Little Saint Bride [Death and the Maiden, #1]

Chapter Twenty Seven: Will O' the Wisp

And then something rises from the green mush before us.

The woman-- if that's what it is-- sits up from where she had been floating along in the water, covered in slime and muck. Her body is a patchwork quilt of scars and blistered flesh, half concealed in murky water. Her hair has fallen out in hunks, leaving odd patches of scalp and rotten, tangled hair. From where I stand, I can see moving, bug-like creatures in those fleshy remains, devouring her exposed scalp and face into a series of maggot and holes--

And I scream.

I can't stand maggots.

I can only see how they bit into my brother after he died.

My stomach lurches, and with little warning I vomit over Hadrian's feet.

That sparks off three reactions. First, my own throat burns of acid. It's a disgusting feeling, one that brings up another wave of nausea and a churning cramp in my stomach that doubles me over.

Second, Hadrian reacts ridiculously slowly to the vomit sprawled across his feet. He blinks at me, bent over and clutching my belly, before glancing at the globlets of sick. Then I hear him turn and retch, fighting against vomiting because I had.

Third-- and most important of all, even though neither of us notice at first-- the Maggoty Swamp Woman hears us spewing our guts up, and stands up out of the water.

It takes a pair of slapping, wet feet on cobbles to make me scream once more. When I look up, lumpy grey breasts, covered in open slashes, dangle before my eyes. My eyes continue upwards to find a slack, expressionless woman with a maggot sliding down her zygomatic bone.

Her hands are bound in between her breasts, and I realise where all the scars have come from.

Each one of her nails is sharp, and pointed-- and I squint at them. They weren't just sharp; they were blades rammed through the beds of her nails in order to make human claws, claws that cut her whenever she breathes or moves or itches her nose. She can't move a hair without slicing half her face off.

That's how she keeps cutting herself.

And, inked into her arms, and hands, the words, "SIN OF TORTURE AND MURDER."

I step away, but those claws come rushing too fast.

She grazes my cheek, and I feel three identical cuts open on my face, small enough to ignore. The green woman is inhumanly quick, and despite being bound at her wrists, she's lethal. Her grabs towards me blind me with silver flashes of light reflecting off my torch, and then cut me as I block with my forearms.

Remembering the dull knife strapped at my waist, I buy time stepping away from the green monster, my eyes never leaving her own. Fumbling for the weapon is taking too long, and the more frustrated I become, the harder it gets to free the blade. But after a tense eternity of dodging, I finally strike back, knife shooting up towards the lady's ribs. Metal meets flesh in a sickening squelch as the blade sinks deep, crunching into bone as my hand pushes the hilt up.

She lets out a guttural scream, sharp teeth hissing in pain, before attacking me in an even greater frenzy. I'm not prepared, and her claws split all the seams of the shoulder of my hazard suit.It's as if the knife between her ribs has only incensed her further to kill me.

I wrench the knife out and plunge it in again, feeling sick inside. The noise of tearing flesh echoes as I stab the woman repeatedly, gritting my teeth to stop my body shaking violently. Eventually, her attacks cease, and she starts to stumble.

She coughs, and a wracking globule of blood plops into her hand. I see how she flinches.

I raise my knife to attack once more, until the woman is overcome by a coughing spout and streams of blood fly everywhere. Her bound hands flail to stem the flow, and in a stroke of misfortune her fingers split straight through the cartilage on her nose.