Chapter Twenty-Six: Front Door, Back Door
Lisa had landed poorly when she’d jumped the back fence, but she got up and kept running: past the vacant house, onto the dull street, and on. The road was flat and straight, nothing as interesting as the curving lanes of Archi lined with beautiful shrubs and trees and vines. The streets here were lined with light posts and vertical store fronts. No vegetation. No feeling of home.
But there was a small piece of home here. One group who had tried to protect her from this. Keep her safe. That was her destination.
Twenty minutes after setting out, Lisa reached the castle. It was abandoned. She’d expected the Estikans would rush to protect their count. Seemed that when the fighting had got a bit rough they’d all run off to the safety of their homes rather than tough it out.
The walk across the stone bridge seemed to take forever, the sides promising a fatal drop should she lose her balance. Every step brought the castle bigger before her, made her question whether she was doing the right thing, but she had to see what carnage her husband had wrought here. With luck, there would be something to nullify her fears.
Instead, there was… this.
The bodies were gone, but it was clear where they’d been. Whether they had been vampire or wolf she couldn’t tell, but the blood stains were, in most cases, significant. And plentiful. Weapons lay scattered on the courtyard’s stones, as well as the occasional bullet casing.
“I’m sorry,” said a silken feminine voice high and to her right. Lisa turned and saw a shadow stand from where it had been lying, completely unseen, on the curtain wall. The shadow stepped off to land beside her. Niamh, the eldest Andraste daughter, dressed in thick leather to protect against werewolf bites and the freezing wind.
“We tried to keep you from seeing this,” said Niamh. “Keep you safe until afterwards.”
Lisa could feel tears behind her eyes. “It’s not your fault what he is.”
“Come.” Niamh led her to the large hall on the left of the courtyard, up a set of steps. The keep was lit by torches on the walls and warmed by a roaring fire. The four surviving Andrastes were inside, their heads bowed and hands clasped. In front of them were bodies covered in white sheets: four humanoid and four bestial. A far cry from leaving your friend’s remains in the hands of an angry mob as her husband had done.
“Missus Paddington,” said Adonis. He clasped her hands in his.
“I’m… sorry for this,” Lisa said. “For what has happened.” She wasn’t sure why she was apologising for James; after all, being here meant that she wasn’t still with him. That she had made a conscious decision to remove herself from him.
“The Three-God has a plan, I’m sure,” he said, though he didn’t sound sure.
The funeral or prayers or whatever they’d been doing had stopped. Everyone was now watching her. Everyone except Niamh, who was playing with a mobile phone. Hardly seemed the time to check her messages, but why should the vampires start caring about feelings now? They’d gone years looking down on Lisa. All of Archi had. That had been quite a wake-up: coming from the Mainland, where men fawned over her, to Archi where she was despised for both her personality and appearance. Quite the blow to her self-esteem.
Shit. That made it sound like she’d only settled with James because she thought so little of herself.
The worst part was, she didn’t even know if that was the case.
“I won’t be here long,” Lisa said.
“Stay as long as you require.”
She didn’t really want to stay at all. “I just need some money,” Lisa said. It felt awful having to say those words. Saying them to the vampires, worse. “Something they can’t trace so I can go and… start afresh.” She’d go up to Scotland, to her birth family. The MacBeans could shelter her from anything, even James. They had the money, several estates. Even if he came looking for her – which he wouldn’t, because that would mean abandoning his quest with the Andrastes and she clearly didn’t mean that much to him – he wouldn’t know which of their properties she was on. If he started sniffing around, she could use their money and connections to craft a new identity and disappear completely. James would never find her.
Adonis went to the large wooden table that occupied the centre of the room, midway between the bodies on one side and the fire on the other. “What do you fear?”
“If James… fulfils your prophecy, he’ll come for me. For his ‘blessed union’.” The words were more spat than said, which she hadn’t meant. Or, hadn’t thought she’d meant.
Adonis frowned, black brows coming together. “Yes… And after your joyous joining, the Three-God’s grand plan for the world will come to reality.”
“What grand plan?” Lisa asked.
The three Andraste children straightened at her tone. Clytemnestra leaned forward, halfway toward a pounce. Melanthios slid a hand to his waist, where a one-handed axe sat in a holster. Lisa didn’t back down.
“The instant James blessedly-unions me, the world will end!”
And in that moment she knew. It was in Adonis’s face, in the way the colour vanished in an instant. The way his mouth drooped open in shock. A slight stoop of the shoulders. A world away from refinement and sophistication.
He hadn’t known.
“What?” he said.
“McGregor translated the Book of Enanti. After the union, Idryo is so upset that She unravels the Braid of Time.”
Adonis shook his head like a teacher at a quarrelsome student. “That is simply a metaphor for the ending of the Three-God’s direct influence in human matters. Releasing the Braid breaks the cycle of creation and destruction, thus allowing all to live forever.”
“No, the universe entirely ceases to be. No one lives forever because no one lives at all.”
There was no biting comeback. No witty return. Not even a slur. Adonis didn’t tell her shut up or that matters were beyond her. He stuttered.
“I… I should consult the copies.”
“But it doesn’t matter,” Lisa said. Adonis looked up sharply. “Because they’re going to fulfil the other prophecy.” Of course they were. Going to her grandparents’ was just a… an additional safety net in case Beck had an accident. “Then it’s redemption all round and everyone’s happy, right?”
No one else was smiling. Why was no one else smiling? Some were sharing looks, though, and that was probably a bad sign. “Lisa,” said Adonis, “that’s not possible.”
“Why, because you need to fulfil this one to set up for the next round of stupid prophecies?” She looked around the great hall. “I assume the Book of Idryo is around here somewhere.”
“It is. But for its prophecies to come to pass, the champion must eat the Fruit of Life.”
But that was the prophecy McGregor recommended! Had this all been one giant double-bluff by Adonis? Setting them up to fulfil the wrong one?
“This is, instead, the end,” said Adonis, “The final prophecy. The demon will kill his brother. Then the union and… if you are right… nothingness.”
Despite the fire roaring at her back, Lisa felt cold. “So why not have him fulfil the other? One serve of fruit and veg and everybody’s happy.”
Again the three children sent worried looks turned toward their father. Lilith watched Lisa with compassion, or pity, or something. “That prophecy cannot be fulfilled,” said Adonis. “The Tree of Life grew in the Garden of Terpo, Lisa, but no more. Not since the zombies overran the garden and crushed everything in it.” He snorted. “It is a bitter irony: that beings of death should trample the Tree of Life.”
The Tree of Life had died? What kind of rubbish theology was that? What kind of crap God let an army of zombies march over the top of a significant part of Her end plan?
Wait…
“If the Tree of Life is dead,” Lisa said, “what’s behind the town hall?”