Tea, Lycanthropy and Other Virtues

Chapter Fifty

Constance was no more. She'd come un-spiraled until there was just anger; hungry and seething. Far away a vampire writhed in her cage and two women huddled together on the floor of a tower, but these things did not concern the flame of rage she had become.

Constance

Constance was so powerless and her choices were so few that she was not really a person at all. She could not even keep her own grandmother safe. The knowledge tore at her heart and seared her chest, so she let Constance go and became nothing but the anger inside.

She was a conduit now, as rage poured into her from the streets below. The supernaturals hurts came in to her heart and mixed with her own pain and then beamed back out into the city, an ever-growing cycle of calamity. There was no ebb to this rage. And why should there be? Why shouldn't they burn it all down?

Constance?

There wasn't room for Constance as all the injustice, all the unfairness, burned through her.

Constance?

Who was this Constance, this person?

Please.

Far away a voice she used to know. The smallest corner of her heart stirred.

Constance, please.

If she wasn't Constance, then why did her heart move to protect that voice?

Constance.

Constance, I need you. We need you to come back. Hugh can't come, but I came. Arms encircled her neck, the feel of them pulling her into her physical body. "Please come back."

She blinked her eyes, focusing slowly.

She stood alone. Baines and Edward were staring out over the streets, wholly absorbed. Emile's cage was swinging precariously, her eyes black, her fangs fully extended. Gran and Hannah huddled together on the floor, and Simon was hugging her.

"Come back," he was whispering over and over.

Her still shackled hands felt like they weighed a hundred pounds as she lifted them to stroke the top of his head.

"I'm here Simon." Her voice was raw.

He looked up at her seriously. "Can you stop them?"

She glanced at the chaos below; monsters and mayhem in a wash of scarlet. She was too tired to feel the terror that should have gripped her. Instead, she breathed and let go of the war drums pounding through her head. Allowed herself to feel something else and then opened her heart.

Peace, she thought wearily over and over.

"They're stopping," Edward said.

"What is going on?" Baines turned toward her.

Now that the chaos was beginning to ebb, they could hear bells sounding warnings through the air.

Peace. She forced herself to feel it. Peace. She was too tired to feel anything else. She let it pulse out of her with every beat of her heart.

Vaguely, she saw Baines reach into his jacket. Her brain was too slow to understand why.

There was a crack as he fired his pistol. Simon stumbled into her, Gran screamed, Hannah leapt up tossing the key she'd stolen toward Emile, before launching herself at Baines, knocking him to the ground, his gun clattering across the platform and off the ledge to the darkness below.

Simon pressed against her. "Constance—" his knees buckled.

"Simon?" Her brain was still trying to make sense of what was happening.