Dance among the flames, p.28
Dance Among the Flames, page 28
He turned around, expecting to find the line of candles that separated Adriana’s mystic prison from the rest of the bedroom. Instead, he saw a wall of fire.
Francesco appeared beside him and whispered into his ear. “It’s not real.”
Michael didn’t respond. He couldn’t even move. The inferno popped like gunfire and buffeted him with heat. How could it not be real?
Francesco touched Michael’s face and whisked him away from the fiery scene to a place of soothing colors and light. “Nothing can harm you if you trust in me.”
Michael gazed through the swirling nebula. From this height, the fire below looked insignificant, hardly bigger than Michael’s catatonic body, poised on the bed beside Adriana.
“I’m going to burn, aren’t I? Why do I always have to burn?”
Francesco turned Michael’s face toward his. “You don’t. Trust me, Michael.”
“I can’t. It’s too much.”
“That’s exactly why you must. Faith only counts when it’s challenged.”
Chapter One Hundred Four
Adriana shook Michael’s shoulders. “Come back. Please. I can’t bear it.”
Whore. Liar. Murderer. Filth.
A thousand voices screamed, and all of them sounded like her voice, her doubts, her truths. The images were worse. Her face in the throes of ecstasy. Her body performing deeds so vulgar they made her want to vomit. Her soul withering in corruption.
She covered her eyes and ears and screamed.
The torment quieted. Fingers pried hers away from her face. Michael’s voice whispered in her ear. “All will be well.”
She opened her eyes. His face seemed different somehow—gentler, older, wiser—as if he was not Michael, at all. And yet, she trusted him just as much.
He stepped off the bed onto the darkness and opened his arms as, beyond him, the walls of her prison blazed. “Trust me.”
How could she possibly climb into his arms and allow him to carry her into an inferno and certain death?
“I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
She didn’t believe him, not because he would lie to her but because what he promised wasn’t possible. As the vile accusations grew louder and the damning images multiplied, Adriana climbed into Michael’s arms: Better to burn with him and be done, than to suffer this slow corruption. She buried her face in his chest and sighed with relief as he covered her ear with his hand. The warmth and smell of him made the growing sounds bearable.
“I love you, Michael.”
Would God bring them together in Heaven? Would they be reborn together in another life the way the Umbandistas believed? Or were these precious seconds all they had? As the heat stung her arms and the wind from the inferno buffeted her hair, she hugged him tight. If there was a journey to take, in this life or the next, she would take it with him.
She took one last look at Michael then closed her eyes as he stepped into the flames.
The heat vanished. The wind stopped. The accusations silenced.
Adriana opened her eyes and slid out of Michael’s embrace onto the bedroom floor. Behind her, a thousand votive candles formed a line in front of Jian Carlo’s massive bloodwood bed. In front of her, Jian Carlo shook his fists at Serafina, like a child throwing a fit.
“You said this couldn’t happen.”
Serafina grabbed Jian Carlo’s face. “Be careful, my pet. Be very, very careful.” Then she shoved him away.
Adriana gasped. Who was this sniveling creature? Certainly not her husband, the man who had stolen her youth, isolated her from family and friends, controlled every aspect of her life. Who had raped her. “Who are you?”
Jian Carlo seemed puzzled, but Serafina just smiled in that reptilian way that had always terrified Adriana as a child.
“He is mine. And you need to be taught to respect what is mine.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve never taken anything from you.”
Serafina let her hand fly, but her slap never landed: The old Michael was back, full of righteous fury.
He gripped Serafina’s wrist and glared in her face. “Don’t you fucking dare.” He shoved her into Jian Carlo and reached back for Adriana. “Come on. We’re out of here.”
Serafina pushed Jian Carlo forward. “Stop him.”
The men tripped and fell in a tangled sprawl. Jian Carlo recovered first, pinned Michael on his back with a forearm against his throat, and pounded Michael in the face.
Adriana screamed.
Michael bumped and jerked, somehow freeing himself from Jian Carlo’s hold. For a moment, Adriana thought his greater size and youthful athleticism would win the fight. Then Jian Carlo wrapped Michael’s arm in some kind of Jujutsu hold and jolted it with tremendous force. Michael howled in pain as his shoulder popped.
Adriana rushed forward to help. Before she could, Jian Carlo released Michael’s arm and pushed it out of the way. He rose on his knees and raised his arms high, ready to strike.
“Stop. Please,” she yelled.
But it was too late. Jian Carlo dropped his weight and drove his elbows down into Michael’s chest. Bones cracked. He rose again and repeated the strikes. Chest, throat, face. Cracks and thuds. So much blood. Michael used his good arm to cover and deflect, but with one shoulder dislocated, his hips pinned, and his legs locked in place by Jian Carlo’s, those elbow strikes kept hitting their targets.
Adriana yanked Jian Carlo’s hair, but he kept pounding on Michael. If she didn’t find a way to stop him, Jian Carlo would beat him to death.
Rage flooded Adriana’s mind and radiated through her body. The emotion was so foreign that it took her a while to recognize it. When she did, it consumed her. She ran to the corner and grabbed one of the wooden canes from Jian Carlo’s collection—Brazilian Walnut, one of the hardest woods in the world—and struck the side of his head. The sound cracked like a major league hit, but this wasn’t a ball, it was Jian Carlo’s skull.
Adriana doubled over, leaned on the cane, and vomited on the floor.
Michael rolled onto his side, moaned and spit blood.
Jian Carlo fell onto his back and clutched his bleeding head.
“You bitch,” Serafina screamed.
Adriana stared at the cane in her hand. How could she have hit Jian Carlo with this? She loosened her grip. The cane felt evil. She didn’t want it anymore, but it clung to her. Then she heard a sound far more evil than the cane.
Against the wall, Jian Carlo crouched like a wild beast, teeth bared, and glared through bloodshot eyes. He meant to kill her. Michael must have seen it, too, because he cried out and struggled to reach her. He’d never make it in time. But Adriana refused to die. Not with Michael’s life still in jeopardy. Not while they still had a chance to live.
As Jian Carlo shoved himself off the wall and lunged toward her, she hefted the cane behind her shoulder. Time slowed. Michael shouted a warning. Jian Carlo roared with blood lust. Serafina screamed. Adriana cracked the cane, with all her might, across Jian Carlo’s throat.
Chapter One Hundred Five
Colors pulsated in time with Francesco’s rumbling voice. It was beautiful and hypnotic. Michael wanted to watch it forever, if only Francesco’s formerly gentle voice hadn’t hardened into a military general commanding him to war.
“On your feet. The barrier is weakening. The sorceress is losing control. This cannot be allowed. The demons want their revenge. If you don’t stop them, Serafina won’t be the only one who pays.”
Michael was too exhausted to care. He wanted to float in the glorious nebula of swirling color, not return to his pulverized body. He tried to focus, but his mind felt soggy.
“I feel bad,” he whispered.
“I can help you if you’ll just—”
Michael slammed back into his body, ripped from the peaceful nebula. Daggers of pain shot through him. His face throbbed. His shoulder screamed. His ribs exploded in agony with every shallow attempt to breathe. He couldn’t see. He wiped the blood from his eyes, took one look at the spinning room, and vomited on the floor.
Francesco had said something about the barrier. Something important. Something Michael had to remember.
He rolled away from the mess and cried out as his dead arm flopped, sending shocks of searing electricity into his shoulder. Dislocated. Had to be. Michael recognized the pain. He vomited again, then braced his dead arm against his waist, and crawled to his feet. This would hurt like a sonofabitch, but it had to be done.
He braced himself against the wall, took a deep breath, and released his arm, crying out as the weight of it pulled on the injured tissue. Nausea hit him again. The room began to spin. Groaning through the pain, he rotated his torso until his back arched and his arm hung behind his hips and gravity stretched the bone from the socket. Gasping through a curse, he straightened his back and pushed through the resistance. The bone popped into the socket.
He slumped against the wall, panted with relief, and surveyed the room.
Jian Carlo lay dead in Serafina’s arms. She rocked his corpse and chanted something ominous in Portuguese as the barrier wobbled. The air over the candles pulsated, as if something inside fought to escape.
The demons want their revenge. If you don’t stop them, Serafina won’t be the only one who pays.
Michael was running out of time. And worst of all, Adriana was back on the bed, striking at the air as though fighting off a swooping threat.
Go now.
Michael pushed himself away from the wall and headed toward the bed. His torso ached from the broken ribs. His swollen face throbbed. It hurt to breathe. If the barrier repelled him, as it had the first three times without Francesco’s protection, he wouldn’t survive.
Doesn’t matter.
He limped away from Serafina and her eerie chant, and stepped across the candles into the anguished wails of a thousand tortured beings. Furies and demons slashed and tore. The innocent suffered. The powerful reveled and the weak were consumed.
A crazed hag flew at Michael, screamed for help as terror contorted a face already marred by boils and rotted teeth. Tufts of stringy hair clung to her patchwork scalp. She clawed at Michael’s face, but before her jagged nails reached him, a hideous winged creature with dragon scales and a human face skewered the hag with its talons. She reached for Michael as the demon shoved her into its fetid maw.
Michael screamed.
Francesco’s soothing voice cut through the deafening wails. “Nothing can touch you unless you believe.”
Michael dropped to his knees. He was well beyond receiving comfort from a spirit. He needed help from a higher power. He bowed his head as his mother had taught him and recited The Lord’s Prayer.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.” The words flowed, but his eyelids wouldn’t close, forcing him to watch trespasses he could never forgive and would never, ever forget.
An abomination with the head and talons of a vulture on the body of a bear charged straight at him.
“Close your eyes, Michael. Close them now.”
Michael did as he was told and waited for the claws that would rip his throat and split his gut, but the wailing stopped and a blessed silence embraced him. Michael waited, afraid to move yet terrified to remain still.
“These demons cannot hurt you, Michael. Trust in me, and I will guide you through this hell.”
Michael nodded. He wanted nothing more than to put his faith and trust in the saintly spirit, but when he opened his mouth to speak, his eyes opened as well. A disturbingly familiar scene took center stage. The girl from his dreams was tied to a stake about to burn.
Colette.
She looked utterly peaceful amid the chaos and gazed at him with such love that he loved her in return.
“You have been touched by God, Philippe.” Her soft suede eyes caressed his heart. The melody of her voice sang sweetly through the thunderous noise. “Guard thy gift.”
Michael raced to her, and although he felt the wind rush against his face, he did not seem to move. In his place a boy threw himself at her feet.
Philippe.
He sobbed and tore at the knotted rope that bound Colette to the stake, but his small fingers couldn’t unravel the knots. He grabbed her calves and climbed up to her knees. “Don’t leave me, Colette. Please don’t leave.”
A farmer yanked Philippe from Colette and tossed him onto the ground.
Michael scrambled to his feet, looking from the pyre to the bed. He had to do something. Colette and Adriana both needed him, but who should he help first?
Révérend Père d’Amboise materialized in front of the pyre, thumped his staff and pointed an accusatory finger at Michael. “You are the one. She dies in your stead.”
The wicked priest laughed and hurled his torch onto the pyre, igniting it into flames. Michael shielded his face from the onslaught of heat. When he looked back, it wasn’t Colette in the fire, it was Adriana.
He charged forward as a new batch of kindling combusted and sent sparks and flames to block his path. Michael stumbled back and brushed the embers from his sleeves. Laughter mocked his efforts, punctuated by the crack and pop of burning wood. Michael tried to look, but the heat singed his eyes, making them water and blurring his vision.
The blaze wavered making it look less like fire and more like red undulating smoke. From this smoke, a new specter formed, female and formidable, an Amazon with wild black hair and piercing amber eyes.
Serafina.
“Come, Michael.” She held out her arms in mock welcome. “We are growing impatient.”
Her dark skin and red dress paled into the dingy white flesh and robes of the wicked priest. For a moment, Michael could see both of them together as one, male and female, separated by centuries, united in a common purpose to destroy.
The specter wavered into smoke and revealed Adriana tied to the stake and Philippe clutching her bound waist. Michael felt split in two. Part of him hugged Adriana while the other part watched in horror.
“She burns for us,” Philippe cried. “We have to help her.”
“No,” Michael said. “This isn’t real.”
As Adriana wept in terror, Michael wasn’t so sure.
Despair seeped through his veins like wine through a cloth, spreading everywhere at once and staining him with doubt. He looked up at Adriana tied to the stake, caught in her own personal hell. How many lifetimes of suffering had she endured while waiting for him to do the right thing? How many incarnations had they lived, searching for each other, trying to right this wrong, and failed? How many times had Michael let others pay the price while he ran from the truth?
He was done with this evil. It was time for this nightmare to be put to sleep.
Chapter One Hundred Six
Serafina reached into the folds of her skirt and removed a piece of chalk, a cigar, a pint of cachaça, and a concave disc of polished bronze that fit neatly in her palm. Moving quickly, she drew a circle around herself and Jian Carlo’s body then filled it with smaller circles containing diagrams of intersecting tridents, arrows, crosses, and swords—some straight, some curved, some in the form of waves.
Serafina lit the cigar and blew the smoke around her. She propped the cigar in Jian Carlo’s mouth, drank a swig of the cane liquor, sprinkled some to share with the spirits, and tucked the bottle in the crook of Jian Carlo’s lifeless arm. The rest of this ritual would have to wait. First, she needed to see what was happening inside the Hell-like prison she had created.
She wiped the bronze disc on her skirt until it gleamed like a mirror and drew a scrying sigil on it with chalk. The surface clouded and swirled like smoke. When it cleared, she saw Michael Cross shielding his face with his arm as hideous creatures clawed and swooped, attacking and devouring one another, not just around Michael but around Serafina, as well.
How was this happening? And why could she hear their screeches and wails?
Scrying spells were only supposed to show images on a disc, but Serafina had appeared inside a flame in the demon prison of her own creation. She was there and here, both places at once.
Michael charged, but the fire around her other self blazed and drove him back. She held out her arms and laughed as they paled and aged into the wrinkled hands and white sleeves of the old French priest.
“Come, Michael. We are growing impatient,” her image said inside the fire.
“She burns for us,” a boy cried.
Serafina stared into the scrying disc. When she saw Adriana tied to the stake and the peasant boy clinging to her legs, as full of love and fear as he had been for the young French witch, it all came together. Serafina would finally stand on the ashes of those who had vexed her soul for centuries.
She raised her hand to wipe the spell when a new face filled her scrying disc. São Francisco. His church had been her favorite in the Pelourinho District. His sad smile made her feel like a desperate teenager all over again.
“You have strayed far, my sister. Will you not come home?”
Her other self inside the vision laughed. “Home to what? Your church? What did it ever do for me?” She sneered at his shabby robe and bare feet. “What did it do for you? You were once a great warrior, São Francisco. Look at you now.”
The spirit sighed, as though greatly disappointed. “Holy wisdom confounds Satan and all his wickedness. You know this, Serafina, yet you close your heart from grace.”
Serafina did not like the direction of this conversation nor did she like the saint’s feathery touch of peace and hope, the same touch she had felt in her forest terreiro when she was preparing to draw blood for this spell.
“Keep your weakness to yourself, gentle saint, I deal in power, now. Dread and promise wound together, a window of magic to seek, save, and destroy.” These were the words that had ridden in on the New Year’s Eve tide and landed in Serafina’s mind that night on Devil’s Beach. Although she still didn’t fully understand them, she knew they were true.
“No, my sister. You will not use this power. It will use you.”
Serafina shrugged. Exú had promised her justice and satisfaction in exchange for service and obedience. If his price sometimes grated against her soul, too bad. The power she gained from him justified any suffering she had endured and any suffering she might have to endure in the future.
