Beautiful Salvation by Jennifer Blackstream Page A

got the distinct impression he was trying not to shout, resisting the urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her.
     
    “Then I’ll die.” Aiyana straightened her spine, steeling her resolve against the strange pain in Saamal’s eyes. “I will not be a threat to my people.”
     
    “If the Lord of Near and Nigh gave you this power, then he obviously meant for you to keep it. He must mean for you to use it to benefit your people, perhaps you simply don’t yet understand how?”
     
    Aiyana hardened her jaw. “I had no say in what was done to me. I was never asked if I wanted this power, never consulted about whether I wanted to be the one to bear the responsibility of these urges, this bloodlust. The Black God cares for power, not for people.” She hesitated, then forced out the next words in a rush. “The urge the power inspires in me to sacrifice my own people proves that. How could a god who cared for his people want them to die like that? Hearts ripped out and thrown into pits, flesh torn and—” She pressed her lips together, unable to say anymore.
     
    Saamal flinched as though she’d punched him. He opened his mouth twice before he spoke. “Surely you know why the sacrifice is needed?”
     
    Aiyana averted her eyes, examining the trees, the ground, anything to distract herself from remembered dreams. She knew that they were memories given to her when the Black God put his power inside her, knew that they weren’t merely images, but men who had truly been killed in the years before she was born, before her family had seen the error of their ways and turned to worshipping the White God. “Yes. My people used to believe the land had to be fed, to be revitalized. They thought it needed blood.”
     
    Her stomach rolled. For a second she could swear she felt the earth trembling, a surge of hunger screaming from the land. The forest disappeared around her, and suddenly she was back in her dream. She could see herself, standing larger than life over a barren field, one of her subjects clutched in her grip. She squeezed the squirming form, claws sliding like swords into the struggling body until blood rushed in a warm flood over her hand, pouring to the earth in a waterfall of too much blood to have come from one body. The blood poured and poured, rushing like a river over the land. The land drank it down greedily, brown grass coming alive, flooding over the land in an emerald blanket. Dried up river beds swelling with water, trees blossoming with leaves where moments ago there had only been bare, brittle twigs. So much blood…
     
    “Earth does not need blood to be fertile,” she gasped, talking to herself as much as to Saamal. “People, lives, should not be sacrificed for food.”
     
    “Perhaps not in Sanguenay, Nysa, Meropis, or even Dacia , but here in Mu, it is very necessary.” Saamal widened his stance, his arms straight down at his sides as he faced her.
     
    “Why?” Aiyana demanded, her heart beating so loudly she could barely hear her own voice. “Why must we be so barbaric, so bloodthirsty?”
     
    “It is not the people who are bloodthirsty, but the land. Have you never heard the story of how Mu was formed?” A thread of warm anger had woven through Saamal’s voice and he stretched himself to his full six feet to stare down at her from his superior height.
     
    Aiyana opened her mouth, then closed it. She searched her memory, but for some reason, none of the stories that came to her offered a response. “No.”
     
    “In the beginning, there was only the sea, and the great crocodilian sea monster Cipactli. She was a ravenous beast with thick brown scales and a gaping mouth full of sharp, jagged teeth at every joint. The Black God and the White God sought to create a world where people could live and thrive, but every time they created something, it would fall down into the sea and Cipactli would consume it. Cipactli knew only how to destroy, and she kept the gods from creating