Read Online Spectyr by Philippa Ballantine - Free Book Online

forward to wrap her now more structured arms around the other boy. He tried to run. His eyes widened, bright blue and panicked. He burst away from the protective hold of his father and leapt for the door.
    She was faster. When her wings curled around him, he howled, feeling the sharpness of her power puncture every muscle and sinew. Hatipai sucked them down greedily, pulling his form into her with a sound that would have been disgusting if she had possessed any mortal sensibilities.
    When their second child’s form splattered to the ground, a dry mass of skin and bone, the two parents didn’t scream. Nor did they try to run. The mother’s eyes darted to the remains of her sons as if she thought it some magic trick in very poor taste. Then she looked at Hatipai. The geist was used to worshippers admiring her beauty, so she felt the nakedness of her brand-new body especially sharply. It needed covering.
    The man was closest. His skin came free with a sound like ripping velvet, while his screams erupted from a mouth now devoid of lips. The woman wailed with him. It was only bare moments, heartbeats, since she had been pleased to see the gleaming angel in her home.
    Mortals were such fickle creatures. They called into the dark, demanded answers and attention from forces they could not comprehend, and yet when they had that attention and those answers, they complained about them.
    The skin settled around her form, and now Hatipai could feel the warmth of the room and smll the tang of blood and fear. It was a scent she remembered well. The man staggered, blood pouring from his body like a squeezed sponge, and then shock took him. He crashed into the small altar the family had been praying at, sending food offerings and incense sticks clattering into the gore. Then he was on the floor spasming like a gutted fish.
    Hatipai was no longer interested in the man. She was already appreciating his gift.
    Looking down, she saw that the body had also shuffled into a familiar pattern; it was modeled on a princess of Delmaire—one that Hatipai had devoured from within in the earliest years of her arrival in this world. In her opinion, this use of bone, flesh and skin was much better than any their original owners could ever have put them to. As she was admiring what she had made, the woman came at her with a knife.
    It was certainly not the first time a mortal had attempted such a thing, but it was quite possibly the most pathetic. Hatipai caught her arm before it had even completed its downward descent.
    While a knife blow could not have killed her, it would be a shame to mar this fine new form. It might not be enough to contain her for long, but she still enjoyed it. Holding the woman in place, she looked down. Her eyes still blazed gold; for some reason, the human eye was something her magic could not replicate. Her first instinct was to kill the pathetic creature, but when she looked deeper, she realized that would have been a kindness.
    Hatipai was not prone to kindnesses—so instead she smiled, working her lips around teeth made from the woman’s child. That was when the new widow broke down. Sobbing, she slumped to the floor.
    “What . . . what are you? What are you?” Her questions were squeezed out of a chest that appeared to be having trouble breathing.
    Hatipai raised an eyebrow—an expression she had always been fond of. Her voice was sweeter than honey, more vicious than grief. “I am the goddess you called for. You did call, didn’t you?”
    Through her pain the woman nodded, unable to deny their prayers and offerings.
    Hatipai smiled again. “So for your faith and your offerings, I thank you.” And then, naked, she walked from the room, her tiny, perfect human feet trailing patterns of blood and gore after her. The music for her progress was the wretched lamentations of the woman.
     
    As he stood on the quarterdeck of the Dominion and looked toward the shambling hulk of the ship on the horizon, the Young