Page 126 of The Reveal
Augie is sobbing, gripping one of her hands. I only know that I am too, because I see my tears splash on her coat.
“If I had to choose the perfect way to go, it would be exactly like this,” Gran says, her voice getting weaker. We have to lean in to hear her. “All of us together. The way it should be.”
We hold on to each other for as long as we can. Until, no matter how many times I try to plead or bargain, her grip goes slack.
And she is no vampire. She is not supernatural, only a gateway to the supernatural. There is no possibility that she will come back in the mist, or at all.
The finality of this beats down on me, a weight too great to bear.
I feel the rain begin. It’s warmer than it should be on Halloween this high in the mountains, courtesy of Savi, I imagine.
The wolves howl, though the sound is changed from the howls I’ve heard before, and I understand that it’s a tribute. A lamentation to fill the air, and it’s beautiful. It’s lonely. It’s one of the most mournful and lovely things I’ve ever heard.
It breaks my heart again and again and again.
Augie sits up first. He wipes at his face, then begins arranging Gran’s body so she looks the way she did when she was alive. Perfect. Unruffled.
Ready to cut everyone down to size with a few well-chosen words.
I sit back too. I feel ... dazed. Hollowed out with this new grief that’s like the sharp edge of that knife stuck deep into my own chest.And while I know that it’s sliced into me good, I also know that the real pain hasn’t hit yet.
There will be a lifetime for that.
I look around blindly, but Ariel is already there. He crouches down and wraps me in his arms. His burns are already gone, only the faintest shadows over his skin to show that he was ever marked or marred.
I find I can revel in that, and find it desperately unfair, all at the same time.
He holds me there, tucked against his body. His strong arms wrap tight around me, like he’s holding me together. I don’t just feel that mark on me glow.
I glow straight through.
And this is the scariest thing that’s happened with him yet, because it isn’t sexual at all.
He gives me pure comfort. And I take it. I sink into it and feel that deep, resonatingrelief. Not that his hug takes away the pain. But somehow, because he shares it, the pain is slightly more bearable.
I think thatmaybeI won’t just die right here after all.
“I hate to interrupt,” comes Ty’s low, furious voice after a thunderclap I barely register. “She was a decent lady. But we have bigger problems.”
That’s when I hear it. The shouting in the distance, a terrible din.
Ariel stands, bringing me with him. We all move back up toward the place where the road that lazily circles the crater would be, if there was no snow.
But I can’t focus on the snow or the road in my memories.
They’re coming in fast.
It’s those same figures in their creepy cloaks and horrifying masks, looking like plague doctors from another time, only far more ominous and terrible.
And it’s clear that they’re heading straight for us.
“What the fuck arethose?” Augie demands.
“The Goddess of Filth has many species of acolyte in her cult,” Ariel says. “Orcs. Ghouls. Harpies. Every creature you can imagine.She collects them. I’d suspect this lot are not human, however. Too easily broken.”
Augie makes a low, anguished noise. “Not easily enough.”
I can feel something in me sit up and take notice, even though every other part of me wants to lie down and let grief do what it will. I want to let the grief eat me whole. I might not want todiethe way I did a few moments ago, but living holds no appeal at all.
