24. Angel

24

ANGEL

F lashes of her face rip through my head, over and over again.

Her voice. Her eyes.

Blue gray. Tugging at something at the back of my mind.

Her scent.

The woman in the black dress. The black bride.

She assaults the edges of my memories, hammering into my heart with a pain I cannot understand.

Seeing her in danger tore at the control asserting itself over my mind to obey my mistress, my Matron. I've never felt such powerful forces, contradicting one another, like they're vying for my very soul.

Shaking my head, I try to focus on the task at hand. My orders.

But ever since the battle, since she killed the man named Marco, she's been distant, drifting in that fugue that I have seen come over her.

It's worse now.

And there's nothing I can do to help her. I'm not even sure I actually want to.

Not that I have a choice.

Thankfully, things are easier that way.

The mobster's mansion is ours now. Another place to tear apart, to ransack.

Maybe we'll stay here for a night.

If she lets us.

Whatever the Herald asks. Whatever Matron wants.

Gathering up the stragglers from the battle, throwing the dead into a hideous, horrifying heap, I trudge through the destroyed decorations, visions of the scenes colliding out of order, music ringing in a dissonant cacophony in my head.

It reminds me of another time. One stage.

Lights shining down, music cueing me to move…

Then it's gone, replaced by another face, two of them. The huge man with the stern gaze. The tall one with the long, honey brown hair.

There were others, too, that I can't quite bring to mind. Less important.

People who looked at me with terror in their eyes. Fear for me. Or of me.

Worry. Compassion.

Those are things that people feel, right?

I felt none of them when the Herald shot Marco.

Only when she told me to hurt the bride, my heart thundering in my chest, the wailing shriek tearing through my mind, slamming against that brick wall of the world before whatever made me this way.

Against the wall that the Matron placed around my memories to protect me from the horrible things that were done to me.

That's what she told me, anyway.

I have to believe her. She's the center of my waking world.

Only challenged in my dreams by the woman with eyes like the surf. Hair that flows on forever down her back. And that body…

Another part of me that I deny completely awakens to those thoughts.

Desire like I've never known.

Distractions. My body keeps stacking bodies, slapping away one of her other children, a wretched creature.

Fortunately, I feel no pity for them, only mild revulsion.

Looking down, I see the mud and reddish stains smearing my hands. I should wash it off.

So I head inside, cleaning the filth off my body. Because the Matron demands that I behave differently from the rest of them.

"You're pretty." A high voice quavers from the table by the door.

I stare at the creature. A woman. She's less gaunt than most. Probably pretty once.

"What do you want?"

"Some fun. The Herald commanded that we could indulge while we're here. That the Seven say we should give into those urges."

"I don't have urges."

A sickly grin splits her face as she lurches forward, hesitating once she gets within a few feet. They know to be afraid of me. Because of what the Herald has made me do to so many of them.

To teach them lessons.

"L–Let me show you. You'll see."

Shaky hands reach for my belt buckle, fumbling with the clasp.

She doesn't even yelp when the back of my hand takes her across the face, launching her across the room, smashing into the table and chairs.

"Touch me again and I'll kill you."

"Please! I can make you feel so good! You can even hurt me while we do it! You can choke me!"

I take a step back at the request, a wave of nausea rolling over me.

This is wrong .

So much so that I want to scream. I want to break something.

True, absolute disgust rises in my throat, burning acidic.

Before I can do more damage, or something worse, I storm from the room, running up the stairs, rushing into the first room I find, slamming the door behind me.

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry," I hear my voice pleading, wheezing.

And I see her face again, the bride in black.

Everything always comes back to her. A distant scream, begging me to find my way back and remember who she is.

It's no use.

Because the Matron ordered me to forget. I cannot defy her.

I need her. And the medicine she provides for her children. It keeps us alive, keeps us true to the righteous path. Even if a voice deep inside me rages against those orders.

"Angel! Come to me." I hear her cry from the other room.

She's furious.

About more than the fact that the group of resistance fighters escaped. Her plans for the day fell apart. And it was her fault.

Gathering myself, clamping down on my panic and grief, I stagger from the tight confines of the bathroom into the offices of this house.

"We need to decide what our next attack should be," the Herald announces, sitting behind the desk.

Her eyes track across the room, past me, seeing nothing.

I wait for more, but she just sits there, inhaling, exhaling.

Finally, I gather my courage, ask the question in my mind.

"Why did you kill that man, Herald? I thought we needed him." Even if I hated him with all of my heart. Not that I can remember why.

Maybe it was the way the black lace bride looked.

The tears in her eyes as she walked down the aisle, clearly resigned to her fate.

Like me.

A slave to someone who knows what's best for you when you have no idea what you should do. Perhaps he was like that for her. Still, I am glad he's dead.

"It doesn't concern you, my darling. But we got what we needed from him. More loyal soldiers. More vehicles. Supplies. And a lovely home to live in."

"For a while."

"No. I think we'll stay this time." Her smile is pasted on, false.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" I hear her whisper in another voice.

"We took it. It belongs to us now."

"It always did."

"Suit yourselves. Now that we have it, I think we should find wherever they've holed up and take that too."

The back and forth fades with a shake of her head. I am certain it continues silently, where only she can hear them.

Sometimes, I wish I could hear them, the Seven. To know their plan. To understand my purpose.

To see what the future holds for this existence.

Every time these thoughts surface, though, the need arises again.

Triggered by her demands, her requests.

And fueled by a hunger that eats away at everything I have left.

It claws at my insides, and I am left gasping, weeping, curled in a ball in the corner of whatever room I call my own for the night.

I'm one of the lucky ones. Most have to go days without. Days living with the scorpions digging their way out of their skin. Nightmares of free will and the terror of going back to it.

Of being lost and alone.

For me, that means reliving a memory.

One I'm not even sure is real. A night of the bitterest cold. The deepest pain. Utter hopelessness.

Tumbling through the dark, never to see the sun again.

"I brought Marco here with the promise of offering up the woman. His stepdaughter. But I assumed we would have everything in order by then. That she would have told him what she knew."

"What does she know that's so important?"

"Where the throne of the Sinful is."

"Then we still need her?" A twinge of hope wriggles up through the despair.

"We do. If nothing else, to make her pay for what I have lost. To make her pay for my brother's sins."

"Then let me hunt for her. Let me find her." Because I need to. To see her and understand why she means so much to me.

"Fine. Hunt for her. Find her. And the hole the Block have crawled into. I want to wipe them off the map once and for all."