Illumination 10.7: Seeds of Crystal
Everything was as clear as crystal: sharp-edged and slightly fractured. Natalie knew she wasn’t whole, but she was close. She couldn’t go back, but if she gathered up all the pieces, she could go forward.
She squeezed Ajax’s hand as Hatherly came around the corner, his two cambions trailing him. “Can you distract Surge? And maybe the other one? I need to talk to Hatherly.”
“Just talk?” He flexed his scarred fist.
“Well, I’m not going to kiss him,” she said, and she thought her voice was very carefully controlled.
He squeezed her hand back. “I’ll keep them away from you.” Then, slipping away from her, he called, “What did you do with Seth?” as he accelerated away.
Hatherly flicked a hand dismissively and Surge paused, fixing his leonine gaze on Ajax.
Seth, thought Natalie with a pang. She’d felt the despair engine flick on, then off, followed by the low thrum of Gate’s absolute focus field. And Hatherly looked annoyed, as only Seth could make somebody. Seth was tough. He’d hang on. She didn’t dare think he wouldn’t.
“I see you’re feeling better,” called Hatherly. The ugly expression of annoyance was replaced by the pleasant, benevolent expression she’d come to hate. “You’d gone too far for a while, but young Ajax helped you recover your balance. I knew he had potential.”
“I’ve regained more than my balance.” She moved toward him, stopping at the curb.
His smile flickered. “Ah, I always felt that way when returning to myself after a deeper journey into the chaos.” His head twitched. “I wish I could see the shore again. But come here, girl, and we can fix this wretched world.”
“No,” Natalie said calmly. “We can’t. Not that way.”
Hatherly frowned. “You’re being irresponsible. It’s the only chance we have. Otherwise we’ll just trudge on through our own muck until we finally slip into oblivion.”
Natalie caught her breath. Then she shook her head. “It’s not a chance. It’s how we come to oblivion. Giving up on each other.”
Beyond Hatherly, Surge moved to protect him from Ajax. But it was a feint, and Ajax danced away from Surge’s paw, luring the cambion after him. But Gate remained, watching Natalie with heavy-lidded eyes.
“If that’s true, then what does it matter? It’s hastening an end of a timespan that is only measurable to those who remember it, and there will be nobody left to do so. And the end is inevitable, if we don’t do this. Where are the Antecessors now? Look at us, playing in the shadows cast by the light of a dead star and thinking there’s more there. There’s nothing to hang on to unless we can finally reach beyond.”
It was all so sharp and clear and sad. Natalie said, “Not we, though. I. And I don’t want to do it without a ‘we’. Humanity is more than one person, Hatherly. You can’t burn everybody to thrust one person beyond. You must know that on some level. You said it yourself: you haven’t seen the shore for a long time. You know something’s wrong.”
“That doesn’t matter! I have goals, I have methods and tools. I have a system.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Even if I’m not what I was, the legacy I left myself still guides me.”
“Your legacy has become corrupted,” she said, as gently as she could. A small part of her wished he could be restored. He’d turned parts of himself into amazing things, into beautiful, sensitive things. And he’d turned other parts of himself into true monsters.
He’d turned Malachi into a monster, and Aya. He’d found Tainter and used him like a scalpel. He couldn’t see the difference anymore between monsters and everything else.
A small part of her wanted to save him, but mostly, sharp-edged and fractured, she wanted to kill him. That would be giving into the darkness, but what else did he expect, unable as he was to tell a savior from a monster?
Ajax shouted at Surge, and she trembled and relaxed.
Hatherly glared at her. “Don’t be ridiculous. I know myself better than you, young lady. And everything is still perfectly clear to me. I just have to get my perspective right. Now, are you going to take up your responsibility or not?”
“No,” she repeated. “I’m already doing that, right now, talking to you.” She buried her disgust and hatred, and held out a hand to him. “You can come back again. It’s hard but it’s possible. You know it is.”
But even as she said it, she realized the problem with her words. He’d spent years, maybe decades thinking about this, and he’d fooled everybody. Whatever he saw from the shore was what had driven him into the depths.
He scowled at her, and put his hand on Gate. “I’ll do it, then. Something enduring will be better than nothing but the darkness, forever and ever.”
It happened quicker than Natalie could have imagined. The cambion stepped into Hatherly’s body, but instead of melting into him, the man and the monster merged together into an impossible grotesque. A limb smacked angrily at Natalie as sparkles of light gathered around the creature. She ducked and rolled automatically, thinking, Is this it?
And then, as she came to her feet, as she still had feet, she thought, Apparently apotheosis takes time. And special effects.
A hiss, a wail, and something went boom. Red light flared around Hatherly and he staggered to one side, a shocked expression on his face. Behind him, standing at the corner of the building, was one of Ajax’s soldier friends, with a long tube on his shoulder and a fierce expression on his face.
Hatherly screamed in rage and turned to leap at the soldiers. He didn’t seem to have been seriously hurt, but he’d been hurt. There was still hope.
But only for a few moments. Natalie could already feel her energy sapping away, as the absolute focus field focused exclusively on one anima. She pulled her katana into her hand and moved.
Surge howled, clawing at the ground as Ajax held him by the base of that snapping tail. The cambion desperately wanted to get away, but whether to defend Hatherly or to flee she couldn’t tell. She didn’t know how, but Ajax was containing him.
Hatherly landed in the midst of the soldiers, half-crumbling the corner of the building. A man screamed, and then there was another explosion. The light didn’t fade this time; Hatherly was becoming incandescent.
Natalie dashed up behind him, started to swing her weapon, then paused. Hatherly was some kind of hybrid now, with four legs and two arms and a face in his torso, but he was still wearing the clothes he’d been wearing all along.
Hatherly turned and caught her in one arm. “Changed your mind?”
Natalie didn’t answer. Instead she pushed her hand inside his jacket. What was beyond was unpleasantly gooey, not cloth, not flesh, and extremely hot as well. But her fingers closed around a little box. “Got it,” she said. She pulled it out and flicked the lid open. Something small and glowing brightly rose from the box, into her other hand.
The little star burned into her skin. It hurt; it felt sweet; it felt like everything. The crystal edges of the world softened, just a touch. “Got it. I win, you poor bastard. I’ve got myself back again, all the way, and you could never do that.”
Hatherly stared at her, then his expression, almost hidden in light, twisted up and he shrieked, throwing her aside like a broken doll. Then he flailed around, stomping and hitting everything he could reach.
Natalie lay where she landed, smiling a little. She didn’t have much energy left.
But the soldiers, those who remained, were still fighting. How? Ajax said they’d mentioned drugs before. She thought of the soldiers, and the Awakened Darkness that had fought for them once. They’d trained themselves that well. Humanity could be more, even without lumination. And Ajax was fighting with them, and beyond them, Seth–
So she stood up again, and she threw herself on what remained of Hatherly, cutting at what remained of the cambion. As she thrust her katana into the head in the middle of Hatherly’s torso, the light flickered, and her strength surged.
“Here! Here!” she screamed, and drove the sword in deeper. Ajax stepped beside her and slashed his scythe across the spot.
Hatherly screamed. It was a very human sound. It was like the soldier who had screamed earlier. The light vanished, leaving spots of blindness behind. And life flowed back into the world.
When the purple and blue glows faded, Natalie realized that Hatherly was melting into water along with his cambion. She wondered if that was what happened when you made too many cambions, if you became one yourself.
Then she went and found Seth, stepping over a little case full of syringes that lay between the burnt and bloodied soldiers and the medic crouched beside her brother.
Hatherly hadn’t tried to make certain he was dead. He hadn’t cut off his head, or slit his throat. But she’d never seen anybody so damaged before, not and still be alive. “Is he…”
The medic gave her a bright-eyed, feverish look. “We have emergency transport incoming. And there’s a lot of very talented people over in the camp. Keep your fingers crossed.”
Ajax came up beside her and took her hand. “I think we’re under arrest,” he said mildly.
Natalie made a sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob. “As long as they let me stay with Seth, that’s fine with me. What happened to Surge?”
Ajax looked up at the sky. “He kind of got away from me. When I, uh, came to help you. Sorry.”
“I wonder if he melted like Hatherly?”
“Would he? I mean… you probably know more about cambions now than anybody else.”
Natalie hesitated. Some cambions definitely seemed more independent of their creators than others. She remembered her cat, as if through the veil of a dream, and a conversation with Surge in darkness. “I don’t know. But… I hope so.”
Illumination 10.6: Diet Despair
The soldiers didn’t want to chat, Seth found, even when he offered to tell them all sorts of interesting things about the Guardians. They wanted him to sit quietly with his back against the wall and his hands on his head, while they watched Ajax and Natalie. He couldn’t see Natalie and Ajax himself. That was for the best, but he watched the soldiers carefully, smiling the whole time. If one of them even seemed close to squeezing a trigger, Seth was going to gut him.
The leader’s attention was pulled away from the drama by the crackle of a phone. He had a brief conversation, then looked at Seth. “You’ve got the same magic weapon as Ajax?”
“Sure. Want to see?”
The soldier ignored the offer. “Good. Some of the monsters are migrating this way. There’s a human with them.”
“I guess everybody wants to see the show.” Seth leaned his head back against the wall. “She’s escaped from him, and he doesn’t like that.” He closed his eyes as Martin started barking into his microphone.
“The idiot’s ignoring me.” Martin glared around the corner of the building.
“Good. She’s more important.”
A moment later, one of the soldiers sighed and relaxed. Seth sat up. “It’s over, then?”
“Tango,” muttered another one, fumbling with his gun. That seemed wrong, somehow.
“Shit,” said Martin. “He’s here.” He reached in a pocket and pulled out a tiny case.
Seth looked around, glancing around the wall. Natalie and Ajax were very close. Despair crept over him, cold and empty.
And it was odd, because it wasn’t real. It was like he’d had a drink flavored with artificial despair, and he could feel the bitterness at the edges. It bore only a passing resemblance to what he’d felt before, in the world without Natalie.
He turned around. All of the soldiers had collapsed to the ground, and Hatherly stood beyond them, with Surge on one side of him and the biomechanical cambion Seth had fought before on the other. The artificial despair radiated off of him, and even though Seth knew it wasn’t real, it still made him want to fall to his knees.
Instead, he smiled.
Hatherly smiled back, the old familiar smile of the man Seth had grown up knowing. “I rather thought you’d be able to lure her out when my own assistants failed. Why don’t you go to sleep as well, Seth? It will be easiest for you.”
“Boring, you mean.” Seth moved away from the wall, looking at Hatherly closely. He had no illusions about his ability to fight Hatherly alone and win, especially with his two cambions. Last time, he’d worked on taking out the biomechanical creature, and it had been the wrong decision. This time, he wanted to know how Hatherly was making him feel so awful.
“Oh, come now. If not for yourself, do it for your sister. It will bother her to see you suffering.”
“You didn’t hear? She’s not my sister anymore.”
Hatherly moved to one side. “You seem remarkably cheerful about that.” His hand brushed his belt, and Seth noticed the slowly moving shape on his belt loop. It was very small, but it moved in fits and starts, like a vivisected living thing struggling to escape. Just focusing on it made Seth want to give up and shut down.
He dragged his gaze up to Hatherly’s face instead. “Oh, it’s the best news I’ve had in days. I don’t have to be responsible for her anymore.”
Hatherly snorted. “You’re lying, boy.”
Seth’s grin widened. “Well, yes.” Then he launched himself at Hatherly, moving faster than the artificial despair could.
The cambions didn’t even try to intercept. Hatherly caught him like he was an enthusiastic child, bending one of Seth’s arms backwards. Seth didn’t even try to fight, pushing his free hand toward Hatherlys’ belt. He knew when he’d touched the artificial despair device because he didn’t feel the pain and emptiness anymore. Instead, he felt giddy. His arm didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt.
He tried to yank the device off, even as Hatherly was doing something awful to his arm. But it didn’t want to detach. He realized it was the belt, holding onto Hatherly with strap-like tentacles.
Well, here he was. He brought out one of his knives and drove it into Hatherly’s midsection, right through the device.
And the pain came rushing back, real and bloody this time. Distantly, he felt the biomechanical cambion switch on its field, and that made the pain less. That made everything less.
He was on the ground, holding onto Hatherly’s sword blade with one hand. Surge’s paw was on his shoulder. His own knife was bloody, too, but Hatherly was moving as if he didn’t feel it. But the despair device dangled, broken and still, from his hip.
That was good.
Good.
Illumination 10.5: Sleeping Beauty
“Wear this,” said Martin, passing Ajax an earpiece. “And follow any instructions I give you immediately; they may save your life.” They stood behind a decaying tenement, just out of sight of where Seth had convinced Natalie to wait, and the soldiers weren’t happy. They hadn’t actually argued with Martin when he decided to allow Ajax’s ‘little date’, but they were holding their weapons in worrying ways. Ajax could have explained the situation in a way that made the whole event a little more relevant, but he didn’t want to take the chance of Natalie getting shot. There was no way he could have explained it which would have let him escape to meet her unmonitored.
Ajax peeked around the corner. He could make out the distant silhouette of Natalie, but between them was Seth, walking slowly down the street. The other guy looked ragged, and Ajax wondered what the odds were of the worried soldiers shooting him instead. “I’m going to go talk to my friend,” he announced. “Keep an eye out for monsters.”
“Like the one with the girl?” asked one of the soldiers, looking through a scope.
“What?” said Ajax. Even squinting he couldn’t make out more than a crouched and shadowed figure. “No,” he added, “I’ll handle that one if it’s necessary.” He went around the corner and met Seth across the street.
“You brought friends.” Seth gave him the same awful smile he’d worn for days on end after losing Natalie.
“They were going to follow me if I didn’t. I figured it was best to keep them where we could see them. What’s going on?”
“She started out by attacking me, but we got over that. She’s still shedding Awakened Darkness, though. Now she wants—” He shook his head. “I remind her too much of what she doesn’t think she can get back again. Maybe doesn’t want back again. There’s a lot she doesn’t remember right now.” He shrugged and stretched. “Over to you. She can have a future with you instead of just a past with me. What do you want me to do with your bodyguard?”
Ajax frowned at Seth, trying and failing to see what was under the grin. “Talk to them, I guess. Keep them from shooting Natalie. Look harmless.”
“Oooh, harmless. I’ll do my best.” And he strolled past Ajax without a second glance, waving at the soldiers as he approached them with his hands in the air.
Ajax went to Natalie. She was crouched down, her hands in the fur of the cat cambion Ajax had once wanted to kill so badly. The cat was cleaning its paw, but Natalie watched him approach. Her eyes widened as he got closer, and his heart thumped. Even filthy and injured, she was beautiful: a wild, ghostly dream.
“You’re a black hole,” she said, wonderingly. “I remember you. I remember failing you. Why are you here?”
Ajax had been thinking about this: not the immediate answer, but the deeper one. “I’ve been helping your people. You see, I didn’t need you in order to stay after all.”
She smiled, her face lighting up. She stood up and the cat sat down as she stepped around it. Then her smile faded. “You’re not alone.”
“Oh, you’ve seen those guys before,” he said, as airily as he could while trying to keep his body between the soldiers and Natalie. “They’re just here to deal with Hatherly.”
It was like he’d flipped a switch. Her entire demeanor changed. She wasn’t a ghostly wild thing, but something hard and angry. She looked around. “Is he here?”
“Nope. They’ll make sure he stays away.”
She studied him. “You’re tense.” She was shedding tiny monsters, her anima flickering bright and dark like a photonegative of itself. She could do anything: lash out, run away, break down, and anything unpredictable was even more dangerous. The soldiers didn’t like unpredictable.
“Just ignore them,” he suggested. “Soldiers are everywhere now.”
“Are they?” Her brow wrinkled, then she shook her head. “What do you want from me?”
He wondered, then, if she didn’t remember him, despite what she’d claimed. “Do you remember our talk in the darkness, during Nightfall?”
She bit her lip. “I could if I wanted to.”
He moved closer to her, slowly and carefully. She stood still, but her gaze darted from side to side, and her breathing quickened. “Why don’t you want to?”
“There’s a fence. The stuff on the other side of the fence is there for a reason, even if I can’t remember what the reason is.” But she frowned, and backed up a step.
Ajax stopped moving. “Would you like me to go away?”
“Just… stay there for now.”
He crouched down. “I’m right here, baby.” A voice in his ear buzzed at him, but he tuned it out, concentrating on Natalie. She pushed her fingers into the fur of the cat.
“Who’s your friend? I met it once before.”
“They all found me out here. I made this one when— when— when—” She stuttered to a halt, her eyes going distant. He waited, his fist clenching behind his back. Finally, softly, she said, “After I came out of the box, he wanted me to demonstrate what I did. He… insisted. He kept one.”
Ajax stood up. Alarmed, she said, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to go kill him.” But he didn’t move, watching the way her hands fluttered, then wrapped around herself. “Unless you’d rather do it yourself. Ladies first and all.”
“Don’t go!” The words seemed to slip out and she stopped hugging herself and hugged the cat instead.
He crouched down again. “It makes me furious that he hurt you. But I’d rather stay with you.”
“What do you want from me?” she demanded.
He gazed up at her. “I want to see you smile.” She took a step closer. “I want to listen to you talk. I want to keep you safe. I want to set you free. ”
She stood right in front of him, close enough to touch. She looked down at him, one foot on a hunk of stone between them. Slowly, he stood up and looked down at her.
Then, without a word, she reached out, twisted her fingers in his shirt and pulled him in to kiss her. As she did, the cat cambion dissolved into glittering light. His hands came up to steady her on her perch, one at her waist, the other sliding up her spine. Her mouth was soft but insistent, salty with old tears and sweet with the urgency of her kiss.
And when she pulled away, her eyes were different. Tired, and older, but present. The ghostly wild thing was gone. She pressed a finger to his lips. “I think,” she said quietly, “that I would like to find Hatherly. He has something of mine.”
“All right,” Ajax said, but he didn’t move.
“Um,” she said after a moment, and a smile touched her old eyes. “You have to let go of me for that to happen.
“Oh. Do I?”
And then a voice squawked in Ajax’s ear: “Repeat, tango incoming. Wake up, kid. Get the girl over to us before—”
Seth shouted wordlessly behind them.
Illumination 10.4: How We Win
As Malachi stared at Jehane, the cambion bird blocking the door squawked, then warned, “They come,” as it hopped away from the door. A moment later, three figures moved through the door: Tainter, the wolverine cambion he called Rend, and Aya. The wolverine snarled at the bird, who looked away.
Jehane’s stomach dropped out through her feet. She felt like once again she’d been so close to getting things right.
Aya put a hand on her hip. “She’s not who we’re looking for, Malachi.” The bartender muttered something and grabbed at the gun on the bar. It clattered onto the ground behind the bar, and he ducked after it.
“Oh, my sweet,” said Tainter. “Mal has a special relationship with this bit of meat. She makes him all tingly. Doesn’t she, Mal? Have you been amusing yourself with her again? She doesn’t look as durable as your last bit. But I know she makes you rambunctious. We could play a game. Which one of us will kill her first? Aya can be the judge.”
Aya drifted over to the bar. “I’ve found another toy.” She peered over the bar, then reached over and pulled up first the gun, which she tossed into a corner, and then the bartender. “A wise old man. Maybe he can give me advice.”
Malachi reached out and pulled Jehane behind him. “You’re not going to touch her.” It was just like last time, except that it was suddenly a lot harder to run away. They were cornered.
“Oh, but I will. Sit down, my boy, if you’re not going to play my game. Remember how your Emily didn’t die? I think I still have a bit of her back home.” Malachi gasped and shuddered, and Tainter continued, “You aren’t strong enough. You’ve never been strong enough.” He fidgeted with a tiny device attached to his belt, like a second buckle. “Miss Emily was your strength before, and we took that apart. Very educational, I have to say. Do you remember her cambion calling your name?”
Jehane stepped around Malachi and placed herself between them. “I’m strong enough.” She wasn’t, she knew she wasn’t, she cried all the time— but she was used to dealing with monsters. She’d always been dealing with monsters. Her earliest memory was of a monster attached to the woman who cared for her, and how it grew bigger when she looked at it. Tainter was much more of a monster than that one had been: everything like a human, but blackened, feeding on withered bonds, the real devil.
But she wasn’t going to let him hurt Malachi any more. Maybe her entire childhood had been in preparation for this.
Tainter looked at her. “Nah, you’re not strong enough either.”
Jehane stared at him, listening intently to his shadow music. She realized, listening to the twang of it, that he was alone. Aya had arrived with him, but their music didn’t intermingle. He had no connections to anybody else that were not black, dark notes; nobody would mourn him.
She wasn’t alone. Even at her darkest moments as she struggled to rise past her handicaps and escape her solitary Tower room into a world of light and life beyond, she hadn’t been alone. Not since Malachi had come to the children’s ward, and maybe not before, either.
The realization made her fear of Tainter melt almost entirely away. She still wanted to live, oh yes— but in Seth and his family, and in Ajax, and above all in endless Elian, she would. And in Malachi—
But Malachi wouldn’t remember the Emily who had lived and laughed, only the Emily who was dead, a bleeding corpse. Tainter was doing his best to obscure the good memories with the bad, to destroy every connection Malachi had with what he once was.
“I am,” she said. “I’ve got something you don’t.” She half-turned to Malachi, who was staring blankly at nothing at all. “Remember her properly, Malachi. You’ve got to remember Emily as she was. It will help.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” drawled Tainter.
Jehane took Malachi’s hand. “Ignore him. Remember her when you first met her. The first time you took her hand.”
“I couldn’t save her,” he said flatly.
Jehane hesitated. “You can save something of her. You can save your memories of her. That matters.”
“This is some boring metaphysical bullshit right here,” said Tainter, and with no more warning than that, he leapt across the intervening space and smacked Jehane on the side of her head so hard it knocked her down. But she was trained, and she rolled with it and came back to her feet, her ears still ringing.
“Would you like a little girlfriend, Miss Aya?” called Tainter, watching her.
“Oh, please,” said Jehane, with real disdain. “You can’t push me over the edge. I went over the edge when I was six. And I can see what you’re hiding. I know your secret.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then we’ll have to deal with you as we dealt with Miss Emily instead.” He stepped forward.
“No!” Malachi’s shout preceded his sword, and Tainter scrambled out of the way, grinning.
“Finally!”
And they fought. Malachi had very little of his usual grace, and Tainter was cautious, teasing. He was faster than Malachi, despite Malachi’s superior training, as if he had some personal version of the absolute focus field powering him. Jehane watched closely, her heart in her throat. She wanted to help, but should she? Could she?
Aya abandoned the bartender and sidled over to Jehane. “Hey, what’s his secret?”
Jehane spared the Echthros girl a split-second glance. She didn’t have her weapon out and she looked honestly curious. “He’s built on secrets. He hides everything. There’s nothing underneath, not even a him.”
Malachi and Tainter’s weapons crashed together. Aya said broodingly, “He showed me how useless hope was.”
“Aya, he lies.”
“If you can’t find the truth in darkness, it’s not going to be in the light either,” said Aya, her voice distant.
The swords clashed again, and Jehane realized that Tainter was suddenly pushing every advantage over Malachi that he had, as if he wanted the fight to end. Malachi stumbled, and Tainter grinned.
It was enough. Her long glaive in her hand, Jehane darted forward and stabbed Tainter’s exposed back. She felt the long curved edge slice into his flesh and catch against a bone. Tainter reared back, shouting in pain, and Malachi surged forward to take the opportunity. His own blade thrust into Tainter’s stomach, and up.
Tainter sagged to the ground, sliding off the blades. He looked scandalized. “You— you ganged up on me,” he gasped.
“Yes,” said Jehane. “That’s how we’re stronger than you. That’s how we win.”
Puzzlement crept across his face, and froze there.
Behind them, the wolverine cambion, which had been menacing the bird cambion perched on a table, roared. Malachi was still panting, but he looked at the bird. Its feathers were an intense blue now. It raised its head and met his gaze. Gracefully, it fluttered over to the wolverine and landed on its back. The wolverine roared again, spinning and throwing its head to the sky.
Then, the pair of them burst into incandescent flame. Malachi stalked over to the flame and pushed his sword into it up to the hilt, then drove his fist in after it. His face whitened, but after a moment, he pulled his fist out again. When he did, the fire went out, and both cambions were gone.
Jehane, holding her breath, gasped in relief. She was distantly aware that Aya had vanished out the door, that the bartender was crawling away, but all she could process was Malachi, looking at her with clear, familiar eyes.
He went past her, out the open door, and she followed him. He opened his fist. In his palm lay a slick curl of reddish hair. He regarded it for a moment, then blew on it. It flew off his hand and into the light breeze. The wind picked up and carried the coil into the sky.
He watched it for a moment, then turned to look at Jehane again. His eyes were no longer empty. Instead they were expressive and alive and sad. “She wasn’t always good to me. She wasn’t always kind. She liked to enjoy herself, and she liked to play, and she laughed every day. And she was everything I centered myself around since she danced into my life and demanded I follow her. She wanted that, and I tried to give it to her.” He showed Jehane his empty hand. “I’m not really sure what to do now.”
Jehane took his hand. “You’ll figure it out. I’ll help, if you want me to.”
His fingers closed over her own. “Hatherly’s still out there. He’s got Surge and Gate and the others. Nothing’s really changed.”
Jehane smiled at him through her tears. She was always crying, after all. “Everything’s changed. You’ll see. Everything.”
Illumination 10.3: Unspoken
Sleeping had been a privilege Natalie couldn’t let herself enjoy. But the sound of the family she’d saved was comforting, and she was tired, and a few moments off peaceful oblivion had overwhelmed her.
But she fought back. She always fought back. She remembered the monsters. And when she’d woken up, she’d known the truth.
She couldn’t stay in the same house as the gentle family that had tried to save her. She was far more dangerous than any of the monsters outside. She was the mother of monsters.
She crouched in the shelter of a shack, away from the endless sky, and stared at the weapon in her hand. It was the monster of monsters, no different than the ones she’d made at Hatherly’s command. It mastered the darkness that shadowed her, and channeled the darkness inside of her. And it was always hungry.
The first of monsters Hatherly had drawn from her lurked at the door off her shelter, but she didn’t want to see it. The second one fluttered above her head, whispering, but she didn’t hear it. She concentrated on the blade in her hand, and the darkness dripping from her other hand. She could, if she wanted, shape it into one of the shadows. To be one of the true monsters she would have to put something of herself into it and she wasn’t sure what she had left to give it. Hatherly had made so many monsters and retained so much of himself. Maybe it was a learned skill.
Fascinated, she stared at the creature she was crafting. It seemed to grow more solid as she studied it. She could push her will inside it, shape it. She shaped it like loneliness, like responsibility, like despair, like meaninglessness. She shaped it like self-awareness. And it grew larger and larger. It started to pull something from her–
A voice, a human voice, spoke to her.
“That looks sticky.”
She looked up. A little boy flickered in front of her vision, before becoming a young man. She knew his face.
Panic exploded over her. She couldn’t—
The creature leapt off her hand toward the boy, and she fled, unable to watch the result.
The two Cambions she’d made kept pace with her. “Go away,” she threw at them, and the moth was caught by the wind and carried into the sky.
The cat, though, just smiled. “Not yet.” The boy was chasing her. “He wants to take you back to where you belonged.”
“They want what can’t be. Shut up.”
“Natalie!” the voice before her called, and it hurt. She remembered he was cunning as she fell to her knees. The cat moved in front of her. It didn’t want her to escape. Her own monster, her own servant and it wouldn’t let her escape this boy who looked like her and called her name.
“Seth,” whispered the cat. And the word made her feel better. She could stand up again. They were on equal ground, and it helped, although she was dreadfully afraid.
The boy approached her, and for a moment she thought she could see behind him a long line of people, all looking at her with their hands outstretched. But she couldn’t go back.
“Hey,” said the boy. “Don’t run. I’m better at tag than seeking.” She looked at him warily, the cat pressing against the back of her legs. He went on, “We used to play in the upper floors of the Tower, do you remember?” The moth fluttered over his head, then came to her head.
She remembered, rocking back on her heels as if struck. He moved forward, catching her arm. “It’s okay,” he said soothingly. “You can come back. ”
She shook her head wildly. “I can’t. I’m— I can’t save you anymore, Seth. I can’t be what I was. I can’t be your sister anymore.”
His expression froze. Flatly, he said, “Nothing can make you not my sister.” His fingers moved on her arm, and then he pulled his hand away, leaving her to steady herself.
The moth fluttered between them. Its name was Surreptition, Natalie remembered. It kept secrets away from Hatherly. But what secrets had she ever had from Seth? She raised her hand to the moth and let it light on her fingers. Then she watched, fascinated, as it crawled back into her anima.
And it brought her everything she’d left behind, she thought. Seth, her other siblings, her parents, her teachers, their hopes and expectations. But she still wasn’t what she had been. She could never be that again.
“I’m not her,” she told Seth. “Your sister.”
He stared at her, then reached out a hand to brush his fingers across her uninjured cheek, her ear, her matted hair. Then, his hand shaking a little, he touched his own pale hair. “You are.” But his voice was cracked and broken, as if it hurt him to say that.
Something dark surged inside. “I’m a monster too now,” she insisted.
“Too?” he inquired softly. “Then why does it matter? But you’re still my sister, in the end.”
The moth in the depths of her soul have one last flutter of its wings, and the darkness crashed over her. “You don’t want me to be your sister,” she said, knowing it was true.
Seth’s entire body, already tense, coiled as if to move, and Natalie responded, not sure if she was going to run or fight or do something else. But then his hands came up to thread through his hair in a remembered gesture of deep frustration, and his eyes when they met hers were full of anguish. “I can’t do this,” he muttered. “I was the wrong person for this. I’m not who you need right now. God, I wish I was. I wish–” He cut himself off, and fumbled in his jeans. “Don’t you worry, Natalie. I’m going to get you somebody too dumb to try and argue with you.” He spoke into a little walkie-talkier. “I need—” his voice broke again. “I need Ajax.”
She wondered who that was.