Chapter 20 The Burning of the Strike #2
Lambspeak’s form broke into mist, and before Amiel crashed after them, another beast materialized from Lambspeak’s mist. It caught Amiel by the jaws and ripped them apart before Amiel’s form exploded into fog and both beasts evaporated into a violent, sweeping darkness that cast across the sky in a wave that swallowed the valley.
Ella shielded her face against the mist as two dark figures coiled and twisted inside, taking distinct shapes and as they churned across the valley.
It was hard to tell them apart, each a deep shade of darkness. They tore through the landscape. As big as city walls, they crashed and came together again, one throwing the other across the valley.
The beast who had been cast back retaliated with a deep, mechanical roar, sending black chains from its body and striking the other monster that ran toward it. A series of wings expanded on the second monster’s back.
The chains wrapped and then snapped two of the wings before the monsters collided again and rolled before the second lifted the first into the air, pumps of its powerful wings sending a storm of ash over the valley.
They spiraled and crashed with a deafening roar slamming through the bleeding grin and shattering it before an explosion ignited the landscape.
Ella crawled from the mire of oil onto a nearby mound of dirt, shielding her face from the frightening heat as the flames raced over the grin and through the field of the Spirit of Death. Conquered at last, it all burned.
The coiled, flaming beasts shifted and dissolved in the wreckage.
One of the figures stood from the fire in a broken hunch, shoulders rolling back as a hand with black tipped fingers pushed the oil back across his hair.
It slid down his neck and temples in streams like sweat.
He looked back at her over his shoulder with amber eyes.
This version of Lambspeak had finished Amiel at last, but this version was not the one that had brought her here in the first place. It was not the version that had started the fight. The one she watched now was centuries from her and saw through her.
Clouds streamed across the sky in a closing of the final curtain, billowing out and expanding before opening floodgates of rain down into the mire.
Ella’s mind arrested the present like an anchor, swimming for it like an island in the ocean and closing off everything that was not of her time. That ancient apparition of Lambspeak dissolved in the billowing mist, it’s burning eyes locked onto hers.
She sat there and waited. Jackson emerged from the fog of freshly doused fire, his clothes stained in the oil. She hoped he would not ask how heavily she’d just relied on a future version of him he so deeply hated.
He passed her as he coughed from the smoke, falling down against a rock behind them.
His ensuing silence was painful. She could explain that Lambspeak had intervened in drastic measures. She could explain that’s why Amiel’s burned corpse now lay at the exit as Jackson left the Grin.
But he must know. He must know Amiel’s fate just as he’d in some ways witnessed his own.
They didn’t speak to each other. All of her memories crashed and collided furiously with old emotion and heartbreak she’d never let herself recognize.
She sat in silence and sorted through the storm inside, watching the Bleeding Grin, some symbol of that lost part of her life, still shrouded in fog and flame.
It took her a moment to realize that even now, despite the price they’d paid, she still didn’t remember how all of it had ended.
She could not remember what happened to Peter. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Her mind grabbed impulsively for the vial of Amnesia tucked in her belt. It was a frightened child’s escape.
She shouted, suddenly full of rage and scrambled forward as she gathered the vial of Amnesia and threw it through the air and toward the flames. It fell hopelessly short of the Bleeding Grin.
With each angry shout, her rage grew as she threw what other stones she could until there were no stones left. She sank down into a crouch and pushed the dirt through her hair and sobbed.
The past was now an awful, raw wound, and seeing Lambspeak’s brutal victory, she’d also seen a glimpse of the future he’d foretold. The worst part was, she cared too much to forget it all over again.
She had no concept of passing time, but when she finally turned around Jackson was still sitting, his hands resting on his knees as he watched her patiently. Ella approached and sank down beside him.
The idea of reasoning through the future gave her a headache.
Without thinking, she rested her head on his shoulder, and released a long breath that barely captured the depth of her sudden exhaustion.
She felt like a wrung cloth in the rain, each second a bit heavier.
She closed her eyes, opening them again when Jackson squeezed her hand.
Her fingers traced over his palm and wrapped between his. The warmth between their palms felt like the only reassuring thing in the world.
“Lambspeak saved us,” she confessed, though she knew he already recognized it. She stared vacantly out into the fog. “I feel like the past is lost, and I’ve just cost us the future somehow. Jackson, I’m sorry.”
“I think you’re finally coming to terms,” he said, surprising her.
She turned her head on his shoulder to look at him, strands of ash coated hair still stuck to her face.
“The present is all we really have,” he said, “I just want you to stay in it with me. Will you?”
She swallowed hard, nodding against his shoulder. His eyes searched hers as she lifted a hand to his face and turned toward him. The edge of her thumb stopped at his lips, and next, she did something that shocked them both.
She wasn't sure what motivated it, her body moved of its own accord, fueled by emotions she didn't quite recognize. Her hands moved to either side of his head, and she leaned forward and kissed his forehead.
It could have been less powerful had it been between any other two people, but as she leaned back and saw Jackson's eyes, only then did the gravity of her actions resonate.
That distinct, symbolic kiss had been a hallmark of the Rider's of Saint East, exchanged since before they had a name.
It was a greeting and goodbye all together, imparted during the deepest tragedies and greatest celebrations.
Cultural, religious, spiritual, romantic, it said: no matter what, the human soul exists.
Startled at her own behavior, she leaned away. "I'm sorry," she rushed the words as if they burned coming out of her mouth.
Jackson still looked shocked, a rare expression for someone so well acquainted with the twists and turns of the world.
"I'm sorry," she said again, embarrassed. She started to stand.
As if his body sensed her movement before his mind did, his hand rose up to her arm and pulled her down.
His other hand captured her face and he kissed her. Wrapping her in his arms, he pulled her close to his body and she buckled as he rolled her onto her back.
In that moment, the only safety in the world seemed to be what closeness she found with him. There was a breathless healing in their kiss, an unburdening as his hands brought her close to him.
His touch was reverent, and the minutes that passed drew on with the slow unfolding of her mind and body. Layers of fear and reserve were peeled loose like bandages, mirroring the release of her oil-soaked clothes that held fast to her skin like the sticky, pervasive bindings of guilt.
There was no determined objective, no rush, only the natural discourse of a physical language where one word poured easily into the next. She couldn’t have predicted how things would progress, only that it had felt normal in a sphere where time had become inconsequential.
When she was at last naked in his arms, she didn’t think of the hawk tearing through the flesh of its prey as she had so many times before.
She no longer thought of the indignity of the slaves as she submitted to his touch and expressed the vulnerable evidence of her pleasure in her breath and voice.
She no longer thought of Marnie’s humiliation as she opened her body to him.
In the midst of the oil and the mud and the smoke, she gripped his hair and wept in the joy and grief of release, thinking only of the yellow daisies he’d touched with such hope, even with blood on his hands.
She recognized now, she’d longed to be touched like that, loved like that. She’d been a broken ghost in her yellow dress, and through the rhythms of his body, she was wrestled into the present to at last be a woman again.
She found hope in the midst of it all, and for several minutes afterward, believed that she would never see Lambspeak again.
It took time for other thoughts to creep back into place, thoughts of the oil and the mud that caked their hair and faces, marking smeared hand and fingerprints across them both.
One fingerprint lined the bottom of Jackson’s eye, and he smiled as she tried to wipe it off and left only a darker smudge as they lay there in each other’s arms.
Watching him, the past and present now felt like impossible places, and she whispered to him as she coiled herself into his chest, “It feels like I could stay here forever.”
“Then do it,” he whispered back.
She laughed and eased up, searching for her shirt. He watched her struggle to put her clothes back on, laughing until he tried to do the same. Soaked in oil, it was like trying to put on a second skin.
“Let’s walk back to Paris. No more shortcuts,” Ella said as they both dressed, and he chuckled.
They put their gear back on, and she was amazed at how light she felt, hiding a smile as she glanced back at Jackson, who’d just finished returning his gear.
“You make it easy,” she said to him after finishing a quick braid of her hair. “To be here.”
“Here?” he asked, synching his belt in place. His smile already told her that he understood what she was suggesting, but she explained anyway.
“I think I can do this. I think I can avoid Lambspeak. I think I can maybe remember anything and be okay.”
He grinned and pulled her back toward him, kissing her again with a full smile, “You’re saying I just did all of that?” It was rare to see him gloat, and she discovered that she loved the expression of pride on his face.
“Absolutely,” she fed into it, and he only laughed.
“Don’t tempt me. It just took us thirty minutes to get dressed,” he whispered into her ear, exposing a playfulness she’d only seen the shyest glimpses of before.
She wrapped her hand in his as she laughed, and guided him back toward the exit of the valley. They waded through the fog until trees came into view. After a cocktail of adrenalin and the release of Jackson’s touch, she felt for the first time in a long time, that everything would be okay.
As they approached the woods, she heard a familiar and chilling click.
Ella froze where she stood, hoping that she had simply imagined the sound.
“Stay very still,” a familiar voice cut through the trees up ahead, one Ella recognized before the figure emerged.
His face was haggard, several bandages wrapped tightly around his forearms and head. She barely recognized him, but the voice was unmistakable.
Ella gasped in shock. “Crow?”