An Invocation of Monsters (The Void Book 2), page 27
“Me?”
“A Void-touched woman,” Mary said. “I used a spell from the Cultes de Goules to speed up the process. Really, Gillian should have recognized that one. After all, she was the one who killed a man for it.”
I stared at her, wide-eyed.
“I could see how upset you were when you arrived,” Mary said with a sly smile. “You truly believed you’d failed to heal your mother. But you should not blame yourself, Elle. It wasn’t cancer that killed her. You didn’t stand a chance against that black magic, untrained as you are.”
I wanted to kill her. If I could just break these ropes, I’d snap her neck right now.
She swiped at her ear again, frowning.
“I had aged enough that bearing the child of a monster would be difficult, but keeping you alive proved to be a blessing. Your touch healed me, turned back my clock. You made this possible for me.
“And, within days of arriving, you lured the monsters out. I truly could not have asked for better bait.”
“Then why did you try to kill Kiraxis?” I asked through gritted teeth. “What could that possibly have done for you?”
Mary sneered at me. “Oh, so the thing has a name? The problem is that you were too good of a bait. They were blindly worshipping at your feet, and you healed them, helped them evade my traps. I needed a monster to create my own child and heir, not another one of you damned Marsh sluts lording it over us all.”
Her hands were trembling. She took a deep breath and exhaled, squaring her shoulders.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said calmly. “You’ve brought the monsters back. When I sacrifice you to the Void, I will summon one who will grant me my desires. He will give me his child, his power.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works,” I said, keeping my voice soft, but Mary ignored me.
“I have read all the books. I’ve searched for years. An offering of blood… that’s one of the most powerful of all. It cannot ignore my call.”
Ah, so the monologue was finally over. My time was up.
My monsters hadn’t come for me.
In a way I was glad they had stayed away. If they had sense, they would run as far as the Void would take them.
I didn’t want to go to my grave knowing this psychopath would trap them and rape them and force them to impregnate her.
Just go, I thought to them.
My ears popped again, the pain extending into my skull and down my neck. Mary was feeling it, too, hunched over and twisting her head.
“I’ve waited for years for someone who would understand everything I’ve gone through to get here,” she said to me. “Now you know how far I’ve gone.”
She straightened up, flicking the knife. Congealing blood flew from its point and splattered across the circle.
“By the darkness of night, I offer this woman to the Other Side.”
I licked my dry lips, felt my heart begin racing again.
“I offer her blood. I offer her flesh.”
I made one last effort at freeing myself, re-opening the clotted wounds on my wrists. The ropes held fast.
“I offer her bones, and I offer her mind.”
My ears popped, the pressure snapping.
The darkness pressed in. One by the one, the stars winked out.
I tasted copper, watching as the blood pooled on the circle quivered, and droplets began to rise, floating in midair like jewels.
My hair rose with it, twisting upwards in a cloud of crimson around me.
“I offer her soul. This child of the Void is yours in death.”
I realized the stars had not burned out.
They were blocked.
An abyssal blackness rose beyond the cliff. As Mary pressed the edge of the dagger against my throat, beads of blood welling from the sharp line of pain, the blackness shifted.
And opened its blazing, fiery eyes.
39
Elle
I think it was only the shock of seeing the monster that saved my life.
Mary’s knife paused at my throat, stinging and ice-cold, when she saw the look on my face.
Then she turned as his eyes opened, blasting us with a light so intense it felt like our flesh would be scorched from our bones in an instant.
She flinched, then fell to her knees, prostrating herself before him.
“O Master, God from Beyond the Door, I beg you to accept this woman,” she pleaded. Her hair had risen as well, as though lifted by invisible fingers, the pooled blood around us swirling upwards towards the sky.
It was the monster’s presence, here in this world, that had turned physics upside down and inside out.
The earth itself was rattling, the vibrations passing through the wooden beam I was tied to and making my teeth clack together.
I slammed them shut, forcing myself to meet the monster’s gaze.
He was enormous, so large it broke my mind. A thousand times the size of a human being, big enough to take a bite out of this cliff and take us with it.
As black as night, with alien runes blazing in vivid aqua all over his body.
He leaned forward, peering at us with an eyeball the size of a car.
What was he? Was this what Mary was trying to summon?
He said something, his voice so loud my head felt like it’d been struck with a bat. I cringed, crying out, and Mary screamed openly with her hands clamped over her ears.
When she took them away, her palms were covered with fresh blood. It pooled and flew upwards, into a hand that had appeared over the circle.
I stared up at the monster’s lineless palm, awed and amazed by the titanic proportions.
Utter madness.
The ground quaked harder, like the earth itself was shrieking from his presence. The wooden beam cracked, then shattered, flying up in a spiral of dust.
I stumbled forward, only to discover that the flowers in my hair, the stitches in my sacrificial dress, the ropes around my wrists and body—all of them were disintegrating as well.
Petals and threads flew upwards, along with shards of bone as Mary’s deer skull mask burst into pieces. Even the flame of the bonfire, made liquid by the lack of gravity, joined the storm of detritus, along with its ashes.
Mary clutched at her face, at a thousand bleeding cuts from the shattering of her mask, and stared at me through a mask of blood.
Pain screamed through every part of me as I moved, but I had kept my presence of mind.
I held the knife now.
She backed away, wrapping her arms around herself. Then she turned to shout at the monster.
“I offer her to you, O Master!” she screamed up at him. “She is yours! I only ask for what is mine!”
The monster’s colossal gaze focused directly on her, and she whimpered, crumpling once more.
I didn’t have much time to ponder how to escape before his eyes turned to me.
There was a literal weight to his gaze. I felt it pressing down on my head and shoulders, a titanic force that wanted to drive me to my knees before its power.
But I pushed back, remaining upright, staring defiantly at the monster with one eye. If she wanted to sacrifice me to him, he was going to have to fight for it.
But the monster smiled.
“SHE IS MINE,” he said, gentle and affectionate, his voice no longer pitched to shatter eardrums.
“Then take her! Take her and give me the power!” Mary stretched out her arms, her face pressed to the ground.
The monster moved closer. The edge of the cliff crumbled and fell away.
“MY FLESH, MY BLOOD. WHAT DO YOU DESIRE, MY DAUGHTER?”
My heart skipped several beats.
It was impossible. This monster was almost beyond imagining, beyond any human reckoning.
And yet… the love in his gaze, the gentle smile…
This monster was a V’uthli. My father.
“I…” I almost couldn’t speak.
I hadn’t come here to sacrifice anyone. I hadn’t wanted all this bloodshed.
But the V’uthli’s presence was so titanic that the earth was ripping itself apart around me.
The trees surrounding the circle were uprooting, their branches flying into the storm overhead, their trunks shattering.
The Wendigo Society had started a working of power, and until it was concluded, the storm wouldn’t abate.
I had to ask for something.
What did I desire more than anything?
“I want the Void to be guarded from people who want to use it,” I shouted over the rising shriek of wind. “I want the monsters to be kept free from her! I want to protect them from her kind!”
The V’uthli blinked, and those few seconds of darkness were like the world vanishing entirely until he opened his eyes again.
This time his smile stretched wider, revealing fangs longer than I was tall.
“I GRANT YOU THIS EXCHANGE,” he said. “I CHARGE YOU TO GUARD THE DOORS AND THIS LAND.”
“I accept.” The wind sucked the air from the lungs and the words from my lips.
“I CHARGE YOU TO GUARD THOSE TO WHOM YOUR SOUL IS BOUND, AND ALL WHO ASK FOR YOUR AID.”
“I accept!”
“YOUR BODY, LIFE, AND SOUL BELONG TO THE VOID. YOU WILL GIVE ALL YOU HAVE, ALL YOU ARE, TO PRESERVE IT.”
“I accept,” I gasped. I could not breathe. My scalp prickled with pain, the hairs on my head ripped upwards by the wind.
“THE CONTRACT IS SEALED, CHILD OF MY FLESH. MY DUTY BECOMES YOURS. I WITNESS THIS BINDING WITH BLOOD.”
Oh, god.
Moving with a quickness that was nauseating, that titanic hand descended, the long claws on thumb and forefinger reaching down and plucking Mary from the ground.
They skewered right through her, and he lifted her up into the air, his mouth opening wide.
I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t hear.
I clapped my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes tightly shut, and turned away as the V’uthli consumed Mary.
Even so, I heard the crunch of bone, her final screams.
The wind died so quickly I almost fell over. I was doubled-up, on my knees, gasping for breath that had been snatched away from me only moments ago.
It took me a long, long minute, but I finally dared to open my eyes.
Silence all around. The stars were winking peacefully overhead.
The storm had vanished, and the V’uthli—my father—was gone.
But the destruction around the stone circle remained. The cliff was still crumbling into the lake. Trees had been ripped up and left gaping holes behind in the earth, and dark stains still covered the circle.
I shakily got to my feet, looking around.
All of this was mine now. Even if I had never wanted to harm anyone, I had made a blood sacrifice by allowing Mary to be taken.
I tried to tell myself it was for good.
She had killed her own sister, her friends. She had killed Kase, Willow, and Joseph. The blood staining this circle was on her hands.
A hoarse sob erupted from me without warning. The image of Kase’s pale face as she held the knife to his throat was burned into my mind.
“Elle.”
I didn’t turn around, another sob wracking my body.
But when I felt my monsters’ hands on me, I didn’t move away.
They were mine. I had given Mary to my father, and now I would guard them for an eternity.
I twisted to hide my face against Toth’s chest.
“I am sorry, Elle,” Toth said, his voice low. “When a time of great change comes to the Void, it is forbidden for us to intervene. Some changes can only be made by mortal hands. You are the child of the former guardian. He would not have allowed you to be harmed.”
I choked on another sob. “I’m not crying for myself. I’m crying for Kase.”
And perhaps for Willow and Joseph, also. They had been murdered for nothing, their lives wasted.
I felt Kiraxis’s claws on my sides.
But, thankfully, my monsters didn’t try to justify their deaths or console me with empty words. They also knew it had all been needless.
They just let me cry until the last tears had run out.
When I’d run dry, I felt a little better.
Not much, but a little.
I wiped my cheeks, winced at the pain in my swollen eye, and pressed my hand to it. The power seemed to flow through me more easily, a river breaking through a dam, and soon the flesh under my palm felt firm and normal. I blinked, but the blood gluing my eye shut was still there, of course.
I settled onto Kiraxis’s lap and pressed a hand to my aching skull next.
The monsters were silent but soothing as I worked on healing myself. By the time I felt functional again, I’d managed to at least box up my emotions for now.
I was not sorry that I had caused Mary’s death, nor that I was now the guardian of these doors.
I was sorry for Kase, but no matter what I told him, he had chosen this path. I only hoped he would be at peace in the next life.
And I wasn’t sorry that my father had offered the sacrificial contract to me.
I would always choose the safety and lives of my monsters and all who lived here.
Mary would have taken the power in both hands and run with it. She was cruel and twisted to the core; I was still shocked by some of the things she had told me.
I would write them all down. No one would ever read it, but I would make sure the Wendigo Society’s crimes were not forgotten.
Perhaps one day my own future daughter would need to know what had happened.
“I’d like to see Drazan,” I said hoarsely, and Kiraxis picked me up. The monsters moved silently through the woods, leaving the circle behind.
I wanted to walk, but the Mlul’dra refused to put me down. I wondered what my monsters had thought as I came this close to getting my throat cut, and then decided not to argue with him over it.
When we reached the lake’s edge, Drazan was already there. I held out my arms to him, hugging him tightly.
They were all still alive. They were mine.
That was all that mattered.
“I love you all,” I said. “With body, life, and soul. I will never, ever leave you.”
They surrounded me, murmuring their love, touching me with gentle strokes. I thought about everything I’d given up to come here: a gray, empty house, the fear of my secret, fear of myself.
And through it all, I’d found a family, love, acceptance of myself, and a calling.
That was all I’d ever desired.
When Toth’s claws tightened on my shoulder, I looked up, alarm spilling me through me. Had Mary somehow survived?
But it wasn’t her.
Several massive shapes moved in the darkness, coming from the edge of the woods. The shapes of monsters.
There was the Mlul’dra I had seen earlier, speaking to my mate—Rask, with his swirling silvery stripes. A Klee much like Drazan, walking on two legs, his face tentacled beneath gleaming aqua-blue eyes.
A V’uthli, but this one was much smaller than my father. He was much taller than a normal man, his lower body a swirling tornado of smoke, but he seemed less… wild. Almost civilized-looking and austere.
And riding on Rask’s back, her sky-blue-and-peach hair pinned into her usual messy bun with a pen stuck through it, was my cousin Juno, smiling tentatively at me.
I stared at her in shock, taking in her monsters. Her stomach was so round it looked like she was smuggling a watermelon under her shirt.
Round with a monster’s baby.
So many things clicked into place for me in that second.
She slid down from Rask’s back and held out her arms. Her monsters were protectively arrayed around her as I took one step closer, then another.
I fell into her arms, hugging her as tightly as I could with that watermelon between us. We sank to the ground, Juno stroking my hair and back, cuddling me close.
“I know it’s hard, but it’ll all be okay. I promise, Elle, it’ll all be fine. You made it. It’s over now.”
I just laughed through my tears.
I had all of my family around me now.
It was going to be a whole hell of a lot better than okay.
40
Toth
“How did you get here?” my mate asked. I picked up a blanket and draped it over her shoulders, tucking it in to hide her blood-splattered body.
Elle clutched the edges as I sat on the couch, and scooted closer until she was pressed firmly against me.
It was strange to be inside the Lodge, the house that I’d carefully avoided prior to her arrival. Kiraxis had gone forth to sniff out any remaining traps, and we’d determined the downstairs to be safe enough.
Drazan and Zirin had remained in the lake, electing to guard the outside of the Lodge.
But my mate had taken her cousin’s hand and practically dragged her inside, wiping tears away.
I looked curiously at the woman who was blood-kin to my Elle.
She wore her long hair in a shade of sky blue that became a soft peach at the ends; she had gray eyes that were a softer shade than Elle’s icy steel.
But aside from physical appearances, she emanated power. I felt it humming in my teeth when I was close to them.
“Well…” Juno gave my mate a sheepish look. “Here’s the thing. I’ve been waiting for this to happen. It was only a matter of time before the Void opened for you. The picture you sent me, with your face blurred out—” She waved her hand in front of her face, and Elle nodded with understanding, although it meant nothing to me. “The same thing happened to me when I arrived on Duskwood Island, and it's happened to all the women in our family who were chosen to enter the Void. I still don’t know why it shows up in photos and paintings, but I hope that as the gene pool grows, I can study it a little more.”
Elle stared at her, then raised her hands to her face, grazing her nails down her cheeks. “You knew I was going to meet monsters? Juno! The whole time I’ve been sitting here planning to totally blow your mind, and you already knew?!”
“Yeah, sorry. I mean, I’ve got a monster’s baby hanging out in my uterus right now, so… consider my mind blown.” She patted her round belly. “I wanted to tell you before, but… I wasn’t entirely sure a door would open for you elsewhere, and if it didn’t, I didn’t want you to be disappointed. But I’m glad it did. Now we have two major gateways to the Void to watch over, and hey, we can visit each other whenever we like.”
