Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  He clenched his jaw and looked away.

  “There are children in Norwood! There are babies! Have you ever seen an infant Eater? Have you ever heard the…the sound they make?”

  She could see his pulse ticking in the black vein exposed at his opened throat. Otherwise, he did not move.

  “Please.” Lan pulled his unresisting hand close and curled around it, pressing her brow to his cold, cracked flesh. “One day. Just in Norwood. No one has to know!”

  “No.”

  “Let them die,” said Lan, “or let me die with them.”

  “No!” His hand wrenched free of hers. “Hate me, if it makes the grief easier to bear, but I will not unmake my victory for you. The people of your village must suffer the fate they forge by their actions.” He stood glaring down at her a moment, then seized his belt and battled it open. “As you did, when you came here and when you gave yourself to me.”

  She rolled over in his bed, staring at the wall without seeing it as he undressed. Her eyes ached, but stayed dry. Her chest hurt, but she kept breathing just fine. She could feel the mattress shift as he climbed onto it, but it might as well be happening to someone else, in a story she had once been told and half-forgotten.

  “This is the fate you have chosen,” he told her, trailing the backs of his fingers down her thigh. When he found the hem of her dress, he turned his hand and drew it back up, fabric bunching around his wrist. His palm made a rasping sound against her skin, unpleasant to hear, but not to feel. “So embrace it. The past is dead.”

  “So is Norwood,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps. But even if so, grief cannot bring it back to life. Leave it behind.” He slipped his hand beneath the folds of her dress and cupped her breast. “Be with me.”

  With him? With the man, the monster, who had sent the Revenants to Norwood, who had raised them in the first place? He was Death. He was the Devil. So why wasn’t she fighting? Why not scream, kick, spit in his horrible face? She let him touch her, caress her, and if she shuddered when he did it, it was only because she wanted it so much. Why did she want this?

  Nothing had changed. Norwood may still be burning and all that she had may be lost, but all that was in the world outside. Here, if only in this room, this bed, she thought she could let it go. It would be all the heavier when she had to pick it up again, but she could let it go for now.

  Lan rolled over and put her arms around him.

  He stiffened, then shook his head hard and hissed, “Stop it! Your past lovers may have found a pretense of desire endearing, but I do not. I will not be mocked in my own bed!”

  “W-What?”

  “Close your eyes,” he ordered, roughly gripping her thigh and maneuvering himself atop her. “Say nothing. I’ll take what I want, I need no help from you.”

  Now it was Lan who said, “Stop it,” and although she said it without his vehemence, he recoiled. “You’ve been poisoned and you lost your Children tonight. You’re hurting every way you can be hurt. The last thing you want is sex.”

  He flinched again, then bared his teeth at her, his lip splitting wide to show the gleam of bone beneath. “What is it you imagine I want?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe…you want what I want. To feel…better. Maybe you want me.” She pulled tentatively at his neck, but he would not be moved. “Maybe…I want you too.”

  A moment’s silence, like a slamming door, while he let those words wither. Then he pried her hands off him and said, “Get out.”

  “Azrael—”

  “I have no use for liars. I am done with you. Out.”

  She fumbled at the loosened draping of her dress, trying to shield herself from his contempt. “It’s not a lie!”

  “Of course it is!” he snapped. “Did you really think I would not know it? The sweetest words are still belied by the flesh.” Suddenly, he was on her, his weight crushing down over the whole of her body and his hand knotted in her hair. “Speak whatever words you will,” he growled. “I hear the pounding of your heart. I smell the fear in your sweat. I feel—” His knee thrust itself between hers, wedging her thighs apart. She slapped at him with a high cry of panic and he smiled. “—your true touch.”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  He relaxed his hold on her hair, but did not release her. His knee ground against her pubis, miming the rhythm of sex while he watched. Her thighs clenched, her hands gripped the bedding, her belly tightened; he shared it all.

  “You think because you do not scream or struggle that I am blind to your horror, but you cannot deceive me. Your skin—” He passed a hand down the curve of her arched throat, light as a whisper. “—crawls. You writhe. You shudder.” He squeezed her breast, his thumb scraping back and forth across her nipple before bending deliberately as if to take it into his mouth. He stopped, head cocked, to listen to the involuntary sound this act provoked with a smile of bitter satisfaction. “You moan.”

  She lay aching under him, her body alive to everything, and felt like crying. “You made me feel good before,” she whispered, unable to meet his burning stare. “I want that again. I don’t want to think tonight. I just want you…to make me not feel like…me.”

  He spat out an unknown word that needed no translation and shoved himself away from her. Lan lunged after him, catching him with a shaking hand he could have easily thrown off. Instead, he stopped, crouching like a gargoyle at the very edge of the bed and, like a gargoyle’s, the body she embraced might as well have been stone. He offered no encouragement as she twined her arms around his chest. The points of his exposed spine caught at the flimsy fabric of her hanging dress; she tore it off with shaking hands and pressed close, feeling bare bone against her bare breasts.

  The water of the fountain endlessly fell into his bath. There was no other sound.

  At long last, he said, simply and without inflection, “I cannot believe what you say.”

  “Then I won’t talk.”

  He looked at her. Before he could turn away, she caught him and kissed his scarred mouth. He tried to pull away, but his efforts to break her grip came to his hand on her wrist and no more. When she pulled at him, he allowed her to lay him down.

  As she tried to kiss him again, he turned his face away. Undaunted, she brushed her lips instead across his split cheek, following the edges of the open wound down his throat until it closed. She kissed the bullet holes on his chest, kissed the dry bone exposed at his rib, kissed the ancient runnels carved into his stomach. Her hand moved lower still, finding the heat of his jutting cock and gently squeezing as he groaned.

  “Your mouth,” he ordered.

  She raised her head and looked at him.

  His own mouth twitched. “Please,” he amended.

  She obediently shifted, kissing a steady if unhurried path around his shaft while she stroked him in her fist. Next, her tongue, traveling every inch, now wetting him in long slow passes, now tracing loops and knots with just the point of her tongue. At last, Lan fastened her lips at the underside of his base, lightly sucking all the way to the tip as his back arched, then taking him into her mouth as fully as she could.

  Azrael’s hand came to rest on her head, his claws pricking at her scalp in time with her movements. “Ah…how can the mouth that speaks such honeyed poison give such pleasure?”

  She had said she wouldn’t speak, so she hummed.

  His hips bucked up at her and he panted out a short laugh. “You have your own cruelty, human, for all that you revile mine.”

  Kicking away the last clinging swath of her dress, Lan rose up and clumsily straddled him. She could feel his cock like a brand against her belly. She closed her eyes, shutting out every sense but that of touch as she took it into her hand and then into her body.

  It wasn’t sex, not the way she knew it—the tarnished coin by which so many necessities were secured in this world. Sex was furtive; there was no privacy within the village walls and outside them, the slightest disturbance brought Eaters. Sex was mechanical; she
did only what she had to do to satisfy the terms of the bargain, which more often than not was just to stand up against the wall and keep watch. Not now. Not with him.

  Her first movements were self-conscious, unsure of what he wanted or was feeling, but she knew what she wanted and in the absence of command, she took it. What began with caution soon gave way to something violent, that was nearly an attack. She rode him, graceless, bucking and clawing at his chest for leverage, her eyes squeezed shut against the distraction of sight. His body was awful, but it gave her what she wanted and hers took it in with single-minded, animal need.

  She could feel it starting to happen already, that little taste of death. It was fire and shadow wrapped together, growing both brighter and blacker as she chased it. Anticipation coiled inside her, winding her up tighter and tighter, until she was only huddled over him, shivering in the heat of the thing’s grip, scarcely moving at all and falling further and further away from the finish.

  And then he began to move with her, rising up to meet the stuttering roll of her hips with a powerful thrust of his own. At once, the darklight promise of the thing erupted. She arched, eyes rolling back and one arm clutching at empty air, just like the brewer’s boy having a fit, and before those first waves had receded, she was spinning.

  Suddenly, the bed was at her back and Azrael was above her and he was right about everything. Her skin crawled; her senses heightened until each bead of sweat was a razor and even the air had a weight she could feel. She writhed; her legs wrapped his hips, her hands clawed his shoulders, her head tossed until her sweat-damp hair slapped the bed and stung her face. She moaned; the more she tried to lock them inside, the louder they got, until the second eruption took her, when she screamed. Lights burst behind her eyes and turned black, so that for a moment, she thought surely she was fainting and the tiny part of her that still cared about anything was embarrassed.

  But her vision cleared and there was Azrael, neck arched, groaning in the grip of his own darklight, coming as close to death as he ever could. She felt that too, a bloom of heat intense enough to hurt, if only for that first second. When it was over, he slumped, breathing hard against her shoulder before pushing himself off and dropping onto his back. The bed shuddered. So did Lan, one hand clutching between her legs as if to ease the ache of his withdrawal.

  Neither spoke for some time.

  Finally, he said, “You are…so different.”

  Her brows knit. She glanced at him uncertainly.

  He caught it and laughed, wiping her sweat from his skin. “No, it was not a compliment, although someday you will have to learn how to accept them. Chamberlain!”

  Lan fumbled at the blankets, just managing to cover herself as the door opened and Azrael’s manservant entered.

  “My guest requires fresh attire,” said Azrael, rising unabashedly from the bed and gesturing back at her. “And an escort to her room.”

  “Yes, lord.” The dead man went immediately to the wardrobe. Apparently, Azrael ripping the clothes off his concubines was not a singular occurrence.

  Lan didn’t watch to see what he picked out for her. “What…What did I do wrong?”

  Azrael looked up from his inspection of the scratches on his shoulder in surprise. “Nothing, but the hour is late.”

  “That’s not…” Lan looked uncomfortably toward the waiting, stone-faced chamberlain—the dress was blue—and tugged her blanket up a little higher. “You don’t have to send me away.”

  “And you don’t have to prove your conviction.” He paused, then forced a smile and a gentler tone as he said, “Surely tomorrow is soon enough for your audience.”

  Lan dropped her eyes and nodded, but didn’t move.

  The water in the fountain poured endlessly down.

  “Leave us,” said Azrael.

  Lan looked up, but it was his chamberlain who obeyed, laying the dress by the wardrobe and discretely retreating. Azrael stood, his arms folded, until the heavy door shut, then said, “No woman has ever asked to sleep in my bed before. Is it a trick? You have my favor yet, but I warn you—”

  “It’s just a long night.” She dragged a hand through her hair, pushing it back only to pull it forward again, like it was a curtain she could close against his suspicion. “There’s nothing up in that room…but Norwood. Please. I can’t be alone with that tonight. I can’t be alone with them.”

  “But you can be alone with me? That’s bold of you.” He took one step toward her, still smiling, sketching out a one-armed gesture that was nearly a bow. “Am I not the monster who murdered them?”

  “I know, all right? I know.” Lan slapped a hand over her eyes, which had begun to blur ominously although they were, for the moment, still dry. “I can forget that for one night. I can pretend I’m not me when I’m with you. I can pretend you’re not you…when you’re with me.”

  “I envy you.” He paced over to the fire and did something that lowered the flames, then went to the bath and shut off the water. Time crashed down into the room, measured out one drop at a time, with longer and longer spaces between, until it stretched out forever. “If you stay,” he said at last, stressing the first word, “you will…pretend…you want to stay.”

  “I…” do. Lan rubbed her eyes again. Still dry. “I will.”

  “You will not speak of the dead without the walls of Haven.” With the fire down and his back turned, all she had of him was the splash of eyelight reflecting off wet stone—a faint pale smudge—and his voice. “Nor of the living.”

  “I won’t speak at all, if that’s what you want.”

  His eyes found her through the screen that separated his bath from the rest of the room, their eerie light flicking in and out with every step. At one point, he dragged his claws along the latticework—she could hear the tk-k-k-tk sound—but his eyes were all she could see of him. They seemed to float, disembodied, like his voice, when he said, “And what would you say, if I allowed you to speak?”

  She let the blanket fall, a little at a time, and held out one arm. “Come to bed.”

  He made a sound deep in his throat, not a laugh or a mutter, but some rough animal sound. The mattress shifted, bucking her slightly toward him as his eyes swooped suddenly close. Before she could leap away (and she would have, damn her for a coward), his hand found her in the dark, stroking her cheek briefly before slipping around to the back of her neck. “You’ve never said those words before, have you?” he murmured, laying her down. “Say you haven’t.”

  “I haven’t,” she admitted.

  His hand moved, brushing along her neck and continuing down until it encountered the edge of the blanket, then up again to cup her breast. His face loomed over her, impossible to escape, but he made it easy to avoid his gaze. His attention was fixed lower, caressing as much with his eyes as with his hands, and Lan soon found herself transfixed as well. She’d had sex before, been fondled, leered at, and it didn’t bother her, but this was different. She was never so aware of her body as when Azrael touched it.

  “You’ve never slept with another man before,” he said, close against her skin. “Have you?”

  “I…” She roused as if from sleep, blinking too fast and weirdly breathless. “You know I…have. You know…This isn’t fair! You said you don’t want me to lie!”

  “Is it a lie?”

  “I…I’ve been with—”

  “Been with. But not slept with. Slept beside.”

  It was true, although it was not something she’d ever thought of before. The revelation was not a pleasant one. But he’d told her, hadn’t he? ‘You think you have no more innocence to lose,’ he’d said, ‘but you are wrong.’ She’d just sold it in pieces, like everything else. And some of the pieces, it seemed, were small enough to slip her notice.

  “W-will you…” Her voice, none too strong, broke to a whisper. “Will you sleep with me?”

  He shook his head, his eyes leaving faint tracers as they moved side to side. “Alas, I do not often sleep, nor easily
tire. But if you ask me…nicely…I will hold a watch while you sleep.”

  “Not yet.”

  “No.” Giving her breast a final gentle squeeze, he dropped his hand once more to the blanket and pulled it away. She felt the chill of the room only for an instant before his flesh, even colder, covered her. “Not yet.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  She dreamed of Norwood, but not the usual dreams. Just what made her think so, Lan could not guess, since she didn’t remember her dreams as a rule and didn’t really remember this one either. All she had were impressions, like the stink of char that lingers long after the fire or a print in the mud after the boot has marched on. So she knew she had been in Norwood and she knew it had been empty, although the only image that stayed with her was that of the long table in the cooklodge, long abandoned, with a half-empty jar of peaches and an old weathered rucksack at one end. There were no bodies, no smoke, no blood. Only the silence, broken by a sudden explosion of sound that ripped her right out of sleep.

  She did not immediately know where she was. The noise that had awakened her had become the crash of falling water, a sound her brain stubbornly tried to insist was the waterwheel at the village mill, even though she could clearly see indoor-walls hung with bedcurtains and smell the indoor-smell of sweaty sex in a windowless room. She was lying sideways at the foot of a bed. There were claw marks on the headboard and tears in the sheets. Lan had been half-wrapped in a blanket and left in defeat, discarded on the field of battle. The victor had long since left and she knew she was alone, so when she raised her head and saw a dark figure in a white, flowing gown coming at her, she very naturally let out a caw of alarm and threw herself back in a mad scramble that propelled her out into empty space and then to the floor, where she knocked her head hard on the tiles.

  Eater, was her only thought and now that her legs were hopelessly tangled and anchored somewhere to the bed, she would be caught, torn, devoured…and raised up.

  The figure did not slow, but did affect a curt sigh. Then it knelt to unwrap Lan’s kicking legs, slapping her once to stop her struggles. It was the slap that brought recognition.