Around the time the sun came up, Rebecca reached over the arm of the couch to grab the remote control and turned on the television. Instead of Erica’s favorite cartoons, she found the local weekend morning news.
“...and as of right now, we’re hearing that more than four hundred families in the state of Tennessee have fallen victim to what I can only describe as the most devastating, unimaginable acts of violence I have ever heard mentioned in my thirty-two years in journalism,” the middle-aged anchor said, reading from a sheet of paper he held in a white-knuckled grip. “More than one thousand children across the state, murdered in their sleep. Their friends and families are devastated. The authorities are overwhelmed.”
Rebecca sat up slowly, and the crocheted blanket fell to her hips as she stared in shock at the television.
“And that’s just the local toll,” the anchor continued. “According to a statement released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation just minutes ago, across the country overnight, more than ten thousand households have suffered strikingly similar tragedies. In every case reported so far, human children were viciously murdered while their parents were home, but if these reports are accurate, not one of the parents is able to tell authorities what happened. They all claim to remember nothing.”
“Rebecca, turn that off! Your sister shouldn’t hear any of this!” Grandma Janice came in from the kitchen and grasped for the remote control, but Rebecca stood, still clutching it, and crossed the room until she stood two feet from the television.
On the grainy, full-color screen, the anchor set down his printed report and looked straight at the camera. “But what’s even more bizarre is what’s not in the official statement. This morning, rumors leaking from law enforcement agencies around the country seem to bear a striking similarity. If those rumors are to be believed, in each of these tragic cases, a single child has survived, completely unharmed, and claims to have witnessed the murder of his or her siblings. And folks, as strange as this is going to sound, so far all of the surviving witnesses of these thousands of murders are six years old.”
The remote control slipped from Rebecca’s hand and thumped onto the carpet, button-side down. The television set flashed off.
“Oh my God.” Grandma Janice sank onto the couch, her jaw slack. Rebecca sat next to her, and for nearly three minutes, neither of them moved or said a word.
Down the hall, a door opened, but lost in the maelstrom of their own confusion, neither of them heard Erica pad down the hall, barefoot.
“I’m hungry,” the six-year-old said, and her sister and grandmother jumped. As far as Rebecca could tell, Erica had just appeared there in the doorway out of nowhere.
For years to come, Rebecca would look back on that moment—on that one thought—and marvel at how close to the truth she’d really been.
Delilah
Gallagher wet a rag in warm water at the bathroom sink and pointed at the closed toilet seat.
I sat. The tiny room felt even smaller with both of us in it, but for once, I didn’t mind the invasion of my personal space. Surely the only thing worse than waking up covered in blood would have been waking up alone, covered in blood.
“Are you in any pain? Sore muscles or joints? Bruises?” Gallagher asked. When I gave him a puzzled look, he elaborated. “If you were in a fight, you might be injured.”
“My feet feel sore. And...crusty.” I curled my toes, and something caked between them cracked against my skin, but I couldn’t look. It was probably more dried blood.
Gallagher sank onto the edge of the tub and lifted my right foot onto his lap. “Mud,” he declared with a satisfied huff. “Though you seem to have walked most of it off, and the soles of your feet are scratched up from going barefoot in the woods. It hasn’t rained in days, so you must have been near a stream.” He lowered my foot again, then he took my left hand and began to clean my fingers with steady strokes of the warm, wet rag. The repetitive motion should have been soothing, but the grisly nature of the task kept me on edge.
“I don’t remember leaving the cabin. I don’t even remember waking up.”
With my left hand clean, he rinsed the rag, then began to work on my right hand with those same steady strokes. “But no pain or bruises other than your feet?”
“No pain other than the normal pregnancy stuff. And I haven’t seen any bruises, but I’ll check everywhere when I shower.”
“And the baby’s still moving? Everything seems well with her?”
“From what I can tell.” But again, my lack of access to prenatal care left a terrifying question mark hovering at the edge of my thoughts. “Gallagher, I don’t think I was in a fight. I think I...killed someone. Is it possible that the baby killed someone through me? Like you do?”
The fear dearg are a particularly violent and brutal species of fae that must keep their traditional hats wet with the blood of their victims.
They must kill, in order to survive.
He actually chuckled. “That seems highly unlikely.”
I pulled my hand from his grip with a scowl.
“I meant no offense. You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met, mentally and emotionally. And philosophically. But literally tearing someone apart requires a physical strength you simply don’t have. How would that have even been possible?”
“I don’t know. How is it possible for me to have left the cabin in the middle of the night, then snuck back in covered in blood without waking any of the shifters?” If I’d made any noise, Claudio, Zy and Genni would have heard me. And they definitely would have noticed the scent of blood. “It shouldn’t be possible for a human woman to embody the savage spirit of justice, yet that’s only one of the more difficult-to-grasp aspects of my life.”
“Fair point,” Gallagher conceded as he began cleaning my hand again.
“I got up in the middle of the night and hurt someone. Judging from what appears to be arterial spray arcing over my nightgown, it’s likely that I killed someone. But what’s even scarier than what I did is the fact that I can’t remember doing it.” I shrugged, and my reflection in the mirror mimicked the motion. “What else could this be, other than the baby’s bloodlust?”
Gallagher’s focus gained a sympathetic gravity. “Delilah, fear dearg don’t lose the memory of their kills. This is much more likely to be the furiae’s work.”
“But I don’t forget the things the furiae makes me do, either. I’m not prone to violence. But the furiae is, and your child comes from a long line of vicious warriors. One of these two squatters has to be the cause of this. But I can’t tell which, because again, I can’t remember...”
The first time I’d woken up unable to remember something, I’d lost four weeks of my life—including the conception of my child.
“I understand why the memory loss upsets you, but try not to read too much into that aspect. You could just be sleepwalking.” Gallagher finished with my hand, then hesitated just a second before he tilted my chin up and began wiping gently, slowly, at a streak of blood on my neck.
“When I first started working at the menagerie, there was a handler who used to get up in the middle of the night and feed the exhibits in his sleep. One night I caught him and woke him up, and he was completely disoriented. He had no memory of what he’d been doing, even though he was still holding the rabbit he’d been about to feed the adlet. He only did it a couple of times the first month I was there, but we had to let him go, because it was dangerous for him to start opening cages in the middle of the night, with no idea what he was doing.”
“You think I’ve been killing people in my sleep?” I took the rag from him and roughly scrubbed the last of the blood from my neck, because suddenly I needed...space.
“I think that’s worth considering, before you scare yourself with less likely conclusions. Beyond that, we don’t know that you’ve actually killed anyone. We don’t even know
whose blood this is, or how you spilled it. Or even that you did spill it, for certain.” Gallagher frowned. “On second thought, the lack of memory is rather troubling.”
“So, this doesn’t happen to redcap women when they’re pregnant? Vicarious bloodlust?”
Gallagher followed me into the bedroom, where I gestured for him to turn around so I could change out of my stained nightgown. He turned. “Pregnant fear dearg often experience an increase in bloodlust, but I don’t know whether that’s the baby’s bloodlust or simply an increase in the mother’s needs to compensate for the toll being taken on her body. As with increased appetite.”
“And I’m guessing there’s no way to tell, because a fear dearg mother would be killing, anyway, to keep herself alive. So once again, I am breaking new—and disturbing—ground.” I pulled a threadbare maternity shirt over my head, then plucked a pair of thrift-shop maternity pants from the top dresser drawer.
“Regardless of the cause, you wouldn’t have been able to sneak past me if I’d been here,” Gallagher said while I pulled my pants on, fastening the low-rise waist below my bulbous stomach. Then I tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to face me, sympathy and guilt warring over his features.
“For the record, I wasn’t sneaking. At least, not that I can remember.”
“I won’t leave you again at night before we figure this out.”
“Gallagher, don’t—” But it was too late. He’d already said it, and redcaps cannot lie or go back on their word. “You have to hunt. It won’t help either of us for you to keep growing weaker.”
His grumble was so deep it resonated in my bones. “I am not weak. And I can hunt during the day. That’s more difficult, obviously, but not impossible.”
I smiled as the consequence of his latest promise truly sank in. “I would feel better if you stuck close at night, since we really have no idea when this baby might decide to make an appearance.”
Gallagher’s gaze narrowed at me. “Why do you look...triumphant?”
“You just gave me your word that you’d stick close. But you already gave me your word that you’d help rescue Miri and Lala. The only way I can see to reconcile those two promises is to take me with you on the rescue.”
“It isn’t fair of you to trap me with my own oath.” But he looked more impressed than truly upset.
“It also isn’t fair for me to have been pregnant for ten and a half months.” I stood and arched backward, stretching as best I could. “Right now, I’d gladly stack my list of complaints against yours.”
He chuckled. “I know better than to rise to that challenge. May I make you and the baby some breakfast?”
“That would be wonderful. The baby would like to request French toast with cinnamon.”
Our cabin-mates were starting to wake up when we headed into the main room, and Lenore swung her feet over the edge of the sofa bed, staring at the bloody sheets as I carried them to the washer. “Delilah, are you...?”
I gave her a tense smile. “I promise you that if I were in labor, I would not be doing laundry.”
“Labor?” Zyanya sat up next to her, blinking, still half-asleep.
“No. Laundry.” I stuffed the sheets into the ancient washer while Gallagher pulled a loaf of bread and a carton of eggs from the refrigerator.
“Someone’s going to have to go shopping today,” he said as he began cracking eggs into a bowl.
“Not it,” Claudio called from his pallet on the floor. He’d picked the phrase up from me and had found many opportunities to use it. “But I will take Genevieve hunting for breakfast, so the eggs go further.”
“I’ll go with them,” Zy volunteered. “And we’ll bring back something for dinner.”
I was getting tired of rabbit, but I would never have said that, and not just because the alternative was usually squirrel. The consistent supply of fresh—if gamey—meat was an advantage of living in the woods with three shifters, but I couldn’t help missing the ground beef and chicken breasts that had been staples of my precaptivity life.
“Before you guys go...” I added soap, then closed the washer lid and set the old-fashioned dial. “Did anyone wake up at all last night?”
“Non.” Genni headed into the bedroom, on her way toward the bathroom. “I dreamed of chasing squirrels.”
“No, why?” Zyanya asked. “What happened?”
Gallagher added milk and sugar to his bowl of whisked eggs. “It appears that Delilah took a nighttime stroll.”
“Did anyone see me leave?” I pointed to a faint series of dusty footprints I’d just noticed, leading from the front door toward the bedroom. “Or come back?”
Heads shook, and they all exchanged worried, curious glances.
“Eryx?” Gallagher called, and the minotaur peeked over the railing from the loft, his heavy bovine horns pointing across the room at the fireplace. “Did either of you see Delilah leave the cabin overnight?”
Eryx shook his head, presumably speaking both for himself and for the oracle.
Gallagher frowned. “Claudio, would you mind sleeping in front of the door tonight?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary...” I began as the washer spun up to its full, grinding volume behind me.
“I don’t mind,” the silver-haired werewolf said with one hand on the front doorknob. “Genni! Vite!”
“J’arrive!” she called out from the bathroom, and a moment later, the wolf pup returned to the living room smelling like toothpaste, her face damp and clean.
When the shifters had gone, Rommily took a turn in the bathroom and I sat at the table to watch Gallagher cook. Even after nearly a year with him, it still surprised me that someone whose entire life was founded upon violence and bloodshed could be so caring and thoughtful.
He would be a good father. Though I was sure of little else, I was certain of that. If the world gave him a chance to be.
“So, spill.” Lenore sank onto the chair next to mine and set a glass of ice water in front of me. “What happened last night?”
“I think I killed someone.”
“What?”
Rommily and Eryx joined us for breakfast, and while we ate, I explained what we knew about my nighttime activities. When I got up to clear the table, Rommily was still staring at her plate. “Look for the man in the mirror,” she mumbled.
“What? Rommily, what are you saying?” I leaned closer to hear her better, and she seized my hand so suddenly that my stack of plates crashed to the floor in an explosion of glass and syrup. But her grip on me only tightened. Her gaze found mine, and her golden-brown eyes were glazed with a white film. “The reflection cannot be trusted.”
“Delilah, don’t move.”
I pulled my hand from Rommily’s grip, and an instant later, Gallagher was there. The cabin spun around me as he lifted me into his arms, supporting my weight effortlessly beneath my knees and my shoulders. His shoes crunched as he carried me away from the broken glass.
“Cradled like a babe birthed in blood!” Rommily shouted, and when Gallagher turned, I found her still staring at me, her frame tense.
Eryx made a distressed sound deep in his throat. The cabin shook and his hooves ground glass into dust as he raced to the oracle’s side, but she would not let him lift her from her chair.
“The gift of life. The gift of death.” The oracle’s voice lost volume as her prophesy neared its end. “And but a heartbeat between...!”
With a grunt, Eryx lifted Rommily, chair and all, and carried her across the cabin, where he set her chair in front of the window seat. He knelt, a difficult act for someone so large and top-heavy, and took her small hands in both of his huge ones.
Rommily’s eyes cleared. They focused on his, then they filled with tears, and I watched, still cradled in Gallagher’s grip, while an intimate, inarticulate grief passed between the oracle and the minota
ur, one unable to explain her words, and the other unable to ask her to.
“I’m fine. Put me down,” I said, but for a second, Gallagher’s grip on me only tightened.
“You heard the lady.” Lenore hurried past us toward the table, carrying a ratty broom and our chipped dustpan. “Put her down. And add paper plates to the grocery list.”
Gallagher set me down, and I headed straight for the bedroom on unsteady legs. I sank onto the end of the bed and sucked in a deep breath. And held it.
“Delilah?” The door closed, and I looked up to see that Gallagher had followed me into the room. “What’s wrong?”
“Seriously? Didn’t you hear her?” My pulse was a steady roar from deep within my own head. “I’m going to die in childbirth.”
He scowled. “That’s...not what I heard.”
“A babe birthed in blood. The gift of life and the gift of death, with a heartbeat between them? Or something like that. What else could she mean? What else is there that you can’t protect me from?”
He sank onto the bed next to me, again careful to leave space between us. “Delilah, we could spend from now until eternity trying to interpret poor Rommily’s second sight and never once get it right. Don’t let fear obscure reason.”
“Well, then, what do you think she meant?”
“I don’t know.” His shrug jostled the entire bed. “I doubt even she truly knows. But she also said something about the reflection of a man in the mirror, and I have no plans to avoid the looking glass.”
The looking glass.
I couldn’t resist a smile. Every now and then, it was easy to remember that Gallagher was much older than he looked. Though at that moment, with dark circles forming beneath his eyes, he was starting to look closer to his true age, whatever that was. “You should sleep. You’re out hunting most nights—” With no success, based on the still-faded red of his cap. “And you owe it to the baby and to me to keep yourself healthy...” But the suggestion died on my tongue when his gaze flicked away from mine in an obvious effort to hide his thoughts. “What?”
Fury Page 5