Raven gasps in pain, stumbling backwards.
I don’t give her any respite; I want this to be over. I follow, hitting her in the side of the head, and again as she goes down. I jam my arm beneath her chin, pinning her.
“Yield,” I order her. “Or I’ll kill you.”
Her eyes are struggling to focus. “You won’t kill me.”
“Once upon a time I wouldn’t have. A lot’s changed.” The truth is in my eyes.
Raven gives a feral scream of rage and taps out. I rise from her body. My cheek stings from her blow, but it was the only one she landed.
I feel cold, and older than I am. The crowd converges on us. Several people lift Raven and carry her to the holding cell. Quinn hasn’t moved from his spot; he appears ghostly.
People are looking at me differently, I realize. There is furtive awe in their glances now and it stirs something discomforting in me. I think I’d prefer them to think me the bratty girl they disregarded once upon a time.
Luke joins me. “Welcome to the other side,” he says grimly. “They’ll never look at you the same way again.”
“Can we go home?”
He nods. “I’m proud of you. It was a thankless task but someone had to do it.”
I shake my head wearily. “Don’t be proud. This was ugly.”
“Most things are.”
Chapter 30
September 16th, 2066
Luke
After the bout Josi sleeps while I sit beside her, contemplating the red, red moon in the sky.
The drug works in cycles. Just as the body does. Its effects will be bad again soon, and then not so bad, and so on. Now that I know I haven’t been turning all year, I guess it’s safe to assume the effects are more like what happened to Josi than we initially thought – and maybe, like her, I’ll only change on the blood moon. For her it took a couple of years to progress to the point of a proper blackout, but I can feel it building. My skin itches and my teeth ache.
I know precisely what it feels like to believe you’ve murdered someone without any memory of it, and it’s not a feeling I wish to endure again. And if I am to assume it’ll only happen once a year, then it means, basically, that I have twelve months to destroy Falon Shay before I use the antidote to make myself normal again.
And now I just have to get through tonight.
I’m not sure what time it is when I climb from bed and make my way to the holding cell. Still early in the night, from the feel of the moon tugging at my insides.
Raven’s sitting in the corner of the room, face swollen and bloody. I don’t know why I’m here, but I enter and sit in the opposite corner.
“Why?” I ask her. “I’m struggling to believe you could be broken enough to do this simply because I didn’t want you.”
She watches me with her black eyes, but she says nothing.
“What happened to you?” I murmur. “You grew up here, free of all the madness. You’re supposed to be one of the healthy ones.”
Raven licks the blood off her bottom lip.
“I really thought I’d done it,” I say with a hard laugh. “I’ve had nightmares, every single night, of killing those poor people. You did a thorough job of sending me mad. Even down to the blade beneath my bed.”
Still she refuses to talk.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” I demand, frustrated. “Don’t you want to at least explain yourself?”
“What’s the point? I’m the villain, aren’t I?”
I shake my head and stand up. The cast on my hand itches like crazy and I’m feeling claustrophobic in a box with a madwoman. I need sky and moon now. “Bye, Raven. Thanks for trying to get me executed.”
“Bye, Luke. Thanks for making sure you weren’t.”
My feet falter momentarily, because she sounds sincere. I leave before she can mess with my head any further.
The night is quiet. I watch the stars above me as I walk home. And the red, red moon. When I look down I see the shadow of a figure passing across the road I’m on.
“Meredith,” I call softly, and she pauses to wait for me. “Whatcha doing?”
“I’m on my way home for the night,” she replies.
“Josi gave me the antidote you made.”
“It’s not an antidote. It’s a blocker.”
“Right. Well thanks.”
She nods. “It worked very well on Dr Collingsworth, before Raven murdered him.”
“What?” I exclaim. “Ben’s dead? Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know,” Meredith replies. “By the sounds of it she has violent tendencies and a lack of empathy that suggest she might be clinically psychopathic.”
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe, rubbing my eyes wearily. “I’ll come by in the morning and you can run me through it. I can’t deal with it right now. ’Night, Meredith.”
“Goodnight, Mr Townsend.” She carries on, and I do the same. She’s a weird lady, but it ain’t her fault, I guess.
A sound drifts out to me as I draw nearer to home. The deep notes of a cello being plucked. I listen to them and let them wrap me in melancholy; it’s not a bad feeling. It’s quite beautiful, actually, and something I’d never experienced before I met Josephine. I realize it’s the first time I’ve felt anything other than anger in weeks. In a strange way, it’s a welcome feeling. Like sinking into a soft mattress or through a gentle ocean.
I think sadly of Ben; in my heart he joins the other casualties of this war. And I thank god we have Meredith.
The cello notes stop abruptly, and there’s something about the way they cut off mid-song that alerts me. Quickly I head inside to find Josi standing in the middle of the room, her bow in hand, staring at the wall with a look of such deep concentration that I know she’s doing some serious mental acrobatics.
Without looking at me she says, “Batch didn’t die of decapitation.”
“What?”
“The bruising, remember. He was strangled to death, decapitated after.”
“Yeah, so?” I watch her, trying to work out what she’s telling me. A faint tingle of dread is uncurling in my stomach.
“How big is your neck?” she demands, dropping the bow and striding to me. She puts her hands around my neck as though to strangle me. “Batch was bigger than you. We went over every inch of that body. I remember his neck – it was thicker. There’s no way I’d be able to strangle you to death. I don’t have the strength, and Raven’s hands are smaller than mine. There was also no sign that he’d been beaten into submission first.”
“So how could she have strangled a bigger, stronger man?” I agree.
“And how could she have carried you both to the crime scenes? You would have had to be drugged and unconscious, and you weren’t dragged because there weren’t any marks. I know firsthand how heavy you are. Batch was even heavier. It’s possible she could have carried you, but pretty damn unlikely. And particularly unlikely in the time frame of those last kills.”
“Which leaves us with – ”
“The killer being a man.”
We stare at each other.
“You go down a second time and you irreparably damage the respect they have for their leader,” she intones. The words I spoke to Quinn before my flogging. “He was so humiliated, Luke,” she breathes. “I didn’t get it at the time. But he was furious. You undermined his power when you publicly beat him the first time. He tried to humiliate you in return with the flogging but you only earned more respect by staying silent. He knew he had to take you out without looking like he was the bad guy.”
Horror curls inside me, and then we take off in a sprint to get Raven free.
*
Raven
I wanted to drown, and so I shall. A tidal wave. I felt it coming. It called to me as it approached. I’m coming as fast as I can. Wait for me.
After Luke goes I ready myself.
But Quinn arrives first. That’s alright. It’s good, I suppose. A rounding out of it all. The end of the circ
le meeting the beginning.
“Hello, dear,” I greet him sweetly. “Beloved apple of my eye. Light of my life.”
“You worked it out then.”
“Well, it wasn’t moi. So who’s the most duplicitous, two-faced rat in this whole place?”
He clasps his hands and gazes down at me. Jesus, how did I ever let him touch me with those pudgy hands of his? “It was never meant to be you who took the fall. The whole fucking point of it has now been blown to shit.”
“The point being to get rid of the one person who posed any threat to your power.”
Quinn nods. “But this would have had to happen anyway. For Ben.”
“The murder I didn’t commit.”
“He was old as shit. As if he would have been strong enough to drag a scalpel through his own neck. You admitted it too – you told me you killed him because he remembered too much.”
I gaze at him in disgust. “I don’t know if it’s worse if you actually believe that’s what happened, or if you’re lying about it.”
“Doesn’t matter either way,” he shrugs. “That’s what they’ll all be told.”
“I used to like that about you,” I tell him. “The mask of kindness you wear over the cruel truth. I liked that only I could see beneath it.” I laugh, shaking my head. “I thought it was dangerous and thrilling. How childish.”
“We understand each other,” he argues. “I see beneath your mask and you see beneath mine.”
“I guess that’s true,” I nod slowly. I meet his eyes. “Here’s the truth I know about you, Quinn. Your power is part of that mask. Underneath it you’re weak and impotent and scared. You haven’t even been able to get a fucking erection since he woke from his coma. The Inferno won’t be yours for long. There are people here now with true power.”
He is livid. I think he’s about to attack me, but he restrains himself. “And I’m going to destroy them both, starting with his parents.”
I stare at him. “Bullshit. Even you aren’t that sick.”
“How else am I meant to take him down?” Quinn asks coldly. “I thought you’d get that, being the mistrustful, heinous bitch you are.”
“If I don’t trust, it’s to keep this place safe. Everything I do is for the settlement.”
“Well, now you can be eaten alive for the settlement.” He turns for the door with a smile and my heart ruptures because shit he’s really going to do it – he’s going to murder Luke’s parents just to hurt him and I can’t let him, I won’t let him.
“Quinn,” I say, and as he turns I attack him with a ferocious blow to the temple. He hits the ground but rolls swiftly, kicking me so hard in the stomach that I hit the wall. He crawls to me, taking my chin so he can smash my skull against the stone. Things go black for a second. I can taste steel.
I’ve never been able to beat him. I certainly can’t beat him now, so recently brutalized by Josephine. But no matter what he does to me, I will not let him leave this room.
He smashes my head again. But with hands that are steadier than rock I reach into my sock and pull out the razor blade.
Quinn holds my chin and leans right in close to say, “You’re worthless, Raven. The only thing you’ve ever been good for is looking at.”
I drag the razor through his throat and hold his eyes as he dies.
*
Luke
We are sprinting along the road I travelled only minutes ago when I pause at the spot at which I ran into Meredith.
“What?” Josi asks.
I frown. “Where does Meredith sleep?”
Josi nods behind me, in the opposite direction to the one Meredith took. “Couple of houses that way.”
“Shit … I think …” I shake my head. “I gotta check something. You go get Raven out and I’ll meet you there.”
I sprint off after Meredith. I’m only a few minutes behind her. The lab is in this direction, but she specifically said she was going home for the night. I check inside but it’s empty. All that’s left over this way is the Den, the fields and the wall. The second I see the empty hall and kitchens, I know, and launch myself into a sprint.
The wall looms, and up ahead I can see the east gate. There are guards up there, but they’re focused, of course, on this perpetual need to kill the beasts outside. They aren’t looking for any danger within.
And so I see, with horror, the gate being unlocked.
By Meredith Shaw.
“Meredith!” I shout, knowing it won’t do any good. I’m too slow, I’m tragically slow, I can’t push myself fast enough, even with this monstrously fast body of mine, a body Meredith created herself with that first damn cure for anger.
The guards have turned at the sound of the shouted name. “Take her down!” I roar, and they fire wildly at Meredith, but she has already unlocked the gate. Why? I ask myself desperately. Why has she done this? To kill herself? To kill us? I’m not sure I’ll ever know, because as the guards are shouting in panic and rushing to sound the alarm, and as the bell tolls over the compound in a foretelling of doom, I see Meredith swarmed and eaten alive.
I am unarmed and I have a very broken hand. Shattered, in fact. But I keep running straight toward that open gate, and the flood of Furies swarming inside the wall.
*
Josephine
The bell rings so loudly and suddenly that I get a fright. I peer around in the dark, wondering what it means.
Something’s wrong, that’s for sure.
I start running for the steps to the holding cell, a sense of urgency propelling me.
*
Raven
I think of Ben as I slice my wrists open. He destroyed himself before his memories could. There was a lot of guilt in his past. There’s a lot of cruelty in mine. I have never been a nice person. I took pleasure in the fear and discomfort of others. I liked hurting people, and that’s the sign of a truly weak human being.
There’s too much hate in my heart. I don’t know where it came from or how to come back from it. I’m drowning in it. And in the blood slipping from my arteries. I always wanted to drown.
The door bursts open and someone gasps.
It is Josephine Luquet. I start laughing. Because of course it is.
She takes in Quinn’s dead body and my bleeding wrists, and then she stumbles to me. Her hands try to grip the wounds, but she’s too late, way too late. I am seeping away with the gentle lapping of waves.
“No, Raven, no no no,” she utters, and I see that she’s crying. I’m in her arms and it feels warm.
“I used to think you ruined my life,” I tell her. At least I think I do. I feel hardly here anymore, hardly tethered to the lips of my body. “But it was me who did that.”
“Don’t,” Josi cries, then screams, “Help!”
“’S’alright,” I mumble. “I’ve wanted this for a long time.”
“Raven,” she says. “This is my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.”
“It was Quinn,” I manage.
“I know. I know it was,” she sobs.
“Good,” I sigh. “He was a prick.”
Josi laughs. Her tears are all over me, and my blood, too.
I think of Luke Townsend, who is the reason for this. Not that it’s his fault. He was simply the catalyst. It was that glimpse of love that set me on this path, and I was never going to be able to get off it, not even if Quinn hadn’t been such a small man. The arrival of Luke was an irreversible rotation of my soul into a new position, one that had seen a pinprick of light and couldn’t ever unsee it.
I look up into Josi’s beautiful dual eyes.
I think of my mother, in the end, whose life was traded for mine.
Chapter 31
September 16th, 2066
Josephine
I don’t think I could have moved if I hadn’t heard the screams coming from above. They shatter through the nightmare of this moment. She seems so fragile in my arms. She never seemed like this when she was alive.
I am filled
with a surprising grief. It’s the timing. The tragedy of the mistakes made and me being five minutes late that meant she died. Five minutes.
Fury engulfs me. There’s no place for it to go – just a dead man on the ground. I feel like spitting on him. How fierce she must have been, to kill the man she loved so she could protect the rest of us from him. My hatred has been so misplaced; all along I have been punishing the wrong person.
I emerge from the stairs into chaos. The bell is ringing and ringing, but it’s almost drowned out by the screams of running people and the snarls of Furies.
The camp has been overrun.
I’m right by the training room, which means the armory. Dodging through an oncoming rush of hysterical people, I get the door open and scramble for weapons. Two handguns, even though my aim still sucks, several magazines and a huge machete.
Something growls and I whirl to see a Fury lunging at me. I manage to get the blade in between us and the creature impales himself on it, but still scrapes his fingernails through my shoulder. I grunt, stabbing the machete deeper until I see the Fury die, then I shove it to the ground and wrench my blade free.
Dashing outside, I am met with a horrifying sight. The guards on the wall are openly firing, but the Furies have integrated with the people and in the dark it’s almost impossible to see who is who. Bullets take out anything that moves. A resistance woman drops dead before me, shot in the chest.
“Get to the tunnel!” I scream as a group rushes past me. I don’t know if they listen, and I can’t wait to find out.
I plunge into the fray – I have to find Pace and Will. My gut is wrenching me to wherever Luke is, but I know he can take care of himself. As I hack my way through half a dozen Furies, slicing at anything I can, I yell for everyone to take cover in the tunnel, yell it over and over.
It starts getting harder to move forward and I realize there are too many. I can’t cut them down fast enough. Drawing my pistols, I start to fire wildly into the mess of snarling teeth and limbs and bloody eyes.