Vassa in the Night (31 page)

Dexter stops five feet away and raises his nails to gaze at me. His expression is distinctly sheepish. I wrap myself more tightly around Tomin, who's recovered from the shock enough to hug me back.
Not this one,
I try to tell Dexter with my thoughts.
Just this once, disobey, disobey, disobey. You don't want to be Babs's servant, I know it.

If I say it out loud she'll know Dexter betrayed her, and then who knows what she'll do to him? She's already looking from Dexter to me, monitoring the appeal on my face and the shame in his droop-nailed stance. She grins to herself, a smirk that sits tightly coiled at the bottom of her face. And then she grabs my arms in her claws—and my God, how impossibly, incomprehensibly powerful she is!—and pries me loose. Bony vines seem to wrap my back, my arms, and I thrash with all my strength to get free. I watch Tomin's face, still turned to mine, as Sinister drags him away from me and then topples him onto the floor with a thud. Fear glimmers in his widened eyes, but so do tenderness and concern. Even now he's worrying about
me.

Dexter heaves up the axe between thumb and forefinger and totters a little with its weight. With a mincing, doubtful creep he approaches Tomin at neck level and looks at me again. Like he's waiting for my damned approval.

“Proceed,” Babs says. “I find myself experiencing some impatience, Dexter.”

I make another effort to break away, yanking at those skeletal arms binding me, bucking to try to lift Babs off her feet. Dexter shifts the axe to get a better grip for chopping and takes a couple of hesitant swipes at the air. Tomin's dismayed eyes reflect in the blade—and then my self-control breaks.

“Dexter!” I hear myself screaming. “Don't do it! I will never forgive you!
Don't!
”

I hear the whistling sweep of the axe in the air before I see it—and by the time I see it blood is already jetting from Tomin's sliced neck. Dexter shudders with bloodlust, and then the axe spins again, chopping off Tomin's left arm. Both hands are hopping delightedly now, drunk on the violence. Sinister grabs the axe from Dexter as if they were fighting over a toy and takes a turn, hacking off the right arm and leg. Dexter perches on the tip of his forefinger like some gory ballerina and twirls in the blood fountaining out of the right shoulder.

Babs lets me crumple to the floor where I throw up, gasping and retching again and again. When I'm able to look up Dex and Sin are doing finger paintings in the blood—hearts and stars—and skating back and forth like kids on an ice slick.

Babs casually picks up the axe where they dropped it against Tomin's rib cage. “Dexter, my dear?” she says coolly.

Dexter's turning a figure eight in the blood, but he pauses to glance up at her. Shy and quizzical. He's slathered in crimson.

And at that Babs slices him right in half: a straight cut between the ring finger and the middle. The pieces crash convulsing onto the floor.

“Sinister, I'm afraid you'll have to do the tidying up by yourself tonight. Don't forget to store the parts for me; they'll be coming in, shall we say,
handy
. You'll have to use these coolers. The ones in back are all full. We don't have a stake free at the moment, so just pop that head in the fridge for now as well. And Vassa, you return to the register. I wouldn't advise leaving your seat again tonight.”

I think I might be laughing hysterically and sobbing at the same time.
Erg,
I think,
Erg, you never would have let this happen. If only I hadn't left you behind …

Babs casts a disdainful glance over the scene: me, curled shaking beside a pool of vomit, Dexter in spasms and Sinister suddenly standing rigid and unbelieving. She turns on her heel and stalks off in her scarlet-splashed dress, not even waiting to see if we follow orders.

And for a long time we don't. All the giddiness has gone out of Sinister and he stands glum and shocked, his gaze riveted on his dead partner. I shudder and gasp, tears streaking my face and sick still on my chin. Gusts of icy wind seem to sail through my body. Then, after I don't know how long, Sinister seems to resign himself. He grabs the cuff of Tomin's jeans and starts the laborious process of dragging a chopped-off leg away, one miserable inch at a time.

I suddenly realize that half of Dexter—the chunk with the thumb and forefinger—has moved a little. As I watch he crawls sluggishly toward the edge of the ruby puddle that pulsed from Tomin's heart. Dexter's dying, maybe, but not yet absolutely dead. Like I care.

When he reaches the margin where the yellow floor begins, the Dexter-chunk arches like an inchworm. With his bloody forefinger he reaches out and begins marking the linoleum.
SORRY,
he writes.

“Like that does any good,” I tell him.

UNDIE HIM.
The words are clearly printed in block letters, but that doesn't mean they're comprehensible.

“There's no such thing as
undying,
” I snarl.

PROF PEPP,
the thing formerly known as Dexter adds, but the last letter is slurred. Then the half hand slumps and falls still.

“Where's my friend?” I say, too late. And then I think,
Prof Pepp? Do you mean that gray soda Picnic was drinking?
But this time I have the sense not to say it out loud.

No answer. But one idea gradually makes its way through my foggy awareness: with Dexter dead and Sinister with plenty of work to do for the rest of the night, this is the best chance I could hope for to try to find Erg.
Get moving, Vassa.
I drag myself upright and then pause to smear out Dexter's bloody messages with my foot; I'd rather Sinister didn't see them. Peel off those useless gloves, too, and rip open a pack of paper towels so I can clean my face.

I turn and Sinister is right there watching me, his fingers clenched and his knuckles white with rage. He extends one finger and jabs toward Dexter, then waves the finger in a scolding motion. Then he points at me. He performs the sequence a second time, then a third, his movements more vehement with each repetition. I get the meaning, naturally:
This is all your fault. You killed him!

“Yeah?” I snap. “Have you considered blaming Babs instead? I mean, she was the one with the axe and all.”

Sinister hops in a frenzy and I turn my back. My friends are getting trapped and murdered one by one. But Night is still in the window, dark and silent and shining—and maybe it knows more than I do.

I walk up to the clapping door and stretch out my hands. “Night,” I whisper, “Night, can you hear me? I've been trying to fight Babs, but it's not going so well. I just got Tomin killed and he was a really sweet guy. And I can't find—my friend.” I still can't name Erg in case Sinister is listening, but Night must know who I mean. I pause for a moment and search the sky. There are only two or three stars fighting their way through the orange dust of light pollution, but the crescent moon is strong and clear. “Night, anything you can do to help would
really
mean a lot. If I can just get my friend back we'll have a way better chance of helping you, too. Please.”

I take another step forward, but somehow my extended right foot doesn't land on the floor. Something hard is punching my left foot off the linoleum, tipping my whole body forward, and the right foot keeps stretching out into empty space, trying to get some kind of purchase. But it can't, because there isn't any.

I'm in the night, caught between the velvet sky above and the rough asphalt below. And I'm falling. I barely have time to gasp.

 

CHAPTER 20

“Hi, again,” I call to the motorcyclist. I know from the way the buildings look now, like serrated black glass enclosing the parking lot, that he'll be able to hear me. We're back in our shared territory. “You know, if you don't have a name, it's probably about time we made one up. I don't know what to call you.”

He's stopped just a few feet away from me. I get up off the pavement—why the hell was I lying there? It's not a bed—and walk unsteadily over to him. “I tried to open the stars for you,” I say. “All I did was set my jacket on fire and scare the daylights out of the poor swans. I'm really sorry. I wanted to. If I could pull those stars out, then would you be free?”

There's a long pause, and somehow I can hear his thoughts passing like a whisper on the air. “Then I would return,” he says at last. “I, and my brothers. To free one would loose us all.”

“You'd return to Night,” I say. “That's right, isn't it? You'd be part of
the all above us
again, and that's Night. Right now you're like a doll that Babs tore out of Night, but really you and Night are supposed to be together. Just like she stole Erg from me. She doesn't care who's
bound
to each other.”

Somehow he needs a while to think about that. Images of Tomin and Erg rise in my mind, and I'm crying again, though my tears feel strangely hard and cold. I catch one in my palm and it sparkles blood red, a sharply faceted jewel. It reminds me of the ring that doomed the old man who called me
Sabine
.

“I could have a name,” the motorcyclist finally offers. “You could call me by a name.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” I tell him. “But that's beside the point, right? You need to get free. I mean, is that even your
body
? Or is it some kind of weird shell that Babs made? When I fell—inside your brother, I guess, that time when we were traveling together?—my fist hit his throat and it sounded like metal. And there were freaking
rabbits
in there. As his stomach. It definitely wasn't natural. So I started wondering if I was seeing what he's actually built out of, once you rip the illusions away? And then maybe you're like that, too.”

I think I'm confusing him. He seems flummoxed. Communication has never been our strong suit. “She made this body,” he says at last. “She made a mockery of man. And then she shut the eyes behind me.”

“So I'm right! It's not your real body at all.”

“It … becomes mine. I am becoming … more a man. Night seems far away from me now, Vassa.”

“Night misses you so much,” I tell him. I'm calming down, getting my self-control back. “I don't know how I know that, but I do. Are you saying that you
don't
want to go back? But you're bound to Night. You can't just keep being Babs's slave!” I look around again, and this time the parking lot sparks like a star field. I could be standing on a glass lake cradling the reflections of uncountable galaxies. When I turn my gaze up the sky isn't rusty with ambient light anymore. Its black is lucid, its stars blue-fierce. “It's so beautiful. Don't you want to go home? There has to be a way!”

“I could stay here. In this dream. I could be bound anew. Not to Night anymore. We could close the stars behind you.” With that jet visor covering most of his face it's impossible to read his expression. Only his ash-white chin and mouth are visible, and the mouth is set in a flat, cryptic line. But his meaning is about the clearest it's ever been. Maybe he's gradually getting better at talking to me. “Vassa, give me a name.”

Something in his tone gives me pause. “Am I making some kind of commitment if I name you? Because I'm seriously too young for that.” Maybe
young
isn't a concept he has much grasp of. I remember something he said before, when I was riding on the back of his bike. “Are you talking about going on dreaming forever? Like, as a couple? We'd stay here?”

I gaze around again. It's a gorgeous place, no question, but kind of menacing, with its miniature glossy mountain range and its gleaming emptiness. And I'm honestly not sure it offers much scope for, you know, personal development. What would a life in this place even mean? It definitely qualifies as
anywhere but here,
anywhere but home and Brooklyn, anywhere but any normal human location. And I might even become
anyone but me,
more a dream-ghost than a girl. The idea has its attraction: not-Vassa living in an enchanted nowhere with this not-man. The reality is that I probably have more in common with the motorcyclist than I do with other humans. No one would ever judge me again for not fitting in, or think I was too weird to live, or regard me as a pretty face with no one at home behind it. I would be absolutely free, now and forever.

He leans my way with his arms reaching out to embrace me. To my own surprise, I step back. “We could dream here. We could remake it, and me, dreaming as you will. You can give me a form of your own choice. Whatever you speak you can see here, Vassa.”

Worth a try, I guess. “Ocean,” I call to the horizon, and suddenly it's there, emerald black with curling waves taller than buildings. Flights of opalescent fish sparkle in the waves' sweep and foam like fine lace wraps the black. As I give it more thought the sound arrives, slowly rising out of nothing—crash and whisper—and then the smell, a deep salt pungency.