Chapter 19 #2
But every second the rage threatens to consume me.
Bigger than I am, older than the oceans, it’s so difficult to remember to be gentle in the face of it, to be small and scared, to be human and to remember what human means.
My fingers twitch, a light pressure around their little candle flames, flickering so warm between my frozen fingers, a poor mockery of Bas’s bonfire blaze.
My bone and whole fingers, a broken memory of the girl I used to be.
The girl I still am, in love and in pain, with a shining harvest god sobbing over his father’s dying body in the wreckage of my mother’s RV.
Breathing slowly, an unsteady bubble of calm, I give the souls in my cupped palms a little tug.
Not enough to break the ties that hold them to their flesh, just strain them a little, red threads of fate stretching taut, until they come face to snarling face with me—just so they can hear me because apparently, we’re having trouble communicating.
Staring them straight in their terrified souls, biting every word, I reiterate, “Bring the helicopter down. Now.”
Funny how they remember their badge but lose pieces of their faces.
Funnier—even misremembering their mouths, the exact contour of their noses—I can see my monstrous reflection in their frightened eyes.
I don’t recognize myself. Or maybe, I just don’t like the thing I see, truer and older than my human self.
Swallowing hard, I push the anger down. I struggle to hold on to the immediacy of time, the terror of a teenage girl-shaped thing. I let the pilot go and ease his frantic head back inside his meat, but I keep my grip on the scruff of the second man.
My hand pressed tight over his mouth, my lips to his ear, I whisper, “Do you understand what I am now? Do you understand what your people did?”
And god, but it would be so easy to snuff out his light. It jumps and gutters against my fingers; wouldn’t take more than a stray thought to smother it.
Doesn’t he deserve it? Even now, faced with my reality, he doesn’t understand. He bares his teeth in my face, straightens his shoulders to stare down death with dignity and how dare he?
How dare he after what he took from me?
Hail batters the helicopter rotors. Wind howls, flinging it aside.
Carefully, gentle as a child with an ant’s nest and a magnifying glass, I tug the man out of his skin again, inch by excruciating inch.
Ice clouds his eyes. Snowflakes settle on his lashes.
My hand aches to close, to crush, but I hold it so extremely still—hold him so obviously hostage, spine arched backward and body rigid.
The rifle slips from his empty fingers, sliding across the helicopter floor and out, shattering on the ground below.
The rotors roar so loud, struggling in the frost, I don’t hear it hit.
I can’t hear anything but the drone of the motor and the screaming wound in my chest—
Home, home, home.
Punching buttons and levers, the pilot brings the helicopter down.
The second the rotors slow, I shove the second soul away from me, cast it into the wind. Spinning, I grip the pilot by the spine before he can leave his chair.
“Not you,” I snarl. “We need you. Sit.”
Forcing him back into his seat, I pause just a second to make sure he’ll listen before I snap back into my body.
Every inch of me aches; I ignore it. Broken fingernails scrabbling in the dirt, I drag myself to the RV door, leaning heavy in the frame.
God, I can’t look. Can’t breathe. The stench of blood hangs so thick in the air it turns my stomach, thick and visceral and wrong.
Cain’s eyes flicker, barely seeing me, his face so terribly pale.
Catching the recognition in his babynapper’s face, Bas turns, tear tracks steaming on his cheeks.
He meets my gaze and his eyes are blinding—black as an empty, shattered sky and yet, so painfully bright, seeping divine gold.
His hands on the blood-soaked hoodie held tight to Cain’s side glow red as banked coals and I know—
He is the only thing holding Cain together now. He is death’s other half, fighting his own nature, trying so hard to stave off the harvest.
Swallowing, I croak, “I got us a ride.”
Bas almost smiles, trying hard to hope.
“What do you think, old man? Can you make it fifty feet without your guts falling out?”
“There’s no point,” Cain wheezes. My living ears only hear half of every word; the hell-born thing inside of me picks out the rest.
“Shut up,” Bas whispers, heaving him up and over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. “There is to me.”
I lead the way, the head of a haunted procession, the whole time feeling Cain’s soul struggling like a trapped bird in his cage of flesh, battering against his ribs, aching, seeking rest. Tears burn in my eyes, freeze on my cheeks.
My palms ache, torn between the horrified memory of souls extinguishing and the longing to do worse, humanity colliding with my residues of godhood.
These government men, these awful soldiers, don’t matter. Cain matters. He matters so much a harvest god would resist his own purpose to save this one human man. Matters so much Death herself would erase the souls that hurt him.
And meanwhile, far away and safe somewhere, my selfish human mother goes about her life without guilt, without consequence.
When she caused this. So much suffering and for what—a daughter she only ever wanted in theory?
She broke the world for me, claimed becoming a mother was the most important thing she ever did.
So then, why did she never even learn to talk to me? Why doesn’t she know who I am?
And meanwhile Cain didn’t even want Bas—Cain just wanted the world to stop ending, the dead to quit rising—but somehow, that ended him up with a son, with love.
And a cold ghost light trickling steadily through our fingers.
What was worth this that costs so much?
Shoulders bowed, Bas steps inside the helicopter, lowering his babynapper carefully to the floor. I follow. The pilot’s eyes dart between us, crazed and white around the rims, reaching for his gun. I stare at him, clinging hard to my human body because if I don’t—
If I break, if I scream and snap and boil the storm, I will end him, and Cain will die, and we will not have done everything we could.
“I don’t care what you have to do,” I whisper, so furious my voice cracks. “I don’t care what kind of trouble you get into. You will get this man to a hospital now.”
“No,” Cain croaks, the light guttering in his eyes. “Don’t waste this opportunity.”
Bas presses a shaking, glowing hand to his cheek. A little of his babynapper’s awareness filters back.
“Would you shut up already?” he says, the false levity in his voice falling flat. “We’re probably like ten minutes from a city. You can make it another ten minutes.”
Fueled by Bas’s light, Cain surges forward. His hand catches in his sleeve, climbs his shoulder, gripping hard. Gently, painfully gently, he closes fingers on Bas’s chin, forcing his son to look at him.
He says, “I appreciate it, kid. But I had a good run. And you—” A cough shatters him, lays him out against the wall, hiccupping blood.
Bas’s hands flare brighter. The crimson-stained hoodie smokes.
“Don’t say it,” he bites between his teeth. “Don’t you fucking waste your breath saying it.”
Cain laughs, even now, his hazy grin stained red.
“Do you need me to say it?” he breathes.
Bas’s whole body bends, shaking.
“Shut the hell up,” he gasps.
“Then I’ll tell her.” Slow and aching, Cain turns his head.
His gray eyes find mine, a lighthouse seeking shore.
More than half dead, he sees me—sees all of me—my ghost gripping the pilot’s neck beneath his helmet, soul and flesh in my clenched fist and both of them bruising.
He says, “You have a responsibility, Persephone. You are a weapon. Aim accordingly.”
“I’m gonna get you to a hospital,” I lie. An icicle drips from my chin, shattering on the metal floor. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Cain’s hand flutters weakly. His soul pulls at his seams, caged only by the sheer willpower of Bas’s burning hands on his arms, his chest, his shoulders bowed and trembling, forehead pressed so hard against his father’s heart.
Still, Cain tries again. With a monumental, final effort, he brings his palm up to cradle the back of Bas’s head, his skull so small in his babynapper’s big hands.
Quietly, with his final rattling breath, Cain lists off coordinates—and falls still.
Through my teeth, I tell the pilot, “Fly.”