by Alana Melos
Richter saw what we did. He shouted and the rest lurched after us, but it wouldn’t take long now. I don’t know how he thought he was going to take her, but there was no way. Once the zombies laid off of Alistair’s shield, he fought to his feet, the green around his arms glowing brighter than ever. The Siren moved, her good fist leading the way as she ducked and wove through the small horde. Everywhere she punched, rotting flesh exploded, leaving behind a sickening smelling trail of gore. I followed. Those she missed got my blade. I didn’t have much work to do.
“You’re not leaving here alive, Richter,” Alistair spat, blood punctuating his words. His eyes glowed and his voice took on a terrible quality, hollow and echoey at the same time. Terror washed through me at the very sound of it. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t right. I didn’t know what in the hell it was, but it brought me to a stop. As Rebekah destroyed the last of the walking dead, she came to a halt as well. She flipped up her gore streaked goggles. Her ashen colored face made her look like one of the dead surrounding us.
“Tiannun sha g'aas uftg una su saka nx 'angaantha,” Alistair screamed, his words louder than the surrounding tempest. His ethereal tentacles whipped in a frenzy around him. The ground shook and I struggled to keep my footing.
“What in the f--” I started to say, the words he screamed actually hurting my ears. I glanced to Richter. He kept attacking, forcing Alistair’s shield back by inches, but it didn’t matter. He knew it didn’t matter; I could read it in his eyes from where I stood. Whatever Alistair was doing was big, really big. The Reich mage stopped his attacks and backed up, his eyes wide. He hadn’t expected this.
“You’re insane!” he screamed at Alistair. “You don’t know what you’re unleashing!” If I was scared, he was terrified. Whatever knowledge he had made all the difference. For once, I felt blessed in my ignorance.
“G'agh un sha Oftg Gugt ghhu gghaftft un sha tlathat ftasghaan sha ghu'ftgt su ga'uia' nx rua!” Alistair shouted, his voice penetrating us. I winced, but Rebekah cried out, doubling over in pain as she held her head with her hand and the stump. Richter’s face was pale and drawn. He started to shake his head back and forth, denying the sight in front of him mutely.
When I looked back to Alistair, he was laughing. His mouth formed a rictus of insane joy and I could see all of his teeth, much like the old drawings of the Joker in comic books. His eyes glowed sickly green. The earth shattered behind him, falling into an abyss filled with a terrible blackness. Out of that nothingness came something, a winged beast, mutated and grotesque. Its eyes were covered with translucent bone white skin, yet it could still see. It screamed and I winced again, the high pitched sound piercing my head, aggravating my headache. It continued to scream. As it did, I felt something else rupture in my head. My nosebleed started again, yet I wasn’t the worst off here. Rebekah crumpled as she held her head, shaking it back and forth as she squeezed her ears, trying to shut out the sounds. Even Richter looked in more pain than I, though he kept his feet as he backed up, his eyes darting back and forth from the creature to Alistair and back again. I didn’t understand why it affected them both so strongly and not myself, but Richter made ready his escape.
“He’s escaping!” I shouted, my words swallowed by the wind. I started to run towards the Reich mage, but too slow. He traced runes into the air, carving the air bloody with his magic. A gateway opened behind him. I jumped, propelling myself forward with my teke and swung my blade. He stepped backwards into the portal and disappeared. My blade cut nothing but empty air as the doorway shut behind him. “Fuck!”
I looked back to Alistair, expecting him to stop now the threat was gone. He didn’t. Although he didn’t scream any more of those words, I got the feeling he didn’t have to. The portal he’d opened to who-knew-what sucked in the surrounding light, save for the eldritch glow from Alistair who stood there and swayed in terrible joy. The creature he’d released flew above me, searching for its prey. When it shrieked again, it dove at me instead of the Reich mage, its mouth open to show lines of jagged teeth. I threw myself down to the ground. It snagged part of my jacket, ripping the leather easily, then winged away into the sky, away from the light. It disappeared in the horizon, and I looked back to Alistair as I climbed to my feet. He began laughing. More than the shrieks of the creature or the words he’d screamed, that laughter cut me. He had gone mad. Just like that, Alistair had snapped.
Our games now suddenly didn’t seem like he was indulging me. He’d said he needed to stay humble and rooted, and being subservient had been his way to do it. I shook my head numbly, trying to wrap my head around what I was seeing, around the emptiness behind him which echoed in me. It sang to me, high pitched sweet songs of want and devouring. It hungered. I could feel that. It hungered.
When a dark purple tentacle began to emerge from the hole behind him, huge and thick, I started to move towards Alistair. My feet carried me forward before I even knew what I was doing. The tentacle blossomed, opening to reveal a savage red eye inside, scanning, hunting, looking for its first victim. It took everything I had to keep walking. As I did, my eyes slid away from the tentacle as it wormed its way out of nothingness. I couldn’t bear to look at it in its wonderful, horrific beauty. I spotted a more or less intact tree. With my teke, I cut a switch from the branches and floated it to me. I had nothing else to try. Either this would work or it wouldn’t. There was no place to hide from these things, whatever they were. None at all.
I removed my porcelain mask and put on my regular one, arranging my features to sharp confidence. That was much easier than I thought it would be. My normal self came forward, empty and alone, a porcelain doll dressed in human flesh. My hunger throbbed in time to the thing behind it, its alien thoughts infecting me. I couldn’t shut it out, but I didn’t want to. The song of hunger repeated itself over and over, dragging my feet forward. I longed to give into the madness, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. My normal confidence surged forward. I knew I was in charge. I had to know it. I was the mistress of my destiny, the captain of my soul. Nothing would take that away from me. When I was just a couple paces from the laughing--and crying--mage, I stopped and struck his face sharply with the switch.
His glowing green eyes blinked and his laughter stopped as if cut. He looked to me as he raised his scarred hand to his face. “You hit me,” he said, words hard to make out amidst the shrieking terrors behind him and the wind around us both.
“Did your Mistress tell you you could summon these things?” I snarled and hit him again, drawing blood upon his other cheek. When he winced, I smiled. These might be my last few moments, but at least they would be doing something I loved to do.
“No, I--” he said, then started laughing again, a loud chuckle which burbled up from his chest. The tentacle behind him hit the ground with a resounding crash and began to slither out. Another forced its way up from the abyss and got stuck, the two of them too big to go through the hole Alistair had created. They pushed against the boundary of reality, trying to open wider the gate to insanity. If I threw myself through it, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything ever again….
I narrowed my focus to Alistair and only to him. He was mad, but not wholly gone. Maybe his work with this magic shit had protected him somewhat, but not as much as he thought. Maybe it was his strong will. Maybe it was the weather. I had no idea. When I struck him a third time, a slight moan escaped his lips. Whether it was from pain or pleasure, I didn’t know.
“How dare you presume!” I snarled, my heart racing in my chest. I might have been mostly empty and longing for destruction, but self-preservation remained a top priority no matter what. “Kneel, worm! Kneel to your Mistress!”
He turned those awful eyes to me. The green flames licked at the hair dangling over his forehead and he burned with power, as if it were consuming him from the inside out. “You’re not my Mistress,” he said, the words thick. “I serve other things.”
I stepped forward and slapped him hard, leaving a red handprint
on his near bloodless face to join the switch mark. At the same time, I kicked his knee on the side. It buckled and he went down on it, falling on his injured knee hard. He winced with pain and struggled to rise, but I forced him down, using my teke to augment my strength.
“I am your Mistress,” I said coolly. “Don’t you remember all those times I made you beg? That I tied you up to whip at my pleasure? Don’t you remember all those times I beat you, beat you so hard until you begged me never to stop? You gave yourself to me, Alistair. You are mine, and you will obey me.”
His jaw went slack and I kept staring down at him, willing him to listen to me, to obey. Years of practice let me keep my face still, harsh and commanding as I wanted it, though inside I doubted if this would work and plotted an escape if it should fail. I spied movement around him… the tentacles squirmed and pushed. Each inch they crawled out made my blood boil cold with terror. When the ground cracked, I felt rather than heard it. Rebekah cried out even louder, but I couldn’t look away from Alistair. If I did, he was lost. If he was lost, so were we all.
Yes. It really was that dramatic. You know I don’t lie.
“You’re not...not…” he stammered, unable to complete the sentence. Was it my imagination, or had doubt entered those eyes alight with fire?
“I am,” I repeated, slapping him again. “I am your Mistress. You are mine. Mine to do with as I please. My slave.” I clung to my arrogance, using it as the paltry shield it was to keep the madness at bay.
We stood there, eyes locked as the world fell apart behind him. The tempest raged ever on. As the tentacles squeezed out of the hole, parts of their flesh sheared off against the rock of the solid earth. Where they touched, the ground turned black. In the midst of this chaos as I stared at Alistair, a calm came over me and I knew I was going to win. Why? No one would break me. No one had a stronger will than I… and we both knew it. I might have been plagued with these alien feelings, may have been confused by what caused them, but no one would ever break me. I smiled.
“Be a good boy, now,” I said, almost purring the words. “Don’t make me punish you.”
“I…” he started, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the green fire had dimmed. I could see his irises and pupils now. Clarity entered, a shining beacon in the sea of madness. “I am yours.”
“Close the rift,” I said, speaking the words softly, as a lover would do. “Do that for your Mistress.”
“Yes,” he said, struggling to rise. I helped him instead of keeping him down. His voice felt more there. “Yes, I will, Mistress.”
When he stood up, wobbling because of the damage done to him by Richter and myself, his eyes fell upon me again. The last licks of eldritch green circled around his pupils then disappeared. Alistair nodded slightly, then turned. He shouted in an unfamiliar language, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t human either, though. He traced runes in the air which glowed for a moment, then surged forward.
A loud shriek rent the air apart and I stumbled back, too close to the source. My ears hurt and I felt the warm trickle of blood on either side of my neck. Yet Alistair stood tall and strong, facing the unspeakable horror he’d raised to force it back into the bottomless pit of nothing. It raged at him. The anger spilled over, infecting everything. The very air itself screamed in agony. I couldn’t force it out, not any longer. As the dark purple tentacles writhed, the rift grew smaller, squeezing them without mercy as the rupture in reality closed oh so slowly. My knees buckled and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the sight of it. I saw it all anyway in exquisite detail, seared into my mind. What I had thought were small tentacles before, or perhaps long bumps, moved independently of the huge one, popping off in waves. Segmented worms with legs swarmed around us, though they kept wide of the mage’s circle of power. One of them reared its head to show a circle of razor sharp teeth. I heard it sing its song of hunger as it writhed in its death throes, begging me to join it.
My sense of reality broke… just a little there. This part remained blurry to me, but I swallowed the scream which threatened to break loose. I wouldn’t. I refused to. Instead, I choked on it, gasping for air through my nostrils, trying to suck in the fresh air through the foul which was an impossible task.
A great thunderclap announced the closure, and everything suddenly seemed so sweet and normal. The scream I’d swallowed turned into a laugh, twisting in that fraction of a second into blessed relief. I opened my eyes to confirm it was gone. The ground stood black and smouldering, but there, wonderfully there. The snow resumed falling. The white flakes mingled with the dark strands of Alistair’s hair. He turned to me, his face drawn pale with exhaustion and pain, but the scars disappearing under whatever magics he had to hide them. Blood had soaked into his clothing from the cuts he suffered under the onslaught. He wavered where he stood.
“Thank you… Mistress,” he said, his voice hoarse and his lips bloodied.
“Don’t you forget who’s in charge,” I said, smiling weakly. With the rift closed, those suppressed emotions surged forward and happiness dominated. The sheer joy of being alive filled me, causing my smile to widen. The dawn’s rays struck him, giving him a golden halo. He almost looked angelic.
“How could I?” he said. He took my hand in his, and brought it to his lips to brush a bloody kiss over the knuckles. “You’re my Mistress.”
I glanced behind me to where Rebekah climbed to her feet, her stump bleeding anew as I had forgotten to maintain the seal over it. “For now, I am.”
Chapter Fifteen
Without fear of Richter or the ICPD following us, I led both of them to my closest safe house, which was right on the edge of the Wastelands. Strangely enough, it wasn’t anywhere close to the crash of the Uptown saucer where the main slums had been prior to the fall, but to the northern side of the city. That’s where most of the mutants and freaks had migrated to ages ago. It’d earned the name ‘Wastelands’ since anyone who didn’t belong there got wasted, sometimes in more ways than one.
I didn’t like this hideout, but the rent was cheap and I kept it stocked with supplies. Since Alistair’s house had been obliterated, we had nowhere else to go and this was the closest. The snow hadn’t let up, which was fine with me. It did make traveling a pain in the ass until Alistair conjured some kind of sleigh or sled. When I stepped on it, I was halfway afraid it would disappear or would collapse into those centipede worm things I’d seen. It didn’t. He guided it gracefully over the massive snow banks covering the city, following the directions I gave him.
The place had two rooms, that was it. One was a catch-all kitchen, living room, bedroom, and the other was a closet for a bathroom. Like Harry’s fake hideout, it was mostly bare… but unlike his, this one did have dust on the counters and window sills. I didn’t come here often. I much preferred my posher hideouts, but sometimes you had to lie in the dirt.
It wasn’t just supplies I kept stocked, but also changes of clothing and medical supplies. While Alistair eased Rebekah on the bed--the only other piece of furniture in here save for a comfortable plush chair--I stumbled into the bathroom and ransacked my supplies. My chest ached like fire where the mystical shit had cut me, but Alistair still had what appeared to be a thousand cuts on him, and Rebekah’s stump took priority.
When I came back out, Alistair murmured some words, and his hands glowed… golden this time, not green. He ran his hands over his body, and where I could see they touched, the skin closed up. Hmph. Maybe I’d hit him up next time I got a beating.
“We have to bandage the stump,” I said.
“No, no,” she moaned as she struggled to sit up. “No, heal it. Put it back on.”
Alistair and I exchanged a look. “I didn’t pick it up,” I said, my face straight, though the bracelet she’d been wearing burned a hole in my pocket. I wasn’t about to leave that behind.
“If we don’t close the wound, it’ll start bleeding again,” he said. “Either with magic or mundanely, we need to make sure that
doesn’t happen. You are weak enough already.”
“But my hand!” she squeaked, her blue-green eyes fraught with worry. “I thought it could be put back on!”
Huh. She was adapting fine to this world. It was a gambit I might have done in similar circumstances. Of course, after the dismemberment, the fight, and the alien rift in the world, she’d been so out of it she had forgotten to get the severed hand. “It’s gone now,” I said, words blunt as always. “I’ll have to start calling you lefty.”
At the same time, they gave me a dirty look. I shrugged. My mind numb both from my mental tinkerings and the beating it had took, I didn’t care right now. I welcomed the numbness and felt more like my old self than I had since Axis.
“So let me close the wound,” Alistair said. “The bracelet is gone now, I can heal you. It’ll take some out of your physical resources, but…”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “She’s weak enough from blood loss already. Let’s bandage it, and get some rest and food in her. It’s been a long night.”
“Isn’t it my decision?” she said, snapping her reply with the last bit of sass left in her. Looking at her disfigured stump, Rebekah shook her head. “Bandages.”
