Ignoring them all, single-minded in her wrath, Thea flew around the building. She counted five bombs in all, at various points around the Colony Center. As far as she could tell, only three had gone off, and one of those looked like it had malfunctioned. The bomb itself and the door it was chained to were the only things near it that looked damaged.
Whoever did this sucked at it.
That was all Thea needed to see.
She could accuse Megaira and Fury Unlimited of a lot of things, but incompetence was not one of them. Thea was pretty sure that if their rival colony had set out to bomb Hexing House, the bombs would have worked.
Which left only one enemy: the Concerned Citizens For A Fury-Free County. And that meant that whoever had done this was human.
Security had been all over the place all day. Thea herself had gone outside just after the ceremony, and flown a quick lap around the building before going into the dining hall. She’d seen nothing by the doors, and no humans around.
Those bombs hadn’t been set up and left sitting for hours. They’d been set up recently. By someone who couldn’t just fly off afterward.
The culprits were out there right now, driving away.
And Thea meant to find them.
As she soared higher into the air, Thea thought again of Nana’s empty, staring eyes. Yes, it was a lot less damage than it could have been. But it was more than enough that somebody had to pay.
“Thea! Go back.” It was Damon from Security. He flew toward her and shouted, “The campus is on lockdown. And everyone’s been requested to stay on the ground.”
“You’re locking down now? Really?” Thea laughed at him—and her laugh sounded insane, even to her own ears. “If you had any sense, you’d be doing what I’m doing. You’re sure as hell not going to stop me.”
“Stop you from what?” Damon asked.
“He’s out there,” Thea said simply. “And I’m going to get him.”
Go. Chase.
Avenge.
She had no patience for Damon. She would attack him in a second, to get him out of her way.
But that didn’t prove necessary. Damon considered her. Then, whether because he agreed with her, or because he was overwhelmed and had enough to deal with, or simply because he could tell she was dancing on the edge of madness, he shrugged.
“I warned you, that’s my job done,” he said. “Dig your own grave if you want.”
“It’s not my own grave I’ll be digging!” Thea called over her shoulder as she flew away.
She was still shaking, as much with cold as with anger, despite the fact that it was a sunny, warm day. Thea wondered if that meant she was in shock. Obviously there was something wrong with her.
She decided it didn’t much matter.
There were no cars on Spencer Road. Thea kept her eyes trained on the shoulders as well, and the tree line beyond, on the chance that someone was fleeing Hexing House on foot. But there was no sign of anyone.
Route 47 had a bit more traffic. Thea flew north, then south for a few miles, staying off to the side but not especially concerned about being seen. How much harm would another picture of her do, at this point?
She wasn’t sure what she was looking for until she found it: an old pickup truck, dented in places, one side door a different color from the rest. That was not in itself unusual for the area. Nor was the smattering of religious bumper stickers. But the combination distinctly suggested Mr. Fanatic to her.
Thea flew closer. The driver was wearing a cap pulled down low, and she couldn’t make out his face, but she saw his head turn toward her, then back to face the road.
He sped up. A lot.
Of course, that might have been anyone’s natural reaction to having a monster fly up alongside them. This truck might not have anything to do with Mr. Fanatic or the bombing. But Thea had a hunch it did.
Gotcha.
There were no passengers that Thea could see. The truck swerved around an eighteen-wheeler, then cut off a minivan, nearly causing an accident, before turning sharply left, too close across the traffic.
Well, that was stupid. Did you think that turn would lose me somehow? I’m not in a fucking car. And Cullings Road is a lot less busy, you idiot.
Thea veered left to follow the truck. She wasn’t cold anymore. In fact, her face was so hot she felt feverish. Feverish and oddly excited. Happy, even. Like a kid waking up on her birthday, anticipating all the fun to come.
There was no time to analyze either her feelings or her abilities. She didn’t stop to consider whether what she did next was possible for her, or even why she was doing it. Thea simply flicked her wrist as she came up behind the truck.
It flipped over and skidded on its roof, into the ditch on the side of the road.
She did have a moment of panic then.
Thea, you fucking monster. You didn’t even confirm it was him first. What if it isn’t him? Who’s the idiot now?
But it was him.
Thea cut Mr. Fanatic’s seatbelt with her claws, and dragged him out the driver’s side window. His old truck didn’t have airbags, and he’d banged his head against the steering wheel. He looked dazed as blood flowed into his eye—not unlike the blood that had flowed into Thea’s own eyes, not half an hour ago.
Do I have a head injury? Is that why I’m acting like this?
It was the last touch of human hesitation—the last rational thought—she had before the smell hit her. Stale beer and sweat. The truck reeked of both. Thea had no bad association with that particular combination of odors, as far as she recalled, no childhood trauma it brought back from the shadows of her subconscious. She would never understand why it enraged her so.
But before she knew it, Thea was shaking again, barely able to control the urge to not only claw at Mr. Fanatic, but to bite him too. Bite right into his face, and taste his blood while enjoying his screams.
She lifted him up and flew into the woods, where they wouldn’t be seen, then threw him to the ground. She was seconds away from tearing him to pieces.
But Thea stopped when she saw his face.
He was still a little out of it—maybe from the blow to his head, maybe just because he was Mr. Fanatic—but he seemed to understand he was about to die. He didn’t look afraid. He looked calm, resigned.
And proud.
No doubt it was her imagination, but in that moment, as she leaned over him, wings spread, claws out, Thea thought she saw her reflection in Mr. Fanatic’s eye.
He’s proud because he’s fighting a monster. He’s the good guy.
She swallowed the burning bile that had risen in her throat, and stared at Mr. Fanatic, suddenly unsure what she wanted to do with him.
“Did you think I would let Susan’s death pass?” he croaked, his first words since she’d pulled him out of the truck. Thea noticed for the first time that his arm hung limp; his shoulder was dislocated. Had the crash done that, or had she?
What difference does that make? You made the crash.
“Did you think I would just meekly succumb to the will of the demons?” Mr. Fanatic went on. “Like a lamb to the slaughter?” He made no attempt to stand or get away. Had he broken any other bones? (Did it matter?)
Thea didn’t want to argue with him. She had to get him back to Hexing House during this window—she feared it might be brief—of self-control. “You’ll have to come with me, Mr. Agnew,” she said.
Mr. Fanatic laughed. “What, so they can kill me?”
He was right. They would almost certainly kill him. But what other options were there even to consider? Call Holgersen, tell him to arrest this man for an act of terrorism against a place his boss refused to even acknowledge the existence of?
“You’ll have to face fury justice,” Thea said with a shrug.
“Justice.” Mr. Fanatic practically spat the word. “Do you really kid yourself that’s what you deal in, harlot? Justice?”
“Don’t you get self-righteous with me!” Thea said. “You just kil
led… I don’t even know how many people. You killed an old woman. A good woman. She was dear to me.”
Mr. Fanatic gestured widely with his good arm. “Vengeance is Mine,” he said. “And retribution. In due time their foot will slip; for the day of their calamity is near. And the impending things are hastening upon them.”
Thea smiled sadly. “Think you’re clever, cautioning a fury against vengeance? Or maybe you’re always quoting scripture because you think it’ll burn me, like garlic burns a vampire.”
In a way, maybe it had done just that. Thea was tired suddenly. So tired. She pushed aside an insane urge to lie down in the dirt beside him. “But I know Deuteronomy as well as you do, you—”
She stopped suddenly. Something was wrong. Mr. Fanatic’s arm had been spread against the ground, but now it was underneath him.
He’d been distracting her.
It was the work of a second, after that. Two at the most. His hand came out from behind his back. Thea leapt at him. Her wing batted the gun out of his hand, at the same moment her claws raked across his throat. She felt them cutting deep, ripping open everything in their path.
And Mr. Fanatic bled out onto the forest floor.
Nana was buried in the cemetery on the south side of the campus, with nobody but Alecto and Graves to witness the burial. What those two would say to each other at a time like that, nobody could imagine.
But the old fury’s memorial fete, as they called it, was not a private matter. The Colony Center was closed for rebuilding, so it was held picnic-style on the same open green where her son had lost his wings.
The whole colony turned out. As with Nero and Flannery’s wedding, the only ones who didn’t join in the celebration of Nana’s life were the members of the Security department. But unlike the wedding, they made no attempt to be unobtrusive here. They patrolled in pairs, heavily armed.
Dr. Forrester and Julius were even in attendance. In their attempt to recreate the preventative for the Ninth Disorder, Langdon and the doctor had managed to create something even better: a drug of sorts that, as long as it was taken at regular intervals three times daily, kept the symptoms of the disorder at bay, and prevented the Forresters from being overwhelmed by their vices. It wasn’t a cure, but they hoped that wasn’t far behind.
Of course, Langdon had scowled Thea out of his office when she’d asked about testing the drug. Not only was he still convinced that she didn’t have the Ninth Disorder, or anything like it, but he assured her that the medication in its current state was formulated only for humans, and might even be dangerous for a fury to take.
Now, watching Julius play kickball with a few young furies, Thea thought of another little boy: Talbott Lexington, who’d lost his whole family at Hemlock Heights. Maybe if Fury Unlimited had been able to recruit somebody of Langdon’s medical abilities, the Ninth Disorder never would have gotten far enough out of hand for them to feel they had to put such a brutal stop to it. For all of Megaira’s supposed genius, it seemed she had a talent only for killing, not curing.
As the afternoon wore on and sweet tea gave over to wine, Nana took on a legendary quality. She had been more-or-less a recluse for years, but it seemed like almost everybody had some fond childhood memory of her. Those who didn't pretended they did, and those who were children themselves were forced to listen patiently as their parents and grandparents recounted their stories.
Thea, meanwhile, had taken on a sort of mystique of her own. She’d been greeted with deafening cheers the day of the bombing, when she threw Mr. Fanatic’s lifeless body down on the steps of the Colony Center.
She couldn’t have said what possessed her to fly away with that body in her arms. Maybe she just wanted to show them all that justice had been done. Telling them so allowed her to tell herself the same thing. Allowed her to call it justice.
Vengeance is Mine.
Or maybe it was for more practical reasons. Holgersen had shown up on campus the next day, after Mr. Fanatic’s wrecked truck had been found nearby, with no sign of the man himself except an awful lot of blood in the woods. When Holgersen saw that the Colony Center had been bombed, he put two and two together easily enough.
But by then they’d buried the body, and without that, the detective couldn’t prove a thing. Especially given how dicey it was for him to pursue any case involving furies.
He hadn’t left a happy man. In fact, Thea could have sworn she’d heard the phrase close this whole fucking place down being muttered.
And the impending things are hastening upon them.
Thea couldn’t worry about that. Hell, she wasn’t even sure closing this whole fucking place down was such a bad idea.
Besides Nana, two other people had been killed in the attack. Several others were injured, including Cora, who had broken a wing while sheltering an elderly guest from flying debris.
But Thea’s initial assessment was correct: it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. The bride and groom themselves had escaped with only minor cuts and bruises. Pete and Aunt Bridget were unhurt.
Despite the horror surrounding Thea’s return from her pursuit of Mr. Fanatic, Aunt Bridget had hugged her niece and cried. She’d been unable to find Thea after the explosion, and feared the worst.
Pete, on the other hand, had looked a little sickened by his childhood friend. He’d taken Aunt Bridget home not long afterward.
And now the furies of Hexing House were rebuilding. Burying their dead.
And cheering for the murder of their attacker.
Murder was what it really was, of course. Thea didn’t try to kid herself that it was self-defense. She’d disarmed him easily enough. There was no need to cut his throat.
But it happened so fast. He had a gun, I was threatened. I reacted. That’s all.
Yes, an inner voice that sounded an awful lot like her mother’s agreed. But you liked it.
You didn’t bring that body back to prove anything to them, or even to yourself. You brought it back to show it off. Your trophy.
Standing at the edge of the field, watching Nana’s funeral turn into a party, Thea thought she’d never hated herself more. Not even during those two years with Baird.
“You look like the only one here as disgusted by these people as I am.”
It was Graves. Despite his not being able to fly, Thea hadn’t even noticed his approach. He looked completely lost, and up close, Thea was almost alarmed by his sunken eyes, ringed in gray and bloodshot with purple, his sagging posture, the way his clothes seemed to hang off him. He looked like he was suffering from a terminal disease.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Thea said.
He gave her a skeptical look, then shrugged. “I suppose you are. Everyone loved her.” He sneered at the crowd. “Doesn’t stop them from having a grand old time, though.”
Thea sighed. “That’s always the way of it with funerals though, isn’t it? People have to find some light to cling to, even if it’s a false one.”
Graves laughed at her, and not kindly. Thea inched closer, trying to smell whether he’d been drinking again.
“Aren’t you the wise one today?” he said. And yes, there was a definite whiff of something—rum?—on his breath.
Well, she could hardly blame the man. His mother was dead, and they hadn’t been on the best of terms.
But was that all there was to it? Thea eyed Graves speculatively, wondering.
How did they know?
It wasn’t like Flannery had sent out wedding invitations to the Concerned Citizens For A Fury-Free County. So how did they know the whole colony would be gathered that day? How did they know how to bypass all the security? How did they get on campus in the first place?
The same way they’d put that dead bat in her room. If the dead bat was their doing, and Thea had a feeling it was. They had to have someone on the inside.
Was it Graves?
It wasn’t the first time Thea had wondered whether he might be in league with the humans. He had plenty
of cause to resent Hexing House. And working for Facilities, he had the means to help outsiders without raising suspicion.
“Graves,” Thea said. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Ninth Disorder, when I asked you about Hemlock Heights?”
He looked startled, but recovered quickly. “Well, I pointed you in the right direction.”
Thea scoffed at that. “A few cryptic words does not count as help. You said you didn’t want to help either of us, Fury Unlimited or Hexing House. You were angry at both colonies. At all furies, really.”
“So what?” Graves said. “You wouldn’t be angry, if people gathered around like it was a party, to watch you be held down and have your wings cut off?” He snarled at her. “You’d think a girl like you would understand. With your history.”
Thea returned his glare. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Graves leaned forward and said, too loudly, “It was a gang rape.”
Several nearby furies turned to stare.
“Keep your voice down,” Thea said.
But he was still talking. “—figured a whore like you would understand, that’s all. Baird never shared you with his friends? I’ll bet he did. But then, maybe it wasn’t the same for you. Maybe you didn’t feel humiliated, violated, helpless. Maybe you liked it. Maybe you loved it.”
It was almost that easy for him to provoke her. But Thea swallowed back her anger. She couldn’t let herself lose control. Not again.
She’d passed a point of no return, out in the woods with Mr. Fanatic. And now, watching how ugly Graves’s face became in his rage, Thea realized something. Or maybe she’d realized it the second Mr. Fanatic’s body had flopped onto the steps of the Colony Center, a lifeless sack of meat and bone. Maybe she was only facing it now.
Langdon was right.
She didn’t have the Ninth Disorder. If she did, she would be manifesting sins in general. The superhex had always brought up cowardice the most, during Dr. Forrester’s experiments.
But it was wrath that kept overtaking Thea now. Only wrath.
Heartlessness.
Lasting Fury (Hexing House Book 2) Page 15
