A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,57

concept of blood on her hands. Something to haunt her for the things she had done.

“You tell me,” she said in a measuring tone, her eyes intent. They dared me. They probed me. They doubted me, but pressed me. She was still testing me for something.

I had seen so many things in my time – things that didn't jive, things that simply were, that I lived to let go because that was how it worked, because there was just no putting a name to them. It was a rule of thumb, not putting a name to things. As such, naming a character in the midst of it was a ridiculous notion. I did not even know where to begin. There were no generic roles to be filled. Any role in this mess was one that was surely extremely complex or simply chaotic.

“You're not a Serbaen,” I said.

At least I was able to determine what she very much wasn't.

She laughed. Evidently I had stated the obvious, or it was a joke to her for another reason.

I was not dissuaded by her laughter. My mind was running wild with the possibilities – to me, very real possibilities. “A demon?” I tried. “An...angel?” Then it came to me, on silent, sharp wings. “Gods. You're the Angel of Death,” I breathed.

And she laughed again. “Oh no, my dear – no one so noble.”

“Then what? You have a contract with Death. You hail from a place not of this world, and enslave people in this...this trap. To die. How many?” There was something accusing in that question, straying from the point.

“There are a great many,” she answered with a matter-of-fact, devastating honesty, “who wander my chasm.”

“Who else from the heavens is warranted to harvest with such damnation?”

“I do not harvest. I simply reduce. Reduce them to hysterical wanderers, chained just out of reach of the world above them. I simply render them stuck in a rut.”

“Why?”

“So the sun will come up in the morning.”

“Because the sun demands blood?” I demanded, my tone hot with opinions.

“And who are you,” she asked, “to question the greater scheme of things?”

I could hear it in the way she said the first part, that she wanted to know.

Who was I?

She was not merely putting me in my place.

It puzzled and intrigued me, realizing we were at a stalemate. That this being of power was at a loss over me, as I was over her.

The difference between us: I could not begin to guess why.

How to answer? A part of me suggested that now I had leverage, and could use it to my advantage, but suddenly I was also struggling with my own qualms regarding definition, underneath my sly motives.

Indeed, who was I? What was the best truth?

Surely 'Avante of Manor Dorn' would in no way satisfy any kind of curiosity. So what was she expecting me to say?

But it was no use. Evidently, she grew impatient with my dimwitted sense of self, and my prolonged freedom there in her ravine. This was no self-respecting interrogation.

“I am not the Archangel,” she said. “I am his ambassador. And you have fallen into my crack of the world, where I hold those that are due for their reckoning. It doesn't matter who you are. You have come to me in the same way many of them do. I will take you as such.”

“No...” It was the senseless protest that would come out of anyone's lips. “My name is Avante,” I blurted in denial. “My name is Avante...” As if it would prove something. Perhaps it would prove whatever she had been looking for. Maybe it was in my name. Maybe Avante was a special name...

“It works like a spider's web, Avante,” she explained patiently, ruthlessly. “You fall in, you become entwined. It's a properly functioning trap. And the louder your protests, the quicker you bring the beast down on you. Just a word of advice.”

No... My fists clenched. “But I am the spider...”

It was a small murmur, but something fluttered behind its pitiful existence.

“I beg your pardon?”

I didn't know where it had come from either. But I looked up at her, meaning it.

In realization, she humored me – but it was with little patience.

My hand was in hers. She considered my fingers. The constellations in her eyes burned against the patterns of web there.

“There are those in this world who can walk the cracks,” she said, as if admitting it, but not as if she'd been wrong before. She was simply saying it,