Fell of Dark (8 page)

The Sawmen made me suffer. I felt their blades. I bled from my stomach, my spine split, and they cut me in half again and again. The Architect's punishment for my thoughts of suicide.

I survived myself. Doesn't this mean I'll survive everything and everyone?

I was halfway across a street, but the woman in the car didn't want to stop for the sign. She wanted to slide by. At the last second, she realized she couldn't make the turn without hitting me. She stopped short. I glared at her and brought my fist down on the hood of her car. “What the hell are you doing?”

What did she do? She raised her hands and shouted back through her windshield. I could read her lips: “What? I stopped.”

I argued with myself whether or not to hit her car again.

Things happen inside of me, and sometimes they come out. I brought my hand down, laid my palm on the hood, and the engine stopped. The tires deflated, all four of them, flat to their rims, and I glued the woman's hands to the steering wheel. I willed her window down. She couldn't speak.

“You've got to watch the people,” I said. My voice sounded deep and foreign, even to me: my Protector. “You've got to watch the people.”

Minutes went by before my mind and heart were mine again. Then the sadness came.

I released the woman's hands, started the car, inflated the tires, and gave her back her tongue. An angry miracle.

My name is Hawthorn Blythe. I had a sister named Salome. Her name comes from the Hebrew word for peace.
Shalom.
She drowned when I was four. Saving my life. All I remember is the taste of the ocean. Salome turned into a seahorse. I'd swear it.

Her bedroom looks exactly like it did when she was thirteen. A few posters on the wall, certificates of merit in swimming and medals, but, mostly, there's the sheet music. Sheet music on her walls, books of sheet music piled on her bed, just as she left them, the top one open to Corelli's Allegro in D Major, no. 11, from
Twenty-Four Preludes
. She played piano, violin, and guitar. She sang. I have nothing on her. I can't sing or play a thing. Nothing on her, except for chess. How can chess compare to music? It can't.

Salome loved me. This must be obvious. Before she died, my parents loved me, too.

My parents were named Kermit and Tatiana. Once they fell into their Gehenna, as my father called it, they lost their names. Nameless demons. They visit me from hell. The violence against me started ten years ago.

Punishment.

My parents stopped feeding me and themselves more or less. They gave me bologna or peanut butter, water or tea. I have no idea what they ate. I never saw them sit down to dinner. Where did they eat? What kept them alive? Their anger? Their hate? Their violence?

My nameless parents. I want to give them new names. Kulthat for my father and, for my mother, Tillion. Kulthat and Tillion, the demons who slowly kill me.

Hawthorn Blythe.

Hawthorn. My father told me the same information over and over before he became a demon. “Thorn, your namesake comes from a fruit-bearing shrub and tree. Family: Rosaceae. Genus: Crataegus. The plant has much myth and lore around it, from faeries to druids to Christ Himself. I have favorites. Hawthorn kills vampires dead, so to speak. It may heal a broken heart. Christ's crown of thorns came from a hawthorn, and so it groans and cries out on Good Friday.”

I have never killed a vampire. I've only broken hearts. I believe I could torture Christ.

Blythe=
blithe
. According to the dictionary,
blithe
means “joyous, merry, or gay in disposition; cheerful.” Or “without thought or regard; heedless; carefree.” Do I have to say anything?

Hawthorn Blythe. Is this any kind of name for an unhappy killer who thinks too much?

Chess. Kermit taught me when I was very young, before Salome died.

My father had been a prodigy, though he lost interest. He went to law school at nineteen. Now he does nothing, has nothing.

Could I be called a prodigy? Hard to say. I've never played chess against anyone but my father.

The day Salome died, my father and I played a game. On the beach, in the sand, a travel set. I took a floating raft out on the ocean. My father had me in check, and I needed to think. Could I save myself from mate?

I put my head down. When I looked up, ready to come in with my escape, I'd drifted so far out. What could I do? I screamed.

My sister stood on the beach scanning for me. Her hand shading her eyes. When she heard me, she came to me. A rescue that would leave her dead.

I don't exactly play chess anymore. I have no one to play against. I work out the puzzles in the newspaper. I play against myself.

Is chess a violent game? It's war on a board. So it's violent at its source.

I've played more than once against Kulthat, my father who's not my father. Now a demon. When one of us takes a piece, we make the other bleed. A dagger here, a sword there, an ax, a mace, an arrow. We suffer. We finish games fainting.

I always win. How could I not? Kulthat forgets he needs to plan. It's a war, and wars need plans. It needs more than just the desire to damage your opponent, to punish him for breaking your heart. For killing your daughter.