Chapter Twenty
“It’s all about the Rez. Not only does it separate us from hollows, but us from each other. Control your reservoir and the autonomy it provides, or forever become a puppet to one that’s larger than your own.”
–Hades, “Some Philosophical Shit”. 4 Years After.
* * *
How long had they kept her down here?
One day? Two? More? It was hard to say. After Santiago called his goons, Leah had been stuck in this cell, crucified against a cross on the wall with nails bolted through her limbs. There were no windows to catch daylight, nor sounds that leaked in from the outside world, though she could hear the crying and screams from others who’d been locked down here with her. It wasn’t long before she realized just how widespread this coup had gone. She could make out the voices of Luciá and a few more of her people from the convoy as they begged for help.
But none would come. Leah was the help.
Dwayne, Charon, and the rest of the Hunters were thousands of miles away. The Council would eventually send a crew if Leah never returned, and it’d be hard to sweep an entire convoy disappearing under the rug, but that Santiago was willing to go this far proved how little he’d thought this through.
No, it was worse than that. Abraham was pulling the strings. El Dorado and its people were just his puppets. Somehow, some way, he had turned them into his own. His fingers hadn’t just wormed their way inside Pandemonium’s walls.
They had spread all the way down here.
The door creaked open, with firelight spilling in. Leah closed her eyes to keep from being blinded. After so long in pure darkness, the rapid stimulation was disorienting.
Fingers wrenched an eyelid open though, and her brain short-circuited as it tried to process so much light.
“Still holding strong?” Santiago asked after a moment.
She grunted. “Remove the nails and see what happens, asshole.”
“Such foul language. Don’t you see that it is Satan who drives your hatred?”
“Pretty sure your name is ‘Santiago’.”
“I am Hermano Santiago now,” he corrected.
“Just like your friend, Mateo?”
“We are all Brothers and Sisters under God, sí.”
“If that’s the case, you’ll have no fucking problem getting me out of these restraints.”
“Not until you have been baptized in the light of our Lord.”
Leah grit her teeth. “Whatever you think you’re trying to do here, don’t. In spite of everything, I’m still open to letting you live. Just tell me what Abraham did to get you to flip, and we can have a conversation about how to undo the damage that’s been done. No one else has to die.”
He tsked. “You are thinking about this all wrong, señora Leah. The Hermanos have done nothing but give me the tools to save myself. I am now able to behold the Lord’s power like the rest of my family, and that is all that is needed. I will give you this same gift.”
The light of the torch crackled, and Leah blinked through it. Now that it had been in her face so long, she could see clearly again. Not just the cell, or Santiago’s token white mustache, but his eyes, along with that frenzy he’d adopted.
Exactly like Brother Uriel, Father Abraham, and every other Beholder she’d seen.
“You’re saying that I’ll become like you?” she asked.
“Only if you open your heart to God.”
“Then fuck off. I’m not about to become some mindless pawn.”
He recoiled an inch. “You will understand soon. You may be the Whore of Babylon, but you can still be saved.”
She groaned. “Enough with all the Whore shit, seriously… It doesn’t even make sense. We’re all incapable of sex, remember? Like, even if you count Lust, I haven’t touched the stuff in years.”
He shrugged. “Be that as it may, you will see His light as I have, just as God has commanded.”
Santiago spoke some words in Spanish, and more Beholders entered. Mateo towered behind, his stern face still defiant as always from inside his brown Friar cloak.
One by one, the nails were wrenched from her limbs, only to be replaced by a firm hand holding them in place. Not giving me an inch, huh? Unarmed and with bones still healing, most would write Leah off as harmless, but these guys weren’t messing around. As much as she wanted an opening, it was looking like they weren’t about to give her one.
With her crucifixion undone, the Beholders began to strip her down. First her sheepskin jacket and jeans, then the underwear and T-shirt beneath, and finally, her scarf. She hissed as Mateo snatched it from her face, but there was nothing more to be done. Not for the time being, anyway.
She flicked the hair from her face and met his fearless gaze with a fire of her own. “Don’t know how much of this you can understand, Hermano Mateo, but so fucking help me… I am going to take extreme pleasure when I carve your eyes from their sockets.” She gleamed, knowing just how horrifying she looked without her scarf.
He struck her. Leah spat out a glob of blood.
The troupe pulled her from the cell as her limp legs dragged against the stone floor. The light from the torch radiated out, and Leah caught sight of the rest of her people. Guards from the convoy, merchants who’d accompanied her on this trip, and even a couple of the fresh Spanish-speaking rezzers who came to El Dorado over the promise of a society where communication for them would be easier.
Then she saw Luciá. Her silken brown hair had gone wiry and unkempt, and her red eyes were dulling in the fading light. She watched in horror as Leah was lugged by, black ichor dripping down her naked form.
That hurt more than anything else. Seeing the failure in action. Knowing just how much others would suffer because she hadn’t seen this coming. Luciá trusted her, but Leah let her down.
It isn’t over yet. Leah cleared her throat and held her head high.
“Listen up, citizens of Pandemonium!” she screamed. “Don’t you dare let these fuckers break you!” one of the Beholders grabbed for her mouth, but she bit a finger off before he could get a good grip. “Here me now, everyone! I am Lady Leah, the Head fucking Huntress, and I am going to burn this whole parish down! So keep your head in the game until that happens. That’s a fucking order!”
Then Mateo grabbed her throat and squeezed. She gasped as her larynx crunched under his weight.
But it worked. Reddish tears rolled down Luciá’s cheeks, but she was smiling.
Hope had been restored. At least for now.
That much would have to do until Leah came up with a plan.
* * *
It took well over an hour before Santiago and a squad of his black-cloaked Inquisitor friends managed to bring Leah to their destination. Well outside El Dorado, down the hills, and into a grove. The sun was high above, casting long shadows through the emerald trees before landing on a pool of water, still and clear like a sheet of glass.
There was no denying the beauty of this place, but as Leah caught her reflection in the pond, she blinked through tears in her eyes. Her body was naked, and with the damage she’d sustained, her normally pale skin had grown blackened and bloated where the broken bones still healed. Peeled skin also formed without the daily additive of preservatives she’d gotten so used to.
And her Mark was out for all to see. During her own hollowing, Leah’s cheeks had been reduced to shredded meat down to the muscle, and her lips were missing entirely. Hideously twisted teeth bent out from her blackened gums where they’d been exposed from the injury, with ooze mixed with mucus that clung to the edges. It had been so long since she’d seen this in the open.
No longer was Leah the queen of the world. She was just another walking corpse. Thin, rotting, and so fucking weak. She closed her eyes to avoid the sight.
Santiago laid a hand on her shoulder. “It is okay, Leah. It is going to be okay. This is your true self, perverted by Sin.”
“Fuck off!” she squeaked, her larynx still raw.
“Let go of this hate. It will be easier if you do not fight His love.”
Leaves rustled behind, and Leah realized that there were plenty more than just them. An entire crowd had formed of Beholders, these ones clothed in white. There had to be thirty of them… No, fourty. All watching Leah standing there naked with the same glee in their eyes. The same zeal.
Santiago stroked her hair, his passion burning strong. “I brought many English-speaking friends to help with your baptism.”
All in unison, the crowd drew books. She recognized the binding at once. TheHoly Word. That same book that she’d allowed to be circulated back home. That same fucking book.
Like robots, the Beholders flipped through the pages before landing in the same spot.
Santiago drew an invisible cross in front of Leah. “We ask you, Father, with your Son, to send thy Holy Spirit upon the water of this font. May all who are buried with thy Lord in the death of baptism rise also with him to the newness of life. We ask this through the power of our Lord.”
“Amen!” the Beholders roared.
“My dear Brothers and Sisters, let us ask our Lord to look lovingly on this child…” Santiago continued.
He droned on from there, with the mob responding when prompted, but Leah wasn’t listening. She watched the pool in front. The water seemed to have changed with so many bodies casting shadows, darkened like an endless pit forming to swallow her whole.
Santiago breathed deep, his fanaticism rising. “Leah, I hereby baptize you in the name of the Lord.”
They plunged her into the water.
For a moment, there was nothing but the dark, cold water. Leah twisted her head this way and that, expecting something else to come from the blackness of the pool, but the water was shallow, and the surface was barely a foot away.
Then a sound began to grow. A soft hum penetrated the stillness, created by many tones at once. Little by little, the sound grew in volume, and Leah watched as exposed legs paddled through the water besides, pure and clean, without the slightest signs of rot. The Beholders had her surrounded, their voices seeping through the water above.
Then the hum turned to words as they all spoke at once. “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sittethin the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doth he meditate day and night.” A pause. “Amen!”
Leah tried to peer around, but there was nothing but a wall of shadows everywhere she looked.
“And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,” they continued, still in unison, “that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither, even under Sin; and whatever he doeth shallprosper.” Another pause. “Amen!”
On and on, they uttered their cultist gibberish as Leah lay in place, interjected every so often with a sharpened “Amen!” The water grew calm again as they all remained in place.
Stay strong. You can get through this. Just a couple more minutes, and she’d be out. Leah could even play dumb to make the Beholders think they’d won. That was all that mattered. Making them think that they’d gotten her onto their side.
Then she’d kill them all. Every last one.
“But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful for thee. For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield from Sin… Amen!”
How much longer was this baptism going to take? This couldn’t last forever. HBRS-15.21 was a beast of an engine when it came to immortalizing the human body, but there were certain limitations to keeping the mind intact. Unlike hollows, rezzer brain cells would degrade after too much time without oxygen. Then rehollowing that otherwise occurred over weeks would accelerate to mere hours as the neurons quickly burnt out.
“O Lord my God, in thee do I put my I trust: save me from all that persecute me, and deliver me: Lest he tear my flesh and soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver… Amen!”
Then the dark truth became apparent. That was the point. The longer this process wore on, the more Leah would hollow, and the more weakened her reservoir would become. A drained Rez is a pliable one, she realized. It could be filled with anything!
Including their ideology…
Leah wriggled in protest, but her body was locked in place. There were too fucking many of them!
“Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble before you… Amen!”
Why didn’t Leah take a breath before this? She could’ve bought herself another thirty minutes. Maybe more. But she didn’t know. How could she!?
She gasped without thought, only for water to flood into her throat. A cough came next, dissipating into the uncaring pond besides. Again, she looked for an escape, but there was none to be had. The weight of the mob was so much fucking stronger and they were forcing her down together!
Their voices rose in intensity, saturating the world around her. Each “Amen!” cut like a knife, right through her soul.
“…I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: So shall I be saved from mine enemies… Amen!”
Leah shook her head. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! But the Beholders continued without mercy, their words bleeding into her mind. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t see straight. The more she struggled, the more perverted the world became. The shadows shifted around, broken only by beams of light tearing in from an unstable surface above.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any sinful way in me, and lead me back in the way everlasting… Amen!”
Something else was out there too, hidden inside their prayers. An energy. A power. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it now. Some kind of force that was stronger than she could ever hope to be.
It was the Lord. Calling to her. Holding out an invisible hand. She was so weak and vulnerable, but He would be there to save her. So long as she listened. So long as His words took hold.
No! Fight it. Don’t let Him take you. Another sound had entered her world, a shrill bleating, distorted in the water. Leah was sobbing… No, crying. Crying and drowning. Both at once.
But even that wasn’t enough to keep Him out. The Lord’s voice rose above her pitiful suffering, pressing ever deeper into her soul. It was so much greater than her. So much more powerful!
Leah wanted to go home. Back to the Lodge. With her friends alive again. Masterman and Karl and Butters. Except that wasn’t right. Their names were different, and they had faces too. But only grey shadows formed when she thought about them. Where did they go? Why wouldn’t they come back?
“Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. My heart panteth anew, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes,it also is gone from me… Amen!”
She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t win. She was too small, and the Lord was too big. His power was greater than anything else, and she was on her own against Him.
“Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with oil of gladness above thy fellows. All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia…”
An image of a flower suddenly formed inside her mind, but not of aloes or cassia. She saw something else, with lilac petals that curled out from a tube-like stem.
A bellflower.
She blinked. The pond vanished, replaced by a sea of jagged, lichen-covered peaks. The sky roared with fury, spewing forth hail below. With each “Amen!” another bolt of lightning struck the ground.
She looked to her hand, but the bellflower had disappeared.
Do you know why I won’t stop? Her own voice echoed. Why I can’t? Because if I do, I’ll lose everything else that makes me be me. And I don’t want the Hollowing to take me too!
We won’t let that happen, another said, his voice high and nasally. A figure towered above. Through the rain and the wind, she could not make out his face clearly, but his eyes were looking into hers. Brown eyes. Human eyes.
Liam, she realized. He’d come back for her in this chaotic, dark place.
If you lose any more precious memories, he said, we’ll just have to make new ones. He smiled. Better ones.
His hand wrapped around hers. Where her flesh was cold and decayed, his felt warm and soft. She squeezed tight, but his arm moved like clay, slowly melding into something else. Lilac petals sprung from where his fingers used to be, and the arms turned again into the stem. Her bellflower returned to her.
Liam smiled above. We’ll get through this. Together.
That was right. It didn’t matter what she lost. Only what she hoped to gain. The two had learned this lesson on their journey across the country together. She’d forgotten until this moment.
Leah blinked again. She was back underwater, with the Beholders chanting above. But the bellflower was still there. Right in her mind’s eye, its purple purity a beauty to behold.
No, the Lord couldn’t have that. This was between Leah and Liam. They earned it together. They’d fought for it. Who cared how insignificant and replaceable their time became in the grand scheme of the cosmos? It was still theirs.
Nothing else mattered. Pandemonium. The Lodge. A mountain of books. Those were just things. Leah didn’t need them. Whatever memories lost could be replaced like anything else. All she needed was that ephemeral sense of life.
All she needed was her dear, old friend.
“Amen!” the Beholders bellowed. “Amen! Amen! Amen!”
Each shout stripped another part of her away, but they couldn’t penetrate her core. Leah fixated on the only part of her that kept her sane.
“Amen! Amen! Amen!”
Her bellflower sat in front.
“Amen! Amen!”
Still strong.
“Amen!”
Still pure.
“Amen!”
Still hers.
“Amen!”
Suddenly, Leah was yanked back up. Light flooded her retinas. She gasped. Vomit came after, the water clearing out from her lungs. No longer did anyone support her. She gripped the ground feebly as her stomach emptied out of fluid.
What the hell happened? The sun wasn’t high above anymore, but inched low on the horizon.
She looked around. There were so many people in white cloaks. Watching her with smiles on their faces. They were so inviting and peaceful.
An older rezzer stared her in the eyes, with wrinkled skin and a thick, white mustache.
“Sister Leah,” he said. “Blessed be the Lord.”
“Praise be His name!” she shouted.
Leah threw her palm over her mouth. No! The words had slipped out without choice, as if something else had hijacked her Rez the second he mentioned the Lord.
Leah caught her reflection in the pool again. Her irises weren’t the vibrant magenta she’d always seen, but diluted under a pale sheet.
Leah bit her tongue. “Fuck y-y-you!”
Santiago sighed. “So this baptism was not a full success… Very well, we have no choice but to feed your body back to strength, and then we will begin again tomorrow.”
Again!? No, they couldn’t!
Leah floundered for an escape, but the Beholders closed in before she could get away, once again using the weight of their numbers to force her into the ground. She kicked and punched, but they had her beaten.
Leah couldn’t go through that. Not again!
She closed her eyes and shrieked.
* * *
Dusk fell as the Beholders escorted her back up the hill. Their party was down to eight Inquisitors now, half equipped with crossbows, while the rest brandished staffs. Not that it mattered. They needed no more than one to keep Leah still. She’d lost the strength to resist. Her arms were tied behind her back and her head knelt low, and all she could do was watch the ground in front.
And then we will begin again tomorrow, Santiago had said. Again. Again. Again. The words echoed over and over.
Winning this battle wasn’t enough. They were going to force her to go through that horror another time. And another. And another.
That was the strength of the Lord. He could engage in this fight endlessly while Leah’s soul would slowly wear out over time. Not even her mental fortress could survive that forever. Already, she wondered if her bellflower would be there a second time.
Sounds rolled down the hill. Music. The Beholders paused and muttered to themselves. One whispered a command in their native tongue, and the others moved in front, their staffs and crossbows drawn.
Is that a guitar? The closer they drew, the more apparent it became. Someone else was out here, playing a song.
The group turned the bend, where a lone figure sat on the side of the path. He calmly strummed his instrument, using a boombox as a chair while tapping his foot to the song’s rhythm. The last light of day reflected off the golden trim of his velour jacket, and a black top hat sat above. One of the Beholders called out, but he did not turn their way. He merely plucked at his guitar, his fingers growing in speed and intensity as he swayed his body back and forth.
Leah’s memory was still fractured from the baptism, but there was something iconic about this moment. Yes, she’d heard this style before. Spanish flamenco music. Only digital records could be played these days. To move fingers at that speed and precision was impossible for a rezzer. Not unless they trained for months to strengthen their muscle memory. Even then, one could only move that fast for short, controlled bursts.
And yet, here this guy was, rocking his guitar in the middle of the woods without a care in the world, his pace accelerating to an unfathomable crescendo. He didn’t even miss a beat when he let the song continue, raising the speaker’s volume while placing his guitar to the side.
The thought came back into focus. Only one man left in the world with this level of dexterity. His name had been born after perfecting such a feat. Leah del Sur, the people of El Dorado liked to call him. A Hunter with the grace of a flamingo.
Flamingo spun around, his skull-shaped mask locked in that perpetual grin. A rapier appeared from the nothingness of his velour jacket, with a guard cast in gold. He pointed the blade forth and bowed.
The Inquisitors charged, but Flamingo danced to the side, delivering a thrust that pierced through the closest one’s mouth. Before his friend could recover from the miss, Flamingo glided behind, using his enemy’s ear as the rapier’s next entry point. The Beholder gasped and fell.
The crossbowmen launched a volley, but Flamingo was already on the retreat, weaving from side to side as he dodged their shots. His feet moved to the beat of the flamenco music that still played in the background.
Leah remembered herself. This opening couldn’t be allowed to pass. She wrenched her body free and ran. Her arms were still tied behind her back, but she knew how to fix that. She slammed her shoulder into the nearest tree, just at the right angle. A pop rang out as her arm dislocated from its socket. She bounded into another tree, repeating the maneuver. With her limbs no longer constrained, she curled into a ball and rolled. The weight of her body jerked her loosened arms to the front of her chest. By the time her captors realized what had happened, she’d already forced her shoulders back into their sockets.
Flamingo had downed another pair, and the surviving four abandoned their ranged weapons and went to melee. Two of them came her way.
My turn. Leah took a deep breath to clear her mind. Now, more than ever, she needed to remember her own strength.
The Inquisitor raised his staff. She dashed first, catching the wood in the lip of the rope between her hands and nullifying its energy. The two locked eyes, his dumbstruck visage mere inches from her own. She beamed.
Before the advantage could be lost, she redirected the weight of the staff. The bottom half struck the gap between her enemy’s legs, sending him off-balance. As the Beholder tumbled back, Leah leapt into the air. With every ounce of strength her weakened body could muster, she slammed her heels into his skull. Grey matter mixed with bone exploded out, dousing her naked legs in ichor.
Damn, did it feel good to be back in the game.
Another blow struck her shoulder, and her bones cracked anew. Leah glared at her next enemy. The Beholder prepared for another swing as she readied for defense.
But then he froze in place, a metal spike suddenly sprouting from an eyeball. The surviving eye curled behind its lid, and the Beholder fell. Flamingo stood in his place.
Leah grunted. “I had him.”
“And other six?” he quipped.
“I’ll give y-y-you them, Flamingo. Quite the entrance t-t-too.”
He tilted his head. “Stutter? Hermanos harm you much, sí?”
“Yep.” She grimaced. “Please tell m-m-me there’s more than j-just you.”
“Sí. Some Hunters fight with me.” He held out a hand. “Come. We must go to them before more Hermanos arrive.”
“Wait. I can’t l-l-leave yet.”
He paused. “Why? What you need?”
Leah stared at the dead Beholders and remembered how much her Rez had been fucked up today. She’d need sustenance fast to mitigate the damage to her long-term memory.
“Brains…” she moaned.
Lots and lots of brains.
