by Karen Duvall
“What happened to Geraldine’s baby?” I asked, my head humming with questions about my ancestors.
His eyes popped open and he blinked as if waking from a dream. “She survived. Her name was Maria.”
“Did she become a knight like her mother?” And like my mother?
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maria was still a baby when Geraldine was executed. I think the midwife ended up raising her as her own. What happened after that…” He held out his hands and shrugged.
So Maria probably grew up not knowing about her roots. She never discovered who she really was.
Geraldine couldn’t have been the only Hatchet Knight to start the order. “Tell me about the other knights.”
Aydin cocked his head to one side, his puzzled expression looking painted on instead of real. “What about them?”
I heaved an exasperated breath. He was stalling. There was still so much I needed to know, but he purposely held out on me. Why?
He smiled, and lifted the box he’d been holding to run his hand across the top. “What do you think is in here?”
I was dying to know, but I refused to let on how much. I didn’t appreciate his mocking. “I can’t say I care.”
His smile widened to show a bright row of perfect teeth. “You’re a terrible liar.”
The small cube of wood was now balanced on his open palm. It jumped an inch and the lid popped open. Something shiny and colorful leapt out to land squarely in my lap.
“What the hell?” I started to swat it away, then realized what it was. A frog. A tiny, jewel-encrusted frog not much bigger than my thumb. I looked up at Aydin. “Mind explaining what this is?”
“Her name is Ruby.”
The tiny creature lifted its amphibian head and grinned at me. It looked like a grin, anyway. I know frogs don’t have lips, but this was no ordinary frog. “What’s it doing in my lap?”
“I think she likes you.” He squinted at the sparkling creature and nodded as if he approved.
A living piece of jewelry. It didn’t get much weirder than that. I held my hand open and Ruby hopped on. She was covered in precious stones: rubies, diamonds, amethysts, emeralds. I looked for skin showing between the jewels and found only silver. Her eyes shone like polished sapphires. I blinked at Aydin. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Because there isn’t anything like Ruby. At least not in this world.” He reached for the animal and she hopped up to land on my shoulder. “I think you have a new friend. She doesn’t want me to put her away.”
“Then don’t.” I turned my head to peer at the frog that was now mere inches from my face. “I don’t mind having a roommate.” No doubt an enchanted one, which made me wonder what else lived inside the trunks and ancient boxes in this room. Was Ruby a gift? Or a bribe to stop me from asking questions he wasn’t prepared to answer?
Just as I was about ask that very thing, a vibration pulsed through the floor and a low boom sounded inside my head. Ruby leapt off my shoulder and disappeared behind the futon.
“What was that?” I asked Aydin.
“My wards have been breached.”
But he wasn’t a sorcerer. “You know how to set up wards?”
He stared at me and frowned. “You don’t?” Not waiting for an answer, he rushed from the room and I followed.
“I knew I’d find the two of you here.” Gavin stood in the middle of the living room looking pleased with himself. “Pleasant drive back?”
Aydin faced him, stone-faced and cold as a lost soldier who had fought too many battles and never won any of them. “What can I do for you, Gavin?”
Gavin grinned, but his eyes were hard. “Getting chummy, I see.”
“Us?” I coughed. “Oh, yeah. Best of buds. Cowards are high on my list of favorite people, right next to serial killers and rapists.” I fought to follow Aydin’s example, holding the muscles in my face still and letting my eyes freeze over with indifference. I hadn’t practiced the poker face much and I hoped I looked the part.
Gavin narrowed his eyes, then slid his gaze to Aydin.
“She doesn’t like me much,” Aydin said stiffly. “Having her stay here is the best way for me to keep an eye on her, but she doesn’t see it that way.”
Gavin tapped his bottom lip and studied us. “I trust you, Aydin. You’ve served us well over the centuries. Chalice, on the other hand, is a loose cannon. Can you handle her?”
“You know I can.” Aydin’s expression didn’t change. Fearful that mine would, I averted my eyes to stare hard at the floor.
“I’ve figured out a way to let Chalice speak with Saint Geraldine without me present.” Gavin stepped to the far wall and investigated a decorative arrangement of dried reeds in a tall ceramic vase. “Aydin, I want you to go with her.”
I frowned, then caught myself. Gavin didn’t know anything about Aydin’s relationship with Geraldine. I had to pretend that I didn’t, either. It was easy to do when I thought about how much I still didn’t know, and I hoped it translated to my face. Either my acting had worked or Gavin was too preoccupied with his fabulous plan to notice.
“He’ll pass through the tomb walls and remain invisible while you talk to Geraldine. She won’t know he’s there, and he’ll report back to me everything that’s said between you.” Gavin pulled a reed out of the vase and pointed it at Aydin. “It’s the perfect plan.”
I tossed a quick look at Aydin, who’d managed to maintain his apathetic facade. Even so, I swore I detected a hint of glee in his eyes.
Aydin stripped out of his jean jacket and handed it to Gavin, who folded it over his arm. The front of Aydin’s T-shirt said I’m Gonna Survive. Even if It Kills Me.
I stood beside the tapestry that covered the vault of Saint Geraldine’s tomb. When Aydin unbuckled his belt, I turned away to face the woven piece of art and studied an intricately stitched rose garden made of flowering vines that climbed an arched arbor. It smelled musty.
I heard the slide of fabric along skin, then the clink of Aydin’s belt buckle hitting the linoleum floor. Knowing there was a naked man behind me made my skin warm. And this wasn’t just any man; it was Aydin. I felt my blush deepen.
In a few minutes, Aydin and I would be standing in front of a mummified head, having a conversation with a dead woman who wasn’t really dead. Though I’d be the only one talking since Aydin couldn’t speak while invisible. For all I knew, he’d be seeing Geraldine for the first time since their clandestine meetings in the midwife’s home more than nine centuries ago.
“I’d like to take candles in with me,” I told Gavin without turning around. I needed him to leave me alone with Aydin before he ghosted out and could no longer talk.
“You don’t need light to see her, Chalice,” Gavin said, sounding annoyed.
“I know, but maybe she does.” I’d made that point the last time we were here. “If she can’t see me, she may not talk to me.”
Still facing the tapestry, I heard Gavin’s theatrical sigh at my back. “I have some black ritual candles in the car. I’ll be right back.” His footsteps tapped down the long hallway and trailed into silence.
“Aydin?” I was afraid of turning around to find him standing nude in front of me. Not that I didn’t appreciate the male body, especially Aydin’s, but I feared seeing him would light an erotic spark we might not be able to put out this time.
When he didn’t answer, I did turn around. No one there. He’d obviously ghosted out so I removed my contacts to see him. Though it was night and the lights were dim, they were still bright enough to make me blink and squint, so I covered my naked eyes with my hands. I peeked through my fingers and sure enough, Aydin’s hazy, translucent form wavered in front of me. He drifted toward the door.
“Wait!” But it was too late. He passed through the vault door and into the tomb behind it. I slipped out my earplugs and pressed the side of my head against the tapestry. Though soundproof, the door wasn’t thick enough to prevent my ultrasonic ears from he
aring. There were whispers. A man’s voice. A few seconds later came the female response.
“Holy shit,” I said to no one as I realized this wasn’t the first time Aydin had paid his lady friend a visit.
The sound of approaching footsteps made me push away from the door and bank off the wall like a ball in a pinball machine.
As Gavin came nearer, his frown deepened. “What’s wrong with you? You look agitated. What’s going on?”
“He, uh, Aydin just…” I gestured at the door and tried to cover my surprise at knowing Geraldine had spoken to him. So I pretended to be flustered about something else. “He went in without me.”
Gavin smiled thinly. “Do you have a problem with that?”
I didn’t, but since I was doing a poor job of masking the emotions that animated my face, I acted like I did. “He’ll screw everything up.”
“She can’t see him,” he told me. “So don’t worry about it.” Moving in front of me, he lifted the tapestry and began pushing buttons on the electronic lock. A whoosh of air blew past me as the vault opened.
Gavin handed me the candles. “I’ll be waiting right outside.”
I nodded and slipped into the tomb. The door swung slowly closed behind me, enveloping me in incredible silence. How I loved hearing nothing for a change.
I didn’t see Aydin right away. Instead I focused on the head at the center of the small table and the silver aura pulsing faintly around it. Again my heart ached for the dead woman who clung to life without a body to embrace it with.
Just like my encounter with her hand, the mummified skin on Geraldine’s face appeared to soften and plump, her pale skin suffusing with a healthy glow. Her shrunken eyes filled with light before eyelids formed to blink over clear blue eyes that glimmered in the darkness. She looked about my age, maybe a couple years older. Her coral-colored lips spread in a serene smile before she said, “Hello, Chalice.”
My heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s. I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to kneel. I also bowed my head and said softly, “Saint Geraldine.”
Her laugh sounded like tinkling bells. “There’s no need to be formal, child. I’m not royalty.”
I stood and looked around the tomb, searching for Aydin. He stood naked in the corner. I forced myself to keep my eyes focused above his waist and when our gazes found each other, he stepped forward. “I hope you’re not too surprised.”
“I listened at the door and heard you two talking.” Still amazed by what I was witnessing, I swallowed what felt like sawdust in my throat. “I wish you would have said something to me earlier. When Gavin saw my face just now he knew something was up.”
“But you held your ground. I knew you could do it.” He angled himself to face Geraldine, positioning his hands over his groin in classic fig-leaf fashion. I blew out a relieved breath. He said, “I explained to her how you and I know each other.”
“I thought you might have,” Geraldine said with a pleased smile. I was surprised to hear no European accent in her voice, though Aydin didn’t have one, either. Assuming he’d spent time with her over the past nine centuries, I figured he must have taught her English, as well as kept her up to speed on the modern world. “We have much to discuss, and hardly any time to do it. Gavin will get suspicious if we take too long.”
Panic gripped me. “I’m a terrible liar. Gavin always knows when I’m lying.”
Aydin’s brows arched in concern. “We’ll figure something out. We have to. And your expression of detachment is improving.” His lips curved in a reassuring smile.
Though pleased to have his confidence, I wasn’t sure I shared it. “I have questions,” I said to Geraldine. “Lots of questions.”
“I’ll answer as many as I can.” She slid her blue-eyed gaze to Aydin. I could see she used to be a pretty girl; her beauty lived on in the enchantment that shrouded her remains. “Aydin can fill you in if we run out of time.”
I reached inside my pocket for the copy I’d made of my mother’s note. I hadn’t wanted to take the chance of Geraldine being unable to see the invisible ink. “Do you read rune divinations?”
A tiny frown wrinkled the perfect skin of her forehead. “It’s been a few centuries, but I remember. What do you have?”
I opened the copied note in front of her eyes. She blinked and her eyes glowed. “This is from Felicia?”
I gasped. “You knew of my mother?”
“Of course. I know about all the women in our order.”
So it was as I suspected. Geraldine was a Hatchet Knight. And she’d used the present tense so that meant she knew of others who were hopefully all still alive. “Where are the other knights?”
“One thing at a time.” She stared once more at the note. “Your mother wants you to find the Fallen. So does Gavin. Each for different reasons.”
“Gavin made me tell him what the note said.” I caught a brief flash of anger in those crystal-blue eyes. “But I transposed the rune signs. I can’t interpret them myself, but I know what each symbol is. He translated what I’d given him as meaning the silver veil is closed to the Fallen’s spawn.”
She pinned me with a serious stare. “Then you know whose child you are?”
I shook my head. “I thought it possible my mother had used some kind of code to pass me a secret message. My father can’t be a fallen angel.”
If Geraldine could have nodded she would have. Instead, she gave me a slow blink. “No code. It’s true that your father is one of the Fallen. As for the divination, you did the right thing. We don’t want Gavin to know its true meaning.”
“Which is?” I held my breath.
“Harvest is the reaping of rewards. The tree of wisdom is a shaman’s rune and means transformation. Dice cup stands for fate, and thorn means change and action, or it can also mean travel.”
I heard Aydin gasp.
“So what are you saying?” I asked her, my pulse sounding like running hoofbeats inside my head.
“Gavin’s translation is nearly the exact opposite of what your mother saw in the rune stones she threw.” She paused before saying, “She predicted you would take a journey, which has already happened. Is that right?”
“I came here from Chicago.”
“Next you will learn your fate of transformation from the tree of wisdom, who in this case is your father. A member of the Fallen.”
My hands shook and it felt like tiny needles pricked the bottoms of my feet. I clenched my jaw as I tried to hide my reaction from Geraldine and Aydin.
“Are you okay?” Aydin asked.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d been denying this ever since Gavin first brought up the theory of who my father was, but somewhere deep inside, possibly as deep as my DNA, I’d known it was true. Still, I couldn’t help feeling some shock at learning the truth and its implications. Half angel. Me. Who’d have thought?
“I’m fine,” I said, barely opening my mouth to say it. My teeth were clamped so tight that my ears rang. “I’ll be fine. Just give me a second.”
“We don’t have a second.” Geraldine focused on Aydin. “Protecting our sisters will be harder than ever now.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Who’s being protected, and why? What’s going on?”
“I’ll let Aydin explain the details. Chalice, you play a far larger part in all this than you realize.”
“Hold on a minute.” I was getting more confused by the second. “What part are you talking about?”
“You know about the Order of the Hatchet, but what you don’t know is how the order has perpetuated itself over time.” She looked to Aydin, then back at me. “We took it upon ourselves to even out the balance between the forces of dark and light. Our knighthood depends on divine strength so we bred with as close to the divine as we could. We took angels as mates.”
It was just as Gavin had said. His recitation from the Book of John echoed in my mind: Fornication is a sin against God. Sin is transgression of the law of God. Fo
rnicating with the Hatchet knights had denigrated the angels to the rank of Fallen.
“They were once Guardians, from the Arelim,” she went on. “It became tradition for our daughters to take their Guardian as mates, and then their daughters would do the same, and so on for generation after generation. Your mother, Felicia, mated with the Arelim angel Barachiel.”
I gulped a shallow breath. Barachiel. My fallen-angel father had a name, and that made him real. “Where is Barachiel now?”
“I don’t know,” she said, furrowing her brow. “I can’t hear the Fallen speak, only the Arelim. And they won’t tell me. Gavin wants to find the Fallen to make deals similar to the one made with Aydin. He wants to find your father because he thinks Barachiel knows where our sister knights are.”
I glanced down at the note in my hand, speechless. The Fallen wouldn’t be with other angels, would they? So I’d never find my father beyond the silver veil. He was somewhere else and I didn’t want to think about where that might be. A place for dark things. The black veil.
“Your mother obviously had something she wanted you to do, or knew your father had something to tell you. I don’t know. We don’t keep track of our mates after becoming pregnant.” She closed her eyes and went still for a full second before adding, “These angels of the Arelim sacrificed their place beyond the silver veil to help breed an army of special women to fight the darkness.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. This was way more than I could handle all at once. “What happens to angels who fall?”
“They lose their wings and become regular men,” Aydin said. “Or they can choose to join the darkness. That choice would allow them to keep their wings and their powers.”