Miserere: An Autumn Tale Page 4

  Static filled the display before solidifying to show the image of a girl standing in Hell. Her fists were pressed to her face and her eyes were wide with terror at the soul before her. The soul reached out to grab her. The girl twisted and stumbled out of his reach. She turned to do the most dangerous thing she could by running blindly into the shadows.

  Lucian closed the phone; his breath quickened. He concentrated on the resonance of magic around him. After several seconds, a buzzing sensation traveled up his arms. The weak reverberation of a broken Hell Gate grew stronger then faded again.

  Had she passed through the Veil anywhere but within the Wasteland, her journey would have ended beside him. The child must have slipped through the nearby Hell Gate where evil waited to take the unwary or inexperienced, especially those foundlings new to Woerld.

  Lucian could save her, but it would mean opening the Hell Gate. To use so much force would automatically inform Catarina of his approximate location. Even someone as dense as Speight would feel the surge of power and the parting of worlds. Everything he had sacrificed, everything Father Matt had sacrificed, would be for nothing.

  Don’t dawdle.

  Startled by the sound of the old priest’s words, Lucian looked over his shoulder, half-expecting to see Father Matt standing beside him. He was alone.

  “You don’t understand—” He stopped talking. Good God, he was going insane.

  To open the Hell Gate would be a breach of his covenant with the Citadel to never manipulate the Gates again. Taking the pledge was the lone reason he had left the Citadel alive and, until this day, he had never considered breaking his oath. If he violated his covenant, he would have to stand trial to answer for his recidivism. His exile would be revoked, and he would face a death sentence.

  A foundling, Lucian, drawn to your light and allowed through the Veil by God’s hand, Matthew’s voice chided. Will you let her become like Rachael? A one-eyed, drooling monster lost in dreams?

  His sister’s mocking words sounded no gentler in the old priest’s voice. Lucian pressed the phone to his lips. Real or imagined, Matthew’s words were true. Lucian couldn’t let the child die, even if it meant giving himself over to the Citadel courts. He had squandered his life, but the foundling deserved her chance to live. Perhaps this was the opportunity Matthew had offered, for what better way to make restitution to Rachael than to save another from the fate she had suffered?

  He pocketed the cell phone, closed his eyes, and tried to remember the Psalm to open the way between Woerld and Hell. Yet all he could recall was standing with Rachael the last time he held her. When he’d stroked her cheek to soothe her, she turned her face to press her lips against his palm. He almost stopped, almost took her back to the Citadel on some pretense, but his pride and his sister had set his course.

  Lucian snapped free of the memory and opened his eyes. The words wouldn’t come. Panicked, he tried to clear his mind. If he delayed too long, the time could slip, extending the girl’s torment in Hell without a second passing in Woerld.

  While inhaling the rotted air of the Wasteland, he caught the faintest whiff of clover. Rachael always smelled of sunshine, clover, and some sweet musky scent all her own. He touched his Psalter, wrapped in the scarf she had once wound through her hair.

  Lucian had not prayed since his exile, but this request wasn’t for him. He hoped God would hear him for the child’s sake. “Please, God, help me remember.”

  The only words he recalled belonged to Rachael: John doesn’t think I’m ready for the Gates. She had been breathless and impatient. Always impatient was his Rachael and it would prove her undoing.

  The memories he’d evaded for the last sixteen years floated to the surface, and this time, Lucian didn’t stop the recollections. Let them come. Let him remember. If he intended to face Rachael, he must stop running from his past.

  His fingers tightened around his cane. “Psalm 20,” Lucian whispered to the dawn. That was it. They had used Psalm 20 to open the Gate, and Rachael never lost her focus. Neither of them ever lost their focus. It would be their triumph; it would be their ruin.

  “‘The Lord answer me in the day of trouble. The Lord…’” He couldn’t recall the rest of the Psalm. What if he could no longer command the Gates? What if God no longer answered his call? He, who had once guided her so confidently, couldn’t remember the next words in his anxiety. Clearing his throat, he stilled his nerves and began again, recalling once more the musky scent of her skin.

  “‘The Lord answer me in the day of trouble! The name of the god of Jacob protect me!’” Yes! Yes! That was it! He was no longer sure to whom he prayed, the God of Jacob or Rachael. “‘May he send me help from the sanctuary, and give me support from Zion. May he remember all my offerings and regard with favor my sacrifices.’”

  The hesitancy fled his voice and peace filled him. He felt for the spatial ripple in time as he chanted. “‘May he grant me my heart’s desire, and fulfill all my plans. May the Lord fulfill all my petitions.’”

  The words flowed back into his mind as easily as the unseen strength allowing him to channel this greater power. Humbled by the force filling him, he sensed a give in the air and knew the Gate was close to obeying his command.

  His baritone thundered through the Wasteland, and he spread his arms wide, feeling Woerld give. “‘I shall rise and stand upright. O Lord; answer me when I call.’” On the final word, he rapped his cane against the earth, a rush of air rippled around him, Woerld fell away, and he was alive again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  cross creek

  A flame swelled and receded behind the dirty hurricane glass surrounding a thick gray candle. Its light illuminated a dusty dresser and black cobwebs wafting from the ceiling. On a rickety nightstand, another candle cast shadows around the dying boy and the scarred, one-eyed woman occupying the austere room.

  Rachael pulled her rocking chair closer to the bed and peeled back the blood-soaked quilt. She narrowed her left eye as she frowned at the youth. Pink bubbles formed at the corner of his lips where his skin had been ripped. She’d stitched him up as best as she could, but there were too many wounds, too much lost blood. The boy’s eyes were open slits, dull with death. She was sure he didn’t see her. Perhaps that was just as well.

  She wiped her fingers on the tail of her filthy shirt and picked up the stack of cards she’d found in his wallet. An identification card contained his name and address—Peter Richardson, 909 Country Club Drive, Taylorsville, North Carolina—and a fingerprint beside his smiling picture. The boy’s library card was next then his social security card.

  A thin headache threaded its way into her brain. She rubbed the black patch over her right eye. This was her fault. It didn’t matter whether he was attacked within the Veil or in Woerld. He was her foundling, and she should have sensed his coming so she could be there to help him.

  She was slipping. A tendril of fear burrowed into her heart; she killed it before it could take root. Fools whined.

  Peter closed his eyes and his chest rose and fell as he slept. She placed the cards on the table and settled back in her rocker, the creak of wood against wood the only sound above the wind. Rachael remembered her own pain when Caleb had brought her out of Hell. Sleep had been her only escape; deep, dreamless sleep where her agony couldn’t touch her. Lulled by the rocker’s smooth motion and the warmth of the room, Rachael’s thoughts drifted in the semi-dark. Her mind wandered into a dream where she dreamed herself back on Earth.

  She was eleven years old again and running through the field behind her father’s house. A rusty pick-up truck obscured by kudzu and weeds loomed out of the twilight. Her hip bumped the fender before she could swerve. Rachael caught her scream before it fled her lips. She left a bloody handprint on the hood as she passed.

  A quick glimpse showed her father following her at a dead run. He was only a few yards behind her. Pale blonde hair stood in stark contrast to his red, furious face, but Rachael only saw the bloodied ax
that he carried. From the open windows of their farmhouse, the radio blared. Her father grinned and Mick Jagger growled a song about a man with railroad spike driven through his head.

  Rachael ran toward a strange crimson fog. She cringed when her tennis shoes hit the boards that covered the old well, but the wood held. For her. Seconds later, her father crossed the same boards. A resounding crack drowned the chorus of the song.

  She heard the crash and looked back, but the field was blurred by the red haze so like the blood that covered her. Suddenly someone grabbed her and she screamed. She stumbled into John’s arms hard enough to drag them both to their knees.

  Her father’s cries rang through the Veil. Rae-baby, you come on over here and help your daddy now. From the depths of the well where he’d fallen, his voice echoed strangely into Woerld. Rae? Get daddy a rope. Baby? I know you’re there. There was a splash and a panicked groan. Goddamnit, Rae, you quit fucking around and get your ass over here! Right now!

  Rachael turned to John, but he was gone, and she was in Lucian’s arms. He spoke her name with a voice like thunder and silenced her father’s pleas. With a touch, he drove her demons into the night and made her safe. She reached for him; he slipped away, swallowed by a mist.

  A mighty wind dispersed the fog to reveal a city of death where the gale shrieked through empty buildings. Lucian stood before her, his dark eyes ruined with grief, a blaze of white marring the black of his hair. He leaned upon a cane and called her name. She was drenched in blood, only now it was her own. She thrust her crimson hands forward, her life pooling at her feet.

  I can’t make it stop, she said as a fly whined past her face.

  Peter’s final whistling breath woke her with a start, and her dream dissipated into the night with a little boy’s soul.

  Rachael leaned forward. “Peter?” She rubbed his hand between her palms. “Come on, Peter.” She pulled the blanket off his body and listened for his heartbeat. Silence. The room blurred and her throat burned. She choked her tears down. Weeping wouldn’t bring him back. The dead never came back.

  “Hey, you tried. You really tried.” Rachael smoothed his hair and kissed his cheeks. “I’m sorry.” Sorry for him and for herself. “I’m so sorry.” Her first foundling and he’d died before they could know one another. She reached over the headboard and took down the rosary hanging on the wall then wound the beads around his broken hands.

  The quiet house echoed her loneliness as she knelt beside him. After rummaging through her exhausted brain, she settled on the Lord’s Prayer and recited the verses by rote. She remained still for a few minutes after she finished, resting her head against the mattress.

  On the floor beside the nightstand leg, a piece of paper caught her eye, and she reached down to pick it up. The photograph must have slid out of Peter’s wallet. Rachael stood and carried the picture to the candlelight. Two young people posed on a beach, laughing at the camera. The boy was Peter in the not-so-distant past; the girl was obviously a very close relation, possibly a sister.

  How happy they looked. Rachael tried to remember if she’d ever laughed with such wild abandon but no memory would come. A tear wept through the stone of her heart; she swept it away before it could weaken her.

  A fresh drop of blood splashed across the photo, landing on Peter’s face. Rachael examined the red blotch in wonder. When she dabbed her nose, blood smeared across the back of her hand. The headache returned and rammed into her skull with the riveting agony of a spike through her temple. She screamed in surprise and anger. Fire snarled her synapses, driving her thoughts like quicksilver before the beast in her head.

  Somewhere a Katharos opened a Gate between Woerld and Hell.

  Her brain burned with cold as the Wyrm surged from the abyss of her soul. The demon seized her distraction and scratched against the back of her mind, a cadaverous fingernail scraping against a tomb. She started her Psalm of protection: ‘I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, that he may hear me…’

  The Wyrm flinched back.

  This was nothing. She could control it.

  The body on the bed sat up.

  “Rigor mortis,” she murmured, but she knew the corpse was too warm for rigor.

  Peter’s head turned toward her and his eyes shot open.

  Or not. She continued the Psalm through parched lips. “‘In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord.’”

  The temperature in the room dropped until her breath misted before her in a cloud of white. Her fear raised beads of sweat to her upper lip. The air was oppressive in spite of the cold, a dark heaviness settled on the room, and the Wyrm uncoiled in her brain. The creature sought a vein, an artery, a canal to its birth; the Psalm held the demon back. For now.

  “Save her,” Peter croaked, the stitches on his cheek ripping open his flesh again. The air in front of his mouth did not turn white. No warmth in his lungs; the dead didn’t breathe.

  She glanced at the rosary. Peter’s skin didn’t burn so the boy’s spirit had returned, nothing more. Had there been another foundling with him? The girl in the picture?

  “‘…in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying,’” her hoarse whisper broke the stillness.

  “Lyn… Lyn.” The remnant of Peter’s hand started to jerk within the rosary. “Save—” The corpse gagged horribly.

  A thin stream of smoke began to smolder where the rosary touched his flesh. There was a sudden change in the pitch of Peter’s voice as the minor Possessors surged forward, seeking a body to command. The boy’s mouth worked. A shrill cacophony erupted from his throat, each voice striving to be heard one over the other through his dead lips.

  Certain her head would explode, she shut her eye. Her hands shook as the Wyrm fought for control of the body they shared. “‘…my soul refuses to be comforted…’”

  The Gate closed against the shadows rushing out.

  “Leave us alone!” The hellish chorus vomited from Peter’s lips. His flesh burned.

  The Possessors receded, clawing to remain in Woerld before they were sucked back into Hell. Shadows dry as October spiders skittered into the corners of the room. The Wyrm withdrew to the recesses of her soul where the demon would await its next opportunity. Peter’s body flopped back to the bed and twitched before it resumed the illusion of sleep that was death.

  Half blind from the sweat pouring into her good eye, Rachael staggered to the window and threw it open. Cool night air washed her face. Vomit slipped through her lips before she could lean over the sill where she retched until she thought she would see her lungs. She took deep breaths, glancing once to the inert Peter, now a shadowy husk.

  Lucian had commanded that Hell Gate. The residue of his magic tingled through her veins, and she raked her nails across her forearm. Not even pain drove the warmth of his prayers from her soul. Ever since his exile, she’d starved her heart of his love and purged her flesh of his touch. Until tonight, he’d been dead to her.

  She slammed her hand against the wall and strangled her angry cry. The dead don’t come back. She prayed mindlessly, I think of God, think of God, oh, God, please God, God, God, forcing down the despair that threatened to engulf her. Lucian. Oh God, oh damn, not Lucian.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  the citadel

  The sun rose over the trees before the pungent tang of wood-smoke aroused Rachael. Someone had lit a fire in her stove. She lifted her head and rested her chin on her arm as the yard crept into focus. Her head pounded; she felt hung-over.

  Her dog Caesar barked and Rachael thought her scalp would peel from her skull. She sat up to see a black mare and a small roan tethered to her hitching post. The roan’s saddle displayed the Citadel’s black and red colors. The mare also wore the Citadel’s alpha/omega emblem on her bridle, but the rest of her tack was nondescript.

  That was not a good omen because the plain saddle meant someone was going on a directive. Around her throbbing headache, she recalled the previous evening. The shock of feeling Lucian’s magic had receded
to become the silent rage she’d learned to live with.

  Half the Citadel must have experienced Lucian opening the Gate, and John wasn’t going to let Lucian slide again. The Seraph had obviously sent the judge and constable for an extra horse.

  A door slammed from the direction of the kitchen, and she winced.

  “Rae?”

  She recognized Caleb’s voice and frowned. He was one of the few constables who didn’t fear the Wyrm and frequently dropped by to check on her. He was also John’s primary choice to accompany her on directives. Her heart quickened to send throbs of agony into her head. Surely John didn’t intend to send her after Lucian.

  “Rae, you up?”

  Peter’s wallet was cool in her hand, and she realized she still held the photograph. She licked the tip of her finger and managed to rub her blood off the image before she returned it to the inside flap.

  Caleb came into the room and leaned against the doorjamb, surveying the mess. Instead of his cassock and collar, he wore a brown shirt and pants to blend in with the locals of the surrounding countryside. Caleb was definitely going on a directive. “Rae?” He assessed her condition with a critical eye, and she knew he watched to see whether she was connected to reality or immersed in her dreams.

  “I’m all right.” She tried to stand and slipped in her vomit. That couldn’t look good. The sour stench gagged her and she choked down her bile, willing her body into control.

  Caleb came to her side and took her arm, helping her balance herself on numb legs. Very few Katharoi bothered to touch her; they all complained the resonance of her magic was as tainted as the Wyrm. It was just as well; she didn’t like being touched anymore. She shook the constable’s hand off her arm.

  She smelled coffee and tobacco on his breath when he said, “Take it easy, Rae. What happened?”