She was doing nothing on her own now. She was weak and exhausted. Her Pattern was doing its work automatically. Apparently it would go on doing that work as long as there were Patternists alive to support it.
Then Mary began to realize that Doro was having trouble. She began to wonder why she was still alive. Her thoughts came to him clearly. And apparently his thoughts reached her.
You can’t kill me, she sent. After all that, you can’t kill me. You may as well let me go!
He was surprised at first that she was still aware enough to communicate with him. Then he was angry. She was helpless. She should have been his long ago, yet she would not die.
If he could manage to leave her body?a thing he had never done before without finishing his kill he would only have to try again. He couldn’t possibly let her live to collect more of his latents, to search until she found a way to kill him.
He would jump to Karl, and perhaps from Karl to someone else. Karl would already be more dead than alive now that she had taken strength from him. Doro would move on, find himself an able body and come back to her in it. Then he would simply cut her throat?decapitate her if necessary. Not even a healer could survive that. She might be mentally strong, but physically she was still only a small woman. She would be easy prey.
Mary seemed to clutch at him. She was trying to hold him as he had held her, but she had neither the technique nor the strength. She had learned a little, but it was too late. She was barely an annoyance. Doro focused on Karl.
Abruptly Mary became more than an annoyance.
She tore strength from the rest of her people. Not one at a time now. This time she took them all at once, the way Rachel had used to take from her congregations. But Mary stripped her Patternists as Rachel had never stripped her mutes. Then, desperately, Mary tried again to grasp Doro.
For a moment, she seemed not to realize that she was strong again?that her act of desperation had gained her a second chance. Then her new strength brought her to life. It became impossible for Doro to focus on anyone but her. Her power drew him.
Abruptly, she stopped clutching at him and threw herself on him. She embraced him.
Startled, Doro tried to shake her off. For a moment, his struggles fed her as hers had fed him earlier. She was a leech, riding, feeding orgastically.
Doro caught himself, ceased his struggles. He smiled to himself grimly. Mary was learning, but there was still much that she didn’t know. Now he taught her how difficult it was to get strength from an opponent who not only refused to give it away by struggling but who actively resisted her efforts to take it. And there was only one way to resist. As she sought to consume him, he countered by trying to consume her.
For long moments they strained against each other, neither of them gaining or losing power. They neutralized each other.
Disgusted, Doro tried again to focus on Karl. Best to get away from Mary mentally and get back to her physically.
Mary let him go.
Startled, Doro brought his attention back to her. For a moment, he could not focus on her. There was a roar of something like radio static in his mind?“noise” so intense that he tried to twist away from it. It cleared slowly.
Then he noticed that he had not drawn away from Mary completely. He was still joined to her. Joined by a single strand of fire. She had used her mental closeness with him to draw him into her web. Her Pattern.
He panicked.
He was a member of the Pattern. A Patternist. Property. Mary’s property.
He strained against the seemingly fragile thread. It stretched easily. Then he realized that he was straining against himself. The thread was part of him. A mental limb. A limb that he could find no way to sever.
The Patternists had told him how it felt at first?that feeling of being trapped, of being on a leash. They had lived to get over their feelings. They had lived because Mary had wanted them to live. Doro himself had helped Mary understand how thoroughly their lives were in her hands.
Doro fought desperately, uselessly. He could feel Mary’s amusement now. He had nearly killed her, had been about to kill the man she had attached herself to so firmly. Now she took her revenge. She consumed him slowly, drinking in his terror and his life, drawing out her own pleasure, and laughing through his soundless screams.
Epilogue
MARY
They cremated Doro’s last body before I was able to get out of bed. I was in bed for two days. A lot of others were there even longer. The few who were on their feet ran things with the help of the mute servants. One hundred and fifty-four Patternists never got up again at all. They were my weakest, those least able to take the strain I put on them. They died because it took me so long to learn how to kill Doro. By the time Doro was dead and I began to try to give back the strength I had taken from my people, the 154 were already dead. I had never tried to give back strength before, but I had never taken so much before, either. I managed it, and probably saved the lives of others who would have died. So that I only had to get used to the idea that I had killed the 154 …
Emma died. The day Rachel told her about Doro, she decided to die. It was just as well.
Karl lived. The family lived. If I had killed them, Emma’s way out could have started to look good to me. Not that I would have taken it. I wouldn’t have the freedom to consider a thing like that for about twenty years, no matter what happened. But that was all right. It wasn’t a freedom I wanted. I had already won the only freedom I cared about. Doro was dead. Finally, thoroughly dead. Now we were free to grow again?we, his children.
