Book One: Némein
('to give what is due')
Prologue:
"Why don't you just do it?" The woman asked, her voice rasping but her tone hollow: bored. Her own blood was already bright on her lips, frothing from her throat from an internal injury. Her silver eyes were luminous as she stared up at the young slender mortal woman who held a knife poised at her throat.
"Are you so eager to die, Luna Morrell?" The young woman asked from between clenched teeth.
Luna turned her face away.
The young woman was straddling her, they were at the end of their fight now; she held the blade of silver and wood above her heart, her muscles tensing with her grip, ready to strike with deadly force.
Luna remained with her face turned to one side, her gaze was remote as if she had disappeared into her own mind and it was a cold vision. Her body was limp beneath her assailant's, she would not resist when she would cleave her heart in two.
"I want to know why." The young woman said tremulously. "Why did you kill my parents? Why did you let me live?"
A spark of light jumped through Luna's silver gaze like lightning. Life. She reached up slowly to remove her glove and reached up to press her cold palm against her cheek and the furrow of scar tissue that decorated it. The woman hesitated, jerking back for an instant but she allowed her to touch her and Lunas's touch was like fire against her skin and she was transported into her memories.
She was the same. No. Not altogether the same. Luna was mortal then, she could feel the quivering thread of panic running through Luna just as her body, muscles and bone readied for the kill. Luna's heart was thundering, her breath heavy with excitement.
"You take the heart as a warning to the rest." A man's voice ricocheted about her skull; the voice was cold, deadpan as if he weren't talking about murder.
She felt as Luna did the hard and warmth and wetness of her clawed hand puncturing the chest, scarping against bone, fingers clamping around the beating heart, warm meaty walls encompassed her fist and then pulling, the resistance because the heart was connected, still trying to beat, a body still trying to live.
She felt the trembling of her hand, the exhilaration of violence and disgust too. Yes there was disgust and icy white regret that hitched her breath.
The second time was harder, but shock had set in creating a numbness that made the physical act easier and she watched as if outside of her own being as she punctured through the woman's chest, soft flesh parting, the sound of ripping loud in her own ears and the sensation of that beating heart, the hard bone, the warm wet insides.
A part of Luna died that night, the sentimental childish part that thought there was someone to protect her from this. There was nothing but her claw fisted around the still beating heart of a woman. A heart that had animated a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister…a traitor.
She stared at the organ, the colours bright, the meat succulent; she could not deny the hunger moving through her, the way it provoked her sharp teeth to grow, the curves of her ears to sharpen, just the subtle changes. But self-control, the military training would prevent her from fulfilling the beastly desires that reared from within.
"And the child?" The voice again.
Dread. A cold sweat that gathered at the base of her spine, made the heat of the organ in her hands drain to ice. "She's just a kid." She said, a dulcet voice soft and vague and hollow even to her own ears.
"She will grow into a woman and that woman will carry the image of your face in her head and vengeance will be written in her heart. It would be kinder to end her life now." The feeling of a hand on her shoulder, kneading the rock hard tension there. "Return her to her parents in the after world."
She didn't believe in beyond this world, she believed in flesh, in blood and the here and now.
The little girl was splotchy red and crying and so vulnerable it wasn't fair. Life wasn't fair. A memory within a memory of being hit so hard the impact had crushed her cheek, her jaw, her nose. "Don't cry, Madelyn." Luna said gently, gently.
The girls eyes were grey and lavender, bright with tears; her mouth was a trembling line. She was so small. So delicate, it hardly seemed fair.
"Do it." The man's voice. "Do it and be quick. I'll be outside."
She knelt eye to eye with the child. Soft round limbs. She put her bloodied hand on Madelyn's chest trying to convince herself it was flesh, just flesh. How it trembled beneath her claw, its small breaths stuttering between sobs. She touched her round cheek and felt a shock run up her arm, this girl had been precious to her mother and father, just a girl, she had no choice in this.
"Don't cry." Luna said again. She reached for the girl's face, gentle, her features blank. Madelyn could almost remember the sight of Luna when she was that child trying desperately not to try cry, remembered thinking if she could stop crying that Luna would stop too.
Luna stared down at her own hand and watched as her clawed fingers turned more animal becoming longer, sharper, a shade darker. She took hold of the girl by the chin, pinching her skin, feeling her tremble, breathing in the intoxicating scent of her fear.
She dug her sharp animal nails into the girl's cheek, tearing her flesh and drawing blood, he remembered how it had hurt. She spread the girl's blood across her cheeks and mouth as if painting her face for war and all the while she tried to block the child's screams, pitiful, heart wrenching noises. The girl passed out and Luna left her body.
"Is it done?" The man asked casually as if the task was mundane.
"Yes." She said the lie was a stone in her heart.
It still sat heavy in the silt of her consciousness even now. She removed her hand from the rippled scars of the girls face, her eyes locked to hers, lavender and grey glossy with un-fallen tears. Madelyn was filled with the sensation of Luna's memory as if it were her hands that had torn out hearts and her nails the ones that had forged the scars she had borne since that day.
"Why?" Madelyn asked.
"I do what I'm told." She said, infuriatingly calm there was no more hint of pain on her face.
"But you let me live."
Luna turned her face away. Whatever channel had opened up between them had closed as her expression turned distant and cold.
"You're a monster." Madelyn said softly.
Luna didn't respond, not a whisper to defend herself and why would she need to? It was true, it was everything she had ever wanted to be: a cold, unfeeling monster.
Miss S 10/01/2014