Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,77

I asked her. “Don’t all you dreams ever bother to talk to each other?”

The girl frowned, and the black wolf with the white eyes lay down at her feet. She scratched behind its ears for a moment or three, then sat down beside it, looping one arm about the animal’s neck. The wolf was a brute, at least twice her size—larger, I thought, than it had been the first time I’d dreamed of the pair. She buried her face in its fur and began to sing, very softly, for the wolf. And the song she sang was the song that Mercy Brown, the Bride of Quiet, had sung to me the night I’d died.

Oh, where are you going, my pretty fair maid? Oh, where are you going, my honey?

She answered me right cheerfully, I’ve an errand for my mummy.

“Stop it,” I hissed. She did stop. Singing, that is. She raised her head, narrowed her blue eyes, and glared at me, angry, confused.

“What did I do now?” she asked petulantly, defensive.

“You know goddamn well. You know perfectly goddamn well.” I shifted my weight, and a handful of construction-paper leaves rained down from the pretend tree, red, orange, brown, yellow.

“That song,” I added.

“It’s just a song. It’s just a song I heard somewhere, a long, long time ago.” She went back to scratching the wolf behind its ears.

“The night she killed—”

“—us,” said the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl at the edge of the dream field. She kissed the wolf on the top of its head and it gratefully licked her hands. “I do guess that sort of ruins it,” she said. “A shame. It’s such a pretty song.”

“Fuck you. I have enough ghosts without haunting myself.” And I stood up, dusting off the seat of my jeans and scattering startled grasshoppers.

“Quinn,” said the girl, looking up at me. The wolf, she was looking up at me, as well. Her eyes seemed damp, like she was about to cry. I didn’t want to see her anymore, and I stared out across the field again. For the first time, I did see something on the other side. There was a wall of smoke, and there were flames, and the sounds of battle drifted in the cold breeze blowing through the stalks of tall grass.

“You saw,” said the girl. “You saw us in a cage, an awful sort of cage. You saw that the twins had locked us up inside a cage.”

“I did,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the advancing inferno. Something was coming, and it might not be the worst thing I’d ever come up against. But, then again, it might. It might be the worst times ten. I heard the cries of men and women. I saw the sun glinting off swords and shields and the banners of war whipped about the heads of soldiers like flying serpents.

“And I heard a voice,” said the girl, “in the midst of the four beasts, I heard a terrible, terrible voice saying to me ‘Come, child, and see.’ And behold, in the midst of the whirlwind I looked, and I saw a pale horse.”

The fire beyond the field was spreading, driven and fed by the wind, and an enormous white stallion was charging towards me, a white horse bearing not one, but two riders, a man and a woman, brother and sister. Their armor was as white as snow.

“And their names who sat on him were Death,” said the girl at my feet, “and Hell followed after.”

The sound of the horse’s hooves was thunder.

The sky had filled with smoke and crows.

“We won’t die in a cage,” said the blonde girl.

I looked down, and where the girl and the wolf had been, there was only the skeleton of something that was neither exactly a girl nor a wolf. The bones were charred, as was the earth all around them.

I could feel the earth coming apart beneath me.

And then . . .

“Time to wake up, girlbaby,” said Charlee. “We’re almost there.”

And I opened my eyes. The Porsche rolled along a darkened street, past darkened storefronts and restaurants and bars that were shut up tight for the night. I coughed and rubbed at my eyes. I could still smell smoke and scorched flesh. I reached for the pack of cigarettes and the lighter in the pocket of my peacoat. I asked Charlee what time it was and he tapped the clock on the dash.

“We were being followed,” he said. “I had to take a serious detour after Hartford,