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She wasn’t the only one capable of ignoring wounds. I
charged the queen once again, colliding with her. She moved
only slightly, laughing hard and horrible at my apparent
failure. I wrapped my arms as far as they would reach around
her bulk and sank my sisters into her many layers of wan
flesh, using them to hoist the giant cannibal over my head.
While resting within the flames, I had spied the engulfed
ruin of a church steeple across the cavern, the splintered
wooden cross at its peak somehow still intact. I raced
across the uneven stone, holding Miss Patience high, and
slammed her into the jagged tip of the cross. I ducked my
head as the spire exploded from her left breast and shot past
my shoulder, splashing her foul liquids everywhere. Miss
Patience fell quiet, grasping at a stake thicker than my leg.
Its length was ablaze, slick with boiling blood, its wicked
tip well beyond her reach. I shed my burning coat and threw
it to the ground, watching as Sara Kain tried in vain to pull
herself free from fire and death. She was beyond even the
significant shelter our dream provided.
She looked upon me with pleading eyes and held out her
clawed hand. “I don’t want to pass without telling someone.
I’ll tell you . . . and then I can fade away. Please!” I waited
until her flesh had crisped and blackened, sloughing off in
places, sizzling as it slid down between glowing embers.
Finally pulling her seared body from the pyre, I laid her
head upon the smoking remains of my coat.
“Tell your final tale, Miss Patience,” I said in frozen
tones. “And should your story please me, I will spare it from
the hungriest monster of all—oblivion.”
“Very well,” She said. Her teeth sounded out a terrible
rhythm as they scraped and gnashed. Her words fell from
her mouth like stillborn babes plummeting to the cold earth,
naked and hopeless.

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