“Did they communicate how to repair the gate?” Celene cut to the chase impatiently.
I nodded. With her light touch, the Star Clan’s medicine woman had explained everything.
Looks of cautious relief bounced between them.
“Please enlighten us,” Mephos asked coolly.
In that moment, I was suddenly aware of how quickly “what goes around, comes around.” To quote my hosts, I simply said, “It would be much easier to show you, rather than tell you.”
****
Rasmus joined us for dinner. He didn’t eat, but the waitress kept his glass of water full. His close proximity made me uncomfortable, maybe more so even than the vampires. I knew at any moment he could open the line between us, and I’d be flooded with a stranger’s thoughts. I remembered the weight of his corrupted cogitation pressing on my mind just after we’d materialized in Spain. So many moving parts. So many means to an end. Rasmus was always calculating. His cancerous convictions had slithered like rattlesnakes through my brain along with an unquenchable thirst. But now, a wall of silence had gone up between us. and I could no longer recall his schemes. It was as if his story was written in vanishing ink. All that remained was the thirst and the noisy thudding of his staggering heart.
Rasmus seemed to have a total disinterest in the comforts of good living. Food, clothes, social etiquette, none of it seemed high on his list. His bones jabbed beneath his skin. His throat fought to swallow. His crumpled features seemed etched with pain, but he functioned as if he had no infirmity.
Rasmus had donned the baggy, unbleached, calf-length pants Celene had given him. The side-wrapped sleeveless tunic she’d matched to it actually approached tidy, but he looked as though he was barely tolerating it. Somehow, he’d stopped the constant shifting of his form and almost looked normal. Eccentric, but within the realm of normal.
“Have preparations been made?” He cut to the chase before we’d even received our appetizers.
“Yes, old man. The limestone deposits are being removed as we speak.” Mephos shot me a sideways glance. “Melisande’s ingredients were a bit of a challenge to procure, but she will work her artful magic tonight. By the end of the evening, we will have a working gate again.”
“I will await confirmation that the alterations have worked before I communicate success to Hotan.”
“Rasmus.” Mephos seemed to slap an extra layer of mortar on his wall of patience before he continued. “Our affairs are not the business of the Djinni Nation. Perhaps they should tend to their own problems.”
Rasmus stared silently at the vampire. A hint of disdain rode Rasmus’s expression, but his posture was neutral. His rattling heartbeat didn’t change, but his hands, where he’d laid them on the table, were beginning to disintegrate.
“I will rejoin you at the cloister.” He pulled his hands from the table and stood. With a nod to me, he turned and left the restaurant.
Mephos drank his wine in silence as Celene signaled for another bottle. I finally turned to Bertrand.
“Why does Rasmus look like he is about to crumple where he stands?”
“Because he is,” Bertrand answered.
I tapped my fingers as I waited for more of an explanation. The knight flashed me a private smile, and I returned it. I was growing comfortable enough with Bertrand to prod him a little.
“Rasmus of Gomorrah was cursed by God.”
“Gomorrah as in Sodom and Gomorrah?”
“That’s the one.” The knight pointed at me, then drained his wine glass.
“Once upon a time…” Bertrand opened his hands as if they were a story book. “The residents of the Dead Sea region did naughty, naughty things, and God smote them.”
I gave Bertrand a disbelieving look.
“Some tried to flee, but they were turned to pillars of salt. All except one man, a priest, whose sins were great. This man had a rare disorder that would one day be made famous by another man named Lazarus. God’s wrath caught the priest at the edge of town, but his unique syndrome would not let him die.”
“Rasmus has Lazarus Syndrome?”
Bertrand raised his eyebrows as if inviting me to make the determination.
“I thought the Lazarus phenomenon was just a mistake in resuscitation.”
“And yet, here he is thousands of years later without the help of the healing springs.”
The shock of Bertrand’s words crept across my scalp. I’d seen things…unbelievable things that had made the presence of God undeniable. But the Old Testament version of God was never a thing I bought into. If there was one thing the hell gates had taught me, it was that we had no idea what God was. Our brains weren’t equipped for it. Was the Heavenly Father a smiting god? If so, why was I still breathing in and out? An image of Edwardia at the end of my spear flashed through my mind. Granted, Edwardia had done unspeakable things in an attempt to pry open the Seventh Gate to Hell. She’d nearly destroyed my beautiful riverside hometown. She was too far gone to be redeemed, but in the end, I was the one who had taken her life, not the other way around. For that matter, if God was a deity that punished the wicked, why were these life-draining vampires still sipping wine and cashing checks?
The collapsing sensation that had taken hold inside me the moment Rasmus had translocated us gnawed at my bones like termites. Not only had he stolen my connection to Grayford, he’d passed along an ancient curse. He’d tucked his own undoing into my flesh. Now, I bore a piece of his punishment for him.
Who would do that to someone? I stared across the restaurant in the direction the crumbling man had gone. Was Rasmus’s body, at any given moment, turning into a pillar of salt?
He must have been a really sucky priest.
****
The drive to the cave was a little easier at night because I couldn’t see the certain death that fell away from the road next to me. This time we walked slowly through the cavern. I felt ridiculous in the sequin tank dress Celene had pushed on me. At least, they’d let me wear a pair of disposable spa shoes for the rough terrain. Celene navigated the slanted, cratered hills and crags like a gazelle in her strappy heels. I slipped and clambered after her. Two vampires I’d not been introduced to carried the supplies the ghostly medicine woman had put in my mind.
When we reached the Chambre Noir, it was already lit with camping lanterns. The circular room seemed larger without a tour group in it. Bertrand helped me lay the blanket down. He placed the mortar and pestle in the center for me. I knew a stone bowl that size was heavy, but he placed it lightly as if it had no weight.
I tugged the hem of the sparkly dress as low as I could get it and sat on the blanket. Celene and Mephos took the remaining items from their silent companions and stood on either side of me.
I lay back on the blanket, next to the crucible, and stared at the blackness above us for long minutes. If we were to shine a flashlight into the abyss, I was pretty sure we’d have seen the rocky walls of a naturally occurring shaft extending upward until the light’s reach faded. But that had not been what the Magdalenians had seen. No doubt, their torchlight had barely broken the ceiling of shadows. All they’d known of that mysterious space was that it ate the light and carried their voices to a place beyond the world.
Whispered chanting reached my ears.
“They’re coming.” I gestured for everyone to sit.
I closed my eyes as distant drums echoed down from the void. I let the rhythmic vibration lull me into Stage One sleep. When I opened my eyes again, the blackness was filled with fireflies. The Star Clan joined us in the chamber. Their ephemeral bodies made a ring around us as we waited for the medicine woman. Her spirit stream dipped down from the twinkling darkness and slid along my skin. Soft, cold fingers danced along my arms. Her frigid hands slid over mine, and I understood. Her magic was complex. She would use my hands to perform the ritual of binding.
When she was ready, I sat up and crossed my legs in front of the crucible. I reached for the red limonite rock in Mephos�
��s hands. The medicine woman whispered a wordless question.
“Did your person ask the Earth for this gift before taking it?”
Mephos looked at one of the two nameless men. The vampire nodded.
“Yes. This gift was received with respect,” he answered. I was relieved they’d followed the instructions I’d given.
I placed the crumbling rock into the bowl and crushed it with the pestle. I ground the soft stone into powder then reached for the water pitcher clutched in Celene’s hands.
“Did you ask the stream for this water?”
“Yes.” She nodded and smiled brilliantly.
I poured a small amount into the bowl and scraped it with the willow stick the medicine woman had requested we bring. The powder turned to a garnet paste. Tremors of energy drifted up from the bowl as I folded the paste and gave it one last stir. The ghost’s hands vibrated beneath my skin. She whispered to me again.
“I give my offering to the eternal hunt.” I reached for my hair and separated out a lock. I took the rubber band from my wrist and wrapped it around the hair. The other vampire handed me a pair of scissors, and I clipped the hair just above the band so the strands stayed tightly bound together.
Bertrand lifted the bowl with the red ochre mixture, and I stood. We walked to the edge of the Star Clan’s circle. There was a story inside their twinkling eyes. I could tell they wanted to say something to me, but the weight of the ages pressed against their tongues. They lifted their hands to my face. Their fingers sifted through the years to find the moment I was in. The ice of their soul streams bit into my skin colder than anything I’d ever felt before. At last, they broke the circle and let me pass.
I stepped over the rope railing and stood before the half-formed bison. The ocean of limestone deposits had been hastily scraped away to reveal the faded remains of the painting. Sometime tomorrow an archeologist would step into this cave and faint dead. My pre-historic art professor’s face rushed into my mind. If she could know what I was about to do, she would punch me in the throat.
The medicine woman lifted my hand and dipped the cut end of my hair into the bowl. Chanting filled every nook and crevice of the cave. It danced along the walls as the banging of drums changed to the clacking of hooves. Spirits woke around us, animals, humans, elementals—the memory of their fierce lives wove through me. They sang to me of tall grass whipping, thunder rolling, and mountains trembling. The ochre pigment dripped like blood over a sunbaked savannah. It steamed like breath in the highest heights. It clotted in the wound of the world and beat like feet around a fire.
I gave myself over to the passion of the magic as the medicine woman touched the paintbrush to stone. Her will poured out in sleek lines. It curved into horns and bowed into a neck. She dipped the brush again and formed a proud face with a sloping forehead and flaring nose. Her laughter sang inside me as she drew the last line and the spirit of the bison closed in. It towered over me. Its monstrous potential struck fear in my heart. It was a wondrous, exciting fear that filled me with the song of life. I looked around at the members of the Star Clan. The thrill of the hunt burned through them. They watched me closely to see if I understood. But I could only grasp at a fraying thread of what I was feeling. Life had once been a quick and consuming thing filled with singing muscles and spinning stars. Death snapped at heels and charged with horns lowered. Lovemaking was desperate and holy. Tribes were the reason to keep moving, and magic…it bound all things together.
The shamaness drew back and surveyed her breathless work. She whispered the last piece to me, and the Star Clan drew close. Her hands lifted as she urged me forward. I lifted shaking fingers to the newly completed bison. It huffed and snorted and stamped inside my mind. The crack in my brain opened, and I touched the brush to stone. I drew a straight line and two small slanting segments at its tip. The arrow quivered along the stone and bit the bison’s skin.
The cave spun, or maybe it was just the bison. One by one they burst into motion running in a circle. An endless whirlwind of motion. The arrows sought their hearts as they ran forever in an endless effort to feel the long grass whipping, to hear the thunder rolling. That was the magic keeping the hell gate from opening completely. The ancient sorceress smiled inside me. She’d used what she knew, the magic available to her, the tumult of her raw and wonderous world had power enough to seal a rift in space. Our world did not.
I shivered in awe as she slipped from my bones. The removal of her all-consuming magic left my flesh cold and empty. One by one, they drifted from the chamber back up through the doorway to forever. I turned to the medicine woman as she stood outside of me again. Our eyes met, as did our souls. She touched my hand and lifted it to my forehead. The paintbrush drew a line between my brows and down my nose, then returned to trace out two small segments at its tip.
You are the arrow.
Her soundless words sunk into my skin like a tattoo. I knew they would always be there.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Sisters of Immaculate Pain
Melisande
We wove our way back to the valley ledge, and then my hosts turned the car in another direction.
“We aren’t going back to the spa?”
“No,” Mephos answered. “It’s time to show you our true home.”
A sense of foreboding settled over me as we swerved and skidded our way around to the other side of the mountain. The valley was arranged differently on this side. Jagged drops were more pronounced, and the valley floor was littered with fallen boulders.
Instead of descending, the road cut upward in nauseating rubble-strewn ramps. Bertrand shifted gears and dug into the loose rock. We spun around a blind switchback, and suddenly the stony face of the mountain’s southern exposure was revealed. The world above the clouds was cold and cleansed of colors. Bright moonlight bleached the rugged, alien landscape.
We turned onto a spur of rock that attached the main mountain spire to a citadel-like outcropping.
The convent sat atop the jutting rock formation like a fractured crown. Its many layers dug into the mountain, chipping away at its natural terrain until there was nothing left but a single tower, pointing its boney finger toward God. A tendril of clouds hung just below the outcropping giving the illusion that the cloister hovered in midair.
The car lurched downward, leaving my stomach behind as we circled to the opposite side of the structure. Ancient stairs crept up from the turnabout where Bertrand parked. The complex was laid out in a circular pattern with the mountain at the center and the buildings looking out in every direction.
I followed Bertrand’s powerful form as he took the worn steps two and three at a time. By the third flight, I was out of breath.
“We need to work on your cardio,” Celene teased in her usual double-entendre way.
The view from the landing at the top of the stairs was otherworldly. From that height, the entire landscape unfurled in eagle-eye views. The mountains ran down to hills, and the hills clustered around a small delta. Far below, in that softer land, a village went about its life under the watchful eye of the mysterious medieval castle. A gust of wind rounded the eastern face of the structure and almost carried me away. Were the air elementals sending me a message?
“Come inside before you’re blown away.” Mephos waved toward an ancient set of wooden doors. The entrance to the convent was intimidating. The vampire placed his hand on one of the decorative crosses carved into the wooden door panels and didn’t catch on fire. That was a good sign. On that comforting note, I followed my undead hosts inside.
The halls of the convent were quiet and empty. The gray stone walls were clean and lacking decorations. It seemed drab compared to the vampires’ other residences.
The hall we traveled down opened into a chilly open-air courtyard with roughly carved columns and arching colonnades along its four sides. At the center of the moonlit space a solitary stone figure stood with arms stretched to the sky. A spear jutted from its side and a gris
ly tangle of thorns dug into its brow. The human-sized crucifixion was somehow even more disturbing without the cross. I turned my eyes from the frozen agony of the figure. Why would someone display Christ that way? It seemed morbid at best.
Across the cloister, another set of doors opened into a long, warm room, brightened by a fire at one end and flickering sconces along its lofty walls. I rubbed my bare arms and cut a path to the hearth. The sequin minidress did nothing to protect me from the cold wind at this height. Neither did the slip-on heels Celene had forced me to change into.
Busy medieval tapestries hung from the walls depicting gatherings of robed figures in natural settings. The cartoon-like trees stood rigid and separate from the other flora. Each plant and vine displayed its leaves in flat, precise arrangements. Empty spaces between branches were filled with two-dimensional birds trapped forever in the threads of a lifeless moment.
A bit of movement caught my eye at the opposite end of the room. Two bent figures draped in white fussed over a banquet table filled with tarts, cakes, and macarons. Mephos whispered to them and they nodded. If they responded to him, their words were too quiet for me to hear across the room. The cloaked individuals backed through a low doorway and disappeared.
“Hungry?” Mephos chimed.
I was more thirsty than hungry, but the desserts looked so good.
“Don’t worry, Melisande. You’ve proven yourself very useful. We will not poison you.”
That statement delivered zero comfort. They might not poison me, but they could drug me again.
“Come.” Mephos poured four glasses of champagne. “This is a night for celebrating. You’ve set everything to rights, and we couldn’t be more thankful.”
I took the glass and waited for the rest of them to take theirs.
“A toast to Melisande Blythe, Tamer of Gates and Worker of Wonders. May your foes respect you; danger neglect you; friends protect you; and heaven accept you.”
It was a weird toast coming from a member of the damned, but what I knew about vampires was not a lot.
A Shiver of Shadows Page 20