Griffin
Ival’s struggles ceased. He hung in the grip of the cinereous, while the rust worked its horror on him. I longed to close my eyes, to look away, not watch this happen to my love. But it would feel like an abandonment if I did.
My shadowsight revealed the grayish black lines spreading over his skin. The scars on his arm seemed to attract the corruption; they flushed dark, all the way to the very tips of his fingers.
“No,” I whispered helplessly. Tears slicked my cheeks, but I was bound tight, and I couldn’t even wipe them away.
“I’m going to kill every last one of you,” Christine said, her voice shaking with a mixture of rage and grief.
Creigh and Tate ignored her. “Let him go,” Creigh ordered.
The cinereous released their hold on him. Ival fell to his hands and knees, head bowed. I couldn’t see his face anymore, couldn’t see the black tendrils creeping across his beloved features.
Marian let out a low, ugly laugh. “How does it feel, Griffin?” she taunted. “What should I have him do first? Kill your friend? Or no.” Her gaze fixed on Ma, who shrank against me. “Your mother deserves to die.”
“Silence,” Creigh snapped. “You forget who is in command here. I shall decide what use to make of Dr. Whyborne.”
Ival laughed.
It was a strange sound, nothing like his usual reserved chuckle. His whole body jerked, and then...
And then he burned.
It was nothing anyone else could see, but my shadowsight revealed the rush of magical fire. It started in his fingertips, touching the earth beneath which ran the arcane line. The black-clotted scars were stark against his skin...
And then the black began to crumble, to flake away, replaced by blue fire.
Marian let out a cry, almost of pain.
Creigh frowned, not yet alarmed. “What is he doing?” She glanced back at Marian—then seemed to realize something was truly wrong. “Stop him this instant!”
“Stop me?” Ival asked in a voice like something ancient, something that lay within the earth and the sea. His body convulsed, and he coughed, expelling a cloud of black dust.
The rust, burned to ash.
“Stop me?” he repeated, louder this time. “Do. You. Know. What. I. Am?”
He surged to his feet, his movements slightly jerky, as if he didn’t quite fit his own body anymore. When he turned on us, his eyes blazed with blue fire even in my ordinary sight. Creigh let out a gasp of shock. “Seize him!”
“Do you know what I am?” he howled in that ancient voice. The cloth above his scars began to char into ashes. “I am the fire that burns in the veins of the world! I am the maelstrom made flesh!” He dropped into a crouch, slamming his palm against the barren earth. “How dare you touch me, filthy parasite?”
The arcane line exploded in my vision, forcing me to look away. Power howled through the field, and I could feel it against my skin like a blast of hot wind. Something roared beneath the ground, answered by a scream of agony from Marian. Both were nearly drowned out by the warning shriek of overstressed metal. The windmill swayed madly—then water surged from the well, smashing wood and steel to flinders.
“Look out!” shouted Tate.
The windmill struck the ground in a twisted heap. Water pooled around it—but no trace remained of the spores. The arcane fire had burned away the rust beneath the ground.
I felt hands plucking against my bindings. Startled, I looked down, and found Ma working at the ropes with shaking fingers.
Vernon held Marian, who looked dazed. Creigh and Tate were distracted, but they wouldn’t remain so for long. They’d realize they could still use us as hostages against Ival, and Ma couldn’t free me fast enough to prevent it.
And I wasn’t going to let them turn me into a weapon against him a second time.
“Ival!” I yelled. “The stone! Use the curse breaking spell on it, now!”
He staggered a bit as he rose, but kept his feet. Creigh grabbed the stone and it pulsed. The protrusions on Marian’s forehead pulsed in answer.
The cinereous released Christine, rushing toward Whyborne. Without hesitation, Christine seized a steel rod from the fallen windmill and attacked the cinereous from behind. The rod sank deep into their soft flesh with every blow, leaving behind dents as she wrested it free. It didn’t stop them, but it slowed them just long enough for Whyborne to reach Creigh.
Creigh stumbled away, but Whyborne was faster and seized her wrist. Before she could fight back with some magic, the arcane energy flared once again.
There was no finesse to what he did, not this time. He grasped the jewel in his hand and simply tore the spell into shreds.
The cinereous making for Whyborne stopped in their tracks. Perhaps encouraged by their stillness, Christine began to beat them with even more force.
The bindings around one of my wrists came undone. I began to frantically untie the knot around my other wrist, as Ma attacked the rope securing my legs to the scarecrow’s pole. I held my breath, expecting Iskander or the cinereous to attack us at any moment.
But they didn’t. None of them moved, or showed the slightest interest in anything happening in front of them.
Creigh raked her nails across Whyborne’s face. He released her, and she staggered back. “This means nothing,” she snarled. “Marian—stop him!”
Marian laughed softly, and the sound turned my blood cold.
“You think to order me?” she said, a triumphant grin twisting her features. Was it my imagination, or were the antler-like growths on her forehead getting longer? “Now that the spell of control is destroyed, why should I listen?”
“You treacherous bitch!” Creigh shouted. “You’re nothing but a tool! Without me to guide you—”
Vernon laughed. “Oh, I think my Marian can guide herself,” he said, putting a hand to her waist. “Especially since she had the brilliant idea of providing several of the dishes for the community dance, even though we couldn’t go ourselves.”
Horror closed my throat. The dance. Everyone in Fallow would be there, from editor Carson to Lawrence and Annie, from the oldest man to the youngest child.
“I’ve felt them come into my control all evening,” Marian said. “They’re mine now, to do whatever I want with. Revenge at last, and I have you to thank for it.”
“No!” shouted Tate. “My wife, my daughter were there! You have to let them go. You can’t do this!”
The last of my bindings gave way. I fell to the ground. If we could just get away while they were distracted, perhaps—
“Parasite,” Whyborne snarled. He paced toward Marian, a blaze of light in my vision.
Marian turned to him, and an odd look of glee crossed her face. “You. I didn’t see you, hiding in that pathetic skin. What are you?” She licked her lips, and the corruption unfurled around her like wings. “You’ll make the perfect celebratory dinner.”
Then she struck.
Whyborne tried to pull on the magic of the arcane line, but he was spent. In a moment, she was on him. The dark arms of the corruption snatched his spells from the air—and then speared directly into him.
His mouth stretched open in a soundless cry, and his back arched. Dear God, what was she doing to him?
“Yes,” she groaned. “I never realized. They’ve kept me in famine, when I could have had a feast!” Her eyes widened with revelation. “But this is nothing compared to the vortex they spoke of. The one in Widdershins. If I could feed on it, I would be unstoppable.”
Tate pulled a revolver from his pocket and leveled it at Marian.
There came the roar of a gun. Tate jerked back, blood coating his vest. Iskander lowered the pistol he’d used to shoot Tate, looking utterly unconcerned by his own actions.
Vernon laughed. “I guess you shouldn’t have underestimated us after all,” he said.
Then he staggered forward. Creigh stood behind his fallen body, her expression wild and desperate. In her hands, she clutched a length of wood from the windmill, which she’d used to strike him.
Marian jerked, her attention distracted from Whyborne. “Vernon!”
I couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t think. Whyborne lay motionless on the ground, and I ran to him. “Christine! Leave off and help me!”
“Kander!” She dropped the metal rod and grabbed her husband.
And he grabbed her in return, his hand closing mercilessly over her wrist.
Then he staggered as Creigh struck him as well. “Come on!” she gasped. “Tate’s wagon is this way!”
Christine hesitated, visibly torn. “You can’t help him if you’re corrupted too,” Creigh snapped. “And if we try to take him with us, Marian will know where we are instantly. Either come on, or stay here and join him!”
The cinereous began to shamble toward us.
Christine swore, scooped up one of Iskander’s dropped pistols, and ran to me. Between us, we hefted Whyborne’s weight on our shoulders. Spasms wracked his body, nearly tearing him from our grasp.
“Come on, Ma!” I shouted.
She came, and Creigh, the four of us stumbling along, dragging Whyborne with us. Christine twisted around and fired, picking off the nearest of the cinereous.
Somehow, we reached the road just ahead of our pursuers. Creigh led the way to a horse-drawn wagon. “Hurry!” she shouted. Christine swung up beside her, and pressed the pistol into Creigh’s side.
“So much as look like you might betray us, and I’ll blow you straight to hell,” Christine warned.
I heaved Whyborne into the bed of the wagon, helped Ma up, then leapt in after them. Even as the cinereous reached the road, Creigh snapped the reins. “Hee-yah!”
The horses sprang into motion. Then we were gaining speed, the cart careening madly along the road. I shifted Ival’s head into my lap and clung to the side of the wagon as we left the fields behind.