Ch 20
Angst Level: The overall story level is higher than the number of things I read on this board before coming out of lurk-dom. Ch 20 is still thoroughly depressing- this is, after all, the Maclay backstory. Light may enter, but cannot escape.
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When Ulysses had come home to a silent house, he'd been momentarily panicked, then blackly suspicious before he'd seen his wife and son were both in the back yard. Judy was hard at work, her hair shining in the evenings dying sunlight where she'd tied it back, pink gardening gloves protecting her hands from the thorns and sawtooth leaves of the brush she was clearing. The land they lived on had been little more than a standard tract house in disrepair that seemed to have been dropped in the middle of untidy wilderness, but little by little they'd turned it into a home. The front looked almost respectable now, though he hoped to do more to it once they got the encroaching wilderness in back under control.
He changed from his work cloths to his home grungies before he joined his wife. She really shouldn't be working as hard as she was, not when the flu bug she'd caught was tenaciously refusing to depart. Without a fever, though, he couldn't really object to her wish to keep chipping away at the innumerable tasks that they'd taken on with this house.
Judy straightened when she heard him open the sliding glass door, wiping a subtle glow of sweat from her brow with a dusty glove, leaving a dirty smudge in its wake. Unaware of it she met him halfway with the welcome-home kiss that he used to look forward to the whole day through. The wash of warmth he'd thought was love would always hold a question now, even as he conceded that however artificial they may be, the feelings were still real within him. Others had envied them- her for her husbands rapt devotion, him for his radiant wife's charm- but the envy carried bitterness now, rather than pride.
“How was work?” Judy drew away sooner than was her wont, eyes scanning back along the hillside until they rested on where Donny was industriously hacking away with a stick at one of the bushes marked for removal.
“Fair to middling.” The response didn't elicit the little grin it usually did, drawing forth another thread of unease. Her voice sounded tense, the perennial cheerfulness muted even in the three words she had spoken. Tracing his hand down to rest on her hip he studied her profile, trying not to assume the worst. “What did the doc say?”
Going to the doctor was a risk, but after a month of unrelenting gastric rebellion that left his already-slender wife teetering at the edge of gauntness, they'd decided it was necessary.
“He said,” Judy's eyes dropped as she pulled off her gloves, hugging her arms to herself with one hand covering his, “he wants more testing...”
Ulysses snorted. “Meaning he doesn't know.” Any other business and you'd get a refund for that answer, but he doubted the doctor had extended that courtesy.
“No... it's...”
As the words trailed off, dread began to build within his chest. Judy was the talker of the two of them usually, and the unaccustomed reluctance couldn't herald anything good. “What's wrong?”
Judy gave a mirthless chuckle. “I should've know. You weren't here, but when I was carrying Donny it was almost the same- but it shouldn't be possible. I'm on the Pill.”
“You're...” Joy and wonder bloomed and just as quickly withered as the possible implications sunk in. In tentative dread he gave voice to what she would not, “You're pregnant?”
Judy nodded slowly, “Dr. Greishaber said... he said that no birth control is perfect, that sometimes... I couldn't believe it, but Lyss,” she turned her shining eyes to his, expression full in indescribable force of feeling that spanned both wonder and fear, “I heard it. I heard the heartbeat.”
Her hand tightened against his. “I wanted to ask so many things, but he started talking about blood work- that mine was strange, that he needed more tests. I'm supposed to go back, but... how much is real? How much of it is...” She dropped her head, “me?”
He felt his eyes narrow as his mind hurtled in a race toward a hundred possibilities, eventualities, and dark premonitions. “How far along?”
“Fourteen weeks, they think.” Judy leaned against him, the warmth of her diffusing into him as she continued uncertainly, “Maybe thirteen. They said that any later and I'd be showing.'
With a sigh of resigned relief he dropped his head forward to rest aside hers. “Then there's time..”
“Time?” She tilted her face toward his, uncomprehending of the obvious course they'd have to take.
Ulysses tightened this arm around her in a supportive squeeze as he murmured in soft sympathy, “Well, you know we can't keep it-”
She stiffened and pulled away sharply, facing him fully. “What are you saying?”
“It's the only responsible thing to do, Jude- knowing what we do, what it could be-”
“You want me to abort?” the words held little disbelief, but large measure of accusation.
“Knowing what she could be? You'd condemn her to that?”
To this.
“I'm not going to kill our baby.” Her voice was low and tight, but she needed no volume to convey her vehemence. Her eyes shone at him with the glint of the sheathed knife, the holstered gun.
Here, none shall pass.
It had to be the demon in her that fueled this adamant irrationality. That or hormones. There is no other way she could be blind to the cruelty she proposed- to Donny, to their own future, if not to the germinating seed of life within her. Softhearted she could be, but softheaded she was not.
God, but he wanted to be the softhearted one sometimes. To let go of responsibility and ask for the easy way. Let Judy to make the hard call- just once. But what if she didn't? They had no room for the foolishness their youth should've afforded them. They didn't get to make mistakes that they'd laugh about to their children's children. They got decisions that had no right answer- just wrong or painful.
Their tragedy was supposed to be personal, self contained. To allow it to flourish further- what flowered on a branch of sin? He didn't want any of this. He wanted to have dreams he could believe in. He wanted to hope- and sometimes he could see that hope in Donny. His son, who was industriously fighting off the slavering hordes of evil seen only by the very young, concealed as they were by the clutching, half-dead branches of old sagebrush. Donny would not be shackled to this life. To him Ulysses could tie his dreams, see them rise and flourish as they should have.
He let his silence speak for him, waiting to see his wife waver but instead only seeing the flush of anger rise in her cheeks. If she were thinking logically, there'd be no call for anger. Their course was clear, but for the selfish heart.
The selfish heart yearned for Donny not to grow up alone. It wished to spare him some of his filial duties, heaped on a only child. It wished to feel again the rush of pride and peace in the grip of a tiny hand. It wished for anything but bleak promises of heartache, no matter what choice- as if there were a choice- was made.
“Don't make this any harder, Judy-”
With a narrowing of her eyes and a seeming shiver of flesh, her assumed humanity fell away, derailing his words. He seldom saw her this way in daylight anymore, the form reserved for the darkness of night or shadows of the shed they'd carefully constructed up the hillside. The fading daylight drew forth the slight redness in her sienna horns, the highlights shining as no candlelight allowed. Was the mask about her eyes always so dark? He couldn't recall, but tore his eyes away before meeting hers. When her eyes shone crimson- that was a sight that broke something within him every time he saw it. The eyes- window to her soul, and it hurt to see how it burned.
Ulysses looked in sudden worry back toward the road, view unobscured by their newly planted saplings, then to where Donny had flung his stick into the bushes with a high pitched whoop. He let none of the fear that sang down his spine into his face, only the harshness of necessity.
“What the hell are you doing? Someone might see.”
“Let them.” Judy said coldly, but visibly reigned her emotions in when his eyes finally snapped to meet hers. “Is what I am so horrible that it might- might- be like me? What if he's a boy, Lyss? What if we'd known before- would you have taken Donny from us?”
The words stung, but he couldn't let this devolve into some contest of passions. “That's not fair. Knowing what we do now... what our daughter would have to do...”
“Mamamamamama! There's an owl-” Donny had started to run toward them, his excited call drawing both their attention for a moment. His eyes caught his mothers and the yell died instantly, feet sliding as he changed direction and smacked into Ulysses legs, clinging there.
Ulysses leveled a critical glare at his wife, who turned her face away in shame. To his surprise she did not retreat, nor did her human shell slide back over her. Donny didn't need to see this- to inflict their secret on him was needless spite. He dropped into a crouch that interposing himself between his son and his demon wife.
“Donny-boy... Your mama's having some trouble right now. You want to go watch your cartoons for a while?” It was a school night and for all that it didn't mean much in kindergarten, making a habit of television during the week wouldn't serve his future. The offer fulfilled its purpose- pulling Donny's wide eyes off his mother as Ulysses squatted down to his level and gave him a little push toward the house.
The wide blue eyes shone, but instead of tears Donny sniffled out, “Fraggles?”
Insipid little stories with no redeeming value. Couldn't he at least watch something real? A documentary or at least some nature thing? Ulysses grimaced at the thought. “Sure- if it's on. Why don't you check?”
Another careful look and Donny took off toward the house with more speed than just enthusiasm for singing puppets would inspire. Ulysses watched his wife's stricken gaze follow him, but even with the expression of shame she still didn't hide away the demon within. Until then he'd been able to keep his distance from the emotions that this latest disaster had been calling forth, but frustrated anger was leeching through.
“Don't you take this out on him.” It came out harder than he wanted, but instead of a wince, Judy responded with equal temper.
“By being what I am?”
“Yes! Because he's going to grow up knowing that it's a part of him and he doesn't deserve to be saddled with that.” Ulysses carefully reined himself in. Passions incite passions, and there was no leeway in their lives now for anything but icy judgment. It hurt to see Judy in pain, even as she covered it in with this melodramatic display of temper. How easy it would be to just concede... but that would be wrong and they could well spend the rest of their lives paying for the mistake. He spoke again, this time more carefully. “What good would it do for him, to know you have this... thing you have to keep under control inside you? They said he'll never become like you. You can't possibly wish to burden him with it.”
Judy's eyes had slid to the ground. “You know I can hide it- that I do. Just... I'm so angry right now, Lyss.”
It wasn't worth much as an excuse. For a child, maybe, but adults couldn't let themselves just give in to their feelings. “Well, don't be. Angry doesn't make good decisions.”
“What decision?!” Judy snapped back. “This is a life we're talking about.”
“A life that could end up like yours- you know it's not easy- you can't tell me it is.” That he had to be the responsible one again wasn't fair. But then, what had been fair since this whole thing started?
The dark rimmed eyes tightened. “And if it's a boy?”
Another way out, an easy answer. Ulysses closed his eyes and shook his head, “If you waited till we were sure... would you be able to abort? Ultrasound's not perfect- and you'd want to keep hoping, even though it could go so wrong.”
Judy didn't deny the assessment, ignoring the bare truth as her face began to transition toward an aching desperation. “Doesn't it tell you anything, that this baby was granted to us? Despite everything?”
“It tells me that medicine for humans might not work on your kind.” He regretted the bluntness, but there was no way to accent the demon the child could be without emphasizing the demon in her. Her eyes were starting to water, though no tears streaked her shadowed face.
“Or maybe- just maybe- we're meant to have this baby. That-” she caught his glower and her face closed off. “Don't even start, Lyss.”
“You want to decide because of religion?” He should have let it be. Religion was the last recourse of those without a shred of evidence for what they wanted to believe- and could justify any answer you cared to look for. Even Judy would concede that much, once she calmed down.
“What better reason can there be? There's no way to know what's right.”
“When you can't know, it's not a time to gamble. Not when you're weighing the child's entire life.” and ours.
“What if I could be sure?” Judy challenged.
“The doctors can say what's likely, but it's not sure.” Ulysses started to dismiss the idea of grasping at that frail hope. Modern medicine had failed them once already- what was to say it wouldn't again?
“The doctors can't be sure- but I meant...” She paused, taking a slow breath in a gesture that heralded some return of reason. “What if I could find out?”
The careful words elucidated for him what she meant. “Magic.”
Judy nodded, watching him closely. It was no secret that he was ambivalent about her magic use since she'd changed. After all the people they'd met in India, people who'd spent their lives in dedication to that power, and how few could match his wife's ability, he'd had to call the question; was it because of what she was? Did the same magic that allowed them what little life they had together spring from the same force that constantly tried to sunder them? There was no sure answer, but it fit the cock-and-bull story that yogi had fed them.
Whatever its source, they needed her magic. Every time she used it, though, he found himself feeling sick inside. Just another force in his life that was beyond his control. He realized that Judy had started speaking again as he sunk into his thoughts.
“I already called my Mama... she said there's a spell she's heard of, but she doesn't have it- it'll take a day or two before she can get hold of it.”
“And if it says the baby's a girl?” He hated to ask, but he had to know. If it was all just another way to delay what had to be done, better to have the heartbreak before it grew any greater. His wife had crossed her arms protectively across her belly, looking away. He tried to bridge the space between them, to give her the comfort she needed, but she only drew further away. “Judy...”
“I know.” The words were sharp, but softened to a bleak whisper. “I know... just don't expect me to be happy about it. I still feel like we're talking about killing a child. Ending something that could be so much...”
Now she let him hold her, arm around her shoulders as she leaned against him. He tried not to think about the horn dragging against his chin as her head moved, focusing instead on the simple scent of her- one thing that didn't change when she moved between her true form to the human one she usually wore. He could imagine it was the woman he married in his arms, not the creature that woman had become. She was warm against him, showing by contrast that the chill of the night was falling rapidly. In a jolt, Ulysses' mind focused and shot a spike of doubt through him. Not trusting his voice at first he waited for the moment to settle into icy stillness before he asked,
“Do you know the baby is... ours?”
Mine?
Judy tore herself free, her expression as if he'd struck her. He wished he could be contrite, but there was too much reason for suspicion to feel guilt for his words. He did not withdraw them, watching his wife in hopes of reassurance. When it was not forthcoming, the knife of his misgivings twisted deeper. Once upon a time Judy would have fallen in the face of the judgment he was implying, turning her attention to the pain that it was born of. That she did not was only further proof of how she'd changed since her transformation those few years ago and it took him aback to realize it.
How could he allow this kind of corruption to spread? It would be so easy- it was as if he had his own demon, urging him to let the pieces fall as they would. He wouldn't be to blame- he'd told Judy what was right, it was on her head if what he feared came to pass.
He couldn't. The voice was just another way that the demon in his life had corroded his soul. All he wanted was to make Judy happy, but like so many things since the demon had taken over their lives, he wasn't going to get what he wanted. They'd do the best they could with the hand they'd been dealt. He'd had fleeting thoughts of just picking up his son and leaving, but for better or worse he was married to the demon his wife had become. By love or by more stark commitment, they were bound.. and abandoning all logic, he still loved her desperately- so much that he would bear the misery of her anger, her pain, her heartbreak in the wake of the greater good. He would be the surgeon, cutting deep in order to heal.
Had the demon set its hooks so deeply in him that he couldn't shake himself free, even as it tore him apart from within? Perhaps. It didn't matter if it were true- he would not abandon Judy, even if he thought he could. It's not much of a man that walks away from duty.
In the end, this would be just another thorn in the briar patch that had grown around them. They'd weather it together, hearts bleeding all the while.
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Tara watched contemplatively as the latest Peter Porker messily chowed down on the scraps she and her father had brought up from the house. Donny had named one of the pigs their father had brought home thus and while it had long since met its end, every pig since had carried the name. That or “SpiderHam”.
She actually preferred spiders to the pigs. Charlotte's Web, Babe- movie or text, no one had ever convinced her of the notion that a pig could be cute. She didn't doubt that they were smart but any animal that would eagerly swarm to the fresh-killed corpse of its brother and guzzle the blood pooling beneath him? It didn't endear them to her. She was funny that way.
The lull in her fathers' narrative had been a natural one, entering as the pauses became longer. In a way, she wanted the story to end. It would be easier if it had, if there were no more history interwoven with what she was. Wasn't it enough? It made sense that there was something her parents had brought back from India involved in the mechanism that had allowed her mother to function as nearly human. The disparity in the two primary modes of practice in magic she'd been taught were clue enough for that.
She glanced behind her, toward scrub brush and pine hiding the shed up the hill. The scrub had been slowly creeping into the yard, further evidence of her home's decay since her mothers' death. Beth had been right enough that there was more to do than a couple of men with full time jobs could handle. Maintaining land wasn't a great task when done over time, but it was constant. Nature had her own way of doing things and their presence was only a delay, not a deterrent, to her plan.
There was little point to pushing for only the instruction manual to... again, she found herself enforcing a blank over where her imagination wanted to illustrate the speculations that had begun to surface. She'd never considered herself a prude in any sense, though certainly polite conversation tended to eschew topics not meant for uninvolved parties, there was that glaring concept that it was her parents. If what they had done were as simple as spell work, there would be no cause for the long story- and the longer it went on, the more she dreaded the eventual answer. There would be no reason to skirt the facts, circling through the history, unless there were some unpleasant surprise waiting at the end.
The enormity of it all was starting to fall across her again, viscous despair descending to try to pull her under. Her Mama had given up, built her own prison in this house of tightly withheld feeling, and for all Tara’s resolution not to allow those walls to seal around her again, even their cold embrace seemed better than to stand alone in doomed defiance of her heritage.
What her Mama had done was not unthinkable, when logic exerted itself fully on the untenable position that the woman had found herself in. Still, to know that she had wandered, strayed, hunted- whatever word you chose, it still violated the sacred bond between her and Tara’s father. Violated it in the hopes of preserving it, but… she shook her head, as if the rid herself of the thoughts. Mama was Mama, and nothing in the past would change the woman who Tara had been raised by. Now that she was gone, it was that much more irrelevant, yet that much more vile a taint to an image Tara still held dear. She would still hold that blemished memory close, even knowing the stain would spread through her as well.
Her parents had intended to contain it, to stymie in their generation this well of misery, yet it had found a way to break them anew, in the form of her birth. She was an inevitable tragedy that they could not abandon, too much a link to their greatest trial not to resent the sight of.
Peter shifted and Tara backed away just in time to avoid am explosively wet snort. She grimaced at him, but the pig blinked in oblivious contentment. Much as she despised the creatures, it was a good sign that her father had started taking them again. He'd shut down the barter in his business after her mother's death. Even when her mother hadn't been able to continue the meat sales at the farmers market, he'd even kept up the booth for a little while. The sales had been pitiful, but it had been important to her mother to continue the task that she'd enjoyed so much, continue the ties with those she'd stood beside for years. All but the most loyal customer base had quickly dwindled, the few that came inevitably asking when she'd return.
As her mother's condition had worsened, Tara had taken over the stall. She'd hated having to deal with all the unfamiliar faces, the casual words that she never knew the right answers to. Her mother had thrived in the eye of the public and the rest of the family was poor substitute. Her father, at least, hadn't driven anyone away the way Donny's sullen disinterest or Tara's own demeanor had. The days past when he'd taken joy in working beside her mother might not be back, but he must have taken some joy from the task itself, if he'd taken the effort to start again. She'd have to ask Donny later about how it had been going. Maybe with Beth helping to supply some of the banter?
It seemed too hot for October twilight, though the breeze across her arms was cool enough to raise goosebumps. She started back toward the house. It would be dinnertime soon enough, and by the look of things, Beth wasn't going to be home in time. It was hard to imagine her father taking that well, but the rules had always been different for her cousin. There was no mystery to it. Bending the rules didn't matter so much, when it was just a girl coming home a little late. Tara letting herself be that lax could have been too easily been a signal of how little self control she had, something that would be devastating when the demon in her emerged.
Her stomach was getting antsy for food, but in recognizing the sensation, she recognized the feeling layered beneath it. She stopped in her tracks, counting the days. Four. Four days now. The longest she'd gone between feeding had been three days since this nightmare began, so even the little leeway was something she should be thankful for, but it was hard to see it that way.
Four days since she'd almost killed Willow.
She didn't know how to gage the slow burn she felt. Jean had told her that the time between feedings would lengthen now that her quickening had finished, but by how much? Could she even trust that estimate, given how the Hellmouth had skewed so many other features of the process?
She wasn't on the Hellmouth now, though. Would that be a good thing, not strengthening the force of the Draw? Or would it only mean that her... prey... would suffer all the more?
Her tail tightened around her leg as the thought rose unbidden; what would the Draw do to her family? Cold logic said that as a force that had nothing to do with reproduction, consanguinity would make no barrier. Her father was no more than human. Donny- she wasn't sure if her mother's genes could protect him, either.
Jean had said that if she fed more often, the consequences to her victims would be less. If she didn't wait until the Draw forced her to feed, what then? Choosing to do what she did rather than having the decision forced upon her... lack of control relieved her of the sense of responsibility, at some level. Choose to do harm, and do less? Or know that you will do harm, and in refusing, make that harm worse?
Her upbringing said that she shouldn't give in. Stand against the forces inside her until she broke, then take responsibility for what followed and rebuild to stand against them again. But then she thought of Willow's slack, pallid face. Of the hiss of the ventilator, the tube down her love's throat moving ever so slightly as her thin chest mechanically rose and fell. And the memory of the slower rise and fall a few hours before, the warm glow she'd stolen away.
She would have to push the issue. If her father couldn't, or wouldn't, give her the key to stopping her need to feed, then she had to act. To steal away into the night as her mother had before her, trying to find the lesser of the evils her continued existence required.
Part of her echoed flatly that choosing between evils wasn't necessary. After all, it was only her continuing existence that made them necessary. Until a year ago, that would have been the clear choice. The suffering of one, briefly, in exchange for a lifetime of inflicting suffering.
Hope was a treacherous thing. She had become selfish, finding pieces of life that she had come to covet. All but one she'd still been willing to leave behind. Willow. It was a cruel prize, the life she'd dared to hope for. And all her hope had done was hurt the one she cared for most in the world.
Her thoughts were shattered by the sound of the Soledad's barn door opening noisily from the neighboring property. There were indistinct voices that followed, but while the words weren't clear, the tone was. The warmth in the night seemed to rise as her jealousy flared. Why did those voices deserve their uncomplicated happiness? What had they done, that she had not? What had Willow done, that she couldn't give her that chance?
Tara's tail refused to stay tethered, though she kept the lashing it wanted down to a staccato twitch. Maybe this was her message from above, maybe it was a trial of her character. She didn't know, but as she changed direction, away from the house, she had the sense of something she had held precious dying within her. No quiet death, but the hand of her decision holding it under a rising tide of necessity as it struggled.
She could tell herself it would be the last time, almost convince herself it was so. A little more time and her father would provide the key. A little more time and she could rebuild the life she'd so briefly thought could be hers. A little more time and she would know if the price of her life was one she was willing to pay. Buying time meant something as long as there was hope.
Hope was a great corrupter.
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Life is intervening again- the next section will be some time after mid-May.
-Never
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