E1: " Good Girls Don’t Die" 

I don't know what it is about people, but they never expect you to drop on them from the ceiling. I slam into the stone floor of the chapel, right in the middle of the fuckers. First one gets my knife in his stomach. Second one is behind me with a club. He swings, I dodge left, and I nail him with a kick to his knees.

Next one gets a slash to the throat and a kick through a stained glass window. Deconsecrated and abandoned or not, this place is really beautiful. And I'm fucking the whole thing up with gore and broken windows.

The truth is I really don't like murdering, but these guys are revolutionaries. Kinda sympathetic, in that they want commoner rights. Less sympathetic in that they want to crucify every last one of us to get them. Conflict of interest.

Also, I don't mean to brag, but I am really good at murdering. Blame my mother.

Stabbing these guys is not actually what I'm here for. I'm after the unholy relic they worship.

That's going to have to wait a moment, because one of them is currently kicking me in a very personal area. Actually a smart choice — Noble blood lets me shrug off a lot of injuries, but you can still cause me pain. Hence the fact that I'm doubling over and hitting the floor right now. Oww.

While I'm down, I get another Club Guy who takes a swing at my head. This one hits. I let go of my knife and someone grabs it. And now the cultists are mobbing and kicking me. Fuck. Even for me, these are going to be some bruises.

No sword, no knife. So plan B. I wrench my right hand out from under some asshole's really heavy boot and squeeze it closed, activating one of my stigmata. They're replicas of the wounds of Christ, except mine convert my blood into weapons. Poor Doubting Thomas would have hated that.

I squeeze out a blade and thrust desperately upward, stabbing a revolutionary in his very personal place. Kinda hope it's the same one. That gets him out of my way and I manage to somersault through the gap.

Angry as these guys are, they're a mob of disgruntled assholes, not trained soldiers. I dropped out of soldier school, but I'm a tough cookie.

Aha! Relic! Right on the altar. I guess if you're blaspheming, you might as well go all the way. At least it's in plain sight. Maybe I can get it without killing all of them.

I grab the crucifix. It stings and burns, and I immediately regret my fingerless gloves. Silver, really? It had to be both a cross and silver? I flip it in my hand. First rule of crucifix safety: invert the damned thing.

On the plus side, it's big and heavy. Which the nearest cultist finds out when I clock him on the head with it.

I drop it in my bag. I embroidered a crude Grail on it earlier, so hopefully that'll block any radiance. Fucking heavy, but at least it won't burn me that way.

Now's the part where I run. Real fast, because for all the murder I can do, there are a lot of them.

I scouted my exit before I snuck in. Door to the right of the altar, go past the sacristy, get a bunch of gross cobwebs in my hair, escape into the churchyard.

That's the plan. And I execute it flawlessly.

Except for the dude who shoots a fucking crossbow bolt into my shoulder.

🩸🩸🩸

I know a lot about pain and what it means. At my fancy-ass military academy, they actually shot and stabbed us a lot. Nothing really dangerous for our kickass sacred anatomy, but they wanted us to know what it's like.

Which means I know exactly what's in the back of my right shoulder. The head is silver plated. That's the metal Judas was paid in, so it burns like hell. The shaft is cypress. One of the four woods of the Damned Cross. That's not me snarking, it's literally Damned.

Anyway, that shit hurts. The silver's getting into my bloodstream, which means all my damned veins are on fire.

I careen through the churchyard, trip on a fallen headstone, and hit my head on one that's still standing.

And I black out.

Which maybe means it's time to catch you up on what the hell's going on here. I'm Katriona Saxon. My friends call me Kat, and my enemies call me Oh Shit It's Her Fucking Run.

Believe it or not, I'm a trained diplomat and strategist and one hell of an investigator. But somehow I keep murdering people.

Oh, wait, think I'm awake now —

— at least a little bit. The revolutionaries are pouring out of the church.

Lucky for me, reinforcements are here.

One reinforcement, specifically. Head to toe in red leather, gleaming hardgold armor over her shoulder and heart.

She moves fast. Hella fast. So fast she leaves an after image. And she's got a sword. A helluva sword, only half a head shorter than her and utterly massive.

My reinforcement starts slicing rebels up. Heads from necks, torsos from hips —

— and God knows what kind of other gory things. I don't know, because I've blacked out again.

Lucky for you, that means more explanation.

So, Christendom reigns over all the West. And reigning over Christendom are the Noblesse. The Noblesse are the Good Shepherds, guiding and protecting their flocks of commoners.

Of course, part of being a shepherd is eating sheep. We don't eat flesh like the Hounds do — gross! — but we do partake of their blood.

Why am I switching around between "they" and "we?" Because I'm kinda-sorta a Noble. My mom is a pretty big deal. But my dad? Commoner. Which makes me a bastard. I don't know that much about dad, only his name. Saxon.

Ooh — awake again!

I see the woman in red standing victorious over a graveyard full of bloody cultist giblets. Smells really good.

I try to stand up. Doesn't entirely work, but it briefly me face to face with the image carved on the headstone. A woman's face, worn away so that I can only see the shape of her head and her smiling lips.

The banquet smells and the silver poisoning must be making me weird, because I make a kissy face at the stone woman before I collapse again. Right on my damn tits, too.

The warrior woman comes over and pulls me up roughly, yanking my not-arrowed arm and putting it around her shoulder.

— "Get a move on. We don't want anyone better armed to find your mess."

We limp off to what I hope is safety.

I look at her pale face, her bloody silver and blond hair. So close to her. Even delirious from an unholy wound, it strums one of my heartstrings.

Jeanne, the Ruby Paladin.

My hero.

My savior.

My ex.

🩸🩸🩸

Dunno if you've ever been in this situation, but it's not a great idea to just rip an arrow out of somebody. It can go very badly.

Silver and cypress, though, are a different matter. You get those things the hell out of you before they can do permanent damage.

So yeah, my ex-fiancée rips the thing out of me, not being in any way careful or gentle. I can't tell you whether she's doing that because of the urgency of the situation, or whether... you know, because.

Anyway, I'm handling all of this with gritted teeth and a warrior's grace.

— "If you're going to scream like that over a little pain, maybe you shouldn't get in so many fights."

Okay, not quite grace.

— "It's not like I've never heard you scream."

I regret saying it.

— "You're a stupid bitch, Kat."

— "Not gonna argue with that one."

I'm especially not gonna argue because she's using my real name. Last time we talked, she decidedly was not. And "bitch" is a step in the right direction, too.

— "What the hell were you even doing there?"

I was after that weird cross. Probably for a good reason, but mom didn't tell me.

— "Fucking up the Crimson Revolution. Same as you, right?"

— "Yeah, but I came fucking prepared. And not to put too sharp a point on it, but I'm a lot better prepared all the time."

She's honestly right. She's fitter than me, she's trained better than me, and she managed to get through Confirmation after I dropped out. And, well, our relationship did have some very sharp points.

— "Mom sent me. I do what I'm told."

— "You don't. You never do."

— "Okay, okay. I needed money. Fucking dudes up was the price."

It's a lie — I'll explain later — but it is, fucking embarrassingly, really plausible.

Jeanne rolls her eyes and pulls out a canteen from somewhere. She does that with everything. Makes it disappear and reappear without needing to carry a pack around. That's how she was able to carry me into the woods without the bigass sword getting in the way.

She swigs it and I catch the scent. Partially distilled blood, anti-coagulant, essence of cherry blossoms. If you're not drinking from arteries, that's the stuff you want.

I look at her expectantly and hold out my hand to take the canteen.

— "Nope, mine. You've got rust, right? Or are you seriously not capable of taking care of yourself?"

I do have rust, and I reluctantly rummage in my pack to get the pouch and my own canteen. Which is just fucking water.

Rust is basically powdered blood. Easy to transport, stays good for months, and so on. You just mix it with some hot water and there you go, nutritious meal.

Problem is, it tastes like shit. So the distillers put in an ungodly amount of salt.

I slap a hot pad on the canteen and the mixture boils in no time.

— "Jeanne?"

— "Yeah?"

— "Thanks for rescuing me."

— "Thanks for fucking up my scouting."

Pause. I look her right in her pretty yellow eyes, and decide to bite back my retort.

— "And... you're welcome. I couldn't just let them kill you. Best case you would have lost that arm."

If you think she's being mean and then a little soft because she's my ex, you're mostly wrong. This is how our conversations have always gone. She believes in tough love, and most of the time I can't see past the tough.

She sighs.

— "I'm getting married."

— "You're what?"

Jeanne and I were engaged, but we drew that out forever. We very complicatedly didn't like each other very much.

Well, we didn't after the years of having wild fucking sex started to fade.

— "I sent your invitation to your mother."

My mother didn't mention that when she sent me out here. Which means Jeanne hadn't sent it yet. Or Mom knew how I'd react.

— "I'm happy for you."

She tries to look me in the eyes, but I look down at my boots, then drink some of the horrible broth I just made.

— "Are you?"

I nod, still not looking at her.

— "I am."

— "Then you're going to be there?"

— "Guess so."

She sighs.

— "He's actually a man this time."

Always like this. She's always been like this.

— "Low blow, Jeanne."

— "I really cared about... old you."

There are a lot of things I could say to that. Tender response that I'm still that person. Bitter response that she never acted like she cared.

Instead, I grit my teeth. Check my shoulder, which is already knitting itself back together. The poisoning must not have gotten too far.

— "Thanks again for saving my dumb ass, Jeanne."

I'm not feeling at all grateful anymore, but I don't want to leave on a bad note.

I turn and start to walk away. I need a place to rest for the day and I'm definitely not going to entomb myself next to my incredibly successful and widely admired ex-girlfriend.

As I leave, she says something. Gets the last word.

It hurts.

Too fucking much for me to repeat it.

🩸🩸🩸

I just walk in the woods. Brooding, I guess.

No, sulking. I can admit that.

The way I'm telling this, you probably have a really awful impression of Jeanne. And she definitely is awful. But we were also awful together. As hard as it is to remember being with her, I know that I got into the damn relationship myself and that I exited very badly.

I'll tell you more about that when I'm in less of a mood.

I stop at a little clearing. The moonlight feels different here. Brighter. The leaves of the surrounding trees and each blade of grass seem to glow.

The headstone glows, too. Weird to find that in the woods. Broken, eroded. A relief of a woman's face, chipped and worn away.

Or is it worn? True, only the narrow-lipped mouth remains, set in a warm smile. A slightly too wide smile. Here's the bit that doesn't make sense. Rather than bare, smooth stone, the years or centuries have exposed the impression of a skull. Sculpted bone beneath sanded away flesh.

Pretty good place to bed down for the day.

I put down my pack, then realize there's something else that doesn't make sense. I've been carrying a silver crucifix for hours now, and with a wounded shoulder and silver poisoning to boot.

(That's all healing nicely, by the way.)

I put my gloves back on and lift the thick bag around the damned thing out of my pack. That's not me cursing, by the way. Symbols of the Savior's murder are abominations, and they're downright awful to see or touch. The damned thing is literally damned.

Still inverted, heavy but not as much as it should be, not made of anything radiant. But in place of Christ, it sports the figure of a woman.

Not a bad looking one at all. But who is it?

I flip it so that I don't feel like I'm looking under her toga. It gets heavier, and my skin starts to crawl. But nothing like it should feel.

Most of these things have inscriptions from some unknown ancestor of Machine Code. There's a little sign above the figure on this one, too. But they burned me with these at school, too. Made me wear one on a necklace, even.

This is definitely not the inscription I had branded between my not-yet-tits for a week and a half.

Why the hell did Mom send me to get this?

Sun's coming up, though. Like I said, time to bed down.

I put the crucifix carefully away, drink a last swig of my rust — even more vile when it's cold — and make my bed for the evening.

One last thing. Need the blessing of the long-passed occupant. I kiss two fingers and gently press them to the woman on the headstone's lips.

🩸🩸🩸

The truth is, those of us with Noble blood sleep best in the ground. The soil welcomes us, the roots cuddle us, on some level it's really nice.

The problem with that is that no soil is as good as home soil. I'm bound to the land, same as my mother. Lying a couple of feet under the ground in a random patch of forest feels like... well, a little bit like sleeping in dirt would for regular people.

Now, I could just carry a casket of home soil around with me, just sink into it during the day and have someone lovingly cover it with rose petals and Autumn leaves.

I could... if I was rich. The cart, the horse, the nice big casket, all of that costs money. And the nice person to tuck me in costs not being single.

So this is me. I sleep in dirt.

🩸🩸🩸

Sleeping... goes well? I'm not really sure how you rate those things, but I certainly don't wake up in the middle of the day with a bunch of dirt in my mouth.

Strange, though. Dreams are supposed to fade when you wake. This time, they get clearer as I start getting my shit together to go back to Mom's.

I remember a woman, her body covered face to feet in silk and gauze. She lay atop me like a lover in the midst of afterglow. And speaking of glow, the red light of her heart illuminated the bones beneath the shrouds.

Grotesque.

Abominable.

Fucking hot.

NEXT

I get railed. Kinda. And I visit Mom. Keep your eyes wide open for...

"Blame It on the Train!"