Page 9 of Hellbound

A heart of darkness. The voice was lyrical, piercing.

Silence.

But the heat deepened, the way a fire deepened when it received air.

The hand drew back, paused.

Then it plunged into Ksenia’s cooling chest. Her sternum and ribs gave way with a crunch, blood and viscera clinging to the hand and wrist as it wrenched out something that looked less like a heart and more like something pulled from the earth. A dark stone with veins of pulsing red and orange, calcified with vengeance.

And as the hand reared back, a translucent shade of a woman formed of bloody vapor peeled upward, chest-first, and separated from the corpse. Her limbs and head hung limp, as if she were being towed through water. Slowly, her form rippled like a flame and rose to standing before the figure.

Wild curls fanned away from her face, eyes closed, brow furrowed.

Ksenia slammed awake, as if half-drowned.

She gasped for air and found none. She clutched at her throat, her hands falling through.

She registered the deafening silence in her own body. No heartbeat. Not even the wet sound of her swallow.

She shot her eyes down.

Her hands were incorporeal.

No.

She turned them over, eyes focused on the corpse beneath her. A leg bent out of sorts. Rib cracked open. Headless.

Her corpse.

No.

A woman with a pair of mismatched eyes studied her: one silver, one void-black with the weary patience of someone who had done this many times, neither finding it surprising nor mundane.

Just necessary.

Her patience thinned, and she tightened her grip around the stone. Ksenia felt a heavy pressure envelop her, and her form rippled, as if a wind had cut through her.

You called for me, she said, her voice resonating in Ksenia’s skull. And I answered.

Ksenia’s attention snapped to the foreign being.

Called for her?

I am Vornaya. God of Crossroads. She stood, stony heart in hand. When the dead linger, be it they are unwilling or too vengeful to go, they find themselves at my mercy.

She had never seen this deity’s likeness in any church or scripture she had been taught.

Ksenia shifted but found herself unable to move, unable to cry out. Bound by an invisible straitjacket that was Vornaya’s grip on her heart.

But Karsan Saranov is…productive in creating aberrations without souls…salting the lands and making me clean up his mess. A hint of annoyance lingered in her words.

At the mention of the king, the veins in the heart within Vornaya’s blackened palm became cracked fissures. She chuckled, examining it. Your hell-bent need for revenge will destroy you from the inside out and ravage the lands. It must be destroyed.

If Ksenia had breath, smoke would have wafted from her nostrils. The heart in Vornaya’s hand grew incendiary, compounding with hatred. An unjust ending—I know. I’ve tried to offer aid to the others who suffered your fate. All of them were certain they could slay him and win their souls back.

She tilted her head and continued.

None of them did. And now this is all that remains of you. A grudge that runs deep enough to salt the earth. Enough to constitute a wretched self. A wry smile curved her lips as Vornaya tossed the heart from hand to hand. Barely.