by S. C. Green
Red wasn’t very responsive to the images. His reading had only shown one spike when a series of pictures from the Sunn Chemical plant had played through. Instead, he chatted animatedly all day, even singing along with the Leonard Cohen album I was playing.
Then, suddenly, he went silent. His reading spiked higher than ever. I paused the slideshow and studied what he was looking at. It was a press clipping, showing the scene at his wife’s funeral. She’d been killed in a hit-and-run accident, and the driver responsible had never been caught. The picture showed an austere black coffin, festooned with delicate white flowers, sitting at the gravesite. A crowd of mourners gathered behind it, their heads bent in still, silent prayer.
“I know thisss,” Red said, his rasping voice thick with emotion. “Thisss wasss the worssst day of my whole life.”
Red couldn’t remember any details, just a wave of intense emotion. I noted down his reactions and moved to the next slide. It was a programme from the funeral, and on the bottom right corner, a small map had been drawn indicating where the party would gather by the graveside.
I zoomed in on that memory, trying to bring the image to the front of my mind. I’d seen the image hundreds of times--in reports, during presentations to government officials, on a tiny computer screen while Red and I studied it together, trying to bring back more of his memory.
“It’s in the northern corner of the cemetery,” I said, recreating the map in my head. “Block E. It’s right across from a wooden bench underneath a willow tree and a sundial—”
“I remember the sundial.” Alain grabbed my hand, dragging me toward the factory door. “We’ve got to get there before they do.”
13
Sydney
I raced through the deserted streets with May flying in front of me, her huge wings casting a shadowed slice across the ground. My chest heaved, and my thigh muscles begged for a break. I gritted my teeth and poured on speed. We had to get to the Compound. We had to find Harriet.
I’d known Alain would try and follow us. He wasn’t as clever as he thought he was. We’d hidden in a reeking toilet stall and waited until we saw them fly away toward my apartment. Then we made a run for the suburb of Lonsdale. Luckily, we didn’t run into any other humans or Reapers on the way.
The high iron gates of the Compound loomed ahead, one gate hanging off its hinges. We raced inside, ducking through the first grand courtyard. Two raised garden beds flanked the space, although most of the vegetables had been pulled up, the dirt pitted with holes as if someone had rooted about for the last of the food. I took a wide berth around the dark stain in the centre – the place where Dorien had executed three of his rival Reapers and claimed control of the Order.
As I ran toward the hallway, the mangled corpses of two ravens lay in the garden. Reapers, reverted to their raven form upon death. There was another large bloodstain at the foot of the steps. Broken furniture and bullet casings lay scattered everywhere. Something horrible had happened here.
“Down here.” May swirled back into her human form, her wings folding back as her body elongated. Her boots hit the cobbles, and her wings became the tails of her long, flapping coat. She took the staircase leading down into the basement. “I sense Reapers. They’re here somewhere.”
I followed after her, hoping we weren’t walking into the sight of a massacre. Especially if the massacre wasn’t finished.
Black feathers, tinged with red, littered the staircase. We clambered over splintered furniture and overturned barrels. Dust piled in the dark corners, the remains of husked bodies. Dark water pooled between the cobbles. What happened here?
A shaft of light from a high, grubby window illuminated the basement before us. Chairs and cabinets had been piled up around the old goat pen, forming a high wall. Through the debris, a gun barrel glinted as it swung toward us.
I grabbed May and yanked her back toward the stairs. I held my finger to my lips, but May shook her head.
She stood and yelled out, “Who’s there?”
I yanked her back down again before a bullet took her out. I bared my teeth into her face at her stupidity.
But the bullet didn’t come.
“May … is that you?” a voice croaked out.
Her eyebrows drew together. “It’s me. I’ve got Sydney with me. Who’s there?”
The barrel retreated into the makeshift wall, and a black-clad figure stood, his balding head just visible over the top of the wall, catching the light like a giant ostrich egg. I peered into the darkness, struggling to resolve the figure’s features.
May leaned forward, her face eager. “You’ll have to come out from behind your wall.”
The figure sighed and transformed into a beautiful raven, its plumage lustrous, the frill around its neck pronounced. It flew over the wall and landed on a small crate a few feet from where we hid and transformed again. A few moments later, a tall figure stepped into the shaft of light, the black coat of the Reapers pulled tight around his thin body. A bony hand reached up and removed the hood that now shrouded his face, and I found myself staring into the eyes of Lorcon, who had been one of the most trusted elders back when I’d lived in the Compound.
“You’re alive,” he croaked out, his gaze darting from May to me and back again. “Praise the gods.”
“What happened here?” I demanded. “Where are all the Reapers?”
Lorcon shook his head and blinked as if I should know. “Gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” May’s voice rose an octave. “It was only a few days ago I left here. How can everyone be gone?”
“Dorien’s doing.” Lorcon’s voice cracked as he said the words, But bitter hatred dripped from every syllable. “He demanded we all follow him into the Citadel. Alain stood up to him. He fought with Dorien in the quadrangle. Much blood was drawn. In the end, Alain lost, and he slunk away, badly injured. But the seeds of his doubt had been sown.”
My mind reeled. Alain hadn’t told me he’d fought Dorien in the courtyard before he’d gone after me into the Citadel, or that he’d been injured. The Mimir must have healed him, the same way it healed my broken womb.
Lorcon kicked a pile of dust at his feet, his expression grim. “What you see here is what remains of those who stood up to Dorien. He swept through with his wraith and took them all, then he and his few remaining followers went to the Citadel. They never came back. Your doing, I presume.”
“I can’t believe it,” I whispered.
I’d lived among these remarkable creatures, so like humans, and yet, so other. They were Alain’s family, his whole world, and they were gone. For ten years the Reapers had held off the chaos that threatened to overtake the city. Now, their Order was no more. Alain, May, and Lorcon were the only ones left.
And Raine. But I didn’t count her.
“He killed them all? All of the Reapers?” May squeezed my hand, her shoulders hitching as if she couldn’t draw a proper breath.
“You know well the evil that lurked within him,” Lorcon said to her. “Does he still live?”
I shook my head.
“Then that is at least some miracle.”
“How did you survive?” I asked, not bothering to keep the suspicion out of my voice.
“I was a coward.” Lorcon said. “I tried to hold the staircases, but the wraith were too many. I couldn’t reap them in time to break free. So I hid in a secret compartment within my room under my bed, similar to the one Dorien used to frame Malcolm. In his haste to get to the Citadel, he didn’t think to search as thoroughly as he should have. When I emerged, I found this.” With an elegant sweep of his hand, he indicated the derelict basement, the scattered feathers, the bloody handprints smeared along the wall.
“Why are you still here?”
“This is my home,” Lorcon replied simply. “Where else am I to go? Besides, I’d held out hope that some of the Reapers who’d gone with Dorien might return, and I could convince them of their error.”
“Has a girl come h
ere?” May asked. “She’s a little older than me, blue eyes, curly blonde hair, carries a giant gun.”
Lorcon shook his head. “No one has come here.”
May turned to me, worry twisting her mouth. “Than what—”
Her words cut off as a shout echoed from above.
“What’s that?” I raced to the staircase and thrust my hand against the low ceiling. Unfortunately, we were three floors down, and all I could see were the walls and ceiling of the room above us.
Another shout, followed by a man screaming. Lorcon winced, as though he’d heard too much screaming already. May’s eyes met mine, wide and frightened. We both must’ve had the same thought at the same time. Alain had followed us, and now he was in trouble.
We raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time. May and Lorcon transformed into their ravens and zipped away. I clambered after them, yanking my pistol from my belt and holding it in front of me, as if bullets had ever protected me before. Well, first time for everything.
I emerged into the main courtyard. Still empty, But now, a heavy tension hung in the air, lifting the hairs on the back of my neck. A faint scraping sound reached my ears. I dropped behind a pillar and listened.
It was only feathers drifting across the cobbles, skittering toward the staircase. Dead leaves in the garden rustled slightly.
A faint breeze prickled the skin on my arms. That was odd. There wasn’t any wind inside the dome.
I scanned the courtyard for movement, human or otherwise. Nothing. So where had the shouting come from? With a deep breath, I ran for the main gates.
Outside, the wind whipped even harder. Goosebumps rose along my arms, and they weren’t solely to do with the cold. It took me a moment to orient myself and figure out exactly what I was seeing. When I did, my stomach dropped like a stone.
Five men, each carrying large guns, sprinted down the street, their faces pinched with fear. One of them shouted instructions, but the wind tore the words away. They left two bodies lying on the road behind them, unmoving. Why weren’t they going back for their fallen? It couldn’t have been us they were running from, and there was no one else around … just this strange wind.
I coughed as the air around us swirled with dust. Thick plumes of it whipped up by this sudden, incomprehensible wind, like thick brown fingers reaching up from the earth. The dust stretched toward the retreating men, and they poured on speed, tossing down their weapons as they careened down the road.
The wind was picking up all the dust and debris that had settled over the city. But where had the wind come from? How could this be happening inside a dome?
The cloud appeared almost solid, its form too deliberate, the wind too localised. I coughed again as it swirled closer, the air blanketed with gritty particles. Two ravens emerged from behind the cloud and dropped down beside me, becoming humans.
“What did you see?” I called over the howling wind.
“It’s no ordinary cloud,” May cried. “Look!”
The cloud shifted again, the particles swirling and coming together, forming a long shape. A giant hand emerged from the miasma, fingers made from dust and stone, lines across the palm swirling with the wind. May and I held each other as the wind howled through the street, tearing off boarded windows and kicking up the piles of rubbish into a great tornado of debris. The hand reached over, fingers bending and grasping the nearest man. It shouldn’t have had enough form to do that, but it did. The man screamed as the hand enveloped him, but the scream became lost to the cry of the wind. His skin cracked and peeled away, revealing the meaty muscle and pulsing blood vessels beneath. Blood stained the cloud as it squeezed him tighter.
The man’s bones crumbled to dust, his jaw collapsing even as his mouth hung open in silent terror. His body disappeared, the remnants swirling into the cloud, becoming part of the terrible beast that churned and surged before us.
“That cloud is a wraith,” Lorcon cried. “How can this be?”
The cloud rolled past us, chasing the men down the street. As it passed over the bodies lying prone, it collected them too – entire humans reduced to fragments of dust as the cloud fed itself.
My whole body trembled. How could we possibly fight this?
The cloud rolled away, and as the dust cleared and the debris smashed back down to Earth, the way across the square became visible again. A woman stood on the other side of the street, her arms raised, a triumphant grin across her pretty face.
Harriet.
The winds swirled around her, whipping her hair into a pale halo about her head. Her gaze settled on us. Her grin spread wider, and she winked at me. Actually fucking winked.
“Harriet!” May screamed. “Come to us. We’ve come to save you from that wraith. Sydney will send him back to the underworld, and it will all be okay.”
Harriet laughed, her usually smoky voice tinkling like water flowing down a stream. “I think it’s you who need saving, little Mayfly. Not me.”
The words sounded odd, out of place in Harriet’s mouth. Something wasn’t right here. I tried to grab May, to pull her back, but she yanked her arm from my grasp and rushed toward Harriet.
“What are you talking about?” May shouted. “What are you doing here?”
“What I should have done years ago, darling,” Harriet called back. “I’m getting out of this shithole dome. And I’m taking the key to my life with me. Will you join me?”
“Wait, did you do this?” May gestured to the cloud. “What have you done? Did you see what it can do? It’s killing people. How is this even possible?”
“All I’ve done is reunite two lovers,” Harriet said. “That’s exactly what your mother wanted to do, what she promised to do. I made it happen. Doesn’t that make you happy, May? Doesn’t it make your pussy just ache for me?”
“Stop it!” May sobbed. “Why are you saying these things? This isn’t you.”
“I’m more me than I’ve ever been before,” Harriet cried, raising her arm in the air.
The cloud arced through the air, turning about and following the path of her hand as she sliced it toward us. The wind screamed around us. I grabbed the iron gate of the Compound, steadying myself as the wind threatened to knock me from my feet. May ducked down and covered her head as a large brick flew past her face.
“Where’s the wraith?” I demanded. “The one May’s mother calls Red. We know he’s behind this. We can free you from his grip.”
Harriet jabbed a red-painted nail at the cloud bowling down the street toward us, swelling as it sucked another of the men into its miasma. “This is him, fornicating with his lover, creating a whole new generation of wraith, an unstoppable army, ready to do my bidding. This time, they are mine. I control them. And I’m going to make damn sure my demands are met.”
“What demands? You haven’t made any demands,” May shouted, trying to crawl across the uneven ground toward her. “Harriet, why are you doing this? What has that wraith done to you?”
Harriet tossed her head back and laughed. The cloud swept over her, lifting her body from the ground. She stared at us through the swirling debris and shook her head, pressing her hand against her temple. For a second, her triumphant expression was replaced by one of pure terror. But as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone again.
I glanced at May. She’d seen it, too. Hope seemed to surge through her body as she leaned forward. I gripped her shoulder, trying to drag her back down beside me, but her skin buckled beneath my fingers. The bones snapped and knitted together, remaking themselves. I lost my grip.
May leapt to her feet, hurling herself after the cloud.
“May, no!” I cried. Her coat flapped madly as she ran, swirling into a black ball before disappearing beyond my view. A few moments later, her wings swept her up as she dived straight into the cloud.
14
Raine
We ran across the deserted road and through the broken iron gates into the cemetery. My skin itched, my body desperate to become a raven and so
ar overhead. We’d be able to cover more ground as we searched for our daughter. But Alain didn’t change, and I admit I liked the feeling of his warm hand in mine. I stayed in my human form and kept pace with him as he leapt and dodged through the broken stones.
The cemetery had been completely decimated. I wasn’t sure if what I was looking at was the damage caused by the wraith living inside the Citadel, or by the explosion that had destroyed the Mimir and wiped them out. Dust whirled around us as we raced between the toppled stones, the parched soil kicking up clouds that choked us. The concrete paths, once so neatly trimmed and flat, were so badly torn and cracked that we had to leap over fissures and pick our way around debris. When Alain stopped in front of the willow tree, I didn’t recognise it. It bore no leaves, and the bark had been scorched black. The bench beneath it was broken in two, the sundial fallen on its side.
“We had a picnic here once,” he said. “Do you remember?”
How could I forget? We’d been dating a few months. I had a rare day off work, and Alain changed his schedule around so he didn’t have to reap that night. He packed up a basket with all my favourite foods – blue cheese and crackers, Doritos and super-hot chili, fresh grapes that burst with sweetness – and a bottle of champagne. We’d spread out a blanket beneath the trees and spent the afternoon conversing with the dead. We laughed as we recounted some of our favourite memories of growing up together inside the Compound. We imagined our futures, spreading bright and bold before us. I with a promising career, Alain in line to be a Council member, the possibility of children of our own … Then, the cemetery had been peaceful, a resting place for people who’d been loved in life. It seemed the perfect place for our romance to kindle. Now, it was the place where all my feelings for him had to die.
Alain wiped a loose strand of hair from my forehead. “Don’t look like that. I know you had a different idea of what our reunion would be like. What happens now doesn’t erase the happiness of the past.”
