Chapter 23 Malachi
Malachi
Conniving little cunt.
“No need for growling. I’m just here to check on my big sister.” Piper says, the words wrapped in a nauseatingly sweet, mortal lilt that makes my stomach turn.
“She’s your little sister,” I snap, baring my fangs in warning. “If you’re going to wear the skin, learn the history, you bureaucratic, ass-licking shrimp.”
“Malachi, stop it!” Eden’s voice cracks from behind me, a brittle sound caught between a dozen different terrors.
“Be quiet, mortal,” Piper says. “The adults are speaking.”
Eden freezes, her breath hitching in a way that suggests her heart has stopped. “Wh—what?”
“That isn't your sister,” I bark, not looking away from the vile threat before us.
“Then what is it?” Eden chokes out.
“A Compliance Warden, from the Ninth Division,” I snarl.
“A—a what? Where—where’s Piper then?”
“Wardens get fired out of a cannon,” I spit. “They don't have the luxury of carrying shells across the Veil. They land as vile, naked little shrimps, and they have to requisition the first biological template they find or they’ll flicker out in seconds.”
The Warden smirks as she reaches up to smooth down a stray hair in her ponytail. “Correct. I travel light. I arrived at the coordinates, and your sister was the first thing to park her car outside. Quite the stroke of luck, wouldn't you say?”
“You... you just took her?” Eden whispers. “Because she was there?”
The Warden lets out a long sigh. “I hit her with a sensory dampener in the parking lot, borrowed the image, and here we are. It’s remarkably efficient.
She won't remember a thing—just a migraine and a missing hour when she wakes up behind the wheel.
Though I must say, her internal monologue is loud, and its preoccupation with her 'failed' relationship is... exhausting.”
I don't have to see Eden to know her face has gone bloodless; I can feel her fingers twitching against my bicep, her nails digging in so hard she’s at the point of piercing the flesh.
“Now. Enough of the chatter,” the Warden says as reaches into the air and pulls out a pair of manacles forged from iron and knotted sinew, pulsing with a sickly violet light. “You’re coming home.”
Beside us, the House-Beast goes feral, turning into a blurred arc of puffed-up fur and unsheathed claws, scrambling backward toward the kitchen in a skittering, low-bellied panic, her hisses drowned out by the heavy, atmospheric pressure now curdling the air in the room.
“No,” I say, shifting my weight to make sure Eden stays behind my outstretched arm.
With a deeply put-upon sigh, as if I’m a child throwing a tantrum over a toy, Piper reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a narrow shard of dark glass, its surface etched with shifting symbols. She lifts it, scanning it over me from head to toe, cataloguing me into the system.
It emits a series of sharp chirps as a strobe of harsh violet light sweeps over my chest and bleeds into Eden behind me. The glass begins to vibrate, the smoke within it turning from a sickly grey to a pulsing crimson that illuminates the Warden’s borrowed face in deathly flashes.
“Oh, you absolute moron.” She moves the glass to her lips, her eyes narrowing in disbelief. “Warden Seven-Two-Nine to Dispatch. Subject Virezeal has initiated a biological tether to the mortal Veraxia warned us about. The readings are off the charts. It’s... messy.”
A static hiss erupts from the shard. “Define 'messy,' Seven-Two-Nine. What kind of tether?”
“It’s a blood-bind,” the Warden mutters with a look of pure irritation.
The words smack me right in the gut.
So it wasn’t just some sickness leftover from crossing the Veil?
No. That’s impossible.
For the first time since I stepped through the portal—since I tasted mortal air and decided consequences were a future problem—I realize something with absolute, sickening clarity.
I fucked up.
The Warden speaks into the glass again. “She’s fully anchored to his core. Do you require me to still perform the memory wipe on the mortal? I haven’t worked a case like this before.”
“Negative,” the voice from the glass snaps. “We don't have time for the paperwork. Terminate the mortal. The shock of the death will snap the bind, then we can bring Virezeal back with force and send a clean-up crew.”
My heart stops. The world goes silent, save for the roar of the blood in my ears and Eden’s quiet whimper behind me as her fingers clutch at my arm.
“Is Veraxia okay with that?” the Warden asks, idly testing the weight of the manacles.
“She doesn’t need to know,” the voice crackles back. “She wanted him back; we’re bringing him back. The mortal is an unauthorized variable. End her.”
“Understood.” She pockets the device, drops the manacles to the table, and in one fluid, nauseating motion, her delicate fingers burst, bony pincers tearing through the fingertips. Its swallowed-up eyes land right on my little summoner, and the world turns a violent, searing red.
“You should have settled on the paperwork,” I snarl.
I hit the creature with the force of a falling star, the momentum slamming us both across the room. I don’t give it a second to breathe. I pin it against the wall and drive the heel of my palm into its chest, the ribs snapping and grinding like dry kindling.
Needle-sharp fangs sink into my shoulder, piercing through my shell, deep into the silver flesh underneath.
A guttural roar of pain tears from my throat as blood bursts through the punctures.
In a flash of movement, Eden’s by my side, her face a mask of primal, terrified determination.
With a deep, gritted breath, she plunges a kitchen knife deep into the side of the creature's neck. It releases my shoulder, its head snapping back as my essence sprays from the wound, coating Eden’s hands.
Seeing her like that—my little summoner, blood-stained and ferocious, protecting the monster she’s supposed to be afraid of—ignites a burning surge of adrenaline in my gut.
Fuck yes.
I don't waste the opening.
There’s a sickening crunch as my fists meets the center of its face.
The nasal bone collapses and the orbital sockets shatter inward.
In one smooth move, I grab it by the jaw and the top of its skull.
And I twist. Then my hand digs into its chest and rips through the sternum.
Within the tangle of grey viscera and bone, a solid, barely pulsing weight meets my palm.
Wet leather tears as I haul its heart into the light—a dense knot of necrotic muscle humming with the static of the Ninth. The Warden’s eyes bulge, pupils blowing out into ink-stained voids as the light behind them flickers and dies.
The shell beneath me finally goes still, the structure of the bones collapsing into a heap of useless, cooling matter.
The soft, freckled skin of her sisters stolen face dissolves like wet tissue paper, revealing the nightmare of pale-pink, plated flesh, and the needle-lined mandibles that are still twitching in post-mortem reflex.
A wicked, maniacal laugh bubbles up from my throat. Every primal instinct I have is screaming in triumph, a chaotic standing ovation for the slaughter.
That felt fucking good. No—it felt better than good. The hot, oily slide of viscera, the cracking of bones—fuuuuuuuck. I feel euphoric.
Then, the cold, sharp bite of metal presses into the my throat. My head snaps up, the crimson haze of violence vanishing as she forces me back, making me stand until I’m pinned against the wall.
“What the fuck is a blood-bind,” she snarls, digging the blade in against my windpipe, deep enough to draw a bead of dark, sluggish blood.
“It’s exactly as it sounds,” I grit out. “We’re bound. By blood. But I swear on Satan’s blades, I had no idea it was possible.”
“Bullshit. You knew.” she accuses, her voice trembling. “You’re a demon, you must’ve known! This is your—”
“A demon I am; a librarian I am not,” I cut her off.
“My particular talent has always been fucking around—with an impressive track record of not finding out. I spent centuries surrounded by occultists who jerked off to the nuances of all this kind of bullshit, but I usually tuned out the second they started yapping. Not my finest move, in retrospect.”
“We’re in this mess… because you tuned it out?” she grits out.
“You try being stuck in a veritable cage your entire existence, little summoner, and then tell me you wouldn’t jump at the first crack of light you saw without thinking through the repercussions.
But let’s be honest. You already did jump, didn’t you?
You were so desperate to drag your Corpse-Boy back to the light that you didn’t think it through either.
You wanted out of your grief; I wanted out of the boredom. This is on you as much as it is me.”
“Oh fuck you. At least I didn’t lie! You looked me in the eye and told me Hell had my coordinates but it didn't matter. You promised no one was coming!”
“I never promised a damn thing,” I hiss, leaning my weight into the blade to test her nerve. “But I did not think Veraxia would waste the resources to actually come and get me. I didn’t think—”
“Yeah, you didn’t think!” she yells, her voice cracking as she shakes the knife at me. “You were fine with me being collateral damage as long as you got to stay out of Hell!”
“I am not fine with it!” I rumble back, my own adrenaline-fueled temper exploding.
“Why do you think I just tore that thing's sternum open? Why do you think I’m standing here covered in its sludge?
If I wanted you dead, I would have stepped aside and let it happen.
I stopped it from killing you because I decided you weren't for the taking!”
She opens her mouth to argue, but the fight seems to drain out of her, replaced by a cold, dawning horror.
“So... the kit,” she whispers, her voice barely audible over the sound of my own thudding heart. “It isn’t going to work, is it? We won't be able to just wash this away?”
“You're assuming correctly,” I rasp. “That kit is for a smudge on a window. This? This is a structural collapse. You can't scrub out a blood-bind with some store-bought incense and a chant—I know that much.”
“Fuck!” she shouts, the word exploding out of her as she digs the knife in further.
“Enough with the theatrics, Eden.” I reach up and swat the knife away with a flick of my wrist.
She stumbles backwards, the blade dropping to the floor.
“So what’s the plan, then?” She says quietly, wiping her ichor-coated hands onto her pants as if she can peel the last few minutes off her skin. “What are we going to do? Live like this forever?”
Beneath us, the Warden’s body and the stolen skin disintegrate, turning to a fine, grey ash that vanishes before it even hits the air. Within seconds, the floor is empty, save for the odd spatter of viscera that refused to evaporate.
“I don't know, Eden.” I shrug. “But I’ll live. A luxury you might not have soon if we keep standing here debating my character.”
The House-Beast finally creeps out from the kitchen, her belly low to the floor, sniffing at the spots where the Warden’s ash has already vanished.
Eden scoops her up without preamble and sinks onto the couch, burying her face in the animal's fur, whispering broken, muffled apologies into the cat's ears.
My fingers hook into the hidden seam behind my neck, and with a loud, suctioning rip that echoes through the quiet apartment, I yank the suit downward.
I grunt through clenched teeth, my muscles cording as I strip the translucent, shimmering suit down from my shoulders until it dangles at my waist, the empty arms swinging uselessly against my thighs like the shed skin of a snake.
“Jesus Christ,” Eden breathes.
“Stop fucking saying that,” I grit out, pressing a hand to the putrid wound on the shoulder as I begin to pace.
I was supposed to be the one in control, the one enjoying the vacation. Instead, I’ve dragged a fragile, grieving girl into the middle of something she doesn't understand, and I barely do if I’m honest.
I’ve made her a target. And for some reason, the thought of her light being extinguished because of my boredom makes the cold blood in my veins turn to ice.
I need to fix this.