Page 36 of Snake Eyes & Bad Luck

Feed him to the beast. And we are the beast. Feed. Feed. Feed.

“Probably.” Her head fell to the side. The whispers, the madness that brewed within her, grew heavy. It pooled in her belly, and she’d never felt so much power in her life. Because, despite the fact she sat at his feet, nothing but her skirts and her slowly turning sanity, Lord Pavlin was afraid of her. He used to be a great man. Eyes detached and uncaring about life before him, his only desire was for the Order. For his goddess. The man before her stared with frightened flames in his eyes. A dribble started at his nose. It was small, but the crimson trickled down over the top of his lip.

Stuff him full. Give us to him. Put us in his belly.

Pavlin blinked once, stumbling back a step. His gloved hand rose to his lip and swiped away the blood. When he pulled back his glove, the metal rings around the leather showed spots of blood. His eyes widened just like the dead man a stone’s throw from her. Another dribble came out of his other nostril and the paladin stepped further back from her.

We hunger. Flesh and bone and marrow and blood. And blood. A lake of his blood.

“You know the worst part about…” she trailed off, flippantly twirling a muddy palm about the swamp around them. Pavlin’s gaze darted from his dirtied glove to her face. Avelina sighed, “I didn’t even kill my father.”

The madness dribbled out of her. It seeped from her pores, swirling around her arms. She raised both, palms open toward him, the madness turning to colors once more. A murky brown formed as he raised his weapon.

“Liar!” Pavlin lunged only to stumble backward. His eyes fluttered and a larger, thicker line of blood trailed out of his nose. He choked on his tongue. The first blast fired off her left hand, smashing into the center of his armor. Pavlin spun away from her. His armor clattered and the morning star sank into the mud. Hot metal filled her mouth, and she inhaled in deep through her nose.

“I don’t really care if you believe me.” The second blast left her other arm, the one with the new bone finger, and it spun Pavlin in the opposite way. His screams bounced off the water and the trees. In fact, he joined a symphony of pain as other wet, curdled cries sounded. Pavlin wrenched pieces of melted metal off his body before the flesh beneath it could be eaten by it. When he was nothing more than a man with a nose bleed, his head snapped up. Curious. His attention was on her, not on his Paladins who begged for his aid. His fury with her would drive him to attack her directly again.

She would need to be smart. Neddy’s lesson showed her she could kill him if she got her hands on him. Avelina arched an inquisitive brow. Diversion always works. Villains love to monologue. “How did you know who my patron was?”

“Our Lady, SunBringer, told me. She came to me in my dreams, told me of your location. I was sent here to cleanse this swamp of your filth.” He stalked forward. She matched his steps, keeping her eyes on him. A yell sounded somewhere in the trees and was swiftly cut short. It was silly for her to think it, but she couldn’t help it. He’s going to be insufferable when he’s done.

Her lips curled for a moment only for her face to fall. Wait. Her eyebrows furrowed. “SunBringer spoke to you? Told you where I was?”

“She bestows visions on her best warriors.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion as he wrapped his fingers around his morning star. She should have tossed it in the lake, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hoist it. Her father’s broadsword was the weight of a grown man, Pavlin’s weapon was just as mighty. It would be a waste of time to bother with it. But she did lament not throwing it to the fishes.

Avelina glanced at the sky, then back to him with furrowed brows. “Are you sure it was SunBringer you spoke to in your sleep?”

“You poisonous snake, you insinuate I cannot tell the difference between visions and hallucinations?” He spat, charging at her. Avelina flung herself away from him, running along the soggy beach of the lake. The maze of trees would garner her cover. Plus, she knew he wouldn’t be able to swing openly. Much like her father on the train, the trees were too tightly packed beyond the keeper’s cabin. She’d need to follow the path to the dense forest. Unfortunately, it was a slick, muddy path that caused her to bounce from foot to foot in order to avoid his heavy blows.

“I’m not insinuating anything!” She laughed, hysteria filling her veins with buzzing bees. His weapon hit a stray tree instead of her and sent her stumbling backward. Arms up to cover her face, she hissed as splinters bit into her exposed forearms. Keep him talking. Keep him off center. Keep him coming. She needed to get to the trees, then she could get close to him without fear of getting a spiked ball of metal to the stomach. “Just that my father never had visions. She never visited him once.”

“You lie!” He shattered another tree and sent her flying when the long bar of his weapon got her in the side. She rolled through a large patch of moss. Her arms and legs moved even while her brain was spinning to keep up. Avelina was back on her feet only to be knocked down as he slammed the weapon into her. She’d never been stabbed before; in all her life she’d never had anything pierce her and shred her skin.

But it was funny, as she rolled into a pack of trees, her back knocking hard into their bark…it didn’t hurt nearly as much as when her patron flayed her finger open and replaced her finger bone. There was a hole in her stomach, blood rushing out of her as she found a chunk of her missing. And the worst thing that ever hurt her was something she couldn’t even prove happened for real. Catalysta messed with her mind. Nothing was real, time was an illusion, and there were voices in her ear, whispering about eating the Lord Pavlin. Blood seeped between her fingers as she pressed her palm to the wound.

His gloved hand wrapped around her neck, shredding her back with the bark as he hoisted her up. Up. Up until her feet dangled limply below her. The blood loss hit her brain fast. Everything was cold and spots danced in her vision. One hand to her wound, the other clawing at his grip around her jugular, she stared down at him with hatred.

She hated Pavlin. Hated the Paladins. Hated the Order and SunBringer and everyone in that fucking Stronghold.

“It matters not if she visited him or not. He was never in need of intervention or comforting embrace. Knight Commander Dalethorn was a pillar of this Order…” Pavlin trailed off as her lips broke open in a cruel grin.

“Not even when his wife died?” She spat the blood filling the back of her throat.

“You are—”

“The weapon,” Avelina interrupted, hand leaving her wound to slap her crimson stained palm against his face. His eyes shot open as she felt the magic seep out of her bones into him. His temple throbbed against her skin as she watched death flood the veins on his face. One last flicker of recognition filled him before his eyes turned to milky glass. Lord Pavlin collapsed. She fell over him, crumpled up in a ball across chest, unable to move her frozen limbs. Her cheek against his chest, she murmured into his rapidly cooling corpse, “The Dead Mother used to destroy you all.”

Chapter Nineteen:

Cottonmouth

Shit. Shit-shit-shit-shit. Callum raced out of the trees, finding his little viper collapsed on top of the dead Paladin. “Well, darlin, now I can’t accuse you of pullin’ yer punches, huh?”

He was whispering to a dazed, bleeding Avelina. She didn’t even talk back as he peeled her off Lord Pavlin. The wound in her soft belly made him swallow over a lump in his throat. He reached down into the roots around them and ripped out one of the many veins of the swamp. It came away stringy, little white tendrils lashing out at him. Avelina curled up in the crook of his one arm while he shucked the root. Getting at the core, a writhing mess of white veins that united all the trees in The Bark Father’s swamp. He put the thrashing flora into his mouth and ripped them in half. Green blood filled his mouth. Callum poured the rest over her wound and watched it sink in.

The blood stopped, crusting over into a scab. Then the skin slowly crawled up and over it. Stitched back together in clumps until it was like the wound never existed, The Bark Father’s blood worked it’s magic. While the evil tree at the center of the swamp was a cruel master…there was a reason those who serve him were hard to kill. He made everything of his sturdy. Made to last.

It was obvious that Avelina was made to hurt. Her powers drove people away in fear, and could defend herself with quick thinking. But a morning star still hurts like a son of a fuck. He glanced at the corpse beside them and was reminded of Neddy. Ink filled in all the lines in his face. He was a dramatic painting, with wide eyes, mouth ajar, and spider webs of onyx all over his face.