Chapter 87

Luna Arkavis has never gotten lost before, not in Armagetton.

She’d grown up here; the bright pink trolls at the Graveyard Café with their droopy noses buried in their cups of sputum tea were about as familiar as her monthly flow. Luna wasn’t able to master any skills yet—not water magic or light, nor spirit nor earth. Not like the King, who’d mastered earth and spirit, had the ability to control the ground, and reached the zenith of his skill in battle spirit.

Not like her sister Lucille, who had taken to spirits, her sword whistling through the air as blood sprayed from the open necks of her conquests.

A nimble-fingered bounty hunter, that was what her sister was. Luna wished Lucille practiced something less unsavory, but she couldn’t complain. It was what kept them fed; it’s not like their mother’s housecleaning didn’t come in some way.

Luna sighed, turning into another dark street that she feared was identical to the last one. Dark fog covered the path she’d taken, and she swallowed heavily, her heart knocking against her ribs.

The cawing of overhead vultures made Luna whip her head up nervously. There were always vultures in Armagetton; they followed death like the bulbous green flies Luna saw munching on the rot of corpses, but something about this night was different. There were too many of them; Luna was sure that, above the gray mist, they filled the whole sky.

She had heard other voices in the dark too, passing too quickly for her to string the words together.

“Night…drift…calling, Lilith’s sons…” It didn’t make sense to the skittish girl.

Luna noted with a squeal of dismay that her white cotton dress was stained with the rot of the city. She feared it would take a good helping of holy water to rinse off the stain, and her mother’s angry screams were to be heard again this night.

She’d begun to feel dizzy again, like she did when she lost soul matter; it felt like being jerked from behind and turning around to see emptiness. Luna’s legs slapped the ground hurriedly as the hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

If she could find herself in the familiar white rose bushes that lined the entrance to Moose Street, all Luna would’ve had to do was walk straight and turn left, and the red door that opened into their small cottage would welcome her from the sting of the cold.

The sudden scream made Luna still in her waterlogged shoes, the squelch of her frilly sock against her black Maryjane pumps loud in the ensuring silence.

Screams and agony were rampant in Armagetton, so why was that scream different? Primal?

Luna kept walking, her eyes shifting in the growing blackness restlessly.

She turned each corner with fresh urgency; there was something following her now, mimicking her footfalls. Luna felt the tears run freely from her eyes. She’d been so foolish, running off on her own in Armagetton, a maiden fae, pure and untouched by magic, without the protection of her sister, on a night such as this no less.

Luna remembered it was the night of the planar eclipse.

She raised her head to peer through the gap in the fog, through the cloud-bloated skies where the full moon hung heavily like a ripened fruit from a low-hanging branch.

It was all Luna could do not to scream when she finally threw open the door to their small cottage and banged it shut, only catching a glimpse of the large teeth that would have been at her neck if she’d delayed a second more.

“Mother?... Father?” Luna whispered harshly, fisting and shaking her hands in her skirt, and was greeted by silence. The three candles lit on the small wooden center table had burned to waxen dots, and the sweet scent of molasses from her mother’s cooking and the sharp bite of alcohol from her father’s practice drifted to her nose.

Luna’s gut gurgled with discomfort; had it ever been this quiet at home?

Luna got the sudden feeling that all was not well.

“Lucille?” Luna’s soft soprano shook with fear, her widened eyes only just taking in the rake of claws on the cushion and the blood that’d congealed on the concrete floor of their living room. Luna followed its trail all the way to the kitchen, where her heart stopped beating temporarily at the sight she found.

Her mother was lying in a heap on the stone slab of the kitchen floor, her guts torn open, the entrails arranged around her like a flower wreath. Luna turned and promptly threw up, shaking violently as she tasted bile. The gore made the tears swim in her eyes, blurring her sight.

“No!” Luna screamed, pushing the intestines back in her mother’s open stomach as though it would have made her better, made it all go away, her mother getting up and ambling about, asking

“Back so soon, dear girl?” in her usual fashion.

Luna’s body shook with tremors, and when she could walk again, she found her father not far off; his neck had been sliced open. The jagged bits of white flesh puckered until she could see the red tendons and the small piece of spine left.

“Pa?” She cried, pressing a shaky hand to his face. Luna called and called, running between the two bodies in a bid to revive them, but the dead stayed dead.

Luna didn’t know how long she laid between them before she heard the knocking sound. It sounded like something big was thumping its mass against the small front door. It didn’t sound like the wood was going to hold much longer when Luna staggered to her feet, soaked in blood that did not belong to her.

She needed to find her sister. She needed Lucille to be okay.

Outside, Luna could smell burning skin as the fire blazed, with white smoke oozing from the open windows of the tall buildings. The screams came from all around her now. Little notes of despair whipping through the gray fog

It sounded like the whole town of Armagetton was running past her, the stamp of feet on the rain-slick sidewalk ubiquitous as Urchins and Goblins and Demons whizzed past, some falling over with a meaty crunch and promptly getting trampled on from the frantic groaning Luna heard. She even thought she caught the gold fur of werewolves bounding straight at her, only stopping to tear at the attacking creatures, whose haunting howls were strangely melodic.

Luna’s feet raced on their own accord, her mind disconnected from her body.

“The Cathedral on the edge of the street, I need to get to the Cathedral on the end of the street!” Luna chanted to herself until she’d slipped through the double oak doors by the hair before they were shut and sealed behind her.

Inside the cathedral, the dark wood pews were filled with Armagetton’s wounded fae.

The Valkyrie closest to Luna was muttering something she couldn’t understand. Her blue curly hair frizzed from the cold, and her dirty white smock was half hidden by the pew’s arm. The Valkyrie’s spiked bat was propped on the pew.

There were bright yellow candelabras lining the two ends of the church all the way to the altar, where Luna spotted the resident priest Markov listening quietly as a pair of pink trolls with humanoid faces narrated their tearful ordeal.

The Reverend Markov was a tall, portly man, the push of his stomach making his black cassock longer in the back than it was in the front.

“Reverend Markov!” Luna yelled, flailing her arms desperately as she tried to catch the priest’s fleeting glance, before muscling her way through the tight crowd that’d gathered on the processional walkway.

The cathedral choir, a pack of masked nuns, were singing a slow, faint rendition of Oh, faithful night when Luna’s outstretched hand brushed the lapel of the Reverend’s broad back.

“Reverend Markov! “What’s going on?” Luna squeaked, wringing her hands, as the priest turned to face her, removing his round-rimmed glasses somberly.

Luna thought she saw the mist of tears in his wrinkled eyebags.

“It’s the end of the world, Luna, dear girl. This is the day of reckoning. He whispered resignedly, just as a loud bang hit the high dome ceiling of the cathedral, making the yellow light of the chandeliers clatter lightly.