Torn red silk splattered with crusted guck, rotting matter, grass stains, and the acrid stink of fear-induced sweat. One tit hanging free. I was anything but a bride. “You want me to lie.”
He shook his head, long hair waving in a way that was far too familiar. “I want you to admit what all of us who have seen you already know. My father isn’t here, so grasp this moment in which I keep him away. The acknowledgment can be between us. Torment him for all eternity as he seeks out your favor. He deserves nothing less. But right here, in this garden, you and I will come to an understanding. Take him as your husband, and you’ll save more than just the boy.”
Fine. I’d trade the only currency I had if that boy would be laid in my arms. Vladislov could have my body and a troth. He would have taken both anyway. “He’s my husband.”
“Are you his soul?” The question was breathless.
“No.” Yes.
Relief fell from the lips of a man I never wanted to see again—a man I wanted to get to know, whose knee I wanted to cry on—who was no different than his father.
And it seemed their agenda was not much different either. Though from where I stood, both of them were blind to that truth.
The family squabbles that would happen over the table would be interesting.
Jade and Malcom would watch them bicker, and I wondered if they would see it too.
Leaning forward to whisper atrocities in my ear, Jesus told me where my son was tucked away. Why he was there. How many I would have to kill to get him.
I didn’t scream. Not then. What would the point be? I didn’t rage at God for the unfairness of what had been done to a child. I simply nodded and turned away from the son of God.
And entered the Cathedral.
The path before me, it was as if I had walked it a thousand times. Those who dared come near a mother seeking her child I killed with surprising ease.
And I drank.
And they ran screaming when the carnage in my wake was discovered.
Vladislov had made me strong. God had designed me to be deadly. Darius had wrung the goodness from me. And I had agreed to be wife to the Demon who controlled the world.
Glassy-eyed humans in pens, deep under the rot of the twisted church. Hundreds, thousands in the catacombs. They didn’t speak at the sight of my blood-soaked body as I passed by. They didn’t ask for help.
Their minds were mush, their state hardly above that of an animal.
Though I could have, I didn’t help them. I wasn’t there for them. I didn’t even acknowledge them.
My mind was filled with the glowing beauty of a towheaded child that had his own pen, his own rags, his own snarling rage.
I tore the bars of his door right from the stone, bent metal… as if it were a simple task.
Scooping up a wild beast who tore into my throat in his hunger, I grew complete.
I sang as I rocked him, until the drowsy thing had a full belly and I had a sleeping child in my arms. His head lolling against my shoulder, I carried him away from his suffering. I bore him out of the desecrated Cathedral straight out into the world.
My son.
He smelled of poison ivy, of birch, of blood, and of fire.
The sun rose as he indelicately snored. And he nuzzled against his mother, a stranger who wanted him.
Vladislov did find me in time, resting on a park bench, curled around my boy.
A boy he looked upon as if he saw through the pretty, filthy shell. Smiling, honest, Satan held out his arms to take the burden from me. I allowed it.
Cradling the still sleeping little one, he waltzed slowly around, humming a few bars. Our eyes met, my husband asking, “Can we keep him?”
Forever. “Yes.”
“What bliss!”
Chapter Twenty
Vladislov
The boy lying fast asleep upon the bed was an angel. Well, at least angelic in appearance. I couldn’t even blame Pearl for falling in love with him at first sight.
Parted lips and apple cheeks smeared with dried blood, on an utterly cherubic face. He smelled of my wife, the same wife seated beside him as she continuously petted his matted, pale hair. I don’t think the little thing had ever been bathed, not that I had any intention of poking around in his wee brain until greater topics had been sorted.
“Pearl, my darling, beloved wife, I’m angry with you.”
Her hand stilled, just as filthy as the boy lying atop a pricy silk coverlet. It hovered, the tips of her claws unable to fully retract with her young near and a very real threat looming beside them.
“Don’t think I can’t see how you seethe, trying to hide it because the fate of the boy matters more to you than your pride. And I know why you’re angry too. I can see that as well.” Stooping down so my lips might brush her ear, I growled, “I can see right through you.”
She didn’t have an answer for that. How could she after the night she’d lived?
My Pearl may have refused the perfectly wonderful bath of blood I’d prepared with love, but she had bathed in plenty of blood on her own.
Drenched. I found her sitting in a human park in broad daylight looking like an extra from a horror flick. Rocking a small child in her arms, too taken with him to notice the looks she was garnering from the locals.
True to human form, no
