The Darkening Dream (49 page)

“You still look tired, Papa.”

He set his pipe on the desk to come around and hug her.

“Even God’s aid is not without cost,” he said. “You’re sure the vampire’s dead? And Pastor Parris?”

“The pastor vanished, so we don’t know what happened to him. But even if he’s alive, I doubt he’ll dare return here. As to the vampire — given that the creature was literally obliterated by the wrath of God, I’d say we’ve seen the last of him.” She sighed. “I just don’t understand why
Hashem
even allows the existence of such a beast.”

“I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe — I the Lord do all these things,” Papa quoted in Hebrew.

“Isaiah 45:7?”

He looked pleased. Sarah didn’t.

“So that’s it. God has a plan? That’s just—” He held up a hand, and she stopped.

“Admittedly,” he said, “the divine scheme can be perplexing to the rest of us.”

“One of the things I don’t understand — and there’s plenty — is the aspects we assumed in the Temple. I like to think I’m a good person but I wouldn’t exactly call myself angelic.”

He didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. Sarah waited him out.

“I think I finally owe you the truth about what I did,” he said.

She felt her heart pound faster. “With the Horn?”

“You remember in September of 1909, when your mother had influenza?”

“Of course.” Mama’s fever had taken over a week to break.

“September 29 is celebrated throughout the Christian West as the Feast of Saint Gabriel,” he said.

Today is the Feast of Saint Gabriel,
the wolf had said to her.

“The Horn was in my desk,” Papa continued, “and from it spoke a voice of cold red flame.”

“Like Moses at the burning bush?”

“More like the
Akedah
.”

An angel of the Lord had asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac in the land of Moriah. The very spot where Jerusalem was founded, where Solomon built his Temple.

“Why don’t I remember?” She felt so cold. Like she had lying broken on the temple stones, until Anne touched her with so warm hands.

“God’s small mercy, I suppose.”

“He’s mean —
Hashem
.”

Papa tried to smile. “God tested Abraham. Why should it be any different for us?”

Sarah heard the horn, slow and mournful.
The horn sounds our sacrifice. My death, your blood, your death, my blood. I save you and you save me.

She remembered now. Papa had taken her down to the cellar. She was cold then, too, wearing only her nightgown. He’d seated her on the roots in the back, her bare feet resting on the dry wood.

Then a voice spoke. It was a whisper, yet the loudest sound in the world.

“Joseph, Joseph.”

“
Hineni
,” he said, “here I am,” and kicked off his shoes.

“As surely as your blood and your voice know my name,” the angel said, “my voice shall know the blood of your blood.”

Pain twisted Sarah’s innards then. Her first blood ran warm down her calves, slicked the roots and her toes.

She followed Papa’s hand to between her feet.

He placed a horn there. A most glorious Horn, about a foot long, engraved with Hebrew letters and encircled in gold. Her blood — black in the dim light — dripped onto it.

The long trumpeting note droned on and on.

Beneath Sarah, the roots began to glow and shimmer. They grew brighter, more vibrant, transforming from dirty tubes of wood into the verdant branches of a living tree. Leaves emerged from buds unseen, opening themselves. Soon she felt like a queen seated on a glorious living throne. The tree continued to swell around her, buds giving way to glorious orange and red fruits. She breathed in the intoxicating smell, akin to orange blossoms yet indescribably grander.

“Papa, can I have a fruit?” she heard herself say.

“Don’t touch them, little
malka
.”

Her skin tingled. She looked to the side and saw the expanse of Paradise, the Garden of Eden. This was no ordinary tree, watered and fed with her blood. There, in that dark basement, the tree of wood and tree of knowledge became one and the same. The layers of God’s creation compressed together.

Twelve year-old Sarah had tapped her foot. “I’m going to get down if that’s okay.”

Papa took her hand as she stepped down to the dirt floor, had hugged her close, not caring about her blood-soaked garment.

Before their eyes, the tree withdrew. At first the fruit shrank to nothingness, then the leaves folded, and finally the glow faded. When it was no more, the blood on the roots and the Horn itself were gone, too. Nothing remained but the limbs of an old sycamore.

Sarah shook her head to clear her thoughts, trying to focus on the four walls of Papa’s study. The trumpeting of the horn faded from her ears.

“God had you do that?”

“Obedience to the Lord is not bondage but righteousness.” His eyes looked so sad. “It’s less than he asked of Abraham.”

“God’s still mean,” she said. “What happened to the Horn?”

“The Lord used us to return it to Paradise, to the Garden of Eden, where it belongs. Now it waits there with Gabriel, so he may bring it to Elijah.”

“That’s why I had the wings in the Temple?”

Papa toked on his pipe, but it had gone out. “The object we perceive as the Horn,” he said, “is but a protrusion of God’s Strength into the world. Such a powerful force has likely tugged on us, just as the moon pulls on the ocean to create the tides.”

The Strength of God sings in our blood
, Isabella had said.
The passage is almost open, beyond lies Paradise, and the dark gift redeemed.

“And the monsters? What do they want with the Horn?”

Joseph clicked his teeth on the tip of his pipe. “They keep their own council.”

“But God won’t let anything really bad happen, right?” Sarah asked.

“He saw to the vampire’s end, did He not?”

“So we’ve postponed the End of Days?”

“Given that all men must be righteous first,” Joseph said, “I think we still have a bit of time.”

They both laughed.

“I have a train to catch,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

She shook her head.

He was going to stay with the Hoffmanns until the house was repaired — there went his money for a car — but Anne had offered to put Sarah up. Boston was too far from school… and Alex.

“What about the Sabbath?” he asked.

After what God had put her through, she really didn’t feel like praying just now.

Sixty-Five:

The Toast

Salem, Massachusetts, Friday evening, November 21, 1913

S
ARAH RODE THE TROLLEY
out toward Alex’s house, not even trying to stop thinking about him. She’d never felt this way about a boy — a man, really — and wrong religion or not, Alex was a good man. She hated to disappoint her father, but really, after everything that happened, didn’t she deserve something for herself? The worst that could happen was his being upset with her for a couple of weeks. If he expected her to forgive him, she could hope for the same.

And she
had
just survived near death at the hands of a nine hundred-year-old vampire. What was the point of following all the rules if God was just going to test your faith regardless?

With voices and blood in the basement…

She shuddered then hopped off the trolley at the junction. Her boots crunched in the snow, already packed hard. Walking west, she watched the sun crawl downward. Did Khepri really drag it across the sky? Was the sun a ball of dung pulled by a cosmic beetle?

In any case, the temperature would soon drop. She picked up her pace.

She still had questions. Was Alex the wolf in her dream, or Mr. Palaogos? Was everyone part of some giant cosmic plan? None of it made any sense, but if Mr. Palaogos
was
the wolf, he should have some answers.

Sarah let herself in through the gate as the last sliver of sun dropped below the horizon. She knocked on the front door. Unlocked, it drifted open at her touch.

“Alex, are you home?” Sarah called out. The foyer was dark. When she heard nothing, she edged closer to the stairs. “Hello?”

She heard a soft voice from the library and followed it.

“Good evening, Sarah.”

It wasn’t a large room, and the sheer mass of bookshelves further cramped the area. Old Mr. Palaogos sat alone in his chair by the window. He had a book on his lap but stared at the drawn curtains.

“Good evening. Is Alex home?”

The old man looked frail, his skin almost translucent.

“Call me Constantine. I’m sure he’ll be downstairs momentarily.”

Had Alex said anything to him? The old man seemed so ancient it was hard to imagine him even thinking about such matters.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” Constantine said. “You’ve saved your friend and vanquished Ali ibn Hammud al-Nasir. This is no small matter. For nearly a millennium, he stalked the earth. No small matter indeed.” He reached for a dusty decanter and crystal glasses, poured red wine into two.

“A toast, to the first of old debts settled.”

“I think you owe me the truth about Isabella,” Sarah said.

He pointed behind her, at a small painting on the wall. Sarah had once seen an Italian Renaissance exhibition in Boston, and this portrait would have fit right in. Isabella’s red braids were bound tightly about her head and fresh garlands of red roses hung from the gold frame.

“I agree,” the old man said.

When she turned back, his smile as he offered the glass looked every bit the wolf.

“This vintage is exotic and ancient, quite lovely.”
Try some
echoed oddly in her head.

Part of Sarah wanted to scream. She felt hot and flushed and didn’t know why. The other part of her wanted to accept the glass. She reached for it. The wine was exotic: meaty, salty, perfumed.
Finish your glass, dear
.

“It would offend the gods to waste it.” He threw back his own goblet and emptied it.

She couldn’t think clearly. She backed up and reached a hand out to steady herself against a bookshelf but still lifted the glass to her lips and finished it.

She looked over at Mr. Palaogos, but his chair was empty. Instead, a wolf stood on all fours in the small space between them. His eyes glowed like rubies. She held out her hand, and he sniffed at it delicately. Everything seemed to rotate as he curled about her knees, pressing into her skirts like Mr. Barnyard.

Then the wolf vanished, and Constantine stood behind her. Looking down, she saw his purple slippers — always a touch of purple, color of kings. His hand took hers. Part of her wanted to flinch, part of her wanted to grasp him back. His hand wasn’t that of an old man, his touch smooth and cool.

He spun her to face him, pulled off her overcoat, and unbuttoned her jacket and scarf. They fell to the floor.

“The passage draws near. Remember the city decked in red? Today is November 21, the Orthodox Feast of Saint Gabriel.”

“March…” she muttered. So dizzy. Papa had said it was March.

“In the west, my dear. We Greeks are slow to change our calendars.”

He looked forty years younger, just as in her dreams, except her sleeping mind must have added the fur. He and Alex bore a strong resemblance, one that hadn’t been so evident in the old man’s visage.

Sarah staggered back against the hard shelves. Her mouth felt filled with cotton.

“You were in my dreams?”

“You invited me into your home. I’m afraid I couldn’t resist returning for the occasional drink.” He was smiling, his teeth very long and white. “You and Isabella have so much in common, I’m glad you chose each other.”

“For what?” The room continued to spin.

“I’m sorry it comes to this.” He cupped her chin in one hand and rested the other on her bare neck. “The passage grows near, and I only know one way to bring her back, to make old wrongs right. The beetle has forced my hand.”

Constantine caressed her neck. The pulse of her blood rang in her ears, her body refused to run, and even the will to do so froze in her veins.