Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9)

by T. A. Pratt

Then the New Death groaned and fell to his knees. Elsie stood behind him, both hands wrapped around the haft of her pickaxe Trepanner. The point of the axe was buried right in the top of Skully’s head. The god coughed, and burning embers floated from his bony mouth. His hands clenched and twitched and spasmed.

  “Good work distracting him there, boys.” Elsie beamed at them. “Who even needs Marla, right? Maybe I should seize the throne myself, huh? I’d be a great dread queen. The dreadliest.”

  Skully slowly lifted his hands. He didn’t reach for Bradley or Pelham, or try to wrench out the pickaxe. Instead, he lifted his aurochs’s skull from his shoulders, axe and all, twisting the skull with a sound of tearing cartilage and flesh. He tossed the skull and axe aside and rose to his feet, stumbling, headless, into the cave.

  Elsie stood, apparently dumbfounded. She picked up the axe, the aurochs skull still stuck on the end. She lifted the axe high, staring at it blankly, then began to giggle. “It’s like a candy apple on a stick, isn’t it?” She pointed the axe downward, put her foot on the skull, and stomped, knocking the skull loose, leaving a neat star-shaped hole in the bone. “I bet I could sell one gently-used death god skull on the supernatural black market for crazy money. It’s a shame I’ve transcended any need for material wealth, huh? That’s always the way it goes.”

  “The New Death is wounded,” Pelham said. “How shall we proceed?”

  Elsie swung the pickaxe in a casual arc. “We could charge in there and try to kill him again. But I’m starting to think the whole ‘murder Death itself’ thing might suffer from certain logistical difficulties. Like, maybe we’re trying to burn the sun or freeze ice or drown water or something, you see what I’m saying?”

  Bradley let out a low whistle. “You think we can’t kill him?”

  “I thought the chances were fifty-fifty with Trepanner here. Looks like we got the wrong fifty though. So, at this point, we can go all suicide-mission, with the consequences for suicide being eternal torment with a personal touch for you two, and I don’t even know what kind of horror for me. What do gods do to other gods who try and fail to kill them? I mean, I can imagine what I would do, and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of anything in that conceptual vicinity.”

  “Mrs. Mason suggested that she had plans beyond a simple brute force attack,” Pelham said.

  Elsie nodded. “Yeah. I know her endgame, I think, because I know her, and how she thinks, but I’m not sure how she expects to get to that point.”

  “We could ask her,” Muscles called. “My queen approaches!”

  “Always fashionably late,” Elsie said.

  The Palace of Death

  Three figures stood before the mountain the New Death had in lieu of a palace, and Marla’s heart rose. Bradley and Pelham were okay. Also Elsie was there, which didn’t make her happy, exactly, but by and large it was better to have the chaos god where you could see her.

  “Marla!” Elsie said. “And your merry band of miscreants, plus that friend of yours who tried to set me on fire last time we met. Welcome, welcome. We confronted your enemy and I axed him in the head. I was majestic.” She gestured grandly. “The boys helped. Oh, and a sort of goat-demon thing, too, named Muscles Malone, that wants you to make it a real boy. I think it flew away, or maybe it just quit existing for a minute. It’s so hard to find good –”

  “Wait, you killed Death?” Marla stared at the skull on the ground at Elsie’s feet. She hadn’t sensed when the old Death died, so the New Death could certainly die without her sensing it, she supposed... but if so, it was oddly anticlimactic. The good part was that she could throw the thing in her shoulder bag into a deep pit instead of using it.

  But Bradley shook his head. “The New Death just, uh, tore his skull off and stumbled into the cave. He’s hurt, maybe? But I don’t know how badly.”

  “He’s got a whole interchangeable head thing going,” Marla said. “I thought it was purely cosmetic, but I guess it’s got its practical side too.” She climbed off the chimera and patted its flank, then let if fly away, though it wouldn’t last long without her attention. She tilted her head back and looked up at the mountain. “This is all wrong.”

  “Would you like me to redecorate?” Genevieve said.

  Marla shook her head. “No, I can feel my power waxing. We’ve broken the New Death’s absolute control of this realm, and the balance is shifting.” She cocked her head, and the mountain transformed into a palace of white marble, akin to an elaborate tomb but scaled up to make a suitable habitation for giants. “There. Much better.” Her clothing changed, too, the armor of bones and ice and metal appearing when she willed it.

  “Whoa. Full Valkyrie.”

  “Thanks, Rondeau. But I’m more like the one who employs the Valkyries.” She tried to summon Death’s terrible sword to her hand—possessing that blade was crucial to her ultimate success—but it wouldn’t come. The New Death must be wielding it, then.

  That was okay. She’d just need to take it away from him. “Is everyone ready? Same plan as before: help me clear a path to Skully.”

  Pelham stretched out his hand, and a walkingstick with a brass ball on one end appeared in his hand. Rondeau hefted his gun, and Elsie spun Trepanner around in her hands with a grin. Bradley and Genevieve were empty-handed, but they had other resources.

  Marla led the way, the rod of lapis lazuli in her hand. The entrance was big enough to accommodate a zeppelin, and the foyer was a vast ballroom of marble, with candles floating unsupported in the heights. At the edges of her vision, the marble flickered, transforming into rough stone walls and back, but wherever she focused her attention, her version of local reality held sway.

  Elsie really had hurt Skully, at least enough to loosen his control. Or maybe Marla was just better able to use her powers now that her mortal mind and her godly perception were fully integrated. The whole bargain she’d made, separating her mortal life form her divine one, had been a profound miscalculation. She’d been so desperate to hold on to her humanity, to keep her mortal self separate, that she’d essentially given herself dissociative identity disorder. She’d made the Bride of Death into a separate personality, practically a separate person, and an antagonistic one, at that. Now, for the first time since her ascension to godhood, she was fully herself, just one thing, truly whole, and in the place where she belonged.

  Scores of human-sized doorways opened in all directions, some at floor level, some placed at random heights on the walls, but Marla recognized a trivial delaying tactic when she saw one. She gestured, and all the doors vanished, except the one that actually led somewhere: straight ahead. “He’s through there.” She sensed a ripple in the chaos, a gathering of power, a reallocation of energy and matter. “Um. Expect resistance.”

  A horde poured out of the doorway, bellowing in rage. Marla had expected cartoon devils, three-dimensional renderings of demons from old illustrations, or predictable, recycled pop-cultural nightmares. Instead, Skully had conjured monsters drawn from the pasts and minds of his enemies.

  Among the dozens of monsters were versions of Bradley with shards of mirror for teeth, a writhing golem made of flesh-stripping beetles, a shambling corpse with its flesh sprouting deathcap mushrooms, disheveled men crackling with electricity, pale dogs, and a passable imitation of the Beast of Felport. They were all just conjurations, though, little wads of chaos given shape and limited autonomy, and she waved her lapis lazuli rod and turned them into puffs of cloud and nothing before they got within twenty feet.

  “Aww,” Rondeau said. “You could’ve left a few for me to shoot.”

  “Trepanner hungers for brainmeats, Marla,” Elsie agreed.

  “Skully is trying to delay us, and that means he wants time to do something, even if it’s just finding a new head. I’m not inclined to give him an extra second.” She started forward, but more figures emerged from the door... and these had a heft of independent reality the others hadn’t.

  “Oh, hell,” Genevieve said. “
Pun intended. And I thought I assembled a pretty good Marla Mason Revenge Squad.”

  The first time Marla had come to Hell, she’d been forced to confront the spirits of everyone she’d killed. Skully’s recruitment was a bit more broad, though: this seemed to be just about every dead person who’d ever borne her a grudge.

  “Hello, Marla.” Regina Queen, dressed in floor-length white fur coat, offered an icicle smile. “You asked for my help, and repaid me with assassination.” Her son, the pale subterranean sorcerer Viscarro, skittered forward in his mother’s wake, dressed in ragged monk’s robes. He looked worse actually dead than he had when he was undead.

  Marla shrugged. “Well, Regina, you’re a murderous psychopath. That’s just how it had to go. Hey, Vicky. Wasn’t your whole goal in life cheating death? How’d that work out?”

  The two of them were joined by Marla’s old rival Susan Wellstone, who still bore the bloodstain over her heart from when Marla’s dark doppelganger the Mason had killed her.

  “It’s bad enough your arrogance led to my death,” Susan said. “To be forced to spend eternity under your rule is intolerable. You weren’t even fit to rule a city, let alone the entire afterlife.”

  “Good to see you again too, Sue. Did you bring along Gregor? Ah, there he is.” The conniving dark-haired sorcerer smirked at her, hiding behind more formidable shades. Susan and Gregor had been a real pain in her ass, once upon a time, and apparently they were getting the band back together.

  The mad priest Mutex was there, too, face impassive, an obsidian knife in each hand. The cannibal witch Bethany as well, sprouting wings of scrap metal, her teeth filed to points. The anti-mancer Christian Decomain—well, he was probably here for Elsie; she was the one who’d turned him into frogs and then stomped on a bunch of them. The shapeshifter Finch, transforming into a grizzly bear as he approached.

  Marla scowled. “Finch? What do you have against me? I killed the guy who killed you! He’s standing right there! Or are you still pissed I interrupted your stupid swingers party?”

  The bear just growled. Others filed in. Somerset, the old chief sorcerer of Felport, trailing a cloud of pigeons. The shimmering, indistinct blur that was doubtless Gustavus Lupo. That haole sorcerer who’d styled himself king of the Hawaiian wizards, the one she’d called Greaseface, still wearing his absurd feathered cloak. Jason’s thuggish friend Danny Two-Saints, holding a straight razor. The half-burned, ambulatory form of John Wilkes Booth, carrying a pistol. And more, and more, and more, all dead by her hand or at least in her vicinity –

  “Marla, don’t let yourself get sidetracked.” Rondeau put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a little shake. “Like you said, Skully is just trying to buy time, you can’t settle old business with all these... oh, shit, is that Campbell Campion? Cam-Cam? Aw, man I’m so sorry, I didn’t know Jason was planning to kill you –”

  Pelham slammed his walkingstick down hard on the floor, three times, crack crack crack. “We must not be delayed! These poor souls have all died. Their lives are finished, and that old business is done. We must move forward.”

  “We aren’t here to delay you.” Regina seemed to be taking charge, which wasn’t too shocking. She’d always gravitated naturally to authority, fueled by her endless fount of arrogance. “We’re here to kill you. Being dead is terrible, Marla. You’re going to hate it.”

  “I’m the good queen here, you idiots,” Marla said. “Most of you are straight-up villains, and the New Death believes you’ve earned an eternity of nightmarish torment. Believe me, you’d much rather have me in charge, with my laissez-faire policies. You should be helping me defeat him.”

  “He’s promised us paradise if we slay your friends and bring you to him,” Regina said. “Paradises beyond our own capabilities to imagine.”

  “We’re happy with our decision,” Susan said. She never could stand to let anyone else be in charge. “Kill them!” she shouted.

  Marla tried to banish the dead back to their afterlives, but they were locked, impossible for her to budge: Skully was pouring a considerable percentage of his attention into keeping them solid and present.

  Mutex came at her first, knives weaving, and though she cracked him across the face with her lapis lazuli staff, he didn’t even flinch away. “Fight them!” Marla shouted. “Take them apart, they don’t feel pain!”

  The next few minutes were confusion. Elsie cackled gleefully, laying about with Trepanner, making a special point of driving the axe into the head of Christian, which was good; his magic-suppressing skills still worked here, but anti-mancy was no protection against a heavy metal object bashing in your skull. He fell—and then vanished. Marla gasped. She could sense that Christian’s soul was gone. He’d been cast out, into oblivion, and had ceased entirely to exist. A magical pickaxe that could wound gods could erase the souls of the dead, too, it seemed.

  Marla’s other friends fought less definitively, but their attacks were effective, too. The bodies of their enemies were constructs made of primordial chaos, and being dead already meant they couldn’t be killed, but they could be disabled. Rondeau kept falling back, blasting away with his tommy gun, managing to cut Lupo nearly in half with gunfire. There was no blood, of course, and the skinchanger flickered through assorted identities while sprawled on the ground. Pelham seemed to be dancing with Viscarro, his walking stick cracking hard against the subterranean sorcerer’s long, nearly skeletal limbs. Jenny Click poured fire into Regina, who poured ice right back: at least their elemental antagonism seemed evenly matched. Bradley was fighting with Gregor, who dodged and spun with grim intensity. For her part, Marla had to fight off Susan Wellstone, who was now riding around on Finch in his bear form, one hurling magics, the other swiping with claws. Bethany was trying to flank her, and Booth was taking potshots with his pistol, though she was one tyrant he wouldn’t be able to assassinate; her armor was more than sufficient to turn bullets, at least.

  Where the hell was Genevieve? She was the trump card, and she should have been able to end all this easily: dropping this rogues gallery into a pit, weaving cages around them, manipulating the environment in ways even Marla couldn’t. Marla kicked Bethany in the chest, dodged around the bear, and scanned the corners of the palace.

  Gen was separated from the others, on the ground, scuttling away from an advancing attacker, someone Marla didn’t recognize, a bald white guy in a dirty peacoat. Genevieve could alter reality. Why was she afraid of some random –

  “Oh, shit. When did he die?” The man coming for Genevieve was objectively the least formidable person in this group by several orders of magnitude. He was stupid and brutish, with no magic and no impulse control, just a common street thug. But back when he was alive, he’d brutally attacked Genevieve, sending her already-fragile psyche over the edge. Genevieve had later faced him, and realized he wasn’t a monster of mythic proportions, but just some asshole, and it had seemed to help her psychologically... but apparently seeing him here, now, coming at her again, was too much of a shock, and she’d forgotten her own progress, and her own powers. He was her PTSD personified. Marla had to –

  Something drove Marla to her knees, a terrific weight and force slamming into her back, and she smelled fur and sweat and the stink of bear-breath.

  “Elsie! Jenny!” She flung out one arm, pointing with her lapis lazuli rod at Genevieve’s personal boogeyman. “Get rid of him!”

  Jenny broke off attacking Regina and flew across the room, and Elsie pirouetted and giggled her way in that direction, too. The thug—what was his name, Terry?—looked around, eyes wide in totally justified terror.

  Jenny made him burst into flame, and Elsie started beating him with her axe like he was a vein of gold she was trying to mine.

  Marla heaved upward with godlike strength, flinging the grizzly from her back, and ran toward her frightened friend. “Gen! Genevieve, you’re okay, he’s down, but we need help!”

  Genevieve looked at her, eyes wet and blank, then shook her head and
got unsteadily to her feet. “I—I’m sorry, seeing him was just such a shock, I didn’t even know he was dead....” Her eyes widened as she took in the scene, a decent cross-section of Marla’s personal murderers’ row doing their best to kill her friends.

  “No!” Genevieve shouted. She brought her hands together, and there was a sound like a thunderclap, flinging all the antagonistic souls flying in every direction, slamming them hard against the marble walls. The wind she’d conjured didn’t touch Marla’s friends, only her adversaries, even the fallen ones. Tentacles and arms of white marble emerged from the walls, grabbing onto the dazed souls, and pulling them all—some screaming in fear, some shouting curses, some rendered incapable of sound by the battle previously—into the walls, where they disappeared as cleanly as pebbles dropped into a pond.

  The sudden silence was resounding. Marla looked around. “Is everyone okay?”

  “No.” Bradley’s voice wavered. “No, not everyone.”

  She turned, and her heart became a falling stone. Bradley knelt beside a spreading pool of blood, and at the center, there was Pelham, an obsidian knife still protruding from his chest, his eyes open and empty.

  “Pelly!” Rondeau dropped his gun and raced to his friend’s side, sliding on his knees in the blood. He tore the knife out of Pelham’s heart and threw it aside. “Marla, Genevieve, somebody, you have to heal him, come on, it’s just a little hole!”

  Marla lowered her eyes. “I can’t... Rondeau, he’s gone.” Pelham’s body was an empty shell, his soul already departed. She closed her eyes, trying to sense his immortal self, and there he was, a falling star among many others in the heavens over Hell, streaking toward the great sea of primal chaos where he would make his afterlife.

  Marla had known the chances of everyone getting through this unscathed were pretty much zero, but Pelly... he’d barely even had a life. He’d been raised on an estate, trained to serve aristocratic magicians, and had only been given a brief time to make his own way in the world. She’d never had a more loyal friend, and she couldn’t think of anyone she’d known who was a better man.