'Get thee gone, foul creature of Satan! Return to the grave from whence you came!'
'Reverend?' Elizabeth said softly, confused.
He took a step forward and brandished his makeshift crucifix. 'Begone, foul spirit! Leave us, or be destroyed!'
Elizabeth took a step back and the three advanced, gaining confidence as she faltered. She started to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Tears streamed from her eyes.
'She weeps like the virgin!' one of them cried.
'It’s a lie! A trick of Satan! Kill her!' another barked, and that sparked a roar of approval from the others.
He fumbled at his belt, and Elizabeth realized he was going for a weapon. She turned and ran, fleeing back toward the church. Sharp chips of stone dug into her bare feet, but she didn’t slow, and she didn't look back. She heard more voices now, others shouting to her pursuers. They fell away behind her, and she knew they were gathering.
She hesitated. If enough of them joined the group, she thought desperately, maybe someone would listen. Maybe someone could see the truth. She snorted bitterly. If the group laid hands on her she was as good as dead – again. They wouldn’t listen. They would be rabid, hungry for the kill. She laid her hand against her heart and felt it beating strongly. She was alive. She was no demon, no matter what they thought. She was the same girl she had always been. Surely she could make them see that?
These people had loved her . . .
She stopped running and turned. The mob slowed, coming cautiously toward her down the dusty street. Someone had brought out a torch despite the fact that it wasn’t dark – and she realized they meant to burn her. The flames flickered over his head, dancing in the breeze. They all spoke at once. Reverend Criscione called out to her, quoting lines of scripture. She had never found him particularly comforting, and now – with torch’s flame dancing off his sweat-coated face – he looked and sounded terrifying.
'Please!' she begged them to understand. 'It’s me! I’m alive! I don’t know what’s happened, but you must believe me. Please! Find my father! Find Benjamin – they will tell you. They will show you. I…'
A stone whizzed through the air, landing a couple of feet from her. She followed its trajectory, shocked, watching it bounce away harmlessly. Another landed closer. The third wasn’t harmless; it struck her on the thigh.
She screamed in pain. A fourth stone flew straight at her face and she raised her arms to block it, turning her face.
'Do you think they’d be so quick to stone their risen Messiah?' Balthazar’s mirthless voice echoed inside her head. She spun around looking for him. He would help her. He would stop this! He wasn’t there.
The air exploded with sound. A screech of rage blasted the silence. A dark form dropped from the blazing sky like a black bolt of lightning. It struck the fourth stone from the air inches from Elizabeth’s face, and then soared upward with a powerful sweep of wings, screeching.
'A demon!' Reverend Criscione cried, pointing. 'You saw it! A demon! She called a demon to protect her!'
'It looked like an owl to me…' another chimed in.
Elizabeth didn’t wait. She turned and fled. Blinded with tears she bit back on the pain and ran without a sound as the road tortured her feet. She ran as she’d never run in her life, back to the church, and beyond. She stumbled through the lichgate into the graveyard, running between the stones, and tripped, slamming her knee painfully into a gravestone. She lurched away from it and stopped dead in her tracks. Another step and she’d have tumbled into an open, empty grave. She didn’t need to look down. She knew what it was. She knew who it was for.
There was a wooden plank hammered into the earth to mark the plot. Scrawled across it in dingy whitewash barely visible in the sun, her name shimmered back at her. She sobbed and pushed herself away, moving through the graves more carefully. Behind her, she heard them coming, their voices drawing nearer. Without looking back, she ran on. Her breath came in deep, heaving gasps, but she didn’t stop. She knew there was a narrow path beyond the graveyard, and that it curled down the side of the hill to the gulch. She looked up. The sun was still high in the sky. Night was maybe an hour away. If she reached it there would be places to hide. They might not follow her across. Not in the dark. All she had to do was wait for the night.
She found the trail and started down. It was more overgrown than she remembered. She moved as quickly she could, wriggling between the trailing branches and trying not to cry out as limbs slapped at her and roots cut into her feet.
The voices seemed more distant now, disembodied, as though she were gaining ground. She forced herself on, stumbling down and down the narrow track.
Something cried out above her. She spun and stared up through the trees, trying to see what had made the sound, but could make out nothing through the thatch of branches overhead. As she turned back to the trail, the strap of Benjamin’s pack snagged on the stub of a branch. She tried to yank it free, but the branch refused to surrender its prize. She pulled hard again, so hard she lost her balance and started to fall. She waved her arms wildly, trying to find her balance, and the pack tore free. She stumbled back, almost made it upright, and then lost her footing completely and plunged over the edge of the gorge.
She heard the inhuman scream of a great bird, and her mind went blank.
On the cliff above, Reverend Criscione and the others watched as a great dark shape rose, silhouetted against the failing sun, and then – without warning – disappeared.
The ground beneath her back was cold and hard. Stones dug into her side. Her head spun. Somewhere inside she lost herself, who she was. Her eyes were gummed shut with the grit of dust and sleep. She rubbed at them with her knuckles and opened them.
She screamed.
A man stood over her, a strange man with coal black, furtive eyes that glared at her with such inhuman intensity it stole her breath and stilled her scream. His nose was oddly narrow, his eyes set close to the prominent ridge. A dark tangle of hair sprouted from his head in a wild tumble, glossy and blue-black. He wore a hat, and a long dark coat that fluttered up and created strange shadows around him. It wasn’t like any coat she’d ever seen.
Elizabeth tried to back away. The cotton gown hung off her in tatters. Somehow the ragged clothing made her feel more naked than if she'd been wearing nothing. She tried to wrap it around herself, but the man leaned down and, with one powerful yank, stripped the remnant from her body. It fell about her feet in tatters. He stared at her. His glare was hideous and uncomfortable but there was no lust in it. Still, she tried to cover herself.
That was when she noticed.
She didn’t understand. It was wrong.
Horrified, she looked down and instead of seeing her bruised and bloodied feet, saw her belly. It was round and full. She clutched at it, trying to make sense out of what she saw. Elizabeth shook her head, working up a scream, but the man leaned in, tangled his fingers in her hair, and shook his head. She stifled the cry. Her eyes swam with the madness that threatened to take her.
She's fallen. Surely it couldn't have been more than a few moments since then? She'd lost her grip, slipped and fallen from the narrow cliff edge into the gulch. Images and memories warred for control of her mind. Mariah and Elizabeth grasped the frayed ends of her memories, each trying to weave a different picture and both falling short of their shared reality. She heard trailing wisps of Balthazar’s insidious whisper echoing through her brain, and the visions he’d shown her complicated what her mind told her had to be true. She had been pregnant, and her child had been taken. She had been Elizabeth. Her name was Mariah.
She had fallen but she hadn’t struck the ground – she had been snatched out of the air and borne up by something huge, and dark. She was pregnant. Her name was Elizabeth, and she had been dead. When Balthazar found her she’d been on that doorstep a second time. Was she alive at all? Was this hell?
She sat up, groaned at the sudden pressure this put on her swollen belly, and tried to rise. She didn't have the strength. She ached all over. A sharp pain on her forearm caught her attention. She glanced over and saw long, deep welts scored into her soft flesh, as though she'd been gripped too tightly in gigantic hands. Or talons? A wave of dizziness swept over her. She saw the ground falling away with sickening speed, felt the darkness swallow her and the wind suddenly lash against her face. Whatever had taken her had gripped her arms and its grip had not
