Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Be sure to read the first book, Winters and the Beast, before starting here!
Summary
After coming to terms with two things--one, that he's made of mold, and two, that life goes on--Ethan Winters must work with his new alliance to definitively end Mother Miranda's hundred years of terror.
The key to her undoing, or rather, the many keys to her undoing, are buried deep in the village's remains. Some secrets will require Ethan to do the one thing he never thought he was capable of: bringing back the Lords, and convincing them to work with him.
Meanwhile, Karl works to become more than just "The Fourth Lord", while subconsciously knowing that for his entire life, all the things that seemed too good to be true....go away after awhile.
with brad dourif as an un-mutated salvatore moreau
resident evil village
“I lived through the same plague as Miranda,” he began again, kneeling at the headstone. Ethan could only see the back of Moreau’s head, but he heard the crippling pain in the man’s trembling voice.
“She was older than me. Lived here, she already had….well…” His dark head turned to glance at Eva. “You, I suppose. I survived because I was at sea when the outbreak happened. My first schooner. I was young–it was our family rite of passage. Oh….how I loved the Black Sea. But my mother died from that outbreak. I am so sad I was not here. My father, he survived. He was the village doctor, you see…but horrible, horrible. I was never any kind of scientist.”
Moreau laughed bitterly, and Ethan heard the hint of the taunting Lord within his voice. He tried to keep his lip from curling, which left him with a very perturbed expression that Moreau did not see.
“When I returned, I was not treated kindly. Miranda was studying in his clinic, and…well,” he turned back to them, his eyes glistening. “I suppose you know what she did next.”
“All too well, I’m afraid,” Eva said. She lowered herself gingerly to the grass. Moreau sat back on his haunches, clearly willing and ready to talk–to her, at least.
“My mutation was very slow. It took my intelligence as the years went by. I can’t even remember much after I lost my vocabulary. I tried so hard to hold on. My father disowned me, of course…Miranda then became my mother.”
Another bitter laugh. “I was good at fishing. She didn’t want good at fishing.”
I still do not know where you are, or how to find you. Your fellow monarchs would have me believe you are dead, but I know better. The purifying crystal returned me to the closest thing to my previous state that exists, but I can still sense you in every tree, every ray of sun.
I have been here now twelve years. The people still call for you. They leave flowers at your family crest at the sacred site. Your sister has grown into quite the Queen. She now has a son, I wish you could meet him. She is still not you, however, and many knights have left their posts in your absence. Your likeness still hangs in many homes, or so these kind servants report.
I have been in the castle as a captive for my tenure here, but my stewards tell me that those commonfolk approve of us, that they bring me flowers I cannot see, gifts I cannot have. They wish to speak of me, about you, as if I am a thread that flows to you. How I wish that were true.
I have been allowed to teach the village youth sometimes, simple lessons, letters, music…always watched, again, a prisoner. But I have not made lessons in over a year. My eyes are worsening, and my hands hurt so badly that I cannot play. Just more reasons why it seems I am close to the end.
These fools have one final insult to give us. I learned this week that I will be buried in stone deep within the castle recesses, so that I might never become a part of your world. I fear I might never see you again. I write this in the hopes it finds you, and you seek out what corner that might preserve me, to return me to the earth.
The others were so angered by your stealing the crystal that they decreed it will be buried with me, never to be used again. Many rituals and beliefs are changing; children are no longer brought to be with their families, and the poorer are not allowed to be buried within reach of resurrection. It is a travesty that such a miracle of life has fallen into such evil-minded hands. I still hope to find you one day. I will never regret returning to look for you, even if it is not to be in this life.
—---
Ethan chewed through the breakfast sausage as he read the letter. He could now understand the language that Godric’s lover wrote in, and he had been combing through the years of documentation since waking. This letter had been sealed; it was special, covered in artwork and old ribbons. He paused to bite into an apple. He’d slept better last night than he had in years, certainly since Dulvey. And he was up before anyone, even Karl. He’d made breakfast and now sat at the kitchen counter alone.
The morning sun streamed in, and it hurt his eyes greatly. Ethan had drawn the curtains for the first time since moving in.
Someone was coming down the hall. Gentle footsteps sounded on the hardwood, and Eva poked her light blond head into the room, staring in confusion at the drapery.
“Ethan?”
“Morning.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” he gestured toward the food. “Feel free.”
She moved for her favorite kettle, and stared at him with a strange look. “Are you sure you feel fine?”
“Better than I have in awhile,” he admitted. “Eva. How do you feel about becoming the Queen? The Megamycete still needs one.”
She stared, a bit perturbed at his bluntness. “I….I have been considering it. The time might come to say my goodbyes soon. I try not to think about it.”
He met her eyes. “I’ll keep reading. I’ve got help now. Maybe there’s something. Someone I can reach out to.” He thought of the fragment of Miranda.
Ethan felt bad for bringing up what clearly pained Eva greatly. He wanted a solution. He would find one, he decided, as she turned away from him, back toward the kettle. He tried to fix things with another entirely blunt and out-of-character statement.
“Donna could become the Queen if things don't work out...if I mean...Hey, you know, Karl and Sal don’t have to do the surgery on Donna the barbaric way. I can do it.”
“You…?”
“Miranda can do it. She’s been infected with the Black God. Well, now, so have I. I can do it.”
“Has it…does it….communicate with you?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. It’s like a voice in the back of my mind, dormant, like the others.”
She looked worried. In a firmer tone he said, “I’m in control, Eva.”
“I believe you. I just…I think they would rather…they have a plan….it could be serious….”
“Fine,” he scoffed, “I’m taking Alcina to see Godric today anyway.” His pride a bit stung, he returned to the stack of journal entries and love letters. “Do you know why she’s so curious to meet him?”
“Beyond the obvious?” Eva giggled. “Doesn’t everyone want to meet him?”
He scoffed, and returned to the notes. The researcher had been a true learner, right to his end. Over time his observations and ponderings lost focus, his sketch lines became shaky, his handwriting worsened in legibility. But he’d worked to at least pen down the information.
“When are we burying Godric’s….boyfriend? Is there a medieval word for boyfriend?”
Her smile was soft. “Boyfriend is probably suitable. Perhaps we could do that tomorrow tonight. It will be a full moon.”
“Did you know he was buried with the Purifying Crystal?”
Eva looked shocked, nearly dropping her tea strainer. “Are you certain?”
“That’s what his letter said, actually, a few of them say that.”
“This is incredible news, if true, Ethan. That crystal has almost legendary power.”
“Power to not have you go back into the Megamycete?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I wonder who told me to go to his tomb? There had to be a reason.”
“Was it not the voices, or the Black God?”
“Yeah, but who told THEM? Did they just decide?”
Her expression was just as curious as his. She was combing through the papers. Eva’s hand paused and hovered over a beautiful lineart of Godric’s face, and his lover’s next to it. They were a handsome pair, but the artwork still did them no justice. She made a soft noise, stroking the paper with her fingertips. “I hope we can help them.”
Ethan still had half a roll in his mouth when the loud thuds of Karl’s boots announced the engineer’s arrival before he entered the room. The roll was hastily eaten, and the blond flew out of his seat. Karl had barely entered the archway into the kitchen before Ethan put his hands on the other man’s shoulders, pushing him against the wall with a deep kiss. Eva rolled her eyes, but was smiling, as the sounds of a very ravenous, teenager-hormone-level, good morning makeout session filtered into the room.
Heisenberg’s boyish giggle followed them to the counter, where Ethan returned to his coffee. Heisenberg sat beside him, a completely wolfish grin on the scarred face. Eva smirked at both of them. Ethan ruined the spirited mood entirely with his next question.
“Does Miranda have your crystal fragment?”
The pause in the air was pregnant; Karl’s face fell. “Ethan, I told you not to talk about-”
“It’s a yes or no.”
Eva’s face of doubt showed that she wanted to tell Ethan what happened. The blond turned his gaze to her instead, then. Karl shook his head angrily as Eva admitted, “It was stolen, from where I placed it years ago.”
“Who stole it…wait, it was your brother, wasn’t it? Miranda said he-”
“Ethan, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“If he did that, can we trust him?”
Karl slammed his palms onto the countertop and stood, storming out of the room and heading toward the basement. Ethan followed him with his gaze, and then frowned. He turned back to Eva, speaking through the voice in his mind.
Do you trust Karl’s brother?
She looked as though she wanted to disappear. The blond woman shrugged her petite shoulders, and bit her lip. I am not sure.
—------------
There was one ill side effect of his symbiosis to the Black God, he realized after breakfast. Sunlight was now excruciating. Ethan pouted over this for another hour as he helped the girls prepare for the day, fishing through bags of new outfits for the perfect dresses-choosing what to wear for the visit with Godric. What a strange life, he mused as he helped both brush their teeth, supervising and juggling his own toothbrush at the same time.
When a knock sounded at the bathroom door, Ethan figured it was Alcina, but was surprised to see Donna. She was wrapped in a shawl and still had her night dress on. “Could I…” she blushed preemptively, and Ethan paused, realizing he was shirtless, with toothpaste smeared across his lips. He turned to the sink, rinsed off and turned back to her, at the very least toothpasteless. “What’s up?”
“I was going to wear these confounded…pants, but I…it took so much talking me into it, to buy them, I thought I’d make shirts to match, but now I realize I don’t have time and wanted to try…this might be the only day I….”
She spoke low, seeming frightened and embarrassed, and Ethan caught on quickly. That was not typical of him, and he mused that it must be some learned inference from the entity that resided, nestled inside his chest like a weight. Had he always been a dumb blond before now?
“Sure,” he answered, and called over his shoulder to the girls. “After you brush your teeth, wash your faces, Evie, help Rose, and then brush your hair!”
Two gargled ‘okay’s answered him (Rose’s was more of an ‘otay’) and he left the room to go to his bedroom. Ethan opened a drawer and held out two sweaters-one was grey, the other a deep jewel toned blue. The blue was a knit turtleneck, the grey a soft cashmere. Her eyes lit up, and Donna stroked both fabrics.
“They’re..so lovely,” she said hesitantly. “Do you have….”
“Anything in black?” He laughed. “I actually don’t. I’d say to ask Karl, but my hunch is that if it didn’t come out of a bunker from 1944 he doesn’t have it in stock. Don’t worry, you’ll look great in these,” he thrust both into her hands.
When Donna looked at the sweaters, and then him, rather thoughtfully, he raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“You’re different, Ethan.”
“Am I?”
“You seem…assured, somehow.”
He crossed his arms, willing to argue, but then realized he probably would have felt strange about being in front of her shirtless before today. Why was that? Ethan didn’t know why he was shy. In fact, he hadn’t even acknowledged that he was shy before this moment. He was definitely an idiot, he decided.
“I guess I am different,” he acknowledged. “But I’d rather everybody didn’t treat me like I’m some kind of monster.”
“We are all some kind of monster,” she protested, and actually winked at him before she turned to go. Ethan considered, as she walked away, persuading her to let him take a swing at removing the crystal. He had all the confidence in the world that he could do it. But she had seemed nervous, and was likely focusing on the jeans dilemma to distract herself from what she would endure today.
He instead called, “Donna.”
She turned.
“Good luck today. Everything will go fine.”
Her smile faltered, but she kept the brave facade up.
—--------
Ethan didn’t see Donna or Karl again that morning. Eva and Moreau retreated to the basement soon after breakfast, and Alcina emerged looking frightfully gorgeous in a red dress. Her face was stony, and she seemed intent on something (hating Ethan still, probably) until she saw Rose and Evie in their rusty orange, matching dresses and bows–and then she melted.
Ethan brought out the patera to the circle they stood in, and held it out in the middle of the group. His eyes met Alcina’s and he caught, for the first time, a glance of uncertainty….was that giddiness? He pondered what she might have to say to one of Heisenberg’s ancestors, and then the world tipped upside down.
—----------
Ethan’s mind was washed with memories while they turned. The girls were giggling and Alcina was mesmerized, but his eyes blackened. He saw his own hands, bloodstained. More blood on snow. Godric in front of him, smiling, his mouth red with blood. The King was even larger, with golden-red eyes and a fiery anger that he had taken out on whoever’s corpse lay beneath him.
His facial cuts healed instantly, in front of Ethan, as he smiled. Breath fogged around him. He spoke his language.
To the next.
He was speaking to the Black God.
The scene was so viscerally real that Ethan had to double-check his hands for blood when he pushed against the familiar, isolated doors.
Godric was sitting on his throne, but moved to kneel on the rug when the two girls rushed in. He embraced both just as a favorite uncle would. Ethan sauntered in behind them as Alcina looked uncertainly around. She would have recognized the church site. Her eyes had not landed on Godric yet, as she took in her somewhat familiar surroundings.
Ethan felt a sudden change in his chest, his body; it happened before he could process it. The thing inside him moved and stirred, stretching out within him. He was nearly horrified to feel his mouth and jaw expanding into the elongated, exaggerated features of the night before. Red and gold eyes shone and lighted on the King; Ethan was taller, abruptly.
This slightly monstrous shift was taken in great stride by Godric, who stood and clapped his hands once before moving to embrace Ethan. “My old friend!”
He wasn’t speaking to Ethan. He spoke to the creature directly, in his own language.
Ethan growled a reply, not recognizing his own voice, and he was shocked when, after the firmly planted kiss on his cheek, Ethan’s own tongue left his mouth-it was long, like a dog’s, oh god-and licked up one side of the other man’s scratchy beard. Godric roared with laughter and picked Ethan up as he had the children, rocking him.
The girls shrieked and giggled below. When Godric dropped the blond, the spell seemed to be broken and Ethan abruptly returned to normal-he hadn’t even felt the transformation back to himself. He shook his head, embarrassed, as Godric put him almost in a headlock. He was squeezing Ethan hard. His eyes danced. “You are a warrior,” he said, poking a finger into Ethan’s chest. “Beautiful display. Wonderful spirit.”
The blond couldn’t help but smile, even though he felt he would run out of air in a moment. Godric dropped him entirely when his eyes landed on Alcina.
She looked, if it were possible for her…. nervous . Ethan remembered, as he clambered to his feet, how she’d expressed distaste for men touching her. He stepped in the middle of the two, still trying to catch his breath from the hug. “Alcina, this is ..well, King? Godric. Godric, this is Lady-”
“Dimitrescu,” he finished, his loud and bruteish body language softening. How was that possible? And why hadn’t Godric treated Ethan so fragile? He’d just been dropped, after all. He stepped forward, a rather serious expression on his usually smiling face. He extended one hand.
She took it, resolutely, and stepped up to him. They were both tall, but Godric still towered over her. This seemed to unnerve Alcina, and she tensed up as if waiting on a hug. The smile returned to Godric’s eyes, and he gave a very formal kiss to her knuckles. “I have heard you do not like men,” he said rather bluntly, and Ethan raised his eyebrows.
Alcina balked at this introduction, but he quickly added with a nod, “A wise choice. Fiends, all of them. Please, come sit.” She actually smiled at this and her lip trembled. He gestured at the throne, which sat empty. Alcina looked doubtful at this idea, but he began to lead her forward anyway. Godric’s good-natured smile seemed to win even her over as she moved after him, settling onto the seat.
Ethan sat on the bench he usually took, feeling unusually sheepish. He’d licked an almost seven foot tall man. What could he even say after that? He was content to sit and listen.
Godric dropped casually to the steps, and then motioned for Ethan to sit next to him. The blond awkwardly slid off the bench and nestled beside the large King. As one arm draped over him, and Alcina raised a quizzical eyebrow, Rosemary climbed up the broad man’s back, using his long hair as a brace to pull herself up. Evie was now pushing her fingers into the ash that had fallen after hundreds of years of existence in this chamber, and she rubbed it onto Godric’s eyes.
“Warpaint?” Ethan ventured, and Godric closed his eyes to placate the girl.
“Makeup,” she corrected.
Ethan withdrew the goodbye letter that he’d read this morning. He passed it to the King silently, and Godric held it close to his chest as if giving it a hug. “I will read it when alone,” he offered, and the blond nodded.
With one eye now covered in the world’s most death-metal-looking smoky eye, Godric turned to Alcina, letting Evie have access to his other eye. He squeezed Ethan’s hand reassuringly; when had they started holding hands? Ethan had to roll his own eyes. Godric was just as invasive as any mold consciousness, moreso, but the blond loved it.
The King’s voice was deep, rich, but still gentle. “Lady, you had business to meet me, to ask?”
Alcina looked rather…in place, on the throne, Ethan realized. Godric didn’t look so bad in ‘makeup’, either. The woman fidgeted, and then bit her red lip. “I do. Eva spoke with me at length when we went through the castle. About her role. She insinuated that you know more than anyone, about the…presence that the Mold colony has always supplied from its catalogued minds.” That was a mouthful, and she exhaled as she finished.
“The Queen,” he said simply, knowingly, as Evie began brushing through his long beard. Rosemary might have been doing something with his hair, if she had the dexterity, but mostly she was pulling it into knots. Godric didn’t even notice or grunt in pain as Karl had done. He simply smiled slyly through his darkened lids at Alcina.
She, like everyone else, was flustered at his stare. She wrung her hands over their black gloves.
“Yes. That. Well. Is it true, that you know the process?”
“Process,” he said uncertainly, turning over the word. “Is an easy ritual. Mold chooses.”
Wait . Ethan had no idea that Alcina even knew about this, let alone wanted to discuss it. He pivoted, as much as he could under the hulking arm.
“I see. I would like to….” She steeled her voice, seeming frustrated at herself for faltering. With a small shake of her head, she tried again, to Godric’s ever-widening smile.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
The surprises didn’t stop coming after Ethan’s ‘conversation’ with the BSAA agent.
Heisenberg steered him into a large bank branch, where amid all of the Romanian words, Ethan picked up on some of what was transpiring. A land development fund allocation. Not the bank’s funds. The funds left by Miranda. It was a vast amount. He knew part of it was for the power restoration in the valley, but wasn’t the government handling most of that?
The bank teller seemed to catch on that Ethan couldn’t keep up, and amid paperwork signing, asked Karl, in English, “So, what are the plans-a business, as it is a commercial account? Will you need assistance finding contractors?”
“We’ll draw plans up by spring, let you know,” Karl replied amiably. His very American accent startled the banker. The engineer stroked his beard and added nonchalantly, “Plans’re up to the wife.”
Ethan turned sharply, wondering what in the hell Heisenberg was referring to, but the man thumbed at him cheekily. “That’s the wife.”
The banker laughed, confused, as Ethan’s face burned.
—---------
Evie had her first ice cream with Ethan, Rose, and Donna in attendance. As Ethan dug enthusiastically into his milkshake, Evie said in a deadpan, “The lady behind us in line was wondering why you weren’t holding Donna’s hand. She thinks you two are our mom and dad,” and caused the blond to almost choke. Donna turned red, an exceptionally rare feat, and Rose laughed. So it appeared that his earlier ‘reading’ of Redfield was accurate…those infected, with enough power, could pick up on thoughts of others, even humans who weren’t infected.
After the ritual of ice cream, Ethan said amid a racing heart, “Evie, if you want to call me your Dad…I’m okay with that.”
“Really? Even after…all the bad stuff…?”
“Sure.” Why did that make him so nervous? But then, he’d been nervous about taking care of Rose as well. Ethan just supposed he took the title of ‘Dad’ seriously. Which made sense, as his own had disappeared in his youth. “You don’t have to, but you can.”
“I think you’re a good dad.” Was she responding to his statement, or to what he was thinking?
—---------
His next surprise was at the group meeting spot; Ethan and his small entourage approached the fountain at 6pm, the agreed time. The blond’s gaze turned to tunnel vision when he saw a hunched figure, wrapped in multiple black shawls, tossing something onto the cobblestones for the birds. But they were…crows.
Time slowed; the grain leaving her hands cascaded in slow motion. He heard the crackles as it landed, saw the black glinting eyes of the corvids as they pecked. Ethan stared back at the figure, willing it to turn around. He knew that when it did, it would be the hag…Miranda. She straightened, her back still to him, and a familiar musical laugh soared toward him. It was the same laugh he’d heard in January, in the Potter’s field-the mass unmarked grave of the village. He moved to stand in front of Donna. Rose was in her stroller, Evie was holding his other hand. Ethan pivoted so he was in front of Evie as well. Donna pulled the stroller back and peered where it was that Ethan stared, but she seemed to miss the figure shrouded in black.
Crows littered the entire area. Most people walked by them without seeming bothered. When he heard cawing, Ethan realized they were on the nearby statues and building ledges as well. His gaze again went back to the hag. She turned and he prepared for the pale eyes.
And yet when she turned, it was a different woman. She wasn’t wearing black, she had on a bright red and yellow shawl. She smiled a toothless smile at Ethan before turning back and pouring more grain out. To pigeons. Pigeons were in the square. He blinked rapidly.
“Ethan, are you all right?”
“Did any of you see that?” He half turned, his voice low. He looked at Evie hopefully. Even she shook her head in confusion. “The pigeons were….crows. That woman…she looked like Miranda. Only for a second.”
“I believe you,” Donna said simply, “But we didn’t see it.” She gazed at the woman, and then back to the blond. “But your eyes, Ethan…they were…”
“Dark,” the child finished.
—------------------
It happened again after the train ride home.
The regional train out of the city was old, creaky, rusty. The combination of metal and motion lulled Heisenberg into a peaceful nap, and he sprawled out on a long window seat with Donna under his head, Moreau under his feet. Ethan felt nervous, as if he were being watched the entire time. He was trying to busy himself with anything other than what was on his mind; the strange encounters of the day. He now had a phone, and only knew two phone numbers to put into his contact list.
So he put them both in, hoping they were right, and sent the same text.
Hey, it’s Ethan. This is my number.
He looked around at his makeshift family, wondering why he felt so uneasy…the morning train ride had been uneventful. The buzz from his phone startled him.
Hey Ethan! You finally got a phone! Welcome to the future. Zoe.
Copy that. You sure your boyfriend wants you texting me? Chris.
He rolled his eyes at that and began a response. Soon he was chatting with both, avoiding the topic of Eveline to Zoe, and feeling far more normal than he had in awhile.
Eventually they reached their stop, a rural station that had no amenities and a dirt lot. The pair of vehicles they’d driven out here were in the lot, waiting on them under a lone streetlight. Ethan should have felt relief at seeing the old reliable vehicles, but he couldn’t shake the feeling. As he stepped onto the platform and gazed down the row of doors opening, he saw a familiar face floating past all of the unaware passengers.
It was Miranda. She smiled at him, a nasty smile, and time seemed to slow around Ethan again as he watched her.
Time’s almost up, he heard in his mind. Was it her voice?
“Papa,” Heisenberg said idly, putting a hand on the small of Ethan’s back. “Let’s go.”
“I-I saw-”
“I believe you,” Heisenberg said without a pause, “Don’t give it any attention. Let’s get home.” His soft voice did nothing to console the father, who scowled at Miranda one last time before leaving.
—--------------------------
Ethan’s Journal
September 24
I have a phone! It even gets service at the house, which has already annoyed Heisenberg.
We had a great day in town. I saw Chris, or rather, Chris dragged me into some diner to yell at me about bringing the lords back, I guess. It ended better than it could have. Not only did I get to finally tell him how I felt, but he understood, I think.
We got a lot of what we need to start bringing this place back onto the grid. Plus Evie got her first ice cream…on a cloudy day in September. I guess it’s perfect.
Heisenberg and Moreau are going to try their hand at this ritual/surgery to get the crystal fragment out of Donna’s body tomorrow. I know they’re not saying it, but they’re nervous. Well, Moreau is always nervous, but he’s the only one who ever saw it done and he knows what to do. I don’t even want to know how many surgeries Karl has done but since it’s Donna, he’s scared.
Eva is going to stay with them in case something goes wrong. I don’t know how it works, but apparently, our bodies will calcify or crystallize as a defense mechanism. Kind of like dying, temporarily (which happened to me after I lost my heart). Or, they hope it’ll be temporary. Eva has the best chance to be the mold ER doc.
While they do the surgery, I’m going to take Alcina to meet Godric. I am a little stressed about bringing the girls, but Eva says it’ll be fine. And I guess both of them sneak off and see him sometimes. I’d be mad about it but I understand why they do.
Assuming all goes well with Donna’s fragment, that will only leave Moreau’s. It feels like we’re finally gaining ground, but I can’t help being scared of whatever this void is I feel…it feels like something is coming, like a storm. I felt it today before I saw the hag as well as when we got off the train. I can also hear a voice sometimes, not the regular voices from the Mold (they don’t show up unless I talk to them, usually) but a voice that seems like my own. It wanted me to out-power Chris today when he was pulling me.
I’m going to sleep on the couch again tonight…I’m worried. Alcina did say she would slit my throat if I ‘went feral’......is that her way of being nice to me? I can’t really tell.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
The blond followed along begrudgingly. His first response was something between shock and curiosity–why was Chris here? Why were they so urgently headed down a back street toward a business that looked barely open? It was the middle of the day on a weekend, surely there wasn’t some plan…then again, he knew Redfield. There was always a plan. Ethan’s second thought was panic as he realized Heisenberg would go nuclear if he had any idea about what was happening.
Ethan still trip-followed along, his hiking shoes skidding along the sidewalk as he resisted. At first he remained quiet, but as they approached the diner at the end of the street, and the amount of passerby dwindled, he finally attempted in a hiss “If…Heisenberg–”
“I’m not trying to piss him off, that’s not what this is about,” Chris said tersely.
It had nothing to do with trying. Chris was the thing that would piss Heisenberg off just by existing. The blond grunted instead of speaking again. Ethan got the sudden, distinct feeling that if he wanted to really resist, he could. Whether it was true or not, he didn’t know, but a small voice inside him reminded him he could do it. He’d pinned Heisenberg, moved an over-500-pound sarcophagus cover on his own. Still, best not to let Redfield know any of that, he decided, and together they stumble-tripped into the business Redfield kept his eyes on; the neglected diner at the end of the street.
Ethan still clutched the bag from the computer store, feeling stupid as he crossed the threshold into the dingy place. Despite the fair amount of autumn sunlight outside, it was dark here, with shades drawn around every window. Ethan noticed the other members of the Hound Wolf squad sitting at a large table. They were being loud, almost obnoxious. They were also dressed in most of their gear…Chris wasn’t.
A ploy to keep the workers interested in the other group, Ethan figured, and no one even looked at the pair of men that entered this time. There was one squad member by the door, and Ethan realized that they’d probably either forcibly set up here and paid off the place, or else another squadron member was outside, turning anyone approaching away.
The corner booth was only steps away, and Ethan finally jerked his arm away from Chris. The brunette looked startled, as though he hadn’t realized he was still holding onto Ethan. Of course Chris slid into the seat that faced the entire diner. “Sit,” he said in the same short tone, and Ethan angrily obliged, scooting next to the heavy bag he carried and scowling intensely. “What the fuck, Chris?”
“I should be asking you that,” the other supplied, and withdrew his phone. He fumbled with a cigarette and lighter as Ethan begrudgingly flipped through photos. He didn’t recognize the area, though it looked wooded. A soldier’s corpse on the ground, bloodied and torn apart. Ethan didn’t understand, and scrolled, seeing different angles of the body, until the photos changed to night vision screenshots. One of the twisted corpses of Lycans that Ethan had dealt with earlier in the year-and Miranda nearby, standing in the clearing as she seemed to point to her creation where to go.
Ethan’s face, which had nothing but a scowl until this moment, suddenly changed to confusion. He hadn’t considered that Miranda was powerful enough to appear on camera…he didn’t know why he hadn’t considered that. The next photos were infrared, and it didn’t take a genius to make out the shape. The remnant of the dragon that Miranda had commanded. There were aerial shots of it as well as ground photos.
The blond tossed the phone back, his scowl returning. “Keeping an eye on me?”
“Somebody apparently has to,” Chris snapped. “I was trying to stay the hell away from this place, but we were asked to investigate the area by the local government since they want to build there, and every state worker in a hundred mile radius is terrified of the job.”
The sluice. The power plant. Right. Ethan’s brows softened but only for a moment. He glanced at the phone again, and then pushed the device away.
Chris spoke again, this time with clear hurt in his voice. “What the hell are you doing, Ethan? What is all of this?”
“All of this!? You should know!” He was hissing, indignant at the question. “It’s Miranda, it’s always Miranda.”
“We went in to survey and she killed one of the local agents who got too close. The report COMMS said the agent shot at her point blank and it had zero effect. He didn’t know what to do, just kept shooting, and I guess pissed her off. But then when my team was called in, we try to scope out the area and catch this fuckin’ thing? I thought I told you to be careful. I have pictures of what looks to me like a…. Version of some of the Lords… What the hell is going on?”
Ethan rolled his eyes. Despite his ever-arching Dad-aura, Redfield always somehow managed to infantilize him, make him look like a child. Spoke to him as if he were a child. The anger from the winter boiled over again as Ethan fought to keep his voice down. He glanced around the diner, hearing only the loud raucous conversation from the other table.
“Miranda, is what in the hell is going on. You should know that, especially, based on how much you knew and didn’t tell me.” The words were meant to sting, and based on the hurt in Chris’s eyes, they succeeded. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to get rid of her for good.”
Chris exhaled smoke and leaned in after setting the cigarette in an ashtray. His hands were clasped together, forward on the table, gripping each other as if holding himself back. “I told you I’d help, Ethan, and I meant it. But I don’t even know where to start if you’re….Eveline, really, Ethan? The Lords? That's who you're utilizing, and I don't even want to ask how-”
“Ah, okay, so that’s what this is about.”
“It’s not.”
“It is.” Ethan narrowed his eyes. “You know, I was the one who managed to take out every single Lord on my way to Miranda the first time. I didn’t see you and your group doing that.” If possible, the look on Chris’s face was even more haunted, even more pointedly guilty. Well, good. Ethan wasn’t in a kind mood. “I didn’t just bring everybody back to have a party, it was necessary.”
This sounded strange to his own ears, but it was true-even though it directly contradicted his earlier feelings toward the group. He knew Chris, who rarely took up a position of allowing himself to care about other humans, much less mutants, would never understand. Ethan would protect his feelings, his obligation, toward the others and never speak of it to Redfield.
“Necessary. Okay. Is it also necessary to work with the likes of Ada Wong? Giving information to–”
“No,” he snapped. “Ada gave ME information. Ada Wong sees me as a competent adult who can read openly about what I am. Karl worked with her for a decade, she had samples of the mold before Mia ever saw it. The only reason the BSAA had the serum they used in Dulvey was because of her organization’s research on it. I know you like to think I’m some dumbass who needs to be lied to and protected, but that’s not what I am, Chris. You can’t keep pulling this alpha male agent shit on me and acting like I’m a kid in trouble. You’ve never, not once, treated me like an equal or even half an equal.”
Though he didn’t intend to, Ethan was flooded with Redfield’s inner thoughts. He wanted to reach out and take Ethan’s hand, the blond realized incredulously. Ethan’s glare turned to a stunned look and he caught the thread of thought, mid-sentence.
Chris wanted to punch the wall, scream, embrace Ethan. Put a hand on his mouth to get him to shut up. He was thinking of Ethan’s lips. The blond drew back, wondering if he was losing his mind. How could he read Chris’s thoughts? Chris wasn’t infected….?
Even though Ethan had sat up, his hands were still forward on the table. Chris actually did take one of Ethan’s hands in his own. Ethan felt the older man’s sweaty palms and trembling grip. He was terrified. The blond also suddenly had an extremely dry mouth and couldn’t stop blinking. What was happening? Though Ethan wanted very badly to blame the mold, he knew this sensation was nothing quite so fantastic. It was simply acknowledging the chemistry that had always been there. Which was a terrible idea mostly because of a four-letter word that started with K….
Ethan swallowed. Chris’s thumb was unnaturally light over his hand. Chris dipped his head toward the table, too shy to raise it. “Ethan….I’m sorry. I never wanted…to be around you.”
Well, that hadn’t been what Ethan expected. The blond’s frown returned easily.
Redfield tried again. “I mean…when I saw you in Dulvey, I wanted to help you and then, I wanted you to go live your life. I always wanted that for you. Mia too.” Chris shrugged. “It turned out to not be that easy. The more time I spent getting to know you, I saw how capable you were, I saw….”
He withdrew his hand rapidly, startling Ethan with his reflex. The blond’s hand hovered on the table for a moment and he finally pulled it away. Chris combed his finger through his own hair, but still couldn’t quite make eye contact. Instead he turned his attention back to the cigarette. “I saw somebody that I wanted to protect, not somebody I ever wanted out fighting with me. I just didn’t know the difference because I… I loved being around you. And even if we….if I….ugh.”
He smoked, and finally seemed to gather the strength to meet Ethan’s eyes with his own sparkling blues. Ethan felt his heart jump at the eye contact, and he realized slowly that the schoolboy crush he’d had when first meeting Chris, that he thought was in his head, and stupid, may have been reciprocated. He’d never known.
“I…was happy to see you and Mia move forward. And start a family. There was so much going on, so much I found out that I didn’t ever want to….. Bother you with. I didn’t want you to hate me, but by the time we knew Miranda’s plans-and she’d already kidnapped Mia-it was too late to ever hope…. I wanted to be there for you no matter what. Guess I fucked that up.”
Ethan’s memory of the last few years was bubbling up, and he fought to keep his breath under control. What a shitty time it had been, truly, and he felt as though he had no agency of his own…just dragged around by the BSAA. Chris had been the one solace in all of that. The months of interviews and physicals and injections and studying was Ethan's only taste of the misery that Evie had known for her life, and he abhorred it. He knew that Redfield, by taking him under his wing, had been looking out for him in his own way, and he sighed.
“No, you didn’t. I get it.” His voice was hollow and flat. When their eyes met again Ethan gave a miniscule, halfhearted smirk. Chris shook his head, clearly not finished. His eyes seemed haunted now.
“You don’t know how bad it hurt me, to leave you down there…when I heard…”
But, his emotions flowed from him like a river, and so Ethan did know-he didn’t have a choice in knowing. He felt the pain, anguish, heartbreak from Chris, everything that Redfield held inside. It was so palpable that Ethan had to bite his own lip to keep from crying out. He was proficient, by this time, at feeling and seeing others’ emotions, but experiencing a well of hurt from someone who was outwardly so stoic was a tortuous and difficult sensation.
“Chris, it’s okay.” This time Ethan reached out and took the other’s hand, grasping it with all of the confidence that Redfield couldn’t muster. “I get it.”
Ethan withdrew after a squeeze, and then arched an eyebrow. “About Miranda… You can help?”
Chris lowered his voice even further; it was barely a growl. His eyes danced around the dark room. “The government doesn’t want to hear that we found yet another problem to solve, they want to hear that it’s being managed. They'll throw money at it. You do what you’ve gotta do out there-” he pointed at the laptop. “I expect you to keep in touch with me, I’ll get you a private network set up so we can communicate. I've been busy, but I'll make time for this, Ethan. And if you want my advice, the best thing you can do this winter is….”
Chris huffed, as if he were loath to say his next words.
“If you're keeping those… Others around. Do what you can to blend in. If you have more people out there that you can move by the old village, I would do it. If you want more construction, do it. The more that’s going on down there, the more ‘normal’ it will look when the bioterror prevention orgs do their flyovers. It'll also make all the keep out and warning signs more legitimate. And uh, maybe no more dragons?”
“Let me just take notes for that one,” Ethan said dryly, and Chris actually chuckled.
After he recovered, the brunette continued, “The more normalcy we bring back to that place, the better. I know that most people in towns and villages nearby won’t set foot in it, and that’s probably for the best. I can’t afford to have more than a roving guard every so often, but the government agreed to repair all of the perimeter fencing.”
“You mean the dilapidated barbed wire that I crawled under in January?”
Chris’s smile was dazzling, almost too unbelievably handsome for the dingy diner and the bleak conversation. “Ass. Miranda put all that up back before the first war.” They both laughed, quietly, but it was still a good feeling.
Redfield exhaled. “How’s Rose?”
“She–”
“Boss!”
The silverware began to rattle; Ethan’s eyes widened. Chris shot up from his seat, moving toward the door. Ethan followed, scrambling with the bags he’d been carrying. The old window chains were rattling against the glass, and Ethan caught the perplexed question from one of two workers in the kitchen- “Cutremor?”
“More or less,” Ethan muttered under his breath. Despite Redfield’s very, very wide shoulders and his protective stance, Ethan ducked under his arm and made it to the door first. The rest of the squad also moved behind them, but Chris turned and snapped at them to stay inside. When Ethan swung the door open, Chris and Ethan both caught Heisenberg’s figure, standing casually at the curb. He smoked a cigar, and a terrified young diner worker stood beside him. Behind both of them was Moreau, who looked even more terrified.
“Karl!”
“Ethan.” Eethun. “Fancy seein’ you here.” The engineer sniffed the air, as Redfield begrudgingly walked outside behind the blond. There was no point in hiding his presence now. “Smells like…what is that? Dog?”
The diner worker stared incredulously at the hulking American. Chris rolled his eyes as Heisenberg continued, “Nah….not dog. Rat.”
“Will you quit it with the theatrics,” the blond hissed, and looked apologetically at the diner worker. “We were all just leaving.” He glared at Chris, and then Karl. “RIGHT?”
“Right,” Chris sighed, and Karl shrugged, laughing with just a hint of his former cruelty. The whole diner had been shaking, Ethan marveled, and now the sounds slowly ceased. Heisenberg plucked the cigar from his mouth, and stood in front of Redfield, squaring up.
“There some kinda’ problem that required Ethan, an’ Ethan only?”
“I just needed to talk to him. I’ll let him fill you in later.”
There was a hidden challenge in his words, as if he dared Heisenberg to forbid him from speaking to Ethan. The diner worker bolted back to the door, and Redfield signaled for his team to come out. A small crowd was gathering up the street at the strange group of people. Ethan cringed, and began walking away. He checked his watch, ignoring his own crimson cheeks.
Heisenberg pivoted his head, watching Ethan, then Moreau, walk away. He glared at Chris from behind his glasses, and spoke in a low tone. Even though it was quiet, his voice was full of anger. “You need to talk to him, do it the normal fuckin’ way. Knock on the door. He’s not your puppet, he doesn’t get pulled an’ yanked around in public.”
Redfield scoffed. “Right. You’re giving me authority to knock on your door, then.”
Heisenberg shrugged as he walked away, a terribly ill-tempered grin on his face. “Unless you’re scared.”
His arms swung as he turned, catching up with the blond, whose blush was even deeper. He’d heard the entire conversation, of course.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Table Of Contents
This is the work of the Black God.
It is the work of a desperate man, nothing more. No gods required.
Nonetheless, his powers will have to be taken before he is imprisoned. With the aid of that entity there is no telling how easily he might escape.
We are in agreement. Bring forth the King.
—----
Ethan awoke with a start; his journal was in his hands; he’d fallen asleep on the parlor sofa. What were those voices? He realized they’d been speaking the medieval dialect of Romanian. Godric’s dialect. The blond sat up, rubbing his eyes, and was slightly startled as the front door opened. Karl entered, bringing in an armful of firewood, and crouched by the large, empty fireplace.
“What are you doing?”
“Just finished puttin’ everybody to bed,” the other said in an amused voice, “Figured if you’re gonna banish yourself out here, you might want a fire.”
Ethan sat up slowly, wondering what time it was. He’d come to the parlor after dinner; it had been early. He closed the journal and rubbed his eyes again. “Thanks.”
“You don’t have to hide away, I can take you,” Karl chided; he looked underdressed, wearing only cargo pants, his boots, and his long-sleeved shirt. Without his coat, hat and glasses, he looked so young and handsome. His thick frame was silhouetted against the created beginnings of a small fire, his masculine profile was full-lips, nose, brow. When he pivoted and smirked at Ethan, the blond blushed. He instantly wondered how to tell Karl to ditch wearing anything that hid his face and body, forever.
“Do you want to…stay in here for a while? I can get us drinks.”
“Sure, Buttercup.”
As the fire grew, Ethan returned to the parlor with one glass of wine, one whiskey. Karl was sitting on the sofa as he had the night that Ethan told him about Godric. He’d been in a similar cheeky mood then.
See anything you like, Buttercup?
Even further back, Ethan remembered sitting on the ottoman while Maricara inspected his face, his hand, musing about his existence.
Walking in the darkness, with no notion who he is! But how can it be healed?
His haltingly amiable words to Karl. What color were your eyes, before….?
Green.
Ethan sat next to the older man, not asking if he could cuddle; Heisenberg’s arm was already draped over an empty spot that seemed made for him. Yellow eyes lit up with a smirk at Ethan’s serious expression. The scowl brightened into a boyish smile when he met the other’s eyes. For a moment they looked at each other, neither speaking.
Ethan handed over the whiskey.
“I’m not the wife,” he began, and Karl chuckled almost too readily, as though he knew it would come up sooner or later. “You’re the wife.”
“No way.” Karl’s accent was never misplaced, somehow.
“I was meaning to tell you, Miranda was trying to get into my head,” Ethan was smiling behind the wine glass, “Looking for where Colm’s body is-I have no idea why-and I didn’t want her to know, so I started thinking about you. She got to see your ass.”
Heisenberg made an overwhelmingly disgusted face, while Ethan laughed. This caused Heisenberg to laugh, then drink deeply from the glass of whiskey, and he placed it on the table with a final cringe. “So she’s back to that shit…I knew it was gonna happen, she just needed time to get her power back, I guess.”
“Is that something she was able to do?”
Karl’s expression by firelight had never looked more serious, more hurt. “Not with any accuracy, with the people who got cadou. Which was lucky for me…but I still trained myself to think of anything but her while I was around her. Others, sometimes…. It was torture for ‘em. Put a few people out of misery after she got in their heads an’ they were punished for whatever it was she thought they knew…or believed. When Donna figured out how to use her…” he gestured, “Miranda had her start doin’ that dirty work. Messin’ with heads. Takin’ things out. Puttin’ things in that don’t go.” Karl’s eyebrows raised. “That’s…about when Donner’n’I stopped….when I-I…c-c…”
Even his voice was haunted. He bit his lip, willing his stutter to quiet, as Ethan stared into the fire alongside him. Karl sipped again, this time stroking his fingers along Ethan’s bicep. Ethan spoke, willing to give Heisenberg a break after that intense confession.
“I…I guess, read? Chris today, by accident. I don’t know how that’s possible, I thought it was only a thing that happened here, or with people who were infected.”
Karl’s expression moved to a sly one, and Ethan turned to him. “Did you know he…had feelings for me?”
“Ethan, I don’t know how a guy is a computer genius, a complete badass with a shotgun, and a total idiot all at the same time, but you are one of the most obtuse son-of-a-bitches I’ve ever met.” He laughed at the scowl now on Ethan’s face. “Of course I know. How did you NOT know?”
“Does it…bother you?” Ethan knew his own jealous streak had shown up several times, but he assumed Heisenberg’s hatred of Chris was over the factory incident, not his feelings toward Ethan. He’d never acted concerned about it.
“Nah. I agree with him, why would it bother me?” Heisenberg managed more whiskey. Ethan considered this, and finally smiled at what he realized must be a compliment.
After a comfortable pause, Heisenberg turned the empty glass in his hand, staring at the crystal patterns. “Do whatever you have to, to not let her see what she wants to see. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about with the grave-don’t tell me, I don’t need to know-nothin’ good can come of her wanting information, and then gettin’ it.”
Ethan realized something in that moment, and he turned to Karl, wide-eyed. “Is that why you won’t talk about–!” The crystal fragment.
Karl’s expression told him he was correct. Ethan’s face fell. “Wait, was it…Miranda trying to get that information from you? Did she…possess me?”
Karl had apparently already considered this. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think that was all you, wantin’ to know. An’ Ethan. I don’t want to talk about it because…”
They were about to delve into a new era of their relationship, a deeper layer, Ethan realized. Karl had been nothing but honest with him since he’d met him, but there was still this one wedge between them. The single thing he didn’t speak about, and Ethan was finally going to know why. It would mean many things, maybe, but it would bring them closer in a way that Heisenberg was afraid of. It was the final secret, wasn’t it?
He should have felt excited; he felt sick.
“Not only does talkin’ about it uh…invite those thoughts…because it does. But. Eva and I have known for years now that the thing has to be destroyed. This is somethin’ in the making for a long time.”
The Duke had said that, hadn’t he?
“Always thought I’d have to kill…them.” He was talking about his siblings. “They might still end up dead-None of us know the full extent of what the shit does. Miranda probably doesn’t even know, she just guesses. We don’t know if it’ll kill me. I planned for it just in case. Made peace with it.”
“But you still have your cadou–?”
“Right. That cadou was a lot stronger before. The crystal was like a built in turbocharger. I could do a lot more with it. With it not powerin’ the cadou,” Heisenberg chose his words carefully, “I don’t have the same power. I used it when you and I fought. I won’t do that again, I want the damn thing gone, I want her gone. I’m happy to fight her however I can, and probably will, til the end. But the crystal has to go before that, an’ when that happens, there’s a chance I might go with it.”
Ethan was silent. His blood felt like ice. His head felt full of cotton. He blinked at the fire. So this was the conversation. They’d gone from a tense dance of words around coffee in the dining room, to this.
This was what it was like to not be in denial. Neither he, nor the other person, was trying to change the conversation into something hopeful, or protect feelings. Nobody walked off in the middle of the discussion. There was a completed delivery of potentially devastating news, and a quiet acceptance.
A billion ‘what if’s and ‘but’s boiled beneath the surface. And yet Ethan knew that for as much as he knew about the mold, Heisenberg and Eva both had years, decades….in Eva’s case, a century, on his information. They had accepted it as a possibility. He now had to accept it as a possibility.
Was more black fluid coming from his eyes? The tunnel vision felt like it was coming back. He dragged his fingers across his face and looked; no, it was tears. He was hyperventilating. He laughed at his own stupidity and then drank more wine. Karl was looking at him, but he couldn’t look back.
“Talk to me, Ethan.”
The scowl was aimed at the fire. His voice sounded like a child’s.
“I don’t want you to die.”
“Maybe I won’t.”
“What’ll I do if you do?” He finally turned, really crying now, to see the still-contemplative look on the other’s face. He put a hand over his mouth to stop the stream of begging, pleading that threatened to come out. In a gesture of unusual tenderness, Karl threaded his hand through Ethan’s blond hair, almost petting him.
“It’ll be okay, Papa. Remember what I told you? We’re all just energy. I’ll always be around in some way.”
Ethan still had his hand over his mouth, and now he leaned down into Karl’s chest, thinking of many different things. His own father’s disappearance, Mia’s deaths, his deaths, Godric’s imprisonment, the crystallized man in the tomb. Alcina’s devastation over losing barely-human daughters. Eva’s great yearning to be human and how she seemed to spend every moment of her human life grateful for existence, drinking it like nectar.
Life seemed very fragile and unfair and he could only cry about it. Karl’s arm draped over him, pulling him in closer.
Maybe it would be okay, but maybe it wouldn’t.
For the second time that night, he didn’t remember falling asleep. Though Karl had no fear about a potentially dangerous Ethan, he respected the blond’s wishes to be alone, and after tucking him in, Karl left the room. Ethan slept by the light of the dying embers.
Neither Karl nor Ethan saw the shadow of Jochen, constantly beside him, never truly dead or alive. He sauntered out after his brother, eager to watch the other work.
—------------
Ethan fell in his dream, into a dark spot of a catalogued megamycete. He knew when he sat up that she would be there, looking at him with her pale eyes and confused expression.
“Miranda,” he sighed, closing his eyes. Not really Miranda. A fragment of Miranda. The only decent part she had left, apparently.
“You! I…forget who you are. You learned how to come at will?”
“No, I’m sleeping. Dreaming.”
“I must have been thinking of you.” She giggled; it sounded just like Eva.
Ethan rubbed his face tiredly. She continued, “Still, if you can come here in a dream that would mean, maybe your powers are growing?”
“You…the other you, said something today about almost being out of time,” he said. The train station. Maybe his desire to know had brought him here. “Out of time for what?”
She sat cross-legged. Ethan wondered why this couldn’t have been the Miranda that he encountered; she seemed so docile, charming. Even her thoughtful frown was nearly innocent. Couldn’t they just make a quick trade?
“I can only guess…But I can sense that the core of the Mold, the consciousness, will die soon. She cannot lead from there. The mold is a colony, yes? It must accept a queen. Without a queen, it will fall apart, just memories moving into the earth like raindrops. There has been so much energy used lately.”
Ethan thought of the dragon. Their re-creation of Eveline, who seemed to have far more power than everyone else. Eveline had, after all, created her own fungal root-in Dulvey.
He scratched his head. “Could you do that? Could you be the queen?”
She looked startled. “I…am a discarded piece. A reject. I cannot even remember who I am much anymore. We all go to the voices, and then nothingness, without a complete mind to lead.”
Ethan switched to rubbing his temple.
How could he tell Eva that this was her future? She’d done it, without knowing, for nearly a century anyway. With no guidance, while witnessing the terror her mother inflicted on an entire settlement for multiple generations. He’d just accepted the possibility of Heisenberg’s death earlier in the evening, and now he was going to have to accept that Eva might also have to leave him forever? And if she didn’t….
He was crying again. Miranda-fragment put her hand on his knee; she felt less than solid, like a soft breeze. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know what to do,” he confessed, laughing while crying.
“The Black God has been calling you,” she said, looking at her own hand that had been on his knee, as though she only knew this information after touch. “Maybe it has something to say that will help?”
“What even is the Black God? I’ve heard that since I came here. Isn’t it just the Mold?”
“No,” she tapped a finger on her chin. She was stunning. He hated looking at her and seeing someone so beautiful. “It is….a consciousness that was created from mimicking humans, perhaps. The Mold rarely creates things on its own, it just copies memories. But this one was created long before us all, before this land was settled. It is a trickster. It has helped, but…” she tsked. “It is a fickle one.”
“Miranda embraced the Black God,” Ethan said in a monotone, dragging his hand down his face. “She accepted it, or whatever it was she wrote in her notes.”
“Yes, one like you, a traveler, can do that. It has been done. Our long-ago Kings were instructed to split its consciousness between all four of them. First to win our land. And then to rule it. But it was banished after it kept…well…eating outsiders. The Kings became cannibals when they embraced the Black God for too long. It is a powerful friend, but has no human mind.”
He remembered what Godric had said, about who the Black God was. We are.
He remembered Miranda eating the bloody heart as she sat on the rock island.
“Where….is it?”
Her expression of curiosity blossomed into one of awe. “You really….it’s…I…hm…don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know.”
“That makes two of us.”
Ethan closed his eyes again.
He sought the fireplace with the burning embers. The sofa. The two empty glasses that sat on the table. When he opened his eyes, he was sitting up on the couch. Karl’s fire crackled gently at him as if to tell him to go back to sleep. But, Ethan stared out the window. A restlessness overtook him. He recalled the storm Heisenberg had created to correct the hysteresis of the consciousness.
They had uncovered a small, glowing red bundle of neurons and other cells. It was under the surface, down the cliffside. The caverns hadn’t been made by rock, but by petrified mold. This whole area was ancient fossil, and the mold just kept growing in it year after year, making a cocoon bed out of its own fossils.
Ethan grabbed his phone and scrolled through it, looking for some sort of placation, some communication that would bring him peace, or allow him to ignore his restlessness. He found the opposite.
From Chris.
-Yeah, we all underestimated you. I’m not ashamed to say that, I’m relieved you’re as tough as you are.
-You have no idea how tough I have gotten. At this point I really should be studied.
-Don’t joke about stuff like that, Ethan…some people who get infected really are.
-I know. I just hope it’s enough to finally get rid of her.
-If anybody can do it, it’s you. You’re resilient as hell. And maybe as stubborn as she is.
-I’d say more stubborn, she just has time on me.
-Fair enough. Don’t go doing anything crazy just because I give you my full stamp of approval to be in charge, and told you that I believe in you. I try not to say shit like that even when it’s always been true.
-Since when have I ever been anything but cautious?
-Very funny.
-You should say more ‘shit’ that’s true. I like hearing the truth.
-Don’t push your luck.
Before he knew it, he was standing at the window, staring out across the moonlit field. Ethan’s gaze was on the part of the field he couldn’t see from here; the house was on a high hill. But he knew, remembered very well, where IT was. The fungal root had re-colonized far away from the ceremony site, and almost seemed to hug the caverns underneath the cliffs of this home, as if it were the only un-contaminated ground left. Shrinking away from the area of the blast radius.
Ethan didn’t even put on shoes; he was out the door in a moment, moving across the dark cliffside trail like a ghost. He followed the path of the funeral procession…it felt like so long ago. The path where Karl had ridden by him on the large black horse. Past the hill where Karl had pulled the mechanical heart out-the first time he’d ever seen the engineer shaken. Where he’d learned who Eva was, saw Eveline reappear in the ‘flesh’ for the first time.
Why are you helping me?
Because I hate Miranda.
The blond peered down the steep cliff sides, where before, Eva had appeared and reappeared, moving along the rocky cliffs when Ethan was Heisenberg’s anchor. Heisenberg had yelled at him, “Why can’t you do THAT?”
He turned behind him to look toward the house; moonlight illuminated the quiet, dark manor. The tall grass, now mostly dead, whispered around him. Like the castle and Donna’s home, the Heisenberg manor was positioned at the far reaches of this mountain valley, as if to pull away from the organism that resided under it. As if their ancestors had wanted to hide in the mountains, away from the center of the root.
His family slept there, and Ethan might have felt guilt over once again venturing off on his own, except that the desperation he felt was louder in his soul than the guilt.
He wasn’t accepting death as he was told to, was he?
Was he doing what Miranda did?
He was supposed to go back to bed, and hope that whatever had gotten into him since stepping into that pool didn’t take over. Hope that he didn’t try to wrestle information out of another member of his family. What if he went after one of the children next?
Being out here, learning what to do-however he was going to do that-was less frightening than going back to bed and pretending that they had time, that there wasn’t a need for him to step into whatever full power he had at arm’s reach. Or, maybe, he was delusional and it was all an excuse and the pool of death had ruined him completely. Ethan’s cheeks were streaked with dried tears.
He didn’t want Karl to die.
He didn’t want Eva to die, either.
He didn’t want to keep locking himself away.
In Chris’s notes he’d read about Miranda’s encounter with the Mold. She had wandered into a cave, touched the root. Her mind was flooded with information. It was a feeling more than a thought, but Ethan’s mind was made up.
As the tall man disappeared from the cliffside, now easily moving from precipice to precipice, jumping the way that Eva had jumped so long ago, those inside the manor began to stir and awaken. Most of the inhabitants didn’t know why, but were roused from their dreams. Some fell back asleep quickly. Others stayed awake, peering at the ceiling or wall, wondering what had awakened them.
Ethan could sense the energy from the fungal root as he moved closer to it. He was only several petrified-mold shelves away from the ground. Karl’s attempts at burning the top layer of mycelium worked well farther out, where the water helped him conduct electricity over wide swaths of land, but here the ground was insulated, protected. And the root’s energy was strong, he realized.
Miranda was close, he could sense her. Ethan moved once more, stepping from the sandy white shelves of petrified rock to the ground. His bare feet touched on dirt threaded with mycelium. It did feel electric; his hairs stood on end, he heard a buzzing in his ears. He stared at the ground, noting the silvery strands that pulsed as if reading him.
The one that healed us.
Whatever voice that was, referred to Karl’s tornado lifting debris and rot away from the core, allowing it to ‘breathe’...to survive.
That was technically Heisenberg, he answered in his mind. No longer had he communicated with the consciousness than she was there, standing ten feet away. His conversation had called her to him like a beacon. Though Miranda smiled-in her sinister way-at him, she looked perplexed, as if she were surprised to see him.
“You’ve made a grave error, doing all of this in an attempt to stop me. So much energy you’ve wasted. I cannot re-enter the Megamycete as its ruler. What will you do instead, who will you sacrifice?”
The taunt hurt, as it would be Eva who suffered. Miranda seemed to catch onto this emotion, and she tilted her head. “Eva..?”
“How can you just pull a crystal out of somebody without killing them?” He asked bluntly. Ethan didn’t want to argue, he just wanted information. If he had to touch the fungal root to get it, so be it. But maybe she was feeling as generous as her clueless, trapped remnant.
She chuckled, not even listening to his inner dialogue.
“Worried about dear Heisenberg, are we?”
His lips moved into a tight line. “Tell me.”
“You mean, like this?” Miranda pulled her golden-clawed fingers away from herself; in a shower of sparks, a glimmer moved into her hand. She held it aloft for a moment, turning it. “Alcina’s. There are many others, lost to time, but the ones I seek, we both know who has them.” She pushed the crystal back into her body, her eyes glowing white as it merged, skin turning white and threading with white veins.
He didn’t speak.
She crossed her arms, happy, it seemed, to know more than Ethan. “Do you remember when the Mold took you, at the ship? Eveline’s root was there. You were absorbed by that Megamycete, Ethan. At an earlier time, so was Mia. When it chose you, and pulled you in, you became something else entirely. Something so much more. So did Mia. Unfortunately, by the time she got to me, her mind was not intact.”
“Fuck you.”
“Is yours?” She grinned. “Do you understand?”
“What the hell does my past have to do with my question?”
She chuckled against a rumble of thunder. “You are more powerful than you know, Ethan. You were a human who became part of a core. The others are not. They never will be. They are simply this organism trying to create its copies, as it always has, its own ecosystem.”
“Who else has been absorbed by a…Megamycete?”
“I was,” she said proudly. “Rose was. As well as someone else you know, but not the ones you look to save.”
He threw his hands out. “I’m done with the fucking riddles. This isn’t a storybook.”
“You could send the Lords to me,” she said abruptly, and he tilted his head. So this was why she’d appeared to him. She had something to say, to bargain. He’d figured. She spoke again, realizing he was listening intently. “I can remove the pieces, and leave them intact.”
“And…if I did…Heisenberg?”
“I will exchange his crystal for the one you currently have. His brother is very useful to me. I have spent a lifetime curating his mind into the obedient son that his twin was not. He knows how to move through strata expertly. He is non-negotiable.”
“Molding his mind, huh. Is that why he got away from you? Why he’s still away from you?”
Her smile faltered, and he lowered his head. The wind was blowing now, icy on his neck. Ethan barely felt it. He had another question.
“You have Heisenberg’s?” That didn’t sound right.
“It is a one time offer, Ethan. I suggest you choose wisely.”
He couldn’t read her, the way she read him, he realized. Dammit. Was she bluffing? It didn’t matter. Ethan knew that if he made some kind of deal with the devil-to Heisenberg, the literal devil-and lost their one chance at getting his brother back, Karl would never forgive him. Besides, if she really did have the crystal, she would have to crush it to destroy whatever part of Karl was inside it, right? Heisenberg was still alive, so either the cadou could exist on its own, or she was lying. Right? Hopefully.
Ethan was desperate to find a loophole or a solution, but not this desperate.
“I always choose wisely,” he said curtly, and stepped closer to her. His intent wasn’t to interact with her, however, and the blond dissipated as his body morphed through the layers of mold, re-emerging moments later in the last place he’d seen the root. A cavern, where grey rock and walls of crystals surrounded the thick, black knot.
He knew, sensed, that she could not follow him here. Godric had put it best.
She is denied.
The Megamycete had changed.
The last time Ethan saw it, the strange growth was the size of a car, resembled a curled fetus, and something similar to a human heart. It had glowed red, brightly, angrily. And it had a heartbeat, a rapid one.
Now the root towered over his head, fifteen, twenty feet high? More importantly, it had changed shape. It no longer looked like a fetus at all. It looked like a human heart, complete with tendrils of mold suspending it in the air like blood vessels leading away from its center. It moved and pumped grotesquely and again Ethan wondered why he had to be made out of something so disgusting. He approached it, surveying further.
This change is your work, Ethan.
The same voice as earlier, the one that spoke about healing. He ignored it, to examine the health of the root.
Some of the walls of the ‘heart’ were graying, hardening. It was struggling, he realized. The center still glowed bright red, still seemed to have plenty of vigor within them, but he was reminded of Heisenberg when he saw the massive amount of energy, and the breaking, failing tendrils around it. He didn’t even need to ask what the problem was this time. The absence of the mother, the mind…the heart? Of the mold.
This is what Miranda had meant. They were running out of time to save the Megamycete. What would happen if they didn’t give it the component it apparently needed? Why couldn’t the damn thing just adapt?
Eveline’s Mold was destroyed, and her consciousness lived on. Lived on in Ethan, he realized abruptly. He carried all of them inside of his mind. Jack and Marguerite as well. The house. The Molded within it. He’d become a holder of a world, without even realizing it. That world was now connected to this one; he’d become a part of this one as well. So had Rosemary.
He would live if this mold died. Rose would live. But everyone else existed only through the conduit of this organism. He didn’t know what would happen. Ethan didn’t want to find out, he realized.
Careful now, he heard a voice mutter in a teasing, tantalizing voice as he approached. Don’t want to touch anything dangerous.
It almost sounded like Godric. This was different from the cacophony of voices indexed by the mold. Was this its creation? The Black God? He could sense a presence here, one that wasn’t invisible voices, or another person.
He spoke aloud. “If I…touch you. Am I going to lose my mind?”
“Human minds are so easy to lose. Like pocket change.”
“If I touch you, will it kill the root? Take more power?”
“Not so much more. I have been waiting for you. Saving energy. Sending you strength.”
He thought of moving the sarcophagus. Pinning Heisenberg.
“Why me?”
“So that we all may survive.”
He thought back to Miranda’s mind. A trickster. A ‘fickle one.’
Ethan’s heart beat so hard in his chest he thought it might burst.
“Shall we, Ethan Winters? Do you want my help?”
Alcina, he thought wildly, I need you here.
Was that even possible? His entire being, this entire chamber, coursed with energy. If it was possible, it would be here. The Black God chuckled, as if he didn’t mind entertaining.
Ethan turned, eyeing the cavern, which had no entrance or exit. The crystals glistened from the red light on the fungal root, and then, startlingly, Dimitrescu shimmered into view. She seemed translucent. She was traveling as he used to travel–in dreams, her physical body likely still sleeping. She wore a black silk nightgown.
“What is this? Am I dreaming?” Alcina hesitantly stepped toward Ethan, eyeing the Megamycete skeptically. “Is that…”
“I need your help,” he began anxiously. Her utterly bewildered look was almost humorous.
“Surely you are not going to touch that thing.”
“It’s…whatever’s inside…it’s offering to help us.”
“And you trust…THAT?”
“It won’t let Miranda anywhere near it,” he said quickly. “The whole reason it looks like that on the edges is because it…kicked Miranda out, I guess, after the ceremony with Rose. It also has…all the voices.”
She looked back at the root again with an expression of wonder, laced with her usual disgust. When she didn’t speak, he pressured her, “Weren’t you the one who said if I could fully transform, it could be used against Miranda?”
She arched a brow. “Well, yes, I suppose.”
“You were in control of yours. How did you do it? Please. If you think I can’t do this, be honest with me, I need it right now, I need somebody to tell me the truth. I trust you to do that.”
Alcina was completely taken aback at this, but recovered quickly. She blinked rapidly, and crossed her arms, pacing and staring at the crystals that surrounded her.,
“I…was not in control at first. I suppose I am very headstrong. I was not frightened, I was angry that my body had done something so unacceptable, without my permission. I thought of my daughters, in the end. Every time I transformed, they entered my mind, instead of fear. Had I not had this stubbornness, lack of fear- no doubt I would have been as Moreau. Emotions ruled him, and ruled what his body did. Miranda asked many questions of me after I showed her what I could do. All of her questions related to my emotions, my thoughts, state of mind. They seem paramount to a successful transformation. To keep control of yourself.”
Ethan followed her pacing, watching her phase in and out of view with each pulse of the ‘heart.’
“As to your second point…” she stopped, dropped her hands, and turned her head to meet his eyes. “You, Ethan….” Her smile was soft, barely perceptible. “You will be fine. You made your way into a lost place with no exit, and fought with every fiber of your being, well past barriers anyone else could have. I have no doubt that you can control whatever this thing will turn you into. However, what then?” She eyed the root with suspicion. “After Miranda is gone, will it quietly remove itself from you? Will you slowly go mad, as in the old stories? Look at…well.” She huffed, batting her eyelashes. “Look at what happened to her.”
“Yeah,” he countered. “I guess I figured I’d cross that bridge when I get to it.”
“Such a man,” she muttered, but didn’t move. Her eyes were on Ethan as he wiped his palms on his pants, and then stepped forward.
“I hope I won’t regret this,” he muttered, hearing the laugh from the entity he now knew was the Black God. As Ethan lifted his right hand, he hovered it for a moment. “Did you know Godric?”
“The warrior King, I so loved him. So many good battles together. Then one day….ritually ripped apart from each other. I would have broken him out of there, somehow…..and they knew it.”
This was enough to satisfy Ethan. If it was good enough for Godric, it was good enough for him. It was this, or go lay back down and try not to wake up black-eyed and insane, with no memory of it.
He touched one of the black spots on the bottom end of the ‘heart.’ Instantly, his vision went black. Alcina’s consciousness disappeared from the cavern, her worried look unseen by Ethan as he wrestled with the pain, unfamiliarity, of thousands of voices surging through his entire being, as if he were electrical conduit. One of the voices-presences-was louder, stronger, snaking its way deep into his chest.
When he burst upward through stone and dirt, it wasn’t like his previous travels. Turning into air, as Eva had once called it. Ethan quite violently erupted from the ground, the crystals and mycelium both bending out of his way when he moved, his force enough to burst through soil on its own. He struggled to stay conscious, shaking dirt from his hair-he felt suddenly exhausted, as if he should sleep, but he ground his teeth instead. Unsteadily he stumbled, and then fell onto one knee.
The blond watched his hands elongate as he held them up; his heart raced even more. His body felt warm, for the first time since he could remember. So warm he wanted to pull his skin off. He was burning alive. This was the metabolism of the mold, he knew. He didn’t know how he knew. Ethan held his head in his hands, grunting against a sudden crushing headache. He heard the voice inside.
Sleep. Rest.
I can do it.
“No,” he argued, feeling his very calcified-white skin growing strange, crystal patterns around his limbs. It needed more arms, more legs. Too small. Maybe more eyes? Ethan fought against this too. “NO, NONE OF THAT.”
He dragged what he could of his long, clawed hands across his face. Black fluid trickled out from his eyes, and his cheek felt like stone-cracked marble. Smooth, with deep fissures. Though he couldn’t see it, his skin had lost all color and now resembled something like the moonlight that streamed down over him. Shadow and blue-white light mixing as this…guest? Intruder?
Part of him
–NO.
Changed him.
It seemed the Black God conformed at least partly to its host; Ethan did not turn into an entirely new creature. His body grew in height, elongated, and he felt the burn on his back where his skin crackled–Tendrils? Fibers? ……Wings? In horror he realized that they could climb, bony structures that protruded from his back, holding wispy black tatters with hooked ends. They reminded him of Miranda’s mutated form’s wings-those had looked downy.
It wanted to get up, away.
NO.
Ethan dragged his hands-claws, blackened, with dripping ichor hitting the ground as it flowed from his fingertips-into the dirt, pressing his bare feet there too. He felt his toes flex, and realized they were long and clawlike as well. It was now a tug-of-war with his body, with him holding on, clenching teeth to the ground, and the thing inside him wrestling up, seeking the sky.
The same obsidian that moved down to cover Miranda’s eyes was creeping toward his own, but his stubbornness seemed to give it pause. The shining mycelium strands, black veins underneath, pooled across his forehead, under his chin, but his eyes remained uncovered. The blackened pools crystallized, blackened like a crown over his brow. They had relented; he could see.
His vision blurred, reddened. He recalled the crimson light from below, the energy of the Megamycete. Ethan’s sclerae became red, his pupils golden. Suddenly his teeth ached. His entire face ached. When he stretched his mouth in a strangled cry, he was forced to acknowledge that his entire jaw was larger, his mouth wider somehow. His tongue licked around a row of sharp, elongated teeth.
Teeth for tearing.
Ethan couldn’t argue with that one.
Up.
He didn’t want to go up. Well, he did, but not like this. Not right now. Not until he could get control of this thing.
And then what?
Well, he’d be in control, that’s what.
Was he talking to himself?
Ethan felt something pulling. Tearing. Himself. Oh, no you don’t, he thought wildly. But he watched the ground disappear from view, and then everything disappeared.
On the cliffside, out of his view, Eva, Alcina, Moreau, Donna, and Heisenberg were all running down the trail, approaching the end of the rocks where the bonfire had burned months ago. Karl was in front by a long shot. Behind him Eva yelped, “There!” as they all skidded close to the edge, peering down the long craggy ravine. Right as she pointed, the gaunt, long figure barely recognizable as Ethan exploded, bursting into-
“Kingfishers,” Karl marveled, his eyes luminescent as his head tilted up, following their flight pattern. There were hundreds of the small birds moving in tandem together. The former lords and their sibling watched in awe at the silhouettes against the moon. The brightly colored birds bobbed and weaved in a murmuration reminiscent of Miranda’s crows. The flock hugged the cliff wall, drifted up, trying to fly high, then lowered. The movements were fluid, but jerky, as if a tug-of-war were taking place.
“You can do it, Ethan,” Alcina muttered under her breath, eyes on the flock.
Donna turned to stare at her older sibling. “Do what?!”
The birds all collapsed into one dark cloud, that then morphed in a flurry of wings. When Ethan reappeared, it was on one of the ledges. He held his head in his hands and cursed, but the sound barely carried. It was a growl, inhuman, no vocal chords maneuvering any language.
His body was elongated, different. His forehead, arms, legs dripped with black. He was barely recognizable, but it was him, all right.
Karl didn’t have his hammer, but he raised a hand anyway, summoning any long-lost pieces of metal from the valley below. When Eva motioned to the others, Karl turned back to them. “No, stay here.”
After biting her lip, Eva nodded, and Alcina said haughtily, “You have two minutes.”
Heisenberg scoffed at this, but meandered down his awaiting steps quickly. As he descended, he finally chose to hop over to a higher ledge than Ethan. He stared over the white ‘rock’ at the creature that sat on all fours.
It was tall, lean, dark on the edges-hands, feet-with a pale torso and face. Not so different from Miranda’s transformation, it was a beautifully grotesque thing with long legs and longer arms. But this one looked suited to being on all fours, with its hunched posture and inverted hocks. Karl was reminded of deer legs, due to the thinness and shape.
It heaved, exhaling and sounding like a bull, complete with steam issuing from its nostrils. Karl wanted to cheer Ethan on, tell him not to fight it, give him some other sage wisdom-having transformed once himself as well, but he was rendered speechless, finally.
The thing that was Ethan was rising to stand now, almost fully upright, drawing itself up with closed eyes. It probably took all of Ethan’s concentration to maintain control of this form, and Karl stared, his own glowing eyes still wide. Was Ethan in control?
His clothing was in tatters, he had some kind of appendages protruding from his back. Claws dripped with inky black. When he lifted his head, Karl could see the familiar sight of blond hair. It stood out from the trails of black crystals that crusted around his forehead, leaking fluid under his eyes and down his throat. His mouth was entirely blackened, but they were Ethan’s lips after all. The thing-Ethan- grimaced-the teeth were not Ethan’s. They were fangs.
Karl was only on a shelf several feet higher than the ledge the blond had landed on. Ethan was close, but not within reaching distance. And now that he was pulled up to his full height, Ethan nearly towered over the engineer. He was easily seven feet tall, maybe eight. Heisenberg was still mesmerized into silence when it saw him.
Its eyes opened, and they were no longer blackened. They glowed red, with bright yellow irises. It stilled when it caught his gaze, and the grimace full of fangs fell. Ethan’s uncertain expression peered out past this creature’s.
Heisenberg actually beamed.
He’d know that upset gaze anywhere.
Ethan paused; seeing the other man had been his worst nightmare. He wanted to wrestle through this alone. This thing inside of him seemed to regard the other with nothing more than mere curiosity-do we need to kill? NO- but just as the shock spread across Ethan’s face he realized the nightmare of him becoming Molded had never been a nightmare to Karl.
Karl had, in fact, known what Ethan was made of all along.
It changed nothing for him.
This changed nothing. He’d never seen the engineer so fascinated.
Captivated.
Ethan thought Heisenberg would only be reminded of Miranda in this form, as Ethan was…it filled him with disgust. But as Heisenberg stood on the rock with an overwhelmingly enthralled expression, Ethan’s heart began to still.
Just then Karl whistled sharply, thumb and finger in his mouth. It caused Ethan to frown; his new face contorted in uncomfortable places; his brows drew over golden-red eyes, but the reason for the shrill ‘come here’ whistle became clear when a sleepy-but-excited Evie appeared on the rock next to Karl in her brand new pajamas.
She held a very awake, very squirmy toddler-Rosemary. Evie sat the girl on the rock beside Karl, who picked her up easily. Together the children each held out a hand to Ethan, as if they could pet him, touch him, or coax him to the rock. Heisenberg continued to beam, an awestruck look on his face, his own breath fogging around him in the cold night air.
Ethan dropped down instinctively to all fours, but was still within eye level of the group. Rosemary was babbling dada, apparently recognizing him when he could not even recognize himself. Evie looked impressed, something he never thought he’d see from her. Her smile was wide and genuine.
His eyes darted between them, back up to the engineer, back between them. Part of Ethan screamed in rage that Karl had brought his children down onto a cliffside to gawk at this animal.
But he could formulate thoughts even better with this added consciousness, that only saw things as they were. Had no fear.
They weren’t gawking. And they weren’t just his children, were they? This was what Alcina had spoken about. Family.
He pushed himself upright, standing only on his back legs, leaning his palms against the rock where the trio watched him. It felt less natural than being on all fours, but he was adamant to gain control.
Ethan’s eyes were still wild and reddened, but he dropped his head as if to show submission-in reality, he was exhausted, and didn’t want to fight any longer. He finally closed his eyes.
Don’t let me give up -
Rosemary’s hand on the back of his head burned to the touch, but there was also some sensation of…tearing. Letting go. Sleeping. It radiated from his neck and through his chest. And it wasn’t him.
When Ethan got the strength to climb onto the rock, his eyes flickered open enough to see that his hands were back to normal. His clothing was torn open where he’d transformed-he could finally, finally feel the chill of autumn air on his skin-and he was still barefoot. He rolled lazily onto his back as if the petrified mold were the most comfortable bed in the world.
His eyes were still closed. “I know, a cage,” he said to Heisenberg.
“Are you kiddin’ me? THAT was somethin’ Winters, that was, holy shit!…..”
“Dada-raaahhhrweerrr!” Rosemary approved.
The wind picked up, ruffling Ethan’s hair. He was ready, finally, to sleep.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Table Of Contents
Ethan banished himself to the parlor sofa, and had a speech prepared for Karl if the latter came to complain about being alone. However, Karl never appeared. As Ethan drifted off to sleep to the sound of rain on the windows, he wondered what the engineer was doing. With eyes closed, his powers allowed him to easily see into the faraway room; there, seeing simultaneously through reality and the liminal space, he could see Heisenberg sitting at the desk. The radio was playing the same scratchy, low-toned classical music Heisenberg preferred to listen to at night. Cigar was in his mouth, tools were in his hands.
Seeing through the liminal space, where lines blurred and colors glitched, Ethan was also able to see something else for the first time. As Karl leaned forward on his stool, his face drawn into an uncharacteristically serious yet serene expression, his twin leaned over the desk behind him. He looked on at Karl’s work as if to encourage him, but also seemed to be learning while watching.
Jochen’s hair was longer than Karl’s, Ethan noticed. It was also the same deep auburn Karl’s had been many years earlier. Without a beard to hide them, his features stood out in the dim oil light–plump lips bent into a frown, square jawline, the most artist-friendly masculine chin in the world. The bruises and cuts across Jochen’s face were fresh and new, tinged with black blood instead of red. Ethan figured the twin was probably out of favor with Miranda for the moment. The father finally dropped into a restless sleep, the image of one brother watching over another burned into his mind.
—
There were many surprising firsts that next morning. The journey was mostly painless; road to the train station, then a train to the metro station, then a short metro ride into the heart of Brașov. It was one of the first cities Ethan visited after moving to Romania. The first surprise was that the American ended up leading the group; he pointed out the directions of different areas, gave a quick lesson on public transit, handed out cash, and gave everyone their meeting spot and time to return.
The second surprise was the feeling Ethan got as he watched the group plot and plan how to divide amongst themselves. Donna, Eva, and Moreau were giddy, speaking their native language rapidly, while Heisenberg and Dimitrescu stood idly by, the true embodiment of “too important to be bothered” Lords, casual and relaxed about the day. Though Ethan knew from the very painful hug he’d given Heisenberg that morning that the other had carried the retrieved crystal along in his coat, taking no chances.
Evie and Rose were chasing each other around one of the fountains in the town square while the adults talked amongst themselves. Ethan felt his heart both swell, and felt a tightness of anxiety around his deep emotion. He cared about them, he realized–all of them. What a bizarre, ridiculous twist of fate.
Not only did he care about them, but out here in the world, away from the quiet solitude of the village’s remains, he realized they were truly capable of living . That included himself, and the children.
The future was going to happen around all of them. The stuck-in-time way of living that Miranda had cultivated around her village for a century was done. Once she was gone for good, they would continue to rebuild. For the first time, it felt like he had a future. Ethan hadn’t missed all of the adverts on the metro for nearby spas, mountain and castle tours, resorts. He had so many ideas, and they all seemed just as ridiculous and fantastic as the idea that he was a fairytale creature with magic powers…but it was all real .
He’d had a similar surreal moment while training with Chris, years ago. Surrounded by agents at the shooting range, getting fitted for a bulletproof vest, filling out paperwork for doctors (the irony, in hindsight, that they worried about his health while undertaking training.) When Ethan was given the standard issue rifle and signed the paperwork for its care, Redfield had beamed at him. He remembered his own disbelief-how had he ever moved from systems engineer to that ? It felt strange, uncertain, but he decided he would make the best of it.
This feeling was similar. He would make the best of it. But unlike his BSAA training and the strangeness and stress of the soldiering world, this world felt…. right. It felt like the family Ethan had always intended to have. Maybe not the specific members of the family…maybe not a precisely human family, which was what he’d always thought he’d have, but did all of that matter?
The mold may have skewed his emotions, but he found himself silently agreeing with Eva’s judgment of the findings. It enhanced what he felt in his heart. He wanted a family. He wanted to open up to these people, build something together. A life worth living for all of them.
Alcina begged for Rose’s stroller, which Ethan was happy to oblige her with. He’d never seen the tall woman look quite as happy as she did pushing the beautiful antique stroller in the overcast sun. Whether for habit’s sake or style’s sake, she wore a large hat. After their slow walk took them out of the shade of the metro station, she tilted her face up to the cloudy sky and inhaled.
It was only a slight surprise that Karl was acting more like an older brother than Moreau; he had no qualms about staying with Moreau, who was nervous about being seen, terrified to speak to others. The men agreed on a hardware store first, and a store that sold fishing supplies immediately after. Eva, Alcina, Donna, and Rose had made similar methodical plans, but the stores were instead entire shopping malls. Ethan was relieved he wouldn’t be expected to tag along, and the women acted insulted when he asked if they really wanted to spend time buying toddler clothing.
The next surprise was Karl himself; though he refused to change from his arguably intimidating and confusing wardrobe, he garnered plenty of positive stares from others. He and Alcina had multitudes of admirers from the weekend crowd pouring out of the metro station behind them–some people even took photos, others blushed and whispered. It had been this way on the train and the metro too. The pair of them seemed to captivate others. Karl was completely immune to this attention; Alcina seemed to bask in it. She even flashed a few dazzling smiles at those bold enough to raise their cameras or phones.
What had Ethan missed in the first place? Clearly, he wasn’t affected by charisma, or strange fashion. It was likely the whole ‘missing daughter’ fiasco took his attention from the Lords in the moment. He still found himself annoyed at the attention the siblings drew from tourists and townsfolk. He wished, stubbornly, that he had a ring to wrestle onto Heisenberg’s finger if anybody had any question about his status-which would have been pointless, as the engineer wore his electrical gloves even here.
Eva nodded at the black-haired child, who was still giddy with excitement. “Should she come with us?”
“I made an ice cream promise,” Ethan reminded her, and checked his watch. “It’s pretty early. What if I go pick up the phones and computer, and then meet you guys at Emma La Dulce at one?”
Alcina tsked. “You really think we will take only two hours to go through the first shopping center?”
“What if we split up, and I bring Evie to you, Ethan?” Donna offered.
“Works for me. Work for you?” Ethan asked the child directly. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Okay!”
And just like any other large, somewhat normal family, they dispersed at the town center. Ethan made his way down the stone street alone, feeling strange about the entire emotional roller coaster of the past two days. He felt strange, but satisfied.
This feeling continued when he was able to stutter in some limited Romanian upon his arrival to the computer store. He purchased a laptop and put a desktop on order for pickup. Ethan felt strangely at home as he navigated the walls of accessories and monitors. The shopkeeper was thrilled with talking tech to the American, and so Ethan’s spirits were further lifted after he left the store.
He looked at his watch again. He’d finished more quickly than anticipated, and still had over an hour before it would be time to double back toward the main streets. The blond sauntered down the cobblestone walk, contemplating shopping for clothing, when a tall shadow fell into step next to him. Just as he turned, he felt a strong hand grip his bicep.
“Shut up, don’t say anything, follow me. And don’t yell,” the last part was added almost jokingly. Ethan was stumbling, frozen, his feet trying to keep up with the taller, black-clad man. He knew the voice but couldn’t bring himself to believe it, until he finally caught a glimpse of the other’s face.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Table Of Contents
Ethan could smell Donna’s cartofi cu carne de porc as he dressed; his mouth watered. Just as he pulled his shirt over his head and inhaled, he remembered that he would have to confess his strange behavior, and his stomach dropped again. He stared in the mirror skeptically; he was clean and shaven, his hair in its simple style. Grey sweater, blue jeans, tan shoes. No black or grey veins crossed his face. Just the signature frown. He continued to stare as if doubting the reflection-he had reason to.
Godric had said we are, in response to the question about the Black God. That made less sense than most things.
He could hear Evie talking animatedly from the kitchen. Ethan’s thoughts turned to Dulvey at her voice. Jack and Marguerite were at peace, Zoe was enjoying her life, Mia at the very least wasn’t trapped, reliving her three years of terror over and over again. The last victim had been Evie, and she was here now-she had a second chance, a chance to be a child. The uneasiness of Louisiana in his mind should have faded, a bad memory overshadowed by how comparatively great Ethan’s life had become. He hoped it would only improve in the future.
But he looked haunted, felt even more haunted, like a house full of spirits. Like the Baker house, he supposed.
His gaze left the mirror and drifted to the old-fashioned phone on one of the ornate desks. He would have to call Zoe and tell her what he’d done with Eveline. She’d kill him. Zoe only knew the child as her tormentor. Ethan wouldn’t blame Zoe for being mad, but as she’d planned to visit over the holidays, he would need to call her soon. In case she decided to curse him out for an hour and mail him an alligator head, instead of visiting.
With one more, hopefully resolute, stare in the mirror, Ethan left the room. Talking to his faraway, ancient friend had at least cheered him up enough to socialize. He doubled back to check Karl’s room, remembering Godric’s warning about the crystal.
He fully anticipated Karl to be peering into it deeply when he turned into the large mostly-workroom, but the engineer was at his bench with the same item in front of him. He was stooped forward, hair wild as he worked. Ethan didn’t even have to ask what he was doing, but the blond frowned. “Really?”
“Don’t start,” Karl said simply, his lips gripping a cigar. He was squinting past the smoke, his eyes glowing faintly as he held the delicate tools. A recent purchase, a very expensive watch repair kit, which Ethan had bitten his tongue over. Why the hell was Heisenberg so obsessed with a key that went to a factory that no longer existed? It had been months. He’d restored multiple vehicles, even salvaged a goddamn tank. He’d built up the sheds, stables, the garage. He was now working on erecting a whole little fishing village complete with windmill. The key seemed to be the thing he couldn’t figure out. And it led nowhere.
Ethan had hoped Heisenberg would invite himself to the table, make nice for Ethan’s sake, but it became clear that the brunette hadn’t even considered it.
“Godric says to protect the crystal.” At this, Heisenberg’s head shot up. “He said Miranda might be able to corrupt it. I don’t know how, I’m just letting you know.”
Heisenberg moved to stand, and began knocking things around the desk. Ethan presumed his help wasn’t needed, and headed back toward the others, feeling slightly shunned for the second time that day.
—--------
Some of Eva’s flowers had made their way onto the table. The nice china was out; the tablecloth had even been changed. Ethan marveled at how beautiful the dining room looked, and then put a hand on Eva’s shoulder. “This looks fantastic.”
“You seem to be a bit cheerier. At least more than the weather.”
“Rolling around in the mud helped.”
She giggled. “Godric?”
“Yeah. How was your day?”
Eva’s nearly translucent eyebrows raised and she glanced at Alcina, who was sitting at the table with a pensive expression. “It went well, I think.”
“Is the castle rubble? That why she came back?”
They both snorted at this. “No, the castle will be fine, I believe. We did learn things, but we can discuss those later.”
—---------------
Dinner was actually far less dreadful than Ethan anticipated. The first topic that came up was, surprisingly, going to the city. Moreau and Karl already made a list of medical supplies they needed, and Donna was beaming at the idea of getting new crafting material. Ethan had been promised a computer, still needed to buy a winter wardrobe for Rose, who was growing out of everything, and now he needed a winter wardrobe for Evie as well. When he voiced this, Evie abruptly interrupted, “Wait…we’re going out in public, to get me clothes?”
Ethan was chewing. He swallowed. “Is there something wrong with that?”
“You mean, you trust me? To be around….other people?”
The table’s other occupants looked uneasily at the girl, and Ethan raised his eyebrow, dipping another roll into the stew. “Well….yeah, I guess I do.” He gave her the most skeptical, dad-like stare ever. “Should I not?”
Her face softened. “I’ll be good. I promise. I can be good. I just…” now she turned back to her plate, stirring her soup uncertainly. Ethan realized as he studied the girl’s face that she had Mia’s almost button-like nose. Her voice was low. “I just hated how everybody thought I was too much of a freak to be in public. Worried I would do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing. The lab made me age up fast, but I didn’t know how to act like a kid, I never saw another kid. Even though the lab had them.”
What a creepy thought. Ethan frowned.
Donna, who sat beside the older child, rubbed a pale hand across her shoulder and back. “You will do just fine.” Her voice was so soft and soothing, Ethan wondered how she was ever capable of creating the horrors she lived with. “You will be in good company…we were not allowed out of the village for many years, so it will be new for us as well.”
“Speak for yourself,” Alcina said smugly, her red lips curling into a smile. “I loved the city.” She paused and looked at the window, where rain still poured against the glass. “Though…it will be new to go in daylight. With a body that…”
“Oh yes,” Moreau said with a loud, almost gleeful exhale. “A body that is normal!! Yes, it will be AMAZING!”
Ethan had to smile. They would look like a bunch of goofy tourists, in their out of date clothing and with all their excited questions. As he turned to feed Rosemary, who had no interest in the art of the spoon, Evie asked, “Will we get ice cream?”
“Oh yeah,” he said with another smile. Donna and Eva smiled at this question as well. After Rose began gnawing on a carrot, Ethan returned to his own bowl. “Although, we’ll probably be the only ones lining up at the shop if it’s raining like this out there. They’ll think we’re crazy, eating summer food when it’s cold.”
“I don’t mind that!” Evie was so excited she was nearly buzzing. Her smile was full, and without any sinister undertone. Ethan smirked back.
“Wait, if you are taking me to the shops, and buying me clothes…does that mean you’re my Dad?”
He nearly choked on the soup that was already halfway down his windpipe; Ethan chortled and sputtered, causing Eva to slap him on the back, as Alcina watched with a raised eyebrow. “Uhhh, I?”
The table waited expectantly.
“You’d pick him? Look at ‘im, he’s scrawny, he’s a dope. You sure you want him as a Papa?” Karl sauntered into the room and plopped down on the other side of Moreau, grabbing a plate and ignoring Alcina’s glare as he scooped food onto it without even checking to see what it was. “Although he does have a real mean streak, and a temper, so maybe you two are alike.” His flash of a white smile and wink at Evie betrayed his nature, and she giggled shyly.
Alcina surprised everyone by adding to the joke. “He’s also quite terrible as a houseguest…breaking things, bumbling around, disturbing the visiting merchant.”
“Hey!”
“I agree,” Donna said in her quiet, contemplative tone. She barely carried the hint of a smile. “You should also know….he is also afraid of the dark.”
“And he’ll just barge in anytime, no matter what’s on tv!” Sal moaned extravagantly. Ethan tried to form words as the others chuckled, until he realized that-holy shit, they were all laughing together. Even Alcina’s lips were upturned behind her wine glass, her cheeks rosier than he’d ever thought they could get.
Ethan settled for cutting into the meat forcefully and mock-scowling. He winked at Evie too. She smirked back, but then her eyes widened as she second-thoughted Moreau’s comment. “Wait–we have…TV??”
—-------
After the morning plans were made and dessert was eaten, Ethan held Rosemary in his lap. He mopped what food he could from her face, but she had always hated being cleaned. After thrashing about, ducking from the bib, she disappeared from his arms, only to appear in Karl’s lap, laughing gleefully.
Ethan threw his hands up, and then his eyes widened. “Boy, I hope you don’t pull that while we’re traveling tomorrow!”
“She won’t,” Evie said with another laugh, “She has to be at least next to where the mold is to do it.”
Karl simply ate around Rose as if he dealt with this often. Alcina was studying the toddler with interest, and she finally, hesitantly said to Ethan, “...May I?”
“Of course,” he answered, perhaps too quickly.
Karl picked up the toddler. “You wanna go see your aunt? Ask her how the weather’s doin’ up there?”
Ethan thought his heart would surely melt, and even Dimitrescu’s expression was warm at his gentleness. Heisenberg handed the child over, and the castellan’s facade of sternness melted even further. She began speaking gently, cooing, as Rose very interestedly talked about something. Rose’s father, true to form, was about to ruin the perfect moment.
He stared at his hands. “So…early this morning I…something happened, I. I got really forceful with Heisenberg, asking him questions, but the thing is, I don’t remember anything.”
Eva in particular looked troubled. He saw the glances between the others. But she spoke first. “What were you asking about?”
“Asking him to tell me where his crystal was,” Ethan said flatly. He felt stupid. What a dumb thing to lose consciousness over, wasn’t it? It sounded lame, not scary at all like it actually was. They were going to think he was a moron.
“I changed. I…”
“He calcified,” Heisenberg supplied from his seat. “Not a full transformation, but…”
The Lords now stared with trepidation and fear. Heisenberg threaded his dark hands together. “He was strong too. Had claws. The works.”
Moreau’s glassy pale eyes were full of worry. “That’s not good!”
“Yeah, thanks,” Ethan responded, and the other ducked his head as if to apologize.
“Blacking out means you’re scared,” Evie said simply. Her voice held none of the malice it had before, but she still spoke so matter of factly that Ethan had to remind himself she was only a child and not his elder. Why was she the one supplying so many answers to him about his own existence?
“Godric said that too,” Ethan said. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“You have to stop being scared, silly,” Evie answered with a sly smile. “If it happens more, it can give you more power, but maybe that’s a bad thing.”
“It is,” Karl interjected, as Ethan contemplated.
“How can we help, Ethan?” Eva’s stare was the one that Ethan couldn’t meet; Eva had done nothing but help them and take care of all of them. Eva was also the one person who knew the Mold. If she had no answers, and Godric’s best answer was ‘don’t be scared’ …Ethan was screwed. He hated this situation, hated the stares he was currently getting, hated that he had no answers, and worst-hated that he felt it would happen again.
When he shrugged helplessly, she put a hand over his. “We’ll figure it out.”
“On the other hand,” Alcina shrugged, “If you were able to control this transformation, this might help you defeat Miranda, might it not?”
The table was quiet.
—-----------------
Ethan brought her another bottle of wine. This time, he knocked on the door and waited where he stood. She came to the door already bathed and in pajamas–a beautiful silken robe–her face beautifully bare of makeup. He held out the bottle and then lifted a second glass. “Care to…share a glass?”
Her scowl was palpable, but she stepped aside and waved him in. “I have never in all my life invited a man into my sleeping quarters,” she admonished, and he smiled as he passed through the doorway.
“Guess I’m special then, huh?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She took the wine, and closed the door. They sat on two plush chairs in the suite, facing each other. Ethan began to pour the wine; she held her glass out. “Is this about our conversation earlier?”
“Not necessarily,” Ethan said honestly, pouring his own glass. “I just wondered how you were doing.”
“I am….something,” she admitted, and rolled her eyes as she drank. “I am…old, tired, sad. Bitter. Angry. I am alone. I am lonely.”
“I’m sorry.” He was stunned to hear her speak this way, but he appreciated the honesty. Still, he didn’t dare reach forward to comfort her; he simply looked at the floor.
“I will say, Ethan, I appreciate your hospitality. And your daughter is beautiful. Daughters?”
“It’s Heisenberg’s hospitality really,” he said quietly, and then drank to cut himself off. The last thing he wanted to do was lecture Lady D on her interactions with Karl. He hadn’t had the best track record of interacting with Karl, after all.
“I do not fit in here,” she said rather bluntly, fidgeting with her deep red nails. “I may not fit in anywhere.”
Her wry smile was oddly terrifying. “Not for the reasons you might think.”
He sat back in the chair, and drank more wine. “Try me.”
Alcina considered this. She at first looked skeptical, but her eyes lighted on the compass necklace that Ethan always wore. Clearly she recognized it, and contemplated some more. “I think, perhaps, you might understand, at least a bit.”
After his gesture, she began. “You saw what the stored consciousness showed you…pieces of my life. But that was what I consider the end of my life. I was forty-four when I showed up on Miranda’s doorstep,” she chuffed, clearly sore about it. “I had a whole life before this. It was…difficult. As a young girl, I was the epitome of feminine beauty. I went to finishing school, even though my mother could not afford to feed my siblings. I was the eldest, you know, and they were very poor. Our noble line ended when they moved to America and someone gambled away the family fortune. Had I been a boy, I suppose I would have died in the war, or else become a rich businessman and saved the family. As it was, my duty was to grow up beautiful and marry a rich businessman, to save the family.”
All of this required more wine; he filled her glass as she continued. “The dresses, the poetry, the instruments, the training were…” Alcina’s lower lip was trembling as she tried to smile through the sentence. “Perfectly suited to me. I was such a young lady . So they all said! It came so naturally. But then…when I became a woman, when things began to grow, one could say,” she chuckled, but Ethan’s stare didn’t waver.
“...I became suddenly too tall to be pretty. That wasn’t the worst of it, I could still have survived, but I got all of the hormonal urges and ideas of puberty and…well.”
His face was still stoic. She shrugged at him, as if to spur him toward a conclusion, but Ethan shook his head, signaling that he didn’t understand. When Alcina spoke, her voice was oddly full of fright, almost fragile. “Those thoughts were all for the wrong gender. I found femininity personally appealing, but I also found it…tempting. Alluring. It was all I wanted to seek out. I was ravenous.”
Now Ethan nodded, finally understanding, his eyebrows raised. When she saw this, she hurriedly drank from her glass, and then asked in a rush, “Was it…difficult for you?”
“To come to terms with my sexuality?”
“I suppose that is my question.”
He considered. “At times, yeah. I was confused for years, made sure I had relationships that were either low maintenance-” cue Mia, who was always studying abroad or going on work-study programs and wasn’t necessarily there, to be vulnerable with, in the early years, “or people who I knew there wasn’t a future with. It took a long while to be comfortable, and it only happened after years of talking about it.” He said the last part pointedly; it didn’t seem she was too experienced with talking about it.
Alcina gave him a hesitant smile. Then her eyes cast downward at the ornate rug under their feet. “I did want to save my family. I did want to start my own family even, become a mother, be the good eldest child. But…I wanted all of that with another woman. You can imagine that it did not go well.”
“I can imagine,” Ethan said sardonically. She frowned.
“They forced me into an engagement in the end. And he, the man….he…” Ethan remembered the intrusive memory, the assault. Her eyes met his again and he said nothing; she could sense already, that he knew. She exhaled as if in relief.
“Would you believe me, if I told you that even in my castle, even as I grew and changed, even as I murdered every man who set foot on my property, would you believe me if I said….I never felt safe, ever again?”
“Well, if I look back at how I acted. Last night. If that was a fear response, I guess I can believe it, yeah.” His lopsided smile was meant to be reassuring, but she narrowed her eyes as she smiled back.
“What does that say about me, Ethan Winters?”
“Says even the scariest monsters I know are operating on fear,” he answered swiftly, and she laughed heartily.
“Might I ask a favor of you?”
“Sure.”
“Eva spoke to me of this…Godric. We talked about a great many things. But he intrigues me. I would like to meet him. I am finding the amount of men I want to interact with still firmly at zero-no offense, but I…have some questions for him.”
“He’d love to meet you, I’m sure.”
“Splendid.”
The father stood, a flush across his cheeks from the wine. He turned toward the door. “Guess I better go try not to…black out and turn into a villain,” he muttered, and she stood with a sweeping gesture, moving toward the door.
“I may be able to provide assistance with that, but let us wait until after sleep.”
“Sure, Karl got out the tire iron and the cattle prod in case I act up again,” he joked, and shuffled toward the doorway.
He was out of the door, and leaving, when she said hesitantly, “Ethan.”
He paused and turned back, his eyes bleary from the difficult day.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Table Of Contents
The sensation of traveling through the strata of the consciousness was beginning to feel familiar to Ethan; as he sank upside down through the black he realized he could now tell just how deep, how far removed from everything this “core” was. He felt that he was traveling a great distance, performing a difficult feat even by mold travel standards. It became clear to him that this path was never meant to be taken.
Godric had been put here to suffer, alone, eternally.
This should have made Ethan even more resolute, or happier, when he pushed open the large wooden doors, but he was afraid. He assumed Godric would be ashamed of him, or otherwise disappointed for the very clearly out-of-control display this morning–if Godric knew about it, but he seemed to know about most things.
As usual the large, broad man was reclining in his throne with legs splayed out in front of him, while his arms swallowed the meager rests they were given. He gave his usual coy look to Ethan, and rose with his usual joy. Ethan could only manage a thin, worried smile when he was pulled into another bear hug, lifted off the ground and given a kiss on the forehead this time. His blush was profound.
It seemed as though Godric wasn’t disappointed.
“How did you like my battle plan?” He pulled Ethan down onto the wooden pew and then draped himself forward, one long arm behind Ethan. He put his other hand on Ethan’s knee, which caused a blush so deep it had probably never been seen in this realm.
“Well,” Ethan said, “thank you for helping Evie find her humanity, you’re wonderful–” Godric beamed, batting his eyelashes, “And, you finally got Karl on your side by helping get his brother’s crystal back.”
“She is lovely. We talked for so long.” Godric gestured at the pews and the floor, which Ethan saw were now covered in an older child’s artwork along with the charcoal-marks made by Rosemary. Ethan could pick out a few things in Eveline’s artwork that were familiar: all were terrifying, scribbles having to do with mold-related memories, but he noticed himself in stickman form, standing with a smile and holding the hand of a girl in a blue dress. She’d even drawn them holding little ice cream cones.
Godric winked, and then said, “The crystal, it can still be corrupted. By that witch. Keep it protected.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. “Okay…I’ll…we will.”
“You have seen something,” the King said eagerly, changing the subject. His English had gotten even better, Ethan marveled, and then nodded hesitantly, unsure how to explain. Godric was not interested in hearing it.
“May I see?”
“Uh-”
The crypt appeared out of the darkness, Ethan’s flashlight showing the way. Right , Godric hadn’t meant photos or travel-he was an expert at reading Ethan’s memories. They appeared like a movie in front of the pair. Together they witnessed, from Ethan’s perspective, the note, the skeleton, the crypt. He heard the whispers again.
He was v er y l o v e d
Godric raised an eyebrow at this, and then both of his eyebrows rose at the sketch of his own face, as Ethan scrambled to look at the papers that were on the ground by the crypt. His expression seemed similar to Heisenberg’s in a moment of truth–he wanted to trust, to believe, but didn’t quite dare.
This is where the rather intrusive memories of Alcina came back to him, and Ethan remembered the pain of it. The King nodded and stroked Ethan’s hair, muttering as, in the memory, Alcina approached– “You absorb so much, in a way that matters. Is good, you care about others, feel as they feel..”
“It felt like I didn’t have a choice,” the blond grumbled.
“Maybe not, but it is still good of you to be.” Godric’s large hands could thread through his hair easily, rapidly.
At the memory of Alcina, Godric elbowed Ethan and wagged his eyebrows. Ethan actually laughed at this, realizing slowly that Godric didn’t hate him or think that he was evil. He quipped, “She might be your match in strength. She’s pretty big. And mean.”
“I cannot walk in those shoes of hers…with the spike bottom?” He was talking about heels, Ethan realized with a smirk, “...so, she has beaten me,” the large man chuckled. He cleared his throat. “Mean?…she is scared, and alone.”
When Ethan touched the crystal that was encrusted under the Dimitrescu emblem, Godric rolled his eyes and then scoffed, patting Ethan on the head as if he were a hopeless case. He held up Ethan’s hand and turned it, eyeing how the digit was still grey, unhealthy looking. Ethan frowned. He’d noticed, but had been so distraught this morning he didn’t even try to fix it. Godric tsked.
But then the King dropped the hand as the lid was moved and the white light fell over the crystal form in the sarcophagus. Godric made a strangled noise, and his strange eyes widened, his thick eyebrows rising as his mouth opened. Ethan watched a look of absolute sorrow and pain, then relief, then shock, fall over the rugged features in waves. The pure love and warmth that radiated from Godric was palpable. Ethan desperately wanted to speak, to comfort the man who had given him so much emotional reinforcement. He stayed silent and still, however, as the memory faded and Godric’s shiny, pale eyes found his own.
The voice was small, hoarse, nothing like the booming resonating tone he usually had.
“He came back?”
“Seems that way.” Ethan couldn’t help but offer a sardonic, sad smile.
“How did you…find him?”
The blond frowned. Godric mopped at his eyes with one hand and stroked Ethan’s hair with the other. “It was all the voices. They led me right to him.”
“But how? Why?”
“I was kind of hoping you’d know that.” Ethan stared, and Godric stared back. Finally a wide smile crept across the King’s face.
“He came back.”
Ethan didn’t know what else to say, so he satisfied himself with playing with the long strands of auburn-chocolate hair, marveling at how long they were. Godric seemed to enjoy this. He was silent for a moment, still staring at Ethan, and then said, “Will you do something for me?”
“Of course.”
“Bury him.”
This wasn’t what Ethan expected. He frowned. “But don’t you want–”
Godric shook his head slowly. “That crystal you touched…deathly bad, imprisonment. If his soul has any chance to be free, it will be returning to the Black God.”
There was a pair of words he didn’t want to hear. Ethan gulped, but spoke with confidence anyway. “Okay. Sure. Where?”
“Somewhere beautiful.” Godric sighed.
Ethan turned to look at the door; the strands of void moved in front of it, shimmering. He wondered what would happen if he just stayed down here, refused to leave. Godric answered him aloud, speaking close to his ear. “You would be trapped.”
A chill ran down Ethan’s spine at that, and he shook it off, shrugging his shoulders. Feeling unusually bold after the fear he teased, “Couldn’t ask for better company though.”
The roar of a laugh returned. Godric tsked again as if Ethan were being naughty, and added, “I agree.” They both smiled, and Ethan sighed. Hearing that laugh was like drinking a big glass of warm apple cider on a windy day.
Godric stroked Ethan’s neck. “But something troubles you. Now I can help, in exchange?”
“You don’t ever have to do anything for me in exchange for….” Ethan faltered. “We’re friends. Just–”
Godric was already pulling another memory from him, but this was one that Ethan had never seen, or felt. He realized, strangely, that he was seeing and hearing himself from someone else’s view. Heisenberg’s. How could Godric do that ?
Heisenberg’s voice in darkness. “Everything is fine. I can’t do this….Not now.”
His own voice. “Now.”
Ethan’s heart was beating rapidly. Godric seemed to notice this and patted him reassuringly.
“Ethan– Ethan, get off me.”
“Tell me –”
The lights were suddenly, abruptly on, and Ethan gasped aloud at seeing his own whitened, calcifying skin and his dark features. He looked very similar to Miranda when she was on the verge of a transformation.
“Get OFF.”
“I can’t lose you. Tell me, and I’ll bring him back.”
Ethan actually put a hand to his mouth; he dug his fingernails into his own lips as if in punishment. It sounded so much worse, hearing it said aloud.
“The Black God wishes to be restored.”
“Ethan!”
Just as the flying tool collided with his head, Ethan stood, his breath ragged. The vision pulled away and Godric looked curiously up at him. He shook his head, and began pacing in the small stone area. The door was nearly covered with the same void that dripped from the walls and ceiling, and Ethan considered just sticking his head into it and maybe getting lost for good.
“Calm down,” Godric said gently, but he was smiling. “It is all right.”
“What about ANY of that was all right? How do I keep it from happening again?”
“You have to be in control,” the King shrugged, saying this as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
“I think I was a little too in control in that moment,” Ethan argued. “Or, a part of me was.”
“Fear.”
“THAT is fear?”
“Fear is the most powerful. Fear is our prime weapon. Do you know,” Godric crossed a leg very flamboyantly, very Karl-like. “Our warriors went through rituals to remove fear. Do you know what happened?”
Ethan shrugged. Godric bounced his foot up and down, stroking his beard. Ethan wondered how much like him Karl would have been without the trauma.
“They were stupid. Buffoons. Razed down like beasts. No fear means no will to win, nothing to lose.”
Ethan immediately remembered the lycans. They were fearless. They were also stupid, and once he’d gotten the hang of it, pretty easy to spot and kill. The same with Karl’s Soldaten, he realized ironically. Not having fear made those foes somehow beneath Ethan. He’d had the edge on them. He tilted his head, actually considering for a moment the relevance and insight from a man who lived hundreds of years before him. How could he not let his fear get the best of him? It was still a mystery.
They stared for another moment, and Godric rose, supplying the usual bear hug. Above Ethan’s blond hair he whispered, “Time to go, Ethan.”
“Godric. What is the Black God?”
The King smiled and patted Ethan so heartily that he felt wounded. He pushed the blond back toward the door, and threaded his fingers through Ethan’s hair as he kissed his cheek fondly. While his lips were next to the pale skin, he muttered with a smile, “We are.”
When Godric withdrew from Ethan, his stare was intense, his smile light. It stunned the blond into silence as he slowly pushed through the doorway, and into darkness.
=====
He hadn’t quite stuck the landing; Ethan toppled headfirst back onto the yard, hitting one of the stepped gardens and falling into a very ungraceful somersault over the hill. He landed on his back and winced as he heard the patera clang to the ground beside him. Shit. While picking himself up in the mud, while a torrent of rain continued to fall, he realized he could sense…hear? Someone coming.
Ethan stood, covered in mud, as Heisenberg and Salvatore approached from lower in the yard. From Heisenberg’s garage, perhaps? The former looked mildly annoyed, the latter absolutely mesmerized at Ethan apparently wallowing around in mud puddles. He said nothing though, and Ethan only frowned as he attempted to pull some of the worse clumps out of his hair.
Heisenberg could not have cared less about whatever Ethan was doing out here. He said through a cigar, “You see uh, a horse go by here?”
“Is that some kind of joke?”
“No!" That was Moreau. "The Duke’s horse is gone from the stable!”
Ethan frowned, and asked, “Sage?”
Karl shrugged. “She’s safe an’ sound. Door’s still locked.”
Ethan’s frown deepened. He picked up the patera and tucked it under one arm as Donna had done.
Karl shrugged again, tossed the cigar on the ground, and began to walk past the blond. Ethan realized he felt very shunned, and he could still sense the guard that Karl had around him. Salvatore looked almost apologetic as he followed his ‘brother’ toward the rear door of the home, passing by mud-covered Ethan.
“Heisenberg,” Ethan said in what he hoped was a brave voice.
When the brunette’s head turned, it was sharp, his hat brim flinging water droplets away as he looked expectantly at the other.
Feeling very doubtful, Ethan slogged the several steps that separated them and after flinging mud from his hands once more, pressed his palms onto Karl’s jaw gently, pulling him forward into a kiss, leaning down to narrow the already small gap in height. At first the engineer-who was somehow still warm despite the autumn rain-froze, taken aback, but after several moments he gripped the muddy shirt Ethan wore and pulled himself closer. Their muffled breaths fogged in the small pocket of air between them.
A boyish, goofy giggle interrupted what was shaping up to be a very purposeful, intense kiss, and both men pulled away to turn and stare at Salvatore, who clapped a hand over his mouth and ran away toward the house in a strange bobbing gait, as though he’d just witnessed something utterly forbidden and hilarious. He laughed the ridiculous, honking guffaw one more time as he pulled open the door and disappeared.
Heisenberg rolled his eyes, and turned back to the blond. “What was that all about?”
Ethan's gaze was on the door where Moreau had disappeared. “I don’t know, he’s a moron?”
“I meant you…that.”
“I just…I want to comfort you. I’m not running from or in denial about anything, I’ll figure this out, I want to salvage this miserable day, and…” the blond shrugged rather pitifully, “I saw a handsome guy in the rain and wanted to make out with him.”
Karl’s indulgent chuckle was almost as flamboyant as his ancestor’s propped leg. He looked positively giddy. Ethan gave a jockish half-smile that could have passed for cocky if he didn’t look utterly ridiculous, covered in mud. It wasn't often that he could 'get' Heisenberg, but being this direct sure did the trick.
As they turned to walk inside, Ethan took the gloved hand in his own. “With the whole situation the other night…and then this morning…How do you deal with me?”
“Easy,” Karl supplied, pulling open the dining room door, “Been dealin’ with morons my whole life–”
Eva, Alcina, Donna, and Moreau all stood in the kitchen, and now their faces dropped in unison at Karl’s words.
“Right,” Karl said, tipping his hat, “That’ll be my cue.”
As he scurried past Ethan and out of the room, Alcina stared up and down at the blond and said after a moment, “Do you also need a cue?”
“No,” he said honestly. “I’ll go shower.”
“We await your return with bated breath,” she griped as he passed.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Table Of Contents
Ethan’s Journal
September 21
Today is a horrible day.
It should be an amazing day, I should feel like celebrating. We didn’t lose anybody this time. We might even have the upper hand.
After everything was over, the last thing I remember is laying in bed next to Heisenberg. I woke up with a pounding headache. I guess I blacked out…I don’t even want to write about what I did. I don’t have any memory of it at all and it makes me sick to my stomach. The worst part was seeing Karl look at me like I’m capable of terrible things..to see him suspicious of me after everything we’ve overcome.
I don’t want to believe him, but I know he’s telling me the truth. He always does. I wanted to lay in bed and cry all day or lock myself away in case it happens again, but Rosemary needed me. I put on a brave face for the morning but it was really hard. Karl said we will tell everyone what happened later…I know he’s right, but I dread it. Evie is a part of our household now and I want to be strong for her too. I guess I have a habit of just wanting things to be okay when they’re not. I also have a habit of apologizing, I guess…Heisenberg got annoyed at me for apologizing to him so much. He said it wasn’t my fault, but I feel like it is.
Everyone had breakfast, and now they are busy. Well, everyone except me. Donna took Evie and Rose, they’re all in the ballroom playing since it’s too rainy to go out. The weather is almost as bad as my mood-it’s pouring buckets. Karl and Moreau are in the basement trying to figure out what equipment they need for the procedures. We need those fragments ASAP.
Eva and Alcina went to the castle to look at the damage, and try to find out what Miranda is up to. Alcina said she wasn’t coming back here unless the castle was rubble ... which doesn’t surprise me. I can’t even worry about that right now. I’d rather everybody be away from me after this.
So everybody is doing something useful except me, and everybody is avoiding me. I can feel it and I hate it. I don’t blame them. Even if they don’t know what happened, I can tell they know SOMETHING happened. They know I’m not myself, to put it mildly. I thought it would be awkward having Miranda’s “children” around me…but not for this reason. Turns out maybe I am the bad guy.
What if I lose control again? How do I stop it?
—-----
Ethan had intended to answer the question in the journal, but as he stared at the paper with blurring eyes, he realized he didn’t know the answer at all. He didn’t have a clue. How could he stop something he didn’t even know happened? And yet, he could sense when he awoke that something was wrong. He felt a pit in his stomach, and it only worsened with seeing the expression on Heisenberg’s face. Dammit, he was going to cry again.
The blond closed the journal and put his head in his hands.
Ethan had a vivid memory for imagery, and a decent proficiency at recalling words. Strangely, one of his conversations with Godric entered his mind as he struggled to get his emotions under control.
“I said, you changed. You stepped into the lake. Changed you.”
“The…that dead place that Miranda made?”
“Yes.”
“You know that place? What do you mean changed?”
“You will be more like her. Wading in the water. It is full of her….you…Absorb.”
“Great. So I am gonna turn evil?”
“Not evil. Mmm…Dark. Desperate. Not just absorb. You walk the same path as her. You are now trying to cheat death.”
“How do I make sure I don’t end up like her then?”
“You will not. He likes you dark. So do I.”
“I just don’t want to be like her, that’s all.”
“Then you must learn grief.”
The memory of the conversation was enough to console him, as though even the recall of Godric’s comfort, the thought of the warmth of his words and his embrace, had some kind of consoling power. The blond rested his head in his palm.
Trying to cheat death–that’s what he was doing? What specifically had Godric meant?
Abruptly Ethan’s mind pulled forward another conversation. Unlike memories concerning Godric, this was the conversation that gave him a cold dread, that settled over his bones like frost every time he thought of it. In fact, every time he had thought of it, Ethan had interrupted himself and forced his mind elsewhere. Now he could not muster the fortitude to do this; the memory flowed over him involuntarily, intrusively.
This time he did begin to cry, hiding his face in his hands.
“So what happens if you…if the Cadou…”
“He will die. Once the pieces are destroyed for good-a must, if we are to destroy Miranda for good, the catalogued consciousness would also be destroyed.”
“You’re saying, right now, right this moment, if something happened to Karl…he’d be…the Mold…there’s no…”
“Better make some good memories with me, that’s all I’ll be.”
“I-there’s no way to-can’t we-”
“Fear not, Ethan, Donna,” this voice was the Duke’s. “We have the upper hand here. This chess game was being played long before you were both aware of it. Let this news settle. Take some time.”
“Do we have time?”
“There is always time.”
Ethan huffed, finally pulling his hands away from his face. For the first time that day, the storm of his own actions ceased swirling around his head and he remembered the Duke. He had always known the man to be a mystery, but for the first time Ethan felt inclined to solve the mystery. His gaze wandered over to the dirty, discarded clothes from last night. Along with his clothing was his backpack. Ethan had stuffed the papers from the crypt into it, and hadn’t touched them since then. Now they almost called to him.
The Duke’s horse had shown up at the manor in the storm the night before. That couldn’t have been a coincidence either, could it? The original home’s stables were mostly dilapidated, but Karl had begun restoring a small portion of them back in the spring-partially for the goat, but also because he’d been offered horses from his family’s former stock. So the horse had a place to stay, and hay to eat. But Ethan figured sooner or later, the Duke would turn up. He’d have to, wouldn’t he? It had to be a purposeful release. Ethan wouldn’t believe anything to the contrary.
He wished he could translate the medieval writing, at least the pages that bore the Duke’s seal, but he had no chance of doing so without Eva’s help.
Ethan pondered the Duke’s words. There is always time.
Time for what?
With a sigh of exhaustion and melancholy, the blond stood, moping from his room and wondering where to go. He had to learn to grieve, to accept death? That was the key to not losing his mind? It seemed too simple. But the mere idea of being okay with Heisenberg’s death was too scary. Heisenberg was like a cat with nine lives, but Ethan got the distinct impression that he was on his eighth.
Without a real plan in mind, Ethan meandered down the hall and turned at the large glass doors into the back gardens. Rain made the day grey-blue,so lightless it almost looked like nighttime outside. Even the linden tree was hard to see from the doorway. Ethan walked, with no motive, out toward it. It was freezing; he was pelted with large droplets, and wind that bit at his neck. Halfway across the garden Ethan finally looked up and saw the old, twisted limbs rising up, looking grateful for the rain.
The earth was wet around the base of the tree, but one spot looked even more soaked than the rest; the hole he’d dug recently, after Miranda’s flippant destruction of Mia’s consciousness. Ethan hadn’t put anything here to mark the spot yet. He wanted to buy something nice, and had told Karl he felt terrible about leaving the area bare. As he approached the recent burial ground he realized that Karl had made a cross for Mia. It was simple,brass, held together with expert welds.
Ethan found himself moving to his knees, sitting in the soggy muck, and staring at the spot with wringing hands, as though he didn’t know what to say. After a moment’s silence, he felt extremely stupid. But just as the hollow void seemed to exist inside of him all morning, something slowly changed as he sat in the rain, staring hopelessly, like a wet puppy. It suddenly felt almost as though Mia were sitting in front of him waiting to hear what he had to say. This strange feeling replaced the hole in his heart, and he suddenly found himself speaking.
“You’re gonna kill me,” ironic first words. “Eveline-Evie, I brought her back. Actually, Zoe might actually kill me.” He paused to smile, and then cringed. “It was….someone else’s idea, but I’ve been thinking about Evie a lot lately anyway. Learning more about her. It’s hard Mia, still not having all the answers or the reasons why. Why she came to be, why you agreed to…” He trailed off, letting the roar of the downpour resonate over his words.
“I don’t think anybody can help me at this point, I know I’ve got to figure this out myself, but I sure wish you were around to see the girls. I wish Rose could grow up knowing you, not just hearing about you from me. I don’t know if you’d be willing to give Evie the chance that I did now that we can understand and help her. Something tells me you would though. You were terrified of being a mother, but we both know you were good at it.”
He still twisted his fingers nervously, as he finally looked at the cross. It too dripped with rain. Ethan could feel the presence of what he assumed was Heisenberg’s mother just beyond the cross, but he refused to look that way…it scared him, even though the presence was comforting. He was wary, he supposed, of the unknown.
Ethan leaned forward, rising to one knee. There was no heat left in his body; he felt he would freeze if he stayed much longer. And though a part of him wanted to just lay down and give up, he truly didn’t know how to quit-he never had.
For better or worse.
“The first time you ever held my hand,” he recalled in a voice so quiet it was barely audible over the howling wind and sheeting ran, “it was because my grandma died, do you remember? I was so sad I couldn’t even talk, I had never dealt with any kind of death before…since we never heard back from my dad. But you found out from my Mom why I couldn’t talk and you just came up to me and held my hand. This morning Rosemary did the same thing, she came up and just wouldn’t let go. Even though I didn’t say anything.” He laughed, though it had a gloomy tone, and leaned forward with an elbow on his knee.
More to himself than to anyone else, he added quietly, “Makes me feel like you’re with her in some way.”
At this, Ethan felt a surge across the ground; at first, he wondered if Karl was nearby, as the earth around him felt electric, buzzing. The familiar sensation was in the air as well. But…didn’t the mold end at this particular boundary? Maybe he was about to be lucky enough to be struck by lightning. The blond looked around, surveyed the foggy garden-what little he could see through the rain-but there was no one and nothing around, no visible reason for feeling goosebumps and sensing whatever this was.
When he turned back to the tree and cross, several branches shot up from the ground, startling him. He was petrified for a moment, thinking it was somehow the mold growing or expanding, but these tendrils were green, not black. They tightly wound around the cross and then behind it, sprouting leaves in seconds. The delicate leaves unfurled and opened, immediately getting pelted with rain, but they were strong and simply swayed in the wind.
Several red buds appeared on the plant and also opened rapidly, one after the other. Three in total, the bright red roses trembled under the weight of the raindrops.
Ethan lost his balance on the one knee and sank back down in the dirt, a look of wonder on his face that hadn’t been there in a very long time.
He couldn’t speak, or move, but he was probably crying; the goddamn rain was beating down so hard he wouldn’t even have known. He was at least in some way calmer, assured. Ethan finally found his legs again, nearly tripping as he stood. He righted himself, smoothed his sopping wet shirt, and gave a shaky smile at the gravesite. He nearly toppled over at a voice nearby saying in a low, doleful tone, “What a lovely grave marker.”
“Donna! Holy shit! Christ!” She hadn’t lost her talent for scaring him. Ethan caught himself and then looked down at her apologetically; she stood with a black umbrella over her head, and something tucked under her elbow. Despite her beauty-and how well this rain was a perfect backdrop to her blue-black wardrobe-Ethan’s heart was still hammering in his chest. He clutched it, and leaned forward as she extended the umbrella, looking amused.
“You frighten easily.”
“Have you met you?”
She laughed, a rare, lovely sound, and then gestured toward the home. “I’ve made the girls and I some lunch, would you like to come eat?”
“I uh…thanks Donna. I’m just not hungry right now.” He was freezing though, and being under the umbrella just reminded him how sopping wet and cold he was. Donna smirked.
“I thought you might say so. I…thought this might be a good idea. For you.” She held out the item carried under her elbow: Godric’s Patera.
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure-”
“Yes, of course. The girls and I are very cozy. We will be alright. I think you could use a visit to your friend.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“We all sense each other, Ethan…it is a wonderful bond to have, to feel not alone anymore. Before, everyone was so isolated from each other. Now we can take care of each other. At least…I want us to.”
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Table Of Contents
Karl knew they would be making a horrible, gambling mistake if he forced Eva and Ethan to yank his brother from the Mutamycete and put him into the world right there in the parlor at 3am. He knew , logistically, that they needed to plan things.
But the want, the soaring hope, was there, and he’d insisted on taking the crystal to the master bedroom–his former room–even though he couldn’t touch it without an unpleasant, painful sting that made his head and ears ring and seep black fluid. Eva put the crystal on a high shelf above an ornate wall mirror that, until today, Karl had ignored completely.
He now stared back and forth, between his own scarred face in the mirror, and the slightly luminescent crystal on the shelf. Imagining having his brother there, in the flesh-as it were. Heisenberg’s mind surged with possibilities. He’d rarely dreamed about anything this recklessly; he was almost buzzing with happiness. Not even his frustration with Ethan being a constant threat to his own health, or his distaste at Alcina’s arrival could rile his spirits.
For once, Karl felt something different than bitter resentment or righteous anger surging through his charged veins. It was new, wild, out of control. Hope.
Karl passed out on his former bed while Ethan quietly left the wine and glass outside Alcina’s door with a quiet knock.
Heisenberg didn’t wake up when the blond crawled in bed beside him and also fell into a deep sleep.
—------------
Salvatore was content to take the sofa, and passed out as soon as the rest of the group departed.
Donna picked the dark-haired child up and carried her as she moved toward the hallway. She paused, unsure where she should take the girl, and Eva supplied from behind her with a supportive smile, “I’m sure she’d love to stay with you. You made her very happy with the horseback ride. Do you feel comfortable taking care of her tonight?”
Donna beamed, and then hugged the heavy bundle of limbs and torso that draped over her. “I do. She feels so familiar to me. Maybe she reminds me of Claudia. I’m not sure.”
“I sense a bond between you two,” Eva affirmed. They began moving toward the staircase, and Donna hesitated, wondering if she could speak. The calm, friendly face of Eva spurred her forward, and she exhaled quickly, “I….do you…sense, something else?”
“What do you mean?”
Donna actually paused, and lowered her voice as she glanced around the hallway. She wasn’t sure where the others were, and didn’t want anyone to overhear them. “Ever since we returned from the field, I feel…something is wrong, different. It’s not the child,” she added quickly, stroking the girl’s long black hair with her pale hand. “And it is not anything I can place within myself or another.”
“I do feel dread,” Eva admitted, her very Miranda-like eyes narrowing in thought as she considered. “I suppose I attributed it to my mother’s actions tonight…the chaos….”
“It’s not that,” Donna said more resolutely. “I know her moods, her…effect on others. This is different. I feel something dark, brewing from within. Perhaps the Mutamycete is….” Dark lashes fluttered closed. “Dark water, flowing over rocks, smooth, but deadly. Like a ghost within us, a tearing curtain, a growing void. Something is missing from us tonight, or else, something is coming toward us.”
Eva’s expression was grim, and she gripped Donna’s other hand. “I understand. I believe you. You can sense these things best.” She seemed to consider something else, and then added, “You used to see such things, even as a child, did you not? You were treated, given medication, due to visions and prophecies. This is a part of you.”
“Yes,” Donna’s voice was even more hollow and sad than usual; her mouth pulled into a sorrowful frown. “Sometimes I have feelings…or see things…before they become reality. My mother called it our gift, but the village elders and pupils were not kind about it. It was seen as heresy.” She left out the most egregious part, which Eva had already witnessed long ago–Miranda had sent Donna away, to a cruel institution, for a time to “cure” her of these visions, feelings, and claims.
The wind howled outside. Eva brought Donna’s hand into both of hers. “I believe you, Donna. I am glad you told me. Let us work on finding out what this means, after we sleep.”
“Yes,” Donna said again, and gripped Eva’s hands tightly.
She realized, as they exchanged one final uncertain smile, that she'd never spoken as an adult about her visions. Miranda’s ‘treatment’ caused Donna to cease speaking about them altogether. That she could share was comforting, in the face of a foreboding unknown.
—----------
Karl felt two things when he awoke, bleary-eyed, and peered through the shadows of not-yet-morning darkness. One was freezing cold hands exploring his thighs and hips, delicately-but not too delicately. The other was Ethan’s groin, lodged so closely behind him that they were practically melded together–specifically, the other man was hard, and was not hiding it as he pushed his hips forward again.
Karl grunted in discomfort, not at the touch, but at how frozen Ethan felt. He was unnaturally icy. When Karl glanced down, he could barely make out blackened tips of fingers. The engineer was uneasy, but said nothing. The night had been a lot for all of them–time would hopefully help.
“Still mad at me?” Ethan whispered when he realized Karl was awake. The brunette relaxed at the soft voice, dropping his head back onto the pillow and closing his eyes again. “Yep.”
“Can I make it up to you?”
—---------
Ethan must have been just as exhausted as Karl; he moved within the brunette slowly, lazily. He’d entered him from behind, and they stayed curled in the embraced position while Karl’s sharp, breathy notes matched the blond’s indulgent strokes. The engineer only spoke once, a rather strained utterance of Papa , which drew Ethan toward the plush lips, where he expressed his hunger, his tongue invasive, commanding, and bitingly cold.
After the early reprieve, (so early that dawn hadn’t arrived, as they were still cloaked in darkness) Ethan kept his body wrapped around Karl, stayed inside of him, and buried his chin into the wide shoulder.
“Less mad?”
“Mhm.” He sighed, his voice heavy with sleepiness and post-orgasm haze. Karl didn’t even have the energy or will to drag either of them to the shower. He would just lay here until he fell asleep again. Last night was a long night, too long. But as he began to drift back to sleep, content with the chill of Ethan around and even inside of him, something changed. It was like a wave across the bed, a cold blast of air. Heisenberg’s eyes slowly opened again and he glanced uncertainly around the black room. Had it been this dark a moment ago? The curtains rocked gently, as if there were a breeze. But the windows were closed.
He’d thought the blond was asleep, judging from the shallow breaths. But a strange monotone issued, lips behind Karl’s ear.
“Tell me what you did with it.”
Heisenberg didn’t have to ask what. The conversation had come up in the parlor. Ethan wanted Heisenberg’s crystal fragment. It was a failsafe for his consciousness, maybe. He knew that Ethan saw it that way. To create a person from a piece of a separate, powerful crystal, had never been done by Miranda or anyone after her. But Heisenberg didn’t dare shoot down the blond’s inhuman resoluteness; it was a solid theory. But it didn’t matter–the one topic that Heisenberg refused to approach was anything related to that fragment.
“Ethan,” Karl sighed, burying his head back into his pillow, trying to loosen himself from the chilly grip of the mold man. “Everything is fine. I can’t do this….Not now.”
“Now,” Ethan said in that same even, un-Ethan like tone, holding on tightly to Karl. He’d clutched the older man like this before, though not in a long time. After they first became intimate, there was a certain desperation that erupted from Ethan sometimes, an overwhelm of need for physical reassurance, and Karl had always been content to let it manifest. He didn’t mind consoling the pillar of family strength. Ethan had been through a lot.
So he relented, allowing the clinging posture across his form. Heisenberg sighed, and settled into the mattress. Despite his high tolerance for-maybe sometimes, his enjoyment of–physical neediness, nobody could out-stubborn him, not even Ethan Winters. Telling Heisenberg to do something was the fastest way to ensure that it would never happen. His eyes closed. Just as a brief period of silence lulled him into false relaxation, the blond rolled, moving on top of him, and pushed Karl onto his back.
The brunette’s eyes opened and he stared, confused, as the dark silhouette of Ethan rose on top of him. Ethan pushed down forcefully on his shoulders.
Something wasn’t right.
Ethan’s weight was too much, too strong. Heisenberg, who had plenty more strength than normal men, couldn’t even toss him aside. And his hands, pressing into Karl’s body, were freezing. He could feel razor sharp nails digging into his skin. Ethan didn’t have long nails, never had. Heisenberg was sinking deeply into the mattress as though the weight of ten people were on him.
“Ethan– Ethan, get off me.”
“Tell me –”
Karl used his powers to turn on the lighting in the room; orange oil lamps flooded the shadows, revealing Winters and his feral expression. Karl had hoped that the light would bring some clarity back to the blond, but Ethan simply leaned forward, his eyes still wild, hazy. His gaze went past Karl, as if he were blind-he stared into nothingness. Ethan’s skin was too pale, Karl marveled; it looked chalky and textured. When Miranda had transformed into whatever the hell she became, her skin looked similar. He had examined Lycan corpses that also did this–it seemed to be a symptom of the mold’s quick metabolism. Heisenberg interrupted his own frightened thoughts with, “Get OFF.”
“I can’t lose you,” Ethan said in the unnerving monotone. His voice sounded thin, faraway. The words would have tugged at Heisenberg’s heart, had he not been furious about being pinned. “Tell me, and I’ll bring him back.”
This infuriated Heisenberg, but he didn’t have the presence to argue about it. However, the many tools in his room began rattling. “And…” Ethan’s voice changed entirely with his next words. It deepened, sounding more like a rumble of thunder, or an earthquake than his own voice. “The Black God wishes to be restored .”
“Ethan!” Karl snapped loudly. He struggled again, this time thrashing as much as he could–which wasn’t a lot. Ethan was completely focused on incapacitating the brunette, which is why the distraction worked. When Ethan, black-eyed and shadow vein-covered, opened his mouth to demand or plead again, the industrial sized pipe wrench from the nearby workbench slammed into the side of his head.
Ethan crumpled immediately. This second was all Karl needed to tuck and roll away from underneath. He landed on his feet beside the bed. The blond made a strained noise, holding his head in his hands. Karl held his hand out for the wrench, which was pulled into it; he caught it deftly. He waited to see what the other would do silently. The engineer noted his own coldness toward Winters, and acknowledged the survival instinct that this act had awakened in him.
Karl had been in self-preservation mode far longer than he’d been living…however he’d been living for the last few months, and it was an unwelcome backslide. He’d cheered Ethan on when the other infuriated him before. But this was different. It wasn’t Ethan.
Was it?
Ethan slowly sat up in bed, and when his eyes opened, he stared at Karl in confusion.
“What the hell–what…why are the lights on?” He paused, his eyes widening as he saw Karl standing out of bed, the lights on, saw the wrench in Karl’s hand and the deadly, instinctive look across the usually animated face. Ethan still clutched a palm to the side of his head where he’d been hit with the metal. Karl had used enough force to kill an ordinary man. After Karl didn’t answer, a well of tears sprang up behind the hazel eyes. This tone was the saddest Heisenberg had ever heard him, a tremble similar to the one he’d used when saying what he thought was his last goodbye to Rosemary months earlier.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Table Of Contents
The scene in the parlor thirty minutes later looked like a surreal Renaissance painting. Firelight flickered over the Victorian sitting room and its inhabitants, illuminating their strangeness and, for the moment, frozen positions and expressions.
Alcina sat with a thousand-yard stare, hair askew, night dress filthy, sunken into a plush chair. She was able to slouch elegantly, somehow. Salvatore sat nearby on the floor, biting his fingernails and eyeing Alcina. Donna had a similar blank stare as she and Ethan took the couch, while Karl spread out in front of the fireplace, apparently volunteering for Evie’s ‘learning to braid’ endeavor. She stood behind him, frowning at the piles of grey and brown hair, pulling it in different directions with impressive concentration considering it was 3am. Ethan could have passed for being asleep; his head was back, eyes closed as his long arms draped almost half of the couch.
Only Eva was not present; true to her word, she was making donuts, among other treats. Soon Donna left her chair to bring in the trays of drink and food. The smell of warm, fried dough was a call to everyone. Ethan had perhaps the most enthusiasm of anyone as he piled his plate high with comfort food. Eva plopped down on the floor beside Salvatore and beckoned Evie over; she demonstrated an easy braid, and the girl tugged at Karl’s head until he obliged by scooting closer.
Eva broke the comfortable, but overwhelming, silence by speaking to the girl.
“Evie, you were amazing tonight. Thank you for your help.”
“Yes,” Ethan said, nodding fervently. “You did great.”
She clearly did not know how to take a compliment; the girl blushed and ran her brush through Karl’s hair with more gusto, causing him to grunt in pain. Finally she responded, “I had help with…remembering. And doing what you said, about finding the good parts.”
“Who helped you?” Eva asked, demonstrating the braid again on Moreau’s silky, long black hair. He’d apparently begun washing it, Ethan noted. He looked as if he’d gotten some sunshine too. He was actually almost healthy-looking. More or less.
“Godric,” Evie answered, and Ethan smiled widely. “When I was standing there after I first came back, I wasn’t in my body. He called to me and used the mold to help me remember like you said. So many emotions, he said they came from others too, good emotions, so I could learn to be happy and trust people.”
“He is so fascinating,” Eva murmured to herself, and Karl winced against the sharp pull of a haphazard braid, as he shoved a donut in his mouth. With muffled words thanks to the mouthful of food, he quipped, “Leass’ he’s finally goodfer’ somethin’.”
Alcina glared over her wine glass, but didn’t speak.
“He’s helped us with everything,” Ethan argued, and paused to chew. He shook his head. “We’d be screwed without him. Although…even though we were fine out there, I don’t like our odds right now. It seems like every time we have a win of some kind, Miranda turns around and has something else up her sleeve.”
“Welcome to the shit show, Winters,” Heisenberg said as he wiped crumbs from his beard, “Pretty sure I’ve been bitchin’ about that for several decades, if any of you cared to listen.”
“I don’t know what you dealt with…when…I wasn’t here,” Donna interjected in her deep, melancholy tone, “but destroying the castle seems…a desperate, power hungry move. She is colder now than ever before.”
“I want to get those other fragments,” Ethan blurted out, and looked apologetically at Donna, then Moreau. “It’s….you saw what one did. The whole point of bringing you all back was to get those fragments into this realm, away from her, which she wasn’t counting on, since she was okay with me…uh…getting..rid of all of you.” Ethan trailed off, and looked at Eva. “Do you think we could use them, somehow, against her?”
“You can’t,” Evie said, again giving up on the knot she’d created and instead brushing it back out, causing Karl’s yellow eyes to widen in pain. “Only she can use them. She changed them that way.”
“Can we destroy them?”
“Oh yeah, easy, if you can find them.” She was very confident, every bit the same know it all, assured, bossy child as before. It was almost endearing without the murdery side of her. In fact, Ethan mused that this was one trait they had in common. And he couldn’t chalk that one up to mold; he had always been bossy. According to his mother, anyway.
“Well in that case, I’d rather destroy them,” Ethan replied. “Moreau, I was hoping to let you finish the windmill project and whatever else you’re building down there before asking you to show me how to remove those fragments. But I think based on tonight…”
“I can set things up,” the other said quickly, nodding a bit too enthusiastically. “I can…find equipment.”
“We can use the basement,” Karl said, before downing a fairly large shot of whiskey.
“What do you need to do it? Is it a surgery?”
Alcina shook her head, faintly. The room’s attention was on her immediately. “It wasn’t for me. She just–pulled it out of my chest. It hurt immensely.”
“Only Miranda can do that,” Evie said matter-of-factly. Karl’s hair was now brushed and fluffy. With a yawn, the child moved to sit on the couch between Donna and Ethan. Her eyelids were heavy, and her head pushed back against the sofa as she yawned again. “You guys have to do it…kinda like a surgery. Kinda like a ritual. You have to crystallize the part where the cadou used to be. The mold remembers. Then when it turns back to normal, someone has to take the crystal part out. Someone made of mold. It can be dangerous, but probably will be okay. You just have to be careful.”
Salvatore was nodding along, thoughtfully poking his finger into his chin. “That’s right! That’s very similar to the…how she did the first, with the cadou. She learned, after creating cadou, that she could crystallize just it and implant things. That’s how she did it. And the host…well, she could crystallize them too after they were infected.” He winced, and his enthusiasm dipped as he confessed, “She…experimented on me, a lot. She wanted to know how to remove the crystal from me. She said it was like…” he laughed, bitterly, his lip trembling. “She said it was like letting me borrow her diamond ring.”
His face disappeared behind his palms.
Alcina’s drifting gaze moved away from her ‘older brother’ and toward the floor. Her cheeks blazed with the flush of wine. “She did the same to me. Not only do I recall that…I now remember the secondary study she performed on me, after my implantation. She caused me to forget it.”
Heisenberg’s stare changed; it turned dangerous, as if he were put on edge by her words. His lips were still pursed, and his strange eyes pierced Alcina, not that she noticed. “But I had even accidentally read it in her research notes!” With a dry, almost sad chuckle, the Lady finished her wine and spun the stem across her fingertips. Her tone was haughty, mocking, as she recalled the paper she’d read. “Applied cognition control procedure.”
“Fuck,” Ethan said despite himself, disgust written on his face. He was reminded of the clueless, chipper Miranda-fragment in the Mutamycete, and the ritual of splitting souls. Alcina laughed shakily and then set the glass down, as if she thought she would break it. Ethan noticed the tremble in her hand. Past him, Heisenberg’s gaze was also on Dimitrescu’s hand.
There was a short stretch of silence again.
“Karl, where’s yours?” Ethan remembered the dinner at Donna’s house, where Eva had explained that Heisenberg removed his own fragment years ago. “You didn’t destroy it, right?” Wouldn’t that be…immortality suicide? And yet, Karl had claimed in that same meal that he was very mortal, depending only on his cadou–and that when it was gone, he was gone. “Where is it?”
Ethan’s voice was shrill and Evie, who had mostly fallen asleep while curling shyly against Donna, raised her head unsteadily at the sound. She blinked hazily, but didn’t provide an answer, if she had one.
Karl simply shook his head, running his tongue along his lower teeth. He clearly did not want to discuss it. Well, fuck that. Ethan would just listen in on Heisenberg’s thoughts. Why not? Everyone else was doing it. His scowl must have given something away, because Heisenberg growled, “Fuck off,” as Evie’s voice whispered in Ethan’s ear. She was speaking to him telepathically.
Don’t do it, it’s not good.
His anger was interrupted at this gentle, kindhearted plea, and Ethan met Eva’s knowing gaze from across the room. She’d heard the child too. The blond felt immediately embarrassed and leaned back onto the sofa with a rather stunned expression.
What the hell had he been thinking? What was going on?
Eva stood abruptly, a strained look on her fairylike features. “Talking will do us no good in this tired state. Let us rest.”
“How do I get back–”
“Just stay the night, Moby Dick,” Karl spat, shaking his mane out and looking at her directly. “I’m too tired to call a crane service to move you-”
“I may not have claws, you pig, but I bet your rube ancestors had knives in their kitchen, and even if they didn’t, you are sitting entirely too close to that fire,” she snarled. Karl made a ‘c’mon’ gesture and Salvatore stifled another almost frightened laugh.
“I think staying together is wise tonight, especially since you, Alcina, are very…new to this form. It does take some adjusting, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
God, it was a repeat of the fucking meeting at the church, Ethan marveled. Eva was doing Miranda’s job of keeping the peace, interrupting the two hotheads. Maybe wings would sprout out of her back soon when she’d have to raise her voice at them.
Alcina picked at the chair, considering Eva’s words. Donna nodded. “Being human again comes with human sorrow and human fragility. It is not good to be alone until you adjust to that.”
Salvatore nodded at this as well. “If..if anything’s messed up at the castle I’m sure we can see better tomorrow anyway.”
The castellan massaged her temple in a gesture Ethan empathized with.
This was one area where he could actually say something helpful. “There are spare rooms, I bought all new mattresses and bedding months ago. Everything is clean and fresh, and expensive. We deep cleaned all of the rooms, everything’s really nice. There’s two full baths, and a clawfoot bathtub in the east wing upstairs. Always fresh towels, linens in the closets too. Oh, and…you’re welcome to any of the bottles in the wine cellar, Karl would be happy to show you where it is.”
She removed her hand from her temple and a soothed smile crept on her lips. The tall woman nodded briefly, muttering something about minimal class, and stood. She smoothed out the mostly-ruined nightgown as Karl clapped his hands together suddenly. “Well hell, look at us. The whole rag-tag, reject gang is back in action! Almost even on the same team, minus the Desperation Station, over here. Damn, we’ll have to throw us a loser party!”
“Cretin.”
“Juggernaut.”
“Are height jokes the banal, insipid, and SOLE weapon in your arsenal? I expected better from someone who claims to be intelligent, but you are rather…SHORT-sighted.”
“Oh I got more, I been savin ‘em,” he shot, rising to his feet. “Mastodon. Colossus. Goliath. Longshanks. The classics. Then we got the newer ones, y’know, pop culture inspired. Bigfoot. Titanic. The Whopper. Supersize-”
“Please,” Donna said evenly. “Evie is trying to sleep. At this rate, you'll even wake Rose.”
“I will go choose a room,” Alcina said brusquely. Her tone sweetened artificially at her next words, reminding the blond of how she had spoken to her daughters, with thinly veiled rage...not aimed at them, but at everything around them. “And Ethan , if you don’t mind–a deep red will do.”
He had to smirk at her show of control-she was bossing him around in front of Karl, making him bring her wine. The blond gave a half-grin. “Sure thing, Lady D. I'll bring it right up. Down the hall behind me, staircase up, pretty much any room you see other than the one that isn’t covered in plants-”
“I love my plants,” Eva said defensively, but she was smiling. “Goodnight, Alcina.”
Karl’s face reddened, and Alcina waltzed away from the group.
“I do have one last bit of news, that might brighten some hearts,” Eva said, biting her lip, and she clasped her hands behind her back. “While moving through the strata during the fight, I learned where Miranda has been setting up to plan her next steps. Her original lab exists now only in the catalogue. But. She had an underground connection to her lab through the castle.…she was very much avoiding disturbing it while controlling the remnant.”
Salvatore’s eyes widened. “I remember that place.”
“I only had several minutes, but I was able to see it. I could not enter, there were…traps, I suppose one could say. If someone traveled there, they would be stuck like a fly in a web.”
“Ethan here’ll just fuckin walk right in, hell,he’ll make an appointment for it, pencil it in, schedule the day off justta’ fuckin’ go find trouble.” Heisenberg remarked. Ethan glared. Heisenberg raised his eyebrows. "You wanna stop by right now? I mean why not, night's still young-"
“--I heard Godric again, he knew where I was, and he somehow was able to remove the item I wanted from the table. He could not appear to me, nor I to him, but I moved back to the forest and…somehow, the Mold….gave it to me.”
Her eyes were sparkling as they usually did; quite a feat after her very difficult evening. She was almost dancing as she stared at Karl specifically.
He shrugged. “Well?”
Eva’s dress-homemade, of course-was a full circle skirt with many petticoats and a ruffled hem. It had multiple deep pockets, as most of her clothing did, and now she thrust one hand in a side pocket as she swayed with the skirts. She withdrew a large, ornamental-looking crystal. It was milky white, with streaks of a pale green throughout it. Before anyone could even begin to guess, the excited woman blurted, “It’s Jochen’s.”
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Table Of Contents
“Eva,” Ethan said in a heavy tone, thrusting the paper at her.
When she looked up, eyes alight, Ethan confessed against the wind, “There’s something I’ve gotta tell you.”
Eva, Donna, and Alcina stared at him expectantly. Even the horse was looking at him. “When I saw your mom earlier. She was…different. She said that she was…” he gestured, trying to find words. “She was your mom’s humanity . That’s what this is talking about. Godric must have known…”
Eva hid her mouth with the paper, thinking quickly. She seemed full of emotion, buzzing with this revelation, holding back her every thought about the possibility of a human…a kind, motherly Miranda.
But she only said, in a throaty whisper, “Ethan…Eveline is your…creator.”
His face was not appreciative of the reminder.
“Can you reason with her?”
“Eveline!” Alcina’s eyes widened, as she made, perhaps, many connections at once.
“I can try,” he said in a faint voice. Eva pushed Donna in front of her, pulling the crystal out of the bag and placing it in the black-haired woman’s hands. “Quickly.”
“What are we doing?” Donna asked meekly as Eva and Ethan moved around her, pulling Alcina into a circle, holding hands. She looked stunned, but allowed them to continue.
“Fighting fire with fire,” Ethan said sardonically. Alcina really did have admiration when she looked at him that time, he was sure of it.
“We’re going to do the same thing we did when we brought Alcina back,” Eva explained, closing her eyes. “Focus, think on the crystal. Make a connection, as if it were an object you loved, wanted to get to know.”
Ethan or Eva were both powerful enough to create a regenerated ‘person’ from a crystallized essence in minutes now. But more of them simply equaled more charge, more banks to draw power from. Ethan saw Miranda reappear in the field, heard the crackling, splintering sound of a morphing crystal from Donna’s hands. Then a rumble sounded deep in the earth and Donna rather meekly tried to cradle the burning, glowing thing in her hands. Tendrils of black mycelia shot out from the alive-feeling-thing, and without thinking, Ethan put his palm over it.
Instantly a blast erupted from either his palm, or the thing that it touched; everyone was thrown back this time, even the large bumbling Remnant that by now had grown quite tired of the brothers that pestered it.
Ethan landed hard on his back, but scrambled urgently to his knees. He was the first one up, and he ran back to where, instead of a crystal, a large patch of singed ground smoked, around a thin, wiry figure.
Long dark hair fell into her face. It looked just like Mia’s.
Ethan moved forward, still on his knees, and grasped her shoulders. She seemed stunned, or perhaps she was just being regular creepy Eveline, staring down, eyes glazed over. “Eveline. Listen to me. It’s me. Ethan. I need you know something. I was wrong about a lot, Eveline, wrong about almost everything that matters, and I’m sorry. You have good in you, do you know that? I know that people treated you horribly. Used you.”
Eva moved to shield the duo from Miranda. Her lip trembled, but she stared down the older woman anyway.
“What mirage are you? A weaker, discarded version of me?” Miranda laughed, eyeing the young woman. “What game is Heisenberg playing with this?”
“I’m not you,” Eva snapped as Ethan continued to plead with Eveline. “I was your creation. Not that thing back there. I was yours.”
“Blasphemy,” she spat, but there was a wavering, a doubt, in her voice.
Ethan couldn’t focus on this conversation; he was hoping that his bond, Eveline’s last moments with him, were remembered in some way that wouldn’t make her murderous toward him. If she became that way, she’d likely kill them all; or whatever it was one did to harm mostly immortal mold beings. Ethan knew from experience that torture was in her toolbox.
“You should have never had to go through any of that. But you’ll be safe now, I promise. You won’t ever have to be in a lab again, or see anyone you don’t want to see. You can have whatever family you like. We have a beautiful yard, you have plenty of time before it gets too cold to play. I’ll take you out for ice cream. Eveline, I need you to do something you never had a reason to do before…I need you to dig deep, and find the goodness I know you’ve always had. It’s in there somewhere, and we need it.”
He’d moved from holding her shoulders to holding her hands. Ethan’s eyes were dark again; he realized as he spoke that he meant what he said–they weren’t just platitudes. He felt sorrow for Eveline, felt compassion for her. The full picture of her life was never more evident to him than it had been lately, and his own turn toward the dark, his own mold-related struggles with family obsession, only increased his compassion. The part of Ethan that would have been disgusted, drawn his hands away from this–the master orchestrator of his nightmare, was nowhere to be found.
She was reading him. Pulling these emotions from him. Ethan’s compassion was being inhaled by the energy field surrounding her. Eveline always knew when people lied. It was no different now. Her tense shoulders relaxed as she seemed to drink from the well of compassion that he offered.
And then, something changed within her. He could feel energy pulling, shifting. Eveline was transforming. Not physically; physically she was still frozen, but something was happening inside. He didn’t know what else to do but hug her, so he did, his chin on her shoulder. He stared into the darkness, his blackened eyes tracing over the silhouettes of the Heisenberg brothers as they got more and more bloody. Eveline grew warm in his arms. She’d never been that way, he realized.
Eva and her mother were still exchanging words, while Alcina and Donna watched Ethan, seemingly impressed.
After a moment Eveline shifted, scuffing her boots against the dirt, and he pulled back. She’d either have gained whatever humanity existed within her, or she was about to make this night go from bad to bloodbath.
Light blue eyes flickered their gaze away from the ground, and to him. They weren’t the icy blue they’d been before. They were soft. Mia’s eyes. He brushed hair away from Eveline’s face and gazed at her expectantly.
“You really will take me out for ice cream?” she asked in an almost skeptical tone, and he laughed; why were his eyes welling with tears?
“Ever had an ice cream cone?”
“Never.”
“We’ll get you two, one for each hand.”
When their eyes met after his laugh, she smirked at his next words.
“One for each hand, Eveline.”
“Call me Evie,” she said nonchalantly as she strode past him, and toward Miranda.
—---------------------
Eveline-Evie-made short work of Miranda, Jochen, and the Remnant. She crystallized the creature, allowing Karl to finish it off with a hammer (to his delight, and to Alcina’s disgust) and she partially crystallized Miranda with a mere wave of her hand. The cult leader looked appalled at this development, and quickly disappeared with her Heisenberg lackie in tow.
Karl looked particularly heartbroken when his brother faded from sight, avoiding his brother’s gaze as he stepped next to Miranda and disappeared.
Alcina looked shocked to be alive; in fact, she was, and it was a feeling she had not felt in a very long time. She stared at the broken, charred remains of the beast. What had Ethan called it? Her evil part? She didn’t know about that, but she was shaken at still being here after preparing to sacrifice herself.
The shirtless engineer patted his truck remains lovingly, and then slung the hammer over his shoulder, waltzing toward the newcomer.
“Hey kid,” he said easily, as if this were all the most natural thing in the world.
“I know you,” she said, a bit surprised. “I remember something…from the lab. You came there after I was born. You bought me books.”
Karl looked embarrassed; Ethan’s eyes widened at this. Evie’s face dropped as she remembered, “The lab people threw them away. I never got to see them.”
“Fuckers,” he muttered, and then pointed a thumb toward the home, faraway on the hill, where only a few lights broke through the trees. “I gotta whole library up there, you interested?”
“I need a drink,” Alcina said as they turned to make the very long trek. Donna led the horse by its bridle, but she was staring, still mesmerized, at Evie. As though she found her to be the most beautiful thing in the world.
“I think we all do,” Ethan echoed. The autumn windstorm followed them up the hill; when they crested at the road, and the sound of the wind soon turned into the sound of an engine.
Eva sighed, and Ethan paused to wrap an arm around her shoulder and plant a kiss on her head. “You were amazing back there. Always are.”
She looked crestfallen, but smiled at his gesture of kindness. “I will go ahead of you, and perhaps start some tea?”
“Coffee,” said Ethan.
“Wine,” said Alcina.
“Whiskey,” said Karl.
Her smirk crept back across her face. In a subdued tone she said, “Perhaps donuts.” And vanished.
For several minutes they walked in silence. Ethan held Evie’s hand. Even she seemed quiet, pondering.
“The hell,” Karl said through a cigar–WHERE DID HE GET A SECOND CIGAR? “Sal?”
It was indeed; the man drove one of the repaired civilian work trucks, and this one even had second row seating. He waved out the window, and just as Ethan’s head almost popped off, the blond saw the happily sleeping, smiling toddler in her car seat. The fisherman had even properly strapped her in–Ethan was officially impressed.
The group was happy to load up into the vehicle, and Salvadore jumped out of the driver’s seat, allowing the engineer to hop up into it. His action got him a doglike pat on the head from his sibling, and Moreau beamed at Karl’s, “Good thinkin’.”
Just as Ethan contemplated how to fit everyone inside the cab, Donna called in a more-steady-than-usual voice, “Evie?”
The girl turned; she was still holding Ethan’s hand. She surveyed the woman with interest. She somehow knew Donna’s home; did she know Donna? Ethan waited, and Donna asked her question in a rush of adrenaline. “What if we…rode the horse?” After a moment of silence she added, “I know it’s cold, and raining, and-”
“Oh! Wow!” The child immediately forgot about Ethan, letting go of his hand as she rushed to the woman. “Please can I ride him, can I do that?” Her gaze moved from Ethan to Donna, as if she wasn’t sure who to ask. Donna looked at Ethan, and he nodded. Donna mounted the horse first and Ethan lifted the girl up; she excitedly grabbed onto Donna and then sat in front of her, a wild sparkle in her eye. One that Ethan remembered from long ago. As the pair rode up the hill away from them, he turned back to the truck.
Alcina, as expected, sat in the rear and grumbled about its cramped seats, but she began cooing as soon as she saw the sleeping baby. She didn’t even notice Moreau moving to the other side of Rose, so that Ethan could sit next to Karl. Ethan turned in his seat as Karl adjusted his mirrors, moving the passenger mirror with magnetism.
“She’s so perfect, Ethan, so beautiful. I…I must apologize. What we did…I-I was told…”
His chin rested on the leather seat; he pivoted around, looking at them. His smile was soft. “It’s okay. I know. I know what she put you all through.”
“May I…touch her?”
“Of course.”
Alcina’s gentle strokes along the side of the toddler’s face were the epitome of motherly. A sacred gentleness that seemed reserved for only mothers. She made several more cooing, enchanted noises that Ethan didn’t think she was capable of making. When the engine started, Karl shifted gears, and then paused as if reconsidering. He grabbed the blond in the passenger seat by the throat and pulled him close into a passionate, angry, deep kiss. Ethan melted, muffling his own surprised whimper. When the brunette pushed him away, Alcina made the most disgusted noise in the history of mankind, and Karl pointed a finger at Ethan.
“You are never, EVER, FUCKIN’, EVER, allowed out anymore. I’m makin’ your ass a fuckin’ CAGE. I’ll have Evie stand outside your fuckin’ DOOR, Ethan. You’re a fuckin’ DUMBASS.”
“I am so confused,” Alcina said bitterly, rolling her eyes. Salvadore was giggling behind his fist.
Now the truck pulled away, and Heisenberg shifted into a lower gear for the hill ahead.
“I think tonight was a HUGE success,” Ethan countered, planting a kiss on Karl’s cheek. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“A fuckin’ CAGE, Winters. Mold-proof it. Spray bottle full of bleach. You fuckin’ idiot.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too, you fuckin’ idiot.”
Alcina’s gaze moved between each man; she decided that if the vomit came, she would aim forward, instead of out the window.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Table Of Contents
Donna walked with Rose partially to shush her; she knew pacing and bouncing were ways to quiet babies, but also because she wanted to keep an eye on the events, if at all possible. And those tall second-story windows were made for looking out of. A windstorm swept over the mansion and most of what she saw was thanks to intermittent flashes of lightning. The wind howled around the structure.
Rose was not impressed by the rocking and pacing, and was crying still. Salvatore had gone to get an array of snacks and peace offerings from a cupboard downstairs; would Ethan balk if he knew they were trying to give his toddler crackers at 2 in the morning? Maybe, but probably not.
When Moreau reappeared, his desperate, simpering mannerisms seemed to agitate Rose further. She flung her arms out, but begrudgingly grabbed an apple slice and bit into it, her cries subsiding into furious grunts. “Now she sounds like Karl,” Donna mused with a hint of a smile.
Salvatore brushed a shaky hand over the child’s curls, his uncertain expression melting into admiration.
“Karl!” He answered Donna with saucer-wide eyes. “He was…steaming mad!”
“I really thought she was going to hit him,” Donna muttered quietly as Rose demanded more food, which Uncle Sal dutifully supplied. The still-angry toddler said something in a babble, some command, and pointed toward the room’s corner. He glanced, but then answered Donna, “Or he was going to hit her.”
The young-looking woman sighed, and patted the older man’s hand, which was covered with chewed-nails and peeling skin-anxiety-related, for maybe the first time in a thousand years. “Sal…look at us. What are we doing?”
“G-getting a..a…second chance?” he said, in an almost apologetic way. “Helping.”
“It just feels so surreal.”
“Is it bad, Donna?”
“No. It just feels lonely. I hate fighting, I hate…whatever this is. Remember the old festivals? The parties we had. Remember when the villagers would come together, build a new barn? Or host a market. Even though…no one from the outside ever came. It still felt like…”
“Like a place, not a…a…hole in the ground. Simple. Happy some moments.”
“There are things I miss, even as awful as it was. We did have happy moments.”
“Maybe there is time for more happy moments.”
“I hope so. Salvatore. I’m so sorry for…never…I never…I gave you no voice. Angie was so cruel to you, just as cruel as the others. I take responsibility.”
Rose was arguing with this sentence as she took more food and now distinctly pointed at the cabinet, but the adults were still deep in conversation, still staring out the window with a hope of seeing something, having some clue about where the others had gone, what had happened. Crashes and screeches were the only clues.
“It’s all right,” he said in a very shaky voice. “Do you want to know something funny? The meanest. It wasn’t Angie, it wasn’t Alcina. Not-not even the villagers who saw me when they were fishing, and they threw rocks and sometimes shot at me.”
Her sympathetic stare was the question, and he answered with a trembling lip. “The meanest…was Mother-Mother-Miranda,” the words were choked out, “... always. She hated me…the more I changed, the more she hated me.”
Donna stayed silent, but dipped her head toward his. He was a few inches shorter than her, and he patted her on the back when she leaned in for the embrace. Though she was silent, the two were aware enough of their emotions for him to intuit her thoughts. She had already known that. She watched it, after all.
When Rose shrieked, causing them both to jump, and pointed again at the closet door, Donna sighed. “All right, little one, let’s listen to you now.” She held out the toddler to Moreau, who looked shocked.
“You…you’d trust me? To…?”
With an encouraging look, Donna handed over the child, who was still babbling at the closet. Donna approached it cautiously, her hands drawn up to her chest, plucking at her black nightgown’s collar in a nervous gesture. Salvatore was staring in awe, as though he couldn’t imagine what Donna might find. He didn’t even protest when Rose stuck one of her carrot slices into his mouth, he just chewed, enraptured.
“The only thing here is this,” Donna said in confusion, slipping her hands around a heavy, large, dark purple stone. It weighed in her hands as she lifted it. “It feels…strange.”
“Be safe,” Moreau said in a stutter, clutching Rose. A new sound came from nearby, shocking them both again, and they jumped at the clicking keys of a typewriter. It sat on a high shelf. Donna laughed nervously and sat the crystal back down. “Look at us, acting so scared. No wonder they left us here.”
“I-I’m sure you could be more scary, with your flowers,” he said reassuringly, and Donna dipped her head at the compliment.
“I’d rather not,” she acknowledged, and then approached the typewriter, which had ceased its ghost typing. “What could this be?”
When Salvatore had no answer, Donna reached up and plucked the paper out of the machine.
TAKE CRYSTAL TO ETHAN
TELL HIM, GODRIC SAYS –
SHE HAS HUMANITY TOO
“Godric!” Donna exclaimed, remembering the way that Eva and Ethan had exploded onto the floor after disappearing, had needed hours to come down from whatever experience they’d had. She only heard some of the details from Eva. She read the note aloud to Moreau, and then glanced at the shelf.
“Do you think it’s a trick?”
He shrugged. “Ethan would want to know,” he acknowledged.
“How do I get there?”
“Maybe…maybe you can travel the way Eva does?”
Donna sauntered to the crystal; she picked it up again, holding it in one hand, the typewritten note in another.
“I’m afraid I’ll get lost. Ethan seems to have poor luck when he…”
Salvatore made a strangled noise at the window. He pointed, and Donna ran, looking at the horizon for the worst-case scenario. But there was nothing to see, other than a faraway white blur….headlights? And the resonant screeches and thumps. Sal was pointing downward. “A loose horse! Is that–”
“Ronin!” Salvatore had plenty of stabling experience, even though most horses shied away from him in his later years. He’d known this particular horse a very long time, perhaps over a century now. “But where is the carriage? He has no harness, no collar.”
“Perhaps the Duke is camped nearby…We can return him later, but this feels like fate,” she said excitedly, grabbing her loose hair and twisting it into a haphazard braid. She tied it with a piece of string from her nightgown. Rose was now chattering happily, seeming to realize the message had been conveyed. Donna looked around the room hopefully, and saw an old-fashioned cloak draped over a nail–it had likely been there for a century. She cringed, thankful at least for her rain boots, as she pulled the moth-eaten grey fabric around her shoulders. It had no hood, and she sighed in frustration.
Moreau bit his lip. “You think—you want me to go instead? You watch Rose?”
Donna’s eyes were wide. “I…I think I need to do this,” she said in a voice brimming with fear, “And besides, you know I’m the better rider.”
In fact she was a very accomplished rider, and had an almost unnatural way with the large animals. Maybe it was because they shared similar traits; shyness, a love of quiet, a habit of attracting unwanted attention from others, and palpable inner strength, all traits that were ignored when it came time for work. Salvatore nodded wistfully, remembering the glory of the former days when Donna regularly rode. Before her cadou. Unfortunately, by then, he’d already begun to look relatively grotesque. Their acquaintance was made mostly by moonlight, simply because he feared scaring her.
She left in a flurry of grey cloak, and he watched from the window as the horse stood expectantly outside, stamping at the ground. Several minutes passed and the dark form of the woman appeared, wrapped in the cloak, a large satchel across her shoulder containing what, apparently, Ethan needed.
Salvatore and Rose both watched, mesmerized, as Donna approached the buckskin in a gentle, yet urgent way. Moments later she’d somehow scrambled on his bare back, and without reins, grabbed the horse’s mane and urged him forward with the faintest of nudges.
Since there was no light around, she disappeared on the road almost immediately, and Salvatore held his breath as he continued to seek the dark night for clues about what was happening. Rose yawned, content in his arms, and he beamed when he realized she would go back to sleep soon.
—-----
Ethan and Karl were flanking the creature, Ethan making use of the rifle and Karl still gleefully flinging metal toward it. Alcina was entirely overwhelmed by the sight of these two working in unison against…well… her . She gazed at the monster with something between disgust and pity. This had been her legacy? When she’d first transformed, Alcina was horrified, despite having already degenerated into murder many times over. She never wanted to be a freak, never wanted to be anything but grace personified. Instead, she’d become this thing, and Miranda had been delighted.
Well, eventually. At first the religious leader was stunned; she wanted to study the transformation, wanted samples. She seemed jealous, almost, and had remarked about the great power within Alcina afterward. Eventually Miranda warmed to the idea that her adopted daughter had an even larger, even more terrifying presence. Alcina had always hoped, believed, after that, that she had won favor.
So much for that, she thought bitterly.
In truth, for all of Ethan’s energy and the promise that things were ‘lovely’, Alcina had no desire to be here. She was wet, cold, barefoot, and she had no one. Her daughters were gone. She had no one else, never had…and of all the final insults, Karl damned Heisenberg was here, creating a larger-than-life magnetic field and wielding an electric hammer as if to add one more insult to the pain. She contemplated leaving Ethan’s side and waltzing forward toward the beast, ending them both.
Ending them all, perhaps. Who cared?
She took a steadying breath. She could bolt. It was only perhaps one hundred feet away. There was nothing that either man could do to stop her. Right? They might not even try. Ethan wanted her to do this.
A loud, bone-rattling thunderclap sounded, and Heisenberg stumbled backwards as his field fell; he put a hand to his head as if he’d been struck. The trio did not have to look far for the source of the sound; a black hole appeared within the pitch black of the night, and a form stepped out of it. Heisenberg’s hammer was ringing as he built back up another field, his eyes darting between the woman in front of them, the beast stalking the treeline, and the truck, behind everyone.
“She really here, Ethan?”
“No,” he said angrily, the wind stinging his eyes as he only barely lowered the rifle. He could sense that she was more…tangible, than she’d been during the ceremony. He could probably touch her, but she couldn’t touch them. “No, she doesn’t have a body.”
“Not yet,” Miranda agreed, her voice a hiss, like a snake. She ignored Karl as she usually did and strode instead toward Ethan. He raised the gun and his frown returned, as the truck creaked independently behind him. “But I will, soon, Ethan.”
He fired a round; it went past her, and Karl stepped even farther back, trying to juggle whatever the hell it was he was trying to do. Alcina paused in her suicide mission, wondering if she could take out her tormentor. She drew herself up haughtily despite standing in the rain in a nightdress. Miranda, however, only had eyes for Ethan.
The beast roared, and suddenly the truck they’d arrived in soared over their heads, groaning as it was hurled by the engineer at the creature. It ripped apart midair, a purposeful act by Karl; Alcina saw fluid spraying from the carcass of his beloved vehicle. In another moment he’d struck the broken, twisted parts of metal with a carefully aimed (was that possible?) lightning bolt; the gasoline ignited in a fury, lighting the field-and the creature-as it screamed. Alcina’s voice echoed from it, cursing Heisenberg.
“You have learned something…something which I need to know,” Miranda said hollowly to Ethan, ignoring the general chaos behind her. “I sensed it earlier. You have been near its resting place.”
“ It ?” He thought of the man made of ice, the sarcophagus with the strange crystal.
Her eyes lit up. Goddammit, could literally anybody stay out of his fucking head?
“Yes, Ethan, that’s it,” she said in another hiss, drawing even nearer. The dragon yelped, downed for a moment, on fire. Karl pulled the hammer back. “Think of it. The location of the damned. Where is it?”
He knew better. He glared at her, thinking of the kind Miranda stranded somewhere in the consciousness. Then he thought of Alcina’s pale arm catching moonlight. He thought of Karl’s ass in those cargo pants, in fact, thought of Karl’s ass in several other compromising positions. Miranda’s face twisted into an expression of rage.
“Fuck you,” he answered, and thought of Mia’s long, brown hair in the Texas sunlight. Ethan grasped the rifle in his right hand and drew his left back. He remembered the night of the ceremony, how the white showers of sparks had left Eva’s crystallized palm and hit Miranda right in the chest. His anger outweighed any curiosity he might have had about her next movement, and he could only hope his own attempt was as powerful.
When he emptied every ounce of anger into the throw, a shower of golden sparks erupted and blinded everyone, blazing more brightly than Karl’s gasoline lightning trick. The Lord, and his sibling, shielded their eyes as Miranda flew back into the darkness, disappearing. Her wail of rage faded, and Alcina stared at the black-eyed father with a new sense of admiration.
“Karl, look out!” Eva appeared in the fray, pushing the engineer away as another form stumbled into reality directly behind her. At first, Ethan was confused, but then he realized who was wielding the familiar sword. Karl yanked the air and the blade almost left the man’s hands, and both laughed. The same laugh. That beautiful laugh.
“It’s Heisenberg’s twin,” he explained breathlessly to a very sick-looking Alcina. She watched the pair of brothers as they sparred, putting on a show of loud insults as they had last time. Her voice was full of despondent sarcasm. “There are two of him? This is surely hell, curated to my specifications.”
Ethan snorted and then abruptly pulled her behind him. Miranda had reappeared, and a gaping, black-bleeding hole was in her abdomen. But she straightened, with effort. “I will take what is due,” she spat. “If I have to tear that eyesore of a building down, stone by stone, then I shall.”
Alcina shoved Ethan aside and he nearly toppled over, not anticipating her strength. He would need to reload soon; he cautiously let her take the lead as he aimed for the dragon-like beast.
“How could you do this to me? Using my own mutation…use me, in this way?” Alcina’s long arm gestured to the screeching, wounded Remnant. The Heisenberg brothers, probably purposely, danced around it, some of their blows landing near or on it. It was spinning, twisting, trying to follow them as they taunted each other in German. Karl continually tried to yank the metal sword away from his phantom brother.
Miranda narrowed her eyes. “Had you been looking through the castle properly, you would have found it. I gave you that task many years ago.”
“You gave me nothing but tasks! Meaningless, idle! I couldn’t live, I couldn’t leave! You made me a monster and then locked me away. And now you have taken my power, the only thing I had left, and turned it into a mockery.”
Miranda looked bored. Ethan took the opportunity to reload.
“Your power? I gave you everything. This,” Miranda’s golden-claw-covered hand swept toward the monster. “This is my legacy, my creation. This beast was owed to me. Now I can control it, as was meant to be.”
Ethan considered winding up another golden spark ball. He was getting pretty sick of listening to this shit, and as he fired another round at the beast, he wondered if bullets were even affecting it. Was it here ? Was it between realms, like Miranda? Perhaps she’d purposely made it that way. Unkillable. Ah, fuck. Fuck.
If this is what one fragment did, he didn’t want to see what the whole thing could do.
Ethan shrugged the rifle over his shoulder, putting it away, having realized that it was useless. Then again, the whole crystal was a part of his beautiful, wonderful daughter. That’s what the whole thing could do. He smiled to himself. To Alcina, he said, “Don’t listen to her, she’s just trying to piss you off. Make you as miserable as she is.”
Eva suddenly appeared again, feet away from Miranda, and scolded, “Look at this destruction. What would you even do with a daughter if you had one?”
He’d never heard her speak directly to Miranda. Eva’s voice was shaky, and angry, hurt, in a way that Ethan had never heard before. Both he and Alcina stared at the exchange. Miranda looked confused, then annoyed. Before she could answer, Eva had repeated Ethan’s move; her palms came upward, and a bolt of white energy and sparks erupted from her hands. Miranda barely had time to cry out, enraged again, as her ephemeral form disappeared. For the moment.
When Eva turned to look at him, he saw a trace of misery on her usually placid face. But then she smiled sadly. “I suppose you know too. I just realized…the creature…it is not…”
“Karl,” Ethan yelled across the field, “We can’t hurt it.”
“Like hell,” came the loud reply from somewhere in the dark.
“No, I mean…we can’t KILL it…it’s like Miranda, it’s not fully here on this plane.”
“You got a formula for pullin’ a solid’ bein’ outta a big bitch dragon, Winters?”
Jochen’s laugh resonated, an echo of his brother’s. Alcina rolled her eyes.
“No,” Ethan called dismally.
“Maybe blast it with your fist like you did her a minute ago, that was cool,” one of the Heisenbergs called. When they yelled, their accents melded, and he couldn’t tell one voice from the other.
A strange noise sounded from behind them. Hoof beats. It couldn’t be. Ethan was almost afraid to turn around simply because he didn’t want the night to get stranger. It was going to turn into a Monty Python sketch, he was convinced. It would be someone banging coconuts together.
But he was compelled to slowly look, expecting something else terrible to appear instead of his preferred coconuts.
It was Donna, atop a thick draught horse, clutching a bag in her hands.
“Ethan!” she said wildly, sliding off the horse as Eva ran toward her, grabbing her protectively. Despite the very large, very deadly mutated dragon creature sixty feet away, the horse was calm, simply shaking his mane as she dismounted.
“Donna, what the fuck?”
“Read this,” she said wordlessly, fumbling for a folded up paper in the bag.
Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story
Be sure to read the first book, Winters and the Beast, before starting here!
Summary
After coming to terms with two things--one, that he's made of mold, and two, that life goes on--Ethan Winters must work with his new alliance to definitively end Mother Miranda's hundred years of terror.
The key to her undoing, or rather, the many keys to her undoing, are buried deep in the village's remains. Some secrets will require Ethan to do the one thing he never thought he was capable of: bringing back the Lords, and convincing them to work with him.
Meanwhile, Karl works to become more than just "The Fourth Lord", while subconsciously knowing that for his entire life, all the things that seemed too good to be true....go away after awhile.
