On the Verge (25 page)

“The aegis. I could feel it, just a bit of it, after you told me you knew about the Verge. So I sent you to her and gave you my doll as a precaution. I’m sorry, but I thought you might make it, and if the witch went back on her word, I hoped the bugs might finish her.”

She laughed. It was cold and mirthless.

“You’ve heard of me, haven’t you?” she said with false hauteur. “Vasilisa the Brave, standing up to the wily Baba Yaga with my trusty doll?”

Freya just stared at her, uncertain of how to respond. She hadn’t heard of her, but wasn’t sure she wanted to anger the person in charge of the bugs.

“I’ll take that as a no,” said Vasilisa. “Well no matter. You’ve heard of me now.”

She paused.

“Actually it seems like my little experiment is somewhat successful. It scared the witch off at least for now. And you do have the paint.”

There was treachery in her voice as she eyed the container Freya clutched to her chest.

“I’m not really bad, you know. Just tired of this fable I’m forced to live. I’m actually willing to let you go. Your death is no use to me now. Just give me the color. Things haven’t gone to plan. But her color. Now that would make a nice consolation prize.”

Her words were calm, but Freya could see the defiance burning in her eyes along with the kind of fear that makes you reckless.

“I’m sorry I can’t do that,” said Freya. “My life depends on this color. I won’t hand it over.”

Vasilisa’s face clouded. When she spoke again her voice was calm.

“The colors are powerful,” she said. “They’re very valuable, especially this time of year. Baba Yaga will return, and she will punish me for what I have done. With her color, though, I might be able to protect myself somehow, maybe even buy myself a new fate.”

“The color stays with me,” said Freya with as much conviction and finality as she could muster.

Vasilisa looked down at the ground. Her shoulders visibly tightened and her fingers curled into tight little fists. Rusty had remained a short distance behind Freya during the exchange, bent nearly double with fatigue and pain. But they could both see that whatever rapport existed between them and the girl had evaporated with Freya’s last words, and he used whatever strength he had left to draw himself up to his full height. He looked ready for a final battle.

“You humans have finite lives,” Vasilisa said, her voice flat, dull with rage. “We of the Verge live the lives of legends. We die countless deaths at the hands of storytellers, only to be born again in the pages of some other tale. For you there is freedom in death, a final, infinite release. In the Verge our stories are not our own and death is just a means to someone else’s end. You don’t realize how lucky you have it. You should cherish your mortality.”

She stood before them, cold and broken for a moment, before continuing.

“Let me grant you the privilege of dying.”

She raised her hands, intoned some words in her native tongue, and Freya knew the bugs weren’t far behind. She thought if they ran now they might be able to make it back to the belfry and out to the real world where the bugs couldn’t follow. But Rusty was too weak for another mad escape attempt. She prepared herself. If nothing else she would go down fighting.

She had just exhaled, steeling herself for the return of Vasilisa’s terrible insects when it happened. One minute Vasilisa was standing there and the next she was underneath the black taloned feet of Baba Yaga’s hut, crushed, Wicked Witch of the West style. Freya gasped. She was still in shock when the brown face of Baba Yaga appeared in the doorway.

“No need to thank me, my little turnip,” the witch said. “I’d been wanting to do that for a long time. Always going on about how being part of my story is a fate worse than death. It’s rather insulting, you know.”

She climbed down the rickety stairs, whistling a strange little tune as she went.

“Anyway,” Baba Yaga continued, “she’ll be back of course, and that’s punishment enough for her, but I might as well help myself to a meal in the meantime. Now I suggest you get out of here and get on your way.”

Freya grabbed Rusty’s hand and without a word walked quickly around the lethal hut. They broke out into a run the rest of the way to the church.

Baba Yaga’s mad cackle followed them the whole way, filling the underground ghost town. Freya looked back once. The witch was under the house pulling fiercely at Vasilisa’s bent and broken legs that protruded from beneath the raptor feet. Freya gulped hard before sliding through the open door of the church. The witch would satisfy her craving for flesh tonight after all.

D
akryma lay in bed and stared peevishly at the cat staring back at him. It sat, silhouetted by the light from the nearly full moon, framed by the large open picture window that looked out over Channary’s backyard.

She was in bed next to him, her lithe body half covered by the blush silk sheets of her sumptuous bed. He could see one of her small but perfect breasts through the fringe of her long, black hair. The dark lashes of her almond eyes brushed against the high cheekbones of her exotic face. He thought about reaching out and running his finger along the curve of her hip, to touch her golden skin, but he didn’t want to wake her. He hoped that beautiful head of hers was slipping off into a dark dream world ripe for his reaping. The men and women he coupled with always provided him the best sustenance. The little death of an orgasm with a dark lord was an excellent breeding ground for the black carnality that he considered a particularly satisfying delicacy.

A soft mew called his attention away from the deliciousness of Channary and back to the strange little panther presiding over her room like a diminutive usurper. Dakryma was rather fond of cats. He felt a certain kinship with them as they were among the most melancholic of all the creatures in the animal kingdom. That, coupled with their studied indifference, made them rather like his furry counterparts, stalking the night, fully owning their sleek power, making ennui and apathy beautiful.

But this one was different. It was solid black, which was usually his favorite variety of feline, but the way it regarded him with its brilliant yellow eyes gave him pause. It was undoubtedly a familiar, but what witch or warlock might be its master he couldn’t fathom.

He wondered briefly if it might be Channary’s own attendant. When he had seen her hours ago at the bar of an eccentric lounge in that peculiar Seattle neighborhood, Fremont, he had thought there was something special about her. She’d seemed particularly full of just the sort of energy Dakryma craved. It bloomed out of her like a dusky flower, lovely and mesmerizing but somehow disturbing as well. It was similar to the feeling he got from a creature of the Verge, but he’d sworn off his own kind after his entanglement with Ophidia. Nothing good ever came from such a union, and humans were nearly as gratifying and infinitely less life-threatening.

He was just about to approach her when he turned around, and she was right there at his side, her low voice cutting through the neo-Grunge music.

“Come with me.”

She’d grabbed his hand and he followed her out the door and into the dismal night air. They walked down the street hand in hand, like newly smitten sweethearts. They said nothing, but every once in a while she’d turn his way and lift the corners of her mouth into a smile that was sweet but not innocent. He wondered what kind of secrets she had inside of her and his imagination caught fire, anticipating all the ways he would make her divulge those mysteries. Beautiful, dangerous, erotic, enigmatic, she was a sphinx incarnate. Something tingled in his brain, some kind of silent alarm, but it wasn’t enough to override his desire. Soon all he could think of was ripping off her tight jeans.

They passed under the Aurora Bridge. Dakryma glanced up and there was the iconic troll, the neighborhood’s mascot. It was a huge statue cast in concrete. Very tongue-in-cheek with an actual VW Beetle in hand, a dour grimace on his face as he presided over the antics of curious tourists posing in front of him, climbing on his head or pretending to pick his nose. Dakryma smirked. A real troll would tear those people limb from limb, but he doubted very much that there was enough belief in these parts to call an ancient creature like that from the Verge. But the morbid juxtaposition of an actual troll attack, known for their bloody viciousness, in front of the whimsical, oft-parodied sculpture struck Dakryma as rather droll.

They walked a little further on 34
^th
Street before turning left on Woodland Park Avenue. Another block and they stood at the bottom of a set of steep concrete steps leading up from street level to one of those quintessentially Northwest Craftsman-style homes from the early decades of the twentieth century with its multi-peaked roof and wide porch supported by thick tapered columns. Except this one was different. It was painted in a mind-boggling array of colors from its chartreuse door to its lilac window trim. A little sign at the base of the stairs read: House of Kour, Channary Im, Proprietress. Well, at least he knew her name now.

They started to climb the front stairs but stopped midway up and stepped onto the tiny terraced lawn in front of the house and entered through a back door.

“My shop is up front,” Channary had said to him. “I don’t like to mix business with pleasure.”

It was the first thing she’d said to him since those few words they’d exchanged at the bar less than half an hour ago. She remained silent as she opened the door and led him up a mahogany staircase to her moonlit bedroom. They went at each other like animals. Dakryma wasn’t even sure how they got their clothes off, so focused was he on appeasing his desire. He only slowed down once throughout those intense moments, and it was because of the cat. It was observing them nonchalantly from its perch above the bed, peering down disdainfully as Channary rhythmically rode his hardness with increasing speed. He wanted to be concentrating on the flawlessness of her nipples, but the cat unnerved him. The only thing that helped was to change positions, and he liked being on top anyway.

She came silently, her striking features communicating the intensity of her orgasm. He finished not long after, collapsing next to her in the wide bed. She lifted a finger to his face and outlined his angular jawline before closing her eyes and drifting off, her narrow ribcage rising up and down slowly.

And still the cat stared. It was really starting to piss him off. The presence of a familiar meant only one thing: he was under surveillance by someone with connections to the Verge, and that was trouble. He carefully got up from the bed and stood below the windowsill where the cat sat several feet above him. A breeze blew in and danced across his pale skin. He called softly to the creature. Familiars might be the eyes and ears for their Verge masters, carrying out their reconnaissance stealthily and without complaint, but they were still merely animals with no special cognitive advantage. He called out to the cat again but it made no move to jump down within arm’s reach of Dakryma.

“Maybe you’re smarter than you look,” Dakryma muttered under his breath.

It was no matter to Dakryma. On a night like tonight with the moon shining at near full intensity there were plenty of shadows to play with. He kept his feet still and craned his neck to find his own dark outline stretched out across the hardwood floor. A few quick words whispered into the night and his penumbra lifted off the floor and floated out the window. The cat watched it impassively as it moved silently past it into the crisp night air.

Dakryma waited. The cat waited. The room was silent. The cat’s eyes glowed and Dakryma could almost glimpse the eyes that looked through the feline’s diamond-shaped pupils. There was a presence there and she danced around the edges of his memory nearly recognizable but slipping away before she came into complete focus. He was craning forward, hoping to get a better look at his remote observer, when suddenly and silently great orange talons dug remorselessly into the cat’s back and it was lifted up and out into the air by an outsized gray owl. The familiar let out an ungodly screech at it disappeared into the night sky. A moment later an insubstantial cloud of inky vapor slipped back in the window and slid down the wall to the floor, settling there at Dakryma’s feet.

Adumbral manipulation, just one of the many perks of being an incubus-cum-fallen angel. He stood on the little bench built into the wall below the window and peered out into the sable sky of late October in Seattle. He couldn’t see the owl any longer. He assumed it had found someplace to enjoy the feline feast it had so effortlessly and ruthlessly skewered. He scanned the urban vista, wondering how many slumbering heads were under the multitude of gray-shingled roofs before him. He felt the blood rush to his member. Entering dreams, haunting the psyches of his sweetly sleeping victims, was like foreplay, and when he found the melancholy in those nightmares it was better than sex.

He was thinking of paying Channary a dreamland visit or at the very least waking her up for a second round when he happened to glance down at her backyard. It was of middling size with an aging brown fence marking its borders. He found it interesting that there were no plants save for grass and a single tree that grew out of the yard’s very center. It was lush and full with vibrant emerald leaves, lustrous in the light of the moon. Clusters of pale green fruits shaped like miniature pumpkins could be glimpsed here and there when the increasingly icy wind blew the verdant foliage out of the way. Her neighbors had trees too, but all that could be seen of their arbors in the clear autumn night were barren branches, clacking together in the breeze, their leaves scattered across the ground below in moldering heaps.