Knight's Curse (12 page)

On closer inspection, I could see the differences between my mother and me. Her nose was straighter, her face thinner and she had long black hair that waved around her head like ribbons of midnight. She wore a black leather jacket that flared open as she ran. She looked at the camera head-on, her expression defiant, her eyes slightly narrowed as if to challenge the photographer. This fierce woman was the mother I’d never met.

“Why did you keep it?” I asked.

“Because I knew you’d want it. Your mother was obviously a strong woman to have survived a fatal gunshot wound long enough to give birth. You deserved to know what she looked like.” He eyed the picture, then focused on me. “I couldn’t save her, but I hoped for a chance to save you.”

Damn Gavin. It sickened me to know the man for whom I’d slaved for twelve years had killed my mother, but I could do nothing about it. I’d tried to kill him once. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try again.

My mood more numb than sad, I let the photo fall to my lap. “You can’t save me, Aydin.”

“I realize you’re living your destiny, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help you through it,” he said, his voice deep with meaning. “I think your mother would have wanted that, don’t you?”

I passed my fingers over the face in the photograph, trying to sense her through the plastic, through the years that separated us. The photo was a cold and inanimate thing. It couldn’t feel my longing or my loss.

“I’m here for you,” Aydin said. “I’m no substitute for your mother, but I understand what you’re feeling. I lost my own family many lifetimes ago.”

Yet he’d taken a big risk to give me a gift of family that I could treasure always. No one had ever done anything so selfless for me. Not even the monks.

Aydin jiggled the bed to get my attention. When I looked up, I found him smiling with mischief in his eyes. “Want to see some magic?”

I shook my head, but inside a ghost of smile touched my heart.

“It will cheer you up. I promise.”

“You said you’re not a sorcerer.”

“I’m not, but I’ve learned a few tricks over the centuries. I’ll show you.” He stood, strode to the door and left.

“Nice vanishing act,” I said to my mother’s image. “But we’ve already seen that trick. At least this time he’s not naked.”

He returned minutes later, his hands cupped around something he seemed careful not to drop. He joined me on the bed and held out his open palm. A furry, black caterpillar wiggled slowly over the sigil scarred into his skin.

“Cute.” I petted the tiny creature. “But not very magical.”

Aydin linked the fingers of both hands together and blew through an opening between his thumbs. Pale blue light glowed through cracks in the finger cocoon he’d made for the bug. After one breath, he stopped.

I leaned back to create more distance between us. “What did you just do?”

“Magic.” He pulled away his fingers and in place of the caterpillar sat a golden-winged moth. “It’s a tiger moth. Very common.”

“But not at this time of year.” I stared at the insect. “Your breath. It gives life?”

He shook his head. “Accelerates it. A byproduct of my immortality I discovered by accident a few hundred years ago.”

I blinked, my focus still on the moth. “So if you breathed on a puppy, it would turn it into a dog?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “I’ve never tried it, but I think it would take more than one breath. Puppies and caterpillars aren’t exactly in the same league.” He stood and stepped to the door to open it, releasing the moth out into the night.

“Magic doesn’t have to be bad, Chalice.” He dipped his chin toward the photo still in my lap. “If you and your mother aren’t proof of good magic, I don’t know what is.”

I hugged my one and only family heirloom to my chest. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For this.” I patted the picture. “And for the lesson in perspective.” I stood from the bed and grabbed a couple of shopping bags off the floor. “Shall we go?”

After leaving McCook, we’d barely gone thirty miles when Aydin announced he was too exhausted to drive. Considering I’d already slept more in one day than I had in a week, I didn’t have a problem taking his place behind the wheel. He needed to sleep; I needed to think. I wasn’t one bit lonely without conversation as he snoozed beside me.

Aydin took back the helm once we got close to Denver’s city limits because I didn’t know my way around well enough to find the Fatherhouse. He parked the rental in a driveway behind the old refurbished factory, close to where a small house sat sheltered beneath the enormous branches of a hundred-foot-tall cottonwood. The tree’s skeletal limbs looked like claws that raked across the night.

“Home sweet home,” Aydin said as he engaged the parking brake.

I opened the car door and studied the dusky little house. I’d left out my contacts because my night vision was so much better without them. I scanned the front yard where shadows crept around the base of the cottonwood and wove in and out of low-growing fitzers. “You’ve got ghosts,” I told him.

He stiffened. “I do?”

“About half a dozen.” I peered at the human shapes that faded to smoke then reformed and hid behind the pillars holding up the front porch. “They’re old ones. Probably hanging around out here because they can’t get in the main house.”

“The wards are set to keep them out.” He grimaced. “I hate ghosts.”

“So do I.” The chips and pretzels hadn’t been filling enough so we had stopped for burgers in Sterling. I gathered empty fast-food bags from the floor of the car. “Ignore them.”

“I always do.” He climbed out and shut the car door behind him.

I stepped on the path leading to the front door, then froze. My nose twitched as I sought out the scent that could give me nightmares. “Your gargoyle doesn’t live in there with you, does he?”

Aydin chuckled and shook his head. “Shojin lives in the Fatherhouse basement.” He moved ahead of me to the front door, unlocked it and held it open. Such a gentleman.

“Thanks.” I set down my armload of fast-food trash and slid my contact lenses back in. “Okay, you can turn on the lights now.”

He flipped a switch and warm light poured into the living room. Modern sconces hung near the ceiling on walls painted ochre and sage, and a flat-screen TV was mounted like a painting on the longest wall.

“At last, someone with taste. Thank you,” I said, while releasing a relieved breath. “I’ve encountered too much bad art lately.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Allow me to show you around the house. That is, if you’re still sure you want to stay here.”

“I’m sure.” I’d made up my mind the second I walked in the door. I needed this. I
deserved
this.

He gave me a puzzled look before waving a hand at the room we were in. “The living room.”

“Very retro.” I took in the fifties-style room complete with a boxy sofa perched on slender wooden legs. I liked it. It felt peaceful.

The kitchen, on the other hand, was techno-modern all the way, with stainless-steel appliances and concrete counter tops. “This is amazing.” The house didn’t look like much from the outside, but the inside more than made up for it. “Where do I sleep?”

Worry lines creased his forehead.

“You do have an extra room, right? I mean, you said…”

“I do.” He leaned back on his heels. “I never have company so it’s more of a storage room, but it does have a bed and a bathroom across the hall.”

“Sounds perfect. Lead on.”

I followed him to the back of the house and he pointed to an open door. “Make yourself at home.”

I flicked on a light to illuminate a neat little room with a futon rather than a bed, but I didn’t mind. Anything would be better than sleeping in the Fatherhouse. There were a lot of boxes in this room, most made of wood, and some that looked like leather trunks. They appeared to have come from different time periods, and I suspected they contained mementos he’d saved over the centuries. “Are you a collector?”

He touched his chin in thought. “You could say that, yes.”

I sat on the futon and bounced a couple times. “Comfy.”

“Good.” He still looked ill at ease.

“Hey, if you’ve changed your mind about me staying here, I’ll understand.”
And I’ll never forgive you.

“It’s not that.” He gave me a tight smile. “I’m glad you’re here. Really.”

“What better way to spy on me, huh?” The smile
I
returned was genuine. He was growing on me and I almost felt like I could trust him. “A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, right? I’d rather it be you doing the spying than some faceless sorcerer in another country watching me through a portal painting. At least I know you. Sort of.” A blush burned my cheeks when I thought about the passion we’d shared. Neither of us had given in, but it was only a matter of time.

He turned serious and stepped away from the doorway to join me on the futon. “You don’t know me the way you think you do.”

I cocked my head and studied the stern look on his face. “Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

“You don’t know my history, what happened to me nine hundred and thirty years ago. It’s not what you think.”

“Okay.” I settled my back against the futon and crossed my legs. “Then fill me in. I’m all ears.”

His shoulders sagged as if beneath a heavy weight, and he leaned forward, resting his forearms over his knees. “I fought for the Turks in the First Crusade between the Christians and the Muslims.”

“You weren’t kidding about being a warrior,” I said, the gravity of his true age hitting me all at once.

He nodded and closed his eyes, frowning as if he recalled memories difficult to dredge up. “In the last battle I fought, my army was driving back enemy troops when I noticed a woman wearing a helmet and chain mail that strained against her enormous belly. She was pregnant. And she swung her sword as bravely as any warrior on the front line.”

Stunned, I didn’t know what to say. I knew women occasionally fought in the Crusades, like the order of knights from whom I was descended. But a
pregnant
knight?

He opened his eyes to look at me. “She was in labor, Chalice. Blood stained her tunic from below the waist. Watching her, I was barely able to concentrate on my own sword. Then I saw her go down.”

I leaned forward as if watching a suspenseful scene in a movie. Only this was real, which made it all the more frightening. “What did you do?”

“I picked her up and carried her to a cavern in the side of a hill. The fighting had moved on ahead, and I could hear the shouts, the killing blows, the screams of men dying. And so could she.” He stopped to swallow. “I intended to leave her there so that I could keep fighting. I didn’t even know this woman. A Christian. One of the enemy. I should have killed her right then. Looking back, I sometimes wish I had.”

But all this had happened centuries ago. How could it matter now? “Did she have the baby?”

He nodded. “A girl. I didn’t speak her language and she didn’t speak mine, but we managed to communicate somehow. Hand gestures, mostly. And we shared our names.”

He stopped talking and I couldn’t stand it. “So what was her name?”

“Geraldine Terranova.” He sucked in a breath before adding, “You would know her now as Saint Geraldine.”

DID HE MEAN THE SAME SAINT GERALDINE
entombed at the Cathedral Basilica? She and Aydin had lived during the same era, so it shouldn’t surprise me they had known each other. It made a millennium seem so much shorter somehow. A decade or a century, time was indifferent to people who could live forever.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Aydin asked.

I nodded and cleared my throat. “I’m just taking it all in. Can the world have really been that much smaller back then?” I didn’t expect an answer and he didn’t give me one. “It’s all adding up for me now—Geraldine, the Vyantara, the angels.” I stopped. I hadn’t told him anything about what my father was supposed to be. I’d keep that bit of info to myself for now.

Without reacting to my angel slip, he said, “Gavin doesn’t know I knew Geraldine when she was alive. None of the Vyantara know.”

“That’s some secret to keep for over nine hundred years.” Gavin could sniff out a liar like a fox could a hare. “How’d you do it?”

“I’ve had time to get my story straight.”

No argument there. “So what
is
your story? The real one.”

He slouched back against the futon, both palms curved over the mounds of his knees. “After Geraldine gave birth, I couldn’t just leave her. So I found a midwife in the village. I tried to leave it at that, but I couldn’t. There was something about her, some inner light that glowed through her eyes and made me think of angels.” He jerked a look at me. “You said something about angels. You know what she can do?”

I recalled my conversation with Elmo and shrugged. “Only that she’d been accused of witchcraft because she claimed to talk to angels.”

He turned his gaze to a wall lined with boxes stacked high to the ceiling. I could have sworn I saw the smallest one on top shift sharply to the left, but he didn’t seem to notice.

He sucked in a breath and said, “That was a strange time in our world’s history, Chalice. So much evil plagued Europe and the Middle East that people didn’t look like people anymore. Their bodies were contorted, faces hidden behind hoods, their hands gnarled into claws that curled like fish hooks.”

Looking distracted, he tapped his chin and squinted as if that would sharpen his memory. “In the small villages around the holy city, the humans were turning into something else. They did odd things, performed miracles, cursed their enemies and talked to angels.”

“What kind of angels?”

“The Fallen kind.”

He meant the demonic kind. “So it was a fallen angel you’d made your deal with.”

“It wasn’t that simple.” He scowled and a muscle in his jaw began to twitch. He stood to straighten the same stack of boxes that had drawn my attention a moment ago. Focusing on the top box, he carefully picked it up to hold it gently in his hands, treating the small wooden cube like a fragile piece of glass. “From the moment I met Geraldine, I knew there were dark powers at work in that war. The Crusaders fought an army of creatures that fed off violence, greed and hate.”

I cleared my throat. “So your deal—”

“—was really a curse disguised as a gift.”

“How did it happen?”

He turned the small box over in his hands. “I went to see Geraldine at the midwife’s home, but the woman wouldn’t let me in. I was a Seljuk Turk, the enemy, and with all the horrors happening around them, none of the villagers were taking any chances.”

I was once again struck by the age and experience of this man. I studied the straight line of his nose, the crescent shape of his eyes, and those very thick, very black eyebrows that seemed to furl around his deepest thoughts. He was a living artifact the Vyantara had added to their cursed collection. A freak. Like me.

His gaze bored into me as if daring me to disbelieve what he said. He’d told me things he wouldn’t reveal to just anyone, and his earnest expression begged me to hang on every word. “A hunchbacked figure approached me in the streets. A hood partially hid his face, but he pulled the fabric back when he spoke. He was pale, his hair white as clouds, and his skin smooth and hairless as a child’s. He said he needed my help.”

I suspected what that cloaked figure had been. “He was an angel, wasn’t he?”

Aydin nodded. “I saw an enormous black feather fall to the ground between his feet. I didn’t think he was carrying birds under his cloak.”

I shuddered. “One of the Fallen.”

“He said he knew a way for me to see Geraldine. He promised to make me invisible so I could pass through the walls of the midwife’s house like mist. In return I would have to spy on his enemy and bring him secrets of the Christians’ plans.”

“Did you?”

He looked away. That was my answer.

“Geraldine was angry with me for making the deal. That same angel had tried bargaining with her for her baby. He knew the child was gifted because it was spawned by one of the Arelim.”

My breath caught. The Arelim, guardian angels of the twelfth order. Gavin had said my father had been a Guardian before he fell from grace.

The father of Geraldine’s baby was an angel, meaning Geraldine had obviously been one of the first knights in the Order of the Hatchet. I gulped down air that had suddenly become too thin.

“What about your immortality?” I asked. “Did you know that was part of the bargain you made?”

“I didn’t find out until later, when a Crusader saw me materialize outside an officer’s tent and tackled me to the ground before slitting my throat. He left me for dead, and that’s exactly what I thought I was. Dead. But I didn’t die. The fallen angel I’d dealt with hadn’t wanted to lose his investment. That’s when I realized the gift granting me time with Geraldine was also a curse.” He hung his head to stare at the floor. “I also realized I’d fallen in love with her.”

And then his love was executed and dismembered, her withered head a trophy in the hands of his enslavers.

My gut twisted and I suddenly felt like I’d lost something, too. The one person who had given me back what I thought I’d lost forever: my mother. And now I’d lost him to a dead woman. Or rather, an undead one. I peered up into his face, but his eyes were closed. What could I say? That I understood? I really didn’t. I didn’t know what it was like to love someone that way. I didn’t know how it felt to care so much for someone that I’d sacrifice my own soul just to be near him. I wanted to understand and to feel as deeply as he did, but it would only happen if I stayed human. I now had one more reason to break the gargoyle’s curse.

“What happened to Geraldine’s baby?” I asked, my head humming with questions about my ancestors.

His eyes popped open and he blinked as if waking from a dream. “She survived. Her name was Maria.”

“Did she become a knight like her mother?”
And like my mother?

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maria was still a baby when Geraldine was executed. I think the midwife ended up raising her as her own. What happened after that…” He held out his hands and shrugged.

So Maria probably grew up not knowing about her roots. She never discovered who she really was.

Geraldine couldn’t have been the only Hatchet Knight to start the order. “Tell me about the other knights.”

Aydin cocked his head to one side, his puzzled expression looking painted on instead of real. “What about them?”

I heaved an exasperated breath. He was stalling. There was still so much I needed to know, but he purposely held out on me. Why?

He smiled, and lifted the box he’d been holding to run his hand across the top. “What do you think is in here?”

I was dying to know, but I refused to let on how much. I didn’t appreciate his mocking. “I can’t say I care.”

His smile widened to show a bright row of perfect teeth. “You’re a terrible liar.”

The small cube of wood was now balanced on his open palm. It jumped an inch and the lid popped open. Something shiny and colorful leapt out to land squarely in my lap.

“What the hell?” I started to swat it away, then realized what it was. A frog. A tiny, jewel-encrusted frog not much bigger than my thumb. I looked up at Aydin. “Mind explaining what this is?”

“Her name is Ruby.”

The tiny creature lifted its amphibian head and grinned at me. It looked like a grin, anyway. I know frogs don’t have lips, but this was no ordinary frog. “What’s it doing in my lap?”

“I think she likes you.” He squinted at the sparkling creature and nodded as if he approved.

A living piece of jewelry. It didn’t get much weirder than that. I held my hand open and Ruby hopped on. She was covered in precious stones: rubies, diamonds, amethysts, emeralds. I looked for skin showing between the jewels and found only silver. Her eyes shone like polished sapphires. I blinked at Aydin. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Because there isn’t anything like Ruby. At least not in this world.” He reached for the animal and she hopped up to land on my shoulder. “I think you have a new friend. She doesn’t want me to put her away.”

“Then don’t.” I turned my head to peer at the frog that was now mere inches from my face. “I don’t mind having a roommate.” No doubt an enchanted one, which made me wonder what else lived inside the trunks and ancient boxes in this room. Was Ruby a gift? Or a bribe to stop me from asking questions he wasn’t prepared to answer?

Just as I was about ask that very thing, a vibration pulsed through the floor and a low boom sounded inside my head. Ruby leapt off my shoulder and disappeared behind the futon.

“What was that?” I asked Aydin.

“My wards have been breached.”

But he wasn’t a sorcerer. “You know how to set up wards?”

He stared at me and frowned. “You don’t?” Not waiting for an answer, he rushed from the room and I followed.

“I knew I’d find the two of you here.” Gavin stood in the middle of the living room looking pleased with himself. “Pleasant drive back?”

Aydin faced him, stone-faced and cold as a lost soldier who had fought too many battles and never won any of them. “What can I do for you, Gavin?”

Gavin grinned, but his eyes were hard. “Getting chummy, I see.”

“Us?” I coughed. “Oh, yeah. Best of buds. Cowards are high on my list of favorite people, right next to serial killers and rapists.” I fought to follow Aydin’s example, holding the muscles in my face still and letting my eyes freeze over with indifference. I hadn’t practiced the poker face much and I hoped I looked the part.

Gavin narrowed his eyes, then slid his gaze to Aydin.

“She doesn’t like me much,” Aydin said stiffly. “Having her stay here is the best way for me to keep an eye on her, but she doesn’t see it that way.”

Gavin tapped his bottom lip and studied us. “I trust you, Aydin. You’ve served us well over the centuries. Chalice, on the other hand, is a loose cannon. Can you handle her?”

“You know I can.” Aydin’s expression didn’t change. Fearful that mine would, I averted my eyes to stare hard at the floor.

“I’ve figured out a way to let Chalice speak with Saint Geraldine without me present.” Gavin stepped to the far wall and investigated a decorative arrangement of dried reeds in a tall ceramic vase. “Aydin, I want you to go with her.”

I frowned, then caught myself. Gavin didn’t know anything about Aydin’s relationship with Geraldine. I had to pretend that I didn’t, either. It was easy to do when I thought about how much I still didn’t know, and I hoped it translated to my face. Either my acting had worked or Gavin was too preoccupied with his fabulous plan to notice.

“He’ll pass through the tomb walls and remain invisible while you talk to Geraldine. She won’t know he’s there, and he’ll report back to me everything that’s said between you.” Gavin pulled a reed out of the vase and pointed it at Aydin. “It’s the perfect plan.”

I tossed a quick look at Aydin, who’d managed to maintain his apathetic facade. Even so, I swore I detected a hint of glee in his eyes.

Aydin stripped out of his jean jacket and handed it to Gavin, who folded it over his arm. The front of Aydin’s T-shirt said I’m Gonna Survive. Even if It Kills Me.

I stood beside the tapestry that covered the vault of Saint Geraldine’s tomb. When Aydin unbuckled his belt, I turned away to face the woven piece of art and studied an intricately stitched rose garden made of flowering vines that climbed an arched arbor. It smelled musty.

I heard the slide of fabric along skin, then the clink of Aydin’s belt buckle hitting the linoleum floor. Knowing there was a naked man behind me made my skin warm. And this wasn’t just any man; it was Aydin. I felt my blush deepen.

In a few minutes, Aydin and I would be standing in front of a mummified head, having a conversation with a dead woman who wasn’t really dead. Though I’d be the only one talking since Aydin couldn’t speak while invisible. For all I knew, he’d be seeing Geraldine for the first time since their clandestine meetings in the midwife’s home more than nine centuries ago.

“I’d like to take candles in with me,” I told Gavin without turning around. I needed him to leave me alone with Aydin before he ghosted out and could no longer talk.

“You don’t need light to see her, Chalice,” Gavin said, sounding annoyed.

“I know, but maybe she does.” I’d made that point the last time we were here. “If she can’t see me, she may not talk to me.”

Still facing the tapestry, I heard Gavin’s theatrical sigh at my back. “I have some black ritual candles in the car. I’ll be right back.” His footsteps tapped down the long hallway and trailed into silence.

“Aydin?” I was afraid of turning around to find him standing nude in front of me. Not that I didn’t appreciate the male body, especially Aydin’s, but I feared seeing him would light an erotic spark we might not be able to put out this time.

When he didn’t answer, I
did
turn around. No one there. He’d obviously ghosted out so I removed my contacts to see him. Though it was night and the lights were dim, they were still bright enough to make me blink and squint, so I covered my naked eyes with my hands. I peeked through my fingers and sure enough, Aydin’s hazy, translucent form wavered in front of me. He drifted toward the door.