Page 41 of Up from the Earth

“Well, they don’t know how right they are. Darkness has a way of tainting energy, the fabric of these souls, irrevocably. They become like a disease, infecting everything around them and corrupting what good was there. And let me be clear.”

Their eyes met mine again, and the intensity there was enough to send me staggering, swallowing down the potent concoction of rage and gravity they exuded.

“These are not just simple misbehaving individuals, those who broke a few rules or irritated those around them. These are beings who were so corrupt in life and death that they created a malignant aura on the threads of reality. They are foul, the lowest of the low, the closest thing to ‘evil’ that actually exists.”

As I crossed the distance to them, I reached out for their hand, the other going to their achingly beautiful face and sweeping down the lengths of their endless hair.

“We will take care of it.” I nodded, holding their gaze steadily. “Though, I will admit, I am a bit surprised that ‘evil’ is apparently a fantasy considering the situation.”

They chuckled, shaking their head as they took my cheek in their elegant hand. “Evil is a word, little beast. The notion that there is some being or entity somewhere that sits behind all of it, like a puppeteer controlling the strings, simply isn’t true. There is no ‘evil,’ no diabolic overload lofting from some massive throne. Souls. They create all the good and all the bad in the world. They are responsible for the shades of morality that color the skein of fate.”

It’s us. We’re the cause of all of it.

“Here, here. Well put.” The voice that sounded behind us was odd—warbling and garbled through the barrier. “And I, for one, believe that if it is in our hands in life to enact our virtues and vices at our leisure, then why should it not be the same in the afterlife.”

It was a man’s voice, carrying the hint of an accent that I could recognize as one from the area where my coven lived.

The King and I spun around as a furious growl shook the air, Cerberus moving to stand in front of us. I wove my fingers through the fur on his back just above his tailbone, sending my love for him into the bond that threaded between us.

“Who—”

But my words were cut off as an arm pressed against the barrier, stretching it out like probing against too-thin flesh. The indents of his fingers twisted and clawed at the wall from the other side until, all at once, it tore. Two hands gripped either side of the fading separation, splitting it wide enough for the figure to step through.

My stomach coiled in revolt, threatening to eject its contents as I laid eyes on what oozed into this plane of existence from that hellish prison beyond.

Priestly robes were the only thing that remained from what I assumed was his typical form. They were marred with char, the edges holey and seared into a stiff-looking texture. The color at his neck that would have been white was grungy and stained with a splatter of red that disappeared into the black fabric of his frock.

But all of that was nothing compared to the monstrous face the man now wore. His skin had been pulled horrifyingly taut against his skull, and it was deathly white. No eyelids or lashes existed on his face, the milky orbs of his eyeballs sitting plainly in their sockets, ringed by deep maroon fibers of dried-out muscle tissue.

The man’s nose had also all but disappeared, melting into the upper edge of the priest’s non-existent lip. Instead of plump flesh, nothing covered the yellowed, elongated teeth within his mouth, only two strips of sinew stretching between the mandibles to keep them secure. Torn musculature and skin formed threads of matter that blazed a profound red against the colorless face.

“Dear Gods…whatareyou?”

The priest’s eyes, pupil-less and seemingly blind, shifted toward me, and I recoiled, squeezing Cerberus’s black coat. Hardly a tongue sat behind that too-large section of his jaw, and it flapped as he somehow managed to speak.

“Gods? Ha! Another blasphemous witch, isn’t it?” My mind churned; how did he know of witches? “Keep your heathen nonsense to yourself, bitch. If I am anything, I am only whatyour kindhas made of me.”

I shook my head, my skin crawling, and my insides swirled. The sight of him speaking, the sight of him at all, pushed my mind to the brink, pain thudding behind my eyes. What could this foul man—creature—mean? Witches lacked the power to do anything remotely like what I was seeing. The only other time I’d seen something so horrendous was when—

“Summer.” My eyes burned with tears, the memory of that day rushing to the surface of my mind. “Oh, fuck.”

The Priest only chuckled, nodding his gruesome head as the facts settled into shape like pieces of a puzzle. My mother had kept the image of that…woman from my head for many years. I knew what had happened, how the monster she became took our priestess from us, and how Summer—now the Queen of the Shadowed Summer Sun—had been the only thing to defeat her.

If this had to do with her, with my long-ago sister, then this man could only be…

“Father Paine.”

He snapped his head to me, shifting through the air in a blink. He was too close, the stench of him dripping off in solid, disgusting condensation.

“Oh, ho, ho. So the little witch knows her history, eh?” The words were as mangled as the priest’s tongue. “And where is that little whore? Where is this Summer who cursed me to that?”

Father Paine gestured wildly at the barrier, his arm popping at the elbow as he threw his finger back to point. I shook my head. This couldn’t be happening.Hecouldn’t be what threatened this world. He wasn’t strong enough. He justcouldn’tbe.

“Not feeling like answering?”

At once, The King’s clawed hand shot out through the air, seizing the priest by the throat. “That’s about all I will take of you harassing my wife.”

Cerberus’s growl roared louder, filling the space around us as The King gripped Father Paine’s neck. But then my King was yanking his hand away, revealing singed flesh where he’d touched the priest.

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