Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  “You wound me.”

  Her heart raced too fast, pounding in her throat. She kept using pieces of furniture to barricade herself behind, but they were mostly futile attempts. There would be no reasoning, no bringing him out of this gently. She let magic pool in her hands, heat at her fingertips. She waited for him to lunge, all snarling chaos and sharp teeth and blood, and held up her hand, freezing him in place.

  He immediately resisted, slamming his power against hers in a dark spray of sparks that she could barely hold off. Serefin picked up a chair by the leg and swung it into the back of Malachiasz’s head.

  To absolutely no effect.

  “Oh, huh,” he said, surprised. “That worked last time.”

  Malachiasz rammed into Serefin, knocking them both into a bookshelf and toppling it.

  Nadya picked up a broken chair leg, hefting it slightly. No harm in trying again, she supposed, and brought it down hard. He flinched away but it gave Serefin time to kick him off as Malachiasz’s claws got terrifyingly close.

  “My face has seen enough abuse,” Serefin muttered, catching some kind of light in his hands and punching it against Malachiasz’s chest.

  Malachiasz made a panicked screech, clawing at himself. Nadya grasped at her magic and pressed her will down against Malachiasz’s—against Chyrnog’s—knocking him off his feet.

  It was overwhelming, the well of power, and Nadya hardly knew enough to form it into anything that wasn’t broad strokes of raw magic, but that was what she needed. She slammed it down against Malachiasz, knocking him unconscious.

  Only a broken boy at their feet, bleeding from a head wound.

  Serefin let out a long breath. “We’re in trouble,” he said softly. He sat down with a heavy breath. “What were you doing in here, anyway?”

  Nadya felt her face grow hot. Serefin glanced at her and closed his eye.

  “Blood and bone,” he muttered.

  “We were just—”

  “I would rather tear out my remaining eye than hear what you do with my brother. Forget I asked.”

  She was quiet. She started to right overturned furniture.

  He held out his hand. “Come here, sit down. We can clean up later.”

  She didn’t want to. Picking up the mess was the only thing keeping her from thinking about how hopeless everything was. She sat anyway, heaving a sigh. Serefin wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  “We can’t fight this, Serefin,” she whispered, leaning into him. “He’s not going to get out alive. I don’t think I am, either.”

  He rubbed his hand against her shoulder, kissing the side of her head. She rested her head against him. He smelled nice, the slightest hint of copper, but mostly like wine.

  “There’s always a chance,” he said quietly. “We always have a chance.”

  “Since when are you so optimistic?”

  “Only when someone is catastrophizing even harder than I am.” He paused. “You’re shaking.”

  Serefin pulled her closer. He sat there, with her curled up against him, in silence for a long time. There was nothing to say to make either of them feel better. Eventually a groan broke through the quiet. Malachiasz sat up, cradling his head, and crawled the few steps to them, collapsing over them both.

  “I don’t like this!” Serefin said.

  Malachiasz mumbled something completely incoherent against Nadya. She folded up, pressing her face into his hair. He shifted, flipping over, elbowing Serefin in the stomach hard, almost definitely on purpose.

  “He’s gotten so much stronger,” Malachiasz said, his voice scratchy.

  “It’s becoming harder to get you back,” Serefin noted. “You’re going to have some horrifying bruises. Although maybe that would be an improvement?”

  Malachiasz glared at him. He reached up and touched Nadya’s neck. His fingers came away wet with blood.

  “I need to stay away from you,” he said.

  “I can handle myself,” she said.

  “As true as that may be,” Serefin said, “Malachiasz is an hourglass and the sand is nearly run out.”

  Nadya sighed and told them about her conversation with Pelageya. Malachiasz frowned slightly.

  “I don’t think Malachiasz is the only one we need to worry about,” she said quietly.

  “What do we do with that? Surely the god has weaknesses. Surely you—”

  “Wait,” Malachiasz said, moving to sit in front of them. “You said the Church was afraid of you; your gods were afraid of you.”

  “Yes, the whole ‘molded by the old gods before Marzenya claimed me’ bit is cause for some alarm.”

  “Why, though?”

  The Church was easily explained. Nadya was proof that everything the Church had taught wasn’t true. She could shake the Church down to its foundations. The gods, well, wasn’t it also her fault Marzenya was dead? After a long pause, she said so.

  “I wouldn’t have been able to kill Marzenya without you, Nadya,” Malachiasz said earnestly.

  “The old gods made me; I can’t be their weakness.”

  “Well, not only you,” Serefin said, “but it’s like Pelageya was saying, wasn’t it? It’s not only about you. It’s about a cleric made by old gods, a Vulture turned chaos god, a blood mage turned…”

  “What exactly are you, Serefin?” Malachiasz asked amiably.

  Serefin held a hand out and a cloud of moths spread out around his fingers. “I’m not sure.”

  “Godstouched,” Nadya said.

  Serefin shrugged.

  “And a prasīt with rational influence magic,” Malachiasz said.

  “I don’t understand that at all,” Nadya said.

  “No, neither do I.” But he sounded like he desperately wanted to study what it was Parijahan did without even being aware of it.

  “Serefin, it sounds like you’re saying we should work together,” Nadya said dryly.

  “A baffling suggestion after all the backstabbing, I know.”

  They were all quiet for a long breath. Malachiasz gazed over her shoulder.

  “Positively shocked you didn’t toss me out that window,” he murmured.

  Nadya gasped. “I could have defenestrated you so easily. A lost opportunity.”

  Serefin rolled his eye. “So … where does this leave us?” he asked.

  Nadya thought of the world she could see. The things she could do. There was surely a place they could go to confront the end of the world.

  Even if they were doomed, they had to try.

  41

  MALACHIASZ CZECHOWICZ

  Morokosh needles his fingers like icicles into the minds of mortals, driving them into frenzies so deep that one young girl might slaughter an entire village on her own.

  —The Volokhtaznikon

  Malachiasz needed to stay away from Nadya.

  Nadya clearly had no intention of letting Malachiasz out of her sight.

  He was rattled by everything in the library: her nearness, her warmth, the feel of her legs around his hips, the way she posed questions that she knew he wouldn’t want to answer while looking at him so intently—seeing him—the feel of his teeth cutting into her flesh, the taste of her blood, sweet and bitter and disastrous.

  He could still taste it.

  He had followed Serefin to the kitchens, desperate to wash away the sweetness. Serefin, delighted in an utterly concerning way when Malachiasz had requested alcohol in a desperate bid to forget all the feelings he couldn’t handle, brought out a bottle of vodka with a flourish. Nadya seemed dubious.

  “You both have entirely unhealthy coping mechanisms,” she muttered. She touched Malachiasz’s side and he flinched involuntarily. “Oh.” She’d pulled her hand away like he’d burned her. Her dark eyebrows tugged down, expression troubled. “All right,” she said, “I should have taken you literally biting my neck as the bad sign it was.”

  He reached for her. The grief at losing her was still close and he couldn’t help it. He gently tugged her hair over one sho
ulder. The bite wasn’t deep but had an ugly look to it.

  “Shit,” Serefin muttered, frowning at spilt vodka. “I can hit you with a pan if need be,” he offered, glancing up.

  Malachiasz could feel how close the god had grown, how easy it would be. He was so hungry.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked Nadya.

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have minded if I didn’t know what it meant for you.”

  Oh. Well, then. That was distracting.

  She took his hand from her neck, gently squeezing his fingers.

  Serefin swore again. Malachiasz sighed.

  “Let me.” He took the bottle from Serefin, noting that nothing had ended up in the glass and Serefin was moving his hand from the glass to the spill on the table with a deepening frown.

  “It’s the eye,” Serefin said. “Depth perception. I—no, that’s not enough, more than that.”

  Malachiasz took a sip of vodka while sliding a glass to Serefin. It went down with a satisfying burn. Serefin took the glass—and the bottle—leaving the room. Nadya and Malachiasz exchanged a glance. She shrugged before following. Malachiasz hesitated, uncertain.

  He should leave before he hurt them all. He had never had anyone in his life before that he cared enough about not to hurt. It was strange and terrifying. He didn’t like being seen. He liked his masks and lies. They were safe. This wasn’t safe.

  Nadya poked her head back in. Her hair was still gathered over one shoulder, creating a pale curtain as she leaned in.

  “Malachiasz? If you don’t come, Serefin is going to drink that whole bottle by himself and he really shouldn’t.”

  She still had her left sleeve rolled up, revealing the strange inky stain on her skin that tracked up her neck; her fingernails curled into claws. The eye at her forehead had closed. If she was molded by the old gods—and granted an unfathomable power that had knocked the air out of him—why did Chyrnog want her so badly? Or was that not it? Not a vessel, but a creation in her own right. Something that might shove at the world until it crumbled.

  He thought of the girl in the snow, shaking as she offered up her arm, her blood, so they could escape the Vultures. The girl who had nearly tossed his spell book in the river. The girl who stood before him now, her hair no longer in a rigid braid crown but loose at her shoulders, darkness staining her skin and soul.

  What if they really were looking in the wrong direction?

  Chyrnog stirred. “I’ll have her power, too. She was made to set me and my kin free. Made to unlock our chains. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Not her.

  Her touch startled him as she took his hand. “Come on, sterevyani bolen,” she said, tugging him out of the kitchens. “I knew the vodka was a bad idea.”

  She pulled him through the painfully cold halls and into a sitting room. It was in a sadder state than the other rooms. There were tired furs on the floor and a few threadbare chairs paired with one very battered chaise. The walls held more icons, which Nadya took in with a sigh.

  “We can turn them,” Serefin said. He’d taken to swigging directly out of the bottle and poking at the oven in the corner, trying to warm the room. Kacper had found him and watched worriedly from a nearby chair. Serefin finally succeeded and immediately flopped onto Kacper.

  “I want to see them start crying,” Malachiasz said, peering at one.

  Nadya rolled her eyes. She opened a trunk, pulling an old blanket out and wrapping it around her shoulders. “Did you read those books I brought?” she asked, settling on the chaise. The books were on a table. She must have brought them with her, along with his forgotten spell book, which she handed to him.

  He’d read two of them and had some ideas, but if it all came down to finding his shattered soul, he was at a loss.

  “Do you still have that pendant?” he asked Serefin.

  Serefin blinked, bewildered, patting at his chest. “I do,” he said, tugging the necklace out from underneath his shirt. He tossed it to Malachiasz.

  Malachiasz turned it over in his hands, sitting on one of the chairs.

  “Can I voice my hesitation at making plans with the person the old god currently is possessing?” Kacper said.

  “We’re not making plans,” Nadya said. “We’re discussing historical precedence.”

  Malachiasz smiled slightly. Nadya leaned on the arm of the chaise, taking one of the books into her lap. He flipped open his spell book. He didn’t know if having it would help, but he hoped so. If not, there was a pencil in his pocket and the light hit the fall of her hair in a way that made his fingers itch.

  “Can you read it?” Serefin asked.

  Malachiasz flipped a few pages until he found a spell. It was unsettling. He’d written this spell, knew exactly what it was supposed to say, but there was a terrible disconnect and he couldn’t process any of it.

  “Can you?” he turned the question on Nadya, who’d sunk down into the chaise.

  “I don’t understand the mechanics, but yes.”

  Interesting. He returned to the page before and the first few lines of a haphazard sketch of Nadya. He had missed the safety of this book. The knowledge that all he was could be found carefully tucked within the pages.

  “Sofka was abandoned by Marzenya,” Nadya said, frowning at the book in her lap. “Lev was chosen by one god, it doesn’t say who, and returned from the mountains but couldn’t speak and supposedly touched by Peloyin—oh, that’s odd.”

  “What is?” Serefin asked.

  Parijahan wandered into the room, moving to sit next to Nadya on the chaise. Żaneta followed, yawning. She handed Malachiasz half a slab of black bread and a cup of tea before sitting next to him with her own cup. He stared at her.

  “Serefin mentioned that eating actual food helps with the…”

  “Cosmic hunger?” Malachiasz offered, but he took it gratefully, sipping at the tea. It would do little to sate the discomfort of being so close to Nadya, but it would numb him, for a time. “Where’s Katya?”

  “We probably won’t be seeing her or Ostyia,” Kacper said.

  Nadya clapped her hands together. “Where’s Rashid, I just won a bet.”

  “You didn’t,” Malachiasz said, recalling the many, many bets Parijahan and Rashid made with each other at their expense.

  “I absolutely did. Anyway, Peloyin keeps coming up, but he’s the one god I’ve never spoken to. The other gods always avoid talking about him, and information is sparse, for whatever reason.” She flipped a page. “The original four were all clerics who either lost the touch of their patron gods or went somewhere and came back changed.”

  “Like, say, dying then not being dead?” Serefin asked.

  “Parijahan hasn’t, though,” Nadya said. “I still don’t quite understand how you’re wrapped up in this,” she said to the Akolan girl.

  “Ah,” Parijahan said softly.

  Malachiasz perked up. He knew that tone. Oh. “It was before you came to Kalyazin.”

  “We were kids. I was hungry and didn’t wait for our tester.” She leaned against Nadya’s knees. “The poison moved so fast. I was gone before anyone realized what had happened. Rashid was there, but he didn’t know I’d died. He thought it was a weak poison. If he hadn’t been there … that would have been it.”

  Kacper tucked his chin against Serefin’s shoulder. “Is most Akolan magic like this?”

  “Akola has a lot of power,” Malachiasz said, “and it’s true, they hide it, but it also might be true that it doesn’t manifest in the ways it does for us or Kalyazin.”

  Parijahan nodded. “There’s a lot we don’t know because the mages sequester themselves away in the deserts. And our court mages are more for show.”

  Malachiasz desperately wanted to figure out how Rashid and Parijahan’s magic worked. He wished they weren’t here at the end of everything. He chewed at the bread, but it didn’t seem to be helping. He was feeling rather ill.

  “You can’t resist. If you don’t take one here, I’
ll merely force you somewhere else. There is no stopping me.”

  Malachiasz let out a sharp breath. Nadya’s eyes were on him. She got up, downed the last bit of vodka in her glass, and crossed the room, still wrapped in the blanket, taking his hand.

  “You need to sleep,” she said.

  He did. But he didn’t want to. His head ached from being whacked and it was easier for Chyrnog to take hold of him when his defenses were down. But Nadya pulled him back to her room. They needed to keep their distance. He didn’t know how to say no to her, though, because he didn’t know how much time they had left.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  She tapped him resolutely on the chest. “I don’t want to be alone, and neither do you.”

  “I hurt you—”

  “You really don’t need to act like that bothers you.”

  He reared back, stung. She glared up at him.

  “I—of course it does.”

  “But you like it, too.”

  He flushed and looked away. “You know what I am.” He paused, adding, “If I’m going to bite you, I would much rather it be something you enjoy.”

  She laughed. The sound made his heart trip over itself. She sat at the edge of the bed and drew her knees up to her chest.

  “We could always … not sleep,” she said.

  He had been halfway through tugging his tunic over his head and he froze. The tunic slid back down, his brain going fuzzy.

  “Come again?”

  Her head tilted. “We are very likely going to die.”

  “Yes?”

  She flushed. “I … I don’t want to die not having known what it feels like. Being with you.”

  “Being with me?” he asked, his voice cracking. He knew what she was talking about. She frowned, hugging herself.

  “You’re making fun of me. Poor, sheltered, repressed Nadezhda.”

  “I’m not making fun of you!” he said, quite firmly, before conceding. “You are absolutely repressed.”

  “Shut up,” she groaned, falling back on the bed. “I just…” she trailed off. She let out a breath.

  He closed his eyes because every nerve was on fire and his traitorous body was betraying him, damn it.