34. Chapter 34 #2
It’s not silly, he said. My left arm turned cold as he lifted it, lacing its fingers through the ones on my right hand, one thumb rubbing against the other.
I couldn’t help a watery laugh. It was pathetic that that was the closest I’d get to him.
Best I can do at the moment, he said. It’s not silly, okay, I’m not going to be in here forever—
You might be, and even if you’re not, you’re just going to run off and get yourself killed.
I don’t have any intention of dying. I plan on keeping myself alive for eternity out of pure spite.
You think you’re so amusing.
You think I am too, most of the time.
I think you’re an idiot.
I think you don’t mean that. You can’t lie to me, remember?
My left hand squeezed my right, one thumb still stroking the other. It was sweet, but it didn’t make me feel any less shipwrecked.
Even if I do leave, he said, you don’t think I’d spare three fucking seconds on you before I took off?
That I’d go without so much as a backward glance, a nice knowing you?
We’ll have some things to sort out before I go anywhere.
Frankly I don’t have any intention of letting you rush back through the wood on your own, or at all.
I have to look for Serich.
No you don’t. I’ll take you back to the village and look for him myself. I’d be faster on my own. You can check if he’s made it back home while I’m out there.
I blinked into the blackness, not knowing what to say for a moment. You don’t even like him.
I dislike the thought of you in the wood again more than I dislike him.
I can hardly go back to Monde’s End without him. They think I’m a murderer. If he’s not there to vouch for me I’ll be either hanged or cast out. That might happen even if he is there to speak for me.
Obviously, Remy said, his voice heavy with sarcasm, I’m not going to let anybody kill you.
You can wait here, then. I’ll check the wood for him.
I’ll take him back to the village if I find him and come back for you.
It might take me a while, there’s no blinking in the wood, only on the outskirts, but if it’s daylight when I go looking, I might have enough time.
It hasn’t even been three days. He can’t have gotten far.
And if you can’t find him? I could hardly bear to think of it. If Serich was dead, it would only be because of me.
If he’s dead, you mean? Then I guess you’ll have to stay here, with me.
I’m sure that would go over very well. I tried to picture myself living here; failed miserably. It was like incorporating a soppy, frilly-dressed girl from a portrait into a hellscape.
We’ll figure something out. I’m not going to let villagers with pitchforks kill you, I’m not going to let you wander around out there without knowing where you are.
Let’s just… he trailed off like he had a headache, like he’d gotten much more than he’d bargained for.
He’d expected to tease me about a dream but wound up with arguments and almost-tears.
Why don’t you just go back to sleep, it’s the middle of the night.
We don’t need to plan anything right this second. I can feel how exhausted you are.
I tried, but I couldn’t fall back asleep.
It had to be before dawn when I finally dragged myself up and out of Remy’s bed, thinking there was hardly any point in flopping around for a few more hours.
Remy was more careful with me than usual, as if he expected me to burst into floods of tears at any moment.
He said little as I washed up (which in itself was rather startling; since arriving at Hell, he’d tried, with the limpest of suggestion, to get me to tilt my head this way or that, to drop my chin so he might have a better view, laughing when I never budged, drawing back from his window in cheerful defeat) but while I stood at the looking glass in his washroom, combing through my wet hair, I felt him looking back.
You’re quiet, I said, staring into my own eyes.
Just thinking.
It must be terribly hard for you, if you need utter silence to do it.
I don’t think, he said, and here I could hear him try his best to sound his most demonic, I’d let you get away with saying such things if you weren’t so pretty.
I stopped being afraid of you a while ago.
He made a dismissive gesture up there in his cell. I don’t think you ever truly were. You’ve always had a bit of a mouth.
That wasn’t right, though. I must have been a little afraid; why else had I always pictured him as a beast? And when, exactly, had I turned those talons and claws into hands; when had the forked tail disappeared, the wings melted away? I couldn’t recall.
I felt him watching me as I began a braid at the back of my head.
I wonder if you would do something for me, he said as my hair slid through my fingers. It might be hard for you.
In the mirror, one of my eyebrows dipped low. What is it?
I want to go to Fang.
I thought it was a joke for a second or two, though I felt no humor in his words.
My lips parted as my hands fell away from my hair.
I shook my head, momentarily too stunned to answer.
And when I was about to argue, he said, I want you to see John Dale.
I want you to know he’s where he belongs.
I can tell you that he is, but you won’t believe it until you see him.
If he’s there it’s because he gave a full confession up in a judgement session.
A one-second flash of Fang had been more than enough for me. Its laughing, bloody aura, sparkling torches and screams, the bodies shackled to the walls, hordes of flesh, ash-white succubi with smiles like open wounds—no. Remy—
I can block your ears.
But I can’t just wander around alone. Wouldn’t someone stop me?
It’ll be quick. In and out. The crowd in the antechamber will be at its thinnest so early in the morning. There would be a guard at the door if we weren’t allowed out of this apartment.
I grimaced at myself in the mirror, unconvinced.
Some part of you still wonders that I might have been wrong about him, and it’s no good denying it, he said, when I’d been about to interrupt, because I can feel it whenever his name is mentioned.
I won’t make you go, but I want you to. To let you leave here thinking I’m some monster, that I did it for some sick pleasure of my own—I don’t want that.
Had he not sounded so earnest, I probably would have refused him. It felt as if he were undoing me, unwinding me string by string, tatters collapsing around me until all that was left was a helpless yes.
The moment I agreed, he elbowed me aside and took control. In seconds we were out the door of his apartment, off and moving down the hallway, torches streaking past in orange blurs.
A thin straggle of damned milled in the antechamber, but if they called out to me, I didn’t notice, cosseted away in my own mind.
My hearing bled away until nothing perforated the fog.
My feet, under his control, were sure and quick as they descended the spiral stair, and though I couldn’t hear it, I felt the dull roar of noise from Fang vibrating beneath my boots.
A minute later, he pulled me up short on the landing beneath the archway.
Fang was a confusion of blood and flesh and merry light.
The air was stuffy and close, smelling of sweat and metal and fear, the musk of hounds.
Steel flashed from every corner. Firelight danced over naked skin.
Hounds prowled and demons stalked. It was as gruesome as I remembered.
Perhaps more so, for the newest decorations that even Remy seemed surprised by.
Pallid figures swinging in midair, their toes a few feet off the ground.
Their heads lolled but their limbs jerked horribly, monstrous marionettes caught in some vigorous dance.
Their bodies were oddly loose, as if every bone had been dislocated.
I followed the leather straps which coiled around their wrists and ankles up to colossal iron chandeliers overhead that had been pulled and shaped into elaborate whorls and coils.
Perched like carelessly elegant nymphs upon each chandelier was a pale-skinned, red-lipped demon, eyes flaming in the torchlight.
In their hands, cross braces that controlled the damned.
And one of those damned I recognized, as Remy looked around.
His doughy body flopped on full display, every dimple and vein lit by the unforgiving torches.
The indignity was sickening, a plunge of revulsion the likes of which I had never known.
Had I been in control of my own body I felt sure bile would be creeping up my throat.
I felt a wrench of savage satisfaction from Remy as I looked upon that slack, hopeless face. The black-throated ecstasy of watching John Dale dance, a puppet on a string. The dark back alleys of his mind, its murmurs and shadows, his venomous heart thumping in tandem with my unsettled one.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for the man who would have violated you?
he snapped. Even if I hadn’t cared about you at all I would have killed him, the sooner to send him where he belongs.
How terrified you would have been during your final moments.
I wouldn’t have suffered to feel all that even if I’d hated you.
The bodies were dancing so quickly it made me ill. I heard my own blood hiss and pound around me, stuck there in that dark room in my mind.
They can’t lie during judgement. Remy’s voice was loud and hollow as it rang around my cell. If I had access to the council’s notes I could tell you what he did, every detail.
The last thing I wanted was details.