27. Azrael
Idon’t sleep that night. Nor do I return to my bedroom.
I will not allow you to waste this second chance.
My migraine has returned with a vengeance.
The chords of the piano sound eerie in this abandoned room, this hollow, forgotten part of the house. I play louder, one eye on the ancient grandfather clock even though I don’t need to watch to know what is coming. To hear every tick of every second that passes, time creeping along forgetful of our tragedies. Oblivious to our marking of them.
As the second hand crosses the twelve-o’clock mark, the minute hand follows. A door opens on the clock face where a small bird should emerge to announce the new day. But the mechanism is old, and I don’t remember the bird ever having done its work. Instead, there’s a black hole and a creaking of sorts before the door closes and the clock carries on keeping time, neither knowing nor caring what day this is.
I continue playing, closing my eyes, my song a lament with too much grief, too much loss, too much sadness. But even if I pour everything I have into the music, the pain never lessens.
And now, Bec lies barely conscious in the hospital bed upstairs. My wife is locked in my bedroom, and I don’t know when I can unlock that door and face her—when and if I can set her free.
I recall our conversation just before I learned that Bec had fallen ill. Me telling her I can’t protect her if she’s not honest with me. That I have a right to know. What a hypocrite I am.
I will not allow you to waste this second chance.
Grandmother’s words repeat in my mind. I stand, slamming the piano lid down so hard the keys scream, shrill and final. I blow the candles out, eight of them dripping wax from the candelabra onto the piano, and stalk out of that room in near solid darkness. Memory guides me down the corridor away from the main part of the house toward the door that will lead me outside. I don’t want to run into Grandmother. I couldn’t stand it.
I will not allow you to waste this second chance.
I hear her words again as I step out into the night. The air is humid and heavy, and I walk to the lake, to that tree. Time may not care, but I will mark my brother’s death.
Did Willow understand when I told her how I’d found him? Butchered. It’s the only word to describe the sight I came upon when I got to the clearing that night. He was naked, having stripped off his clothes and left them in a neat pile nearby. Which somehow makes it all worse. He’d calculated it all. Planned it. Thought it through. He’d have carried both rope and dagger to the tree. He’d have to have chosen the place and the time so as not to be interrupted.
The fact that he did it here, not at Shemhazai’s altar, means something, doesn’t it? Or maybe it’s what Willow said, that he sought the comfort of memories of happier times. Of our mother.
If she were here, what would she make of us now? Me, a man who has locked his wife away to await… what exactly? Her execution?
Am I a liar? Will this curse make a liar of me as well as a murderer?
What would my father think of me? Of us?
I can tell you they would not be proud. But there is one thing I am certain of. They’d send Salomé packing. They’d tear down the statue of Shemhazai.
But at that thought, I stop. Would they? They had years to do it. We lived on this property for almost a decade before they disappeared. We were away from Grandmother’s ever-watchful eye, away from scripture as she sees it, yet Shemhazai stands tall and angry and blood-thirsty as ever. The demon-angel will never have his fill.
Why didn’t my parents tear down the statue that stands as an icon?
When I get to the clearing, I slow my steps. In the distance, I hear Benedict whine, and guilt gnaws at me. I should have brought him. I’m sure Grandmother has him tethered to the pole outside the kitchen door.
I just want to be alone with my thoughts and my misery, though. I don’t deserve the happiness he brings.
I move toward Abacus’s tree. Once I’m near enough, I search the ground for a sharp stone and, in lieu of a proper memorial, I carve a line into the trunk of the tree to mark the first anniversary.
The dagger he used to cut out the birthmarks on his shoulder blades was an antique dating centuries back. Its place sits empty in the library still. For those Penitents who chose to shave the head of their sacrifice, inflicting yet another humiliation on the condemned woman, that was the blade they used. No scissors; that hadn’t been barbaric enough. The significance of it all, the butchering of the hair that is so much a part of the Wildblood identity, Abacus having chosen that particular knife to slice the mark of our ancestry off his back, it is not lost on me.
That knife, worth a fortune once, now rusts in the bottom of the lake—and good riddance to it. If Grandmother knew, I’m sure she’d send a diving party to retrieve it.
Willow’s face in the window last night comes to mind. The way she looked at me when I dragged her from Bec’s bedside and locked her away is burned into my mind. Her concern for my sister. Her disbelief. Her desperation.
Then Grandmother’s warning.
I will not allow you to waste this second chance.
I turn from the tree, that rock clenched in my fist and with a scream, I send it crashing into the water. I push my hands into my hair, pulling at it, the pain of the migraine almost unbearable. When Willow and I stood under this tree just a few nights ago, she set the tips of her fingers on my temples and, as if by some witchcraft, banished the pain. The way my head feels now, it’s like someone’s pushing pins into an effigy of me. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
I walk back toward the house, but veer off toward the chapel when I get to the crossroads. Anger carries me toward the statue. I find my hands are fists and my jaw is set tight with rage.
I don’t plan on paying any attention to it, but I am going to do what my brother would have wanted me to do: light a candle for him inside the chapel. Abacus, for all our Grandmother’s teaching, still believed in a good god. A benevolent one. He was terrified of Shemhazai’s wrath. As much as Grandmother had tried to beat into him that Shemhazai was his god, he’d resisted. He was stronger than she wanted to believe.
In the end, not strong enough, but not in any way weak.
The red light of the tabernacle lamp comes into view first, and I don’t mean to pause at the broken altar. I don’t mean to pay the demon-angel any mind, but my eye catches on something glinting around his sword hand and I stop. Because there, since my visit with Grandmother, someone has hung a crucifix.
Is it a mockery of the angel? Surely it could not be Grandmother. She would not affix a crucifix to his wrist. Not Bec, obviously. The staff wouldn’t come here. I hear their whispers. They’re certain the thing is haunted. Willow is locked away. It’s not her. Was it Emmanuel? An effort to temper Shemhazai’s power? His grip on us?
It’s strange, out of character.
I leave it alone. I’ll ask Emmanuel about it later. Instead, I go into the chapel, which always feels cold no matter the outside temperature, and light two candles. One for Abacus and one for Bec. Because it can’t hurt, can it?
My cell phone rings. I lift it out of my pocket to find it’s Emmanuel.
“Where are you?” he asks, sounding urgent, his voice echoing as if off empty halls.
“Out at the chapel. Where are you?”
“I came to find you in your usual place. Heading back now. You need to meet me out front now.”
“Why? Is Bec?—”
“Bec’s stable. She woke up a little while ago and managed to have a few sips of broth. Larissa just called.”
“Larissa?” The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and I make my way out of the chapel and back toward the house.
“There’s been an attempt on another woman.”
I hurry my steps. “What?”
“Disciples. She’s alive. Badly hurt but alive. And we need to meet Larissa.”
“Why?’
“They were interrupted. A neighbor was walking her dog and the thing went batshit apparently. Neighbor knew something was off at the house, and when she set the dog loose, it went bolting for the back door. Must have scared them, and three men fled, one of them injured.”
“Still not processing why we need to meet with Larissa. I don’t want to leave Bec and I need to talk to Willow.” I see my grandmother in the living room and decide to take the long way around to the front of the house.
“You will. They abandoned a car. There’s apparently photos inside. Photos of our house.”
My blood runs cold.
“What?” I ask as I come around the corner just as Emmanuel steps out of the front door. He disconnects the call and tosses the phone to me.
“Scroll through the photos. That’s just a few, apparently. I’ll drive.”
I catch his phone before he slides into the driver’s seat of the Jaguar and open the photos. What I see there has me stopping. It’s a series of shots and they’re recent. I guess they’re from the day the Wildblood sisters came to visit Willow because there they all are as I scroll through. Whoever took the pictures must have been following them.
“Get in,” Emmanuel calls, leaning across the front seat to push the passenger side door open.
“What the hell?” I shake my head.
“There’s more on the scene. The back seat of the car is apparently littered with photos of one particular redhead, not all recent, but documenting fucking years.”
I get in, close my door and turn to him. “Christ.”
He starts the engine, revs it, puts the car into first gear as I scroll to the last photo—one of my wife.
My wife, floating naked in a swimming pool, her eyes closed.
“What the hell is this?”
“The pool is at their house, in the backyard.”
I zoom in on Willow’s face in the photo and what I see there has me horrified and sickened at once. Because someone has taken a pen or hell, could be the point of a dagger, and carved a cross into her forehead. It looks like it’s been done repeatedly, angrily. Across the top, written in furious red sharpie, are the words: for the wages of sin is death.