The Book Eaters(75)
Earplug’s esophagus tore free. So did half the skin on his face. He gurgled and collapsed like a stringless puppet. Blood sprayed her chest in a hot, sticky baptism.
“Holy…” Matley said, gasping, his grip on Cai slackening. Tallboy stood at his side, petrified and stunned.
“Hungry!” Cai twisted in his father’s grasp and clamped his mouth on Matley’s ear.
Matley snarled a torrent of curse words but Cai clung on, preternaturally strong for a child of his age.
Devon couldn’t see it happen, but she could hear it: a faint snicking as the probiscis tongue shot forward, piercing through Matley’s eardrum and into his brain.
The blackjack dropped from rigid fingers, rolling across the floor to bump against Tallboy’s feet. Tallboy screamed and did nothing except clasp his blackjack, statuefied with horror.
“… ungh.” Matley crumpled to the ground as if all the tendons in his legs had been simultaneously cut, hands pawing reflexively at the little boy who still clung to his neck. Cai curled around his father’s head, eyes half-lidded like a milk-drunk infant. The pawing hands slowed, then stopped, then dropped to the side.
Matley tipped over to slump in the spreading pool of Earplug’s blood.
Too much for Tallboy. He shrieked and bolted for the door.
She couldn’t let him get away. Devon sprang like a cat. A six-foot, blood-soaked, half-dressed cat. She tackled him with a sideways lunge and they landed together, him sprawled faceup and her atop his chest.
“Monster!” he howled, his fists raining uselessly against her. “Fucking monster!”
“Yes,” Devon said, and shredded his throat like a cheap paperback novel.
ACT 4
DAWN
22
FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT
PRESENT DAY
It isn’t fair, and it isn’t right. Aren’t we people, too? All Families are family. The Collector made us all, each for our purposes, even if we no longer follow those purposes so strictly. We are no more or less deserving of compassion or the right to free lives than the book eaters are. Why should we live under lock and key?
Weston must agree to set us free. Give us the secrets of Redemption, allow us to emancipate the other dragons. The least of what we deserve.
And if he does not agree, then I will do what I must. Whatever it takes.
—Killock Ravenscar, private journal
The Ravenscar siblings stood in the gray winter light of the First Library, with Mani quietly occupying the far corner. All three of them listening in perfect silence.
Devon sat with hands tucked between her knees, gazing out through the windows. Traquair’s garden maze filled the window view, dark and overgrown. Even in bright winter sunlight it looked the way her life felt; tangled, full of dead ends.
Into the breathy stillness, Killock said, “And afterward? How did you escape the premises?”
“After Cai ate his father’s mind, I found Matley’s keys, cleaned out his private safe, and got the hell out.” Her gaze wandered, drinking in the room. Shadows played over rows of vintage books on oaken shelves. Darkness soothed the eye, thick carpets cushioned bare feet. The scent of softly aging paper and warm wood encompassed them.
She had missed this kind of house, she thought, and felt chagrined. Years of wanting to get away from the Families and their manors yet here she was, reveling in that environment. Once a princess, always a princess.
“The Easterbrooks didn’t give chase?” Mani pulled out a notepad and began scribbling.
“I borrowed the car before any of them knew what was happening,” Devon said, sinking back against her too-comfortable chair, “and managed to get to the train station. We caught a train at random, ended up in the south. It took the knights a while to start tracking us down.”
Hester had dug out a pad and pencil from the study desk, but unlike Mani, she wasn’t taking notes. Devon, glancing across at the expanse of pale paper, was startled to realize the other woman was sketching something; trees and foliage, a hint of hedges. Her view from the window.
“Interesting.” Killock coiled and uncoiled his tongue like a serpent. “But consuming a book eater mind is not the same as consuming a human one, due to the vast quantity of information that book eaters can retain. That is an experience that changes us. How did your son cope with such a feed, at such a young age, without enduring severe psychological trauma?”
“He didn’t cope. After a few hours Cai was nearly vegetative.” Rocking, swaying, gibbering to himself. “I met a woman in the park, with her baby. I saw them and I had this idea … you know, because a baby’s mind, it’s so blank, so small, and…”
Devon squeezed her hands together. “No one else was around. I knocked the mother out and gave the baby to Cai. In the state he was in, he didn’t object. I’m not sure he even remembers.”
And this, even this horror, wasn’t the full truth. But she couldn’t give anyone else the truth. Not yet.
Hester’s voice floated the words, soft and quiet. “What happened to the baby?” She held her pencil perfectly still, poised above the sketch pad.
“Returned it to the mother. The whole thing took about ten minutes and nobody else noticed.”
Not strictly what happened—the context had been different—but the basic fact was she’d destroyed that infant before giving it back.