Jovienne

by Linda Robertson

  He recoiled.

  “Not deep. Just a few drops from your finger. Come here.”

  He stood, but reluctance made him slow.

  She held Nathan’s arm above the smaller circle and sliced his finger. He twitched, but she kept his hand steady and the blood dripped into the circle.

  “No.” He yanked from her grasp and backed up.

  She thought he was changing his mind about her using his blood until he ripped off his sweater.

  “No. Not now!” Nathan held his arms up before him. The skin split as easily as an eye opening, and dark fluid oozed out. “NO!”

  Nathan’s eyes rolled back and his head fell forward. His knees bent slowly as if he were crumbling in slow motion, and then he straightened like a puppet whose strings had been pulled taut. He rose into the air.

  Jovienne gaped. She’d intended to try summoning the Sanctus Spiritus through the smaller circle, but it had come before she could begin. More concerning was the fact that the spirit had come through her sealed circle without affecting it. She made a full revolution, scanning the burning base of the circle to confirm this.

  “You were commanded to never again open a Hellgate.”

  She spun toward that breathy whisper.

  Nathan hovered as he had been, but she was certain the Sanctus Spiritus had used him to speak. The voice was almost Nathan’s but not, yet different still from Araxiel’s.

  The hanging head raised and Nathan’s eyes opened showing only white. “Who do you plan to slay, abhadhon? This man? The demon within him? Or yourself?” As it spoke, the mouth opened the least possible amount to articulate each word, and it never fully shut.

  She noted that it left itself out of the equation. “Can you not tell? You must not be well versed in the ways of weaving.”

  “There is but one way to break your circle. A death must occur. I, of course, suggest the demon.”

  “What if I prefer to kill you?”

  “It would not be a surprise if you choose to squander the opportunities afforded you, but the overall loss would be minimal. Like the opportunities afforded this man and your pedagogue, all were calculated risks. Whereas the two males have shown themselves to disappoint, both maintained their faith. You have exceeded expectations, yet your faith never developed. We are here now because it would seem you are the greater failure.”

  Jovienne’s chin lowered and she shook her head. Then, her jaw set and her chin lifted. “What you call opportunities, I call oppression.”

  “You were bestowed with gifts far greater than most.”

  “And with those ‘gifts’ came enslavement to a single course.”

  “Ungrateful.”

  She shoulders squared. “Free-willed.”

  “Abomination.”

  “Unafraid! Defiant!”

  “To what end?”

  “My freedom! To live without your interference or control.”

  “To be mortal? You wish to have the quintanumin ripped from your soul so you may live only to die and have your soul held accountable for all the faithless sins you’ve amassed so that you may end up in Hell anyway?” Nathan’s head cocked. “Save us the trouble, Jovienne. Open your Hellgate and crawl in.”

  “No! I mean, yes, I want my life. I’ve done what was asked of me, but I resent what God made happen to make me this. I resent being a slave.”

  “Of course you do.” The pragmatic tone had no room for even a scrap of sympathy. “You’re mortal. You were meant to suffer and, through worship, become more than you are.”

  There was no reasoning with this Sanctus Spiritus. No negotiating for a better deal. And likewise, there was no escape from her bargain with Araxiel. If she wielded the unholy sword, the Holy Spirit would surely flee her circle as easily as it had entered. Her options dwindled.

  What if I raise a demon? Loose it here in the circle. The Spirit will dispatch it or flee, leaving me to do the job. Either way, death would bring down the circle. I can retreat too. Make a better plan.

  She faced the smaller circle. “Ahi!” Green flames shot up around the smallest drawn inner circle. “Kehena puka hamama!”

  Around them, the cinders punctuated the phrases for her. Energy lifted thick and sharp. Lowering onto her knees beside the green flames, she took a cleansing breath and turned the point of the lion-headed dagger toward her chest.

  “No!”

  Movement erupted across the sea of cinders outside the circle. The bowing charred bodies twisted to peer up toward the sound. She followed their gazes to the stairwell that led from the roof. “Jovienne, no! Don’t do it!”

  BECAUSE SHE WAS working a ritual, Andrei was stuck in the cringe and his skin was crawling non-stop, but desperation kept him focused. He noted the stigmatic in the circle, suspended mid-air. He descended the stairs, searching for a path to get to her, but the floor was packed with the creatures.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she called.

  Relief flooded over him as she lowered the dagger. “Neither of us should be here.” He gestured at the mass of nonliving bodies separating them. “Stop this witchcraft and come with me.”

  “It’s not witchcraft!” she shouted, pounding her fist on the magic wall. Sparks scintillated across the surface. “And I can’t leave the circle.”

  “More circles? More magic? And a knife at your own heart?” He realized her wings weren’t the beautiful downy wings he’d seen before. They had become bat wings, as Raazaq and the others had described. “After what you told me yesterday, I thought you understood this only brought you misery.”

  She hung her head.

  One of the creatures arose and ambled toward Andrei. His stomach flip-flopped. God help me. He drew his sword. The creature rushed him and got in close before he could use the weapon. It struck him three times before he kicked it off of him. “Jovienne!”

  The creatures nearest him snarled and twisted to their feet. His heart raced, but he fell into a ready stance.

  “Andrei, just go!”

  “I won’t leave without you!”

  The creatures moved in. Andrei lashed out, severing one’s head from its shoulders. The others moved in. More followed. Andrei fought, but they surged forward in insurmountable numbers.

  He screamed when they touched him. He roared when they stripped him of his sword. Panic set in as they overpowered him, clutching his arms and legs and lifting him over their heads.

  THIRTY

  JOVIENNE KNEW ANDREI’S worst fears were coming true. In spite of it all, he held his ground and fought even as they surrounded him. It wrenched her heart. He was doing this for her. She had to do something. Finish the Hellgate! She pulled the dagger blade into her chest.

  The pain dropped her to her knees, but she caught a handful of blood as the dagger ejected itself. The look of the blood mesmerized her. It sparkled like burning glitter mixed with the purple-red fluid.

  The drum beat changed.

  The cinders attacking Andrei stopped. They dropped him and scurried away, rushing to gather in the far corner. Many converged to commence their blurry work while others lay down in a circle, climbing atop one another and weaving their spindly bodies together, building a circle like a high barrier of dead bodies.

  Andrei had his feet under him and hurried toward Jovienne. “What are they doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It can’t be good. End this. Now,” Andrei pleaded as he neared the circle, “while they’re distracted.”

  “I can’t. You need to go.”

  He eyed the blood cupped in her hand. “Jovienne—”

  His desire to save her from what he thought was evil would endanger them both. Her temper flared. “I want my life! I won’t be a slave anymore! I won’t be a pawn.”

  “Everyone on Earth is a pawn.”

  Following her pedagogue’s surprised gaze, Jovienne looked to the stigmatic. His cruel tone set her off.

  Stomping close, she thrust her bloody hand into his face and snarled, “You want a
taste of mine this time? Let’s see what the darkblood in me does to you!” The fingers of her free hand raked into his hair, finding clots from his representation of the Crown of Thorns. She felt very satisfied that the Spiritus Sanctus actually struggled to keep Nathan’s face away from her bloody hand.

  “Jovienne!” Andrei shouted.

  She realized he’d shouted her name several times. Keeping her grip on the stigmatic’s scalp, she turned.

  “What’s darkblood?”

  She struggled with what to say. This would have to be a last straw. He would see her, her ‘witchcraft,’ her bat wings, and her demon blood as wretched and unable to be saved.

  “An ancient demon bled into her. She absorbed it,” the stigmatic answered.

  She glared at the Sanctus Spiritus, and then faced Andrei squarely, prepared for the worst. “That’s why my feathers are gone.”

  “Will doing this undo that?” he asked.

  “No.” The Sanctus Spiritus said the word so harshly it didn’t seem like a human voice at all.

  She released his hair and drew the golden sword from her belt, and then laid the flat of the blade on his stomach. He screamed.

  “Jovienne! That’s the Holy Spirit of God!”

  She pulled the sword away, bringing skin with it. “I know,” she said over her shoulder, keeping her glare trained on Nathan’s all-white eyes. “He’s also the reason I have the quintanumin! While I was in a coma after the wreck, this jerk forcefed his stigmata run-off into me. Someone like him did the same to you. It’s how we are given the quintanumin.”

  Andrei said nothing.

  “He’s the reason,” Jovienne continued, voice shaking between clamped teeth, “that people like you and me are transformed against our will, forced into hidden lives and an eternity of murder and pain.”

  Though the drums had quieted, they rumbled loudly again, this time as a militant march meant to keep steps synchronized. Jovienne watched Andrei to see if he noticed a change in his cringe. From his expression, he did. They both looked to the cinders. Many had left. Only the ones incorporated into the barrier or working within it remained.

  “They’re calling a demon.”

  The circle shielded her from the sense of evil they were calling up, but she could gauge it by Andrei’s posture. His shoulders tensed, tight and weighted. “There’s no time, Andrei. Leave. Now.”

  He faced her. The noise of the drums kept her from hearing him, but she could read his lips: Not without you. A red light burst up from the midst of the cinders.

  Inside the circle, Jovienne was protected from whatever terror was coming, but Andrei wasn’t. Her eyes scoured him in an instant. “You’re unarmed.” The cinders had stripped him of his sword.

  ACHING FROM THE weight of the evil, Andrei’s knees threatened to buckle. If asked, he’d have sworn his skin was melting off of him, but he stood firm amid his terror for what was coming.

  “My, my, my.” A sultry voice resonated, amplified amid the cinder-tower. The red light faded and the woven tower of bodies unraveled in a flurry of limbs. A woman strode the aisle that the creatures parted to create for her. Her skin was alabaster and her body was covered with what looked like an irregular pattern of red lace. She had no hair, but artistic scarlet lines trailed over her head and face. Behind her fanned featherless scarlet wings.

  “Damnzel,” Jovienne said.

  “You were given that sword for one purpose, sweetie. And I’m here to make sure you complete the task. If you don’t…I get to kill your hot teacher.” She laughed a bird-like titter of giggles. “Damned if you do…damned if you don’t. Your situation hasn’t improved for all of your conniving.”

  They gave Jovienne a sword. She’s in a circle prepared to use it, but Damnzel’s threatening her. So Jovienne must be rebelling against the original plan.

  She’s defying both.

  Andrei assessed Damnzel again. Whatever demonic power now imbibed within her was a greater match for his basic quintanumin. She was a bigger threat than the creatures who remained, but there were far more of them falling into ranks behind her.

  He checked Jovienne. Her eyes shone, brimming with all her fears. If she didn’t slay the Sanctus Spiritus, Damnzel would kill him. But if Jovienne did what they wanted her to do, neither of them was likely to survive anyway.

  No wonder she had wanted him to leave. Him being here weakened her position.

  He knew what he had to do.

  If I win, Jovienne will have nothing to fear. And if I don’t, she has nothing left to lose. Their threats will be empty.

  “It was my honor to teach you. You always do what needs done. Be true to your heart. Face your enemies and roar like the lioness you are inside.”

  He charged at Damnzel.

  Cinders blocked him.

  Andrei kicked one back, punched another. Their brittle fingertips touched him, partially disintegrating against his shirt. They grabbed at him with dry bones. He jerked to the right and quickly back to the left. He would escape one, and another would replace it. The creatures ripped his shirt away. Stinging welts rose on his back.

  “Are you afraid of me, Damnzel?”

  “Hardly, but watching you in action is making me hot. It’d be a shame to kill you before I’m satisfied.”

  While she spoke, he cracked two of the dried heads together, crushing them, and removed one’s arm at the elbow with a jerk. He pulled femurs from the fallen and spun, using them to force the ring around him to widen. “How can I satisfy you when you’re so far away?”

  “If you want me, sweetie, come and get me.”

  He was making headway, but it was time to utilize some help. By using his ghost hands, he felt for movements behind him. With his bone weapons crossed before him, he called for the quickening and blasted forward, smashing dried flesh as he passed. He nearly stumbled as he stepped on the fallen creatures, but he managed to maintain his balance and continue his charge until he arrived only a few yards from Damnzel.

  There, the things accelerated into their busy modes and darted in, scratching and biting him before he could react. Rivulets of blood trickled from the injuries.

  The creatures converged around him. He panicked. Over a creature’s shoulder, he saw Jovienne’s chin drop.

  I won’t fail her again.

  He spun, kicked out, and released the shout building within him. His heel knocked three down. The remaining ones dived at him. He kicked another away. The rest wrapped their dead arms around him like a determined nightmare.

  He shouted and twisted, primal panic renewed, fueling his need to escape, disposing of logic and tactic in the process. That burdensome weight slithered around him and made anvils of his shoulders. The terrible weariness coming over him threatened his ability to fight.

  “Enough!” The creatures halted at Damnzel’s order. “You can go,” she told them as she stepped toward Andrei. The cinders departed.

  As she drew closer, he realized he’d been wrong before, about the lace. He could tell exactly where her limbs had been ripped off, and what currently held them on were arteries used as thread. Her skin was lacerated all over. What he’d mistaken for decorative fabric was thousands of surgically precise cuts. Her intimate areas, which he’d thought were covered, had been skinned.

  “Enticing, isn’t it?” she asked. “Believe me, it gives a whole new meaning to the word rawhide.”

  Playing fair wouldn’t win this one.

  Andrei quickened forward and swung the bones together. Damnzel raised her arm in defense. The broken hipbone protrusion tore into the stitching that held her arm on. The severed limb disintegrated like embers falling off a log.

  With a scream of rage, she swung her other arm and knocked him off his feet.

  A slick, wet sound erupted at her shoulder and the flesh stretched down, growing, replacing the lost arm with a sleek, black reptilian claw.

  “Ooo…” she whispered, looking at it. “I think this one’s better than the old one. Longer, stronger, sharpe
r.” She clacked the nails together.

  Andrei got his feet under him and shook his head to clear away the pinpoints of light.

  “Let’s do it,” Damnzel said.

  THIRTY-ONE

  JOVIENNE WATCHED HER pedagogue bravely fight his way toward Damnzel. She knew exactly what he was thinking, what he was doing for her. Regardless of his reaction to her ‘evil,’ he reciprocated her emotion. He felt she was worth fighting for.

  More than that, he thought she was worth saving.

  “Look at all you have wrought,” the Sanctus Spiritus said, voice weak.

  The plan, as imperfect as it began, had changed and picked up so much momentum she felt powerless to stop it. “This isn’t what I wanted.” She peered at the sparkling blood as she tipped her palm to let it pour into the smaller circle. It was a waste. There wasn’t time to call a demon, fight it, and kill it. Andrei—the only family she had—needed her help now. Someone had to die so she could leave this circle and help him. “Is this what you wanted?” she asked softly. “Am I the monster you sought to create when you decided to remake a daughter of nephilim as an abhadhon?”

  “I did not do this to you,” the stigmatic replied. “But I approved of the endeavor.”

  She turned from the small circle to face the hovering body and time slowed as she drew both swords.

  The stigmatic’s countenance became strained. “Purchasing freedom with death works better when it’s your death and someone else’s freedom.”

  Jovienne’s wrists flicked as she gave the swords a spin and lunged forward to stab both deep into Nathan’s stomach.

  ANDREI’S OPPONENT CURLED her reptilian claw, but was unable to make a fist. The palm was too long, and sloped the wrong way like an iguana. She could, he reasoned, skin him with those claws.

  He attacked, jabbing the bone at her abdomen. Her extended arm smacked the femur sideways between them and she threw her weight against him, forcing him back a step. Her new black fingers clamped around his wrist and jerked his arm up and she kicked him in the ribs.