XXV. ...And Then, You Will Burn

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Marcella woke up with a jolt.

Underneath the moon, starving for its sanguine blood, Marcella nodded off in a Toyota she hot-wired with the aftertaste of a wine merchantʼs sangria on her parched tongue and a splitting headache throbbing in her temples. As the Toyota harbored itself underneath the inky moonlight, Marcella looked at the CALLER ID with a numbness, a desecration to her strength, and in the midst of all the turmoil, she pressed it against her head. Wheezing, coughing, freezing to the point that her bones cracked against his skin, where her teeth were chained to one another, to where the alcohol in her system bubbled.

Marcella clutched the phone and pressed it to her forehead, waiting to answer, wondering who would die on the other end if she did answer it. If she would see the blotchy, bare body of one of her siblings naked as they choked on curdles of their own blood, or a screenshot of one of their body bags on her phone, or Learʼs severed head glossed in the gore of a sicarioʼs knife.

Marcella inhaled sharply, sobbing to the moon.

"Itʼs done. The witchfyre is in place, the books are in my possession. Itʼs done," Marcella said hurriedly, furious.

"Mmm, it has been a while since I have heard your sweet voice, and I must say, the anguish in it makes every waking moment of my suffering almost worthwhile. What did you tell your friend?"

Marcella huffed.

"That I was in Chicago to start a war. To buy protection. Silence. I lied. To protect my siblings, to protect my family. I lied."

The silence was too loud. Too paralyzing, too consuming. Gripping the wheel, Marcella leaned in and sniffled, gritting.

"I swear to god, you sadistic b*tch, if a word of those documents went to the press–"

Marcella inhaled sharply, composing herself.

"I want all your copies of that psychiatric evaluation. Now."

Ingibiorg chuckled.

"I am afraid that demand is no longer an option for you," Ingibiorg said with a menacing murmur.

"The reason being? That transcript? It was fake. Fan-fiction, if you will. A completely fabricated psyche-eval. Well, actually, not completely fabricated. What your mother did in Havana was much worse, Iʼm guessing, or else you wouldnʼt be here. Who knew that our sweet Marcellita had something to hide?"

She saw flashes.

The car trekked along the street languidly, cruising along the jagged concrete and falling into the historic ruin. Rummaging through the passengerʼs seat compartment, Marcella rammed her fingers along the dashboard in search of her grandmotherʼs gun, locked and loaded with eight silver rounds. As she clutched it, she burned through more hard, cheap liquor and sangria, letting the sensations fill her up with a syrupy suffocation, and it burned. Olivia and Trevorʼs wide doeful eyes, Javier and Whitneyʼs sharp, ruthless ones, Louise and Lynxʼs sweet ones, and Romeoʼs mischievous ones. All her siblings, snuffed out like a flame.

"You played me," Marcella murmured, hollow.

"No, you played yourself," Ingibiorg replied.

A pause.

"Do you know the words of the poet Machado, muñequita?"

She saw death.

A man. Tall, dark, handsome, with a cross branded on his cheek, burned into the skin and a mouth chalk full of blood. The bar was Shakespearean, and in the haze of the s*x and the sodomy, she let out a gut-wrenching sob. The gas whirred, churning and coiling around the room, brimming with bony ash, and she screamed. Squirming under his grip, prayers rolled off her mouth: pleading prayers, prayers of sacrifice, prayers of relentlessness, prayers of no mercy, of no compassion. There was a fever that raked through her skin, a fever that was blotched with numb tears and alcoholic need, and as she entered the Twelfth Night, she let out a choked cry.

"Excuse me?"

"I was Norwegian by birth in another life, a displaced queen of promised lands, and in the wake of my husbandʼs anniversary – the anniversary of his death – I met Antonio Machado. He was a lovely poet, exotic with Spanish poetry and divine in Norwegian wisdom and well-versed in Scottish politics, but he was married. A schoolteacher, enamored by his beautiful little wife. He loved her very much. Not for her looks or her status, but for her charity, her kindness. She was the Virgin Mary when she roamed the earth, with a purity the world had never known, and as he monopolized her love, was a pimp for his poetry, she died. The purity choked out of her, the body of Christ her shrine, the temple of Jesus her legacy. And when she died, he became a great poet. Immortal, as I am."

Marcella growled.

"If you think Iʼm going to sit idly by and here you rant and rave about the time you won, you should remember who I am. What I have access too, what Iʼm capable of. This isnʼt going to be a time you won. If you want the books, take them, but if youʼre going to lecture me on how Antonio Machado fooled the world you have another thing coming because I donʼt get played. Those documents were forged."

"Not entirely."

The woman paused.

"Oh, sweet girl, you think I care for a few measly books? Or blackmailing you with some phony documents?" the woman scoffed. "No, my dear, I could care less. The books were merely a ruse. The same with your motherʼs report. You...the information you have? That is far more valuable than some first edition classics and a doctorʼs note."

As smoke swallowed the Pub, the flames rose – black as obsidian. The flames hissed, simply meshing with the sky, but...there was something different with this destruction. The dead made their peace, draped in the everlasting darkness, but some didnʼt make their peace. Some screamed, shrilly as the throats of the Scottish men and women in Fife, Dunsinane, Inverness, Glamis. The night was full of dark terror, pregnant in the belly of the bloody beasts that roamed Chicagoʼs streets, and Marcella drank in every screech, every growl, every scream, every groan. Chicago was lit ablaze by the devilʼs fire. Shuddering and shaking underneath the rills of demonic fire, demonic shadows, she consumed it like she would her pain.

Chicago was on fire.

And everything burned.

"You see, the stories humanity tells are so deliciously predictable. In their pain, in their grief. Man would give entire nations to lift grief off his heart, and yet you cannot buy anything with grief. Grief is worthless. Humanity is worthless. But the stories we tell, now those are worth the price of pain, of grief."

"You want information," Marcella said, deadpanning. "You...blackmailed me, threatened my family, their lives, for...information?"

"I want leverage," Ingibiorg said simply. "In the short time I have made your acquaintance, you have been driven by your rage towards anything more powerful than you are, by your animosity towards the world. Protective, paranoid. In the Orderʼs court, youʼre the fairest of them all. The Virgin Mary come to life. A woodsy girl; a dead ringer of Cordelia from King Lear. Innocence, incarnate. But you and I both know that behind that sweet face of yours is nothing but a predator; an ambitious little girl that plots and pokes and peels at the very skin that keeps you alive. You have secrets, muñequita. Secrets that change that very...reputation of yours. What happened in Havana? Iʼm guessing thatʼs a first."   

The fire was primordial. With hair braided in blood and enticingly hot as a mothʼs kiss. Her body clamped forward instinctively, her gun pointed at the White Haired Man and his ghostly accomplice. Terror incarnate. Her tears were ferocious, raw in their acidity, and the fire was sweltering, scorching, pellets of hellʼs water. She watched the blood and muck on her body ebb away with emotion, the bruises on her ankles spearing her skin, with trepidation. With fear. Her cries were full of hate, full of suffering, and she was drowning in the blood of the family business. The darkness, the monstrousness of it all.

"Secrets change people, but things change them, too. Trauma, violence. I did what I had to do to survive deportation, to survive getting killed. My family and I do what we do to survive. So yes, people change. I changed, so if you want information or something to blackmail me with, you wonʼt find it."

"No, Marcellita, no. Yes, dear girl; trauma changes people. Everything changes. But you, my blessed girl, you do not. Which I suppose is now becoming apparent, as you sit alone there – on the tarmac, instinct overtaking emotion, murderous anger over logic just as it always has. You see, Marcella, I set a trap for you. And to my advantage, you fell right into it. People change, but you never will. Because that is simply who you are."

"And who am I? T-tell me."

"An addict to your pain."

The way she spoke came out in desperate snarls. In stagnant tears and Cuban curses and the Rʼs she rolled off her tongue. The White-Haired Man and the Other Man with the cross were stoic. Without emotion, and Marcella saw herself dropping her gun. Trembling at her words as they raced down her spine, caught in the chill of her burning coldness. She saw herself pulling at her hair, she saw herself screaming, and then she saw...silence.

A deep, maniac face like the ones her mother would make. Dark with treachery, muffled by murderous rage.

"Machadoʼs wife, what she wrote for him, would often be based on Shakespearean proportions. Poetry about gluttonous greed, about a thirst for power that compels man to let himself be consumed by dark ambition, about bureaucrats and seasoned politicians spurred on by their pure, chaste lovers to enter the hellish depths of the world with a hunger for revenge. She wanted to get out of the rut that was her past, so she did something about it. You are the same. When I first saw you, a quiet little baby suckling on her mother's teat, I knew everything about you. About the woman youʼd become. he price of power is the need to stay on top, and you proved that little cliché. Youʼre here now, Marcellita. Alone, like a helpless little animal at the mercy of a true monster."

She saw gasoline splash the walls as she stood in the silence, holding her holy ground. Light rained down from the vengeful with the poisonous tongue of an old Spanish love song dancing off the fireʼs harsh arm. The fire was a scorned daughter trapped in a loveless marriage between her parents, and she reigned with a merciless hatred. The fumes of her resentment sprayed every wall, every crevice, every edge that drew the light in closer, and with the force of an immigrating army, she struck. With gentle licks and coy kisses, making them wait. Watch for doom to strike.

Softly, slowly, silently.

"Tell me, Marcella, did you really think theyʼd wait forever? Your friends; your family? Hiding behind you and your crusade; falling for every little lie; sacrificing everything to keep you happy and safe and content and getting nothing in return? I know you, sweet girl, and you can tell me you never came to Chicago for selfish reasons, that you came to protect the ones you love, that you lied to Ciro because you needed to keep your siblings safe, but you and I know that I am not the villain in this story, dear girl. You are. You wanted to fight violence with violence, and like the pyromaniac you are, you started a fire in Chicago and convinced yourself you could contain it. For power; for dominance. Your mother gave your siblings all of her empire, and she gave you nothing. And we both know you won't let that stand because the endless cycle of ambition, of secrecy, of hate is your addiction, just like Machadoʼs wife, just like King Learʼs Cordelia, just like Lady Macbeth controlled her daughter, and just like the way your mother controlled you. But alas, this is a taste of compulsion, and like all tales of compulsion there is only one way this will end."

Her flames stoked Warʼs sparks just as greedily as the manʼs hunger did and Marcella stood above them. Marcellaʼs jealousy, Marcellaʼs numbness, it was a narcotic. A narcotic she was high off, a narcotic that filled her with dizzying need for satisfaction, for a satiation to her cravings, and as the fires swallowed them whole,  the ghosts of the smoke danced. Howling in grief, calling to her with stifled sobs that wracked their bodies. Glass shattered, the flames scuttling across the Pub, puffing away at the bar vicariously. Growling in rage, the flames burning in red and amber.

Chicago burned.

"First, you will crash..."

She went out in a blaze of glory as the Pub exploded.

"…and then, you will burn."