The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [58]
Although the Castle County coroner had presumed Travis dead in the explosion at the Mine Shaft Saloon, the Seekers’ analyses had shown otherwise. Remains of four separate individuals were found in the ruin of the Mine Shaft. None of the samples had matched Travis’s DNA—which they had on file thanks to a small skin sample he had never noticed Deirdre taking.
It was just one of the many ways she had used him. And while the madness of the new Black Death had occupied her, now there was nothing to keep the memories from creeping back—memories of what she had done to her friend.
So, is that your shadow self, Deirdre? The one that can lie?
She would never forget the sound of his voice when he spoke those words. It had been so soft, yet it had damned her more surely than a ringing chorus of anger. He had thought her a friend, and she had deceived him, manipulated him for her own ends. No matter the reason, how right it had seemed at the time. Deirdre had never believed the end justified the means; at least she had always thought so. Yet in order to serve the Seekers, she had betrayed her friend. And for that she would never forgive them.
Not long after the immolations ceased, she had simply stopped showing up at the Manhattan Charterhouse where Hadrian Farr had been directing their research. She had ignored the phone calls, the e-mails, the pager beeps. Damn the Seekers, but couldn’t they ever do anything in person? Then, without really thinking about it, she had gotten on a plane and had put an ocean behind her. At first she had thought she was going to Ireland. The years when, as a girl, she had lived with her grandmother outside of Cork, listening to old songs and first learning to play music, still lingered in her mind. But the plane had touched down at Heathrow, and the muted grays of London had shrouded her in a soft dullness that, if she didn’t think about it too much, could almost be mistaken for comfort.
Deirdre clutched the empty absinthe glass, willing it to fill again, to help her forget if not forgive. All hail Our Green Lady of Oblivion. But the glass remained empty.
“Hello, sweetie,” said a woman with a mop of orange hair as she slid onto the bench next to Deirdre.
She was long and lanky, curved as a willow, her limbs seal-sleek in clinging black vinyl. The face she turned toward Deirdre was stark white, and her eyes were lost amid dark circles of kohl. It was hard to tell through the smoky, clove-scented air of the pub, but beneath the garish makeup her features might have been exquisite.
The woman coiled a thin arm around Deirdre’s neck. “You look dangerous and yummy.”
Deirdre did not smile. “Just the first one.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. There was a listlessness to them, a dullness, yet a hunger as well. She bit a lip colored the deep purple of a bruise. “That’ll do.”
The woman shifted closer, vinyl creaking. Deirdre felt her heat through the plastic. In a way she was tempted. It might not be such a bad thing to lose herself with another—a different sort of oblivion. Her work with the Seekers had left little time to take a lover. It had been a while since she had been with a man—or a woman. However, there was something about the haziness in the other’s eyes, the languor of her motions, that sickened Deirdre even as she envied it.
“I’m not in the mood,” she said.
“Then I’ll help you get into it, sweetie.”
The woman pushed something onto the table, then lifted a strangely long hand to uncover a pair of purple pills, each marked with a white lightning