Feeling the way, CH 29 (Patreon)

The remnant of the town looked no better from the ground than it did from the helicopter. Buildings were half fallen, what was standing had been sand blasted until no details remain. It was large. Large enough I wondered how it vanished from the records. A few thousand people would have lived here, probably mining the mountains. Back in the early twentieth century, in this part of the state, it would have made this a major city. So where had all records of it gone to?

I drove slowly, looking for a sign this was the town I was looking for. Santa Cruizes. It wasn’t like there was a ‘welcome to’ sign when I drove in. Or that storefronts which might have had the city’s name on them had survived the century of sandy wind.

I brought up the call function in my helmet and found out there was no signal out here. So much for checking in with Beth for confirmation if this was where I wanted to be. There were no other settlements visible from the sky, but towns had been known to vanish under the sand in a lot less than a century.

I was about to turn around and head back to Albuquerque, and admit defeat, when the lowering sun reflected off something and my hackles went up.

There was nothing creepy about the building. It was a church that had suffered the same sand blasting the rest of the town had. That it was still standing mostly intact could be considered the most unusual thing about it.

Or, you know, the fact that I rode by it twice based on the trails in the sand and didn’t notice it before.

Was it the time of the day that rendered it visible? The fact I was about to leave? Some other factor? Magic was definitely involved.

I had a couple of hours before the sun sets.

Did I really want to be here in full dark, with the not creepy church that appeared out of nowhere?

I got off the bike. Where else would I want to be? I pocketed my phone, took the holster out of a saddle bag and clipped it to my belt. Bereta Perforator. Twenty-one bullet clips filled with hollow point. I might be relatively fearless. What I was not, was stupid.

Ignore what Winfred’s got to say about me.

I did a slow circuit around it, looked through the broken windows at the sand covered interior. No indications anyone had been in it. No boot marks in the sand, no litter, no ‘don’t come in the place is haunted’ warning.

It was as good as an invitation to go in, wasn’t it?

The door resisted due to the sand accumulated in front of it, and when it opened, I was left speechless. I know, easy to do when alone.

I was looking at a well-lit interior of a church with pews of polished wood, a floor made of white marble veined with black and gold. Candelabras stood by each pew with lit candles. In front was an altar with a blood red cloth over it. A cross was on the wall above that with Jesus hanging there.

I stepped to the side and looked in through a broken window. The layout was the same, but there weren’t any pews left. I couldn’t tell what the floor was made of because of the sand covering everything. There was the remnant of an altar and only one arm of a cross hung from the wall, crooked and looking like it might fall if I closed the door too hard.

I looked through the door. An impeccable church that might have been built a few years ago and saw regular maintenance.

Not creepy at all.

I placed a block to keep the door from closing—again, not stupid—and walked in.

The air was warmer. The sunlight higher. There wasn’t the cool breeze from the door and I check to confirm it was still open. It was, and through it I saw the sand blasted town.

The theories on time travel were as iffy for the magical community as for the scientific one. There was a time, oh, twenty years ago, when anyone who’d looked into it would tell you time travel was categorically impossible. If it could be done, it would be governed by a god of time. No such god, no time travel.

Then, Hertz came about and teleported. Another impossibility up to that point. So now the thinking came down to the same thing on both side. Energy. Time travel might be possible, but required the kind of energy we couldn’t generate.

I have no idea if anyone has pointed out to them the kind of energy teleportation should require.

Still, if this was time travel, my gut feeling was that I’d see the town of the early twentieth centuries, instead of the one from today. So this would be magical preservation. Which was impressive in its own right.

Where was the power for it coming from?

I walked to the front carefully.

There was no sense of reverence to the place.

That was on me.

San Francisco now has a few churches performing actual church ceremonies instead of holding parties and orgies. Read the history books. But there’s still not one church goers in my family. I doubt there’ll ever be, having our own god and all that. A real god, too.

I turned around to took in the altar and my eyes were drawn to the stain glass window high over the door. There it was, the art commissioned from Margaret Redmond. Looking at it, positioned there, it was definitely supposed to represent the sun. The wavy lines as rays, even if they weren’t moving from a center point. Said point more square than round. But the colors, yellows and reds, definitely brought the sun to mind.

I expect that when the light hits it right, the whole church is bathed in it.

I was glad this had been preserved, even if the implications crept me out.

Then there was the question of how a boy who’d never left Denver could have a memory of something that couldn’t be seen outside this church in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. Maybe Wanna Be showed him a picture, but that raised the question of why.

Behind the altar, there was a door. Walking around, I saw the remnant of a building at the back. That door would lead to that. Or outside now. I opened it and looked into a corridor of polished wood paler than the pews. The floor was hardwood. Paintings of people hung along it. Simple folks going about simple business. At the end, it opened into a room with an open door and past that I saw a kitchen table. 

It was bigger than the fallen structure implied.

I opened the first door I came across on my left. It stuck a little, the wood was warped. A small bedroom was on the other side. A rough wool sheet on a simple bed with a thin mattress. A side table and a desk were the only other things there. On the desk was an inkpot and quill. A stack of paper with writing on it. I couldn’t read it, so I took a picture with my phone. The next two doors were similar bedrooms.

The one after that caused me to freeze as I reach for the handle. There was a sense of wrongness to it. Of desecration. 

I felt something like that, years ago, when I was a kid and my fathers took us to Belize. To the Hearth our grandfathers desecrated in their attempts at taking power they didn’t deserve. 

The hearth has been repaired, restored to what it would have looked like before the altar was taken to the US by the Lewistons. Plenty of ceremonies have been performed in an attempt to remove the traces of the perversion that was performed there, but that sense of wrongness remains for those of us attuned to magic.

It was what I was sensing here. Not the magic of my god, but a god’s magic being perverted into something it wasn’t meant to be.

I pulled the door open and stairs leading down into darkness stood before me.

Can I state right here that if someone is setting all this up, to cut it out with the horror movie stuff. I was never a fan.

I used my phone to light my way. Two dozen steps and I was at the bottom. Pillars held the ceiling up. The width of the church and going back under it. The smell of death wasn’t thick, but present. It was old and new, fresher over dessicate. 

I scanned the floor as I moved in deeper, expecting bodies, but I didn’t come across any. At least Wanna Be took them out of here, if this was him. For all I knew, it was just a coincidence.

Yeah, right.

I froze as I studied the wall, and tried to understand why I did that. There were no sounds that weren’t there before. No smells that—I breathed in. No, no new smell. Still, something made me pause.

I turned around, shone the light across the way I came, and nothing there either. I snapped it in a corner, thinking I saw motion. Nothing. When it happened again, my light shone onto empty space a second time. Only now I no longer believe this was just my nerves.

I lowered the light to the floor and relaxed. Almost all magic revolving around hiding people or objects revolve around causing you to slip over it when you’re trying to see or hear it. Using that focus to guide the misdirection.

Thinking about it, that was probably why I didn’t see the church when I was looking for it. The reflection caught me out of the corner of my eye and then drew my attention.

I didn’t focus. I let the differences in shades register. My dad, Albert, could pickup differences in shades even computers couldn’t see. I was nowhere neat that good, I only had a fraction of his gift. But it was enough to make out the form moving in the dark. Now that I was not trying to identify a sound, I made out the scoffing as they moved.

When I moved, there was no warning. I was on them, then we were on the ground. I couldn’t see them, but I felt them. Definitely a guy.

“Get off me!” the man ordered and the words had power behind them.

Unfortunately for him, I was a stubborn son; we all were in my family. My hand moved toward his neck. I felt his hand against my chest, then I flew back. I landed and got to my feet. I considered the gun, but I didn’t want to kill Wanna Be yet.

No, this couldn’t be him. That was magic.

I still didn’t want to kill him yet; well, at all. I looked at the gun in my hand, and cursed my dad. Not everything was solved with a gun, damn it. Still, since I was holding it.

“You move, I shoot,” I said. “Your call.”

There was a snort. The bastard moved; I changed my aim.

“You want to try this again?” I could barely make him out, which was an improvement. Either he needed to focus on the effect or it was running out.

“Your done,” he growled. “You’ve angered the wrong god.”

“I’m pretty sure you have the wrong person. I don’t get in the way of gods if I can help it.” Something shoved against me, I shot. In the flash, I made him out running for the stairs and I took off after him.

Warning bells went off in my head, but I ignored them. If he was trying to escape, I definitely didn’t want him to succeed. He was at the door to the church when I reached the top of the stairs. It was a straight line from this point on.

He was screwed.

I covered the distance before he traveled a quarter of that on the other side. A jump and I was on his back. We rolled. I felt the hand on my chest and grabbed onto him before I flew off. I was still launched, but I took the jacket and shirt with me. He swore loudly. Ripping this off his back can’t have been pleasant.

I landed, got to my feet, wondered when I lost the gun and glared at my opponent.

He was a monkey of some sort. Call me speciesist if you want, but there’s a lot of them and I don’t recognize them on sight. Anyway, I was too distracted by his body to care about his species. No, not that way. His chest and arms were scarred to the point the fur didn’t grow.

Magic and scarification equaled only one thing.

The confirmation Damian had followers. Which meant power.

There was blood on his fingernails and I was concerned it was mine, but I couldn’t afford to care. I straightened.

“You have picked on the wrong guy to fuck with,” I told him.

“I? You started this. You brought His wrath down on you. I’m just his instrument.”

I unsheathed my claws. “You can go tell my great-uncle that no one in my family will ever stop standing up to him when your magic returns to him.” I ran at him.

“Great-uncle?” he asked, confused.

I swiped, but he wasn’t there anymore.

“Stop!” the monkey yelled.

I ran at him, and this time I saw him scratch his arm before flickering away. I snarled as I turned.

“Please.”

I took off in his direction, watching for any movement. I had—I snarled as he was gone again, but this time I saw the blur of his motion as he crossed the room and I followed it, ready to rip the throat out of that monkey before he could react.

He screeched as I barreled down on him and threw his hand up as if that was going to do anything against my—

I was in the air, uselessly trying to reach for him as I floated over his head and came to a stop with him out of reach. I screamed and roared, flailed about trying to get myself closer, but barely wobbled in place.

He looked at me fearfully as he moved away.

“I am in so much shit,” he said.

“You’ve got that right! You fucking let me down and I’m going to ripe you apart!”

“The first commandment. Oh, burning blood, the first commandment.” He paced in a wide circle around the pews, and me. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know who he is, I can’t be punished if I don’t know, can? I was just defending myself, I’m allowed to do that. Did I shed his blood?” he looked at his hands, smelled his claws, and visibly relaxed. “All mine.”

Curiosity as to what he was doing made me slows my trashing, and because Wolf’s gift needed me to constantly push, exhaustion came roaring, and I couldn’t trash anymore.

He noticed my lack of movement and, while staying far, he stopped pacing. “If I let you down, will you promise not to hurt me?” I snorted. “Please?” he pleaded. “I really shouldn’t be holding you up there to start with. There’s only so much I can explain if He comes demanding what I’m doing.”

I heard the capital ‘H’. I should, everyone in my family does the same when we refer to our god. Everyone in the Society does. “Oh, I would love to see him show up.”

The monkey looked even more fearful and glanced around as if he expected there to be someone else with us.

We were in a church lit by an afternoon sun that hadn’t moved since I’ve stepped in while I could see it was dark out the open door. He might be justified in not being sure what to expect.

I gently dropped to the floor, and as much as I wanted to charge at him. I needed to catch my breath, so I pulled myself to a pew and sat. That seemed to settle him and he sat on his own pew, far from me.

I watched him, and was surprised with how normal he looked, if I didn’t pay attention to the scarification on his torso and arms. Now that I wasn’t trying to kill him, I realized that it wasn’t random.

I’ve seen pictures of Sahataan’s follower from back before my great-uncle killed him and took his place. The marks they made on their body to power their magic was all over the place, only one person had done the work with any kind of precision, and that was Damian. His marks were precise, structured. Everyone else just filled the space until there was none left.

On the monkey, it was limited to specific areas, creating the pattern of stripes through his short fur.

The other thing that surprises me was how I wasn’t picking up any anger off him. He could be a great actor, but the worry felt genuine. Stories I’ve been told about Sahataan’s old followers all revolved around accumulating power without regards for others, or taking vengeance. Nothing about someone who looked and felt this ordinary.

“What’s the first commandment?” I asked, because the silence was getting uncomfortable. He was the follower of a sociopath, and he was looking at me like I might suddenly rip his throat out.

Okay, maybe I gave him a reason to fear that.

He jumped and looks at me fearfully.

“You seem to be afraid you broke it or something. What is it?”

He worried his lower lip. “Never an Orr shall be touched,” he finally said, and I stared.

“Is that a joke?”

He shook his head.

“You, can’t touch me?”

He nodded.

“Your god, my great-uncle, who hates my family for so many reasons I can’t list them all, ordered you to not touch us. Do you see why I’m having a problem believing you?”

“The Blood was—”

I burst out laughing. “The Blood? I was told Damian was—”

He shushed me and looks around worriedly. “You can’t use his living name.”

“Why not?”

“It’s disrespectful,” the monkey replied, offended.

“The guy threatened mine and my brother’s lives while standing over our cribs. Excuse me fucking much if I don’t have much respect for him. What should I call him instead? Sahataan?”

His eyes grew so wide I nearly laugh, but the fear in them stopped me. “Don’t say the insane one’s name. You might call him back.”

“Insane one?”

The monkey nodded.

“D—your god called the on he killed insane? Have you heard any of the stories about the stuff your god did before he did that one?”

“That was the living him. The one with the name.”

“D—”

“Don’t say it!”

“Buddy, I don’t know if you’re the crazy one to believe anything you’re heard from him, or just one of his pawn. So I’m going to ask you one question and how you answer is going determine what I do, got it?”

He nodded.

“How many people have you killed.”

“No one!” he replied and immediately he looked away, then at his hand. Before I called him on the lie, he said, “that’s not true.” He swallowed, won’t look away from his hands. Remorse was what I pick up from him.

He raised his hand with two fingers up. He was terrified when he glanced at me.

That many marks, and only two dead? I didn’t want to believe him, but the remorse and fear. They were real.

I remembered Elias and how he fooled me, but what were the odds of me coming across two sociopaths in only a few weeks?

They’d be better if I wasn’t an Orr, that’s for sure.

Still, until I was sure, I couldn’t get myself to just attack him. I considered a few phrases, but his marks could easily block anything I would come up with. There were people who have studied the books Damian left behind, as well as others that were found. I’m not one of them.

“Who were they?”

“Bad men.”

I kept myself from snorting. How many killers have used that as a justification? “I’m going to need more than that, buddy.”

“They were going to kill my family.”

“Okay, and who’s your family?”

“I don’t know.”

I sighed. “Look, believe it or not, I’m trying to—”

“I don’t know! That was my price! I had to sacrifice them so they would live, okay?”

I let him calm down. “Tell me what happened.”

He let out a slow breath. “I screwed up.”

I kept my opinion to myself on that one.

“I used to have a good job, I made good money. My family… They must have been great if I was willing to do this for them. But I didn’t have enough money. So I started gambling. Poker. I had a system, and for a while it went well. Then not so much. I borrowed from the wrong people. I tried to repay them, but it was never enough. I told my wife what I did. She said we’d find a way out.”

“You remember that?”

He nodded. “I remember I have a wife, talking with her. I have two sons and a daughter.” He smiled. “One granddaughter.” The smile fell. “But I don’t know who any of them are. When I remember the event, where they should be are holes in my memory.”

“That’s cruel.”

He nodded. “But he told me he’d do that. The men had broken down the door. I’d barricaded my family in the basement. I was going to be the only one to pay. They beat me, told me everything they’d do to my family, before leaving me there to go do it.”

He was silent. “I was so angry. I had done that to them. I wanted to be able to get up and rip their throat out for taking my mistake out on my family. I tried to yell; I would do anything for a chance to protect my family, pay any price so they wouldn’t have to suffer for my mistake. And He was there. Standing over me. Offering me the power I wanted, so long as I was willing to sacrifice what was most precious to me.” He snorted. “I accepted. I didn’t care. Even when He explained what I’d lose, how He’d take them out of my life. So long as they lived, He could kill me for all I cared. What else did I deserve after bringing those two monsters into my house.”

“You killed them.”

He nodded. “It wasn’t pretty. He gave me strength, endurance, toughness and I went to town on those two. I hope. I pray that He made my family forget me and anything I did. I’d hate for them to remember me like that.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“No. It would be too kind for me to know that. It’s part of my suffering that I can’t be sure they wouldn’t be terrified of me if I were to show up on their door steps one day.”

“Sex?” I had to ask. Both because that might be my biggest fear and because it was the standard sacrifice before Damian. He looked at me, confused, so I asked. “Can you have sex?”

“Sure, not with you. Sorry, but I’m not into guys.”

I laughed, and that confused him more.

“What happens now?” he asked uncertainly.

“Now, you tell me the rest. Starts with those commandments, and while you’re doing that, you need to ready yourself because you need to have a meeting with someone.”