Melancholy: Episode 3

by Charlotte McConaghy

  “Theoretically,” she repeats. I feel like throttling the woman.

  We keep Ben in the cage a little longer, just to be sure. He doesn’t argue or complain. He just sits quietly, but instead of the eerie restlessness he used to have, he now exudes sad contemplation. His clothes are dirty and torn, he has blood smeared all over his hands and face, and the stench of his cell must be of death – because though we removed the eaten carcass of the second Fury, we could not clean the remnants away.

  I stay and watch him even after the others have gone to get lunch. I feel inexplicably compelled by him.

  “How much do you remember, Old Man Fury?” I ask him, sitting on the edge of a bench with my legs swinging beneath me.

  His milky eyes find me with a bit of a squint. “All of it. All the things I’ve seen, and all the things I’ve done.”

  “What did it feel like?”

  Ben doesn’t reply.

  “I don’t feel sorry for you,” I tell him bluntly. “It’s right that you should go through what you did to the others.”

  “Karma,” he comments with a faint, empty smile.

  “Justice. And it’s unfair, in fact, that you were the one to get turned back.”

  Ben looks at me properly. And he says, “I think it’s fair.”

  On impulse, I open the glass door and step inside with him. I crouch and help him to his feet. He shakes a little, that old-age sort of shaking. It’s incredibly strange to see a feeble geriatric in place of the strong, savage predator who sat in here yesterday. I help him to the seat in the lab and get him some more water.

  “You in any pain?” I ask.

  “Wouldn’t I deserve it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name, young lady?”

  “Raven.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Raven.” I fold my arms. “I was born here and I’ll die here. Free.”

  “But why were you named for dead creatures?”

  I swallow, unsettled by the question. “What were you named for?”

  “Nothing.” He finishes his water and hands me the cup. I turn to refill it for him. “Remembering things lost is a fool’s game,” he says softly.

  When I turn back he is taking the scalpel from the bench.

  And he is slicing it straight through his own throat.

  The cup drops from my hand and smashes onto the floor. I lurch forward in shock to press my palms against the gaping wound in his neck, but there’s way too much blood and it’s too slippery to even keep any pressure there. The color drains quickly from his face and he slumps onto me. Together we slide to the floor and I feel his life pour out of him and we are trapped in a macabre sort of embrace as Ben Collingsworth dies atop me.

  It is Quinn who finds me and helps to drag me out from beneath the dead body. I am shaking and covered in Ben’s thick blood, so pungent that I gag violently.

  “What happened?” Quinn keeps asking me, and I blink, trying to wrap my mind around the question.

  “I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I … He remembered too much.”

  *

  There’s a tidal wave and it’s coming for me. Didn’t I always wish to drown?

  I wake, disoriented. Ben’s blood is still all over me; I’m choking on the stench of it. I throw off the sheet but it gets tangled in my feet and I trip clumsily to the ground. Blinking, I look down at myself. There is no blood. I’m washed and clean.

  Footsteps sound and I look up to see Quinn appearing in the doorway. He sits on the edge of the bed and runs his hand through my red hair.

  “Did you kill him?” he asks me.

  And I hate him for it.

  I hate him.

  I hate him for his weakness and his lies, and for this pathetic, empty relationship of ours. I hate that he has always pitied me and patronized me, I hate that he doesn’t trust me or believe me, but most of all I hate that he doesn’t know me, not even a little. I am a stranger to him because he doesn’t look at me. I am invisible. I am invisible to everyone in this whole fucking compound and I hate them all, I hate the whole world and I hate myself most of all.

  A little piece of poison was born on the day I slipped out of my mother’s womb and killed her in the process.

  I rise to my feet. I don’t look at Quinn; I will never look at him again. He’s dead to me. I get dressed and walk out into the scorching hot sun, and as I walk down the main street of our compound I see people emerging from the steps to the tunnel.

  She’s at the front. Josephine Luquet. She doesn’t look like she did when she first got here. Not plain or sullen or weak or sickly. Or perhaps she does, and it is me who looks at her with different eyes. Either way, as she walks toward me now I see something entirely different.

  At the back of the group is Luke Townsend, and my heart is splintering with longing. It hurts so much and I don’t know where to put it or how to get it out of me – I think I’m drowning after all, drowning not in love, but in the scorching shame of love.

  “I told you what would happen if you came back here,” Quinn’s hard voice speaks from behind me.

  The bedraggled group faces us. I count them quickly and see that three haven’t returned with them. One of them is Shadow.

  “We took out all stock of the sadness cure,” Josephine says. She looks tired, but there’s a clarity to her incredible eyes, a sharp kind of certainty that makes her seem very strong. “It’ll take them a while to manufacture more, so it buys us some time.”

  “Some time to do what?” Quinn asks.

  “Take out the Ministers,” she replies simply.

  We stare at her. I feel a thrill over my skin, under my bones. It’s the audacity of it. The sheer, courageous lunacy. For the first time since she arrived in my home I think I like Josephine Luquet. I think I like her a hell of a lot more than I like my coward of a boyfriend.

  Until she says, “We came back because this is our home, and because Luke is innocent of the murder charges. It was Raven who killed four people.”

  I freeze. “What?”

  “What are you talking about?” Quinn snaps.

  A few resisters have crowded around, excited to see the returned. At Josi’s words, suspicion fills their eyes. They’ll want to believe this. They hate me and they love Luke.

  “Can we go somewhere and discuss this?” Josi asks.

  “Say your piece before I have you all put through the gate,” Quinn orders.

  I watch her eyes search for and find Luke. He gives her a small, simple look, but it crystallizes everything for me because it is intimate. He will never look at me that way. Just as Quinn will never.

  Josephine takes a breath. “Fine. It’s simple. The whole premise of your case against Luke doesn’t make sense. You condemned him because you were convinced he had motivation. That there was this old feud between him, Batch and Lace. You then said he had means because of the drug in his system that caused him to have violent blackouts. But the two cancel each other out. The very nature of those blackouts is the complete loss of your own personality, all your memories, all the thoughts and feelings that make you you. You don’t care who you kill – the bloodlust is blind. Luke wouldn’t have been in the right mind to recall a conflict, search out those people and kill them. On top of that, the drug doesn’t make you turn any old time. It takes years to build in your system to the point of a complete blackout.”

  “You said it works differently for adults and children,” Quinn argues.

  “Not that differently.” She shakes her head. “Luke’s had symptoms, sure. But he wouldn’t have been likely to turn for a couple of years. Beyond all of that, the third and fourth murders can’t have been him, because Luke and I went to bed only fifteen minutes before I woke up and found the bodies. It wasn’t enough time. Besides which, if he had turned that morning, I’d be the one who was dead, as I was lying right next to him in bed.”

  “So you were sleeping together without permission!” I accuse desperately.
I am ignored.

  “So then what? What are you saying happened?” Quinn presses.

  “Luke’s disoriented state and lack of memory is conducive with him having been drugged. It would have been easy for someone to set it all up to look like it was Luke. The link between the people who were murdered proves, if anything, that someone was trying to frame him. The only people who knew about the drug in his system were the two of you, plus Dodge and Ranya. Ranya’s a treacherous bitch, as we have already established. But Raven’s the only one with real motive.”

  “What motive?” Quinn snarls.

  Josephine meets my eyes. “She’s in love with him.” Her hands squeeze my insides and my heart jackhammers. No. “And we all know how Raven handles rejection.”

  You bitch.

  They’re all staring at me with outrage and scorn. I am mortified.

  “Is that true?” Quinn asks me. In front of the whole compound. I stare at him with more hatred than I know what to do with. I can see in his face that he already believes them. There’s not even a scrap of loyalty in the man.

  So I say nothing. Why do I say nothing?

  Because fuck them all, that’s why.

  Quinn motions for a couple of guys to march me to the holding cell to await my punishment.

  “I challenge you!” I say abruptly, wrenching my arms from their rough grips. “I have a right to challenge my accuser! Josephine Luquet, I challenge you to a bout.”

  There’s silence in the hot, dusty afternoon.

  It’s Josi who replies, surprisingly. “She’s right,” the girl says. “I accept.”

  I am escorted home to wait until the fight. They aren’t watching for it, so it’s easy. Easy to ask for permission to go to the toilet, and while I’m in there to remove the blade from my leg razor and slip it into my sock.

  *

  Josephine

  “That was too easy,” I mutter. I am pacing my old living room. It’s weird to be back here after I never thought I would be. Pace, Will, Eric and Luke sit squeezed together on the couch, watching me.

  “Why does everything have to be too easy?” Will moans. “Why can’t anything just be easy?”

  “Quinn believed it too easily.”

  “That’s because it’s obvious she’s guilty,” Pace points out.

  I shake my head. Something still feels off. After all this time, I finally figured out the truth, and I thought it would put an end to the nagging frustration at the back of my mind. But it’s still there, still nagging away. A piece I missed.

  “It’s not your concern. Focus on the fight,” Luke orders me. Claire’s already put his broken hand in a cast, which he reaches inside to itch. She and Tobias were fine, thank god. They pretty much holed up in their house, and it was Raven, surprisingly, who took them food.

  Luke hasn’t asked me to step aside and let him fight her. I know he won’t – we’ve moved beyond him trying to protect me from stuff. He knows what’ll happen if he takes a flogging for me again. I made the accusation, and we should have been smarter about letting him do it, but we weren’t, so I’m the one who was challenged. No way around it. This is my fight.

  It feels right, anyway. It feels like facing Raven was always going to be my fight. I have to beat her, or she walks free for the murders. So I will. I’m not sure what we’ll do with her after that – I don’t want to kill anyone ever again, frankly, and no matter what she’s done I don’t believe sending her out to the Furies is right.

  “Time to go,” Eric announces, before I can come to any conclusions.

  *

  Every member of The Inferno has come to watch. They are crowded around the combat ring as I push through them to the middle. Their eyes don’t belie much confidence in me. Raven is already here, readiness in every muscle.

  She smiles and it looks brittle. “I haven’t forgotten our last fight. It was a joke, Josephine. You can accuse me all you want, but you’ll never be able to face me with any real strength, in any way that matters.”

  There’s a nervous shuffle moving through the onlookers. They know she’s right. They know I’m about to have my ass handed to me on a platter, and that the murderess will go free.

  But what they don’t know is that I’m not the woman I was a year ago.

  “You challenged me. I’m here.”

  “Fine,” Raven says with a bitter, hopeless laugh of regret. She believes to her bones that she’s going to win.

  I walk to meet her. My eyes find Luke’s. I feel his power, and I feel my own.

  “Begin,” Quinn says.

  She comes at me, hard and fast. But what I once thought was fast is now … not. She is fast, but she is not as fast as I am.

  Cello music begins in my mind and it centers me in my body, in every single inch of it. I can feel it, feel every movement, every flinch and tense and stretch.

  I run at her and slide beneath her blow, arching backwards and spinning to slash out with my right arm. I take out her knees and I am already sliding up to hammer my elbow into her neck as she falls, slamming her heavily to the ground. Twisting to drop with her, I land with my knee on her chest, pinning her. Blood spurts from her mouth and she is so shocked I decide to give her a moment to regain herself.

  Rising, I stand back.

  I become aware of the absolute incredulity of our audience. I don’t let it breach my walls. I have to stay present. Raven’s a formidable opponent.

  She coughs and manages to get to her feet. She’s woozy, I can see.

  This time when she comes at me it’s with wariness, and far more concentration. A left jab, followed by a right. I block them and when she’s overextended I swing a deep left hook into her unprotected kidneys. The pain shocks her and I take the moment to hit her twice in the nose, two fast right jabs.

  I duck low and hit her in the solar plexus, and as she stumbles back I smash her in the side of the head.

  Raven hits the ground. I straighten, waiting for her to tap out.

  But she rises to her feet. Faces me. Wipes blood from her eyes so that she can look into mine. “You got back up,” Raven says. “You got back up every time. The least I can do is the same.”

  And it hurts. The sudden appearance of her humanity, her grace. I long for life to have been different, for the world to have been different. I long for her to have known love and kindness, instead of whatever cruelty drove her to such hatred. I regret that I must do this. I regret.

  Raven attacks me, and this time her blows are harder, faster, as though she has found some reserve within her.

  I block and block, my right coming up to guard, my left staying low to guard; we move so swiftly together it’s a blur, a dance, a thing I never imagined I’d be capable of. I feel her fist sweep by my jaw, only just missing.

  Sometimes you have to get hit.

  She’s holding herself tight now, aware of any attacks I might make. She’s being careful. So I feint right, duck in and jab low, knowing it will leave my whole left side wide open to her. She takes the bait, swinging a mighty right blow into my face, but I am waiting for it and I know where her center of gravity will be and I know how unguarded her side will be. I lunge into the blow, taking it harder than I would have, but tilting so that I can send my boot into her ribs. I feel them crack beneath my kick.

  Raven gasps in pain, stumbling backwards.

  I don’t give her any respite; I want this to be over. I follow, hitting her in the side of the head, and again as she goes down. I jam my arm beneath her chin, pinning her.

  “Yield,” I order her. “Or I’ll kill you.”

  Her eyes are struggling to focus. “You won’t kill me.”

  “Once upon a time I wouldn’t have. A lot’s changed.” The truth is in my eyes.

  Raven gives a feral scream of rage and taps out. I rise from her body. My cheek stings from her blow, but it was the only one she landed.

  I feel cold, and older than I am. The crowd converges on us. Several people lift Raven and carry her to the holding cel
l. Quinn hasn’t moved from his spot; he appears ghostly.

  People are looking at me differently, I realize. There is furtive awe in their glances now and it stirs something discomforting in me. I think I’d prefer them to think me the bratty girl they disregarded once upon a time.

  Luke joins me. “Welcome to the other side,” he says grimly. “They’ll never look at you the same way again.”

  “Can we go home?”

  He nods. “I’m proud of you. It was a thankless task but someone had to do it.”

  I shake my head wearily. “Don’t be proud. This was ugly.”

  “Most things are.”

  Chapter 30

  September 16th, 2066

  Luke

  After the bout Josi sleeps while I sit beside her, contemplating the red, red moon in the sky.

  The drug works in cycles. Just as the body does. Its effects will be bad again soon, and then not so bad, and so on. Now that I know I haven’t been turning all year, I guess it’s safe to assume the effects are more like what happened to Josi than we initially thought – and maybe, like her, I’ll only change on the blood moon. For her it took a couple of years to progress to the point of a proper blackout, but I can feel it building. My skin itches and my teeth ache.

  I know precisely what it feels like to believe you’ve murdered someone without any memory of it, and it’s not a feeling I wish to endure again. And if I am to assume it’ll only happen once a year, then it means, basically, that I have twelve months to destroy Falon Shay before I use the antidote to make myself normal again.

  And now I just have to get through tonight.

  I’m not sure what time it is when I climb from bed and make my way to the holding cell. Still early in the night, from the feel of the moon tugging at my insides.

  Raven’s sitting in the corner of the room, face swollen and bloody. I don’t know why I’m here, but I enter and sit in the opposite corner.

  “Why?” I ask her. “I’m struggling to believe you could be broken enough to do this simply because I didn’t want you.”

  She watches me with her black eyes, but she says nothing.