Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
Cisco
Aface I once knew is all I see in my crowded vision.
She is my sister, my penance, my worst nightmare, and now my next meal.
“You stole everything from me.” The guttural snarl is ripped from somewhere deep in the void. “And for what . . . nothing?”
I laugh at the bitter irony. She wants the power, but it’s nothing now. It’s emptiness that can never be filled. I’m not even sure what she stole from me, just that it’s all gone.
“You can still have something, Cesco,” she shoots back. “But first, you must give me your half of the curse. Do that, and I’ll give her back to you.”
Lies. All lies.
How can you give emptiness?
Shadows whip out from my body and latch around her throat.
There is only nothing, and it’s all her fault.
The darkness flares around us, pulsing and roaring.
“Can’t you see?” she cries. “I’m only trying to protect you. She won’t love you like this.”
I stare at the face I once knew, but also the one I never knew. A hollow ache echoes inside me, and I wonder if that’s the space “she” used to occupy in my soul. Is that why I can’t summon the will to believe this liar, to feel anything but apathy?
To feel anything at all?
“Give it to me,” she begs. “She won’t trust you like this.”
“Trust?” I laugh. The ribbons of shadow drag my meal toward me. Boots scrape across the cobblestones. “I taste your deception in the air. Why should I trust you?”
It smacks at my wrist, desperate for freedom. It’s then I realize my hand had at some point replaced the shadows circling her neck. I don’t remember moving my arm.
“She’s alive!” she chokes out. “Believe me. He wanted her dead but—” I squeeze hard. “Made it so she could—knew you’d never—give it to me—unless—”
A glimmer of warmth flickers at the edge of my vision. It shines defiantly, begging for my attention, but when I turn, darkness is all I see, and the notion of why I looked in the first place escapes me.
A name, perhaps.
A person.
My mind chases the notion, but it slips away as though taken by the waves.
My meal’s face turns in the same direction. Its mouth moves, but no sound comes. The swarm buzzes and roars until it’s all I hear.
Finish it. Eat her sins. Consume her soul.
But then . . . a warbled sound finds my ears, almost as if we’re in water. It reminds me of . . . I frown as the notion slips away again.
Another flash of color.
Closer this time. Brighter. Hotter.
Red. Copper. Yellow. Gold.
“Cisco!”
Do I know that husky voice?
The memory of plush lips with a beauty mark at the corner brings a flicker of warmth, breaking through the void. Eager for more of that feeling, I let go of my meal, the face I once knew, and it stumbles away. More sound crashes in. More sights and details.
I hunt through the darkness and find another face. This one is surrounded by coppery hair, wild and free. She wears an unfamiliar, billowing white dress with yellow flowers. It’s too big and hangs off one freckled shoulder.
Freckles.
On her shoulder.
“Cisco.”
She speaks. Blue eyes lock with mine, and it feels like a hit to my solar plexus. I can’t breathe. Can’t focus on anything else but her face. Her beautiful face. Those lips.
I know those lips.
I know that beauty mark at the corner.
Sensations ignite in my chest as I recall the feeling of those lips on my mouth, my neck, my body. I ache when I remember those lips flattening, and her beauty mark disappearing. An inferno when those lips stretched tight, when she smirked and called me Padre.
“Mercy,” I rasp.
“Hey, babe.” Glimmering eyes crinkle. “What’s happening?”
“I—” I look at my hands and blink. “I don’t know.”
She has the sword. She’s here to kill you.
My jaw clicks shut. I glance down at Mercy’s hand where a blade of fire crackles, and I snarl. Its divine power flares in response, and it feels like blisters against my skin. My darkness reacts, swelling and swarming at the threat.
Kill first.
Eat.
Devour.
Shadows erupt from my body, but halt instantly when the fiery threat winks out of existence. Turning full circle, I open my senses and hunt for it.
“Babe?”
That voice again. I know it.
“It’s just me now,” she says.
A patch of warmth breaks through the clouds like the sun, but it’s not fire. Not flame. It’s just her.
“Mercy,” I choke out, stumbling forward, swiping to clear the shadows from my path. I need her. Can’t forget her again. Where is she? “Mercy!”
Ribbons of shadows flee from my swiping hands and reveal more of her beautiful face directly before me. She’s rising from a crouch, palms facing me, expression wary. The fiery sword that was in her hands is now a dead thing on the ground.
“You’re safe,” she says. “Promise.”
She sacrificed her power?
That notion sparks more heat in the emptiness, and it hurts. Dio, it hurts as if I’m being incinerated, only . . . I’m not losing parts of myself. I think . . . I think I’m finding them.
I double over, clutching my stomach. The shadows ripple around me and attempt to keep me upright, but I am a heavy weight. A puppet on marionette strings.
“You fool! You should use it to save yourself.”
I hiss at the other voice, another memory that hurts.
Mercy’s palm swings in that direction. “Hannah—or should I call you Maria?”
My head whips up. Maria? Yes, that’s her name.
My baby sister. I blink through the agony.
I battle the puppeteer pulling my head in another direction, but I need to see them.
If I lose sight, I fear I’ll lose them forever.
Hannah. Maria. She is one and the same. The face I know.
Alive. A sob slips from my lips and is eaten by darkness, but I know them.
I know them.
More color filters in, and I see more of their figures. They’re not far away, facing each other, wind whipping in their hair.
“Fuck you,” Maria snaps at Mercy.
“Just keep a calm head, okay?” she returns.
“And why should I? He played us both.”
“Exactly. Don’t give him what he wants.”
“What he wants is for one of us to become Famine. He doesn’t care which one.”
“You know?”
“Of course I know! I’ve always known.”
“Jesus-fuck! Then why aren’t you fighting back?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing all these years? I was trying to find a way to protect you all the best that I could.”
“A Spanish abbey filled with dead nuns says otherwise.”
“Not if you knew the alternative was worse.”
“Why didn’t you come to us? Why didn’t you ask us for help?”
“Why would you trust me? I was never there! I was never a part of your family, despite being a part of the same Sisterhood.” My sister holds up her hand, stopping Mercy’s response.
“But that’s okay. I knew I wouldn’t be. Not since the first day I found half of Mary’s Gospel in the Spanish archives a few months ago.
” She swings her pointer finger to me. “But I knew he would be there.” Her breath hitches.
“And I knew that if I could make Beelzebub think he controlled me, if I could make this work, then it would make up for all the hurt I caused my family. But you fucked everything up. He was supposed to fear for your life, you idiot! Now he’ll never give up his half of the curse . . . but I suppose—”
“Hannah, stop.”
“I suppose there’s still time.”
“Don’t do it.”
A scrape of metal. A flash in the darkness. The puppet strings jerk me upright. The pain in my void melts away.
I only have eyes for the dagger pressed against a pale throat, for the hand that controls it, and for how it rests just above a smattering of freckles on a shoulder.