The Silver Kiss (22 page)

He dived at Zoë, fangs bared. But something was in her hand—a crucifix. He stopped and snarled, raising his hands, then he started to shift. Leather wings peeled from his arms.

“Don't let him go,” Simon screamed.

She blinked, too afraid to comprehend what he meant.

“Stop him!”

Christopher's face heaved and rippled. His nose turned up, and he began a mocking chitter.

Simon couldn't look at Zoë directly. The light coming from her upraised hand hurt his eyes. Yet he ran to her and grabbed the searing cross from her with a cry of pain. He hurled it at the creature that was Christopher, as it rose
into the air. The ribbon tangled around the bat. The chittering turned to screams.

The boy emerged from bat, with the ribbon about his head, the cross strapped to his eyes. There were burns across his face, and he tore at his flesh as if trying to tear out the pain. He opened gouging wounds on his cheeks as he struggled over the grass. He couldn't see where he went. He stumbled blind. He stumbled too far, and he found the pit. He howled. A squelching thud filled the empty air where he had stood a moment before.

Simon flung himself down at the edge of the hole to see. He heard Zoë come up behind him, then moan and move back.

Christopher writhed on two stakes impaling him. Foul smoke arose from his bubbling form. His body, dying, tried remembered shapes to escape but couldn't quite make the change. A sequence of muddled forms emerged, and twisted on the skewers, spitting blood—boy with bat's head, wolf with boy's arms, pig with boy's face, sloughing skin.

And huddled in the corner, miraculously unhurt, the skinny boy whimpered and sucked his hands, too terrified to scream. Simon reached in, hauled him out with one hand, and flung him. He rolled across the grass, got up, and fled.

Christopher, a boy once more, twisted into a wizened dwarf, fell in on himself like a crushed insect husk, and finally lay still and mummy like.

Zoë didn't speak. Simon didn't turn to face her. He imagined disgust on her face and didn't want to see it.

“Leave me,” he whispered hoarsely, fighting ice tears. “Leave me, brave heart. I'll come for you. I'll let you know how I am. I must fill this hole, and I must think.”

He never turned to her. He never heard her leave. Or noticed the soiled teddy bear lying abandoned on the ground. The emptiness crashed in, and he asked himself the question that he hadn't dared to ask before. What will I do now?

15
Zoë

Z
oë gazed at her reflection in her mother's dresser mirror and held a string of pearls to her throat. They glowed against the black sweatshirt she was wearing. Her sleek neck showed no blemish, as if the boy had never existed, but he was out there somewhere. Her fingers trembled as again she felt the bitter aftertaste of sickness.

She'd come home last night and had hardly time enough to undress before she was in the bathroom throwing up. She'd huddled on the bathroom floor in her nightdress, pressing her sweating forehead against the cool porcelain, moaning with each wave of nausea. The repeated flushing finally got her father's attention, and he came tapping gently on the bathroom door. She let him in, and he patted her back and said comforting things, until she was well enough to get up and return to her room.

“Something I ate,” she told him.

He laughed sympathetically. “You eat so little, it seems unfair.”

She tried to smile. “Yes. It's usually me disagreeing with food, not the other way around.”

Her sleep had been restless. Once she woke with a start in a cold sweat, but she couldn't remember what she'd been dreaming. She was afraid to fall back to sleep, fought it, in fact, but was dragged under again despite her efforts. She got up in the morning to a nervous stomach, and dark rings under her eyes.

“Don't go to school today, sweetheart,” her father said before he went to work. “I'll pick you up here on my way to the hospital.”

Zoë had no intention of going to school, but she couldn't settle to anything else either. Eventually, she found her way into her parents' bedroom, and to her mother's jewelry box.

She had always loved playing with her mother's jewelry when she was small, and her mother had sometimes used that to her advantage when she especially wanted some quiet. Going through the little drawers brought back the peace of childhood. Here was the cheap, sparkling star she had given her mother one Christmas, and here was her grandmother's ring. There was order in the rows of earrings under the velvet-lined lid, memories in the broken and odd assortments in their special niches.

But the old memories couldn't blot out her memory of the night before, and that awful, terrifying chase. She had
really believed Christopher was killing Simon, and there was nothing she could do about it. I wanted to protect him, she thought. But how do you protect someone against that? The craziness was overwhelming her. And who were those boys? She shivered. Those stupid boys. She threaded the pearls back into their velvet pouch. They clicked like teeth.

Nothing will frighten me ever again after seeing Christopher in that hole, she decided. Her stomach tightened, still not immune to the memory. She closed the lid of the box.

Simon had killed his own brother. Surely that hurt, no matter what his brother had been? What did he feel? His whole life—if that's what you could call it—had been spent chasing this one thing. What would he do now?

If he leaves, could I go with him? she wondered. Could I live like that? She could live by night, she knew, but the blood? No, she couldn't face the blood.

Her gaze sought the self-portrait of her mother that hung over the bed. “He's so lonely,” she said to the painting, as if begging her mother to understand.

She curled up on her parents' bed, stroking the familiar, nubbled bedspread, and fell asleep under the portrait, under her mother's watchful eyes. She slept an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

Her father found her still sleeping when he came home. She splashed some water on her face and climbed into the car, still bleary-eyed. They were almost at the hospital before she felt fully awake.

Anne Sutcliff was sitting up in bed, wearing a pretty bed jacket she had bought on a trip to England years ago. She was very pale and thin, but she was smiling.

“I'm going to get a soda,” Harry said. He left the room.

Zoë sat in a chrome chair by the bedside. She felt fragile.

“I hear you've been smashing up furniture.”

Zoë started, and groped quickly for the excuse she had given her father. “Uh, yes. I put my coffee down without a coaster. You always warned me, didn't you?”

Zoë was relieved to see a familiar amused look on her mother's face. “Don't worry, no one's going to jump on you, silly. But I'm not sure a hot cup would have done quite that much damage.”

“Well, it certainly was a surprise.” Zoë felt herself redden.

“Zoë, I don't care what happened, really. You've a right to be angry.”

God, she thinks I did it on purpose, Zoë thought.

“I used to get so mad,” her mother said. “Not so much now.”

Zoë remembered how, when her mother first got sick, she'd blow up at the tiniest thing. “ ‘Cause you were scared,” she said.

“Yeah. That's part of it.” Zoë's mother smiled at her.

“But you can't keep it to yourself, or you burst at the seams. That's why I suggested the, you know, the therapist to your dad. When you said he wasn't talking.”

“He went,” Zoë said.

“You, too, huh? You're going to need each other.”

When I'm gone, Zoë thought miserably, finishing the sentence for her.

Her mother reached for her hand and squeezed it, and her voice softened. “The world won't shatter, Zoë.” She always seemed to know exactly how Zoë felt.

“We've all got to die,” her mother whispered, and closed her eyes, as if admitting this had been a great effort.

Zoë cringed as if she'd been slapped. Don't talk about it, she pleaded silently. I don't want to talk about it. No matter how many times she'd told herself her mother was dying, it was awful to hear her mother say it. She stared at her jeans, afraid to look up.

Mom tugged at her hand. “It's not going to go away if you ignore it. There are no spells against death, Zoë.”

Zoë forced herself to look at her mother. Yes, there are, she wanted to say. Dark spells. I know one. But she knew she couldn't. “You're giving in. If you say things like that, you're letting it happen.”

Her mother shook her head. “I'm just not so afraid anymore. That's not giving in. Zoë, your dad's going to need help. You've got to look after him.”

Zoë glanced at the door before she could help it. What if he heard?

Her mother saw the worry on her face and sighed. “I'm
sorry to put this on you. It's unfair, isn't it? You shouldn't have to be the strong one.”

Zoë's fists clenched. She was right, it was unfair. The whole thing was unfair. She finally asked the question she had kept on asking herself ever since this began. “Why you, Mom?”

Her mother took a clumsy sip of water. “It happens to people all the time, why not me? I'm not special. Hush!” She touched her lips. The gesture was an effort. “I know. To you. But not in the whole scheme of things.”

Zoë looked at her mother with pride. She's so much better than me, she thought. She's brave.

“I don't think I could feel that way,” she finally said.

“Well, people your age don't believe they can ever die.”

Mom was quiet for a while. Zoë didn't know if she was resting or thinking. An orderly pushed a rattling cart by the door. Someone down the corridor was buzzing the nurse.

“I suppose I'm still a little angry,” her mother finally said. “There's things I'd still like to do. Did I ever tell you how I wanted a house in the country with a bunch of cats, and a studio with huge skylights?”

“Lots of times.” Zoë remembered sitting with her in the kitchen after school, when she took a break from painting. While they sipped hot tea, her mother would describe her perfect studio in minute detail. She never grew tired of planning it. Her mother could never live
Simon's life—all nights, no bright, glowing days, no grand plans, only survival. She would pine, shrivel, become other than what she was. “What a half-assed life,” she could imagine her mother saying, and she smiled.

Her mother looked at her curiously. “Something funny?”

“Cosmic humor.”

“Oh.” She didn't push. “Speaking of cosmic, I rather like the idea of reincarnation. I'd like to come back as a cat owned by someone like me.”

Zoë took a deep breath. Maybe it got easier the more you talked about it. She'd try hard, for her mother's sake.

“The someone like you would probably be married to someone like Dad, who's allergic.”

Her mother's smile faded. “I can't comprehend being nothing. It gives me a spooky feeling inside.”

That's what Simon said, Zoë realized.

Anne Sutcliff winced, squeezing her eyes shut, and Zoë's stomach did a flip. She wasn't going to die now? Right in front of her? But her mother composed herself.

“I can't go on with this pain.”

Again Zoë thought of Simon.

“I was afraid that seeing me like this would wipe out the good memories, Zoë. That you'd only remember me like this. Don't let that happen. Remember when …” And she launched into one of her favorite stories of Zoë's childhood.

Zoë sat and nodded and smiled, and didn't really listen.
She thought about what her mother had said. If she can deal with this, I'll try. But I don't have to like it.

Her father came back in and joined in with a story of his own. Then she was telling them her side of a story, and they were laughing, and she was a part of them again.

“Don't let it take away your life too,” Zoë's mother whispered to her just before Zoë and her father left. “Live it for all it's worth while you've got it.”