Brenna Yovanoff - The Replacement

Tate lunged toward them, but two of the Cutter’s men moved to intercept her. They caught her by the back of her jacket, almost lifting her off the ground. Her legs thrashed wildly, and she was screaming for Natalie in a voice that made my chest hurt.

I remembered what my mother had said when the Morrigan had found me, asked for my service and I’d agreed because I didn’t want anything to happen to Emma. Everything involves choice.

I knew what she’d been trying to say—that you have to think about your options, weigh the consequences before you make decisions, but the advice was so worthless when it came to the things that mattered. This wasn’t one of those times.

This was the endgame. The time when everything got quiet and there was only my fast, panicked breath and my heartbeat. There was only me. The one outside of everything, when everyone else had a place where they belonged.

“Wait,” I said.

The Lady stopped with her back to me. “What do you mean by this, Mr. Doyle?” But she sounded like she was smiling.

“Let me go instead. It’s the only real choice.” It wasn’t until I said it that I knew how true it was. “It’s the only thing left to do.”

The Lady turned and shoved Natalie into the crowd, almost throwing her at Tate, who jerked away from her bewildered guards and ran to catch her. Tate knelt on the ground, holding Natalie against her chest. It was closest I’d ever seen her come to crying.

From the shadows, the Lady’s voice was sweet and, under that, darkly excited. “Come along, Mr. Doyle.”

Tate looked up at me, shaking her head, and I stared back at her, trying to make her see my conviction. Just let me go.

She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in Natalie’s hair. The gesture made me more certain than ever that I was doing the right thing. The only thing. I turned to follow the Lady, who stood waiting on the stone step of the crypt.

As I came up to her, she pushed back her hood to show her face and I almost stopped breathing. She was badly changed from the woman I’d met in the reading room. Her eyes were bigger, blacker than the Morrigan’s or any of the blue girls’. In the white of her face, they looked like lumps of soot, all deep shadow and no color.

I remembered Emma’s story about going into the cave to be eaten. How if you went willingly, then death wasn’t death, but transformation.

There are all kinds of things that can scare you every day. What if someone you know gets cancer? What if something happens to your sister or your friends or your parents? And what if you get hit by a car crossing the street or the kids at school find out what an unnatural freak you are and what if you go too far out in the lake and the water is over your head and what if there’s a fire or a war?

And you can lie awake at night and worry about these things because it’s scary and unpredictable, but it’s real . It’s possible.

The Lady’s deep, unblinking gaze was black and impossible.

She held out her hand, waiting for me, and I took it, letting her draw me away from my life, my friends, and toward the crypt.

“Wait,” I said, feeling the word catch in my throat. “I just want to look.”

Roswell and the twins were pinned against the churchyard fence, held there by the Cutter’s men. Drew had the same blank expression the Corbetts usually wore, but Danny was watching me with a look like there was something sharp under his ribs and someone twisting. Roswell stood with his back against the fence, restrained by two men in black coats. He was still holding the revenant, watching me. Just watching.

Between the headstones, Tate crouched with her arms around Natalie. Her mouth was open like she wanted to say something, but what was there to say? Her sister was her family. The only right thing was to turn away from her, away from the whole shining world and toward the Lady.

For a second, though, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. Tate’s eyes were on my face, and it was hard to give that up. To give up my life when it was finally starting.

The musicians and the blue girls stood quietly. This was what they’d come for, not out of pleasure or malice. They’d come to see their world renewed and that meant blood. It didn’t matter that I was standing right in front of them. In all important ways, I was already dead.

“Come to me,” the Lady called, her voice echoing to me from inside the crypt. The door was open now, a dark slash against the white stone, and I turned and followed her because it was the last, best thing to do.

In the entrance, I could smell wet dirt and cold stone. The floor was covered in a shallow layer of water, ground seepage or rain. I couldn’t hear anything except the sound of my own heartbeat.

“You’re bleeding,” the Lady said from the shadows. “I can smell the copper and the salt.”

In the dark, her face was ghostly, almost transparent. Her bones showed palely through her skin. When she raised her head to look at me, I could see her teeth and now they were just as cruel and as jagged as the Morrigan’s.

She smiled and held out a hand. “Come closer and let me look at you.”

I took another step, away from the ruined church and the circle of watchers, into the dark.

“I dreamed this,” she said. “Dreamed of you for years, even before I knew you. But a dream is a poor substitute for the flesh.”

We were inside the crypt now, out of sight of the churchyard. “How long have you been living off the blood of innocent people?”

She reached for my arm, pulling me close so she could whisper into my ear. “You ask me to calculate in years? You would be better served by gallons. Time is only the mythology of those who have not lived long enough to see every structure collapse, every condition fold back on itself. The people demonize us, and then a century later, they pray to us.”

“Not in Gentry,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how much peace or prosperity you give them—they’ll never worship you. Not like they did in your old home.”

The Lady smiled, lips peeling back from her teeth. “Home? My home is wherever they know me. In Gentry, they make effigies to me, and you think it matters whether they burn them for spite or for love?”

“You’re saying that it doesn’t matter if they love you as long as they believe in you?”

The Lady nodded. “This is the natural order. Gods fall out of favor and become monsters. And sometimes they rise from the rank and file of the vanquished to become gods again.”

“What about you?” I said, watching her starved face. Her eyes were impossibly dark, like time stretching back forever, and it was deeper and more complete than any famine or plague or war. It went on so long that it seemed to see inside me. “What are you?”

She smiled, reaching up to touch my face. “I am terror.” Her hand was papery against my cheek, her skin getting thinner. “I draw strength from their fears and I feed on them.”

“I thought you fed on the blood from their offerings.”

She laughed, and it was a dry, moldy sound. “Darling, you are too delightful. I feed on the fact that they offer. I eat their devotion and their abasement. Now hold out your hand.”

I let her take my wrist. She cradled my hand in both of hers, turning it like she was feeling for a pulse. Then, without warning, she sank her teeth in.

Pain surged up my arm and I gasped but didn’t pull away. I took a shallow breath and then another. The force of her bite made huge white spots bloom in front of my eyes.

“I expected different,” she whispered, scraping my hand with her teeth. “Since the day I first drank the blood of my own, I’ve been dreaming of it. The desperation, the surrender. Like a man they called Caury.”