Mathieu Read online

  “Why so much effort, then?” She lifted an aching arm to encompass the room and everything in it.

  He snorted, a most undignified sound in what looked to be a holy place. “I rebuilt this. I realize you do not know, but long ago there was a hermitage here. The monks came here and built here with their own hands and lived a life of holy solitude. The monks would go years without seeing another soul. People would leave food and other goods in exchange for prayers.”

  “I’d heard the stories about the holy men who lived here when I crossed the mountains with the army on our way to the Holy Land years ago.” He absently stroked his thin beard as he continued. “The monks were long gone, of course. But I found some ruins and stacked stones and made the cross and all with my own hands so that I might partake in their peace.”

  “But why,” Jenn asked while looked around for her pack, spotting it in the corner. “Why all this work if you won’t pray?”

  He reached gracefully over to her pack and placed it in front of her—again very careful not to come close. “At first the work soothed me, I think. Then the quiet of the place did as well. I was crazed with the world’s pain when I arrived, and here there is no one or no thing that can hurt me.” He placed another piece of wood on the fire and then went back to his far corner. “Nor can I hurt anyone. This place is a sanctuary, a place of healing.”

  “Yes. I can see that. It’s beautiful.” She looked around, noticing the small details that only firelight could bring out—the shading of the stones, the whorls and knots in the wood, the shine of his eyes as the flames flickered.

  He shook his head and corrected her. “No. It’s empty. Soulless, like me. No matter what I do, I cannot bring God to this place or to my heart. God is dead to me. Gadreel made sure of that.”

  Jenn focused on the cross in the front of the church. “What do you think about up here by yourself, then?”

  “Redemption.”

  She nodded and then asked quietly, “Do you dream of it?”

  “No. I remember when I lost all hope of it.” She watched as his eyes grew distant while he watched the fire.

  Chapter Six

  It was hot. Hotter than anything he’d ever felt before in his life. His mail chafed and burned his skin through his underthings, and the horse under him seemed to radiate even more heat into his body. The fortress stood above him, red-brown in the shimmering heat. Madness, he thought. Madness to attack such a great fortress with such a small army. But surely God wills it, and with God on our side defeat is not possible.

  Mathieu adjusted his shield and kissed the hilt of his sword. He’d been told that in there was a finger bone of the family saint, Bertrand, who had been killed in a flaming wheel of death for his piety. Surely that saint would protect him now, even if Mathieu were nothing but one of many bastard sons of a great and powerful man.

  The Saracen host in front of him writhed and leapt, crashing against the army of Christendom. The sound of metal clashing and horses screaming reached him long before the fighting did. He still put spurs to his steed to race headlong into battle, screaming for the righteousness of the cause.

  “Dieu le veut!” The battle cry touched him to the very core, to the depths of his soul. To regain the Holy Land from the infidel would mean everything, and would bring salvation to sinners even as egregious as Mathieu, erasing the stain of his birth. Gaining his fortune and with that, the hand of Yvette, would only add to his glory.

  He had been told that dying while fighting for the Holy Land was a sure path to Heaven, had even been shriven this morning. Somehow that thought did not comfort him when the lance tore through his mail, driving the rings deep into his flesh and ripping him open. It certainly didn’t comfort him when his horse then floundered under him, falling and pinning him as the battle raged on and over and around him.

  After a time, time flowed strangely and the fighting moved elsewhere, leaving Mathieu alone to face his death. The carrion birds fluttered around him, unconcerned at his flailing attempts to keep them away. There was much to feast on here, and soon he would be dead. After a while he didn’t even have the strength to whisper prayers through his parched and bleeding lips. Not even the smell of death and corruption reached him.

  The knight appeared before him as he gasped in pain, lungs filled with fire and dust. The strange knight’s armor was a lurid red, his horse black as night with hooves of fire. A squire followed on a mule close behind, a strange old man with empty eyes and a rusted iron chain of four long, curved links welded around his neck. He didn’t notice at first that the old man was naked.

  “Ah,” said the knight. “I felt you here and wondered if you would live long enough for me to find you.”

  Mathieu could only shake his head weakly.

  “Of course you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” The knight took off his helm and beamed down at the dying Mathieu. Golden hair haloed a beautiful visage that was only enhanced by piercing blue eyes.

  “An angel,” Mathieu croaked through blistered lips as he looked up at the knight. “You’re an angel come to take me to Heaven.”

  “Something like that. But not quite.” The knight smirked and did something with his hands that Mathieu could not follow for the darkness rushing in around him.

  Chapter Seven

  “I need your help.” Jenn cleared her throat and spoke again since it seemed that he was lost in his own thoughts. “I need your help.”

  “No.” He didn’t even look up at her; he was lost in the fire.

  “You don’t even know what I want.” She scowled despite her best effort to keep her face blank.

  “I know that I can’t leave this place.” He sighed. “The world has too much pain, too much hurt for me to go back into it. I cannot bear it and I could not bear hurting others because of it.”

  Jenn shifted forward. “You’ve been up here for six months. Did you think that maybe you need to stop hiding and start living?”

  “Hiding keeps me away from that which makes the darkness stronger, and from those that would call to the darkness and use it for foul purposes. I am what Gadreel made me. I cannot change that, much as I wish I could.” He hugged himself as he looked at the floor. “I cannot die, not for lack of trying. I cannot live, for that would make those around me die. I am best kept here, far away from the world and those who live in it.”

  She sighed and tried again. “You owe me.”

  He was silent so she pressed her advantage. “You told me you owed me a debt. What kind of noble are you if you don’t honor that?”

  He turned and looked at her, cocking an eyebrow. “I would hardly call myself a noble.”

  She smiled. “I found you, Mathieu de Bourguel. The blazon on your surcoat led me right to you. I found where you were born, I found where you lived and I found where you died. You went to the Holy Land on Crusade. You died in the Battle of Acre.”

  “But I didn’t die.” He smiled back, but his smile was painful.

  “Everything I found says you did,” she retorted.

  “Many things that were said to happen never did. Everyone knows that Troy burned because of a stupid prince’s love of a beautiful woman, even though Demonkind started a war so they could feed on pain, misery and death. Wars have torn this world apart, have made brother kill brother, father kill son, neighbor kill neighbor, all so Gadreel and his kind could feast.”

  “So what happened to you?”

  “Me?” He shrugged and waved around him. “This happened. I took a gut wound and thought I was going to die. I prayed to die from the wound and not the mortification. Not even with my grievous sins did I think I deserved that agony. When I woke I was not dead, no matter how much I wished I was.” He sat heavily on the other bench. “And I wished mightily for a long, long time that I would die. But Gadreel would never allow such a thing.”

  She nodded for him to continue, but he only shook his head and spoke. “You found me. What do you want from me?”

  “One of us has
been taken by one of…those things. Like Gadreel.” Jenn pulled a picture from her jacket and passed it to him. He looked at her hand as if it were a venomous snake and then took the picture, being very careful to not touch her fingers. “Her name is Amanda. She’s a good friend of mine.”

  “I am sorry to hear this. Deeply sorry. I would not wish this on the foulest person on Earth.” He looked at the picture and frowned. “But you have not said what you want from me.”

  “I want you to help us get her back from that thing and help us destroy it. We don’t know how to, but you’ve shown us that it’s possible. I want you to help us save her.”

  “No. If she’s been taken, it’s already too late.” Mathieu shook his head and handed back the picture with the very tips of his fingers.

  ”You’re one of her ancestors.”

  He froze and then frowned. “Impossible. I can assure you beyond a shadow of a doubt that I fathered no children before I met Gadreel.”

  Jenn raised an eyebrow at his wording but pressed on. “No, but your cousin Yvette de Argenton married Thierry de Viehel and produced several children. We’ve traced the family and found that Amanda comes from that line.”

  “So you… she married that pig after all? He was a horrible man. I pray he treated…” Mathieu shook his head and paused, “I hope she was happy.”

  “I have no idea,” Jenn answered brusquely, not meeting his gaze. She instead focused on the picture in her hand. Amanda was an old friend, willowy, blonde and blue eyed. She was beautiful and glamorous and witty, everything Jenn wished she could have been.

  Except now Amanda had been taken by God only knew what and was trapped God only knew where, and the only one who could save her was sitting in front of her refusing to come off his mountain.

  She looked back up at Mathieu. He’d gone pale, probably at the thought of leaving his sanctuary. She frowned. “We need your help. I need your help. You owe me.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “You realize that time moves differently There, don’t you? What seems to be days to you is weeks or months or even years to those trapped over There?”

  Jenn narrowed her eyes at this information. “No. I don’t even know what There is. ” She sighed, shook her head and repeated herself. “That’s why we need you. That’s why I need you. That’s why Amanda needs you.”

  Mathieu raised his eyebrows. “There is where Demonkind live, if you can call their existence that. I would call it Hell, but Hell would be more hospitable.”

  “She needs your help. I need your help. Please Mathieu, I’m begging.”

  Mathieu stared at her, his eyes glowing amber with reflected firelight. After a long silence in which Jenn read in his eyes the deepest despair she’d ever seen, he blinked and looked away. “Begging does not suit you. All I was has always belonged to you.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “I swear that I will help you as much as I am able. But you need to understand that she may already be lost.” He shuddered with some dark memory. “Do you know what has her?”

  “Something like Gadreel. The energies it left behind were similar to what we found in London.”

  He sighed and then took a deep breath, drawing strength and courage from some unknown place. “That doesn’t tell me enough. We should move quickly.” He paused and then cocked his head. “Is she strong-minded?”

  Jenn looked down at the picture in her hand. “I’d say so. She’d argue with a doorknob. Just ask her father about how little she wants to do with her birthright.”

  “Hopefully that stubbornness will be enough to buy her the time we need.” Mathieu didn’t sound confident as he rose to his feet. It seemed that the motion drew the firelight to him. He glimmered in the shadows, his eyes still shining with reflected flames. “We’ll need to leave now to make the best of the light. Time is of the essence.”

  Chapter Eight

  Mathieu breathed in the thicker air as they descended. It was full of scents, each cloying in its own way. He could smell the resins of the evergreens around him, but there was a faint underlying scent of machine oil and of humanity.

  The first reminded him of his youth, the second repelled him, and the third drew him in with the promise of pain and sorrow, food for the darkness within.

  He’d tried so hard to run from, to ignore those urges. But he could feel them uncoil under his skin at the promise of a feast.

  “Are you okay?” Jenn’s voice was low, quiet in the stillness. He could tell she was hurting, the pain radiating from her in a delicious aura.

  “I’m fine.” He answered automatically as he choked down the darkness. Not her. Never her. You will never hurt her or anyone she holds dear, he told the darkness as he kept walking.

  He wasn’t fine. The trip down the mountain was disorienting. When they’d passed through his wards he’d drawn them back into himself, absorbing their power and erasing all traces of their existence. It was an odd feeling since they’d been up so long they felt as if they’d grown independent from him. Now he was walking back into a world he’d tried to forget existed.

  “You’re not fine. I can tell.” Already she knew him again, it seemed.

  He paused. “No, but I will carry on. Do I have any other choice?”

  She was silent at that.

  They trudged together towards the people who waited for them. She’d been much slower than he’d expected on the way down, her blisters and the thin air catching up with her. They would be caught in the dark before reaching her camp. He wasn’t worried about himself, but he could tell by the sound of her footsteps that her she was in pain. Her tread was shorter, faster. She was putting as little pressure as possible on the balls of her feet.

  He finally spoke after hearing her softly gasp in pain on the last stretch of terrain. “Why did they send you up here if you had no experience in climbing? Did they not realize how badly you could hurt yourself?”

  She paused behind him. “It’s not as bad downhill. Really.”

  “Liar. It’s worse. Remember, I marched through these mountains before there were good roads.”

  “I think I hurt more than you did. Nothing personal, but this is a total bitch.”

  He snorted and stopped. “You need to rest. Stop. Sit.”

  She dropped down, gasping for breath. “We don’t have time to waste on my weakness.”

  “And you will waste even more time if you sicken or injure yourself in your haste. A few moments of rest will not change your friend’s situation.” After a few moments of silence he spoke again. “I can feel your people below us. We’re close now. Do you think you can make it?”

  “Do I have any other choice?” Her voice was tired and ragged, the mockery of his previous question subdued in her pain.

  “Not really.” He looked up at the sky through the trees to judge the daylight left. There wasn’t much, but they couldn’t stop now.

  Tonight the stars would come out. Their cold, white light would glimmer down at him, unchanged since his childhood. He’d learned long ago that the stars were each suns, but far, far away. Some of them even had worlds of their own, some like Earth with people and Demons of their own. Gadreel had told him that at one point, he remembered.

  He knew if he squinted hard enough, he would be able to see the curve of infinity, and beyond that was There.

  Chapter Nine

  It was cold. Mathieu woke shivering. The heat of Acre was gone, replaced with a deep chill that made his bones feel as if they would fly apart into a million pieces at any second.

  The chains around his wrists were colder than the air, which seemed impossible. They burrowed into his flesh, down to his soul, and made him ache.

  He was naked as the day he was born. He looked around and the world was gray; gray and flat and so horribly cold. There was nothing here but the place he was and the chains around his wrists that held him in the middle of a strange circle inscribed in the dead earth.

  “You’re awake. Good.” The Angel was there and Mathieu breathed in relief. A quic
k glance at his middle showed that his wounds were healed, the wound from the lance nothing but a small faded red line.

  “Am I in Heaven?” Mathieu asked as he made his way to his knees, the chains around his wrists making a sweet chiming sound as he moved. “Is this a test to prove if I am worthy of seeing God?”

  “A test?” The blonde angel laughed easily. “I suppose you could call it that.” The angel gestured to the squire and Mathieu cocked his head as the old, withered man with empty eyes walked forward.

  “Damonn,” intoned the angel, “remind me of what I’m supposed to do now. You know how I am about these things.”

  The old man looked at Mathieu then for the first time, really looked at him. His gaze was filled with pity for the briefest moment, and then blank again. “Master, you are to force this one to you with as many of the five bindings as you can. You will then take from me all that you have given me over these many years and force it into him so that he may serve you as I have served you. I have drawn the circle as you commanded. Once this is done, you must destroy me before my body fails and all that you have worked for is lost.”

  “Ah, yes. Thank you, Damonn. You’ve always been a good slave.” The angel advanced towards Mathieu, its beautiful visage changing, melting away with every step.

  By the time that the Angel reached Mathieu’s side, there was no beauty to be seen.

  With a cold but hot hand, the Angel pushed Mathieu onto his back with an evil smile. “I like my slaves pretty,” it said as it ran its hands over Mathieu’s face.

  Mathieu screamed as bones shifted under the profane touch. The pain was overwhelming, making the borders of the gray world red and black at the edges of his vision.

  As quickly as it came, the pain was gone. “That’s better,” the Angel spoke again. Mathieu studied the Angel’s face and eyes as the creature spoke again. “Pain, Fear, Blood, Sex, Love. I know I can get four of the five now. And I’ll bend you to the fifth one soon enough.” The angel licked its lips and smiled.