Page 55 of Daughter of the Dark

“I shouldn’t have come.” She backed away from Sami slowly. “The others will be expecting me soon. Take care of yourself, yeah?”

“Solana, wait—”

But she was already gone, letting go of the last of the past she held on to.

Night fell over the streets of Sonqo like a plague. Slowly at first, and then all at once, shadows shifting from murky to opaque. Solana stayed where she was in the corner between two buildings, waiting patiently for trouble to find her. She was in the mood to release something, whether it be her anger or muki from their own brand of torment. She was desperate to feel something other than the pathetic pity that welled inside of her.

With a palm on her dagger, she slunk away from the wall, swaying unsteadily as the ground shifted beneath her feet, eyes darting from one side to the other, aware of every noise, every shape, every crevice of dark. Her dagger stayed cool for long enough that Solana thought she might not run into a single muki. How lush the lives were here, that nobody died unexpectedly or violently, that most of their dead felt no need to return and wreak havoc.

She was about to turn back the way she had come when she saw a bright flash of color race by from the corner of her eye. She spun and held out her dagger, the sharp edge of the blade glinting in the moonlight. There was nothing there.

Another flash, this time followed by a child’s giggle. Solana saw sunlight and brown hair and her favorite blue dress. She took off down the street after her, desperate to see who she was running from.

“Careful,” a voice called out. “You don’t want to get blood on that pretty dress.”

Solana whirled in a circle, flashes of gentle hands and scraped knees and soothing words. “It’s important that this stays in your body at all times.” Fingers tickled her sides. She laughed, but his eyes were so serious. “You are very special, ususi.”

Ususiiiii, the dark whispered.

The walls of the homes surrounding her blurred and swayed. Solana stuck out a hand to steady herself, but the wall she fell against was cold and severe, sucking her down into memories and nightmares, swirling the two until she couldn’t tell what was real or imagined.

A knife pressed against her body. Fingers curled into the earth. Blood-soaked stone and forgotten pasts and gut-wrenching betrayal.

On her knees, Solana gasped for air, dying to live, to be free, to—

She didn’t feel the heat of her dagger until it was too late. The muki was upon her within the next breath, a collision that sent her careening into the wall with enough force to make her vision go black. It knocked her dagger out of her hand, and her solidly back into the present, into a reality where she had gone to hunt muki all on her own in a ridiculous dress because she was reckless and selfish and sad.

Pathetic. Distractions were for the weak, and Solana was the weakest of them all.

Daggerless and waiting for her vision to fully return, Solana watched through a fog as the muki got to all fours and shook its head like a dog, and then its beady eyes landed on her. Saliva dripped from its teeth. Scraggly bits of hair fell onto its forehead. It watched her, waiting to see what she would do. Solana chose to stay very still. To carefully calculate the distance between her and her dagger and her and the muki and the muki and her dagger, trying to ascertain who would get to what first.

It was more consideration than she usually gave any single problem, but there was no Sami to watch her back, no Reyes to hunt beside her.

It was only one muki. And despite the several piscos and the negligible vision problem, Solana was determined to put it down.

Decision made, she lunged into a slide, her hand just closing around the hilt of her dagger when the muki’s body hit her again. She was able to turn so that she was facing it and swing the blade into its side. Not an ideal spot—she preferred the base of the neck—but this would slow it down and give her the time to make a killing blow.

Except it didn’t react the way she had expected it to. Its head hovered above hers, tilted like a dog hearing a strange sound. If it had ears, she imagined they’d be perked.

Instead, it watched her, its beady eyes unmoving and unblinking, and then it moved its lipless mouth.

At first, she thought it was another nightmare. A figment of her imagination paired with a foolish amount of pisco. There was no world in which muki spoke, and yet, Solana watched its mouth move and attempt to form words. She saw its purple tongue touching the roof of its mouth. She heard the gurgle and gasp of language, even if she didn’t understand the words. Solana tried to scramble free. She yanked her dagger out of its side and plunged it back in, higher, this time, where she knew its unbeating heart would be.

But its mouth didn’t stop moving, and its grip tightened on her arms, talons digging into her flesh and pinning her like a cat playing with its food. She wanted to scream, but she didn’t dare wake it from whatever trance it seemed to be stuck in.

And if she had screamed, she wouldn’t have heard the word it whispered.

Ñakapana.

A hiss, a whisper squeezing through decayed muscle and deconstructed flesh.

Solana pulled her dagger out and sunk it back in, this time into its chest. Brackish blood poured onto her hands and stomach, and still the thing spoke.

Ñakapana.

Ñakapana.

Ñakapana.