Black Briar

by Avett, Sophie

  Disappeared was the owl, in its place stood a stout goblinesque creature. Socrates the Darkling’s true form had brownish gray skin and bubbled, short Doberman ears, scrawny long arms and short bracketed legs. Bone fingers were tipped with sharp, black nails. His knuckles dragged as he hobbled into existence. Of course, he was draped in a tarnished Templar’s tunic with dirt and blood stains. He’d paired the flag with a ridiculous pink feather boa and purple, pointed shoes. He always wore pointed shoes. With bells. Little Keebler bastard.

  The minute he was fully materialized Socrates ripped the red cap off his pate and shook it with general outrage. “What is this?! I leave you alone for two seconds and this”—he lifted the puppy by her scruff, “is what comes of it?!”

  Crimson moonbeams beat down on Sybille’s shoulders from no discernable source and electrified the stannic scarlet ooze leaking from the spinning wheel’s rotors. “Oh, Socrates…” The corner of her mouth twitched. “This tragic tale has only begun…”

  Nova was coming. She could feel him…searching. Surfing millions and millions of webs. Searching for hers. The shining string that would lead him to where her consciousness had wandered off to. She wasn’t making it easy for him. The Dorn Turm, or so it was called by the creatures who hailed from this plane, was her kingdom. Her domain. Completely. It was a domed orb, protected with ancient magic the Hag taught only to her brightest and boldest students. It was nearly impenetrable.

  But Nova wasn’t without skill. Nor was he weak. He would be here soon.

  Very, very soon.

  The spinning wheel ground to a halt. Even now, she was tired. Safe and satisfied with her world and still her bones were lead, her feet heavy, hands and mind weary.

  “He doesn’t know when to give up and die…” She sighed and willed herself to stand. “Shall we teach the prince a lesson?”

  “Where the hell is my tea pot?” The darkling muttered, thrashing about in the small kitchenette wrapped around the north bend of the room. “Can’t find anything in this bloody tower!”

  Sybille threw open the doors to her armoire, perusing racks of all the dresses she’d always wanted but never had the money to buy. All her money went toward saving for the Hag’s dream of a hospice and sanatorium. With the exception of her sister, Dru, Sybille was Enid’s only apprentice.

  It was the old woman’s dream that she would one day be able to open an independent clinic in the outer city. For that, she needed a certain kind of expertise, and that’s where the Briar sisters came in, which is precisely why something as old and as wise—and vindictive—as Enid the Hag endured things like naughty nun-habits. Someone had to help that old codger fulfill her wildest dreams. And it would be her adopted grand-daughters. Believe it.

  The spindle witch yawned. “Your kettle’s in the oven.”

  “Oven?” The darkling crowed and glared at the puppy romping around his knobby ankles in pursuit of the frilly pink lapels of his dollhouse apron. His beady, yellow eyes narrowed as he pointed a bony gray finer with a sharp nail. “Out to get me too, eh?”

  The puppy’s rose ears flattened, head tilted with confusion. But alas, it only lasted a moment. She happily snapped her teeth around his finger.

  Good girl.

  “Ravenous beast!” He swatted the pup’s nose and she hid her snout in shame. “That’s right, now help me find the sugar. Teatime waits for no…What is that? No, no, give me that—here, you can hold the spoon. Now then, where’s the… No sugar?” Dishes were heaved. Shattered against the wall. “I haven’t endured these kinds of living conditions since Hell!”

  He snapped his fingers and a squatting sugar tin appeared in his hand. It was Enid’s sugar tin. There would be blood in the streets.

  “Where’s goddamn the milk? Who does the bloody shopping in this tower? Shoot that bastard on sight. Why, I…”

  Nova beat at the walls of her world. Reality wobbled around them and she carelessly plucked a gown off the leaning skeleton, and slinked behind an Arabian awning posted near the dragonhead vanity. “How did you get the puppy here anyways? I mean, I know you can be wherever you want to be”—her mouth crooked—“within limits, of course.”

  The darkling snorted and she snapped her fingers, obliterating the taffeta skirts in puffs of wired green magic. “I don’t recall freybugs having the ability to walk from plane to plane this early in life. Did you…?”

  “I ate it.”

  The puppy barked happily and Sybille threw up a swath of fabric like a bucket of confetti. “Liar.”

  A cloud of tattered spectral material snaked in the air and slithered around her mellow curves in the guise of a black, long-sleeved nightingale evening gown. Black lace draped over a plunging, off-the-shoulder neckline—arms completely covered in sleeves of velvet ribbon. They ended in a triangle, hooking around her middle-finger.

  The shoulders were spiked with wyvern scales, spattered with glistening dew droplets. What tendrils landed on her head, stretched and curved, and gnawed the rest of her hair beneath an elegant headdress with tall, helix horns.

  The long evening skirt spun from ragged shadows and glitter-dusted, failed dreams licked at her legs as she sashayed to the balcony on pumps made from raven feathers, heels pillared on silver, scalpel stilettos. Snip, snip, snipping across the floor.

  Starlight was bright and dying, sighing and screaming with the same breath. Her slash of crimson lipstick curved in the moonlight. “Three, two, one…”

  Crack!

  The galaxy was torn right down the middle and the wicked witch leaned a sharp hip against the marble railing. Black widow in wait.

  After all, when she’d run she’d hoped he would not follow. She’d hoped he would do what was right and FedEx her sleeping body to the Hag with a bill for the trouble. But Nova would always follow, such was their disease. Their attraction was a natural disaster. Untamed. Limitless. It was the kind of kismet that tore countries apart, robbed banks, and rolled around naked in screams and roses. And it would probably be the death of them both…

  “What the hell is this doll doing in my kettle? I say, they’re getting wily aren’t they…” The darkling heaved the bloodied toy over its shoulder and porcelain shattered. A tiny ghostly wail of equal joy and sorrow wafted up to greet her ears. “Damn, you animal—give me the spoon!”

  Crack!

  Lighting. Thunder. “He’s…” Sybille’s mouth sickled into a sinister crimson line and she snapped her fingers. An ebony scepter wrapped in glittering red roses wafted into existence and landed in her hand. She struck the marble with the wicked bladed tip. “Here,” she finished.

  She waited…

  Waited…

  But the stars did not explode, the briar mountain didn’t crack in two—nope, nothing happened. Nothing, but the faintest breeze. Sending the small curling wisps escaping her headdress to lick at her cheeks. And then, there was a man on the horizon walking across the water. Leaving ripples to pulse in place of footprints.

  The darkling cackled. “Hasn’t a whit of originality, does he?”

  On the contrary, there was nothing quite like Nova’s brand of divinity in motion.

  But this…

  This was a first.

  According to lore, the ancient and true gargoyles were children of the dragon. Born from their tears. They were reared and raised in the heat of fire and brimstone. They did not need food, water, or air. Such a creature’s hunger knew no bounds. If they wished for blood, they painted black altars red simply for the sheer joy of it. If they killed, they did it like a kid with a magnifying glass and an ant farm—for the hell of it. For sport. A race of notorious and practiced head collectors. It was written that their thirst was their undoing. That they were cursed into spending the waking hours asleep by the very dragons that made them.

  The modern gargoyle wasn’t a modern creature at all but rather a creature that maintained its purity with a code they themselves had written into stone consecutive millennia ago. Years of tireless efforts and pract
ices had given them unrivaled mental discipline. They did not feel—they reasoned. They did not cry, nor did they war—they’d evolved. A guardian race. Loyal, elegant, brutal, but only with the right incentive. Their purpose was to find a patron, to do as dragons did and protect their treasure, and, in return, be protected during their slumber hours. To exist in harmony with other beings in servitude was their self-imposed penance and redemption as a people.

  Most followed the Draconel’s code and teachings. Some modified it according to their values. And still, others chose to abandon it all together. In the end, it didn’t matter. Eventually, the sun rose and stone would overtake them and they would all be equal beneath the sunrise. But there were those special ones. Those rare half-breeds. Unlike most, Nova had the cursed reprieve of retaining a completely human form and life for his first thirteen years. But with puberty came the “casting” period. Rock cracked and ravaged skin until the man was all but swallowed whole.

  A hereditary skin disease. Not lethal, but ugly to look at. Leprosy, but with scales instead of plagued skin. For Nova, daylight slumber brought the power of a dreamspinner. Unlike true gargoyles, gargouilles like Nova never slept. They were awake even when the sun was beating down on their iron shoulders. They were wandering, walking, spinning and weaving entire worlds together and apart. It was existing in several places at once, a tangible astral being. To see everything—forever and always. Eternal vigilance.

  Nova would never be considered a true gargoyle. Not by anyone. Not even as the rock rash overtook and ate his humanity away, layer by painstaking layer. Not that those blemishes ever seemed to bother him. But in this dream, he’d come to her as a man.

  Just a man.

  No trace of gray flesh and diamond glitter remained. In his mental projection, he met her as himself, as the simple man he might have been another lifetime ago—a tall Japanese aristocrat with intense black eyes and a sinful bend for a mouth. The sheer size of him was imposing. His killer body made his clothes fine. Not the other way around.

  Hard muscles and lithe lines were draped in the elegant folds of a peacock blue kimono. Where a traditionalist would’ve paired the outfit with socks, sandals, and a pair of wide, pinstriped hakama pants, her gargoyle did no such thing. He’d selected tight and revealing medieval black hose swatched with leather, prayer beads, and chains.

  The wide obi belt’s lapels danced on the wind, lost in the inky ribbons of his hair. The silk rolled and waved, slipping across the sharp planes of his face as he came to stand before the black briar on a pair of highwayman riding boots rescued from the pits of Sherwood Forest.

  He widened his stance and peered into the perverted heavens without a shred of respect. “Troublesome, woman.”

  My, oh my, was he ever gorgeous?

  Was the gargoyle fuck all beautiful?

  Did he have the power to make her knees weak with one hot look?

  Indeed, but so what.

  Sybille’s tongue darted out to sample the tension wafting between them in oceans of red mist. “You lost, baby?”

  He didn’t humor her with a twitch. “Come down, Sybille. Or you will be fetched. And you will not like it.”

  Her lips curled, poison apple ruby lipstick snaring the light. “I like my ice a little thin too. But if I were you, I’d skate away while I still had fucking legs to speak of…” she whispered softly. She almost sang it in a sad little song for him.

  The gargouille’s eyes burned with hellfire. “Why don’t you come down and walk with me?” He opened his hand, “Like you used to…?”

  Now, now, he knew her way better than that. Green flame ignited in her palm and she blew the fireball like a kiss. “Only in your dreams.”

  Explosion. Worthy of an orchestra.

  Nova shot into the sky long before the flames could land a kiss. The ocean roiled like the River Styx, wakened by the blast. Thousands of tiny eyes winked to life in the waves, spirits of the drowned gaping up at the samurai, a wish pinned amongst the stars. He hovered a battlefield apart from her balcony, suspended in midair like a god.

  “Sure, Sybille?” A jewel encrusted dragonlance sling-staff roared and ruptured into existence. He caught and wheeled the post in menacing arcs. “This lesson was succulently taught once before, and you did not enjoy it…”

  “I remember.” Smoke bubbled at her feet and carried her up from the balcony on a cloud, skirts billowing around her in a fleet of waves as she hovered above a tower of thorns. “You had help, remember?” She trained her ebony specter’s dragonhead on his heart. The emerald pearl caught in the beast’s black teeth pulsed with energy and the world rippled, registering the change. “Shall we play even odds this time?”

  One minute there was nothing…

  And then, a massive heraldic dragon smacked across the tower like a wrecking ball.

  But to see a dragon was not to hear it.

  No one ever heard a dragon make a sound beyond beating the sky with its massive wings or crushing rock and brick to rubble. No one ever heard a dragon scream unless it was to breathe fire. Talons hinged into the weeping stone and skulls, the black reptilian beast snaked around the tower and poised its long serpentine snout over Sybille’s shoulder like a medieval awning.

  Raptor-wings and elegant barbs, long and twisted horns. Maleficent was a drake queen with smoldering amethyst eyes and glittering onyx scales. Mature. Royal. Her Majesty was once an ancient spirit roaming the Fade freely, she was all Sybille’s now. Mind captured and warped to the spindle witch’s will. No weak being could command that caliber of beast spirit. No, only the strongest could master mythology of that magnitude. A crazy bitch with a dragon in her pocket was hell on this plane as well as the next. Believe it.

  Sybille folded her sleek arms. Her long, black nails were as shimmering talons, eager to be put to use. “Scared?”

  “It was gargoyles that conquered and rode the first serpents creation had to offer.” Eyes blazing white suns, he rose higher into the inky stars like a soul wafting up from a dragon’s corpse. “I fear nothing.”

  Raising his arms like he was lifting the oceans, Nova hung, crucified in the cosmos as a snaking azure dragon with large fish-like scales and silver feathered wings burst from the Milky Way painted on the horizon. The beast was born and spun from his soul. Stag-like horns and a golden mane, it was savage and elegant in one breath, whirling and wringing its lithe body as it unfolded massive wings at the samurai’s back, gifting him flight even when he fell. Celestial King.

  “Well…” The spindle witch patted her dragon’s snout, each smoking nostril the size of her hand. Similar terrible smirks carved parallel paths from ear to horn. “Think they’re hot shit, don’t they?”

  “Surely, you jest?” Nova swirled his hand over his head to indicate her headdress, and Ryojin, the lung dragon, snorted, long gold whiskers flailing. “Such drama…”

  Her eyes narrowed into slits. “Go fetch me a hood ornament, Maleficent.”

  Maleficent shot from tower like a bullet with tattered black wings. RyMjin followed suit. Heraldic beast meeting Asian lung in a collision of claws, barbed and feathered tails. Bellows shook the heavens. Nearly toppled the gods out the sky. Awe was absent from only two beings, the wicked spindle witch and the gargoyle, locked in a battle of wills. Wielding their staffs like reins as they gazed at one another across an eternity of stars.

  RyMjin caught Maleficent’s neck between three rows of jagged teeth. She roared and backhanded him into a moon. The planet cracked and asteroids peppered the Milky Way like spectral dust. His beast fell but caught an updraft and launched himself in pure pursuit.

  Sybille’s lip curled. “Persistent.”

  Maleficent beat the sky with her slow but massive wings and swooped in a wide arc, only to dive directly toward the male. She pinned her wings, gaining an unnaturally high speed, with claws ready to grab and rend. RyMjin lagged his course, carving east, and she speared by him— snapping his ass with a fierce whip of her arrowhead tail.

&n
bsp; A muscle in the gargouille’s mouth ticked as he rubbed the lower end of the staff across his backside, like it would ebb the sting. “Sybille,” he growled.

  She flipped him off. “Nova.”

  RyMjin and Maleficent collided again, locked and tumbled, drifting through the clouds like reptilian wrecking balls. The kinetic force of every blow shattered the air. Boom! Boom! Roar! Boom!

  Sweat. She could feel it pebbling on her brow in corporal reality. Exhaustion. Adrenaline. What was experienced in the dream world was felt—however muted the sensation might be—in corporeal reality. And Nova always left her in pieces.

  Always.

  Never did she leave his lair without feeling like her legs were going to give out from beneath her, and he was far from a disappointment in the realm of the Fade. Such was his focus. His mastery.

  Not today, motherfucker.

  Maleficent bowled a knotted RyMjin into an abyss of black clouds and reared into the sky, head swiveling at unnatural angles as she searched for the fallout. Her bat-like wings were heavy, slowly keeping her from stalling out completely, but she was slipping. Oozing down out of the sky as she waited.