God's War by Kameron Hurley Read Free Book Online Page B

they
jeopardized the lives of women like Jaks and Kine and little Maj. It’s what she
told herself every time. It’s what she told herself now as she shoved her knife
fast and deep into Arran’s naked armpit three times.
    Arran flailed in the straw. Nyx
listened for Jaks. Sex and liquor and a hard fight would send even the worst of
sleepers into a dead quiet, but anybody who lived like Jaks might be able to
shake off worse.
    Arran tried to catch her wrist with
his other hand. Nyx rolled the rest of the way up onto the platform and pinned
him still. She waited until the strength bled out of him, then began to saw at
the neck with her stolen knife. For a stretch of time while she cut off Arran’s
head, she wasn’t a bel dame at all—just another body hacker, another organ
stealer, another black trader of red goods. The only difference was, when she
brought this boy in, her sisters would forgive her. Her sisters would redeem
her.
    She had collected the blood debt
this boy owed Nasheen.
    Nyx tugged off her burnous with
sticky fingers and bundled up the head. She was an hour’s walk from the local
collector’s. Her feet were numb, and her legs ached.
    This was all she knew how to do.
    She got lost somewhere outside
Jaks’s place and turned around in circles, listening to the scuffle of feet and
bugs. She remembered what Jaks had said about the mutants. Dark shapes hissed
and skittered through the alley, some of them big as dogs—only without the cozy
fur. She stumbled over a head-size ravager gnawing on a human hand. It caught
hold of the end of her bloodied bag and tried to jerk it out of her hands. She
bludgeoned the enormous bug to death with Arran’s head.
    Light and noise from the apartments
hanging above her seeped into the street. Her bundle grew heavier as she
walked. She kept losing her grip, and the head thudded onto the dusty street,
picking up more sand. The organic burnous would eat most of the blood, but not
for much longer. Even bugs got full.
    She’d just turned off onto a lane
she recognized when she caught the sound of footsteps behind her. She didn’t
turn, only picked up her pace. Her insides were hurting again. She needed a
second wind, but she’d already spent her fourth getting into Faleen.
    The footsteps behind her broke into
a run.
    Nyx ran too.
    The way was mostly dark, cut through
with rectangles and lattices of light. She ducked in and out of darkness. Bugs
hissed and scattered around her.
    She was twenty-four years old, a
bottom-feeder among the bel dames, and she was about to be far less than that.
    “Nyx! Nyx!”
    She kept running. Just keep going.
    Two shadows leaked out of the alley
ahead of her. She knew their shapes before they leapt—a fox and a raven.
Shifters tracked better in animal form. The third would come from behind. She
put one arm over her head to deflect some of the blow.
    Her sisters cloaked her from all
sides.
    I’m a fool, Nyx thought as she hit
the dirt, suffocated by the weight of her sisters’ bodies. It took three of
them to pry the burnous from her clenched fingers.
    Nyx howled. She twisted, found an
opening through fur and feathers and long, black burnouses.
    They shot her. Twice.
    Nyx heard her sisters’ voices in
hazy snatches, little clips of song and breathy whispers. Rasheeda, the raven,
had once been an opera singer. A soprano. Nyx had never much cared for opera.
It was all about virgin suicides and widowed martyrs. She got enough of that in
real life.
    The air was sultry and smelled of
death and lemon. Nyx saw tall women wearing the white caps of Plague Sisters
moving through the hall. She could hear the click and scuttle of insectile
legs. The Plague Sisters were a guild of magicians specializing in the
decontamination of bel dames and the refurbishment of discharged soldiers. Nyx
had been among them before, back when her carcass was hauled in from the front,
charred and twisted. But she’d been too ruined even for the Plague Sisters, and
they’d