He held up a hand and a faint crackle of black energy played between his fingers, dancing across his debased flesh, before he stretched out his palm and the power moved from him toward the killers.
Here was the capricious will of God. As often distant and oblivious as it was pure and obliging. Here was the strength of ten thousand prayers spoken in hope and belief, and ten thousand more from, the heart of his loss and hatred.
"Hellfire, son," Duffy called. "What you got there?"
Jester afforded himself a grin. "Heaven-fire."
He clenched his hand and the cords of mystic power tightened around their bodies while they screamed. It was an ugly passionate sound, perhaps loud enough for Marcie Andrews to hear down where she moaned trapped and broken in the catclaw briars and tussocks of weeds. The black energy wove about the Ferris boys and stung at them like wasps. It tore and delved and slithered through their ears to heat their brains. It dug at their tongues and knew all their words. It skittered against their knives and the blades turned red-hot in the emerald darkness. Both cried out,"God-"
We all call for God before our deaths, Jester thought, all except himself, of course. Which is perhaps why he was so blessed and so damned.
His shadows found all their secrets and weaknesses and raked their excruciating places. The brothers, like all righteous penitents, went to their knees, bleeding and sobbing and begging.
"I may have use for you two," Jester said.
Once he had been a man like other men, but perhaps with a greater will to serve Heaven than most. He preached the holy word and sought to save lives that had gone to shambles. The road whispered for him to follow and he traveled the land giving witness and testament: He had a lush, compelling voice and would sing at tent revivals. His words, a gift from on high, brought peace and joy, and then, by turns, prophecy and tongues.
Eventually, through another boon, he began to heal the sick. The crippled, diseased, and maimed came to him in long processions, winding through the marshes and villages and towns, hobbling in along the dirt tracks, the blind following his voice.
He had the love of a good woman at home and he always returned to her, in time. When he returned they would picnic down by the bottoms and make love in the juniper. When the Lord called for him to move on again, she understood.
His last few years as a mortal man had been busy ones. He was away from home more than ever. Building churches, improving schools, inviting doctors to create clinics. Mending those he could and consoling those he could not. The flocks gathered to him. No matter how often they saw the miracle of each new day, and were blessed with life and family, they needed to be reminded of the Word.
There were more ill children to attend and souls to save. So many that when he spotted the orphan boy in the swamp revival during an all-night sing, and heard the child sing and preach with a golden voice even more commanding than his own, he knew he would mentor and cultivate the boy's skills.
After those long months traveling the hills and the swamps, growing to love the boy as a son, he returned to Enigma strong and tan and full of conviction to find his wife holding a newborn baby girl.
He remembered that moment as one of overwhelming elation, so much so that he rushed to her and threw his arms around her. It wasn't until he noticed his wife's terrified expression that he realized he couldn't be the father. He'd been away for more than a year.
Brother Jester could no longer recall his wife's name, or his own at that time, because for so long it made him suffer and groan to even think of them. But he spoke her name then, whatever it had been, and, with the pieces of his heart twisting inside him, he looked at the baby and wanted to kill it.
His wife spoke his name, whatever it was, and said, "You love God more than you do me."
It wasn't a question. It needed no answer. But he felt compelled to say, "Yes." As if there could be any other response from him. As if there should be.
"He's a selfish god, is what He is," she continued, "and I'm a selfish woman. I need a man wants me more than anything else. Who comes home to be a husband."
Jester began crying, smiling sickly, unable to stop. "But we were bound before-"
"You haven't spent more than a week at home in the five years we've been married. How bound does that make you to me?"
He didn't know what to say or what to do. The full sweeping call of his rage had not struck yet. His tears fell and he staggered about the room, occasionally lurching toward the baby as if to take her, and then moving off again. He stumbled into furniture. He hugged the boy and then shoved him aside. There were pictures of Jesus on the wall staring.
Brother Jester asked who the father was.
His wife wouldn't answer.
But even then, as his path to destruction widened before him, with no possibility of avoidance, his power was rising. He went to his knees before his wife, chewing his lips, blood filling his mouth.
Shadows drifted. Angels moved through the air and knew him-Azrael, Adonai, Ariel, Anafiel-their wings unfurling and the light brush of black feathers touching his cheek, their shadows crossing his racked body like scourges.
The knowledge became his because it was nothing but a greater torture. And from such pain came purification. His mind filled with white light and the answers to his questions.
Bliss Nail, the rotten rich man who already had six daughters. They were always laughing and gabbing about town, driven about in a huge town car, with a chauffeur who tipped his cap to everyone he passed.
The baby girl merely stared at Jester, smiling toothlessly, and then reached for him and grabbed hold of his finger.
Jester scowled at his wife's child, wanting it dead.
The boy, standing behind him and holding a handful of roses to present to the woman, said with true understanding, "The Lord's work sometimes ain't easy on His servants. We do our best but it ain't always good enough."
In his heartbreak, and in the awakening of his true nature,Jester had almost forgotten about the boy. His protege, his almost-son.
Brother Jester said, "Quiet, boy, you don't know anything about what this means."
"I reckon I do, and it's you who's done lost your way. I see it in your eyes. They're brimmin' with hate. It's not too late. Ask forgiveness."
"Like hell!"
And then, like the striking of a hammer, Jester's skull nearly burst with his black grief and righteous wrath, his need to die and his need to kill. He screamed and the baby began to cry, and the wife backed out of the room, and the boy dropped the roses.
Jester remembered running for the shed and finding the hatchet there. The shadows of lost archangels lashing him along like a whipped animal.
The boy had tried to stop him. The child's faith was fearsome and forceful, even the angels drew back from the boy, confused and uncertain. But the boy was only eight years old and Jester struck out with the hatchet and left the child crumpled in the dust, his forehead cracked and bleeding.
Returning to his wife, who was on the phone pleading for her lover to aid her, Jester casually twirled the hatchet, the blade dark with a splash of the boy's blood. Bliss Nail's voice came through the line loudly, and in the background there was the sound of girls squabbling and yakking. He grabbed up the phone and said, "Bliss Nail, you'll have a silent home now."
Then he proceeded to murder his wife.
She didn't struggle, her hands raised as if to scratch at his eyes. But she never did claw at him, as if too disgusted to touch him now, even if it might save her life. He left the infant in its cradle, willing it to die but unable to reach out and break its neck or use the hatchet. And how he had tried. He'd stared at his hands for minutes, until they turned black and began to spark. But for some reason, despite his rage, he couldn't place his fists in the cradle and do the deed.
After that, his memory became a haze. He remembered awakening once at the end of a noose, his body swaying, laughing to himself because he wasn't dead. Then he felt small hands on him. His next recollection was three days later. He was bent in the road chewing on the headless body of an egret. There were feathers in his mouth, and a group of children stood across from him, whimpering, too frightened to even run.