#hecate my beloved. she came. she went. she came back at the very end.

[tuxxydo]

the only thing that makes me sad is that about pre-hellboy hellboy comics is that we'll never see hecate unless it's her from like morbillion years ago.

[embklitzke]

Awakenings - Book Six - Chapter 2

The world ended on an August Sunday.  This is the story of some of those who survived the end of everything.

Two

               The door creaked softly open and she stirred, fingers bunching in the fabric of the pillowcase, immediately tense.  This wasn’t home and she knew that, though the bed smelled of him and it was comfortably dark, the room small and snug. Hecate reached for her magic but it eluded her, slipping through her fingers like the trailing edge of cloth, as if someone were walking away too quickly and she couldn’t move quickly enough to stop them.

               Then she heard the sound of his tread, his breathing, and relaxed.  The door clicked quietly closed behind him, keys jangling as he set them down.

               “Are you all right?” she asked in a whisper.

               “I don’t know,” Matt said, a chair creaking as he sat down to take off his boots.  “I’m sorry I woke you.”

               “I was already awake,” she said, peeking out from the nest of blankets to watch him in the dimness.  “I heard you leave earlier.  It was hard getting back to sleep.”

               He winced.  “Sorry.”

               “It’s all right.”  She studied him for a long moment, the way red and gold strands caught what little light there was in the room, the curve of his jaw, strong but not too sharp.  Her fingers curled inward, fingertips brushing against the bandage wrapped around her hand.  The place where he’d cut her palm for the binding still ached, though it was a comforting ache, not like the pain in her side.  The pain in her hand was born of love.  The pain in her side had been born of hate.

               “I went up to the forge,” he said.  “I just felt like I needed to.  I’d left so much unfinished, I needed to make sure that—that—”

               “That everything was the way you’d left it,” she whispered.  His shoulders slumped slightly and he nodded, his hands falling limply between his knees, his boots unlaced now but still on his feet.

               Slowly, he rose, working his boots off, and crossed the floor to the bed.  “This is still my home.”

               “I know,” she said, reaching a hand out for him as he sank down onto the edge of the bed next to her.  His fingers laced through hers, squeezing gently.  “I don’t want to take you from it.”

               I’m just afraid.

               He looked down at her and reached down with his own bandage-wrapped hand to brush her hair back from her face.  The fond smile on his face made her heart miss a beat and she smiled back, though weakly.

               Her smile faded.  “None of this should have happened the way it did, Matt.  I handled it badly.”

               “I’m not sure what choice you had,” he admitted, looking away.  He stared at the door, at their jackets hung up there.  The hole in hers had been stitched up, though she could still see the faint stain where it had been soaked with blood—her blood.

               If Pluton had managed to get it an inch higher, or an inch over...

               “What are you thinking about?” Matt asked, his voice quiet.  She winced.

               “Nothing that I should be, probably,” she admitted. She inched closer to him, trying to conceal the pain that wrapped around her midsection as she moved.  Healing would be slow—she knew that.  It was a price she was willing to pay this time, though. What they had managed to do was worth every extra minute, every extra hour, every extra day, week...it was worth all of it.

               I killed a god of death before he could kill me.

               Matt stayed quiet for a few long moments.  If he’d noticed any change in her expression from the pain moving had caused, he didn’t show any sign.  He just stared at nothing for the space of a few heartbeats before he said, “My sister’s looking forward to finally meeting you.”

               Hecate startled a little at the news.  “Really?”

               He nodded, seeming thoughtful.  “She was up at the forge when I got there.  Said she’d needed to stretch her legs, but I think she was mostly there because she was looking for me.  She kind of admitted to that.”

               “She was worried about you?”

               “A little,” he admitted.  “Not as worried as I thought she would be, though.”  He lapsed into silence again, but looked down at her afterwards.  “I really think she meant it.”

               “Meant what?”

               “That she’s looking forward to meeting you.” One corner of his mouth tugged upward in a now-familiar smile.  “Said you must be something special.”

               She blushed and burrowed deeper under the blankets, vainly trying to hide the mixture of pleasure and embarrassment that washed through her at the thought.  She was flattered, that was for certain, but there was also worry there.

               It was an old worry, the same one that had plagued her for centuries, one she’d never quite seemed to be able to escape no matter how hard she tried.  She’d always feared that somehow she wasn’t good enough.

               What if Marin Astoris decided that she wasn’t good enough for her beloved brother?

               “Hey,” Matt murmured, lifting the blanket to peek beneath it, seeking her face in the shadows.  “What’s wrong?”

               “Nothing,” she said, though the answer came a little too quickly for him to believe her—she knew it, too, even without seeing the slight shift in his expression, the flicker of worry in his eyes.  She stopped just shy of sucking in a breath, not wanting to further betray her nerves.

               Please don’t ask.  Please don’t ask.

               He hesitated a second too long before he sighed. “All right,” he said.  “But if you—”

               “It’s not really anything worth worrying about,” she said—and meant it.  “Just baggage.  Shit I should have let go of a long time ago and...didn’t.  In my defense, I never really had much opportunity to work through it, though.”

               Matt nodded slowly, then leaned down to kiss her gently.  “As long as you’re sure.”

               She wasn’t, but she was more than halfway there and didn’t want to let her uncertainty win this time.  “I’ll be okay,” she said, then smiled weakly.  He brushed her hair back from her face again and smiled back.

               “Promise?”

               Hecate nodded.  “I promise.”

               Those words, at least, were true.

                 “Phelan?”

               Phelan turned at the sound of Marin’s voice, blinking. “What are you doing up?”  He winced as soon as the words had left his mouth, wishing he could take them back.  I could have phrased that better, more gently.  She’s not an invalid.  “Sorry. Come on.  I was just starting breakfast.”

               Shoving her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt, Marin nodded, moving slowly to sit down on one of the hewn benches near the cooking fire.  She chewed her lower lip, watching Phelan as he poured some water from the kettle over the fire.  He could feel the weight of her gaze, sensed that something was amiss.

               Let her find the words, he thought as he slipped some tea into the cup, setting it down on the stones ringing the fire to steep as he prepared a second mug of the stuff.  Whatever’s bothering her, she came to talk to me about it, right?  If she’d already chosen her words, she’d have blurted them out by now.

               His stomach sank at the idea that something was wrong—he prayed nothing was wrong.  He’d slept the previous day away, recovering from the magic he’d called and the multiple assaults Thesan had launched on him.  This morning had been better, and Jacqueline hadn’t stopped him when he’d given her a kiss and slipped out of bed.  Phelan liked to think he knew his own limits, even if he pushed himself beyond them with alarming regularity.

               Marin still hadn’t found the words she needed when he handed her one of the mugs of tea.  He sat back on his heels, watching her as she stared down into the depths of the mug.  He cleared his throat.

               “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, leannán.”

               A bitter laugh escaped her and she shook her head.  “It’s not that.  You need to know.  If I don’t tell you I’m not sure who else is going to help me figure out what this means.”

               His brows shot up and she glanced up at him, chewing on her lower lip.

               “Something tried to get into the barrow,” she said. “And Matt and I can’t figure out what it was.”

               “Something or someone?” he asked, forcing his voice to remain steady.  His mind reeled, shuffling through the possibilities rapidly. It was too much to hope for that it had been Pluton and his ilk, which would have meant the threat, though real two days ago, was ended now.  Once he would have wondered if it was Hecate’s doing, but he was confident that it wouldn’t be her, not now—perhaps it never would or could have been.

               “We’re not even sure of that.”  Marin bit her lip, her fingers tightening around her mug. “He had a feeling, so we went.  He was up at the forge this morning.”  She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as if to steady herself before she continued.  “Something was digging in the dirt, with bare hands and claws and probably shovels, but it doesn’t look like they stuck around for very long either way. They didn’t get too deep, but it was like they were trying to undermine the wardings somehow.”

               A shudder racked him.

               Not good. Not good at all.

               “It could be anything,” he murmured. “Anyone.”

               Just what we need, right?

               He closed his eyes.

               “I’ll have a look,” he rasped after a moment, feeling sick to his stomach.

               “Alone?”

               “If it comes to that,” he said, shaking his head. “I doubt it will.  I’ll take Thordin or Seamus.  Someone.”

               Hopefully one of them will have more insight.

               Why didn’t I sense anything?

               He sat down heavily next to Marin, chewing on his lower lip, the mug of tea he’d started brewing for himself sitting abandoned on the stones around the fire.  She leaned against him and he shivered despite the warmth of the fire, reaching to wrap his arm around her tightly.

               “What do you think it is?” she whispered.

               “I don’t know,” he said.  “But we’ll figure it out.”

               “Matt said the same thing.”

               Phelan closed his eyes again.  “Well, he’s right.  We’ll figure it out.  And then we’ll figure out how to stop whoever or whatever it is.  Once I get out there, I might be able to sense something familiar if it’s someone I’ve gone toe-to-toe with before—and if I drag Seamus along, he might be able to do the same thing.  We’ll just have to see.  I’ll go out there later, when the mist burns off.”

               “What would they want our dead for, Phelan?”

               He shook his head.  “I don’t want to think about it, leannán, and neither do you.  It doesn’t matter, anyway.  They won’t get them.  Whatever they’re planning won’t come to anything.”

               She set aside her mug and hugged her knees to her chest.  Phelan’s lips thinned.

               “I promise,” he added, his stomach twisting.

               She looked up at him.  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Phelan.”

               “I try not to.”

               The words tasted like ashes.

                 He didn’t wait for Seamus or Thordin, or for the mists to burn off.  Barely half an hour passed before Phelan took his leave of Marin and the fire, leaving her in Tala’s company to cook breakfast.  He stopped only to pick up his staff and his satchel of herbs on his way out to the bridge.  Jacqueline was absent; probably checking on Cariocecus before she, too, made her way to the fire.

               Is it one of Vammatar’s sisters, finally coming for revenge?  A new gambit of Leviathan’s?  Was it Pluton and his array, or something else?  Thesan?

               A shiver crept down his spine that had nothing to do with the misty rain.

               One way or another, he was going to find out, no matter what it took or how much it took out of him to do it.

               His fingers tightened around the strap of his satchel as he crossed through the ward-lines and headed down toward the bridge. Nothing felt odd or strange as he passed through them, which was minor reassurance and nothing more.

               I don’t always sense things coming anyway.  Nothing should reassure me anymore.

               Even the ley lines felt settled, though, as he crossed the bridge at a brisk pace.  Something about that set off alarm bells that were probably born of nothing more than paranoia, started to make that feeling that all was as it should be feel even more like an illusion, something designed to lull him—to lull all of them—into a false sense of security.

               Or had the storm really passed and it really was only his paranoia?

               I’m finally losing my mind, he decided as he forged onward.  The aching silence of the empty plaza weighed on him.

               No. There must be something.

               I should have woken Seamus or Thordin and dragged them along.  Maybe both.

               Probably both.

               Phelan steeled himself and kept walking.

               The world was still strangely silent as he paused near the Shakespeare Garden, staring down through the mists toward the barrow.  From here, it seemed Marin was right; the wards protecting the barrow were intact—at least for now.

               At least they seem like they are from this distance.  What are they going to feel like when I get down there, though?

               He exhaled through his teeth and started down the hill.  Something brushed against his cheek.  For a second, Phelan’s heart seized before he caught a glimmer of blue and green and brown out of the corner of his eye.

               “Longfellow,” he muttered, shaking his head with a rueful smile.  “It’s not nice to scare me like that.”

               The faery made no reply, though Phelan knew he’d stick close.  For a second, he wondered if his presence was Carolyn’s doing, but he discarded the idea quickly.  She didn’t have any reason to send any of the faeries out this way, certainly not after him. No one knew he’d left—not so far as he knew.

               Besides, the garden used to be their home.  Maybe they’re still trying to reclaim it.  Maybe.

               If they were, he’d take it as a good sign.  That was the kind of thing they could certainly all use.

               One hand tightening around the strap of his satchel and the other firmly locked around the carved wood of his staff, Phelan resumed his trek downhill toward the expanse of grass that was the place where his friends had buried their dead nearly a year before.

               If anything, the mists felt thicker as he came to the bottom of the hill, heavier and colder.  Something plucked at his senses, pricking at the back of his mind, just elusive enough that he couldn’t quite grasp it.

               A shiver crept down his spine.

               I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

               He crouched at the edge of the barrow, his hand hovering over the broken earth without quite touching it.  His heart beat a little faster.

               Matt’s got good instincts.  Smart of him and Marin to come out here to take a look.  Phelan stared at the open ground for a moment.

               You need to touch it, he told himself.

               His hand shook a little as he slowly lowered it toward the turned dirt, bracing himself for whatever might come.

               The sensations hit like a truck.

Awakenings is a fiction serial written by Erin M. Klitzke.  It updates three times a week at http://awakenings.embklitzke.com.  Full chapters will be released here on Tumblr once a week.

Copyright 2008-2017 Erin M. Klitzke.

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