Rage (13 page)

Panting, seething, Missy chanted her mantra, the one that had kept her sane for the two months between Graygirl's death and Adam's betrayal:
I don't need the blade. I don't need the blade. I don't.

In the back of her mind, a kiss of steel:
B
UT YOU WILL.
A
ND WHEN YOU TAKE IT UP AGAIN,
I
WILL BE THERE.

"Over my dead body," Missy snarled.

"If only it were that easy," a woman said from behind her.

She stiffened as those sickly sweet words hit her, stoking an urge of appetite deep within. Missy slowly turned to face Famine.

The Black Rider stood, shadowlike, stretched tall and thin and woefully dark, even in the light of the desert sun. Farther back, the black horse stood aloof, its white eyes glowing softly.

Missy heard Ares snort its response, felt her steed's fury radiate as if its body were aflame. But her gaze was locked onto the thin figure in black. The wide-brimmed hat hid Famine's face, but Missy saw white teeth flash in a quick smile before it was eaten by shadow.

"No matter how much you run from your responsibility," said Famine, "it has a nasty way of finding you."

"I'm not running," Missy said. "I'm quitting."

"Quitting? You've been on the job an entire day, and it's already too much for you?" Famine sniffed. "I would have thought War was made of sterner stuff."

War was; of that Missy had no doubt. "I'm not War," she said.

"Of course you are. You think just because you throw away your symbol of office that you no longer have an office?" Famine clucked her tongue. "A king without a crown is still a king, even if his empire is only dirt."

Kings and crowns; stuff and nonsense. This was no storybook tale of heroes and legends.

O
F BATTLES,
War whispered.
O
F GLORY.

No, she wasn't listening to that blazing voice. "The Sword makes me War," Missy said through clenched teeth. "And I threw away the Sword."

"It doesn't, and you did. That changes nothing." Famine took a step closer.

Next to Missy, Ares stomped a hoof and bared its teeth, clearly promising to rip the Black Rider apart if she came within reach. Behind the Black Rider, the black horse merely watched.

Famine smiled thinly at the warhorse. "You see? Your steed defends you. If you were not still War, it would eat you."

Ares flicked its ears, but Missy didn't know if her steed was agreeing with Famine or mocking her. She frowned at the black horse, at the way it simply stood there, taking in the scene as if watching a play—or, considering its Rider, dinner theater.
Famine moves, stage right, delivers her poignant soliloquy. Applause. Fade to black. Pass the salt.
She remembered Ares snapping its teeth at the black horse just last night outside Kevin's house; she remembered how Famine had to murmur to her steed to quiet it.

If the black horse thought Famine were in danger, it would have protected her. Just as Ares had been protecting Missy. She reached over to the warhorse and stroked its neck, tempering it with her touch. For whatever reason Famine had come, it hadn't been to fight—not unless Missy delivered the first blow.

"Now stop your sulking," Famine said, "and do what you're meant to do."

Missy gave the red horse a final pat before she stepped away. She thought of a gray cat, remembered the feeling of soft fur threading around her fingers, remembered hearing a content purr that loosened even the tightest knots in her neck and shoulders. Missy dug her nails into the meat of her palms and was rewarded with eight tiny bites. With pain came clarity, and she said, "What I'm meant to do? You mean encourage people to hurt each other? Kill each other? No thank you."

Famine sighed. "Such a small mind. You used to have such a vibrant imagination, if a bloody one. And you used to come girded for battle. What happened? Laundry day?"

"I had a soccer game."

Famine snorted. "Human things. You've moved past such things, War."

"I told you. I quit."

"You didn't. You merely had a tantrum." The Black Rider smiled, a knife-flash of teeth quickly eaten by the shadows of her face. "Which, as far as that goes, was not nearly as impressive as some of your more spectacular fits of temper. Like that time during the summer of 1945."

Missy's stomach pitched. "You're saying War got mad, so two bombs got dropped on Japan?"

"I'm saying the time for child's play is done. You're War, whether you like it or not. Now accept your role, retrieve your Sword, and get to work."

Sickened by the notion of bombs dropping over a slight to War either imagined or real, Missy shook her head. "No." A million times no.

The Black Rider said nothing for a long moment, and the space was filled with the sounds of a toddler crying over his stolen ball, and of children's screeching laughter—a malicious sound, mocking and cruel. Missy's nostrils stung with the remembered stench of urine, and her ears rang with Jenna's taunt about not bleeding all over the ice cream. Missy clenched her
fists and stared murder at the young thieves. They, in turn, began to fight—which ended all too quickly with a bloody nose and a tongue-lashing from an exhausted parent. The toddler kept crying for his lost ball, even when an adult tried to soothe him.

When Famine spoke again, her voice was soft, thoughtful. "The elders here in the refugee camp, they whisper among themselves. They fret over their supplies, over the battlefield that seems closer every day. Over how the world has forgotten them. They wonder if God has turned away."

Missy glanced at the woman in black. Famine's back was to her, her long coattails dancing in the hot wind. "Has he? Turned away?"

"You'd have to ask Death," Famine replied.

Missy thought of the Pale Rider, of a man with bottomless eyes and a crafty smile, and her cheeks burned.

"They're right to worry," said Famine. "At the rate they're going, they have enough food for three days. A week, if the adults give their portions to the children."

Missy kicked the rocky ground. She didn't want to hear this, didn't want to know the death sentence of a quarter million people. "Because the supply trucks aren't being allowed through the warzones," she said sullenly. "I know."

Famine looked over her shoulder at Missy. Beneath the hat's shadow, her eyes shone brightly. "You don't sound happy about it."

Happy?
Happy was for birthdays and Disney dwarfs. Missy glared at the Black Rider. "What about this could possibly make me happy?"

"This is your demesne." Famine lifted a gloved hand and motioned to the camp and beyond it, to the mountains that kept the battle away from the refugees. "All of this is because of war. You should be overjoyed."

Missy snarled, "You're sick if you think there's anything enjoyable about any of this."

"Sickness is for Pestilence. I'm merely stating the truth. War thrives on destruction, relishes the sound of despair. This should be mother's milk to you."

"I told you," Missy growled. "I'm not War."

"But you are."

Missy screamed in frustration and impotent fury. "I don't want this! I don't want people to kill each other, to destroy each other for ideology or politics or any reason at all!" She flung her hand toward the refugees. "I don't want any part of this!"

Impassive in the face of Missy's wrath, Famine said, "Then change it."

Just like that: change it. Missy let out a bitter laugh, one that coated her throat like honey. "You keep saying I'm still War. So how can War stop war?"

"You
can't
stop war," Famine replied. "It's human nature. You could no more tell a bird not to fly or a fish not to swim."

"Great," Missy said, defeated. "So no matter what, this happens."

"Of course. If there were no war, there would be no need of a Red Rider."

A Rider in the face of the storm; a Rider to lead the way to destruction.
The end of everything.
Chilled, Missy rubbed her arms.
Apocalypse.

Death's voice, a cold caress in the desert heat:
It's just a word.

"I'm not saying we destroy the world," Famine said in a huff. "And I didn't tell you to stop war. I said if you don't want any part of what you see, then
change it..
"

Change. As if the word alone told her what to do.

Words have power,
Death had told her.
But so do actions.

"Don't you see, girl? Balance," said Famine. "It's always about balance. When the scales tip, we're there to right them once more."

Missy stammered, "I-I don't understand."

"Of course not. Because you keep insisting you're not War." Famine walked over to her steed and offered it something from her pocket. As the black horse chewed, she said, "You know, Pestilence quit once. Needed a mental health break, or some such thing. Set aside his crown, and he left." She slid a dark look at Missy. "And in his absence, the Black Death took out most of Europe."

Missy's heart slammed in her chest.

"When the fatalities approached a hundred million, Death went looking for Pestilence, who had been on a beach somewhere, getting a little skin cancer. When Death found him, the two talked. And when they were done, Pestilence got back on his steed and rode again. He couldn't undo the damage that had been done. But he stopped it from spreading any further. That took some time—about five hundred years."

Bile rose in Missy's throat.

"By the nineteenth century, he eradicated the plague from Europe. So many lives lost, all because he had turned away from his responsibility. One wonders," Famine said idly, "with the broad array of nuclear goodies people have today, what would happen if you really were to quit."

Missy commanded herself not to vomit. Sweat popped on her brow, and she swayed, lightheaded, but she forced her nausea to abate. "So I'm trapped."

"Of course not. If you die, then Death would tap someone else to be War. If you really want that," said Famine, "I would be happy to oblige."

She thought of what waited for her back in her life—she was at best a laughingstock, and at worst she was persona non grata, a living pariah with almost two years before she could escape through college and start over. Adam had destroyed her.

Y
OU GIVE HIM TOO MUCH POWER,
War murmured.
H
E WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A CATALYST.

He couldn't handle her scars. That had been the true cause of everything—the reason she had lost Adam, had pulled away from the few people, such as Erica, who had genuinely cared about her. Missy laughed, the sound a strangled scream. She had cut to keep herself grounded, to make life less overwhelming. She had bled herself again and again so that everything would make sense, so that she could breathe easier. And it had cost her everything.

Her life was nothing but a teenage tragedy.

"
War can be a tragedy, certainly,
" Death said quietly, his eyes alight with blue fire. "
But you could be something more.
"

Remembering his cool touch on her face, Missy stared at the refugee camp, at the displaced people whose lives had been ravaged by war. She stared at them, her thoughts whirling, and an idea took root. It bloomed slowly, and as it unfurled, Missy's hands shook. The thought terrified her—but what scared her even more was the notion of
not
acting on her idea, of shutting herself away while War's version of the Black Death rained down upon the world.

She couldn't quit. And she didn't want to die. That left her only one option.

Missy looked at the children, who were kicking the soccer ball while the toddler continued to cry. She marched over to the small group, snatched the ball, and gave it to the little boy. He laughed in delight and began to kick it. When another child tried to steal it, he bit the girl's arm.

Missy smiled grimly. In her mind, War chortled.
W
HETHER IT'S A CHILD'S TOY OR A NATION'S OIL, IT'S ALL THE SAME,
the Red Rider said.
Y
OU FIGHT FOR WHAT YOU WANT
. A
GGRESSION.
I
T'S THE SPICE OF LIFE.

War was right: people had to fight for what they wanted. It was a matter of degree, Missy decided. Or maybe balance, as Famine had said—strength matched with temperance.

No,
she thought.
Not balance. Control.

I
T'S ALWAYS ABOUT CONTROL,
War agreed merrily.

Missy understood the need for control. She imagined razor-sharp kisses along her skin, the sting of blood meeting air, the euphoria of calmness after a cut.

She couldn't stop war, according to Famine. But she could give something to these people, and to the people beyond the mountains, fighting for their beliefs and spilling blood to prove their worth. After all of their wounds, after the paring down of their humanity and their lives to nothing but shell-shocked nubs, she could give them respite.

She inhaled deeply, raising her arms and spreading them wide.

Famine called out, "What are you doing?"

Without looking back, Missy replied, "Getting my Sword."

She opened herself to the red tide of power that was War. It careened through her, a torrent of energy that sizzled through her blood, drowning her and burning her, consuming her and renewing her until she was a phoenix arising from her own ashes. With a rapturous cry, she summoned the Sword to her. It appeared in her hand, the perfect blade, a thing of crystalline murder.

Melissa Miller, avatar of War, bellowed her challenge to the world. Wrapped in a red haze, she sliced through the refugees and the warriors and the humanitarians and the civilians caught in the warzone—everyone within a twenty-mile radius. The Sword cut deeply, carving into emotions and sawing through states of mind.

War wielded her blade, and around her, people bled.

She felt them all, from the wizened refugee whose bare feet had been misshapen by the desert rocks, to the young fighter in the village beyond the mountains who'd vomited as he made his first kill this very day, to the child living with her family under the bridge because the gunfire was too strong for them to make a run to the relative safety of the school building—Missy felt them and more than a quarter million others. These were her people—defined by war, shaped by blood, tempered by need. She screeched with their pain, with their fear and ongoing terror; she ached with their constant sorrow and pulsing bitterness that ate at their souls; she groaned from their constant exhaustion of not knowing if today was the day there
would be no food, no shelter, no sanctuary. Missy felt everything as her people bled out their badness. She took it away from them, snatched it like a thief.