Lena Graves's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

The morning after the bargain, Damien did not pour Lena a drink. He stood at the end of the bar and cleaned a glass that was already clean. "Half of nothing is nothing," he said. "You promised me souls. Show me one. Prove the split works, or the door closes to you tonight." Lena smiled her wide red smile, but her stomach went cold. Her dagger did not store souls where a man could see them. It drank them whole. She had never proven a kill to anyone in two hundred years. If she stalled, Damien would cut her off from his patrons. Without his floor, she had no hunting ground left. She needed a kill, fast, and she needed Damien to watch it feed him. The bar was nearly empty. One small figure sat alone in the corner, a boy in a white cassock, his shaved head bowed over a cup of water he had not touched. Dark bruises ringed both his wrists. Damien watched him too. "That one wandered in at dawn," he said. "Nobody came looking. Nobody will." Lena crossed the floor and sat beside the boy. She let her voice go warm. "You're a long way from any choir," she said. The boy lifted his face. His eyes were wet and dull. Then his mouth opened, and his voice dropped to a low rasp. He spoke words in no language she knew. The rings on her fingers went icy. Lena had killed drunkards and farmhands without a flicker. This was different. But Damien stood watching, and the door stood open only while she obeyed. She drew the dagger beneath the table. The runes along its blade began to glow. "Come with me," she whispered. The boy rose and followed, trusting as a lamb. She led him behind the bar, into Damien's sight. Then she slid the blade between the child's ribs. The dagger did not drink the way it always had. The boy's small body folded, but the soul that poured out came wrong, thick and black, hissing against the runes. The jewel in the hilt flared and split the light into something that hurt to look at. The blade shuddered in her hand. Half the dark smoke peeled away and sank into Damien's open palm across the room. Damien closed his fist around it. His red eyes went wide, then narrow. He staggered one step back against the shelves. The glowing bottles rattled. "What," he breathed, "did you just hand me." Lena stared at the empty cassock crumpled on the floor. Thirty-two souls now. But the thing inside the boy had not been a boy's soul at all. It coiled now in Damien, and in her blade, awake. "The split works," Lena said. Her voice shook. "You have your proof." Damien did not look grateful. He looked afraid of her, and of what sat in his hand.