Night Lost

Page 16

She threw herself at him, her hands grabbing his shoulders as her body stiffened against him. When he looked down, he saw that she had impaled herself on the juniper branch.
Her eyes met his. When I come to you, I want you to kill me.
Ma bien-aimée. She could not wish to die. He stared down at the wound in her belly, and saw the juniper branch disappear into it. He put his hand against it, trying to stanch the flow of silver-blue blood gushing from her. Never.
You have to be the one. Tears cleaned a path to her jaw. I can't do it. I don't know how. I can't find the way.
The flock of chickens crowded around them, pecking at the blood pooling around their feet. Gabriel swept her up into his arms and carried her into the rose garden, looking for something to dress her wound. Then his arms emptied, and he stood among the roses, at the edge of a deep, rectangular pit. He looked down and saw her body, limp and lifeless. The sides of the grave began falling in on her, burying her. He tried to jump in, to lift her out, but his body would not move. Tears of rage and frustration blinded him.
Don't cry. Her eyes opened just before the earth covered her face. I can't love you either.
"Their name is Legion," Father Orson Leary murmured, lighting a candle with a shaking hand, "for they are many."
He had been kneeling before the statue of Saint Paul and beseeching him all morning, but his patron saint offered no consolation. No matter how many prayers he offered, the stern, beloved face, rendered so aptly in the slate gray marble, stared down at him with silent disapproval.
If Saint Paul could speak, Leary knew how he would chastise him.
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are*(*Corinthians 3:16-17, NKJV)… you were…
Saint Paul had deserted Orson Leary, as had the Father. It was no better than he deserved. Michaelmas loomed ahead, a black date on the calendar when he would once again be obliged to fulfill the bargain he had made with the demons. Leary had tried to resist in the past; spending days in prayer, bathing in blessed water, partaking of the host, and purifying himself in every manner he knew before the day of obligation arrived. None of it had rid him of the evil he suffered. The only time he had not obliged them, he had been made to bleed from Christ's wounds for a fortnight.
The Mother had known. Her spirit had flown through the night and found him huddled and weeping in the silence of the church.
What do you here, my son?
Leary would not think of her, or her laughter, or the ways she used him. She polluted the purity of his body and mind. She had made him violate the sanctity of his oath. Surely Saint Paul could see that it was she who had defiled his carnal temple.
Prayer would not save him, however, any more than the demons would.
He had struck a bargain with their Demon King. Richard had promised to save his sanity—a reward for the evil Leary did on his behalf—but the demon himself was now going insane.
Leary feared Richard. His demonic form and insidious voice marked him as a creature of hell. But when Richard had offered the bargain, Leary had been desperate enough to cling to it, the only earthly hope of winning back his soul. Leary had believed Richard could save him, until he had learned that Richard had slaughtered his own servants on Midsummer Eve. Not as a sacrifice to the Evil One, but on a mere whim, as a cat let loose in a rats' nest kept killing even after its belly was full.
Perhaps the Mother had done this to the Demon King to prevent Leary from escaping her. He would not put it past her. Her evil affected all men.
Leary tried to see his dilemma as blessed suffering, the sort of evil to which the Apostle himself had been subjected. Had not Saint Paul been beaten with rods, thrust in stocks, stoned, and pursued by the wicked? Delivered by the wicked unto wild beasts, thrown from a wall, defamed, bound, and beaten, Saint Paul had withstood everything in the name of God—and perhaps guilt over his own crimes before Jesus Christ had saved him.
For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. *(*Galatians 1:13, NKJV)
The Apostle had gone to Rome even when he had known it would mean his death. Courageous Saint Paul had to stand before the mightiest of men—the Emperor Nero himself—not to be judged, but to show that he could not be judged. It was why the emperor had put him to death. The greatest of the Apostles, the hand of God on earth, had shamed him.
Perhaps that was what Leary had to do: stand before the Demon King, and allow him to consume him with his madness.
"Begging your pardon, Father." Tim Bright, the cleaning woman's son who came in to help her sweep up and dust on Fridays, approached him in a timid fashion. "My mum sent me to say that there's an international call for you. He wouldn't give a name, but Mum said he speaks English, and sounds like a Yank."
Leary knew who it was. "Thank you, Timothy." He rose, ignoring his stiff knees and numbed legs, and walked toward the little office beside the vestry.
The modern phone he had had installed upon taking over the church had some particular features known only to Leary. After closing and locking the office door, he pressed a button under the console that prevented anyone from listening in on the line.
His head pounded as he lifted the receiver to his ear. "Father Leary."
"Orson," the Brooklyn-accented voice on the other end of the line said. "I'm impressed. Not many brothers could spend all morning on their knees, staring at Saint Paul's hangnails."
"I was in prayer, Your Grace." How Cardinal D'Orio always knew what he had been doing in the church wasn't a mystery; every church under Brethren control had hidden security cameras installed. Most Brethren never knew they were being watched; Leary had discovered the cameras by accident. "To what do I owe the pleasure of speaking with you?"
"Your general incompetence," Cardinal D'Orio said pleasantly. "Time to pack your bags again. I'm moving you to Ireland."
Leary's mind blanked. "Ireland?"
"That country to the north you Englishmen have never been able to keep in line," the cardinal said. "You'd be buried there, if you hadn't run out on your brothers in Dublin."
Dublin. Where it had all begun. Where it had to end.
"I had no warning." How easily and smoothly he lied now, as if the evil inside him took control of his tongue and spoke for him. "Had I known that the maledicti meant to attack, I would have stayed and died fighting with my brothers."
"You?" D'Orio made a contemptuous sound. "You'd have squealed and tried to run away like a little girl. But that doesn't matter anymore. You survived; they didn't. Now the monsters are coming for you."
Leary knew his transfer to the church in London had been only temporary, and that his days as a member of the order had been numbered. After Cardinal Stoss, the leader of the Brethren, had been murdered in America, the confusion within their ranks had been close to sheer chaos. Electing Cardinal D'Orio to serve as the new Lightkeeper had been a canny move by the Lightmaster; D'Orio was well-known for his dogged pursuit and elimination of traitors within the order.
But for all of D'Orio's zeal, the cardinal still did not know that Richard kept his stronghold in Ireland. If he had, the Lightkeeper would have moved heaven and earth to destroy it.
D'Orio was speaking to him again, Leary realized. "I'm sorry, Your Grace, but our connection is poor. What did you say?"
"Get your head out of Saint Paul's ass and listen to me, Orson," the cardinal said. "Your prisoners are free. That bitch surgeon may have put their pieces back together, but they remember what you did to them. They're going to want revenge."
"They will find me." Of that he was sure.
"That's why you're going to make excellent bait. Get a paper and pen and write this down." D'Orio gave him contact names and numbers for Brethren in Ireland. "You're taking over the parish in Bardow. Pack and go up by train. A rental will be waiting for you in Galway. Don't travel under your own name."
Bardow was the name of a village not twenty miles from Dundellan Castle. "Wouldn't it be better if I stayed in the city? I could—"
"No." D'Orio's voice changed. "You'll go where you're told, and you'll watch for them. Don't screw this up, Orson. It's your last chance to prove your loyalty to me."
The line clicked abruptly.
Leary's fears bloomed inside him. He could not go to Bardow. He was too frightened now. Through fear he would be made clumsy, and he would betray himself to both the Brethren and the maledicti. Richard would never believe that he had been assigned to Bardow for any reason other than to expose him to the order. If Leary could escape the Demon King's wrath, the order would provide no haven to him. D'Orio would never forgive him for what he had done, or what he had concealed from them.
Leary walked out into the church. He could not pray for an answer; God had turned His face from him. He could pray for death, but in his disgust Saint Paul would likely make him immortal, so that he could suffer on until the end of time. The scent of flowers closed around him, and he glanced at the altar, but the vases were filled with lilies, not roses and wisteria.
"Are you Father Orson Leary?"
He turned to face a tall gentleman in an exquisitely tailored suit. White hair framed the man's chiseled features and streaked the dark mane that he had pulled back into a neat queue. Behind him, a beautiful black-haired woman and a scarred-faced man stood waiting by the altar.
D'Orio would not send a Frenchman to him. "I am."
"I would speak with you."
Leary looked past the man at the others. The dark-haired woman was not merely beautiful; she was stunning. Certainly far too lovely for the oversize brute standing at her side. He would have thought them tourists, but for the quality of their garments and the sweet, flowery fragrance coming from all three of them.