Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series)

by Karin Cox

  You are never alone.

  How I wished I could tell Joslyn that. How I wished I had stayed with her in the ruined castle and taken her in my arms, but wishing would not make it so. Joslyn was lost to me. But the Cruxim was right: if I could find Sabine’s anchorstone, perhaps she might be returned to me. While Sabine still lived, so must I.

  Soon, a patch of dark forest spread like a stain over the landscape below. It looked as black as I felt. I wanted to nestle in it and hide myself as a nightbird might, sleeping through the day in the hope dusk might come more easily.

  I fluttered to the ground and crept into the mess of oak, stumbling over roots wet with moss. Branches grasped at my feathers and the air kissed my face. I longed for the shocking refreshment of a stream in which I might wash away the past. I pushed on, deeper into the gloom, past bear and badger and burrow creatures that stared at me, mutely curious, before scurrying away. When I heard the giggle of water slipping over stones, I crawled into the stream and let it lick my skin and heal me a little. Then, I slept.

  The shrill call of a cuckoo woke me. It, too, reminded me of Joslyn. It had been true, the story I had told her in Gandler’s tent while my lips stung with the bitterness of her apparent betrayal. As a lonely boy, an orphan—my mother lost to me, my father unknown to me—a nest of starlings had captured my heart. How careful I had been with them, only to find an impostor within. I had loved the cuckoo like any of the greedy, chirruping chicks, but it had killed the others and driven them from the nest. Still I had loved it. Eventually, it had been set upon by a cat, which I caught and drained, tossing its body behind a row of pox carts. I had mourned for my chicks and for my cuckoo friend, and I had avoided cats and their graceful cruelty altogether—until I met Sabine.

  But then, only part cat she is; the rest of her is all woman: tempestuous, courageous, headstrong, and kind. A lioness of a woman who loved me despite the wrong I had done her. A woman who would have faith that I was searching for her still. But where to start? The riddle she had told me when Dr. Gandler had separated us made little sense.

  “Where womb and navel meet as one,

  and python’s coils foretell the sun,

  there shall you find the stone you seek,

  of marble smooth and white and sleek.

  Make a pledge to know thyself before mischief is nigh,

  and you shall know the ancient place at which my stone doth lie.”

  Navel and womb. I put my hands to my head and propped myself against a knotted tree trunk to think.

  Women and their riddles.

  Anxious to decipher it, I stood and paced, my wings fluttering with agitation. An ancient place: that much I understood. If I took Sabine’s words at face value, it would not be in Paris, nor even France. Where had Joslyn said she had flown from Beltran?

  Lovrijenac Fortress. Dalmatia.

  No, it would not be there, not if that were a place known to Vampires. And pythons? A serpentine river perhaps.

  A great hopelessness washed over me. There must have been thousands of Sphinx statues in the world. How long would it take me to seek them all out, to find her, and to rouse her? Centuries. Eons. I had eternity.

  My mind took in the globe’s great cities: London, Rome, Constantinople, Moscow, Paris, Athens—and there, the tiny seed of hope sprouted.

  Greece: a land of gods and olive groves and creatures older than history. A place where the word history itself was made. Was not Thebes the home of the Sphinx’s riddle to Oedipus? Oedipus had bested the creature, it was said, and she had thrown herself from a cliff. Could Sabine’s anchorstone be there, in Thebes, the birthplace of her kind? I thought of Spain, of England, France, and London—all places where love had lent me roots. In Greece, I had nothing. No one. Perhaps I was wrong. It could be anywhere, I realized.

  I put my head in my hands. How would I ever find her?

  “First, you must begin to search.”

  My head jerked up. The voice was too girlish, too real to be the Maker.

  “I told you to leave me.” I directed my thoughts to the glow emanating from behind a spreading chestnut tree.

  “And I told you that fate binds me to you.” Skylar stepped forward into the clearing. “If you are fated, then you will find Sabine. If it is fated, then I will help you look.”

  “I do not need your help.”

  “You do. But you do not know how to ask for it.”

  “I would not ask for it.”

  “Then I give it freely.” She strode toward me, still glowing in the greenish half-light, and put out her hand. “You should not be alone. Your thoughts themselves are poisonous. Let us fly to Greece, if that is where you wish to begin your search.”

  I was too melancholy to repel her again.

  She looked triumphant as she moved forward into a patch of open forest near the stream, and then she soared up into the air.

  Defeated, I followed her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  We reached Athens at midnight, recognizing it by the gleam of marble under a ghostly moon. The white pillars of the Acropolis guided us in to a city half-forgotten by progress. Together, we swooped down to a grove on the hill of nymphs, hitting the hard ground with a thud. The rock beneath my feet steadied me, grounded me. Here was something tangible: marble from which countless Sphinxes surely must have been carved, and among them, I hoped, Sabine’s anchorstone. A quiet determination replaced the sorrow of Sabine’s absence.

  Beside me, Skylar bowed her head, and once more I heard her thoughts: “He loves her truly.”

  “Yes,” I answered silently. “I do.”

  I could see by the jerk of her head that I had surprised her. She had not expected me to intercept those private thoughts.

  Nostrils flaring, she nodded before saying, “Then we have work to do. But first I must feed.”

  I felt it too: a growling hunger for blood. A Vampire’s throat between my jaws would do me good, would make me feel I was avenging Joslyn and Sabine.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Let us hunt.”

  It was a new thing to me, hunting with another Cruxim. Sabine and I had fed together many times, her stealth and my speed perfectly married, but I was surprised to find Skylar’s grace and her ability to blend into the shadows no less impressive than Sabine’s.

  We sought out a coven house first. Sometimes, I could smell them. The walls slick with blood, the scent a metallic invitation on the night air. But we found none nearby. Instead, we slipped into a vacant whitewashed villa and dressed. Then we let our hunger lead us to a bar near Piraeus.

  The harbor waters reflected a watchful moon, and the wine was sweet on my lips, made sweeter by the vinegar-dipped bread that whet our appetites as we perused the menu—watching the streets for any hint of the supernatural. We looked, for all the world, like lovers, although our eyes met only once: when we saw the one with lace bunched at his throat, his sleek curls smoothed back and a small speckle of blood marring his cravat.

  A lady dined with the creature at the taverna next to ours. A cameo moved at her throat when she laughed, which she did often, setting her cleavage quivering. When he had finished picking at his meal with long fingers, and the waiter had cleared away the shells, the fingerbowl, and wineglasses, the Vampire followed her out onto the street.

  I stood and put out my arm for Skylar. With a cute curtsey, she took it in hers, and we stepped out after them. Her small hand tucked into the crook of my arm was both strange and comforting. I had not walked with a woman like that since Evedra, and even then, I had been dressed as one of them.

  Ahead of us, the woman giggled, and her heeled slippers tapped out a heartbeat on the street. The Vampire’s arm was around her now, his pale, handsome face close to hers as he slid his arm lower to clasp her waist. She did not baulk but batted her eyelashes and angled her head closer to his shoulder. One of her curls had come loose to trail down her back.

  When he stopped and thrust her into the dark cave of a doorway, his lips upon hers, she ga
sped only a little and clutched him closer, throwing her head back.

  “How long I have waited for this moment, Anastacia,” he panted.

  “Then do not wait. Oh, wait no more.” She pawed at his trousers, and he stopped for a moment to unbutton them, letting them fall from his hips. “As you wish,” he murmured.

  Beside me, I saw Skylar turn her head, averting her gaze from his grinding hips, which thrust the woman against the door. The woman grasped the brass knocker and moaned, rubbing herself against him as his lips met her earlobe.

  Taking up the velvet ribbon of the cameo, the Vampire drew it taut.

  “Now!” I commanded Skylar. “Now! Before he kills her.”

  We rushed upon him, Skylar to the left and me to his right. The Vampire half-turned at our approach, but only in time to see my bared fangs descending on his neck. He made to swing his head, to struggle away from me, but found Skylar’s lips there, her teeth agleam in the thin light that issued from a room above.

  “W-what is this?” he stammered, no doubt surprised by her beauty as much as by her teeth.

  Even killing, she looks at peace, I thought enviously, and then I plunged my fangs into his neck. Hot blood burst through me, tasting of lust and impending death. His approach was not a new thing, not a novel way for them to kill.

  Sex and death, I thought. The two are brothers. From the corner of my eye as I drank, I saw Skylar pull the weeping girl away and tug her petticoats down.

  “Flee,” Skylar told her, shutting the woman’s O-shaped mouth to still the screams. “Flee now.” She pushed her in the direction of the alley’s entrance. From the shadows above, a bat wheeled and screeched.

  “Flee,” Skylar yelled, “and be thankful. You have lost a lust but found a life.”

  “Cruxim!”

  Skylar spun back toward the sound.

  Turning my eyes up from my meal, I noticed a second Vampire crouched beneath a windowsill.

  “Drink!” I shoved the near-dead Vampire into Skylar’s arms. “I will deal with this one.”

  She laughed, the clear, confident sound of it bouncing down the alley, following the footsteps of the Vampire’s prey. “And let you have them both? No.” Her features sharpened with bloodlust and her mouth opened to reveal her fangs, but her eyes remained on my face. I felt the heat from them as I drained the last rushing drop from the first Vampire and dropped his body onto the cobbles, panting. Skylar rushed toward us, but then she spun so quickly and gracefully that I almost missed it, and moved toward his friend. The second Vampire scanned the rooftops for a perch or escape. A cry came from above, and I followed it to see a slender, pale-haired Vampire folded into one of the eaves. He looked young, too young, and the thought took me that I knew him, but I could not discern from where before he leaped out into the night. The dark caught him on bat’s wings, and the creature circled, shrieking down to its friend below before vanishing into the dark. That Vampire, too, made to turn to a bat, but he was heavier and not as fast, and Skylar moved toward him like a wind. With a single swift kick, she stunned him.

  “Be gone,” she said as she fell upon him. It sounded more like absolution than a threat, and her lips moved to his neck as gently as a lover’s. She lay there with him for minutes, his Vampire blood thickened by fear or a deadly desire. Finally, when he had ceased his twitching and was still, Skylar sat up and smiled. Not a drop of blood smeared her mouth; it was as if she had kissed him to death.

  “How did you do that?” I licked my lips, embarrassed by the blood smeared on my mouth and on my sleeve, where I had wiped it.

  Skylar smiled again. Even her teeth were free from the taint of blood. “I was trained,” she said. “You will see.”

  Our meal made, we settled on the rocky outcrop of the Areopagus. The old city stretched stark white before us, its nudity broken by the pale light of evening that seeped under blue doors. It was an unsettled time in Athens for Christians and Muslims alike. The Greeks, ever wary, were more so than usual. Dark eyes shifted uneasily in dark faces as we passed. Black-clad widows of the plague sat in doorways, their arthritic fingers clattering on worry beads of hazelnut shell or olive pit when they saw us. The plague had crept into the agora. Its rigor settled in the twisted, whitewashed alleys and cast a pall over the marketplace. Even with our wings hidden beneath capes and clothes, two Cruxim aglow must have seemed feverish and fearful to them. We kept our distance. We sought the shadows.

  All over the city, artifacts lay in the streets like so many histories, and I knew not where to start but for the cemeteries that sat like crooked teeth at Kerameikos. The statue of Athena that graced the Parthenon had once been adorned with Sphinxes on her crown, I knew, but she was long gone now and crumbling. Everywhere we looked, the stones were brittle relics, the faces eaten away, the wings chipped. All of them bore sorrowful expressions that I could not reconcile with Sabine’s proud demeanor. All the while, as I found them and kissed them, Skylar watched me with eyes gray as rain.

  We wandered the winding laneways of the Plaka, following the chants of a priest, but nowhere did we see a Sphinx that moved at my touch. At Anafiotika, a donkey stumbled by, shying when it smelled us. Its burden of fresh rosemary and thyme and salty, curdled feta hung in the air. The aroma made me think this was a Joslyn place, and that Sabine would not be here. I felt the absence of them both so keenly that I stopped and leaned against a wall until the donkey and its cargo had passed.

  Eventually, when my heart had flown with all its hopes at the statues of more than fifteen Sphinxes in Athens and not one had rewarded me with as much as the batting of an eye, Skylar put a hand on my shoulder.

  “It is enough for today.” She squeezed gently.

  Loneliness opened like a vault inside me. Her hand, warm above my wings, trembled there, as if a current ran through her to me, but I ached for Sabine, for a friendship forged from stone and sorrow. I shook her off and rose again into the night to search the Cyprus groves on the Hill of Muses.

  At one statue, I thought I felt a slight ripple beneath the stone, but when my lips brushed the marble, they met only the dust of memory. Weariness was playing tricks on my mind.

  Still I tried. We flew on through the night to Thebes, but despite the old myth, no Sphinx statues quickened at my hopeful kisses. If the lions that adorned the gates of Mycenae had faces, their eyes might have stared at me accusingly, but only their bodies saw us slip into that ancient place to search for any sign of Sabine there.

  There was none, only grizzled gravel surrounding olive groves, and poppy-strewn plains that stretched before us like empty years. At Korinth, I pressed my lips tightly against the marble smile of a Sphinx that had guarded funeral stones there since the sixth century. Not a twitch of tail betrayed the creature within. Nor did the stones at Marathon, Khalkis, or Katerini arise from their slumber as we flew up the coast.

  At daylight, I slumped into a cavern on Mount Olympus and rubbed my aching wings. Skylar was sympathetic, but I missed the weight and heat of Sabine—the length and strength and power of her supple body sprawled next to me.

  “Do not give up hope.”

  Skylar’s voice seemed to come from far away, as if she were not talking to me but to herself or to something that existed elsewhere.

  Hope: the word hung in the air. What a fragile concept it was. What a tangle of coincidences. “She could be anywhere,” I said.

  “Then we will go anywhere.”

  I jolted upward with anger. “No! I will go anywhere. Why will you not leave me? Why have you come?”

  “To protect you,” she said, without a trace of anything but kindness.

  “I don’t need your protection.” I felt for the cross at my throat. “Look at what happens to the women I try to protect or to those who protect me.”

  “Sometimes, men need protection from themselves.” She shook her head a little. “And sometimes that is a woman’s job.”

  I sniffed.

  “They loved you, Amedeo.”

 
My hair felt thick with dust and sweat as I raked it with my fingers. “Why can you not leave me to my grief?”

  “Because...” She peered at me curiously for a moment, as if she might answer differently, then she inclined her head a little, rose, and began to collect kindling at the cave’s entrance. “You need me.”

  “I need no one but Sabine.”

  I watched my thought enter her mind like an arrow. For a second, Skylar’s wide, arched brows drew closer, and I thought my words had left a wound, but I could not be sure. Her wings shimmied slightly, either with cold or insult. Insult, I thought. Was I coming to know her moods, etched as thinly on her as they were? Perhaps I knew her too, in some strange way. I felt my forehead crinkle at the thought, and put it away.

  Then she turned away and piled the sticks and leaves she had gathered high into a tower.

  When she turned to face me again, she kept her eyes lowered. “What made you come to Greece? Why do you think she might be here?”

  “Nothing but hope,” I answered. “Fragile, broken hope. And a riddle.”

  She glanced up at that. “Tell it me,” she requested.

  Suspicion halted the words on my lips. “Why should I? Perhaps you have too much interest in a creature you did nothing to save when you could. Why seek her now? Why save her now?”

  Skylar was silent for a time until she said, “There is a riddle, too, that I have heard. It speaks of a way to wake a Sphinx from a long sleep. That is in part why I was following you, Amedeo. Why I was following you both. A time may come when we both need your friendship with Sabine, just to survive.”

  Skylar had coaxed a thin flame from the nest of twigs and dried leaves, and its smoke funneled up to hang in the cave’s roof. Coughing, I stood and moved beside her at the fire. “Tell me this riddle.” I took her arm and turned her to face me. “Tell me now.”