A Twisted Ladder (74 page)

And Patrice thought,
But they are following your wishes, Chloe, they aren’t really my wishes
.

She sensed the excitement among the river devils, and knew that the intent belonged to them as well.

“You are all calling the rabbits, and you are all shooting them through Ramsey. In this way, you do not know which of you has killed which rabbit. It is easier for you at this stage, but you will grow bolder. . . .”

The rabbits kept coming, called by the other three children, and Ramsey shot them each between the eyes. The tail ends of his blindfold stirred in the breeze.

Chloe said, “These rabbits, they are like all humans. You can move them to your will. But there are those who naturally oppose you. Those others would bring our secrets to the entire world. They show people how to unlock the triggers within their own minds. So then all the people everywhere become the same as you. You are no longer any more powerful than the fools of the world.”

Patrice turned her focus to her brothers and her sister. She implanted the suggestion to cease their calling. Ramsey continued to shoot the remaining rabbits, but no more came forth.

Chloe paused, and scanned the children. “The other one is here, yanh? Marie-Rose?”

Patrice said nothing, but the twins nodded. “Yes ma’am.”

Marie-Rose gripped Patrice’s hand. Their mother’s gaze swept over them, wide and searching. Patrice realized Chloe could only dimly sense the things that were so apparent to Patrice and the other children. Chloe grabbed Patrice by the wrist and shook it until the girls let go.

Chloe said, “Marie-Rose. There might have been more of your race but for the way you were born. You broke my womb. Now you are alone, the four of you. You must stand against the other ones by yourselves.”

Marie-Rose started to protest, “But Maman!”

She stopped, realizing that Chloe couldn’t hear her. The river devil bent her head and whispered into Rosie’s ear.

Marie-Rose turned to Ramsey and spoke, and Ramsey also vocalized Rosie’s words in unison with her: “But Maman, who are these others?”

Patrice gaped. She had never heard Ramsey speak before, and any utterance he’d made had been little more than a grunt. But now he spoke Rosie’s words with perfect clarity in his own croaking, unused voice. It sounded impossibly deep and Marie-Rose sounded small and light as they spoke together: “How will we know them?”

Chloe nodded. “I will show you. See my intent.”

All four children concentrated. They called. Patrice felt her fingers curl into fists. She sensed the briar growing thicker. The trees of the physical world stretched higher, blacker, more vast, pushing the sky away and forcing the enclave deeper into the tangled world.

Patrice followed her mother’s intent along with her siblings. They searched, and found the presence in the woods. They sent their will forth. Unlike with the rabbits, there was resistance. They locked their minds together and pulled. And then Patrice felt a sense of yielding to her call.

Sounds in the woods—snapping branches. From the shadows, Ferrar appeared.

FERRAR LOOKED DIFFERENT THROUGH
the lens of the briar. He emitted almost a golden shimmer, just the faintest trace, but he also emitted something much more powerful than the visual phenomenon. Patrice realized that she might have distantly sensed it when she’d walked alongside him, but now it felt like a tidal wave of energy.

Ramsey kept his shotgun trained on the woods. Trained on Ferrar. It sat at Ramsey’s shoulder but through the blindfold, there was no need to lean in and peer through the sights. He saw and heard nothing, and in acting on the children’s intent, or Chloe’s intent, he had no awareness of shooting a rabbit or a stump or a human being.

Ferrar resisted them. He was slow to advance. It caused the children to reflexively pull harder at him. The exchange was electrifying. Ferrar stepped from the trees to the bank.

Patrice felt a stirring of such savagery that her lips fell open. But this sensation danced at the top of her head, and it warred with another part of her psyche, deep within her skull, one that tried to neutralize the viciousness. Like lightning dancing over the ocean. She felt that if she wanted to, she could expand or shrink that ocean, depending on whether she wanted to tame the lightning or let it dance. And that war within her psyche was equally as exciting as Ferrar’s resistance.

Ramsey reloaded.

“Hold back,” Chloe said sharply.

Patrice saw the X at Ferrar’s throat. The splotch of blood at his eye. Either point made an excellent target.

But Ferrar’s gaze was fixed upon Patrice. In it lay the vastness of that ocean, and at once Patrice understood. People like Ferrar could bring that vastness forth. It could soothe the turbulent energy. Swallow it up. And it acted as a roux for human evolution.

Chloe said, “See my intent.”

Patrice searched inside her mother, terrified of what she would find. But the result was a simple thing. She wanted only for Ferrar to kneel. Ferrar would be blindfolded too. Cover that gaze that seemed to penetrate deep into the ocean within Patrice’s psyche. And then, the children would turn their focus back to Ramsey. . . .

But Patrice didn’t want to think about that. She joined her brothers and sister in making Ferrar kneel. She felt him resist. A warping, rolling wave of resistance. Too flexible to push against, because he seemed almost to bend with their will. Ferrar’s gaze never left Patrice. Sweat beaded his brow.

“You see the flaw,” Chloe said. “You see how these kinds may oppose you.
Les lumens
. Even with all of us in focus, he is obstinate.”

Ferrar exhaled slowly through his lips. And then at once, the waves of resistance dissipated. The children actually lost balance for a moment. As though they’d been pulling a cart with a rope that suddenly snapped. But Ferrar remained on his feet. Patrice felt the lovely chaotic lightning snap through her mind and then disappear. She knew that she could not conjure that lightning back to life, that delightful, primal savagery, as long as Ferrar kept his gaze on hers. She could not bear to join her siblings in the pigeon game with Ramsey and his shotgun.

And suddenly, she didn’t want to. Couldn’t remember why she would ever want to in the first place.

But this was not true of her brothers and sister, they still drank from the intoxicating pool of Chloe’s intent. They were heady with the power. They weren’t trained in Ferrar’s gaze.

“It doesn’t matter,” Chloe said. “
Le lumen
cannot oppose us all.”

Patrice looked at her hands. She saw just the farthest hint of Ferrar’s shimmer. His ocean had seeped into hers, and helped her to broaden the vastness. Even her own hatred for her mother seemed to have dispersed like mist on the ocean.

But Chloe’s intent still accelerated. It passed through Patrice like vapor, but it rested inside the other children. Not in words, but in an awareness and solid but artificial desire. To not shrink in fear and weakness, but to strike Ferrar down, naked-eyed, and preserve the power of their line.

No!

Marie-Rose turned her face toward Patrice. Patrice focused her mind on her sister, and on Guy, and then Gilbert, pushing her mother’s intent out of them. Leaving them open.

Ramsey and all four children turned away from Ferrar and faced the bayou. The sight of it soothed Patrice. No longer looking upon the litter of dead rabbits. The river devil looked from child to child and began to babble. She spoke in a language that Patrice did not understand. No; she might not have been able to identify the words, but she felt the river devil’s full intent. The hatred for Ferrar. The conjuring of that exhilarating chaos.

“What is this?” Chloe said. “Turn around.”

She yanked Gilbert’s arm and he turned to face his mother. The other children looked over their shoulders. They seemed uncertain. One by one, they turned back, casting confused glances from Chloe to Ferrar. Patrice turned too.

Chloe said, “Now! The hunter, turn Ramsey around.”

But the children, in unison, turned instead and faced the bayou again. Patrice could feel her mother’s gaze boring into their backs. The vastness inside kept her calm, preventing her from fighting or resisting, while somehow bolstering her strength. The river devil stepped away from Marie-Rose and pounced at Patrice, her silver eyes flashing. She lashed out with a sharp claw at Patrice’s arm. Patrice flinched.

Chloe yanked Patrice by the hair and threw her backward onto the bank. Patrice cried out. She felt the skin abrade down her forearm as she tried to break her fall.

“You do this!” Chloe said.

Rosie’s river devil railed and babbled. The strange conjuring filled the bayou. Patrice pushed against the packed mud and looked back over her shoulder at her mother.

Ferrar stepped forward. He leaned over and put his arms around Patrice, and lifted her to her feet. She looked down at the dirt and blood scraped into her hands and forearm. Her skirts were mottled with filth.

Chloe said, “You disobey me! You fraternize! You poison your brothers and sister!”

Patrice took a shaking breath. “No Madame, I think it is you who are poisoning us.”

Chloe slapped Patrice across face. Patrice gasped and felt a momentary resurgence of electricity. But she saw the surge in the river devil’s eyes, and she let the crackling pass through and out of her.

Chloe turned to Ramsey. Her face was hard. Patrice observed what lay inside her mother’s heart. Chloe implanted the suggestion to Ramsey to shoot Ferrar through the throat. Chloe’s ability was much weaker than that of her children, but Ramsey was an easy vessel to navigate.

Ramsey turned, the shotgun aiming back toward them. Patrice threw her gaze on him and made him swing the weapon away, but too late. A shot rang out. It caught Ferrar. Patrice turned to look.

Ferrar sank to his knees. But the scar at his throat was untouched. Blood poured from his shoulder. It had spattered Patrice.

Ramsey was reloading.

Patrice trained her focus on Ramsey. He paused, chin down, the blindfold tails at his back. She could sense her mother’s doubled efforts. But Ramsey heard Patrice’s suggestion with much more resonance than anything Chloe could send forth. He turned back to the bayou and threw the shotgun into the water.

Chloe flew into a rage. She struck Patrice, a hard cut across the mouth, and Patrice tasted blood. Chloe struck again and again, pummeling until Patrice stumbled and fell back to the packed wet earth. A tuft of fur from one of the fallen rabbits drifted on the breeze. Chloe kicked.

Patrice reached inside to that shimmering ocean that seemed to wash through herself and Ferrar and to a smaller extent, the others; even Chloe. She used her mind to push Chloe back. Chloe stopped.

Patrice said aloud, “Children, turn and see.”

Guy, Gilbert, and Marie-Rose turned around to face them.

Chloe’s face twisted with rage, but Patrice formed a tight net around her, and Chloe seemed unable to move against it.

“Ferrar,” Patrice said.

Guy and Gilbert stepped forward and went to Ferrar, who was now lying on the edge of the woodland, leaking blood with the rabbits. The twins put their hands to his shoulder and compressed the wound. The river devil shrieked. Marie-Rose pressed her hands over her ears, weeping and screaming.

Patrice rose to a sitting position. “Make a doll, Rosie. In the mud.”

Marie-Rose looked at her older sister. She knelt at the edge of the water, tears streaming, and traced an outline of a figure in the banks. Marie-Rose’s physical form still lay strapped in the nursery at Terrefleurs, but her projected self worked with the water and mud to form a small creation. The shape emerged from lapping water that trickled through channels of dirt. The river devil quieted, watching the little girl, and seemed mesmerized by the activity.

Patrice turned her attention to her mother.

“We need clean cloth.” She crystalized the thoughts that showed exactly what she wanted.

Though Chloe fought, she followed the motions of Patrice’s implanted suggestion. Chloe reached under her skirts and pulled a knife from a belt around her thigh. With shaking hands, she tore shreds from her skirts and then gave them to the twins. The boys pressed them into Ferrar’s wound and held.

“Now kneel,” Patrice said.

Chloe’s mouth was pulled into an angry grimace. She sank to her knees in front of Patrice. Patrice rose to her knees to face her. Mother and daughter stared eye-to-eye.

Patrice said, “You’re going to leave us alone now. You’re going to leave Terrefleurs for good and live in New Orleans. You’re not welcome here anymore.”

Chloe quaked before her.

“Do you understand?”

Chloe was grinding her teeth. It seemed that she fought harder against this than when she had torn her own clothing. Patrice saw the turmoil of intentions inside her mother, and she sensed the determination.

But Chloe answered, at least for the moment, “Yes.”