CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“THE WINTER’S PICK OF THE honorarium will be Elliott Archway.”
James felt blood trickle down his jawline. He’d bitten his tongue.
Time went still.
His limbs were frozen.
The crowds of thousands peered up at the frightened students on stage and James felt his nape prickle as the little swan-white hairs on the back of his neck stood on end from the chorus of sighs of relief and murmurs of gratitude.
“Thank God.”
“Praise the Lord.”
“It’s finally over.”
Elliott had collapsed into the pyre wood.
His body was careening forward, and James had tried to grasp him back upright, but James’s normally quick hand felt nightmarishly slow. James couldn’t breathe. His heart went dead. His lungs refused oxygen. His hand refused to obey him.
Elliott fell straight forward into the stacks of wood and without hesitation, the burly huntsmen marched over to him and grabbed him up from the splinters and cuts of wood, spreading vinegary, gamey, livery salts beneath his nose.
The whispers of pity were unbearable.
“One of Mrs. Ledgerman’s orphans?”
“An orphan chosen this year…poor child.”
Earlier that day, James’s hands were bathed in blood. He was removing the entrails of a subject, a nameless corpse, the organs putrefied with necrosis. The eyes were gouged.
Professor Wulfram had supervised behind him.
He disliked when James buried the bodies with humanity and compassion, instead, bearishly, Wulfram disposed of them in the local coroner’s incinerator.
Wulfram frowned in disapproval whenever James placed a cloth over the eyes out of respect for the deceased.
In his perspective, it was a waste of cloth.
All James Wilde could think of now were Elliott’s soft bichromatic eyes.
He couldn’t let that happen to Elliott.
James bolted into movement. He needed a strategy. He sprinted down the rough-hewn, splintered, timber steps of the raised platform. He checked his wristwatch, it was exactly 2:00 AM in the morning. It was godlessly early, but the crepuscular dark worked in his favor.
The sun wouldn’t rise for another four or five hours, which meant visibility would be low in the woodlands.
No one would see him in the moonless dark.
The Eisenhower Woods were secluded, compactly small, one of the only mountain forests nearby without cabins or private residences like in the Nixon Forest, because it was considered a sacred memorial ground.
No one was permitted to enter on the day of the killing.
It would be Elliott’s final resting place with the hibernal sacrifices of years past. Only Elliott and Lucien would be given entry to the sacred path.
No one would be permitted to escort them either, not even the police. The police only intervened to shoot the sacrifice in the chest or the head, if they attempted to flee at the ceremony. A bullet-related death was unacceptable to the College.
A bullet was brutish–bullets pulverized cranial bone, ruptured through crucial tissue, fragmented important cartilage, damaged vital organs with unnecessary holes, and rendered the critical muscle unsalvageable.
After all, the College needed the body anatomically intact for alchemy experimentation.
To the public, however, the College merely claimed the preservation was out of dignity and humane civility.
At last, the hibernal ceremony was over.
All at once, everyone returned to their lives, yawning and chattering in the freezing winds. It took every ounce of restraint in James’s muscle to remain grounded and not give into the barbarous rage to curse them all to hell.
His eyes darkened with a mixture of fury and hatred.
He vowed he wouldn’t simply slaughter Lucien Montclair. He would desecrate his body. He’d be resourceful with whatever means nature gave him to raze him down to the earth.
As if emerging from his murderous thoughts, the smirking, prideful creature approached him.
His large, coarse stag antlers that wreathed his head were nearly as broad as his shoulders.
The wisps of his light blond hair rustled in the wind.
“The grandeur of the winter play will be interesting this year, won’t it? ”
James had to physically coerce his jaw to unclench. “You have your Cadmean victory, enjoy it while it lasts.”
Lucien tilted his head towards Elliott. “Do you think he will cry?”
A profane warfare raged an unholy bloodbath in James’s mind. He barely remained silent. He was dangerously close to bursting the blood vessels in his pupils. He restrained himself within an inch of committing a massacre.
Unaware, Lucien luxuriated himself in a victory lap.
“I will miss your performance this year it seems. As I’ve said, it upsets me, because there’s none as beautiful as you in the magnitude of theater.
” Lucien angled his dark bident towards the unconscious Elliott.
“Nor is there anyone as idyllic and saccharine than him in our institution. His attraction is bewitching, isn’t it?
When he gazes at someone, not even the loveliest woman or the finest man compares to Elliott Archway. What a pair you made.”
Do not say a word to him, James. The battlefield is not here. It is not time.
Lucien feigned pity. “A wholesome young man with pure love inside of him. His natural innocence almost makes you want to corrupt him, doesn’t it?
He makes you want to commit acts on him that are wretched.
Taint his soul to see if there’s a wolf inside of him, like the rest of us.
There’s a magnificent light within Elliott, wouldn’t you agree?
” Lucien’s pale lips stretched further. “I will delight in draining the light out of his eyes. No matter how beautiful they are.”
James nearly bludgeoned Lucien to death with the metal bident in Lucien’s grip.
James didn’t care that there were scores of children in the audience.
He didn’t care that there were elderly citizens with cardiovascular conditions.
He didn’t care about the mothers carrying their Crucian baskets for offerings.
James cared even less about the rows of students with holiday festivities to attend as they started to depart, stretching their hideous Yule tunics as they all waved final good-byes to Elliott on their way out.
James would’ve rammed the bident into Lucien Montclair in front of them all until all that remained of him was pulp.
Saps of his corporeal membranes spread everywhere.
However, James only had an hour and forty-five minutes before the winter production began at Thysdrus at 5:45 AM.
Therefore, for now, James needed to remain in place. He couldn’t vanish and endanger his alibi.
He was forced to witness the huntsmen adorn Elliott’s ears and head with the honorarium buck antlers. Elliott looked helpless.
James needed to join together with the rest of the thespians, if he wanted his alibi to be solid steel.
He needed to leave with the production crew members while he could.
The theater members were his testimonial accounts that he’d been with them the entire time–from the grit wooden stage of the ceremony to the lavish stage of the amphitheater.
However, James convinced himself he still had time with Elliott.
The actors were busy reciting lines and practicing cues with alpaca-wool scarves strewn over their necks; the quiet crew sat around, murmuring to each other about the horrors they witnessed in past ceremonies. They exchanged dramatic stories like passing Illica’s libretti between themselves.
For a breathless moment, James witnessed Kitty screaming, which snapped Elliott out of his sopor as he regained consciousness at last. In the dark, Kitty and Elliott, like rafts lost in sea tides of people, tried to reach each other as the overwhelming masses flooded Elliott.
The older men were embracing Elliott, patting him, saluting him, all in appreciation for his sacrifice.
The older women grasped his cheeks, bequeathing him with their handmade wreath necklace around his neck, heaping their sympathetic thoughts and prayers onto him, shedding a tear down their faces.
Elliott must’ve barely registered their presence.
His fierce eyes were on Kitty.
The fire torches and pyres burned reflectively in Elliott’s eyes.
James gave himself sixty seconds to pull himself together. The sight of their embrace desolated him. When Elliott was forcibly separated from her, James became completely undone. Don’t move, James. Don’t go to him. Remain in place–
Before he knew it, he tore through the crowds, he grasped Elliott.
“I’ll meet you in the end–” James could hardly catch his breath. He was hopeless and lost, his words colliding, grasping the front of Elliott’s shirt as firmly as he could, terrified Elliott would be taken from him. He stumbled on his words. I’ll meet you at the end of the woods. “Hold on for me.”
James pressed his mouth against Elliott’s forehead. He pressed their temples together afterward, emotion distraught in his eyes. His breaths hard.
Their heavy breaths were white vapors of frantic oxygen between them.
“Hold on for me in the Eisenhower Woods. Promise me that.”
“I promise.” Elliott gazed up softly at him and James had the overwhelming urge to kiss each of his eyelids and to promise to keep them safe for him.
He’d battle them all to the death before he let Wulfram and his protégé exsect Elliott’s bichromatic eyes from him, disposing of him in crematoriums as though he were nothing but skin and muscle.
Perseus Swann would rid the world of Elliott, bisecting into his body mercilessly, then settle in to dinner at a Michelin-star restaurant with a luxuriant wine and a perfectly seared filet mignon without a moment’s disturbance.
Perseus had attained his position as an elector on the commendation of Wulfram as his finest protégé.
Perseus was the exemplar of an elector who would have no reservations or pity for anyone.