by J. L. Murray
“Mikey,” Dez said, his voice like a child as he fell into the snow. Mike saw the Rev step toward the man, the gun still raised, aimed straight at Dez.
Mike felt his feet move, and he was headed fast for the Rev. He felt himself screaming and it seemed the Rev was moving so slowly as he looked up and saw Mike coming at him. Mike had the stake in his chest before the Rev could squeeze the trigger again. And Mike was still screaming as the Rev disappeared, gun and all, into the trunk of a tree, its branches stretched out as if in surrender. Mike stepped away, the scream dying, but still echoing. Black petals rained down around him as he turned to see Dez on the ground, the snow stained dark.
Mike sank down next to him, the boy who had once been nothing to him, a greasy liar, a rogue. Mike looked at his face, and his dying eyes, and he didn’t see a punk. He saw a man.
“Dez,” Mike said, trying to lift him up. He was limp, but Mike managed to lift his head out of the snow, cradling him with his good hand.
“Was I brave, Mikey?” Dez said, blood in his teeth. “Did I save the kids?”
“You were brave,” Mike said. “You were the bravest man I’ve ever seen. You saved them all.”
“I wanted you to be proud, Mikey,” he said. “I wanted to be something to you.”
“Dez,” Mike said, shaking him as his eyes unfocused. “Dez, don’t do this. Don’t leave me here.” He began to cry as the life went out of Desmond Paine’s eyes, letting go of the sob that had been in his chest since the Rev’s gun went off.
“It’s time to go,” said a deep voice behind Mike. Flynn’s voice.
“He wanted to save the children,” said Sia. “Come, Michael. Let’s obey his wishes.”
“He was just a kid,” Mike said, his voice weak and pitiful.
“He got his wish,” said Sia. “It was all he wanted, in the end.”
“We all do what is necessary to get the things that we want,” said Flynn. “Stand with us, Mr. Novak. Avenge your friend.”
“There’s no one left,” said Mike. “Everyone’s dead.”
“Ambrose Conrad is just through those trees,” said Sia, her eyes bright, even in the dark.
“What good am I to you?” he said, looking at the two of them.
Sia crouched next to him. “You mean something to her,” she said.
“Her?”
“Genevieve.”
Mike blinked. “Viv’s alive?”
“She’s with the children,” said Sia. “And your friends are coming. They’re at the gates. They’ve searched long and hard for you. It is time for you to choose.”
“The Fallen are here?” said Mike.
“Coming to save you,” said Sia. “Do you want to be saved? Or do you want Genevieve?”
“Sia, let us go. Leave him.”
“No, he’s important,” she said, smiling at Mike. She bent and whispered in Mike's ear. “I told you that you would be the lucky one.”
Forty-Two
Viv watched Conrad grow weak, a tube in his chest, a glass cylinder catching the dark blood coming from him. She looked down the line of tiny hospital cots, trying not to feel. Trying not to remember. Trying to stay cold and angry and hungry.
They had finally crossed through the thickness of the trees and opened a thick metal door with the letter “Z” stenciled on it with chipping white paint. Conrad led her down a slippery concrete staircase.
“None of them were allowed down here,” he said. “Only Mathilde and a dedicated staff.”
“I suppose now it’s only the dedicated staff,” said Viv. The memory of Mathilde, Conrad’s sister, screaming on a slab, sat like a sour taste behind her eyes. She could see down into the darkness, but all she saw were stairs and mold and tiny crawling things. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the smell of feces and something rotten.
“No, I killed all of the staff,” said Conrad.
Conrad closed the thick metal door and drowned out the glorious sound of music coming from the courtyard. A song so heated and varied and multifaceted that Viv couldn’t believe the sounds could come from one person. But the music was still playing in Viv’s head. She had to close her eyes from time to time when a note touched down deep inside of her, resonating within her bones.
As Viv had descended the last few steps, she saw the first of them. Small faces, tucked away into tiny beds, so thin they looked like ghosts.
Children. So many children. The beds went on forever, it seemed. Every child who had been taken in Philadelphia, maybe every child in the state. Every child who had survived. All brought here and pumped with sedatives, an IV in each arm delivering a heady brew of vitamins and pentobarbital. Viv was overcome and couldn’t move for a moment. She froze in her tracks as she looked out over the ocean of tiny faces of every shade, every race, every sweet innocent eyelash. Viv felt her mouth open and close as the shock washed over her. She knew children could be on the grounds, but she was not prepared for what met her eyes. Conrad walked to a table set against the wall and pulled a white sheet from a large machine. Viv noted a nearby door that looked like a restaurant walk-in refrigerator. She moved to a small child who appeared starved, her cheekbones sharp and her skin sallow. Viv discovered she wasn’t hungry around the children, which surprised and confused her at the same time. She’d been unstoppably hungry in front of Margaret Watts, and when Conrad took an orderly in the halls Viv felt her teeth descend. But the children gave her nothing but a sorrow, deep in her chest. Perhaps it was the weak blood, or the starvation. Viv touched the girl’s face and jumped as the tiny beauty opened her eyes just a little. Viv smiled at her as the child gazed up at her. The girl opened her mouth and her face flattened as her teeth descended.
Viv backed away, but the girl was already asleep again, her eyes rolling up and her face returning to innocence. She looked at Conrad, who had a tube stuck into his chest, his face a mask of pain as he turned on a switch on the machine. It began pumping out thick, dark red blood and dripping it slowly into a dozen glass vials.
“Heart’s blood,” said Viv. “It’s no different than blood from any other part of your body, you know.” She tried to keep the anger from her voice.
Conrad closed his eyes. “You know very little about us, Genevieve. You’re still so young.” He slumped back in his chair, letting the pump take blood straight from his heart.
Viv approached a sleeping boy, his chest rising and falling shallowly as he struggled for breath in his tiny chest. Viv pulled down the blanket off his chest and saw the thick, jagged scar where they had cut him open. She stepped away, looking at Conrad. Another boy, this one older, ten years old, maybe. She pulled away the blanket and saw the same scar. She looked down at her own chest, pulling the clean scrubs Conrad had given her out away from herself. She reached down and traced the white scar all the way up to her collarbone and covered her mouth so she wouldn’t cry out.
There were thousands of children. And all of them had been torn apart, their hearts replaced.
“They’re asleep because you can’t turn them on yet,” she said. “You didn’t know how to fix them. Like Sia.”
“My sister knew how,” said Conrad. “If only I’d listened. But I wasn’t ready to abandon my experiment yet. I wasn’t ready for an army as strong as I am. I wanted to keep them weak. You see what Joshua has done to me?”
“Your experiment,” said Viv. “You decimated your own race.”
Conrad looked at her, his eyes bloodshot. “You don’t understand anything, doctor.”
“I understand everything,” she said. “Your hubris destroyed your own kind. And now you’re scrambling to correct your mistake. With children.”
“I did not replace their hearts,” said Conrad.
“But you ordered it done,” said Viv. “Like everything else, you made others do your work.”
“Mathilde owed me her life,” Conrad said, his lip raising in a sneer. “She sided with that bastard Flynn. I told her that he never wanted her, but she refused to listen and was surprised when he shoved a s
take through her chest. One millimeter more and she would have been dead. One millimeter, and I couldn’t have saved her. We cut out the sickness and she was able to continue as an ugly, ruined thing.”
“And yet, she gave her life for Sia Aoki.”
“Do not speak of Sia to me,” Conrad said, his voice suddenly a hiss. He closed his eyes again and leaned his head back against the wall. “Mathilde took everything from me. Joshua was like a brother to me. And when I turned on him, Mathilde told him everything.”
“So you killed her,” said Viv.
“I allowed her to die,” said Conrad. “For Sia. Only for Sia, that’s what she said. How she could love the woman who replaced her, I will never know. How she could love a woman in that way is a despicable abomination.” The pump was slowing, his skin growing gray.
“You’re killing yourself,” said Viv. “Take that tube out of your chest.”
“I will take as much as I can. You know, Mathilde was barely healed when Joshua forced his way into Sia’s life. Her music was like a drug to him. She had the face of an angel. I warned him to leave her, to kill her in the traditional way. Revenants should not fall in love with humans. He was a fool. He chose her over his own kind. He could have been a king.”
“So you punished her. When you found out she was the one. The Beta. You turned her pain into a spectacle.”
“Yes. Now stop asking me questions, Genevieve. I cannot talk. I am feeling so very weak.”
“You’re dying.”
“I don’t have enough. And you are too young. You still have human blood mingling with the ancient.”
“What’s in the cooler?”
“Look for yourself,” he said, gesturing limply. “You and I are going to make them ours. Mathilde has been coming down here every day and pumping her own heart’s blood. We are the same, she and I. Our blood. She is dead, and can no longer interfere. She cannot command them to turn on me. I am the only one left now. They will obey me.”
“But Sia carries your sister’s heart.”
“Just as Mathilde always wanted,” said Conrad. “Since the first day she saw her, she wanted her. She would have set her free, had she known I would not find her again. She thought Sia would be safe here, where she could look over her. But she was wrong.”
“You tore Sia apart anyway,” said Viv, reaching for the handle of the walk-in. “You did it without putting her to sleep. You did it in front of a crowd, like she was an animal.”
“She was just a human,” he said.
“Not any more,” said Viv.
“How do you know that? Did she survive the experiment?”
Viv looked over to see Conrad studying her. Viv smiled.
“You are weak,” she said. “And Sia has Mathilde’s heart.”
“You said that already,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You are mine, Genevieve, what are you keeping from me?”
“You underestimate us,” said Viv. She opened the cooler and walked in, running her finger over the hundreds of vials of dark red blood. Heart’s blood. From Mathilde’s heart. A vial for each child. She felt Conrad rise shakily and stand at the door of the cooler.
“How much do they need?” she said.
“Naught but a drop,” said Conrad. “Injected deep into their hearts.”
“They had lives before you came,” she said, her back to him. “They were happy, safe. They were loved.”
“Love doesn’t last,” he said. “They’ll be safer now that they’re mine.”
“And you’ll do what to them? Make them do your bidding?”
“They will not keep to the shadows,” said Conrad. “I’m finished with trying to make humanity feel comfortable. What was your word? Safe. There is no safe. I will show the people what fear is. I will set their children loose upon the world and they will know what it is to fear.”
“And what of the old ways?” said Viv. “The laws that you are so interested in. What of beauty and darkness and shadows?”
“We are terrifying enough in the light,” he said. “What use have I for darkness?”
“They are all dying up here in the light,” she said. “Can you hear the music?”
“What music?” he said.
“You can’t hear her?” said Viv. “It’s her, you know. Sia. She’ll be the end of you.”
“I’ll make her see,” he said. “She can still be mine.”
“She has Joshua Flynn’s blood in her veins.”
“And you have mine,” said Conrad. “And yet, you are no friend, are you, Genevieve? Why do you disobey? How can you? You are meant to be mine.”
“I only speak the truth,” said Viv. “You shouldn’t have lied to me.”
“When did I lie?” His mouth twitched as though he were fighting a smile.
“You said I wouldn’t feel it,” she said. “You said I wouldn’t ever think of it again.”
“I also said you’d killed him.”
Viv turned then and stared at Conrad. He pulled the tube out of his chest with a sucking sound. He gritted his teeth and tossed it on the floor. And then he smiled.
“Humans are always so eager to believe,” he said. “You may have cut him, yes. But I healed him. He’s here, now. Do you want me to pull out his IV? Do you want me to wake him and show him what his mother has become?”
“No,” Viv said, her voice a whisper. “And yes.”
“Do not cross me ever again,” said Conrad, pulling his shirt back on. “Unless poor little Hunter deserves to die a second time.”
“You have no right,” said Viv, her voice coming from somewhere deep inside of her. Somewhere raw and dark. Somewhere full of shadows. Her teeth came down.
“I have every right,” said Conrad. “And soon, I’ll have an army of sweet children. When they get older, we’ll have enough heart’s blood to make my real army. And when that time comes, we’ll cut out their borrowed hearts and put them into beings more powerful. They’re really just incubators, until they get stronger. Then little Hunter really will die, though his heart will beat on. Now, Dr. White. Come prepare the blood to inject into the children’s hearts.”
“I would like to see him.”
He gestured weakly. “Be my guest. Find him if you can.”
Viv turned to the sea of tiny faces, swallowing thickly. She walked down the aisles, up one row and down another. So many children that her brand new heart hurt at the sight of them. She felt something expanding in her chest as she walked down the perfect lines of beds. Faces of every color, every shape, every size. Babies, toddlers, pre-adolescents, all turned to monsters and forced into servitude. She could help them. She could end this.
And then Viv stopped, unable to move, unable to breathe.
“Hunter,” she moaned. She fell to the ground at the side of his bed. He was small, so small. Impossibly small in his little bed. His face was streaked with dirt and his eyes were crusted with sleep, but he was otherwise perfect. Viv pulled the sheet down to see the scar on his tiny chest.
“Perfect,” she said. She watched as something dripped onto Hunter’s face, and realized she was crying. She smiled through her tears, stroking his tiny face. He was so cold. She was going to warm him. She was going to warm all of them.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to Hunter, and she kissed his face, she kissed his fingers, she kissed his cool little head. She bundled him back up under his blanket and took a step away, unable to tear herself away.
He’s here, she thought.
Stay strong, said Sia.
I don’t know if I can, I’m so weak.
Strength, dear Genevieve, said Sia. For them. All for them.
Viv forced herself to walk away from her boy. Each step felt like plunging into cold water, growing colder with each step away from Hunter.
“Please,” she said, when she stood in front of Conrad.
Conrad stood, gray as a corpse. He took her hand in his. Viv felt the pain filling her up. But something else, too. Strength.
“
I’m stronger than you know,” said Viv. Someone said that to her long ago. Otherwise how did she know to say it?
“That’s more like it,” said Conrad. “You know, you talk about the old ways like you know them. In the old days you wouldn’t even be here. Think of it. A black woman. How odd would that have been?” He laughed. And that’s when Viv saw the small girl. She would know her anywhere. And she knew why Sia had come, and why she hadn’t left.
She was looking at Sia’s daughter.
Viv turned to look at Conrad and she smiled.
“You are not going to survive this,” she said.
“Who’s going to kill me?” he said. “You? Joshua?” He laughed.
Viv stared at him. “She’s not like anyone else. She won’t forgive you. And neither will I.”
“She’ll have to,” he said, anger in his voice. “She’ll have no choice. And I do not seek your forgiveness, Genevieve. You are mine.”
“You’ve torn our children apart and put them together again,” said Viv. Conrad looked at her quickly and Viv smiled.
“What do you mean our children?”
“You didn’t know,” she said. Viv looked to the child again, the spitting image of Sia.
Her name is Ana, Sia told her.
“Ana,” Viv said aloud. “Her name is Ana.”
“How do you know that?” said Conrad. He stumbled weakly toward the child, and Viv saw fear cross his face. The child of his enemy’s lover, the lover who had grown as strong as his enemy. Stronger, perhaps. Viv laughed.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she said.
“Tell her. Tell her I didn’t know. Tell her I’m sorry.”
“How weak you are,” said Viv.
“You’re just a woman,” he said. “What do you know?”
“I know much,” said Viv. “I know Sia, a creature who barely lives in the world. She’s a beautiful spider who draws you to her. And you’ve dismembered her offspring. And mine. Do you fear her, I wonder?”
“I’ll kill her if I have to.”
Viv cocked her head. “Can you hear it now? Can you hear the music?”