CHAPTER NINE #2
I don’t have to look at the boys to feel their rising tension. It’s a smog, leeching what clean air remains. It’s a hard knot in Kellen’s jaw. A narrowing of Lukan’s eyes. It’s the way Roan shifts like he’s ready to lunge forward and snatch me away.
“What are you talking about?” I ask Mom.
The hand twisted in my sweater unfurls and the arm snakes across my middle. Her chin settles on my shoulder.
“I think they should tell you,” she murmurs, a little taunt in her voice.
My gaze settles on Kellen and I don’t miss the faint glint of silver in his eyes. I pull in a slow breath, bracing myself.
“Kellen?”
“Yes, Kellen, tell her the truth. Tell her about your promise to your God to bring her to him. To offer her as a sacrifice to free him from his prison.” Her hand toys with the hem of my sweater. Drifts up to pick at the button. “Tell her what you actually are.”
“Let her go,” Kellen says instead. “Your fight is with us. She’s innocent in this.”
Mom huffs. “I would never hurt her. I’m protecting her from you and that monster who built his kingdom over the bodies of thousands of humans he slaughtered.”
“You’re twisting the truth,” Kellen bites out, and I realize he’s not denying it.
“Am I a sacrifice?” I whisper, heart thumping even as it creaks.
“No!” Kellen snaps at the same time Mom hisses, “Yes!”
“They need you, need you to lie on their Father’s altar and give yourself as a willing lamb to free him from the prison your people put him in to stop his murderous rampage.
” Mom lifts her head to fix Kellen with a sneer.
“Rina is coming home with me. Isn’t that right, Rina?
We’ll go home to your dad and have stuffing just the way you like. ”
“You can’t go with her,” Lukan snarls, taking a furious step forward only to come abruptly short, face slightly pale. “Rina sweetheart, please, come here.”
I think I want to. My brain is telling my legs to move but they’re refusing.
“See? She knows she can’t trust you,” Mom drawls, tugging me back another step. “She knows she’s safe with me.”
“What are you?” I blurt without thinking, head tilting in Mom’s direction.
Her blue eyes that have dulled a little too a murky, dirty dish water gray blink at me. “It’s me. Your mom. You know me, honey.”
But she smells different. Mom never wore anything with a scent. She was always so careful. But she’s drenched in a meadow of wildflowers. Dead, rotting ones under a scorching sun. Baked dirt and something decomposing in the bushes.
“What are they?” I ask instead, tracing the face I’ve known and loved my entire life.
The hand on my arm lifts to brush a lock of hair off my temple. “Shades. Fragments of a useless demiurge desperate for freedom. They wear the faces of those you know and love to gain your trust, but beneath the facade, they are wisps.”
I don’t know if that answered my question, but I’m not as scared as I thought I would be.
“What’s a demiurge?”
She picks at my button with long, talon nails. “A primordial God. A creature older than the stars. One of the original creators of earth. A blood thirsty monster who slaughtered humans for eons, drenched the soil with so much blood that everything that grows in his kingdom was red.”
I wait for the boys to protest. To deny the words. But they continue to watch me with a mix of panic and fury.
“How was he stopped?” I ask.
“By the other demiurge.” A coil of my hair is twisted between her fingers. “They bound him to the earth and his domain. They sealed him in so the only way to free him is if a stupid mortal lets him in.”
“Let me in, Rina.” My dream demon’s whisper echoes through me.
“I’ve been dreaming about him,” I whisper. “He tells me to let him in.”
Mom huffs. “But you’re a smart girl. You know you can’t go back to him.”
I stiffen. “Back?”
Something shifts in Mom’s face, a grimace like she’d said too much.
“Don’t worry about that. It was a different lifetime.” She touches my cheeks with her fingertips. The texture is wet. Slimy. “You never have to see him again. Once we get home—”
“What did you mean, can’t go back to him?” I push.
The softness shifts to annoyance. The corners of her mouth extend too far at the corners. Stretching nearly to her ears.
“Let it go, Rina. It’s not important. We need to get home to your father. You know he can’t be alone.”
But I’m not stupid. I’m not blind either. Even if there wasn’t a faint sheen of scales beneath the translucent skin, I know she’s lying.
“You’re not my mom,” I tell her firmly.
The smile slips. Her eyes blink and open to dark, reptilian slits.
I scream and a hand grabs my arm. I’m wrenched out of the thing’s hold and hit the floor when my numb legs fold beneath me.
Standing where my mom had been a second before is a gorgeous woman with the lower torso of a giant, black snake and a face made of nightmares. Her legs coil together, scales shimmering like an oil slick in the light. It twitches and tightens as she straightens to nearly brush the ceiling.
“Stupid girl,” she hisses through a lipless mouth. The maw opens wide enough to flash twin fangs and a long, forked tongue. “You just couldn’t do what you were told. I would have taken such good care of you.”
“Eaten her,” Roan snaps.
I didn’t think snakes could roll their eyes, but she does something close and sweeps back a chunk of oily, black hair off her shoulder.
It was the only thing covering her. Without it, her chest is bare.
Breasts plump and peaked with hard, black nipples.
The scales, I note, trying to drag my torso back, extend only to her armpits.
Her arms and shoulders are moderately human with only a faint glint of glimmer.
It almost appears as though she’s wearing a snake skin dress.
“I haven’t had a human soul in so long,” she grumbles. “We’re not all so lucky to have one drop into our lap.”
“This one is taken,” Kellen barks. “You knew that.”
The snake shrugs. “You can’t blame a girl for trying.
Besides, maybe she changed her mind since last time.
” Slitted eyes drop to where I’m still sprawled across the carpet with Lukan standing over me.
“She’s pretty. I could be convinced not to eat her right away.
” Her tail slithers and drifts towards my ankle. “Ever been fucked by a Shahmaran?”
Lukan stomps in the approaching appendage.
The creature shrieks and recoils, snapping her tail back behind her. She bares her fangs in a hiss.
“Get the fuck away from her,” he snarls.
Still scowling, the creature faces Kellen. “By the treaty, you can’t hurt me.”
“The treaty ceased to apply the moment you touched our queen. Your king will understand as he would do the same if his queen was threatened.”
Behind her, her tail flicks. The only show of agitation on an otherwise calm exterior.
“You know the rules. First come, first eat.”
Kellen closes the distance between them and stands eye to eye with the creature glowering at him with matching hatred.
“You knew she was ours. There is no claiming when she’s already claimed.
It’s only the fact that she’s unharmed that Father hasn’t pulled the earth from beneath your kingdom.
You think he’s weak because he is imprisoned?
Go near Rina again and he will make sure you become an example of his fury.
” The pause he gives sends a cold snap whipping through the room.
He lets it linger just long enough for the creature to shift before resuming.
“As for you. Father may not be here, but I am. Take Rina to the other room.”
Neither Lukan nor Roan argue when Lukan scoops me up into his arms and marches with me into the next room.
I get just a glimpse of Kellen rippling like a disturbed lake in the night before we’re rounding the corner.