Page 25 of Wilder


  Amber stood shaking her head over and over, as if denial would change the facts.

  No. Only the truth would change the facts that Dr. King presented.

  In the shadowy places of the cave, the Belows stood weeping or staring in shock.

  “I know how you all feel.” Dr. King wore the usual: his black suit, his white shirt, a blue tie. He looked and sounded like the man in charge. “This is a shock and a tragedy. No one can replace him, so we need to think about closing the Guardian cave—”

  “We can’t give up on Guardian! He saved us. He cares for us.” Amber swung around to face the Belows. “We have to rescue him!”

  Dr. King intervened at once, projecting his authority and dominating these sad souls whom life had treated so badly. “We can’t fight! These people have guns. They used a helicopter and a net to catch Guardian. They are all-powerful. We have to cooperate.”

  “No,” Amber said. “I won’t cooperate with the devil!”

  Sternly, Dr. King said, “Then you won’t survive.”

  Taurean muttered something.

  “What?” he snapped.

  Moises spoke up. “She said if you haven’t met the devil face-to-face, maybe you are going the same way he is.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Dr. King’s tone softened. “But I understand your distress. I’m distressed, too, and I know that you are all upset—”

  Aleksandr straightened to his full height. He stepped into the light. “I’m upset.”

  Dr. King spun to face him, and for one moment his eyes lit with joy.

  Taurean rushed at Aleksandr, mewling like a cat. She embraced him, quickly, loosely, and jumped back.

  Amber fell to her knees and raised her hands to heaven.

  Moises walked toward him slowly, holding out his hand and weeping loudly.

  Aleksandr took his hand and shook it, then gently moved him aside and advanced on Dr. King. “I’m very upset. Who told you I was captured? Who told you I wouldn’t be coming back?”

  Dr. King wet his lips. “Taurean . . .”

  Taurean shook her head violently.

  Moises said, “No, she didn’t.”

  Amber caught on quickly, and leaned across the table. “Really, Dr. King, who told you?”

  “I heard at my clinic.” Aleksandr could almost see Dr. King’s mind working. “A patient came in. . . .”

  “You heard from a patient?” Aleksandr nodded as if he believed, then shook his head. “And you made it back to the Guardian cave before me? You’re three-foot-nothing, and you beat a running beast back here?”

  “Your mind isn’t right,” Dr. King said. “You probably lost your way. You probably blacked out.”

  “I know I didn’t.” Aleksandr stepped to the chair where Dr. King stood and, for the first time ever, deliberately towered over the tiny man. “What have you done?”

  Defiantly, Dr. King tilted his chin up. Then he collapsed onto the chair. He sat with his legs straight out, his fists clutched tightly in his lap. “After you first appeared down here, and I found you, they came to the clinic. They came to me. I didn’t go to them. I don’t know how, but they knew that I’d found you. And they offered me money.”

  “You betrayed me for money?” Aleksandr hadn’t expected that.

  “Not money for me. For the clinic.”

  “Ah.” That made more sense.

  Dr. King continued. “You have to realize—no one in the real world cares about the homeless. About the street people.”

  Aleksandr stared coldly.

  “Except you and me,” Dr. King added hastily. “Nobody official, I mean. Nobody with a checkbook. More important, no one believes it’s possible for a black dwarf to care for them. I can’t get government funding. I can’t get charities to take me seriously. I had no funds, but I was treating people for disease, for hypothermia, for injury. I didn’t have the most basic medical equipment. I was setting bones blindly, without an X-ray, using splints and rags. Treating disease with no medicines. Starving people came to me and I couldn’t feed them. The homeless were sleeping on the floor of my clinic and I had no blankets to cover them.”

  “I got it. It was tough.”

  “They came to me and said that if I kept an eye on you, they’d support the clinic.”

  “They? Who are they?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know! I just know that for the past twenty months, I’ve had morphine and food and antibiotics whenever I needed them. I’ve done a lot of good. I stand by that.” Dr. King was passionate. He was persuasive.

  The Belows all shuffled forward a few steps.

  He glanced around at them, then appealingly up at Aleksandr.

  Yeah, Dr. King. Who’s going to protect you now? “You told them about me, told them enough that they knew exactly how to bait the trap. You sent Taurean to me with the report that Charisma was under attack, knowing I trusted her implicitly, and knowing perfectly well that Smith Bernhard intended to take me captive.”

  “I was your friend!” Dr. King cried. “All this time, to the best of my ability, I have helped you!”

  “Was the whole setup your plan? Did you tell them that the one foolproof lure to get me to the surface was knowing Charisma was under attack?” The beast in Aleksandr wanted to kill Dr. King. Or perhaps . . . Aleksandr himself wanted to kill him. “Did you ever think about Charisma? That she could have been killed?”

  Dr. King began, “They promised—”

  “And those people always keep their promises, do they?” Aleksandr saw before him a fool—and a future demon meal. “Did you really think that Charisma and I were such good friends of yours that we’d be willing to sacrifice ourselves so you’d have the cash to run your clinic?”

  Dr. King hunched his shoulders.

  “By the time you betrayed me, I knew what Bernhard had done to me, and you knew it, too. Operations without anesthesia. Torture and brainwashing.” Aleksandr looked at his hands, warped, deformed, hairy. “He made me a monster.”

  Shaking with indignation, Dr. King got to his feet. “Get over it! I’ve always been a monster. I was born that way!”

  “No. You made yourself a monster.” Like a bully with a puppy, Aleksandr picked up Dr. King by the collar. He picked up the medical bag. He carried the choking, kicking doctor to the entrance to the cave. He wanted to throw him. Throw him as hard as he could.

  Instead, he set Dr. King on his feet. He placed the bag next to him. “Get out,” he said. “Go to your friends and tell them I’m back in the Guardian cave, and see what kind of support you get from them. And never, ever come underground again.”

  Dr. King straightened his tie, his jacket, his cuff links. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Aleksandr snapped out a laugh. “You knew my story, you knew what had been done to me, and you double-crossed me anyway. Don’t deceive yourself. No matter how many starving people you feed. No matter how many homeless you help. No matter how many of the sick you heal. You allied yourself with the devil, and you are going to hell.” He turned and walked away.

  “What difference does it make that you rescued Charisma?” Dr. King wasn’t loud, but Aleksandr heard him clearly. “She’s going to die anyway.”

  Aleksandr kept walking. “Not if I can help it.”

  “She’s beyond help already. She beat back the demon’s venom, but only temporarily. No one can escape the demon’s venom, and sooner or later she will die, blind and in agony.”

  Aleksandr wheeled to face Dr. King.

  With a small, spiteful smile, Dr. King concluded, “So even if you manage to escape Smith Bernhard, you’ll be alone. Enjoy your years in wretched solitude, Guardian.”

  Chapter 45

  Charisma remembered nothing from the time she saw Guardian escape the net until she woke to find herself standing in a dimly lit corridor full of doors, wearing pajamas, surrounded by nuns in nightgowns. She said aloud, “Either this is a weird dream, or I’ve been sleepwalking again.”

  Mother Catherine
slowly reached out her hand and rested it on Charisma’s shoulder. “You were sleepwalking.”

  “I was really hoping it was a dream.” But Charisma knew better. She could still hear the earth beckoning, cajoling, demanding. “How long have I been . . . asleep?” she asked. Unconscious, she meant.

  “Twelve hours. It’s now eleven in the evening on the day of the demon attack.” Mother Catherine tucked her arm around Charisma’s. “Perhaps we should go to my office and talk.”

  The other nuns smiled kindly and drifted away, through the doors and into their stark bedrooms.

  Mother Catherine led Charisma down the corridor and through a wide, ornate wooden door with a small plaque that read, PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE.

  “I feel like I’m in trouble,” Charisma joked. Except she meant it.

  Mother Catherine gestured to a chair in front of a battered antique desk. “I think you are in trouble.”

  Charisma sat. “I guess I am. I just don’t know which part of my trouble is the most important.”

  “This morning, after you passed out and we put you to bed, I stayed with you.” Mother Catherine used her hands to lower herself into her seat. “I rapidly became concerned. You were talking aloud, begging me to tell you that Guardian had escaped—”

  “Has he?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, the poor thing has escaped.”

  “He’s not a thing,” Charisma snapped. “He’s a man.”

  Mother Catherine lifted her eyebrows in surprise. “Of course. Forgive me.”

  Charisma subsided. She may have overreacted.

  Mother Catherine continued. “After I reassured you of Guardian’s safety, you then begged someone who was not visible to leave you alone, to let you live. Apparently whoever it was . . . is stalking you.”

  “Yes. That.” Charisma wondered exactly how to tell a nun that the earth had given her a woo-woo gift. “It’s more of a what than a who.”

  Mother Catherine showed her keen powers of observation when she said, “You do realize that in my days as the director of an orphanage and a convent, I’ve not only seen children with unusual skills, but I have also heard every story, and discovered some are even true. And now I’ve also been attacked by living demons from hell.”

  “I don’t know if we can call them living.”

  Mother Catherine looked over her glasses at Charisma.

  “Right. That’s not important. Okay. Here we go.” Taking a breath, Charisma told Mother Catherine everything, from the first moment she’d felt the earth bless her with a gift to her induction into the Chosen Ones, to the threat and the call that filled her head.

  When she was finished, Mother Catherine leaned back and tapped her fingers together, her heavy-lidded eyes thoughtful. “You don’t want to respond to the call?”

  “If I stay here with the Chosen Ones, that’s a good thing, too. They need me for all kinds of reasons.” Charisma shifted, then caught herself. The chair was narrow and hard, and required that she sit straight-backed and very still. “They need a fighter, and I’m one of them, and maybe I can help figure out how to free that first feather from the box, and maybe I can help find the second feather.”

  Charisma might as well have saved her breath. Mother Catherine saw through her babbling to the heart of the problem. “When you follow the earth’s call, what is it you fear?”

  Charisma wanted to say more . . . but slowly she subsided, and answered the question. “I fear darkness. Forever.”

  “Death.”

  “Death with no chance of redemption. For eternity.”

  “If you want my advice—”

  Charisma really didn’t.

  “—I’d say your choice is clear. You don’t want to abandon the Chosen Ones when your vow was to stay with them for the seven years of your tenure. That’s admirable. But your vows to the earth far precede your promise to the Chosen Ones—”

  “I never took a vow to the earth!”

  Mother Catherine said nothing.

  But her eyes, made big by her heavy, dark-rimmed glasses, spoke volumes.

  Charisma folded her hands in her lap and shut up.

  Mother Catherine continued. “And if the earth is calling you now to redeem your promise, you must obey.”

  “I don’t want to die alone and underground,” Charisma said passionately.

  “Do you know that the earth demands your life?”

  “I’ve had so many dreams . . . about going into a tunnel in a mountain, a tunnel without light or hope. And I know there’s another world on the other side, but I also know I might never find my way out. Not ever.” Charisma swallowed. “Eternity in the dark.”

  “I have some experience with calls from the beyond, and women who fight that call for good reason. But I also know that you have to take the gamble. You have to hope that what good you’ve done on this earth will be a light on your way. Do you not?”

  Charisma sighed. She nodded.

  Why did she have to end up in a convent with a clear-sighted, honorable nun?

  “Good.” Mother Catherine opened her desk drawer and dug deep. “You can’t go to your meeting with the earth in pajamas. It’s not respectful, like attending mass without your head covered.” She pulled out a set of keys. “I’ve kept the clothes I wore to the convent in 1960, when I renounced the world and all its vanities. I think they’ll fit you very well.” She went to the tall cabinet in the corner, unlocked it, and smiled.

  Charisma saw a plethora of papers, holy day decorations, and supplies. And graduation gowns in the school colors.

  Mother Catherine flipped through the hangers and crowed with delight. “There it is. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.” With loving hands, she brought forth a cloth garment bag with buttons. She laid it across her desk, opened the buttons, and revealed a cream-colored Jackie O–styled jacket with matching trousers.

  Awe brought Charisma to her feet.

  “It’s Chanel. Some might say I’ve been saving it out of vanity.” Mother Catherine stroked the wool with her fragile, twisted fingers. “I say I’ve been saving it for you.”

  “It’s . . . It’s too much. It’s a piece of history. You should keep this. It’s yours!”

  “Yes, and I wish to give it to one of my favored children, one who will appreciate the gift.” Mother Catherine smiled at Charisma’s reverence. “Now take it.”

  With reverent hands, Charisma accepted the suit.

  “I wore it with a blue cotton blouse.” Mother Catherine removed the hanger from the closet and frowned. “Oh, dear. It’s a little faded around the shoulders.”

  “It’s dark down there. I can wear the blouse”—Charisma took the hanger—“and as long as I keep the jacket on, the earth won’t notice.”

  “No.” But still Mother Catherine frowned. “I saved the undergarments.” She pulled an old cardboard box covered with boldly colored flowered paper from the top of the closet and opened it. “Yes! And the shoes.”

  “Oh . . .” Charisma cooed as she lifted the cream-colored handmade Salvatore Ferragamo pumps out of the box. “These are fabulous.”

  “They work very well with the suit.” Mother Catherine snapped the box shut and placed it on the desk.

  “Thank you. But I can’t . . .”

  “Of course you can. I give it all to you.”

  “Thank you. Really. But I can’t wear the heels to the cave. It’s too far. And it’ll be dirty.”

  Mother Catherine’s eyes widened in horror.

  They both contemplated the pristine shoes.

  “I’ll get your athletic shoes.” Mother Catherine disappeared, and returned in only a minute carrying Charisma’s black-and-fluorescent-pink training shoes. “There. You can wear these until you get there, and change before you step on sacred ground.” Mother Catherine nodded decisively. “Now I’ll leave you to dress.”

  “Right. Sounds good. Thank you,” Charisma said again as the door closed behind Mother Catherine.

  She kept on her own
“undergarments”—not only did the idea of wearing Mother Catherine’s freak her out, but the elastic in them had failed about thirty years ago. She didn’t have hose, of course, de rigueur for 1960, but her workout bra and panties gave her a slim line under the suit, which was even more fabulous than Charisma had first imagined.

  Donning her training shoes made her wince, but when Mother Catherine knocked and entered, Charisma spread her arms. “Well?”

  Tears sprang to Mother Catherine’s eyes. “My dear child. You do me—and Chanel—honor in your choice of garb.”

  Charisma closed her eyes in relief.

  Mother Catherine slipped the pumps into their custom cloth bag and handed them to Charisma. “Now come.”

  “It’s night. I’m going to need help getting out of the convent so I can go belowground.”

  “No, you won’t.” Mother Catherine shook her head and led her down the corridor, past the doors to the nuns’ bedrooms, toward a small locked door at the end of the hall. She unlocked it and turned on the light.

  Charisma peered down the narrow, steep stairway.

  “When Sister Brigetta found you sleepwalking, this is where you were headed.” At the bottom, Mother Catherine flipped on the next light.

  The basement was storage for the school and convent, full of boxes and paintings and chipped holy statues. At the back, where the light was the dimmest, was another door, metal and secured with a series of locks.

  Charisma’s heart began to beat heavily.

  Behind that door waited her destiny.

  As Mother Catherine opened the locks, she said, “Remember, my child, you have to ascertain the right thing to do, and do it.”

  As the door swung open into the Stygian darkness, Charisma said, “You make it sound so easy.”

  “It is. You will do the right thing. I know it.” Mother Catherine handed her a flashlight, lifted her hand and blessed Charisma, and left her standing, staring into the darkness and wishing she had Mother Catherine’s faith . . . in herself.

  Chapter 46

  An hour later, Davidov found Charisma wandering slowly through the tunnels and led her to his empty brew pub. He set her on a bench at a long table. As he served her warm, rich beef stew, he said, “Mother Catherine tends to think of the broader picture, and miss the fact that you might need refreshment before you start out on such an arduous passage to the heart of the earth.”