“You’re just like me.” He pulled me closer, until our faces almost touched. I could smell the blood on him, the breath of poison that had claimed Justice. I wanted to draw away from him but could not. To see him like this, to touch him for the first time; to realize that it was true, that all these years there had been this other part of me, this changeling boy living in the City of Trees, and never knowing it, never knowing me; never knowing him. He stroked my face, took my hand, lifted it so that I could see our fingers entwined and the same thin wrists, the same broken nails and slender fingers, then pulling back my other sleeve to show me my arm, his arm, the veins like new young vines and their patterns both the same. He dropped my hand and gazed into my eyes once more.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered. And staring at him I nodded, and murmured his name; because it was so. I glimpsed the beauty that had held the City in sway, the sweetness in his features beneath their film of blood; the high cheekbones and gray eyes that, had they not been so striated by fatigue and madness, would have been lovelier than any eyes I had ever seen, lovely eyes, eyes I dared not meet in dreams, the eyes of the Boy in the tree…
And suddenly I saw it, saw Him; suddenly I knew that this was what Miss Scarlet had glimpsed at our first meeting, and knew at last what it was those others had seen through me:
A demon, a god. Revenant and revered one, the eternal victim and He who holds the knife. A boy of unearthly beauty, different from the One who had haunted me but also the same, as Raphael was like me and yet not me; as though Raphael’s corporeal body had been transformed and this other one shone through him as though he were a beaker of clear water. As I gazed into those eyes I knew that He had found His final place, He had found His way into the world. I had been an imperfect vessel; Raphael Miramar had become His ideal host.
“Wendy. My sister—”
He drew my face to his and kissed me. For one instant I felt in him a spark of something that was neither hatred nor desire but perhaps relief, and peace. Then he groaned, turned so that his cheek crushed against mine. His eyes clenched shut as though to keep from seeing some horror beside him. His hands clutched my side, his tongue slipped between my lips as he pulled me tight against him.
“No—” I cried, trying to pull away.
But in this, at least, he was different: he was stronger than I was. I fought and bit, tried to scratch at him, went mad thinking, This is the one who killed him, this is the one who murdered Justice; but it was no use. Neither hatred nor will nor force could shake him from me. My struggle only aroused him more until finally I kicked him, knocking him aside for a moment as I fell. I staggered to my feet. He threw himself against me and knocked me down, then grabbing my shoulders forced me back and smashed my head against the earth, so hard that it felt as though he had taken a knife to my temple. I nearly passed out from the pain; perhaps I did …
Because now there is a thrumming in the air, a sound like wind in the leaves or something else, a sound I have never heard, not in Waking; only perhaps in dreams. The sound of waves returning to some distant shore, the sound of voices chanting. Gradually their words become clear:
We came upon Baal
Stricken on the ground:
Mot had slain him. We cried,
“Puissant Baal is dead,
The Prince, Lord of Earth, is perished.”
Our lamentation wakes Anat.
She descends from the throne,
Pours’ dust of mourning on her head.
In her face she cuts a gash with a stone,
She gashes her cheeks and her chin,
She plows her breast like a garden,
Harrows her back like a plain. She lifts up her voice and cries:
“Baal’s dead!—what becomes of our people?
What becomes of the earth?
After Baal I’ll descend into earth.”
Anat goes and wanders
Every mount to the heart of the earth,
Every hill to the earth’s very bowels.
She comes to the Wasteland
To the horror of Mot’s field.
She comes upon Baal
Stricken on the ground.
Then weeps she her fill of weeping;
Deep she drinks tears, like wine.
Loudly she calls
Unto the Mother above.
“Lift Puissant Baal, I pray,
Onto me.”
The Mother wakes.
She picks up Puissant Baal,
Sets him upon his sister’s shoulder.
Anat lifts up her voice and cries:
“Now will I sit and rest,
And my soul be at ease in my breast.
For alive is Puissant Baal,
My brother, king of the earth.”
When I open my eyes once more I see him above me, his hands tight about my shoulders as he thrusts against me, grunting, his face contorted into a mask of such despair and terror that I try to turn my head so as not to see it, not to see him, my own face there above me in the throes of such torment as I can no longer imagine, a horror even worse than mine at being ravaged by him.
But He is too strong; I cannot look away…
And suddenly they are there with me, all of them: Morgan Yates with her face pressed against a bloodstained window, Emma Harrow staring as her brother’s body twists slowly from a leather belt, Jane Alopex recoiling as He turns to her and extends His hand, Fabian a gray wraith twisting in the night. Just as suddenly they are gone. I am alone. It is me there, for one moment my own face hangs above me in the darkness, not Raphael but Wendy. Then he tosses back his head and cries out: a scream that echoes from the walls and is taken up by those who watch, until the air is filled with it: a shriek of such horror and misery and loathing that it deafens me, and I shut my eyes so as not to see the anguished face that would make such a sound.
It is over. He rolls from me and lies prostrate upon the blackened earth. I turn onto my side to stare at him, reach to touch him: my consort, my enemy, my brother. He does not move; he lies there as though dead.
A shadow falls across his face. Dimly I become aware of other sounds; cries and the sound of fighting, metal against metal, granite crushing bone. There is a smell of burning, of flesh. Above me stands the Aviator. Blood slicks his arm and hand, and he holds a piece of metal like a bloodied scythe.
“Kill him!” a voice shrilled. I twisted to see Oleander hanging from a spike beside the ladder, his face contorted as his arms flailed. Blood frothed from his mouth as he strove to free himself. “The missiles — he will destroy us all—kill him!”
His hand flopped against his side. With his last bit of strength he pulled a knife from the folds of his trousers and tossed it. It skittered across the floor and halted beside my brother’s body.
With a roar Tast’annin leaped from where he swayed above me. Stumbling against the ladder he raised his arm, the light blazing crimson from his scythe as it struck at the boy’s neck. For one instant Oleander’s mouth mirrored Tast’annin’s own, a frozen mask of loathing and horror; then with a rush of blood his head toppled from his shoulders.