“You told me to be ruthless!” protested Jill, balling her bloody hands into fists. “You said that he needed me to be ruthless!”
“The Master feeds from the village, but he protects them as well,” said Mary coldly. “You have killed without his permission and without his blessing, and you are no vampire; you had no right.” She lifted her chin slightly, shifting her attention to the crowd. “The Master has revoked the protection of his household. Do with her as you will.”
A low, dangerous rumble spread through the crowd. It was the sound a beast made immediately before it attacked.
Perhaps Jack could have been forgiven if she had turned her back on her bewildered sister, still dressed in her lover’s blood; if she had walked away. These were extraordinary circumstances, after all, and while Jack was an extraordinary girl, she was only seventeen. It would have been understandable of her to hold a grudge, even if she might have regretted it later.
She looked at Jill and remembered a twelve-year-old in blue jeans, short hair spiking up at the back, trying to talk her into having an adventure. She remembered how afraid she’d been to leave her sister behind, even if it had meant saving them both. She remembered Gemma Lou, when they were small—so small!—telling them to look out for each other, even when they were angry, because family was a thing that could never be replaced once it was thrown away.
She remembered loving her sister, once, a long, long time ago.
The crowd had been watching Jill for signs that she was preparing to run away. They hadn’t been expecting Jack to push her way into the center of their ring, grab Jill’s hand, and run. Surprise was enough to get the two girls to the edge of the crowd, Jack hauling her sister in her wake, struggling not to let the blood make her lose her grip. Jill was strangely pliant, not resisting Jack’s efforts to pull her along. It was like she was in shock.
Becoming a murderer and getting disowned in the same day will do that, thought Jack dizzily, and kept on running, even as the first sounds of pursuit began behind them. All that mattered now was getting away. Everything else could happen later.
12
EVERYTHING YOU NEVER WANTED
SEE THEM NOW, two girls—almost women, but still not quite, not quite—running hand in hand across the vast and unforgiving moor. One wears a skirt that tangles and tears in the bracken. The other wears trousers, sturdy shoes, and gloves to protect her from the world around her. Both of them run like their lives depend on it.
Behind them, a river of anger, split into individual human bodies, running with the unstoppable fury of the crowd. More torches have been found and lit; more pitchforks have been liberated. In a place like this, under a sky like this, torches and pitchforks are the native trappings of the enraged. They appear without being asked for, and the more there are, the deeper the danger.
The crowd glitters like a starry sky with the individual flames of their ire. The danger is very real.
Jack runs and Jill follows. Both of them are weeping, the one for her lover blooming red as a rose in the empty moorland, the other for her adoptive father, who should have been so proud of her and has instead cast her aside. If our sympathy is more for the first of them, well, we are only human; we can only look on the scene with human eyes, and judge in our own ways.
They run, and the crowd pursues, and the rising moon observes, for the tale is almost ending.
*
DR. BLEAK COVERED ALEXIS with an oiled tarp when he heard footsteps pounding up the garden path. He turned, expecting to see Jack, and went still when he saw not only his apprentice but her bloody sister. Behind them, the furious body of the mob was gaining ground, outlined by the glow from their torches.
“Jack,” he said. “What…?”
“The Master revoked his protection when the villagers saw what she’d done to Alexis,” said Jack, still running, pulling Jill into the windmill. Her voice was clear and cold: if he hadn’t known her so well, he might not even have realized how badly it was shaking. “They’re going to kill her.”
Jill gave an almighty shriek and yanked her hand out of Jack’s, letting the still-slippery blood work for her. “That’s not true! He loves me!” she shouted, and whirled to run.
Dr. Bleak was somehow already there, a white rag in his hand. He clapped it over her nose and mouth, holding it in place. Jill made a desperate mewling sound, like a kitten protesting bedtime, and struggled for a few seconds before her knees folded and she fell, crumpling in on herself.
“Jack, quickly,” he said, slamming the door. “There isn’t much time.”
Obedience had been the first thing Dr. Bleak drilled into her: failure to obey could result in nasty consequences, many of which would be fatal to a child like she had been. Jack rushed to Jill’s side, gathering her unconscious sister in her arms. They were the same height, but Jill felt like she weighed nothing at all, like she was nothing but dust and down.
“We have to hide her,” Jack said.
“Hiding her isn’t good enough,” Dr. Bleak replied. He grabbed a small machine from his workbench and moved toward the windmill’s back door. “You’ve been an excellent apprentice, Jack. Quick-fingered, sharp-witted—you were everything I could have asked for. I’m sorry this has happened.”
“What do you mean, sir?” Jack’s stomach clenched in on itself. She was holding her sleeping sister, covered in the blood of her dead girlfriend, and the village was marching on the windmill with torches and pitchforks. She would have said this night couldn’t get any worse. Suddenly, she was terribly sure that it could.
I’ve seen this movie before, she thought, almost nonsensically. But we’re not the ones who made the monster. The Master did that. We’re just the ones who loved her.
Only they weren’t even that, were they? Dr. Bleak would have saved Jill instead of Jack, at the beginning, because he’d seen Jack as a more logical choice for a vampire lord. That didn’t mean he’d known her or cared about her. Time is the alchemy that turns compassion into love, and Jill and Dr. Bleak had never had any time. If anyone in this room loved Jill, it was Jack, and the worst of it was, she wouldn’t even have had that much if it hadn’t been for Alexis. Their parents had never taught them how to love each other. Any connection they’d had had been despite the adults in their lives, not because of them.