Chapter 23

Fangs and Fur- Beta Read Along

*This chapter is extra long because I’ve combined 23 and parts of 24. I adjusted the pacing and structure of these chapters to avoid a cliffhanger for weekly readers. The published version will read differently.

Screams Dili had made herself forget filtered back through her ears.

Agonized moans, desperate wails, and dying breaths filled a tent she refused to see again. It was the same painful dirge in every memory from every battlefield she’d ever attended, but she knew exactly which overflowing healing tent she was in without looking.

A voice broken with pain called her name, a final stuttering prayer for mercy.

She clenched her eyes tighter, wouldn’t move a muscle, but the memory of magic moved within her, anyway. The boy’s last gurgles were so loud compared to the shrieking of the city guardsmen who’d lost his leg lying on the ground nearby.

Just as she remembered.

Dili cried. She couldn’t help it, even though in that memory she’d run out of tears several moons before that bloody day.

Strong hands gripped her wrist and tugged hard.

“I beg you, come! We need you!”

Dili followed along blindly. She wouldn’t open her eyes until the clash of divine swords and the roar of creation magic drowned out the woe from the healing tent. And once she blinked her eyes open against the harsh light, she did not gape at the sky above, cleaved asunder by the goddesses of war.

Dili had eyes only for Gaia. Gold adorned the divine witch, from her endless locks to her shimmering skin to the gentle aura that always glowed around her. But guilt dimmed the brilliance of her golden gaze.

“Please!”

The divine witch pulled on Dili’s wrist with all her might, but Dili ground her heels into the dirt and would not budge.

All as she’d remembered, except for her own salty tears streaming down her cheeks to match Gaia’s golden ones.

“Please save them! They will listen to you!”

Gaia’s plea cut through Dili’s heart, because she remembered all too well what would happen next.

The divine witch yanked on Dili again, tugging her toward a single golden rope that extended down from the clouds. Even the rope glowed with the might of Gaia’s magic, shining like a ray of hope in a world ripped apart by divine ego and soaked with human blood.

Dili refused to go anywhere near that rope. And it was her memory.

“Where’s Hadrian?” she asked.

Gaia leaned against Dili’s unmoveable weight, grunting with effort, but didn’t say anything.

“Gaia, where’s my vampire?” Dili demanded.

The divine witch just pulled on her wrist harder. “Please! Help me!”

Gaia acted just as Dili remembered without reacting to the new things Dili said and did—something the witch would have to think on later. She needed to find Hadrian.

She didn’t dare look around in search of the vampire, though. Not in that memory. Toad and Hadrian needed her at her best. She wouldn’t risk getting sucked back into a self-loathing spiral.

Besides, if the vampire had landed in the same memory after falling into her left pocket, she would have heard a different ruckus in that healing tent than exactly what she remembered. That much gore and death would push any vampire to his limits.

At least she hoped Hadrian had landed in her memories as she had and not somewhere… else. She didn’t understand how the creation magic that made each of her pockets actually worked, only that it was made to only work for her.

“Please, Gula, it has to be you!” Gaia begged.

Dili tried to smile back at the divine witch’s miserable face. “I cannot bear to hurt you again, my love, not even in here.”

She trusted her instincts, shoved her free hand into her left pocket, and fled from the scene she wished never to see again. Aching relief flooded her as that horrible memory blurred into a vortex of sight and sound. Then, savage guilt choked her throat as a primordial call heralded a different memory, from a far older time, resolving around her.

Dili blinked her eyes open in wonder at the ancient night sky, a brilliant tapestry of jewels untouched by human ambition. Haunting melancholy squeezed her soul as she marveled. No human would ever witness such beauty in the time she called home; they’d already consumed it.

A dark shadow crossed her vision, and suddenly muggy heat enveloped her. Barking, chirping, sawing, honking, horning, roaring, and every other animalistic sound disturbed the night as prey sought shelter or each other and predators swooped and stalked the dark shadows. Towering shapes loomed in the darkness, as trees that would have looked out of place at home arched up into the sky.

Her joy at the sights and sounds of one of her favorite worlds of their making would have sunk her to her knees had she not already been lying down in the grass, nearly dead.

Which meant she had mere minutes to act. Her body could give no more; she couldn’t search for Hadrian there and then, not as she was, stuck in that ravened carcass.

Worse, in that moment, she truly did not have a left pocket to plumb even if she could have moved any of her large reptilian feet, or her long tail. This memory was the reason He’d made them wear His blessing, which meant at that exact moment, her flesh was bare.

Fury, the kind so hot it overcame all other feeling, consumed her at the slightest thought of seeing His face again.

She couldn’t linger. Wouldn’t, no matter what the cost. If Hadrian was there, she would have to find him another way.

The sky overhead shimmered with a divine glow that instantly replaced all of Dili’s hot hatred with icy fear. She had to run. She had to get away. She needed to—

The first thing she noticed was the absence of pain, and she instinctively relaxed before she knew it was safe to do so.

The second thing was the warm sunlight playing on her face. Laughter rang out nearby. Water lapped around her ankles. The hem of her dress skimmed her legs, lifting with a cooling breeze. The fishy odor seemed stronger than usual, but the comforting smells of a burning hearth and baking bread wafted through the salty brine.

Dili knew when and where she was before she looked. Again. It was her home away from home long after she’d taken to living amongst humankind. A place He’d given her, not rather than made for her, because she’d asked for that little slice to be of her own making.

Nostalgia chewed through her as she remembered her haven for the first time in centuries, opening old wounds.

She wouldn’t cry, though. Not here. So, Dili sniffed and pressed her hands against her waist. She groaned with relief that both pockets seemed intact and dipped her right hand in just to be sure her things were still there, too.

Happy voices called her name in the background. She yearned to respond in kind and linger with the rambunctious children there by the riverbank, but she turned her back on the treasured recollection. Those children were long gone. Hadrian wasn’t. She hoped.

When Dili had left the first battlefield, she’d put her faith in the pocket and her desire to find Hadrian. She thought it had worked. After fleeing the threat of seeing Him again, though, she doubted it.

She sighed. She had to stop hiding from herself. Here, at least, if not out there.

Dili admitted that the first time, she had run from Gaia’s pain more than she’d sought Hadrian’s location—just as she’d run from Him in her Triassic memory.

The magical boundaries of the pocket had only given way when she needed to flee. The witch embraced the truth with another longer, slower sigh, but refused to let shame curdle in her gut. Toad and Hadrian needed her.

Sudden insight lit up Dili’s mind. They needed her.

She did not understand the creation magic that constructed the literal pocket of reality she traversed, but she knew one thing with certainty about creation magic itself: it liked to keep making.

And the pocket had been made to only work for her.

If she could move between memories when she needed to flee, then she should be able to move when she needed anything else, too. She just had to make those other needs louder than her base instincts—or something like that.

Dili blocked out the sounds of the children drawing closer and slipped her left hand into her left pocket, because it felt right more than it felt necessary. She focused fully on Toad. Her familiar, the black cat she’d accepted as her own, trapped in a charm Dili could not lift. Stuck with the half-siren, who resented the shackles of servitude just as much as he did. She’d manipulated Naddahdat to keep Toad safe from the reckless woman’s scheming, but he needed her. And she needed him.

So much. So, so, so much. A lot. He must have felt so alone, he must have—

Dili muttered her frustration and let the farce of feeling go. She wanted more than anything to get back to Toad and return to their life, a genuine primal urge to return to a sense of home and family, but the reality she would be returning to involved Hadrian, or his loss, if she wasn’t successful in rescuing him. And Naddahdat, plus all the other consequences she’d been outrunning.

She worried about Toad, but she trusted in the blood oath she’d sworn, and no matter how she felt about leaving him behind, she knew it was dangerous for anyone but her inside that pocket.

Which is why she was scared for Hadrian. She needed to find him as quickly as possible. There were a handful of memories buried in her left pocket that not even a vampire could survive. But there were countless memories that would wound the heart and the soul far deeper than the body, no matter his admirable strength or powerful magic.

It was those memories she feared the most. If Hadrian saw… there was so much she couldn’t bear for him to see. So much she had to shield him from. She’d done… She needed to make sure he hadn’t—

Death’s miasma was as sweet as it was cold when she spilled out of the vortex. Not the noxious stench of decay, but the myriad blend of all endings, remembered and forgotten, regretted and blessed. The overwhelming smell infiltrated Dili’s nose and mouth and clogged up her airways with its thick odor. Her heavy breathing riled the still air, and a rare ripple of sound disturbed the heavy silence of sleeping souls.

The witch shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms as she peered around cautiously. The palace looked the same: cold stone with glittering frost along the walls that was the only source of light in the gloomy domain of Kur. Engraved cuneiform she could still read stretched over the endless walls as high as she could see into obscurity.

She stood in a long hall. There was only one way ahead, and one way behind. Each direction looked the same, but there was no mistaking which way lay Death. If Hadrian were here, she knew he would be ahead. He’d have had no other choice if he’d landed here.

Dili stepped forward with her gaze straight and level, always looking forward, just as she had in the memory. The difference was her cautious tread, when once she’d bustled down the hall with purpose.

Even though she kept her eyes focused on the gloomy end, glowing blips flashed in her periphery. She didn’t spare them any attention. The seven gates were the only way in and around Kur, each filled with dust and the memories of lives and loved ones. Only divines could walk the hall of the dead freely, and Dili followed in their footsteps by invitation, not her own power.

After Dili had bypassed the seventh gate, she took a few more steps until her vision blurred. Her ears started ringing. Saliva flooded her mouth until she drooled. The hair all over her body stood on end, her limbs trembled, and her nervous system glitched. She pushed forward anyway, taking several more stumbling steps. Not even she, with all her power and knowledge, could process the divine magic that transported her from hall to chamber.

The witch’s sensory faculties returned at once. The stone walls and icy brilliance still surrounded her, stretching up into the abyss, but instead of a hallway, there was a staircase. A staircase so long Dili knew she could not descend, for it did dive down. Down, down, down past physical or magical capacity toward an unremarkable dais made of the same stone, glistening with the same ice.

The royalty of humankind liked to sit above their subjects, perched on pretty chairs and adorned with material wealth to impress their status upon any who saw them.

No throne could uphold divine ambition. No crown could encircle divine magnificence. No symbol could embody divine power.

The goddess Ereškigal beamed in the center of the dais, a towering figure with unlimited power, undeniable magic, and unquestionable superiority. And around her, despite Dili’s pleas and divine threats, waited the vampire horde she’d forced into worship.

Vampires, perfectly still and perfectly quiet, lined the unimaginable staircase top-to-bottom. Hundreds more stretched out to the left and right of the stairs in a sea of statues. Their vacant eyes gleamed neon green, evidence of their desperate hunger. Still, not a single vampire so much as twitched as she entered Ereškigal’s chamber.

In that memory, Dili bore witness to Ereškigal’s crime and no more. She’d wanted to see it for herself, because she hadn’t believed the accusations against the goddess. She didn’t want to believe it.

Now, Dili feared she had lost Hadrian to the goddess’ divine summons. Just as she turned to the first of countless pale faces, Ereškigal’s divine voice rumbled through the chamber.

“I told you, you’d be back.”

Terror slipped cold and slimy down Dili’s throat. She jerked away from the unknown vampire and peeked down at the goddess.

Ereškigal burned brighter, and she was growing. Taller and taller and taller, an inescapable clawed hand stretched up toward Dili.

Horror pushed a scream from her lips as the vortex swallowed her, sucking her away before the memory changed even more.

Saltwater closed over Dili’s head like a fist. She choked as the ocean pushed past her frightened shriek and down her throat. Panic frayed the edges of her mind, but Dili snapped her jaws shut and struggled toward the surface. Her dress dragged against her, almost too heavy for her. Sheer grit pushed her back to the surface, gasping and spitting.

A storm raged overhead, with dark clouds and pelting rain. Enormous waves churned with the whipping wind, continually crashing over her head and splashing her in the face.

Dili wouldn’t be able to keep her head above water for long. She shoved her right hand into her pocket, except her fingers just slid against folds of sodden fabric. The waves had twisted the dress around her body. She grabbed the skirt of the dress and wrenched it right, which is why she couldn’t react when two waves collided around her, tumbling her underwater.

She reemerged spluttering and scared. She couldn’t afford to drown before she even found Hadrian. She had minutes to search for him before she’d have to abandon that memory.

Dili treaded the turbulent water frantically, spinning as much as she was able with her dress tugging her down to survey the roiling surface.

No land. Nowhere. Just the ferocity of water above and below and all around. The freezing cold started to permeate her adrenaline-enhanced senses. The first signs of fatigue ached through her body.

“Hadrian!” The word ripped from her throat. She scanned the white foam and dark troughs desperately. “Hadrian!”

A strong wave bowled her over, but thankfully didn’t sink her far below the surface. She kicked herself up and chugged at the air, her throat stinging.

And then there was silver suddenly before her. A dark figure floated up the back of a wave away from her.

Dili called his name, losing precious air to spur wild hope. She kicked toward him, muscles already burning from the icy temperature. Each wave lifted and then dropped her, stealing her progress. Her dress became heavier and heavier as her strength waned.

She didn’t care. It didn’t matter what happened to her body as long as she got to him.

Her fingers tangled in the long silver locks fanned out around him first. Hadrian’s body rolled face-down in the swell, completely limp, but all vampires were dead already. As long as he hadn’t run out of magic, she could fix the rest.

Dili yanked Hadrian’s body toward her and wrapped one arm around his torso. The waves swamped them, and the current tried to tear them apart, but she clung on as if he were a lifeline.

The witch shook, not from the freezing cold or the seizing pain, but with the release of fear. When she had fled in primordial fear from Ereškigal’s chamber, the pocket had not returned her to the peaceful riverbank. It had not returned her to a memory where she reigned supreme, either.

Dili had run away right into the heart of a hurricane for Hadrian. Not because she needed to find him, but because she needed him. His company, his strength, his power—him. The vortex opened around them, and Dili held Hadrian tightly to her chest as the magic whirled them away into a different memory, together.

Next chapter on Friday, December 19.