What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (24 page)

Moira, the self-proclaimed heir to Gideon’s throne.

They all must have been watching me make my way down the street, haloed by the light of the cycle that still presses close to me, herds me on.

Just ahead of me are more flames, flames spiraling up from an old trash barrel, a stream of acrid black smoke billowing above my head. It’s hard to make them out clearly, but as I get very close there are obviously two figures huddled close to the barrel, set aglow by its pulsing light. Just beyond this are the interlacing headlight beams, the front forks of the bikes turned both left and right, crooking the lights at odd angles.

I’ve been prodded along to this circle of light. I’m obviously meant to join the two already there.

And then I’m being pushed into the ring. Someone is using a pole or the leg from a table to prod me on. For a moment I’m right beside a motorcycle, its engine thrumming like the drone of a giant bee, the vibrations working up through the soles of my boots.

Jump onto its seat, take hold of the handlebars.

Could I ride the thing? Could I use it to get away?

A visualization of myself on the bike accelerating into the darkness pops into my mind for a split-second before I’m shoved again, just beyond the edge of this crude circle they’ve formed. I totter but I don’t fall down.

Must not fall. Will not fall.

“Glad you could join us, Gillian Rose.” Moira’s voice threads its way through the noise, the chatter, the yelling and chaos, like an invisible serpent. I can’t see her—she must be standing just outside the glare of the headlights. Her voice commands attention, like an actress declaiming from the lip of a stage. Without any strain, she can make that voice fill a vast space like an auditorium—or a city street at night.

Reflexively, I pull back a few steps but she says, “Stay where you are. Step closer, inside our little circle of light.”

Immediately there’s a punishing blow against my back, someone smacking me, knocking me forward and I stumble deep into the ring, near the leaping, sputtering flames rising from the steel barrel. I know Riders are all around, running through the streets like wolves, swooping bat-like through the darkness but I can’t see them. I can only see—

Tetch and William right next to me, kneeling on the pavement, their hands held behind their backs as if their wrists are bound.

Their heads are downcast. They lean forward as if bowed before an altar. The altar of an idling motorcycle. Or maybe it’s just that the beam of light before them is too bright, shining into their faces with a spotlight’s glare. They look abject, passive. Traumatized prisoners of war, too beaten and cowed to do anything but meekly submit.

I don’t want to join them. I don’t want to be on that level.

Must not fall. Stay prepared to move. Keep struggling against them.

Fight until you succeed. Or die.

I wait for one of the Black Riders to step into the ring and force me to my knees beside the others. I wait, expecting another blow at any moment but I’m left unmolested. I have no idea why. Maybe there’s too much light in the circle. I’m sure none of them wants to be blinded, even for a second. And they must be confident that I can’t escape.

I wait for Moira’s voice to fill the space with its easy, eerie projection, maybe to explain to me what’s going on or to address her followers. Surely she won’t be silent for long.

But then I realize that there’s some commotion in the distance, a hash of voices, some of the Black Riders shouting at each other. “Touch me and I’ll rip you to pieces,” I hear and recognize the voice as Aisa’s. I’ve never heard her sound remotely as agitated. She’s completely lost her cool, her composure.

And then Aisa, Milo and Bodie are shoved into the circle, close to me, near the fire.

They look naked, exposed, like subterranean creatures caught by powerful lights they’ve never confronted before. Each still wears a pair of impenetrably black, face-hugging sunglasses but even with that—eyes completely obscured—the light wounds them badly. They pace around the edge of the ring of light faster and faster, paying no attention to me, circling like caged jungle cats.

“You outnumber us now, Moira,” Aisa yells into the dark beyond the circle. “But our numbers will grow.”

Moira’s voice floats airily above the fray. “Or dwindle. Who’s to say?”

“You
can’t
hurt us, Moira. You wouldn’t dare. You’re afraid to step into this circle with us. You’re afraid to actually fight.”

“Fight.” She laughs, a fluttery, unconcerned laugh like anything Aisa might say is hardly worth paying attention to. “Fight with what? Switchblades? Bricks and bats? Our fists and fingernails? You don’t understand your position, Aisa. How weak you are your friends are. You should have thought it through before deciding to make an attempt at independence.”

“Two tribes, Moira. Get that through your head. We’re two tribes now.”

“So
you
say, Aisa.”

In fury, Aisa kicks over the trash barrel, turning loose a floating sea of embers. Tetch and William come suddenly to life, leap back. Aisa turns on them and gives William a brutal slap across the face, knocking him flat on his ass. Bodie’s right hand like a metal claw latches onto Tetch’s shoulder and forces her back down. For a moment I see trails of tears staining her cheeks as her face is caught in the light. She’s terrified.

“Don’t hurt the bikes!” one of the Riders outside the circle shouts. A motorcycle is quickly hauled back from the burning trash that Aisa’s spilt.

“What about our van?” Bodie spits out.

I hear Aisa hiss at him, her voice low and dangerous. “Shut up about the van. We can get another van.”

I wonder why they don’t just fight their way out of the circle. They’re still pacing, shielding their eyes. It’s like they still have some vestigial respect for Moira, like whatever authority Gideon bestowed on her still holds.

“So, let’s divide the spoils,” Moira says, changing the subject, her tone light, unconcerned, like she’s about to do the three Riders in the circle a favor they should be grateful for—a favor that will cost her nothing. “Who’s going to get who? We need to make it fair.”

Moira’s voice is everywhere and nowhere. I have no sense of where she is except that she must be close, not far from the circle’s rim. Her voice drifts from place to place, blown by the wind, filling the air around me, disembodied, haunting.

Aisa says, “We’ll take the girl.” She points at me. “This girl. Gillian.”

“Oh, no. We get
that
girl. You can have the other two.”

Milo charges up to the edge of the ring, close to where Moira last seemed to be speaking. “What do we want with these other two? Aisa
wants
the girl. Aisa’s
going to get
the girl.” He’s acting like a protective boyfriend.

For only the merest millisecond I get a glimpse of a fleeting black specter caught by the light and it has to be her. Moira. I hear her say, “Is she? Doon, will you stand up for me like Milo is standing up for Aisa?”

There’s no reply in words but a fat clump of damp litter, waste paper and foam, flies across the boundary of the bikes and slaps Milo in the chest. It makes a sodden
thunk
and slides down the front of his black jacket. He stops pacing, stands alert like a cat, ready to charge after wherever Doon or whoever threw the refuse is lurking.

Moira starts speaking faster, smoothing things over before they go too far. “Now, now. Let’s not fight in front of the children. You three know I have the advantage in numbers. At the very
least
I have that advantage. Why not just give in?” I hear Milo growl. “For now. Take the other two, do what you want with them and be happy. For now.”

“What good is that going to do us?” Aisa says. “You got Jendra—”

“Jendra,” Moira says as if an idea has just occurred to her. “Jendra, come here. Your friends want to see you. This boy, this pitiful, frightened little creature, was a good friend of yours once, wasn’t he?”

Now I’m aware that Jendra must also be close, probably only a few feet away, but I can’t see her.

“Not my friend now, Moira. He
was
.” The voice sounds like Jendra’s but altered. Enhanced. Enlarged.

William perks up for the first time. He raises his head, strains to see beyond the glare. I think of that moon-shaped scar, the pain he’s endured. I imagine him hoping that by some miracle the friendship he had forged in the past with this girl will save him. Even though she seems more than willing to deny him.

“Should I let Aisa keep him or take him with us? Let me know, Jendra. This is interesting.”

If Jendra replies to Moira, I can’t hear what she says.

“Come here, boy,” Moira calls to William, cooing, happy to be able to exploit the moment. “Come to the edge of the circle. Into this pool of light. Let us all see you.”

William rises to his feet slowly, hunched and frightened, looking all around as if expecting to be struck down again at any moment. He edges his way timidly to the rim of this crude circle the sputtering, thrumming bikes have formed.

I get a good look at William’s face. Despite everything there’s something hopeful in it.
Jendra.
The promise of reuniting with her is leading him on.

Staring at William, at how weak he seems compared to Milo or Bodie, I wonder—is he capable of becoming as they are? Is he really one day going to disappear into the night with the other Black Riders?

Then Jendra, or what I’m assuming is her, meets him in the radiant cone of a headlight’s beam. She’s a dark shape hovering. She seems taller than he is, bigger but also shadowy. Hard to get a fix on. She darts in and out of the light like it’s a spray of ice cold water.

I hear William’s voice, so very tiny in the echoing darkness. The whoops and cries of the Black Riders have died away. Even Milo, Bodie and Aisa appear very interested in what’s about to happen. “Jendra? Can I—can I see you?”

“Here.” He looks all around but can’t make her out. “Here. Look!” She springs into the light again for just seconds and vanishes. She sounds irritated, unhappy, as if being pulled from her adult world back into the childish world of the Elders she left behind is painful to her. “That’s all. I don’t want him looking at me!”

But then two figures become just barely visible at the periphery of the headlight’s gleam. Moira appears to have her hand on Jendra’s shoulder, keeping her still for a moment, keeping her close to William. The three Black Riders from the opposing tribe near me tense up, draw together, hovering, waiting to strike. I’m spellbound by what’s happening, wondering if they will risk attacking Moira. Moira must believe that they won’t.

“Be gentle, Jen,” I hear Moira say. “You were friends.”

William appears torn between his fear of Moira and a fierce desire to finally be close to Jendra again. He’s trembling visibly, begins stuttering. “M-m-make me like you, Jendra. I want to be like you.” His voice is so meek, so submissive and small.

There is laughter. Even Aisa laughs.

“No, no,” Moira says. “This is important. Do you remember what Gideon told us once, long ago, about the ceremony of blood?”

There is murmuring. The laughter dies away completely. Aisa and her crew now seem too caught up in what’s happening to lash out at Moira physically. At least until they’ve let her have her say.

“You all know what I’m talking about. What some used to do in the days before all the old ones died. The mixing of blood. When two people who loved each other and wanted to join each other
on the other side
, tried to hurry things along, mixing the blood of the sick one with the blood of the one who was still healthy.”

“Healthy,” Aisa snarls at her. “They weren’t healthy.”

“You’re right. Let us say,
unchanged
. How about it, Jendra? Is there anything left of your feelings for this boy that might make you want to help him along, maybe speed up the change so you can be together again?”

“Jendra?”

William’s voice breaks into a sob, a sound of pure agony. I expect more laughter but there is none. It can’t be compassion. It has to be curiosity that keeps them hushed, the desire to absorb every word, every moment of what’s about to happen. I’m sure Jendra is trying to figure out what Moira wants her to do. She has little interest in William but a lot of interest in pleasing the leader of her tribe.

“What do I have to do?” Jendra asks.

“Just agree to the ceremony, Jendra, and you’ll see. Do you agree little man? You could become like she is. Or you could die. It’s your choice.”

“All right.” That’s all William says with his meek little voice, barely audible over the sound of the engines. He takes a few quick steps back, retreats.

“What’s that? We can’t hear you.”

William edges up to the rim of the circle again. He looks like he’s about to collapse. It must be taking every ounce of strength he possesses to face Moira like this, to speak to her directly. He must want to be reunited with Jendra badly. But I can understand—he has no one else.

“I will.” His voice is louder—fragile, quavering—but it’s sufficient to satisfy Moira.

“It’s a date then.”

As quickly as it started, the interest this exchange has held for the Riders fades. I can sense them start to move with anxious energy, predators in the darkness, the sounds—whoops, screams, hollers—they make scarcely human.

I watch Aisa, Bodie and Milo face each other for a moment. Their eyes are hidden of course—I can’t even see their faces clearly—but I know they’re trying to regroup, decide what to do. As one, they exchange the slightest of nods, reaching a decision without saying a word. But all they do is start pacing round and round again.

William is still where he was, standing by the circle’s edge. When Aisa finds him in her way, she simply whacks him aside with the hard edge of her forearm. William sprawls into the middle of the burning trash. He tries to scramble back up but maybe his hands are hurt—scraped, burned. He can’t push himself up all the way and keeps sliding back on the embers. I find myself moving toward him instinctively, unable to see him suffer, but Milo blocks me, a cruel smile on his ghost-pale face. He shakes his head. I can’t interfere.