There was a convenient set of thick-growing, fragrant junips to relieve herself behind, and she was startled into a half-laugh as thunder rattled overhead. In Boston, such a thing—relieving oneself behind a bush while bolts of lightning crackled from the heavens—would have been farce, or unthinkable. Here, it was simply what must be done.
Mother would simply die. Avert!
Oh, Robbie.
Slipping and stumbling, she worked her way up the path. Roots tripped her, and devilpine clawed at her hair and habit. When she returned to town, she would be a sorry sight indeed—at one point she fell, scraping both hands and breathing out another curse that would have made Robbie proud. The locket was safely clasped in her fingers, though a bit grimed, and she did not glance up. If she had, she would have perhaps seen a lightning-charred tree twisting against the darkened sky, and guessed where she was.
As it was, she rounded a massive spice-smelling devilpine, shook her head, brushing bits of stuff from her dress, and halted short, tucking her veil aside.
It was a clearing of sorts, a shelf of dirt and stone before a frowning hill-face glowering down at the growth upon its chin. Its mouth was a vertical crack, large enough for a carriage to pass through, but very black. Above, the eyes were full of twisted, wind-scoured junip, and the devilpines around her soughed in the wind, pronouncing sibilants that sounded eerily like laughter. The nose was a ruin, a shelf of crumbling stone, and the locket tugged insistently. But not toward the crack.
Instead, it fairly leapt, the chain biting her fingers, and a clump of junip shook itself as thunder rolled. Cat let out a faint cry, stepping back and almost catching her abused bootheel on her skirts. Spatters of rain plopped down, and the earth released a heavy fragrance, junip stretching and tossing as the wind loaded itself with fresh moisture and the promise of renewal.
The figure, a scarecrow with dark messy hair, his once-white shirt smeared with crusted filth, leapt back as well, startled. “Who the Devil—oh, damn your eyes, Kittycat, what are you doing here?”
Cat stumbled and sat down, hard. Her teeth clicked together, and she tasted copper blood. The locket went mad, its chain sinking into her flesh as it sought to escape her grasp and fly to the scarecrow.
“Robbie?” she whispered, but the word was drowned in thunder. “Robbie?”
“What in God’s name are you doing here?” he hissed, and it was unmistakably Robbie. But so thin, and his eyes blazed. Their familiar darkness lit with a foxfire gleam, and another flash of lightning drenched the clearing, turning the face above into a leering skull. “You have to leave. Now. Before it takes over again—”
“Robbie…” Her heart pounded so hard she thought she might faint. Tears trickled, thick and hot, down her cheeks, cutting through dust and dry grit. “My God, Robbie!”
He beckoned, one pale hand flickering as a fresh spatter of rain fell, warm drops the size of baby Jonathan’s fist steaming as they splatted into dust and hit tossing devilpine branches. “This way, dammit. I can’t hold him forever…come on, Kittycat!”
She scrambled to her feet and ran for him; he caught her arm in a bruising-hard grip and yanked her aside—
—just as a searing flash lit the clearing afresh. She was tossed from her feet, a massive noise passing through her and a devilpine’s trunk rearing to break her fall. Or not quite, precisely, for she hit badly and there was a brief starry flash of pain before unconsciousness.
Chapter 27
One thing about the weather in these parts: there were no halfway measures. It was either dry enough to parch you in minutes, or it was a solid wall of water fit to drown you even if you were upright and riding through it.
He had a bad momene.
God, just let her be alive.
As if God would listen to his prayers. Those of the Templis were sworn to chastity, and he’d betrayed that, hadn’t he? Along with all the other virtues, one after another, like dominoes.
The lightning-charred tree was no longer a rarity on this hillside; nevertheless, he knew the trail and struggled up, shaking aside the clutching wet fingers of undergrowth. Out here, any scrap of moisture was to be clung to, and Damnation rested where it did because of the aquifer underneath.
Later, when Jack Gabriel thought of Hell, he thought of that battle up the hilly trail, every branch and root conspiring to clutch and hold, the lightning throwing bolts at earth and sky alike, and the sick knowledge beating under his heart that he might be too late. Wet dirt crumbling and the sick taste of failure in his mouth again, his boots slipping and grinding, the guns all but useless in their holsters and his hands prickle-numb with grace that had no outlet.
There was the large trunk of the devilpine, and he rested his back against it for a moment, his ribs heaving. If he kept this up, his heart was going to explode. He blinked several times, his hatbrim sagging under the water, and wished he’d had time to step behind a bush on his way up. Fear had a way of making a man’s water want to escape.
He stepped around the devilpine, guns out, and saw nothing but the clearing before the grinning crack in the hillside, deep velvet-black and exhaling a cold draft that turned the rain to flashing ice. Another gem-bright dart of lightning, almost blinding him, and there was a shape at the claim’s threshold—a woman’s skirts, fluttering as she was dragged by a tall scarecrow into the gaping maw. He was running before he had time to think, a thundercrack of rage lifting him off his feet and his spurs ringing in the moment before he touched ground again, the bright white-hot flash of God’s fury scorching all through him before he landed, flung through the entrance and into an ice-bath of torpid bad mancy. He collided with the scarecrow, and the thin man threw out an arm. The blow tossed Jack Gabriel aside, against the cave wall, and he slid down with red pain tearing a hole in his side.
Cath—
But the thought cut off, midstream, and a black curtain descended.
“I think he’s waking up.” Hushed, a woman’s voice. Very soft, its cultured tones a brush of velvet against his skin.
Jack blinked, or tried to. There was something crusted in his eyes. A damp, cold, clammy touch brushed against the crust, but not hard enough. You had to scrub to get dried blood out of crevices.
“Just keep him over there.” Harsh, a man’s voice, but oddly familiar. “I can smell it on him.”
“Ah, yes. You were saying?” Another tentative brush. She was touching him, and his head was pillowed on something soft but damp. There was a living warmth underneath it, and he tried to clear his eyelids of the crust. Sound of running water, thunder rattling above a roof of stone and earth. Hard ground under his hip, he was half on his side, and his hands were flung out, empty.
“He buried me in consecrated ground, Cat. So…here I am.”
“The consecration kept you whole. So you’re…dead. And…not dead.”
“Well, yes. You keep saying that.”
“Pardon me for having a tiny amount of trouble with the idea, Robbie. It is rather unholy.”
“Mother would just…” A heavy sigh. “But she has, hasn’t she. I’m sorry, Sis.”