I dressed quickly, grabbed him by the arm, and tugged him from the room while he screeched. I fought not to scream when he sank his fangs into my wrist. My blood splashed against the black hallway walls as I marched outside into the gusting snow. I made it to the outer wall and yanked back the huge wooden plank of the main gate doors, and stared at the bronze bas-relief friezes while they roiled and surged like molten metal.
It showed two new faces among the frothing others.
Both of them blinked and calmly watched me sweat in the blizzard.
"Gawain is coming," I said. "And he's with my father."
Chapter Ten
I waited for them all night in the storm.
Moonlight ignited the swirling swells and billows of snow. There was no other watch. At some point, one of the acolytes came out and tried to place several thick woolen blankets over my shoulders. When he touched me the embers of arcana blew back into his face and he cried out in surprise as his teeth glimmered blue and orange. I stood freezing in the rising steam with the snowfall melting as soon as it hit me, the wind alive with flaming sigils. It was getting rough out. Self glowered at me but said nothing. My oath had taken its toll on him as well. The more I held my ground the farther we split apart. The wheels of the world turned out of sync, grinding and squealing and waiting for the grease of sacrifice.
I'm sorry, I said, but he didn't answer.
Uriel plodded through the knee-deep snow to stand beside me, staring down the cliffs uncertainly. In all the time I'd known him he'd said only a handful of words to me. He remained stoic as stone, immovable perhaps, but never unfeeling. Even his brother didn't know his capabilities or the extent of his convictions. He wore dangling crosses, some inverted, others not. The ebb and flow of his hidden inclinations brushed against me.
Eventually he picked up the blankets and wrapped himself in them. Occasionally the living idols would clamber over his tunic, gaze around, and squeak to him. Nip was nowhere in sight, but his tears flowed from Uriel's brow as if he were sweltering. The plastic saints started playing peek-a-boo. Uriel's prayers were of a kind I'd never heard before. He spat wards into the wind but they froze in midair.
After another hour, as the blizzard worsened, Uriel gestured to me and said, "Don't peer into that darkness too closely." He spoke little enough, but managed to really say even less. He turned, fought his way through the snow, and plunged back inside the abbey.
Time became tangible and smeared all around me. The weight of the past came down again, bloated and crushing. I no longer heard my mother singing. Instead my father's giggles reigned over me. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be right from the beginning. The steam dissipated, and so did the majiks. My fingers grew numb. I fell over and shaped a snow angel for myself. I nodded off, slumped against the gates. The friezes rolled under my cheek. I slept for a time and only awoke when my father's frigid bronze lips kissed me.
I couldn't see much of anything besides the thrashing snow and revolving hexes. I thought I heard jingling and I spun around, listening intently for the sounds of my dad's humiliation. There was nothing but my heavy breath in the battering wind. Self frowned and pointed high. I shielded my eyes and looked up.
The possessed nun who'd tried to seduce me had climbed out my room window to stand shaking on the ledge. She'd gotten dressed again, and the folds of her habit fluttered and rippled like a spreading black stain. Thick ice rimed the precipice. Hands groped for her ankles. She inched along the ledge, reaching back to steady herself against the rampart, but continued on. Other people sprouted from the window trying to reach her. They began whipping themselves right there, invoking God and other deaf creatures. The bride of Christ crouched and waited, denouncing herself before the vast chasm and crashing floes below.
She managed to smile though, and plucked at the snowflakes in front of her face. I thought I could understand why she might do that. Perhaps because the flakes, at least, were so close and solid in an otherwise ethereal place. Her arms came up as if she could hang on to the air, and simply step out onto the falling snow and drift back down to earth. She leaped and floated, or maybe flew for a moment, buoyant in the howling jet stream. Maybe the mount didn't want to let her go yet. Perhaps it would pull her back inside. She hovered there for another instant and dropped into white silence.
Is this my fault?
Ask yourself. My ass is cold.
Gales ripped across the courtyard. I got lost along the outer curtain. I stumbled towards the monks' Chapter House and found the access tunnel to the cloisters but the doors were frozen shut. I wandered and lost my bearings. I fell asleep again for a few minutes, until more jingling bells roused me and I came awake half buried and shivering violently. I wondered if they'd abandoned me or if I'd deserted them instead. Self was gone.
The moon had set but there wasn't any dawn. I felt utterly alone and thought of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. While he awaited the kiss of Judas and the arrival of the Roman soldiers, Christ could have called on twelve legions of angels, but he went to his fate alone. What guts.
I followed the jangling toward the inner curtain and back into the monastery. Two sets of wet footprints led a trail to the west wing.
I'd waited all night and had still missed the return of my father.
That awful stink of burning tallow wafted on the draft. Smoke formed new shapes of damnation. Ash on the walls spelled out the names of my high school graduating class, rows of those who hadn't become students of hell. Supplicants and monks lined the corridors, giddy and anxious. Assertions were being made.
Priests murmured their masses as I stalked past. The tinkling bells withdrew farther into the distance. I heard a baby crying, and I started sprinting.
They'd put Gawain and my father in the highest tower, near the principal hall of the church. I took the stairs three at a time and barreled over acolytes. The hushed crowd huddled in the narrow stairwell and fought to get a glimpse of what was happening. I threw elbows and shoved past everyone, hoping to hold in my rage and failing as usual. Incantations boiled from my mouth and eyes, and my touch set fire to their cowls.
Abbot John tried to slam the tower door in my face and I howled my hexes into his chest. He blew over backward into Aaron's arms, who looked at me deciding whether to draw his sword. We could go this route if they wanted. My teeth wriggled with the taste of coagulating spells. Aaron kept his hand on the hilt of his sword but didn't attack.
Self said, You're late.
My father skipped from foot to foot, giving raspberries and chuckling. Just another dead man harlequin sticking his tongue out and making faces. The bells chimed on his hat and clown costume. My hair was thick with ice crystals, and when I turned aside my curls rang together in harmony with my father's jangling. I had a flash of deja vu. This had never happened before but it would happen again.
Gawain held the infant in his arms, and I knew he could hear Elijah's whispers. He stroked the baby's head as if trying to calm Elijah's fury-or perhaps he merely wavered before he squeezed the soft spot of the child's skull.
While I'd waited all night, another clown in the storm, comparing myself to Christ on his way to the crucifixion, Cathy had given birth in the house of her enemies.
Gawain had survived the destruction of our original coven, and the permutation of the one that followed. I thought he could endure almost anything. Protected in his blind and deaf muteness, eardrums punctured by his own parents, his long white hair fell across his face as he stared at me with his seared corneas. His forked serpent's tongue slithered between his lips. I wondered what it was that he found in me.