Sacrifice (The Venus Chronicles #1)

Chapter 13

Thirteen

At first glance, it appeared to be merely a faded tapestry, hung where the altar once stood in Michaels’ old, converted church. Some might have mistaken it for just atmospheric decoration, but the medieval design deserved far greater appreciation than that. It presented a rich and detailed depiction of Christ on the cross, surrounded by his disciples. Yet, it was not the image that made it remarkable–it was the thread from which it had been woven.

As Michaels approached along the nave, he uttered the incantation of revelation and drew a series of glyphs in the air with his outstretched hand. At once, the fabric came to life. Threads unraveled and recombined to create new patterns. Gold and silver filaments wove into symbols and lines of power, while strands of obsidian crystals twisted into clusters. The tapestry shimmered with color, shifting and changing.

This was the Atlas of Souls , a living map of every being on the planet, each one represented in the knotted thread. Color registered good and evil in a heat map ranging from dark purple to gold.

The innocent shone like suns in a distant nebula, their strands of gold flaring white hot as Michaels passed his hand across the surface. He drew strength from their presence, a wave of pure energy rippled over his skin. They were beacons of hope in a sea of darkness. The spark of hope.

The darkest of them smoldered like malevolent coals. These were the ones of most concern, the possessed mortals, corrupted by dybbuk. His nostrils flared with distaste. It was time to select his next target.

Michaels drew lines of energy from the fabric, threads rising like smoke to meet his fingertips as he whispered the words of the incarnus spiritus . He teased the ribbons of light forward and pulled them apart, coaxing their essence out of the weave. Filaments snaked around his fingers and enveloped his hand like a glove.

Michaels took a deep breath and opened the connection.

This dark one was ancient, one of the Incendi . He recognized it. He’d last met this demon during the First World War. Like so many of its kind, it had reveled in the chaos and death of the battlefields. They delighted in slaughter, attracted to it like bees to honey. This one had escaped him then, but now its time was up.

Michaels felt his way through the connection to the host and explored his identity. An investment banker with a predilection for pain, his secret fantasies exploited by the dybbuk. He was lost in a maze of confused desire and need that the demon had constructed. Michaels could see that it wouldn’t be long before it had total control of him.

He stepped back to unfurl the banker’s lifeline. Fear of abandonment hammered home by a tyrannical father that had sent him away to boarding school too young, had opened the door to the demon. Michaels could see where the dybbuk had entered and the point soon where it would convince its host to kill - the unforgivable sin that would lead to eternal damnation. Time was short. Michaels could not save the banker’s life, but he could save his soul. And protect his potential victims.

He made a mental note of locations and the dybbuk’s glyph and closed the connection.

Grinding tension left his body and the taste of sulphur and ashes flooded his mouth. Michaels ran a flat palm down his face.

What he needed now was a salve. He scanned the rippling fabric, searching.

A speck of glitter pulsed then shone and its ribbon of light grew from the tapestry like a seedling to flow across Michaels’ fingertip in a cool stream. It climbed his index finger and sank through his palm to run in his veins.

At once, the residual buzz of the demon was replaced by its silky cool. Michaels couldn’t help but be drawn in and transported in the blink of an eye to her side.

It wasn’t strictly necessary. It wasn’t his job or his purpose. Being a celestial had a Ying and Yang and some days, this day, he needed to be more than a sentinel. He needed to embrace the angel.

The girl lay in a hospital bed in the children’s ward of St Thomas’s. Hair lost to chemotherapy, she was propped up on a mountain of pillows and leafed through a picture book she’d eased from the slack grip of her exhausted mother. Even in the midst of great suffering, her aura shone pure gold. Goosebumps ripped up Michaels’ arms, and he smiled down, already feeling better.

“Hello,” she said, without taking her eyes from the page. “Have you come to take me to heaven?”

Michaels huffed out a small laugh. He wasn’t usually visible to mortals during his visits, but not so with this one. Of course. Why was he even surprised? She was so obviously special.

“No child,” he said.

She looked up and her tired eyes ran over Michaels’ wings, one side and then the other. She looked delighted.

“Mummy said that you would come. She prayed every day.” The girl put down her book and held out her hand to take his. “I’m not afraid.”

Michaels grasped it and closed his eyes.

The ribbons on light from the tapestry were nothing compared to this. Cool calm flowed from her little body into his. It ran through his veins and over his skin to lift every hair and unfurl the great feathered wings on his back. Michaels’ heart swelled with her purity and the inevitability of cure solidified in his consciousness.

The cancer was advanced. Tumors riddled her frail body. Michaels felt it but was not perturbed. Carefully he guided the flow of energy full circle, her healing quintessence finding its way back into her. It burned at Micheals palm as it left him, but the pain was nothing to the lift in his spirit it had brought. The quintessence swept through her body, cleansing it of the metastases to heal her lungs, her liver, her spine. Michaels knew it had worked before he opened his eyes.

“That tickles,” the girl said with a giggle.

Michaels let the energy dwindle. A rosy glow burned in the girl’s cheeks and the shadow of hair regrowth blossomed beneath the skin of her scalp. He knew he shouldn’t linger, shouldn’t even have come. He bent to whisper in her ear, released her hand and faded from the hospital room to return to his place before the tapestry. Cool calm had dowsed the acrid fire the dybbuk had left in its wake.

Back at St Thomas’s, the child’s mother awoke. She rubbed at her eyes. “Lucy, who are you talking to?” she said.

“An angel,” Lucy replied with a nonchalant shrug. She turned a page of her book. “He told me I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up and save lots of kids like me.”

“Did he now?” her mother said. She stroked her daughter’s cheek. “You look much better today.”