Long hours crept by. The noises of dinner built up overhead, feet slow and quick, heavy tread and the light patter of children. She found herself salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs when the sounds paused for the evening meal, and then the feet sounds resumed for the after-dinner chores. There was another pause during evening meditation, a lesser buildup of noise when that was finished, and finally all the noises faded away. The house quieted. Water, hot or cold, did nothing to satisfy hunger. The muscles of her shoulders and back burned in any position, and even the volumes of erotica lost their ability to distract after the first half dozen. She found herself eyeing the delicate Japanese pictures of couples (and more) coupling, wondering if the pictures were printed on edible rice paper.
She hadn't heard a footstep overhead for at least half an hour, which put it close to midnight, when a noise came from outside the door. Struggling stiffly to pull herself upright from her nest of towels, she waited, her heart racing. A single pair of heavy feet descended the wooden stairs; half a minute later a key scraped in the lock. The door opened. Jonas stepped back, allowing her to emerge.
His dark eyes studied her, looked in at the small room, and came back to her face. "Did you enjoy my library?" he asked he:.
She gaped at him. "Did I—? Well, no, to tell you the truth. Not under the circumstances. I didn't even have my reading glasses."
He nodded as if that were the only consideration, then asked, "Did you wash yourself?"
"Not very well, but—"
"That should do it, then."
"What?"
"Good night, Ana." He reached forward then, immobilized her head between his powerful hands, and bent to kiss her mouth, briefly but with a thoroughness so reminiscent of Aaron that it made Anne's scalp tingle. Before she could react, before she knew whether the tingle was lust or revulsion, the bearded mouth left hers. Then she felt his thick fingers enter the neck of her polo shirt to draw out the buckskin pouch and pull it over her head.
He picked open the drawstring top with surprisingly delicate fingernails and shook the contents onto the palm of his hand, turning them over curiously with one thick finger. The bead, tufts of fur from the dogs, stones, and bee pollen he funneled back into the pouch, but he took the silver crescent that she had bought in Sedona between two fingers and turned it back and forth, watching the light play across the low indentations of its beaten surface.
"The moon revels in the reflected glory of the sun," he mused. "In alchemical allegory, Luna reaches the height of her existence in her conjoining with the sun." He turned the pendant around again, and said, "Come."
She followed him reluctantly past the stairs that led to open air and back into his study. He went over to the strange collection of bones and objects at the third window, detached one item from the rest, and brought it back to her, displayed on his palm, its leather cord dangling down the back of his hand. It was the rough moon-shaped object she had noticed earlier, an elongated, worn silver nugget threaded onto a thong. He smiled to himself, the same private smile she had seen as he caressed the altarstone in the abbey ruins with his fingertips, and then he curled the thong around the moon shape and pushed it into the buckskin pouch and drew the bag shut.
"I'd like you to take that," he said. "It is… appropriate that you should have it."
Anne studied him, and asked slowly, "Why? Whose necklace is that?"
"It belonged to Samantha Dooley, who is no longer with us," he told her. "She did not, shall we say, live up to expectations."
Still smiling to himself, he tied the pouch snugly shut and dropped the cord back around her neck. He tucked the medicine bag inside her shirt and then tugged her collar up to hide it, a gesture that was somehow even more intimate than the kiss he had given her. "You may wear it," he said.
And then he walked out of his study and disappeared through the door to the laboratory.
Anne stood rubbing her hands across her mouth and scalp, trying to wipe away the tingle, to scrub away the taste of Aaron that Jonas had left behind, shocking, unexpected, and just too damn much, on top of everything else. She felt punch-drunk, and not only because of the painkillers she had swallowed. The past few days had been one long, deep plunge into the terror of her past ending with the abrupt euphoria of anticlimax, sleepless nights thinking she was balanced precariously over a bottomless abyss, only to discover that it was all a fake, constructed by tricksters and fed by her own dark imagination. All in all, it was more than she could deal with. She felt like a jigsaw-puzzle person scattered across the landscape, and she craved only to have Maria Makepeace standing over her, gathering up the pieces one by one and putting her together again. She wanted to go after Jonas and draw his mouth down onto hers. She wanted to vomit at the idea. She thought about dashing her head against the stone wall until she lost consciousness. She felt as if she would never be rational again. She felt as if she had just faced death and walked away again. She felt… she felt monstrously hungry, and would have killed for a cup of English tea.
She raided the refrigerator and gulped down a bowl of cold red stuff that looked like spaghetti sauce and tasted like Swedish meatballs, and followed it with a cup of scalding, strong tea. In the dim kitchen of the silent house, life seeped back. She palmed a couple more of the painkillers from the bottle in her pocket and swallowed them gratefully. She might even manage to sleep tonight.
She went upstairs, aware of the silence and of the simple well-being that food brought, conscious of the blessed goodness of life in spite of everything. The urge to walk away from it all was powerful, but she held the two children before her like a talisman, her still center in a maelstrom of threat and desire and confusion. Jason and Dulcie would be asleep, but she decided to take the long way around and lay the palm of her hand on their door in passing, a silent goodnight. Snores came from a few of the rooms, most were still, but when she got to the children's door, to her surprise she heard low voices coming from within. She tapped very lightly, and the room went instantly silent. She tapped again, and heard movement inside, and then the door cracked a couple of inches.
She started to put her mouth to the opening and say that she just wanted to wish them a good night, when the door flew back and Jason—taciturn, undemonstrative, cool and aloof Jason Delgado—lunged out and flung his arms around her. She grunted at the pain and he immediately let her go, but Dulcie squeaked "Ana!" and they hushed her and scurried inside the room, closing the door behind them.
In the end all three of them huddled together on one of the beds, Dulcie tucked in between them and fading fast.
"Are your shoulders as sore as mine are?" Anne asked him when Dulcie was limp.
"It's my back that kills me, when I bend over."
"Here, take one of these," she said, and tapped out a couple of the pills from the bottle. "If it doesn't help in an hour or so, take the other."
"Thanks." He reached for the half-glass of water next to Dulcie's bed, and winced at the movement. She put a third tablet down next to the one she had left on the table, just in case.
"So what did you think of all that?" she asked, very casually.
"I don't know. I mean, they're good people, but I've got to say, I don't understand half of what they're saying. And that alchemy stuff—it's weird shit."
Her heart sang even as he apologized for his language, and she reached over and squeezed his hand. "It's okay, Jason. We'll figure it out. Just give me a couple of days. Now, you get some sleep."
She stood up and moved to the door, where she paused for a moment to look down at Dulcie nestled in her bed and at Jason sitting on the edge of the other bed, bending stiffly to take off his socks. This might be the last time she was alone with them for days, weeks even. If she brought in the authorities (as she intended to do) and if they broke Change up (which they would), the truth of who she was and what she was doing here would be revealed to these two, and the trust of their relationship with her would be shattered.
Jason looked up, and frowned
at the expression on her face.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," she told him. "My dear Jason, it's nothing at all. Sleep well. We'll talk tomorrow." She left the room and closed the door on the two children, blessedly unaware that there would be no tomorrow.
Chapter Thirty-one
page 2 of 2
Change: Are you sure you're okay, Jonas?
Seraph: I told you I was fine. Stop harassing me, Steven.
Change: Okay, okay. You just sound troubled, is all. Are you sure the Social Services thing is off your neck? I could come over and-
Seraph [shouting]: Steven! Enough!
[a silence]
Change: I'm sorry, Jonas. You know best, of course.
Seraph: And before you ask me, no the work has not progressed. But I think it shall, very soon. I think I've seen the problem. Your friend Ana showed me it, in fact.
Change: Oh, that's really great news, Jonas. I don't suppose you want a hand with keeping the fire hot? Like the old days?
Seraph [laughing]: No, Steven, I don't think that will be a problem.
Change: She'll be helping you, I suppose. Ana. The boy can't be that far along yet.
Seraph [laughing]: Ana Wakefield will indeed help me in the great work.
Change: The great work? Jonas, what are you going to do?
Seraph: I am going to perform a transformation, Steven.
Change: But what kind, Jonas? Jonas, what do you have planned?
Seraph: You're not listening to me, Steven. I told you. Transformation.
Change: Jonas, listen. You're not—
Seraph: I have to go now, Steven.
Change: Jonas, Look-I was thinking today that maybe it's time to go on that trip to Bombay we were talking about. I could phone…you know, and see if he could see us.
Seraph: Good bye, Steven.
Change: Jonas, wait! don't hang up. I need to—[connection cut]. Damn.
[end of transcription]
Excerpt from the transcription of a telephone conversation between
Steven Change and Jonas Fairweather (aka Jonas Seraph)
1:34 a.m., GMT, May 24, 199-
Anne Waverly continued upstairs to her own room, and to bed, and she drifted away into the first easy sleep she had found since getting on the plane. It was such a vast, earth-shaking relief to know that she was just plain nuts, to know that her poor twisted imagination had simply carried her away, to know at last that everyone was safe. Not least of all was the half-humorous satisfaction of knowing that after the mess she'd made of understanding Change, Glen McCarthy would never ask her to do another job for him, ever again.
She had thought Jonas Seraph capable of insane violence. However, now it appeared that the most violent act the Bear was interested in was a sort of Tantric union with her. His primary goal seemed to be convincing another generation of followers that they, too, could make gold. She had thought Jason locked inside an alembic; instead, he had been set the task of a medieval apprentice. She had even believed that Jason was converting to Change doctrine, but now—the joy of his phrase "weird shit" rang in her ears, and she slipped into sleep with a smile on her lips, allowing herself to wonder what the two Delgado children would make of Anne Waverly's silent cabin in the woods.
She slept, and the house slept, unaware that below in the depths, the signs and portents of the last day were coming together in the mind of Jonas Seraph, freeing the fiery serpents from their mortal bondage. He gloried in this Woman, in what she had brought him and what she would do for him, and he labored hard to finish the preparations for this last and greatest Work of his lifetime. After so many trials and failures, after the disastrous mistake of thinking Sami would be the moon to his sun, the silver to his gold, after so many petty deceptions of gullible minds for the sake of perpetuating the whole, all the years of seeing one Work after another go dead and dry, at last it was upon him. Sami had been a mistake. Her energies in the end proved insufficient, her dedication no match for his own. That last Work with her had nearly robbed him of his confidence, reduced him to a thing as dead as she. Not this time. Soon, very soon, the final Transformation would be his. Every so often he paused to look up through the narrow windows, until at last he saw what he knew would be there, waiting for him: a delicate crescent, the first night of the new moon. And it was good.
The house slept, the moon rose and faded, and then at two o'clock in the morning, the peaceful, dignified Victorian mansion seemed to exhale sharply. The heavy cough jolted the building from one wing to the other; it startled the birds from their nests, set the dogs to barking, and reached down through the thick layers of fatigue and drugs to jerk Anne Waverly upright. She did not know what had woken her, but she heard the dogs and after a minute became aware of a strange vibration in the air, a distant roar almost too low to register as noise. She thrust her bare feet into her shoes and opened her door. Down the hall she saw movement as another person stepped out of a door on the opposite side.
"Did you smell smoke?" the woman said tentatively.
"Oh, God," Anne cried in despair. "Call 911," she ordered, starting down the hall in the other direction. "I'll wake the kids."
"Nine one one?"
"The fire department," Anne shouted over her shoulder, and then drew a deep breath to bellow into the night the alarm of "Fire!"
She flew along the corridor and down the stairs, making as much noise as she could, banging on doors, shouting continuously. Others had heard or smelled the danger and were doing the same. Screams built, one door after another flew open, the occupants rushing toward the stairs and safety.
When she reached Jason and Dulcie's room, the hallway was filled with running adults and children and the door to their room was standing open. She wasted agonized seconds looking under the beds and checking the bath down the hall, but they were gone. She could only pray with her very bones they had heard the alarm and run outside with everyone else.
The old house was going up like the stack of tinder it was. No need for a bomb made of fuel oil and nitrate fertilizer when one had a century-and-a-half-old house kept dry by its radiators, Anne thought in a brief bolt of rationality before she returned to the impossible task of checking the rooms.
She found one child sitting upright and rigid with terror as the flames broke through at the end of the corridor and roared full-throated at them. Anne snatched up the girl and fled down the back stairs, feeling the house trying to come down on her head.
The night air was thick with ashes and smuts and the fire leapt and swallowed with nothing to stand in its way. Beneath the noise of the blast furnace, adults shouted and cried out, children wailed, dogs barked and howled wildly, and the horses in the field screamed out their terror. Anne thought once she heard a siren in the distance, but nothing came near, and none of the residents caught shivering in the dancing light had any way of knowing that some of the popping glass they heard was actually gunfire, as Change guards in camouflage suits, unaware of what was happening, took potshots at the emergency vehicles gathering at the gates.
Anne was more interested in the absence of the only two people who meant anything to her. She pushed her way frantically up and down through panicked clusters of people, demanding if anyone had seen the two American kids. She found Sara, who looked at her uncomprehendingly from beneath a bloody scalp wound, and Dierdre, who was herself unscathed, although the woman she was with, probably her mother, was curled on the ground clutching her leg, white-faced with pain. Neither had seen Jason and Dulcie. Some of the adults were gathering the children together at a distance from the buildings. Two women ran up with an armload of first aid kits they had retrieved from the Change vehicles, dodging three white-eyed horses that pounded through the yard and vanished, freed with the other animals from the burning barns. Men and women staggered up to the place of refuge laden with horse blankets, buckets of water, and a couple of highly unnecessary kerosene lanterns, but their paltry attempts at organization amid the maelstrom of heat an
d the battering confusion of noise and panic was like a nest of ants working dumbly to restore order as the ground was being uprooted around their heads.
Anne dodged through the chaos of running adults in night-wear, past clusters of terrified children, around strange heaps of possessions that had been rescued and then abandoned—a sofa, three closed suitcases, a bedsheet wrapped around a tangle of clothing and framed photographs—looking for Dulcie and Jason. The cacophony of noise beat at her, the heat was a blaring, monstrous force, the bright, leaping illumination alternating with black, stretched-out shadows created a surrealist vision from hell, and Anne would have given five years of her life for a single deep breath of cool, smoke-free air.
And still she could find no sign of them. She stood for a moment in the lee of a wide, scorched-smelling oak tree and tried to gather her thoughts. Other than the house, which possibility Anne's mind refused to consider, there was only one place they could be. She wiped the edge of her white T-shirt across her filthy face and prepared to turn her back on the moaning adults and the screaming children—only to be grabbed by the shoulders and shaken furiously by a maddened figure shouting and spitting in her face. It took a moment to see Marc Bennett beneath the soot and the distorting terror and fury, and to interpret his words as a demand to know where Jonas was.
The Birth of a new moon Page 40
