Hoarfrost (Blood of Cain Book 2)

by J. L. Murray

  "I tried to kill him," Abel said, seeing me watching him. "Cain found me, and I broke his horn and I almost won. I almost won the game, Frankie."

  "I know what to do now," said Dekker, like a broken record. I looked at him.

  "No," said the shapeshifter, "only her heart. Only the walker of worldssss."

  Dekker looked at the Mother and raised the antler above his head. "Take mine instead of hers," he said. "She can live." He looked at me again. "Everything is perfect."

  Then he plunged the horn into his chest.

  "DEKKER!" I was screaming his name over and over again, "DEKKER, DEKKER, DEKKER!" I couldn't see straight as I went to him, the antler lodged in his heart, just like my dream.

  "I did this," I said, pulling Dekker to me, holding him as he vibrated, spasming, blood spreading out from the horn and soaking his clothes, and then the sand beneath him. His eyes were watching my face as I screamed, his name becoming just one long, raw scream into the moon-soaked sky. Dekker put a hand up to touch my face and he smiled, silencing me. I stared down at him and he looked up at me, his dark eyes wide and unblinking.

  "You're the sun, Frankie," he said. Then blood bubbled out of his mouth and he gave a long moan. The light went out of his eyes and he stopped spasming. He stopped everything, and for a moment, I didn't understand. I didn't understand how he could stop moving. Dekker was always moving, even while he slept.

  "Dekker," I rasped, as his hand slid from my face and fell to his side in the sand, now stained red. "No, no, no, no." A raven landed next to me, then another, then another. The white eyed raven lighted on my shoulder. Ravens were everywhere, and far away in another world, I heard Abel cry out in alarm. I was moving in a world where nothing worked the way it should. The ravens were screaming, singing their song at me, and I understood what they sang now. The time for gentleness was over. I looked over at the shapeshifter, still changing, trying to settle into a shape that pleased me. It became my old boyfriend Sean, it was my mother, it was killer after killer. It was Ron, it was Brett Canton, it was every frozen face from the makeshift morgue. And all the while it was backing away from me. The shaking beneath us moved faster and harder and more violently.

  Dekker’s eyes were open, but there was nothing there. He was gone. Water dripped on his face and it took a moment before I realized I was crying. I kissed his lips and they were still warm, as if he weren't really dead, as if he might kiss me back.

  I slid out from under his body, watching him for what seemed a long time. The shapeshifter was moving across the beach, toward Abel and Esme, but it stopped when it saw me watching. Its face shifted and slid, his body elongating and spreading wide until it glitched and flickered into Dekker's face.

  "You're the sun," the shapeshifter said as Dekker.

  "I have to find my light," I said, but the words came out under my breath, as if I only needed to say them to myself. I looked back over the water, and saw the Mother's paltry silhouette surrounded by the moon behind her, huge on the horizon. Light. Light. Find my light. Do not touch her!

  Everything’s perfect.

  I looked at the Mother, who was staring at me as I stepped up to the shapeshifter. She watched, as if she knew the battle was already lost. Something else the Morrigan said went through my mind: You won't be strong enough until you forget what you can't do.

  "All I have to do is touch you," I whispered to the shapeshifter. "But I can go one better."

  Quickly, I reached out and grabbed the thing by the back of the neck, pulling him close as Dekker's face stared back at me, unseeing. With my other hand, before I could remember not to, I shoved the knife deep in his throat, and sawed, quick as I could, until the blade met bone. His blood poured gray over my hands and his eyes went dark first, dark like dark windows, dark like the space where his soul should have been. Then his whole face went black, and when I let go of him he fell to the ground and I spun around, a tingling creeping up my fingers, my arms, my shoulders, my breasts. The tingling grew stronger, becoming a buzzing. Would I go mad like the others? I could hear Abel screaming. The tingling filled me up, mixing with the power inside of me. Something was missing. Missing. I was missing. Missing what?

  Staring straight at the moon, I could see the Mother's shroud was no longer white. Blood from the hearts she kept inside her were seeping out and staining her shift dark red.

  Find your light.

  I reached out toward the moon, and then I took it.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I felt the light filling me up, burning away doubt, fear, anger, until I was nothing but light and darkness. The ground beneath my feet was soft and I felt it shaking, sending sand flying up to hit my fingers, cool and wet. I raised my fingers in front of my face to watch them trail first light and then darkness like twin shadows. I raised my face to the sky and saw that the cloud of ravens had become dotted with white doves and I could see them all because I was radiating light. I was the sun. I saw a school of fish jump in the sea, as if they yearned to reach for me. From the wilderness on the other side of the highway, I heard the gentle keen of a wolf. In the distance a cougar growled in her throat.

  The beach was cracking, shaking, and I was the one shaking it. I laughed at the sight of it, insects and crabs scuttling up through the chasms. My head was tingling, my eyes, my mouth abuzz with words never yet spoken, and a throat that felt as though it were breathing for the first time. Was this was it was like to be born? Someone was screaming a name at me, and it sounded familiar.

  "Frankie! You have to control it," a man with one leg was saying. He was dragging a woman's body away from me. I could see the magic coming off her, even though she was unconscious. I felt I should know both of them, but the thought was fleeting. Ravens landed on my shoulders, my head, flapped their wings around me like a cape of black shining feathers. The light was inside me now, growing brighter and stronger than I ever felt possible. I lifted my arms to either side, feeling the wind and the spray and sand that the wind whipped through the air, stinging as it hit my arms, sticking to the blood on my fingers. I saw the small body at my feet, and I reached down and picked it up, grabbing the hair. With a crack of bone, the head came off and I held it up to look at it. The face was a void, blacker than black, empty. I laughed again, dropping the head in the sand, and my mind was a cyclone.

  "Frankie, you have to fight this," the one-legged man said. I knew by looking at him that his name was Abel. I'd once been afraid of him. Me in the past. Before the light, before the light, before the light. Before I knew, knew, knew. Time was repeating itself, time was standing still, time was speeding up. And then the Mother was behind me, on the sea. She was hurrying, sounds of static, smells of fear, the rank sweat of the very long dead. But dead people didn't sweat, and that made me laugh too.

  I saw the now-headless corpse lying at my feet, covered in a layer of sand. I bent down and reached into his dead chest with a crack and burst of wetness, and pulled out his heart. It was gray marbled with black, still and soft. But after a moment it began to beat in my hand. I dropped the knife from my other hand and cradled the heart as it mewled like a newborn kitten.

  "Will you kill me, Jacob?" I said, looking at the dead man on the beach. "She made you promise. Frankie made you promise to kill me. But can you kill me?"

  And then Dekker was standing in front of me, but he was transparent, like a dream or a ghost. He blinked at me, and I saw him from the inside. So much pain, such a heavy weight. I wanted to stay with him, though I couldn't remember why. But something was pulling me, pulling me back toward the sea.

  "You're not really here," I said, and I laughed. He laughed too, and I remembered something from a life before.

  Everything’s perfect.

  "Who said that?" I said, but no one answered.

  "I love you, Frankie," the man called at me as I set one foot atop the water. "This isn't the end."

  "I'm not Frankie anymore," I said. "I've lost her."

  I stepped on top of a wave and let it sl
ide me across the water. I could see the shape of the Mother of Hearts, slipping in and out of reality, slipping in and out of sight. But to hide she was going to a place I knew. I could see her squeezing herself between molecules in the air, and she seemed so small. Parlor tricks and fakeries. I couldn't see for all the colors, as the world seemed to be opening up to me and only me. A flower unpicked growing wide and bright and infinitely beautiful. The ravens were following me and several were flying low and furious, dragged down by gravity and the weight that they carried. The head, dripping gore, the bright white vertebrae dangling from the sliced neck like a wind chime.

  "Devil's Trap," I said, and looked down, the water shaking, the waves choppy at first and then rising up fast and strong and high. I couldn't remember what I was doing here. The feeling inside me was intoxicating, the light seeming to wrestle the dark, the dark doing the same with the light. Together but never mixing, separate entities writhing inside me. I was looking for someone. But the moon was so bright, the sea was so deep, and the fish were leaping all around me, splashing the ravens in their fervor. I walked atop the waves and my eyes lighted on someone doing the same. Someone in a red cloak, soaked at the hem by the salt water. I wished to be next to her, and suddenly I was, looking into her shroud. I lifted it from her face like a groom lifting a bridal veil. A black crown on top of her head began to melt when I touched it, and it coated her skeletal face like dripping candle wax.

  "I found my light," I told her. I could see sinew clinging to bone, skin mummified under her eyes and chin. I held up the heart to her face. "You forgot this."

  She stared at me and I laughed because she was looking but there were no eyes to see.

  "Frankie Mourning," she rasped, but it was different. Wasn't it? Had she spoken to me before? Someone died that night, and she had come for...

  "Esme," I breathed.

  "We don't need her," said the shrouded skeleton. "We don't need anything from you, Frankie. Let me go. Let me go home and I won't come again."

  "Why did you come?" I said, reaching out to touch her exposed cheekbone. She screamed as I trailed my fingers down the side of her face, and when they came away, I'd left little trails of light so bright it hurt my eyes to see it.

  "My master, remember?" she said, moving away from me. I could see light in her, but it was dim. Half the hearts in her rib cage were still frozen. Frozen with hoarfrost. Who was I forgetting? "I came to seek you out and beg you to speak with him. In exchange I have brought the words from his vision." She was speaking fast and I had to focus on her words because I couldn't understand for a moment.

  "Cain and Abel," I said. And when I parted her cloak I could see her bones covered in hoarfrost. "You gave them power and now you want to take it back. You want to take Esme's power. You want my power. Do you still want it? Do you want it so you can go back, as strong as your master?"

  "No," she said quickly, and I wrapped my fingers through her ribs as she screamed.

  "You didn't come for your master," I said. "You came to take it. You came here to take my heart.“

  "No, no, no, I came for my master!” She was shaking as I squeezed her bones between my hands. Light was coming out of me now, along with the tendrils of darkness, great beams of white light, and I saw everything. Light from my fingers and toes and belly, light from the top of my head and coming out of my mouth. Light and darkness, both at once.

  "Do you want my power, Mother of Hearts?" I said, as the bone crumbled between my fingers. I held up the beating heart, marbled with light now. "Do you still want it so badly that you burn day and night in your envy and decay? Do you want my life, Mother of Hearts? I'll give it freely. But it may not sit well inside of you."

  "No, I can tell you secrets, Frankie Mourning. Please, I can tell you all the secrets you ever need to know. Lilith! Let me tell you about Lilith!" Her voice was curdling in my ears.

  "Who is Lilith?"

  "You'll remember," said the Mother, watching the heart as I lifted it to shine in the moonlight. "She is using you. Every time you kill her children, she grows stronger. It's the reason she asked you to help her. She wants your power more than I do, she wants it all. And you're helping her grow strong. Each monster you kill brings her closer to you. She has slipped into a goddess. She helps you to get you closer to killing all her children. When she is strong, she will kill you.“

  I rested my eyes on her grotesque face as the waves lifted us close to the sky, before bringing us low again. I heard screaming, a crack, and I could see a road collapsing behind the beach. There were people on the beach. Had I just been there? Someone important to me was there. But then I remembered that maybe he wasn't there anymore.

  "All I have to do is fall," I said, and light came from my mouth with every word. My darkness was wrapped around the Mother now, too. There was a space in her rib cage where I'd crushed the bone. "Where did you come from?"

  "You know where I came from," she hissed.

  "What do you call it?" I said. "Some call it Darkness."

  "It is not dark," she said forcefully, then seemed to regret the tone. I laughed as she flinched. I squeezed the heart and it glowed with the brightness coming from me. "It is Xibalba. It is beautiful, and you are right that it is dark, but not the way you think. We are not allowed the sun. We are not allowed the light."

  "Why?" I said. "Who does the allowing?"

  "You!" she said. "Your gods, your people. They drove us there, and we must suffer. There is no light but from magic that glows in the ground and the stones and the sky. It is not enough. We are dying."

  "That's why you want to kill me?"

  "I don’t want to kill you," she said. "I want to become you."

  "You want to be a god?" I said, and I felt a smile spread across my face. "Do you know how it feels to lose yourself, Mother of Hearts? Do you know how it feels to destroy and rebuild and make things new again? I feel as though the light never touched me until tonight. I feel as though I've forgotten who I am."

  "Madness," she said. "You touched the monster. You killed him. You cannot touch a monster without consequences."

  "Oh, I know all about that,” I said, the smile sliding from my face and I was suddenly crying, the tears full of light as they fell into the ocean. "I remember being in love once. But I can't quite grasp the details. It slips away when I try to think about it."

  "Let me go, Frankie. You'll remember in time. Let me go back to him, my master, if he'll have me. I'll go away. And we can pretend that none of this happened. We can pretend it is all a dream."

  "A dream," I said. "Do you know what I see in my dreams? I dreamed I had a sister." A face, lips blue, ice, hoarfrost. A frozen ocean. Becky screaming, screaming, screaming. Becky, Becky, Becky, Rebecca.

  "Rebecca Mourning," I whispered.

  "No," the Mother moaned. "Please."

  "She was my sister. I killed her. Why would I do that?" I remembered in flashes. The tear in the veil, casting her out. "She looked just like you," I said. "That's what she said. The woman that tore her from her home looked just like me. Saint and sinner, dark and light. That's you, isn't it? And then you told the monster to touch her."

  "I had no control over him."

  "I don't believe you." The shapeshifter’s heart grew bright in my hand, so bright it seemed the moon was a shadow.

  "You did that to her," I said. "And your messages. I remember now. Tell me the words, Mother of Hearts. Before you die, tell me the words you were sent to tell."

  "I'll die either way."

  "Yes."

  "I refuse."

  "Tell me the words," I said, "and I'll tell your master you did well. I won't speak of your betrayal."

  The bones shook.

  "Tell me!" I screamed, and even the ravens cowered.

  The Mother's voice wavered as she spoke, saying the words like a prayer. "The becoming of the beast who watches," she began, "Will ignite a war of souls, But she will feast upon the sickness, And cleave the veil by winter's toll." The Mother
seemed to gasp for breath as she finished, though she had no lungs. "Those are the only words that matter. The only words that tell you what to do."

  "What does it mean?" I said.

  "It means," she said, "that by winter, you will bring down the veil. It means, Frankie Mourning, that you are our savior. And when you cleave the veil and release us, we will be in the sun once again."

  "Someone told me it's dangerous," I said. "Someone, somewhere told me it must never happen."

  "They told you that because they are afraid. For what they did to us, for why they did it. Your madness will pass, and you will be weak once again. Beware, Frankie Mourning. The gods lie."

  "And so do you," I said, grasping the heart and shoving it deep into her chest. And then I let go.

  THIRTY

  I felt as if I were in pieces, floating down onto the angry sea like ashes. But when I looked down, I was still myself. I turned and saw someone on the shore. A body, unmoving. Jacob Dekker Tommy Jacob Dekker Dekker Dekker. The names ran together in my head. I could see so far it made me dizzy. I saw a man no one else could see. He was magic once, but now he was just a man with one great horn rising off his head, bleeding where the other horn had been broken. He was also bleeding from the shoulder, stomach, and hand, all wounds left by one he loved. He was walking across the sand, and dragging a smaller man with a missing leg, afraid, wanting to help me, but too afraid. I followed them with my mind as they approached the untended body of a woman. Fire spread across the beach from beneath her body, blackening the beach as the magic left her. Soon she would be dead. The one-horned man pushed his companion, the one-legged man. His brother. I knew them now. Cain and Abel.