Chapter 16 #2
I’d been wondering why these episodes were so different from the bloodlust I’d known all my life.
I’d never liked the part of myself that enjoyed killing, but I certainly prefer that to my fury sending me completely out of control.
I hop up on the counter by the sink, suddenly too tired to stand.
“Who put the syrabraxa in Baz’s friend?”
Deacon shrugs, pressing the paper towels tighter to his side. I avert my eyes from the way his traps ripple. “Some crazed warlock.”
That reminds me—“You know anything about another syrabraxa host? A woman who might be in her eighties by now? Was never killed for the dark magic, either?”
He tilts his head in thought. “I don’t know who it was or where she is now, but I’d heard of a hunter woman about forty years ago who went into the Citadel just fine and left imbued with the curse.”
The woman from the asylum. Real, perhaps. And if so, a host, just like me. I choose my words carefully. “The Citadel? As in, the Elders put one into her? Why?”
Deacon shrugs as he removes the bloody towels from his ribs. “Power, obviously.”
“But…they’re the Elders. They’re good. They—”
“Ever read a history book? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And once people are that powerful, the only thing left to fear is losing said power.”
I stare at him, kind of in awe. “That’s profound.”
“It’s from Star Wars.”
Before I can roll my eyes, I notice his wound has already stopped bleeding. Strongest demon in the city is right. I nod at the way his skin is already closing up. “Is that because you take so many souls?”
“It helps.” He tosses the towels in the toilet and flushes, then tugs down his shirt. “You find my brother yet?”
My breath pulls tight in my chest. I’d been waiting for that one. “Working on it.” Deacon shakes his head like I’m just as foolish as he expected. “What happened to that aeon from 1781?”
Deacon doesn’t reply and I have my answer. I bite my cheek until it hurts. “How long will stabbing help?”
“Not much longer.”
“I’m not going to let it drive me mad. If it starts demanding more than deviants…
starts demanding mortal lives…” I spent years mistakenly worrying that being an aeon meant one day I’d want to kill innocents.
Now there’s something in me that actually could drive me toward that kind of mindless violence.
At the rate I’m going, I wonder if soon I won’t be able to tell the difference between a deviant and a human being.
I think of the look on Sophia’s face back at Shiloh.
She’d been…afraid of me. “There’s got to be a way to get this thing out before then. ”
But if Deacon knows how, he isn’t telling me. He picks up my dagger from the floor and moves to wash his hands, rinsing his blood off my blade too.
“Why’d you come here with him, if you hate him so much?”
He hands the weapon to me, wiped clean. “I didn’t come here with him. Caspar and I both have business in this city—”
“Like being on the board of the Windsor.”
“Right.” A quiet fury surges beneath his features. “Just because I don’t tear the skin from his face every time we’re at the same luncheon doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”
“You hate him enough to help me?”
“I already told you the apocalypse would be bad for business. I couldn’t have him figuring out what you are. What we’ve been up to.”
What I’d give to know what Caspar has on Deacon to keep him under his thumb. I lean against the muted green wallpaper, too many thoughts in my mind to make sense of. “Caspar Harlock is the High Thane.”
“Yep.”
“He’s the reason this is happening to me.”
“Looks that way.”
It’s such a head trip, my hands curl around the counter to keep me upright.
I don’t waste my breath asking Deacon how the High Thane stood across from me at dinner parties, the Windsor gala, and charity raffles without me ever having so much as an inkling.
It was the same with Driscoll—both of them protected under the same spell.
I’d always known there was rampant corruption in the Half City, but this—Caspar Harlock, High Thane of the Brood—it’s almost laughable.
And he’s trying to woo my mother. If only he knew he planned to kill her troublesome kid.
Finn must be the “difficult child” of his my mom told me about. I want to cackle—if only she knew.
“I have to tell Fiona. The Elders. We know the identity of the king of deviants. This is how we stop him.”
Deacon’s expression is pitying. Like I still don’t get that Santa isn’t real. “You think they don’t know? Caspar’s been High Thane for centuries.”
Horror seizes me. The Elders? No way. “You’re wrong.”
“Their job isn’t to eradicate all evil, Vivienne.
It’s to maintain the delicate balance. They remove him, a new Thane will sprout, like heads on a hydra.
I told you this back at the Manor. All you’ll do by going to them is risk them seeing that thing on your back.
Then they’ll kill you and take the power for themselves. ”
I allow my eyes to meet his, still reeling. “You know about…”
“The Elders exterminating the aeons? I was around when it happened.”
God, he’s fucking old. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If they took me out. With me gone, there’ll be no more apocalyptic threat to your business.”
“True,” Deacon muses. “But then the Elders will be granted world-shattering power, and I don’t much like that, either.”
“You don’t want the High Thane to find me. You don’t want the Elders to find me…” I glare at him. “What do you want?”
“What I want, Vivienne…” His face doesn’t change as he studies me. “Is none of your business.”
I roll my eyes. Why did I even ask? I pivot to a different question that’s been nagging at me the last ten minutes. “Why does Caspar even care about his place in Astera society? Why does he care if my mom is his girlfriend or his mayor? He’s going to unleash hell on Earth.”
“Demons don’t want to obliterate your world…
” His eyebrows lift as he says it, like I’m missing something fairly obvious.
“Why do you think the original High Thane broke open the Chasm in the first place? Not just for destruction or freedom, but for a chance to see sunlight and smell the sea. To traipse through jungles or ascend mountains. Even more so, to indulge in all the pleasures humanity cultivates that deviants just…aren’t capable of.
Black-and-white movies, pastries, LSD, gardens filled with roses and thyme.
Symphonies. Mud wrestling. Oil paintings, race cars, cathedrals…
You need a soul to make art.” He leans back against the door in thought.
“My uncle doesn’t crave destruction. What would there be to rule over then?
All he’s ever wanted was to expand the scope of his power, like every other monarch in history.
To rule this superior plane, and the one beneath it. Together.”