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Cathy

I’m buried inside my own mind. I can see through my own eyes but distantly, not directly. As if the picture of what’s happening outside is being broadcast to my consciousness.

I have no arms or hands. No legs. No tongue or teeth or lungs.

I am bodiless again. This is another kind of death, more dreadful than any of the deaths I’ve felt before because this life was mine.

For years I battled for autonomy, for power over my limbs and lungs, and to have them stolen like this is a travesty.

The death god’s large, cold hands have closed over mine on the steering wheel, and he’s inside me, a violation I can hardly bear, even as he tries to numb me into acceptance.

There’s no physical agony, but I know that he’s plucking at my nerves like puppet strings, rearranging my skeleton, unstitching my flesh.

No amount of weeping could relieve this sense of loss.

I did it for Heathcliff. And I would do it again a thousand times over. But inside, in the muted hush of my own consciousness, I am mourning.

Daisy and Gatsby are here, with their friends.

I know this, and I can hear everything they say, but my thoughts are dim and clouded, muffled as if Cernunnos laid a thick, heavy layer of cotton over my mind.

He doesn’t want to talk to me or bother with me right now.

I’m supposed to sit quietly in the back seat until he’s ready to notice me again.

My will is a flicker somewhere deep in my soul. Suffocated, nearly snuffed out, just like at Aunt Nellie’s house. I want to coax it out again, to feed it into a wild bonfire, but I’m weighed down, wilted. Everything is fuzzy and nebulous, and I’m only sinking further into the stifling stillness.

Why do they stifle me over and over?

Cathy. A voice pierces the cottony depths like a golden blade, clearer than the other mumbling voices from outside. They’re foggy and distant because I’m not in control of my ears—but this one is sharp and bright as a dagger.

I know that tone. I recognize the way it echoes painfully in my mind. It’s Daisy.

I hate the sensation of her voice—it grates against my nerves, nails on a chalkboard.

But I welcome it, too, because it’s like a hot knife slicing through a thick sheet of ice, breaking it up.

The jarring force of her tone knocks me out of sync with Cernunnos, and for a second, I can control the body we share—a response to the keen clarity of Daisy’s voice.

My body responds with a compulsive shudder.

My body. Mine.

Cernunnos seizes control again, but I can still hear Daisy. She’s telling me about Cernunnos, about his past. My bloodline does not belong only to him, to a male who would crush and confine me, but to the one goddess he could never tame. The Morrigan.

Cathy. Daisy’s voice reverberates through my darkness. You are a daughter of Fate herself, and I command you, in the name of the Morrigan, to fight.

Cernunnos addresses me then, sharply, a disembodied voice in my consciousness. “We had a deal, child. Your lover’s restoration in exchange for my residence in this body. A bargain with one of the Tuatha Dé Danann is not easily broken.”

Terror turns me cold. “If I break the bargain, will Heathcliff die?”

“He has been restored, and that cannot be undone. But I can always kill him again, in some new way. And I will as a penalty for your faithlessness.”

“They’re making you another body,” I reply. “You heard what they said. You can see Baz’s mind—is she telling the truth? Can she craft you a new form?”

He hesitates. “I cannot see everything in their minds—only their attitude toward me and the nature of their abilities. Baz’s gift is unfamiliar.

I cannot discern its limits, and I will not trust it.

I prefer the flesh and blood I now possess—bones I can build upon, blood I can use to fuel my greater form. ”

Cathy, you will fight. I demand it , Daisy says.

Like oxygen fed to a flame, the words strengthen the flicker of willpower I have left, and it rises higher, brighter.

“My blood. My bones,” I tell Cernunnos. “I am not your fuel or your amusement.”

“And I am your god, not some market vendor with whom you can bargain. Sit quietly while I get rid of these complications.” His consciousness veers away from mine, roaring outward in a great pulse of wind.

Cathy , Daisy persists. Your will is more powerful than you know.

Baz is drawing the god’s portrait. Once the portrait is complete, it should leave her tablet and appear in physical form.

Cernunnos has already absorbed your blood through the sacrifice, so this plan should work.

Baz did it once before with Manannán, but she’s not descended from Cernunnos, so she can’t complete the process alone.

You have to push Cernunnos out, press him to enter his new form.

I can help you. Together, we will overcome him.

Her words are interspersed by loud protests from Cernunnos.

He’s shouting over her, over the wind, his voice swirling both inside my head and throughout the church.

“She’s lying. The bitch is lying… There is no such magic.

Your human technology and your science do not work with the old gifts.

They are not compatible. It’s not possible. ”

Through the layers Cernunnos has wrapped around my mind, I can see what he’s doing to Gatsby and the others.

He’s hurling pulses of crushing wind at them, whipping them with vines, thrashing with ponderous limbs, and stabbing with spear-like claws.

But I also see a hazy glow around the women.

Baz and Daisy each form their own locus of power, while the men defend them.

My vision becomes clearer, as if I’m stepping nearer to a window. I’m closer to seeing properly through my own eyes.

Enough , says Daisy. Cathy, it’s enough. All of it. Time to rise up.

“Enough,” I echo, and suddenly I feel my lungs again, my throat, my lips.

My mouth is bleeding at the corners, and the pain is so sharp that I almost retreat.

It’s comfortable inside Cernunnos. My senses were dulled, and I felt the loss of control, but there was no physical pain.

And I have suffered so much pain in my life—the physical pain of exposure, wounds to my body as I wandered…

the lashing of branches and the tearing of thorns.

Rocks bruising my feet. My father’s drunken blows.

The inner torment of grief upon grief, cracking me open, spilling my blood and tears for people I didn’t even know.

I don’t want to endure all that again.

“It’s too much for you to handle,” Cernunnos says softly.

Outside, in the church, he’s still roaring at the others, demanding their worship, but he’s in here, too, speaking to me intimately, quietly.

“Let me be your safety. I will filter the world for you. You will have all the pleasant sensations and none of the terrible ones. No more tears, or screams, or wandering. No more sharing grief that isn’t yours.

You will teach me all the ways of the world, and as a part of myself, you will never die.

You will experience wonders with me, and you will never need to weep again. ”

It’s tempting. More tempting than I want to admit.

Some people might agree to that life, to the absence of pain. I wouldn’t blame them. Not one bit.

But I have always pushed against the boundaries that were set for me, even when it hurt.

And since I met Heathcliff, I have fully come to life.

Staying blanketed and protected inside Cernunnos would mean giving up all freedom—giving up the beautiful anguish of being human, the aching joy of experiencing the world with Heathcliff.

Whatever pain I have to endure, no existence could be satisfying without him .

“My life has been wretched at times,” I say. “But it’s mine, and I’ll be damned if I let you have it.”

I feel the surge of Cernunnos’s anger. But I’m awake again.

I’m not a cringing little soul in the back of his mind or a drugged sleeper in Aunt Nellie’s guest room.

No matter how much it hurts, I won’t dull this pain.

I will take it like a woman, like a fucking goddess, and I’ll get past it, like I always have.

Maybe I’ll die doing it—maybe the pieces of me are separated beyond repair—but death is better than prison.

All I care about is Heathcliff, alive …and myself, mistress of my own fate.

I swallowed a god, and I can spit him back out.

My consciousness expands, and I find my eyes, my mouth, my voice. Two words. “I’m ready.”

Daisy hears me, and she smiles, showing her fangs.

Above the wind, above the thunder of Cernunnos’s protests, above Heathcliff’s roar of defiance and the snarling of the vampires, I hear Daisy’s voice, clear as a bell. “Baz, time to sign off!”

“Got it!” Baz shouts back without looking up from her tablet.

“I have died a hundred deaths before this one.” My voice is mine, but it’s blended with Cernunnos’s deep tones as he fights for control. “I know you, and I do not fear you. This is my body, not yours. My will, not yours. I no longer consent to your presence here.”

Cernunnos hisses, our shared body rising taller, shadows condensing into a dozen more arms, antlers expanding. But I can feel something else now—another will, separate from mine or his, tugging at him. Drawing out his spirit.

The god panics. Wrenches control back from me, bellows, “No!” and sends everything he’s got toward Baz in one destructive maelstrom.

Gatsby takes a clawed fist straight to the gut. It punches right through him, then yanks back, leaving a gaping hole in his stomach.

He chokes and staggers, collapsing into the aisle.

Daisy screams and falls to her knees beside him. She rips at her own wrist, then shoves her bloodied arm desperately against his mouth.

Vines coil around the other two vampires, binding them together. They’re lifted higher, higher, while the vines constrict their bodies.