“Lori.”
“Shut up,” she said. “Don’t give me any more excuses. They’re just insults.” She studied the blade, not him. “You’ve got your reasons. I think they stink, but you keep hold of them. You’re going to need something to cling to.”
He didn’t move.
“What are you waiting for? I’m not going to tell you it’s all right. Just go. I never want to set eyes on you again.”
He stood up. Her anger hurt, but it was easier than tears. He backed away three or four paces, then understanding that she wouldn’t grant him a smile or even a look he turned from her.
Only then did she glance up. His eyes were averted. It was now or never. She put the point of Decker’s blade to her belly. She knew she couldn’t drive it home with only one hand, so she went on to her knees, wedged the handle in the dirt, and let her body weight carry her down onto the blade. It hurt horribly. She yelled in pain.
He turned to find her writhing, her good blood pouring out into the soil. He ran back to her, turning her over. The death spasms were already in her.
“I lied,” she murmured. “Boone… I lied. You’re all I ever want to see.”
“Don’t die,” he said. “Oh God in Heaven, don’t die.”
“So stop me.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Kill me. Bite me… give me the balm.”
Pain twisted up her face. She gasped.
“Or let me die, if you can’t take me with you. That’s better than living without you.”
He cradled her, tears dropping onto her face. Her pupils were turning up beneath her lids. Her tongue was twitching at her lips. In seconds, she’d be gone, he knew. Once dead, she’d be beyond his power of recall.
“Is… it… no?” she said. She wasn’t seeing him any longer.
He opened his mouth to provide his answer, raising her neck to his bite. Her skin smelled sour. He bit deep into the muscle, her blood meaty on his tongue, the balm rising in his throat to enter her bloodstream. But the shudders in her body had already ceased. She slumped in his embrace.
He raised his head from her torn neck, swallowing what he’d taken. He’s waited too long. Damn him! She was his mentor and his confessor, and he’d let her slip from him. Death had been upon her before he’d had time to turn sting into promise.
Appalled at this last and most lamentable failure he laid her down on the ground in front of him.
As he drew his arms out from beneath her she opened her eyes.
“I’ll never leave you,” she said.
ABIDE WITH ME
It was Pettine who found Ashbery, but it was Eigerman who recognized the remnants for the man they’d been. The priest still had life in him, a fact given the severity of his injuries that verged on the miraculous. Both his legs were amputated in the days following, and one of his arms up to mid-bicep. He didn’t emerge from his coma after the operations, nor did he die, though every surgeon opined that his chances were virtually zero. But the same fire that had maimed him had lent him an unnatural fortitude. Against all the odds, he endured.
He was not alone through the nights and days of unconsciousness. Eigerman was at his side twenty hours out of every twenty-four, waiting like a dog at a table for some scrap from above, certain that the priest could lead him to the evil that had undone both their lives.
He got more than he bargained for. When Ashbery finally rose from the deep, after two months of teetering on extinction, he rose voluble. Insane, but voluble. He named Baphomet. He named Cabal. He told, in the hieroglyphs of the hopelessly lunatic, of how the Breed had taken the pieces of their divinity’s body and hidden them. More than that. He said he could find them again. Touched by the Baptiser’s fire, and its survivors, he wanted the touch again.
“I can smell God,” he’d say, over and over.
“Can you take us to Him?” Eigerman asked.
The answer was always yes.
“I’ll be your eyes.”
Then Eigerman volunteered. “We’ll go together.”
Nobody else wanted the evidence Ashbery offered, there were too many nonsenses to be accounted for as it was, without adding to the burden on reality. The authorities gladly let Eigerman have custody of the priest. They deserved each other, was the common opinion. Not one sane cell between them.
Ashbery was utterly dependent on Eigerman: incapable, at least at the beginning, of feeding, shitting or washing without help. Repugnant as it was to tend the imbecile, Eigerman knew Ashbery was a God-given gift. Through him he might yet revenge himself for the humiliations of Midian’s last hours. Coded in Ashbery’s rantings were clues to the enemy’s whereabouts. With time he’d decipher them.
And when he did oh when he did there would come such a day of reckoning the Last Trump would pale beside.
The visitors came by night, stealthily, and took refuge wherever they could find it.
Some revisited haunts their forebears had favoured; towns under wide skies where believers still sang on Sunday, and the picket fences were painted every spring. Others took to the cities: to Toronto, Washington, Chicago, hoping to avoid detection better where the streets were fullest, and yesterday’s corruption today’s commerce. In such a place their presence might not be noticed for a year, or two or three. But not forever. Whether they’d taken refuge in city canyon or bayou or dust bowl none pretended this was a permanent residence. They would be discovered in time, and rooted out. There was a new frenzy abroad, particularly amongst their old enemies the Christians, who were a daily spectacle, talking of their martyr and calling for purges in His name. The moment they discovered the Breed in their midst the persecutions would begin again.
So, discretion was the by-word. They would only take meat when the hunger became crippling, and only then victims who were unlikely to be missed. They would refrain from infecting others, so as not to advertise their presence. If one was found, no other would risk exposure by going to their aid. Hard laws to live by, but not as hard as the consequences of breaking them.
The rest was patience, and they were well used to that. Their liberator would come eventually, if they could only survive the wait. Few had any clue as to the shape he’d come in. But all knew his name. Cabal, he was called. Who Unmade Midian. Their prayers were full of him. On the next wind, let him come. If not now, then tomorrow.
They might not have prayed so passionately had they known what a sea-change his coming would bring. They might not have prayed at all had they known they prayed to themselves. But these were revelations for a later day. For now, they had simpler concerns. Keeping the children from the roofs at night; the bereaved from crying out too loud; the young in summer from falling in love with the human. It was a life.