Page 62 of Love, Nemesis
She wasn’t sure which of her chances were better, finding Lethe in time or getting struck by lightning.
Chapter 16: Grace
LETHE LEANED BACK against the cave wall. He removed the packet of cigarettes from his pocket and popped it open. There were three left.
He drew one out, taking out his lighter. It hissed but didn’t light. He tried again. The third time, it caught.
He inhaled and tilted his head back, exhaling the smoke into the air.
He had time, he knew that. No one could navigate these tunnels as quickly as he could. He’d find Ana and Ares again, dance whatever dance they wanted, but he had business to finish first, especially when the future was so uncertain.
He couldn’t rush this moment, and more so, had to guarantee it happened.
“Sometimes I imagine a red balloon,” he said, looking down at the cigarette in his hands. He moved it back and forth in between his fingers. “It’s always just kind of floating up and up. I watch it go. There was a carnival in the city park sometime before the world collapsed.” He stood, perusing the cave wall, reading the writings of former Riders of Saint East. There were layers of codes and creeds, all that remained of a culture and people. “We all have those little…flickers of life before it broke, but the strange thing for me is that the memory of the balloon specifically never happened. When I think back on my life before the collapse, that balloon is what I think of, and it seems morereal than anything else. It took me a while to realize what that meant.”
He paused before a series of carvings, reading a saying etched in stone.
“‘It’s the high wheat that catches the harvest. The tall grain makes the bread.’ They say the reason the Strike went after the people on our Dear Anne’s was because what they considered the best of us were more likely to be compatible with Madness. They were wrong, of course, which is why that saying spoke to me.”
He turned from the carvings and continued to circle the room.
“It’s all nonsense. Pointless murder in the end. One big joke. A laugh. I don’t need to tell you that, though. You were there.” He passed a wooden slab centered in the room, surrounded by dried branches. The smell of oil filled the cave. He put the cigarette between his lips, turning to face the pyre he’d built.
“You thought you’d be a hero,” Evira accused, tied back against a wooden slab.
He’d tracked her last night, on his watch, when the other’s had been sleeping. He knew these mountains; these caverns were as close to him as the atria in his own heart.
She’d been on her way back from scouting, from one of two known paths. Finding her in the dark had been the most tedious part. The rest of it had been quick and easy.
“I did. For a while, I thought I was a hero.” Lethe tilted his head back, watching the ceiling as he exhaled a line of smoke.
“And you failed,” she bit out like a snake, as if noticing the contentment on his face. She bared her straight, white teeth against rich, painted lips. No doubt she was a snake, doing many flattered men and women in with her venom. The Eating Ocean had never infected her with Madness, but no doubt she’d inflicted all she’d learned from the Strike on unsuspecting people all these years.
As Lethe watched her, he couldn’t help but be reminded of the people she’d killed, if only to get what she wanted.
Pushing back against burdensome feelings, he removed his flask and approached her. He unscrewed the top and offered it to her, a betrayal of those very feelings that held him captive.
“I’d need more than that,” her voice hissed, low and bitter.
“Just drink it,” he urged. “You’d be surprised.”
She obliged reluctantly, and he returned the cap. He sat back down and almost immediately saw her relax.
“You’ve been drinking Snake Bite,” she spoke as if confirming her own theory and then stared up at the ceiling with a bitter laugh. “Ah, the infamous Snake Bite.” For a while, it had been infamous indeed. It dulled the effects of The Ocean, muted a Strike’s powers, or at least it would have, had their sense of smell not tipped them off to its purpose. It had been a part of one too many failed attempts to kill the Strike.
“I tripled the dose for you.” He exhaled, watching the smoke dissipate into the air. “My healing mutation is a double-edged sword. I’ll tell you, when the Strike caught me, they had their fun with it.” He rubbed his neck, feeling the stubble down his jaw.“When their attempts at getting me to accept the Strike virus didn’t work, they handed me over to Amiel.”
“Amiel was a disgrace,” Evira barked.
Lethe chuckled at the irony in her distaste. He wanted to return to her reverence of the Strike, remind her of her own fascination with them, but he didn’t.
She’d see Amiel as a foul exception to the rule. Amiel was one of the few Strike who resented the temptation of human beings, turning instead into terrifying beasts and hunting people like prey instead of being willing to indulge in the seductive emotions that made all Strike so weak. It had been that very weakness that had pushed the ROSE to consider the final solution to the war: burn the Strike along with their human herd. Their codependence on each other would render the Strike too mindlessly distraught to fight with any strategy or escape the flames.
The final solution, at great cost, had worked, even for Amiel, because even though Evira claimed Amiel was a Strike with no real sense of honor or loyalty, those things had been the attributes that had cost her. Amiel had been too loyal to Strike Peter and not Evira, despite everything she’d sacrificed, things that Lethe knew Evira thought had been hidden from the rest of the world. They were deeply humiliating things, even for a monster like her.
For the first time, Lethe realized why he hadn’t minded Evira as much as he once did. Though he’d never mention it, or reveal that he knew of it, he could relate to the sting of such humiliations as hers. Amiel’s every word could have bent her into whatever shape, favor, or degradation imaginable.Meanwhile, Amiel’s powerful counterpart, Strike Peter, had played a very real role in Lethe’s own torture.
Now, Evira would never forget Amiel’s purple eyes—that sickly, glowing mauve. Lethe would never forget Peter’s eyes, burning with rings of red like hot steel.
