“The orphan girl, for one, screams every time she sees a new face and she wanders the outskirts. She dislikes the smell of bodies, you see.”
Meridan pressed the back of her wrist to her nose, coughing. Even I was sickened by the smell. Keeping the corpses in the town could only serve to fill it with a foul stench and disease. But then the slightest bit of motion caught my eye, prompting me to turn my head and spot the shutters of a window swinging closed in a house across the square.
“I thought you said you were running low,” I commented.
“We are.” She sighed, dusting off the sleeve of her shift as if it would do anything to clean the stains off the fabric. “But some have shown willingness to serve us. The more villagers we eat, the more that willingness grows.”
“So you keep the bodies here for morale?” I said, raising a brow.
She shrugged.
I looked around, trying to find signs of others, but the town itself seemed as dead as the carcasses in the wagon.
“How many of you are here?” I asked again.
“Those who ask questions are looking for a reason to do something,” she said. “What is it you want here, Dahlia? With a bronze sword in hand, no less.”
I rested my hand on the hilt again, taking a deep breath, despite the air being filled with that putrid odor.
“What do you know about me?” I asked.
“I know you betrayed your mother. She was favored by the father below. You betrayed her for a human boy and let a mere child kill her and her sisters. Your own blood sister executed you for it.”
She looked me up and down with a soft snort. “She failed, obviously.”
“Dahlia beheaded Ligeia. Did you know that?” Meridan added like it was a threat.
“It does not surprise me,” the woman shrugged. “You are a killer of kin. Now, you carry the weapon of a hunter. I suppose you have made your choice.”
“There are more of you,” I said. “I know there are. You cannot have taken an entire town on your own.”
“I didn’t, of course. But it shouldn’t surprise you that any other sisters that remain do not have the tongue to speak with you the way I am. The luckiest of us escape. Some of us die, quick and painless, at the tip of a hunter’s bronze blade. But some… some are met with even worse fates. They cut them out, you know.” Her eyes glazed over, seeing past me and into a memory. “So that we cannot use our voice.” Her hand lifted, her fingers lightly grazing over her lips. “And then they put us in binds. They line us up with others so rich men can find one they like. If you’re lucky, they will tie you down so they can ravage you, again and again and again, and then boast to their friends about the act. If you’re unlucky, they pry out your teeth. One. By. One. And then they force your mouth over their unclean cock just to laugh and feign control over something they’ve all feared for hundreds of years.”
My heart sank thinking of sirens in chains, their tongues and teeth ripped from their mouths. But my heart also sank at the thought of innocent people being slowly ripped apart and devoured. The ugliness of it all made my stomach turn.
Beside me, Meridan’s head dropped a little, turning toward me. I wished I had something to say, but the world was dreadful. Sirens. Men. All of it. There was no defending one or the other.
“But Akareth is a merciful god,” the woman added.
My eyes lifted to look at her again, the sound ofhisname cutting into me like a hot knife.
“Merciful,” I said under my breath.
“He lent us his sons to rid this town of the human disease that tried to devour us. To offer us a chance at vengeance.”
I tossed a glance at the bodies in the wagon again and recalled the island of Frenchmen bearing my sister’s mark. She’d tried to gift humans to the xhoth in exchange for protection as well and danced on the same edge of a blade this nameless Kroan was. In the end, it was all doomed to fail. The xhoth would grow tired of humans and crave more.
“Where are the sons, now?” Meridan asked.
The Kroan laughed, shaking her head as if the question was too ridiculous to answer.
“They will devour all of you as soon as the humans are depleted,” I added. “They’ve already killed two of my companions.”
“Of course, they have. You are the heretic.” She glared at me with disgust, her nose wrinkling as her eyes roamed down the human clothes that dressed my body. “A Kroan that prays to Lune.” She spit onto the ground at my feet. “Ligeia should have cut your head off your shoulders.”
She lunged, hands outstretched. I sidestepped, but she managed to get a hold of my neck, squeezing and digging her long nails into my flesh. Meridan stepped up beside her, her blade finding purchase in the Kroan’s shoulder. She screamed, the sound loud and enraged. Not wanting any more attention, I squirmed from her grip and clutched her arm, swinging her around until her body hit a brick wall. Her head slammed against the hard surface and she slumped to the ground, limp and unconscious.
“Go,” I said, pushing Meridan away.
