Page 24 of Dark & Darker Still (Vane and Roc: Origin)

Twenty-Three

Vane

Death comes for us all. A fact that cannot be argued. Both my mother and father are dead. I have stood over their corpses shoved into velvet-lined boxes while a string quartet played in the background and a crowd of mourners murmured their condolences.

I am familiar with death. And I thought I was above it.

Because losing my parents didn’t break me.

No matter how many people came by and shook my hand and tried to hug me, who told me the grief would fade and I would heal, I couldn’t summon the right amount of heartbreak to understand what it was they were saying.

My mother had been ill most of her life. A side effect of marrying and birthing monsters, no doubt.

And my father betrayed everything we were.

Did I feel the loss of them? Yes. Did I grieve them? Not really.

So, I thought I was immune to the trauma of death.

But I forgot one very important thing.

Love .

Deep down, I didn’t love my parents.

But Lainey…

I haven’t moved in five days.

I am hollow.

I can’t seem to summon the energy to act like I’m alive when my sister is dead and all I want is to be dead with her.

Everything hurts, including my soul. It hurts in a way I didn’t think possible.

But festering beneath the hurt is rage. And I think it’s the rage that is keeping my heart beating and my lungs expanding.

It’s there, the fury, just simmering beneath the surface.

I pour Roc and myself a fresh glass of bourbon. There is an ashtray on the table between us, full of stubbed-out cigarettes. We’ve been semi-drunk for the last several days. We’ve barely spoken. What the fuck is there to say?

How did this happen?

We are so careful with our time.

As boys, our father hammered into us the most important precept:

Do not murder the time lest you devour everything in your wake.

It essentially means that we are meant to keep time alive beside us, honor it, and nurture it like a god. Because without the time, we can’t control our monstrous insides.

How did Roc let time slip away? How could he be so reckless?

Maybe we are more like our father than either of us wants to admit.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, almost like he’s been reading my mind.

The question has been running through my head for days. So, I suppose the answering of it without me asking is no surprise.

“I know,” I answer and drown my rage in the bourbon.

The fuzzier I get, the less it hurts. I may just spend the rest of my life drunk.

Our sister was all we had.

Everything good about us.

Gone.

A breath stutters up my throat and I swallow it down, bite back the tears that are always threatening to overtake me.

“I’m going to kill them,” I hear myself saying.

Roc stretches out his legs, propping them on the chair beside him. “How? They know what we are. They had mercury-filled bullets. We’re fucked.”

I light another cigarette. “I’ll find a way.”

A door opens further in the apartment.

Alice emerges from her room.

We’ve barely seen her in the days since?—

A lump wedges in my throat.

When I think of Lainey too closely, I see her lying in a pool of her own blood.

What they did to her?—

My eyes well up again and I sniff them back.

Alice is pale. Bedraggled. Somehow, in just a few days, she seems to have lost several pounds, making her more gaunt than usual. Her face is splotchy, her eyes bloodshot, as if the only thing she’s done is cry.

“The funeral is tomorrow,” I tell her. “You should shower.”

She steps forward, her gaze cast to the floor. She won’t look at us.

“I’m going after her.”

“Who?” Roc says.

Alice finally looks up. “Lainey.”

Roc and I share a look.

Alice is one of the few spades from Wonderland who has control over the dead.

Though control is giving her too much credit.

She can raise corpses from the ground, mostly only on full moons, and usually only for an hour at most. Sometimes I think she can hear the dead too, because she’ll get this vacant look on her face like she’s listening to something only she can hear.

But bring someone back from the dead?

Impossible.

“There is nothing to go after,” Roc reminds her. “Lainey is dead, and I don’t really want to see my sister as a walking dead corpse.”

She licks her lips. A tear spills over her eyelid and runs down the globe of her cheek. “Lainey has Wonderland blood in her veins. Which means when her spirit passed over, it went to the Underland.”

I snort. “Are you mad?”

“I saw her.” Her mouth is a trembling line.

“You think you saw her.”

“No. I saw her, Vane. I know I did.”

“You had just been knocked out by the butt of a gun, Al and then knocked out again by blood magic. You were probably concussed.”

“You’re not listening to me.”

I shove my chair back and lurch to my feet. “You’re not listening to me. There is no Underland. There is no afterlife for us. When we die, that’s it. We’re gone. Our sister is dead. She’s not coming back!”

Alice blinks rapidly and a river of tears streams down her face.

She says nothing to my outburst. She just nods and walks away.

I look over at Roc. “Say something. Was I wrong?”

His eyes are heavy. He’s still splayed out between two chairs at the dining room table.

“Lainey is dead.” He sets his feet to the floor and slowly gets up. “And nothing will change that. You were right to talk some sense into Alice. That’s not hope. It’s delusion. And I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”