by Lily Levi
The boy had come to me in the London tube a few night past - or maybe it was only a couple - it didn’t matter which.
Have you seen the moon tonight, he’d asked. And then he’d went on and on until the entirety of the Master’s riddle had unwound itself from his mouth and lay glimmering on the patched cement beside me.
Serena Moon. I wouldn’t have left London for anyone else and without the Master’s prodding, I might not have left even then. London was warm in a cold sort of way, comfortable and dark. But it couldn’t last.
I considered the boy beside me. He was a psychic, that much was clear, but there was no telling if Master Deadmourn had sent him or if he had simply picked up the message and delivered it of his own accord.
“Where are your parents?” I asked idly.
He looked up at me with his flat, gray eyes. “They left a long time ago,” he said.
“They died,” I said more sharply than I meant to. “Sugarcoating is a waste of time for people like us. You’ll get that soon enough.”
He stared up at me. “You’re not people,” he said calmly. “And my Mum and Dad are in Whales. I couldn’t go because of school. My aunt is worried about me, though.” His eyes took on a deep glaze, though his stare held true. “There are a lot of nice people looking for me.”
“Do you see them?” I asked. I had known other psychics only in passing, but it had been nearly a century since my last encounter. They were few and far between which was just fine as far as I was concerned. They weren’t inherently dangerous, at least not in my limited experience, but they never failed to be meddlesome beyond measure if they took an interest in something or someone.
“No,” he said, blinking. The soft glaze cleared and his pupils darkened. “But I can feel them.”
I nodded. It’s what the others I’d once been acquainted with had said it was like, too. “And you feel the moon in America?” I asked, pressing him further. Ambrose had left for the unholy land weeks ago and I had wished him well and good riddance. Theron had followed him like the lapdog that he was, and I was more than certain that Orlando, Desmond, Cain and all the rest had flew off right after him too, like a sad flock of witless, hungry birds. But I wasn’t going to play a game without rules. It was pointless.
Now, however, there were some parameters that could be followed and it almost made sense to join in the fun.
“No,” said the boy. “There’s no moon in America.”
I tightened my grip on the leather armrest. “You don’t say.” Either Serena wasn’t in America anymore or the boy’s senses were off.
“Yes,” he said, frowning.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We have to get off the plane before it lands,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Is that all?” But it wouldn’t do to anger him or to get angry at him. I needed whatever he saw - whatever he felt. I didn’t stand a chance otherwise.
I ordered a second drink from the attendant and closed my eyes. I poured the whole cup into my mouth and swirled the sharp liquid against my teeth and gums, burning every spot of flesh and bone behind my lips.
Serena was tempting enough in her own right. There was something strange about her and it had been a long time since I had felt a spike in interest in anything at all, let alone a woman. They were all the same. Everyone was the same. But Serena was different in a bad way, a very bad way, though I couldn’t have said how exactly.
But it wasn’t for Serena’s sake that I couldn’t piss off the little boy beside me. I needed him for other reasons. If the others decided they wanted to follow the line in the Master’s riddle about ‘culling the sweet herd’, then I didn’t stand a chance on my own. None of us did.
“You should’ve made appliances,” said the boy, interrupting my thoughts, the same thoughts he could feel.
I stared down at him. “Appliances,” I said. “You mean ‘alliances’, but you’re probably right. Less trouble, appliances.”
He shook his head like a parent disappointed in a child.
I leaned my head against the seat.
“It’s funny,” said the boy.
I swallowed the rest of the needled vodka and looked down at him in his odd white raincoat. “What,” I said, not particularly caring what he found funny or not.
“The moon riddle is like a tarot card spread,” he said. “It can mean whatever you want.” He looked away from me and back out the square window.
“Do you know how to use the tarot?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, his voice distant. “They’re confusing.”
“Better learn,” I said. “And trust me when I say you better fucking learn and you better do it fast. Your kind doesn’t always last so long.”
He crossed his arms and the sleeves of his raincoat squeaked together. “They’re a cliché,” he said.
I lifted my brow at him and held it high to garner the full effect. “Your parents put you in a little rich boys’ boarding school, didn’t they?”
He raised his own brow at me in return.
“Yes, well,” I said. “There’s a reason they’re a cliché and it’s because they work.” I leaned back into the chair and folded my arms across my chest. I closed my eyes and wondered how the world had gotten so entirely fucked from top to bottom. Centuries of relative peace and quiet and one little lamb throws the whole thing into a tailspin because she just wouldn’t die like the rest. How hard would it have been for the Master to cut her down instead of letting her leave the mansion?
Not hard at all, I imagined. He’d wanted to watch us struggle. If it was a game, it was for his entertainment, not ours.
“A brotherhood destroyed,” mused the boy. “The final game for the final throne. The last heirs consume themselves.”
I opened one eye to find him staring blankly at the seat in front of him. “I like it better when you talk like you’re eight and not eighty. How about you be a little less creepy, huh?”
“I thought you said I wasn’t a kid,” he said, turning his eyes to me.
“Just speak like a normal person, okay?”
He pursed his lips and we sat in silence for a long while. It was more pleasant than I would have dared hope.
“What are you going to do to the moon?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Rip it from the sky,” I said without thinking.
“Really?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. I hadn’t thought that far. If I could take the riddle however I wanted, it would be better to get it all over with rather than playing like I was some white knight with whoever else she was with, if she was with anyone at all.
The boy smiled for the first time since I’d met him. “She’s with someone,” he said. “Another bad thing. His name means ‘immortal’. What does your name mean?”
I ran my hand against my jawline. “Fucking Ambrose,” I said. “Well, guess we get to play save-the-fucking-princess after all.”
The woman in the seat ahead of us turned her face between the crack in headrests to make sure I saw her disapproving frown.
I waved the attendant down a third time, suddenly more irritated than I’d been since the boy had interrupted my wasted nirvana below the streets of London.
Ambrose. Why was it always him?
Cain
Serena Moon.
A name the devil would give to his own carcass.
“Are you listening?” asked Pollux.
“No,” I said.
He pressed his hand to his forehead and stared out through the broken glass of the warehouse window. “I said that I saw Nikolai’s dog in the night. He’s on his way.”
“Don’t need him,” I said. “Ambrose is afraid.”
Pollux laughed long and loud. His voice echoed violently against the sheet metal walls and thundered against my ears.
I growled at him but he didn’t cower as far back as he used to.
“Ambrose isn’t afraid,” he said. “You think he ran from us because he’s afraid of you? He wasn�
�t running from anything. He’s running to something. No,” he said, stepping away from the window. “Ambrose doesn’t run.”
But he had. He’d run and he’d taken the little lamb with him.
My little lamb, for truly she was mine. She had always been mine.
The Master directed me to her one hundred years ago and I could still taste the chill in the air during the hour of her birth. I’d led the nuns to the floorboards in the dark corner of the broken home. I’d stood in the dank soil beneath the church’s ivy and watched her grow from babe to girl with a crooked frown and wild hair.
What beast had not come for her?
I’d ripped their shoulders apart and the limbs from their bodies. I’d smattered their fur against my cheeks, my hands wet with their blood. I’d chewed their bones to splinters so they could not return; trapped forever in the hell they had risen out from.
Serena Moon was supposed to die, but only the Master could command her death. No one else.
But then the words had come and he hadn’t wanted her dead anymore.
Shoot for the moon. Kill it. Protect it. The old game is dead.
The Master no longer cared if she died and he didn’t care if she lived. Still, I knew what I wanted. It was what I had always wanted.
“Cain,” said Pollux, pulling me from my thoughts once more.
I had sat down on an overturned crate and hadn’t noticed. My body was a creature unto itself and my words came from outside of me, but always my mind was my own. It was a warm place to be. A good place. A dark place, but a good place.
“Hello,” he said, long and low. He crouched in front of me. “Yes, hello, there you are. I understand that focusing is very difficult for you sometimes, but maybe if you watch my hands while I speak - I move them so much, you see - it might help you listen to the words.”
I grunted at him. Pollux had grown bold after Orlando’s death.
It had not been a bad thing for Orlando to die, but it had not been my choice. The Master had commanded it and Pollux had spoken it. I could not resist. My body could not resist.
I would kill Pollux when the last traces of the Master’s presence left his voice, just as I had killed Orlando. If I could never have the same free will as the others, I could at least have something like it.
Pollux crouched in front of me. He turned his head from side to side like a curious, ugly animal. “I know what you remind me of,” he said. “I’ve finally figured it out.”
I rested my hands on my knees and waited. I would tear his pale face from the skull it covered. I would feast on his blood and feed his body to Nikolai’s dog. I would kill him the moment I could move against the echos of the Master’s will.
“You’re like a gargoyle,” he said, but his voice was hollow and drifted away from my ears. The warehouse blackened and I silently wondered what it was my body was doing.
Killing Pollux, I hoped. I clung to the dream of what might be and rested in the depth of the eternal night that I had come to think of as home. It was a world unto its own. It was a place where not even the Master could reach me. It was a warm night filled with stars.
Only the moon was missing.
Serena
The boat rocked against the sea, slow and gentle, cradling us together. We were the only ones in the world and it felt as though the night could last forever, uninterrupted by man or beast.
It was us and only us, entwined on the open deck, legs, arms, lips; and if the stars watched, they didn’t mind.
“What is it about you?” Ambrose whispered, mouth at my neck.
Theron ran his cold hand along the length of my side. “It’s the mystery you like,” he said to Ambrose.
I moved onto my back between them and looked up into the black, starlit night. The full moon wavered in the sky, blurred by wine. It had been heady and full of a deep life that we could only borrow, but it was enough. It was more than enough.
Ambrose caressed my cheek with the back of his hand. “Is it strange?” he asked.
I shook my head against the deck, though I couldn’t have known what he was asking. Everything was strange and it always had been.
“I don’t want to fuck her,” he said suddenly to Theron on the other side of me. “I don’t even want to take her clothes off.” He ran his hand from my cheek to my breasts beneath my jacket and down to my hip.
I didn’t mind that he touched me. Was it the wine? No. I liked it. Would I feel the same in the morning? Perhaps.
“That is, I do want to fuck her, of course, but, oh, what is it?” Ambrose’s voice flooded over me, warm and full of a need that went beyond the lust of men that I had grown so used to.
Theron raised himself up onto his elbow and the lines of his face overtook the endless sky. “What are you?” he whispered.
I laughed softly. It was a question with no answer and the only thing that had kept me alive despite my own terrible shortcomings. Shortcomings that included following the both of them onto the boat and going… going where?
The place escaped me and I closed my eyes to take in the sweet scent of the men - no, the creatures - beside me.
“Have you ever loved anyone, Serena?”
I opened my eyes and turned them to meet Ambrose’s, pale and full.
“No,” I said, tasting the word as it came out from between my lips. But I had.
It had been too long ago and I had killed him. I had killed every man who had ever loved me or who had thought they loved me. But to kill the man I’d loved, it had assured me that I was as terrible a creature as I had always suspected myself to be.
But I had killed him for love. Did it matter? Did it change things? I had killed him because he would grow old and die before my love could finish with him. And so had I finished it for both of us.
Love’s death was sweet, but it stung with a black hatred that I would never suffer for again.
“There’s something in you that begs to be loved,” Ambrose continued. He squeezed the flesh of my thigh and pressed his mouth to my cheek.
“You’re drunk,” I said, long and slow. I like you drunk, I wanted to add.
“So are you,” said Theron. He moved his mouth to mine and I took his tongue with a strange gladness.
Ambrose grazed his sharp teeth along my neck and I shuddered excitedly at the memory of his bite and the bites of the others.
I turned my face from Theron’s. “You’re a monster,” I breathed, but where I might’ve said the same only the day before with bitterness, there was only a renewed vigor. Ambrose was a monster, as was Theron. They were all monsters.
“And so are you,” he whispered.
“And so am I,” I breathed.
Theron touched my hair and moved it from my face. “You’re more monstrous than you know,” he said. “More monstrous than we know. I can feel it. What are you?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. Something formed in my throat, like a ball that I could not swallow. I met Ambrose’s eyes in the dark and he smiled at me more kindly than I could envision him doing. Perhaps I was more drunk than I thought.
“Serena,” he said.
I closed my eyes. “Don’t let them kill me,” I said.
Hope. I was hoping. Maybe I had never stopped hoping, but there it was, at last, in full display, blossoming deep inside of my chest, crushing my heart and opening it to the world.
“Then be ours,” he said, the wine thick in his voice. “Be our little monster, Serena Moon.”
Serena
The sun pushed its warm rays through the double-paned windows below deck. The cold bodies of Theron and Ambrose flanked me on either side, unmoving in their soundless sleep. We had made ourselves a nest on the floor with blankets and pillows from the open berths, though I didn’t have any memory of doing it.
I turned my cheek against the rough fabric of the pillow and let my eyes wander over the sharp angles of Ambrose’s gaunt, pale face. His dark brows worked themselves imperceptibly together so that the perpetual serenity of
his face was hardly there at all. He was dreaming or existing in some nightmare darker than reality. I edged close to waking him from it, but stopped my hand before it could touch him.
Perhaps he was fighting for me in his dream, protecting me like he’d promised to do. Would the day come when he would have to choose between me and his brothers? Undoubtedly. But in that moment, right then, it almost felt like a dream itself.
I was safe between them, Ambrose and Theron, and it had nothing to do with their strength. They wouldn’t let me fall if they could help it. They’d grown fond of me - maybe more than ‘fond’ - and their growing care pulsed cooly around me.
And I felt how, exactly?
Dangerously close to something I had promised myself would never happen again.
I turned carefully onto my side and reached out for the seat above Theron’s shoulder. I pulled myself up from between the two of them as carefully as I could and stepped soundlessly up the narrow stairwell and up onto deck.
The water glittered, cool and happy, full of a joy that I almost felt. The wind was full and the sky was clear of clouds. We were far enough away from America and anywhere else to feel almost safe. It was a strange feeling and there was no telling how long it would last, so I shook it from my shoulders as quickly as it had tried to settle there.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the battered box of cigarettes. They shifted together against the thin cardboard. They were so few that I could almost count them by the sound of their shifting.
I pulled one out, lit a match against the wind, tossed the burnt splinter of wood into the waves below, and tried to remember the last time I’d had a real moment alone.
Everything had been a blur since that night in Chicago not so long ago. Well, more of a blur than it already had been. Time moved too fast and it moved too slow. I often felt stunned, unable to think or to feel the way I imagined others could.
It felt so much like the weeks and months following my departure from the Deadmourn Mansion. I hadn’t known what to think or where to go. I had let my instincts guide me and now I was running away with the same creatures I had run away from.
I flicked the ash onto the deck and recalled only vaguely how we had laid there together the night before. They had vowed to protect me. I couldn’t remember the words, but I could remember the feeling. Of course, even with the death of Orlando, the whole thing was inevitably still a game to them - kill me or protect me - but I might at least feel a little glad that they hadn’t chosen to end me where I stood as I’d always imagined them aching to do.