by J. L. Murray
Despite my insistence that I wasn’t upset about Dekker, I felt unsettled that he wasn't who he said he was. I understood, I got it. He hadn't known me before. But after everything, after my mother, after my sister, Cain and Abel, after everything that happened in the lake, I had to admit that finding out he'd been lying cut to the bone. I left in an attempt to save him, and even then, even when I told him everything, he hadn't told me his name. Even when his life was at stake, even when he knew I would leave again to save him. I would leave a thousand times if I there was even a slim chance to save his life.
But he said nothing.
A rhythm started behind my breastbone, a beat that rattled my bones.
"Frankie, are you okay?" said Dekker. I looked at him. He was watching me with concern, something like guilt always just below the surface.
"I'm fine," I said. "Let's go get Esme, and find out what the hell Cain is up to."
"You're crying," he said, and he sounded like he might be on the verge himself.
"No, I'm not," I lied.
EIGHTEEN
Esme was slipping and sliding across the ice, but moving fast, as if she were being pulled into the frozen mist. The unmistakable smell of dust hung in the air, one I knew all too well. It was the same frozen, dusty smell as the wind in Moledet.
"It's got to be Cain," I said, looking across the frozen sea. The sky was not on fire, not yet, but I felt a sharp pang of fear as I stepped onto the ice, the scene too similar to my hallucination to be discounted: the sea frozen, chasing a woman who could burst into flame at any moment. Maybe this was the end. Maybe this was how the end began.
"Might not be Cain," said Dekker, startling me. I'd been so focused on Esme that I'd forgotten he was there. And he had been quiet. "Maybe it's like Abel, and he stashed his powers in someone else."
"Maybe," I said, watching the horizon for smoke, for the telling glow of fire. "But who would be out here in the middle of the ocean?"
"The last time I was standing on frozen water, it wasn't Cain."
"My mother is dead," I said, taking my eyes from the horizon and trying to look at him. But I couldn't bear it and I began walking across the ice, after Esme, my boots sliding with every step.
"Just saying, it might not be Cain," Dekker said, following. "He passes his magic around like it's candy on Halloween."
A scream rent the air, and we both jumped. I saw Esme in front of us stop and go still, staring at something ahead of her. Slowly, she turned to look back at me, seeming to take in her surroundings for the first time. She shook her head, apparently stunned, then turned back to whatever had shocked her. Then she stepped into the mist and disappeared, the scream still hanging in the air.
"Esme!" Dekker called, hurrying after her. I grasped his hand and he looked at me, surprised. I felt a shock of bewilderment myself, but knew it was right. I couldn’t let my feelings about Dekker endanger Esme's life.
"We're stronger together," I said. "Remember?"
He watched me, then nodded woodenly. "Yeah," he said.
Together, we went into the mist, the pounding in my chest, the scratching in my head intensifying, the darkness trying to push its way through my skin. This is why I had come to Westport, this is why Dekker wanted me, why he practically kidnapped me to get me there, on the frozen sea. This was what I was made for, I was slowly starting to understand. I had to put down whatever was causing all this. When it got right down to it, killing monsters was easy. I was here to do a job, and I was going to damn well do it. I didn't need to overthink it, I didn't need to plan. All I had to do was kill. It was simple. The trick was accepting what I was. Because when you accept that you’re monstrous, everything else falls into place.
I could feel Dekker's hand grasping my own, squeezing too much, trying so hard to hold onto me. Particles of ice were suspended in the thick air and grasped at my eyelashes and hair as I walked through. The frozen water beneath us felt odd beneath my feet and seemed as though it shifted with each small step, the groaning and creaking of frozen sea making it seem as if the ice were about to give way at any moment. Far beneath the bright ice, hoarfrost crunching beneath our shoes, I felt as though I could feel life continuing on the ocean bottom, though not in the water. Far beneath even that, I could feel the dark things that wriggled and grasped and squirmed trying to get to the surface. Trying to get to me.
Above, the ravens were gathering again, their screams seeming to vibrate the ice around us, until, seeing the terror on Dekker's face, I realized that I was the one making the world shake. He pushed up my sleeve.
"Frankie," he said, almost a moan, drowned out by the birds above us. My arm was moving, the skin bubbling with the darkness underneath, spiderwebs of black mottling my skin.
"You don't have to be here," I said, the words difficult to form, tendrils of black floating out of my mouth and eyes as I spoke. Dekker shook his head, unable to speak. Or maybe he knew the words would be drowned out by the now-living sky. He grasped my hand even tighter, as if I would fly away, joining the ravens above. And maybe I would. Maybe I could fly away if I wanted to.
But there was Esme to consider.
The air grew colder as we walked through the nearly solid fog, the ice pricking our skin, melting on our clothes as we followed Esme. Dekker called after her, but the birds were too loud now. Only the white-eyed raven on my shoulder remained silent. My body was shaking, or the ground was, I couldn't tell any longer. I felt inseparable from the world, aware of everything around me. The jutted rock islands on either side, the sparse vegetation clinging to the stone, a stand of spindly trees rising out of the now-shallow water, and a wall of crackling, hoarfrost-encrusted curtain of ivy thrust aside by Esme. I felt it all. I felt the chill, the ancient dust, the empty air that once crackled with manifested memories. No barrier blocked this world from Moledet, no wall or fabric of the universe, no protection from the two worlds colliding and it felt so very wrong. Yet there was indeed something blocking Moledet. Someone. And as I saw Esme standing completely still, I could see who it was. And it wasn't Cain.
"Oh, Jesus," I felt rather than heard Dekker say.
Another scream pierced the air. Esme looked back at us once more, smoke rising from her shoulders in the frigid cold. I could see the fire in her eyes. "I can't stop it," she said, and I felt her words, too.
Standing on a low, flat island of stone was my sister, Rebecca, hair flying as though possessed, her face dusted with sparkling ice, thick around her cheeks, and eyes that had become pale, solid. Still, she turned to look at me, the ice to Esme's fire. Behind her, a rip in shimmering, ethereal fabric moved in the air. And beyond I could see an empty wasteland, where once there was an entire universe.
"Rebecca," I said, and my voice seemed no longer my own. "Becky, what have you done?"
Becky opened her jaw wider than should have been possible, her mouth full of sharp shards of icicles that hung from her teeth and tongue and the roof of her mouth and glistened in the glow burning in Esme's eyes.
Becky began to scream, and Esme went up in flames.
Dekker reached for his gun, and I walked toward the two women. Esme was moving toward Becky, still screaming, her eyes moving wildly. The birds above us were deafening, nearly drowning out my sister's screams.
"No," I said, but no one heard. I saw Becky's face, all those years ago, stinking of gasoline and writhing as she burned. Esme was running toward her now, as if driven by a force she couldn't control. The power itself was forcing her to destroy the other, the ice killing fire, the fire trying to win every time. Cain and Abel with new bodies, ready to murder each other. Because I could see now that Becky was ready to kill Esme, and Esme was fast approaching Becky, leaving a trail of fire that sizzled and burned on top of the ice.
"Stop!" I screamed, my feet carrying me toward them. I halted, finally noticing Dekker was frozen where he stood, looking up into the air just beyond where Rebecca stood. A man was suspended there, covered in ice, and absolutely dead. I could see
his uniform through the hoarfrost. A police uniform. At first I thought it was Ron, the mustachioed deputy that cared for Esme so deeply. But when I realized my mistake, I saw that I knew him all the same. He was one of the cops from the beach, he'd nodded at Dekker earlier when I was seeing the beach where the bodies were found. I could just make out that the name on his uniform said Willard. There was a little boat frozen in the icy water. He must have gone off on his own, ignoring Esme’s instructions to wait before going on the water. And Becky killed him. Not Cain, but my sister.
I met Dekker's eyes, and when I looked back, Esme had stopped running. She saw Willard, too, dead and suspended above. The corpse was covered in the same ice that covered everything else, that was now spilling out of Becky's mouth. The air had become blindingly white around me, the ice covering us, the fetid smell of smoke after the fire was extinguished. The sickening feeling of being paralyzed as ice encased my body, crusting around my arms and legs and feet, forming a thick layer and imprisoning me in a supernatural storm of ice and snow and fog and screams.
And then, as quickly as I was incapacitated, I was free. I moved my arms, the ice falling away, and I squinted into the torrential blizzard surrounding us. I couldn't see anything but white, but I moved forward, feeling Becky there, hearing her screams, feeling the ice crack and break away from my legs with each step. The darkness within me, either responding to my anger or to the magic that I could feel crackling all around, expanded in my chest and moved through the pores of my skin like smoke. I couldn't hear my birds, and I remembered my mother, or the creature that looked like my mother, wielding the same power Becky had now. My birds had fallen then, too. And so had I.
"Becky," I said, and I knew she could hear me. My voice bounced back at me, as if in a cave. She stopped screaming and as I approached, I saw her. She was standing completely still as if she were frozen, too. But then she turned her head to look at me and she blinked. The ice melted away and she was looking at me. As she'd looked at me in the lake before the monster took her, with only two words on her lips before she sank under the lake. Run, Frankie.
"Frankie," she said now, her voice hoarse and raw and so quiet. "My how you've changed." Her face drooped then, and her chin crumpled as she sobbed, her tears turning solid on her cheeks, and tinkling like chimes on the hard, icy ground.
"Becky, this isn't your fault," I said, moving toward her. But then I saw that Esme lay on the ground at her feet, her flames extinguished, ice covering her arms and legs and torso. She blinked up at me, horror in her eyes. Was this how it was each time Abel died? Was this how Cain killed him? For a moment I felt relief, because this was not my vision of the apocalypse, this wasn't my hallucination on a rocky beach. Esme wasn't strong enough to engulf the world in flames. But that meant she needed my help all the more.
"You have to stop this," I said to Becky, watching Esme. My sister turned then, looking at the rip that opened up Moledet to the world. Silken shreds of ghostly fabric moved in the chill air and the smell of dust grew stronger as I came to stand next to her. Becky held up her arms, as if she were about to dive into a swimming pool, then charged forward, into the tear in Moledet, trying to jump in, to swim right out of the world and into another. But she was stopped immediately, like slamming into a brick wall. She fell, crying out, but got up, a crazed look in her eyes. She crashed into it again, screaming in pain as the opening refused to let her in, leaving her collapsed and gasping on the ground.
"Stop it, Becky. Please," I said. But she didn't hear, or didn't want to. She got up again and charged at the tear, shrieking, hitting it hard, the ugly crack of a bone piercing the air. Becky's left hand hung at an odd angle as she writhed on the ground, ice encrusting it quickly where her wrist had broken. She got to her feet and made to smash her head against the invisible barrier.
I grabbed her around the waist, wrenching her backward, and using my weight, pulled her to the ground. She was kicking and screaming, but I pinned her there with my knees on her shoulders. She screamed my name in rage, her eyes full of ice again, kicking against my back with her knees. But I held her firm. She shook her head back and forth like a rabid animal, and ice traveled up my arms where I was touching her. But when I moved, it flaked away.
She stopped struggling and looked up at me, and I remembered my mother. She tried to turn me to ice, too. She'd been so surprised when it didn't work. I looked down at my arms, and the darkness was wrapping itself around me now, oozing through the air, toward Rebecca.
"What happened to you?" I said. "Did Cain do this to you?"
"Frankie?" she said, and stopped struggling, her voice high and scared. I remembered Mirabel, her child-like voice telling her father his fate right before I killed him. Becky stared up at me, eyes wide, her face softening. "Frankie, he said it would be okay, but it's not. It's not okay. I want to go home."
"Home?" I said, the darkness filling up my throat and filling the air with my words. "To Montana?"
She shook her head, frowning as if a child of six, moving her eyes toward the gaping hole. "Moledet. He told me I'd be safe there. Cain gave me a gift." She smiled as she looked at me again. "I can make icicles, want to see?"
"That's not your home, Becky," I said. "That's your prison. Don’t you remember?"
"I just want to go home," she said, "I want to be safe. It's so loud here, and people keep making me angry. I just want them to leave me alone." Her body went limp under me and she closed her eyes and began to sob. “I just want to be left alone.”
"Becky, what happened to you?" I said. She looked to the sky, her sobs easing, seemingly forgotten. She smiled through tears.
"He came," she said. "He came and I saw him again. He was so handsome, I forgot how nice his face was. Do you remember, Frankie? When he used to twirl us up in the air? Round and round and round..." The smile faded. "There was someone with him, though. Cain was so afraid. She tried to take his heart, Frankie. Who would do that? And his beautiful horns, cracked and dripping blood. He was fast, too fast for her, too fast for me." Her eyes met mine, and she looked like a lost child. "And Daddy, he touched me. He was smiling, but I don't think it was a nice smile." She took a gasping breath, her eyes still on the sky. "I don't think I ever saw him smile like that. And then I broke." When she spoke again, it was in a whisper. "I can't find the pieces, Frankie. I can't put myself back together."
"Daddy?" I said.
"I dreamt my father had a face," she said, her voice innocent and full of fear. "Why did he do this to me?" Tears ran down her cheeks, turning to ice before they hit the ground.
"What did you say?" I said, my chest aching. "Who told you to say that, Becky?"
"It looked like Daddy," she said. She blinked and focused on my face, her eyes hardening. "He always liked you better," she said, her voice going cold.
"Is that who ripped the hole in the world?" I said. "Daddy? Or the person with him? Was she in a white robe?"
"She was familiar," she said. "Dark and bright at the same time. She felt like you, Frankie. Night and day, wicked and holy. She felt like you." Her eyes were filling up with ice again. "She felt like you," she said again, "she felt like you, she felt like you, she felt like you! I dreamt my father had a face." Her voice had become a growl, each word a strike as she spat ice. "Cleave the veil, cleave the veil, by winter's toll. Feast upon the sickness, Frankie. Oh, God, please make it stop. Frankie? I can't get the words right and Daddy is going to be so angry. Mama will make us pray. Will she whip us today, Frankie? I'll take your blows, you're so little, so small. Just a little angel. She's too young for that, Mama. Run away, little Frankie. Run, Frankie! Before she catches you!"
"Becky," I said, holding her tightly, her body shaking, vibrating as the ice came back to her cheeks and eyes and lips. "That wasn't him, Becky. It wasn't Dad. It's a shapeshifter, a monster."
"He touched me and everything went strange," her voice was far away now, her breath coming out as puffs of ice. I felt the darkness throbbing as if in response, tendr
ils wrapping around my body, and around hers.
"He touched you?" I said, remembering the Mother, her voice strained as the doppelgänger of my father walked toward me in the parking lot: Do not touch her! He touched Becky and now she was insane. I remembered the last time I saw my sister, holding hands and walking on top of the lake. She seemed sane enough then, almost at peace with her fate. Jump, she'd said, and I had. I died that night and Becky was pulled back to Moledet, with Cain as her new captor.
"Becky, when did he touch you? Becky!" I said. But I could see that she was already gone. She opened her mouth and it was filled with ice. And when she screamed, I felt the darkness inside of me lash out, ripping through me, tearing its way through my skin, cutting me to pieces to get out, to get at my sister. And I knew it would destroy her. I knew I would destroy her.
"No!" I screamed, but my voice was so small, so faint under the sound of Becky's keening, ice covering my body, but falling away as the darkness shoved its way through, releasing me and wrapping around my sister, her screams muffled as it filled her mouth and nose, the tendrils covering her body until she was writhing within a chrysalis the color and consistency of oily black smoke. Ice burst in chittering puffs of sharp points that shattered against the darkness that encircled her, squeezing tighter, ever tighter, I could feel its grip on her because it was me, a part of me, protecting Dekker and Esme from her explosions of power. And willing it to squeeze tighter and tighter.
I couldn't stop it, I couldn't keep myself from killing her. She was murdering people, whether she meant to or not. My own sister, dead once by my hand and brought back again. And now I was killing her again. For what? To save a man who lied to me, and a cop who would rather see me dead. But I couldn't stop it. I screamed as my sister died beneath me. I looked back at the opening, the rip in the world, Moledet dead and blowing dust.