Yes. But why are you?
The ancient god of violent death, of murder and mayhem, and whatever else he was alleged to oversee … the powerful, sour-tempered brute of darkness … it swelled up and stretched and enveloped her. He swallowed Nora, not quite touching her. He filled the space in the shadows around her and observed her keenly.
I have a proposal. I think you’re going to like it.
You must be quite confident of this, to arrive so boldly. You must need something.
She confessed, You’ve got me there. But I’ve got you here; so we’re either at an impasse, or we’re in a great position to strike a bargain. It’s up to you.
He pondered this. Name your terms.
Help me fight your sister.
Damastes recoiled. Then he recovered and crowded around Nora again. You need me to help fight. You think she’s here.
I know she’s here. There’s no way these slaughter nuns are following me so fast, so crazy, around all these shadows. They’ve got help. Now I need help, so are you in, or what?
What’s in it for me?
You get to come out and play and wreak a little havoc. Do some murdering. It’ll be fun. And then you’ll go back in the box.
He bristled. She could feel it.
So she added, But if you play nice and make yourself useful, maybe we can come to some sort of arrangement. Like a time-share or something.
Maybe the old god didn’t know exactly what a time-share was, but he got the general idea fast enough. Nora thought he sensed an opportunity and was calculating exactly how he might leverage the situation to his advantage.
He was undoubtedly planning a hostile takeover and a hasty escape when he let out a long, wicked sigh and said, On your word, then: I defeat my sister—
Which you’d probably do for free, let’s be real.
I defeat my sister, he began again, with a decidedly peevish tone. And the lid on the box, as you put it … is up for negotiation. I will … play nice. With you, not her.
*
Outside the strange little space where time wasn’t working normally, and Nora had time for a conversation with a murder god, things were about to get very, very bad. The slaughter nuns were circling. They were coming.
Indigo and Selene were screwed.
*
Yes—it’s up for negotiation. Now hurry up and help me out, or we’re both going to have a seriously shitty day!
The air went cold and the darkness went sharp.
Nora tried hard to keep from panicking. She tried to hold herself together, even as she let herself come apart—one shadowed brick at a time. When the wall was down, and the lid was cracked, she looked down at her hands. She was pressing her fingers together almost automatically. It was practically a superstition at this point, but she’d kept it filed it away in the “can’t hurt, might help” column. Now it was time to hurt. She took a deep breath, and she opened her hand.
Damastes surged forth.
He rose up and filled Nora’s body—he assumed control over Indigo’s body—and then, as time snapped back into place around the pair of them, they moved together as one.
Let go, little woman. I need a word with my sister, and you’ll be in the way.
“I thought I did let go…?”
Selene asked, “What?”
But there wasn’t time to explain.
Indigo exhaled and retreated, feeling the god rush through her veins like her own blood. She could still move her hands, her legs. She could still blink and turn her head and look around at the terrible scene in the newspaper’s basement.
Let. Go.
“Sorry!” she squeaked. “Take the wheel, man. Take it.”
You didn’t have to ask Damastes twice. He reared up, and Indigo reared up. She felt him taking the reins and running with them—and it was thrilling, but appalling. She did her best to keep one hand on the controls, but he was a runaway train and she’d made a deal.
Well … go get ’er, she told him. But she didn’t say it out loud. He had too much control, and she had to thank some other god for that. It was as if she’d been driving a Lamborghini, and she’d handed over the keys to a NASCAR driver.
The shadows jutted up higher and sharper and stronger than she’d imagined them; they rallied around her like a fortress—an armed fortress, with foot-long spikes on every brick. Damastes surged and the walls swept outward, catching the first two slaughter nuns and ending them on the spot. They didn’t die, but they twitched and they stopped, broken and bent. They bled all over the floor. Indigo could watch them if she was fast, if she caught them out of the corner of her eye.
Of Damastes’s eye.
No, of her eye.
He moved in a blocky blur, a chess rook the size of a horse. He shuffled the darkness with all the speed and facility of a ninja, and all the unstoppable force of a train. Two more sisters went down under the fresh onslaught, as the murder god seized every drip, drop, and sliver of the basement shadows. He weaponized them in an instant, lifting the dark scraps up and swinging them around, using those modified arms as big as doors, shoving and stabbing all in one brutal gesture.
One of the Androktasiai held back. The twist of her face said she was wrestling with something, and Indigo had a pretty good idea of what that something might be.
To Damastes she whispered, It’s her. Over there. Look at her. She’s negotiating, like I did.
I’m on it.
And he was. He pushed another slaughter nun aside with something that looked like ease, but came with such a rush of violence that it couldn’t have been. These were the same shadows Indigo used, and she had used them to kill, but the god of murder (or a god of murder) did it so much more smoothly, without even the faintest hint of hesitation.
The Androktasiai’s eyes changed, going so black that they bled ink. She opened her mouth and raised her arms, and she spoke with a voice so loud that it threatened to split her open. Her body shuddered and seized, even as this new power took control and lashed out.
“Brother of mine!” she roared, and she looked so much larger than she had before, even a few seconds ago. Her hair moved like Medusa’s snakes, and the shadows pushed against her, around her. They outlined her like a dull black halo.
Four slaughter nuns froze. They gazed at their sister with confusion.
Selene saw an opportunity and raised her remaining bloody blade. She sent it swirling at the closest Androktasiai and nearly took off her arm. Grievously wounded, the woman retreated. The other three withdrew from Indigo and Selene and their own fellow nun. They weren’t stupid. They knew this wasn’t right—they just weren’t sure how wrong it was. Not yet.
Selene was happy to fill them in.
“You see?” she shouted, and a stringy line of bloody drool slipped down her chin. “I told you—I told you all! Caedis wants to murder Damastes—what better way to accrue enough strength to fully manifest in this world than to murder a murder god and take his power?”