46 Nathaniel Hawthorne

Maggie had been ready to deliver a terrible justice upon Alpha, but now, the one person in the world whom she had thought pure-of-heart, looked back at her from the seat of a killer.  Her reddish-blond hair looked just like her blondish-red hair.  Maggie loved Mary.

“Why?” Maggie asked.  Tears began to roll down Maggie’s freckled cheeks in fat tracks, like wax from your very last candle. 

Maggie pulled her coat open, exposing the white-white fleece within.  She searched Mary for another weapon and found only a syringe – in one of the coat pockets, a white baptismal gown.  “Why would you try to kill me?  I loved you?  And why . . . those girls?”  Maggie cried through gritted teeth, her heart a cocktail of rage and sorrow. 

 “I never wanted to kill you, Maggie.  But you just kept pushing and pushing.  And innocent people were getting hurt because of you.  You were dangerous to everyone at Sacred Heart.”

“I was dangerous to Sacred Heart?!  Innocent people were getting hurt because of me?!  Do you even grasp the lunacy of what you are saying, or are you too far gone already?”

“But don’t you see?  What I did – it wasn’t something I did to them, it was something I did for them.”

Maggie railed at her mentor, “You killed good people!”

“Well, then you better kill me, sweetie.”

Maggie jammed her gun into Mary’s forehead.  Blood still streamed down Mary’s face from their earlier combat; it trickled down on to the white fluffy collar of her jacket. Mary growled in frustrated rage; she couldn’t pull the trigger.

“Why Alpha?  Why the A?” she demanded.

“Oh Maggie,” Mary sighed, “I already told you, so long ago:  Nathanael Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.  A, for Adultery.  A, for Abortion.  A, the cleansing light of Absolution, the divine gift of secrets brought in to the light.  A – the brand of punishment that brings Sanctification.  Each of those women, each of them, they had a poison within them that needed to be drawn out, drawn out like the Serpent’s very own venom.  They were weak, defenseless little children, babes, that couldn’t overcome the sickness within them.  I cleansed Kathy’s womb; Susan couldn’t control her own lusts; I washed her in the purifying waters of Saint Christopher’s.  And Tiffany couldn’t resist the hunger of her blood, always crying out for more-more -more heroine and speed.  Never enough. – They were never going to get better, Maggie.  Nothing could help them, not the Program, not Sacred Heart or Paul or a Higher Power.  You see, don’t you?  They couldn’t be fixed.”  Mary licked some blood away from her lip.  “Maggie . . . you can’t save ‘em all.”