“You the first like you,” she conceded. Maybe it just didn’t think the way she did. She’d never made one like it before, after all.
It rumbled low in its throat, then slid around her, knocking books off her shelf. A glass box fell to the ground and shattered.
“Watch yuhself!” Bitter scolded. The creature stopped; then its form rippled down its smoky length and it became a fraction more translucent, and suddenly nothing in the room was touching it. Bitter could see the dim outline of her desk through its body. She reached out and touched one of its limbs, gasping softly when her fingers sank through it, as if it was smoke. “Oh, wow. You could make yuhself like so? Less … solid?” It didn’t reply, swerving its neck instead to look out of her window. Bitter glanced along with it. The sky outside was totally dark now, only flickering streetlights visible through her blinds. “That’s Lucille,” she said. “It’s where I live.”
It suddenly occurred to her that if this one could talk back, then maybe it could answer some of the questions she’d been holding for years. “Where yuh come from?” she asked. “Why the blood does call you?” The creature ignored her completely, and Bitter felt that cold warning again. Something was different about this one. “Why did you come?” she ventured.
This time it swiveled its neck to look at her with that marbled gaze. “Show me your arm,” it said. Bitter hesitated, then stretched her left arm out to the creature. The cut she’d made was still seeping blood, and just reaching out pulled on the skin, making it hurt worse. She winced and fought back tears. The creature extended one of its smoky limbs, retracting its claws until only one was out, curved and sharp.
“Doh hurt me,” Bitter whispered, suddenly afraid that it was going to rip her arm open some more, take all her blood for itself. She was too scared to move—there was nowhere to run to.
The creature paused, its yellow eyes flickering at her. “I would never hurt you, child.” It touched its claw to her forearm, and the tip of it sank into her skin like a dream. There was no pain at first, just an increasing warmth that seared down the length of the wound. Bitter gasped as the cut flared hot, then watched in shock as the flesh pulled itself back together, healing quickly. The creature removed its claw, and her arm wasn’t on fire anymore, the cut wasn’t there anymore.
Bitter looked up at it. “Thank you,” she said, pulling her arm back and cradling it against her chest. “Yuh eh have to do that.”
“You bled for me,” the creature replied, swiveling its scaled head around. The broken eggshells on its spine glinted in the light.
Fair enough, Bitter thought. That entitled her to some answers, at least. “Why yuh here? What yuh want?”
“You called,” it said. “You wanted.”
“I know,” she replied, “but what about you?”
The creature opened its mouth and its voice glitched, the guttural rot falling out of it. A smooth and menacing deep voice replaced it, melodic with an icy charm. “Child, you wanted what I am.” It glanced out of the window again, almost distracted.
Bitter took another step. “Okay,” she said. “What are you?”
She needed to know everything she could, because suddenly the power balance in the room had shifted into something she didn’t quite recognize. Bitter was painfully aware that she was just a small human next to a very large and intimidating creature that could toss her out of that window like a rag doll if it wanted to. She was hoping that it wouldn’t, that it meant what it said about not hurting her, that they would have the connection she’d had with all her other little creatures—something fond, something that recognized it wouldn’t have existed if she hadn’t made it, something that made her matter to it. The creature barely seemed to be paying attention to her, and Bitter didn’t like how separate it made her feel, how scared and lonely. “What do I call you?” she asked, forcing a smile on her face. Maybe if she seemed relaxed, she wouldn’t tip it off to how nervous she was actually getting. “Do you have a name?”
It looked down at her without expression, those inhuman eyes blank as chalk. “What I am,” it said. “Call me what I am. Call me what you wanted.”
“I wanted help,” Bitter said, keeping the smile plastered on her face. “Are you here to help?”
It tilted its head again; then Bitter felt the force of its full attention home in on her, like a blast of cool, heavy air. She fought the urge to take a step backward. She had made this thing and she would face it.
“Help?” it repeated.
“Yes! With the monsters, Theron, the mayor.” She threw up her hands and her smile left. “Everything!” Didn’t it understand? Couldn’t it feel how much she’d put into it, how much she was hurting, how much she needed things to change?
“Call me what you wanted,” it repeated. “It was not help.”
“Yes, it was!” Bitter almost stamped her foot, she was getting so frustrated.
The creature stared at her, then replicated the smile she’d worn just a moment ago, stretching its dark mouth wide, her blood dry and cracking at the corners. It was a chilling sight—it looked wrong, all seven eyes fixed on Bitter.
“Call me what you wanted, child,” it said, amused and full of a lethal charm, its voice colder than dry ice. “Call me Vengeance.”
“That’s not what I wanted!” Bitter protested, her fingers numb with adrenaline. She just wanted help. She wanted the monsters to be gone. She wanted Lucille to be safe, no matter how impossible that felt. “You meant to be, like, a protector. Can’t I call you something else?”
Vengeance glanced out of the window again. “No,” it said. “You wanted them to suffer.”
“I—”
“We are paired by blood, little one. You cannot lie to me.”
Bitter fell silent, then took a deep breath. “Do you know what they doing to us?”
Vengeance rippled. “Yes. Atrocities.”
“Right. I just want it to stop.”
The creature’s body was still as it looked out into Lucille, smoke drifting off it. “You humans have always been like this. We have watched since the beginning.”
“What you mean, we?”
“Us.” Vengeance lowered its neck and rotated its head clockwise. “The angels.”
Bitter thought she had heard wrong. “The what?”
It ignored her question. “It is a good thing you called us. We can reset things again.”
She was starting to feel dangerously out of her depth. “What yuh talking about?” Her questions were piling up like a drowning wave in her head—Bitter couldn’t keep track of them all. What did it mean by a reset? When had it done a reset before, and why did it keep talking as if there was more than one of it? What the hell did it mean by angels? The little things she had been drawing couldn’t have been angels.
“Do not be afraid,” Vengeance said. “The world changes when the angels return. You will see it, hear it. It will make its way into your language, it will bend the shape of your air.” Vengeance stretched out, and Bitter backed up against the wall. “The hunters only hunt those who need hunting, those who cause harm and call down the hot light upon their heads.”