Chapter 24
The damned woman had escaped him again. Jessamine had a way of disappearing into a crowd that he would never understand, considering he was a god directly connected to her, and he should have been able to follow her anywhere.
But then someone had grabbed his arm, asking him a question like he was the man he was pretending to be.
He’d shaken them off, only to be waylaid yet again.
But this time it was the man who had warned him off in the garden, the young man who now had wild eyes and looked very much like he’d seen a ghost.
“What?” Elric snarled.
“We have to leave.”
“Leave? Do you think I would even entertain leaving without my lady on my arm?” Elric wanted to punch a hole in a wall. At least then, maybe it would feel like he was doing something.
But the young man shook his head frantically, his hair flopping in all directions. “Listen to me. I know what they’re doing. I know there is a risk that you cannot take. We have to go.”
“There is no risk too great for her,” he muttered, looking through the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of raven hair. “If you wish to run, young man, you should.”
“We can’t stay here! Someone needs to survive—”
Elric reached out and snagged the young man by the lapel. Dragging him so close he could see the young man’s pupils dilate with fear, he hissed, “Who are you? And how do you know so much about all this?”
Hands wrapped around his own, but the man wasn’t struggling.
Not in the slightest. He was just holding on to Elric for dear life.
Fear ran throughout his entire form, but he was clutching Elric not with fear of him, but fear for him.
“I will gladly tell you everything you wish to know if we leave this place!”
“Then you should leave. I have a house at the end of Rose Street.”
“The haunted one?”
“Yes. Meet us there when you can, And if you touch anything that is my property, I will flay your skin from your form and make you eat it piece by piece. Do you understand me?”
He hadn’t thought the young man could get any paler, but there it was. The last bit of blood rushed out of his features and away from his lips, leaving him rather corpse-like in appearance.
But then the young man ran from the room, pushing and shoving people out of his way as though there were hounds nipping at his heels.
A murmur rose through the crowd. Obviously people were getting uncomfortable with so much activity.
Elric couldn’t blame them. This was supposed to be a party full of people reveling in their own power, yet there had now been instances of four people running.
He would have found it all amusing if he didn’t feel the tingle of magic running through the room. He hadn’t felt even an ounce of it before now. Jessamine was whispering a request through him, and he knew that something terrible was about to happen.
He helped her with a protection spell but felt the magic still building around him, like a lightning storm was brewing where he least expected it. The power actually lifted the hairs on his arms, and he hadn’t been around a spell like that in a very long time.
Strange. Even stranger that no one around him seemed to react to it.
Most people were milling about the main area of the home with the black-and-white-checkered floor.
They lingered by the stairs, clearly expecting Fortuna or someone else to appear at the top of them.
And yet, Elric still had the sensation that something terrible was about to happen. Something he couldn’t control.
This magic wasn’t his, but it was familiar.
There was but one god who had given their people the ability to cast spells like this.
The Crone and her priestesses had magic born from the heart.
It was, essentially, magic created from emotion.
The greater the emotion, loss, rage, fear, the better the spell.
He hesitated to use his magic to prod at it, because he wasn’t sure what it would do in response.
Could a priestess of the Crone have survived this long? He doubted it. The Crone wasn’t able to control life or death. Her priestesses died far more often than his witches, in fact, because they were usually too pious to sell their souls to him.
But why was there priestess magic in this room?
Hissing out a long breath, he tried to move through the crowd unseen, but another older gentleman grabbed his arm. “Martin! I haven’t seen you in years.”
“Always good to see you, old chap,” he muttered, slapping a hand a little too hard on the man’s shoulder and trying to disentangle himself.
“Do you still have that… playroom?” Something disgusting twinkled in the old man’s eyes. “I would love to come up to your hunting cabin and experience it for myself again. I did very much enjoy my time there with you.”
“I’m sure you did.” Elric wanted to put his fist through this man’s chest and yank out his still-beating heart. “But unfortunately, I sold the cabin.”
“Whyever would you do that?”
“Too many dirty old men soiled it.” With a snarl, he ripped himself free from the old man’s grasp and moved through the crowd again.
There it was. A boiling, crackling sensation that only got worse the more he focused on it, like a bubble of magic building around them. Something was about to happen. He knew it. And then… it burst.
An icy tingle ran down his spine, like water dripping from the nape of his neck all the way down to the backs of his knees.
Then the first person groaned. It was a woman next to him, her bright red corset making it hard for her to bend at the waist where she was clutching her stomach.
She moaned again, her voice carrying over the sudden silence in the room as everyone seemed to hold their breath.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” the man beside her asked, placing his hand on her back.
She opened her mouth to reply, but instead vomited blood. It poured out of her mouth in a fountain of bright color and splashed on the tile beneath her. The blood spread too quickly, like it was thinner than normal blood should be.
Everyone stared at the red liquid splashed across the pristine black-and-white-checkered floor. No one moved. Not even a cough.
“Was it something she ate?” someone muttered, their words carrying a little too loudly in the room.
But then another guest gasped and clutched at their stomach, flailing for support, but no one wanted this person to touch them.
The entire crowd lunged away from the two people who were now vomiting on the floor.
“What is going on?” Elric murmured, sidestepping a pool of blood as he tried to move toward the stairs.
A guard there held out his hand to stop him, his eyes wild with fear.
But there were veins in that man’s eyes that were far too visible.
Red striations that looked like they were writhing in the whites.
And suddenly, the guard hissed out a breath.
Those eyes roved, but they were suddenly staring past Elric.
“Who turned out the lights?” the guard snarled.
“No one.” Elric moved out of the man’s way as he lifted his arms and wildly waved them in front of him.
“What do you mean, man? I cannot see!”
“You’re blind.” Elric watched as a few more people in the crowd shrieked and started clawing at their eyes. One woman did it so hard that her nails left bloody strips as she tore at her own face. Panic had started to set in. Soon enough, people were running for the doors.
But the doors were closed. Locked from the outside.
All of these people, the greatest and most powerful in Inverholm and the kingdoms beyond, were trapped. No one was going to let them out, and no one was going to help them. Not while they were sick.
And that’s what they were, he realized. They were infected. One by one, their skin mottled. Pustules bloomed on their flesh as they scratched at their arms and cried out for help.
He stood there by the stairs, watching with shock as they all ran for the doors. They plastered themselves against the wood, rattling it so hard he was surprised it didn’t burst from its frame. They were shrieking now, too, begging gods who weren’t listening for mercy.
“Open these doors!”
“Please, someone help us!”
“This is a mistake! I wasn’t supposed to be here!”
Over and over, they cried out. One of the men shouted in a tone that was different from the others, and Elric feared he was being crushed against the door, but there was no room for mercy here.
An old woman slipped in the blood on the floor, falling onto her back and crying out in pain. But no one reached out to help her, not even to pull her upright. It was complete and utter pandemonium, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Not even a god.
Eventually, a few other people realized that as well. They were mostly older, wiser. People who had seen their life flash before their eyes a few times now, and knew this time they wouldn’t cheat death.
They backed away from the door, and that’s when he realized how much this kingdom still needed the gods. Because in the hour of their need, many of them dropped to their knees, and they prayed.
What a horror it was to watch. His siblings were dead and gone.
They hadn’t been in this realm for centuries, and the only god left was him.
But still, these people believed. They begged and pleaded to gods who could no longer hear them, and likely wouldn’t have helped even if they were still alive.
They promised all the good deeds they would do and all the lives they would save.
The sacrifices they would make. The children they would teach to worship the gods as well.
So many offerings to gods who no longer existed.
Someone touched his leg, and he looked down to see a young woman there.
Her eyes were bloodshot and wider than they should have been.
A small trickle of blood trailed down her chin, and when she smiled up at him, her teeth were coated red.
But still, the little redhead tried to be pretty as she met his gaze.
“You aren’t like us, are you?” she asked, her voice thin and reedy.
He bent down, easing onto his knees before her as he looked her over. “No, I am not.”
“Are we dying?”
“I don’t know. I have never seen a person become infected before.” He tilted his head to the side, watching as a blister formed on her cheek, marring her pretty face even further. “What does it feel like?”
“Not quite like death at all,” she whispered. “Like I can feel myself leaking out of my ears and I don’t know how to plug the hole.”
“How tragic.”
“Indeed.” She took a deep breath, or at least tried to do so. Something wet stuck in her lungs when she did, and a wheeze rattled in her chest. “Are you a god?”
“I was once.”
“Can one become something other than a god?”
He pondered the question, knowing that she deserved an answer in death at the very least. “I became a god, so I suppose there is a way for me to unbecome one as well.”
“Do you know how to do that?”
Elric shook his head. “No, little one. I do not know how to shed the chains of godhood any more than you could escape the web of mortality.”
“Oh.” Her eyes turned glassy, and he watched their vivid blue be overtaken by cloudy gray, as if there was nothing left for her to see but a shadow of the world she clung to. “Do you want to become something else?”
“Once upon a time, I would have said yes. I had days when I wanted to be human more than anything else in this world. I wanted to live as you do. I wanted to see the world as you did. Feel pain, suffer, love, and endure.” He reached out for her, dragging her body across the floor so she could lean her head against his side.
“But now I would not give it up for anything. This power is what keeps the people I care about alive.”
“Could you keep me alive?” She’d tilted her head against his shoulder, but he knew she couldn’t see him anymore. “I would do anything if you kept me alive.”
He could. He could gift her life and keep her as a pet. There was a time in his life when he would have. But when he looked at this woman all he could see was Jessamine, and how lacking she was in comparison to his queen.
So instead of casting any spell, he merely stroked his hand through the woman’s hair and held her face against his shoulder. “No, my dear. I’m so sorry to say that I cannot keep you alive.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“Both.”
“All right,” she sighed, and he could hear the rattle even further. It was deeper in her chest now, more prevalent than before. “What god are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who are you? Who do I say led me to death when I am in the other realm?”
He smiled and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “The Deathless One is with you, child. My shadows will guide you through the next realm toward a happier place.”
And then she died. So easily. There was no battle, like Jessamine, who always fought tooth and nail against losing her life.
This woman was here, and in a blink, she wasn’t.
Until her body suddenly inhaled again. She gasped, but it wasn’t her in there.
He didn’t feel her soul at all. Not in the realm where he had promised her guidance, and certainly not in this room.
Elric stood with her, watching as the girl rose to her feet. Her hands were claws at her side, her body twisted in a strange manner that wasn’t human at all. Her head cocked to the side, her mouth working as black ooze started leaking from her lips.
She made a horrible grinding sound and then shuffled forward. There were only a few people left alive in the room, he observed, all slowly turning into these shambling creatures.
Not a single one of them had a soul. And not a single one of them had passed through the in-between realm where he was supposed to feel them.
“Jessamine,” he growled, before turning and taking the stairs two at a time. He would find his gravesinger, and then they would discover what Leon Bishop was really doing.
Because the king was no longer here.