Vassa in the Night (35 page)

She reaches two fingers into Tomin's jugular, and I know she's about to plunge her hand in, rupturing his throat as she goes, and haul his heart back out through his neck. And then there won't be any magic strong enough to save him. A beating heart is a pretty basic requirement for being alive, right?

If I yell, fight, protest, I'll just hurry the process and enhance her enjoyment while I'm at it. Instead I stare at her like I'm the one who's dead. Like she's already murdered me, but my empty eyes refuse to waver for a moment. She was expecting more of a reaction and my blank look seems to confuse her; maybe not much, but enough that her fingers pause where they are. Moving impossibly slowly, still staring, I take a single step toward her, with absolutely no idea of what I'm going to do. Babs's white floating eye darts back into her face, and for an instant I see a slight, silvery glaze pass over her expression.

Babs is afraid of me. Weak and hopeless and human as I am, she's genuinely scared of what I might try next. How did I fail to understand that before this moment?

And she should be, I realize. Because it's not just me she has to contend with. I've made some friends since I came to this place. I can feel Night watching us through the windows. I can see Babs's hair stirring on her neck with the first breath of a sudden wind.

I can hear their wings.

*   *   *

A throbbing cloud of swans lifts up, obscuring the whole front of the store and half the ceiling. Feathers eddy in time with the raining notes of the piano. In the narrow space of the store huge impulses of wind rebound from wall to wall, and boxes begin to pitch off the shelves. The jars and bottles shimmy until the endless song is confused by a low, relentless tinkling, glass on glass.

Babs looks from that beating mass of wings to me and back again. Her upper lip rises in a snarl, and her hand thrusts deeper into Tomin's gaping neck. I can hear a high-pitched shriek coming from somewhere in midair and my vision blurs white—and then Babs goes staggering backward, slapping wildly at a swan that seems to be landing on her face feetfirst. Its neck coils around her while its clawed toes dig at her eyes. Her upper body disappears behind snowy feathers and two strong wings slap the sides of her head so hard that I'd think her eardrums must burst.

Tomin's chest slips from her grasp. A huge crash resounds from the next aisle, and I turn to see a cluster of swans already at work toppling the next set of shelves. Babs yowls and thrashes with her powerful arms, but she can't seem to drive that swan off her face. I hear shouts of delirious triumph coming from the swan. Aren't they supposed to be voiceless?

It's not the swan shouting. Through the rush of its feathers I see something small, azure, and black clinging to the back of its head.

Erg. She's leading the swans in this assault to buy me some time. Babs is caught between three of the huge birds now, pummeling her from all sides, her scrawny arms waving out of billows of white—but, strong as she is, they probably won't be able to hold her off for long. I leap across Tomin's body and fling open the cooler where that gleaming gold bottle is waiting for me. I have to jump for it and the first time all I do is knock a few bottles of beer off the shelf. The sound of their smashing seems impossibly loud until I see that one of the swans has the axe in its bill, and it's getting to work on the destruction of the refrigerators and everything inside them. Shattering glass sheets down like snow and the axe is getting closer. I jump again, and this time my hand closes on something cold and slippery. The axe misses my fingers by an inch, and a moment later the maddened swan takes out the top whole shelf. I jump back, my skin drooling with soda. Blood beads on my wrist; I must have caught a few flying splinters, but for the moment there's no pain.

All I can feel is what I have to do, now, while there's still a chance. The bottle gives off a soft glow and lights up my flesh. The back of my hand shines dull ruby, striped black by the bones. With my free hand I grab a fistful of Tomin's looping hair and shove his head unceremoniously back into place. There isn't time to fuss with lining everything up just right, so it's going to have to be close enough. I twist off the lid. The soda's gotten a pretty thorough shaking and it froths up the glass neck and spills over: foam the color of candlelight. I swing forward just in time and the first drops splash onto the dark red line where his arm was removed from the shoulder. Frayed gray cloth curls on both sides of the wound.

He doesn't jerk or spasm this time. He doesn't move at all. All the motion is inside me as I stand stock-still above him: blood thumping in my ears and hope jamming where it hits solid despair. Nothing is happening. Did I somehow misunderstand what Erg was trying to tell me? A savage hacking noise bursts out somewhere nearby, and I look away from Tomin for a moment: the swan with the axe is applying it to the door of my room. The other swans have driven Babs almost to the end of the aisle, but she has one of them by the throat now. There's a hideous crunching and the swan collapses to the floor in a twitching heap, its neck lying in broken zigzags on the mounds of glass and crackers. How can I fail when they're ready to die for me?

I look back at Tomin and see new skin spreading as softly as sleep over the gash at his shoulder. For a moment everything freezes inside me and my breath turns to fists in my throat.

I don't feel myself starting to move again, but the next thing I know I'm pouring careful trickles of the shining soda across each of Tomin's cuts in turn: first his severed neck, then the other shoulder, the elbows, hips, knees … I lose track of where I am. There are no more screams and wingbeats, no more falling shelves and crackling lights.

There's nothing but the quiet, urgent work of putting back together what never should have been broken. It's a miracle too sweet and rare for me to spare any attention for anything else. It takes most of the bottle, but I can see Tomin fusing back into a whole boy. Still dead, still sad, but at least he looks human again and not like a butchered mess. He's whole and he's beautiful.

And now that I've come this far, there's a hitch. I've got no idea where the bottle of Sippable Shadow has gone. I stare around the chaos that the swans have made of the store. There's not a shelf standing. Ribbons of gashed packaging rustle in flamboyant heaps over the reek of pickle juice and jam and bleach. Crystalline drifts of crushed glass fill the refrigerators, syruped in milk and cola. Night seeps through punctures in the orange walls. I don't see a single intact bottle or jar anywhere. I hear my breath heaving in my throat, but apart from that I can't feel anything. There are no more shelves to block the view. Numbly, I look at a throbbing feathered tangle with a pair of human feet sticking out at the bottom. Almost all the swans seem to be tackling Babs now, and they've shoved her to the brink: black space opens where the picture windows used to be. Glass jags gleam along the top like diamond teeth. All at once I understand. They're going to throw her out into the parking lot—and, since Night isn't especially fond of her, she probably won't be as lucky as I was.

I'm not delusional enough to convince myself that there's any possibility the Sippable Shadow could have survived when everything else has been trashed. I can't save Tomin and I'm going to have to accept that and keep going. I can't save him anymore than I could save Zinaida, so I'd better concentrate on the living.

Because there is one person I can save. She doesn't deserve it, you tell me? She's an evil witch and death is too good for her? Yeah, that's absolutely true. I'm not arguing.

Ask me if I care.

The store has completely stopped dancing, I notice. Like it's waiting to see what will happen.

*   *   *

“Swans!” I yell. I'm running over the rubble, glass crunching under my boots. I'm still holding the Sippable Sunlight, since in this mess there's nowhere good to set it down. They've already hoisted Babs off the floor and they're carrying her toward the darkness—probably to lift her nice and high before they drop her. I see at least three swan corpses scattered around, so the survivors must be raging for revenge. “Stop! Please!”

I can see Erg now. She's perched on the head of the biggest swan and grinning like a maniac. “Um, Vassa? You can tell we're busy here, right? Ooh, we've got some serious splatting to do! I told you we'd show her!”

“Don't kill her,” I say.

The swans all pivot their heads to stare at me: dozens of skeptical black eyes riveted on mine. Babs's dangling feet kick below the steady pulse of their wings. She's just outside where the door used to be, space yawning below her.

Erg sighs. “Vassa, you know I don't like arguing with you. But we might just have to agree to disagree on this particular issue. Since you're making about as much sense as a talking sandwich! It's not like Babsie is going to become some delightfully reformed character and dedicate her life to feeding stray elephants. And anyway, you promised! You told her you were going to take her down.”

“I told her I was going to
undo
her, dollface. But—is she like you? I mean, the rules that you told me about, about what you're not allowed to say. Do they apply to her, too? So if she says too much…”

Erg considers that, her little head tipped and jarring up and down with the rise and fall of her swan. “Sure, that would work. You could knock all the magic out of her that way. But what about my pleasurable anticipation, Vassa? I've been so very much looking forward to killing her as thoroughly as possible! Ever since we got here! You wouldn't want to deprive me of that now, would you?”

I'm not sure why Babs hasn't contributed anything to the discussion. It seems out of character, but maybe she's just too pissed off to speak. “Compromise, doll? Let's try it my way first. If that doesn't work—we can't let her go on the way she has been, I know that. But murder really isn't something that I want to do with my life. Please? And anyway I need information, and you know I can't ask you.”

Erg stares. “She won't do it, Vassa. She'd rather be dead than give up her power and just be plain human, and old, and sick. There isn't the slightest doubt in my mind. As to her preferred alternative.”

“Babs?” I call. “You're hearing this, right? Would you like to weigh in?”

A muffled snarl comes through the moonish globe of feathers, gleaming pearl bright in the light streaming from the broken windows.

“Um, swans? Do you mind letting her talk? If this doesn't work, I promise you can drop her. From as high up as you want. Okay?”

The swans peel back enough to show me Babs's face, battered and scratched in a halo of flashing white. Her roving eye has swollen shut, but the other glowers at me between puffy lids. Ah, so it's not the swans' fault that Babs can't speak. There's something covering her mouth, though at first I can't make out what on earth it could be. Something pinkish gray, with a pale red round at the end of a fat stalk. It's wriggling.

Sinister. He's clapped himself over her mouth, his nails gouging deep into her cheeks, his thumb shoved between her teeth. What is he thinking? “Sinister? I'd like to ask Babs a few questions. Is that okay?”

With an awful slurping sound, Sinister drags his thumb out of her mouth and peers at me. He's keeping a grip on her by pinching her nose, and with two or three swans holding each of Babs's arms she can't smack him off. After the way they lifted that motorcycle, I should have realized that my swans are just as strong as she is.

“Hi, Babs,” I say. “Actually, I still feel sorry for you. Even after everything you've done. I'd like you to get to live, as long as you can do that without hurting anyone else. But I don't get the impression that you have enough self-control to change like that on your own. So I'm—here to help you.”

The crazy thing is that I really mean it. I want Babs to live peacefully somewhere, read books and drink mint tea, maybe take up watercolors or something. No matter what Erg thinks, I can't shake the feeling that Babs has the potential to be different—that maybe having too much magic has messed her up, and she'd be a lot nicer without it. If Erg kills her, I know I'll grieve for her. For the person she could have been.

“Ah, but I'll take a whole hatred,” Babs snarls, “over the half-pity of a bisected nobody.” Her voice is thick and nasal and Sinister sways in front of her lips.

“Too bad that's not an option,” I tell her. “I don't know why, but I can't hate you. What I can do is spare your life, though. If you'll just tell me a few things.”

Babs glares wordlessly. The biggest swan snaps its bill at me.
Get on with it.

If I was Babs, I'd try to cheat my way out of this by lying—so I decide to start by asking something I already know as a test. “That guy in the parking lot. Who is he?”

Babs still doesn't answer, and the swans pitch her up a few feet and catch her again. For all her bravado I can see fear wash over her face. “He's nothing, not in himself. But he was part of Night, once. My bitty captive, now.”

She gets the same pale, sickly look that Erg did. So far, so good.

“Thanks,” I tell her. “For being honest. Okay, so what are you actually selling here? You're not making your money off chewing gum.” I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, too.

Babs is not happy with the question, but she doesn't have to be. The swans start shaking her. “The bits and dabs and glands. The choice cuts below the neck. There are certain rarefied buyers, imp, and money's not their true coin. But you've sussed that out on your own.”

Pallor seems to gush through her face and her head sways. Getting there.

“Great job,” I tell her. “I'm sorry if this hurts, Babs, really, but we're almost through. Okay, what do I have to do to pull the stars out of the motorcyclist's eyes, so that he can go back to Night?”