The Blessed (37 page)

“Like Dr. Frey?”

“Yes, and many faceless others who do their dirty work but are just as dangerous. Vandals, some have called them. Destroyers of bodies and corrupters of souls. They are threatened by our very existence.”

“What is it that they are so afraid of?”

“Of the power inside you,” Sebastian explained. “To be a wake-up call. To be living examples that things can be better.”

“Soul models,” Lucy said.

“Yes,” Sebastian said. “People are lonely, hurting, empty. You will fill them.”

He reached for the book on the altar in front of him. He lifted the silk tassel marking a specific page. “You asked me what this was all about. It is all about you.”

He walked over to the urn and brought it back to the
altar as well, first removing a few hot coals and slipping them into the golden censer before him. He reached into the incense boat next to it and sprinkled a few resinous grains onto the coals and watched the smoke rise.

The air became heavy with the spicy aroma, the scent of cedar and rose. The candles burned brightly around them, almost singing their praise. Lucy, Cecilia, and Agnes felt an invisible pressure upon them, much as Sebastian had. The weight of the world.

Sebastian rose and stepped away from the table and toward the back of the altar where three linen wraps, secured with rope, enshrouded sculpted figures beneath them. One by one, he removed the ties and the coverings, revealing pristine life-size statues of beautiful young women, painted in the most gorgeous hues of blue, purple, red, green, gold, and silver. Wearing expressions both of joy and sorrow. All holding palm fronds. At the base of each statue a nameplate.

Saint Lucia.

Saint Cecilia.

Saint Agnes.

Their hearts jumped.

The girls were awestruck by what they saw. Symbols of faith and of purity worthy of worship. Saint Lucy, a wreath of roses and lighted candles around her head, holding a golden plate before her, her two beautiful blue eyes sitting atop it. Saint Cecilia, in flowing robes, with a violin and bow, a winged angel at her shoulder, eyes turned heavenward. Saint Agnes, long rivulets of curls flowing to her
feet, surrounding her, a lamb tucked safely in her arm.

Sebastian returned to the altar and took his seat and held up the
Legenda
to his face, so that all they could see were his eyes.

“These are the long-forgotten legends of your namesakes, martyrs who gave their lives for something greater than themselves. Young girls. Teenagers, like us, who changed their worlds by their example and made the ultimate sacrifice. Human beings but divinely inspired. Subjects of art and architecture, poems and prayers. Their pictures enshrined everywhere. Their names literally on everyone’s lips. They were superstars for nearly two thousand years before the word was ever invented. Eternal icons.”

“It is hard to believe,” Lucy whispered, speaking for them all.

Sebastian ripped the illuminated parchment pages from the old book and handed one to each. They were amazed. The sense of empowerment they felt was palpable. Something in the stories, in his words, resonated with them to their very cores.

“You share their spirit. Their bravery. Their passion. Their purpose,” Sebastian proclaimed. “Still yourselves. But something more.”

“You have sought attention. Adoration. Affection,” Sebastian went on. “All aspects of love. Now you will find them. Not just for your own sake, but for the sake of all you touch.”

Sebastian removed his shirt. He looked deep into their eyes and reached in the reliquary box and removed Cecilia’s
chaplet. He detached the milagro, dropped it into the urn. “Cecilia, the Messenger.”

He read out loud:

“Patron saint of musicians. A daughter of wealth and Roman privilege, but raised secretly among the faithful, she believed herself guarded by an angel. Betrayed by her jealous husband and turned over to the authorities as a heretic, she was to be beheaded but each of three attempts failed. She sang her faith for another three days even as she lay dying. Her body, exhumed centuries after her death, was found in an incorruptible state. In her determination, she found everlasting fame.”

Sebastian took the scalding hot milagro from the urn and pressed it onto his chest, branding her sword with bow right over his heart. Despite the agony of his burning skin, he did not cry out in pain. The girls winced as his skin sizzled.

“Your irresistible song will pierce the hearts and minds of others. It will fill their yearning souls, which have been left empty by doubt and false promises, with passion.”

He placed the chaplet back onto Cecilia’s wrist.

Likewise he removed Agnes’s chaplet, separating the flaming heart milagro and purifying it in the fire as he spoke: “Agnes, the Lamb.”

He continued to read:

“Patron saint of virgins and victims. Sentenced to death for her beliefs, she was stripped and dragged through the streets of Rome
and sent to a brothel to be abused and humiliated. The men who attacked her were struck blind. Her hair grew and covered her nakedness from head to toe. Tied to a stake to be burned, the flames parted so as not to harm her. Finally beheaded, her precious blood was soaked up from the ground by believers. Dishonored by her adversaries but never defiled. In her refusal to compromise her faith or her body, an eternal testament to the power of love and innocence.”

He lifted the sacred heart from the fire and pressed it to his chest, internalizing the pain, and then placed it directly over the impression of Cecilia’s sword, making it appear as if the blade was piercing the heart.

“Your compassionate heart and uncompromising virtue will be an example to all who seek honesty and true love. You will bring comfort and understanding to the troubled, teaching them not only how to love one another but to love themselves.”

Finally, he removed Lucy’s chaplet and placed her double-eye milagro into the flames: “Lucy, the Light.”

He read her passage:

“Patron saint of the blind, in body and soul. She gouged her eyes from their sockets to make herself less attractive to those who defile her, refusing to renounce her faith and remaining fearless in her suffering. She lost her sight and her life to her tormentors but never her vision. The way of light shining through the darkness of life.”

He took Lucy’s milagro and positioned it strategically above the other two. His flesh was now completely raw there, but he did not hesitate. He lowered the charm down onto his skin and pressed it in so that the eyes were now serving as a guard for the sword.

“You are a beacon that will show the way out of darkness toward hope and a better life. An all-seeing leader whose unbreakable will and steadfast determination is the essence of faith.”

“The eyes keep watch over the sword that pierces the heart,” Lucy observed.

“There is no more need for books to tell your story and glass boxes to preserve your legacy. The waiting is over. You are here.”

Their milagros, the three of them, combined, burned into his body and into his soul, branding him and binding them together, for all eternity.

No longer merely legend, but living within him. In them.

A reliquary of the heart.

Jesse saw a familiar face at the corner. Dr. Frey’s.

“Take me around the block,” Jesse told the cabbie.

He jumped out, paid his fare, and walked around the back side of the church, unnoticed by Frey and the small ragtag group of arm-scratching, hollow-eyed guys encircling him. These were definitely not colleagues. Especially the big bald guy accompanying Frey. It was definitely Sicarius. What would Frey be doing taking him for a walk? Nothing good, Jesse was sure.

As for the others they were meeting, Jesse had never seen a psychiatrist sporting distressed leather and red high-top Chucks that he could remember. He did recall seeing a few rehab types wandering the hallways of Frey’s loony bin, lining up for the daily dose of morphine. How hard would it be for the good doctor to roll them over to the dark side for a few extra hits? Not very.

“Crackheads,” he mumbled to himself.

In fact, he might have put it down to a drug deal or even a robbery if Frey didn’t look so calm and in control. In command. The guys looked familiar to him. A local band, always looking for attention and always screwing up whenever they got it. It was almost like they just played music for the drugs. Took gigs to take the edge off the fact that they were waste products.

Frey sure gets around
. No piece of shit was beneath his radar apparently, himself included, but then such a common touch was good for the hospital’s rehab fund-raising and the doctor’s personal profile. He had pull with both the upscale Park Slope prescription pill poppers and cred with the street fiends who squatted along the polluted Greenpoint waterfront, leaving aside the fact that none of them were ever cured, which was never really the purpose anyway. Now Jesse understood why. Frey was an equal-opportunity enabler and not averse to a little outpatient treatment.

He watched Frey suddenly excuse himself to a café across the street, and the guys remained in a tight circle, nervously eyeing the boarded-up entrance to the church.

Jesse checked his phone. His palms were sweating and it was getting harder to swipe his touch screen. Nothing from Lucy. He called and called. Again nothing. If she wasn’t at home, the only other place she could be was in there. And reception was probably awful. He looked over at Frey in the café window, calmly sipping his espresso, and suddenly, his minions broke for the church steps, looking
from side to side to see if they were being watched.

Jesse texted.

They’re coming.

Jesse was out of options but desperate to help. He logged on to his site and updated his status. Time for a mob, he reckoned.

Can I get a witness?

He typed in the church address and hit send.

The candlelight was growing dimmer, bringing their moment together to a natural conclusion. But there were still questions to be answered.

“I know who you say we are, but I still don’t get what it is we need to do,” Lucy said. “Or why anyone would want to kill to stop us from just trying to be ourselves. Better people?”

“I don’t think this was meant to be a self-help seminar, Lucy,” Cecilia interrupted. “There has got to be a reason.”

Sebastian walked over to the reliquary and laid his hands on it reverently. He paused and then spoke with great deliberation.

“The day that I took the chaplets. It was revealed to me who they were destined for. And that I was to deliver them. At that time, my own fate was also revealed.”

“Like a prophecy?” Agnes said, naively. “What did they tell you?”

“That I had to find you before they found me. Before they kill me.”

“Over my dead body!” Cecilia shouted.

“It doesn’t matter what happens to me now. I’m ready to give my soul back. My only despair is leaving the three of you.”

Lucy was on the verge of tears. “We will protect you, Sebastian.”

He put his hand to her lips.

“My mission is accomplished, but yours is just beginning.”

“Mission?”

“The answer to your question,” Sebastian said. “Our reason to be here.”

“What do we need to do?”

“Two things. Call them miracles, if you like. The first, accepting who you are, is accomplished. The second you will have to find out for yourselves. Remember, they will not stop until your hearts do,” he continued. “Until your blood is on their hands.”

Sebastian could see the resolve in their eyes.

“By the first miracle, you are called Blessed. By the second—”

Agnes interrupted. “Saint.”

Sebastian’s eyes lit up at her understanding.

“You are the last of a line,” he explained. “If one of you is defeated before performing your second miracle, then the
scale will be tipped forever in the direction of evil and the way will not be nor will it ever be prepared. It will either begin anew with you, or end with you.”

“Way for what?” Agnes said.

“For whom,” he said. “It’s a battle we’ve been losing for too long. It is a battle you must win.”