by J. Stone
“Wait, wait,” the last one repeated. “We’ve captured a vespari. Just think what we can do with that.”
This made her Petronila, the one who spoke in a slithering speech. She was tall and slender. Lithe. Elongated even. She would have been even taller if she didn’t hunch over, though despite holding her body curled forward, she was still taller than Lockhart. Still taller than the other beldams too. He stared up at her, seeing the warts, boils, and cysts on her face. On her back was a huge hump that protruded through a rip in her clothes. Disease covered nearly every inch of her slender frame, but she seemed no worse for wear.
For his part, Lockhart just hung there from those hooks, feeling like his guts were slowly slipping out of the wound in his stomach. Given how they’d strung him up, he felt the wound stretching and tearing ever wider. He was too weak to do anything. He was at their mercy, and they knew it.
“He just killed Gunnilda,” Mabilia reminded them, pointing to the still smoldering pile of ashes at the side of the room. “He has to die for that.”
“And he will,” Petronila told her, the words slithering out of her mouth. “He will. We can all agree that he has to die.” The beldam crept up to him and stuck a finger into his guts, making him cringe with an electric pain. She coated the tip of her finger in his blood and lifted it up for the others to see before slurping the liquid off. “See?” she asked. “Even if we don’t do anything, he’s going to die. It’s just a matter of how.”
“We could rip his legs off!” Estrild suggested, emerging from behind Alviva.
Lockhart shot her a glance, and she cowered back behind the fat beldam.
“I don’t care how he dies, as long as it’s painful,” Mabilia said.
“Again,” Petronila replied with a long nod toward the ground. “We can all agree to that. Pain is important.”
Lockhart looked over to Alviva who stared at him, licking her lips. Petronila saw this too and moved between him and the fat beldam.
“Now, now, Alviva,” she said, curling down even further so that she was eye to eye with her. “We don’t want to eat him.”
“Speak for yourself,” Alviva said, pushing the slender beldam out of her way and stomping toward Lockhart.
The fat beldam grabbed Lockhart’s left arm, shredding the rope that suspended him from one of the meat hooks and causing him to swing there, held up only by the hook they’d bound his right hand to. Alviva then pulled the hand toward her mouth, but Petronila grabbed her to stop her.
“A hex!” she shouted.
Alviva stopped, looked at Petronila, to Lockhart, his hand, and back to Petronila. “What kind of hex?”
Petronila grinned, showing off her jagged little teeth. “Think of all the power he has inside him. All the monsters he’s killed.” She ripped his shirt to the side, exposing the intricate vespari tattoos on his chest. “Through these runes, he’s bound untold scores of our kind inside him. Even Gunnilda is inside him now.”
“What’s your point?” Mabilia asked from behind them. “We kill him, and he won’t be able to do it anymore.”
“Yeah,” Estrild chimed in. “Kill him. Eat him. Suck his bones clean! Shit out his meat!”
“No,” Alviva said, dropping Lockhart’s left hand and causing him to swing again from his right arm, still held up on the single meat hook. “Petronila is onto something.”
“Thank you, Alviva,” the slender beldam said, bowing even further down. She pointed back at Lockhart. “We place a consumptive hex on him, letting the power stored inside him flow into us.”
Alviva smiled and turned to face the others. “I like it.”
All four of the beldams huddled together, discussing the hex they intended to place on him. Lockhart had a moment. He had an opportunity. Alviva had left his one hand free. That had to be enough. The beldams had taken his gun from him, but his knife remained tucked into his boot on the opposite foot.
Suppressing a groan, Lockhart lowered his hand and raised his foot up as far as he could. His fingers pawed at the knife’s handle, not quite able to reach. The wound at his gut was tearing ever more. He couldn’t give up. He refused. He gritted his teeth and reached again. Whatever stitching he’d managed to do before tore, and more blood spilled out over his belt and pants. He’d deal with that later. If there was a later. He gripped the knife in his hand.
That’s where his plan ended. Having the knife wasn’t enough. He needed the strength to use it, and he found that wavering. His eyes closed, but he forced them open again. Lockhart pushed past the weakness. He had a job to do. With his bound hand, Lockhart grabbed the hook and raised himself off it. It wasn’t enough to get him off the hook, but it was enough for him to slide the knife between the hook and his hand.
Unfortunately, Lockhart didn’t have time to cut the rope. The beldams turned back to him, and he released the knife. It stuck there between the hook and his hand, slicing into the flesh of his palm. He grimaced at the pain, doing his best to ignore it. They hadn’t noticed his escape attempt, and so he played along, continuing to dangle there like their prey.
“We’ve prepared something special for you,” Alviva told him.
The fat beldam approached him, belly jiggling and with a bowl of viscous black, almost metallic ink in one hand and a needle in the other.
“One last ingredient,” she added.
The fat beldam pursed her lips together and let a thick drop of her saliva ooze down into the bowl. Mabilia, Estrild, and Petronila all repeated this disgusting step, adding their own bodily fluids to this black substance. They bound themselves to it, and now they intended to bind it to him.
Before he could do anything, Mabilia approached him from the side and grabbed his free arm. She gripped it so tight, he thought she might break his wrist. The small one, Estrild, skulked behind the others, still afraid to look him in the eye, only occasionally looking up at him through the strands of hair that fell down and partially covered her eyes. Petronila moved to his other side and grabbed his shirt, ripping it from his chest. This exposed all of his tattooed runes, as well as the wound in his gut. Neither of these were what the beldams sought.
Alviva licked her lips and held the needle up for him. “We’re going to add a new rune to your collection,” she told him, giggling to herself.
The beldam dipped the needle into the ink and then pressed it to the flesh of his chest, just above the other tattoos. Lockhart could smell the ink, and though he couldn’t place what all they’d put in it, the black substance had a terrible odor like that of dung. Something they had concocted with their vile magics, certainly. Alviva then plucked the needle out and pushed it back in, staining his skin with the ink over and over.
Lockhart had felt much worse pain than this, so he took it as another opportunity. The vespari squirmed with each press of the needle. Mabilia held him in place, but his goal wasn’t to escape her. His intent was to cut the rope with the knife still wedged in between his palm and the meat hook. With each movement, he felt the forward section of the knife tear against the rope, but the back section of the blade was slicing his palm open further and further. That was far worse than the needle pricking his flesh, but he kept tugging against it regardless.
None of the beldams noticed what he was doing, being too preoccupied with the hex Alviva engraved on his chest with their vile ink. That fat beldam was nearly finished though, and he had to hurry. Another strain against the knife. He felt the rope begin to fray. He’d nearly made it through. Blood, however, pooled in his palm, and with nowhere for it to go, it dripped down his arm. A drop splashed against his forehead. This caught the attention of Petronila.
“What’s this?” she asked.
The slender beldam raised her long finger to his forehead, scraping the blood off, and she licked it from her finger, while tracing the drop up. Lockhart had to move fast. One more hard tug, and the rope was severed. The vespari dropped, the knife fell with him, and Alviva stumbled backward. Lockhart’s hard leather boots landed on the c
ave’s rocky floor, but his other hand was still in Mabilia’s clutches. He had a plan to put a stop to that.
Lockhart grabbed the falling knife in midair with his bloodied but free hand. He swiped it at Petronila, causing her to back up along with Alviva, but neither of them were his target. Lockhart turned the knife toward Mabilia and sliced down against her wrist. The runed blade swept right through her flesh and came to a hard stop at her bone. Mabilia released her grip with a deep and terrible scream, but Lockhart held tight to his knife’s handle, tugging it away from her and peeling some of her flesh off as it dislodged from her bone.
The vespari lunged for Alviva next, but she moved away from him, her fat flesh jiggling with each step. Mabilia recovered from her wound faster than he would’ve hoped, and with a roar, she began to charge him. Petronila grabbed her from behind though, having circled around to that side of the cave when Lockhart wasn’t looking.
“No,” she whispered in her ear. “Look!” Petronila pointed to Lockhart’s chest. “The hex is finished. We just have to wait now.”
Alviva started laughing, her fat jiggling with each outburst. Behind her, Estrild joined in with a high-pitched cackle though she didn’t seem to know why she was laughing. Mabilia looked over at them, pain and anger still flush on her face. Petronila, however, glared with a wicked smile. Lockhart knew that Alviva claimed to lead this coven, but he saw the slender beldam as the most devious and the most to be concerned with.
“Let’s go,” Alviva told the others. “The hex will do the rest of the work.”
“But he--” Mabilia started, gripping the wound in her wrist.
“Silence!” the fat beldam told her. “We leave. Now. I will not repeat myself.”
Alviva turned around and opened a dark swirling portal that shimmered with her sorcery. She picked Estrild up, tossed her through, and then stepped through herself. Petronila was next. Mabilia took a final look at the vespari, grumbled, and finally turned away from Lockhart, passing through the portal.
Lockhart, meanwhile, stood there, panting with the bloody knife still in hand. Stupid as he knew it to be, he couldn’t just give up. Resolving himself to kill them there and now, he stepped forward, intending to follow them through the portal. The beldams had other plans for him though, as the portal closed behind them, abandoning him in that cave with the fresh ink dripping down his flesh. Exhausted and in terrible pain, Lockhart dropped to the ground. He’d faced the beldams ill prepared, and he’d had no hope of defeating them in such a state. Sliding his finger across the design on his chest, Lockhart tried to determine what exactly they had done to him.
The shining black ink was still dripping and his flesh was reddened and tender to the touch. Alviva had done a messy job, but he recognized the design. Petronila had called it a consumptive hex, but he knew it by another name. Documented in the Vespari Brotherhood’s Arcane Compendium, the design had earned the name, Caustic Brand.
The Caustic Brand was a death sentence. A curse would strip his body and soul of all power. That didn’t just include his own soul but also every soul of every monster he’d ever killed. Each of them resided inside the tattooed runes on his chest. The beldam would feed on him during the process. The outlook was bleak, but Lockhart wasn’t the type to give in to such feelings. He knew that the curse had a cure. One cure. He had to kill the creatures that had cursed him. This would end the Caustic Brand and restore any siphoned power back to him.
That said, Lockhart thought that this type of magic was out of reach for the sorcery of a beldam. They specialized in more typical magic. They focused mostly on inflicting pain on their targets. How or why a beldam would learn this kind of sorcery he couldn’t say.
That would have to wait though. Needing to do something about his immediate injuries, Lockhart stowed the knife and forced himself to stand. The beldams had made that cave a home for some time by the look of things, and they left in a hurry. There had to be magical reagents there. Maybe there was something he could use to tend to his wounds.
The vespari began searching through a few large, wooden crates and a tall, standing dresser that had seen better days. As he scoured the room, Lockhart picked up his revolver and tucked it back into its holster at his hip. He would have to check his bullet supply and reload later.
In his search, Lockhart found the needle that Alviva had used to tattoo him, some thread, and a variety of herbs that he could combine to make a poultice. Mashing the herbs in a pot he found, he prepared them first. He fought unconsciousness with every step, as he’d lost a lot of blood, and it wore on him. Regardless, Lockhart managed to make the herbs into a paste before long, and he let it sit over the fire the beldams had left behind.
While the poultice heated, he focused on stitching himself back up. Grime and ink still covered the dirty needle, so he poured some whiskey he found among the beldams’ discarded human victims in a glass and threw the needle in to sterilize it. After sloshing it about in the alcohol, he was content with its cleanliness. Threading the needle, he sat down in a creaky old chair and began the process of stitching the skin of his slashed gut back together.
This kind of self-administered healing was nothing new to him. A vespari could expect to deal with countless injuries during their lifetime, especially when working in the enormous but nearly empty desert. It’s not a kind occupation, and not one for those of a weak stomach. Pain was mandatory and constant. Lockhart had learned ways of ignoring it, and he wished he could do that as the needle pierced his tender flesh and tugged it back together. Lockhart needed the pain now though. He focused on it to keep him conscious and working.
Once he passed the needle through the opposite side of the wound from where he had started, Lockhart decided it was good enough. He cut the thread and tossed the needle aside. Now, he needed the poultice. Standing up and moving to the fire, he grabbed the pot and walked it over to a table, sitting it there.
Reaching into the pot, Lockhart grabbed a handful of the hot poultice and slopped it over the wound in his stomach. It burned at his flesh, and he had to grit his teeth and slam his fist into the table to fight the pain. The poultice was necessary though. It would disinfect the wound, fight inflammation, and help the injury heal faster. The grainy sludge sunk into the wound, past the shoddy stitches, and started to cool there. As the poultice cooled, he started to feel relief. He needed to hurry.
Without the pain, he wasn’t going to last much longer. He was going to fade. Picking up another handful of the poultice, he slapped it on his sliced open palm. Again, it burned at his flesh but soon started to cool. Knowing he couldn’t force himself to stay awake any longer, Lockhart sat down in that creaky chair, so he wouldn’t fall and dislodge the poultice. His head fell back, and darkness overcame him.
***
Lockhart awoke several hours later with a fever in his brow, a scratch in his throat, and a rumbling in his stomach. Taking a quick glance around the cave, he verified that the beldams hadn’t returned while he was out. He was alone. That didn’t mean he’d found his way out of the proverbial woods just yet though. The slashed gut still threatened him, and even if not for that, he now had the Caustic Brand to deal with. He couldn’t worry about any of that yet. He needed to get out of that cave and find somewhere he could rest and recover.
Thinking about how far he’d tracked the wraith and where he had to be now, Lockhart decided that the closest town was Abilene. A tiny little speck of a town like most of those in that dry and cracked desert, but they’d have enough resources to get him on the mend. He had dwindling supplies anyway, so he needed to go into town to restock. The only problem with that was that the vespari also had a dwindling coin purse. He could afford to buy some of what he needed, but unless he managed to get a heavy discount, he’d have to do without a few things.
First, Lockhart needed to get out of that cave. With a groan, he forced himself out of that rickety chair, only to fall forward onto the table in front of him. Some of the dry and crumbling poultice fell out, a
nd the most recent stitches strained against the exertion. All the more reason to keep moving, he told himself. Pushing himself upright once again, he stumbled to the nearest wall. Using it, he scraped his way along the cave back toward the entrance, leaving a trail of blood and poultice crumbs.
When he finally made it outside, a sunrise greeted Lockhart rather than the darkness of the prior evening. The night’s chill still held on to the morning, but it wouldn’t be long before the sun’s rays scorched the desert once more. Not eager to trudge through the day’s heat, the vespari set off east toward Abilene.
Lockhart, once again, used his duster, wrapping it around his body, attempting to keep the poultice in place. Nodding his head down, he used the brim of his cowboy hat to shield his eyes from the rising sun. He had to be careful though. He didn’t want to get too comfortable. Despite the brief nap, he was still exhausted, so occasionally, he would look up at the sun, its warmth heating his face and the brightness flashing his eyes. This ritual kept him from fading too quickly, but he had a long way to go before Abilene.
Slogging through the waste’s dried and cracked dirt, Lockhart eventually saw a shadow pass by, and he heard the nearby flapping of wings. Looking in its direction, he found a vulture landing on a rock not far from him. The bird clacked its beak at him, eyeing him as he moved. Hopeful for a meal, certainly. As if he needed another reason to not pass out, the bird would present a serious threat if he fell asleep. He was near enough dead that the vulture would be more than happy to start on him should he fall.
That wasn’t all either. Vultures were harbingers of a greater threat. Harpies. Vile, bird-like creatures with black feathers that covered their bodies up to their neck where a red, glossy, and smooth skin took over. They took after vultures in that way, so as to keep clean when they ripped and plucked at the corpses that served as their meals. Unlike the smaller birds, however, they were more willing to kill. Granted, they preferred an easy target too, but they had no fear or qualms about finishing something off if it was near enough to death.
