Chapter 14
We walked out onto the porch and down to the beach. We hurried. Even in daylight, Auris seemed to have no trouble with the terrain, or at least less than me, but I refused to slow him down.
Around us, the pastels were draining from the world and giving way to colder blues. I hoped night would come quickly.
Unlike our beach walk the other night, we didn’t get close to where the waves licked the sand, but stuck much more to the dunes between us and the water, where the town was.
From there, the Seafront Bar shimmered above us.
It was close, a leisurely fifteen-minute walk from the house though we had made it here in under ten.
Fairy lights around the eaves had already blinked on, and the sound of people getting drunk, along with the background music made the place hard to miss.
“What now?” I asked, but Auris had already pulled out his phone and was texting.
The cool light from the screen lit up his face, hiding the color of his eyes from me. “Harold is taking a video for me.”
“Okay.”
He looked up, and then I could see the silver in his eyes. “Ethan, you need not worry.” He hugged me close, and we kissed until I heard the quiet noise of an incoming message.
“Is that it?”
Auris was already opening the video, and we watched it together.
There was music and people talking, nothing unusual for a bar.
The two men at the table were priests all right, I could see the white collars under their more regular clothes—zipper sweaters on both of them, an outdoorsy-type vest on one. Padding enough to hide weapons under.
“They were talking about hoping to find me,” Auris said when the video had ended.
“Huh?”
He shrugged and put his phone away. “I read lips. Not an exact science, but well enough. They’re here for me.”
I hugged myself, walked three steps toward the bar, then back to Auris.
“We need to leave. No, you need to leave. They won’t do anything to me, so I’ll stay here and distract them, and then we can meet up later. You can take my car, and I’ll tell them you stole it.”
Auris narrowed his eyes, and their silver was getting duller, darker.
“My sweet, you will do no such thing.” I watched as the brightness drained from the world and his eyes alike, as black overtook them.
“I will not leave you to them. Those men are filled with righteous zeal. They wouldn’t just allow you to walk away if they suspected temptation.
” He looked up. “I will deal with them.”
“But—”
“Look at me, Ethan. Night has fallen. This is my time, not theirs. You saw what I can do.”
I nodded. “Right. They don’t have…I don’t know, silver bullets?”
He chuckled. “Those would not do a thing, my sweet.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Listen, I clearly cannot lose them, which means I need to do this now. Can you make your way back to the house?”
I shook my head. “I’m not leaving you. I… Can I help?”
Auris stilled, then shook his head. “You have a blockheaded streak, but very well. You can go inside, if you like.”
“Then what?”
“See if they come talk to you. I’m pretty sure they will recognize you.”
“Right. And then what?”
He lowered his head, and the light from the bar illuminated half his face. “If you want to, you can try luring them out. Act surprised, tell them I told you to get a drink to calm your nerves and then come back to me with liquor in your blood. Or whatever you like, really.”
“And then…what are you going to do to them?”
He shrugged. “One thing the church knows and sticks to is the immersing in water trick. When they send people out, it’s one of the first things they do once they return.
In fact, they’re trained to take baths every night when they are on the road while their partner watches.
I’ll entrance them and get information out of them.
I might try to make them feed information back to their network.
What I cannot do is let them live out the rest of their days in peace.
They will never leave me or my kind in peace either. ”
“So that means… You’re going to kill them, that’s what you’re saying.”
“Yes.”
I nodded. “But they would kill you as well. I mean, they want to murder you, right? This isn’t… You’re doing this in self-defense?”
“Yes. Ethan, you can go back to the house, that really would be fine. You don’t have to have any part in this at all. I’d not think less of you.”
I considered that, considered also that crucifying someone in a church was wrong.
Starting from when I’d met him in that church, Auris had had more than enough opportunity to do a million wicked things to me, and he’d shown me nothing but kindness.
And love. Gloria seemed to honestly like him and care about him, even if she was entranced.
I didn’t think Auris had entranced her to wink and hint as hard as she did about how great she thought me and him getting together was.
All of which made my decision easy.
“I’ll go in,” I said.
He nodded. “You don’t have to be afraid. I can hear what goes on in there quite well now that it’s dark, and I can get to you fast. But—” He took my hand. “—don’t let them know you’re helping me of your own free will. And don’t let them get too close to you. They’re definitely armed.”
I nodded. They had weapons, but I could do this. They wanted to hurt Auris. I could do this.
“What happens if they figure out I’m helping you?”
“Nothing you want to think about. Friends—good people—have been murdered for refusing to tell them what they wanted to know.”
That still didn’t sound real. Murderous priests should have been an oxymoron.
Not that I was religious, but they were mostly old people, and from what you saw in the news, when they picked victims, those were children.
This was something else entirely, and those two guys up there, they didn’t look geriatric at all.
“Okay. This is basically just like a gala opening. I can do this.”
Auris huffed. “What sort of gala openings have you been to, my sweet? Anyway, I know you can do this, but you don’t have to. Are you really sure?”
I nodded and straightened. “I’ll help you with this. I helped you in the church, and I’ll do it again now.”
Auris kissed my forehead, then pulled back. “You’re brave, my Ethan. The way up is over there, do you see it?”
He pointed. I could barely make out the path in the darkness, but if I squinted, I saw the rope handhold, the outline of wooden steps. “Yeah. You’re staying right here?”
“I’ll be wherever you can get them to follow you to, don’t worry about that.
If they don’t come over to you at all, I’ll come in and have a chat with them there.
Don’t approach them; they’ll think it suspicious.
” He put something in the front pocket of my jeans.
I heard the rustling of a bill. “For your drink.”
“Okay.” I walked up toward the bar.
It was slow going because the steps were uneven and winding, and I had to squint against the sea breeze while also looking where I stepped.
But I did arrive on the back patio of the bar, a big, hand-drawn sign telling me to pull the door open.
As I walked toward the door, I thought how nice it would be to walk from the house to this bar and have a drink out here on the patio while Auris sat next to me, while I watched his eyes turn black with the sunset. But it was too cold for that now, winter riding in fast on the ocean.
“Maybe next summer,” I mumbled. I pumped my fists once and put my hand on the door. “Okay, you can do this,” I whispered before I walked into the Seafront.