Nightlights: Guardians of the Edge

10.4: How We Win

As Malachi stared at Jehane, the cambion bird blocking the door squawked, then warned, "They come," as it hopped away from the door. A moment later, three figures moved through the door: Tainter, the wolverine cambion he called Rend, and Aya. The wolverine snarled at the bird, who looked away.

Jehane's stomach dropped out through her feet. She felt like once again she'd been so close to getting things right.

Aya put a hand on her hip. "She's not who we're looking for, Malachi." The bartender muttered something and grabbed at the gun on the bar. It clattered onto the ground behind the bar, and he ducked after it.

"Oh, my sweet," said Tainter. "Mal has a special relationship with this bit of meat. She makes him all tingly. Doesn't she, Mal? Have you been amusing yourself with her again? She doesn't look as durable as your last bit. But I know she makes you rambunctious. We could play a game. Which one of us will kill her first? Aya can be the judge."

Aya drifted over to the bar. "I've found another toy." She peered over the bar, then reached over and pulled up first the gun, which she tossed into a corner, and then the bartender. "A wise old man. Maybe he can give me advice."

Malachi reached out and pulled Jehane behind him. "You're not going to touch her." It was just like last time, except that it was suddenly a lot harder to run away. They were cornered.

"Oh, but I will. Sit down, my boy, if you're not going to play my game. Remember how your Emily didn't die? I think I still have a bit of her back home." Malachi gasped and shuddered, and Tainter continued, "You aren't strong enough. You've never been strong enough." He fidgeted with a tiny device attached to his belt, like a second buckle. "Miss Emily was your strength before, and we took that apart. Very educational, I have to say. Do you remember her cambion calling your name?"

Jehane stepped around Malachi and placed herself between them. "I'm strong enough." She wasn't, she knew she wasn't, she cried all the time-but she was used to dealing with monsters. She'd always been dealing with monsters. Her earliest memory was of a monster attached to the woman who cared for her, and how it grew bigger when she looked at it. Tainter was much more of a monster than that one had been: everything like a human, but blackened, feeding on withered bonds, the real devil.

But she wasn't going to let him hurt Malachi any more. Maybe her entire childhood had been in preparation for this.

Tainter looked at her. "Nah, you're not strong enough either."

Jehane stared at him, listening intently to his shadow music. She realized, listening to the twang of it, that he was alone. Aya had arrived with him, but their music didn't intermingle. He had no connections to anybody else that were not black, dark notes; nobody would mourn him.

She wasn't alone. Even at her darkest moments as she struggled to rise past her handicaps and escape her solitary Tower room into a world of light and life beyond, she hadn't been alone. Not since Malachi had come to the children's ward, and maybe not before, either.

The realization made her fear of Tainter melt almost entirely away. She still wanted to live, oh yes-but in Seth and his family, and in Ajax, and above all in endless Elian, she would. And in Malachi-

But Malachi wouldn't remember the Emily who had lived and laughed, only the Emily who was dead, a bleeding corpse. Tainter was doing his best to obscure the good memories with the bad, to destroy every connection Malachi had with what he once was.

"I am," she said. "I've got something you don't." She half-turned to Malachi, who was staring blankly at nothing at all. "Remember her properly, Malachi. You've got to remember Emily as she was. It will help."