Women Scorned (24 page)

But there had to be a way to kill the High Priestess and take over. Aludra was stronger, more powerful. She just needed to play their game a bit longer. She wondered what her punishment might be. She’d heard of the rope room, had seen the scars on the High Priestess and some of the slaves. Maybe she would be punished in this way for losing the spirit, for destroying what their order had been created to do in the first place. Without the spirit, without Rory, they couldn’t do their precious ritual, couldn’t gain eternal life, would now have to wait for another nine hundred years.

The nine. Her birthday. Her mother, cut open just so she could be born on the precise day. The day when her birthday would equal nine-nine-nine.

The order was sure to fall apart without purpose or leadership. The High Priestess was getting tired, that Aludra could see without needing to be shown. But Aludra could lead them, could help bring about another chosen one.

*  *  *

The petulant brat didn’t draw the spirit. The Dark One still claimed the ritual would go as planned, that Aludra
had
drawn the spirit. So where was it?

The High Priestess stood tall, steadied herself, then continued with the preparations. She needed to prepare despite the lack of Rory’s other half. Could they do the ritual with just one half?

She couldn’t let on that she knew the ceremony wouldn’t happen, couldn’t show a shadow of doubt or the Dark One would know, might, in fact, already know. It was just a matter of how long she could pretend that everything their order stood for wasn’t destroyed. And it was. She was sure of that.

Aludra would pay with every ounce of her blood. She would find a way to make the stupid child suffer. That was for sure. Coming back empty handed…what was that? The chosen one. Ha. She’d show them chosen.

The High Priestess had other plans that didn’t involve any such ritual. When she was through pretending, she would take them all with her into the spirit world. She would not take the blame for the child’s mistakes and she would not go into the darkness alone.

*  *  *

The High Priest raised a gnarled hand and pushed opened Aludra’s locked door. He saw the girl, always a girl in his mind, though she was coming on forty years, and attempted a smile, but before the smile could reach his lips he was shoved backwards, hitting the wall behind him. At least that’s how it felt. He shook himself and looked up only to realize he hadn’t moved.

“The ritual will continue,” his voice boomed, though he didn’t say the words. The Dark One spoke through him. Heat filled his mind and body.
Thank you, Lord, for choosing me for this honor
, he thought.

“But the spirit,” Aludra began. For a moment he almost felt sorry for the girl.

The Dark One raised the High Priest’s arm. Aludra came off the ground, hands pinned to her sides with invisible bindings.

“You drew the spirit as required. Rory comes now. You are the chosen one. It will continue.”

A look of terror shadowed Aludra’s face. Why should she be afraid? They’d been waiting for this for centuries. This was what she’d been groomed for. She didn’t know how her fate intertwined with the Dark One’s greater scheme, but even if she did, she should feel grateful at being such an important part of the proceedings. Her sacrifice would allow them to continue on forever and would allow humans to live as they once did in a world of magic, where they could commune with souls, gaining wisdom, insight, worldly knowledge. How could she not want this, even if it meant her death? It was all for the greater good. And she would be eternal as a spirit.

And then it dawned on him, just as the Dark One left Aludra’s room. Something happened while she was out of the manor, something the Dark One didn’t anticipate. Aludra knew what was happening but something else had twisted her mind. She no longer shared the same vision as the Order.

As the Dark One walked with the High Priest’s body through the manor toward the altar room, he wondered if his life’s work, his last 300 years of existence and planning and hope, were all for nothing.

*  *  *

Outside Aludra’s room, the High Priestess listened at the door. She’d gone there to scold the child, to berate her for destroying everything they’d worked so hard for all these years. But the booming voice behind the wooden barrier was that of the Dark One, in possession of the High Priest, and she didn’t dare interrupt when the Dark One spoke.

So, Rory was coming, should be there soon. The brat had done her work after all. The ritual would take place. How could the Dark Lord know this?

Her plans for destruction vanished with the words. Why had she ever doubted the Dark One? He’d never been wrong before so why had she thought him wrong now? She scrubbed the doubt from her heart and mind, ready to sacrifice herself if it became necessary to do so.

There would be a ritual. Midnight. This didn’t give her much time. She would work quickly. That wasn’t a problem. She ran through the manor, her silver hair flowing behind her. Down the hall, across the entryway. She paused in front of the upside-down cross and gazed at it a moment. It meant many things in their order, this cross. God, according to the Dark One, had betrayed all of mankind with his son. Instead of giving them passage to Heaven, he sealed them in darkness forever, their souls eternally locked away from bliss.

The Dark One knew of a way to open this world, and he’d seen fit to share it with the High Priest. The upside-down cross represented Jesus being turned on his head, the portal being reopened. The blood running from it and into the basin below was to represent the sacrifices they all had to make for their dreams to become reality.

And it would all happen. Tonight, their dreams would come to fruition.

Cackling, she ran down the stairs into the cellar room. She heard a noise outside, a thumping sound, but consciously ignored it. It did register as odd to her, this noise, since she’d never heard a sound like it before. Too excited to care, she continued to the metal door behind the stairs.

She passed through the candlelit catacombs, the darkness pooling in the spaces between the sconces bored into the walls. She lifted her robes to keep from stepping on them as she stooped through the tunnel. After several twists and turns, she came into the altar room. In the center was her podium, a large book open upon it. And before it, the stone slab where she would lie. She would be the conduit. The spirits would pass through her, their birth mother to a new life and into this world. Her role had been clear from the start, since childhood. She would give birth to the mother and father of the chosen one. The chosen one would draw Rory’s female half and then she, the High Priestess, would give birth to the new world.

It was beautiful. As she ran her fingers over the stone slab, a single tear traced her cheek.

Part Three

The Solution

Chapter Eighteen

As the High Priestess prepared the altar room, a strange feeling crept over her, familiar and at the same time foreign. She stopped her cleansing ritual and looked around, face scrunched, listening. The chant she’d been murmuring died in her throat.

“Rory,” she whispered. She looked up at the ceiling in the direction the male half was imprisoned. The other half had come. A fiendish grin spread across her face. She performed her cleansing with more fervor than before, her gestures wider, her voice louder, her smile broader.

“Midnight,” she said every so often. “Midnight, our waiting is over.” All their years of servitude, all their years of planning, finally over. There had to be a way to bring the spirit inside, lure it into the manor without it suspecting what they planned. It had to be perfect, subtle. The child drew it here, after all. The ritual would commence.

*  *  *

Aludra paced the narrow confines of her room, still trembling from His presence. He said the spirit would come, that the ritual would continue. But it couldn’t. She had to stop it. She didn’t know why she was worrying anyway. Midnight was approaching and Rory wasn’t anywhere close to the manor. If it was, she would’ve felt it.

And then she did.

Unmistakable.

She became alive with Rory’s presence, knew that it wanted her, knew that she was the target, the object of desire, in this moment. She shuddered and sank into a sitting position. Rory, here. The other half, the half she’d been sent to lure.

Tears traced her cheeks. She rocked back and forth for a moment, truly afraid for the first time, afraid for her own life, afraid she would not be able to gain the control she wished, afraid she’d never get to tutor another on the pleasures of pain.

Unless she could come up with something in a very short amount of time, she was over. She would cease to exist; she would become one of those angry spirits, trapped in a realm where other spirits would tear her to pieces for eternity for what she’d done to them.

She straightened, wiped the tears from her face, and began working out her plan.

*  *  *

At the base of the manor, Libitina found a small window painted black. The rest of the outer wall was windowless but for some reason, someone had put one here and then painted over it. She couldn’t understand the point.

The window led into a cellar of sorts.

The musty darkness wafted up her nose, tinged with a smell she now associated with Camilla, the rot of death. She turned and watched Camilla slither through the opening, her torn face strangely illuminated in the dimness of the tiny room.

“Where do we go now?” Libitina asked.

Camilla simply pointed up and to the right of where they stood.

“That doesn’t help. I need to know how we are supposed to get up there.”

“She’s there,” Camilla said.

Libitina stopped trying for her help and resumed looking for a way out of the cellar. They were inside, at least. That was something.

*  *  *

The High Priestess leaned against the stone slab in the center of the room, panting, wiping sweat from her brow. Her long, white hair was a tangled mess in her face, her robe disheveled. Never had she worked so hard.

She smiled and looked toward the entrance to the antechamber.

“She’s here,” she whispered. “Rory is inside.” She left the altar room. Candles flickered in her wake and then stilled, illuminating the chamber where the ritual would take place. Opposite the opening through which the High Priestess left, another opening led deeper into the mountain. Soon this room would bustle with life. It smelled of cinnamon and rosemary thanks to worn leather satchels hanging from the ceiling.

Every surface glistened, waiting for the ritual to come.

*  *  *

Camilla looked around in the dark. There was a staircase. She ascended. Pain. All around her, pain.
The green-eyed witch
, she thought. Aludra’s victims became more insistent, sensing their revenge at hand. The walls oozed with suffering and hatred.

Camilla stepped outside herself, someplace safe. She no longer felt her body, but rested in darkness, floating there in a peace she hadn’t felt for days. No more pain. No more visions, no more disabled body. She could move freely if she so chose, but she didn’t choose. She drifted, enjoying the lack of boundaries.

In this state, she thought about what she’d seen in the Akashik records. She’d been chosen with a specific purpose in mind. She had a destiny to fulfill. To avenge all those women who’d suffered.

I’m not up for it
, she thought, the sound of her mind wafting through the void. She hadn’t expected her thoughts to carry sound, but it offered her comfort she didn’t expect. She continued.
I don’t think I can do this. But then all those spirits would remain angry, unable to move on. I have to do this. I have to help them.

Then she thought about Aludra. The one who had violated her mind, made her suffer through the suffering of others. She thought about the cop in her car, a person she could have expected to trust, taking advantage of his authority. And then she thought about the three men from whom she’d stolen breath. Inflicting pain, killing. Those they hurt never forgot. They merely waited for the right time to take vengeance. She wondered how Rory managed to keep track of all those it needed to avenge, or did it simply pick and choose, having too many to assuage them all? What would it be like to live that kind of existence forever?

She wanted her body to die, her spirit to be free. It wouldn’t be suicide. She was already dead. She merely longed for the peace her death should have offered. An art student. That’s what she’d wanted to be. San Francisco, on a fantastic journey to becoming a full time artist. And what did it matter now? The darkness swirled around her as she hid in a place Rory couldn’t find. She would stay here until she sensed that Rory had found the green-eyed witch. And then she wanted her own revenge.

This time Aludra and all her sick friends would pay.

Then the ritual. Then she could die.

Chapter Nineteen

Thirst grated its throat like sand. Hunger tore its nerves as the longing consumed it. Aludra. The dark virgin. To taste the spirit of one so tainted. Sweet, sweet, SWEET! Rory searched the room, focusing on finding a way to the one it sought. The body rotted but the woman’s strong spirit kept it fresher than it would have expected. Good. The longer the body lasted, the better.

Need to feed, need to avenge, need to get back to the spirit world. Mistake. That’s all this had been. One big mistake. Rory knew this now, knew that splitting itself with the promise to avenge all angry spirits so they could ascend had been futile. Too many angry. And there were more each day. A never-ending task. Rory would be trapped in this form for eternity. It knew that now.