David Wilson - Hallowed Ground

A great cry rose, and the canvas roof was wrenched aside by huge talons. Dark winged shapes swooped in low, and a rain of something – dirt? Sand? Something that glittered like diamonds and seemed to adhere to the Deacon like feathers to tar. They clung to Creed as well, and the child.

Finally the light grew too bright, too intense, and the sound too loud. Creed felt his lifeblood pulsing way, staining his shirt and pooling on the floor at his feet. The snakes lapped at it.

"Damn you," he choked, spraying more blood with each syllable. "Damn you to hell."

And everything grew dark.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The angel Remliel felt a shift in the essence that bound him to the Heavens. He reached out, as he had reached out countless times, for the silver thread that tied him to his Lord. It was the conduit of purpose, the beginning and end of thought.

He carried light to the world below. His was the task of bringing the divine to the corporeal, the essence of God to the flesh of man. He awoke the spark inside them that helped them divine their true nature…that was his purpose.

The flow of energy to the divine was a cool wash of strength, the thread that bound him to those below was tenuous, a glittering shimmer of light so weak - so frail - that it took all of his concentration and all of his will to maintain it. His was a sacred duty.

Now something had changed. He stretched out toward the shift with his will, intending to close the growing rift and set things right. The change was not subtle. It tore at the fabric separating the Heavens and the Earth - a veil protecting one from the other. The veil was so vital to the essence of creation that Remliel would gladly have divided his essence and healed the rift through eternity if his immortal flesh could protect it.

He reached back for the strength he needed, but again, something had changed. Instead of growing wider and flooding him with energy and power, the conduit to his Lord shriveled. Beneath him, a bright funnel of light descended. He clutched at its walls. He drew back and spread his spirit, blending it with his surroundings and weaving it into the fabric of heaven, but each time he made contact, that contact was ripped free, and the pressure from below - the remorseless drag where there had been no more than the most tenuous leak of light - yanked him downward into a soaring, diving spiral. Behind him, the thread that bound him to his maker thinned and stretched and thinned some more. It did not break, but it felt as though a blade of black ice had pierced his heart.

And then…it was dark.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The Deacon feared his heart would burst. The heat and the pain of the talisman seared his flesh and threatened to erase coherent thought. He dug his teeth into his lip to buy himself a different pain, a distraction to give him strength as he fought to hold on. Colleen held the child out to him, and the ridiculous cowboy, already a dead man with the poison of vipers flowing through his veins and the lead of his own bullets buried in his flesh, reached out to him as well. It was pitiful. Comical.

The intensity of the light washing over and through him felt as though it ought to have burned, but it burst through his skin and made contact with the earth beneath his feet. It bathed him, and it bathed the child, it bathed Colleen, whose face had first gone slack with surprise and now glowed with shock and wonder.

The cowboy’s head dropped, and his grip loosened. The light bathed him as well, but it would be a final experience before death. The Deacon grinned fiercely and whispered the name again - the single word of power he’d changed in a ritual so ancient and powerful it transcended the boundaries between worlds.

"Remliel."

The cowboy lifted his head, despite the blood draining from his wounds and the venom coursing through his veins. Something important shifted, and if he could have, in that instant, the Deacon would have pulled back and away. The talisman burst its bonds. A beam of light pierced the Deacon’s flesh and joined him to the child. It shot through the young flesh with the ancient eyes and found the cowboy as well.

The Deacon gasped, dragged air into tortured lungs, threw his head back…and screamed.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Creed felt the life seep out of him by slow degrees. The snake bites burned like fire, and his grip on reality slipped. He knew what it meant. He was as good as dead. He had pierced the barrier, whatever it might be, but his bullets had fallen short, and then – like traitorous partners, had rebounded on him with lethal accuracy. He thought back to the dark woman and the crow men. He felt the locket burning like a shard of ice into the flesh of his chest.

The Deacon said something - something unexpected. It shifted the ring of power and shot threads of light out into the tent, illuminating the faces of the crowd. An arrow-slim shaft of light slammed into Creed’s chest. It drove the locket back into him so hard it felt as though the circle of metal was embedded in his chest. He raised his head, saw the look of exultation and triumph on the Deacon’s face, and felt a surge of power – bright, intense power – flood his being.

Something grappled with his thoughts, fighting for control, or to break free, but Creed seized the moment. He lifted both guns with reflexes like trapped lightning, snapped both triggers at the same time, and this time he drove his hands forward, drawing on the new strength that filled him. The barrels pressed into the Deacon’s belly and when the hammers fell, there was sound.

Creed couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d last heard sound of any sort. The twin reports brought a grin to curl the corners of his mouth. The Deacon stared at him in shock. Colleen gasped and staggered back with the child. Creed felt another flash of light sear his soul. It went beyond the flesh. The locket and the bright golden light combined and in that instant Creed felt something snatched from the child -- something dark and squirming and vital. It drove into him, sucked from the tiny form and pounded through the bright silver and the graven images.

Memories he’d never lived cascaded through his mind. He saw the girl, Elizabeth. He saw a town he’d never known, and a mountainside. He saw a crossroads, and the dark woman, the woman who seemed to become an owl on a whim and whose servants were sometimes crows, sometimes men, sometimes neither. He fought to control his mind, but another voice - a third consciousness - screamed and screamed and screamed and Creed staggered back beneath the onslaught of it.

Behind him, breaking the sudden silence like the sound of a thousand shards of shattered glass striking the earth, a voice spoke into the void.

"Well, well, well, what have we here? Oh my, this is new."

Creed turned.

He saw a tall man in a dark suit. There was a watch chain dangling from his pocket, and his eyes were as dark as night. Beside him, a woman stood. She was dressed in leather, very much alive, and her eyes blazed with the manic intensity of a soul that had seen too much. Creed felt the power in that gaze, the weight of her hatred. He raised a hand to ward it off - forgetting he held the guns.

She drew and fired, and Creed closed his eyes in resignation.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Creed heard the duel roar of the woman's guns. He felt the whisper of air across his cheeks, so wrong after the thunder of the shots, but it wasn't until he heard a pair of unearthly screeching screams that he finally shook free of the moment and moved.

He whirled around. The crow men had crept up directly behind him and had been reaching out to grab him with their jet-black talons when her bullets struck – now they stood very still, stupid emotionless expressions on their predatory avian faces. As Creed watched, the two staggered back, almost as one, their balance awkward as their knees buckled beneath them.