Hallowed Ground

Chapter Thirty-Six

The Deacon feared his heart would burst.  The heat and the pain of the talisman seared his flesh and threatened to erase coherent thought.  He dug his teeth into his lip to buy himself a different pain, a distraction to give him strength as he fought to hold on.  Colleen held the child out to him, and the ridiculous cowboy, already a dead man with the poison of vipers flowing through his veins and the lead of his own bullets buried in his flesh, reached out to him as well.  It was pitiful.  Comical.

The intensity of the light washing over and through him felt as though it ought to have burned, but it burst through his skin and made contact with the earth beneath his feet.  It bathed him, and it bathed the child, it bathed Colleen, whose face had first gone slack with surprise and now glowed with shock and wonder.

The cowboy’s head dropped, and his grip loosened.  The light bathed him as well, but it would be a final experience before death.  The Deacon grinned fiercely and whispered the name again - the single word of power he’d changed in a ritual so ancient and powerful it transcended the boundaries between worlds.

'Remliel.'

The cowboy lifted his head, despite the blood draining from his wounds and the venom coursing through his veins.  Something important shifted, and if he could have, in that instant, the Deacon would have pulled back and away.  The talisman burst its bonds.  A beam of light pierced the Deacon’s flesh and joined him to the child.  It shot through the young flesh with the ancient eyes and found the cowboy as well.

The Deacon gasped, dragged air into tortured lungs, threw his head back…and screamed.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Creed felt the life seep out of him by slow degrees.  The snake bites burned like fire, and his grip on reality slipped.  He knew what it meant. He was as good as dead.  He had pierced the barrier, whatever it might be, but his bullets had fallen short, and then – like traitorous partners, had rebounded on him with lethal accuracy.  He thought back to the dark woman and the crow men.  He felt the locket burning like a shard of ice into the flesh of his chest.

The Deacon said something - something unexpected.  It shifted the ring of power and shot threads of light out into the tent, illuminating the faces of the crowd.  An arrow-slim shaft of light slammed into Creed’s chest.  It drove the locket back into him so hard it felt as though the circle of metal was embedded in his chest.  He raised his head, saw the look of exultation and triumph on the Deacon’s face, and felt a surge of power – bright, intense power – flood his being.

Something grappled with his thoughts, fighting for control, or to break free, but Creed seized the moment. He lifted both guns with reflexes like trapped lightning, snapped both triggers at the same time, and this time he drove his hands forward, drawing on the new strength that filled him.  The barrels pressed into the Deacon’s belly and when the hammers fell, there was sound.

Creed couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d last heard sound of any sort.  The twin reports brought a grin to curl the corners of his mouth.  The Deacon stared at him in shock.  Colleen gasped and staggered back with the child.  Creed felt another flash of light sear his soul.  It went beyond the flesh.  The locket and the bright golden light combined and in that instant Creed felt something snatched from the child -- something dark and squirming and vital.  It drove into him, sucked from the tiny form and pounded through the bright silver and the graven images.

Memories he’d never lived cascaded through his mind.  He saw the girl, Elizabeth.  He saw a town he’d never known, and a mountainside.  He saw a crossroads, and the dark woman, the woman who seemed to become an owl on a whim and whose servants were sometimes crows, sometimes men, sometimes neither.  He fought to control his mind, but another voice - a third consciousness - screamed and screamed and screamed and Creed staggered back beneath the onslaught of it.

Behind him, breaking the sudden silence like the sound of a thousand shards of shattered glass striking the earth, a voice spoke into the void.

'Well, well, well, what have we here?  Oh my, this is new.'

Creed turned.

He saw a tall man in a dark suit.  There was a watch chain dangling from his pocket, and his eyes were as dark as night.  Beside him, a woman stood.  She was dressed in leather, very much alive, and her eyes blazed with the manic intensity of a soul that had seen too much.  Creed felt the power in that gaze, the weight of her hatred.  He raised a hand to ward it off - forgetting he held the guns.

She drew and fired, and Creed closed his eyes in resignation.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Creed heard the duel roar of the woman's guns.  He felt the whisper of air across his cheeks, so wrong after the thunder of the shots, but it wasn't until he heard a pair of unearthly screeching screams that he finally shook free of the moment and moved.

He whirled around.  The crow men had crept up directly behind him and had been reaching out to grab him with their jet-black talons when her bullets struck – now they stood very still, stupid emotionless expressions on their predatory avian faces.  As Creed watched, the two staggered back, almost as one, their balance awkward as their knees buckled beneath them.

Creed didn't trust the reprieve.  He'd personally plugged at least one of the creatures full of enough lead to sink a boat, and they'd walked away – not to mention falling two stories to the street before taking wing.  This was different.  The girl fired again, and part of the nearest crow men's head exploded.  It screeched, turned, and tried to leap into flight but only managed to rise a few yards, before it veered crazily first one way and then the other, caught on the torn fabric of the tent's roof, and swung back toward the ground.  It hit with such force the ground shivered.  It did not so much as twitch.

The second crow man made it into the air, but the girl was unnervingly quick.  She dropped one gun into her holster with a slick spin around her palm and gripped the hilt of one of a series of wicked knives sheathed on her belt.  She whipped her arm forward and released the knife in one smooth motion.  The blade flashed end over end after its target.  It drove through the side of the thing's head, slamming into the bone with enough force to send it veering to the side, and ended its short flight in a desperate dive into the camp.

'Christ,' Creed said.

He spun back.  The Deacon still stood, lurching back and forth.  He clutched something at his chest, but somehow Creed knew instinctively it wasn’t his heart.  Without thinking Creed holstered his gun, unconsciously mirroring the girl’s motions, and lashed out.  He struck the Deacon hard in the chest, and at the same time he drove his hand down, parting the man’s hands, and snatched the thing he held from his grasp.  As he yanked his arm back he felt resistance, so he pulled all the harder.  The thong around the Deacon's neck snapped, and the pouch tore free.

Creed's hand snapped back, moving of its own volition.  His hand moved of its own volition and slammed the pouch into the spot where the icy cold locket still rested.  The sudden surge of energy that came with the contact rattled his teeth and sent him staggering back.

The pouch, suddenly limp and empty, fell through his fingers and hit the ground.  Out of the corner of his eye Creed saw the Deacon fall.  He felt his own balance begin to slip away from him, and he tried to turn, thinking that