Not Shyla...please, Fred. You can't.
Not my Shyla.
Something slithered around his arm. The vines, twisting tighter, pulling him down.
Except...no thorns?
Another movement around his other arm. Still no grinding needles.
He might have been hallucinating. His lungs screamed and his head pounded, so why trust a desperate mind? Winding coils constricted, though, and a sound reached his ears.
Digging?
Yes. Hands at the earth. Furious scrabbling in small, tiny movements. The roots—or whatever they were—tugged at him, drawing him up, out—
Light. He saw the first light of the surface again. The white hands; jointed fingers. He caught a glimpse of his cemetery doll's cracked mask—
Conall heaved in an agonizing gulp of air, finally. Dizziness swallowed him then, plunging him into another, safer darkness.
***
Night had fallen when Conall finally resurfaced from fevered, restless dreams. When he opened his eyes, he beheld the blue ceiling of his own room. The tender weight of his doll nestled against him, cool to the touch. He tilted his face toward the hint of snow and evergreens.
Ribbons—dirtied and some a little ragged—still twined around his arms and even around his torso. Those had been the things tugging at him in the ground, then. They yet clutched him, as though she remained afraid to let go.
Conall groaned. He still felt the dull, stinging ache of the thorns where they'd pierced him. An ugly heat throbbed beneath his flesh.
His leg would be hurting for days after the abuse as well. He shut his eyes with a weary sense of defeat. How could he go after Father Frederick now?
Asya lay motionless beside him. The marionette with cut strings. Before falling dormant, she'd evidently tucked herself up as close as she could to him, curling into a tight ball.
She looks like Shyla. When Shyla was little...curling up next to me when she had a nightmare.
Immediately, he recalled the expression of fear on Shyla's face when Fred had grabbed her hours ago. Conall clenched his fist, grinding his teeth on the urge to scream with frustration. Her eyes—the helpless panic—
"Asya," he whispered, bending to whisper into the soft curtain of her hair. He had no way of knowing if she remained dormant or if she could hear him begging. "Please...you have to tell me...what did he do?"
For several moments, the doll remained lifeless. A heap of silent porcelain parts. He'd decided to slip away from her and rise—find some way to get to Fred—when the ribbons stirred, and Asya lifted her head. She didn't turn her face toward him, but he had the sense she peered at him from the corner of her unseen eyes.
"Please," he beseeched her. "Please, tell me."
She glanced away in a childlike gesture of shame. Presently, the last of the ribbons unwound from his body, and she rolled to climb atop him, straddling his flat belly.
Conall stared as, very, very slowly, the ribbons loosened from around her body. They fell away in graceful, sensual loops, revealing first her hips and belly, gradually bearing more of her flawless white flesh up, and up. As he watched, her ivory skin began to flicker and crack—it almost appeared to be a trick of the light, like a candle flame cast strange shadows all over her. He had no candle in the room, though...no light at all. The light came from her.
At first, he didn't understand what it meant. Each small glimpse showed him lines and contours he couldn't reconcile. Then, after several moments, he started to understand. She showed him scars.
Surgical scars. Heavy stitches. Dissection. It came to him in a patchwork image, hidden under the beautiful veneer of ceramic perfection.
The doll, Fred had said. I think she's my favorite work. One of my most beautiful creations.
Wouldn't you agree she's perfect, Conall?
He lifted a hand to a spot on the soft round of her stomach. Under his fingertips, he watched the image of her skin flicker from flawless white to bruised, ugly gray, criss-crossed with sutures. No detectable change to his touch. Utter horror, however, unfolded in his mind.
"This," he said, running a thumb over the spot. "This...is where your...your..."
No change in the doll's expression. She didn't have to give any response: Conall recognized the surgery which must have resulted in these wounds.
"Christ," he said. "The man's a priest. A fucking priest. And he did this to you?"
She tilted her head to the side. Then she lifted her chin up, exposing her throat. The ribbons adorning it like a lovely choker remained still. Conall had never seen those silvery-gray strips fall loose. Even when Asya had allowed him finally to see her eyes...the ribbons around her throat had never come away. They wrapped tight around the smooth pillar of her ivory throat.
Conall reached up and tugged at the silk. At first, they held fast—if Asya had been flesh still, he imagined the ties would be painful, perhaps strangling. Finally, he found purchase. It took stubborn strength to pry them away, but then he saw it. Underneath the wrappings, Asya wore a real choker.
No, he thought. A collar.
The pendant of Saint Margaret.
Conall sat up, wincing but ignoring the ache. He reached out to touch the flat bronze disc with the image of the saint embossed upon it.
"This is the same one he gave to Shyla."
Not exactly. On Asya's pendant—Asya's collar—a cultish symbol had been hastily engraved over the image of the saint. Conall had little knowledge of faith or of the occult, but he could recognize the jaunty, hieroglyphic nature of the mark. The lines of it appeared rusty too, dark with some sort of—
His lips parted.
"He used...your blood?"
The doll nodded.
"It is a curse, then," he murmured. "He cursed you into this form?"
She bowed her head, and he felt a subtle quiver shake her pristine form. As though she cried, trembling with little, silent sobs.
"You never meant to hurt Shyla," he said. "When you lunged...I thought you wanted to...to do something to her, to attack her. But you wanted to get at the pendant he'd given her, didn't you?"
Another nod. This time the gesture turned into a gentle nuzzle as she leaned forward to touch his cheek with her own.
"It's why you threw it into the fire."
He wrapped one arm around her and held her close. Her trembling grew worse, in a sharp, hitching sort of way. When he held her away from him, bloody tracks ran from under her blindfold, and when he carefully nudged the tight mask of ribbons away, she let him. He beheld those beautiful parti-colored eyes, real eyes, reddened with tears.
In one hand he still fingered the flat pendant of Saint Margaret. Fred had always recounted Margaret as patron saint of the dying. As with most saints, of course, Margaret held multiple meanings for parishioners, and she also stood as the saint of pregnant women. Childbirth. The downtrodden and the outcast. Fred, though...Fred had always evoked her as Saint of the Dying.
The Saint of Death.
"How did he do this to you?" Conall asked again, running one thumb across the cracked lines of her cheek.
I wanted to perfect immortality.
Immortality...through death?
Conall's frown turned into a low, angry sneer. He closed his fingers around the pendant and its ugly defacement, and gripping hard, he yanked it from the collar around Asya's throat.
As soon as the chain linking the pendant snapped, Asya jerked. Her lips parted enough for her to draw in a shocked, somewhat pained gasp, and her fingers dug into the flesh of his arms. Soon, the tension in her passed, though, and she met his gaze. Tender surprise shone in her eyes.
"There," he said. "Now you don't belong to his twisted version of a Saint anymore."
Asya tilted her head. Her expression wavered: awe, then sorrow; confusion, then relief. Finally she collapsed against his chest, curling up to him, lacing her arms behind his neck and pressing close.
Hiding with him, from a nightmare which had held her too, too long.
The ribbons moved, slithering around him. They laced up his arms, around his throat and up, threading in his hair. They didn't tighten, didn't threaten to choke him: they settled close to him, gently caressing his skin.
The silvery mist rose up once more—though it might have risen only in his mind. It kissed his skin, spreading cool, sweet relief over his aches and wounds. As her ribbons gentled him and her hands caressed his rough, unshaven cheeks, Conall found himself falling once more into his cemetery doll's lonesome memories.
Her first thoughts came scathed with heat and smoke. Details defied his grasp, but Conall understood the scent of sulfur and choking dust. She'd been in one of the bombings. Directly. Asya's memory filled the room around them in shadows of debris, flickering light, and the muffled cries of other nearby victims.
"This is when you were hit," he murmured. Eyes somber, locked on his, she nodded.
"Yes...the home my captain kept for me. Destroyed."
Her echoing whisper carried the sound of time and memory.
The doll's voice faded, allowing Con to hear the voice of Asya, her living voice from before Fred's evil manipulations. He saw beneath the spectre's mask the face of the unspoiled ballerina, stark with fright as she shouted down on him. He was the Captain once more, in her reenactment. And the Captain was dead.
"When he died, I had no one to turn to. He had not told his family of me. I knew no one else in this country. All our possessions, destroyed...any money I might have had, out of my reach because of the war. My baby, already on the way."
Her hands fell to his, and she guided them to her belly as though to underscore the last. As his palms caressed the smooth, flat plane of her abdomen, she showed him scenes of tenderness, and courage brought on by the promise within the child. Trailworn Asya, seeking temporary refuge in boarding houses...sitting in humble rooms after a day of work to pay for her stay. She spoke to the baby, smiled for it, and drew out the one possession she still had—a tiny music box, with a delicate porcelain ballerina turning in graceful pirouette—to fall asleep while it played them both a lullaby.
"Alone...with my baby coming...I turned to the church. They sent me to the convent of Saint Margaret to have my child."
Conall saw the path of this story now. Asya found her way to Whitetail Knoll, same as he had. She'd sought sanctuary under the auspices of the Saint of pregnant women.
There, Father Frederick discovered her.
"Necromancer."
The word came from her like a snap of bitter, black ice. In it Conall heard depths of loathing, outrage, and the fruitless cry of violation.
"For many weeks, we barely noticed one another. He came to say Mass, three times a week. I worked alongside the nuns, filling my day with work to stave off any threat of self-pity. Then, one day, he approached me at breakfast, as though we'd been the dearest friends for years. 'Oh, Miss Kariyeva,' he said to me, 'I once saw you dance in Belgium. So sorry to hear of your present unpleasant circumstances.' But he did not mean the bombing or my poor lover's demise. He meant the baby. He meant, because I had not been married."
Ribbons rolled, silk against his skin. Conall slid his hands around her, pulling her close, feeling her disgust. He held onto it with her, his own anger boiling to think anyone could call Shyla an unpleasant circumstance.
From the beginning, she'd disliked Father Frederick. Conall watched roiling black shadow and spitting distrust follow the priest through Asya's mind. He oozed, like sickening-sweet tar in her thoughts.
Miss Kariyeva...you must certainly have trained very well as a ballerina.
I understand it takes a great deal of strength and stamina to maintain such skill.
Asya, won't you walk with me a ways? I would enjoy your company this morning.
"He became like an unwelcome suitor. The more I rebuffed him, the closer he came."
Conall recognized sensations shivering through her, as though they were his own: he felt Frederick's hand closing on her arm; he caught the creeping goosebumps along the back of her neck when the priest's eyes followed her in the cloisters.
"One night," she whispered, breath like dark lace against his ear, "I woke. He stood beside my bed. I saw him drop something—some vile poison—into the water glass on my table. He meant it for her. He wished to kill her."
"Why?" Conall whispered. His left hand returned to her belly, a motion so natural, so instinctive. Hers covered his. With his other hand he cradled the back of her head, their brows touching.
"He wanted me."
She's rather lovely, wouldn't you say?
...it takes a great deal of strength and stamina...
"He wanted me...ready."
Ready for experiments.
Conall's fingers outlined the invisible tributaries of the patchwork scars.
I wanted to perfect immortality.
"You weren't perfect," he said. "Wouldn't be, couldn't be a perfectly immortal, while you carried another man's child."
"I told the sisters of his attempt. They did not believe me. I tried to leave, but they stopped me. When I continued to fight...he spread rumors I must be going mad."
"He made you a prisoner."
Asya drew in a deep, heavy breath, and let it out in a weary, wraithlike sigh. Bloody tears began again.
Conall pulled her to him, holding her tight against his chest, stroking her long, lovely hair. She must have found a way to flee the convent, soon after Shyla arrived. She would have been utterly alone, desperate to escape a priest out of his mind. However she'd managed it, she'd come here. She hid Shyla in the first secret spot she could find.
Then...
The ribbons around her rippled along his skin like flowing water. The smell of the river, wet grass, and clean stones suffused the space around them. Echoing faintly from far away—over time as much as over distance—her heard her last, hopeless scream. The splash. Icy, cold silence.
"You drowned," he said. She trembled, porcelain limbs rattling quietly, and he firmed his grip, kissing her hair.
"You drowned. Oh, Asya...I'm so, so sorry."
"He drowned me," she corrected. "He found me. Struck me with a rock...and held me under."
The ribbons relaxed.
"Then...before I could truly die...he cursed me."
He didn't need to see any more. The Father had already as much as told him the rest.
I think she's my favorite work.
"He's an evil, twisted son-of-a-bitch," Con growled. "I won't let him do it to Shyla. I swear it. I'm going to kill him for hurting you, Asya. For taking her. I will not allow him to take your baby's life!"
This brought a strange reaction. She met his eyes, her own narrowed with confusion. He realized, for the first time ever, he'd referred to Shyla as someone else's child.
Because she is. This is her mother.
Her true mother.
He pulled his beautiful doll close again and held her, rocking her in his arms while he silently vowed revenge.
Chapter Twenty
Asya disappeared into the mists before Conall could fully prepare himself to go. She hadn't abandoned him, though: he sensed it must be her restricted mode of travel. Whatever Fred had made her into, Con imagined she couldn't have a great deal of mobility and freedom. The strings of the marionette might be hidden, but it had taken thirteen years for her to stretch them as far as the graveyard and back to her daughter. Apparently, it had surprised Fred she'd ever made it to Whitetail Knoll at all.
So where has she been all this time?
She'd almost certainly been trapped at the convent, where Father Frederick could watch her and control her. Where he now no doubt had taken Shy.
Conall still limped, leg aching from his knee to deep in his hip, where Fred's hellish thorn branches wrenched it. It made slow work of collecting his old soldier's gear: attaching his old sword bayonet to his shotgun; digging
out his web belt and attaching munitions rounds to it once more; donning his old uniform body armor; and finally managing himself into the cab of his truck, wrestling his weapon in beside him. The convent lay more than two hours northeast of the Knoll...and Frederick already had all the lead he required.
What would Con find there? Surely the Little Sisters would take issue when Fred arrived, dragging behind him a struggling adolescent girl. The insane priest may have once convinced them Asya Kariyeva had gone mad, but they would have to see Shyla needed their help. Wouldn't they?
If Fred's been keeping the doll a prisoner at their convent for thirteen years, why didn't anyone notice?
Why didn't they do something?
It spread a sour, slimy feeling of dread through his gut. Whatever Fred exposed himself to during the war, it had crawled into his mind like a sickness and made him a monster. Whatever dark magic the priest amassed allowed him to transform a healthy, strong young woman into a phantasm of mis-creation. Asya, at once a work of art, worthy of the collection at the Louvre; at the same time, a patchwork misfit, a golem of her former, living self. She really had become his personal Frankenstein's monster.
Might he have done something to the Sisters in those thirteen years, as well? Could the church have become his...laboratory?
Conall tried to think back to the last time he visited the convent. More than a decade ago. The Little Sisters of Margaret were a tiny, secluded Order. Most of the people in Whitetail Knoll might see but one or two of the women in town on errands once each week, and sometimes not even so often. In fact, in recent years, Fred took it upon himself to deliver many of their supplies when he visited to say Mass. Truth be told...Conall couldn't be sure when he last saw any one of the sisters in person.
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