Blood Justice, page 42
They murmur that murder can be righteous when done in the name of blood justice as Sofia shivers from the cold spiraling inside her. The more of her I freeze, the louder the voice of vengeance and rage becomes, drowning out everything else around me until it becomes a gravelly, low chant that I can’t discern from sound or thought.
It’s what she deserved.
She betrayed you to ally with your enemies.
They took your grandparents from you. They murdered your father. Almost killed your mother too.
Tsk. Tsk.
Pity toppled the compassionate Queen’s kingdom.
But the vengeful Queen reigned supreme by wielding the Queen’s Justice.
Be the Queen. Use the power of the gods. Dispatch the Queen’s Justice.
End her.
End her.
End—her.
Sofia gasps and falls silent, gawking down at the veins in her hands that’ve swollen and turned vibrant blue beneath her bloated appendages.
It’s as if my will runs on autopilot now, and for a moment, I feel completely weightless. All the frustration of injustice and unfairness vanishes in the shadow of the rage that grew a little more every time someone slapped us and we had to turn another cheek.
Well … my rage and I have both run out of spare cheeks.
Clem grips my shoulders and cries into my face, “Cris, please!”
I clench my fist tight. It’s time to finish this. I won’t be callous and torture her. I’ll at least make death quick for her. But Sofia’s end doesn’t come fast.
Or at all.
The magic inside her warms and dwindles until it evaporates into nothing like fog hit with vivid daylight.
“No,” I mutter in disbelief. “No, what is this? What’s happening?”
Sofia crashes to the floor in a screaming heap, clutching her left hand to her chest. The tip of one of her pinky fingers has turned black with frostbite. The force of her teeth chattering vibrates her cheeks.
Clem zips to her side to help her up, but once she’s on her feet, she shoves him away from her.
I’m still stunned, glancing between my hands and her. I reach out the broken window toward the Moon again, grasping the air hungrily for that familiar connection, but it’s gone. The Moon doesn’t respond. I put one hand over my stomach, then both, and again—nothing.
My tether to the spiritual realm—to generational magic—is gone.
Oh, God. What happened to my magic?
Sofia’s in my face before I realize what’s happening. She slaps me so hard that I stagger to one side. That was unexpected. But maybe it’s what I deserve.
The ringing in my ears grounds me in reality again, sobering me from the intoxicating rage that took control of me. And that voice in my head goading me on … what the heck was that?
Nausea churns my insides like a washing machine once I realize how close I just came to killing someone I considered a friend once. Sofia has her faults, but Clem was right. This is different from Tabitha and Dr. Thomas. This is Sofia, for gods’ sakes.
What the hell have I done?
Maybe this is why Oberun’s influence was erased from history. I’ve allowed him—or rather, the idea of him—to lead me astray. And then Clem’s warning from earlier slaps my other cheek. Could that have been the voice of the Moon King I heard before at Tabitha’s and Dr. Thomas’s homes? And just now?
I take a step back and glance around the room, but no ancient gods are here with us, only the concerned stares of four other people that communicate a myriad of emotions, none of them good.
“Sofia…” I start, and immediately find the words hard to get out, but I fight through the humiliation and disappointment anyway. “I’m sorry.”
My apology feels massively inadequate, though while I regret what I did, I don’t take back any of what I said. Murdering Sofia’s not the answer, but judging by the fire in her eyes, I’ve sent a clear message—albeit one that might’ve somehow cost me my magic.
Sofia’s nose wrinkles. “I was wrong before,” she sneers. “You and Valentina are exactly alike. And I hate both of you mean bitches. Where is my phone? I’m getting the hell out of this dumbass cabin and these stupid-ass woods.” Her voice wavers at the end, and she clamps her mouth shut tight but fails to hide her trembling lip as her eyes well to the brim. She turns in place, searching the floor for her phone until she meets Zac’s mischievous stare.
He points to the toilet.
“You put my phone in the fucking toilet?” shrieks Sofia.
Zac sits on the toilet (fully clothed, thank the gods) and grins at Sofia. “I told you already that you don’t need phones. No one’s going anywhere. We’re all dying here tonight. My dad already told me.”
“Oh, fuck this,” grumbles Sofia. “I’ll walk back to sanity and civilization.”
She turns and snatches open the front door—and screams. She stumbles backward, trips over her own feet, and falls ass first to the floor.
Sofia scuttles back several feet, terrified as she stares up into the face of Jack Kingston, who stands in the doorway, a gaunt and ominous silhouette against the moonlight.
FORTY
CLEMENT
Jack Kingston lumbers into the cabin, leaving the door partially open. He stumbles while stepping around Sofia, falls up against the wall, and slides down to his butt in a pitiful breathless heap.
Sofia gets up and scurries to the other side of the room and presses her back against the wall, watching everything unfold with frightened wide eyes.
Fabiana was telling the truth. Jack looks awful. The man’s rail thin despite a conspicuous belly, a stark contrast from how I remember him at the Vice Hall party. The slacks and dress shirt he’s wearing are mud stained and torn ragged in some spots as if he was in a fight with someone—or something. His hair’s greasy and brown and slicked back from his splotchy, sweaty face. And the dark circles under his eyes are so prominent that they’re downright ghoulish.
“Dad!” Zac cries out. He bolts across the room and drops to his knees at his father’s side. When Zac leans in for a hug, Jack palms the boy’s face and shoves him.
Zac falls aside, and shock and hurt register briefly on his face, but then he shakes it off and scoots closer to his father, putting his back against the wall next to him. He pulls his knees up to his chest and hides his face behind them, his beady eyes poking out at us over knobby curves of pink flesh.
Jack, his face pinched and eyes shut as if in excruciating pain, reaches into his pocket and removes an iron key. His eyes part slightly, and he holds it out to me.
I snatch it from him, immediately caught off guard by the heavy weight of it. I hurry over to Fabiana, who’s already sitting up, her ankle extended, ready to be free again.
When I turn the key in the lock, the resulting click is so damn satisfying. I open the manacle carefully and help Fabiana lift her swollen, bruised ankle from the medieval device.
“You think you can walk on it?” I ask her.
She winces and hisses when she tests out putting a little weight on it, then stretches her leg and flexes her foot. “I just need a minute,” she says. “Nothing’s stopping me from getting the fuck out of this raggedy cabin and back to my brother.”
I catch Cris’s face snap to me and sense her drawing closer before she takes the first step.
I release a shaky breath. “There’s something I need to tell you. It’s about Yves.”
Fabiana withers. “What? Is something wrong? I thought you said he was okay?”
“Not … quite.” I look away momentarily to gather my resolve.
She snaps her fingers in my face, regaining my attention. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Last June, Yves and I were leaving the art museum together. It was late at night, and we were in the parking lot alone, and—”
“I need you to get to the point,” Fabiana snaps.
Cris appears beside me and puts a hand on my shoulder. She doesn’t utter a word. She doesn’t need to. Strength radiates from her. My invisible connection with my sister tugs on my heart, much like the tether to the spiritual realm connected to my gut.
“This guy snuck up on us,” I say. “I still don’t know who it was or why he targeted us, but he, uh … he had a gun … and…” The room becomes stifling hot all of a sudden, but I press on in spite of the tears brimming in my eyes and the pressure building behind them, threatening to burst my damn of emotions. “He shot Yves … and he died … in my arms … and I didn’t know what to do, so I took him to Jean-Louise Petit’s house, a-and we resurrected him. But his soul is broken, and I don’t know how to fix it, and I’ve been hiding it and trying to do everything on my own, but I need help.”
Fabiana sits so rigid and still that I seriously begin to fear she might’ve either turned to stone or she’s on the cusp of an aneurysm. Cris’s grip on my shoulder remains firm. I want to reach up and grab her hand, absorb more of her strength, but I hold fast and don’t look away from Fabiana. This is part of my penance. As bad as it may be.
She scoots to the edge of the mattress, closer to me, and narrows her eyes. “This whole time, you’ve been lying to me?”
“Technically, no,” I say. “Only from June until November.”
Fabiana’s glower deepens, and her mouth prunes. “You people,” she sneers. “You—fucking—people. Y’all won’t be satisfied until I’ve got nothing left. I try so hard not to be the villain I could be, but that restraint gets tougher to maintain every day.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, standing up now, because I’m quite confused. “I didn’t take anything from you.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she quips.
My sister takes a protective half step forward.
“And hear me straight and clear on this, Clement Trudeau,” Fabiana says. “Stay away from my brother.”
She pushes herself to her feet and starts to walk off but stumbles and cries out in pain. Sofia jumps up and dips underneath Fabiana’s arm, draping it across her shoulder and steadying the woman.
I’m too numb to respond. I had a feeling she might not take the news well, but I didn’t think she’d respond like this. Fabiana was my final lifeline. And she’s abandoned me too. Even the gods won’t help me. It’s time I accept my shitty fate.
I’m all out of options, Yves. I’m so sorry.
I failed you.
Fabiana limps toward the door, clinging to Sofia, who walks in ragged step with her. Fabiana stops and points at Jack. “I take it this piece of shit can’t make the walk back,” she says.
Jack remains seated with his back to the wall, slumped forward, his face frozen in a twisted expression, his eyes shut tight. He’s panting and sweating as if stuck in a fever dream.
Sofia peels away from Fabiana and quickly rifles through Jack’s pockets until she finds his car keys. They jingle in her hands as she returns to her position as Fabiana’s human crutch.
Zac watches them with a contemptuous glare. The eerie shadows cast on him by the still-swaying light amplify the vicious, dogged hatred on his face.
“You two stay here and keep an eye on them,” Fabiana says to me and Cris. “I’ll send the police back for you.” She looks at Clem, and her face twists. “And for your sake, I’m going to try my damnedest to calm down on the walk back to the main road.”
The last thing I ever wanted to do was end up on Fabiana Bordeaux’s bad side. I was only trying to help.
“Fabiana…” Cris steps up in front of me, the back of her shoulder braced against my chest. “You deserve to be angry. But my brother didn’t murder yours. Clem loves Yves, and Yves loves him. Right, wrong, or indifferent, Clem did what he did to preserve Yves’s life. Be mad, but don’t be reckless. That’s my brother you’re speaking to.”
So many intense emotions flog me at once that I don’t know how to respond to any of this. No matter how cold the world treats me, I’ll always find the warmth I need in my sister, even when she’s changed so much that I hardly recognize her. And that’s why I cannot imagine a life without her in it. No matter what.
Fabiana scoffs. “You are significantly less intimidating without your magic. I said what I said. All you kids are just like your parents.” Sofia casts her eyes at the floor, and Zac still looks put out. “And you can’t even see it. They’re raising you all up in their images. Fine, go on and live out your sick fantasies, but leave me and my family out of it.”
She turns and hobbles out the door with Sofia and vanishes into the forest.
“Something’s not adding up.” Cris frowns at me and then rounds on Zac and Jack, the only others left in the room with us.
Jack opens one glassy eye, and Zac continues scowling at us over his dingy kneecaps.
My sister studies them with patent suspicion. “Kidnapping Fabiana. Murdering Ben Beaumont. And framing our mother. Months of coordinated effort just to walk in here now and hand us the key to free Fabiana? The math ain’t mathin’. Why would you do that?”
Jack’s other eye inches open halfway and twitches. He cocks his head and lets out a gurgling chuckle. “Jack Kingston wouldn’t.” His voice has become all bass and gravel, which is terrifying in the already-creepy atmosphere of this cabin. “But I would.”
I move closer to my sister, preparing to grab her and run straight out that door behind Fabiana and Sofia.
Jack jerks forward and groans, clutching his strangely swollen belly. He bares his teeth and rips open the shirt, sending several buttons shooting across the room. Something serpentine moves inside him, pressing against the underside of his pink flesh. His eyes widen with terror.
Zac cries out and reaches for his dad, but Jack knocks him away again.
Cris gasps and grabs my hand. We both take a step back.
“What the hell is this?” I whisper.
Cris squeezes my hand, but she has no idea either.
“Oh, God! Fuck!” Jack screams. “It hurts!”
He gets on his knees and presses his forehead to the dusty cabin floor, sobbing and holding his stomach—and whatever’s writhing inside him.
Zac crab walks a few paces away. Tears stream down his cheeks as he watches his father howl in agony, powerless to do a damn thing to stop it.
Jack’s back hunches as he dry heaves. The painful-sounding retching turns my own stomach. Cris grimaces beside me and clings tighter to my hand, but neither of us can turn away—not even when the milky-white bile spews from his mouth and spatters onto the floor in front of him.
And it doesn’t stop.
More and more sputters from his open gurgling, moaning mouth like a faucet with too much air in the pipeline. But then he gags one final time, and his face and throat redden and then turn purple as something with the girth of a grown man’s forearm wriggles up his throat and pokes its serpentine head from Jack’s mouth before squelching onto the floor. It’s some sort of half snake, half worm alien thingamajiggy that makes my skin crawl—from the inside.
“What the fuck is that?” Cris whisper-shrieks beside me.
“You asking me?” I whisper back. “I dunno!”
Jack collapses, out of breath, facedown in a pool of his own cloudy vomit.
Whatever thing Jack just spit up slithers toward the door as its tail splits in half and miniature feet with webbed toes form on the ends. Arms sprout from the upper portion of its body with hands and fingers developing as well. The creature swells in size and darkens in color as it drags and kicks itself across the floor and out the front door, leaving a trail of white ooze behind.
FORTY-ONE
CLEMENT
I can’t believe I’m standing in a magical cabin in the middle of the woods, debating whether I should follow the nightmarish creature that just exorcised itself from Jack Kingston’s body in the most grotesque and nasty way possible. Zac, overwrought with panic, flips his father onto his back and frantically tries to bring him back from his half-conscious dazed state after that taxing and horrific experience.
“I need to see what that was,” I tell Cris.
I don’t wait for her to try and stop me, nor does she but instead follows close behind as I carefully pull open the front door and step into the chilly night air outside.
The creature, which now resembles a small bald gray-skinned toddler, drags itself several yards away from the cabin. The sight of it is surprisingly not as disgusting as the sound it makes.
Its muscles rip themselves apart beneath its ashen skin, crinkling like tissue paper. Bones snap apart, breaking and mending themselves back together, clacking like knitting needles. White slime oozes from its pores like sweat and steams when it hits the cool air, as the being continues dragging itself through the grass, constantly evolving its now-humanoid form until it’s the size of an adult man.
He’s on his hands and knees on the ground in front of us, butt-ass naked, his skin darkened to a brilliant purple-tinted ebony, the same color as a starless nighttime sky—like in the Kahlungha.
The Moon beams above us like a beacon, drawing my eyes to it. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s engorged overhead as if peering down at us—at the very clearing where we’re standing. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Cris stands silent next to me, gaping up at it too.
The man-being in front of us pushes to his feet and stands up, stretching to his full towering height. The underside of his right wrist, usually where the Mark of the Gods would be emblazoned, is a mess of splotchy scarred skin, as if his mark was clawed off by a feral creature. The sight of him sends shocks of terror zipping through me. I recognize him at once.
The Moon King.
He turns around with clunky, treelike movements and stares down at us with contrasting bright eyes, each a miniature full moon shining down on us like the real one above. His thin lips stretch into a grin that sends hot needle pricks down my back. Several rows of jagged teeth twinkle with starlight as if they were made from the Stars themselves. He flexes his thin fingers at the end of his long, spindly arms.
