As Secretary’s knife I…I—don’t want to talk about this part. Forgive me, please, I want you to know my story in its wholeness, but the final act of my escape from Marduk’s throne isn’t a portion worth telling. The actions taken weren’t mine. Nothing about that was, and so they’re not representative of me. Nothing of me was there because I’d made the “wrong” choice, and proven unworthy of self-direction! I’m sorry, it’s just, if you ask me, the whole event between breaking the encirclement and returning to Realspace is boring. Hardly illuminating as to my character. So let’s skip forward some…to when Secretary and I stumbled back into Realspace—that’s a good part. At least, I think so.
The Staircase we’d exited deposited us far from the docks of the Lodge District. Far from the district at all. We were high-up, on someone’s rooftop, in the thick of Brightgate. Secretary slipped from my back, walked about the roof sucking in deep breaths of Real air, and then collapsed onto their back. Grateful we’d made it. Unworried about being followed because the Staircase behind us evaporated from existence once we’d left. Marduk was a man of his word.
Secretary groaned, “Relax, little brute, we’re home. We’re home.”
#404’s command slackened my leash, but whether limp or taut I could still feel it. That place where the curse hooked into all that I was. It’s why Sphinx couldn’t help me escape it; her freedom and her life were tied into my own. She’d been pushed hard as a result, taking wounds meant for me that I couldn’t dodge—Secretary’s order hadn’t said, “Oh, little brute, make sure to dodge on the way out as well.” No one tends to worry about the damage done to a knife until after they've attempted to cut with it.
So with my body returned to me, however temporary or however searing the gales of pain that tore through my limbs, Sphinx was my first priority. I returned her to my spirit so at least one of us could recover. Sphinx had lost most of a leg on the way out. A portion of a wing was severed. They’d been gored multiple times. All to save me from my handler’s poorly conceived demands.
“Okay, little brute,” Secretary huffed, rolling up into a sitting position, “let’s get this intel back to headquarters and—”
“Why?” I asked, attention pinned on the Lodge District’s skyline. Was it always so ugly?
“Because we’re the only ones who survived—”
I scoffed, “And whose fault is that?”
“Marduk’s,” Secretary declared.
The skyline was ugly, but it was better than other things, people, I could’ve looked at. Though I did trace a path from the skyline to Brightgate. Stiffly walked to the roof’s edge, and looked down to admire all those little people scurrying about their little lives. Unaware of who’d died so they could enjoy blissful mundanity.
I countered, “But it’s Nemesis who sent us there. She signed off on the missions, didn’t she?”
“Yes—”
“And, correct me if you didn’t say this, but we knew Marduk was a Marquis,” I reminded them. “Our first mission and it was obvious.”
“What’s your point?” they asked, rising to their feet—I could hear their clothes shifting.
I could hear their heartbeat, it was a hurried uptempo sort of rhythm reminiscent of Mom’s favorite songs—wailing guitars, screaming singers, and drums who raced toward the end. Secretary must’ve been exhausted pinning down my bodily autonomy—the curse wasn’t made to make it easy to keep us under control. It required a firm attentive hand. Especially when we were ordered, as I was, to feed on so many lives. No matter the reason, that’s what happened. It’d made the curse advance prodigiously. Gifted me better ears, sharply pointed like a dog’s; a better nose, one sniff painted my surroundings in strokes of carmine on the black behind my eyelids; and it even made my gore-dressed state not just palatable but exultant. There was no shame about the viscera that rouged my cheeks or the heartsblood that painted the snow-white scales of my arms a wilting pink.
“Nemesis sent us to die,” I answered, “obviously.”
Secretary paced behind me, unbalanced. “Little brute, it was a stealth mission. We were never supposed to see combat.”
“But we did.”
“Because a Sovereign fucked us over,” Secretary screamed. “No one could’ve planned for that.”
My head wobbled, shaking the reasonable point from my mind. “She still sent us,” I argued. “Soldiers, Barons, maybe a few Viscounts. We shouldn’t have been the ones in there.”
“That’s our job,” Secretary said. “We risk our lives to handle these problems before they harm innocent people.”
“Lupe wasn’t innocent to you?” I asked.
“That’s not what I said,” they replied. “Lupe was…”
“Not your friend,” I offered. “Not your concern?”
“Different. Lupe was different,” they admitted, “in some ways like Cedric.”
I dragged some entrails from my head—they’d been tapping at the back of my neck. Dangled it over the building’s edge, curious what the reaction would be if I’d dropped it. I tossed it to the far side of the roof. I then turned to Secretary, though my eyes were tilted away from them. I wasn’t ready to look at them.
“Who I might remind you, Nemesis killed,” I said.
“Cedric died in the exam—”
“That she designed,” I stated. “It’s looking to me like a lot of people are dying for Nemesis, because of Nemesis—”
Secretary rushed toward me—to hurt me, no, they had the gall to hug me. Pressed their head into the crook of my neck. Assault me with their stench, floral with citric notes made twinge ripe from the sweat of fear of violence.
“Forget Nemesis,” Secretary said.
“I can’t,” I answered. “Not when she and Marduk get to walk around with people throwing away their lives for them. Not when they ruined mine.”
My arms were vines, creeping up Secretary’s body. Careful so my claws didn’t shred cloth or flesh. Tensed just enough for this to be considered a hug. Beyond them, I watched the edges of the sky lighten toward deep cerulean—morning was in motion. Lupe’s Morning had died, but as sun danced across windows and restored color to the world I refused to mourn. The city in all its splendor, however ugly, could serve as the medium for my vengeful message.
“Let them fight,” I spoke, the idea philosophically ergonomic. “They can be the other’s punishment for everything they’ve done. It’s so simple saying it out loud.”
Secretary tried to pull away. I pressed them back in. They looked up into my face as I looked down into their eyes. Both of us committed to pulling the other to their side of the knife’s edge we stood on, we danced on, Brightgate’s last symphony of stirring wakefulness acting as accompaniment for our dreadful waltz.
“Little brute,” Secretary said, “Nadia—”
“Shhh,” I instructed. “You had it right the first time.”
Secretary stammered, “So they wronged you, I get it, but you took this whole exam to join the Lodge. To help people, to help Brightgate—”
“Oh no,” I laughed, “I joined to kill Nemesis, and to use your own phrasing, you’re the one who loves this city.”
“You took the missions to—”
“Get points. Make some things safer for Melissa and Amber,” I explained. “Free Sinaya, aid Lupe in her goals, and help you climb the ranks—that last one being my intended apology for what I was going to do. Nowhere in my thoughts was the safety of Brightgate’s people.”
“Little brute, why are you acting like this is simple?” they whispered.
“Why are you acting like it isn’t?” I asked, “Are you so attached to your Lodge, to Nemesis, that you’d make an enemy of me?”
I twirled Secretary from my grasp. They nearly went over the rooftop’s edge—pity. Arms outstretched they found balance, and while their heart was tossed about a ship slowly sinking toward a decision…I held out my hand.
“We can just go,” I said. “Let what was meant to happen, happen. Maybe find out why you love the ocean, hmm?”
Secretary shut their eyes. Pushing me away; the two of us falling on opposite sides of the knife.
“It’s not the right thing to do,” they said.
I sighed, “But for me, it’s the best thing I have left.”
When they opened their eyes, read my face, it caused a broken-hearted smile to sprout. They’d seen my own decision. Though it wasn’t to either of our pleasures to embrace its resolution. A minute we waited. Maybe we’d have waited longer if a bell hadn’t tolled on the hour—there wasn’t much time left. So to the droning noise of a mechanical giant, the evacuation of rooftops by disturbed birds, we played out the last steps of our dance.
“Spider-lillies—” they tried to control me.
I was faster. Their fault really. In our escape, if there was something of interest to note, it was that Divi*** came easily when thought and consideration were cast aside. Acts of magic done by mundane motion. My recent practice allowed me to copy a trick I’d used on Sinaya, Divi**** the space between me and my foe—Secretary, by their own choice—for what may as well have been an inescapable blow.
Despite this, they tried the control phrase once more. “Spider-lillies—”
I ripped out their heart. Their arms collapsed between their chest and mine. They’d slumped forward and I caught them—careful not to drop their heart. I’d ripped it out but it was still theirs.
A dying body may go cold, but their final breaths tend to be hot. The passion of living escaping the fragile cage of flesh and organs that evolved to hold onto it. Cling to it. Secretary, ever a master of themselves, didn’t cling to life but to me. Pulling with the embers of strength on my hair so I’d look at them. So I’d see myself—carmine-faced, carmine-eyed with speckles of honey-gold, and a fang-filled smile salivating from another life taken.
“Yes?” I asked, expecting some corrosive words to be their last.
“I’m so sentimental,” they said. “To ever think you needed to embrace the comfort of the knife. What poorly fitted advice intended for an old regret.”
I asked, “And if you got to go again, what would you tell me?”
“Nothing,” they said. “You knew what you were. From how you argued near the end, Lupe figured it out. I’m just late. So, I think it’d be advice for me. To beware this knife, however beautiful or loving, and not to wish so readily to bring it into myself. As the closest, it seems, we’d ever be is you plunged into my chest.”
“That’s a lot of words,” I said. “You could’ve commanded me to save—”
Secretary kissed me silent. They kissed me deep. Their lips gently chill, but tongue deathly cold. When we parted their lips looked lively—it was just some blood from a dead cultist painting them though. As Secretary’s fading command of their body, saw their legs knock and give. I didn’t drop them. I couldn’t drop them.
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What I did was prop them up. Against the upraised portion of the rooftop, so they could back—away from the Lodge I planned to ruin—where the sun rose. I kept my eye on the future, forward always forward, after all.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’d haunt you,” they said. “Going by that future-you, it still does.”
“That’s cruel,” I gasped.
Secretary chuckled, coughed, and slumped to the side. “Says the woman who stole my heart.”
“Sorry,” I said, spotting a fire escape I could slip down.
“Don’t be, it means I’ll live on in your memory,” Secretary said, before cooing softly at a memory that floated in for their eyes only. “So that’s why I love the ocean.”
“Wh—” I stopped myself. Their contract was done. Fulfilled by death. I’d receive no answer and only had their slowing heart to comfort myself. To remember them by. To make sure something of them could stay with me—I kissed it. Tenderly, reverently, wantonly. It wasn’t their lips, but the absence of them I felt most acutely.
I know I said this was a good part, but it’s my part. Their part, in some ways esoteric.
* * *
Afterward, I cut my way across Brightgate. A scalpel sliding along her veins. Skipping off the bone. Chaining Godtimes with such rapidity that, were anyone to see me, I’d be but a sanguine phantom in the corner of their eye. The only mark of my passage, proof of my trek, the gouges in the stone of buildings.
When I arrived at our residence building, it was by its walls that I entered my suite. To my claws, the stone was only pudding-firm—the true obstacle was the window I’d left locked by accident. A problem remedied through mortal force, however brutish. So it was onto a suite strewn with glass that I tumbled in, and finally let my feelings tumble out—loud as they were.
Amber found me first, and true to her character—always true she was—no shock registered in her expression. She didn’t pummel me with questions or demand I sketch out an explanation. She, as usual, read me. I wasn’t a hard text in this state, wearing my pelt of gore and viscera.
Stroking my head—though likely removing bits of flesh that were gum-stuck—she asked, “What’s next?”
My hands, fanned across my face to catch tears, closed. Slid back so my eyes could meet hers—mouth still hidden, but smiling. The curse, my carmine seductress, still flowed through my brain but it wasn’t why I smiled. It was because Amber played her part so well to compliment mine—always making the choice or asking the question I needed. Whether I knew so, or not.
“Gathering our things,” I said. “We’re leaving.”
In stating the next steps, I acted as any good leader should and went about completing them for myself. I’d never really unpacked since we’d been here—we were always going to make a hasty exit. Amber rose and wrapped her arms around me. Forced me to a stillness.
Amber said, “You didn’t give up on killing Nemesis.”
“I already did,” I chuckled.
“How—” Amber asked, but before she could compel me to any honesty I’d turned about in her arms. Pressed my lips to hers. Not a kiss, maybe for her, but it wasn’t a kiss as I saw it. At the time, I’d decided that no kiss could compare to what I’d had. There could be no taste I’d wish to overwrite…or share with anyone on this earth.
My pressed lips were enough to send Amber reeling. Her eyes danced with the flickering light of lust’s heat, and the curse’s urges—I’d painted her lips carmine by accident. She slipped from my room to the common area. My bag in one hand and Mother’s Last Smile comfortably in the other, I followed. Discovering Melissa and Ina melted into each other on the couch, gently stirring before my blood-dripping presence entered their view and shocked them from slumber.
“Alls below,” Melissa gasped, “Nadia are you okay?”
I cocked a hip, winked. “I’m fine. Better at the sight of you, of course.”
Ina, that small gremlin, clambered to cover Melissa with her own body. I hated that she tried, but as my tongue swished behind my fangs…what I really hated, loathed, is that she was right to do so. Ina had always seen me in the worst light possible—she was a bitch like that. It didn’t make her accurate, but when you make the worst light in the house your spotlight you shouldn’t be surprised if someone reads the scene appropriately.
“No shit,” Ina spat. “If all that came from you, you’d be face down and cold. So where’d it—”
“Really, Ina?” I purred. “I’m sure you could imagine worse ends for me. Which, speaking of ends, Melissa, go pack. We’re leaving.”
“But the exam—” Melissa said.
“Isn’t needed anymore,” I stated with a smile. “Let’s go home.”
“Home?” Melissa questioned me as if still sleeping. She’d dreamed of me stating such, no doubt. Though the word evoked a squeeze from Ina, a physical grounding in opposition to the fantasy I was trying to fulfill.
“The last test is today,” Ina said, reinforcing the obvious with another hug. “Mel, you do this and you can go anywhere. Do anything you want.”
The bitch even cupped Melissa’s head with her twiggy fingers, and the two shared this look, these expressions, that had no continuity to the moment. Ina had revived an old discussion—last night’s discussion—and it had no room for me. Intentionally.
Soft, conspiratorially so, Ina reminded Melissa, “You could leave.”
That’s what they’d talked about in each other’s arms. Was Melissa’s waking shock because I stood there a charnel mannequin, or was it because she’d been lured to sleep with dreams involving my absence? Either way, it couldn’t stand—I planned to lose no other friends or lovers this close to my victory.
“She can leave by staying?” I asked, chuckling. “That’s oxymoronic even for you Ina, and I think very against the agreement we have, Melissa. Come now love, don’t I deserve some defense?”
Ina said, “As if you aren’t doing the same to me. Telling her to leave right now just because—”
“I never said you couldn’t come, Ina,” I stated, cutting off the little doll before she got too wound up. “Melissa, we need to pack, and you can bring your favorite diva if you want. So please, pack.”
Melissa whipped from Ina to me and back, our arguments tossing her between reality and fantasy without grounding. So, mediator that she was, Melissa parted from Ina’s arms to make for her own suite. Very much keeping her berth around my growing puddle of wasted life.
“I’m going to get dressed,” she said. “We can talk about leaving over breakfast?”
“No, we can’t. It has to be now. Sooner the better,” I said.
“Why?” Ina asked.
I laughed. “I don’t have to explain—”
“Mel, ask why,” she urged. “There’s no reason Nadia would ever want me around.”
“Is it so impossible for me to have grown some, Ina?” I asked, before turning to Melissa. “Please trust me and—”
“Why does it have to be now?” Melissa asked, hesitant to slam the hammer of skepticism into the glass dream I’d done my best to arrange.
There hadn’t been enough time to figure out how I was going to explain things. I’d figure it’d be easier on Every Train, Brightgate—what was left of it—in our rear, and her so thankful that I was quick to make the call for our exit. Answers are easier to accept when someone’s happy. Harder when, as she was, already perturbed.
“It’s simply not safe. The last test,” I answered.
“Why?” she asked.
I said, “The Lurkers, they’re still a problem. A pernicious one. It’s only prudent to realize that the Lodge has no intention of keeping us safe, and we’d be better off making for some other exam in some other place.”
Melissa screwed her eyes shut. Leaned against the doorway, and swung her, “Why?” through my explanation. I giggled—a minor pattering—then covered my mouth to smother them.
“Their plot, my love. To take the city and the Lodgemaster’s head,” I said.
Ina rolled my answer between shuffling hands. “They’ve been trying since the exam started. You didn’t run at any of those points. Why now?”
“I don’t have to answer—” I said.
“Why?” Melissa asked, that great hammer of questioning swinging again, breaking things and wasting time. It was aggravating.
I said, “Because they have a small army’s worth of entities—unbonded but directable—they can field. The Staircases they’ve made, some of them, connect to the menagerie in which they’re kept. If directed…”
“They’d drain into the city streets,” Ina concluded. “Unbonded but having climbed a Staircase, they’d be much weaker than a properly bonded entity. Yet, if it’s so many of them…”
Now, I concluded for her, “Weakness doesn’t matter. The Lodge will have to respond. Defenses will be thin everywhere. The Lurkers can ravage Brightgate’s face whilst taking the Lodgemaster, their defender’s, head. Is that a good enough answer, Mel?”
“Yes, but it means we have to stay,” she said, as I beheld her metamorphosis.
Her dessert-sweet face hardened with the heat of conviction. I’d laid out the reality and while terrible, she raised her head ready to face it, the faith in her eyes, scintillating, a crystal of righteous purpose shifting beneath the sun. She took my hand to guide me toward it—unaware our morning had…passed. It pumped giggles out of me which in turn caused her clement expression to falter. Why was I laughing?
“Why, I’ve accomplished what I set out to do,” I said.
Ina said, “The exam hasn’t—”
“Shut the fuck up,” I snarled, then whirled to Melissa. “You know why we’re here. When I tell you we can leave, it’s because our task is done. Nemesis is going to die, and you and Amber won’t have to worry about me doing it because I had a great idea—if you don’t mind me stealing your off-hand suggestion, Amber.”
Amber, so quiet until now, dredged up my implicit joy to Melissa’s explicit horror. “Temple, I didn’t mean it. If you let Marduk and Nemesis fight, no one here wins.”
“I do,” I said. “What part of this isn’t making sense?’
The room had quieted from my question, all of them as confused as a class clown sitting for an exam they never studied for. Then, they backed away from me—well, Ina and Melissa did, Amber stopped to lean over the counter in the kitchen of our suite—like I was an animal in a place meant for only people. Ridiculous really, this was my residence too; it was…until Melissa made a choice that I doubt she regrets. Without looking to Ina, she addressed the diva.
“Run to headquarters,” Melissa hissed. “Now!”
Ina—who I hold was more of an animal than me—bolted, doelike, from the couch for the door. I’d had little against Ina beyond her existence in my personal sphere, but the edge of apathy is so very thin. Melissa had shoved the girl to my mental category of enemies and obstacles. That was the real cruelty if you ask me.
My fingers twined for an Atomic Glory, parted just as fast, loosing a sharp tongue of chalcedony flame I’d intended for Ina’s leg. It would’ve been a fun bit of asymmetrical symmetry to have claimed her arm’s opposite—Melissa thought otherwise, swinging the couch with crude Mutant strength to block me. The flames were spent reducing the couch to nothing, and Ina slipped out the door while the upholstery burned to embers.
“Why’d you do that?” I asked.
Melissa said, “You were going to kill her.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” I said. “I was going to amputate her leg. Now, telling her to go spread the news, give Nemesis a fighting chance, well…now I’m going to kill her. You did that yourself.”
I dropped my bag, and reversed into my room—the window was already open. The drop wouldn’t be that bad. Though again, Melissa thought otherwise and made use of her extensive sorcerous biomodifications. Thick strands of silk attached to my clothes—just above each joint—that she used to pull me back toward her. My shoes slipped across the floor. Inching me back from the window. Loosening the noose I’d prepared for Nemesis and Marduk.
“Amber,” I pleaded, my voice weak, small, “you remember your promise to me?”
She gaped, “Temple—”
“Kill Melissa,” I ordered. “She’s in my way. You promised.”
“Nadia, what?” Melissa asked, as if she wasn’t aware of what she’d done. Betraying me, my family, and all for some random collective bitch she’d known for a week.
“Do it!” I screeched, but Amber turned her head. Refused my request—to fulfill her promise.
Amber whispered, “This isn’t what I wanted with you.”
“Fine,” I said, “it’s always what everyone else wants. What I can give them. Purpose, their dreams, freedom, or love. But when all I want is the heads of two monsters, you all abandon me. Well, I guess Sphinx was right. It would only be us in the end.”
I went limp. No longer fighting to progress forward, Melissa inadvertently yanked me back towards her. She was off-balance. I rotated in the air, glaive ready to take her head. Mother’s Last Smile lost its divine refulgence mid-swing—though I’d been blind to it, focused on the expression Melissa held in those final moments. Neither betrayed nor sad. No, no, she had the look of someone who finally understood a joke, a lecture, a truth. Melissa saw me.
“Oh,” was what her final words would’ve been.
Mother’s Last Smile kissed her neck—I broke Mom’s heart—and her “smile” shattered. A shard flew into my left eye, slicing through so quick and clean I’d not have noticed if it wasn’t for my vision darkening. I collided with Melissa. We fell, scattered across the room, and I wept.
“You killed my mom,” I moaned.
Melissa, without heat, said, “You did that yourself.”
She was right. I’d made the worst mistake. Squandered a precious gift. A weapon that, in retrospect, was never meant for vengeance or war. Mom had taught me everything she knew because she wanted me to be healthy. Be safe. She wanted to spend time with me. It was Mom who wheedled Dad about arranging the marriage; Melissa was someone she knew made me happy, made me feel like a person—a rather large benefit for a hybridae—and who’d never abandon me. Mom loved Melissa. No surprise she’d hate to see me try to kill her.
I stumbled to my feet. “I loved you.”
Melissa wobbled to hers. “And you, like this, are something I could never love. No matter if you wear the face of my Nadia, I refuse to love a monster.”
“Okay,” I said, “then let’s finalize our divorce.”
I charged toward Melissa. She dropped low ready to receive me, as she’d done when we wrestled in middle school. I’d no intention of something that sentimental—monsters aren’t sentimental things. So hidden at my side, was a Fivefold Atomic Glory that wound together our shared fates and possibility. Where we’d worked it out, fallen or risen together, parted amicably, or just outcomes where I’d never come back here at all. They were pleasant; they weren’t mine.
Melissa caught me by my shoulders, stopping my charge. As if presenting a flower, I brought my hands forward for her to see. A quick glimpse before all was chalcedony. The roar of an explosion. A whoosh as she was launched backwards. When the fireflies cleared from my good eye, I saw our suite—our temporary home—burning away. Memories and all. Then, spearing through smoke and haze, was a vine of twisted muscle tipped with a serrated hook of bone. It latched into my shoulder, shredded muscle.
In the distance, Melissa said, “Let’s,” before yanking me through the hole in the wall.