Chapter 1 #2
In the light, I saw that the way he had been bound to the cross was somewhat elaborate.
There were restraints, not ropes, that kept his arms and torso and legs in place.
They were custom-made things, the buckles sturdy but similar to those on belts, but the rest of them was metal chain links that interconnected.
The metal had plenty of sharp edges that dug into the man’s skin.
The crude roughness of that contrasted sharply with his clothing, which was all black but high end.
It was the kind of outfit people wore to gallery openings—not flashy or designed to impress, just simple and beautiful. In places, it glistened wetly. Blood.
The restraints actually made it easier for me to get him down.
There were no knots to undo, just buckles, which my shaking hands managed easily enough.
When I began working on the first restraint, undoing it with clumsy fingers and holding the flashlight in my other hand, I had the strongest sense of déjà vu I’d ever had.
In fact, this was more than déjà vu, it was like almost remembering a dream, catching glimpses of it, only to lose the whole of it on waking.
I shook my head and kept working on getting him free.
I started with his right arm, which fell to his side when I finally had the restraint open, then went to his left.
Before I unbuckled the strap across his chest, I had the good sense to undo his legs.
I had tracked bloody footsteps all around the cross in the process; I saw that as my light darted everywhere, but I didn’t care.
I cared that he lived, that I didn’t have to watch the life drain out of him as if the headstones outside were calling it to them.
“Okay, almost done.”
I fiddled with the strap across his chest. This one was difficult, because his weight pulled against it, making it so there was hardly any give at the buckle. I did my best to push his torso up, hoping he didn’t have any major injuries I’d upset further in the process.
Working as fast as I could, I got the buckle open and freed him from the cross at last.
His full weight sagged against me, and I managed to hold him with a huff.
He was a dead weight, and I was a photographer who didn’t really work out beyond the occasional yoga session at the studio near my place.
I couldn’t quite hold him, so I had to let him go to the floor, although I tried to get him there as gently as I was able.
He moaned. His back felt wet under my hand, and I looked from it to the cross.
Words stuck in my throat. Spikes had been hammered into the cross from behind, and he had been mounted on them. He had to be hurt badly, and I needed to get him help, quick.
“Can you hear me? My car isn’t far away. I’ll get you to a hospital, but I need you to get up.”
As I was draping his arm over my shoulder, I heard noises from outside the church. The door was thrown inward moments later, and the commotion started.
Everything happened very fast, and I’m not sure I remember the sequence of events correctly. I do remember there were three of them coming into the church.
The beam of my flashlight caught them, and the tone of their angry voices will ring in my memory forever.
“What are you doing? By the Holy Lord—” They shouted more religious stuff and prayers that, luckily, didn’t sink into my memory. They were wielding guns, and they took aim at me and the man. I froze.
I couldn’t even begin to comprehend this.
This church was supposed to be abandoned, and now there were more people here.
The man leaning heavily on me was close to dying, and crazy people dressed in black were here, apparently to get the job done sooner rather than later.
They would kill me too. I’d had the chance to go home with a cute server less than an hour ago, and now I was about to die.
I didn’t want to die.
Out of nowhere, the man’s weight was gone.
He moved, and then there was screaming. A part of my brain struggled to understand this, because right up until that moment, he’d seemed too weak to do anything, closer to dying than I’d ever seen anyone in real life.
The way his body burst into action now was beyond anything even someone rested and in peak physical condition might have been able to do. It didn’t compute.
My flashlight fell to the floor and rolled away from me, and all I saw were broken pieces of what happened, caught in the kaleidoscope of scattered light and movement.
The man was fast, too fast, and the others were not.
I heard them screaming, and other noises I’d never heard before.
My brain told me those cracks were bones breaking, and the wet noises were skin tearing and blood splattering.
I thought it strange that I made that connection, as if some ancient part of my brain retained a genetic memory of violence.
Throughout our evolution, nature had apparently seen fit to store this auditory memory in case it was ever needed again.
It didn’t take very long until the church was almost silent again. I couldn’t place the noise I could still hear. There was the rustling of fabric against fabric, a low groan, skin on skin. It was less of a fighting noise, closer to lovemaking, but different in a terrifying way.
I reached for the flashlight. I needed to see.
Dark hair fell down his back where the blood from his wounds still lingered.
His shirt was torn too. I watched. I watched and didn’t understand what I saw.
The broken skin from those spikes, the violently tattered edges of his flesh, the tissue beneath his skin that had been laid bare, it… fused, healed, became whole again.
The other man’s hands were visible around him, grabbing at the air in wild, clawing spasms, like a despairing animal caught in a lion’s jaws.
The man I had taken off the cross had his head close to the other man’s throat, and the other man’s eyes were staring upward, wide and blank. There was blood.
Instinct rode me, and I got to my feet and started walking, heading around them toward the exit. There was another corpse in my way; a priest, judging by the collar. I stepped over him. I needed to get away from this.
The door was still open, and I went to pull it open farther, but before I could take hold of it, another hand reached past my face, slammed the door shut in its frame, and held it there.
I stared straight ahead, not daring to turn my head.
The nails looked almost like glass, certainly sharp, and I felt the weight and shape of the rest of his body behind me, close enough to make me hold still, even though my heart was beating like a blacksmith’s hammer in my chest.
“So long, I have waited… Fear is the appropriate reaction, in a way. However, you saved me, and I give you my word you’ll never have to fear me.
Ever.” The voice did not go with the things I had seen.
It made me think of the comforts of a warm home, of books and pipe smoke.
This voice ran over me, sweet and soft like wildflower honey.
Still, I was breathing loudly, and my heart was racing. I tried to turn my head to the left. There was the outline of the third person there, sprawled on the ground.
“Don’t.” He put his right hand on my shoulder. His left was still keeping the door shut. “Don’t look at them. Look at me.” He made me turn, and when we were face-to-face, he made me look at him by pulling my chin up with his hand.
The only light I had was the flashlight, and such faint illumination could play tricks on the mind. His irises looked completely black though, pupilless. His lips appeared red and flushed.
When he looked at me, I felt as if something warm washed over me, not unlike when you were given a very strong pain medication and the world around you felt as if it were cotton-wrapped.
Do not move. Stay right where you are, don’t look at them, and calm down, he said, but his lips didn’t move at all.
Only when his eyes left me did I realize that they had held me with the force of something far larger than myself, far stronger than anything I’d ever known. I wanted to move. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t.
My breathing calmed. However, I needed to see what he was doing.
Through stubbornness or strength, I did manage to slightly turn my head, roll my eyes that way, and look.
He was bent over the man who had been on the floor to the left of the door.
The man on the floor was still moving, struggling now, it looked like.
The long-haired man was whispering to the one on the floor. I couldn’t make out any of his words, nor what the man on the floor said in return. He tried to reach for the rifle he’d dropped.
One of those strong hands with glass-like fingernails pinned his arm before it could reach the weapon, and after more whispering, the dark-haired man tore into the other’s throat with his teeth.
The man on the floor spasmed as he died, and there was no doubt at all that the dark-haired man was drinking his blood straight from his neck.
When the one on the floor stilled, the other got back to his feet and turned.
Either he’d wiped his mouth or he’d mastered the skill of feasting cleanly.
Apart from the color in his lips, there was no blood visible on him.
Even the deep cuts he had sported all over his face when he’d been on the cross had healed into scabs, really just flakes of copper still clinging here and there.
I couldn’t see even the smallest trace of scars.
In spite of the dried blood, his face was beautiful, framed by that dark, straight hair.
There was a part of me that itched to take a picture.
“You are of strong will,” he said when he got close to me, pulling my face toward him so I wouldn’t look at the dead guy on the floor. “I’ll not force it again; you have my word on that, too.”