Free Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams by Damian Huntley Page B

edges of her eyes which ran
down towards her cheeks, and more creases by the edges of her
mouth, little tributaries running their course toward her chin;
however, all of these lines seemed to have softened by degrees.
Something more than this though, which sent shivers down her spine;
it wasn’t really her face, not the face she’d grown accustomed to,
nor the face she’d grown up with. She was looking at her mother,
and as she exhaled and the mirror steamed with her breath, the
illusion was complete.
    She wiped the
condensation from the mirror with her forearm and leaned in,
examining her eyes closely. The irises were not hers, not her own
near-mahogany brown eyes. Now she saw her mother’s eyes; green with
flecks of brown; staring at her, blinking with her, looking to the
sides suspiciously. The particular slant of her eyelids, the depth
of the crease over her eyes and the arch of her eyebrows was wrong.
Everything was beautiful; yes, her mother had been beautiful, but
everything was so completely wrong. Her nose; the arch more
pronounced, her nostrils thinner, the creases of her cheeks bore
deeper grooves from a life more full of laughter. All wrong. Then,
by degrees, as she stared at her lips, Cupid’s bow arched as it was
notched with her tongue, and there, the bow grew deeper, her lips
filling out. Her lips, not her mother’s. The arch of her nose
rippled, and she could hear it as much as she could see the change,
like water dislodging from her ear, the crackling sound of the
cartilage moving. The irises of her eyes began to be shot through
with dark beams, each one filling out the strands of green, blue,
and gray; subtle flecks all now lost in dark lakes of umber. Her
eyes. No, not the eyes she’d grown accustomed to, settled for,
bemoaned, but accepted. These were the eyes she’d grown up with.
The crow’s feet, gone; carrion of age given flight by this fearsome
transformation. Laugh lines no more, for the woman who stared back
at her meant business.
    “Well now,
there’s a thing!” She watched the young girl’s mouth, forgetting
herself, admiring her bloom of youth. Then she looked away, lured
by the siren’s call from the living room. Another long dead fitness
instructor beckoned for her to join.

CHAPTER FIVE
DC
     
    West booked a 9pm
flight from La Guardia to Ronald Reagan Washington National,
traveling under the name of Anthony Statham. He traveled light,
carrying only a small case containing his forged credentials, and
he arrived at check-in with enough time to relax while enjoying an
hour of meandering, and people watching at the departure gate. The
flight wasn’t fully booked so he was able to enjoy the short
journey with the luxury of two seats to himself.
    In Washington,
West took a taxi from the airport into downtown D.C. and asked the
driver to drop him at the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania. The
Willard wasn’t close to David Beach’s home, but it was a short walk
from a private parking deck which housed one of West’s cars. He
checked into the hotel, made his way to his room, lay on the bed,
and closed his eyes, allowing the past to flood his mind.
    At five in the
morning, West checked out, walked the two blocks to 14th Street NW,
and keyed into the parking garage. West had made a habit of keeping
a couple of car to hand in most major cities. Licensing, taxes, tag
renewals, roadworthy tests and other such administrative headaches
had made this particular habit almost impossible until he had found
a small company based out of Iowa who were happy to take care of
those intricacies on his behalf. It was a vulnerability of sorts,
but it was a minor consideration for the luxury it afforded
him.
    He pulled a key
out of his pocket and hammered it into the awkward old lock of his
69 Mustang Boss, resting his case in the passenger’s seat. He had
built the Boss’s engine himself, hand machining parts rather than
3d printing; however, the engine was sufficiently powerful that
designing and