Pulling out her vials of Arachne’s blood as she turned, Eva faced a still burning portion of the forest. Zoe should have helped to put it out before she left, but apparently she forgot. The task fell to Eva, but at the moment, she was more concerned about the circulatory system lurking behind one of the less flaming trees.
“How long are you going to skulk about?” Eva shouted as the orbs of blood started orbiting her.
A certain former nun slipped around the side of the tree. Today, Lynn wasn’t wearing her nun habit. She had a pair of jeans on while being wrapped in a heavier wool jacket. Her shorter hair hung free, unkempt and unbound.
“The last time we fought in a forest didn’t go so well for you,” Eva said. Arachne moved up around her, readying for combat with her extra limbs sprouting from her back. “And I was alone then.”
Lynn eyed Eva, staring first at her before glancing towards Arachne. Her gaze was dull, half lidded and almost bored.
“Have I ever called you a monster?”
Eva tilted her head to her side, half shrugging as she did so. “Probably. I imagine a lot of people have, though I don’t consider myself one. At least not morally. Physically?”
Eva held up a hand, inspecting her carapace. Doing so had become something of a habit of hers whenever her inhuman nature was mentioned. She couldn’t say exactly how her habit had come about. Sometimes she felt like showing off for whomever she was speaking with.
Other times, she almost felt as if she were doing it for herself. Her eyes were blood-red with black sclera, her tongue could stretch a good distance and was dark in coloration, and even her teeth weren’t shaped quite like human teeth anymore.
Yet, without looking into a mirror, her hands were her most obviously inhuman elements. Things that she could use to confirm for herself that yes, she was a monster.
“Yeah, I’d say that I am physically monstrous.”
Lynn shook her head with lips curled into a disgusted sneer. “To think I ever saw you as a child.”
Eva sighed, rolling her eyes. Readying some of the blood for a shield while the rest prepared a wire ball for an attack. “Are you going to fight me or not?”
“The enigmas. I’ve been doing research on them.”
Eva paused, narrowing her eyes. “Go on…”
She kept her blood at the ready, not discounting the possibility of a trick.
“They are sent by a Power. One at war with other Powers.”
Alright. Nothing new there, Eva thought as she calmed the flames using her thaumaturgy. If they weren’t fighting, there was no reason to let the forest burn down.
They had known as much since Zagan had given Nel the enigma fetter and she had scried on another plane of existence through it. They hadn’t explicitly known that it had been at war, but that was easy enough to guess.
“The Power creating the enigmas is one that has shown up in history on occasion. Every time it turns up, it manifests in some new form. Adapting or perhaps merely mutating.”
“So what? How does knowing that help us?”
“The problem is that these enigmas are not helpful towards humanity. They attack everyone without distinction. Human, demon, monster, mortal.”
“They don’t attack undead,” Eva said, thinking back to her memories of Sawyer. “Or, I know of a necromancer who tamed them. I don’t know if they tried to attack him before he tamed them.”
Eva had a whistle that she got from Sawyer. Presumably the one he had used to tame the creatures, though she hadn’t actually had a chance to test it out. Had she brought it with her, she could have tried it out on the one Zoe had incapacitated.
“Tell me, do you believe that necromancers worship Death?”
Eva rubbed the back of her head, moving her sharp fingers through her hair to massage her scalp with a practiced touch, glad she wasn’t still cutting her head. “Well, it made a certain amount of sense until you asked.”
“Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Necromancers go around killing people. But to power their constructs, they tend to use stolen souls. Either pulled directly from Death’s realm or from recent kills. Souls that haven’t been picked up by psychopomps.
“Necromancers, vampires, mummies, zombies, skeletons. The Power behind their reanimation is Life itself. To be clear, it isn’t entirely intentional. Merely a side effect of the undying nature of Life.”
“So what then?” Eva scratched her head. Knowing which Power had been attacking Void was an interesting bit of knowledge, but didn’t exactly help. No matter who Lynn named, it was still a Power. Too far above mortals or even demons to affect.
“Can something that embodies the very concept of life be killed?” Lynn shook her head. “I doubt it. And if it can be killed, is it a good idea?”
“But it must be stopped.”
“Agreed.”
“Especially if they’re going to be showing up in the mortal realm without being pulled through a demonic summoning circle.”
Lynn looked away and down towards the ground. “That might have been my fault. Shalise had been cleansed through the ritual with the obelisk. I was concerned for any taint that I had collected. I had been attempting my own ritual using natural moonlight. By the time I realized that something had gone wrong…”
She held out an arm, pulling back the sleeve of her jacket. Her dark skin was covered in violet bruises. Bright enough to be almost glowing. “I’m not quite sure how this happened, but I managed to prevent it spreading.”
“Would you like an amputation?” Eva asked, forming some of her blood into a small ring. When Lynn looked to be hesitating, Eva said, “Ylva mentioned corrupting effects of enigmas. Leaving it alone could be bad.”
“I believe that they become what they consume. Being touched or…” She held up her arm. “This isn’t corrupting me.”
“You’re willing to take that chance?”
Chapter 005
Eva popped into the gate room of the women’s ward. As Arachne hopped off her and grew back to her full height, Eva pulled out her cellphone and sent Zoe a message stating that she had put out the fires and was taking a rest at the prison.
Not entirely true, but not a lie either.
At least it would keep her from worrying when Eva didn’t end up at the apartments.
Heading out of the gate room and into her own room, Eva added a fresh bit of blood to her warding scheme. It was somewhat annoying that she had to do so. Eva had cleaned out a handful of people in the recent months—Zagan, Lynn, and half of Juliana’s family to name a few. That she was readding one of those people so soon was just a little irksome.
But things were strange. If someone who had been looking into the enigmas more than anyone else around wanted to be her friend at the moment, Eva couldn’t really deny them.
Devon didn’t care about enigmas. Especially not with his new wind on Catherine’s ritual circle—though that had hit a small snag with how decimated the demon population was at the moment. Catherine was quite picky in just who was allowed in her ritual. She kept flip-flopping over having Arachne because of her dubious demonic origins. Lucy was still out of sorts and not in any shape to participate in a ritual.
Which just left Devon’s carnivean.
To the best of Eva’s knowledge, Anderson hadn’t summoned any demons and neither had anyone else. Being able to feel demons now-a-days took a lot of guesswork out of figuring out how many demons were around.
Devon and Catherine had been planning to summon a demon. They had actually tried but wound up getting a few enigmas instead. Four separate tries ended up with them summoning nothing but enigmas. Whether that was because of the specific demons they had tried or because Hell was once again being infested with enigmas, Eva couldn’t say. And neither could they.