Seraph of Sorrow (28 page)
“And the rules about killing innocent people—where are those written down?”
“If they were innocent, they wouldn’t have lived hand in hand with the troublemakers.”
“Guilty by association, you mean.” Winona had learned this term from one of the crime dramas her mother didn’t want to watch anymore. “What does that make me, after you killed those two people in the middle of the street?”
“There was just the one. Just the man. Their leader. He had already killed Jeffrey Swift. I needed to stop him before he killed again. He’s the only one I killed.”
“That’s not true, Ma.”
Winona tried to collect herself. “I mean, maybe you didn’t see everyone. But there were three people in that intersection. One man, two girls. You killed that man, and you killed a girl. And you would have killed the other one, too. The one that hurt you. Somehow, she survived.” Satisfaction filled Winona as she let all this out. Was she happy the girl had survived? Well, happy
a
girl had survived, she supposed. It was generally a happy thing when a girl didn’t die a horrible, burning death. What the girl did
after
she survived didn’t make Winona so happy, even if it led to a certain . . . what? Justice?
“Those weren’t girls. Those were soldiers.”
Winona supposed Glorianna Seabright could be some sort of soldier. But not that
other
girl. And not all those innocent, scared people scattering across downtown.
Now what will they become?
She thought of the trucks parked at the Seabright farm that evening, and the woman in the truck with the tents and the sleeping bags and the food.
“So that’s what Forrester’s gone off to try to kill,” Winona finally said. “Soldiers.”
“What Forrester’s gone and done isn’t any of your business,” Patricia snapped. “You mind your ma and dinner.”
The microwave beeped. Reaching up to rub her ear again, Winona went back into the kitchen. She carefully poured the gumbo into two ceramic bowls, breathed in the smell of spiced sausage and shellfish, and then put tin foil over one. The other one, she stirred with a spoon and brought into the living room, keeping the dish towel underneath.
“Why am I still here?” Her mother spat the bitter words at the vampire who had returned on screen to ravage another beauty. “What good is a weredragon who can’t change her shape? Who can’t fly or turf-whomp, hunt or breathe fire, visit Crescent Valley or . . .”
“What’s Crescent Valley?” Winona asked, sitting down on the arm of the couch next to her mother’s wheelchair and putting a spoonful of gumbo up to the older woman’s lips.
Patricia grimaced, gummed the spoon, and swallowed. “. . . Or mingle with the newolf packs, or call the fire hornets to her side. No good, that’s what.”
“I can’t do any of those things,” Winona pointed out.
This only angered her mother. “What good is
anyone
, without any of that?!”
Winona offered another spoonful with a steady hand. “You have your two kids, Ma.”
“Go away.”
“We love you. We need you.”
“Go away.”
The spoon faltered, and Winona rubbed her ear with a free hand, blinking hard. With great effort, she brought the utensil back up to her mother’s lips. “I love you, Ma.”
The second spoonful disappeared, all but a couple of grains of rice. When her mother didn’t say anything after swallowing, Winona offered a third spoonful, and a fourth, in silence. They got through the whole bowl that way, the only sound coming from the television. The treacherous creature with the black cloak and sharp teeth took two more maidens.
Once the last spoonful was done, Winona took the bowl and spoon into the kitchen, rinsed them, took the foil off the waiting bowl, found a clean spoon, and had her own dinner alone in the kitchen. Then she cleaned off those dishes and the original plastic container, wiped off the kitchen counter, hung the dish towel up on the oven door handle, and walked out the back door. The last sound she heard from the Brandfire house came from the television, yet another girl screaming as she was taken by the monster.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tasa’s coils rippled anxiously as he tried to keep up.
“Don’t you have some toddlers to murder?”
“That’s not what we do. Winona, did you just leave your mother alone in the—”
“Forrester should be home. If he comes home instead of hanging out late with his friends, she’ll be fine. If he stays out late, or gets himself killed, then she’s in trouble, isn’t she?”
“You’re crazy!” Tasa cried. “You’re killing her!”
“I’m not doing a damn thing to her. All everybody has to do is what they’re
supposed
to do for once, instead of relying on me. Rules aren’t only for me. They’re for everyone. Rule number one: Don’t kill. Rule number two: Do what your mother tells you.”
“She told you to leave her to die?”
“She told me to go away.”
He snorted. “So back to my original question. Where do you think you’re going?”
Winona wasn’t sure, so she said nothing. They walked in silence through the mid-September evening. Each time a car passed, Tasa blinked into a yellowing crop pattern.
About an hour later, as she turned onto a familiar rural road, he sighed. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s a place I know I can stay.”
“They’ll kill you!”
“They have no idea who I am.”
“Okay, how about, they’ll kill
me
?!”
“No one invited you. Besides, you know they won’t see you.”
His scales rippled again as an eighteen-wheeler passed on the paved highway behind them. “They’ll hear us talking. If they look hard enough, they’ll figure out what’s going on.”
“You know the solution to that.”
He sulked the rest of the way, about two miles of invisible shuffling through gravel. The sun lowered in the sky, casting their shadows in front of them. Winona wondered if anyone else would somehow detect him, when they got there. Why did Tasa insist on coming along? She didn’t need his protection.
As they crested the hill and saw the Seabright farm, she gathered doubts. Unlike last time when there were a dozen or so trucks in the driveway, the entire far yard was now filled with them, as if parked for a county fair. There were also vans and recreational vehicles and campers. Behind them all, between the house and the crops where workers toiled, were rows and rows of tents, ranging in size from small, individual domes to palaces spun from nylon and canvas.
Closer to them, the front yard was filled with people, many of them clustered around either the porch or two bonfires that were halfway between the house and the road. They were armed much better than the crowd the dragons had terrorized in spring.
Before long, a couple of large men near the top of the driveway noticed her. “You here for the rally?” one asked, walking up. He had a short black beard and a sword slung off his belt. Winona looked around nervously—there was no trace of Tasa, not even a shadow—and nodded.
The other man was taller and held a sheaf of papers. “Name?”
“Winona.”
“Last name?”
She paused. “Victoria knows me.”
The man with the papers smiled. “Victoria’s busy. You want in, give us a last name.”
Thinking quickly, she seized on a few rumors her brother had passed on. “I don’t want my friends to know I’m here. Some of them scare me. I thought I could come here to be safe.” This made them pause. Her smooth, dark arms gestured up to the crescent moon. “If I were going to turn into a frog, wouldn’t I have done it by now?”
They both laughed, and the man with the papers wrote her first name down. “Winona. We’ll be telling Victoria you asked after her. If
she
asks for your last name, you’d better give it.”
“Thanks.” She gave them a smile for their trouble, and walked down the driveway.
She didn’t see Tasa, but his disembodied voice carried arrogant admiration. “Quick thinking. Lucky for you, they don’t know much about when dragons come of age.”
“Lucky for you, I didn’t scream ‘dragon, dragon!’ and point in your general direction.”
This made him chuckle. “I think I’ll be okay in this crowd. They’re not looking for anything like me. Too busy making lists of who’s naughty and who’s nice.”
They mingled, though Winona could never be sure when Tasa was at her side, silently comingling, and when he was altogether gone. She thought she saw a bonfire reignite briskly once; and on another occasion an entire table full of trays of grilled meat tipped over, ostensibly because a large man at one end leaned too hard on it.
She moved among her enemies like the crisp September wind, trying to understand them. Had they all lost family to dragons? Were the stories she was hearing true or exaggerations? There was the woman who said a dragon had burned two of her sisters to a crisp and eaten them both, along with a third who was still raw and screaming on her way down the beast’s gullet. There was the elderly couple who had lost all four of their children, and eight of their grandchildren, to a single attack on a town like this one. There was the teenager, a year or so older than herself, who claimed the missing lower third of his left arm was in a fire-breathing lizard’s belly, instead of where it ought to be.
Around and around she went, chewing on the tales these warriors spun, unsure which were true. Was it possible they were
all
true?
From her position by the bonfires, she heard hushing. Looking up across the crowd, she spotted two familiar women on the farmhouse porch. One was her mother’s age and had her hands raised for quiet. The other, standing behind Victoria, was the teenaged brunette warrior who had crippled Patricia Brandfire.
Glorianna Seabright, I presume
. The thought of what this girl had done to her mother weighed Winona down.
I shouldn’t have left Ma,
she told herself.
I’ve endangered her. Forrester won’t be back in time. People are depending on me. I should . . .
“Hey!” She wriggled in surprise as the invisible cloak of Tasa suddenly wrapped around her. “Get off me, you pervert!”
“Hush.”
His hot breath warmed the back of her left ear. “Can’t you see her staring straight at you? You don’t want this kind of attention. You have to hide!”
“Fine, get off me!”
He shrugged his invisible shape off of her as she walked away, hoping to lose Glorianna’s attention in the play of light and shadow between two bonfires.
Is this how it will be from now on?
she wondered.
Will I be running away from her forever? Is that what I deserve?
Once she was farther away, she stopped despite Tasa’s protests and watched Glorianna and Victoria talk to the crowd. They spoke of bravery and justice. They invoked the memories of the cherished dead. Then, they ended with a chilling, rallying cry.
“Death is on our side! Death is on our side!”
She backed away from the crowd’s fringes until Tasa dared to flex a few visible scales. “Still feel safe here?” he jeered softly, as the crowd pumped fists and weapons into the air.
Before she could answer, a small group of these warriors pushed through the crowd and climbed up onto the stage. One of them whispered fervently in Victoria’s ear, and she stood up straight. Victoria passed the message on to Glorianna, and soon the teenager was calling for quiet again. The crowd obeyed.
“Our scouts tell us there is a new attack, on a new town. It is not far from here. I will go fight these demons. Who will join me?”
The entire mob cried out at once.
What followed was a remarkable display of coordination and tactical planning. Most of the warriors had already been assigned a squad with an experienced leader. They left the farm with assignments and maneuvers—the bravest souls to accompany Glorianna and Victoria into the heart of battle, teams of archers to swing wide of the town and cut off escape routes, and some small teams armed with pyrotechnics to serve as diversions and distractions.
Within fifteen minutes, the entire field was almost empty, with only a skeleton crew to stand guard and see to the grounds and equipment. It wasn’t until the last of the red taillights disappeared into the distance that Winona realized who these warriors were hunting tonight.
From the obituaries of various local papers the following week:
BRANDFIRE, 42 BRANDFIRE, 18
Patricia Lee Brandfire, 42, died in her home Thursday evening due to complications related to previous severe spinal cord injuries. Forrester Astin Brandfire, 18, died earlier the same evening from multiple stab wounds related to gang violence. Authorities do not believe the two deaths are connected.
Patricia Brandfire, née Redhorn, was born and raised in Roseau, and then received her Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Minnesota, Morris. Her marriage to Lamar Joseph Brandfire lasted sixteen years, before the latter’s accidental death in a boating incident.
Forrester Brandfire was born and raised in the area. He planned to attend St. Olaf College in Northfield next year.
They are survived by Winona Emma Brandfire, 15, the second child of Patricia and Lamar.
When Winona Emma Brandfire, the sole surviving member of the Brandfire clan, had her first morph one month later, she was utterly alone. Most of it happened in front of a full-length mirror, where she watched the violence inflicted upon her body with revulsion and despair.
Not me,
she found herself thinking, and before long she was screaming it out loud.
Not one of them! Not like them!
CHAPTER 14
Following Instincts
By the time Winona began her studies at Carleton College—hours away from her hometown, but right across the river from where Forrester would have started St. Olaf three years earlier—she still hated what happened every crescent moon. She wanted no part of her family. The Brandfire farm had fetched a good price to developers, giving her plenty for college and a future without dragons.
A small college like Carleton was the perfect setting for someone like Winona. The quiet, intimate campus had enough remote corners for solitude, and still supplied plenty of company when she needed it. There were idealists bound to notions of truth and justice, and cynics certain no such goals were attainable. Both sides argued themselves hoarse in classrooms throughout the day, and in dormitory hallways throughout the night. She had found a true community, where the only thing everyone she met could agree upon was that the idea of real-life dragons was not nearly abstract enough to be interesting to anyone.
Tasa continued to check in on her periodically, despite her protests. He kept his campus visits brief, rare, and under a crescent moon. Since he was the only connection to her past, she tolerated his comings and goings, even if she didn’t have much patience for what he had to say.
“You look terrific as a dragon,” he would usually start with.
“I look like a monster,” she would counter, in the far reaches of the campus arboretum.
“
Monster
is a relative term,” he would try to explain. “Dragons are not prehistoric animals. They represent an evolutionary leap.”
“So we’re superior to normal people?” she would scoff. “I can see where this is going.”
They bantered like this, one rejecting her heritage and the other urging her to embrace it.
“Monster,” she would tell him.
“Champion,” he would counter.
“Disease.”
“Power.”
“Misguided.”
“Unharnessed.”
And so it went on. He would stay for about an hour or two and then go, and then come back two months later, and then disappear for another month, and then return three months after that. She made other intelligent friends at the school, though she found none could challenge her with the same intuitive probing that Tasa could. She began to wonder about him. How old was he? What did he look like as a human? Did he have a last name? But their discussions engaged her so much that she never thought up those questions while he was around.
One evening early in her sophomore year, they were resting in a copse of trees not far from the western edge of campus. He gave a short nod toward a dormitory across the athletic field. “There’s a group in Evans Hall I think you should meet.”
She paused from scratching her scaly back with a birch branch long enough to spot the old brick dormitory in the distance. “What, in there? Who are you talking about?”
“There’s a cluster of rooms on the third floor that has been dark every crescent moon for September and October. We walk by that side all the time, and they’re never around during a crescent moon, and they’re always around when it’s not. Haven’t you noticed?”
She shrugged. “I guess. What, you think they’re dragons?”
“Duh!”
“Get real. It’s a coincidence.”
“Why don’t you go up there and find out?”
“What,
now
?” She held her wings out.
“Of course not, you can’t camouflage like I can. Once this moon’s done, go introduce yourself and talk about what you’ve been through.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
At least not with anyone else.
He tilted his head, sensing her reluctance. “Winona. You’ve been here over a year. I can’t be here for you all the time. You have to find others like yourself.”
“I’ve told you—I don’t want to find others like me. I can barely stand
you
!”
Nevertheless, a few days later her fist rapped on the door to one of the third-floor rooms in the southeast corner of Evans Hall. The young man who opened the door was gorgeous, over six feet tall with reddish-brown skin and a braid of long, black hair. He wore a clean, gray T-shirt and jeans weathered by nature, not a fashion designer. His eyes were dark, his face bright.
He smiled when he saw Winona. “Hey,” he said as if he knew her.
“Hey,” she said back. “I’m . . . I mean, I noticed you around campus. I thought I might track you down and . . . There’s a dance this weekend.”
He raised his brows, but his face remained friendly. “Do you know my name?”
Her eyes strayed to the door and the small dry-erase message board on it. “You’re either Danny or Moj . . . um, Mojee . . .”
“Motega.” He laughed as he followed her gaze. “My friends have bad handwriting.”
She stuck out her hand, terrified. “Winona Brandfire. My handwriting is very neat.”
Motega Brave-eyes came from northwest Minnesota, not too far from where Winona was raised. He was in his junior year deep into his studies in geology. Having surpassed most of his fellow students (and a professor or two), he was undertaking a course of independent study.
“Geology?” she wrinkled her nose over her cup of chai latte as they sat in the student center together, later that afternoon. “So, you study rocks.”
He let out an easy chuckle. “I like learning about what’s under our feet. The ground we stand on feels so solid to so many of us. That’s an illusion. The earth is constantly moving and churning. It’s a wonder we don’t fall off it.”
“I’ve felt like that,” Winona admitted.
“So what’s
your
major?”
She flicked her hand at him, rubbed her dark locks, and took another sip of latte. “I don’t need to pick one until next year. I’m leaning toward history. There’s this American studies course I’m taking, Minnesota in the Nineteenth Century. I like it.”
“Why? Is the professor good?”
She shrugged. “She’s fine. More than that, I’m finding the lessons of history intriguing.”
“Such as?”
“People’s first impulse is always to hurt each other,” she blurted before she could stop herself. Noticing he didn’t seem to mind this darker turn in the conversation, she continued. “Take the European settlers as they moved across the Great Plains. With all that land, and no one could say where it ended, why start planting flags and killing those who were already here? Before Europeans showed up, people lived in peace here.”
A corner of his mouth curled up. “I think you may have an overly sanitized view of the cultures that roamed these lands before 1492. Some Native American groups got along fine with each other, for thousands of years. Others didn’t.”
“That only proves my point. Everywhere you look, people have been going after each other with guns, or axes, or . . .”
Or pitchforks and fire,
she almost said.
His sigh was heavy. “True enough. Since before written history, people have been splitting themselves into tribes and . . .” He put his own drink down and stared across the cluttered tables and chatting students. “And it only gets worse.”
Right there, Winona nearly spilled out what she really was. Something made her say instead, “So are you going to this dance with me or not?”
He showed a perfect row of teeth. “Absolutely.”
“Are you ever going to say where we’re going?”
“We’re almost there,” he answered.
“Why all the secrecy?”
“It’s our third date,” he explained. “I thought we might do something special.”
“Huh.” She assessed him carefully from the passenger seat, making him laugh.
“I only mean, I wanted to find a place where you and I can . . . intersect.”
“Intersect? Is that what the boys call it nowadays?”
“No, no! I’m not expecting—I only mean—look.”
She followed his finger across the windshield and toward a sign that read:
WELCOME TO HISTORIC FORESTVILLE
“This place was founded in 1853,” he explained. “It was a thriving rural trade center until the railroad took lines of commerce too far away. There’s plenty here for a history student.”
Winona studied the bluffs through the window as he recounted a scene from millions of years ago: miles of melting ice, carving out bluffs from the soft walls of rock, forming caves and sinkholes deep out of sight. The steep topography had created all sorts of climate and soil conditions, with southern slopes warmer and drier. There were forests and prairies, savannas and oak woodlands. She felt her shoulders relax as he continued to tell her about spring-fed streams, and the trout and minnow one could still find around here.
“This place is beautiful. How did you learn about it?”
“I’ve been to this state park a few times for class. There’re twelve miles of caverns down that way. We’re in the karst region of Minnesota. The crevice formations are anywhere from two hundred to five hundred million years old.”
“Wow,” she whispered through the car window. “That’s a lot of history.”
“Where I come from, folks don’t care much about geology.” He cleared his throat as he parked the car. “I wanted to share this with you, Winona. Because there’s something I want to tell you about myself.”
Smiling, she reached over and placed a finger over his lips. “Let me guess. In a few days, you’re going to change.”
His face froze. “How did you know?”
“I have a confession, too. I came to you because—” She paused, wondering if he would forgive her small deception. “It wasn’t just about the dance. I came to you because I noticed you were gone sometimes . . . like me. You and your friends—Danny, your roommate, and Rick and Pete next door, and Jodie and Katherine next to them—you all leave during crescent moons.”
It got quiet in the car. Behind Motega’s stunned expression, brown leaves whipped against the car window. Winona bit her lip and pulled at her ear.
I’ve ruined everything.
“I thought we were careful,” he whispered. “We’ve taken so many precautions . . .”
“I’m sure no one else has noticed. I only did because—”
He didn’t look at her. “It’s not safe anymore. We’re going to have to move on.”
She grabbed his hand, startling him. “Please don’t go,” she begged. “You’re the first one like me who . . .”
What? Burned a town down?
“Who’s actually
like
me.”
“You don’t understand what some of us have been through. A few years ago, a young woman named Glory Seabright attacked our reservation.” He didn’t notice the effect this name had on her. “She had a small army of warriors with her, unlike any we had seen. They were coordinated, they were skilled, they cut off our escape routes and . . .”
“I know,” she interrupted him with a soothing touch on his sweaty forehead. “Motega, I know. I lost my brother and my mother to these same people. They don’t know you’re here. I would never tell them. You can trust me.”
The fright in his dark eyes faded a little, and he saw her as if for the first time. “I should introduce you to the others. I mean, really
introduce
you. Next crescent moon. You’ll join us?”
She laughed nervously. “Can we just get through this third date?”
They got through it fine. Forestville was lovely, and the grounds of the state park were covered in a rainbow of fallen leaves. Because of his connections with the staff, he managed to get off-season access to the caves, and they finished their date among the dimly lit stalagmites. There, they laid out blankets, had a quiet picnic, and fell in love.
Three days later, the evening before the crescent moon, Winona visited Motega’s room and found the door ajar. He and Danny were inside, facing away from the door and talking to a screen. Winona couldn’t see the screen because her boyfriend’s head was in the way, but it was obvious someone was talking back.
“This is my call,” a deep and calm voice was saying over the speakers. “You’re half a continent away. I’m in the best position to assess the situation, and—”
“Why not kill her
now
?” Danny shouted. The baldness of the statement made Winona take a step back through the doorway. “She’s killed dozens of us, maybe hundreds, in a few years. Every month you wait, she and her disciples will kill more.”
“There’s more to her than that,” the voice answered. “There’s got to be more to all of this than what we originally planned. Maybe I don’t have to kill her. Maybe I can neutralize her.”
“I don’t know what you mean by
neutralize
,” Motega admitted, in a voice more composed than Danny’s. “I want to remind you of the promise you made: to stop this killing machine. Our numbers are dwindling, our people scattering. Soon a crescent moon will mean nothing.”
“You’re one of our best, Motega. I respect what you’re saying. But you’ve accepted me as your leader, and you have to trust my judgment. I can stop her. My way.”
Motega caught Winona in his peripheral vision. He did not move, but a sad smile crossed his lips. “All I ask,” he said before shutting off the screen, “is that you remember history.”
Danny looked up as the call ended. He was a short man with a red crew cut, and his cheeks flushed as he recognized Winona. Without a word, he got up and left the room.
“I’m sorry,” Winona offered. “The door was open, and—”
“He’ll be okay. He’s not angry at you. That conversation was difficult.”
“Who was that?”
“A new hope, for all of us. He’s out east right now, a student at Harvard. This was not the right time for introductions. I hope you understand.”
“It sounds like he’s made contact with Glory Seabright. You plan to kill her?”
“As you heard, that’s under debate.”
“I hope your leader knows what he’s doing,” she said with her throat tightening. “Because my brother had a plan, too. And it didn’t work out so hot for him.”
“He’s very good,” Motega promised. “And he’s not only my leader, Winona. He’s yours, too. He belongs to all of us. He’s someone you can be proud of.”
“Motega . . .” She trailed off, uncertain of what she wanted to say. “It’s taken me some time to trust what I am. What we all are. Even now, I can’t talk about it comfortably. The idea that all we do is kill, and destroy, and terrorize . . . I can’t take it. I need to know there’s something more to us. I need to know we’re capable of more.”