Slayer: An Isabella Hush series story

Part two

I waited until the wood nymph slipped beneath the root of the acacia tree, leaving her hammock to lift in the breeze, before I spoke.

No doubt she knew if I had arrived, things wouldn’t turn out quite so lovely as a hammock made of spider’s silk. She probably suddenly remembered she was needed elsewhere.

“Well?” he said. “You haven’t answered me.”

I toed the gravel.

“I waited as long as I could.”

“It was foolish for you to wait at all,” he said. “The masters won’t be pleased.”

The familiar chiding in his voice tightened my throat until I thought I wouldn’t be able to swallow down one more drop of saliva.

He did me the grace of turning to face me finally. He knew I hated talking to what passed for the back of his head. Another small mercy, one I didn’t deserve under the circumstances.

His eyes looked almost human from where I stood, but I knew if I stepped closer they would more closely resemble a spider’s, that within the boundaries of the cornea, enmeshed within each other, were a hundred smaller eyes.

I pinned my gaze to his nose.

I wasn’t afraid of much, but I was afraid of spiders.

“You should have opted for death by iron,” I said to him. “Quicker and less painful than this way.”

He spread his arms as wide as he stood.

“What?” he said with a chuckle. “And miss the chance to speak to you one last time? Besides: I’d miss all this.”

He waved behind him over his head at the setting sun.

Here in the Fourth World, it was the same color as the human realm because we shared the same celestial heavens, and so every now and then it was easy to forget which of the worlds you were in.

As a measure of respect, and to honor him, I panned the scene and took my time doing so. From the fire in the skyline to the shadows of the trees casting smudges onto the grass and blooms, I gave each its honor.

If you came to kill a man, you should at least pay him the respect of admiring what he thought was beautiful.

I noticed a cluster of plant stalks topped with a bulbous, muscled bloom. Each seeded cluster held threads of fluid that fed the plant and that if you cut into would bleed red water.

“You planted the heart flowers,” I said as I stepped forward.

One more inch, casually, so as to not frighten him. I’d learned the tactic at his knee. Keep the doomed off guard. Make them comfortable.

They never see it coming if you’re kind.