Scenting Hallowed Blood (8 page)

Meggie was talking now of
preparing certain ancient sites for the advent of the Shining One.
‘When he comes, he will awaken the serpent, and the sites must be
primed to channel this power.’

‘Which sites?’ Tamara asked.
They had many to choose from.

Meggie glanced at her sharply.
‘The Giant’s Bed, Ezekiel’s Mount and Serpent’s Bower at Enoch’s
Hall.’

‘Why not the Mermaid’s Cove at
High Crag?’ Tamara’s words conjured a stiff silence.

Meggie blinked at the woman.
‘As you know, High Crag is forbidden territory. It belongs to the
Grigori, and the cove beneath it is no different.’

Tamara shrugged. ‘True. Which
is perhaps why we should claim it for our own.’

Meggie smiled, but it was clear
the smile did not come easily. ‘No.’ The word was final. Around the
table, other members of the Conclave murmured agreement.

Tamara made a gesture. ‘It was
just a thought.’ She took a sip of tea, feeling absolved. Her
sisters had refused to listen to her ideas, but at least she’d made
the suggestion.

After the Conclave had all gone
home, Betsy and Meggie remained seated at the table. Tom came in
and made them a fresh brew, before withdrawing discreetly to his
parlour.

‘I am concerned about Tamara,’
Meggie said. She wanted her sister’s opinions.

‘Hot and fiery,’ Betsy
conceded. ‘She has a thirst on her.’

‘A thirst for power. I can’t
keep a rein on her.’

Betsy heaved her rounded
shoulders in a shrug. ‘Time will wear the edges off. The young ones
are excited by the Fallen One, and his frequency affects them all.
They’ll be high-spirited nags for a while.’

Meggie smiled. ‘I’m almost sad
such feelings no longer affect me.’

Betsy shook her head with a
frown. ‘I’m not.’ She took a sip of tea.

Barbelo was waiting in Tamara’s
cottage, as Tamara had expected. She was sitting at the kitchen
table reading a magazine. Next to her hand lay a talisman carved
from serpentine; a double-headed serpent coiled around a staff.
Even before she took off her coat, Tamara felt drawn to pick it up.
Energy thrummed up her arms and she dropped the talisman
quickly.

Barbelo directed a swift glance
at her. ‘You must learn to hold it, for you will use it
shortly.’

Tamara rubbed her hands
together. ‘What for?’

‘To overcome the guardians at
Mermaid’s Cove.’

Tamara felt a chill course
through her belly. She wondered whether Barbelo was already aware
of the conversation that had taken place at Meggie’s house. A
thread of unease wriggled through her, but she banished it firmly.
‘Why would I want to do that?’

Barbelo smiled up at her. ‘We
must construct a thought-form there, which will attract the Shining
One. A thought-form of a woman.’

You know!
Tamara
thought.
You know everything already!
‘I hardly think it’s
worth me telling you what happened tonight,’ she said, ‘seeing as
you seem to be aware of everything I saw or said!’

Barbelo laughed. ‘Not
everything,’ she replied.

‘Who is the woman I saw in the
pool?’

‘Her name, I suspect, is
Ishtahar,’ Barbelo answered. ‘Sit down, Tamara. You have much to
learn this night.’

Emma stood in the doorway, looking, as
ever like a ‘Forties film star. Her pose — elegant, one hand held
up beside her chin holding a cigarette, her rolls of dark hair, her
red lips. She could have been anything between thirty and forty
years old. She was nearly one hundred and fifty — a Grigori
dependent, once left to rot by mentors who abandoned her, now
restored to vitality by Shemyaza.

‘If you’re not going to do
anything about yourself, at least do something about the boy,’ she
said.

Shem was lazing on the sagging
sofa, staring listlessly at the TV. If the set had possessed a
remote control, Emma had no doubt he’d spend the entire day just
flicking from channel to channel, absorbing nothing. She was
beginning to feel out of her depth, what with trying to look out
for the kids and keeping her senses alert for pursuit. She feared
it greatly, having seen the shadowy figures who’d emerged onto the
High Place back in Little Moor, just at the time she’d managed to
drag Shemyaza away. Shem dismissed her anxieties. She had guessed
he simply did not care what happened to him now.

‘Which boy?’ he asked her,
without looking away from the screen.

‘You know very well which boy,’
Emma responded. She marched into the room and positioned herself
before the TV, forcing Shem to look at her. She didn’t like what
she saw in his face. He looked burned out. Perhaps she’d been mad
to flee Little Moor with him. There were other Grigori here who
could care for her needs now. Had the time come to free herself of
him? She had a responsibility towards Lily and Owen, because she’d
promised their mother she’d always take care of them, but this
wreck? No. His apathy made her angry. It seemed so self-indulgent.
‘Owen,’ she said.

Shem looked away from her.
‘There’s nothing I can do.’

‘I don’t believe you. You made
him like that, so I presume you can unmake him. You are the Great
Shemyaza, after all.’

Shem shook his head, smiling.
‘You make me sound like a TV magician. I’m not anything, Emma.’ He
picked up a magazine and began to leaf through it.

‘If you stopped feeling sorry
for yourself, it might help,’ she suggested. ‘Have you been to see
Owen?’

‘You know that I haven’t.’

‘Well, if you did, it might
prick your conscience. He’s lost his mind. I have to bathe him,
dress him, feed him. Sometimes, he soils himself. It’s disgusting.
No-one should live like that. Don’t you care what it might be doing
to Lily and Daniel?’

‘None of them are my
responsibility,’ Shem answered. ‘Nothing you can say will change my
mind. Peverel Othman damaged Owen, not me. I can barely remember
it.’

Emma did not believe these
words. ‘Well, let me remind you then. One Thursday night, Owen
disappeared into his room with you, and didn’t wake up for
twenty-four hours.’ She struck a pose. ‘Now, let me see, what
happened next? Ah, you took him out to the woods with you on the
Friday evening. He was like an automaton, drugged perhaps. For some
reason, Owen felt compelled to rape his lover for you, whom you had
considerately laid out for him in a similar drugged state. Of
course, I may have been hallucinating, but I swear I saw demons
that night, Shem, and an attempt at a ritual sacrifice. Now, I
might be wrong, but I can’t help feeling the condition of those
kids
is
your responsibility. Daniel escaped with his mind
intact because he’s — well — Daniel. Lily’s attempting to blot the
whole thing out of her memory and Owen is catatonic. Didn’t your
goddess tell you to care for the children, Shem? Have you forgotten
so quickly?’

Shemyaza had listened to her
speech without reacting. Emma had hoped to provoke him, but
appeared to have failed. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t me. I told
you that.’

‘You can’t go on like this,’
Emma said.

Shem shrugged. ‘I can’t be what
you or Daniel want me to be. I wish you’d both leave me alone.’

Emma made an angry noise and
stormed out of the room, to secrete herself in the shadowy kitchen
areas in the basement, where she had made friends with whom she
could drink tea and whisky all day. She liked the Grigori who lived
in the Rooms, but felt unable to confide in any of them.

Left alone, Shem put his head
on his knees and covered it with his arms. He wanted to weep but
couldn’t. If he only had some release, his mind might clear, he
could feel alive again. Neither Emma nor Daniel were aware of, or
understood, his torment. In one cruel stroke, he had been given
awareness, and although the memories of his life as Peverel Othman
were diminished, those that remained were stark in his mind, like
matt black figures on a white background. He couldn’t help Owen
because he couldn’t bear to face the boy. Also, to reverse the
process, he’d have to touch Owen, and Shemyaza felt incapable of
touching anyone now. Emma had tried once or twice when they’d first
arrived at the Rooms, turning up in his bedroom in the middle of
the night, clothed only in perfume. She had practised her art upon
his flesh, but it had been as if he were paralysed. The thought of
sex conjured murky, flickering memories of dark rituals he had
performed, debasement, torture, unspeakable defilement of spirit
and flesh. Despite his claims of indifference, he could not
disassociate himself from those events. Part of Owen lived inside
him, because he had stolen it. Only by giving it back could Owen be
restored, but Shem was physically incapable of achieving that at
present. He had forgotten how to give.

He knew how badly Daniel wanted
him to express his potential as Shemyaza, but it was more than
obstinacy and resentment that made it impossible. He felt that it
was a mistake; he couldn’t really be this thing of power. Shemyaza
had been dead for thousands of years.

He exhaled, long and slowly,
and lowered himself to the sofa, stretching out his limbs, seeking
comfort from the yielding yet gritty cushions. He closed his eyes,
and red and purple patterns pulsed across his mind: the
interference of the TV screen, flickering unheeded in the corner of
the room, or the colours of his own pain. His mind drifted, and
thoughts swam across his consciousness like winged dreams. He
descended into semi-trance states whenever he was left alone, and
then it felt as if his life as he lived it now was simply a
fantasy.

What right had the universe to
plant the memories of that ancient, forgotten life and subsequent
torturous death in his mind? He could no longer eat meat, because
he could remember the smell of his own flesh burning. Sometimes, a
poignant memory would assail his mind, such as now, when his
imagination flew free. He would expect to open his eyes, not to the
crumbling decay of the Moses Assembly Rooms, but his ancient home,
with its cool, lofty chambers and swaying draperies, and the
translucent pleats of incense on the air. At any moment, his old
friend and conspirator, Salamiel, might walk into the room, put his
head on one side and say, ‘Are you coming, then? She’s waiting for
you.’ And there would be a message from Ishtahar in his hands: a
single sheaf of corn bound with ribbon, a wilting flower picked
from the corn-fields. Or perhaps dark-eyed Penemue, another of the
rebel cabal, would come to his chamber and fling himself on the
bed, saying, ‘Listen to this,’ and read out his poetry; shivering
lines about Ishtahar and her sisters. They had held each other
once, Shemyaza and Penemue, in the perfumed opulence of Shemyaza’s
palace. They had nuzzled each other’s flesh and whispered of the
delights of human women, igniting their own desire with expectation
and the excitement of taking that which was forbidden. Penemue had
been innocent, wanting only to share his words and the ability to
shape them with his human friends. For that, his people had killed
him. Not for humankind the art of writing; they must be kept as
animals, uneducated. In prison, Shemyaza had been brought word of
how Penemue’s lowland woman had been stabbed through the belly by a
Serafim guard. It had, of course, killed the baby, but she had
lived. They had done something worse to her afterwards, like taking
her tongue or her eyes, but thankfully Shem had forgotten the
details. His own Ishtahar had suffered, and legends spoke of how
her tears of grief had caused the Great Flood, but his people and
hers had realised she was special. They had not maimed her.

Memories of his past life
flooded his mind now, but they were intrusions. He did not want to
own them, and pushed them away, fighting off the dream-state that
seemed to want to enfold him with bittersweet recollections. He
must stay conscious and refuse the past admission into his
life.

With a cry of frustrated pain,
Shemyaza sat up on the sofa, blinked at the TV ahead of him.
Peverel Othman had been demonic in his obsessions, but he had never
experienced doubt or regret. Shem yearned for that strength of
indifference now.

Shem knew, in his heart, that
Emma was probably right and that someone
was
looking for
him. It was inevitable, because the Parzupheim were greedy for
Shemyaza’s power, or what they believed it to be. Only by refusing
to accept what he had become could he hope to hide from them. It
was impossible to conceal himself physically from Grigori adepts,
he knew that, but if they came to believe they were wrong about
him, they might leave him alone. He realised this was probably a
futile hope, but if anyone was in danger, it was only himself. The
Parzupheim wouldn’t be interested in Emma or the others; they were
insignificant.

Let them take me
, he
thought, raw with unshed tears.
Let them destroy my body, break
it and burn it. I owe them nothing. I will not be their scapegoat
again and I will not ‘
be’
for them.

Lily Winter liked living in the
Moses Assembly Rooms. The other occupants, who seemed to fill
Daniel with apprehension and Emma with scorn, attracted her. At one
time, the Rooms had been a gathering place of Grigori adepts, and
perhaps strange rituals had taken place there. Certainly the
multitude of bedrooms suggested that many people used to stay
there; the servants’ quarters alone were huge. Since its hey-day in
the Victorian age, it had declined and was now nothing more than a
kind of hotel for Grigori who felt estranged from their people.
Lily loved its fading grandeur and was fascinated by its eccentric
inhabitants, who seemed to have nothing to do other than live out
their own fantasies. Its caretaker — or perhaps owner, for the
details were unclear — was lean Naomi, and it was from her that
Lily had learned the Rooms’ history. Naomi had a twisted leg and a
stooped body, as if she’d suffered some terrible accident years
before. This alone was unusual, because Lily had already learned
that Grigori could heal their bodies far more efficiently than
humans could. It was impossible to guess Naomi’s age. She painted
strange, ancient patterns on delicate silk, with which she adorned
her body and the crumbling walls of her room. Lily spent a lot of
time with Naomi who like to be read aloud to as she worked on her
patterns. Her taste in literature was eclectic: sometimes she
wanted to hear humorous fantasy tales, othertimes heavy, depressing
modern novels, written by women who seemed to have been punished by
life.