The Raven King
Page 39
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His reflection went wide-eyed; his wife stood behind him, fingers wrapped around his throat. A few of her blond hairs strayed from her otherwise smooth hair, and the collection lights behind her burned these strands golden-white-fiery. Her eyes were black. One of her eyebrows was raised, but she looked otherwise unperplexed as her fingertips pressed into his skin. His neck purpled.
He blinked.
She wasn’t there.
She had never been there. She had left him behind. Well, in fairness, he had left her behind, but she’d started it. She was the one who had chosen to perpetuate a considerable amount of tactless violent crime in the wilds of Virginia, right when he had decided he was ready to take his toys and go.
“I’m alone,” Greenmantle told the mirror.
But he wasn’t. They buzzed down the stairs, alighting upon the tops of the picture frames, and ricocheted into the kitchen.
Greenmantle turned from the mirror to face his collection. A four-armed suit of armour, a taxidermy unicorn the size of a pygmy goat, a blade that continuously dripped blood on the floor of its glass case. It represented the finest of nearly two decades of collecting. Not really the finest, Greenmantle mused, merely the objects he thought most likely to capture Piper’s attention.
He thought he heard something in the hallway to the room. A humming. Or scratching. Not quite scratching – it was too light for that.
“After numerous personal betrayals, Colin Greenmantle had a nervous breakdown in his late thirties,” Greenmantle narrated, ignoring the sound, “leading many to believe he would fade into obscurity.”
He regarded the earrings in his hand. He had taken steps to acquire them over two years before, but it had taken this long for his suppliers to cut them from a woman’s head in Gambia. Rumour had it that the wearer could see through walls. Certain types of walls, anyway. Not brick. Not stone. But drywall. They could handle drywall. Greenmantle didn’t have pierced ears, so he hadn’t tried them. And with Piper pursuing a new life of crime, it seemed he might never find out.
“But the onlookers had underestimated Colin’s personal fortitude,” he said. “His ability to bounce back from emotional injury.”
He turned to the door just as the visitors exploded through it.
He blinked.
They did not disappear.
He blinked, and blinked again, and something was still coming in through the door, something that was neither his imagination nor a cursed mirror image. It took his mind a moment to process the sound and the sight to realize it was not a single visitor: It was many. They poured and tumbled and scrabbled over one another.
It was not until one broke free from the horde and flew at him erratically that he realized that it was insects. As the black wasp landed on his wrist, he told himself not to slap it. It stung him.
“Bitch!” he said, and swung the wine bottle at it.
Another wasp joined the first. Greenmantle shook his arm, dislodging it, but a third flew at him. A fourth, a fifth, a hallway-full of them. They were all over him. He was wearing a beautiful jacket, and boxers, and wasps.
The earrings fell to the floor as he spun. In the mirror, his reflection dripped tears and he saw not wasps, but Piper, her arms and smile wrapped around him.
“We’re through,” her mouth said.
The lights went out.
It was 6:22.
You could say what you liked about Piper Greenmantle, but she wasn’t a quitter, even when things didn’t turn out exactly as she imagined. She kept going to Pilates long after it was physically satisfying, continued attending book club after she discovered she was a far speedier reader than her fellow members, and persisted in getting fake mink eyelashes sewed into her own every two weeks, even after the salon location closest to her was shut down for health violations.
So when she went looking for a magical sleeping entity supposedly buried near her rental house, she didn’t quit until she found it.
Unmaker.
That had been the first thing it had said when she’d found it. It had taken her a moment longer to realize that it was replying to her question (“What the hell?”).
In Piper’s defence, the sleeper was unsettling. She’d been expecting a human, and instead she’d found a murder-black six-legged creature that she would have called a hornet if she didn’t firstly find hornets repellent and secondly think hornets had no business being eleven inches long.
“That is a demon,” Neeve had said. Neeve was the third leg on their uncomfortable tripod. She was a mild-voiced, squat woman with pretty hands and bad hair; Piper thought she was a television psychic but could not remember how she’d arrived at this information.
Neeve had not seemed happy to have uncovered a demon, but Piper had been dying at the time and unchoosy with her friends. She’d skipped over all other social niceties and said to the demon, “I woke you. Do I get a favour? Fix my body.”
I will favour you.
And it had. The air in the darkened tomb had gone a little shifty, and then Piper had stopped bleeding to death. She had expected that to be the end of it. It turned out, though, that a favour was a one-time affair, but favouring was for ever.
Now look at her. They were out of that cave, the sun was sort of shining, and Piper had just killed her cowardly dirtbag husband. Magic was churning through her and, to be honest, she was feeling pretty badass. Beside her, a waterfall was crashing upward, backwards, the water spraying up into the sky in great gasps. The tree closest to Piper was shedding its bark in peeling, wet clumps.
“Why does the air feel like this?” Piper asked. “It’s like it’s scratching me. Is it going to twitch like this the entire time?”
“I believe it is calming,” Neeve said in her faded voice. “The further we travel from the moment of your husband’s death. These are aftershocks. The forest is trying to rid itself of the demon, which seems to use the same power source, focused through the forest. The forest is reacting to being used to kill. I can sense that this place is about creation, and so any step you take that is opposite to that will cause this kind of spiritual quake.”
“We all do things we don’t want to,” Piper said. “And it’s not like we’re going to be killing loads of people. This was just to prove to my father that I was being serious about making up with him.”
The demon asked, Now what do you wish?
It was clinging to the marled old bark of a tree, back hunched in the way hornets curl when they are in the cold or damp or breeze off a waterfall. Its antennae quivered in her direction, and it still hummed in time with a swarm that was no longer in evidence. Overhead, the sun shook; Piper had a thought that it wasn’t really daytime at all. Another bit of bark sloughed off the tree.
He blinked.
She wasn’t there.
She had never been there. She had left him behind. Well, in fairness, he had left her behind, but she’d started it. She was the one who had chosen to perpetuate a considerable amount of tactless violent crime in the wilds of Virginia, right when he had decided he was ready to take his toys and go.
“I’m alone,” Greenmantle told the mirror.
But he wasn’t. They buzzed down the stairs, alighting upon the tops of the picture frames, and ricocheted into the kitchen.
Greenmantle turned from the mirror to face his collection. A four-armed suit of armour, a taxidermy unicorn the size of a pygmy goat, a blade that continuously dripped blood on the floor of its glass case. It represented the finest of nearly two decades of collecting. Not really the finest, Greenmantle mused, merely the objects he thought most likely to capture Piper’s attention.
He thought he heard something in the hallway to the room. A humming. Or scratching. Not quite scratching – it was too light for that.
“After numerous personal betrayals, Colin Greenmantle had a nervous breakdown in his late thirties,” Greenmantle narrated, ignoring the sound, “leading many to believe he would fade into obscurity.”
He regarded the earrings in his hand. He had taken steps to acquire them over two years before, but it had taken this long for his suppliers to cut them from a woman’s head in Gambia. Rumour had it that the wearer could see through walls. Certain types of walls, anyway. Not brick. Not stone. But drywall. They could handle drywall. Greenmantle didn’t have pierced ears, so he hadn’t tried them. And with Piper pursuing a new life of crime, it seemed he might never find out.
“But the onlookers had underestimated Colin’s personal fortitude,” he said. “His ability to bounce back from emotional injury.”
He turned to the door just as the visitors exploded through it.
He blinked.
They did not disappear.
He blinked, and blinked again, and something was still coming in through the door, something that was neither his imagination nor a cursed mirror image. It took his mind a moment to process the sound and the sight to realize it was not a single visitor: It was many. They poured and tumbled and scrabbled over one another.
It was not until one broke free from the horde and flew at him erratically that he realized that it was insects. As the black wasp landed on his wrist, he told himself not to slap it. It stung him.
“Bitch!” he said, and swung the wine bottle at it.
Another wasp joined the first. Greenmantle shook his arm, dislodging it, but a third flew at him. A fourth, a fifth, a hallway-full of them. They were all over him. He was wearing a beautiful jacket, and boxers, and wasps.
The earrings fell to the floor as he spun. In the mirror, his reflection dripped tears and he saw not wasps, but Piper, her arms and smile wrapped around him.
“We’re through,” her mouth said.
The lights went out.
It was 6:22.
You could say what you liked about Piper Greenmantle, but she wasn’t a quitter, even when things didn’t turn out exactly as she imagined. She kept going to Pilates long after it was physically satisfying, continued attending book club after she discovered she was a far speedier reader than her fellow members, and persisted in getting fake mink eyelashes sewed into her own every two weeks, even after the salon location closest to her was shut down for health violations.
So when she went looking for a magical sleeping entity supposedly buried near her rental house, she didn’t quit until she found it.
Unmaker.
That had been the first thing it had said when she’d found it. It had taken her a moment longer to realize that it was replying to her question (“What the hell?”).
In Piper’s defence, the sleeper was unsettling. She’d been expecting a human, and instead she’d found a murder-black six-legged creature that she would have called a hornet if she didn’t firstly find hornets repellent and secondly think hornets had no business being eleven inches long.
“That is a demon,” Neeve had said. Neeve was the third leg on their uncomfortable tripod. She was a mild-voiced, squat woman with pretty hands and bad hair; Piper thought she was a television psychic but could not remember how she’d arrived at this information.
Neeve had not seemed happy to have uncovered a demon, but Piper had been dying at the time and unchoosy with her friends. She’d skipped over all other social niceties and said to the demon, “I woke you. Do I get a favour? Fix my body.”
I will favour you.
And it had. The air in the darkened tomb had gone a little shifty, and then Piper had stopped bleeding to death. She had expected that to be the end of it. It turned out, though, that a favour was a one-time affair, but favouring was for ever.
Now look at her. They were out of that cave, the sun was sort of shining, and Piper had just killed her cowardly dirtbag husband. Magic was churning through her and, to be honest, she was feeling pretty badass. Beside her, a waterfall was crashing upward, backwards, the water spraying up into the sky in great gasps. The tree closest to Piper was shedding its bark in peeling, wet clumps.
“Why does the air feel like this?” Piper asked. “It’s like it’s scratching me. Is it going to twitch like this the entire time?”
“I believe it is calming,” Neeve said in her faded voice. “The further we travel from the moment of your husband’s death. These are aftershocks. The forest is trying to rid itself of the demon, which seems to use the same power source, focused through the forest. The forest is reacting to being used to kill. I can sense that this place is about creation, and so any step you take that is opposite to that will cause this kind of spiritual quake.”
“We all do things we don’t want to,” Piper said. “And it’s not like we’re going to be killing loads of people. This was just to prove to my father that I was being serious about making up with him.”
The demon asked, Now what do you wish?
It was clinging to the marled old bark of a tree, back hunched in the way hornets curl when they are in the cold or damp or breeze off a waterfall. Its antennae quivered in her direction, and it still hummed in time with a swarm that was no longer in evidence. Overhead, the sun shook; Piper had a thought that it wasn’t really daytime at all. Another bit of bark sloughed off the tree.
