Mathieu (7 page)

Slowly, the darkness stopped its advance and then even more slowly retreated back to where Mathieu knelt, lower lip held between teeth. Perspiration beaded on his forehead and above his mustache.

When he opened his eyes and inspected the area, it was nearing dawn. The grass was green again, even if it wasn’t as perfectly green as it had been before. It seemed translucent, brittle. “Just like me,” Mathieu muttered under his breath with a sigh.

He wiped the sweat off his face and rubbed his goatee with the palm of his hand as his eyes strayed over to the tents. “Merda. I can’t even control it here. How am I going to do this without killing everyone?”

C
hapter Eleven

“Enough of this. Your resistance has been amusing in its own way, but enough. I need you.”

Mathieu painfully drew himself to his knees, pulling at the iron chain around his neck as if he could somehow tear it off with just his bare hands. He wanted to stand and face the Demon, but he knew he was too weak. The circle drained him now that his blood had been worked into every symbol and curve. Mathieu had lost track long ago of exactly how much blood Gadreel had spilled into it, but he knew he should have been long dead by now..

Gadreel stepped into the circle and continued. “Damonn is fading, and I am losing patience. Enough.”

Bracing for what he knew would happen next, Mathieu spoke quietly, “I am not yours. I belong to God, The Almighty Father and Jesus, his son. I am one of their children and you cannot claim me.”

The impact of a Demonic fist hurt just as much as it had every time before. “You are a child of God? And how many of your Father’s other children did you kill before I found you?” Gadreel’s voice mocked him through the red pain that covered his vision and made him curl up into a ball as more blows rained down on his body. “How many of your brothers and sisters have you slain?”

Mathieu gasped back, as he had every time before, “I killed no one, but to kill an infidel is not a sin but the path to heaven.”

“
Yes, yes. We’ve covered that already. But despite your air of injured innocence, you’re not in heaven, are you?” Gadreel’s favorite form came into view, parting the red film with its beauty. “You took communion, you confessed, you were shriven before battle, but you’re not in heaven, are you?”

Mathieu shook his head, unable to speak for the pain.

“Of course you’re not. Because you’re not going to go to heaven. Ever. God has rejected you and given you to me.” The angelic creature smiled sweetly and pushed Mathieu onto his back. “Your heavenly father doesn’t want you, just like your earthly father doesn’t. I’m the only thing that wants you, out of all that is in the world. All that is left is for you to serve me. Forever. God is dead to you.”

The creature’s touch was ice and fire blended together, and Mathieu screamed at the violation. He despaired as the iron chain around his neck choked his breath—and what little strength he had left to fight—away.

Mathieu could see Damonn from the corner of his eye; the old man collapsed into a heap outside the circle.

“See, we’re just in time here,” Gadreel gasped into Mathieu’s ear as it did something that hurt more than anything it’d ever done before—which Mathieu didn’t think possible. Nerves screamed and burned as if a thousand bees stung them all at once. Mathieu’s head felt as if it would explode. Knowledge and power filled him and flowed over and through him and swept him away in a torrent of agony.

His skin felt stretched too tight, as if he were holding in great amounts of…something. His brain felt equally tight, and he could sense there was something there as well, just beyond his reach and understanding.

“
See? Not so bad, is it? I didn’t feel a thing.” Gadreel’s voice hissed in his ear as a freezing hot tongue wound its way up Mathieu’s face. The Demon Lord stood then, glorious in its nudity, Mathieu’s blood dripping from his fingertips.

Mathieu shuddered and felt his gorge rise in the back of his throat, even though he could not remember the last time he’d eaten. He tried to pull himself into a ball as he’d done every time this had happened before but Gadreel put its hands on Mathieu’s shoulders. “None of that, now.” Mathieu could not move as the Demon Lord traced bloody symbols on Mathieu’s forehead and chest.

“There we go. That bit of unpleasantness is out of the way.” said Gadreel. “Now, remember for me what to do now. Damonn is dying. He’s served me well enough all these years and his suffering does not amuse me at this moment.”

“You must immolate his body to make sure that your power and knowledge stays in the one vessel you’ve chosen so that no one else can take it from you.” The words came from Mathieu’s lips with no conscious thought of his own.

Gadreel smiled and touched its forehead. “Ah, of course. How could I have forgotten such a simple thing?” It then turned to the quivering heap that was all that remained of the old man and gestured. The smell of burning flesh filled the cold gray place and a high screaming noise filled Mathieu’s ears. He heard it in his head long after it had stopped in reality. The world was cold and gray; the only color came from Mathieu’s blood and the fire that consumed what was left of Damonn.

Mathieu turned his head and wept.

C
hapter Twelve

Marcus woke early, as was his habit. Jenn had always been the slug-a-bed in their relationship, probably due to the differences in their upbringings.

After all, life on a farm was hard. You had to get up early and do your chores, even if you had been up all night studying Kabballah and Geomancy. Rich people didn’t have to milk cows at 4:30 AM.

He gently unwound himself from Jenn’s sleeping form, rubbed a hand through the stubble on his chin and with a silent sigh rolled himself out of the sleeping bag into the cold morning air.

Fully awake now, he quickly unzipped the tent flap and tumbled out into the pre-dawn. Jenn stirred behind him and flipped the edge of the sleeping bag over her face. He smiled and shook his head. She was exhausted and he’d let her sleep as long as possible, even if it wasn’t that much longer in the grand scheme of things.

Stumbling to the edge of the fire pit, he stirred up the coals and put a few pieces of wood on to reignite the fire. While coffee was normally a must in everyday life, at this temperature and altitude it was the nectar of the Gods and probably the only thing that could pry his wife out of those sleeping bags. Maybe. If he was lucky.

He assembled the pot that had been measured and filled the night before and put it on the adjacent camp stove to brew before looking out towards the edge of camp.

Mathieu was in the same place, but he’d gone to his knees sometime in the night and was staring at the ground. Marcus raised an eyebrow and then sighed and walked over despite his better instincts. When he drew closer, the grass under his feet crackled and broke with
a
sound crossed between dead leaves and broken glass. He hesitated at the sound but then moved closer, watching Mathieu minutely wince with the sound of every step.

In the early light Mathieu looked very young; nothing more than a kid, really. He hugged himself as he looked up at Marcus, eyes wide with despair.

“I can’t do this.” Mathieu’s voice was barely a whisper. “I can’t.”

Marcus squatted down and instinctively reached out to put a hand on Mathieu’s shoulder and was shocked when Mathieu recoiled violently.

“Don’t touch me. Oh God, don’t touch me.” Mathieu scooted away from Marcus on his knees and wrapped his arms around himself even tighter. The crystalline grass broke under him with a chiming racket. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I know, I know,” Marcus soothed. “You’d never hurt anyone.”

“Never willingly,” Mathieu answered bitterly as he looked back to the peak where he’d hidden away. He focused sharply back on Marcus. “You’re going to make me stay, aren’t you?”

Marcus carefully weighed his answer. “I can’t make you stay. Only you can.”

“I know this.” Mathieu had seemed to regain some of his equilibrium. Marcus still couldn’t help thinking of him as lost kid, though. “I swore to help.” He sounded as if he was reminding himself of the only reason he had to keep going, the only reason to stay sane.

In the awkward silence between then, Marcus finally spoke. “Do you want some coffee? It’ll help warm you up.”

“Coffee?”

“Coffee.” Marcus said the word firmly. “Without it, everything in life turns into shit.”

“So that’s what I’ve been missing for the past eight hundred years?” Mathieu sighed. It seemed to Marcus that he was physically forcing all the small, shattered pieces of himself back together as he straightened up and then stood. “Why not? It can’t hurt, can it?”

Marcus
shook his head. “Not as much as you’ve already been hurt, I’d think.”

“No.” There was a pause. “Nothing could ever hurt that much.”

“No,” agreed Marcus. “I didn’t think so.”

Later, Mathieu clutched the hot metal cup in his hands and watched the campsite stir to life around him.

Jenn and Marcus shared a tent, as did the two climbers who had helped Jenn get to the borders of his wards. There were some people watching him from the windows of the metal hut behind the test. There was the empty tent they’d set aside for him. And as these people went about their business, no one came near or spoke to him.

He smirked around the lip of the cup as he drank. Being a dangerous unknown quantity granted one some privacy, he supposed.

At first taste, coffee did not much impress Mathieu. When he’d said as much to Marcus, the blonde man had laughed and taken the bitter, dark brew from him and then presented him with something much lighter, sweeter and entirely much more to Mathieu’s preference. Being called a ‘Philistine’ about not wanting to drink coffee in its unadulterated form had rankled until he realized the man was joking with him.

Joking. With him.

“They’ll be here to take us down in about an hour.” Marcus had gestured to the north. “We’ll go to the Foundation’s local chapter house at Sanctuaire de Notre-Dame la Salette. Someone will meet us there with clean clothes and we’ll put together a passport for you. A quick shower and change and…” Marcus made a flying motion with his hands.

With a quick shake of his head, Mathieu imitated Marcus’ hand gesture. “And…?” He let his tone ask the question.

“And we’re off to New York.” Marcus waved away further questions as he poured another cup of coffee and walked back towards the tent where Jenn slept. “And now I have to venture into the den of the dragon. Pray for me.”

Mathieu
cocked his head and smiled through his tension. “Prayers from such as me would not be heard, but you have them for the little they are worth. Die with honor, brave Chevallier.” He raised his cup of coffee in salute.

Marcus saluted back and then unzipped the flap of his shared tent, ducking in to face his dearest wife and wrest her from sleep’s loving embrace.

With a sigh, Mathieu turned back to his coffee and watched the climbers begin the process of disassembling the campsite to the sound of Jenn’s complaints at being woken.

When she had pulled up to a mostly sitting position, hunched under the sleeping bag with the cup of coffee held close to her chest. If Marcus had less of a survival instinct he might have pointed out her similarity to a gargoyle at that exact moment.

Instead he spoke quietly, “He’s still here. I almost thought he’d run during the night.”

Jenn shook her head and drank another gulp of coffee. “Of course he’s still here. He swore he’d help. People from his time tended to put a lot of emphasis on keeping promises.”

“Yeah.” Marcus looked over his shoulder at the closed tent flap. “I wonder if that applies to cases of insanity.”

“He’s not insane. He’s …” Jenn shrugged her shoulders and searched for the right word. “Fragile. He’s just fragile.”

“I say to-may-to, you say to-mah-to and they both mean the same thing. He’s bugfuck crazy and we both know it.”

Jenn shrugged. “It’s workable. Dwayne is fucking insane and look how great he is with divination.”

“Yeah, but being completely bugfuck crazy never hurt in divination—it could almost be considered a prerequisite. It could really hurt in this case though.”

Clutching the coffee closer, Jenn looked at him and said quietly, “He is Amanda’s only chance. You know that, I know that. Amanda’s dad knows that, which is why he’s spent all this money and goodwill
with
the Elders on coaxing him down. I can put up with a little bit of creepy gibberish if it brings her home safely.”

Marcus met her eyes squarely. “I’m not worried about creepy gibberish. I’m worried about people—mainly our friends—getting maimed or killed or worse when he cracks. And he will crack.” He paused and continued, “I don’t want hurting him on my conscience, either. I never thought I’d say this, but I feel sorry for him.”

“We’re not going to hurt him. He’s going to help us. He’s a great resource.” Jenn shrugged off the sleeping bag and started rooting around for her clothing. “Despite being the painfully polite and chivalrous stalker type.”

“I don’t think he means it that way.” Marcus peered out at the somber figure standing by the campfire. Mathieu had managed to put the maximum amount of distance between himself and the others and still remain in the ring of tents; he stood totally alone, even among people. “I don’t think he’d hurt you.”

“Oh, he’d die before he hurt me,” Jenn confirmed. “It’s just…” She made a searching gesture before saying the only word she thought fit. “Creepy. Having someone that knows someone you used be forever ago, someone that knows a you that doesn’t exist anymore, and knows things about you that you don’t even know and have no way of ever knowing?” She shuddered. “Creepy.”

Marcus teased, “Some women would think it horribly romantic. Unrequited love through the ages and all that jazz.” He looked at her, feigning fear. “Are we in trouble? Are you going to leave me for him?”