Chapter Seven

The story of the world you know and the world I know separates here. Seal has reached a new place, one inhabited by things only the dead know. It happened in the most dangerous places, among monsters. But the dead are not all bad, as you will find out. Some are quite helpful, when you find the right ones. If you get scared, keep going. Being scared and keeping going is what this story is about.

Butcher Briggs ascended a broad muscular chest carved into the side of a mountain. His sharp fingernails bit into the surface, natural handholds were unnecessary for his powerful hands. He climbed between carved pectorals and past the undulating ridges that formed the neck. He reached the face of a man, jaw clenched, with outstretched arm, pointing into the void. The carved man sat atop a charging horse. It was unmistakably the statue of the Crazy Horse monument, finished, but desecrated.

Butcher reached the chin, pulling himself above the lips of the carved warrior, two sharp fangs protruded from its mouth, with an opening wide enough to crawl through, like a cockroach. There were easier ways into the Sisters' palace, but he liked climbing.

The inside of the palace, carved into the hollowed-out monument to Crazy Horse, was richly decorated and furnished. Running fountains sprayed water, dyed red, a dozen feet into the air, out of the carved faces of drowning people. Small puddles formed on dark marble around the fountains. Periodically, women dressed in basic dirty linens sopped up the water with their own clothing before disappearing down another corridor. As one servant passed, Butcher grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into a dark corner. He pushed her back against the hard stone and placed her wrist to his mouth. His teeth sank into her vein to feed. Used to the treatment, she did not scream. But she proved too soured by past use, even for his taste. Her blood had the flavor of old roadkill and ran slowly, thickly coating his tongue. He withdrew, disappointed. Fresh meat was becoming hard to find.

He walked into the largest chamber carved into Crazy Horse's head. Everyone already stood assembled. The colossal monument's eye had been blasted open, forming a huge circle. It provided a clear view of the dark gray sky and the grounds below. In the center of the eye, peering outward, stood Perdita, considered the leader of the three Sisters. Her blond hair waved in an invisible breeze. The magic she controlled allowed her to conjure simple effects over her body. She could make her skin dark or light, change her eyes to look like those of a wolf, and rumor had it she could change her shape.

Evadine, one of the two dark-haired Sisters, noticed Butcher Briggs enter the room. His hubris and lack of fear were always clear. "He's here, Perdita," she said, her words carrying a faint accent from somewhere warm and far away. Her faded blue eyes, framed by long straight hair that ended just above sharp shoulder blades, regarded him coldly.

The blonde Sister turned towards him, her eyes now stark white, showing black pupils that pulsed like a heartbeat.

"You are late, Butcher, I assume you have a good reason," she said.

"I was busy tracking the seven renegades," he replied. "I almost had them, but your little messenger alerted them and ruined my hunt." He pulled an object from his pocket and dropped a bird at his feet; the messenger the Three sent to him. The bird appeared to be made more of shadow than feathers, scrunched up and thoroughly broken. Butcher never kowtowed to the Three like the others. Combined, they could have hurt him, but he was valuable, and dangerous enough that he might take one with him so they wouldn't take the risk. "I have news. The mouth has opened. A living person has entered."

"Yes, we know," the final Sister said. Unlike the others, her eyes were empty. Hollow voids sat above her cheeks like tunnels a rat burrowed into the ground.

"Merrivale," Butcher bowed and addressed her. She heard the hardened leather he wore brush against his skin with the movement. She had been the prettiest of the three before she lost her eyes. Butcher had spent time with her. Merrivale enjoyed his underlying cruelty. She appeared to be the softest of the three, but he knew better from experience.

Merrivale, led by a servant, received whispers in her ear to describe what she could not discern with her other senses. "We have our own messengers," she said. The blind Sister pointed towards the wall. A boy, barely fourteen, hung suspended above knee height. His muscles strained under the weight of heavy chains holding him high on the wall. Stains darkened the floor from the previous victim of the Sisters' rituals. Small carved grooves spread below him under his feet, forming a concentric pattern. They were designed to catch blood, channeling it into an urn placed into a hole at the center.

"Release his left arm," Perdita called. Another servant, clearly soured, his veins showed black through pallid skin, cranked a handle counterclockwise. The boy's arm fell to his side. He had lost all sensation and could not lift it.

Perdita approached a dais. A dark metallic ball, the size of an orange, sat in a cradle made of cottonwood branches. Sharp spikes protruded from it. She picked it up using her long fingers to avoid the spikes. She held it outstretched before her and strode towards the boy. Her black pupils, mere pinpricks.

"Please don't hurt me," the boy whimpered hoarsely, "I can tell you how the Seven hide from you."

"We are not worried about your rebels," Evadine said. She spoke with a soft, barely noticeable, Greek accent. "We have better uses for you than telling us the location of our escaped slaves."

Perdita placed the spiked ball into his freed hand. He had no strength to hold on to it, but it did not fall from his open fingers. The spikes pulled themselves deeply into his palm and drew his blood. Small drops fell at his feet, into the channels below, but the ball also drank in his blood on its own.

Perdita ran through the ritual like hundreds of times before. But none had ever been as important. "Listen to me, boy, you are of pure spirit. Tell the truth, you are untouched?"

"Yes," he answered. "I have never been fed upon." The boy spoke without emotion, robbed of his will by the vampiric ball. The Sisters kept him, and other Lakota, locked in a protected enclave, away from others of their kind, but that wasn't always foolproof. Paleskins, even the most loyal, were always hungry, and decent food became increasingly scarce.

"Repeat after me," Perdita commanded the boy. "Exactly… and we shall set you free."

Blood continued dripping from his left hand. His eyes drooped, but he remained conscious. He looked at her mouth as she spoke. "Zuzeca." She looked at him. He stared dumbly. "Go on," she prodded.

"Zuzeca," he said.

"I summon you in my time of need," she whispered this into his ear.

"I summon you in my time of need." He felt her cold hand press flat against his chest. Tears formed on his face from the vampiric ball's stinging spikes as the pain intensified.

"Come from hiding, snake spirit, so I may honor you." Her hand closed on the back of his neck.

"Come from hiding, snake spirit, so I may honor you." The boy's pain faded under her spell. He believed Perdita would save him.

"I sacrifice for you, great Zuzeca." She pulled back to look into his eyes. His tears turned bloody and filled the corners of each eye. Perdita smiled at the sight.

"Say it," she whispered to him, guiding his mind with her gaze.

"I sacrifice to you, great Zuzeca."

His breathing grew shallow until even the blind Merrivale no longer heard it. The vampiric ball fell from his hands and thudded to the floor and an image coalesced from it. A long object squeezed from a tiny hole, like toothpaste through the eye of a needle. It grew thick. Inky blackness formed into dark shiny scales. Two eyes appeared from the center of the mass. It became solid and long. Perdita had successfully summoned the powerful spirit of Zuzeca, the black snake of hidden things and concealed knowledge. It saw the Sisters, Butcher Briggs, and knew its betrayal immediately. It slithered towards the blasted eye of Crazy Horse, seeking escape. It knew of the Sisters, mostly by rumor.

Evadine scrambled after the snake. She reached for its tail, catching it with her sharp nails. The snake swung around, sinking black poisonous fangs into her arm, but she did not release her grip. Merrivale, led by her servant, came from behind and caught its flailing, hissing head in her hands. It tried to strike again, but they held it fast. Perdita laughed and its anger at them grew. Her white eyes met the snake's black ones directly, her pupils now shaped to mimic the snake's own. It screamed in rage at her. Perdita's face was only inches away. The snake wanted to strike, but it remained helpless.

"Welcome black Snake, to the Hunting Ground, the spirit world of your people. Where your kind go after they die. Here we are their masters and now we are your master. You know our kind. Your people call us Paleskins. There are none like us in your stories. We are of the old world and we are war, disease and ruin. You have no power over us and I command you," she taunted.

It stopped struggling. Zuzeca held the power of sight and prophecy. Some stories told a tale the snake spirit would bring about the ruin of the People. This was why the Sisters had finally chosen to summon it.

"Your White Buffalo Calf Woman imprisons us here and we wish to be free. After decades, the mouth has opened but we cannot reach the living world alone. Tell us of the one that has entered."

The snake answered. "Great and terrible, vampires. I know your kind." It did not talk like a snake in stories with silky, enticing words punctuated by elongated S's. Its guttural voice spat out each word, spite coating each.

"And the girl who entered?" the blind Sister asked. "Is she the one we have prepared for?"

"She comes to my mind only faintly," the snake said. "She is younger than this used boy here. She walked between worlds." The black snake swiped at the air with its tongue. It tried to rock its head, but Merrivale's grip held firm. "She is living," it finally said. "She has the power to open your cage and let you out."

These were the words the Sisters had hoped to hear.

"Then she is the one," Evadine said, relief and delight in her voice.

"She will summon our enemy who binds us here against our will. We can destroy her and be free," Perdita said, more for Butcher's benefit than her Sisters'. He learned only then that this land did not have to be his eternal punishment. The Sisters believed while the dead could summon lesser spirits, only someone alive could perform the ritual that would summon the one powerful enough to set them free.

"Sisters, we must bring the girl here. Our plans are working. She has started the Rites. But she must not know the power she holds until it is too late."

"Black snake, what must the girl do now?"

Zuzeca looked at each, its face indiscernible, on purpose or by nature of being a snake, one could not tell "You know the seven rituals. Their power?"

"Yes, we know the rituals, stupid snake," Perdita said. They had tortured many to gather what they believed were the Rites, supposedly sacred in the eyes of the Lakota. They had learned there were seven. The sweat lodge, a vision quest, making of relatives, keeping the soul, a dance, the catching of the ball, and the one that had brought them the girl, coming into puberty. "We know she has bled and was allowed entry. But what is next? When do we use the ball, the Spiritseeker to summon our keeper?"

"All the rites must be performed. Some happen by fate, others forced." The Sisters nodded at one another, knowing the work they had already done to make the Rites happen through the chosen girl. "But the ball is at the end. When all power is gathered. Then you can complete the Rites and summon the Buffalo Woman." The rites were forbidden to all outsiders, to Wašíču. They were sacred, known only to the Lakota but the snake knew his countless brethren had been tortured to reveal the information about the secret ceremonies. And now these three vampires hoped to twist them to their own triumph. What could Zuzeca do, now trapped, other than be himself and give the Sisters what they desired to hear.

"Then we will bind your goddess and she will do as we demand. Snake," the white-eyed Perdita said, "can you see far? Do we succeed?"

"Yes. All will succeed. She will summon the goddess for you. She will bring forth the White Buffalo Calf Woman. You will touch your enemy." Hearing the success of their plan confirmed, the Sisters let the snake go.

It had not expected the sudden release. Before it could slide away, they stamped their hard heels down on it. Its bones broke under their feet until it no longer moved. The black snake called out as they continued to smash it and they paused. "Another, though. Came. A boy," it said through broken jaws. "Alive. Separate. Lost. Chaos." And with those words, Zuzeca faded from the world.

"Snakes are not to be trusted," Butcher Briggs said.

"The snake spoke plain until the end. There are always risks, and we control the board," Perdita said. But mention of a living boy worried her. Why would the snake warn them? Butcher spoke wisely. Snakes are not to be trusted. "The boy must be removed."

"I was to go after the girl, to make sure she did what you require."

"We can handle the girl. This unknown boy must die."

"Are you asking me, or telling me," Butcher Briggs said.

"Is there a difference?" Merrivale said to him. She reached out to his cheek and brushed it with her fingers. Her skin, hard and unyielding as his own, felt like cold stone.

"Hurry then. A boy with a hidden spirit is no trifle," Perdita said. The snake said he was chaos. She assumed he was beyond its sight the same way he had entered without them knowing. "Succeed, and we shall have billions of souls to hunt again." She pointed at the urn embedded in the floor. "For your renewed strength," she offered, as payment.

Butcher Briggs grabbed the half-filled cup and drank the blood, the sweetest he had in a long time. He walked past Zuzeca and kicked at its lifeless husk, to be sure it was dead. He wondered how many spirits the Sisters had destroyed. Thousands, he mused, and it would not be the last. Not even the last today as he watched more untouched sacrifices being marched in by Paleskins. He made his way out of the blasted eye and climbed down.

The Sisters remained and discussed their plan, refining the details. It was a game, and they liked their games.

"Do we have anything else to worry about?" Evadine asked.

"The Hollow King," Perdita mused, "could he, or would he, interfere?"

"No, he is broken and wants out as much as we do," Merrivale said. "He is no threat."

They removed him from the game long ago, Merrivale delivering the final blow herself. The Hollow King's last futile act of blinding her had not saved him. She once had beautiful hazel eyes that shone in a prism of green and brown and gold. For his assault on her, she delivered him a fate worse than death.

The Sisters turned to the three new ones to be sacrificed and began another ritual.

Halfway down Crazy Horse, Butcher spotted three shadow birds leave through the blasted eye of Crazy Horse. The Sisters' summoned messengers, flew off into the gray sky. Each took a different direction. His eyes were keen, but he did not watch them for long. He had a boy to kill so he could escape this hell. He looked forward to the hunt. Though he expected it would prove no challenge. The living were weak and easy, just like the dead.