Revenant Eve (60 page)

She shook her head. “I felt it was wrong to walk away from the Place de Greve. Now I
know
it was wrong. I feel even more strongly it is wrong to take any life.”

“They want you doing that,” I said. “They like violence.”

“But those things are vile,” Jaska said. “Evil and ugly.”

Aurélie looked down. “The last time I heard these words, or words very like—
black devils, ugly, they don’t know better, they need the whip to make them work
—it was said about
us
.” She laid her hand over her heart.

Jaska flushed to the ears.

“We all made that mistake about the demon-spawn,” I said. “And I
am sorry for my part, but there’s the forest of maples, though I wonder how much of what those seraphs told us is true. But yes, we do have to check,” I said hastily as both began to speak. “However. Without the amulet, which Mord has, how will we find her? I’m trying to see her, but I don’t know her, really—no affinity—it’s not working.”

Aurélie had been scowling at the forest of maples. “All I see is trees.”

“And so it is with me. We have to fetch Mord back,” Jaska said in a low, determined voice. His face was tight in that stricken, sickened expression of someone who understands too late how badly they’ve stepped in it.

Ruli had said that anger and violence fed the demons, but I was still ready to kick the first one I saw. Guilt, regret, betrayal. Three emotions I really hate.

“Think ourselves at the cathedral. Don’t give ’em the chance,” I said.

Guilt might have driven us, but suddenly we stepped off the bridge, and there was Nôtre Dame, from which drifted the rise and fall of plainchant, the Latin soothing and melodic as it promised forgiveness and redemption.

Not five hundred yards from the church entry, there were the hordes, squealing, hopping, lumbering, weapons waving in the lurid red and purple light.

Jaska gripped his sword, but Aurélie put out her hand. “Wait.” Her forehead was taut with tension, her lips compressed. She began to glow with that blue-silver light: the necklace.

“Go free,” she said in French, and in stumbling Latin, “
Animas vestras sunt liber, ire in libertatem.”

Your souls are free, go in freedom
.

Red eyes, green-glowing, yellow, snake-pupiled and black, lidless and bulging, the demon-spawn gazed at her, then some scampered and scuttled off into the darkness, squealing and howling in triumph. Others waved weapons and advanced menacingly, maybe confused, but definitely angry.

Jaska gripped his sword, stepping in front of Aurélie. Wrong it might be, but he was going to defend his lady.

“Did you expect gratitude?” came Uriel’s beautiful voice. “Command gives them purpose.”

Aurélie did not answer, nor did she need saving. The light intensified to an eye-watering radiance, and the uglies and the fake angels stayed well back of it as we slowly walked to the cathedral. The presence of the necklace might have drawn the demons to us, but they could do nothing to it, or to any of us in proximity to it.

We reached the steps. We reached the narthex, then the nave. The plainchant enfolded us, and Aurélie staggered then straightened. Jaska and I each took one of her hands. “It’s nothing, I was dizzy,” she said, her deep voice huskier with strain.

We hustled into the bell tower, through the jello, and back into the emperors’ crypt in Vienna.

Aurélie lit the way with the necklace, throwing back the shadows to reveal the baroque glory of Maria Theresia’s and her emperor’s sarcophagi.

Aurélie and Jaska paused, staring at the sarcophagi, and I knew what was hitting them: the reminder of Time. The
memento mori
, a young couple (one royal, the other about to be) gazing at the remains of another royal couple, aware of their youth and beauty, so fleeting.

“We could stay,” Aurélie whispered.

Jaska shook his head. Just once. For him, there was no choice: He would go back to the uncertain world, where he was maimed in one leg, where he would grow old and die, because that’s where his responsibilities lay.

Aurélie gazed up at him. She didn’t say anything, but I saw the way her fingers tightened on his.

They’d made their choice, and so had I. Like there had ever really been a choice, in spite of the craziness of my dancing, of the stage.

All the more reason to appreciate every moment we get with one another
, I thought, the longing to see Alec so strong I felt it in bones and nerves.

“As fast as we can,” Jaska said in Dobreni.

Aurélie might not have known the words, but she understood the intent.

Mord was shocked to see us.

That’s the word—shocked. Like he’d forgotten our existence. All the way to the St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Aurélie whispered to herself, depending on Jaska to guide her as she concentrated on willing demons to stay away. But when they walked into the profound sensorium of that music, they froze in equal shock.

Music had been the solace for all three for most of their lives. Complex and compelling harmony filled the enormous space. You could listen to that forever, I thought, giddy with elation.

As Mozart directed his orchestra and choir, I could see the effort Jaska expended not to get lost in the song. He took Mord aside and filled him in. I could see the impact as each point hit Mord, and I mean hit. His fingers tightened on the sword he wore at his side, his breath hitching as if he was stabbed by an invisible knife: demons, time, Elisheva left to suffer, and
we have to get out of here as fast as possible
.

I’d been dreading Mozart’s turning into a demon and threatening us, or trying something worse, but in a way, the torture was more exquisite, as Mord stood there divided between his lifelong love, music, and his new love.

Mozart said sadly, “Another unfinished composition?”

Mord said, “We have been tempted by the seraphs.” His voice flattened. “And we are lost.”

“No you are not,” Mozart retorted. “You’re only lost when you surrender will. Here—I have a gift. It may help you.”

He dashed into the transept and returned with a violin. “Take this, and go quickly.” He pressed it into Mord’s hands.

Chords soared in a glorious crescendo around us as we retreated, and this time, we heard the music all the way back to the crypt, only losing it to silence when we stepped back into Nôtre Dame.

Paris was silent and empty when we emerged, shrouded in starless night. Aurélie still had the necklace light cranked to the max, but beyond its nimbus pressed cold, malevolent threat. When we neared the horrible
forest, it blinked into another reality: still human figures, young and old, some looking like corpses freshly dug up, others near death, many marked by rivulets of blood, like cracks in sculpture. Each still, gazes fixed on hopelessness and darkness.

Mord held the amulet gripped in one hand, the violin in the other. He began walking toward the victims, searching each face intently as he passed.

Aurélie gave a muffled cry and darted around him, one hand clutching her necklace, the other outstretched, fingers distended. She ran from tree to tree like someone demented as Jaska followed in her wake. Light bloomed on every person she touched with the necklace. Of course she wasn’t going to leave anyone behind, though many of the people she touched crumpled to the ground, apparently lifeless. Others staggered, some shying away when Jaska or I tried to help them. Most vanished like smoke.

Nobody tried to stop Aurélie. That necklace was too powerful.

She found Elisheva.

Mord was there to catch Elisheva when she started to fall. He crushed her in his arms, his head bent as he whispered endearments. I gripped my nails in my palms, afraid she was dead. But her eyelashes fluttered, and she gazed up into his face.

“I’m sorry,” he said, over and over. “I’m sorry.”

“I had faith you would come,” she whispered.

“Let’s—” I began,
go
unspoken.

An army of gargoyles, trolls, scaly things, snake-fiends, you name it, encircled us. Leading them were the three seraphs, who I mentally termed
the fake angels
, as beautiful as ever.

T
HE PEWTER-HAIRED ONE SAID,
“Your power is not strong enough.”

Elisheva touched Aurélie. “They want you to use the necklace’s power to attack them.”

“I know,” Aurélie said, without shifting her steady gaze from the three demons. “That is, I don’t know everything about this necklace that there is to know. But I’ve seen in dreams what it can do,” she whispered as the silvery light expanded to touch the slowly advancing hordes of nightmare figures: she was trying to free their souls.

Either her magic did not work, or else they embraced their evil, because there was no visible effect outside of the cold glitter of reflected light in those malicious eyes. One goblin creature licked his chops, drool hanging down in a long strand.

Jaska gripped the sword. Mord gravely held the amulet out to Elisheva, who accepted it with a voiceless word of thanks. She stirred, standing on her own, and he moved away from her, courteous and somber. Then his hand closed around the hilt of his sword, a finger at a time.

For a measureless interval we stood there, waiting to be attacked, as the demons probably anticipated the mayhem to come.

“No,” Aurélie said, laying a finger on Jaska’s wrist. “No.”

He dropped the point of his sword, looking at her in silent grief. Her
hand stole into his free hand, her intention plain: If death was nigh, they’d face it together. But she couldn’t take lives, even in defeat.

I wavered, wondering if I was going to have to be the one to cross that line, because I was
not
going tamely, I would
not
let evil win without fighting back. Even if fighting was what the demons wanted, I craved justice, and there was none in standing by to watch Aurélie and Jaska, Mordechai and Elisheva, hashed to bits for the entertainment of these worse-than-bloodsuckers.

Then Mord stretched out his hand, which was gripped white-knuckled on the sword. He dropped the weapon to the ground. Mozart’s violin had been tucked up under his armpit. He took hold of it now, bow and instrument, which he swung into position. He touched the bow to the strings and closed his eyes. One long, liquid note spooled through the tension, pure and clean and simple as water—and as compelling. With infinite absorption, and a touch as delicate as a butterfly, he began to play. Rabbi Nachman had taught him that storytelling rests on the distinction between sleep and waking, death and life, good and evil, light and lightlessness. The world cries out with longing for good, and music is one of the ways to get it there—and the Rabbi had sung a
nigun
to demonstrate.

It had taken time for Mord to internalize Rabbi Nachman’s wisdom, but he had it now. From all directions, faster than wind, Mord drew bits of light: from the city’s candles, from the hearths, the torches, from the stars beyond the gathered clouds overhead, and he fashioned the light into song. Storytelling through music was his conduit to the healing of the world, the restoration of the shards of light scattered through the universe.

Before the feet of the menacing army sprang tongues of flame, small at first, but growing larger as light gathered in streamers, coalescing in a great wheel overhead.

The violin no longer spoke alone. Voices joined, at first in whispers, then in songs—I heard the children of Nôtre Dame—and then instruments added one by one.

We heard Mozart’s mighty choirs, all the way from Vienna.

Those who walked through this part of the Nasdrafus striving against the tide of violence gave their strength to Mord, forming their own army of harmony until the music broke the limits of sound and spread to the horizon, the music of the spheres, beyond beauty and beyond anguish, but partaking of both. We are finite vessels and cannot hold that much glory without burning up, but even so I exerted mind, heart, and spirit to hold the glory.

But it slipped away, because one thing we cannot control is time.

I don’t know when the demons vanished. I only knew that we reached Nôtre Dame and Mord was still playing, though the violin glowed, runnels of flame blue along the bow, the joins of the instrument incandescent.