Almost.
Surrounded by the subterranean vista, he thought of the cave of the warrior camp. Then he saw himself using his hand on the pretrans who had threatened him, and on his father.
He undid his glove and slid it off his glowing palm.
What he contemplated now went against the laws of both nature and his species.
Reanimation of the dead was not an appropriate or allowable course of action under any circumstances. And not just because it was the Omega's realm. The Chronicles of the race, those volumes and volumes of history, provided only two examples, and neither had resulted in anything but tragedy.
But he was different. This was different. Jane was different. He was doing this out of love, whereas the examples he read about had been done out of hatred: There had been a murderer that someone had brought back to use as a weapon, and a female returned to life as an act of revenge.
And there was more in his favor. He healed Butch on a regular basis, drawing the evil out of the cop when he did his business with the lessers. He could do the same for Jane. He absolutely could.
With iron resolve, he pushed from his mind the outcomes of those other forays into the Omega's realm of dark arts. And focused on his love for his female.
The fact that Jane was a human was not an issue, as reanimation was the act of bringing that which was dead back to life, and the dividing line was the same no matter the species. And he had what he needed. The ritual required three things: something of the Omega's, some fresh blood, and a source of electrical energy such as a harnessed lightning bolt.
Or in his case, his fucking curse.
V walked back out to the hall of jars and didn't waste time picking. He took one randomly from the shelf, its ceramic marked by fine cracks, its color a murky brown, which meant it was one of the early ones.
When he returned to the altar, he slammed the jar into the stone, shattering the thing, revealing what it had housed. The heart inside was covered with a black, oily sheen, preserved by what flowed in the Omega's veins. Though the exact nature of the induction into the Lessening Society was unknown, it was clear the Omega's "blood" went in first before the heart was removed.
So Vishous had what he needed from their enemy.
He looked at the skull of the first Brother and didn't think twice about using the sacred relic for what was an unlawful purpose. He took out one of his daggers, scored his wrist, and bled into the sterling silver cup that was mounted in the top of the skull. Then he palmed the lesser heart and squeezed it with his fist.
Black drops of distilled evil welled and fell, mixing with the red of his blood. The liquid sin had magic to it, the kind that ran against the rules of the righteous, the kind that turned torture into sport, the kind that enjoyed pain inflicted on the innocent… but it had eternity in it, too.
And that was what he needed for Jane.
"No!"
He spun around.
The Scribe Virgin had appeared behind him, her hood down, her transparent face a mask of horror. "You must not do this."
He turned away and brought the skull up next to Jane's head. On a fragmentary thought, he found an odd, reassuring parallel that she knew what the inside of his chest looked like and he was about to know the same of her.
"There is no balance in this! No price given!"
V removed his jacket from his female. The bloodstain under it, on his shirt, was like a bull's-eye right in the middle of her chest, between her breasts.
"She will come back not as you know her," his mother hissed. "She will come back evil. That shall be your result."
"I love her. I can take care of her, like I take care of Butch."
"Your love will not change the outcome, nor your facility with the Omega's remnants. This is forbidden!"
He wheeled on his mother, hating her and her stupid fucking yin-and-yang bullshit. "You want balance? A trade? You want to stick it to me before I can do this? Fine! What's it going to take? You saddled Rhage with his curse for the rest of his fucking life, what are you going to do to me?"
"Parity is not my law!"
"Then whose is it! And how much do I fucking owe!"
The Scribe Virgin seemed to take a moment to collect herself. "This is beyond what I may gift or not. She is gone. There is no return once a body has been left fallow as hers has been."
"Bullshit." He leaned back over Jane, prepared to cut open her chest.
"You shall condemn her ever after. There will be nowhere for her to go but to the Omega, and you will have to send her there. She will be evil and you will have to destroy her."
He looked at Jane's lifeless face. Remembered her smile. Tried to find it in the pasty skin.
He could not.
"Balance…" he whispered.
He reached out and touched her cold cheek with his good hand and tried to think of all that he could give, all that he could trade.
"This it is not just about balance," the Scribe Virgin said. "Some things are forbidden."
As the solution became clear to him, he didn't hear anything else from his mother.
He lifted up his precious, normal hand, the one he could touch people and things with, the one that was as it should be, not some cursed burden of destruction.
His good hand.
He put it down on the altar, splaying the fingers out and flattening his wrist. Then he took the blade of his dagger and laid it on his skin. As he leaned in, the weapon's sharp blade cut right through to the bone.
"No!" the Scribe Virgin screamed.
Chapter Fifty
Jane was out of time. And she knew it in the same way she knew when a patient was taking a turn for the worse. Her internal clock went off, her alarm starting to beep.
"I don't want to let go of him," she said to no one.
Her voice didn't travel far, and she noticed that the fog seemed more dense… so dense it was starting to obscure even her feet. And then it dawned on her. They weren't obscured. With cold dread she realized that unless she did something, she was going to dissolve and take her place within the wall of ambient-nothing. She would be forever alone and lonely, pining for the love she'd once felt.
A sad, shifting ghost.
Now she was finally struck by emotion, and it was one that brought tears to her eyes. The only way to save herself was to let the yearning for Vishous go; that was the key to the door. But if she did it, she felt as if she were abandoning him, leaving him alone to face a cold, bitter future. After all, she could imagine how it would be for her if he died.
In a surge the fog grew even thicker and the temperature dropped. She looked down. Her legs were disappearing… first up to her ankles, now to her calves. She was leaching out into the nothingness, dispersing.
Jane began to cry as she found her resolve and wept for the selfishness of what she had to do.
How did she let go of him, though?
As the fog crawled up to her thighs, she panicked. She didn't know how to do what she must-
The answer, when it came to her, was painful and simple.
Oh… God... Letting go meant you accepted what couldn't be changed. You didn't try to hold on to hope in order to coerce a change in fortune… nor did you battle against the superior forces of fate and try to make them capitulate to your will… nor did you beg for salvation because you assumed you knew better. Letting go meant you stared at what was before you with clear eyes, recognizing that unfettered choice was the exception and destiny the rule.
No bargaining. No trying to control. You gave up and saw that the one you loved was in fact not your future, and there was nothing you could do about it.
Tears fell from her eyes into the swirling mist as she released all pretense of strength and let go of her fight to keep her tie to Vishous alive. As she did, she had no faith or optimism, she was empty as the fog around her: An atheist in life, she found in death she was the same. Believing in nothing, now she was nothing.