The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 36. Chapter 36

Heidi Anderson’s parents stayed in a cabin ten miles outside the city during the summer months. Vanus could see why she picked it. It was close enough to the city she could drive there if need be and secluded enough she could hide. Out here in the boonies (was ten miles outside the city considered the boonies?) the eyes could play tricks on the mind. But it was also quiet. So quiet you could hear a twig snap. No matter where she and her daughter went, he knew it would not be far enough to get away from the forces of Inferno.

She stood on the step of the screened in porch, watching him pull up to the cabin anxiously with her arms folded over her chest. He could feel her anxiety from inside the car. He was anxious, too. I shouldn’t be here. I should be at home, recovering. But what kind of person would he be if he abandoned this woman and her daughter to deal with things on their own?

The sky was darkening, the shadows thickening. Van’s eyes searched the treelines as he got out of the car. The cold wind carried a trace of ice, making his bruised face smart. He wished he had something to cover his face, to hide what Heidi’s husband had done to him, but he had nothing, so she would have to face this cruel new reality head on once more. How did a person cope with such a thing?

These thoughts followed him as he trudged across the yard with his staff strapped to his back and a grocery bag in hand. “What’s that?” she asked in a jerky voice. She pointed at the bag with a cigarette in hand.

“Personal effects. Do you have protective wards around your home?”

“No.” Heidi waved a hand dismissively. “My husband and daughter decided we didn’t want to put our daughter around that. We thought it would…protect her…from…whatever. I guess we were wrong.”

“What I’m doing isn’t meant to harm anyone, it’s meant to protect your home,” Vanus said with forced patience. He hated the idea of people not protecting their home based on conservatism. “I am certified to lay wards around your home that will keep you and your daughter safe. With your permission I’d like to walk around the inside and outside of the cabin.” This was the longform, polite way of saying, Step over and let me do my job. With this thought a pang hit him. He missed the towering, brooding presence of Bazzelthorpe. He should be here with me, not back at the hospital. It’s hard to believe just over a week ago he wanted to kill me. Now we’re…

What were they? He inwardly shook the thought from his head. Now was not the time to think of such things.

Heidi let out a tired, heavy sigh. He watched her shoulders sag and her head dip low. In just two week’s time her life had been turned completely upside down. Derailed. Her husband was a killer and was turning into a monster. He could set aside his own pain for the time being. After all, was he not responsible? Could he have not done more?

You’re always too late…

He stepped into the wan light just as she raised her head. She saw his face. She gasped. “Did my husband do that to you?”

He’s not your husband, he wanted to tell her. Instead he looked away. He didn’t want her to see his shame, his rage. He didn’t want her to see just how badly Anderson and Leonidas had beaten him down. He didn’t want her to see just how much he wanted to kill her husband.

She must have seen it anyway because she said, in a subdued voice, “Come up to the house. Don’t worry, Little Annie is already asleep. I gave her some Benadryl. She’ll be out all night.”

Not yet, he told her. He still had to lay wards down around the house. He told her he was completely capable of letting himself inside the house if she didn’t mind. Heidi Anderson told him she didn’t, gave him one last lingering look, and then disappeared inside the cabin, the screen door swishing shut behind her.

Vanus was glad for the chance to be alone once more. He shook his head, mentally kicking himself. How many protocols was he breaking by being here, alone, without backup? It was time to call the captain. The phone call was brief but unpleasant.

“Every time I talk to you, the news gets worse and worse,” Gwendolyn said with a strained voice. “The higher ups are breathing down my throat. They’re ready to send someone down to take over things…and trust me they won’t be as pleasant or patient as I’ve been, Kaufman…”

Kaufman this time, he noted, not Vanus.

“...I need you to reel this in yesterday.”

He gritted his teeth in fury. He wanted to throw his cell phone on the ground until it was in smithereens. “What the fuck do you think I’ve been trying to do?” He dropped his voice to make sure he wasn’t shouting. The last thing he needed to do was frighten his charges more than they already were. “My partner has been in the hospital twice. He’s in there right now recovering from his injuries. You gave me Dougherty and two of his people were killed. One of my eyes is almost completely swollen shut and you expect me to give a shit about your bureaucratic struggles. Get fucked, Gwen.”

She started to protest. He hung up before she could say anything.

Fuck her.

It was time to lay defenses around the house. He started at the front door, sprinkling red brick powder along the thresholds of the front and back door, and along the sills of the windows. He painted wards on the sides of the house with a bucket of red paint and a brush. Inside the cabin, Heidi gave him the code to the security alarm. With this everything was armed as much as they could be. The rest would be up to him.

She handed him a large mug of steaming coffee. “My parents don’t have cream or sugar in the house,” she told him in the way of an apology. “I didn’t think to grab any from the store.”

“Black is fine,” he told her. He managed not to grimace when he took a sip.

He made a quick circuit around the house while Heidi followed his heels at a distance. He didn’t mind. Whatever it took to make her feel more comfortable with his being here. This was her parents’ home after all. This was her life. He tried not to look at the framed pictures of Heidi as a little girl at the beach with her parents, at the photos of her with her husband beaming at him from the wall. Seeing Anderson look so happy only made Vanus want to kill him more (something he would never tell Heidi of course). He made sure to tiptoe past the room Little Annie slept in. He was grateful to find her sleeping with his back turned to her. He didn’t have to see how much or how little she looked like Anderson.

Back in the living room they sat on a sofa that smelled slightly of mothballs. A fire crackled in the brick hearth. She kept looking at him out of the corner of her eyes, tracing every bruise, every scrape, every expression. He could tell she was trying not to, but he also knew she couldn’t help it.

“Brad did that to you,” she said finally. It wasn’t a question. She was simply stating a fact.

He let his silence speak for him.

“Are you going to kill him?”

“He’s not your husband anymore. He’s killed a lot of people. He’ll kill you and your daughter if he gets the chance.”

She shook her head in denial. Her eyes burned with tears. “I just can’t believe he would do the things he’s done. I’m looking the evidence right in the face and…You don’t understand…I don’t understand. For as long as I’ve known him, Brad has always been the sweetest, most loving, most gentle man I’ve ever met. He would never do these horrible, horrible things. Why do things happen like this, Mr. Kaufman? Why has my husband been taken from me?”

Because of me, burned itself into his tongue.

“Because they aren’t so different from us,” he said. “Because they are lost. Because they are selfish and hungry for power. Because they want to keep us down so low we never rise to the top, never reach our full potential.”

Heidi’s finely plucked eyebrows drew together. “Full potential?”

Vanus nodded. “We weren’t meant to live this way. This life, this world isn’t meant for us. We are meant for better things. Someone else robbed us of it. Took what is rightfully ours. We call them the Archons. The creators of this world. They serve the ultimate creator, the demiurge.”

“The demiurge?”

“The Christians called Him God, and then He died when the world stopped believing in Him.”

“Is he benevolent?”

“Do you think He’s benevolent?”

Heidi turned to face the fire so half of her face was eclipsed by shadow. “No, I don’t. I agree with you. I think we live in a world that’s not supposed to be. I think the thing that created us is a petulant tyrant. So then what’s the point? I guess that’s what I want to know. Why do you do what you do, Mr. Kaufman? What drives you into the darkness?”

“The hopes I’ll find the light,” he said without thinking. But I don’t think I’ll find it, he added silently. I look and look and look and things just keep getting worse.

An alarm went off in his head. He turned his head in the direction of the front yard. His heart seized in his chest.

Another alarm sounded in his head. Someone or something had tripped one of the wards he’d placed around the property. Seeing the alarmed expression on his face, Heidi opened her mouth to ask what was going on. He silenced her by pressing a finger to his lips. “Stay absolutely quiet,” he said. “Go upstairs to Heidi. Don’t wake her up. Be ready to move when I tell you, but stay where you are until I tell you to move. Do you understand?”

She nodded. All the color had drained from her face but he could sense the maternal drive to survive that all mothers have slide into place. He was comforted in knowing this woman would do anything it took to protect her daughter upstairs. Even if it meant giving up her own life.

He waited until he was sure she was at the stairs before going to the front door. He turned out all the lights on the way, extinguishing visibility in the house in the hopes that it would make it harder for potential threats to gauge his movement inside the cabin. He pulled out his cell phone and quick-dialed the emergency back up number. With the punch of a few numbers he was able to send out a call for backup; they would trace his location and send out reinforcements on the double. Now I just have to make sure we make it through the next ten minutes, he thought.

He was by the front door now. For a moment he leaned his head back against the wall, listening to the silence of the house and the pounding of his own heart. Once more he wished Bazzelthorpe was here. He would take the Astorathian’s suspicious looks and intensity over the three or four chaos magicians Gwen would send to him.

I’m not ready for this, he thought. I’m not ready for another fight.

How many more bruises and blows to the face, to his very psyche could he take before it became too much?

Remember, this isn’t about you, you idiot, he reminded himself. You’ve got a woman and a little girl you need to protect.

With every cell in his body primed for action, he set a timer on his watch for ten minutes. He only had to keep Heidi and Little Annie alive for ten minutes before backup got here. He primed his staff with mana and went to the door.

It was time for the countdown to begin.