Page 65 of House of Furies
“Wrong again.” He screwed up his mouth into a hideous pucker and nudged my head with the pistol. “One more try, and then you die.”
“The p-pin,” I whispered. It was the only thing I could think to say. My eyes flicked downward to show him. “Gold... pin.”
Bremerton searched the front of my frock and with his gun hand ripped the cravat pin from my dress. His grip on my neck tightened in warning as he fumbled to tuck the pin into his pocket. There was a commotion at the door. I could see the whole of the house gathered there, trying to get in. I watched Lee shove aside first a stricken Mary and then Mr. Morningside himself.
I tried to shake my head at him. No.No. But he could make it through the warding on the door.A boring human boy. A boring human boy trying to save a dying monster like me.
But Bremerton was not taking any chances, and he was no fool. He blind fired again, and this time I felt the bullet hit. I felt it as if it had struck me in my chest, only it had struck Lee’s. The bullet’s discharge left me confounded and deaf for a moment, and I watched in trapped silence as Lee stopped, touched his fingers to his chest just over his heart, and pulled them away shining with blood.
Then he crumpled to the floor, a red flower blossoming across his crisp white shirt.
“You did that!” Bremerton screamed at me. “You made me do that!”
His voice was muted, and so was my own voice as I thrashed against him and shrieked incoherently, landing one blow at last, my knee slamming into his groin. He recoiled and dropped me, bending in half with a throaty cough. But the gun was still firmly in his grasp, and he blocked me completely from the door.
I looked at Lee, at his lifeless body on the floor, and groped blindly for the spoon in my pocket. There was nothing else in reach, and for now it would have to be my one and only weapon. Bremerton recovered, as I knew he would, and lunged at me again, pinning me against the wall. This time I had the desperate wherewithal to throw my arm up and grab his wrist, fighting the trajectory of the pistol before he could aim it at my head. He snapped his thumb against a latch on the pistol’s handle and a short bayonet shot out toward me, missing my throat by a hair. We struggled, both of us growing damp with sweat, and just as I hoped, he paid no mind to the dull spoon in my left hand.
But it was not just a spoon. Not in that moment. It could be anything I wanted.
I closed my eyes and jabbed the spoon against his side and then his neck and he laughed me off, twisting the gun away from me. There was no more time. The pistol would need to be reloaded, and unless I could hit the latch on the handle and retract the bayonet, my moment had come. Vaguely, I heardthe others screaming at one another in the hallway, disjointed voices tumbling as they struggled to find some way through the ward. I heard an ax slamming into the wall, but they would never break through in time.
It was not a spoon. It was not a spoon. Sweat ran hot and itchy over my forehead. Time slowed. It was not a spoon but a knife.Jab jab. It was a knife. Yes, a bayonet like the one slashing toward my neck. I wanted it to be a knife.Jab. Never in all of my years had I wanted anything more than I wanted this spoon to be a knife.
I felt the spoon sink in, far, and I snapped my eyes open to watch the cruel-bladed knife disappear into his throat. A gurgle of surprise bubbled out of his mouth, and his eyes now were wilder, more dangerous. It wasn’t enough. He could still aim the pistol, and aim it he did, lifting it with weakening and shaky fingers and pointing it at my face.
“Mary! Quick, quick, shield them!” I heard Poppy’s tiny scream pierce through the veil of dread.
It happened too quickly to feel the full meaning of it. I saw the bayonet flash toward my face and flinched, watching the blade ricochet off my cheek, the touch of it like the brush of a feather. Then there was only Bremerton’s flummoxed expression and the blood pouring out of his mouth as my stab wounds disabled him at last, and then I felt the air around us deaden and flatten and I braced, knowing I was shielded by Mary but terrified all the same.
I had thought the Resident’s scream horrid, and indeed it was, but this sound was the sky itself tearing in half. Over Bremerton’s shoulder I saw Poppy in the doorway, her mouth wide open, her eyes black as a starless sky, as her unnatural shriek rippled toward us. It did not touch Lee and it did not touch me, but I felt its buffeting wings on my cheeks as George Bremerton’s bleeding face expanded and distorted like a warmed boil and popped. I shut my eyes tight and crumpled back against the wall, blood and sinew and God knows what else showering me in horror.
My legs fell out from under me and I slid bonelessly to the floor, raking gore out of my eyes and wiping at my mouth. I spat and coughed and breathed a full breath after too long. Then the tears came, and I crawled on hands and knees away from George Bremerton’s headless body to the brave young boy shot dead by traitorous blood.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
For a long time after they pulled Bremerton’s body out of the room, I sat next to Lee. There was nothing that could be done for him. The bullet had hit him square in the chest. He looked oddly untouched, the crimson stain on his shirt the only indication that something had gone terribly awry.
I wiped a piece of Bremerton’s skull from his boot. It offended me that it had touched him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to look at his face, knowing it would undo me. “I’m so very sorry, my friend.”
The bloody spoon sat in the little shallow basket made by my skirts. I held Lee’s hand after making sure mine was cleaned. His skin was still warm. That made the tears come stronger, more painfully, until I couldn’t see anything but a watercolor of the splattered room and Lee’s fine boots.
Chijioke had finally taken his ax to the door itself, allowing the others to come in. They watched outside the mangled door frame, two Residents hovering in the very back like worried parents. Mr. Morningside was the only one brave or stupid enough to come in and stand next to me. Then, with a sigh, he sat beside me on the floor, his long legs pulled up so that he could rest his wrists on his knees.
“This is my fault,” he said hoarsely. If I could feel anythingbut loss, I would have marveled at his taking responsibility. “The first and last children... I should have put it together sooner. And I definitely should have realized we had an End of Dayser among us.”
I said nothing for a long time, uninterested in his explanations. When I could better manage my tears, I wiped at my face with my apron and fixed him with a stare. The black hair and golden eyes. The too-perfect proportions of his face. He stared back at me and then took a handkerchief from inside his coat. With utmost care, he reached across and dabbed at my bloodstained face.
“Is what he said true?” I asked. “Are you really the Devil?”
“Yes.” He smiled wryly, exhaustedly. “Well, what he would call the Devil. What you would, too, I imagine. Most of what’s put down is ridiculous, but I admit some of it is accurate. Throw darts at a dictionary long enough and you’re bound to strike ‘truth.’ I’ve had many forms, many names, untold centuries to come and go as a thought or as a being.”
Perhaps it was best to learn this way, while I was still numb from Lee’s death. “Then you must be very powerful.”
“If you like.”
“But not powerful enough to walk through agoddamned door.”
