On my twentieth attempt, my granddaughter’s loose lips drove my eldest to withhold her blessings and the duchess of life grew angry, making mistakes beneath the light of a bloody moon. She lost control and threatened my herald, dooming the prospects of the tower before the ground was ever struck. I felt, at first, that bringing the child was a mistake, but then my eldest did something I did not expect. She interceded on her sister’s behalf and willingly descended to the broken peninsula. To think being a mother would change her as a woman so much… Millia Gnu Aye succeeded the throne.
A crack of thunder woke him.
Alexander jumped to his feet, rain hammering against the tower. He rubbed his eyes, surrounded by darkness.
How long had he been out?
He picked up a candlestick and lit it with a strike of his flint. The room flickered, his stove as cold as ice and the sounds of construction noticeably absent.
The storm must’ve gotten too strong, he thought, walking towards his bedroom door to check the hallway.
He heard a scuttling noise like many fingers tapping across a wood floor. Something inside of him awoke—a primal feeling causing the hairs on his neck to prickle and goosebumps to appear along his arms.
Alexander blew out the candle, pushing his back against the wall and holding his hand over his mouth, his palms cold and clammy. His eyes adjusted, hands shaking, jumping to dim shadows and haunting whispers.
A buzzing noise came from the hallway, heavy breathing, and something wet slapping against the floor.
He dropped the candlestick, moving toward an armoire in the corner of his bedroom and slipping inside. He pressed his bulbous form tight against the wood, but the door wouldn’t shut, so he left it cracked, peeking into the room.
A face slithered around the corner, cheeks pressed against the door hinge, eyes glowing red like blood.
“My love,” a woman cooed. “Where are you, my love?”
It was Decima, but it wasn’t. Her voice was all wrong. Distant, alien, and sinister.
“I’m hungry, sweetheart.” She arched her neck, bashing her forehead against the door as it creaked open, her tongue flicking against the wood like a snake.
Her feet thumped onto the ground, fingers fully extended from her calves, knees, and ankles. She was like a centipede now, dextrous and precise, hanging from the ceiling, against the walls, and dangling from his chandelier, arms folded like a mantis, head swiveling from left to right, her white hair much longer, horsehair worms coiling against each other, parasitic debauchery.
Decima screamed, attacking the floor by his chair, knocking his soup bowl against the wall and cracking it in two. She ripped up the wood flooring like tearing the skin off a rabbit, coiling her body around the plank and licking the top where his meal had spilled, salt and dried broth.
She had her back to him, freckles draining from her face, down her neck, across her breast, and erupting from open sores on her forearm—tiny, winged gnats buzzing about her ears.
Alexander needed to get out of there.
He tiptoed from the armoire and towards the open door while she was distracted.
He was close, so close he could touch the frame, but he flinched, a floorboard groaning under his foot, echoing about the room at the worst possible moment.
Decima’s back muscles tensed, the half-eaten board dropping from her hands and clattering against the ground. Her head swiveled towards him, twisting until her chin faced the ceiling, her hair coiling against the floor.
“There you are, my love.”
Alexander vaulted through the door, swiping the candleholder off the ground and ripping the wax off the pointed ends. He ran down the hall but she was on him so fast, fingernails hooking his shoulders and knocking him over.
“Oh, my love,” she moaned, claws digging into his chest. “I’m hungry, sweetheart. You wouldn’t want your beloved to go hungry, would you?” Decima was face-level with him, and he could smell her breath, stripped rosewood varnish.
“She wants to make love to you,” Decima said, tongue flicking across his cheek. “But you don’t need your toes to make love. Not your fingers, or your tonsils.” Her claws pierced his chest, and he screamed as she tore into him. “Men can live with only half a liver, one kidney, and a lung. You don’t need two, do you?”
The red light of her eyes flashed in the dark as she lunged for his neck.
Alexander yelled, driving the pointed end of the candlestick into her exposed belly. It pierced her, blood spilling onto the floor, and she convulsed violently against the walls.
“You bastard!” Decima screamed, knocking over end tables as her body thrashed, throwing the bloody candleholder against the ceiling.
“Forgive me!” he shouted in a shaky voice. “But you’re not her!”
Alexander ran as fast as he could down the hall, listening to the howls of an injured beast with the wind at his back. He slid down a ladder and onto the third floor into many winding corridors and lofty bookshelves.
Seas and storms.
Ninety degrees east.
Four knocks on the door with the lion’s head.
Alexander knew where to go, which book to pull, and which door to disturb, but Decima didn’t. He heard her scream as she dropped into dead-end pits and scratched against the walls of closets, breaking windows, and crashing through doors.
The Gnatu had already boarded up the front entrance, but Alexander knew another way. A hidden passage dug out in times of war. He’d lived in the sunken passages and hidden walkways all his life. This house held no secrets.
Alexander came to a stone fireplace with a tiled back wall behind tinder and flint. He tore out the metal grate, staining his trousers with soot as he opened the chimney and pressed on the tiles, shifting them like puzzle pieces.
There was a scratching noise above him as something heavy struck the floor.
Thump!
Alexander jumped, shifting the stonework, his hands clammy and fingers clumsy. He cursed as he dropped a tile, scrambling to find it.
Thump!
The ceiling above cracked, dust and wooden splinters tapping against his shoulder like heavy rain.
“Oh, gods above give me strength!”
She was close, the sound of her many fingers drumming above his head.
He scrambled, replacing the tiles. A clever mosaic. First came the boy, naïve, uncertain, but proud.
Thump!
Next came the man and then the woman together as one.
Thump!
Then came the children, the cane, and the grave.
Decima’s arm burst through the ceiling, wooden supports crashing onto the floor as she tore open a hole, wiggling her torso through but catching her feet on the studs.
“I’ve found you, sweetheart,” she said, with a crooked grin, body hanging from the opening like a bat.
Alexander yelled, hands shaking violently, smearing soot across the mosaic, and pushing as hard as he could.
The fireplace gave with a click and opened into a tunnel beneath the manor. He swung around the other side and pushed the stone panel back, but Decima was on him in seconds, her arm reaching through the narrow opening and striking at his belly. She laughed, fingers covered in blood as tiny purple gnats fluttered through the opening and snapped at his cheeks.
Decima enjoyed the hunt.
Alexander threw his entire weight against the door, the stone panel slamming against Decima’s elbow, causing her to scream. She withdrew, and he sealed the passage, clicking it in place, but the stonework groaned as that mad woman struck the wall, the sounds of tiles spilling across the floor.
It wouldn’t hold long.
Alexander crawled through the narrow passage on his knees, his eyes frantic as he gasped for air. The cold damp walls pressed from all sides, but he saw flashes of light on the other end, thunder and lightning.
His heart hammered in his chest, pulling himself as fast as he could, rainwater running against his cheek as rats scrambled over each other to escape the tower.
He heard the mortar crack like an egg and down came the stonework as a beast spilled into the tunnel behind him. He turned his head, able to see a pair of glowing red eyes blazing in the dark.
She moved unnaturally quickly, tearing through the passage using her many digits as paddles against the dirt.
Alexander screamed, crawling in a mad dash to freedom, rats squealing as they scrambled about his knees, but the tunnel was too long and he was much too slow, the feel of her breath against his feet.
He dropped into the fetal position, covering the back of his neck with his left hand and sobbing into his knees.
Boom!
Thunder blasted in his ear, his teeth clattering and his hands shaking.
Nothing.
Alexander opened his eyes, the sounds of laughter fading beneath the wind and the rain. He turned his head, looking back down the corridor, but found only darkness.
Decima was gone.
— ✦ —
Morta opened Decima’s right eye and flashed a light against her dilated pupils.
She looked terrible; her face covered in blood and splinters of wood caught in her white hair.
“How much did you hit her with, Igor?” Morta asked.
“Four milligrams of Etorphine, fifty milligrams of Azeprone, and seventy-five hundred units of Hyaluronidase.”
“Fuck, you don’t think that was a bit much?”
“You know your sister, Morta. Prudence is always the best choice.”
“Great…” Morta picked up Decima’s arm, limp as a doll, and felt her pulse. “Lachesis went too far this time, didn’t she?”
Igor scuttled around the bed, nuzzling Morta’s shoulder as he lifted the sheets over Decima. “It’s not my place to question her,” he said.
Morta licked her lips, crossing her arms and blushing slightly. “Thanks for stopping my sister, Igor.”
“As you say, my lady.” He looked over his shoulder, lens flashing and mechanical hooves clicking against the floor.
Morta pinched Decima’s cheek. “It’s been a while since we’ve shared a bed like this,” she said. “You’re such a handful, you know that?”
Decima’s spider-like appendages twitched, fully extending from her calves and ankles, pushing the sheets off her thighs and over the bed.
Morta sighed, trying to shove her sister’s elongated fingers back into her legs like pushing bendy straws into a shallow cup. She preferred a millipede’s butt to a centipede’s, but Decima’s body wouldn’t cooperate, fingers bouncing back like rubber.
“Fine,” Morta said, throwing her hands in the air. “Have it your way.”
She heard the clicking of someone’s heels racing down the halls before Nona burst through the bedroom door. She stood, holding handfuls of her skirts, panting loudly, her hair disheveled, her makeup half finished, and she was missing an earring.
“I came—” Nona tried to catch her breath, leaning against the door. “As fast as I could.”
Morta reclined against the bedrest, lifting Decima’s limp hand and waving it at her. “Hello, Nona,” she said, mockingly. “How was your day?”
“Not—” Nona gasped, dropping her skirts and holding her hands over her mouth, staring at the bloody bandages wrapped around Decima’s belly. “Gawds, is she okay!?”
“A bit bunged up, but otherwise fine. She’ll be sleeping well tonight.” Morta slapped her fist into her palm. “Pow!” she shouted. “Out like a light.”
Nona picked up her skirts, tiptoeing over the exhausted clips and spent full metal jacket casings. She stopped, breathing in sharply, a loud beep sounding, her heels pressed against the pin of an MS3 pressure-release land mine. “Morta,” she growled, standing as still as possible. “You always do this.”
“And you always fall for it. Hard to tell which is worse.” Morta snapped her fingers and Igor climbed from the ceiling, inserting a safety pin beneath the pressure plate.
Nona exhaled, taking Igor’s hand as he guided her around proximity charges, tank shells, and a rather pristine broadsword collection. Not that the blade nuances or the hilts character would mean anything to her sister.
Nona raced to the side of the bed, tripping over her heels.
Decima’s nose wrinkled, turning over on her belly towards Nona. “Mother,” she murmured, barely lucid.
“No, I’m your sister,” Nona said, crawling into the bed and snuggling beside her. “It’s me, Nona. Everything is going to be alright now.”
Decima mumbled something, her feelers retracting back into her calves, ankles, and knees, stubby little pinkies once more.
“Well, look who’s teacher’s pet,” Morta said, swinging her feet over the side of the bed and stretching her arms. “I guess I’m a little dry.” She sniffed under her armpits, rolled her eyes, and clapped her hands. “Nona, you’re on babysitting detail tonight. The Gnatu are bringing her something to eat. Until they get back, keep her close to your scent. Even drugged, she might still lose herself.”
“What happened to her?” Nona asked.
Morta sighed. “I might have fucked up,” she said. “Decima and I got into a fight, and she left the garden on an empty stomach. She saw Alexander, and, well, you get the picture.”
“She tried to eat him!?”
“Yes, and no, Lachesis tried to eat him. Chalk it up to self-defense.” Morta leaned back, a thigh holster peeking out from under her skirt. “But it’s good for a woman to assert her dominance in a relationship, right?” she asked, trying to sound convincing.
Nona scowled, slapping her hand over her face. “There’s a difference between wearing the pants and setting the dinner table, sister!”
“I know that…” Morta pushed herself off the bed and fingered the folded carbon-infused blade of a Venetian Schiavona. “I just wanted what was best for her,” she said, wincing, a drop of blood running down her hand.
“Sister, we’re not children anymore.” Nona joined her by the weapon stand, her lips curled in distaste.
“I know.”
Nona shook her head, tearing fabric from her sleeve and wrapping it around Morta’s finger. “Well at least you stopped her from making a terrible mistake.” She crossed her arms watching the dressing turn red. “Um, sister, you can stop that anytime now.”
Morta closed her eyes.
Decima was right. Sometimes it just felt right to bleed.