Monstrous (Blood of Cain Book 1)

by J. L. Murray

  “Becky,” I called into the night. “Becky, please. I need to talk to you. I need to see you. Someone...wants you.”

  The night was silent. No crickets, no rustle of critters in the woods. Nothing. Unnaturally quiet.

  “Call her again,” hissed Ruth. “Do it.”

  “She hates me. She’s not going to come,” I said. “Stop this. Just let him go.”

  “I’ll let him die.”

  “Then you’re just about the stupidest reflection I’ve met so far.”

  “How so?” she said, the smile frozen on her face.

  “Because you already know what I’m capable of. If you lose your leverage, you lose everything.”

  “Shut up. Call her.”

  The ice cracked again and Dekker staggered, balancing himself quickly again.

  “Becky, where the fuck are you?” I screamed into the night. “Goddammit, you bitch, listen to me for once!”

  Silence.

  “Well, it was worth a try,” said Ruth. But I heard the grief in her voice. “Take heart, Frankie. At least you won’t die alone. You’ll have your precious Dekker with you.”

  “No,” I breathed.

  “Truth be told,” she said, “I was always going to kill him. The more the merrier is what I always say.”

  “You piece of shit.”

  “Go ahead,” she said, prodding me with the knife. “Out on the ice.”

  I took a step toward the lake, a familiar heavy hum starting in my belly. The heartbeat behind my eyes began pounding once again. The drumbeat in my chest radiated to every part of my body.

  “Why is this happening?” I gasped, staggering.

  “What are you going to do, Frankie?” Ruth laughed. “Kill me with bats? Get out on the ice.” The knife did more than pierce my skin this time, she slid the knife into muscle and I gasped, but refused to scream. I looked out at Dekker. He was shaking hard now, the water up to his knees. I heard another crack.

  “This is sadistic,” I said. “Just let me die the way I want to die. Let me stop this.”

  “I’ll feed you to Mother,” she said. “Then I’ll be free.”

  “Don't you understand? You will never be free. You’re not a person. You’re a reflection of a person. You have no soul.”

  “She’ll be there, I know it. My Rebecca.”

  “She won’t. She’s not dead.”

  “I don’t believe you. She would have come.”

  “What makes you think she didn’t?” said a voice.

  “Rebecca,” Ruth breathed. “Please, show yourself.”

  “Honor your promise, Mother. Let the man go.”

  “I was lying,” she said. “I was always going to kill him.”

  The figure of a person began rising from the edge of the lake, made of water and covered in hoarfrost. As it formed, I saw it had Becky’s face.

  “Rebecca,” said Ruth, as she dropped the knife and stumbled to the edge of the lake. I picked it up and looked over at them. I could feel a rumble under my feet. I wasn’t causing it this time. It was coming from the lake.

  “Frankie,” said Becky. I looked over and saw she was fully formed, standing in front of Ruth, who had dropped to her knees.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I called you because she said it would save Dekker.”

  “I didn’t come for you, Frankie,” she said, turning her head to look at Ruth. “I came for her.”

  “Rebecca, I’ve waited so long.”

  “Don’t talk to me,” Becky snapped. She looked at me again. “I’m sorry, Frankie. For everything. Let’s make it right again. You and me, together.”

  I nodded. It was all I could do. Becky looked at Ruth again.

  “You took my life from me. Not you specifically, but still. You hurt my little sister. Over and over you hurt her. Do you really think you’re my mother? My mother is lost. She’s gone crazy in that place. The only rest for her is death now.”

  “Yes, death,” said Ruth. “We can be together.”

  “She doesn’t mean death for herself,” I said, and put the knife to Ruth’s throat. “She means you.”

  “No,” said Ruth. “No, this is wrong.” Hoarfrost sprung up on her skin, covering the blade of the knife, spreading to my hand, where it melted on my skin. Ruth’s breath came fast when she realized. I frowned.

  “You’re not trying very hard,” I said.

  “I’m trying,” she said, “there’s something wrong. You’re stopping me, Frankie. You shouldn’t be able to stop me.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” said Becky. “I never had a chance. A chance to live, a chance to see my mistakes, a chance to correct my sins. And that’s fine. That’s just the way it goes sometimes. But do you know what I’ve learned in the days since I died?”

  “What?” Ruth was watching her, rapt.

  Becky bent low so their faces were nearly touching. “I am my sister’s keeper,” she said. “So right now you’re going to do what she tells you to. Or I’m going to make you suffer.”

  “I’m already suffering.” Her voice was a dull whine.

  “You don’t yet know suffering,” said Becky. “But you will.”

  “There’s something inside you, Frankie,” said Ruth. “I can feel it coming off you like heat from a fire. What is it? It feels so familiar. It feels like home.”

  “Shut up and stop this,” I said.

  She nodded. I took the knife from her throat and she crouched down by the ice-covered water. She placed a hand on top of the wet ice and I watched it solidify and turn white again under her hand. The frost spanned out, coating the lake, turning the air frigid. And I saw Dekker go rigid as it reached him, ice encasing his feet.

  “He won’t fall, at least for a little while,” she said, looking up at Becky with a worshipful look on her face. “Please, just let me touch your face.”

  “I wouldn’t let you lick my boots,” Becky sneered.

  There was another thump under our feet and the solid ice cracked, right down the middle. I looked out on the lake to see Dekker and I cried out.

  The frozen lake was cracked right down the middle, a rift that opened up less than an inch from where Dekker was trapped in the ice. I stepped out onto the lake.

  “No,” said Becky. “You know what’s under there, Frankie.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I have to stop it.”

  “By throwing yourself in? That’s not going to solve anything.”

  “It’s what needs to happen,” I said. “I’m the only one who can kill it.”

  “How do you know?”

  I swallowed and met Becky’s eyes. “Lilith told me.”

  “Lilith,” she repeated. Then after a moment, she nodded. “I understand now. Use your darkness, sister.”

  “You’ll say I’m a sinner.”

  “You’re no sinner,” she said. “I’m not even sure you’re human. You’ve always been like something from another world. Different than anyone or anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “A demon,” I said.

  “No,” she said quickly. “An angel. Call the ravens, the creatures who live outside the light. Call those who fester and writhe beneath the dirt, animals who feast on rot and decay. Call them, Frankie. Call everything that hides in the air and the water and the trees. Let go of whatever it is inside of you and end this nightmare. Save us, if you can. But more importantly, save yourself. For once, save yourself and let go of everything weighing you down on this earth.”

  Shadows moved beneath the crack in the ice, rising to the surface.

  “What if I can’t control it?” I said. “What if I hurt Dekker? What if I kill you all over again?”

  “Then you’ll give me a chance to die as myself. With dignity.”

  I swallowed, breathing hard. As I felt for the weight inside me, the thumping, the scratching in my head, the ice fissured again, crisscrossing the first crack. Dekker was motionless. The crack ran just on the other side of him and I could see the ice around his feet b
alanced just barely between the two fissures in the ice that ran down into the lake. Long, clawed fingers rose up out of the crack, grasping the edge of the ice.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Frankie, use it. We have to go to her, kill her. The monster who ended our lives. The man is a distraction. We have to kill the beast.”

  But my eyes were on Dekker. He was trying to say something, trying to scream, but the tape over his mouth wouldn’t let him.

  “Help him,” I said to the thing that looked like my mother. “SAVE HIM!”

  “He can’t be saved. No one can.” She couldn’t help it. She laughed. I put the blade of the knife to her throat.

  “Killing me won’t help your little plaything,” she said, smiling. “Besides, you wouldn’t kill your own mother.”

  Dekker was tipping now, falling to one side his feet trapped, unable to catch himself, to move away. He was falling, falling, then the fingers shot up, connected to an impossibly long arm, skin slimy and nearly glowing in the dark it was so pale. It grasped Dekker around the middle, and he disappeared into the lake. He was gone, the spot where he’d been standing like a hole in the world someone needed to patch up. Reality was going to seep out of that hole and unravel the world. Because Dekker was standing there and now he was gone.

  I was screaming. I don’t know when I started, but I couldn’t stop. And then I was on top of Ruth, plunging the knife into my mother’s body over and over and over again. I couldn’t stop stabbing her, couldn’t stop plunging the knife down, even after she stopped moving, even after I was striking bone and the nerves in my arm were on fire. And when I stopped screaming, she wasn’t laughing anymore. She wasn’t smiling.

  “Frankie...”

  “I killed her,” I said, looking at my hands. I dropped the knife, covered in blood that looked black in the night. It covered my hands, my face, my shirt, my pants. I was soaked in my mother’s blood.

  “No, it wasn’t her.”

  “I killed her. I used the same knife and I killed her.

  “She wasn’t our mother,” said Becky.

  “I killed her.”

  “You killed a foul thing,” she said. “Not a person. Not our mother. Frankie!”

  But I couldn’t stop looking at her face. It was spattered with her own blood, serene now, in death. Frozen in time, as though the last twenty years hadn’t happened, as though I were still a kid in a long dress, my hair too tangled, my manners too coarse, my voice too loud.

  “Mama,” I moaned. “Mama, wake up.”

  Becky slapped me and I blinked at her, slowly raising a hand to my cheek. She stood over me. I could see fog rising from her fingers, the gifted power raging in her, turning her eyes crystalline white.

  “Stand up,” she said. I obeyed, finding my legs and standing. A cold wind hit the wet blood that covered me and I shivered.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I said.

  “You’re not weak, Frankie,” she said. “You never have been. That wasn’t her, you understand? Do you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know. I know it isn’t her. But...”

  “Now she can never come back, I know. But she was never going to. Do you think Cain would ever let Frankie Mourning’s mother go?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No,” agreed Becky. “Now find your goddamn spine, Frankie. Reach down into your twisted soul and grasp onto your darkness, do you get me?”

  “I get you,” I said, my voice stronger.

  “None of this is your fault. It wasn’t you who made this happen, it was him. Cain. It wasn’t you.”

  I nodded. Something was happening inside of me, I could feel the familiar sensation again. I blinked and Becky came into sharp focus again. There was a screech and a raven landed on my shoulder, talons sinking into my flesh. Another raven came and landed at my feet. Then two more joined it.

  “That’s more like it,” she said. “Now go out on the ice and kill that bitch.”

  chapter twenty-three

  T

  he ice held us both as we walked across the lake. Becky took my hand and we made a path straight for the center of the rift. I could feel it in me, pulling, stretching. I felt the scratching at the inside of my skull again.

  We stood on the edge of the precipice, the ice wet and melting, sinking into the water. I wasn’t afraid of falling in. I felt like I had to fall.

  “Are you ready?” said Becky.

  “I’ve been ready since that day,” I said.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “I should be,” I said. “Is this what it would be like, if you had a chance to grow up? Would we be friends?”

  “I don’t know, Frankie. I was a mean little shit.”

  “Yeah, you were.”

  Her smile faded as she looked at me.

  “I can’t go with you, Frankie,” she said. I made a promise to Cain.”

  “For my life.”

  She looked down into the blackness of the rift. The ice crackled and shifted under our feet.

  “This is his test for you. I’m not allowed to help. It wasn’t just your life,” she said, “but also mine. I wanted...I don’t know what I wanted. But what I got was this.” She gestured to the ice under us, to the lake around us. “We’re on opposite sides now, Frankie. I’m not even supposed to be here.”

  There was a lump in my throat. “Becky, don’t. Don’t go. We’re finally together. I’m finally–”

  “Absolved?” she interrupted. She met my eyes again. “Frankie, there was never anything to absolve. You’re Michael with his heavenly sword, you’re Solomon, you’re justice, and everything you do is above reproach.”

  “Everything?” I said.

  “You have faults,” she said. “As do we all. Jesus on the cross had doubts.”

  “I don’t believe in all that,” I said.

  “Even now?” she said. “Even with Cain and Abel fighting over you? Even with everything that happened?”

  “I...don’t think it’s all so simple. I don’t think it’s black and white.”

  “Yes,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. As they fell, they froze, making small plinking noises as they hit the ice. “Yes, I think you’re right.” Her expression changed to one of pain. “He knows I’m here. He’s pulling me back.”

  “Becky, I’m sorry,” I said, reaching for her hand. Her fingers were like the very ice she wielded. I felt frost form on my fingertips, but I didn’t let go. “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

  “I’m not,” she said, the confidence in her voice so sudden it surprised me. “This was all meant to be, Frankie. You have to see that now. Perhaps, even now, we’re being tested. We were always going to end up here, you and me. We were always twisting toward this moment. You were always the one who was going to save us. Ever since you were small. I think that’s why I hated you, because I knew it. I knew you were better than me from the moment Mama brought you home. From the moment I saw your face, I always knew you were something special. When she unswaddled you for the first time, I swear for just a moment, I saw wings.” She laughed. “I thought you were an angel for a second. And then those ravens. Frankie, I saw what you did, right here, all those years ago. I saw how you tried, I saw who you really are. And it takes my breath away.”

  “Don’t say that,” I said.

  “All you ever wanted was to be my friend. All I ever had to do was be yours. I failed my test, Frankie. But I won’t fail again. This is my second chance, and I will make up for it. I’ll die again if I have to. I’m going to make it up to you.”

  “I don’t want that,” I said. I couldn’t feel my fingers any longer and when I looked down, the hoarfrost was covering my arm to the elbow.

  “It’s not about you, sister,” she said, smiling, though there was pain in her eyes. “It’s my test, and I’m going to prove myself worthy.”

  “You’re not my keeper,” I said, remembering the old bible story. “I killed you, remember?”

  “You’re wrong,” s
he said. “You saved me.”

  The ice cracked under her feet and I felt her slip, her hand stretching to keep hold of me, to stay in the world. Her eyes widened as she began sliding away across the ice, as though she were being pulled by a string. All the way to the edge of the lake. She looked down at the ice, black and shining along the edges, with a sudden blue glow. She fell then, feet first, into the ice. The glow waned, then went out, a wisp of fog rising from the place where Becky had been standing.

  I turned back to the rift in the ice and looked down. Flickers of light were now visible beneath me. The entire lake seemed to be flashing with red and orange, glowing like a fire.

  I jumped, not sure if I was falling in Hell or into a fight. Water or fire, ice or death. But I knew it was going to hurt. And the heaviness inside me throbbed like a drum.

  I landed, surrounded by light.

  “Dekker?”

  I couldn’t see at first where the brightness was coming from, but I walked toward what I thought was its source. I followed the cracks in the ice, like a tall cliff rising from the bottom, melted rivulets of ice cold water running down the edges.

  I realized I was gripping my knife. I was expecting a monster, the creature I’d seen in Cain’s world. But as the light became brighter, I realized it was coming from beneath me, the wet earth under my feet starting to dry and crack like clay riverbeds in summer. Through the ice on either side I could see mossy logs and branches, the world of green beneath the lake. I’d been afraid of it as a child, but I could see now that it was beautiful.

  If I died here, maybe I could stay. I could haunt the bottom of the lake and warn brave little girls away. I looked ahead and could feel the flame now. I stepped forward and found myself on stone, smooth and white and going on ahead as far as I could see, a perfect crack down the center. And through that opening, light poured forth, light from a fire that burned hard and fast and hot down below.

  I remembered the creature in the memory, trying to climb back into the crack from whence it had come. Trying to go back to where it had been safe and comfortable. The fire from the fissure in the stone was brighter now, and when I looked up I could see a dark cloud hovering overhead.