"Yeah, it’s beautiful. I’m so happy for you..."
However Faith could sense sadness in Candy.
"What’s wrong, Candy."
"Your wedding day; I won’t be there."
"Why, whatever do you mean?"
"I’m a wanted fugitive, Faith. It wouldn’t do to have the fuzz bust in on your wedding."
"That’s why we’re doing it at home. Neither I nor Marcus is Christian. We’re to have a Wiccan ceremony. John is going to be our priest; he seems to know his way around a ceremony."
Doesn’t he just, thought Candy.
"Anyway, that way you can be there. We wouldn’t have you miss it for the world. He likes you, you know. Marcus I mean. He’s just a bit scared of you. I thought if the two of you did something together then maybe it would bridge the gap. He gets a thirst for human blood you know…"
"We could go hunting together? Except instead of the wood on the street instead?"
"I’ll ask him."
"You do that. Who knows? Maybe he’ll have fun."
The man ran gamely down a back alley. He was a holy man so the sight of a woman dressed more for a night on the town than for hunting humans brandishing a steely bloodstained blade was bad enough for this kind God fearing church goer. Yet, the sight of the wolf type man accompanying her had made him piss himself. And now he had met a dead end.
"Listen! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" the man shouted.
Candy stared long and hard at the man."I want to kill you." She then gestured Marcus who stood on haunches behind her."He wants to eat you."
"GREAT LORD!" the man had screamed as Candy had stabbed his heart with the knife.
She knew by now how to make a kill shot, which artery to sever, how to bleed them slowly and she prided herself on these skills. The man had sunk slowly to his knees and Marcus had pounced. On the way back, Marcus now in human form yet still slightly bloody around the mouth had kicked off the conversation.
"Wow! I never knew what it felt like. What you got out of it. I was terrified of you, but now..."
"You’ve got a little something..." Candy gestured towards his mouth where the fresh blood was beginning to dry.
"Now I feel a little more equal. You understand?" said Marcus, and Candy thought she could sense a faint trace of hidden guilt, buried deeply somewhere inside him, yet despite her best efforts she could not reach it. In answer to his question however, Candy thought she did.
Faith did not.
"Marcus, enough is enough. You cannot simply just go around killing senselessly. I should have seen it for the stupid idea that it was."
"You cannot blame Candy for this. Nor me. It is in my nature. My true nature."
"Promise me Marc. Promise you will do this no more. Not until it need be."
"You would have me deny myself?"
"No, Marc. I am only asking what is right. Candy is different. She has needed to kill."
"She enjoys it Faith. And now I understand why. It is as I said, in our natures now."
"Promise me, Marc. There will be enough bloodshed to come if I am right."
Marcus sighed resignedly. "Okay Mon fleur. I promise." Yet there was no resentment thereafter, for he loved her and she was to be the mother of his child.
The other odd thing that Marcus found hard to explain was his new sense of time. He could remember a face without ever seeing it before, and he knew some events before they happened yet he was as empathic only as the next man. Finally he found the courage to speak to John about this, not wanting to seem naive to his new nature.
John as ever obliging gave him the explanation he desired. "Many, many years ago there were men, some like you called Dedannans. They were immortal or like you part immortal men. They found, when they attained this state, some actually being born like this, that they could see somehow into the past and future and also into the moment. Does this sound familiar?"
"Yes. Please continue."
"Well. These men found that because of their nature, nature itself had to re-balance. Each of us has a day our death will fall on. You no longer have that. So therefore to be rebalanced to the universe you have no real birth. You have now been around as long as nature to nature's eyes."
Marcus marvelled at this. Of course it was now so simple."Thank you John."
"No problem. Listen; can you lend me ten bucks for a bottle?"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER KILLING
Jessie’s face leered up at him with the glazed steely eyes of the dead. He stared back, tears rolling down each cheek then falling in single irregular drips onto the cool dead skin beneath.
I'm sorry Jessie, I... they tricked me again. I thought they had tricked me the first time, but they did it twice and I'm sorry, I would never have...
John stared at the hands wrapped around the neck below, and slowly began to remove them. He looked up and moaned in surprise as the world suddenly became real. It had happened again and he had been powerless to stop it. Quickly he turned away from the body, however instead of making for the front door he found his way into the kitchen, and began to search for something to drink.
The fridge revealed beer and he supposed this might have to do, yet was glad when an unopened bottle of gin turned up in a cupboard. He found a small glass and filled it. Presently he swallowed and sighed. It had happened again, and he decided that if there was any chance to putting it to rest he would have to go through the finer points of what had occurred, as he had done the last time.
He knew what was behind this, that much at least he still understood. It was what he called his sorcerers conscience, the part of him that could not forget the horrific things he had done during his various magical rites. It was true that for the most part John had always good intention, yet brutality had been unavoidable on many occasions – the Great Spirit demanded it – and although there had been times where he had been able to make it right, such as the time with Jessie, where he had butchered the children and brought them back, there were others where the sacrifice was a one way deal, non negotiable.
Each of these acts had created a trauma, not only in a part of John's mind yet also within the very fabrics of reality. Yet, John had understood that this was part and parcel, this was his lot as a sorcerer, and he had accepted this and learned how to cope with it, to keep it from eating him up, or worse yet becoming a dominant factor in his makeup. He had seen people who couldn't cope with their acts, who were too weak to balance this factor, to fight it down and it was as if the acts themselves had consumed all of their basic goodness and left only the bad, which would then flourish and intensify as their sorcerer’s conscience overtook their mind and hearts.
With John, it had been the killing in the institution which had acted as the trigger for the resurgence of this the part of him. This now was obvious. It was not just however the death that had been dealt, but the manner in which this had happened.
Candy when killing gave of a strong vibration of enjoyment, as did Jan. For John himself, he too had enjoyed the battle. It was his nature as a Mohawk to fight proudly, and he had congratulated himself at the time on his triumph.
He had last killed two years ago. He had been responsible for the murders that had occurred in the city around that time. John himself had been moving from city to city, all over the world, killing as he went. Always young women. And always for the same reason. When he had learned of Faith and Candy he had made a vow to atone for his these killings, to fight in a good fight. He knew of these hellish creatures that Faith spoke of, yet had had no real reason to cross paths with them in all his years. Until then. And, he supposed, now.
As the murders had stopped alongside the same time Candy had being incarcerated in the institution her guilt and responsibility had been assumed. When released John had intended to confess to her, especially when the murders had started up again and had entered her room to do so.
However, Brekin had walked in and gotten the wrong idea and since then no other chance
had come up. Either that or he was just too much of a damned coward. No it had been two years since he had killed previously and a long time previously to that, and he had had to admit that at the time he had felt a rush of excitement, it never occurring to him that this may reawaken a darkness that he had finally managed to put to bed after so long a time.
Swallowing a mouthful of gin he turned his mind some two hundred years into the past.
He remembered it had been nearly six months since Jessie’s death and John had been a wreck. He was feeling the pain of a broken heart, of mourning; for Jessie had been the only woman he had truly loved. He had spent most his time alone in the ‘Golpe de Gracia’ Bar in Mexico at a small table near the back drinking himself to oblivion, or at least as close as he could get to it before he did what whatever was necessary to make it there fully.
Eventually John had staggered out of the last in his journey of taverns, bleary eyed, his clothing stained brown in places with suggestions of red; indications of bad happenings - and had walked the thirty three miles to where he had buried Jessie’s body, collecting stones as he walked. The terrain was all dirt yet grass from nowhere suddenly appeared, and it was as if it had crept up on him, still he paid no heed, the insatiability of sadness tearing painful holes across his senses, making blind spots of his eyes. The grass was cut into three sections, the small blades of drying yellowing flora the covering for the packed earth beneath which concealed the decaying corpse of Jessie. With his remaining strength he removed the stones from his pockets and stacked them into a small pile at the head of the grave, to serve as a marker of Jessie’s whereabouts, lest the Great Spirit need guidance when it came to collect her soul.
This complete he settled his body on the grave’s surface.
He would spend one last night on this soil, close to his loved one. The next day he would join her in the next life. That night was made for hard times. As he slept the memories of each death he had caused, each violent act he had committed came to him with startlingly clarity. It was as if the dam he had built inside to keep such things at bay now flowed freely upwards from where they had previously lain repressed and bound in a deep corner of his psyche, a mind opening occurrence that now let the horror escape, and as the sun crept upwards again, the new day dawning on the institution of life, John found himself falling deeper into this new awareness of his past.
It was seven o'clock, that moment when the sun is making itself known and the broken dreams of yesterday were nothing more than vague hunches when John felt from inside his slumber the watchful eyes of another. He immediately opened the lids which covered his visual senses and found himself staring at – it could not be – Jessie. She was looking down at him with a mixture of concern and curiosity. He shook his head once, twice – then blinked as quickly as his body would allow for fear that in that brief moment of darkness she would disappear. He did not see the shadows that moved nearby, only the woman he had thought gone forever.
"Hello there," Jessie said, "you look like you could do with some eating. A man could catch his death sleeping in these here parts without shelter or fire."
John smiled and stood, and when Jessie extended her hand it was without hesitation that he took it.
"I have a place not far from here. If you want you can walk me there and I can fix you breakfast, which you can eat while I clean up your clothes."
"Thank you Jessie. I- I thought that...."
Jessie looked at him strangely then he thought, as if what he was saying made no sense to her, and she appeared to be about to speak when he made the gesture of waving off what he had just said. "Please ignore me. I've had a long night and the day is confusing for me. I..." and then he had stopped as he found he did not want to say what he had thought, that he had thought her dead, and that he had been planning to join her in this finality. Jessie nodded at his words, although the look of concern did not completely leave her face, and so they set out and nearly twenty minutes later they came to a small wooded hut. Jessie led John in by the hand. The place was small, three rooms only, yet it was neat and homely. Jessie ordered John to strip and promised she would take care of his clothes and begin the meal. Yet, when the Mohawk was completely naked, he noticed that she would steal glances in his direction, and he had to fight a smile. John loved women, yet none like Jessie, and he decided to forgo breakfast if possible for he hungered after her body more than food.
It was as if by magic then that he found himself in the bedroom with his loved one. She had protested slightly at first, yet it had been the protests of a person who indeed wanted what was on offer and thought the formality of polite refusal to be an added spice.
And then the worst had happened.
Jessie, the woman he was making love too, was no longer Jessie, and he had cried out in an anguished yelp, never before feeling such bewildered pain, and he had struck out in a rage, brought about by fear, again and again, smashing bone and tearing flesh until the woman which lay beneath him had been mutilated unto death. He had closed his eyes then, inhaling breath in an aid to calm his beating heart, yet when reopening then it had been Jessie that lay once again beneath him, and this time it had been too much to bear, and he had wept openly at such a sight.
Then, for the first time he had found himself waking from a trance, had seen again the body of the woman beneath, some kindly stranger who had only wished to help another, and the truth of what had occurred had stung him with the tail of irrefutable fact. That had been the first time. And now it was happening again.
It had happened after that, countless times over the next two hundred years, John himself responsible for the deaths of thousands of women. Then one day he suddenly stopped mourning. It was around the time he had met the green eyed girl. John shuddered then. She too had become close to becoming his victim, yet she had in some way resisted the magic which would normally steal over the women the shadows chose. She had taken him in and he had learned of her mother's death and seeing another in such grief, a grief he found he could relate too and it was as if the simple fact of Jessie’s death no longer carried the extreme pain it used to.
And as such the killings then stopped. John had sworn then to make amends in some way for the carnage he had created throughout the course of his killing sprees and promised himself that he would help in some way, and he had realized that the Great Spirit must have put such knowledge in his path for this purpose.
He poured the final measure of Gin. He had ten bucks in his pocket. That would buy another bottle. He supposed he should avoid it but it was either that or sober up, and either way the darkness was going to steal over him, give him the urge, so he may as well control it to a point.
For the moment that was all he had left.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FAITH MAKES A WOLF A HAPPY MAN
It was the day of the wedding.
Faith now bore to her normally slender figure a largish bump. As both her parents had passed on it was up to Brekin to give her away, with Candy as maid of honour. Candy had remembered the old saying ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue’ and had dutifully given Faith a lock of her hair, a brand new one hundred dollar bank note (acquired with Johns help), a deadlock given to her by Brekin that he insisted on Candy’s insistence on reclaiming and a pornographic movie (also acquired with Johns help) much to Faith’s blushes and Marcus’s amusement.
To the music of Carmina Burana, Karl Orfs satanic opera, and Candy’s slight giggles, Brekin led Faith by the arm towards John. He was also to be Marcus’s best man and after dropping Faith off at the altar, which consisted of a bench of roses, white and red at either side, he took his place beside the groom.
Candy, much to Johns frowns could not help but giggle still at the choice of music, however she knew it had been the first opera Faith had seen when on Earth.
As John began the service he seemed to hesitate slightly, yet after a moment he launched into his semi-pre-prepared speech. "In the name of…uh… Danu, t
he great good Goddess of all I bind thee Marcus and Faith, in this world and in the next, together for eternity," then the wild Indian American literally bound their hands together with a band of leather. "In the name of Pan the God of sexual union, I urge thee to join tonight in your privacy in his name, with all the joys and ecstasy such a union will bring." Marcus and Faith looked upon each other and Marcus winked. "Now... uh... well kiss the bride."
This was all the encouragement both needed and Marcus literally swept her off her feet and planted a long encouraging kiss on her lips, before carrying her off to their room, with much clapping and a wolf whistle from Candy. Moments later they could be heard, with the squeak of springs and the gasping of Faith. John turned up the music, just as it climaxed to the birth of the anti-Christ. Candy again laughed, and this time John and Brekin joined in.
An hour had passed and the newly-weds were still to emerge from their boudoir.
"What about it, Candy?" Brekin said indicating the altar.
Candy was stunned. "I’ll tell you what. When all that is coming is over then you’ve got yourself a deal."
Brekin looked happy yet downhearted at the same time.
"I’m sorry if I...." began Candy yet the Rasta cut her short."It’s not the wait. It’s just I can’t get a read on the outcome. Can anyone here?"
Both John and Candy shook their heads.
"What if we don’t make it? What then Candy?"
"Well at least we tried."
John took this as his cue to excuse himself. There was a bottle in the kitchen with his name on it.
"You’ve give me something already Brekin. Something I thought impossible. You spoke of salvation, yet I never thought it would be in something as simple as love. And that is what you have reawakened in me. Something that was taken by evil has been given back by good."
Tears formed in Brekin’s eyes.
"You are my salvation Brekin." For the countless time Candy led the Rasta by the hand.
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