Part Seven

Thursy was quiet as she sat in the car with Osprey. His black eyes were turned away from her, focused like laser points on Scotch standing across the street with a pay phone to his ear.

Her skin had come off like orange peel in the shower. Some of the pieces had been so big they hadn’t fit through the drain and collected like a giant, fleshy hairball. She had flushed the chunks down the toilet and rinsed the blood off the wall.

Alone. Without Scotch or Yared holding her hand or Kiria’s glare pushing her forward. She had done it all alone once Osprey left.

The experience was new, like her first sip of alcohol. Stunning and vivid and too much. Her stomach had begun to hurt, and her back.

"Can you hear what he’s saying?" Osprey asked, still not looking at her. He gestured to Scotch across the street.

"No."

"Soon your hearing will change. Words spoken three blocks away will sound like they were whispered against your ear. Don’t let it frighten you, with a little practice you’ll learn how to ignore it. The same goes with your sight, senses of smell, taste, and touch. Do your bones hurt?"

"My bones?" she repeated. "No."

"Tell me when they do. They will shed like your skin did, then be absorbed by the muscle mass. You’ll need to lie down quickly."

She had thought the bleeding would be the worst of it. The idea that she was going to become even more alien to herself was sickening.

Osprey turned his hear, and their eyes met. "I meant," he said, "that I can help you through it. You don’t have to do it alone."

Alone, the way she had stood in the shower, trembling so hard she could barely stay standing while the jets of water slid under her skin like the metal edge of a letter opening? She almost wished now that she had asked him to stay, even if it had meant taking off all of her clothes and falling apart in the arms of a stranger.

She realized for the first time how much worse this would have been if Osprey hadn’t come for her. If by some miracle the pack had put her back together and forgiven her, only to discover that the changes had barely begun. Better to be a stranger with someone she didn’t know than to be one to her own family. Scotch had taught her that with one horrible kiss.

"Thank you," she told Osprey, "for doing all of this."

She put her hand on his wrist.

His eyes closed part way in a dizzy half-blink. "Anything you need," he said, his voice throaty.

Suddenly she couldn’t feel her hand, only his, as if they had traded bodies. The leather of the armrest was rough under her fingers and the heater pumped warm air onto the back of her palm. She could even feel the weight of fingers on her wrists, brushing her thumb.

Osprey said something she didn’t hear, something panicked. She heard the word, "don’t," and then the car was flooded with bright light.

Thursy put her free arm over her face, trying to shield her eyes, but she saw anyway. In front of the car, Osprey was being tied to a wooden post, buried in twigs, then sticks, then bales of hay, bound tightly under the moon. A match was lit and the smoke rose up around him like a tornado in swirls of gray and choking black, but it didn’t block out the sight of his mother’s face.

She stood ringing her hands while her lover tried to drag her away, worried that she might decide to admit to her crimes rather than see her son burned at the stake. "Violet, Violet," he said, his voice as cold as the depths of the ocean, "he’s nothing."

Osprey could hear this even as his lungs seized up. He could see his mother’s feet trying to step forward before her mind stopped them. He could hear the excuses her lover made for letting him burn and knew the truth: that she had sacrificed him for herself, that she was petty and selfish, that his death would not keep her up for more than a few nights.

The burning went on all night. He passed out and when he woke up the pain was gone but the flames were higher than ever. Into the next day, into another night, and the villagers were running out of wood, sending men into the forest to chop down trees.

Violet left before noon of the second day, either unable to watch any further or else annoyed by the delay. Osprey couldn’t tell which. The crowd grew larger and larger as more people came, dragging with them torches and trees and pieces of furniture to add to the bonfire. For hours he could see nothing but flame and black smoke. He watched his own skin turn to ash and then flush with fresh blood and grow pink again.

On the beginning of the new night, a voice slipped into his head.

Well, well, my boy, Hunter Redfern said, it seems you are stronger than I realized.

Everyone had been forbidden to communicate with him, even to send a last comforting thought to him. But Hunter was not everyone.

You don’t even know what you are, but I do. I’ve seen this before.

Osprey had the courage to speak back. Tell me.

In time. Let yourself fall apart. If you concentrate, you can do it. Turn to ash and don’t rebuild until you hear my voice.

It hadn’t been easy, but Osprey had given himself up to the heat and the kiss of flames and slipped away. When he woke up, he was Hunter’s prisoner, just a head in a box, unable to feel the rest of his body or properly speak. A week later he had begun feeling the minds all around him. A nurse, two body guards, Hunter’s daughter in the next room. He could touch them, clench them, and make them do his bidding.

But Hunter was careful. He took safeguards to make sure that no matter how tightly Osprey controlled those around him, he was never able to reclaim his body, while at the same time strong enough to force Hunter’s enemies into action.

Seven years passed before Thierry Descourdes found him in a hat box in Hunter’s closet and put him back together. He had offered protection and Osprey had knocked him unconscious and run.

And run and run and run. Given up his mother’s last name, Yarrow, and spelled it backwards to throw any trails. Hidden in her homeland with the paltry humans who were too afraid of the look in his eyes to approach him, kept himself safe.

He had followed the legends of others like himself who would not die. Into Ireland, Brazil, the Congo, and finally, Russia. Where he discovered a witch cut into a dozen pieces for the crime of healing humans, then buried in the cement foundations of an entire street. The man’s name was Reka. Osprey had taken care of him every since.

Then, later, in France, there was Elomi, who-

The car door opened. A gust of cold air brushed Thursy’s neck and she felt herself dragged out of Nice, away from Elomi who she had tried so hard to protect-

No, not her. Osprey had tried to protect Elomi. Osprey had been the one burned at the stake while his mother stood by silently despite her knowledge of his innocence. Osprey had spent those years in Cluj living the life of a hermit before traveling into Russia and digging up Reka’s body.

But she knew it all. She had felt every instant of misery and betrayal and fear. She even knew that his mother had lived, that he had heard of her again ten years before. She was living in the States now, married and with children, the siblings he had never met, a tiny niece.

Thursy blinked. Osprey had pulled away from her and had one hand on the door latch. His face was pressed into the window.

Scotch, who had opened the back door and climbed into the car, glanced between them. "What’s wrong?" he asked, even as Osprey sat up straight again and gathered himself.

"Nothing," Thursy said softly. She was thinking, Oh, sweet Bast, Osprey, I didn’t realize. I knew they had hurt you but I didn’t understand.

She did now. Now she understood so well why he was afraid for her, afraid that she would be captured and cut into pieces that she almost told him to drive to the airport, that they would jump on the first plane to nowhere.

But Scotch was relating news from the village. "Mom’s a mess, Gedmark, I mean. Kvyn says she’s only slept for an hour and that she had nightmares. Dad wouldn’t listen to a word I had to say, he just kept telling me to forget about the human and come back."

"What about Yared?"

"He’s still…hysterical. They sent him someplace this morning, to some kind of facility for crazy Night People in Seattle. It’s called Attendance Row."

"I know it," Osprey said. His voice was still throaty, rough.

Without thinking, Thursy reached for the memory, only to find that her connection to him had been severed. She had seen so little of him in those moments, just enough to know who he what he was. There were leagues of tragedy in his life she knew nothing about.

"The vote is tonight," Scotch said. "I tried to tell Dad about Galdwyn but he just said I was upset. Gedmark couldn’t even come to the phone."

Thursy came close to saying, "Forget about it, Scotch, and get out of the car. Osprey and I have to talk." Then the sound of Yared’s cry echoing through the village while she sat in the basement of her own home weighted down with chains flashed in her mind, and she said, "How long will it take to get there?"

"Not long if we take the plane," Osprey replied. "But you shouldn’t go. Stay here and I’ll get him."

"He won’t go with you," she argued.

"I’ll…force his mind."

He could do it, of course. He could make Yared walk and talk and dance a jig. Then the exhaustion would crash down on him until he collapsed, for hours or days as his brain repaired the places where it had been torn apart with effort. That much Thursy had seen.

"You can’t go alone. When you’re weak afterward, anyone could get to you."

He ran a hand through his hair. Thursy could feel Scotch’s eyes on her from the backseat, hunting for understanding that would act like bridges between them.

Thursy knew he found nothing. The bridges had been burned.

"I’m coming," she told Osprey. "Scotch?"

"I’m in."

The bridges were gone, but she could still count on him to help Yared. Even to help her.

Osprey shook his head slowly as if it were heavy with dread. "All right," he said, and guided the car into the street.

As they headed for the airport, Thursy’s spine began to ache.