Monstrous (Blood of Cain Book 1)

by J. L. Murray

  But when it came time to kill Dekker, I’d found another way. I’d saved Dekker and killed everyone else.

  If anyone needed absolving, it was me. As the monster pulled herself from the bottom of the lake, covered with silt and sticks and glistening with mud, I knew she felt the same relief.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said. “You’re the girl. From so long ago.”

  “I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque,” I said.

  “I do not know this place.”

  “Do you know what I’ve come to do?”

  Her eyeless face seemed to sniff the air, breathing in deeply.

  “You have found your darkness, little one.”

  “I did.”

  “Have you seen my mother? Have you seen Lilith?”

  “I’ve seen her.”

  “It’s so cold here. It hurts. Since the stone cracked and I emerged, I can never stay warm. My mother told me I’d be safe in the fire, but now, nothing is safe. I am so tired.”

  “Your mother regrets what has come to pass.”

  “Give her a message from me,” she said. She raised her pallid wings, flaccid from lack of use, limp and broken in a few places. There were scars on the monster’s skin where I had guided the ravens to rip at her before.

  “Yes,” I said, surprised at the grace in the monster’s voice.

  “Tell her I am sorry,” said the creature. “Tell her I should have been stronger, I should not have let him tempt me. I should have killed him for trying. But I sniffed the air and I was curious. It smelled...familiar. Tell her not to mourn me. I am not afraid. Death is a welcome comfort.”

  “I understand.”

  “Perhaps you won’t die, little one. Perhaps the darkness will let you live this time. I can smell the death on you, though. It clings to you. And the darkness is a cruel mistress. Did my mother tell you how you would die? I have seen it, though it may not come to pass. Have you already been wounded? I saw a horned man in my dreams, he drove a blade into you.”

  “Yes, that happened.”

  “Ah. Then it has come to pass. At last. Call them now, little one. Call them and let it be over. For both of us.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. “I was...expecting something different.”

  “You wanted a fight,” said the creature. “It would feel more just to you.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Well I am too tired to fight. And there is no point. The power inside of you would take me eventually. It’s why you were chosen. It’s why you are here. And with your sacrifice, you will close the door to Hell before it bleeds into the world. With your power, it will be enough.”

  “Chosen?” I said.

  “Chosen, yes,” said the creature. “But I tire of talking. Let the darkness go, let the creatures take me, and then take my eyes. That is how it must be done.”

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “Sounds simple, does it not?” she said. “But you must take the eyes, little one. And you must throw yourself into Hell. That will close the crack. That will stop all this putrid death that surrounds us. All the chaos and pain. Your sacrifice is the skeleton key.”

  “You caused all this,” I said. “Do you remember?”

  “I remember everything. I cannot change my nature. I would do the same to you if I thought I could. But you are different, are you not? I have seen you walk on water. And you were immune to me when you were only a child. I took your sister and sent her soul to my mother. As a gift. We all try to please our mothers, little one. But not you.”

  “Don’t talk about my mother,” I said.

  “You’re crying.”

  “Everyone needs to goddamn stop telling me when I’m crying,” I said, watching the birds and bats and creepy crawlies that surrounded me, as if awaiting orders. Flapping wings filled my ears and I felt the darkness inside of me, so heavy. If I could just use it, it could be gone and I could fly away, just like a raven. Like an angel.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Why?” she said.

  “I’m monstrous, too. Just like you. And I don’t want to die, I don’t think. I found something I never knew about before.”

  “You are sorry for yourself.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I’m sorry for you. I think we’re the same.”

  “No, little one. We could not be more different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You regret taking your sister. In the fire. You wake up screaming. I laugh when I think of how I took her sweet soul.”

  “What?”

  “I have to die, little one, for my own benefit. For my own comfort. But my nature is to cause pain. It makes me laugh. Little apes. I would laugh at your sister, had I been you. How did she look when you set her on fire? Did she look surprised? Did you laugh?”

  A raven came down and tore at the creature’s face, shrieking.

  “See? It is not so hard to kill me.”

  “I didn’t do that,” I said.

  “Of course you did. They only obey you.”

  Another raven shrieked as it grasped her in its talons, tearing at a limp wing. The creature screamed as the ravens descended, the bats clawing, the worms and bugs and crabs wriggling their way under her skin until she was nothing but a writhing mass of feathers and wings and pain. And when the ravens let go, flying up into the air in a cloud of darkness, and the bats followed, the creature was bleeding clear blood from hundreds of wounds.

  She did not move again.

  I reached down into the water and picked up my knife, clean from the water, cleansed by the melting ice that was up to my waist now. I heard the ice crash down into another crack as I made my way to the creature. Insects flailed in the water. I pushed them aside and stood over the great creature.

  Her eyeless face was a mess of skin torn away, showing pale, fish-like muscle beneath, the stark white of bones showing through in several places.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I felt empty now. Dark red blood gushed from my stomach and swirled out into the water along with the black. But I couldn’t feel a thing. I walked slowly, wearily over to the beast’s head and opened her mouth. And there they were, just as I had seen them so many years ago, two silver eyes, pupils sideways like a goat, with an iridescent coating that was blinding, even to me. These eyes ruined me. These eyes made my life a circle that started and ended here.

  I reached down and grasped the eyes in my hand. They were slimy and hard at the same time, held in the creature’s mouth by two thick, flesh-colored stalks. I slid the knife along these, sawing back and forth until they broke off, and the eyes came away in my hand. I looked up at the source of the light, dropping my knife into the water, holding my hand over the hole in my stomach.

  “At least I saved him,” I said. “If nothing else, I saved Thomas Dekker.”

  I staggered over to the crack in the stone floor, fire licking my feet. I took one last breath, grasping the eyes tight in my hand.

  “Here’s to love.”

  I fell.

  I wanted to scream, but stopped falling before I finished sucking in my first breath. I was sitting in a chair, a scrubbed wooden table in front of me, two cups of steaming tea sitting untouched in china cups. An eerie light was coming in through the window, where I could see fat flakes of snow falling onto the bare trees. Behind me, the fire in the wood stove crackled. I knew where I was, but it didn’t make sense.

  I heard her humming under her breath but didn’t recognize the song. It was pretty, but sounded archaic, as if it was written not just in another time, but also another place. I turned and my heart beat faster.

  “Beatrice?”

  She turned and Bea looked at me, smiling serenely. She moved toward me gracefully, her hips swinging like silk through water.

  “You’re not Bea.” I watched her sit down at the table, moving easily. Bea didn’t move easily. She limped around, she stumbled awkwardly, she knocked things over. “Are you another reflection?”

&
nbsp; “I am not bavuah, Frankie.” Her voice was strange, familiar. And she said that word with a lilt, as though it were her own word, from her own language. I looked at the window again. It wasn’t snowing any longer. The sun streamed in now, and I could smell the green of spring outside, with fluffy cottonwood seeds floating on the breeze. I blinked and it was night, a fat moon shining like a flashlight into Bea’s cabin. I looked at her.

  “Is this real?” I asked.

  “As real as anything,” said the woman who looked like Beatrice. “Is anything that you’ve seen real?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, startled by the truth of it. “I’ve never known.”

  “Everything is real, Frankie,” she said, picking up one of the teacups and raising it to her lips. “And everything is an illusion.”

  “I know you.”

  “Yes.” She smiled, took a sip of tea, set it down daintily. “We are acquainted. Though it was only a moment we spent together, I feel we have become something together. Something like family.”

  “Never had much luck with family.”

  She laughed. “Tea, Frankie?”

  I picked up the cup. It was milky and when I brought it to my lips it seemed there was more sugar than tea.

  “This is a memory,” I said. “I know this tea. It’s what Bea gave to me the night we met.”

  “Not exactly a memory. Do you know who I am?”

  Now a late summer rain was pounding the roof, rattling the windows.

  “I think so,” I said. “I’m...a little confused.”

  “That’s because you’re dead.”

  I nearly dropped my cup. It slipped in my hand and sloshed cool tea all over my white nightgown. I set the cup back on the table and looked at the stain on my front.

  “My mother’s going to kill me.”

  “Not anymore, Frankie.”

  I looked up at Bea's eyes, dark and sparkling. Like looking into very deep water. Water. Something about water. Water turned to ice, someone in trouble. Was it me? No, a man. I could see his face in my mind.

  “I saved him,” I said. “I saved someone. Was he important?”

  “Oh, yes. Very important.”

  “Why is he important? Is he going to kill me?”

  “Perhaps,” she said, lowering her eyelids coquettishly. “But he’s your match.”

  “Match? Like my perfect match? Like a soulmate?”

  She chuckled again, low in her throat. “No, like a match to your gasoline.”

  I looked down to brush the tea from my nightgown, but I was wearing clothes now. A black tee shirt and jeans, a leather jacket. I looked up and my teacup was gone.

  “We’re going to consume each other, that’s what you said. You’re the raven. But you’re not really a raven. Or Bea. You’re her. Lilith.”

  She bowed her head towards me. “I have been called that. I’ve been called many names.”

  “Why do you look like Beatrice? Have you seen her? She fell into a mirror.”

  “She is not really here,” said Lilith. “But neither are you and I. You jumped into Hell, and that is never very pleasant. I should know.”

  “How are you here? How are we here? You said I’m dead.”

  “You are.”

  “Is this Hell?”

  “You’re not going to stay dead, Frankie. You must know that by now. You must know they will never let you go. At least not willingly.”

  “The brothers.”

  “Cain and Abel, my dear. You can say their names. And to answer your question, we are here because I have willed it. I am stronger now. Stronger than I was.”

  I looked down at my hand, clenched into a fist. I slowly opened it and stared at the objects resting on my palm. Two mirror globes, opalescent eyes. When I looked at them, all I saw was blood. I dropped them on the floor. But I blinked and they were gone.

  “She was your daughter,” I said. “You asked me to kill her. I could have pulled her back into Hell. I could have dragged her through the crack and let it close. Why did she have to die?”

  “She was causing trouble,” said Lilith, watching me closely. “She is the reason you are who you are.”

  “That’s not what you said before. You said I’ve always been this way. I was always going to become what I am.”

  “You remember.”

  “I’m starting to understand. Why did you ask me to kill her?”

  She looked down toward the window. Outside it was snowing again.

  “Your first question was about your friend,” she said. “Beatrice has been a devoted follower. She has power, too, more than she knows, which is why she was able to reach me when no one else could. She was able to pass through the mirror, to walk through the stone walls of my prison, and she looked upon my true face. She offered her body to me, to do the things I need to do.”

  “Like make me hallucinate?”

  “If you want to see this moment in that way.” She smiled a very un-Bea-like smile. A seductive smile. “I see it as offering you a way out.”

  “A way out of what?”

  “He’s going to bring you right back, Frankie. That much is obvious. But what you do with it is entirely up to you.”

  “Abel.”

  “Yes, for now, Abel. But later it might be Cain. Two sides to the same coin. Each leads to servitude, to powerlessness. But you have never been powerless, Frankie. I think even you can admit that now. You are only powerless so long as you convince yourself that you are weak. Are you?”

  “No,” I said immediately.

  “It’s why they want you. Because you are potent. But they want you to think you are not. They want to keep you hobbled. And they’ll do whatever it takes to keep you on your knees. Do you know why?”

  “Because I’m as strong as they are.”

  She smiled again. Her smile felt like sunshine on my face. “And soon, you will be stronger. Then together, we will end this. Would you like that?”

  “Yes, but why wait?”

  “If you display your strength now, they will destroy you,” she said.. “They would come together just to ruin you, to make sure you can never rise up against them again. Do you understand?”

  “So, you want me to play along.”

  “Yes.”

  “Pretend I’m weak.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “When I have more power,” she said slowly, “I will be free. I will liberate myself from my smooth stone prison and fight at your side. We are one, Frankie. You and your crone and me.”

  “What?”

  “Together, the three of us can end their game, this play that Cain and Abel direct with only the two of them as an audience. We will show them this world is not their stage. We are going to demonstrate our power, and then we will destroy them, to save everything and everyone on this planet. The past, the present and the future. The women three. We will be their end.”

  “Just one question,” I said. “What about your own children? You keep saying you felt sorry for humanity, but you’re having me kill your own kids. Who does that? Who sacrifices their children?”

  “When I had my children,” she said, “I gave each a flicker of power. It’s what each mother does. She gives up her own power for the child within her.”

  There was a glint outside the window like from a bonfire burning nearby.

  “Yes,” I said, remembering my own mother. Had she given up her power to have me? No wonder she was disappointed.

  “My children are evil. I made them that way. I laid with demons and dark creatures. They are monstrous by design, so they would cleanse the earth of the children of Adam. I wanted to drive them mad, I wanted to make them suffer, I wanted them to watch their friends and loved ones die in horrific, gruesome, cruel ways.”

  “And then you reconsidered.”

  Flames were lapping at the window glass now, turning it black.

  “I made a deal with Lucifer to seal my children away, and to keep the children of Adam from harm. But Cai
n has broken the pact. And the great one I made the deal with, signed with my own blood, he does nothing. He does not rise up to burn Cain to ashes. He does not save my children by sealing them away again. He has forsaken me.”

  “You made a deal with the devil? That’s why you’re stuck in that prison?”

  “The details are unimportant.”

  “So all this shit is real? All the stories, all the fire and brimstone?”

  “You’re in Hell, Frankie,” she said, gesturing to the window. Fire was now consuming the outside of the house, I could see. The window cracked as I watched and fire rushed in, fanning out along the ceiling.

  “So the devil locked away your kids, and in return you had to surrender yourself to your enemies. At which point, Cain decided to lock you up. And you let him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I felt responsible. I felt perhaps some of my own darkness remained in Eden, corrupting him. Not everyone is strong enough to temper their darkness with light. And he had very little light, from the beginning.”

  “You think Cain was your fault.”

  “I think no one is blameless in this world.”

  “But you want to kill your children. What’s changed? What the hell has changed?”

  “I’ve changed,” she said. She stood up and it seemed she was far taller than Beatrice ever was, that she was far more frightening. “I no longer see the need to suffer. Do you understand that feeling, Frankie? I no longer want to punish myself because of who I am. I no longer blame myself for the weakness of others. So, Frankie, do you want to be truly free? You’ve never tasted freedom before, but you could be powerful. If you were allowed to breathe, you could soar. Don’t you want that?”

  I stared at her. Flames licked her hair.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I’m afraid.”

  “We’re all afraid at first,” she said, bending low so our faces were nearly touching. “Fear comes before the unknown. Fear comes before learning what you’re made of. Frankie, will you help me destroy them? Will you help me end this?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Yes,” she said. “There is always a choice with me. I am not Cain or Abel.”