The Twins of Noremway Parish (14 page)

Together

Chapter 8

The Father of Darkness woke for the first time in 2,000 years. The first thing he remembered was hovering over a blood-filled fountain. He was confused. His first moments of consciousness were without explanation. He didn’t exist, and then he did. That was all he understood. His instincts told him that he was a man, but the reflection staring back at him from the pool of blood was of a nondescript being without shape or form, invisible to all who would enter the cathedral.

As he stared into his ghostly reflection, he swooped down to drink. The blood touched his unformed lips. The sweet nectar surged up his ghostly serpent’s tongue as he slurped and swallowed. Pure ecstasy: So sweet.

He drifted back away from the fountain and fell into dissociate fugue. Continuity ceased. In brief flashes of incoherent memory, he witnessed the comings and goings of the people through the cathedral, and as they passed through, he touched their souls. He saw inside their hearts. The friar with the decorative cloak had an admirable aura of authority. He was a very strong man, but he had a weakness; he was lonely and longed for love.

The parochial vicar, too, had these feelings, and she felt them even more strongly than the friar. She secretly hoped the twins would bring them closer together, while the friar feared the outcome of a joint venture into parenting.

He drifted around the dark corners of the cathedral without explanation, without identity, without form, without purpose.

When the plump, curly haired women started screaming about devils, witchcraft, and sorcery, a vague memory seized him, and with it a purpose: all the fear: all the hatred. He touched this woman as she seethed her revulsion. Memories flooded his mind, and his body began to take a solid form as it fed off the dark emotion. It had found a soul that it knew it could manipulate. Rising from the shadows as she left the crowd, followed sheepishly by her husband, he followed suit. This woman would be a pawn in its plans for Noremway Parish. That is until it found someone more useful, and perhaps his true reason for being.

***

Rita and James Morgan stormed away from the cathedral. James looked ashamed, as usual, as Rita burned red with anger. The chancellor was standing right outside the entrance looking weak, tired. His skin was pale, and he was sweating. James offered him a sympathetic look.

“
They are doing the devil’s work in there!”

Blood returned to Urey’s face at amazing speed and he found the strength and motivation to retort, “Sure they are, Rita. Brother Decon is a devil, Sister Teret is a succubus, Dr. Plague is a vampire, and I’m a werewolf. We’re all in on it. Sorry you didn’t know.” The deathly pale returned to his face, and weakness overtook his composure, as it had since he started feeling this way—sick and weak—after getting bitten by one of the wolves. He even had a memory of being shot in the stomach with an arrow, but just like the memory, the wound seemed to have disappeared. What was going on?

“
How dare you! I’m going directly to...” She trailed off. Maybe she saw the look in his eyes, the one that said that maybe he actually was some sort of nightly beast of terror. Perhaps she could see that at that next full moon he would find her and rip her apart with his sharp teeth and claws. There was no authority that would take her side when the chancellor was a werewolf. She left her husband to follow slowly behind her.

As Rita and her husband made their way home, an unfamiliar man approached them. Being a close-knit community, everyone in the parish had seen each other at one time or another, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. The man wore a green cloak (a color usually never worn in Noremway Parish, for it only served as a reminder of the world that was), and red crescent-shaped earrings. He was bald and stocky. His muscular, solid frame made him an intimidating sight despite a somewhat shortened stature. He extended his hand in welcome. Neither Rita nor James took it, but he left it hand out. “Just who are you?” Rita demanded.

“
What manners you have,” the man said with a smile. “I have asked myself that question many times over the past—how long? I don’t know. When you come into existence staring into a pool of blood that just looks so…
appetizing,
you tend to be a little confused about who you are. That’s what I would say anyway. Now that I think about it, I believe my name is Falcon.”

“
Excuse me?”

“
Falcon. The name is Zuriz Falcon. How do you do, ma’am? Don’t mind the baldness. I didn’t even have a head a few hours ago. Isn’t that amazing how our lives can change so drastically from one minute to the next? For example, a minute ago I didn’t even have a body. A day ago I didn’t even exist. Well, that isn’t quite true. I have all these memories. Gosh, memories stretching back
forever!
”

“
What—?”

“
You come along and cure me of my dissociation. For that I must thank you. But I’m sorry to say you’re mine. And a part of me—which part of me, I can’t really say for sure because, you see, I have such little experience with having
parts
—knows that you won’t mind it one bit. You know why?”

“
What? No.”

“
Because you’re angry–you’re so angry and you don’t know why. I could say maybe it’s because your daughter hates you. How your daughter got married two years ago, but you never heard because she stopped writing you long before then. Ah, but how much angrier you would be if you knew James knows all about it. Poor little Abigail didn’t want dearest Mother to know that she married Brandon. And darling Daddy kept the secret just for her. He even thought about going, but he couldn’t get away from you long enough. Isn’t that simply amazing?”

The man smiled, showing an even row of white teeth. He licked his lips with the serpent-like tongue. As confused as Rita was about this strange person, she understood one thing: he knew things he couldn’t possibly know. But did she care? No, not at all. She gazed into the man’s green eyes and wondered what jewels she could find there if she kept her gaze true.

“
Oh I know that when her letters stopped coming, you burned her possessions. You burned them in her room—on her bed in fact. Isn’t that right? You burned her dolls, her books, her toys…you piled it all up on her bed and set fire to it. What a great mother you are.” Rita said nothing. “A fantastic wife too, no less. James, she burned the house to the ground and blamed you for it, didn’t she? ‘Oh my careless oaf of a husband threw a lit cigar away.’ No big deal, of course, but it’s a shame that a person so quick to find fault in others is so willing to pass along her own fault.” Falcon was flooded with information about Rita and James’s marriage. Details of verbal and emotional abuse; Rita Morgan standing high on her thrown in the home, ordering her passive husband to do her bidding. He took it, even though day after day “you think about killing her in her sleep. Oh James, that’s what gets you through the day, isn’t it–the fantasy that you may one day succeed in bringing yourself to do it? Fantastic!”

Rita began to speak, but what she said didn’t make any sense. “We have our Abigail. We love her so dearly. We know she’s grown into a lovely woman.” James looked as though he were holding back tears. Tears for Abigail? Tears for himself?

“
There, there James, be not sad,” Falcon said.

“
Tears…of…joy,” James choked out between sobs. Of course they were. Why didn’t he see it before? James thought he—Falcon—was a devil coming to claim his wife. She would soon be vanquished from this world forever. Ah, but her work had only just begun.

“
Indeed. Tears of joy.”

“
Abigail met a boy in Bassingway Parish,” Rita said in a daze. “His name was Brandon. She wrote us about the time he kissed her behind the cathedral. Oh what a naughty, naughty little boy; I’d have hung him from the Angled Cross had he been in Noremway Parish that day. I truly would have; just a dutiful mother protecting her daughter’s innocence.”

“
And how we all camouflage our evil thoughts in the cloth of righteousness,” Falcon said. “I love it. It’ll be a shame when I have to kill you.” James stood in a trance, appearing hopeful that
that
time would come sooner rather than later.

Rita continued in her daze. “My daughter hasn’t written in five years. Five years? Aye, five years–give or take, I suppose. I don’t really know for sure. You see, I stopped keeping track, to be quite honest with you. It hurts too much to know that she wants nothing to do with the woman who gave birth to her, who carried her in her belly for all those months. I bear some of the blame, I suppose, but I could never admit that to her. Never. It wouldn’t due. No, it surely wouldn’t.”

Suddenly the glazed-over look in her eyes melted and she seemed to be seeing Zuriz Falcon for the first time. “What a lovely young man you are, dear. I’ve not seen you in the parish. What is your name?”

“
The name is Zuriz Falcon,” he said with a broad smile. “I am from Bassingway Parish.” This was, of course, a lie.

“
Oh that’s where my beautiful Abby lives. So you know my daughter? Her name is Abigail Rita Morgan. Rita is my name, and ‘twas my mother’s name before me, and her mother’s name before her.”

“
Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?”

Rita laughed. “Oh you silly man–not a coincidence at all. Tis how names are passed down in the parish. My darling daughter…I hear now she is married.”

“
Yes. I told you that.”

“
Aye. So you did. What an unworthy little man. Brandon, I believe he calls himself?”

Falcon had done his duty on the setup, now to go in for the kill. “The man she wed is of the most horrible stock. I can end it all for a price. Is there no price you would not be willing to pay to have this marriage obstructed, annulled, voided? After all these years without her, I would think not; anything to get her to come home to you.”

“
You know a mother’s heart, Zuriz.”

“
Please, I prefer Falcon.”

“
It was a mistake sending her away. She got in with this boy, and now she thinks that all that we have ever done for her was done because we were
selfish
. Can you believe that? She has really lost her way.”

“
And you want her back?”

“
More than anything.”

“
Thy will be done. All I ask of you is to tell your authorities that the friar and the parochial vicar are having a forbidden love affair.”

“
They’re not!” Rita said, feigning incredulity, but really thinking that it was the dragon’s breath of rumor.

“
Ah, but they are…or they are going to. I can tell you they are most definitely thinking about it. Report this piece of information to the authorities. You will see your daughter again real soon. And I will ensure that her marriage to that boy is over.”

Falcon then disappeared into a dark mist and made his way to Bassingway Parish to pay the estranged Abigail Morgan a visit.

***

Rita said, “We need to go see the chancellor.” The glassy-eyed look she had while talking to Falcon was gone, replaced with the fire of determination. She started toward the chancellor’s house, knowing full well that they might have to wait for him.

The fact that they were even out this late carried with it the frightening prospect of a wolf attack. Given what had happened to the Watermans, everyone was concerned about the wolves, but this was important.
Besides
, she thought,
the friar called a late meeting, completely ignoring the fact that by the end of the meeting night would have descended upon the parish, and the wolves would be stalking their nightly meals.
Some things were worth the risk.

It was full dark now, and wolves had yet to materialize in the night, but James feared they soon would. Scattered groups of people leaving the cathedral laughed as they joked on their journeys home. Of course the jokes were to keep their minds off their fear of the unseen creatures of the night, and the laughter was of a nervous nature. But James was terrified; he could feel his heart thumping loudly in his chest. It beat a steady rhythm in his ears. He breathed heavily as they walked. He was out of shape, which was bad, but the pain he felt in his chest was worse. “What’s wrong with you, James? Hurry up. Quit that huffing. You sound like a dying horse.”

“
Yes, my dear,” he obeyed, but he could feel the tightening in his chest. His own father had died of a heart stoppage, so he feared the same fate awaited him. Sweat beaded on his forehead a bit more profusely than it should have given the temperature. The rain from earlier in the day still lingered in the air, but the humidity was relatively low. He could feel the sweat under his arms and his back and was thankful that the cloak was thick enough to cover such embarrassing stains. He just followed. The encounter with Falcon still left him a bit disconcerted. He didn’t know at the moment how Rita felt about the meeting, but she seemed determined to carry out her end of their deal.

“
The chancellor is going to want to hear this!” Rita insisted.

“
Really, Rita?” he breathed. “What are we going to tell him? He’s not taking the witchcraft seriously, because there is no witchcraft.” This was the first time (that he could recall anyway) that he had stood up to her. He braced himself for what he thought would be a slap across the face or a punch in the chest (oh God, he hoped she didn’t do
that!
), but she simply said, “I don’t care about that anymore. I think we’ve got that friar and that whore right where we want them. I’m certain they’re sharing beds. I wouldn’t put it past either of them.”