Cupidity - chapter twenty five

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Previous chapters here.


The hills slid past, scrubby bushes and dry baked earth, golf courses and white-painted houses. Angel leaned his head back on the seat and let it all slide past.

"I could've finished you all off," he said. "Every single fucking one of you."

Robin steered them across an interchange and then off down a road that Angel recognized. It led to Alberich's mound. Robin's knuckles were white where he gripped the wheel.

"Perhaps you should've done that," he said. He was staring out at the road ahead. "Why didn't you?"

Angel looked over at Robin's sharp profile. He wanted to tell him exactly why, but he just couldn't, not now. He closed his eyes and must've dozed, because he didn't remember anything until Robin shook him gently awake.

"We're here," Robin said, peering into his eyes with a worried frown. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Feels like I've got the world's worst hangover," Angel said. He ached, every part of him, and not just his body. He missed it. He missed the rush of power and it sickened him.

There was still no smell this time, thank god. Angel found it easier the second time around. Maybe he was getting used to it, he thought. Or maybe it wasn't so bad compared to the rest of the day. Or maybe he was just in shock.

They had to find a container and pick up all the bits. Robin insisted. There were a lot of them. It seemed weirdly disrespectful to cram Alberich's head in there with the rest of...him. Angel wrapped it in the towel and carried it in his arms.

"You don't have to..." Robin started.

Angel looked over at him, and he stopped talking. It was funny, Angel thought. He looked so worried. The other funny thing was how much Angel could see, all of a sudden, like a whole other world shimmering at the edge of his vision. He wondered if he could do what Robin could do now.

He stepped back and to the side--and into the soft grass by Terrence Goodfellow's grave. Someone touched his shoulder. He squeaked a little and nearly dropped the head, and oh god he was carrying around a dead guy's head, what the fuck.

"You brought him to me," Eos said.

Angel shook himself as Eos took the towel-wrapped bundle and cradled it against her breasts.

"Yeah. Uh." He took a few steps back.

Eos looked at him, quiet and solemn. "Do not worry, child. Strange as it is, I find no urge within myself to harm you."

He swallowed. "That's good."

She sat cross-legged in the grass and unwrapped Alberich's head. She stroked his hair. "I should have known when you asked for my blood. No one's asked for that since him."

"I just didn't want to leave her like that. She couldn't even die."

"She still can't. I made sure of that. Though I now find myself curiously indifferent to her suffering. I suppose revenge matters less when one is dying."

"You're not dying."

She laughed. "I'm human."

"Angel!" It was Robin, hurrying into the clearing with the bag slung over his shoulder.

"I'm okay. We were just talking."

"I see. And are you done?"

Angel looked at Eos, but she was already walking over to Robin. She took the bag from him and looked inside it.

"Yes," she said faintly. "We are done." She started laying pieces out on the grass, constructing Alberich piece by piece. "Help me or leave."

Robin helped. After a few minutes, Angel did too. He wished it were as horrible as it should be, but it just wasn't. It didn't feel real. Once he was as whole as it was possible to make him, they raised a mound over him, a miniature of the one where they'd found him. Tiny white flowers sprang up on it and grass grew over it, and Eos wept, her tears landing on his grave.

"Now he can be reborn anew," she said.

"He can?" Angel whispered to Robin.

"Maybe. In time. They are very hard to kill. She might even live to see his return."

The wood were changing, Angel noticed. Through their murk he could see flat shapes, like tower blocks. Under his feet, leaves blew away to show cracked concrete.

"What's happening to it all?" he said.

"Rose," said Robin.

"The land reflects its lady," Eos said. "Or its lord."

"Then I'm guessing Rose isn't doing so well." The grass in the graveyard was still green and thick, but all around them it was fading to brown. "Can't she fix herself now?"

"She can," Eos said. "But she can't. It's within her power, but not when she's like this. She despairs, and the land despairs with her. They are one and the same now, and one reinforces the other."

She spoke without looking up. Robin watched her, and Angel watched Robin. He couldn't read that expression at all.

"Will you, like, be okay here?" he said. "I mean, no house. And it's getting cold. And what are you gonna eat?"

She shook her head and wouldn't answer.

They left Eos kneeling by the graves, her fingers buried deep in the grass. The silver sky was broken by tall dark shapes, thin fingers pointing up to the sky like a parody of a city.

"Rose doesn't like the trees, yeah?" Angel said.

"She always did love the human world," Robin said, touching the edge of a tower of glass and concrete that was half built and already half crumbling. "Perhaps it was more of a fetish."

They walked for a while. The air was cool and the sky was uniform white, thick and heavy and seeming to muffle sounds. Robin didn’t speak and Angel couldn't find anything to say. He kind of thought there was a lot they should talk about, at some point. Maybe.

The buildings got bigger and the gaps between them became dark chasms floored with churned up dark earth. It felt like stepping into a grave.

"Aren't you scared of meeting Rose?" Robin asked him.

He sounded strange. Wary, Angel thought. Around them, through glossy windows that somehow he knew where not made of glass, he saw fleeting dark shapes and faces, some human and some not.

"No," Angel said. "I’m not scared."

The tallest building was easy to see. It was empty inside. The four towering walls enclosed nothing but an elevator. The doors opened for them, and stood open, waiting. They looked at each other, and then Angel stepped in.

She had an office. It was wood paneled, but the panels were rough and unvarnished. There was a bookcase filled with books, and a lamp and a desk and three chairs. A laptop sat open, glowing softly. Next to it lay the gun. Around the walls, dark haired women waited silently.

Rose stood near the single large window, looking out. She was as neat and as polished as he’d ever seen her, except that her feet were bare and filthy and her gaze was dull and flat.

"I thought you'd come to find me," she said, turning to them. Her voice was hard and sharp and it seemed to stab into Angel’s ears. "My brothers."

"I'm not your brother," Angel said.

Rose darted a single glance at him, like a blow. "You are now."

Angel didn't even want to think about that. “No,” he said.

“Leave us alone,” Robin said. “Do that and we’ll reciprocate.”

“I have my own land now,” she said, her voice rising. She sounded confused. “What would I want with yours?” She turned back to the window and laid her palm flat on the glass. It bowed under her touch and he saw her whole body shudder. The floor under their feet shivered too. “I can’t see,” she said. “Everything’s so dark. Yes, you can leave me alone.”

In the elevator on the way down, Robin held his hand and Angel was stupidly grateful. They hurried through the narrow streets like lost children in a fairy tale, pulling each other along. The air was getting colder, almost icy as it crept under Angel’s clothes. It was getting darker too. This wasn't just Rose's land. It had been his too, even for those few moments. They weighed on him, as heavily as the dull and cold air.

They came to the grave mound, but Eos was gone. She was close by though, somewhere. Angel could feel it.

“Do you want to go home?” Robin said. His breath came out in a white plume and he sounded almost pleading.

Angel put his hand in his pocket. Jenny’s tile was still there. It was smooth and warm under his fingers. He ran his thumb over her number.

“There’s still something we should do,” he said.

***

"The likelihood of me being able to do a damn thing about this curse is slim to none," Jenny said.

"Eos said she could fix herself if she'd just realize. She's so..."

"Lost," Robin said quietly.

"I'm a witch, not a therapist."

"You know any therapists willing to work with the queen of the fairies? No? Wow, shocker."

Jenny sighed. "Fine. Let's go."

They stepped out of the bar and into the other world. Angel thought he might be getting used to this. It was a worrying thought.

"Fuck," Jenny said softly. He didn't think he'd heard her swear before. "What happened here?"

It was worse. Asphalt and concrete covered everything. Glass windows cracked and shattered as they walked past. Strange graffiti grew and swirled on the buildings, painting scenes of the forest by moonlight, of creatures with inhuman eyes, and of tides of blood lapping at countless stained, bare feet.

"Rose happened," Robin said. He took Angel's hand again, and Angel wasn't sure which of them it was meant to comfort.

Jenny stood straighter and grasped her walking stick more firmly. "Right, then. Show me."

They took the elevator up again. Rose was still standing at her window. Her women stood or lay about the room. One was eating a pigeon delicately, with bloody fingertips. She offered Angel the heart, and he looked away quickly.

Jenny went to Rose and stood quietly next to her. She didn't speak to her or touch her. It was a long time before Rose turned to look her way with those blank eyes.

"I don't know you," Rose said.

"No, you don't."

There was another pause, so long that Angel sat down on Rose's desk to wait.

"Who are you?" Rose asked, at last.

"I'm no one. Just like you."

Rose nodded slowly. "I am no one and nothing, dead and buried. Everything is so dark. I can't stop bleeding. Oceans of my blood, but it's never enough, I'm never empty and the land is never full."

This time it was Jenny who was quiet. The women around the edges of the room stirred, with like wind through bare branches. Robin moved closer to Angel.

"You don't feed a land on blood," Jenny said, finally. "That's silly. Plants need rain, even the ones here." She reached out and pressed her thumb lightly between Rose's eyes, like she had with Robin.

Rose seized her by the wrist and throat and groaned. Her women echoed the sound, like the splintering of an old tree trunk by wind or the beginning of an avalanche. The shadows in the room thickened, and thunder rumbled outside, and Jenny didn't move. Angel could see blood on her throat where Rose's nails dug into her skin.

Rain started to spatter and hiss against the glass. It was only a few drops at first, and then it gathered and rolled down like tears. Rose's mouth was open, her face blank.

Angel looked between her and the rain. He picked up Roses's paperweight, a heavy gold frog, and heaved it at the window. Glass shards flew everywhere, and Rose screamed as a fragment cut her cheek.

Wind blew the rain in on them in great gusts and swirls, sticking Rose and Jenny's hair against their faces, plastering papers to the desk and the walls.

Rose's eyes were shining, Angel saw. He didn't know if it was tears or just a lifting of that horrible dead stare. She let go of Jenny's neck and looked at the blood on her fingers. She licked it off carefully, like an animal licking a wound.

"I hurt," she said, very softly.

"Then do something about it," Jenny told her.

"I don't know how."

"Figure it out. You're in charge now. No one can do it for you."

"I never wanted this."

"Yeah, well, you can't always get what you want. But sometimes you get what you need."

Rose frowned. "That's the Rolling Stones."

Jenny shrugged. "Sorry. You can't always be as eloquent as you'd like all on your own, either. But it's still true."

Rose blinked slowly at her and turned to face the window. For a second Angel thought she meant to jump, but she only stood there, letting the rain soak her from head to toe. She stepped on the broken glass, and where the blood from her feet seeped into the carpet, tiny red flowers bloomed.

"You should all leave," Rose said. "I need to think."

Her women left by the door or faded through the walls or sank through the floor. Angel cleared his throat and slipped off the desk, tugging Robin's hand. "Going, right."

Rose turned her head and looked at Jenny. "You may come back."

"Ah. You know, I'm sure you'll be fine now. I'm sure you would've fine anyway, and I'm really not--"

"You may come back."

Jenny sighed and rubbed at the cuts on her neck. "Right."

When the elevator let them out onto the street, Angel saw green shoots creeping up through the cracked concrete.