The sight is too glorious to believe, too magnificent.
A sound of astonishment leaves me; I feel absurdly close to tears.
“Luke?” Shadow stands beside me, staring at my face. I blink, dazed. “What are you looking at?”
“The birds,” I say, as if he’s an idiot.
Shadow follows my gesture and peers into the sky. And as I see his confusion, I realize.
There are no birds in the sky.
But I continue to watch them anyhow.
*
Josephine
My back aches from planting vegetables all afternoon, and cracks like an old woman’s as I straighten. Luke’s waiting at the edge of the garden for me, and I give him a wave. His skin is brown from having spent so much time in the sun lately, and as the evening light turns golden I see him tilt his face to enjoy the sky.
As I draw nearer, however, I realize he’s not enjoying anything. He’s staring too hard and his jaw is clenched as though in pain.
“You okay?”
He looks at me and there’s something weird in his eyes. Something … distant. Without a word he turns for the Den, and I follow. His hands are trembling, I see, and there is blood beneath his fingernails.
In the Den we head for our usual table at the back, but something’s not right. A disturbance is unfolding. Several men are grouped around our table, where Claire and Tobias sit quietly. One of the guys – it’s Blue, I now see – is pouring ale on Tobias’ head, trickling it slowly down his neck and laughing as he does so.
“Doesn’t this annoy you?” Blue asks him. “Doesn’t it make you even a little bit shitty?”
“Fucking freak,” someone else mutters.
“How about you?” Blue asks Claire. “Doesn’t it piss you off to see me humiliate your man this way?”
Claire and Tobias are both miserably trying to ignore the men.
Blue leans close to Claire’s face, making it impossible for her to look anywhere else. “Where’s your fire, love?”
I realize too slowly, way too slowly, that Luke is no longer at my side. I start forward in a rush, but he’s much quicker than me. He is through the crowd, bowling people over, and he has Blue by the throat. He lifts the large man off the ground until his feet dangle helplessly. His strength is ludicrous – no one is that strong.
Everyone around us scatters back, startled and excited. People fight all the time, every night, but not Luke. Luke never fights. And at the very idea a kind of hush falls over the Den.
“You want fire?” Luke asks Blue softly, while the man chokes. “You want rage?”
Luke slams the man down heavily – it’s a serious body blow from such a height. Crouching over him to make sure his whole body is pinned, Luke punches Blue in the face. Over and over again. Blood spills and I see teeth fly.
I run and slide, shoving myself as far between them as I can and forcing Luke to stop. He meets my eyes, milliseconds away from hitting me by mistake. His gaze is an eruption of cold, brutal fury.
“You’ll kill him,” I warn.
It takes him several long moments to come back to reality. “Breathe,” I murmur, and he does so with difficulty.
Blue is groaning beneath us, but I don’t rise until I’m sure Luke is with me.
“Outside,” I order him. “Run it off.”
“My parents …” he manages.
“I’ve got them.”
Luke disappears through the crowd of awed observers; they shift nervously out of his way.
“Psycho,” Blue spits through a mouth of blood. He’s trying to rise, but he looks barely conscious.
“How idiotic can you get?” I demand of him. “Taunting an elderly man with Parkinson’s in front of his Blood son? Be thankful you’re not dead.”
“Get him to Ranya,” Quinn interrupts and a few people help Blue out.
I meet the leader of The Infernno’s gaze. He doesn’t look impressed. He looks like he is starting to understand that a rabid dog must be muzzled.
Before Quinn can say anything I turn to help Tobias out of his seat. The man is shaking quite badly, so Claire and I both take an elbow and support him into the cool air.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Cruelty is much easier than kindness,” Tobias replies placidly.
Claire giggles. She sounds like a madwoman, and the sound follows us through the quiet, moonless night.
*
August 1st, 2066
Luke
Josi is sitting on the floorboards in front of the couch. Behind her, Mom is combing through the knots in her long dark hair. Dad is reclined with his feet up nearby; he was reading the tablet, but his hands started to shake too much so now Josi is reading aloud. “The world to me was a secret, which I desired to divine; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.”
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. Demanded by Dad. A curious thing to me, but then I guess I always wondered how he had so many annoying pearls of wisdom. He must have read the classics in secret, careful to make sure we never caught him.
I sit apart, nursing a glass of wine and watching my family. I have a peculiar ache in my chest as I do. There’s a yearning in the frame of Josi’s shoulders, as there is in the tender touches of Claire’s fingers. A yearning for mother, a yearning for daughter. It hurts to think of all the things Josi has missed in her life, all the tiny pieces of childhood. I took safety for granted, and love. I had so much of both. Josi had neither. And now here she fits, as neatly as a puzzle piece, with her hair in my mom’s fingers, reading my dad a story.
I have been stealing moments to lacquer her cello nearly every night for the last two months. Rina gave me her violin strings, but they weren’t thick enough so I stripped an extension cord, took the copper wiring inside it and twisted it around the strings to give them a deeper twang. The instrument is as ready as it will ever be, but I don’t know when to give it to her. No moment seems right. I feel strangely nervous about it. All of me has gone into those panels of wood, those carvings and bridges and strings. I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t like it, or if it doesn’t work.
I remember words, and they haunt me. Yes, I still. But it means nothing without trust, and I won’t ever trust you again, Luke Townsend.
Will she see the cello as a means to win her trust? I don’t want it to be about that. I want only her enjoyment of it, because I can see how she fades a little each day without her music. Perhaps I’ll leave it for her anonymously, or find someone to give it to her instead of me.
Mum looks up at me as she braids Josi’s hair. She smiles a soft smile, one I remember from many years ago. But it is edged, as it will be forever, with sadness. Where will Dave exist, if we have no sadness with which to remember him? What connection will remain between him and us if we can’t grieve his loss? The thought causes a revolt in my chest.
I realize that Josi is not looking at the tablet as she reads, but at me, the words drifting from her absent mind. She’s read this one before, then. I meet her eyes and she pauses. Then says, still not looking at the book, “How mutable are our feelings, and how strange it is, that clinging love we have of life, even in the excess of misery.”
I smile. We look at each other, lost in thought, until Dad says loudly, “Hey? Which bit is that? Read it in order, kid!”
“Sorry.” Josi curbs her laughter and goes back to reading.
*
“When?” she asks me, later tonight when we are alone.
“When it’s over.”
“What if it’s never over?”
“It will be.”
“But what if it’s not?”
I consider her. She is taking off her cardigan and hanging it over the knob of my bedroom door. I move to lift her t-shirt over her head, revealing the ravens on her back. I run my fingers over them, one at a time.
“Now, then,” I say softly.
Surprised, Josi tilts her neck to look at me. Her eyes spark and glow. “Now??
??
I nod, and kiss her. Her mouth opens to mine and I push her to the bed. “Tell me again how many.”
“Three,” I say against her lips. “I dreamed of three. Two boys and a girl.”
Out of the corner of my eye I can see three black crows perched on the windowsill, watching me.
*
September 7th, 2066
Josephine
I have my hands pressed against Pace’s swollen belly. I can’t feel anything moving, but I’m determined to sit here until I do.
Right now, in this moment, I feel happy. Despite everything. Despite the cures and murders and Raven hating me and the looming death of us all, which seems imminent at the best of times. I am reminded of something I read once. That happiness is not a perpetual state, but a fleeting moment, a thought, the lick of an ice-cream. So in this fleeting moment, in this thought, I am happy. And I want to lick an ice-cream.
“I’m not enjoying this,” she warns me.
“Shhh.” I lean closer so my mouth is near her skin. “You are wanted and so loved, my little darling,” I tell the fetus.
“Wanted and loved!” Will yells loudly, like a football referee upon the final goal of a match. He’s bouncing a soccer ball on his feet and keeps accidentally breaking stuff with it. Half the furniture in this house has been smashed several times by that ball.
Pace groans and pushes me away. “This thing is the reason I’m not part of Luke’s team!”
I dismiss the statement with a wave. “Oh, Luke’s team is awful. You’re lucky you got pregnant before he recruited you. I wish I had.”
“Me too,” Will adds.
She rolls her eyes. “When do you leave?”
“Next month. Cures are getting administered at the end of October.”
“You’ll wind up getting yourselves into a complete mess without Hal and me,” she sniffs.
“Probably,” I agree, watching her face as she in turn watches her belly. Hal’s here in the room with us – he’s in every room with Pace, I know.
“But not likely!” Will grins. “Luke’s turned us into a well-oiled machine.”
It’s true, actually. I’m constantly astonished at how far we’ve come in a few short months.
Maybe it’s the baby, or my general thawed-out state lately, but I feel a pang. Clearing my throat, I murmur, “Either way, you two have really wormed your way inside me.”
“Gross!” Pace exclaims.
“Figuratively,” I amend quickly. “Not literally, of course. I just mean I …”
“We love you too,” Will says with that complete emotional ease of his.
The baby moves and I squeal in delight. “It kicked!”
“Goal!” Will shouts, then kicks the ball straight through the window. Glass shatters and all three of us scream. In the wake of the mess Will turns to us with a sheepish grimace. “My bad.”
*
I head for Dodge’s lab. Tonight there is almost no moon at all, and the weather’s cooled off substantially. Yesterday Luke and I presented all our findings to Quinn and Raven, basically telling them that after months of searching and interviewing and collecting evidence, we don’t know who killed Batch and Lace. There is no motive that we can find, and no plausible story about how either of the murders could have happened. The only connection between the two – and it’s a big one – is the fact that the victims were married, but this only seems to confuse things further. Of course, if one was to be told that a man was made beast for a night, there might be some conclusions to draw. But of course one is not told that. One will never be told that.
Quinn said that he and Raven would take over the case themselves while we prepare for the city mission. I feel confident they’ll come to as many dead-ends as we did. The main concern is that they’ll once again choose someone innocent to blame.
Beyond that it nags at me, though. Something about it.
I run all the pieces of evidence over in my mind as I walk the dusty road. The case should be open and shut. I know what happened. I know that Luke was responsible. Man made beast. But … it just doesn’t quite fit, and I’m not sure why.
“Josi, what a nice surprise,” Dodge greets me as I enter the lab.
“A real shocker,” I reply, given we have a standing appointment.
Meredith isn’t here tonight. She’s been given proper living quarters, since she’s been so cooperative and well behaved. She’s practically a girl scout, and I don’t know if it’s my general suspicion of everyone that makes me wary of this fact, or the knowledge that no one, not even a cured drone, is a girl scout. Except for, you know, girl scouts.
Dodge takes a blood sample and swabs my mouth and skin.
“Yo!” Luke bounds in, flinging himself into the chair next to mine. He is buzzing with energy.
“You’re in a good mood,” I point out.
“So are you,” he grins. “I can smell it.”
“Huh?”
“Superpowers, baby.”
Dodge and I both look at him. I’m sure the concern is patent.
“My synesthesia,” Luke supplies. This seems to satisfy Dodge, but not me.
“Your so-called superpowers are hallucinations,” I remind him.
“Au contraire, mi amore.”
“Are you also hallucinating that you know how to speak French?” I mutter.
Luke laughs as Dodge takes his blood. “What’s the diagnosis? Am I still a zombie?”
“Yes.”
“I’m a medical marvel,” Luke informs me happily.
“Are you drunk?”
He laughs again, and that’s when Meredith enters at a bit of a rush. She goes to her workbench and starts fussing around.
“You okay, Doc?” Luke asks her.
“I couldn’t sleep. I want to inject him now.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Dr Collingsworth.”
I blink. “Inject him with what?”
“An amphetamine I’ve been working on. The first I feel confident might work. I was going to wait until tomorrow, but – ”
“But instead you decided to get all shaky and urgent,” Luke finishes.
Meredith takes a syringe over to the glass cage where Ben is stock-still and watchful. “Mr Townsend? Your assistance, please?”
Luke walks straight up to the cage and opens it. Without any kind of preparation. Ben attacks, snarling. But I needn’t worry, because Luke gracefully sidesteps the old guy, taking him in a headlock that sends him straight to sleep.
Meredith injects Ben in the neck and then locks the cage once more.
“It’ll take at least twenty-four hours before we see any possible results,” Meredith informs us.
“Results of what?” I ask. “What’s the drug for?”
“To make him human again,” she replies, and heads off back to bed. Luke and I look at each other in astonishment.
Dodge watches Ben’s sleeping form for quite a long time. I can imagine he must feel intimidated by Meredith.
“Can we hurry this along, Harley?” Luke asks. “I’m missing dinner.”
There’s a silence.
Luke realizes what he’s said and goes abruptly still. “Sorry,” he murmurs, good mood evaporating. “Sorry, Dodge. I – ”
“It’s fine, Luke,” Dodge says quickly.
My heart aches. I reach to take Luke’s hand and squeeze it. He sighs wearily and rests his head against the back of the chair. “Remember his wasps?”
“I remember his wasps.” I move my hand up to smooth his hair. “What’s the prognosis?” I ask Dodge.
“Both still the same, by the looks of it.”
“Degenerating and healthy?” Luke asks.
“She’s not healthy,” Dodge says, alarmed at the idea. “Josephine, you’re not healthy. You know that, right?”
“Impossibly fast healing? If anyone has superpowers, it’s me,” I tell him.
“Jesus – not at all! Don’t you remember what I told you?”
“Of cours
e I remember – ”
“You’re precariously balanced. Anything could destabilize you.”
“Yeah, but everything’s anything,” I say with a breezy wave of my hand.
“Exactly!” he exclaims.
I roll my eyes. Luke is watching me worriedly. “I’m fine!” I assure them.
“I don’t know if you’re quite understanding the predicament – ” Dodge tries.
“I get it,” I say, growing irritated. “I’ll be careful. I won’t put anything in my system that could destabilize the drugs already there.”
Dodge looks at me, standing. He looks at Luke, too. And it’s in that moment that an alarm goes off inside my mind. It’s the way he keeps looking between us. That damn pity is back.
“That includes all number of things,” he tells me carefully. “It’s any bodily change. Including hormones.”
I swallow. But no. He doesn’t mean …
“You can’t get pregnant, Josephine,” Dodge specifies clearly. “Your body has undergone too much damage.”
“What – ever?” Luke asks.
“The spike in hormones would kill her.”
I am frozen.
“Oh …” I manage faintly. “Shit.” The room is spinning slightly. I squeeze the armrest. “Sorry, I … didn’t realize. Sorry.” I look at Luke. “Sorry.”
There is agony in his eyes. “Josi …”
I feel a bit like I haven’t taken it in. I think it’s one of the worst things I’ve been told in my entire, miserable life, and I don’t want to take it in. I breathe out. “Sorry.” I keep saying sorry and I’m not sure why. “Can you take me home?”
Luke leads me out of the lab even though our session isn’t over. We walk quietly through the night until we reach his house.
Waiting outside is Raven and two guys. Carlos and Kim.
“What?” Luke asks rudely.
“You haven’t been cleared for procreation, and you’ve been spotted spending the night together several times.”
Luke groans. “Raven, don’t.”
“You’re to be put into holding until your punishments are decided.” Raven sounds so cold, so angry. I am abruptly sad for her. She clearly loves Luke, in her own twisted, sicko way.