Nate Kenyon - The Order

After a warning to finish his business and move on, they let him go, and Cain returned to Gillian’s home as the sun dipped below the city walls and night fell.

He did not know what to expect when he arrived. Gillian’s mood that morning had been such a stark contrast with the night before, it was almost as if he had been dealing with two separate people. The house was dark and silent, and when he knocked, nobody came for so long he thought Gillian might have gone out. Just as he turned to go, the door opened, and he found her standing in the shadows, her face gray and lifeless.

“I spoke to your friend Kulloom,” he said after he had entered and set his staff down. “He’s an interesting man.”

Cain smelled something familiar on the air that he could not place. The smell turned his stomach. Gillian had swung the door closed, but had not otherwise moved. “He’s not my friend,” she said. “I wasn’t entirely truthful with you, Deckard. I don’t . . . work at that tavern anymore.” She glanced to the right and muttered something under her breath, as if speaking to someone else, although the room was empty.

“I see. How are you going to eat?”

“I—I make do.”

Gillian’s voice was strained. Cain went to light the lantern on the table, cutting through some of the gloom. Gillian shrank away from it as if the flame might leap out and scald her. Her gaze darted left and right, scanning every corner of the room. Her face was shiny, her eyes ringed with dark circles, and her mouth continued to move as if she were about to speak, but she said nothing.

Judging from the state of the house, she could not have much money left, and that, along with the stress of taking care of a child, may have been more than she could bear. What had she said to him last night?

Whispering. All the time, inside my head . . . they won’t let me rest. They tell me terrible things.

Close contact with demons often drove a person mad, and it could have an effect years later, like ripples growing in a pond.

Gillian refused to look at him. One hand was behind her back.

“What do you have there?” he asked, keeping his tone casual, although his sense of alarm was growing.

“Nothing.” She took a step back and shook her head.

“Let me see it, Gillian.”

She shook her head again, holding her other hand out, as if to stop him. Her back was against the door now, and he caught a flash of something shiny as she shifted her body. She seemed to be fighting a great inner battle. Her face crumpled, her lip trembling. A tear slid its way down one cheek; then she shook her head again, and abruptly her expression changed, growing hard and angry. “No. No. You leave this house right now, Deckard. You’re no longer welcome.”

“I think you should sit down. Let me get you some tea.”

“I don’t want any tea! You would probably enchant it to keep me quiet. Isn’t that what you do? Your kind likes to bury things in the past and keep them there. Like what happened to you in Tristram.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Gillian’s expression changed again. Her voice grew lilting, almost playful: “I grew up with him, don’t you remember? Until he disappeared—”

“Enough!” Cain shouted. “Do not speak of that.” His rage and self-loathing boiled to the surface, and he made a move toward her. Gillian brought her hand out from behind her back.

She held a large knife, its edge stained red.

Now he knew what he had smelled when he entered the house: the coppery scent of blood.

“I was cutting meat,” she said. “For our dinner. Chopping it up.”

“Where’s the girl?”

“She’s sleeping. They told me I must not disturb her.” Gillian suddenly smiled, and it was a wide and predatory smile, like a snake about to swallow a mouse. Her eyes went glassy and rolled back into her head, showing the whites.

The room seemed to revolve around Deckard Cain, walls bowing like giant lungs taking in a breath. The child! He had left another innocent one alone and in danger, focused on his own pursuits while blood was spilled. He cursed himself for his blindness and stupidity, his uselessness in reading the signs that had presented themselves plainly to him yesterday; Gillian was sick, quite possibly dangerously so, and he had ignored the warning signs. Just as he had always done.

His past tried to force its way back in, nearly overwhelming him. This time, he must act before it was too late.

Your kind likes to bury things in the past and keep them there.

Cain grabbed the lantern and limped to the hallway as fast as he could, light bouncing against the floor and ceiling and sending dancing shadows across his sight. Leah’s door had a latch on the outside, but it was halfway open. He entered the room, his heart racing, and stopped short. The lantern revealed an ordinary scene, the girl curled on her side on the narrow bed, her face smooth and peaceful. There was no blood, and she was breathing regularly.

He gave a great sigh of relief. Gillian had been cutting meat for their meal: that was all. There was nothing to worry about; Leah was fine.

That might be so. But it did not explain Gillian’s odd behavior, and it did not change the fact that they were clearly on the edge of losing everything, with money running low and tension in the home rising quickly. It did not explain the voices in Gillian’s head, or the fear she had for Leah.

Like what happened to you in Tristram . . . Cain heard a noise from behind him, and he turned to see Gillian enter the bedroom, the knife in her hand.

She did not appear to see him. As she approached the bed, the temperature of the air in the room seemed to drop. Leah sat up, eyes still closed as if asleep, and as Gillian raised the knife, a crackling energy leapt between them, and Gillian was thrown violently into the wall by some invisible force that reached out a giant hand and swept her aside.

Cain recoiled in shock. He had seen nothing, and there had been little warning, but some kind of strange magic was at work. Leah was like a puppet with its strings being pulled, her head weaving back and forth in a strange, hypnotic dance. He thought again of the touch of her hand, the feeling of power coiled within her, a strange magic that threatened to burst free, with unknown consequences.

What is this?

Gillian stood up, going at the bed again. Leah’s eyes opened, and she screamed in fear, shrinking back as the knife was torn from Gillian’s hand by that same invisible force, clattering onto the floor.

“Evil ones!” Gillian shouted, spittle spraying from her mouth as her eyes rolled wildly. She kicked and scratched at something that seemed to hold her in place. “Child of the witch! Your black ways will not save you much longer! The dead are coming for you!”

Fully awake now, Leah seemed powerless to stop whatever was happening, as if her own body was beyond her control. Her frantic gaze went from Cain’s face to Gillian’s and back again.

Cain had to end this quickly, before it was too late.

He set the lamp down, reached into his pack, and removed a vial filled with a white powder of Torajan jungle tree root and bone mixed by a priest of Rathma. He uncorked the vial, poured the powder into his palm, and blew it into Leah’s face.

The girl sighed, her eyes rolled back into her head, and she slumped back onto the bed, unconscious.

Quickly Cain turned toward Gillian, who had been released from whatever had been holding her and was going for the knife on the floor. He threw the remains of the powder in her direction, and as it drifted over her, she dropped like a stone, her legs buckling loosely as her head hit the wall with a heavy thud.