We Will All Go Down Together (44 page)

And now, at last, I force the issue. Bring this bitter crop we share to harvest by steering Blandina and Penemue together.

My Maker will not see her coming, not least because it simply does not think enough on me—one amongst many, only, made and thrown away over the millennia—to consider me worthy of distrust.

“A visit to the Anchoress, first,” Mother Eulalia had decided. The prospect made even Blandina wary, but she at least knew what was coming. Not so Cecilia, fumbling hopeful down through the dimness (all anchoresses took a Vow of Shadows, along with their other vows) while they followed a trail of luminescent paint—arrows on the walls, footprints on the floor—towards their destination.

“You’ve never done this before, dear.”

“No, Mother.”

“But you’re familiar with the terminology, I expect.”

“
Anchorism
, late 16
th
century: from the Old English
anchor
, ‘recluse, hermit,’ itself from the Mediaeval Latin
anchorita
or
anchorite
. ‘A person who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular life entirely, choosing a prayer-filled, ascetic, Eucharist-focused mode of existence.’”

Makes it sound so simple,
Blandina thought. “And our anchoresses?”

“Former members of the Order, now retired.”

“Don’t have all too many of those, do we?”

“Not that I’ve heard of, no.”

It was common practice for the bishop’s representative to say office for the dead over an anchoress as she entered her cell, to signify her rebirth to a spiritual life of solitary communion with God and His angels. Roke himself had recited at least two of those, including one for the woman they were about to consult, before affixing the bishop’s seal to the fresh-laid concrete across her door. After which the plasterers came by, white-washing over everything but a little flap-door at the bottom and a squint at the top, known as a “hagioscope”—the first for meals, such as they were, while the second provided a tiny one-way window back out into the world its occupant had left behind.

“She took the name Kentigerna on making her vows, against our usual rule,” Mother Eulalia explained, “since that particular saint was a hermit, not a martyr. But given her capacities, I believe she might have been thinking more of St. Kentigern Mungo, when she made the choice; he was noted for his miracles. As she was for hers.”

“Should I address her as Sister Kentigerna, then?”

Mother Eulalia shook her head, glancing Blandina’s way so that she would feel free to answer. And: “No,” Blandina obliged her. “She’s the Anchoress—we’ve only got the one. And you shouldn’t
address
her at all, if you can help it.”

One more corner, and there they were at last, outside the closet-sized room in which the best seer the Ordo ever recruited would spend the rest of her life. More paint rimmed its outline, a phantom lintel propped by two ghost-posts.

“I see you,” a rasp of a voice greeted them through a vent in the wall, making Cecilia jump. “Eulalia, Blandina—and you, newcomer, unblooded
girl.
Number Twenty-Three. Vic . . . 
toria
.”

“
Cecilia.
”

“Not yet, you’re not. Not ’til you profess fully.”

“Excuse me, I’ve
made
my vows—”

“The simple ones, only. You’ve told God you love him, and isn’t that nice. But has He told
you
the same? Not yet . . . maybe not ever.”

The harsh words weren’t aimed at her, but Blandina shrugged anyhow and rapped her knuckles sharply against the door, making it ring. Reminding the woman inside: “She’s
Mother
Eulalia now, Kentigerna. You’ll give her that much respect.”

“
My
Mother was Apollonia, witch-seed, and she died so
this
one could live—you, too. You let yourself get carried away and saw her carried out in halves. Head
and
body.”

“I know my sins. Did my penance too, years back.”

“You should do more.”

Beside her, Blandina felt Cecilia stiffen, but Mother Eulalia simply sighed. “We need to consult,” she told the squint-hole, patiently. “On a matter of some urgency.”

“Oh yes, most honoured war-leader,” the Anchoress’s vicious whisper agreed. “Please don’t hesitate to ask if it’s ever a
good
idea to treat one of our Creator’s first-made children as though they were something you can throw silver, salt, or fire at, and just hope it goes away.”

“This one is Fallen,” Blandina pointed out. “Been like that since before Cain got his mark. All we want is to get it to move on.”

“And then it’s someone else’s problem, eh?”

“You said it.”

Cecilia looked at her feet.

“If you
did
happen to have some sort of special knowledge,” Eulalia went on, mildly, as though the Anchoress hadn’t spoken at all, “we’d be
very
grateful to have it. Blandina, in particular.”

A few breaths went by, hoarsely mirrored through the grate, as the Anchoress mulled this over.

“They hurt themselves to stay here,” she said, eventually. “This is most important to remember when facing the Host.”

“Grigorim aren’t—”

“Oh, shut your mouth for one single minute, Judas Rusk’s by-blow—long enough to learn, or go ask elsewhere. At least that
Mother
of yours knows enough to know she knows nothing. Physics tells us everything in the universe is just energy and emptiness in some sort of combination, the only difference between ape and angel being just how close together things can get before exploding. Which means that, whenever Hostlings
of any sort
come to earth, they transmute themselves into the idea of flesh through molecular manipulation, and since they aren’t really corporeal to begin with, when you damage them, they fly apart and revert to the Eternal.”

“Meaning?”

“
Meaning,
all you can do to an angel is deflect it a while and hope it turns its attention elsewhere.”

“How?” Blandina asked through her teeth.

“
Think,
Blandina. The longer they remain enfleshed voluntarily, the more ‘earthly’ they become. They were made to be extensions of the Maker’s will, already perfected, so they can’t change; they aren’t supposed to
want
to change, even to improve themselves. Any personal ambition on an angel’s part is corruption—even the ambition to do good, not that
that
’s what Penemue’s been doing. To pursue your own ends is how you start to Fall.”

Mother Eulalia nodded. “Yes, I see.”

“Do you? Rusk’s daughter, what does this angel do? What do we
know
it does, from your own evidence?”

“It makes . . . copies of itself. Nephilim. Degrades human beings to breed children. Pretends to be a little Creator.”

“Yes. And therein lies the only part of it—or
parts
of it—you can hope to harm. What hurts a possessed body will work just fine on Nephilim, and with far less fallout; they’ve never
been
human, after all.” Kentigerna gave a great grunt of effort, apparently settling back into whatever position they’d found her in. “Now go,” she muttered, voice fuzzing down into exhaustion. “You tire me, both of you . . . the pretender, too. Go dash your brains out against Heaven’s door and see what it gets you.”

Eulalia bowed her head. “Thank you, Anchoress.”

“I don’t want
your
thanks. Just a promise. . . .”

“Name it.”

A pause. “That you’ll leave me alone from now on,” that dry scratch of a voice replied, so hoarse now it made even Blandina’s throat hurt to hear. “Don’t try to make me talk anymore, or eat. Just send someone down to check if I respond, and when I cease to, plaster the slot door over. Screw the memorial plaque in on top, and let me sleep.”

The despair in her tone was catching. And though not-quite-darkness pressed hard about them, Blandina could still see Cecilia’s moist eyes skitter this way and that, searching for what she already knew she’d find: similar beaten-bronze rectangles trailing away on either side, each bearing a name, a date.

Only fit that they live out the rest of their lives in their coffins,
she thought.
Being already dead, and prayed over.

Leaning forward, lips only inches from the grate, Blandina told the Anchoress: “I’ll do that part myself, unless you’d rather I not.”

“Do as you please, Atia Rusk,” the Anchoress said, wearily. “You always do.”

From then on, she was silent.

This time, Cecilia barely waited ’til Mother Eulalia was out of earshot to turn to Blandina, demanding: “Something I should know?”

“You? Lots, about a lot. I’m taking it you mean what she meant, though. When she called me—”

“Rusk. As in the Five-Family Coven? Roke and Druir on the one side, Glouwer, Devize, and
Rusk
on the other. . . .”

“That’s right. My birth-name traces to Judas, Alizoun Rusk’s son, born in the Witch-House at Eye. Fostered by good folk after his mother’s burning, he broke free and made his way to the Seychelles, where my kin come from. Made a pile out of ships and trading, old Judas, enough to buy Veritay Island; owned slaves too, and he did what masters do. My Mémé used to tell us bedtime stories about his great-granddaughter, a woman named Tante Ankolee, Angelique Rusk,
powerful an’ puissant, who buy she-self out-bondage with her gift
. . . . Her son, Collyer, would be my three times great-grandfather.”

“Which makes you—”

“Just another bride of Christ, like you, redeemed with His sacrifice. There’s nothing of Alizoun, Judas,
or
Tante Ankolee ever came down
my
way but freckles in summer. But Kentigerna felt it from the start, and she never took to me, even though Mother Apollonia chose to believe I meant what I said then, same way Mother Eulalia does, now. So I made my vows, and Christ alone knows I keep them.”

“And only God can judge?”

“He certainly hasn’t said any different, not in all these years.”

They were almost to the armoury door, where Sister Prisca would have a raft of things for them to choose from—blades cooled in holy water, cold iron chased with silver, their cross-hilt handles carved from fully provenanced saints’ bones. Blandina felt her fingers curl, palms itching to find themselves filled, and the battle-longing rose up high in her, stronger than any other hunger.

But there was Cecilia, still, blocking her way, nose wrinkled and eyebrows hiked. Not quite
asking
as talking her way through it all like some slow problem, logical to a fault—“Mac Roke made vows too, though. Didn’t he?”

“Took them and broke them. You’ve seen
his
family.”

“But you must’ve
known
, like the Anchoress did with you. I mean—it’s not as if he was hiding it. His name’s
Roke
.”

Blandina paused, made herself think her next words over, carefully as possible. The very thought of revisiting Roke’s betrayal made her so tired she could have wept, but didn’t; her tears weren’t hers to give away, not anymore. They belonged to Him, like everything else.

“I . . . felt something,” she agreed, reluctantly. “From him;
for
him. Thought it was just friendship, or maybe the other—I’m not old, or dead. But then. . . .”

Christ
, it really did hurt, still. Enough to make her blaspheme, at least interiorly.

“We all have our something,” she finished, at last. “I’ve told mine. And even if he’d never told his, he might’ve done good work for us, he’d just kept his word. But—he lied.”

Cecilia gave her a look that verged on pity. Good thing she couldn’t tell how it made Blandina want to punch her in the throat.

“To you, you mean,” she said.

Blandina snorted. “Who d’you think I think I
am,
sister? I mean to
God
.”

She tapped the door-lock, felt it give way. Stared the eye-scan down and strode through as the blast-shielding slid smoothly apart, Cecilia following behind.

“Would
you
ever submit?” Cecilia asked, unexpectedly. “Be immured, like Kenti—like the Anchoress?”

“There’s no one can order you to do it, sister, if that’s your worry. You have to volunteer.”

“Why
would
you, though? Why did she?”

“Because she saw things she didn’t like,” Blandina told her. “Just sometimes, at first, then all the time, ’til she couldn’t see anything else. You can’t fight, like that. So she opted out, went contemplative; prays all day and night on the Ordo’s behalf, using her visions like a direct telephone line to Him.”

“Roke said he saw something too, just before he withdrew. The thing that wasn’t an angel.”

“He said a lot of stuff on his way out the door.”

“Have
you
seen anything?”

“Same things you have, all the bloody time.
We fight monsters.
”

“Goddamn it, you know what I—”

Blandina rounded on her, hissing: “
Yes.
But you don’t
ever
take His name in vain, Vicky-Cecilia, no matter what we’re talking about—not here, not near me
.
You don’t
dare.
”

“I’m very sorry, Sister Blandina. I wasn’t aware you had a monopoly on faith, around here.”

Huh.

Looked like little Cecilia had a break-point, after all. Blandina studied her, measuringly, and was pleased to see her shift into fighting stance, though her hands stayed unfisted. As though Blandina’s attention constituted a threat in itself.

Good,
Blandina thought, approvingly.

“I can’t do what Roke does,” she told her, at last. “Bad blood aside, I just don’t have that capacity. So no, I’ve never seen anything made me question my vocation, so I’ve never had to make the decision to stay or go. I do one thing only, well enough to merit the front-line, and no matter what every other Rusk before me might’ve got up to, I do what
I
do for God. Odds are, I’ll be
long
dead before I ever have to consider making Kentigerna’s choice.”

“You hope,” Cecilia replied.

It comes to pass now, just as I hoped for.
The Ordo descends upon us with Sisters Blandina and Cecilia in the fore, Mother Eulalia and the others behind. They follow Rose-of-Sharon Hopkinson’s coordinates—a strip mall just across the streetcar tracks, where Mimico blends into the very last of Queen Street East—and find the bowling alley turned club where Penemue Grigorim sits in one of the farthest booths, waiting to be paid homage to by fresh potential victims. Blandina’s team arrives in an ambulance and comes in through the back, some dressed as paramedics, others as police; a tossed mixture of smoke bombs, flares, and flash-bangs goes in first to disperse most humans, who will later remember only the vague, traumatizing impression of a kitchen explosion, pulled fire alarms, a general scrambling rout.