Skin & Scales

By Sherri Cornelius

What if you didn't have to die to go to the afterlife? There's a one-way street called the Desmayo ready to take you there, but you won't find it on any map. And the journey changes you forever.

Drina made the journey to the Black Veil and got a permanent suit of scaly armor out of the deal. She ushers souls through the Light while fighting off the evil Magmata, dumb creatures made of volcanic material. She's pretty good at her job, except for the one time it counts. When a stone drone disappears with the spirit of her estranged father, she can't just let it go. Soon it becomes apparent she might live to regret that...if you can call this living.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sherri Cornelius
• Release date: Apr 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301214778

Sherri Cornelius

What started as a hiatus seems to have become a permanent end to my creative writing. Yes, it happens! People actually get off the hamster wheel, on purpose, for real. Not often, I'll admit, especially as dedicated to it as I was, but I had bigger lessons to learn. Writing and publishing got in the way of those lessons, and to be honest, the lessons I was learning killed my creativity. I mourned the loss of my dream and moved on. Not saying I won't start writing again someday, but it will be a new dream. Feel free to peruse my short catalog and old blog, and thanks for coming by.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Black Veil wrapped Drina in darkness while the mourners sat in sunlight. A few of them seemed to care about the deceased—a careworn man who wept openly, the small boy tugging the man’s suit jacket, and maybe the priest. Others didn’t. Like the fashionista who kept sneaking peeks at her watch, and her craphead companion who actually answered his cell phone. He was considerate enough to walk a full three paces before flipping it open like a tricorder.

Drina didn't care about the husk in the casket either, but at least she had the excuse of never having been acquainted with the spirit who'd once inhabited said husk. Plus, Drina might be seeing that spirit soon enough, and then she would care.

The craphead walked straight toward her. Just as she started to wonder if she ought to move, he stopped, snapped his phone shut and went back to the funeral.

If the man had more than glanced at the cedar where Drina leaned, he'd only have seen a shadow that should not be there. He would probably dismiss it on the surface, but it would stay with him. He might genuflect and fidget with unexplained disquiet. Maybe murmur a prayer to his guardian angel, a shining image of goodness, a messenger come to escort the departed home. He would expect his angel to have a benign, comfortingly human face. Wings and white robes. Perhaps a little golden halo. He would not expect the angel to be a monster with claws and ridges and scales. To look more like a demon.

Sorry, dude, I'm the only angel you're gonna get.

Drina pushed off the tree and wandered a few steps, letting her gaze drift away from the mourners and over the headstones. Slow today.

Drina was here to usher lost souls to the Light, but the truth was that many, many souls made it out all by themselves. Most of them hopped up out of their bodies and didn't let the Light hit them on the way out. Some lingered. Any unfinished business might keep a spirit hanging around, or a quick death in which the spirit didn't realize it was dead, but it seemed those stragglers were drawn instinctively to their funerals. Maybe the bewildered spirits heard the priests talking about them. Drina didn't know how a spirit could get confused when the Light was right there, never more than a few steps away. Maybe they only saw it if they wanted it.

The mourners wandered toward their vehicles, and the funeral home guys started cranking the casket down into the hole. Drina kept her eyes peeled. The spirits tended to stay in the thin part of the Black Veil, close to their old familiar lives, but it was possible for one to appear in the thick. The Veil intermingled with Lifeworld, like fog. Thicken the Veil and the living seemed like the ghosts. Thicken it enough and the living and all their works disappeared entirely, leaving nothing but the constant Earth. Every once in a while a straggler would wander into the depths of the Black Veil, but for the most part, they sought the thin.

Movement caught her eye. Since her arrival in the Black Veil she’d honed the ability to sense the proximity of another being not only in physical distance like a human could, but also in Veil density. This one was close on both counts, and it glowed.

In the gloom of the Black Veil, one thing burned brightest: the Light. Only one other thing burned at all. The Magmata.

Showtime.

Drina pulled the steel gauntlets off her low-slung belt, slipped them on without looking and slapped the latch closed on each one. The gauntlets were the only steel she needed. Scales protected the rest of her body from the high temps of molten rock.

She followed at a pace to overtake the Mag undetected. It was about the size of a man, but stockier, thicker, dumber. The surface of the creature was always in motion;  tectonic plates traveled hypnotically over the top of the magma, which shone through the cracks and the shapeless, changing eye sockets, the only feature on its lumpy face.

Though Drina hadn't spotted a spirit, there had to be one nearby. While the Ushers relied on sight to spot their targets, the stupid Magmata seemed to just know where they were. Like the Mags could smell them, despite the lack of a nose. Too bad the Mags couldn't smell themselves.

Looking for a little sport, darlin'? She crept up directly behind the Mag. The trash-talk was all for her own sake, since she was pretty sure the Mag couldn't hear her. Come to mama, you stocky rock monster, you.

Drina flung herself at the Mag and hit him square in the back. As her momentum took him down, she reached around the Mag’s black boulder of a head, slashed at his eye sockets with the claws on her gauntlets, and then rolled clear. The Mag was slower getting up, but it was quick enough. They circled each other like wrestlers; no way would Drina let it get a hold on her. She couldn’t win that contest.

Strike, retreat, repeat.

Swimming, red eyes bored out of an otherwise featureless face. Volcanic crust ground against itself as the creature moved. Even if this Mag were Drina's last, that godforsaken grating sound would evoke a Pavlovian anger response in her brain. Stupid Mags.

She feinted right and then dashed left past the Mag, slashing again at its eyes. Though its eyes weren’t made of flesh, it was a vulnerable spot, like the cracks between plates only bigger and easier to access. Its clumsy, thick hands groped but couldn't find purchase on her smooth scales. Drina hadn't felt her metal claws make contact with the Mag's eyes, but knew she'd hit her mark when it stumbled away, swiping at its head, the only sound the clack of stone on stone.

It spun around, lunged; Drina danced back, but not quick enough, and the Mag connected with her gauntlet. The latch popped open. Drina slapped it against her thigh to close it, but the mechanism was bent. Again the Mag lunged, taking advantage of Drina's hesitation. It grabbed on to Drina's arm with both fists—fists made for thumping, not for grasping, but still she was caught. As the creature tried to yank her down, she dug in her heels.

In a tug-of-war, a boulder wins over a gecko any day.

The Mag gave a last huge heave, and Drina levered over the fulcrum of her heels. What neither Drina nor the Mag had counted on—as if a Mag could count—was the loose gauntlet.

As she stumbled past the Mag and went to the ground, her hand slipped free. She rolled once and was on her feet immediately, circling with the Mag again. The gauntlet stuck out of its fist. The Mag held it out to the side as if it had forgotten it could drop its arm. Stupid Mag.

Now Drina had a choice: fight the Mag one-handed or run. She wanted her damn gauntlet back, but even if she got it back, would it be salvageable? Magmata seemed to have only two settings, off and crush.

Unlike the scales on the rest of her body, the skin on her naked palm would be pretty much destroyed if it came in contact with magma. Though the magma was contained, the hard surface of a Mag was still hot. But if she knocked into the Mag at just the right angle, there’d be no reason to use her hands anyway. The gauntlet would come free and she could snatch it up and be on her merry way.

The Mag swiped at her with the fist clutching the gauntlet, and Drina dodged it easily, circling while she ran through her plan.

Ram the side with the gauntlet. The Mag will let go of the gauntlet to grab me, but I’ll be faster. Sidestep him, lead him away and double back; snag the gauntlet and take off.

Drina said, You don't know you're about to be chop suey. The Mag didn't say anything. Drina charged, lowering her head at the last moment for impact.

The Mag grabbed where she would have been instead of where she was. Drina connected with its fist, barely feeling the shock of the impact but hearing the ring of bone on stone. The gauntlet fell to the ground in a tumbling arc.

Right under her foot.

Premature celebration became a scream of denial as her foot came down on the gauntlet and shot out to the side. The moment she went down, the Mag dropped like a boulder on top of her.

As Drina's guts shifted to unnatural places, the Mag compressed her windpipe with its massive fists. With her gloved left hand she held the creature off her while the naked right swiped the ground beside her. Where was that fucking gauntlet? Her arm trembled. If the Mag shifted its weight forward, it would collapse. And why did the Mags have to grind so much? How was she supposed to concentrate with all that grinding?

Her fingers brushed something hard. The gauntlet. She hooked it closer with a claw, tried to wiggle her hand into it. The opening was too small. She smashed the gauntlet against the side of the Mag's head, but didn't have the leverage to do any damage. She squirmed ineffectually under the weight. 

Above her, the Mag's face wavered and dimmed. Even in the weird-time of the Black Veil a human brain needed oxygen. The Mag shifted just enough, and Drina's arm started to buckle under the weight. No choice but to use her exposed hand. The useless gauntlet crashed down beside her head.

Her claws were sharp, but they were also short, and the Mag was hot. Adrenaline kept the pain from her foremind as she sliced into a crevice between rock plates on the creature's chest, breaking whatever magical binding held the creature together. Magma spewed. She squeezed her mouth and eyes closed as hot liquid spattered across her face and chest, while she raked her claws into the opening she'd made.

It was too late. Her oxygen-starved brain gave in, and the Veil descended just as her arm buckled.

Drina woke slowly, dashing any hopes she had died and could finally go into the Light. The Boss probably wouldn't take her, anyway.

She lay still to let the pain tell her where she was injured. Her bare hand tingled a little, but she ignored it. One problem, her eyelids were stuck shut with spatters of cooling magma. So she had done some damage to the bastard! Her arms moved normally when she reached up to swipe the magma out of her eyes, but her legs were pinned by what she assumed was a dead Magmata. Her middle felt like it had been wrung out and hung to dry.

And her right hand was really starting to sing.

She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her gloved hand to get off as much hardening magma as possible before opening them. The heat must have penetrated her eyelids, because she couldn’t see anything. She blinked to make sure her eyes were open. A blind Usher, now that would be hilarious. The first? But no, her vision was clearing. The sky lightened into its usual color of dust storm. The Mag had collapsed next to her, the remains of one leg slung over hers like a lover.

Wheezing, forcing her sluggish limbs to do her bidding, Drina rolled out from under the Mag and sat with her arms crossed over her knees, forehead resting on forearms, for a few ragged breaths.

Her right hand was now on fire. With her heel spur she popped open the latch on the left gauntlet, shook it off, caught it, and snapped it onto her belt. She clamped down on her forearm and looked around for the smashed gauntlet. There it was, behind her.

The gauntlet was ruined, smashed beyond identification, as if crushed by a boulder. Hm. She'd have laughed if she'd felt better.

She staggered to her feet and peered through the scrim of the Black Veil at the mourners clustered around their vehicles, unmindful of the melee taking place just a few yards and a whole dimension away. Only moments had passed for them, but the fashionista and the craphead were already gone. When she turned back to examine the magma man mess her heart leapt into her swollen throat. A woman was staring straight at her.

Drina's pulse slowed again once she realized the woman was only the spirit of the husk in the casket. She never got used to the dead seeing her, because they still looked human. She knew the woman was dead and had already begun decomposing in her absurdly plush casket. By now Drina had seen enough dead people to know spirits manifested the way they saw themselves, not the way other people saw them. This woman in a pair of sweats and a pink t-shirt, dark hair in a ponytail, might have been eighty years old or twenty when she died. Her spirit looked closer to thirty.

For a long moment the two females locked eyes. Finally the spirit took a step back, as if she didn't realize yet she didn't need to use her legs. "¡Mi Dios, usted es verdadero!" -My God, you're real.-

Drina replied in broken Spanish, I will— Her voice cracked in her bruised windpipe. She swallowed hard. I no hurt you. Help you to the next place. There is your Light. You go on.

Instead of turning to the Light, the dead woman looked at her family, lingering on the man and boy. She could have been anything to them, mother, grandmother, sister. Color flickered over her form as emotion flickered over her face.

You will meet again, Drina said, in the Light. You see it?

The woman looked over her shoulder, where the Light hung just beyond her. The Light barely penetrated the eternal dusk of the Black Veil; to Drina it looked like the sun through a sandstorm, or through fog. What did the spirits see with their limitless sight? It must be beautiful.

The woman took a single step toward it, reached out a tentative hand, and the Light came to meet her. Then she surprised Drina by turning back. "Vienes?"

Times like these, Drina wished she could cry. I can’t come. You go on.

The spirit didn't look back again. She reached out to the Light with both hands this time, and it took her.

Chapter 2

Lohn inspected Drina's burned palm over the table in the one-room shack they shared, using his knuckles so as not to slice her blisters with his scimitar claws. Drina had modeled her gauntlets on Lohn's natural Mag-killers, after seeing the damage they could inflict. Scales covered every inch, and though those scales were smaller and more flexible than on, say, his chest, they fit together so perfectly not a drop of magma would penetrate it. She wondered what his hands had looked like before he became an Usher. Strong, probably. Tan and rough from working in the vineyards of Spain. But she didn’t ask.

Lohn leaned over her palm like he was going to kiss it and make it better, but instead he worked up a wad of saliva and let it drip onto her wound. An Usher's natural analgesic worked better than the ibuprofen she used to take every day, but not as well as the stuff her friend Inez used to steal out of her grandma's purse.

"It feels better now, si?"

She moved her fingers, testing. It still hurt, but thanks to Lohn's saliva she could at least think through it. Yeah, it does, a little.

Lohn lowered her hand to the table as gently as if it were origami, then picked up the damaged gauntlet. He used his claw to wrench the latch back into position. Drina sat back and watched him work. What good did he think it would do to get the latch working if she couldn't even slip her hand inside?

How did a Mag manage to get your gauntlet? he murmured.

The latch got smashed and the son of a bitch pulled it off.

His head came up. What kind of a place, Lifeworld in your time, women using language like that.

Sorry, Lohn. It's just me. All the other women were pure as the driven snow. She didn't even blink as he held her gaze.

He shook his head, then went back to work. "You shouldn’t let the Mags have your armor, Mija."

"Oh, geez, why didn't I think of that, Padre."

This time Lohn moved only his eyes to disapprove.

He fiddled with the gauntlet a couple more minutes, even though claws and brute strength were better suited for popping open the Magmata than up-close work.

I cannot get it quite right. He straightened up and heaved a big sigh. We must to take it to the armory.

I figured.

Pale yellow stone rose on either side to an arched ceiling high above. Though she’d been here twice before, once to have her gauntlets designed and once more to pick them up, she still didn’t know what kind of Lifeworld building housed the armory. Whatever its purpose in Lifeworld, in the Black Veil the armory was the busiest place Drina had ever seen.

Metal crashed only a few feet to her right, and she gave a little scream and jumped back. No one else had jumped, she saw. Lohn didn't appear to have noticed at all. Turning her attention back to where she was going, she screamed again and leapt to the side, just missing being flattened by a huge cart pushed by an inattentive Warrior—for the second time this trip. She vowed to stick to Lohn's backside. He didn't seem to have that problem.

All the Ushers intent on invading her space were Warriors. Not one Usher she could see wore gauntlets like her, or chain mail or even shin guards. The elemental smell of molten metal and rock, the clanging and shouting of Warriors, their apparent camaraderie and underlying aggression—these things made her shrink in on herself.

By contrast, Lohn was a shambling island unto himself. His confidence seemed to come directly from the club of a tail swishing behind him, back and forth across the marble floor. Maybe that’s what Drina needed. A tail.

Hey, Lohn, where do you think we are? she yelled.

In the armory.

No, I mean, where in Lifeworld?

I don' pay attention to such things.

Drina peered past the workers, looking for a clue to the armory’s origins. It's an old building. Must be, if it's left this deep an impression on the Veil.

Probably it is a palace.

Doesn’t look like one. It could be a train station, or a temple, or an old library. Further in, the walls glowed orange with the magma from the smelting pots. "Or maybe it has something to do with a mine. They’re using magma to heat the metal, and wouldn’t it be easier to get if they had a direct source? Seems too fancy for a mining building. Oh, maybe they tapped into a volcano. That