Chapter 16 #2
“Shut up!” she spat out, only just managing to form the word. Her body shook. They began to circle each other.
He laughed. “They faced the gallows at dawn.”
Aicha’s grip around the hilt of her sword would have been painful had she not felt so numb. Her blade sung with a thirst for his blood, as did her own heart.
“SHUT UP!” she screamed again. The creature’s rage bled into her tongue.
“Your sister’s neck snapped on impact. So undeserving of a painless execution.”
The glee in his eyes set her ablaze, flooding through her veins. She did not want to hear it. She could not.
“But your father? He was not so fortunate, choked like a—”
Her movement was uncoordinated and reckless as she slashed her sword at him.
Aicha’s scream was inhuman, feral, as her blade sliced against his skin, beginning at his cheek to go diagonally across his face to his chest. He screamed, but dodged her next attack until he raised his own sword.
He briefly staggered back, swiping blindly in the air.
“You fucking whore!” he spat, their swords clashing and disturbing what had been a haunting silence on the streets.
Aicha blocked his blow, hissing as he nicked her shoulder.
Eyes wild and manic, she moved without thinking, in a manner her father would have punished her for.
But her father wasn’t here, and that thought sent her further into a frenzy.
When she stumbled, narrowly missing a strike to her throat, she dropped her sword as he slammed into her.
Gripping the back of her neck while he aimed his sword at her, on the precipice of driving it through her torso.
Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the blade, halting its movements as the sharp and dirtied metal sank into the skin of her palm.
They stood there, at a physical impasse as he pushed against her grip, trying to force the blade to slide through her hand.
But he did not know the limits that Aicha had been pushed to in her training, how hard her baba had worked her until she could not breathe.
How her own fingers bled from injuries. The bruises she had endured, the look of pride Fouad had granted her the first time she withstood a punch.
Blood poured from between her fingers, dripping onto the tiled floor and down her wrist. She released a cry of frustration as her hold began to weaken.
When the blade shifted, panic flickered in her chest. She watched blood soak into the fabric of the bracelet that Naima had returned.
The bright colours became sullied with her own blood, seeming to reflect the state of their destroyed home.
She felt as though the last tresses of her sanity were evaporating.
Gone. It was all gone. They were all gone.
The impulse came naturally, as simple as reaching out to grab a cup that had been tipped over.
With an ease that should have scared her, she sank her teeth into the spot where the soldier’s Adam’s apple lay and clamped down.
The soldier released an ear-splitting howl that would echo in her eardrums for days.
His hands yanked on her hair painfully in a desperate attempt to pull her off him.
Instead, Aicha’s jaw locked, slicing into flesh as his screams continued.
She felt her jaw ache—and the taste and smell of his blood consumed her.
She found that she liked it, that the unwanted friend inside her took pleasure in the blood that spilled from between her teeth.
She hungered for more, and Aicha did too.
Her teeth ground together and she pulled back, taking with her a chunk of his flesh.
Blood spurted from the wound, coating her cheeks and jaw, and he fell to the ground.
She spat out his flesh as he crawled backwards, choking on his own blood, grabbing at his throat in an attempt to stem the bleeding.
Bending down to her knees, she leaned over him, no longer able to hear the sounds of his desperate gasps and babbled pleas for mercy.
She wouldn’t have cared anyway. She’d never care.
Everything became muted, as though she was submerged. It was almost calming.
He looked too alive.
He had come into her home, destroyed it and dirtied it, taken her family, and still he clung to his life.
Aicha felt the heaviness of his sword, flipping it in her hand, until she once again gripped the blade, and the handle faced away from her.
Tilting her head, the corner of Aicha’s lips quirked upwards, as if the friend within her found it amusing to notice the emblem of her father’s business on the hilt. The five-point star.
A weapon he had been forced to forge for them.
It was almost poetic, now, that she would use it to give the soldier his finishing blow.
The hilt smashed into his face with a sickening crunch, one that Aicha enjoyed.
So she did it again. And again. And again.
Her movement became practised, eyes glossing over and her jaw setting as she watched the blood burst from the dent in his face.
He slowly quietened, his body becoming limp, as she caved in his face.
Until the sunburn on his cheeks was hidden with blood and shards of bone, until his thin nose disappeared into the gaping hole in his face and his once green eyes had burst. Until his face was no longer recognisable.
And Aicha continued, intent on watching the bone fragments and strewn teeth disappear into the mesh of softened flesh.
Until he no longer held any traces of who he once was.