Chapter 49

49

The Baron

Wind sliced past Jericho’s wings, as he flew over the carriage which held the bishop. Horses galloped along either side of the coach, members of the Pentacrux guarding the man on what would be his last trek to Rome. Under the cover of night, he flew swiftly above the trees, adjacent to the road, his black wings quiet and stealthy against the dark sky. The plan was to wait until he reached a stretch of road known for nightly attacks, but Jericho could hardly wait.

He had already waited long enough.

The bishop and his men would die that night, and Jericho would finally be free to flee with his Lustina. The sooner he carried out his assassination, the quicker such freedom would come to pass.

He swooped down from the sky, and as fast as lightning struck, he seized the first soldier, tearing him from his horse’s saddle, only to break his neck midair. When he released the body, it fell upon the second soldier, who flanked the opposite side of the carriage. As he veered off the path, Jericho followed. Every one of them had to die, after all, if he were to make it seem like a raid.

The wayward horse slipped into a patch of trees, and while arrows sliced toward Jericho, drawn by the two remaining soldiers, he trailed after the escaping Pentacrux soldier. Through the treetops, he watched the soldier’s horse trample over fallen brush, until its leg tangled on a branch and the beast tumbled with its rider. The soldier pushed to his feet, limping, eyes watching the sky. Jericho stalked him for a moment, then touched down on the forest bed well ahead of him, cloaking himself in his dark wings in the surrounding, shadowy forest. As the soldier raced toward him, Jericho removed his dagger and struck out, slicing the soldier’s throat.

He then took to the sky once more.

The remaining soldiers kept alongside the carriage, their arrows whizzing past Jericho as he followed behind. When he neared, he brought his wings in tight and barreled toward the carriage, spinning like a vortex. He plowed into a soldier’s back, sending him flying forward to land on the ground with a hard thud. The carriage trampled him and, in doing so, came unhitched from its horses. It swerved and toppled over.

Jericho landed a short distance off, and as he strode toward the fallen carriage, which held his prey, the last of the soldiers sent an arrow flying toward him.

He caught it midflight.

The soldier’s eyes widened.

Jericho flipped the arrow around and sent the head of it sailing back toward the soldier. Before he could escape its inevitable destination, the arrow pierced the man between his eyes and he collapsed to the ground.

Jericho approached the carriage, wings spread wide and ready. For years, the man tormented him into showing his true form, and now, he would see. In his final hours, the bishop would know the aberrant monster who would show him the same mercy as he’d shown a young boy over the years.

The carriage door swung open, and Jericho drew back his hand, but halted mid-strike.

It wasn’t the bishop who emerged, but the young friar, whose hands were tied, his mouth sealed by needle and thread.

Shock punched his chest as Jericho caught the stumbling Felix in his arms and glanced about for the bishop. At the quiet moans of the friar, he sliced through the threads with his dagger.

“Save her,” he rasped.

Not a second later, the tip of an arrow sliced through the friar’s forehead. Jericho looked up to see another member of Pentacrux, one who must’ve hidden in the carriage, running toward the forest, but he didn’t bother with him.

Panic swelled in his chest as he lowered the friar to the ground then took to the skies.

Back to Praecepsia.

* * *

The river! The river!

A cacophony of voices called out to him, as Jericho flew through the woods. Tree branches snapped across his legs, as he hovered low, eyes searching the ground below. The canopy opened onto a clearing, in which he found the river.

In the surrounding darkness lay a figure of white, and as he descended toward it, he could see the delicate fabric floating on the water’s surface, dancing around Lustina’s sleeping face. He touched down at the river’s edge, every muscle in his body wound tight.

Immeasurable dread and disbelief curled through him like a thorned vine, tearing across his heart, as he trudged through the shallows that splashed around his boots. On a shaken breath, he lifted her cold and limp body from the water, the fabric dripping as he carried her to the bank of the river and sank to his knees.

Her face blurred behind a shield of tears, while he lay her in his lap and stroked her pale, angelic face.?“Lustina,” he whispered, before kissing lips that no longer held the warmth of life. “Wake for me.”

She didn’t move. Didn’t so much as stir, or twitch in his arms.

Panicked, he held her face and forced breath into her mouth. “Wake for me, please.”

The baron refused to believe the truth that she wouldn’t do so. That someone so innocent, so good, could perish in such a cruel and merciless way. He lay her on the ground, breathing into her still body over and over, in hopes she might take one sip of air and rise.

“Please,” he begged. “Do not go into the light that beckons you. Come back to me. Listen for my voice, Lustina.” Clutching the crown of her head, he rested his cheek against hers and whispered in her ear, “Come back to me, and I will find you.”

He waited. Breathed into her again. And waited.

Still, she did not move.

Her eyes did not twitch, as in dreams, when he would sometimes watch her sleep while marveling at her beauty. The sweet scent of vitality had faded for something that burned the back of his throat. Her lips did not curve to the only smile that could ever fill his chest with longing. Instead, she lay still. So still.

He caressed her soft cheek, while his heart slowed to a deathly cadence. “Lustina,” he whispered.

He longed to hear her voice, that sweet melodic sound which calmed the violence inside of him. To feel the warmth of her skin, instead of the cold and stiff presence of death. He fought the tears that burned in his eyes and stroked a trembling hand down her wet hair, as reality came over him.

Gathering her up into his lap, he held her against him and tipped his head back. A distant sound hammered inside his skull, so full of misery and despair, and as it came into sharp clarity, Jericho realized it’d ripped from his own chest. With her silky, wet hair draped in his fingers, he rocked back and forth, holding her in his arms.

Lustina.

Everything he’d ever dreamed of, everything he’d ever wanted in that unforgiving world, lay unmoving against him and entirely out of reach. How cruel of fate to gift him with the warmth and sunlight, a mere breath of contentment in his otherwise cold and rayless world, only to steal it away.

For what seemed like an eternity, he let the pain drag him into abysmal depths. Deeper than he had ever ventured in his life. The darkness there crushed his insides, thickened his lungs.

He couldn’t breathe.

There would never be another Lustina. He would never again know the warmth of the sun, nor the taste of sweet berries. The scent of flowers that was as much a part of her as the smile that lit her face.

Her raven hair and stardust eyes.

Her generous and giving heart.

She slipped from his world like a fragile leaf on the wind. One he longed to chase until the end of time.

“This world never deserved you.” Lifting her to his face, he pressed his lips to hers. “I will look for you in the Nightshade. However long it takes, I will find you and bring you home. Remember me.”

He stared down at her and ran his finger over the Pentacrux branding, where silvery swirls lit up the mark of his sigil, still cloaked in her skin. Should he lay eyes upon it again, his soul would recognize her in an instant. The sigil, unbreakable and binding.

No matter what. In life. In death.

Eternally.

In the distance, the toll of the bell signaled a mocking death knell. The pain inside of him clawed at his chest, like a beast yearning for escape.

Do not seek vengeance, the voices said to him.

The baron shook his head, teeth grinding beneath the rage that simmered inside of him like a boiling cauldron. “I cannot let this go unredressed.”

You will suffer immeasurable consequences.

“I would burn in eternal flames for her.”

Do not seek revenge.

A loud, piercing ring shrieked in his ear, and the baron flinched, jaw slack with the agonizing sensation that vibrated inside his head. “I forsake all of you! All of Praecepsia will burn for what they did to her!”

A roll of thunder echoed in the sky above.

The ringing stopped, and he opened his eyes to red. Blood red. The color of the moon.

A sign.

Sliding his hand beneath her legs, he lifted Lustina into his arms and carried her through the dark forest, until he came to the edge of the trees. Off in the distance, the torches of the Pentacrux lit up the night sky, where they stood lined at the entrance of the monastery, protecting their precious bishop.

There would be no protection.

No mercy.

Not for the bishop, nor Jericho’s father.

He lay Lustina gently on the ground and stroked a trembling hand down her hair. So peaceful she looked. Angelic.

Kettled rage exploded inside of him, and he shot toward the sky, could feel the tingling in his wings, the power that gathered in every feather, like thousands of lightning bolts trapped inside of him. A flock of ravens circled, drawn to the vibrations that shook around him, heating his skin. He lifted his hand to bolts of jagged light that flickered between his fingers, caught in his palm, and directing his gaze on the men below, he could hear their shouts as they readied for a war they would never win.

Jericho drew back his fist, and when he slammed it through the air, bolts of lightning struck down upon the men, with a force that sent a crack up through the monastery’s stone walls. Flames caught on the surrounding wood and straw.

Their arrows slung toward him, one piercing his leg, another piercing his bicep, but he merely busted their shafts away and sent another powerful bolt of lightning down upon the men.

The sound of their screams, as they burned alive, rose up into the sky, echoing all around him, and he reveled in their morbid dirge.

The destruction felt good. So good, he rained more of his wrath down upon them, moving beyond the monastery to the surrounding village. Blast after blast sent villagers screaming from their homes. Mothers clutched their children. Fathers gathered their animals. They ran up and down footpaths, through the village, like scattering mice.

He felt no remorse for the cries of the innocent, who begged him for mercy.

He felt nothing, at all.

It wasn’t long before all of Praecepsia was lit up like one giant pyre.

Jericho returned to the monastery, to find flames bursting out of the windows and the belltower. The clank of the old metal was the only warning, before the massive bell cracked and fell to the ground on a plume of embers that rose up into the night. Bodies crackled and burned all around him. Those still alive pleaded for help. He ignored them as he stalked toward the cathedral.

Tucked inside the archway to the undercroft, Jericho found a shadowy figure cowering there, and as he approached, he realized it was the bishop. Eyes wide with fear, the old man stared up at Jericho, his hand covering his face blistered by burns.

Jericho strode up to him, his wings still tingling with the vengeance that pulsed through him. “I have only one question for you. Why?”

“You could have had the propensity to do good, if not for your evil nature.”

“Answer the question! Why her? She was the only good in this place. This world.”

The bishop clutched the rosary wrapped tightly around his trembling hand, as if prayer could possibly deter his fate. “She was born of evil. Cursed. Like her mother.”

“Like every mother who defies your lies and cruelty.”

“Your mother had no choice. And had I the wisdom to know better, I should have killed Lustina sooner. Before your affections complicated everything. Did you honestly think I would baptize such a detestable creature into our holy faith? I knew what you intended, boy. I smelled the bloodlust on your breath the moment your mother passed.”

Jericho had suspected as much, but hadn’t fully grasped just how much the bishop loathed him until then. That he would’ve forgone the trip to Rome, the opportunity to establish his power in Praecepsia in order to ensure Lustina’s death, was a level of enmity he hadn’t anticipated.

“I’ll admit this,” the bishop prattled on. “I underestimated you. Your power, it exceeds anything I could’ve imagined. But alas, it does not matter, does it?”

“Why?”

“You do not know?” A chuckle escaped him, which turned into a coughing fit amid the black smoke that grew thicker around them, as the destruction of Jericho’s wrath took its toll. “She is cursed. To be reborn. Again. And again. Never to remember her lives past.? And on the eve of the pentad blood moon, she will die as a sacrifice. It is written in scripture, and it has come to pass.”

The vague recollection of the prophecy rose from the mire of thoughts in his head. “A sacrifice to whom?”

“To you. And you will be banished from this world as punishment for your vengeance upon us.”

“You could have let her live. Saved yourselves and your city.”

“Evil must never be granted mercy. For it grows like a vine that will one day strangle the righteous. The souls of nonbelievers are destined to perish in the fire!”

It was Jericho who laughed that time, a cruel and wicked laugh. “You still believe that you are the chosen.”

“We are the only warriors of the Holy Father. The only true avenging angels.”

“Then, an angel you shall become.” Jericho reached down, grabbing the neck of the bishop’s robe, and dragged him across the courtyard, through the flames and remains of charred bodies, out beyond the walls of the monastery.

* * *

Jericho lifted the makeshift cross, to which he had nailed the bishop. The flesh of his back had been torn open, his skin pinned into the wood at either side of him, spread out to look like angel wings.

Morning had arrived, but only the charred remains of a city that once thrived stood as a grisly backdrop. Flocks of ravens fed on burned carcasses, cawing and fighting over what little meat remained.

The bishop, whose pallor bore the telling sign of shock, stared down at Jericho, his life growing weaker by the moment. Through panting breaths, he whispered, “Absolution.”

Unmoved by the word, Jericho tipped his head. “For you, there is nothing.”

Black, shadowy figures circled above, and a raven perched itself on the bishop’s outstretched arm, which had been secured to the cross by the metal crucifixes Jericho had gathered from the soldiers’ burned carcasses. At the bird’s caw, more ravens flocked around the dying old man. They prodded his flesh with their beaks, sending an agonizing sound past his lips.

As they feasted on his wounds, like that of carrion, Jericho watched the shadows of darkness settle in overhead.

Not long now.

The Sentinels would come for him, just as his mother had told him.

He hurried back to the woods, his body covered in the bishop’s blood and gore, and he found Lustina still lying by the edge of the forest where he’d left her the night before. Not a single bird, or animal, had disturbed her.

With tears in his eyes, he fell to his knees beside her, and curled himself into her body, pulling her into his warmth. “I do not have much time, but what time is left, I long to spend with you. To remember your face, so that I might find you again.” Stroking a hand down her face, which had turned colder in the night, he pressed one final kiss to her lips. “Do not forget me, Lustina. Do not forget my love for you.”