Indigo(91)

Straightening and pushing her hair out of her face, Indigo said, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

Now the murder golem’s eyes widened, its face taking on a falsely innocent look. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m sure you do. You’re as slippery as…”

“Slime?” suggested Xanthe.

Indigo glanced at the slaughter nun and nodded. “Yes, slime. That’s what you are.”

The murder golem pouted. “A girl could take offense, you know.”

The tone was playful, but Indigo wasn’t taken in for a moment. The creature in Shelby’s form was wholly unpredictable. In the past few days he had threatened her, raged at her, cajoled her, bargained with her, pleaded with her. He had shown her many faces, though only occasionally his true one—that of a savage, bloodthirsty entity entirely without mercy.

Indigo was exhausted, but she tried not to show it. She and Damastes had pooled their resources to drag the three Androktasiai along the shadowpaths with them, and it had taken a hell of a lot out of Indigo. Exactly how much she wasn’t sure. Glancing at Damastes again, she saw that the Heykeli’s pout had become a leer.

“Feeling tired, little girl?” The voice the demon spoke in—Shelby’s voice—deepened and roughened on the last syllable, as if its throat had suddenly become filled with gravel.

Indigo felt a moment of panic, then one of anger. “Not too tired to do this!”

She lashed out with her mind, hitting Damastes like a tidal wave, swamping him, sweeping him back into the box and slamming the lid down hard. The Heykeli froze, its eyes glazing, its mouth dropping open.

Selene looked from Indigo to the murder golem, then back to Indigo. “What did you do?”

Indigo felt dizzy with fatigue. The mental energy she had expended along with her rage had taken more out of her than she was comfortable with. She forced a smile. “I’ve put him back in his box. He was being … disobedient.”

Megaira said, “You don’t look well.”

Less accusingly, Selene added, “This is taking a toll on you, isn’t it? Bigger than you’re letting on?”

Indigo scanned her subconscious for a sign that Damastes might be listening in, but she could hear nothing. Her sudden burst of rage seemed to have stunned the murder god into a sort of stasis. Taking advantage of the moment she nodded. “Listen. I’m on top of this whole Damastes thing, and I’m pretty sure that nothing will go wrong…”

“But?” said Selene shrewdly.

“But I have a contingency plan, in case things do.”

Quickly she outlined her plan to the three Androktasiai, who listened grimly and without interruption, as though instinctively appreciating that time was of the essence. When she was done, she said, “Right, I’m going to—” But before she could complete her sentence, she felt a surge of darkness inside her that sent her stumbling back against a tree.

All at once her head was filled with a booming, jagged fury that was not her own; a fury so vicious and uncontrolled that it took her reeling mind several moments before it could translate the maelstrom into words.

How dare you do that to me! Damastes’s voice was like thunder now, like an earthquake, like the earth splitting open. How dare you humiliate me in such a manner! If you attempt that again, there will be dire consequences!

For a moment Indigo was cowed, then she lashed right back at him. Don’t you dare threaten me!

But she didn’t follow it up. Because in this instance she hadn’t allowed Damastes out of the box. He had broken out of his own accord, had freed himself from her control, and that unsettled her. It unsettled her very much indeed.

She watched silently as he reinhabited the murder golem, its mouth shutting, its eyes blinking, then staring at her. For a moment, there was silence, a standoff. Then Selene, looking around, said, “Okay. I guess these are the woods. So where’s the cemetery?”

Indigo tore her eyes away from Damastes. She tried to look and sound casual as she took her bearings. She squinted up at the sky. There was still enough light for now, but the shadows were deepening imperceptibly between the trees. Dusk wasn’t too far away.

Hoping she was right, she pointed. “This way.”

Megaira took a long, deep breath, gripped the hilt of her sword, and said, “Let’s put an end to this.”





18

They moved like ghosts through the trees.

A large swath of woods surrounded the old cemetery in a remote corner of Pelham Manor, a piece of Westchester County, New York, that had been ideal in the 1950s but which now seemed quaint and faded. They’d passed through the town, but now the world of the living had been left behind. The woods were vibrant with autumn colors, though some of the branches were bare and skeletal. A breeze skittered leaves along the forest floor, but they were quiet, these women. No one would hear them coming.

Nora went first, keeping her human form for now, clinging to it as if it, rather than her shadow powers, was the strongest weapon she possessed. Her instinct told her this was true. Her fears shouted it.

Indigo was a thing of shadow. It—she—belonged to the same twisted world as Damastes. The same mad reality as the thing that walked behind her in a Halloween costume of her friend Shelby.

That was all wrong. So wrong. It was madness and Nora wondered, not for the first time, if all of this, if everything that had happened to her, was nothing more than a fantasy, as insubstantial as smoke? As unreliable as delusion?