The Twins of Noremway Parish (20 page)

The outside door opened. The light was blinding and he could see the silhouette of Franz and another man who appeared to be the chancellor. He quickly went back to the bunk and sat down, favoring his right arm as his did. The door shut. Franz held a lantern in one hand and a club in the other. Gool remained on the bunk and pretended to be asleep with an eye cracked open.

“
He’s asleep,” the sheriff whispered to his companion, although there was no way that he could honestly think his prisoner was asleep. Surely he’d seen him quickly lie down.

The two men walked back to the desk, put the lantern on a hook behind the desk, and dealt out two hands of Texas Hold ‘em. “So, what’s the verdict tomorrow, Ghora?”

“
He’s guilty, of course, but I wouldn’t recommend execution. With Lynn and Tomias’s deaths, the parish has been through enough already.” They had already placed blind bets. Urey had the disadvantage with the big blind this hand. “Alright, ante up.”

“
It might be beneficial though. They have to take their anger out on someone,” he said and placed the minimum bet, which Urey called. Then he proceeded to deal the flop.

“
What’s wrong with you, Franz?” he said and checked the bet. “Leniency is what’s called for here. He’s already been shot through the back, and he’s suffering with an untreated fracture in his arm. Excuse me for saying so, but I could charge you with cruel treatment of your prisoner. Refusing to provide medical treatment for him…it’s a crime against humanity. I think under the circumstances, a jail sentence will be enough. You know this. You might think you have something to prove. That since Tomias is gone, you can do what you want, but above anything else, you must honor the law.” Franz checked the bet also, then dealt the turn card.

“
Don’t talk to me about friendship and honor, Ghora,” Franz said. “You’re the last person to talk about honor. I know what happened to you at the Waterman place, the wolf bite? I see how you’ve been staring at the moon at night, longing to run through the dark to join your new brethren.” The chancellor placed a small bet, which Franz called but did not raise.

“
My brethren? I don’t know what you mean.” But of course, he did. He could hear them speaking to him, beckoning him, taunting him, begging him to come out and run in the dark of night. Memories from last night came back to him, and his hand went up to his throat. He gave it a quick rub, expecting the flesh and bones to be tender, but they weren’t; they felt good as new. Somehow it was a relief, but then again, it wasn’t. Knowing that he was inhuman, undead, or whatever the correct term would be offered little comfort, but at the moment, death seemed like it would be a worse alternative. That was the paradox of death. It seemed like the worst thing possible, this
unknowable
means of existence, but death was something that everyone had experienced before. What were you before you lived? If not alive, then obviously you were dead, and you didn’t seem to mind it then. So why would venturing into the unknown realm of the undead be a better alternative than entering the known world of the dead?
Because, I already tried killing myself and it didn’t work,
he thought.
I should be dead, but somehow can’t die. What choice do I have?

Franz dealt the river card, the final card played that hand. “You know exactly what I mean. You and the wolves–you’re one of them. I see it in your eyes. The orange light of the fire that burns within you gave it away. You know some things you just can’t hide from me. And I think you know that I own you now. You must do whatever I need you to do for me, and there is nothing you can say or do about it.” He stopped talking for a second and examined his cards. “Besides, what will the people of Noremway Parish do when they find out their chancellor is a werewolf?” Urey said nothing and placed a small bet. The sheriff turned his cards, showing his poker hand: Royal Flush. “Look I can slow play for as long as I want to drag you along and keep you in the game. Either way, I win. Nothing can beat my hand. Keep that in mind if you plan on crossing me. I’ll be meeting with the hangman tomorrow. Don’t disappoint me.” Handing him the pack of cards, he said, “Your deal.”

Chapter 12

A successful card game is usually fraught with deceit and the act of keeping one’s card close to the chest. A successful relationship—whether it is personal or professional—works in just the opposite way. Decon wanted to tell Teret just how he felt and what sacrifices he wanted to make, the secrets he was willing to keep. The twins were in the next room, quiet, sleeping peacefully, unaware of the nearby tension. “I love you, Teret.”

“
I love you too, Decon.” They kissed. “You feeling guilty?”

“
I thought that I would, but something seems to have come over me. I don’t know; I can’t explain it. All I can think about is change. It’s about time things started changing. There is no reason that the intellectual leaders of Noremway Parish can’t experience the pleasures of the flesh. No reason we can’t fall in love. It’s one of the things that bind us together. There is no shame in that.” He kissed her again. “Just a few days ago, I shunned any thoughts of pleasure. It was before Noremway Parish was blessed with the twins. I can see them seriously being an impetus for change.”

“
Right. Like it or not, those twins are our responsibility,” Teret said. “Damn traditional views. We have a responsibility to fulfill and we are perfectly fit to do it; better than anyone else in the parish.”

“
Having a nontraditional child makes for looking at our world in a nontraditional fashion. Makes you actually think about what we’ve just accepted without question for all these years. And people like Rita Morgan need to either learn to adapt or be left behind. That prig is of a dying breed.”

And that seemed to be the end of the discussion. Before long, they would find the discourse moved from their private quarters to being the talk of the town.

***

Decon Mangler woke early and went into the living room to check on the twins. They were fast asleep. Children were funny things. Sometimes they could be so content, but other times they cried as if the world were ending. The twins, who by the look of them had nothing but reason to cry, were at peace. Whatever dreams passed through their minds must be of a better sort of experience than reality could offer them.

They had kicked the red and gold blanket off them as they slept so Decon pulled it back over them, and saw that the babies were actually quite cute when their deformity was covered. This broke his heart, but at least there was hope. He sincerely hoped that Plague could come through on the surgery to separate them.

Then there was this business with the story teller. It still confused him, and he had a mind to read through
The Book of Ragas
for any insight into this being. Why could he now remember his encounter with such detail? He was lucky that Teret was very knowledgeable in such things because he would have to pick her brain. He knew there had to be some mention in the ancient writings dealing with story tellers.

Before the written word, histories were passed down through oral traditions. People adept at story telling handed these tales down from the grandparents to the grandchildren. That cycle continued on for generations until the invention of the written word. Beyond that, he knew next to nothing about the story tellers of legend.

He continued looking down at the twins as Teret came out of the bedroom. She was wearing a blue and gray robe. She walked to him and grabbed his arm and, pressing her face against his shoulder, breathed in his scent deeply and exhaled in a loud whoosh. He looked down at her with a smile, and they kissed.

“
Aren’t they so adorable?” she said.

“
Of course, my lady.”

“
Aw.” She moved away from him, toward the pantry where the fruit, grain, and other food was stored. Soon it would be time to feed the babies. A milky substance was made from the golden grass that was often a liquid staple for newborn children.

They hadn’t cried out in hunger yet, which was something that concerned her (but, she suspected, something that Decon had not even thought about), but she would soon be ready with some fresh milk for them.

Her hand went to her belly. She could be growing a child inside her now for all she knew. It was a strange feeling. In the course of one night, she had gone from never being able to experience the growth of her own biological child to possibly being pregnant. Of course, it was too early to tell, but the possibility made her heart flutter.

“
What are you smiling about?” Decon asked as he walked over to her and grabbed the hand that was rubbing her belly. He hadn’t noticed the gesture.

“
Just thinking that I love you,” she said and kissed him. She loved the way he looked at her. She could get lost in those eyes. She stared into them intently; suddenly she grew light-headed and dizzy, and disembodied voices flooded her mind.
Zuriz Falcon is dangerous. He must be stopped!

She found herself, instead of Decon, catching a glimpse through the story teller’s eye.

She was standing alone in a dark basement. She had never been in the Waterman House, let alone underneath it, but based on Decon’s descriptions, she knew exactly where she was, and what she was seeing. After she oriented herself to her new surroundings, she was able to concentrate on the voice coming from the darkness.
“Listen to my story, Story Teller, and you will know how Zuriz Falcon came to live in our time. We came to Noremway Parish long ago; in fact we never left. After the death of Zuriz Falcon in the great battle against Ragas Moliere, the great wall was built. We were still here, weakened, but largely ignored. The people no longer saw us, so they assumed we had left, that we had truly been banished, unable to come through the new barrier. Yet this was not the case. We either went underground, stayed beyond the wall by choice, or came and went as we pleased. You see, we never left. We were merely biding our time until we could resurrect our father before we made a move.”

Decon Mangler, I hope you are hearing this. Your parish is in grave danger.

“
When Tomias Waterman married Lynn, we knew we had an opportunity to resurrect our father. You see, after several attempts at pregnancy, Lynn gave up. She miscarried twice. She was unhappy, and tempted to leave him. Then we stepped in and offered the good mayor a deal. We could solve his wife’s pregnancy problems, and save their marriage–or so he believed our end of the bargain to be, although the actual wording was they would be married until death.

“
We descended upon Lynn Waterman in the night. She suspected she had been violated, but assumed it was a dream. And here we are just under nine months later with Zuriz Falcon, a child born unto Lynn Waterman.”

This explains many things I had long suspected. Lynn Waterman was the inculpable mother to this resurrected demon conceived of her through an unscrupulous arrangement between her husband and representatives of the corrupted beings of the dark.

***

As Teret looked on, all she could think was,
‘This doesn’t explain the twins’
. That was true. In fact, it deepened the mystery. She assumed that the voice in the darkness was explaining that the Waterman child was this Zuriz Falcon. When exposed to the holy water, the child dissolved, but that must have been part of the plan, because they spoke as if they had been successful in their endeavor to resurrect their powerful father.

So that left the question: where did the twins come from? She had less curiosity concerning this question than it may have appeared. It was one of those things she didn’t need to know in order to love them; but knowing where they came from, what their purpose was, and why they seemed to come out of the fountain in a reaction that may have involved this resurrected lord of chaos, could be important to the survival of Noremway Parish.

The voice of the story teller spoke in her mind, asking the same question she had been.
“Explain to me again what was supposed to happen. I think I may be getting lost in this story.”

The deep voice of the Dark responded with a sort of arrogance that it didn’t have before, “When the baby touched the holy water, it was expected to dissolve and Falcon’s spirit would emerge into the shadows. That was all that was supposed to happen. They would wonder why the child had dissolved, and then we would conquer Noremway Parish when Falcon gained full strength. But other forms of sorcery are at work here, the origins of which we know not.”

The voice of the story teller rang through her mind in an unspoken voice so that the creatures of the Darkness could not hear:
Decon Mangler, please hear me and remember!

She stepped forward and saw the blue being wrapped in a dark fog. It was upside down with a clearly defined head at the bottom end. The shape was vaguely humanoid, but as she stared at it, it turned its head toward her and their eyes met. A sensation burned through her eyes and into her brain, but she didn’t look away.

She knew that this being was the story teller, and she continued to walk toward it.
“Who are you?”
the story teller asked at the same time that she heard the narration of her approach play out within her mind
(a lovely lost lady of unknown origin walks toward me without fear. She sees me for who I am. As I stare into the powerful red eyes, I become lost in them and find myself swimming in another world. “Who are you,” I ask.)