Page 25 of Jackal's Pride
“You said you didn’t even know if you had one.” Her words were accusing.
“Those aren’t mine.”
Her eyebrows pinched together. “I don’t understand. You stole them?”
I laughed. “Stole them? I wish them gone. No, Maureen, the one hundred and thirty-seven are my curse.”
“One hundred and thirty-seven?”
“One hundred and thirty-seven hearts.”
I couldn’t prevent her from reaching out and palming my chest this time. Her long fingers were oddly soothing. “So many…” She said in awe. “They can’t all be in there.” She tilted her head as she studied my chest. The lavender invaded my nostrils. I let it. For now. “You said it was a curse. Like ghosts inside your chest cavity?”
“They are,” I assured her. “They haunt me every second I’m awake.”
Maureen’s features softened. The hard edges of her venom I was so acquainted with dissipated and I saw something new—something less harsh. Something almost forgiving.
“They’re the reason you want to go back to sleep.” I swallowed yet admitted nothing. “Why are you cursed?”
“I released a plague on a witch’s village. Back then, villages weren’t huge because humanity was spread out all over the world. The settlement I wiped out was considered big back then… One hundred and thirty-seven people died because of my disease. The witch cursed me with all of them.”
“She wanted you to feel their pain and agony?”
It was suddenly hard to admit to her that I was a being incapable of emotions. That it was only now that I could feel like a human. I wanted nothing more than to not have them again, but the thought of Maureen knowing that I couldn’t process passions and excitements… For some reason, I did not want her to know.
“Yes, she wanted me to understand what they went through.”
She dropped her hand. “Well, do you?”
“She made sure of that.”
“You don’t understand completely.” Her shoulders slumped. She turned away from me. I didn’t like it. I was starting to see that there were a great many things that I did not like. Maureen’s disappointment was one of those things.
She faded without another word, and I was left to follow her into the human world. “How so?” I growled the moment I ported to her.
I stiffened as my senses went haywire. Strange fumes filled the air, blaring noises chased one another, and everything was so loud. I tore my gaze from her and took in my surroundings. This was the human world? I didn’t recognize it. The smoke came from all the things moving on their own. The buildings were enormous. Some were made of mostly crystal and transparent while others were shiny.
“Some places are worse than this,” she whispered. I was still trying to figure out what was wrong. I sensed nothing to give me a clue.
Maureen faded again, and I followed. I knew what she meant the moment I stepped in the sick-place beside her. The disease was everywhere. This sickness was nothing like what I enacted. Maureen passed through a door like a ghost. Curiosity overwhelmed my irritation as she dragged me around. She stopped at the bed of an elderly man. His body, barely clinging to life, was riddled with illness. The rancid smell of failing organs filled my nostrils. It was already rotting the man. His flesh was pale except for the festering yellow blisters all over his skin. “This is a hospital—in case you’re not familiar with the word it’s a ward for the sick… They’re calling it the second Black Death—a highly contagious virus. They haven’t found a vaccine, and it’s not responding to antibiotics. Nothing works. Humans don’t understand that the disease isn’t supposed to be cured.” She crossed her arms, lips in a flat, somber expression. She lifted her gaze to mine. “The end, you might say, is already here. Soon, this will be everywhere.” Her eyes softened. “Reapers can’t fight this kind of enemy.”
The worldwasending. Maureen did not seem like the kind of creature to admit that she couldn’t do something. For that, I gave the man a second glimpse in the bed. “Let me guess, you want me to try to cure him?”
She exhaled. “I’m asking first.”
All so that they could keep their eternal lives? “You want to live that badly?” I jeered.
“Yes, I want to live!” She dropped her arms and stepped closer.
Lavender pulled me in. Every time she came close, that scent momentarily snagged my thoughts, rendering me useless. Fortunately, the invasion lasted mere seconds.
“Not only that,” Maureen continues, “but this world we’re in right now, is filled with so many good people. People who deserve to live. It’s one thing not to care for the adults. But how can you be okay with the loss of a child, or for Heaven’s sake, a newborn?”
I didn’t want to understand, but the hearts suddenly showed me. The pain in my chest intensified as the memory assaulted me.
“Help me!”
I tumbled over a log on the way inside the Elder’s tent. My body burned, my joints ached, my teeth bled and burned like they might pop out, but my child—my child. He wasn’t breathing! The sickness was stealing him away. I couldn’t lose him. “Please, help…” I stumbled not being able to catch myself this time as I fell with my baby boy in my arms. I pushed myself off of him with what strength I had left and gasped at what I saw once I lifted my head. The Elder was dead, lying several feet from my child and me. I whimpered as I pulled my child closer. “I’m sorry,” I cried, but no tears came. I was already too exhausted to do much more than scoot to my child. But when I cradled my head to his chest and heard no heartbeat, I begged for the sickness to claim me sooner.