She looked up at the dark clouds. The wind could hear the wailing of her branches, the rustle of her leaves, the mournful sob of her executioner’s tree. She’d cradled enough dying men in her boughs to understand what the solemn one was begging for.
The pixie-like one watched the solemn one shudder and struggle to sit up again. There was no pity in her gaze.
“You’re not done yet,” she said.
“I am.”
She gripped his arm and ruthlessly yanked him to his feet. He thrust a killing blow at her. She easily knocked it aside and then held him up when he would’ve fallen.
He was so much larger than her. A bear next to a rabbit.
“Fine,” she said, starting to walk with him. She placed a knife in his hand and smiled when he didn’t stab her. “You may be done with me, but I’m not done with you.”
“Where are we going?”
She flagged a taxi and shoved him into the back.
The driver kindly ignored the wheezing, bruised, solemn man.
The pixie-like one smiled at the driver and said, “City Hall, please.”
98
The innocent one soared through the black clouds. He was in his father’s form, a dark-winged monster swooping after the taxi as it sped across the serpentine river. He kept close, like a hawk tracking a mouse’s shadow.
If the solemn one had fought the pixie-like one, he would’ve darted down, grasped him in his claws, and carried him to the horror. He smiled, tracking the yellow taxi’s light. He dove between the cables of the bridge and swept past the taxi. At the window, he slowed and nodded to the pixie-like one.
Who could see the Jersey Devil’s son tonight? The black clouds were so thick most humans would believe he was a figment of their imagination.
The wind gasped. A convulsing, anguished scream ripped at its thin tendrils.
It wasn’t the boy.
The boy was gone.
Most of the wind had stayed with him, keeping the funeral pyre’s fires at bay.
No.
This scream sounded like the ocean rushing through a sea cave. Or like a ship crashing against a deadly reef. It was the citrus and pearl dust scented woman, and she was in agony.
Had the wind already forgotten its promise to the boy?
Had it left the citrus and pearl dust scented woman to die?
It feathered toward her, collecting the thin particles of itself that remained in the horror’s ring.
It shrieked and reared back at the blast of scalding, tear-flesh-from-bone, searing heat. What was this?
The heat scorched the woman and her brothers. She was crumpled on the ground, her arms over her head. The musician and the trickster shot waves of ice at the hell scented fires. It wouldn’t be enough. It couldn’t be.
The wind saw their illusions were weakening. But the fire was a hungry, torrential, endless thing.
Why wasn’t the woman fighting? She was the strongest of the Bards. She was the heir. She could shove back the flames.
The wind moaned at the heat and sank toward the woman’s shaking form.
It hadn’t wanted to leave the boy. It hadn’t wanted to.
