‘They’re all over,’ he said dully. ‘All goddamn over!’ He slammed his fist against the veve, and the copper bulged downward half a foot. He lifted the fist to his eyes, as if inspecting a peculiar root; then, with an inarticulate yell, he struck again and again at the strut, battering the welded strips apart. His hand was bleeding, already swelling.
‘Please, Donnell,’ she said. ‘Get back on it. Maybe…’
‘Too late,’ he said, and pointed to a spray of broken blood vessels on his forehead. ‘I was dead the second he hit me. It changed them, it…’
She started toward him again.
‘Stay the hell away,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to end up twitching at your gates, mauling you like some damned animal!’ He looked at her, nodding. ‘Now I know what all those other poor freaks saw.’
‘He ain’t got no way to come to you,’ said the Baron, pulling at Jocundra’s arm. ‘Get away from him.’
But everything was balling up inside her chest, and her legs felt weak and watery, as if the beginning of grief was also the beginning of an awful incompetence. She couldn’t move.
‘They wanted to wallow in life right until the moment their hearts were snatched,’ said Donnell. ‘And, oh Jesus, it’s a temptation to me now!’ He turned away.
‘God, Donnell!’ she said, clapping her hands to her head in frustration. ‘Please try!’ The Baron put his arm around her, and its weight increased her weakness, dissolved the tightness in her chest into tears.
‘Where’s Otille?’ asked Donnell casually, seeming to notice the Baron for the first time.
The Baron stiffened. ‘What you want with her? She crazy gone to hell. She past hurtin’ anyone, past takin’ care of herself.’
‘They can do wonders nowadays,’ said Donnell. ‘I better make sure.’
The Baron kept silent.
‘Where else,’ said Donnell. ‘She’s upstairs.’
‘Yeah man!’ said the Baron defiantly. ‘She upstairs. So what you wanna mess with her for?’
‘It needs to be done,’ said Donnell, thoughtful.
‘What you talkin’ ‘bout?’ The Baron strode forward and swung his fist, but Donnell caught it - as easily as a man catching a rubber ball - and squeezed until it cracked, bringing the Baron to his knees, groaning; he flung out his hand at the Baron, fingers spread. When nothing happened, he appeared surprised.
‘What you want to hurt her for?’ said the Baron, cradling his hand. ‘Hurtin’ her ain’t ‘bout nothin’.’
Donnell ignored him. He opened his mouth to speak to Jocundra, but only jerked his head to the side and laughed.
It was such a corroded laugh, so dead of hope, it twisted into her. She moved close and put her arms around him; and at a distance, curtained off from her voice by numbness, despair, she heard herself asking him to try again. He just stood there, his hands on her waist.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe I…’
‘What?’ She had a flicker of hope. Nothing concrete; it was unreasonable, all-purpose hope.
His fingers had worked up under her blouse, and he rubbed the ball of his thumb across her stomach. He said something. It started with a peculiar gasp and ended with a noise deep in his throat and it sounded like words in a guttural language: a curse or a fierce blessing. Then he pushed her away. The push spun her around, and by the time she had regained her balance, he was gone. She could hear him crashing through the thickets; but dazedly staring at the place where he had stood, she kept expecting him to reappear.
The dark shell of the house was empty. Splinters of glass glinted on the stairs between the shadows of the shredded blinds. Climbing up to the attic took all his self-control, his training; he wanted to go running back to her, to breathe her in again, to let his life bleed away into hers. Even the knowledge that the way was closed did not diminish his desire to return to the veve, to try once more, and only his compulsion to duty drove him onward. He hesitated on the top step; then, angry at his weakmindedness, he rattled the knob of the attic door. It was locked, but the wood split and the lock came half-out in his hand. He kicked the door open and stepped inside.
Part of the roof was missing, and the moonlight shone on a shambles of burst crates and broken furniture and unrolled bolts of cloth. All Otille’s treasures looted and vandalized, their musty perfumes dissipated by the humid smell of the night. It was strange, he thought as he walked toward the three doors, that killing Otille was to be the summary act of his existence, the resolution of his days at Shadows, his life with Jocundra, healing. It seemed inappropriate. Yet it was essential. These aberrations had caused enough trouble in the worlds, and it had been past due that someone be elected to befriend the cadre and eliminate the seam of weakness, disperse the recruits, punish the High Aspect and her officers. He had been an obvious choice; after all, twice before the Aspects at Badagris had dealt with the cadre of Mounanchou. Such purges were becoming a tradition. It might well be time for a restructuring of the cadre’s valence, for bringing forth an entirely new aspect from the fires of Ogoun. He was nagged by a moral compunction against the killing, and the frailty of the thought served to remind him how badly he needed a period of meditation. Disdainful of her guessing games, he ripped the central door of the Replaceable Room off its hinges, lowered his shoulder, and charged along the passage. He shattered the second door with ease, but as he came to his feet, he experienced a wave of weakness and dislocation.
The roof of the apartment had been torn off, and the light of moon and stars gave the walls and bushes the look of a real forest. A clearing in a forest. Hanks of moss had been blown into the room and were draped over the branches. An oak had caved in part of the far wall, and through the branch-enlaced gap he could see a tiny orange glow. Probably somebody night fishing, somebody who didn’t know better than to venture near Maravillosa. Otille was standing behind a shrub about twenty feet away; a branch divided her face, a crack forking across her ivory skin. She sprinted for the door, but he cut her off. She caught herself up, flattened against the wall, and began to edge back.
‘Come here,’ he said.
‘Please, Donnell,’ she said, groping her way. ‘Let me go.’ The O sound became a shrinking wail, and then a word. ‘Ogoun.’ She shivered, blinked, as if waking from a dream. Her silk robe, which hung open, was speckled with leaves and mold, and a large bruise darkened her hip. Her eyes flicked back and forth between Donnell and the door, but her face was frozen in a terrified expression. Black curls matted her cheeks, making it appear her head was gripped within the scrollwork cage of a torturer’s restraint. ‘Let me go!’ she screamed, demanding it.
‘Is that what you really want?’ He kept his voice insistent and even. ‘Do you want to go on hurting yourself, hurting everyone, screwing your sting into people’s lives until they curl up in your web and waste?’ He eased a step nearer. ‘It’s time to end this, Otille.’
She edged further away, but not too far. ‘I’m afraid,’ she said.
‘Better to die than go on hurting yourself,’ he said, inching forwards, trying to minister her madness, seduce her with the sorry truth. ‘Think about the suffering you’ve caused. You should have seen Valcours die, bleeding from the eyes, his bones crunching like candy. Downey, Clea, Dularde, Simpkins, all your supporters. Gone, dead, vanished. You’re alone now. What’s there to look forward to but madness and brief periods of clarity when you can see the trail of corpses numbering your days, and feel sorrow and revulsion. Better to die, Otille.’
She raised her hand to her cheek, and the gesture transformed her face into that of a young girl, still frightened but hopeful. ‘Ogoun?’ she asked.