When an enigmatic tattooed woman approaches freelance journalist Kyler Withers, he begins remembering a past life as a mage. Once known as Etherwolf, he served a sentient evil known as the Darkness.

Horrified, Kyler fights to keep his humanity. Against him are growing memories of the monster he previously was. Aiding him is the love he rediscovers he had for a powerful mage artist named Sorin. If Kyler cannot overcome his past, he’s afraid he’ll help the Darkness destroy everything, starting with his lover.

*************************

Kyler Withers decided it was safe to teach journalism again when he stopped dreaming of dead children.

He celebrated his decision by leaving his townhouse and driving downtown to pick up a few things. San Jose had grown since he’d lived there as a teenager. The lush orchards that had once dotted the landscape were gone, replaced by a foliage of glass and steel.

Kyler lost himself in this man-made jungle, passing corporate hunter-gatherers and potted trees. It reminded him of the green twilight of South America, where people lived and died under the shadows of…

South America.

He was doing it again.

Kyler focused on the afternoon, the light traffic, the people around him. Summer had died, leaving this October day cool and mourning. The wind whispered over him, tugging at the end of his leather duster as he went from shop to shop, picking up a new briefcase, some notebooks, and, in an alley between two buildings, a knife camouflaged like a pen. The notebooks he placed in the case; the knife, an inner pocket of his duster. He found it ironic that such a deadly thing could look so innocent.

The brooding thought followed Kyler back to his black Scion. He toyed with calling his old college roommate. They could have an early dinner, watch Citizen Kane, and try to convince themselves they loved the movie. Old times. It could be fun.

He couldn’t do it.

Kyler started the car. He would be replacing Owen in the spring, and while Owen looked forward to starting his life over, Kyler feared his gloomy nature would taint his friend’s hopes. Life, he knew, could twist in a moment. Owen might change his mind. The San Jose/Evergreen Community College hiring committee might have another look through Kyler’s last book and become uneasy. The dreams might return.

In this moment, the fears were just ephemeral things. Owen was happy. The District Board was fond of him. No one was dead.

His car got awesome gas mileage.

Laughter blossomed inside of him. Mileage. He was at a place where that was a concern. He was lucky.

Fifteen minutes later, Kyler and his awesome mileage car pulled in front of a two-story townhouse.

The house was too new to really feel comfortable, but the trees in front hid it from the street, and the red brick façade gave it a subtly elegant look. Anyone could live here. A new teacher. A Pulitzer-winning journalist. A rumored murderer.

Kyler told himself no one thought that. It was just a house. He was just another man.

Murderers could look like anyone, though. They could live anywhere. He might not remember what happened, but it didn’t make the people who were killed less dead. They…

The memories he’d spent the afternoon running from had found him.

Kyler frowned and headed for the house.

In all honesty, there were parts of the last two years he was proud of. He’d originally gone to Colombia to investigate the effects of the government’s crackdown on drugs on a small town, and ended up substituting for a former lover in his school. When people began disappearing around the area, Kyler stayed, first to investigate, then as he got to know the students, to protect.

And he had protected them, hadn’t he? He might not remember what happened the day the guerrillas came into his classroom, but he knew that some of the children got out alive. The scar that crept from the corner of his left eye to his hairline told him he’d been in danger, but it proved…

It proved nothing.

An ache threaded out from his stomach. It crept through him, tightening his chest and stealing his breath. He didn’t know what had happened but the surviving children did. They never spoke against him but whenever he approached, they crossed themselves.

And trembled. They were afraid of the dark. They were afraid of shadows. They were afraid of him.

Kyler unlocked his door and slipped inside, snapping the bolt shut behind him. Until that realization, until that afternoon, he’d wanted to remain there. Let others chase stories. He’d found himself.

Well, others had found him too, and they’d rather he be several thousand miles away. So Kyler had left and, being him, wrote.

Kyler dropped his briefcase on the coffee table. He thought the words would give him closure. Instead, they sharpened his nightmares and got him the Pulitzer.

He’d dreamed of the award. Now that it was his, he dreamed of it still, only now the neat black print on the certificate was crimson. The world recognized him. Fucking great. He didn’t.

Kyler shoved the thoughts back. Tearing himself apart over what had happened hadn’t helped in the past. If he didn’t force himself to move on, he was afraid it’d kill him.

The ache in his stomach changed, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since that morning. The quiet pain comforted him, giving him something to focus on. Pizza, he decided, and maybe some coffee.

Kyler walked across the library/living room. When he’d moved in four days before, this room had been unpacked first, and now bookcases lined the walls.

At the entryway, he took two steps down to what he was currently calling the Valley of the Kings, for most of the kitchen was still in boxes. Three miniature pyramid-stacked structures set around the hard wood floor. Somewhere, hidden within one of the cardboard sarcophagi, was his Pulitzer.

The award had been his dream for years. Now it was just a slip of paper, a physical representation of missing time.

It had allowed him to pretty much choose his next place of work, though. Kyler could have approached any university or newspaper in the area and been fairly certain they would offer him something. He could’ve tried his hand at Stanford, San Jose University, anywhere.

Instead, he chose San Jose City College. Or, to use the vernacular, Silly College. Ghetto College.

His choice had surprised many. Despite the new tech building on the corner of Bascom, the small campus was an old place, one that had little funding and had to do the best it could with the resources it had. Its students were a varied mix of race, gender, and age, its teachers and administration at once working together, and yet apart. When Kyler was there, he felt… something. Alive. Needed.

It was a Colombia thing, he suspected. Whatever might or might not have happened that afternoon, he’d liked the man he had been. Since he’d left, he had been living a half life. Perhaps, once he returned to teaching, he’d be whole again.

After ordering a pizza, Kyler picked up a package of coffee, put water to boil, and then rummaged for his favorite mug…a large black cup that one of his dead students had made him. He cradled the cool shape against him and carried it over to the counter.

Something glinted red out of the corner of his sight. Kyler followed it to the edge of the counter, and to a tabloid-sized newspaper.

His lips quirked. There were no mysterious deaths there. The staff would be his in the spring, so Kyler had gone through the eight-page issue that morning to get to know them. A couple of hours fresh from the printer and he’d debauched it with red ink. A word in the caption was misspelled on page four. Someone relied a little too much on quotes on page six. And, Kyler’s personal peeve, they forgot to continue a story from one page to another.

Beautiful page design, though. If Kyler hadn’t known the editor was an art major, he would’ve suspected after seeing the young man’s strip on the entertainment page. The kid had talent. In a world that wanted something big and shiny to look at, he would get attention. Someone who drew readers to a publication could be forgiven a couple of spelling mistakes. All Kyler needed to do was find him a copy editor and the Spectator would be perfect.

A chill breeze stirred his hair.

Kyler turned.

Across the kitchen, the back door crept open. Sunlight bled across the hardwood floor.

Unease unfurled inside of him. He always locked doors behind him. When he didn’t, someone died.

Kyler crossed the room.

His image scowled at him from the door’s glass as he approached. He’d once been told he was classically handsome. The man who’d said it had wanted to sleep with him, though, so one had to take that with a grain of whatever salt best suited their diet.

Personally, Kyler thought he was more Byronic. That wasn’t any better, he’d written a term paper in college arguing that the type should come with a surgeon’s warning, but it was more accurate. Cerulean eyes, aristocratic nose, and lips that were set to frown. At thirty-six, he unfairly looked thirty.

When he was with others, he set his shoulder length black hair free, letting it hide the scar. Alone, he preferred it out of his way.

He also preferred not to watch himself, so when he reached the door, Kyler shoved it away, knocking his doppelganger aside.

Outside, sunlight painted the small yard in an ethereal light. There was a patch of concrete, some grass, and a cluster of yellow flowers. The gate in the left corner was locked. No one was there.

Behind him, someone sighed.

Kyler turned.

A shadow spilled across the entryway to the kitchen.

Kyler’s heart thumped staccato-quick against his chest. In Colombia, the guerrillas had come up silently behind him.

They were dead, though. He’d seen the bodies, the way their heads had been nearly twisted off. They couldn’t be here.

But what if…

Kyler reached into his coat and withdrew the penknife.

A quick tug at the cap, and then the blade caught a flash of the overhead bulb, sending a splash of light over the wall, across the room, and into the eyes of the figure stepping into the room. It…she…raised one hand over her eyes.

Kyler studied her. She was pretty, with light brown skin and short dark hair. She wore a black vest and jeans, exposing the various tattoos that dotted her flesh. Butterflies lay along her right arm, a long red serpent wound around her left, a couple of small spiders dotted the bit he could see of her stomach, and a dark slash of color lay across her neck.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was sweet, with a trace of an Irish accent.

The surprise faded into disquiet. She wasn’t from Colombia, but she’d broken into his house. Judging by her empty hands, she’d discovered he didn’t have much she could steal.

“If you leave now,” he said, “I won’t call the police.”

Her fingers splayed, allowing Kyler to catch a glimpse of her eyes. They were the green of Colombian woods. Very pretty. People disappeared into them and were never seen again.

“You can call them, if you like,” she said. “It won’t matter.”

Kyler’s unease sharpened, making his hand twitch. The reflected light jumped and stabbed her eyes.

The woman’s fingers shuttered. She chuckled, and the soft noise made her chest and shoulders shake. “I’m pleased to see you too, Etherwolf.”

Etherwolf? “What’re you…”

A shadow. Ethereal, a second skin that he could never touch. That’s what he saw, the night the guerrillas came. Just his shadow and theirs; his crouching while theirs towered over him. Crouching, shifting, waiting…

Kyler blinked. For a moment he’d thought that he was in Colombia again. The shadows…

God. What was he thinking?

“It’s going to be all right,” the woman said. She drew closer.

“Get out,” he said.

“No.” She unbuttoned her vest. “There’s something you need to see.”

Kyler closed the distance between them. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he could scratch her. A light pain would hopefully send her running.

He raised the penknife.

And then discovered that he couldn’t hurt her. She wasn’t threatening anyone. She simply wasn’t well.

The realization was a relief. A worry. He couldn’t attack her. He wasn’t a monster. He was just in trouble.

“I’m not interested,” he said, pushing past her. The phone was on the counter. Hopefully the police would arrive in a few minutes.

Movement whispered behind him. “I was never your type.”

Fool! To turn his back on an unknown. Had he learned nothing?

Kyler turned and scowled at her.

“My name’s Rhune,” she said, undoing the last two buttons. “You’ll understand soon.”

She took a step towards him, causing his shadow to fall over her. Then, she turned. The vest slipped off her shoulders, giving him a hint of another tattoo. His shadow hid its features. Considering the odd dichotomy of the others, this one was likely either as innocent as a butterfly or as deadly as a spider.

Kyler clicked the phone on. If he was straight and she wasn’t weird, this could’ve been interesting. As things were, this still was interesting. Interesting wasn’t always good. “I’m calling…”

Circles rippled across her skin.

Kyler stared, watching the movement sweep over her shoulders and down her arms. Where it crossed, spider legs stretched and butterflies fluttered.

What? How?

Kyler slid back along the counter. His shadow slipped away from her flesh.

Light swept over her, revealing pale cocoa skin and an obsidian tattoo of a man. The figure echoed his posture, his stance, the curve of his face. It was odd and beautiful and…

It shifted, turning its subtle features toward him.

Different shades of black wove a nose, hint of eyes, lips. It smiled.

Kyler stilled. It couldn’t be moving. He had to be imagining this. Had to be dreaming or hallucinating or…

He wasn’t.

Kyler set the phone and penknife down, then touched Rhune’s back.

She had warm skin. Warmer where the shadow was.

The darkness lapped at his fingers, sending a cool shiver through him. Images flickered at the edges of his mind. The guerillas, their shadows…

…painted a story across the wall. Two of the men wanted to take a student outside to talk, yes, just talk. Kyler said no, but it wasn’t a request, and he was introduced to a knife.

It traced from the corner of his left eye to his hairline, giving his burgeoning scar the illusion of Egyptian kohl.

It was a game, the guerrilla explained. The knife would go in deeper if he blinked.

Kyler remained quiet as blood snaked down his face. Behind the guerrilla, the shadows drew closer.

A breeze traced over him, whispering… something.

The guerrilla’s hand twitched, sending the knife in deeper.

Pain stabbed Kyler, blurring his sight. Men became shadows, shadows men. When he could see again, the guerrilla smiled.

The wind sharpened, making the shadows dance.

“Etherwolf,” the wind whispered. It caressed Kyler’s skin, lapping at the blood. The touch was familiar. Comforting.

Behind the guerrilla, the shadows approached.

Kyler stared at them, at their man-made darkness, and knew who he was. Kyler, yes, but also…

Kyler yanked his hand back. God. There’d been something in the wind, something alive and…

Black tendrils followed him, tugging at his fingertips.

He stumbled back, hitting the counter. The tendrils snapped and retreated into Rhune’s flesh.

A cold breeze brushed over Kyler, stealing his warmth.

“Etherwolf,” it whispered.

“Did you hear that?” Kyler asked.

Rhune half turned toward him. “No. I can sense it, though.” She held out an arm. Ripples moved across her skin, stirred as if a breeze was playing across water.

A moment later, the breeze swept over him.

It teased his skin, slipping beneath the ends of his coat and shirt to taste his skin.

“Ether…”

“No!”

The wind stilled.

Kyler snatched the penknife off the counter turning to Rhune. “What the hell was that?”

“The Darkness.” She glanced at the knife and smiled. “A sentient culmination of all of humanities’ fears and hates.”

Dear God. “What does it want?”

“It’s mercurial. Sometimes it wants death. Sometimes domination. Every once in a while I think it wants to look at something pretty. Right now, it wants you.”

No. “Get out.”

Rhune’s smile faded. “I’m beginning to wonder if I should’ve brought someone for you to kill.”

“I don’t kill people.”

Rhune laughed. The quiet sound shook her body, making the ink shimmer. “Oh, my friend. Do you think the Darkness would be able to call you if there wasn’t something inside you yearning for it?”

She was wrong. The only thing Kyler wanted was to remember and…

Was that really true? He’d begun to remember something a moment before and he’d shied away from it.

Rhune’s laughter faded. “I read your last book. I know how the guerrillas died.”

“The authorities believe they turned on one another.”

“The authorities can be blessedly stupid.”

Kyler drew back. When he’d woken up beside the bodies of the guerillas and five of the children, the surviving kids said nothing. Kyler had hoped he hadn’t hurt anyone.

What if he had, though? What if Rhune was right and this was in him? What if he had killed them?

“It’s going to be all right,” Rhune said.

She was wrong. It might never be all right.

Rhune approached him. “You’ve been reborn into a marvelous time. Once you’ve killed again, you’ll remember the Darkness and…”

Kyler stabbed her in the chest. No darkness, no moving shadows or tattoos, no, no, no.

Rhune slumped against him.

Kyler held her. God. What had he just done?

A tremor ran through her body. Her blood was hot. The heat surprised him. He’d never stabbed anyone before.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Rhune chuckled. “Don’t be.”

What?

Rhune shoved him back. Obsidian liquid crept down from the knife wound.

“We’re going to have to do this the hard way,” she said. The green in her eyes leaked out, leaving brown.

Kyler stumbled, and then caught himself. Her blood…her eyes…spilled into the dark splotch across her neck and stomach, disappearing. The surrounding tattoos trembled.

Then the ink crept down her body.

Rhune’s skin lightened to the gray of cigarette ash. A moment later, black ink bled out of her skin and onto the floor, forming a pool.

Ripples flowed across the surface. After one passed, an onyx butterfly leapt out of the center of the pool. Gossamer wings fluttered, black veins solidifying in the semi-transparent material. It was beautiful and ugly and…

He had to get out of there.

Kyler headed for the back door. He’d have to go around the house to get to his car but at this moment he didn’t care.

Heat spiked through Kyler’s foot, stopping him.

Kyler looked back and saw a glistening black hand stretched out of the pool, clinging to his leather shoe.

He jerked, breaking free. The fingers flexed and then came after him.

Cursing softly, Kyler leapt up onto the counter. The hand searched the ground for him and then returned to the pool.

A tremor lanced through him. God. This was happening. He couldn’t deny it, couldn’t unsee. How the hell was he going to deal with it?

On the ground, Rhune slumped beside the pool, sinking her fingers then her hands, into it. The surface shimmered, and the liquid pulsed.

Kyler looked around. Weapon. He needed a weapon, preferably something he could use at a distance.

He hadn’t unpacked much in this damn room, though. What was he going to throw, that stack of paper plates? Some plastic forks? The hose from the sink?

Holy crap. The hose. And by hose, he meant hot water.

Years working with ink and paper had taught him that water and ink didn’t mix. The liquid might only irritate Rhune, but it would have to do something to the tattoos.

Kyler grabbed the hose from the sink and turned the knob. Water erupted out, turning the soft plastic cool, then warm, then hot. He turned, aiming the nozzle into the growing black pool and…

Rhune disappeared into the pool.

Fuck. What was she doing?

Maybe he didn’t want to know.

Kyler flicked his wrist, sending a strike of water over the pool.

The liquid trembled beneath the water, broke apart, then leapt in different directions.

Kyler pursued it, sending water over one pool, then another, then another. Could he weaken her this way?

Distant ringing echoed into the room. The phone…

No. Not the phone. The doorbell.

On the ground, the pools pulsed, darting towards the entryway. Butterflies erupted out of the ink, followed by quivering worms, ants, and spiders.

Kyler cast a spray of water across the floor. The ink scattered, then dragged itself out from the water. It reformed and disappeared into the living room.

The doorbell rang again.

Kyler stopped the water. Rhune hadn’t fled the water. She was running to the door.

Fuck. If Rhune got to whoever was there…

“Run!” Kyler hopped off the counter and ran into the other room. “Run!”

At the doorway, butterflies and spiders crept under the front door, leaving small drops of onyx across the threshold.

“Run!” Kyler ran up to the door and yanked it open.

Outside, a young man stood on the new welcome mat. His smile twitched, and the plastic pizza container in his hands shook.

Black shadows bled across the young man’s skin, settling into new shapes. A snake twined around one arm, a spider crouched in the hollow of his throat. A butterfly fluttered across his face and disappeared into his hair. He dropped the pizza.

The young man blinked. One blink, he had blue eyes. Two blinks, green.

Shit.

Kyler threw himself at the door, shutting it.

A hand appeared at the last moment, forcing it ajar.

The pizza man chuckled.

“Well,” he said, leaning against the door. To Kyler’s horror, he felt the door slowly pushed open. “This isn’t my preferred gender, but it’ll do for now.”

Can ghosts influence the living? Can they make a man fall in love? Help him see things in different lights? William Maltese, AM Riley and Lex Valentine weave four tales that pose these questions and answer the question, LOVE ME DEAD?

**************************

Ghost Hunters

Long Beach

AM Riley

“Ri-i-i-i-i-ta! Ri-i-i-i-i-ta!”

The voice echoed, disembodied, in the dark room. My hand tightened on the theater armrest, and something icy cold and damp touched me.

“Ah!”

“You want another beer?” whispered Rick, leaning toward me and touching the back of my hand again with the bottle.

“Sure.” My palm closed around a chilled beer bottle, still damp from the ice chest. Millers with the twist-off caps were a staple of our ghost hunting evenings. Rick carried them in a portable chest fitted with a shoulder harness. Currently the ice chest rested at his feet, and I heard the crunch of ice as Rick leaned over and got himself another bottle as well.

We were seated in the theater of the Queen Mary Hotel. It was after 11:00 p.m., the theater was closed, and the lights were shut off. The only illumination came through a ventilation grate in the far left wall. A shaft of light angling down to the dusty parquet floor, particles of who-knew-what twisting in its glow.

“Ri-i-i-i-ta.” I could see the source of the voice, Beth Ann Tomlinson, seated several rows below me, her hair a fuzzy mass in the dim light. Her husband Daniel sat beside her. I knew him by the outline of the knit cap he always wore.

Two rows down and over to the left I could discern the hunching shapes of the three Musketeers, George, Bob, and Ginger. Bob had some kind of recording device running that needed technical maintenance; I could hear it squeaking from several seats away. Ginger’s small digital camera made a sound every few minutes. She’d look through the pictures later for the translucent spherical dots that ghost hunters call ‘orbs’. A few seats beyond them were Amy and Dick, whose heads had been pressed together since the lights had gone out. Dick was known amongst we ‘die-hards’ as ‘Screaming Dick’, because of that one unfortunate night in the main engine room when a box had tumbled onto the floor behind him. He’d shrieked and run, banging his head on the portal door and, still running and screaming with the blood running down his face, had shattered the nerves of a group of people on a ghost tour of the HMS Queen Mary.

Ghost hunters don’t scream or run. REAL ghost hunters. Die-hards like us.

I let my gaze rest on the two-headed monster of Amy and Dick for just a little longer; thinking that though Dick was branded a coward, he had more courage than I did. He’d had the courage to reach across the dark abyss and take the hand of the one he wanted.

Something I hadn’t yet had the balls to do.

Rick’s elbow shoved into mine, and he leaned over so he could whisper against my ear, “It’s almost midnight. Let’s go.”

Title	Notturno
Author	ZA Maxfield
ISBN#	978-1-60820-034-4 (print)
	978-1-60820-035-1 (ebook)
Release Date	June 2009
Cover Artist	Deana C. Jamroz
Paperback:	220 pages
Available At:	MlrBooks (ebook)

Amazon–coming soon
B&N –coming soon

Antique document expert Adin Tredeger thought finding a pristine five-hundred-year-old homoerotic journal was tough. Wait until he finds out the man who wrote it wants it back. Donte Fedelta isn’t above using the vampire playbook to get what he wants, but Adin has a few tricks of his own.

***********************

Becket Merriday is on the trail of a killer who is murdering beautiful young men in the small town of Irenic. What he discovers an ancient race of immortal beings hunted by an incredibly powerful adversary: the angel Mastema. Soon, Beck and his partner, Sean Logan, find themselves at the center of a deadly supernatural war.

*************************

PROLOGUE

Wystan Parish, Virginia

Wait for it. Feel the hint of dew on the air, the cooling of the sidewalks and the diminishing sounds of traffic from the Interstate. Sense the stars hovering above the town, not yet visible but forever there. People were going inside, returning to their homes. Good smells began to drift past him: kitchen and bread and belonging.

A boy was perched on the concrete garden steps leading down from the doors of the rectory. The garden was a sheltered, dark green cove hidden from the road by a wrought-iron fence heavily overgrown with weeds, honeysuckle and boxwood. It was a secret place, damp and quiet, filled with growing things and presided over by an ancient magnolia fully six feet across at the trunk. The boy was dark-haired, with brilliant, wide-set blue eyes vaguely reminiscent of a cat. He closed his eyes, ending their devouring stare, and inhaled deeply before snapping back to attention, his gaze fixed on the patch of sky he could see through the trees to the west. Becket Merriday was an alert child for a seven year old, but his attention had lapsed and he had almost missed it. It always happened so quickly, and he knew from experience that even a momentary distraction could bring failure.

The world was diminishing, not preparing for sleep, but taking a steadying breath before night hammered down with all its native creatures and habits. The evening birds were out. He did not know their names, but they were swift, ratcheting flyers that seemed to come with the red sunset, black arrow-shapes darting in the brazen light of afternoon. The sun itself was gone, sunken without fanfare. The sky still held the light, but there was no glaring source as an author.

He was captivated by small things: the thumb-print blush of smoky-blue in the southern sky, the band of pink to the north, a razor line of fire in the west. He turned his head expectantly as light winds shifted from north to east, carrying a smell he recognized only as distance. A cloud passed, the light dimmed a wisp of a shade, and in the space of one breath to another it happened: dusk covered the small factory town, a brief witching-time between light and shadow.

Beck stared in profound awe and sighed.

He had spent the earlier part of the afternoon in the private library. Father Dane had unlocked it for him with a finger to his lips, well aware of how Father Calvert would feel if he knew that young, careless hands were pawing his revered volumes. Father Dane was much younger than Father Calvert, a new addition to the parish and only recently ordained. Beck trusted him no more than the other priest, but Father Dane only patted his head, made sure he washed his hands, and placidly ignored him with the benevolent, hieratical surety of man utterly convinced that God would take care of His own.

Beck was sure that Father Dane looked at him like he would a mouse that lived under the sink; a small, furtive thing who took great pains not to be noticed, but still needed the crumbs off the table. Lately, Father Dane had begun to allow him to spend hours in the locked, dusty anteroom of the rectory that served as the library, plowing through thick religious treatises and leather-bound volumes of dogma. There were also a few small, neglected chapbooks with crisp, gilt-edged pages describing the evils of sorcery and the fiery end awaiting all heretics. Beck devoured these with the starved hunger of an extremely inquisitive and deprived young mind.

He had read a new story that morning; an exciting one full of monsters and giants and wicked women. Like any boy, he relished such tales, though he was sure he would get into serious trouble if Father Calvert ever found out.

The story was about angels and women and how the children made between them in lust were evil—so purely, irredeemably evil that when such a one was slaughtered, all the demons of the earth had sprung fully formed from its corpse. He liked some of the words in the book, like lust. It was a bad word and he had to remember that, just like he had to remember all the other bad things he must not do or say and all the secrets he must never tell.

He told it to the stillness of the garden, holding the rich, rough sound in his throat and rolling it out with his tongue; “Llllllust.”

“Hello.”

Beck started, jolted out of his ritual, and turned to glare at the intrusion that seemed to spring from thin air. He had heard no one approach.

An elderly woman faced him. Her dress was long and old-fashioned, her white hair knotted into a coil at the back of her neck. One gnarled hand rested on a wooden cane that supported her slight body. Beck thought she looked like she might fall over and blow away without it. Weak, she was. He relaxed. She was not much of a threat, but he had learned that appearances were the least telling thing about people.

“Hullo,” he said warily.

She smiled. “You’re distrustful. That’s good. That’s very good.”

“You shouldn’t be back here,” he said in his thin, strong voice. “This is the Father’s private garden. He doesn’t like visitors back here.”

“Yet here you are.”

“I live here.”

“Are there other children here?”

Beck looked down at his shoes. “Nope.”

“Ah, of course. I’d forgotten.” She nodded as if she understood everything. “I’m very tired. Is there somewhere an old woman could sit?”

Beck glanced back at the church rectory behind him, shook his head.

“Just for a moment? Please?”

Dusting his palms off on his trousers, he hopped down from the steps and led her to an algae-streaked stone bench under the magnolia, feeling the rich loam sink under his sneakers as he walked and wondering if the old lady was going to punch holes in the moss with her cane. He’d be in trouble then, because of course Father Calvert would think he did it.

Though it was not far, the woman had to stop twice to catch her breath, leaning heavily on the cane and casting a weathered eye at him. Beck halted when she did, but offered nothing further.

“You keep your distance, child,” she breathed as she sank onto the bench like a pale, floating leaf, her voice hoarse with exertion. “And you’re ignoring your manners. I know a word.” She looked piercingly at him. “Instinct. Do you know that word?”

Beck shook his head.

“You have an instinct inside of you. It’s like a tiny voice guiding you do to things, or not to do them. Telling you things you never learned but know anyway. At this moment, your little voice tells you not to trust me. Why, I wonder?”

Beck planted his feet and crossed his arms in silent resistance. “Don’t like you,” he stated mulishly.

“You don’t even know me.”

“I don’t care. You ask too many questions.” His nose wrinkled. “And you’re stinky.”

She laughed with a high, tinkling mirth, and Beck stared with his jaw dropped because when she laughed, the light in the garden seemed to grow more intense. Not brighter, it grew deep. The birds stopping singing as the scent of apple blossoms filled his nostrils, and the leaves of the garden suddenly seemed fuller and greener. Perfume flowed from the wild roses and the blooming gardenia and jasmine, and the seed pods of the varicolored four o’clocks swelled and popped as they opened, and every unopened moonflower suddenly unfurled a pallid banner.

Something moved inside Beck, a small, sealed door cracking open an inch to shed a particle of radiance into his soul. Not very much, just enough to let him know the door was there. His shaking hand went to massage his chest, wondering at the feel of it, this strange sense of expansion inside his own skin. He had no words to express it, but he knew that the direction of his life had irrevocably changed.

Change

, the uninvited guest that destroys what once was. He had experienced change once. Change was being left crying on cold stone steps in the snow. Change was when gentle hands left you and never touched you again, when everything you knew went away and never came back.

This time, change was welcome at his door. He relaxed visibly. “Who are you?”

“Call me Claire.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “That’s not your name.”

Beck reached for the caution he had felt toward her and realized it had vanished. He moved to the bench and sat beside her. A length of silk-embroidered lace from her scarf lay on the stone, and Beck picked it up to admire the pattern. It was an intertwined circle of birds, their wings clasped together.

“What’s that other smell?” Beck asked. “Not the apples.”

“You don’t like it?” He pulled a face and she smiled. “It’s called lavender. I thought all old ladies wore it.” She waved her hand in the air and the cloying, soapy smell faded. “Better?”

He nodded. “It smells like a funeral. When they bring the coffin in, the thing inside smells like that.”

“People?”

He dropped the scarf and shrugged, suddenly diffident as he fidgeted with his thumbs. “The thing inside. It doesn’t move anymore.”

“It was once a person, Beck. Like you.”

Now he looked at her straight, his eyes accusing. “Not like me.”

She sighed. “No, Beck. Not like you. I’m sorry I said that.”

The light had faded from the garden. Twilight had fallen without their notice and the enclosed area was sunken in tones of mauve and ash. He scooted a little closer to her. “I missed the nightfall,” he said, his face drooping into lines of childhood woe.

“There will be other nightfalls.”

“They’re all different. That’s why I can’t miss one.” Bright tears shone in strange blue eyes that seemed longer and narrower than was natural. They were the color of sapphires. “I have to remember them all, all the ways they’re different. Then when I feel bad I…” he trailed off.

“When you feel bad,” Claire prompted.

“When I feel bad, I can take them out again. All the little…” he groped for a word.

“Details?”

A nod. “The details. The nightfalls. They keep me safe.” He clasped his hands together so hard that his knuckles turned white.

She reached over and held him as he trembled, her spidery hand on the back of his head, but he did not cry. After a moment, he pulled away. A neon street lamp sputtered and crackled to life in the alley, and the bloated glow reached into the garden, scattering the darkness. Something bright winked from the old woman’s sunken breast. Beck looked at it.

“What’s that?”

She removed it without hesitation. It was a charm necklace, an incised disk of gold on a steel chain, about the size of a quarter. She dropped its weight into Beck’s palm and he turned it over with his finger. It was very lovely. On the surface of the raw gold, pitted and dark in places, was a tree in a circle. The fine lines of the branches were grooved and shaped to resemble bark. The tree was leafless and crowned with fire, and a snake twined around its bole. Beck saw none of its flaws, only that the patina of extreme age covered the charm in a shimmering aura of secrets.

Secrets that might speak to him.

Claire smiled as Beck’s fist closed over it greedily. “It is yours, Beck.”

“Really?” Hope melted into glee, yet still no smile. He would never really learn how to manage that, only to construct an expression that resembled the real thing. The feeling, though… yes. He knew what joy felt like now.

“Oh yes. It’s entirely yours now.” She looked around the garden then and checked the angle of the sky. “It’s getting late. The old priest will be missing you soon.”

A shadow filled Beck’s eyes at the mention of Father Calvert, kindly Father Calvert, whom everyone spoke so well of. Claire rose and he stared because the cane had vanished. The old woman moved without a trace of stiffness or age.

Beck stood up, suddenly afraid. “Don’t go!”

Claire smiled and extended her withered arm to brush a strand of hair from his eyes, which was glossy black and shining as spider-silk. “We will see each other again.”

“Again”

seemed to roll in the night like faint thunder. She gave his hair a last caress before she turned away. The intricate, wrought iron garden gate that led into the narrow alleyway lay just beyond the reach of light from the street lamp, and Beck heard the gate creak as it opened. Claire’s heels clicked on the pavement for several counts before they suddenly ceased. There was no fading sound of her step as she got further away.

Beck rushed to the gate, for once gripped by a more primal fear than darkness. He jerked it open and saw that the alley was empty. He did not bother running out and looking for her. He knew what he would find.

The boy closed the gate and locked it, and in the dark gloom under the eaves surrounding the gate, he reverently spilled the golden charm into his hand, brought it to his mouth, and kissed it.

~ ~ ~ ~

“Where is that child?” Father Calvert murmured as he moved aside the pale, smooth lace of the Battenberg curtain with a fingertip, letting the cool touch of its softness slide over his knuckles. Beck was already an hour late. His lips pursed in amusement. Beck was always running off somewhere, elusive and quick as a little lizard, always drawing attention to himself.

The parish had been given the annual sum of fifty thousand dollars in return for feeding, housing and educating Becket Merriday. The money arrived the same day every year, in a vellum envelope hand-delivered by a brisk and unsmiling attorney who answered no questions. Calvert had called their office once, digging for information, and had been so coldly shut down that he had never tried again. Beck’s benefactor wished to remain anonymous, he was told, and it was a private matter that he was being paid not to pry into, wasn’t he? Calvert had hung up the phone shaking with outrage. He himself had not agreed to the arrangement, but had inherited it, so to speak, from the elder priest in place before him. That priest had died three years ago, and Calvert felt no particular loyalty to any contract the man had made with Beck’s mysterious guardian. He often had thoughts that Beck must be a senator’s by-blow or some rich heiress’s secret, and that whoever owned the little rat could probably afford a whole lot more than they were paying to keep Beck out of sight. At any rate the boy was certainly born out of wedlock. The Church had not taken a hard stand on bastards for some time, but Calvert had his own opinions.

Calvert waited five more minutes at the kitchen window, humming quietly as he watched several dusty sparrows pick for grubs in the dead leaves. He finally left, heading for the quiet hall that led to the rectory, certain that he’d find the boy huddled in some corner with a book. Predictably, as soon as he opened the door to the dimly-lit rectory, he heard a scuttling sound behind the bookcase. He smiled and closed the door, silently pushing the lock into place, double-checking to make sure it held.

“Beck?” he called softly, creeping around the tall bookcase, the air so still he could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. “Are you hiding, angel? I’ve got something for you.”

He looked down and saw a small, dark head bowed over a book, and two childish legs drawn up to a thin chest that shivered and heaved. Beck held the book clasped to him like a shield, arms crossed over its cover. Calvert knelt and gently pried the book away from Beck’s grasp, who reacted by drawing up into an even smaller ball. Calvert set the book aside and carded his fingers through the black silk of Beck’s hair, sighing deeply when his penis twitched at the contact. He felt his member grow stiff and poke at the restraining fabric of his briefs, and he scooted closer. “Sweet angel,” he crooned.

“Lustful priest.”

Still on his knees, Calvert jerked back from the boy and whirled, shocked by the unfamiliar voice and dismayed that a stranger had invaded his sanctuary, someone who could have seen anything.

He turned back to hiss at Beck to hide somewhere, but stopped, his jaw hanging open, when he saw that neither Beck nor the book was behind the case. It was empty, with only the sweet ache in his groin for evidence that the boy had ever been there.

His eyes darted around the room, searching. The rumpled carpet led a red trail to a hunched shape outlined against the window. Outside, the streetlamp dripped sour yellow luminance into the rectory, coalescing around the dim form of an old woman who leaned heavily on her cane. Calvert relaxed slightly and stood, consciously smoothing his robes. Only an old lady, probably hard of hearing, too. Whatever she had seen, he could talk her around. He’d always had a way with women and kids.

Calvert wiped the perspiration off his brow with the end of his sleeve as he began to approach the old woman. She was older than he first thought, yet he could have sworn it was a man’s voice he heard. Confusion and fear made his charming voice less kind than he was wont to speak in public.

“Can I help you with something?”

“You have helped yourself to quite enough that is mine.”

Calvert frowned. Just my luck, he thought. Why do all the crazies find their way down here? You’d think there was something drawing them. Why don’t they go uptown, where they can at least get a meal?

“Excuse me, but just how did you get in here?”

The woman advanced, moving away from the leprous light, her cane clicking on the wooden floor with a sound that reminded him of a prowling dog. “In the old days, we knew what to do with men such as you. Faithless priests are no novelty. Still, confession is good for the soul.”

His heart began to pound. She had seen something. “Now, just wait a moment—”

“But then, it was so much harder to hide it in those days; lack of faith.” She stopped and stared at him, her hair pulled back from her face in two white waves and her old eyes knowing and jaded, seeing inside him. “We would take a man like you and hang his skin from the branches of a poisoned tree. But first, we would cut a hole in your belly, pull out a length of your guts, and strangle you with them. This we would have done while your feet roasted over a pit of coals.”

Calvert recoiled as much in fear as in startled offense. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave!”

She laughed. It was not the reedy titter of an old woman, but the full-throated laughter of a healthy man. Calvert gasped and took several steps back. His hands worked, fingers curled into fishhooks as he dug at his belt for the solace of his rosary, but that thin comfort evaporated when the woman began to change.

Calvert’s jaws opened and closed before his mouth cinched into a drawstring purse of disbelief. The woman’s washed-out hair darkened and smoothed as new bones jutted up from her collar, forming broad, square shoulders. Her body plumped and filled out, a wind battering her skin and bones from within.

“Oh God!” Calvert choked, backing up, tripping over a ribbed edge of the blood-red carpet and falling hard on his rump. Fear scalded his bowels as they let loose.

“Llllust!”

A bass roar now, a bull-voice that called down sin from the pulpit.

Calvert began to babble. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee oh God, be with me God, be with me!” as he held the small wooden crucifix to his mouth, almost eating it in his terror, as the choking stink of his own shit reached his nostrils.

He could see the man now. Not the nightmare monster he had feared would leap, bloody muscle and skin ripped aside, from the old woman’s bones, but a man with pale blue eyes and pure black hair that curled at the sides of his long face, dressed in a long black cassock and Roman collar. His beauty made him all the more terrible.

The man stretched out his hand. “He was mine.”

Calvert felt his heart trip and seize, and he panted, feeling a chill begin in the center of his chest that grew and quickly seeped into his arms and down to his fingertips. The cold became pain, and pain became howling agony as he flopped and screamed, mouth dripping pink froth from bitten lips, slapping at his chest, vainly trying to put out the fire. The last thing he saw as the muscles of his heart burst and showered his chest cavity with bits of molten lava, was the rise and sweep of two pale curtains that shuttered away his last view of the world.

They looked like wings.