Chapter 46
Helen folds her arms over her chest. “Mary. I should have known you’d turn up like a bad penny.”
I’m sick of being threatened. “Who the devil are you?”
Mary’s attention goes to Adrian. “I see your hand reaching. If you touch your gun, I’ll set fire to the powder and blow it to smithereens. Probably won’t be too good for your internal organs, given where you’re carrying it.”
Adrian freezes. The wand in her hand—she must be a sorceress like Helen. I briefly consider running up the steps behind us, but the moment to escape, if it ever existed, is past.
So I plow ahead instead. “What do you want from us? Tell me now, or we’re not going anywhere with you.”
Rather than answer directly, she says, “Look me in the eye.”
I glare into her pale blue irises. Maybe if she’s distracted with me, Helen can do something magical.
“By the dark gods, he’s human,” Helen snaps.
Mary sits back, seeming surprised. “You’re right, he is. I guess I owe Dorset an apology.” She considers me a moment. “Maybe you, I suppose, depending on when you were returned.”
Adrian stiffens beside me. “You’re one of the people who’ve been trying to kill us. Like that Irvin fellow in New York.”
“May he rest in dreams forever,” Mary agrees. “I took a shot at you through a window, then chased the two of you down the road that night, with some of my friends.” She tilts her head back slightly, as if to indicate the silent man behind the steering wheel.
I’m torn between outrage and the need for answers. “You know about the Swarm. You oppose them. So do we.”
“We shouldn’t talk about it here.” Mary glances around, as though someone might be spying. “Get in the car.”
“Like hell,” Helen replies.
Mary snorts. “Come on, Hellion. It’ll be like old times.” She winks in my direction. “We roomed together in college.”
It’s clear Helen doesn’t trust Mary. But we need answers—and allies, even if they were trying to kill us not long ago. “If we come with you, are you going to try to murder me?”
Mary looks incredulous. “Why would I do that? I thought you were still one of them. Now I know you aren’t.”
“That didn’t stop Irvin,” Adrian points out coldly.
“Well, he always was a bit of an idiot.” Mary gestures at the back seat with her wand. “I really don’t want to resort to threats, when we’re getting along so well.”
“Fine.” I open the door before I can start second-guessing myself and slide into the car.
Both Adrian and Helen radiate disapproval, but they join me. As the car pulls away, Mary says, “Shall I make introductions, or leave it to Helen?”
“Oh, please, allow me,” Helen says. “This is Mary King, who lost her mind and joined the Cult of the Waking God. She probably had some sort of dream vision that told her to murder you, Sterling, and of course that was good enough for her!”
I’m starting to get the feeling they have a rather complicated history between them. “I see.”
“And is this cult normally given to murder?” Adrian asks carefully.
The question seems to shock Mary. “Of course not—the Waking God loves humanity.”
Now it’s Helen’s turn to snort loudly.
Mary ignores the sound and extends her hand over the back of her seat toward Adrian. “I didn’t get your name, sir.”
He hesitates, then shakes her hand gingerly. “Adrian Evans, insurance investigator.”
“Oh, so that’s what you’re doing with Caine. Stole something under the Swarm’s influence, did he?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
Mary only laughs. “I like you.” She turns back to the fore. “Helen wouldn’t be running around with fools—”
“I ran around with you.”
“—so give me a chance to prove my good intentions. We’re almost there.”
We’re back in the more unsavory parts of town, though nearer the docks this time.
The streets are narrow and wind more than it feels like they should.
Threadbare laundry hangs from lines overhead, and faces steal furtive glimpses from behind curtains as we drive past. Many of the windows are boarded over, even when the buildings themselves appear to be inhabited.
At last, we pull over in front of an old colonial house with a sagging roof. Time and weather have stripped most of the paint from its boards, leaving them a dull gray. “You’ve come down in the world,” Helen observes to Mary.
“I’d prefer to say I’ve found my vocation. The people here need relief from the bleak reality of their lives.”
“You could just sell bootleg liquor like everyone else.”
Mary arches a brow at Helen. “Now when did either of us ever think small, Hellion?”
She and the silent driver get out and start up the stoop, apparently trusting us to follow. Adrian touches my arm as we reach the muddy sidewalk. “Is this a good idea?” he asks in a low voice.
“Probably not. But I need answers.” I meet his worried gaze. “You don’t have to come inside with us. Mary probably won’t threaten to blow up your gun.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He squeezes my arm, then lets go. I long to kiss him to show how grateful I am to have him at my back.
Helen marches up the stairs, stomping her feet angrily as she goes. We follow, and the silent driver shuts the door behind us.
The house is gloomy inside, all the drapes pulled tight over the windows, so the only light comes from the transom and a single dim bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Stairs run up directly in front of us, with doors to either side.
One, presumably to a parlor, is shut tight.
The other stands open to a combined living room, dining room, and kitchen—what they called a “keeping room” in the era the house was built.
An odd scent hangs in the air, some exotic incense, perhaps.
Mary leads us into the keeping room and lights the candles on the table. Banked coals wait within the enormous hearth, which she stokes into flame. “Are you hungry? I’ll send Dorset out for sandwiches.”
“I’d rather know why you brought us here,” Helen says.
“Then have a seat.”
We do so. Creaks come from above—someone else is here, moving around the upper floors. I’m unpleasantly reminded of the bloody drip in the Fosters’ house, and from the expression on his face, so is Adrian.
Mary takes a bottle of whiskey from a shelf near the hearth. There are already cups on the table, as if she’d prepared for our arrival, and she pours a measure for us all without asking. Satisfied, she sits down across from me.
“What is this cult you’re a part of?” I ask. “What does it have to do with the Swarm?”
She picks up her cup and lazily swirls the whiskey around in it. “Would you like the short version or the long version?”
The more information we have, the better. “Let’s go with the long version.”
Helen sighs loudly and sits back, presumably having heard all of this before. I ignore her theatrics and focus on Mary.
Mary shoots a smirk in Helen’s direction, before turning her attention to Adrian and me. “Firstly, I prefer the term ‘church’ to ‘cult’—a bit less prejudicial, don’t you think?”
“I suppose that depends on one’s experience with churches.”
“Touché.” She lifts her glass and drinks. “Do you know what an egregore is?”
Adrian looks as baffled as I am. “Not in the slightest,” I tell her.
“You can think of them as entities sustained by unified thought and emotion. They require love, worship, and sacrifice, to give them life and power.”
“In other words, they’re gods, at least according to their devout followers.” Helen folds her arms over her chest.
“What is a god, but something that gives our lives purpose and direction, strength and power, in return for our worship?” Mary counters.
This is all getting a bit esoteric for me—but I had asked for the long version. At least Mary’s explaining her motives, which gives me a better idea of her character and how far we might be able to trust her. “And you found that purpose in this…Waking God, was it?”
She nods earnestly. “I did. It was in college when I first uncovered references to them. They had flourished for centuries, uplifting humanity, giving those among their followers such gifts…but fools never can see beyond their immediate, petty needs. Their followers were hunted to extinction, their sacred places burned, their holy name struck from the records.”
I could guess how this had played out. “But not all the records.”
“Things always get missed. I was intrigued by the scant references I found, so I followed every clue, every whisper, every trace in my hunger to learn more.” An expression of fond memory softens Mary’s face unexpectedly. “And on the way…I suppose you could say I fell in love with them.”
She trails off for a moment, lost in memory.
“My devotion was the first step toward resurrecting the god. A sort of spiritual necromancy, if you will. As the god began to wake, they sent me dreams. Cloaked in symbols, as all dreams are, but I spent all of my time and effort decoding their messages.”
Helen sniffs. “Which is why you got kicked out of school.”
“What could such an education offer me?” The question sounds honest, as if Mary can’t imagine anything more important than the mission she’s embarked on.
It makes me uneasy—she’s a true fanatic, and fanatics can never be trusted, even among one another.
“My dreams led me to other like-minded folk, and we founded the Church of the Waking God. At the moment we’re a small, carefully selected group.
The proper rituals must be observed, the correct thoughts held, the right mindset obtained, in order to resurrect the god as they were.
Otherwise, they’ll be contaminated, become something different. ”
I’ve spent too much of my life being told what to think and do, so it’s a struggle to keep my reaction off my face. But I need to know more, and if Mary believes me sympathetic, she’ll be more likely to answer truthfully. “How does the Swarm come into this?”
“We’ve been calling them the Host, but I like Swarm better now that I’ve heard it.
” Mary tips her glass at me. “The Waking God’s been trying to warn us through our dreams. They set us on the trail of people who seem human, but have something else inside, possessing them.
Like a host of demons, if demons were real.
We were instructed to kill such people on sight.
I didn’t even realize before I saw you that the person could revert to an un-possessed state. ”
It explained why the cult had been so determined to murder me—they were acting on divine orders. “Why, though? What interest does your egregore have in the Swarm?”
Mary shrugs. “Don’t know. Dreams are tricky things to interpret, and if we’ve been sent any that explain it, we haven’t gotten the message. But maybe you can change that.”
“If you’re asking me to join your cult—”
“Hell no!” Mary seems offended I’d even made the suggestion. “Maybe someday, after the Waking God has become the Awakened God, and there are enough devoted minds that variations in belief won’t change them into something else. But right now, we have to be exclusive.”
Helen cocked a brow. “You tried to convert me.”
“Because I wanted to share the joy, the wonder, with you.” Mary’s expression slumps briefly into one of sadness, before she shakes it off. “But that ship has sailed.”
At least we aren’t about to be proselytized. “Then what do you want from me?”
Mary finishes off her whiskey. “Tell me everything about the Swarm.”
“I don’t know much.” I take a fortifying swig of my own drink; its rawness burns my throat. “My memory’s been suppressed. But I’ll tell you what we’ve learned so far.”
I glance at Adrian for approval; he gives me a subtle nod. Between the two of us and Helen, we lay out what we’ve found out about the Swarm, Chrysalis, Mithras and Aion, and all the rest. By the time we’re done, the last sunlight has vanished, leaving us only candle- and firelight.
“So hypnosis worked on you, but imperfectly.” Mary fixes her gaze on me. “I think I have a solution. Or rather, a member of our group does.” Her body tilts toward me, and there’s something avid about the motion. She’s desperate to know what her god wants from her. “Let us restore your memories.”