Flynn, still holding Poe’s twisted sword at bay, yelled, “Don’t pull the blade out! Hurry down the hill and get Chari!”
Her eyes said everything: She wanted to argue; to fight. To pull out the thing that cruelly pierced her closest friend. She wanted to bury Poe. Reluctantly, she turned and ran, while Mack knelt and bled slowly.
It was not supposed to be this way. Flynn seethed.
Whatever shock Poe had experienced, it waned fast. The Guardian withdrew his right arm, freeing his sword and bringing it about to strike at Flynn. “The beast,” as Poe saw him, was unimpressed. Though terribly skilled, Poe was also eager and easily read. Flynn crossed his own right arm, colliding it with Poe’s forearm and breaking his momentum. The sword had kissed Flynn’s neck, and would have taken his head in a second more. The swordsman staggered.
This man was Poe. Never before had Flynn felt such anger. So many emotions he had suppressed; so many bubbling to the surface in the weeks since fleeing Civilis. But never an anger so raw as this. To feel so wronged, so robbed. Flynn caught his opponent’s sword arm and drove it back against the trunk of a tree. The blade stuck, escaping its owner’s hand as Poe was driven back up the hill, to the white walls he protected.
“Why you?” Flynn demanded angrily. “Why did it have to be you? Another taker of lives?!”
The killer was confused, at a loss as to Flynn’s meaning. It was to be expected. His machinations had at least been deceptive and illusive. Poe’s were blunt. Fatal. There was an insult in the lack of subtlety in this exchange, the difference of leagues. Flynn held him to the wall by the neck, his left arm straining—for this young man, though slender, was not light. Flynn pulled back his right hand and bared the terrible claws that could pierce Poe and expose his blackened insides to the world. For one moment, those eyes—as he strained for freedom, for breath—saw. They went wide. Somewhere in them, there was an understanding. Then darkness.
Chapter Fifteen: Moments of Clarity
At last, the killer stirred.
Flynn had watched him from night’s end through daybreak, fighting a little to stay awake, lamenting the World Between’s lack of coffee. Poe was tethered to Heaven’s gates by the length of Zaja’s whip, arms spread apart, head hanging slack. The two swords were at Flynn’s sides as he sat cross-legged on the ground some distance from their owner. Examining. Waiting.
It took too much restraint not to kill him, Flynn reflected, cradling his head in his right hand. His eyes ached. Such decisiveness used to come naturally, but now …
Poe grunted vaguely. He was dressed in black, and not shabbily like the people of Purgatory. His clothes were expertly cut and maintained. His boots and leather gloves were worn, but showed a sense of craftsmanship the other people of this world had long forgotten. And then there was the purple cloak, crumpled in a pile behind Flynn. His white hair was less than shoulder-length, tied back into a short ponytail behind his head. That, coupled with his pale skin and contrasted with his rich purple eyes—Poe was certainly of this world. But something unspoken told that he wasn’t the same stock.
“I would suggest not struggling,” Flynn told his captive. He held up an arm, showing where the barbs of Zaja’s whip had stuck him. He’d asked Chari to leave the wound, needing it for this moment.
“I did not expect to wake,” Poe confessed. “Now or ever again.”
There was much to ask him, more to tell—more than should probably be trusted to one such as him. It did not escape Flynn’s notice when Poe’s hand flitted involuntarily toward the blacker of his swords. If the damn thing suddenly rose up and flew back to its owner, he was ready to intercept it.
“You tried to kill us.”
“And if I’d slain even one of your number?” Poe asked. He was not hostile, just curious.
“Then you wouldn’t be here, and I would be undone. So let’s both be grateful for small favors.”
Poe didn’t gloat or offer condemnations or elicit some villainous laugh. He seemed annoyed by the proceedings. “I have no gratitude for trespassers who would bind me to my charge.”
“Your charge?” Flynn almost laughed at this.
Stone-faced, his captive introduced himself. “I am Guardian Poe, protector of Heaven’s gates.” Even bound, he exuded an imposing aura.
“What a farce,” Flynn scoffed. “And that’s why you hunted my friends? That’s why you drove us back together, waited until Jean and Mack were close before trying to stab them both? Why you stalked him long enough to see us reunited?”
Poe flushed, caught in the half-truth he hadn’t even realized he was telling. Like in the woods before, he was easily outmaneuvered by the careful observer. Seizing on this, Flynn rose and looked down.
“Don’t be so self-righteous. And don’t pretend you do this in the name of sacred duty. You’ve left all those bodies out there—destroyed from meeting you—because you enjoyed it.”
“And what if I do?” Poe demanded. “I fulfilled my task as best I could! I could not do less and hope to survive! Or to suffer the shame I would have done to my family’s name!”
“I tallied hundreds of bodies in the woods. There can’t be more than a decade’s rot among them. Is that how the Guardians did things? Is that honoring your family’s legacy?”
Poe averted his gaze from Flynn’s reaching eyes. His hand twitched again, reaching for the black sword. The barbs of the whip pressed hard against his skin, shredding his sleeve. Blood would coagulate around the wound, making the barbs painful to unstick. Flynn understood what it was to come to grips with one’s past, abruptly and painfully—Poe would writhe as needed.
“It is not,” the Guardian conceded. Poe sat in silence until asking, “But what now? Did you learn my name just to come open my eyes? To shame me and watch me suffer?”
“I came because a fallen goddess sent me to find you,” Flynn told him. “Take heart—she implied that you were important.”
“You have exposed me for the fiend I am!” Poe retorted. “Importance is not in my destiny, save as a cautionary tale; a fable told to keep better children from falling to villainy. Tell me then—what consolation is there in that?”
“Right now, I can’t say.” Flynn opted to hold back the truth for a time. “Just that you might have the chance to do some piece of real good. Maybe enough to offset the body count you’ve racked up.” He should have left it there, but he let his envy slip. “Maybe enough to make a positive difference.”
Though his hand still reached instinctively for the more insidious of the two swords, Poe’s efforts slacked. What the forlorn Flynn unthinkingly shared, his counterpart noticed. “What are you?”
“I’m like you,” Flynn replied. “A man who let himself become a monster.”
*
Zaja knelt to examine the package Flynn had brought the short distance from the gates of Heaven, unraveling the purple fabric. It was the swordsman’s blade—the black one, the stuff of nightmares washing through it.
How ironic, she considered, that I should be the only one who wasn’t attacked or injured in that exchange, the luckiest in the face of near-certain death.
“Ow.” Flynn twitched as Chari was examined the fresh scar on the side of his neck.
“It’s not healing,” she said. “My apologies; the wound was small. It closed fast, set in.”
Against his fair skin, the scar on Flynn’s neck was discolored: thin and gray and almost smiling. When compared to the barbed wounds Zaja’s whip had left on his arm, she could see it hadn’t healed right.
“It’s fine,” he said, pushing Chari’s hand away. “A little cold, is all. It would be a problem if the injury had been bigger.”
“Yeah, you’d be dead. Notable fuckin’ problem.” Jean turned to Chari. “So what about you, or Mack? You both fixed up mostly fine.” She gestured at Mack, who sat just off the road, sewing the gaping stab wound in his shirt.
The matching scars that ran through his front and backsides made Zaja wince, more so than th
e old ones left from lashings and beatings. She would be glad when he shirted his lanky torso. One could tell by the sight of him that he should have died. Instead he was smiling with sewing needles clasped in his teeth.
Chari rubbed the back of her leg. She seemed to be standing fine, but conceded, “It still pinches a little.”
“They weren’t cut with the same weapon as me,” Flynn pointed out as he kicked aside the cloak covering the sword on the ground, ensuring everyone could see it. “He called it the Dark Sword.”
“That’s a shitty name.”
Zaja privately agreed with Jean, but stood up to ask, “… How come?” Her legs were sore from crouching too long, and she shook them a little as she continued, “I mean, I saw the other weapon after … after Jean pulled it out of Mack’s backside. It looked, well, ordinary.”
“The Searing Truth,” Flynn confirmed.
“Much more poetically entitled,” Chari commented. “Does it bespeak a measure of derangement when one names their own weapons?”
“Only if ya use girl names,” Mack replied.
“From what I’ve gleaned?” Flynn went on. “Both swords were forged long before the birth of the man who now carries them. Might be the same with their names.”
Poe still hung on the distant gates. Up close, Zaja had found him handsome, though he was not of the same race of human as she. Devoid of the sadism he’d worn the night before, he became much more approachable. Still, she looked to Flynn, whose animal-like traits belied a face that would otherwise have been plain and unordinary at best. Good looks gave little insight as to whom one could rely on.
“Poe doesn’t look well,” Zaja observed. The pale Guardian’s head was bowed in sickness.
“It’s this thing.” Flynn picked up the Dark Sword, taking care to keep the hilt wrapped in Poe’s cloak. “He acts like it’s part of him. The farther away it gets, the worse he feels.”
“Ooh, ooh!” Mack shambled up suddenly, dropping his work to the ground. “I’ve got it! We tie that sword with some string and hang it from a stick, right? Then we just dangle it and lead him around and take him to Airia or whatever!”
The other four looked at each other, and then carried on as though Mack hadn’t spoken. Pouting, he hopped back down, gathering what he’d dropped and resuming his work, grumbling, “Nobody likes Mack’s ideas.”
“So what action do we take now?” Chari asked. “We cannot very well continue with him tethered there.” She gestured at the gates, looking at them, then at Flynn. “Have you any concern that someone will wish to come through the passage you’ve barred?”
“I’m really not,” Flynn said, still holding the wrapped Dark Sword.
“I ain’t exactly keen on takin’ a guy with that tried to axe us,” Jean pointed out. “Never mind givin’ him what Airia is fixin’ on givin’.”
“We might not have a choice,” Flynn said reluctantly. “Guardian Poe is the reason we’re here.”
“We’ll find the runner-up then,” she retorted. “Next guy on the list. She said there was a dozen before him, right? Gotta be someone else; someone a little less crazy!”
“There’s not,” Flynn said. “Not for us. That hollow man is all we have to work with. There’s no one else, and no certain way to get to them if there were.” Wrapping up the Dark Sword, Flynn turned his back on the others. “And Aaron wanted him. That’s enough for me.”
“You intend to let him down this soon?” Chari tensed at the prospect.
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t mean to kill us first,” Flynn spoke plainly. “Then I’ll give him back the weapons that he used when he tried to.”
After the previous night, Zaja couldn’t blame Chari for feeling a little cagey. She had held Chari steady when she’d healed her own leg, heard her screams of agony ring, and covered her after she’d passed out from the pain. The wound hadn’t healed evenly either, even with her accelerated technique. There was an arc of uneven flesh branded into a girl who had, like Zaja, once never known any physical hardship. Even more so than the mark on Flynn’s neck, the scar on the back of Chari’s leg really did look like a smile, albeit upside down.
*
Poe’s breathing eased. The warmth pervading his body cooled and though he could not see it, he knew the Dark Sword was wrapped in the cloak that the beast dropped only a few feet away.
“You’ve returned,” Poe observed, but the beast said nothing in response. It just walked up and squatted, resting on one knee and looking up at him. It would be easy to wrench forward and kick the beast’s face, though doing so would cause the barbs binding him to tear into his skin, ravaging his flesh. Little doubt his captor knew this as well, as it finally spoke.
“In a few minutes, I’m going to untie you.”
It was a ruse, a feint of some sort. “Just like that?”
“I told you we were sent to find you,” it replied. “You’re not going to ask why because I’m not going to tell you yet. What I have to tell you, you’re not ready to hear. Not from me, at least.”
“And you ask what of me in return?” Poe demanded. “That I spare your lives when I am free? Very well, it is as done. I have been humbled, but if you’re about to suggest I abandon my duty—!”
“Why would you want to stay?” it asked with derision.
The question stung. This thing had claws more fierce than the literal ones it had shown in the starlit night. It seemed self-satisfied in the asking, and was right to be so. Poe’s eyes were open. He saw himself, for one moment, for what he really was. And it was enough.
“You didn’t start a killer,” the beast told him, “any more than I started as what I am today. Something went wrong along the way, and maybe this seemed like the only solution, or the best. But here we are: you and I.”
Without another word, it went to Poe’s right arm and unraveled the bindings, unsticking the barbs in his flesh. The beast was not gentle, tugging as though Poe’s skin were a snagged thread. But he undid the bindings nonetheless. Though Poe’s hand palpitated at the Dark Sword’s nearness, he stayed it. He was not yet unbound, and he did not wish to provoke his conqueror needlessly.
“My name is Flynn,” the beast told him.
“If I don’t stay,” Poe inquired, “where would you have me go? I cannot imagine your allies will be so forgiving as to welcome me among their ranks.”
“They’ll do what needs to be done,” Flynn told him. He was neither cheered nor troubled by this information—it was simply something he passed along.
It had been so long since Poe had last shared conversation with another, he was surprised at not being more unpracticed. The last true exchange had been with the Archangel, nearly ten weary years prior. After that, there had been only threats, which had grown shorter in proportion to his heightening bloodlust.
“Mine is a sacred station,” Poe confessed. “The name Guardian itself was imposed upon my ancestress, generations past. It is not something I can rightly leave behind.”
Freed, he at last fell forward, rubbing his arms, which stung from the digging wounds.
“You may find you have another calling,” Flynn replied as he carefully rolled up the blue one’s whip, “one that will take you far from here.”
Poe knelt first to pick up the Dark Sword, feeling catharsis in holding it before sliding it within the sturdy straps that bore it across his lower back. While taking up his cloak, Poe found the Searing Truth still plunged into the ivory road and sheathed it behind his right shoulder. Flynn’s eyes were on his back all the while, but he said and did nothing.
Another calling. The prospect smelled of honey in the stink of fetid reality. He had not been raised for this, meant for this. His had been a nobler task, and all he had done when the mantle fell upon him had been in its name. Good intentions had paved the way to what he had become. Blinded, he had allowed it to happen. In that, if nothing else, he had been derelict in his duties. It was not a breach of destiny easily bridged.
“Would you allow me a
n errand?” Poe asked. “There’s someplace I need to be.”
“Don’t leave us waiting long,” Flynn said with a disarming smile. “We’re all busy people.” As Poe turned his back, Flynn spoke out once more. “I’ll be watching the trees this time.”
It was a warning that cut deep, but Poe was not looking for trust, or friends. He’d only ever had one, and those days had long gone by. But in seeing the others ahead, he diverted prematurely into the woods. He did not need to pass so many dangerous people while feeling so vulnerable.
*
At least the flies do not suffer for a meal. Poe averted his lingering gaze from a corpse left in an open patch. He had never tended the bodies beyond tossing them off the ivory road to Heaven. Such care was taken as to not sully the path others would soon walk, to keep them at ease with their guards lowered.
There was only one body he’d ever fully tended. He remembered dragging the weight of it, alone—a small boy, weeping in the night. No one had been there to help him—there were seldom more than two in the woods outlying Heaven: father and son. With no tools or means of digging a grave in the rooted ground, Poe had dragged the body to the same spot he arrived at now: a pool of water, secreted away behind a cage of trees, modest but deep. When he reached it, he knelt, resting his palms upon his thighs. He was sore from the hours spent bound, for the healer had offered Poe none of her services. If she had, he would have declined, for what he felt now was a pain he needed to remember. Poe had forgotten the smallest injuries people could be made to suffer, untouchable as he had been for so long.
“I have raped the integrity of our family’s legacy,” he murmured softly, “with obsession and rage. With cruel and terrible acts, borne of childlike naïveté …”
The pool’s waters were still before him. In Poe’s youth, he had played here with a friend—long since lost to him, her laughter diminished in the wind. Innocence lay slain beside his father, the mantle of Guardian and a sword still too heavy for a young boy to bear.
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