A Beast of Nine Horns, page 26
part #3 of Into Vermilion Series
The Scourge Maiden cometh. The Scourge Maiden cometh.
Something had to give. And something did.
Coral knew what she had to do.
Chapter 33
The night clouds were black as ink when Coral slipped out of the Instatel, gym bag over her shoulder, leaving the neon islet—and the tatters of her lie of a life—behind her. She walked quickly at first, chased by the hungering, snapping things at the back of her thoughts. But as the groves overtook the rough hem of Almagest’s outskirts, her pace slowed to a crawl.
In her bag, Crux Caedis weighed her shoulder. An ache was already starting. And not just in her muscles.
Gaze drifting skyward, Coral studied the vault of the clouds, finding only the barest hint of gray lit by the shrouded moon. Tears welled in her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall. She had to be stronger than that if she was to survive what was coming.
Because before this was over, a lot more people would be cursing her birth.
Sharpening her thoughts, folding optimism and despair into her own brand of cursed steel, she wandered along the dark wooded road toward the center of town.
“Coral!”
She stopped abruptly, staggering over the skip in her heartbeat. Her jaw tightened, and her chest immediately hurt. She’d been so absorbed in her own darkness she hadn’t noticed the footsteps following her. Cursing to herself, she turned and found Tamara silhouetted against the orange corona of a streetlight.
“Coral, where’re ya goin’?” Tamara hurried nearer, her steps crisp on the cracked pavement.
“Don’t come any closer,” Coral shouted.
Tamara halted. A hurt look spread across her lovely face.
Coral took a deep breath. “Don’t come closer, or it’ll just make this harder.”
Tamara didn’t say anything. She just stood there, fifteen feet away, staring at her, cutting Coral with her softness.
Heart wrenching, soul cracking, Coral forced the words out. “I… I can’t go on like this, Tams. Something’s gotta change. And that something is this.” She shrugged, and her voice went small and weak. “I’m leavin’.”
Hurt crashed anew over Tamara’s features, but it was near-instantly swallowed up by a radiant smile. “Oh, is that what this is?” she said through a sad little laugh. “I feel like I recognize this bit from somewhere.”
“This ain’t a bit. I…” She swallowed hard, fought for the words. “Listen. You… Ever since we met, you’ve been the absolute best thing in my life. And especially since…” She gestured inarticulately at their surroundings. “You’ve been my everything, Tams. And that’s what makes this so fuckin’ hard. I… I’ve got somethin’ I’ve gotta do. But it’s somethin’ I’ve gotta do on my own. And that means—”
“And that means you’re gonna break up with me so I won’t wanna follow ya. Is that it?”
Stunned, Coral stared at her, feeling those words like a fist in her gut. Though she wasn’t far off, she still felt her soul fracture with guilt and loss.
And Tamara all but laughed at Coral’s reaction. She gave a slow blink, her giggle gliding like silk through the empty street. “I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt,” she said, stepping nearer, “and assume that wasn’t your plan. ’Cause if it was, then your plan was trash. I know you love the shit outta me.”
Coral tried to find some strength to cling to. If she crumbled now, leaving would be impossible. She’d just give herself back to the dark indulgence of inaction. But her will was already slipping between her fingers like the ashes of a torched rose. Before she knew it, Tamara had laced her arms around her neck and stood gazing lovingly into her eyes. What remained of her resistance bled out. Coral knew she couldn’t bring herself to hurt her.
For a long moment they stood there, sharing an eroding look. Finally, a smile flickered through Tamara’s lips. “C’mon, enough of this shit trope. What’s this about?”
Coral sagged in defeat. She’d hoped to take the easy way out. Clinging to what they had, not wanting to ever forget the look of unconditional affection sparkling in Tamara’s cocoa eyes, she leaned in and kissed her. She wanted to press the sensation into her, make it a part of her forever, however long forever lasted.
When they broke, Coral leaned her forehead into Tamara’s. “I have to leave.”
Tamara said nothing. In the silence, it all boiled to the surface, flotsam from a wreck that had spent the last six weeks sloughing to the seabed. When it seemed Tamara would hold her silence forever, at last she spoke. “This is because of those men the other night. This is a protect-me-by-separatin’ kinda thing, ain’t it?”
Coral licked her lips, hating how easily Tamara could read her. “There’s more to it than that.” She didn’t want to mention how the bloodbath had left her fragile and confused, even doubting who she was. With a sigh, Coral slipped her bag from her shoulder to give it a rest. She stepped over to the curb and settled herself down on a cracked bulge of asphalt caused by a particularly adventurous root.
“I keep seeing it on the news, Tams. I keep seeing the pain and the bloodshed, all the violence in the Cicatrix. All the violence outta the Cicatrix, too. I see the vigilantes shootin’ up bands of crims, and the craters from artillery fire. The victims of the scourge. I see all of that, and I can’t unsee it. Because…” She blinked her tears back and took a deep, steadying breath. “Because it’s all my fault.”
Tamara sat down beside her. “What’re you talkin’ ’bout? It ain’t your fault?”
“Yeah it is. It’s all directly my fault.” She held Tamara’s gaze, and she saw something shift then. “I’ve been lyin’ to you. All this time, I’ve been tellin’ ya I don’t remember anything that happened after I killed Malthus. But…that’s a lie.”
Tamara’s chin dipped in a subtle nod. “I know.”
“Wha?” Coral’s insides twisted at those words. Her mind stuttered and restarted, panic and denial racing through her. “But… B-bullshit. How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I’ve spent the last six years pickin’ up on all the little quirks that make you Coral. Things you’ve always tried keepin’ to yourself. I know you can’t stand bell peppers, but never once complained about ’em when they showed up in Mama’s cookin’. I know the reason you play Tamamo in Garnet Cross is ’cause you’re afraid you’re not good enough to play a serious character. And I know the ending of Kirakera moves you to tears every single time you watch it.” She giggled. “It was so cute how you tried to pretend you weren’t cryin’ the other night.” Her laugh turned into a sigh, and she crossed her arms. “I don’t know everything about you. I never could. But I know enough to realize when something’s off. And frankly, you go distant and weird every time our conversations touch on those memories you supposedly forgot. Gimme some credit here, girl. I ain’t that oblivious.”
“But if…if ya knew, then why’d you let me keep lyin’ to you about it?”
“Because I knew you’d tell me when you were ready. And I didn’t think you’d go and do somethin’ like this.” Tamara propped her chin in her hand and looked off down the road, toward the silvery haze of light seeping from beyond the old-growth forest sealing them off from the world. “I guess it might’ve been wrong of me to pretend. Especially after all that talk of us not doin’ that no more. But… I wanted to give you the chance to be who you really wanna be. And if that happens to be a Coral who didn’t remember anything…”
Coral choked. That was precisely who she’d wanted to be. But instead, she was trapped with the memories of what she’d done, with the hunger and the urges and the whispers of malice begging her to gnash, to kill, to slash, to drink. She was trapped within a cloud of afterimages of people she wasn’t, and somewhere in the blur between them was a self she’d forgotten.
“You don’t get it,” Coral said. “I… All the people I’ve killed…”
“C’mon. Those people were gonna kill us. It was them or us, and you know that.”
“No, I ain’t talkin’ ’bout them. Them, too, but in the grand scheme they don’t matter. I’m talkin’ ’bout everyone who’s died since the outbreak began, and even before it. The people taken by the scourge, by the violence… All their blood is on my hands. I did this. All of it. This is the world I created.”
“Coral, no, it’s—”
“Yes it is! Don’t you get it? I’m the Scourge Maiden! I’m the cause of all of this!” She stood abruptly and stomped to the lamp post a few yards away, braced herself against it, and tried to stop the tears streaming down her cheeks. “And…and even if you don’t care, even if you could forgive me for everything I’ve done…do you understand how it feels? A hundred years from now, if mankind survives, what’re the textbooks gonna say? That everything was just great in the 21st century until the Scourge Maiden came and fucked everything! It used to be hemos as a whole, but now I’m the villain of history! If I was never born, the world wouldn’t be on the verge of collapsing!”
She gasped down chilling gusts of night air, tried to control the sobs clenching her heart and lungs. “I’m the villain of history,” she repeated. “But…maybe what the world needs right now is a villain. A villain who can put things right.”
She turned and found Tamara standing at the curb, her eyes gilded by the streetlight’s glow. “You think you can fix this?” she asked. Was that doubt in her tone? Concern? Fear?
“Well, some people think I can.” Her fingertips grazed her shirt, right over the wound in her chest, where Shimazono’s spear had pierced her clean through and screwed the flesh. “People are prayin’ to the Scourge Maiden, askin’ her to save them. To come and unfuck what’s been fucked. To show mercy. And…maybe there is somethin’ I can do. Somethin’ I know that nobody else does.”
A breeze brushed through the pines, a few flakes of snow rustling against Coral’s jacket. She tried to read the silence. Finally, she swallowed hard and continued. “She’s behind what’s happenin’ in Saint Isabeau. You realize that, don’t ya?”
Slowly, Tamara nodded. “Lady Descoteaux.”
“I haven’t seen her on TV or nothin’. But everything happenin’ there… Even if I could forget all the stuff she said, I can just feel her in it. The Hyacinth’s moving toward the hemoclasm. And…if they succeed in bringing it about…things’re gonna get a hell of a lot worse. But I have the power to stop her. Even though it ain’t never gonna make up for the things I’ve done… I can at least stop things from gettin’ any worse.”
Tamara’s eyes widened. “You’re gonna fight Lady Descoteaux?”
Grave as death, Coral nodded.
Tamara chuckled, incredulous. “Coral. That’s… You’re insanely gifted with your powers. I mean, with Crux Caedis in hand, you…” She paused, let the silence fill in the serrated facts. “But you’re just one girl. You can’t stop bullets or dodge artillery shells, and those’re exactly the things they’ll be launchin’ at you if you try to cross into the forbidden zone. Remember those Freedom’s Hammer nutjobs who just tried to get in?”
Tanks go boom. Militia goes pop.
“Crux Caedis or no, there’s no chance in hell you can get into Saint Isabeau without crossin’ somebody’s path. And between all the vigilantes and the rogue guard and the not-rogue guard, not to mention Descoteaux and the rest of the Hyacinth and those blood gargoyle things…fact is, you’d need an army to get into Saint Isabeau.”
“I can get an army.”
She watched the cogs click into position. “The Sons of Gavin…”
Coral exhaled a plume of fog. “They still worship me. And I can use that. I can gather enough of ’em to break through to Saint Isabeau. Then I’ll face Descoteaux. And if Crux Caedis is as strong as I think it is, I can put an end to all this.”
Tamara’s shoulders sagged. Forehead creased, her eyes traced the run of Coral’s legs to the broken asphalt underfoot. When she looked up again, she almost seemed like a different person. “I guess I ain’t gonna be able to convince ya not to go, huh? So that means I’m comin’, too.”
“No, Tams, you can’t come. It’s too—”
“Too dangerous, yeah, yeah, you’re tropin’ on me again. But I’m goin’ with you all the same.”
“No,” Coral said firmly, drawing on all the strength and coldness buried in her heart. “You ain’t. I won’t take you, and that’s final. This is my fight. Not yours.” This was the only shot she had at anything resembling redemption. “Besides,” she said, conviction solidifying in her chest, “your heart’s too pure for this.”
Tamara’s expression hardened instantly, a flicker of fire lighting her pupils. “Pure? And why the hell do you get to decide what I’m too pure for?”
Her sudden ferocity gave Coral pause. She blinked at her, shook her head. “Because. You’re…uhh…”
“Yeah? Because I’m what? Meek? Quiet? Soft?” The last one came out razor sharp. Tamara suddenly reached for the small of her back and pulled something dark seemingly out of nowhere. “Tell me, would a pure girl have this?”
Coral’s breath escaped her. Her pulse hammered in her throat. “Tams…is that a gun?”
“You’re goddamn right it is.” She racked the slide, took the pistol in both hands, and aimed down the sights at an imaginary target somewhere among the trees. “Stole it off one of those assassins.”
Coral tried to find words, but nothing would materialize. She just stared and watched as Tamara uncocked the pistol and returned it to her waistband.
“Pure,” Tamara scoffed. “You’ve got it so backwards, Coral. I ain’t pure. I’m twisted as fuck.”
“What…?”
“Just look at me. I fell in love with my best friend, and I’m so sick with that love that I don’t even give a shit you’re a hemomancer. I threw my entire future away for a hemo. And after you slaughtered Shimazono and his men, any normal person would’ve turned and run. But not me. I ran even faster toward you. What kind of sick person does that make me?”
“No,” Coral said. “You ain’t sick.”
“No?” Her smile had a strange edge to it, almost mocking. “I threw everything away for a girl who, at the time, I thought couldn’t have possibly cared about me. I left my family without even a word of goodbye. I crossed the vermilion line. I’m a race traitor. You get that, right?” She laughed, sardonic and syrupy and cynical. “The only thing in the whole world I care about is you. But really, ain’t that the same as only caring about myself? I’m selfish, Coral. But that’s fine with me. At some point, I stopped caring about labels like selfish and sick. Society’s approval is worth less than nothing to me after what it’s put us both through.”
Coral stared at her, her breath gone. She’d never seen Tamara this ferocious before. She understood now. The girl had always been a lioness. She’d just been hiding her claws.
Tamara took a deep breath, let it out in a cloud. “Let me tell ya somethin’, Coral. I’ve been watchin’ the news, too. All the hate, the death, the sickness. And it makes me think back to middle school, when those boys tormented me, made sure nobody could help me without bein’ labeled a hemo-sympathizer. And now I see people dyin’ under similar circumstances.”
Coral flinched at the reminder.
Dark fire seethed in Tamara’s pupils. “I know what you’re gonna say. That’s your fault, too, right? Okay. Fine. You wanna take the blame so bad, then take it: the Scourge Maiden brought this hideousness to the surface. You brought man’s worst out of hiding. But you did not create it, Coral. The rot has always been there. And you and I, we’re proof of it, ain’t we?”
Shadows flashed through Tamara’s expression as she let the silence breathe. The moon chose that moment to slide out from behind the cover of the clouds, bathing them in pale light. Coral’s stomach tightened, anxiety and adrenaline mixing. She could feel the pressure of something brewing. The storm was about to break. She needed it to break.
“Read my lips, Coral,” Tamara said at last. “I hate this world. I despise it with every fiber of my goddamn being. I hate it for what it is, and even more for what it pretends to be. I hate that it forced you to hide what you are, that it’s pushed crims to violent cults, that it’s revived the fuckin’ hemo-hunts. The Sons of Gavin… To quote a wise man, they ain’t wrong about everything. All of society is rotten, infected. And I’d love nothin’ more than to tear it all down, burn the infection out from its roots.”
Coral blinked at her, barely able to think straight. Her heart was pounding. “Tams, when did you develop such a revolutionary streak?”
She smiled hollowly. Then she crossed the few remaining steps to Coral, her stride slick with danger. “Tell me something. Why? What’s the point of goin’ off to stop Descoteaux? Why throw away what we’ve got?”
Coral swallowed, let her eyes drift down to her shoes. “Because I… I’m responsible for all this misery. It’s only right that I fix it.”
“I dunno, Coral. You say that like you owe the world somethin’, like it hasn’t spent the last eighteen years breakin’ ya down. And that kinda pisses me off. If we’re gonna do somethin’ big like this, why do it for the world? Fuck the world! Let’s do it for us.”
“W-what?”
“Maybe it doesn’t hit you the same as it does me. But lovin’ a hemo…it changes something in ya, I guess. I’ve been gettin’ less and less comfortable just survivin’. Don’t get me wrong, I love you to death, but I hate living like this. Do you know how bad I wanna scream to everyone I meet that the love of my life’s a hemo, and how little it fuckin’ matters? But I can’t. And all those, those norms at Robby’s who always give us those melty, gooey eyes when we’re together… Their eyes should be meltin’ a hell of a lot more than they are, ’cause we’re more than just two girls in love. I don’t wanna hide anymore. Not from you. Not from society. But for that to happen, something huge has gotta change. Something fundamental.”
Again she spoke those exciting words. And as soon as they left her ears, Coral wanted to hear them again and again.
