David Wilson - Hallowed Ground

The flames flared suddenly. Two of the stones set into the dirt that ringed the fire-pit rolled out of place, forward and to the side, making a funnel for the fire to rush out through. The flames curled off to either side, rushing faster and faster, and rising, always rising, tongues of red licked up into the sky.

Within the long silence between heartbeats the wagon was surrounded by cavorting flames. Balthazar rose and strode forward, seemingly oblivious to the battering heat and scorching flame, and stepped directly into the center of the broken campfire circle. Mariah tried to cry out, but the air was hot and acrid and she clamped her mouth shut, biting her lip painfully, tasting blood and something else.

Balthazar turned back to face her. The flames gathered around him as though his to command. They did not touch him. He cast his arms wide and the jacket he wore, a jacket that seemed suddenly far too heavy and warm for the desert, ignited. It burst into flames. The raging fire spread, shrouding him, enveloping him. It hung in the air behind him like fiery wings, and he laughed.

The laughter rolled over Mariah like pounding thunder. It buffeted her with such heat she felt her skin drying and shrivelling over her bones. Still Balthazar laughed. She closed her eyes and tried again to scream, but now, when she needed her anger there was only fear and no sound would come. The laughter blew her words, and her breath back down her throat.

Then he fell silent. He reached down into the burning coals at his feet. His hand slipped beneath the surface and returned with a long glowing tube gripped tightly. Balthazar unscrewed the end of that tube with a deft flick of his wrist. He upended it and dropped something into his hands. Another flick of his wrist, and a scroll unfurled. The paper was bright, and the letters seemed to have been penned in flame. Mariah tried to read, but it was impossible. If she kept her eyes open, they felt as though they would melt on the anvil of his fire.

She closed them as tightly as she could, but it didn't matter. The images burned through her eyelids and into her brain. Her head shook from side to side, and she raised her hands to her eyes. Tears spilled out and steamed through her fingers.

And then it was gone. A warm wind brushed across her skin, turning chill as it touched her. She heard a crow's cry in the distance. She didn't want to see, but she opened her eyes. The stones were all in place, the fire in the pit smouldering low. She turned slowly, not trusting her eyes.

Balthazar sat in the chair across the old crate from her. In his hands he held a scroll. He turned and showed it to her. The script was beautiful and archaic, each flowing line of letters carefully inscribed. Balthazar unrolled it to the end. There was a large fragment torn from the bottom right corner, splitting the signature and ruining the perfect symmetry of the document.

Mariah reached for her coffee. In its place, a tall, clear glass stood. The glass was filled with water so cold that condensation peppered the surface. She gripped it in one shaking hand, and then brought her other hand to steady it as she raised it to her lips and gulped it down. There was no gentle sipping, no careful swallowing, she inhaled it and almost gagged on the icy water. What she couldn’t drink dribbled down her chin.

"It is a long story," Balthazar said. "It is a story of betrayal and loss, of love and death. In a way, it could so easily be your story, couldn’t it, Mariah? Love lost, great treachery, the spectre of death; none of these things are strangers to you, are they?"

She met his gaze, and though the spark of defiance was not dead, it was – for the moment at least – cowed.

"Tell me," she said, knowing that she didn’t want to hear it and knowing that she didn’t have any choice but to.

With a wink, Balthazar began. . .

Chapter Thirteen

Benjamin stood over Elizabeth's coffin and stared out through the stained glass windows far above into the dying rays of the sun. He was alone in the church. The funeral was scheduled for the morning, early, before dawn’s first light. It was hot near Saguaro on the best day – it would be an unpleasant ceremony if they allowed the sun to rise before they laid her to rest.

In the cool of the evening, the scent of the cut lilies and the wreaths and garlands of flowers stacked around the coffin permeated the air. A light breeze blew in the front door on its way through the rectory in back. In the morning, the pews would be full, and Amazing Grace would shake the rafters. Benjamin didn't plan to be there to hear it.

He had propped open the coffin so he could see her face. One last look. She was so still and quiet he could have believed she was carved of porcelain if he hadn't held her warm, supple body in his arms days before. She was smiling. Her expression spoke eloquently of serenity and peace. But how could she be at peace? How could there be any serenity now? There was no calm; there was only violence and its ghosts. The rest, the tranquility, the notion of peace, they were all lies, and above all else in the world, Benjamin despised lies.

A whisper of cotton broke the silence. Benjamin didn't look up from her lips. He knew what he would see, and he wasn't ready. What, not who, he thought, tracing a finger across her cold cheek. Soft footsteps padded across the wooden church floor. The lilies and wildflowers gave way to a darker scent. Moments later, a pair of very pale hands rested on the rim of the coffin. He still didn't look away from Elizabeth's face, he didn’t need to.

"You are sure that this will work?" Benjamin asked without turning.

"If you doubted," a soft, husky voice replied, "you would not be standing here, waiting. You would not take the chance of letting someone see us alone."

Benjamin said nothing. He had nothing to say.

"You have the money?" she asked.

Now he looked up.

"I have your money, witch. See that you earn it." There was no aggression in his voice, only a deep well of hurt, despite the harshness of his words.

The woman he knew as Jeanne Dubois gazed up at him with deep, unblinking brown eyes. He met her gaze, but found it unyielding as granite. After a few moments he looked away.

She turned, and started toward the front door of the church without another word. Benjamin gently lowered the lid of Elizabeth's coffin, rested his hand on the wooden surface for just a moment, and then followed the witch into the deepening twilight. As they stepped into the churchyard, he looked up and down the deserted road. There was no one moving at that hour, nor was there likely to be, but he still looked. And he listened, because what he could not see he might well hear. Sounds had a peculiar way of travelling in the dark.

Jeanne Dubois was not the kind of woman a respectable man should be seen alone with. The shame of it would be that much worse with his fiancé only two days dead and still not in the ground. The church rested up against the outer edge of Mission Ridge, one side overlooking the sloping valley that held the town, the other cresting a deep, narrow gorge. Jeanne turned away from the town and crossed the church yard toward the slope and the cliff beyond. Her feet crunched on the gravel, adding an earthy tone to her passage.

The rear of the church was a graveyard. Ancient, canted stone crosses and rough-hewn monuments sprouted like broken teeth. The graves were well tended, even those that had toppled or had their stones broken. Some bore fresh flowers. Jeanne walked through them without glancing right, or left. Benjamin was forced to hurry his steps to keep up. He did not dare look at the blooms in case they had withered at her nearness. He chided himself for being a fool – but he still did not look.

The climb down to the gorge was rough. Vines gripped at his ankles and branches whipped back across his face as he pushed through them. He cursed and stumbled forward. The ground loosened underfoot and he fell hard on his hip. He cried out and reached for a dangling branch. Just for a second he had it, felt its reassuring solidity and strength and then he his fingers slipped and it was gone. He panicked; pin-wheeled his arms, and tilted out over the brink.