Chapter Two #2
“What in the blazing sun?” he harrumphed.
The book snapped shut and Avelina twisted to crane her ear to the sound.
Crashing and cursing bounced off the walls.
Her father threw open their cabin door to listen for any announcements.
The train jutted forward again, returning to it’s former speed.
They both sighed. Everest announced, “Must have been a creature on the tracks. Poor fool was likely tenderized.”
“Poor thing,” Avelina added with a quick nod of her head.
“One would think the sound of a train would persuade anything on the tracks to run the other way,” her father grumbled under his breath.
“One would think,” she muttered in agreeance, her hands moving like she might open the curtains.
Then a flash of the woman in the lace shroud returned and she stopped in her tracks.
Painting a fake smile on her lips, she folded her hands in her lap.
It’s fine, it was simply a deer or some poor thing stuck to the tracks.
Definitely not a woman with a crown of bones on the tracks.
“Father,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.
“Hmm?” he didn’t glance up from his book, returning to his page. He’d left the door open and she figured that he was punishing the rabble just as much her with his sermon.
“I was wondering…” she trailed off as, once more, the train lurched.
But that time, it wasn’t because the train itself slowed down.
Something’s boarded the train car. Something heavy. Get out. Get out now.
The voice from last night filled her skull and she scrambled back up to her feet. Her back to the window, she gulped down air greedily. Out? How? It was a one-way tunnel out the door, there was nowhere to hide. Each cabin was a square with two bench cushions. There was nowhere to go!
“Avelina! Have you lost your mind?” her father roared, climbing to his armored boots.
I think I have. The words didn’t form on her lips as she stared up at him.
Wild eyes with a wobble in her lower lip, she lost her voice.
Frozen in place, the world slowed down like sand trickling down the side of an hourglass.
In each individual grain, she watched her father turn toward the doorway.
A ruffian, covered in dripping rags and sludge, held up a dagger.
The blade glowed with a vibrant green as her father stumbled backward.
His sword was useless in such closed quarters, his armor bulky and heavy.
And as the brigand drove the blade into the weak spot between platelets, deep into her father’s armpit, her heart stopped beating.
She was a stone statue, mouth open and scream locked back in her throat.
Coward. Pathetic.
Little lamb.
Move! Do! Something!
Everest Dalethorn the Third fell to his knees, choking on his own tongue as violent green ooze crawled up his veins to his face.
The attacker, a pale human with a wet mop of brown hair on his head, wrenched the blade out of her father’s body then ran it back into Everest’s neck.
A squeak of terror escaped her and that’s when glowing amber eyes snapped up to meet hers and she was locked in with her father’s murderer.
“What do we have here?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She pleaded like she was the one who stabbed him.
Her hands flew up in front of her as the ruffian tossed her father’s corpse to the floor.
The killer stepped all over her father’s armor, coating his crisp cloak in mud.
Blood coated his arms, fingers even dirtier as he grabbed her by the neck. She finally screamed.
Not that it mattered, the whole train was screaming.
The air vibrated with blood-curdling shrieks, some cut short before the sound moved down the train.
Her world blurred around the man’s covered face.
The only thing she could see over the dusty rags—practically painted onto his face thanks to the rain—was the top quarter of his features, including those cruel eyes that bore holes into her soul.
“Where’s the loot?”
“I don’t own anything. I don’t have anything! Take his armor! His broad sword is worth something!” She squealed like a pig as he pressed the bloody tip of his poisoned blade to her sternum.
“Now I know yer holdin’ out on me, sugar. What cha got?”
“I don’t have anything!” She whined harder, trying to push herself further from him. There was nowhere to go. Her father took up the whole cabin floor. His killer was studying her face with his flame-filled orbs. While standing on his corpse.
“I think yer lyin’!”
“I’m not lying!” she panicked, kicking and scrambling as he pressed the tip a little harder against her flesh. Eyes clenched, she clawed at the walls like they might open up and let the storm swallow her.
Weak. Pathetic. Coward. You deserve this.
“Do you really think that way?”
Time stopped completely. She peeled her eyes open.
The voice was in her ear, a delicate rasp that curled around her lobe and sank into her skin.
Like a kiss on the cheek from a ghost, everything went cold.
There was no warmth in the cabin. Frost clung to the edges as fingers wrapped around her bicep.
Inch by inch, they crept around her body till she was enveloped in thin, boney arms. An itchy lace pressed against her cheek.
Avelina watched the woman from the field slide up behind the ruffian.
Her crown of bones stabbed up through her shroud, helping keep the shabby, rotten fabric against the cheek bones of the haunted figure.
Hollow eyes of endless darkness stared deep into her soul.
The woman didn’t speak, as her lips were sewn shut, but Avelina still heard her.
“Do you want to live?”
“Yes,” Avelina croaked, tears streaking down her cheek.
“What are you willing to give in exchange for your life?”
“Everything,” she gasped. Her fingernails dug trenches into the wallpaper of her train cabin.
Avelina wasn’t sure why she said it. Why she agreed to the goddess’s deal, or why she did so without hesitation when her whole life was full of trepidation…
but when Catalysta, The Dead Mother, goddess of delirium, grief, and shame put out her hand to the poor girl, Avelina took it without question.
She was dead either way…why not take the fun way out?