We all froze, staring at Rita in shock and awe. Rita cut her father’s head clean off, and for a second, or maybe even a minute, my brain was too discombobulated to figure out what just happened.
Rita decapitated her father.
The second his head hit the stage floor, the tear in the sky closed, and the creatures that had almost broken through completely disappeared. White fluffy clouds filled the sky once more.
We all gaped at Rita, dumbfounded, as she let her sword fall to the ground and pulled off the backpack. She didn’t look at a single one of us as she zipped it open, took out a can of petrol, and began dousing Theodore’s head and body.
I heard the shake of a box of matches just before she whipped one out, struck it alight, and flung it at her father’s corpse. It caught fire instantly and went up in a mesmerising display of purple and black flames.
Tegan
Three hours earlier
I blinked my eyes, knowing I felt way too shitty to be dead—unless by some sick twist of fate I’d ended up in hell. I peered around myself and discovered that no, I wasn’t in hell. I was still lying flat down in the mud, my neck sore and swollen from almost being choked to death.
I heard sobbing coming from nearby. Weakly, I pulled myself up to a sitting position and spotted Rita a few feet away, her arms around her knees as she cradled them to her chest. She was quietly weeping, tears running down her face. The last thing I remembered was that same face looking at me with pure hatred. Now there was nothing left but sadness.
I shifted my body a fraction, and her eyes whipped to mine.
“Not another move, Tegan.”
“Rita … I …”
“I said, not another move.”
“Okay, I won’t move.”
She looked away from me then and wiped her eyes with the long sleeves of her dress. Both our clothes were completely destroyed with grass and dirt. I felt like I’d simultaneously been punched in the throat and swallowed a bag of sand.
“Why didn’t you finish me off?” I asked in a sore, raspy voice.
She didn’t answer me for a very long time, then all I got was, “I don’t know.”
“You must know. What made you stop?”
“I said I don’t fucking know. Now will you please just shut up?”
I reached up and rubbed at my bruised neck, which was when I noticed there was something wrong with my hand. The index finger was hanging limply, and I couldn’t seem to move it. My body must have gone into shock and blocked out the pain for a time because now my entire hand was screaming in agony. I sucked in a sharp, hissing breath and tried to focus through the pain.
“You broke my finger.”
“You got lucky then.”
“Rita, I know why you stopped. You stopped because you couldn’t bear to kill someone who’s your friend. No matter how much you try to convince yourself you’re evil, you know it’s not true. You know that Theodore is a madman, and I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but even though he’s your biological parent, you’re nothing like him.”
Talking seemed to be distracting me from my effed-up finger, so I kept going.
“Even now when I look at you, I see Noreen. I see her in your eyes and your hair. I see her in your face. She will always be a part of you, a far bigger part because she’s the one who brought you into this world and she’s the one who raised you. Theodore is no better than a passing sperm donor, and you know it.”
I didn’t feel like I’d gotten through to her, and I didn’t know what else to say. But then, Rita spoke quietly, “If that’s true, then how come every time I look in the mirror all I see is him? All I see is a lost cause.”
“If you were a lost cause, you would have killed me, but you didn’t. The good in you stopped you from following through with it.”
“I can’t find the good.”
Summoning my courage, I got up on my hands and knees and crawled to her. She didn’t tell me not to move like before. Instead, she waited patiently for me to get to her.
“I can help you find it,” I whispered, kneeling before her now. Her eyes lifted to mine, and there was a trickle of hope within their watery, tear reddened depths.
“Okay, then. Help me,” she said, her voice barely audible.
“First you need to kill the darkness.”
“How?”
“By killing the person you think put it there. You have to kill Theodore.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “I can’t do that. You don’t understand how powerful he is. I’ve spent time with him. The magic he possesses is unfathomable.”
“That doesn’t matter. Everybody has a weak spot, and I think you just might be his. He’ll never expect you to be the one who kills him. You have the element of surprise on your side.”