Death, sex, money.
In some lives she knew me. In many she didn’t.
I was as bound by the treaty as they were. I couldn’t retaliate if she was unharmed. Once the die had been cast, it was too late. The best I could do after she’d been led down the path was facilitate the highest-ranking position, the best pay, the most comfort, and of course, facilitate the sudden heart attack, choking on tongue, stroke, aneurism, and any other instant death to a man who made her feel disempowered, even for a moment, while she worked.
I waited roughly fifteen hundred years before Jarovid paid for what he’d done when he’d overseen the men who’d tortured her, brutalized her, then tied her hands and feet as she was pulled in four directions.
The years I’d refused to participate in the lore were long behind us. The days of gods egging me out of Hell had come and gone. The conclave, at long last, granted me the retaliation I craved.
Vengeance lingered as I hunted the missing traitor.
In 1947, a twenty-one-year-old named Winifred bore a thick Irish accent, a round, happy face, and the daily chore of salting and dying cod in the cold, North Atlantic island of Newfoundland. I caught wind that the rocky settlement was disproportionately plagued with a night demon they called “the old hag.”
Sailors, mothers, babes, would awaken to a twisted woman sitting on their chest, paralyzing them as it terrorized the island.
In thousands of years, I’d learned the stack of tricks played by the succubus.
And it was here, in this cycle, I knew I’d find my sister.
Chapter Twenty-Four
1947 ADE
Jellybean homes dotted an endless coastline as fishermen took the reds, pinks, greens, yellows, and blues from their boat and painted the rest of their lives to match.
Winnifred—Winnie, according to the three hundred or so in their cove—lived in a mustard home, with a mustard boathouse against their dock to match.
Hers was one of many isolated inlets that dotted the shores, most inaccessible by road, cut off from the world, save by ship. Many outharbours kept to themselves, while others sent their sailors on months-long journeys—some through the Northwest Passage, cutting through ice, trapped for months as they harvested seal, whale, and cod. Others went south, returning with rum, conches, and a tan.
She was tasked with skinning, curing, and otherwise preparing the cod when they were available. She milked the goat. Hid the shame of lobster shells—cockroaches of the sea eaten only by the poorest of families—and had raw, pink fingers fromher nearly impossible time with crops, save for the potatoes, turnips, and beets that could survive the weather.
Cruel winds kept trees from growing more than a few feet tall, as the bluster ripped their roots from the shallow earth if they stood above a man—with pockets of inland exceptions, of course—though if she wanted reprieve from the wind, she and the rest of her family hunkered down in the living room against a roaring stove, hoping the chopped wood would last through the storm.
She enjoyed the sailors’ tales but was not one for the sea.
The men, women, and children kept the world turning on rural beaches, their Celtic roots taking on a life of their own, Emerald-Isle tongue developing its own in-speak, and lore birthing new superstitions. Gods, fae, and powers, were no strangers to people who experienced blessings and curses in their rawest forms among the unforgivable rock.
With the crack in the veil held by their belief, came the inevitable darkness.
If Izi wanted to hide, changing her motive of operations was a half-assed job. Sexuality was a preferred form of draining, but for the most part, only worked on men.
She had someone else to torment, a brother to evade, and a death sentence to dodge.
I didn’t dare take the form of a sea creature amongst a people who were sustained primarily on root vegetables and marine life.
A bird might do the trick, but given the circumstances, it didn’t quite fit.
The island, though too southerly for natural apex predators, faced an annual parade of icebergs as they broke free fromGreenland and floated down the Atlantic current. At least once a year, an iceberg would make landfall somewhere along Newfoundland’s rocky shores, delivering a starving polar bear, or any other creature that had the misfortune of living adrift for weeks or months without food.
Love left bowls of milk out for the fae. She avoided circles of mushrooms. She wove interlocked crosses made of grass. And at night, she kept her eyes peeled for signs that the hag might visit her family.
It was late spring when I finally stepped out from behind the veil.
It was high tide, and the rhythmic lapping of waves breaking against rocks covered the sounds of my approach.
Love was shuttering the goat well past sunset when I saw my chance.
She closed the doors to the barn and turned to see the only form I could think to take that was special enough to affirm her belief in the otherworldly, but small enough not to startle her.
