A grey sheer of rain had cloaked the night in glistening monochrome. By the time I'd made it into the courtyard, hurrying past the tiny amphibian corpses, several others had already gathered around the hounds and their prey. Torches had been lofted into the air, laced with the magic to burn bright through the storm. The hounds were slickly black tonight; the torches added the sheen of burning oil to their slabbed fur. I pushed my way through the gathered demons and their servants, searching for Chiro.
One of the hound's heads turned away from their target and trotted to me.
Gabriel, ears perked, flipped his forked tongue over my hand. I made a face, started to pull my hand away when his ears shifted flat. His tail drooped into an uncertain, low wag at just the tip. I pushed him away, letting the rain help clean my slimed fingertips. The hound watched with harvest moon eyes I might've called curious if I'd known any better, and leaned forward for another lick. He could smell Chiro's blood, I thought, smell or taste some tiny particle lingering on through my hasty rush outside.
"He's fine," I muttered, and rather doubted it. What was the hex doing to Chiro?
I shouldered past the last line of the crowd. Chiro stood hooded and soaked among the grappling pack, occasionally nudging gnashing teeth back from someone crouched on the ground.
Across from him, kept away from trouble by the bulky weight of the Walrus, Dakota stood beside a gaping Val. Neither women noticed me as I splashed forward with help from an elbow to my back. I caught my balance on Gabriel's shoulder. The wolf snarled and lunged at those behind me, and I stumbled in front of the someone...something captured.
It had all the structure of a humanoid creature, but it was tall and slender, figured neither quite like a man nor a woman. Crouched though it was, skeletal fingers held against its head, I could tell that its spine was limber, slightly catlike, an interesting match for limbs that suggested an apelike gait. Its body was sewn together by raw red muscle and white sinew, sticky and patched with rain and mud. Laid over the flesh in most places except joints, was a boney carapace that ended in a thick, eggshaped skull. Three horns sloped elegantly away from wide, deep cheek bones, inside whose shadowed depths there was only the faintest gleam of green. Its jawline curved into a beaky black mouth.
And it stunk.
Even in the downpour it stunk, smelled like a rose left to rot in a garbage dump.
Chiro snatched a sword from another demon. In a matter of seconds two others had wrestled it into submission, forced its muscled neck out. In between its hardened covering I could see the veins pulse. The blade lifted.
The creature's beak opened. Trough a whistling, high voice, it called out a low, "Ah, Tay Wilson."
I darted forward with a screech to stop. The pair of demons sneered. Rolling his eyes, Chiro lowered the blade. I was mildly surprised he didn't swipe the head regardless. His fingers shifted impatiently along the hilt.
"It's from the Witch," he said, in that clipped tone suggesting there was nothing else to know.
"What's it want?"
"Your head."
"Then I should be the one getting the message, shouldn't I?"
"He's right, you know," hissed the creature.
Chiro lifted his hand in a 'told you' gesture. "Tay," he continued. "It's pouring. My hounds are hungry."
"They can wait a minute longer, and you're already soaked."
"As are you," he said, with the grin of the cat who ate the canary. "Don't you want some relief from that?"
The creature's worm-white tongue rolled over its beak. "Insolent halfbreed," it began.
And at that very moment, something about the situation felt so, so very wrong. Just a feeling, a tickle in the back of my skull that raised goosebumps- and as I looked to Chiro I realized that the other demons, even the hounds, had hushed and backed away from us. The creature stayed crouched and now unrestrained. Chiro stood still, but his gaze lifted up, up, up.
The rain stopped with a dull patter. A shadow had fallen over us.
I looked up.
A feathered, rot-blistered wing had flicked over the scene. The stringy end of a serpentine tail, textured with velvet scales, wound around my arm. Down came the long neck of an eastern dragon risen from the dead, it seemed; down came its tattered, half-skull face. Dank breath warmed my ear. A tongue licked my cheek.
"Bonsoir, ma petite puce."
Dakota's rain-soaked face had gone white.
"Yer Majesty," said the Walrus, bowing low. The other demons offered a similar response, even Chiro, although he never averted his gaze, just nodded his head in polite, begrudging respect.
I had thought the King stayed in his tower because he couldn't transform, that Chiro had injured him beyond repair. That disfigured horror in the dark couldn't have gotten any worse, and yet, looking up at the dingy blue body, its burned and naked throat and that balding, dreadfully sharp face....How could the King live through this? Was he also hexed?
Corrosion and battle had eaten away at what might've once been a glorious hide of night tones and twilight indigo. The distinguished jawline bore heavy cuts to the bone. Rainwater flowed over exposed ribs, where it pooled on the curves and landed hick drops on my cloak. With a deep breath, I set my hand on the King's permanently bared teeth and nudged him gently away.
"Cat, who is our visitor you are set to execute?" he rumbled.
The creature's head rose.
"A messenger of the Marrow Witch," Chiro responded, and all the demons made that funny little gesture. The Walrus pushed Dakota, and she, Val, and I finally complied, too. The lingering girls follow their Lord's lead with questioning faces.
The King's arm, short but thick as a treetrunk, lifted with one claw the creature's face. "What does It ask of us?"
"The ceremony may continue as planned," the creature said. "The girls must come with us, to pay for the crime committed."
"Girls?" I said.
"More than two hands killed our priest." Its head, still gripped by the King, angled one dark socket toward me.
Dakota met my eyes. I looked away from her nodded at Chiro. "What about him?"
"Our lord's competitor," the thing said. "We do not find fault in that."
"Then you should find no fault with a Lady."
Its tongue rolled out again. "One girl then."
"Not worth listening to," Chiro cut in. The King rumbled his agreement, neck arched to bring his head back around beside me. I walked straight past his lacerated muzzle and crouched down beside the creature.
"Creature," I said, searching for its eyes. "Does the Witch love you?"
"The Witch loves us all."
"Tay," Chiro said, and using the flat of the blade to tap my knee. "Get the hell away. This is a minion. These are the bones of victims ground into new clay. This is flesh drawn of ash and mud."
"What would the Witch do to us?" I asked, even as I felt the King's teeth sink delicately into my cloak to drag me back. I stumbled upright, snatched the cloak from him with a smart slap on the fleshy half of his chin, and returned to the creature. I repeated my question.
The creature's skull tilted thoughtfully. "That which is just and deserved," it said slowly.
"And Akta...is he truly dead?"
"Those who pledge their service to the Marrow Witch never truly die."
"Did you pledge your service?"
"I owe service."
The King coiled contemplatively behind me, a soft rustle of velveteen fur against wet cobblestone. I shared another glance with Dakota, who had been looking down at her hands as if she were still clutching Akta's heart. I squared up my shoulders and said in a loud voice, "I'm not going to behead the messenger."
Whispers. A ripple of discontent that would've grown to a bellow if I hadn't hurried on through the rest of my impromptu speech. "Tell the Witch I do not accept these conditions. Akta has no claim over the Lord and Lady who beat him, nor over their own conquests. He took my body and drank from my flesh. That is penalty enough. As the first Lady to survive the Hunt, I am willing to forgive the peddler's trick that hindered me throughout, and even the hellions spawned tonight. The Witch can wait a year to have me, if it takes that long. And as a show of Its goodwill, I'd like It to surrender you, Creature, into my service."
"Tay." Chiro clutched my arm. His dark grey eyes were shadowed with concern. "This isn't how the story goes. You don't talk to the Witch like that. Its servant will take your head off."
"I know what I'm doing."
"You really don't."
The King's talons pushed us apart. "Hold your tongue, cat. Your Queen has spoken."
"Milady," Chiro said then, and tipped his head with as much annoyance as one could pour into the moment. He shoved the blade back into the hands of the one he'd taken it from, and snapped his fingers in Gabriel's direction. The hound jumped to attention, and the pack with him, scrambling atop each other, pawing after Chiro, leaving burning ash that sizzled and smoked as the hungry beasts left.
"Off with you lot," the King snapped. The courtyard emptied as quickly as it had filled, with a few demons sent to escort the creature outside the walls. During that time the King's claw hadn't left my chest, and wouldn't until Dakota ushered Val beneath an overhang and the two disappeared from sight. The same paw gave a dirty little squeeze before letting go, dark talons settling on the ground near me.
"You shouldn't be spending time with that heathen," the King breathed, glancing off in the direction of the kennels, or wherever it was Chiro had taken the hounds to feed.
I followed his gaze, sheltered by the flea bitten feathers of one tremendous wing. "Someone once told me I should find my own loyal thing."
"You have a crag cat."
"Which has worked out better for Shail than for me."
"And the creature?"
"To learn from, not to trust." I tried to meet his eyes, unsure if what I was looking at was green, or orange, or yellow- maybe everything all at once, changing. "I've spent time with the cat, as you call him. He seems like the type who'd be content to let this world burn. He must be fairly talented to take a title from your own flesh and blood."
The hiss of rain was only just louder than the dragon's miffed snort. "Correct."
"A man like that makes for a better pet than an enemy, don't you think? Put gloves on the cat, and he won't be catching mice."
"Cats do as they please and they've still got teeth. What happens when it pleases him to pull the gloves off?"
"He won't," I said, and on that I was sure. "He's mine."
His paw grabbed me by the waist. "And when your womb quickens?"
Those mellifluous words and teasing way he touched my belly made me flinch. "Isn't that what you're after? Protection for your legacy?"
The King watched me through an unblinking gaze. I stared right back at him, and at last he trundled away from me, tensing his muscles as he prepared to spring into the wind. "I will enjoy your mouth so much more when it belongs to me," he hissed. Then he was a shadow in the rain, and I was safe underneath the hood of my cloak. I watched the rain dent the little bellies of the toads, trying to remember everything I'd just done and said. It was like a ghost speaking through me, some auto-mode to recklessness I'd switched on. What had I done? What would I do?
I headed in the direction of Dakota and Val. No sooner had I crossed out of the rain and into the chilly hall was I sprung upon by Val. Her wild red hair stuck dark on her cheeks as she hugged me.
"Fuck," Dakota said from our left. "I don't even know what you do with that. I'm sorry, Tay."
"It's okay."
"What are you thinking?"
"That I don't know enough about anyone. We've gotta learn if we want to survive." I took them aside and told them what Chiro had said about haunting. I needed to get back home. I needed to talk to my mother. There was a small puncture in my clothes, where the King's talon had pulled the linen shirt. My fingers widened the hole as a chill raced along my spine. If Mom knew a way out, now would be the perfect time. Where was she, and why hadn't anyone from the other side tried to contact me since the Hunt?
"Bonsoir ma petite puce" = Good evening, my little flea :) French
HEADS UP: I forgot to tell y'all but I have a chapter up in Friday Night Bites called "South Dakota." [Hmm, what character could that be about hmmmm] Check it out if you'd like to see what she was up to prior to being chased off a cliff! Because it happens before Hunted, it's not included in the original tale, so be sure to look for it in FNB!