by Scott Hale
Collectively, Rime went tense. All around R’lyeh, she could hear grips tightening on handles, and arrows being nocked into bows. There were whispers, too; words of doubt that were as chilled as the wind itself. Ghelys wasn’t following tradition, this much R’lyeh could tell; and if it came to blows, she wasn’t sure who would fall first—him, or Isla.
Isla stepped up to R’lyeh, Elizabeth, Miranda, and Deimos and ran her tongue over her teeth. “Yeah, they’re mine. If they had done their job, we wouldn’t b-be standing out here, f-freezing to death. G-give them back or k-kill them—I don’t c-care.”
Isla lingered on Deimos. Gusts of snow swept across her face, wiping out the little color still left on her cheeks. “You s-should f-feel fortunate. You’re a man, and right where you ought to be. Chained up, f-freezing your balls off, and indebted to me.” She jabbed the tip of her obsidian sword into his side. “I’ll t-take this o-one along with Audra.”
Out of the coffin-shaped Cult house, there was a scream. Girlish and grating, it stabbed like icicles into R’lyeh’s ears. All eyes had been on Isla, and now they were on that house.
The icon of the Cult of the Worm—that two-headed, eight-limbed stick figure—started to glow on the front door. Then the front door began to shake, as if a great pressure had built up behind it. The hinges whined, the wood buckled; light, black not blue, stretched out from underneath the door, like one long shadow cast from some monolithic source. Deimos had mentioned something about crazed Lacunans, their offspring, and the Witch. Was this it?
R’lyeh pressed herself harder into Miranda. She’d already had one major freak out, but she wasn’t far off from another.
“Come on out, Audra,” Isla said, taking her sword from Deimos’ side. “It’s time to go home.”
Overhead, clouds had formed over Rime, and over Rime only. The ashen nimbuses churned out thunder and snow in equal doses. Occasionally, the clouds would flicker and pull apart, as if the wintry bindings that had brought them together were failing. Deimos was right: this storm wasn’t natural. Someone had weaved it here.
And Isla knew it.
Pale as a corpse, and as rigid as one, too, she went up to Ghelys and barked into his eel mask, “Nice try,” and then kept going, back to her horse. She mounted it, shouted, “Joseph, get the prisoners.”
A man in black and fifteen soldiers broke away from the line of Winnowers and galloped forward. The man in black, Joseph, was ugly as sin; even in his armor, R’lyeh could tell he was all bone. His hair looked like it hadn’t been washed since birth, and his face was so craggy a meteor must’ve hit it. If this was Isla’s boyfriend, then they were perfect for each other. He looked like the kind of person who would do anything for anyone for an ounce of attention.
“Joseph Cleon?” Ghelys laughed as Joseph and his fifteen soldiers met up with Isla. “You escaped Pyra with your life and the Hydra’s Demagogue? There must be more to you than your winning personality.” He gave her the up-down.
She recoiled in offense.
Joseph drew his sword, which was steel, not obsidian. “She is not a piece of a meat to be ogled by your demonarchy. Your kind are ethnocentric, prejudiced, mansplaining monsters that have been oppressing the human minority for centuries. You should feel fortunate that Isla has given you an ounce of sympathy.”
“Alright.” Ghelys took his spear in both hands. “Now that I know how smart you all are, you can have your prisoners.”
There’s something wrong. R’lyeh nudged Deimos, and he put his hand on her shoulder.
The coffin-shaped house’s front door flew open. The armed Rimeans behind R’lyeh and the others broke rank for a moment, and then quickly reformed. In the doorway, Audra of Eldrus stood, the butcher’s gown she wore splattered with gore. From inside the house, streams of fresh blood poured past her feet, across the porch, and down the steps, before hissing to a freeze in the snow. She was unarmed, but unlike Isla Taggart, she didn’t look like the kind of woman who needed a weapon or an army to get something done. Her face was hard, unflinching; a scar like war paint was slashed across her eyes. And there was a glow to her, too; very faint, like she was outlined by the shadow of herself.
“Great,” Isla said through her teeth. She kicked her horse forward.
R’lyeh drifted toward Audra, as if called by her image.
Deimos grabbed her by the straps of her armor. “Stay.”
“She should be g-guarded, yeah?” Elizabeth chattered.
“She was.” Deimos stepped in front of R’lyeh. “Those are her guards pouring past her feet.” Then, to Ghelys: “Ghelys, you are making a mistake!”
“Deimos,” Ghelys said, “you are the one who put us in this mistake. Shut your mouth.”
“Deimos?” Isla hummed. “I like that name. Ghelys, is it? I’ll take the women, actually. God invites all creatures to dine at Its table. Now, come here, Audra.”
Deimos started forward; the guard of twenty Rimeans quickly raised their spears, stopping him.
“Audra, don’t move. Don’t do anything,” he pleaded.
A violent wind rocked Rime, staggering R’lyeh. She grabbed onto Miranda. Thunder bellowed from the frosted firmament, and all at once, a heavy snowfall like an avalanche fell upon the village. The temperature plummeted further; R’lyeh could feel it dropping in her spine—her bones like barometers. Any sensations she had before were gone; the cold had come to eat them all.
With the conditions close to a total whiteout, Isla Taggart gave up her game. Shouting over the pummeling wind, she said to Ghelys, “I just wanted to see how stupid your kind are. This is impressive—” she held out her hands in the near-blinding snow, “—but not enough. God is my shelter—”
Joseph Cleon and his band of fifteen each reached into their satchels and took something small out.
“—and Its roots my shield—”
The forty-five Winnowers started forward on their horses, closing in on Rime from almost every direction.
“—and I shall never know pain or sorrow—” Isla reached into a satchel and held out a red, bristly, grapefruit-sized mass.
A seed of heaven. R’lyeh’s throat closed-up. Just like in Gallows. She turned to Elizabeth.
“—for God is everywhere—”
Isla threw the seed of heaven at Ghelys’ feet.
“—always watching, always—”
And then Joseph and the fifteen soldiers threw their seeds.
“—waiting.”
Audra screamed, “No!” and ran down the front steps of the Cult house. Where she had been, her shadow still stood.
Ghelys shouted, “Stop her!” and was thrown off his feet as the ground heaved and broke apart around him.
There was a moment of silence, like there might be at a memorial, and then there was terror: the ground opened up and the veins of God poured through. Long, thick stalks of vermillion veins exploded out of the snow and shot out across Rime in every direction. They weaved through the village like snakes seeking out prey, striking buildings and bodies with bone-shattering strength. In a matter of seconds, the vermillion veins had begun to create a ceiling over the village, as if to shield the Winnowers from the weather.
R’lyeh took one look at Elizabeth and Miranda, and ran. Winnowers’ horses thundering behind her, she broke through the armed Rimeans, toward the Cult house and toward Audra.
“Grab her!” R’lyeh said, Elizabeth and Miranda at her sides.
Deimos sprinted past R’lyeh into the worsening whiteout. He crashed against the Cult house, his bound arms doing him no favors.
Audra quickly regrouped with him.
“No,” he panted to R’lyeh. “She cannot go back with you.”
“She has to!” R’lyeh bounced off the Rimeans surging through Rime. A vermillion vein whipped past her face, impaling three Night Terrors at once. “We need her!”
Audra of Eldrus looked at the Winnowers charging toward them, and at Isla, who stood at the center of the vermillion storm, reading psychoti
cally from The Disciples of the Deep. Then she trained her gaze on R’lyeh, Elizabeth, and Miranda.
“I’m sorry you came all this way,” Audra said, “but no one is using me ever again.”
She took Deimos’ hand. Her shadow ran down the porch and joined them there. It dropped to the ground on its hands and knees and started to cough and wheeze and spit up an ephemeral fluid. The fluid bubbled and throbbed, and spread across the ground, built upon itself. Gray growths formed on Audra’s shadow; its entire frame ballooned into something bulbous, like a four-foot grub.
Audra and Deimos mounted the shadowy grub. Twelve legs shot out of its rippling sides and lifted the creature’s body off the ground.
“Go to Caldera,” Deimos said. “You deserve better.”
And with that, the shadowy grub ran up the front of the Cult house, onto the roof, and took Audra and Deimos into the impenetrable fog beyond.
Several vermillion veins slithered across the ground, snatching Night Terrors off their feet and hauling them like hooked fish into the air. The Winnowers rode back and forth through the village, cutting down Night Terrors caught by the veins. Rime was constricted, like a garden overrun with weeds.
“God is everywhere,” Isla cried, somewhere inside the red chaos. “Rejoice, for though you did not know it, you have been living upon a most holy site! Repent, and you shall taste Its salvation!”
Elizabeth and Miranda took off in front of R’lyeh, and R’lyeh followed after. They tore through the village as fast as they could. What had been an open sprawl had now become a dense maze, as the vermillion veins continued to weave themselves around Rime. Night Terror after Night Terror ran into and past R’lyeh and her Corrupted friends, but no one stopped to stop them.
R’lyeh spotted an opening at the back of the village and hurried towards it. Her joints ached; rods of pain jammed their way through her arms, legs, and chest and did everything they could to make her stop. But she couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop. R’lyeh was on the move. R’lyeh had to always be on the move. Even if she lost her toes to frostbite, she couldn’t go anywhere but forward. The past was in everything but the future.
She bit her lip, licked the snot off her nose. The whiteout was worsening; she couldn’t see but a foot in front of her. And then there was a ringing in her ears, and despite the cold, she suddenly felt very hot. Her vision went fuzzy. One leg stumbled, followed by the other.
R’lyeh was down on the ground before she knew it. Looking back, underneath her, in between her legs, she could see the shapes of Death coming for her. They were coming for her, and for her alone. She had cheated Death too many times. Maybe the Skeleton could get away with it, but not her. The clammy hands of delirium closed in on her head and held it there. Held it there to make her watch. To make her watch the shape of the vermillion Death spiraling towards her.
She looked forward. Vrana’s ax, the Cruel Mother’s daggers, and the faerie cloak lay not far from where she was, gathering snow like a mantle would dust. Ghelys had dropped them here as if they hadn’t meant anything at all. Priceless treasures to her and her alone.
“Get. The. Fuck. Up.” Elizabeth grabbed R’lyeh with her bound hands and hauled her off the ground. R’lyeh managed to grab the cloak and daggers, but not the ax.
Miranda bent down and rammed her shoulder into R’lyeh’s stomach. With Elizabeth’s help, she lifted R’lyeh up, over, and onto her shoulder.
“Go to sleep, little Octopus,” Elizabeth said. “We tried.”
R’lyeh forced her eyes open. Her body bobbed up and down as Miranda ran with her over her shoulder through the village. There was Rime Rot all over the back of Miranda’s neck. Before R’lyeh passed out, she brushed a little of it off. After all, it was the least she could do. In fact, it was all she could do.
R’lyeh woke up two days later, seventy miles away from Rime, in a small cabin Elizabeth and Miranda had “borrowed” from an old man she never actually ended up meeting. R’lyeh had been asleep on the hearth, her head a few inches away from a small fire. A loud sound and a whimper had brought her out of her slumber. Her neck, forearms, legs, and feet were itchy and red, and dotted with hard, black blisters that were begging to be popped. Turning over to face the rest of the cabin, she found that she had sprained an ankle, and had also bled all over the ground at some point—but from where, she couldn’t be sure.
Elizabeth and Miranda were sitting at the table, watching R’lyeh wake. Miranda looked sick, and her lips were still wet with vomit.
R’lyeh wanted to ask them what was wrong, but speaking was too difficult, so instead, she stood. Miranda was leaning forward, and she had her left arm, her paralyzed arm, laid out across the table. Except her hand wasn’t connected to her left arm, anymore. It was in front of Elizabeth, beside a meat cleaver. Like R’lyeh’s blisters, Miranda’s hand was hard and black, and it looked like a hunk of wax. There was blood everywhere.
“Don’t worry, little Octopus,” Miranda said as Elizabeth began tying off the amputation. “I didn’t need that hand anymore, anyways.”
“Where are we?” R’lyeh croaked, unable to take her eyes off Miranda’s severed hand.
“Safe,” Elizabeth said, sounding as if she were about to cry. “Say, R’lyeh, do you have any drugs left?”
R’lyeh had failed the Skeleton twice. First, at Gallows, by killing the priest and burning down the church. And then again at Rime, where she hadn’t managed to even speak to the woman she had been told to bring back. The Skeleton had promised to help her find Vrana, but why would he help her now? And Vrana’s weapons? The ax and the daggers? They were gone, too. How could she save someone so far out of her reach, if she couldn’t even manage to save someone within her grasp?
R’lyeh took a deep breath, the smell of the distant Divide filling her nostrils, and set her sights on the woods ahead. She had to keep moving.
“You’re quiet,” Miranda said, slowing down.
R’lyeh had lagged behind the two women. She had spent most of the time back there staring at the nub on the end of Miranda’s wrist.
“Thinking about everything,” R’lyeh said, which was true, but not in the way Miranda probably thought.
“We did what we could, yeah?” Elizabeth said. She slowed down, too. “Bone Daddy has a backup plan, I’m sure.”
“She made vermillion veins come out of the ground.” R’lyeh squinted; ahead, through the gaps in the woods, the Divide’s water twinkled with drowning light. But even so, why was everything so white? Not just the river. The trees, too.
“And that’s good to know. And it’s good to know the Winnowers now have a base in the North. And it’s good to know Audra is safe.” Miranda looked at her left arm and what was left of it. “No offense to your kind, but it’s nice to know there are a few hundred fewer Night Terrors running around, too.”
“Fuck them,” R’lyeh said, touching her mask. “I hope Deimos is okay.”
“Me, too,” Elizabeth said. “Hey, Real’yuh?”
She took off her mask, thought about throwing it. “Yeah?”
“How would you like to be inducted as an honorary member of the Deadly Beauties?”
Instead of putting the mask back on, she held it at her side. It was October, and though the wind was brisk, it was better than the new dark inside it.
“Uh, what’s that?”
Miranda puffed out her squirrel cheeks. “She doesn’t know?”
“Hey, go easy on the girl, yeah? She’s only been traveling with us for months now.”
“What is—” the Divide was definitely white, and where were all the ships? “—what?”
Elizabeth stopped, started putting a few piercings into her nose and lips. “When we lived at the Orphanage, before we were turned into vamypres—”
“Temporarily,” Miranda added.
“—yeah, duh. Let me tell the story, alright?”
Miranda rolled her eyes and turned toward the sliver of water that was the Divide. “Huh?” She had noticed somethi
ng strange about it, too.
But Elizabeth hadn’t or didn’t care, so she carried on. “When we lived at the Orphanage, before we were turned temporarily into vampyres, me, Miranda, and our two friends, Jessie and Emily, decided to form a club. We were the only few non-vampyres at the Orphanage and we thought we were a lot cooler than everyone else there. Prettier, too, you know, because they all had been alive for so long and were kind of gross. The Bad Woman said we were deadly, because we reminded the other kids of what it was like to be mortal. Too much of a temptation, yeah? And no matter what anyone could do to us, they couldn’t keep us down.”
“Hey, Liz,” Miranda said, pawing for her attention.
“So, Jessie and Emily aren’t with us now, and Miranda and I’ve been keeping a close eye on you.”
R’lyeh covered her mouth, to hide the smile and how much she was blushing. Why the hell was she blushing?
“Deadly doesn’t even describe you, girl,” Elizabeth smirked. “Deadly with a blade; hell, even your blood is deadly from all that crap you eat. And look what we just went through. I don’t even know how we survived. You’re thirteen. I mean, you’re a Night Terror, but still. Anyways, how about it?”
“I, uh, yeah!” R’lyeh threw on her mask.
“No, no. You have to let that pretty face breathe, yeah?” Elizabeth lifted the Octopus mask off her head. It might’ve been the only time she had ever touched it. “Now, there’s no gold star for joining. But trust me, when you’re a Deadly Beauty, people will know! And so will you. And that makes all the difference.”
“Okay,” R’lyeh said, grinning. “You guys are—”
“Liz,” Miranda said.
Elizabeth handed the mask back to R’lyeh. “Damn, what?”
“Look at the Divide.”
“Eh.” Elizabeth bit her lip piercing and plodded forward. “It’s just the… huh.”
“What?” Maybe it was from their time in the North, but to R’lyeh, it really did look as if the river was covered in snow. The month wasn’t exactly right for the weather, but she wasn’t exactly from these parts, either. “Looks like snow,” she said.
