Chapter 5

5

Farryn

Rain pelts my face and saturates the oversized green utility jacket I’m wearing, giving the crisp, late October air a frosty bite.

A ghost white statue of Saint Felix of Praecepsia guards the entrance to the Cathedral of the Felician Sisters, as I pass through a baroque iron fence. The moment I step inside the church’s narthex, a sweet floral scent hits me, and I turn to find a vase of roses propped on a nearby console. White ones, their stems bent over, petals wilting, the very tips of which have turned an inky black.

Lowering the rain-sopped hood from my face, I take in my surroundings.

Thick pillars with perfectly rounded arches stand at either side of the expansive nave, where confessionals line the walls. Beautiful, stained-glass windows bear figures of saints and apostles.?Rich wood pews gleam at either side of the aisle leading up to the altar.

Out of nowhere, I hear a clang, clang, clang.

My feet move toward the sound, absent of my control, beyond the altar to a staircase. Dim lights illuminate my descent, toward a sub-basement of the old church.

Clang, clang, clang!

The noise echoes down the corridor, and though I’m compelled to call out, I don’t want to alert whatever made the noise to my location. Instead, I pad carefully, quietly. The sound leads me to a brick wall where the undercroft seems to end, and I freeze in place.

Over the bricks of the wall, a large circle with embedded shapes inside of it has been painted in some sort of black substance.

I recognize it immediately.

The symbol for Nightshade.

Words appear over the image, across the brick, as if something invisible is writing them, and I frown, watching the message take form.

Seek out Van Croix in Nightshade.

From the ceiling overhead, an object flutters to the ground, and I reach to pick it up. A black feather, whose tip carries the same black substance as the writing on the wall.

Clang, clang, clang!

Bricks tumble from their places in the wall, crashing to the concrete floor, and on a startled breath, I jump backward, arm shielding my face from the plumes of dust.

When I lower my hand from my face, I find two bodies tethered at the necks by rope looped through anchors on the wall.?The black and white garb they wear tells me it’s two nuns. The thick crucifix tied to the hand of one of them bangs against the pipe along the wall behind her.

Clang, clang, clang!

* * *

On a sharp inhale, I opened my eyes to the dark ceiling above me in time to catch a shadow flickering across. Eyes glued there, I kicked back, spine crashing against the headboard behind me. “Ca’ligo an a tua!” The words flew out of my mouth before I realized I’d said them. The shadow slid over the wall, trailed by the lights of what must’ve been a car passing the house. Shallow and shaky breaths sawed in and out of me, while I scanned over my surroundings.

I ran a shaky hand across my brow. “Just a dream. It was just a dream.”

God, it seemed so real, though, and somehow, the rancid scent of rotted meat clung to my nose. I retched, swallowing back the acid in my throat, and leaned across to knock on the bedside lamp.

The silly phrase I’d spoken was something Aunt Nelle had always said when I’d wake from nightmares. A language she’d made up, which she’d claimed to be the cure for keeping bad spirits away. Strange that I’d have even remembered it

As I swung my feet down to the floor, a tickle across my heel had me jerking back on a scream. I peered over the bed’s edge to where something stuck half out from underneath.

Swallowing a gasp, I snatched it up and held it up to the light. Every barb of its vane held a silver metallic line that glinted under the bulb. I observed that the rachis, a hollow shaft down the center of it, carried unique and intricate swirls.

I’d only ever held a feather once before.

Cold tendrils of fear crawled down my back.

* * *

“Papa! Look what I found!” I carry the long, black feather through the mess of books scattered across my father’s office and hold it up to him. “Papa, look!”

Face buried in a microscope, he says, “One moment.”

Smiling, I hide the feather behind my back and wait patiently for him to look up. It feels like it takes forever.

He finally lifts his face from the scope and jots some notes in his book on the desk beside him. So many books. So many scribbled pictures of things he sees in that microscope. When he finally turns to me, I can hardly contain my excitement. “What is it you want to show me, my exuberant little fairy child?” He ends the question on a chuckle and twists his chair to face me. Brown eyes set beneath bushy, gray eyebrows and straggly gray hair that he always pulls back into a ponytail make him look more like my grandfather, but I don’t care. Those eyes are the warmest, most caring eyes in the world. And although Papa is always busy with his work, when he talks to me, he always turns to face me. And listens. Really listens to me.

“It’s a surprise. Are you ready to see it?”

“I’m dying from all this anticipation.” His smile stretches wide around crooked teeth that my mother used to say was his most unique trait. “What do you have to show me?”

Shoulders bunching up with excitement, I whip the feather from behind my back and hold it up to him. “Ta-da! A bird feather!”

The smile on his face fades to something serious, those gray, bushy brows coming together, as he plucks the black plume from my fingers. “Where did you get this?”

“At the church.” Through the woods stands the remains of an old church that burned down. Papa said it’s two-hundred years old! It’s where I take my dolls and play sometimes. I also talk to my mother there, even though I know she can’t hear me all the way in Heaven. But Papa says she’s here on Earth, and he swears someday he’ll take me to her.

“You must never go back to that church by yourself again. Do you understand?”

“But, Papa, it’s where I play. And talk to Mommy sometimes.”

“Listen to me, Farryn. It’s very dangerous there. Do you know what this is?”

“A bird feather.”

“No, child. It belongs to the dark angels. Remember what I told you about them?”

Of course I remember. The stories he told me give me nightmares to this day. Head lowered, I nod. “But you said the good ones have black wings, too.”

“The good ones have no concern, or use, for a young girl like you. No more wandering. You stay close to this house, and you let me know if you see anything strange.”

“What kind of strange?”

“Eyes watching you. Eyes like flames.”

“I’ve never seen eyes like that before.”

“May God and the angels keep it that way.”

It’d been over a decade since I last saw a blue-black plume that reminded me of a raven’s wing.?Leaning back in the chair I’d taken in my aunt’s place, I twirled the feather, watching the silvery tips create a metallic streak with every turn.

At the brush of something soft across my calves, I jumped back in my chair. The trill meowing had me looking down to where Camael, the striking black sphynx cat I’d inherited from Aunt Nelle, circled my legs. Slapping a hand to my chest, I exhaled a shaky breath. “Jesus,” I muttered.

She let out a purr as she strutted beneath my palm and pounced into my lap.

“I was wondering when you’d finally grace me with your presence,” I said, as I stroked her warm, velvet skin. Rolling onto her back, she stretched across my folded legs, lengthening her neck for a good scratch until I obliged. As Nelle’s once-prized pet, she’d grown used to being pampered, and had no problem assigning me as the surrogate petter after my aunt had passed away. “She spoiled you. You know that, right? Cats aren’t supposed to have this much control over human beings.”

As expected, the lazy cat offered nothing more than a long blink, her focus undoubtedly on my scratching and not my words.

While one-handedly giving her attention, I ran a magnifying glass over the feather’s surface, examining tiny whorls within the silver streaks of it. Closer examination of those whorls revealed even tinier symbols. Hundreds of them.

Frowning, I leaned over Camael and studied a particularly thick cluster etched into the rachis. In my haste to get to my feet, I knocked the cat from my lap. “Sorry, love.” I took a moment to pet her before she sauntered off, no doubt pissed at me, and fished through the box of journals for a notebook I’d seen a couple weeks back.

After flipping through about a half-dozen, I found the one I was looking for and opened it to the pages upon pages of sketches. Symbols of all shapes and sizes, with accompanying names and descriptions. Through the magnifying glass, I spotted one particular symbol on the feather, then flipped through the notebook to find its match.

Libidine, my father had labeled it, and went on to describe it as a symbol for lust. He also explained that the presence of particular symbols in sequence represented each of the seven deadly sins. Iracundia for Wrath, Invidia for Envy, Avaritia for greed, and so on.

I sat back in my chair, flipping through more symbols. Dozens of symbols. Perhaps hundreds. All of them labeled and categorized, a task that must’ve taken countless hours. “Okay, what are you trying to tell me, Papa? That this is all real?”

I flicked the magnifier between the feather and the notebook, then back to the feather again. It couldn’t just be a coincidence that the feather left in my room happened to carry characters that corresponded to my father’s handwritten notes.

I shook my head, reluctant to believe what the universe was telling me. The impossibility that’d been thrown into my lap.

That everything my father had said was true.

Angels did exist.

And perhaps so did Nightshade.