The Chosen

She swung the cleaver in a lateral arc. It’s bright blade sunk inches into Feldspar’s stout neck, releasing a spray of brackish, black blood. He howled further, shuddering.

And with all her might, Vera brought the cleaver down with both hands—

swack!

—into the center of his bald forehead.

He teetered back, arms reeling. The cleaver’s formidable blade had bitten into Feldspar’s brain no less than three inches, the great cranial fissure oozing the midnight blood.

Then he collapsed.

Vera squealed. I did it! I did it! I—

Then her squeals of victory corroded.

Feldspar got up.

The look on his halved face was not one of rage or betrayal or anger. It was a look of wounding, or heartfelt hurt.

He removed the cleaver from his head and tossed it aside. Then, his other hand—the hand whose fingers Vera had so expertly chopped off—he turned over and looked at.

She’d separated him from his power, from the amethyst, and had buried a Sheffield meat cleaver into his head to boot, but he didn’t even seem to care.

“Kyle was just an acolyte, a weakling,” Feldspar said with a vast sadness in his voice. “My power here—my fortitude—comes from a far greater source.”

Vera screamed, a reasonable thing to do under these newfound circumstances. Feldspar’s good hand snapped to her throat. He raised her up fully off her feet, then threw her down. Her head smacked the tile floor, her vision churned, then darkened. She knew she was passing out.

And she also knew what was going to happen next.

Just…let me…die first…

He hauled up her gown, spat on her sex. His hand clamped again to her throat as he bared himself. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you now, Ms. Abbot. But first…”

The bulbed, nearly white end of the thing nudged her sex, began to enter…

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he bellowed.

Perhaps Vera really was dying, or maybe she was hallucinating. But in the furthest recess of what remained of her consciousness, she thought she heard something.

It reminded her of a dream-sound, a reverberation from a nightmare:

chink! chink! chink!

What was it?

Feldspar struggled shambling to his feet, his eyes for some reason so large that they appeared to be on the brink of launching from their sockets. His face contorted, and his ears—

Vera, in her daze, squinted.

There’s blood coming out of his ears…

chink! chink! chink!

With each chink! Feldspar seemed to buckle. Still issuing the maleficent howl, he staggered out of the kitchen…

To the atrium, Vera deduced.

She crawled at first, then managed to rise to her bare feet. She blundered out of the kitchen, into the