The winds blew across the river and battered a massive tower, wailing against its walls like a grieving widow. Inside, thousands of spirits floated silently imprisoned, awaiting a call they despaired they’d never hear.
A trickle of ash snaked around its base, hissing and mocking those inside. “I’m going to make her pay. And when I do, when I tear her stupid mortal body to pieces, all of you will rot here. Rot, rot, rot…”
“A new dilemma,” Alexi declared once everyone was reassembled in their sacred space. Percy fiddled with the scarf draped strategically over the torn neck of her dress as he moved to insert her key. The blue fire again burst to great heights, then settled. The red dot still paced in another space and time. The encircled Guard broke apart, examining and murmuring.
“What’s this?” Josephine breathed, fascinated. She began walking the lines as if traveling the corridors herself.
“Looks like Athens, but…” Elijah traced the perimeters behind her.
“There we are, yes?” Michael pointed to the circle to the side. “Seven dots.”
“And the red one?” Jane gulped. Alexi sighed.
“The enemy,” Rebecca murmured.
Alexi nodded. “We can only guess. And the enemy, it would seem, is clearly marked. This map is very nearly Athens, as you see, but not quite. The spirit and our Athens worlds, nearly identical. And they are likely merging closer every moment.”
There was instant uproar among The Guard, a jumble of questions, frustrations, fears.
“What is this sea of blue?” Percy murmured, interrupting. She pointed beyond the red dot.
“If it were simply a room, would it not look like an empty frame like the others? What fills this space?” Michael peered close.
Alexi’s eyes widened. “We must have a host of comrades.”
The Guard fell to nearly shouting. The idea that there was a space in which countless others of their kind existed was world shattering, them having spent their lives a meagre, proud six; it was just as shocking as merging worlds they’d vowed to keep separate. Percy used the opportunity to reach down and pluck out the key, and no one seemed to notice. She fumbled beneath her scarf, returning the key to its former place.
“Silence!” Alexi cried. “I don’t like this any more than you, to say the least. But another confrontation on a far larger scale than we have seen or imagined will surely make its way to us. Perhaps we may now take some consolation in the idea that we might not fight alone.”
“That Gorgon was just the prologue,” Rebecca stated.
There came a familiar tearing sound. The Guard circled at the ready, Alexi stepping in front of his wife as a shield. Percy illuminated, her power beginning to burn bright, reactive and preparing for a battle. The Whisper-world through the portal roared in Percy’s ears, its blackness total.
Aodhan popped into view, first bowing his head subtly to Jane, who blushed fiercely and looked away. He turned to Percy and said in Gaelic, “My lady.”
Percy stepped forward. Alexi took her hand, held it tightly, limiting her movement.
“Careful,” Aodhan warned. “She may have escaped. As soon as I saw her being reassembled, I stole a bit of her remains. I assumed then that she couldn’t be reformed…but I may have been wrong. I’m so sorry…I would have come to you sooner, but these portals aren’t always predictable.”
Percy was baffled. “Who are you talking about?”
“The Gorgon.”
The rest of The Guard looked on, unable to hear. Percy could hear Alexi’s teeth grinding. She turned to him, begging patience. He looked away, glowering, but did not release her hand.
“Lucille Linden?” Percy clarified. Everyone shuddered.
“Be on the lookout.”
Suddenly Beatrice appeared in the portal. “The troops eagerly await freedom,” she stated.
“Troops?” Percy asked.
“Guards gone by. I told you it’s your turn, they must be freed. Study that map, girl, you’ll need it soon. But not yet. I’ve a last few doors to knit up behind these Whisper-world fools. You’ll know when—you’ll receive a sign. Go on, now, I’m sure your husband’s had quite enough—”
“Percy, I’ve had enough of this,” Alexi said, dragging her backward by the arm.
She turned to stare at her husband, and her white face flushed with frustration. “Alexi, let her speak to me! It concerns me and my fate, which then concerns all of you. Unless you’d like us to betray one another out of fear for the truth!”
The Guard raised eyebrows at a tone stronger than they’d ever heard her use. Alexi set his jaw and held her firm.
“Indeed. Let’s get on with it, shall we?” Beatrice declared. “Leave you to it.”
Percy stared at the spirit. “Leave me to what?”
“To study the map, and then at some point, when a portal opens before you and you are beckoned, you’ll have to go through. Didn’t I already tell you that? How many times must I tell you that you’ll know when?”
“What is she saying?” Alexi hissed.
“At some point I’ll have to go through,” Percy replied.
Her husband growled, turning to Beatrice. “I tell you, I’ll not see her jeopardized.”
“It isn’t up to you, leader dear! Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to return to ensuring your survival when the battle comes—which I now see is a thankless job,” the spirit growled in return. The portal narrowed.
“I’ll be there for you—for all of you,” Aodhan assured Percy softly. “All of us will. You’ll not be alone.” The portal snapped shut.
“Beatrice says they’re both here to help, we’ll not be alone,” Percy repeated hollowly. “And that we ought to thank her.” The grip on her arm tightened, which she hadn’t thought possible. When she breathed his name, grimacing, he remembered himself, gave her a look of apology and eased his hold but did not let go.
The group was silent.
“Well?” Elijah finally asked.
“Well, what?” Alexi spat. “If there is to be a war, we need not seek it out. It will come. When it comes, I’m sure we’ll all know. Shall I send a telegram?”
“But don’t we want to…prepare?”
“This isn’t a cavalry exercise! We stand in our circle and use what magic we have, as we always do. Prophecy, fate and destiny have given us no other weapons. We’ll meet what comes when it comes. That’s all there is.”
No one said a word.
Percy yearned to ask Alexi to recall the Power and Light, to bask in that ceremonial surge of heaven that made all troubles small and insignificant. But The Guard was filing out of the sanctuary, and the opportunity was lost.
At the Athens portico, Alexi nearly tossed her into their carriage. She winced and rubbed her arm. He sat next to her in silence, his hand clenching upon the folds of her skirts.
“You might take a moment, Professor,” Percy said quietly, a firm edge to her voice that only surviving incredible events had been able to fashion, “to think that your wife might be just as frustrated, confused and frightened by these possibilities as you, and that she may be forced to interact with them all the more directly. I would appreciate support, not misdirected anger. Second-guessing almost had you failing Prophecy once. Let’s not test it again.”
Alexi’s silence shifted from brooding to stunned. He stared at her. Over his face crossed shame, then terror. She glimpsed a boyish, wounded horror, a complex mess of intentions that Percy understood, however infuriating and awkward their byproducts. In this aching, naked, helpless moment when his stoic mask was let slip for her alone, when The Guard’s mighty leader allowed her to see his fear, she was able to let her own hurt go.
Her clenching heart eased, love swelling like an overflowing cup. She kissed his lips softly, running a hand through his hair. His furrowed brow smoothed as he clutched her hands in his, his eyes speaking volumes his lips would have fumbled over. Silence still remained between them, but at last it was not strained.
He
went directly to his study, Percy to her boudoir. There were no words. Percy wasn’t sure if he would join her in their bed or take the whole night pacing. She wanted only to sit, in that silence, and breathe. There were times in the convent when she had done that for hours, hearing only the occasional whisper of a passing ghost, the comforting low drone of a Mass bell where she was expected but often absent. She held her own Mass, privately, the murmur of the breeze her rosary, and she knew that God was there.
“Our Lady,” she muttered, glancing at her first confirmation rosary hung on her armoire, a string of pearls as white as she. “Leave divinity to someone else. If I must see ghosts, I must. Let me help put them to rest and then let me be. But must there be some grand finale? Can’t something more powerful than I fight it?”
As she undressed, she was not ashamed to linger in the wicked thrill that unlacing her torn undergarments provided, for that fierce, mutual passion needed no apology. But looking up again, she paused at the mirror and could do nothing but stare at her arm. A nasty, burgeoning red and purple bruise covered it, Alexi’s firm grip. It needed apology. But now was not the time.
Slipping into the comfort of a luxurious white robe, she ignored how much a ghost she appeared and instead fancied that she was a votaress of the moon. Lighting and stoking a fire, she gathered her filmy white robes, perched on the window seat of their bedroom and pretended that she was part of the moonlight.
A long while passed before she heard his foot on the stair. He paused at the doorway. She turned.
He was in that delicious disarray of undone buttons and shirtsleeves, a nearly empty snifter in hand. “Hello, my north star,” he murmured. She moved to rise and greet him, but he entered and set the snifter on the dresser. “No, no. Stay there in the moonlight. You’re positively magical.” He sat across from her on the window seat.
“Are you all right, love?” she asked.
“I will sometimes…”
“Need quiet. Yes, as will I.”
He nodded, and his eyes flashed suddenly. “I’ll fight to the death for you.”
Percy’s brow furrowed. “Let’s hope it won’t come to that.”
He reached for her. Percy kept a hand on the ribbon that clasped her outer robe closed.
“Let me touch your skin,” he murmured, taking her hands in his. “It calms me,” he explained, sliding his fingertips under the robe to slip it from her shoulders.
Percy grabbed, but she was too late. She’d hoped to keep the damning mark from his view, or at least spare it for another day, but his eyes widened and there was no distracting him. The mark was garish in the moonlight. His fingertips reached toward the bruise, trembling. “How did this…?” He looked up at Percy in confusion, and back to the bruise.
“It doesn’t hurt. Much,” she said meekly.
Alexi’s eyes were an emotional maelstrom. He jumped to his feet, unable to meet her gaze again.
“Alexi, please.” Percy reached out.
His cloak was around his shoulders and he was out the door. His footsteps bounded down the grand staircase and the front door slammed. The pound of Prospero’s hooves down the lane carried away into the night.
Percy was chilled by the utter silence of her house, blinking as the shaft of moonlight widened through the window. Rising, she went to her armoire and plucked free her string of rosary beads. Gliding to the bed, she slid back the velvet drapes and turned down the covers.
Yet another tempest. Storm and calm, storm again. She sat against the headboard and tucked her knees up under her chin. The only sound was the click of her rosary beads, one by one, as she sought simply to breathe.
Michael could feel a weight approaching like a swinging pendulum. He anticipated Alexi. He brewed a hot cup of mulled wine: one of their favourites to share, good for the darkest nights of the year, and for the darkest hours of the soul. Alexi tried his door and found it open, and he soon appeared at the threshold—haunted, powerful, a strange creature that didn’t quite know himself anymore.
“Hullo, friend,” Michael said. “Shall I take your cloak or do you plan to pace about a bit and run back out the door?”
Alexi furrowed his brow, stepped into Michael’s modest living room in the small and simple quarters the Anglican Church bestowed upon him for his modest services as parochial vicar to local parishes. He sat. Then he stood, removed his cloak, hung it on a wooden peg and sat again. Michael held out a mug. Alexi took it and sipped. He set the tankard down unevenly, a drop spilling out and down the side onto the rough wooden table stained with years of hard use.
“There’s a bruise on her arm,” he said finally. “A large, ugly bruise.”
Michael sipped his wine and said thoughtfully, “When we try and protect those we love, we sometimes use unintentional force. I daresay we’ve all been bruised by one another at some point.”
“I was a man of measured control once. I prided myself on the quality.”
“Do you now wish to be violent?”
“Only against those forces who seek her out. But I dragged her away from Rebecca’s office and down to the chapel, and she…said I was hurting her. And there I went again tonight, seizing her just the same and dragging her back from the portal. I only saw the effect when I tried to touch her skin, when I…” He trailed off, sure Michael understood.
“You don’t recognize these things now inside you,” the vicar stated. “These baser urges of jealousy and lust, the ravages of fear and the compulsion for control. Well…” Michael smiled wryly. “You understand control, Alexi, but not in relation to someone you adore. Your courtship was strange and harried, your lives hanging in the balance. You’re both practically children in terms of love, and children are often scared. We react with improper force when we are scared.”
Alexi took a long drink and was silent. Michael knew, from conversations past, mostly in their youth, before Alexi had as fashioned the many walls of his adulthood, that his own role was to clarify the maelstrom of the heart, not to expect an easy flow of conversation.
“While I believe she intuits all these things,” he continued, “you cannot take it for granted. While I’m sure you apologized…” He halted as Alexi’s eyes flashed with frustration. “While I’m sure you will apologize, and while I’m sure she knows you’d never mean to hurt her—”
“I told her that,” Alexi snapped.
“Then why are you here?”
Alexi’s knuckles were white on the table. His breathing was slow and deep. “Because I’d let the spirit world take, seize and rule this world if it meant she’d be left alone. This directly conflicts with my duty as mortal protector. In fulfilling Prophecy, have I lost my will to maintain it?”
“If that’s the question, who should take your place as leader?”
Alexi’s eyes widened and flashed with repugnance as he pounded the table.
Michael leaned in. “I thought so. Then you’d best get this under control. You’d best trust her, no matter what the fates may have to do. She’s no one’s pet. Not some mythical god’s former bride, nor your toy—”
“Of course she’s not a toy.”
“Then let her approach the spirit world without making her feel she’s betraying you. Let her do her job on the edge of danger, and you may do what you must. She isn’t plotting, Alexi. She’s not full of memories she’ll not share, or powers yet to reveal. She’s a sweet girl overwhelmed by life, who only wants to love and be loved by you. Duty and fate will take their course. They must. But, ‘Worry not for tomorrow. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.’ Don’t make more.”
“She…she has reassured me as well.”
“Then why come to me? Don’t you trust her words? Oh, Alexi. Mend thy ways.”
“I do! I don’t trust me. I don’t…know where to relegate this fear. My power is all that I’ve had, and my duty—and now she is all that I care about. And I seem to be hurting her. Where do I put all this instead…?”
“Put your fire into your fire, your lov
e into your wife and your fear unto the Lord. Times like these are good for prayer.”
Alexi rolled his eyes. “Dear One True God,” he muttered, “please protect the mortal coil of a pagan goddess. Amen.”
Michael chuckled and stroked his mustache. “ ‘Persephone’ is just a name for a spirit of beauty at a certain time in history. I’m sure we could argue a biblical place for her if it matters. Your wife has the name of that pagan goddess, but the fact remains that she’s your mortal bride in the Year of Our Lord 1888—and she’s Catholic, so pray for her, damn it. I don’t care how confusing it is. And pray for us, to anyone. If the dead are about to flood Athens, divine goodwill couldn’t hurt. Your prayers can be in Hindu, if you like. Now, go home. And apologize.”
“Yes, Father,” Alexi said wearily. Rising, he threw his cloak over his arm. “Thank you.” Bowing, he saw himself out.
Michael hoped the Lord would grace Alexi with peace. He also allowed himself one moment to wonder if he himself would ever find it. Sipping his wine, he stared into the fire and simply breathed.
Alexi found Percy tucked in their bed, rosary in hand. She gazed upon him calmly as he entered the room and removed his suit coat.
“Where did you go?” she asked quietly, not an accusation.
“To confess,” he said. “Now I seek forgiveness.” Percy held out her arms, and he fell gladly into them.
Josephine was particularly ill at ease as she absently tended to her fellows, well aware personal frustrations were to blame, the Grand Work aside. At an hour too late for common company and yet too rattled to be alone, several of The Guard found themselves at La Belle et La Bête, a bottle of wine between them.
It was Elijah who broke the silence with classic inelegance. “He does push her about a great deal, doesn’t he?”
Josephine noticed that the women in the room, even Jane, bristled. Michael, who had just showed up, furrowed his brow. “What did you expect?” she asked honestly.
The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker Page 20