Lori had broken that spell of despair, coming to him not begging but demanding he forgive himself.
Now, back in the avenues from which his monstrous condition had sprung, he felt her love for him like the life his body no longer possessed.
He needed its comfort, in the pandemonium. The Nightbreed were not simply bringing Midian down, they were erasing all clue to their nature or keepsake of their passing. He saw them at work on every side, labouring to finish what Eigerman’s scourge had begun. Gathering up the pieces of their dead and throwing them into the flames; burning their beds, their clothes, anything they couldn’t take with them.
These were not the only preparations for escape. He glimpsed the Breed in forms he’d never before had the honour to see: unfurling wings, unfolding limbs. One becoming many (a man, a flock); many becoming one (three lovers, a cloud). All around, the rites of departure.
Ashbery was still at Boone’s side, agog.
“Where are they going?”
“I’m too late,” Boone said. “They’re leaving Midian.”
The lid of a tomb ahead flew off, and a ghost form rose like a rocket into the night sky.
“Beautiful,” Ashbery said. “What are they? Why have I never known them?”
Boone shook his head. He had no way to describe the Breed that were not the old ways. They didn’t belong to Hell; nor yet to Heaven. They were what the species he’d once belonged to could not bear to be. The unpeople; the anti-tribe; humanity’s sack unpicked and sewn together again with the moon inside.
And now, before he’d a chance to know them and by knowing them, know himself—he was losing them. They were finding transport in their cells, and rising to the night.
“Too late,” he said again, the pain of this parting bringing tears to his eyes.
The escapes were gathering momentum. On every side doors were being thrown wide, and slabs overturned, as the spirits ascended in innumerable forms. Not all flew. Some went as goat or tiger, racing through the flames to the gate. Most went alone, but some whose fecundity neither death nor Midian had slowed went with families of six or more, their littlest in their arms. He was witnessing, he knew, the passing of an age, the end of which had begun the moment he’d first stepped on Midian’s soil. He was the maker of this devastation, though he’d set no fire and toppled no tomb. He had brought men to Midian. In doing so, he’d destroyed it. Even Lori could not persuade him to forgive himself that. The thought might have tempted him to the flames, had he not heard the child calling his name.
She was only human enough to use words; the rest was beast.
“Lori,” she said.
“What about her?”
“The Mask has her.”
The Mask? She could only mean Decker.
“Where?”
Close, and closer still.
Knowing she couldn’t outpace him she tried instead to out dare him, going where she hoped he would not. But he was too hot for her life to be shaken off. He followed her into territory where the ground erupted beneath their feet, and smoking stone rained around them.
It was not his voice that called her, however.
“Lori! This way!” She chanced a desperate look, and there God love him! was Narcisse, beckoning. She veered off the pathway, or what was left of it, towards him, ducking between two mausoleums as their stained glass blew, and a stream of shadow, pricked with eyes, left its hiding place for the stars. It was like a piece of night sky itself, she marvelled. It belonged in the heavens.
The sight slowed her pace by an all but fatal step. The Mask closed the gap between them and snatched at her blouse. She threw herself forward to avoid the stab she knew must follow, the fabric tearing as she fell. This time he had her. Even as she reached for the wall to haul herself to her feet she felt his gloved hand at her nape.
“Fuckhead!” somebody shouted.
She looked up to see Narcisse at the other end of the passage between the mausoleums. He’d clearly caught Decker’s attention. The hold on her neck was relaxing. It wasn’t enough for her to squirm free, but if Narcisse could only keep up his distraction he might do the trick.
“Got something for you,” he said, and took his hands from his pocket to display the silver hooks on his thumbs.
He struck the hooks together. They sparked.
Decker let Lori’s neck slip from his fingers. She slid out of his reach and began to stumble towards Narcisse. He was moving down the passage towards her or rather towards Decker, on whom his eyes were fixed.
“Don’t,” she gasped. “He’s dangerous.”
Narcisse heard her, he grinned at the warning but he made no reply. He just moved on past her to intercept the killer.
Lori glanced back. As the pair came within a yard of each other the Mask dragged a second knife, its blade as broad as a machete, from his jacket. Before Narcisse had a chance to defend himself the butcher delivered a swift downward stroke that separated Narcisse’s left hand from his wrist in a single cut. Shaking his head, Narcisse took a backward step, but the Mask matched his retreat, raising the machete a second time and bringing it down on his victim’s skull. The blow divided Narcisse’s head from scalp to neck. It was a wound even a dead man could not survive. Narcisse’s body began to shake, and then like Ohnaka, trapped in sunlight he came apart with a crack, a chorus of howls and sighs emerging, then taking flight.
Lori let out a sob, but stifled anything more. There was no time to mourn. If she waited to shed a single tear the Mask would claim her, and Narcisse’s sacrifice would have been for nothing. She started to back away, the walls shaking to either side of her, knowing she should simply run but unable to detach herself from the sight of the Mask’s depravity. Rooting amid the carnage he skewered half of Narcisse’s head on the finer of his blades, then rested the knife on his shoulder, trophy and all, before renewing his pursuit.
Now she ran, out of the shadow of the mausoleums and back onto the main avenue. Even if memory could have offered a guide to her whereabouts all the monuments had gone to the same rubble, she could not tell north from south. It was all one in the end. Whichever way she turned—the same ruin, and the same pursuer. If he would come after her forever and forever and he would, what was the use of living in fear of him? Let him have his sharp way. Her heart beat too hard to be pressed any further.
But even as she resigned herself to his knife the stretch of paving between her and her slaughterer cracked open, a plume of smoke shielding her from the Mask. An instant later the whole avenue opened up. She fell. Not to the ground. There was no ground. But into the earth.
“I’m falling!” the child said.
The shock of it almost toppled her from Boone’s shoulders. His hands went up to support her. She took fiercer hold of his hair.
“Steady?” he said.
“Yes.”
She wouldn’t countenance Ashbery accompanying them. He’d been left to fend for himself in the maelstrom, while they went looking for Lori.
“Ahead,” she said, directing her mount. “Not very far.”
The fires were dying down, having devoured all they could get their tongues to. Confronted with cold brick all they could do was lick it black, then gutter out. But the tremors from below had not ceased. Their motions still ground stone on stone. And beneath the reverberations there was another sound, which Boone didn’t so much hear as feeclass="underline" in his gut and balls and teeth.
The child turned his head with her reins.
“That way,” she said.
The diminishing fires made progress easier; their brightness hadn’t suited Boone’s eyes. Now he went more quickly, though the avenues had been ploughed by the quake and he trod turned earth.