by Anya Allyn
I saw glimpses of your father and of your grandmother in other worlds. Worlds in which your grandmother did not contract cancer. Worlds in which your father did not die young.
I became like a starved man, hungry and desperate for more. What I was seeing was not enough to satisfy me. I could only peer into these worlds, like I was outside their window—I could not physically cross into them. But I had already spent vast amounts of money to find the first book and have it translated and money was growing thin. I began seeking investors—people who would fund the search for the second book—rich widows, businessmen mourning the loss of a child. I even sought the investment of my friend Zeke, knowing he had never recovered from witnessing the death of his three children in a house fire. I gave no thought to the consequences of my actions or how I might hurt people.
I am greatly shamed. My old friend Zeke was right. This was not the way to go. It is headed down the wrong path, when instead we should trust in the great design of the universes.
And all the time that I was chasing the knowledge of the books, the castle was watching me, waiting, biding its time. My funds swiftly ran low. I ended up taking Allan Baldcott onboard, knowing he was one of the descendants of the chateau. I turned a blind eye to his pursuing you. All I was focused on was obtaining the second book.
I didn’t suspect that Henry and Audette were betraying me all this time, reporting everything to the castle. Even Gilles betrayed me—had he not died in the train crash, I would have witnessed my own brother’s deceit.
I have hidden the second book away where no one may find it. At first I thought I should destroy it, but that is the terror of these books—they claim your mind and make you want to protect them at all costs. They almost sent me insane. My desire for their knowledge overpowers me still.
I did the only thing I could. I hid the book in a location away from the house and I am about to leave and go somewhere where I cannot easily return. For the madness is overtaking me minute by minute and I fear that soon I will allow the book to claim my mind and use me at its will, And the castle will gain hold of both books of the Speculum Nemus.
Do as I have instructed you to do. Take the treasures of diamonds and gold and leave the house in the mountains. Buy yourself your own house and your own life, and live a happy and fulfilling life. That is what I want for you.
Your loving grandfather
P.S
A little poem I wrote for your eyes only:
A puzzle for a penny
A room without any
And mermaids pray
The burning orb away
Molly began to fold the letter.
"Wait. That poem… I've seen it before. In those visions Henry sent me into, I watched Tobias write that poem."
Molly frowned. "Just a cute riddle from Tobias to Jessamine?"
"Maybe." I sat back on my knees, thinking about the letter. It was hard to think of Jessamine as a lost and lonely little girl. But that was what she’d been. If she had received this letter, everything might have been different. She might have had the life her grandfather wanted for her, or at least, some semblance of a life.
“The letter explains a lot,” Molly mused. “Like back when we were trying to trace Jessamine’s family history and we couldn’t get any further back than Tobias. We didn't guess that he'd changed names.”
I gazed at the words. I kept returning to the riddle. "This is probably silly, but, well, it’s just that the letter ends on a set of instructions for Jessamine. About taking the treasure and buying herself a house. I wonder if the poem is some kind of instruction too—one that only Jessamine would understand?”
Molly grasped my arm. “What if it’s directions for finding the second book?”
I stared back, alarmed. “We need to take the letter to Jessamine.”
“How...? And she’d probably kill us on sight if we went back there.”
“I don’t know how... but she’s the only one who could tell us anything”
She nodded, carefully folding the letter. “We’ll try. Next time they send us back here, we’ll find Ethan and ask him where to find the refraction that leads to Devils Hole.”
Closing my eyes, a thread of hope wound its way through me. I could search for my mother there—the mother that I’d been born to.
22. SERPENT SKIN
~ETHAN~
Present Day
The Ranger Stronghold
The bleak sun barely touches the icy bay as it rises. My heart hammers as I move to scan the scene beyond the edge of the building. Any such move could have your face hit with a stream of bullets. Today, I’m lucky—not a single ranger patrols the street. I throw a discarded shoe at the electric fence. It’s dead. The rangers normally turn it off for an hour every three hours to save energy—but now that their generators are running down, they can also be unpredictable.
I push myself under the wire fence on my back and crawl quickly to the cover of nearby buildings. The temperature is bitter. For a week, I’ve looked for Frances—a week of searching through the wild-eyed people crammed into the holding pens. Block after block of skyscrapers with their basements and garages filled with those who wait for the serpents’ jaws.
I rummage through my clothing for a steroid inhaler. Pushing it into my mouth, I spray the medication. The inhaler is empty. I need to return to the museum to grab more meds. My lungs already burn and hurt. But there’s no time for that. Ignoring the white fuzz in my brain, I continue towards my target.
On the next street, men and women in black gear patrol the streets that skirt the skyscrapers. They don’t need to wear white to hide themselves—the serpents don’t touch them. I want to go and kick their heads in, throw them all into the holes in the frozen bay. I can almost hear Sophronia cursing them, muttering that they could be on our side, helping us. Instead, they band together and serve the serpents. A round-shouldered man shuffles past, his face red and beaten by the weather. He looks so ordinary—he could have been an accountant or a banker or a clerk before the ice came. I wonder what cog in his brain broke loose and made him decide to turn against his fellow humans.
An arm grabs me about my neck. A thick arm. Wrestling myself around, I stare into the meaty face of a guard I’ve seen before. I don’t know his name but his small pitted eyes and sneering mouth are burnt into my brain. Six months ago, my friend Logan and I were captured by this ranger and his buddies. Do you know who we are?, he’d told us, We’re kings of the world.”
Then they’d grabbed Logan and raped him, and laughed while they threw him to the serpents. They forced me to watch it all. Then they'd come for me.
The ranger’s friends barrel toward me. This time, they’ll make sure I don’t get away. The ranger’s arms are steel, his body built like a truck. My intestines turn to water. My fist closes around the knife in my pocket. With no time to think of anything better, I jab the knife hard through the fabric of my jacket. The blade is long and it pierces his side.
He stares down, confused at the pain for a split second—then a murderous expression rises in his face. I don’t hesitate. Whipping a second knife out, I stick him again. But there’s no fatal wound. His fist pounds down on my head. I fall hard against the wall. He slips on the ice as he swings his fist, ready to hit me again. He crashes down like tumbling bricks.
I’m already running, loping away. Throwing myself inside a doorway, I wait and watch. To keep running is a mistake. Running attracts the attention of more rangers. The pit-eyed ranger and the others bang the door open. I’m above the doorway, crawling through the ceiling. I know these buildings—I’ve been here too many times to count over the past year. The rangers will keep searching—all day if they have to.
The knots in the pit of my stomach twist and tighten. I don’t have time for this. There is one more block of skyscrapers that I can check to find Frances. If she isn’t there, then she was in the lot of humans sent out to the serpents last Wednesday. Or killed at the hands of the other prisoners—some have go
ne crazy in the pens. Moving quickly through the ceiling, I make my way to the second floor, then out through a window. To get to the next block means a dash across open space. I risk it. No shouts or gunfire rain through the air. Breathing heavily, I throw my grappling hook up onto a window frame. The glass is already smashed. Hauling myself up, I kick the remaining glass out. It falls silently to the snow-covered street. White frost covers the copying machines and computers of the office inside. I run through, taking the rope and hook with me.
The stairwell is dangerous to take—rangers occasionally patrol these. The elevator doors hang open but there is nothing but an empty black space inside. As I shine my flashlight upward, I see the elevator stuck a few floors up. If I try climbing down the elevator ropes, the elevator itself could come crashing down. And I’ll be toast. I decide the stairs are the best of two bad options. Taking a knife from my boot, I slip it into my pocket—I lost my best knife in the pit-eyed ranger’s gut. Next time I see him, I vow to kill him. The first time I killed a ranger, almost five months back, I stabbed him twenty times or more before he died. And then I vomited everything in my stomach while his blood spread across the snow. I since learned to kill quickly—with the least noise possible.
I peer down through the other side of the ceiling. Three rangers stand on a metal mezzanine walkway above the basement. The basement isn’t crowded. Less than two hundred people sit and lie on the grimy floor. I know that none of them have been fed since they’ve been here. The rangers don’t bother feeding the captives. A woman cradles two tiny children—both asleep—while she stares with open hatred at the rangers. Guilt cuts through my mind. I can’t rescue all these people. There is no way of rescuing them—even if I set them free, either the snake monsters or the rangers will get them.
A small child huddles on her own, her head buried into her shoulder, hood drawn down. It’s the kids by themselves I’m most sorry for. They’ve got no parent with them in their last hours on earth. This kid looks too small to be Frances and my gaze flicks away, but not before I notice a small, headless toy under her arm. My gaze snaps back. It’s her.
Outside the garage door comes the screech of a truck pulling in. I can guess the truck is pulling a trailer load of new prisoners. Any minute now, the door will rise and the people will be herded in. There’ll be many guards, but if I’m lucky, they won’t have much ammunition. Ammunition is hard to come by. I move silently along the mezzanine grid. The first ranger looks at me in dull surprise before I stab him in the throat. It’s a mistake to let them see you. Either the guy had supersonic hearing or he just happened to look my way. Pinkish-red foam bubbles from his mouth as he dies. Guiding his limp body to the floor, I continue on. I cut the throat of the next ranger, taking him from behind. I pray the last ranger doesn’t notice that her ranger buddies are now lying on the floor. The woman with the two children gazes up at me. Her expression gives nothing away. I steal behind the last ranger. She turns just as I approach. Her eyes wide and terrified, she fumbles in her pocket for her gun. I leap before her, my knife sliding into her stomach. Tugging the knife free, I finish the job.
My legs shake—no matter how many rangers I kill, I don’t get past the sickening sound of the knife entering flesh, the gurgle of death in their lungs.
My throat tightens as the doors rise a crack, allowing a sheet of light to cross the floor below. There’s no time to waste. I rappel down the rope. Faces turn to me—faces frozen with shock and trauma.
I point upwards to show them the rangers are gone. “When those doors rise—run for your lives!”
I hold out my hands to try to quiet them, but it’s already too late. People are jumping to their feet and storming toward the light that streams in under the doors. Crouching in front of Frances, I grasp her shoulder. “I came to get you.”
Her eyes are quick but she doesn’t move for a moment. Then she uncurls herself and clutches onto my middle in the same split second. People surge forward—desperately crawling and throwing themselves under the garage door. The rangers attempt to close the doors again, but the doors jam. With Frances under my arm I roll under the door and run. Machine gun fire meets my ears. People race in all directions—dark blotches against the snow. There’s nowhere to hide. There’s just the stark whiteness of the frozen bay. Our best chance of getting back over the lake is now—now while there are hundreds to people for the rangers to catch.
Breathing hard, I sprint in a straight line for the bay, still holding Frances. The woman with the small children runs behind me.
Serpents rise from their holes in the ice. Never have I seen so many at once. Many of the people head back into the streets and buildings.
I made a mistake. We need to turn around.
The pit-eyed ranger storms toward me. Frances screams and the sound is a sword slicing through me.
My mind goes white as I run straight for the middle of the bay. Ice splinters high in the air as more serpents crash through the ice. The path ahead breaks into shards. People are pitched into the water. I charge forward, not knowing which way to run. The muscles in my legs seize up as I jump across water to a hunk of floating ice. It tips. I jump to the next. And the next. This time we don’t land well. Frances screams again as we slide across ice on our knees.
Gunshot rings out. A man roars in pain as he falls, sliding along the fractured surface—the pit-eyed ranger. Another ranger must have taken bad aim. The massive jaws of a serpent crash over pit-eye, dragging him into the water.
I force myself to my feet. A serpent rises underneath us, flinging us so high there is only sky. Frances lands hard on the ice on her back. She doesn’t move. My hip bone crunches into the ice near her.
“Frances!”
I grab her and keep running. Serpent teeth crunch the ice behind us.
We’re on the other side. But we can’t stop. The serpents can thrust themselves far onto the land. And the rangers will be coming. As soon as they can take their vehicles across the ice, they’ll be on top of us. I run through tunnel after tunnel, as far as I can go. Blood hammers through my chest, my lungs squeezing. I gasp for air that doesn’t come. My head explodes in flashes of black and white.
“Keep going, Frances.” My breaths come in short, gasping stutters. “But don’t get caught. Promise me you won’t get caught.”
She shakes her head, her small mouth drawn in. I kick myself for not staying and hiding her somewhere in one of the buildings. As I collapse to the ice, she crawls next to me.
“No, Frances,” I try to tell her. She’ll die of frostbite and exposure here on the ice.
But no words come. My brain bleeds out oxygen. And then there is nothing.
* * * *
I struggle violently against something being held over my face. The rangers. They must have caught Frances and me.
But instead of rising up to fight, I relax, my lungs taking in air. Images are hazy as I open my eyes. All around, a shimmering diamond pattern is close, like the air itself is made of this. Soft dark eyes are above me, dark hair hanging—so long it brushes my face and shoulder. I know who she is but it can’t be her.
So this is death.
I raise my hand to touch her face, grateful I am to see her this one last time.
Her eyelashes and cheeks are wet. “You scared me.”
She’s here. She’s real. I’m not imagining her. And I’m alive.
Alive.
“Cassie….” I try to sit.
“Ssh,” she warns me, her fingers lightly touching my mouth as she takes the mask away.
A small body nestles at my side. Frances raises her head slightly and tells me to shush as well, her amber eyes wide. “Calliope’s here,” she says.
Cassie links fingers with Frances, and then gently puts Frances’ head back down. Then she places her own head on my chest. I can see above me clearly now. The shimmering diamond shapes are a sheet of serpent skin.
Cassie’s body trembles. Her eyes are bright and soft—staring at me with wonder, lik
e she’s never seen me before. “If they find us,” she whispers in my ear, “I know they’ll kill us. But if I die, my heart stays with you. You’ve always had my heart. I just didn’t know that until I almost lost you.”
I don’t trust myself to speak.
Shouts ring out through the frozen air. Boots crunch roughly on ice.
“Nothing,” a woman calls piercingly. “One of the other rangers must have picked them.”
My heart beats rapidly under Cassie’s cheek. Picked is a ranger term for capturing humans. I know they’re looking for us—me, specifically. They know I’ve now killed more than two dozen rangers. And now the friends of pit-eye will be after me.
The boots walk part of the way into the tunnel, then turn and walk the other way. If the light hits serpent skin at the right angle, it’s difficult to see, and anyone under it would be effectively be hidden. It’s a damned risky strategy, but I know Cassie would have been desperate.
The rangers’ voices fade into the howling wind.
Cassie shivers. She wears nothing but a t-shirt and jeans—her jacket and overcoat lay beneath Frances and me.
“We have to get out of here—they’ll be back sooner or later.” Cautiously, I push the serpent skin away and hand her the jacket. “How the hell did you find us?”
“Molly and I were across the other side of the bay when we saw the people running, and the serpents crashing through the ice.” Her voice is taut with horror. “We saw you and Frances with a ranger chasing you and we went to help you.”
I grasp her arm. “You ran straight into that?” Terror grips me at the thought of her out there with the serpents and rangers.
