The Deception Dance (28 page)

“Stop,” I plead, “Stop laughing.” But my
voice fails and he doesn’t stop laughing.

My chest convulses so violently my head hits the floor. The shadows
converge on the priest and his laughter suddenly ceases. I close my
eyes.

For a few seconds the world narrows down to the lines of pain webbing
through my body; then, a woman’s voice commands, “Hold
her still."

I pry my eyes open.

Mrs. Trandle, my childhood neighbor stands above me. She’s
alive?

Another woman is beside her, I can’t recognize her melting
features but her accent sounds Irish.

Two people are searing my arms with their fingers. I scream out in
pain. Something is shoved into my mouth.

“Swallow!” The Irish woman tells me. I know who it is
now, Madeline, Stephen’s
real
ex. “If you don’t
swallow that, you’ll die.”

I muster all my energy and spit the object out of my mouth. Someone
tries to pry open my mouth again but I manage to keep my teeth
clenched.

“Raven,” Mrs. Trandle says, her voice shaky, “That
man was not a priest, and you’re not going to heaven. You’re
going to purgatory.”

They try to open my mouth again but I clench my jaw. My eyes are open
but shadows consume the world and I see black.

“Soon her throat will be closed, you need to convince her,”
Madeline whispers.

“If you die and your soul goes to purgatory...” Mrs.
Trandle whispers, “Andras will start taking souls again,
thousands, maybe millions, of souls. Madeline is a
witch
,”
even in my state I notice she says the word with disdain, “She
can raise you from the dead, but only if you swallow her charm.”

My head flops from side to side.

“Promise her what you have to. It needs to be now!”
Madeline does not bother lowering her voice and it sears my ears.

“I promise...” Mrs. Trandle’s voice shakes, “You
will not be raised from death until your family is safe. We’ll
keep it from Andras, from everyone… everyone will think you
are permanently dead until your family is safe. I swear on my honor,
as a Christian.”

My jaw slackens and I let them slip the charm inside. Swallowing the
pebble sized charm feels more like choking down a boulder. The few
attempts it takes me, before I swallow, drains the rest of my energy.

The last thing I hear, while my throat closes, is Madeline saying in
a soft Irish lilt, “You know what’s comin’ right?
You know what you promised?”

I faintly register that Mrs. Trandle’s voice cracks when she
answers, “What I had to.”

And, I die.

Day Fifty-Five

Blink. Blink. Blink.

“LIVE!”

Bright. Dark. Light. Black. White. Black. Blackness...

My body is limp, I have no control.

An electric river, flows- jolts into me. My chest raises, jerk,
shock. Scream.

A blurry hazy face, an angel’s face surrounded in red
icicles. No, not ice, hair.
“Raven,” Her words frost
my ears,
“Can you hear me?”

Yes.

“Blink twice for yes.”

Blink, Blink.

“She’s back. Oh, dear God, Finally.”

I’m shuddering, shaking. I hit wood; it's on all sides of me.
Rough branches cut into my arms every time I convulse.

“Oh, curse of the crows! They’re coming! Look! Down the
hill!”
Irish voice, it’s the ice angel. “Hold
yer circle! Don’t any of you break the circle! Oh, I did not
want this, but we need her movin’, now!” Madeline, it’s
Madeline. She holds a knife above me and cries, “I’m so
sorry!”

The knife comes down, down, down. A streak of silver cuts deeply into
a tree beside me.

I scream as a new current of electricity floods in.

There is nothing but pain.
Nothing
... Every inch of me burns
with frost. I must be lying in a snow-melt river. Ice-crystals
consume my body then face.

I reach up to brush them off but there must be some type of weights
on my arms. Before my hand even raises an inch an ice whip coils
around my arm. No, not a whip, it’s fingers, Madeline’s
fingers.

She scolds, “You want a hole in your cheek? Don’t you
touch yourself now; your skin hasn’t finished… err...
recomposing
.” Then she says quieter, as if to herself,
“Just a few more minutes.” Her hand uncoils from around
my wrist. “You hold the circle now. Hold it!”

The world around me slams into focus; I’m in a nest of branches
and sticks. There are stars above me, the frigid air stings my eyes.
I close them.

Then, all the sounds of the night flood in, I hear chanting, many
people chanting. And there are other sounds, thunderous drums,
hundreds of them, beating a chaotic rhythm. The rhythm slows,
replaced with another fouler tempo; howls, shrieks and screeches and
screams. I know that sound, I’ve heard it before. It’s
the sound of...

The sound of...

Demons.

Madeline cries, “Damn. Close your eyes. Don’t look at
‘em. Hold the circle!”

The electricity dwindles and extinguishes. I’ll just lie here,
in the earth. I open my eyes, and blink against the sting. I wonder
if I’m finished...what is it she said?
Recomposing
?

“Damn!” Madeline shouts.

I want to brush away the thick layer of mulch and dirt covering me
but even pushing that away is impossible; the nearly weightless
substance is too heavy for me. I’m trapped under layers of
chopped wood; roughly hewn stumps and trunks.

“Good,” Madeline says, breathlessly. She shoves the
branches aside, brushes off the dirt and yanks me up by my arm.

I’m not ready for this…

I flop forward head leading the way, but she grabs me by the
shoulders and supports my body weight dragging me out of my nest.
She’s strong for such a little lady. My head lulls forward. I
fight to lift it and see...

Demons, on all sides of us.

Closer, five women, all in grey dresses with long hair like
Madeline’s hold their arms out to the sky making a circle,
Madeline and me in the center.

The demons stop inches from the women, beating at (and held back by)
some invisible barrier. Some are only the size of a large dog but
most tower over the women. Red eyes twinkle out of nearly a hundred
heads, some heads are scaly, or gray and slimy or shiny and black
like a beetle. The crowd blends together in my sight, almost as if it
is one giant gyrating mass, all sharp teeth, fangs, tusks and crimson
eyes. I blink to clear my foggy focus. I blink again. I can...
somewhat... differentiate them.

What I intend to say is,
‘oh, God,’
but all that
comes out is a wheezing sound. After a few attempts I roll my head up
to my shoulder.

A figure is fighting in the horde. He’s slashing and spinning
just outside the circle.

Madeline screams directly in my ear, “On three we break the
circle and run to Nicklaus!”

Nicklaus, my Nicholas. My friend, the demon killer. And that’s
what he’s doing, killing demons, maiming, dismembering...Hell,
yeah.

My head flops forward.

“One!”

Madeline shuffles backward toward the outer edge of the circle
dragging me along fire-fighter style. I kick at the ground hoping to
help with my limp weight; my legs bend at awkward angles and do
little to push me along.

“Two!”

Madeline hefts me up hugging me around the waist. We’re only a
few yards from Nicholas, but a demon steps to the invisible barrier
directly between us and the one-man fighting tornado.

The fiend is a full head taller than me, horned but with the head of
a bear, black and shiny, his red eyes twinkle down at me with hunger,
but I’m not sure for what. His lips split apart in a too-wide
grin exposing two lines of jagged teeth.

Madeline inhales sharply, “Bloody. Hell. Three!”

The chanting stops.

She pushes forward, straight at the massive smooth black chest and
outstretched limbs of the Demon.

I don’t have time, or the ability, to scream or fight Madeline
off. I don’t have an instant to think before she lunges me at
the Demon’s slick metallic-looking exterior. Right before I’m
sure we’re about to (literally) get the bear-hug from Hell, the
Demon leaps out of our path. The unexpected lack of obstacle sends us
tumbling forward, under several clawed swipes and a shiny blade. My
cheek hits something hard and black, it moves quickly away. I open my
eyes and peer at the offender; it was a boot, Nicholas’s boot.

“You take the sword. I’ll take her!” This is from
Nicholas.

Around me on all sides, hoofs, feet and talons shuffle back. Strong
arms slip under my knees and back lifting me from the wet slimy
grass.

“Ha...”
Yeah
, that was supposed to be, ‘hi
Nicholas,' but it didn’t quite work out.

Nicholas gawks down at me as if we’re not surrounded by a crowd
of blood-lusting demons; he stares at me as if I’m the most
frightening being here. He’s crying, actual tears wash off
streaks of blood on his face. He looks awful, bruised, bloody and
overall unkempt. He’s so different from any other time I’ve
ever seen him before, even when he was covered in Chauncey’s
blood he still managed to look sharp.

I want to tell him, ‘
you look awful,’
but this
time all that comes out is a gurgle.

I tip my head toward the demons. Their noise level hasn’t
decreased in the slightest but they aren’t moving. They’re
forming another circle around us, but this one isn’t as fixed,
their sheer numbers push the front-most demons forward, these fight
and claw to get away. The surging swaying circle gets tighter and
tighter as more demons crowd around. It’s as if they all want
to come at us but not one of them wants to be the one to attack.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Madeline, a blur of grey and red,
needlessly swiping her silver blade at the snarling, howling,
cackling ring.

“We need to move now!” She screams over the clamor.

“What about the others?”

“There are no others, not anymore!” She shouts. “We
need to be down the hill before the soul-bound...”

“I know...” Nicholas inhales and charges for one end of
the circle, Madeline stays so close I can feel her back at my
shoulder.

“Move. Move. Move!” She keeps up the chant like some kind
of freaky cheerleading routine.

The demons before us inexplicably fight to get out of our way. One
small devil-looking fiend actually climbs away over a boulder sized
demon-beast. Though their teeth don’t stop snapping and the
freakish-light shining through their red eyes never dampens, the
demons almost seem…
terrified
of us
.

Our movement is, at first, slow-going until a demon-fox does not
quite make it over the gyrating wall of monsters, his barbed tail
flicks out and nicks my elbow, stinging like nettle. The fox-demon
explodes, combusting into a cloud of ash in an instant.

Before the cloud of ash is sucked into the dirt, the entire mob is
trampling each other to stampede away.

Nicholas and Madeline don't even let out a sigh, they just sprint as
if what we’ve just escaped is nothing compared with what is
coming.

A star filled sky dimly lights the landscape; we are in a sloped
clearing at the edge of a lush forest. We rush by a few tree outliers
and continue onto a road that cuts into the hill. At the bottom of
the hill, a house shines almost too bright to look at.

Madeline screams, “Bloody Hell, they found us. Move!”

Even though we’re only about two hundred
yards away from it, and closing the distance, my eyes take a second
to bring the house into focus. The large brick cottage looks as if
the earth has mostly taken it back, all the way up to its thick
thatched roof. Incongruous with the houses earthy feel are the dozen
or-so men in full body armor wielding giant sci-fi-looking guns.
Their guns are all pointed forward at us. No...not at us, past us. I
swing my head to the other side to look over Nicholas’s arm.

A van speeds up the road, gaining on us.

Madeline exhales out a steam of profanity that is so Irish I would
have laughed if the situation wasn't so awful (not sure my lungs
could manage laughing right now, anyway).

The sound of gun shots whistle through the air. One of the armed men
has run forward and is nearly to us shooting at the van.

“Keep your position!” Nicholas shouts but the man doesn’t
hear him; he’s charging forward shooting at our pursuers.

That’s when I see them, following out of the forest close
behind the van, our very own demonic horde. The gun-happy man must
see them too because he halts and stays directly behind us, still
spraying bullets.

The moment we cross past the men into the flood lit grass, the shots
ring out. Madeline and Nicholas do not even pause.

At the door Nicholas turns around, and I see bodies littering the
ground. Human bodies, they barely made it outside of the van. Outside
the barrier in the shadow, only demons remain and they don't enter
the light.

Suddenly and intensely, my sense of smell returns. I moan and almost
heave (what, I’m not sure, since I haven't eaten since the
puttanesca). I manage to tilt my head up to look at what I’m
wearing, a used-to-be white dress that I’ve never seen before
and is about as filthy and foul smelling as an open sewer. I’m
sure the rest of me is no
picture of loveliness
either.

“Inside,” Madeline puffs out, pushing open a large blue
door.

Nicholas maneuvers me into the door and through an earthen space,
made entirely of cobble-stone and brick. Several people rush forward
as we enter, the only one I instantly recognize is Tobias.

“Stop!” Madeline raises her sword, warding off the crowd.
“Show us your wrists, now.”

One man objects saying, “We’ve already...”

She spins to point the sword at him. “Does it look as if I
care? Show me your wrists now, or get the bloody hell out of my
house!”