What a change, from the simple ghost who couldn’t see past the, well, past, to this. An entity with an agenda.
“After that, I don’t know. It’s impossible and borderline insane to plan with this many factors in play. But if we can take the advantage, we can upset the balance again.”
“One mistake, one failure, and someone can take power. Even if we succeed…”
“If we succeed, we’ll have made them regret what they did,” I said. “We’ll have left the door open for change, if we haven’t changed things in the course of it.”
“That’s not good enough. I need more.”
“I can’t give you more,” I said. “It is what it is, and it’s better than what you were doing. It’s… almost constructive.”
“Or we just destroy it all,” Molly said.
“Your family included?” I asked.
She bowed her head a little.
“Callan-” I started.
“I know,” she cut me off.
“The Other that attacked him, the Homoculi, they were egged on by the ringing of the bell.”
“That’s on Sandra, it’s not me,” she said. Her voice was more distorted than ever.
“It’s a bigger problem,” I said. “A systemic problem, one that involves all of us. I can’t give you anything more concrete in the way of plans. I can’t give you power or answers or strength or any of that. All I can do is say I promise. I swore to Evan that I’d deal with the monsters. I will strive, in the midst of all this, to root out the true monsters and deal with them. It’s the third time I’ve promised this.”
“Third?”
“The third,” I said. “To Evan, to myself as I realized what I was in the Abyss, and now to you.”
I could hear the bell go quiet.
Eerily similar to the moments before she’d taken control of me.
“The last I saw, Sandra and the priest weren’t that far away. Closer to downtown,” Molly spoke. She sounded surprisingly like Molly, albeit with a tone as though she were nursing an awful lot of hurt near her heart.
I looked south. Toward the lake.
“You’ll want to wait,” Molly said, in her very normal voice. “Another few minutes. The priest is praying, and you’re hurt.”
“Blake’s tough,” Evan chimed in.
“Yeah, no, I’m pretty hurt,” I said. I tested my arm. The wood was patching itself up, but a whole joint was harder to put together, and I suspected I was low on fuel.
“But when you’re standing in front of the TV, nobody’s going to tell you you’ll make a better door than a window. Because you are a window.”
I could see the impatience on Molly’s face. She wasn’t one for idle humor, even while we were waiting.
She wasn’t really Molly. She’d become something else.
“Where’d this power come from?” I asked.
Molly shot me a look.
“You’re awfully aware of what’s going on here. You’re generating so much rage. I’d expect a ghost to affect one person like you’ve affected me, but… you’re affecting all this. A huge amount.”
“Sometimes, in the right time or place, an idea can become a spirit, and a spirit can become a god,” Molly said, in that ordinary voice that made me think of a Molly who’d never thought of gods outside of visiting church once a week.
“A god. You pick this up from one of your books?”
“No.”
“From Mags?”
“No,” Molly said.
“Because Mags is the only-”
“I don’t want to talk about her,” Molly said. “She’s not part of this. And I’m glad for that.”
“How is she not a part of this?” Evan asked. “She’s an ambassador. You’d think an ambassador would be busier in a time of war.”
“She’s with the small council. She’s keeping- I don’t want to talk about her,” Molly said. “I hate her and I don’t and… it’s easier not to talk about her.”
Read the tone, Evan, I thought.
“It’s gotta be important if you’re becoming a god, and Rose said Blake gave you power and Mags gave you power, and-”
“Evan,” I said. “Let’s listen to Molly when she says she doesn’t want to talk about something.”
“Thank you. I’m not saying I’m becoming a god. It’s… only an idea.”
“That’s a hell of an idea,” I said. I looked out over the town.
“Scary idea,” Green Eyes said. “I’ve never met a happy god.”
Just about everyone present glanced at her. Green Eyes didn’t elaborate.
“Sandra is mustering her strength,” Molly said, a change of subject that felt just a little forced. “I’ll create a distraction.”
I nodded.
“What will you do?” Molly asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ll hurt her somehow.”
“We,” Green Eyes said. “I’m not leaving you again. Not when you got a hole in you the last time.”
I nodded.
“You have ten minutes,” Molly said. “Then I hit them.”
I moved.
My goal wasn’t Sandra. At a run, I could get to the lake in two to three minutes. Get within sight of her in half that time. Even injured.
One arm held the other in place, tight against my abdomen.
Green Eyes followed, surprisingly quick. Evan was in the air.
“I need bodies,” I called out. I glanced at Green Eyes. “Already dead!”
“Bodies?” Evan called out.
“Unattended!”
Getting further down the street, heading southeast, I saw the park at the end of ‘downtown’, insofar as Jacob’s Bell had one. Hillsglade House was almost directly north, the lake and Sandra directly south.
Evan was already circling over a pair of buildings.
Playing the role of the buzzard.
As I drew nearer, I realized there wasn’t an alley between the buildings. Here, the shops were just starting up. Many were closed.
The furthest point from the newly revitalized area at the north end. Closest to the marsh and the forest that the city wanted to expand into. Close to the park.
It was like returning to the tenements. I climbed a section of display window that was covered in iron bars, then reached for a windowsill.
After the Tenements, even being injured, with one arm only partially working, serving only to hold my position and give me a chance to raise my right arm, this was cake.
Green Eyes was even faster at climbing than I was.
We reached the rooftop.
A dozen birds congregated on a pair of corpses. A couple, pecked to death. A telescope had toppled beside them, and snow collected on a book that was still open, pages facing the sky.
Green Eyes lunged for the nearest bird. She caught it, and stuffed it in her mouth.
Two of the other crows exchanged glances in a very human way, then took off with the rest.
Approaching the bodies, I brushed the woman’s hair aside. It was only after I moved it that I saw her face and recognized her as a Behaim.
Using the Hyena, I carved flesh from bone.
Using raw strength, I tore carved bone from body.
I pressed carved bone into the cavity. One folded segment of spine went into my middle, which still gaped open. Almost like intestine.