The Relic (Cradle of Darkness Book 2) Read online

  Wing lifting, all touch retreated. Brightness broke through our private circle, causing me to squint at the unwelcome intrusion. Leaving me with the face of a man who looked disturbed, a bit angry, and even sad.

  A man with his outstretched wing folding at his back as if he were an angel, even though the wing was that of a creature from the pit. One propped up on an elbow, watching me in silence, bathed in sunlight.

  Minutes passed, with each tick of the clock my shame growing, though I was unsure what sin I had committed. Endless hanging silence that left me fidgeting and unable to hold his gaze.

  Unable to beat it another second, I muttered, “God cannot be a woman.”

  “And the world cannot be round. And humans cannot land on the moon. And evolution is not factually based because the most popular creation myth of this era had everything burst into life in seven days. But you don’t know that word, because you were raised as a practical slave under starvation conditions. It took you decades to learn how to write, picking up snatches here and there while you wandered from city to city. Famished for education, but female, weak, poor, and frightened. There is nothing evil about you. But there is evil in ignorance. Ask me how many verses of that bible I could quote to support my argument?” He reared back, haughty and grim. “Actually don’t. I have no interest in wasting my breath. You can’t hear, because you are broken. And I am gravely insulted by all you have said.”

  Why was I crying? Why were hot tears falling down flushed cheeks? “But you don’t understand. God cannot be a woman. He filled Mary with child.”

  “The immaculate conception? Winged angels in the sky at the birth of Christ?” Unfolding the wings at his back, Vladislov beat them against the air, raising himself from the bed as if to take flight. “Gift from kings who’d traveled far. Gold, frankincense, myrrh. All priceless items left at the feet of a peasant woman and her swaddled baby.”

  My mouth opened, but I was cut off by another beating of his wings and a louder riposte. “Just to make it clear in case you are not picking up on the subtle hints I’ve layered through this chat. Mary enjoyed my cock when we lay together. For birthing my offspring, she was rewarded with riches. And to many, I am a God. But the only God I worship has a cunny. And I know this, because I have seen you gloriously naked. Wordplay or no, I will not have you insult my Goddess, my love, or my tireless devotion. You will be educated, starting tonight. And you will meet with Yeshua in time and find yourself in a world so far beyond what you allow your mind to comprehend that you will hate me for it.”

  Crying all the harder, I put my head to my knees. This only angered the pacing tiger, who grabbed something and threw it to shatter against a far wall.

  On a roar, he demanded, “Tell me how to make this stop!”

  And I snapped. “Just hurt me already! I’m worn sick from waiting!”

  Lifting up an entire chifforobe in rage, Vladislov ripped it apart. No longer man in form, no longer rational. He broke the simple things in that creepy room, bellowing smoke and braying like a wolf.

  “Hear me, woman!” Demonic in person, in voice, on every level, that winged monster turned on me. “I will not. You don’t need a devil. You torment yourself enough to put the entirety of hell out of a job.”

  Chapter Eight

  Pearl

  What a mess…

  Not just the room, but my insides. Guilt I could not explain weighed on me. More than that, the things he said, about how long it had taken me to learn how to read. How I had drawn letters on brick with rocks. The decades of practice so I might have one redeeming quality.

  I too could quote scripture… verbatim.

  Misspeak and receive a strike with a cane across the shoulders.

  As a child, I'd memorized every part of the bible that made it clear to be female was to be evil. I could recite prayer with a rosary until my fingers bled.

  I could kneel on rice, be beaten with a stick, and be hung from a tree.

  I could be raped.

  But I could not navigate this world. Not that I had ever navigated my own well. Always hungry. Always ashamed. Always last in line and first under fire.

  Stick-thin, starving, lonely, waiting to be delivered.

  Waiting for exactly what now sat before me in ruins. A room with a window. Companionship.

  Food.

  As embarrassing as it was to admit to myself, I was tired of starving. Rats, stray dogs, bugs when I was especially desperate. Vomiting after a meal. Hearing the priests screaming the first time my fangs elongated.

  I had prayed for my entire life to be cleansed of my urges. I felt less.

  Because there was a whole world of things so beyond my scope that I just stuttered and drooled like the idiot I was.

  A demon had torn every last bit of furniture in my room to shreds. All save myself and the bed. I bore no scratch or bruise.

  That was a lie.

  My pride was heavily bruised.

  I worked hard. I loved to work hard. It was the only thing I’d ever been appreciated for. Never late, did the job without complaint. The model cigarette girl, or waitress, or cleaning lady.

  The very priest that came to offer me the Eucharist each day believed I was mad. I certainly felt it. But I could not forget the feeling of that weighted paper between my fingers, the script in my own hand. Penmanship I had copied from a discarded letter I had found in the streets.

  Penmanship of a lady of worth.

  Why did all the things in this house always get broken?

  Powdered wigs and mud, he said. Yet my costume was from my last years I could remember. Even the nightgown with its ruffled collar and plain cotton. I was the very joke he’d made. Cloche hats, sack dresses, a party in theme to the Roaring ’20s.

  Ridiculous in every way.

  Cold now that the inferno had left. After he had broken sad copies of my former cheap furniture.

  The whole room was so at odds with the rest of this penthouse. And yes, that was the proper word, as I had been corrected like the idiot I was, more than once.

  A veritable castle in a city I remembered but didn’t know.

  “Cigarette?” My calling card, my trade. A word that came easily to my lips.

  A thing that was out of fashion and deadly, not that anyone knew such things back then.

  Tobacco caused cancer. Which I would never have. Just like I would never age, and even starvation had not killed me. I was this forever.

  On a planet that was round.

  And apparently humans had walked on the moon. THE MOON!

  Staring at the wrinkled cotton of my nightgown, at exposed arms that were no longer barely bone and flesh… I didn’t know myself.

  And I should have.

  All I could think of for those three days I had hung from a tree as a child was how I was born of evil and deserved to die. But never did. The branch broke before I did.

  Darius raped me in body and mind, in so many ways I knew I could not remember. And I endured.

  Stupid, ignorant, a pointless decoration in the room.

  “Please forgive me.” Out of nowhere, he arrived, on his knees, his head in my lap as he sobbed. Those wings of his twitching with each massive inhale that stretched his ribs.

  Who asks the forgiveness of an idiot?

  And what idiot rests their hands on the shoulder of a weeping devil?

  I wasn’t afraid of the truth, even if I didn’t care for it, admitting, “I am as stupid as you say. I always have been. Stupid and sickly and starving.”

  Those eyes turned up, cracked black cheeks sparking with flame turning his tears to steam. “I was wrong… and foolish. As much as I hate your evil thoughts about yourself, I should have held my temper. But no soul has challenged me in ages, and I’m out of practice. This entire behavior was so beneath me and so unworthy of what you deserve.”

  What I deserved was that tomb, the journal, the notes, the rotting things within.

  The dark.

  “No, my love.” Monstrous
paw to my cheek, a thumb tipped in a curling claw wiped my tears. “You deserve the sun. I don’t care what God you think granted it to you. In fact, I should thank him, if it is indeed a man you see in God. For if you had been born human or Vampire, either way, once I had brought you back to my embrace, you would have lost the daylight. And now you can walk in both worlds, holding my hand.”

  A hand that dwarfed mine as he took it and brought it to his black lips.

  “And you can look the angel while I look your devil.” Another fervent kiss to my knuckles. “Lead me about by my nose.”

  Why was this breaking my heart? “But you are the devil.”

  “One who will learn to be good if only you’d love me.”

  Those eyes. Beast or man, no matter the shade or glow. I knew those eyes. “I do not want to talk to your Jesus, or sit with him, or know these things you know. I’m too tired.”

  “Lie down, my soul. Rest yourself under my wing. Sleep through the day, knowing I’m here.” Beseeching tears fell from his unwavering, weighty gaze. “Forgive me my temper.”

  There was only one answer for all of this. “I will sleep under your wing, if you take me back to my tomb.”

  And leave me there to rot.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your soul would sing in sleep, and I’d hear and be driven mad by it.” The monstrosity began to rise. “Even eternity entombed beside your corpse would not be enough to sate the beast. I need you. I need my soul. Order me about. Make demands. Hurt me. But thrive as you do so.”

  “You sound so—”

  “In love?”

  “Insane.” Yet I said it with a teary laugh.

  “Please. Let me beg. Let me grovel. Touch my face. See me.”

  And it should not have moved me as it did, but his pleading stirred my belly enough to remind me to breathe. “I do see you. The serpent in the garden. And I have been waiting for the apple.”

  “It was a quince in the first telling of that tale. And there also was no garden nor Adam nor Eve, but I will pretend there was if it will appease you. Tell me to lie, and I will do so.”

  “Your truths are unbearable.” And overwhelming, like walking over shards of glass.

  “You are tired, my love. You are overwrought.” It crept into the bed, the very bed I slinked toward the middle of to make room for the monster. “Sleep under my wing. Let me serve you.”

  He already stretched the massive appendage over the two of us, and I found myself having lain back upon the pillows. I accepted the dark. Because the rest of him did not touch me.

  I dreamed of Coney Island.

  I woke to smiles and joy. His joy.

  Grit in my eyes, dog-tired as if I had not slept a wink, I wanted to turn my face into the pillow and hibernate for a year. Or a thousand.

  “I think a long sleep would do you well.” It had crept closer as I slumbered, flush to my frame and having pulled me to his chest. “Which I will grant you. But considering the mistakes I have already made, I would be remiss in failing to offer you the chance to see your daughter marry her love. I cannot let you regret it later.”

  The same daughter I had learned of only hours before. On my first date. Where all the actions I had always fantasized about had been delivered… along with many so out of my scope I had neglected to enjoy a moment of it.

  “Seeing you—” Talons carded through my hair. “—it’s hard to restrain my enthusiasm to have you home. To have you so close and so untouchable. To crave. Show me pity.”

  His pleadings had gone from forlorn to wide-eyed and silly, as had the expression on the face of the hideous thing. And I found that I had fallen for it, smirking no matter how I fought my lips.

  “Three days? Three days, sleep. Three days, rest.” The beast melted into the form of a man yet kept those wings. Though it had not kept the tatters of its clothing. “And on the third day, rise.”

  Yawning, the thought of a three-day-long sleep divine, my taunt came out a tease, “You really are Satan.”

  Wind settling over me, shutting out intrusive daylight, he hummed. “And you do so love to call me names.”

  Already half asleep, I turned my face into the pillow. “I never liked my own, so it’s only fair.”

  This made him laugh. “I’m not surprised. You were always extremely difficult to please.”

  Which was utterly incorrect. “All I ever wanted was kindness.”

  “And you were so starved you fail to see it when it’s right before you. Even if the form offering it is hideous in your eyes.”

  When he sounded sad, it stirred me in a way I thoroughly disliked. But I was too tired to consider, already dreaming of evergreen forests when his awful lips scraped over my cheek.

  “Three days, Pearl. Then I shall wake you with a feast.”

  On the third day, I rose.

  In an entirely different room.

  To the sound of church bells.

  Chapter Nine

  Pearl

  The clothing hanging in a room called a walk-in closet was enviable. Gowns and blouses any working girl from my era would have spent their hard-earned pennies on. Out of date, yet still so beautiful I didn’t want to touch in case I snagged the fabric.

  A time capsule of the best years of my long life.

  The 1920s had passed a century ago. Yet I’d clung to them and been indulged.

  There was no mistaking that truth. Having been beaten, hung, drowned, shot, tortured, I still lived. And I was going to live forever. The more I imagined those immortals, those vampires, who wore mud or powdered wigs—how they failed to move forward out of insanity—the more I saw a reflection in myself.

  I saw it in the walk-in closet. In the cosmetics provided for me that were nothing like the advertisements on television. Cake mascara and rouge had not been used in decades, it seemed.

  I saw it in my unwillingness to wear a bra, opting for an “old-fashioned” step-in.

  I saw it each night when I dressed and looked in the mirror, my reflection, wearing clothes so beyond my means, so pretty, that any cigarette girl would have envied me.

  Yet there were no cigarette girls anymore.

  No one dressed this way save for themed parties.

  And I was doing it by choice.

  I—the hard worker, the adaptive employee—was stuck, stubborn, and willfully pouting about a world I had never been able to change. An ultimately pointless pursuit God would not approve of.

  “I need modern clothing so I can get a job.” Daring one last time, I touched one dress, a pale-pink number I admired and longed to deserve. “That restaurant with the terrible seafood platter had a sign in the window. They were looking for help. I could work there to pay for the clothes.”

  “I mean…” Vladislov sighed at my back, as if I had mentioned a topic he anticipated and loathed. “If you wish to work, it can be arranged. But the question of money? I have more wealth than the entire United States and continent of Europe combined.”

  “I like to work.”

  I felt the shrug in his words, imagined wings elongated in a careless flutter, though I knew he was in human form. “Many immortals do. I’d be the first to admit it’s a great way to immerse oneself. But, may I counter your suggestion with one of my own?”

  Turning so I might look at the person who’d woken me with a gentle kiss, to sacred bells of a church specially rung for me, to a priest speaking in French and a breakfast of pain au chocolat, I felt a bit beholden.

  No.

  I felt a sensation I’d never known outside of desperation. I felt grateful.

  Gratitude had always come from begging just so I might survive. With this monster, gratitude came like it was a normal emotion.

  “What do women wear? I’ve seen trousers. I’m not comfortable with that.” Considering the final decade I remembered was all about women breaking free, my sentiment was silly. Women had already thrown off corsets, shortened their skirts, cut their hair.

  Hell, I had
cut mine!

  Hell?

  I began to laugh. As did my host.

  “Husband.” A smooth voice paired with a smooth hand down my arm. “I am your husband, not your host.”

  Something in me bantered easily, was playful in a way I had never been with a man. “But we’re not married.”

  “My sweet soul, if a ceremony would please you, I’ll have us ‘wed’ in the grandest of fashions. A virginal white gown, veil trailing to be held by one hundred attendants.”

  Chilling as quickly as I had warmed, I thought of only one word. The one that stung. “I’m not virginal.”

  He pulled down the outdated dress I liked most, turning me to hold it before my frame. “In every possible way, you are a pure virgin deserving the crown of a queen… even if you want to hostess at a restaurant or wash dishes in a kitchen.”

  When he talked in such a way, I would blush. Felt it creeping up my cheek as I pretended to admire the upheld, beautiful dress instead of meeting his eye. “You mentioned a suggestion?”

  “University.” The tip of his human finger tapped my nose. “Join a sorority, eat pizza, and drink beer, go to parties and make friends. Take classes and expand the mind I already recognize as brilliant. Any subject can be at your fingertips. Work if you wish, but consider that study will be time-consuming. And I must be fair in stating that you will need tutelage before you might be admitted. I have a collection of wise minds ready to teach you, which might eat up years until you can quote Plato as well as you quote Psalms.”

  “You are teasing me.” He had to be. I was dumber than a rock. At least fifteen of my former employers had said so.

  “Uh, they are so lucky they are already dead.” A peck landed on my lips between his complaints. “Wear this pink number tonight. We can stay in and watch a modern movie if you want to leap forward into what's trending now. If you're feeling daring, we can watch the movie that has an entire planet of women overjoyed and salivating.”

  “But we're only at 1959.” Jumping ahead seemed forbidden! Yet at the same time… was there really any point in postponing the inevitable. What did women these days watch? I would see their mannerisms and clothes. Hairstyles, cosmetic trends. Perhaps this was the best first step. “I would like to see this movie.”