Merciless Saviors E-Book

H. E. Edgmon

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 447

Beschreibung

Embark on a wild ride of reincarnated gods, past lives and intoxicating villains, where magic is real and all too dangerous, perfect for fans of Aiden Thomas. Gem and the other gods wake to find themselves returned to the Ether, in the bodies they had a thousand years prior. Now in a world deeply corrupted by a millennia of the Shade's rule, they must all find how they fit into this new chaos. Alliances break and form as Gem and the others travel across their old kingdoms, having to decide the fate of not just this world, but all worlds.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Available from H.E. Edgmon and Daphne Press

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Content Warning

The Ether

1 The Bloodbath that Awaits was your Choice Alone

2 The Beginning and End

3 You’ll know as soon as I do

4 Life Finding a Way, Even in Darkness

5 A World Away

6 Go Home

7 Let me Take you Home

8 You Didn’t Think I was me

9 And New Ones Have Taken their Place

10 Don’t Poke this Bear

11 Hvtvm Cehēcares

12 It’s not that I Actually Wanted to die

13 I Don’t Know about this

14 My Name is Clover Amarith

15 The Desperation with which I’ve Mourned

16 Not my Problem

17 It Suits me to Ignore the Contradiction

18 This is Only Going to get Worse

19 The Walking Dead

20 Stupid, Romantic Human

21 They’re Already Dead

22 Never should have come here to begin with

23 Like a Gift he’s Nervous to Give

24 The Worst thing that could have happened to gem

25 Salt and Grief

26 A Welcome Grave

27 I Don’t want to do this

28 The Magician is Just Going to Keep Making Everything Worse

29 Happy, Pathetic, Boring Human

30 What are you doing here?

31 Before Turning back and Descending into the Dark

32 We can never come back from this

Epilogue

List of Characters

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Hell Followed with us

The Spirit Bares its Teeth

Compound Fracture

AVAILABLE FROM H.E. EDGMON AND DAPHNE PRESS

Godly Heathens

Merciless Saviors

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First published in the UK in 2024 by Daphne Press

www.daphnepress.com

Copyright © 2024 by H.E. Edgmon

Cover illustration by Elena Masci

Cover design by Jane Tibbetts

Map design by Westley Vega

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-83784-025-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-83784-026-7

1

For children who were handed scissors and punished for running.

I know you didn’t think there’d be this much blood.

I know you were just trying to get away.

CONTENT WARNING

While this book is about magical powers and fantasy worlds, it’s also an honest story about pain. It features a candid portrayal of mental illness stemming from childhood trauma, and a main character whose own mind sometimes seems to be working against them. Recovering repressed memories, and the questioning of reality that follows, is a significant part of this story. There are also graphic depictions of suicidality, depersonalization, and other symptoms that are difficult to stomach, which may make some readers uncomfortable.

Other potentially upsetting content includes:

•Incest, childhood sex abuse, and other sexual violence involving minors.

•General violence, including murder and torture.

•Horror, including anthropomorphic and body horror.

•Brief mentions of nonconsensual pregnancy and pregnancy loss.

•Animal death.

1

THE BLOODBATH THAT AWAITS WAS YOUR CHOICE ALONE

It rains in the church attic, fat drops of warm water and thick shards of stained glass, while I take the Cyclone’s life and the Reaper takes a bullet meant to end mine.

There is screaming. It could be lifetimes away, as muddled as it is, reaching for me through the bands of time and space and magic as thick and black as tar. The quiet sound of Zephyr Beauregard’s last breath seems louder. Beneath my pressed knee, beneath the callous weight of my knife cracking through the eggshell of his rib cage to pierce the yolk of him, the rich boy gurgles and spits. In this moment, I know with certainty why they call it a death rattle.

Someone grabs my knife arm. They try to drag my shoulder back, try to wrench free the weapon buried in Zephyr’s chest. Do they think to save him? Do they not realize they’re too late? Too late for the Cyclone. Too late for any of us.

His blue eyes widen until they can’t anymore, until they aren’t blue at all anymore, color leaching away like oceans drying up, until I’m staring into ash that used to be a home. Around me, I know the world is moving, loudly and quickly, and I know it wants me to move with it. But I’m trapped here, suspended in a cocoon; my body, my knife, the skin and bones and blood that used to be a boy.

The electricity starts like a tingling in my fingertips. Like the pins and needles of sitting wrong for too long, like part of me falling asleep while the rest is awake. Am I awake? Have I not been sleeping for weeks, for years, for lifetimes? Am I not only just now beginning to open my eyes?

It starts like a tingling and it grows like a fire, a cold burning ripping its way up my arm. There is screaming, and maybe it’s mine.

Lightning touches my heart and my head tips toward my spine, eyes rolling back. The last thing I see is Christ on the Cross above me.

My last thought is that this god did not die for my sins. But others have. And more will yet.

* * *

In the Ether, I stand on the cliff’s edge overlooking the shoreside cityscape below, as it falls victim to the ravages of the Cyclone’s latest tantrum. The ocean swirls into hurricane gusts, and tornadoes of brine tear down whole houses, leveling generations of memories in seconds. Before this, the city was filled with screams of panic and disbelief as its people tried to escape what they knew was coming. Now those screams have fallen silent. There is nothing but the wailing of the wind and the cracking of wood as lumber falls.

The Cyclone is a fickle and merciless god, moving at random from one village to the next, demanding offerings from its people only to indulge in their destruction whether they sacrifice or not. There is no reasoning with him, no bargaining that may actually hold sway. He sets his course and cannot be moved from his path—unless, just as randomly, he decides to turn.

I’ve been following him for some time now. Something must be done, before he floods the whole of our world for his own entertainment.

“What about him?” I ask, waving my hand at the beach below. “You cannot look upon the Cyclone’s actions and tell me you truly see no purpose for my weapon.”

Who am I talking to? I’m alone on the cliff.

At least, I thought I was.

“The monstrousness of another does not excuse indulging in your own.”

The voice comes from behind me, though I don’t turn to face it. I must have known she was there, if I spoke to her, but . . . how? I don’t remember her being there, I don’t remember . . .

Who is she?

Some tangled consciousness, some part of me that is Gem Echols, desperately wants to turn around and face the voice. It’s beautiful. Sultry, raspy, deep, and melodic, the way I imagine a jazz singer might sound. But I have no idea who she is.

But I do. The Magician does, I do, I know her, I came here with her, I must have. Why can’t I remember who she is? If only I would turn around and look at her.

“It is not indulgence to create a safeguard,” I snap. My hands curl into fists so tight my nails dig into my palms. I get the impression we’ve had this argument many times, I just . . . don’t remember any of them. “I am the keeper of the scales. My place in this world is to keep the axis righted. How am I meant to do that if I cannot eradicate those who are bent on its collapse?”

“You are the keeper of the scales,” she agrees. I can feel her disappointment, and it makes my chest ache. I don’t know why, but I need her to understand me. I need her to forgive me. But more and more, I realize she isn’t going to. “That does not make you our warden. Nor our executioner. The bloodbath that awaits was your choice alone.”

“I don’t know why you seem to think so little of me.” I sniff, tilting my head back as a spray of salt water ghosts up from below, coating one side of my face in a wet shimmer. “After all we have meant to each other, I cannot accept that you would abandon me now. Not over this.”

A wash of seafoam begins to swirl, tumbling round and round itself like soapy suds overflowing in a bucket, until finally the swirls give way, the sea parting. From its dark depths, the Siren emerges, body rising from the abyss until she can plant her feet on the water’s surface. She tilts back her head and roars the Cyclone’s name.

Her roar is met with distant laughter, carried down on a boom of thunder.

“It is only because of what you mean to me that I see this act for what it truly is. I know your heart, Magician, even the parts of it you would like to hide. Even the parts that you keep secret from yourself.” Behind me, her voice cracks and I want to cry. “And I know the truth. It is you who has abandoned me.”

Lightning strikes me in the chest.

* * *

I don’t wake up so much as I realize my eyes are already open and I’m standing outside the First Church of Gracie. It’s not like I’m unconscious one minute and conscious the next; it’s like I’m stuck in some vivid daydream only to suddenly remember what I’m doing. Except I don’t remember, not really. I have no idea how I got here.

Here. I’m on the sidewalk. It’s no longer raining. There are cops, and parishioners, and crying parents, and old gods. Rory has an arm around my shoulders. Enzo is talking to an EMT, his parents in the back of their ambulance.

In another, my mom helps a first responder ease my dad onto a stretcher. The doors close behind them. I think I talked to her, but I can’t remember where they’re going.

Buck and Rhett are gone. Or maybe they’re still inside the church. How long have I been standing here without being in my own body?

The sidewalk quiets when someone rolls a gurney through the crowd. There’s a black sheet pulled over the corpse. I don’t know if it’s Poppy or Zephyr.

Rory’s arm tightens around me. The ambulance takes Enzo’s parents away. He walks back to us, his fingers threading with mine. None of us speak.

A cop snaps his fingers in Marian’s face. He’s trying to get her attention, but he catches mine instead. She stares beyond him, following the flashing lights as the ambulances careen away from us and toward Gracie’s tiny hospital. Is her girlfriend in one of them?

How many people survive gunshots to the head every year? More than can call themselves gods of death, probably. If the odds were in anyone’s favor, it would be Poppy’s.

The cop raises his voice. Rory tenses. Enzo releases my hand.

Marian doesn’t need us. She turns her cloudy eyes on the officer. She doesn’t speak. I don’t know that she can. But a Black woman in a pinstripe suit touches a hand to her shoulder and speaks for her. I don’t know who she is, and I don’t know what she says. But the cop rolls his eyes and leaves.

The woman steers Marian away from the crowd. Toward a car parked on the street. Murphy’s in the back seat, staring straight ahead, unblinking. Is this woman Murphy’s mom? She helps Marian into the back seat. It strikes me like rotten food in the pit of my stomach that the god of battle has never looked more like a scared little girl.

Indy meets my eye from across the road, where he’s standing next to his own truck. His expression is stone, eyes cold and harsh like black ice about to send us off the road. There is a world where the god of art paints murals with the blood of those he’s massacred. I’ve never seen my friend look as much like that god as he does now.

Everything has turned upside down. Everything has gone tipped out of whack, out of order, out of balance . . .

Balance. My head hurts. I am was the keeper of the scales.

Buck’s warning is as clear now as the day he spoke it. “And the scales will tip . . . tip . . . tip . . . until they fall from existence.”

What does a world out of balance look like?

I don’t realize I asked the question out loud until Enzo says, “We’ll see. Soon enough.”

Rory kisses the side of my face. “Let’s go home.”

Home. I don’t know what that means anymore, either.

2

THE BEGINNING AND END

Home, at least for tonight, means the log house where Rory’s grandparents live. They don’t come outside to greet us, the way I’ve gotten used to. I can’t say I’m not relieved. On the list of things my fractured—still-fracturing?—brain can handle right now, they aren’t present.

Rory turns off the ignition, their grandfather’s ancient sports car going still and quiet. I miss the Jeep. I wonder if it’ll ever be drivable again. How many bullet holes can a car survive? More or less than a god in the body of a teenage girl?

I don’t know if I feel guilty, and I don’t know if I should. It wasn’t my finger on the trigger. I wasn’t the one who ordered it pulled. I’m not the one who shot Poppy.

All I did was survive.

It’s only when the silence stretches on for a beat too long that I realize Rory’s staring at me. Enzo, too, bent over the center console, head tilted to face me. I can’t read either of their expressions. Or maybe I don’t want to. Something electric and heavy pulses in my temple, the beginnings of a terrible headache. Or maybe the end of one.

“What?” I don’t mean it to sound angry. I’m not angry with them. I’m just tired.

Or am I even tired at all? Maybe I’m too awake, hanging in that space where exhaustion has gotten so bad that sleep is impossible. I don’t know anymore. Upside down. Out of balance. Tip, tip, tip.

“How do you feel?” Rory finally asks. I get the impression they don’t really want the answer.

“Fine.”

“Fine?” Enzo repeats the word back to me, like he must have misheard.

I clear my throat and rub one fist over my eye. There’s a vein twitching in the lid, like the flicker of lightning over and over. “Yeah. Fine.”

It isn’t not true. Fine is not healthy or happy or stable or sane. Fine is also not dead or dying or broken or gone. Fine is somewhere between. And I am, I guess, somewhere between, if that somewhere is that I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know how I am, but I think I’m fine. I’m pretty sure I’m fine.

“Gem—” Rory begins, and I don’t realize they’ve raised their hand until their fingertips touch my cheek.

The unexpected contact makes me jump. I don’t let them say whatever was meant to come next. “What happens now?”

Rory and Enzo exchange a look. That can’t mean anything good.

Enzo looks back to me and touches his hand against the back of my wrist. “We go inside. We get some food in you. And then maybe we call the Evergod.”

The Evergod. Buck Wheeler. The god of time.

“Why him?”

“Gem,” Rory repeats, taking a deep breath. “Taking the life of another god with the Ouroboros has been your greatest fear for as long as the weapon has existed. You said it yourself, over and over again. You were never supposed to be the one to wield that knife the way you did today. The balance . . . you warned us the balance would be thrown out of order if you ever did.”

“Right. Yeah.” I look at my hands. I can still feel the pressure of Zephyr’s rib cage cracking underneath them.

“But do you have any idea what that means in practice?” They hesitate, tapping one fingertip against my knee. “Do you know what’s going to happen to you?”

“I . . .” Heartburn crawls up the back of my throat, but the acid tastes more like burnt plastic. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

Ever since Buck pulled down the wall between lives, giving the pantheon back all of our memories, things have been clearer than ever before. I’ve seen more of myself, in my every iteration, finally beginning to understand who I am and how I got here. But there’s still a shroud of fog between me and . . . something. There are still memories I can’t grasp, no matter how desperately I reach for them.

And right now, I can barely grasp at the present, much less the past, and certainly not the future. Ever since I woke up on that church sidewalk, my head is only on my body in the way of bone and muscle. My thoughts have gone wind-whipped. Reality, whatever that means, is happening at the other end of a very long telescope. I hardly know if I’m actually in this car at all.

“Right.” Enzo trails his knuckles over my arm, brushing them against the inside of my elbow. I think he means it to be comforting. In reality, it tickles a little. I don’t tell him to stop—it’shimself he’s really comforting. “But if anyone does know what’s coming, it will be him.”

“Sure.” That makes sense. Buck Wheeler knows everything and nothing, the most formidable and feeble among us in equal measure. Of course, it’s his power that the present hinges on. Nothing can ever just be easy.

“Gem,” Rory says again, and I find her eyes with my own. She has beautiful eyes. Dark brown, one painted with a bloom of green. She’s beautiful. I miss her. Or I missed her. Or. “Why did you do it?”

“What?”

“Why did you kill him?” She shakes her head. Those beautiful eyes are wet and sad, and I don’t understand anything, but I would do the worst thing I’ve done all over again if it meant she didn’t have to look like this anymore. “We had a plan. What happened?”

“I—”

—don’t have a good answer for them. The decision to kill Zephyr had been spur-of-the-moment, impulsive, reckless. I’d been angry at Marian, having just realized that she’d set me up, that there was no way the Lionheart was letting me leave that church alive, not if she was allowed to see her plan through. I was tired, tired of the self-flagellation, the apologizing, the grief of reckoning with myself. I hadn’t had a new plan beyond wanting to hurt Marian and Poppy as much as I could, beyond wanting to do the most ruthless, brutal thing imaginable just to scare them both.

But it wasn’t just the Reaper and her lover I’d scared. Rory stares at me with those wet eyes and Enzo watches me with his mouth set like barbed wire and I realize I’m shaking and I don’t know when it started or how to make it stop.

“I thought I could trust her.” I don’t even know I’m talking about Marian until I realize it in the aftermath of my own words. Thunder rumbles outside the car, loud and close enough to shake the frame. “But her bullet was meant for me. The Lionheart will always have a bullet meant for me.”

“And you wanted her to feel as betrayed as you did.” Enzo doesn’t pose it as a question, but as a mirror. The words are meant to show me something, but I don’t meet the reflection to examine what.

“How did you even know about the gun? How did you—”

I cut Rory off again. “Buck.”

It’s the only answer anyone needs. The car goes quiet again.

Without distraction, my attention is drawn back to the unfamiliar hum of power in my hands. This uncanny spark just beneath my skin begs to be played with. I imagine the world like one of those plasma lamps, imagine pressing my palms against it and watching threads of magic leap toward me like obedient servants.

As I do, a bolt of lightning strikes so close to the passenger window that it blows the side mirror from the door. Rory and Enzo jump, all of us wheeling toward the charred-black hole, the smoke rising off the metal.

My partners are afraid. I can taste their fear, even without looking at them. I am not unafraid. But it’s not just fear that wets my tongue and makes my heartbeat quicken. This lightning is mine. I summoned it here even without meaning to, and I can learn to control it. This was an act of my magic.

And it was free. There will be no payment collected. The one caveat to what I can do, the single thread that has bound me for my entire ancient existence, the limitation that declared I could only have what I was willing to sacrifice for . . . is no longer part of the equation.

I can do anything I want without consequence.

Enzo clears his throat. “Come on. Inside. None of us can do anything on empty stomachs.”

“Unexpected wisdom from someone built like a starving Victorian orphan,” Rory quips, pushing open the driver’s-side door and climbing out.

Enzo looks as if he wants to argue, but just rolls his eyes and follows them toward the porch. Maybe because now’s not the time. Maybe because he does have the body type of someone who would die from cholera.

Either way, there’s something nice about the snark. It makes me feel a little more . . . here. Like maybe, if I’m lucky, my head isn’t going to float away like a helium balloon that lost its weight.

The relief lasts for only a minute. Inside Rory’s house, the unreality returns worse than before.

Joseph and Ellen Hardy are only alive right now because I had bigger problems on my list of terrible people who need to be dealt with immediately. With Zephyr dead, and Poppy in either the ICU or the morgue, they’ve been bumped to the top.

How was it less than two weeks ago that Rory told me the truth about them, and what they’d done to her? The way they’d locked her away, tortured her to force her to remember she was the Mountain? How was it only last night that I walked into their bathroom and found Joseph clutching one of Rory’s old, used tampons, like a dog snuffling through the trash?

Hm.

I saw a video online once that said time isn’t actually linear. That’s just the way we process it, because otherwise our brains would break. Like Buck’s. He’s not seeing something special; he’s just seeing what’s really there, what’s hidden from most of us—that everything is actually happening all at once.

Maybe that’s what’s happening to me. Maybe linear time is falling away, and I can’t grasp it anymore, and my brain is breaking. I’m here, in this living room, but I’m not here. And everything happening in the past and everything happening in the future both push in on either side of me, muffling the present, making my skin crawl with overstimulation.

Or maybe it’s that I’m more powerful than I’ve ever been, and nothing matters anymore. If there are no consequences to anything I do, then nothing is real.

I blink and realize I’ve missed part of the conversation. Rory and Joseph are talking. I try to tune back in, catch up, but can’t seem to focus through the pounding in the front of my skull.

“I don’t understand,” Rory is saying, the words slow and cautious, like talking to a feral animal backed into a corner.

“Your bleeding stopped about ten days ago, didn’t it?” Joseph asks, and my stomach drops.

What the fuck is wrong with this guy? Outside, it starts to rain. It pounds against the tin roof, loud enough that Ellen has to raise her voice when she speaks.

“If you’ll just do this every other day for the next week or so,” Rory’s grandmother shouts, taking a step closer to her grandchild, “you probably won’t ever have to do it again. It’ll probably be done.”

“Done.” Rory repeats. Their eyes, those beautiful, mismatched eyes, have gone cloudy. Outside, a bird screeches. “Because I’ll be pregnant.”

Wait, what?

My head snaps back toward Joseph. No, not Joseph, but behind him. It isn’t just the five of us in this room, there’s another, a sixth, on the couch behind Rory’s grandfather. A boy. Not a boy, a man. Twenties, maybe thirties. Dark beard and a flannel shirt. I don’t recognize him. He looks uncomfortable, glancing between all of us, hands on his knees.

I remember I’m still covered in Zephyr’s blood.

“Joseph . . .” My voice doesn’t sound like my own, but I don’t know what my own sounds like anymore. I tilt my head, eyes slowly dragging toward the older man’s face. “What have you done?”

His own eyes fill with tears in response, and a fearful nerve tics in his jaw. “You have to understand, this is the only way. Without an heir to carry on our family, the Mountain will disappear. It is my sacred duty to protect the bloodline. I am only doing what must be done so she can survive.”

The words press into the notches of my spine like fingers digging into a yellowing bruise, but I ignore the ache. Instead, I look back to that man on the couch.

“You.” He meets my eye. Whatever he sees, he swallows. Outside, thunder rattles the windows. “How much did they tell you before you came here? What did they have to say to get you to agree?”

“I—”

“Did they ask you to fuck their granddaughter? Did they mention she was only seventeen?”

“Look—”

“Did you know the plan was to knock her up? Did that excite you? Did they mention she wasn’t human?”

“You—”

“Did they warn you about me?”

Harder and harder the rain pours, as if the sky has ripped open, water flooding like blood gushing from an open wound. Birds and bugs, coyotes and gators, they scream and howl and protest, and their wails are carried on the frenzied wind that whips all around us. Lightning illuminates their shadows through the windows, casting long, eerie talons along the floor, black fangs across the walls.

The man pisses himself when I take a step closer. Gross. Maybe I’ll just reach in and pluck out his bladder so that doesn’t happen again.

“Creature.” Enzo’s voice is as calm as I’ve ever heard it when he speaks for the first time since entering the house. I don’t realize he’s right behind me until one of his finely boned hands slides from my hip to my chest, stopping me in my tracks, holding me in place with unexpected strength. “That’s enough.”

I want to protest. This is not enough; this has only just gotten started.

“This pathetic little man does not deserve the pleasure of your cruelty. He was nothing more than a tool in someone else’s hand.”

A tool. Disgust crawls up my throat, thick bile that threatens to gag me. Enzo’s right. However they try to explain this to themselves, Joseph and Ellen planned to rape Rory. They were just going to use this stranger as their means to do it.

They planned to rape their teenage granddaughter.

To force the god of land to carry a pregnancy against their own will.

To force their own depravity on the woman I love.

“How did you ever imagine getting away with this?” I have to ask, turning my face back to Joseph’s. “You had to know I would find out. You had to know what I would do to you.”

A tear slips down Joseph’s cheek. To his credit, he holds my gaze when he says, “I figured you’d kill me. I just hoped I’d do what had to be done first.”

Ellen lets loose a sob, and her knees give out. She crashes to the floor, slumping forward at the waist, pressing her hands into the carpet. “Please. You have to understand, there was no other way. We prayed you would see the truth. You need this as much as she does—if there is no heir, you may never find the Mountain again.”

Wind begins to whip inside the house, swirling around the living room so hard that it might take me off my feet if it wasn’t my own doing. The ground rumbles underneath us. Somewhere in the distance, an animal howls.

When I speak, slow and careful so as not to be misunderstood, sparks flicker from the tip of my tongue, enunciating each word with an electric pop. “I am the god of gods. I am the beginning and end to all magic. There is nothing I cannot do. And the Mountain is mine. How outrageous that you would believe anything, in any life, in any world, could keep me away. What a sacrilege that is.”

Ellen’s body shakes with the force of her cries. Joseph’s head tips forward, shoulders folding.

“You.” Enzo raises the hand from my chest to flick his wrist at the man on the urine-damp couch. “Leave. Before I change my mind.”

The stranger doesn’t need to be told twice. He practically throws himself to his feet, fighting the indoor winds to wrench open the door and stumble down the porch steps. The violent gale slams the door behind him.

What to do now? Somehow the question is more difficult when the answer could be anything imaginable, not less.

In the end, it isn’t up to me anyway.

Enzo steps around me, planting himself in the center of the room, his body between the humans and the gods. When he turns his head over his shoulder to meet Rory’s eyes, his own have begun to glow again. They light up the space between us in shards of blue and silver and red like blood. Though my wind whips at his hair and clothes, he doesn’t sway. His shadow leaps to life, a sentient being all on its own, shielding him in a cloak of darkness.

He is the god of things forbidden. And we have only seen a fraction of his power so far.

“Aurora.” He says their name like an offering, and I glance to Rory’s face. Her glassy eyes flick, slowly, to his. She blinks, as if unsure who or what she’s seeing. “I need you to answer a question before this goes any further.”

Their curls fly, wild, across their face. They don’t say anything, just continue to stare.

I want to warn him that I don’t think she’s really here with us, but I can’t make myself say it. Instead, I reach for her, my hand hovering just in front of her face. When she doesn’t flinch away, I push back her curls, gathering them behind her head and using the elastic on my wrist to tie them off.

Enzo presses forward. “They want an heir for your family line. I need to know if you believe they should get exactly what they’ve asked for.”

I frown in his direction. What the hell does that mean? This doesn’t seem like the time for his mind games.

Rory seems to be considering the same thing, her thick eyebrows slanting together in confusion, a frown tugging at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes follow Enzo’s shadow as it circles him. Something like recognition begins to dawn in her face.

The Mountain whispers, “Yes,” and the Shade, like a knight beneath her banner, turns to see her will be done.

Tempered by my confusion, the wind inside dies down until the house is quiet again. I don’t know what these two have decided without words, but I suspect I’ll want to hear what happens next.

Enzo’s footsteps are light as he makes his way to Ellen’s side, kneeling next to her and curling one delicate finger beneath her chin. He is gentle as he tilts her face away from the carpet, forcing her to look at him. “Do you know who I am?”

“You are the devil,” she sobs.

“Yes. But it’s not as simple as that, is it?” He smiles, and the hand on her chin moves to her elbow, pulling her up and helping her to her feet. He rises with her, and pushes back the hair from her face when they’re standing together. “I am the god-king of many kingdoms. Did you know I conquered the gift of creation?”

Realization begins to tick its way down the back of my neck in the form of rising gooseflesh. I reach for Rory and find their hand, squeezing until they squeeze back hard enough to make my knuckles pop.

Ellen and Joseph exchange a look of their own. When Joseph looks as if he might protest, Enzo’s shadow slithers toward him, curling around his legs and sliding up his torso. The older man sputters, shocked, staring wide-eyed down at the black magic enveloping his body.

Enzo calls Ellen’s attention back. “I can give you the heir you want. No one need touch the Mountain to carry on your line. All you have to do is ask for my help.”

“But . . .” Ellen whimpers, glancing between her husband and her granddaughter and this wicked, sweet-tongued god from hell. “Why would you help me?”

“I know your legends tell you I am the villain in this story. But stories are so often forced to abandon shades of gray in favor of black and white. A parable cannot teach a lesson about good and evil if there is no evil.” I’ve heard Enzo’s practiced monologues many times, but this is different. This is not an actor putting on a performance; this is the serpent whispering in Eve’s ear the succulence of the apple. “You and I both know that isn’t reality. Reality is shaped by shades of gray, by people doing what they have to. That’s what you and your husband have always done, isn’t it? That’s what I’ve always done. And surviving doesn’t make us evil.” He touches his knuckles to her cheek, so tender in his manipulation. “I am not without benevolence. I can help you because it’s what you deserve. Just say the words. Tell me this is what you want, and I will consecrate your womb with the gift of life.”

“Ellen,” Joseph warns, cut off when the shadow claws into his throat.

His wife doesn’t seem to notice. She stares, enchanted, into the mesmerizing eyes of the devil, and whispers, “Yes. This is what I want.”

At my side, Rory gives a quiet groan and stumbles forward. The movement is subtle, the way the Mountain catches themself before they can fall to the ground, but I know what it means. Their world is breaking. I let go of their hand only to curl my arm around their back, pressing our bodies in a tight line. They rest their temple on the top of my head and suck in a jagged breath, like a breeze over broken glass.

Enzo’s smile is cold. He tucks one hand behind Ellen’s back, and places the other over her stomach. The old woman touches his shoulder as if to keep herself upright.

Power glows in his palms, as red as freshly spilled blood. The glow brightens and brightens until light encircles Ellen’s pelvis and the living room is cast entirely in a red overlay. Ellen gasps, her fingers tightening on Enzo’s shoulder, her eyes widening in shock.

And as quickly as it began, it ends. The light is extinguished and Enzo steps away from her, rejoining Rory and me on the other side of the room.

For a long moment, nothing much happens. Ellen reaches down to pet at her belly, confusion and hope both adorning her weathered features.

Enzo’s shoulder brushes my arm as he leans in beside me, and I glance down at the top of his head, growing more and more concerned with each passing second.

Rory opens their mouth.

Before they can ask what we both must be thinking, Ellen lets out a startled little cry, eyes widening again as she clutches at her stomach. Seconds later, when something in her torso snaps, like a bone being broken, she doesn’t scream in pain but in delight. Eyes practically glowing with excitement, she stares down at her stomach as it begins to grow.

Her torso expands like a balloon inflating, swelling up into a perfect circle cradled between her hips, slung low on her pelvis. She tugs up the hem of her floral shirt, revealing the evidence of exactly what Enzo promised. She’s pregnant.

Ellen Hardy is carrying the continuation of the Mountain’s lineage, a child gifted to her by the Shade. A union of the bloodlines.

It feels impossible, but so does everything else.

And then,

“What the—”

“Holy shit.”

A perfect imprint of a tiny hand presses against her skin from the inside, like a palm pressed to the foggy glass of a windowpane. I lose my breath, and Rory almost loses her footing again, but somehow, we keep each other together.

Deliriously happy giggles begin streaming from Ellen’s mouth as she stares down at her swollen middle. “Joseph—Joseph, are you seeing this? We did it. Oh, we did it. Everything’s going to be okay now. Oh.”

Lovingly, she strokes her own fingers against the tiny ones inside of her.

I tilt my attention to her husband. Joseph hasn’t said a word, though the shadow has released its intangible hold on his neck. Unlike his wife, he does not look happy. He does not stare at her belly with adoration, as if this gift is the answer to all of their problems.

He looks afraid. He knows what she hasn’t yet realized.

But it won’t be long now.

Ellen’s giggles begin to slow, quieting and growing more and more sparse until they dry up altogether. Her smile fades into a frown as she blinks down at herself. At that hand inside of her as it presses further and further out, stretching her skin more and more until nearly an entire arm is visible.

“What . . . what’s happening?” She looks to Enzo for guidance. “Is this normal? Is the baby all right?”

“Oh, I have no idea.” Enzo shrugs, utterly nonchalant. “I’ve never done this before. I’m not even certain it’s a baby. Or a human. All I know for sure is that it’s alive.”

“Wh—” Ellen’s confusion is quick to warp into fear when something else inside of her cracks. She gasps, this time in pain, and grabs for her hip as she falls to her knees again. “No. . . . no, this can’t be right.”

I can do nothing to move from the spot I’m planted in, can only watch in revulsion as her belly begins to crawl. As whatever thing has taken root inside of her starts to slither and squirm, pressing up against her insides until I can make out all of her ribs, until I can see something like a face trying to force its way through her belly button. Bones break and skin stretches, and Ellen’s gasps turn to cries turn to screams.

“Make this stop!” she howls, begging Enzo for relief.

“Are you not grateful for your gift?” he asks her. “Do you no longer believe this is exactly what you deserve?”

She might’ve had something else to say, might’ve argued, might’ve continued to plead with him for leniency. But all that leaves her lips is a mouthful of blood, red seeping out over her teeth, down her chin, coating her shirt.

With fascination and disgust, I watch her belly as it shrinks, as the creature in her womb leaves the safe cradle of her pelvis. I can see it, see its squirming body as it snakes up her torso, punching into the cavern of her chest, breaking every bone in its path. Ellen’s eyes roll back in her head, blood leaking from her open mouth, and the only sound she can make is a high-pitched, desperate whine.

No. No, that isn’t Ellen. That’s the thing, crying out from inside of her body, using her mouth as its own. When it reaches her neck, it bursts through the cords of her throat, severing the muscles and veins and the links of her spine until her head simply falls from her shoulders and hits the floor with a wet thud.

And this thing is certainly not human. It slides from the secretions of its mother’s open neck, its body mushy and wet and mottled red, like an oversized clot of blood with arms and hands and a grotesque face like an unfinished Picasso. Using its tiny hands, it drags itself down her body and onto the carpet, its eyes, leaking pus and blood, moving from Enzo, to me, to Rory, before settling on Joseph.

It opens its half-formed, toothless mouth and makes that same horrific screech.

Maybe I’m going completely insane. Or maybe its scream sounded like “Dada.” I think I’d rather be crazy.

As it begins to drag itself across the carpet toward Joseph, leaving a trail of slimy discharge in its wake, the older man struggles against his shadowy warden, desperate to break free and get away.

“Willa Mae,” he dares to say; dares to turn wild eyes on his grandchild. “Please—you know I’ve only ever done what I had to! Don’t let them do this! The Shade will betray you! The Magician may already be lost! I am your only ally!”

“Enzo,” Rory says slowly, raising one hand and giving the smallest flick of their fingers. “Let him go.”

“As you wish, kitten.” The shadow leaps from Joseph’s feet and back to Enzo’s, falling in line with his body, perfectly unremarkable.

“Thank you, thank you.” Joseph scrambles toward us, reaching for Rory, and—

Lightning strikes inside the house, charring the carpet black, smoke billowing up.

It’s enough to make him stop, hovering in place, frantically looking between Rory’s face and the screeching thing still crawling toward him. “I knew you would understand, I knew—”

“May you never know a moment of peace.” Rory’s shoulders straighten. They stand up taller, reaching their full height. Outside, the birds caw and screech and swirl around the house in a cacophony of rage. “As I have not known one since the moment you stole me from my home.”

“But—”

“Run.”

His anguish is realized. Joseph’s eyes widen and widen and he backs away, toward the front door, and that thing screams and screams and crawls faster to reach him. He flings the door open and the uncanny brightness of the afternoon sun floods in, almost cartoonish in its sharp contrast to what’s happening down here. Joseph races onto the porch, yelling out in pain and shock as a frenzied flock of hummingbirds, dozens of them, peck at his wrinkled skin, as swamp bugs buzz and sting and swarm around his head, as a violent wind nearly knocks him off his feet. And still, he forces himself to run, scrambling down the porch steps and fleeing as quickly as he can into the heart of the bayou.

All the while, his crying child drags itself over carpet, and wood, and dirt, to get to him.

From the doorway, we watch until they both disappear. I have a feeling we won’t see either ever again. I really hope I’m right.

3

YOU’LL KNOW AS SOON AS I DO

When the pig finishes eating Rory’s grandmother’s corpse, she sends it home in the same direction she summoned it from. And we’re left with nothing but the stains on the carpet and a too-quiet house.

Enzo, sitting on the kitchen counter, having just watched a five-hundred-pound sow chomp her way through raw flesh, cartilage, and bone, clears his throat. “Anyone still hungry?”

Rory doesn’t look at him—but a crow does fly directly into the kitchen window, making him jump. I put my head in my hands.

“A simple no would suffice.” Enzo taps his fingers against the counter’s ledge, his rings clinking against the butcher block when he does. “Should check in with my parents.”

It’s such a human thing to say. I look up from my palms, considering the boy on the other side of the room. This demon of unspeakable power who has existed since the dawn of creation. This teenager who loves his mom and dad.

He finds me staring and smiles, sad and apologetic. I want to kiss him. I don’t think either of us can be touched right now.

“Oh. Right.” I look away to pull my phone from my pocket, opening the forgotten texts from my mother.

MOTHERSHIP

I’m with your dad at the hospital. They’re going to keep him for psych evaluation. If you can, could you meet us here? I don’t know when he’ll be allowed visitors. I’m going to stay until all of the intake is finished. Might be a while.

And then, later, only fifteen minutes ago:

MOTHERSHIP

He’s been admitted. Going to head home soon. Worried about you. I know I don’t know what’s happening . . . but I’d like to. Please call if you need me. Want to at least know you’re okay.

Am I okay?

Does she, of all people, have any right to ask if I am?

In the church, while time hung suspended like a noose in the Evergod’s hand, I’d started to forgive her. I’d realized, for the first time, that she was so much like me, in her own fucked-up way. We are both always trying to make the right choices, to protect ourselves and the ones we love, and somehow we end up ruining everything anyway. I’d decided I needed to take my anger and learn to let it go; to make things right between us.

What’s changed since then? Nothing. Everything. I am exactly the person I was the last time I spoke to her, and I’m not, at all. I remember the empathy I’d felt for my mother, but I can’t seem to actually make myself feel it again. Maybe it’s the Cyclone’s power, electricity short-circuiting the pathways in my head. Maybe it’s the sting of Marian’s betrayal—a defense mechanism that says if I assume the worst from everyone, no one can disappoint me.

Or maybe I’m just manic and need to take a nap.

Either way, I text back with a pin for my location, followed by:

need a ride home. we should talk.

I don’t have any idea what I’m going to say. I guess I’ll figure it out when she gets here.

I’d half expected to find a text from Indy waiting for me, but there isn’t one. No one else has reached out. I open Instagram, scroll through stories looking for any mention of Poppy or what happened at the church, but there’s nothing. I can’t explain why, but the quiet is more disturbing than any flood of notifications would be.

“My mom’s coming to get me,” I tell the room, putting my phone back in my pocket. “She has questions.”

“What are you going to tell her?” Rory asks, though they don’t look at me. They stare out the window overlooking the front porch, eyes in the swampy distance where their grandfather disappeared.

“You’ll know as soon as I do.”

There is so much more I want to say, but I can’t seem to drag the words to the surface. I want to tell her how much I love her. How sorry I am that this happened. I want to ask if they’re okay, even though I know they aren’t, even though I know no one could possibly be okay after the things we’ve seen today.

She doesn’t give me the chance to say anything anyway. Rory turns away from the window, eyes distant and glassy as she addresses Enzo. “I can give you a ride to your parents’.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay, thanks.” He clears his throat. Exchanges a look with me before looking back at her. “Thank you.”

Rory shrugs one shoulder.

He killed for her today. The implications of that aren’t lost on me. They don’t hate each other, not anymore, not even if some part of them might want to. And now they’re being awkward about it. Gods and teenagers.

“What are you gonna do after?” I finally manage to find my tongue.

She blinks, her lips parting. I can see the struggle play out across her expression, the way her mind reaches for something, anything. Her eyes dart to the stains on the carpet, black and brown and flecked with bright red.

“I guess I’ll . . .” Clean up the blood and afterbirth? Tidy up the house that she lives in alone, now that her grandparent-kidnappers are both gone?

“Come to my place. Once you’ve dropped him off, just . . . come over, okay?” I swallow. “You won’t even have to sneak in through the window. Probably.”

Maybe, by then, my head won’t feel like fresh-blown glass, stretchy and burning and more likely to crack than not. Maybe I’ll actually be able to hold a conversation, to say the things I desperately want to say, to sort through my own fucked-up, muddled feelings to figure out what the hell those things even are.

“You too.” I glance at Enzo. He’s still perched on the edge of the kitchen counter, nervously twirling one of his decorative rings round and round between his thumb and forefinger. He raises his eyebrows at me. “Come over, whenever you’re finished with your parents. I’ll feed you. We can . . . come up with a plan.”

Marian is going to kill all of us. At the very least, she’s going to try. I don’t know what to expect from Indy or Rhett. Buck and Murphy are wild cards, too, but for totally different reasons.

Maybe I fucked everything up with what I did in the church, but what other options did we have? Zephyr getting the knife, or killing Murphy and our parents? Poppy taking the Cyclone’s power while Marian put a bullet in my chest?

Everything is terrible, and I have no idea how to fix any of it. But it was still our best option. I played the hand I was dealt, just like everyone else. I did nothing wrong. If I tell myself this over and over, it may start to taste like truth.

Enzo slides to the ground, feet connecting soundlessly. “You want us to wait here until your mom shows up?”

“No.” I answer too fast. “Um. I’ll be fine. She’ll be here soon anyway.”

Enzo and Rory exchange another look. Silent communication slips between them as if they’re passing clandestine notes written in code, and I’m on the outside watching them conspire against me. Or maybe I’m just feeling a little raw. It’s probably all in my head.

“Are you sure?” Rory asks. She takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for any of us to be alone right now.”

“I’ll be fine.” Sparks flutter along the outside of my forearms, making my hair stand on end. I swallow. “There’s nothing more dangerous than me out there.”

“Excuse you—” Enzo begins to argue, that arrogant, infernal drawl on his tongue.

I can’t listen to whatever he might want to say, so I don’t give him the chance to finish. “You might be the devil. But even Lucifer was carved by the hand of his god, and we both know I could cut your wings if I wanted to.”

Something wild and bright ignites in Enzo’s eyes. His expression trembles with the blooming of renewed fascination. “Oh.”

Rory sighs. “Okay. I’ll see you soon, then. Just—be careful. All-powerful Magician or not, I’m still bigger than you, and I’ll beat your ass if you let yourself get hurt.”

“Thanks, babe.”

She brushes her shoulder against mine as she leaves, a subtle, barely there acknowledgment that we both know everything is terrible, but we’re still here, still breathing, still together. The flash of her skin on mine is too quick and almost too much all at once. I take a deep breath that rattles in my lungs.

Enzo stops in front of me on his way to the door, following in their footsteps. He kisses the side of my mouth and says, “You should take a shower, darling. Your poor mother is in enough distress. And the remains of that British skid mark really don’t deserve to decorate your skin a moment longer.”