Read: Ch 1
"JWF," I muttered to the otherwise empty house. At least I knew the gateway was permanently closed. Small potatoes considering the amount of blood on the floor, and did I fail to mention the other body? Shaking my head, I hoisted Alida's limp body in my arms.
I didn't remember her being this small, like some 'my size' doll from the mall. It had only been two years since I'd seen her last, two earth years. I did the math in my head. Twenty years. She should've been bigger, instead of looking for all the world like the small child I'd left behind. I swept everything off the island and laid her atop the counter.
"By the gods, Alida, what the hell happened to you?" Her cheeks were pale, almost lilac in the overhead light, and when I opened her eyelids, the irises were almost gone, thin, pale purple lines around her pupils. Something warm and wet oozed into my shirt. I looked down to see more blood, the flow seeping from beneath her.
Rolling her gently to one side, I peeked underneath, pushing away long-matted hair and remnants of her shirt. But I couldn't see anything. "Let's get you cleaned up."
After binding her body to the island with a little magic, I hunted through the house for medical supplies. I found sterile bandages in a drawer by the refrigerator, scissors and duct tape in the hall closet and ice packs neatly stacked in the big freezer in a separate room near the mud room. Upstairs yielded ointment, rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. Oh, body wash and an enormous assortment of towels. I threw everything into the empty trash can in the master bedroom and headed back to the kitchen.
She hadn't moved, not even a twitch beneath the binding. I sat the trash can on the floor and ran warm water in the sink at her feet. I squeezed a giant glob of body wash in and let it foam and bubble. After wetting a washcloth, I wiped her face, black soot giving way to bright red gashes. I rinsed and repeated, methodically cleaning away the muck and mire until the sink was thick with it.
Alida moaned as I poured hydrogen peroxide over her open wounds. Her eyelids fluttered but never opened. A familiar pattern of welts rose on her arms and legs, the distinctive lattice marks that could only be created by our father's special cat-o-nine tails. I paused, washcloth in hand, and stared at her back. When had she gotten a tattoo?
Recently, had to be. I could feel the heat emanating from the raised pattern, an intricate set of knotted black wings. The mysterious blood had started here, still oozing from the thick lines. It was beautifully brutal, like the artist had captured Alida in mid-flight and drawn the play of her wings right on her...
Wait.
I sought out the telltale knobs above her shoulder blades and found nothing. In a panic, I poured my magic into her, pulling what should've been an amazing set of black feathered wings from her back. She screamed and bucked against me, and I stumbled backwards as bloodied stubs ripped through her skin.
"No!" I pulled back, and they sank inward, through the tattoo, until they were flush once more. He'd taken her wings. Alida's pride and joy. Gone. She must've been devastated. What could she have possibly done to deserve this punishment? Sure, he'd kicked me out, too, a few years ago, but I still wore my wings, still held onto my gifts.
But Alida... I traced the tattoo, she twitched, and as I pulled my fingers away, they burned. It wasn't all blood, not hers anyway. I yanked the plug in the sink, and the inky blackness on my fingertips crawled into the watery downward spiral. Cicatrix. His cicatrix.
Latin for 'scar', it was our father's trademark. They said in human lore that their God marked the first son for his transgressions against his own brother, but Father had been the first one, not the human Cain. The story, the dark and perilous fall of the favorite son, left out that not-so-tiny detail, and it had taken him several millennia to figure out how to do it to others. Ever painful, always beautiful, his hands were his torturous paintbrushes.
He'd lost his wings, too, on that fateful day when he'd found himself floating through planar ether. Glorious white feathers, like little slices of moonlight, had fallen to his feet as he protested the omnipotence of his father, until with a thought and a gesture, the bald mass of muscle and sinew shattered. And the rain of flesh and blood turned snow white to crimson.
The irony wasn't lost on me.Â
The box moved.
Ah, shit. I hadn't forgotten the other body, the target I'd been hired to remove from existence, but the appearance of my little sister. Yeah, I'd been thrown for a little familial loop. The box moaned, and over the island, I saw a hand reach up and turn off the television. Gods, the guy was even boring dead. Well, beheaded.
He hadn't been alive for almost fifty years.
"I'll be right back," I whispered. A quick kiss for Alida and a smack to the box, I headed over to the corpse. I'd left the sword in the kitchen, but I didn't need it. Ritual was ritual was ritual. The gods didn't care how I carved the runes. Get a knife? Use my hands?
I twitched, my hands electric and alive from the night's excitement. "Hands it is." I held them out, small shafts of blue-white light zigzagging from my palms to the body.Â
"Breath of life." Two runes glowed on his chest in an iridescent blue. "To darkness fade." They rose from his flesh, twin coils of energy spinning in the open air. His body convulsed, back arching high until the stump of his neck pressed an imperfect circle onto the carpet. I inhaled and cupped the balls of light in my palms.
"Emptied vessel," I closed my hands around them, and the blue burned to bright red tongues of fire between my fingers. Downward, I shoved the remade runes into him. "Cleansed." The flames hit flesh and engulfed the corpse. Skin cracked and peeled away from muscle, tendons and bones until all that lay at my feet was ash.
I knelt down and sank both hands into the still-warm remains. "Blood of the father, heart of the son." Magic pulsed from inside me, through my shoulders and down my arms. I clenched my teeth as it broke through my skin, blood pouring from my fingertips. The price of glory.