Playing With Fire

by Adrienne Woods et al.

  Yuhltse’s hand left Rahlizje’s chest and slowly moved up until those cold fingers closed around the thief’s throat. She did not put much pressure there; this was merely a demonstration of the fact that she could, if she wanted, squeeze the life right out of her acolyte, and nothing and no one would stop her. The wooden bowl of that black, glistening substance that had burned Rahlizje’s lip neared her open mouth, and the thief’s breath came fast and heavy now. No, this was not what she had expected at all.

  “You felt it, didn’t you?” So many voices from a woman who did not seem anywhere near large enough to contain them all. “All of this down your throat would kill you, yes. A little less than that would send you into fits of agony for days. But you know pain, Rahli. You know it as well as I, and we can both attest to the fact that it is nothing more than a means to an end. I will not waste the blood of Imlach’s Finger like this. But you and I both know that if I changed my mind, there is nothing you could do to stop me. Your punishment, little flame, is the same as mine once was. Not pain, not fear, not solitude. Defy me as often as you like, but know that the price of that defiance is your own will. And I will take it from you again and again until you have nothing left to give.” Finally, the echo in the woman’s chambers softened, the stone walls quit their trembling dance, and only the crackling of the fire filled the silence.

  The tears had welled enough to trickle down Rahlizje’s cheeks as she stared at the beautifully, perfectly terrifying visage looming over her. They were warm on her skin until they hit the High Priestess’ fingers still curled lightly around her throat. And she knew, in that moment, that she could do absolutely nothing until her mistress released her.

  Yuhltse took a deep breath through her nose and let go of her acolyte’s throat, trailing her fingers across Rahlizje’s skin until her hand returned with the other to support the bottom of the wooden bowl. “Now,” she breathed, blinking slowly, a tired smile flickering at the corners of her mouth. “Stand, little flame. Let me show you how to adorn the High Priestess of Imlach with His very blood.” She stepped back, and the hold Rahlizje felt from the tips of her fingers to the depths of her own bowels suddenly lifted.

  The thief said nothing as she stood, this time of her own accord and without being forced. Because Yuhltse had revealed just how much she knew of Rahlizje of Holjstruke, and it was enough to strike the first taste of true fear in the thief’s heart. She would do what she had to do to escape the same consequences that had just been meted out to her. If Rahlizje did not have her own will, she had nothing.

  When Yuhltse offered her the bowl, this time, Rahlizje took it. The High Priestess turned and approached the standing mirror held in a gilded frame just inside the doors. Rahlizje followed her, knowing not what would be required of her but only that, as a maiden to her mistress, she was expected to follow. She’d played this part countless times in countless villages and holdfasts, and yet now, it was no longer an act.

  “Stand there.” The woman eyed Rahlizje and pointed to the stone floor at her side. When her handmaid obeyed, Yuhltse studied herself in the gilded mirror and tilted her head again. Her arms lifted gently from her sides, and she brought her long, slender fingers to the hollow of her own throat. “Start here,” she said, tapping her throat twice. “The rest will come to you.”

  Rahlizje had no idea what she was supposed to do, and it must have showed quite clearly on her face.

  Yuhltse chuckled—a sound so light with amusement and so contrary to the terrible force of all those otherworldly voices speaking through her at once that it sent another shiver down Rahlizje’s spine. “His blood is many things, as you will see. Right now”—she spread her arms again and nodded at the reflection of her nude body in the mirror—“ritual paint.”

  Dipping her fingers slowly into the thick black liquid within the bowl, Rahlizje took a tentative step forward. A part of her, in the back of her mind, had entertained the thought of touching the High Priestess’ body before she’d even stepped foot inside these chambers. She never could have expected that she’d be doing so like this, as a handmaiden preparing her mistress for whatever ritual was to come.

  One thing she did know for certain. The temple witch was very, very real. And Rahlizje had no choice now but to bend to the woman’s will—or lose her own.

  Chapter 18

  “I expect you to wait here for my return,” Yuhltse said as her handmaid helped her slip into the black robes the priests of Imlach all wore, no matter their status within these temples. “You may entertain yourself as you like, little flame, but beware of how far you explore. Some things even I cannot undo.” Then she stepped toward Rahlizje, hooked a finger under the thief’s chin, and leaned in to kiss her again. It was short and dry—a whisper against Rahlizje’s lips—and a very clear warning. Do not disappoint me.

  Her robes swirled around her ankles as she headed across the room again toward the wardrobe. The doors creaked open, and she reached both hands inside to lift out the strangest item Rahlizje had ever seen. It looked at first like a crown, all spikes and jagged edges of iron forged into a formidable ring. A giant metal disk etched with symbols she didn’t recognize was mounted at the very center of the circlet, making the entire thing look remarkably heavy. Braided bits of hair and leather thongs fell in waves from where they’d been tied to that iron crown, clacking with every movement. Rahlizje saw beads there and the same silver trinkets strung through some of the acolytes’ hair. She’d thought she’d seen bones in some of the others’ braids, but now there was no doubt about the bones strung along the curtain of macabre decorations spilling from the headdress—fingerbones, perhaps a few toes, the jagged end of a rib, and human teeth.

  Rahlizje frowned at the monstrous thing the High Priestess withdrew from the wardrobe. Both doors closed, and Yuhltse returned to the center of the room, cradling the headpiece in her arms as if it were her own sleeping child. “You will not see it tonight, Rahli. But soon enough, I’ll have you standing at my side.”

  “To do what?” Immediately, Rahlizje regretted the question. She’d never bit her tongue like this out of fear—out of a perverse longing to test the limits of her mistress’ patience. Because no, patience and leniency did not exist within this woman in equal parts at all.

  “We offer ourselves to the Sleeping Darkness, little flame. Many do not yet understand why. It is my duty to remind them of what is to come.”

  “Is it—” Rahlizje stopped herself this time. She couldn’t say why now she wished to question what would happen, as if she truly believed in what might happen. Perhaps she did. After all, what she’d seen the High Priestess do just an hour before should not have been possible.

  “Is it what?” Yuhltse pursed her lips, though they twitched in an urge to form a smile instead. “You wish to know if this is magic?”

  Rahlizje blinked quickly, hoping the woman’s unknown abilities did not extend as far as hearing others’ thoughts. “Or something like it,” she muttered.

  “Well.” The woman looked her up and down again and finally smiled. “If it is magic, it is the kind that has been locked away longer than any of us can fathom. Mabrek named it such, and he felt the stirrings of its return. So do I. Still but a little beyond my reach, mind you, but stronger. For me, it is merely life. Service. My flesh for—ah. That too you must wait to understand.” The woman passed Rahlizje and headed for the double doors. With the headdress cradled in one hand, she reached out with the other to pull on one door’s iron ring. Then she paused and turned back to her handmaid. “You’ll hear it from me many times, but I’ll leave it with you now to ponder, if you wish. The greatest power, Rahli, is the one nobody ever sees.” Those ice-blue eyes flashed again—or perhaps Rahlizje was only remembering the time they truly had—and the High Priestess of Imlach turned once more to face the open door and the dark, cold passageway beyond.

  She lifted the headdress in both hands and slowly lowered the iron crown onto her head. The transformation was instant—a thin, pale w
oman in black robes one moment, a monarch the next. Yuhltse’s shoulders spread and pulled down as the weight of the headpiece fully settled upon her head and neck. She no longer moved with a languid carelessness but with a stiff, straight-backed grace, a commanding assuredness that left no room for anything else but what she meant to do as the wearer of that vestment. Rahlizje had no idea what that was, but she knew within her bones that to sneak out of Yuhltse’s chambers and attempt to follow her would be a crime worth its punishment. And that, above all things, she meant to avoid.

  When the High Priestess disappeared within the darkness of the corridor and Rahlizje could hear only the crackling fire in the hearth beside the doorway, she pulled the door shut by the iron ring and turned to view Yuhltse’s chambers.

  ‘You may entertain yourself as you like,’ the woman had said. Part of her felt like that in and of itself was a trap waiting to be sprung. The other part of her was certain, somehow, that the High Priestess of Imlach did not say anything she did not truly mean. The only question now was what could the thief find here to provide even a modicum of entertainment?

  Her gaze fell onto the old, age-dusted tome Yuhltse had pulled from the bookshelf. The woman had not kept it secret, had not forbidden Rahlizje from touching anything. Perhaps she was testing her new handmaid with a morsel of temptation left out to lure Rahlizje into disobedience. But that didn’t feel quite right, either.

  Slowly, Rahlizje approached the bookshelf and reached out for the tome. It did not sting her like the black sludge Yuhltse had called the blood of Imlach’s Finger. It felt like nothing more than decades of dust and the thin suppleness of parchment on the verge of collapse. Perhaps it was stronger than it appeared. Many things were, she knew. Many things weren’t.

  She could not help it that she glanced at the chamber doors once more, just to be sure no one meant to intrude upon her entertaining herself and chastise her for it. It wasn’t a particularly admirable quality to find in herself now, this hesitant double-checking of her own decisions. But Rahlizje was starting at the beginning all over again, stripped away of who she thought she was, as her mistress had so eloquently put it. And now that she was no longer intoxicated by the woman’s presence in the same room, Rahlizje found herself forming another plan within the High Priestess’ chambers. The greatest power might indeed have been the one nobody ever saw, but Rahlizje was quite certain that most people never even bothered to look.

  That was what she intended to do with what time she’d been given.

  Taking the book with her to the elegant bed, so sharply contrasting the cold, black stone of this entire place, Rahlizje let herself sink down on the surprisingly soft mattress. Then she began.

  The first page of this text—the one that was so important that the High Priestess had used it to deliver her first lesson—named it only as ‘A History’. That was it. But the page after that revealed a script much different than the one she’d read aloud to her mistress. This writing was small, cramped, and steeply tilted to the left. Still, it was legible, and it was dated close to seven hundred years in the past.

  A flare of curiosity and eager anticipation rushed through the thief. She had been captured, tied up, and carted across Eldynia. She’d been shot in the dead of night, had suffered through a certainly deadly fever, and had been sold into the services of the woman who owned this book. She’d been stripped, shorn, made to kneel more than once—first within the altered state of blue smoke and countless hands and again beneath the auspices of her new mistress’ powers. She knew what it was to lose every last bit of her own control over herself and her decisions, over her very body, over her mind.

  Yet here she remained, Rahlizje of Holjstruke, Rahlizje the thief, sifting through the pages of a centuries-old tome that, to her utmost surprise and delight, detailed every iota of the forces the Priests of Imlach sought to control here within the temples of Arahaz. Perhaps Yuhltse had left it out for her on purpose with some much more hidden motive in mind. At this point, Rahlizje didn’t care.

  She would read, and she would learn. And when the time was right, she would do what she’d always done best—the thing that had never failed her in all her years of running from those who wished to bend her to their will. Rahlizje would steal from Imlach Himself, and the temples and all the acolytes within them would help her do just that. Because no one ever looked too closely at a thief they believed they’d caught.

  About Kathrin Hutson

  Born and raised in Colorado, adopted by South Carolina, and at home in Vermont, Kathrin Hutson has been writing fiction for eighteen years, editing for eight, and plunging in and out of reality since she first became aware of the concept. Kathrin specializes in fantasy and sci-fi, with a smattering of short stories that weave in and out of literary fiction.

  In addition to writing exquisitely dark fiction, Kathrin runs her own independent editing company, KLH CreateWorks, for novels of all genres. She also serves as fiction coeditor for Burlington, Vermont’s Mud Season Review literary magazine. Needless to say, she doesn’t have time to do anything she doesn’t enjoy.

  To find out more about Kathrin and her novels, visit her website at www.kathrinhutsonfiction.com.

  A Fated Exception

  by Kat Stiles

  A Fated Exception Blurb: Cass is just a brilliant programmer to the outside world, a super geek paid millions to fix unfixable computers. What no one knows is she's really a technomage—she has the ability to communicate with any program or machine through touch.

  The world Cass lives in is one that fears her kind. She is one of a dwindling number of “enhanced,” people whose DNA was optimized at birth. Hunted by OCEI, an organization that will stop at nothing to eliminate the enhanced, Cass and other enhanced hide their abilities to survive. Relationships are forbidden—the chemical reaction of fluids exchanged with super-charged DNA can be deadly.

  When Cass is called in to troubleshoot an unresponsive android, she makes an alarming discovery: humanity is on the verge of extinction. Her only clue is a sexy shapeshifter, Tyler, who sparks a desire within her she can't control. No matter how much she tries to ignore him, she can’t deny the intense attraction she feels. But that attraction is dangerous, for both of them.

  Can Cass discover the plan to wipe out humanity before it’s too late? And can she resist Tyler, or will her desire for him be her undoing?

  Chapter 1

  "Ms. Lexington, we require your services," the voice on the line said, in a panicked tone.

  The call wasn't unexpected, after the Dynatech website had been hacked. There was a thread about it last night in my feed. I ignored it, hoping their staff would figure it out. Or pay the ransom, I didn't care which. After just getting back from a week-long stint fixing code in Redmond, I was exhausted.

  "Ransomware?" I asked, suppressing a yawn.

  "With a twist. If we don't pay in the next 24 hours, they're going to wipe our servers. All of them. We've confirmed the bug exists throughout our network."

  Likely an empty threat. But a billion-dollar company like Dynatech couldn't risk it. Even with a redundancy setup, the time it would take to get up and running would be less than my fee.

  "Two million, due on completion," I said.

  The man on the line took no hesitation in agreeing to my fee. That made it abundantly clear that they had already exhausted all internal resources, and maybe even a couple of consultants, like me. I didn't get many calls, but when I did, it was because no one else could figure it out.

  "A jet is waiting for you at Newark Airport. Brandon will brief you on the way; a limo is outside."

  Damn, they must be desperate to have a car here already.

  "Give me 15 minutes," I said, and disconnected.

  I wondered what time it was, as I yawned and stretched myself upright. My bedroom was devoid of any electronic devices, they were too distracting. Even with room darkening curtains, I knew by the headache that surfaced it must have been sometime in the early morning.


  So much for catching up on sleep. But it wasn't so much sleep as solitude I craved. Being around people takes a toll on any introvert, but for me it was much worse. My work required me to be onsite most of the time, and it was my least favorite aspect of the job.

  After a shower and a strong cup of coffee, I was partially awake. I knew I could catch up on sleep on the flight—Newark to Atlanta was at least a couple of hours. What I worried about was staying awake for whatever Brandon had to say. Briefings just sucked, especially IT ones. If it wasn't a dick-swinging contest on who knew more acronyms, it was a bunch of useless information.

  I ran my fingers through my short, silver-blackish hair, shaking off the excess water, before pushing it back in a headband to avoid styling it. Then I grabbed my cell phone. 3AM.

  I sighed, trying to work myself up to at least acting in a civil manner. Coming in as a consultant, I was often viewed as the enemy, and I didn't have the energy to even attempt to overcome that. I grabbed a couple of days' worth of fresh clothes and switched out the clothes in my suitcase.

  I took one final, longing gaze at my home. The new leather couch that had been used twice. The cozy nook by the bay window I had redone, with the sole intention of reading something, anything non-technical. The lush area rug—the softest thing I'd ever touched and the stage of most of my fantasies.

  Before my mind traveled down that road (which only lead to frustration and regret), I took a deep breath and exhaled. Time to work. After this gig, I won't accept any more jobs for a while, I promised myself. Really, I won't, I told myself, but I could practically hear my inner voice laughing at me. Though I hated to be around people, I still wanted to help them.