The black mound of the Burren loomed neath the stars, rising with every mile as its stones spread like some scabious disease across the land. Few roads were brave enough to penetrate its deeper recesses. And without the floodlit halo of Kilmartin’s site to guide their course, they may never have found it. But the headlights seared a steady path through the darkness, snaring glimpses of tumbled-down walls and high rocky hills laid across the land like beached whales – shapes and shadows in a storm that was worsening by the minute.
Mina listened out for the drum of the watchers’ feet behind them, recalling that sting of glass when the jeep’s window had been smashed in; her cheeks still tingled at the thought of it. For once her fears hadn’t spread their ghastly wings, but still her fingers kept flexing nervously around the steering wheel as she stared through the dark mists of her mind. She understood now why the watchers had retreated, why they hadn’t stormed that station and taken what they’d come for. In Jennifer’s face, they thought they’d already found it. The only reason Mina was alive was because her sister was dead.
‘Focus on the road, Meens,’ she whispered under her breath, blinking her sore eyes through the tiredness. ‘We’re nearly there.’
Eventually she’d be force-fed all the stages of grief in a single vomit-inducing mouthful. But for now, she just had to get through the night. They were still a while away. A scattering of houses glowed like lonely bonfires in the wild, and it’d been an age since they’d passed another car. The Burren’s scraggy fringes were home to so few. It was exactly the kind of place – remote as it was desolate – that the watchers could infest overnight and nobody elsewhere in the country would ever be any the wiser.
Since she’d learned of Sean Kilmartin and his one-of-a-kind granite shaft, all she’d wanted was a chance to talk some sense into the man – to snatch the weapon from his hand before he could pull its trigger. But Mina was starting to doubt if she’d really thought this through. Too much time had elapsed. There was no telling what horrors he’d already summoned to the surface.
Madeline remained predictably tight-lipped on the passenger seat, offering no more than a body for company. It wouldn’t have been like the woman to spark up a conversation without some words of kindling. Mina had spied on her through the rear-view mirror in those rare moments when the windy roads unfurled. Madeline’s face was so at rest, it looked as though she were asleep with her eyes open. But should the watchers have caught up to them, her keen hearing would have detected their coming long before the yellow one on the back seat could shake a feather, and hopefully she’d have the good sense to say something before another window got smashed to smithereens. The borrowed squad car hadn’t the weight to withstand even the most half-hearted of attacks, and it wouldn’t be like Mina’s favourite fairies to ever go easy on her.
Madeline could have changed any aspect of herself, smoothing out those creases and handpicking the beauty of others to create her own original. The human face was, after all, putty for her to play with: a pinch here, a pinch there, less or more as she pleased. Youthfulness was hers, if she’d wanted it. Any hair colour, any style, with a catalogue of eyes to complement each one. The possibilities were endless as they were irresistible had she been so inclined. But the woman was exactly as Mina remembered her – a perfect likeness of the professor’s late wife, albeit on a particularly cheerless day – and her blue eyes were smouldering as ever.
‘Everything okay?’ Mina asked her, speaking softly so as to not leave too great a stain on the silence between them.
‘Yes, Mina,’ she replied. ‘Everything is okay.’
Good chat, Madeline.
A radio was docked on the dashboard, identical to those in the comms room. She’d refrained from fidgeting with it in case someone should have talked back to her. But an occasional voice had crackled over the hum of the engine, assumedly from some other station around the country, communicating across all channels. Luckily her name had yet to enter the conversation. Whether Mina’s absence from her cell would be deemed a kidnapping or a jailbreak was irrelevant. The Guards would soon be looking for her either way. She imagined checkpoints positioned on every lonely road, scouring cars for stowaways, and helicopters searching the night like a sky full of moons. Hopefully the reality was a little less dramatic given that her guilt had yet to be proven. Though the same could also be said for her innocence. She knew which side of the fence Lynch would be camped on.
A sudden rumbling outside of Mina’s thoughts drew her back to the moment.
‘Did you hear that?’ she asked.
It’d sounded like a far-off clap of thunder, but that was hardly surprising given the storm lashing against the windshield.
‘We’re too late,’ Madeline said, sitting forward.
The wind beat in rhythmic waves across the sky, as though a tempest were now circling directly above them. And then – from nowhere and everywhere all at once – a soul-splitting scream tore through the night like a siren. It was so animalistic, so savage, and so impossibly loud that no watcher could have been responsible.
Mina kept the car in motion, though it was more by dumb luck than instinct that she’d held it together. Madeline’s skeleton cracked aloud like a tree on the cusp of falling – splitting and tearing in the seat beside her. She gripped her skull as if that haunting voice were now trapped inside it. Fingers stretched through their sockets, their nails growing before Mina’s eyes and curling into those hideous claws of her kind. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Madeline’s shoulders bulged up from beneath her coat and the woman’s whole body wrenched violently back and forth, in agony and out of control.
‘No,’ she growled in a voice that was unrecognisable, ‘stop the car.’
Mina jammed on the brakes and sent them skidding to a standstill in the middle of the road.
‘Get away from me,’ Madeline screamed, her eyes bulging sickeningly from their sockets.
Mina fumbled with the door in a panic and collapsed onto the road. From there she watched her friend twist and howl as her body was broken apart limb by limb. It was as though a watcher inhabited her very skin, vying to burst its way out.
‘Madeline,’ Mina cried, shouting over the yellow one’s bawling in the back seat, ‘what’s happening? What do I do?’
Like a beast drawn to a scent, the woman’s face snapped towards her. Its bones had lost their cleanness of form, as melted candlewax dripping and solidifying into sickening new shapes. A few teeth had already reverted to their true form, growing from her black, bloodied gums like short spears.
‘I can’t fight it,’ she screamed as her left fist clashed with the windscreen, splitting fractures through its glass.
The wind whipped at Mina’s face as she dashed around the car and flung its passenger door open. Without knowing what do to, she refused to stand back and do nothing. Madeline’s legs had already stretched so long that they’d split through the dashboard, and yet she seemed oblivious to everything but the pain. Mina gripped the sleeve of her coat and dragged her from the seat, exhausting the strength of both arms just to get her onto the road. She knelt beside her – offering whatever solace she could – but Madeline pushed her away, guarding her from whatever devilry was scraping flakes from her free will. Her tear-streamed face rose to Mina’s, startling her back. The bridge of her nose had collapsed and caved into its cavity, but – worst of all, and that which sapped the hope from Mina’s heart – Madeline’s eyes now burned a hellish orange.
‘Run,’ she snarled, saliva foaming through her teeth.
‘I’m not leaving you like this,’ Mina said, braving a step closer.
‘No,’ Madeline cried, forcing her eyes shut, ‘you mustn’t…’
She suddenly jolted up to her feet as though some puppet master in the sky had just ripped at her strings. Even in Madeline’s distorted state, her agility was terrifying. Now, as before, Mina knew that running wasn’t an option. They always find you. She backed away in the shadow of that ghastly silhouette, its bones cricking and cracking with every jagged movement as its eyes blazed in the black.
‘Fight it,’ Mina said, determined to try till the end. ‘This isn’t what you are!’
But Madeline kept on coming, dragging her feet closer and closer, claws at full stretch by her sides. Death could come at any second, so swiftly that Mina’s eyes wouldn’t even catch it. With every inch she retreated, they drifted further from the headlights, and Madeline’s breathing grew more distressed. How long could her mind resist those urges when her body had already succumbed?
‘Madeline,’ Mina pressed, backpedalling faster to put more distance between them, ‘please, come back to me.’
But there was nothing – no ashes of humanity – to suggest that she could still hear her, and they’d strayed so far from the light, it was impossible to see how much of her friend remained. And yet, such was Madeline’s stubbornness, Mina knew she’d sooner die than relinquish her claim on the life she’d chosen.
‘I know you’re in there,’ she said. ‘You have to—’
Her tired feet – too leaden to lift off the ground – tripped over one another, sending her falling backwards. She scuttled away, frantically trying to find her footing, but Madeline pounced forward, slashing at her calf before she’d chance to drag both legs away. A claw tore through Mina’s jeans, gouging out a bloody chunk of her. The wound burned like a blue flame, scorching through her leg and calling a cry from her lips. Any closer to the bone and she’d have lost more than mere flesh. She rolled away, trying to throw herself out of Madeline’s reach, but every fraught movement was touch and go as her body screamed at her to lie the fuck down. She lifted back onto her feet, blood seeping through her jeans, but the pain struck her like an arrowhead, sending her floundering back to the ground. She winced in agony, anticipating a second assault – more flesh cut and lost to the darkness – but was standing stock-still, unmoved since she’d stained her claws with Mina’s blood. Was she somehow regaining control? This was her chance, however long it may last, and Mina lurched to her feet, hobbling on one leg towards the light. The gale blasted her back as she pawed her hands across the car to stay upright, limping against it as the thunder of Madeline’s feet suddenly stormed from the darkness. Acting on instinct alone, she collapsed to the ground just as another handful of talons tore through the panelling of the door, shattering its window and sending the yellow one into hysterics as glass showered down atop his cage.
‘Please,’ Mina shrieked, dragging herself away, ‘don’t do this!’
She crawled into the white space of the headlights, and from there she watched as Madeline manifested from the dark, witnessing for the first time what she had become: a soul lost between two races, neither one nor the other. All traces of beauty had receded beneath the skin, leaving a face flat and monstrous, more nightmare than reality.
‘Look at what it’s done to you,’ Mina shouted.
Madeline’s shoulders cracked back as though some unseen leash had wrenched her neck, warping it at such an angle that would have split a human spine. Somewhere, immured behind those glowing eyes, she was still in there. Leaner and longer and repelling that urge to revert to what she once was – and that which she no longer wanted to be – she lifted her hands to the light, turning them, studying their ugliness from every angle. She’d finally seen what had become of her.
‘Come on, please, you have to fight it!’ Mina cried. ‘I can’t do this without you.’
Madeline was staring down at one hand in particular now, mesmerised, as though she were willing it to change. Veins writhed like worms above and below its bones. And yet, as agonising as it must have been, her expression betrayed no pain, just an unflinching determination to take back what was hers. Fingers cracked at their joints until – with a sharp flex of her wrist – they shrank to a size more human. It was horrifying to watch, and yet Mina wasn’t horrified. Madeline’s claws retracted like those of a cat, slotting perfectly within the bone. Skin softened, paling in the light so as to appear smooth and more youthful than ever before. She held up both hands; one monstrous, and one so feminine in form that even its nails looked manicured. The darkness and the light – those two sides that raged to overpower the other.
‘That’s who you are,’ Mina said, breathless from relief. ‘Stay with me! Stay in the light!’
Madeline’s eyes shimmered with golden tears as she looked to her. ‘No,’ she spat, planting both hands down on the road, ‘I will not answer to you!’
But these words were not meant for Mina.
Madeline’s head lowered, draping her long silver hair to the ground. She groaned through gritted teeth as her skeleton crunched aloud again. Limbs cracked back against their sockets. Those bones that had risen across her body began to collapse beneath her clothes. And when her gaze rose to meet Mina’s, the fieriness of her irises had faded like flames trapped in a jar.
The woman’s face was as she remembered it.