Page 102 of The Deathless One
An avenging goddess stood beside him. And who was he not to kneel at her feet?
“I don’t want him dead,” she said, her voice ringing out in the room. “I want his memories. I want to know everything he knows about what is happening to my kingdom and where we go from here.”
“He deserves to die,” Elric replied. And for a moment, he was furious that she would ask this of him. This man had touched her. He’d made her bleed.
Elric would make him suffer for that.
But then her hand slid up and down his back, and everything eased in his mind again. She was well. She was alive. He could see it in the long lines of her body, the strength in her belly, which flexed as she moved, and the shimmering, writhing scars just underneath her ribs, higher over her breast and heart, and again around her throat.
Three deaths.
A trinity of pain that had brought her to this moment.
He took one step back from her, then another, before slowly sinking to his knees. “What do you wish of me, witch?”
Eyes glimmering with retribution, she turned her attention to the man still stuck halfway through the wall. “Callum Quen, you told me you had become a coward because of your fear. I want all your memories that are connected to that emotion. Each and every one. I will leave you with whatever else remains.”
Though still wheezing, the man’s eyes widened. “That will leave me with nothing.”
“Then you will be a simpleton walking the streets begging for food. Everyone will remember who you once were. The Butcher of Grimoire Rise. A man who rose so high that for a brief moment he touched the sun, only to melt and fall to earth. They will know who you are now. A man who failed, and who now suffers in his failure.” She swallowed, her hand rising to press against the wriggling scar over her heart. “I am merciful, because you will remember all that you did. To everyone else you will be nothing more than a child in the body of an old man, a doddering fool whom they pity. But you will know who you really are.”
Elric had thought his torture creative, but he had never thought she would bid him to do this. Callum Quen was a man who lived with pride that he had built an empire beneath himself out of a city made of dust and bones. Now, she would take that all away and leave him with nothing.
“I will build it again,” Callum wheezed. “I did it once. I will do it again.”
She walked up to him and knelt, her dark hair tangling around her form and giving her the look of some feral goddess who had selected her chosen prey. “What did you say to me? You’ve already run out of time, Butcher. You are old, and your days are numbered.”
His face turned white, blanching with fear and loathing even as Elric loomed over her shoulder. He cursed them both, hissing and spitting out obscenities that eventually faded as Elric passed his hand over Callum’s face.
He pulled the memories out of the older man, pushing them toward Jessamine so she could breathe them in as she had before. Her ribs expanded, tiny hollows in between the thin bones rippling with movement as she sucked them inside herself. Stealing memories and power from the man who had helped end her life.
She tasted his fear on her tongue, the acrid flavor burning with the memory of when he’d been infected. She walked with him as he hid his wound, knowing that his time was short. The wonderful flare of hope when he knew there was a chance to live, and the connection with Leon, who had somehow found out about his infection. Tears gathered in hereyes along with Callum’s despair at knowing he only had the one choice: he had to betray those he loved.
But through all of it, she saw a weak man. A man willing to hurt others so he didn’t have to suffer, and righteous fury heated her blood. This was right. It was his time to end.
And then the Butcher of Grimoire Rise was no more. Instead, he slumped against the wall, an innocent smile on his face.
“?’Allo?” he asked, that grin turning slightly dopey. “Who we got ’ere, then?”
She stood and turned away from him, the long tail of her hair swishing below her spine as she strode toward Sybil and held out a hand for the woman to take. “Come, my sister. We’re leaving this place.”
“And the others?” Elric asked, practically vibrating with his need for vengeance. “Those who helped him?”
Dark, haunted eyes turned to look at him. The deep purple bruises around those black eyes seemed to deepen. “Kill them all.”
“You are coming home?” Sybil asked, drawing her hood up over her face.
“I have matters to attend to first.”
“Your familiar misses you.”
She smiled, the soft expression feeling odd on her face while she knew men were dying in droves in the buildings behind them. She’d taken clothing off one of their dead bodies, after all. But the moment she stepped out into the morning light, she tilted her head up to the sky and breathed in fresh air.
“I wish to be free of this for a few moments,” she whispered. “I want to let it all go for a few hours before I dive back into fighting for a kingdom.”
When she looked, Sybil wore a grin on her face. “Then run, gravesinger. Let your god chase you, and may you both be blessed with what you find at the end of the hunt.”
Jessamine didn’t question the desire. She just bolted down the alleyways of the Factory District. Before anyone noticed the two women who left behind a building full of dead bodies, before the screams woke anyone up. Of course, there would also be the rumors of black magic clinging to the skin of every dead man in those buildings. But it would take a while for people to understand that a god had returned.
