23.
Rose
The silence might have been the worst part.
It was in the still of the night that Rose seemed to feel it worst of all, the quiet stretching like a heavy, suffocating blanket over her. She lay in the darkness, looking up at the ceiling, and wondering if it would be like this forever. It had been months, and she’d wondered, based on Tamhas’s comments, if maybe, just maybe, the village would start speaking to her again.
So far, though…it just hadn’t happened.
Nighttimes were the toughest part. She would have figured it’d be walking down the street. But it wasn’t. The hardest part was to lie awake in the wee small hours, thinking about the future she didn’t have any longer, at least not here, where she’d expected to. Thinking about Graham, about her mam and granddad, and wondering what she could have done that was so wrong—
Rose tensed. There was a sound in the night, faint and distant, like a bird hooting, or perhaps squawking. It was a bit of an odd noise, not one she normally heard at night. Birds slept at night, didn’t they? Unless they were owls?
Perhaps she just usually wasn’t awake at these hours. That was the real challenge. She’d gotten into a pattern where, with nothing to do during the days, she’d sleep until whenever she felt like. And then take a nap in the afternoon. And why not? It wasn’t as though she had anything else going on.
No friends.
No appointments.
No future.
She rustled against the sheet, chasing sleep again and failing. She put her face against the pillow, seeking a cool spot and failing to find one, as though every inch of the pillowcase had been heated in the oven. Rose let out a little sigh, adjusting her thin white t-shirt and shorts. They rode up uncomfortably, and she considered simply tossing them given that it felt stifling in here.
An idea occurred, and she got up on her knees, bouncing against the spring of the bed, feeling a little like she was on the moon from the bounce. She threw open the window a few inches, and the night air came in with real chill. Rose shivered, her skin instantly rising in gooseflesh, even from so small a gap as she’d made.
A small trill of delight ran through her, and she slipped back under the covers with the closest thing to a smile she’d worn in months. Winter was on its way, she could feel it in the air, though it hadn’t come quite yet. There’d been a snowfall or two, sure, but they hadn’t stuck, and had melted away shortly after arrival, which was strange. It wouldn’t have been unusual for them to have a few inches by now, but all they had thus far was a nice, brisk chill to the air.
The wind picked up and rushed into the room like an uninvited guest—except she had opened the window, so she supposed it was invited after all. Either way, she pulled the blankets up to her chin and shivered in mildest pleasure, the room infused with the scent of the outdoors, of the coming cold, of—
Another high, trilling bird caw came, louder now, and Rose froze in her bed. It sounded closer, didn’t it? Or had opening the window just made it seem so?
Rose took a deep breath and watched it appear in front of her in a heavy mist as she exhaled. This had always been her favorite time of year, going toward the days of frozen chill, heading toward Christmas, toward that time when everyone on the village street seemed to greet each other with a little extra joy, as though it were a reminder of how fortunate they all were to have one another—
That didn’t seem likely to happen this year though, did it?
This year she’d be walking the streets by herself, if this new tradition continued. No one would look her in the eye. They’d all rush away, grabbing their children—the few there were—and pretending she was a disease carrier in the street.
No, it was best—
The hawk trilled again, loud, almost earsplitting, and Rose stirred, craning her head back to try and look out the window. There was nothing but black and starry sky above, no sign of this bird that seemed to be continuously trying to—
There it went again. Loud, like it was trying to—
A door slammed. Then another.
There was movement in the streets; Rose could hear it through the open window. Someone was out there—now another someone—more doors were opening, and voices melded together in the night.
“What do we do?”
“Is this it?”
“—now come to us?”
“—thought we had more time—”
“—not ready.”
It was a cacophony of action, like every house in the village was emptying its contents, its residents. Someone was ringing a bell, loud and clanging, and it hurt Rose’s ears. She’d only heard them ring it very occasionally, when there was an emergency, perhaps.
What, then, was this?
She got up on her knees and stuck her head out in the window, grimacing against the cold chill that caught her as she did so. The night’s darkness was nearly complete, a few exterior lights on houses casting shadows over the trees in her garden. The buzz of conversation was thick in the air, so thick it was like a stew of melted rubber, almost impossible to do anything with.
Graham’s voice drifted to her through the din. “What do we do?”
Rose frowned, the heavy lines creasing her brow. What was this?
A door slammed closer to her, and she heard her granddad speak, audible by dint of his proximity to her. “All right, then, you lot—”
“It’s happening.” Hamilton’s cool, calm voice split the night like an axe split cord wood.
Her granddad hesitated, probably contemplating his answer. “Right now?” he asked. The conversational buzz was fading to silence.
“Yes,” Hamilton said. “Right now.” A pause. “Where is she?”
“Inside,” Rose’s mam answered, strong, resolute. Had she gone out with Granddad?
Just what were they talking about? “She” was inside—?
Oh.
Rose.
“Come on then, lads,” Hamilton said, grimly, and the quiet spurred to life once more. “And lasses,” he added, as though in apology to someone who’d taken offense.
Rose could feel the change in the atmosphere of the house this time as the door opened, as though a groan ran through the entirety of her home from the change in pressure, the shift in the wood frame hidden inside those plaster walls. She was still half-out the window, listening, when she heard the footsteps coming toward her door.
She scrambled, like an animal panicking at a predator’s approach. They were coming for her, many of them, strong, confident footsteps echoing down the hall like thunder on the approach of a storm. Rose’s mouth went instantly dry, and her skin turned colder than any blustery winter wind could have managed in the space of a second.
Her feet rustled against the sheets as she started to propel herself out the window. Her only thought was of escape, and she knew not from what. There was only the threat of something, of the villagers coming after her, the target of their ire of late. Their scapegoat, they had alienated her so effectively that if she’d heard this entire conversation only a few months earlier, she’d have thought they were planning a party for her.
Now, her stomach roiled in blind panic as she lunged for the window. The only party she reckoned they were planning for her now was the kind where her neck would be at the end of a thickly knotted rope while her feet danced a good margin above the ground.
Rose hit the window sill on her way out, lower back thumping as she slid roughly against the window. She hadn’t raised it high enough; it wasn’t as though she’d planned to do anything other than get a little breeze. She certainly hadn’t planned to use it as an escape exit—not when she was in her nightwear. Her chest scraped against the sill on the way out and her lower back ached from where it had made hard contact with the window at the squeeze point of her pelvis and her arse. She’d gotten just a little too deep at that part of her body, and she couldn’t turn it sideways to get out like she had her head.
“What’s that?” someone said, muffled, through the door.
Rose felt a note of panic. They were almost—
Someone threw open the door, a booming noise that was like the arrival of death itself, and she looked back to see shadowy figures through the dirty glass. They were in her room now, standing inside, and Rose was here, briefly trapped with her damned arse stuck…
“Get her!” someone shouted, and someone else shouted back inside, thunderously loud, “She’s trying to escape out the window!” There was a frenzy of motion inside as Rose tried to wriggle her way through, out, away from this shite, blind panic settling over her now even as strong hands grabbed at her legs, clamping on and trying to yank her back. She kicked out madly, trying to free herself, but they had grips like iron, and they were on her calves, her thighs, and holding on tight enough to bruise the skin.
Someone yanked a hand away, and then another did, and a brief thrill of hope ran through her. Her powers! They couldn’t hold on, not if they wanted to—
“She’s burning me!” someone shouted. The voice was low and deep.
“Use the bloody sheets! Get a hand on her!”
Footsteps were coming around the house now. Rose’s stomach seethed. She struggled against the window even harder, and it slid up a few inches, allowing a little margin for her to try and slip out, butt bumping it again as it hit the widest point of her arse cheeks, pelvis thumping against the sill on the down side. And then—
She was free, worked loose of it, and tipping toward the earth and a good drop a few feet below. She could see the dark ground start to rush up at her—
Someone grabbed her by the ankle, arresting her momentum as she started to tip forward. This grip was strong, but strange, a cloth texture wrapped over the fingers. Another came a moment later on her other thigh, fighting hard against her body’s forward motion.
Rose hung there, almost out the window, and those grips dug in tighter to her skin. She cried out, unaware that she was even whimpering now, trying to escape this—this—whatever it was.
They seized her and dragged her back through the window, all pretense of being gentle dispensed with. She struggled as they reeled her back in, and someone punched her in the back after she’d rattled the window fearfully by bucking against it. The glass shattered and showered her with a few flecks that cut at her, but she ignored the pain. She was crying already. Someone threw the window frame open full, and now there were enough cloth-clad hands on her that they dragged her back in easily.
“Get a sheet over her!” someone shouted, and the other shadowy figures worked to make it happen. A sheet was thrown over her immediately, and she saw her mam’s face before it came over her, and had the dim realization that her mam was, in fact, the one who’d done it.
The hits that followed were breathtaking. “Don’t kill her!” someone offered as guidance between the blows. She was screaming, crying, trying to fight back but not having an ounce of luck. She couldn’t see except dimly, through the cotton, and the hits—they kept coming, hard and fast against her sides, her back. Something broke, and the fight went out of Rose, and she lay on her bed, covered in a sheet, crying and sobbing, face trying to suck breaths through a cloth wet with her own spittle.
“Drag her out,” a voice commanded.
It was granddad’s.
Rose’s mouth was frozen open in a long, whimpering scream. It came in a low whine though, instead of a fearful, forceful cry. They carried her out, people on every side like it was a funeral procession, carrying her sheet as though it were to be her casket.
Dark thoughts swirled around her. Maybe this was the end. Maybe they’d had enough of her now, and they were going to just get over with the things they’d been thinking about behind her back for months.
It would almost…almost…be welcome.
They dragged her outside, the slight warmth of the house giving way to another round of cold chills that filtered through the sheet. She expected cheers of triumph and jeers of hatred from the assembled townsfolk when they brought her out. But it was silent instead, the quiet hum of any conversation simply dying when they brought her into the middle of the crowd and then pulled back the sheet.
Her mam was standing right there, one of her “pallbearers,” stone-faced and uncaring.
Granddad was at the other side, and his lips were pursed, face knitted with worry. “I’m sorry,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he meant it or not.
Rose was on her haunches in a sea of legs, a sea of people staring down at her. Her shoulders were heaving up and down involuntarily with her fear, her eyes darting to see implacable gazes shining down on her like beacons from above, watching, judging…
The hawk cawed once again, louder now that she was out in the open air, the frosty cold rolling across her skin, her shorts and thin tank top inadequate to protect her from the frigid late autumn weather.
“We’ve got her,” Miriam Shell crowed from somewhere behind her, and laughed like a great crone, some mixture of relief sprinkled in with…fear? Rose wasn’t sure she heard it right, her heart was pounding so hard.
Rose was crying, her nose running as the wetness froze on her cheeks and her lip. She tried not to show weakness but it wouldn’t be held back. Not even here, among these people who hated her. The pain and terror was pressing in hard, like razors against her, and all she could do was look around at them as they stood like forbidding statues, all of them looking down at her.
“It’s coming,” her granddad said, looking around in the darkness.
“Can you feel it?” her mam asked, face frozen like the chill had dragged it into a death mask, white as pale snow.
“Nae, but it’s about to happen,” he said, rubbing his hand against his chest. He glanced down at Rose.
The hawk called again, and it echoed over the village. Rose looked up, peering at the bird of prey. It was circling, and she wondered if it was a bit out of place here, and at this time of night.
Graham edged into view, not looking at her but for a brief second, and then he looked away. “I wish we could just get this over. If it’s going to happen—” He didn’t finish his thought, and no one else finished it for him.
Rose swallowed, feeling like a boulder was trapped in her throat. She wished it would get over with too. If they were going to kill her…
Her friends, her family, her neighbors—
…she wished they’d just be on about it. Hang her from a gibbet and be done. The chill was biting, and it wasn’t just the weather. She’d lived here all her life, and now these people—she’d once have thought her people—had turned on her.
To the last.
Her granddad tensed at her shoulder, and she looked back to see him stricken, his face a pained shade. A grunt behind her jerked her attention away, and then someone cried out.
“It’s coming!” Hamilton shrieked, and he lunged through the crowd at her, hand outstretched.
Rose let a little shriek of her own as he reached for her, hand open, palm extended. Someone else grabbed her from behind, landing a heavy, sweaty palm on the back of her neck. Someone seized her hard by the arm, someone else by the back, lifting her. Someone grabbed at her back, clawing at her. Their hand pressed against her and their nails dug in to rip her apart—
She was lifted high now, up in the air, and everyone wanted to clutch at her, to rip at her, fingers digging in like they meant to tear her apart. Her mam found purchase somewhere in there, she could tell by the cold fingers at the small of her back. Her shirt was ripped off without ceremony, there one moment and gone the next, and replacing the cloth were a dozen hands lifting her up, frigidly cold on the small of her back. They pulled at her legs, her arms, ready to tear her to pieces—
Rose screamed, and screamed, and—
She was held there, up in the air, above the heads of the crowd, the freezing night air biting at her belly and chest and throat and face and toes and fingers, and what felt like a thousand grabbing hands on her body as she was trapped there, lifted into the air with no power of her own. She kicked her legs and it did nothing; hands caught her again, anchoring to her as they came back down.
Rose let out another wild scream, and someone hit her in the back of the head. It was like the time she’d leaned over to see what was in the bottom of Granddad’s cedar chest, and the lid had come crashing down on her. She saw stars then, a flash in the cold night, just as she did now.
The back of her head ached where she’d been struck, and thoughts were slower to come. Her mouth was cottony dry and the hands—they were everywhere—clutching at her, grabbing at her, holding to her, her skin burning where they touched…
Burning.
Where they.
Touched?
Now other screams were filling the night, and the crowd was wild and surging, Rose carried on them, her voice blistered and raw. Her skin itself felt like it was on fire, and she looked over to see Mam staring up at her, mouth open in a scream of her own. Rose could almost feel her there, her presence, and then suddenly Mam’s eyes went dark and her body went limp. She reeled away, gone, somehow; Rose knew, could feel her—her entirely—inside the mind, now, and someone else stepped into the void and laid a cold, rough hand on Rose’s skin by her ribs.
They were falling away like dead flies now. She watched Hamilton’s eyes roll back in his head hard, death come for him, and he fell over. Graham’s eyes were flittering up, only the whites visible save for the peak of his spasms, when a tiny edge of the pupils could be seen, a hint of the brown which she’d once thought she could stare into forever. Then he fainted away limply and crashed, and someone else surged in, trampling over his body to lay hands on her.
“Had to be this…way…” her granddad said over the screams and cries, and she looked over at him just as he keeled over, and she knew he was dead too, his hand leaving her body as he fell. Her skin felt as if it were aflame, hard fire running over the flesh. She half-expected her skin to be glowing in the night like a midnight fire’s last embers, but she was as pale as ever, and nearer to the ground now.
A pitched cry came from behind her, and somehow she knew Miriam Shell had fallen, her day now done, and the stray thought passed through her mind—was that what she had sounded like with Graham?
Rose’s very head was splitting, her mind now lit afire, as though someone had gone and crammed too much in its bounds. There was a mad whirl to it all, a very mad whirl that made her wonder how she could possibly endure this feeling—this burning feeling—even one minute more—
And then it stopped, and she realized she was on the ground, or near to it. She rolled and found a body, another body, bodies piled on top of others. She rolled and saw her granddad’s face, still in death, eyes open and staring back at her, and she wanted to scream, but something else shut that instinct down. Her mam was just there, buried under another body, face invisible, but there was a clear view of her sleeve that Rose could hardly forget. She knew her mam’s wardrobe, every stitch.
The hawk sounded again, and the riot of noise in Rose’s head stilled, listening for it. There was a raging energy in her mind, an indistinct mass of howling that Rose could scarcely make out between the screaming of her nerves, ever single inch of her flesh howling at the feeling it’d just been overwhelmed with. She’d never felt anything like it, that burning feeling. The closest thing she could think of was—
You dirty little harlot.
The voice burst out of the din in a distinct shock of outrage.
Rose stopped dead, her slow writhe stunned into quiet and stillness by that voice that sounded like a bullhorn out of the heavens.
It was her mam’s voice.
We have to go now, her granddad said, and it was as though he were there, next to her, or louder, even. She rolled to look and—
There was no one there. Above, the hawk was the only thing that was moving, and it was circling lower, like a carrion bird over a corpse.
Rose tried to push herself up and failed.
Come on then, you.
Move it, girl.
Useless thing.
We have to go, now!
The cacophony was deafening, a chorus of voices with an utter lack of unity. They screamed and squalled in indistinct directions, and Rose clapped her hands over her ears, cold fingers against frigid lobes, trying to shut it out but only making it louder in the process.
Go, you stupid girl!
Get us out of here!
Her mam’s voice cracked through it all, sullen and resentful and filled with icy hate. Idiot child. I should have thrown you off a cliff the moment you were born.
Rose got to her feet, wobbling on unsteady legs. Somehow that voice drove her, and she looked up at the hawk, which sounded once more and then—
Something long and sharp buried itself in the bird, appearing as though by magic, a skewer straight through the creature. It arced and fell, thudding to the ground just beyond her house.
Go, you idiot! someone shouted in her head, and Rose staggered forward, trying to find the fallen bird. She traced a path around the house, but when she came to where she thought it might have landed—
Tamhas lay there, a long spear sticking through his middle, and his breath coming in sharp gasps. Rose stood there, at the edge of the house, and then took a tentative step toward him. He met her eyes, and gasped, and motioned her forward.
She came, strangely drawn to him as he lay there, dying. She knew just by looking at him that his time was short. The spear, whatever it was, had pierced him clean through when he’d been a bird. It hadn’t stopped piercing him now that he was a man again. He raised a hand to her, and something urged her forward, a thousand voices in her head telling her to take his hand.
Rose took his hand, and knelt next to him. The smell of his blood as it pumped out onto the cold ground filled her nostrils, metallic.
His hand was cold against hers, another against her this night. “Needed your…help…” Tamhas whispered, and when he spoke blood oozed down his lips. She cradled his hand, thinking of the kindness he’d shown her so recently. Speaking to a body was a strange and small kindness, yet it was the only one she’d received of late. “You’re the only one who can…” His eyes fixed, pain setting in from her touch, and she started to pull away, but he clutched her hand, like the others, shaking in the night against her skin.
He didn’t last long, his shuddering done, his blood stilled. And Rose dropped his hand, feeling him this time, another voice in the chorus, but not loudly. Like a pebble in a pond, the ripples coming out from it, but the rock itself so small and indistinct as to be lost in the volume of water.
Now go, you idiot! someone shouted in her mind.
Go! Go!
Go!
Get, you fool!
Run!
Rose staggered to her feet and did run, making it to a thicket about fifty yards away before she collapsed into them, leafless branches stinging her, hiding herself from sight and feeling the jagged pains of the night like swallowed glass, writhing around inside her with all these new voices. She whispered, almost, to herself, sobbed quietly, even as the chorus of howls screamed in her head to—
Move!
Go, stupid!
Get out of here!
You’re going to kill us all!
But they were already dead, weren’t they? Rose wondered as she knelt there on the frozen ground. It seemed impossible that they weren’t; she felt them in her mind, that frightful sick feeling that she’d—
Well, she’d—
She’d eaten the souls of every single person in her village.
And they’d bloody well lined up and forced her to do it.
The first voice in the night was like a stilling calm, icy and laden with contempt for everything. She couldn’t see the speaker himself, but somehow she knew of him immediately, a vision thrust into her eyes about what he looked like—mop of wild, dark hair and shadowy eyes, his face filled with a barely veiled look of contempt. Tamhas’s voice supplied the name, Weissman, and Rose listened to him speak in the quiet night.
“…turned out pretty well, Raymond,” Weissman said with dripping contempt. “This is the last cloister. And look at ‘em! Other than the shifter, they’re all…” He strolled into the middle of the town, Rose watching him from behind the bushes. “…well, good and dead.”
“People don’t just keel over and die like this,” the second man said, following slowly behind Weissman. Tamhas seemed to hand his name to her: Raymond. He must have overheard it while watching as a falcon.
“Au contraire, Raymondo,” Weissman said, all full of vicious energy, like he was glorying in the pile of dead Rose had crawled out of. “And you should know, you lil’ Hades scamp, you.” Weissman spoke in an American accent, and the lack of formality between them told Rose everything she needed to know about who was boss here. “How many times have we walked into a scene such as this, dead everywhere—I mean, this is your raison d’etre, Ray. This is what you do, keel people over and die ‘em.”
“I didn’t kill these people,” Raymond said softly. She couldn’t see him well, but he seemed like he was…struggling with the bodies, all piled together. Rose could see the corpse of Ronnie Gordon, his youthful face already adopting a grey pallor in death. Someone had lifted him up to touch her, too, and she could hear him seething inside her, slithering in the back of her mind like an angry little snake.
“Hm,” Weissman said, not really seeming too interested. “Well, they’re dead, and that’s what counts. I’m thinking…mass suicide. Like Heaven’s Gate.”
“I was trying to pull them from their bodies, and then, suddenly, they were just…gone,” Raymond said, with soft regret.
“Who cares?” Weissman called into the still night, like the cawing of a crow, black hair like a shining shadow, brighter than the dark around him. “They are dead. Mission accomplished. Let’s move on with our lives like they have. No. Wait. Not exactly like they have, obviously…”
“You’re going to care if a certain succubus who’s been foiling your London operations got ahold of old souls like these, some of whom might know what her power can actually do if she were to…unleash it.” Raymond’s soft voice was like a grenade exploding in the night, and it shut Weissman up hard.
Rose’s ears pricked up. What was this about a succubus?
“I honestly did think Sienna Nealon would be here for this,” Weissman said, and now he was quieter. “That she’d try and stop us, at least.” He laughed bitterly, but it sounded hollow. “My spies still put her in London, hunkering down and waiting for us to come back. I guess she doesn’t give a damn about Scotland, but then…who in London does, really?” He cackled, but again it lacked any real feeling other than a malice that made Rose shiver in the night. “So…she ain’t here. It was probably just poison.”
“Do you see any cups?” Raymond’s soft question was laced with accusation.
“Shut the hell up, Raymond. You’re stepping all over my triumphal mood, you downer lowmarket jackass.” Weissman seethed in the dark. “Can’t you just let me have this moment? If I could stop time to savor this minute, this second, without pissing off Akiyama, I would do it just so I could breathe in this triumph. We have wiped out every cloister in Europe. Every one. They are all dead, all of them—with that, you know, glaring exception of the country of Revelen, but who cares about them? We’ll get to them. Sovereign will get to them,” Weissman amended. “But Europe—the old redoubt of metahumankind? It’s ours, Ray.” Weissman slapped him, genially, across the back of the neck. It didn’t seem very friendly, even to Rose, who had just been handled much more roughly. “Now let’s go deal with your not-so-great niece and put this whole continent away, okay?”
They started away, Weissman again in the lead, and Raymond giving one last subtle look around. He seemed to stare into the dark, and then, placidly, quietly, gave an indistinct wave at the darkness, but not at her. As though he could not see her, but somehow suspected—or knew—she was there. Then he, too, turned and started after Weissman.
“Something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Ray,” Weissman said, their voices receding into the dark. “Why can’t you use your souls like Sovereign does? Seems like a thing that you’d want to do. Power untold, right at your fingertips? Why not seize it, Ray ol’ boy?” Weissman adopted a British accent—a terrible one—for the last bit.
“Because it’s forbidden,” Raymond said, raising his voice slightly, as if trying to project the message backward, to Rose. “After Hades died, his offspring were warned, in no uncertain terms—do not seek this power, or you will be annihilated, swift and sure. And they did some annihilating, too. My brothers and sisters—”
“Yeah, I got the story from Sovereign,” Weissman said, already sounding like he was losing interest. “Still…haven’t you ever at least been tempted? I know you’ve got to have some serious souls rattling around in there, Ray. Why not just…keep it in reserve, you know?”
The answer came back, muffled, not given for her benefit: “Because my father never taught me.”
Weissman was quiet for a moment, then let out a peal of laughter. “Daddy issues? Join the club, Ray.” And they vanished into the night.
Rose huddled behind the bushes, listening. They were talking still, in the distance, and she could hear them all the way up until they reached a vehicle and she heard the engine start. She sat there listening, until it faded from sound, from audible range, and was gone in the night.
When it was gone, she stood. The village was silent, dead.
And her mind…
…her head…
…was not.
The question, unasked, on her lips, was asked instead, in a dozen voices, in her mind, all at once, a cacophony of confusion and fear and worry:
What now?
We have to get away, her granddad said. Have to survive.
What if they come back?
We need to be elsewhere, her mam said.
Where do we go? they all asked.
Edinburgh, Tamhas said. We vanish. Blend in there. Wait. We’ll be safe in numbers.
Rose just stood, listening, buried in her own thoughts, the thoughts of the entire village.
You carry the fate of us all now, her mam said, seeping disgust. Try not to cock it up, you little whore.
You should get going, Tamhas said, a bit more kindly. You can take Miriam’s car.
Aye, Miriam said with loathing that was apparent, even in Rose’s head. The keys are in the house on a hook. She’s topped off.
“I…don’t know how to drive,” Rose said, muttering into the dark, speaking to herself? It felt so strange.
Miriam knows, Tamhas said. So now you know. You know everything we know, and can do everything we can do. Hamilton’s acting…my martial arts…it’s all at your disposal now. For the good of us all.
Did you hear what those two were talking about? Granddad asked, sounding a bit shrewd. About—
Her using our powers, Tamhas said, with some calculation of his own. Aye, I heard it. Sounds like something we should look into as well. I knew it was possible for Old Hades to do it, but…this is an added wrinkle, isn’t it? Explains why her kind— he didn’t put any meanness into it, like others in the village might have when talking about Rose —were so hated after he died. It became quite a stigma.
Aye, it’s a wrinkle, all right, mam said. But what’s my useless daughter going to do with our knowledge, our powers? Other than likely burn herself to death with Augie’s?
Tamhas was quiet, was calm, but when he spoke, a ripple of excitement ran through them all. Why…she’s going to get revenge, of course. For all of us. Because… And she could almost see him smile in the dark of her mind. …that’s our way.
*
Zack just stared, stared at the dead bodies, and a cold unrelated to the winter’s chill ran through him, top to bottom. “Oh…my…my God…”
“This…changes things somewhat,” Eve Kappler said in quiet voice, staring at the dead, and the girl who stood frozen in the middle of them, talking to voices in her head that they all could hear. “Weissman and Raymond killed her family.”
“They tried,” Gavrikov said, the Russian seeming to shiver in the chilly Scottish night. “But did you not see? The entire village sacrificed their own lives to Rose in order to save themselves from Raymond.”
“It’d be hard to miss that mass suicide disguised as a midnight wilding,” Harmon said, looking around a little cagily.
“This little scene bringing back memories?” Bjorn asked Harmon with a nasty sneer.
Harmon snapped around to look at him. “Why, yes, yes it is. When it comes to throwing yourself on a succubus to avoid death, I’m very familiar with the process. Though even I have to admit, watching an entire village mob make that choice at one time to avoid being drained by a Hades? Well…I thought I was jaded, that I’d seen it all.” He looked over the dead. “This…this is new.”
“It’s not new,” Zack said quietly. “This must have happened…seven years ago now. Look at Rose here. She’s a teenager, probably about Sienna’s age. She’s got that thin, reedy look, malnourished. Reminds me of—well, Sienna, when we pulled her out of her house.” He looked away. “It’s starting to alarm me the similarities I’m seeing between them.”
“Her people were wiped out by Century during the war,” Eve said, nodding at the dead. “How many voices do you suppose this scared, angry girl has in her head right at this moment?”
“This moment we’re viewing?” Harmon asked, looking away. “Or this moment right now, that we’re not living because we’re among the dead trapped in her head, reliving the tragic high points of her life?”
“Explains why is she crazy, no?” Gavrikov asked.
“The sooner we get out of here,” Harmon said, “the better.”
“Now all we need is a body to jump ship to,” Eve said. “And a chance to do so.”
“You assholes,” Zack said under his breath. “Bastian…you cannot possibly think this is a good idea?”
Bastian’s ghostly form was standing silent in the moonlight, arms folded across his massive chest. He stirred in the dark. “Leaving this place behind? Why wouldn’t we want to? This girl’s made a hell in her own mind and we’re living it with her. You bet your sweet bippy I’m getting out of here if I get a chance.”
“Sienna has been our—” Zack started.
“Horse?” Eve asked.
“Vessel?” Gavrikov threw in.
“Prison,” Bjorn said.
“Our home,” Zack said, “for lack of a better word. And you guys are talking about leaving her to die at the hands of this crazy—”
“She could already be dead,” Gavrikov said, but there was a slight catch in the way he said it. He swallowed, visibly, uneasily, “for all we know. We can’t see outside this place. She may well be a corpse, cold, and gone. Our loyalty should be to—”
“To her,” Zack said, feeling the fire of the feeling.
“I don’t think we’re going to come to a consensus on this,” Harmon said stiffly. “But if it makes you feel better, remember this moment. And when we jump ship, and I have access to my powers again, we can send this memory of Rose’s to Sienna, if she’s still alive.” He spoke smoothly up until he said her name, and there…he seemed to catch a little as well. “Maybe the knowledge of what Rose is, how she came to be…maybe it’ll help her. But beyond that…”
“This is not our fight anymore,” Eve said, eyes cool. “We’re not sharing a body with Sienna. We never really shared a mind with her. She has goals to save the world from all these dubious criminals, most of whom don’t actually want to destroy it. They just want to cut their little slice out of it, and I’m content to let them have that piece—so that I can have peace.” She shrugged. “Is that so bad?”
“It’s depraved indifference to human life,” Zack said. “Yes, that’s generally considered bad.”
“I’m not human,” Eve said. “Hell, I’m not even alive anymore.”
“I’m indifferent,” Bjorn said with a split grin, crooked at the corner of his mouth. “And depraved.”
Bastian broke his silence. “I’m not indifferent. But this mano a mano thing that Rose has got going with Sienna…” He looked right at Zack. “You think our place is in the middle of this fight? We’re on the bench at best, out of the arena at worst. Rose doesn’t want us, and Sienna…” He shrugged. “She’s not in our Area of Operations, okay? Much as you might want to help her…what do you really think we can do from here?” He looked around, as if taking the emotional temperature of the others, who were nodding in quiet. “It’s our obligation to bust out. After that, if you want to help Sienna…” He shrugged again. “Maybe we can get you your own body, and off you go.” He looked to Harmon for approval. “Right? Let the man pursue his interests.”
“We are going to need many fresh bodies,” Gavrikov said.
“I’m certainly not opposed to trying,” Harmon said smoothly. “I don’t wish Sienna any ill will…at this point.” He seemed to stiffen again. “If you want to go help her once we’re out…I won’t stop you. Just don’t expect me to get involved. Rose is a small threat to everyone else—”
“She’s killed five thousand people, man,” Zack said, disgust welling within him. “That’s not a small threat and that’s not a small number—”
“It is in the long history of mankind,” Harmon cut him off. “You want to get involved? You may. Leave me out, all right?” He looked around, caught a few nods. “Leave us out of it, I should say. Because it looks to me like a grudge match. Like Rose powered up to kill Sienna. What’s she going to do once she’s done? Hm?” He paused, waiting for an answer Zack didn’t have to give. “Probably nothing.”
She will not stop, a quiet voice seemed to whisper in the wind.
“Oh, good,” Eve said dryly, “the disembodied voice again. Look me in the eye when you speak to me, voice.” She looked around, as if expecting something to jump out of the shadowy bushes. “Hm? Or are you a coward?”
“Yes,” came a voice as a silhouette slipped out of the dark, appearing before them as if shimmering like falling water. His face was clear, handsome even, and the earnestness that had been there before was replaced by eyes that were dark and shadowed.
Graham.
“So you are in here with us,” Zack said, looking him right in the eye. There was a sadness there, one that hadn’t been present when last he’d seen Graham, in this very memory, grabbing hold of Rose and letting her rip his soul out of his body to save himself.
Graham just looked at each of them in turn, and then stared at Rose, still huddled in the bushes. As they watched she stood, turning, and started down the lane toward Miriam Shell’s house, as if spurred to life by their discussion of her. She wobbled, unsteady on her legs, but gained strength with each step. She avoided the bodies, picked her way around them, and disappeared into the night behind a house that was freshly painted and shone blue in the moonlight.
“This…” Graham’’s voice was quiet, full of sadness, and some strange, foreboding menace. “This is not all.” He looked at each of them in turn, and Zack could see in his eyes a pain, a callousing to his soul, a wounding that years in Rose’s mind had left him with—something that Zack himself did not feel, could not feel, even after years of his own imprisonment in Sienna, a longer sentence than Graham’s.
And it worried him.
“This…” Graham said, and it seeped into Zack like the rising chill of Scottish winter as the wind ran through, rustling the bushes around them, “was just the beginning…”