Chapter 31 The Phantom
The Phantom
I want to follow Christine and Raoul. They need me to be with them, protecting them. They require my constant oversight and guidance.
Or perhaps it is time to recognize that what I call protection is often obsession. They are both powerful beings with scores of their own to settle. And I have a directive from Christine to ensure that Manannan’s attack on the shifters does not become a slaughter.
Her conscience and Raoul’s must guide me from now on.
It is enough, I tell Manannan in my mind. You’ve killed enough of them.
You summoned me to your side for vengeance, he retorts. Would you abandon the task half done?
Watching the shifters thrash and struggle for their lives is disturbing. The pity unfurling in my heart is a new sensation for me. I think perhaps Christine’s sympathy for them is contagious and has infected me.
I cast aside my mask. “Stop,” I call aloud to Manannan.
He remains near the doors by which he entered, both of his huge hands lifted, his brow bent in concentration as he wields the water he summoned from the nearby river.
I do not have the power to stop him. He will continue killing, beyond reason, beyond need. Once, I would have gloried in all the death, in the influx of souls to my realm.
But I am not the being I once was.
When more waves rush into the building, the panther crouches down at my side, muscles coiled tight. Lloyd-Henry is getting ready to spring away, to change forms…to leave us again.
I won’t allow it.
The limited magic I possess is nearly depleted, and I keep mentally colliding with the barriers the blond vampire erected in my mind. But I scrape together the remaining power I can access, and when the panther leaps away from me, I throw a coil of shadow rope around his body.
He transforms into a raven, and I quickly tighten the magical lasso, managing to keep it cinched around his foot. He shifts into a stag, snapping my grip, but I hurl the shadows around his midsection as he’s bounding toward the rows of seats. I jerk him backward with all my might.
With a cry of rage that sounds both human and monstrous, he whirls to face me, changing into the shape of a huge black dog. I tighten my shadows again, preventing his escape, and he snarls, a demonic threat.
“You protected me,” I say. “Why? Why would you care about my life when you cast me aside as worse than useless?”
A voice emerges from the dog—a voice so hollow and distorted that even I feel a chill at the sound of it. No shifter should be able to speak while in beast form. The fact that Lloyd-Henry can is a grotesque distortion of everything I know to be true.
“I don’t enjoy watching the destruction of something I worked to create,” he says. “Even if it was, in the end, a deformed and impotent failure.” His head turns, watching Manannan’s waves continue to pursue and drown the shifters.
Anger coils around my heart. “Why do you consider me a failure?”
“Because you could not eliminate one small band of vampires at Wicklow. They defeated you. You, a god.”
“I was not yet at my full strength. And there was the girl, the blond vampire.”
“Little Daisy.” The wretched voice croaks from the dog’s throat. “I did not expect her to be there.”
“Her power surprised me. So much has changed since I was forced into sleep beneath the earth,” I say. “Something she told me has remained in my mind ever since that day. She said, ‘In this world, we are the new gods.’ And I believe she may have been right.”
He growls, tugging against my shadows.
“This crusade of yours, this endeavor to raise the old gods—it was doomed from the beginning,” I tell him. “The world changed, yes, and so have we. Manannan’s control over water and storms is impressive, but it’s nothing like the power he used to wield. And I am…something else. Something new.”
“You’re a mistake,” he snarls.
“Face me, man to man, and tell me that,” I reply.
For a moment, the dog’s lips only pull back farther, exposing jagged yellow teeth and purple gums. Then, with a whirl of smoke, the creature transforms, and there he is.
Lloyd-Henry Woodson, as he called himself during the time we spent traveling and residing together.
What his true name is, I may never know.
My shadow rope has slipped away, and when I cast it again, he raises his hand to the level of his eyes so that when the lasso drops, it tightens around both his neck and his hand.
Wrapping his fingers around the rope, he pushes outward, easing the pressure of the noose, loosening it until he can toss it away.
I don’t attempt to recapture him.
“Ever since you resurrected me, I have struggled with my old memories,” I say.
“But I can recall millions of new things. I have accumulated knowledge, experienced music, and composed my own songs. I have delighted in the talents of others, particularly Christine—a vampire, as it happens, like those who defeated me at Wicklow. I became obsessed with her, but my obsession changed as well. I have grown to love two precious souls with all my heart.”
I step closer while he eyes me warily.
“I have made mistakes,” I continue. “I will make more, and I will keep learning from them. But I was meant to be here, just as I was meant to meet Christine and Raoul. I firmly believe that Fate, wherever she is, has blessed me with this existence. So tell me again. Tell me I’m a mistake.
Tell me I’m useless, worthless, and a failure. ”
He backs away as I advance. I’m smiling, flooded with a confidence and triumph I’ve never felt before.
It feels like I have won a battle I never acknowledged I was fighting—a war within myself.
“I do not need to be a god or even the shadow of one,” I tell him.
“I can let every part of that existence go, release my past, and fully embrace my new role in this world. If only you could see how freeing it is—how beautiful life can be when you are at home within yourself. I swear, it’s better than magic. ”
“You don’t understand,” Lloyd-Henry seethes. “This is my great plan. All the pieces—I’ve been setting them up for decades, for centuries.”
“So you said.”
“I want to conquer death. Rule the world. Be worshipped as the savior of humanity.”
“Modest goals, to be sure,” I say dryly. “Wouldn’t you be happier if you released yourself from the pressure of such cosmic ambition?”
“I can’t. All that work—all the lives I destroyed along the way—to abandon it all?” His voice shrills. “To say my life’s work was useless, no longer worth pursuing—it’s unthinkable!”
“I have done terrible things, too,” I say. “I fully acknowledge that part of myself, and if I need to do terrible things again to protect those I love, I will. But peace will come when you accept the past rather than excusing it. It should not be the guide for your future.”
“You’re a fucking imbecile, and you talk like my therapist,” he snarls. His naked body shudders, and I notice lumps writhing beneath his skin, as if his flesh is corrupted by worms. He bends over, a groan bursting from him as a stronger spasm racks his frame.
“What is happening to you?” I ask.
He looks up, features contorted with pain. “I tried to cheat death one too many times. But it won’t get me, I swear. I will defeat it. Someday, there will be no more death, and I will be the one who ushers in that utopian world.”
“From what I’ve read of human fiction and philosophy, attempts at a utopian world rarely meet one’s expectations,” I reply.
“Death is the great enemy,” he rasps. “The only one worth fighting.”
Abruptly, I realize that the waves have ceased and that Manannan has drawn closer to us. He has been listening to our conversation.
“I ruled over death once,” I say quietly. “I came to realize there are worse things. Confinement. Loss of choices. Imprisonment within a cage of twisted ideals. The belief that your own existence is the most important thing in the world.”
“Then you no longer fear death?” Lloyd-Henry scoffs. “If it came for you, you would succumb without resisting?”
“I fear the end of possibilities, of choices. I will strive to remain in this world as long as I can to be with those I adore and to contribute something beautiful. Yes, I fear the end. It is only natural…only human. But I will not let the terror of death control me or steal the joy from the experience of living.”
Manannan’s deep voice speaks on my left. “Joy? How can there be joy when the one you crave is beyond your reach?” He glares at Lloyd-Henry. “You promised you would raise the Morrigan for me.”
“And I looked for her,” Lloyd-Henry gasps, grimacing through another spasm. “She has no grave, no prison. There is no physical trace of her to be found. She was never bound like the rest of you.”
Startled, I glance at Manannan. He looks just as shocked as I am.
“That’s impossible,” he says. “We trapped her just as we trapped him.” He jerks his bearded chin toward me.
“And I looked in the place where you told me to search,” replies Lloyd-Henry. “There was nothing. No trace of the divine or other supernatural influence. The ritual you and the other gods performed was either temporary or it did not work at all. Perhaps she fooled you into thinking it did.”
A laugh surges up inside me, and I can’t resist letting it out. “She tricked you.” I grin at Manannan. “Of course she did. She’s been free this whole time, weaving her threads through the tapestry of the world.”
“Meddling, you mean,” growls Manannan. “Well…fuck.”
Lloyd-Henry vents a rasping chuckle. “I suppose your plan won’t work now, eh?
” When I throw him a confused glance, he explains.
“Manannan asked me to raise the Morrigan, and then he planned to tell her that her new existence was all thanks to him. He hoped that in her gratitude for the resurrection, she would forgive him for scheming with the other gods to confine her.”
Manannan swears loudly and sends a great fist of water smashing into the bleachers. Metal snaps and plastic chairs crumple. But in the wake of the damage, his shoulders slump. I recognize that posture, that loss of purpose. A sense of helplessness, feeding his external fury.
“There is a word I’ve learned recently,” I muse. “Might be useful if you ever do encounter the Morrigan.”
“And what is that?” growls Manannan.
“Grovel,” I say simply.
“Grovel? The fuck does that mean?”
“You can look it up when we get back to my lair,” I tell him. “I can give you some tips.”
“You’re both fools.” Lloyd-Henry’s voice is a thread on the verge of snapping. “Talking of moving on, of accepting death—trapped by sentimentality, with no sense of vision—it is insufferable!”
He falls to his knees, releasing a cry of anguish before shifting into stag form.
The shift doesn’t seem to offer him relief, however.
He stamps and tosses his head, screaming as only a deer can.
The stag morphs into a crow, then a dog, then a panther, each form becoming more frenzied than the last, until he is switching forms too fast for me to perceive any of them.
Manannan and I instinctively back away. No power that either of us possess can help him.
We listen to his garbled shrieks and stare at the amorphous whirl of limbs, antlers, mouths, and tails that was once our summoner until, with one final unearthly whimper, the matter of which he was composed loses all integrity and plops to earth, a steaming pile of red flesh and black ichor.
If he could have found peace within himself, if he could have accepted his defeat, he might have survived. Or perhaps, as he said, he had cheated death once too often, and Fate herself decided to snip the cord of his life one final time.
I tilt my head, surveying the mass, wondering if he’s really gone. Wondering how I should feel. I think I am experiencing gratitude and sympathy, both of which seem appropriate for the man who was instrumental in my resurrection.
“I am going to find Christine and Raoul,” I tell Manannan. “You can come with me or wait here.”
Without waiting for his decision, I take the steps of the bleachers three at a time. My conversation with Lloyd-Henry was one I needed to have, but now that it’s over, the urgency to be with my singer and my poet is back, full force.
I only hope I was right to trust their strength and cunning, to let them pursue Raoul’s sister on their own, injured as they both were.
When I reach the top of the stairway, I encounter two of my ghosts drifting aimlessly in midair.
“Where did the wolf and the girl go?” I ask.
“That way,” replies one. “They climbed up to the roof. Two wolves and a woman, but one wolf is dying. Can you smell it, my lord? The sweet aroma of death?” The ghost giggles, and her companion joins in with a wailing laugh.
I rush past them, a curse on my lips. I feel as if, like Christine, I have two hearts—except they are both outside my body, beyond the shelter of my ribs.
All I care about is reaching them in time.