by Irene Ferris
Jenn froze as she studied Mathieu. His features were rougher than the Mathieu she knew, nose crooked from a break, complexion rougher and pocked with old scars. Ears bigger, eyes smaller, hair lanker. The Mathieu she knew was an ethereal beauty because Gadreel had made him that way—and completely untouchable. This Mathieu was handsome enough but human through and through.
Mathieu looked at her for a moment and smiled. His teeth were white and straight and completely intact, something an inner voice told her was very, very rare in this time. It transformed his face from passably handsome to radiant. “This is the way you should remember me,” he said in a language she shouldn’t have understood but did.
She blinked at him, turned to look across the vineyard again and then back to him. “What?” She shook her head in confusion before answering in the same language.
“This is the way you should remember me.” He repeated the words carefully. “I don’t want you to remember the other me.”
“The other you?” She knew she sounded stupid but couldn’t help repeating his words.
He didn’t seem to mind, merely nodding and then grabbing the pony’s bridle, again avoiding sharp teeth and unabashed equine hatred. With a quick jerk, he good-naturedly pulled the pony’s head to one side as it to remind it to behave. “The me you know in the life you live now. I’m much sadder there.” He paused as if he were tasting the words before saying them. “Fragile. Damaged.”
She nodded dumbly.
He smiled and nodded back. “I don’t want you to remember me like that. I want you to remember these times, when we were young and happy.”
“But I don’t remember. That’s the problem.” She answered him. “I don’t remember any of this.”
“If you don’t remember, then why are you here?” He gestured towards the vineyard, towards what looked to be a tall church, towards a keep on a distant hill.
She followed his gaze to the keep, which she now knew was her home. “I don’t know.”
She was studying the play of late afternoon sun across the rows of vines when he asked his next question. “Why haven’t you killed me yet? Why are you leaving me to suffer?”
She whipped back to look at him and saw Mathieu as she now knew him, sad and beautiful. “We can’t kill you. I can’t.”
Mathieu sighed and said in a fatigued voice, completely unlike the bright tones of only a moment before, “You need to. You do me no favors by keeping me alive. Even saving me from that creature—which is hardly possible--would only add to my misery. You know that.”
And Jenn did know that, deep inside. But she denied it. “There’s got to be another way. You don’t deserve to die. You don’t deserve any of this.”
Mathieu smiled again, but this time it was a tired, weak smile. “But I do deserve it, Yvette. Don’t I deserve an end to it all?”
The pony snorted and sidled under her. She patted its neck again and crooned. It calmed at her touch.
Mathieu changed back to his human features and smiled brightly. “Remember this, Yvette. Remember my love for you, remember the laughter we shared and the songs I sang you. Remember the things that made us happy.” He paused and then frowned before continuing. “But you need to give me peace.”
Jenn sat straighter in the saddle. “I’ll give you peace. But I won’t kill you.”
“Then you’ve failed me already.” Mathieu’s frown deepened for a moment before he smiled gently. “I can’t hold it against you, though. I’ll always love you despite it all. I’ll even love those you hold dear, although it all confuses me horribly. I’m not supposed to be able to feel this way anymore.” He patted the pony one more time on the neck before turning loose the bridle.
The pony snapped at him again and Mathieu sighed as he once again avoided the teeth. “I have no idea how such a vile tempered beast ever found love in its blackened heart, but if it were to be anything it would be you. Nothing can ever help but to love you.”
Jenn paused and studied him closely. “This isn’t real.” She said as he cocked his head at her. “This is my subconscious making me feel guilty because I don’t like the thought of you knowing all these things about a me in a life that I don’t even remember. You aren’t real.”
Mathieu shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Who am I to say what your dreams mean?”
Eyes narrowed, Jenn answered, “That’s rich, coming from you. You’re the one who triggered this whole Freudian excursion.” She pointed at the vineyards, church and keep. “I know about all these because I went to your town searching for records about you, and learned about what the place was like when you lived there.” She slapped the pony on the neck. “You told me about this animal. You told me it was mean and evil tempered and that it loved me. None of this is real.”
Mathieu nodded during her speech, scratched his goatee and smiled softly. “Perhaps. But maybe you should answer me this: What color is your pony? I never told you that.”
She looked down and saw that the animal’s coat was golden with lighter flecks that gleamed in the fading sunlight. Her mouth went dry and she looked up at Mathieu. “Now you’re not playing fair.”
“I told you before that fairness doesn’t exist in this world.” He took a step back and then another. “Should I ask you again what his name is? Or would that frighten you more?” He smiled and shook his head. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want you to be angry at me.” His face shifted again to the beautiful, haunted features she knew. “I think your anger would be the one pain I couldn’t bear.”
“What does this mean?” Jenn leaned forward and asked again, “What does it mean? Every dream has a meaning. What is my subconscious trying to tell me about you?”
Mathieu shrugged again. “I don’t know. That’s for you to figure out.” He looked over his shoulder at the encroaching night. “I have to go back now. I don’t belong in the light. Not anymore. Not for a long time.”
Jenn watched as he turned and walked down the hill into the vineyards, the shadows of the setting sun seeming to swallow him as he went. She made a fist and pounded her thigh in frustration. “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.”
She woke, beating Marcus’ chest and swearing.
Chapter Forty - Two
The room was thick with the scent of wet paint. “I thought you said this shit was odorless,” Dwayne complained as he tore strips of masking tape off the wall.
Susan growled back, “It said reduced odor on the label, not odorless. Any issues, take it to management. I don’t want to hear it.” She wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead, leaving a trail of green paint.
“I’m management and I don’t want to hear any of it from either of you.” Marcus’ voice was tired and worn.
Eddie chimed in from the far side of the room where he applied red swirls around a yellow sigil, “It really doesn’t smell THAT bad, Dwayne. I mean, it could smell worse.”
“Yeah, if something had died down here a few weeks ago.” Dwayne mumbled under his breath and twitched randomly.
“You mean like Amanda’s soul?” Jenn asked the question in a tone so sweet, it was sharp. She didn’t like heights much but she had the steadiest hands. That was why she was currently laying on a board balanced between two ladders, freehanding the design on the ceiling.
“Low blow. You’re not playing fair,” Dwayne whined.
“There is no fairness in this world,” Jenn answered faintly as her brush traced out the characters of a spell she could barely understand.
The board quivered and shook as Marcus climbed a few steps to speak softly, “You okay?”
Her brush hesitated for a second before moving onto the next sigil. “Yeah. Just tired is all.”
“We all are. You know I love you, right? Truly, madly, deeply.” He brought an auburn curl up to his lips and kissed it.
She pulled her lips up into a grim smile. “I love you too. Truly, madly, deeply. I’m just… all turned around.”
“Why?” He held up a cup of water for her to rinse her brush
.
She paused and then half-shrugged, “Things would be easier if we just did what he wanted. A lot easier. And a lot less unsettling for me personally.”
She could see Marcus nod from the corner of her eye. “True. But is easier the right thing?”
“Of course not.” She sighed as she checked her work on the ceiling and then nodded to herself in satisfaction. “I think this should do it.”
He held her shoulders as she slid down the ladder and then wrapped his arms around her so tightly she could barely breathe. She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed.
“Do you love him?” He’d asked it into her hair so quietly she barely heard him speak.
She blinked in surprise. “Do you?” she asked in a hushed voice. “You seem a hell of a lot more eager to run in and save him than I do.”
Marcus nuzzled her hair. “I promised him. I can’t not try.”
“I know. Let’s just get this over with so I don’t have to turn everything over and over in my head for another night, okay? The more I think, the more frightened I get.” She smiled weakly at him and reached up to kiss his cheek.
Marcus nodded and then turned his attention back to the room. The ceiling and walls bore matching sigils in vivid shades of red, yellow and green. The various members of the circle bore matching splashes of color, as if in solidarity with the spell they were constructing.
“Is this it?” Jenn gestured around the room. “It seems kind of anticlimactic.”
“We still need to do a containment circle on the floor,” Carol answered from the far corner of the room where she’d been stacking brushes and paint. “I had a call from an old friend in Amsterdam. He’d looked at the oldest records and found a reference to what we’re doing. His translation of Agrippa says we need to do this in red—for fire--and that we need to invoke the four princes of angels on the Cardinals—Gabriel on the north, Michael on the east, Raphael on the west, and Uriel on the south.”
Marcus nodded and grabbed the brush and can of paint she’d located and held out to him.
Carol was looking at Eddie’s phone and reading aloud. “Then we need to put in some of the divine names—he suggests Elohim Gibor for punishment of the wicked, Tetragrammaton Sabaoth for victory and triumph, and Adonai Melech which rules all.”
Jenn helped Marcus trace a perfect circle in red paint and then to fill in the geomantic sigils. In the middle, encircled by the names of power, she wrote ‘Gaap’. The letters were clear and concise despite the way her hands trembled at the thought of seeing the creature again—or maybe the thought of seeing what had been done to Matheiu.
“Okay, gather ‘round.” Marcus looked at each one of his circle in turn. “You know what we’re trying here. We want to trap that thing and get Mathieu free of it. It’s dangerous, and we don’t know half of what this spell is capable of doing. So I won’t blame anyone who wants to back out now.”
He looked around the circle again. Dwayne crossed his arms and stared back, completely still but for a twitching muscle in his cheek. Eddie and Susan glanced at each other, joined hands and looked back at him. Carol merely nodded back at him while Jenn half smiled and shrugged.
“Okay.” He cleared his throat and continued. “We’re going to activate this spell with the four cardinals—me at North, Jenn opposite, Eddie and Susan at east and west.” He pointed to the duct taped circle at the edge of the room. “Dwayne, I want you right at the door with your foot on that circle. If things go pear shaped…”
“You want me to make sure everyone gets out and Carol and I throw that bad boy up so we can go meet out in the woods and blow it all up, right?”
Marcus ground to a halt, finger still in mid-air. “Yeah. Exactly that. How did…”
“I can see the future, dumbass.” Dwayne responded in his driest tone.
“Oh yeah. I keep forgetting that.” Marcus shrugged as everyone else nervously giggled.
“Can I help?” Amanda’s voice was ragged. She stood in the doorway, dressed in one of her sundresses. What had once clung attractively to her frame now hung off of her bony shoulders and emphasized just how gaunt she’d become.
Marcus hesitated and looked behind her.
“My father is upstairs sleeping, if that what’s you’re looking for.” Her voice hardened. “I’m a big girl now. I don’t need to have him with me every minute of the day. I don’t want him with me, either.”
“I’m sorry.” Marcus realized that there was so much in the words that he should be sorry for but he could never encompass everything.
Amanda met his eyes and then looked away, flinching from even the suggestion of intimacy. “I know. But that doesn’t change a thing, does it?”
“No.” Marcus swallowed hard and glanced at his wife, who shook her head imperceptibly. “But I don’t think you should be here, Manders.”
He watched her flinch at the nickname. “I think I should. I want to see that bastard brought down. I have the right, don’t I?”
“Of course you do, sweetheart.” Susan turned and addressed Amanda directly. Amanda cringed away from the sudden movement and then visibly straightened, thrusting her chin out at them in defiance.
“I don’t think you’re ready for this.” Jenn said flatly. “I don’t think you’ll ever be ready for this.”
“Fuck you,” Amanda answered. “Fuck you. Who are you to say if I’m ready to face down the thing that… that…” She choked on the words and her fury before swallowing hard and continuing, “that thing.”
Marcus took a breath to speak but Jenn held up a hand. “Your father said Mathieu took all your power before he left. What were you going to do to help us?”
Amanda glared at Jenn with tear-filled eyes. “He took its power. He didn’t take mine and I learned a few things before Gaap forced me inside.” She unconsciously wrapped her arms around herself and started rubbing, reopening the wounds that had scabbed over during the night.
Dwayne made a small noise in the back of his throat before speaking. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
He was answered with a hateful glare and a hiss. “I think it is. It’s a grand idea.”
“No, it isn’t. Nor is this an opportunity for you to face down your personal demons.” Marcus paused and then continued. “No pun intended. But this is a rescue mission, pure and simple. I don’t want to deviate from that course.”
Amanda’s face hardened as she forced herself to meet his gaze again. “Of course not.” She said the words as if they were foul-tasting. She turned away from him, then paused and studied the pattern on the south wall. “Why did you change the spell? It’s different than the one he made me watch for—but not by much. Why did you change it?”
Carol cleared her throat and spoke, “We want Mathieu to live through this. We don’t know what happened to his last Familiar—the one before you, that is. We want to be sure.”
“She lived.” Amanda turned back to them. “She’s alive now. Merit got Gaap’s power and outran The Foundation. Gaap couldn’t even get close to her, and not for lack of trying. It dragged me all over creation just to try and win it back but she’s as strong as a demon now.” She winced and rubbed a burn scar on her upper arm. “Didn’t you know that? The Foundation knows all about her.”
There was an awkward moment of silence before Jenn spoke. “I think your father neglected to mention that rather important tidbit to us.”
Amanda snorted. “It’s a bad habit with him, the not mentioning important things.”
“Yeah. I kind of figured that.” Jenn nodded and then quietly continued. “But I still don’t think you’ll ever be ready to face this thing.”
Trembling slightly, Amanda paused and then nodded. “You’re probably right. But I can’t help but feel that there’s something I need to be doing to get myself back.”
Carol cleared her throat before speaking. “If…. When we get Mathieu back, he’s going to be….” After an uncomfortable silence she continued. “He’s going to need someone
who understands. Who can make a connection…”
“He touched you and you didn’t get hurt. Maybe you can help when we get him back. I don’t think any of us are going to be able to lay a finger on him for a long time, if ever.” Eddie blurted out, then winced and rubbed his hand in memory. Jenn caught herself rubbing her own for a different reason.
Amanda gave a short laugh, harsh and painful. “Of course I wasn’t hurt. He and I, we have the same scars, the same pain. I wear mine on the outside because I haven’t figured out how to hide it all yet.” There was a pause and she spoke again. “His are inside but when he touches you, it’s his pain you feel.”
“He’ll have more scars when we get him back. He’ll need help.” Carol gestured impotently.
“More help than I can give.” Amanda hugged herself again, seeming to retreat back into her shell. “More help than I could ever give.”
“That’s what needs to be done. If you can’t do it, then you need to be somewhere else when this goes down.” Marcus’s voice took on a stern note. “I mean it, Amanda. If you want something to do, then that’s it.”
Amanda glared at him for a long moment before finally giving a short, sharp nod. “Fine.” Her voice was icy and calm, in complete contrast to her hunched shoulders and shivering frame. “Where do you want me?”
Marcus jerked his head towards the door. “You can wait there. Dwayne won’t get too close but he needs to be in the general area.” He returned his attention to his circle and clasped his hands together. “Are we ready to do this then?”
“Is that a rhetorical question or did you really want to know the answer?” Eddie half-shrugged, “because if you want the honest truth…”
“You can tell me all about it from the East,” Marcus interrupted. “After we’re done.”
“That kind of defeats the purpose of your question, you know,” Eddie groused as he moved to stand on his Cardinal.
“That’s the idea, smartass.” Susan flipped her hair as she took her position across from him.