Rise of the Poison Moon (28 page)
Read Rise of the Poison Moon Online
Authors: MaryJanice Davidson
Tags: #Magic, #Fantasy fiction, #Dragons, #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Spiders, #Shapeshifting, #Epic, #Good and evil
I am. I am recovering well. I can leave soon with you. Will you listen to me now, Mother? Will you tell her? She is still wasting her medicine on this one.
“Why?”
She doesn’t want to kill the pain. She never has.
They all stared at the neat, even scars down Andi’s forearms. Andi lifted her head but could not keep it up.
“I want to go back . . .”
“Are you crazy?” Jennifer spat. “Skip will kill you!”
“No. Not Skip. I want to go way back . . . way back, when it was dark. When I could sing and make light. Do you remember, Dianna?” Andi’s head lolled so she could smile at the sorceress. “Remember the sunrise song?”
Dianna’s fingers whitened around the edges of the medical bag. “Yes. I remember.”
Andi’s lilting voice filled the room:
Eyes open, eyes open, Where are you? Where are you?There you are, shining star!Look at you! Look at you!
Andi blinked up at Elizabeth. “I’m sorry I killed your husband.”
The doctor stopped what she was doing, clenched her eyes and fists, and pressed down on the mattress. “I forgive you.”
A broad smile lifted the girl’s cheeks. A bloody tear welled and tricked toward her left ear. “You’re going to be the first one out. I just know it.”
She began to laugh, an easy and carefree melody that filled the room. Before she could complete it, she died.
CHAPTER 46
Jennifer
By the time Dianna and Evangelina came to the bridge a couple of hours later, Skip was waiting for them, alone on the other side. The suddenly chilly air around had caused a fog to settle along the river, and droplets began to sparkle as they crystallized on the cold pavement. Off to the east, the carcass of Xavier Longtail was still visible.
He looked at both of them. “Are you here to kill me, Mom? Or will your favorite child try to do it for you?”
Brother. You feel strong.
There was admiration in the words, but no fear.
“Stronger than you.”
Time enough to find out.
“Francis.” Dianna looked around in despair—at the chaos under the barrier, the ruins of two buildings not far away, the green haze above. “Look at what you’ve done here. You have to stop.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with the Scales family, Mom. You’re no diplomat. Let’s get on with it.”
Dianna glanced at her daughter.
Yes, Mother.
Immediately, the creature’s black corona expanded, and the powerful figure of Evangelina sprang through the barrier.
Skip waved his right hand clockwise, and she veered off the bridge and careened into the river far below. “You’re going to find the laws of gravity have some difficulty applying consistently near me, Evanga- loser. The closer the crescent moon comes”—he glanced up at the sky—“the more power I gain over the forces of nature.
“How about you, Mom? You have anything you’d like to try?”
The human form of Dianna dissipated, leaving a play of bright hues—greens and oranges and yellows. The colors fell to the asphalt and crept toward him without thickness, slipping through the barrier where it met the bridge.
“What’s your plan—you’re going to watercolor me to death? Ugh, you know, I don’t care. Let me end this right here.” With a twirl of his finger, a void burned a circle around Dianna’s display. Try as it might, the two-dimensional form could not pass out of the ring. Nor could she revert to three-dimensional form.
“That’s your own little world I’ve created there for you, Mom. Like a moon hanging still in the sky, you’re going to stay there. For once, you’re going to
stay
.”
stay
.”
Evangelina had emerged from the water and was approaching from his blind side with more care than before. He turned as if to face her, then paused at a whistling sound from a third direction. In a flash, he was something else—an arachnid, if anyone could call it that, twenty feet of silver and vermilion streaks, with eight jointed and plated appendages. Each was tipped by a hairy, starfishlike claw. One of those claws caught something out of the air—an arrow—and the creature faced the woods to the south. An octet of yellow eyes focused on one large oak.
“Eddie, I saw you two hours ago when you helped Andi escape. You could do with a bit more imagination. But I do appreciate the arrow.” A spinneret threw up a long thread of silk, which Skip looped around two of his arms. A third knocked the arrow, and a fourth aimed it into the gloom surrounding Evangelina. The missile flew.
AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE
“Not bad for a guy who never took an archery course!” Skip reverted to his human form, tongue licking a loopy grin. “C’mon, Eddie! Toss me another one, and I’ll hit ’er again!
“A shame Jennifer can’t join us,” he told the crippled Evangelina, the helpless Dianna, and the unseen Eddie. “How convenient for her that she never found a way out. She doesn’t have to face me—she and her mother can send their pals, and if
you
die, what do they care? Have they bothered to mourn Xavier Longtail? Any funeral in there for Eddie’s dad? Cripes, the ceremony for Mr. Scales was, what, five minutes in a potato field? Five minutes more than Mr. Blacktooth got, anyway.
you
die, what do they care? Have they bothered to mourn Xavier Longtail? Any funeral in there for Eddie’s dad? Cripes, the ceremony for Mr. Scales was, what, five minutes in a potato field? Five minutes more than Mr. Blacktooth got, anyway.
“And I’ll bet Jennifer didn’t even think twice when a thousand or so of her new best friends got on the wrong side of my tidal sorcery. That’s a whole misty subspecies, folks.
Gone.
And her buddy Susan didn’t even do a blog entry on it.” He glared into the foggy woods where Eddie was, and pointed at the river. What might have been tears—of frustration, or regret—welled in his eyes. “They came to help her, Eddie. Like you come to help her. I don’t blame you.
I
tried to help her, more than once. And she never gave a crap.” He kicked at the sparkling pavement. “She won’t care about you, either, no matter how hard I make you bleed. And I will make you bleed, Eddie. You’ll bleed, and you’ll hurt, and she won’t care. Did she care about a single one of those water balloons with wings? Did she even
bother
to learn their powers, try to join them, and risk her own life alongside theirs?
I killed every single one of those watery motherfuckers, and—
”
Gone.
And her buddy Susan didn’t even do a blog entry on it.” He glared into the foggy woods where Eddie was, and pointed at the river. What might have been tears—of frustration, or regret—welled in his eyes. “They came to help her, Eddie. Like you come to help her. I don’t blame you.
I
tried to help her, more than once. And she never gave a crap.” He kicked at the sparkling pavement. “She won’t care about you, either, no matter how hard I make you bleed. And I will make you bleed, Eddie. You’ll bleed, and you’ll hurt, and she won’t care. Did she care about a single one of those water balloons with wings? Did she even
bother
to learn their powers, try to join them, and risk her own life alongside theirs?
I killed every single one of those watery motherfuckers, and—
”
“Missed one.”
A patch of fog behind him gathered instantaneously into the shape of the Ancient Furnace. A sparkling wing claw came up and grazed him on the back of the neck, as she breathed vapor over his spine. Ice crinkled his skin too rapidly for him to act. An expression of surprise froze on his face, and his arms hung in midair.
“It’s the weirdest thing,” she explained as she shifted from dragon to human. “Every lurker knows how to self-vaporize. It’s like riding a bicycle, for them. It was so hard for me to figure out that bicycle. In fact, I didn’t have it down until about twenty minutes ago.
“But the elder skill, the one that’s supposed to be
hard
to learn”—she flicked an ice chunk off his nose—“well, I got the hang of that right away. Only needed to see Sonakshi demonstrate it once in the hospital parking lot. Maybe it’s the winter weather that made it so easy to pull the last bit of heat out of the water within you.”
hard
to learn”—she flicked an ice chunk off his nose—“well, I got the hang of that right away. Only needed to see Sonakshi demonstrate it once in the hospital parking lot. Maybe it’s the winter weather that made it so easy to pull the last bit of heat out of the water within you.”
The circular void around Dianna disappeared. Evangelina managed to straighten herself after reaching into her corona with a spindly claw, extracting the arrow from wherever it hit, and tossing it into the river behind her. An oak tree to the south rustled with the sounds of a teenaged boy scrambling down. Jennifer found herself exhaling a breath she hadn’t thought she’d been holding.
“The air smells fresher out here,” she observed. She lifted the collar of her jacket. “Colder, too. You might be like this for a while, Skip. Though I only need long enough to shove these into your heart.” Two daggers appeared before Skip’s glazed brown irises. “What do you think? Can all the poison in the world thaw you in time to save your own ass?”
Dianna and Evangelina advanced. Neither of them made a move to stop her.
“End of monologue. Good-bye, Skip. Fuck you for killing my father.”
“NO, JENNIFER!”
Jennifer sighed and rested the points of the blades against Skip’s stiff breastbone. “Mom. He deserves this.”
“I forgive him. I forgive him, and I want to help him.”
This got her daughter to look up. “Mom! How could you! He killed Dad! He killed all those other people! He even killed Andi, who at least said she was sorry! He’s not sorry.”
Elizabeth bit her lip and looked at her through the barrier, a world away. “Jennifer, don’t you get it? This is our chance to destroy the dome.”
“Seems to me like killing Skip is our best shot at that.”
“If you kill him, it will never come down. Think about it, Jennifer. Edmund wanted sacrifice, and he got that. He wanted Glory dead, and he got that. He wanted Skip protected, and he’s got that.”
“Sounds like a dead guy’s getting all he wants. When’s my turn?”
“It’s about what you give, Jennifer. Forgiveness. Edmund Slider cared about that, too. We have to forgive.”
Turning to look at the icy statue of Skip, Elizabeth relaxed, took a deep breath . . . and walked forward.
Ten steps later, she was through.
The shimmering barrier disappeared, leaving behind a ruined town that suddenly seemed to breathe in. The river’s current shifted, the trees bent inward, and the sunlight played longer on the rooftops.
The doctor kept walking, until she was in front of Jennifer and Skip.
“Mom . . .
how
?”
how
?”
“I realized, as Andi was dying, that Edmund cared about three things. First, he wanted this town to experience sacrifice. It has certainly done that. Second, he wanted Skip to reach his potential.” She nodded at the moon. “Check. And third, he wanted a different Winoka. He wanted a town that was built on forgiveness, instead of retaliation. It’s the only logical kind of civilization . . . and Slider was all about logic.”
Jennifer shook her head. “We’ve been trying to pass through this wall for months. You can just walk through it, and it’s gone?”
“Listen to me, Jennifer. I couldn’t walk through it before I lost something precious—even more precious than Glory had been to me. And I couldn’t walk through it until I had forgiven that enemy. Your father’s death, the seraph’s sacrifice, Skip being at our mercy—these all had to happen. Without that sequence, we’d still be stuck.”
“So we just forgive Skip, and it’s all over?” Jennifer looked warily at where the barrier used to be, as if it would reappear at any moment. “That sounds too simple, Mom.”
“Then why has no one tried it? We’ve thrown fists and shot bullets and even wheeled minivans into that dome.
No one
on the inside, who has lost what you and I have lost, has tried forgiving anyone else.”
No one
on the inside, who has lost what you and I have lost, has tried forgiving anyone else.”
“I haven’t forgiven anyone.”
“But I have. It only takes one. That’s all Edmund needed to see: a glimmer of hope. A touch of humanity.”
“And he killed all those people.”
“He killed no one. He isolated us, and left us to make our own choices.”
“Mom. You can’t seriously expect this is over. Things like this are always more complicated. Dad
died
. Skip
killed him
. You can’t just walk across a bridge, and say it’s okay, and, and—”
died
. Skip
killed him
. You can’t just walk across a bridge, and say it’s okay, and, and—”
“What did you expect, Jennifer—that we’d have to toss a magic ring in a volcano, or find little bits of someone’s soul spread out over town and crush them with a glowing hammer? Would those things really be harder than what I have done here right now? I’m human, honey. Part of me
still
wants to see you shove those blades into that kid’s chest. But I can’t let you. That’s not your destiny. That’s not the solution. That’s not how the real world has to work.”
still
wants to see you shove those blades into that kid’s chest. But I can’t let you. That’s not your destiny. That’s not the solution. That’s not how the real world has to work.”
“I know how the real world has to work. Bad people like Skip hurt others. Good people like you and me punish the bad people. That’s justice.
That’s
my destiny.”
That’s
my destiny.”
“Jennifer, honey. Put down the knives.”
Waking from a gray dream, Jennifer looked at the weapons in her hands. Her fingers began to tremble.
“Kill him, Jennifer!” Dianna sounded desperate. “You must, before he thaws. Look at the moon.”
Through the haze, the dark jade disk above began to yield, on one side, the slimmest crescent of brilliant emerald light.
“We’re running out of time!”
“Yes, Dianna, we’re running out of time.” Elizabeth’s voice remained calm. “We’ve been running out of time since the dome went up. Since before that, really. That’s the excuse people like you have always used: if we don’t kill now, when on earth might we get the chance again? Hurry, and kill, hurry and kill. Has that gotten us anything? Did that bring down the dome?”
Other books
A Worthy Wife by Barbara Metzger
Deep Yellow by Stuart Dodds
Demon Lord V - God Realm by T C Southwell
The House Gun by Nadine Gordimer
Animal Orchestra by Ilo Orleans
Celtic Sister by Pentermann, Meira
Moving Forward (Moving Neutral, Book Three) by Atlas, Katy
Van Laven Chronicles by Tyler Chase
Absolution by Jambrea Jo Jones
Eater by Gregory Benford