“The children. You wanted to kill the children, don’t you remember?”
“Why would I kill children?”
“To save them.”
“What!” Intrigue was doing her best to suppress her annoyance, but she was not doing well; Hawk was making no sense. She was no murderess, no psychopath; what purpose could she possibly have to burn little children?
“They couldn’t live; there were demons waiting to take them.” He paused, his deep green gaze dropping uneasily to the floor. “In all truth, Gemstone Ivora, I don’t have the slightest idea why you killed them. It seems out of place to me, but there’s a lot of what I’ve seen of our previous existence that confuses me to Hell—the drink helps with that, I’ve found; it mutes the mind and numbs the senses. There was no purpose in that existence, no goal, no plans; there is no evident reason for your murders. Shall we leave it at that?”
“No.”
“You killed them because they annoyed you. Because they were selfish and unhelpful, and because most of them would have frozen before the end of the winter, and those that might have been strong enough to survive alone would have starved anyway, that winter. You thought it would be best to end them quickly, rather than let them suffer.”
“Why were there children here to begin with? Where did they come from?”
It was Hawk’s turn to become annoyed; his lip had split open where he’d been chewing it and dribbles of blood were splattered across his chin. “How should I know, Intrigue? I never even met you until after Phoenyx saved my life. All I know, I learned while the golden river was filling up my lungs and bringing me here.”
She wanted to know exactly what the ‘golden river’ might be, but Intrigue forced herself to focus upon the former part of this statement. “Phoenyx saved your life?”
“From your friend, Miss Drake, who was ironically a vampira at the time, and a follower of Angel. A lot was different there, on that unreachable side of the river, and the memories you don’t have are irreplaceable. They never happened. The history of this house matters little, Intrigue, and our conversation is straying…” He yanked the flask from his hip and twisted the cap free, coughing a little as the fiery tainted blood burned at his throat. “You’ve got Chaotics to find tonight, and I have yet to show you the lay of the house.”
They stood in that quiet room together; the silence a thin and fragile wall that helped to keep Intrigue on this side of reality, the side which had begun when she stepped out of her door to find Tylenol. Even when Hawk spoke softly, pointing out objects as he did so, the silence was not truly breached. The dead beneath this house were not really there—they had not died in a fire in this house, because Gemstone had never been here, and hence had never killed them—but they were uneasy sleepers nonetheless.
Hawk lit a candle, bathing his hands in a warm, uneasy light. They still stood in the main room, and Intrigue frowned. This place seemed familiar enough, but something about it still threw her mind off-track, making it obvious that although this place existed and had existed in her mind, so completely that it had hurled her into feelings of deep deja vu, it hadn’t existed in any reality. She had never lived in this house, never breathed this smoky air, never seen these black-smeared walls. She was beginning to understand the edge of how this was possible, and just thinking around the edges made her mind reel. She forced her thoughts aside, realizing that for the time being, acceptance was safer than consideration.
She hadn’t needed the light to see the room—in fact, it made everything more difficult to see and increased the danger that the vampires would be able to trace them—but it lent an undeniable air of authenticity to her surroundings.
“Put it out.”
He did so. Hawk took another deep drag from his hipflask, emptying it, and looked at it morosely. He no longer thought he needed human blood—if something happened to Talon, he’d know it without ever having to taste her blood in his flask—but he was unable to give up his addiction so suddenly. He glanced at Intrigue out of the corner of his eye, and saw Gemstone standing there for a moment. He blinked, and she was gone. It was the light from the candle, perhaps, that had made her seem well over six feet tall, and the sudden darkness that made her hair seem longer, almost black. Perhaps it was the moonlight reflecting in her brilliant emerald eyes that made them look black, cool as obsidian. He had seen her as she had been on the other side of the golden river, her long hair hanging loosely over her shoulders, which were held tautly back, as defiant as any ever had been. Her eyes had held a spark of mischief, but the underlying current had been one of a terrible ferocity and unshakable bloodlust, perhaps a touch of insanity also. He had seen all this in one moment, before it was as gone to him as Talon’s smile. He looked upon her now in a new light, certain that he was not wrong, that there was no way he was wrong.
“That’s what the river had done to you, Gemstone, I see it now. You’re not Gemstone now; your name might truly be Intrigue for all I know—though I don’t know much—you are as fascinating…as intriguing, if you prefer… as you ever were, and there is something new—cunning, perhaps—in those wondrous green eyes of yours. You look so like your mother, Gem, and I never saw her.”
“How do you know it’s true then?”
“You’ve seen her. And in a way, I did. She was there when we fought Phoenyx; your father’s ghost was cradling her corpse when he told you to let it all go. It doesn’t matter really how I know.” He glanced at her again, measuring what he saw in her eyes. “It’s because it’s not what it was before the flood. The golden waters changed everything—do you hear me, Intrigue?—everything. You were never capable of being destroyed in any manner until that shining brook closed its mouth around you, but you’ve lost your life now. They changed the house, too. It’s larger now, and that’s why your mind has such a hard time working around it. It’s probably twice the size now; it was little more than a shack before.” He waved his arm toward the wall opposite them. “Do you think you could lead me through this house?”