Still he refused to look at me. I waited, then said, “Why am I so important to you? You could have anyone in this House, in this whole forsaken City. Why do you want me?”
He pushed the blanket from him and looked up, his hair falling into his eyes. “Because you are beautiful. Because they hurt you at HEL . Because I love you.”
I thought of how he had saved me; of him standing over me in the Home Room, watching silently through the night while I tossed in the bed with the Ascendants’ machines hooked into my brain. And I thought of tapping Fancy, her joy as she greeted Raphael; her delight when she first saw me and thought I was he. Raphael Miramar, beloved of the House Miramar.
And who loved Wendy Wanders? Who even knew who I was, except for Justice and Miss Scarlet?
But I couldn’t risk returning their love; could only imagine it, really, for I had nothing of my own to give. Only nightmares and despair and suicide.
I laughed harshly. “Love? Your people are whores. You want to use me, just as Dr. Harrow did—you’re no better than any of them!” But I knew my words were not true.
Pain and yearning so distorted Justice’s face that I looked away.
“Oh, Wendy …” He took a deep breath, shook his head before going on. “It’s not just that you are beautiful—”
“But you are beautiful, Justice. All of your people are beautiful! Any of them would welcome you as a lover.”
In the soft light his eyes burned a vivid sapphire blue. Angular face rounded just enough to keep its lines from gauntness, smooth brow raked with that golden hair above slanted deep-set eyes. I had seen how other Paphians gazed upon him with presumptive pride, as if in his even features each recognized his own. But to me they all seemed too much alike; only something in Justice’s face marked him, lines left by his time at HEL , the relative hardship of our life with the Players.
“Beauty is too common among your people for it to move me,” I said at last.
He sighed and wrapped a blanket around his knees. “There is a saying we have: ‘Empty vessels are the loveliest.’ That is why we love children, innocents, anything that is young and new, before the world changes it and it begins to die. Maybe that is why I love you.”
“But I am no innocent, Justice. And I think I am Death itself sometimes.”
He reached to stroke my hair where it had grown back to cover the nodes and scars upon my temples. “You are not Death, Wendy.” He drew me closer to him. “But even if you were …”
I shut my eyes and let him touch me, felt an odd dizziness that frightened me. I opened my eyes and took his chin in my hand, brought his face close to mine, kissed him until I drew blood once more from his broken lip. He cried out and drew back, but not soon enough.
Giggling, I fell upon the bed, exhilarated by the taste of his dismay, those few drops burning like some hot liquor upon my tongue.
“Oh, it’s lovely, lovely!”
A blurred glimpse of his face, Justice shaking his head, his mouth moving though I cannot hear the words. And then it comes …
Strands of blood and saliva entwine within my mouth. Fire flares back to my temples so that the blood dances beneath my skin. I shut my eyes tightly, the better to see what sings there so bright and clear—
Eyes, eyes, eyes dancing, green as the highest branch upon the tree, eyes so clear that they show no pupil, nothing but the reflection of what He sees before me, Justice’s white face dancing now too as he tries to hold me and suddenly I am clawing at him, grunting deep in my throat as my nails tear his face and —
With a cry Justice rolled across the bed, and I wailed to lose my dream. I scratched at my own face, dragged my fingers across my cheeks until I felt something warm, jammed my fingers into my mouth and gagged: because it was my own blood I tasted, the shining strands snarling into clotted chemicals. On the other side of the bed Justice wept.
My stomach stopped heaving. The shrieking in ‘my mind stilled. I raised my head to see Justice crouched on the corner of the bed.
“Why won’t you let me?” he cried. “I could make you happy!”
I held my head in my hands, pressing my thumbs beside my eyes to stop the pain raging there. As he reached for me I spat at him, pointing to a thread of blood trailing from my lip.
“That makes me happy,” I snarled.
But as I spoke I reeled back as though I had been struck. My sight dimmed as something black and huge and cold loomed in front of me. I began to shake uncontrollably and choking reached for Justice.
“No—stop Him—”
But it is too late.
“Baal is dead,” a Small Voice wails. “I have killed my brother: puissant Baal is dead.”
My hands fall back helplessly; Justice’s face ripples as though reflected in dark and quickly moving water. A cloud across the surface. From the depths rises another face, leaden-hued, soft and pallid as a salamander. As He turns to smile at me the skin droops from his cheeks. From His neck floats a rope — no, a vine — but then it too falls away, its flaccid curve tracing the outline of His mouth. His smile widens to show white broken teeth, swollen tongue, the waxen tendril of a feeding maggot.
Another Voice whispers, “No. Baal is risen; his sister Anat we take now —
“With sword we cleave her,
With fire we burn her,
In the field we doth sow her.
Birds eat her remains,
Consuming her remains,
Devouring her remains.
Puissant Baal died;
And behold, he is alive.
And lo, Anat we take now.”
His grin is hideous. I scream, try to escape those livid eyes but He is there reaching for me. His hand beckons me and all He has to do is touch me and I will lose all this, this room and earth and the warmth of air and blood, He will take me as He took them, all of them, and I feel Him, He is inside me the blink of His eyes His mouth opening to rend me my beautiful brother in the dark—
His eyes close, his mouth snaps shut, his lips furl into new green leaves spilling from a tree where stranger fruit grows. Another boy, yellow hair plaited about a leather belt, smiling, smiling as he always does seeing me in the mirror: Emma, Aidan, Raphael, my brother, we three there …
The face that rears to gaze upon me with hollow eyes rimmed with bone is not his: not Aidan’s or the laughing Boy’s. I scream because as the belt slips from the neck it leaves no scar, no burning flesh, but instead skin soft and s mooth as Justice’s had been beneath my nails. The swollen eyes that stare from the corpse are my own.
“Wendy. Wake.”
Dr. Harrow’s voice rings clear and strong enough to pull me from a profound stupor. Beside me Justice stirs, then moaning turns to hug a pillow. I sit up, keeping my eyes shut so that the vision is not disturbed.
I know she is not really here, not in the Paphians’ chamber where I have finally collapsed. She is a Small Voice now, but it is Emma Harrow I hear and not my own thoughts.
“Dr. Harrow,” I whisper. My hands tremble as I pull the coverlets to my breast. I can still taste the bitter residue of my brain’s own bile. “Dr. Harrow—please help me. I have entered a fugue state. Please—”
She laughs. A starburst of pale yellow light as the threads of her consciousness leap neural chasms.
“You live in a fugue state now, Wendy.” Her voice fires along my locus ceruleus so that I begin to sweat in fear. The neural threads twist and spiral into a brilliant trail. Her sour laughter plunges into the utter darkness of regret.