“I am Elizabeth, and it is time, I think, for you to begin satisfying yourself after all these years of hiding.” She held a hand to him as she stood, which he took mutely, and together they began to move along the pathway filled with the crowds brought out by the weather. “I want you to think of me as someone who understands you and casts no stones, not ever, Khalil. My generosity is founded in my desire to see that you are rewarded in this life, not the next.”
Still confused, but wrought with conflict and more than a little outright fear, he regarded her for a chilly moment as some of his fortitude returned. “I do not need reward. You are a demon to think that flesh can suffice as a payment for such sin.”
“So you admit the sin, but refuse the reward? Curiously sadistic on your part. I had not taken you as a stupid man, merely one who has slightly more exotic tastes.” She stood before him with a stillness that made her seem disconnected from the vibrancy of their surroundings, a beautiful cutout in two dimensions, offering him something he could not refuse, not if he was remotely honest.
Where would I go next if I were caught? Canada? I do not have family there. His checklist of options was pitifully short, and her smirk told him she knew as much as she savored his discomfiture. He wavered, weak, and full of a self-loathing that was as venomous as the bite of any creature from the depths of hell itself. Maybe I could see what she wants first. Just see.
“Yes, of course, Khalil, why don’t you come along, if for only a day?” Elizabeth stunned him further, reading his transparent thoughts with ease as he wriggled in the logic of her illicit proposal.
“Where will I go?” The defeat in his voice was leaden.
They began walking in tandem again, and she linked her arm through his as warmth permeated his jacket, causing him to look down at her. The girl, not Elizabeth, looked up at him, eyes rounded with innocence and a hint of fright that he found irresistible. She reached up, on tiptoes, to flick the tip of her small pink tongue across his earlobe. As her hot breath caressed his face, she whispered slowly, “Come to me first, and if you are of merit, then, and only then,” and her hand brushed his groin softly, lingering for a scorching moment, “my brother can come visit you, at night. But only if you are obedient, Khalil.” His breath became short, and he dared not look down, but a telling wash of hot air and the smell of Elizabeth’s perfume was enough for him to keep his eyes downcast, looking intently at the path they walked, fighting not to vomit at his own diseased soul that this stranger flayed bare with the lash of her truth.
24
Florida
Kevin was both insightful and intelligent. No mere parrot of dry texts, he conversed with us as someone who had seen great volumes of opinion about the supernatural, considered the evidence, and synthesized it in a manner that yielded scholarship of a highly approachable nature. What Kevin distilled from his ongoing education in the Church was, in some way, a reflection of the person he was, straightforward, companionable, and considerate.
Leaning back on the couch, he said, “Let’s discuss something other than the symptoms of what Elizabeth is doing to spread such discord.”
“A medical approach?” Risa asked, keying in to his line of thinking. She never failed to make superior logic leaps from the smallest statements. It was a remarkable ability.
“That’s one angle, yes, but I’m thinking about her nature. Consider some basic facts that are in evidence, regardless of your emotional reaction to her existence. Do you believe that Elizabeth is a woman? A human, that is?” Kevin looked around at us all for input on what was a highly unusual question.
“She is not human now,” Wally said slowly. “She may have been, but not now because she has proven resistant to some . . .” she searched for a word that didn’t sound bat-shit crazy.
“Oh, hell, just tell him, Wally. Knives. She’s resistant to knives, and we should know because Ring buried one in her chest after she nearly killed the three of us in a brawl.” Risa delivered this revelation with a confessional sigh and a truly Jewish shrug after the fact, deciding to let the good priest decide if we were staging an elaborate hoax or revealing something new to him, something he had never seen in the walls of the Church.
Kevin sat his wine glass down with a definitive tock on the coffee table and looked as if he might leave. Then he shook his head as if to clear cobwebs, and gazed at us, measuring once more whether or not we were worth another minute of his time.
He cleared his throat and asked with deadly seriousness, “Perhaps I should have asked if you three are human, although to me, as a man of some education, you certainly seem to be, but I am firmly in the camp of believers who think that deception is the watermark of evil. I see a great deal more here than meets the surface, Ring. Somehow, you chose to insult me, albeit mildly, by thinking that I wouldn’t realize the nature of your relationship.” Wally blushed and Risa pulled at her hair in a gesture that would fit perfectly on a schoolgirl caught in a lie. I forced myself to focus on Kevin, Father Kevin who, no matter what my own beliefs were, had just confronted us with the fact that we had lied to him. Based on that, his question wasn’t only reasonable; we should have seen it coming from a distance if we’d been paying attention. It was obvious we weren’t.
“Another point,” Kevin began, holding up a didactic finger and slipping into the voice of a teacher, “I don’t see any clear career activities in this house, and none of you strike me as particularly lazy except for that beast.” Gyro perked his ears at the term, which had been used to describe him since he attained full size at the age of one year.
Wally’s dam broke, and she began to speak in a rush. “I am sorry that we lied to you, Father. I do not know what to say. I am truly sorry. We all are. I—we, we are all—well, we have a job, if you can call it that, but we are not corrupt or bad. I do not know how to explain this to you. I think maybe Risa should talk now because I am feeling much like I will not be clear enough to make you understand our home.”
Kevin regarded her evenly, then his expression softened and he said, “I accept your apology, Waleska, and I know that you are not a malicious person, not at all.” He sighed gustily and slumped further into the couch. “My first mentor once told me not to try correcting everything I saw as wrong because I would soon find myself ignoring the things that really needed doing. Sitting here, I see that he was most certainly right, although I can’t imagine he would have envisioned such colorful circumstances.” Wally was truly relieved. I know that she takes the status of her soul very seriously, despite her outwardly carefree aura. He shifted his attention to Risa and held a hand palm up to her in the universal symbol for wait. “Before you say anything at all, Risa, let’s set some guidelines. One issue we must clear up before we discuss anything important is where we’re going to stop talking tonight, okay?”
Risa agreed as did I. Wally was still flustered; she remained silent.
“There’s only one topic I want to explore. Elizabeth. Anything else is a sidereal aspect, a benefit from our study of this mystery woman. She is the star of our little inquiry.” He looked to Risa for her assurance, who nodded tersely, once. “Okay, since we’re in accord, begin. Who do you think this woman really is? Or better still, do you think that she is a sociopath?”
“Oh, very much so,” Risa answered instantly. “She’s a textbook case. She uses people without concern for their well-being. She has no conscience whatsoever. We have evidence that she is a mass murderer and considers her orchestration of death to be an asset worthy of boasting about.” Kevin raised his eyebrows at that, but she continued. “Unfortunately, she is also frigidly beautiful, and her amorality is bone deep. She exists in a complex, puerile, vicious, interlocking puzzle of a life that is assured of further victims because of her confidence, her exterior appearance, and her ability to prey upon the weak.”
“She’s a ruthless twat,” Wally added for emphasis, and then covered her mouth in shame. “Sorry.” Kevin responded with a momentary sour moue, but then smiled in forgiveness.
I had to explore just what the limits of our conversation were going to be, so I asked Kevin, “Instead of asking us questions, let me clarify something. Why did you ask me if I thought Elizabeth was a demon?”
He sat in reverie for a moment, clearly discarding avenues of explanation, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. I just felt it needed asking. You walked up to me and started a conversation that was a bit different from my usual fare. I’m not unfamiliar with spiritual problems, but the majority of my parishioners have very . . . pedestrian issues to be dealt with. Divorce. Alcoholism. Abusive family histories rearing up decades later to poison their homes, things like that. Those are my bread and butter, so to speak, but I am not unprepared by the Church for topics that may seem more exotic to persons outside the faith.”
That squared with our impressions of Kevin. He seemed like the kind of person who would prepare for even rare contingencies, since it was all part and parcel of being a good priest. And Kevin, I knew, wanted above all else to serve his parishioners in the best manner possible, even if it meant sitting in a house where three adults carried on a less-than-traditional form of marriage, sort of, and were now telling him that they had attempted to murder a woman who may have been a demon.
I decided that it was time to see just how much Kevin wanted to know, so I asked him, “Aren’t you wondering why she survived being stabbed? Do I look like I’m incapable of breaking the skin of a person with a knife, no matter how dull?” I leaned forward, hands on knees, watching his face as he processed what he wanted to say, what he thought he might say, and then, what he actually permitted himself to say. I suspect those topics were all quite different.
“Well, Ring? If you’re capable, why did she get up?” He folded his hands in a gesture of infinite patience and sat back to wait. He was going to make me convince him, and he looked like a man who knew what it was like to be lied to. My eyes flicked to Risa, then Wally, who both nodded imperceptibly, and I made my decision to spill some of the beans, if not the whole pot.
“She wanted me to stab her. She designed the entire encounter beginning as long as thirty years ago or more, in a dense, complicated series of actions that compelled the three of us to confront her, attack her, seemingly win due to my skill with a knife, and then be crushed afterwards by the belief that we had committed murder.” Kevin regarded me evenly and never blinked.
“And despite your act of violence towards this woman, this—puppeteer, she survived because you were meant to be burdened by guilt or torn apart by shame?” Kevin scanned the room, giving each of us a long, searching look.
Risa asked, “Kevin, what is a demon? The definition of a demon and the practical explanation of a demon, if the two terms are different?” Wally had been thinking the same thing because she patted Risa’s leg in solidarity. Our own assessment of evil might vary greatly from the official Church position, and Kevin might veer even further still given his obvious passion for analytical thought. He gathered himself and started to speak, hesitated, and then shrugged.
“From my perspective, there are three possible definitions. The original term, daimonium, is Greek, and it doesn’t necessarily connote a being of evil. It used to mean something that is of a divine nature. Only later, through the influence of Jewish and Christian scholars did the term come to mean something repellent,” Kevin said in a voice that slipped into the cadence of a teacher.
Wally looked perplexed, but of course, beautifully so. “Is a demon not bad? Always? I thought that divine things were angels, or God.”
Kevin addressed her confusion by saying, “They are. But some demons were angels, and one demon in particular wanted to be God, or at the very least rule the universe as we know it. So the idea that a demon could be defined as something evil depends on your personal definition of what composes an evil being. If a creature exists for the sole purpose of doing harm to others, then that, to me, is a demon. In the case of Elizabeth, when I asked Ring about her nature, I had no inkling that this sort of discussion was in my near future. I ask you, then, since you’ve been quite clear about what Elizabeth does to innocents, the answer is very clear. She is, by both of the definitions I know, a demon. She is supernatural or divine in some way because the human body is not capable of shrugging off a knife wound to the heart. Another consideration being that someone who has this physical . . . gift, yet chooses to kill, often it would seem, and in an endless pattern that I presume stretches beyond that of a normal human lifetime?” He ended with a question, inviting further explanation about the woman whom he had now branded by his own words, inhuman.
Risa stood and handed Kevin a printed sheet taken from the cache of letters Elizabeth had written over the millennia. “Why don’t we let her tell you in her own words?”
25
From Risa’s Files
Poitiers, Kingdom of Gaul, Anno Domini 732
Daughter,
I have discovered and fostered a tool for harvesting souls that is beyond any of my most fervent hopes. Here in Gaul, a leader has arisen who is the type of zealot that I support without reservation, such is his martial skill and willingness to kill in the name of God. And what a bounty that reason for bellicosity has become! Warfare in the name of holy vengeance will burn like wildfire for the duration of this world. The embers of this conflict are casting more light than the sun itself, and I am, naturally, squarely in the middle of it all.
I am currently a woman of great respect, a widower whose merchant husband left her an immense fortune. Of course, my suitors are too numerous to count, ranging from the earnest would-be saviors of my drifting, purposeless life to the opportunistic minions who love money more than their own breath. It’s a heady brew, to be pressed from all sides by men who are the mirror image of prancing fauns, all vying for my hand, my fortune, and my lands.
By now you may have heard news of the slaughter here, a truly gruesome loss for the invaders. Charles Martel has a true gift for the tactical response to a thrust from a blood-hungry, fanatical army bearing their faith, their weapons, and ultimately their own deaths. Charles met fervor with a lust for destruction that was irresistible, and after the killing grounds were quiet, his armies had thrown the disordered interlopers on a path back to the ocean, free from his relentless judgments.
I keep my articles of God close to me and in great variation. One can never know how to best prod local warriors into combat in order to defend their own True Faith. You should take this lesson to heart—never limit yourself to one confession, but be versed in all of the traditions of our prey, so that you may usher them to their demise with little chance of failure. Remember: After all of this, only your obeisance to me will educate you to your true purpose. To imitate me is to please me. To be kind to the rabble around you is to make me wroth.
Kill without fail. There is no other path to power.
Your Mother,
Aia
26
Florida
Kevin swirled the last of his wine and left the glass unfinished, a pensive look on his face as he carefully set the letter down. He scanned the room, looking at our faces for further revelations about a woman who had, up until moments ago, been a mere ideal. Now, after seeing our collective humorless expression, Elizabeth transitioned from a possibility to that of flesh and blood, removing any apocryphal doubts lingering about the existence of supernatural beings. It was a shock, to put it mildly, but Kevin was designed to respond to evidence, and he handled the discovery with remarkable aplomb.
“How far do the letters go back?” His first question was directed at Risa.
“At least twenty-three hundred years. That we know of, that is,” Risa answered.
Kevin glanced at the paper again as if he expected it to grow tentacles. “And who, or perhaps I should say what, is the source of these documents? Have you seen them in their original form?”
I shook my head, and Wally said, “They are all from the woman whom Elizabeth addresses as daughter, but she is not a blood relative, j
ust a—just a woman who knew Elizabeth a long time ago.”
“Very long ago,” I added. Risa nodded emphatically.
“Why does she address her as a daughter then? There must be a reason that is slightly more . . . significant than just knowing someone, no matter how far in the past. And as long as I’m asking for clarification, tell me about this so-called daughter as well.”
I looked around in discomfort, knowing that no matter how I described Delphine, Risa and Wally would feel the need to clarify my remarks, so I just waved meekly at Risa, who gleefully took the lead.
“First, the woman being addressed in all of these letters is currently named Delphine. And not to be to blunt, she’s a prostitute, of sorts, and has been for some time, perhaps two centuries. The letters were translated by her servant, Joseph, who appears to be a linguist and scholar of some skill.”
Kevin blinked once in surprise and then regained his composure. “Two centuries. Well, this Delphine is certainly redeemable, just as Mary Magdalene earned the eradication of her sins. You used the term servant when identifying this Joseph. Did you mean exactly that? That term implies more than an employee, but perhaps something less than a slave.”
“No, just a servant, but yes, it is more than the simple task of an employee. Joseph is quite dedicated to Delphine,” I added in as bland a tone as possible.
Kevin revised his line of questions then, and asked us all, “Please, elaborate on how Delphine could be a daughter to Elizabeth. I suspect the answer is something a bit less traditional than a simple familial tie.”
Wally snorted, elegant as ever. “Nothing about these women is traditional. Elizabeth makes her daughters; she does not give birth to them.”
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