London Harmony: Small Fry (16 page)

Then I turned to see that the four women with auras that dripped with power had moved to the gate.  I looked at the beautiful woman in the red cloak, she was just as I had imagined her, and she held herself with such surety and confidence, power held in check by an iron will.  Power that could finally end me.

I tilted my head at the Red Hood and pleaded, “I have sought you three for so long.  Will you sister, after we stop the Marcus brothers?  Will you grant me death from this torturous existence?”

She reached a hand forward and I recoiled, hissing out, “My touch is poison!  It would kill you.”

The woman seemed nonplussed and smiled with confidence as she shook her head, there was something gentle yet pained in her voice as she said, “No, it won't.  Only a wolf can end the curse of the Red Hood, just to have another rise to take my place.”

She reached through the bars and cupped my cheek with an unnaturally warm hand.  I closed my eyes and basked in the feel of flesh on flesh that had been denied me for so long and reopened my eyes to look at the woman who was very much alive as she comforted me.  The impossibility of actual contact was overwhelming to me.

I looked at her in shock then fell to my knees sobbing uncontrollably as I held her hand to my cheek.  I whispered between sobs, “You can... you can touch me?  Human contact, after so long.”

Another moved closer to the bars, the one that had more raw power than the others, but with a slippery grip on it.  I jerked back as she started to lay a hand on mine but then I smiled through my tears as she didn't fall down dead either.  Her hand had a glassy sheen to it.

  The third had a warm energy that made me just want to gaze upon it and confess my sins.  She changed her appearance and grew antlers and a feathered cloak in an instant.  She looked like a goddess to me and I knew this was Gretta Snow.  Then that actual goddess of nature reached through the bars to stroke my hair and said in a voice that was all sunlight and warm breeze, “It is alright now child.  Everything is gong to be just fine.  We will all face the balance of the Scales together.”

I looked around at the women, my sisters, and nodded through my tears.  We all looked back across the waters to the west.  Something evil was coming, something that had the reek of death and power.  It was the Gathering.  I felt my upper lip twitching up into a sneer as I thought. We're right here Marcus brothers, your move.

But right now... I closed my eyes again and reveled in the contact as the fourth woman laid a crystal hand on my other cheek.  I thought back over the centuries before I had been cursed, to the last time I had physical human contact.