Dark Time: Mortal Path by Dakota Banks Page B

Liquid the color of pus pulsed through each abstract symbol, and it was shot through with red—her blood, extracted 24 z 138
    2009-08-25 02:50

    centuries ago when Rabishu pulled her from the flames.
    She’d been ashamed at the time that she couldn’t write her name, but Susannah had come a long way since then. Reading Sumerian cuneiform was a skill she’d acquired in the late 19th century. Her contract was written in something that preceded Archaic Sumerian, but necessity had a way of elevating her skills.
    She studied the contract and read part of it aloud.
    “Failure cannot be tolerated. The servant will be given a choice: a painful death and passage to…to oblivion, or a life spent balancing dark acts with those of the light. Success will bring passage to a higher plane. Failure to balance will result in unending torment.”
    She paused, considering what she had just read. She wasn’t sure she had it word for word, but close enough. “What does this mean? I don’t understand the choice.”
    It means I kill you. It will take you many years to die, as an example to other slaves.
    Susannah shook her head. “Don’t lie to me, demon. The last time I saw this contract I was an illiterate girl. That’s no longer true.”
    A sudden blast of noise in her mind sent Susannah reeling. Rabishu didn’t like to be challenged. She struggled to keep her feet, and the angry outburst wore down.
    It is at the insistence of Anu, Ruler of the Sky, that there is a choice.
    “We have spoken of Anu before, and the crystal lens you seek.”
    Speak no more of that, traitor. It no longer concerns you.
    “Then tell me of the choice, as you are bound by Anu to do.” If Susannah had any cards to play, she was eager to get them on the table.
    If you choose to die now, your death will be painful and prolonged—long by my standards, not yours, and I have served my lord for over four hundred thousand of your years—but at the end you will have no further consciousness. Your essence will be divided up and fed to the winds. It is a release from pain, if nothing else.
    “And the alternative?”
    If you choose to live, you must save lives to balance those you have taken at my behest. You will be mortal, although you will retain pale versions of the powers that I gave you when you entered my service. If you die before balance is achieved, you become my plaything—as long as I exist, with no release.
    “If I should succeed in this balancing?”
    None of your kind has ever done so. If you are the first, you will join Anu in the third sphere of existence, an honor granted to very few gods. In your words, it would be paradise.
    “I thought Anu was gone from Earth.”
    In the third sphere, distance and time mean nothing.
    “Then I choose life, as I did when you first pulled me from the fire and made me your servant. I choose to live and I will beat you at your game!”
    It is no game. You will never succeed. I will enjoy welcoming you to eternal torment.
    “Stop trying to cheer me up.” Having survived the moment, Susannah was feeling better. Anu, wherever he was, was giving her a chance.
    She put her hand to the wound on her chest and found that it hurt but had stopped leaking her life’s blood.
    An odd sensation gripped her, the reverse of the feeling centuries ago that death was leaving her body. The gray cloud of death entered through Rabishu’s mark and spread out inside her, trying on her body like a coat. She was mortal.
    Rabishu leaped at her, knocking her over. This close, his stench was overpowering.
    How does a void have weight?
    His teeth parted and out came the tongue, red and obscene. It played lazily over her chest, taking up the blood from Rabishu’s mark, then drifting onto her breasts. She felt his agile tail stroking her legs.
    She stiffened beneath him, wondering if he was capable of raping her and unwilling to go any further with the thought.
    Then tremendous pain stabbed through her middle. She tried to clutch her