#BloodBossBabes

By Rachel Kolar

Hey Girl!

From: Amy Shearer (serpentsisteramy@sotesh.com)

To: Heather McBride (mcheather@ymail.com)

Hey, girlfriend! Love looking at your beautiful family on Insta. And congrats on getting into grad school—that’s HUGE!

Furthering your education while raising a family takes so much dedication, and that’s why I think you’d be AMAZING on my team. For the past six months, I’ve been offering blood libations to Sotesh, Mother of Serpents, and let me tell you, it has changed my life! I get to set my own schedule, bleeding the unbelievers when it’s convenient for me. I have the security of knowing that when Sotesh comes in Her glory, I’ll be spared the worst of Her wrath. And She gives Her faithful THE BEST gifts! Just last week, I hit Green Level and was blessed with the ability to shed my soft warm-blood skin. Check out these before and after pics—my acne is COMPLETELY gone! #CobraClear #WhiteheadsAreForWarmbloods

I’m looking to pick up some acolytes, and you’d be a natural. Let me know if you’re interested! And give my love to Jason and the kids. <3

XOXOXO,

Amy

(Continue Reading…)

[Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part novelette. Visit our previous post to read Part 1.]

Reading Dead Lips — Part 2

By Dustin Steinacker

They must have razed the entire village, Alex said carefully, rather than admit that ordinary people had killed the officers living here. Better for the city to appear a battle casualty.

“Why does it matter?” she managed. “Whether it was military or rebels?”

“Czir military all captured or killed. Nobody there left, but still guerrillas fighting. No need to inspire them.”

“But you know it was rebels.”

“Everybody knows. Propaganda.”

“Then why?” she pled. For understanding, for any way to put order to this. Questions of politics seemed so distant and sanitary to this charnel town before her. “Why the coverup?”

“We pretend not to. Same thing. Propaganda still works.”

These streets of death brought names back to her memory. Her friend, little Tibor, he of the harelip scar. The Valentins, who both shouted and struck their children and made Noe glad for her gentle mother. Petr Mátyás, an oddly well-to-do peddler who’d had the misfortune of settling in Óste just before the end. A nice man with a hard-to-place accent who loved a foolish pun.

All dead or enslaved or worse. This was a graveyard, as much as any she’d visited coming here.

Snap. (Continue Reading…)

Reading Dead Lips

By Dustin Steinacker

Nouelle had always thought that she’d feel a sense of homecoming when she returned to the country that had birthed her. But after eight years, it was already a foreign land. Her first day back she risked a hostel, near the border, and the shower water was wrong; it stung her flesh with its force but never seemed to rinse off the lather. The loudest voices in the common room all spoke the occupiers’ dialects and she stayed silent rather than mark herself as a Czir. The cooking smells too were unfamiliar.

After that she slept out of doors.

She was wiser than she’d been when last she breathed Czir air (this she told herself, and sometimes she believed it too). She now knew occult sciences, after all, and had acquainted herself with the many stages of corpse-stink. So yes, she was standing on ground that she’d had to sell herself to escape, occupied ground. But she was also prepared. She’d lost everything she ever had in this country and now, dammit, she had the chance to take just one thing back.

Somewhere within these borders was her sister. (Continue Reading…)