He did.
Her voice was quiet. “That demon that got the Sorcerer? He got me. I’m more of a monster than she is. More than the person-melting, flesh-ripping, cannibal mermaid. By several accounts, she’s actually nice when you’re on her good side. I have a very hard time saying the same thing. I’m trying, but it’s an uphill battle.”
“Do your worst,” Noah said, setting his jaw.
Despite this, she could see the fear in his eyes. Not necessarily fear of her, but knowledge he’d been caught. He’d pushed it too far, and he’d lost. Now he was ready to die. The words that would send his brother and the two girls scattering were no doubt on the tip of his tongue.
“I was made to serve a purpose, just like you,” Rose said. “I was thrown to the wolves, just like you. You can see the markings on my skin? I have a spirit inside me, tearing me to shreds. Just like you. The big difference between us is that you were made to run, and I was made to be scary. Enough that people wouldn’t want to fuck with me. Enough that people who are even more messed up than I am would think I was playing the game and being a good little monster.”
She let the words sink in.
“I’m all out of fear,” Noah said. “That bucket’s ran pretty dry a while ago.”
He can lie, Rose observed, but he put up a good bluff.
“Mags has conveniently glossed over the question of what might happen to your group when the sorcerer is gone and this place is left to languish.”
“I didn’t gloss, damn it,” Mags said. “I didn’t think about it.”
“I dwell a lot on the future and long term plans,” Rose said. “I’ve studied this sort of thing. Vestiges. Abandoned places. When he dies, this place will disappear. The monsters who’ve been hunting you will throw all rules or whatever to the wind, Johannes’ protections obviously won’t hold, and there’ll be a short period of utter carnage and destruction before they move on to greener pastures. If you survive, and that’s a big if, this place sinks. You get swallowed up by the Abyss, a place that made a relatively ordinary girl into that mermaid you see over there.”
Noah glanced again at Green Eyes.
“Being what you are, you won’t last long. It’ll change you too much, too fast. Just like it did to my other half. It will split you up from your friends because that’s the best way it has to change you into something it can use. That’s if we win. Understand? If we succeed in our goal, we kill the sorcerer and stop or bind the demon, you’re doomed. If we fail, you’re worse off. I think you get that, but I don’t want you to tell yourself that there’s any chance you can go back to life as usual, miserable as it is.”
“You want us to join you because of that?” Noah asked.
“No,” Rose said. “I’m negotiating. You don’t get what we’re really doing, or the reality of what else is happening, or any of that. That’s fine. I understand that you’re limited in terms of what you’ve been told. You’ve been fixated on everything that’s going on here. On surviving, on the fact that you’re a plaything. You’ve resigned yourself to the fact that you got screwed. I’m going to say this in terms you can relate to. You’re a vestige. You’ll always be a vestige.”
I’ll always be a vestige, the thought crossed Rose’s mind.
“And?”
“And you’ve told yourself you’ll always be Johannes’ pet. Or you’ll be stuck running from something or other. You can’t leave because you have no place to go to. Well, I’m offering. If you help and we succeed in all of this, I should be free to stake out a demesne, and I’ll give your group permission to use a share of it. You’ll have control of that space just like Johannes has over his, like the demon has now. No more running. Minimal obligations.”
“No obligations,” Noah cut in, too fast, too eager.
He was just a kid, after all.
“Minimal,” Rose said. “The way this world works, you can’t have no obligations.”
He hesitated, but he’d already expressed some interest.
He looked to his brother and the two girls, but they weren’t any help. They weren’t giving him an avenue to refuse, or to argue against it.
The hook was set.
“I’m the type of person who holds a machete to a kid’s throat,” Rose said, “But I can be that type in a way that’s useful to you. One that’s invested in protecting you.”
“I dunno,” Noah said, noncommittal, “Like you said, you’re a bitch.”
Using fodder she’d handed him.
But, at the same time, her own thoughts were coming together.
She wasn’t willing to spend any more time on him. Time was too tight, and something told her that so long as she pushed, he’d push back. If she tried to pull, to draw him in, he’d resist.
“Figure it out,” she said.
She released him, pushing him away with her free hand so he couldn’t or wouldn’t throw himself at her, clawing and biting.
“I’m not sure I like how you handled that,” Ainsley commented, quiet.
“Did we have another choice?” Paige cut in.
“Aren’t you supposed to be some exemplar of truth, fairness and justice?” Ainsley asked. “Because maybe that was true, but I don’t think it was fair or just.”
“I think it sounded like both,” Peter said. “I agree with the kid. This whole situation here wasn’t fair or just, either, and I think we’ve already established that your whole dynamic was a bit hypocritical, as far as Rose and general nonsense went. You’re oh for three.”
Ainsley shut her mouth. Rose wondered if she’d connected to the notion that Peter had been pursuing her, and was left thoroughly off balance now that he was on the attack, in a manner of speaking.
But that wasn’t the focus. Rose turned and looked out the window, her thoughts elsewhere.
One of the many plans she’d considered in the context of the war had been a big declaration for her demesne. If she would be attacked by everyone anyway, why not claim as much as she could? If she could claim the streets of Jacob’s Bell, for instance, she might be able to encapsulate or overwhelm Johannes’ influence.
The idea of a proper demesne had stayed with her, and had inspired the offer she’d made to the boy. But halfway through that thought, as she looked to the future once again, she could imagine how her personal realm might be affected by her association with the Abyss. How Noah and his friends wouldn’t be out of place in the midst of it.
Johannes’ demesne wasn’t so dissimilar from the Abyss.
The parallels kept getting drawn. Blake had wanted her to bring Green Eyes. A bogeyman. Was there more to it? Was he with her in thinking about how things all fit together? Gatekeeper, human, demon? Humans and the abyss? The stable ‘real’ world and the churning void of the Abyss?
“We should go,” Lola said, an abrupt statement that disturbed Rose’s line of thinking. “I might not be capable of doing much, but I can feel my neck prickling like someone’s sneaking up behind me. I’m pretty sure the lawyer is close. Not about-to-kill-us close, but in or near the building.”