Chapter 17
Lucky was dozing when I got back to where I’d left him and Harrison—not so good for keeping an eye on things.
Frowning, I put the karruk inside the edge of the tunnel then went back to the truck.
Digging around in the extras in the back of the truck, I found what I was looking for and threw the extra heavy leather coat on.
The fur lining was still soft and smelled slightly of Veyyr and I cursed under my breath.
Of course it was his. I hoped he missed it. Even if that was not why I picked it.
Hopping out of the truck bed, I walked around to the front where Lucky was ‘on guard’. His chin was to his chest, his arms folded, and his ass up against the bumper of the truck.
I tapped his bicep and he lurched forward, spun, and sent a fist straight for my head. I ducked easily. “At least your reflexes are good.”
“FUCK!” He gasped and clutched at his heart as his eyes locked on me. “Fuck, I never fall asleep like that…”
“I’m going back into the tunnel. Don’t leave without me.” I patted his arm again.
“You sure?” He leaned over, his hands on his thighs. “Like, you were in there deep before.”
He had no idea just how deep. “Yeah, I’m sure, I think I know this place.
It’s sparking memories.” All truth, I just didn’t think I needed to tell him about the gorgon waiting for me in there.
I mean, if I died, Veyyr could just go find himself another Tracker.
The only person that might miss me would be Sorrow.
Speaking of, he sat on the front of the hood, gripping the top bar of the oversized bumper. I ran a hand over his head and scratched just under his jaw. He’d grown on me. His eyes closed and he leaned into the pressure. “Nice.”
“Sorrow, you wake them up if danger is coming.”
The sorrowbird fluffed his feathers and grumbled as I took my hand away…fucking grumbled….at me. “Fa-wk. Fine.”
“It will be fine,” was what I said as I stepped back into the lair of the gorgon, holding the karruk at my side.
Even though I wasn’t sure it would be fine at all.
I couldn’t seem to pull up much in my mind about gorgons.
I knew they were old mythology from before our world was broken.
Medusa…was that a name that was tied to a gorgon?
Something about turning people to stone?
The darkness enveloped me the second I stepped into the shadow of the tunnel, as if a door had been shut behind me.
I looked over my shoulder and could see the truck, Sorrow sitting on the hood, Lucky watching me disappear, his mouth opened and he was talking but I heard nothing.
They were still standing in the light of mid-day…
but the light didn’t reach me. A void. The gorgon lived in a void of some sort that trapped darkness in and light out.
Wild.
“Hmm. I can smell the bird! Bring it!”
Light bloomed ahead of me, candles coming to life on every ledge—on bits of cars, in the grates and vents, on the broken edges where the tunnel had partially collapsed.
The gorgon was still curled around herself, propped up on the coils of her serpentine body.
With all the light, I could see her colors more clearly.
Scales of deep green, purple, and a zig-zag of black down the spine.
I handed her the bird. “I gutted it.”
“Ah, pity, I should have told you to leave it whole.” She shrugged one thin shoulder; the bones straining against the skin and then flipped the bird high into the air.
I couldn’t do anything but stare as her upper body shifted lighting fast into that of a snake, the triangular head easily three feet across with fangs as long as my forearms. She opened her mouth and caught the karruk, swallowing it whole in two quick gulps.
The lump in her neck slid down and once it was past the point where her human body would have started, she shifted back to her partial human form. A healthy glow covered her skin, and her shoulders were not as thin as they’d been a moment before.
“Excellent, you are a good hunter!” She grinned and I stared as her thin cheeks filled, and her breasts—now bare of any clothing seeing as she ripped through it with her giant snake head—lifted as if she were being plumped up before my eyes.
“Here,” I slipped out of Veyyr’s jacket and threw that to her as well. “Maybe take it off before you shift. It’ll last longer.”
The gorgon caught the jacket and stared down at me. “You are…gifting me this?”
“Well, I stole it from someone else, so I don’t know about a gift. But your clothes were in tatters.” I shrugged. “What did you learn?”
The weight of her gaze was easy to hold, and I didn’t back down as she drifted closer, still holding the jacket as if I had given her a bomb, and not a way to stay warm. “You…gifted me this. Without being asked.”
I frowned and spread my hands to the side. “This world is hard, I remember that much. What does it cost me to ease someone else’s burden when the cost is a jacket?”
Her mouth hung slightly open and then she smiled.
“Oh, I have waited for this, for you. I just had no idea…” Her laugh was sudden and showed me far more of her than I wanted to see.
She slipped the jacket on and slid away from me.
“Come then, let me show you what I have for you. What name do you have now?”
Now.
She knew I had another name before this. “Mallory. Mal.”
“Mal.” Her head tipped to the side. “A name that has historically meant unlucky, or unfortunate. A name of hardship and depending on the Latin route, can mean ill-omened. And this was the name that you were given upon your…re-birth into this world?” Her hands were on that same large book, her back to me.
Ill omened. Unlucky. Just like Sorrow. Fuck…someone was playing with me, and it sent a river of determination through my blood. “Whatever my name was before, doesn’t matter. I’ll own this one and make them regret it.”
Her smile was wide that even from the side I could see the edges of it—almost as if her jaw unhinged. “Excellent. Oh, so very excellent. I like this version of you much better.”
This version of me…was I not close to how I had been?
A pit of uncertainty rolled inside of me. What if my unique set of skills had allowed me to do terrible things? Was I the villain in this story and that’s why I’d been cast into the Rift?
I spun the ring on my left hand. There could be answers about the piece of jewelry too if I asked the right questions. “Do you have a name? You know both of mine, I think it’s fair you give me at least one.”
She flipped a few pages. “Do you not remember your mythology?”
I crossed my arms and dug through the recesses of my mind. “Medusa. Euryale. Sthenos.”
“Stheno. Close enough. And which of them to do you think I am?” Her eyes didn’t slip to me, she was too engrossed in the pages, her fingers trailing the words.
Gods it felt like I was pulling the information out of mud, but it was there, as if the knowledge of the world was allowable, but not that of my heart.
Like the pages of a book that I’d read in another lifetime.
“Medusa was mortal, and unless the stories are wrong, has been gone a long time. Euryale and Stheno were immortal. It seems most likely you are one of the two older sisters.” What I didn’t want to say out loud was that the oldest, Stheno, was also the most dangerous.
A monster who was both brilliant, and violent, depending on whether you offended her.
If I guessed the flakey middle sister, and it was Stheno, I would be up shit creek.
“Stheno.”
Her head finally swivelled around. “Why that sister?”
If I was wrong, I could still offend her, and I doubted it would go well.
“Because it’s obvious you value knowledge.
” I motioned to the book in her hand. “And you and I both know you could have killed me without an effort. And by the book I read, if it was correct, Stheno was the most dangerous of the three sisters, despite Medusa’s reputation overshadowing the others. ”
“Hmm.” She pursed her lips and a cold bead of sweat slid down my spine as her eyes narrowed, and the tip of her tail flicked back and forth. Fuck. Had I been wrong?
“And you think Medusa or Euryale could not have killed you easily?”
I didn’t move, feeling very much like a rabbit being stared down by a large snake. “I’m sure that any one of the gorgon sisters wouldn’t have an issue with ending my life if they didn’t like me.”
A huff blew out of her and then she laughed.
“You are right, I am Stheno, but I wanted to see you sweat a little, Tracker. At least you are somewhat educated. And humbler than when you were last here. My last sister, Euryale prefers the coast, and the ocean caves. Last I heard, she made her home close to the dragon’s nesting grounds. ”
She flopped the large book down on the ground at my feet. “That is the spell I believe was woven into you. It is powerful, Mallory.”
The book was two feet by four feet, and even open wide it was a foot off the ground. I dropped to a crouch and started reading. Or tried to. The words weren’t words, but glyphs in a pattern I didn’t understand.
I shook my head, frustration flowing hot. I’d thought I was close to finding out something more…and now just another fucking fucker fuck of a bucket of fucks dead end. “How the fuck am I supposed to read this? It’s not even Greek. It’s just fucking scribbles.”
Stheno lowered herself, took one of my hands and placed my palm onto the paper.
“Not scribbles. A ward. A witch’s mind-lock. Anyone without the proper blood—such as another magic user like myself, sees anything but that. And you…if you are your mother’s child truly should also be able to break it.”
I looked up at her, her dark eyes freakishly large and glittering. “My immunity?”
“It should break the lock, while you touch the paper.”
Tearing my eyes from hers, I looked back to the book and pressed my palms to either side of it. The glyphs shivered, lines running backward, the symbols unbraiding into a readable text beneath.
A touch of Lethe
To be cast upon one that you wish to be yours fully, and forever.
Water from a seam of forgetting
Salt from the tears of a dragon
Blood of the caster
Rope made of a veilrunner’s tail
Blood of the one whose soul you wish to claim
A blade quenched in the waters of Lethe, to cut the memories and mind free
A mirror polished with dried nightshade and ash from a blacksmith’s forge
An item with which to complete the binding
Bind your chosen one with the veilrunner’s hair, both hands and feet. Mix the tears of the dragon with half of the water from the seam of forgetting. Draw your casting circle with the salted water.
Spread the ash and nightshade on the mirror, then shatter it and lay the shards upon the chest of the one you wish to own.
Mix your blood with the remaining water, stirring three times, slowly and with intent with the unbinding knife. Speak the Words of severing five times to invoke the elements.
Pour the water down the chosen one’s throat, then cut the air above the subject’s brow, and heart. (This “cut” severs memory pathways instead of flesh.)
Drip the caster’s blood onto the item you have chosen for binding and attach it to your chosen one.
The ink on the page seemed to blur as I read the lines of severing, knowing that they’d been read over me and still not finding the memory.
“All memories shall fall away like silt in a riverbed.
The mind becomes a slate unmarked.
The heart empties of all those before.
What remains can be remade.
What is written after shall be true.”
I stopped reading, my fingers flexing as if I would crumple the pages and make what I was seeing not real. Not true.
Before I could say anything, before I could find words of any kind, Stheno grabbed the book, and snapped it shut.
“It wasn’t meant to make you just forget, girl.
It was meant to make you re-form. This spell wiped you clean of everything you were, of everything that came before…
but she never got the chance to press her own wants into you.
” She crouched down to me once more. “Because you escaped her, the question is how? What is the first thing you remember?”
I pressed my fingers to my head, the world spinning. “I woke up in a seam. A Rift. There were riftwolves hunting me, pushing me upward.”
“Nothing before that?”
Stumbling upward, I paced a circle. “I have a memory of Thorn when she did this. She stood over me with the knife…”
Stheno reached for something at the top of the tunnel and brought down a long piece of leather that she wrapped around her middle, cinching the winter coat around her middle. “The knife of unbinding. Anything else?”
“I fell into the earth, away from her.”
Her hands stilled. “Into the earth? Like a seam that opened at just the right time?”
I closed my eyes and tried to make more of the memory clearer. “I can see her over me, I can see the knife and I—the ground opened up around me, not like a seam, more like being swallowed, dragged downward into quicksand.”
And yes, my body knew how quicksand felt.
“Hmm. And what item do you think she bound you with?”
The world seemed to slow as I lifted my left hand to stare at the ring that curled tight around my finger. “My wedding band.”
Stheno opened her mouth and then she let out a long low hiss, her arms spreading wide as she spun toward me. “You dare enter my home?”
“What?” I took a step back. Damn it, I should have been smarter, should have kept my guard up. But it wasn’t me she was looking at, but someone to my right.
Veyyr stepped out of the darkness, his hand clamping down hard on my upper arm, before jerking me hard to his side. “You have something that belongs to me.”