26. Lazarus #2
The tome is clear on dead bodies and how to prepare them for burial. It is a strict practice. Had they killed Iona, they would have buried her rather than take a dead body with them.
If that was her blood, and if she is dead, then the cemetery is the next place to look.
Revenant’s family believes in funeral pyres rather than burial.
He’ll want her body exhumed. I find it difficult to concede that the long road of searching for his sister would only lead back here.
That possibility hurts my soul, and if we must pull her body from the ground, I’m uncertain I’ll be able to continue on my path in a relationship with God, for that is not just.
To busy myself, I walk across the grounds, passing the buildings for schooling and doctoring, and beyond small homes.
Techno is no longer with the bikes, but I catch a glimpse of Salem, head tilted up toward the sky, enjoying the southern spring weather and the bright sun. It’s a much different climate from back home on the inland sea with the gray skies this time of year.
I stop at the seventh house down. It’s white and bright, unlike how it used to look. The flower boxes that once hung in front of the windows are no longer there.
My shadow pulls toward the building, and my fingers twitch as if to reach for the knob as a memory takes over my senses.
Ruth Mary squeezes my hand tightly as we reach the bottom step together. The house is family sized, a rich buttery-yellow color with white trim and flower boxes filled to the brim with red and pink geraniums. It’s perfect.
“I can’t believe the apostles granted us a house. Us, of all the believers.” She sighs, looking up at me.
Her green eyes sparkle, and her skin brightens as she starts to glow.
Growing desire between us has been something I’ve needed to speak with Apostle Jerome about. How tempted I have been. It was he who said it would be the word of the Lord for us to look toward a union together.
I shrug. I’m just as surprised as Ruth Mary to find out that the newest house was to be ours.
“Do you know whose family we’re being placed in? I know this house was meant for the next apostle,” she whispers conspiratorially to me, her shoulder practically against my chest.
I do know. But I’m forbidden to tell her because of the sensitive nature. No one is to know that the apostles approached me to make me the next appointed one.
I shake my head. “I guess it’s a surprise. Let’s go see our new home.”
Ruth Mary darts up the stairs. She flings open the screen door and twists the knob, then steps into the house. I follow less quickly since I helped build the house. I know many of its features, though I haven’t been in here since they finished plastering the walls.
“Asa, the kitchen is huge!” She runs back to where I am in the living room, on the other side of the dining room. “I’ll cook a whole feast for the resurrection in here all by myself.”
Her smile, wide and bright, has me smiling. I want to tell her all the things I know.
She runs to me and wraps me in a hug. I’m caught off guard but wrap my arms around her anyway. It’s frowned upon for us to touch like this, especially in private, but one hug in the privacy of our new home should be fine.
“I love you, Asa.” Ruth Mary looks up at me. Her voice is low and serious. “No matter who is assigned to our family, know I’ll always love you most.”
I’m freed from the trance and push past the painful wounds, continuing out to the burial grounds.
It’s a long walk. The warmth of the sun against my skin draws a yawn from me, and I let my shadow loose from where it is underneath me, minding its place. Taking the shape of the large dog, it meanders through the tall grasses along the path.
I’ve begun embracing the natural order of shadows and letting mine be freer. It is hard to deny the safety it provides when, not confined to your feet or against the angle of the sun, it is able to move between shapes more quickly.
The edge of the cemetery is marked with decorative iron fencing that is the same size and shape as I remember it, but many more headstones fill the open grassy field.
The granite crosses marking each resting place of a member of the House of Apostles date back to when I was an infant.
I walk through the rows, looking at dates and names.
When I come to the first one listed within a year after I left, familiarity strikes a chord.
The next grave and then another follow it.
Each name, someone I once knew, is a somber tone played out like a death knell.
It’s a tune of mourning I was oblivious to until now.
I pass the third row and then the fourth.
Midway down the fifth row, I come to a gray granite stone like the rest.
It isn’t anything special or opulent.
None of the markers are, the uniformity meant to symbolize how, in death, we are all the same.
But this stone marker brings me to my knees.
I’m overwhelmed by the sound of the wind through trees and the calls of birds. Everything in my chest burns, my hands ache from being clenched into fists, and my jaw pulses from the pressure of the grinding of my teeth.
Ruth Mary Galatlin
Omega
I read the engraving a dozen times over.
My heart is hemorrhaging all over again.
The date on the stone is barely two years after I was cast out.
I feel as if blood pours out of every inch of my skin, and I may succumb to a puddle here in this field with her body.
Shivers rake across my skin, and tears blur the letters before me. I blink through them and keep reading the engraving. Maybe in the next blink, the letters will rearrange. Maybe in the next breath, the truth will change.
I fall forward with my hands coming to rest on the earth.
Prayer. One is supposed to pray for the dead.
God has forsaken me once again.
There are no prayers for this.
Losing her, a second time, is more than I can bear.
How did this come to pass? Why did they let this happen? Were they there for her when she passed? Were they the cause of it? Did she die from the break in the bond?
I sit back on my heels and force my head up toward the sun, toward heaven. Would she be smiling down on me?
One thing is for certain: She would not approve of me kneeling in the dirt over her. She would not approve of me getting dirty like this.
I push up to stand and force myself into a more acceptable composition. Something more becoming of an alpha. The little pieces of my soul are still crumbling to dust, disappearing into the wind.
“Lazarus, are you okay?” Mayhem’s voice is behind me.
He knows of what happened before I became a Night Wraith. He bore testimony when I arrived, to the mangled flesh where my mating mark was broken as it was cut from my skin. Every day he saw the way my shadow refused to heal the flesh, for fear of losing her, until slowly, she faded away.
I find it easier not to answer him and continue to walk the rest of this row. I look for the rest of the pack. One of them should have died along with her. Alphas are not meant to withstand the bond breaking. But no. Not even one of them lay beside her in this field.
I turn into the final row and look for Revenant’s sister.
The third grave in, the last one with a stone marker, the first name Maria Donna. I do not recognize it, but the last name etched into it, St. Pierre, I’m aware of. Could this be Honey’s mother?
I try not to dwell on the thought. I am not here to uncover Honey’s past, no more than I was here to learn the outcomes of my own.
As I finish checking names and dates on the wooden crosses, those for which the stone monuments had not been made or delivered yet, relief washes over me that no earth has been disturbed here within the last six months.
“She did not die here.” I look to Revenant, who had come to stand next to Mayhem, silent rage rolling through him. “They have taken her with them. Wherever they have moved.”
“You’re sure?” Revenant pushes.
I indicate to the earth, undisturbed and awaiting the next demise. “It would be too conspicuous to travel with a body. They would have buried anyone who died in the next space per the tome’s teachings.”
Revenant’s jaw is tight, and anger furrows in the creases of his brow. “They have her, then. It’s hard to say based on scent because of the filth, but it could be her. Where would they go?”
His question is directed at me, and I hold no answers.
“I do not know. The apostles were in talks of purchasing another property when I was with them, but it was nothing I had any information on or access to. I could not begin to guess where they would have moved the compound. Nor why they left behind the items that they did.”
“We’ll call in some voyagers off the road to watch. Maybe they come back for the stuff they left behind?” Mayhem advises.
“Do that.” Revenant nods and begins walking back to the bikes.
Mayhem hesitates to follow him. “You’re good, Laz?”
“I’ll be along shortly.” I don’t make eye contact because I am not ‘good,’ as he would say, but a few moments longer down here will not hurt our time to get back to Hod’s Landing.
I need another minute to breathe.