"Take your hands off him, Cathy," her mother said. "Before his stench gets on you."
"Stop talking like that, Mother."
"You won't die," I told them. "None of you will die here."
Kinnion. The name didn't mean anything to me, but somehow she was carrying Elijah, who still wanted me dead. He was now closer to Danielle than I was. I wondered if this would upset Jebediah's plans. As a reincarnate Elijah might care more about raising himself than raising Christ, and it might take years for him to grow into his skills once more. He whispered threats in my ear as he sought to be reborn, and I could almost see his fingers scratching on the other side of her uterine wall, greedy to get at me, hoping to steal my love.
"My uncle is the abbot," Cathy said.
"John."
"Yes."
Self pressed his nose to her navel, the milk in her breasts already curdled, and said to Elijah beneath the skin, Hey, buddy, two words for you and your resurrection: diaper rash.
There are no coincidences. Even in the icy breeze the air stirred with the hint of ozone, the drawing of threads of power.
The poltergeists perched on Eddie's head and slicked back his hair. He and his mother worked well together, heaving on the rope hand over hand like sailors hoisting sail, hauling us across. The boy said nothing, and I couldn't get a bead on him. He didn't seem troubled, upset, or flustered, and smiled pleasantly when I caught his eye. Cathy rested beside me, patting my knee.
Kill her now before Elijah takes over completely. My second self's jaws worked in a frenzy, the stink of nuns and monks everywhere. That's what they're going to want you to do.
Why should the order care about him? What does Abbot John have to do with this?
He shuddered with impatience and sneered at me, looking so much like my father that I reached out and put my palm to the side of his face. Abbot John will call for blood. Kill her.
And prove the woman right? We're getting out alive.
No, we're all dead and always have been.
Chapter Seven
The Opus Dei choir chants of the daily services drifted in the wind: part song, part plea. The brothers often lapsed into several esoteric languages preserving their rites and secrets. When we'd almost reached the shores of MountArmon, I fell to my knees once more. With an air of indecision Self snapped his claws together, wondering if he should carve into my heart again, and knowing I'd made another big mistake.
On the mount sacred oaths were taken to a new degree, and even the most careless promises held power. Swearing to keep someone alive might result in my own sacrifice. Elijah continued his attack from the warmth of the womb, griping about love just like everyone else. The ferry creaked along. Soon the rope became heavily smudged with blood from their wind-cracked hands. We struck shore and the sheep began to shriek.
Blond hair draped into my mouth, and Cathy gave me a look of flawless pity. She wouldn't be able to lift me alone. Eddie helped, and after a time the mother too. I limped off the ferry, struggling up the curving stone trail forged and smoothed into the side of the mount.
Above us we could see the church and sheltered arcade cloister, the sacristy and refectory, and the snow-covered transverse tunnels leading from building to building. I glanced back and watched the ferry being drawn once more to the far side, and I wondered if my father the harlequin would be joining us tonight.
It took over an hour to make it to the top of the mount, and by then Cathy was near fainting. We held on to each other for support, wheezing in harmony. Self had chewed and snipped free most of Eddie's knotted specters, but the poltergeists continued to float around us like scared children, staring wide-eyed and wandering in confusion. Self was feeling crowded and bit a few in the ass to get them moving, taking out chunks of memory and heartache, but they only smudged themselves harder against the kid. They shuddered in Eddie's armpits and hid in his ears, moaning.
We stood before the outer ward wall of the monastery, staring at the doors with bronze friezes showing images from Revelation and the lost books of the Bible. Scenes from Wars of the Lord, Thomas the Gnostic, and the Book of Enoch reached out, with displays of loss and atonement swirling in the metal.
A copy of the Book of Enoch had been in Jebediah's library. It was a tome devoted to the human and not the hallowed that had been discovered in Abyssinia in 1773, a region of Sheol and place of the wicked. It recounted the story of the two hundred insolent angels who swore a blasphemous pledge against God. They consented to the fall in order to take human wives, and then descended upon Armon, the Mount of the Oath.
A young monk with a shaved head stood there watching, the purple welts across his face bright in the sunlight from where he'd accidentally struck himself while scourging his shoulders.
Janice wrenched my arm forward, dumped me into his chest, and said, "Take him, you idiot." She knew her way around the abbey, and led her children straight to the priory. Her shadow fell heavily across her son, and the signs I read showed Eddie on the floor, disemboweled. The puzzled monk didn't know whether to go after her or to help me up first. He started walking me toward their small infirmary but I resisted and aimed us for the sacristy. Self gave a deep sigh and snuggled against my chest. He loved churches.
Follow them, I said.
No, that bitch gives me the creeps.
I leaned on the stone and felt the waves of the ages rumbling against my back. Inhuman antiquity walked here, filled with human frailties and failures.
It hadn't been easy mending on Magee Wails, and would be even more difficult this time.
The monk had smashed out a couple of his front teeth so he might be able to form ancient cruel words not meant for a man's mouth.
"Take me to Brother Aaron," I told him. "Or Uriel."
We walked the white-stone pathways along the cloister gardens, past the basilica residential buildings. Other priests and acolytes descended the crude pine steps of the scriptorium and stared. Despite being surrounded by the lush expanse of forests and rivers they still carried the desert with them. They'd taken the most severe and unyielding tenets of the Cistercians, Trappists, and Benedictines, and used the harshest doctrines to try to garner harmonious results. They were kidding themselves, and some of them even knew it. Hollow faced and grim in the purpose and rigors of the soul, the heat of their beliefs beat into them, searing as deeply as the sun off the sands of Persia.
Aaron DeLancre stormed down the passageway with his sword drawn, and both Self and I growled. The veil of evil draped over his entire family. They could follow the bloodline with ten generations of doctors or accountants and they'd still smell like the Inquisition. Uriel also appeared from the scriptorium and did his best not to mouth any curses. They both looked exactly like their brother Jebediah, with the same broad features and sorrowful mantle of those born of witch killers. They even kept beards, but only so they could yank out handfuls of facial hair, the way the Roman guards had done to Christ.
Aaron held his sword just as men in the 1950s used to hold their cigarettes, with an easy charisma and a touch of vanity. "We know why you're here."
Of course they knew, but I had a duty to swear it aloud. "I'm going to have to kill your brother." The chills began to wrack me again and the darkness rolled across my mind.