Ixidor rushed around the wagon.
Phage stood there, blacker than the black night. She clutched the griffon in a headlock. The thing's flesh rotted away, just as Nivea had. Phage hoisted the skeletal griffon and waggled its ribs, so that the great feathery wings seemed to sprout from her own shoulders.
"I knew I would find you," she said. "I killed Nivea, and now I kill you."
Ixidor did not know what to say. How could he fight her with no tools, no weapons, not even a paint brush?
Virulence ate through the griffon's skeleton, and bones tumbled like white sticks from Phage's fingers. She advanced.
Ixidor took a step back, keeping the distance between them. He would not run. He would bluff and bargain until he had reached Greenglades, where his own beasts could rise to protect him. "Why do you hunt me?"
Phage crept forward, keeping eyes locked on her prey.
"For sheer spite?" Ixidor asked, nearing the edge of the wood.
"Yes," Phage replied in a hiss.
Ixidor shook his head. "Vengeful beast." He hurled himself up a tree bole, scrabbling to climb aloft.
With a shriek of animal rage, Phage leaped after him. Her hand swiped just behind his retreating foot. Instead of climbing, Phage merely wrapped her arms around the tree. Bark split and peeled; quick blackened and sloughed; heartwood burned right through. With a sudden lurch, the tree and its occupant began to fall.
Ixidor flung himself across the emptiness, toward a high crotch nearby. His hands snagged the bark, but it ripped away. He fell. Fronds slapped his back as he tumbled. He struggled to get his feet under him but could not. Vines snared his legs, and he crashed down on his back amid undergrowth. There he lay, beneath a thin layer of flapping leaves. He could not breathe, the air knocked from his lungs.
Phage loped froward through the forest, looking for him.
"You cannot hide, Ixidor. Darkness is no ally of yours. I am darkness," Phage said quietly. All around her, undergrowth rotted, and soon, Ixidor's cover would be gone.
He stared up beseechingly toward the branch of a tree, where a pair of red eyes watched.
"There you are," Phage said. Even in the gloom, her teeth glinted. "Don't make me walk on you. I would rather wrap you in my arms and cradle you to death as I did to Nivea. Rise."
Fall.
The black panther plunged from the branch.
Phage glanced up too late.
All teeth and claws, the cat impacted her. Its jaws clamped down, crushing her face. Fore claws ripped open her throat and hind claws her belly. Next moment, the cat was slain by rot, but its corpse smashed Phage to the ground. Rots and putrid meat pinned her.
Ixidor gasped a breath, struggled free of the vines, and cracked a branch from a nearby tree. The broken end came away in a long spike, just as he had wished. He charged, holding the bough lance-like, and rammed it into Phage. He felt the jagged point pierce her chest, punch through muscle, and crack bone. He thought he even sensed the spongy lung beneath. Yanking the branch out, he plunged it into another spot.
Already, the sharp point was gone from the branch. It struck this time like a blunt pole. Worse, as the last of the panther fell away, Ixidor could see that the claw marks down her belly were knitting closed, and her throat had ceased bleeding. Phage shuddered, throwing off the remains of the panther's skull. Even her face had healed.
Ixidor rammed the stick at her again, but she grabbed it and yanked herself to her feet.
Dropping the branch, Ixidor turned and ran. He had nearly killed her. The panther was, after all, just another weapon in his hand, and he had a whole forest of them. If only he could get far enough ahead She was too quick. Phage thrashed through the forest, closing on him.
Ixidor half-turned, raising his arm to ward back the blow.
She grabbed his arm, and contagion spread from her fingers. Her touch was agony-cold, numbing, killing. It turned his flesh black and made his muscles into gray jelly. Fingertips to shoulder, his arm rotted. Phage closed her hand around the bone and twisted. Sinews snapped, the joint popped, and like a wing pull from a long-roasted bird, Ixidor's arm ripped entirely loose.
Screaming, he clutched the bloody stump.
"If you had let me, I would have held you. You would have been gone completely by now. Will you make me take you one piece at a time?" Phage asked. She tossed the rotten bones aside and stalked toward him.
Ixidor staggered away. He stumbled backward over a root and fell, staring up into the canopy. "Nivea!"
Phage reached for him. Her arms opened in the all-accepting embrace of death.
"Nivea!"
Something flashed like lightning in the forest. A wide, white blade swept down and struck Phage's shoulder. Her right arm fell cleanly away. It thumped in the weeds beside Ixidor, and he had the crazy thought of grabbing it and placing it on his own stump.
A figure came between Ixidor and Phage. It was a woman-an angel. Her flesh was alabaster, the color of the statue in the garden. She was no statue, though. Her feet hovered above the ground, unblemished by dirt or grass. Her hair streamed, and her huge wings drove back Phage. She advanced, the lightning sword beaming above her shoulder.
Ixidor stared, dumbfounded.
Phage hadn't a chance. She stumbled helplessly.
The angel lifted her blade high and turned its point downward, and rammed the sword into a scabbard across her back. She was not going to kill Phage-or at least not that way.
The angel opened her arms and wrapped Phage in an embrace. Snow-white fabric enfolded black silk, purity warring with corruption. Smoke poured from their flesh. Skin peeled like burning paper and muscles caught fire. Bones split and organs drooled from ruptured cavities.
Phage crumpled. She slid like a greasy bag out of the arms of the angel. Whatever remained of her on the robes of the angel burst into flame and were gone.
The angel turned. She did not step or flap, but only swung slowly about, her wings gathered at her back.
Ixidor fell to his knees and then to his face. He clutched the ground with the fingers of his remaining hand. "Nivea."
She hovered above him, staring down.
"Forgive me, Nivea," he muttered into the ground. "Forgive me."
"I am not Nivea."
Ixidor raised his eyes. It was like staring into the sun-blinding and painful. "You are Nivea."
"I am not. I am your new creation. I am the Protector."
Ixidor blinked. "New creation?"
"Your dream was the medium."
He shook his head. "My dream?"
"All of this is a dream. It began when you thought you had startled awake. It ends now…"
Ixidor sat bolt upright in bed, breath raking into and out of him. He was covered with sweat. He dragged back the silk curtains and swung his legs down, seeing the unmen crowd nervously up around his bed.
A dream. The whole thing had been a dream.
Except that something beamed brightly-powerful, feminine, floating above the floor. The angel drifted beyond the circle of unmen, who cast watery shadows across their master.
"You are real," Ixidor said breathlessly.
"You created me out of your dream. I am your Protector. I will keep you safe from all foes."
Ixidor averted his eyes to the marble floor. "You will avenge Nivea. You will kill Phage."
The angel nodded with Nivea's own likeness. "I will kill Phage."
Ixidor smiled for the first time in days. At last, he had created something beautiful. He stood and held out his hands toward the angel.
Only one arm rose. His right arm was gone.
He gasped, prodding the stump of his shoulder. It was not gory as it had been in the dream, but still the limb had vanished.