If there were any way to stop this, Gerard would do it in a heartbeat. It’s not just the two Hunters making him answer their questions or help them, it’s the summoning itself. It’s being tied to the Book.
The occasional aches that come from his protective charms activating around another power have now become constant, an almost crippling agony with even the slightest movement. He remembers the time his mother summoned one of her victims to demonstrate her power, the way the woman had cried and begged for a release from her pain and torment (he tries not to remember Martin’s pale, tear-streaked face or the way he’d stood in front of Gerard and Melanie, all of nine years old, arms outspread like he could protect them, like he needed to, like Gerard shouldn’t have been the one protecting him). He wonders if he’s inadvertently made his own pain worse or if it’s like this for the others, too.
Not like he can ask. He doesn’t even know if it’s possible to summon two pages at once, and he’s pretty sure his is the only one written in English anyway. And frankly, he wouldn’t wish this on another soul.
He looks at the pair, exhausted and hurting. He still doesn’t know their names—well, that’s not true; the woman’s name is Jules or Julie or something like that, or maybe the old man just calls her Jewel, like she’s a precious treasure or something—and it’s not like they’ll introduce themselves to him at this point. Names have power, after all, or at least they can. Not that these two think he’s got any power.
They’re right. He doesn’t. All he has are memories and pain.
“It’s such a simple question, Gerard,” the woman says coaxingly. “Monsters that steal faces. What are they?”
It is a simple question, theoretically. Face-stealing is almost certainly the Stranger, although he’d need a bit more information to be sure. Not that he’s tried explaining Smirke’s Fourteen to the pair. They probably aren’t interested in it, not like that. There are monsters, and there are Hunters, and as far as they’re concerned those are the only two divisions that need to be made.
But Gerard knows what they want is more than that. They want him to tell them the creature’s name (he doesn’t know, not without a detailed explanation, and even then he can’t be sure he’ll get it right; lots of creatures steal skin or faces), and how they can kill it. And they’ll keep him here, summoned and in pain—they know he’s in pain, he thinks they actually enjoy it—until they get the answers they want.
He’s tired of it.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“The hell you don’t,” the old man says. “Now tell us, like a good little boy.”
Those words, said in the same condescending tone Mary and Liliana always used on Martin to browbeat him into submission on the rare occasions he dared talk back, trigger Gerard’s flight-or-fight response—and as Melanie often says, his inner animal is an emu. “I’m not your bloody monster manual. Even if I did know, I’m done talking to you.”
The woman’s eyes flash. “Getting mouthy, isn’t he?”
She’s talking like he isn’t there, which only serves to aggravate him further. The old man flicks his lighter meaningfully, the Book held in his other hand. “Maybe we should teach him a lesson.”
He moves the flame closer to the book. It causes a renewed surge of agony to pulse through Gerard’s tattoos. Maybe it’s the pain, or maybe it’s just his frustration boiling over more, but Gerard snaps, “Do it, then.”
“You think he won’t?” the woman challenges.
“Too much of a coward,” Gerard says contemptuously. He knows this is stupid, knows he’s goading them, but honestly, what can they really do to him? He’s dead. Just a memory pressed in a book. “You won’t really do it. Too afraid of losing your only leverage if it doesn’t work.”
Two bright red spots appear on the man’s cheeks. “What did you call me?”
“You heard me.” Gerard’s not sure where all this is coming from, but he presses on. “You won’t really do it. That’s your problem, old man, you set the stakes too high at the start and now you won’t follow through. Never make a threat you won’t carry out.”
“It’s like you want me to,” the man says incredulously.
“Wait,” the woman says, narrowing her eyes.
Too late. The old man flicks the flame again and holds it close enough to the book that one of the edges starts smoking. It honestly doesn’t hurt any worse than it already did before, but Gerard doesn’t think they know that.
He lunges forward, hoping to catch them off-guard, and manages it. He can tell the old man thinks he’s trying to knock the lighter out of his hand, but he’s not, not really. He manages to actually make contact with it—it burns far hotter than it ought to—and pushes down instead of knocking it away.
The book catches instantly. Instantly, the old man goes from holding an outsize book to holding a small fireball. He cries out and drops it to the table.
“Trevor!” The woman springs towards the man and the fire.
“Get back!” The old man—Trevor, Gerard guesses his name is—stumbles backwards, dropping the lighter in his haste. It goes out, of course, lighters don’t stay lit if you aren’t holding down the trigger, but the damage is done and the book is ablaze.
Curiously, it doesn’t hurt. Not yet, anyway. Gerard can feel the flames licking at him, but even the constant pain from his protective charms is gone. Or else he’s passed the threshold of pain that his brain can handle and it’s just shut off. Or else he’s truly dead and pain can’t touch him anymore. Either way, he watches in a sort of exhausted triumph as Trevor and Jules or Julie or Jewel or whatever her name is drag each other out of the room, then turns his gaze back to the book.
It’s a Leitner. Well, technically it’s a book of power. He remembers his mother and Aunt Lily once trying to remember what they called them before Leitner started putting his name in them, but they never could come up with a good answer. Either way, it’s the sort of book that would have been a Leitner if his mother hadn’t kept it, and it’s burning. He needs to sing it out.
Ordinarily they sing “Down Among the Dead Men” when it’s one of Terminus’s books, fittingly enough, but when Gerard opens his mouth, that’s not what comes out. He finds himself singing one of the songs from the album he found a couple years ago by that Bristol shanty band, the one that’s not technically a shanty but has the feel of one. He can almost hear Martin and Melanie joining in with him on the chorus, and out of habit, he drops out and imagines them singing the second and third verses. The song’s a good one, but he doesn’t realize why he’s singing it, exactly, until he picks up with the final verse.
Now that I’m staring down at the darkest abyss
I’m not sure what I want, but I don’t think it’s this…
It’s true, he realizes, even as he keeps singing. He’s resigned to dying, has been since he found out about the tumor…or at least he thought he was…but at the core of it, he wants to live. Not that he has much choice. He’s already dead, anyway. Just a memory on a page. The book is going to burn itself out in a second, and he’ll burn out with it.
No more second chances. No heading back to England for him. Just…whatever comes next.
So be it. He doesn’t like it, but it’s not really up to him, after all, is it?
For our souls in the ocean together will be…