The lance thrower, p.12
The Nine Births of Carnage (Cross Academy Book 3), page 12
“Well, we need to talk about it again.”
“You think I’m evil for wanting you to know how to prepare your own food?”
“I think you’re evil because you want me to believe killing bunnies will make me strong.”
Seganamé reached forward and grabbed the animal, a shrilly squeal was the only noise it made before the cracking of its neck silenced the room.
Zuriel stared with an open mouth as his master slit its throat and hung it over the bucket in the corner to drain. He turned back around, wiping his hands on his crimson cloak.
“You won’t be eating anything you can’t make yourself from now on,” Seganamé said.
Zuri sobbed, a flood of tears pouring down both his red cheeks. “You are evil!” he screamed. “You’ve been fooling me all along!”
“Zuri, you’re overreacting.”
“I wish you would’ve showed me this side of yourself before.”
“Or what?” Seganamé challenged sharply. “What would you have done?”
“I…” his voice trailed off. He had no answer.
What would he have done if Seganamé had tried to convince him to kill a bunny when he was five and shy instead of nine and desperate to please his adoptive father? It wasn’t like he could have left and survived in the woods alone. He’d had no one else but Seganamé. Had nowhere else to go except with Seganamé.
He wiped the salty tears from his chin and took an angry breath. “You just… You never showed me how evil you could be.”
Seganamé sighed. “I’m not evil. I’m just not as good as you.”
Zuri glared. “You never showed me this side before!”
Suddenly, the room darkened.
It happened so fast, Zuri instantly looked toward the kitchen window, shocked to find the curtain still pulled to the side. There should have been plenty of sunlight streaming in, bathing the dirt floor in an evening glow of warmth and luminescence.
Shadows crawled from beneath the drawn curtain, slithering along the floor—right toward Zuri. He let out a frightened yelp and fell backwards onto his butt as he tried to get away.
Strangely, the first person he looked to for help was Seganamé. But as the boy’s panicked eyes landed on his master, his fear tripled.
Seganamé was glowing. Like all the light that should have been in the room had been laid over his flesh like a second skin. The only darkness on his master was the black inverted cross that appeared in the center of his forehead. Everything else was bright and beautiful. Even his hair looked vivid and ethereal, as if his red locks had been replaced by living fire, red-hot flames tamed by a more cunning sort of heat.
His hazel eyes burned into Zuri as he stared down at the boy, seeming taller than normal. As Zuriel looked him over from head to toe, he realized his master was taller, but not because he’d grown. He was levitating over the floor, and from beneath his red cloak were more shadows. Like dark clouds, they billowed out and filled the room, moving like smoke through the little cabin.
Zuriel scooted backwards as Seganamé moved forwards, gliding as elegantly as a dark angel.
“Stay away!” Zuri cried, backing up faster.
Seganamé opened his mouth to speak, black smog rolled off his tongue with each word. “Is this what you wanted to see?” he asked in a voice that sounded nothing like him. It was dark, deep, and hardly human. “Should I walk around like this? As a demon?”
Zuri gasped, his eyes burning with fresh tears. What sort of monster had he awakened?
Or had the monster always been there?
Before Seganamé could say anything more, Zuriel scrambled to his feet and ran from the cabin.
He ran without direction, feet slapping the cool evening earth as he darted through the surrounding woods. His lungs burned as he gasped for air, desperately sucking down big gulping breaths. Nothing seemed to ease the pain crippling his heart, making his chest ache.
That wasn’t him, Zuri cried in his heart, that wasn’t my master!
Not the kind man who had only ever smiled at him. Had only ever looked after him. That dark monster in the cabin wasn’t Seganamé. He would never believe it.
And yet… The proof had been right there in front of him. As real as the trees whipping by while he ran. His master had summoned darkness, had spewed black clouds from his mouth like curses as he spoke. Smoke had billowed from his red cloak and though his face had shone with light, there was a powerful darkness inside him—all concentrated in the inverted cross in his forehead.
Just the thought of that dark symbol sent shivers up Zuri’s spine, making his tired legs wobble as he ran. All this time—all these years—Zuriel, Hosenké, and Atara had been spending their days with a monster. A demon.
Hosenké was right.
Zuri sobbed, tripping over a rock. He got his hands up before he hit the ground but that didn’t help much. The rocks on the ground cut into his little palms, his knee whacked against a branch covered in dead leaves. Zuriel sat on his butt, staring down at his scraped hands and crying over his burning knee. His tears blurred his eyes and wet his face; when they dripped from his chin, his palms began to sting from the salty tears dripping into his fresh cuts.
This was the worst day of his life. So much pain over a rabbit that’d ended up dead anyway.
Zuri wished he could rewind time and do it all over again. Never lose his temper. Never yell at his master. Never learn the truth. Because the pain he felt had nothing to do with betrayal. It was so unbearable because he knew the truth hadn’t changed a thing.
He still loved Seganamé. Still hoped that, somehow, they could move on from this. That maybe this was all just a bad dream and if he shut his eyes and opened them again, he’d be in his bed with Hosenké sleeping across the room and Atara in a hammock wrapped in her furs.
Desperate, Zuri squeezed his eyes shut so tightly that stars danced on the inside of his lids. He took three deep breaths and then three more for good measure. And then he opened his eyes. And screamed.
Standing before him was a beast far scarier than Seganamé. It was tall with fleshy skin so white it was almost translucent. Its ears were pointed and stuck straight up from the very top of its head, looking more like soft horns than anything. Its nose was upturned and flattened like a snout, its mouth was propped open by the large crooked fangs that jutted from between his lips like spikes. They were thick and black and dripping with a liquid so funky, Zuri gagged as it exhaled through its mouth.
The boy had seen his share of demons in his life; they inhabited the woods, they stalked the river in search of lost children, they even raided villages when they felt they had the numbers. It didn’t take much examination for Zuri to know what he was looking at.
An ogre.
Without words, he popped to his feet and ran in the opposite direction.
He didn’t get far.
There was another ogre waiting by the trees, it stepped out to block the boy’s path before he could take more than three steps. This one was taller than the first, but twice as ugly with a headful of wild white hair that looked so odd on the creature Zuri wondered if it’d scalped a human and made itself a wig.
“Looka here,” said the first ogre, walking up behind him. Zuri could smell its breath even being a few feet away. “We came out to hunt. But our food came to us.”
“Lucky,” said the second ogre in a higher-pitched voice.
A female, Zuri realized, though that didn’t change his predicament one bit.
He stood his ground. “Leave me alone, beasts.” If he was going to get eaten, he would make sure he was the worst meal they ever had. He hoped he tasted bad. Hoped he would give them ulcers and gas. But little Zuri never got the chance to find out how delicious he was because the next moment, the female ogre was covered in shadows—as if black ropes had materialized around her … and dragged her backwards into the forest.
She screamed loudly, wickedly, like she was being eaten alive. Zuri screamed too; the sound of the lady ogre dying was so haunting he nearly wet himself as he sank to his knees. Even the male ogre trembled, dropping its club to the ground with a thud as it held its clawed hands up in surrender.
What he was surrendering to, Zuri had no idea. The woods around them had darkened with the setting of the sun. Zuriel was sure the ogre’s eyes were better than his, but if he could see who had attacked his female companion, he didn’t let on. Both of them stared fearfully into the forest, awaiting their fate.
Seganamé pushed through the brush in his red cloak, still glowing, still wearing that inverted cross in his forehead. His eyes burned with rage; his very presence emitted a hateful darkness Zuri hadn’t felt before. But none of it was aimed at him.
His master walked right past him toward the ogre, making the beast take an instinctive step backwards.
“Y-You killed my wife!” the ogre cried. “You killed my Merna!”
“You tried to harm him,” Seganamé said coolly. Unafraid, he turned his back on the darkling and knelt beside the boy. “Are you alright, Zuri? Did the monsters hurt you?”
He wiped snot from his nose with the back of his hand, smearing it across his chin. “N-No.”
Over Seganamé’s shoulder, the ogre retrieved his club and took a step forward.
Panic shot through Zuri’s heart, but Seganamé remained calm. “Don’t try it,” he warned without even looking. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I can sense your darkness,” the ogre said in his gravelly voice. “You’re more like me than you are like that boy.”
Seganamé didn’t reply.
“Yet, you would fight me over that human child?”
Zuri gasped as Seganamé leaned forward and took him into his arms. He could feel his deep voice rumbling in his chest as he hugged him and said, “I would kill you over this human child.”
The ogre raised his club.
Seganamé leaned back and cupped Zuri’s chin. Oddly, he was smiling when the boy looked up at him. “Keep your eyes on me,” he said calmly. But Zuri craned his neck to peek around his master, intrigued by the sudden choking noise he heard coming from the ogre.
Seganamé held his chin, turning his head back to face him. “On me,” his master reiterated.
Suddenly, the choking noise turned to gurgled cries—long, bellowing screams that almost sounded muffled. Like the ogre was being violently drowned.
Drowned in what? Zuri wondered, but when he heard the distinct popping noise that he could only recognize as the cracking of bones, he realized the monster was drowning in his own blood. Cracked ribs stabbing his own lungs, his neck being crushed, windpipe caving in, his torso imploding, squeezing the life from his heart.
Zuriel clamped his hands over his ears, trying to block out the noise. He squeezed his eyes shut and tucked his face into the folds of Seganamé’s cloak. He didn’t know how long he stayed that way. Didn’t know what else his master had planned to do. But Zuri kept his eyes and ears blocked until he felt light press against his lids, and he peeled them back to find that he was in his own living room.
At first, he thought he was seeing things. He hadn’t felt Seganamé lift him from the ground or carry him away. Maybe he used his dark powers, the boy wondered as Seganamé set him on the sofa and then moved to the kitchen. He came back with bandages and a bowl of warm water with a cloth soaking inside.
Zuri sat quietly while his master treated his scraped hands and examined his bruised knee. Neither spoke. Neither made eye contact. The boy squirmed on his cushion, jittery in the silence.
When he couldn’t take it anymore, Zuriel said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“Why not?”
“I should’ve been honest with you long ago. But I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know how you would react.”
Zuri knew what he was referring to.
“So … you really are a demon?”
Seganamé paused, holding Zuri’s hand as he spread ointment over the cuts. “No. I’m not.”
“But what I saw earlier—”
“I have dark powers, yes. But I, myself, am not a demon.”
He wasn’t sure he understood, but he also wasn’t sure he cared.
“You saved me,” Zuri muttered.
Seganamé looked up at him, confusion mottling his features. “Of course I did, Zuri. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“Well…” he fidgeted. “I yelled at you. And I made you angry.”
“So that means I should have left you out there alone in the wilderness?”
Zuri couldn’t hold his gaze; couldn’t handle the genuine concern he saw there on his face. “You left Hosenké and Tara here alone at night,” he said quietly, his last feeble attempt to convince his master that he wasn’t worth saving.
Seganamé sighed. “If I had one hundred children here, I would leave the ninety-nine to go after you.” He reached up and stroked his cheek. “I don’t care when you mess up, or even when you run away. I will never leave you nor forsake you, Zuri.”
The words sounded so familiar… yet something about them, something about the way Seganamé used them almost made the words seem … wrong. Like they didn’t belong to his master. Like he had no business saying them.
Zuri stared at the inverted cross in Seganamé’s forehead. He didn’t bother hiding it anymore since his secret was out. But that didn’t make the boy feel any better. If anything, he felt even more afraid than when his master was breathing smoke and summoning darkness in the kitchen.
Something’s not right, Zuri told himself. But he couldn’t pinpoint just what. And he wasn’t sure he could do anything even if he could point it out.
He shifted on the couch when Seganamé stood and cleaned up his supplies. “I have a question,” the boy said, but his master replied with a sigh.
“Not now, Zuri. It’s late.” He sat on the couch beside him and leaned back, closed his eyes.
Zuri stared at him; he’d never seen him sleep before.
“Seganamé?” he whispered.
“I’m tired, Zuri,” his master said. “Let me rest.”
Zuri turned away, examining his bandaged hands. Seganamé wasn’t exactly a demon, but he obviously wasn’t human either. But does that really make a difference? Zuri wondered. His master was still kind to him, even after he’d messed up and tried to run away. Even after he’d yelled at him. Zuri had been saved in the woods, and now his wounds had been treated.
He has dark powers, the boy concluded, but he isn’t evil. Somehow, Zuriel felt he could live with that.
___ + ___
When KI opened his eyes, he wasn’t surprised to find Seganamé staring at him. But he was completely shocked to feel tears running down his own cheeks.
He sighed. He was getting tired of Zuriel’s depressing memories. Tired of feeling his confusing emotions. And tired of being carted around by the Third Birth of Carnage.
As if he sensed his displeasure, Seganamé said, “The journey is almost over.”
Somehow, that wasn’t the response KI wanted to hear. At the end of this journey, he wouldn’t be himself anymore. He hardly felt like himself now. His memories were fading by the day, even summoning images of Fox in his mind’s eye was difficult. He felt thankful Talon and her sisters all looked so much alike, save for the differences in the shades of their brown skin. If they weren’t so similar, KI feared he wouldn’t be able to recall his best friend’s face at all.
He glanced at Talon, sleeping by the fire, and felt a sense of calm. It wasn’t just that she reminded him of Fox, it was that he knew she cared about him. Genuinely cared. Not because they were from the same village, or because he was important to the Academy, or because he housed an ancient soul that should have died long ago. Talon cared because she did. And it felt good to be around someone who still enjoyed him for him. Not for the boy inside.
Zuriel… the name sounded more like a curse every day.
“Do you hate him?” Seganamé’s voice caught KI’s attention. He sat by the fire not too far away, poking at the embers with a stick.
KI knew exactly who he meant. “No,” he answered. “I don’t hate Zuriel. He didn’t ask for this any more than I did.”
“I see.”
“Does Zuriel hate you?” he asked.
Silence rode on the breeze that blew over them. KI waited patiently. He wasn’t tired. He’d sit all night if he had to, but he would get answers out of Seganamé tonight.
The Thirdborn glanced up from the fire. “I hope he doesn’t.”
“Why do you care so much for him?” In his memories, it was obvious the Thirdborn cared for the other two children. Hosenké and Atara. But it was also painfully obvious that Zuriel was somehow special to him.
Even now, KI felt a warmth radiating from the demon as he gazed over at him. Like he was truly looking at his own son. He might as well have been, KI looked so much like Zuriel now he hardly recognized himself whenever he caught his own reflection.
KI was nothing like the tanned, blonde-haired boy he’d been in Wi. His hair was jet black with gentle waves now, his skin was a deep olive tone; he was taller and more muscular, like his body had aged by years. KI was sure he’d turned fifteen by now, probably a few weeks ago, but his body still seemed more mature than his few teenage years. Like he was closer to twenty, and very experienced in combat. He had inhuman reflexes, incredible strength, and he hated to admit it, but he’d developed a burning craving for blood lately.
Seganamé shifted. “I don’t know why I care about him,” he muttered into the flames.
KI exhaled slowly. “Have you ever cared for me?” he dared.
It was an odd question that had shocked both KI and Seganamé, but the boy couldn’t take back the words once they were spoken. He wondered why he even cared what the Thirdborn thought of him. But it was hard not to take things personally when Seganamé was feeding him, talking to him, and being kind to him all day long.
The Thirdborn stared at KI for a long moment.
“Have you ever cared for who I am apart from Zuriel?” he asked softly.
“No.”
KI bit the inside of his cheek, confused as to why that simple word sent pain stabbing into his heart. Maybe it was because he’d spent so much time in Zuriel’s past, watching Seganamé raise this innocent child. Watching him show so much care and concern for an orphan boy.
