“Not much of a looker,” I said. “But on the other hand, he has a lovely singing voice.”
“Your use of humor in the face of fear is peculiar. Reverence is by far the commoner response.”
“Yeah, well, I guess that means I’m no commoner,” I said, “and anyway, it seems to me there’s two likely options as to who you are. One of ’em’s in charge of hell, and the other’s responsible for the platypus. The former deserves no reverence from me, and the latter’s gotta have a sense of humor. Now, you wanna tell me what I’m doing here?”
“A better question would be what it was you were doing in Cambodia.”
“My fucking job, that’s what.”
“Were you, now?”
“You’re damned right I was.”
“But why?”
“I go where they point me. That’s the gig. That’s my forever. You don’t know that, then what the hell are we all doing here?”
“Ah. I see. So you were simply following orders, then.”
“That’s right.”
“It amazes me that your kind was given the greatest gift in all of Creation — free will — and yet you’re all so willing to forsake it at the slightest provocation.”
“The slightest provocation?” I repeated. “Is that what you call being damned to hell for all eternity? Because it ain’t been exactly a basket fulla kittens.”
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t have been. Still, Samuel, I’m surprised that you, in particular, would succumb to such weakness of character. I would have thought that with all you’ve experienced, particularly given the target of your maiden collection, you’d be reluctant to rely upon that old chestnut. Many a war criminal has pled the same, to no satisfactory result.”
“That’s not a fair comparison,” I said.
“Isn’t it?”
“My orders don’t leave a lot of wiggle room.”
“Don’t they? What of New York? Of young Katherine MacNeil?”
“The order to collect her was based on false pretenses. She was an innocent. Neither can be said of the order to kill the Brethren.”
“Really? What of Thomed, then?”
“Whatever peace he’s come to now, it can’t change who he is or what he’s done. And let’s not forget, the body he’s been fused to since he and his buddies’ little ritual had to belong to someone.”
“Are you certain about that?” the creature asked.
“As certain as I am of anything,” I replied.
“On that, at least,” it said, “we do not disagree.”
The child-thing raised its hands, first finger of each raised, and made a rotating motion with the two of them as if setting an invisible plate spinning. The world seemed to twist beneath my feet, and my vision swam. I took a knee and closed my eyes, my equilibrium lost, my stomach threatening mutiny. When the world steadied, I opened my eyes once more, and found that day had turned to night and that the child, its mouthpiece, and I were not alone.
A bonfire was burning some twenty yards away from where we stood, pushing back the dark. Its flames reached high into the sky, struggling against a cold wind to lash at the crescent moon. Beside — but not around it — stood a group of people huddled in twos and threes. I counted nine — no, ten — all but one of them in simple cloth, undyed and rough, robes and tunics and the like. Some affixed with bits of rope, some wrapped such that they affixed themselves. Feet bare, or sandaled. The lot of them looked as though they’d stepped straight out of the history books.
And not one of them noticed our presence.
“They cannot see us,” rumbled the child’s pet beast, the child once more unnerving me by responding to my unsaid thoughts, “because we are not here.” The child gestured like a maître d’ showing me to my table, and I took his hint, wandering puzzled into the strange gathering.
Beneath my feet, I noticed the heather had been burned back — scorched black plant matter forming a circle maybe twenty feet around. Inside the circle was drawn a pentagram so large its five points touched the outer edge of the burn zone, white ash against the black. Though I shuffled, puzzled, through it, my feet did not disturb the delicate ash line. As I reached the interior of the pentagram to find another, smaller one rendered inverted inside it, realization dawned. I’d seen something like this once before, during Ana’s failed attempt to recreate the Brethren’s freeing ritual.
A ritual that I was about to witness.
I scanned the faces in the crowd, all frightened, expectant, their worry-lines etched deep by the long shadows of the firelight. A blond-haired boy of twenty hugging tight a fresh-faced girl with chestnut hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose, cooing, reassuring. Drustanus and Yseult, I guessed. A brash, muscular young olive-skinned man pacing back and forth on thick, powerful legs as fast and smooth as a shark through water, his face a brittle mask of arrogance. Ricou, I suspected. A pack of three conversing in nervous whispers, one an Indian boy of not more than fourteen, the other two wild Roman-era Scots, or Vikings maybe — a male unkempt and hirsute; a female small and quick, her hair a simple plait. Jain and Lukas and Apollonia. A broad-faced Asian man in monk’s robes sitting cross-legged in meditation was the furthest from the firelight, young Thomed’s knitted brow indicating his thoughts were far from peaceful. And at the center of the double-pentagram, over a small stone altar, stood two men: one young, handsome, dark-haired, dark-eyed, at ease; the other older, bird-thin, sharp-angled, and feverishly intense, hands worrying at a small jute bundle in his hands. Grigori and Simon, respectively.
I reminded myself that these physical forms were meat-suits, nothing more. That the entities inside were older, harder, crueler than they appeared. But still, I could not shake the notion that they were but children, goading one another to go and ring the doorbell of the creepy house at the end of the street.
Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
Then the tenth of them stepped into the light, draped despite the chill in a slip dress of parchment-colored silk, and carrying in her delicate hands an ornate, glinting gold skim blade. My borrowed heart damn near stopped. My breath caught in my chest.
The tenth was Lilith.
“Did you bring it?” she asked the older of the two standing at the center of the circle: the one I knew as Simon Magnusson — although her word-sounds did not synch up with the movements of her mouth. But when I thought upon that fact, I realized it was not exactly true. What I’d heard had matched her lips’ movement just fine, but what I understood her to say did not. It seemed my child-companion had done me the courtesy of translating.
“I did,” said Simon, his word-sounds and meanings also decoupled in my mind. He unwrapped the tiny bundle in his hands to reveal a small, dark orb, projecting rays of black across the field that seemed to dim the fire, and proved darker still than night itself: a corrupted human soul.
“Good,” she said, and then glanced up at the sky. “The heavens are aligned, which means it’s time.” She handed the handsome dark-eyed man — Grigori — the skim blade, and then with one open palm caressed his face. He leaned into her touch and smiled, one more in a long line of victims to her otherworldly wiles, I thought. “I trust you understand what must be done?”
“I do,” Grigori replied.
“Then do it, and be free.”
I watched the rest in numb horror, knowing all too well how it was going to play out. They took their places around the altar, Grigori and Simon at the center, the soul in the very middle, their hands raised up above their heads, both of them clasping the skim blade well above it. As one they chanted, and the firelight extinguished. A bitter wind ripped across the meadow, stinging against my skin.