The Graves of Saints (2 page)

Who was Octavian to argue?

After all, in the eyes of the witches, he was the man who’d gotten Keomany killed.

It had begun, if Octavian understood correctly, right here in this clearing. Keomany had been using her earthcraft to purify the soil, but when she had reached down into the world and tapped
into nature, she had been struck by a wrongness so profound that it had shocked her into unconsciousness. Chaos had infected the world and begun to spread, and Keomany had been able to pinpoint
ground zero of the blossoming infection. Several times in the past, Octavian had drawn her into danger in order to combat some supernatural threat, but she had always come back alive. With the
crisis in Hawthorne, Massachusetts – the waking of an ancient Chaldean chaos deity called Navalica – it had been Keomany who had sounded the alarm, and who led the charge. The moment
she had returned to consciousness, she had called Octavian.

But the witches still blamed him. He had argued the point, but now, as he watched Cat sprinkle Keomany’s ashes into the soil amidst the circle of witches, he admitted to himself that he
bore at least some of the blame. The first time Keomany had faced real evil, Octavian had been drawn into the fight because she was an old friend of the woman he loved. But after that crisis had
passed, Octavian could have kept Keomany out of it. He had enough magic of his own; surely there had been no need to keep putting Keomany in danger.

He frowned and dropped his gaze to the prickly grass underfoot, his own sorrow beginning to break down the defenses he’d erected to hold it back.

No
, he thought.
It was her fight, too. With her connection to the earth, she wanted to be a part of it.

And that was true, as far as it went. After all, Keomany had called him, this last time. But there had once been measures in place to prevent things like the awakening of Navalica, and Octavian
was partly to blame for the fact that those measures were no longer functioning. He had helped to tear down the church’s magical hierarchy in order to save the Shadows – the beings most
people called vampires. But only in the past couple of years had he begun to fully appreciate the consequences. There were many Hells, and within them lived unimaginable creatures who would have
loved to bring the human world to ruin, or make a feast of them, if only there weren’t barriers keeping them out.

Without the magic to refresh those barriers – magic no one alive knew how to perform – this dimension’s defenses were failing, and humankind was entirely unaware of it.
Fortunately, for quite some time, nor had the denizens of the thousand Hells that bordered the human world. But when Navalica woke, it had been like a beacon shining out across the dimensions.
Octavian and his allies had captured and imprisoned her, cutting off that beacon. But he knew that some of the demons and monsters would realize what it had meant, or would shamble vaguely in its
direction and find that walls which had once kept them out had now fallen.

Keomany was dead. As awful as that was, and as good a friend as she had been, she would not be the last casualty. Things had been set in motion now that he would not be able to stop without a
great deal of help. But his first duty had been to Keomany, to take her ashes home so that the people who loved her could mourn her properly. He owed her that, at least.

As for the rest, he decided it would be best not to mention any of it to the witches. Cat and Tori and their friends, though they practiced earthcraft and had some small skill with such magic,
had only a fraction of the elemental power that had come so naturally to Keomany. Even if they hadn’t disliked him, and blamed him for Keomany’s death, Cat and Tori wouldn’t have
been able to help him.

He had done all he could for Keomany, and for the witches of Summerfields. The time had come for him to be reunited with the woman he loved. Nikki Wydra was a musician and had achieved a certain
amount of success. She had seen her share of impossibilities become real, had faced darkness and horror with courage, but she wanted a simpler, more ordinary life. Octavian did not look forward to
having to explain to her what had happened with Navalica . . . and what it meant. But after the events of the past few days, he longed to have her in his arms again.

Soon enough
, he thought, for it appeared that the witches were nearly done with their ceremony. A light breeze began to eddy some of Keomany’s ashes across the clearing, but they
blew toward the base of the apple tree at its center, and that seemed only right.

Distant thunder rolled across the sky, the storm getting closer. It seemed the ritual had been timed perfectly, for the clouds were darkening overhead as if it were dusk rather than morning. The
witches came together around Cat and Tori, all talking amongst themselves, embracing and wiping away tears. After a few moments, several of them broke away from the group and began to talk with
some of the other mourners who had gathered there. A young hipster couple who worked at Summerfields made their way into the circle to join Cat and Tori, the guy gesturing first to make sure they
were welcome. Tori hugged them, but Cat only smiled sadly and turned to gaze at the apple tree, with its fruit hanging heavy and ripe with promise.

Octavian turned away. There was nothing more for him here. He hadn’t been able to reach Nikki since leaving Hawthorne the previous day. Tonight she was due to perform in Philadelphia, so
he knew that she might be too busy with rehearsal and sound check or a dozen other things to respond to the two messages he’d left. But he had also sent her a text asking her to let him know
she was all right, and her lack of response had him worried. He imagined it was something trifling – that she’d lost her phone or dropped it in the toilet – but as soon as he was
back in his rental car and on the way to the airport, he intended to ring her hotel in Philly. She would be grief-stricken to learn of Keomany’s death, and heartbroken that she’d missed
this ceremony, the only sort of funeral her old friend would have. But there were other things Octavian and Nikki needed to discuss, like how to make sure the rest of the world didn’t end up
in ashes, like Keomany.

‘You taking off?’

Octavian looked up to see Patrick studying him through those round spectacles.

‘I’ve got a plane to catch.’

‘Without saying goodbye to your friends?’ Patrick said, nodding back up toward the witches in the clearing.

Octavian glanced at them, saw Cat and Tori holding hands and talking to a small cluster of people.

‘Keomany was my friend,’ he said, surprising himself with his honesty. ‘Trust me, they’ll be happier when I’m gone.’

Even as he spoke, Cat seemed to sense the weight of his regard. Wiping a tear from her cheek, she glanced over at him. Her eyes narrowed and her lip curled up in a snarl. Without a word to the
others, she broke away and started down the slope toward him. Patrick wisely retreated.

‘You son of a bitch,’ Cat said, jaw so tight she seemed to bite on the end of each word.

Octavian cocked his head slightly, not sure how to proceed. Past Cat, he saw Tori making swift excuses to their friends and hurrying after her wife. But not even she was going to be able to put
out the fire he saw in the earthwitch’s eyes.

‘Something I can do for you, Cat?’ he asked.

He saw the punch coming. It would have been easy to dodge the blow, or simply to stop her. With a gesture, he could have frozen her in place or knocked her backward. But he could feel the fury
and grief pouring out of her and he knew that if he let her connect, it would at least give her a moment’s catharsis. And in the back of his mind, he figured he deserved it.

Cat hit him so hard that his neck snapped to the side and he turned, staggering a few steps before he was sure he wasn’t going to fall down. He’d heard and felt one of her fingers
break on impact, but these witches were capable of healing that quickly enough.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Tori shouted, grabbing Cat by the arm to keep her from further violence.

‘That it?’ Octavian asked. ‘Or is there more?’

Fuming, Cat tried to pull away but Tori held her tight.

‘That’s enough,’ she said.

‘Keomany’s dead because of him!’ Cat said, never taking her eyes off of Octavian.

‘Baby, listen to me,’ Tori pleaded, reaching up to touch Cat’s face, turning her so that they were eye to eye. ‘You were there. Keomany called him. She knew what the
stakes were every time she walked into one of these situations with him. You want to hit someone, you want to scream. I know, ’cause I feel the same way. But Peter loved her, too. He lost
her, too.’

Cat began to sob and Tori pulled her into an embrace. It should have looked awkward, with Cat so tall and Tori so petite, but they fit together perfectly, as lovers always do. Octavian wanted to
walk away, but whatever Cat needed to help her grieve right now, hating him was part of it, and he wanted to make sure she’d said what she needed to say.

As Cat held her and wept, Tori whispered in her ear, but not so quietly that Octavian couldn’t hear.

‘Think of how long he’s been alive, and how many people he’s lost. Almost everyone he’s ever loved is gone. Some of them died right in front of him. You want to punish
him, baby, but there’s no way you can make him suffer any more than he has already, just by surviving this long.’

Octavian flinched and took a step back. Noticing the movement, Tori glanced up at him. Her copper eyes held no apology, only pity.

‘You should go.’

There were things he wanted to say, small comforts and reassurances, but he knew if he spoke now it would be to ease his own heavy heart. Instead, he glanced once at the others gathered around
the clearing on the hill – most of them studiously minding their own business – then he nodded to Tori, turned, and started back down toward the barn and the parking lot beyond.

At the bottom of the hill, people were buying apples and early-season pumpkins while their children were drinking cider and eating fresh-baked donuts at picnic benches and begging for a hay
ride. But as Octavian passed amongst them, the first raindrops began to fall, and the sky rumbled with thunder, still distant but coming closer.

The storm had arrived.

The rain drove the mourners indoors. Most of them abandoned the orchard quickly, though the witches were not so intimidated by the storm. The elements were the glory of nature,
and the earthwitches both worshipped and took their magic from them. But still they were only human, and on a day of gray sorrow, none of them had any desire to be drenched in cold September
rain.

Tori and Cat were the last to leave the clearing, the last to stroll down through the apple trees toward the barn below. Their earthcraft was nothing compared to Keomany’s, but they had
magic enough to keep the rain from touching them for a few minutes. With the storm coming in so quickly and so unexpectedly, most of their customers would be leaving, and so would their friends.
Tomorrow they would all gather to celebrate the equinox together, but today Tori and Cat wanted only to return to their home in the grounds of the orchard, make strong coffee, and wrap themselves
in a warm blanket, trying to forget that Keomany would never return to the bedroom they had given her in their own house.

Back on the hill, rain pattered the leaves of the trees and the wind picked up, shaking their branches. Overripe apples came loose and fell to the ground, rolling before being caught in the
ragged grass or in ruts in the earth. Lightning flashed, turning the sky white, and the thunder that followed it shook the hills and echoed along the small valley.

A large, perfect apple fell from the new tree in the clearing the witches had left. It did not roll. Strange winds worked against the gusts of the storm, swirling along the newly rejuvenated
soil of the clearing, picking up dirt and grass and stones and all of the ashes that the earthwitches had sprinkled onto the ground during their ceremony. Small shoots worked their way up through
the earth, roots that seemed to clutch at the apple, plunging through its skin and flesh in search of the seeds within, inspiring them to send out shoots of their own. Impossibly.

The ash and soil and other detritus of the autumn harvest spun about in that unusual wind, collecting around apple and root, growing and taking shape, sculpting and building something new.

For Gaea was threatened, and she would not weep for her daughter.

New York City, New York

Charlotte still hadn’t quite gotten used to waking up in daylight. It shouldn’t have been that difficult; only seven months had passed since the sadist who called
himself Cortez had turned her into a vampire. She remembered life before death very well. But in the time she had spent with Cortez’s coven before running away, he had gotten into her head in
a way that no one ever had before.

Really, there were no such things as vampires – at least not in the way the movies had always portrayed them. They were blood-drinkers, yes, and they had evil in them, but their true
nature was much more complex than that. Vampires were human beings who had been afflicted with a kind of supernatural infection before being killed, a taint that altered them on every level. They
were both demonic and divine. ‘Angel souls and devil hearts’ was the phrase that had been popularized to explain their origins. When one such creature made another, they were
resurrected from death as something entirely new, beings capable of shifting their flesh on a molecular level, becoming virtually anything they desired.

For centuries, calling them Shadows, the church had attempted to eradicate them. When that did not work, the Vatican sorcerers responsible for hunting them began to capture the Shadows instead,
using magic and torture to alter their thoughts and memories. Many of the vulnerabilities that popular lore attributed to vampires had been invented to weaken them, lies implanted in these Shadows
to be released into the world, and soon enough, the Shadows believed that if they went about in daylight the sun would burn them to ash. They began to fear the cross, and to accept themselves as
the creatures of evil the church portrayed. These fabricated limitations made them easier to hunt and kill, and soon, their numbers dwindled and they retreated to the darkness for safety, becoming
what the church had named them.