Page 112 of Claimed By the Mothman
Nell leaned in. “Either you take us both,” she hissed, her breath brushing the surface of the doors,“or you take neither.”
The doors did not open. They shuddered beneath her palm once.
“I am not asking,”Nell shrieked, slamming her hands against the doors with all the force she could muster.
As soon as her palms crashed into the wood, her opal flared, splintering with light that began to spread from beneath her fingers. It climbed away from her, crawling along the lacquered surface. The doors warmed beneath her hand.
“He ismine,”she snarled, watching the light curl, growing brighter with every pulse. “And I amhis. I will not leave him there alone.”
The ring flared again, so brightly it hurt to look at, and the light sank into the pulsing red of the door, disappearing like water poured on dry ground.
As the last of the light disappeared into them, the doors opened, slowly and silently.
Nell didn’t hesitate or wait for them to change their mind.
Drawing a deep breath, she stepped through.
Chapter 24
He thought it would hurt. He thought the Lustrum would tear him apart, jagged and merciless as it stripped him of all he was and all he ever had been, not even leaving behind memory.
Instead, when he passed through the red threshold, the floor vanished and he found himself floating in a space that was both empty and not at the same time.
He had awoken this morning and Nell had been asleep beside him, curled beneath the blanket. He had gazed at her for a long while, listening to her breath rise and fall, watching the early morning light cast her in a golden haze. She hadn’t stirred as he slipped from the bed and lightly touched her hair, just once, in silent benediction.
He had said he would walk beside her into the Lustrum, and he would have. But when he walked into the kitchen and saw the red doors, he could not wait.
Because he had hoped, deep in his marrow, that there was a chance.
He was Harbinger, and Harbingers searched for the patterns. And in this one, he found a narrow seam, and he remembered something he’d only caught whispers of in the Broodhome: That sometimes, very rarely, a seam could be closed and mended by a new thread.
He had always dismissed it as myth, but now he prayed for it to be true. Perhaps, if walked willingly in her place, offering himself in her stead, it might take only him and leave her whole.
Now, in the formless void, the shape of his body begin to soften at the edges. First his fingers and the very edges of his wings. His breath began to spin out and away from him, as if wrapped around a spindle that was slowly gathering it from his lungs.
Sig closed his eyes—or thought he did—and felt the Lustrum press forward. The not-air bent with the weight of ages as it approached. It paused before him, and Sig could sense curiosity in its attention.
We remember you. Harbinger, herald of sorrows, you have stood at thresholds and watched them fall.
Memories of the Dooms he had witnessed flickered across Sig’s unraveling memory. The village swallowed by waves. The hospital that collapsed, suddenly and fiercely. A child’s final breath in the smoke of a burning home.
He felt the instinct to ascend rise in him as he sensed his own Doom approaching, as his body continued to fade away into the nothing. But Sig bore down and forced it to quiet. He would not rise, nor would he call. For so many years, he had watched others’ fates and done nothing. Now, he would do the same for himself.
The Lustrum moved closer and curled around the shape of him like the night wind.
Why have you come, Harbinger? This is not your pattern.
“I come willingly,” he said, or thought he said.
Curiosity thrummed through the air.
You are not sacrifice, but signal. This is not yours to offer.
“It is now,” he spoke through a mouth he could no longer feel.
Why?
The Lustrum folded around the question and drew closer.
