The Pyramid Waltz by Barbara Ann Wright Page A

Starbride, it wasn’t working. Katya didn’t know if that was a mercy or a cruelty. It all depended on what they wanted.
    The shopkeeper shrugged. “I had hoped to make this easier for you, but…” He gestured to the large man. “Do it.”
    Licking his lips, the large man gave Katya a languid look and drew a small knife from a sheath at his belt. He moved to Starbride’s right hand and pried it open. She squealed and bucked. “Shh, shh,” he whispered as he laid the knife between two of her fingers. “There’s a good girl.”
    Horror tightened Katya’s chest and spread up her neck to her head. “Don’t.” Rage tipped over into an eerie calm that left her face hot and her body shivering with cold. Her necklace pulsed against her chest. Back inside the shop, she heard someone pounding on the door.
    On the table, Starbride tried to pull away from the large man, but she was bound too tightly. She whipped her head back and forth as the large man rested the blade against her index finger. “How many should I take?” he asked.
    “That’s up to her.” The shopkeeper gestured at Katya with his chin. “If the fingers don’t work, cut out the tongue.”
    “Don’t do this,” Katya said. She felt a tickle on the back of her eyeballs, and her necklace burned her skin. It awoke half a memory. She wanted to tear her necklace out of her coat, but she couldn’t take her hands from the bars.
    The large man bent Starbride’s finger back and drew the blade across the joint, drawing a thin line of blood. Starbride gave a muted scream.
    “Shh, shh, sweetheart,” the large man said. “This your first time?”
    There was a tiny sound, almost undetectable, and Katya knew without knowing that her pyramid necklace had shattered. Something inside her shattered with it. Tingles ran along her head, her limbs went numb, and then pain fractured her mind. She closed her eyes and heaved, and the bars parted like blades of grass. She stepped through, and all the unbound people stepped back, but they couldn’t get away. She would have their blood, though she couldn’t recall why. All that mattered was that they were there, fragile hearts waiting to be crushed, and she wanted to oblige them. The large man first.

Chapter Eight: Starbride
     
    Katya changed. Starbride felt it in the air the way she felt a warm summer breeze turn cool before a storm. It almost made her forget the man who was going to maim her. When he stepped away, she watched Katya’s transformation.
    Horns sprouted from Katya’s brow, long and smooth. They curved over the crown of her head before pointing up at the sky. Her face had moved from pained to beautiful and inhuman, her eyes blue within blue. Unnatural cold rolled from her in waves, prickling Starbride’s skin. Her face was calm, almost serene as her clawed hands lifted. Katya crossed the room in a blur and appeared in front of the would-be torturer in a blink. She reached between his legs and clawed him from groin to chin, cutting through him as if he were warm pie.
    He barely made a sound as his insides became his outsides, and he dropped. The shopkeeper held his pyramid high, but the glittering shape had gone dark in the center. He stared at it in wonder until Katya relieved him of his head. The other people screamed and ran. Distantly, Starbride heard wood splintering from inside the shop.
    Katya darted for the masked people, one after another, killing and killing in the space of a heartbeat, her movements too fast to follow. She murdered them all without losing the calm look upon her face, and blood dotted her fair skin like motes of flour.
    At last, Katya turned a dark gaze on Starbride, and she feared that look almost as much as she had the idea of the torture.
    An old man stepped through the curtained door. “Katya, no!” He held a pyramid aloft, and Katya shrank from it, hissing.
    The large, red-robed man and young blond woman Starbride had seen in the palace hallway stepped around the old