Chapter 134 - What Time Cannot Heal

I dearly hoped I’d made the right call. My gut said I was on the right side here, that I had done the right thing. There was no way to know for sure, of course. If Cerberus didn’t show up where we’d arranged to meet, what should I do? Hunt him down? I still felt he wasn’t a threat to humanity anymore, but how could I be certain?

It took some serious effort to put those worries away, at least for now. With Cerberus gone, it was time to make sure everyone else was okay, and the threat was truly gone. My Cleanse spell told me that the curse was broken, which should have reverted everyone to their original forms, but I needed to see it with my own eyes.

Our battle had carried us a couple of blocks north. We’d ended up near a big school building where it looked like Alex’s people and Cerberus’s werewolves must have first clashed. There were signs of battle everywhere. Flames flickered on shattered cars and dead bushes, debris from the battle and flight was everywhere, and then there were the bodies.

One thing I had to say about fights between higher tier combatants—the fights tended to result in relatively few casualties. Alex’s people had a few medics with Heal spells. The werewolves had Regeneration. And most of them were high enough tier to be difficult to kill even without those powers. If these had been regular humans without crystals fighting, I figured the dead bodies would have been piled high. Instead, they were scattered here and there along the street.

It was easy to tell Alex’s dead from the werewolves. His people all wore armor and carried weapons. The werewolves had neither. They were naked, most of them, lying dead on the pavement, their human-again faces staring up blankly at the sky. I winced and turned away.

A dead dog took me by surprise. It, too, must have been infected by the curse and turned into a werewolf. Cerberus must have bitten a few regular dogs, too. This one was a big German Shepherd, a male with a collection of wounds too long to list.

I pressed on, stepping up my pace. I was exhausted, but Alex and Maggie might still need me. I rushed down the street, moving fast.

There, past some trees, I spotted the building where I’d dropped Maggie. People stepped from the front doors, stepping out into the street like they weren’t quite sure the nightmare was over. But I saw the former werewolves, too. They were scattered around the front of the building. Most lay on the ground, but others stood, looking down at themselves like they weren’t sure how they got there.

All of them were human. We’d done it! I rushed forward, eager to reunite with my friends.

A cry of anguish stopped me cold.

My head snapped around to where the shout had come from. It was one man, kneeling in the street, cradling something in his arms as he rocked back and forth, sobbing and crying out. I knew that voice, knew that person. It was Alex.

Something awful had happened. I launched myself forward, Flying to my friend’s side. He needed me, so I went to him.

I landed a few feet away, settling gently onto the pavement. He was holding a body, and since it wasn’t wearing any clothes, I had to guess it was one of the werewolves. One of them who’d died in the fighting before they all reverted to their natural forms. I knew in my heart who it had to be even before I came closer.

“Alex, I’m here,” I said, stepping nearer.

He whirled toward me. “You. Of course, it was you.”

“It’s over. The curse is broken. We won’t have to worry about more werewolves, at least not from this curse,” I replied. “Is that…?”

“Marion?” Alex said. He nodded. “Yes.”

I opened my mouth to say something and realized the body he held had no head. There was no coming back from that wound. She’d been truly dead even before the werewolf curse broke. No amount of Healing would cure that.

Alex filled the silence instead. “She came at me, tried to bite me. I’d decided to let her do it. If I couldn’t have her back as herself, then at least I could join her as a monster. I figured maybe we could be together that way. But instead, they killed her.”

“Your people?” I asked.

He nodded again. His eyes were wide, and I got the impression he wasn’t entirely there. He was in shock. How to help him through this? It didn’t seem like something a Heal spell could fix.

“They killed her. Cut her down.” Alex sobbed again.

“They were trying to save you,” I reminded him, knowing even as I said it that the words wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would.

He turned to face me, then, his face bright red with fury. “They should have left well enough alone!”

“Alex…” My voice trailed off. How to help him? I reached back to the horrible day I’d lost Amanda. What would have helped me, then? I wasn’t even sure. “I’m so sorry. Marion was an amazing woman, and we’re all less for losing her. How can I help?”

He didn’t reply, at first. Then his face twisted in a scowl. “You could go back in time and stop yourself from twisting her arm into helping. Maybe then she wouldn’t have been bitten and turned into one of those beasts. Maybe then, she’d still be alive. You were the one who came to us for help, who preyed on her need to help others, who got us out there where we were vulnerable to those things.”

I took a step back, the heat of his anger so strong I could almost feel it through the air. “Alex, I am sorry. I’d do anything I could to bring her back.”

“But you can’t, can you?” Alex snapped. “No one can. All these amazing powers, and none of us can bring back the dead. We have Heal and Cleanse and Lightning Bolts and who the hell knows what else, but have you seen one crystal for Reincarnation? Resurrection?”

I shook my head. Far as I knew, no one had seen anything like that.

“Exactly. Nobody has.” He set Marion’s body down gently and stood, turning to face me. “Not yet, anyway. I will find a way.”

“A way?”

“To bring her back!” Alex snapped. He closed the distance between us in under a heartbeat. “I’ll bring her back. No matter what, I will find a way. And you! You stay the hell away from me. It’s your fault she’s dead, Castle. I will never forgive you for that.”

He took a swing, an open hand slap. My Agility was so much higher than his, coupled with the Celerity stones, that it looked like Alex was moving in slow motion. I could have dodged easily, side-stepped the blow, but I didn’t. My friend was in pain. If hitting me would reduce his agony even one iota, how could I do otherwise?

His slap hit hard, and I turned my head with the blow, moving with the momentum of the strike. That turned my head hard around to the right, and I’d closed my eyes, just for a second.

When I opened them again, he’d already turned away, scooped Marion’s body from the ground, and grabbed her head. With that macabre collection cradled in his arms, his eyes streaked with tears yet somehow still filled with as much rage as there was pain, Alex shot me one final glare before taking off. His Flight carried him swiftly away to the south, and I let him go. There wasn’t anything I could do for him right now. I could only hope that time would heal what I could not.

“Are you all right?” Maggie’s voice came from behind me. I turned and looked into her eyes. She’d changed, too. The softness that had once filled her face was mostly gone, replaced by a look that spoke of both pride and a new fierceness.

“Not really,” I replied. I shook my head, trying vainly to clear away some of the guilt and pain. “I think I will be. Just, not today.”

Maggie tilted her head in the direction Alex had gone. “What’s he planning?”

“He said something about finding a way to bring Marion back to life. I don’t know what he has in mind, beyond that. If Alex is right about magic returning to the world in patterns similar to our ideas of magic, then maybe there’s a way. Bringing the dead back is a common theme for magic in myths and games.”

“Maybe there’s a way, but usually those stories carry a cost too, don’t they?” Maggie asked.

“The myths and legends, for sure. The games? Less so.” But which would it be? Alex had said he’d do whatever it took to bring her back from the dead. What if he ended up making some sort of monkey’s paw style bargain to do it?

“Shit. What about his people?” Maggie said. She pointed toward the building behind her. “He was useless in there, by the way. Almost got all of us killed. I had to take over and lead them in that fight. Me, Cam!”

I flashed her a grin, which made her roll her eyes. “You expect me to be shocked that you turned out to be a great leader when push came to shove? I’m not.”

Maggie blushed lightly. “Thanks. What do we do with them now, though? With Alex gone again, you know they’re going to look to us.”

“Good question,” I replied. “I think for now we get them back to their home base. I’m hoping Alex will come back to us soon. Hell, maybe he’s already back there.”

“I don’t think so,” Maggie replied. “You didn’t see him inside there. He was just about catatonic. He just lay there when the werewolves tried to attack us. He did nothing, even after I’d Healed all his wounds. Alex is hurting really badly right now, Cam. Are you sure you can’t try to go to him? You two have been best friends since almost day one, right?”

“Since day one,” I agreed. “But I’m probably the last person he wants to see right now. He blames me for Marion’s death.”

“What?”

I shrugged, feeling the weight of that guilt pile back on. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s right. I came to him and Marion and asked for their help. Alex wanted to say no, but Marion wasn’t willing to stand by when people needed her.”

“Sounds like her. She was amazing.”

I smiled. “She was.” The smile collapsed into a frown. “Now she’s gone, and I have to wonder if Alex is right. Maybe it is my fault.”

“It’s not,” Maggie said, grabbing hold of my shoulders. “Look at me, Cam. Alex is speaking from his pain, but if Marion were here, she’d tell you that was complete bullshit. Nobody made that woman do anything she didn’t want to do. If she decided she was going to help Harvard’s people against the werewolves, then nothing and no one would have been able to keep her from that. Please believe me. I miss her something fierce, but she would never want any of us to blame ourselves for her death. She chose how she went out. Marion laid down her life to save someone she loved. That was her in a nutshell. Don’t take that from her.”

Enough of what she said broke through the wall of my guilt that I managed to give her a nod. “Fair enough. She’d kick my ass if she heard me talking like that. Come on. Let’s get these people back together, get them home, and then start figuring out what’s next.”