On the Verge

by Garen Glazier

  “They’re mine now,” Beldame howled again as she backed away from the podium, grasping the artifacts to her chest with renewed vigor. “She presented them to me,” she said, pointing at Freya. “Everyone saw it. It’s official.”

  There was a brittle edge to her voice as though it might break into hysteria at any moment.

  “The Verge doesn’t care how you got those colors,” Dakryma said from across the room. “It is a force like gravity; it can’t be stopped.”

  He nodded at Rusty who had been waiting patiently in the back of the gallery. Suddenly he raced forward, leaping onto the dais where Beldame stood. He pushed past her and grabbed the backdrop emblazoned with Dakryma’s glowing eyes and pulled it away from the wall with one great tug.

  There hanging on the wall was Dakryma’s painting, but instead of a portrait it was just a black rectangle, its obsidian surface shining in the bright gallery light. Freya gasped when she saw it. At first she thought it must be some kind of joke or worse, confirmation that Dakryma had been lying to them the whole time. But then suddenly the black vapor that oozed from the grand works on either end of the gallery began to pour out of the jet-black panel as well. And Freya recalled what happens when you mix blue, red, and yellow together. Black. The black hole at the center of the color wheel.

  Beldame took a few desperate steps forward, but it was too late. A dense tendril of Verge had already escaped the confines of Dakryma’s Stygian quadrangle and enveloped her waist, holding her firmly in place before it began to retreat. In a few more moments, the twinned vines of Verge from Stuck’s masterworks collided just in front of the struggling Beldame and combined forces before turning inward toward the terrified collector, pushing her with brutal force backward, adding their forward intensity to the retrograde pull of the black rectangle.

  For a few horrible seconds Freya thought Beldame might actually drop the colors, realizing that they were the pieces of itself the Verge wanted back, but it soon became obvious that even certain annihilation couldn’t pry those colors out of Beldame’s avaricious grasp. There was a sound like thunder and a high-pitched scream and Beldame was gone, along with the colors she had clung to until the very last. Freya strained to see through the dissipating fog the Verge had left behind. As the smoke cleared she was amazed to find that the once empty bleakness of Dakryma’s painting was now filled with the chilling likeness of Imogen Beldame. She stared out of the picture plane, a haunted look in her eyes and a quiet terror etched in the painted lines of her face.

  It was a painting unlike any other that Freya had seen. It was so lifelike, the colors so expertly chosen, and the shadows so carefully placed that it seemed as though Seattle’s greatest patron of the arts might come alive at any moment, but it was not to be. The Verge had reclaimed its colors and, with them, a nightmare, not from its own myths or fairytales, but from the darkly creative forces of human nature.

  Freya smiled. It was done. They’d stopped Beldame. She felt a great weight slip from her shoulders. She turned to Rusty, ready to celebrate their victory, but instead of the relief she expected to see, she found rage contorting the tortured grooves of his face. He was staring at Ophidia. He wanted his revenge.

  Rusty started off at a sprint; Freya was still amazed at how fast the big man could move. But he stood no chance; even with aegis he was just a mortal. Ophidia smiled at Rusty as he approached, then raised an elegant hand, distorted by the appearance of a single wicked claw, and sliced through the air, just as she had done the last time she and Freya were in the gallery. The succubus stepped quickly through the rent in time and space.

  “Duty calls,” she said as her body disappeared.

  The fissure began to mend itself, but not before Rusty rushed through the opening, his mind set on wrapping his fingers around Ophidia’s neck.

  “Stop!” Freya called after him. “Rusty! Don’t!”

  But it was too late. He had vanished along with the succubus, leaving Dakryma and Freya alone in the deserted gallery.

  “Where did they go?” she asked the professor, panic in her voice. “She’ll kill him!”

  “I imagine she’s gone to the Convocation,” Dakryma said. “She’s late for her Morrigan duties. The creatures of the Verge will be getting most anxious and unruly without her.”

  “Where is it? I can’t let Rusty die! There has to be a way to stop her.”

  “I can find the place,” Dakryma said. “And I can stop her. Not so much to be of service to you, mind, but because I have a score to settle with the harridan myself.”

  “How will you know where it is?”

  “It’s Halloween. The place calls to me. I just need to follow its song.”

  “Take me with you,” Freya said. It was more of a demand than a plea.

  Dakryma looked hard at her, his icy blue irises flashing brilliant yellow-green.

  “I suppose you’ve earned it,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to miss the final act.”

  He stretched out his hand to her, and she took it without hesitation. As soon as their fingers touched, he drew her in close in an embrace that took Freya’s breath away. She closed her eyes, enjoying the closeness of his body despite herself. He was magnetic, electric. She could see why Ophidia had fallen so hard for him.

  “Hold on tight,” he whispered into her ear.

  Suddenly she could no longer feel the floor beneath them. They flew upward through the gallery ceiling as though it were water, encountering only a slight resistance before Freya felt the cool night air on her cheeks. She’d been keeping her eyes closed, and when she opened them the city stretched beneath her, kissed by the cool light of a full moon. Turning her head to the side, she glimpsed Dakryma’s glorious wings, the gift Stuck had granted him.

  They beat once, then twice, as Dakryma hovered above the museum. He seemed to be waiting, listening for the call of the Convocation. A moment more, and they were off. Freya had heard nothing, but the professor glided through the air, confident, it seemed, in their destination. The tall buildings of Seattle’s downtown slid away as they soared to the south. A few minutes more and the warehouses of Georgetown were visible beneath them.

  “There,” Dakryma said, the low rasp of his voice unnervingly close to Freya’s ear. “The Convocation is in that old building below us. Hang on.”

  Freya braced herself as they dove out of the night sky, straight toward the roof of a ramshackle building. She couldn’t help but gasp as they drew even with the roof and then passed through it with that same disorienting feeling of swimming through plaster and rafters. When they hit air on the other side, Dakryma spread his wings, breaking their rapid descent just in time to land gracefully amid the throngs of demons that filled the floor of the Vestiges Club.

  The partygoers quickly made room for the professor. They could sense his power and knew when they were outranked. Just outside the perimeter of space his presence created, the assembled creatures writhed with such intensity that Freya instinctively pressed herself deeper into Dakryma’s arms, fearful of what might happen should she venture even a few feet beyond his grasp.

  It was hard to tear her eyes away from the terrifying mass of demons. They seemed wild, out of control, as they ripped and tore at one another, writhing and twisting into a perverse knot of fangs, talons, sinew, and flesh. But Freya’s gaze was drawn above the chilling horde to the balcony where, on an elaborate black velvet throne, Ophidia sat, her posture relaxed, her face dark, her eyes the dead black of a shark. She looked out over her demon charges, fixing Freya and Dakryma in her basilisk gaze. Then she slowly stood, and an unlikely hush fell over the rabid revelers.

  “Welcome, welcome, my dears,” Ophidia intoned, her voice reverberating in the eerie silence. “I had thought we’d spent quite enough time together already, but apparently you feel otherwise. Can’t get enough of me, eh?”

  Freya saw her cock an eyebrow at Dakryma. When she continued speaking, she was addressing him.

  “Well I’m afraid now that the upst
art human has been taken care of I have little desire to continue our association. As you can see, I am most busy attending to my little soiree, and I’ve kept my guests waiting for me long enough tonight. So unless you’d like to test your power against the combined strength of Seattle’s assembled fiends and monsters, I’d suggest you flutter back out of here the same way you came in.”

  Ophidia accented this with a dainty flicker of her preternaturally long fingers, the sharpness of her blood-red nails giving the gesture a decidedly sinister quality.

  “But you can leave the girl,” Ophidia continued. “For their patience at my delay I’ve promised my charges a little something to appease their bloodlust. I thought it was just going to be my old beau Rusty here, but I’m sure the tender meat of his little paramour would be most welcome. Am I right?”

  A primal cheer erupted from the gathered creatures. As they screeched and bellowed, Freya spied Rusty just visible at the foot of the club’s grand staircase, his head low, his arms held tightly by two vicious-looking demons that dwarfed even Rusty’s great size. Strange hands reached out for Freya and she leaned even closer to Dakryma, hoping his proximity would keep her safe. She was shocked when the professor, who had held her so close mere moments before, cruelly shoved her away into the eager clutches of the nearest grasping creature.

  “Have her,” Dakryma said. And although he did not raise his voice, his words resonated throughout the great room, silencing, once again, the raucous crowd. “You are the one I’ve come for, Ophidia. We have a history, my lovely, and we end it tonight.”

  Freya didn’t have a chance to reply before she was swept up by the revelers, and half dragged, half pushed to the place at the base of the stairs where Rusty stood. He lifted his head for a moment, the look in his eyes a heartbreaking combination of wrath and regret, before the monster to his right cuffed him cruelly.

  “Keep your eyes down, meat,” the creature said.

  The demons closest to them howled with laughter. Then one of them began to shout: “Give us the meat! Give us the meat!”

  The rest of the crowd took up the chant until Ophidia raised her hand, and once again, silence fell across the assembled creatures, but more reluctantly this time. They couldn’t be contained much longer.

  “A moment more, my patient ones,” Ophidia said. “I’d like to give this uninvited guest a proper send off first.”

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment,” Dakryma said, his voice growing hollow, otherworldly, his eyes glowing, incandescent. “It’s time for you to return to the Verge, Ophidia.”

  From her vantage point on the stairs, Freya saw him unfurl his great wings once more and, with a few powerful thrusts, rise above the floor. He hovered over the crowd and seemed ready to swoop forward to launch his attack, when Ophidia suddenly split the air open before her and stepped through, reappearing a second later on top of Dakryma’s back. Freya watched as the succubus lifted a great talon, poised to bring it down and across his exposed throat, then gasped as Dakryma tilted abruptly to the side and Ophidia slid off him, rolling awkwardly across his wing. She flailed about, attempting to find purchase, her wicked nail tearing into the feathered flesh before she tumbled off hitting the ground with a thud. Dakryma dropped out of the air a second later, landing inelegantly a few feet from her side.

  She lay there motionless for a moment. From where she stood, Freya thought Ophidia might already be dead; a frantic buzz swept through the club as the creatures of the Verge wondered whether they should mourn their fallen queen. But Freya spied a subtle shift in Ophidia’s form, and in another breath she was rising to her feet. She turned slowly toward the injured Dakryma and her beautiful face was gone. In its place was the grotesque mask of the succubus. Her fangs glinted in the low light. She ran her obscenely swollen tongue across their pointed tips.

  “You can’t kill me that easily,” Ophidia snarled, her voice distorted, her jaws clacking.

  Dakryma stood, but Ophidia was on him in an instant, her fierce claws ripping his flesh before a devastating backhand sent him careening away from her. The demons filling the club screamed and roared. The large ones guarding Freya and Rusty tilted their heads back and howled. Werewolves.

  Freya stole a glance at Rusty. His chest was heaving, and he stared at Ophidia from beneath his heavy brow. His arms were bent, his legs ready to spring forward. Before she even realized what was happening, Freya saw Rusty rip his arm out of the grasp of the brute behind him. The creature’s celebratory howl was cut short as he tried to regain his grip on Rusty’s arm. But it was too late. He had already pushed through the revelers nearest them and was barreling through the crowd, a beast charging his prey. Surprised demons, too transfixed by the spectacle created by Ophidia and Dakryma, crumpled in his wake.

  Freya shouted after him, but she knew it was useless. He was after his own vengeance. Dakryma wasn’t the only one with a score to settle. Rusty burst through the last of the creatures surrounding the ring where Dakryma faced Ophidia, but he didn’t stop. It looked as if he meant to tackle Ophidia, take her by surprise, but somehow the succubus knew he was coming. A moment before he reached her she simply stretched out a grotesque hand, wrapped her long fingers around his neck, and used his own momentum to lift him high in the air before slamming him down with such force that Freya was certain Rusty was dead.

  Freya screamed, but the sound was lost amid the wild cries of the assembled creatures. They seemed to be feeding upon the violent energy of their Morrigan and her attackers. It stripped them of any pretense of humanity, any shred of decency. Freya’s heart should have stopped, but instead it was beating madly in her chest, urging her to action.

  She saw Rusty move. He was still alive.

  The werewolf holding her hostage grew wilder, more manic, with each passing moment. His head and body shook violently as he began to shift form, incensed by the smell of blood and violence in the air. Freya knew she had to act quickly. She sprinted away, her guard still in the throes of transforming from man to monster. Freya dove through the crowd, approaching Ophidia, as Rusty had, from behind. She thought she might make it, but then she saw Rusty raise his head from the floor, saw his eyes fill with fear at the danger Freya was exposing herself to. That look of terror was all it took to alert Ophidia of Freya’s imminent attack. She swung around at the last moment and grabbed hold of Freya’s arms with a single powerful hand, bending them cruelly so that she was forced down to her knees. With the other hand she twisted her claws into Freya’s hair and wrenched her head back.

  “I have been after a taste of your soul since the moment I laid eyes on you,” said Ophidia. “You’re the only one of our strange little crew that hasn’t had the privilege of my affections. We’ll have to change that. Right here. Right now.”

  In the next instant Freya felt Ophidia’s teeth sink into her face. She tried to scream, but the succubus’s horrible tongue filled her mouth and choked the air from her lungs. She flailed in her grasp, but it was no use. There was a sick pause, where it seemed that the demon was enjoying her deathly kiss, and then she took a deep, rattling breath. The effect was nearly instantaneous. Freya’s body went slack, and Ophidia dropped her arms so that she could grasp Freya’s head with both hands.

  Freya vaguely saw Rusty jump on Ophidia and realized, as though she were observing it from a distance, that he had wrapped his meaty fists around two of Ophidia’s largest teeth. He was pulling for all he was worth, attempting to break the steel-trap grip she had on Freya’s face. As she struggled to maintain focus, Freya became aware of Dakryma at her side, pushing Ophidia away, trying to separate the demon from her prey. It didn’t seem to be making a difference, and she vaguely wondered why Dakryma would help her when minutes before he’d gladly given her over to Ophidia. But it hardly mattered now. As time ticked by, Freya’s urge to fight back lessened; she began to give into the kiss.

  As she slipped away, recollections from the past week danced through her mind. She concentrated on these memor
ies, fragmented, but vivid. There was Vasilisa, cradling her doll, telling her that the creatures of the Verge were not the masters of their tales; they lived and died at the hands of their human creators. In the strange disjointed way of dreams, Baba Yaga was suddenly the one speaking, laughing as she devoured Vasilisa: “It’s Halloween. Anything can happen,” she cackled between mouthfuls.

  Then they were gone and a cavern full of goblins took their place. The kobold’s ruthless queen, one horn missing, reminded her of what it had felt like to break with expectation, to disregard the plotline written for her and create her own story. She could see the königin, righteous in her indignation, swallowed by the Verge, her elegant horn pressed into Freya’s hand. A piece of her identity stolen, she no longer fit the legend.

  This last thought echoed in Freya’s mind, but as she felt herself slide closer to the edge, her memories began to lose their coherence, shifting from recognizable scenes to a swirling multicolored maelstrom, until, in one abrupt shift, an image coalesced from the chaos. It was Beldame, clear in the darkness of her mind. She seemed to be speaking from the confines of her portrait, telling Freya about the power the possessed object grants its owner. The power of the collector.

  With that last searing thought, Freya was jolted awake. Her arm brushed against a hard lump in her boot. The dagger. With the last bit of strength she had left, Freya worked the blade loose from its hiding spot, wrapping her fingers tightly around it. Then, in a motion that surprised her with its sureness and speed, she brought the dagger through the side of Ophidia’s mouth. The succubus released her face and reeled back in pain, her long tongue jutting from her mouth. In a flash, Freya severed it.

  The succubus’s black eyes widened in disbelief as she stumbled backward, thick blood gushing from her mouth. Freya was too weak to stand, but from where she knelt on the floor she saw Ophidia reel, her skin growing viscous and sluicing off her body. Rusty was still on her back, and with a final sickening twist, Freya watched as he wrenched two enormous fangs from Ophidia’s mouth before stabbing them into her neck. The succubus screamed, an unholy wail. She seemed to be slowly disintegrating, her flesh melting into a stinking pool on the floor. Her panicked shrieks filled the room. Many of the demons began to flee, frightened by the desperate death pangs of their Morrigan. But one of them did not move.