Chance Damnation
Page 26
“I killed you,” Theodore whispered.
“Yep,” Aloysius said. “And you can see how badly I’m taking that.” He tried to force himself to get the boogie out of his mind, but it wasn’t working too well. “I’m sorry you lost her.”
Theodore’s head dropped onto his chest. “I’ll find her.”
Aloysius wasn’t too sure how things had worked out, so he looked around and didn’t spot Maeve, the original one, the one who had been so good at the books and so bad at talking Theodore into making children. He didn’t see her; maybe she’d stayed dead.
“Get Sebastian to help you,” Aloysius suggested. “I’m pretty sure he owes you one.”
“No magic,” Theodore said. “I’ll find her all by myself.”
Aloysius shook his head. It sounded like one of those things that would make sense in retrospect but sounded like crazy-talk just now. “You need any help, just let me know.”
“Okay,” Theodore said. He looked a little better, anyway.
“Aloysius!” Nick shouted.
Aloysius hiccupped and turned. There he was, a human kid with the biggest ears and Adam’s apple he could have imagined, with Connor behind him. Aloysius’s mouth dropped. Well, hell. He spread his arms and clapped Nick around the shoulders, thumped him a couple of good ones across the back. He did the same for Connor.
“Good to see you, good to see you,” he said. “How’s it going?”
Connor gaped at him.
Aloysius ignored him and ducked into the room off the side of the entryway where Sebastian usually changed his clothes, the room at the back of the church being little more than a closet with a door to the basement.
“Father Vincent,” he said.
Sebastian was washing his hands; he hadn’t put on his robes yet. “Aloysius.” He turned off the water, dried his hands, and stood there with the towel.
Aloysius hugged him so hard he nearly knocked him over. He whispered, “We’re in heaven, aren’t we?”
Sebastian chuckled but didn’t answer.
“You staying?” Aloysius asked. He meant, Are you going to stay on here as our priest?
Luckily, Sebastian didn’t have to ask what he meant. “I think so.”
“Good man,” Aloysius said. He whistled and found Honey standing in the entryway with Peggy. Peggy took one look at Aloysius and burst into tears.
He hugged her, too. “Shh,” Aloysius said. “It’s a new day. It’s a brand-spanking-new day.”
“What’s going on?” Honey asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” he said, still patting Peggy on the back.
Then Liam came in.
Aloysius thought, well, if there’s anything that could spoil this day, it’s that cantankerous old man. He gave Peggy another squeeze and let her go.
Liam walked in like a man with no memories, looking at everything as if for the first time. Robert was right behind him, looking scared. People talked to Liam, but he didn’t answer, just watched their lips move.
Aloysius waited until Liam was next to him and said, “Pa. Robert.”
“Aloysius,” Liam said. He had his cane, but he wasn’t leaning on it. In fact, he looked younger than he had in years. Liam walked into the church and sat down. Robert trailed behind him, looking from side to side, down at the floor, into the rafters.
Aloysius laughed under his breath. It was probably going to take him years to figure out whether Liam was his father or Connor’s. Connor might know, but then again he might not.
“Where are the kids?” he asked.
“Probably outside,” Honey said.
“I’ll be right back.” He did a shuffle out the door and into the bright sunlight. He decided that he’d take them all down to the river that evening, for a picnic.
The two kids were standing on the dirt hill, staring at Celeste Marie’s father. His elbows were out akimbo, and his face was twisted in a snarl.
Aloysius imagined raising his revolver—he carried it with him always, now—aiming it at Celeste Marie, and blowing her brains out. She’d fall. Jerome would sink to the ground with her, his knees hitting the dirt the same time her blasted skull did. He would look down at her, look up at Aloysius. Jim would start screaming, and people would come out of the church. Either he’d go to jail or he wouldn’t; it was hard to tell, Celeste Marie being a half-blood, what would happen. He’d have to leave the farm and Honey behind, anyway.
But it’d be over. He wouldn’t have to feel like he was walking on glass anymore, waiting for the world to break under his feet.
“Jim!” he called.
“Aloysius,” Jim called back. “You want to drag your brother by the ear into church, or shall I?”
Aloysius trotted over to Jerome, grabbed him by the tip of the ear and yanked.
“Ow!” Jerome said.
“Get your butt in the pew,” Aloysius said. “You, too, young lady.”
Celeste Marie looked up at him with her black eyes that didn’t seem to have any iris around them and were almost blue in the whites. “I was pretending to be dead,” she said.
“You’re very clever,” he assured her.
“But then I couldn’t stop.”
“It’s a good thing that Sebastian asked for help then, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
Aloysius squatted down next to Jerome. Damn, that kid was going to be tall, he thought. “I got one thing to say to you, and then that’ll be the end of it,” he said.
“What?” the kid asked.
“You keep an eye on her.”
“I will.”
“What I mean is you better marry her. Sooner rather than later. Don’t be like me.”
Jerome turned beet red, grabbed Celeste Marie’s arm, and ran into the church with her.
Aloysius laughed. His boots crunched on the gravel as he walked back to the front door with Jim.
On the whole, he decided, he liked heights.
***
Chapter Selections
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
***
Author Information
Every summer as kids, we would host one group of cousins or another and jump off hay bales, create mazes by crawling the patterns through the tall grass, and steal green apples out of the garden. We also branded calves, killed chickens, and stole steak knives to threaten skunks with. But that’s growing up on a farm for you.
Now I write fantasy, science fiction, and horror—and most of it comes from the worlds that I created as a farm kid, one way or another.
My first novel, Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse, lets you choose how you’re going to fight a zombie invasion. Warning: you die. Sometimes, you turn into a zombie and then you die. But can you save the world before you kick the bucket? See any majo
r bookstore in order to buy a copy.
“This is how I like my zombies: fast and funny. Choose this book, and you won’t be choosing your doom. You’ll be choosing hours of gooey, gory hilarity.”
- Steve Hockensmith, New York Times best-selling author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls
Website and blog: deannaknippling.com.
Twitter: dknippling
Facebook: facebook.com/deanna.knippling
Smashwords: DeAnna Knippling
***
Cover Credits
Images
© Beliksk | Dreamstime.com
© Vladthefool | Dreamstime.com
Cover Design DeAnna Knippling & Matt Knippling
***
Publisher Information
Wonderland Press is a publisher of wonderful things by author DeAnna Knippling and her various pen names. I use different pen names so readers of one type of book don’t accidentally buy books they don’t want—for example, I have one pen name that I just use for younger readers.
See the Wonderland Press website for more information on upcoming books, weekly fiction, and limited-time coupons (hint: check on Fridays).
Website and blog: wonderlandpress.com
Twitter: wonderlandpress
Facebook: Wonderland Press
Smashwords: Wonderland Press
***
Read More!
From Wonderland Press and DeAnna Knippling
Death by Chocolate
Ellie can’t see it, but she’s a saint. A good girl who takes care of her Grandie at the nursing home, recycles other people’s trash, and worries about getting her loans out on time so she doesn’t inconvenience her customers.
It’s too much for the Devil to resist: is Ellie good, or is she just boring? He makes her a deal. She can be thin, pretty, and immortal…as long as she doesn’t eat chocolate. Ever. If she does, she’s going straight to Hell.
Except Ellie doesn’t like chocolate, so he better find something—or someone—better to tempt her with. Then the bad boy at the top of Ellie’s sexual bucket list appears. Coincidence? Probably not.
Haunted Empire
Captain Ian Halloran, a small-time interstellar chocolate smuggler, insulted research librarian Aoife Cavenaugh’s intelligence as well as her virtue when he tried to fondle her at his own wedding, to her beloved cousin. But that was years ago. Now her cousin’s ghost haunts Aoife, trying to terrify her into finishing the research that Aoife started and Ian stole after she knocked him out and tried to strangle him at the reception.
A chance to give humanity the edge over their alien overlords, the secretive Danavas. A chance to step out of her adventureless life as a dull librarian. A chance to put her cousin’s ghost to rest. A chance to finish strangling that low-life, back-stabbing thief of a cousin-in-law once and for all.
First Chapter from Haunted Empire:
I Part 1. Lavender Blue
Aoife locked the door to the cottage that served as her office. The fairshopper library trees whispered around her, muttering in unintelligible codes. A leaf dropped in front of her face, hissing data. She ignored it and followed the laboriously winding stone path to the garden exit.
Everything on Tullynally was like that. Too cute. Why nobody could build a library that looked like a damn library, she'd never know. Books that looked like books could exchange information just as easily as books that looked like trees.
Aoife spotted a familiar horse-drawn cab with two brass-handled doors and a rail around the roof for luggage. The cab driver, Angus, pulled to a halt, tipped his threadbare top hat at her, and started to jump down.
Aoife jerked opened the cab door, vaulted in, and latched it behind her. She shouted up, “Don't bother with the niceties, Angus. Just take me home.”
“Bad day?”
“No. Terrible day.”
“What happened then? Did ye not get funding for yer project?”
Aoife opened the door on Angus's side and stood on tiptoe to peek up at him. “Angus, ye wouldn't believe it. They wanted me to turn over all my research without a breath of promise that I'd be the one to finish the project. They never intended to give me funding. I'm too valuable to lose from the library, they said.” She sat down, pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve, and dabbed at her face. She would not start bawling in a cab like a broken-hearted trollop weeping over her lost lover.
Angus paused. “That's too bad, lass. Want a dribble of whiskey?”
“You drink shite for whiskey.”
“Ah, well.”
“I didn't say I wouldn't have any.” She stood in the doorway and grabbed Angus's outstretched arm. He pulled her easily up to the top of the cab and swung her over to the driver's seat. He fetched a tin flask out of his long black coat and handed the flask to her. She pulled the cork out with her teeth, dropped it on its chain, and drank.
“Ooooah.” She handed the flask back to Angus, who grinned and gulped twice before he lowered the flask.
“Terrible whiskey for a terrible day.”
“Isn't that the truth,” she said. “But ah, one good thing. At least I don't have to leave.”
“I thought you hated this place.”
“I do,” Aoife said. “But I know it like the back of my hand. We grew up here, my cousin Imogen and me, before the Empire came and prettied it up.” Aoife took another swig at the flask. “Take me home, Angus.”
Angus slapped the reins, and the horse nickered and plodded forward. Another slap of the reins and the nag shook its head in its halter, jingling the buckles, then picked up to a trot.
Other planets had hovercars, which were cheaper to build, simpler to run, and didn't need pointless subroutines that let the horse flick away fairshopper flies with its fairshopper tail.
But other planets didn't have Angus. If she were braver, she’d take him home with her. She let her imagination wander—
“Wait!” A small child's voice echoed down the street.
Aoife looked back. A boy of eight or so, dressed in a dirty yellow coverall, was running after the cab. He was from offplanet, judging by his clothes and shaved head.
“Wait, Miss Cavenaugh!”
“Pull up, Angus.”
Angus pulled back on the reins, and the horse slowed. Aoife grabbed a rail and lowered herself over the side before the cab had stopped.
“Miss Cavenaugh!” The boy spread his arms and leaped toward her. Aoife caught him by reflex, stumbling backwards at the weight. “I found you, I found you!” The boy smelled like a sweat-soaked sock that had been mildewing for months.
She pushed the boy to arm's length. “Good grief, child. Who are you? Why are you looking for me?”
The boy's face turned into a gargoyle's gaping howl and tears trickled down his face.
Aoife rolled her eyes. “What's wrong? I can't understand you if you stand there crying.”
The boy wailed louder.
“All right,” she said. “Get in.”
Aoife tried to pick the boy up, but he was heavy as anything. She dragged him bodily to the cab. Angus jumped down and lifted the boy into the cab, then hefted her up afterwards. Aoife pulled the handkerchief out of her sleeve and handed it to the boy. “Blow,” she said. He blew his nose wetly and handed the handkerchief back to her, his breath still jerking in and out, sob by sob.
“Shht,” Aoife ordered. “Now, what's the problem?”
“Ma-mamma told me to find you,” the boy whimpered.
“All right, you found me. Who's your mamma?”
The boy sniffed.
The only person offplanet she knew who might have a boy his age was her cousin. “Imogen? Is that your mamma's name? Imogen?”
The boy nodded.
“What happened to Imogen?”
“M-mamma's dead,” the boy said. “And now she's a ghost.”
Aoife looked at Angus, who was still standing outside the door. He touched the brim of his hat. “Take us home, Angus. I'd better find out what
's going on.”
Aoife's flat was above the Black Alice tavern on Shetterly Street. The building was a dun-colored brick block, sporting lace curtains and fairshopper flowerboxes with blossoms programmed to follow the sun. Red enameled paneling and wide double doors with brass handles fronted the tavern. Charming. The cab pulled up to the curb, and she let Angus hand her out like a lady. The little boy, who had said his name was Aillig, refused to jump down into Angus's arms, so she had to catch him.
The curtains in Nana MacMuertie's flat twitched. Aoife was convinced Nana only lived above the tavern in order to report on the drunks coming and going. And here was Aoife, leading a strange little boy up the stairs and not wanting to answer any questions. The news was bound to be around the neighborhood within the hour.
She went up the back stairs, but no luck.
Nana opened her door, directly across from Aoife's. “Hallo, love,” she said. She had salt-and-pepper hair and a humorless face like a soggy leather mask.
Aoife unlocked her door with her thumb and held the door open with one arm. “Go inside, Aillig.”
“Aren't you going to let him say hello?” Nana asked the boy with a quavering voice. “Would you like a piece of candy?”
“'Lo,” the boy muttered.
Aoife pushed the boy into the flat. “Go wash your face, Aillig.”
“Who is that?” Nana asked.
“My nephew. He's had a hard journey. Excuse me, Mrs. MacMuertie.” She gritted her teeth as she turned away and let the door close gently behind her.
Aillig stood unmoving at the kitchen sink with the water running.
“Turn off the water, Aillig,” she said. “What are you, some kind of fairshopper? Don't be such an idiot.”