49. Petra
PETRA
The townsfolk thought that Arnoult and the Ouroboros Society had summoned the devil and . . . and gotten the girl pregnant.”
My voice starts faltering again, and a part of me is astonished at how personally I’m taking all this. I avoid looking at him directly since this is about his family, who, it turns out, are descended from a homicidal maniac.
“So the town turned against Arnoult and his men. And get this—” I glance at Sin warily. “Arnoult died shortly after.”
“What? How?”
“That’s the strange part.” I answer in an absent-minded tone again because I’m already scanning through the rest of the article.
“There’s no mention of how he died, and all witness statements are kind of vague.
But it says here that before he died, he vowed to return and take revenge on those who had hurt him and his . . . his beloved.”
There is a long silence between us while we try to wrap our heads around this long train of tragic deaths.
Parents killing children, entire families dying together . . . there seemed to be some foraging force that swept up these people’s spirits into a state of murderous frenzy, into a death-desiring obsession that had to end with self-sacrifice.
Dark thoughts like these chase each other through the eerily silent corridors of my mind. I find a dusty chair and sink into it as my knees buckle and give way under all the information we have unearthed.
“Petra . . .” Sin begins in a tactfully neutral tone. “Did you know that Radcliffe is still home to a big Christian cult?”
The non-sequitur jolts me out of my horror-filled imaginings, and for that I am grateful.
He adds, “Though they don’t call themselves that. The official name is The True Doctrine.”
“The True Doctrine?” I repeat in a hollow tone, forcing myself to pay attention so I won’t dwell on the grisly images that keep flashing across my mind’s eye, or the fact that I’ve heard that term before—in my dreams.
“What’s that about?”
“They’ve been around for at least two centuries. They are a puritan branch of the Catholic Church, though most people just call them puritans because they don’t drink, party, or do anything that’s seen as ‘fun.’”
“Yeah, I think I’ve heard my parents talk about that community,” I continue, after a brief spell of silence. “Mom doesn’t like them, says they are too secretive and secluded, almost cultlike. I’ve heard people joke about them at school, too, but I wonder how much of it is actually true.”
“I think it’s more than just rumors. They’re . . . well, they’re just odd, aren’t they?”
There’s a distant look in Sin’s eyes, as if he’s putting together a jigsaw puzzle without a reference image.
“I’ve seen them at the local farmers’ market, and they are always on guard, somehow. Always in their groups, dressed in plain clothes, and the women wear these lace veils that cover their faces. They don’t interact much with the rest of the people around here.”
“Do you think they know more about Arnoult and his . . . weird vow? Maybe they know about the rituals.”
“I somehow don’t think they would take it too well if we just barged into their community and asked questions about devils and demons,” Sin adds in a cynical voice.
I bite my lip, deep in thought.
“What if we could find a way to get close to them?” I suggest in a mechanical tone devoid of all conviction. “Maybe if we attended one of their church meetings we can ask them about the identity of the girl Arnoult was in love with and—”
Sin scoffs lightly. “Good luck with that! They’re notoriously closed off.”
“I get it, but there has to be a way we can gather more information,” I reply without thinking why it had to be us doing all the digging. “We can’t let it go; too many people are at risk.”
Sin nods and starts shuffling through more boxes. I try to suppress a yawn as my body begins slackening under the weight of exhaustion and stress and the you-know-who.
At one point, I sit back and stretch my spine to alleviate some of the pressure from my feet.
“Look at this,” Sin says, pointing to a document with a beautiful header in curly loopy lettering. “Sources say that Arnoult’s legacy was kept alive by some of his members, his most trusted ones in the inner circle.”
Sin chuckles and continues, “Apparently, Arnoult had some otherworldly powers.”
“Oooh, sexy,” I retort in an impassive voice, and this makes Sin snort out loud.
“No really, this article says that he could talk to supernatural beings. And get this—he apparently had some arcane sigils that he used to summon demons.”
“Really, Sin? This all sounds so . . . folklorish. It’s like we’re in a Dan Brown novel and we’re racing against time to save the world.” I roll my eyes. Yet the word ‘sigil’ continues to resound in my mind.
Sigils . . . like those in my dreams? That Arnoult had gotten from the Vatican?
“Hmm, I don’t know,” Sin mutters doubtfully.
“Here, give me that!” I say suddenly, reaching out for the paper in his hands at the same time as he jerks it away from me.
“Argh!” I yell when the edge of the paper slices through the skin of my thumb, and a few drops of red pearl over the pale nailbed.
“Ah, shit!” Sin exclaims before drawing air through his teeth in a somewhat endearing way. “Let me see.”
“It’s nothing, really,” I start, but he’s already gently taking my hand and looking at the cut with intense concentration.
“It’s not nothing,” he insists, and before I can protest further, he brings my finger to his mouth and sucks the tip gently.
The hairs on the nape of my neck stand up, and I can feel my knees trembling a bit.
“Sin,” I murmur, my thoughts scattered at the contrast between this tender moment and the dark history of our surroundings.
“Just . . . let me take care of you,” he says quietly, nuzzling my fingers in his palm and kissing them softly.
The sight of his lips moving over my skin makes me flush and lose the thread of my thoughts.
So I gently draw my hand away and clear my throat.
Sin sits back and picks up a slim pamphlet from the box he had been reaching for before I gave myself a stupid paper cut.
“So this looks like some kind of local newspaper from that time,” he says in a casual tone, as if he hadn’t just been sucking my thumb. “It had quite a few articles on Arnoult, speculating whether he was behind all the murders.”
I’m floored by this discovery, but a part of me seems to straighten up in tension. As if there is a foreboding voice that is telling me something in words I cannot hear. But Sin looks unmoved by the latest piece of insight into his family’s history.
While we rummage through even more boxes, I wonder if any of Sin’s family upstairs can hear us.
What if Marie gets up for a midnight snack and passes by Sin’s room on the way to the kitchen?
What if there’s a fire, and Lisa and Tom rush in to make sure Sin and I are okay?
The thin thread of my thoughts is broken when Sin says, “Found something!”
“What, what is it now?” I rush over to him, my brow darkening with distress as I wonder what fresh news from hell awaits us this time.
Sin is pulling an old letter from a dark corner of the box. The paper looks fragile, tattered, and yellowed with age.
I lean closer as he carefully unfolds it. “What does it say?” I whisper.
“It’s dated just before Arnoult died,” Sin replies, his voice low, almost reverent. He begins reading aloud:
To My Purest Knights,
I write these words to lock my legacy in stone.
I will not rise with the angels nor sink with the sprites from Beelzebub’s den.
I will not rot under snow nor ripen with fruit in some mortal’s orchard.
Anoint me with blood, my vessels, and I will be reborn on the next blood moon.
I will walk again on this blasted earth when enough sacrifices have been made; I will smite the heathen throng. I will be reborn. I will be reborn.
My stomach twists with every brutal line, shorn of any abashment and dipped in bloodlust. “Reborn? ‘Anoint me with blood’? What the hell is he talking about?”
Sin glances at me with fear-ridden eyes. “It means he plans to come back. If they complete the sacrifices—I think that’s what ‘anoint me with blood’ means, he will . . . he will come back, somehow.”
“And ho-how many sacrifices do they need to make?” I ask again, even though the question itself is too horrific to be answered.
“Ah, that I don’t know,” Sin replies with a chagrined expression. “I don’t even know where to begin with all this . . .” He waves his arms around, as though trying to encompass the fucked-upness of everything.
“Sin, if he’s going to be reborn on the next blood moon,” I begin, as a dreadful realization dawns on, “and they—whoever is killing these kids—are still operating under that belief, then . . . then we don’t have too long, right?”
“Exactly!” he replies, confirming the date on his phone before I’ve even finished stating my theory out loud.
“So . . .” We both look at each other, and eventually, I turn out to be the one brave enough to ask.
“What do we do now?”