14. Azrael
Ileave Willow to entertain herself. I’m tired, fucking exhausted. I had woken early this morning with my head pounding, feeling like I was suffocating. The same damned nightmare played again, but this time it felt like there was a hundred-pound weight on my chest—like that weight was stealing any breath I managed to take.
There was one difference in the dream, though. Elizabeth Wildblood was absent.
It was Willow who came riding up in that cart wearing ragged clothes, a lock of her hair having been ripped from her head. Willow whose eyes I met on Proctor’s Ledge as she was taken to the hanging tree, the noose dropped over her head, tightened around her neck. Willow not with the hate Elizabeth had in her eyes but something else, something different. Willow with that hollow darkness I glimpsed in the photograph at her home, her sister laughing and her trying to but looking haunted instead.
When I gasped awake, I was shocked to find myself staring into a pair of green eyes. It took me a minute to realize what the weight on my chest was and why it felt like my breath was being stolen.
That goddamned cat sat on my chest, staring at me like the Queen of fucking Sheba, and she didn’t budge when I opened my eyes. Instead, she just kept on looking at me as if I were the fucking intruder.
“Goddamned cats,” I mutter again at the memory of the morning. Well, the middle of the night.
I’d gone to grab her, intending to toss her across the room, but she hopped off me just in time and nestled into the curve of Willow’s arms. Just like earlier that night, she set her furry little face on Willow’s shoulder and sneered.
“You watch yourself,” I’d said to a cat. A fucking cat.
I’d drawn the blanket over Willow’s shoulder and gotten up because that was the end of sleep for me. Given the time of year, though, could I expect differently? I changed into running clothes and went out to run, and when I reached the lake at the far end of the property, I sat looking at the tree where I found my brother almost a full year ago.
After too long at the lake and as the sun rose, I returned to the house, showered in a guest room so as not to wake Willow and headed to the library. Well, through the library and to the stacks where a secret door leads to the dark wing. To my hideaway. It’s where I find myself now, breathing in the closed-up smell that clings to this place. Trying to make sense of cobwebs swaying in a draft I’ve never been able to identify the origin of. I’ve lived here most of my life and this wing is still a mystery to me.
Abacus and I were born in France, as was Emmanuel. My grandparents had lived in the Paris house all of their married life, and I don’t think my father was expected to leave it. Mom worked in a Parisian café when she met dad. She’d been working to pay her way backpacking through Europe. Neither was older than seventeen. She’d graduated high school early and was taking a gap year before attending university. She never did get there because the way they told it, they fell in love at first sight.
I smile to think of it.
If Grandmother had been more welcoming or even simply accepting of Mom, I wonder if they’d have left France to take up residence in the New Orleans home that had been empty since my great uncle, Tobias, had passed away a decade earlier. Although, as Grandmother tells it, a Tithing was overdue, and with the Wildbloods settled in New Orleans, it was inevitable the next Penitent would come here. Given the tragedies that had been multiplying, and knowing my grandmother, I can see how her twisted mind would add two and two together and come up with eight.
The birth of Abacus and myself—well, the birth of Abacus—was a sign to her that my parents’ union was not blessed. Abacus was born average. Not deformed, not lacking in any way, but simply average. I was the stronger of the two of us, bigger and quicker to hit all those milestones doctors measure. But I was born second.
When Emmanuel came, my parents had a reprieve because Grandmother found no fault with him. However, after his birth, there were several miscarriages. My parents always wanted a big family, and that was one area where they and Grandmother agreed. But each miscarriage, always around the twenty-week mark, was another sign to Salomé Delacroix that her son’s marriage should not have been, that the next Penitent was not to be born to this woman.
Back then, my brothers and I didn’t know about the curse. Our parents kept us well sheltered as far as that went. But in time, as Grandmother became more and more adamant that our father leave our mother and marry an appropriate woman—a Society woman—they left Paris and took up residence in the New Orleans house. It was Dad’s anyway as the oldest living male of the family. Once they left Paris, they’d cut off all ties with Grandmother.
Rébecca was born shortly after our arrival in New Orleans. I still remember how small she was, how happy Mom especially was with her girl. She’d always wanted a daughter even though she loved my brothers and I wholly.
Before the time of Rébecca’s birth, they began renovations on the house that my great-uncle had let go to ruin. They were set to begin with the dark wing upon their return from the yacht trip they never came home from.
With a heavy sigh, I turn into the room that houses my mother’s beloved piano. Electricity is spotty in the dark wing and non-existent in this room, so I begin the task of lighting the candles and take in the boxes upon boxes stacked all around the room. My parents’ things, which Grandmother had ordered packed and put away first thing upon her arrival. I guess it could have been worse. She could have burnt them or made us move back to France.
But by then, there was no doubt that the time of The Tithing was drawing near as far as she was concerned. The Wildbloods had four daughters and one of them was rumored to be marked with the crescent moon. It was, to her, a sign from Shemhazai himself come to her in a dream.
The thought of Shemhazai makes my head pound harder, and so I shove it aside. I sit on the piano bench, lift the piano lid, and begin to play. The tattoo on my arm is visible, and I try not to see it, remembering the way Willow looked at it. At me. How she seemed to be physically repelled by it as if sensing its dark energy. It was as if she knew what Shemhazai would take from her.
I wear him on my body and I, too, feel that repulsion. It’s not for what he’ll demand of me. I know that well enough, and I’m prepared to pay the price if it will save my sister and keep my remaining brother safe.
It’s what I am expected to do to her that has me battling myself. It’s Grandmother’s stories of the past, of the curse. It’s what I’ve read in The Book of Tithes that chronicles the tragedies my family has suffered over centuries. How those tragedies somehow, as if by divine intervention, abate once The Tithe is paid and the Wildblood witch sacrificed.
It”s insane, I know. Yet here I am. Here we all are.
Just to clarify one thing about that divine intervention. It’s not any God in heaven I am talking about. Grandmother believes in one God: Shemhazai. The leader of the fallen angels, or Watchers, who were sent to look after humans and who instead took the women for themselves and created a species of man and beast. Well, beast or God, depending on who you ask.
Nephilim.
The children of fallen angels and human women.
Until, that is, the great flood was sent to wipe out the race—genocide, according to Grandmother. The leaders of the Watchers, Shemhazai among them, and my own namesake, Azrael, were punished for eternity. Well, eternity by our human standards, I suppose.
According to my grandmother, the Delacroix family is descended from this race. To her, it explains our great height, our strength, and our abundance of blessings. Only since Isaiah Delacroix had the misfortune of meeting and falling in love with Elizabeth Wildblood did things go so wrong for our family.
Well, falling in love is how she explains it. His lecherous advances being rejected is probably more likely the case if he’s anything like the dream version. However you say it, though, generation after generation, both Wildblood and Delacroix have paid a heavy price.
But I digress.
I close my eyes and focus on the music, an ancient requiem that banishes the migraine and envelops me in its darkness. In a darkness that is somehow a comfort because it brings with it oblivion, at least for as long as it lasts.
My mother, Amélie, taught me how to play. She had an incredible talent for the piano, and I inherited about an ounce of it. Actually, she could pick up any musical instrument and play beautifully, but the piano was her beloved. I still remember the look in my father’s eyes when he would watch her as she created the loveliest music. I am so grateful to have this piece of her left for me, a single thing Grandmother can’t take away.
I lose myself in the notes, pounding on the very same keys my mother pounded on. I play until the tips of my fingers are numb, until the light filtering in through the dark, heavy drapes covering every window turns a deep orange marking the setting of the sun. I have passed a full day here, which is not an unusual thing. Time seems to move more quickly when I play.
And I am very aware of time. Of days. Nearly three-hundred-sixty-five of them. Just a few more days until the anniversary that I will need to mark. A full year since Abacus’s death.
Rest in peace, brother.
Between his death and The Tithing, it’s no wonder my head feels like it’s going to explode.
I stop abruptly, hitting the final note that becomes a haunted echo in this haunted house. Willow was right about that. I sit here for a long time, my hands resting on the smooth wood of the piano lid. I look at the ring on my left hand. My wedding band. And I know it’s idiotic, but in some way, I feel a quickening inside myself. Something new.
Maybe it’s simply that, the fact that it’s new. She’s new. Maybe it’s that she’s so full of color and life, so much so that energy has no choice but to manifest as that vibrant red hair, those clear blue eyes that sometimes look like shards of glass—at least when they’re looking at me. But that thing, that quickening, it is hope. Hope even in the face of everything.
Or hell, maybe it’s a thing as simple as attraction. The woman makes me want. I take my fill of women as I need to, never denying myself, but it is just that: sating a need.
With her, it’s something else entirely. Lust. A hunger like I’ve never felt before. A yearning to touch. To possess. A thing I fear will never be sated, not with her.
The chime of the clock echoes from the main hall of the house. I check the time on my father’s antique watch. Six o’clock.
I get to my feet and, after glancing at the last photograph taken of my family days before our parents’ final trip, I blow out every candle and make my way back from the dark wing to the library. If I wasn’t sure before whether my grandmother knew where I spent the days I vanished from the house, I am now. Because there she is, seated in my armchair studying the stained-glass window, a tumbler of whiskey on the table between the two chairs. Without turning to me, she pushes the glass toward the empty chair. Grandmother doesn’t drink. It’s a vice.
“Grandmother.” I cross to that chair because there’s no sense in doing anything but that, and I take a seat, picking up the tumbler and sipping from it.
“Azrael,” she says with a smile that turns the blood in my veins to ice. “I understand the witch will be joining the family for dinner.”
“The witch is my wife. And yes, she will eat with us.”
“Why?”
“Because she needs to eat.”
“She can eat with the servants. You’ve already given her a room of her own in our home, which I am against.”
“Yes, I’m aware.”
“You’ve allowed her to roam freely.”
“Do you expect me to keep her under lock and key for a full year?”
“It does not need to be a full year, as you know,” she says.
The muscles in my face tense as I try not to show any emotion. Once The Tithe is collected, it falls to The Penitent to make The Sacrifice within a calendar year. Each Sacrifice is marked in The Book of Tithes, a logbook of sorts, and historically, The Sacrifice is made anywhere from a few weeks after the marriage to a full year.
“The sooner the better, if you ask me.”
“Lucky for her, it’s not up to you.”
She narrows her watery gaze on me. “You’ve taken her to your bed.” She grins a knowing grin.
“And?”
“Don’t let the whore turn your head. You can have any woman you want. You’ve fulfilled your obligation with this one.”
“What do you want, Grandmother?” I ask, checking the time.
“I want what needs to be done to keep our family safe and prosperous.”
“And you want me to hurry up about it.”
She nods.
I get to my feet. She rises to hers and we face one another.
“You understand what is required of me, do you not?” I ask.
“Of course. Your sacrifice, too, will be great, and we will honor you for it.”
“Not that part. The other. The fact that it will be my hands that spill her blood.”
She simply raises her chin, stubborn as ever. She is obsessed with this curse, with making The Sacrifice. Over the last decade, it has consumed her and stolen the little bit of humanity she had left. “Your family needs you, Azrael.”
“It will happen on my terms and in my time. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll collect my wife for dinner.” I set my empty glass down and head toward the door.
“Rébecca may not have a year,” she calls out from behind me.
I stop, because this always makes me stop.
“If we were to lose her,” she says from closer than I expect. “You’d never forgive yourself. I know you.”
I rub my forehead, not sure I’ll make it through dinner with this migraine.
The door opens and I hear Rébecca. “He’s usually in here when you can’t find him,” she’s saying. She giggles and starts to say something else, too, but as soon as she sees us and realizes I’m not alone, she stops dead in her tracks. I swear she shrinks a few inches in front of the old woman.
“What did I tell you about associating with the witch?” Grandmother says, stalking toward my sister, who takes a step backward. At the same moment I grab hold of my grandmother’s arm, Willow, whose hand Rébecca was holding, pushes my sister behind her.
“She didn’t seek me out. I heard some music and got lost searching for the source,” Willow says, although I can see her guilt.
Was she snooping? And how did she hear the music?
Grandmother is seething. She turns to me, rage making her face go beet red. She tugs her arm out of my grasp, so angry she spits the words she speaks. “You let her wander around this house, who knows what she’ll do! What more curses will you allow this witch to bring down on our heads for your own selfish desires, Azrael Delacroix?”
Willow snort-laughs.
“How dare you, witch?” Grandmother practically hisses.
“She’s not…” starts my little sister, but she stops when she sees Grandmother’s face.
“You realize calling me a witch is not an insult, don’t you?” Willow taunts.
Grandmother sets her sights squarely on Willow but speaks to me. “Azrael,” she starts in that calm, quiet way she has. It is the very same tone that she used just before she administered her punishments when we were younger. “You should teach your wife some manners. Keep in mind you would not be the first Penitent to take a second Wildblood when the chosen one refuses to heel.”
Ah. There it is. She knows Willow’s Achilles’ heel, just as she knows mine.
Willow’s hands fist but before she can speak, there’s another sound. “I don’t feel well,” comes a small voice from behind Willow.
We all turn to find Rébecca has gone pale as a ghost. I rush to her and crouch down to hug her just as Emmanuel enters.
“There you all are. I’m starv… Bec?” He rushes toward us as Grandmother, her head held high, walks out of the library with her long black skirt whipping around her.
“I’m sorry,” Rébecca says, burying her face in my shoulder. “I found Willow outside and she was lost.”
“Was she?” I ask, glancing up at my wife.
“It’s not your fault, sweetheart,” Willow says, quickly averting her gaze from mine and setting a hand on Rébecca’s shoulder.
I glare at her and what she sees in my eyes has her pulling her hand away. “Emmanuel, take Bec to get dinner. We’ll join you shortly.” I straighten up and wrap a hand around the back of my wife’s neck. “Once I’ve had a word with my wife.”
Emmanuel glances between us, and one corner of his mouth curves upward as he leads our sister out of the library and closes the door behind them.