“Yes. Yesss! Zeus—he did not give his sword directly to Perseus. He threw it from Olympus and it fell upon the shores of Lamia’s island. When Perseus came to claim it, Lamia thought to consume him as she’d done so many others, but he was so fair, and she was so hungry. Not for the eating of the flesh, but for the sweaty, grunting lust. To sate the eager wetness inside her coils.” Cassandra sniggered, her laughter shaking her emaciated chest and making the pudding parts bounce. “Perseus did not want her, but he wanted the sword, and so he promised the queen he would return, after he took the head of Medusa. They would be lovers, he said. So smitten was Lamia, so full of wanting, she plucked her eye from her head and scried for him. It was Lamia that told the hero where to find the Gorgon. It was Lamia that drew him a map on the sand, and all because she wanted his seed frothing inside of her. Without her sight, Perseus would have sought the Gorgon for years, but with her aid? He killed Medusa and avoided detection by her vengeful sisters. Lamia was as much a tool as the shield or sword bestowed upon him by the gods.”
“...that’s not how Ma tells it,” Bernie said. “She never mentioned that.”
“Would you?” Tanis countered.
“Well, no, but Lady Babbles-Much could be lying.”
Tanis regarded the broken creature before her, the melting flesh and the monster mask, and she shook her head in revulsion. “Wasn’t that Cassandra’s curse? To speak truth and never be believed? I’m choosing to believe her this time.”
“I know all the truths, and the truth is Perseus spoke lies, and your mother waited and longed, and when the vision of his marriage to Andromeda besieged her, Lamia’s hatred of humankind was born. Betrayal burns brightest, yes?” Cassandra paused, her tone turning coy. “The Gorgons well know this, too. They wanted revenge upon Lamia for her hand in Medusa’s slaying then, and want it still, all this time later, and use me as their weapon. This plague upon you all, Lamia get, was brought upon you by your mother’s base desires. By Lamia’s insatiable appetites for cock and flesh and flesh and cock.”
Delighted with her lewdness, Cassandra hummed beneath her breath, voice loud and soft and everywhere in between. Tanis ignored it, focusing on Cassandra’s chest, and most specifically, her heart. The body was so frail, the ribs would probably crack like toothpicks with a single punch, but she couldn’t punch too hard or she’d damage the heart with her strike.
Why is that a bad thing?
“Why do I need your heart?”
“If you leave any remnants, the phoenix blood will raise me again. Take me with you; use me for trade. It is currency some cannot ignore. Take it, Barlas. Take it and free me from my prison. Taaake it and save yourself and your love and your legacy. Go home, to your Naree.”
Stop saying her damned name.
Just... get the hell out of here. Now. Get out.
“Get to the door and get ready to run.” Tanis said to Bernie. “When I pull this thing out, every alarm she’s hooked to will go off.”
“You can’t be serio—”
“Do it, Bernie. Or we’re fucked. More fucked. Go.”
Berenike hesitated, scowling at Tanis, scowling at the half-mad, half-dead woman propped up before them, before abandoning the closet and making her way to the bulkhead. She inhaled deeply, deep enough Tanis could hear it, and grunted. “Clear outside the door. And just for the record, I think you’re batshit.”
“I probably am.” Tanis lifted her eyes to the mask, to the painfully alert brown eyes flickering behind the mismatched eyeholes. “You ready?”
“As the rain. Right as rain. Nothing can be gained without loss, Barlas. Faith. Love. Dawns follow dusks. My heart. Your heart. Strong and true. Follow them. Send me to the Elysian Fields.”
Tanis didn’t understand, but she wouldn’t humor the Mad Hatter any longer than she absolutely had to, either, and so she pulled her hand back, counted to three, and punched forward, into the hot, runny mess of woman. Blood and meat exploded in a spray across Tanis’s face, neck and chest. A gob landed on her lashes and she had to blink it away to see. It gushed over her hand as she pushed deeper into Cassandra’s torso, toward the strong muscle beating so fast and hard. As she suspected, Cassandra’s bones gave way without much pressure. The prophetess didn’t react to the pain beyond a pathetic wheeze, not even when Tanis’s hand closed around her heart, fingers feeling it pump wet and slimy in her hand. Tanis’s forearm was nestled within the cavity, snug as a bug, like Cassandra’s body was willing and able to swallow her whole.
Tanis didn’t tarry, for her sake or Cassandra’s; she adjusted her grip and, with one vicious tug, jerked the heart free. Blood ran in rivers. The monitors exploded with sirens. Tanis released her hold on the second chest piece and let it clang to the floor as she ran from the closet, a blur of woman, toward the bulkhead and the waiting Bernie. Outside, into the mid-day heat and the brutal spring sun. There were no Gorgons, no priests to greet them. It was only the trees and shrubs of the Everglades. It was only the cold, dead stares of the Gorgons’ victims as the lamias sprinted by.
CHAPTER TEN
THE HEART WEPT blood. Tanis pulled off her top, wrapping the organ in a vain attempt to stop it from dripping everywhere. When that didn’t work, she took off her baseball hat and dropped it in. What the hell she was supposed to do with the heart of a Chronicler, she didn’t know. Trade it, Cassandra said, but to whom? Who’d want it? A bruja or a völva or some other spirit talker? Tanis knew exactly zero of those and she had no intention of eating it herself. She might have all the magical ability of a fart, but she was comfortable with her fartness. Fartiness. Fartishness.
I could feed it to a gator, but when a prophetess says to keep a human heart, you should probably keep a human heart and shut up about it. Besides, better useless to me than in the hands of the Gorgons.
There was no point agonizing over it, and so she concentrated on running. Bernie was the one to veer off into shallow water to help cover their tracks—any dripping blood would land in the marsh instead of on the grass. Boots and sneakers pounded, water flew, their pants drenched from thigh to toes. Soon, they were upon the corpse of the priest Daphne had killed. Soon, they were past it and circling around one of the bigger lakes.
The Gorgons and their priests couldn’t scent track like the lamia. They could, however, eat what remained of Cassandra’s flesh to gain temporary sight to try to find them. Everything Tanis knew about the sight said it was a fickle gift, often not showing you what you wanted to see so much as what it wanted you to see. Sometimes it could be steered, thus Lamia’s somewhat useful vision about Ariadne, but not always. They had to hope it was the Gorgons’ day to encounter Murphy and his Law and not the lamias’, otherwise they were leading a pair of angry Gorgons and their followers right into the heart of lamia country.
“What are we going to tell Ma?” Bernie panted. They’d sprinted for miles, and only when there were no scent signatures on the wind did they dare rest. Both women leaned against trees, Bernie red-faced with exertion, Tanis’s body slick with sweat. Tanis wanted a cigarette but she wasn’t sure her screeching lungs could handle it.
Tanis dragged her forearm across her brow, accomplishing nothing more than smearing Cassandra’s blood into her hair, too. “Keep it simple. Ariadne, the Gorgons, that’s it. Cassandra and the heart, Perseus—that’s extra. She doesn’t need to know what we know.”
“She might know already.”
“Depends on what she’s seen, sure, but she didn’t even know the Gorgons were out here. It’s not an exact science. We’ll roll with what she throws at us.”
Tanis pushed herself away from the tree, swatting flies off of the bloody lump in her hat. She wanted nothing more than to go home, to slough off the sticky meat on her skin and curl up with her best girl and never let go. Or, conversely, to let her go as quickly as possible and get her to safety, if need be. Her mother didn’t deal in idle threats.
“Why’d you help her?” Bernie asked, motioning at the hand. “Cassan
dra. The Naree thing?”
“Pretty much. Well, that and they were torturing her. Let’s get this shit over with,” Tanis said, pushing herself away from the tree despite her body’s protests. She helped Bernie up and they set off side by side, both smelling like the bottom of a compost heap. Tanis filled Bernie in on what she’d missed in the closet.
“That’s pretty fucked up,” Bernie said.
“Yep.”
“Did she even tell you anything about Naree?”
Tanis shrugged. “Not really. She just said that if I killed her, Naree would live. Maybe Naree would have lived anyway, but it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.”
“Fair.”
And they walked, and walked, through brush and around saplings and by birds and alligators. By the time the flagpole, with its flapping, rippling shorts, rose against the sky, it was pushing suppertime. Tanis felt heavy all over, the muscles in her legs aching and her back sore. She was sticky and wet and holding a human heart, which was probably not the weirdest thing that had ever happened to her, and didn’t that speak to a colorful life.
“I need to hide the heart,” she said.
“...wh—right. Yeah. Hell, I’m too old for this.”
“Yeah, you are.” Tanis ducked into one of the Den’s few standing buildings—the half-collapsed post office—and put the heart in the toilet. It was dry and cleanish and the last place anyone would look for anything good in the world, if the heart of a resurrected prophet could be considered ‘good.’ She put the lid down and walked outside, her sports bra stained rusty red, her midsection still splattered with blood despite sweating gallons. Her underwear glued to her crotch in uncomfortable ways. Her jeans felt like scratchy sausage casings around her thighs and her shoes squished with every step.
I’m disgusting.
“You ready?” Bernie asked.
“I wore my Sunday finest.”
The lamias shared a look, then they shared a smoke, and then they headed underground.
TANIS’S EARS WOULDN’T stop ringing. A high-pitched, incessant screech stabbed at her brain no matter how many times she shook her head. Her vision swam, too, like she was drunk on a tilt-a-whirl. When Lamia struck, she struck hard, and Lamia was in the process of pummeling both of them, potentially to death in Bernie’s case. Her heavy tail lifted and crashed down again on Bernie’s huddled form, punishing her ribs and lower back with each strike.
At least Tanis was mostly deaf to the verbal diarrhea spewing from her mouth.
“Worthless!”
“You should have died instead!”
“I hate you!”
Feeling’s mutual, you psychotic bitch.
“MOTHER!” Tanis was shouting, though she still couldn’t hear herself. “THE GORGONS ARE COMING. WHO’D HAVE WARNED YOU IF WE’D DIED?”
Lamia had grabbed Bernie by the hair to pull her up off of the floor. She looked like she wanted to snap her in half, but Tanis’s proclamation, ill-advised as it was, stopped her. She settled for smacking Bernie across the face and sending her sailing instead. Bernie hit the floor and curled into a pill bug shape, her shoulders trembling as she sniveled in pain.
The old girl needs help. I have to get her out of here.
Lamia whirled around, her coils circling Tanis’s waist. So much muscle beneath those scales, squeezing, constricting, but not so much they’d crush Tanis to death. It was just enough to make it hard to breathe. Just enough to make her feel like her spine was pressed against all her guts and her hips were about to dislocate from the sockets.
“What do you know?” Lamia demanded.
“Ariadne wouldn’t tell them your location; they tortured her to death for it. They’re still looking for you. There’s time to get away.”
“Yes. Yes, she is a good daughter. Was. Oh, oh! Ariadne! My beautiful girl.” Lamia bellowed, her lament filling the cavern and echoing out, beyond, down the pipe and into the main expanse where the unloved daughters toiled, waiting for news. Lamia’s hands covered her face while she sobbed. Her swollen midsection rubbed against Tanis’s back; Tanis could feel the shapes there, the oval eggs already formed and pushing at Mother’s flesh, demanding their birth.
Don’t be so eager, girls. It’s not so good on the outside.
Lamia wiped away tears and snot with a wad of her matted hair before thrusting Tanis away. “Get me Sibylla. Yes. She will look for a new den. We must plan our escape. Soon, but not in haste. Errors are made in haste. Like Argentina.” She slithered back to her pile of mattresses and sprawled on her back to stare at the stone roof of her den, her mountain of skim milk flesh quivering with upset. Again she burst into sobs. Tanis didn’t care. Ariadne and Daphne were a loss, yes, but a small, twisted part of Tanis relished her mother’s suffering too much to grieve for them.
It was petty. Sometimes, petty was okay.
“Take Berenike with you,” Lamia said. “She soils my floor with her blood. You too. You’re disgusting.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Before Lamia’s mercurial mood landed either of them in traction, Tanis collected Bernie from the floor and threw her over her shoulders, fireman’s carry style, and jogged from the Den. Bernie groaned with every step.
“How bad are you hurt?” Tanis asked.
“I’ll live,” Bernie rasped. “Have I mentioned I’m too old for this shit?”
“What?”
“I SAID I’M TOO OLD FOR THIS SHIT.”
“I’m sorry.”
She meant it. Lamias could take a lot of punishment, but there was a limit. Bernie’s face was bloodied again, and the tooth that had threatened to come out after Mother’s first tantrum had been knocked out during the second, leaving a gap in her front bottom row. Her nose was swollen, her left eye puffed up and nearly closed and fated to turn ugly shades of yellow and purple. Four shallow gashes crossed her shoulder and chest from a slap that had landed at a bad angle. Bernie’s middle was nearly as bloodied as Tanis’s, and Tanis had ripped a human heart out an hour ago.
Tanis juggled Bernie’s weight so it fell more naturally against her neck. “Where am I taking you?”
“Barbara. She’ll get me.”
Bernie had to repeat it three times thanks to the ringing in Tanis’s ears. They trudged through the main pipe, getting looks from their sisters—some curious, some afraid, some disdainful. The last came from the loyalists, the few humanoid daughters who thought the answer to pleasing their mother was copious amounts of ass-kissing. It bought them some indulgence sometimes, but Lamia was just as quick to abuse them if they displeased her. They were, just like every other human daughter, tools to be used and discarded.
They probably think Lamia’s tears are my fault.
Well, fuck you, too.
Tanis stopped mid-nest, where the population was thickest, midway down the passage from Mother’s chamber to the end of the pipe. A fluorescent light hung overhead, granting her a spotlight in all the shadowed dankness.
“LAMIAS!” Tanis’s voice boomed, echoing through the vast expanse. She was too deaf to gauge her volume, but by Bernie’s wince and the collective swivel of heads, she had their attention. “Ariadne and Daphne are dead. May they rest in the Elysian Fields together, strong.”
There were some gasps and some groans followed by whispers and tears. A few of the true daughters emerged from their silken prison for news, and when it was relayed, they keened, feeling the loss of one of their own. They clung to one another, arms and tails entangled, moaning their sadness. Tanis looked none of them in the eye as she resumed hauling Bernie toward Barbara’s hovel.
One delivery, one message to relay to Fi, one heart to collect from a shitter, and she could go home to the only person she wanted to see.
She licked arid lips.
Get me the hell out of here.
“HOLY CRAP, BABE. You look like shit. Are you okay?”
Naree was on the couch in front of the TV in her dinosaur print pajama pants and a blue T-shirt with a tech logo printe
d across the chest. In one hand she had the remote; in the other, a box of crackers. Her feet were propped on the ottoman, one of those silly foam things separating her toes to keep her blue sparkle pedicure fresh. Her hair was in a ponytail, her contacts off and her glasses on. A box fan was propped on an Amazon carton by her feet to keep her in the direct blast zone of more tolerable air.
“Long day. I’ll explain in a bit. How are you?”
“Kinda gross,” Naree confessed. “I’m bloated. Like, Hindenberg bloated. If I explode you can have all my cool stuff.”
“Don’t explode. I’d miss you.”
Naree grinned. “Okay, but you’re missing out; my stuff is really cool. I have a Nintendo 64, you know, and a copy of Paper Boy. That shit’s like nerd gold.”
“Tempting! But no.”
Tanis wanted to bury her face in Naree’s hair and breathe her in, to stroke her face and kiss her, but didn’t want to get any of the grossness on her, so she slunk off to the shower, stripping out of her clothes and dropping them in the trash bin, the Colt left in the sink until she could put it with the six or seven or ten she already had in the closet. The heart was in the trunk of the Caddy; it wasn’t an ideal place for it, considering the Florida heat, but it was a whole hell of a lot better than bringing it in and stuffing it in the freezer.
Wasn’t it?
She wasn’t going to worry about that for a while.
The water circling the drain went from crimson to pink to clear quicker than she anticipated. She brutalized the soap, cramming it into places no soap was meant to be crammed, scrubbing her skin raw to eradicate any last traces of viscera from her hair, her ear. Her hearing was better—not great, but better—and the weird gob of people that had gotten stuck behind her ear washed off, so all in all she was feeling better.
Hungry, but better.
She toweled off and slipped on a pair of boxer briefs and the first clean T-shirt in the laundry basket, which happened to be one of Naree’s that read, All I Hear is Noise, Noise, Noise. The Colt was put on the top shelf of the closet along with its cousins. A trip to the kitchen reminded her that they’d grocery shopped the day before, and she threw together a couple of sandwiches before heading over to the couch and gingerly sitting down. The right cushion had a spring that could get stabby if you weren’t careful, which each of them had found out the hard way before.
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