“SHE SHOULD BE HERE by now,” said Jack, putting aside the bone saw she had been carefully sharpening. Her eyes went to the open door, and to the moor beyond. Alexis did not appear. “I told her we were going to have supper at nightfall.”
Alexis had been granted permission to stay the night at the windmill. It would have been considered improper, but with Dr. Bleak to serve as a chaperone, there was no question of her virtue being imperiled. (Not that her parents had any illusions about her virtue, or about Jack’s intentions toward their daughter. Despite Alexis’s status as one of the resurrected, they were both relieved to know that she had found someone who would care for her when they were gone.)
Dr. Bleak looked up from his own workbench. “Perhaps she stopped to pick flowers.”
“On the moor?” Jack stood, grabbing her jacket from the back of the chair. “I’m going to go find her.”
“Patience, Jack—”
“Is an essential tool of the scientific mind; raise no corpse before its time. I know, sir. But I also know that this isn’t like Alexis. She’s never late.” Jack looked at her mentor, expression pleading.
Dr. Bleak sighed. “Ah, for the energy of the young,” he said. “Yes, you may go and find her. But be quick about it. The festivities will not begin until you finish your chores.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack. She yanked on her gloves, and then she was off, running for the door and down the garden path. Dr. Bleak watched her until she had dwindled to almost nothing in the distance. Only then did he close his eyes. He had lived in the Moors for a very long time. He knew, even better than Jack did, that lateness was rarely, if ever, as innocent as it seemed.
“Let her be alive,” he whispered, and recognized his words for the useless things they were as soon as he heard them. He sat still, waiting. The truth would come clear soon enough.
* * *
IT WAS THE RED that caught Jack’s attention first.
The Moors were far more complex than they had seemed to her on that first night, when she had been young and innocent and unaware of her own future. They were brown, yes, riddled with dead and dying vegetation. Every shade of brown that there was could be found on the Moors. They were also bright with growing green and mellow gold, and with the rainbow pops of flowers—yellow marigold and blue heather and purple wolf’s bane. Hemlock bloomed white as clouds. Foxglove spanned the spectrum of sunset. The Moors were beautiful in their own way, and if their beauty was the quiet sort that required time and introspection to be seen, well, there was nothing wrong with that. The best beauty was the sort that took some seeking.
But nothing red grew on the Moors. Not even strawberries, or poisonous mushrooms. Those were found only on the outskirts of the forest held by the werewolves, or in private gardens, like Dr. Bleak’s. The Moors were neutral territory, of a sort, divided between so many monsters that they could not bear to bleed. Red was an anomaly. Red was aftermath.
Jack began to walk faster.
The closer she got, the clearer the red became. It was like it had exploded outward from a single source, shed with wanton delight by whoever held the knife. There was a body at the center of it, a softly curving body, lush of breast and generous of hip. A body … a body …
Jack stopped dead, eyes fixed not on the body but on the basket that had fallen at the very edge of the carnage. It had landed on its side. Some of the bread was splattered with blood, but the apples had already been red; there was no way of telling whether they were clean. No way in the world.
Slowly, Jack sank to her knees in the bracken, for once utterly heedless of the possibility of mud or grass stains. Her eyes bulged as she stared at the basket, never looking any further than that; never looking at the things she didn’t want to see.
Red. So much red.
When she began to howl, it was the senseless keen of someone who has been pushed past their breaking point and taken refuge in the comforting caverns of their own mind. In the village, people gathered their children close, shivering, and closed the windows. In the castle, the Master stirred in his sleep, troubled for reasons he could not name.
In the windmill, Dr. Bleak rose, sorrow etched into his features, and reached for his bag. Things from here would continue as they would. It was too late to control or prevent them. All he could do was hope that they’d survive.
* * *
JACK WAS STILL ON her knees in the bracken when Dr. Bleak walked up behind her, his boots crunching dry stalks underfoot. He made no effort to soften the sound of his footsteps; he wanted her to hear him coming.
She didn’t react. Her eyes were fixed on the apples. So red. So red.
“The blood should get darker as it dries,” she said, voice dull. “I’ll be able to tell which ones are dirty, then. I’ll be able to tell which ones can be saved.”
“I’m sorry, Jack,” said Dr. Bleak softly. He didn’t share her squeamishness—understandable, given her youth, and how much she had cared for Alexis. He allowed his eyes to travel the length of the dead girl’s body, noting the deep cuts, the blood loss, the places where it looked as if the flesh had been roughly hacked away.
Second resurrections were always difficult, even when the body was in perfect condition. Alexis … She was so damaged that he wasn’t sure he could succeed, or that she would still be herself if he did. Sometimes, the twice-dead came back wrong, unstoppable monstrosities of science.
“I will, if you ask me to,” he said abruptly. “You know I will. But I will expect you to help me if it goes wrong.”
Jack raised her head, slowly turning to look at her mentor. “I don’t care if it goes wrong,” she said. “I just … It can’t end this way.”
“Then follow the blood, Jack. If a beast has taken her heart, I’ll want it intact. The more of the original flesh we have to work with, the higher our chances will be of bringing her back whole.” That was true, but it was also a convenient distraction. Dr. Bleak knew enough about bodies to know that Alexis would reveal more injuries when she was lifted. The dead always did. If he could spare Jack the sight …
Sparing Jack had never been his goal. If the girl was to survive in the Moors, she needed to understand the world into which she had fallen. But there was preparing her for the future, and then there was being cruel. He was perfectly happy to do the former. He would never do the latter. Not if he could help it.
“Yes, sir,” said Jack, and staggered to her feet, beginning to follow the drips and drops of blood across the open ground. She had spent so many years looking for the slightest hint of a mess that she had absolutely no trouble following a blood trail. She was so focused on her feet that she didn’t hear Dr. Bleak grunt as he hoisted Alexis’s body up and onto his shoulders, turning to carry her back toward the distant shadow of the windmill.
Jack walked, on and on, until she reached the village wall. The gate was open. The gate was often open during the high part of the day. The sound of raised voices from inside was more unusual. It sounded like people were shouting.
She stepped through the gate. The noise took on form, meaning:
“Beast!”
“Monster! Monster!”
“Kill the witch!”
Jack stopped where she was, frowning as she tried to make sense of the scene. What looked like half the village was standing in the square, fists raised in anger. Some of them held knives or pitchforks; one enterprising soul had even stopped to find himself a torch. She would have admired the can-do spirit, if not for the figure at the center of their mob:
Jill, a confused expression on her face, blood gluing her gauzy dress to her body, so that she looked like she had just gone for a swim. Her arms were red to the elbow; her hands were terrors, slathered so thickly in red that it was as if they were gloved.
Ms. Chopper pushed her way through the throng, shrieking, “Demon!” before she flung an egg at Jill. It hit the front of her dress and burst, adding a smear of yellow to the red.
Jill’s eyes widened. “You can’t do that,” she said, in a surprisingly childish voice. “I’m the Master’s daughter. You can’t do that to me. It’s not allowed.”
“You’re not his daughter yet, you foolish girl,” snapped a new voice—a familiar one. Both Jack and Jill turned in unconscious unison to see Mary standing at the edge of the crowd, blocking Jill from the castle. “I told you to be patient. I told you that your time would come. You just had to rush things, didn’t you? I told him he did you no favors by cosseting you.”
“You told me to be ruthless!” protested Jill, balling her bloody hands into fists. “You said that he needed me to be ruthless!”
“The Master feeds from the village, but he protects them as well,” said Mary coldly. “You have killed without his permission and without his blessing, and you are no vampire; you had no right.” She lifted her chin slightly, shifting her attention to the crowd. “The Master has revoked the protection of his household. Do with her as you will.”
A low, dangerous rumble spread through the crowd. It was the sound a beast made immediately before it attacked.
Perhaps Jack could have been forgiven if she had turned her back on her bewildered sister, still dressed in her lover’s blood; if she had walked away. These were extraordinary circumstances, after all, and while Jack was an extraordinary girl, she was only seventeen. It would have been understandable of her to hold a grudge, even if she might have regretted it later.
She looked at Jill and remembered a twelve-year-old in blue jeans, short hair spiking up at the back, trying to talk her into having an adventure. She remembered how afraid she’d been to leave her sister behind, even if it had meant saving them both. She remembered Gemma Lou, when they were small—so small!—telling them to look out for each other, even when they were angry, because family was a thing that could never be replaced once it was thrown away.
She remembered loving her sister, once, a long, long time ago.
The crowd had been watching Jill for signs that she was preparing to run away. They hadn’t been expecting Jack to push her way into the center of their ring, grab Jill’s hand, and run. Surprise was enough to get the two girls to the edge of the crowd, Jack hauling her sister in her wake, struggling not to let the blood make her lose her grip. Jill was strangely pliant, not resisting Jack’s efforts to pull her along. It was like she was in shock.
Becoming a murderer and getting disowned in the same day will do that, thought Jack dizzily, and kept on running, even as the first sounds of pursuit began behind them. All that mattered now was getting away. Everything else could happen later.