3. Azrael
Iwas right about it being a long day. It has been. And it will be a longer night.
I stand in the vast library that takes up two floors. It is the space that divides the west wing from the dark wing. My way to the dark wing is through a hidden door, probably something that was created when the house was originally built for servants to come and go unseen. The shelves that line three of the four walls are stacked with leather-bound tomes, some centuries old. Ladders slide along to grant the reader access to the books on the upper shelves.
One wall is a stained-glass masterpiece. Apart from fairly minor repairs my parents made to the window, it is original to the house. As I sip my whiskey and gaze upon the image now, I wonder at the implausibility of such a thing. Even as walls crumbled, this glass somehow survived the ravages of time.
I take in the image as the full moon casts its light through the array of colors. The spotlight is on the beast. Well, beast or angel, depending on who you ask. The beast’s black wings are stretched wide but curve in around the edges almost protectively as he gazes upon what? His prey? Victim? Sacrifice?
If you ask Rébecca, she is his fallen beloved. Only Bec can tell the story in a way that romanticizes an image such as this.
It is that fallen woman I study now, taking in the vibrance of the red hair that spills in a mass of waves through the beast’s fingers. At least her eyes are closed. I don’t think I could stand it if they weren’t. The shades of color in the rest of the glass are dark grays and blues so deep they could be black. Shards of lightning break up the monotony, and although each color is represented, it all fades in the brilliance of the red hair of the woman.
The door opens. I turn to find my brother, Emmanuel, entering.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Tonight, it begins. Tonight is the ceremony of the Tithing where the chosen Wildblood girl, the one wearing the witch’s mark, will be sacrificed to me. She would have been Abacus’s if he’d lived.
Since he did not, the task of accepting The Sacrifice and doing what has to be done has fallen to me. She’ll have red hair and the birthmark. That’s all I know. All these years later, the Wildblood women arrive into the world with red hair in defiance of science or logic. The gene should have died out centuries ago, yet they just keep being born with it.
“How the hell has this thing survived so fucking long?” I ask him, my gaze on the image of the beast looming over the unconscious woman.
“Grandmother’s backwards fairy tale version or reality?” Emmanuel asks.
One corner of my mouth curves up into a grin. “Not sure I’d call her version a fairy tale.”
“No, you’re right.” He comes to stand beside me after pouring himself a drink. “You ready for tonight?”
“Not really.” I turn to study him as he studies the stained glass. Emmanuel and I are very similar in appearance. In height and build, we’re well matched. Our hair is dark, although I wear mine to my shoulders and his is to his chin. When we go into town together, not a single person doesn’t do a double take. We’re like twin marble statues brought to life, almost inhuman in appearance with our great height, powerful build, and bone structure any supermodel would envy.
Ironically, my twin Abacus had looked nothing like me. He was shorter, stockier, more common in appearance–as Grandmother had liked to emphasize with disdain.
Emmanuel and I, though, could be twins. The one thing that distinctly differentiates us is the color of our eyes. Mine are a fiery gold, not brown, not hazel. Gold. Not quite natural in moments, especially when I’m angry. Emmanuel’s are a cool, icy silver that look as if backlit by some otherworldly light.
In dress, we are distinct. He has always preferred more casual clothing, lightweight cashmere sweaters, tailored pants and suits, with his tastes being expensive. Not that mine are any less so, but I prefer an older style of dress. My favorite coat in fact is one from my father’s closet, a lightweight, well-worn leather coat with wide lapels detailed with fine gold thread. The brass buttons, which are antiques themselves, gleam even in the dim light of the library. I remember my father wearing it. It was his favorite.
Where Emmanuel and I are exactly similar is that we both prefer black or gray clothing for the most part. Perhaps it’s just part of our dark nature.
“I checked in on Rébecca on the way down,” Emmanuel says. “She told me to remind you what she said?” he says it like a question, one eyebrow raised.
“Why isn’t she asleep? It’s almost midnight.”
“She’s almost sixteen, even if she doesn’t look it. It’d be weirder if she didn’t stay up until midnight.”
“Is Benedict with her?”
“Yeah.” Emmanuel smiles, and so do I. Grandmother doesn’t like that animal upstairs or in the house at all. If she had it her way, she’d leave him out on the street. Hell, she’d probably try to have the driver run him over. I wonder if she isn’t afraid of the oversized German Shepherd. He certainly has no love for her. “Saw Gran in your room by the way.”
My face tightens. “What was she doing?”
The door opens then, and Grandmother enters, followed by two servants. One carries our cloaks over his arm, while the other holds a tray with our masks and, fuck me, that ring.
“What I was doing was making sure you followed protocol,” Salomé Delacroix says in the tone of one in command. She turns to the man carrying the cloaks. “Wait here. You!” She snaps to the woman with the tray. “Come with me.”
The woman cowers behind my grandmother, who looks like no one’s grandma that I know. First, she is tall and broadly built, and her wavy gray hair is pulled tightly back into a bun at her nape. Her face is, as usual, scrubbed clean. She’s never worn makeup that I can remember, not for any occasion. Her cold eyes, a watery blue so pale they’re almost colorless, miss nothing although I do notice the shadows beneath them. I wonder if she’s dreading what is to come, but somehow, I doubt it.
There is nothing soft about my grandmother. Nothing warm.
“Grandmother. Do I need to put a lock on my door?” I ask her as my gaze falls upon the ring on the tray.
“What have you got to hide from me, Azrael?” she asks, adjusting the lapel of my jacket before taking the ring from the tray and holding it out to me. “You should wear it always. Be proud of it.”
I look down at the ring, wondering how something so insignificant can feel so evil.
“It’s a fucking ring, Gran,” Emmanuel says to her utter annoyance. She has forbidden the use of foul language in the house, and I’m sure my brother takes pleasure in using it so openly.
But mostly, she hates being called anything but Grandmother.
Slowly, she turns a calculated gaze to Emmanuel and the instinct to protect my younger brother kicks in as she sets him in her sights. He can handle her, mostly. He likes messing with her, but it’s dangerous.
“You, Emmanuel,” she starts, stepping toward him to brush imaginary dust from his shoulders. “Should be prepared. Should anything befall your brother, you will be our last hope.”
“Well, let’s make sure nothing befalls my brother then,” Emmanuel says with a snort.
“Disrespectful—”
“Enough. I’ll wear the goddamned ring.” I put it on without allowing myself to think about it and check my watch. “We need to go,” I tell Emmanuel and step past my grandmother.
“Cloaks and masks. It is tradition,” she says, closing her hand over my arm to stop me.
I turn to find her holding up one of the masks. These are not specific to our family. They’re masks of The Society, the secret organization our family has been a part of since the very beginning. A founding family of IVI, the Delacroixes are powerful both here in New Orleans and in France, where our family originates.
Emmanuel and I have minimal interaction with The Society. My father had been shunned because he married outside of IVI. It’s at least one of the reasons Grandmother hated our mother.
For my part, as head of this household, I will do what I need to do to maintain our standing within The Society. They are, after all, a necessary part of our lives, although by taking the Wildblood sacrifice as my bride, I’ll be following in my father’s footsteps and marrying outside of The Society. That is as it needs to be. When it comes time for Emmanuel or Rébecca to marry, expectations will be very different.
But I can’t think about that right now.
I take the mask and look at it, my gaze catching on that ring on my finger.
My grandmother gives me a victorious grin. “The girl, I’ve prepared a room for her,” she says.
“Have you?” I ask, meeting her gaze. It irks her to have to look up at me even though she is almost six feet tall herself, but I have six inches on her. “Where exactly did you prepare a room?”
“In the servants’ quarters, of course. You won’t want that witch in your bed any longer than necessary.”
“They are staff, not servants.”
She chuckles.
“And besides, what if I like her in my bed?” I ask, cocking my head.
She stiffens, narrowing her eyes but clearly uncomfortable. “You’ll claim her once. Consummate. It’s the rule. After that, there is no need. You can have any woman from the Cat House or anywhere else. God knows the city is full of whores.”
“But she’ll be my wife, Grandmother. It would go against the God you claim to love to find pleasure elsewhere. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Which commandment is it?”
Emmanuel snorts.
Grandmother sends an evil glare his way but focuses her attention on me. “You’ve forgotten your lessons, have you?”
“I haven’t forgotten the beatings.”
“Speaking of lessons, I have one with Rébecca tomorrow,” she says as if I didn’t say what I’d just said, eyes narrowing because she knows my sister is one way to control me. “She hardly pays attention anymore. Always distracted, that one. A replica of your mother. I may have to reintroduce incentive learning.”
Incentive learning. The incentive being not to take a beating. I will never forget the bite of her favorite cane or strap. I still remember the day I saw my father’s back, the years-old scars that criss-crossed the expanse of it. He was as gentle as my grandmother is not.
I grit my jaw and close the space between us, hands fisting, crushing the mask. “If you ever lay a finger on Rébecca again, you will deal with me. Am I perfectly clear?”
She stares up at me, a sheen to her dark eyes I hadn’t noticed before. “I understand consequences, Azrael. Do you?”
“Am I fucking clear?”
A heavy moment hangs between us, and I know she wants to reprimand me for my language, but she’s cleverer than that. She takes a step backward. She is afraid of me as much as she wishes she weren’t.
“You’re right. She’s so sickly as it is. I wonder if incentive learning wouldn’t push her body further than it can handle. Abacus couldn’t handle any of it. He was weak. A coward. And she’s more like him than us, isn’t she?”
My vision blurs, blackening along the edges as red-hot rage burns from my very core through my extremities. If Emmanuel hadn’t put his hand on my shoulder in that moment, if he hadn’t stopped me, I think I would have hurt the old woman.
“Az. Let’s go.”
It takes a long, long moment but he manages to turn me away. We walk toward the door, bypassing the man holding out the cloaks.
“Masks and cloaks!” Grandmother calls out, running after us.
“Keep walking,” Emmanuel tells me, one hand firmly around my arm to keep me from turning on her. “She’s an old woman. Just keep fucking walking.”
“There will be consequences!” she yells once we’ve reached the front doors.
There, I do stop and turn back to face her. “There are always fucking consequences! To hell with them!” I bark back, throwing the mask at her or at the wall, I’m not really sure which. “And with you.”