Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(14)
“Turn,” it commanded.
I pivoted, trying not to overbalance again. The spirit flowed toward me as a boiling mass of vapor, becoming more defined the nearer it grew. I made out a lopsided face, the features melted like wax, its eyes febrile sparks of light in sunken sockets. A feverling.
“Swing.”
Unearthly strength coursed through my body. The sword traced an effortless arc, steel flashing in the candlelight. It felt so easy that at first I thought I had missed. Then I saw that the feverling hung sliced nearly in two, only a few wispy filaments of vapor connecting its halves. And its face—I had never seen a spirit look afraid.
“Again.”
One final swing, and the feverling shredded away to nothing. Satisfaction coiled through me, like a cat licking its whiskers after a kill. I clenched my hand on the sword’s hilt. That feeling had belonged to the revenant, not me.
“Perhaps you aren’t as useless as I feared. Still, there’s something strange about you—you’re listening to me, for one thing…. Oh, what’s this?”
Sister Julienne’s blood pooled at the corner of my vision, shining crimson. I looked away, but it was too late. Everything I saw, the revenant also perceived through my eyes.
“A dead aspirant? What does that make you?” An astonished pause. “You don’t have any training at all, do you?”
“Be quiet.” It hurt to speak, my throat raw from screaming. I rested the sword’s point on the ground and bent to retrieve my dagger.
“I doubt you even know how to dismiss me back into the relic,” it went on, incredulous. “Do you have any grasp of the danger you’re in, human? It’s only a matter of time before I possess your body and take it on a long, merry—”
Its voice cut off with a hiss. I had slapped the dagger against my arm again, raising another welt. In the merciful silence that followed, I tasted a coppery tang in my mouth. When I swiped a hand across my lips, my fingers came away freshly gleaming red. I must have bitten my tongue while convulsing.
The blood looked unnaturally scarlet, almost pulsing in the crypt’s shifting candlelight. It wasn’t just mine; most of it belonged to Sister Julienne. As soon as I had that thought, my vision tunneled, and a rush of vertigo swept through me, turning my knees to water.
Weakness wasn’t an option. Taking measured breaths through my nose, I sheathed my dagger and tucked the reliquary beneath my arm, making sure it was tightly latched as I set foot on the stairs. Though the revenant’s presence had receded, I still felt it evaluating me, circling my defenses like a fox around a henhouse. The moment I let down my guard, it would try to possess me again. That was assuming it got a chance.
“What happens to you if I get killed, revenant?”
“Nothing,” it replied, too quickly.
“You go back to the relic,” I guessed. “If that happens, you’ll be helpless, and the spirits attacking us will destroy you. To be able to protect yourself, you need to keep me alive. That’s why you helped me.”
“Why do you care, you horrid little nun?” it snapped.
“Because you’re going to keep on helping me,” I said grimly. “You don’t have a choice.”
Halfway up the stairs, I could hear the prayers again, muffled by layers of stone. Another few steps, and there came a scream, a splintering of wood. I took the rest of the stairs at a run.
When I burst into the chapel, I was met with a scene of disarray: novices weeping, Sister Iris shouting orders to the nuns. She stood guarding Mother Katherine, who knelt at the altar, deep in prayer. The doors still held, but barely; as I watched, a new sliver opened in the wood, bitten through by a blade.
Sister Iris turned as she heard me enter, her expression relieved for the instant it took her to take in my appearance. Then she definitely stopped looking relieved.
“Artemisia? Where is Sister Julienne?”
I was bleakly aware of how I must look, dripping with gore and clutching a sword. I bolted the crypt’s door and held out the reliquary. “Please keep this safe.”
The blood drained from Sister Iris’s face. “Oh, Artemisia.”
I couldn’t bear the look she was giving me. Would she believe me if I told her I wasn’t possessed? I didn’t know. Wordlessly, I turned from her and walked down the center of the nave, between the pews, conscious of how the prayers and weeping silenced as I passed. I caught a brief glimpse of Marguerite, her mouth hanging open. Ahead, the door shuddered with continuous battering strikes. A crack appeared in the bar.
“Revenant,” I said, ignoring the stares this earned me, the frightened whispers. “Attend me.”
“I’m not your servant,” it hissed. Then, grudgingly, “There are dozens of thralls outside. Be ready.”
Another blow shook the doors. Then they burst open in an explosion of flying splinters.
So many men. A tide of them, stinking in their mud-spattered chain mail, eyes shining silver with ghost-light. To them I must have seemed an easy target, standing alone in their path. My drab gray robes did nothing to distinguish me from the other sisters. I felt the wind blow a mist of rain across my face as they came for me.
The revenant tugged on my arm, like a puppeteer tweaking a string. I lifted it, palm upraised. Power roared up within me like a wildfire, consuming, unstoppable. A push, and the soldiers halted as though they had slammed into an invisible barrier. A twist, and every last one fell to his knees, seizing. Their mouths stretched wide; a torrent of vapor poured from them as they jerked and trembled and at last slumped unconscious to the floor.