Page 122 of An Invocation of Monsters

Mary waited patiently for him to finish stuttering the sentence out over a sob.

Then she cut.

His blood gushed out, spilling a puddle across the circle. Mary gently tipped him over the cliff’s edge.

My god, what a fucking waste. Poor Kase. He hadn’t wanted this; he’d just wanted to see the Void, not be a sacrificial goat for this crazy bitch.

If I had just seen what was before me… I could have saved him.

Joseph finally slowed to a halt in front of me, his eyes looking distant and crazed through the mask of red he wore.

“Now we offer a new lamb, one pleasing to our masters,” he intoned, reaching out to me. “We offer her body, her blood, her bones, her mind, and her soul. In death, she will serve you. In death, she will open the door for us. Master, we invoke you with the sacrifice of this woman.”

Mary strode forth, her hair swinging beneath the deer skull. Her stone knife glinted with wetness.

Instead of stabbing me, she quickly stepped up behind Joseph, drawing the dagger across his neck like a striking snake.

The shock in his eyes was real. He clutched his throat, trying to contain his life’s blood, but Mary had cut too deeply.

It poured out of him, staining the stone, even as he sank to his knees.

“W-what?” he choked out. “Why?”

“I offer this man to the Other Side.” Mary’s voice seemed to echo from within the skull. “I offer his worthless blood. I offer his faithless flesh. I offer his meager bones, and his wasted mind. I offer his barren soul.”

She kicked the dying Joseph in the side, then grabbed the collar of his shirt and dragged him to the cliff, heaving him bodily over the edge.

Even from that distance, with the bonfire crackling between us, I heard her whisper, “You stupid bastard.”

I struggled harder, opening wounds on my wrists, feeling my own blood drip down my fingers and patter on the stone behind me.

The last sliver of sun lit Mary like a demon.

She turned around, and I felt her eyes searching me from within those blackened sockets.

My heart was slamming against my ribs, my lungs so constricted they were tight balls of pain lodged in my chest. From a distance, I could think clearly, but here and now… no.

I was just another animal caught in the mindless panic of a trap.

Mary tilted her head.

“And you, my lovely little monster… your blood will be the greatest offering of all. I could do no less for the one who should have been my own daughter.”

38

Elle

She stepped forward, the knife held at her side.

“Yes, I should have been your mother,” she said conversationally. She was twisting the knife in her grip, the blade flashing with each rotation. I was already anticipating the sensation of it biting into my throat. “After all, I have been through the doors countless times. Thousands, perhaps… not enough to preserve my youth, but to keep me alive for a very, very, very long time.”

I could just see the flash of her teeth beneath the skull as she grinned.

“You see, I was the first one Sophie brought through,” she confided. I froze in the midst of my struggles, unsure if I’d heard her right.

Mary… or in this case, Marie.

The pushy, greedy little shit.

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