Wouldn't it be better, Ayaan thought, to just put her down?
It could be done so simply, so painlessly. Ayaan could hold the girl against her breast and then just use her power, just a little, to end the girl's life. Or even better, she could just... just...
Patience was the first living human Ayaan had been near since the Tsarevich remade her. The girl's energy burned inside her hotter than the stove in the kitchen'Ayaan hadn't really expected that, that it would be so warm or radiant. She felt quite cold, suddenly, quite chilled, and she longed to have a little of that heat inside her. No malice, no threat came attached to that desire. It was the simplest, most wholesome feeling in the world.
'Come here, Patience,' Ayaan said. 'I want to hold you in my arms and make everything better.'
The girl slid off the ottoman and onto her feet. She looked down at the carpet but didn't come any closer. Tears slicked down her cheeks.
'Come here,' Ayaan said. She took a step closer to the girl. 'Come here.' She reached out one hand and touched Patience on the elbow. The little girl's face came up, her eyes tightly shut as if she knew what came next, as if she was bracing for it.
Behind Ayaan a door opened and Erasmus stepped inside. Ayaan could feel his energy behind her, cold and unwanted. 'Well, what do we have here?' he asked in a high-pitched, sing-song voice, and held out his arms. The girl ran to him and embraced him like she would a giant teddy bear, her arms tight around him, her sobs buried in his fur.
A tremor of revulsion went through Ayaan's body. She had considered something so terrible it made her bones ache. She wouldn't have done it. She told herself she never would.
'We all make mistakes,' Erasmus whispered, and she spun around to glare at him. 'It can be so hard.'
Ayaan stormed past him and out to the barnyard. The green phantom stood there waiting for her, his ghouls standing as motionless as statues in a line behind him. No sign remained of the skinless horrors from the barn. The body of the dead wizard had been completely devoured. Only bloodstains remained in the barnyard.
'You did well,' the phantom told her. 'I guess you get to live.'
Monster Planet
Chapter Nineteen
'Do you feel the power here?' the green phantom asked. His withered face was creased with a beaming fascination. It looked grisly on him but Ayaan got the point. His curiosity was killing him'he really wanted to know what was inside the wizard's silo.
Ayaan felt less a burning need to know than a profound caution. Smoky, curling tendrils of purplish dark energy licked out from the metal structure. Its metal staves looked scorched as if by a terrible fire. The six hex signs mounted around the silo's door would burn her flesh if she tried to enter.
Patience, the adolescent daughter of the wizard, came forward. She hadn't collapsed yet'she was tougher than Ayaan had thought she would be. Maybe she was just glad to have something to do. The girl approached the silo with a bloody knife in her hand. She had just slaughtered a goat while they waited, something that came natural to her from long practice, and now she made cutting motions around each hex sign with her gory blade. One by one they faded, their potent magic fizzling away. 'The door is open now,' she said, in the hushed tones Ayaan associated with how men spoke inside a mosque. She started to move aside to let them in but then she looked up at Ayaan and Erasmus. 'She was very nice to me,' she told them. Ayaan had no idea who she was talking about. 'Please don't hurt her.'
Ayaan turned and looked at the green phantom. 'What's going on here? What is this thing?'
He shrugged. 'It's a reliquary, I suppose.'