--
Bodies. Dead bodies. There was no way out. I gasped for breath. A corpse lay over my face, another below. Dead slack shapes wretchedly warm and suffocating. There was no way out of this black coffin. They buried me alive with dead men touching me. I clawed and kicked and hit hard walls and ceiling above. It did not open. I screamed and there was nobody to hear. The jagged rents of it pierced my head.
After screaming it out and scraping at the metal coffin there was only trying to breathe in the tiny space. I'd kicked still-warm flesh of the dead bodies. Still-warm. You're wrong. They're the same. I reached down again and grasped a wrist—too small to be Misha's and probably Imogen's. There was a steady pulse. I could hear them breathe if I listened. They felt no pain nor anything else.
It was impossible to tell what time had passed, but we were in the trunk of a car. Most probably Meera's—not Meera, Meskah's—grey car. There was some air left. I breathed more slowly. All three bodies were here: Misha's bulk, the shape of Erin's face, and Imogen's wrist. All three breathed softly and steadily.
She is Meskah of the blood-eyed Moirai and she has the power to deprive people of their senses. Her twin brother Ismail is the torturer.
I reached around in the inside of the car, pushing the bodies out of the way while they slept until I found the lever to release the trunk. It was slow work and the sticky sweat from flesh a miserable heat—and they would not stop touching me. I feared this. At last there was a freedom when I kicked it in.
I fell onto shrub-spotted sand in the golden light of afternoon drawing to an end in orange-tinted clouds beautiful to see. There was no one in sight. I heard the sound of waves and saw the sea close, the rock of Akalat on the horizon. A place I knew from Monty's father's fishing, very close to the beach. There was not one conscious breath from anyone human—but someone human would have come for the noise already. Someone not human would have killed.
Cars meant vampires could not track with their senses and we were free from Bodhi and Jon for at least a little while. I reached back into the trunk and shook Imogen's shoulders. She did not wake. They did not seem to be able to reach and find themselves out of it, no matter how far Meskah had gone from them.
You know very well where Meskah has gone.
I wasn't even going to try to lift Misha. I dragged Imogen out by her shoulders, and bit by bit hauled her down over the sands to the water by the boating docks. She did not wake, though her feet left a snake's trail behind her and sand flew in her hair. Her body still breathed normally by its instincts. The waves rolled shallowly at the edge of the beach.
I threw her in. I am not trying to drown her. I counted while her face was under water, grasping her ready to pull her out: one, two, three. If this particular shock didn't work she wouldn't die from it—
Imogen rose like a vengeful mermaid, coughing and spluttering in rage.
"—Drowned me—you—" She brought up her arms and hit my chest with both fists, and I went down into the saltwater too. A beat later she stopped.
"It was all dark." She took a hand off my ribcage. "There was nothing at all. And she did it. You woke me up—" Both her hands suddenly gripped my shoulders like burning iron. "Erin and Misha! Are they the same? Get them out! We've got to do it now! They'll go mad in there!"
"You've learned Meera has powers. Her real name is probably Meskah—no, that doesn't matter," I explained. "Short story: Meera has powers, Bodhi and her family have powers, Monty Black and his friends have powers too—and I need to stop him doing something terrible tonight. Help me with that."
Imogen blazed and did not listen. "Erin and Misha first. I know what it's like. One second lasts forever there. They come out of this sane or else—"
We took Erin down between us and dunked her in the sea. She was quieter than Imogen to wake up, clinging to her friend and staring wide-eyed at the world to reassure herself it existed again, softly trembling. But she told us to simply use the water in Imogen's coat, and placed her hands over Misha's mouth and nose. Dripping and stopping him breathing simulated drowning close enough. That brought him back to the land of the living, shouting like an angry bulldog until Erin slipped under his right arm and stayed by him.
I spoke. "Monty's a rival to Bodhi—the pranks on her were him. It's about powers. He's going to bring back someone called Perdita. She's ash and fog, and she slices into people from the air, and she's lost and wandering. She'd foam around someone and grind them to nothing. I think that was the core of the story of Rhoda Jansen—or whoever her victims really were." Perhaps I should almost be grateful to Meskah that they half-believed me. "I have to go to him, before. I can convince him he owes me one. Or several.
"Or his father Sam. He'll know what to do."
The lighthouse would soon switch on a golden beam across the ocean, from the highest point on the rock that blocked the open sea. Akalat, Top of the Rock. Inhabited by humans who left traces of their presence well before Jon and Bodhi claimed they were born, where their great heroes were laid to rest. The oldest place—and so the place for legends and horrors. Monty and monsters waited there. In a sense Meskah had only brought me closer to that goal, but the sea was wide between here and it.
"Check out the boats," Imogen said, and just like that there was a plan.
"Misha, you and Erin run to the houses. Keep away from any weird noises. Tell Sam Black—tell everyone." The car ignition was secured by an extra lock, and with turnings and rough ground the way might just be faster in a shortcut on foot. Other forms of communication Meskah had seen fit to destroy—a cell phone smashed and squeezed until its wires spilled out of it. "Look after Erin," she told him. "I'll look after X."
"—You know, Meera's make-you-go-to-nightmare-sleep powers made us believe in sci-fi or supernatural straight away—but you've been locked up in the Cullen house and you never said how you know what's going down on Akalat." Imogen unknotted a tarpaulin covering a motorboat docked in the water. "You a mutant too? Changeling? Witch? Put this on."
She opened a locker in the side of it and flung me one of a pair of lifejackets.
"I'm as human as you. I can think my way out of some of their powers. That's all. But Perdita cut into me and showed me her face in my blood, and I saw—" In dreams, but that made it sound worse. "She's communicating," I defined weakly. "They're bringing her here for the purpose of killing the Cullens, but they're unleashing something much more monstrous."
Imogen bent over the boat's ignition, gloating over the fuel. She used a penknife from her pockets to pry the cover free and then efficiently wove wires and sparkplugs together.
"...I'm impressed you know how to do that as well as break into houses. It's like a superpower."
"I like to know how to do a little of everything." The engine thrummed into life. Imogen smirked, then reached back for the knotted rope that secured the boat to the docks. "You know how to pilot this thing? No? Fuel tank, motor, moorings, steering, throttle."
"Got it."
"Keep a lookout for obstacles."
The boat was freed—and then began to cut across the sea to the Akalat lighthouse.
"They all have powers? They all have the same power? You really think Meskah's waiting for us there?" Imogen kept her eyes on the sea. The tides flowed but out from land it did not seem in the grip of harsh chopping currents. Soaplike white foam flowed back from the boat's dark green wake.
Of course she understood that Meskah was out there because of where the car was discarded, and asked because she was frightened. I didn't tell that to her. "They have different powers." I listed what I'd seen myself. "Meskah has a twin brother who tortures people with pain. And they say there are double-jointed contortionists and some with electric power and some more who can brainwash people."
"Oh. It's brave of you," she said. Words burst from her again like a jug filled with water cracked by a blow. "You've been kidnapped and—and horribly tortured for all I know. And straight away you're riding out to rescue Monty from something." She looked at me again, briefly, and her voice rose and fell between high and husked. But she kept her hands and the boat steady toward their goal. "Erin's— You've seen me completely freak out before, X-guy, and even though I'm the one who wants adventures I'm not good at living with them. Erin's the one who gets out her first-aid courses in a crisis. I'm just the one who knows how to mess around in boats."
"That's not the reason I'm doing this. I'd let Monty dig his own grave if I wasn't sure the ash would kill me." I knew how monstrous that would sound to her but could not make it sound any less cold or true. "I have to ask you things too, Imogen. Has anything happened to my mother that you know about?"
This more than any other I needed to know. Waiting for that second was a cold torment.
"No." She shifted the drive selection. Recounting facts seemed to even out her voice. "Lean right—throw your weight to balance this thing out. Your father's been worried, you have to know that. He found your blood in the woods. It's not good to think your kid's been murdered, especially a second time."
It was okay: she was still there.
"I'll see Gordon soon enough." The boat moved at her guidance; I felt the darkening water slip below. "Jenessa?"
"Helping us," Imogen said, "Jen's been our computer support all along."
"That's..." It was unfamiliar to feel a grin stretch untainted from ear to ear. For that moment I found it impossible to contain a shining flash of elation. There was one thing in all of this that was brilliantly certain. "That's amazing."
Then there was a black rock underwater to her right and I called a warning for Imogen to steer away.
Akalat came closer, a darkened pair of mountains against the gold-tinged sky, like three teeth in a damaged mouth—a tall incisor tooth, an open gap, and two smaller peaks of ragged molars. We both watched it arrive. "Everything's got to have a weakness, doesn't it?" Imogen said. "What are theirs?"
"Eyes and insides are flammable," I said out of instinct, "—but there's no way for either of us to fight them. Meskah and those like her look human but they're made of stone. Maybe something more like titanium. They're fast, faster than your eyes can track. Superhumanly strong. And incredibly durable. You can't stake them."
She caught that last part, and after I'd not mentioned certain words before.
"Hold on. Stakes? As in..."
I hurried it along. "They live off blood and kill people and they're very old. There's a word for that, isn't there? Oh, and Monty...the Quileute people have a story about being made from wolves. Guess what he turns into?"
She steered carefully, shifting her head to look up and down at Akalat's dock and the sea. The lighthouse beam switched on in a sudden shock, a cold yellow path that widely lit its way before being swallowed by distant water. "...Don't tell me. Look, I like the Moonsprite books even though people keep going on about how werewolves shouldn't be glamorous shimmering silver werewraiths—the lead girl detective character is cool—and they're not real. I've even heard Chase going off on them—he was the first of the reservation boys who shifted schools to play sports—"
I could understand Imogen's disjoint phrases because I did the same thing: when too many ideas spilled out it was not possible to make them one. She grasped it quickly, and managed to extract herself from the tangents.
"Okay. They have powers, they hurt people, and Monty's and Chase's powers involve shapeshifting—and whether or not you like it, they like your power immunity. And you know something about the one you call Perdita," she said. "Solution to my Hallowe'en mystery story and probably a lot of others around the country."
She quickly outlined the story of how Meskah came into it: that the vampire searched for information in the town, that Imogen's own insatiable questions to the stranger had led to her being unable to shake the humans off, that Imogen and the others had believed in organized crime and secret agents from the government rather than the truth.
We were very near to Akalat now. "Perdita," Imogen asked, "do you know that means lost? It was in the school play last year. Did you name her? It's just that you say that—she's a lost soul who kills people."
Her alien sky intruded where I slept. She merged into me once and I dreamed of her memories of the place where she was born. Perdita knew foreign constellations centuries and hemispheres away, and knew only those when she no longer had eyes. Perdita was lost and barely knew what she did, except that Carl and Adelaide wanted the same vengeance against the same creatures, and so they became a trio of friends. She was still a monster like the rest of them.
Her thin ashen voice in the air hissed from blood.
I don't always see things that are real. I gave Perdita a name and a reason.
"Probably. Yes. They can't die and she is dust." Imogen gave a small, sharp shudder to that.
She slowed the throttle. "Throw your weight back a bit and get a handle on the mooring ropes—there's the dock. There's only one place to go. The rock's not that big. Last time I was here it was school... And hold there." I flung over one rope, she the other, and she settled the engine.
"We should take different paths," I told her. "They have much better senses than we do and it raises the odds."
Imogen raised an auburn eyebrow. "What kind of terrible horror movies don't you watch? You'd have to be the damsel in distress of this not-so-daring duo. There's one way up from here anyway." She burned brightly: she was all vivid fire within and without, sharp with it to boot. She jumped lithely to the dock and beckoned me to follow, challenging the very world to put her down. "Don't forget we have backup. What could possibly go wrong?"
The path to the old lookout was steep and up a long, rusting iron stairway embedded above the rock. Imogen had a pen-size flashlight tucked in a pocket, but it was not dark enough to use and risk attention; and enough light spread from the lighthouse beam to vaguely reach us. I saw a flash of a distant ship, floating left and right as if some current had begun to turn against its favor.
Monty. Don't do it, I asked in my head.
At first I'd run and she'd kept up, but then it became too easy to bark shins against the high-raised rusted stairs. We followed the spiral upward as quickly as we could—scrabbling up the rock instead no easy climb. One way. Our footsteps rung on the metal and I tried to convince myself that the echoes we heard were only ordinary and real.
Monty.
When it came, it did so silently and pulled me off my feet. A trenchcoat. Red eyes set in a shadowed face, and even in what little light remained they were a fresh arterial scarlet rather than wine-dark crimson. It twisted one of my arms high on my back and the other low. Imogen began to echo my scream—and stopped herself. Then she lunged forward with two fingers stretched the right distance apart to aim for the eyes, and failed hopelessly.
His backhand was alarmingly gentle, as if shooing a fly rather than killing it. Imogen fell flat on her back on the rocks with a cry. An instant later and both his hands grasped me again. My arms burned in their sockets.
Monty, now would be a great time.
Then he ran with me, and I saw nothing of Imogen any more. The stairs were cleared in a bare few seconds, my feet dangling awkwardly above the ground as the vampire leaped. I struggled against the pain of it, but this stone was not at all gentle.
There was an old lookout point with a wood-framed house, the older, a black square staring out over sharp rock down to the sea, watching for invaders. The vampire threw me down so harshly I felt bones were broken, and I looked up at lit oil lamps to see Monty and his friends. Nat startled to stand; Fane Clearwater glowering in a corner; Chase leaning against the wall; Leb and Israel cross-legged around a wide fire burning red and golden in a pit; Monty himself foremost with them. I began to peel myself from the ground.
"I came to stop you. Don't do that to her." Nothing shattered, only bruised. I raised myself but did not stand.
"Do what, Swan?" he said.
Israel glared at the cold intruder with a twist of his lip that showed a flash of teeth and Fane seemed to bristle, but they did not try to kill him.
"I don't know what, but it'll kill everyone if you do it." That did not sound convincing.
"How did you get here?" Monty stood above me. He wore a dark cloak around his shoulders, carefully sewn with bright circles and thick geometrical lines at the edges that suggested a wolf's head, over black shorts and a muscled bare chest. He'd always had curly hair and a trace of a child's plumpness around his cheeks, and that was still in his face if you purposefully looked for it. He'd be far warmer than the vampires to a touch. All of them wore the same uniform of the cloak, as one band of protectors, their hair coiled up and slicked behind their heads. It had the same effect as a company of soldiers. You could never think of them as only young teenagers like this. "The plan would have let you home free."
"I am home free. Almost." It was becoming rapidly unlikely. "Thanks to improvisational arson and birdwatchers. Imogen Winthrop's here, and there are others who know we both are. Rescue her."
She rescued me. If there was only Meskah in the woods or no human I would be dead or worse. She tried to fight something that could not be fought.
Israel detached himself from the fire and changed. The familiar rush of heat from it was almost unbearable combined with the burning fire. I saw the giant wolf pacing in front of the vampire—holding him back from springing. From the direction of his red glare it would have been over me. The cloak billowed loosely over the back of the fur.
"You're a complete idiot. Chase, Leb, I say to fetch Im," Monty ordered. "Don't engage the enemy yet."
But then a piercing scream echoed somewhere below. They were late and far too late, and I would not think of it while the wolves galloped outside to see what could be left. Moments ago—it was moments ago and Imogen should still be breathing and vital like a flame, the one who brought me here.
I knew what an open throat looked like on a woman, perhaps not so different from a dead deer, soft and broken and gone.
"You're allied with a bloodsucker?" I accused. The male vampire was a killer—it shone in his eyes. He'd hit Imogen down and hurt me. The scream was his fault. "He's Ismail of the Moirai, isn't he?" There weren't many names I knew—although above the high collar of his coat he was darker and more heavy-browed than the twin Meskah. "A torturer. Eats people."
"Not," Monty said defensively. "It's a temporary covenant, since we want the same thing as Carl here." The coals of the firepit danced red behind him—bit white behind my eyes. Pain filled inside and outside. "Kill the Cullens."
Then for the first time I heard the feral male vampire's voice. A high, rich tenor and a north-European accent that sounded as careful as an actor's tones. "You stood by while my hand was ripped from me and watched them burn it." His lips were drawn back from his teeth and beyond the giant wolf he crouched like an animal. He looked into my eyes.
But he, like Monty, had both hands in about as intact a condition as it was possible to have hands. It made no sense. Burn vampire parts and they were not supposed to come back; werewolves lived and regrew.
Monty and I both stopped in shock at a second, longer scream from below. The giant wolf howled something out—and his friends stopped to listen to it as if they understood.
"Immy's still alive. No thanks to you," Monty said fiercely. I took in a deep, painful breath.
"What you're doing won't thank you for it any more," I said desperately. "Taking Perdita. Her soul's already lost." Their faces remained blank at the name.
Imogen was alive but that said little. I imagined it was Meskah to find her again. You would not expect mercy from a blood-drinker.
"You mean the ash one?" Nathaniel asked, speaking for the first time here. His cloak fell a little too large around him. "Im's story isn't the only legend about something like her. In eighteen-seventy-four, Daniel Pierce in Massachusetts stepped out of his farmhous to visit a neighbour, leaving footprints in the snow that abruptly stopped. Family members said that they heard screams coming from the air above. In nineteen-twelve, Freda Lang vanished in Oklahoma in mid-step crossing a field in front of a parson and his two children. We worked out what she was, and that she's unstoppable enough to defeat them."
Monty gave a smooth nod to that. "Nat did the research. You gave me the idea, Swan."
That was an impressive burst of horror. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Energy. Mass. You carried on about it." Firelight glinted in Monty's dark, wide eyes. "The transformation changes mass and releases energy, all we needed. We're power stations. We had enough to bring her back in a ritual."
All this to kill Bodhi: because she ripped him apart in the woods and gloated over it. Perhaps she had done the gloating to distract herself from killing, but she said that she wanted to kill Monty when she thought he was good enough to fight.
It wasn't something I disagreed with on general principles, I told myself. I wanted to see them all burn.
"And we've already done it."
No. Oh, God.
The faces stared at me: Monty proud, Nat indifferent, Fane warlike, the wolf snarling. The vampire barely held at bay.
It will be much worse than he thinks.
Fane said something, scornful and fervent. I'd known and seen.
Chase and Leb's shapes returned, carrying Imogen on the back of the darker wolf. She looked pale but there was no blood, and her eyes were open when they let her down. She staggered to stand up.
The pair of gold-eyed wolves changed back. She watched. "It's real," she whispered. "It hurts." And she came next to me. "You're human. You say you are. It hurt so much."
"Two blood-eyes. They're here to watch and they let us take her. Seems the good doctor isn't liked any more among his own kind," Lebegue reported. Monty accepted it with a short, brief nod.
"We can take care of them too if we have to. And we should. They've no right to walk on our territory." He turned to Imogen. "You can't spill, you understand? He's crazy, but you're not. We don't have a private island to run to if things get rough. There are plenty of people who'd want to chop us up to find how we work."
That reminded me of one in particular who was willing, very willing, to chop people apart and find out. A calculus, something very clear, but it was already coming.
"I don't want to hurt you kids," Imogen said, shakily, standing up to them even now. "I tricked them. They hurt me, but I lied to them and they believed me. She wasn't herself, shocked and gripped with pain; she squeezed my shoulder with her hand. "It was you I lied about, X-guy. Told them I was the one who got through Meera's power in time. Then they tested me with the other one, who looks at you. He just looks at you. That's how he sets you on fire." So it was not Ismail of the Moirai at all who was the one who stood here.
There wasn't anything to say to that. I didn't move to stop her touching me. It didn't matter what anyone did, now.
"She is coming," the male vampire said. He sniffed the air avidly as a dog, and pointed a long finger at me. "She will want his blood. If you did not bring him here then I would have demanded it."
"Well, she can't have him," Monty defended me. "She's meant to rip apart the Cullens. She doesn't need to kill any humans. That's the deal."
He did not reply.
"The tide's changing, Monty. Look out there," Lebegue said.
Rocks, grasses, and black water barely lightened by the yellow beam as far as I could see with human sight. The tides steadily slapped the cliff face in a quick mounting sound. The light went out in a whisper and a beat between one splash and the next.
"Fuck," Monty said, keeping a steady tone. "The Coast Guard weren't supposed to be here tonight. Supposed to do it remotely." Monty transformed only a few inches from us—I heard Imogen choke in a breath. The warm dark fur materialised from thin air and a rush of heat, sharp teeth and claws glinting in the fire's light, suddenly-lambent eyes glinting and aware of seeing everything.
"It's about time." Fane Clearwater lifted her head and glared at me. "If you two were stupid enough to bring them here—especially Bodhi—and you're very stupid and can't even drive a van—then she's too late to read our minds. I'm ready to go."
She put herself outside before changing; the large wolf ran and was out of sight before the blink of an eye.
The twins wanted to ruin the light and so there were things they wished no human to see. Israel's shape was the only werewolf left by the vampire. They thought this one far less strong than Bodhi, or that there was a worse threat—there was a worse threat.
Imogen was watching Nathaniel. "Wait, you're human too?" she said quickly. "You're not a—um. Thing that you call yourselves that involves changing into giant wolves?"
"Superhero?" he said. "Yep. Can't turn." There were low noises beyond, but he didn't seem concerned yet. Or afraid of the vampire with Israel standing there, a light brown wolf with reddish streaks across his back and head. "But I'm one of Monty's imprints. That means he'll know if anything happens to me. For them it's like always being able to look up and see your people waiting for you like stars. It becomes a net full of us, shining like suns..." It sounded oddly poetic. Perhaps he directed it at the cold one waiting to spring for a warning.
The yellow light outside came again, but this time the beam shone down not far from our cliff, crooked and in a bridge over the ocean. The vampire chose that moment to strike and Imogen cried out in shock.
The wolf and the man-shaped thing rolled on the floor with each other—a savage open mouth in a face shaped like a human—the trenchcoat ripped and torn. Israel bared his teeth and the claws slashed down. The walls and floor shook. We humans sheltered in a corner, and the giant wolf outweighed the man with scarlet eyes. Israel bent his head to a leg—the wolves were made for this—and sent it flying across the room.
Then the dismembered monster spoke calmly. "I surrender. A temporary loss of control. You should not blame me for it, Child of the Moon." Imogen was staring not at them but at the firepit; she pulled a stray bootlace from a glowing coal.
That wasn't how you killed them. You had to burn the pieces. But Israel chose to spare the vampire while he reached for his own leg and placed it by his thigh. Like Antony, part by part he would return. There was a howl like a scream beyond in the dark, and Nat's shoulders swept upward like sharp needles. Shapes like a man and a woman crossed the beam for a swift moment, by a dark wolf either Monty or Fane, while a third screamed—
There is worse. There is much worse.
I had tipped over a wide narrow-lipped stone bowl with dark red residue in the base—mixed with clumps of dirt like tea grounds.
"Nat? What did you do?" It turned my stomach.
He spoke despite it all, his voice very level.
"Blood, but it's legit," he said. They weren't vampires. "We stole it from the clinic. Dust and ash Monty scraped up, parts of her. Probably lots of plant matter mixed in. Salt. A new kind of ritual."
Sodium is among the materials needed to make a human; six tablespoons or so of salt. It's not a large part of our composition. The sea lashed against the cliffs below.
In the fragments of leapings through the golden light heavy shapes flew at Meskah and her twin of the Moirai, and perhaps she could not use her gifts when she was besieged. A creature with no compunction about murdering humans to eat would have less for someone capable of fighting them—and they were children. Fane in particular.
The rules of the world were wrong: rituals with blood and salt and stone and monsters were nothing to do with reason—yet the energy was in an equation of transformation—
It came, and Israel lifted his head to watch. That was his most important mistake. He turned his head to the beam of yellow light that illuminated the sea, and at that moment the vampire below him hit his skull.
He lay on the ground, unmoving. The vampire held his leg to his thigh and balanced upright, that translucent fluid trickling down ripped jeans.
And outside there was a waving stream of dust in the yellow light, rising as if from the sea.
"One imprint," the vampire counted. "One sacrifice. One surplus."
Nat scrambled out of the glassless window. It was the wise thing to do—to be with the others, and he knew the place. The vampire could have caught him but instead blocked me from that escape. In a moment Imogen formed a different plan. Glowing coals spread on the ground and fire gave her a shield, and she held a long burning stick in the air.
"You come closer," she threatened, "and your leg—I know fire hurts you, you just stay back!" And she protected me. Her brown eyes blazed and I could believe she was strong enough to set him on fire.
"I smell her on you," he said, red eyes never moving nor blinking. They called to us, even though I should have stared at the light as yellow as some full moons radiating a bridge across the earth. Dust hissed.
"...You mean me?" Imogen suggested. "The Coast Guards will come here soon, my friends are bringing them, and if you lay so much as a finger on any of us then—"
"I think you should be more specific," I said.
"Ellie," he said, and then: "Remember what she did to me."
If he were human I would have described his features as Hispanic, darker than me. He looked hardly older than twenty and was nobody whose face I remembered. When Helen and Fane fought the other vampire I would have sworn to a flash of fair hair above the coat and a pale face twisted in rage. He had brown hair above heavy brows, a long face and soft-edged long nose. The process would have turned his skin glass-smooth and reworked his features to a dangerous allure. This one had both hands; I'd felt them. He was frightening, but it wasn't the same fear as before. Monty called him Carl, but the torn trenchcoat didn't show a hissing mass of writhing vines below.
"...You're not Carl." Imogen and I stood against the wall, behind her fire. "Not that one Helen knew."
Maybe I was right about the brilliant red in his eyes and what it meant. The translucent fluid over his leg seemed to piece the gap back together; the stone skin melted into it and slowly he returned to wholeness. It wouldn't be long now.
"Remember that you watched them burn my hand," he said. His teeth were very white in his face when he smiled, and below his coat old bloodstains lay on his clothes. "Remember that Bodhi slew me with fire and sword."
"And brought me a tentacle for a trophy," I said. That made him angry. Scarlet flared in the brilliant eyes and he startled forward, too soon, too soon—
I spoke again and turned him back for another moment. "You're not Carl at all. Someone else. Memories that aren't yours. You shouldn't remember them burning your hand—you weren't there."
But a single particle of dust on the wind was not difficult to miss. It was to fly anywhere and do anything, and the beam of crooked light was oddly clogged.
"You're someone else. Someone modern. Look at your hands, at your chest. Remember who you really are. Remember that and don't eat us—"
Dust and fog sliced into blood and brain and this time she changed someone.
We forget almost everything that meant anything to us as a human, because the pain is the worst you can ever know.
Remember what the dust gave to your mind.
"I'm Carl," the man who wasn't any more repeated, and he bared his teeth like a feral dog. "Carl. She will form from you again."
Perdita soared on the winds and beat against the bars of a cage, and all of us she summoned here.
Bar for Imogen, who came here herself, and who brandished fire.
"You leave X alone," she threatened. Perhaps she almost succeeded to immolate his weeping thigh. But he stepped smoothly over the flames, avoided her brand, and cast it down to burn on the ground. His long stone fingers wrapped around her neck.
The instants of time passing slowed to a crawl. A silent voice. A tongue protruding from her mouth. A tightening hand of a statue. Dangling feet kicking against the air.
I said something, but it made no sense.
—
