Hoarfrost (Blood of Cain Book 2)

by J. L. Murray

  "I thought you wanted to set the world on fire."

  "Not like this."

  "What's going to happen?" I said, failing to hide the fear in my voice.

  "It is not for us to say. You cannot kill the woman, I understand. I will do it for you."

  "No," I said, and the darkness inside of me seemed to grasp at my bones, trying to push its way out. I felt it pushing against my skin, felt the hurt of it, the pain less acute as it came alive again. "You stay the fuck away from Esme. Stay away from me and everyone I know. I don't want you here. Tell Lilith her ideas are shit. Go back where you came from. You said I could be stronger than you. Go back to the other side or you're going to find out how strong I am." But I didn't feel strong. I felt weaker than I had in a long time, standing ludicrously with my feet apart, knees bent, hands curled into fists. The Mother seemed to watch me, and I waited for her to laugh, but she didn't. She didn't attack me, she didn't even move. I felt sick from the ache of my power, the weakness, the smell of rot and the still air. I turned and took a step toward the bar, but a small shadow skittered around me in the dark, moving like an insect. And when it stood in front of me, I couldn't suppress a cry, tears springing to my eyes.

  "This isn't possible," I breathed. The thing in the suit stood in front of me, six inches away, but it wasn't real, it couldn't be.

  "You're not him," I said. The thing looked back at me with my father's face. He smiled, but it was an inhuman thing, the eyes so strange that they looked like glass, the features too perfect to be real. It took a step toward me, holding up a hand, its fingers splayed in an awkward way, its height rising, stretching, becoming the size of a man. The size of my father. Its splayed fingers made a fist, one finger pointing at me, just as my father had done in my hallucination on Jason Halloran’s beach.

  The devil’s had his claws in you since the day you were born.

  I raised a hand, reaching out for him without thinking.

  "Do not touch her!" The Mother appeared next to the thing that looked like my father, afraid for the first time. She pulled him violently back, the thing that looked like my father squealing as she forced him into her robes where he disappeared.

  "What the hell was that?" I screamed, my voice shrill, "and why the fuck did it look like my dad?"

  “He looks as his prey needs him to look. It is a strange gift, and a useful tool." I remembered how Abby Stromberg sat in church with her dead mother, Jerry had seen his dead wife. And now my father.

  "Is that one of Lilith's?" I said, shouting now, ignoring the pain. The power in me, so weak before, stirred. "Are you carrying a fucking monster around on a leash?"

  "It is useful to me," she said.

  "I'll kill Abel myself," I said, staring at the place where the thing had disappeared into the shrouds that surrounded the Mother. "I'll figure this out with Esme. I'll do everything on my own. But you have to kill that thing." I remembered Ome saying I had to kill the monsters, but killing them would make things worse. But he'd also said I needed to make a choice. "Kill the freaky shapeshifter, or no deal."

  "That was not the arrangement with Lilith."

  "Maybe not your arrangement," I said, "but that was my arrangement with her. You kill that thing, and I'll kill Cain and Abel, the both of them. So, if you don't want me causing trouble, you're going to have to put that thing down. Put it out of its misery and everyone else's."

  When I looked at the shapeshifter, I had a deeper intuition about it than the first of Lilith's brood. I’d felt sorry for the eyeless, winged creature in the lake. It had been pitiful, and couldn't help what it was. But the thing with my father's face filled me with a cold horror. I knew I didn't want it anywhere near me or anyone else. It was wrong in the world, and needed to be put down, like an earwig crawling in your hair, a spider crawling up your leg, a centipede in the cupboard.

  "I agree to your terms," the Mother said after a moment. "I will kill my pet, and you will kill yours."

  "Fuck off," I said, “just get rid of it.” I walked to the dead raven, still unable to explain why it bothered me so much when the owl killed it. I picked up the bird gingerly, cradling it in my hands.

  "Very well," she said. "You will kill Abel on this night, and all his vessels. Or we will come back. And as you know, I will not be nearly so kind."

  "Yeah," I said, the darkness twisting and turning inside of me now, the pain I'd felt before like a fading dream. "I get that distinct impression."

  "Do you smell smoke?" she said, and she really was laughing now, a grinding, screeching, metallic sound that made my stomach turn. She vanished then, silently, as if she just slipped through an unseen door without a sound. She was there and then she wasn't. And then I did smell smoke. The air seemed to come to life again and rain pelted down on my shoulders, quickly dissipating into a light sprinkle. And someone was screaming.

  The door of the bar burst open and Dekker staggered out, his knees buckling. He fell to the ground, then scrambled to his feet again. He looked around him, panicked, his eyes finding me. "Frankie," he called, his voice hoarse. He stumbled toward me, latching his hand onto my arm, nearly knocking us both over. He looked down at my hands where I held the bird. I opened my mouth to explain, but he put his hand on my shoulder, his face a mask of terror.

  "He's dead," Dekker said, his voice a whisper.

  "Who is?"

  "Will," said Dekker. "He's dead. She...I don't know what Esme did. But she just...he's dead."

  "Esme killed Will?" I said. "Why?"

  "I...I don't think she meant to. There was fire everywhere."

  I looked down at his arm, realizing he was cradling it. The fabric of his suit had been ripped away, the edges melted. On his arm was a burn in the shape of a hand print. "What..." I said, unable to finish. I took a step toward the building, but a figure emerged from the now-blazing inferno, lurching out of the bar, dragging something behind. As the wind blew the smoke in the other direction, I froze, staring. The figure was female, ashes clinging to her naked body, as though her clothes had burned right off of her.

  "Esme?" I said.

  She was keening, sobbing, pulling something behind her. I put my hand over my mouth when I realized it was a person. Or it had been. A charred body that she was dragging by the ankles. Esme was breathing hard, looking at the body. She dropped the corpse's feet and opened her mouth and screamed. I felt the darkness move, felt the smoke-like substance ooze from my fingertips. Felt it moving in my hands. I looked down and realized it was the raven that was moving. It moved its neck oddly, and with a clicking noise, it righted its head. Flapping its wings, it looked up at me on a distinctly un-broken neck, blinking white, dead eyes. Then it let out a cry and flew away.

  "Oh, shit," I said.

  TWELVE

  "Her son Matthew was staying with his grandmother," Ron the cop said in a hushed tone. "They haven't even told him his dad's...you know. Dead."

  "Jesus," I said. "What are they going to do?"

  "I guess he's going to stay there, Esme's mom is keeping him away from the television and newspapers. They think Esme should be the one to tell him, but she's not quite right yet, you know? She just needs a good sleep."

  We were standing by Ron's vehicle, lights flashing in the parking lot where the little bar once stood. All that remained of the Bayside Pub was a pile of ashes and charred wood. It had gone up like a matchstick even with the rain. They were saying it was electrical failure. The fact that it happened minutes after Jerry was killed seemed, according to the Westport Police Department, inconsequential, coincidental, and not anyone's fault at all.

  "A good sleep?" said Dekker, focusing on Ron for the first time.

  "Agent Tucker?" said Ron.

  "A good sleep isn't going to do fuck-all for Esme," said Dekker, his voice edgy. "She just lost her husband. She thinks it's her fault. Nothing good has ever come from this combination." He was covering the burn on his arm with his suit jacket.

  "Why don't we take care of Esme tonight?"
I said, patting Ron on the arm. "We have an extra room. We could keep an eye on her, and she wouldn't be in her house looking at Will's stuff."

  "I didn't think of that," said Ron. There was true grief behind his eyes. He'd been a close friend to both Esme and Will, I'd gleaned that much. He was the first on the scene because he was already on his way to meet Esme, and he tried to cover her up with his windbreaker and get her away from Will's charred corpse, which was currently covered in a white sheet smeared with soot. Esme had been taken to the hospital in the back of an ambulance against her will.

  "They'll want to keep her for observation, I bet," said Ron. "That's what they always say on TV, isn't it?" He tried for a smile, but it didn’t stick. "I guess I'm in charge until Ezzy gets on her feet again. If the hospital clears you, it's all right with me. God knows, seeing my ugly mug didn't do her any favors."

  "It wasn't you," I said. "She was upset. It makes a person a little crazy to see someone die like that. And if it's someone you love, it's much worse."

  "You know something?" said Ron. "I've been doing this for ten years now. I've never seen anyone die like that. Just my aunt, and that was natural causes, peaceful, quiet. Esme of all people should never have seen that. A woman like that, she doesn't deserve to be a widow. She doesn't deserve any of this."

  "Does anyone deserve it?" I said.

  "Can I come check on her?" he said. "Later, I mean. Tomorrow."

  "You're the boss," I said, but he didn't smile. He just looked at Will's body covered in white fabric and shook his head, more haunted than anyone I'd ever seen.

  I drove to the hospital. Dekker was quiet, but something was bothering him. He kept grunting and nodding, as if in agreement with himself. I pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. "What's going on?" I said.

  "You saw what's going on," he said.

  "I saw you more scared than I've ever seen you," I said. "I saw Esme with all her clothes burned off, dragging her husband's body out of a freak accident."

  "It wasn't an accident," he said. "Didn't you see his chest? Look at the mark on my fucking arm. That's going to be a scar." He lifted his arm so it was in front of my face, the angry red burn in the shape of a hand, just starting to blister and ooze. "All of this is fucking brutal."

  As they put the sheet over Will's body, I saw the mark Dekker was talking about, different from the rest of Will's decimated body, as if the fire had burned there the fastest: a hand-shaped mark, bright white against the black. Dekker was right, all of this was brutal. It tore into you, lingering in your chest and behind your eyes, like a cold, dead weight.

  "It was her," he said. "It was Esme. She just...exploded. I don't know how else to explain it. She grabbed me, but I had sense enough to get away from her." He rubbed his arm subconsciously, then winced at the pain. He closed his eyes. "Where were you?" he said, his voice going quiet. "You could have saved him."

  "You said it happened fast," I said. "Maybe I couldn't have."

  "Was it you?" he said. "Did you make her do that?"

  "How would I make her explode?"

  "I don't know," he said. "But it looked like you thought you were hurting her. Right before you left."

  "It wasn't me," I said. "I saw the one the wraiths talked about. She calls herself the Mother of Hearts. I tried to kill her, but she's too strong. I don't know..." I covered my mouth tight with my hand and closed my eyes. I could still feel the pain as my power retracted into my body, wounded. After a moment, I took the hand from my mouth and looked at Dekker. "I don't know what to do. She's so strong. Stronger than me, maybe stronger than I'll ever be. I couldn't save Esme, I'm so sorry." The last I said in a whisper and I looked out the window so I didn't have to see the way he saw me. Vulnerable, weak, tired.

  "The Mother, the same one Jerry talked about?"

  "She wants Esme dead," I said. "She says she's got Abel's power. She said Esme has to be killed or the power is going to eat her up and burn the world to cinders."

  "Is that true?"

  "Does Esme seem like the Garden of Eden type?" I said, looking at him again. But he wasn't looking at me the way I thought he would. I'd fought the Mother and lost, but Dekker's eyes were soft as he watched me. He didn't hate me and he didn't blame me. I lit a cigarette and cracked my window, blowing the smoke out, watching it dissipate in the air. But it tasted like the ash from the burning bar, the smell of burning flesh, and I tossed the whole thing out the window. I breathed the fresh air in deeply and didn't feel so much as a stitch in my side. "She called Esme Abel's vessel," I said, "like she was an object. Like she was nothing. Esme isn't working with Abel, she can't be. You've met her, worked with her, gotten drunk with her. Does she really seem like she’s working with Cain and Abel?"

  "No," he said, "but you didn't see her."

  "I know," I said. "I'm sorry I wasn't there. It was like time stopped."

  "Because of this...Mother of Hearts?" said Dekker.

  "She said I was doing it. Why would she say that?"

  "Maybe you were," said Dekker.

  "No," I said. "That's not possible."

  "What the fuck is possible about all this, Frankie? Look, all these spooks, they all say the same thing. You don't know how much you can do, how powerful you are. You don't know if you were doing it. "

  "You're saying I’m responsible for Will's death."

  "No," he said, shaking his head. He turned to look out the window. "I don't know. Maybe Abel only came here because I brought you here."

  "Fuck you, Dekker," I said. "You are saying it's my fault."

  "Look, we can't stop every death, Frankie," said Dekker, seeming to steel himself. He looked at me. "We kill a lot of bad guys, you and me. If one good guy gets killed every now and then, at least we're still saving more people than we're killing."

  "That's shit logic," I said. "What we do isn't noble. We're killers. Probably serial killers. Because I know you enjoy the fuck out of it, and to be honest, I'm starting to like it, too."

  "We're not serial killers," he said, seeming surprised at the notion. Offended even. "We're vigilantes. Outlaws. We kill bad guys and we save people, Frankie."

  "By killing."

  He stared at me for a moment like he wasn't sure he knew me. "You're not a serial killer, Frankie. You're a hero. Maybe...I don't know."

  "What?"

  "You're not going to like this," he sighed. "But did it ever occur to you that maybe you're some kind of goddess?"

  "Oh, Christ, not you, too."

  "Think about it!" he said, holding my arm as I tried to get out of the car. "Mysterious powers, righting wrongs, talking to weird creepy things."

  "Gods aren't all they're cracked up to be," I said.

  "So you have thought about it."

  "Maybe the day I was born, all the power of every god on Earth all got sucked into my tiny baby body, and all the gods are going to come looking for me to save the world from utter chaos and destruction."

  "I mean, you don't have to believe it, but you don't need to get all sarcastic with me," said Dekker. "So what do you want to do? Maybe you're not a god, but you seem to have a plan."

  "I never have a plan," I said. "I only have goals.”

  “Which are?”

  “Find the real Abel. Kill him. Tell this cocky Mother to fuck off." I opened my door and moved to get out. Dekker put a hand on my arm again and I stopped, glancing over at him.

  "You're not hurt," he said, looking at me strangely. "I haven't seen you limping at all."

  "It’s all healed," I said, feeling oddly embarrassed. "When the darkness inside me came out it sort of...fixed me."

  "It fixed you," he repeated. "Just fixed you? And you're not a god, not at all." He sighed heavily, hand still on my arm. I shrugged him off. "Frankie, you know what I'm going to say."

  "Let's not do this," I said, my voice so soft and tired that I barely recognized it. "We can't just run away."

  "We can," he said. "You're a person, you can do whatever the he
ll you want. You're not theirs."

  "I'm not a god," I said. "But I might be the only one who can stop them. All of them. The wraiths, Cain and Abel, Lilith, the Mother of Hearts. Take your fucking pick. The monsters that Lilith tossed like wildflower seeds all over the fucking planet. There are probably more, a lot more than we know. And from what I've seen, Dekker," my voice went so quiet he had to lean in to hear me, "I'm the only one who goddamn cares. The world is overcome by monsters, and no one is coming. No one cares enough to save any of these people, least of all the actual gods."

  "I care about these people," he said, then frowned, shaking his head. "No, that's not completely true. I care about you. I care about getting you out of here alive. I can't watch you die again, Frankie. I can't. And what if you don't come back this time?"

  "Then I don't come back," I said. "What I am, it's not good for me. You think I'm good, you think we're heroes. Maybe I do some good, save a few more people from getting murdered or even worse. But when it's over, I have to live with it, I have to dream of the things I've done, and relive my sins every night. It's only a matter of time before I become a monster myself, if I’m not one already. I don't know how to control this power and I'm afraid I'm going to hurt you. I'm afraid I'm going to kill someone that doesn't deserve it."

  "You didn't kill Will," said Dekker.

  "Maybe I did. Maybe I'll do the same to you."

  "So you want me to just let you go?" he said. "Walk away. Just like that?"

  "Just like that." There was a knocking sound in front of us and when we looked, a raven stared in at us. A raven with white eyes and greasy, rumpled feathers that were bright white between his eyes.

  "What the hell is that?" Dekker said.

  "One of my ravens," I said. "I accidentally brought him back from the dead."

  "Right," said Dekker, after a long silence. "Not a god, not at all."

  I got out of the car and the raven lighted onto my shoulder as I crossed the parking lot, pulling lightly at my hair with its beak.