Limerence: Book Three of The Cure (Omnibus Edition)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  “Just noticed. She was always watching it from the wall.”

  “You notice more than anyone else.”

  “Nah.”

  My thoughts stay with Raven for a few too-long minutes. Her death is one of the greatest regrets of my life. I didn’t try with her. Sure, she was a bitch, but she’d been through some truly horrible things in her life, and she was strong. It’s so easy to forget how strong, but in fact she spent her life protecting that settlement. She did whatever it took. She was a woman who truly had no line she couldn’t cross. And I led her to her death and left her there alone.

  I can’t help thinking we were more alike than I knew. Only problem was that when her boyfriend betrayed her he did it with malice in his heart, whereas mine did it with love.

  “Do you think I’m making a huge mistake?” I ask.

  “With what?”

  “Getting married.”

  Will snorts. “What’s bothering you?”

  “I dunno,” I sigh.

  Will snatches my hand to stop me from picking my nails incessantly.

  “I can’t give him children,” I admit finally. “My body’s too messed up from all the experiments they did.” Only to Will would I be able to say that.

  “Do you think he cares?”

  I nod.

  “But do you think he cares more than he loves you?”

  “Not right now. But one day he will.”

  “Maybe one day we’ll be dead.”

  “Actually definitely one day we’ll be dead.”

  “Precisely.”

  “He tells me all these stories about how it was for him growing up. Their family was bursting with love. After that there’s no way I’ll be enough for him. He’ll need what he had growing up. Hell, I need what he had.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Numbers. More than two. A group of love.”

  “And what are we?”

  I turn to look at him in the dark. There is suddenly a wound and I’m the one who’s inflicted it. “Of course,” I say. “Sorry. Yes. You’re family.”

  “We’re all family. Which makes this the biggest group of love there’s ever been.”

  I nod, feeling awful. “Sorry. I love you.”

  “I love you too, loser. So get married and be quiet.”

  “I will.”

  He’s still holding my hand and gives it a squeeze. “If I see any errant babies I’ll pinch one for you.”

  “Cheers.”

  There’s a long silence and then he repeats more softly, “One day we’ll be dead.”

  Maybe for most people it’s a pretty empty statement but for us, for those in the tunnels with the hungry beasts at our doors, it feels like it will probably be sooner rather than later. Which makes him right, more right than he knows. I’m surrounded by family. A wedding is what we need, all of us.

  Chapter 10

  September 29th, 2067

  Josephine

  We lie pressed together to survive the cold. We huddle and shiver like dozens of mammals whose body heat is needed to live upon. We touch like family might. Like creatures of a kind, the closeness tender and intimate.

  But really they are monsters and I’m a ghost and we are all waiting out here to dissolve.

  *

  April 1st, 2067

  Josephine

  Today there is a wild wild wind. It picks me up and dances me through the sky. Today it rushes through my heart. Because once upon a time I didn’t believe in love and now he’s waiting for me at the sea cliff.

  I walk past the people who make up this strange, motley family of ours. Shadow is here, leaning on crutches. I don’t have the space in my heart to be angry with him for whatever he’s incapable of offering – I’m already too full. This cliff is crowded with people I love. I feel their presence but I can hardly think, hardly breathe, hardly be. It seemed so silly to me that he wanted me to walk down an aisle to where he waited but now I think I understand the significance. It feels like a choice to make, an action to take. It empowers me and prepares me, this short walk to him. This too-long walk to him.

  The sky above is very dark. Far out on the horizon a bolt of lightning strikes the ocean. I didn’t know this was where we’d marry – he surprised me with the sea and the sky and he looks so handsome with tears in his green eyes.

  I reach him and he takes my hands and suddenly it’s as though we’re alone on the windy cliff. The only two left in this world, just as it felt when we first met. There are words we’re supposed to say but I can’t wait. I kiss him and in his arms the rain ruptures the sky. It’s dark with it. We are drenched to the bone and I can hear nothing but the roar of it around us. A storm I can feel through every inch of my body; the spark of it alights all the places we touch.

  I pull away just a little. Enough to whisper in his ear. “I love you, my darling. Beyond life, beyond death.”

  “And I you,” Luke whispers back, and we are married.

  *

  December 17th, 2067

  Luke

  There’s a gaping dark beneath my feet and I’m just hovering. I’m hovering right above it. It’s sucking. Jesus I can feel it sucking at me. She won’t look at me. And there are all those terrible wounds on her body. That body I know better than my own. The one I’ve kissed and touched and fucked and loved for four years. It’s mine. Her body is mine. I feel sick because she won’t look at me and she’s always looked at me and I’ve always seen a thing in her eyes that makes me know she’s mine. Even when we broke up, even when she hated me for lying there was that thing in her eyes that I could sew into my soul and rely on but it’s not there now it’s not fucking there and I don’t know why I can’t remember why.

  *

  Life has been incomparably large today. I’ve watched both my parents greet their son after eleven years. We’re all shell-shocked and without a clue what to do now. It seems like it should be obvious but it’s not. It’s like when someone dies, everyone sits around feeling lost. This is the same, but without the absence. Dave’s so calm that it’s making the rest of us uncomfortable. Mom has no idea what to say and Dad keeps making awkward jokes and meanwhile I can’t concentrate on the magnitude of it all because my wife is acting like a stranger. She should be here but she’s not.

  I settle Dave into Mom and Dad’s little sleeping-tunnel with a big bottle of whisky. They all sit down to talk but there’s a long silence. I feel very selfish for asking, but I’m about to lose my mind and can’t help it. “Do you know what’s happened with Josi since I’ve been away? Has she been acting weird?”

  Mom erupts into laughter, which is not a good sign. I look at Dad instead, starting to feel nervous. His hands shake, followed by his shoulders and back. “She hasn’t been here,” he finally admits in the halting, trembling speech of his disease. “She disappeared the same night you did.”

  Oh Jesus. “The whole time?”

  “She came back less than a week ago. Found out that you were gone and went straight up to bring you home.”

  “And she didn’t tell you where she’s been?”

  They shake their heads. I look at my brother for something, anything. He was always the one I looked to to make me feel better because he did it so effortlessly but all I see in his eyes now is pity. Pity, like he knows something I haven’t yet worked out.

  “I have to …”

  “It’s fine, go,” Dave says. “I have a lot to catch up on with the folks.”

  I give them each a kiss on the cheek and duck out into the hall.

  *

  I can’t remember that night, the night we both disappeared. I can’t remember anything around it but I can feel it. Josi used to say she could feel the blood moon without having any memory of it. Now I understand what she means. Something bad happened and I’m responsible for it.

  She’s not in the infirmary which means Zach let her walk on the damaged leg. She’s not in our bed-tunnel, or the dining hall or the kitchen or the arena. I find her, instead, gazing
through the cage at the waiting horde of Furies. They aren’t snarling or growling, they’re just staring back at her. It’s disturbingly quiet.

  “Josi?” At the sound of my voice they erupt into their usual hideous noises.

  Josi brushes past me and heads back through the tunnels. There’s a brace around her leg and a crutch in one hand. I don’t think she should be walking on it at all, given that I was very recently able to see its bone.

  “Josi. Stop. Wait.”

  Finally she stops. We’re only a meter from the opening to the kitchen and if there’s anyone in there I’m sure they’ll hear us but I don’t care I can’t think I’m only a question awaiting an answer.

  “What happened?”

  She looks at me. Slowly. And it’s not as though there’s nothing there. It’s just … calm. Everything that’s there is calm.

  I feel myself lurching forward and grabbing at her in terror. I take her arms and we meet the wall behind her and I’m asking did they cure you over and over because I’m so sure in this moment that they have but she says no, no, enough times until I hear it.

  An unsteady breath leaves me. My hands tingle as I drop them. “Sorry. Sorry, darling. I thought …” I shake my head and try to calm down. “I haven’t seen you … It’s not … What’s happened?”

  Josi studies me. Her one blue eye is very bright. There’s no expression in her face. “Do you have time missing from when they captured you?”

  I swallow. Nod. My guts churn with guilt: another of my goddamn lies come back to haunt us. Fifteen months ago I told her I’d taken the antidote for the drug that made first Josi and then me a slave to the blood moon. But I hadn’t. I wanted the power it afforded me, the one that would allow me to kill Falon Shay. I craved the blood moon. What is it about me that lies and lies and lies? I hate that piece. I wish I could kill that piece.

  “How much do you remember?”

  I know the answer to this question well. I’ve spent the last three months lying in a white cell thinking about it. “I remember being in the city. Then nothing until I woke inside the lab.”

  Her eyes narrow fractionally as she processes this.

  “That’s a big chunk, isn’t it? What happened? How did I get taken?”

  She’s very careful as she forms her words. I can see it. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  “Josi …”

  “Luke. Honestly. Just leave those days behind. It’ll be better, I promise. They’re over.”

  “I need—”

  “Take a breath.”

  I don’t understand what’s going on but I can feel something bad. I try to breathe.

  “Look at me. This will hurt.”

  I swallow and find the courage to look at her.

  “You’re my favorite person in the world. And we’re both okay. Everything’s okay, I promise. But I can’t be your wife anymore.”

  I blink. “I don’t … wait, what?”

  She’s so calm. “I’m not capable of it. I’m different now.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Are you insane? Of course it’s important!”

  “I can’t talk about it yet.”

  “What’s going on? Please, you have to tell me what’s going on.”

  “Just listen to me.” She covers my mouth with her hand and stares into my eyes. “Listen. I adored you. My whole heart was yours. But the thing we shared isn’t inside me anymore. I don’t love you.”

  I pull away from her and shake my head. This is nonsense. “It’s like last time, that’s all. I’m an asshole but we both know that and I’ll spend the rest of our lives making it up to you—”

  “It’s not about that. I don’t care that you lied. Truly. It’s so unbelievably small to me now.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m not angry. I don’t feel anything close to anger.”

  “How?”

  “You can’t see it now but there’s peace deep inside and it has nothing to do with anger or sadness or even love. It’s just … quiet. It’s about wilderness.”

  “What? I don’t understand. You don’t sound anything like yourself. You sound like a fucking drone.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “I need you to talk to me, darling. Tell me what’s wrong. What did they do to you?” My voice breaks and my heart breaks and— “What did they do to you?”

  “Nothing. Nothing, I swear. I’m fine.”

  “Was it Shay?”

  “No, it wasn’t Shay.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I start crying as I run my hands over her arms and shoulders and face and neck. The burns on her, and the scars, my god. “You don’t feel right, baby. I can’t feel you. I can’t feel you.”

  “I’m fine,” she says. “I’m fine.”

  “Where are you?”

  She closes her eyes as though in pain. “I’m right here but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be with you. I’m not … the same.”

  “Open your eyes. Look at me.”

  She doesn’t.

  “Look at me.”

  Reluctantly Josephine opens her eyes.

  “Look at me and tell me you don’t love me.”

  She licks her lips, just a darting of her tongue. Holds my eyes and calmly says, “I don’t love you, Luke. I’m so sorry. I wish I could. I hate hurting you. I’m so sorry.”

  I feel sick because I believe her. I actually believe her. I’m falling into the gaping fucking darkness and I can’t catch hold of anything. She reaches to touch my face. Her fingers slip on the tears there. I wrench away from her, my nerve endings too raw to be touched.

  This isn’t happening. I shake my head again. Take a deep breath. Stop the tears, stop the panic, stop everything. I allow my certainty reign. There are things I know and then there are things I know.

  “Josi,” I say softly. “Listen to me now. I don’t understand what’s going on and I don’t know what’s happened to you. But I’ll look after you, and if you don’t want that then I’ll just wait. For as long as it takes, forever. I love you beyond life, beyond death.”

  There is a long, slow moment. We look at each other quietly. I remember so many moments, so much love. We have an embarrassment of love between us.

  Only she says, “I never thought it possible but there are things bigger than love, and life, and even death. I’m sorry.”

  Chapter 11

  There was once a girl who lived in a snow-covered forest. She was the only girl in this forest, indeed she was the only girl in any forest, or so it seemed to her. She wandered alone, day after day. She was the loneliest creature to ever exist. Once she saw a bird of prey and fearing it, fled. But the bird sat in the branches of a fir tree and sang sweetly to her. She heard the truth in its song and knew there had never been a girl in the forest to begin with, only one bird of prey and now a second, come to share its voice with her. They might be the last two in the world, but they were two, and that mattered.

  *

  December 20th, 2067

  Josephine

  If I could wish for anything it wouldn’t be for the return of love. It would be for Luke’s escape from the pain it causes.

  “Love?”

  We sit in the silence created by Dave’s words.

  “Love?” Claire repeats.

  The dining tunnel is quiet tonight. The kids have all been sent to bed and the adults have gathered to discuss what is to become of life, our first meeting since Luke and I returned. I’m at the end of the long narrow table, in my usual spot. Luke is at the opposite end, in his usual spot. Between us sit Dave, Claire, Tobias, Will, Pace, Eric, Blue, Zachariah, Shadow and last of all is Guillaume, whom I belatedly recognize as the man whose foot I chopped off. I haven’t seen him or the other members of his family since I got back, and I look at him now with faint relief that he survived that brutal day.

  “If he was planning this when I was there, he never told me,” Zach says of his father.

>   “Do we know when?” Luke asks but Dave shakes his head.

  “If the drug has been successfully tested on Dave then they’ll administer it soon and they won’t make the mistake of giving any warning like they did with the sadness cure,” Shadow says.

  “It’s not a drug,” Dave says. He clears his throat. “I mean, it’s not just a drug.”

  “So what is it?”

  “They use a system of shocks to different parts of the brain and then inject you with neural pathway stimulants that trigger small seizures every time your brain fills with love chemicals like dopamine, so it immediately trains itself out of creating those chemicals. It’s pretty genius, actually.”

  There is a horrified silence.

  “Good god,” Claire whispers.

  “Doctor Frankenstein, eat your heart out,” Zach mutters.

  “Did they do this to you?” Luke demands.

  Dave nods.

  “Did it … hurt?”

  It seems like a stupid question to me – of course it hurt. My eyes dart up to the roof of the tunnel. Rationally I know it’s not getting any lower but I could have sworn there was more space in here a minute ago.

  “We need more information,” Eric says.

  “We always need more information,” Pace mutters.

  “What do we want here?” Luke asks. “In plain terms.”

  The discussion takes off and I listen quietly. They want the cures abolished. They want the current government removed from power. They want to find a way to reverse the cures already administered. They want action taken to start regenerating the land outside the wall, and they want the wall taken down. What they all agree on most strongly is that they want the Bloods either disempowered or turned to our cause and the Furies eradicated so that all of this can be made possible.

  Three months ago I would have agreed with them.

  Now it all sounds foolish beyond belief.

  “There’s no reversing the cures,” I tell them. Their chatter ceases and all eyes move to me. “There’s no ‘eradicating’ the Furies unless we make ourselves responsible for genocide. And there’s no overthrowing the government unless you’re all willing to spill an ocean of blood.”