Page 38 of The Reveal
He shot. I drove.
We didn’t speak.
We didn’t have to. I could feel his terror. He could feel mine, mixed in with that hollow despair.
But neither one of us could bear the thought of not making it back to Gran.
“It wasn’t long after that the monsters started roaming the hills at night,” I tell Ariel. “And I know that by the time they made it to our house, we’d boarded up all the windows and installed metal gates on all of them. For those long, terrible first months, all three of us huddled together down in the basement because we figured we were more likely to make it through the night if there were heavy metal doors between us and the roving bands of nightmares everywhere.”
“It would certainly offer a bit of a buffer,” he says. Very politely, since I doubt very muchhewould have any trouble getting in—or, more likely, forcing us out so as not to have to deal with that pesky invitation issue.
I try not to think about what it would be like to stagger out of a burning house to face down my impending beautiful death in the form of this creature.
I think about it anyway. Until it makes me quiver, though I do my best to hide it.
“As far as I know, it was a feeding frenzy,” I tell him, trying to sound serious and not like I’m imagining his fangs on me.Inme. “A free-for-all. Power was out. Internet was out. We had a hand-crank radio for camping that lasted the longest, but even that was eventually nothing but static. After a while, there were fewer attacks in the night. They used to come and try to tear off the windows and scratch up the house, but they stopped. I don’t really know why.”
“I can tell you why.” Ariel gazes down at me, his silver eyes bright and unreadable. “But you seem remarkably incurious as to why ithappened in the first place. Do you not wonder why that Tuesday of all Tuesdays?”
It’s tempting to feel chided, but I don’t.
Or more accurately, I won’t.
“One thing I’ve learned is not to wonder about things that can’t be changed.” It’s my turn to shrug, and I make it operatic. “What’s the point? Maybe there’s a monster union and that was your version of a strike? Maybe it was the monster revolution? I don’t know. All I know is, I went from leading a fairly uneventful life in rural Oregon to being prey in the course of one terrible day. Who cares why it happened if it’s not going to stop?”
He turns slightly, and once again I’m too aware of him. I’m too aware ofme. It’s as if the borders of my own body want to blur into him. As if I want to hasten the process and simply melt against him. Into him. Everything in me is certain that if I touch him, I’ll burst into flames, when everything I’ve ever heard about vampires is that they’re cold.
But if Ariel’s cold, he doesn’t feel like it to me.
All I can seem to feel in his presence isfire.
“Seven thousand years ago, there was a historic planetary and celestial alignment,” Ariel tells me. “Humans love to elevate their sciences above all else, but nothing in the universe is so simple. Seven thousand years ago, that alignment heralded the birth of what I suppose you would call a goddess. In human terms.”
“A goddess,” I repeat, and it’s a struggle to keep myself from thinking about all that dark goddess shit that stalks me through my nightmares. And the Goddess of Filth that Gran keeps muttering about. I feel the hint of a headache bloom in one temple. But I do my best to sound skeptical. “Naturally. Because along with all the monsters, there have to be gods and goddesses too.”
“Gods and goddesses are simply the monsters that can be bribed.” Ariel says that with a certainty that tells me that no matter what I might want to disbelieve,hethinks what he’s saying is true. Meaning,it probably is. “The monsters who can demand human participation in their affairs. After all, the stock tastes so much better if it thinks it’s responsible for its own bloody sacrifice.”
A kind of dark thrill sweeps through me at that. Or maybe it’s fear. If so, it’s not the sort of fear that I can understand. It’s not the sort of fear that makes me want to run, screaming.
Unless it’s to him.
Which really should also terrify me, yet doesn’t. Not the way it should.
“Who was this goddess?” I ask instead, trying to sound whatever the opposite of incurious is. Or maybe because I want to be scared of the right thing. “Why do you know about her and analignmentanyway?”
“Death goddesses tend to leave a trail of carnage in their wakes,” Ariel says, and this time it’s his matter-of-factness that makes me fight to repress a shiver. Because I’ve seen carnage, but somehow, the way he’snotdescribing hers makes me think it’s worse. “This particular goddess was called Vinca. Over the course of some centuries, she hacked her way through the better part of what is now Europe, making a name for herself and developing a rabid cult in the process. Over time, her bloodlust became unmanageable and she was neutralized.”
I try to imagine what he’s talking about, behind the cool, emotionless way he’s telling it to me. I think of my nightmares, and the horrible bird that sometimes chases me, sometimes stares, and sometimes pecks its way into my flesh. “How do youneutralizea god?”
“Carefully,” Ariel replies.
So dryly that I can’t think of anything else to ask him, so I nod. I hope it looks like the understanding I certainly don’t feel.
“The same set of celestial events took place three years ago,” he tells me after a moment. “The best way to describe it is like the opening of a lock. Once this lock was opened, certain restraints disappeared. It is something that the creatures you call monsters had been waiting for.For a very long time, and some more than others. But crucially, it is the first in a series of foretold events.”
“Foretold events,” I repeat. “Like ... Nostradamus?”
“The trouble with prophecies and visions is that they are so often the province of madmen and drug addicts.” Ariel makes a dismissive sound, deep in his throat. “I can’t tell you the number of times the rambling of some mad fool was held to be a great prophecy, only to repeatedly not come true. This particular planetary alignment, however, did in fact occur. You could argue that’s simply science. But to the Kind, it was the first step toward a very particular fate.”
