Page 121 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
One lightning-fast lunge and you swing the flat of Cobra Lily’s sword. All those years of living and training during the war have not gone to waste.
Mercy surprises you. Even as the blade swings down, she is already moving, diving and darting past your left side. You twist to block a blow, but are shocked a second time to find she isn’t attacking. Only moving to a safe distance.
She should be trying to kill you; it’s her only chance to survive. Why else would she come back? She has no options, no possible other plan. You are her monster legacy, existing only to be defeated. Surely, that is how she sees you.
Oh, well. Her weakness is your advantage. You leap forward, sword singing and hair flying in the roiling tempest.
It shouldn’t be close. Mercy never took any kind of formal fighting training, in all her years and lives. She fiddles around with knives and has a good aim, but that’s not the same. You have fought in literal wars and spent time learning weapon techniques.
Except she is fast, an unencumbered spirit compared to your heavy, sluggish body. Every swing is met with empty air. You are burdened by the weight of flesh, moving only as fast as joints allow. And she is less interested in hurting you than avoiding you, which you don’t understand.
Maybe you should be slipping out of this body, too. But that’s risky. If she decides to dissipate her storm, normal sky will return and you’ll die quickly up here without the constant pour of water. It would end her life, along with yours, but you can’t be sure she wouldn’t take that trade.
It has always annoyed you that summoning storms is not in your repertoire. That is all Mercy, and nothing particularly to do with being a water ghost.
She darts to the side, swinging again with furious intent. No point overthinking it. You will stay in this body for now and cut her down, because you are a far better and more experienced fighter than this bumbling middle-aged woman, even if she is a ghost.
And once you’ve trapped her a second time, you’ll make sure she doesn’t get out. Mercy will know what it is like to be forgotten and alone, forever and ever and ever. Then, maybe then, the rage you feel will start to cool. It must.
Leap, and swing. Down comes the blade.
She catches it in her claws, wrests it from your grasp. But instead of striking, Mercy flings the sword out and over the balcony.
“I have more,” you snarl. “More weapons, more bodies, more hate for you!”
So do I, Siu Yin. We can go on like this forever, both of us—immortal in our anger, endlessly cruel and destructive. Is that what you want?
“I’ve told you what I want! I will be the storm that washes away your whole world! I will punish everyone for forgetting, for betraying, for hurting!”
I see. You want to do this the hard way, huh?Mercy draws herself upright, teeth gleaming and claws hanging, the tattered rags of a water ghost plastered to her skeletal form.
You take a step back, wary and tense.
Sung Siu Yin, she says, in a voice as deep and cold as the ocean,before you were even born, I was already dead. Before you drew breath, I bathed in rage. Before you killed a man, I had already drowned a village.
You want to fight? Then we fight! This is my storm, little girl, little niece, and I remember how to sing to it. You wanted me to remember everything? Well, I do. And I had forgotten more than youeverlearned.
“Oh shit,” you manage, and then all of that tempestuous power bears down on a single building.
It is like heaven itself has reached down to punch you, with a whirlwind of air so strong that every window shatters in the Murray Building. Debris smashes against nearby buildings, and the air is full of glass. The noise is enough to burst eardrums and you careen wildly, hopelessly off-balance.
Mercy grabs your wrist.
She stands impossibly still amidst that chaos, spirit feet braced on the slick linoleum, ghostly skin sheened with rain. She is light as a feather and should blow away, yet she stands solid as a marble pillar. Her claws hold you fast, keeping you from fleeing.
You stare at her with eyes wide, clutching back at her wrist. Temporarily forgetting that you, too, are an undying ghost.
I’m very sorry, niece, she says.This will hurt.
Lightning strikes directly. It’s just like on Mami’s boat, all those years ago. Only this time, there is no ocean to displace the energy.
Your body explodes.
38GHOST TALKER
August 22, 1975 (Today)
Smell returns first. The air smells like seared bacon; the realization is almost funny. Gasping, you crawl at last from the smoldering remains of Cobra Lily’s skin, like a demented butterfly emerging from a tainted chrysalis.
