It had come. The thing she had sensed and feared long ago, the breakdown in the structure of her reality had arrived. Her punishment was now manifest.
That human… that human woman her son loved was dying at this very moment. She was in his arms and bleeding on him and dying.
With an unsteady arm the Scribe Virgin put the chickadee back on the white-blooming tree and stumbled over to the fountain. Sitting down on its marble edge, she felt the light weight of her robing as if it were heavy chains drawn around her.
The fault of her son's loss was hers. Verily, she had brought this ruination upon him: She had broken the rules. Three hundred years ago she had broken the rules.
At the inception of time she had been granted one act of creation, and accordingly, after her maturity had been reached, one act of creation she had effected. But then she'd done it again. She had borne what she should not have, and in doing so had cursed her begotten. Her son's destiny-the whole of it, from his treatment under his father to the hard, coldhearted male Vishous had matured into to this, his mortal agony-was in fact her castigation. For as he was in pain, so she suffered a thousandfold.
She wanted to cry out for her Father, but knew she could not. Choices that had been made by her were naught of His concern, and the consequences were hers alone to bear.
As she reached through the dimensions and saw what was transpiring unto her son, she knew Vishous's agony as her own, felt the numbing of his cold shock, the fire of his denial, the gut wrenching twist of his horror. She felt, too, the death of his beloved, the gradual chill coming upon the human as her blood leaked into her chest cavity and her heart began to flutter. And then, yes, then, too, she heard her son's mumbling words of love and smelled the rank, fetid fear that poured out of him.
There was naught she could do. She, who had power beyond measure over so many, was in this moment impotent because fate and the consequence of free will were her Father's sole domain. He alone knew the absolute map of eternity, the compendium of all choices taken and untaken, of paths known and unknown. He was the Book and the Page and the indelible Ink.
She was not.
And He would not come to her now for that reason. This was her destiny: to suffer because an innocent born of a body she should never have assumed would be ever in pain, her son walking the earth as a dead male for the choices she had made.
With a wail the Scribe Virgin let herself lose her form and slipped out of the robes she wore, the black folds falling to the marble floor. She entered the water of the fountain as a light wave, traveling in between and among the hydrogen and oxygen molecules, her misery energizing them, bringing them to a boil, evaporating them. As the transfer of energy continued, the liquid rose up as a cloud, coalesced above the courtyard, and fell back down as tears she was incapable of crying.
Over on the white tree, her birds craned their necks to the falling water droplets as if considering this new occurrence. And then as a flock they left their perch for the first time and flew to the fountain. Lining up around the edge, they faced outward from the glowing, seething water she inhabited.
They guarded her in her sorrow and regrets, guarded her as though each were big as an eagle and just as fierce.
They were, as always, her only solace and friendship.
Jane was aware that she was dead.
She knew it because she was in the midst of a fog, and someone who looked like her dead sister was standing in front of her.
So she was pretty damn sure she'd kicked it. Except… shouldn't she be upset or something? Shouldn't she be worried about Vishous? Shouldn't she be thrilled about reuniting with her little sister?
"Hannah?" she said, because she wanted to be sure she knew what she was looking at. "That you?"
"Kinda." The image of her sister shrugged, her pretty red hair moving with her shoulders. "I'm really just a messenger."
"Well, you look like her."
"Of course I do. What you see now is what's in your mind when you think of her."
"Okay… this is a little Twilight Zone. Or, wait, am I just dreaming?" Because that would be great fucking news, considering what she thought had just happened to her.
"No, you've passed on. You're just in the middle right now."
"In the middle of where?"
"You're in between. Neither here nor there."
"Can you be a little more specific?"
"Not really," The Hannah-vision smiled her precious smile, the angelic one that had brought even Richard the nasty cook around. "But here's my message. You're going to have to let go of him, Jane. If you want to find peace, you're going to have to let go of him."
If the him was Vishous, that just wasn't happening. "I can't do that."
"You have to. Otherwise you'll be lost here. You only have so much time you can be neither here nor there."
"And then what happens?"
"You are lost forever." The Hannah-vision got serious. "Let him go, Jane."
"How?"
"You know how. And if you do, you can see the real me on the other side. Let. Him. Go." The messenger or whatever it was evaporated.
Left on her own, Jane looked around. The fog was pervasive, as dense as a rain cloud and as infinite as the horizon.
Fear crawled through her. This was not right. She really didn't want to be here.
Abruptly a sense of urgency grew, as if time was running out, though she didn't know how she knew that. Except then she thought of Vishous. If letting go meant giving up her love for him, that so wasn't possible.
Chapter Forty-nine
Vishous was driving Jane's Audi like a bat out of hell through the rain, halfway to Havers, when he realized she was not in her car with him.
Her corpse was.
His panic was the only energy in the enclosed space, his heart the only one that pounded, his eyes the only ones that blinked.
The bonded male in him confirmed what his brain had been denying: In his blood, he knew that she was gone.
V let his foot ease off the accelerator, and the Audi coasted for a stretch, then slowed to a stop. Route 22 was empty, probably because of this early spring storm that was blowing, but he would have stayed right in the middle of the road even if there had been rush-hour traffic.
Jane was in the passenger seat. Belted in upright, with the seat belt holding his muscle shirt against her chest wound as packing.
He didn't turn his head.
He couldn't look at her.
He stared straight ahead, down the road's double yellow line. In front of him the windshield wipers flipped back and forth, their rhythmic slapping like the sound of an old-fashioned clock, tick… tock… tick… tock…
The passage of time was no longer relevant, was it. And neither was his rush.
Tick… tock… tick…
He felt like he should be dead, too, considering the pain in his chest. He had no idea how he was still up and around when it hurt this badly.
Tock… tick…
Up ahead there was a curve in the road, the forest coming up to the asphalt's shoulder. For no particular reason he noticed that the trees were all crowded in tight together, their leafless branches interlacing, creating the impression of black lace.
Tock…
The vision that came to him crept up so quietly, at first he didn't know that what his eyes were registering had changed. But then he saw a wall, a subtly textured wall… lit by a bright, bright light. Just as he wondered about the source of illumination…
He realized it was a car's headlights.
The blare of a horn snapped him to attention, and he stomped on the gas while wrenching the wheel to the right. The other vehicle fishtailed by on the slippery pavement, then resumed its course, disappearing down the road.
V refocused on the forest and in quick succession received the rest of the vision like a movie. With numb disregard, he watched himself take actions that were arguably unconscionable, witnessing the future as it unfurled, taking notes. When no more was revealed, he took off with a desperate purpose, heading out away from Caldwell proper at twice the speed limit.