Sau’ilahk spun back at that voice in his mind.
“We have no desire to serve Beloved,” Khalidah said aloud. “Have you not had enough of that yourself? Have you not had enough of our god’s broken promises? Oh, yes, I know you have.”
“We will take from Beloved what it took from us ... ,” said the little ghost, though Khalidah finished, “And the way to kill a god is with its own tools.”
Sau’ilahk looked between the two. “You have found ... all ... of the anchors of creation?”
“We know how to get them,” Khalidah answered. “But more than that, we know where Beloved’s newest and most cherished is now.”
“The dhampir will serve us just as well as the orbs,” the ghost girl added.
Khalidah turned in the dark, heading back up the alley.
Be prepared, oh, petulant priest. I will find you again when the time comes for Beloved to die.
Sau’ilahk heard a low, breathy laugh up the alley.
Khalidah’s silhouette slipped into the far street, rounded the corner, and vanished. The attendants leveled the litter and rolled it off behind him, and the little ghost girl was suddenly gone.
Sau’ilahk had known disappointment and despair for so long that he was almost afraid to hope ... to kill his god.
Khalidah walked the street with a narrow smile, malicious but hopeful. After having gone so long without flesh, since his escape from the sect, each body he had claimed was a marvel as well as a minor struggle.
This newest one was not yet fully his own, and he paused near a tea shop closed for the night.
As a poor place, it had no glass in its windows, which were shuttered tight. It did have a worn brass sign dangling before those shutters. He could not help wanting an amusing peek, so he grabbed the sign’s bottom edge. As he turned its dimpled surface, he caught a better reflection of his current face.
“I see you,” he whispered. “And you see me, do you not ... domin?”
Khalidah grew joyful at a scream rising from deep within his thoughts.
Ghassan il’Sänke stared into his own face warped by the brass sign. He watched another smile accompanied by another low laugh, neither of which was his own. And he screamed again in the dark of his own mind as Khalidah walked away in his flesh.