THE NEXT DAY (TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2022)
AN ALLEY, TRIBECA, NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES
“Get up!”
The kick to Ella’s ribs lifted her a bit off the ground and sent her sliding on the ice. She could feel the steel-toed boot and the cracking sensation as her ribs broke. The pain was both immediate and distant at the same time.
Ella had been walking to her apartment from Charlie’s place when someone had pulled her into an alley in what felt like a mugging. Before she could react, she had felt a sharp piercing sensation on her thigh. Now she felt groggy and in a haze, feeling disconnected from everything.
“This little thing, this vermin will be our Empress?” Another voice. And then a bit of warm moisture on her face. From spit. The warmth contrasted with her other cheek pressed against the slush and cold pavement of the alley.
She could hear the crunch of footsteps on snow but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t see. Her eyes were tearing from the pain.
“Ekerri chose this? A fucking monkey? Ekerri was a titan straddling the ages. He was Utu reborn, worthy of following. He slaughtered his way through the People. We followed him willingly, for we were the chosen ones. The Blooded. And together, we fertilized the lands with blood… and he picked a human as his heir?”
Another kick, this time to her face. She saw stars and maybe she blacked out for a moment. This time she can feel another crack and some teeth break. But she can’t even tell what has happened.
A third voice, “Now now. Ekerri was a butcher. But the Emperor,” and even in her concussed state, she could hear the derision in this voice, a woman’s voice, “… the Emperor was a clever bastard also. And he betrayed us, his elite. Casting us into that hell.”
And now a new pain, almost exquisite in its sharpness. Ella managed to open her eyes, and she could see a woman’s stiletto heel. It had pierced her hand and pinned it to the ground. Blood welled out from around it.
Who wears heels in the ice? Ella dazedly thought to herself.
“We’ll kill this pawn. Then that bastard, traitor Ekerri will die. We shall hold true for the return of Inanna.”
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
And Ella saw the first one, the one that had jumped her from an alley on her way home from Charlie’s, blur. And his legs changed, tearing through the pants and multiplying. Soon they took on a strange rust color. Two large pincers emerged from where the creature’s hips had been.
Great. A fucking lobster centaur is going to kill me, she thought.
Ella was barely holding on. Her hand was still pinned underneath the woman’s heel. Her ribs were definitely broken and every breath hurt like hell. Her face was partially numb. And she could feel blood on her face, on her hands.
It wasn’t even cold anymore. Despite her lying on her side on ice and dirty city slush. She felt a lassitude and warmth spreading through her.
So this is what death feels like. At least the pain is gone.
Another kick landed somewhere, and it slid her a bit around where she was pinned down by her hand. It was excruciating. Now she could see all three of them. No. There were five. Two had hung back by the entryway.
The one that had transformed was clicking his pincers and his hands mimicked the movement.
“She dies now. I am going to enjoy eating her flesh.” And now she saw this creature’s tail with venom dripping from it.
A scorpion?
And Ella finally managed to focus for a moment. Her eyes flared brightly and all of them recoiled in astonishment. The power cleared her system immediately of the venom, and, even though the pain became more intense from her wounds, she could think.
She could feel her mouth shift as her jaw moved back into its place. Her left hand clenched around the heel that had pierced through it, and she pulled hard and the woman fell backward.
And then she took another shot. One that was similar but different to the one she had tried using — was it just two days ago? — against the sniper.
The scorpion man lit up in a torrent of white light, just a silhouette. And then there was just the smell of burnt flesh and ash floating in the air.
Ella stood up. Her wounds were still knitting together, but so incompletely. It was still agony when she moved. And she reached over and pulled the heel from the her hand. Blood dripped and she staggered and hissed from the pain.
She was drawing deeper than she ever had. But she could feel the well of power running low, and it was hard to collect what she could to fight further when she saw something astonishing.
The remaining four were kneeling and bowing in the snow.
“Inanna Reborn. We are Blessed in Her Name and Presence. Bringer of our Restoration. Protector of the world. We are Aqrabuamelu. Our service is eternal.”
It was a prayer and offering. The chant was a ritual but she could feel it carrying something to her.
The woman, having scrambled into the kneeling position added in a martial shout, “All hail, Empress of the People.”
The others echoed, “All hail!”
She limped over to the woman kneeling in the dirty snow in a trash strewn alley. The woman’s hair was the same rust red of the scorpion and Ella could tell, with her crown on her head, that this woman was also a scorpion creature as were the others. An Agrab-something.
She threw the bloody heel at the woman’s head and missed.