Shadow of Death: Book Two of the Chosen Chronicles (28 page)

Fernando’s gruff tones filled the room. “God damn it! Pick up … I need to speak with you – now! …Fine. Call me as soon as you get this.”  A click was followed by a beep, plunging the room into deafening silence.

Picking up the receiver, Notus dialled the number from rote. He knew to whom Fernando wished to speak. Instead the boy lay in a private hospital room hooked up to monitors and tubes.

“Hello?” said the feminine voice on the other end.

Notus inhaled sharply, wondering at the intelligence of calling the Master and Mistress of the British Chosen. He was about to hang up when he heard Bridget call his name. He lifted the      reliever back to his ear.

“Paul? What happened? What’s wrong?” Worry brought out her slight French accent, combining with her South London accent.

Shutting his eyes in pain, he could not speak the words. To do so would shed more than a million suns upon a truth too difficult to bear. He heard a muffled argument on the other end and the phone was passed.

“What the hell is going on, Notus?” growled Fernando. “I’ve been getting calls from Masters and Mistresses all over the EU – like I have any clue – as to why we all nearly passed out earlier tonight.”

Notus’ breath caught at the revelation. It was not supposed to happen like that. Only the Chooser or Chosen would suffer if the other died. That was what happened to the boy and explained the sudden pain Notus had felt, nearly felling him at the ROM. How the boy was killed after so many centuries remained a mystery, but if the emergency doctor was right, then it still did not explain it. Then again Notus had never heard of any other Chosen having been hit with lightning. It was a fluke. It was also a miracle that the paramedics were able to revive him. What could not be denied was the boy was no longer Chosen.

“So are you going to tell me or do I have to speak to the Angel like everyone’s been demanding me to do?” threatened the Noble.

Swallowing the stone that had formed in his throat, Notus barely recognized the voice as his own. “The Angel is gone.”

“What are you talking about? Gone where?”

A click and Bridget joined the conversation on another handset. “Paul, what is going on?”

Closing his eyes did not help assuage the lump in his throat or the tears that threatened to spill. “The boy—” His voice caught in an attempt to halt the truth that when spoken could no longer be denied. “He died. He is no longer Chosen.”

The dam broke releasing a flood of tears.

“What?!” came the unified response.

“What happened?” asked Bridget.

“What are you talking about?” yelled Fernando.

Slowly, through a halting description, Notus explained the events of that evening, ending with the incredible revelation that the boy, after a millennium and a half, was once again mortal.

Silence filled the void, allowing Fernando and Bridget the ability to digest the news.

“That’s not possible,” whispered Bridget, finally breaking the silence.

“Everything about the Angel is impossible,” remarked Fernando with a snort. “You will fix the problem, won’t you, Notus?”

The question caught the monk unaware. “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously, afraid of the answer.

“You will Choose him again?” Fernando’s question was more a statement of fact.

Notus released his baited breath in a huff. “No,” he whispered into the receiver.

Shocked responses travelled the line to his ear forcing him to pull the handset away.

“Fernando! Fernando. Calm down!” Bridget’s voice filled the air.

“Calm down? Don’t you realize what that idiot monk is condemning him to?”

Notus sighed as he listened to the banter between Master and Mistress.

“He’ll be eaten alive, literally, by the Vampires, once they find out!” continued the Noble. “They’ll make what Violet did to him look like a fucking day at the fucking beach! He has to come home, now.”

“To what?” replied Bridget, hotly. “Once the news is out that the Angel is no longer Chosen, what do you think the other Masters and Mistresses will demand? He’ll either have to be  Chosen again or put to death, and we know how most of them will vote. Notus, you
must
Choose him again before anyone finds out.”

“I can’t,” replied the monk. Hating himself he placed the receiver to his ear. “God gave the boy a treasured gift. He’s done his work in saving the Chosen and this is his reward.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, Paul,” spat Bridget. “What’s the real reason?”

New tears trailed down the monk’s face. How could he tell them that he wished that it had been he and not the boy to have been given the blessing of mortality? Jealousy percolated up to join with the desperate loneliness that filled him. He should be happy for the boy, but he could not find it within himself to be so.

He shook his head, knowing that they could not witness his denial. The boy had been Chosen accidentally – an Oath broken unwittingly. Notus cared for his charge, growing to love the boy and eventually believed he was blessed with someone to walk eternity with. It was no longer the case. The boy had received what Notus had always hoped to attain, and now he was asked to consciously break his Oath never to Choose another, thereby   insuring his search for mortality was a failure.

“I’m so terribly sorry,” he whispered. “I
can’t
.”

Notus lowered the receiver until it fit into its cradle, cutting off Fernando’s protestations.

In the darkness, Notus made his way to his bedroom. Despite the newness of the building the door creaked on its hinges. It was then he realized it was not his room, but rather the boy’s.

The unmade bed awaited the boy unknowing that he could never return. A book lay open, its spine cracked despite Notus’ constant insistence to treat them with more care. A black wooden stand on the dresser displayed the boy’s
wakizashi
and
katana
, and on the wall behind hung his
naginata
. All appeared expecting the return of their master, unknowing that the boy
’
s life among the Chosen was over.

Turning away from the weapons, Notus walked to the open closet, running his hand over the white cotton dress shirts, their textures soft to the touch. The scars the discipline, a scourge made of steel chain and barbs, had left on the boy
’
s back were sensitive to the touch. Only the finest clothed his boy. But the boy was no longer his.

Pain gripped the monk around the chest and he spun to face the empty space.

The boy was no longer his!

Notus had been in a stupor, even when he spoke to Fernando and Bridget. Having spoken the words to them and witnessing the desolate room sloughed off the shock, permitting reality to crash in.

The boy was no longer his!

On unsteady legs, Notus barely made it to the dishevelled bed before his legs gave out. The scent of the boy on the bedclothes was strong in his nostrils. Lifting the expensive down pillow the boy used, Notus hugged it to his chest, tears flowing to moisten the pillowcase. For the first time since he was Chosen, millennia ago, Father Paul Notus wept.

S
nipping the last suture closed, Thanatos leaned back on his heels to observe his work and sighed. It was not his best, the irregularities in the sutures’ spacing was evidence to this fact. It did not matter. There would be no healing, no scarring, only decay. Thanatos placed the tools of his current trade on the stainless steel tray, the clatter resounding off the concrete walls, and cocked his head to the side as he took in the nude form of the corpse before him.

He had found the cause of death in the stomach of the too skinny woman. A condom filled with crack cocaine had burst. There was a word for her kind - a mule - and her blue horsy     features fit the bill perfectly.

He had seen these things over the ages. Death came to all mortals, some by choice, some by accident, some by genetics and bad luck, but most by stupidity. It was clear by the tracks in this woman’s arms which route she had chosen.

Snapping off the latex gloves he hit the stop button on the recording device that had to be on during autopsies and removed the gore stained apron over his grey-green medical uniform. He would leave the body for the individuals responsible for taking her back to the freezer but before doing so there were notes to make and forms to sign off on.

The desk housing the computer sat in the corner and was splashed with cold illumination from the old CRT monitor. It was the chair that offered succour to his tired body. A couple of clicks with the mouse and the program providing him with the basics of the woman’s existence came to life. Her first and last name was listed simply as Jane Doe157. No birthday, no address, no other information was filled out except for her height, weight and colouring. An estimation of age was listed, but it was always so hard to tell with heavy drug users. They always appeared much older than they were, the drugs sloughing off years the harder the drug usage.

Typing in his findings, he filled out the online form. Computers made life easier and more complicated at the same time.
One of the best things he had ever done was to have Godfrey go and purchase him a typing tutorial. Now his fingers flew over the keyboard until the computer could no longer catch up. Lifting his hands, Thanatos watched the screen magically display the words he had written, his brown eyes widening at what was revealed.

Instead of his autopsy observations and conclusions the words “The Angel” repeated themselves over and over, filling in the lines of text meant for the deceased girl.

Dumbfounded, he knew he had not typed those words, or had he? Highlighting the text he hit the delete key and watched the pixels disappear. It did not erase them from his memory.

Releasing a huff, he leaned back in the chair and ran a hand over his brow before letting it fall to the armrest. He was shaken. That was the feeling he denied himself. Having seen, let alone touched the Angel’s sword was the closest he had ever come.

He would have approached the Angel earlier, but fear of what to say to him, what to ask, curdled in his stomach. All his hopes were pinned upon the Angel, but what Bastia had done shattered any possibility of approaching him. He had only to watch from the distance as the Angel summoned the Dragon’s Breath to eradicate the Vampires of Paris to prove that it was better to watch and to wait. After all, he had waited all these millennia; a few more centuries would not hurt if it meant that Thanatos would finally find the answers to the questions that plagued him.

It seemed now Bastia’s first born would continue where she was forced to leave off. If only Thanatos had enough sway over the pup to convince him to leave the Angel alone.

It had been centuries since he stood before a Vampire. The last was when Bastia yelled at him over his obsession with the Angel and the Chosen, before she rushed out in a huff never to be seen again. His beautiful Priestess of Bast had twisted into something he never had intended to see. Now Corvus was taking up where she had left off. Corvus, the first Vampire Bastia ever created. The mortal Roman general who had been her plaything, her slave, bending to her will as she supped upon his blood. The same one who had proven that the curse continued onto the next generation, and who was now Dominus of all Vampires and set to destroy Thanatos’ only chance for redemption.

Thanatos frowned. The idea of being placed in the middle of the Vampires and the Angel seemed more promise than threat. Removing the small plain metal phial that hung around his neck, Thanatos clutched it in both hands, his eyes closed in fervent prayer.