On the Verge (33 page)

Freya shouted after him, but she knew it was useless. He was after his own vengeance. Dakryma wasn’t the only one with a score to settle. Rusty burst through the last of the creatures surrounding the ring where Dakryma faced Ophidia, but he didn’t stop. It looked as if he meant to tackle Ophidia, take her by surprise, but somehow the succubus knew he was coming. A moment before he reached her she simply stretched out a grotesque hand, wrapped her long fingers around his neck, and used his own momentum to lift him high in the air before slamming him down with such force that Freya was certain Rusty was dead.

Freya screamed, but the sound was lost amid the wild cries of the assembled creatures. They seemed to be feeding upon the violent energy of their Morrigan and her attackers. It stripped them of any pretense of humanity, any shred of decency. Freya’s heart should have stopped, but instead it was beating madly in her chest, urging her to action.

She saw Rusty move. He was still alive.

The werewolf holding her hostage grew wilder, more manic, with each passing moment. His head and body shook violently as he began to shift form, incensed by the smell of blood and violence in the air. Freya knew she had to act quickly. She sprinted away, her guard still in the throes of transforming from man to monster. Freya dove through the crowd, approaching Ophidia, as Rusty had, from behind. She thought she might make it, but then she saw Rusty raise his head from the floor, saw his eyes fill with fear at the danger Freya was exposing herself to. That look of terror was all it took to alert Ophidia of Freya’s imminent attack. She swung around at the last moment and grabbed hold of Freya’s arms with a single powerful hand, bending them cruelly so that she was forced down to her knees. With the other hand she twisted her claws into Freya’s hair and wrenched her head back.

“I have been after a taste of your soul since the moment I laid eyes on you,” said Ophidia. “You’re the only one of our strange little crew that hasn’t had the privilege of my affections. We’ll have to change that. Right here. Right now.”

In the next instant Freya felt Ophidia’s teeth sink into her face. She tried to scream, but the succubus’s horrible tongue filled her mouth and choked the air from her lungs. She flailed in her grasp, but it was no use. There was a sick pause, where it seemed that the demon was enjoying her deathly kiss, and then she took a deep, rattling breath. The effect was nearly instantaneous. Freya’s body went slack, and Ophidia dropped her arms so that she could grasp Freya’s head with both hands.

Freya vaguely saw Rusty jump on Ophidia and realized, as though she were observing it from a distance, that he had wrapped his meaty fists around two of Ophidia’s largest teeth. He was pulling for all he was worth, attempting to break the steel-trap grip she had on Freya’s face. As she struggled to maintain focus, Freya became aware of Dakryma at her side, pushing Ophidia away, trying to separate the demon from her prey. It didn’t seem to be making a difference, and she vaguely wondered why Dakryma would help her when minutes before he’d gladly given her over to Ophidia. But it hardly mattered now. As time ticked by, Freya’s urge to fight back lessened; she began to give into the kiss.

As she slipped away, recollections from the past week danced through her mind. She concentrated on these memories, fragmented, but vivid. There was Vasilisa, cradling her doll, telling her that the creatures of the Verge were not the masters of their tales; they lived and died at the hands of their human creators. In the strange disjointed way of dreams, Baba Yaga was suddenly the one speaking, laughing as she devoured Vasilisa: “It’s Halloween. Anything can happen,” she cackled between mouthfuls.

Then they were gone and a cavern full of goblins took their place. The kobold’s ruthless queen, one horn missing, reminded her of what it had felt like to break with expectation, to disregard the plotline written for her and create her own story. She could see the
königin
, righteous in her indignation, swallowed by the Verge, her elegant horn pressed into Freya’s hand. A piece of her identity stolen, she no longer fit the legend.

This last thought echoed in Freya’s mind, but as she felt herself slide closer to the edge, her memories began to lose their coherence, shifting from recognizable scenes to a swirling multicolored maelstrom, until, in one abrupt shift, an image coalesced from the chaos. It was Beldame, clear in the darkness of her mind. She seemed to be speaking from the confines of her portrait, telling Freya about the power the possessed object grants its owner. The power of the collector.

With that last searing thought, Freya was jolted awake. Her arm brushed against a hard lump in her boot. The dagger. With the last bit of strength she had left, Freya worked the blade loose from its hiding spot, wrapping her fingers tightly around it. Then, in a motion that surprised her with its sureness and speed, she brought the dagger through the side of Ophidia’s mouth. The succubus released her face and reeled back in pain, her long tongue jutting from her mouth. In a flash, Freya severed it.

The succubus’s black eyes widened in disbelief as she stumbled backward, thick blood gushing from her mouth. Freya was too weak to stand, but from where she knelt on the floor she saw Ophidia reel, her skin growing viscous and sluicing off her body. Rusty was still on her back, and with a final sickening twist, Freya watched as he wrenched two enormous fangs from Ophidia’s mouth before stabbing them into her neck. The succubus screamed, an unholy wail. She seemed to be slowly disintegrating, her flesh melting into a stinking pool on the floor. Her panicked shrieks filled the room. Many of the demons began to flee, frightened by the desperate death pangs of their Morrigan. But one of them did not move.

Dakryma.

As Ophidia twisted in agony, Freya watched as he drew his hand back, his fingers splayed, and then thrust his arm straight into her chest and wrenched out her heart. He held it, black and hard, in front of her face for a terrible moment, and then crushed it so that it became nothing more than sand that he blew away with a single breath.

“The end,” he said.

What remained of the demon Ophidia sank to the ground, an oozing carcass of black sludge. A haze of dark smoke slowly materialized, engulfing her writhing form before pulling it away through the cracks and crevices of the floor. The Verge had her now.

I
t was one of those singular late fall days in Seattle, the kind of day that reminds you of life and death in equal measure. Only a few stubborn leaves clung to the trees lining the sidewalk, their fallen comrades creating dense blankets of decay on the wet cement. But the sun was shining and the air had a freshness to it, even in the middle of the city, which sparkled with the verve of nature’s last hurrah.

She walked down the familiar curving street toward Imogen Beldame’s grand mansion. Rusty strode with sure, heavy steps by her side, carrying the old woman’s portrait. Freya was glad he had come with her. She disliked even being in the same room with Beldame’s painting, and she had major qualms about touching it, so she was thankful he had volunteered to carry it. He had it casually tucked under one massive arm, the haunted face on the panel covered by her black scarf.

It had only been a little more than a week since Halloween, but Freya couldn’t stand having the painting in her home any longer. It seemed to her that the Beldame staring out at her from the glistening surface was a little too convincing a likeness. The only parts of the image that retained the desolate blackness Dakryma had created were Beldame’s intense eyes. Their glistening inkiness alternated between appearing baleful and intensely entreating. The effect was unnerving. She told herself that it was just the interplay of light and shade that made the painting so alive, but she knew that there was more to the world now than met the eye. She had no doubt that the real Beldame was trapped there within the painting’s right angles.

It was Dakryma who had suggested putting the painting in Beldame’s home. It was an ironic move that satisfied his melancholy nature, a megalomaniac collector imprisoned among her possessions. After Dakryma had ripped out Ophidia’s heart, terrifying the remaining demons in the Vestiges Club into submission, they’d found her belongings and along with them the keys to Beldame’s mansion. Freya had worried briefly that it might appear a little suspicious to be seen poking around Beldame’s home after her unexplained disappearance, but she wasn’t overly concerned about getting caught up in a missing persons investigation.

Unsurprisingly, it seemed, Beldame had made many enemies during her relentless and often ruthless pursuit of objects, and the police department didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to track her down. Plus, Freya didn’t have anything to hide so there was nothing to lie about, and the truth was unbelievable anyway.

They rounded the bend in the road and approached the dense hedge in front of the towering façade of Beldame’s home. As her feet sank into the layer of wet debris that now covered Beldame’s once-immaculate walk, Freya wondered what the mysterious professor Dakryma would do once he was freed from his portrait.

As it turned out, a certain Slavic witch residing in Seattle’s deep Underground had agreed to break the bonds that kept Dakryma hobbled to Stuck’s painting. Baba Yaga, proud, sly, and powerful despite the ravages of a New World, had been behind the scenes the whole time pulling some strings; first as a mentally unstable homeless woman with a penchant for clairvoyant proclamations, and later as a striking redhead with a proclivity for unusual baked goods. Now that the upstart Beldame had been dealt with and the fragile balance between this world and the Verge was once again secure, she could afford to make Dakryma work for his freedom. He’d need to do a few favors for her first. Then she would relieve him of his ligature. She’d made no such guarantees about the dream catcher though.

If he ever succeeded in getting himself free from his various magical manacles, Freya thought, he’d need to be a bit more vigilant in the future, but the wistful pensiveness that was his natural state didn’t lend itself well to practical of-the-moment considerations. For her part, Freya still hadn’t figured out whose side Dakryma was on. He’d carried her so tenderly to the Convocation only to throw her mercilessly to the demons upon arrival and then rush to her aid when she was dying in Ophidia’s arms. Maybe he did have warm feelings for her deep down, or maybe he just thought fighting off Ophidia was a good way to kill the succubus, and in that respect, of course, he had been right. Freya suspected she would never know. The only thing that was certain about a demon like Dakryma is that you could never be certain of him.

The one person she could count on was Rusty. Freya had recovered spiritually from her encounter with Ophidia relatively quickly; she’d always suspected she had a deep reserve of soul. And Rusty had been by her side the whole time, even, and especially, when it became apparent they would now share Ophidia’s particular brand of parting gift. Her face was marred by a ring of angry red marks where the succubus’s teeth and bitten into her skin. The wounds were deep and likely to leave scars. But Freya felt at peace with that. They would serve as reminders of her strength, her resilience, and the series of events that had brought her to Rusty; their feelings for each other were more than skin deep.

Indeed, with Ophidia’s demise, Rusty seemed to have freed himself of a great burden. Freya had even seen him smile, briefly but genuinely, when she had regained enough strength in the days following the Convocation to repeat the beautiful night they’d had together after returning from the Underground. Each day their feelings grew in intensity, and each was guardedly optimistic. Both of them were used to being loners, but the things they had been through together had created an undeniable bond. It wasn’t love yet, but it was very close.

Freya put the key in the lock of Beldame’s solid oak door and turned it until she heard a satisfyingly heavy click and the door slid open on silent hinges. They stepped inside the dark foyer with its airy chandelier and solid wood furnishings and headed down the hallway past the staircase with its disturbingly realistic caryatids. The intricate Persian carpet muted their footsteps as they padded across the anteroom just outside of Beldame’s study.

The spectacle of the oddities and wonders in Beldame’s wall-to-wall glass fronted cabinet of curiosities still filled Freya with a kind of odd longing for places that she would never see and precious things she would never be able to afford. There was still a bit of the collector in Freya, and the over-the-top display reminded her, just like last time, of the hidden but insistent desire she kept close to her heart, that slow-burning will to possess, to know, to keep as her own the marvels of this world and others.

It took a very specific kind of person to amass a collection like Beldame’s, and Freya, much to her horror, realized she had the same internal raw material. All it would take was the will, some cash, and the impetus to abandon her principles. Then with a swallow and a blink she came to her senses. There’s a little good and evil in all of us she thought, and it was her job to make her own imperfect, messy way forward, striving to be neither irreproachable nor irredeemable, but simply a human doing her best.