Rob Thurman - Grimrose path

I had red and gold scarves on the ceiling, hanging like billowing sails or the canopy of the bed of a princess. I didn't feel much like a princess right then, but I did feel as if I were sailing. On a smooth glassy surface… not a ripple-only me and the red-gold of a setting sun as I drifted silently. Then the falling sun was gone and the Fallen took its place-fallen leaves, fallen suns, fallen God's own.

Everything fell, sooner or later.

"Lying, lying bitch. Useless paien filth. Not worth one-fifth the soul of a common whore." The teeth touched the skin of my face. "Cronus is still taking wings. Giving up those souls accomplished nothing."

I had told him this might be the case. A convincing lie cannot be told without some shred of truth to it. I blinked at the plaster dust in my eyes and took a shallow breath, the best I could do after most of the air had been forced from my lungs when I hit the floor. I gave Eligos the best imitation of a triumphant smile as I could, considering the pain and lack of air that, thanks to the reaction to my smile, didn't get any better.

Eli hissed and wrapped his hands around my throat. They started out covered with scales and equipped with talons but in a short second turned human-as did the face inches from mine. "Thousands and thousands of souls gone and Cronus didn't give one good goddamn. Or two or three goddamns." The hands tightened. I didn't struggle. If I did, he'd see I was still weak. I could go for the gun in the small of my back, but I wouldn't make it with his weight on top of me. There was nothing I could successfully do to escape him. I was hurt, dazed, and I was being choked to death, and there was only one thing I could do that might save my life-use the weapon I'd been born with that required no shape-shifting at all.

I kept smiling.

I didn't let my body buck against the lack of oxygen as it was so desperate to do. I didn't rip at his hands. If I was turning blue, I did my best to make it look like a good color on me-this year's must-have-and I smiled up at that impossibly handsome face. His impossible face, my impossible smile, an impossible thing not to struggle for air. But I was out of all choices except one. So I smiled as my lungs burned as if they were torched from the inside out. I even smiled as dark blotches began to slide across my vision… from sunsets to storm clouds.

Then another impossible thing happened. The pressure around my neck eased. I could breathe. I did, in slow and even breaths as if I hadn't missed a one, much less many. They, mainly Buddhist monks, say you can control your body in more ways than you can imagine-slow your heart, your respiration, fly above the needs of your physical self. That was nice for them, but I still would've liked to have seen the Buddhist monk who wouldn't have gasped for air and tried to claw Eli's face off right then. The first at least… They were better about not seeking vengeance than I was. You don't see many face-ripping Buddhist monks. Good men, very good, very patient men.

I sincerely wished I had the strength for some face ripping myself, but I wasn't necessarily very good. Patient? It depended on how you measured… by hours or years. I liked my karma immediate. Face ripping was very immediate.

"You drive me fucking insane!" He grabbed at the coverlet from my bed and tore it to pieces, silk raining down like dead butterflies. Glaring at me venomously, he spit, "You knew. You knew Cronus wouldn't stop if we set his Rose free. Or did someone already eat his goddamn Rose?"

I raised a balled-up fist to my mouth and coughed. I made it sound like the phoniest of coughs, as if I were playing at being human-playing very badly, as if barely trying. It was a cover for opening my swollen throat and pulling in more air. "Oh, so much better," I answered before smiling even wider.

"Cronus never had a Rose."

It was true. Cronus never had a Rose; he hadn't left one at the door either. He had left that ribbon, but I was the one who had tied it around a stem. I'd driven to the nearest florist, paid a ridiculous price for that one perfect rose-signature red, wrapped the ribbon around it and voila… which would be French for "I made Hell my bitch." With a flower, a simple flower. Did it get any better than that? True, surviving it would be nice, but between living and pulling the ultimate trick-"suicidal tendencies" isn't just the name of a band. We can't help ourselves. We don't want to help ourselves. It wasn't an addiction. It was a necessity. Tricking was as crucial as breathing to most of us.

We were hell-bent for leather, and let the devil take the hindmost. We were rarely the hindmost, but if we were? We kicked ass every second on our way out. We'd jump out of the plane without a parachute and shout, "Geronimo" all the way down.

Geronimo, Eligos, you son of a bitch. Watch me fall and watch me laugh right up until I hit the ground.

Eli's eyes went from hazel to black to hazel again. Black copper full of fury, hazel full of reluctant admiration. He was a monster, a killer a thousand times over, and a sociopath who'd consider torture a mandatory appetizer. Yet he was like me too. He tricked, for a much more sinister reason, yes, but he couldn't help admiring a brilliant con. "You…? There never was a Rose?"

I did love fooling a demon, a true demon-high-level, Hell's flip side to a trickster. It was a rush you never tired of. And while I was laughing all the way, if I could survive it, that would be a bonus. Dying for a trick was part and parcel of the job, but living to gloat about it afterward-that was good too. I hoped his admiration of the Roses and the truth would keep me alive long enough to be the smuggest girl in town.

"No. There was a Rose, but she wasn't Cronus's." I didn't try to sit up. There was no way I was close to that. Breathing was still an effort and keeping the appearance of it, ironically, effortless was more demanding. Instead of sitting, I linked my fingers across my stomach as if I were on a psychiatrist's couch, spilling my deepest, darkest thoughts.

It was deep and dark, what I revealed. Failure always is.

"She came to me last week, but she called herself Anna, short for Rosanna. She was a sweet girl. Average. Normal. She wasn't beautiful or an MIT-level genius. She was in art school. I don't know if she was actually any good, but she had dreams and dreams are nice." And they were. People without dreams die the same as people without a heart to pump their blood. To live a life without dreams is to be digging your own grave every single day.

"When she was a little girl she was in an accident and had half her face burned off-her ordinary, kind of cute, freckled face eaten away by flames." I remembered those restored freckles with a clarity of a life brilliantly magnified by tears. "But when she turned twenty-one, one of you was nice enough to give it back to her. You do so love your charity work, your kind." I tapped my thumbs together and let my smile fade. "I told her I couldn't help her. She made a deal of her own free will and, sorry, so sorry, little fishy, but swim off and live with the consequences. Or, I guess I actually meant, wait until you die and then suffer the consequences… not live with them. She didn't though… wait, that is. She walked out the door, stood for a few seconds on the curb with her bag and her pictures of Sir Pickles the Perilous, and then she stepped into the path of a bus. There was glass and blood and twisted metal. Part of her is still in the asphalt of the road. That darkened stain in front? You probably didn't notice. Just one more stain in a world of stained things and stained people, but that-that is what's left of Rosanna." I'd heard the crash. I'd run to the door, and seen what had been glorious and whole turned into something pitiable and broken. The pictures were scattered with puzzled feline eyes staring blankly at nothing.