Black Briar by Sophie Avett Read Free Book Online

of fun was a little sick.
     
    Under Sybille’s domain, the Fade was…
     
    If the Fade was creation, than Sybille’s little slice of heaven was the roiling center of a wicked cauldron. It started with a dead sea of acid. The kind that ate through flesh and bone with finger-licking snaps and sizzles. Lime green froth and foam popped, bubbled. Erupting from the middle of the briny ocean was a tower spun from brick and the skulls of her enemies, set into place with oozing, insidious ruin. Inky, spoiled tears trickled from their empty eye-sockets. It was a home all her own. Cold and sharp black briar grew like the plague, crawling and creeping until the edifice was swallowed.
     
    The sky above the thorn tower flashed green and purple with lightening. Each crack like a god strumming low notes on an organ. In Sybille’s world, each cloud painted something different. Ragged, ghostly faces of the criminally heinous and insane. Clown marks with jagged smiles and tears. Stars, cosmos marking the images of wyverns, wyrms, and dragons. A sinister lighthouse standing beneath a bedeviled sky with dead moths sticking to its shattered bulb.
     
    Decorative grotesque spouts were sentinels jutting off the edifice with watchful black eyes, mouths gaping as they rained acid, barring windows from the uninvited. They rained and rained upon the world. It poured over every entry but one—the balcony at the very top. The marble beveled out into the world like an opera seat. To peer between the sheer plum balcony curtains drifting and wafting with the sweet magnolias in the breeze was to peer into madness.
     
    The scent of peach blossoms, white jasmine flowers, and red, red roses floated from the rusted quarry stone. What wasn’t stone was heavy teak wood with Nursery rhyme pictographs carved in the rosette paneling and steepled accents. Porcelain dolls rowed on the bed, lining the shelves and baseboards. Life-like, roving eyes were moist. All of them souls killed and trapped in the Fade. Sybille recognized some of them. Most, she did not. They were smiling. They were all smiling. Blood glistening on their innocent and blushed cheeks, dribbling from their opaque mouths and sweet cherub lips.
     
    And behold…
     
    Seated on low versatile stool in the very center of this darkness was Sybille. She’d fashioned as a crown made of tin-foil and a dress made of black, weary waves of pleated black taffeta. Seated on a low versatile stool with her black sapphire gown pooled around her, she hummed a tune she’d never been able to place and guided rough wool through the ebony spinning wheel’s wicked, sharp spindle.
     
    Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle. Tiny bells rang like snowfall, creeping and sweet.
     
    Yes, because it wasn’t enough that she had to listen to him talk all day every day.
     
    Now, she had to hear the magic coming too.
     
    Disappeared was the owl, in its place stood a stout goblinesque creature. Socrates the Darkling’s true form had brownish gray skin and bubbled, short Doberman ears, scrawny long arms and short bracketed legs. Bone fingers were tipped with sharp, black nails. His knuckles dragged as he hobbled into existence. Of course, he was draped in a tarnished Templar’s tunic with dirt and blood stains. He’d paired the flag with a ridiculous pink feather boa and purple, pointed shoes. He always wore pointed shoes. With bells. Little Keebler bastard.  
     
    The minute he was fully materialized Socrates ripped the red cap off his pate and shook it with general outrage. “What is this?! I leave you alone for two seconds and this” —he lifted the puppy by her scruff, “is what comes of it?!”
     
    Crimson moonbeams beat down on Sybille’s shoulders from no discernable source and electrified the stannic scarlet ooze leaking from the spinning wheel’s rotors. “Oh, Socrates…” The corner of her mouth twitched. “This tragic tale has only begun…”
     
    Nova was coming. She could feel him…searching. Surfing