Four months ago, Ess’Siijiil

“But Nyss, I—”

“Quiet,” Nyss hissed. “You do want money, right? To get a better place to live? I have several good places I can set you up with, but I need to know I can trust you.” He slithered around me, the old lania’el wearing a fanged smile under black eyes. In the flickering light, the scar that ran along his chin seemed almost white.

“You can already trust me!” I half-shouted, coiling up higher. “Why can’t you trust me?”

“Shh. You wouldn’t want that friend of yours hearing, would you?” He put a blackish-green-scaled hand nearly up to my mouth, face serious.

I hiccupped, and struggled to stop fresh tears from flowing. I can’t… this—it’s too far.

“She’s, hic, my sister. I already told y—”

“Doesn’t your sister want to get a better life, too?” Nyss slid around me, a little tighter. “She can’t possibly want to live like this her whole life, hmm? What about the herbs she already needs, and the magic she’ll want later?”

I swallowed and tried hard not to move away. Slowly, I forced myself to meet Nyss’s eyes and he continued, “’She’ won’t be able to be a ‘she’ much longer, you know. Not without what I can provide.”

I broke off the gaze, and bowed my head. “I know, I just—”

“Need to do this one. Last. Job,” Nyss finished for me. “And then you’ll get off the streets for good.”

“Just one last job,” I mulled the words over. “Do you promise this is the last one?”

“I promise,” Nyss repeated with a smile.

“A-and I only have to k-kill…”

“Just her. Ussen Ssyt’s second cousin Ysta won’t be missed.”

This is for Kyrae. This is for both of us. Slowly, I nodded.

“Good girl.” Nyss patted me on the head, then leaned in so our noses were almost touching. “I expect her dead by morning. Am I understood?”

I nodded again, rapidly this time, squeaking, “Yes, y—”

The hand on my head dug in, sharp nails pressing against my scalp. “Good. Go then. Let your friend sleep and come back to me when it’s done.”

Nyss released me, though he loomed tall in the dark space until I’d closed the door behind me. I slumped against the nearby wall and caught my breath. Once I felt my breathing slow again, I slithered away to pick up what I’d… need from downstairs.

I didn’t really mind that this would mean another sleepless night. Lately, my sleep had been poor and my dreams had been agonizingly long. Kyrae had noticed for sure, but all this was just for a little longer. As soon as we got to a nice place, I’d surely sleep better. That had to be it.

My shadow powers were stronger than ever, but I still needed a knife—just in case. I hoped I didn’t have to use it, that I’d just be able to smother my target with shadows and not have to see…

When I entered our home and slid our door closed, it was completely dark inside. Kyrae was out right now, so I had time to fetch what I needed. Hopefully I’d be back before she even found—

I saw something move in the shadows, in my shadows, and I struck first. Cold tendrils wrapped around the person, frigid darkness smothering their breath.

The thief struggled, and I felt my tiredness sweep back over me. For a moment, my control slipped and I saw the person’s face in the darkness. I gasped and toppled back onto my tail, trying to pull my shadows away as fast as I could.

Kyrae.

The person I was attacking was my own sister. How didn’t I notice?

“Issa,” Kyrae coughed. “Please…”

“K-kyrae…” I tried to speak, but my throat swelled. My vision blurred and my breath hitched, coming out in wheezing sobs.

Wordlessly, my sister—my sister I’d attacked—stumbled over to me.

“Hssssssss…” I tried to speak, but still couldn’t. The hiss turned into a whine and ended in a staccato of hiccupping sobs.

Kyrae reached out, and I tried to shoved her away. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down, my torso landing in the dirt right next to her.

Neither of us looked at the other. In the silence, I heard her own hitched breathing slowly even.

My sister spoke first. “Issa—I’m scared, Issa. Are you… you anymore?”

What?

I stammered. “H-huh?”

“Y-you a-attacked—and I was just—I—” Kyrae stammered.

“I’m sorry!” I cried. “I just thought that…” No more words would come and I trailed off.

Kyrae’s reply was long delayed. “D-did you? Did you think?”

“What?”

“Did you think, or did whatever’s the source of those shadow powers think?” Her voice gained confidence as she spoke.

Did I think… “Kyrae,” I tried to reassure my sister. “Nothing’s in my mind, Kyrae. I’m just doing what I need to do.”

“What you need to do…” Kyrae trailed off.

Then, into the silence, she suddenly shouted, “Is what you need to do killing someone?”

I startled. My mouth moved, but I couldn’t make words.

Kyrae continued, her voice lowering in volume but increasing in sharpness, “Do you really need to kill someone? Does someone really need to die to get a good place to live?”

“I…”

“Think about it, Issa,” Kyrae’s hard voice started to waver and even in the dark, I could see tears forming. “Think about it. I’m going to go now—make us some money that’s not hurting anyone but some rich person’s coinpurse. I…” she walked past me to the door, legs wobbling. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

“…Okay.” I tried to smile, but the movement of muscles felt wrong.

Kyrae left without a nod, and without a smile of her own. She closed the door behind her, harder than was necessary, and left me alone in total darkness.

For a while I stared at the earthen wall. Then, slowly, I uncoiled myself, my body stiff. Hardening myself, I looked for the knife in the darkness. I half expected Kyrae to have hidden or taken the blade, but instead it was exactly where I’d hidden it. The blade had been cleaned, although the metal was dull in the darkness.

I hadn’t cleaned the blade. Kyrae must have. But if she was so adamant that I didn’t go through with Nyss’s plan, why would she—

“Let me go!” Kyrae’s voice, high and panicked filtered down into the dark room from above.

My hearts leapt in my chest and lower body. I snapped to attention, and without re-sheathing the blade, I dashed out the door and up to where I heard my sister cry out. The knife shook in my hands, and the next breath I drew was met with a hiccup. Walls closed around me, and even the short distance to where I heard my sister cry out seemed to stretch and warp in front of me.

No one should mess with us this close to Nyss’s place? Right?

Reflexively, my shadows curled around me, muffling the panicked sliding of my tail. Turning a corner, I caught sight of a lamia—ke’lania by their size—dragging a squirming bundle away.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I dashed for them, extending my shadows.

“Kyrae!” I shouted, stealth forgotten.

I made a dash for my sister, leaning down low to the ground to move as fast as I could. A dark mass of tail blocked me and I drew up short, crashing against rough, dark scales. I spun on reflex and looked up at the person standing between me and my sister. Even in the darkness, I recognized Nyss by his scar.

“Nyss!” I shouted. “Kyrae—look! Help!” I pointed with the knife at Kyrae and her assailant as they continued to get farther and farther away from me.

“Everything’s fine,” Nyss whispered, drawing around me almost protectively.

“What do you mean?” I tried to move around him, but his hand grabbed my arm, grip strong despite his wiry frame.

“I caught Kyrae snooping around upstairs. She jumped me, Issa.” Nyss frowned, looking wounded. “She betrayed us.”

“Wha…” My head reeled and I almost toppled over. Sister, betrayed—but how?

“She’s just using you Issa. She’s selfish—doesn’t want the success you have. Kyrae is jealous of your power: of us.” Nyss’s words flowed like warm sap.

I almost choked on them. No. She wouldn’t? Right? Kyrae hadn’t been happy with me lately, though—and all I was doing was helping both of us!

“Y-you’re not gonna…” My gut lurched.

“I’ll simply take her away, where she can’t hurt you, Issa. I’m not heartless.”

Take her away. Where she can’t… hurt.

I felt the weight of the knife in my hand. The knife whose blade Kyrae had cleaned.

Kyrae. My sister who’d stood behind me even though she didn’t approve of what I was doing, and who brushed away when I’d attacked her earlier. My sister who would never wish me ill. My sister I cared about more than anything, any wealth or power in the world. The knife in my hands was proof of her truth.

“Issa!” I heard her voice, a pained and distant shriek.

Pieces fell into place. Clarity. Before I really knew what I was doing, I’d whirled on Nyss, hissing.

He said something I didn’t hear and I drove the blade toward his throat. He ducked under and drove a fist at my jaw, tail sliding wildly around behind me.

My knife bit into wood, and his fist caught me in my jaw. I heard a crack and tasted blood; pain shot through me like skyfire. When Nyss’s tail hit my back, I toppled forward, and my knife clattered off into the darkness. My broken jaw hit the floor and stars blasted into my vision. I tasted wood and dirt, my arms and chest pressed into the ground by the weight of Nyss’s tail.

“Stupid girl!” Nyss hissed.

All I could think about was stopping him. Stopping Nyss and rescuing Kyrae.

He moved to finish pinning me, and I heard his jaw click—getting ready to bite. His tail wrapped around mine, but the shadows were slippery.

And the shadows were mine.

I felt something in the shadows. Like another limb, or another tail. It felt for heat, for warmth, for life. And it plunged inside.

Above me Nyss gagged. His body rolled off mine as my tendril pushed deeper. I rolled away, rising up on my tail, with both hands covering my mouth. I felt loose teeth and spat a mouthful of blood. Nyss’s tail, spasming came around and hit me in the side, throwing me into the building, shoulder first.

I coughed, spewing more blood, but I finally saw what was happening to Nyss. Writhing shadows pulsed around him. Already, his torso was held, and now his tail was being wrapped by tendrils of darkness. An outline of him, glowing, overlaid my vision.

Inside Nyss, a lance of cold darkness was spreading. He coughed and gagged and spasmed as my shadows drove the air and the life out of him. The cold pressed in on me, too, and I felt something at the edges of my mind. Something that liked the deathly chill.

I closed my eyes and looked away, now acutely aware that I could feel everything. Every shadow tendril holding him, every dark mass pressing against him. I could feel his insides as they dulled and grew cold, his heartbeat as it stilled

I tried to pull back, to stop. I tried to let him go. But I couldn’t. My right eye closed, but my left stayed open, watering in the cold air, forced to look at Nyss as he died in dark agony. I didn’t need Kyrae to tell me that eye was solid black.

I couldn’t pull away. I couldn’t stop once I’d started.

Eventually, his slowing struggles ceased. I felt, and saw the moment Nyss died. The moment his heat, and his life, left him, and his aura blended against the shadows.

The spell seemed to break and I fell like a puppet with my strings cut. Nyss toppled across from me, his eyes wide and afraid and his jaw forced all the way open, the last beads of useless venom dripping onto blue lips.

I threw up. Vomit mixed with blood on the planks under me. I shivered and shook, but I didn’t feel tired. Whatever my powers had done had fed them. Whatever was behind them had been fed. I slid down the wall and coiled over myself.

I couldn’t think about rescuing Kyrae. I couldn’t think about moving from my position curled on the floor. And I couldn’t think of moving away from Nyss’s cold, dead stare.

Oh Jaezotl, Kyrae was right.

***

Blackness started to creep in around the edges of Kyrae’s vision. The hand against her mouth was too tight, and the tail coiling around her legs was rough and crushing. Still, she fought on, desperate to escape.

She found purchase and bit down on her attacker’s palm hard enough to draw the sharp taste of blood. Her attacker recoiled, and in that moment, the young elf was able to draw a breath and shout a single word.

“Issa!”

Then the hand was on her again, and her dulling senses met again with the taste of blood. Her attacker could easily have killed her, but he hadn’t. Maybe they wouldn’t kill her? Not that it mattered if she lost Issa.

Not lost to them, but lost to whatever thing was inside her influencing her thoughts. Kyrae knew that day in the warehouse where Issa got her curse would haunt her the rest of her life. A curse. It had to be—nothing else made sense. What Issa had was no blessing of Jaezotl or the old gods of the elves, the Pantheon of Ea.

Was that moment—that crash of some cursed thing on the floor—the moment she lost Issa?

From back in the direction of Issa and Nyss, Kyrae heard a heavy thud—and the sound of scales scraping quickly on wood. Her attacker heard a moment later. He stopped, hissed something in a low whisper, and waited. Kyrae, too, waited, her vision almost completely dark. Agonizing moments later, her attacker swore, and air returned as Kyrae was tossed aside.

She hit packed dirt hard and rolled against a building. Too exhausted and out of sorts to make herself loose for the fall, she felt her arm pop out of its socket on impact.

Pain joined the fire in her lungs and she bit her tongue to stop from crying out. I have to get away. This is my only chance.

Grimacing, she propped herself against the building and used it as a backdrop to force her shoulder back into its socket. Another white flash of pain settled quickly into a dull, familiar ache.

Stumbling to her feet Kyrae ran toward the nearest small, dark space she could see. Moments later, her attacker came sprinting down the road she was just on, tail scything into the dirt below. Kyrae didn’t get a good look at his face, but a creeping dread replaced her fear.

Is Issa okay?

Do I… do I go back for her?

Kyrae knew the answer in her heart, clear as a bright, noonday sky.

***

Sometime later, a heavy tail swept by near me, and I heard a sound like someone choking. I didn’t move from my position on the floor. Blood and vomit clung to my side where I lay, and my hair had fallen slowly across my face. I hardly even smelled it against the cool evening air.

I was afraid of the cold now; the comfort of the darkness had an edge. I want to stay in the light right now. Under the low-burning torch, I wasn’t going to move a muscle. Honestly, I couldn’t even tell if I was breathing.

A big weight, with a rush of scales, smacked into my side. I hit the building I was up against and bounced off, now face down in the fetid mire I’d been laying in. Still, I didn’t move. Maybe I can’t move?

Someone huffed above me, and then rushed off into the night.

I continued to lay there. Even though breathing was getting harder, I just didn’t want to move.

At some point, small, rough hands rolled me over. My breath came more easily, and I relaxed as a familiar voice called to me.

“Issa! Issa!” it said. “Issa, please! Please answer me!”

I coughed. Clotted blood came out with the spittle. I felt pain in my jaw again, distant.

“Issa?”

I coughed again. Someone was on top of my tail. She dragged me up so I was sitting against the wall. I felt stiff, but I didn’t quite want to move. My head rolled around and I got a look at the voice’s owner.

Familiar green eyes stared at me, blurry with tears. Kyrae’s dirt-streaked face appeared around the eyes and she shook me. Her dark hair fell in front of her eyes. I reached up to brush it away; my hand shook, the limb not quite responding. Green, liquid eyes tracked my limb through black bangs until the scales on the back of my hand brushed her forehead.

She’s real. The shell of fear I’d built cracked open, just a little.

My sister stiffened. Slowly, she raised her own hand and clasped mine.

“Issa?” she called again, hopeful this time.

Now, her whole face was blurry. I blinked and it cleared a little, but I felt streaks of damp warmth trickling down my cheeks. I didn’t mind; the heat warded against the chill of the night and its shadows.

“—m sorry,” I croaked, then coughed again. My throat felt raw and tense. “I’m sorry, Kyrae.”

“Issa! No. Please, please don’t go!”

“B-but… you just got here?” My mind tried to piece together why either of us would be leaving.

“Not me!”

Pain started to clear the fog around my thoughts, even if my vision blurred more and more with tears. Words tumbled out, faster and faster as reality crashed into me like a falling tree. “I’m not—I’m not gonna leave you Kyrae. I’m sorry. I messed up a lot. But I’m not gonna kill—never again gonna—I won’t let whatever’s in me take me. I need to get us safe. I need to…” My words turned into discordant hissing, and I coughed, hiccupped, and struggled to breathe.

Kyrae put her hands on the sides of my head. “Shh… Issa. We. I’m going to help you, and you’re going to help me, okay?”

I nodded with a stiff neck, drawing a shaking, slow breath.

“Can you move?” she asked.

“I—I don’t know.”

“Can you try?”

I tried. My tail felt numb, like when I’d slept on an arm wrong. Slowly, through splinters of returning feeling, I got my lower body to move. All the while I kept my gaze away from where Nyss’s body lay. I could still feel the shadows around me, waiting, and I shivered—but not from the evening air.

“We need to go,” Kyrae struggled to pull me up off the building.

My tail came away with a wet sucking sound, dirty emerald scales colored the dried brown-red of blood and vomit. I teetered, but managed to stay upright, tail wobbling under me. “Go where?” My jaw hurt, badly, and I winced when I brought a finger up to poke at it. I’d need to find a healer.

“Away! Anywhere!” Kyrae threw an arm out toward the street.

“But money…”

“I have enough.” Kyrae looked over to the place I couldn’t bear to look.

“Okay,” I nodded. “I’ll follow you.”

Kyrae responded by pulling me into a hug. I cried another apology into her, and the two of us slowly made our way away from Nyss’s house.

As I woke up more, we moved out and away down by the river. I dipped in it to wash myself, swimming along slowly with my tail until I’d kicked up enough mud to risk leaving the water dirtier than I’d entered. I didn’t know where we were going, but Kyrae’s eyes burned with fire, and even though her steps were shaky, she didn’t once slow down.

When I wavered, she caught me, and when she tripped, I caught her. Together we stole off into the night, afraid, cold, and hopeful. We’ll find someplace to live, Kyrae; we’ll both find a way out of all this.