Part Two

It was an unfortunate fact that people always got hysterical after an execution went wrong. They were crying or hyperventilating or cursing, even hours after the event itself, and Heaven forbid any of them think to go home and distract themselves while the corpse was still wiggling.

At sunset, the entire village was still gathered in the courtyard around the scattered body.

Osprey Worray walked quietly between the trees, careful not to get bits of mud on his wing-tip shoes or his jacket smeared with sap. His hand was closed tightly around the handle of a leather briefcase and a perfectly ironed hanker-chief peeked out of his pocket.

He had never been to the village before, but it felt familiar. Ten brick houses without shudders or porch railings sat in a circle around the cobblestone courtyard. No phony landscaping intruded on the mountains’ ruggedness. No dogs barked at the end of chains. This place was as natural as any shelter from Nature could be.

Three dozen people or so were gathered at the center of the courtyard, where there was the stump of what had once been a truly massive tree. As Osprey approached it he caught the scents blood and lighter fluid knotted together like ribbons in the wind.

There was a silence hanging over the tree stump that had been there for hours, that everyone was protecting with their hushed sobs and whispered voices. Containing the horror to this mercifully quiet sphere gave them the idea that they were not completely helpless.

A woman caught sight of Osprey as he approached and rushed forward. Her eyes were red and swollen but sane, and he could see a touch of cat-like gold in them. "Mr. Worray?" she asked.

He offered his hand but she didn’t notice it. He recalled that most of these people had never spent any real time outside of their village and was relieved that she didn’t act appropriately. He couldn’t stand the thought of touching her. "Yes, mam."

She nodded. "Thank Bast you’re here. We’re running out of things to try."

"I understand." He did, too. He remembered. "What was your name, mam?"

"I’m sorry, I’m Gedmark Thrithe. Do you need to…"

"See the body, yes, Mrs. Thrithe."

She led him closer to the stump and the pack moved wordlessly to allow him past. No one spoke, the silence hung thick like blankets they had wrapped around themselves to soften the blow.

Osprey saw the body and froze.

He had thought it wouldn’t bother him this time. He had believed he was finally immune to the horror of the execution, that he would be able to look at this one without feeling the fury and betrayal and panic inside himself.

He had been wrong.

He could have grabbed Gedmark Thrithe and throttled her. He could have broken every bone in the body of that nervous, pot-bellied man standing across the stump. He could have twisted all of these people until they popped like balloons for doing this to another person, for stealing from someone else something so vital and intimate as a life and being able to not hate themselves for it afterward.

He had killed people. He had never told himself it was justified. He had never tried to deflect the blame.

He couldn’t tell if the body was male or female. The head had been severed and burnt to a crisp on a make-shift barbecue, and a large pickling jar contained a lumpy brain floating in blood-stained water. The rest of the body had been reduced to piles of glop and bone, sloughed all over the surface of the stump. Some bits had been burnt, some had been minced.

"How long has it been?" Osprey asked, forcing himself to speak. He knew that everyone was looking at him, waiting for him to reassure them.

"They broke her neck at dawn," Gedmark said.

He turned to her. "They?" he asked.

Shame filled her face. "We," she admitted.

Osprey stepped to the edge of the stump. "Where’s the heart?"

"Cut into quarters and burnt," an old woman told him. She had the withered, weathered appearance of a pack elder, but even her stony expression was shaken.

"And?" he asked.

"It still beats," she replied.

Osprey nodded. He lifted his hand ran it through the air above the closest pile of mussed organs. A magnetic field lifted the hairs on his arms.

He almost smiled then. They had done all this to her and she was still trying to put herself together again. She wouldn’t let them put her down and then put her out of their minds.

He felt a kinship with her. She was one of his own, his to protect, and no one else knew about this secret alliance between them.

She was one of his.

"Is she a bogeyman?" the old lady asked.

He glanced her way, hating the old bitch, having everybody in this pretty little village for thinking imaging that their ceremony and written words would justify their karma in killing another. He had killed more people than were standing around him; he had never believed he wasn’t damned for it.

He hated the word "bogeyman," too.

"Yes," he said, trying to appear serious and trustworthy. "I’m afraid she’s a bogeyman. Normal methods will not kill her, I’ll have to do it myself."

"But you can do it?" the pot-bellied man asked.

"Yes. Of course." He opened his briefcase and removed a handful of black plastic garbage bags. "Put her body in these and carry them to my car. It’s quarter mile from here, where the road ends. I’ll take it from there."

He dropped the bags on the ground, closed his briefcase, and began walking away. His face hurt with the effort not to cry or grin or shout.

Before he had reached the outer circle of houses, he felt a hand on his arm. The woman, Gedmark, following him with fresh tears in her eyes.

He wondered if she was the victim’s mother. For a moment she reminded him of his own mother and he felt a wave of sympathy, despite

what she had done. He lifted an eyebrow.

Gedmark was flustered. "It will be quick?" she asked.

"Yes. And painless."

"When will you return the body?"

He stumbled for an answer and came up with, "She must be buried in consecrated ground. I can’t bring her back."

The dampness ran down Gedmark’s cheeks. "Can you at least call to let us know when it’s over?"

He thought she must be the mother. "Yes."

"Thank you."

He nodded and began walking away again, then paused and turned back. "Mrs. Thrithe?"

She lifted her head.

"What was her name?"

Gedmark wrapped her arms around herself. "Thursælia West. We called her Thursy." Her voice turned rough and stilted as she added, "She was only sixteen."

Osprey stared at her in open disbelief. Gedmark saw his expression and searched helplessly for something to say.

She wasn’t a woman. She was a monster.

He began walking toward the car again, not turning back even when Gedmark called after him. "Hurry with the body," he shouted, and rushed into the safety of the woods.

What kind of people executed a sixteen-year-old girl?

*~*~*~*

The call had come in the middle of the afternoon. Osprey’s bedroom was darkened by thick curtains but he could hear the New York City traffic droning outside. The phone had rung seven times before he found it hidden in the bottom drawer of his desk and answered.

"Hello?" He flopped back on his bed, strangely aware – as he always was when he woke up – that he was alone between the sheets.

Unexpectedly, Gen Wind had been on the other end of the line. After confirming his identity, she transferred him to Thierry himself.

"Hello, Osprey," Thierry said, their tenuous alliance obvious even in his greeting. "How are you?"

Osprey rubbed at his eyes. "Fine. How are things with Circle Daybreak?"

"Very well." He hated Thierry’s formality. He hated it that he was supposed to support a man who didn’t have time to look up a phone number and dial himself.

"There’s a situation in Oregon which requires your attention."

Most of all, he hated the weird shit Thierry made him do.

"What sort of attention?" he asked, yawning.

Thierry paused. Thierry never paused. "There’s been an execution."

It took Osprey a long time to figure out what Thierry was talking about. Suddenly he sat up. "Where did you hear this?"

"From Noel Jordan. One of the pack elders of a tribe of pumashifters called her around seven a.m.."

"Are they certain?"

"Noel is. I told her I’d send you out there to see for sure." He deliberately cleared his throat. "If you’re convinced by the evidence, may I assume everything will go as we discussed?"

"Yes, of course, whatever," Osprey said without thinking. "Do you have an address?"

*~*~*~*

So he had flown to Oregon and seen the mess made of a painfully young life, and he had taken what was left of the girl away in plastic garbage bags to his New York high rise where the only two people in the world he loved watched him rearrange the pieces and wash them down with warm water and gentle soap.

And when the girl rebuilt herself, rising out of the bath water with a hysterical scream, green eyes lit like Chinese lanterns, Osprey wrapped her in a blanket and then went into the other room to make a call.

Gedmark answered as if she had been waiting with her hand on the phone. "Yes?"

"She’s dead," Osprey said, and hung up.

In the bathroom, Thursy West began sobbing.