Page 21 of Saint, Sorrow, Sinner
Olive trees and chapped tongues. What a place it was,someone groaned, his voice low and rough, like the listing of a great ship.Judea, though.He hummed, as if pleased.Home beckons, girl. Do you think it still bleeds? Is Akeldama still slick, still rotting?The voice grew louder, deafening.Call me prince of Gehenna; call me the one with a price—
“Sophia,” Juniper said, so urgently Sophia startled. She blinked. Time had slipped again. Around her, Colin, Tehlor, Lincoln, and Bishop stood at the ready, and Juniper stared, picking her apart. “You okay?”
Sophia nodded. “Did you ...” She tilted her head back, glancing at Colin. “Did I say something?”
“Seemed a bit stuck is all,” the priest said. His smile paled. “Go on, listen to June.”
“Stuck,” Juniper repeated. She transferred her gaze to Sophia. “More like entranced. Are we ready?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Bishop said. They uncrossed their arms and gripped the back of Juniper’s chair. Gold flooded their eyes and their pupils narrowed into diamonds. Their oversize shadow slinked across the floor on pawed feet, bent by candlelight.
Juniper inhaled deeply. “Let’s begin, shall we? Mirror me. Place your arms above mine across the table.”
Sophia did as she was told. Carefully, Juniper reached, securing her hands around Sophia’s forearms. Sophia did the same, gripping Juniper beneath the dent of each elbow. She called for bravery. Rallied strength and swore to be fearless. She stole a glance at Tehlor. The witch stared back at her, and Sophia thought of Valkyrie, of everything Tehlor had become by the sheer will of her gods.What will my God ever make of me?She turned back toward Juniper and tried to ignore the soft press of the psychic’s fingertips on her flesh.What am I worth?
“Join hands,” Juniper said.
The four practitioners formed a circle around the table and clasped hands.
“See, priest, I’m not so bad,” Lincoln cooed.
Juniper shushed the pair before Colin could respond. She met Sophia’s gaze and stayed there. Her chest expanded on a long, steady breath.
“I am found wanting,” Juniper said. Her voice lifted, stronger and louder than Sophia expected. The color in Juniper’s eyes gleamed, replaced by molten gold. “Would spirit grant me an audience?”
Are you from Endor?The voice boomed in Sophia’s skull. She winced, squeezing her eyes shut.The road to Damascus is riddled with vermin. Weep, dead caller, for those with gifts burn brightest in perdition.
“He’s here,” Sophia whispered.
“Who?” Juniper asked.
The candlelight blurred and stretched as Sophia fell backward, tumbling into herself.No.She fumbled, attempting to anchor to her skeleton.Stop.Tried to resist.Don’t.But the rift yawned open, and she could do nothing except peer out from within, a passenger inside her own body. She lurched forward in the chair, gripping Juniper’s arms harder. She saw flashes of her body reflected in the rosary around Juniper’s neck. Watched herself become unrecognizable in the reflection on the curved window behind the table.
Black-eyed and horrific, pale and unknown, Sophia De’voreaux devolved into someone else entirely.
“Hemlock grew in Eden too,” Sophia said, but the voice was not her own. It came from deep within, rumbling out of her gaping mouth. Her lips twitched. Her tongue, lifeless, began to dry. “Fruit fell and rotted. Corpses soured in the sun. Death had no name, but my future was sealed, nonetheless. Mydestiny,” she spat, closing her lips around the word, snapping at it, “was a predetermined noose, sahira.”
“Do you have a name, spirit?” Juniper asked.
“Do not take me for a fool,” Sophia shouted. The voice boomed, howling, roaring, crashing, as if several animals had been stitched into one singular beast, mimicking an ocean, an earthquake. Other spirits clamored inside her, pushing against her skin, searching for a way out. She felt breakable. Yanked in one direction, then another. “And he said to me: I will tell you the mysteries of the kingdom, brother. But the ink of my gospel bled into the streets, transcribed for no one, spoken to no one, and the book was better for it.”
“Judas Iscariot,” Colin said. He muttered something else under his breath. A prayer of some sort.Saint in the Armory, give strength to the downtrodden—
“My name in your mouth!” Sophia’s jaw stretched wider. She felt trapped in her body, drowning, tossed by unseen waves. “Filth,” she hissed, snapping her teeth. Bone clanked. Her mouth rattled. Soreness bloomed in her gums. “What a sorry thing you are, searching for redemption inme.”
Juniper dug her fingernails into Sophia’s pale arms. “No one is exempt from redemption, spirit. Even you can be forgiven.”
“I am king of the dead,” she bellowed. Her jaw cracked. Sophia wanted to scream, wanted to claw her way out of her own body, wanted the séance to end. Pain became strange and distant, finding her like a ripple traveling outward. Only the smallest, shallowest bit made contact. The rest afflicted her apprehended body, piloted by incorporeal entities.
Possession was ugly. Familiar and brutal and miserable, like a collar buckled too tightly, like a hand on her nape, holding her down. Sophia thrashed inside herself. Hit and kicked and tried to reach for her teeth, for her fingernails, for tiny, organic weapons.
“Let me in, king,” Juniper whispered. Her voice careened into the cavernous waste where Sophia writhed and shrieked.
Juniper was a fast-moving jungle, tendrils prodding every crevice, blooming bright and warm in the darkness. The lichen inside Sophia had a source. Sophia felt it growing, bursting, widening with every ghost who tried to sneak through time and find a new place to haunt. The controlling spirit—Judas, Judas, Judas—raged against Juniper’s interference. His presence grew, deafening and oppressive, and Sophia could not hear, or move, or breathe. She saw herself—biting at the air, teeth cracking together, eyes like polished onyx—and wanted desperately to evacuate her own body. To place herself somewhere, anywhere else. Her spine locked. Laughter—maniacal, angry laughter—skidded out of her. Blood, the taste, the smell, became overwhelming.It stained the roof of her mouth, splattered the back of her throat, and poured from her nose.
“See,” Amy said, tenderness foreign and sudden. She was a wraith, sliding through the split seam dividing life from death. “You were always meant for this, honey. One, two, we’re comin’ for you,” she sang, sighing pleasantly. “Three, four ...” Behind her sister’s voice, Sophia heard shouting, hollering, breakage. She turned within herself, facing blackness, shadow—nothing, so much nothing. Two hands shot out, landing on each cheek, clutching hard. Amy’s busted, eyeless face, gouged and broken, filled Sophia’s vision. Tar-like liquid oozed between her teeth. Old blood crusted her nostrils. Her voice became an inhuman growl. “Burn the whore.”
Sophia couldn’t break away. She was caged in a body she’d once known, in her own temple.Yes,she thought,burn me down.
