Read Online She Walks in Shadows by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paula R. Stiles - Free Book Online

he’d grown quiet and hard, she broke away. Lavinia gathered up the brand she’d prepared earlier, one end wrapped around with hessian and soaked in pitch. She used the flint and steel to strike a spark and the flambeau burst into life.
    Rist took the hand she offered and they set off towards Sentinel Hill, the flame dancing in the wind, throwing shapes and shadows before them, flashing in eyes that hid in the undergrowth and bushes on either side as they processed in silence.

    The path was much easier than the one Rist had tried to blaze a few weeks before. Indeed, it seemed as if the foliage made a point of drawing back so as not to snag Lavinia’s ancient finery. He’d been worried sparks from the torch might fall onto her dress, turning her into a Roman candle, but the fire seemed respectful, too.
    By the time they surmounted the summit, the flare was dwindling, almost spent, but Rist didn’t doubt that his cousin would have been able to negotiate the dark with her confident step and astonishing pink eyes. They entered the circle of standing stones with its table-like rock in the center. Lavinia didn’t waste any time, placing the dying brand on the mountain of kindling set closest to where the hill dropped steeply away, but still inside the stone ring.
    She turned to face Rist, smiling as the balefire lit and leapt. Lavinia reached up and pulled the dress from her shoulders, sliding it slowly until she stood in a pool of sepia froth. She rolled her shoulders, making her breasts bounce a little.
    Rist noticed only that, despite their heaviness, the bosoms still sat high, never having had a child to drag them down. He noticed only the tiny waist, the flaring lower hourglass of her hips, and the bushy white triangle at the junction of her sturdy legs. He was so distracted that he didn’t notice the malformations on her flanks, her hips, the myriad tiny eyes embedded there, blinking lashless lids in the flickering orange glow.

    She gestured to the table-rock and watched as he disrobed clumsily, quickly, and came to her so she could maneuver him onto her, into her. He was a handsome boy, she thought, though one of the others, one of the shitty ones like Putnam or Wilmot or George, might have served better. Their natures might have been more fit for what was being done here this night. She did not regret having chosen him, though, as her first.
    As the young man labored over her — in and out, in and out — the night sky gleamed, lightning tearing across the silvered black, the stars brightening. Nebulae formed and swirled, shot red and blue and purple like pinwheels, and a sort of ebony gold streamed into an enormous shape that was not a shape, that was form without form, with tentacles and eyes like Christmas lights which appeared then faded as fast as blinking. Rist reared up, unable to see what was occurring above and behind him, but sensing it. Though he couldn’t stop his rhythmic motion even if he’d wanted to, he tried to turn his head when he felt the cold fire that poured from the crack in the heavens touch his skin and seep in. Lavinia latched one hand to his jaw and held him there with a strength that, in hindsight, shouldn’t have surprised him.
    “He must move through another,” crooned Lavinia. “Don’t be afraid, cousin. You’re greatly honoured to be his instrument, as I am to be the Lord’s vessel.”
    The cold fire coursed in his veins, chasing Rist, or what was left of him, away; it was as though he fled through the tunnels of his body, until he was trapped in a corner of his own mind. Whatever had invaded him showed no mercy; it rushed in and slammed against the last of Rist just as he slammed into Lavinia, with no fear, only lust, the desire to achieve his end, to find its goal, to spill and soak the fertile soil.
    In his last moments, Rist’s eyes darkened, took on the color of the stars and sky, the swirling vortexes of the nebulae above, and the being that had taken him showed its