Page 58 of Bloody Bargain
“No, you aren’t. For the record, we’re not either.” We tapped our bare shoulder where the mark remained. “Gamil, by the way.”
Before she could attempt to respond, we held up S’ba so it caught the light. “We’re here to offer you a bride price of unspeakable horror. Untold numbers of our children have died by this bane metal. S’ba, the Star of Death. Has D’abeloloa told you the story of his guardian blade?”
Tessa jerked her head once in the negative without blinking. In a show of faith, we paced away, focusing all seven eyes on the blade held reverently, bitterly in our palms. Would she stab us again?
Would we like it this time?
“S’ba fell from the heavens in a vicious maelstrom of black rock from the godly realm, peppering the dunes of Kemet with molten iron and winding glass.” We recounted the tale in older, more familiar language, holding the dagger by the blade so she might see the gritty fulgurite inside its amber hilt. “The pharaoh Hatshepsut II and their advisor Senenmet bestowed it upon D’abeloloa after he tamed the Nile during a terrible flood. He spent many years with them, training their army to protect them against theauf.Well, againstus,really.”
“Why are you offering it to me then?” Tessa swam with confusion, her spirit so ripe with elemental blood that it made us thirsty. “I’m planning to kill as many of yourchildrenas I possibly can.”
We smiled sadly, holding the dagger out to her.
“Fallen gods are gods of nothing. We have waited long enough for them to come home, but it’s obvious that they’ve turned away from us for good. Deluding ourselves any longer would be, well, pathetic. Don’t you think?”
Ah, the sting of sympathy. One of our least favorite flavors. It burned where Tessa’s spirit pressed against our skin.
“What were you the god of?” she asked suddenly.
We weren’t expecting that question, and something thick lodged in our throat. No mortal could fathom the grief of a god. “Does it matter?”
Tessa shook her head, lowering her dagger. “No. It doesn’t have to matter.”
An impression of the life she left behind pressed against our vertical eyes. Laughter, warmth, late nights, fast loving, tragedy and triumph. A woman that had dealt with the razor’s edge of life far longer than her cosmic compulsion to kill our children. She’d been a healer then, meeting people at their worst moments and lifting them up. Strange how the most heroic parts of herself were the ones she’d cut away.
“Take it,” we said with a crease in our brow. We stared at S’ba like an old enemy, its point pressed against our wrist, hilt extended towards its rightful owner. “One cut is all it takes, and it will never dull.”
“Thank you…”
Tessa gripped the hilt and carefully removed the blade from our skin, leaving a tingle in its place.
“The only way to rid Earth of theauffor good is to collapse the veil, you know. You’ll need to free another b’adruokh to do that.”
Tessa slipped her old kitchen knife into her boot and holstered S’ba at her waist in a homemade sheath. Her brown eyes sparkled with sunlight and her spirit vibrated around her, poised to fight, as she cast her eyes back at the village behind us. Our children were gathered in alarming numbers, humming like the hive they were as they watched the sea in a trance, waiting for all their numbers to arrive. Normally I would relish a coming war. This time… I wasn’t so sure.
“How do I find one?”
I breathed in the distant smell of death like a fine perfume.
“You can’t.”
Her glare sliced to us like we might be her next target. We shrugged, and the bangles decorating our long earlobes tinkled together. “They are not in places you can reach anymore. After you liberated D’abeloloa, the others were moved from inconspicuous pockets to hostile, waterless tombs that he could not reach.”
“Damn it,” she hissed, hands on her hips.
“Even if you did reach them and the veil fell,” we hedged, hands behind our back as we took a step into the aura of her spirit, basking in its dangerous tingle. It smelled much better than the decay of our children’s human hosts. Like cloves and sacred herbs…
And a certain overgrown snake.
“Theaufwould be trapped here. Desperate, hungry… They’d be worse than they are now. Are you willing to live in that sort of hell in order to purge them?”
Tessa couldn’t answer directly. The hypocrisy pained her as she crossed her arms over her chest and held herself. “Humans don’t have a chance against them already. They’re everywhere. It’s a bloodbath regardless if other humans see it or not.”
An old argument she had with herself often, peppered with memories of a train station. Anaufthat had crossed the veil to feast without a host. A smiling man’s face with bright white teeth and a deep laugh that warmed her belly. She cut off the memories with brutal efficiency at the sensation of dirt on her hands.
We resisted stoking that fire, swallowing down the taste with less relish than usual. Tessa held herself back too, denying the question she really wanted to ask us. Afraid down to the cold dredges of her soul of the answer.
When she killed someone, were they still in there? Had she been a murderer all along?
