Almost Alive (The Beautiful Dead Book 3) (34 page)

I ignore his question and ask another. “Did it bother you when he kissed me?”

John looks down, picking at his fingers. Even the way his hands move reminds me of the old John, the worker John, the whitesmith who beat against metals with heavy hammers, who always had the stains of grease and dirt on his mannish palms and muscled arms.

“No,” he finally decides.

“Why not?”

“I could tell it was goodbye.”

The Anima Stone is such an ugly, jagged piece of glass that has no business harboring such power. I don’t know why I expected it to be some beautiful, glowing piece of art. It isn’t even daunting or impressive.

“I’ve missed you, John.”

He’s still picking his fingers. We haven’t had a proper talk since his Waking Dream, what with being prisoners trapped in separate spider cocoons and all.

“Yeah,” he agrees sullenly.

I smirk at him. “‘Yeah?’” I repeat, annoyed. “‘Yeah?’ That’s all you got for me, really?”

He turns his head now and those burning brown eyes smolder me. Somehow, his grey eye is no more; both of them are brown and tortured and heavy with unspoken words. And he doesn’t need to speak them at all, it turns out. He lifts a hand to the back of my head and draws my face into his, and I feel the tenderness and the strength of his hungry lips as they meet my own.

It’s his kiss that tells me my John has returned.

When our lips separate, for quite some time it feels like they never separated. I smile despite myself, revived, and watch as even the hardness of his own face softens. He licks his lips, then comes in again for yet another.

Where words failed him, his kisses say it all.

Ever since Shee’s departure of this world, the spiders seem to have lost all sense of organization—scattering, hiding or abandoning the underground lair altogether. From the bowels of the battlegrounds, the surviving Dead are brought outside. Ash staggers out of the cave first, Jasmine guiding her. Upon seeing each other, I rush to Ash and give her a tight embrace. She’s been through Garden’s fall as a Living and Shee’s madness as a Dead.

“The Chief,” she tells me, her voice heavy, her eyes unable to meet mine.

I nod, bring her head into my shoulder and hug her tightly. “He’s at peace now,” I tell her. I’m likely just trying to tell myself, feeling stupid in my miniscule, wimpy attempts at consolation. Maybe now the Chief and Helena might, in the ethereal plane of existence where all stray Anima goes, meet. There, I’m certain he’ll have the courage to tell her he loves her. And she will have the wisdom to hold back her sass and accept it.

The tall teen girl was unlucky as well. Sara turned to dust right at the start of the battle, Willard tells me when he’s brought to the surface. He and Ash sit under a tree, despairing over their lost friends before taking to silence, letting the calm breeze play on their faces.

Half of Brains is recovered. Somehow, her legs were torn off along with half her left arm. It’s like she’s back to the way I found her when I Raised her. “I … am …” She can’t decide how to finish that sentence. She’s set in a sitting position under a nearby tree where she stares peacefully into the sky, pondering that third word.

I join Jasmine and Marigold at the mouth of the cave where Jimmy has taken to cutting into the walls with his nails. His fingers are red and bloody and his face is wet with tears of rage. Nothing the girls say can touch him. I fear that nothing at all in the world but Ann could touch him now. “All she wanted,” Jimmy grumbles. “Heroes die free,” Jimmy mumbles. “The things in this world,” he groans, just phrases and broken sentences as he keeps sniveling and muttering nonsensically. His fingers bleed and he digs and digs. Even across the way in the spider woods, we can still hear his sobs of despair.

When I return to the remaining Dead, they fall silent. Marigold and her chipper cheeks. John and his brooding pout. Jasmine is hugging herself, patient. Lynx leans against a tree, flanked by Ash and Willard and a carefully-balanced Brains who seems to have taken to humming.

My mother stands slightly apart from the rest, her steely eyes on me. For some reason, I feel the whole of them waiting on me to say something significant. My body hurts in so many ways, heavy with the weight of a hundred worlds and memories, I can’t bring myself to utter a single thing.

“The Lock-stone,” one of them says suddenly, Ash. Her voice is solid, invigorated. “We have it now. It’s ours, right? Doesn’t that mean …” She looks to her friends for support, then returning her eyes to meet mine. “Doesn’t that mean we’re finally safe?”

The yellow lump of mineral still in my hand, I shrug and say, “I suppose so.”

“I feel stronger already,” mister Willie confesses.

“Me too,” agrees Marigold, the cheeriness returning to her otherwise vacant eyes. “I feel like—like myself again!”

I stare down at the stone. How can the presence of this ugly thing be responsible for so much joy and so much pain? I study it, my mind clouded and obsessed. This stupid, ugly thing that carried us across the land and caused us to lose so many of our friends along the way.

“What now?” asks Ash. “Do we head back?”

I frown. “Back? … Back where?”

“To New Trenton,” she answers, as though it were obvious. “Where else? The Undead will receive us like heroes. The Humans will come to embrace us again, after hearing about the sacrifices we’ve made.”

“And we’ll be returning with Julianne the Jubilant!” says Willard, inspired, turning to face my mother. “That’s what they call you, Julianne. You’re a hero to us,” he tells her, grinning with fiery passion. “Without you, we would be dust in a cave.”

At that, my mother only issues one uninspired huff, then says, “I am anything but jubilant.”

Jasmine keeps her face blank. John too, observing Ash and Will with a sullen stare. Lynx only twitches, whether tickled by a spider in his ear or otherwise. I imagine we are all thinking the same thing. We are the only ones who know Julianne’s true identity, that she is my mother, former Deathless King, Mad Malory, the one who made the world come undone.

“Don’t worry on our losses. We’re
all
heroes now,” Ash says, misunderstanding my mother. “We saved Undeadkind! We ought to be celebrating. We will honor the lives of those we’ve lost and we will cherish—”

“My name is Julianne Westbrook,” my mother says, her voice commanding attention, “but I have had many names.”

Her eyes meet mine importantly. I watch her with eyes as blank as the endless grey sky above us.

“Malory,” she mutters, letting it out, “was my first name in this Second Life. It was given to me when I was Raised by a kind woman named Brianne of the Seventh. They called me Magnificent Malory.”

Ash seems confused, not following. Of course she wouldn’t follow just yet; she was a Human at the time of Mad Malory and doesn’t know the story. Willard’s face, however, reflects otherwise.

“No, that’s a lie,” he decides, announcing it. “No.”

“After I had my Waking Dream,” my mother goes on, “I learned I had a daughter. I spoiled my daughter and turned my back on my daughter and neglected my daughter in favor of friends, in favor of a career, in favor of riches and houses and clout. She died and I wasn’t there.” She’s saying all of this to me, now, her face heavy and anguished. “She died and I wasn’t there.”

Willard, realizing her identity, turns slowly to me, comprehension stinging his eyes.

“I tore off my face and adopted a new name. King of the Deathless, you might know,” my mother says to Ash, whose face now registers with alarm. “The Deathless King surely rings a bell. A funeral bell, perhaps.” She chuckles darkly, then tosses her crossbow to the ground. “Whether it harms you to hear it or not, I am not what I was before. My mistakes cannot be forgiven and I don’t want them to be. I’m at long last reunited with my daughter and I have played my part in saving our kind.” Her eyes turn tender, and in this moment, I’m touched by the familiar face of my mother, showing through the false one somehow. “Return to the City of the Dead, if you must. But I cannot, I will not go with.”

“Neither will I,” decides Jasmine. Ash and Will turn to her, startled. “I am not alive. I am not one of them. I don’t belong there.”

“I don’t either,” says Lynx, licking his lips. “I’m hated by all … and rightfully so. I played my part too.”

Marigold makes a strange chirping sound, drawing our attention, and then she says, “I want to be where my friends are. You are my friends.” She smiles brightly, all her teeth showing, her fingers wiggling, even her ears. “You’re my home and I’m at home wherever you are.”

“This isn’t right,” grunts Will, twitching with a furious anger he is, most visibly, holding back. “None of this is right. No. Not right. NO!”

My mother is about to say something when, quite suddenly, Willard lunges for her, a scream of rage wresting out of his throat and shattering the peaceful air. Jasmine and Ash are quicker, grabbing hold of him and keeping his flailing hands from reaching my mother. He doesn’t relent, pressing and pushing against them until his elbow crunches into Jasmine’s cheek—a snapping sound echoing across the field—and he breaks free from their clutch, tearing after my mom.

She lifts the crossbow with a second’s notice. Will stops, her readied weapon aimed at his nose. The rage still sends tremors down his every limb as he freezes there, furious, practically snapping with bared teeth.

He turns finally, surveying the alarmed faces of all of us who just paid witness. His look of anger is traded for one of deep sadness. “But why?” he asks simply. “Why?” His eyes find Ash, his friend. “Even you?” She can’t seem to produce an answer, pressing her lips tight and hugging herself. “She’s … This … But this is the Deathless …”

“We’ve all done wrongs,” says John, to the surprise of all, even me. “We’ve done bad things we aren’t proud of. This woman and her Deathless Army, they’re responsible for the deaths of my parents. They’re responsible for the deaths of many of our loved ones. Mayor Megan’s own brother, even. But she is also the reason Winter is with us.” His eyes land on mine. “We all have our demons.”

“I WON’T PUT UP WITH THIS!” cries Willard suddenly, kicking up a curtain of dirt with his boot. “Not any of this! How can you stand in the presence of the Deathless King and do nothing?? John, you
coward!
Ash, I thought I had a friend in you. Oh, when I get back to New Trenton, I promise you this, the city will learn the
truth
.” His eyes burn Julianne, furious, shaking with rage. “You might escape your sins with these fools. You might consider yourself absolved or forever Damned, I don’t care, I will
never
absolve you. I will
never
forgive. They will learn.”

With that, he stomps toward the trees, sand kicking up with his every furious footfall.

They will learn, he said. And with their learning, they will also learn that Mayor Megan kept the secret. They will learn their leader lied to them. Their world will come apart, I realize. “Stop him,” I whisper, unheard.

Everyone seems like they’re just fine with him leaving and no one lifts a finger. But I start moving after him. My mom’s legacy can’t be destroyed. The hero cannot be ruined. The Undead there need a hope. The Living there need an idol. I cannot let him destroy her name.

“Stop, Willard, please,” I beg him. He doesn’t stop. “Willard! Please! Think about what you’re doing!” He doesn’t stop. Neither do I. “STOP!”

In my scream, Willard drops to his knees. His arms fall off his body and his head rolls backwards, drops to the earth and shatters into pieces. His clothes flutter in the wind, freed of a body, and the trees around him receive the dust and the ash.

I stare down at the stone in my hand, disbelieving. It glows the raging, furious color of liquid gold. I drop it, astonished, and back away from the vile weapon, collapsing to my own knees and covering my mouth.

What have I done?

“Winter.” It’s my mother’s voice. She’s crouched behind me, her arms coming around me at once. “Winter, it’s okay. Come, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

“What have I done?” The ash that’s become of Will gently blows and swirls in the distant wind, carrying off to wherever the wind’s headed. “What did I …?”

“It was an accident,” she whispers, kissing my cheek and bringing my head into her chest, sparing me the sight of anything else at all. My world’s plunged into darkness as she holds me, gently rocking me. “It was an accident. No one’s to blame, sweetheart. No one’s to blame.”

In the darkness with my eyes closed, I try to picture what the rest of our Second Life is going to be like. My mother the former Deathless King. My friends who just witnessed me destroy an innocent person. The man I love who’s lost his heartbeat. I sit here on my knees, leaning into my mother and I try to picture my Second Life.

The wind stirring in my ears, my white hair flinging all around me, I can’t picture a thing.

“It had to happen,” says Jasmine somewhere behind me, having crouched down to join us.

The gravelly voice of Lynx is heard, too. “There’s a price for all our futures. Think on that, Winter. There’s always a price to pay.”

“We’ve fought so much,” Marigold puts in, the usual cheeriness of her voice giving into a solemn sincerity that is quite becoming in her. “I’ve had my share of fun. I’ve had my share of … doubts and fear. We’ve all loved and lost, Winter.”