17. Chapter 17 #3
My legs were falling numb, curled awkwardly against Serich, but I didn’t dare stretch them out and risk waking him from his fitful, hard-won sleep. Even with his body heat, I was freezing. Though it was too black to see anything, I was certain my every exhalation blew an icy cloud into the air.
Do you like the cold, then, I asked It dully, since your mother’s blood is frost?
I don’t mind it. She’s from Frost, her blood isn’t made of it. Frost is the circle she lives and works in.
And your father’s circle?
He was a mutt. Fang and Fury, mainly. As far as I know I don’t have blood from Flame, but we don’t keep records on who sleeps with whom. Frost tends to keep to themselves but the other circles have always mingled.
It interpreted that chill I felt correctly.
Fang and Fury, It said, and for the first time in a while I heard his inhumanity, how cold and hard and hypnotic his voice sounded. That scares you?
Fang…it sounds like you’re a beast. A soulless creature that thought cruelty was for sport.
Is it truly cruelty if it’s been deemed justice by your God?
I could think of nothing with which to respond, but It didn’t wait for an answer.
I’m many things but I’m not a beast. My father’s grandmother is a succubus.
There are beasts in Fang, but a handful of succubi and incubi as well.
We might find your poor dead baker in Fang.
I’m sure Fury will have fought for his soul, too, but really it could go either way.
A succubus would be happy to tear him to pieces in perpetuity but such wanton malice would make him irresistible to Fury.
They punish all sorts of gluttony in Fang; the violent ones tend to wind up in Fury.
But what to do with a murdering rapist? There was a twinkle in his voice that made my veins go icy.
I’m sure the succubi will give him all the sex he wants.
They’ll kill him slowly every single day from here until eternity.
The more he begs for mercy the longer they’ll drag it out.
Rape is considered gluttonous?
Rape isn’t about sex, it’s about domination.
If all he had was a sexual compulsion, John Dale would have spent his time in brothels.
He chose rape and murder. Unrepentant sexual obsession would land him with the succubi but they have a special place in their hearts for rapists.
They’d make a compelling case for his soul.
I fit my head into the crook of Serich’s neck, craving something sweet and warm to counteract the demon in my head. Frost sounds the least hideous of all of them.
One would think, but you’d be wrong. Many consider it one of the worst.
Serich mumbled in his sleep. I hardly breathed, afraid I’d woken him, but he merely made an indistinct noise in his throat and floated off again, his fingers twitching against the small of my back.
He would have let me kiss him; I knew it even though I’d never kissed anyone in my life. He’d wanted it every bit as much as I did. He planned to take vows and surely they’d mean something to him but still, he’d wanted it.
I felt the full, leathery weight of Its attention on my thoughts. Did you have something to say?
No.
I didn’t believe that. I’m sure you find me devastatingly amusing, my silly human desires and fear of death.
Watching people trip and fall is amusing. This is not. Of all the men out there, you choose this one?
He’s been kind to me where many wouldn’t.
That’s hardly a reason to offer yourself up. He may want more than you’re willing to give him.
I thought of my stripped bloodrose, petals fluttering to the earth.
How nothing good would greet me after I passed through the veil.
If I was lucky, I would drift. The other option was even worse.
My life has been so small for so long. I have so few good memories.
I want to take one more with me when I go.
What if it’s not a good memory? What if it’s miserable and uncomfortable lying in the dirt like an animal and you hate every second of it?
Maybe it will be. I’ll never know unless I try it. You’re the one who went on about how this journey would surely kill me. You thought I’d die the moment I set foot in this place and the bloodrose was no comfort.
Forget the fucking bloodrose, Des, It said.
It’s a prediction, not a certainty, it’s— he broke off as a great sniffing sound tumbled through the gaps between boulders.
I felt him get to his feet in that back room of my mind, edging right up to the windows of my eyes, though there was nothing to see but velvety darkness.
An enquiring tap against the rock blockade; a curiously low, almost subliminal whine threading through the cracks, just outside the range of my hearing.
I ceased breathing entirely, the better to listen, and leaned closer.
Singsong, almost. Inhuman, but speech, or something near it.
Something was calling out to us; it knew we were in here.
What is that? I asked as I shook Serich awake.
And It said the only thing guaranteed to make my blood run colder: I’ve never heard anything like that before.