Sekhet

  “Oh…yes.” Laughing herself, Olivia took Dot’s hand, shaking it firmly. “I am Olivia.”

  “Olivia…Olivia?” Giving the impression of being immersed in thought, Dot repeated the name three more times before the light bulb over her head exploded. “Victor’s Olivia? Well now, it is nice to finally have a face to the name. Come in, child, come in. Do you like tea? I have some wonderful teas.”

  “Um…yes, thank you, that would be wonderful. So you know who I am?” Olivia’s voice told the story of a young woman who was not only insecure about being there, but one who longed for the man in her life to show her off to the friends she knew so little about. “Victor talks about me?”

  Patting herself on the back for a job well done, as a sense of utter trust wafted her way from Olivia, Dot led the way to the kitchen, but not before a smile passed between them. “Oh, child, he never stops. Olivia this, Olivia that.”

  Molly and Joe enjoyed seeing the master of deception in action.

  “Your grandmother is going to hell,” Natasha laughed, watching Dot.

  “Yep,” Molly replied with admiration for the woman who could find a way out of everything.

  “Joe, would you get the milk from the fridge, please,” Dot asked, smiling in his direction.

  “I’ll do it,” Molly said. Joe had broken out in a sweat from just walking down the stairs and right now he didn’t need to entertain Olivia.

  “It is nice to see you, Olivia,” Molly uttered, handing the milk to Dot, trying to seem natural, but as soon as the words came out, she knew it couldn’t have been more out of the ordinary.

  Olivia, now seeing Molly walk out of the room with Joe, she felt every bit the fool Victor had been telling her she was.

  “So, Olivia, how did you and Victor meet?” Dot asked, placing a cup of hot tea in front of the now not so sure young woman, who not only felt her face redden but wished a black hole would open and swallow her whole. How would she explain this to Victor?

  “How did Victor and I meet?” Olivia repeated, stalling. What was she going to say? I picked him up in a bar for a one night stand and we just hit it off? “You know, I cannot actually recollect,” she lied. She put the hot liquid to her lips and took a sip, inhaling nervously, burning her tongue, much to her annoyance.

  “Hmm… well, Victor has practically been part of our family since the day he was born, only he will say it was when he and Molly happened upon one another in grade school. Proper little misfits, the both of them, all through school. You should have seen them the night of Victor’s senior prom!”

  Dot was not capable of holding in her laughter any longer, because of course, they had never gone to Victor’s prom together – Victor and his family had moved to Seattle long before his prom day.

  “I never knew they went to the prom together,” Natasha chimed in, trying her hardest to hold her voice at an even tone.

  Olivia took another sip of tea, carefully this time.

  Dot continued her story. “Oh, they were a sight!” Slapping Olivia playfully on the arm, Dot chuckled. “Completely went out of their way to make as much of a commotion as possible. Molly wore a bright pink dress, with fluffed out shoulders, spiked hair, red lips, and blue eye shadow. And Victor? He sported the worst fitting tux he could get is hands on. Trousers up to his ankles. A bright yellow bowtie. They looked like a unicorn had shat a rainbow.”

  Spluttering a laugh in the corner, Natasha couldn’t help but join in the conversation. Taking a seat beside Dot, she said, “Now that unicorn I would have loved to have seen!”

  It was the appearance of a normal household, where the oldest lady in the home recounts embarrassing memories of the younger generation.

  “Well, it just so happens I have photos of the prom.” Dot jumped up, in a rush to produce her proof.

  Natasha could play dumb as well as anyone else. “Of course, you do,” she laughed, watching Dot move more swiftly than she had in days, going into the living room, where she began to rummage through an oversized black chest by the back wall. “She has photos for every occasion in that thing,” she explained to Olivia.

  Smiling awkwardly, Olivia asked, “So how long have you known Victor?”

  “As long as I have known Molly.” Natasha watched Olivia’s face alter right before her very eyes. For an intelligent woman in her profession, she really has no idea how to hide her facial expressions, Natasha judged as she watched Olivia, with great interest. “Me and Molly, we took our first steps in this very kitchen.” She continued with a chuckle, “She’s like a sister to me.” Knowing she should stop right there, Natasha didn’t; she wanted to make sure Olivia knew her place, regardless of Victor’s feelings on the matter. “You don’t like her.”

  “Why would you say that?” Olivia asked. “I mean, whom don’t I like?”

  “It wasn’t a question.” Natasha’s response was clipped as she rose from the chair just as Dot returned, photos in hand of an event that had never happened.

  “Where are you going?” Dot asked.

  “I’m just going to step out back,” Natasha said, patting Dot on the shoulder. She gave Olivia a nod before leaving through the back door out to the garden, where she ran right into Victor as he came bouncing around the corner, a frown etched deeply on his forehead.

  “We have a problem,” Natasha whispered as the peace and quiet she had been hoping for came to an abrupt end. “Actually, you have a problem.”

  “How long has she been here?”

  “Too long!” Natasha placed her hands on her hips. “You have to get her out of here. Now!”

  “I know. I can't believe she showed up.” Victor’s shoulders slouched in defeat “Where are Molly and Joe?”

  “Molly brought Joe back upstairs; he wasn’t looking too good.”

  “At least that means Olivia is still in one piece…” stopping himself in mid-sentence, pulling his shoulders back, Victor took the steps required to come face to face with the door.

  “If you need an alibi, I can help,” said Natasha.

  Victor opened the door with a snap, exploding into the kitchen with a glare at a cackling yet wonderfully controlled Dot, and a horrified Olivia with a photo in her hand. It was enough to make Olivia’s face turn a bright crimson.

  Seeing Olivia sitting in Dot’s kitchen had set Victor’s alarm bells ringing loud and clear. He couldn’t risk her life, he wouldn’t. Her turning up unannounced had shaken him to the core. As he watched her drink tea with Dot, looking more and more uncomfortable by the second, he became aware that she deserved better. If anything happened to her, he knew it was more than he could handle.

  “Outside,” was all Victor had to say for Olivia to bid Dot farewell. She followed him from the house straight to her car.

  In place of those three amazing words every woman longs to hear, he gave her two: “It’s over.”

  CHAPTER 23

  You Were Beautiful Once

  It was after midnight when Chief Budrow returned home. The house was dark. He had half-expected she would be waiting up for him. Too late, he knew he had done it wrong – demonstrating who he was, showing Jess what was actually within the man she had adored for so long. He should have talked to her first. He had failed.

  He recalled her face as it turned to an ashy white while he stood before her in all his glory. He had scared her and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to take back his stupidity. He would go inside, wake her up, sit in bed and talk calmly and try to explain everything.

  Jess had given him exactly what he wanted and needed – a true partner, someone not influenced by death, by vengeance, or by a desire to devastate and destroy. Jess brought with her the prospect to try again to live in this world and forget the other one. He knew his love for Jess was something only he could understand, and when her time came in this human world, he would move on, as he has done so many times before.

  This time, however, he grasped that his heart would shatter into a million pieces, and the strain it would take to
stop being what he was and what was expected of him would, in fact, be almost impossible to bear.

  Placing his house key in the lock, he twisted it with trepidation, hoping she would talk to him, hoping she would understand. He heard the familiar click as the door unlocked, but as he opened the door, the metallic smell of blood assaulted his nostrils and the horrible realization about loss of life within hit him full force.

  Ramming the door open with a roar, he ran in, shrieking Jess’s name. No response. His legs felt as though they weren’t moving him fast enough, this body that for the first time felt insufficient. Flipping light switches on, he came to a screeching halt at the foot of the stairs. Blood had pooled around her body all the way to the tips of fingers of her left hand, outstretched and motionless.

  Panic and confusion, laced with chaos, were in her still opened eyes. The knife was stuck in her neck. He ripped it out, heaving it across the room. Falling to his knees, his black trousers soaking up the blood, he touched the coldness of her skin.

  A reverberating cry came from him as he threw his head back, hands balled into fists at his sides as a thunderous anger raced through his body until finally no breath remained in his lungs. No longer the man people identified in the street as Chief Budrow, wings outstretched wide and powerful, he roared his grief. Finally, they fell around him in defeat, draped over him in a final effort to enclose him, close off to the world around him.

  Throwing himself upon her prone, unresponsive body, he howled, pulling her to him in a mass of blood-soaked hair and heavy lifelessness. Finally, no longer growling like a crazed animal, brushing the blood-soaked strands away from her face, he leaned down, shaking with emotion, kissing her icy lips as gently as he had that night they had shared their first kiss.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered as he lowered Jess gently back down on the floor.

  His body was overcome with anger, but right now he had to be the chief of police. Standing, turning back into Budrow, he walked to the phone and called the station. The officer in charge told him a deputy would be there in minutes.

  A small whimper came from the hallway. Lizzie was clinging to a teddy bear held firmly against her chest. Taking Lizzie in his arms, he felt her shiver against him, her big brown eyes glazed over with fear. Like a bunny caught in a snare with no way to free itself, to be thrown to the wolves in the shadows and torn to pieces. For what seemed like a long time, no words were spoken between them. Budrow found sanctuary in the small, nervous sounds coming from his daughter.

  How much had she witnessed? Budrow comforted her as her small fingers reached out for his cheek. He gazed upon her in complete awe, memorizing her face as it was at that very moment.

  The fact was, he had coexisted with those around him in a realm he should have departed from many years ago. The time before Jess, when all he did was go from city to city for centuries, state to state in pursuit of something more... but what, he couldn’t recall. The day Aileen was born, he had tried not to think about the past, of trials and tribulations attributable to strong women with powerful maternal bloodlines.

  He had never suspected Aileen. “Pure idiocy,” he spat with anger. All this had started when Molly came back. Her lack of common sense he has always played off as her being Lucy’s daughter, but he had learned, these past few days that she was back in Twisp, that it was Molly’s desire to touch the darkness surrounding her dreams, the strength she possessed, so unlike others around her, that was always going to get her into trouble.

  As Scurlock, he had chosen to sit back and watch. As Scurlock, he had observed from a distance as Daniel had helped her yet again, being the father she should have had when the Council had temporarily stripped her of her casting abilities. His admiration had grown for her in waves as he watched her rise and fall through failures and successes. The woman’s ability to cast was remarkable. But what of Aileen? She was Jess’s child. Wonderful, normal Jess.

  A scratching sound came from the doorway.

  “Give her to me,” Aileen demanded.

  Budrow stared at his daughter, open-mouthed.

  “I said, give her to me.” Arms outstretched towards him, Aileen waited, her eyes telling him nothing of her thoughts.

  He didn’t answer. When you have spent all your life looking at perfection, the moment it stands before you tainted with weakness is when Budrow, turning into Scurlock, became aware of what had transpired. It didn’t take a genius to realize that Sekhet had gone that extra mile this time.

  Scurlock’s anger multiplied tenfold as he envisioned Jess’s final moments, staring horrified into the face of her daughter, the young woman she had so lovingly brought into this world. Had she flickered into the light and out again? Was her death slow and torturous? Or was it quickened by Sekhet’s own selfish wants?

  He laughed softly. “You know,” he said, putting his hand on Aileen’s face, “you really were beautiful to me once, Sekhet.”

  A redness spread across her cheeks.

  “Go!” he ordered her. “I will deal with the onslaught of questions.”

  Her response was to hook her fingers under Lizzie’s armpits.

  He shook his head, gripping his child tightly. Aileen’s eyes turned bright red. She growled, “Give me the whole child or half a child, I care not.” With that, she ripped Lizzie from her father’s arms and ran from the house.

  All he wanted now was Sekhet; the rest could wait. Scurlock started after her, a fearsome force, but sirens engulfed him. For now, he had to be the chief whose town was under attack from forces, malicious forces, emanating from one solitary house in the valley.

  CHAPTER 24

  Return to Hell

  “Welcome home.” Lucifer’s smile was one of genuineness. “I have a matter of great importance to discuss with you.”

  “You know why I’m here!” Scurlock countered as he followed Lucifer step by step up the long narrow hallway toward the heavy doors. Spirits trapped behind the walls, clawing their way through the invisible mask holding them in place, were etched like pieces of art into a molding of horror. Always moving. Voices numbing the senses. Fingers reaching out but never touching.

  “Of course I know why you are here. What has taken you so long?”

  Pushing the huge doors open with ease, Lucifer stepped inside, drawing in a deep breath of heat and heaviness as the air warped around him – a tornado after its prey during a storm.

  The chamber was exactly as Scurlock remembered it. For one who had it all, Lucifer hated change of any kind. He enjoyed his comforts, of course, individuals to serve him, people to fear him when the occasion arose, or not, it didn’t matter, as long as he was always in the mind of Heaven and on the lips of men.

  An outsized, smooth-edged circular table sat underneath the single window, which gave a flawless and somewhat textbook picture-perfect view of what people assumed Hell to look like: a vast sea of red hot lava racing down the sides of two gigantic all-encompassing volcanoes, ceaselessly spitting their bowels out, triggering a dark cloud of smoke every time an abrupt thunderous explosion sounded from within.

  Where waterfalls, lakes and rivers would bring breathtaking sights, down here, the water would boil the skin from bone, while the gasses drifting off it in waves burst into changeable fiery infernos, incinerating everything in their path.

  Atop this table sat a chessboard carved of the finest marble, the pieces hand-carved with such precision that Scurlock could make out the eyelashes on the pawns and the pearls of the queens.

  The most remarkable members on the board, of course, were the kings. One king, his wings outstretched, comparable to a bird of prey, had an evil smile etched into the face, an accurate portrayal of its owner. The other king had the face of Gabriel, who considered it most inappropriate to carry on the friendship, but he had found it impossible to find another opponent, one who loved the game as the fallen angel did, whom he had befriended from the beginning of all things. A gift between adversaries. Not that Gabriel ever made an appearance, but t
he game continued day after day, night after night, as a piece may or may not be moved. The mind of an angel or a demon was a powerful thing when it was allowed to demonstrate such things.

  Scurlock indicated the chessboard. “So how long has this game been going on?”

  “Five hundred years or so,” Lucifer replied with a shrug of its unimportance. “It is a bet I will not lose.”

  “He bet you?” Scurlock’s surprise was evident. “That had to hurt.” Shaking his head with a snort of amusement, Scurlock moved closer to have a better look. “Five hundred years, and you have each moved one piece?”

  A low growl of agitation vibrated through the air. “It is a game of strategic skill; you can’t just move a piece without there being a reason behind it.”

  “I like how your bishops are carcasses.” Nodding his head, his bottom lip stuck out slightly, Scurlock added, “Nice touch.”

  “I think so.” Appreciation for the comment showed in Lucifer’s reply, only to change to a shocked howl as Scurlock’s fingers went to graze over the wings of the white king, “Don’t touch that! Do you realize what you could have done, you fool! No one can touch his pieces but him. You could have ruined the game!”

  Lucifer allowed a shudder to pass over his body as his wings freed themselves from their enclosure, a suit fit for a king. “Before you say another word…” Stopping, he turned to look at Scurlock square on, his words betraying a bitterness that couldn’t be hidden “…my friend, she has been dealt with.”

  “What do you mean? Dealt with? Who?”

  “Sekhet.”

  Not knowing how to respond, or even how he felt, Scurlock said, “What have you done?”

  Tilting his head to the side, Lucifer drifted over to Scurlock, whose feet seemed to have frozen in place. Instead of answering, he said, “My son still drives me crazy. But for his mother, I would have placed him in a region not even I could get him out of.”