Chapter 77
“I bet you’re wondering why I’m not with my husband,” Last said, picking at her soggy muffin.
She pulled tiny pieces free, rolled them between her fingers into a sticky ball, and then flicked them to the dusty ground.
When an unfortunate cockroach scuttled to her lure, she conjured a stone fist and smashed it.
She’d crushed six so far, and their exoskeletons let off a musty, wet-cardboard odor.
Although that smell might have been the bran muffin.
“Not really,” I said as Last’s stone fist chased after a fleeing cockroach.
“Gotcha!” she crowed as the cockroach splattered over the stone floor.
I ignored the crunch and the fetid scent and wiped at a drop of sweat rolling down my forehead.
The creature behind the wall was growing impatient. It paced, scraping at the stone, madness and hunger pressing against the backs of my eyes until my vision was bloodied in blacks and reds.
We were deep in the catacombs, where the air was so heavy and stagnant it choked on itself.
The tunnels had sloped gently downward, the bones in the walls shading from white to gray to dust. As the tunnels constricted, the fist-like pressure of the creature’s malevolent hunger increased until I felt crushed beneath its grindstone weight.
The stone feel scraped over me and ground against my bones, urging me on.
Couldn’t Last feel that?
Couldn’t she feel the madness and the malevolence?
It was so overwhelming that even with Jagger’s hateful blood curiously drawn to the creature, I still felt a gnawing, instinctual fear prodding at that tiny pit of self-preservation in my stomach.
Run, the fear whispered. Don’t free this thing. Run while you still can.
“How will you control this creature when it’s loose?” I asked, another drop of sweat falling as I pulled a knot free. And another. And another again.
There was a war happening in me: I fought Jagger and the Clarks’ wills—and lost each time I untied a knot.
There are some battles in life people can win. But there are others you can never win. You can only keep fighting and hope to survive.
I wondered if the rockslide weight of Jagger’s will was like that. I couldn’t throw it off—I could only grapple and wrestle and fight it so the weight of it didn’t crush me. There was no winning. There was only losing or surviving.
Years ago, Jagger had executed a slipshot by stacking slabs of slate on his chest, until his lungs were finally crushed beneath the weight. It had taken twenty-seven slabs. The slipshot had survived for days.
Some people might say surviving is winning, but I don’t know if that’s the truth.
You can survive and lose, just like you can win and die.
In the beginning, I’d hoped this was a fight I could win. Even Justice had told me to hide my good so someday, I might be able to defeat Jagger. I wasn’t certain, though, if Justice had been wrong. Maybe this fight with Jagger was the type that could never be won.
Justice had gone before me. He’d lost already. Survived and lost.
There was only one question. Was he alive enough for there to be hope, or had all his hope withered, died, and become a rag man haunting his soul?
I didn’t know.
I only knew I was unlocking a being that made Jagger’s blood groan and my insides shudder.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to,” I added. “It doesn’t feel like it can be controlled.”
I pried another knot free from the torturous jumble of tightly woven locks.
“Control?” Last frowned. She’d perched on a narrow stone ledge, nestled against the rib cage of one of her ancestors. “Who said we want control? What’s the point in controlling chaos?”
“But—”
“We’ll let it devour the Smiths, and then we’ll put it back.”
Put it back? She thought they could put this thing back? I wasn’t certain exactly what it was. Spirit? Stone? Creature? A horror that couldn’t be looked at without turning to stone?
“And if you can’t put it back?”
She shrugged. “Then we’ll kill it.”
The thing in the walls stilled. Was it listening? Could it understand?
It had never seemed intelligent to me. It was only hunger. Madness. Hate. It was a mindless, devouring thing, driven by the need to inflict pain and then consume the screams. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew it was the sort of darkness that hated the light.
I tapped on the rope that connected me to Jacob again. Maybe he would come. Maybe he’d stop the Clarks.
“But what if it destroys the city?” The Clarks lived here. This was their home. Why would they want to destroy their home? “And what about the millions of people—?”
Last jumped down from the ledge and slapped me.
I blinked, the cold sting of her hand bringing a flush of needles to my cheek. The knots I’d been untangling slipped from my mind and snapped back into place.
Last turned her hand and smiled at the red working its way over her pale palm.
“Sometimes, Mari, you say the stupidest things. We want to destroy the city. We want people to die. What did I tell you when we first became friends? Sacrifice is a necessary part of life. Why do you care what happens to people you don’t know?
More importantly, why don’t you care about me?
I’m your friend, but you haven’t even asked about my wedding night. ”
I pressed my fingers to the hot sting of my cheek and thought about Luvic’s stricken, horrified expression when he’d realized Cora was gone.
“You’re right. How was your night?”
I turned back to the stone and combed through a line of clove hitches, dragging my fingers through the knots.
Last smiled and hopped back up onto the ledge, kicking her feet happily.
“Thank you for asking. Well, it started out all right. As you know, my husband is a very attractive man. Even with all the blood, and the hole in his chest, and all that gray skin from his principal’s binding .
. .” Last shrugged when I narrowed my eyes.
“Oh, it’s a Bard thing. The principal explained it to me.
It’s an object of power implanted in his skin.
It makes him loyal to the Bard. It hurts him, I think.
” She swung her feet and smiled at the splatter of crushed cockroaches.
“I truly don’t care what the Bard does to his son.
Whatever he does, I’m certain my husband deserves it.
He’s so smug. He’s so pretty. He’s always smiling.
But inside, he’s a monster, just like the rest of us.
I want him to know it. I want him to admit it.
” She made a sound of frustration and smacked the rib cage behind her, scattering the bones.
It was dark at the dead end of the tunnel. The only light was Last’s conjured green-yellow flame, but I could still make out the angry curl of her lips.
“What happened last night?” I asked.
Last’s lips flattened, and she shrugged. “He didn’t want me.”
I fumbled with one of the knots I was untying. She sounded so forlorn I gave her a quick, surprised glance.
“Exactly! You’re thinking the same thing as me.
How could he resist? Men are stupid creatures driven by instinct.
They’re slaves to lust. Look at the praying mantis—the males know they’ll be eaten by the female as soon as they mate.
What do they do? They mate! They can’t help it!
I bet they like it. Who else? The black widow spider devours her mates.
The sagebrush cricket. Even some female octopuses eat their mates.
Yet all of them keep mating. Why? Because males will do anything to slake their lust, including die.
So what’s wrong with my stupid Bard husband that he won’t do what he’s supposed to? ”
I cleared my throat and then offered, “Maybe he doesn’t want to die?”
Last scoffed. “Nobody asked him.”
I slipped another row of knots free. The creature scratched at the wall, testing the integrity of the locks.
“Maybe he loves someone else.”
“Don’t be stupid.” She frowned. “Besides, that’s not it.
He didn’t want me like this, and he didn’t want me when I looked like the type of woman he prefers.
” She sighed. “I wanted us to have a friendly marriage. I thought we could get along. I see now it’s not going to work that way.
Gifts and kindness didn’t work. Trickery didn’t work.
So . . . what would you do? Never mind. I forgot.
You try to kill the men who are infatuated with you. ”
She wasn’t wrong. “What do you mean, ‘the type of woman he prefers’?”
Cora. She had to mean Cora.
She waved her hand, and I flinched as she crushed another cockroach. This one with her bare fist.
“It was stupid,” she said, wiping her hand on her jeans. “There’s a woman he thought he wanted. He doesn’t. Obviously. We both know that now. Even the woman knows it. Maybe . . . hmm . . . maybe . . . Do you know what he’s afraid of?”
“No. No idea,” I said quickly. Too quickly.
Last narrowed her eyes.
“The woman,” I said. “The one he thought he wanted. What happened to her?”
Last tilted her head, studying me. “Why?”
“Well.” I peered at Last through the darkness. “I’d think you wouldn’t want him going to her.”
Last laughed. The wispy, gleeful sound made the creature in the walls shift and moan hungrily.
“Did you kill her?” I asked, my heart thudding, climbing my throat.
“Kill her?” Last shook her head. “Why would I kill her? I’m not my brother. Not even Secondus would’ve killed her, and he was worse than Primus. Be glad you never met him.”
I had met him. I’d thrown blood snakes at him before jumping into the East River.
“No, I didn’t kill her. There are beings who are good for sacrifice, and there are beings who are good for . . . other things.”
“Like torture?”
“No! Honestly, Mari. Is that what you like? Is that what you would’ve done?
No, I’m not cruel like you and Primus. I’m kind.
I’m good. She’s happy right now. She’s content.
She has exactly everything she’s ever wanted.
She has a nice, beautiful home. It’s in a quiet, safe place.
She has all the food she could want. She can sing.
She can dance. She can rest and relax. No one’s hurting her.
No one’s bothering her. In fact, she’s exactly where she wants to be.
I’ve done her a favor. I made her a gift.
You think that’s nothing? It’s something.
It’s something good. You should be impressed with me.
My husband was impressed. He liked what I did.
He didn’t say so, but I know. He liked it.
He’s glad I did it. He’s thankful. His lusts were twisted, and his insides were warped, and I fixed it for him.
I showed him he wanted a creature, and now he doesn’t want her anymore.
Now they’re both happy. She knows he’s mine.
I know he’s mine. And my husband knows he’s mine.
He just has to admit it. He just has to give in and act like a man.
That’s all. He can act like a man and then—”
Last’s voice shook with vehemence. Her volume had been rising, and when she broke off, her chest was heaving with the violence of her words. They knocked against the walls as if she’d been punching her point into the stone.
She took another breath and then said, with the angry calm of a person standing on a ledge, “He’ll act like a man, he’ll do what a man does, and then—” She sliced her finger across her throat.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. It rushed from me. Last leaned back against the wall, tilting her head up to stare at the dark, carved stone ceiling. A spider crouched in its silk web above her.
The monster scraped at its cage, and I pulled free a swath of knots. Eight more hours at most, and then it would be free.
“Am I heartless?” she asked, her black hair hiding the green glow of her face.
“Do you want to be?”
She reached up, stretching her pointer finger to the silk web. The spider fled, disappearing into a crevice.
“Sometimes,” she whispered.
I stilled, waiting in the suffocating quiet for her to say more.
Finally, she shrugged. “If I were heartless, I wouldn’t want you to like me so much.
I hate my husband, but I want him to love me.
I’ve never been loved. I want to know how it feels.
I want to see what it’s like. And if not him, then who?
Nobody. But it’s stupid to hate someone and want their love.
If he does end up loving me, I think I’ll hate him even more.
I would hate him for loving me even while I groaned in the pleasure of it.
Oh well. I won’t love him, but Mari, I’d like it—I would really like it—if he loved me. ”
We were quiet while Last contemplated the spider’s abandoned web and I untied another million knots.