Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) (22 page)

Her voice was soft, and although part of me doubted her still, the fanning of her wings lulled me as I leaned my head back against the stone and listened.

“I told you once that we were older than man, Amedeo, but it was a half-truth.” She stopped herself, aware of the fragile truce between us. “Not of design,” she added hastily, “just that our origins are beatific, heavenly, but we are earthbound creatures, born of earthly acts.” Her eyes left the page and studied my face. “Have you read The Holy Bible?”

I shook my head. “Not entirely.” I had tried once, when I was very young, and then again in Barcelona when I committed Joslyn to the nunnery, into the care of the Maker.

“What can words on a page tell me of my Maker?” I explained to her. “The scribblings of prophets do not concern me.”  In truth, I did not think even men believed it. For all their angels and demons, few who saw me with their own eyes in the tower of Sezanne had thought me a thing of the Lord. “Life has taught me that men fear evil more than they aspire to do good.”

Skylar contemplated my words for a moment and then said, “There is a passage within that some believe to be the Maker’s word on justice. ‘An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth.’ We are that eye, Amedeo. And that tooth.” I saw the points of her canines pillowed against the crimson of her bottom lip. “We are divine retribution, Amedeo, in all of its folly. But the
Cruximus
is not like the Bible. It is not the word of the Maker; it is the memories of the Sibylim before us, a record of days past.”

She passed the book to me, her finger tapping on a passage. “Here. Take it. Read it yourself.” 

When I did not, she smoothed it open again on her knee.

“In the Beginning, before darkness entered the world, the Maker existed in Paradise attended by a choir of winged servants. Angels were beneficent creatures who were proud in their service to the Maker and were also the servants of the Maker’s greatest masterpiece and the most favored of all his creations—Man. So proud was the Maker of his creation Man that He bestowed upon him a great gift, one that he had not given his humble, loyal heavenly host. The gift of creation. Angels were filled with love and joy and harmony and good intention, but they were forbidden from enjoying each other’s bodies. Only men and women could join in love to conceive new life.

“The first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, grew daily in the Maker’s favor, enjoying the delights of the Earth that the Maker had made for them. Soon, the heavenly host, who served them, began to resent the gift the Maker had given humankind. They became enchanted by Eve’s beauty and by Adam’s virility. With their envy, the first sin was born into the world. The sin of envy consumed them, an unquenchable fire, until it drove Lucifer and a handful of renegade angels to leave the tranquility and peace of heaven for the Eden of the Earth. It was there that a Fallen Angel known as Sammael fell in love with the first woman, Eve.”

I could tell, by the cadence of her voice as she read, the fairytale quality of the words, that she knew the story almost by heart. It crossed my mind to stop her and to ask only for that which had brought me to Silvenhall in the first place: the Sphinx’s riddle. Then Sabine’s words replayed themselves in my head:
She did not tell you because she knew what it was to be a monster.

What good was the riddle to me? If I revived Sabine she would surely hate me: for what she was ... and for what I was.

“Sammael tempted Eve with his heavenly beauty,” Skylar continued. “And Eve was flattered by his words. She lay with him beneath the tree of knowledge, and thus was Eve’s nudity revealed to her husband, and thus was the curse of painful childbirth laid upon her and all of her daughters. Thus it was too that Eve, and wretched Adam with her, was cast from the Garden of Eden.” She stopped to draw breath, running her tongue over her lips.

“There was no apple?”

She shook her head. “The temptation was not knowledge but carnal knowledge. Eve’s desire for Sammael and his for her.” She smoothed the page again, tilted it into the light, and again began to read.

“The Maker loved his heavenly host, but Sammael’s treachery infuriated him. He smote Sammael for his sins and banished Lucifer and all other dissenters to the fiery realm of Hell, from which they might tempt mankind only in deed and never again in flesh.

“In time, Eve grew heavy with child. When her pains of labor bore forth offspring, it was not one child but twin boys—one she named Cain and the other, Abel.

“Only one of her sons, Abel, possessed the wings on which his angelic father had flown down to the Earth.” She fluttered her wings, which made a shushing sound against the rock.

“Adam both loved and resented the twin boys, for he saw they had been born of lust, of temptation, and deception, and of envy. Sin lurked in their blood and in their hearts.

“Of the two, he loved Cain more, for Abel’s wings reminded him always of Eve’s transgression and of Sammael. The Maker, however, loved both sons equally. The Maker considered all on Earth his children, and he knew that Abel, who had done no wrong himself, deserved a father’s love as much as Cain.

“Cain grew to be a farmer, and Abel a shepherd. Adam and Eve were proud of them and put their troubles behind them.

“In those days, the Maker walked among men and visited with them, and every year, to honor him and to ensure the crops grew strong in the fields and the herds were plentiful, meat and produce from Man’s toil would be served to the Maker at a great feast.”

Again she stopped. I sat up straighter, turning my head from where it rested against the wall.

“In the Crèches, we still observe the Feast of Remembrance.” She bit her lip. “Or we did. Now that I am exiled...”

She bit at a fingernail and then returned her hands to the book and continued.

“Both mortals and angels attended the feast—for Adam and Eve had other children by then too—and all would sup and dance and make merry, and lay before the Maker the best of their table.

“One year, Cain laid out his sacrifice of crops: plump ears of corn, pumpkins round and bright with goodness; nuts and berries from the soil and the bushes; rich, fragrant wine squeezed from the grapes; freshly baked bread studded with barley and herbs, and with it olive oil, green and piquant; and then sweet, fresh fruit from the vines, and honey the bees had conjured from the nectar of flowers.

“Abel, the shepherd and herdsman, set out his sacrifice, too: succulent, tender lamb rubbed with mint and herbs and cooked slowly over a fire; sweet fermented mare’s milk; and pressed cheeses kept cold in a running stream.”

It was what she had meant, I saw. We were all shepherds. I nodded my understanding.

“Seeing the cornucopia he had spread before the Maker, in comparison to Abel’s meat and milk and cheese,” she continued, “Cain was sure the Maker would dine from his bounty first. But the Maker had seen the gentleness with which Abel tended his sheep, the care he afforded them, the respect he held them in—even nesting in the stony hills, a lamb under each wing, to stave off the bitter winter. He had seen and felt the great pain in Abel’s heart when the time had come to slaughter them. He had seen how carefully, how respectfully, Abel had butchered the meat, and the thanks he held in his heart for the animals the Maker had given unto his care.

“‘I know what sacrifice it is to kill something you love so that others may live,’ the Maker said to Abel. ‘For I loved Sammael just as dearly as I love you.’”

I felt my heart constrict. Hadn’t I too sacrificed Joslyn for Sabine? Would I sacrifice Sabine, too, for Skylar?

She hesitated, perhaps noticing the fear in me, and then she bent her head back to the book.

“At the Maker’s words, Cain felt envy flood his heart and doubt and jealousy drown his soul. If it was such a great sacrifice to kill something one loved, Cain imagined he could make that sacrifice too.

“The next day, while others lay sleeping off the feast and the wine, Cain called for Abel to accompany him into the fields.

“There, he attacked him. Abel fought back, even biting his brother’s neck in an effort to throw him off, but he could not. As Abel’s death blood spilled over the land, it became barren and dry. Corn withered on its stalks and its kernels became a rain of hard pebbles. Vines curled and clawed the dry ground. Flowers snapped shut, trapping dying bees inside, and the nuts and the vegetables and the fields of rye rotted before Cain to leave a ribbon of desert stretched out before him.

“‘Father, forgive me,’ Cain cried out in terror.

“But the Maker said unto to him: ‘Cain, my son, envy and pride have blighted your heart, just as drought and destruction have stolen your farmlands and crops. You killed your brother not so that others may have peace or justice or food or security but so that you might feel loved, when all along I have loved you as I loved him, and all along you have had Adam’s love at your twin’s expense. That is no sacrifice. It is murder. All who walk on Earth or dwell with me in Heaven shall know this foul deed by the banishment I set upon you and by the mark of shame your brother’s teeth have scored into your neck. Evermore you shall suffer a crippling loneliness and hunger. Not crops, nor bread, nor meat, nor milk, nor wine, nor oil, nor seeds, nor cheese shall assuage your appetite.’

“‘Then I shall die most cruelly, Father,’ Cain lamented.

“The Maker replied, ‘You shall not die of starvation, for I shall not kill you, Cain, but let you live forever, wandering the Earth with no people and no nourishment so that you might remember that which your brother gave you: the taste of his sacrifice, and the knowledge that in your envy you spilled the blood of your twin. None shall give you food, for when they see the fiery gleam of your eyes, the paleness of your skin, the teeth sharp as those of the three-headed hound that guards the gates of Hell, and the bite wounds on your neck, they shall know that you are He, Cain, who bears the mark and the curse of the Maker and who has escaped hellfire only by the benevolence of a Father’s love.’”

Skylar wet her lips.

The words, though archaic, were lilting, and I shuffled my wings against the rock to stay awake. 

“And so Cain was banished. For his sons, Adam wept, and Eve repented again of her sins and the misery her betrayal had visited upon her family.

“Many years passed, and then many decades, and even centuries, until Adam and Eve and all of Cain’s brothers and sisters were dust and bones. But still Cain trudged the Earth, always starving, always hungering and never satisfied.

“Deep in the molten fires of Hell, Lucifer began to grow strong. Seeing Cain cast out, like he himself had been, Lucifer pitied him.

“In his lair within the dank, hot earth, Lucifer’s angelic radiance had attracted the lesser creatures, whose cold blood was warmed by his brilliance. The bug and beetle, the bat and the belly-crawling snake had become Lucifer’s companions. Still desiring his revenge on mankind, Lucifer sent the bat out into the world to seek out Cain.

“‘Cain,’ said the bat, its beady eyes aglow with hellfire, ‘you wander the world in hunger and yet the very thing that might sustain you is before your eyes, for the blood that your brother Abel spilled on the Earth is your damnation and your salvation.’

“Cain did not glean the bat’s meaning until the vampire bat continued. ‘I drink from the blood of the sheep and the horse, from the camel and the cow, and so do I survive to fly toward the heavens that Lucifer is denied. But I am just a small creature. The blood of a bigger being might sustain you, for the Maker never said that mortal blood was forbidden to you.’

“Cain, racked with starvation, said, ‘No man would give me freely of his blood, Bat, nor any women either, for all will see that I have the mark of Cain and will shrink away from me for fear of reproach.’

“‘Then let me drink from you, Cain, that I might become you, and you me. Together we shall bear down upon them as bats and drink from them.’

“And so Cain offered his neck to the bat, which drank of his tainted blood and grew greedy, craving the blood of humans. As the bat’s gluttony flowed into Cain’s blood, so Cain, too, became a bat with reddish eyes and elongated teeth and flew out into the night to seek his prey.”

Skylar gazed up at me to ensure I was still listening, and then went on. “His first victim was a man sleeping in a field. Cain’s hunger was so great, so consuming, that he drained the man in seconds and filled his little bat body to bursting, but still he needed more. With Bat as his companion, he sought more and more and eventually resumed his manly form, his teeth dripping and his veins filled with the blood of innocents, and following this frenzy, his great hunger was temporarily quenched.

“‘Bat, you were right,’ he said, ‘I am satisfied. How should I repay you for this kindness?’

“‘First, you must let me become one with your body when you feed, for I am too small to feed upon humans myself, yet their blood is so rich and so warming.’

“And Cain agreed.

“‘Second, you must pledge your allegiance to my master, Lucifer, who can offer you the love your Maker has denied you. You must be the Dark Lord’s loyal servant for evermore, for it is truly he who has bade me to teach you how to slake your thirst and satiate your hunger.’

“‘Of course,’ Cain agreed, and he bowed down to Bat and let him once more enter his body, and together the two flew to Hell to treat with Satan.”

I reached over and stayed her hand where it moved down the row of text. “It is as I thought: Vampires are the devil’s brethren.”

She nodded, then cleared her throat and read on. “The Maker was furious at Lucifer’s intervention and at Cain’s feasting on the blood of other mortals. Wrath consumed the Maker. His mercy for Lucifer and for Cain had only created another evil in the world, and he wished he had smote them both. However, the Maker had given his word that He would not kill Cain, and so He kept his word.

“Knowing he could not let Lucifer’s ravenous new monster destroy Man, the Maker raised Abel—the wronged, winged brother—from his century’s old grave. In repayment for Eve’s sin, mankind’s soul did not ascend to the heavens but at their death became one with the earth and the animals. After Lucifer and his Fallen Angels left heaven, none—not Man nor Angel—breached the divide between the earthly and ethereal realms. So the Maker took up the bones of Abel from the dust, and he blew his spirit into them until Abel was whole and radiant and alive once more.