Sawkill Girls

by Claire Legrand

  “Hold her down!” Marion cried.

  Zoey muttered, “Damn it,” and obeyed, because the alternative was to blast Val, and keep blasting her, until there was no life left in her body. If Val had truly been owned by this beast for God knows how long, then . . .

  A tight hot lump formed in Zoey’s throat, pushing tears to her eyes.

  Then Val doesn’t deserve to die like this.

  Not by his hand.

  And not by mine.

  Zoey cursed every curse she knew and straddled Val’s hips, her knees digging uncomfortably into the roots. Her buzzing hands hovered over Val’s chest, defibrillator-like, and her legs clamped down on Val’s body like a set of tiny human prongs. No matter how hard Val bucked, no matter what horrible things she shouted at her, Zoey kept her pinned in place beneath the tree, her sizzling hands glued to her belly. Blood seeped out from between Val’s flaming white fingers.

  Beads of sweat rolled down Zoey’s back. Her stomach rebelled against the smell of cooking flesh.

  Courage, dear heart, murmured a tiny white moth, fluttering down out of the trees to land between Zoey’s knuckles.

  Val shrieked, her body bowing up off the roots with such force that she looked like she might split in two. She spat a mouthful of steaming black liquid at Zoey’s face.

  Zoey gagged, spitting and heaving. Every bone in her body screamed at her to run. She pressed down harder against Val’s torso. The thrum of the stone and mud and water beneath her trembling legs kept her vital, kept her upright and thrumming.

  Marion wiped Zoey’s face with her free hand, her fingers cool.

  “Listen to me, Val,” said Marion, her voice calm. “I’m going to talk to you until this is over. Okay?”

  Val growled, her head snapping from side to side, “When this is over, I will tear you apart!”

  “No. When this is over, we’re gonna have a nice long talk. Just you and me.”

  “You are filth,” shouted Val. “You are carrion—”

  “Remember when I kissed you, in the stables?” Marion cupped Val’s sweating cheek. “I’d never kissed anyone like that before. I’ll never forget it, Val.”

  The brilliance in Val’s chest flickered, sending fingers of light shooting all down her body. She sobbed once. “Marion, help me!”

  “I’m right here.” Marion gazed at Val, steady and unflinching. “We both are. Me, and Zoey. We’re not leaving you.”

  Zoey’s hands were going numb, and her shoulders ached like they’d been pierced by hot irons. “I won’t be able to do this for much longer.”

  Her vision dimmed, then brightened. She gritted her teeth, imagining the sketch of the girl in her father’s book—a sword in one hand, the other held out like its own shield.

  “Come on, Val,” Zoey muttered. “Come on.”

  “You’re doing great,” soothed Marion. “I’m so proud of you, Val.”

  Val drew a great, ragged breath and roared up at Marion, “I will devour you for decades, and you’ll feel every moment of it!”

  But Marion didn’t let go of her hand. “I’m right here,” she murmured. “I’m right here, Val.”

  She didn’t let go even when Val’s furious shouts dissolved into awful, bubbling breaths, and racking coughs that made Zoey’s chest hurt to hear them. When Val’s eyes fell shut and she began to silently convulse, Marion sprang into action. Releasing Val’s hand, she ripped off her jacket and said to Zoey, “We have to turn her!”

  Zoey released Val’s limp, shuddering body, bearing down against the urge to collapse out of sheer relief. Then, together, she and Marion turned Val onto her side, used their own hands to keep her glowing ones pressed to her stomach. They wedged Marion’s balled-up jacket between the back of Val’s head and the root behind it, and then they each held her by the shoulders—Zoey behind Val’s body, Marion’s in front—as she threw up fountains of tar. And with each mouthful spewed, Val’s hands and chest grew brighter, until she subsided, wheezing, and opened her eyes.

  They were watering, bloodshot—and the same crystalline Mortimer blue that Zoey had always so passionately cursed.

  Marion let out a shaky burst of laughter. “Val, you did it.”

  “Wait just a second.” Zoey gathered her last shreds of strength and readied her hands, just in case. Her shoulders flared with pain in protest. The moth remained between her knuckles, wings slowly beating. “Is he gone?”

  And Val, tears rolling down her flushed cheeks, pulled up the torn scraps of her gown to reveal her abdomen. Two smoking, bloody handprints flanked her navel like the wings of a bird coming to rest. Below them stretched a pale pink smile of scar tissue—an echo of what had once been.

  Val

  The Pledge

  By the time Val could once again open her eyes, she realized she had been moved away from the tree against which she’d been thrashing. She now lay close to the sea, on a gentle rise of land coated with downy tufts of grass and pockets of rough gray sand. From very near came the rhythmic lapping of waves. The sea breeze kissed the bits of her skin bared to the night.

  She lifted herself up on shaky arms, wincing from the pain of her belly. Someone had pressed a sweater to her stomach to stanch the bleeding, tied it around her waist with a belt.

  Marion’s sweater.

  “Marion?” Wildly, she looked around, her mouth sticky and sour, only to be caught by two steady hands on her arms.

  She blinked, her vision clearing, and then she saw her—Marion, sitting in front of her, shivering a little in her camisole, her hair dark and tangled, her pale skin luminescent in the moonlight. Despite everything, Val felt overwhelmed with the urge to kiss her.

  For a moment she actually considered it.

  Marion, though, must have seen the thought show on her face. Her concerned expression slipped behind a door.

  “Don’t,” she said quietly.

  “I’m sorry,” Val replied, and then realized there were far too many things she could be apologizing for, which made her feel faintly sick.

  Without thinking, she folded her arms around her middle and drew her knees to her chest. The resulting pain nearly knocked her flat, and she cried out, unfolding herself. Carefully breathing in and out, she mapped the path of bruises and cuts along her thighs, up her back, dotting her belly and arms.

  Marion moved toward her, then abruptly stopped. She looked away, biting her lip.

  Val blinked a few times to keep her tears under control and turned her gaze to the sea—the titanic churning flatness of it, the cresting waves blinking in and out of moonlit existence like fireflies, the stars looking down coldly upon the mutable chaos of Earth and deciding, perhaps, that it was better to exist up in the quiet void of space, after all.

  A circling light drew her eye. On Sawkill’s western shore, the lighthouse stood tall and lonesome.

  “Zoey calls it the Eye of Sawkill,” said Marion at last.

  Val turned, pulse leaping in her throat at the sight of Marion looking out to sea, the wind whipping her hair across her cheeks. “The what?”

  “You know.” Marion gestured across the water. “Like the Eye of Sauron. In Mordor.”

  Val shook her head. “The Eye of . . . what?”

  Marion smiled a little. “Yeah, I know. Lord of the Rings. Zoey’s been trying to get me into it.”

  “Never seen it. Or read the books.”

  “Yeah.” Marion’s face was unreadable. “Me neither.”

  Without warning, Val’s ravaged nerves gave way. She managed to hide her mouth behind her sleeve and turn away, but swallowing down her sobs made her burning throat ache so badly that she just cried harder.

  Soft fingers pressed her own. Marion’s voice came quietly: “Val . . .”

  “Good God.” Zoey stalked over, announcing her presence with an aggravated huff. “My phone service blows chunks out here. Er.” She stopped just within Val’s line of sight. “No offense, Val. I meant normal, human chunks. Not, like, gross monster chunks. But, whateve
r, I saved your ass, so I can say what I want.”

  Val looked up at Zoey through tear-heavy lashes.

  Zoey remained unmoved. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you have something to say to me?”

  Val nodded miserably. “I . . . The things I said while he was in me,” she began, the words so dreadful that she nearly lost her courage. “The things I did. I’m so sorry.” Without thinking, Val clutched her stomach, then hissed when her hands touched her wounds. Fresh tears stung her eyes, but she couldn’t muster the energy to wipe them away. “That’s not enough. I know it’s not enough. I . . .” She looked helplessly up at Zoey. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

  “I don’t expect me to, either,” Zoey said at once.

  Marion kept her eyes on the water. “Zoey’s father has a book full of information about you,” she said, “and the Collector, too.”

  Val nodded. “The Hand of Light. He mentioned them. He knew they were watching him.”

  “He?” said Zoey.

  It felt strange, to call him by a fairy-tale name, when to her he had been more than that. Not a story, not a legend; a reality.

  “The Collector,” Val answered quietly. “I was born with him inside me.”

  Zoey stood still as a sentinel. “The book says you didn’t have a choice but to obey him. That his will consumed your own.”

  “I had a choice.” Val kept her voice flat and plain. “I could have ended things, if I’d had the guts for it. I could have killed my mother. I could have killed both of us. Then . . .” Val drew in a shuddering breath. “That might have done it, forced him out of our world for a while. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. And now . . .”

  At the thought of her mother’s ruined body, Val squeezed her eyes shut. “Now she’s dead, and he’s not, and I’m . . . I’m still here.”

  Zoey’s voice cut cleanly. “Your mom’s dead?”

  “Yes,” Val replied. “Lucky her.”

  “Don’t say that,” Zoey snapped. “Not when people we love are dead and gone, not when we’d do anything to get them back.”

  Val shrank into the throbbing bend of her body. “You’re right. Of course, I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  “You could say that for the rest of your life,” said Zoey, her voice thick, “and it wouldn’t be enough.”

  “Then I’ll say it for the rest of my life,” Val replied, opening her eyes to return Zoey’s steely gaze with one of her own.

  “What can you tell us about him?” Marion placed her hand on Val’s. Immediately Val’s fingers, tensely curled into the sand, relaxed. “Anything to help us fight him.”

  “He can exist outside the stones, but only in an unstable form,” Val said. “His vision, his movement—they’re not dependable. He needs help to reliably get around, though not nearly as much as he used to. He’s so much stronger now. And he can take different forms—”

  Zoey cut her off. “That we know. What else?”

  “We were running out of time.” Val stared at her hands. “He’s been feeding, evolving, ever since he first arrived here. Each kill requires less and less time for him to digest. Each kill grants him more power. Soon, he’ll be free. He won’t need me. He won’t need anyone.” Her stomach seized; a wave of pain pulsed through her. “Mom thought he would only need one more.”

  “And then he’ll be able to go wherever he wants,” Zoey, said, her voice unsteady. “Kill whoever he wants. Not just girls. Anyone.”

  Val nodded miserably.

  “Oh my God. He could be stalking that last person, whoever it is, right now.”

  “But he probably can’t leave the stones,” said Marion. “Right? He’s trapped there? Now that you’ve . . .” She gestured at Val’s belly.

  A tremor of fear shook Val as she imagined him there—waiting, raging. “I suppose he is. Wait.” She glanced over at Marion. “How did you find the stones? I remember . . .” She flushed a little. “I overheard your conversation with Zoey that night.”

  “What does it matter how we found them?” asked Zoey.

  “The stones are where he entered our world,” Val replied, “through a tear in the woods. My grandmother called it a gate. It’s hidden really well. No one can find it except for those of my family’s line.”

  “And Marion,” Zoey said, lightly thumping Marion’s leg. “We found it, the first night we met. I tried to go back afterward, by myself. Couldn’t find them.” She looked curiously at Marion. “Maybe it has to do with your tessering. If it’s a tear between worlds, it makes sense that you would be sensitive to it.”

  Marion drew in a sharp breath. “Oh, God. Tessering.” She faced Sawkill, hand over her mouth. “My mom. Your dad, Zoey. We just left them there with Briggs, and I’m too weak now; I don’t think I can get us back. Shit. Shit.”

  “Hey.” Zoey knelt in front of Marion, gathered her hands in her own. “It’s okay. Those assholes won’t hurt them. They need them to get to us, remember?”

  Val’s throat tightened as she watched the two of them—the ease with which they touched each other, how comfortable they appeared existing in the same space.

  Val supposed, a sick fall of resignation settling in her hollowed belly, that she would never again enjoy that sort of rapport with Marion, or with anyone. She’d forfeited all rights to such comfort from the moment she’d emerged from her mother’s womb, born to a world full of monsters.

  She planted her palms in the sand, forced herself to speak. Maybe speaking would keep her from unspooling altogether. “So what do we do now?”

  Zoey considered Val. “Grayson has his mom’s boat,” she said slowly, “and her old shotgun, Lord help us. He should be here in a few minutes. If my text got through, that is. Beyond that . . .” Zoey hugged her middle.

  “Whatever we do,” Val said, “we’ll have to do it fast. Normally I’d say he wouldn’t leave the stones on his own, not for long enough to do any damage and not with me so far away from him—but he’s probably never been this desperate before. There’s no predicting what he’ll do.”

  Marion moved away from both of them and stood. She faced Sawkill, arms rigid at her sides.

  “You’ll hold off the Hand of Light for as long as you can,” she said. “The two of you and Grayson. Maybe your dad, Zoey, if he can get free. And while you fight, I’ll go to the stones. I’ll tesser myself and the Collector into an obscura. I don’t want . . .” She paused, cleared her throat. “When he comes for me, I don’t want anyone else to have to see.”

  When she turned, her eyes held a sheen that shredded what remained of Val’s heart.

  “Just promise me,” said Marion quietly, “that when I’m gone, you’ll take care of my mom. I’m worried she’ll try to hurt herself.”

  “Absolutely not.” Val rose, gritting her teeth against the echoing pain. “You’re not going to some other realm alone. If you go, we go with you. We’ll help you fight him—safely, where no one else can get hurt—and once he’s dead, you’ll bring us all back home. No one’s dying tonight but him.”

  She glanced down at Zoey and extended her hand. “We’ll hunt the fucker down. Together.”

  Zoey clasped Val’s hand and rose to her feet. “I wasn’t kidding, about not forgiving you.”

  “I didn’t think you were,” Val replied. “But for now . . . ?”

  Zoey nodded tightly. “For now, we have an alliance.”

  Marion watched them, uncertain. “I don’t know what will happen to us once we get to the obscura. The book says he can’t be killed—”

  “Screw that book,” said Val. “It was written by men.” She held out her free hand to Marion. “We’re rewriting it.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Marion placed her hand gently in Val’s. At her touch, Val’s skin warmed all the way through—from her fingertips to her sore belly to the battered lines of her legs.

  “Together,” Marion said quietly, with a small, cautious smile.

  The rattle of an approaching boat motor cut the moment in two. Zo
ey gave a whoop and raced down the shore to the water, waving her arms at a long, sleek speedboat. It pulled as close to shore as possible. Then Val saw Grayson Tighe leap out of the boat, run awkwardly through the shallow water, and sweep a cheering Zoey up into his arms.

  She watched them embrace, Grayson’s hand cradling the back of Zoey’s head, her legs latched around his hips, and felt as though she might drift in that spot forever, unmoored and unmatched, trapped on this span of empty beach by the excruciating force of her own longing.

  Then Marion’s quiet voice pierced her: “Even knowing what I know, and knowing what you’ve suffered, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive you for what you did. Or that I should.”

  Val couldn’t bear to look at her. She half blinked, afraid to set loose her sudden rush of tears, and stared stubbornly at Grayson lowering Zoey to the ground.

  A cool hand touched her face, turning her gently. Val met the blazing expression on Marion’s face with hope blooming in her heart.

  “But I really want to try,” Marion whispered, and when she gently leaned her forehead against Val’s cheek, Val let out a small sob of relief.

  It was then that the air around them exploded with gunfire.

  Zoey

  The Pursuit

  The first two bullets pierced the water not three feet from where Zoey and Grayson stood.

  The third hit Grayson’s leg.

  He cried out and collapsed, reaching for his calf. His hand came away wet and black in the darkness, and when Zoey crouched beside him, propping up his body with her own, she realized, with a lurch of unmitigated horror, that two other speedboats were racing toward them from Sawkill—and that the gunfire had ceased.

  Because she was essentially now wrapped around Grayson, a human shield.

  Because the Hand of Light had no qualms about hurting him—but they would not hurt her, or Val, or Marion. Not until they had them right where they wanted them.

  “They’re after Grayson,” she cried, looking back to find the others, but they were already there—Val and Marion, charging through the water toward the boat. Val’s hands sparked like white embers flaring back to life. She reached the boat, Marion’s sweater still strapped to her waist, and climbed swiftly aboard before heading to the captain’s seat. Marion positioned herself between Grayson and the approaching men, threw Zoey’s bat into the boat, then ripped off her shoes and socks and tied one sock around Grayson’s wound, her movements steady and sure.