by K. C. Cross
“I highly doubt that’s how it works. I’m the ingredient, Pie. You’re the alchemist.”
“But I’m not! I’m not magical at all.” She has to realize this is stupid. She’s standing in front of me as a wood nymph chimera. And something is squirming inside her flannel pocket.
“Pia!” Pie reaches down and plucks out a tiny sparrow. “Oh, I am so pissed at you! Where have you been? In my pocket this whole time?” Pie pouts her lips as the bird chirps.
And I’m not gonna lie, those pouty lips are very fucking cute, but we don’t have time for this. I grab the bird, stuff it back inside her pocket, and shove the ax at Pie. “Do it.”
“No! I can’t—”
“Helloooooo!”
Pie and I hold our breath as we turn and look in the direction of the open kitchen door.
They’re inside.
“Helloooooooo!” Grant calls again.
“Pie?” That’s the sheriff. “Pie, are you here?”
I take Pie’s hand, wrap it around the ax handle, and point to her. “Chop it off right now. And then dribble the blood on the scale and tell them to get the fuck out of our home! Do you hear me?”
“Helloooooo!” Grant calls again.
Pie looks absolutely shell-shocked. But she swallows hard, and nods. “OK.”
I kneel down in front of the chopping block, place my face against the scarred wood so my left horn is in the center, and then say, “Do it. Now!”
Pie grunts as she lifts the ax. And then, the next thing I know, it falls. And for a sick moment I think that it’s not enough. The force won’t be enough.
And then my mind goes black.
CHAPTER THIRTY - PIE
Pell slumps to the side of the stump, then to the ground, his body limp and heavy.
I just stare at the undulating knob of flesh and bone that is the stub of his left horn. It’s like lava and it begins to flow. Like he really is made of fire. I can’t take my eyes off it. “Pell?”
He doesn’t answer me. And he doesn’t move, either. Horn blood is pouring out of him. The tree stump chopping block hisses and smokes when the river of monster blood makes contact, immediately burning it. I reach for the chopped-off horn, then pull back. What if it burns me too?
But then, from behind me, a voice. “Pie.”
Not the sheriff.
Grant.
I stiffen, then lean down and, without hesitation, I pick up the horn in my hand. It burns me. Like hellfire. Like nothing I have ever felt before. It sears into my flesh and for a moment, I can see the damage—the dead muscles, and the snapping tendons, and the charred bone.
But then I blink and it’s gone. The pain remains, but the damage is invisible.
Magic?
Maybe. Because so far the only magic I’ve done comes from my hands.
I whirl around, my empty palm forward to ward Grant off, my other hand clutching Pell’s horn to my chest. It hurts my heart—sizzling and searing me. Burning a hole through my flannel. But then Pia flies up.
Grant is distracted. He has never seen her. Has no idea who she is. He looks up and I use that moment to grab the dragon scale at my feet and tilt the horn filled with Pell’s monster blood until the thick, viscous fire drips over the surface, covering it in a syrup of flames.
Grant turns back, smiling. His teeth are no longer human. But they aren’t anything like Pell’s wolf-like canines. They are like the rows of shark teeth inside the dragon’s mouth.
“Who are you?” I ask, taking a step back. I don’t want to look weak and afraid, but that’s how I feel. This isn’t Grant. Or… maybe this is Grant. But Grant is not a human. Grant is something else.
“Say the words. Do the spell.” Pell’s words are barely a whisper. And they are immediately lost because Grant speaks in almost the same moment.
“Do you know,” he says, “how I knew you would end up here?”
“What?” I swallow hard. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”
“Don’t you know, Pie? Don’t you remember me?”
“No. I don’t know you!”
“The spell, Pie,” Pell mutters again. “Order him to leave! Banish him! Now!”
I hold up the scale, but then Grant says, “You’re not even real, girl.”
“What?”
“Don’t listen to him!” Pell is getting up on his hands and knees. But he’s so weak, I don’t think he’s going to be able to help me. “He’s lying. Don’t listen!”
“You wish I was lying,” Grant snaps. He narrows his eyes on Pell, sneering. “I told you before.” Now Grant looks at me. “And now I’m going to say it to you. You’re not real, Pie. You do not exist. You are a bit of my magic and nothing more. You are here at my request, to do my bidding, to give me that.” He nods his head at the bloodhorn-covered dragon scale in my hand. “And then I will go inside Tarq’s tomb and get that book myself. And when I come back out, this world will once again be mine.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
Grant laughs, throwing his head back. “I am the only god who matters, slave.”
“Saturn,” I whisper.
“Hmmmm. I guess you’re not as stupid as you look.”
“Fuck you. Get out! Get out of our sanctuary!” I thrust the scale in front of me, pointing it at him. But he lifts up his hand, palm out, and then…
I am pushed backwards with such force I feel like I slip through the fabric of time and space itself. I land hard onto a bare, cracked linoleum floor, skidding to a stop, banging my head on the frame of an iron bed. But it is not until I try to get up that I realize I am in a straitjacket, my arms pinned to my sides. And there are nurses holding syringes, and orderlies holding me down, and doctors pronouncing me insane…
Something flutters inside the straitjacket. Pushing against the tight fabric. And I watch this. I watch the creature pressed against my bare flesh as it wriggles and writhes until a tiny head crowned with red feathers pops out and says, “You’re not crazy, Pie. You’re real and so am I.”
But I hate myself in this moment. Because I remember this day. This really happened to me. They did put me in a straitjacket. They did push me down onto the floor. They did stand over me with their needles and drugs and threaten to leave me like this. Drugged-up and stupid. Insane and alone. Because they had permission from my mother to do these things.
“Say it,” the doctor is ordering me. “Say it, Pie! She’s. Not. Real. You’re not real, either. Say it!”
And I want to say it. I want to say it so bad. Because I know what comes next if I don’t.
The drugs. The therapy. The names, the stigma, the insanity. The abandonment. The loneliness. The loss.
And I did say it. This has already happened. I said it when I was twelve and they left me alone.
This isn’t real. Maybe it was never real. Maybe it was always magic?
Because real is the monsters of Saint Mark’s. Real are my horns and my hooves. Real is Pia. Because Pia is me and I am her.
And we are… monster.
We have always been monster.
I open my eyes and I’m on the ground next to the chopping block, no longer stuck inside my delusion. Grant is bending down, reaching for my dragon scale.
I put up a single palm and from the center emerges millions of moths. They fly out and up in a swarm, swirling around Grant just like they did the sheriff yesterday, engulfing him in a dusty cloud of wings.
I scramble over to the scale, pick it up, get to my feet and thrust it at Grant. “Out!” I don’t know what else to say. So I just say it again. “Out!”
Grant becomes a pillar of fire and I’m just about to think it worked—it’s over!—when the moths just shatter into thin air like they are nothing to him.
He’s hunched over, but he straightens now. And he directs all his attention to me. Then he laughs and puts his hands up, like he’s going to send that spell I just did right back at me.
And it’s going to be bad.
I close my
eyes, cover my face with my arm, thrust the scale out in front of me and then—
The whole world rumbles in a very familiar way.
Not an earthquake.
A dragon.
The ground splits, the sanctuary walls crumble, the sky goes dark, and the air goes cold.
And then there he is. The blood dragon of Saint Mark’s Sanctuary is loose.
His mouth opens, aiming right at us, and I can see the smoldering fire inside him. The pool of lava burbles and spits and everything suddenly reeks of sulfur and brimstone.
Several things happen at once.
My moths are back, surrounding me this time, their dusty wings beating against my bare arms and cheeks.
Pell grabs the dragon scale and steps out in front of me, holding his severed horn in the other hand. The moths surround him, putting us into a protective cocoon.
And then, in that same moment, Tomas releases his hellfire and the whole world goes up in flames.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE - PELL
I put my arms around Pie just as the flames wash over us from above. The stench of dragon fills the air and then… then it is nothing but flames, and fire, and heat, and molten stone as the world we know turns into a pool of bubbling brimstone.
Pie and I stand there, gripping each other, horn blood covering one side of my body.
Grant… Saturn… whoever he is—screams.
We fall to our knees from the power of that scream, but nothing can touch us. Not here. Not like this. Not when we’re together.
We do not burn. We do not shrivel into dust. We are not incinerated.
We stay whole. We stay together.
We are the moth and the flame.
Everything goes quiet when I say these words in my head.
Then Pie’s voice. “A horn, a hoof, an eye, a bone.”
Before I can even think about it, I’m reciting the next line. “A man, a girl, a place of stone.”
“A tick of time.”
“A last mistake.”
“Keep them safe behind the gate.” She sighs. “I think I get it.”
“Get what?”
“The curse, Pell. It’s in the poem. I think it’s you and me. You’re the man and I’m the girl.”
We think about this as the earth stills and the stench of dragon fades. There are no flames, no fire, and the molten stone that used to be the wall of the sanctuary is hard, and cold, and black as night.
Finally, I stand, pull her to her feet, and then we look around at the destruction.
But it’s not the destitution of moments ago. It’s the ruins of a battle that took place thousands of years before. It’s something from the future and the past all at once.
It is the magic of Saint Mark’s.
“Tomas!” I yell. “Tomas!”
“What the hell… What the hell am I lookin’ at?”
Pie and I turn to find Sheriff Russ Roth standing in the middle of the great entrance hall. But there are no longer walls between there and here because they have been destroyed by the breath of a blood dragon.
“What the fuck is happening out here?” He says it calmly. He doesn’t even shout. In fact, I’m not even sure he’s talking to us. He might just be thinking out loud.
“What do we do?” Pie whispers.
“Banish him,” I say. “Banish him now!”
The sheriff is not that close. He’s maybe a hundred feet away. But he must hear me because he pulls his damn gun and points it at us. “You’re under arrest for—”
Pie grabs the dragon scale from my hand and raises it and this motion kicks off his trigger-happy instinct because once again, he fires his gun.
Everything goes slow. Each moment becomes an eternity as the bullet flies towards Pie, the scale still too low, and this time there’s nothing to break the momentum. It hits her right in the chest and she goes flying backwards and in that instant two more things happen. Pie Vita croaks out the words, “Be gone!” and I use one of my few innate magical powers to freeze her in place.
When Pie actually stops falling mid-air and it hits me that she cannot die as long as I hold her there, I breathe out a sigh of relief and turn back to the sheriff. Because he is now a dead man as far as I’m concerned.
But he is gone. Pie’s last words were just enough to finish the job.
Then I look back at Pie and realize that she is gonna die. She is gonna die before we even get started because her chest is a mangled mess of flesh. “Help!” I call. I don’t even know who I’m calling to. Tomas? The gods who deserted me? The little sparrow? Hell, I’d let the sheriff back in if he could save Pie from her now-certain death.
But there is no help.
Tomas is gone.
Pie is frozen.
Grant… dead?
Sheriff Roth… banished?
And now there’s only me.
Standing alone in the blood dragon debris field feeling as cursed as I’ve ever been.
I glance down and see my chopped-off horn. Still dripping blood over the ground. Bubbling, and sizzling, and turning everything it touches to black obsidian.
I reach down to pick it up out of instinct. But the moment my fingertips touch the horn, the whole world goes black.
CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO - PIE
I am running. Breathless running. Exuberant running. The kind of running that only happens in a wood. That can only happen to creatures with hooves and hind legs.
Pell is next to me and he, like me, is overflowing with joy, his breaths coming hard and fast in perfect rhythm with my own.
We leap over fallen trees. Jump from rock to rock on a steep cliff edge. We make the orange leaves on the white-bark trees shudder as we pass.
It is the best moment of my life.
And this thought is still lingering in my mind—still echoing off the sweet happiness filling me up—when it all changes. When it all goes from bright to dusk.
I am alone. Not running. Standing.
Breathing hard, though. Like I was running. Like that was real. Pell, and me, and the woods. It was real.
It just isn’t anymore.
The air is crisp and cool enough that tendrils of steam billow out from my mouth with each exhale. “Hello?”
And now panic begins to build. Because I am me. This is not a dream. This is real. I am real.
And I am not supposed to be here. This is not a place for creatures like me.
This is a place for the old gods.
The damaged gods.
The vengeful gods.
This is where they live, not us.
This is their wood, not ours.
And I am trespassing.
“Are you dead or alive, girl?”
The voice comes from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It’s thick, and deep, but feminine too.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.
“Which one do you want to be?” the voice asks. And then there is a woman attached to it, standing in front of me with her hands clasped in front of her. She is tall with brown skin and wise eyes. Her robes are bright gold and orange, like the leaves in the woods around me. She reminds me of one those brightly colored Hindu women who wear those sarong things. And she jingles when she moves. Little strings of tiny bells hang around her wrists, and ankles, and neck. A bejeweled headpiece drapes pearls and crystals across her forehead. Her eyes are dark and wide and so is her smile. “This question shouldn’t be so hard, Pie Vita. Which do you want to be?”
I have to take a deep breath, because I know her. “Ostanes.”
“Quick! There is no time left for reunions, child. You need to decide. Do you want to be alive or dead? Do you want to be a monster or a human? Do you want to be cursed or not?”
“I get a choice?”
“No,” she says. “Not really.” I screw up my face in confusion. “You’re dying, girl. The sheriff’s weapon hit you in the chest. You are, in this very moment, still alive only because Pell froze you before most of the damage could be done. But h
e can’t stop it, Pie. He can only put it off. You will die today, one way or another, because you are not eros. You are not the caretaker of Saint Mark’s Sanctuary.”
“What?” I look down at my hand and the ring is still there.
“That’s not the same ring. You know this. You saw Grant’s ring. What did it look like?”
The urgency in her voice is gone now, so I take a moment to think back. “It had… a face.” I nod, looking up at her.
“Whose face?”
I’m about to say I don’t know, but I do. It was the same face above the doors in the sanctuary. Which isn’t some generic mythological Green Man. It is someone very specific. “Saturn’s face.”
Ostanes rewards me with a gentle smile. She has a very calming nature to her. I like it. “He is old now, Pie. He has almost no power left. Gods can only rule with permission. They need humans to give them power and this world’s humans left Saturn behind centuries ago. This sanctuary is mine. He has no power here. But…” She pauses to make sure I’m listening. This must be the important part. “Neither do I. He made sure of that in the last battle. That’s why there is a curse. He wants my power. Everyone”—she whispers this part, leaning forward a little—“wants my power.”
“The book,” I say.
She nods and straightens up. “That book does not belong to Tarq and eventually you will have to get it back.”
“What?” I huff, annoyed. “Why do I have to do it?”
“You can choose to stop, if you’re done.”
“Done? I don’t even understand what you’re talking about now.”
“Do you want to be a monster, Pie? Do you want to live in the curse with Pell? Do you want to continue? Do you want to try and make a difference and fix things? Or do you want to quit?”
I look down at my monster body. I like it. I do. But… “This is not me,” I say.
“Isn’t it?” Ostanes chuckles a little. “Are you sure?”
“It’s not me. I’m Pie. I’m—”
“You are this, girl. You are chimera. You are nymph. You are gorgon. You are minotaur.”
“What?” I almost choke out the word.
