What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (35 page)

“Jendra!” Moira sings the name, her voice rising to a pitch that pricks at my ears. In the depths of this frigid, breezeless winter night, now that the music has been cut, her voice penetrates, reverberates more than ever.

Jendra appears from between two of the tall, unbroken columns at the top of the square. She parades regally to Moira’s side like she’s walking out on stage. This is her moment.

These two female Riders stand side by side in silence for a few minutes, peering down at William’s quivering frame.

I’m amazed by how majestic Jendra looks, how changed. Her hair flows free in the wind, dances on her shoulders. Her lips are as dark as burgundy wine and her eyes wide halos. She’s dressed in exactly the same fashion as Moira, a carbon copy with platinum hair.

William lifts his chin and stares at Jendra. His eyes blink in the firelight, look hollowed-out and sunken. I can’t make out the scar on his forehead but know it’s there. He could be praying to Jendra, his eyes gaze at her so adoringly, imploring her for help, for succor.

He wants this. He doesn’t want to be the boy he is now—so weak, so unloved. And who could blame him for wanting so badly to change?

But will this change him? Is it possible?

I can’t get my head around how anyone could be remade from such a fragile little boy into one of these proud creatures. Refashioned from such poor stock into beings so grand and unearthly. So horrifying and cruel.

But it’s a sickness, what they’re offering him—they are the products of a disease—and he only wants to be made strong, wants to be cured of all the hurt, all the pain he’s had to endure.

Moira makes her way with style down the steps to where William is waiting. She’s like a model on a catwalk. She waves away the two Elders who are still at William’s side.

From a pocket of her coat she draws forth a blade, a long ceremonial dagger with an intricately carved ebony handle. The steel glints in the bonfire’s glow as she holds it aloft. If there was any chatter, any fidgeting, any Riders or Elders who weren’t paying attention before, all eyes are riveted on Moira now.

Jendra follows her down the steps, walking just as Moira walked, flouncing to a stop at her side.

Moira crooks her finger at me. “Come closer, Gillian. I want you to see this.”

I glance to my left and right and realize the Elders who had escorted me have slipped away, rejoining the larger group. I’m half a dozen yards from the steps. I can’t see the other Black Riders but I can feel them all around—
so many, so close.
The atmosphere is charged with static energy, enough to make my hair stand on end.

I know I should do something to stop this.
William—so helpless, that scar.
But part of me—a shameful, craven part of me—wants to see what happens, follow this through to the end. I’m caught up in the performance like everyone else.

I’ve let the rifle droop, the barrel pointing at the bricks. I know I have a fleeting chance now, could fire at Moira or Jendra from close range. But I would get one shot, one shot only, before the Riders descended on me, ripping me to pieces like the eviscerated deer.

And even if I had a chance to escape after that one shot, William would never come with me.
He wants this
. I would be sacrificing myself for absolutely no reason except the satisfaction of trying, of
maybe
killing one of them before I, too, was slain.

So I keep edging nearer to Moira until she looks satisfied.

“Now face each other,” she says. “Jendra, you need to be close enough to him to do this. Don’t spoil things for me.”

“I won’t, Moira,” Jendra says, her voice bright, doll-like.

Moira gives the dagger to Jendra first. “I think you know what to do.”

Jendra takes the blade in her hand, stares at it while brandishing it in all directions, fascinated by it. Suddenly she lifts her other hand up high, pulls back the sleeve of her coat and exposes her wrist. She turns to all assembled, gives everyone a chance to see exactly what she is about to do. She begins to press the sharp point of the dagger against the top of her wrist, just below the palm of her hand.

I glance at William, see him close his eyes and turn away. When I look back at Jendra, she has just finished drawing the blade down her inner wrist an inch or two. She holds her arm up high again and gradually turns in a circle, displaying it. When I have a chance to see it, dimly visible under the light of the flares, I can make out only a meager ooze trickling down her arm—she hardly bleeds at all.

Then Jendra hands the knife to William.

Will he go through with it? Can he remain upright long enough?

He looks as though he could sink to the ground.

William closes his eyes, steeling himself for this. He has only to endure another moment of pain—and he might,
might
be transformed. His mind must be filled with images of the nightmare he endured when that moon-shaped sliver of flesh was peeled away from his brow.

He takes the knife and raises
his
wrist. He doesn’t bother turning to show the assembled crowd but faces Jendra. Jendra still holds her wrist aloft, the trickle of blood, black and thick as a garden slug, imperceptibly creeping down her arm.

William, too, stares at the knife as if hypnotized. It’s so quiet—the sound of the fire the only thing audible. This time there’s no impatience from the Riders, none egging him on to hurry, to be done with it. They seem absorbed completely by every second of what’s happening.

And if he doesn’t go through with it? If William can’t bring himself to pierce his own skin?

What if he lets the dagger slip from his hand? If he topples to the ground?

Moira would surely spring at him, snatch up the knife and finish the job for him. It’s impossible to imagine her doing anything else.

But surely she must want the ceremony to be voluntary, something William is asking for. If she forces him—slices into his skin with her very own hand—it will be hard to convince the other Elders that this is a good thing. Convince them that they, too, should be sacrificial lambs in another blood ceremony.

At last William starts to press the tip of the dagger against the thin inner skin of his wrist just as Jendra had done. His hands are trembling wildly. For what seems an eternity, he wavers. I begin to believe he
is
going to give up, can’t force himself to go through with it.
What is in his mind—that crescent scar—the pain he’s known?

But then he scratches with the tip just enough to produce a splotch of blood. Having gone this far, he doesn’t stop, slowly continues drawing the blade down his wrist, exactly as far as Jendra had done.

Instead of a slow ooze like Jendra, blood begins coursing down his arm like an overturned glass of wine, dripping along the sleeve of his coat, pooling in the crease of his elbow, falling in rapid droplets to the bricks below his feet like the start of a rain shower.

He really starts to sway now, teetering back and forth with no one lifting a hand to help him, Jendra so close but unwilling to touch him. I shoulder the rifle and move to his side, wondering if anyone will try to stop me.

I grab William by his uninjured arm. He doesn’t even glance in my direction. Simply lets the dagger fall from his hand, clattering onto the brickwork floor. His face is as white as a Black Rider’s, wears an expression that makes me think of someone tumbling backwards down a bottomless well.

I look at Jendra, so close to me now. She has a spacy, bemused smile on her face—doesn’t seem to be focusing on anything, staring up at the sky, back at the fire. And her eyes—

Her eyes are black cauldrons with no end to them. Unknowable, unreadable. Across their surfaces torch flames are reflected, dance like blood-red imps who have leapt free from the fire.

Jendra holds out her bleeding wrist to William and he manages to do the same. He’s as floppy as a rag doll in my grip. I have to spread my feet apart, assume a sturdier stance to support him.

Put a stop to this. Pull him away.

But I can’t. I couldn’t drag him out of the square with me if I wanted to, let alone manage to escape on my own.

This scene must play out to the bitter end. William still wants this to happen—holding his arm up, trying valiantly to complete his part in these ceremonial rites. And I will be beside him, within inches of what’s about to transpire.

The smell of blood—it’s very real, the sweetness, the stinging metallic jolt of it. I flash back to having had Moira’s blood in my mouth—spitting it out like snake’s venom.

I watch William and Jendra’s arms move together like a film in slow motion—but they connect at last, wrist against wrist.

And now it’s Jendra who struggles to stay on her feet, who has to fight a primal urge to recoil from the unchanged human.

For a matter of seconds Jendra and William are able to keep their wrists together, blood smearing into blood. Both look like they’re feeding into an electric current, quaking, convulsing with shock.

Then their arms fall away from each other and at the same moment all the strength goes out of William’s legs. He almost pulls me over with him but I’m able to soften his fall as he goes down. I slow him enough to keep him from dropping with a thud to the bricks, letting him settle in a soft heap.

And then William goes from shivering, shuddering to suddenly having a body-racking seizure.

He begins writhing like an epileptic, like a patient in an asylum undergoing shock therapy—enduring a massive influx of electric power. He stiffens so rigidly that it looks like his spine is going to snap.

He’s being torn apart. His face is scrunched in agony and blood beings seeping from his nostrils, from the corners of his mouth.

I look around wildly and see that Jendra has retreated a few feet, still holding her arm up high, making no move to help her old friend. Moira and the Riders beside her maintain their same position on the steps and behind them are the fragmented columns holding Gideon’s body and Needle—none of them responding, all just staring at what’s happening to the boy.

Then William’s movements start to slacken, his face begins to relax. Soon he has subsided into a sporadic jerking, like a bad case of the hiccups. As I gaze into his face, I realize he is dying. He begins to gasp, takes a few erratic breaths and ceases to move at all.

I place my hand on his chest but feel nothing—no beating heart, no rising and falling of his narrow, fragile ribcage. I get back up and take the rifle in my hands.

Moira. I will
kill Moira.

My mind seethes with the image of a single bullet boring into the soft milky-white of Moira’s forehead, right between those corkscrew curls.

I shake my head violently.
This isn’t me. I can’t be one who has such murderous thoughts, can’t murder in cold—

Blood.

But is that what flows through the veins of these nocturnal apparitions? Can I even call them human? Do their hearts pump out the same red blood cells, the same white blood cells that flow through me, that flowed through William?

I look down at William, at his crumpled, defenseless face and know that he could be any one of us. Next time, it might be me lying there—or Emily or Carson or Stace or Finch. We’re pawns—under the thumb of madness.

Voices rise around me. Words aren’t clear but there’s some movement, some agitation. It’s harder to see—torches are pulled from sconces, their flares dancing wildly in all directions. The bonfire is burning lower, collapsing in on itself.

I know there are only seconds remaining in which I can act.

Moira.
I try to get a fix on Moira. A torch remains stationary near Gideon’s body and she stands beside it, still visible, her hand on his chest as she looks dazedly from side to side. She must be confused, trying to come up with words that will regain control of the situation, maybe seeking guidance from her sleeping lover.

Keep steady on Moira—stop hesitating.
Moira is not human.
Imagine her lying lifeless like a queen in state—stretched out alongside Gideon on that slab.

But my finger wavers on the trigger. I keep arguing with myself as the seconds pass.

Better not to open fire. Aisa will simply take Moira’s place—nothing will be changed by this.

Keep hold of the rifle and run.

Jendra is on the steps between Moira and me, pacing through the flickering light in a slow circle. She seems unaware that I’m only a few feet from her. She still has her gashed wrist half-raised, stares at it blankly.
What is going through her head?

I try to aim past her, aim at that quiver of torchlight so close to Moira’s waxen face. My finger touches the trigger as I stare at the shadows of her dark eyes, the smear of blood at the corner of her mouth and squeeze—

But I flinch—just at the crucial split second. At the moment I pull the trigger, a car-sized chunk of the bonfire caves in on itself like a detonated building. At the crack of my shot, the fire gives out a rumble and a thundering crash, followed by an enormous hiss as it settles like a thousand snakes have been tossed on the flames.

And ringing out over all this is a piercing cry that stings my ears. Moira is still standing at Gideon’s side, her hand now entwined with his.

I hit no one—the shot went wild
. But then I see—

Jendra.

She staggers to one side, clutching her arm. She looks at me, dazed and appalled, wide eyes blinking slowly as if unable to comprehend what has just occurred. Without warning, Moira springs to her side, grabs Jendra by her uninjured arm and drags her back up the steps.

Pandemonium breaks loose. It’s harder than ever to see—unsteady gleams of torchlight, the bonfire lowering and spitting embers—impossible to get a fix on any of the shapes flashing about faster and faster.

The Elders have dropped back to the far end of the square and the Riders are phantoms once more, inky wraiths crisscrossing the space around me. Their cries blur into an indecipherable babble. One knocks into me hard enough to spin me around. It takes a moment for me to realize that the rifle is gone, plucked right out of my hands.