by Laura Legend
The second wave of vampires that had accompanied her were off the chain and after the monster. Within minutes, the whole lot of them would go irreversibly feral and be beyond her control—unless she could retrieve that relic.
She watched as the monster tried to fend off the feral vampires. They were crawling on him like ants. He pulled them off and batted them aside only to have them right back at him.
They were starting to swarm. They were frantic for blood. Their violence was indiscriminate.
Ferality was contagious, and the Heretic could feel the itch creeping up her own spine. Without the relic, she wouldn’t last much longer either. Her mind already felt cloudy. Her appetites and emotions were surging.
Still, she hesitated a few seconds longer. She watched Cass’s body intently until she was sure that Cass was still breathing. But as she did, she noticed something else.
There was still hope.
The Holy Coat was lying on the ground, in plain sight, not far from Cass.
At this point, if she broke from the tree line and went after the relic, the swarm was as likely to attack her as anyone.
It was a minor miracle, in fact, that they hadn’t already caught wind of Cass on the ground, defenseless.
The snow swirled and the wind howled with the intensity of a blizzard.
Now was not the time to be mastered by fear.
Cass, she thought to herself, I’m coming. As long we’re together, you’ll never need to be afraid.
Tossing aside her cloak, the Heretic dove down the hill and into the fight. She was spotted almost immediately. Two feral vampires came after her. She was halfway to the relic when, mid-stride, she spotted Cass’s sword on the ground. The first of the two vampires was almost on top of her. She dove, rolled, snagged the sword, and braced herself with the blade pointed upward as the vampire crashed down on top of her, impaling itself. It exploded into ash.
The Heretic spun to her feet, sword ready, waiting for the second. The sword felt good in her hand, its grip familiar, its blade true. In her hands, it glowed a faint white.
She’d forgotten how much she’d loved it.
She went on the attack and they met, halfway, like jousting knights in a crash of steel, teeth, and claws. The Heretic‘s shirt was torn, her arm bleeding. But the vampire’s head was rolling red in the snow and its body disintegrated in the whipping wind.
The Heretic ran back in Cass’s direction. She frantically searched in the gathering snow for the relic she’d seen lying nearby. In the snow and ice, her hands were numb. When she finally found it, she could barely feel the ancient fabric.
Had Jesus really worn this? If she held it to her face, could she still catch his scent, lingering after all these years?
The fabric, while worn and threadbare, was warm. She could feel its power pulsing through her, pushing back the darkness, restoring her mind. She felt her neck straighten and her jaw relax. She felt her vision clear and hands recover the capacity to be something more than a weapon.
She felt—more than she had in years—human.
Three more feral vampires were bearing down on her. With calm dignity, she stood to meet them, unafraid.
When she consciously tried to draw on the relic’s power, she felt an electric shock travel up her arm, through her heart, and into the base of her skull, opening a circuit. With the coat in one hand, she reached out with her other, willing the vampires to feel what she felt, amplifying and directing its power with her own body. The vampires, loping at full speed, slowed, and fell to their knees. Their hands went to their heads, as if they’d just rediscovered their own minds. And a look of acknowledgement dawned as they recognized the Heretic and realized what—at least for now—she’d just saved them from.
The Heretic turned her attention to the red horned monster. He was still harried by a dozen vampires, but their numbers had started to dwindle as he dismantled them one by one. As she watched, he pulled one from his shoulders and tossed it aside.
But it landed right next to Cass.
Cass caught the vampire’s attention.
“No, dammit,” the Heretic breathed, reclaiming her sword and running with the blade in one hand and the relic in the other.
“Stop!” she shouted, willing the feral beast to come back to itself. But it looked to be too late for this one.
It pounced on Cass and braced itself to tear out her throat.
Still ten feet away, the Heretic marshelled her momentum and threw her sword, pegging the vampire in the heart.
Ash.
The Heretic slid to her knees, next to Cass, and took Cass in her arms.
Her eyes burned with tears.
It had been so long. So very long. She hadn’t dared to believe that she would ever hold her girl again. She buried her face in Cass’s hair, clutching her to her chest.
“Cass, are you okay?”
The moment of reunion didn’t last long, though. It was ruptured almost immediately by a roar.
“Caaasss!” the monster thundered, seeing Cass in the Heretic’s arms.
The monster shook off the remaining vampires and turned its full attention to the Heretic.
The Heretic looked back over her shoulder and then down again at Cass.
“Cass,” she said, snapping her fingers, “get up.”
38
CASS STILL COULDN’T get the present moment to click into focus.
She felt like she was like fiddling with an old TV hooked up to a set-top antenna, trying to get the static to clear and her channel to tune. Her experience of time was fragmented and glitchy, filled with white noise. Her vision flickered back and forth between the past, the present, and the future, showing her glimpses of each without ever grounding her in the present.
The problem was that, unless her mind was at least partially synced with the present, time just unfolded without her. The world continued to turn, but she couldn’t change anything. Her body, captainless, lay limp on the ground.
The last thing Cass remembered happening in the present was Miranda, feral, bearing down on her. Miranda’s sword was raised, ready to strike. Cass had fallen to her knees and the thought had occurred to her, clear as day: this is how it ends.
But why? Why had she thought that? Why had she fallen to her knees? What was it that Miranda had said?
What robbed Cass of the powerful icy rage she’d been relying on?
Your mother is still alive.
That was it.
That was what Miranda had said. And Cass, a seer to the bone, knew she was telling the truth. And, in the face of that truth, time had gone haywire. Past, present, and future collapsed in a jumble.
Her mother was alive.
Holy shit! My mother is still alive!
Cass’s eyes snapped open. She was back in the present.
Snow was falling. The sky was bright but filled with clouds.
Cass lay on the stone cold ground in her mother’s arms, her vision blurry.
The sky pinwheeled.
Her mother’s face, backlit by the bright sky, was cast in shadows.
Rose wiped away her tears and buried her face in Cass’s hair. She asked if Cass was okay.
Cass couldn’t say. She couldn’t feel anything. Her limbs were numb.
Rose looked over her shoulder and froze. Her face went pale. Something was coming. Something scary.
Rose snapped her fingers in front of Cass’s face, calling for her attention.
In response, Cass’s eye focused, but her vision remained strangely doubled.
“Cass,” her mother said, her voice urgent, “get up. Now.”
She pressed something into Cass’s hand, wrapping her fingers firmly around it.
Then Cass realized she’d seen all of this before.
She’d seen this entire moment—on the train, as she’d visited the basement of her childhood home and seen her mother’s things and sat in her mother’s chair.
That hadn’t been a visit to her father’s mind. Or her own. S
he’d been inside her mother’s mind.
And most importantly, she hadn’t had a vision of the past, calling for revenge. She’d seen a vision of the future—of this moment, now. And the moment was calling for redemption.
It wasn’t too late. This wasn’t the end yet.
Her mother needed to be saved.
She had pressed her sword into Cass’s hand.
Rose snapped her fingers once more. This time the snap worked like smelling salts, like a defibrillator pressed against her heart, and Cass felt life flood back into her limbs.
“Mom!” Cass cried, vaulting to her feet.
Over her mother’s shoulder she immediately saw what had terrified her. A giant, horned monster was bearing down on them, its eyes aflame, consumed with the same wrath that, minutes before, had filled her.
Cass had never seen anything like it—though something about it struck her as weirdly familiar.
Positioning herself between her mother and the monster, Cass planted her feet, raised her sword, and held out her free hand like a traffic cop.
“Stop!” she commanded.
To Cass’s surprise, the monster put on the brakes and slid to a stop in the snow.
She hadn’t expected that to actually work.
It was staring at her, its wrathful expression dissolving into a mix of sadness and confusion.
Cass met its eyes.
Time flickered between past, present, and future, juxtaposing images in her doubled field of vision.
One second she was in the present, staring into the eyes of a monster, its chest heaving. The next she was in the past, staring into Zach’s eyes. The images flickered faster and faster, rotating back and forth between the two, erasing the boundaries between them.
The monster’s eyes were Zach’s eyes.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Cass said, dropping her sword as her eyes welled with tears.
She looked down at her hand. The grass ring on her finger was brown and fraying. The magic was coming undone.
She took a hesitant step forward toward the monster. It stayed rooted in place.
Then time flickered again, the channels flipped, and the past superimposed itself on the present.
Now, instead of being on the mountainside, Cass was standing in the alley behind the coffeehouse in Salem where she and Zach had worked.
It was the day before she would meet—and kill—her first vampire. All of her troubles were still to scale. Her world was still ordinary. Zach came into the alley to toss some trash into the bins and found Cass worrying that she was going to get fired for mouthing off to a trophy wife. He grinned his goofy grin and wisecracked, flirting with her. She teased him back and threatened to call his bluff and kiss him for real. She backed him up against a brick wall. He pretended to be afraid, closed his eyes, and wincingly puckered up. Cass leaned in close, playing along. She could feel the narrow, magnetic space between their bodies vibrating. And she felt, for the first time, the desire to kiss him for real. In that moment she wanted more than anything to make him smile again.
He cracked one eye to see what she was doing. And, as she met his eye, the channels flipped back and she returned to the present where she was staring into the eye of a monster.
Only a faint afterimage of the moment in the alley lingered.
“Zach—” she began, her voice cracking. She didn’t have any idea what she might say next.
She took a step backward. One hand covered her mouth. Her other hand remained outstretched, palm still facing outward like a traffic cop, holding the idea of the monster at bay.
She turned to face her mother.
“Mom?” she asked.
“Cass,” Rose said, standing, as the snow swirled around her. She reached outward, hesitant, as if Cass were so fragile that, she might break at the slightest touch.
Rose’s skin was pale and her eyes were sunken. But apart from that, she didn’t look a day older than when Cass had seen her last.
Cass’s mind couldn’t bring itself to believe what her eyes were seeing.
What had happened to Zach? How was her mother here? She couldn’t wrap her head around it. And the fact that her head refused to simply be in the present wasn’t helping. Every moment was ghosted by absent worlds and lost times.
Rose’s hand was still extended. Cass, reciprocating, moved to take her mother’s hand in her own. But as she did, the channels flipped again, the past came to the forefront, and the present was reduced to the play of phantom shadows.
Now Cass could see, doubled in her vision, both her hand in present, reaching for her mother, and her hand as a child, stretched out toward her mother’s closed casket.
She was eleven years old. She was at her mother’s funeral. Her dress was black. The day was cloudy and the chapel was somber. Apart from Cass and her father, only a handful of friends and family were in attendance. Cass’s father was already seated in a pew, his head in his hands. Cass was standing in front of the casket. Miranda was standing behind her, her hands on Cass’s shoulders. Miranda gave Cass’s shoulders an encouraging squeeze. For a flickering instant, though, Miranda’s hands seemed to Cass like claws and she cringed, a scream rising in her throat.
And then, before she could cry out, they were Miranda’s own hands again, strong but gentle. Little Cass turned and buried her face in Miranda’s dress, holding onto her for dear life. Cass wanted them to open the casket.
“Make them open it, Aunt Miranda,” she said. She needed to see her mother one final time. “Make them open it.” But Miranda told her it was impossible. She would never see her mother again. Her mother was gone.
And yet here she was—the present resolved into focus—and Cass was seeing her mother’s face again, reaching for her mother’s hand.
But Cass noticed that, in her other hand, Rose was holding something.
She had the Holy Coat.
And she had it squeezed in a white-knuckled grip. She was hanging on to it as if this relic were the thing that, in all the world, she was most afraid of losing.
Cass hesitated. A raft of questions bubbled to the surface.
“Mom?”
Cass blinked.
“How are you here? Why are you here?”
Cass’s eyes fixed on the Holy Coat.
“Why aren’t you dead?”
The bittersweet smile on Rose’s face faded into something that, without the smile, was simply bittersweet.
“Oh, Cass,” she said, “I’m sorry. Believe me, I am. It is a long story. And a difficult one to tell.”
Then Cass saw it.
All the pieces snapped suddenly together with alarming speed and precision. Her mother had died. She hadn’t aged because she was undead.
Her mother was the Heretic.
And now all of Miranda’s choices made sense. Miranda, having finally discovered what Rose had done, chose to join her.
Time stuttered.
But now Miranda was dead and Zach was changed and the Heretic had the relic—the relic for which thousands had already been butchered—firmly in hand.
Cass’s stomach turned inside out. She staggered backward, away from her mother, and nearly fell into the snow.
“No . . .” Cass said, willing the revelation to unmake itself.
“Cass,” Rose said, her voice hardening, “you may not be ready to understand, but I did all of this for you. I lost your brother—I wasn’t going to lose you, too. And, damn it all, if I had to sacrifice my own life in order to remake this world into one that was fit for you, I was willing to do it.”
“No . . .” Cass said again, weakly.
“Cass,” Rose said, “I need you. We need you. There’s no time to lose. We can still remake the world. We can still save them. We can still save everyone.”
Cass’s heart rebelled at this last claim.
“Everyone, Mom?” Her thoughts turned to Miranda. “I think it’s too late for that.”
“Cass—”
“At what cost, Mom? At what pri
ce?”
Cass’s vision blurred at the edges as Rose stepped forward, relic in hand, pleading.
A final vision flickered into view.
This last vision was more than she could bear.
Cass was wearing the Heretic’s cloak. A cloud of light swirled around her, gathering strength, pulling her eyes upward. Her body felt like a lightning rod, channeling some mystery she had no desire to grasp. She felt something like what she imagined Judas must have felt when he’d slipped on his own ill-fated crown.
The sky cracked open. A bolt of light picked her up and spun her around and she saw them. She saw them all gathered at her feet, a throng of thousands of vampires bowing their heads in reverence, watching her expectantly, as if she were their queen.
As if she were their last hope.
As if she were going to save them.
Cassandra Jones, queen of The Damned?
But the vision was too much. Cass couldn’t process it. And instead of the channel flipping back to the present—to that frozen moment with her mother in the ruins of Judas’s castle—it felt as if someone had simply pulled the plug on her TV.
The screen went dark, time collapsed, and all the light in Cass’s world contracted to a single white dot before blinking out altogether.
She was out of time.
39
ZACH DIDN’T UNDERSTAND what had happened.
One moment, Cass was looking into his eyes as if, through the layers of monstrous distortion, she recognized him. The next, she’d collapsed at his feet as if her body had been vacated, as if the thread tying her mind to this world had been cut.
He fixed his eyes on the Heretic—on Cass’s mother?—and lumbered forward, blocking her from reaching Cass. He may not understand what had just happened, but he was sure that it was the Heretic’s fault.
The Heretic gathered herself, straightening her posture.
Zach’s attention was drawn to the relic she still had in hand. He could still feel the power radiating from it, burying him deeper and deeper inside the amniotic red that encased him. He couldn’t let her take it. Even if there wasn’t any hope for him, he couldn’t let her win.
His breathing grew heavier and he pounded one fist against his chest.