Chapter 643
Inside, Katelina changed into her pajamas. She was on her way back from the bathroom when she ran into Loren and Zander. The teen was mid-sentence. "amazing! The way you took them out, like some kind of kung-fu. Where did you learn to fight like that?"
Zander looked at the boy curiously. "Is training not a part of your discipline?"
"Um-not really," Loren said. "I mean Micah showed me some things, and Jorick has before, but nothing like that."
"Our training is part of worshipping the Goddess. It teaches control, patience, and many other things. The scriptures bid us to be 'ever ready to treat with conflict' yet 'use that knowledge only when no other recourse is offered.'"
Katelina moved on, imagining Zander and the others as Shaolin monks in some far Asian temple.
She bedded down in the front room, conscious of the empty couch across from her. Though vampirism saved her from being stiff in the morning, it didn't make an uncomfortable couch more comfortable. She tossed and turned before she finally dropped off.
A heavy black dream melted into her mom's living room. A fourteen year-old Sarah was hunched on the couch, an ice pack to her face. Bruises on her bare arms were like dark finger-paint. Her shirt was torn.
"I'm sorry," she gulped between sobs. "I-I got scared."
Katelina patted her hand and looked to her mother. Patricia's arms were crossed. A valley of fury formed between her eyes.
"I'm not angry with you," she said firmly. "You did the right thing."
She turned for the phone. Sarah leapt to her feet. "No! Please, don't call my mother."
"I wasn't going to, honey. I'm calling the police."
Sarah clutched her. "No. Please don't! Not again! He just gets angrier. Please. It was my fault." She dropped back, shaking with her sobs. "My fault."
Patricia took hold of her shoulders. "Honey, it is never your fault, do you understand? Never. No matter what you've done, there is never an excuse for this."
"I-The school. They sent someone again. To the house."
Katelina bit her lip. That explained what the counselor wanted when he called Sarah to the office yesterday.
"Good." Patricia pulled her into a hug. "Maybe they'll arrest him."
Sarah wriggled free. "But they won't. They don't carethey were only there for two minutes and they didn't even come in." Sarah hung her head and her voice turned brittle and bitter. "Mrs. Braumins already explained it to me."
Patricia shoved her giant glasses up her nose. "What did she say?"
"She said I'm a Townsend, and no one cares about a Townsend. The best thing I can do is stay quiet, keep my head down, and try to last until I'm old enough to move out."
Patricia pursed her lips. "Don't you listen to that, Sarah. You're as important as everyone else, no matter what your name is. Do you understand?"
Sarah sneered. "Tell that to the rest of the town. People only care about who your parents are, your grandparents. How much money you have. People like us don't even register."
The front room faded, replaced with a movie-style medieval castle. A little girl screamed, engulfed in flames. A faceless Baron watched. Then Anabelle appeared, not wearing a mask, but whole and perfect. With a scream, she raced to save her daughter, battling the blaze with her bare hands. Fire licked her face and her palms.
Though Katelina hadn't been there, had no idea what had been said, in her dream Estrilda lay in her mother's arms and croaked silently, "It's my fault."
The dream washed out. Katelina landed in an abandoned house. Torn curtains fluttered like tattered butterfly wings. Broken glass crunched under her feet. She moved through beams of slanting sunlight until she reached an open cellar door. Down sagging stairs, Samael sat on an old suitcase.
He cocked his head to one side as she drew closer. "You carry great sadness."
"Estrildathe child we wanted to rescueshe's dead. And Sarah-She betrayed us. She joined Lilith on purpose and she's the one who-" Katelina couldn't finish. "I don't understand. I've known her since I was seven. That she had this person inside her all along; this crazy, evil person who wants to hurt, and kill, and destroy-"
She tried to soak in some of Samael's peace, but it wasn't there. There was only cold emptinessthe same cold emptiness she felt.
"She said I wished she'd died, and I told her she was right. But that's not true. I wish she'd livedI wish the Sarah I know lived. But she didn't. I don't know if she died in that cage, or if it was the night they escaped, or if something happened at the party in Canada, but she's gone and this, this monster walking around in her skin-"
Samael stood, hands folded behind his back. "She is the product of the one you call Lilith, and her poison. That is what the whore does; she poisons all she touches. Has she not turned one of the Kugsankal to her side? A lover of old, yes, but so many centuries have passed that he should have grown in wisdom and temperance. However, one look from her, and he is on his knees, fighting and bleeding at her command. She is a blight! A foul thing that must be destroyed!" Samael punctuated the last sentence with an impassioned wave of his fist. "And she will be, no matter who she hides behind. Her lover, the army she is gathering, all will fall like threshed grain to lie bloody at her feet, then she will follow."
All will fall. She thought of what Sarah had said, "You fight against me, knowing your allies plan to kill me-"
And they did. Had Samael once considered sparing her, he wouldn't anymore, not since she'd joined Lilith willingly.
"Samael. You can see inside of everyone, can't you? Read their minds, even from a distance? Sarah-is she still in there somewhere?"
He turned to her with indifferent eyes. "She is a handmaiden to the whore, poisoned by her words and deeds. One cannot save a frost blighted flower, only pluck it."
"But"
"Rest. When the sun sets, I go on the hunt, and you return to your home."
"But Lilith"
"I will kill her. Look to the one you call your mother, while you still have time."
"Wait! What do you mean? Please!"
"Sleep."
The cellar evaporated, leaving her to scream alone in a void.
