41
He rather dislikes his assistant.
The man is far too uncouth.
He’d been a rabid dog when he met him on the streets, years ago, before this Pravus nonsense.
No subtlety, no grace, no sense of artistry or purpose.
A vulgar man.
Murdering indiscriminately, like some common criminal.
He might dislike the Pravus, and the half-wits running that particular shit show, but at least they had a degree of dignity.
Their violence had a purpose, no matter how misguided.
They offered some amount of order, a rule of conduct, to all of the lawless, directionless young Revenants out there.
But this one…well, if he didn’t have to, then he wouldn’t have involved him with his little hobby.
“She’s really plain,” the assistant says. “Or at least, physically she’s plain.”
A muscle jumps in the journalist’s cheek.
But he says nothing, merely thumbing the steering wheel as he drives.
“But I can see what you see in her. She’s a lot stronger than she seems. Not my favorite of ours, but maybe one of the better ones.”
Of ours.
The journalist’s skin crawls with irritation.
He doesn’t like this man at all.
If only he’d been more careful covering his tracks.
If only the assistant hadn’t followed him to his hiding place, when he’d found Marissa…
But there’s nothing to be done about it now (although, on the bright side, at least the assistant is willing to do most of the dirty work for him).
“Say, what do you think of the Grey King?”
The journalist, lost in his thoughts, is startled back into the present.
“The Grey King?”
“I heard he’s going to make a move on the Femicae,” the assistant says.
“That would be foolish,” the journalist scoffs. “The Grey King might be powerful, but he’s no fool. The witches are more than a match for his ragtag crew of serial killers.”
“He’s powerful?” the assistant asks. The journalist watches him out of the corner of his eye with some disdain. Thick mustache and beard to hide his weak chin. He’s also wearing a turtleneck to disguise his feeble chicken-like neck again. So transparent.
(No challenge whatsoever. A man so dull and easy to read he finds it appalling that he’d call a creature as exquisitely complex and mysterious as Victoria plain).
“Why are you surprised? You really thought a city full of Revenants could be ruled by a weakling?”
“Is he the most powerful Revenant in the city?” the assistant asks, his voice rising like a kid’s.
The journalist envisions his Pulse unlocking the door and shoving the man out of it.
But he resists the urge.
“So they say.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I believe he must be powerful, but the most powerful one? No, I’m sure there are quieter ones. Less ambitious Revenants who are just as strong, perhaps, but less ostentatious.”
“Have you ever…met him?”
He’s staring at him now.
“Richard-”
“No, really! You know the Greys, don’t you? You’ve consorted with them! Surely you-?”
“I’ve met some of them, yes. But the King? No, only the highest ranking Greys have met him personally,” the journalist snaps.
“Are you…jealous?” the assistant snickers.
The image of the assistant’s body tumbling out of the car and rolling on the dirt road just won’t go away.
But the journalist needs him today.
It’s been long enough now.
He’s taken too much time with Tori, probably because he’d become rather fond of her (Plain? Only a fool would think so).
“I heard his Pulse could destroy a city.”
The journalist rolls his eyes.
God, he doesn’t like him.
But he dislikes corpse clean-up even more.
42
“Gentlemen.”
The assistant stops dead in his tracks.
“Who the fuck are you?” he yells, but the journalist waves his hand, signaling to him that everything is fine.
“Dextra.”
The Right Hand of God smiles.
“Good to see you, Clive.”
The journalist frowns.
“What are you doing here?”
“And who are you?” the assistant adds.
“Is he new?” the Right asks.
The journalist feels a tad embarrassed.
“Richard Fean, meet Dextra. He’s…one of the Greys. More than that, he’s…well, he’s the Right Hand of the Grey King.”
The assistant’s mouth drops open.
“You-you’ve met- he’s your-you-”
“Why are you here?” the journalist interrupts, his hard eyes fixed coldly on the Right.
He doesn’t like Dextra any more than Fean.
And by the way the man is looking back at him, with his usual haughty smile and scorching, devilish eyes, he’d say the feeling is mutual.
“I thought I’d drop by and see how you’re doing.”
“It’s none of your concern.”
Fean looks amazed.
But the journalist has been around much longer than him.
Fean is still inexperienced, wet around the ears, new to being undead.
The journalist isn’t afraid of Dextra or any of the Grey King’s lackeys, even if they make formidable foes.
Even if they’re more powerful than him.
“I’m just kidding. You really think your cute little macabre hobby warrants a visit from me or even the slightest attention of the Grey King himself? No, I’m here for…personal reasons. Sentimental, you could say.”
The journalist grits his teeth.
“Am I bothering you?” the Right asks with mock concern, his eyes challenging.
“Not at all.”
43
“Daddy, please kill it!” she begs.
But Daddy pats her head comfortingly.
“It’s just a mouse, sweetie. It can’t hurt you, look at him!”
She wails as he brings the mouse he’d caught in a wire mesh trash can closer.
“Please!”
“Honey, I’m not going to kill him, he was just hungry. Look, he’s scared of you too! You both have something in common, wouldn’t you say?”
She squeezes her eyes shut and looks away as he goes to throw the mouse outside.
“He’s just going to come back!”
“And I’ll just throw him back out!” Daddy says cheerfully. “Listen, baby girl. We have to love all of God’s creatures, even the ones we find scary. They were all built for a reason, for a purpose. They deserve to be here just as much as we do. God loves all of us. You, me, that mouse. He expects us to have some compassion for one another. And to take care of one another. Always think about that before you even consider hurting someone else, ok?”
She nods.
But her heart is still beating too hard in her chest.
Beating so hard it could burst.
“Sweetheart?”
A heartbeat.
Something tangible.
Something real.
“It’s time, dear, you don’t have to worry anymore.”
Worry?
About what?
“You’ve gotten so quiet.”
They’re coming closer.
The journalist.
The assistant.
And there’s someone else too, lurking off in the corner.
But she ignores him.
He doesn’t matter.
“I thought I’d give you the honor of dying in the Arena instead of the Hall. Many brave and powerful Revenants have died here. It’s a privilege, honestly.”
She’s been sitting on the cold metal chair all night.
Her arms are aching from being tied behind her back.
Her fingers are completely numb.
But they flex slightly as she is approached.
“I apologize for the accommodations. He wasn’t supposed to leave you out here.”
Her neck is hunched over in visible defeat, her dirty, unkempt hair clumped over her face, obscuring her eyes.
Only her mouth, thin and haggard, her lips cracked, is showing.
“Oh my. Poor girl. It’s been an honor getting to know you, Tori. It really has. I’ll remember you, dear.”
Remember.
Remember was it was like, being human, Tori.
How…you took it for granted.
Concede.
She is perched precariously on the edge of a cliff.
She’s never liked heights.
She closes her eyes.
She’s standing in her bedroom, a stranger among family.
Blood drips down the walls of the cafeteria as she stands, waiting for judgement.
In the Hall of Truths.
Her father’s corpse, eyes picked clean by mice, stares sightlessly from its ungainly position on the living room floor.
There is no longer a cell.
Just a wide empty black world.
It’s just her and Malek.
Back to back.
She can see nothing.
She just knows he’s there.
Concede.
Reconcile.
And understand.
She reaches out and despite the darkness, she can see her own arm, her own fingers, reaching out into nothingness.
We are Revenants.
“No,” Victoria says quietly, in a whisper so small even her Revenant companions do not hear her.
“My name is Victoria.”
Malek smiles.
I am a Revenant.
I am.
44
i’m not asking you, Victoria says. i’m not demanding.
i’m taking it.
this is my body.
not yours.
not anyone else’s.
Malek, who’d been waiting patiently all this time to hear it, clasps her shoulder tightly.
the power was never mine to withhold…Victoria.
The assistant reaches out to touch her, maybe her face, maybe her throat; where doesn’t matter.
No.
Malek is at her side, whispering in her ear.
He’s behind her, his hands on her shoulders like a protective parent.
He’s moving as her, fingers twitching excitedly, behind his, her, their back.
And as the assistant comes within centimeters of her skin, they move, for the first time, as one.
45
it’s actually rather admirable, how long you were able to cling to your humanity.
most humans when faced with pain, with suffering, with death, will abandon theirs in an instant.
the fact that it had to be dragged from you is rather…
She ignores his ramblings.
She’d much rather focus on the task at hand.
Suddenly, Malek is everywhere.
He had been subdued before. Hiding in corners, never standing fully in the center of her consciousness, not unless he was taking full control, and then she would be the one on the sidelines.
Now they stand side by side.
Now suddenly she grits her teeth and he’s there.
She flexes her hand and he’s feeling her fingers, relishing the sensation of having a physical body again.
She tears through the ropes like they’re made of paper.
And it astonishes her, how easy it is.
How her body throbs, aching with energy, with an uncontrollable, trembling, invisible force.
And when she slings out an unsavory limb, when her muscles clench, and she lets out all of it, the rage, the despair, the desire to break through the mind-fogging numbness, and to feel alive again, Malek lets out a scream, more of a shriek, of pure exhilaration and triumph (this is what he had been waiting for, all of this time).
And it echoes through the underground, his scream from her lips.
But it feels like their scream.
He is elated to be alive.
And she, dead for seven days and perhaps much longer, is strangely elated with him.
The assistant’s body slams into and then clean through the wall.
It goes rolling out of sight, battered pieces of debris falling with it.
The journalist stares at her.
She feels a cold satisfaction curling her mouth into a wicked smile.
He’s never looked shocked.
Or fazed at all.
Now, at the very least, he looks a little unnerved.
But doesn’t last; now he tilts his head at her, looking amused.
“You never disappoint, Tori.”
The assistant stumbles back to his feet, crawling through the new hole in the wall, looking disheveled and irritated.
“You bitch.”
Victoria, unfazed, sways slightly, her head shaking a little.
Malek flexes both of her hands.
He smiles as he turns their head up.
Looks both of them in the eye, unafraid, challenging.
He grins that unbearably smug grin of his.
He giggles a little.
“I’m going to paint this room with your blood.”
It’s her voice, yet not.
The inflections are wrong, much too calm.
There’s a sharpness in every syllable.
There’s a chilling softness in her tone.
She sounds like herself, yet at the same time, this girl, this woman, is someone she’s never heard before.
But she rather likes that.
She’s never heard her own voice sound like this.
Unafraid.
Unfamiliar with even the concept of fear.
Imposing.
Masterful.
Malek, ecstatic, clutches their head in both hands as he laughs disjointedly, a tad hysterically.
“I say that hyperbolically, of course.”
Victoria, perhaps shocked into acceptance, perhaps numb to the point of apathy, feels him take slightly more control over their shared body, but doesn’t attempt to resist or make suggestions. She’s willing to let him do what he does best. She’s willing to step back, just a tad bit.
“Or…well…let’s find out.”
His lips are curling.
He has so many wicked smiles.
Lecherous.
Manipulative.
Kind.
And downright evil, sometimes.
This one feels sadistic.
(But she’s feeling a little sadistic too).
(Torified Tori, heh heh, more like Tori the Terror).
“You cocky little bitch,” the assistant snarls.
He launches himself at her, a dark brown mist swirling around his waist. His Pulse, hard and thick, crawls up his chest, to his arm. It spirals around his forearm until a harsh, jagged triangular spear of sorts encompasses his fingers up to his elbow.
Victoria doesn’t know how to fight.
But…
Malek leaps backwards with ease, long-trained instincts pushing her muscles into action, his abilities surging through her body.
His heels drag on the ground, his knees bent from the impact.
Victoria watches from a throne somewhere above him, now thoroughly detached.
She feels outside of her own body once more.
Almost as though she is watching Malek take on the assistant from the seats above, separated from the scene by grimy, broken glass.
The assistant makes a move, so fast she misses it.
The next thing she knows, she’s forced abruptly back into her own body as pain explodes in her abdomen.
She looks down and is a little surprised to find a steaming brown spear forced clean through her.
Blood dribbles down her naked thighs.
The assistant looks gleeful.
Then shocked and a tad disb
elieving as she grasps it in both hands and pulls it free from her body without a scream or even a yelp.
“Is that all?” she asks dismissively.
She tosses it casually to the floor, the gaping hole in her stomach twinging a little as cold air breezes through it.
She doesn’t look at it.
She can feel it, and yet…not quite.
The pain is certainly…a sensation.
She could moan.
Breathe hard.
Cry even.
But right now isn’t the time.
And she doesn’t allow herself to indulge in that sensation, physical or emotional.
She can’t, not right now.
Dimly, she is aware that pain is unpleasant.
And yet, everything is rather unpleasant, isn’t it, the lights, the assistant’s face, her own skin, weighing her down.
Why linger on one unpleasant sensation when there are so many more?
Besides…
The assistant is fast enough to move out of her range of sight, his Pulse regenerating already, another spear over his arm.
The next thing she knows, he’s sinking his jagged spear into her side, repeatedly, cutting her flesh into bloody rags.
She’s blinded by a white light as she slams into a wall that seems to appear out of nowhere.
Malek stumbles to her feet. He guides her body back up, taking on the disorientation and the pain and shoving it into his own corner, to be forgotten and ignored. The assistant’s hand is on their throat. Malek seizes it.
And her vision goes black.
46
Or at least, that’s what she thought.
The assistant’s hand falls to her feet, her bare skin sprinkled with blood.
He howls in pain, stumbling back, his Pulse dissolving, his face wracked with agony and incredulity.
She stares at the thing before her, the blackness she’d mistaken for unconsciousness.
It’s barbed.
Curved with fine spiny points, insect-like, but large and intimidating, almost like the tail of a dragon or the Lochness monster.
It must be at least seven feet long, but it plays tricks on her, bending and twisting in the light like a massive black python. It curls in front of her gracefully, almost playfully.
It must be at least half a foot wide, perhaps three or four inches thick.
Victorian Tale Page 11
