CHAPTER THREE
cross creek
A flame swelled and receded behind the dirty hurricane glass surrounding a thick gray candle. Its light illuminated a dusty dresser and black cobwebs wafting from the ceiling. On a rickety nightstand, another candle cast shadows around the dying boy and the scarred, one-eyed woman occupying the austere room.
Rachael pulled her rocking chair closer to the bed and peeled back the blood-soaked quilt. She narrowed her left eye as she frowned at the youth. Pink bubbles formed at the corner of his lips where his skin had been ripped. She’d stitched him up as best as she could, but there were too many wounds, too much lost blood. The boy’s eyes were open slits, dull with death. She was sure he didn’t see her. Perhaps that was just as well.
She wiped her fingers on the tail of her filthy shirt and picked up the stack of cards she’d found in his wallet. An identification card contained his name and address—Peter Richardson, 909 Country Club Drive, Taylorsville, North Carolina—and a fingerprint beside his smiling picture. The boy’s library card was next then his social security card.
A thin headache threaded its way into her brain. She rubbed the black patch over her right eye. This was her fault. It didn’t matter whether he was attacked within the Veil or in Woerld. He was her foundling, and she should have sensed his coming so she could be there to help him.
She was slipping. A tendril of fear burrowed into her heart; she killed it before it could take root. Fools whined.
Peter closed his eyes and his chest rose and fell as he slept. She placed the cards on the table and settled back in her rocker, the creak of wood against wood the only sound above the wind. Rachael remembered her own pain when Caleb had brought her out of Hell. Sleep had been her only escape; deep, dreamless sleep where her agony couldn’t touch her. Lulled by the rocker’s smooth motion and the warmth of the room, Rachael’s thoughts drifted in the semi-dark. Her mind wandered into a dream where she dreamed herself back on Earth.
She was eleven years old again and running through the field behind her father’s house. A rusty pick-up truck obscured by kudzu and weeds loomed out of the twilight. Her hip bumped the fender before she could swerve. Rachael caught her scream before it fled her lips. She left a bloody handprint on the hood as she passed.
A quick glimpse showed her father following her at a dead run. He was only a few yards behind her. Pale blonde hair stood in stark contrast to his red, furious face, but Rachael only saw the bloodied ax that he carried. From the open windows of their farmhouse, the radio blared. Her father grinned and Mick Jagger growled a song about a man with railroad spike driven through his head.
Rachael ran toward a strange crimson fog. She cringed when her tennis shoes hit the boards that covered the old well, but the wood held. For her. Seconds later, her father crossed the same boards. A resounding crack drowned the chorus of the song.
She heard the crash and looked back, but the field was blurred by the red haze so like the blood that covered her. Suddenly someone grabbed her and she screamed. She stumbled into John’s arms hard enough to drag them both to their knees.
Her father’s cries rang through the Veil. Rae-baby, you come on over here and help your daddy now. From the depths of the well where he’d fallen, his voice echoed strangely into Woerld. Rae? Get daddy a rope. Baby? I know you’re there. There was a splash and a panicked groan. Goddamnit, Rae, you quit fucking around and get your ass over here! Right now!
Rachael turned to John, but he was gone, and she was in Lucian’s arms. He spoke her name with a voice like thunder and silenced her father’s pleas. With a touch, he drove her demons into the night and made her safe. She reached for him; he slipped away, swallowed by a mist.
A mighty wind dispersed the fog to reveal a city of death where the gale shrieked through empty buildings. Lucian stood before her, his dark eyes ruined with grief, a blaze of white marring the black of his hair. He leaned upon a cane and called her name. She was drenched in blood, only now it was her own. She thrust her crimson hands forward, her life pooling at her feet.
I can’t make it stop, she said as a fly whined past her face.
Peter’s final whistling breath woke her with a start, and her dream dissipated into the night with a little boy’s soul.
Rachael leaned forward. “Peter?” She rubbed his hand between her palms. “Come on, Peter.” She pulled the blanket off his body and listened for his heartbeat. Silence. The room blurred and her throat burned. She choked her tears down. Weeping wouldn’t bring him back. The dead never came back.
“Hey, you tried. You really tried.” Rachael smoothed his hair and kissed his cheeks. “I’m sorry.” Sorry for him and for herself. “I’m so sorry.” Her first foundling and he’d died before they could know one another. She reached over the headboard and took down the rosary hanging on the wall then wound the beads around his broken hands.
The quiet house echoed her loneliness as she knelt beside him. After rummaging through her exhausted brain, she settled on the Lord’s Prayer and recited the verses by rote. She remained still for a few minutes after she finished, resting her head against the mattress.
On the floor beside the nightstand leg, a piece of paper caught her eye, and she reached down to pick it up. The photograph must have slid out of Peter’s wallet. Rachael stood and carried the picture to the candlelight. Two young people posed on a beach, laughing at the camera. The boy was Peter in the not-so-distant past; the girl was obviously a very close relation, possibly a sister.
How happy they looked. Rachael tried to remember if she’d ever laughed with such wild abandon but no memory would come. A tear wept through the stone of her heart; she swept it away before it could weaken her.
A fresh drop of blood splashed across the photo, landing on Peter’s face. Rachael examined the red blotch in wonder. When she dabbed her nose, blood smeared across the back of her hand. The headache returned and rammed into her skull with the riveting agony of a spike through her temple. She screamed in surprise and anger. Fire snarled her synapses, driving her thoughts like quicksilver before the beast in her head.
Somewhere a Katharos opened a Gate between Woerld and Hell.
Her brain burned with cold as the Wyrm surged from the abyss of her soul. The demon seized her distraction and scratched against the back of her mind, a cadaverous fingernail scraping against a tomb. She started her Psalm of protection: ‘I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, that he may hear me…’
The Wyrm flinched back.
This was nothing. She could control it.
The body on the bed sat up.
“Rigor mortis,” she murmured, but she knew the corpse was too warm for rigor.
Peter’s head turned toward her and his eyes shot open.
Or not. She continued the Psalm through parched lips. “‘In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord.’”
The temperature in the room dropped until her breath misted before her in a cloud of white. Her fear raised beads of sweat to her upper lip. The air was oppressive in spite of the cold, a dark heaviness settled on the room, and the Wyrm uncoiled in her brain. The creature sought a vein, an artery, a canal to its birth; the Psalm held the demon back. For now.
“Save her,” Peter croaked, the stitches on his cheek ripping open his flesh again. The air in front of his mouth did not turn white. No warmth in his lungs; the dead didn’t breathe.
She glanced at the rosary. Peter’s skin didn’t burn so the boy’s spirit had returned, nothing more. Had there been another foundling with him? The girl in the picture?
“‘…in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying,’” her hoarse whisper broke the stillness.
“Lyn… Lyn.” The remnant of Peter’s hand started to jerk within the rosary. “Save—” The corpse gagged horribly.
A thin stream of smoke began to smolder where the rosary touched his flesh. There was a sudden change in the pitch of Peter’s voice as the minor Possessors surged forward, seeking a body to command. The boy’s mouth worked. A shrill cacophony erupted from his throat, each voice striving to be heard one over the other through his dead lips.
Certain her head would explode, she shut her eye. Her hands shook as the Wyrm fought for control of the body they shared. “‘…my soul refuses to be comforted…’”
The Gate closed against the shadows rushing out.
“Leave us alone!” The hellish chorus vomited from Peter’s lips. His flesh burned.
The Possessors receded, clawing to remain in Woerld before they were sucked back into Hell. Shadows dry as October spiders skittered into the corners of the room. The Wyrm withdrew to the recesses of her soul where the demon would await its next opportunity. Peter’s body flopped back to the bed and twitched before it resumed the illusion of sleep that was death.
Half blind from the sweat pouring into her good eye, Rachael staggered to the window and threw it open. Cool night air washed her face. Vomit slipped through her lips before she could lean over the sill where she retched until she thought she would see her lungs. She took deep breaths, glancing once to the inert Peter, now a shadowy husk.
Lucian had commanded that Hell Gate. The residue of his magic tingled through her veins, and she raked her nails across her forearm. Not even pain drove the warmth of his prayers from her soul. Ever since his exile, she’d starved her heart of his love and purged her flesh of his touch. Until tonight, he’d been dead to her.
She slammed her hand against the wall and strangled her angry cry. The dead don’t come back. She prayed mindlessly, I think of God, think of God, oh, God, please God, God, God, forcing down the despair that threatened to engulf her. Lucian. Oh God, oh damn, not Lucian.