by Irene Ferris
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it.” Marcus crossed his arms. “Let’s get busy. Dwayne, you and Carol take the attic. Eddie and Susan, the second floor. Jenn and I will search the main floor. First group done gets the other rooms of the basement.”
“And me?” Mathieu spoke quietly.
“You figure out a way to get her back.” Marcus ducked though the door and his footsteps echoed as he ran up the stairs.
Jenn looked at Mathieu for a moment, shrugged and followed her husband. The others filed out one after the other, except for Dwayne who stood and stared at the floor in the center of the room.
Mathieu watched him and then quietly spoke, “Dwayne?”
“Yeah?” Dwayne’s voice was rough with some kind of emotion.
“What did you see when you looked ahead?” Mathieu asked.
Dwayne ignored the question. “You’re as fucked up as I am, aren’t you?”
Mathieu gave a small smile. “If not more so.” He asked again, “What did you see?”
“I told you. Nasty shit going down but I don’t know when or where.” The man looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t like not knowing.”
“No one does. But there’s a reason that the future remains hidden for most people.” Mathieu wrapped his arms around himself again.
“I know. And you know too.” Dwayne looked up and spoke slowly. “You see too many horrible things you can’t change, too many fucked up things you can’t stop and it drives you crazy after years of trying and failing. I figured that out when I was a kid.”
Mathieu nodded again. “Yes. I would imagine so.”
“So why are you crazy? You can’t see the future.” Dwayne asked.
“Circumstances beyond my control, I guess. Seeing too much death over too many years.” Mathieu shrugged and then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter for either of us, does it?”
“Not really. We’re both still bugfuck crazy when push comes to shove.” Dwayne took one last look around the room and walked past Mathieu without a second glance. His steps echoed through the empty basement as he climbed the stairs.
Mathieu turned back to the room and shuddered as he read the spell again.
Chapter Twenty - Three
The search continued on until nightfall.
At that point, Carol retired to the kitchen and started cooking.
“My family loved my cooking and they all loved my spaghetti and meat balls. So quit your bitchin’ and eat. We can keep looking after you all do the dishes.” The rest of them joined her in the large kitchen and ate at a roughhewn wooden table with a white tablecloth. They’d all decided the dining room was much too fine for such a motley crew and enjoyed just all being together.
Mathieu propped himself against the far wall and watched them all as they sat and talked and ate. The food smelled good and although Carol offered him a plate, he was not interested. Instead he was satisfied with just watching them interact and feeling all the undercurrents that ran between them.
Susan and Eddie were a pair, but there were issues there. Their passion ran deep but there was anger there as well. Susan struck sparks of emotion that glowed incandescent behind his eyelids. There was also an undercurrent of want that flowed from Susan to Marcus. It seemed she was always aware of him some unconscious way, but he was completely wrapped up in his wife.
Jenn seemed to sense something because she always kept one hand on Marcus whenever Susan was in the room. A hand on the shoulder or the back or the thigh. A brush of his hair or a spontaneous kiss on the cheek. It didn’t matter because it all spoke of who belonged to who.
Dwayne, on the other hand, seemed to belong to all of them. Carol especially seemed to be involved with him but in more of a motherly aspect, but all of them were protective in the extreme. The man shoveled food into his mouth automatically, not seeming to notice the complex aromas and tastes that Carol had labored to put into her sauce. Carol didn’t care, seeming to be just glad that he ate.
Carol was older and sadder, a mother to the group. She smiled often, but it was a smile that carried pain.
Marcus sat in the center of it all, a born leader. Mathieu watched him and wondered at how easily he seemed to inspire the love and loyalty of all those around him. What he’d thought at their first meeting as a weak chin now seemed to be simply understated. Perhaps he was aging into it?
And then there was Jenn. He watched her as she smiled and touched her husband, her entire world revolving around him. There was a short, sharp pang in his heart as at one angle she seemed to almost resemble Yvette in profile. It was only for a second and then gone, but it was enough to hurt and hurt badly.
Mathieu watched them laugh and interact while his heart ached. He thought he’d grown accustomed to being alone and without human emotion surrounding him. Perhaps he was wrong.
Dinner consumed, the dishes were being washed. Dwayne filled a large silver bowl at the tap and placed it gingerly on the table. Taking a wad of blond hair from his pocket, he rubbed it around the rim of the bowl and touched it to the surface of the water.
He then placed himself to stare at the surface of the water, careful not to breathe on it.
“What are you doing now?” Susan snapped at him. “We need to get back to work.”
“I found her hair in the brush upstairs. I want to see if I can scry where Manders is right now. Maybe I’ll see something that could help us find whatever the Hell it is we’re looking for.”
The room went silent as everyone exchanged glances. Mathieu went cold inside.
“You don’t want to do that, Dwayne. You don’t want to risk that kind of thing right now.” Carol pulled a chair up right next to the man, brushing her fingers through his hair with a worried glance at Marcus.
Mathieu walked forward and the rest of them stared at him, seeming startled at his appearance. He’d been so quiet that they must have forgotten his existence.
“You don’t want to see that, Dwayne. You won’t find anything there that will help.” Mathieu spoke quietly as he reached over and trailed his fingertips through the still water in the bowl. “I will tell you where she is and what is happening if you must know, but she would not want you to see her like that.”
Dwayne’s face curled up into an expression of anger as he watched the ripples go back and forth on the surface of the water in the bowl. Then the expression faded slowly into something unreadable as the water stilled. “All right. Tell me.”
Mathieu spoke very quietly. “She’s in a very cold place. There is no color. All is dead and gray except for the circle that she’s in. That’s red and brown with her blood by now. She has an iron chain around her neck and it feels like it’s burning into her soul with a fire made of ice. She’s naked and she’s alone and she’s broken.”
Dwayne nodded, tears forming in his eyes and rolling down his cheeks as he stared into the bowl. Mathieu continued. “She’s bruised and bleeding and hurt. The creature would have wanted to bind her with the fifth binding but that isn’t possible so it settled for the first four. She isn’t chained to the ground anymore because the circle holds her now, but the marks are still there along with the bruises from the beatings.”
“Wait, wait.” Susan interrupted. “This is bullshit. There’s no way you could know any of that.” She paused angrily, searching for words. “You’re just making this shit up. What kind of sick bastard are you to do that?”
“Those who experience it never come back to speak of it.” Mathieu looked at her until she turned away, stood up and left the room. Eddie looked worried, put down the plate he’d been drying and followed her.
“You’ve been there. You’ve had it done to you. It’s been here in the water since you touched it.” Dwayne nodded down at the bowl, not breaking eye contact with whatever he saw. Carol looked from Dwayne to Mathieu with large eyes.
Mathieu could not meet her gaze. Instead he leaned down and spoke quietly. “Dwayne, look away. That is not your pain to bear. What is done is done. It ca
nnot be changed and I don’t want anyone to hurt because of that.”
Dwayne looked up and gave a pained snort. “Except I can’t be sure that’s not the future, too.”
Mathieu touched his neck and shook his head. “No, I will not allow that to happen. Never again.”
“My mom always used to say ‘never say never’.” Dwayne looked down at the water and stirred it with a fingertip. “Of course she also said my face would stick like that when I made funny faces and that eating all my liver would keep some kid in China from starving. Mom was pretty well full of it, bless her soul.”
“Mothers still do that?” Mathieu smiled at a distant memory. “How reassuring that is.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said from behind him. “Mothers still do that. Always have, always will.”
“Do what?” Susan came back in the room, her cheeks reddened with emotion. Eddie followed her, his posture very stiff. Anger rolled off both of them in waves and Mathieu retreated until his back was against the cold plaster wall.
“Say strange things that mean nothing in the grand scheme but still make you feel better.” Marcus had noticed her discomfiture and eyed her. “What?”
“What? WHAT?” Susan exploded. “You’ve got some kind of poser asshole in here who wants to tell us scary stories and make us clean house instead of doing what we need to do—track down that bastard and get that girl back. What the Hell is wrong with you?”
Marcus looked at her strangely while Jenn came up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Mathieu watched the scene unfold before him and watched the undercurrents of anger and resentment flare up into shades of red and orange. And then the unthinkable happened.
He lost control.
It was with a detached sense of horror that he felt the darkness break loose and slither into the room. He knew it was only in his mind but it seemed the room grew dim, blackness gathering in the corners and creeping slowly towards the people.
“What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with you?” Jenn pushed forward and leaned across the table. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you. You’re a goddamned bitch, that’s what’s wrong. You’re rude and nasty and no one can bear to be around you. And you keep looking at my husband! Eddie not good enough for you? Or can’t he help you sleep your way up the ladder?”
Susan recoiled and turned red. Her eyes flashed as she straightened up and hissed back. “At least I can keep a man satisfied. I see how he watches me. If you acted like his wife and put out once in a while you wouldn’t be having these problems. For fucks sake, you’re married. Act like it.”
“Eddie,” Marcus said in a low, angry voice. “Do something about this.” Eddie spread his hands and gave Marcus a helpless look.
“What?” Susan snapped back at him. “You think he can tell me what to do? Maybe your little ice princess over there jumps when you speak, but I sure as hell don’t.”
“You fucking bitch. How dare you! How dare you speak to him that way? How dare you even look at him!” Jenn tossed her head and red curls escaped the clasp in her hair to bounce around her face.
“Both of you shut up. You assholes just don’t know when to quit, do you? Just leave it alone. I swear to God I want to punch you both in the throat so you’ll stop yelling!” Carol screamed as she slammed her palms on the table. Suddenly her eyes grew wide and she covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh my God, I didn’t mean that. Where did that come from?”
Susan shoved Carol roughly as she made to walk around the table to get to Jenn. “Stay out of this, you old bag. Last time anyone listened to you, they ended up dead.” Carol paled and tears welled up in her eyes before she turned her back to the room and sobbed.
Dwayne curled up as much as he could in his chair, hands covering his head as he started to whimper and rock back and forth.
Mathieu’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head in pleasure as the anger and pain in the room grew thick and heady. “No,” he whispered to himself. “Stop this.” He balled his fists and concentrated on pulling the darkness back inside but it reveled to be free and danced around the room, drawing the others further into its spell.
Eddie pulled Susan back by one arm. She spun and slapped him hard across the face, once, then twice. She ignored his look of shock and hurt as he held his cheek with one hand, turning instead to walk around the table with an air of pure malice.
“Jenn,” Marcus said in a low voice. “Stop it. Don’t get into this.” He put a hand on her shoulder, but she violently shrugged it off.
Susan leaned forward and mocked, “Yeah, Jenn. Whatever are you going to do? Be a good girl for your master now. I could show him a few things, you know.”
“I’m going to do this.” Jenn reached over to the dish drainer on the countertop beside her and pulled out a knife. “I’m going cut out your tongue so I don’t have ever hear you talk again, and then your eyes so you can’t ever look at him again, you bitch.”
Susan blanched at sight of the knife and then her face hardened. The two women stared at each other and the room was silent in shock.
“No.” Mathieu stared at the knife in Jenn’s hand. “No.” He could barely speak, his breath coming in gasps as he struggled to regain control. “Stop this,” he begged the darkness.
Dwayne pulled his head up from the table, met Mathieu’s eyes and then picked the silver basin of water up and threw it on both women, drenching them both.
They both jumped and then froze. The lights brightened as both dripping wet women stared at each other in shock. Jenn looked at the knife at her hand with wide eyes and dropped it to a floor. It clattered at their feet.
“Oh God, Jenn. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” Susan started shaking and crying as she looked at the pale woman crying silently at the table. “Carol, I didn’t mean it. I swear, I would never say anything to hurt you in a million years. Please don’t hate me.” She fell backwards into Eddie’s arms and sobbed brokenly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Jenn shuddered as she kicked the knife away. “Oh my God. What just happened? That wasn’t us.” She looked back at Marcus. “Baby, that wasn’t us,” she repeated.
Mathieu groaned as he slid down the wall to sit on the floor and closed his eyes, resting his head on his knees. Cold sweat stood out on his face as caught his breath. “It wasn’t you,” he confirmed in a hoarse voice that caught in a sob. “It was me.”
“What the fuck was that?” Marcus spun around and dropped to a crouch in front of Mathieu as Jenn and Susan fell into each other’s arms and then into Carol’s. Eddie awkwardly petted first one back, then another while Dwayne held his silver basin and watched the tableau on the floor intently.
Mathieu shook his head and looked up. After a moment he sighed and shrugged. “Now you know my true nature.”
Marcus’ eyes narrowed. “Your true nature? Your true nature? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that he can’t help it.” Dwayne spoke quietly from where he stood. “It means that he’s stuck with it the way I’m stuck with my voices.”
“Your voices don’t almost get us killed.” Marcus didn’t look away from Mathieu.
“You don’t have the slightest clue what my voices tell me do to you, now do you?” Dwayne sighed and then left the room.
“That is so something I didn’t need to hear right now.” Eddie groaned and then turned back to Susan. “Come on, baby. It’s okay, I love you. Let’s get you into something warm and dry.”
Susan snuffled and nodded before hugging Jenn and Carol one last time. Her eyes were a shocking blue from crying, glowing in the kitchen fluorescents.
Marcus still glared down at Mathieu. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
Mathieu looked down, wiped at the tears that rolled down his cheeks with the heel of his hand. “I lost control.”
“Lost control of what?”
“The darkness.”
Punching the wall behind Mathieu, Marcus yell
ed, “That’s not an answer. Tell me the truth.” At Mathieu’s flinch he continued, “When are you going to understand that I’m not going to hurt you? I’m not going to do anything to you. I don’t understand why you keep doing that.”
“You look like it,” Mathieu blurted as he cringed away. “You look just like it when you’re angry.”
Marcus took a deep, calming breath. “I’m not Gadreel. He’s gone. You know that. I’m not going to hurt you. But you need to tell me what the darkness is or I can’t help you.”
“It just is.”
“It is what? I can’t help you unless you tell me the truth.”
“I’ve never lied to you.” Mathieu straightened. “Not once. I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“Tell me the truth.” Marcus leaned forward, his face mere inches from Mathieu’s. Mathieu tried to force his body through the wall behind him to get away but the physical constraints of plaster and wood held him where he was.
Jenn, still shivering in reaction, watched them both with pitying eyes.
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” Mathieu repeated. “Unless it was to say that I may have become that which I hate.” He lunged to one side and away from Marcus, scrabbling on the floor for the knife Jenn had kicked away.
“Hey! Hey! Stop that! Put that down!” Jenn yelled at him as his hand wrapped around the wood hilt of the knife.
Not responding, Mathieu gripped the knife close to his chest. He regained his feet and ran to the kitchen door. Throwing it open, he ran into the night. The stars were clear and bright over his head, the air cool as his steps thudded against the ground, taking him further and further away from the house with its people and air of anger and pain.
Chapter Twenty - Four
“This,” said Gadreel, “is a most amazing invention.” It kicked the crossbow out of the dead archer’s hands.
Mathieu remained silent. The battlefield stretched around them. The wounded twitched and moaned. Those closest to death actually saw him and reached out in the hopes of succor. His heart broke to know that he could give them nothing but more pain.
