Rose: Briar's Thorn (14 page)

The brothers smiled at her and nodded.  Jacob said, “Well said.  This particular demon... you may know.”  He took a breath tilting his head, like he was determining how to break some particularly bad news, then just sighed and said, “Styche the Trickster.”  Gretta and Red both sat up and gasped.

Snow's antlers were at least a hand above her hair and her eyes were an icy white as she spoke in the voice of Perchta.  “Styche was one of the first demons to walk the Earth.”

Daria had left my side and was now leaning heavily into Red, who absently dropped a hand to scratch her.  Then she said in a small voice, “But the Marcus brothers dissolved Styche's binding to the mortal world.”  She was a little pale and looked even more like me.

I looked around in confusion.  I cocked my head at Nicole, who was nodding.  She smiled and tilted my head back to a normal angle with one gauntleted hand and said, “Every Wolf Hunter knows the legend of the origin of the lupus curse.  It was Styche the Trickster who created the werewolves.  Who created...”  She trailed off then covered her mouth as she stared at Mari.

Red finished her sentence in a rough whisper, “Me.”

I took this all in.  We were facing the very thing that was powerful enough to create the evil that has infected so much of the world's population?  Red mumbled, “But why would he work with them when they betrayed him once already?”

Wilhelm pursed his lips, then looked to make a decision and replied, “They promised to remove their binding of him if he helped, to allow him to roam the earth freely as an equal. This is how they cheated.  Free choice is always causing the unexpected.  This is why we needed to step back out into the world.”

Mari made a disdainful noise then asked incredulously, “And he believed them?  They want absolute power, and with two of them already dead, the remaining two want it even more.  They would never share power.”

Gretta answered for them, “The Trickster has existed since before man and had never been foiled before the Marcus brothers.  Even then, he soured their plans.  They did not anticipate him to act according to his nature and poison their own machinations, creating monsters of them in the process.  He will not be fooled again, and he never forgets.  They don't understand truly what they are dealing with.”

Daria made a grunting sound and Mari looked over at her, the two were so very in tune that they could communicate without words.  Mari nodded. “Yes... and what will become of Cristian after this night?  He is part of this whole mess, though not of his choosing.  The world cannot be fully free of the werewolves unless he is destroyed as well.  He never willingly infected anyone.  His brothers forced him to infect his own wife and she sired the wolves of his line.”

Wilhelm deflected the question by looking at the time on the alarm clock on the nightstand and said, “We are out of time.  Remember, when all is at its bleakest, look on high for salvation.”  Was he quoting scripture or something?

We all turned to Parker when her cell started ringing.  She looked at it and said, “It's the Chief.”  She answered, “Hello? … Yes, we are on the move right now...  Warn your men about staying back from Rose.  She will look menacing, but don't open fire.  She'll erect a protective barrier for your men and the people left in the city.  Keep them packed tight and warn everyone away from the barrier.  It will kill on contact.”  I look... menacing?  I knew that, but it still made my heart sink hearing it.  Nicole bumped my shoulder with hers and smiled.

Parker hung up and we all exhaled then suddenly started looking around, the Scales were gone.  We all mumbled, “Fuckin' Grimm brothers.”  Then we headed out the door to the vehicles.

Red called out, “Everyone knows their part?”  We all nodded and she gave us a predatory grin and growled like a wolf.  “Let's show these bastards what we Avatars are made of shall we?”  We all growled back and Gretta took wing as a great white crow while Ella geared up at the motorcycle.  The rest of us loaded into Rachel's vehicle and raced after Ella, who was riding away with a roar of her motorcycle's engine on one wheel.

A minute later we were barreling toward the main city gates at breakneck speeds.  They were closed, but Parker didn't slow down as she chased her woman.  I was starting to get nervous, but then the gates started moving.  They were open just barely wide enough when Ella gunned her motorbike and rocketed through the gap with inches to spare.  Parker followed suit.  The car shook as the air compressed between the gates and the vehicle.  We missed the gates by less than a hands width.

We looked back and there was armored police at the gates cheering us on.  I blinked then asked, “What are they still doing there?  That will be outside my barrier... if I can even make it.”

Red said in a voice of mixed admiration and sorrow.  “The Clean Bloods realized that even while we battled to stop whatever was coming, the normal feral attacks at the city gates would occur.  That they needed to protect any evacuees left in the city.  Chief Mendez is out there somewhere with them.  He said they would hold the lines as long as they could.  They would pull back to fortified locations if things got too bad behind them.”

I blinked and asked in my serpentine voice, trying to understand.  “They will stay, even if it is an impossible fight?”

Nicole took my hand and smiled. “Hey!  Not all humans are bad.”  She gave a cheeky grin.

I countered, “You aren't exactly human any more love.”

She quipped playfully, “Oh shush you.”  Then kissed me to shut me up.  Red and Parker gave a collective, “Oooo” as Daria chuffed.

I twapped them all with my vines.  “Nobody asked any of you your opinions.”

We moved quickly past the droves of people at the gates who hadn't evacuated in time.  National Guard and Seattle police were moving people into the surrounding buildings, to give them a small measure of safety behind FMBs.

All of these brave men and women in uniforms protecting the civilians against something they knew they couldn't defend them against.  Yes, this was the good in the world I had not realized helped to maintain the Scales' precious balance.  It had been all around us this whole time, spread throughout the world.  Maybe we weren't as outnumbered as I had believed.  Then I got it.  The good protect the world, and we protect the good.

I glanced at the faces of these good men and women as we passed.  They turned their gazes toward us, the only vehicles heading toward the danger instead of away.  I saw something in their eyes, a fierceness, determination, and... respect?

We traveled perhaps a half mile into the city, then abruptly burst out onto open streets, leaving the civilians behind us.  Ella slid her bike to a stop, skidding sideways and Parker pulled up beside her.  They exchanged smiles and we all piled out of the vehicle.

I looked back, we were two blocks from the barriers the authorities were setting up as a perimeter.  A white crow landed on my shoulder, startling me.  I barely managed to stop my old reflex of skittering away from contact, reminding myself it was just Gretta.  A vehicle came barreling out of the cordoned off area toward us.

Chief  Mendez pulled up to us and got out.  I backed away, not wanting to get close and Nicole stepped between us as a buffer.  She knew I didn't want to accidentally kill anyone.  The man nodded once at Red then looked intently at me for a moment then turned back to Mari and signaled to the hood of the car where he started rolling out a city map.

He made sure all of us could see, they all formed a wall between Mendez and me.  It must have been instinctive.  Then he ran his finger along the streets as he said in a tired but strong deep register, “I couldn't give you your two-mile perimeter, there are just too many evacuees left.  We'll have to defend any gaps in whatever your girl there can do.  We have the last of the civilians all above North 130th between Greenwood Avenue and Fifth Avenue Northeast.”

He shot me an apologetic look. “That's almost a three-mile perimeter.”

I shrugged and tilted my head almost upside-down to regard the man and I said with humor, “I can do only what I can do.  This is all hypothetical until I attempt it, I don't know if I can even create a one-mile barrier, let alone two or three.”  I exhaled.  “Crazy, wayzy, impossible tasks, improbable outcomes are twisting...  apprehension reigns.”  Nicole put a finger to my lips to stop my unhinged rant.

The crow hopped off my shoulder and was just Gretta standing beside me.  It was an odd effect, there was no fanfare or shimmering, she simply was just Gretta instead of a crow.  She grinned at the man's apprehension at my words.  “I will lend some of my power.  But first, just in case I drain myself...”

She was Perchta at that moment, and I basked in the white hot promise of her power.  I wanted to weep again for the beauty of what I saw.  Her huge white antlers looked like branches sprouting from her head, and her white feathered cloak billowed in a non-existent wind.  Her long white hair was pushed behind her in waving streamers from that same mystical pressure.  Her eyes went from white to red and her canines elongated as she smiled and tipped back her head and let out a cry of power that was not from the pure side of her spirit.  It was a call to our primal side.

Daria and Mari snapped their eyes to her and I could see the glee of the anticipation of the hunt, burning in their eyes.  Then the white goddess of nature was again Gretta.  She laid a hand on my shoulder.  “Ready?”

I gave her a look conveying my doubt, but then Nicole took one of my hands.  “She's ready.  I have faith in her.”  That ignited a fire in me.  She had confidence in me and I would not, could not, let her down.

I nodded and said to everyone, “You may want to stand back.”  Then I locked eyes with the chief and gave him a wide-eyed look which probably just projected my tenuous hold on my sanity. “You maybe further... like a block away... or the next town over...”  I gave a toothy grin.  “Just sayin'.”

Mendez didn't waste pleasantries, he just got into his car quickly and backed it away from us quickly, while never breaking eye contact with me.  The poor man was pale as a ghost.  I giggled.  And couldn't stop.  Knowing and feeling what was coming was making it hard to keep focused.  Daria grounded me by leaning against my hip.  I stopped the mad giggle fit, whispering, “Sorry.  I'm ok now.”  Daria moved away and they all stepped back except Gretta.

I shot them a nervous look and then looked inside myself to that mass of writhing and pulsating blackness which promised nothing but suffering and destruction.  The black magic construct that was my heart and I compressed it with my will, making it denser than I had ever done in my long, cursed life.  It was fighting to get out as I kept constricting.  It may not allow me to end myself, but I am its master.

Then my head snapped back in a soundless scream of excruciating pain as I threw my arms wide and released the blackness into the world.  To do what it wanted, constrained only by my will to give it a path, a purpose.  Tens of thousands of thorny black vines and brambles sawed and tore their way from my flesh.  Powered by the need to destroy, but tempered by the chains I imposed upon them.

I fell to my knees, I had never felt so much unbelievably agonizing pain in my life, even when I was created.  Tears streamed down my face as I screamed that soundless scream, I couldn't get air into my lungs.  I knew it wasn't enough as a thirty foot tall and twenty-foot wide wall of writhing, venomous death came into being.  I could never have envisioned a briar patch of such great expanse.

I reached inside and used all my pain, anger, frustration, and fear to push myself harder and the river of vines became a raging torrent exploding from me.  My vision was tunneling and all I could hear were the wet tearing sounds the evil made as it shredded my flesh in its escape into the world.

But then there was a hand on my shoulder.  It burned in an unnatural white light that cut through the blackness in my mind.  It was Gretta.  Instead of lending me power, she instead unlocked a portion of my mind I had hidden away from the darkness before I began.

I saw vivid memories of playing with mother and father when I was a child.  Of meeting my first love, Safin, and all the adventures we got into.  Of the other Avatars and the friendship and family, I have forged with them.  Then of my Nicole.  My heart soared at the memory of her smile, of her kiss.  I heard myself finally inhale the air my lungs demanded and I smiled in realization.

I had been hiding away and protecting the most powerful weapon I possessed for fear it would be corrupted by the darkness.  I felt energized.  I opened my eyes, not knowing when I closed them and stood shakily to my feet and screamed out a challenge to the darkness.  Love was the most powerful force on Earth, and it could not be broken by black magics.  Gretta didn't need to feed me any magic, she gave me something more powerful and I thanked her silently as her hand slipped away from my shoulder.

I felt the two ends of my briar vines slam into the city wall on either end.  Then I twisted my body violently to the side and snapped off the evil black branches and vines from myself.  I staggered only to be supported by my beautiful silver warrior woman.  I chuckled and wiped the tears from my cheeks.  I was exhausted.  I said in a hoarse voice, “I may have overextended myself.”

She lowered me to the ground so I could sit and rest a minute.  I could feel the mass in my chest moving and writing around.  I had used a lot of it in that act, but I could feel it swelling even now, taking in more evil from the world to replenish itself.  Ella whistled and said, “Bloody good show there mate.”  Then she looked over at Gretta with appreciation. “How much bloody power did you give our Rose here, Snow?”

Gretta smiled at me and said softly, “Actually, none.  My nature magic is not compatible with her black magic, I saw that the two would cancel each other out when I saw her unleash it.  I gave her a reminder.  The rest was all her.”

I smiled softly at her then turned to Nicole.  “I love you.”

Her smile mirrored mine, I loved the warmth in it and the compassion in her eyes.  “And I love you too.”