None of the people at the café across the street had noticed. They were all caught up in their envelopes of privacy, talking, laughing, hunched over coffee cups and cell phone screens.
All traces of humor were gone from the old woman’s face. Her smile crushed downward to become a heavy sneer of disgust. The mass of wrinkles tightened into a lupine leer as the nun raised a liver-spotted hand and pointed one thin and twisted finger at Nora and rattled off something else in a language that sounded so familiar and yet which Nora could not understand. Even though Indigo’s powers had somehow allowed her to understand and speak Italian, this language eluded her. And yet …
And yet …
It was so strangely familiar. Nora was sure she should know this language, and that was certainly as strong as anything in her mind. She’d heard this language somewhere. Some … when, but it was hidden back in the damaged darkness of her mind. Fumbling for it was like trying to pick up pieces of broken glass. It hurt her to try. It made her want to scream.
The woman spoke at length, hissing and snarling her strange words, pronouncing them like an accusation. Or a curse. Then Nora heard a single word in the midst of the tirade. A name, spoken with such intense hatred that it sounded as if it must have drawn blood in the nun’s throat.
Damastes.
“Stop!” shrieked Nora. Her voice was a cry as sharp and high as a gull’s.
The nun’s words faltered, slowed, and stopped. She stood, panting with the effort of spewing her hatred, fists balled, eyes blazing with a heat that was almost palpable.
“Who are you and what do you want from me?” pleaded Nora.
The nun fixed her with a deadly and icy glare. “Did you think that your crimes would go unnoticed?”
“What…? What crimes? You’re not making any sense. I haven’t done anything to you. I don’t even know where I am.”
“You are awash in blood. You reek of murder. You are his, body and soul. You are the Butcher’s instrument on earth, and yet you stand before an Androktasiai—before a righteous maiden of slaughter and think you can lie. To me? To us?”
Nora had no idea what was going on or what any of this meant, but when the old woman spoke that word—Androktasiai—something within Nora’s soul recoiled. The word itself echoed like a shriek in her mind.
Androktasiai.
Then a voice spoke—no … it screamed at her.
The witches have found you. Foolish girl, run. Flee now while you still have breath and life.
It was the towering voice of Damastes, but in that moment the demon’s voice was filled with an emotion other than hatred, contempt, or bloodlust.
Nora could hear, could feel, the demon’s fear.
“I don’t understand this,” Nora cried, saying it outward and inward at the same moment. “You have the wrong person. Whoever you think I am, you’re wrong. I’m an American. I’m a reporter and—”
“You are the vessel of the demon of murder,” interrupted the nun. “You give reach to his arm and dexterity to his hand. You wield his knives and you bathe in the blood spilled in his name. You are slave and consort to Damastes, and you pollute even the meanest ground upon which you stand.”
“No!” snapped Nora, her anger rising to match the levels of fear and confusion. “You’re wrong. If you think I’m with Damastes in any way, you’re out of your goddamn mind. I hate him. He’s a parasite and—”
The nun struck her.
The simple slap was so hideously fast that her withered hand became a blur. The sound was like a gunshot. Pain exploded across Nora’s cheek and seemed to echo all the way down to her blood and bone. She staggered backward, struck the unyielding stone, rebounded, and fell hard to the ground. The pain was enormous and she could feel damage in her neck muscles and tendons. Any harder and that blow would have snapped her neck. The power and speed were too much, too big. It was not possible for a small woman, especially one as old as this, to hit like that.
Run, you stupid cow, screamed Damastes, you cannot win this fight. Go, I command it. Go!
“Fuck yourself,” snarled Nora, and again it was to both the inner and the outer monsters. Inside her mind Indigo also screamed at her, telling her to flee. Not out of fear but because of the safety in shadows. Power was in darkness. Right now the sun was almost directly overhead. The wall seemed to stand on its own shadow, hiding them beneath skirts of stone.
“Please…,” said Nora weakly as the nun grabbed a handful of her shirt. With no sign of effort, the tiny woman jerked Nora to her feet. “You’re making a mistake. I’m not who you think I am.”
“You smell of blood and you stink of murder.”
With a sudden move of her own, Nora slammed both palms hard against the nun’s flat breastbone and drove her backward. Surprise flickered on the old woman’s face, though no trace of pain. If anything she looked mildly impressed, even amused.
“So, the Butcher’s bitch has spirit. But it will not make your death worthy of song.”
“The Butcher?” demanded Nora. “You mean Damastes? You’re trying to kill me. What makes you any different?”
“Damastes is the spirit of murder, of needless death, of slaughter for its own red sake.”
“I know, he’s a total asshole. What does that make you?”
The nun straightened, and she seemed momentarily to appear taller and almost regal. “The Androktasiai are the sacred and eternal sisterhood of battlefield slaughter. Of righteous slaughter.”
“How the hell is that any different? Or any better?”
The nun’s eyes filled with loathing. “To ask such questions is to reveal yourself as soulless and foul, whore of the Butcher. You bathe in blood spilled without art or honor, without purpose or—”
“Shut it,” growled Nora, and she swung a punch at the nun’s face. Nora was tired and heartsick, confused and terrified, and all of that went into the punch. The blow came all the way up from the ground, gathering power and speed with the torque of ankles and knees, waist and shoulders, channeling out through the muscles of back and biceps, into the hard knot of bones of her clenched fist.
No! bellowed Damastes. That is not the way to fight these witches.
The punch … missed.
The nun, laughing, ducked backward and let the punch burn the air instead of smash into skin and bone. The force of the punch twisted Nora, and the momentum—unchecked by impact—spun her off-balance and toward the ground. The nun hooked her in the gut, catching floating ribs and mashing them against liver and lungs. That blow lifted Nora completely off the ground, drove the air out of her lungs, then dropped her like a bludgeoned ox. Nora landed in a fetal ball, wanting to scream, needing to, but unable to force even a choked whisper out of the spasming wreck of her body.