For now. Until this war is over.
“Always!”
You may choose differently when this is finished.
“I won’t.”
We shall see, the figure said quietly. Until then, however you choose, know that I am watching you. Always.
The figure began to fade slowly, becoming translucent first so that the walls (there were walls again!) showed through it. Then the veils misted into smoke, and were scattered by the air; the gleaming flesh dissolved into random glitter, then dissipated before her eyes. Nothing was left of the image of the goddess, save the memory which even now made her tremble.
“Thank you, Saris.” She could barely find enough voice to shape the words. “Thank you.”
She managed to get to her feet somehow. Managed to get to where her clothing lay and put it back on, piece by piece. How few mortals ever saw a god incarnate, much less were counseled by one? Her hands were shaking as she put the communion robe aside. Saris was watching, she told herself. She would always be watching. For whatever reason, the goddess seemed to care about the outcome of this ... what had she called it? A war.
Fully dressed now, she shivered. Oh, Narilka. What are you getting yourself into?
Had she looked behind her as she left the temple, she would have seen nothing unusual, for Saris no longer maintained the illusion of a solid form. Had she listened closely, she would have heard nothing unusual, for Saris no longer couched her words in cadences the fleshborn might hear. But there was a presence behind her, and there were words, and both were echoed by the fae as it flowed about her feet.
Careful, my brother, the Iezu/goddess whispered. We are all watching now.
Fifteen
The snake is black, and its eyes are drops of blood. At one end its many necks twine like tentacles, promising to enmesh the unwary in a living web of cold flesh and sharp teeth. At the other end is a face out of Hell, whose hot breath stinks of sulfur and carrion as it lunges for him, jaws snapping shut mere inches from his throat as he throws himself backward—
Damien awoke suddenly, heart pounding. He was lying on the couch of his rented apartment, and his body was drenched with sweat. What a nightmare! He tried to sit up, but his muscles were like knots and he had to work them loose before they would obey him. What the hell had brought that on?
He would have suspected Tarrant, but the dream wasn’t his style at all; the Hunter generally preferred a more complex scenario, a sophisticated blend of fear and despair that was light-years beyond the primitive biochemical terror of this experience. What was that thing anyway? It reminded him of representations of the Evil One that the Church favored, only far more real and terrifying than those formalized portraits. And why would he suddenly start dreaming about the Evil One now, after all he’d been through in the last two years? Certainly there were more concrete fears to occupy his mind.
He froze suddenly as a particularly nasty thought hit him. For a moment he couldn’t move, but sat rigid on the worn couch as his sweat chilled to ice on his skin. No, he whispered silently. Willing it not to be. What words had Tarrant used when he referred to his patron? Divided into parts, it can be petty and unpredictable. Unified, it is a ruthless evil.
Divided and unified, both at once. He thought of the creature in his dream, and cold certainty filled him. What other image would his mind choose to represent such a Power?
Where the hell was Tarrant now? He’d been supposed to come up as soon as the sun set, so that they could compare notes and discuss future strategy. But it was well past sunset now and the Hunter hadn’t shown his face. Damien could think of only two reasons why he wouldn’t show up on time, and the simpler one—forgetfulness—just wasn’t like him.
Someone—or something—must have interfered.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach Damien caught up his keys and exited the small apartment. By the time the door slammed shut behind him he was already running down the narrow stairs to the first floor, his hand skimming along the demon-wards that had been inscribed into the banister. His feet hammered on the worn stairs in a rhythm only slightly louder than his heartbeat. A voice inside him warned, Even if it is what you think, what can you possibly do? but he forced himself to ignore it as he darted to the next staircase, the one that led down beneath ground level.
Tarrant’s door was shut, and looked just as it would if nothing were wrong. He banged on it with a heavy fist, calling out the Hunter’s name. Again. His blows were hard enough to make the door vibrate, but still there was no response.
“Who’s down there?” The voice came from behind him, a woman’s. He heard her steps descending the narrow stairs as he banged on the door again, with force enough that even the frame shivered. No response. Damn Tarrant to Hell, what was going on?
“Is something wrong?” It was the landlady, an older woman whom Damien had met but once. Her tone was more suspicious than concerned, and her tone made it clear that he looked more like a raving madman than a reliable tenant. He spared her a quick glance, trying for one moment to look calm enough to reassure her. He doubted it worked.
“I think my friend’s in trouble.” He banged on the door again, hard enough to shake the frame. “Gerald! Are you in there?” There was cold sweat beading on his brow now, and his hands had started shaking. He tried to remember what the windows of the apartment were like, which he had boarded up only two days ago. Too narrow for him to slide through, he decided at last, even if he could kick the boards free. Worse and worse. He was about to start banging again when the landlady pushed him aside. Her expression was harsh and frankly suspicious, but she had a large ring of keys in her hand and was reaching toward the lock with it. He let her. The brass key entered the lock and turned, and he heard the metallic snap of a bolt being withdrawn. With one last glance at him she turned the door handle and pulled. Nothing. He pushed her aside and pulled himself, but the door wouldn’t budge. Clearly it was bolted from the inside.
Damn!
“What did you expect?” she demanded.
He tried to work a Knowing aimed at the apartment within, despite the fact that fear and frustration combined made it hard to concentrate. The Working he conjured was a weak thing, that barely made it past the wood of the door. Images took shape before his eyes: dark shapes, bloodstained and evil, whose chill power constricted his lungs until it was hard to breathe. Great. That could be Tarrant himself, for all he knew. How did you distinguish the Hunter from true demons, when the two were so very similar?
“Look,” he told her, “I’m going to have to break in—”
“Oh, no, you don‘t!” She forced herself between Damien and the door. “Your friend wanted a secure apartment, and that’s what he got. Already I’ve put up with gods know how many nails and such being hammered in the windows, and now—”
“I’ll pay for it,” he said quickly. “I’ll pay for any damages in cash, right now.” He dug hurriedly into his pocket, praying that he had enough money on him. There were coins in the bottom, large ones by the feel of them; he pulled them out quickly and offered them to her. “Here.” They’d pay for the door three times over, he estimated; even so she was reluctant to accept them. “Take them!”
“I never had such trouble like this before,” she muttered. But she got out of the way. He stepped forward and ran his hands over the door, trying to Know its substance. After a few seconds he cursed in frustration, stepped back, and tried to think clearly.
The bolt was a solid one, affixed in a steel chamber that was firmly attached to the wood. It wasn’t going to come loose easily, not by virtue of any Working he knew how to do. Damn the Church, which had limited his training to the sorceries it approved of, making him helpless in the face of such a simple mechanism! He drew in a deep breath and tried to think calmly, tried to reason his way through the problem the way Tarrant would have done. The lock was steel through and through. Steel was hard to Work. The slot that received it was also steel, and well fortified against a forced a
ssault. But where the steel parts were affixed to the wood, and within the wood itself ...
He Knew the door and the wall beside it, and chose the wall as the more vulnerable of the two. Then he reached inside it with carefully focused fae, in the same way that he had done to a tree in the Black Lands so long ago. Insinuating himself into its cells, smelling out the microbes that crouched between the woody fibers, analyzing their hunger. At last he found what he wanted, and he Healed. The microbes grew and multiplied, their life cycles accelerated by his Working. As they grew, they digested the wood that surrounded them, breaking down the hard cell walls, rotting the powerful fibers. Two generations of microbes, then three. He guided them through their newly paced life cycles, making sure their hunger was focused on the one part of the wall he meant to weaken; there was no point in causing more damage than he had to.
At last he sensed that the process had done as much good as it was likely to. Despite his rush, he took care to stabilize the hungry microbes at a normal level before he withdrew his senses from the wall; otherwise the rest of the house could be undermined in a fortnight. Then he stepped back, drew in a deep breath, and pulled on the door as though his life depended on it. At first it didn’t move. He persisted. At last, slowly, the wood of the door frame began to give way. Softly at first, then with a splintering crack that made the landlady step back with a gasp. He gave the door a good jerk, as hard as he could muster, and the wood gave way utterly: the steel housing of the deadbolt tore through the wall and the door was open at last, the mechanism of its closure dangling from its edge like a broken limb.
“Gods‘v Earth,” the woman muttered, but Damien had no time to coddle her. As soon as the door was open, he moved into the dark apartment—
—and malevolence swirled up about his legs with such force that he nearly crashed to his knees, cold fae invading his flesh with a power that made bile rise up in his gut, his stomach spasming as if it could vomit up this repulsive evil. Loathsome, unspeakably loathsome; it took all his self-control not to abandon his search and desperately try to find a Working that would scrub his flesh clean of the sickening power. Go ahead, the power seemed to urge, in a voice that stabbed like knives into his flesh. Try it. He could feel it sucking him down that path, toward that insane, doomed effort, and he knew in that moment that more than one living man had scrubbed his body raw in response to its presence, until skin and muscles both were abraded like cheap rope and even the hot blood which flowed freely was not enough to guarantee a cleansing.
With a sinking heart he staggered toward the bedroom, and somehow gathered enough strength to call the Hunter’s name. He no longer questioned what had happened here; the fae itself made it clear what type of creature had visited, and there was only one thing a creature like that would want. “Gerald?” He searched the bedroom quickly, desperately, but he knew even as he did so that the Hunter wasn’t here. Cold fae stabbed into his flesh like knives as he searched the living room and the small kitchen; he felt as if his limbs were rotting away beneath him, infected by every wound. It’s illusion, he thought desperately. It has to be. Ignore it. As he verified that the last room was empty, and gazed upon the basement window he had boarded up himself, he felt a black despair rise up inside him. It was still sealed from the inside, just as he had left it. Just like the other two had been. That and the bolted door guaranteed that the Hunter had been caught inside, and had been taken ... where? What kind of creature had the power to kidnap him out of this place against his will, despite such solid barriers?
With effort he managed to stagger out of the apartment, past where the malignant force now lapped hungrily at the doorsill, to the tiled floor beyond where cool, clean air flowed. He fell to his knees there, and the vomit surged up in him, his stomach spasming as if somehow such activity might exorcise the terrible unclean presence from his flesh. For a few gut-wrenching minutes he was not aware of the landlady standing beside him, or of any other normal feature of the building. Then her voice brought him back to reality.
“It’ll take more than a few coins to clean up this mess,” she said acidly.
Shuddering, he looked up at her; his eyes would hardly focus. “Shut the door,” he gasped. When she didn’t move, he squeezed his eyes shut in the hopes that forcing tears would clear them. “Shut the door!”
She took one step toward the small apartment, and then he heard her gasp. Even without a Knowing she could sense what was in there, and despite the urgency in his voice she clearly wasn’t willing to risk contact with it. At last, half-blinded by the tears he had forced, he lunged forward toward the door. Malevolence stabbed into him as he braced himself with one hand on the floor, grabbing at the door with the other. He narrowly missing smashing his fingers in the door frame as he slammed it shut. For a moment he feared that the presence inside the room would flow under and around that simple barrier, but whatever wards Tarrant had put on the apartment were clearly enough to keep it enclosed now that the door was shut. Thank God for that.
Shuddering, he struggled to his feet. There was fluid on his shirt, and a hot bitterness in his throat. Numbly he wiped a shirtsleeve across his mouth, drying it. His whole body was shaking, and for a moment he could barely catch his breath, much less speak.
At last he looked up at the landlady. If she was afraid of the presence she had sensed in the room, that emotion was swamped by a far greater one: rage.
“I want you out of here,” she growled. “You and your friend both, right away. I’ll keep your deposit to pay for damages, and for cleaning. You get out of here tonight, and don’t come back! I don’t ever want to see you here again, not you or that—”
“You’ll have to break open the windows,” he interrupted. “From the outside. Let the sunlight in. That’ll do most of the work, and then you can bring in mirrors—”
“I know how to do an exposing,” she snapped. “Damn you to hells for making it necessary!” She looked down at the pool of vomit, then at him, in disgust. “Now get your things and get out of here. And gods help you if you ever cross this threshold again.”
Legs shaking, he forced himself up the stairs. Got to find Tarrant, he thought. Got to. But even if he did, then what? Could he help him? Did he have the kind of power it took to stand up to a demon who left such malignance as its calling card?
Have to try, he thought grimly. Not questioning his own motives, for once. Not asking himself whether it wouldn’t be better to let the Hunter stew in Hell at last while the world went on in innocence, a better place for his absence. Because Damien needed him. The Church needed him. And therefore—though most didn’t know it, and would probably deny it if asked—the very world that he had haunted so ruthlessly needed him.
We’re fighting for man’s survival, he thought. Remembering Calesta’s work in the east, and its loathsome harvest. We’re fighting for humankind’s soul.
Pulling on a clean shirt as hurriedly as he could, sweeping up what little cash he had left and forcing it into his pockets, he hurried out into the night in search of his dark companion.
It was a warm night, a sticky night, and half the walls in the Temple of Pleasure had been rolled up in hopes of admitting a cooling breeze. On the broad steps which surrounded the temple some singles and couples sprawled languidly, and it was impossible to tell if the sweat which glistened on their skin resulted from their “worship”—which ranged from half-naked petting to the delights contained in wine bottles and water pipes—or from the night itself.
There was a circle delineated by the temple light, and Damien stood just beyond it. He could feel its presence before him almost as a physical barrier, and for a moment he lacked the courage to cross it. If the Patriarch knew of his search, if somehow he knew that a priest had come here ... well, his reaction wouldn’t be a pretty one, that was sure. And it damned well might prove the last straw between them, one transgression too many for the Holy Father to tolerate.
He was trying not to think about that. He was trying not to think abo
ut what he would do with himself if the Patriarch really did cast him out of the Church. Such considerations belonged to the future, and right now the future itself was in jeopardy. Would he want to remain a priest if he knew that the cost was the sacrifice of everything he believed in? Could he value the robes he wore and the ritual sword he carried if he knew that the price of maintaining them was the submission of this world to Calesta’s hunger? And yet ... stepping into that circle of light was a commitment such as he had never made before, to a mode of operation he had hitherto rejected. Only sorcerers bargained with demons. Only the damned. Never the Church, whose very existence was dedicated to making such bargains impossible. Never, never one of the Church’s priests.
Trembling, he shut his eyes. So the Patriarch does find out, he told himself. So what? Which do you value more, this avocation you’ve grown so accustomed to, or the chance to do something to help save your world? Is one man’s comfort such a great sacrifice for God to require, in order that His people might be defended?
But despite all his internal arguments he felt sick as he stepped into the light, and as he approached the temple he could feel his heart pounding in his chest with such power that it seemed to make his whole body shake.
He hadn’t been inside a pagan temple since his childhood, since the day when his mother had taken him to Yoshti’s house of worship in the hope that it would appeal to him. Even then he had found it uncomfortable, though it would be many years before he could articulate the reasons. Now all that discomfort was back again, and more. He looked at the intertwined couples, at the sweaty groups who sprawled on rugs and couches and wherever the inclination struck them, and thought, This is not worship. He watched an old man blissfully accepting a wad of gummy substance from a priest and stuffing it into his water pipe, and he thought, There is no god in this place. He walked stiffly through what seemed like chaos, dozens of men and women who had nothing in common but a hunger for immediate gratification, and he reminded himself, This is a lezu they worship. They feed him with their lusts, and he gives them illusions of ecstasy. A simple contract, easily comprehended, readily fulfilled. It’s really a wonder that men follow the One God at all, with such relationships available.