Page 16 of A Serpent in the Garden

Serich’s back slammed against mine, one slick hand scrabbling for my wrist. “We have to run!”

I threw my bloody blade at the advancing creature as another crashed against me from the side, all groping hands and putrid breath, but its head split down the center as Serich’s falchion sank into its skull. Even in death, its eyes still smiled. The perfume of roses filled my nostrils.

Serich wrenched the weapon out and towed me away by the hand. Our path was clear but I couldn’t see the ending of this feral clearing as my feet pounded the ground, which nearly rose to meet me when I stumbled. Stretching infinitely before us, it replaced the wood we’d hiked to get here, a limitless black horizon of doom.

I jerked back, wrenching myself from the vise of Serich’s grip. I hadn’t consciously decided to. My body must have made a plan without me, and I swung back to the skeleton crew of creatures who had given chase.

“Desideria!” Serich yelled, but his voice echoed strangely, as if from very far away. I felt exhausted, streaked with sweetly grotesque blood, rose petals coating my tongue, my bones frosting in defeat. So tired I wanted to fall into a heap and drift off into a better dream.

I suppose I must have, because the creatures wove and swam, blurring at their edges, as my eyes glazed over.

And when they cleared, a pile of corpses lay at my feet.

Don’t get too comfortable, It said, watching through my eyes as I drew back from the tattered, bloody husks. You still have to make it through the night. And then, grudgingly: You did better than I thought you would.

I almost cried with relief, feeling Its darkness sweeping through my mind. Faeries? If those were faeries, I never wanted to meet a nymph.

And you never will. They don’t exist. I don’t know where your villagers came up with that story.

The clearing had melted back into the wood. Only the shredded faerie bodies remained. That and the heavy, cloying scent of roses.

I fear I’ve broken your…companion. It said companion as if it were a dirty word, darting my eyes from the strewn limbs to Serich. He was a solid mass of red, two bright spots of amber where his open eyes stared out at me. I knew I could look little better.

His gaze traced the contours of my body, the hands still curved at my sides like blood-dipped sickles. “It came back?”

Collect your blades, It said. Tell this one to pick his jaw up off the ground.

“Yes,” I said, wending through the corpses to find the ones with my weapons buried inside them. “We should hurry.”

“I didn’t know you could handle blades that well,” Serich said as we stripped off our soiled clothing back-to-back by a dismal little stream we’d found snaking through the wood. Even coursing water in this place was silent, the surface calm as death. An ancient tree with monstrous, muscular roots stood beside it, more of those disgusting pulsing mushrooms growing like tumors from the bark.

I don’t like this one, It said.

I heard. My answer was flavored with more than a little exasperation as I flung my shirt to the earth. It had complained about Serich relentlessly as we’d staggered from the slaughter. You don’t like him because he wears a collar.

He’s much too surprised to learn a woman is just as capable of wielding a blade, It said, as if surely I should understand its distaste if I had any sense at all.

You can’t possibly hold that against him. I ripped off the weapon belt at my waist which held up the pair of pants I’d had to borrow from Serich’s dead father. It’s not so much a thing in Monde’s End. The boys in Monde’s End were taught rudimentary self-defense, in the unlikely event the creatures of the wood ever broke free. The girls were taught to hide.

Where I come from all women can handle a weapon, It said as I unearthed a mound of fresh clothing from my satchel. They often have more that needs defending.

Bully for Hell. I tugged a tired old shirt over my head. Gray and utterly shapeless, but at least free of reeking roses.

“I meant no offense,” Serich said uncertainly when the silence had stretched on too long.

“And you’ve given none. It grew bored, eventually.” I balanced awkwardly as I hopped into a fresh pair of pants. “It taught me things. It must prefer knives because that’s the only weapon I’m really comfortable with. And when throwing them at targets grew too easy it made me take aim with my eyes closed. Blotted out my sight because It thought I was cheating. I can hit the bullseye blind now.”

I didn’t think you were cheating, you were cheating.

“Are you decent?” Serich asked, rustling around behind me.

It gave a disgusted little groan that I ignored, fumbling with my belt. “Just about.”

Serich turned to face me, working his arms into a gray shirt, dark muscle bunching at his shoulders as he pulled it over his head. He knelt by the stream, where I joined him.

“My father taught me what he could.” He cupped his hands beneath the water and let them fill. “More than what they taught the rest of the boys back at home.”

I blinked through the water sluicing through my lashes and streaming down my face. “And yet you chose to wield the collar.”