Rise of the Poison Moon (31 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
It was a moment of enormous relief for them all, not least Elizabeth, who was openly happy to see her daughter alive.
“Got most of them down without a scratch,” Jennifer was proud to report. “But Evangelina is still on the prowl. We might want to get back to Skip and Dianna.”
“Agreed.”
The two of them, Susan, Gautierre, and Catherine returned to the bridge . . .
. . . where Skip was thawing in Dianna’s arms.
“Dianna!” Elizabeth surged forward, but caught herself as she realized what was happening. “Dianna, what have you done?” “What none of the rest of you had the guts to do.” The sorceress was crying, and her son’s features were paling. Spiderwebs of black poison were streaking across his face, chasing the crystals of ice away. “I told you we had to stop him, but none of you would do it. You gave me no choice. I had to do it myself. I had to kill my own son.” She buried her head on Skip’s chest, sobbing. Far, far away, the sirens of fire engines and ambulances wailed.
Elizabeth knelt next to them and looked for a pulse in Skip’s wrist, then throat. Dianna did not try to stop her—in fact, she smiled.
“Still trying to save everyone, Doctor? How heroic. He’s past your help—the dose I had to use on him is beyond anything you can cure.”
“We don’t know that until we get him to the hospital. From there, they can chopper him in to the Twin Cities. Jennifer, help me get him on your back.”
Jennifer wanted to hesitate, but she didn’t dare. She stepped forward—
“You’re too late.” Dianna gently let her son’s body fall to the ground and got to her feet. Venomous tears had burned dark tracks on her cheeks, and Jennifer could not tell where the woman’s pupils ended and her irises began. “It’s my fault. I should have stayed with him. I shouldn’t have left him with his father.”
Elizabeth examined Skip’s body, but did not attempt any resuscitation. He was bleeding venom from his pores, and his pale skin was already starting to burn.
“I’ve lost him, just like I lost Jonathan . . . like I’ve lost everyone.”
You still have me, Mother. You lost me, but you found me again.
“Look who’s back.” Jennifer steamed at the sight of the shadowy shape that reappeared. “Thanks for all your help back there, by the way. Nothing like trying to get those choppers landing safely while you were blowing them up. I really appreciate all that.”
You’re welcome.
“Evangelina.” Dianna tried to smile. “I’ve failed you worst of all. I abandoned you to death, and death never really left you. It still seeps from your scales. You can’t help yourself. I’ve tried to show you better worlds, better places . . .”
Jennifer looked at the sky. “Um, Mom.”
“Hang on, honey.” Elizabeth was closing Skip’s pretty green eyes with a single hand and murmuring a prayer.
The monstrous form of Evangelina dwindled into a slender woman. Her expression was confused, and she tried to approach Dianna.
Mother. Please don’t cry. I’m still here.
“Mom, seriously. Look up. Check it out.”
The sorceress stepped back. “I can’t do anything else for you, Evangelina. Please don’t ask me. There’s nothing I can do. I’ve failed both of you. Skip has already come to this awful end, and now you face the same.”
“Folks, if you could just tilt your heads slightly up and check this out . . .”
“Maybe not tonight, maybe not for months or even years—but you are doomed, and damned. I did that to you. I’m so sorry.”
Please stop apologizing, Mother. It upsets me.
“WILL EVERYONE PLEASE STOP TALKING AND LOOK UP AT THE MOON?”
They looked up.
The sliver had become a more prominent crescent, and it was leaving a trail of virulent green in its wake. Even the dark side was pulsing with color.
“Why isn’t the moon fixed?” Susan asked. “Skip’s dead. So is Andi.”
“It’s like I told you,” Dianna told them. “He exists up there as well. Destroying him down here is not enough. We must do it again.”
“How much time do we have?” Elizabeth asked.
“None. We have to do it now. In fact, I’m surprised we’re still standing.”
“We have to kill him on the moon
now
? How are we going to do that?” asked Gautierre.
now
? How are we going to do that?” asked Gautierre.
Dianna wiped her face. “Someone is going to carry me up there. And then I am going to make a sacrifice, for once.”
Mother. You’re not making any sense. You cannot go to the moon. None of us can.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Jennifer added.
“You’re both wrong—in fact, you are exactly the two among us who have the strength to bring me there.”
I don’t see how that’s possible. I cannot survive without air, Mother.
“Even if you fix that problem,” Jennifer added, “It would take months to get there, even at our fastest. We could barely keep up with Army helicopters down here. Do you have a rocket ship hidden somewhere under that dress?”
“Speed is not an issue. Nor is air. The only question would be, which one of you will bring me. I’ve already decided that one.”
She stepped up to Evangelina.
I won’t take you. Not if you’re going up there to die.
“Oh, sweet Evangelina.” Dianna stroked her daughter’s face with both hands, wiping the black strands of hair aside. “I’m not going to ask you to take me. Instead, I’m going to give you one last gift, before Jennifer takes me.”
What do you
Dianna seized Evangelina’s face and explained, as the younger woman shrieked.
“I should have done this when I found you, after all those years you spent in the darkness. There’s no mother I know who wouldn’t gladly take all her daughter’s pain away. I am ashamed that it took me so long to do this. All I can say is, I’m sorry. I wanted time with you. I wanted the time that had been taken from us. You gave me some of that time. Now, I return it to you . . . and so much more.”
Evangelina’s scream became higher, and her eyes brighter. Her hair shortened, and her skin tightened. Meanwhile, Dianna began to age.
“Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Jennifer asked her mother.
“Kid, I have no idea what either of us is seeing.”
Moooooooom!
“I give you the gift of years,” Dianna said. The creases in her face deepened, and she gritted her teeth. “All of the loneliness and misery you suffered, all of the horrible things you’ve done . . . I’ll take it all. You have a second chance, Evangelina. Use it well.”
The girl’s face—for it was a girl now, no older than six—remained a reflection of pain. Her silver eyes sparkled with youth.
Where am I what is this who am when am I am why?
“Just a little longer, darling.” Dianna’s voice was heavy with age. Her shoulders were stooping, and she could barely lift the shrinking child into her arms. The loose clothes Evangelina had worn were now large enough to be blankets to the infant.
Finally, Dianna looked up from the wailing cloth bundle in her arms, to the others. The skin sagged from her cheek-bones, and her eyes were dull with uneasy, shifting pastels. No one spoke.
Slowly, step by step, the sorceress shifted toward them. She edged by the earthly corpse of Skip Wilson, and passed the gape-mouthed Catherine. She paused when she reached Gautierre and Susan, and reached out with a hand to the boy’s shoulder. Her nod passed him, acknowledging the giant black corpse on the other side of the river.
“I’m sorry for your losses, kid,” she croaked. “Find family where you can. Love them for who they are. Stay with them, in good times and bad. If you need guidance . . . look to the family my first husband built.”
She kept going now, passed Susan and Jennifer with a slow wink, came to the last in the group, and held out her infant child.
“Doctor. Please succeed, where I have failed.”
Elizabeth staggered back a step. “Dianna. Ms. Wilson. I can’t—this is—”
“We both know who the difference was, between what Evangelina became and what Jennifer has become. I have finally done something for her, worthy of your family. I cannot continue. It is up to you—the only one in this world whom I trust with her safety.”
“Dianna. I can’t possibly be the answer. You and I—we just—”
The sorceress presented the child again, more urgently this time. “Doctor. I would love to argue this all evening. My other child is about to ruin this earth. I know you ache for another child. I’m offering you this opportunity. If you don’t want it, I’ll leave it with Jennifer, and you can be a grandmother instead.”
Elizabeth took the baby.
“Thank you.” Dianna straightened her back and ran a hand through her gray hair. “Jennifer Scales. I am ready to go.”
EPILOGUE
The Elder’s Diary
I was the last person to see Dianna Wilson alive.
Since she asked, and I saw no other way, I carried her up. We went higher than dragons can, higher than helicopters or jet fighters, higher than satellites.
She whispered the sorceries I needed for speed and survival, though the words she spoke did horrible things to her own withering face and limbs.
My mother has asked me several times what it was like, up there. I find that all I can tell her was that it was cold and quiet. That’s what everyone expects to hear, and so that’s all I say.
The truth was, I have never felt more heat or heard more noise than I have when the earth and we raced through the sky together.
The white-streaked stone beneath us was powered by an engine more ancient, slow, and sure than ours; but the short sprint to the moon was ours to win, and the heavens roared and the stars cheered. The more I think about it, the more I realize the heat and noise came from within—Dianna’s magic was no longer what kept us alive.
She held her own head close to mine, and I began to hear her voice in my head. At first it was stuff I could understand—mostly things about her daughter, and the travels they had shared together in dimensions that existed only in dreams.
But her words made less and less sense, the farther we went. Things she said had happened, couldn’t possibly have yet: a river town vanishing under a billowing cloud of fire, a dark twist of a creature obliterating herself in the midst of a holocaust, a faceless figure hunting ceaselessly for blood, a world without dragons or spiders or beaststalkers. Maybe she was hallucinating, or peering into the future.
When the crescent moon was so large I thought its lower end would pierce us, I heard her thoughts return to me:
please stop here.
please stop here.
Are you sure?
I asked her.
I asked her.
I’m sure. You should go now. Thank you, Jennifer. Give Evangelina my love. Help your mother look after her. Help your mother . . .
I tried to hold on to her, but with one last wink and wry smile, she forced distance between us. Without my heat, her skin began to glisten with blue frost.
You’ve got about ten seconds, child. Move it.
I moved it, still unable to tell for sure if my newfound speed and fire came from within, from her grace, or both. By the time a cloud of emerald fire consumed the night sky, I was already piercing the atmosphere.
According to my mother, it initially looked as though Dianna had failed, and that the moon and everything had been lost. It wasn’t until her last sorcery faded enough to let the slim, white crescent shine through that she relaxed and realized all was well.
But I knew all along that Dad’s first wife would do fine. That woman had no clue how to lose. Turns out, though, she did know how to die in style.
The shimmering curtain that lay over Minnesota for the next fifty nights let only two lights through: the sun, which washed out most of the aurora’s colors; and the cleansed moon, which kept its crescent shape the entire time.
It turns out this was the beginning of something even bigger for all of us—but for those fifty days, it was amazing enough to see the universe bow to that martyred sorceress.
As for me, I landed safely in Pinegrove. Of course. I’m always safe. It’s the people around me who seem to die.
Mom was waiting for me, holding the bundle in her arms tightly against the chill. Fog formations slipped over the river behind them, and one of them was shaped like a large bird. I thought of Sonakshi, and Xavier, and the hundreds of dragons who had followed me to the end.
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