Lionesses

Lionesses

Part 5

We can’t get in to the address the man gave us. You thought I would be able to? Why would that be? I’m a vampire, just as much as Angelus is. I was born a mortal vampire, by your broadest definitions, a living creature that feeds on blood, and I was made into an immortal feline vampire from your worst nightmares. I’m still a vampire. The barrier applies to me, too.

So, we are watching. Together.

Angelus is almost as good a hunter as I am, and I don’t say that about many creatures. He’s looking for something specific. I’ll know it when he sees it. Oh, I can’t read his thoughts. Just his feelings. That’s good enough. Most cats can do that – they don’t need a demon inside them. Angelus is watching people entering and leaving the address, looking for someone weak. Ah! He thinks he’s got one.

A young man, a servant by the look of him, but he has a smell of decadence about him. I think he earns a living by a lot more activities than servanting. Angelus looks pleased. Still, it’s almost sunrise, so we need somewhere safe for the day.

We’ve found an outbuilding, a wood store. Not very comfortable, but it will do, especially since it overlooks what seems to be the servants’ entrance. We’ll take turns watching for this young man to finish his day’s work. Unless we see someone better, of course.

It’s been a long day, but the sun has just dropped below the level of the surrounding buildings. That’s enough. And here comes our prey. Twelve hour shifts, then. We follow him as he goes home, then re-emerges a couple of hours later. We watch as he meets other men in a variety of coffee houses. They give him money, he gives them packages, from a leather satchel that he carries. They don’t smell of drugs. Antiquities then? Is he selling them for his employer, or on his own account? I don’t much care, so long as they don’t smell of those things that we have been sent to find. The book. Her. Palestrina. They don’t. I would know.

And he sells something else. Himself.

He’s coming from his last customer’s apartment, the musk of sex still strong around him. I’m in the shadow of a doorway, and Angelus has slithered out to meet him. I’m sure that boy is part snake – Angelus, that is, not our quarry. I suppose you can imagine what is happening, you don’t really need me to describe it. The way Angelus feathers a touch onto the young man’s cheek, the smile he gives him, the whispered endearments. The way he allows his body to brush briefly against the other. The level of pheromone he’s putting out. The wad of cash that he allows this venal young man to glimpse. Well, you didn’t think we weren’t going to go through the pockets before we dumped the body from the Museum, did you? And we’ve made another couple of kills since then.

Ah. The assignation is made. Angelus will meet the young man as he leaves his employer’s house tomorrow night. We’ll both be there. For now, we just need to find somewhere to spend the rest of the night and tomorrow.

I might have known. Angelus has used some of the cash for a ground floor hotel room. He always did like his comforts. Truth be told, so do I. He lets me in through the window. We are both well rested when it is time to keep his tryst with the servant.

The sun has gone down, and Angelus is standing outside the servants’ door. The lad didn’t expect him to come here – it was arranged that they would meet out of sight of the house. He’s calling the boy’s name. Ahmed. It means ‘most highly adored’. Angelus has certainly made him feel that.

Ahmed comes bundling out of the door, trying to shush Angelus, who simply presses him against the wall of the house and starts to whisper endearments again, soothing the boy, calming him, stroking him, telling him that all will be well. They are all smiles and breathy glances. And pheromones. The boy is falling in love. Angelus makes it look so easy.

He’s asking whether the boy can come with him now. Ahmed says not yet, a few minutes, he must see whether his employer has any commissions for him. I almost growl, but that would give away my position. The antiquities; it can only be those. Palestrina, we have come for you.

I have missed some of the conversation, but I gather that Angelus is unwilling to wait outside, where anyone can see him. The boy is telling him to stay quiet, to come into the servants’ door, and wait for him. At last.

They go in, and I reach the door in one bound. The invitation was only for Angelus, though. He sees it, has expected it, has changed to his true face.

“Invite the cat in.”

Ahmed is rigid with fear, of me, of the demon he thought would be a lover. Angelus has hold of him though, just in case.

“Invite Sekhmet in.”

The boy would fall to his knees, if it were not for the grip that Angelus has on his arms.

“Sekhmet…” he moans. “And are you…Ptah?”

“No, but I have come to do his bidding. Now, invite her in!”

The boy begins to babble, pleading for his life. Angelus cuts across his incoherence.

“I won’t ask again. Invite her in, and you will survive this night. You have my word.”

The boy nods gratefully, and invites me in. Angelus goes for his throat, but as the boy’s heart slows, he opens a vein in his wrist and allows his victim to drink. Well, he gave the boy his word that he would survive. He just didn’t say how. He looks at me as the corpse falls to the ground, and I nod. Aurelius will send someone to pick ups las latest fledgling. The boy can be grateful that at least Angelus has made him a fledgling, not a minion. It gives him a better start.

The man we are looking for is in an upstairs room. We have no difficulty finding it. He is with two other men, both craftsmen. Copyists. They are copying antiquities. The room is full of antiquities.

They don’t at first hear us enter until Angelus, lounging against the doorjamb, his arms casually folded, coughs discreetly. He does have style. He also has his human face on.

The two craftsmen look panicky, but the other has more courage. He gets up and comes towards us.

“Who are you? Who let you in? What do you want?”

“Let’s say that I am here as an agent for someone who has been robbed.”

The two craftsmen rise from their seats hurriedly and try to sidle around us, try to leave the room. I growl a little, and they stop. They back away, looking for the slender protection of their master.

“What has robbery to do with us? Everything here has been legitimately found or purchased!”

I bet.

“You have a rus rus book, and you have some firsnturntury AD bones, found with the book. They belong to my principal. I will have them back. Now!”

“No! They were properly excavated! No one has a claim on those.”

Angelus sighs, and nods to me. I stalk into the room. I find the book first, unrolled. Not all books come as rectangular objects. This one is a scroll. A very thick, heavy scroll, perfectly preserved. It is on the table at which one of the craftsmen were working. Copying it. Angelus sees.

“So, you don’t fake things at all here? Which one would you have returned to the museum, I wonder?”

Then I find her scent. It is very, very faint, and if I were only a cat, I could not have caught it. It is, after all, almost two thousand years old. Palestrina.

Her bones are in a cardboard box on the table. I stand on my hind legs, my paws on the table, for a better look. It is then that I see what has been done. Three of the ribs are missing and half of a leg bone has been newly sawn off. That, too, is missing. I whine. Angelus catches the note of distress. He sees me snuffling at the desecrated leg bone.

“What has happened to the bones?” he demands. I would not wish to be on the receiving end of that voice.

“Tell me, or I will find something here to make you tell me. You won’t enjoy it, I promise, although I shall do my best to. I’ve been a bit short of entertainment lately.”

The man starts to bluster. Angelus calmly crosses the floor and snaps the necks of both craftsmen. They are of no use to us. He continues forward until he is almost touching this thief.

“Tell me.”

Shocked silence.

“Of course, some people would rather have bone-setting surgery without anaesthetic than tell things their master wishes them not to tell. This can be arranged.”

Casually, he reaches down and picks up the man’s hand. There is a sharp snapping noise and the middle finger is suddenly sticking out at an angle, sharp daggers of bone piercing through skin. Angelus’ hand is over the man’s mouth before he can cry out. Gently, he licks the man’s ear. That may be the most shocking thing of all for this victim. I can see the fight leave him. His voice is hoarse with pain.

“They are only bones. Some people will pay well for pieces of bone of a certain sort, a certain age. They specify what they need. It is only bone.”

“Sorcerers?” The word is a hissed sibilant. Did I tell Ang Angelus seems to be part snake? He’s not, of course, but he’s doing a good impression.

The man nods, dumbly. I daren’t think how Aurelius will take this, but I can feel the growl rumbling out of my belly. Only the patience of a predator, a relict of my existence as a cat, stops me from tearing out his entrails there and then.

“Where are the pieces?”

He shakes his head. Another finger goes. More bloody bone daggers. The rag is rammed into his mouth once more, until his sobs subside.

“Ahmed,” he gasps. “Ahmed is the one who sells them. He knows.”

I can barely restrain myself. Angelus nods to me, and this time it is I who goes for the throat. Angelus stops me before it is too late, though, before the man is quite dead, and he gives just a few drops of blood to him. Unlike Ahmed, he will become a minion. Quite a bright one, to be sure. Bright enough to understand whatever eternal punishment Aurelius decides would be apt. Perhaps he’ll let me tear this one to pieces on a nightly basis. He’ll soon learn what are only bones.

Angelus carefully straightens the man’s fingers – we don’t want a crippled minion before we have a chance to play with him properly – then hunts round for a bag. He soon finds the leather one that Ahmed uses. It isn’t very large, but Palestrina was not a tall woman, and her bones will just fit, even the long ones. He examines the curtains, which are a blood-red velvet, and almost new. He quickly has a sizeable piece ripped off, and wraps the remaining bones in it. He places the cloth-wrapped bundle, the book, and the almost completed copy into the bag and quickly slips the strap over his head and shoulder. He also slips in some of the more desirable antiquities. Finders keepers – isn’t that what archaeologists believe? I recognise one of the things that he takes, and I whine as he picks it up. That does not escape his notice.

Working on the premise that members of staff are probably forbidden from entering this room, he fetches Ahmed’s body up here. Aurelius’ minions will deal with all four, now that there is no barrier to stop them entering.

Angelus rifles all four sets of pockets, gathering quite a wad of cash. As he does so, he gives me one of those smiles.

“The proceeds of immoral earnings, of one sort or another. Now it’s just the proceeds of commoeft.eft. Let’s go.”

That’s alright, then. We head back home with our sad little bundle.

**************

You wish to know more about those early years, and about the task I have set Angelus? Very well.

~~~~~~

When it was safe, Sekhmet and I emerged from the cave. Acathla stood where we had last seen him. I have never before heard a cat howl with grief, but Sekhmet did so, her cries carrying far into the desert night. I, of course, was not the same person as I had been the day before, but even so, I felt sorry that this demon who had tried to help me, even whilst trying to solve his own dilemma, had suffered this fate.

But we were alive, and still on the face of the earth. I had no wish to be sucked into Hell, so we had to hide Acathla. It took most of the night, but we dug down into the sand until he toppled over into a deep pit. I took very great care not to touch him in any way. We covered him and left him. Seth had said that he would be sentient, but what else could we do?

The next night, we returned to the village and so our reign of terror started. Sekhmet, driven by the darkness of Seth’s blood, and I, a young and hungry demon, slaughtered our way across Egypt, but always we returned to that village. They were never free of us for long. We took a little time out to visit my birthplace in the Alps, but Egypt was our home. Those first villagers knew who I had been, and called me Ptah. The Hammer. But they didn’t last long. After a couple of generations, they forgot who I had been and only knew what I had become. Ptah. I was content with that name. My birth name is now lost in the mists of time, and only I remember it. They made me a god, and they made Sekhmet a goddess, one to be placated. They believed Sekhmet to be my consort. They would never have understood.

The rest of Egypt called me Sokar, god of the dead, a god to be feared. They got that much right. When Memphis was built close by our village, around 3,100BC as you count time now, the city was in need of a god and goddess, and who better to fill the bill? So, as labourers and other workers moved to this brand new, pristine city of Memphis, coming from the surrounding villages, they took the names of Ptah and Sekhmet with them, and we took the city. Our depredations were enormous, but at the height of its power, Memphis was the largest city in the world. We had plenty of prey.

But, we had had four hundred years of slaughter, and worse. We were…maturing…even if only a little. Gradually, we killed more to eat than we did for fun, and we started to build a family. Minions, childer, never many at a time. When I had minions that I could trust, I sent them out to find more like Sekhmet. No creature should be alone. But we had left it too late. All those of her kind were gone. We never found anything, not even bodies.

Our home remained in Egypt. Memphis was always my favourite, though it is gone now. Its remains are not so far from Cairo, and that is the nearest I can get. We stayed there through the hardest times, including the Fall of the Old Kingdom, the Egyptian Dark Ages. That happened when I was about 1300 years old, and lasted for over two centuries. It was climate change, and it turned Egypt to dust. Humans began to eat their children. You truly are not so different to us, as ready to be monsters as we. The threshold is a little different, that is all.

We looked for ways of returning Acathla to Sekhmet, of defying Seth, if you will, and we sought out any magic user we could find. Witches, sorcerers, shamans. Anybody. You think of sorcerers, if you think of them at all, as the embodiment of evil and greed, using their magical powers for immense personal gain or for the benefit of the dark powers. It wasn’t always so. Sorcerers have been feared, but they have also been respected. It was the Christian religion that condemned them all, called them charlatans, pointed out that most of the things they did were simply works of science and technology beyond their time. Just as the work of the smith used to be considered magical. But because you know how it’s done, it doesn’t mean it isn’t magic.

So, we continued to hunt for someone who could help us. We would visit Acathla’s grave every year, and Sekhmet would give tongue to her grief. She still loved him down all the march of the years. I do believe they are truly soul mates. It was on one of those visits, at the time of the Crusades, that we discovered some foolish men in the process of activating him. We stopped it, but that, again, is a story for another day.

I heard of one sorcerer in Samaria. This was about two thousand years ago, and by then I was different again. Still a vampire, of course, but different. So was Sekhmet.

We went to see the one in Samaria. Simon, he was called. Simon Magus. The one that the Apostle Philip also met whilst visiting Samaria. He was well respected and had done many good deeds. But a vampire has to be careful in approaching a sorcerer. They know what we are, and often have the power to deal with us. So we are circumspect. Even an old and powerful one such as I.

I went bearing a gift. It was a beautifully carved ivory box, filled with frankincense. This was a princely gift – at least, the prince I took it from seemed to think so – and frankincense is valued by sorcerers for its magical properties.

The approach to Simon’s house was unusual for those times and that place. Rather than entering a walled courtyard, the approach was through a garden, full of lavender, jasmine and thyme, fennel and rosemary, and other scented herbs. And roses. The deep red rose that grows in my courtyard even now came from there, a stolen memory of her. The garden was a delight. The servant at the door invited me to enter, saying that his master was away at the moment, but I was welcome to wait for his return. The presence of a demon in a sorcerer’s home can be misconstrued, with unfortunate results. I said that I would wait outside. I was shown to an arbour of clipped cypress run through with climbing roses, sheltering a couple of comfortable seats filled with richly embroidered cushions. Refreshments were fetched for me, wine, pine kernels, stuffed dates, apricots, everything of the finest.

Then she came. She was richly dressed, her hair covered by a shawl woven in deep red and black, and the shawl was wrapped around the lower half of her face. It was her eyes that I first saw. Black as my downfall, warm as the Egyptian night, sparkling with my sins. I should have loved her had I never seen more than her eyes. I was hers from that very moment, and nothing has ever changed. Palestrina. My soul mate.

She sat beside me and unwound the shawl. I, a three thousand five hundred year old demon, was helpless in her thrall. Her skin was golden, her lips full and generous, red as blood, her hair a glory of dark chestnut, framing the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She was his daughter. She was fourteen.

In that society, she would normally have already been married, or at the very least betrothed. I learned later that she was not because she, too, had the potential to become aerfuerful sorcerer, and would stay with her father to learn from him. Marriage could wait. The garden was hers. It said much about her.

She asked me what I wanted from her father. Did I mention being circumspect? I told her everything. More, even, than I have told you today. I have never lied to her, and I couldn’t, even then.

She asked to meet Sekhmet, and I whistled her in from where she waited in the outer darkness. As she padded forward, I saw the surprise on Palestrina’s face – and the delight. They loved each other on sight. As I watched them, Palestrina caressing and soothing and smiling, Sekhmet rubbing and purring, I realised that the only conceivable outcome was that I should have two lionesses in my life. Sekhmet, the demon, my Sire, my companion and friend. And Palestrina, sorcerer and daughter of a sorcerer, as lithe and tawny and powerful as a lioness from the Judean desert, my love, my eternal mate. Mine.

I was playing with fire, and we could all be burnt.

I stayed in Samaria – well, in a cave just outside the city – but it was Palestrina who spoke to her father about Acathla. He was not open to dealing with demons, she thought, and in the light of later events, she was right. She did tell him that a demon had brought the gift of frankincense, a demon who did not wish the world to be destroyed, who had told her of Acathla. Who asked for help in returning Acathla to his own form, and promised a gift of equal value in the event of success. The real gift, of course, would be the continued safety of the earth.

Simon was disturbed that she had seen a demon alone, and even though he was a learned and therefore enlightened man, he was still, at heart, a man of his time, as are we all. He beat her for taking the risk. When I found out, I raged at his temerity in striking my intended, but I wasn’t entirely certain that I blamed him.

Palestrina and I met almost every night. She would come to see me, bringing her basket on the pretence of an early morning herb-gathering expedition, or I would slip into the city at night, whenever she would be able to get away.

I wanted to spirit her away, back to Egypt, to be my consort. Barely a moment has gone by since then that I have not bitterly regretted that I did not steal away with her right at the start. But she wanted to stay for a while longer, to learn more from her father. To be with him in his old age. And I could not deny her. So I stayed. She did not want me feeding on the population of the city, so I fed on desert animals – wildes, es, antelope, goats, sheep. Even those, I left alive, close to water, so that they would recover. Sekhmet did likewise. We were both under Palestrina’s sway.

Simon did indeed try to find a way to restore Acathla, but to no avail. He kept trying, though, to the day of his death. Better a live demon, he believed, than a petrified hellgate. He was absolutely right in that, at least.

Sometimes, I had to return to Egypt, to see to my affairs, but I spent most of my time in Samaria. I could not bear to be apart from her for long, and she was a shadow of herself without me. It was a year before we made love, and I do not know how I held out for so long. But she was young, and I would have staked myself rather than hurt her. I never fed from her, though. Not until the end. Oh, I wanted to taste her, to feel her life and her youthful power coiling through my veins, but I was afraid. Afraid that her father would somehow know, and would kill her for it. And so I kept my fangs to myself.

We continued like this for seven years, until she was twenty-one. I would spend an eternity in Hell for another seven such as those. She was loving and daring and feisty, and her power was growing rapidly. She had learned much from her father about controlling the magic, and it seemed clear to me that she would eventually outstrip him. I wondered how he would feel about that. Then the Christian Apostle Philip came to Samaria, preaching their gospel, and Palestrina heard him. Forgiveness for all, if they will but repent their sins. May all the gods bless her greathearted innocence. She thought that might include me.

At her behest, her father approached Philip, and became one of his followers, even consenting to be baptised. He had heard of the miracles wrought by Christ, and he saw some of the acts of the apostles. He thought to learn some of this new magic for himself.

She had only to look at me, and I did the same. I would have faced Seth and his pack of Hellhounds together, to please her. But Philip would have nothing to do with me, and sent me away. I refrained from killing him and his followers for her sake. It might have been better if I had. She was disappointed but not dismayed. She would speak to Philip herself on my behalf. But it was already too late. Events had been set in motion.

Simon told his daughter that the time had come for her to wed. The young man had been chosen. She was old now, to be unwed, but he had found a sorcerer in Syria, in Damascus. His eighteen-year-old son would be Palestrina’s husband. Magic would be kept in the family. The boy and his family were on their way to Samaria. The betrothal ceremony would be in three days, in the cool of the evening.

Palestrina was distraught, but she still had faith. Faith in her father, faith in her new god, faith that life held justice and mercy and hope. Faith in happy endings. If only she had placed all her faith in me. Instead, she told her father that she loved another, and wished to marry him. She begged her father to meet her beloved first, before deciding whom she should wed.

Simon was outraged that she should have dared to meet a man behind his back. He locked her in her room and set a guard outside her door. That did not prevent her from coming to me – she simply slipped over her balcony and out through the garden. She had been doing it for years.

I asked her to come away with me that night, but she refused. She still wanted to avoid a breach with her father. She wanted him to accept me. I would visit him the next night and try to win his consent. It was a tiny hope, but I could not disappoint her. I consoled myself with the thought that when it all went wrong, as it undoubtedly would, I was sure I could get her out and away without killing anyone. It had been a very long time indeed since I had doubted my own abilities in matters such as that.

But we did do one thing that night, an act that sealed our fate, for that night and the ages to come. We made love, and we mated. I had accumulated in the cave a pile of the most luxurious furs available, as our bed, and in that nest of silken caresses, I made love to her with every fibre of my being, as she did to me.

In the afterglow of the first coupling, I asked her to become my eternal mate, there and then. She looked at me with those night-black eyes, and I remember every word of what was said. I shall never forget.

“When we are mates, do you mean to turn me? To make me like you?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No. I want to stay human.”

She was always wise beyond her years. She looked sad – she knew exactly what she had said. I didn’t hesitate, though.

“And I want you to stay human. I won’t turn you, I promise. Not ever, unless you wish it.”

Those eyes were filled with infinite sorrow.

“If you leave me human, then one day we must part. I will die, and you will be left behind.”

I started to speak, but she put her finger over my lips.

“You will not die with me, an unforgiven demon. Nor will you abandon Sekhmet and Acathla. And you will care for the childe of the fourth generation. You will help him to escape the fate you gave him.”

I had told her everything, even the shame of my choice to Seth. Now she was requiring me to make up for that shame. I would never have the strength.

“I cannot make those promises.”

“Yes, you can. You will look after those that are placed in your care, and I will find a way to come back to you. You will have me buried here where my family are, and you will bury your book with me. If I cannot come back to you, I shall come back to that. Your people have a belief that this is so, that souls return?”

She meant the Egyptians, and they did. I nodded, my throat too thick to s. S. She clasped me fiercely to her.

“That is my promise to you. Now, your promise to me?”

So help me, I promised. The book. I’ll tell you of that later.

We made love again, and I mated her. The ritual and ceremony were bare, with just the two of us there, and none of the objects that we would normally have around us. But it was enough. I drank from her, my fangs in her throat, an elixir such as I had never thought to taste, and I made the vows and the promises that mingled with her blood. I left my mark on her neck, a sign to all that she was mine, but a reminder to me of my oaths. I should have done better to keep drinking, to end her life there.

She left her mark above my heart, her vows and promises mixing with my blood. I can feel them even now. I see her mark every day, her sign of ownership, her promise of a future.

All this was done under the watchful eye of Sekhmet. There is not much privacy in a cave, and Sekhmet needs cover from the sun as much as I. But none of us minded. When the ritual was complete, my beloved did something that surprised both me and my Sire. She beckoned the lioness over, and offered her throat. Sekhmet stared for a moment, with that golden gaze, and then she started to purr. She padded up to Palestrina, but didn’t sink her fangs in – that would have done altogether too much damage. Instead, with a delicacy that even I was unused to, she used the merest tip of one dagger tooth to reopen my own fang marks, and lapped the blood that seeped from the little wounds. She never ceased purring.

When she had finished, Palestrina wrapped her arms around that huge neck and whispered, “You will make sure that he continues to live for me? That he waits for me to return? And that he cares for the childe of the fourth generation?”

Sekhmet pressed her head to Palestrina’s heart. As she raised her head, she drew her own fang up her chest, and a thin red line of blood welled up. My brave and wonderful mate reached out with one dainty finger and traced a path up the wound. She then licked her bloody fingertip. The commitment was made and accepted.

She left me before dawn with the promise that, if her father would not countenance me, she would come away with me, and we would make our future in Egypt. I should never have let her go. But how could I take her away by force? She loved her father, and I remembered how that had felt. It was all folly, of course, but even vampires live in hope of something.

So, the next evening, I went up to the city, on its high hill. Sekhmet waited for me outside the city walls. I took a gift for Simon, a very handsome gold and lapis lazuli necklace that had been worn by an Egyptian queen. I had meant it for Palestrina, but there were plenty of pieces to choose from in Egypt. I would find her one that was even finer. But Simon was not at home. He was following Philip. He had insisted that Palestrina accompany him. Taking my gift with me, I went to find them. It wasn’t hard.

There were two other Apostles there, just come from Jerusalem. Peter and John were their names. They were gathered in the square, just returned, by the look of them, from a trip to the river where they had been offering baptism. Now Peter and John laid hands on the baptised, who all fell to the floor, calling out strange words, in a fit of ecstasy. Receiving the Holy Ghost, they called it.

In an act of supreme faith, or supreme folly, I was about to go forward, to fall on my knees and seek once more the salvation that Palestrina wanted for me, but events pre-empted me. Simon, who had been waiting his turn with Palestrina, was unable to restrain himself at the sight of the ecstasy of the baptised. This was a magic that a sorcerer could not overlook. He went frd trd to the senior Apostle, Peter. These men had been travelling in poverty, they seemed to own nothing but the clothes on their back, and so Simon offered what he thought they needed, what he thought they would want. He offered to pay them handsomely if they would teach him their magic to add to his own. There were murmurings in the crowd, cries of, “It is Simagusagus; Simon, the sorcerer!”

Peter fell into a towering rage, mortally insulted on behalf of his god. He was a tall man, imposing, bearded, strong from many years of hard work, and even Simon, a much slighter figure, had to step back from him.

“May your money perish with you, since you think that the gift of God can be purchased with gold. You are excluded from our faith, sorcerer, and none of your kind welcome here. You shall be as demons to us, an anathema, accursed. Magic users,” he almost spat the words here, “you are steeped in your own sin. Best that you repent of this, and pray to God that you may be forgiven. And you had better pray hard, for the flames of Gehenna are waiting for you.”

The answer was swift and petulant. It is never wise to make a sorcerer petulant.

“Pray for me yourselves, for if I finish in hell, I shall not be alone! Think on that when beseeching your god!”

With that, Simon stormed away, dragging Palestrina with him.

Acathla? He couldn’t possibly be thinking of using Acathla? And if he were, should I make myself and my history known to him? After all, it was my blood that would open that portal to hell. Then Palestrina turned around – she had sensed me behind them. She mouthed one word to me, knowing that I would see and understand.

“Tomorrow.”

At first dark tomorrow, she meant that we would leave here for Egypt. We would have to make sure that Simon didn’t find Acathla, at least until hiser aer and humiliation were spent, and Acathla was in Egypt. We must be there to guard him. I would take her to the nearest port, and we would purchase passage to Egypt, to my new home in Alexandria. There we would make our plans.

******
Continued in Chapter 6