Precursor

Chapter 1 - Hurt

“You will bathe in the blood of the Precursor, and you will accept our Lord.”

The private words of her mother reverberated through Scarlet’s fuzzy head as she kneeled at the altar, forearms on display, fists tightly clenched against the pain of the wounds, red satin gown bunched at her knees. She knew this day would come. Knew what it meant to be a part of her family, a part of her carefully chosen bloodline. Knew that she very well could be the last of that bloodline and their religious order. The Dama S’Dar.

She knew all this but still didn’t believe.

Dim lights laced twinkling amber trails around the hidden faces of the maroon-cloaked followers. Only darkness filled the space outlined by the hoods. Scarlet felt as though she could look through the dark to where their faces should be but weren’t. The faces of ghosts projected from the dark hoods then flashed bright and disappeared. Knowing it wasn’t real—only the substance of connection playing tricks on her—she stared at the faceless cloaked creatures gathered around her as witnesses.

Blood—her own—crawled from her body, swirling in curly patterns and trickling down her sliced open forearms as if searching for something. Or running from something.

The auburn horse with vibrant red feathers radiating from its brow stood beside her with High One Marko Stefanov emerging from its mouth. Marko dragged the akinak across his palm, splitting the flesh to fill a hammered bronze goblet with his thick, crimson blood.

“The blood of those who come before.” Marko’s voice spoke from the mouth of the horse and filled the room as he offered the dagger, tan leather hilt first to his counterpart, High One Leila Ilievski. Her own black horse’s head was fitted with a woven red and gold angular patterned shawl. She immersed the blade in a clear liquid for a moment, then watched as the liquid evaporated, and with it, the blood of her counterpart. She sliced the akinak across her own palm with one quick unflinching motion and filled a second matching bronze goblet as she echoed, “The blood of those who come before.”

Scarlet’s gaze danced back and forth from horse-headed parent to horse-headed parent, the red on each of the horses lingering, distorting her vision. Leila’s eyes, through those of her dark horse’s head, seemed to meet Scarlet’s. A reverent hush had fallen over the audience, filling the intimate sanctum with anticipation as they waited for the only daughter of the High Ones to fulfill the blood rite and become one with the Lord of the Dama S’Dar.

“We have a special gift for you,” Leila said, reaching into her velvety-black robe until her arm disappeared from view as if into a void and withdrawing a shining, silver ampule no longer or wider than her slender finger. The silver turned to flesh in Leila’s hand, becoming a sixth finger complete with a pointed, red-tipped nail. Scarlet blinked at the warped image as the finger returned to its true silver vessel form. “Passed down through my family line, the last remaining part of the Precursor.”

A gasp expelled from a hooded member of the encircling audience, but to Scarlet, it was the hiss of a multi-headed snake.

“Our Lord works in mysterious ways,” said a smaller, cloaked figure at Marko’s side. The voice creaked on the edge of change.

Marko’s tan, powerful hand, now bound with a strip of white cloth, gripped the shoulder of the figure, drawing them closer to the altar, closer to Scarlet. A smile crossed Marko’s face beneath his horse’s head shouting pride in his protégé as Falu drew nearer to Scarlet’s side. A place he was often found.

“Indeed, our Lord works in mysterious ways,” Leila repeated with a nod.

Marko unwound the writhing, braided cord from a distressed leather journal and, as he gently flipped open to a marked spot using care to only touch the edges of the pages, he removed a slip of semi-translucent vellum separating the pages; he spoke the ancient words. “B'dameinū me'chatthīn, nhī chad.” Then recited them in English. “With our blood combined, we become one.”

Leila poured the blood from each bronze goblet into a larger vessel surrounded by a ring of squat, flickering candles. Scarlet watched as the flame from the candle jumped to her flesh, dancing around her spilled blood.

“We become one,” the audience repeated. The sound amplified like booming speakers in Scarlet’s head.

“One family, one mind, one intention just as Ancestors Madyes and Sopolis before us. We honor the Lord with this step of faith and commitment so that he may come again and unify the world just as he unified the families of Madyes and Sopolis, bringing peace, strength, safety, and fortune. Anointed, unconquerable, holy.” With the completion of the words, the tan horse’s head above Marko nodded to his counterpart.

Leila held the narrowed tip of the silver ampule into the flame by the leather grips of long tongs until the seal boiled and spilled, quenching the flame. She flipped the ampule, emptying the blood of the Precursors into the vessel of the combined blood of the High Ones.

Scarlet braced herself for the next step in the ritual, blinking through the swirling colors and coronas encircling her parents. She focused on the pain in her arms to distract from the hallucinations, trusting the hospital just across town to save her from whatever was in that two-thousand-year-old blood, wondering how well her lies would hold, how strong her own mask could be, especially in the state she was in.

Surrounded by a dozen people in hooded velvet robes—a dozen people she had known her entire thirteen years of life—Scarlet considered Falu’s words after his own blood rite. I’ve never felt so complete. So worthy. Tears had spilled from his eyes. He believed, somehow believed, more than Scarlet ever could. But Scarlet had known Falu needed her to believe, and so she had covered his hand with her own and gripped his tightly.

Falu wasn’t the only one who needed Scarlet to believe. Every member of their congregation did. She was raised to believe in their Lord, instilled with the morals and causes of their secret faith. She even at times wanted to believe, waited for her heart to change the way it had seemed to in Falu even before his blood rite.

Kneeling on the soft cushion, blood flowed out of her as her parents placed all four of their hands on the vessel and poured them over the sliced flesh of her forearms. She again waited for something to stir in her, some revelation, some spark, some belief. But it never did. Despite the drugs present in her system to open her mind to connection, nothing came.

Her mind flashed to the girls’ bathroom at her prep school. Guttural sobs had penetrated the metal walls of the stalls. She had sent a tentative, “Are you okay?” into the space and waited. The sobs cut off like someone merely hit the stop button and three seconds later, a polished blond in her perfectly fitting navy and green plaid uniform sauntered from the stall, brushed a stray tear from her otherwise perfectly fixed face, stared at Scarlet in the mirror and said, “Fake it ‘til you make it.” The older girl flashed her icy blue eyes, cocked her brow, and sauntered out no longer disturbed by whatever had induced it in the first place.

Scarlet had never seen that girl again, but the words stuck, replayed in her head over the last and final year of her pre-teen existence. She had tried those words on like they were a new sweater that didn’t quite fit, but might be grown into.

Auburn and black horse’s heads looked to her. With Falu closer, she could see his face beneath the shadows of the hood, grasping for some measure of adulthood, but still a boy in many ways. His smile was so hopeful, so innocent and so carefree, despite the weight of the future laid out before them.

Scarlet knew what she had to do. Knew what those around her needed from her. And so, she spoke the words she knew they all needed to hear, “I accept Our Lord into my blood, into my heart, into my mind and invite Our Lord to guide my path so that I may be of one mind, one family. So that we may become one.”

But Scarlet did not believe.

At that very moment, she began planning her escape.