Seraph of Sorrow

by MaryJanice Davidson

  “It’s not right for them to be here,” he finally told her.

  She nodded. “Maybe not. Maybe if I talk to Lizzy, I can convince them to leave.”

  “I mean, it’s not right to be here, on the face of the earth, at all.” He was trying to keep his voice calm, and he decided it would be a good idea to lay the sword down on the couch. “Somebody’s going to have to get rid of them, Wendy. If you can’t do it, I’ll have to. Not today, not with Lizzy around. Someday. Someone.”

  “Hank. You haven’t killed anything since you came back from—”

  “You think I can’t do it?” He felt his throat fill. “You think I would fail?”

  “No! I’m saying—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Hank nearly fell over, he was so surprised to hear his son’s voice.

  “Eddie.” Wendy chose her words carefully. “She’s been your best friend since they moved here. Do you really feel you could kill her?”

  He was looking at her, not at Hank. “Whatever it takes. Just, please stop arguing like that. I’ll train twice as hard, over the summer. I’ll end my friendship with her, and with anyone who sides with her. I have a rite of passage next year, right?”

  “Eddie . . .”

  “Let him speak, Wendy. He’s growing up.” As Hank stood taller, he watched his son do the same. “My boy is growing up, finally. He’s ready to learn.”

  “Are you sure this is what you want, Eddie?”

  Hank used the question to his advantage. “If you confront Jennifer with a sword, beaststalker to beast, it will not be easy,” he promised. “She will make it hard. She will use your friendship to her advantage. She will beg. You will have to ignore that.”

  Eddie nodded.

  “She will refuse to fight.”

  “I understand.”

  “She will be weak. Like her mother. You will have to be the strong one.”

  He gulped, but his spine did not shrink. “I will be.”

  “You don’t have to attack her the next time you see her. In fact, you shouldn’t. Act as normally as you can. This summer, we’ll train. You’ll start your sophomore year in high school, go to class, and make friends with other beaststalker kids. This town is full of them. You have numbers on your side, at all times. We can afford to be patient. You’ll turn fifteen this autumn, and within a few months after that, it will be time.

  “And then,” he finished with a hand on his son’s shoulder, “you’ll make your father proud.”

  A few months later, they were attending the funeral of a friend. Unfortunately, the Scales were mutual friends of the deceased, and so there was no avoiding them.

  The wake was at the widow’s house, where all the rooms were too small so that unwelcome faces could pop out at you from around any corner. Hank finally huddled in one corner of the parlor. Wendy spent most of her time with him. Inevitably, Eddie ran into Jennifer Scales.

  The two had a short conversation, which Hank and Wendy witnessed from a distance. It started with Eddie’s approach, and Jennifer’s vicious response, and Eddie’s attempts at reason . . .

  “Why is he even talking to it?” Hank asked Wendy.

  “It was my suggestion,” Wendy admitted after a sip of wine.

  Knowing he would despise the answer, he asked anyway, “Why?”

  “He loves her.”

  “He has an unhealthy attachment to it, you mean.”

  She slurped more wine. “Jennifer is Lizzy’s daughter. Lizzy’s gorgeous and smart—”

  “Hadn’t noticed.”

  Her blue eyes mocked the remark. “As I was saying, Lizzy’s gorgeous and smart, and so is her daughter. Eddie grew up next door to her. Of course he’s going to fall in love with her.”

  “He can feel however he likes. As long as he kills it next spring.”

  “Do you honestly think he’s going to do that?”

  “Don’t you think he should?”

  “I think . . .” Her eyes lowered. “I think they should leave town. Jon and Lizzy shouldn’t have put me in this position. Us in this position.”

  “Don’t blame this on them. You could have resolved this long ago. You’re a lot more like Lizzy than you think, Wendy. She has trouble choosing sides . . . and so do you.”

  Wendy frowned and let her gaze drift across the room. Hank followed it, and saw Jennifer and Eddie looking back at them. They were obviously the object of the conversation.

  “I hope they stay,” Hank concluded as the girl flicked a carrot at their son and strode off. “Because then you won’t be able to play both sides anymore. You’re going to have to choose.”

  Several weeks later, Eddie noticed a commotion outside. “Mom! Dad! On the street!”

  Hank went to the window and cursed. On the street in front of the Scaleses’ house, in broad daylight, was the ugliest beast in imagination. It had the black scales of a dragon straight from the abyss, but enough twitching legs to pass as a giant bug. Not even the afternoon daylight was strong enough to pierce the dark corona that shrouded the thing’s head and shoulders. Its insectile legs were trembling, and its tail was twitching.

  “That’s Susan!” Eddie cried out.

  Hank thought at first his son meant the creature, until he caught sight of Susan Elmsmith, the girl who lived down the road, crawling backward on the pavement away from this thing. He didn’t think much of Susan Elmsmith—what was there to think of?—but the sight of a Winoka resident cowering in fear before a monster like this offended him.

  I should do something, he told himself. His feet did not move. Suddenly, a voice rang inside his head. He scratched at his temples, but it persisted.

  . . . no love . . . no love . . . no love . . .

  “What is that?” he heard Eddie say, and Hank was glad he did, for his sanity’s sake.

  “Whatever it is, it belongs to the Scales family.” In fact, Hank guessed this was the spawn of Jonathan Scales. A recent town council meeting had confirmed rumors: a half dragon, half arachnid had decided to roost near Winoka. The exact reason was not clear, but the connection to Jonathan Scales was beyond doubt. And so we pay again for Lizzy’s poor judgment. He glanced at Wendy. And hers.

  A wild fantasy rolled through his mind, one familiar to him: a young Lizzy Georges, smarter this time, who beat her wishy-washy friend to the punch and claimed the promising college student Hank Blacktooth for herself. They fell in love, two perfect souls. He helped her reconcile and reconnect with her beaststalker heritage, despite Glory’s mishandling of her upbringing. She enhanced his reputation as the obvious leader of the future. No one married a lizard or spawned horrific hybrids. Wendy Williamson wandered onto a different karmic path, content with whatever mediocre life she felt like carving out for herself as an anthropologist. Best of all, someone would have killed Jonathan Scales decades ago . . . maybe even Lizzy herself!

  Lulled by his daydream, he did not notice Wendy take the Blacktooth Blade from the wall until he heard Eddie asking her what she was doing. The voice in their heads intensified.

  . . . no love . . . no love . . . no love . . .

  She didn’t reply. Instead, she gave the two of them a sad smile, dropped the sheath of the sword at their feet, turned away, and ran out the kitchen door.

  “Mom, what’re you . . . Mom!” Eddie rushed out after her, but hesitated on the lawn as his mother raced toward certain death, apron flapping in the wind, sword raised high.

  “Ready yourself, beast . . . or ready your soul!”

  She’s beautiful, Hank told himself for the first time in years.

  The beast honed in on her immediately, pounding the air with a single telepathic thought:

  ENEMY!

  Everyone outside—Wendy and Eddie, Susan, Lizzy and Jennifer—fell to the ground. Only Hank, safe behind the window, remained standing. As Wendy crawled back to pick up the sword, the thing spat something—maybe poison, maybe acid—and his wife began to scream.

  She’s going to die, he realized. The beast
must have come to the same conclusion.

  PREY.

  Eddie cried out and leapt forward. Hank stepped toward the door to follow and caught his foot on something: the sheath to the Blacktooth Blade. She may die today, but the Blade must go on. It’s the best way to honor her. She found herself at the end, after all. He walked calmly out to the lawn and assessed his options. Eddie, acting with no reason or focus, had rushed out onto the street and was trying to drag his mother back to safety. The beast hadn’t struck again, but Hank knew it was only a matter of time. Lizzy, trying not to provoke the thing into attacking again, was telling Eddie to get Wendy over to her. The boy turned to him.

  “Dad, help me get her over there!”

  What was he supposed to say to his son, in front of Lizzy and this beast and everybody else? That he should forget his mother? That the monster would soon finish what it had started? That even if it didn’t, the wounds Wendy had suffered were probably fatal anyway? The best way to help is through her legacy. She was brave, and the sword will help us remember her.

  “The sword, Eddie! The Blacktooth Blade!”

  “Dad, she’s going to die!”

  She’s already dead! The sword is within your reach! “The blade, son! It’s right there!”

  By now, Elizabeth was close enough to Wendy to check her pulse. “Hold her still!” Then she turned to Hank. “Call nine-one-one!”

  Surely, Lizzy, you can understand. You’re a doctor. You know she won’t make it. Help me remember her, before that beast destroys the last weapon she ever carried. “The sword!”

  The reproach in her dazzling green eyes stabbed Hank in the gut. “Call nine-one-one!”

  Several things happened after that. Lizzy’s daughter began to interfere, and then Jonathan stepped out the door, and then the black thing in the road got real irritated, and then the daughter rushed about, trying to hide the father and distract the beast into chasing her. None of this interested Hank terribly, though upon seeing the beast leave—and hearing that Jonathan Scales had already called emergency services—Hank went out to the street, recovered the Blacktooth Blade, and returned it to safety within its sheath and above the mantel.

  Then the ambulance arrived, and inside it he joined his dying family.

  He didn’t see Jennifer Scales again until a few days later, outside his wife’s room on the second floor of Winoka Hospital. In that short span of time, an awful lot had happened.

  First, doctors had managed to save Wendy’s life. She would be confined to her bed until the musculature in her back healed—several weeks—but doctors expected a full recovery.

  Second, Dr. Georges-Scales—who Hank couldn’t help notice hadn’t gotten into the ambulance with her friend that day—soon followed Wendy to the hospital, in some sort of coma. Apparently, the beast had been after her all along. Or maybe it was her husband. Who cared? The point was, Lizzy had fought this thing and failed. Like Wendy.

  Third, his son had become a complete loss.

  After Wendy’s injury, Hank had done some thinking. Eddie’s training had gone as far as it was going to go. No, he wasn’t perfect—but the kid was fifteen and Winoka was attracting more monsters into its darker corners. It was time for Edward Blacktooth’s rite of passage. Hank had reminded Eddie of his promise to kill Jennifer Scales (mistake number one, judging from the boy’s expression), handed him the Blacktooth Blade (mistake number two), and sent him off alone as he had once been sent (mistake number three).

  And how had the boy returned? Decidedly unvictorious. In fact unconscious, practically carried on his prey’s back into a hospital, with only the hilt of the Blacktooth Blade jammed into the back pocket of the jeans he wore under his ritual robe. The blade of the heirloom had been shattered and strewn about the parking garage at the Mall of America, left to be swept up by a cleaning truck. It was the peak of humiliation for Hank to receive all this news in a hospital lobby from Susan Elmsmith, the unremarkable neighbor girl with no talents whatsoever.

  The Blacktooth Blade! Gone!

  He had slept at home that night, and then the next, instead of at the hospital with his family. He couldn’t bear to look at them, these two agents of ruin who had managed to undo in a matter of days all the dignity and legacy the Blacktooth clan had spent centuries building and forwarding. No, his time was better spent, he decided, sitting on the living room couch and staring at the blank spot over the mantel where the precious sword had once hung.

  When he finally returned to the hospital, he ran into the person he least wanted to see. Right outside his wife’s room, poking her head through the door and waving at his family—waving!—was Jennifer Scales.

  “What are you doing here?!”

  It gave him no small satisfaction to see the adolescent creature flinch at the sound of his voice. She broke away without looking at him. “Nothing, Mr. Blacktooth.” He stared at the back of her head, fingers itching for a weapon. As if reading his thoughts, she gave him a parting shot: “Shame about your sword.”

  He barged into his wife’s room and slammed the door.

  “Cripes, Hank! I’m resting, here.”

  “Still taking visitors, I hope.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “When they bother to show up, yes.”

  Eddie shifted uncomfortably in his own bed. “You guys aren’t going to argue again, are you? I don’t want to have to get up—”

  “No, please, don’t move on my account. I know your tender arms and legs are still sore from the beating you took at the hands of a girl.”

  “It wasn’t her; it was her boyfriend—”

  “I don’t think he’s her boyfriend anymore, Mom. What’s your point, Dad. I should be back up and trying to kill my best friend again?”

  “Isn’t that what you promised?”

  Eddie swallowed. “That was a mistake. I wasn’t thinking right. I was surprised at what I learned that day, and I reacted badly. I’m going to apologize to Jennifer, and—”

  “You. Will. Do. No. Such. Thing.”

  Eddie’s face hardened. “Jennifer’s my friend, Dad. I don’t care if she can turn into a dragon, or a spider, or a fish. That part never upset me. It upset me that she lied. I’m going to forgive her, because I lied, too. And when friends hurt each other, they forgive each other.”

  “You are not her friend.”

  “Hank, do you hear yourself?”

  “I hear myself fine. Can anyone else in this room hear me?”

  “Unfortunately. Hank, you’ve been trying to tell me the same thing about Lizzy for years—that she and I can’t be friends. Then you try to tell me she and Jonathan can’t be lovers. Then you try to tell your son he can’t be friends with their daughter. At what point do you finally give up and accept—you don’t control any of this?”

  “I don’t give up, Wendy! As a good parent, it’s my job to help my son make good choices! That means exercising authority! I wish you saw it as your job, too!”

  “It’s not your call, Dad.”

  “It is! You will not see that girl again!”

  It irked Hank a great deal that neither Wendy nor Eddie seemed particularly upset at this edict. In fact, Wendy appeared to be smiling. “Hank, do you realize you’ve just told your son the one thing most certain to drive him closer to Jennifer Scales?”

  “Then let me tell him something else. Eddie, if you see that girl again, I’ll kill her. In fact, if I see her again, I’ll kill her.”

  Eddie slowly pushed back his covers and slid out of bed. The bruises that peeked out of his hospital gown were yellowing, and he limped toward his father. Instead of confronting him as Hank expected, however, the boy pushed past and leaned against the doorway.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Well, gosh, Dad. You just told me you were going to kill my best friend. I’ll be damned if I can stop you—we’ve established how much I suck with a sword. So I figure the only thing I can do to be helpful is warn her.”

  “How does that help me?”

  �
��I’m not trying to help you.”

  “Get back into bed, before I beat you worse than you already are.”

  “Screw you. First I’m a pussy for lying in bed with bruises. Now you’ll beat me for standing up? What’s next, you shiv Mom for backtalk?” He slipped through the doorway.

  “Edward George Blacktooth, if you leave this room, don’t bother coming—”

  “Eddie, don’t take too long,” Wendy cut in. “Remember they serve dinner early on this floor. Tell Jenny I say hi, and ask her to have her mom swing by.”

  Furious at his wife, Hank grabbed the boy by the gown and yanked him onto the floor.

  “Hank!”

  Eddie lay on the floor as Hank put his foot on his throat. In fact, he taunted his father with a strained voice. “Finishing what you couldn’t last spring, Dad?”

  “Finishing what never should have started. You were a mistake and a failure from the day you were born. You’ve shamed the Blacktooth name and lost its enduring symbol.”

  “That fucking sword? It was a piece of crap.”

  “IT WAS EVERYTHING!” Hank pressed down hard to stop the kid from talking.

  “Hank, please!”

  “Why do you care, Wendy? If the boy was worth anything, he’d have saved you from getting hurt. I’m doing us both a favor.”

  “Hank, if you kill him, I’ll tell Mother.”

  She threatened me with that last time, too. Feeling something snap deep inside, he kept his foot on Eddie and looked up at her. Funny how she looks so much like Mom in that hospital bed. “Who’s to say you’ll be alive to tell her?”

  If the threat fazed her at all, she did not show it. “She’ll recognize the boot print. So will Lizzy. After all, they’ve been seeing it on my throat since we met.”