by Karin Cox
“Sabine,” I cried, but her eyes were blank and her marble teeth were bared.
“I love you,” I insisted to the empty sky and the even emptier-seeming stone, stroking the tear that had already set to stone on her cheek.
You lie, my heart told me.
The growl that issued from the icy stone suggested that I always had.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She had instructed me to go, yet I defied her and stayed. When I finally slept, my head resting upon her cool, marble shoulder, it was to escape the pain of living. I found little solace in it. I dreamed of blood staining the Earth, spreading out around me, withering everything and everyone, and when I awoke, once more the darkness claimed me as its own and the rage in me returned.
I was hungry. I had not eaten for days. Bloodlust rose in me and rankled me. What it asked disgusted me. How could I gorge myself on Vampires now? In a vain attempt to flee from my growing hunger, I flew out into the enveloping evening.
The brook slithered dark as the snake of time, centuries worth, below me. As I had centuries before, I felt pitted and alone, as hollow as the half-shell of sky above. I had nowhere to go. The only places that had ever felt like home to me were poisoned with the memory of who I had been and whom I had lost.
With a scream, I rushed upward, as if to scratch at the pale eye of the moon with my wings. I hurled all the curses known to Earth and to Hell at my Maker. His only message to me was his absence.
In my rage, I plummeted back down to the crumbling castle.
When I had cried all the tears in me, I lit a small fire to warm myself by and took up the Cruximus from where it lay next to Sabine’s anchorstone.
Do not trouble yourself to read the riddle. Sabine is gone.
I considered destroying it, tearing the pages from the binding and burning them one by one.
Skylar put her life in peril so that you might read it, my thoughts admonished me. I opened it tentatively, as if what I was might cause the book to burst into flames at a Vampire’s touch, but it did not.
If He would tell me nothing, if He would leave me ignorant, perhaps the Cruximus might tell me something—anything—about how to be this thing I had become.
I flipped forward to a section that resembled Psalms, skimming the text for anything of interest. It was written in calligraphy, both elegant and laborious to read. My eyes seized upon on the word I had heard Skylar utter many times: Haemacra. Returning to the first paragraph on the page, I began to read.
“The Sibyl’s Decree” read the title. The name beneath indicated it was written by one known as Eresia—Shintaro’s betrothed, I remembered.
How long had he been alone? How many centuries?
I moved a finger down the page as I read.
“The day shall come when blood will wash the Earth as a red tide, devouring all before it. It shall follow a black wave, a time of dark tidings for mortals, and its teeth shall be sharp with the knowledge of our doings and of our death. Only one among the light-givers might stop the tide. One new to the world yet old to it. One born of sacrifice and of sorrow, whose blood cannot be spilled but who has spilled forbidden blood. This one will be known as the Cruor, and will suffer the Haemacra and live. Vengeance congeals in his veins but his honor will meet it with mercy. Over his coming, the bloodwine will be soured, and through his deeds it will gush from mouths dry with long regret and make them wet and willing to rush upon old enemies. You shall know the Cruor by the cross he bears and by the mark upon him. By the name that makes him live forever. By the love of the Mother and the faith of the Father. By the sins of the Sibling and the love of the Swan. And by the riddle of the Sphinx.”
I shook my head. Garbled words, although I could not deny some of them sang with truth. I was new to Cruximkind, although old after centuries of wandering alone. My entry into Silvenhall had caused them to refuse the bloodwine they had drunk so freely.
I read it again.
Meaning still eluded me. “Through his deeds shall it gush from mouths that are dry with long regret and make them wet again to rush upon old enemies,” I read aloud. Did it mean Milandor would attack Silvenhall? Were they the old enemies it referenced?
My fingers traced the crucifix the good parishioners of Sezanne had carved into my chest and then sought out the smaller, shinier cross of Danette’s that I had folded into my packet.
That much was true: I bore a cross.
Aeternus, my father’s name—Latin for eternal.
But my mother had made the ultimate sacrifice for Kisana, not me, and what sin had my sister committed?
I turned sad eyes to the anchorstone, once more wishing the eyes might chink open and that Sabine might recant the words she had so recently spoken and help me decipher the words.
I flipped the pages forward, searching for the riddle. When I found it, like the other, it was unreadable—a mess of meaningless words.
“Long, long the lion-headed power,
and long the morning’s sweet regret,
brings head to pound, and teeth to bare,
and owes a lasting debt,
which makes the grateful marble maw,
desire tastes tainted yet true.
On wings, the mercy of Sekhmet
so far from Egypt flew,
so one a Sphinx will not forget
might sever stone and Crux anew,
to wake a creature seldom seen
and known to just a few.”
I read it again. It meant nothing. The harshness of my own sigh told me it was hopeless. I could not decipher it without help. And where was help to be found?
With a groan of defeat, I tossed the book into the corner. Thinking better of it, I took it up again. It had the weight of the incunabulum in my hands.
It will be the death of me. Just as Joslyn’s book was the death of her, I thought. What is a book but a lie? Pages of words strung together like a net.
My wings were weakened by hunger, but I suddenly felt I had to leave this place. Sabine was right: there were too many ghosts.
“Skylar? I said aloud one last time. The name was sweet on my lips, but no answer came. Her guardianship, like Sabine’s, had ended.
It is for the best. Although still it pained me.
Where should I go? I asked myself. To a coven, issued my veins. I longed for the blood of Vampires, for the sensation of killing them. The subsiding rage when their lifeblood ebbed away was the only peace I knew.
If not to kill them, then to know them, said my head. To understand them. To absolve yourself for what you have done to them.
I remembered the sensation of the boy’s blood in my veins. The rapture and the sweet taste of innocence. I knew what they knew, even if I was only newly known to myself. I felt as they felt. I sinned as they sinned. How could they turn me away?
Immediately, I laughed at my foolishness. Know Thyself Cruxim. They would hate me just as surely Daneo did.
No, I thought. I am alone.
I hugged the book to my chest.
What was I and where should I go? I had fallen somewhere between two new beasts—Cruxim and Vampire—and yet I was neither, just as I was neither devil nor truly angel. I was a hybrid, very rare, seldom seen, so little known that some thought me little more than a chimera...
I stopped, fluttering vertically in the air for a moment as a thought took hold like a downdraft. It took shape, grew wings of its own. It towed me along with it, south-west, away from Crèches and Covens, Cruxim and Vampire, toward the only species that did not know what I was, toward human beings.
I lifted my face to the wind.
I did not look back.
Below the clouds, I thought I glimpsed the broad, snowy wings of a swan, spread wide to catch me if I fell.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Thank you for reading Creche; I hope you enjoyed it. Amedeo, Skylar, Sabine and more will return in the final book of the series in 2014. If you enjoyed the novel, please consider leaving a review on Goodreads, Amazon, or els
ewhere. I would very much appreciate your feedback. You can also join my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/vk_bP to be the first to hear about new releases and special offers.
You can follow me, Karin Cox, on twitter at @Authorandeditor or http://www.karincox.wordpress.com, or on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/KarinCox.Author. Or you can email me at [email protected]. I would love to know your thoughts.
ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR
As well as more than thirty works of children’s fiction, non-fiction natural history, social history, and many ghost-written works of creative non-fiction, Karin Cox is the author of:
Cruxim, a gothic paranormal romance;
Creche, sequel to Cruxim;
Cage Life, a collection of short stories;
Crows and Other Beasts, a collection of two short stories;
Hey, Little Sister, an illustrated children’s picture book; and
Pancakes on Sunday, an illustrated children’s picture book.
Her essays also appear in the Indie Chicks Anthologies: Memories of Mom and Dad, and Ms. Adventures in Travel.
She lives in Australia and writes full time while caring for her daughter—undoubtedly her most important and precious work.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to the ‘insiders’ who keep me sane: my incredibly supportive online writing groups, betas and editors (Michele Perry and Jessica Meigs), and those other indie authors who share their tips, and their ups and downs with me. My endless gratitude especially to some wonderful fans turned friends: Iva Rajic, Jodi Brooks, and the ever-lovely Mint. Your comments, encouragement, and reader insight are invaluable. Thank you.
And to some friends turned fans: Helen Robertson, JC Lommel, Greg James, Alisa Tangredi, Jolea M. Harrison, Tara West, Mandy White, and, of course, Michele Perry. Thank you for your support and for being coaxed into reading my drafts. If I had to cobble together a workable Crèche myself in real life, you guys would be my Proxim. Bring wine (just the normal variety, thanks. No Haemil. I ask a lot from my betas, but not that much). Thanks for sharing the blood, sweat, and tears with me.