Hallowed Ground
Hallowed Ground
xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40\">
quiet. Your eyes still haven’t adjusted from the brightness outside; you can
barely see a thing. But that doesn’t matter yet. After the scorching sun
outside, simply the cool dark of the wide low atrium is as welcome as a
bucketful of cold water.
between it and the hot back of your neck and hope you haven’t been burnt.
You’re not stupid: ordinarily you wouldn’t be walking about at the hottest time
of the day. Ordinarily you’d be in a dark deserted bar or stretched out
insensible on a hotel bed, waiting out the sun, like everyone else. But
ordinarily you aren’t given errands as irresistible as this. For this you would
have waited in that heat for four hours, lying low like a sniper, every fibre
of your soul focused on the entrance of this church, a black open mouth in the
white glare. The best snipers you’ve known aren’t the flashy, dashing sort in
movies but those staid, stolid, imaginationless individuals who can treat the
waiting as an art in itself: no reading the paper or drinking coffee or
catching up on theirresprespondence for them. Like Caine. Can’t imagine him
reading the paper. You’ve heard him speak maybe twelve words this year. Of the
whole bunch, he’s the only one to make you even mildly uneasy. Aside from the
boss, of course; but then, he’s something else entirely.
you can begin to take it all in properly. Glancing to your left and right,
quick assassin’s glances, past the Give What You Can box, you note the tired,
faded paint covering the unevenly plastered walls in a dark, oppressive red, a
colour you recognise from somewhere; the scarred wood bench upholstered in faux
plasticky leather (though who would actually want to sit and contemplate this
thoroughly depressing entrance hall you don’t know); the large crucifix above
the inner door. The brass nails pinning Christ’s palms to the cross gleam like
jewellery. You’re standing on the bar of a yellow G painted on the stone at
your feet, almost a yarz high. God Is Light, the message reads. Which is
odd, given just how dark it is in here. For all it’s a place of worship there’s
an indefinable seediness here that seems to seep from the very woodwork. You’re
feeling vaguely claustrophobic, uneasy and nervous, with the low-key stomach
ache and dry mouth which usually go with pre-performance jitters. The walls
seem to press in. The colour of old blood. Where have you seen it before? Old
blood… God, it’s a grotesque colour, really, and you really should – but you
can’t quite –
pleasureless, short. You can taste the acid from your stomach at the back of
your throat.
same colour as the whorehouse.
is almost purple for church walls? Perhaps it was him. After all, this
is and has always been his place, his rightful place in the order of things,
just as the whorehouse was yours. His place. Most likely he has dragged his
fingers along the dusty scratched top of this bench, feeling out the scars; he
has probably touched the faded paint of these walls, perhaps peeled a bit more
off with his nail, just for something to do. He has stood where you stand now,
on the step worn smooth with years of Sunday shoes, in front of the heavy wood
door. You can practically smell his aftershave, like blood off a wounded animal.
just resting. It feels odd not to fling it open and just stride in. You haven’t
waited like this outside a door since you were nine years old. Nine, hands
pressed to splintery cheap wood, staring, counting the lines in the grain until
you were shooed out by one of the ladies. Can’t go in while your mama’s
working, hon, casual, wiping the sweat from between her breasts with a
tissue. Ladies. No more ladies than you were. And then hours of playing in the
street until the other kids got bored or called in to supper by their mothers.
Hours of wandering around until you got too tired and then you’d sit under the
wide low porch of that place, in the dirt, waiting until ma was finished and
you could go up to the bed that you and she shared. She’d stroke your hair in
the fast, desperate way you hated, the way snotty Magdalene stroked the fur
coat one of her besotted regulars had sold his premium bonds to buy for her.
And then while you pretended to be asleep she’d cry, which you hated a thousand
times more.
musty silence presses in like a living thing, into ears nose and mouth. It’s
hard to resist backing out of this place, slowly, as if away from a dangerous
toothsome thing, into the sick heat of the noonday sun. But you do resist,
because you’ve got to. And because if you weren’t you you’d be slapping
yourself for being such a pussy, standing here dithering, spooked by your own
imagination. How can a church be like a whorehouse? It sounds like a riddle.
moving inward on newly-oiled hinges that still glisten.
nestled in alcoves, dripping on to threadbare scarlet carpet. Candles, at noon.
Bizarre. But they’re necessary, you realise, if your priest doesn’t wish to
preach in darkness. The sunlight barely pierces the thick layer of dust coating
the high stained glass windows, creating a sinful twilight, flavoured with
incense and sweat and guilt (Christ, it even smells the same, exactly
the same). In here it probably always feels like night, however fiercely the
suns beat down outside. And they are beating down now, opening cracks in the
dirt, invisible white-hot fingers prying the very ground apart, splitting the
foundations of this church. White dizzy spots pop in front of your eyes and you
have to reach out for the pillar in front of you, fingers gripping gritty
plaster as tightly as if the floor might crack beneath you any minute.
apparently. God, the elaborateness of this place. Reds and golds and browns.
Rich fabrics are a shock in a poor area like this, where outside you saw
overrunning weeds poking out through sandy topsoil, dirty children, shanty
houses, thin mangy cringing dogs. There are frills and flounces of architecture
everywhere, all nestled under a high plain ceiling, like lace petticoats
peeking out from under an imitation silk dress. And those candles: tall, dark
red, almost phallic. You thought churches were supposed to be austere places
where man and God could commune, bare places with no draperies to muffle
prayers and no twiddly bits of architecture to tangle them. You never imagined
anything like this. The whole place looks like some upmarket madam’s waiting
room. On the far wall hangs a large tapestry of a woman in blue holding a very
young child. They’ve got gold circles over their heads. Your mother, holding
you to her, rank with the stench of four, five, six different men. You tend to
remember your childhood most vividly by its smells, and it’s a nightmarish
olfactory mess: sex and booze and blood, gun smoke and tobacco and too much
cheap whorish perfume.
hand side hisses, sputters, and drips hot wax on the carpet. There’s the hint
of magnolia in the air. Maybe the candles are scented. (Unbelievable.) The
incense is getting up your nostrils. You swallow a sneeze, but it’s one of
those painful sneezes that makes the back of your throat feel raw and hurts
your lungs. Uncomfortably hot now and what with the pressure in your chest like
a hot hand grasping your heart and squeezing irregularly so that the blood
gushes round your vessels in painful spasms you haven’t felt this trapped since
– since – Oh, God, don’t get so goddamned melodramatic. You take a long
breath of warm dusty air. A moment later you’ve forced yourself calm. Sure,
you’ve got problems – show you someone brought up by a prostitute who kills for
a living and who doesn’t have problems – but you can deal. It’s not like
you need a therapist. All that crap about do you hate your mother and did your
father beat you. Don’t need it. Don’t want it.
You remember the hard stab of jealousy and annoyance you felt towards her, smug
bitch, when he told everyone. It should be you. But then the boss
stopped, mid-sentence, and looked at you, and he was even smiling a tiny little
bit. Ouch, he said, with deadly soft humour. Everyone else looked variously
confused or nonplussed. Dominique, he said, sliding his gaze on to her, if
thoughts could kill you would not be standing there now. And she looked at you
and understood, then looked at Legato for guidance. Legato shrugged, a slow,
elegant lift of his shoulders (his mouth tightened minutely when he did this,
as if he felt some deep-seated pain – which was fair enough, you thought, given
that he’d been a broken pile of human being at Knives’ bare bloody feet only so
many months ago) as if he couldn’t care less. So: Take it, Dominique said, with
an amused sneer twisther her pretty mouth. I sure as hell don’t want to
kiss him hello. Just watch out for that B.F.G, Middy, love, while you’re
declaring your adoration, won’t you? No one reacted except Zazie, that midget
freak, who smirked. It’s an open secret. The only one who doesn’t know
is probably Caine, but he’s got an excuse. Tranquilliser addiction, after all,
ain’t very pretty.
‘lover’s’ church. Come to collect this grown man, drag him out of his dark
crawlspace by the ankle like a naughty runaway child. You position yourself
half-hidden behind a thick column on the back and right, carefully out of
sight, and focus on the empty pulpit. God, you’ve missed him. You wonder
briefly if he’s been sleeping with anyone else. Probably not. Like you, he’s
too self-serving to keep a lover. In the bright light of day, he wouldn’t know
how. You’ve been celibate too: compared to him, none of those sluts hanging
round the hotels held any attraction whatsoever. You couldn’t have been more
faithful to him if you were married. y:
yes\"> \"Times New Roman\"\'>
were all called together? Twelve months since you’ve seen him shoot, handling
what Dominique calls that B.F.G. with all the easeif iif it were made out of
plywood. You love to see him shoot. He holds the gun just so, with an insolent
tilt that is him through and through; squeezes off rounds from his killing
machine with something like tenderness. Spends hours oiling and cleaning it
afterwards. His shots are precision-perfect poetry in bloody motion. He is
better with a gun than you, but you don’t mind: you’ve got Sylvia, after all.
You and Chapel are something to be reckoned with. The kids no one gave a damn
about, grown up into men of skill, men who can put the fear of God into all but
the bravest or the most ignorant. You’re successful together, too. The handsome
priest and the nice-looking guy with the even smile walking out of the bar tend
to be the last ones fingered for the pile of corpses inside. The only thing
more private and more powerful than committing murder is watching someone else
commit murder, standing close enough that the blood spatters on your face, on
your white jacket. A most amazing thing, the taking of a human life. You have
shared it with him many, many times, and it never gets any less breathtaking.
Ludicrouow cow could it not be you today? You and he are bound in blood.
terviervice has begun. Shaky orgasic sic starts playing. You don’t recognise
the tune. Some of the women adjust their hats and bid their offspring sit up
straight.e ofe of the men clear their throats and fidget. The others stare
straight ahead. The pulpit stands high and solitary: a little box with a
lectern, on which rests a large open book. It’s all so mannered, so
orderly. And then there he is, black and angular as he hops up the few steps,
as if he hasn’t a care in the world, to stand in front of the book. He makes a
wincing ‘sorry’ face to his expectant audience; they practically squirm with
delight at his appearance. He is obviously adored here. Allowed to get away
with murder. His dark blue eyes flicker over the congregation as if counting them.
He’s not even aware of it, you’re certain, but his feelings are written as
clearly across his face as the huge REPENT banner strung out above his
head. Where’s the rest of you? The congregation shifts on its hard seats
with guilt. These trusting idiot people, trying to trade their time for
salvation. How you want to l at at them all and how you want, with a
sharp almost physical pain, how you want him, how you want him here, now,
amidst the trappings of his over-elaborate religion, in this superstitious
whorehouse. You’d like to have him right there, on the deep scarlet of the worn
carpet, under the mournful doe-eyed stare of the picture of the woman in blue
cradling the tightly-swaddled baby. He’d sob your name and take the Lord’s in
vain and it would amuse you, like it used to. Hiin uin used to be like anyone
else’s, and having him beg used to do it for you. That used to be all you
wanted. Amusement. A q fuc fuck. A cheap, guiltless screw. A good-looking guy.
to be a hell of a lot easier before you fell so hard.
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial\'>
about that now. Sniper, you remind yourself. You were sent. You have a job to
do. But he’s so magnetic, so effortlessly sexy as he pushes his hair out
of his eyes and wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand that
you (and most of the housewives in the congregation, no doubt) can barely take
your eyes off him. How many of those housewives must fantasise about him, you
wonder, while their middle-aged husbands grunt and sweat away? Understandable,
though. Twenty-six, lean, tanned, and positively radiating the kind of
mustn’t-touch sex appeal that will always, always fascinate this type of
woman. Maybe I’ll be the one, they think. I’ll be the one he breaks his vows
for. They’re not to know that whatever vows he made were broken years ago.
lectern, hands braced as if pushing something, as if wishing to show with his
body just how sincere he is. His black hair shines when the light hits it.
Bloody light, from the small stained glass panel above and behind him. He’s had
it cut since the last time you met, to just above his collar. It looks more
respectable now. Still long enough, though: long enough to tangle your fingers
in, to hang on to. A rush of warmth in your stomach, there and then gone with
the suddenness of a match flare. Devouring him with your eyes never seemed so
attractive before (mostly due to your abhorrence of cliché, granted) but that’s
exactly what you’re doing now, head to toe, dark hair to grubby once-white
socks. You rake him over greedily, mentally stripping off his clothes and
redressing him; you can’t decide if you want him more in his black and white or
stripped and tanned and gloriously nude and half-smiling and wanting it and
yours and soon, soon, hallelujah. mso-fareast-font-family:\"Times New Roman\"\'>
make him coffee; you want to call him ‘sweetheart’ and ‘gorgeous’ and ‘Nick’.
You want to kiss him chaste on the mouth. You want to take him by the hand and
lead him out into the sunshine. So this is what being in love feels like? So
this is love? You really wouldn’t know. People talk about loveless sex and they
think of two people doing it in silence, mechanically, like a health demonstration.
It’s not like that at all. It’s just like normal sex, except completely
selfish. Two bodies straining for separate goals. Taking from each other
not
not giving back. Instead of the wordless shuddering gasp or the sharp ‘Oh,
fuck’ you want him to look into your eyes and say ‘I love you’ and mean it.
Whether you just want someone to say it and mean it or whether it would
only work with him you don’t know and don’t care to find out. Did your
mother love you? Can’t afford a therapist. yes\"> \"Timew Rew Roman\"\'>
isn’t it, that you’velen len pretty damn hard these last couple of years for
someone you a) have barely seen and b) hardly know anything real about. When
was the first time he killed? Who was it? When did he lose his virginity, and
to whom? When did he start smoking, and why? You don’t know these things. You
only know what’s on the surface, what’s within easy reach. How he takes his
coffee (black, sugary); which side of the bed he prefers (the right, or
whichever is closest to the window). It always did make you jealous that while
all you got was the inconsequential stuff, the boss, talented in that way, got
to find out all the deep things.
know he has found them out. When your priest stumbled out of his company white
and shaky didn’t you recognise the symptoms? The dizzy, not quite awake,
what-just-happened look; the way his hands trembled when he attempted to strike
a match and light the cigarette that stuck defiantly out of his mouth. All
forced insouciance. It had happened to you, too. You weren’t so sure about the
others. But it wasn’t that uncommon to find yourself the play toy of the day,
so you assumed it had been their lot too at some point. What else, after all,
does a bored telepath devoid of morals do but delve into the minds of his lackeys?
The boss knows all the deep things about you and then some. But you don’t
begrudge him this. You owe him. You know it. He knows it. He never talks about
it – that would be entirely too crude, not his style at all – but you’re aware
of the depth of your debt every time you happen to glance into his strange gold
eyes.
you were – fifteen-and-a-half, actually – and well on the way to following in
Ma’s footsteps when he came, like some kind of beautiful gold-eyed avenging
angel, reached out his hand and pulled you out of that squalor. Ma, she’d been
stabbed by some drunk jealous customer who thought he had some kind of
ownership over her while she was in flagrante delicto with another and
even though she’d always begged you to get out as soon as you could, you’d
somehow became enmeshed in the game too, too deep to hoist yourself out without
help. You needed money to get out, after all, didn’t you? And what else could
you do to get money? Sex was all you’d ever known; it went on round you, over
you, creaking floorboards and squeaking mattresses above your head.
got herself murdered and you found yourself faced with an ultimatum: work or
starve. You found yourself taking over
a lot of her clients, like some appalling legacy in lieu of a will. She had
nothing to put in a will, anyway. You’d always lived hand-to-mouth. If she was
ill and couldn’t work, you didn’t eat.
you were the one providing the bread, now there was no one else who would care
if you starved. You hated it, of course; hated every minute, every man you had
to do, every low demeaning shameful act and every minute on youring ing knees
and every endless shower afterwards – cold, not hot, because the electricity
bill was hardly ever paid on time – where you scrubbed mercilessly for half an
hour, like some cruel clichéd parody of a rape victim, and still did not feel
like yourself again. Not for you the comfortable acceptance of some of totheother whores of their lot. You strove to better yourself, to make yourself more:
taught yourself to read music and to play your second-hand saxo (yo (you’d
found it, covered in dust in the cellar, cleaned it up and kept it and no one
had said a word) to make a bit of extra money. How you wished you could make
enough for music to be your living. Every night, as the thin sheaves of notes
stacked up on the dresser and the faces changed, the flushed drunk guilty faces
of these men who were straight, yeah, and don’t you forget it, but who
fucked around with boys, yooughought about what it would be like to be free
from this. To choose whom you slept with. What profession could you go into,
besides music? You could always become a priest. They were celibate, weren’t
they? That would be so perfect.
Legato Bluesummers came you thought he was another client. You’d done three
already that night and you ached, a whole-body ache, deep, under your skin. You
wanted a bath. You wanted to crawl under something and hide. You hadn’t felt
this low in months, low and cheap and miserable and exhausted. Oh, it wasn’t
enough to just lie there and let it happen; you had to do your bit, too, or
else they’d complain and you’d have to do it again, better.
was understandable that you looked up wearily as he came into the dim room that
was rank with the sweetish smells of sweat and sex and stale air. He looked
straight at you: into your eyes instead of at your legs or your backside. His
look, the reptilian stillness of it, made you feel cold all the way through. It
felt for a second as if everything had been sucked out of you. And yet at the
same time you thought you might not mind doing this one; this one you might
actually enjoy. He was young, you thought, only a bit older than you, twenty
maybe, and he was beautiful. It certainly made a change. Honest-to-God beauty
was rare in here. And because he was so good-looking he had to be kind, too;
yeah, he’d probably be really sweet. Nobody that pretty could be anything but
sweet. And he smiled as if he’d heard, a weird, thin smile. He held out his
hand. You remember looking at it, bewildered. Did he want to shake on what was
about to happen, or what?
smile again, chilly and almost condescending.
you like to take a walk? he said.
couldn’t comprehend his meaning. Was this slang for some practice you hadn’t
heard of yet? Or, if he did mean take a walk as in take a walk, where
would you walk to? There was nowhere to go.
repeated his question, exactly the same wording, only this time with less
patience: Would you like to take a walk?
hazarded.
couldn’t leave: you told him this. It was your job. This was the only
thing you could do. You couldn’t afford to get kicked out. He had probably
never had to work a day in his life, you thought. He probably had rich parents
or something.
time his weird wonderful eyes lit up and his inexplicable smile blossomed into
a laugh. He stopped laughing and you were a bit glad of that, his laugh was
sort of creepy – then he took your face in his hands as if he were about to
kiss it and stared straight into your soul. And as he stared with his flat,
still gaze that reached in and scoured you inside out you thought, really,
truly, headily thought, for the first time in your fifteen-and-a-half years,
that you might be in love.
you – you, delirious, almost reeling – he said: You’ll do. Bring your
instrument, Midvalley. (How did he know your name?) There may be a … use for
it, later.
that, for the time being, was that.
asking his flock to give what they can for the wards of the church. His blue
eyes burn in his face, terrible, as he tells them about the kinds of hardships
these poor kids have suffered. Abuse. Hunger. Crime. Prostitution. Last
resorts. He speaks of these things with such passion. Such conviction. And yet
with enough careful professional detachment that no one would ever suspect he
was speaking from experience.
chink of cent pieces.
into the dizzying clearness of that night was to kill, with the gun he’d so
kindly lent you, as many of your regulars as you and he could hunt down in your
godforsaken shanty town. It was they who whored themselves to you, then, it was
them on their knees, begging for their lives. You could remember their taste.
And you with the gun to their forehead and the boss’ voice whispering remember,
though his lips weren’t moving. One after the other after the other, down they
went like skittles, and each time the boss’ voice got quieter and your rage
stronger and your hand on the pistol steadier and pulling the trigger easier.
You killed seven men that hot, still night, and the sheriff was either too
scared or too befuddled with heat to do anything about it.
town a free man, the gun he’d given you still warm at your hip. Make them so
afraid that they’d rather kill themselves than face the death you’d provide for
them. You were so struck by his poise and his icy beauty and the blood
thirst you’d seen in his eyes when he’d watched you kill and so grateful for
what he’d done for you that you could not make a coherent reply. His words
pealed in your brain like some great religious truth. Would you kill again for
him if he asked you? More garbage like the men you just took care of? Of course
you would, of course you would. What did it matter what he asked of you now?
What he had done for you was incalculable. For him you would kill any and
everyone. Murdering while you smiled.
mso-fareast-font-family:\"Times New Roman\"\'>
priest’s voice. In its place a thick quiet, punctured semi-regularly by a
phlegmy cough. The congregation has its head bowed in the awkward hush of
communal prayer. Dust sparkles float upward through an aura of pale light,
borne up towards the dark deep arch of the ceiling. And through that dotting of
motes, wafting like indecisive pilgrims to their invisible mecca, your eyes and
those of your priest finally meet.
is perhaps ten or twelve seconds – where the two of you just stare at each
other, unthinking, unblinking. He has the stunned, blank look of a man who has
just come hard up against a wall he did not know was there. His face is
completely empty. It’s the eerie emptiness of an abandoned dining hall with the
plates and cutlery all laid out but no people to use them. You can’t begin to
imagine what he’s thinking. Slowly you raise one hand, not sure whether you’re
waving or beckoning. The gesture seems to wake him and the planet crunches into
rotation again, jerking the people in the pews back to life as they lift their
heads and murmur amen. His eyebrows draw together and his eyes – those
blue-black eyes, the exact colour of a deep, fresh bruise on the edge of
turning yellow – darken, not with fear, no, not that, not he, but with loathing
and impotent rage and territoriality. This is his turf, and here you are,
contaminating it with your presence. How did you find him, he wonders, furious,
frantic, cold with dread on behalf of his precious orphans, how did you find
this sanctuary, where none like you is allowed to tread?
they wait, sheeplike, for him to lead them through the rest of the service,
fingers expectant on prayer books. His fingers grasp the edges of the lectern.
Even from here you tell yourself you can see the thin black rims of unshiftable
dirt under his fingernails. Determinedly he drops his dark head, staring
blindly at the open Bible lying in front of him. He can’t find his place.
Turning the page, he actually bites his lip, which provokes an odd little
flutter of want in your stomach. Riffling through the book’s rice-paper-thin
pages, he manages to knock it off the lectern. Heavily bound and ancient, it
slams on to the floor with an almighty bang, enhanced to gunshotlike
proportions by the echo-y high ceiling. Everyone jumps. The candles on either
side of the lectern flicker.
to collect his composure as he fumbles to pick up the book. Our Father…
sequence, the congregation straggles to its feet and begins. Our Father, who
art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. His lips are moving but you can’t hear
his voice. Oh, God, that rough, accented voice, the one which makes you want to
do unholy things to its owner every time you hear it. And you haven’t heard it
in a long, long time.
p>
staying outside the sheep-pen, and his look – sharp, hating – feels like a
slap. But it does not leave a sting. You’re too used to that look by now – and
anyway, you’re more taken with the beauty of his rageful eyes, more black than
blue in this half-light, like burning holes in his face. You could go on for
hours, like the lovers in songs, about his eyes, their shifting colours. Under his
toffee tan he’s turned quite pale. It’s flattering that you can cause such a
reaction. As he distractedly mouths the end of the prayer (forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those who trespasainsainst us) his eyes
flicker from you to his congregation and aga again. He looks trapped. (and
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil) Poor lamb. You turn
your attention to the mass of drably clothed people filling the benches. (for
thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory)
sure. How long does a church service last? An hour? (forever and ever, amen)
They seek a sixty-minute absolution. And they don’t even know that they, this
shifty guilty flock, are led by the blackest sheep of all. Your own black sheep.
Your bloody-handed blue-eyed priest.
gone blithely past you with the incurious glances of the innately trusting, you
go to the front. He’s not at the pulpit, but he hasn’t run, either. Not him.
He’s sitting in the front pew, head in his hands, the clichéd picture of
despair. You sit beside him. Between you falls the kind of silence, a
not-uncomfortable silence which doesn’t require filling, that usually only
falls between best friends or people in love. He rubs his eyes with finger and
thumb in a tired way. Tiny creases at the corners. He looks noticeably older
since the last time you got up close to him. But then, probably so do you.
dark eyes glint with annoyance. Just let me – yes\"> \"Times New Roman\"\'>
P>
hand back in your lap.
mood. yes\"> \"Times New Roman\"\'>
flat, disbelieving.
light, and your heart gives a dying flop in your chest because he’ll never
believe that you really, truly do, even if you got down on your knees and
declared it properly.
staring at nothing in particular. You recognise the tic. He must be dyfor for a
cigarette. Now he looks up to the crucifix at the apex where walls curve in to
meet ceiling. From his profile someone would never guess he was stop-and-stare
handsome. Most people would say, Change the nose and he’d be perfect. You wouldn’t
change a thing. There. That’s love. That’s got to be love. And if
he can’t appreciate that then –
his pockets, shoulders sloping as casually if he’s waiting in a bus queue.
You’ve gone cold all over, a thrill of anticipation. Is this it? Is he going to
– ? They do say absence makes the heart – ugh, God, what are you saying
– but even so –
you. I’m through with this double-agent shit. I’m not going to lie to them any
more.
emotionlessly, that you know he’s rehearsed it carefully in his head. He must
have been waiting for today. Must have known it would come. Your priest isn’t
stupid enough to be caught out that way. But them? Who’s them? It can’t
be those flapping, idiot girls who insist on tailing round after Master’s
grinning idiot twin. Surely not.
can convince him later, just don’t react), I’m to take it you’re not
going to kill him.
instead.) No. I’m not. I owe him a lot. I owe him – more than that. Assuming
he’s not already dead –
serious-eyed, biting the corner of his lip and frowning – makes him painfully
handsome.
this, why are you banging nails into your own coffin?) But no one knows where
he – where Vash is.
And I’m going to find him. He might kill me. I’m more than ready for that
possibility. He’d be well within his rights. Whatever he dishes out, I deserve
it.
you can’t be hearing this – tender. yes\"> \"Times New Roman\"\'>
from you bastards till I do die, he says, and crosses his arms across
his chest.
proclamation. Why, after all, would this Vash – if he’s as strong as his
brother – Legato’s puppetish body crumpled like a heap of sticks, one staring
golden eye – need protection from a priest, even if that priest were,
admittedly, a bit more and less than human himself? And why would that priest,
who until now has only ever shown concern for himself and those accursed orphan
brats, offer said protection?
the ultimate disrespect from one gang member to another. You’ve always been
intuitive, but this is like telepathy, really it is, you can practically read
it in his eyes; it’s as if someone is yelling his secret in your ear at
this very moment even though you’re trying not to listen. At this minute you
want to believe in his fidelity more than you ever wanted sex from him.
style=\'font-family:\"Arial Unicode MS\";mso-fareast-font-family:\"Times New Roman\"\'>
itself from you in a voice that, if you closed your eyes and listened, you
would have said belonged to a complete stranger, and into the warm quiet you
say:
humanoid Act of God is blonde and very good-looking, sure, with fine cheekbones
and large blue-green eyes, but sweet and stupid, if the smile on the wanted
poster is anything to go by, and sexless too, if he’s anything like his twin.
What could possibly be there, in that naïve charm, for someone like your
priest, dark and shrewd and passionate, with his streak of malice and his kink
for things no clergyman should even think about, for whom sex precedes a nice
dinner rather than follows it?
from his surprise, his mouth quirks into a thin smile, though his eyes are cold.
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial\'>
or you’re a damned good guess. You always were.
gasping, almost, a fish flopping around and choking on air, and all the time
his eyes, cool and passionless as marbles under the dark spikes of fringe.)
Wolfwood – Nicholas – tell me you’re –
says acidly. What did you expect me to say? ‘No, Midvalley, because I was
saving myself for you?’ That it? Well, like hell. I owe you
precisely zilch.
througow gow get the fuck out of my church. Run back to your boss. And tell him
when he comes, I’ll be ready.
doesn’t even shake. Your throat feels completely numb. He’ll kill you.
spoken. Just nods towards the doors. And when you reach them, just before you
reach out and push them open, you stop. Like so many other jilted lovers, you
think, It can’t end like this. You’ve known him nine years, been his lover for
four, been in love with him for one. Maybe if you can look into his
eyes, really look, remind him of the time when you and he screwed slow and
sweet right there in the sand two or three iles outside October while you
waited for Legato, or the time when he got shot in the thigh by a hick with a
shotgun and nearly bled to death and you were the one who saved his goddamn life,
you were the only one who knew how to make a tourniquet. Then he might
show a flicker of feeling. He might even call you back, say he’s sorry, say he
was just kidding, of course he’s coming back, of course he’ll do the job.
look at the man you’re in stupid shameful pointless love with, putting everything
you have and every ounce of love you ever felt for him into your eyes until
they must be as powerful as the boss’s gold ones, until he must see
–
pulpit, tidying up, closing his heavy Bible. Then – sensing somehow that you’re
still not gone yet – then, slowly, he looks up. He finds you easily, skulking
here at the back. He holds your gaze, and there’s nothing like pity in his
eyes.
candles, and the pulpit is darkness.mso-fareast-font-family:\"Times New Roman\"\'>