Awaken

28

“Thine arrogance, thou punished art the more;

Not any torment, saving thine own rage,

Would be unto thy fury pain complete.”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XIV

I loosened the cord around my grandmother’s neck. She slumped to the ground with a moan. A wisp of black smoke rose from her chest and drifted harmlessly into the air.

“Say good night, Grandma,” Reed said.

“She isn’t dead,” Henry explained to him. “That’s how they get when they’ve had the evil driven from them.” He held out his slingshot, which he’d finally found at the bottom of my bag. “But why didn’t you use this? It would have been excellent if you’d hit her in the head at a distance with the diamond. Not the eye, of course, but maybe the center of the forehead. That would smart.”

“You’re a little boy who’s been without a mother for far too long,” Chloe said in disapproval, still holding on to Typhon’s collar as the dog drooled on my grandmother’s Cat Lover sweatshirt. “And anyway, how’s she supposed to get the diamond back afterwards?”

“Oh,” Henry said mournfully. “I never thought of that.”

I looked down at the whip I’d unwound from my grandmother’s neck. The answer had been staring at me all along. No wonder I’d felt such affinity for John’s father’s whip, even before Mr. Liu had told me it was the string grounding me to earth.

“Are you all right?” John knelt beside me to ask, laying a strong arm across my shoulders.

“Better than I’ve been in a long time,” I said.

I’d slipped the chain that held my diamond from around my neck and was holding it in one hand, while holding the tip of his father’s whip in the other.

“I hate to leave her like this,” John said, looking down at my grandmother, who seemed to be only half conscious. She was murmuring something about having to get back to the shop to do inventory. “But we’ve got a lot more Furies to get rid of.”

“We’re on it,” Reed said with a wicked grin, shouldering his harpoon gun. Chloe had to drag Typhon away, but he found plenty of sport chasing Furies through the cemetery. To him it seemed like a game — much as it did to Henry, who rushed off with his slingshot, with which he’d found many rocks to fill. The dog was so large and frightening-looking, many of the Furies simply dropped their weapons and ran off at the sight of him.

“We’ll stay with her,” Mrs. Engle volunteered, kneeling at my grandmother’s side. “Won’t we, dear?”

She held out a hand for Mr. Graves, who took it and knelt down beside her. “We will,” he said. “You lot go on. I know you have much to do.”

I was too busy with the task I was performing in my lap to realize at first what I’d seen. Then I lifted my head and said in disbelief, “Mr. Graves. You took Mrs. Engle’s hand. You saw her hand.”

John had risen to go back to the task of fighting Furies, as well. But he froze when he heard these words and spun around.

Mr. Graves looked sheepish. “Now, now,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Don’t get too excited. I’ve been seeing shadows for some time. I didn’t want to tell you and get everyone too hopeful —”

“But that’s amazing!” I exclaimed, jumping to my feet.

“They’re only shadows,” he said. “Maybe my sight will improve over time, maybe it won’t.” Then he lifted his head to peer in my direction. “But I will say, you’re quite a bit smaller than I thought you’d be, considering the volume of your voice. Wherever you were in the castle, I could always seem to hear you. It’s remarkable. I thought you’d be a much larger girl.”

I wasn’t certain this was a compliment.

My grandmother groaned and reached out to take Mr. Smith’s hand.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “Perhaps I’d better stay, as well.”

I turned my disbelieving eyes to him. “After what she did to Patrick?”

He looked uncomfortable. “She wasn’t herself. And I owe it to your grandfather. We were friends, and … I should have looked after her a little more closely after his death.” He squeezed my grandmother’s hands. “As a religious but not very intellectually curious woman, the discovery that there exists a world beyond ours that isn’t the traditionally taught heaven and hell must have been deeply disturbing to her. Of course, to her, that world would have seemed very threatening, and so that world would have needed destroying, along with John. Oh, she’s waking up. How are you, Mrs. Cabrero?”

My grandmother blinked at him and said vaguely, “What? Oh, hello, Richard. How are you today?” like they’d run into one another at the grocery store. Her gaze flicked right past Mr. Graves and Mrs. Engle, since she didn’t know them, but when she noticed John and me, her mouth flattened into a thin line of disapproval.

“You two,” she said. She looked — and sounded — angry, but more like a prissy grandmother than someone possessed by an evil spirit. “When I get you home, young lady, we are going to have a thing or two to discuss with your mother. Having boys over all night long! I never heard of such thing. Why, in my day —”

I glanced at John in alarm. His eyes were wide.

“Hmmm,” Mr. Smith said, gently setting down my grandmother’s hand and giving her shoulder a pat. “I see that without a demon controlling her mind, Mrs. Cabrero’s reverted back to her, er, more conservative, religious roots. Perhaps taunting her about your sexual relationship with John wasn’t the best way to handle that situation earlier.”

“You did what?” John had stood to hit a Fury who’d come storming up. He was way more shocked over what Mr. Smith had said than the fact that the Fury had been carrying a pitchfork.

“I didn’t know she was there!” I protested.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Engle said, and turned pink. Mr. Graves put his arm around her and looked rightfully outraged.

“I suppose your mother will think it’s all right,” Grandma went on in a critical tone. “She’s always had modern ideas. But this is a small town, and people talk. I won’t have my only granddaughter behaving like a slattern.”

“I won’t have her behaving like a slattern, either, Mrs. Cabrero,” John said earnestly. “I keep asking her to marry me, but she won’t.”

“John,” I cried. Now I was the one who was outraged.

“Well, that’s more like it,” my grandmother said, seeming pleased. “A young man with proper Christian morals, in this day and age? That’s what I like to see. Though he’ll have to get a haircut, Pierce, whoever he is. He looks like one of those dirty hippies that ride their motorcycles around downtown, making all that racket.”

“Oh, my God, no,” I said with a groan, as John looked confused and asked, “What’s a hippie?”

With all this drama, it was almost easy to forget there was a Fury war going on … at least until Kayla walked up to us, dragging behind her the shovel Mike had dropped.

“Here,” she said, handing it unceremoniously to Mr. Smith. “You’re an undertaker, right? You should be good with this.”

“Cemetery sexton,” Mr. Smith said, looking nervous. “I’m a cemetery sexton, actually. Undertakers and cemetery sextons are two different things.”

“Whatever,” Kayla said. She had a dazed look on her face. “Start digging.”

“And, uh, why should I do that?” Mr. Smith asked.

“Because I’m about to murder someone, so we’re gonna need a grave.”

She walked over to Mike’s prone body, then raised the knife I’d confiscated from my grandmother, ready to plunge it into the back of the handyman’s neck.

“He killed Frank,” Kayla said simply. “He should pay.”

The knife was on a downward swing when I went rushing towards her, crying, “Kayla, no!”

It was John who stopped her. He flung an arm around her waist and swung her bodily off her feet, pulling her from Mike’s side and startling her so badly, she screamed and dropped the knife. It fell to the ground below, landing in the poincianas that lay in such a thick cushion, the metal blade didn’t even make a sound against the paved path.

“Kayla,” John said, keeping a gentle but restraining hold on her as she struggled to escape him and retrieve the knife. “I understand how you feel, but that’s not the way.”

“Why not?” Kayla asked, looking furious as she squirmed in his grip. “Frank’s dead. He killed him.”

John’s face went slack with shock at the news.

I thought he’d known, but it was clear from his expression that he hadn’t. Kayla’s words seemed to have been almost a physical blow to him. Unfortunately, much as I wanted to put my arms around him to comfort him in his grief, this was not the time for that.

“We’ll fix it,” John said to Kayla, taking her by both arms and giving her a little shake, since holding her had done no good. His heartache and desperation were obvious both in his tone and the tightness of his grip on her. “I swear, Kayla. I’ll find a way to fix it.”

“John.” I laid a hand upon his shoulder. I didn’t want him to make promises he couldn’t keep, especially not to someone I cared about as much as Kayla. “I killed Thanatos. Remember?”

John’s gaze met mine and held it. Around us was chaos — the shrieking of the increasingly agitated birds overhead, coupled with the shrieks of the Furies as they battled, Typhon’s ferocious barking, the mad whinnies of Alastor, the rushing of the steadily growing wind in the few palm fronds that remained in the trees, and Kayla’s sobs.

But there was a stillness within John and myself that, now that we were truly back together, no amount of external mayhem could disturb.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

There was no need to say it out loud anymore. We could read it in each other’s tear-filled eyes.

“We’ll find a way to fix it,” he said, correcting himself as he looked back down at Kayla. “I swear we will.”

The fight had gone out of Kayla. She was staring down at her feet, her riotous mane of multicolored curls falling over her face. “I don’t know how you’re going to do it and have him be … the same.”

“We’ll find a way,” John assured her. “Kayla, you have to believe me. But killing this piece of trash … that isn’t going to help anything.”

They were so intent on their discussion, neither of them saw the piece of trash they were discussing sit up and look around, notice the knife lying next him, then reach for it.

But I did.

“Not this time,” I said, and struck Mike in the chest with the tip of my whip.

Mike cursed and dropped the knife to clutch his heart with both hands. His face twisted in pain as smoke began to pour from his chest.

John and Kayla stared down at Mike as he lay curled at their feet, moaning. John knelt to lift up the knife.

“What did you do?” he asked me in wonder.

I’d jerked the end of my whip back to me. Now I held it up so the sunlight caught the winking, shining object on its tip: the Persephone Diamond John had given me.

“This works much better,” I said. Then I noticed another Fury behind them. “Hold still.”

Crack. The Fury, who appeared to be around our own age, dropped the switchblade he’d been holding and ran away, grabbing his arm, from which a thin trickle of black smoke began to stream.

John turned to grin at me. “Well done.”

“It was Henry’s idea, really,” I said. “I modified it a little. I can’t take all the credit.”

John glanced around at all the many Furies who were still roaming the cemetery. I could practically see the plan forming in his head. “We’ll be able to reach more of them more quickly on horseback.”

I wasn’t sure I liked this plan. Alastor and I had formed a détente, but it was still an uneasy one, based mainly on mutual sadness over John’s death. Now John was alive and well. I swallowed.

“Great idea,” I lied.

John whistled, and Alastor came thundering up, a Fury clutched in his jaws by the neck of his shirt. John shook his head in disapproval, and the horse reluctantly dropped the man, who fell panting in front of the massive silver hooves. I quickly flicked him with the end of my whip, and he cried out in pain, rolling into a ball, though the diamond had barely scratched him. A puff of smoke floated into the air from the back of the man’s head. Alastor whinnied approvingly, enjoying the sight of another’s pain. That’s the kind of horse he was.

“Nicely done,” John said admiringly to me.

“It was nothing,” I said.

“Mr. Liu?” John called.

The gentle giant came lumbering forward, dragging two Furies by their heads. “Yes?”

John handed a still-shaken Kayla over to Mr. Liu while I quickly touched the tip of my whip to his two captives. “We’re going to put an end to this. Would you look out for her?”

Mr. Liu dropped his dazed Fury friends and nodded at Kayla, his expression, as always, implacable. “My pleasure.”

Kayla looked up at him with tear-swollen eyes. “Let’s go kill someone.”

“Kill?” Mr. Liu shook his head. “Maim is better.”

Kayla shrugged. “Okay.”

John mounted Alastor, then reached a hand down from the saddle. “Step on my boot,” he said as I grasped his fingers, “and swing yourself up ….”

I gave Alastor the evil eye, which he returned, but he allowed me to swing myself up into the saddle in front of John … undoubtedly because John was right there, watching.

If I’d known I’d be riding a death lord’s horse around the Isla Huesos Cemetery, swinging a whip at people possessed by Furies, I probably wouldn’t have chosen to wear a dress. But things never seemed to work out as I planned.

I’m not going to lie and say there weren’t parts of it that were fun. It was hard work and required a lot of concentration. Swinging a whip from the back of a moving animal isn’t as easy as they make it look in Westerns. But I wasn’t trying to rope cattle, all I was trying to do was touch Furies … who, granted, made pretty challenging targets, since they were running away from a thundering hell horse. Several times I misaimed when they dodged and was certain I got them in the face. Not that I didn’t think they deserved it, but I had to keep in mind what Mr. Smith kept saying, that they were humans possessed by demons and didn’t know what they were doing.

Maybe.

Reed and Chloe and the others soon caught on, and then it was a matter of them herding the Furies into areas where Alastor could reach them. And all I had to do was flick them.

“You know, Pierce,” John said in my ear, his arm tight around my waist as we chased down a woman in an Outback Steakhouse uniform who was running from us without fear, her gaze as dead-eyed and glazed as every Fury before her, “I think we’re winning.”

“Against the human Furies, maybe,” I said. I caught the woman, sending her sprawling, moaning, into a pile of decorative funeral wreaths, smoke funneling up from her right shoulder. “But not them.”

I raised my gaze. The ravens were still gathered overhead, squawking angrily.

“Wait,” John said, pulling Alastor to a stop. “Look. Do you see that?”

“What?” I shaded my eyes with one hand and looked.

At first I didn’t see anything. The sun was so bright, and the sky so achingly blue, it was difficult to see anything but the black vees the ravens made against it. But then I saw what John was talking about. A flash of white, fluttering amidst the black specks.

“John,” I said, sinking my fingers into his arm. “Is that … ”

A fat mourning dove, pure white except for a few inky black feather tips on her wings and tail, suddenly swooped down to land between Alastor’s ears. The horse, startled, reared up a little, snorting.

“Hope!” I cried, reaching for her. The bird allowed me to snuggle her against my cheek, cooing happily. “Oh, Hope, where have you been?”

Hope only cooed some more, rubbing her face against mine, then began to search my hair, obviously looking for food.

“I don’t know where she’s been,” John said. “But wherever it is, she found some friends.”

He pointed upwards. There were now white vees visible amongst the black ones. First only a few, then more white birds than black ones, and the white ones seemed to be battling the black ones. The ravens, under attack by a larger and superior force, quickly gave up, disappearing from the sky at a rapid rate.

Only the white birds weren’t completely white, I noticed, when one swooped close enough for me to get a better look at it. They were —

“Pigeons!” I cried in surprise.

“Mourning doves,” John corrected me. “I told you. Hope’s a mourning dove. They vary in coloration.”

The one that had swooped close to me was much larger than Hope, and gray … as silver-gray as my diamond when there weren’t any Furies around. As silver as John’s eyes. It was black, however, on its wingtips and tail. It landed, exactly as Hope had, between Alastor’s ears, but since it weighed so much more than Hope, its landing was nowhere near as graceful.

Alastor gave an angry whinny and shook his head, attempting to fling the bird from it, but the mourning dove was determined to cling to its roost and hung on, cooing loudly, in what I considered a decidedly masculine manner.

“Hope,” I cried. “Is that your husband? Is that where you were this whole time? Did you fly off to find your family and then bring them home to help us fight those nasty ravens?”

“Okay,” John said, his grip tightening on me. “Now you’re talking to the birds. I think you’ve killed enough Furies for one day. Let’s go round up the others and head home —”

“Of course I talk to Hope,” I said. “You talk to Alastor. And why wouldn’t that be Hope’s husband? You’re the one who told me mourning doves mate for life. I think we should name him. What do you think would be a good name for —?”

“Excuse me,” said a deep, masculine voice behind us. “But would you two mind getting down off that horse? We’d like to have a word with you if we may.”

I turned my head and looked down. It was Chief of Police Santos. Standing next to him was my father and my cousin Alex.