Sword Sisters (18 page)

Wow, I’m a piece of work, all right.

I’d been walking as these thoughts marinated in my head, and I emerged at the head of a familiar ravine. The sun had already dropped below the trees, placing it in deep shadow. All evidence of the spider was gone, no doubt cleaned up by forest scavengers. Nothing went to waste in the natural world unlike the sphere of humans, Reapers, and Demons. Everything here had a use, even the broken pieces of a dead god.

The cross-tie for sacrificial victims stood like a skeleton, the broken ends of the chains dangling in the slight breeze. I leaned on it, eyes closed, exhausted, and suddenly trying not to cry. I broke a boy’s legs, a boy probably no different than my beloved, long-lost Aaron. I was a monster, wasn’t I? Just like Adonis and Eldrid said. The best I could hope for was to let someone have his way with me, breed with me like a farm animal, and produce the true Red Reaper. Then, my usefulness would be over, and I could find a way to die.

I didn’t cry. But it was a near thing.

When I opened my eyes again, it was even darker. And that blue glow was present again, coming from deep within the cave.

I knew some caves had glowing moss that grew on the rocks, and there were animals that glowed in the dark as well. But this was too bright and too steady to be either of those things, and it didn’t flicker like a flame either.

I stepped to the edge of the cave mouth and peered inside. Would I see the same shadow moving within?

The light illuminated a high, narrow path that led down into the earth. Fine webbing coated all the surfaces, no doubt from Lurida Lumo’s passage. Yet the floor of the passage was carved into stairs designed for two feet, not eight. What had this cave once been?

And then, from the depths, I heard a voice. Whispering.

I knew Amelia would be along shortly—I trusted her to keep her word—but I couldn’t just let this mystery go. Who or what was down there? Some hermit or bandit hiding in the one place he knew the villagers would never go? Or worse, was this a secret hideout for the Demons? Were they planning a return to this world to renew the Thousand Year War? It seemed absurd, but as a Reaper, even an unwilling and inept one, I simply couldn’t ignore this possibility. I had to know.

I tore off a piece of the dress’s hem and tied it to the end of a broken manacle chain. Hopefully, Amelia would understand that I’d been there and would be back. I held my sword ready although the confines of the cave were probably too narrow for it to be of much use. Then, quietly as I could, I entered the cave.

Just inside the entrance was a curtain of fine webbing, heavier than the cobwebs I knew from the castle but not by much. It was also ridiculously clingy, and I had to spit strands from my mouth. They tasted metallic and bitter.

I’d gone about ten feet when I reached a slight turn and found a wall of webbing blocking the way. I cut it with the sword, and when I did, a faint, whispery moan rose from the glowing-blue depths ahead.

The noise was so creepy that I almost turned back. I was scared of nothing corporeal, but I’d never been trained to fight a damn ghost.

I continued on, the light growing brighter. I tried not to swipe at the webbing, but I was annoyed that my lovely, clean hair was once again attracting everything I passed. I wondered if Andre could smell spider webs.

The passage had several other small turns, which kept the source of the glow maddeningly out of sight. I wasn’t exactly afraid—it took a lot to scare a Reaper—but I did get a serious case of the creeps. What the hell was this place?

As I was about to squeeze through a particularly narrow passage, I sensed movement above me. Another spider, identical to Lurida Lumo, had nestled itself into a cleft and trembled with the eagerness to attack me. I braced my feet and readied the sword, which, in these confines, I could only stab straight up.

The little black cluster of eyes watched me. The blue glow made them seem eerily gentle. The ache in my shoulder reminded me that I knew better.

“Don’t do it,” I whispered, watching for the tensing that signaled an attack. “You won’t get out of this alive.”

The spider seemed to debate this for a moment then scuttled further back into its burrow. I pivoted as I passed under it, not about to turn my back.

By now, the glow was bright enough to read by yet still that pale blue. It made everything either blue, gray, or black, a monochrome vision of the world that made things harder to discern than you’d think. Ahead was an opening into a larger cavern, and I nervously flexed the fingers on my sword hilt. What was waiting for me?

As I stepped through the arched end of the passage, I discovered one very important thing as my foot crunched something on the floor. I looked down and saw bones: human bones. I’d been schooled on human anatomy as part of my battle skills and recognized the vertebrae, lower arm bones, and ribs. And as my gaze rose, I saw that they covered the cavern floor.

I’d found the remains of a massacre.

But I realized something else as well. None of these bones were wrapped in webbing. They weren’t covered in dried skin. They were, in fact, totally picked clean, which meant that the huge spiders, whatever else they might do, had not done this. But what had?

And then I saw the source of the blue glow.

He sat on a crude, rocky throne against the far cavern wall. And because he was naked, I was absolutely certain he was, in fact, a “he.”

 Despite his humanlike form, he looked…gelatinous. Boneless, soft, and weak. And I suspected he’d be sticky to the touch. The blue glow came from the cavern behind him, from a deep recess that descended out of sight.

Some of the blue glow actually came from him as well. It made him hard to look at; I had to squint and peek through my fingers. He saw this and grew dimmer until his glow was bearable, and I could easily make out the details. Like the fact that he was looking straight at me with a knowing little smile.

I didn’t move. My tactical training did not cover an opponent who was half man and half slug. Perhaps if I’d had a salt shaker, I would’ve felt bolder.

With his blue, glowing skin and humanoid shape, he looked like I imagined the Demons of old did before the spell that made them mortal-ish. His facial features were soft as well, like a clay bust that was only halfway finished. But they creased into a wide grin, and he said, in a paradoxically loud whisper, “Aella the Reaper.” His voice was strange, like it came from underwater.

Well, no point in pretending to be a terrified local girl now. “I take it you’re Lurida Lumo?” I said.

“I am.”

“So you’re a god.”

“I am.”

“A god who lives in a hole in the ground?”

“A god may live wherever he chooses.” He raised one hand and motioned with it, slowly and with apparent great effort. “Please, come closer.”

“Why?”

“It is difficult for me to speak more loudly.”

“I thought gods do whatever they choose?”

“Come closer,” he repeated with the exact same intonation.

Did I just backtalk a god? Eldrid was right. There really is something wrong with me. Well, I wouldn’t learn anything standing in the door although, given the way the village had treated me, I wondered why I cared. I knew, though, it was because of Amelia, who had stood by my side against her own people, and who might—if blue slug boy here was really Lurida Lumo—still be in danger. So I picked my way through the bones of what must have been hundreds of people, probably all of them sacrifices: young women taken from their families and left staked out like bait in a trap. Young women who were all some version of my only friend, Amelia.

I stopped well out of reach of Lurida Lumo. Well, out of reach provided he stayed in the shape he currently occupied. I don’t remember much from my studies, but I was certain that corporeal gods usually stayed in the form they chose when they descend. At least that’s what I hoped. Now, more than ever, I wished I’d paid more attention to my studies.

This close, I saw that his slick, blue skin was actually damp, shining with moisture like the stalactites above me. Did he sweat, I wondered, or was this just condensation? I wondered if Freya had an oil for that too.

“Aella,” he said again. I didn’t like this at all. “Yet dressed like a village girl.”

“Sometimes, you have to revamp your style,” I said, wondering how this god looked before he came to the mortal realm.

“You killed one of my guardians and took away my sacrifice.”

“I sure did.”

“Why would a Reaper do that?”

“We disagree on the purpose of nice village girls.”

He smiled, and it looked like the surface of a pudding being shifted from within. Holy Mother of Spikes, this thing is creepy. “Why do the humans deserve your protection when they are such weak, helpless creatures?”

When I was particularly angry at Adonis, Andre, or myself, I’d wondered the same thing, yet this was the first time a ready answer had sprung to mind. “Because we’re weak where they’re strong.”

“Surely, you’re not going to mention such abstract concepts as ‘love’ and ‘compassion,’ are you?”

This guy talked like Eldrid if Eldrid was made out of blue snot. “I don’t have to since, apparently, you already know.”

He shook his head slowly, probably so pieces wouldn’t sling off. “I have not had the pleasure of meeting a Reaper for some time.”

“Are you about to brag that there are Reaper bones in here? Because that’s kind of trite.”

“Oh, no. Nothing so…blatant. I’ve never had a Reaper sacrifice, not in all the long years of my existence.”

“And you’re not about to now.”

His smile widened until it was just a hair beyond where a human expression could go. “Your bravery is admirable. But what I intended to say was that, while I’ve never had a Reaper, I have had…these.”

He gestured with the same hand again, and it moved as if the bones inside were as rubbery as the flesh. I discreetly turned to look, keeping him well within my field of vision as well.

Until everything completely changed.

I jumped back a step, fell into a fighting stance, and fought not to scream. Whether it would’ve been a battle cry or a real scream of terror is open for debate. But either way, I at least managed to stay silent, which was a hell of an accomplishment.

From out of the cave’s blue-lit depths, two unmistakable figures emerged. I knew their long, stringy hair, their ridged eyebrows, their lean, sinewy bodies. In sixty-five years, their stench remained exactly as I remembered.

I knew their kind.

Demons.

Even now, I prefer not to sort through the memories of what the Demons did to the innocent little girl my mother tossed away like the evening’s trash. Every imaginable form and aspect of brutality got practiced on me sometimes as a guinea pig for new innovations but usually just to relieve their boredom. It was a total inversion, a complete perversion of what a child should go through. But what I do remember clearly is the laughter, the mockery, that my pain brought out in them. When Ganesh was defeated, I thought I’d never have to see one of these pasty-faced, baby-raping bastards again. Adonis told me they’d all been destroyed; the only Demons now were in my head. Yet here, now, in this weird-ass cave, were two of them walking toward me.

All right. No one needs to rescue me this time. I’m here to kick Demon ass and chew gum tree leaves, and I’m all out of gum tree leaves. I shifted from a defensive stance to offense, intending to bring the battle to them as soon as they got in range.

Then they stopped.

Something was wrong with them. Where were the intelligent, sadistic smiles that haunt my dreams? They stared straight ahead, glassy-eyed and blank-faced. Those damned Demon smiles didn’t come to their faces. They bore no weapons either, something that was unthinkable for the Demons since Ganesh overthrew the Demon order by having them all made mortal. Before that, not even decapitation could destroy a Demon. Their clothing was tattered and worn with age, something the vanity of Demons would never normally allow. They did not assume any battle stance I recognized but simply stood, faces and limbs slack as if waiting for some sort of order. And this made me positively rigid.

One was male, and the other was a rare female. Where had they come from?

“You may relax,” Lurida Lumo said. “They are under my control.”

Under his what? “That’s some trick,” I said at last, hoping my voice didn’t shake too much.

He gestured at them. They slowly turned their backs to me, something an unarmed Demon really would never do to a Reaper. Then I saw why. On the backs of their necks were hand-sized, slug-like creatures the same glowing shade of blue as Lurida Lumo. They pulsed slowly, and strands of the Demons’ greasy white hair stuck to them. They had bored into the Demons’ skin, and by inference, into their brains. Whatever they were, it was clear Lurida Lumo did have the Demons under some sort of control.

“Do you know,” he asked me, “how it is that Demons came to be in this realm?”

“No one knows that.”

“Demons were once servants of our great Creator, the one who made all things, including the other gods. But they were rebellious creatures, and the creator cast them out and sent them here to serve his most precious creation.”