Page 5 of A Serpent in the Garden

I jumped back as the lake of blood lapped at the toe of my shoe. What—how could you—why would you do this? I felt like a lazy and somewhat petulant pet had just turned rabid. Panic threatened to poison my blood, but a curious chill chased it out. Still the bakery was suffused with heat, the warmth from the ovens not yet gone.

Who do you think snapped Noelle Hawthorne’s pretty neck? It said, almost bored. Or any of the others? You’re right, isn’t it strange only women have died? Women who bear a passing resemblance to you.

They said an incubus did that.

She’d have been drained if that were so. I heard a twist of vertebrae. That, or at home, expecting a baby she doesn’t remember conceiving. A woman can only leave an encounter with an incubus a bloodless husk or pregnant. None of you know the first thing about the creatures that live in the wood. Big cats that breathe hellfire, little goat men with horns and pitchforks, it’s all nonsense—

And you think John Dale did all that based on what evidence?

Has it ever occurred to you that I might have a lot of evidence, even if I don’t share it with you?

He’s good to the children, I said, staring down at the man who was sometimes quite literally the difference between life and death in the village, between mere hunger and starvation, the saint more than one grateful mother had dubbed him. He tries his best to keep people fed when he can possibly help it—

Ah. Yes. Endearing himself to the community. It’s a good ploy. Keep everyone in the village singing his praises and you’ll never cast a suspicious eye on him. And when I didn’t answer: I’ve been around monsters all my life. You think I don’t know one when I see one? I should have let him have you.

I clapped my hands to my ears as though it would help. Shut up shut up SHUT UP.

It actually listened to me. I could hear It breathing, deep and slow, the languid crack of knuckles.

I had to clean up, had to drag the body outside, as close to the wood as I could get. And I had to do it as quickly as possible.

I grabbed John’s slack wrists and yanked. He moved, but barely. One of his eyeballs had burst, I noticed. Bile stormed my throat.

Help me, I ground out.

I thought you wanted me to shut up.

You don’t need to talk to help.

I felt another frost in my blood, my muscles tingling, and John was moving now, sliding across the floor, a red road of gore left in his wake. I kicked the back door open, stepped into the swirling fog, my back hunched with the strain. The bakery stood three doors down from the wood and night was falling fast, the gray deepening from dishwater to a thick and roiling charcoal. I made it there before I thought it possible, sweat pearling at my hairline. John Dale’s wrists hit the dirt with a muffled thump.

I did not spare the baker a last glance before running back to the bakery, careening through the open door.

There’s no use cleaning, It offered, surveying the scene through my hopeless gaze. The muted mineral glitter of the stone floor was washed in blood. I imagined Its fingers steepled, its expression an utter void. Stone is porous. It’s drinking in the blood. Even if you mopped up this mess, there’d be a stain. I grow weary of all my counsel being ignored.

I grow weary of YOU, I snapped back. I’ve tolerated you as best I can all these years, and this is how you repay me. I almost felt as if we were…

I trailed off, but It knew what I was thinking. It always did. It had thoughts I would never be privy to, but It knew all of mine.

You thought we were friends? Its laugh had an edge of surprise. We’re not friends, Desideria. We never have been. The only reason I care about you even a little is because if you died, I’d be stuffed inside a different host. I’d rather not be forced to learn someone else.

And even then, I marveled at how a demon’s myopic opinion should wound me. Of course we weren’t friends. Ours was a relationship of Its convenience.

That It could put me in this position after all our time together was a slap of reality so profound it left me breathless. Mechanically, I made my way to the back of the bakery, where I found a bucket of water. I cleaned up the mess It had made of me in silence until the blood marbling the water turned it a solid, shocking pink, garish as a hag’s poison. My black cloak would not give what I had done away, but I could still smell the metallic notes of what was left of John Dale on the material.

Now march home, sweetheart, It said as I stood. Night has fallen. Things have woken. Hurry home before you have to explain why you were out after dark.

I headed to the door in total silence, not even a thought. Just a static blank pierced by Its omnipresent company. A whirling, fog-fumed night welcomed me as I stepped outside. But that was not the only greeting.

“M’lady,” a small voice rang out through the mists. “M’lady, can you hear me? I need help.”

Every hair on my body bristled.

March, It ordered.

I hunched over, the better to see through the fogs hovering a few feet off the ground. Something white waited at the tree line of the wood. Whatever it was had the shape of a crouched human child, but it couldn’t be a child. All our children were tucked up in bed, ears full of wax.

“Please,” the creature called. “I’m cold.”