Forty-Four Book Twelve (44 series 12) Page 4

  But I couldn’t look away knowing what I knew. And while I wasn’t sure I could stop him, I was sure that I had to try. I had firsthand knowledge of the evil that he was capable of, how he had a true passion for destroying lives. I wasn’t going to let him keep on hurting people. Not without a fight.

  I didn’t know if I was doing the meditation right or if I would one day become good at it. But I would continue to show up and try to make progress. That was my job here at the abbey: to take steps forward. To keep stoking the flame that burned within, so that it would grow strong and bright and be ready for the violent storm that was coming.

  CHAPTER 11

  I was glad Jesse had reminded me about those visualizations. It had been so long since I had played soccer, seriously played soccer, that I had almost forgotten how powerful a technique it was. Seeing the outcome that you want in your mind before an event was as important as anything that happened on the field. Maybe more important.

  Tonight I would do that. I would envision Nathaniel. I would see myself beat him. It would not only train my mind to believe that it was possible, but also that there would be no other outcome, so that when I actually did confront him, the fight would feel familiar. Victory would be mine. I wanted every cell, every fiber of my being, to expect it by the time we actually met.

  The trouble was that I had no idea what the battle would look like. Would it be physical, something requiring strength and skill? Or would it be something played out in the mind, like some sort of cosmic chess game? Samael said to be prepared for everything and anything, but what did that really mean? How can you prepare for everything?

  In sports you practice and train but also rely on your experience, all the years, all the previous games helping to prepare you for the battle in front of you. But I would not have that luxury here. I sensed there would be no second chance, no opportunity to learn from my mistakes.

  My experience would all have to come in the vacuum of my own mind. And I needed to get all the mistakes out of the way.

  I needed to see Nathaniel as clearly as possible. I had to imagine the specifics of how he looked, what he was wearing, the expression on his face. I had to engage all of my senses. The sound of his voice, how the air weighed on my skin. I needed to see exactly how this would all play out even if I was just making it up.

  I sat down, lit a candle, and focused on the flame. I started with a short meditation to calm my mind. When I was ready, when I could feel that something inside me had shifted, I closed my eyes and went back to the beginning.

  I stand near the shore of a river. I know this place. It is as familiar to me as my darkest nightmare. It is where I first saw his face. His true face. The face of a killer.

  I pull back into the shadows of the trees, away from the bright moonlight as it filters through the limbs. I can see my breath as it comes out of me in short, erratic bursts. He is coming for me. I can feel him all around. His scent hangs heavy in the air, a mix of arrogance and death. My heart is beating faster than I can ever remember, faster than when Jesse kissed me, faster than when I fought for my last breaths at the bottom of that lake.

  Suddenly I see her. She is still there, held in place by bony branches, dancing in the water. Dancing still. She turns her head toward me and moves her purple lips. Half of her mouth remains submerged under the icy water, but I can just about make out her words: “Run. Run!”

  And I run.

  I run over the frozen pavement as it winds through the trees, my feet a blur. At first I hear footsteps behind me, getting closer, closer. I run faster. I run and I run and I run until they grow faint, until they are no more. I finally stop, safe, able to finally breathe.

  And then he steps out from behind a tree.

  “Hello, Abigail.”

  He grabs me before I can escape, his hands like a noose around my neck, squeezing tighter and tighter.

  He drags me to the river and forces my head under the water. He strokes my hair and whispers my name over and over.

  “I had forgotten how beautiful you were, Abigail.”

  My world goes black.

  I opened my eyes, fighting for air. The panic was still raging inside me. It was the past and the future all coming together, beginnings and endings with all roads leading back to him.

  After the fear finally ran its course, I felt limp and weak, every ounce of energy having been drained from my body. As it beat slowly and timidly, my tired heart only knew one thing.

  There was no way I would ever defeat Nathaniel Mortimer.

  CHAPTER 12

  The warm sun was making me sleepy, as were the gentle voices that floated through the air like dandelion puffballs caught by a breeze. I was sitting on the porch reading a book on my tablet written by a Chinese general in 500 BC. I usually had my Bible on the table next to me in case anybody stopped by, but I had forgotten to bring it out.

  “Hey, baby,” the old woman said as she walked up the pathway.

  “Hi there, Madge,” I said.

  Madge was a volunteer at the center who helped with housekeeping chores. She always wore a sweater, buttoned at the neck, no matter the temperature.

  “How are you today?” I asked.

  “Doing fine. Where y’at?””

  “I’m good.”

  She walked closer, glancing down at her clipboard.

  “Washing machine broke again, so it won’t be till mornin’ that you get new sheets and towels.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  Her lips broke into a warm smile and she headed toward the next cabin.

  I sat back.

  It was a beautiful spring day, but the clouds were rolling in again. They never seemed to be too far away. Across the way, a crew was working on one of the bungalows. Some of the guests were sitting in a circle under a tree with sketchpads on their laps. I went back to my book.

  I was reading The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and it was filled with bits and pieces of advice for winning battles. I had started keeping a journal with quotes I liked.

  If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

  I didn’t have to worry about the other ninety-nine. Just the one.

  “He will manipulate the surroundings,” Samael had told me. “You will not only have to be physically and emotionally prepared, but because this fight will test you as nothing has before, you will need faith as well.”

  “Faith,” I repeated, the doubt thick in my voice.

  “Yes. You will need it to beat him.”

  That would be tough. I had faith in small things, but when it came to the big ones I mostly just had questions. Like why had it been left to a twenty-four-year-old former barista and a fallen angel to stop Nathaniel, the greatest threat since the Antichrist? Was it all just part of God’s plan? Was I part of that plan? That seemed like a hell of a plan.

  I found it very hard to muster up any faith in something like that.

  CHAPTER 13

  When I opened my eyes, I almost jumped. There was a young woman standing above me, staring.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I was moving your tablet out of the rain. You left it on the railing and it was getting wet.”

  “Oh,” I said, still shaken.

  She handed me back the e-reader.

  “I couldn’t help but seeing what you were reading. The Art of War, huh?” she said. “That’s interesting.”

  I nodded and stood up.

  “I’m Elizabeth,” I said, extending my hand and changing the subject.

  “Anna.”

  She was short and thin and her face was dripping wet. A large watch was strapped to her wrist and a white Nike cap was pulled down tight over her head. She was all bones, with sharp angles for shoulders.

  “You must be my new neighbor,” I said.

  “Yeah, I got here yesterday.”

  The energy around her was fast and gray, feeling like a rubber band wound tight and about to snap. As she took a fe
w steps back, I saw that her legs were splattered with mud.

  “Nice trail,” she said. “Kind of muddy, but I don’t mind. In fact I’m a mudder, so it’s good practice.”

  “A mudder?”

  “I do those mud races. You know, those obstacle courses where they hose down the trail and nobody gets out clean.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I remembered having read about them. “You’ve come to the right place then.”

  Her eyes fell over my body.

  “You a runner?”

  “I’m out there in the mornings before it gets too hot.”

  “I like it hot,” she said, a smile stretching across her tight face. “That way you lose more weight.”

  I thought if she lost any more weight there’d be nothing left except for that big watch.

  “Do they have you doing chores around here?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “They have me in the dining hall.” She rolled her eyes. “Dish duty.”

  “I’m all over the place,” I said.

  As she stood there draining her water bottle, one of those strange flashes suddenly hit me like a sledgehammer.

  She was looking in a mirror, her face covered in dark, terrible bruises, tears leaking out from her swollen eyes. I blinked and in the next second her face was back to normal.

  “All right then,” she said, stepping off the porch and back into the rain.

  “See you later, Anna,” I said. “And thanks for rescuing my library.”

  She nodded and I watched as she went next door.

  That flash had been intense. Not only had I seen a terrible moment from her past, but for the first time since I had been having these strange visions, I felt fear.

  An awful, gut-wrenching fear.

  CHAPTER 14

  The hundred-year-old church was filled with sun-washed stained glass windows and marble statues of Jesus and Mary. It was dark and cool inside, a pleasant reprieve from the sticky heat that had crept in with the dawn.

  It was Sunday and the church was packed. Two young seminary students were assisting with the Mass and seemed a little nervous as they started. I wondered if it was a graded assignment.

  Father Carmichael came in late and took a seat in the row in front of me. As he sat down, I heard a heavy sigh leave his lips. I didn’t see Anna.

  Sitting through the Mass reminded me of my childhood: the wooden pews, standing and kneeling, listening to the voices whispering the Lord’s Prayer in unison. My mom and Kate and I would go to St. Matthew’s every Sunday morning and the whole thing never failed to bore me. I remembered my eyes roving around, looking for friends, and yearning for freedom. Just when I was sure that I would be chained there for the rest of my childhood, a miracle happened and it was over and we were driving to the Pancake House for breakfast.

  With church behind us, the rest of the day was fun. Most of the time, the three of us hung out together in the afternoon. We’d go shopping or stop by the nursery and pick out plants for the backyard. Or if I had a game, we’d all head to the field. Sometimes Jesse came to dinner.

  Looking back, I realized how special those Sundays were. Little did I know then that there was a bomb ticking away silently, getting ready to blow our little world apart.

  Following the service at the abbey, I did what I usually did: I meditated, ran, and read. I didn’t see Father Carmichael again and noticed that his pickup truck wasn’t in the parking lot. I saw Anna later in the afternoon doing timed sprints, deep lunges, and then about a million crunches.

  I had had a good day, done the work I needed to do, and stayed positive. But as evening came, my thoughts took a wrong turn and headed down that sad road back to Ty.

  I knew what had led me there. I had seen a couple across the way watching the sunset. At first they were holding hands, and then his arms slipped around her waist and he pulled her close and kissed her. My heart skipped a beat and then fell from my chest. It wasn’t that long ago that Ty and I had moments like that, staring out at the Deschutes River or out at the street as we sat sipping beers at the end of the day.

  And then somehow it had all disappeared, having burned out like a dead star in the black night.

  It still hurt. I ached for his lips, for those long, passionate nights we had, moonbeams blanketing over our naked bodies as we reached for each other. The dreams I had of him weren’t helping any either. They weren’t the good dreams anymore. Now he was always angry, his face flushed as he screamed at me before storming away.

  I still hadn’t talked to him once in all the time I had been gone. I didn’t want to give him any false hope and I didn’t want him to come looking for me. It was better this way, even if he hated me. But lately, I could feel the guilt gnawing at me, down at the bottom of my gut, especially when I remembered the note and the engagement ring I had left on the table for him.

  Dealing with my thoughts of Ty was the hardest thing of all. Harder even than the thought of having to face Nathaniel.

  I had decided to write him a letter, and soon, just in case I never made it back. I needed to tell him again how his love had changed me, had made me a better person. How he had brought light into my life when I was lost in the dark. I wanted him to know that there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t miss him, and that I still loved him. And how I wished things could have worked out differently.

  And I needed to tell him that I was sorry.

  Sorry for having ripped out his heart, leaving him empty and broken and bleeding on the edge of nowhere.

  CHAPTER 15

  After my run in the morning, I took a shower, ate some cereal, and headed over to the garden, one of my favorite places in the abbey. I met the old priest, like always.

  “Bon jour,” he said as I walked up.

  “Bon jour,” I said, burning through all the French I knew.

  Father Étienne, who looked after all the gardens on the property, was old, really old. I figured he was in his late eighties, maybe even older. He was covered with wrinkles and hunched over like a gnarled, windblown tree. Sister Charlotte told me that he had been living at the abbey for more than sixty years. He stayed in a small cottage near the vegetable garden just like a hobbit. He had a few white tufts of hair left on the sides of his head and an ever-present smile.

  He didn’t speak any English, but he was able to communicate everything he wanted me to do with hand gestures and by pointing with his bent fingers. Today I’d be weeding, watering, and cutting herbs and flowers for the monks who had a stand at a farmers market in New Orleans.

  The garden was massive, with rows and rows of flowers, herbs, and vegetables. There was a large greenhouse in the corner of the grounds that housed an orchid collection. There was even a small vineyard. Everything here grew in abundance, and while the old priest was no longer able to do the physical work, he supervised all the workers and volunteers.

  As we walked Father Étienne waved to a woman in the distance who was setting up an easel. Her name was Rebecca. I had talked to her once and she had told me that she came back here every year at this time. Some of her paintings were even hanging on the walls of the center, mostly of the Virgin Mary situated in different parts of the abbey, standing in the willows or by the church or near the large fountain. The way Rebecca had been able to capture Mary with light coming off of her was really breathtaking, even through my black and white eyes.

  “Oui?” the old priest said, looking at me and pointing to a large patch of weeds that was threatening to choke some flowers.

  “Oui.”

  “Au revoir,” he said as he shuffled away, clasping his hands behind his back.

  It was a bit ironic that I loved working under the warm, balmy sun in these gardens so much. But, then again, it had very little in common with picking chiles in the fields of New Mexico. It was the same difference as there was between Heaven and Hell. There was peace here. And a sublime beauty. Bees and hummingbirds danced through the leaves and vines. The scent of rosemary and thyme and bas
il blew through the air, along with the aroma of blooming gardenias and roses.

  It took about an hour to flush out the weeds, and then I watered the plants, the strong rubber smell of the hot hose filling my nostrils. I took my time soaking them, especially the creeping chrysanthemums in the giant terra cotta pots that lined the cobblestone pathways. When I was done, I started cutting and bagging the herbs. Gray butterflies fluttered around as I worked and I tried to imagine what they must have really looked like. I kept the hose nearby and used it often to keep my head from spinning from the heat.

  At the end of my shift, I heard two voices behind me speaking in French, the old priest and someone familiar.

  CHAPTER 16

  Samael looked like he always did. Leather jacket, Clash T-shirt, jeans, black motorcycle boots, and the old rucksack slung over his shoulder. The two of them stood talking under an awning and although Samael wasn’t exactly filled with warmth, I sensed they were old friends. He always spoke to Father Étienne when he came to visit and seemed much softer and patient in the old man’s presence.

  It was obvious to me that it was Father Étienne who had helped arrange for my stay at St. Mark’s, even though he hadn’t ever said anything about it. The old priest was so revered that I imagined anything he asked for was granted, no questions asked. Even by Sister Ruth.

  I finished with the herbs while they talked and thought about how after all these months, Samael was still a mystery. I would probably never know his story, or what he had done to fall from grace. But my gut told me to trust him, at least most of the time it did. And when I had doubts, I tried to remember what the old grandmother had told me, how although Samael had a dark past he was on the road to redemption.