Chapter 11 #2
The headless man who led the dance was metal, a towering sculpture of bulging human perfection crafted from bronze.
Parts of his body had a vivid green patina, and the same flowers growing on the columns had taken up root in the joints of his shoulders.
They cascaded down his back like a big cape, twirling around him with every flawless step.
The other man who followed was even taller but much more slender, possessing an eerily unnatural beauty and grace reminiscent of the twins.
His skin was a soft shade of mint green, his eyes solid black, and he had a magnificent pair of emerald wings with long tails.
His hair was white, plaited into a thick braid that nearly dragged along the ground.
One of his arms was silver metal, though its craftsmanship was superior and more lifelike than that of his dancing partner.
If it wasn’t for the seams at his wrist and bicep, Seymour would have thought the tall man had simply painted his arm with makeup. He was also not technically naked, as he had a piece of glittering cloth curled around his lower body, the rest flowing behind him like a wispy train of spiderwebs.
Despite the difference in their size—the green man having at least three feet, if not more, on the metal one—they moved with an effortless elegance that the other dancers could never hope to replicate.
There were moments where time itself seemed to slow just to accentuate the swing of the green man’s hips or the firm flex of the metal man’s biceps, and Seymour was equal parts turned on and absolutely terrified.
Wow.
So.
What the fuck did they do now?
Seymour didn’t see any sign of the twins or the chest with the head they’d found, and he wasn’t sure what their next move should be. He looked over at Sariel, trying to catch his eye.
Sariel firmly shook his head.
Seymour stared.
Sariel shrugged.
Seymour looked at Day.
She meowed and shrugged too.
Fantastic.
Their presence had drawn the attention of the human dancers, though most continued their frantic movements without directly acknowledging them. One of the cowboys, however, turned his head toward them. His face morphed into a mask of utter agony and he moved his mouth in a silent plea.
Seymour wasn’t the best at reading lips, but he swore it was…
Help me.
Not even knowing what he could possibly do, Seymour found himself stepping forward in order to assist.
Sariel’s hand on his shoulder stopped him, and he again shook his head.
Seymour wanted to argue, but a loud cry snapped his attention back to the dancing crowd.
The cowboy’s moment of distraction had apparently been enough to throw off the entire group, and the dancers tripped and fell all over each other.
Most of them landed in clumsy heaps, the few left standing continuing to twirl desperately as if nothing had happened.
The giant couple in the middle stilled, and the green man was furious.
“How dare you!” he snarled, his wings flapping as he stalked toward the cowboy. His voice was rich, rumbling and echoing throughout each inch of the large space like the purr of a giant jungle cat.
“Please! Your Majesty!” the cowboy pleaded as he dropped to his knees. “I didn’t mean—”
The cowboy’s mouth vanished.
There was simply no more mouth.
No lips.
No seam.
Nothing.
The cowboy screamed, but it was muffled now. He clawed at the blank slate of flesh where his mouth had once been, and his eyes rolled back. Flowers sprouted out of his nose, his ears, and still more from the front of his pants.
Seymour didn’t want to think about where those were coming from.
The cowboy floated up and then was hurled against the nearest slab of concrete, his body imploding inward until there was only a new bloom of bright flowers in its place. These were blue. His cowboy hat wafted toward the ground, and that was it.
He was gone.
Seymour clung to Sariel, no longer finding the surrounding flora as beautiful as before.
“Oh, my darling,” the headless metal man soothed. “My sweet kitten. My beloved. What’s wrong?”
That was definitely Talos.
Even without a head, he still sounded like a game show host.
The green man pouted and crossed his arms. “He ruined our dance! Hello? Everything was so perfect! It was perfect!” He eyed the other dancers, who were frantically trying to recover and continue. “I should take the rest of them. Start over. And then—”
“Darling, please.”
“No, I want to destroy them—”
“Darling, let’s not be too hasty—”
One of the glass rectangles floated toward Seymour while Talos and the green man kept arguing.
As it lit up with the image of an eerily familiar face in white and blue, Seymour realized the rectangles were screens of some kind.
The face smiled, and the other screens followed until they were all hovering above Seymour. “Ah! Mr. Madison. We meet again.”
“Wow, uh… Mr. Talos?” Seymour blinked.
“Yes, yes.” Talos smiled, and it was the same sharky smile as his puppet self. “And I see Sariel is with you. How quaint. Please! Allow me to introduce Zolrya, King of the Fae.”
The green man barely looked Seymour’s way, far too focused on his argument with the metal man.
Who was also Talos.
Right?
Damn, this was weird.
“I’ve been told that you were successful,” Talos on the screen declared. “Thank you for your patience. My darling’s dances are very important to him. Never a good idea to interrupt him, you know. He can be, mmm, a tad spicy.”
“Right.” Seymour laughed nervously.
Because it was totally normal to turn people into flowers.
Totally fine.
“Do you have my head?” Talos asked with a bright smile.
“Yes, sir.” Seymour glanced at Sariel. “We have it, uh…”
The chest wasn’t with them. Those stupid twins had run off with it.
Fuck.
Seymour really didn’t want to spend the rest of his life as a bunch of petunias.
“Here, my lord,” Absolis declared as he and Vilanos appeared, holding the chest between them.
“We have it right here,” said Vilnaos.
“Here and all yours.”
“All yours.”
Seymour rolled his eyes and muttered, “Great timing.”
“Ah! Excellent.” Talos’s body left Zolrya to come over and examine the trunk.
Zolrya pouted but followed, his hips swishing as he fussed, “What is it, my darling? Why aren’t you paying attention to me?” He clapped his hands, and the throng of dancers disappeared. “Hello? Are you even listening?”
“Yes, my love,” Talos said with the patient sort of tone reserved for cranky children. “Just a moment. We will dance again soon, I promise. This is the little mortal who retrieved my head.”
“Oh!” Zolrya blinked over at Seymour, and he grinned, showing a mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth. “Isn’t he a lovely one?”
“Th-thank you, Your Majesty-ness.” Seymour gulped as he stared up at Zolrya.
Holy fuck, he was tall.
Eight or nine feet, easily.
Sariel’s wings fluttered, and he stepped a bit closer to Seymour.
Day narrowed her eyes and hissed.
Probably for the best that the giant scary green faerie man couldn’t hear her.
Talos opened the trunk so he could lift up the massive bronze head inside. He set it on his neck, and there was an audible click. He stood, the bronze face unmoving though his face on the screen appeared irritated.
Zolrya turned his attention back to Talos, frowning. “What is the matter, love?”
“This is but the shell.” Talos removed the head, and his long fingers expertly cracked it open. It was empty inside, smooth and shiny so that it wasn’t immediately clear what was missing.
“What?” Zolrya snarled as he whirled on Absolis and Vilanos. “Where is the rest of it?”
Absolis and Vilanos both froze, their eyes comically wide.
“Well, you see,” Absolis stammered. “We are, we—”
“We are going to find out!” Vilanos chimed in. “We swear it, Your Majesty!”
“We swear!”
“No. I’ll take care of this myself.” Zolrya gritted his teeth in a vicious snarl.
“You two vapid idiots are clearly incapable of fulfilling even a simple task. You didn’t find a damn thing.
It was this human who did it for you! Talos saw everything!
He sees everything! And oh, how I do so long for more dancers.
I will take your precious little city, every last soul, and then yours—”
“Ah, my love. Please. Allow me,” Talos said sweetly as he returned his head to the chest. His other screens came to life with displays of spiraling code, vibrating as his face fragmented and glitched.
“I will bleed into the cell phone towers, travel through the signals, and burn every last one of them until—”
“Ah, but my good lord Talos!” Absolis politely but quickly interjected. “Your king needs you here.”
“Yes! The king needs you,” Vilanos urged. “You can’t possibly leave!”
“Think of the dances!”
“So many dances!”
“Oh, yes, the dances.” Zolrya hummed, draping himself over the metal man with a soft smile as if he hadn’t been outrageously pissed off less than a minute ago.
It was as if a switch had been flipped, and he sighed happily.
“It is true. I do need you, my love. So very much. You can’t possibly leave me right now.
How about a waltz? Or a minuet? Perhaps something else, one of those intimate dances, just for the two of us and us alone. ”
“Of course, my darling.” Talos chuckled. The screens went blank once more, though his digital face remained partially fractured. “Anything for you.”
Zolrya flapped his wings and giggled. “Mmm, you’re so good to me.”
“You deserve only the best.” Talos beamed.
“Which is why I have you.” Zolrya reached up to the screen, urging it down for a deep kiss.
Seeing anyone make out with a big piece of glass was weird enough, but then there was tongue.
A lot of it.
Day grimaced and retched noisily.
Sariel found the grass interesting, though he extended one of his wings to brush against Seymour’s arm. It was no doubt meant to comfort him, but Seymour really didn’t feel that great.