“I used to feel bad about killing you,” Clay said. “I think I’m over it.”
Silverpin raised a tattooed eyebrow as her smile faded, her gaze moving to the bed, where it lingered. “Looks sturdy enough. What do you say? How about indulging in a little nostalgia?” She began to undress, pulling her shirt over her head and unbuckling her belt.
“I guess this really is more a nightmare than a dream,” Clay said, making her pause, the hurt once again bunching her tattoos.
“You didn’t use to be cruel,” she said. “Selfish, at times. Overly prideful at others. But never cruel.”
“Betrayal will do that to a man.”
She moved closer, reaching for his hand, then closer still when he snatched it away. “Be nice to me,” she said, backing him up against the wall. “Be nice to me and I’ll tell you . . .”
He flinched as she pressed a kiss to his neck, hands moving to his belt. “I get so bored, Clay. Stuck in here. You’d think with so many memories to explore it’d be fascinating. But I can’t change anything. It’s like being trapped in a photostat forever . . .”
“If this is a trance,” he said, a certain uncomfortable but tempting notion stirring in his mind, “then I have as much control over it as you do.”
She stopped, drawing back, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “So?”
He pushed her away and concentrated, summoning every lesson Lizanne had taught him, re-forming the mindscape into a scene of his own choosing. Ethelynne’s tower turned to mist around them, swirling into something much more impressive.
The White’s roar filled the dome, blood leaking from its side as it whirled, scattering crimson droplets across the glass floor where a young woman lay. She shuddered as the blood spread out from the large hole in her belly, trying to stem the flow with hands that fluttered like pale birds.
“Stop it,” Silverpin said. The memory blurred as she tried to take control, then snapped back into reality as Clay asserted his will. Shared trance or not, this was still his mind.
He saw that the dying woman’s lips were moving, forming soundless words she could never speak outside of the trance. He crouched, peering closely at the shapes made by her lips, feeling her last breaths on his face. It wasn’t hard to discern the word she spoke, just one, over and over until the light faded from her eyes. “Mother . . . Mother . . . Moth . . .”
“Stop it,” Silverpin said again, the words emerging as a dry choking rasp.
“Why call for her at the end?” Clay asked, rising from the body. The White roared again and he froze the memory, killing the sound.
She stood with her head lowered, hugging herself tight. “Please, Clay . . .”
“Why call for a woman you enslaved and murdered?” he persisted. “I watched you kill her, remember? You laughed . . .”
“I WANTED HER TO FORGIVE ME!” Silverpin lunged at him, cat-swift and strong, bearing him to the floor, screaming into his face. “I wanted her to know it wasn’t me! It made me! It made me do all of it!”
She fell silent, staring into his eyes as tears flowed from her own. “Except you,” she said, her rage slipping away. She raised a hand to cup his face, smoothing her palm over his skin. “You were mine. The only indulgence it ever allowed me.”
“Do you still feel it?” he asked. “Does it still command you?”
Her head moved in a fractional shake. “But I hear it, like distant thunder from a storm that never ends. I hear it . . . calling to her.”
“Who is she?”
“The new me. The replacement. I have no notion of her name, but I see glimpses of her. Short visions of the world seen through her eyes, conveyed by the White, and they always show the same thing. Different victims, different places. But every vision is a vision of death and each one brings her closer to the White. And when she joins with it . . .”
“What?” he pressed as her words faded, grasping her shoulders hard. “What does it need from her?”
“More of what it got from me.” She pressed herself against him, lips finding his, overcoming his resistance with desperate need. “Understanding . . .”
? ? ?
The chill woke him, leeching the warmth from his skin to leave him shivering in a clammy blanket of sweat. It took a moment to clear the lingering images of the trance, the feverish coupling with Silverpin at the scene of her death. Wrong, he berated himself, guilty repugnance mingling with desire. Very, very wrong.
He was huddled against the wall they had propped him against, the left side of his face compressed by the cold stone floor. The pain in his leg had lessened enough to be bearable, but still provoked a clenched shout as he levered himself upright, gazing around and blinking film from his eyes. The light of the suns had evidently faded on whilst he slept, leaving the structure in almost pitch-darkness save for a glimmer on the rectangular, inscribed pillars that supported the ceiling. It took him longer than it should have to register the most salient fact; he was alone.
“Cuz?” he said, speaking softly though it felt like a shout in the dark and silent confines of the structure. He saw Loriabeth’s pack lying near by and reached for it, finding the remaining supplies intact, including the lantern she had carried from the shaft. A few moments fumbling for matches and he had it lit. The beam revealed a bare and dusty interior, but no sign of his cousin or Sigoral. He thought for a moment then called out, “Lori!”
The only response was the echo of his own voice.