by May Peterson
The only person I knew of that had ever faced the occhiorosso and won was sitting in front of me, and he had paid his voice for it. I’m sorry, Mio. Sorry for not being enough.
“Oh, my.” Her laughter flickered. “Listen to this, Mio. He’s sorry. He feels he failed you. Do you know, that kind of melodrama is almost enough reason for me to despise him. I really cannot stand—”
She stopped abruptly. The amusement slid off her face like wet paint, and a rumble punctuated her grip on me.
“—histrionics.”
A shard of ice emerged from Tibario’s chest. Blood rolled down his shirt, drawing Serafina’s gaze. Eirlys stepped back. Mio’s bonds shimmered and faded enough for him to turn, deliberately, and take in the crystal piercing his brother’s helpless body. Then, as if by its own will, the ice clove upward, tearing through his left side.
My pain sharpened, like inhaled cold, and broke. The red receded, her power evaporating from me and her son.
I fought dizziness to rise to my feet as the ice fell, bloodied, to the carpet. No assassin appeared behind him to have held the weapon. It was as if the ice had moved on its own. Tibario blinked, his posture teetering horrifically around his torn rib cage.
“I.” He coughed. “My chest hurts.”
Eyes blowing wide, he fell back into a heap, blood tearing a black escape from his body.
In the staggered moments as he fell, Mio watched. And began to scream. With no sound. Not even a scrape on the carpet.
* * *
As the night curdled around me, I found myself wondering, would any of this have happened if I hadn’t kissed Mio?
Eirlys dashed to the floor, holding Tibario’s torn chest closed and breathing ice over the wound. Oh, god, she was trying to freeze him together. I recalled a soldier being blown apart by explosives, and being so desperate for him to not be dead that I’d try keeping him in one piece by physical strength. She tried until frost swirled black over the carpet, and snowflakes of blood formed, and still nothing was saved. His death would be almost instantaneous. I could sense the life passing from him.
Mio flailed, waving Eirlys away as if defending Tibario’s body from attack. His signing was so chaotic I couldn’t follow. He weakly pulled Tibario’s arms around himself and heaved dry sobs into his brother’s corpse.
Eirlys kneeled by Mio, inert and powerless. Once again, Eirlys could do nothing. I understood that. I understood nothing else.
“Eirlys,” I said. Softly. I wanted it to be as gentle as possible. “It’s not your fault.”
She simply began shaking her head.
“Eirlys,” I repeated. “It’s time now. You tried your hardest. We both did.” I’d like to think I did. “But now it’s time to fight.”
Slowly, Eirlys changed to nodding. She wiped her frozen eyes and rose, facing me.
I smiled, one of those broken smiles that if you tried to hold it for more than a second, you’d lose everything and start wailing. “Let’s try to save this one, all right? Let’s save this one soul.”
I was used to the grim resolve in her face. But all it showed now was fear. The fear of all those years, of not being able to make it stop. The incubus was winning.
“I believe in you.” Saying that now felt hollow, but she needed to hear it. “We can do this.”
She lifted her sword arm to me. Just like before, we clasped at the wrist.
Like ancient, cruel machinery whirring toward life, a clanging welled from beneath our feet. It was already beginning, with even greater speed than the last soul had been claimed. The incubus must have been hungry. Strains of a chorus, the rattle of hot chains. A colorless glow gathered in the brittle air. Eirlys and I faced it. Shoulder to shoulder.
“An incubus is a soul collector.” Mio may not even have been listening to me, but the act of speech was like a shield raised against the clatter of the Verge. “Ghosts are bound by the imprint of their fetters—their curses. The incubus grows within the curses, linking them together. And this one has been building its nest for a very, very long time. The curse is so strong here, there isn’t a person alive whose death in this house wouldn’t yield a ghost.” I was surprised Tibario hadn’t arisen yet, but any hope that provoked, I quickly strangled to death. “The incubus is going to roll out its welcome for Tibario at the threshold.
“We have to stop it.”
Mio roused himself, blood smearing his face. The fatigue apparent in the wake of his sobs only made him appear smaller, more preciously mortal. “It’s going to take him?”
“No. It’s going to try.” Kneeling, I touched his shoulder. “It’s not getting Tibario. And it’s not getting you. Even if I have to die for good.”
None of the horror fled his eyes.
The clangor rose in pitch, rocking the ground.
Eirlys and I formed a line in front of them. Please let us be able to protect them. Please let us not fail this time.
Then came the raw scrape of space inverting on itself, of sense and light twisting. Every muscle in me said time for another rematch. Time for another net loss.
From the point of light, voices leaked. People begging to be heard. Frail voices asking if anyone was there. Chaotic laughter. Panic. Cries. And the curtain parted. A streak split my view of the room, like reality had cracked in half. All grayness and noise condensed there, like an error in the mathematics of the universe.
The Verge swung open, unleashing the emptiness of the Deep on us once more.
I moved into it, as if ready to embrace. From the corner of my eye, I saw Eirlys’s fist clenching so hard it shook.
And their faces marched into view; they were so carved on my heart, so gravid and nameless, it looked like thousands of souls. Stars studding the Deep’s night sky, each one charged with a hollow light, and impeded with coiled chains. They crowded at the door like a host of passengers boarding a train, as if this time they might run free. Some rioted against their bonds, moaned and gnashed. Others sobbed, reaching out to be taken by the hand, pulled to safety, calling for help.
“Why are there so many of them?” a soft voice asked just behind me.
Tibario. Mio’s brother stood over his own corpse. Death had stripped away all his guile, made him as small and wan as Mio. He rubbed his chilled, dead arms, the Deep wind tossing disheveled hair.
A glistening chain hung around his neck.
I wanted to cry. “I’m sorry, ginger snap.” He looked more like a ceremonial wafer, now. “Doesn’t fix anything. But I’m sorry for letting you die.”
“Oh. So that’s—” He stroked the manacle at his throat, as if realizing only then that it was there. Mio crumbled back toward tears, reaching and reaching for him, each touch grazing air. And Tibario just said again, “Oh.”
I had to keep him talking. The first breaths of death were the hardest, and ghosts were prone to losing bits of their life in them: memories, voices, loves. “There are so many because I’m a piece of shit. Let’s get that out of the way. I’ve been playing this game for a long time, but it’s better at this game than me. Every one of them is a claimed piece.”
“So they’re all dead. Mamma—” His eyes widened. Then he remembered how he died. That was important. “She deceived me.”
Mio struggled to his feet. The way his lip trembled as he calmed himself crushed what was left of my heart. “I’ll never forgive her. Ever.”
He tried to pat Mio’s head, but his ghost fingers trailed through, desynchronized in space.
I sighed. “Listen to me, ginger drop.” They blinked and turned to me in unison. “Come here. You’re not joining this club today.”
I planted myself in front of Tibario and Mio. First his body. The incubus would come for it, fast. A corpse this badly damaged would be difficult for it to possess, but maybe not impossible.
Mio seemed to fray even further as I cut my palm. He seized my
arm, tried to keep the blood from spilling on Tibario, as if out of the sheer desire to stop things from happening to him. It took all the care I was capable of to pull him back, slide him in next to my heart, so he didn’t have to see.
The ghosts rose over me like a wave. Did they know my face? Did they remember anything but pain? A broken sea of chains welled through the cold, tangled with endless faces. I couldn’t see Eirlys well from here—but her hand grasped mine again.
There with Mio falling apart against me, Eirlys’s cold steadying me, I hallowed him. Silver hummed the length of his torn body.
No more souls lost.
I reached for Tibario’s chain. It wasn’t material. I couldn’t break it or smash it, no matter how strong I was. But the holy dark graced my fingers, and when they touched the dead steel, they held fast. Tibario jumped, my virtue making contact with his curse.
I growled. “Stay with me. This is going to be literal hell.”
The wave fell. Screaming metal and sparks crashed across the gap. Had the chains been raw matter instead of the stuff of the Deep, they might have ground the whole house into powder.
I roared. It was the only language my bear spirit had given me to rebuke death. The pure dark was my voice, my authority. I marked this ground, this space, this moment, as hallowed.
The chains shattered against me. Virtue snapped the links, carving an arc of clarity as wide as my arms. In time with me, Eirlys raised her frozen shield, sword blazing. Mio and Tibario had only me. I would not let the curse have them.
Battle descended on the drawing room, the spiritual war of ruined lives and secret disease. Eirlys met the tide of spirits; the phantasmal hands streamed for Tibario, to clasp the new chain in the web. But for a moment, her light and crystal pushed them back.
Tibario tugged frantically on the manacle at his throat. “There’s no lock. No keyhole.” His voice broke as it dawned on him.
“That’s your curse,” I said. “The chains aren’t physically real. Everything in the Deep is symbolism. The curse you have because you died here.”
I pointed to the mouth of the Deep in wordless explanation. Past the threshold sparkling with ghosts, it was endless black. The formlessness of the spirits.
From it, more and more ghosts poured.
They would surely overwhelm us, even Eirlys. They grabbed, begged, screamed, and their passage ripped shadows into space. Dozens of hands clamped Tibario’s chain. I held on to it, but it was taut. Time was growing thin.
Voices clarified out of the din.
“I can’t see. Oh god, I can’t see, where is everyone? What happened, I just keep wandering—”
“Why are we still here? You’re not listening. We’re dead—we’re dead!”
“I’m so cold. This should have killed me by now, it’s—”
“Let me out. Let me out! LET ME OUT!”
That was my chain, to face this again and again and have no key.
Mio faded from sight. Tibario whimpered; his chain had become so cold it had to be torture to him. Eirlys shouted, forced an advance. I held my ground against the onslaught. For at least one more moment, my power did not weaken.
I scanned the room. Cecilio was gone. But there, I found him, with a sigh of relief. He huddled against the wall, his own chain rattling, face covered—but he hadn’t been sucked in. Rosemary was crouched over him, shaking.
I clung to Eirlys. She alone was unchained. She alone was powerful, and her light was all that stood against the void of the Deep. Winter raged from her blade, spiritual ice striking the ghosts, sealing them in place.
But her cries of loss echoed without end. She could not win. She could only fight, forever.
Ginger snap clawed at me, pulling on his collar. “I can’t breathe!”
My hand felt like it would break if I relaxed it. I would not let him go. Darkness and stars gathered like hallucinations around me, beating into the metal. I turned my virtue toward this. Not merely to hallow anymore, but to break. I had tried to break the curse. The virtue of the moon made it possible.
If I dared try again. There must be a way. I could keep one soul free from hell. For Mio, if for no other reason. I invoked the moon and grasped its power. There had to be some way to make it work. Moon-souls were given the power of virtue for a reason; breaking the chains of lost souls, cleansing their curses, was practically our mission. Each soul wrapped up in the incubus’s web seemed to become immune to me, their curses so entangled I couldn’t nudge them while the incubus existed. But there must be a way.
I held it to my mouth. And prayed.
Let this chain be broken.
Nothing happened.
The chain slipped. Tibario screamed. The light was overtaking him fast. And his manacle remained.
Defeat overcame me. The chain lashed free. The vortex of ghosts swirled around Tibario, tugging him toward the void.
“No!” he cried, reaching out for his brother. “I’m sorry—Mio!”
I fell to my knees. My virtue was powerless. Even to give him a clean break from life. I gaped, inert, as death won.
Mio was hunched over Tibario’s body, unmoving. As if his silence had finally taken all of him.
Never to be heard again. Goddammit. I was drowning in people whose only idea of salvation was to just be heard. Eirlys. The souls. Mio.
Tibario had been swallowed by the chaos.
I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t take another of these fucking bastard slaughters.
Mio hunched, still, over Tibario’s wasted body. I spent half a second taking him in.
I couldn’t break this curse. But I pleaded to the bear spirit that had given me the chance.
Let me be able to give him this.
I sped into motion. A bullet’s flight across the room, an eye blink jammed open.
Let this work. Or let me die. I can’t take any more.
I shot over the gulf, into the chains.
I should never have survived anyway.
Eirlys and I made eye contact as I dashed. The horror on her face almost stopped me. Fifteen years, and here we were again. Down the hatch. She opened her hand. No crossed her lips. She might have said, please. Not again.
Before I reached the Verge, ice closed around me. Eirlys was reaching out with her power, claws and bands of cold to keep me from falling in. The Deep would give me one last chance to sever Tibario’s chain, or it would destroy me. Either way, this was it. All of it. It was me.
Or no one.
I broke the ice.
Before I took hold, I heard Eirlys calling. It was the shattering of mountains, the cry of seas that would never calm.
Chapter Eleven
MIO
Someone had killed me.
My heart beat. But I could not respond. Rhodry hadn’t even looked back at me as he’d dove into the abyss. I could not move after him. He’d gone after Tibario, but Tibario was dead, underneath me.
And Eirlys was a flame, run out of warmth but not allowed to go out. Mio. Mio, please. You can hear me. You’re the only one who can. She spoke to me alone across the savaged room. He’s not coming back, Mio. Can you understand me? Mio!
That much made sense. Not coming back. Dead. What didn’t make sense was why she was telling me. I could not save him.
Shaking her head, as if in disbelief, she flew toward the Verge. Snow furled in through the windows, and frost glossed the ground under her. The other ghosts rose to hinder her, and were turned back. None could resist the cleave of her blade. With thunder she screamed fury and pushed through to the threshold. She was lightning scorching infinite flowers.
A voice slithered around me. “You can hear her.”
Of course I could. I could hear everything now. The space of my silence reverberated with all the things there were to hear. The tears of the ghosts. The beat of Rhodry’s heart,
matching my own, from the void. When he was finally trapped in there forever, I might hear it still for the rest of my life.
“Aren’t you going to answer her?”
The speaker moved into my vision, almost companionably. It looked just like me. Clothes a mess, sad eyes, voice flowing true. The incubus had been with me the entire time, as reality was breaking down the middle.
Its words were not measured, mocking, as if they had been before. Instead, it sounded almost desperate.
“Is there nothing in this life that you will answer? Nothing that can persuade you to heed me?”
I turned my incomprehension on the incubus. Something about it had become transparent. Or my powers were finally becoming able to read it. Emotion trailed from it like vapor. Inchoate, fluid, shifting. Something like sorrow or rage, tumbling between the two. None of the scornful glee I had expected from it. And its eyes glared red.
One of its rose-limned hands swept over the room, the wreckage unfolding before me. “All this I have crafted for you, so that you would be persuaded. I could not deceive you? Very well. I cannot see into your heart? Very well. But I know that you care for this boy, and that his death must move you. And I know what you are.”
Persuade. Slow as the spread of venom, an epiphany emerged through its words. It was still trying to move me to use my voice. To let it hear me.
Colorless light streamed from the Verge, chains striking notes in time with a hundred ghostly wails. And the incubus stood off against me on this battleground.
My hands trembled as I signed. “What am I?”
It paused. Looked over the chaos that its curse had created. And sighed. “You are someone able to tell me what I am.”
I could feel my eyes growing wider. Seeing more. The incubus was no taller than me in this shape. And yet in an instant, it eclipsed everything.
