Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  Footsteps were coming closer and Serefin tensed as a hooded figure lit by a torch appeared next to him.

  “Interesting,” they murmured at Malachiasz. Their head moved, taking in Serefin. “Who is he to you?”

  Months ago, he would have said no one, the Black Vulture, a monster, nothing more. Now he wasn’t sure how to reconcile what it meant—this shifting of meaning between him and a boy he hadn’t liked since he was a child.

  “My brother,” Serefin finally said. “Where are we?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you have many questions. And I do apologize for—” they waved a hand at the cellar. “All of this. You had to be purified before entering the temple.”

  Serefin didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Excuse me?”

  “You weren’t conscious for it. He appears to be reacting rather badly to it.”

  The shifting had slowed to the shivers and cracks that Serefin was fairly certain were Malachiasz’s new normal. Eyes and mouths and teeth. His breath was shallow, eyes flickering open but strangely glassy, unseeing. Like something held him and wanted the last word. His spine arched, head cracking back on the hard ground, before he was let go and relaxed. He groaned softly, sitting up very slowly before burying his face in his hands. When he lifted his head, his eyes were onyx black.

  Serefin startled, scrambling back. The figure did not move. Malachiasz eyed them, head tilting, the black fall of his hair a separate kind of darkness in this place.

  This was going to end badly. Serefin had seen enough of the Vultures to know when they weren’t entirely there, and Malachiasz had the look about him that he didn’t particularly care for feeling human.

  “I have to say,” Serefin said. “It doesn’t seem like you have the proper materials to handle someone like him.”

  Malachiasz struck. He moved faster than Serefin had thought possible.

  The figure didn’t move at all. His hood was knocked back, revealing the strange, twitchy boy from Olya’s party. That explained how they were found. The boy was now seemingly stoic in the face of certain death.

  Malachiasz slammed into a barrier of magic.

  He dropped to a crouch, barely fazed. Serefin watched the boy; he hadn’t seen him reach for anything to cast magic with, could he use it inherently? Impossible.

  Well, not entirely impossible. Serefin could do something without his spell book, and Malachiasz was the same. But they had become something more than blood mages, and the rules had warped around them. It was disconcerting. Rules of the universe weren’t made to be broken and Malachiasz had broken a great number.

  “Don’t worry,” the boy said. “We were given ways to keep someone like him contained.”

  Serefin’s eye narrowed.

  Malachiasz held out his palm, fingertips fluttering against the magic. A smile tugged at the side of his mouth. Blood trickled out of the corner of his eye. He slammed his palm against the wall of magic, and it shattered.

  The boy stepped back, surprised.

  “Like I said,” Serefin said, taking another step away. “I’m not sure you realize what you’re up against.”

  The boy cast a harried glance at Serefin when he spoke. A mistake. Malachiasz shot forward, claws slamming into the boy’s chest. He choked, blood dripping from his lips. Serefin winced.

  “Tried to warn you.”

  Malachiasz yanked his hand away, dropping the boy.

  Then he turned on Serefin. As Serefin ducked away, a breath too slow, and was grazed by Malachiasz’s razor claws, he realized the last thing he wanted was to be around his brother when his most primal instincts were all he listened to, including the drive for vengeance.

  “Malachiasz, I need you to snap out of this,” Serefin said. He lifted his hands, pleading, aware this was a hopeless attempt.

  Malachiasz shivered at the sound of his name, something in him recognizing it, but it wasn’t enough. They weren’t evenly matched, not like this.

  Suddenly Malachiasz jolted, an odd expression passing over his face. Chains wrapped around his torso and wrists, moving of their own accord, and he fell to his knees.

  The boy stood behind Malachiasz with a wry smile on his face, blood all over his chin and chest where he’d been stabbed. He should be dead.

  He let out a pained breath through his teeth. “I told you. We have ways of keeping him contained.”

  “Malachiasz?” Serefin ignored the boy.

  Malachiasz’s onyx eyes flickered before the black leaked away to a pale, almost colorless blue. He frowned, straining against the chains, before sitting back on his heels, looking perplexed.

  “Do you remember what happens when you’re like that?” Serefin asked curiously. He had always wanted to ask.

  “Sometimes,” Malachiasz said, his voice sounded scratchy and wrong. He cleared his throat, which devolved into a fit of coughing. He spat out a mouthful of blood. “Do remember this one.”

  “Oh, so how you nearly killed me.”

  Malachiasz tried to shrug but the chains were weighing his arms down enough that he barely managed it. He tilted his head back at the boy.

  “I suspect you have questions,” the boy said brightly.

  Kacper took that moment to finally stir awake. Serefin tried his hardest not to make a fuss but played his hand by pulling Kacper to him and kissing him like he was drowning.

  “My head feels terrible,” Kacper said when Serefin broke away and the boy started chaining him up as well.

  “You and all the rest of us,” Malachiasz muttered.

  Kacper glared, as if he had forgotten Malachiasz was around and was being suddenly and unpleasantly reminded.

  The boy moved on to chaining Kacper, almost apologetically. “Until I know you can be trusted, this is the way things have to be,” he said.

  Serefin and Kacper exchanged a glance. Malachiasz was gazing up at the ceiling.

  “This is a cult,” he murmured.

  The boy finished with Kacper’s chains and took a step back. Without another word, he returned to the stairs and left them in the dark once more.

  Serefin tossed out a few stars.

  “What a parlor trick,” Malachiasz said, a touch more derisively than necessary.

  Serefin thought of what the stars had done to the Vulture that had attacked him in that inn but kept it to himself. Let the Black Vulture underestimate him.

  “What was that?” Serefin asked flatly.

  Malachiasz rolled his eyes. “What do you want me to say?”

  “‘Sorry for nearly murdering you, Serefin,’ would be a real good start.”

  “It’d be a lie.”

  “And you’re so above that.”

  That got a smile out of Malachiasz, which was unnerving.

  “How did that boy survive being stabbed?” Serefin asked.

  “Now that is a good question.”

  Serefin had forgotten how profoundly condescending Malachiasz was.

  “If the internal bleeding hadn’t gotten him, the poison absolutely should’ve,” he continued.

  “You poison your claws?” Serefin said. It was supposed to be a question, but the idea was so ridiculous yet completely unsurprising that he didn’t know what he was expecting the answer to be.

  “You don’t want to know the particulars of why the Vultures are the way we are,” Malachiasz replied.

  Serefin didn’t, in fact, want that. “Never mind.”

  “Truly, I hate him,” said Kacper.

  Malachiasz grinned brightly before an odd expression flickered across his face and he pitched over, coughing. It was mildly pathetic. After a few moments he straightened with some effort.

  “Where are we?” Serefin asked.

  “How would I know? You ask so many questions.” He couldn’t wipe off the blood that had smeared across his chin and every time he spoke there was a glimmer of teeth sharper than was natural.

  “You know something.”

  Malachiasz inclined his head. “Whoever they are, they follow the god th
at has me.”

  “Oh,” Serefin breathed.

  Kacper shot him a questioning glance. Of course. Of course that was how Malachiasz was alive. This wouldn’t be like with Velyos. Because Velyos was, ultimately, a being of mischief but nothing so destructive.

  “That boy is too much trouble,” Velyos noted.

  Who is it? Serefin asked.

  “You know. You dealt with him and walked away alive, which is more than most—more than anyone—can say. That’s how he knew it was possible, you see. The blood is the same. If the elder brother could look upon one as old and twisted and wrong as he, then the younger, who is so much worse, so much madder, could as well, and the younger was the one he truly wanted.”

  Chyrnog. Serefin’s stomach churned. “He’s why I lost my eye,” he said softly.

  “This is your fault?” Malachiasz asked incredulously. Like he couldn’t believe that Serefin was capable of anything, let alone something that had touched him.

  Serefin opened his mouth and closed it. Yes. Yes and no and yes. He shrugged helplessly. “I—I didn’t mean—”

  Serefin was interrupted by the door slamming open. Malachiasz tensed, curling inward, like he was poising to strike, though Serefin didn’t think he could do much while chained.

  Serefin had set an old god free. And the god had taken the most powerful person alive who didn’t have a shred of a conscience. If the world was to fall, it was very much Serefin’s fault.

  15

  MALACHIASZ CZECHOWICZ

  They cut off Svoyatovi Dimitry Teterev’s ears, burned out his eyes, cut out his tongue, but still that did not stop him, nothing could stop him, and he brought down the city of Kowat alone.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  The boy returned with an extremely tall woman whom Malachiasz thought was potentially the cult’s leader, until she hauled him to his feet to stand before the boy.

  “If you are expecting me to be scared and incoherent, I am sorry to disappoint,” Malachiasz said.

  A smile pulled at the boy’s mouth. He had feathery black hair and golden skin, the high features of someone from the Kalyazi north. One of his pupils was the wrong shape—a horizontal slit of black within brown. He lifted a hand to tuck a lock of hair behind his ear, two of his fingers as well as a chunk of his ear missing.

  “My expectations are low, I assure you.”

  “Even better!”

  He was hoping to get a better read on this boy who had survived his claws, but he got no reaction and a shiver of anxiety itched at his hands; he picked at a hangnail on his middle finger behind his back.

  “Are you sure this is the one?” the woman asked. “The other has a godstouched eye.”

  Serefin jolted, as if trying to cover his eye but forgetting his arms were tied. Malachiasz knew what the woman was not saying. He stifled a sigh.

  “You want a show,” he said flatly.

  It was a constant effort, holding the roiling chaos at bay, and thus a release to let his body succumb instead. He closed his eyes—though he saw through every other damn eye that opened on his skin, a veritable assault on his fragile senses. No limbs this time, odd since that had happened during his episode on the floor earlier. He supposed there was no predicting chaos. After what felt sufficient, he carefully pulled everything back, smothering it down, knowing that every time his shields fell it was a little bit harder to put them back up.

  He opened his eyes, watching as the boy’s pupils dilated, a hitch of breath at his throat. The boy’s pulse quickened in a beat so fast that Malachiasz could almost see it against his skin.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, like he was leading this conversation.

  The boy’s eyes narrowed, but after a pause, he allowed, “Ruslan Yedemsky.”

  Malachiasz liked that moment of surrender. When someone handed him their name, not realizing what they were giving him. So few realized the power held in their names, especially not Kalyazi.

  Serefin frowned slightly, his face pale, sweat beading on his skin. He needed to get that eye treated or it was going to kill him. Malachiasz was surprised to find he didn’t want that; he wanted Serefin alive.

  “You have the blood of gods underneath your fingernails,” Ruslan observed.

  “And yours.”

  Ruslan’s fingers kept tugging at a ring on his finger—a bulky thing that Malachiasz suspected held a relic. Malachiasz caught a flash of an ugly open wound on his palm. A wound made by a spike of iron being driven through flesh.

  Had that happened? Who was this boy? A flash of something passed over Ruslan’s face. Malachiasz couldn’t quite decipher it. Interesting.

  “What did you mean by purified?” Serefin asked.

  Ruslan cast him a glance. “I wanted to be certain I’d found what I was searching for.”

  “Me? I’m flattered,” Malachiasz said. “What do you want?” he asked, though he knew. Someone had awakened, whatever that meant, and this cult wanted Malachiasz to kill them.

  He would address that particular moral quandary later, he decided, because he still didn’t know if he was going to aid this god or fight him. If Serefin could rip himself free, he certainly could.

  “I allowed the boy to go,” Chyrnog said. “You will not be so lucky.”

  Malachiasz shuddered.

  Ruslan didn’t deign to answer Malachiasz’s question. “Let’s bring our guest upstairs,” he said.

  “What about the other two?” the woman asked.

  Ruslan peered at Serefin and Kacper, focusing in on Serefin, eyes running over his features.

  “Brothers, you said? We’ll keep you both as incentive for this one to cooperate. Also,” he tipped Serefin’s chin up, “we can use you.”

  “Can’t say I’ll be much use,” Serefin said. “He and I are deeply estranged.”

  They were taken up the stairs. The windows cast light down the bleak hall in jagged knives. Malachiasz had the vaguest feeling that it was a torture chamber. He trembled, his heart beating too fast in his chest.

  Ruslan pulled him down a different hallway.

  “Well, that answers one question,” he said. “Chyrnog’s priests and prophets cannot be touched by the light lest it burn them.”

  “I’m not a priest or a prophet,” Malachiasz snapped.

  “Yet still blessed.”

  It wasn’t a blessing. Malachiasz didn’t even know how to twist this into something he could use. He stumbled as a hunger pang struck him. He hissed out a breath through his teeth, suddenly dizzy.

  “Has the god told you to keep me chained up, then?” he asked instead, ignoring the jittery feeling in his chest. He was going to pass out. “Doesn’t it make more sense that you would be delighted to find someone like me?”

  “We’ve been waiting for Chyrnog for a very long time,” Ruslan said. “It’s unexpected, you see, for him to choose a Tranavian.”

  “A heretic, you mean? It’s fine, I don’t mind.” The word never had any true bite to it, and Nadya had used it against him enough that he had almost grown fond of the term.

  Ruslan frowned slightly, as if unsure what to make of him. Good, he wanted the boy unstable. To wonder if maybe Malachiasz wasn’t so bad after all, maybe he really did have Chyrnog’s best interests at heart.

  He didn’t, of course. Only his and Tranavia’s. And Tranavia above all else.

  Though wasn’t that what had gotten him into this whole mess? He should have been more tactful, careful. He shouldn’t have given Nadya such an easy way to destroy everything. He should have questioned her intentions. He hadn’t expected her to be so adept at lying.

  He had been willfully foolish. Because of course she wasn’t still the scared, naive girl from Kalyazin that he had manipulated. If she had been, he never would have … well, he wouldn’t have cared so much. It was because she was clever and cunning and absolutely ruthless that he was so damn fond of her. She was far more trouble than she was worth.

  But he’d liked the trouble.
/>   He held back a sigh, pushing her from his mind.

  The building they were in was large, a fortress of some sort. Malachiasz couldn’t quite figure out the structure of it, but this wasn’t a church, it was too big.

  They were taken into an open, airy space. A vast tree, dark and brittle looking, sat in the center of the immense room. Clearly dead, its branches dry and thin as they raked up to the top of the ceiling.

  Interesting.

  Malachiasz’s attention lit on a single white flower that had blossomed on one of the branches. Benign enough, but when his vision split, the flower was crawling with worms. Chained to the tree was a young man, only a few years older than Malachiasz. There was something wrong with him. It took Malachiasz a heartbeat to realize that he wasn’t chained at all.

  Serefin let out a soft, distressed sound.

  The tree had grown into and around the man, roots digging into flesh, flesh becoming root. His eyes were closed.

  Malachiasz was struck with a very particular kind of hunger.

  “Good, you know what you must do.”

  Ruslan stepped toward the man in the tree, tipping his chin up. His eyes did not open.

  “He was one of ours, once,” he said, sounding sad. “We noticed something was wrong a year ago but thought little of it. His daily life had been unaffected. But a few weeks ago, something broke within the world.”

  The wall he’d torn through. Tranavia’s magic stripped away. The death of Nadya’s goddess. So much had changed. Pelageya had said things were waking up. What had Chyrnog called them? Awakened ones.

  Malachiasz swallowed hard, his mouth flooding with saliva.

  “What is his name?” he asked.

  Ruslan lifted an eyebrow. “Ivan.”

  He was very, very hungry.

  “You know what you must do.”

  16

  NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

  Zlatana and Omunitsa have always had a bitter rivalry. Sisters, once, but sisters no more.

  —Codex of the Divine 866:73

  Nadya pulled her hood over her hair and lightly regretted the suggestion that they come here. It was so cold—how long would they survive this? Maybe they didn’t even have to worry about the fallen gods, the winter would kill them first.