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MALON
Iwatch as Trine thrashes against the bindings that Misha put her in. Her body locks and pops in a way that looks extremely uncomfortable. Her knees bend and her hips move from side-to-side as she keeps trying to free herself from her bindings.
She throws her head back and screams as hard as she can. It looks incredibly uncomfortable. There’s no way that this doesn’t hurt her. When she’s not screaming, she’s clamping her lips shut, her jaw hardening when she does.
I can see the veins under her skin, going from the top of her throat to her chest. They look painful. She doesn’t look great. There’s a part of me that wants to stop this–I want to go over there and pounce on Luke, make him stop this.
But I can’t.
I won’t do anything. If this is what I need to do to make sure she lives, then that’s what I need to do, and there’s nothing else to it.
She opens her eyes, which aren’t the deep brown they normally are. She sets them on Luke and starts speaking in a language I don’t understand. I think it might be Swedish.
Her gaze darts from Luke, then to me. As soon as she looks at me, I feel this deep burning from my chest that spreads to the rest of my body. I have a few seconds before it knocks me down to my knees. I tilt my head up so I can keep looking at Trine, my eyes narrowing as I keep trying to focus.
But the pain gets worse.
Something about just trying to look at her hurts me a ton. The inside of my eyes feel like they’re being drilled down with an ice pick, sharp and cold, and picking at a soft part of my brain.
The pain is so bad that it makes me feel like I’m going to throw up. This is the first time in my entire life I’ve ever been in this much pain. I might not be human, but I am in a human body, and this feels like inhuman pain.
When I close my eyes, I can hear myself retching.
I can also hear someone speaking quietly from the corner of the room. I try to open my eyes, but it’s not possible.
The laughter at the corner of the room gets louder. The sound approaches my ear. I’m not in the same room as Trine anymore. I’m home. It smells like sulphur and ash and I can hear my siblings laughing somewhere in the distance.
It’s the kind of laughter that is full of intention.
I know they mean me harm.
I want to run away, but I can’t. I’m glued in place.
“Moloch,” Alecto says, her breath a whisper in my ear. I know that I’m still in Malon’s body because I can feel the hair in my neck stand up on end, my heart hammering in my chest. “I didn’t think you’d come back here. Not after you tried to protect the girl. Don’t you know what’s going to happen to you?”
I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, but my sister is happy to provide me with plenty of images in the back of my head. I can see Trine as her eyes roll to the back of her head, as she flops back, as her neck breaks.
I can see everyone in the room engulfed by fire, coughing until they aren’t coughing anymore, their skin slowly turning into ash.
Then I’m back in the megachurch, but this time Alecto isn’t wearing Clara’s body, she’s simply squeezing her hand around Trine’s throat until the white in her eyes is covered by blood vessels exploding in them until they’re covered in blood entirely, until there are bloody tears sliding down her face.
“What’s wrong?” Alecto asks. “You don’t like to see this? She could’ve died if you hadn’t stopped us over and over again. But now she’s going to suffer, and you’re going to watch. I’ll make sure it’s as painful as possible. But you…you know pain. Her, though. She’s just a kid. And she’s going to feel not just my wrath, but all of our wrath.”
I want to scream at her to leave Trine alone. She must read my mind, since she throws her head back and laughs. “It’s going to be fucking delicious,” she says. “I’m going to keep her alive as she sees everyone else she loves dies. I’m going to drag the priest to hell, I’m going to make the doctor beg for his life. The demon hunter…I have such special plans for him. I’m going to have so much fun with him. But it won’t just be me. Every one of us he’s ever exorcised, they’re all going to have a turn. And I’m so nice. Wait until the boss hears about this. Think he might want a hand at all of them himself. What do you think?”
I try not to show her just how upset what she’s saying is making me, but she knows me too well. We’ve spent centuries together. She can read me better than anyone else.
“Aw,” she says. “You have a soft spot for all of them, huh?”
Her tongue, scaly and hot, swirls against my cheek. It burns. I try to move away from her, but it doesn’t fucking work. I’m stuck in place.
“You chose this, Moloch,” she says. “When you didn’t accept the sacrifice from the human. He wanted to give you his child. Why wouldn’t you want that?”
I have no answer for her. It just didn’t feel right. Nothing about it felt right.
Alecto chuckles. She doesn’t want to understand. “When you thought you would protect Trine over your brethren. You forget yourself. You’re not a human, Moloch. You’re just a traitor.”
I retch, nothing but hot acid in my throat. Her words scare the shit out of me. But the way she’s saying them…it’s worse than ever. It’s worse than before. Every time she speaks, it feels like there’s boiling water being poured on my back. I’m trying to hold back the tears that are welling up in my eyes.
