by Scott Hale
“And I want a land where the people are provided for, taken care of; where we can thrive, as we had in the Old World. I believe that all of us here are the missing pieces to solving the puzzle that is our times.
“You said that you want peace, your Holiness. You’ve come a long way, endured many hardships. I don’t believe you would go through what you have without having your own list of demands. This meeting is informal. Nothing will be signed, yet. This is merely to make sure we are on the same page, because the sooner the people see we are working together, the sooner this war will end.
“How would you bring peace?”
There it was. Here it came. That pivotal moment. His decision, her damnation. The fact of the matter was that she couldn’t keep resisting the Word of God. It was getting too strong, too desperate. Eventually, she’d have to give in, or kill herself. There was no other way. She could’ve unleashed the Shadow Bladder at any time while she’d been here, but she’d found an excuse not to in Joy, instead. As much as she wanted to eviscerate Edgar, she couldn’t. The continent would suffer for it in ways she couldn’t begin to comprehend. She was selfish, but not that selfish. As always, she needed a confederate, like she’d needed her brothers before, when she’d grown the Crossbreed. She needed someone standing at her side, urging her on, reminding her that what she was doing was right, and she was right to do it. And there was so much she could do, it seemed a waste to not see her powers fully realized.
Sometimes, Deimos joked that Audra’s Corruption was looking redder than usual these days. She usually cussed him out and put what he’d said out of her mind. She was young. Young people changed. She didn’t have to be set in her ways. Look how well that’d worked out for Isla. If she had Felix, she’d be fine. And one day, when everything was settled, and God was eating out of her hand, she’d visit Edgar in the dead of night.
“I want to stay the Holy Child,” Felix finally said.
Valac’s face was so sour, it looked as if he’d shit himself.
“I will be the Holy Child, who speaks to the people about God, as long as Audra will be God’s Interpreter.”
Was that the first genuine smile she’d seen on Edgar’s face? It was truly a beautifully ugly thing to behold.
“Many of your followers were my followers,” Felix said. “If we don’t stop demonizing each other, even if the war ends, people will keep fighting.”
“Tribal warfare,” Isla interrupted. “My team is better than your team.” She said that as clarification, but it sounded like an actual statement.
“Yeah,” Felix said, and then went back to ignoring her. “The Holy Order and the Disciples have to be one, but not step on each other’s toes.”
“I do like dancing,” Joy said.
Ezra started to tap dance, until his hip popped out of its socket.
“My thoughts exactly,” Edgar said, beaming. “I’ve only ever wanted to unite the people, not tear them apart. Now, we can do it spiritually—” he nodded at Isla, “—and socially.”
Isla took a deep breath and held it in her chest.
Audra imagined if she hadn’t, her head would’ve swelled and exploded right then and there.
“There needs to be a ceasefire,” Felix said.
“Of course,” Edgar agreed. “We will meet with Lotus—”
“Where is Lotus?” Audra asked, surprised she wasn’t here.
Edgar shifted uncomfortably. “Facilitating a handoff from the west… As I was saying, Lotus, Yelena, and Commander Millicent… We’ll meet with them to iron out the details. I would advise the Conscription to retreat from their attacks on the Nameless Forest, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“I know your intentions were to raze the Forest, but those conscripts who’ve actually stayed are no match for the creatures inside. Admittedly, it is a problem I, we, will have to face in the future. Anything that goes in there right now is nothing more than a host for the Arachne’s growing brood.”
Felix wavered; sweat pressed through his robes. “I’ll consider it. Also, the Mother Abbess is not to be harmed.”
Now, it was Edgar who wavered. His scheming eyes shot back and forth in his skull. The attic creaked, much like the gears in his mind—those dusty machines he’d shut down since he’d giving up being human.
“She will… serve me,” Felix added.
Audra glanced at Deimos, who made no attempt to hide his doubt in that actually happening.
Valac readjusted himself in his chair, his fat, blistered legs unpeeling from the seat. “If I may, my Lord?”
Edgar waved him on.
“Mother Abbess Justine is the White Worm of the Earth. Despite her actions, she has no choice but to follow her nature. She was created by God. I am certain it is God she will serve. If not…” he stared at the chain of the white stone necklace around Felix’s neck, “… there are ways to subdue her should she become… unruly.”
“I accept, then,” Edgar said. “What else, your Holiness?”
Felix pondered the question for a moment, then: “The Marrow Cabal.”
At this, Joy tutted and turned her chin to the rafters. “They are my stock,” she rumbled, the fabric on her dress becoming animated.
Like the abused child she was, Isla cowered before the darkening Maiden, instinctively raising her knees to her arms to the fetal position.
“Hex and Warren are key figures in the Marrow Cabal,” Edgar said, ignoring the witch. “I’m sorry, your Holiness, but they must be executed. Were you close with many of the cabalists?”
“No…” Felix said.
“Perhaps we could spare one.”
That’s fucked up, Brother. Don’t make him choose.
Already, she could tell Felix was trying to pick a soul to save.
“It is a difficult decision. I assure you that, for the time being, no harm will come to the cabalists. Audra?”
She perked up.
“Will you become God’s Interpreter?”
Valac said with a lisp, “Speaker.”
“Will you?” Edgar asked again.
Audra slipped inside herself, to the lonely shore at her mind’s edge, where the Word of God ravaged and raged; a hurricane of demands and shadowy debris desperate to make landfall, as if there were worse things out there in the preternatural dark. God needed her. Without her, It was impotent. For so long she’d fought against It, afraid that It would take her over and guide her hand with Its cruel will. It could’ve, if It could’ve, at any time, but It hadn’t, and when she’d let It in, the first thing It’d done was show weakness. Gods don’t do that. Like demons, they deceive. She should know. She was about to be both.
“As long as what I say is final,” Audra said.
Isla uncurled.
Joy smirked.
Valac tongued the holes in his gums.
Deimos closed in to the table and stood behind her, as he always had.
Felix stared at her, every emotion going off all at once in his eyes.
Edgar rose and extended two hands.
Audra stood, and Felix followed. Her left grabbed his right.
With their free hands, they shook Edgar’s.
“Thank you,” he said, tearing up. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
After a minute, he finally let them go. Gathering himself, brushing the cobwebs off him, he exclaimed, “We will have a celebration in a week’s time to commemorate this historic moment!”
Joy shot to her feet, knocking her chair over. She grabbed Ezra’s hand and jerked him out of the attic with her. It was amazing that something so predictable had lived for so long.
As soon as Joy had left, a large moth with strange patterns—skulls, it looked like, and eyes—fluttered past and landed on her overturned chair.
CHAPTER XLV
Elizabeth was responsive, but she wasn’t responding to them. She stood at the edge of the yawning Deep, sword in hand, feet sinking into the turgid silt. Fresh streams of bright red blood dribbled down her sh
redded back. The Bad Woman had flayed her way out of Elizabeth. Now, there was nothing left of the tattoo; only a large patch of sticky wrappings and ragged flesh matted together by congealing gore, like a giant, infectious scab. It provided just enough pressure to prevent her from bleeding out.
The wind kicked up. It pressed into them, warm and acidic. At some point, the Maggot had told them the air they were breathing was nothing more than God’s exhalations. Whatever it was, it wasn’t helping. Every time it blew, Elizabeth started to shake, as the current caressed with all the kindness of an inquisitor the tender remnants of her hubris. She’d carried the Bad Woman in her skin for decades, and tortured her at every opportunity. It was only a matter of time until her prisoner broke free and got revenge.
Vrana’s legs were trembling. Her arms were useless. Fighting the viracocha here, in this oppressive hellscape, had taken everything out of her. She held herself, because no one else would, and dropped to the ground. The gray silt didn’t give, and her tailbone suffered for it. Another bruise, fracture, or break she’d have to tend to later. There was too much wrong with her at the moment to begin making a mental inventory of her physical wellbeing. Her body was spoiling, going soft; nineteen going on nine-hundred. After everything she’d been through, it was hard to say if this was disappointing, or just par for the course.
The gigantic, plummeting gateway that led to the Deep called to her with the sounds of skipping stones and running water. She peered over the precipice into the unyielding dark of Heaven. There were no pathways, and why should there be? This place was not meant for the living, nor the dead, but the deity beyond such trivial states of being. She didn’t know how they’d get down there, but she knew they’d find a way. They had to. Because God wasn’t far now. She could feel Its overwhelming presence emanating from the Deep. It made her bones tingle, and her stomach cold.
Despite this, it was getting warmer. Dudael was burning. The viracocha village had erupted into a crumbling ring of fire, as the flames leapt between the puddles of jet fuel. The aircraft was up to its cockpit in silt, and the rest of its battered body covered in viracocha-shaped bruises. On the battlefield, the bodies of the dead creatures were being molested by their brethren. These survivors, who’d missed the fight by being on the farthest ends of the village, were now raiding the dead, stripping them of their wraps and weapons, or body parts, tearing off arms and legs, or chewing eyeballs and tongues out of skulls. The scorpion-werewolf hybrids were savage in their scavenging, and left little but bone fragments. When others drew too near to their treasures, the Viracocha would attack—their selfish solidarity unwavering even here, on the eve of their extinction. For this was God’s kingdom.
The Skeleton stood in the ruins he’d rendered, soaking up the flames. They ate away his cloak and glove until nothing remained but bone and black mass. He was completely covered, from head to toe, in Black Hour. He was Black Hour.
Neksha was quietly nursing his wounds by some smoldering debris. A large crucifix with a semi-melted Jesus Christ nailed to it marked the spot. It was then that Vrana realized that Dudael was filled, almost constructed from, really, this Old World religious iconography. She’d spotted the sunken churches in the fields, but here there was so much more. Thousands of paintings and portraits and busts and statues, wood carvings, figurines, and kitschy decorations. From stone slabs depicting Odin at Valhalla, a double-headed Aztecan serpent, an ornate, enflamed altar for Vishnu, to a Muhammad tearing his chest open, revealing the bold colors of a Confederate Flag inside him.
The Maggot lumbered near Elizabeth, its sickly yellow body covered in dark splotches from where it’d been penetrated. Its disintegrating fluids dribbled from the ragged holes, eating away the ground. Vrana could tell it’d been awhile since the Maggot had taken so much damage. There was a serenity to the beast; a concession, in those black chevron eyes, that it was lucky to be alive. Since the Trauma, it’d been roaming the sands of the Ossuary, unchallenged. The long passage of time had tricked it into thinking killing God would be easy, but now they were in the thick of it, and the Maggot wasn’t so sure. There were horrors in the Deep even it wasn’t aware of. Things just as strong, if not stronger than the Skeleton.
It glanced at Vrana, then Elizabeth, and back to Vrana again. She could tell it was considering what would happen if the two of them were to die; not to the mission, but to the Skeleton. Would he carry it out alone? Or was his sanity so fragile that, even the death of two decent-but-not-particularly-close friends, would break him? What then, she wondered as the Maggot might wonder, would he do? In a place so close to fabled Exuviae, could they afford the Skeleton losing himself to the Black Hour for good?
The hypotheticals were making her dehydrated. She drank some sanies, shook off a hallucination of Aeson, and right before she started to doze…
Elizabeth said, “I’m leaving.”
That got everyone’s attention.
Head hung low, Elizabeth stumbled away from the Deep. When Neksha stood, she gestured for him to keep sitting. When the Maggot turned, she shook her head. When the Skeleton stepped out of the fire, she didn’t even bother stopping him, because it was clear she knew he wasn’t going to try to stop her.
Vrana pushed herself off the ground with one arm. Her knee gave, and she gave it hell until it started working again. The hole in her foot pumped out blood, but she’d suffered worse.
“Don’t worry about it,” Elizabeth said, her voice so soft, it didn’t seem like hers. “I’m leaving, Vrana. Thanks for having me.”
Stubborn as ever, Vrana went and worried, anyway. She shot the Skeleton a look—Don’t just fucking stand there—caught up with Elizabeth, and took her hand in her claw.
Elizabeth stopped. When she squeezed Vrana’s talons, more blood eked from out her back. “I don’t want to die here.”
“You’re not—” Vrana’s claw fell as Elizabeth let go. “You’re not going to die.”
Still marching on: “Let’s face it: We’re all going to die here. I know it, you know it. But I wanted to die taking down God. If I die right now, It’ll just suck me up, make me one of Its shadows. Right, Maggie?”
The Maggot rumbled, “Right.”
“It’s going to die, Liz,” the Skeleton said.
“I’m sure It will, but when?” She hissed in pain. “You could kill It in the next hour, and It still might have a millennium to torture me. Been there, done that. I’m done with that, Atticus.”
The scavenging viracocha on the battlefield had begun to disperse. Vrana had a feeling that, after the Skeleton’s theatrics, they wouldn’t bother attacking them again, but the same couldn’t be said if she went out there alone.
Every step was a struggle for Elizabeth, but chances were that wasn’t any different from any other day in her life. She passed through Dudael and the places where the fire had died down. Vrana and the others followed her at a distance. Everyone knew what they should do, but no one was cruel enough to do it.
“What about the Bad Woman?” Vrana said.
Elizabeth shrugged. “Don’t care anymore. I’m sorry you’ll have to deal with her at some point.”
“Where are you going?”
“Ossuary. Figure I’ll let Death deal with me, instead. If I just keep going straight, I’ll get there. Right, Maggie?”
The Maggot rumbled, “Right.”
Reaching the battlefield, Elizabeth stopped. She wavered. Her hands attempted to touch her back, but her arms wouldn’t bend that far anymore. She shivered. More blood leaked down her legs.
Vrana tightened her muscles, readied herself to catch Elizabeth when she started to fall.
But she didn’t. She straightened up, started up again.
Neksha said, “There’s viracocha out there.”
Elizabeth brandished her Red Death sword. “Isn’t there always?” She kept walking. “Good luck.”
Watching her disappear into the dreary horizon, Vrana couldn’t bring herself to cry, because there was nothing to cry
about. Elizabeth was a soldier headed out on a much-deserved leave. Whenever she got to where she was going, she was sure Elizabeth would fight again.
“Hey,” Vrana said, a thought occurring to her. “You didn’t say ‘yeah’ this whole time.”
Elizabeth, glancing back, said, “It’s a nervous tic, Vrana,” and kept going.
Neksha found Vrana. Though large portions of him were missing from where the viracocha had torn his wrappings out, he still managed to offer a shoulder for Vrana to rest her head on. And she did.
The blackened Skeleton went farther out than the rest. He stood on the edge of the battlefield, atop the corpses of the dead and said, “I’ll see her off.”
Vrana, Neksha, and the Maggot made their way back to the Deep’s gateway. Jittery shadows scattered across the gigantic throat. They glimmered, in a way, like light catching on treasure.
“Ignore them,” the Maggot said, slithering away. “The Deep is reacting to our presence. If you stare much longer…”
Vrana’s heart shot straight into her throat. Looking down, she saw she’d placed one leg over the edge.
The Maggot said, “This is the way,” and burrowed its head into the silt.
Neksha drove Vrana from the gateway, placing himself between her and it. “I have you,” he said.
Vrana smiled behind her beak. She knew what he was doing, trying to take Elizabeth’s place. That was fine. She could live with that. At this point, she’d lost everyone, and so had he.
After building a sizable mound of silt, the Maggot reared its head out of the ground. The upside-down crucifix mouth said, with a mouthful, “Skeleton, we need you.”
Vrana didn’t dare glance back at him, or Elizabeth. Instead, she went with Neksha to where the Maggot had dug and saw it’d uncovered a large circular door. It was unmarked and utterly ordinary in every regard. If she had to guess, there were probably hundreds of them lining the gateway. Only something like the Maggot would know the right one to choose.
The Skeleton, still looking as if he’d swan dived into a tar pit, went up to the door. He found two grooves and worked his fingers into them until he had a hold.
