Creatures of Want and Ruin

by Molly Tanzer

  “I’d rather not die,” said Fin mildly, sidling up to the siblings. “I know you’re eager to kill them all, but we may be able to do that fairly well without exploding a huge pile of sulfur.”

  SJ looked startled, and she readjusted her grip on the bag she had slung across her back—not her quiver, a different bag, whose contents were unknown to Fin. Aaron and Gabriel carried the fungicide, so she knew it wasn’t that.

  “The important thing is the island,” said SJ. “We need to do what we need to do to, not just to keep us safe, but everyone. If this scheme of poisoning the mushroom at exactly at the right moment doesn’t work, I’m lighting it up.” Her expression was full of admirable determination and understandable anger. “It’s under our feet, Fin. We’ve got to get it out by the roots, no matter what.”

  By then, the jelly was hitting Fin hard, and she could see a lot more clearly through the darkness of the night. Specifically, a subtle flickering behind SJ’s right shoulder that hadn’t been there before.

  That was where they needed to be. But she also saw someone prowling around out there.

  “SJ,” she hissed, “get down.”

  “What?”

  She pulled the other woman down into the cover of the brush. “There’s a guard,” she said. “Look.”

  Aaron and Gabriel were not looking their way. Fin rustled a low pine branch to try to get their attention. It worked. She pointed towards where the man was patrolling the shadows.

  “I’m gonna take him out,” said SJ, readying her crossbow. “I can see well enough.”

  “You sure?” whispered Fin. She knew they would have to kill people tonight, but now that they were at the very moment of it she felt sickened by the idea.

  “I gotta try. If I miss, he’ll know we’re here . . . but there’s four of us and one of him.”

  “We think. There might be more of them out there. He might sound an alarm.”

  SJ stood and aimed, handling her heavy crossbow like it weighed nothing at all, and loosed a quarrel. The scream that followed the twang was loud and terrible—and it didn’t stop.

  “Shit,” said SJ.

  “We need to shut him up,” said Fin, and leaped out of the bushes. SJ took a moment to cock her crossbow again, but she still arrived at the man’s side about the same time as Fin did. Together, they found him writhing, a bolt protruding from just under his clavicle. In the dim light of the wood, his robes looked like the color of blood. Fin was trying to figure out how best to hold him still to gag him when SJ just kicked him in the stomach. He choked on his air and fell silent trying to catch his breath.

  Aaron and Gabriel trotted right up behind as SJ set down her crossbow and began fishing for something in her pocket.

  “How many of you are there?” asked Fin, drawing on her well of demonic power to make him to tell the truth.

  “On patrol? Three. All in all? I don’t know exactly, but many more than you,” said the man when he’d gotten his wind back. “We are legion, and in the reckoning to come you scum of the earth will die, perishing in a wave of righteousness that will—” But they never found out what the wave of righteousness would do, for SJ slit his throat.

  Fin gasped, and Aaron was sick all over his shoes. Gabriel just stared.

  “What?” said SJ.

  “I was interrogating him!” said Fin.

  “You said to silence him!”

  Fin elected not to argue the point; there were other voices in the wood now. As SJ cleaned her blade on the dead man’s shirt, two more men emerged from the trees. One held a hand-axe at his side, the other a shotgun. When he spied them, up it went.

  “Duck!” shouted Fin.

  The report from the shotgun blast was deafening. In the smoke and confusion, Fin nocked an arrow. As she raised her bow, she noticed how strange her vision was—not only could she see through the dark, she could also discern where exactly she needed to take aim to kill the man with one shot. In fact, she had options—she could go either through the eye, or through his jugular.

  She chose throat.

  As she drew, her muscles locked into place and she could feel her body lining up exactly as it should. She’d experienced a similar sensation a few times when she had really devoted herself to her archery practice at school, but nothing like this—never had she felt this kind of clarity, or this level of surety.

  She fired. The arrow flew true and the man went down almost silently, emitting only a bitten-off gurgle before falling to the earth like a sack of wet garbage.

  SJ came over to see the damage, and gave Fin a respectful look. “Nice shooting.”

  “What about the other one?” Fin asked.

  “We got him.”

  Fin glanced over. Aaron was in the midst of being sick again, and Gabriel was wiping his hands. She didn’t ask how they’d done it; it didn’t matter, not really, and they had no time. It was already past moonset.

  “We need to go,” Fin said, pointing into the distance, where she saw that faint telltale flickering of firelight. “There.”

  “Then let’s do it,” said Gabriel, shifting his pack on his back.

  “Take the gun,” said SJ, pointing to the shotgun on the ground. Gabriel had brought his, but Fin saw the wisdom of a backup. Aaron shook his head, but she stamped her foot.

  “Do it,” she insisted. “We might need it.”

  Fin motioned to Gabriel, and they left the siblings to discuss the matter further. Together they crept through the forest until they came to the edge of what, to Fin, appeared to be a ring of light. A clearing—and one, it seemed, that was invisible to Gabriel, given his confused reaction to her motioning for him to stop and be silent.

  As SJ and Aaron caught up, Fin tried to discern what exactly was happening beyond the strange barrier that distorted the clearing. It was a bit like looking at someone across a dinner table through a cut-glass goblet, and she couldn’t hear anything at all.

  “Are you sure about this?” murmured Aaron as Fin edged closer. “I just see more forest.”

  “I’m sure,” she whispered.

  She took an arrow from her quiver and poked at the barrier. It slid through with no resistance.

  “Huh,” she said, and peered up—there was nothing obviously creating the illusion in the trees. But looking down she saw little crystals shining in the light. Something about them looked out of place, and she picked one up.

  “What is it?” she murmured, turning it over.

  SJ took it from her and boldly tasted it. “Salt.” She looked disgusted. “A salt circle. We really are dealing with demons.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Gabriel hissed, almost vibrating with an eagerness to get on with it. “Can we go in there, wherever there is?”

  “I think so,” said Fin, uncertainly. She really wasn’t happy being the resident demon expert here, given that she had less than a full day of experience with the topic. She’d just have to trust her instincts—they were being informed by a demon of her own, after all. “I think if we destroy the salt circle it’ll destroy the barrier . . . but it also might let them know we’re here. We can’t catch them at the right moment if we interrupt them before they get started.”

  “It’s long after moonset,” said Gabriel. “I’m going in. I can’t take this any longer!”

  “All right,” said Fin, and stuck out her shoe. With the toe, she mussed the dirt and salt, dragging it through both until no grains remained in the line of the ring.

  To her, it looked a bit like a curtain parting at the beginning of a Broadway show; she wondered what it looked like to everyone else. Unfortunately, what it revealed was nothing anyone could ever show on a stage.

  Beyond the bulk of the monstrous glowing mushroom from Fin’s vision, Ellie hung by her ankles from a stout tree branch, her bound wrists dangling above the earth. She looked unconscious or at least insensate, her face redder than the robes of the men who stood about her in something approximating a circle, holding bright copper bowls. Beside her Hu
nter was chanting, a knife in his hand. They hadn’t noticed yet that their presence had been revealed.

  No, Fin mentally corrected herself: There were four men in robes . . . and one in slacks and a button-down shirt.

  “Jones?” Gabriel boggled at him. “How could he? That son of a—”

  Fin grabbed him by the shirt. “It’s gone wrong, can’t you see?”

  “I see he’s betrayed us!”

  “I’m taking the shot,” said SJ, leveling her crossbow at Hunter. Fin couldn’t blame her, but at the same time, the mushroom wasn’t fully open.

  “Wait! We need to wait until the very last moment—and Gabriel, look at Jones. He’s not himself! Look at his nose!”

  “Then he’s our enemy.”

  “When the mushroom-thing gets a bit bigger you and Aaron shoot at them with your shotguns—just not at Jones! Then we can run for it and hit it with the poison, like we discussed.”

  The mushroom was opening, splitting into flabby petals. Rainbow whorls rose to the surface of the cap, like phosphorescent jellyfish beneath a roiling sea. Ellie stirred in her restraints as Hunter approached with the knife.

  “I’m taking the shot,” said SJ.

  Ellie’s ankles ached terribly where the ropes held her, her feet had gone numb, and her dangling arms felt like they were on fire. She did not see how matters could get any worse. Then Hunter cleared his throat.

  “General Jones, step forward!!”

  Jones was slow to respond, but he nodded and stepped forward holding a copper bowl. “The f-first offering!” he cried, almost tripping as he approached. Ellie wondered if he was trying to resist Hunter’s power, but it didn’t give her any hope. If he was, he was losing.

  Hunter lifted his arm high. Ellie saw the flash of the blade and closed her eyes, expecting the next moment to be her last, but she opened them again when she heard a whizz followed by a scream. Something hot and wet spattered her face and neck; she couldn’t see what. She couldn’t see anything that was happening—the angle was all wrong—but her heart leaped when she heard the blast of a shotgun from the edge of the clearing. Upside down, Ellie saw smoke, and a robed man fell to the ground. Hunter’s scream turned into shouting, but a second blast drowned out his instructions to his colleagues.

  From where she hung, Ellie saw Aaron emerge as if from nowhere. He threw aside his smoking shotgun and charged into the center of the clearing, sword in one hand, the sack of fungicide thrown over his shoulder. Ellie had never seen anything so wonderful in her life, and felt the stirring of hope in her breast.

  She twisted in her ropes a bit, to try to see Hunter. He was bleeding—she could see the darker stain spreading on his robes—but he was still reaching for her with that knife. Her abdomen screamed with the effort, but Ellie rallied herself, twisting this way and that from where she hung by her ankles. He might kill her still, but she wouldn’t make it easy on him.

  “Be still!” snarled Hunter. In the heat of the moment he had apparently forgotten he could not force her to do his bidding, but others were not immune to his powers. “Grab her!” he commanded Jones, who dutifully moved to obey.

  “How did I miss?” fumed SJ as she reloaded her crossbow. Fin didn’t have an answer; she had been waiting for the smoke to clear enough for her to see, and when it did, she knew what to do.

  “You’re aiming too high!” hissed SJ.

  “Nope,” said Fin calmly, and loosed her arrow.

  It was a shot she couldn’t have made on her best day back when she’d been practicing every afternoon at school, under the tutelage of her archery instructress. The odds against it were incredible, with the smoke and the confusion and the distance and writhing away from Hunter’s knife. But Fin could see the pattern of the rope’s sway and adjusted her grip accordingly, felt her muscles shift and align within her body, and took the shot.

  The arrow frayed the rope as it sliced through it, and Ellie swung free, coming down hard on top of Hunter and Jones, who were both trying to wrangle her as she twisted in the air.

  As Fin reached for another arrow, she assessed the situation. The man Gabriel had shot was down, lying still on the earth a few feet from the undulating fungus, a worrisome dark stain spreading toward it. Fin headed in that direction now that Ellie was free, lest any of the spilled blood reach the entity that craved it. She didn’t know if just any old blood would be considered an offering or sacrifice, but she thought it best to keep everything away from it.

  As she approached the mushroom-thing, Fin saw that Jones had scrambled out from beneath Ellie, but another of the robed men had fallen upon him and they were now fighting. Either his trance had been an act all along or he’d awoken from it—regardless, she was glad she’d stopped Gabriel from shooting at him.

  As she reached the man who was bleeding out near the fungus, Fin heard the unmistakable throaty twang of SJ’s crossbow and a yelp of pain. Fin kept her attention on rolling the man in the robe away from the center of the clearing and scraped at his blood on the ground with her shoe until it was hopelessly mixed with dirt in a little hollow. Only then did she look up to see that SJ had gotten her man this time, and was now crouching over him; she’d apparently had the same idea as Fin about keeping any blood away from the brightly glowing fungal body.

  Looking around, Fin could no longer see Ellie and Hunter. Gabriel was dumping the contents of the sack onto the fungal cap as Aaron kept a robed man back with his cavalry sword. They seemed to be doing all right, considering, but Fin was worried about her friend.

  The good news was that Ellie had disentangled herself from Hunter and her face was turning back to the right color. The bad news was that Hunter was now drinking deeply from the bottle that had hung at his waist. He swallowed the last of its contents as Ellie pushed off the last rope from around her ankles.

  Fin’s enhanced perception told her that she couldn’t do much to help Ellie; jumping into the fray right now would achieve nothing. Having no skill at fisticuffs, it would be better for Fin to stay back and hope for a clean shot at Hunter.

  As she nocked another arrow, it occurred to Fin that she had no way of knowing if this really was the best course of action, or just the demon’s gift making self-preservation seem like reason. She brushed the thought away—she had to trust her instincts.

  She did not trust her eyes, however, when she looked up and saw Hunter’s face change shape. His jaw unhinged like a snake’s as his mouth opened wide. Ellie had leaped atop him and was punching him just as it happened; her hand skittered across too many teeth that were all suddenly too large for Hunter’s mouth. She yelped and fell back, knuckles bleeding from jagged cuts.

  Hunter grinned at Ellie, but instead of leaping to his feet he planted his hands on the ground. The earth itself began to undulate like the mushroom cap beyond, and beneath Fin’s feet grass turned to fur and leaves to scales; bright colors emanated from beneath his palms, spreading like oil away from him.

  “Get down!” cried Fin, and Ellie either heard her or had the same thought. When her friend dropped to the roiling earth, Fin took a running shot at Hunter’s eye as he regained his feet; a great inhuman shriek from the other side of the altar distracted her, and the arrow struck Hunter in the ribs.

  Hunter roared, and his too-large tongue lolled out of his mouth. At first, Fin assumed he was in pain, but as she retrieved another arrow she saw he was looking at his beloved mushroom.

  The fungicide seemed to have worked. The cap had begun to smoke and bubble, and the pulsing rainbow whorls had lost their luster. Fin felt a flutter of hope when the stem snapped; it hit the earth with a thump that sent a wave of earth rolling outward toward Fin and Ellie and Hunter and everyone else as if they were all standing upon the sea, instead of on solid ground.

  Then the cap burst.

  The oily fluid inside the mushroom splashed everywhere. Some landed on Fin’s hand; it smoked and burned and she couldn’t rub it away when she tried to wipe it off on her dress—it clung to her skin like
oil, and began to bubble and sizzle. Her shriek of pain was not the only one.

  Ellie saw the mushroom cap hit the earth, but her surge of satisfaction was all too short. It shuddered like a dying thing and then erupted noxious effluvium that spattered everyone within its fell radius. Her left arm took the worst of it—the pain was intense, like a terrible burn—and then a strange roll of earth, like a wave of dirt and grass and fur and leather and feathers, knocked her on her ass.

  She wasn’t the only one. As she tried to get to her feet, she saw Hunter had already regained his.

  “You!” he snarled, pointing at her.

  Hunter, too, had been baptized by his creation, but he seemed beyond caring that his distended face was smoking and boiling; some had gotten into his eye. Regardless, he came at her again, tongue hanging out of his mouth like a wolf’s, his enormous teeth gleaming.

  Holding her frizzled left arm close to her body, Ellie thought about her boxing mentor and what he’d taught her all those years ago; she thought about her attempts to practice what she’d learned on the heavy bag she’d saved up for but never really used as much as she’d hoped to. Well, she hadn’t known then that she was training to save more than her own life in a fight. Even so, as she danced in close and struck Hunter in the throat with a jab, she was grateful for the time she’d been able to put in—and all the fights she’d listened to on Gabriel’s wireless.

  Too quickly Hunter recovered enough to come at her, his teeth gruesomely lengthening even more as he approached. Ellie was winding up for another punch when something zipped by her ear. She startled back from him as he swatted, bearlike, at an arrow that had embedded itself deep in the meat of his cheek, but it stayed there, black blood welling in the wound.

  Ellie approached cautiously as he flailed, throwing quick punches at his body to avoid his slavering maw and the shaft of the arrow. She struck him in the chest, in the gut, and then she got him with an uppercut to the jaw that sent him reeling, jaw hanging open. Feeling encouraged, Ellie went in for another jab, this time aiming right at his mouth, but as she did, she saw her error too late to correct it.