51: A Way Home
“In theory, we just need to find the vortex that sucked us in, ride its current like a river tide, and it’ll spill us back to Morris.”
Guided by the Keeper of Secrets, Elasha and Lilith headed toward the vampires’ hideout, moonlight thoughts drifting over a violet sky of warped space. The Vampire Princess kept talking, her voice like a lantern in fog. “But how do we find the vortex again? Where I came in was bare as bleached bone.”
“Ah, that? I’ve got a way.” Lilith stopped short, a snowflake halting midair.
The Little White Dragon froze; Abaddon, still drifting behind like a lazy cloud, didn’t react in time. Thump—she bumped right into Lilith’s back.
“Ow!” The Demon princess yelped, palms flying to her small head like a startled sparrow. She puffed her cheeks and glared at the suddenly-still dragon. “Why’d you stop? That nearly killed me.”
“Look, you were the one who yanked us in like a hook on a dark sea. So now you open a door and toss us out. Easy.”
Lilith glanced at the ashen-skinned girl at her side and remembered she had this gray-white tagalong. The kid was about her height, and in certain… departments, she even had Lilith beat, like a sapling already budding in late spring. But Abaddon was slower than the Little White Dragon by a long stretch; even the Little White Dragon could trick her like a kitten with string.
Still, she wasn’t a bad kid. She’d been exiled here over some spat with Satan, a leaf blown off a burning tree. And the only reason they’d entered this dark-violet pocket in the first place was that Abaddon mistook them for the Void Sect.
“By the way, I never asked—where’d you pick up this little one?” Elasha pointed at the seated Abaddon, her gaze steady as a blade in sunlight. She’d noticed the gray-white girl long ago but held her tongue like a courtier at a cold banquet. Asking about someone’s familiar was rude as tracking mud into a shrine, so she’d waited for Lilith to introduce her.
Now, though, this looked like a native the scatterbrained Little White Dragon had fished from this violet pond, so the Princess meant to dig into her roots like turning up a buried jar.
“Heh-heh. You finally dare ask my glorious name?” At the question, Abaddon sprang up like a puppy spotting a juicy bone, eyes sparkling like stars on black water. She thrust out a chest as tragically flat as Lilith’s, pride rising like incense smoke. “Hmph! I am the most fearsome, most powerful, and most loyal lieutenant under Lord Satan, the great Abaddon! Kukuku—prepare to become my follower—ow!”
“Don’t mind her,” Lilith bonked the Demon girl on the head, breaking her self-praise like a pebble cracking ice. The White Dragon sighed, brows knitting like frost on glass. “She’s just a kid who fought with her folks and got kicked out. Then a few Demons who somehow drifted to Spuiset enshrined her as a deity from some dusty myth. Now she’s probably acting as the ‘master’ those Void Sect people serve.”
“This one? Then their taste is swamp-water.” Elasha arched a brow, her look sweeping Abaddon like a measuring reed. “If you must worship, pick someone reliable. Otherwise, you invite trouble like ants to sugar.”
“Not everyone’s like the Nameless One,” Lilith said, voice soft as rain through bamboo. “Even as a god, They’re wild as wind off the steppe.”
She understood why the Vampire Princess slipped into that bluntness. Learning that the rabble in Morris were serving a runaway Demon princess had tugged at old scars, like thunder waking old bone aches.
“I know the Nameless One!” Abaddon’s hand shot up, her small body leaning forward like a bud toward sun. “Lord Satan told me about Them. That night, I dreamed of Them—a very pretty big sister, though nowhere near me or Lord Satan. She told me lots of things, like petals in a stream. She even said I should fling myself into Lord Satan’s arms. She said he’d be so happy.”
“What did Satan say?” Lilith pictured Abaddon launching herself into a tall arch-demon with goat horns, an image like a cat leaping at a boulder. It didn’t sit right.
“Lord Satan warned me not to listen to Them. He said it’s terrible for a teenager’s image, a storm of bad influence. He told me to ignore Them next time.”
“Well, he’s not wrong.” Lilith wiped a bead of cold sweat, a dew-drop on a leaf. That Grim Reaper was getting more absurd by the season, like a kite cut loose.
“Sounds like the Nameless One Themself. You really are a proper Demon child.” Elasha nodded, calm as a lake at dawn. She seemed used to the Reaper’s zigzags and grew curious about Abaddon instead. “Demons inherited the Necromancer Cultists’ creed. Young Demons get two direct talks with a god—at five and at eleven.”
“So you’re only eleven?” Lilith’s eyes widened like lamps, turning to the Demon girl who stood as tall as she did. A cold threat pricked her heart like a thorn.
“Nope, not yet eleven.” Abaddon shook her head, then began counting on her fingers, one by one like beads on a rosary. “One, two, three, four, five… Abaddon is ten this year! I’m about to have my second divine possession!”
“Ten.” Lilith ignored the Demon girl’s bright excitement and stared, hollow as winter sky. The Little White Dragon’s gaze dropped to the Demon child’s chest, then to her own. She squeezed her own hopelessly stagnant softness, like testing dough that refused to rise.
Lilith’s tail drooped like a wilted lily.
“It’s okay. Small is cute.” Elasha saw her gloom and reached out, fingers combing Lilith’s white hair like wind through snowgrass. Her voice settled warm as a hearth.
“Mmm…”
