22. When All Is Said and Done It Always Ends in Flames #4
With my chin down, I forced enough space to unhinge my jaw—I bit her arm as hard as I could, allowing myself a breath only after I tasted blood.
She screamed and tightened her grip, or tried to, but I’d found the crook of her elbow and slipped from her hold, using the other thing I had to my advantage: I’d already kissed a corpse that day.
Unlike her, I no longer had any fear of sinking deeper into the revolting soup of decay that was housed inside the crypt.
She reeled back, resisting my grip, and I used the distance to dive for the pistol that had been flung from William’s hand into the mass of carcasses, forgotten by everyone but me.
Then I turned to point it at William, who was lying motionless on the ground.
Genesis and I clocked it at the same time.
Jude was straddling him, punching down hard, over and over, one of his arms slashed with a river of blood.
The other was stained black from knuckles to forearm, like it had been shoved all the way through William’s chest cavity, through the sickness in his soul, to reach the pavement.
Genesis screamed, and I laughed because the devil inside me laughed, because all of this was so fucking stupid, so filled with unnecessary gore that I could hardly think of anything but the slapstick of it, the unforgivable waste.
All those lives and loves and potential, all for the sake of some false eternity, when one man was already nothing but bone and the other had no beauty left to speak of.
They could have lived close enough to forever using the normal things, private chefs and health insurance.
Now William de Witt was dead before he’d turned sixty.
They’d started a cult just to be exterminated, crushed like insects in squalor, and the whole thing was so fucking funny until I pointed the gun at Genesis’s forehead and realized I wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Get in,” I said. She spat at me, so I emerged from the crypt like Botticelli’s Venus to take hold of her by the throat.
I don’t know whether I was strong or just lucky—if she capitulated from shock or if I really used that much force.
All I know is that I turned her around and dragged her backward until her knees hit the edge of the fountain, and then I pushed her down until she lay among the remnants of her deeds.
“Here’s the story,” I said, aiming the gun between her dazed, unfocused eyes. “You’re a woman who chose a monster. You wrote this ending yourself.”
They say a gunshot is loud and startling. Not at that range.
“Now you’re a monster, too,” I said.
After a moment, I tossed the pistol aside.
I walked unsteadily around to the other side of the crypt and pushed.
It took a while to gather enough momentum, but eventually I managed some leverage, and I pushed the slab back where it belonged.
In my head, I heard the devil saying something, I heard him snap his gum, but I didn’t need to hear the actual contents of his soliloquy.
I’d already said the gist of it out loud.
I caught the dull thud of Jude’s boots behind me. He bent to pick up the pistol, and for a moment, I saw the demon reappear in his eyes.
I remember wondering if it would follow me now that I’d shed blood myself; whether I’d become part of the ritual. Clearly, I thought, there was something living inside me that hadn’t been there before, not like this.
Later I’d understand that I hadn’t actually fulfilled the ritual, which required bloodletting while its victims were still alive. But it was never a real ritual anyway, because none of these bitches were immortal.
Except possibly for Jude.
He looked at the gun in his hand without speaking a word to me, instead turning it over and over. He was staggering a little to remain upright, probably due to blood loss. William had clearly opened a vein, and my guess was that only adrenaline was keeping Jude on his feet.
“Is it real?” I asked him. “The monster.”
His eyes when they met mine were familiarly uncanny. Like facing a mirror and asking my reflection to be something else.
“Jude.” I swallowed. “What will it do to me?”
He lifted the hand with the pistol, aiming it between my eyes. I felt a new version of an old thrill.
“Nothing you wouldn’t do yourself,” said Jude.
My heart pounded in my chest, and I felt grateful. I felt something, and it was no other character’s but mine. The wind blew around me, hot and madly.
Then Jude pulled the trigger and took the shot.
The lights behind me exploded in a spray of electricity, a shower of fluorescence that dazzled like fireworks on the gust of another Santa Ana wind, igniting the dried leaves and dead foliage that lined the villa’s hillside.
The spark caught almost instantaneously, climbing upward on the length of decaying vines.
The trail up to the house flickered like firelight. Then I looked at Jude, and he looked at me.
“Run,” he said.
I knew I had seconds to spare before everything was engulfed. He stumbled a little, swaying like his feet had only moments left to hold him up.
“I love you,” I said. “I could have loved you.”
He looked at me tiredly.
“Anya. Don’t be stupid. Run.”
I counted two heartbeats before I turned.
I knew I’d never get the smell out of my nostrils. The rancid flesh, the noxious smoke. I got into my car and peeled up the driveway, away from the house.
I only paused once, to look down at the flames, to catch the uncanny glow that filled that little pocket universe.
I watched it burn, the villa and its sins, and I thought spontaneously of heaven.
Of how lovely the flames looked when they danced, and how it would feel to die someday.
Knowing that when my end came for me, I’d go with it freely and gladly, hand in beautiful hand.