“Henry, don’t!” I raced to stop him, nearly colliding with a woman who seemed to come from out of nowhere, swinging a pickax at the little boy. I kneed her in the stomach, then struck her hard on the back of the neck with the butt of my whip. As I did so, the diamond at the end of my necklace brushed her skin. A puff of smoke trickled up from the small burn.
I didn’t have time to stick around to watch what happened next. Mr. Smith — and Henry — needed me.
Besides, no sooner had the woman collapsed than she was replaced by a man who came running up with a machete. They just kept coming, and coming, and coming. Every time one of us managed to disarm or knock a Fury down, another one seemed to rise up in his or her place, while overhead, ravens screamed so raucously, my ears had begun to ring.
Maybe we were revenants, I thought dimly. But this could be the day we all died, as my grandmother put it, “for good.”
Considering her broken arm, she and Mr. Smith were almost evenly matched, but she was still a Fury and so possessed inhuman strength. Also inhuman emotions.
“Sinners,” she hissed at Mr. Smith as her hands closed around his throat. “Abominators.”
Henry had landed, unscathed, beside my tote bag and was rooting through it.
“Hold on, miss,” he shouted at me. “I’ve almost found it. You’ve got a lot of things in here.”
Mr. Smith was incapable of making anything but a gurgling sound, but I believe he was saying something else. His eyes, behind his spectacles, which were askew, seemed to be saying, Do it.
I was happy to oblige.
I cracked my whip, sending it wrapping around my grandmother’s throat multiple times, enfolding her as tightly as a warm, hand-knit scarf … one that a loving grandmother might send to her granddaughter in the mail for her birthday. Then I yanked on it as hard as I could, so it was more like the grip of a boa constrictor than a muffler.
Grandma’s hands instantly left Mr. Smith’s neck and flew to her own throat. Now she was the one who was gurgling.
I pulled even harder on the whip, bringing my grandmother to her knees, and went to crouch beside her.
“How do you like the scarf I made you, Grandma?” I hissed in her ear.
Her dead eyes rolled towards me, showing no sign of fear, only hatred and contempt. She was unable to speak, because she was unable to draw in air to breathe. I knew the sensation. It was the one I’d felt when I’d been sitting at the bottom of the pool, after I’d tripped over the scarf she’d made me and drowned.
“Pierce.” Mr. Smith coughed out my name. He was finally able to speak. “Don’t.”
I barely heard him. All I could see was red, and all I could hear was the cawing of the ravens.
“So I’m an abomination, am I?” I whispered to Grandma. “You did all this so I would destroy John, and the Underworld? Kind of like Eve in the Garden of Eden, huh?”
Grandma nodded, an evil smile spreading across her face, even as she gulped for air.
“Pierce, no,” Mr. Smith said. “You mustn’t. I know it seems like it, but it isn’t her. It’s the demon inside her ….”
Dimly I became aware of footsteps striding up behind me. I heard Chloe’s voice saying my name, then John calling, Pierce. Pierce, don’t.
But I didn’t release my grandmother. If anything, I held on to her more tightly.
“Well, nice try, Grandma,” I said, reaching out to hold her close to me, so close I could feel her pulse beating next to mine. “You just made one mistake. I’m not Eve. I’m smarter than that. I’m the snake.”
Then I lifted the Persephone Diamond and crushed it to her heart.
28
“Thine arrogance, thou punished art the more;
Not any torment, saving thine own rage,
Would be unto thy fury pain complete.”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XIV
I loosened the cord around my grandmother’s neck. She slumped to the ground with a moan. A wisp of black smoke rose from her chest and drifted harmlessly into the air.
“Say good night, Grandma,” Reed said.
“She isn’t dead,” Henry explained to him. “That’s how they get when they’ve had the evil driven from them.” He held out his slingshot, which he’d finally found at the bottom of my bag. “But why didn’t you use this? It would have been excellent if you’d hit her in the head at a distance with the diamond. Not the eye, of course, but maybe the center of the forehead. That would smart.”
“You’re a little boy who’s been without a mother for far too long,” Chloe said in disapproval, still holding on to Typhon’s collar as the dog drooled on my grandmother’s Cat Lover sweatshirt. “And anyway, how’s she supposed to get the diamond back afterwards?”
“Oh,” Henry said mournfully. “I never thought of that.”
I looked down at the whip I’d unwound from my grandmother’s neck. The answer had been staring at me all along. No wonder I’d felt such affinity for John’s father’s whip, even before Mr. Liu had told me it was the string grounding me to earth.
“Are you all right?” John knelt beside me to ask, laying a strong arm across my shoulders.
“Better than I’ve been in a long time,” I said.
I’d slipped the chain that held my diamond from around my neck and was holding it in one hand, while holding the tip of his father’s whip in the other.
“I hate to leave her like this,” John said, looking down at my grandmother, who seemed to be only half conscious. She was murmuring something about having to get back to the shop to do inventory. “But we’ve got a lot more Furies to get rid of.”
“We’re on it,” Reed said with a wicked grin, shouldering his harpoon gun. Chloe had to drag Typhon away, but he found plenty of sport chasing Furies through the cemetery. To him it seemed like a game — much as it did to Henry, who rushed off with his slingshot, with which he’d found many rocks to fill. The dog was so large and frightening-looking, many of the Furies simply dropped their weapons and ran off at the sight of him.
“We’ll stay with her,” Mrs. Engle volunteered, kneeling at my grandmother’s side. “Won’t we, dear?”
She held out a hand for Mr. Graves, who took it and knelt down beside her. “We will,” he said. “You lot go on. I know you have much to do.”
I was too busy with the task I was performing in my lap to realize at first what I’d seen. Then I lifted my head and said in disbelief, “Mr. Graves. You took Mrs. Engle’s hand. You saw her hand.”
John had risen to go back to the task of fighting Furies, as well. But he froze when he heard these words and spun around.
Mr. Graves looked sheepish. “Now, now,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Don’t get too excited. I’ve been seeing shadows for some time. I didn’t want to tell you and get everyone too hopeful —”
“But that’s amazing!” I exclaimed, jumping to my feet.
“They’re only shadows,” he said. “Maybe my sight will improve over time, maybe it won’t.” Then he lifted his head to peer in my direction. “But I will say, you’re quite a bit smaller than I thought you’d be, considering the volume of your voice. Wherever you were in the castle, I could always seem to hear you. It’s remarkable. I thought you’d be a much larger girl.”
I wasn’t certain this was a compliment.
My grandmother groaned and reached out to take Mr. Smith’s hand.
“Oh, dear,” he said. “Perhaps I’d better stay, as well.”
I turned my disbelieving eyes to him. “After what she did to Patrick?”