Dove Keeper

by Emily Deibler

  Kill every devil. Kill them all.

  “Wasn’t I a murderer then, in our time together? Didn’t I kill more men for our cause?”

  Supporting Clair’s head with a palm, Jehanne wiped away the woman’s tears with her other hand, though she only smeared more blood as she tried. “Not like this.”

  “As much as I loathe the English, how was the war more just than this? Darling, I’ve been in hell without you. My masters gave me life again so I could give you a second chance.”

  “And how long has that been, your time without me?”

  “Centuries, darling.”

  “I never . . . You want me as your, your . . .”

  Gilles scoffed, as if out of all his sins, her insinuation offended him the most. “It’s more than that.”

  The statement he’d made caught up with her. “Your ‘masters’? Gilles, no, don’t tell me you . . .”

  His pupils darkened as he withdrew, voice rough and deeper inside his throat. “At first, it was only silver I wanted for my soul, because of the mad spending I did while I was alive, but then it was never enough, and so I—dear, that was so long ago.”

  “What?” Jehanne shot him a glare. “What did you do to bring me back?” She yanked on his ruined tunic, hoping the half-undone collar hurt as it tugged against his bruised neck.

  He closed his eyes. “I can’t.”

  She cast an arm to the ruin around her. “You’ve done this, yet you can’t say—God, what did you do? You told me of your wife, and what could be worse than that and this?” Horror sank in. “Where is Marcy? Why did she call the police? Why did you say you were my father? Marcy, where is she, where is she? The wine cellar? Under it with the demons?”

  Casually, Gilles remarked with a blank stare, “You need to bathe and rest before I tell you everything.”

  “D-did you kill her? Did you kill her like you’ve killed everyone here?” All Jehanne wanted was an end to her loneliness, a companion not obligated to serve her, and now she could’ve very well killed Marcy by inviting her friend here because she hadn’t taken “Father” seriously, had tried to reason away all the strange happenings to something wrong with her head.

  “No, she’s alive.”

  “Are you lying just to make me calm? Because, given the circumstances, you’ll have a poor time of it, won’t you?” She could still hear the crunch of Moreau eating bones. “Take me to her. The wine cellar, that’s where, isn’t it?”

  Gilles’ breaths were rapid. “I can’t. You can’t see what’s beneath the manor.”

  “What, the demons? Is that it? Are they your friends?”

  “I wish.”

  “Is that how we’re alive? You serve demons under the floor and sacrifice innocents to them?” She needed to find Marcy, needed to go to the wine cellar. No time. The manor only had so many halls.

  “Close. Not quite.” He was infuriatingly coy, but no matter, she’d make him confess after she saved her friend.

  Both Jehanne and Gilles swerved their heads when, in the near-silence, Clair’s gasps became starker.

  Jehanne ground her teeth together. “I need to pray for her.”

  Gilles reached for her shoulder, but she jerked away. “There’s no use in it. She’s hopeless.” Because of him, and he didn’t sound remorseful. Not for his wife Catherine, and not for Clair.

  The monster. Yet, for all his murders, he still looked like Gilles. She didn’t know what she expected of Gilles, besides outward ugliness. Demons were meant to be hideous, but what did that say about her and her own knowledge of holiness, when many demons were once angels themselves? If God loved the imperfect, Jehanne thought as she looked upon Clair’s open throat, she shouldn’t have aligned deformity with damnation.

  “All the more reason she needs it.” Jehanne couldn’t let the woman die alone, no matter her part in this.

  Then, she had a plan. Of course she did, didn’t she always, eventually? Pray and then run to Marcy. If she could stand. Her legs were lead. She had to go, to stand, to run, but she could only remain with the dying woman.

  Gilles persisted, “Jehanne, I’ll wait for you in the study, where it’s quiet.” He casted a baleful glance at Moreau. “Promise you won’t disappear, and I’ll explain what I’ve done all these centuries, what I am, how we’re alive. Please, as long as you’re here, I can live, and I’m certain you’ll forgive me with that heart of yours.”

  “I promise,” Jehanne lied. Well, half-lied. After she disappeared to find Marcy, she’d definitely meet Gilles again, but not for the reasons he hoped. Thankfully, he left them, Jehanne, Clair, and Moreau. She rested one hand on Clair’s cheek, the other on the woman’s neck. Her own neck throbbed, and she only heard Moreau feeding below. Though the smacking and splintering uneased her, his attention never diverted from the corpses.

  When Clair’s heartbeat left her throat and her soul left Jehanne’s hold, Jehanne still prayed through obligation. She wanted to think Clair’s death had a meaning, acted as peace and forgiveness, but it was tasteless and meaningless besides her numbing rage.

  Peace. Forgiveness. It reminded Jehanne of Gilles by her side moments ago, him and his desperate pleas for her to rest, for her to give him a second or third or fourth chance. Did he ask God for the same so long as he thought he could repent once and absolve everything? Was that why he raised his head to God with demons under his boots?

  It all needs to burn. The bastard, the bastard. He needs to burn.

  Death was needless here, needless and empty, and even if Clair flew to Heaven, God had given her the potential for a full life for a reason, for her own motivations, and, yes, He had planned this too—no, she couldn’t think of it, her head swelled like a rat curled inside it. She wasn’t meant to be alive, didn’t know the reason she was here. If God needed her to protect others, Jehanne had already failed. I can save so many by turning this all to ash. No time to think anymore, no time to adjust to this new skin stretching across her bones.

  With Clair still in her lap, Jehanne jolted when the front door creaked open.

  22

  Marcy

  “André?”

  “Marcy?” He croaked. “Oh God, how the hell did you . . .” They stopped and took each other in. She had no words for how he looked. Whatever the original color of his shirt was, it was black now.

  She asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “Funny thing, that.” He coughed, a rough and deep noise that made Marcy nervous. “I was in the woods, after visiting a friend and playing cards. I think I—it was night. I walked into the woods to take a smoke without the smell bothering anyone. Was drunk and cursing Tante like the fair-minded lad I am. Saw men accosting a-a little boy with this shining, this cross around his neck. Two—three men? Beating him over the head with a wooden club. Tried to fight. Went to punch—him, the leader, and he laughed off a hit to the nose, and next thing I knew, it was dark and hurting. Can’t feel my legs.”

  “Hurting?” Marcy’s stomach roiled, and she meant to ask about the boy, but her gaze shot to André’s bare feet, particularly the left one. “God, André, why is your foot swollen like a melon? And it’s purple.” Like a berry, really.

  “Reassuring, thanks. Twisted it fighting. That luck of mine, you know. And that temper!”

  “I think I can—it needs to be wrapped, right?”

  “I’d say so,” André said, dryly. “But not much’ll be done with me like this.” Half his face was bloated, and his breaths were strained and audible. “Are you intact?”

  Marcy tilted her head, dizziness making her see double. “As far as I know.”

  He wheezed, and it might’ve been a laugh. “That’s as good as anything, I suppose.”

  Scrabbling came from behind. Marcy seized, and yet the possibilities (claws?) gripped her so tightly she couldn’t bring herself to panic.

  Maman, I think you’re about to receive your wish. Marcy shook her head and banished the dark thought. No, bigger issues, priorities. War, darkness
, screaming, her cousin chained up. Escape.

  André’s cheeks were wet, his eyes pink and wild in the lantern light. Blood had crusted under his nose, but it seemed whoever had damaged his nose had also reset it, as if they could handle the blood but not any crookedness.

  “What happened to your nose?”

  André’s mirthless sneer was a startling black. “The monsieur was kind enough to reset it after he broke it. Didn’t want me to be ugly.”

  Uncomfortable with forcing the issue, Marcy focused on his restraints. “God, how do I get you out of these?”

  “We need to go before something gets us. There’s something, the key, the doves, where he keeps his doves, it’s, it’s. . . .” André choked.

  “Doves?” The footsteps were closer than ever. “Do you hear that? The demons, or whatever’s down here . . .” Marcy turned.

  Small figures emerged into the light, bodies covered in grime and scuttling oddly, like crabs. The lanterns cast grotesque, bruise-like shadows on them.

  André coughed, drew a long, loud breath. He shook in his chains.

  Children, three, no, four shaking children. Three boys, one girl, all in torn, disheveled clothes. One of the boys had busted lips and an eye swollen shut. The other two boys had dried blackness on their chins. Marcy couldn’t register the truth, even when everything confirmed her suspicions about Rais. A fissure split in her head. The stories of the man who professed to be her only friend’s father—

  It couldn’t be, but it was.

  André said of the children, “We’ve kept each other company for the past—however long it’s been.”

  Children, no chains, limping freely. A dark voice said to her, Easy to catch and subdue. The monsieur can fend against children well.

  Christ. Remembering herself, Marcy said to the children, “What are your names?”

  “Addie, Jacques, Jules, Isaac,” the girl answered, pointing to herself and each boy.

  “Well, I’m happy to meet you all.” She took note of their clothes then, and whatever color they once were, the garments were now indistinguishably gray and black. In places, gems glinted on the grimy fabric like flies, but whatever the children endured had torn and ruined their clothes.

  “I saw where he put the key, the key to the circles,” Addie said, and Marcy leaned forward.

  “Where is it?”

  “In the mouth.”

  Marcy’s brow furrowed. “Where?”

  “In the mouth, the one in the chair, through there. He stuck it in the mouth.”

  “What? Who put it there?”

  Addie wept. “The blue man stuck a key in the mouth.”

  “Whose?” she asked, meaning whose mouth.

  “The blue man. He—he doesn’t—he likes to chase us before. The master and his servants.”

  “Before what?” Marcy would’ve asked, but thought better of it. She tried to embrace the upset girl, to comfort any of the children and listen, but they moved away from her touch.

  “Marcy,” André said, his voice ragged. “Don’t leave me.”

  “The shackles, I can’t get them off without the key.”

  “No, dear God, you might not—please stay where I can see you. Please. Please don’t leave me.” Begging, God, he was begging in a tone she’d never heard from him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, and to the children, she muttered, “I’ll find our way out, but can you show me where the key is? Show me, please.” She pivoted toward André again. “I’ll come back, I promise.”

  “Please, please don’t go.” He released a sob. “Don’t go, I’m begging you.” She noticed a dark stain on the inside of his slacks.

  With a pinprick chill creeping up her arms, Marcy swallowed. She didn’t know what he’d gone through or how to comfort him, and she thought it rude to ask while he unraveled. She crossed the distance and rested a hand on his dirt-crusted cheek. “Oh, trust me, cousin. I’ll be back. I promise to God.”

  André made a noise between a scoff and a grunt. “Might want to ask someone who’ll actually listen.”

  Marcy didn’t have time to question his lack of faith. “I promise to Papa, then.” With a watery smile, though it hurt, she left André there in the dark and followed the children to find the key, the way to André’s freedom.

  None of the children offered their hands to her, but they led her, five little Virgils with strange gaits. To speak to them, Marcy stopped and settled on her knees. Because she was becoming taller than Maman and almost Papa, she thought she must’ve dwarfed the children while standing, scared them if she got too close.

  “It’s okay. It’ll be okay, sweet ones. If someone comes, I’ll kick them for you. I’ve a heavy kick.” Her words fell as flat as a book page.

  “There, in there,” one of the boys said, the boy with tawny hair and a swollen eye.

  The children stopped as Marcy went forward. They refused to follow Marcy past a certain point. Inching forward, turning her head, Marcy realized she no longer saw the children. A sensation bothered her throat, the phantom tickling of when she saw a spider and then jolted at every sensation because she’d spared it and her mind told her it lurked somewhere on her body.

  Marcy followed the lantern trail, picking up one of the bulky things. Earthy mounds protruded like turgid worms, light passing over them like a watery reflection. As she traveled, shoes scuffing along, her headache worsened, and the smoother rocks rotated like the eyes of a flounder. A brighter glow emanated down the tunnel, a kind, hopeful light brighter than any of the underground prison’s other glimmers. Warmth, welcome, the end to the struggle. After Marcy found the key and saved André, they’d find a way to climb out. She could taste freedom, as green as an apple’s skin, and it made the aches in her chest worth it.

  She stood and sprinted as her lantern and the lights on the earth gave way to—

  Marcy halted and lost her grip of the handle. The lantern didn’t break, but the flickering light died.

  Urine ran hot down her legs.

  23

  Rosalie

  Waking beside Roger that November morning was the worst thing she’d experienced, and Juliette and Maman’s deaths crushed her further. But what Rosalie saw when she opened the leering manor’s front door came a close fourth.

  “God. Christ. Mary.” She didn’t think she’d ever see this many bodies at once. Was this Anatole’s experience in the morgue? Even then, those bodies were clean. This was utter madness, carnage she thought she’d numbed to after reading enough about the men’s faces melting behind masks and their feet rotting away like spoiled meat after weeks in a trench carved out by the Devil’s pitchfork.

  A man, a man who looked like a demon. Blood drenched him so much, Rosalie couldn’t tell what his hair color was. He bolted his head up, his pupils so large his eyes were only gold with the light glaring on black.

  He lurched upward by some power other than his feet and stepped forward with a half-ring of cartilage in his mouth. She pointed her pistol, yet before she could shoot, or before he could accost her, he looked to the stairs where a girl sat with a body in her arms. The girl glowered at him, and he trembled, meat and blood falling from his mouth as he wheezed.

  When he looked back to Rosalie, they stared at one another for what seemed like a minute. She could die now, she realized, but Marcy was here and needed help. Her finger grew heavy on the trigger.

  Eventually, as if deciding her unworthy, he knelt and returned to the scraps of the—God, it was one of the officers Marcy had called. She could tell from the dim glow of the badge.

  Marcy. She had to cross this sea of bodies.

  No blood, no death, nobloodnodeath.

  Blood—Roger. Juliette with blood on her pillow and her squalling babe.

  Her walk was slow, a childhood song playing in her head. When Rosalie ascended the steps, a hand covering her mouth and nose, the girl’s sullen face changed little. It had the wan shroud of mourning. “Are you Jehanne?”

  The girl sniffe
d wetly. “Y-yes.” She coughed once. “Yes.”

  “I’m Marcy’s mother.” Looking to the woman in Jehanne’s arms, “What happened here?”

  The girl straightened, as if drawing deeper into herself. “I don’t know how to explain it, other than there was a fight.”

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’d say so!

  Rosalie swallowed, doing her best not to smell or taste anything. “Where—where’s my daughter?”

  Jehanne’s voice tremored, yet her expression was eerily still. “She isn’t here, but I—I think I know where to find her. The wine cellar, I think we can find it.”

  A cellar?

  “So, you’ll show me to it?”

  “I’ll try.” After she stared warily at the pistol, Jehanne’s eyes roved down to the woman in her arms. “She was my, my . . .” She struggled to form the next word and left it to the stale air. Instead, she leaned down to kiss the woman’s temple before setting the body down and working to stand. Jehanne patted the woman’s apron to find something, it appeared, and when she found a bump in a pocket, she fished out a napkin and whatever the contents were, she sobbed.

  Unsure how to offer proper condolences, Rosalie said, “I’m sorry. I—” The poor girl almost fell and, with the woman’s body between them, Rosalie reached forward and worked to steady the blood-soaked, distant-eyed girl.

  When she righted herself, Jehanne croaked, “Thank you, Madame Deibler.”

  “Please, call me Rosalie. We’re well past formalities.” She looked down. “This woman . . .”

  “Her name was Clair.”

  “I’m sorry you lost her. I wish I could be of better help.”

  Jehanne said, “It’ll be okay. It’ll all be over soon. The worst is over.”