Petra screams and grabs at her neck like she can’t breathe.
“Your true crime was stealing from me,” she continues, back to her saccharine voice. “You know the price for everoot—you were a bystander for more than one seeking soul. I have come for that price, Nestor Blackthorn.”
“Fine, I will go with you. You can take me or kill me,” he offers in a desperate voice. He falls to his knees. “Petra is innocent. Please…”
“We both know I cannot take what I truly desire from here—your soul.” Her rage grows, manifesting as a dark inky shadow growing behind her. “I have a different idea.”
“Wha–what are you talking about?” Nestor pleads.
There’s genuine regret and fear on his face—and something tells me it’s the first time he’s felt that way since leaving the Dreaming Willow Inn.
Anger burns in my gut at the realization of how truly selfish of a man Nestor was. Renata has spent so much time trying to save his guilty soul.
“I will get my payment, and my fun,” Calista taunts with a predatory smile.
Before Nestor can say anything, she squeezes her hand in the air and twists.
Petra’s sobbing immediately stops and she falls to the ground, silent and… dead.
Her eyes are open, staring up at the moonlit sky, but they’re vacant. Somehow, the sadness is still there.
Shouting comes from behind me and there’s the faint outline of a man running toward us—Barrett, no doubt.
“You will spend centuries here, filled with the guilt and shame of your life. You will watch your daughter’s mind deteriorate, and there will be nothing you can do to stop it. Then one day,” she says and steps forward, “You will have to bear witness to them falling in love again. And again. And again. In time, there will be two people who wear their faces and whose souls are tied just as deeply. This time, you will not be able to run away like the coward you are.”
“Petra! Nestor!” Barrett yells as he sprints closer.
Nestor makes the mistake of turning to look back at his friend, and dead wife because the next second, he’s face down on the muddy ground.
With a flick of her wrist, the blood drains from his body and she collects it in a jar at her hip. It’s as large as a pitcher, and she fills it up to the very top.
Barrett drops to his knees by Petra’s body, sobbing and cursing at the succubus.
“Do not blame me, boy,” she snarls in annoyance. “I was only taking what was owed after my lover abandoned and stole from me.” She gestures down to Nestor in disgust before turning back to her portal.
“Nestor…?” Barrett asks, looking down at his dead friend but pulling Petra’s body protectively toward him. “Lover? Does that mean… He did not… He would not…”
His eyes meet Calista’s, and she raises her eyebrows, waiting for him to understand how selfish Nestor truly was.
“That fuckingbastard,” Barrett curses before tilting his back and violently sobbing over Petra’s body.
“I agree,” Calista muses and walks toward him. “Unfortunately for you, my new plan of revenge requires your death as well.”
“Wha–”
His words cut off with a snap of Calista’s fingers, and he falls limply over Petra’s body.
Assessing the mess of corpses in front of her, she scrunches her nose like they’re a pile of dirty dishes she forgot about. She doesn’t take the blood of Petra or Barrett, but she does call her hogs through the portal.
“Hm,” she thinks out loud. “Why don’t you boys take that one? More meat on him.” She points at Barrett’s body, and ropes made of smoke appear.
Four large hogs take the ropes and pull Barrett’s corpse back to her island. I swallow down bile, remembering how Calista said her pets came to her already potty-trained… In human bodies.
Calista steps up to Nestor’s husk of a corpse and opens her hand. I hadn’t caught sight of his spirit until now, but she doesn’t hold onto it. She gently blows the small orb like a dandelion, spreading his soul through the air. Glowing sparks break apart and bury into the soil.
Agitation dances across her features when she notices the soil beginning to change where Nestor’s husk of a body lies.
Looking down, I realizewhyit looks like the same dirt from her garden.
