Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children, #2)

by Seanan McGuire

The Moors exist in eternal twilight, in the pause between the lightning strike and the resurrection. They are a place of endless scientific experimentation, of monstrous beauty, and of terrible consequences.

And when he asks her for her answer, she unties the choker that has circled her neck for the last two years, lets it fall away, and exposes the soft white curve of her neck. There are moments that change everything. A year after Jill becomes the Master’s child in everything but name, Jack stands next to Dr. Bleak on the top floor of their shared windmill. The roof has been opened, and the storm that stains the sky is black as ink, writhing and lit from within by flashes of lightning. A village girl lies stretched on the stone slab between them, her body covered by a sheet, her hands strapped tight around two metal rods.

One girl courts death the other defies it. Dr. Bleak tries to undo the work of the Master.

So she wore her glasses, and she saw things as they were, sharp and bright and unforgiving.

Jack inhaled, breathing in the salty smell of her lover’s hair, and thought that there was something to be said for worlds of blood and moonlight, where the only threat more terrible than the things that dwelt in the sea were the things that lived on the shore. Beauty was all the brighter against a background of briars.

We will leave them there. There are some things that do not need to be seen to be understood; things that can be encompassed by a single sharp scream, and by a spray of blood painting the heather, red as roses, red as apples, red as the lips of the vampire’s only child. There is nothing here for us now.