Wife After Death - DukeyRhino

CH.1 A Hanging

They park by the scaffold and pull him from the trunk. His hands are bound. His scrabbling boots pound out a crinkling paradiddle on the tarpaulin they stretched out to catch the blood and the fibers.

“Get his legs, damn you.” This from the driver, and he recognizes the terrified voice. That’s Sam, a bricklayer. Caspar fixed his toothache just this past winter.

“His head,” someone says. “Careful.”

“What fuckin’ difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference.” The oldest voice, familiar despite its stony encasement of command. “Stand him up. Get the hood off him.”

Caspar’s chin jerks against the fabric as they shuck the bag from his head. Air fills his lungs. A string of lonely highway lights poke glowing holes into his concussion.

Steady, gloved hands on his shoulders. The ringleader lifts his face by his bloodied chin. “Caspar Cartwright. I name you warlock. I name you conjuror. And I sentence you to the mercy of the Father’s judgment. By His grace, may you find forgiveness.” Edgar, that’s this man’s name. He taught Caspar his letters. “Get him up.”

“Edgar. Please, Ed. I know you. You know—” Caspar’s reward for this is a backhand, bony and stinging.

“Shut up.” A tremulous note as his executioner stuffs the smiling schoolteacher further back into the cage of his mind. And Caspar knows now, knows from the hearing, that his life is finished. Edgar filled Caspar’s brain with words and definitions and places and animals he’ll never see. And tonight he’s going to turn that brain into an unlit hunk of meat.

Tomorrow these men will hold their children and greet their neighbors and be good—better, even, to scrub the stain. Tonight they make themselves something besides men.

Stupid animal instinct lags Caspar’s steps, drags his toes uselessly in the dirt and makes an absurdist comedy out of his ascent to the scaffold as his legs fail and fight and his captors curse. A reverberant thud as a pistol butt lands on the back of his head, knocks the world into gray for a moment.

A voice full of disgust and blunted fear. “Let’s make it quick. For your sake and ours. We’re giving you a long drop. Have some fucking dignity.”

“We’re sorry, Cas. So sorry.” That’s Aaron, at the scaffold’s foot, tears dropping from his chin. “It’s for the Father. Please. It’s not us. The inspectors are coming.”

“Shut up, Aaron.” Edgar yanks Caspar up another step. “If you want to help him, find a shovel.”

They muscle him up to the gallows. He’s disappointing himself. He wants to be brave, to face this fearlessly as a servant of the Father. But the feeling of the hemp rope around his neck triggers another helpless, heart-wrenching thrash.

They’ve been doing what they can to avoid his darting gaze. But Edgar puts his gray-templed face in front of Caspar now, ginger to avoid the trapdoor beneath his feet. “You have any last things to say, to us or to the Father, now you say them.” He blinks the perspiration from his eyes. He lets a scrap of kindness out. “Anyone back at Rogarth you want to send a message to, any goodbyes, we can pass those on.”

Caspar’s search for courage has run its course. Instead, he finds a rich vein of anger at these people he’s given his life and light to. He’s not the coward. They are. “I saved your daughter’s leg, Ed,” he says. “I set it and cured it. It would have been a chair or a cane all her life.” He raises his voice. “No messages. No repentance. You want to soothe your consciences, you do it yourselves. I’ve fixed enough of your hurts.”

Edgar spits onto the splintery boards; the thirsty wood absorbs the mark. “Fine, then, warlock. Make your apologies to the Father. Go, Sam.”

This to the guy at the lever, whose knuckles go white on the mechanism. “Father, forgive,” he mumbles, and drops the latch.

And that’s that.

Say this about Caspar’s killers: none of these people have hanged someone before, but they’ve studied hard the way to do it properly. I can tell by how they’ve tied it, how they cinched it around his trembling neck. They don’t want Caspar to suffer.

His neck goes as he drops through the trap, clean and tidy, only a few dancing jigs of his boots before they are still. His eyes blink and go wide and round and then see nothing.

And then they see a vaulted roof, its arches carved with repeated organic filigree that reminds him of the spine he just snapped. He died. He felt himself die. Now he feels himself drag along the ground. There’s a tether at his neck, like a leash. Someone is tugging him, by the rope that hanged him, across polished stone.

He hears the swish, swish of silk rubbing against itself; the click, click of heels on marble.

He’s plucked into the air by small but powerful arms, deposited on something soft. A bier, or a bed, or perhaps both, stacked with sweet-scented cushions and braided flowers. Champak, sandalwood. A creaking noise as someone joins him and sits lightly on his legs.

He cranes his neck, feels a curious numb lightness where the noose broke it. But he’s been re-knit. And now he beholds the one who did it.

Which would be me. Hello, dear reader. I’m assuming that you’re as human as Cas here, unless you guys have taught dogs to read at this point. It’s hard to keep track. You humans are so into teaching dogs how to do things. My sister Ganea once observed that human civilization has been mostly about inventing new weapons and teaching dogs increasingly complicated tricks.

She meant it offensively, I’m sorry to say. She takes a dim view of you. She styles herself as a war deity; I guess that comes with the turf. Me, personally, I think you guys are just fabulous.

“Hi, Caspar,” I say.

“Hi,” he manages, and he’s curious as to his lack of fear. I know because I’m in his head. I see what he sees: a wavering woman-shape, a silhouette of black, smoky tendrils, the faceless void of my head centerpieced by an intricate cyclopean eye of molten gold. I’ve opted for something simple here, about halfway between human and my true form. Close enough to what he’s used to that he’ll see my personhood. Weird enough that he knows I’m far from his species. Just for kicks, I’ve approximated the cocktail dress and the measurements of the first image he ever felt desire for, a photo of Archbishop Tilliam’s buxom young wife smiling radiantly from a rickety shelf of magazines.

I’ve made the dress purple, though. Of all the colors you humans can see, that’s my pick every time. If it ain’t purple, I ain’t wearing it.

By all rights, he ought to be losing his mind from fear and confusion, but he isn’t. Good old Caspar. Or maybe it’s the shock. I’ll take it either way. “Where am I?”

“You’re in my room.” I reach behind him and adjust a violet pillow to cushion his raised head. “Comfy?”

“Who are you?”

“You’d need a few more mouths to pronounce who I am, Cas. Can I call you Cas?”

“Okay.”

“Great.” I’d smile, but I haven’t manifested the face for it. “And you can call me Irene.”

And you can, too, sweet reader, since my real name would liquefy your eyes. That’s my little favor for you.

His mouth hangs in a daze. I’m counting on the shock of his return to cognizance in order to carry us through what might be a tricky conversation. “Am I dead?”

“That’s a less straightforward question than you may have been conditioned to think, Caspar Cartwright.” I’m still perched on him, but I cross my legs coquettishly, leaving little photonegative trails in the air. Can you blame me? I don’t get a lot of opportunities to have legs. “The closest answer is yes.”

His hand shoots to his neck. He feels the hemp still coiled around it.

“You can get all the way dead, if you’d like,” I say. “We could say goodbye here. You might want to do that if you’re big into all the Father stuff, since I’d like to get a little heretical with you. But the Father’s guys down there did just sever your cervical vertebrae. So I’d like to offer an alternative. Maybe you’ll take a little walk with me and give me a chance to explain.”

I know he will. I know Caspar. I’ve spent the last few years in his head. I like this guy. He’s good, but he’s not dumb. He sees the world for how it is and recognizes the ways he can change it and the ways he can’t. I’m interested in expanding those definitions a little.

To be honest, I’m also excited to introduce myself and get a good look at him through something other than a mirror. I’ve ridden enough human minds to know what their desire feels like, what kindles it. Enough to know that those yokels wasted a perfectly good-looking guy when they lynched Cas. He’s got the sort of face that makes you think: oh, this guy is probably stupid. Something about the worried cast of his brow, the strength of his jaw, the meaty amplitude of his trained shoulders. He looks nice but dim, like the boy scout hero of a Relic City drama-comic. I guess gormless is the word. Or maybe himbo.

That’s a compliment, to be clear. I’m unpracticed in giving them.

He’s looking back at me. His gaze lingers on my hips, I’m pleased to say, which I’ve made somewhat wider than the real Mrs. Tilliam’s, for my sake. What can I say? I’ve been working on this body for a while, and I like having a bit of an ass.

“Shall we, Cas?” I hop off the bier and extend a hand. “This is your dream, my man. Nothing here happens without your allowance.”

“I’m dreaming?” He looks around the yawning, gothic chamber I’ve ensconced us in. We sit in a pool of light that obscures its far reaches. A girl must be allowed her little secrets.

“Sorta. It’s the closest comparison.”

He props himself onto his elbows, then unfolds his legs and carefully plants his big dusty shitkicker boots onto my pristine floor. He shakes more dust out of his patched chore coat.

Not that I mind. I can clean myself. By which I mean my self. This is my room, in the same way your stomach is your stomach. Which, yes, if you want to be crude about it, means Caspar is inside me right now. All of this is me. The bier, the pillows, the hall, the little woman, the light, the dark, the form, the void. I am Irene. I am I.

If he knew my true dimensions, if he could comprehend the nature of the being that now lightly takes his hand and leads him down her corridors, if I were to express the depths of my alien mind rather than this speck that I’ve crammed into an understandable form for you and him, it would snap your human brains like twigs under an elephant’s foot.

Perhaps a certain comprehension flickers through him as I lead him through the corridors of Me, shining a light from my eye to guide his way. “You’re the Adversary, aren’t you? You’re the devil.”

“I’m gonna push back on the devil thing. That’s so comical. You don’t see horns, do ya?” I allow my body a little more definition. Onyx lips, a pair of golden eyes folding open below the cyclopean orb on my forehead. “I am part of the Adversary, though, yes. A piece. Maybe the best way you’d grasp it is the Adversary is… like a family. Me and my sisters.”

He examines me. I blink. What a fun sensation that is. My eyes feel so blobby.

“You’re not what I expected,” he says.

My fancy new mouth (so much smaller than I’m used to!) quirks into a smirk. “You were thinking I’d be taller, maybe?”

He releases my hand. He’s growing pale. “I think I ought to pray.”

Ah, there’s the resistance I was expecting. “To the Father? Cas, I’m afraid He won’t hear you. He hasn’t heard you since you were very young.”

“Heresy. That’s heresy.” Caspar’s forehead has a sheen of sweat on it now as absolute reality crashes back into his skull.

“Yeah, dude.” I give an apologetic shrug. “I warned you.”

“The Father—”

“The Father’s servants killed you. The Father’s servants run your world. None of them hear His voice. Maybe some of them delude themselves into hearing something else, but it isn’t Him. You don’t want me to be right, but something’s telling you I am. He isn’t in front of you. Because He is gone.” Caspar is backing away from me now. I follow, swaying with every click of my heels. “Do you want to know how I know, Caspar?”

Caspar’s back bumps into a wall that was not there before. His eyes squeeze shut. His hands clasp. “Father, hear your child. Father, turn to me and cast your shadow from me.”

“I know, because my sisters and I ate Him,” I say. “The war that’s been preached to you, between Heaven and the Void, it was real. It happened. He lost. We won and then we ate Him.”

And I don’t tell Caspar this, since I don’t want him to freak out completely, but just between you and me, that’s not a metaphor. We ate Caspar’s god. We flensed Him and skinned Him and cracked His bones with our many teeth and sucked the marrow. Nothing was left by the time we were done.

His was the first flesh I’ve ever eaten. The first physical substance I tasted. I’ve been alive for millennia without knowing how hungry I’d been. But now I do. I’ve gotten good at suppressing it, but now I’m hungry all the damn time.

“Father, lead me into your kingdom. Keep the gate and the wall.”

“You want to see His kingdom?” I place my palm on the tiled wall by his ear. I’m patient, but I think what Cas needs right now is a shock to the system. “I’ll show you.”

I close my fist and the wall behind Caspar crumbles. I catch his arm before he falls backward, and haul him onto the ledge which now protrudes from my gargantuan self.

And I show him the ruin above which we float, its yellow-ivory horizon stretching in every direction until the cloak of poisonous miasma swallows it.

I show him what’s left of Heaven. Just for an instant. Just long enough.

Then I snatch him back inside, before he can take in enough detail to break his brain. The slouching human shapes racked in pain, the fractals of bone and masonry intertwined and spiraling into ersatz pillars of decomposition. The indescribable forms of myself and my sisters, our impossible shadows creeping across the smashed sanctums and donjons. A tomb-world, a carrion world.

I reform the wall as he collapses and curls up against it, shaking violently.

I kneel before him, straightening my little purple dress at my knees. “That is your afterlife, Caspar. That is where everyone you ever loved and lost now dwells. That is the fate that awaits His abandoned children. And it’s not because of us. It’s been like this for centuries now. You can thank Him for that. He gave up, a long time ago. Why do you think we won?”

His eyes are red. Part of that is he’s crying, part of it is because the sight burst a few blood vessels in them. His voice is coarse and raw. “Why did you show me this?”

“Because they need your help,” I say. “We need your help. I love you, Caspar. I love humanity. You don’t deserve this. None of you deserve it, but you, especially, Cas. I want to rebuild your home. I want to live there with you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

He wants to believe me so badly. I feel the first flickering touch of his faith, like a sweet breath on my neck. Oh, yes. I want more. I need more.

“Do you remember what Edgar called you before he killed you?” I whisper.

Caspar’s dry lips part. “Warlock.” It comes out as a stripped croak. His head buries between his knees.

“A lie,” I say. “An evil, horrible lie born from fear and hatred. You are a healer, Cas. You’re a good man. Dabbling in the eldritch didn’t change that. I watched you. That’s why I chose you. The spells you knew, that was just folk-magic. Old, old ways. As old as me, and I’m old as fuck.”

I put a thumb on his forehead and draw his face gently but inexorably up. Tears have cut lines in the pale dust of his cheek. One of the free-floating tendrils that makes up my hair drifts down the furrow.

“The divinity inherent in creation. You use it to make people better. Believe me, dude. I know what a warlock is. I’ve employed them. I’ve granted them different power. Real power.”

I lay a hand on his dirt-encrusted hair.

“The same power I now offer you,” I say. “I will give it to you and send you back. And you will find the key to Heaven, and open the gate, and let me in.”

CH.2 A Sandwich

I was a little too dramatic, I can tell. Poor Caspar is hyperventilating. But as the reason his lungs still work, I think I’m owed at least one monologue. I pat his head. I believe fleshy beings like that sort of thing. He just sprawls out away from me.

“Okay.” I stand up. “You need time to digest this. Are you hungry? I am.”

I know he is. I feel it. He hasn’t eaten since this morning, when they came for him. My hunger isn’t something I can slake. Not yet. His I can do something about, once he comes off this existential dread.

“That’s where you go when you die?”

“That’s where you go when you die,” I say. “It’s really horrible, I know. You’re a healer and Heaven is exceedingly sick. I’ll help you fix it, but first, I need to upset you more. So maybe let’s do that on a full stomach, hmm? What’s your favorite food?”

It’s chicken parm, but I’m trying to be delicate with him.

“Chicken parmesan sandwiches,” he says. “Do you know what those are?”

I scoff. “Do I know what a chicken parm is. Honestly, Cartwright. I’m not that monstrous.” I help him to his feet. “Let me try making you one. You can tell me how I did.”

That’s one of the fabulous things about humans. From the dizzying heights of dread, you remember sandwiches exist, and suddenly your most prime thought is a hankering for one.

I lead Caspar further through the twisting gothic architecture of my insides. His shuffle slowly turns back into that stride of his, the one I’ve felt from the inside so often. Straight-legged, mechanical, head on a swivel. The walking-the-beat they taught him in basic. He’s been out of the militia for years, but he’s never shaken it; the cadence calms him.

I find myself emulating him, breaking out of my minxy stiletto strut. I subtly replace my heels with a pair of combat boots, adding an inch to my height to compensate; he’s not looking at my feet, anyway. He’s paying attention to his stomach, and the familiar smell wafting his way from my kitchens.

In the center of a hive of furnaces and ovens, a table waits under a checkerboard tartan, surrounded by swiveling stools. I took the tablecloth pattern from the pizzeria he clogged his arteries at as a child. A real greasy spoon kind of place. His sandwich is already waiting for us. The chewy bread, the crispy cutlets, the marinara piquant and on just the right side of too-hot.

He sits grimly before the chicken parm. He rests his forehead in a grubby hand. I sit across from him and watch, remembering to blink occasionally.

His finger stabs into the spongy roll. “Is this real?”

“Its own special kind of real,” I say. “It won’t sate your body on Diamante. On the plus side, you don’t have to worry about counting calories.”

He takes one half of the center-cut sandwich. He slides the plastic basket across the table to me and I take the other half. He’s looking to see if I eat, and what happens, whether the chicken is going to melt his esophagus or something. But there’s a bit of gentlemanliness in there too, and that’s what I choose to focus on as I extract my half and take a bite.

There’s nothing more satisfying than the first starving bite from the center of a stacked sandwich. Take it from me; I ate God. It didn’t come close. For this sensation alone, I’m choosing to work in your defense, humanity. He takes his own bite and sighs a gratified grunt. I wipe my mouth and grin at him.

Look, don’t think too hard about what exactly we’re eating and where exactly the meat came from. It’s a cute moment.

“So before you give me your answer,” I say, after bite #2, “some things to know.”

He focuses on his sandwich, like if he doesn’t look at me, he’ll be back on Diamante and today won’t have happened.

“You’ll need to kill people to get this job done,” I say. “No way around it. Starting with the men who just killed you.”

This gets his hazel eyes up and on me. “I don’t do that.”

“That’s why I’m telling you.” I lick some stray marinara off my thumb. “You’ll come back right where you dropped out, and they’ll see you’re back. Word can’t spread, so you’re going to have to end them. This is the trial run. If you can’t kill the guys who killed you, who can you kill, right?”

I affect a light tone. He doesn’t laugh.

“Look at it this way,” I try. “You’ve seen the afterlife. Guaranteed. Heaven is real, death is not the end.”

“Heaven is horrible.”

“Well, yes. But the way to make it not horrible necessitates sending a few mortals its way first. If you and I do our jobs right, their suffering will be brief. You bust me in and I make Paradise a paradise again.”

He frowns. “Even so. I don’t take lives. I’ve only done it once, and it damn near shook me apart.”

“I know. I know. But the first one’s the worst one. And I hate to bring this up, Caspar, but you’re realizing I have a point. I can tell.”

His face pales. “Can you hear my thoughts?”

“Afraid so.” I reach slowly across the table; he draws back. I settle for placing my palm in the center of the counter. “I’m not asking you to enjoy it. You’ll hate it, but I’ll make you very good at it. And you’ll derive a certain grim satisfaction, because that’s what you feel when you do something difficult but just. As for the toll it takes on your soul, well. Your new Goddess is a very forgiving deity.”

None of this is what Caspar wants to hear. He was born in a theocracy, the vessel of his spirit filled to its brim with love and fear of the Father. He’d be shattered by the heresy I’ve dripped into his ear, if he hadn’t already been shattered by the whole hanging thing.

But he’s seen the suffering. He’s seen the sickness of his reality. And that’s his downfall. Caspar’s got a heart. The deeds I require will hurt him, break him, maybe. We both know it. But it’s his pesky heart that dooms him.

He takes a pensive bite of his sandwich. He barely tastes it.

“Will I be bound to your will?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“So if I give you a yes, I can’t change my mind?”

“No,” I say.

“And if it’s no…”

“If it’s no, I put you back where I found you,” I say, “and you dangle. And then you go to Heaven. Such as it is. I would hate that, Caspar. If I could just deposit you safe in your bed, I would. But the only way you survive is with the power I grant you.”

He remembers the city of ash and gristle and lamentation. He sees the grim injustice of the choice I’ve given him.

I reach out again. He doesn’t pull away this time; he’s too paralyzed. My hand is warm on his; this surprises him. “It’s terrible,” I murmur. “This decision. But if you choose me, I’ll make you strong enough to bear it. I can’t exist in your reality—not directly. But you will be the conduit for my power. I’ll teach you to use it. When you sleep, you’ll return here. And I’ll feed you, I’ll comfort you, I’ll train you. My influence in this reality is unlimited. Whatever you would have from me, I will grant it gladly.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” he asks. “You’re the Adversary. You deceive the minds and eyes of mortal men.”

“Well, Cas, it’s my word against theirs.” I wad up a napkin and toss it into the basket. “I, for one, would believe the one that didn’t hang you by the neck until dead, but you’re the guy with the human brain. You run the numbers.”

He takes the last crusty bite of his sandwich half. I subtly push the rest of mine back across the table to him, but he’s petrified that my saliva is going to mutate him or something.

(Which isn’t true, by the way, unless he wants it to be, in which case I’d happily give him an extra eye or two. That might be quite fetching.)

I watch the gears turn. And then he comes to a really annoying decision. Oh, Caspar. My pure heart. What are we going to do about you?

“Yes,” he says.

“Come on, Caspar. They tried to kill you.”

“What—I haven’t even asked yet.”

I roll my eyes. “Okay. Ask. But for the record, I think it’s silly.”

“You can’t be doing that,” he says firmly. “For humans, it’s very important how we phrase things. I don’t want you to reply to things I haven’t said until I figure out how to say them.”

“Sorry,” I say. “You’re my first human friend. I’m still working things out.”

Friend catches him off-guard, which gives me impish satisfaction. “I want you to keep them here,” he says. “The people I kill for you. I don’t want them stuck in that… place. You did that for me. Can you do that for them?”

I’d love to lie to him, but I can’t. Have I mentioned that? There can be no deception from a patron to its warlock. Nothing outright. Omission sometimes works, but he’s just straight-up asked me. I bet you were sitting there like ohhh, Irene’s an unreliable narrator. What, just because I have tentacles in places you don’t have places?

That’s humanity for you. Can’t live with them, can’t live etc.

“Fine,” I say. “I’d argue that a brief spiritual acid bath would do their blind-faith selves some good, but I’ll protect those dickheads from the Heaven they think they want. If that will remove your hesitation.”

“And you’ll fix them, like you fixed me?” His face brightens. And it takes the sting out of my gripe, the gratitude he feels. Mixed with more of that golden nectar, that intoxicating narcotic. Faith.

I can’t help but smile a little at this big golden retriever of a human I’ve plucked from the gallows. See, now he has me doing it, the dog thing. “I will,” I say. “That’s a frivolous use of my power, but I promised it was yours. The people you kill will be safe. As weird as that sounds.”

“Thank you,” he says, and then a sour flicker of distrust. “Will you let me see them next time I’m here?”

“Sheesh, Cas.” I flick a crumb at him. “I’m putting a lot of trust in you, y’know, giving you all the toys I’m about to give you. Let’s make it a two-way street, maybe?”

“You must understand my reluctance. If you’ve really been watching me like you say.”

“I do,” I say. “And I accept your terms, with gratitude that you’re giving me the chance to prove my word to you. We are going to do amazing things together, Caspar Cartwright. We’re going to save several worlds. Now take your shirt off.”

His brow furrows.

“I have to brand you, and I’d prefer to do it in a spot that people won’t see.” I channel heat into my palm. “You can take your pants off if you prefer, but right over the heart has a fun connotation to it, no?”

He shrugs off his raggedy chore coat. “Will it hurt?”

“More than a vaccination, less than getting executed.”

He exhales heavily through his nose and stands, lifting his shirt off and revealing the functional brawn and weather-kissed skin of a laborer beneath. No glamor muscles on Caspar Cartwright. That triangular torso is hard won from years of martial training and hauling lumber and stone.

I place my hand on his pectoral, feel the sweat and the grime and the dusting of his chest hair. “Swear yourself to me, Caspar. Swear to my service.”

“What do I say?”

“Anything. Just mean it.”

He swallows. His heartbeat increases, a fleet and fearful bird in the cage of his chest. “If your intention is true and if our mission is as just as you say, I will serve you.”

“I accept your service, my warlock.” My fingers brush his chin as I pull my hand away. “I grant you my strength.” I offer him my finger. “Bite down on this.”

“What?”

I waggle it at him. “This is gonna hurt. You don’t want to crack a tooth.”

He gives me a deer-in-the-headlights look. “Your finger?”

“It won’t hurt me.” I brush it against his lips. I could manifest a leather strap for him or something, but I want him distracted. And I sort of want to know what it feels like in there. Hesitantly, he opens his mouth, and I place my pointer along the row of his molars. His mouth is so humid and hot. Sometimes I forget how meaty and wet you people are inside.

I slam my other palm, the heated palm, into his chest, and he screams. His jaw locks around my finger. I feel the dull ache of his paltry pressure. Flesh fizzles. Don’t judge me when I tell you this, but he smells delicious.

He crumples as I remove my hand. “Father above,” he groans.

“Ah-ah.” I crouch to his level. “Irene above, my little warlock.”

His olive flesh shivers. Sweat carries the dirt down his forehead. “It’s done?”

I cradle his cheek, running my thumb along the conch of his ear. “It’s begun. You can put your stuff back on. It won’t sting.”

He brushes the place I branded him. The skin is already cool. Right above his heart, straying from pectoral to sternum, a black brand in the shape of my third eye. The conduit opens. I let my power flow through the firmament into my new servant, and relish the wonder on his face as he feels me.

“Good, right?” I help him to his feet. “It’s going to wear you out at first, every time you call upon it, so try not to overexert yourself. You’ll feel your limits. But the pathways will broaden with use.”

His grim task reestablishes itself in his mind. The men he must send to me. I catch his gaze, snare it to mine. The thin tracery of my pupils in their pools of gold, the smoldering darkness of my face. He’s examining me, trying to find the humanity within. There’s none, not in the way he’d define it, but I like how close we are. I smell the blood in him; I feel its heat. His soul a little flickering firefly in the darkness of this dimension, cupped in the palm of my hand. An impulse rises in me to close my fingers around it, to keep his light locked away within me. To keep him safe from the bruise spreading across existence.

But he has his task.

“Time works differently in my dimension,” I say. “You can stay awhile, if you’d like. If it would help.”

He shakes his head. “I’ll go. Best get it done quick.”

I can still feel his apprehension. His dread. I’m about to argue with him, offer him a rest, maybe manifest a hot tub for the poor guy or something.

And then I feel the air churn as the psychic echo of a city-sized entity breaks the horizon, a slowly widening roar. I witness the shrinking of his pupils as his face breaks into confusion. A trickle of blood drips from his right ear.

“Yes okay get outta here good luck Cas.” I hastily lay my kiss on his forehead and banish him from my realm. His gasp fractalizes and fades as he folds like origami into nothingness, his essence rocketing from me like a hocked loogie.

Just in time, too. If he’d stayed another instant, his sanity would have liquefied. My sister has arrived.