by Bryan Camp
The demon laughed. “You think I don’t know that?” he said, his condescension incredibly discordant coming out of Ramses’ creaky adolescent voice. “I’m counting on that. You know the one thing I crave, after centuries of slavery? Oblivion. I’ll do whatever it takes to get it.” He gestured with the barrel of the gun. “And you can stop right there. Like I don’t notice you creeping up on me.”
Renai stopped, almost—but probably not quite—close enough to lunge at him. If she could get the demon out of Ramses’ body before he pulled the trigger, she might be able to stop this.
But she needed a distraction. She turned to Cordelia. “What’s so special about me and Regal? How does shooting us get you what you want?”
Cordelia chuckled. “Do you really think I’m a villain in some penny dreadful? Shall I tell you my whole plan now right as I am about to bring it to fruition?” She tapped the emery board to her lips, pretending to consider. “I think not.” When she moved, it was as if she became smoke, diffuse and swift and invulnerable. She re-formed right next to Renai, slipped a hand into her jacket pocket, and danced away, all before Renai realized what she was doing. A half second too late, the black-bladed knife was in Renai’s hand. Cordelia raised an eyebrow but smiled. “Let’s just say,” she said, holding up the coin of Fortune so that Renai could see what she’d taken, “that you both have access to a significant source of this.”
Understanding dragged at her with terrible gravity. “Jude,” Renai said, “you wanted me to bring Jude here.”
Cordelia shrugged, an oh-gosh-you-caught-me smile playing along her lips. “His presence would have been appreciated, but it’s no matter. I have what I need. Do it.”
Everything happened at once. Renai leaped for the demon, who raised the pistol and yelled, “Bang!” with a smile, expecting, Renai would guess later, for her to flinch. She didn’t. Instead, the jacket reacted to protect her, the hood flying up and the magic of the ghost word taking effect without her needing to command it. Renai reached inside Ramses’ chest, hands searching for the shadowy substance of the demon, the pain of the revolver’s curse shocking her fingers numb and making her clumsy. Her hands closed on something, a tiny, fragile bit of Essence, just as she heard the quick, deafening bark of the revolver. Cur howled, and Cordelia laughed, a delighted, musical sound.
She stood, trying not to look, already knowing she’d been too late.
He lay stretched out on the oak’s roots, smoke drifting up from the revolver’s muzzle, a small neat hole in one temple, the other side of his head a bloody ruin. The demon was gone, sucked up into the cursed gun just like he wanted. And Ramses was gone, too, just as the Deadline had predicted, from a gunshot wound. The timing had just been a little off.
The noise came out of Renai without warning, a sound of grief, a full-throated anguished wail without words or form or restraint. She knelt at his side and wept for him, cradling the far-too-small bundle of Essence she’d pulled from him, yelling until her throat was raw, a psychopomp keening for the life she’d been unable to save.
Renai allowed herself only a moment for tears, a moment that Cordelia seemed content to watch. Seemed, in fact, to savor. The pain of losing Ramses didn’t go away, was far from satisfied, but it receded enough for Renai to function. She stood, cushioning the tiny Essence to her chest with one hand, and Cordelia’s smirk brought lightning crackling to her other one. She hadn’t had to ask the storm spirit to lend her its power: it came roaring to the surface, eager to lend its aid. “Why?” Renai asked. Her voice was hoarse, the taste of blood in the back of her throat, but she swallowed and spoke again. “Tell me why.”
Cordelia spread her hands. “Same reason the scorpion stings the frog,” she said. “It’s my nature.”
A single spark, a fraction of the destructive power within her, scorched the earth at Cordelia’s feet. “Not good enough.” Renai was so full of righteous fury that she felt like the ground quivered with every step she took.
A flash of anger passed across Cordelia’s face. “Fine. It’s because this world is broken. You know it as well as I do. It’s why you tore yourself apart. How can you possibly love this world when it’s full to bursting with so much shit? You’ve seen it yourself. Everything about this world, from the way the gods above twist and control the spirits for their own ends, to the monstrous acts these mortals commit on each other again and again and again. Children dying because they don’t have clean drinking water, while an entire nation pisses in theirs. The wealth of an entire world clasped in the hands of a few, everyone else fighting over the loose change that manages to slip free. The legions of them who go their whole lives hating everyone who is the slightest bit different. Their skin, their sex, their gender, their love, their faith, their home. As if they don’t all look like that”—she pointed at the Essence in Renai’s arms—“to us.”
“You know I’m right,” Cordelia continued. “You’re death in a pretty dress, after all. You and me, we’re the forest fire that clears away all the dead wood. We’re the inevitable end to all things. Destroying this world isn’t an evil act, Renai. It’s a mercy killing.”
Renai took a long, deep breath, and let the lightning slip away from her grip. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right.” She unzipped her jacket and slid Ramses’ Essence inside, where he would be safe.
Cordelia cocked her head to the side, exactly like she would have done when she was an unassuming little brown bird. “Beg pardon?”
“You’ve convinced me,” Renai said. “I was already halfway there. We’re on the same team, right? The inevitable end, just like you said. Just wish you’d have given me that speech, like, a week ago.”
Cur began to snarl and gnash his jaws, his eyes full of rage and hate. “Traitor!” he yelled. “Fiend!”
Cordelia glanced at him, and then turned narrowed eyes at Renai. “What is his malfunction?”
“He can smell lies,” Renai said. “So he knows I’m telling the truth.” She bent down and picked up the caduceus, its power throbbing in her hand like a heart. She reached out—with her free hand, with the power of a psychopomp—toward the six-legged horse, recognizing the mare for who she was, begging for her trust. “Drag that idiot outside the east gate,” she told the mare, “and kill him.” The massive horse kicked Cur’s sword away where he wouldn’t be able to reach it, grabbed his breastplate in her massive jaws, and dragged him, roaring and spitting insults, out of sight. When they were gone, Renai turned to Cordelia, forced herself to smile, and said, “What’s next?”
The chaos goddess studied Renai for a few silent, tense moments. Renai’s legs trembled, as she waited to see if her gamble paid off, if her honesty about wanting to tear down the world that the Thrones had built—which had been enough to convince Cur’s nose—would be enough for Cordelia to trust her. At last, she smiled, and shook one finger at her in mock rebuke. “I knew you had potential,” she said. “Next we summon Apep. He will need a vessel, so we’ll use this”—she held up the coin of Fortune she’d stolen from Renai—“and this”—she held out her other hand, waited for Renai to give her the caduceus—“to resurrect the dear departed Ramses St. Cyr with Apep growing inside of him.”
“That’s it?”
Cordelia’s eyes narrowed again. “What do you mean?”
“All this just for one person?”
The chaos goddess smirked. “What were you expecting? A serpent the size of a city? An asteroid plummeting from the heavens? The destruction of an entire world in one screaming, bloody night?” She shook her head, smiling, indulgent. “You still think too much like a mortal, Renaissance. You think the devil is a dragon, a shadow overhead who swoops down and burns your city and flies away with your children in his belly. Or he’s the dark whisper in your mind who tells you to kill your neighbor. But the truth is, all he’s got to do is tell you that your neighbor is different. That his food smells funny, that he’s more successful, or that he wants what you have. Then you do it for him.
And when you’re done with the devil’s work, you invite him into your children’s hearts too.” She smiled, and the joy in it was the manic glee of a fire leaping from one building to the next. “Today it’s this boy in this city, Renaissance, but Apep is already everywhere. It’ll be the little things. Trust in those they choose to lead them. Faith in their friends. Compassion for those closest to them, and for those furthest away. A crack here, a break there, all around the edges, until one by one, they’re alone and angry and afraid, and it’s everyone’s fault but their own. They’ll leave people to fend for themselves when a hurricane destroys a whole community. They’ll send their thoughts and prayers when a concert gets shot up. Or a movie theater. Or a school. They’ll elect demagogues and sociopaths and avatars of pure, unfettered greed. And when the flames rise, they’ll blame each other.”
Cordelia smiled, her tongue caught between her teeth like she couldn’t believe she was the one who got to spill the tea. “We won’t have to destroy this world, my dear. They’ll do it for us.”
Renai bit the side of her mouth so she wouldn’t scream. The tempest whirled within her, ready for her direction, but desperate to act. It took all of her self-restraint, every ounce of her newfound balance, to keep from unleashing the storm right in Cordelia’s face. After a few breaths, she recovered enough to ask, “So how does this work? Is there a summoning ritual or—”
Cordelia giggled, shoving the heel of her hand against Renai’s shoulder. “Oh, don’t be foolish,” she said. “Did you really think I was going to rely on you coming to your senses? Or that I would tell you the details of my plan if you had one chance of stopping me? The blood of a sacrifice on the roots of the World Tree is all we needed. Apep’s already here.”
That’s when Renai realized that the quivering beneath her feet had been a steady, increasing thing, more noticeable now that she was still and quiet and not filled with the fury of the storm. That her legs hadn’t been trembling with fear at all. That the earth itself shook.
The grass beneath the oak split and tore, brown soil thrust up from the earth beneath. Two sharp points broke through first, smooth and glossy and hard instead of the scales Renai had been expecting. Above them, the oak creaked and groaned, shifting because its roots were being displaced, perhaps, or maybe in actual pain.
And then Apep shoved his way into the Garden of Eden.
His scales were pure white, as though sunlight had never touched his flesh, and his flat, broad head was crowned with a pair of thick black horns. His body was about half as thick as Cur’s, yet if he rose up from the ground to his full height, he’d be twice as tall. Menace radiated from him like heat from a furnace, and he smelled like incense, like burnt flesh, like sacrifice and spilled blood. It gave Renai an idea, just one chance to do this right.
“I thought he’d be bigger,” Renai said.
If the embodiment of chaotic, evil destruction took any offense at her words, he didn’t show it, but Cordelia threw back her head and laughed, and that’s when Renai made her play.
Everything she’d done and endured since her resurrection had led to this moment: the splitting and reunification of her self, every soul she’d separated from their Shadow, every wrestling match with the destructive impulses of the storm spirit inside her, every glimpse of her family she’d managed to steal using her mirror, every scrap of Voice she’d consumed, every moment she’d wished for a change to this life of hers, even if it was an ending.
But mostly, she remembered that she’d been able to show Cross his Shadow self in a broken piece of polished stone.
She reached into the nowhere place for her knife and for the mirror, pulled them both free at the same time, one in each hand. She brought them together, slow enough that she wouldn’t chip the edges but quickly enough that she’d already fitted the two broken halves back together by the time Cordelia asked what she was doing.
For this to have any chance of working, her mirror, like her soul, would have to be whole. It would have to be big enough, strong enough, to show Apep, the most ancient, malevolent being in creation, that there was another way.
But she had no magic that could repair or restore. She was destruction, an embodiment of the inevitable end, an emissary of death, that much of her agreement with Cordelia had been true. She couldn’t make so much as remake, creation through destruction. She just had to hope that—like the two broken pieces of herself—whatever spirit lived in this mirror would want to be reconciled. She could only hope that her will would be enough.
She could only hope.
Renai let slip her winds of destruction, of change. Apep looked down at her, curious, but unconcerned. So beyond her power that he stared right into her mirror without fear. The wind poured out of her in a torrent, a tornado, a hurricane. She thought about every injustice, every indignity she’d endured. Apep and Cordelia had chosen her city for their destruction, and so she gave them every kind of destruction this city had ever known.
The destruction of the lives chewed up and shat out in this city during slavery, the destruction of even their history, the lie that slavery was somehow different here, with their “even free people of color owned slaves,” the destruction bred from a society that allowed even one human being to own another.
The destruction of neighborhoods flooded and never rebuilt, torn down to make way for “development,” ground beneath the heel of poverty, repainted with the gloss of gentrification.
The destruction of entire generations of men, churned in the thresher wheel of shitty education, drugs, violence, and incarceration, any worth of their minds or their backs or their blood beaten and dragged from them like grain to fill the pig trough, the chaff that was left thrown into the compost heap to fertilize more meat for the grinder.
The destruction of every woman she’d ever known devoured in little nibbling bites, of concern for her safety, of telling her how to dress and who to love, and not to get drunk in public, and not to leave her drink unattended, never walk home alone, never smile too much or not enough, never ask for a raise nor seem ungrateful, women who were sluts if they gave it away and who were killed if they didn’t, every single inch of their bodies belonging to someone else every day of their lives, bitten and chewed and swallowed.
Renai summoned up every moment that this city had disappointed her, had broken her heart, had threatened her shamed her embarrassed her ignored her abused her neglected her hated her destroyed her murdered her, every last one, and she changed them into a fierce, howling wind, into the voice of a hurricane.
And she screamed with that destructive voice a demand that he look into her mirror and see, a plea for him to change, her magic and her fury and her need lashing against Apep’s scales and his horns and his eyes.
She could only hope it would be enough.
His eyes went first. Between one blink and the next, they were red, and then they were blue. After that, the white scales on the top of his head began to flake off, scoured away by the fury of Renai’s wind, first one, then a handful, and then a wave down his head and along his coils to the tip of his tail. Where the white scales swept away, the scales beneath were red, dark as fresh blood welling up from the cut, orange as the fire racing across the sky at sunset, yellow as marigolds spread out across a field, green as duckweed spread out thick across the water like a carpet, blue as the Gulf just after a storm, stretching to the horizon, indigo, like the sky at the first breaking light just before dawn, violet as the handprints smeared on cave walls by the first artists.
Renai gave it all of her strength, all the power of the spirit within her, who gave it gladly, sacrificing itself and dwindling away to nothing, not even a hint of a breeze. It felt like days, it felt like less than a second. She gave it her all, her strength abandoning her just as Cordelia hurled some magic in her direction, a golden ripple of force that shattered the obsidian mirror beyond any chance of repair—finger-sized shards scattering everywhere—and hurled her to the ground. She flinched as she landed, expecting h
ard ground or even harder roots, but her impact was cushioned by something relatively soft.
The fleshy coils of a serpent.
Cordelia stood over her, fists trailing smoke and ruin, breath coming in quick pants. “I am going to enjoy this,” she said. Before she got the chance to unleash whatever destruction she intended, the other half of Apep reared up, a diamond embedded in the center of his forehead, rainbow scales glistening down his length, the opposite of Apep in every way.
“Cordelia, meet Damballah Wedo,” Renai said, “the loa of creation.”
The chaos goddess looked up at him and shrieked, in rage and in threat of violence, her hands full of flames and blades and her eyes eternally dark. She was the embodiment of hate, of order disrupted, the poison in the well, the knife in the dark. She’d killed men and gods and a psychopomp named Salvatore, and she screamed even in the face of pure benevolence.
Damballah laughed.
It wasn’t cruel or mocking. It was the laugh of a being who had seen one end of creation to the other and found joy in it. Renai felt a knot within her unkink. Something she hadn’t realized she’d been holding on to, something beyond even anger.
Despair, that was the word. Since her resurrection, she’d lived with that knot inside her, the fear that the world got a little bit worse every day. That she’d only been granted a brief reprieve, and worse would come later. When Damballah laughed, that knot slipped loose and vanished.
Renai felt tears rolling down her cheeks and didn’t know if they were from gratitude or relief or just pure, unfettered joy.
Cordelia shrank. She curled in on herself, hands into fists, arms over her head, bent at the waist, knees drawn up to her chest. Her golden gown enveloped her, dwindled with her, shifted and changed as she tried to escape. She went, screaming, into irrelevance. When Damballah Wedo spread his great feathered wings and launched into the sky, all that was left of the goddess of Discord was a golden apple lying in the pristine grass of Eden.
