The Wounded Ones
Page 23
“That is correct. Very well done. We also used to be rather good friends before all of this war business kicked off.”
She smiled at him, then winced when it pulled too hard on her new skin. “You seem very nice, but I can’t remember you. I’m sorry.”
He stared at her for a long moment, trying to work out what her angle was. “You cannot recall anything about me or our time together?”
“Sometimes . . . sometimes I get little pieces. A girl smiling or a bit of song. Most of the big stuff hasn’t come back yet. Mother says it is burn-out. When somebody uses magic for too long or too hard they can hurt themselves. Lose parts of who they were.”
It was like he had just hit the jackpot. This Sully was the war hero everyone was clamoring for, the savior of the Americas and the human race, and she was a blank slate. He could have her say anything at all, and she wouldn’t even know that she was lying.
“I am very sorry to hear that has happened to you, Ms. Sullivan. I was very fond of the woman that you became, but I am certain that with time I will come to be very close with the new version of you as well.”
She stared at him for a little bit longer, a tiny frown just starting to form. “I remember eating something with you, we were in some sort of restaurant, I think. It was spicy.”
He smiled. “Whenever I passed through town, I would always try to make dinner arrangements with you because you were such delightful company. More often than not you were busy but—”
Gormlaith coughed loudly and they both jumped. She pointed to Pratt, then nodded to the door. He smiled at Sully again. Just as genuine looking as the first time. “If you will excuse me for a moment, I think your mother worries that I am going to tire you out before you have the chance to see your other guests.”
Ceejay and Raavi sneaked in while Gormlaith chased a back-pedaling Pratt around the side of the building. She spat right next to his foot. “You’re to leave her be.”
“Madam, I can assure you that I have no intention of—”
“I said you’re to leave her be. No parades. No news. No anything. Just let them forget her. She’s a chance at a life of her own now that all this is over, I’ll not have you taking that from her. You know how she was before. You know who she was. There’s no telling what’ll come back, but I’d wager you want her as far off as you can get her if it does. Am I right?”
He considered that for a moment then conceded the point with a nod. “Your daughter was a wonderful person, Mrs. Sullivan, but she could be a little abrasive, and in her tender state, perhaps it would be best if she remained in the loving care that only you could provide.”
Gormlaith’s mouth tightened into a thin line amidst the wrinkles. “And a pension for her?”
“Of course. She was injured in the line of duty, after all,” he added benevolently.
“Then I’ll keep her disappeared for you.”
He was about to hold out a hand to shake but he paused. “And if she should regain some portion of her memories, I can rely on you to ensure her . . . complacency?”
“I’m her mother. Nobody else has hooks in her like me,” Gormlaith cackled.
Sully had not taken well to the booming voice of Ceejay or the way that Raavi kept trying to touch her. She’d thrown both of them across the room with a wave of her hand and a pulse of low magic and now they weren’t entirely sure if they were having a conversation or a hostage negotiation.
Ceejay had come back to sit on the stool beside her, but Raavi was hovering near the door. “I’m very, very sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize that you were so . . . sensitive.”
Ceejay laughed. “If only you had brought your sister along, she would have had no trouble getting her hands under Sully’s blankets.”
Sully let out a little snort that might have been a laugh. It was nice to get some suspicions confirmed. “You can come back over. Just don’t prod at me. I’ve had enough of doctors.”
“Right, sorry. Force of habit. Usually when you knock lumps out of yourself, it is me that you call on to get stitched up.”
“I got hurt a lot?”
Ceejay cackled. “You had a collection of scars that you liked to show off at the bar. Particularly when we went out with the secretaries for ladies’ night.” He guffawed. “You were like a shark dropped in a barrel of fish. It was amazing. Before you met us, you were in the navy and I think you must have had a girl in every port and a scar to match. You had a claw mark on your face from some snake-man that you fought in Laos. That was your favorite.”
Sully looked down at the bare skin of her arms. “Guess I’ll have to start over.”
Raavi pointed to the smooth stump of her arm. “That’s a good one to get you going. I hear you had that bitten off by a gryphon.”
The grinding of beak on bones. The thunder of the concussion. Sully stopped breathing for a moment as it came back. Another tiny sliver of who she had been. She tried to cover it with a laugh but the other too glanced at each other nervously. “Aren’t they extinct?”
Ceejay threw back his head and laughed. “They are now.”
Her mother grumbled back into the room to shoo them out as the storm outside came on in earnest. “That’s enough visitors now. You’ll exhaust her. Off with you.”
Marie came in after the clamor of the other visitors had passed and only the distant sound of Gormlaith lambasting them could still be heard. She perched herself carefully on the stool, smoothed her dress over her legs and finally pulled herself together enough to speak.
“Hello, darlin’.”
Sully turned to stare into the fire.
“Sully? It’s me. Marie.”
Sully didn’t look at her.
“I know you’ve forgotten a lot of things. Your momma made that much clear, at least.” Marie sighed. “You weren’t wrong about her, by the way. I could’ve gone my whole life without hearing her hissing at me.”
Sully snuggled down under the furs and let out a little sigh.
“Are you listening to me, darlin’?”
She glanced over at Marie and that little frown returned.
“Do you know me, at all? Don’t you remember me?”
Sully shrugged, then turned back to the fire.
“You were going to marry me, Sully. We were going to have a big wedding in Imperial Park. I was going to walk down the aisle with a parasol and all my bitchy theater friends were gonna come and throw rice.”
Sully yawned and closed her eyes.
“And now you don’t know who I am no more. You don’t even—” Marie cut herself off with a strangled sob. Sully just lay there as she cried. Not saying a word when before she would have had her arms wrapped around Marie before a single tear could fall. When Marie pulled herself together enough to speak, Sully still hadn’t moved a muscle.
“I loved you, Sully. More than anybody I ever loved in all my life. When you come back to yourself, you’re gonna come back to me. No matter what poison your momma’s spittin’ about me. I know you’re gonna come back.”
She slipped down from her seat and leaned over to plant a gentle kiss on Sully’s cheek. Sully turned just before she got there, and their lips brushed against each other. Marie stared down into Sully’s eyes and there was nothing there but confusion. It was more than Marie could stand. She ran out of the house without another word. Her tears were lost in the torrential rain.
Sully jerked upright with all of her senses on edge. There was a strange perfume hanging in the air and she was certain that something had just touched her lips. She ran her tongue across them, and there was a hint of salt there that she couldn’t explain. Closing her eyes, she let her stronger senses roll out through the house and out. Here was the familiar weight of her mother and the demon. There was the cluster of one man with magic and two without. She strained, but that was all that she could feel. When she opened her eyes
again, she turned away from the fire and peered into the deep shadows that dominated her mother’s home. She whispered, “Is someone there?”
Marie nearly crashed right into Gormlaith on the path. The hag was grinning as rivulets of water traced the terrible topography of her face. “Told you. Didn’t I? I told you she’d forgotten about you. She always deserved better than your kind. Even when you was living, you was trash. She’s going to have a life for herself now. Don’t need any ticks latched on her legs, slowing her down.”
The moonlight flashed off Marie’s fangs as she hissed at the old woman. “Do you even know how much she hated you? She couldn’t even speak about you without feeling sick. Does she remember that? Shall I go and tell her?”
Gormlaith cackled. “Who is she going to listen to, her mother or a stranger?”
The old woman barged past Marie without a care in the world, then called back over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t be trying to come back if I were you. There’s charms you can lay down against bloodsuckers and I’ll be laying them.”
“I wouldn’t come back here if it was the last shit-heap on the planet. My darlin’ will come and find me. She always does. You’ll see.”
Gormlaith’s laughter faded off into the rain, and Marie was left alone again.
She started trailing along the path toward firmer land and the cars, following the dull glow of warmth still left in the others’ footprints. Her pink tears washed away in the rain just as quickly as she cried them. She was almost to the edge of the swamp when something huge and dark burst out of the shallows to loom over her. Mol Kalath shook its wings to rid itself of the worst of the bog-slime, then crouched low enough that Marie could smell the brimstone in the air around it. She had never seen a demon up close before. It terrified her, but she faintly remembered something Sully had said about vampires being hard for them to see. She edged a little further along the path, but the bird-thing let out a low rumbling croak that stopped her in her tracks. “SHE IS COMING BACK.”
Marie whispered. “She is. She is coming back.”
“SAFE TRAVELS, COLD ONE. SHE WILL COME FOR YOU SOON ENOUGH.”
She managed another couple of stumbling steps away before she turned back again. “Thank you.”
Mol Kalath took flight, spiraling up into the storm, gaining speed and height with each pull of its wings. When it broke through the clouds it could see the dullest glow of the sunrise in the east, barely brighter than the night sky but clear enough to a demon’s senses. It whispered, “SHE IS COMING BACK.”
Acknowledgments
All of my thanks to Tricia at Meerkat Press for her ceaseless hard work to bring this book into being. Thanks also to Margaret for her editing prowess, and to my darling wife for being very understanding about the whole “waking up at 2 a.m. to add just a little bit more to the gryphon scene” malarkey.
About the Author
G. D. Penman is the author of the Witch of Empire trilogy, Dungeons of Strata, and many other books.
Before finally realizing that the career’s advisor lied to him about making a living as an author, G. D. Penman worked as a tabletop game designer, as the VIP Manager of a national telecoms company and literally every awful demeaning job that you can think of in-between.
He is a veteran of the battlefields of Azeroth, The Northern Realms, Lordran, Tamriel and Thedas, but he left his heart in Baldur’s Gate.
Nowadays he is fulfilling his destiny as a fat, bearded man by writing fantasy novels and smoking a pipe.
He lives in Dundee, Scotland with his wife, children, dog and cats. Just . . . so many cats.
Did you enjoy this book?
If so, word-of-mouth recommendations and online reviews are critical to the success of any book, so we hope you’ll tell your friends about it and consider leaving a review at your favorite bookseller’s or library’s website.
Visit us at www.meerkatpress.com for our full catalog.
Meerkat Press
Atlanta