by Laura Bickle
“That’s not supposed to happen,” Alex blurted. “That didn’t happen to anyone up north.”
“How many people took it?”
“Twenty-five, maybe thirty of us.”
“Well, it could be lethal in a significant part of the population,” Jasper said. “Or you’ve got a bad sample.”
“I can’t lose any more men to this,” Simmonds said, from the doorway. “I can’t deny the results, but there’s something wrong. I can’t, in good conscience, ask anyone else to take it.”
“But couldn’t there have been another factor?” Alex insisted. “Some genetic weakness that interacted with the serum, or some constitutional issue? Or he could already have been infected from handling the vamp you brought in to torture Katie.”
“My men are all healthy,” Simmonds barked.
I went to kneel beside Tobias while the men argued. I took his hand, which was still supple and warm. I thanked him for his sacrifice and said the Lord’s Prayer for him.
When I finished, there was silence.
I looked up to see the men staring at me. I lifted my chin. I would not be ashamed of my treatment of the dead man.
Elijah was with them. He looked at me, then at Simmonds.
“I’ll try it,” he said.
Simmonds shook his head. “For all we know, it’s toxic.”
“It’s our best hope of surviving the vampires,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “What happened to Gelassenheit?” If Elijah was going to gamble with his life, it seemed only fair that I challenge him. That I play God’s advocate and make sure that he was not acting out of guilt or some perceived balancing of the scales against me.
He rolled up his sleeve. “I want to.”
Simmonds stared at him, hard. “You’re not one of my soldiers. I can’t tell you what to do.”
“I know, Captain.”
The medic looked at him. “I’ll get the jar and a needle.”
***
There are no secrets in a Plain community.
Not for long. The material that holds it together is as transparent as air. Gossip gets from one house to the next, by horseback and on foot, faster than sparrows fly. I had heard it said that the dead travel fast, but news moves faster.
I stood in the shadow of the paddock door, watching Elijah. The medic had scarcely left his side, hovering with needles and thermometers. I simply did as Frau Gerlach asked and brought buckets and sponges to mop his brow.
I was surprised that he had volunteered. He was risking either death or censure by our community. The Elijah whom I had known had been determined to follow the Ordnung. In fear, he’d retracted behind the gate of rules, thinking that would make him safe.
Perhaps time had taught him that nothing could keep us safe. Perhaps he had changed. I knew that I had changed; I could feel it deep in my marrow. Perhaps Elijah was not merely looking upon this act as one of repentance out of some debt that he owed me. Maybe he really wanted to survive, to help us all live.
“I don’t trust him.”
Alex was at my elbow. I looked up at his face, and it was creased with skepticism.
“There’s no reason for you to trust him,” I said.
“But you do. After everything he did to us.”
I was silent for a long moment before I spoke. I suspected that Alex spoke out of uncertainty as much as he did out of skepticism. And jealousy. He knew what Elijah and I had been to each other.
But that was a lifetime ago. I set down the bucket and reached for his hand. “I forgive him. Which is not to say that I have any feelings for him beyond a brother in the faith. I do not forget what he is capable of doing.”
Alex nodded and kissed the top of my head. “You’re a far better person than I am, Bonnet.”
I shook my head. “Forgiveness is a small thing I can do for him.”
I stared into the half dark, watching Elijah sweat and spit into a bucket. It was hard not to feel sorry for him.
Voices rose out front in a cacophony. I followed Alex to the front of the barn. We were shielded from direct view by the side of a tank, but I could see through the door. The Elders were gathered on the brittle grass like a murder of crows holding lanterns aloft, ringed by other men in our community. The Bishop was at the front of the group, arguing with Captain Simmonds.
“You’ve brought poison into our community.” The Bishop’s voice rang out as clear as a sermon. “Your soldiers are no longer welcome here. We are asking you all to leave. Take your poison and the people under the Bann with you.”
“Be reasonable,” Simmonds said. “We have a chance to save humanity. And we’re your best bet at protection from the vampires.”
“You’ve gone too far. You want to alter us—make us less than human. A procedure that we will not survive.”
“Nobody’s forcing anyone to do anything.”
“I survived,” I said, stepping forward. “I survived, and vampires cannot touch me.”
My heart hammered, but I knew that I had to speak. I stood in the doorway, half in the artificial light in the barn and half in the warm lantern light. “I mean not to force this elixir on anyone, but to give people the option to choose.”
The Bishop’s finger pointed to me. “She is unhinged.”
That was a charge that was leveled against anyone who disagreed with him. Ginger had been marginalized by the label of insanity when she was here. But I would not let that happen to me.
I squared my shoulders, walked out into the darkness among the Elders and the soldiers. In that weak light, I began to glow.
The men at the margin of the circle began to back away, clutching their lanterns, muttering to themselves. They turned their backs to me, but I knew that they had seen me. And that they heard me:
“I am changed, but not unhinged. I’ve seen the world beyond here, the devastation.” My voice sounded high and clear to my ears. “I came back to bring a defense against the Darkness. Though you have placed me under the Bann . . . I still love you.”
I would not have been able to say that before this moment. I had felt so much anger, so much betrayal, when they cast me out. I had felt it burning in my chest, scorching my throat and lungs. It had poisoned my words and my thoughts. That rage had chewed me up and spat me out. But now . . . I could feel a sense of calmness pervading me. It felt like love. Pure. Clear. Cleansing. Like fire. I took a deep breath. When I exhaled, the ghost of my breath glowed green in my reflected light. I glanced behind me. Alex was at my back. Where he always was. Part of me and part of that light.
The Elders were afraid. They shrank away from me, like shadows. The light of their lanterns seemed very dim.
I didn’t see what happened next. I don’t think that anyone really did, not even the soldiers. It could have been that one of the Elders knocked over a lantern, stumbling backwards. It could have been that one of them purposefully hurled a lantern toward the barn.
Whether it was clumsiness or malice, I couldn’t say. And it didn’t matter. I saw a streak of fire in my peripheral vision, rushing along the ground. I smelled spilled kerosene, felt the heat of fire along my skin. The blaze licked up against the wall of my beloved barn.
My calm broken, my incandescence fading in the greater light of the conflagration, I screamed at the fire.
All around me, I could hear soldiers shouting. The Elders melted away into the darkness. Alex pulled at my arm, dragging me away from the mouth of the barn.
“No!” I gasped. “Elijah is still in there.”
Alex’s hand was caught around my wrist. I could see a mixture of feeling in his eyes: anger, frustration, fear.
“Let the soldiers find him.”
“We need to get him.”
“Damn it!” He swiveled back to the barn. The west wall was rapidly being engulfed in flames. A stream of soldiers ran out, hauling supplies. None of them was carrying a Plain man. From within the walls, something exploded, sending a firework-like streak of orange through the roof.
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I gave Alex a tug toward the door. Swearing, he followed me.
That was why I loved him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Thick smoke stung my eyes. Keeping Alex’s fingers laced in mine, I plunged into the searing heat. I knew every loose board and broken shingle in this barn. This was my realm, and I could navigate it even in heat and dark.
I pulled him left, unerringly, toward the stall that held Elijah. We crawled on hands and knees in the straw. Sparks spilled overhead in the smoke like stars. I could hear the pop-pop-pop of soldiers’ ammunition sizzling, but it was cool and the air was relatively breathable this close to the ground.
My right hand felt shoe leather, then a leg. I crawled up beside the body, shook it.
“Elijah!” I coughed.
He grumbled and twitched. Alex grabbed his arms and I lifted his feet. We made to go back the way we’d come.
But the fire was too thick. It roared in a way louder than any flame I knew, impossibly loud. It was then I realized that someone had started up the tank that had been parked inside the barn, trying to salvage it. It was moving forward, crushing into the front wall.
The supports of the barn creaked and shrieked. A wall collapsed over the tank. I could hear men screaming. A sheet of fire swept behind the tank’s treads.
There was no escape there.
“It’s blocked!” Alex shouted.
“This way!” I crawled to the back of the stall. I ran my hands over the wood. Part of it was rotted, weak, the same spot I had halfheartedly worked at earlier. I lay on my back and kicked at it.
Alex wriggled down to the ground beside me, pounding at the wall with his boots. We struck at the wood until I felt it splinter and I could feel cool night air rushing in.
I turned over, grabbed one of Elijah’s hands. Alex snatched the other, and we hauled him through into the blessed cool of night.
We dragged him back, back into the darkness. Fire licked through the seams of the barn’s slats, and the soles of Elijah’s boots smoked. The barn creaked and howled under the roar of the fire.
Transfixed, I watched the remains of my beloved hex sign painted above the front door blister and blacken.
Alex had to tear me away. I grasped Elijah’s smoking boots in my apron, and we fled with our burden into the night.
***
“No one must know that you are here.”
“We had . . .” I panted. “We had nowhere else to go.”
“I understand. Come.”
The Hexenmeister ushered us into his home. Elijah’s arms were draped over our shoulders, and his feet dragged soot over the threshold. Fenrir sniffed at him and growled. Herr Stoltz wiped the telltale signs of soot away, lit a lantern, and directed us to a hatch in the floor.
The Hexenmeister’s root cellar was dug into the earth below his cottage. He lifted up the hatch and bade us climb into a dark chamber that smelled like earth and musty onions.
I shivered, climbing down a rickety ladder to the rough-hewn crawlspace. It was close and cold here, the ceiling so low that I could not stand upright. I scooted to the back of the cellar, sat down against sacks of potatoes, onions, and sweet potatoes.
Grunting, Alex levered Elijah down into the dark. With a distracted sense of hopefulness, I noticed that his skin had begun to glow faintly.
Alex clambered down behind him. Herr Stoltz handed down a mason jar full of water and a blanket.
“Hide yourselves,” he said. “The Elders will be coming soon.”
The door in the ceiling closed. I heard scraping of something moving over the hatch.
I turned to Alex, shivering. I could see him glowing in the darkness. He kissed my forehead. He wrapped the blanket around me and I pressed my head against his chest. His shirt smelled like smoke.
I glanced at Elijah’s prone form, draped across a sack of potatoes, dimly shining.
“Do you think he’ll live?” I asked. My voice felt hoarse from the smoke. I reached for the jar of water.
“He’d better. I still want an opportunity to beat him to a pulp.”
I smiled. “I hope you get that chance.”
I heard thumping upstairs, and I turned my eyes toward the ceiling.
Alex began to say something, but I brushed my finger to his lips.
I realized that the sound was rapping at the front door. I heard Fenrir growl, then the tripartite thud of the old man’s feet and his cane on the floorboards and the scrape of the front door opening.
“Herr Stoltz.”
My blood quickened, hearing the Bishop’s voice. The clomp of many sets of shoes on the floor told me that he was not alone. The footsteps thudded all around the first floor.
“This is a late hour for visitors.” Herr Stotlz’s voice was fainter.
“Have you seen Katie or the Outsider man?”
“No. Not since I brought them to the soldiers.”
“You should have brought them to us.”
“I did what I could. Is this what brings you to my house?”
“There is a problem. More than the Bann. They brought with them poison.”
“Poison?”
“They say that it is a way to deter the vampires. It tampers with biology. It killed one of the soldiers.”
“And what are the soldiers doing about this?”
“Nothing. Which is why we asked them to leave.”
“You asked them to leave?”
“Ja. They must. We must be united in telling them that they are not wanted here.”
“I do not understand. At first, we were to welcome the soldiers. They have destroyed a great deal of Darkness . . .”
“And they have tainted us. We have sent them a message that they are not wanted.”
“And that would be the orange flame on the horizon?”
The Bishop said something unintelligible, and then voices clambered over themselves in argument. I drew myself into a ball under Alex’s arm.
“It is finished!” I heard the Bishop say. “Their poison has been destroyed. The soldiers will come to your doorstep. They trust you. Tell them that they must leave.”
“I cannot. They are keeping us safe, as they promised. They are holding up their end of the bargain.”
“Tell them to leave. Offer them no food, no assistance. Or else it is you who we will place under the Bann. And it will be up to God whether starvation or the Darkness gets you first.”
The shoes clattered to the door. I heard it shut quietly behind them, but it had the same force as a slam.
***
The four of us sat around the Hexenmeister’s ink-stained kitchen table. Herr Stoltz sat at the head and I sat to his right. Alex was at the foot and Elijah across from me. Elijah had regained consciousness in the morning, with no other ill effects than startling himself with his glow-in-the-dark flesh. The jar of algae sat on the table among us, and the blinds were tightly drawn against prying eyes. Even so, bits of late-afternoon sun slipped in through the window, casting bright stripes on the floor. Fenrir stretched out under the table, asleep, his belly full of canned hamburger from the Hexenmeister’s pantry.
“I don’t see any other way,” Alex said. “They don’t want us here. We have to go.”
I sighed. We’d debated it all day. He was right, but the truth made my chest ache. I had sacrificed everything to come back. But my community was already poisoned. Tainted. And I was unwelcome. That was the hardest part of it to swallow. I had idealized it to such an extent for my whole life . . . and now I felt that I had an Outsider’s grim perspective on it.
“They think you’re dead anyway,” Herr Stoltz said. “They won’t be sifting much through the wreckage of the barn. They’ll count their own heads and assume that the missing are dead.”
There was a peculiar freedom to that. Not having to say goodbye to my parents. Being able to slip away into the dark. Which was what we intended to do.
Elijah’s gaze was on the jar. “The . . . culture can be divided?”
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bsp; “Ja,” I said. “It should be broken into pieces, daughter cultures. To bring it to people who want it.” I tasted some bitterness in my voice, and fell silent to keep it from overtaking my speech.
Elijah nodded. “I will take some to the soldiers and leave with them.”
I blinked at him in startlement. “You won’t stay?”
He shook his head. “No. They need to know that the elixir works. And they have the ability to cover a lot of ground, reach a lot of people.” He glanced at me. “I hope that you will forgive me for not watching over your parents.”
I sighed. “They would not allow you to.”
Alex challenged Elijah. “And this would fit within your definition of what God wants for you?”
Elijah shook his head. “I have come to accept that I have many amends to make on my way to heaven. I have broken my vow of obedience to the church. But the Bishop would turn me out anyway, for taking the ‘poison.’ There’s no other choice.”
“What about your father?” I asked. Elijah was the last surviving son of his home. He had been determined to do all he could to be there for his father, and now . . . I felt that, in some ways, he was a toy soldier. He always was one to be told what to do. If not the Elders, then the army men.
“My father will not understand. But I am a man now. My choices are my own, for good or ill. If I am a tool of the Devil, then . . .” Elijah trailed off, and shrugged.
I had not ever heard such reasoning from him. Perhaps if I had heard that months ago, things would have been different. He seemed resigned now. Broken, in a way.
Now, all I could offer him was my friendship.
“And the two of you?” Herr Stoltz prompted.
Alex and I exchanged glances. “We will not go with the soldiers,” Alex said.
“No?”
“Not after how they treated us,” I said. “There is a capacity for cruelty there. While I can understand that the ends justify the means, I won’t support it.”
Alex nodded. He reached across the table to take my hand. “It’ll just be the two of us.”
“Come with us, Herr Stoltz,” I urged.
The old man shook his head. “I would not get very far. I’m too lame to follow.” His gaze fell on the jar. “But I will take a portion of this elixir. For safekeeping, with the rest of the secrets. In the event that things change around here . . . some may wish for the elixir long after you’re gone.”