Seraph of Sorrow

by MaryJanice Davidson

  “Hank, are you listening to me?”

  He considered finishing the job now. It would be more a mission of mercy than an act of anger, but no less justified. The problem was he would never get away with it. Glory Seabright probably already had the town’s police triple-checking that basement armory for any evidence that what had happened to her protégée was not an accident. He was confident they would find none. However, with Dawn Farrier expected to survive, sudden death within the confines of the hospital would surely rouse suspicions.

  “Hank, I’m talking to you . . .”

  “Everyone thinks it’s terrific to have Lizzy Georges back in Winoka,” he spat. He didn’t think he was talking to her—he wasn’t looking at her—but he didn’t mind if she overheard. “Even Wendy’s thrilled to have them next door. ‘Ooh, now Eddie has a playmate!’ she says, as if that matters at all. He’ll have no time for playmates, if he’s going to train properly. He’s still too scrawny, he can’t hold a blade, a dagger lies flat out of a limp wrist.”

  “He’s young,” Dawn tried to interject. “Give him—”

  “And I still don’t like this Jonathan Scales!” Now he was pacing with his head down, bullying his own feet. “Why would Lizzy go to Eveningstar with him? Were they spying on dragons, like I did? If so, why aren’t they taking credit for it? Why aren’t they in parades? Why weren’t they leading a beaststalker charge, instead of letting the fucking bugs take care of it all?”

  “Hank, I don’t—”

  “I’ll tell you why,” he told the reflection he caught in the room’s mirror. “Glory. She doesn’t let anyone take credit for anything. She keeps everything to herself, controls everything, wants everything her way! She’s so happy, with her perfect Lizzy returning home. She’s happy, Lizzy’s happy, this idiot Jonathan’s happy, Wendy’s happy . . . Everybody’s so happy, so satisfied!

  “Except me,” he finished, walking out the hospital door, ignoring his mother’s call.

  CHAPTER 19

  Flawed

  “There’s something wrong with that Scales girl.”

  Wendy yawned and flipped the page of her paperback. “Oh, Hank. You think there’s something wrong with everyone. Last week, it was that Otto Saltin fellow—what did you say?”

  “He’s familiar to me.” He couldn’t recall just how.

  “Yes, well, he moves to Winoka and within days you claim there’s something wrong with him. The week before that there was something wrong with the school principal because he didn’t have any beaststalker history in the school curriculum. The week before that, there was something wrong with someone else. Probably me, or Eddie—”

  “No, Mom, seriously. Dad has a point.” Eddie Blacktooth tossed his Windbreaker onto the living room couch and sat down next to Wendy. Hank glared at the jacket, but let his son continue since she was looking up now. “We’re driving home from the mall—Dad’s giving Skip and Jenny a ride—and all of a sudden Jenny has Dad pull over and she just jumps out of the truck! We called after her, but she ran off. Skip and I wanted to do a sweep, but Dad—”

  “That girl doesn’t need our help,” Hank declared. “She needs a clinic.”

  “Dad, get real! Jenny’s not on drugs!”

  “Mouth,” Hank snapped. He fumed at the sight of Eddie exchanging glances with his mother. At least she had the good sense to nod, a sign to her boy to obey his father.

  “Eddie, don’t you think it’s possible Jenny’s hiding something from you, like drugs?”

  “She wouldn’t do that. We’re friends.” Eddie gulped at his father’s darkening expression. “She’s a smart girl, and her mom’s a doctor. She knows better.”

  “Maybe Lizzy’s the source,” Hank muttered. At Wendy’s look, he shrugged. “What? The woman’s a nurse at Winoka Hospital!”

  “You know she’s a doctor, Hank.”

  “Whatever. My point is, hospitals have drugs. Lizzy’s always acted strangely, especially since she met that guy she married. Now her daughter’s old enough to be a user. Maybe a pusher. She ever offer you anything, boy?”

  “No!”

  “Mouth!”

  “Screw that! You’re talking about my best friend! She’s not—”

  “Edward George Blacktooth, go to your room!” Wendy pointed up the stairs with a carefully manicured fingernail.

  They watched him stomp out of the room. Once his footsteps had faded, Hank hissed at Wendy. “He gets that from you.”

  “Oh, can’t you give it a short rest, Councilmember?”

  “And that’s you proving my point. You didn’t respect me when I was a boy. You didn’t respect me when we were dating in college. You didn’t respect me when we got married, and you don’t even respect me now that I’m a town leader. Why would our son act differently?”

  The long sigh signaled to Hank two things: First, that she was tired of hearing that argument from him. Second, that argument would nevertheless work. Ultimately, Wendy Blacktooth would not want to let him down.

  “I do respect you,” she began. “I wish you could see that. Eddie didn’t yell at you because I taught him to do that. He yelled at you because you insulted his best friend—”

  “A girl we’ve forbidden him to see.”

  “—and he’s a teenaged boy. That’s what teenaged boys do.”

  “I never did that when I was a teenager! I never dared! I would never have earned that”—he pointed at the Blacktooth Blade, proudly displayed over the mantelpiece—“if I had. And he’ll never earn it, acting the way he does.”

  “Is this about your mom, Hank?” After years of carrying on, Dawn Farrier had finally died the month before, of complications from injuries from years ago, which had never completely healed. Hank hadn’t seen or talked to her since that day in the hospital.

  “No, it’s not—”

  “He’ll make you proud someday. Just like you made her proud. Give him a chance.”

  He ignored the pop psychology. “I’ve given him plenty of chances. For months I’ve strengthened his training regimen, trying to focus him.”

  “How much more focused could he be? He tries to please you all the time. He goes along to Europe with us every September, even though he hates it, to learn his heritage and study under those old Welsh fogies you hire . . .”

  “For all the good that does. He’s useless with a sword. He won’t practice.”

  “He practices every day!”

  “For what, fifteen minutes? Is that the schedule Glory Seabright had you on?”

  “Mother knew better than—”

  “Stop calling her mother. She’s not your mother. Your real mother was—”

  “My real mother is not the point of this conversation!” Wendy stood up and threw her paperback to the floor. “As I was saying, Mother knew better than to force training on a weapon I had little aptitude for, or interest in. She focused on my bow skills. Your mother would have done the same, if you had struggled. Maybe Eddie should switch to—”

  “Eddie will learn the sword,” Hank declared for what felt to both of them like the thousandth time. “And the axe. And the knife. Once he has mastered close combat, you are free to play archery games with him.”

  “Why treat him like this? He wants nothing more than to please you. You break his heart every day, the way you bully him.”

  “Better to bully him than bury him after he fails.”

  “You have no faith in him.”

  “I have faith in strength. I have faith in discipline. I have faith in commitment. I have faith in loyalty to family. When I see those things from him, then I will have faith in him.”

  “You’ll push him away.”

  “That girl will pull him away, you mean. She’s trouble.”

  “Her again? For heaven’s sake, Hank, did you consider the possibility that she may have been suffering from simple abdominal cramps? The kind girls get? That you drove off and left her on the side of the road, when what she needed most was a ride home to her mother?”
/>   That made Hank pause.

  “Nice to see you pay attention to my point of view, for a change. I’m going to go next door and see if Lizzy needs a hand.” Wendy pushed past him.

  “You haven’t talked to her in years!”

  “Your rule, Hank. Not mine. It’s time I showed support for an old friend.” With that, she was out the door.

  She was back a few minutes later. The Scaleses’ house was dark, and their minivan was gone. They didn’t return later that night. In fact, it wasn’t until five days later that the Blacktooths saw any of the Scaleses again. News spread quickly of an illness that had struck the Scales girl—cancer, the rumor went. Hank did not see much of her after that point, which suited him fine. Was he suspicious of her? Sorry for her? Upset with her? Afraid of her? None of these emotions lasted for more than a few seconds before he chased them away. All he would admit to himself was that something was horribly off.

  It was a bad year for Hank Blacktooth. He was confounded by the Scales family. Also, as his wife had suggested, he was disturbed by the emergence of this Otto Saltin character, whose face continued to echo fruitlessly in his mind. Most of all, he was frustrated by the training of his own son, who barely managed to avoid decapitating himself with the Blacktooth Blade by spring break. His underperforming son consumed most of his time and focus.

  It wasn’t until late spring, when Elizabeth placed a frantic phone call to their house asking if anyone had seen Jonathan, that he thought to check the lunar phases against the periods of Jennifer’s supposed illness.

  “You knew all along!”

  Wendy cowered where she stood by the kitchen sink. Her checkered blue dress—his favorite—was covered by a frilly apron, since she had been doing the dishes when this conversation started. Since researching moon phases the previous night, Hank had uncovered an awful lot of evidence against the Scaleses, and his wife was surprised by none of it.

  In all the years since Elizabeth Georges had suggested he was an abusive man, he had never hit Wendy. It was all he could do now not to slam her pretty, pale face into the cupboards.

  “You have nothing to say?! You were so damned righteous about this last autumn, Wendy. What did you call it that night—‘abdominal cramps’? You told me to give it a rest, and that I was paranoid. Didn’t you? And then you finished off by telling me how important it was for you to go support a friend. Yeah, you had so much to say that night! Your mouth wouldn’t stop moving. Somehow, out of all the pushy words that tripped off your never-stopping tongue, five never came out in this order: Lizzy married a fucking dragon.”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” she finally whispered. “I knew you’d want to kill Jonathan.”

  He spread out his hands. “Of course I’d want to kill Jonathan! Several thousand residents of this town would want to kill Jonathan! The question is, why wouldn’t you want to kill Jonathan? Why have you been protecting it? Because you still have feelings for it?”

  “Why would I have feelings for—”

  “You kissed it at the party, back when Lizzy and it were dating! I saw you—”

  “Hank, that’s not . . . that wasn’t anything. That has nothing to do with this. I didn’t even know what Jonathan was then. I found out the day Eddie was born.”

  “Then why protect it?!”

  She threw her dish towel onto the counter. “Think about it, Hank! Do you really believe I’d want you to kill my best friend’s husband?”

  “That’s not a husband! You can’t marry an animal! It’s dangerous, and Lizzy’s deranged! Any friend worth spit would have hacked its head off the moment she found out!”

  “I was nine months pregnant when I found out! Carrying your child, in case you forgot. Jonathan was beating Mother practically lifeless in the hospital room—”

  “Wait. Glory knows?!” Glory knows! And she didn’t do anything! And said nothing!

  “Yes, she knows. He almost killed her in that room! And Lizzy was lying there with little Jenny in her arms, and I was unarmed, and you wanted me to—what?—pick up a hospital gown and try to smother a fire-breather with it? I was afraid for our unborn son!”

  “Well-done,” he sneered, stinging from this string of revelations. “Even before our son was born, you were able to administer his first lesson in cowardice.”

  She stared out the window, venom in her bright blue eyes.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you, you sneaky whore.”

  He didn’t see what struck him in the head until he picked himself off the floor and turned around. Eddie—his own son!—was holding a brass candlestick Hank and Wendy had bought while honeymooning in Europe. His sparrowlike features were pointed in a snarl.

  (“Dad, get away from Mom! Get away! GET AWAY FROM HER!!!”)

  “You little shit. Did you know, too? Has it been your plan all along to grow up and marry a scaled swine, like Lizzy Georges did? Is that your plan for the Blacktooth legacy?”

  “Hank, he didn’t know—”

  “I haven’t thought much about my future or legacy,” Eddie admitted as the candlestick trembled. “Right now, my only plan is to keep beating you until you stop calling Mom a whore.”

  “Fine. Perhaps a candlestick suits you better than a sword, after all. Let’s see how well you use that thing when I’m facing you.”

  His son’s next attack was pathetic. Hank sidestepped it and pushed his son’s wrists down in a violent circle, using the momentum of the strike to flip him over. Eddie landed with an oomph on the kitchen linoleum, and the candlestick shifted to Hank’s hands. He stepped and pressed his heavy workboot under the boy’s chin.

  “Get used to the feeling of a foot on your throat, son. It’s something losers often experience, when they overreach. You’re not ready to protect your mother. You’re not ready to take me on. You’re not ready to take anybody on.”

  “Hank, please!”

  He looked up sharply. “Please, what?”

  “Jenny Scales saw me through the window. She just left her house and she’s probably heading over here. You can’t do this now!”

  “I can do what I want, when I want. I could even kill him.” To emphasize the point, he pushed his boot into the soft, young throat.

  “Hank, he’s our son! Think about what you’re doing! Think about . . . think about what Glory will do to you! He’s practically her grandson!”

  “I am not related to that woman!” Furious at hearing the mention of Glory again, he stepped off Eddie’s throat and toward Wendy.

  “Hank, Jenny’s on our lawn. Don’t you think Lizzy’s likely to be with her? Don’t you think we should stop this fighting long enough to deal with whatever’s coming?”

  This stopped Hank short. An idea struck him. “You know what, Wendy? You’re right. We should deal with what’s coming. That, after all, is the issue here. Not Eddie. Not me or you. But what’s coming across our lawn right now.”

  The bright locks of Jennifer Scales were visible through the living room window. Hank motioned to Wendy to follow him, pulled the Blacktooth Blade from its resting place above the mantel, and tossed it to her. “Kill it,” he told his wife. “If you have any loyalty to me—or any loyalty to that so-called ‘mother’ of yours—you’ll fix the mistake you made when you let that half-breed leave Winoka Hospital with its father.”

  “But—”

  “No more talk.” He grabbed the collar of Wendy’s cute checkered dress and dragged her through the living room to the foyer. “Kill it, or leave this house and this town forever.”

  The emotion in her face was hard for him to read. Was it pleading? Frustration? Disdain? He honestly had no idea how she would answer the door.

  She didn’t have to. Jennifer Scales, the insolent brat, kicked the thing off its hinges.

  Hank stayed out of sight while Wendy confronted the creature, remaining remarkably calm under the circumstances. The one thing that she could not hide was the cold poison in her voice—poison Hank knew she most wanted to direct at him, but co
uldn’t.

  “We have learned what you are, worm,” she told Jennifer.

  “Where’s my father?”

  “We know what he is, too, now. You cannot save him.”

  “Want to bet?”

  Jennifer stepped forward, but Wendy was quick with the sword. A shame she’s been so hung up on archery, Hank thought. A bit faster, and the girl-thing could be dead by now.

  Wendy kept talking, frustrating Hank to where he considered stepping forward and taking over. Before he could, he noticed Eddie’s slumping form approaching them. He couldn’t stop the boy. Jennifer saw him behind his mother.

  “Eddie! Eddie, please!”

  And then, for the first time in his life, Eddie did what his father wanted him to do.

  “You should leave now,” he told it. “Your father isn’t here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I can’t save you.”

  In Hank’s mind, can’t was close enough to won’t for this particular situation. He relaxed and waited for Wendy to deliver the death stroke.

  Only it never came. As Wendy lowered the sword, Hank looked through the window and spotted Elizabeth on the lawn. The woman had tears on her cheeks, no weapon in hand . . . and still had the power to save her daughter’s life. Hank knew, as soon as he looked at her, that Wendy was not going to kill Jennifer Scales. A tiny, lingering part of his mind understood why.

  Wendy told Jennifer about the code that prevented beaststalkers from killing children in front of family. This much was true, though Hank had seen it violated before. It was a convenient enough excuse, and it sent the girl-thing on her way. As the Scaleses retreated from their lawn, Wendy stepped away from the ruined door and handed the sword back to Hank.

  “Do whatever you’re going to do, Hank. I’m not leaving this house, or this town.”

  They stood there, with their son watching them, for what felt like an eternity. He had no idea what to do next. He loved this woman, and he loathed her for lying to him, and he admired her spirit even when it infuriated him. Did he want her to leave? Would she ever improve if she did? And what would happen to Eddie and his training?