“You’re breaking off the engagement, I suppose.”
Even a week ago, she would have smiled at the wry humor. Today she could not hear the irony. She could not smell his delicate musk, or see the hard slopes of muscle underneath his button-down shirt. All she could see, hear, and smell was the horrific shape wriggling inside his abdomen. This thing killed him, Glorianna told herself. He would have been perfect, but it ruined him.
Those thoughts made it just easy enough to step forward and thrust her blade through the translucent invader’s body.
He reached out immediately—but it was not to block the strike or hurt her. Instead, he grabbed her hands on the hilt of the sword, and squeezed them. A sob escaped her as she let go and knelt down beside him.
“I’m sorry,” she cried, touching his beautiful bronze face. Now that the spider within had been slain, she could sense so much from him again. He hadn’t shaved that day. He had recently finished drinking a glass of red wine—a cabernet. His warm breath flickered past the liquid filling his lungs.
“Okay,” he told her, barely nodding. One hand reached into his shirt pocket before the blood seeped into it and pulled out a single folded piece of paper. “Still love you. Always will.”
As she lifted the letter from his hand, he slumped across the couch. His eyes stayed open, fixed on a point somewhere across the room. The thing inside him shriveled and disappeared.
It was horrible, this victory. She couldn’t bear to touch him anymore, or the sword she had slain him with, or the couch he lay on. In fact, she wasn’t sure she wanted anything left in this house at all. She would set a fire, she resolved right there and then, and leave it all behind. Leave it with him. She would take only herself, and their child inside her. And his letter.
She unfolded the single thin page.
Immediately, she realized she had made an irreversible mistake. The invisible sorcery pricked her skin all over and settled in her flesh, sinking deeper with every word she read:
My love,
You have what you want. I wish I had possessed the strength to stop you. But I fell in love, and as much as it may hurt my people, I could not deny you the vision you wanted. Consider that my gift to you.
However, I can set the terms. My death must be the last stroke of your sword. You may not kill or maim anyone else. In time, you might learn the ways of peace. Consider that my gift to myself.
This sorcery is powerful, and it is binding. As you know, darling, I’ve been writing this note for some time. You cannot undo what I have done. You should not deviate from the path I have set for you. The consequences will be dire.
Queen to g3, my love. After this, you will see that queen coming. You will see just about everyone coming.
—Esteban
With cold fingers, she lowered the letter and looked at his face again. It was still staring. She turned and faced what he had last seen in this world.
The marble chess set stood peacefully in its place on the corner accent table. One white rook was chipped where it had hit the back of the hearth in Vermont. They had not played since they moved here. She realized now he had been playing all along.
He saw me coming. He knew.
Something swelled inside her throat. At first she thought it was bile. Then she thought it was an unbearable sadness. Then it spilled from her, and she realized it was rage.
“YOU’RE WRONG, ESTEBAN!” she found herself screaming at his placid face. “YOU DIDN’T KNOW! YOU COULDN’T HAVE KNOWN! I BEAT YOU! I WON!”
She leapt across the room and kicked the corner table, smashing it and sending the grave-faced pieces flying. “YOU WON NOTHING! YOU DON’T TEST ME! YOU DON’T CONTROL ME! YOU DON’T TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CAN’T DO!”
Whirling back to the couch, she closed her fists until she felt blood seep over her palms.
“SCREW YOU AND YOUR FUCKING QUEEN, YOUR FUCKING SQUARE G3, YOUR FUCKING SACRIFICE, AND YOUR FUCKING KNOW-IT-ALL ATTITUDE! YOU’RE DEAD AND YOU DON’T HAVE A FUCKING THING TO SAY ABOUT WHAT I DO NOW!”
She reached forward and yanked her sword out of his body, causing him to roll off the couch and land facedown on the hardwood floor with a thud.
“Don’t wait up, darling,” she hissed as she made for the foyer to get the rest of her gear.
Hours later, she was back. She had to stop at several bars in several towns—she had decided to pass on a couple of dragons to find another disgusting spider, like her dead monster of a fiancé. She hadn’t bothered to try to disguise her intentions; she had simply pulled out her sword and beheaded the brute. And then she had left. But not empty-handed.
“I’m home again, sweetheart!” she shouted from the foyer, dropping everything except the head, barely feeling the gore that trickled out of its neck stump. “And I brought you a present. I’ll bury it with your body, you arrogant son of a—”
She stopped dead at the doorway to the living room. There was blood on the couch, and chess pieces and table shards all over the floor . . . but his body was gone.
“Esteban?”
Deep in the pit of her stomach, a coil of uncertainty began to wind up. She swung the head toward the floor, stepped back into the foyer, and picked up her sword.
“Esteban, my love. Have you been holding out on me?”
She advanced into the living room, feeling her insides churn harder. Then she screamed.
Right away, she could tell that the massive spider that filled the room was him, and also nothing more than a ghost. Its translucent legs trembled with fury, and four pairs of shadowy eyes fixed upon her.
*Tested,* it told her in her own father’s voice. *And failed.*
As the apparition dissolved into smoke, Glorianna felt the coils of fear tighten in her belly. The subsequent pain was sharp and unexpected. By the time she and her unborn child were alone again in the room, she realized it wasn’t fear causing the abdominal cramps at all.
Lying in a hospital bed later that night, reviewing her own charts and hissing at the doctors who proclaimed an inexplicable miscarriage, Glorianna determined Esteban had been playing the game before she even knew about him. Like her, he had drawn up a plan. Like her, he had not expected to fall in love. And like her, he had carried his plan through anyway.
Of course, unlike her, he had killed their child to make a point.
Was it he who did that? Or me?
She squelched the thought. He had written the sorcery. He had goaded her with that note. She hadn’t known the consequences of ignoring it. He had.
All he wanted was to stop me from killing. He wanted me to be a better person. He wanted me to be a better leader. He wanted someone to negotiate with.
This was more nonsense, she assured herself as she squeezed a dull fingernail under the clipboard blade that also held her chart. His plan was clearly flawed. True, she couldn’t kill anymore. The bastard probably had even worse in store for her if she did. Fine. She didn’t need to do the killing. She would have others do it for her.
Three years later, as she led the beaststalker army that crushed the city of Pinegrove and occupied it, she watched disciple after disciple maim and murder. The fact that the monsters they killed were in human form, and that only she could see the tiny winged demons inside, meant nothing to her. Nor did the fact that they were dragons, and not spiders like Esteban. What did it matter anymore? They were all the same.
She had the houses emptied, and the hospitals purged, and the cemeteries exhumed. She had the historical landmarks torn down, so that tourists would not come to visit expecting them; and she refurnished city hall to her own liking. She sent out word that the newly incorporated town of Winoka welcomed beaststalkers, as well as any who sought protection from the horrors of the crescent moon.
For the next sixty years, the town never bothered to hold a local election. There was no need: Glorianna was their leader. More than a leader: a saint. More than a saint: a goddess.
When she asked her disciples, they denied her nothing—not even the
occasional child to raise, to fill the void in her heart that Esteban had ripped open.
CHAPTER 7
Tested by Family
O sister, life’s journey beginning,
With courage and firmness arise!
Look well to the course thou art choosing;
Be earnest, be watchful, and wise!
Remember—two paths are before thee,
And both thy attention invite;
But one leadeth on to destruction,
The other to—
“What is that, Libby?” Glorianna did not look away from the rural highway.
In the passenger seat of the sedan, Elizabeth Georges stopped singing and lifted her head from the window. “Just something from church, Mother. What, you don’t like it?”
Glorianna weighed her response. On one hand, she had to admit the teenaged girl’s voice was gorgeous. For all the years the two of them had lived together, Elizabeth had sung—in the shower, in the car, in the backyard during practice, possibly while asleep. Music was in the girl’s heart, and it kept her cheeks rosy and her emerald eyes shining. Also, it reminded Glorianna of fond friends. Victoria had liked to sing, and Charlie, too. On top of all that, it was a lovely hymn and better than the usual pop music crap the girl seemed to like.
On the other hand . . .
“It’s not bad, but I find the sound of music irritating today. Perhaps you could stop.”
Libby shrugged and leaned her head against the window. They drove in silence. Farms went by. Silos, barns, copses of trees. Rows of corn. Fields of soybeans. More barns—
“Aren’t you curious where we’re going?” Glorianna finally asked. She had never taken the girl on this highway before.
Now came the all-knowing shrug. “Training exercise.”
Glorianna sighed irritably. “It’s more than that, Libby. Don’t you know what day it is?”
Libby swiveled her head away from the window to give the driver a teenaged grimace—duh!—and then went back to staring at the rural scenery.
“Yes, it’s your birthday. That’s not the point. When I turned fifteen,” Glorianna explained, “something extraordinary happened to me. It was on a day in early spring, much like today. Do you know what happened?”
“Everyone knows. You saved your hometown.”
“True. More important, my father tested me.”
That got the teenager’s attention. She raised her head off the window again and bit her lip. “Mother, I don’t think I’m fireproof. Last weekend, at that bonfire party with Wendy and the others, we were horsing around, and I—”
“That’s not a test you have to worry about,” Glorianna assured her. It was true: She had searched for years and found no one else, not even among the most skilled and ferocious adult beaststalkers she knew, who shared that particular gift of hers. This was easy enough to accept. Surely the savior of beaststalkers from around the world would have unique gifts.
“This is a rite of passage,” she went on to explain. “Every beaststalker has one.”
Recognition flickered in the girl’s face. “Wendy told me about this. Didn’t her parents each have to fight a dragon before you let them move to Winoka?”
“That’s true. And Wendy will have her own rite soon.” Libby’s best friend was also skilled. The two of them often trained together, under Glorianna’s careful watch. She encouraged this sort of camaraderie, within limits.
Today was about Libby alone. Every beaststalker had to take responsibility for their own fights, their own successes and failures, their own results. And if Glorianna was right about this girl—and she was seldom wrong—the results would be spectacular.
“So what will I fight?”
“A dragon. And you will not just fight it, Libby. You will kill it.”
The girl chewed her tongue, a sure (and bothersome) sign to Glorianna that she was thinking. “Why do I have to kill it? What’s wrong with kicking its ass and sending it away?”
Glorianna could have told the girl one of the several reasons she gave most young beaststalkers on days like this—and most did ask. She could have told her that subduing a monster before giving it a pat on the head and shooing it away only prolonged the ultimate problem, which was that they existed in the first place. Or that such mercy gave the creature the chance to learn, and fight another day. Or that mercy itself was a useless trait among beaststalkers who, by definition, would have to learn to kill something at some point.
She didn’t give any of those reasons. They were, for the most part, reasons this girl would argue with. The more they argued, the lower the chances for a successful rite—a beaststalker with doubts would fight badly, and die. She did not want Libby to die.
“You will kill this dragon,” she told the girl, “because it killed your parents.”
Libby looked back out the window. Telephone poles whipped past the car, each one appearing to be beating the girl on the head—wham, wham, wham.
Will this get through that pretty blonde head of yours? Glorianna wondered.
“You’ve never told me much about my parents,” the girl observed, still counting poles. “Whenever I ask, you give me the same line.”
“ ‘Your mother is death, your father an enemy’s tears,’ ” Glorianna recalled from the illustration contained in her own father’s old texts. “It is true enough, of all of us.”
“All I know about my real parents is what I remember from being five years old. I’ve always thought it was cruel of you to keep them from me.”
“I would never be cruel to you, Libby. I felt the information wouldn’t help you, until you were old enough. It’s been hard for me to judge when the right time would be.”
“Is the right time now?”
“Yes. Charlie, your father, was the son of Victoria Georges.”
“My grandmother,” Libby recalled. “She died in a car accident when I was young.”
“Yes. Charlie fell in love with a woman named Jennifer, whom I raised much the same way I’ve raised you. Charlie and Jenny asked me to be your guardian should they die early.
“They did, of course. Because of the dragon. And then your grandmother Victoria was in that horrible car accident days later. All three of them dead so quickly. It was awful, Libby.”
Only part of this was true. There had indeed been a car accident, and Victoria Georges had died in it. It had been the sort of end Glorianna wished for every beaststalker—quick, painless, and undefeated in battle.
What Glorianna couldn’t bring herself to tell Elizabeth, after all these years, was that Charlie and Jenny had died in the same car accident—one curving two-lane highway, one blundering fool in an eighteen-wheeler traveling in the opposite lane, one bottle of vodka, three precious warriors lost. Again, better that way than to a dragon’s fire, or a spider’s poison. However, a poignant tale of ill-advised drinking and truck-driving was not going to get this girl through her rite of passage. Glorianna had known that years ago—in fact, she knew it the day she had arrived on the scene of the accident. Once she had properly motivated Winoka’s fire and police authorities to conceal the truth, she had been free to make up any story she liked.
“How do you know this is the same dragon?”
Glorianna nearly burst out laughing in surprised admiration. Always a thinker, this one. Even at times like this. She did some fast thinking of her own, to keep the lie ringing true.
“It happened not too far from Winoka. A dragon had been spotted on the edge of town, not far from one of the elementary schools. Charlie and Jenny were the first to volunteer.” Remembering their faces and voices, she gave a rueful smile. “They always were.”
“So there were witnesses. And those same witnesses, after all these years, just happened to spot this same dragon, wherever we’re going?”
Glorianna didn’t care for the touch of suspicion in the child’s voice. “Of course not,” she snapped. “Your parents and their reputation are too important for me to leave to amateurs. I’ve been trac
king this creature myself for years.” The lies moved more easily and quickly, once she started rolling them together. “I’ve learned where it lives, where it eats, and where it kills. I’ve known all of these things, but I didn’t act on that knowledge until today. Can you guess why, Libby? Is that thinker’s brain of yours smart enough to deduce why I wouldn’t do anything about your parents’ murderer, until today?”
Red-faced, the teenager wiped a cheek. “How much longer until we get there?”
Glorianna wasn’t finished. After all, she didn’t believe in subduing—she believed in killing. “We get there when we get there. For heaven’s sake, Libby, you’re not a child anymore. You were barely a child when your parents gave you over to me to raise. Do you have any idea what an imposition that was? Do you have any idea what I sacrificed? What you owe me?”
“You know I’m grateful.” Elizabeth sniffed. Now she was wiping the other cheek. “I don’t know what else you want from me.”
“I want you to conduct your rite. I want you to kill the damn dragon. I want you to stop questioning me. And since you want to know something about your parents, Libby, I’ll tell you all you need to know: They would want the same thing.”
The way Libby’s head tilted back toward the window, Glorianna knew she had won.
About ten minutes later, she turned on a dirt road and traveled another half-mile, past black walnut and Norway spruce trees. She pulled to the side of the road. “We walk from here.”
They retrieved their weapons from the trunk and began to hike through the greening forest. Glorianna carried only her sword; Libby had two weapons. One was a small sword—one of the older training blades from the farm in the Red River Valley. The mayor had contacted Libby’s older brother, Michael, who had left Minnesota years ago and lived in Virginia. Michael was nothing like the warrior his little sister had become; his skill was in forging blades, which he did for movie production houses, Civil War reenactment troupes, and some of his special friends back home. He was working on a long sword now, which he hoped to complete soon so that Glorianna could give it to Libby as a gift.
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