Several hours later, I sat with Smithy’s head in my lap, mopping his brow with a cloth. This reversal had an unhappy similarity to Smithy nursing me when I first gained my Keeper’s gifts. I almost laughed out loud. Gifts. Iron Man’s suit would have been far more useful. Thor’s hammer. Instead, I got Dorothy’s stupid red spangly shoes. Last I checked she was excluded from the Avengers.
There’d been no change in his state of unconsciousness, but he was at least mercifully still. My hands were bandaged – probably more to help pretend the wounds weren’t there than for any healing effect – and my hunger was sated by Enoch’s delicious lamb and vegetable stew. He made great dumplings. Attired in clean chambray drawstring pants and a white t-shirt, I smelled decent for the first time since leaving Sydney. But thinking about that morning made me wrenchingly homesick. I wished more than anything Bea was here, temporarily safe with us, not vulnerable in the wicked outside. She’d have all the answers.
The fire burned low, blushing embers the only source of light. Smithy’s pallor was rose tinged so he looked almost well, like he was preparing to surface and come back to me. My morose mood wasn’t conducive to solving the riddle of what had triggered Smithy’s descent. If a serene mind was the key to helping him, we were in trouble. Latoya’s final accusation plagued my brain: “You are all that stands between us and the pit?” Failing Smithy was yet another instance of my total inadequacy. My head drooped, and too exhausted to fight anymore, I slumbered fitfully.
I woke to find myself in the threadbare hovel of an overdosing woman. This was not the usual way a girlfriend met her boyfriend’s mother. There was a stink on the air, vinegar laced with sweet alcohol, which I guessed was the smell of her recent heroin cook.
I avoided looking at her, the gurgled gasps of her dying breaths bad enough without a visual. The inhalations came further and further apart and that same helpless despair I’d felt when reading the Trinity journals overwhelmed me. If I returned with the Key could I save her? Could I bless Smith with the precious gift he sought most, a mother who hadn’t abandoned him for a high?
Even in this dismal room, my desperation forcing me here, I knew her restoration would prove a monumental blunder. I could not rewrite history without a profoundly bad outcome. Smithy’s mother may not have earned a chapter in Bea’s biographies, but she was just as much a victim of the Trinity curse as the rest of us. So much loss.
But I was present for a reason. My forays into others’ lives always served a purpose, whether I understood at the time or not. On this instance, though, I knew full well why I was here: to find a way to help Smithy return to the world, free from the nightmare trance Finesse played for him on a loop. It seemed the best lessons were never taught by sunny picnics in the park and rainbows.
To my right on the margin of sight, the articles of her addiction littered the chipped coffee table. The scene reminded me of another meeting on Daniel’s boat, so long ago it seemed a part of someone else’s existence. This woman used a needle to seek oblivion. Daniel had used a knife, and whatever else he could get his hands on. A small plastic envelope emptied of white powder, a bent spoon, a one-ring camp cooker, were these horrid testaments to weakness all she’d leave behind?
What was her name?
Directing my attention to the mantel in front, I inspected the altar beneath that gut-wrenching painting, full of self-loathing. Where her artist’s signature should have been was the word ‘Shame’ in thick black acrylic. She may have been absent from Smithy’s life, but the loss of her son had tortured her. And perhaps, the loss of the judge also?
Roaming about the cramped, rectangular space in search of her purse for an ID, I refused so much as a glance in her direction. I’d experienced a great deal of unpleasantness since becoming the Keeper, yet this horror scene wrought the greatest emotional toll, emptiness spreading from the centre of my being like a yawning black hole. No wonder Smithy had spent his formative years lashing out.
At the end opposite the painting, the settee of death squashed in between, an unmade double mattress sat on the floor. Nowhere amongst heaped bedding could I locate a handbag. The area was neat and relatively clean. A pitiful pile of clothes were stacked on a cracked vinyl chair an awful shade of olive next to the bed, two pairs of sneakers that had seen better days tucked underneath. Everything here had seen better days.
A bathroom the size of a cupboard in aged yellow tile led off the bedroom. Again, there was no clue who she was in the mirror-fronted cabinet over a bare sink, no prescription medications, nothing. Had she been robbed of money and possessions? Yet, a cheap portable DVD player remained on the coffee table, belting out that hideous punk rendition of ‘Joy to the World’. Smithy’s mother sure had a dark sense of humour.
I returned grudgingly to the woman in question and switched the music off. Silence fell, but not the blissful type. Her glazed eyes stared through the ceiling at the heavens, which almost seemed hopeful. I reached to close them, nausea foremost when I pulled the syringe from the crook of her elbow and unstrapped the loosened rubber tourniquet.
As I turned to place the instruments of her destruction on the table, the limestone nautilus necklace at her feet caught my attention. Without thinking, I snatched it up. My fingers touched cool stone and I earned myself another disorientating psychic jerk to a previous period in her life.
“I’ve told you, Greenie, this is a stupid idea. Nash will never give us any money.”
“Shut up, Violet. You owe me a fix!”
The skinny blonde woman, her beauty not yet stolen by drug abuse, raised track-scarred arms as if to fend off a blow. Her hair was up in a messy ponytail, still damp from a recent shower. She was clean, at least, unlike her grubby partner. The duo rounded the path towards the Smiths’ apartment, this occurrence far enough in the past for a weed-clumped patch of dirt to replace the native garden of the present.
“Alright, Greenie,” she said tiredly. “Calm your farm.”
“Let me do the talking.”
Her companion was further in his downward spiral, hunched, fidgety and lacking several teeth. Perhaps that was how he’d gained his nickname: it didn’t appear his nicotine-stained teeth had seen a toothbrush for a while. They were both attired in worn jeans and ratty tees.
“Yeah,” she snorted. “Like your abundant charms will do the trick.”
“I’m warning you, whore.” He bent close and clasped her arm hard. “Shut it!”
She shrugged from his grasp. As they neared along the path, the judge appeared carting a foam Mal surfboard under one arm, a backpack slung over his shoulders. A mop-haired boy of about six skipped out through the glass foyer doors in pursuit of his father. Both wore rash vests and boardies, and recently applied sunscreen sheened their faces. This gorgeous, happy little boy shocked me, so at odds was he to the anger-fuelled youth I’d grown up with.
The intrusion of unwelcome guests on their weekend fun registered after a couple of steps. The judge’s jaw tightened. He shuffled Smith behind him and planted his feet, propping the board on one end to lean upon it. Smithy peeked out from behind his father’s knees with a curious expression.
Nash had eyes only for Violet. “Unless you’re here to volunteer for rehab, go away, Violet.”
“Man, just give us a little cash and we’ll be out of your hair.” Greenie may as well have not spoken.
“I’m warning you, Violet. Get off my property, now. Or I’ll have you hauled to jail for trespass.”
She lingered, momentarily transfixed by Vegas. “Come on, Greenie. I told you, he’ll give us nothing.” Her smile faltered, replaced by a miserable frown. “Nothing’s what we deserve.”
“Fuckin’ shut up!” Greenie spat through his few remaining teeth.
Greenie’s abuse granted him Nash’s undivided fury. Smithy blinked up at his mother, seeing only a sad lady. He rummaged in a side pocket of his shorts for the carving he’d been working on. At the judge’s second of distraction, he darted out and stopped in front of Violet, offering her the shell on his open palm.
“Here, take it.” He nodded encouragement and her fingers extended to accept his present.
She furtively swatted a tear. “It’s very pretty. You are so clever to have made this.”
Losing his patience, Greenie wheeled and slapped Smithy’s hand away, the shell arcing high and tumbling into the garden. The little boy stood frozen to the spot.
Violet shoved Greenie, her expression mortified. “No!”
The judge’s restraint collapsed. The dropped board glided to the ground. Crossing the space in three long strides, he planted a cracking roundhouse punch on Greenie’s cheek, whose head snapped back on his puny neck.
Cupping his face, the addict wailed, “That’s assault! I’m suing you, you bastard!”
“Please do. It will be my pleasure to see you in court,” said the judge, his tone quietly menacing. “You struck my son. I will have you interred in maximum security solitude where a stain on humanity like you can drown in his own vomit long before a guard notices. Or maybe, I’ll have you transferred to the cell of a notorious gangbanger with a romantic taste for weasel.”
Sobbing, Violet grabbed Greenie and began dragging him away as he spewed invectives at the judge. “I’m sorry,” she cried in retreat, over and over again.
“Violet,” the judge’s voice caught on her name. He gave her his back, bundling Vegas in a hug and herding him inside the apartment building.
That was the first and final time since Violet left home, that she dared approach her son.
I gasped awake in Enoch’s citadel. “She returned later and found the necklace in the garden.”
Wearing her son’s gift close to her heart, always. It was difficult to perceive anything in bandaged mittens, but I gripped a hard lump. Peeling my hand open, just as Vegas had eleven years ago, revealed his limestone nautilus, leather thong and all. Somehow, I’d punctured time and brought it home for him.
“Your mother loved you until her last breath, Vee,” I murmured. “She tried to shield you from her darkness. Addicts are selfish and self-destructive. Daniel showed me this on his boat. But Violet gave you the only thing she had left to give: ignorance of her sorry plight. She didn’t reject you … she saved you. And even though it must have hurt to be the object of your pain, so did the judge.”
Prising apart one of his clammy fists, I placed the nautilus within and curled his fingers over the necklace. I needed a good long howl, but that seemed self-indulgent. Was that memory of his mother and Greenie buried deep in his psyche, ripe for the witch to plunder and exploit? If this didn’t work, I was at a loss for what else to do.
I had no notion of time passing. Lurching awake from a half-sleep with a snort, I swiped dribble from my chin.
“Bear?” a soft voice croaked.
It might have been wishful thinking, were it not for warm fingers wiping tears from my cheek. Smithy broke out in rusty laughter.
“Very elegant.”
Gathering him in a fierce clinch, hysteria coloured my speech. “How could you be so stupid! How could you let her take you?”
“Careful,” he groaned, his face mashed against my belly. “Everything aches.”
“Good.”
He shimmied upright, no mean feat considering I refused to let go. He had bed hair and his eyes were red-rimmed, but he was more beautiful to me at this moment than he’d ever been. Wide awake with no obvious lasting damage, he grinned and held up the nautilus by its leather strand. I dragged in a shaky breath, accepting the necklace to tie it around his neck.
“Thank you, Bear. I’ve missed you,” he whispered in my ear.
Taking my swaddled hands in his, he brushed them against his mouth, peeking from beneath his lashes. Then, he cupped my cheeks and gave me a lingering kiss on the lips. The sensation was warm and inviting and demanded more. I craved to surrender, his radiance stoking my love for him. With Smithy here, nothing seemed impossible. Finesse sought to belittle and corrupt these transcendent human bonds, which only elevated their preciousness. I broke from the kiss and pulled away, but not too far.
“I won’t be appeased by kisses and sugary words.” Much. “From now on, we do this my way. That does not include you charging off to rescue the maiden like Sir Galahad on his steed. In case you hadn’t noticed, buddy, it’s the modern age. Promise!”
He was not the only one who’d gained insight. I was crippled without him. The singular way to prevail was together. The era of team Trinity had arrived.
“Sure.” He nuzzled my neck, planting tingly kisses along my clavicle. “Anything for you, Bear.”
“Oh, you’re hopeless.” For a glorious few seconds, I wallowed in the tease of his caresses. Until reality intruded, reminding me of others in peril.
“Tell me what happened … tell me what she did to you.”
He stopped, his brows knitting again. Settling back, he draped an arm over my shoulders, scruffing his messy hair with his free hand. I snuggled against his broad, hard chest. A spent log broke apart in the grate, cinders coiling up the chimney. Smithy fixated on the fire’s depths.
“Dad has that painting.”
“Shame?”
He nodded. “And all the rest of her works. Stacked around the walls of his bedroom.”
“That’s how the judge remembers what they had together. By surrounding himself in the beauty Violet poured onto the canvas. And he sees her in you.”
“It’s hard for me to tell if we looked alike. The images I got weren’t kind. She doesn’t know it, Bear, but Finesse has given me a great prize.” I squinted quizzically up at him. “Closure. She’s changed everything I thought I knew about my life and helped me to understand my father. Why he’s done the things he’s done, why he lied about my mother’s death.”
I didn’t need to hear the story to know the source of his pain, and Smithy didn’t need to tell it. Aunt Bea always said, “Shared pain is pain halved.” Vegas and I had shared in a few weeks what most don’t manage in a lifetime of relationships.
“The Crone forced you to relive your mother’s slide into addiction?”
“Yeah, but that’s the weird thing. The witch picks the tiniest detail from your head and embellishes her version of the worst outcome.” He idly fondled the shell about his neck. “It’s artifice designed to disable, not fact. Yet living my mother’s fall had the opposite effect to what Finesse intended. It didn’t break me. She gave me clarity.”
“The witch is slipping. Things are changing.”
Smithy extricated himself and went over to a stack next to the hearth, hefting a large log onto the fire. Flames burst up into the chimney, bright warmth suffusing the space. He turned to face me, leaning against the stone lintel in crumpled boxer shorts.
“She’s not going to be pleased you destroyed her club and escaped.”
“Technically it was Daniel who destroyed her club. He’s a traitor and an idiot.”
“He may be an idiot, but he’s no traitor. If he’s guilty of anything it’s overconfidence. The man believed the Trinity knife would kill her. He thought he’d do the deed and rescue me and we’d all be free to get on with our lives.”
“If only it was that simple,” I sighed.
“If only.”
“He doesn’t trust me to get it done. He doesn’t believe in me. Maybe he’s right.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” Smithy understood this was as much about my self-doubt as anyone else’s. “He can’t stand to see one more person get hurt because of her. And I think he’s testing your limits. So far, you’ve surprised him at every turn. You’ve taunted her in her true form and survived unscathed without giving us away. If anyone asks me, that’s impressive.”
Unscathed was a tad generous. He’d have a pink fit once he discovered my hands weren’t just burned from the explosion. “I’m not sure we agree on the definition of impressive.”
Smithy rolled his eyes. “Why insist on calling him Daniel when he clearly hates it?”
I shrugged. “It’s his true name. She stole everything else from him in the most terrible way, including his identity. I choose to remember him from the time before when he was his real, admirable self. And he needs a constant reminder that’s who he really is.”
Smithy’s expression clouded. “But it seems cruel. He blames himself. What’s gone forever is too painful for him.”
“No,” I declared. “Pain is how we remember what’s important. We cannot forget what that witch has taken from each and every one of us. Who’s truly to blame.”
“And we cannot let her take everything.”
“Correct. And now, we have to go and rescue him.”
“I’m glad you agree, Bear. I was worried it might take an argument.”
“You’ve moved on from jealous boyfriend to brother-in-arms?”
“We’re both your Warriors, both invested in your safety. And I think, this time, there’s safety in numbers.”
“We leave no one behind. Besides, I always lose arguments with you. It’s impossible to win against the son of a judge.”
“Can you repeat that so I can record it? It will avoid a lot of hassle in future if I just press play.”
“Not on your life.”
He came to stand in front of me, hands out to help me up. “I need food.”
“Enoch’s an amazing cook.”
“Something other than kebrubs, I trust?” Smithy stuck his tongue out and made a gagging sound.
Brussel-sprout kebabs were a specialty that earned Aunt Bea no compliments. “Lamb stew with dumplings and fluffy mashed potato.”
“Yum. And I’m assuming there’s a bed in this joint? I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep for a thousand years.” He dragged me to my feet into a brief clinch.
“Only sleep?” I batted my eyelids and kissed his bare chest in my best rendition of sexy. I required a great deal more practice.
“Well look at you, all multry spinx.”
“I’ll never live that down, will I?”
My drunken episode seemed an eon ago. Trinity circumstances were bad right now, but I wouldn’t swap a single event that had brought us to this treasured moment. The Keeper’s Key helped me understand that even Mrs Paget’s passing was a necessary cog in time’s grand mechanism. Finesse’s unyielding tyranny made rare breaks more cherished and gave me hope, if fleeting, that love bestowed an advantage over her hatred. My foolish optimism was a stubborn bugger.
Hand in hand, Smithy and I headed for the kitchen. “I think you need an extra shower.” He winked at me. “I’ll scrub your back. I’m sure you missed a spot.”
“I did,” I nodded soberly. “I’m filthy.”
He beamed wider. “Outstanding.”
A flush splotched my cheeks. We knew this respite would be brief. Sunrise heralded another day without peace, unless we erased the Crone from this world forever.
Mason whistled ‘Deck the Halls’ as he worked, looping leather straps over this latest chore’s shoulders to fix him firmly to the X-shaped wooden cross. That’s what he viewed his victims as: chores, not people. His benevolent mistress had given him an early Christmas bonus. The secretive Anathema specialist was only called upon for the most particular of jobs. He balanced on the top rung of a small stepladder with a torch in his mouth.
Deep underground in his favourite vast chamber of L’Empire de la Mort, he paid little heed to the skittering of his mistress’ gangly pets that teemed the catacombs in droves. Instead of walls formed by human skulls, this cavern had high-relief carvings of gape-jawed heads, surrounding him in faces in the throes of agony. Mason relished the solitude of Paris’ intestines, the silence broken only by a pleasant metronome of dripping water.
Others would consider an odour of dank, mouldy earth repellent, but to him it was a better perfume than traffic smog or the expensive scent of a woman. He inhabited dark, subterranean places in preference to the sun’s domain.
Mason secured this chore in stocks of his own design, a hood over its head roped tightly at its neck. It wore nothing else, its body a wreck of burns and festering gashes. Were he capable of sympathy, Mason might have felt a glimmer triggered by the necrotic infection bruising its exposed flesh. He was surprised the chore hadn’t uttered a single complaint, no begging for mercy or attempts at a bribe for freedom.
Neither did it grunt with the pain so evident on pressing anything against its ruined form. Usually it didn’t matter how powerful or well-muscled a male, as this specimen was, they gibbered and blubbered to be spared just as enthusiastically as any girl.
Finesse’s punisher didn’t waste much thought on this irregularity, or many things for that matter. He was paid to act, not think. Although it intrigued him to learn how this chore ended up so out of favour. The mistress didn’t inflict her worms on any old rebel. Imagine parasitic burrowers swimming arteries and veins like so many piranhas, boring organs, poised to shred at a second’s notice. He could see them crawling beneath the chore’s mottled purple skin.
Mason shuddered, reflexively digging a fingernail into his forearm. He’d allowed himself to get distracted. There was something entirely unsettling about this chore and Mason wanted rid of it. He hurried now, no longer whistling. The cross attached to a thick pole by a long bolt that allowed him to spin it like a game-show wheel. Firmly shackled at the ankles, wrists and under the arms, he rotated the chore until the cross was upside down.
The occasion of the big reveal – Mason’s favourite part – was upon them. Kneeling, he loosened the knot and dragged the hood off, gasping in recognition. Finesse’s chosen one, Seth, stared at him as impassively as he had during numerous meetings to arrange ‘dispatches’. Inverted, bare, in restraints and suffering, Seth betrayed no outward sign of his discomfort. Mason rocked back on his heels and gulped. If the mightiest could fall from grace, no one was safe.
With a grim smile, Seth said, “Mason. Never a pleasure.” The words slurred between his swollen lips.
Mason was too stunned to respond immediately, his mind working in furious loops. Did Seth’s demise prove an opportunity for advancement? If he played the situation right, Mason fancied himself the top lieutenant, by the most-powerful’s side. But then, at such proximity he’d also place himself at heightened risk. Several of her deputies had vanished of late.
If he was careful not to repeat Seth’s mistakes … “What crime did you commit?”
“Abandoned a sinking ship. The Crone’s reign is almost at an end. Choose wisely my aspiring underling.”
It was the sentiment of a fraught man. No force on earth rivalled the Mistress. Still, Seth’s attitude smacked of unflinching certainty. Or was it arrogance, a quality he was notorious for? Confusion plagued Mason. He wasn’t paid to think, but the situation demanded consideration. After he’d finished here.
Ratcheting the lever of a block and tackle he hoisted the cross high. Swinging the beam out over a cylindrical hole, Mason lowered Seth until the apparatus neared the bottom far below, wedged tightly by walls either side. He scaled a rope ladder down into the well and detached anchoring chains. The cross now stood unsupported, Seth spread-eagled naked with his head closest to the chalky floor. Mason frittered a moment to gloat.
“If you have any fantasies of liberation, hear this. You are jammed in this well twenty metres below the room overhead. It is a dead end with a single entry where Finesse’s Sentinels roam in unquenchable numbers. You are located at the furthest depths of the Paris catacombs, in an uncharted area where explorers are lost, never to return to light’s embrace. Not only are your hands taped and held in mittens, your neck is secured fast by a noose collar which chokes should you move. Once I’ve left, a wall of blackness and silence more profound than you’ve ever known holds sway. There is nothing to see by, no clue for navigation and no knowledge of your trap by anyone but me. Madness is your reward and will find you as surely as rescuers cannot. Illumination and sound are our alarms. None have ever breached my prisons.”
Seth chuckled, softly at first. “None have tried.”
“So what if they do?”
“You have no idea who is coming.”
“Your offsider, Hugo? I foresee a vacancy closing in another of my pits very soon. Who else cares about you? Family dead, lover gone, influence waning. You have nothing left, Seth.” Mason’s confidence remained firm. “I dare any bold and foolish enough. The witch observes all through her Sentinels. They do not need eyes to see.”
He retreated skyward, taking his rope and his chains, the watery rays of his torch extinguished. Sentry-demons seeking new sport poured into the chamber, the silence broken only by claws on rock and frenzied screeching. The punisher was several caverns over by the time Seth answered. He was too far away to heed the whispered warning.
“The Keeper is coming to avenge those she loves, and Finesse had better be ready.”
Raucous laughter echoed from the pit, floating the stone-bound warrens. Confronted by such defiance, the Sentinels froze. Mason halted mid-step, cocking his head to listen. For the first time, the Crone’s punisher experienced a sensation both unpleasant and novel. A seed of fear germinated in his spine and no matter how he tried, Mason could not shake it free.
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