Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) (10 page)

“I, Shintaro, Speaker of the Council and First Proxim of Silvenhall, call this meeting to a close.” He gestured to me. “Let he who seeks asylum here in the sanctuary walk among you safely.” He lowered his head and glowered at me under beetled brows. “Walk safely among us, Amedeo. Even Cruxim must learn to walk before they can fly.”

I gave my wings a flap in agitation. Would that I could turn and fly far from here.

The Proxim on the dais stood as Shintaro beat one fist over his chest. “For Crèche,” he said loudly.

“For Crèche!” The Cruxim in the crowd and on the dais followed his lead.

“And Crux!” He crossed the fist with the other and gave his wings a mighty flap.

“And Crux!”

Before me, Skylar did the same. The smile she turned on me was fierce and proud and knowing all at once, and it stirred something in me that prevented me from turning away. She nodded to the others, their hands crossed over their chests, as if I might now copy them. But my heart, when I pounded it with my fist, felt false, and the wind of my wings was cold as I called down on me a cross I knew not whether I might safely bear.

I
t felt strange to walk out among them, and stranger still to ignore their whispers as I passed. I could tell from their eyes that many still hated me.

Skylar ignored them, and me. Was she angry still? I supposed she thought I made her look a fool.

“Not me, only yourself.”

“I never asked you to defend me.”

“I did not—only myself. Shintaro defended you.” Her face and voice remained infuriatingly placid.

I rubbed my wrists. “Shintaro’s defense felt like an accusation.” I laughed, trying to break the mood.

She ignored me.

“I should thank you,” I said as I followed her to a wooden boardwalk.

She smiled, still looking away. “But you will not.”

She was trailing her hand along a hedge of Jasmine alongside the path. It was a familiar gesture that at first pained me. Only the scent had changed, and the girl, and yet her face was as soft and lovely as Joslyn’s had been, so long ago. My heart ached at the expression etched there. I had been unkind, then and now, and it shamed me. Whatever her reasons, I did not doubt her kindness.

Stopping, I reached for her other hand and pressed my lips to the back of it. “Do you truly think me so rude that I would not say it?”

“No. Only so proud.”

I laughed at that. “Then you have the measure of me, for I am no swan but a peacock.”

Skylar pulled her hand away, frowning. “You are glad to remain?”

I squinted up at the sun. “Gladness is not something I do well.”

“You have had little to be glad for?”

I almost agreed, until I realized it was not a statement. Skylar phrased even her accusations sweetly.

I sighed as I watched her walk on, the scent of Jasmine rising around us with the bees.

“No,” I answered, catching up. “I have known gladness. It is just that I have had too much to regret. And my regrets need me. Sabine needs me there, not making enemies here and attending hearings I do not understand. What did you mean, in the Council, about the Swan and the regrets? What is this bird you all speak of? You said you would not make the same mistake as Daneo. He seems a man who has made many.”

She turned to face me. “You never said it.” Her eyes laughed, but her smile was forced. She had caught me in my own snare, changing the subject.

It was there again: the hedge between us, the hum of her mysteries. It frustrated and intrigued me in equal measure. Letting my questions drop, I took up both of her hands. “Thank you, Skylar Emmanuel.”

Her irises were paler than dawn over the sea. She held my gaze. “You are welcome, Amedeo—” If she had more to say, she swallowed it and let go of my hands.

“Now, if I must be stuck here, am I able to learn Cruxim lore?”

“Because you thanked me?” Skylar smiled. I could see she was glad for my apology. “Yes, as long as I am here to watch you.”

“Then long may you be here.” I returned her smile. Much as my heart wanted to flee Silvenhall, I knew, too, the sadness of exile. I could not foist that upon her. She had brought me here unprepared, to a place she knew would be hostile to me, and yet, in this “sanctuary” she and Kisana alone believed in me. Was her belief misplaced? Only the
Cruximus
or the Maker might tell me. “Where shall we start? Tell me what it is, this Cruor.”

I was more eager to learn the riddle that had brought me here, but from her expression I sensed it would be kept from me until she was sure I would accept her guardianship.

A frown drew Skylar’s brows together. “Let us start with Haemil,” she suggested. “That is where this feud with Milandor began.”

I shooed a bee away. If it was honey I sought, I had first to find a hollow. Let her teach me in her own way first, and then I might charm it from her.

“You would teach a Cruxim history?” I joked, eager to keep this easiness between us. “I have seen many centuries. Many wars. Mortals war as often as your Crèches, but there is only one war that concerns me, and it is not with humans nor with Cruximkind.”

She plucked at my wing, playfully. “I will not war with you, Amedeo. Let there be peace between us for now, and patience. You think yourself old, yet to many in Silvenhall, you are barely fledged. Learn your history.”

“Might I learn yours too?” I asked, wondering her age. It was a flirt, but it made her smile for a moment. The beauty of it, unmasked by secret emotions as it had always been, made me step back a little and draw a breath, but my return smile, drawn involuntarily by the hot, sharp constriction of my heart, was tinged with guilt. 

Skylar’s smile vanished. The light in her eyes extinguished. “I have lived not so long as a Sphinx. I fear I must make a poor guardian.” She focused on the path ahead, where it circled steeply down the grove then fell away to sky. “My history would only bore you.”

I doubted that. If nothing else, she was an enigma, another riddle to be solved. So closed. So guarded. A leaf furled around the beginnings of a flower, or the hardness of chestnut shielding something sweeter and silkier than it showed.

I shook my head. It was not for me to know her. What could I offer her that I hadn’t already promised others—and failed them? Let the flower blossom, the nut crack in its own time. I had more pressing riddles than Skylar, and older loves too.

Snapped from my reverie by the approaching cliff, I glanced at Skylar, hoping she had not been listening to my private thoughts again. Her face, in profile, showed me nothing.

Cliffs below and columns above were pockmarked with tiny caves, and at the cliff’s edge, Skylar shot upward into the mouth of the nearest cave.

“First lesson,” she yelled down to me. “Rebellion was the start of this, as it may well be the end.”

“What rebellion? Surely it is impossible for Cruxim to war with each other. We are incapable of killing each other in warfare.”

“Amedeo, you have seen them. Seen us all.” She gave me a hand to help me after her into the cave. “Sometimes, it feels like all we do is war. You are right that we cannot kill each other, or at least we do not.” Skylar set off into the darkness. “But I have seen feathers torn from wing and hair from heads, and wounds that took years to heal, physical and emotional. And without Milandor as an ally, even Silvenhall might be compromised if we came under attack. The treaty decreed Milandor had a blood vow to protect Silvenhall and the other Crèches. But now ... they would not kill for us. In truth, they do not even kill for themselves.” She beckoned for me to keep following. “Since they began to drink Haemil, Milandor no longer hunts.”

Our way was lit only by firebugs and by glow-worms that wriggled in the damp walls. When the cave opened out into a chamber, I sensed the iron-sweet aroma of blood. It made me thirsty, followed by an insatiable anger. The lust to kill rose in me.

Why do you tarry here, Amedeo, even while Beltran’s blood-beat calls to you!
I shook my head to clear the thought.

All along the shelved walls, amphorae of clay or carved marble, and jugs of jade and bronze, were waiting, their contents maturing.

It was all I could do not to topple them all.

“We have not always drunk each other’s blood.” Skylar moved along the shelves, as if looking for a particular vintage. “Back in the far, far ages, it began. Most Cruxim drank it only for ritual and ceremony, but we made it for the Sibylim. The Sibylim do not bloodlet. Their blood is considered holy, but as priestesses nor do they hunt. Now they barely even leave Cascadia. When others saw that they, too, might live off Haemil...”

She came over to where I leaned against a wall. Whether I was angered by the words Skylar spoke, by the closeness of the Haemil, or by the distance between myself and any Vampires that might slake my rage was anybody’s guess.

She leaned against the wall beside me. “I have drunk my share,” she confessed. “There was a time I was being trained as a Sibyl. But then ... I ... it was a lucky thing that I had not yet made a vow. It was not my fate.”

“Fate!” The anger in my veins subsided somewhat. “I cannot credit fate—or luck. We make decisions and we call them destiny when they are kind to us and regrets when they are not.”

Skylar shrugged and put out one finger for a firefly to land upon. “You think you make decisions, Amedeo, but I know you have heard the Maker too. The
Cruximus
says we have ills to attend to, sins to absolve, regrets to right. Sometimes we stray from our path. Fate guides us back. It leads us to others who heal us or who will help us fulfill our birthright. I did not choose my fate any more than you did. It was luck that I did not let others choose it for me.” She blew the firebug away and it flitted off to land on a jar of Haemil.

I wet my lips with my tongue, still longing for the wine. Did she mean that I, too, had let others steer me from my mission? Had my love for Joslyn or Sabine made me less a Cruxim? Had I wanted to be human? Wanted to be half animal? I did not know. I had not even known what it meant to be Cruxim, other than to kill. What fate was that?

I scoffed. If my fate was to kill Vampires, then I was more Cruxim than these Haemil-swilling, hiding angels. I had taken more taut skin between my teeth than most of them, I guessed.

Skylar did not explain herself further. Her words were a secret, her thoughts a light that shone inwards. I wanted to ask what she meant, but she quickly changed the subject.

“We also drink Haemil for the Cygnus Amoratus.” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “You think we are hiding, but we never let Haemil quell the need to kill ... not until after your mother...”

I sighed. “Yes, my mother—the cause of every ill in Silvenhall. Perhaps fate abandoned me when I inherited her talent for disaster,” I said sarcastically.

“Milandor did not exist before Calira’s exile.” Skylar ignored me and continued, “They are the newest of the Crèches, but they began to drink the Haemil first. Silvenhall, Hiltenhall, Willendel and Kindamor refused it, drinking only ritually to bind themselves to the Crèche and to each other. We sent parties out to hunt while the Cruxim of Milandor grew strong on their own blood. Then we, too, began to have more feast days, more bloodletting. Humans bred, and Vampires with them. It was harder to remain unseen. It was a convenience not to have to leave the Crèche.”

I walked over to the rows of bottles, touching the jars, wiping away the shining motes of dust. “Yet all the while, the Vampires kept killing and turning and growing in number.”

She nodded.

“I envy you,” I added. “I cannot turn off my hatred for them, my urge to kill. It is a rage, I—”

“Most cannot,” she shushed me. “Do not think the need is lost.” She bared her fangs at me. “We are Cruxim, our need remains. All hungers have a purpose. For us, it is the only way the Crux will be lifted from our shoulders. When Vampires are no more, only then might we truly be.”

I shook my head. “All I know is that I would kill a million times over to rid the Earth of their filth,” I growled.

“You might have to.”

“It sounds a sweet impossibility.” I shook my head. “To stop that terrible passion. What would drive me on without it? I crave their deaths. Without vengeance, there would be nothing but hollowness.” I sounded a monster even to myself, nothing but a killer. But memories of Sabine encased in gold, and of Beltran’s body hunched over Joslyn—dispassionate, controlling, raping—filled my mind. Even if he were dead, I knew I would hate him still. I would give my life to see him purged from this world.

“Peace,” Skylar suggested softly. “Perhaps without vengeance there is peace.”

She moved behind the row of shelves and vanished deeper into the cavern, down another corridor. “Milandor sought peace too,” she continued. “Yet you are right that, like us, without their mission they lack purpose.”

“Not if their purpose is only to live in peace. Not if they have forsaken the mission altogether.”

From ahead, I heard her
tsk
. Her voice, when it came, was brusque. “Theirs is not peace; it is cowardice. Jania says they want a love that exists free from the need to kill or to die. But fear, not peace, controls them.”

“I saw soldiers with them. Jania said they have fought before and won even against Silvenhall. What have they to fear?”

“Yes. Soldiers who train but do not fight. Do not mistake me.” She stopped and waited for me to catch up. “Their fear is not of Vampires, although they seem indifferent to the hunger. They fear not Silvenhall either. In Milandor, they fear only losing the ones they love.”

I reached up, feeling for the cross that hung around my neck, seeking its light in the darkness. “I know what terror that loss is,” I whispered. “It is the greatest fear. I would call them pragmatic.”

Silver eyes shone back at me. Pushing a strand of hair off her forehead, Skylar spun and continued on down the passage. “They are selfish,” I heard her mumble.

At the back of the cave, she hoisted herself onto a stone ledge, patting the seat next to her for me to sit.