Chapter 26 Diantha
Diantha
My world was never something I divided into befores and afters. Change was too constant.
Even when I decoupled my spirit from my body at eight years old, which should have been the biggest before and after in my life, the event was quickly overshadowed.
That year was the first time we were evicted from an apartment.
Someone had lied to the super, told them my mother was a hoarder and had brought in furniture infested with bed bugs.
We spent the next few weeks in a women’s shelter. Another potential before and after—but no.
Because at the end of that horrible month, my mother met a new boyfriend. Todd.
Fucking Todd. He made our lives miserable. He had hypertension and a drinking problem. His breath was so bad, it lingered in our curtains long after my mom kicked him out.
So, you see, before and after never really worked for me.
Until right now.
Because this is the first time I’ve ever blasted hundreds of windowpanes into iridescent dust with my rage.
I lift my hands; I feel the tingle and the burn. Then, poof.
Explosion.
I am a powder keg embodied, and Alfo was stupid enough to bring a match close.
I wish I could see their stupid fucking demon faces as it happens. As I burst in, rip through the writhing puddles of demons churning at Alfo’s feet. His unholy, damned servants.
Unfortunately, my real vision is clouded. It seems like I’ve lost my eyesight in favor of something else. A different sense. All of the energy around me is like fabric. Pliable, malleable, like boiling hot glass. I twist and work it in my favor. There is nothing I can’t do.
I’m a heat-seeking missile, aimed directly at Alfo.
My hands find his throat. The fire of my rage turns to actual flames; I smell his rancid flesh burning under my touch.
I hear shouting, yells. I feel the chaos buck and thrust at us.
It works at my body like the ocean. But right now, there is nothing but me and revenge.
I pull the demon close to me; I tighten my iron grip on his windpipe. I focus every molecule of my body on my memories of the catacomb. The damp air; the packed earth wall. The basin in the center of the room.
I don’t need to give chase. I don’t need to lure him back into the tunnels.
Everything I need is inside of me.
He claws at my face, tears at my grip around his throat. But the goddess inside me has been shaken awake.
The basin’s pedestal. The cold stone beneath my fingers. The chill in the air. The dirt pressing into my knees as I lower myself to the ground.
My entire body tingles. The world is a roar around me, as if a tornado has taken up residence in my brain. Focus. A voice breaks through the chaos of my mind.
I contract the muscles in my body. Stale air. Smooth stone. Packed dirt. Bowen’s voice. Orfeo’s hand on my back—
We fall through time and space then collapse in a heap on the floor. The smell of damp and decay envelops me and, for a moment, Alfo and I both drag down huge gasps of the smoke-free air as we melee.
His desperate hands scramble to grab at the front of my dress. He rips the fabric away, and I use his inertia to spin out of his arms. I tear my silver knife from the holster on my thigh. He crawls backward, clambering to his feet.
“Beast,” he roars. “You are a beast.”
“I am a goddess.” I lunge for him, plunging my knife forward. He dives sideways and I stumble into the altar, slamming my ribs into the cold stone.
He lets out a vicious laugh. “You fucking pussy.”
I flip over, lifting off the ground with the force of my kick, and throw myself at his chest. The space is dark, completely lightless. We fall to the ground, a confused bundle of thrashing limbs in the pitch-black, hissing and spitting.
I punch at the open wound on the side of his face, feeling the soft, wet matter of his jaw sinking between my fingers. His hands close around my wrist, tighter and tighter. He squeezes with all his brutish force until I am screaming in agony.
“Why won’t your fucking bones break?!”
“How many ways do I have to tell you?” I spit through gritted teeth. “I am Hades’s daughter, you fucking freak.” I lodge my feet under his ribs, roll us over, and then flick him across the room. His heavy, dense body hits the wall with a thunderous crack.
The room shakes, loose dust and debris raining down on us. One of the sconces flickers to life.
Alfo’s body heaves with the effort of his labored breathing. His clothes are filthy and torn, half of his skull exposed where his fragile skin caught on the wall and tore away. Dark black blood pours from the wound. His fake human nose is crooked, snapped almost entirely off. He lumbers toward me.
“You are nothing. You are the daughter of a whore. A weak, sick, obsessed whore.”
I ease up from the ground. “No.”
I release another guttural, ancestral scream, lunging for his neck. Alfo catches me around my waist and throws me back against the wall. I hit it with so much force, my neck whips and slams back. I crumple to the ground again.
“See?” He laughs. “Human bitch.”
Focus, a voice whispers in my mind, and I force myself to push through the corporeal pain that has my mind in a chokehold. The world around me pulses in and out, thudding like bass from a broken car radio.
The voice comes to me again. To your feet, my sister.
Hecate.
I brace myself against the wall with a bloody hand and straighten. Blood drips down my hair, coating my exposed breasts. My dress hangs in tatters around my waist.
“My mother was the epitome of bravery.” I advance toward him, holding the tip of my knife level with his windpipe in a steady hand. “My mother sacrificed herself so that I could avenge her and every other woman who suffers at the hands of pathetic creatures like you.”
“Your mother deserved it—”
“My mother,” I boom, my voice filling the catacomb, shaking the earth around us, “was a fucking child. And Hades knew that.”
He barks out another horrible laugh. “You are a fucking bastard with no last name and no powers. Just like your mother, sweetheart. You are nothing.” He grabs hold of his sagging shoulder and shoves it back into its socket.
“Fuck!” His shout rattles every bone in my body.
Then, he drags up mucus from his lungs and hawks a glob of spit at my feet.
“Especially when you don’t have your pathetic dog to protect you. ”
I let his spit hit me. I lift my knife, advancing at the same steady pace. “Mention Orfeo again. I dare you.”
“An idiot. A fucking pathetic, enslaved idiot—”
“He is devoted to me, and you can’t stand that! Fucking admit it, you lonely demon. He loves me, and I love him—”
“He’s a desperate beast who can’t do anything for himself.
Couldn’t even kill Paolo!” Alfo stumbles toward me, broken teeth bared and bloody fists raised.
“You know he cried to me? Begged me with folded hands to kill his creator?!” His lips curl into a putrid, humorless smile.
“I bet he didn’t tell you what he did in order to gain my favor, did he?
Got on his fucking knees and sucked my—”
“Enough.” I dive forward, arms held high. I knock Alfo to the ground, onto his back, and bring the silver knife down in a deep, penetrating X across his throat. “FUCK. YOU.”
More of that hot, tar-like blood pours from him.
He chokes and gags and spits. He coats me in his only proof of life—thick, sticky, and foul.
It spills over the sides of his neck, rolling in waves toward the altar.
I jump to my feet and grab him by his hair, dragging him to the base of the altar.
It begins to vibrate and hum as his blood soaks the stone.
I press my foot into his chest. “From flesh to ash, from ash to dirt, from dirt to the center of the Earth. In nomine Hecate, take this dastardly creature and—”
“Bitch,” Alfo spits. “You fucking—”
I bring my foot to his wound and silence him. “That’s Miss Bitch to you.”
With two hands, I draw the knife back over my head. Then, I bring it down with a shout, falling to my knees, jamming the blade deep into his throat. I press with all my might—harder and harder until I hear his spine crack and pop like the seal on an oyster.
Blood shoots upward, soaking me and every inch of the altar.
The wood beams overhead rattle and shake.
Dirt begins cascading down from the ceiling, shaken loose.
It clings to his foul blood. It coats my eyelids and my hands and the gaping wound across Alfo’s neck.
His head hangs to the side at an inhuman angle.
I twist the knife again and begin the incantation.
“From flesh to ash, from ash to dirt, from dirt to the center of the Earth. In nomine Hecate. Goddess to goddess, I call out to thee. O Mother, O Maiden, O Blessed Crone. Take this dastardly creature, vanquish him. In nomine Hades, here is your foul servant. I send him back to you in my own name—Diantha, daughter of Hades, goddess of the Underworld. Break the bonds that shackle my mother, in the name of this sacrifice and the sacrifice of all your demons.”