My first official act as Luna would be an execution.
Gardenia waited in the basement.
Gabel went with me, but only to observe. I was the Luna. The discipline of she-wolves was my concern now. One that Gabel was very glad to hand over to me. He didn't know what to do with a female who needed rough handling. They mystified him, as if it didn't occur to him females could behave just as badly as males.
Hix, however, didn't care about handling anyone roughly, and had shackled Gardenia in the basement. She slumped against the concrete wall. The shackles held her hands above her head, but she was able to kneel. She trembled from the burning agony of the silver insets on the leather shackles. The leather was a torment: while the silver prevented shifting, you could (in theory) chew through them. The moment the silver components were ingested (unavoidable), it made things so much worse.
It was a way for a wolf to kill themself. An option given to those who didn't need to be kept around for questioning or spectacle, but for whom death was a certainty.
Hix had given Gardenia the option of ending her life herself, at her choosing. How appropriately Hix.
Gardenia raised her head when we approached. Her skin was translucent and blue-tinged, her eyes haloed in purple darkness, bruises forming on tender flesh as the silver poison caused tiny capillaries and blood vessels to rupture. Hatred and fight still burned in her blue eyes.
What a damn waste.
She could have been so much more. Even now she was still full of fight, and wouldn't quit, even with silver eating away at her cardiovascular system and poisoning her brain.
I had to respect that, even if I also had to destroy her. She and I couldn't exist in the same world.
Her gaze moved to Gabel, then slowly back to me.
"This is the end." I told her.
She looked at Gabel again, this time she didn't look away.
Gabel said nothing.
Gardenia believed she could have had Gabel. She believed she had been denied.
My vision shimmered, and the RedWater Ghosts, their coats fading now from the tawny they had been in life, to a white like fresh snow powder, came to me. The pair of them stepped over to Gardenia, sniffing her, the sparkling tips of their hairs drawing strange blue tendrils from Gardenia's skin.
Long training forced the shock away from my mind. This was a new trick.
The blue tendrils drifted towards the sparkling tips as they sniffed her all over. Gardenia seemed unaware, Gabel unmoving behind me.
My awareness teetered on the edge of a realization, like my toes just over the edge of the cliff. The tendrils moved and swayed like marsh grasses massaged by a gentle current. The two RedWater Ghosts sat down and stared at Gardenia, the blue tendrils drifting over their fur-tips.
No. She hadn't wanted Gabel. She had wanted power, and she had pursued it even to death.
She tore her gaze away from Gabel, back to me, and hissed at me like a pit viper.
In a weird way, I had to admire her. Even now she refused to give in. Flint was right about the courage of females. A male would have broken by now, but not Gardenia, and I understood it. The same reason I had fought the Bond, and punished my body just to punish Gabel. It hadn't mattered how much it had hurt. Unlike her, I hadn't been willing to die for it, and there was a point at which I had always stopped. Death was the easy way out of a Bond.
Death was the ultimate price for a failed grasp at power.
And Gardenia had failed.
She could have chosen differently, amassed her own power and prestige without trying to siphon it off a male. Pathetic. I had even given her prestige on a platter, she could have played along with the decoy story and give herself some value, but no. Not good enough for her.
"I gave you every chance," I told her, "I even gave you the chance to help this pack by playing along that you were a decoy to tease out traitors. But you just had to chase power with the maw between your legs."
She hissed at me, "Fuck you, Luna. I know what Gabel did to me, how he touched me."
The tendrils faded from white-blue to a pinkish brown tinge. The ghosts still didn't move, only the tendrils changed their shade. She was lying. Still lying! What did she think, I'd suddenly believe her if she clung to her story? "He never touched you. He used you, and if you had any quality you'd have realized he was never going to touch you, and he was using you. But you just chased the lure without question."
"So you've forgiven him, hmm?" she sneered at me.
"No, and I never will. It's a badly set bone and some days it will ache, but most days I won't give it a thought."
She curled her lips at me. "I'll make sure you think about it all the damn time."
"Good luck with that. You won't be here. You're a rabid bitch and too dangerous to let live."
Her blue eyes narrowed, and the blue tinge under them deepened as her pulse increased and her blood pressure shot up, causing the leaky vessels to deteriorate faster. "You can't execute me. I'm pregnant."
The tendrils remained a pinkish brown. Pregnant. I didn't believe that story either. "So what? You think I want your little pup-spawn around?"
"You wouldn't execute a pregnant female," she hissed.
I scoffed. "How stupid do you think I am? You aren't pregnant. That silver would have started a miscarriage within hours."
Silver attacked our brains and cardiovascular systems. It caused placentas to breakdown and bleeding within hours, but by then the pup was usually dead from the silver passing through the cord. The loss was either the result of the pup's death, or the placenta's decay. Older, larger pups close to birth could survive if the dose was small, and ideally, if they could be delivered to separate them from the mother's contaminated blood supply.
Gardenia hadn't gotten a fatal dose of silver from the shackles, but she was bruising. If there had been a pregnancy, it should have been smeared everywhere by now.
She scowled at me.
She had been trying to get pregnant at some point, I realized. For just this reason. To bring some pup into the world, because if she couldn't have the mate she wanted, she'd trap another male.
Ug. A bastard pup.
She might have been stubborn and brave, but she was all turned around. Rabid bitch.
The tendrils faded from my vision, and the Redwater Ghosts did as well.
I turned and walked back to one of the large, floor-to-ceiling cabinets lining the wall under the stairs. One contained cleaning supplies. The other... implements that caused a shudder to go through my system.
The Moon saw none of this. Oh, She was aware of what transpired down here in this bleach-white hell, but She didn't care.
I chose a leather collar, thick and sturdy, with thin silver plates sewn on the inside. Many of the things in there I didn't know what their horrific purpose was, but this collar I could figure out just by looking. I weighed it in my hands.
Gabel watched Gardenia without sympathy or even moving, seeming not to breathe. Sensing my gaze, he turned his head towards me, ocean eyes calm.
There were easier ways to do this. I could just have Gabel do it with swift, practiced claws. But no. This was between this bitch and I, and I was the Luna of IronMoon.
I'd prove to myself I could do this.
"I'll never grovel to you." Gardenia spat at me.
"Didn't I tell you we're past that now?" I held the collar in both hands. "You seem to think it's just another punishment for you to endure, another pack going to throw you out, fine, we're all assholes and bitches, you'll go somewhere else."
She snarled, lips curling with a feral grin.
I stepped over the shallow lip into the basin of the holding pen. She tugged against her shackles, the silver burning into her wrists and she hissed as her skin burned. "Let me make it clear. You're not leaving here alive. This isn't your punishment. This is your execution."
Her blue eyes widened in horror. She yanked at the chains again. "You-you--"
I sprang forward and smashed my knee into her face. Her head snapped back and smashed into the concrete wall. Blood splattered me and the white wall from her broken nose, and she slumped, dazed against her chains. I hooked the collar around the back of her neck, and quickly slid the end through the buckle, tightening it to a snug, gagging squeeze as she clawed out of her fog. Blood gushed out of her mouth and nose, staining my hands and wrists, splattering my dress further.
The silver plates met the soft skin of her neck and sizzled. She jerked and thrashed, then gagged once.
I stepped back.
Her hands tried to claw at the collar but the shackles only allowed enough slack for her fingertips to scratch at the leather.
"This is how you die." I said. "Alone. No one knowing. No one caring. No announcement. No decree. No public reckoning. I'll tell Cook after you're dead."
She screeched.
For Gardenia there wasn't any worse punishment than dying alone and powerless, robbed of even the ability scream obscenities and lies as she died. Dying alone, forgotten, the pack not asking nor caring... that was punishment for any wolf. Even her. Especially her.
She screeched again, fingertips scratching at the latigo, tears bubbling out of her eyes and the bruising spreading in a blue spiderweb as the stress collapsed more of her blood vessels.
In her weakened state the silver plates would cause fatal bleeding soon. She'd be in a fog within half an hour, and dead within half a day at most. For most of it, she wouldn't suffer or even be aware. Some might say she deserved to suffer horribly, but suffering would have given her a leather strap to bite down on, a chain to throw herself again. Simply being stopped, without an audience to give a damn about her, that was the real punishment for her.
"He'll never love you. He'll always think of me." she gasped.
The cold, cruel resolve within me didn't hesitate or second guess or even pay her any mind.
Gabel turned and went to the steps.
I gave Gardenia one last, distant look.
We didn't look back.
#
Going through Gardenia's things wasn't how I wanted to spend my day, but just in case she was up to something more sinister than just being a worthless sack of skin, I needed to know. She didn't have her own room: she had shared a large room on the third floor with two of her little toadies.
I showered and changed prior to going up there, and they jumped up as I entered. I had no specific issue with either of them, they had just been Platinum's little thralls, and had never had the courage to do anything on their own, or stand up to her.
Well, if she shared a room, chances were I wouldn't find anything of interest.
"Are you looking for something, La--Luna?" one of them asked as I upended a shoebox of mementos on Platinum's unmade bed.
A pang hit me: she'd never sleep in it again. It'd never get made. The sheets would just get stripped off, bleached, remade, and one day another wolf would sleep here.
It hit me, hard.
But at the same time: what had she thought was going to happen? She had always gotten away with this behavior before, so why not again?
Save this was IronMoon.
No matter how necessary it was, I had still done it, without no hesitation, no feeling, no remorse. My hands hadn't even had the decency to shake.
Nothing. Just nicknacks, like little plastic barrettes, hair scunchies, jewelry, hair things, endless makeup, nail polish, filing boards. There were large notebooks that I thought at first were journals, but when I opened them, they were cut outs and print outs from magazines of dresses, makeup, hair styles, accessories, party favors. The scent of her lifted off the pages.
I looked around the room, felt under the bed, between the mattresses, moved the little vanity to peer behind it, looking for anything that might suggest Gardenia had been more than she had appeared to be, that she had done something with her stubborn determination, avarice and ambition.
But she apparently hadn't.
A waste.
A complete waste.
#
"Buttercup." Gabel came into my workroom. "What are you doing here?"
I looked up from my place, slumped against the wall by the windows. "Sitting."
He crouched down next to me, elbows on his knees.
I had done it, without hesitation, feeling or remorse. My hands hand't even had the decency to shake. I had a sore spot on my knee from where I had broken her nose, and I didn't even care. She was probably down there right now, the Hounds on their way for her, and I didn't even care. I cared that I didn't care.
"You didn't flinch when it counted, buttercup."
I rubbed my head again. The tendrils. The RedWater Ghosts. I put my head on my knees and sighed. My head hurt.
"Don't tell me it gets easier, Gabel."
Here I was crying over Gardenia! I hated her, she was ruin encased in flesh, and I was still crying over something, for some stupid reason.
"I've never found it difficult, so I won't say that. You did what had to be done."
"It's that it had to be done at all! That stupid bloodsucker!"
"Is that what's upsetting you?"
I heaved a huge sigh. "I don't know. Maybe it's that I didn't hesitate."
"This is a good thing."
"And we still have her mess. Thanks for the legacy, Platinum."
But she was gone now. Her memory would linger for a few years, a weapon too powerful for our enemies to resist. Enough of a doubt, that there had been an unthinkable indiscretion on Gabel's part.
An ambitious wolf (of either sex) trying to seduce a more powerful wolf was nothing new. And if it had only ever been Platinum crowing to the sky, no one would have believed her. But Gabel had given the rumor flesh, and now there would always be a blood stain.
But I was the Luna, Platinum had disgraced herself and been executed justly. I had won.
Won a fight that I was always going to win, that was stupid and pointless and I hadn't been able to prevent from going to this final conclusion.
"No comment on how I should just be able to deal with it, Gabel?"
"You did deal with it."
"And it was a stupid reason to spill blood!"
"Stupid is one of the best reasons. There is too much stupid."
"Then I should have cut off your balls for causing all this! That was stupid."
Gabel hadn't thought of it that way. Then he said "Check and mate, buttercup. But, I learned the error of my ways. She kept right on with her doomed ambitions."
Good point. I dredged up a smile for him.
"Gardenia no longer merits thought, not that she ever merited much at all." Gabel went on, "What does merit thought is I haven't heard from the MarchMoon yet."
/******
Peeps!
I have to go to the dentist today. Booo. :( This makes me terribly sad. In fact, I hit "publish" right before I left, so if you're reading this right after it went live, I'm probably sitting in a dentist chair.
At least she doesn't discourage me from drinking coffee! I had a dentist once who was like "drink only water" and I'm like "... we can't be friends."
So because I am playing Book Roulette and reading physical books (and my husband has a fit if I dog ear pages) I was using my sticky page-markers (I have some adorable ones I got from Japan last fall, they're on my blog if you want to see) but wasn't really getting the job done. They tended to fall (not so sticky!) and were little.
I needed some real bookmarks. And for the record: my husband doesn't use bookmarks OR dog-ear pages, so I have NO IDEA how he keeps track of where he is in a book. Like... none. He just... does.
Anyway. Back to the bookmarks. As I was browsing Amazon looking for some pretty bookmarks, I had some VAGUE recollection of having some very old bookmarks from my childhood that followed me when I moved out of my parents' house in 2001.
So I was like, "Do I still have those?" There was only one place they'd be if I had them, so I dug it out, and THEY WERE THERE. Three of them: 2 from the 90s, and the 1 from the 80s, minus its cheesy tassel, which has been lost somewhere.
The one from the 80s has a bit of a story behind it: when I was 9, I read a book by Mary Stanton (yes, the Unicorns of Balinor author) called Piper At the Gate. I bought it knowing it was a sequel, and when I finished it, I HAD to have the first book, The Heavenly Horse From The Outermost West, which was not on the shelf. Back in the day, when this happened, you had to special order the book. When it came in 2 months later (no joke) I also got this bookmark to go with it.
There. Long story. :P
Cheers-
Merry
(Sort of sentimental pantster)
*****/