It was like a gun went off in a room full of cats. Everyone sprung away with superhuman reflexes and instincts honed from being in proximity to danger, jumping onto the table or rolling out of their chairs, immediately looking for avenues of escape.
I was torn out of my seat and dragged to the far corner of the room before I knew it. Chiara released my throbbing wrist, giving me a brief apologetic look through her mask. Her strange legs weren’t just for show it seemed.
The Wolf with the featureless face pushed past us to try the door, yanking on the handle, then rearing back and punching a hole through the wood. He reached through, only to tense up and yank his arm back. A syringe had been stabbed into it. A cleaver bit into the wood inside the hole in the door, where the Wolf’s arm had been a second ago. The servers were doing their part to keep us trapped.
A Wolf wearing a brown leather mask jumped onto the table let out a battle cry and flung out her hand towards the Aberrant who had appeared like a ghost through the painting. Her hand and arm rapidly grew, skin cracking to reveal muscle and fat underneath. Her hand’s growth outpaced the arm and soon it matched the Aberrant’s size, curling fingers as large as tree trunks around it. She slammed her palm into the wall, knocking the painting down and causing the chandeliers to shake and flicker.
“Such a slim veneer of benevolence over such a simple plan to strike down your enemies all at once,” Charcoal Mask said, standing near the Witch’s hat.
“What?” Maria asked, feigning innocence. “He wanted a challenge. Something to beat the King of Regenerators, as he was called. He wanted this.”
“So you’ll call your pet off now?”
“I won’t be doing that,” her voice was sickeningly sweet.
Charcoal Mask straightened his tie, hands steady despite the threat. “I’m willing to bargain. Despite our differences, I still believe in Organ’s potential.”
“My father was the negotiator, not me. He was bargaining until the last second, trying to find the combination of words that would undo the ways he had neglected and wronged me for my whole life. You could fill a whole library with all the words that I couldn’t give less of a shit about. You have no say in what happens next. If you can come crawling to me on the other side of the manor, I’ll give you what you want.”
The giant hand was losing colour. The paleness spread like an infection, turning the skin an ashen white. The Aberrant’s stretched face emerged from the back of the hand, walking slowly through like it wasn’t even there. It continued to wade into the arm, its fingers trailing along the surface, dipping into it, like it was walking in a waist-high river.
The Wolf pulled her arm back and her eyes widened in horror as it detached at the elbow, the parts left behind divided into two pieces by the Aberrant’s path. The giant cross-section of meat and bone that remained divided the room. There was no blood, even from the stump that the Wolf stared at in disbelief.
The Aberrant stepped through the banquet table and stretched a hand out towards the Wolf, as if beckoning her to join it.
I ran forward.
“Nick!” Chiara called out in surprise.
I grabbed an upended chair by the leg and heaved it at the Aberrant. The heavy chair crashed against its back and it staggered, falling forward. Its outstretched hand passed through the table but then it caught itself on the floor. The Aberrant recovered and turned its head, staring at me. Its expression was indecipherable because the face skin was stretched to its limit.
I backed up as it advanced through the table. It crossed through the chair I’d thrown and the chair fell into two pieces along the line of travel. Something inside the chair caught my eye and I stared at it, confused.
“Get back!” Chiara shouted.
I staggered back, almost tripping on myself. Fear coursed through me as I remembered too late that I couldn’t use Locust Legs to spring away at the last second.
Chiara seized me by the shoulders and hauled me backwards again.
Instead of giving chase, the Aberrant changed direction and headed towards where the Faceless Wolf was still fighting with the servers through the door.
“Look out!” I shouted.
The Faceless Wolf turned and revealed that his “mask” was gone. His face had returned to normal, an old scar running through the stubble on his chin. He seemed to realize this, feeling at his own face in surprise. He saw the approaching Aberrant and bared his teeth, yanking out the skewer from his arm.
The Aberrant stooped and swung its hand horizontally.
The Faceless Wolf plunged the skewer into its arm just before it passed through his midsection. The Wolf fell apart at the waist and I turned away, tugging Chiara along with me.
The part of the table the Aberrant had passed through had broken off, forming a ramp that I used to run up onto the table. Stumbling across plates and cutlery, I made it to the Wolf who had lost her arm. She had ripped off her leather mask and was hyperventilating as she clutched the stump of her arm.
I stared at the stump, then turned to look at the huge cross-section that ended in the hand, fingers curled up like the legs of a dead insect. The cross-section didn’t line up. There was bone, there was muscle and blood vessels, but none of it was in the right place. I could’ve chalked it up to the mysterious nature of Shaping but the chair… I thought I had seen biological tissue inside of the bisected chair as well.
“Get up,” I told her. “We gotta go.”
She grabbed my hand. I glanced up to see the Aberrant lazily following the once-Faceless Wolf as he dragged himself along the floor. It was toying with us. I’d seen Aberrants take pleasure in inflicting pain, but this felt different.
Chiara grabbed my hand and tore it away from the Wolf’s grip.
I felt a sting of pain and looked down. Strips of flesh were missing from my pinky and ring fingers.
She assimilated me?
Chiara kicked the Wolf in the head, sending her sprawling through plates full of food. She lay still, unconscious.
I snatched up a napkin to stem the blood and walked over to the Wolf. I grabbed them by their armpits and started to drag them towards the other end of the table.
Chiara stared at me incredulously. “Leave her! She just tried to eat you.”
I gritted my teeth and kept going.
The once-Faceless Wolf managed to drag himself over to the corpse of the Aberrant’s first victim, the Disfigured Wolf. He started to assimilate the body. His eyes bulged as the Aberrant raised a foot over him.
“It’s not healing!” he screamed, before the foot came down, sinking into his chest. He gaped noiselessly, unable to pull in another breath.
I deposited the unconscious Wolf next to Maria’s hat, already sweating from the exertion.
“A gift for me?” Maria asked sarcastically.
“You’re controlling that Aberrant, right? I’ve seen it before. I’m hoping that you won’t attack her since she’s unconscious,” I panted. “No pleasure to be gained from killing someone who won’t fight back.”
“That’s rich coming from you. I seem to recall you quite readily killed my puppet in Quebec. I suppose you thought it was justified because your friend had just been launched into space?”
I briefly wondered if the drug was keeping my anger in check. “I’m sorry about the stuff that happened to you in the past. Nobody deserves the shit that happens to them as a kid.”
The lip on the hat curled in disgust. “Fuck off. If you weren’t the guest of honour, I’d kill you in a thousand different ways.”
“But just because you were hurt doesn’t justify any of this.”
“Wah wah wah!” Maria taunted with malice. “All I’m hearing is the pathetic wails of people who have never had to deal with someone else being in control of their lives.”
“Hey!” The Angler Fish Wolf shouted at me. “Stop talking to her and help us find an exit!”
“Oh, you want out? You just had to ask, dear.”
A pair of double doors on this side of the banquet hall clicked and swung open.
“Further into the lion’s den,” Charcoal Mask remarked.
The Aberrant stalked towards us and the other Wolves fled the room. Charcoal Mask remained.
“Excuse me,” he said, lifting the hat and tearing at the fabric.
“Ouch!” Maria shrieked. “Just kidding.”
Charcoal Mask withdrew a camera from within the hat. A red light blinked, indicating it was filming.
“Aww. Not gonna let me watch?”
“It’s best if we remove her ability to track us. We should get rid of any cameras we find,” Charcoal Mask said to me.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, traitor to Organ.”
Charcoal Mask dropped the camera and crushed it beneath his shoe. He met my eyes for a moment, evaluating my reaction, before going to the door.
Chiara beckoned me to follow and I took one last look over my shoulder before leaving. The Aberrant stood still, watching me go. A chill ran down my back as it slowly raised a hand to wave at me.
The next room was even larger than the first. There was a stage here, with a piano and some other instruments on it, but they were all encased in glass boxes. The floors were still a black marble with veins of white, like a photo negative of a vascular system.
Chiara slammed the doors shut behind me.
“We already know the Aberrant can walk through solid walls!” The Angler Fish called out to the others. “Spread out and find a way through.”
The group fanned out, staying away from the wall closest to the room we had just exited.
Chiara’s hand settled on my shoulder.
“Why did you try and save those people?” she asked.
“Hm? I just did. Didn’t think much of it.”
“But you didn’t know them, right? And I saw you eat the food. You’re powerless, aren’t you?”
“You pulled me to safety. Why do that?” I retorted.
There was a flash of discomfort in her expression and she turned away. The back of her mask was open and she touched the end of her short blonde hair that was swept back like wind had blown through it and made it stay like that.
“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “But it wasn’t because I think I’m a hero.”
A dark feeling bubbled in my stomach. “Is that what you think I feel like? I can promise you I’m not here for anything so noble. You asked me before what my reason was for coming? I came here to kill someone.”
“Maria?” Chiara asked.
“No. A man named Chase.”
Chiara flinched at the name.
“I see you know him.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Why do you want to kill him?”
“I’ve known him for a long time, so I know he won’t leave me alone or forget me, ever. Fifty years could pass only for him to show up again, with a perfect plan to make me and Nell suffer for his entertainment.”
“Your Witch?”
“Yes.”
I watched the Wolves try to open the doors on the far side of the room. These ones were larger and even the strongest-looking Wolves couldn’t seem to tear them off their hinges or punch through.
“Are they really so special?”
I rounded on her. “What?”
Chiara met my gaze. “Are you certain that your feelings for this person aren’t born out of the supernatural connection you have with them? Cause I think you ask any Wolf and they’re going to feel like their Witch is different, special, unlike anybody else. Wouldn’t that mean that the connection isn’t actually genuine?”
“I’m sorry, but that just isn’t true for me and Nell.”
“You won’t even consider it? Your telling me your Witch hasn’t done something even a little questionable with her power?”
I clenched my fists.
“There must be some bad Witches out there. They can’t all be misunderstood.”
Memories that didn’t belong to me ran loops through my head. Fragments of other lives that somehow mattered to me even though they were stolen.
“I don’t think so. I think when we actually know people, we love them despite the bad, because the bad things make more sense in context.” I looked up at the crystal chandeliers, remembering how clearly the stars seemed on the night I’d left Nell. “I wonder… maybe if we all shared this connection, if all of humanity were Witches and Wolves to all others, would we be able to hate at all?”
Chiara looked down, then pulled off her mask. There were red tattoos on her face that looked like fingerprints. She looked at me with sadness. “I’ve said something terrible. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. If this helps make it any clearer, my Witch is dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
Chiara shook her head. “I killed them. That was two years ago and it still feels like it happened yesterday. Every day I wake up and wonder if it was justified. They needed to stop and I couldn’t think of any other way, but…”
“You still loved them.”
“Yeah…” Chiara said softly. “But I think what you said helps me a little. Maybe it still hurts because I knew they weren’t all bad. There were parts of them that were special and lovely.”
I thought of the Goblin and Alek.
“Knowing doesn’t help with the pain though,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t.”