Descent Into Dust (35 page)

I glanced about anxiously as we walked toward the tree. Henrietta was not in sight. “We must put protections in place,” I said as I laid the stakes down and began to rummage in my satchel bag.

Father Luke peered down at me from his great height. “I have already done so. I knew if we failed at the house, Marius
had to come here, for this is where the ritual must take place.” His darting eyes scanned the area. The mists were thick, and gathering closer around us. He added in a grim monotone, “The blood is the life.”

The impact of that landed like a punch squarely in my stomach. Henrietta’s blood, to raise the evil imprisoned in the tree once again to life. I felt the flutter of panic once again, and my confidence wavered.

I straightened and faced him warily. “You never expected Henrietta to be in her bed, did you?”

He looked at me blankly. “Really, Mrs. Andrews. Marius has not survived millennia to reach the power he has by making such predictable moves.”

I was becoming angry. “Then why did you not tell us this?”

He remained calm against my snapping accusation. “Did you and Mr. Fox tell me everything? Besides, how could I be sure what the beast would do? You are Dhampir, and at Hess’s house, the vampire touched your mind. I expected you would know what he would do.” His eyes narrowed. “I see I was in error. Thank God I took precautions.”

“You are a knight of the Order of Knights of Saint Michael of the Wing. I was warned I should not trust you.”

“Yes,” he snapped, and at last I saw a glimpse of his rage unleashed. “I am, and well trained to understand that I must work alone and yet I have betrayed my vows. I knew all along what my mission would be, and exactly what I am meant to do, but I allowed my compassion to alter the course. I was moved by your love for the child. My pity for you, for that little girl, nearly cost us all because it swayed me off the course I made a sacred vow to follow.”

My blood grew chill at his hardened expression. “What are
you going to do?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. I was suddenly fearful that Valerian had been right all along, that we possibly had an enemy in our midst.

The priest seemed to pull his self-control around him. “I will have one and only one unique opportunity to kill the creature when it is first revived. Like a newborn, it will be weak and vulnerable, but only for a short while. That is when Marius himself plans to act, to overcome the fledgling demon and devour it. This is when we strike.”

I was nearly breathless with horror. “No. If we allow Marius to advance that far, it will already have been too late. It is Henrietta’s blood—the blood of the most innocent—that he must use to resurrect that thing you guard. If you wait until then…My God, you cannot mean to allow him to kill her.”

His jaw worked. I could see regret warring with determination in his cold, hard gaze. “It is only then that I will be able to destroy the evil that will be unleashed.”

I stepped away sharply, reeling from this. “What kind of priest are you?” I accused. But I knew the answer to that, had known the moment I spied his hulking form in the cemetery. Father Luke was a trained warrior, ready to make any sacrifices he deemed necessary.

I held out a finger to him, my voice ringing with resolve. “I am going to save her. Do you hear me, priest?”

I heard Valerian approaching. I spun away from Father Luke and ran to meet them.

Valerian swung off his horse before it was at a full stop. “Any sign of him?” he called as he rushed to join us.

“Nothing yet,” I told him. “Where is Sebastian? Is he coming?”

“He is right behind me. He should be here momentarily.”

Suddenly, Father Luke shouted behind me. “It is gone! The
crucifix I placed here!” He stalked the empty plain, circling the wicked thorns of the tree, then hunkered down, taking off his leather gloves to touch the ground. “The holy water’s been washed away. Someone has undone the seal I laid earlier.”

Valerian glanced around. “It could not be Marius. He could not touch any of it.”

Father Luke stood, his grim face frozen. “Good God, I did not foresee this.”

I dug into my bag and drew out a glass flask. “I have water drawn from the Chalice Well from Glastonbury Tor. And, look, I have brought stakes cut from the Holy Hawthorn of Joseph of Aramithea. I only have the two I could carry from the house.”

After a moment of stunned silence, Father Luke was the first to speak. His tone was quiet, full of awe. “Of course. Mrs. Andrews, that was quite brilliant.” He held out his hand. “Now, we must not waste time. I am a priest. I made my confession earlier and am in a state of grace. Despite your opinion of me, it should be me to use this holy water to anoint the area. If you will allow it.”

Those seconds in which I had to examine my heart to know the right thing to do seemed to take an eternity. Of course I did not trust Father Luke. I very nearly despised him at this moment for his willingness to risk my precious Henrietta. But the instinct in me I was learning to trust bode me to hand the vial into his outstretched palm. My hand shook as I did it. Some of it was rage. Most of it was pure terror that I was making a grave and disastrous mistake.

Valerian and I watched in silence as Father Luke bowed his head and knelt. After a moment of prayer, he began to minister the ablutions that would purify the ground around the tree.

“You could have told me about Glastonbury,” Valerian said,
casting me a sideways glance. His voice softened. “Emma, I wish—”

A shriek brought us both up short as a woman flew out of the mists, and in the instant before she flung herself at Father Luke, I recognized Miss Harris. She was screaming the vilest filth. We watched, stunned, as she grabbed the priest, who had been caught unawares. He stumbled, and, to my horror, the vial of holy water fell to the ground.

Valerian dashed to aid Father Luke. I went for the vial, but I was not quick enough. It lay on its side, a rusty puddle under its mouth. I snatched it up, examining it anxiously. The light was not good, but I saw much of it had been wasted.

Whirling, I faced the desperate wraith that had once been a devoted nursemaid, ready to vent my rage. The sight of her turned my blood to ice. Her face was raked with wounds, blood matted in her hair. She bared her teeth, threatening to bite. She was still human, but she was wild. Mad.

“Emma!” Valerian shouted. “She is
strigoi mort
. She must be destroyed. My bag. Give me my bag.”

I froze. My God, had my mother been like this? Was this the madness my father had waited to see manifest in me?

“Help me,” Valerian shouted as he wrestled her to the ground. “Emma!”

I did not want to approach that thing that had been Miss Harris. I was thinking too much of my own legacy. I could not move. Father Luke was the one who gave Valerian the implements he needed and I watched numbly as he drove his stake into the nursemaid’s body, then drew an ax to do what was needed to separate her head from her body. I stood close enough to be spattered by her blood, to feel its heat as it was flung against my flesh.

Father Luke drew me away. In his eyes I saw something that echoed my own fears. I was ashamed of my inability to help Valerian. I had frozen. What had happened?

A soft voice drifted on the mists. “Miss Harris? Where are you? I’m frightened.”

“Henrietta!” I cried. I snapped out of my paralysis and spun in a circle, listening. I could not tell from where the voice had come. “Henrietta?” I called again, looking first in one direction, then another.

But she did not answer me. Of course, she would not. She was afraid of me. My mind worked quickly. “Here, darling, here is Miss Harris.” I shut my mind against the gruesome corpse that had been the maid she’d so trusted. “She wishes you to come to her.”

I saw a shape, a hint in the obscuring fog, just at the edge of the tree line, and was about to go toward it when Valerian shouted, his voice ringing with command, “Emma! Luke!”

I swung around, and found myself confronted by a great wind. Hot air, blazing with an acrid scent that stung the nostrils, blasted into our faces and there before us was Marius in his most magnificent incarnation, a lordly figure, caped and massive and gleaming a great, victorious smile.

My eyes blinked to try and decipher what I saw, for his feet were not on the ground. It was as if he were descending from a great height. Then I saw that he had flown, and was landing smoothly, as graceful as a heron gliding onto the surface of a glassy pond. In his arms he held the limp body of a child.

The dark-headed little girl was remotely familiar. Then I knew it was Margaret Linden, the girl from the village, Mrs. Bedford’s friend’s child. Another soul, another innocent, caught in this evil. I admonished myself for not realizing Marius might
have had other children he had singled out as surety against our work to thwart him.

Things began to happen very quickly. Marius did not speak, nor so much as looked at us, and I, having learned my lesson, did not look at him. He slid with the child to the tree, and I rushed forward, stopped by the sight of something there. A darkness thicker than the night around us began to unfold. A stench began to fill the air, driving the three of us—Valerian, Father Luke, and myself—back with the shock of it.

Marius closed in, his face alight with sickening glee. “Come, general. Our father has sent me. Rise now at long last…”

The chant floated in the air, its wheedling, desperate tone raising the hackles along the back of my neck. Marius knelt before the disgusting fog. It seethed impatiently and Marius crooned to it, beckoning the creature to take strength and come forth.

Father Luke tripped to his feet and lunged forward. He had not taken three steps when Marius made a swift movement with his hand, and the priest flew backward, as if a string behind him had been yanked.

Valerian seemed to retreat, then stalked a wide circle around to the tree. He was hoping to sneak up behind the fiend, I realized. His lips were peeled back, a look of naked hatred on his face, so fierce and raw that even I recoiled.

For myself, I was distracted with worry for this new child Marius had brought with him. Would she also be used for the sacrifice, or was it the vampire’s plan to feed from her, to give himself strength for what he was about to do? Either way, it was imperative I find a way to get her safely out of his clutches.

Fishing the crucifix out of my bag, I stepped forward and held it out in front of me. Careful not to meet the vampire’s
eye, I advanced, one step at a time. My legs shook and my voice quavered, but I did not stop.

“By the power of Christ,” I said. I saw the flash of bone-white teeth, wetly gleaming and razor-sharp, as the great vampire laughed at me. But he’d paused, and he was watching.

I knew where Father Luke had made the seal with the holy water behind the back of the tree. I positioned myself across from where he had poured the blessed water onto the ground. Armed with my crucifix, I intended to try to back Marius into the trap.

My mind was braced, not only for what Marius would do as I neared, but for the repulsive brush of his mind into mine, the sapping of my will, the loss of my soul, the horror of the vampire’s touch so deep and thrilling it would take me to hell without a murmur of complaint. I did my best to ignore this fear, focusing instead on the gleam of the child’s dark hair. I fixed my eyes on the pale throat exposed by her lolling head, and I pressed on, sending silent prayers to Heaven to help me.

I must save her,
I prayed fervently.
Help me, help me.

With the crucifix before me, one step after another, I advanced. But there was nothing I, nor any of us, could do to stop Marius when he bent his head to the child in his arms and whispered something to her. With the index finger of his free hand, he hooked his nail into her flesh and tore open her throat. The life’s blood gushed from her like bubbling liquid from a spring.

I screamed, and heard the male cries echo around me. I recognized Sebastian’s voice, and dully registered that he’d finally arrived. He, I, Father Luke, and Valerian—all of us watched with horror as the child’s blood poured onto the ground and the filthy shape that cowered among the roots of the old tree began to swell.

Marius worked quickly, his finger trailing to the girl’s chest. He opened it with no more than a stroke. I fell to my knees, watching helplessly as he drew out the still-beating heart and held it aloft.

A lash of the darkness that seethed in expectation whipped out like a strike of lightning to pluck it from his fingers, and it disappeared into the shadow. I watched sickly as the foul creature thickened, darkened, its stench poisoning the air until tears rolled down my eyes. Or perhaps I was crying.

Marius dropped the child’s lifeless body to the ground. Her face rolled toward me, and I glimpsed her pallor, the shadowed eyes, the ashen lips. She’d been a beautiful little girl.

Over her dead form, Marius and I faced one another. Behind him arched the grasping branches of the hawthorn inside which waiting, hovering, thirsty, greedy, hungry for life was that terrible thing.

Marius moved quickly. Like a snake, he rose in one rapid, fluid movement to his full height and surged forward at the same time. His head snapped toward me and his mouth opened, jaws unlocking so that the gaping maw lined with a row of vicious teeth was impossibly wide. It clamped down on the crucifix in my hand, the hard bite clicking down like the closing of a cinch, and the wooden cross with its detailed statue of the suffering Christ snapped in two.

Horror and surprise slapped me. I screamed and leapt back, scrabbling artlessly from under the hawthorn. I had not thought this possible, knowing full well a crucifix was a reliable weapon against the undead, but somehow his fresh kill had made him stronger, nearly invincible.

Marius threw back his head and laughed, then reached his hand to his left. I saw Valerian go down. Marius had known
where he was and what he’d been planning all along. The monster then leveled his gaze toward Father Luke, who was climbing to his feet with visible difficulty, and pointed his finger almost playfully. The mighty priest trembled, clearly in terrible pain. Marius’s smile gleamed brighter, the vicious points of his fangs glowing in the murky moonlight, and he jabbed his finger again. Father Luke collapsed back onto the ground.