HALEN
The horned higher men shriek in response to the ear-splitting noise. The drumming abruptly stops. A tense crack of silence follows before the pounding of my heart thunders in my ears. Then the screeching chirp sounds again, coming louder.
Devyn rises up, her hands mounted to my shoulders, as she follows the sound to the mouth of the cave. Through her drugged state, she sways, her movements lethargic as she seeks the source of the disturbance.
The hands fastened to my body slacken, the horrid moans and whines increasing until the men are forced to cover their mutilated ears. I take advantage of the interruption and roll onto my stomach. My fingers claw at the earth in an attempt to escape, and my gaze follows Devyn’s through the flames to the dark silhouette outlined by hazy sky and stars.
A figure stands erect amid the night.
As he moves into the glow of the firelight, my breath stills. His face is contrasted in dark-red tones to depict a skull. His bare chest glistens in the vibrant blaze, skin washed in blood, as a fresh cut on his chest bleeds. He is the fabled bringer of death brought to life.
I sold my soul to a beautiful devil. And that demon has come to collect.
The threat of oblivion darkens my vision as I watch the Harbinger verge deeper inside the cave. Alarm thickens the air, terror curls up in thick tendrils with the smoke.
“You’re not real,” Devyn says, her words faintly slurred. She swipes at the air, as if she can dispel a vision. The closer he draws, the more corporeal he becomes.
“Run—” Devyn shouts. “Flee the false prophet. Do not hear his words of corruption.”
The Harbinger’s presence incites fear in the higher men. A bad omen, a doomsday to sabotage the Overman’s ritual. Their screams climb above the persistent screech of the moth.
The frenzy of chaos morphs into the blind fleeing deeper into the cavern. The straggling members of Devyn’s followers stumble and grope as they abandon their priestess to escape.
Devyn rises to her feet, planting one bare foot to the small of my back. When his clashing gaze finds me through the flames, I’m drawn into him. He is beauty and death and destruction—and he’s here, the Harbinger in Hollow’s Row.
Kallum came for me.
With the barrier of flame crackling between them, Devyn stands facing her intruder. “You are him,” she says. “I see you. You have revealed yourself to face me.” I recognize Devyn’s wordage taken from the Harbinger’s letter she penned herself.
Not denying the accusation, Kallum leisurely removes a device from the pocket of his black jeans, and suddenly the chirping goes silent. As he narrows his gaze on Devyn, he says, “Do I look like a moth now?”
Devyn’s heel grinds into the base of my spine. “I see your wings,” she says, disoriented as she tips off balance. “I’ll give you the offering, Harbinger. One we can share.”
She reaches down and claws her nails into my hair. Gripping the strands at the roots, she drags me up to stand before her, securing an arm around my shoulders. In her other hand, she wields the honed antler, and she presses the spike to my neck.
Kallum’s smile is deadly, the blood-red hollows around his eyes empty. “She’s not yours to offer.”
“The Harbinger isn’t here to stop you,” I say to her, trying to play into her delusion.
“You’re my path.” Her hold tightens. “She’s my path,” she says in challenge to him, digging the point into my skin. “I have sacrificed. I’ve walked the abyss. I have achieved what no other could. Not even you, demon of fate.”
A calculating cruelty ignites behind Kallum’s gaze, just as striking and lethal as the hardened features of the skull that masks his face. A shiver envelops me, the press of cold more bitter than the tomb surrounding us.
“Even the wisest among you is only a conflict and hybrid of plant and ghost,” Kallum says, delivering a passage of the allegory Devyn has twisted for her delusion. “Behold, I teach you the Übermensch! Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch—a rope over an abyss.” He takes a daring step closer to the fire. “What is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a going under.”
Devyn’s hold around me weakens. Falling victim to the spell only Kallum can cast, she’s racked with shivers. My entire body lit with pain and shock, it’s too much of a burden to keep me held upright. Devyn removes her arm, letting me crumple to the ground.
Stepping through the fire, Kallum bares his teeth. “A going under, priestess,” he says, his tone snapping as hot as the flames. “Going under is the sacrifice of oneself. I told you before—” he reaches out and touches the side of her face, his action tender, almost regretful “—how easily philosophy can be misinterpreted.”
Tucking my wounded arm close to my body, I angle my face upward, catching a moment where clarity shines through Devyn’s eyes. Hope hangs on a fragile breath, where I’m too scared to breathe.
Devyn follows me to the floor of the cave, her arms extended, her head bowed, tips of the antlers speared into the earth. “I’ve failed,” she mutters against the dirt.
Relief fills the aching chambers of my heart, and I drag in a lungful of smoky air, letting my head rest on the ground. I’m not sure what this means for Devyn. Once she’s apprehended, I won’t have access to her. She needs help; deep psychological help. Not a jail cell.
Fighting the undertow dragging me under, I watch as Kallum drops to his haunches in front of Devyn and takes hold of the spine in her outstretched hand, sliding it away from her as he curls his fingers around the weapon.
Devyn looks over at me, the light lost in her eyes, a message delivered only between us, and my heart thunders. I feel the volatile shift in the air, hear the drums echoing in my ears.
A cry shatters the reprieve as Devyn draws upward in a sharp arc. The curved tines of her antlers strike Kallum in the chest, knocking him off-balance. She attacks, attempting to impale his body.
The struggle ends with Kallum bracketing an arm around Devyn’s neck, her face held by his palm. I see the spiked bone in his other hand…and fear twists my insides.
“You know things you shouldn’t,” Kallum says in her ear as he raises the weapon. “I can’t let you remain a threat to her.”
“Don’t—” I say, my voice coming in a hoarse croak, but my command reaches Kallum, his attack halted in a heartbeat. “Kallum. Don’t.” My eyes seek his beyond the dark hollows. “I’ll never forgive you. Just…let her go.”
A growl resounds from deep within the base of his chest before he flings Devyn aside. She reels unsteadily, the priestess righting herself to stagger to her feet. She doesn’t glance back as she flees the scene.
My sight fading, I track Devyn to the entrance of the cave, waiting until she crosses into the night to let my head drop to the earth.
Then I plead for unconsciousness to claim me.
The arms of death surround my body, and I fold into his solid embrace. He carries me through the dark cavity of the cave, descending deeper into the darkness. As my eyes adjust to the absence of firelight, I make out a string of white lights ahead.
A stark realization washes over me, bringing a dose of reality. We’re not inside a cave at all.
Track lighting runs along the ceiling. Guide beams line the walls, and below, rail lines run along the ground of the tunnel of a mine shaft.
A layer of lucidity breaks through, freeing my mind a measure from the hypnotic coursing my system.
I reach up and touch Kallum’s face, trace the outlined hollows of the skull. Feeling the dried blood. The monster that feeds off my pain, my personified daemon, presented as the killer I’ve obsessively hunted.
“The villain becomes a hero,” I say, my voice weak.
His arresting eyes find mine and he looks into me, his smoldering, breathtaking smile an unbearable ache clutching my heart. “Sweetness, I’m your goddamn devil.”
