Mathieu by Irene Ferris Page B

a foot on his chest and pressed him down.
    “ Do you not feel it?” Gadreel looked at him, eyes half lidded in pleasure. “The pain, the fear, the death? It is a wondrous thing, isn’t it? Fragrant and sweet like a fine wine.”
    Gadreel made a pushing gesture and fire filled Mathieu’s veins. The feeling grew and intensified until he felt as though he were incapable of breathing and his skin felt stretched tight and full till bursting.
    Mathieu rolled over to get to his knees and saw the two mangled corpses against the wall. The baby had been cloven in half.
    “This feeling—this power is from their deaths, isn’t it?” Mathieu gasped out the question and at Gadreel’s answering smile began to vomit uncontrollably onto the ground.
    He had not eaten in any recent memory and there was only bile to bring up, but he brought it up just the same.
    After a moment of this, the hand wrapped itself in his hair again and the world shifted.
    He was back on the bluff, Gadreel standing over him, hand in his hair, bending him backwards till he almost touched the ground with the back of his head.
    “Listen and listen well,” said the Demon with a grim smile, its blue eyes cold as the deepest winter. “I could rip out your soul in order make you hold more power and maybe I should. So you’d best hide yourself well and you’d best hide deep. If you do something like this again, I will come after your soul and I will find it and you will think everything that you have already suffered at my hands as pleasant in comparison.”
    Gadreel released Mathieu’s hair and let him drop to the ground. “Now stay here and accept what I give you. This is your place. Learn it.” The Demon turned and vanished.
    Mathieu lay in the dirt and gasped for breath, and then crawled to his knees. He looked up at the three other humans, still standing in the same place as when he left. Screams and cries from the town below reached his ears, rending his heart anew.
    “How can you bear this? Can’t you stop them?” He reached forward and beat the earth in front of him and then looked at them again.
    There was no reaction, no movement from them. They were dead inside if not out. Something caught his eye and he looked closer. Each of them had an aura, a bloated red aura that grew bigger and stronger as he watched.
    He then looked down at his hands. He had the same aura and it grew with each scream from down below. His nerves tingled and his brain ached and the redness grew with each moment. “No.” He sobbed helplessly and then drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around himself, making himself as small as possible. “No.” He kept repeating the word but it had no effect. The foul power still came.

C hapter Sixteen
    It was late afternoon when they arrived at the stone chapterhouse. It was old, Mathieu noticed, even if it wasn’t as quite as old as he was. Still, it had sufficient pedigree to be impressive.
    Perched in the mountains, truly suspended between earth and sky, it was heart-wrenchingly beautiful. It had all the outward trappings of a monastery. Stained glass windows glistened in the afternoon sun, and a small group of pilgrims filed up a winding track to a group of statues on a nearby hill. Behind what looked to be a large chapel, he could make out the roofline of larger buildings—lodgings?
    Eddie pulled into the circular drive and then through a gate between two buildings into a cobbled courtyard. The vehicle stopped in front of large, ornately carved wooden doors. Symbols danced over and around each other on the doors, spells of protection and concealment and compulsion all intertwined together. Mathieu didn’t need to expend any power to see them shimmer.
    The small hairs stood up on the back of his neck and on his arms as he watched their welcoming committee step forward to help Jenn out of the vehicle and greet the others warmly.
    An older man with silver hair and an expensive suit pulled the lever to move the middle