by Lenore, Lani
This was no longer a place of dreams. More so now than ever, Nevermor was a world of nightmares.
2
Wren found a place within the rocks, watching the fight clandestinely, listening to the clang of steel against stone as Rifter forced the crystalized abomination away from her. She could hear their battle echoing off the walls, spiraling down through the cavern in all directions. She held her breath but Rifter maneuvered carefully, letting the monster chase him into another branch of the cavern. It gave no thought to following after him angrily.
I hope he will be alright. But she did not quite doubt that. Rifter had always been capable.
Even once the beast was out of sight, Wren kept herself hidden behind some taller stalagmites, but stayed away from the edge of the water. This pool looked horribly menacing to her, not knowing what was down in it, and that was perhaps what frightened her most. It was like staring into the dark, aware that it was full of living things – and possibly monsters – that could not be seen. There could be any form of strange creature waiting to swallow her whole at the slightest whiff.
Shuddering, she tried not to think about what might be waiting for her. Instead, she smoothed her dress around her legs and leaned back against a rock, trying to control her breathing. Rifter would be back soon. She trusted that.
The water hardly stirred here, sitting soundlessly between the rock pillars. The air was cool against her skin, but so thick that she could feel it weighing her down.
The whole world is like this now – cloudy and hidden, deceptive and dark. Would she remain untouched by this corruption if she stayed here? She might have wondered, but she knew she had no choice. This was her home, as it had always been. All there was to do was find a way to deliver it.
“What are you doing here?” Wren snapped up at the sound of the voice. It was unfamiliar and had seemed to come from everywhere, until Wren finally realized that it was nowhere except inside her head. It was soft and smooth, feminine, but Wren sensed a menacing note as it spoke to her.
Startled enough that she almost lost her footing, Wren peered through the ominous dark, finally glimpsing the one who had addressed her. There, watching her from within the water, was a pale face, blue like a strangled corpse. The top of the head was barely visible, but Wren could see the shining, silver eyes that reflected the light of the crystals, and she was able to deduce what it was.
A mermaid… Wren was not a stranger to this sort of beast. Perhaps these beings were some of Nevermor’s original inhabitants but to her, these fish-tailed nymphs were as bad as the nightmares.
Slowly, the creature drifted closer, rising up from the water and wrapping herself around a rock. Wren could see that the mermaid was quite different from what she remembered, and she could not think to call her anything other than a monster.
The mermaid was utterly thin and Wren was certain that she could make out all of her ribs beneath the tangled hair that hung around her. The strands were as dry as seaweed, colored like blood and rust, spilling over her barnacle-covered breast and shoulders. Her flesh was like cracked stone or peeling paint. Her face had been beautiful once, perhaps, but no more. Whatever youthful and lovely glow the mermaid had once possessed was gone.
Wren remembered seeing them for the first time. She had been jealous of the way Rifter had looked at them, their faces and bodies so desirable, but that problem seemed to have been absolved with time – and this darkness. There was nothing at all to envy now.
When Wren did not respond immediately to the posed question, the mermaid repeated herself.
“Speak to me, precious,” the voice urged. “A rare treat such as you has not crossed me in a long time.”
Wren was not sure how to answer, caught up in her staring as she was.
It’s not polite to stare, she reminded herself now, but couldn’t keep from it.
The mermaid leered back at her, examining Wren from the spirals of her hair to the tips of her shoes. She did not seem impressed.
“I know who you are,” the mermaid said snidely. Wren knew better than to respond to this creature. Rifter had warned her about them in the past. Once, she had been hypnotized by their song and several had tried to drown her, but she’d not been aware that they could speak her language, even as telepathy.
“You are the Wren, aren’t you? The Rifter’s whore,” the mermaid declared, splashing her fin around in the water. “Much has been said about you. You are not welcome here!”
Wren was surprised by those callous words, yet she couldn’t ignore them. She had opened her mouth and spoken before she could remind herself not to.
“What do you mean?”
The mangled mermaid came down off the rock and swam closer, silently gliding through the water like a snake. Wren lost sight of her for a moment until she reemerged, closer, but not near enough to be a threat.
“It has been said that a horrible demon will come, which will bring even more famine and decay to us here. It’s said that this demon rules over even Rifter’s demon and will arrive in the disguise of a young woman. It must be you!”
Rifter’s demon? Wren was shocked at that – didn’t understand what it meant. This was the first she’d heard of a demon.
The mermaid looked Wren up and down with hungry eyes, carefully examining her features. This made her uncomfortable, as if she was a slab on a butcher’s block. The cave was silent around them – even Rifter’s battle with the crystal beast had gone quiet in the distance.
“You think I am evil?” Wren asked in confusion. “I had nothing to do with this!”
“Anything Rifter brings is evil,” the mermaid swore to her. “He is possessed. The Scourge is the only one who might kill the Rifter, and we pray for his return. When the Rifter is dead, this curse will finally be lifted.”
“No, that can’t be true,” Wren declared, feeling a bit weak in the knees. “The Scourge has done this. He has twisted your thoughts!”
“You should not worry about this now,” the mermaid declared, rising from the water a bit, moving closer. Wren instinctively stepped back. “Look at you – standing there with your perfect skin and young body; your beautiful hair! We mermaids were once the most beautiful, you know. I will enjoy killing you just for that!”
“This is wrong,” Wren insisted. “Rifter would never hurt this world!”
“Enough of this,” the mermaid screeched in a horrible tone like scraping metal. “Perhaps I have lost my voice, but I can still manage to kill you!”
The mermaid lurched forward in an attempt to pull herself up from the water and onto the cavern floor, but Wren got herself out of reached by moving farther up onto the raised area of the slope.
“Wait!” she protested, trying to think of a way to make her case. “I’m not a demon! Neither is Rifter. It’s all a mistake!”
The mermaid released a shrill laugh, casting off the distraction, crawling rapidly from the muck to grab at the ends of Wren’s dress.
“You’re nothing but a nasty trick. Join me for a swim, demon! The water will cool you off!”
Before Wren could remember that she was supposed to be getting herself out of reach, the mer-creature managed to catch her gown, tugging violently to pull Wren closer. Wren resisted, clenching a pointed stalagmite with one hand while fighting for her gown with the other. She kicked toward the mermaid’s face, making her lurch back, and finally the monster released her gown with a gracious rip as her claws slid through the cloth.
The mermaid, beached now but not seeming to care, crawled forward with more vigor than Wren had suspected her for, flipping her tail to throw reaching arcs of the dark water. The cold, rancid liquid splashed into Wren’s eyes and she realized that she was at the disadvantage – as she always seemed to be. This mermaid planned to drown her or otherwise kill her some other way. She had to think, but nothing would come and she was feeling desperate.
“Rifter!” she screamed, letting her voice echo across the water and down through the tunnels, praying that
help would come.
At the sound of his name, the mermaid halted, just on the verge of slashing her ankles. The creature looked up with a star of panic in her eye.
“He’s here? You brought him here? You wretched demon! You have brought this upon us!”
Wren did not hear another word. In an instant, Rifter was there, landing on top of the mermaid, gripping her neck. He bent her upward and reached in, slitting her throat with one motion.
Wren flinched at the sight, not wanting to look, but this was not the first time she had seen him do something so horrific. He had never given a second thought to killing, and she had come to understand his reasons a bit more over time, but she still could not get used to it.
“Rifter, you–” she started with relief, but she did not manage another word.
His eyes flashed as he stared at the cascade of blood flowing out from the dying mermaid’s neck, and he didn’t even seem to recall that Wren was there as he opened his mouth of sharp teeth and ripped into the creature’s throat.
3
Rifter swallowed great mouthfuls of the mermaid’s dark blood, giving no thought to anything except how it satisfied him. It hadn’t been too difficult to trick the cave monster into falling into a deep chasm, but the battle had taken a lot out of him. He needed to be sustained. This living blood would rejuvenate his weak body.
Once that blood began to pulse through his own veins, he felt more like himself. He felt alive again. He could carry on for a while longer.
Opening his eyes as the bloodlust faded, he recalled that he was not alone. A figure in a white dress was standing nearby, and for a moment, he had forgotten about her. Wren was staring at him, aghast as the warm blood dripped from his mouth, and Rifter knew he had gone too far. He shouldn’t have done this in front of her – shouldn’t have let her see.
He shook his head, giving her his sincerest expression.
“I didn’t mean for you to see this,” he said regretfully.
Chapter Six
1
Wren considered running away, but she was frozen in place. Those teeth… She had known that there must have been a reason for them, but she was still utterly shocked. Rifter and the boys had always been so casual with blood, but this! This was unacceptable! It was monstrous and unnatural!
He still had blood on his lips. She didn’t want to look at him.
“Wren, please,” Rifter started as she turned away from him. “I can explain.”
Rifter let the mermaid’s limp body fall away from him, her flesh hitting the rock floor with a sickening slap. He took a waterskin from his belt and cleaned his face and mouth before he stood to approach her. Wren didn’t try to keep herself from stepping away.
“What has happened to you!” she cried, unable to contain it. “What are you?”
“I would never hurt you, Wren,” he said quickly. “Never. Please, believe me.”
He reached for her, but she was too shaken by what she had seen. She tried to fight him away. Against her wishes, he managed to get his arms around her and pulled her into an embrace that she could not wrench herself free from. Her face fell against his neck, still wet with water, and she was certain that she could hear the beat of his heart.
“Please listen,” he urged gently. “My body is not like it was. I told you I was different – changed. I’m cursed.”
Wren’s head was spinning. She tried to focus on his words, but it was hard to think of anything when her knees felt so weak.
“I think you could already tell, couldn’t you, that there was something different about me?”
Daring to be brave, she leaned back and met his eyes, examining their odd appearance. Perhaps now it was his turn to feel uncomfortable, for he shifted in his stance.
“There is something obviously different,” she admitted. “You don’t seem like your old self – despite having grown. I shiver when I look at you.”
He breathed a deep sigh. “I didn’t want to tell you, but there is no way around it, I suppose. I… I saw those children to the afterlife, you know,” he stated, lowering his eyes.
The orphans – they were wanderers, yes – lost souls that had found this place on the way to heaven. Rifter often took them on himself when he found them. She had seen it once herself, and she believed that he had done it with pure intentions, though she wasn’t sure how it affected what he was trying to tell her.
“I’m grateful for that,” she said sincerely.
“They weren’t afraid,” he told her. “They were brave in death. I guided them to the gates, but on the way, our path was cut off. We met with a demon that wouldn’t let us pass. I’m still not sure where it came from. Of course I tried to fight it, but I could not quite manage to kill it. Again and again I tried, but still, it pushed me back. It wouldn’t be moved. The children were beginning to fade away. If they didn’t get to their destination soon, they would be sucked into the world of shadows – into limbo – where there are many doors but no way out for ghosts. Eventually it came to me that if I could not kill the demon, I would be forced to make a deal with it.”
Wren listened raptly as she kept close in his arms, though she was beginning to guess how this story would go.
“At first it seemed that there was nothing I could do, but finally the creature admitted that there was one thing that could change its mind. The demon wanted to pass through the veil, but it couldn’t in its current form. It needed a vessel.”
“You,” Wren confirmed, not really sure what she was hearing.
Demon, she thought. Rifter’s demon.
He nodded. “I welcomed that demon into my body and promised to release it when I came back here. That was, of course, as long as it let the children pass. The beast agreed, but when I returned to the island, I realized what I had done and refused to release it into this place. It simply became part of me. That’s why I look like this – that is why I drank that mermaid’s blood. The demon is still inside me, and sometimes it gets the better of me.”
Wren didn’t know how to respond to all of that. It was more terrible than she could have imagined. This explained his strange appearance – the impossible heat of his skin. Eventually, she asked the only thing she could think.
“Does it hurt?”
“No. Sometimes it’s hard to make choices and keep my mind clear, but I keep the demon in submission well enou–”
Rifter released her and gripped his chest. He winced and groaned lowly. His shoulders slumped. Wren could tell he was in pain, but she did not understand it.
“Are you alright?” she asked quickly, touching his arm.
He took a last deep breath to steady himself and looked up at her. “Of course. I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
“But you just–”
“I’m fine,” he insisted, quieting her with his firm gaze.
Her worried eyes searched him over. She was sure that something had come over him – whether pain or weakness – but he was too proud to admit it. As they stood there, the mermaid’s words finally came back to the front of her mind. She was somewhat hesitant about asking, not knowing how he would react, but she knew she could not continue wondering.
“Rifter, does everyone think you are evil because of the demon?”
He turned his slit eyes to her, the red flecks in them flashing wildly. “Why would you think that?”
“That mermaid said that it was the Scourge that would deliver them and that you brought their suffering.”
“Lies,” he said casually, shrugging it off.
“I admit that it doesn’t make sense,” she agreed. “Didn’t everyone know that the Scourge was the one who killed the world? Is no one on your side? Do the boys… Do they believe this? Is that why they left you?”
“After word of the demon got out, it wasn’t hard for them all to turn against me. This lie seems like a logical explanation to them.”
The reply was vague, but she believed that she had her answer.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. She co
uld not think of anything else to say.
“Enough about that,” he said, not wanting her sympathy. “You don’t believe it, right? That’s all that matters. Everything else will fall into place.”
“Of course not,” she assured him. “I trust you.”
He seemed pleased with that and gave her a smile. “I’m glad you are determined. It will get much worse in the future. There is no knowing what people will tell you, and you’ll need to hold onto that faith. But I promise you, Wren, once this is over, you’ll never have to worry about anything ever again.”
She looked at him, seeing his sincerity, and felt her heart melt inside. She had desired vainly to keep herself young because of him, but the years had continued to age her. Now, she wondered if she would be looking at him the same way if he had not grown with her. The thought of them growing older together suddenly became very romantic, whether or not that was what he had on his mind.
Wren peered up at her first love, seeing a very gentle change in his face. His eyes were soft, looking into her own. He kissed her hands and then drew her closer. Her eyes drifted across his lips and, as she looked at them, she saw what he was presenting to her. There on his lips was a kiss – one she could try to get if she dared.
There was blood on his lips, she thought. His teeth are sharp. Is it true that he won’t hurt me?
She was still undecided within herself, but he didn’t give her the chance to protest. He leaned in carefully and put his lips against hers, and she was helpless to stop it – because of her love, her desire, and so many years of waiting.
His kiss was just as warm and soft as she had hoped it would still be. She was wrapped in such an overwhelming feeling that she completely disregarded any dangers that might be around her – even from him. She only felt the warmth of his mouth and his breath on her face. She felt his hands on her back and in her hair.
She wanted more of this. She wanted all of this. Among so many other things that she had meant to say to him – that she had gathered within her breast over the last four years – one of the most important was the assurance that she wanted to be with him fully, body and soul. Maybe there was no need for words. Perhaps he already knew it.
