Chrysalis Ch10: Fae Hospitality (pt2) (Patreon)

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Night falls over the quiet suburb Lloyd Morgan grew up in. Cricket song mixes with the distant ambience of London nightlife; but the Morgan’s house is deathly silent.  The only audible sound is the tick of the clock, marking each passing second.  Long shadows crawl across the foyer floorboards, creep over the furniture and take hold of the wallpaper. A line of silvery light slips through the partially open front door, dividing the room in half, sparkling off thin lines of salt crystals.

A warm glow issues from the kitchen. Two shadowy figures sit side by side at the kitchen table, one leaning against the other’s shoulder. Each one’s holding a book.

Neither one has turned a page in half an hour.

Something moves in the darkness outside, blotting out the light. A rustling sound. Then silence.

The taller figure stands with a nod, his hand trailing away from the other as he slips away. The second one sets her book down and reaches under the table.

Moments later, a steel toed boot kicks the door open.  It rebounds with the force of the blow, cracking the frame, tearing the doorstop from the wall. The intruder snakes an arm inside, rapping on the wall with a clenched fist.

"Knock knock." Comes a low, poised voice. Neith steps into the foyer, a glowing smile flashing sharpened teeth spreading across her face. Her eyes tighten to slits as she scans the room.  "You have company."

"You must be Neith."

Sarah Morgan advances down the hallway, brandishing a cast-iron frying pan, a price tag still dangling from the handle. She stops a step or two away from a thick line of salt, blocking half the hallway to the kitchen.

"I've heard so much about you."
Sarah's voice is calm and even.

Behind her glasses, her eyes are furious.

"Oh, have you? I imagine your child had quite a tale to tell."  Neith responds, taking a deliberate step closer to Sarah. She clicks her tongue, her gaze flicking from line of salt to line of salt.   As she nears the barrier between the two of them, she licks the tip of her finger and reaches out to tap it. The air crackles, snapping with unseen energies.

Neith retracts her hand, shaking it and laughing.  She digs into her jacket pocket and plucks out a fresh orb of turquoise rock candy, idly tossing it up and down in her palm.  "Seems you've had some time to prepare." She says, eyeing the line of salt with disdain. "Such decadent hospitality.  You really shouldn’t have."

"Please, after all the kindness you’ve extended to our family it was the least we could do." Mrs. Morgan glowers, tightening her grip on the cast iron skillet. "Do you have anything to say for yourself before I break in the new cookware?"

Neith takes a step back, holding her hands up in surrender.   A chuckle on her lips.

"Mum, we're not looking for a fight. We're just looking for a poor, lost and confused little moth. We know she's been here… I'd recognize that delicious vanilla scent anywhere. Just tell us where she is and we’ll be on about our business."

"My son isn't interested in visitors right now.” Sarah snaps.

There's a furtive movement in the hallway behind Neith. Mr. Morgan, slipping out from a door to a side room, an uncapped salt shaker in his hand. Sarah gives a thin, vicious smile.

"... though if you’d like to wait, I’d be happy to show him what we do with monsters."

"Sticks and stones, love.  Better to be the monster…"  Neith’s stance shifts.
Her eyes dart to Mr Morgan, catching him in her periphery.  Her pupils dilate.  Her fangs extend

“...than a mouse."

“Daniel!" Sarah screams, swinging the pan with both hands at Neith's head. Neith snaps backwards, her head blurring as the pan narrowly misses her skull. It slams into the wall, leaving spiderweb of cracked plaster.

Neith falls backwards into a roll. Daniel breaks into a sprint, salt pouring from the shaker into a jagged, half-formed line across the doorway.

Neith’s eyes widen as she realizes what he’s doing.

"NO!"

She snarls as she springs back up to her feet, launching herself towards Daniel.  He completes the line just as Neith’s lunge carries her into the salt barrier, and she slams into it, careening to the side. Her arm loops around Daniel’s leg, and as she falls, she yanks him down with her. He lands on the salt barrier with a sickening thud, scattering the crystals as he tries to pull free.

"Bloody-” Neith growls as she scrambles to escape out the door. A hand clamps onto the back of her jacket.   Daniel wheezes, nearly overbalancing Neith as he yanks himself upright, the two of them staggering back to their feet in an awkward grapple. Snatching at his shirt pocket, Daniel grabs a fistful of crushed flowers and shoves the St. John's Wort down the back of her shirt.

“Aaagh!”

Neith tears free, scrabbling at her back, flower petals dropping away as she tries to claw them out of her clothes. She runs sidelong into the coffee table, sending a heap of books and a folder of Mr. Morgan’s sketches tumbling across the floor. With a hiss of rage, she spins around again, grabbing Daniel by the throat and slamming him back to the floor.

"Right improper lot, you are."

"Hrk - !"  Daniel  gasps, shoving at her face with one hand, clutching desperately behind him for a weapon. His hand closes on a length of wood - the discarded rowan branch.

Neith’s eyes cloud.

"Hrrrrgh..."   She squints her eyes closed, letting go with one of her hands to wipe at her face.   "What is... rowan, is it?"

Her other hand pushes down harder. Daniel gurgles, his face starting to turn purple, swiping at her with the branch. Neith sneers in satisfaction at the noise, ignoring the blows.

"Hiding from unfriendly eyes doesn’t do much good if I already have your throat, tartlet -“

Sarah looms up behind her, already swinging. The pan cracks into the side of Neith's head with all the strength she can put into the blow. She flies sideways, crashing into one of the other salt barriers, her eyes wide and unseeing before she even hits the floor.

-------

She can sense things happening.

Sense them, but not make sense of them. Her head is splitting.

Neith’s hand moves, trying and failing to break a little piece of candy out of her pocket. She just needs a taste. Just a little one.  She needs a hit.

She just needs it.


But try as she might, she can’t.

Something resolves at the edge of her vision. A strange figure, just the barest flash of a man. Someone staring down at her with indifference...no, not indifference.   Not something so neutral.

Disdain.
Like her very existence is wasting his time.

Neith’s eyes widen, the heavy oversweet smell of molasses hanging in her nostrils.   Rows and rows of jars.  Heavy iron piping.  Pine boards pressing into her skull.   Her heart slams in her chest as she struggles to move, to speak, to do anything.

Then the figure blurs.   Squinting up at the figure he shifts, splits into two.   The pine boards and iron piping vanish.   The oversweet smell of molasses evaporating.

…replaced by the cold, bitter tang of iron.

She's lying on the Morgan’s kitchen floor in a tight circle of salt. Someone's wrapped a bike chain around her legs - not quite touching the exposed skin of her shins, but close. Another one around her forearms, just a hair’s breadth away from her wrists.

A thick line of tape is wrapped around her head and over her mouth.

"She's awake." Daniel rasps, rubbing at his bruised throat. He sits heavily down in one of the kitchen chairs, the rowan branch close to hand. Sarah remains standing, clutching the iron skillet in her right hand and glowering down at her.

She steps a little closer, glaring down at Neith. Her husband sits up in alarm.
"Sarah, c-careful - "

"We've been careful." She says, not taking her eyes off Neith. "We've been very careful, and it hasn't worked. Lloyd was quite clear on that.”

“Perhaps we shouldn't be the ones living in fear.”
She crouches down, staring over the salt.

“Do you know how much iron the world uses, Neith?   All the little surprising ways it touches our lives?  Because we do.  We made lists and lists of all the things Lloyd couldn't touch, all the things he couldn’t do or participate in or feel safe around. All the things we had to protect him from.”

Sarah jabs Neith in the arm with the pan.  Her flesh sizzles and she jerks away.

“We spent our whole lives trying to keep him from being hurt because of your world.  Because of what you did to him."

Neith's eyes dart between the two of them. Sarah rests her arms on her knees, leaning closer.

"Why couldn't you let just let us live?"

Neith pulls jerkily at the chains. One of the links slips, making contact with her leg. It hisses painfully, and Neith recoils sideways, cracking into the invisible wall of the salt and bouncing back onto her side.

Pained, furious tears well up in her eyes as she freezes, watching the both of them like a cornered animal, wild and vicious.

Daniel blows out a long breath, watching Neith warily.
"What do we do now? Make a wish?”

Sarah snaps her head around, turning her glare on him.
"Daniel, I don’t think this is the time - "

"Seems about as reasonable as anything else, doesn't it?" Daniel shrugs, his voice growing a little hoarser. "I can think of a few that'd solve this whole thing for all of us."

"So can I." Sarah's eyes glint back on Neith, something much darker glitters behind them. Neith shrinks back.

"Please don't hurt her."  A soft voice rings out.

Daniel sits bolt upright, biting back a startled curse.  The woman kneeling in the foyer had arrived without any fanfare. No breaking furniture, no announcing her presence. Flecks of black run through her long golden hair, running up from the ends in strands and streaks. A faint miasma hangs around the darker patches. An odor of decaying leaves.

She touches her chest and looks up at Sarah, her eyes red-rimmed and dull.

"We... only came to talk. Truly. My guide... Neith she... thought it would be simplest if I gave her time to speak with you first. I apologize if she gave you the wrong impression."

Daniel holds up a hand, jumping out of his seat.
"Sarah, don't - "
"You!"  Sarah shouts. She snatches up the pan and throws it as hard as she can at Astraea.

Astraea’s arm blurs through the air, and the wooden floorboards splinter and surge, growing with the motion like a living entity. The pan bounces off of them, clattering along the floor to lodge harmlessly under the sofa.

As Astraea lowers her hand again, the living floorboards rot and decay into ash, and another strand of her hair goes black. Sarah recoils, scrabbling for a kitchen drawer behind her.

"You're... upset."  Astraea says, her face crinkling in confusion. Like the possibility hadn't really registered with her. Daniel nods, his hand hovering over the rowan branch.

"We're very upset. You hurt our son." He says, carefully. "Do you understand? And this... "
Daniel waves a hand at the splintered floor and cracked door frame.  " - this isn't how you talk to people."

"I... don't understand.” Astraea says, her voice crackling like dead leaves. “I apologized for her manner. I explained our intention. Is there some courtesy I’ve missed?"

In the corner of the kitchen, Neith yelps through the tape, struggling. A brief flash of sparks illuminates her face as she bounces back and forth in the circle. Astraea’s eyes narrow.

"I’m not very experienced with humans, but I know enough to say this is unacceptable hospitality. Release Neith. We aren't here to fight. We just need to talk. I believe our desires are similar."

"Wrong." Sarah snaps, slamming the kitchen drawer closed. She's holding a knife, ceramic, but still very, very sharp.

Daniel stays where he is, tense, his hand trembling slightly.
"We didn't ask you in here. Your guide kicked down our door and threatened us. That's more of a home invasion than an invitation, so don’t pretend you’re welcome in our home."

Astraea’s hand tenses. A thin halo of rot spreads out around her, creeping by fingerlengths through the floorboards. She closes her eyes, breathing out a sigh of frustration, and the rot halts.

For the moment.

"Lyra took your son, right? She took Lloyd from you. My only business is with Lyra. I offered to separate them and she... he... refused. I don’t understand why, but he did. All I need to do is speak with him. I promise. She may be in danger."

Daniel's expression clouds.

"You're leaving out a little, aren't you? If you wanted to talk to him, maybe you could have done that before you tried to... to turn him into your old girlfriend. Lloyd doesn't want to speak with you. Even you should be able to see why."

"As for danger..." Sarah interjects, pointing the knife at Neith. Neith’s expression twists into a silent snarl.  "It looks like we have that handled, don't we?"

Astraea's eyes flash black, and she lets out an angry puff of breath. The circle of rot spreads with the exhalation, drying to brittle charcoal in its wake.  "You’re the ones who don’t understand. "  She snaps. "Neith and I... we were misguided in our approach, but we were not trying to hurt Lloyd."

"Lyra was my..."   Astraea looks down, her voice growing smaller.  The black orbs swallowing her eyes recede, swallowed by kindling light. "We were...we had a deeper bond than you can understand.   She was more than family, she was…”  but her voice trails off, as if saying the words out loud would disturb something sacred.

"... and then she just disappeared, without explanation.”  She says, looking up and coming back to herself.  “And since that time, everything I've been able to find suggests she was running from something. Something she didn’t think I could protect her from.  Can you... imagine how that feels?"   She iterates, every syllable difficult.  Controlled. "Would you have done different?"

"I think we can imagine what that feels like, yes." Sarah growls. Daniel nods, his face set in a grim frown.

"We met her.”  Daniel interjects.   The two women look to him and he continues.   “It’s true she did seem… upset.”   He stops, his eyes flicking warily to the blackening floor around Astraea.   “Do you think it might have been because she thought you’d do something like…”

He gestures around the broken room.
"...this?  To her?”

"Hgmph!" Neith snarls angrily, struggling up onto her knees. Astraea stares long and hard at the two of them, swaying on her feet like a willow in the wind.

"You think she was running from me." She whispers, her eyes clouding. Her hair grows lighter, then darker, angry streaks of light shimmering through it.

Astraea shudders. "Since you've clearly made up your minds… I won't try to convince you. But... what if you’re wrong? What if the monster she was running so desperately from wasn’t me… but someone else?  Something worse.”   She says, her eyes growing dark.   
“What will you do then?  How will you protect her… protect him.”

"If it really is something else…” Sarah starts, putting the words together.   “Then we'll deal with whatever that is just like we’ve dealt with your ‘guide’ here.”  She says, kicking Neith lightly in the side for emphasis.   “We've had a day to work out how to stop you. It wasn't that difficult. Imagine what L - "

She stops, her face knitting in confusion.

"...what L -
L -
why can't I say L - "

A flash of panic crosses Daniel’s face.
"Are you trying to say L - "

He whirls on Astraea, snatching up the rowan branch.
"What did you do?"

Astraea's eyes go wide. She darts a look at Neith, who gives a quick nod of affirmation.

"She sold her name."   Astraea says in a hoarse whisper. "The only place that kind of deal is acceptable is..."

She surges upright, moving with panicked energy. The floorboards of the kitchen splinter and break, sprouting wild tangles of leaf and limb and branch. A small grove of twisted trees splits the kitchen, separating Neith from the Morgans.  Sarah and Daniel stagger backward, holding onto each other to keep from falling.

Astraea holds out her hand, her fingers glowing brighter and brighter until they’re painful to look at. A blast of white-hot light sears through the floor around the circle of salt. Boards crack and crumble, and the crystals slide away.  Neith’s bonds burst, falling in broken fragments to the floor.

The burst of light fades, and Astraea staggers sideways. Her skin and hair wither to ashen grey. Neith lurches to her feet and runs to her side, grabbing her to hold her steady.

"I won’t harm you..."  Astraea whispers, sweat beading on her forehead.  "... for L..."

She winces.

"For L's sake. But I will find him, and I will find out what's happened. Whether or not it pleases you, so long as Lyra is bonded to your child, I will keep him safe.”

"Stay away from him!" Sarah yells, brandishing the knife. She pushes away from her husband as he tries to pull her back, striking frantically at the tree branches. The blade chips and splinters as it knocks chunks out of the bark.

"As if you can stop us."  Neith sneers, still supporting Astraea. Her leg wobbles, still weak from the touch of iron, and she hisses in annoyance. Neith slides the turquoise orb out of her pocket once again, looking longingly into the cloudy depths.

"Bloody hell, I could have used this.”

She turns and casts the candy on the ground. An explosive burst of wind whirls through the room, tossing plates and picture frames, broken branches and scattered papers aside in a blinding spray.

And when it finally dies down and the Morgans are able to lift their heads again, Neith and Astraea are simply…

Gone.


continue reading ->

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Thanks for reading along!   
Be sure to check in Friday February 4th to read  the first part of
Ch11: Rose by any Name

In which Ian makes a confession!  L makes a choice.  Their worm friend continues being a right ruddy grump.