by Riley LaShea
“Run! Get help!” Armand just had time to shout before Auris knocked the knife from his hand and thrust him backward again.
The sound of splintering wood filling the confessional as she ripped the crucifix from the confessional wall, Armand was aware of the shock and pain for a split second as the pointed tip thrust upward through his throat, and then there was only salvation.
Blood pumping over her hands, Auris’ lowered Armand’s body to the floor.
“Think they heard that?” It was almost a joke.
“It wasn’t quiet,” Samuel assured her, sounding disappointed she had put an abrupt end to his assignment.
Staring at the mess she’d made, she could hardly blame him. Fingers already sticking together, she considered drinking to keep the mess to a minimum, but the idea of his righteousness inside of her was too much to bear. Plus, as the scene stood, Armand’s knife by his hand, the crucifix lodged in his throat, it could have been a struggle with any other human.
“I fear Haydn will be disappointed with our scant findings,” Samuel said, and a smile came to Auris’ face at his unabashed desire to become Haydn’s top pupil.
“She won’t be disappointed in you,” she assured him as she felt through Armand’s pockets. “You were fine. It’s me she’s going to be pissed at.”
With good reason, Auris had to acknowledge again, coming away with lint and just enough cash for Armand to buy a coffee on his way home. Clergy and staff restrained in the vestry, they still had the drunk and the old lady to worry about, assuming no one else had wandered in off the street while they were otherwise engaged. No choice now but to flee at an inhuman pace or kill everyone, Auris trusted Haydn would be more forgiving of one of those things than the other, but she wasn’t going to be thrilled about either.
Plus, it was hard to get information from a dead man.
On the verge of abandoning her pursuit, before the pursuit came for them, Auris felt it, the uneven bulge beneath his shirt. Nails digging in, she ripped the thermal fabric to reveal the swath of white bandage wound around Armand’s chest, pausing for a moment at the sight of hard muscle beneath. Rather unexpected, given his nature, despite the fight he just put up, Auris’ fingers brushed his skin, feeling the proof that just because he didn’t show it off didn’t mean Armand wasn’t built for the hunt like the rest of them. Maybe she wouldn’t have minded him inside her, after all.
A little late for the insight, she tore through the gauze at Armand’s side, peeling the heavy layer away. Bandage marred with blood and ink, the tattoo beneath appeared no more than a few hours old.
“I found something,” she uttered.
“What is it?” Samuel returned, an edge of hurry-up in his tone, though he wouldn’t dare say it. Not to her.
“I don’t know.” Digging a nail into the skin above the script she couldn’t read, Auris sliced sharply across it, ripping downward until the jagged scrap came free.
So much for the illusion of a normal fight.
Skin tucked inside her coat, she ran her hands over the rest of Armand, finding loads of wasted potential, but nothing else of value, beneath his clothes, and grabbed her hat from the confessional floor, checking it for blood and finding it amazingly untouched.
“Are you ready?” she asked as she settled the veil back over her face.
“When you are,” Samuel replied.
“Let’s go,” Auris said, and their doors opened as one.
Still the only two people in the chapel, the drunk had gotten to his feet near the old lady, as if it was his intention to protect her if it came to that. His eyes on them, he wrung his hat in his hands, and Auris realized their escape would be easier than expected. Hastening through the pews to avoid the sunlight on the aisles, she pulled the rest of her protective clothing on as they went out the door, continuing on for several blocks before they turned into a covered lane.
Shade providing relief from the sun’s rays, Auris pulled the gloves from her blood-caked hands as Samuel tipped the wide-brimmed hat back on his head, looking like an old sheriff from a gothic western. Listening for sounds of company, in case her eyes were deceived, Auris could hear only the bell-like clink of an aluminum can rolling down the slanted walkway before she pulled the moist, elastic skin from her coat.
“It’s reversed.” Samuel recognized the problem with the script instantly. “A mirror image. Here.” Sliding his glasses from his face, he held the black fabric of his scarf behind one of the lenses, angling until the words reflected in a language Auris was surprised to recognize.
“Ignosce mihi inculpatium.” She looked to Samuel for translation.
“It could translate several different ways,” he hedged. “Given the context, though, ‘Forgive me the Innocents’?”
Not at all what she was expecting, though she had no idea what to expect, Auris’ gaze returned to the words on Armand’s skin, an inverted plea for mercy significant enough for him to carve it into his chest.
“I somehow don’t think he means us.”
9
He could feel her coming from halfway across the city, and it came as only moderate surprise. Though she hadn’t sought answers when her last had fallen, when he saw Vinn stricken from his rolls, followed by the blinking out of Raquel, Cain trusted it was only a matter of time before Haydn gave into the necessity of the situation and sought help.
Chime sounding as she stalked through the door, he clamped down on his eagerness. He wasn’t the one who had chosen to stay away, to maintain the distance between them. It would do no good to look too happy to see her. Eyes on the open book before him, he pretended to scratch notes onto the page, until a leathery swatch fell atop his hand to knock it off task. Taking a moment to recognize what it was, Cain shook it off with a grimace.
“Hello, Haydn.” Lifting his eyes to her at last, he couldn’t stop them from being thorough in their assessment. He could feign indifference at her visit, but he couldn’t pretend the scenery in his office hadn’t just vastly improved. “It’s good to finally see you again.”
“What is this?” She wasted no effort on small talk, on him, and Cain realized, despite their years apart, they were still familiar enough to one another to forgo civility.
“Since that appears to be a nipple, I assume it’s someone’s chest.” Giving up on anything else, he tossed the pen into the valley of the book.
“What does it mean?” Haydn demanded. “The innocents? Who are the innocents?”
“Where did you get this?” Cain asked her.
“Gift exchange,” she uttered. “Where do you think? Auris pulled it off a hunter.”
Of course, she did.
Rising from his chair with a sigh and the swatch of the hunter’s chest, Cain carried it to the corner cupboard. Catching a silver bullet in its attempt to roll off a shelf, he stood it upright before turning to the mirror on the back of the open door, holding the flap of skin in front of him like a morbid breastplate.
“Forgive me the innocents,” he uttered.
“Now that we’re all caught up.” Thin when she walked through the door, Haydn’s patience was rapidly approaching nonexistent, and Cain stepped aside enough to appreciate her in reflection, touchy as that reflection may be.
“This doesn’t happen to have anything to do with the incident in Glasgow getting so much attention, does it?” Cain questioned. “A man murdered with a crucifix and flayed in a church confessional?”
“Partially flayed,” Haydn corrected, like it made a difference. “It wasn’t meant to be a scene. We just needed answers, and Auris was in a somewhat compromised state. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have sent her.”
“You shouldn’t have sent anyone.” Cain pressed the door of the cabinet closed. “You should have come here. People can be stubborn.”
“Yes,” Haydn returned. “And, of all people, there are few I’ve met more stubborn than you.”
So, she hadn’t forgotten the argument left hanging between them. A good thing, Cain guessed,
since the argument hadn’t changed.
“Do you know what it means or not?” Haydn asked.
“There are legends,” Cain told her what he could. “Ancient prophecies. If those with a deficit of soul exist, so must those with a surplus.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Haydn returned.
The look on her face one of disquiet, maybe even genuine worry - if any of them could feel it - Cain thought, for a moment, of just telling her, getting it over and done and hoping no one would be any the wiser. Doing what it was in his own mind to do wasn’t how he kept what little power he had, though. It was a fact he had many years ago been forced to accept. He was a diplomat, not a ruler.
“You need to go see Lilith.” Why not prove Haydn’s proclamation of his stubbornness on point?
The laughter that vibrated from her throat riddled with irritation, and still sexy as hell, Cain wasn’t sure if she found him truly funny, or was trying not to murder him. If it was the latter, he only hoped her restraint held.
“Again with this?” Haydn asked. “My God, Cain. I haven’t gone back in three hundred years. Why would I go back now?”
“Because, if you don’t, I can’t help you.”
Ultimatum going over about as well as expected, Haydn was around his desk so fast she produced her own wind. Hand gripping the front of his shirt, Cain felt the bruise form instantly where it punched against his chest as she pushed him back against the wall.
“But you can help me,” she reasoned. “As in, you know what I need to know. So, how about I just dangle you by your feet and see what trickles out?”
Normally taking far more to get a rise out of her, Cain recognized then how worried she truly was, for herself and her clan. As well she should be.
“That’s one way of arriving at the same solution.” Still, he could do nothing about it. They all had their demons to haunt them, and angering his most persistent demon was a surefire way to bring an apocalypse down upon himself. “Haydn, please, just do what she wants. Who knows, maybe she will finally let you go.”
That about as likely as Lilith letting him off with a slap on the wrist if he gave Haydn everything she wanted and let her slip from both their grasps for another quarter century, Cain wholeheartedly empathized when Haydn could only laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the prospect. Accepting that any threat she made would have little impact against Cain’s more looming menace, though, she released him, stepping away with such a lost expression, it was hard to believe she was wolf and not sheep.
“Three hundred years,” she at last uttered. “And she is finally going to get what she wants.”
Staring blankly for a moment, Cain fought the urge to shake his head to clear his ears, unable to determine if he actually heard the words, or imagined Haydn agreeing to the path of least resistance for both of them.
“Don’t ever say patience isn’t a virtue,” he tested his senses, and Haydn’s responding laughter was anemic.
“So, when did she tell you not to give me any more assistance until I came to see her?” she asked.
“’88, was it?” Cain thought back. “No, ’87, I believe. It’s been quite a while, Haydn.”
Arms cautiously opening, he anticipated a sucker punch every bit as much as an embrace, and was thankful when Haydn chose not to inflict any further pain. At least, for the moment. Folding her against him, Cain felt the renewed affection of a brother for his sister, along with something more urgent and of the flesh. Now considered contradictory sentiments, he was nostalgic for a time when those things didn’t used to be so taboo.
Unable to ignore the effect she had on him, Haydn’s smirk as she pulled away indicated she had every intention of going another thousand years without allowing Cain to act on it in even the slightest of ways.
“Someone couldn’t stop treating me like a wayward child,” she reminded him. “Trying to coax me back into my past every time we saw each other.”
“It wasn’t my desire,” Cain offered in his defense.
“Yes,” Haydn replied. “I’m actually surprised you’re still capable of any desire of your own, seeing as Lilith keeps your testicles in a vise.”
Insult somewhat merited, he hated to admit, and Haydn’s agreement to meet Lilith’s demands still delicate, Cain knew it best to withhold his response.
“Still keeping that book?” He followed Haydn’s gaze to the record lying open on his desk, realizing it was, in fact, the same one. Volume Seventeen, down to its last pages, all notes inside written in a hieroglyphic no historian would recognize, illegible to all but him. As it had to be.
His life, it seemed, had little changed since Haydn was last there. But, then, hers likely hadn’t changed much either.
“We don’t choose our burden,” he uttered. “Our burden chooses us.”
“Don’t I know it?” she returned, drifting away, more in mind than body, though to what was or what was to come, Cain wasn’t sure. Regretting his part in things, despite the fact it wasn’t exactly by choice, he could see the burden press heavy against her shoulders. She didn’t want to do it, to go and see Lilith. All she had ever wanted was to be left alone to forget. Cain understood that better than most. He had some experience with familial disputes himself.
“Call the sylphs.” Haydn’s command came as surprise.
“That’s not…” What Lilith wanted. It wasn’t what Lilith wanted, Cain knew very well, and he couldn’t imagine her being satisfied with such a substitute.
“I am not going where I can be shackled and held against my will.” To his dismay, Haydn was making good sense. With all the trouble to which Lilith had gone to ensure she came, her plan certainly wasn’t going to cease upon Haydn’s arrival. He hadn’t even fooled himself into thinking it would. “If I am going to see Lilith, my body is staying here. Surely, you can understand my lack of faith.”
“You know how dangerous it is.”
“I don’t fear the sylphs,” Haydn said.
“Only because you fear Lilith more.”
“Distrust is not fear,” Haydn returned. “If I was afraid of her, I never would have left her.”
Haydn should have been afraid. She didn’t know how afraid she should be. Cain’s history with Lilith stretched back long before Haydn ever came into the picture, and Lilith always had walked the periphery of becoming that which she once claimed to despise. Something about Haydn had tamed her, which made Cain’s job considerably easier. Harboring a deeper understanding now of what that something might have been, he sometimes wished Haydn would just go back, would be what Lilith wanted her to be, so Lilith would be less of a powder keg waiting to blow at any moment.
“It’s up to you,” he declared, because he had no other choice. He didn’t have the brawn to force her, the brains to trick her, or the influence to persuade her. He was just the mediator with the book.
“I know.” Haydn drove the fact home as she glanced to the closed door beside the cupboard. “How’s your back room?”
“I believe you’ll find everything you’ll want.” Cain accepted the reality that nothing would ever go exactly as he intended.
“I’ll be waiting.”
Pressing a warm kiss to the corner of his mouth, Haydn went through the door, and Cain realized, yet again, if he was any kind of puppet master at all, he was a master controlled from below by his puppets, who knew how to pull all his strings.
Clothes draped across the worn ottoman, Haydn knelt in the pile of floor pillows Cain must have used for meditation, if he ever did that anymore, and twisted her hair up off her neck. No desire for things to get messy, she knew better than not to expect some carnage. The only other time she traveled this way, the stakes were almost as high, but the destination wrought with fewer perils.
At the fumble of items as Cain came through the door, Haydn didn’t know whether to laugh or glare.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You’ve never seen a naked woman.”
Having the good grace, at least, to look
embarrassed as he moved around her with a copper tray of supplies, Cain avoided Haydn’s gaze, trying desperately to ignore the other exposed parts of her, as he put the triad into place.
One canister to her left, one to her right, and one placed in front of her, Haydn watched Cain pull the lids off one by one, glancing clockwise from the canister that appeared empty on her left, to the clay-crafted taper before her, to the clear liquid on her right.
The containers a matching set, it was a rather professional display, she had to admit. When she did this herself, she had to scrape from the world, ending up with a rather amateurish set-up of sea water, mud, and nitrogen in mismatched containers. Not that presentation made any difference. The fact that she was sitting before Cain, making demands that didn’t come from Lilith, was proof that the most rudimentary of elements worked if intention was sincere enough.
“What happened to you?” Cain stopped trying to pretend he had restraint, openly ogling the fading pink line on Haydn’s chest.
“Run in with a hunter,” she said.
“Some run in,” he declared, picking the small glass ink bottle and brush off the tray and moving behind her.
“They’ve become some hunters.” Haydn refused to give her second thoughts room to grow as she heard the wax seal on the bottle break. She knew why she was doing this. They had to have answers. Whatever it took. “Which is another source of recent irritation. Slade’s crew has gotten remarkably good at finding us. Lilith can’t even find me, and this greasy band of mercenaries suddenly knows everywhere we’re going to be. Any idea how they might be doing that?”
“I could only conjecture,” Cain said.
“Conjecture away.” Trying to hold steady at the feel of the circle being drawn onto her back, Haydn remembered how her hand shook when she drew the target, how sloppy her artwork came out. Alone, she’d had no choice but to draw onto her chest, a dangerous entry point, she knew, but desperation had made her willing to risk everything.
