Divine Madness (4 page)

Why did you do it?
the voice asked suddenly.
Why did you take the dark gift from Dippel?

Ninon turned from the wall and shrugged. At the time, it had seemed the right choice to make, to accept that astonishing offer of everlasting beauty. So many of her friends had died young of terrible diseases. Many more were disfigured by pox, their personalities as marred as their flesh while their chances of marriage were destroyed and the bitterness and loneliness infected their souls. The year she had succumbed to Dippel’s plan, the hand of death had been suspended over her neighborhood in Paris, striking out at almost every household with plague. Her own health had been failing when the Dark Man appeared at her door on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. His offer of long, healthy, beautiful life had seemed the answer to a prayer. He hadn’t told her that
it was life everlasting, though. Or about the lightning, the Saint Elmo’s fire—that heart-stopping fire she would have to bathe in every half century in order to sustain herself but whose power to heal would slowly fade. He hadn’t told her that she would live forever, her brain slowly slipping away unless she would commit the sin of suicide.

Sin? Do you really believe in that anymore?

Yes
, a part of her still did. You could take the girl out of the Church, but you couldn’t take the Church out of the girl. That was sadly all too true. As a child she had lived in a world of religious constraints that had threatened to repress her soul. Mass three times a day and hours of prayer in between. She had finally sought to escape the constant boredom by living with her hedonistic father, and then through a traditional male education that exercised her active mind. Neither act of societal defiance had set her truly free, because though one unchained her body and the other her mind, neither could unchain her soul. One parent or other had to win the tug-of-war for their child’s philosophy, and she had decided on music, mathematics, learning—and, yes, hedonism—over life in the convent. But in spite of her decision, her mother’s early teachings had deep barbs that she felt in her heart, an anchor to her past. She worked diligently to rid herself of her mother’s indoctrination, but some clung like burrs in shoelaces. Memories of childhood could be the cruelest of taskmasters, tyrants of the mind that refused to be dethroned. She might love God, but she also feared Him.

Her decision to visit the magician at Gentilly had been her last naive effort at external escape from that parental tug-of-war. Shortly after her encounter with him, she had learned one of life’s most valuable lessons: The things that constrained her were within, and no one on the outside could ever set her free as long as she chose to limit to herself with others’ expectations.

Mea culpa. But Christ-on-a-crutch! Who’d have ever guessed it would come to this?

Cherie, I wish you would not use American English to swear. It’s vulgar
.

Ninon looked at her cat, who had two tiny wiggling legs
still sticking out of his mouth, and she thought:
Now
that
is vulgar
.

“You need a napkin, my pet.”

Corazon just licked his lips and then belched delicately. He returned his eyes to the oil lamp he watched with fascination. He always had enjoyed candle-gazing, especially at night when there was no moon. He was the perfect familiar. She shared his need of light that evening. Night was vast in the desert, far larger than it was in the city. But even this darkness did not provide adequate hiding places for them. They were in a dark part of the world now where dark things with dark sight dwelled, and she also liked to keep a night-light on.

Not that she needed external light that night. Ninon looked at the shutters where slices of moonlight cut the darkness. Unwillingly, she thought again of Saint Germain. He had a smile like the moon, only it went through no dimming phases, so it shone almost endlessly on everyone around him. Like the moon, it was beautiful and cold. People did not notice the cold, so dazzled were they by his physical presence. And what his beauty could not seduce, his drugging voice could. He was charming, he was handsome. And he was soulless. In so many ways, he was worse than his father, who had at least been drawn to the dark arts out of scientific curiosity.

He scares you badly
, the voice said.
More than the father
.

She had seen the Dark Man only once in the last century, but that had been enough to repulse her. The first thing she had noted about Saint Germain’s father was that he called to mind rotten cheese. He had certainly been malodorous to her heightened sense of smell, a faint stench leaking out through the pores in his waxy skin. His flesh itself has been yellow like rancid tallow, falling into the small craters that pocked his face and hands. It was as though he were rotting from the inside out.

Still, as bad as that was, the father wasn’t half so scary
as his beautiful son. That beautiful, crazy son. And he was evil.

As was she. Well, she was slightly insane and very beautiful. She couldn’t say if she was evil. It was the burden of the condition; most evil things were not self-aware. They did not know that they were wicked.

Of course he frightens me. Seeing him is like looking into a dark reflection of myself, a warning of what I might have become
. This wasn’t thought with vanity. Ninon had long since abandoned any pride at the famous beauty and charm that had made her the toast of Paris for more than three-quarters of a century. Like Saint Germain, she too had been a gifted artist and musician, lauded—even lionized—by society. They had both been courted for their opinions and their ability to sway others.

That explanation was also not the entire truth, though. She feared Saint Germain mostly because once he had nearly seduced her. And it wasn’t until she had looked into his eyes, unveiled by a premature moment of triumph over breaking through her reserve, that she had understood that he wanted more than her body, wealth, and secrets. He wanted her soul. To do what with it, she could only guess.

What a fool she’d been! How blind!

Her inner voice sighed.

Well, there is some use in crying over milk that is spilt. You should sleep now. Aleister is standing guard.

Corazon
, she corrected.
Aleister died in the fire, and so did I
.

Ninon awoke resolved. The time had come to make a stand.

She and her cat left the hotel early, declining breakfast but filling up the Jeep and its two spare gas cans. Smelling the gasoline made her think of the fire that had nearly killed her and how wretched she’d looked with singed hair.

You’re not entirely sane today, are you?

Ninon laughed grimly and then started to cough. Laughter was not the appropriate response to such a question, but it was one she seemed to be making more and more often as her control slipped away.

Is this plan wise? The paper said that the local police were holding practice drills in the area. Supposedly looking for drug dealers, but who knows? There are rumors that the United States military knows about you too. All of you, Dippel’s experiments.

Ninon shrugged. That could be true, since the U.S. government had raided Byron’s high-rise. But anything they gleaned would hardly be knowledge that the U.S. would share with the Mexican
Federales
. No one sensible would risk talking openly about Frankenstein-like experiments to corrupt officials in a foreign land. And even in the U.S. there were very few loonies with the kind of security clearances that could be had only by generals and tin gods who would hear and believe such a story. At least this was how Ninon comforted herself. Her protection was the utter ridiculousness of the truth.

She laughed again, the sound without humor.

It was good that there was no traffic around on these back roads, because she wasn’t in any mood to slow down or practice caution. Anymore. Yes, she had awoken clearer than ever about the where if not the why of her next destination. She and Corazon were going to the land of eternal white,
Cuatro Cienegas
, to find a murderous god who lived in a cave and traveled on an underground river where he collected souls. That sounded insane, of course. And dangerous. But she was running out of options. People said it was better to deal with the Devil you knew—but they were wrong. Sometimes the Devil you hadn’t had dealings with was the better choice. Especially if you needed special powers, the kind that would help you take on a enemy who could practice magic and summon demons. At the very least this god could call her a storm.

Demons? But were such things real? Could she trust her perceptions? Might they be just monsters of the mind?

They’re real enough,
she assured herself. And she needed help against them and the man who sent them.

They say, cherie, that there is no free lunch. Best think of this. Why should the god Smoking Mirror help you?

Ninon sighed.
I know there will be a price. Believe me, I know. But whatever it costs, I’ll pay.

She had no choice.

Ninon took up the quill and then wrote quickly:

Let no vain hope come now and try,
My courage strong to overthrow;
My age demands that I should die,
What more can I do here below?

This would serve as a farewell. She wished that it was possible to spare her friends grief at her supposed death, but it was time to leave. She could no longer disguise the fact that she was not aging.

And this might be her death in truth, should the lightning fail to revive her. It was her third time to submit herself to its fiery embrace, and each healing had been slower than the last, her heart and brain ever less eager to recover. There could be no long delay of this process either, for she knew how swiftly age could come upon her. In less than a month, her hair would fall out, her joints knot with arthritis, her vision would fail, and her lungs would fill with water. Lifetimes of delayed disease would gnaw on her innards. But she probably would not die.

A part of her wanted to give in and end it all. But was that suicide? If God had not intended for her to live, would he have sent the Dark Man her way? Surely she was intended for some important purpose.

She had lived ninety years, surrounded by the finest philosophical and religious minds, but still had no answer to this question. So, she would put it all in God’s hands. If he willed it, she would live. If not, she would die in the fire.

Ninon laid down her pen and sighed.

Where the carcass is, there shall the eagles be gathered together.

—
Matthew 24:28

The greatest potential for control tends to exist at the point where action takes place.

—
Ninon de Lenclos

No initiate was welcome if he could not heal—aye, recall to life from apparent death those who, too long neglected, would have died of lethargy.

—
H. P. Blavatsky on the cult of St. Germain, from
The Secret Doctrine

The dirt road she traveled might have been a relic from the days of Cortez, or at least Pancho Villa, and the longer Ninon traveled it, the more she felt that she was driving into the past instead of the future—and she wasn’t at all certain it was where she wanted to go. She also wished that her
Buns of Steel
DVD had actually given her a solidmetal butt. Along with a cast-iron bladder.

This land was closer to the Bronze Age than any New Age, and the old gods felt closer, too, probably because people still needed them and their call was answered by an artesian upwelling of power that seethed out of soil watered with their sweat and blood. The idea of wanting to be with these gods was alien, but she supposed that there was some comfort to be had in seeing aspects of your gods in their animal totems wandering your backyard. Her own bodiless deity, who only visited churches and cathedrals, felt uncomfortably far away out here in the desert.

In the blinking of a tired eye, the dirt track filled with birds, became a bowling alley of poultry with a death
wish, which was Corazon’s favorite kind of meal and had him meowing excitedly. Not sharing her pet’s desire for a bloody strike, Ninon applied the brakes, forcing the cat to put twenty more holes in both the upholstery and the dashboard where he was leaning. Disgusted at her cowardice, he spat once and then leapt from the car’s open window to fetch his now-fleeing lunch.

“Corazon—
merde!
The dry crunchies aren’t that bad!” Ninon killed the engine and jumped out after him. She shoved her pistol into the back of her jeans. Possibly there was some law about abandoning a vehicle in the middle of the road, but she was willing to risk it. “Come back here, you black-hearted cat,” she called, but softly. The sudden and utter quiet demanded a lowered voice.

Her eyes itched, tired of the dust and from the soft brown contacts she always wore these days. The dust aggravated her lungs as well, causing her to cough more frequently.

She trudged after the cat. Over the crest of a white gypsum dune capped with stunted conifers, she came across a small pond—a poza—colored the deep brown of coffee and rimmed with dead golden grass that curved away like eyelashes on a coquette. A nice selection of water lilies bloomed in the tar-colored water.

Cuatro Cienegas
. She was there.

The lilies weren’t the only nice thing in the water. Or, she amended while standing in the tree’s small shadow, not the only
beautiful
thing. The other creature—while splendid—might not be nice at all.

The man was tall, with dark hair and pale skin that glistened with either sweat or water. Perhaps it was a reflection of the golden grass that partially screened him, but it almost looked as if he were covered head to toe in gold paint. He was lean, carrying no extra baggage on his frame. He was also not an
indio
—at least, not full-blooded. Spain’s tentacles had reached far into Mexico while searching for gold, but Ninon doubted it was the
conquistadors this man had to thank for his pale skin and height. Perhaps the stork had gotten lost while making his delivery and left this baby under a cactus instead of the correct cabbage patch in Iowa.

Cherie,
the voice in her head warned.
This is no time to get distracted
.

Oui! Oui!

She had always liked dark men, though. She found them more enthusiastic than the blond ones—like that anemic poet, Rombouillet. It was different in the north, of course. The Norse were quite strong and vigorous. But among the civilized southern peoples, she preferred dark men.

Feeling her gaze, the man stuffed something in his sock and spun about quickly. He stalked toward her, a shotgun ready, though it was unlikely he could see her clearly with the sun in his eyes and her in dappled shadow.

Ninon was not tall anywhere except in intellect. There she towered—or had until her brain had started to die off. But brains, even great ones, were not much help in certain situations, and there were many men who saw a woman alone and tended to think petite meant easy pickings. That was where they went wrong with her. She didn’t have a lot of weight, but every ounce of it could fight when it had to. As much as she didn’t care for it, there were some situations that benefited from the constructive use of applied violence. That was why she kept the nine-millimeter pistol in the holster in the small of her back. That made for a great equalizer when reason failed and one got stuck in deadly pissing contests with morons.

Innocents found the idea of preemptive violence shocking, but aggression was like a drug—the more you used it, the less it affected your sensibilities. Ninon was no longer a virgin and didn’t flinch from it. She wondered if this man was himself a habitual user, a violence addict. It was impossible to tell. The gun didn’t mean anything either
way. Only an insane person would go out alone into the desert and not carry a weapon for protection.

Apparently the man agreed with her, because he carried a twelve-gauge shotgun. It went nicely with the dark sack of rocks he had dropped before starting toward her.

The shotgun would be bad news if he used it. Ninon could probably recover from a single blast, if it wasn’t to the head or heart, but it would hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and delay her for days, and would also waste precious time and energy in healing the wound.

Decision time. Hide or take the ride Fate offered?

She looked about at the available cover. Though she was small, it was smaller. Hiding in the sparse brush wasn’t an option.
Merde!
She was going to have to take the ride, wherever that led her.

“Hello!” she called, stepping into the sun and waving with an ineffectual finger flutter. She gave the stranger a smile she used only rarely because it caused men’s IQs to lower to dangerous levels. Stupid men and guns were a bad mix. She added quickly in American English: “Have you seen my cat?”

There was a moment of utter shock when the man’s steps faltered and his expression transformed. The widening of his eyes almost made her laugh. He couldn’t have looked more stunned if a clown had reached out and played honk-honk with his penis.

His eyes—a brown that was nearly black, she could see now—traveled the length of her body and then returned to her face. She knew what he saw: pale flesh, skintight jeans, a sheer white blouse that barely contained her breasts, and lots of loose windblown black hair. A rear view might have alarmed him, since it would have shown off more than her jean-clad butt if he looked under the ruffle of her blouse, but from the front she looked like a walking, unarmed wet dream.

His gun lowered and he started laughing. The sound
was low, though, as though he were aware at some level that there could still be danger nearby and didn’t want to risk sound carrying beyond the white dunes of the Sunken Region.

“Hullo. I thought you were a hallucination.” He had a slight accent, probably part Highland Scots. The rest was black magic. Language as well as skin tone said he was not one of the proletariat who toiled in the fields—but was he a gentleman?

“Did you say you were looking for your cat?”

“Yes, he ran off after some road runners—thinks he’s a coyote or something.”

A slow blink veiled the man’s beautiful dark eyes and he started to climb toward her. He said, “I’ve seen no kitties out here.” His head tilted down for a moment and he added to himself in a voice she was not meant to hear: “But why not a cat? We’ve everything else.”

Ninon heard him loud and clear, in spite of the whispering wind, but she didn’t say anything, just kept smiling, looking harmless. She wanted to give him complete peace of mind. That was important when the other person carried a shotgun.

“Well now, I don’t suppose that you are a thief or a spy who just happens to be traveling with a cat,” he suggested when she made no more effort to engage in conversation or come any closer. Apparently understanding that a lone female might be alarmed by the gun in his hands, he slung the weapon over his shoulder and climbed the last five feet of slope slowly. He tried to look harmless but didn’t succeed. The small hairs of Ninon’s neck were standing on end.

“Not today,” she said truthfully, making sure not a bit of her French accent came through. She didn’t feel Saint Germain’s unfriendly gaze upon her, but she agreed with this stranger that there was some odd tension in the air. They were in a place haunted by something that liked to watch and listen, and maybe to act. “Were you expecting
one?” She gestured at the gun, putting her back to a tree and thrusting her breasts slightly forward. She reached out a hand as though supporting herself against the rough trunk, keeping it near her pistol, though she wondered how effective the weapon would be if she had to use it.

“Expecting?” He laughed. “Not exactly. Let’s just say that I am always alive to the possibility out here. Lots of wild animals, you know.”

Many of them human. Many of them not. She understood.

“And what did you think I had come to steal? Your rocks?” she asked, pointing with her other hand at the rucksack he’d dropped by the pond. It appeared to be filled with wet stone shards.

“Well now, perhaps I was worried that you were after my heart,” he answered easily. “Men have been known to lose them out here.”

Flirtation. She had invented this game and was good at it. He seemed genuinely taken with her, too, but that meant less than nothing. Even a stone-cold killer could enjoy looking at a woman’s breasts and exchanging a few witticisms or sexual innuendos in between cutting people’s throats. Even her throat.

Before Ninon could decide how to respond to his opening gambit, Corazon appeared, stalking toward her with a confident swagger. There were light brown feathers around his mouth. She wanted to kiss him, feathers and all, for providing her with confirmation of her story. Nothing else would have been half as disarming.

“You really were looking for your cat.” He sounded slightly surprised. Actually, he sounded wonderful. His voice carried a sudden caress as he decided she was safe. It raised the tiny hairs on her arms and she prayed he didn’t notice, or if he did, that he thought it was simple attraction, arousal. “It looks like he caught his lunch too. He must be fast.”

“Of course.” She knelt carefully, pretending not to be
alarmed when the stranger drew even closer. “Corazon, you bad kitty. Where were you?”

“Corazon?” He sounded amused. His voice was flexible, capable of expressing any and all emotions. She sensed he could be anything she liked. “You do know that he’s a male cat?”

“Oh yes,” she said airily, suppressing an urge to cough. Coughing didn’t help shift the weight from her lungs and it was unattractive. It made men think about tuberculosis instead of kissing. She smiled again, confident now that her cat was there. She had learned to play an American ditz really well. “I just call him that sometimes.”

Tall, Dark, and Handsome appeared fascinated, willing to fall for her conversational sleight of hand. She wanted him distracted so he wouldn’t look closely enough to doubt her contacts, makeup, and hair dye, or any of the other tools she used to dim her unnatural radiance. She was careful with her voice too. Stunning with a quick smile was one thing, seducing with a voice was another. She had been good at both before—able to use her words to assure whole groups of people that they were singularly and collectively the most witty, beautiful, and insightful beings that she had ever known, and that there was nothing in the world she wanted so much as to hear their next insight, poem, song—whatever they offered at her shrine. She was even better at it now. Practice did indeed make perfect, and she’d had centuries to hone the art.

Yet, even with her amazing gifts, she sensed she wasn’t in this man’s league. His voice was inhumanly beautiful. She’d only heard one that even came close, and that man had sold his soul to the Devil to get it.

The voice in her head
tsk
ed at her irreligious paranoia, but Ninon didn’t let down her guard. Lucifer, the angel of light, had been beautiful too. That didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. No, she’d relax around this man when pigs fielded an Olympic swim team.

Shadows passed overhead and they both glanced up.
Buzzards. Ninon didn’t like them and had to force herself not to frown. It was hard though. If she died out here, the vultures would rush in to pick over her bones. That’s what they did—stole from the dead. That they would see her as potential food made them seem even less attractive than they were.

“Why? I mean, why do you call your cat that?” the man asked, again moving a little closer.

“Because he annoys me.” She flicked another look up at his face and noted twin scars on either cheek right below the bone, the kind that came from a cut with a very sharp knife or a perhaps large needle. A moment later, they were gone.

“Why?” he asked again. His body took on a relaxed pose, an arm resting propped up on a knee that rested on a low boulder, but she could see that his muscles were still coiled. That was probably just the way he came; naturally wary, but she did her best to look like the kind of girl who didn’t know physical from metaphysical. “I mean, how? Chasing birds? Chasing other pussycats?”

She shook her head, both in response and also to clear it.

“He looms. When I’m sleeping. He gets on the pillow and towers over me while he breathes in my face.”

“
He looms
. I suppose I should step back,” the man suggested. “I seem to be looming too—though hopefully not breathing in your face.”

“Oh no.” She peeped up at him again. “You could tell me your name though.”

Her eyes lowered back to his feet, as though she were modest. The man wore dusty hiking boots and thick socks. But that wasn’t all. The additional item was not standard with most hikers, and wouldn’t have been visible to someone standing, but Ninon, still kneeling could see a blade tucked carelessly into a sheath in his right sock. It was black but not a traditional Scottish
sgian dubh
. It was carved out of obsidian, and had a short buttonlike handle that fit between the fingers and nestled into the palm. She
had seen knives like this hidden in belt buckles, though never made of obsidian. She actually had something similar in her own sock. Her interested was piqued. Thinking back, she’d seen one almost like it in a museum in Mexico City years ago. It had been used in sacrificial rituals.