Chapter 66 #2
Alex threw her hand out and grabbed the edge of Reed’s soul. It was slippery and terrified, wriggling to get away from her. But she was the soldier and the Wheelwalker, and he would not be her first kill.
“Alex!” Darlington shouted.
Girard had stepped in front of her and he was holding a gun.
An actual revolver. She was supposed to understand violence, but this she hadn’t anticipated.
Men like Reed and Girard hired other people to do their dirty work.
The weapon looked alien in his hand, a foreign object. Alex lost her grip on Reed’s soul.
Darlington lunged for Girard, but they were both suddenly engulfed in a whirl of snowy feathers. The owls had descended to defend their priest.
Alex knew she had blundered badly. She had miscalculated how much leverage she could claim. She had believed these men wanted her power enough to play a different game. She seized the spokes of the Wheel, searching for the strength of any Grays she could find.
But then she saw it: The owls were ignoring Darlington. Their beaks and talons slashed only at Girard’s face, at Girard’s hands. He dropped the gun and stumbled backward, screaming as the owls attacked.
Alex didn’t have time to make sense of it. Reed fumbled for the gun, and she took hold of his soul. He looked up at her, his eyes wet and frightened.
Come with me.
She tasted burnt sugar, smelled mountain air, heard the whirring of a helicopter blade. She was standing with a group of men beneath the great stone effigy of an owl.
She was dining in the cellar of an ancient vineyard.
She was climbing up the rocky paths of Mount Rainier.
She was slicing open a woman’s stomach and pulling an emerald from her bowels.
She was diving off a cliffside and plunging into a blue and welcoming sea.
She was a child on her mother’s lap and her father was singing to her in Welsh. This world and every world is yours, my son, yours for the taking.
No wonder demons hungered after human souls, the most elaborate of knots, an infinite series of loops and bends and bights, of patterns that became discernible too late, all of it glorious and particular until the great unraveling, when the design became nothing once more, a single anonymous line fading into the horizon.
Alex tugged and Alban Reed came apart, never to find his shape again.
Elation flooded through her, power in an avalanche, unstoppable, unfathomable.
Now she understood Golgarot’s dire appetite, the great tragedy of knowing you would never feel full again.
Alex drew in a deep breath. A different girl would feel some kind of remorse.
She would sense the gravity of the step she’d chosen to take.
Alex’s only thought was that she was going to have to work hard not to get used to this.
Alban Reed crumpled to the ground.
Girard lay on the snow between the trees, moaning, his face and hands streaked with blood. He tried to sit up, and the barn owls leapt on him again.
“Do you understand this?” Darlington asked.
Alex shook her head. “I thought they were hunting me.”
“When I asked Huilca about the owls, he said, They see what we do not. He said they wait and they watch.” He turned to her. “Alex, maybe they were waiting for you.”
The abomination. The mistake. The thing her father’s order had worked so hard to prevent.
Cautiously Alex took a step toward Girard. The owls turned their odd white faces to her, their black eyes staring. The sounds they made now were soft chirps, brief exclamations.
“I … Thank you?” She looked back at Darlington and he held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I think we can manage from here?”
They hopped and chirped, then took silently to the air, settling once more in the branches.
Alex’s little-girl heart had once dreamed her father would arrive with a family to watch over her, to protect her.
This wasn’t quite what she’d imagined, but at least they wouldn’t argue over politics at Thanksgiving.
Alex squatted beside Girard. Up close, she could see the owls had carved ragged trenches into his flesh.
“Hospital,” he groaned. “Help me.”
“Sure thing, buddy. We just need to handle a few things first.”
She nodded to Darlington, who grabbed Girard by the nape of his neck, dragging him toward the house as he kicked feebly at the gravel.
“I won’t tell anyone,” Girard whimpered. “I don’t know anything!”
“Do we believe him?” Alex asked.
“Turner will figure out how far they spread your secret.”
“No one else knows,” Girard gabbled. “There are too many prohibitions in the order. I swear, we just wanted the nexus for ourselves.”
Darlington considered. “It would be stupid for him to say that when he knows we could just kill him and tie up the final loose end.”
“Tempting,” Alex admitted.
“Some restraint, Stern.”
Girard tried to break away from Darlington’s grip.
“Go ahead and run, little man,” he rumbled, giving Girard’s body a shake. “See what happens if you make me catch you.”
She and Darlington had agreed to keep Dawes and Turner removed from the uglier part of this business. They needed plausible deniability, and they both had a firmer grip on what was strictly moral. Alex didn’t want them to lose that, not given the work that lay ahead with Lethe.
She had never planned to kill Girard, though very possibly he deserved it.
But death didn’t come to those who had earned it.
Reed had demanded a nexus; now he had one, even if he would never get to use it.
His body would be found in the trunk of his Audi and Girard would be behind the wheel—though he’d have no memory of how he got there or much else.
He might not even remember his name when he finished the bottle of water Dawes had prepared for him.
Girard’s teaching days were done. Tough to lecture when you had no recollection of the subject.
It was cruel, but Alex had never promised to be kind.