Page 121 of An Invocation of Monsters

You are half a monster, I told myself. You can get through this. Providence didn’t bring you here to fail now.

But I didn’t see what I could possibly do to change anything. I was trussed tight, the ropes cutting into my wrists, tied to this damn beam like a pagan offering.

That struck me so hard I couldn’t breathe for a moment.

I was tied and dressed like an offering.

Surely they weren’t that crazy… but ‘surely’ hadn’t worked out for me so far in the time I’d been visiting the Lodge.

I tried to open my left eye again, only succeeding in sending pain shooting through my skull.

The switch to English took me aback.

“Now as the sun sets, spilling blood on the water, we do as it bids,” Mary screamed, prostrate before the flames. Her hands worked at her face. “With flesh and blood, we open the door! We invoke the guardian, to come forth and hear our pleas!”

When she rose, it seemed like an apparition rising from the flames. A deer skull, licked with tongues of fire, its sockets dark and the points painted red.

She rose to her feet, a stone knife gripped in one hand, wearing the skull over her face like a mask.

Oh god, no.

I had been wrong the entire time. My hatred for Joseph had blinded me.

Mary was the Hunter.

She stepped to the edge of the cliff and Willow knelt first, looking beatific. The last sliver of sun on the horizon made her hair glow like beaten gold.

“My life for the Void,” Willow intoned. She was smiling, her hands held out palms-up like she was being blessed. “I offer my blood to invoke the guardian.”

“I accept,” the Hunter intoned.

Mary dragged the knife across her throat.

Willow choked, sputtered, spewed crimson. It sheeted down her front, painting her dress the color of her body.

She never stopped smiling.

Mary gently touched her shoulder, and Willow went over the edge of the cliff.

I could almost imagine I heard the splash as her body hit the water.

Kase knelt next, and I gave up on trying to be quiet.

It was impossible to make myself heard through the thick gag in my mouth, but my struggles couldn’t have gone unnoticed. Joseph continued dancing, his eyes flashing across my ruined face as he passed.

He couldn’t block out the sight of Mary cutting Kase’s throat next.

And, unlike Willow, Kase did not look sainted and beatific at the thought of dying.

He looked terrified, his face white as milk, tears running down his cheeks. God, there was cherry cobbler still smeared on his mouth.

I recalled what he’d said in the orchard: for the last… something.

Jesus. He’d meant for our last meals.

He stumbled over the words, each one striking me in the heart.

“M-m-my life for the V-Void. I offer my b-b-blood to invoke the g-guardian.” He almost couldn’t get through the sentence.

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