Page 5 of Love, Nemesis
She did indeed have friends. No doubt he had a list of their names already.
“You leave tomorrow morning,” he whispered, shoving her once more against the wall and then turning to walk away.
The door shut behind him.
Ana stood there in the silence as Hailey left, more than one of his guards bustling about outside. Her eyes drifted back to the table where they’d been sitting.
Hailey’s mug of tea still waited there.
He hadn’t taken a single sip.
Chapter 2: Carnival
BEADS OF BLOOD shivered on Lethe’s forearm. His body quivered with convulsions of adrenaline.
Disassembled bodies paved the road, all neatly placed like offerings and coated gray in soot like cobblestones. Seventeen human torches lined gutters gorged with the fruit of violence. Lethe had helped bind, tar, and light them. Their fires had illuminated the base of the war’s most ominous and prolific symbol. The elegant stone fortress, leaning back like the columns of a throat, rested at the heart of the Strike’s empire. A deep split formed a smile across the columns, like a slit throat, earning it the name the Bleeding Grin.
Tonight, the Grin had seen its last offerings. The death of the Strike, The Eating Ocean’s prophets, had marked the end of their war.
Corpses haunted the shadows of the surrounding buildings, their pale faces lighting the darkness like white seashells along the ocean floor. The only sound was the cackling of the flames. The silence seemed hungry for any man bold enough to violate it.
It was in these moments that Lethe thought of god.
It was never about asking why. God had made the world as it was. Lethe wouldn’t petition to change it.
He thought about god because he felt like one—like a force, trapped outside of time, watching events transpire with no willto touch them, with no sentiment, bias, or humanness. There he saw the power of the being he imagined to be god.
He stretched his fingers against the husk of ash and blood that had closed him in like a casket. Lights exploded across his vision, his consciousness lifted like a balloon, and for a moment he was at a carnival in the city park, watching a red balloon float up toward the sky until it was nothing but a dot.
His head spun like the bright, fall carnival rides. He blinked and he was on them, girlfriend by his side, spare tickets clasped in one hand, the other clasped around hers. She was laughing.
Then he was back on that road, buried among the bodies, a secret in the dark.
He relaxed into his dizziness and watched the horizon tilt beyond his hand. Lightning broke a sky that boiled with shades of rotten wine.
Thunder boomed like a moan of anguish or perhaps a burst of laughter. He couldn’t tell.
This victory, won at all expenses, against all odds, didn’t quite feel like a victory.
They’d charged in with ideals, but the fighting had been crude. There was no cause, only corpses, and for whose purpose?
It rained. The fires hissed.
He was back at the carnival again, standing in the lights and splendor, watching two vendors roast an assortment of meatsfrom across the crowd. He remembered seeing the flames lick up the pale flesh, browning it. He remembered the smell.
The memory gave the night’s human torches some purpose.
But then, what was eating them?
His next thought sent a jolt into his chest, shocking him back from his vision again. His lungs flinched with a laugh, and he bit down hard as the motion jostled his ribs.
Maybe it was god.
The timer rang.
Lethe jolted from the memory, finding himself back in the bakery. The caramelized dressing of two bread loaves cracked and peeled in the raw heat of the oven in front of him. He saw the sugar, bubbled and browned, starting to burn.
He shook the image of skin from his head.
