Freakshow (38 page)

“W
here are we?” Cairo asked incredulously, running his hands up and down the front of his naked body.

“I don’t know,” I replied, searching the horizon for any defining feature at all. There were mountains in the distance, trees and rocks in another direction, but around us was flat and white.

“You are in my domain,” that great buzzing voice hit my ears, consuming my head and vibrating the landscape. Brigid.

“Who are you?” Cairo asked, standing next to me to guard me.

“Brigid,” I said quietly, “she’s contacted me before.”

“Why did you remove us?” Cairo asked. “Where are you?”

“I am everywhere here,” she said, “I am everything in this world.”

“Can you tell us why you brought us here?” I asked.

“I brought you to offer you more than any other acolyte has been offered before, because it is necessary this time,” she said in that buzzing tone that almost overwhelmed my senses.

The air seemed to split in front of us and out of it stepped the same wizened old woman from my dreams. “Is this better?” she asked, adjusting a long white cloak around her shoulders. “I don’t want to come as the maiden, you’re fella here would lose his mind.”

“I doubt that,” Cairo glowered, staring down at her.

“I like him,” Brigid said, looking up at him with a toothless grin. “It’s too bad about the end of things.”

“What’s the choice? What end of things?” I asked.

“Eager to get back to that?” Brigid asked, her voice still multi layered and buzzing, but no longer coming from inside so it was tolerable.

“Not necessarily, but this is no place for us either,” I replied, feeling in my bones how much this world wanted us gone. We weren’t of this world, and didn’t belong.

She smiled and looked at me with a look a mother might give a particularly bright child. “Bingo,” she said. “Now on to the decision. Bear with me as I explain some things to you. Have a seat if you must.” She motioned behind us and a little garden bench appeared, white and smooth like the rest of the world.

Cairo and I sat down, he took my hand in his and gripped it like he was never going to let me go.

“Get on with it,” he said in a low voice, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“There is a prophecy, and I believe your girl here is all caught up in it,” she said with a smile. “Three women will come into the world, three women who will command the beasts of earth, air and water. Three women who will aid in bringing the earth back to a state that is more compatible with her...well...let’s say surviving the infestation of human beings she seems to be enduring.”

“How will that happen?” I asked, “There are so many people, and we’ve been fighting against climate change but it seems impossible at times.”

“Restoring the balance between magic and science,” she said. “Technology is all fine and good, but it’s killing us. We’re slowly choking on everything that is produced, used, and thrown away to sit listlessly in a landfill somewhere. It has to stop, and you are one of the pivots that will bring about that change.”

“What’s the choice?” Cairo asked, squeezing my hand to comfort me. I smiled at him, loving him for being here with me, beside me.

“That choice is yours, my young wolf,” Brigid said, turning to Cairo with deep, sorrowful eyes. “You must decide between you and your son.”

“I don’t have a son,” he replied, knitting his brows together.

“Not yet, but he’s already tucked away safely inside the body of his mother,” Brigid replied, looking at me.

“I can’t get pregnant,” I said, starting to suspect she was a little off her rocker.

“Oh, but you can,” she smiled, showing that gummy grin. “You are, and in about nine months you will give birth to one of the foundation leaders of the new world. He will be a warrior with his father’s fighting heart, and a diplomat with his mother’s gift to influence people. He will be one of the three that ushers in the new world order.”

“What does that have to do with Cairo?” I asked, my chest tightening and my heart threatening to explode out of my throat with the speed it was fluttering.

“I think you know,” she replied, staring into my eyes, tears forming at the corner of hers.

I thought about it, looked over at Cairo and realized he already knew where this was going.

“No,” I said, “I won’t let him choose. Send us back, save us both.”

“It’s not your choice to make, my daughter,” Brigid replied. She crouched down in front of us and set her hands over ours. “This is where you must be torn apart, feel the pain that you’ve avoided all these years. Through pain comes joy, and only when we lose do we understand how to win. You’ve been a magic creature missing that last step to become fully formed, you have to walk through the fire and come out whole or you are not the one.”

“I don’t want to be the one,” I whispered fiercely. I felt tears stinging the back of my eyelids as it all sunk in. “Send me back and leave me the fuck alone. Let my body feel pain, but don’t tear out my heart like this.”

“If you go back with him, you will lose yourself to him,” Brigid said. “Haven’t you felt it already? Haven’t you wondered how you could see your friend’s murdered body and let it fade so fast? Haven’t you wondered why he takes up your every waking moment and consumes your every single breath? You are bonded, but your kind of bond is endless. In this instance, it will devour you until you are a living breathing representation of that bond. You will no longer feel anything but your love for Cairo.”

“I don’t care,” I said, “Nothing else matters to me, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” Even as I said it, I realized how dangerous my obsession with Cairo could become. I would become a shell of my former self, a lap dog living for him and his needs only.

It was an ancient bond when society lived like that, when a woman’s place was at her husband’s beck and call and thousands of years ago it made sense to bond the priestess of the goddess to the leader of the pack. In that case, their bond would make them stronger, more formidable.

These days it wouldn’t work like that. I would lose everything to him, and in some way that terrified me.

“Is there something I can do to prevent her being consumed by me?” Cairo asked. “Anything at all?”

Brigid shook her head, her eyes shadowed by the truth we both saw there.

“I accept your offer,” Cairo said quietly, not even thinking about it.

“No, you can’t,” I said, “You can’t!” I looked at Brigid and declared, “He doesn’t accept anything.”

“Liv,” Cairo exhaled, forcing me to look at him. “This is our son. Our baby. I would give my life for you or him a thousand times over if I had to.”

“No,” I spat. “We can have another. If I could get pregnant this time, I can get pregnant again. Fuck this old bitch, seriously. Fuck them all. We’ll adopt if you want a child so badly, but no, I won’t let you go.”

Tears were streaming down my cheeks in earnest now, his eyes were bright with unshed tears of his own.

“You’ll never have another chance, my daughter,” Brigid said, her voice thick with sorrow. “This is it for you, your son has sparked and is already growing inside, and he is necessary for the future of the planet. You could walk away from your responsibilities, but I don’t know when the next one like you will come up. By then, it might be too late.”

“I don’t care. Let the world crumble, it’s not our fault, why are you making all of this our fault?” I felt like I was on the brink of hysterics, about to lose my mind as it processed this situation. This horrible, loaded, unfair situation.

Cairo took my face in his hands, the hands I loved, strong and calloused, gentle when they need to be. He looked into my eyes and said, “I could never live with myself if I let our child die. Eventually you couldn’t live with that knowledge either, Liv. It would destroy us.”

“I can’t lose you...” My voice broke and my heart followed suit. I started to crumble, fall apart inside even before he said his last.

“You will find him again,” Brigid told me, “once your life is over, he will be waiting on the other side for you. I promise you that. You will find him again.”

“Do it,” Cairo said, his voice stern and strong and fully decided. He kissed me then, like the first time, like the last. His mouth was soft and gentle, but his passion took over and he lost himself in me, I lost myself in him, if for but a moment. That moment was all we had left in the world.

I could taste our tears on my tongue and feel his breath on my lips. He pulled away, brushed my hair from my forehead, smiled and said, “I love you Liv. Don’t you ever forget that.”

F
our beats and Cairo was struck in the heart by both knives, I heard the almost silent hiss as they entered his flesh. I screamed, a seemingly endless cry of rage and hurt, as his body fell to the ground. His body twisted and he reached his human form as he rolled into his back.

I dropped to his side, shrieking and raging against the events that had led up to this. I cursed Brigid, I cursed Orion, I cursed everyone who had ever even looked at the two of us.

The knives were sticking up from his chest, how they’d managed to hit their mark while he was moving so fast was beyond me, but they had. Orion’s aim had been true.

“Don’t leave me,” I whispered, leaning over him, my tears spilling on his chest. “Don’t leave me like this.”

Cairo’s eyes were wide open, his face a frozen grimace of surprised pain. I thought about taking the knives out but knew that could cause more damage than help, so I left them.

I closed my eyes, hating to lose sight of him for even a moment, and curled my toes in the earth. I reached down, sensing the power of the earth just below me, and tried to draw it up into my body.

I would heal him, I could fix this and all would be fine. We could live our lives together.

It wouldn’t connect though, it was like trying to start a car with a low battery, I couldn’t bring the power into my body.

I opened my eyes and he was bleeding out, his life force sliding over his muscled body into the dirt below him.

I tried again, keeping my eyes open and focusing on Cairo’s face as I demanded power from the earth.

I held my hands out over his body, my arms began to glow with the familiar blue haze, but this time it was definitely weakened.

I felt movement beside me and Orion fell to the earth next to me, he began to weep and claw at his own face. “I killed him, my own son. God, please forgive me, what have I done?”

I had to ignore his grief and began to channel the light towards Cai, feeling my own body wilting as I gave him everything I had.

Orion noticed the light and turned to me. I squeezed my eyes shut to block him out, but his voice was right in my ear. “What are you doing? You’re hurting him.”

“She’s trying to help him!” Milan screamed at him behind me.

“She’s hurting him!” Orion raged at my side.

His hand gripped my arm and my eyes snapped open to see the blue light spark and almost catch fire at his touch. He bellowed, his grief giving way to pain as he pulled his hand away.

Blue flames clung to his skin and he fell back, writhing on the ground next to me, screaming in pain.

It was then that I understood the benefit of my condition, I’d never felt the damage the blue fire could do and by the sounds of Orion’s screams, I never wanted to.

I enjoyed the fact that it hurt him though, he’d effectively destroyed my life in one short impulsive moment of revenge. I wanted him to hurt, I wanted him to burn.

Orion scrambled back, leaving me alone with Cairo once more. My failing attempts to heal the shredded heart tissue threatening to wash me under a tide of sorrow. I tried, god, goddess, I fucking tried, but nothing helped. Every time I knit his muscle together, a new leak sprung and the blood kept pumping out. Each beat took him closer to the other side, and there was nothing I could do.

I finally had to stop trying, I had nothing left. I had drained myself in my attempts to revive him, and I was on the verge of collapse myself.

Milan and Paris appeared on either side of me, flanking me, begging me to do something.

“I can’t,” I said, my voice no more than a hoarse whisper. “I don’t have anything left to use.”

“It’s my fault, I took all your powers,” Paris cried and begged Cairo to come back.

I didn’t have the energy to reassure her, to offer her comfort. I had nothing.

I was silent as I lay on the ground next to him, my face close to his. I drew as much power from the earth as I could at that point, just to keep him with me even a few moments longer. Even half a second was an eternity for me, half a second more with the only man I’d ever love.

His mouth tried to move, but he was too far gone at that point to talk. His eyes found mine and I knew then that he was lost to me, and I felt my heart slowly disintegrating.

It didn’t shatter as I’d expected it to, but it felt like a slow flaying, somebody stripping it apart piece by piece until there was nothing left but stone.

I talked him to his death, told him the things I would tell our son about his father, how I would honour his memory and live my life thinking of him...and how Brigid had promised I would find him again.