CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

 

 

The war party convened around two battered trestle tables, warmed by dregs of dollar-store soup.

At least, it felt to Kimberly like a war party. Her and Fitch on one side, Detectives Chan and Goodwell on the other. At one end, grinning, still gleaming with rainwater, the dead woman who called herself Darling. At the other, silent, glowering, was Mrs Rosenfeld.

The strategist. The warrior. The peacekeepers. The inside man.

So what did that make Kimberly? Their lucky charm?

She folded her hands and looked between their pale faces. One madman, two cops, two monsters, and a girl from out of town. She couldn't have picked a less effective team if she'd tried. Then again, they'd all survived this long. Might as well hold hands and jump into the beast's jaws for the big finale.

"So," she said. "We're hitting the pretender queen. Finishing this bullshit once and for all."

To her left, sunglasses fogged by the steam rising from her soup, Darling laughed. "Once and for all? Baby, if you do somehow kill the pretender, you'll still have to take care of her mother."

"If we can kill one, we can kill the other."

"Big assumption. Bad assumption."

It'd only taken fifteen minutes with Darling to learn the dead woman didn't like speaking plainly. Not when you had her pinned to the floor in the middle of a circle of blood, and not when she was facing you across a dining table.

If Darling was still holding a grudge over what Kimberly and Gull had done to her that night in the old asylum, she wasn't letting it show, but Kimberly knew it'd crop up sooner or later. Probably at the worst possible time. For now, though, she needed to keep the war party focused. "So what is the queen?"

Darling shook her head. "Nobody knows. You're talking like she's some fancy bitch sitting on a throne shaking hands and getting curtsies. She's... both of them, old and new... are elemental fucking forces."

Not much different from what Rosenfeld had said. "Have you seen them?"

Darling winced, like she was shying away from half-remembered pain. "The pretender, once."

"And?"

"There was... light." One hand rose up to massage her brow. "There were things in the light. Legs. Look, I only know bits and pieces. Stuff she leaves in my head."

"Legs. Human legs?"

"No. Thinner. Bug legs."

From the far end of the table, Rosenfeld nodded. "Some things have forms. Some things just borrow. I've seen the new queen twice now, and she always seemed like she was just playing at being real. Like a bunch of shapes she saw somewhere else all stuck together."

"Yeah, but what shapes?"

Rosenfeld sighed. "That thing over there's telling it right. Bug parts."

Made sense to Kimberly. Everything she'd seen of the queens – their hideous servants, the creatures they grew and birthed, the centipedes dragging free of dead mens' throats – was insectile. Maybe they weren't bugs themselves, but something similar enough to mirror their forms. Maybe just so horrible that giant insects were the only thing human eyes could compare them to.

Or maybe Darling and Rosenfeld were both lying through their teeth.

"If it's got a shape, it's got a body," Fitch said. "Whatever's got a body can get hurt. Big bastard or not, we can kill her."

"With what?" Goodwell now, leaning back in his seat, legs spread. Cocky. Power posing. "We're running low on Molotovs. Unless you've got something bigger hidden away?"

Not so different to her own Fitch and Goodwell, Kimberly thought. And maybe they were thinking the same of her.

Still had to watch them real close. And if they were smart like her Fitch and Goodwell were smart, they wouldn't trust her either.

All she could do was watch and wait. Let them reveal their true intentions, however long it took.

Fitch leaned back in his seat, wood creaking. "If they're as big and scary as you say, dead lady, I've gotta ask - why haven't they swatted us yet?"

"You haven't seen a queen. I have." Darling's voice lost some of its brass, became low, hushed. "I think... I'm not sure, I just think... that the queens change as they get older. They get bigger. Not just larger, but... more disconnected. That's why they send servants, to do the work they can't do."

"Like you?"

"Like me."

"Doesn't make sense. The more powerful they grow, the less they can touch us?"

"Oh, they can touch us. Just not in the ways they want." Darling's smile was nervous, teeth grinding. "Like humans trying to make an ant dance. We can put them in a farm, we can poison them, but we can't make them lift their little legs on cue. We're too big, too clumsy. We'd only crush them. The queens are the same, I think. The older they get, the more powerful they grow... but it's harder for them to focus. The pretender could wipe us all out if she wanted, but she doesn't. She wants control. So the queens get their little puppets and make us do the dirty work while they get fatter and fatter and finally turn into..." She raised her hands above her head, as if struggling to hold the enormity of it all. "Something impossible."

There was a long silence. The clock in the Mission's kitchen ticked maddeningly, like the pincers of some terrible beast closing and opening, opening and closing. Detective Chan stared at the floor. Fitch was squinting in concentration, cheek bulging like he was trying to tongue a scrap of food from between his molars.

Finally, Darling said, "The new queen is still young. Well. Young-ish. But we're tiny and it's a goddamn giant. It's going to take more than a petrol-bomb to kill it. Shoot it in the face and it'll only tickle. Unless you've got a tank hidden somewhere..."

Fitch was still musing. "Not a tank. Could get a hold of some heavy duty explosives, if we needed. Still a lot of mining happening on the east side of town, and I had a buddy... Then again, I'm no expert. Don't want to lose a hand because I played with things that weren't my business."

"Fuck your hand," Darling barked. "Sit there jerking off long enough and you won't have to worry about a hand. They'll pull your arms off and feed you to the pretender."

"You shut your mouth! You don't get to talk to me. Not after what you've done."

"Don't start this, Fitch!" Goodwell was on his feet now, somehow tall and commanding inside his mud-spattered suit. "I'm not waiting here to die. We saw what hurts them. You showed me that. Fire kills. Fire gets it done."

"We don't have fire. We've got a pickup truck, two Molotovs and a pot of fuckin' soup!"

"And two pistols."

Chan spoke for the first time that evening. She stood suddenly, pulling back her jacket, exposing the holster at her hip and the second pistol-butt jutting from her jeans. "If you children could quit pulling each other's hair for five minutes and talk, maybe we'd get somewhere. You, Fitch. You know where we can get explosives?"

Fitch squinted into the distance, as if trying to recall some faded memory. "Yeah. Just gotta dig up some graves."

"Fantastic." Goodwell rested his elbows on the table, head in his hands. "We're taking on the biggest monster in town with some explosives, a couple pistols and a pickup."

"And soup," Kimberly said.

"Yeah. Can't forget the soup."

 

They argued long into the night. The rumble of traffic died until the only sound was the pounding of rain, the storm sending it sideways against the panes. The conversation blurred, and Kimberly didn't realise she was falling asleep until her forehead was on the table and Rosenfeld was shaking her by the shoulder. "On your feet, Mrs Archer. No use to anyone unless you're rested."

She didn't fight the old woman as she was led down the back of the Mission to a storage room scattered with mattresses. It smelled of sweat and urine but Rosenfeld had thrown a clean blanket over the mattress and set a glass of water on the bare concrete floor. "You first. That young detective, she won't be long. Fitch and Goodwell can have their shift later."

The old woman's hand on her arm was soft, gentle. So gentle Kimberly could almost believe Rosenfeld was real, not one of the new queen's creatures at all. "Were you..."

"Yes?"

It was hard to form words through the exhaustion. "Were you ever a little girl?"

"Me? No. Came out as I am. Just like you."

"What does that mean?"

"You're tired, girl. Down you go."

And then she was curled on her side, breathing deep. Not dreaming. Only floating in and out, snatching at moments in time.

A man's hand curled around hers. His lips against her neck.

A name starting with A, repeating like a mantra, Ah, Ah, Ah-ro,,,

A life before this life. A life in a city of lights, a city that refused to sleep.

And then, gone.

She woke alone, in the dark. The air was bitingly cold and she needed to pee. Light beneath the edge of the door. Were the others still planning their assault? She didn't know where they found the strength. Rustwood always left her drained.

The blankets were a rough robe around Kimberly's shoulders. She stumbled toward the door.

And stopped.

A darkness waited there, a darkness that made no sense. Not a shadow or a trick of the light. A living darkness that shifted weight from foot to foot.

Kimberly stepped back toward the mattresses, shoulders to the wall. She closed her eyes, counted to five, waiting for the patter of footsteps, an intake of breath. Anything that would give away whoever or whatever was waiting there for her.

Nothing came.

She needed to hide. But what was there to hide behind? Only the darkness itself.

On instinct, as if calling her army of roaches, she reached for the shadows. "Get over here."

The darkness in the little storeroom shifted. The angles of shadows cast by flatpack shelving twitched, tugged by invisible strings.

And then, like a curtain torn from a window, the shadows yanked across the room and draped across Kimberly's skin in a fluttering cloak.

She almost squeaked in surprise. Almost. Held it in at the last moment, biting down on her lower lip. No surprise that even light didn't obey the rules in Rustwood. She was drowned in darkness, just one silhouette among many.

She waited.

It seemed a year before the darkness in the furthest corner of the room shifted. There were only more shadows there, but they detached like linoleum peeling away from a kitchen cabinet to reveal the cheap woodgrain beneath. Yes, it was dark there, but not as dark as she'd first thought. The true darkness was a man-shape a full head taller than her, shrouded from peak to toe in what looked like a cheap rain slicker.

Her breath caught in her throat. The hollow space beneath that thing's hood was deep and infinite, and Kimberly thought that if she reached for its face her hand would simply plunge into nothingness, until she was up to the elbow in some horrible, impossible maw.

There were no footsteps when it moved. No angles of knees or hips beneath the fabric. It was genderless, faceless, and yet she could feel the rage radiating from every line of its body. It wasn't black because it needed to hide. It was black because that was the colour of its fury.

"You've learned a lot," it said.

She didn't reply as the thing raised one hand, pointing towards the space where she was hidden, pale fingers unfurling. Human, maybe once. Now they were gaunt, stretched beyond the limits of anatomy. Each fingernail was neatly rounded, but the flesh beneath was long dead. Its voice was gravel. "The queen would be so proud of you."

No point in pretending she wasn't there any longer. The creature had her cornered and knew all her tricks. Anything she could do, it could do better. "You don't look so bad for someone who got an axe in the ribs."

"It hurt," the thing said. "For a while."

"I could hit you again. See if it sticks this time."

A choking laugh. "No wonder she wants you gone."

"Who? Which queen?"

"My queen is the true queen."

"That's why they call her the pretender, huh?"

"You don't dare!" The thing in the rainslicker's voice was a blunt blade drawn across asphalt, high and scraping, sending shivers down Kimberly's spine. She thought, dimly, that she'd heard that voice before, although she couldn't quite place it. "She'll liberate us all."

"Doesn't seem that way to me. Seems every queen calls herself the true queen. Truth is, I'm getting sick of both of them."

The creature clenched one hand into a fist, and Kimberly felt a tugging around her waist, like the blanket was being yanked away. No, not the blanket. The shadows. She fought it for a moment, and for the space of ten seconds the shadows resisted. Then the thing in the rainslicker brought its other hand up, and the darkness was torn away. Shadows snapped back to where they were supposed to be, the angled impressions of shelving and stacks of canned vegetables vaulting high across the walls.

She shrank back, huddled inside the blanket. The thing in the rain slicker cocked its head to the side, and even though she couldn't make out its eyes, she knew it was appraising her, measuring her slim frame, the set of her jaw, the murder in her eyes.

"You've changed," it said.

"Since when?"

"No matter. You are only one against a multitude. Why do you keep running?"

"Giving up is for little boys," Kimberly said. "Besides, I haven't kicked your queen's ass yet."

"She has your boy."

Those four words left Kimberly cold. The child, that damn kid, the baby that wasn't hers. The baby she didn't care for, couldn't care for.

If she told herself that often enough, maybe it'd come true. "Did you hurt him?"

"The boy has a name."

"That wasn't what I asked. Did you hurt that baby?"

"Why won't you say his name?" There was fury in the creature's voice, a growl that shook the walls. "Why won't you say his name?"

Kimberly's hands were tight fists beneath the blanket. She hoped the creature couldn't see how she was twitching. Stay solid, she told herself. Be concrete. Stand strong so it can break itself against you. "Why won't you tell me whether he's okay? Won't your master let you speak? Or are you just a puppy on a leash?"

"Say his name!"

She didn't know why or how the creature cared. All she knew was she had the bastard riled, and she had to push that as far as she could. "One baby's the same as any other. Nothing but noise and shit and crying, crying, crying all the time. I'm only asking out of courtesy for his father. Now tell me, did you hurt him?"

"Why don't you love him?"

It was Kimberly's turn to have the nail pounded deeper into her heart. Love him? The brat who'd appeared without warning? The baby without a real mother? How could anyone...

No. Maybe it really was just her. Some women doted on children, but she'd never had that particular switch flipped, the one that'd make her coo and melt over fat-faced babies. The biological clock had never ticked, and that was just fine.

That didn't mean she wanted the baby hurt. No child deserved that. She could want a child happy without pretending eternal love.

There was nothing wrong with her. There never had been. And she wasn't about to let some dollar-store motherfucker get inside her head and twist her into guilty knots.

"I'd like you to leave now," she said. "This is Mrs Rosenfeld's place. I don't think she'd be happy with you coming uninvited."

The thing in the black rainslicker chuckled. It was a sound like sewage slopping down a drain. "I'm not even here. I'm just an echo. But I will be soon, Kimberly. The queen sent me to hurt you."

"The queen doesn't get everything she wants."

"Actually," the thing in the black rainslicker said, "today, she does."

Outside, in the hallway, Rosenfeld screamed.