The Devouring Gray

by Christine Lynn Herman

  The door to the workshop slammed against the wall.

  “Get the hell away from her!” yelled Justin, and then her father’s hands were wrenched away from her neck and she was gasping and sputtering for air.

  She rolled over, groaning, her eyes barely taking in Justin’s blurry form as he knelt beside her.

  “Harper.” The planes of his face were stark with fear. “Shit, Harper, please be okay. Tell me you’re okay.”

  She coughed, braced her hand against the floor. The crushed residue of red-brown stone pressed beneath her palm as she sat up.

  “I’m okay,” she rasped.

  They were close enough for her to see the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose. To hear each thin, ragged breath.

  He reached for her. Harper was too stunned to even consider stopping him as his fingers traced the tender skin of her neck.

  “Was he…” He worked the muscles in his jaw as he tried again. “Was he trying to kill you?”

  It seemed right, that he should be touching the part of her that hurt the most.

  Harper tried to feel some semblance of sorrow, of disgust, of regret. But there was nothing. She was blank inside, scooped-out and hollow. “I think so.”

  Justin’s fingers were cool and gentle against her neck. But when her eyes met his, he pulled his hand away.

  Behind Justin’s shoulder, Isaac was calmly and methodically tying her father to his workbench.

  “Now, don’t struggle,” he said. “You know what I can do. It won’t be fun for either of us if you try and lash out.”

  “You didn’t go watch Brett and Nora,” Harper said blankly. “You were waiting outside. In case.”

  It wasn’t a question. She should’ve been upset that Justin thought she couldn’t handle this. But he’d been right.

  And she wasn’t angry, wasn’t scared, wasn’t grateful, wasn’t anything anymore. She wasn’t even sure she was human.

  Harper rose to her feet, her eyes fixed on the man sitting at his workbench.

  He was still the man who had raised her. But he was not her father, not anymore.

  He’d tried to strangle her. He’d almost succeeded.

  The knowledge of that sent a dull, sick feeling through her, weighing down her limbs.

  There was no place in this town for someone like her, betrayed and betrayer, no one’s daughter, no one’s friend.

  “You know,” said Isaac, “what he just did is assault.”

  Harper knew Isaac Sullivan didn’t like her. She could see it even now, in his body language. He’d helped her, but only because she’d been in mortal danger. He was only here because he’d been worried about Justin.

  But there was a strange kind of understanding in his gaze now.

  Broken things called to broken things.

  Isaac was right about what her father had done. But Four Paths only had one real law: Founders handled their own problems, and everyone else pretended not to see the ugliness that lurked within the families who supposedly protected them.

  She’d see no justice here unless she delivered it herself.

  “I don’t care,” she wheezed. “I just want him to finish telling us what the Church is going to do.”

  “Harper.” Justin took her hand and tugged her to her feet. The concern on his face had only deepened. “Are you sure?”

  She forced her bruised throat to swallow so the words would come out clear. “I’m sure.”

  She was Harper Carlisle. She’d survived the loss of an arm, her reputation, her friends, and, now, attempted filicide. She’d spent her entire life silencing the dark thing that lay coiled in her chest. The rage that swam beneath her skin.

  Now she wondered why she’d tried so hard to ignore herself.

  Why she’d decided, all those years ago, that being angry when people hurt her was a dark thing at all.

  “Tell me what you’re planning,” she said, locking eyes with her father. Maurice Carlisle looked shell-shocked, clearly unsure how he’d ended up tied to a bench by three teenagers. “Tell me why you want Juniper. Why the Beast needed Violet.”

  And when he answered, it was almost monotonous, mechanical. “We needed her to resurrect our leader.”

  “Your leader?” said Harper. “Who is that?”

  “Stephen Saunders,” said her father. “Juniper’s brother.”

  Not-Rosie stood before her—flat-eyed, unsmiling, dead. Always dead. Even though Violet knew she wasn’t real, seeing her sister still reminded her how much easier it had been to deal with their fragmented family when Rosie was around. They had been a family of two; no matter what, they belonged with each other.

  Rosie was the only other person who would have understood Violet’s fight with Juniper. And now Violet was being taunted with her, a cruel reminder that she could never have her sister back, that she would accept this warped version of her because she couldn’t let go of her for good.

  “But I can’t bring you—her—back,” Violet hissed, clutching the journal close to her chest. “And I don’t want this. If you’ve been in my head, you know I never would’ve wanted this.”

  “So ungrateful.” Frustration rasped beneath not-Rosie’s calm, high voice. “You came into this town with your mind wide open, full of vast, untapped potential, and I have sculpted you into something magnificent.”

  “You used me.” Violet lunged toward it, but Not-Rosie chuckled and reappeared on her other side.

  “You let yourself be used,” it said. “You led yourself through every step. All I had to do was show you what you wanted to see.”

  Violet thought of every moment she’d spent wishing that Rosie was back again. How she’d craved her sister’s company. How she’d felt when Rosie was standing in front of her—so light-headed, almost dizzy with joy. It hadn’t occurred to her that she was being weakened.

  She had played right into the Beast’s hands, and now the whole town would pay for it.

  Beside her, Orpheus hissed at the thing that had taken her sister’s face, her sister’s voice.

  Not-Rosie rolled her flat eyes. “Oh, stop whining,” she said to the cat. “I’m the only reason you even exist.” She turned to Violet. “Did you know your powers wouldn’t work properly without a companion? I made that mistake with Stephen.”

  Bile rose in Violet’s throat as she remembered the way Orpheus had been laid out for her. Like a present.

  It had killed him so she would use her powers. So she would grow.

  “Get the fuck out of my mind,” she said.

  There had to be a way to fix this. A way to fight it off.

  Not-Rosie tilted her head to the side. “Too late.”

  Orpheus hissed. Violet looked down.

  Her hand had crossed the white line of the circle.

  The last things she saw before the room went black were Not-Rosie’s dark, flat eyes.

  Violet came to slowly, her thoughts sluggish and aimless, like a leaf bobbing on the surface of a pond.

  Her skull felt like it had been split in two. She tried to move her head, but it hurt too much.

  Her arms were bound behind her back, which rested against something rough, but she sat on soft, loamy ground. Her eyes opened, blinking blearily as she tried to make sense of where she was.

  She’d been in the woods, trying to get Nora home.

  No, that wasn’t right. She’d been with May, getting her memories back.

  No, that was wrong, too. She was in the attic, reading Stephen’s journal.

  But no. She was missing something, because she had no idea how she’d gotten here. Wherever here was—somewhere suffocatingly, oppressively dark.

  She shuddered, realizing why everything looked so uniform, why the world smelled faintly of mildew and body odor. Some kind of bag had been shoved over her head.

  Terror rushed through her, but at least it was her terror. At least that thing, the Beast, was out of her head—for now.

  She shuddered, thinking of what it could’ve mad
e her do. What she had already done.

  “She’s awake.”

  A chorus of murmurs approached her as Violet squirmed uncomfortably in her seat.

  “Should we take the hood off?”

  “Not until the ceremony starts.”

  “But what if she can’t breathe?”

  “Then she can’t annoy us.”

  “Surely she’s too smart to talk.”

  “She went to the Hawthornes. She’s already talked too much.”

  Violet knew there had to be a way out of this, if only she could concentrate. But her skull ached, her hands throbbed, and she couldn’t shake the panic roaming through her rib cage.

  Her aunt’s prediction rushed back to her: You’re going to die with a hat on. Did a hood count?

  “Enough.” This new voice was soft and syrupy, like an adorable southern grandma holding a glass of alcoholic iced tea. Violet knew her brain was getting loopy, possibly from the Beast, possibly from air loss. The hood was yanked off her head, and as she gasped for air, Mrs. Moore, the town librarian, came into her field of view.

  “There you are, honey,” she said, smiling in a way that seemed far more at home at a picnic than a kidnapping. “Isn’t that better?”

  Violet took in the world around her. They were deep in the woods, branches laced above her head like the bars of a cage. It seemed unfair that the sky was a perfect velvety black, speckled with stars.

  Bells hung in the trees before her, like the ones she’d seen hanging from the eaves of the houses on her first day, like the one she’d seen in the tower above the town hall. But the robed figures that bustled about were untying them, removing them from the trees.

  “You’re the Church of the Four Deities,” Violet whispered. “Aren’t you?”

  Mrs. Moore smiled. “In the flesh.”

  Violet screamed.

  Mrs. Moore’s face crinkled with disappointment. “Oh, sweetie. Now we’ll have to gag you.”

  A roll of duct tape shone in her manicured hand. She tore off a strip and slapped it across Violet’s protesting mouth.

  Unable to speak, Violet scanned the Church members’ faces instead, trying to commit them to memory. Although they were mostly adults, she recognized a few people from homeroom. Apparently, the Church of the Four Deities had been recruiting fresh blood.

  “He approaches!” called out a deep male voice. Robed figures scurried around in disarray as the same figure she’d seen standing over Daria at the foot of the stairs emerged from between two shadowy trees.

  The hooded robes and the gloves it wore hid most of its form, but they couldn’t hide the sickly-sweet, rotten smell as it passed through the clearing.

  The other figures parted around it automatically, from respect or fear, Violet couldn’t tell. She pressed her back against the tree trunk, gagging, as it shuffled toward her.

  “That’s right,” said a robed figure who was walking beside it, like an aide. “We’ve acquired the girl.”

  It stopped only a few feet away from her, then slowly, deliberately, its hands lurched to its hood. And pulled it back.

  The eye sockets were rotted away, the forehead half-demolished; the hair clung on to the scalp in patchy bits of frizzy, dark curls.

  It didn’t matter.

  Violet recognized the face immediately.

  He was a funhouse-mirror version of the boy in the photograph. The boy behind the journals. The boy who’d died with the Beast inside his head.

  Stephen Saunders.

  The corpse was disturbingly young, the slender build and half-rotted face of a boy forever frozen at sixteen.

  Bits of preserved flesh flaked off him as he leaned toward her. As he tugged off a glove.

  Violet whimpered behind the gag as he reached out a skeletal finger and raked it down her cheek. The smell of decay assaulted her nostrils. Bile rose in her throat; every instinct begged her to flee.

  The tether between them snapped into place, like the one she’d sensed with Orpheus. But while the energy that tethered Violet to her companion was a thin, warm strand of effort, this felt different. Something was being forcibly extracted from her chest, leaving her breathless and dizzy.

  She tried to pull back against it, to break it. But Violet’s already-sore limbs were going numb. The branches around her blurred. Her vision had begun darkening around the edges when Stephen jerked his hand away, then rose slowly to his feet, leaving her lolling against the tree in relief.

  When her vision cleared enough to watch the Church members again, she noticed they seemed somewhat confused. Several whispered among themselves, until finally one member approached Mrs. Moore. She caught snatches of the conversation.

  “…late?”

  “Supposed to…”

  “Start without…?”

  “We can’t hold off any longer.” Mrs. Moore’s voice made the other robed figures turn their heads. “It’s time to begin.”

  The bells were gone from the trees by now, a discarded row at the edge of the clearing. The Church members assembled in a circle in front of the town border. Violet caught a flash of the founders’ symbol on the ground, made of bones that glowed white against the dirt. They were too small to be human, a minuscule consolation. It hadn’t been there before—the Church members must have made it, a gruesome tribute to her family’s Deck of Omens suit.

  Two robed figures stepped out from between the trees. Juniper’s limp body sagged between them.

  The sight of her mother, so helpless, was far more frightening than Stephen’s undead body. Violet cried out, but the duct tape muffled her screams. None of the robed figures even flinched.

  They dragged Juniper into the center of the circle and laid her diagonally between the lines of bone. A second later, her brother joined her. He raised his hands toward the sky, and the singing began.

  Sinners who’ve been led astray,

  Wandered through the woods one day…

  They were an unnerving sight, their dark hoods pulled back to reveal the reverence on their faces. They were calling on a monster. Calling for it to take Violet’s mother away. The air crackled around them as the line between Four Paths and the Gray began to blur.

  She was going to die. So was Juniper.

  Her tears grew thicker as she realized that she’d never get to tell her mother she was sorry.

  The Gray began to spill open before her, harsh white clouds seeping through a tiny sliver of the night sky. The trees around them turned squat and dark, the ridges on their trunks pulsing to the rhythm of the Church’s song.

  Which was when the ropes around her body went slack, pooling at her waist. Violet wriggled her fingers cautiously, her eyes darting to the side.

  A familiar head of blond hair peered out from behind a neighboring tree. A moment later, a flash of dark curls and concerned, furrowed eyebrows joined him.

  The tears on her cheeks were relieved ones now.

  Isaac and Justin had come to help her. Which almost made up for them lying about Augusta Hawthorne.

  “Don’t move your hands,” said Isaac. “Pretend you’re still tied up.”

  “And don’t freak out,” Justin added. “We’re your friends. I’m not sure what you remember.”

  Violet ignored Isaac and ripped the duct tape off her mouth. Half the skin on her lips came off with the adhesive, but she didn’t care.

  “What did I just say—” hissed Isaac.

  “I know who you are.” Blood pooled into Violet’s mouth from her ruined lips. She would keep May’s secret. But she couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what was going on, not when her mother’s life might depend on it. “I got my memories back.”

  Isaac’s face slackened with such undisguised happiness, Violet had to wrestle down a grin.

  There would be time later to discuss how they’d deceived her. Right now, she had other things to worry about.

  “My mother’s in there.” Violet jerked her head toward the circle, where the singing was reaching a feverish pitch. />
  “We know,” said Justin. “We planned for it.”

  “You’re both getting out of here alive.” Isaac locked eyes with Violet. “Your mom’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  Violet believed him, or at least the rush of warmth in her chest did.

  But they were three on fifteen. She didn’t know how that was possible.

  And then, on the other side of the clearing, a flash of silver emerged from beneath a hooded figure’s robe.

  A sword.

  A moment later, the Church member closest to the figure was howling in pain, stumbling back into the woods.

  The figure’s hood fell back, revealing a tangled mane of dark curls and a face filled with murderous rage.

  Violet grinned.

  Harper.

  It didn’t matter that they couldn’t stand one another. They’d teamed up—to rescue her.

  And if she was worth enough to these people for May to defy her family and return her memories, for Harper and Justin and Isaac to put aside years of hurt to come to her aid, then she wasn’t alone. Not anymore.

  The circle shifted uneasily, the chant weakening. Isaac took advantage of the moment to charge forward, his hands already beginning to glow.

  “Hey, assholes!” he called out. “Come and get me!”

  Violet shoved the ropes away from her torso. “The Beast wants something with my mom,” she murmured to Justin.

  “I know.” Justin helped her to her feet. She could barely feel her limbs. “It wants to possess her permanently so it can escape the Gray.”

  The thought was horrifying. “Like it’s been possessing me?”

  Justin nodded. “So you figured it out.”

  “Yes.”

  Behind them, a scream rang out through the air—Isaac’s distraction had done its job. Harper’s silver sword flashed on the other side of the clearing, and two robed figures fell back, yelling with pain.

  The singing was completely gone now; everything was chaos and screams. But the circle of bone was still intact, Stephen and Juniper at its center.

  That was all that mattered now.