had slowed down and sounded deep and robotic, as though a machine was filtering his words. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Making it easy, Gabe.’ Her voice tinkled like crystals moving against each other. ‘Come, travel with me. I will take you to the cathedral. To safety. To peace.’ She leapt at him like a cat, fast and lithe; he heard her groan, wrapping her legs around him. He stumbled and they fell awkwardly onto the bed.
He could feel her flesh against his. It was cool and smooth, like marble, and then her lips were on his, her tongue searching, her body moving against him. Reynard, the phone and even the sounds of the raven disappeared. He was back in the Void, waiting for its movement — was he holding his breath? — then the swirling began, and what had been nothing but a grey mist a moment ago began to sharpen into the contours and colours of the scene he most craved.
He was far more exquisitely aware of Angelina this time. He could feel her touch, her skin, her warmth, whereas before, when she’d allowed him to glimpse this place, he’d been aware of nothing. Now all of his senses were his again. It was as though the scene was deepening into reality, while at the same time he could feel Angelina becoming slack against him and a wetness against his belly. For a moment there, he thought his desire to see his cathedral had twisted into something erotic — and who could blame him, with a naked woman wrapped around him?
Without warning, hard on the heels of the sensation of wetness, he felt himself toppling, falling, spinning without control. There was no pain, no flailing about; he didn’t know which way was up, but in his mind’s eye he was travelling closer to the cathedral. He heard Angelina’s voice in his mind.
Let go, Gabe, she whispered. Let go of Paris … of the world.
And he did, but as he did so his hand felt something familiar. The quill. It was all he had to anchor him and he wrapped his fingers around it, feeling its softness and its solidity. It helped him to focus on one final notion: that to let go fully would be dangerous. It was something in his subconscious, perhaps something from his training as a psychologist. Clutching the quill, in the midst of his confusion and dislocation, Gabe felt a part of him hold back as he began to fall into whatever new dreamscape Angelina was forming for him.
It was the kernel of strength and self-possession and even self-awareness that had brought him through his darkest hours; it was the part of him that urged him to breathe, forced him to wake up and accept the day and to find a way through each new one until the pain of his failure and loss of his family began to diminish into the background of his life. He knew from his counselling work that many people didn’t have this special private place in the core of their being to draw upon, to rely upon. It couldn’t be taught. Couldn’t be bought. Couldn’t be acquired. It simply had to be discovered within. He believed everyone possessed this special ‘force’ and he had encouraged his patients to find it, hunt it down. Many had succeeded, with his help.
He was sure his elders didn’t think he possessed any deep strength; they’d viewed him as a coward for running away from confronting the reality of his life, offering wisdom that, in his grief, he couldn’t stomach hearing.
The accident was a random event. It’s not your fault. Except it was.
You can’t be in control all the time. You can. He shouldn’t have looked away from the road.
You aren’t the enemy. He felt like the enemy.
You can’t save everyone. You’re a psychologist. Not a god.
Or his personal favourite. You have to move on.
He knew they meant well; knew these soothing words worked for some people, but to him they were sickening placations.
And so now as he travelled toward his haven, wondering whether he was dead or alive, he held back the one last part of him that he exercised total control over and no-one else could touch … not even Angelina, with her erotic, irresistible manner. He closed himself around the kernel of his most private self — his soul, as he liked to think of it. He rolled it up tightly, every bit of himself that was truly him — character traits, personality, ideas, memories — and wrapped them in a separate sphere that was no longer connected to his body but hovering invisible within it, and he clung to this sphere … this new embodiment of himself. It was his only link with the reality he knew. The cathedral was a dream. He couldn’t be convinced otherwise but, oh, how he wanted it to be real … to live it, touch it, smell its scented candles, taste on the back of his palate the fragrance of herbs crushed underfoot.
The scape before him was shaping into brilliant colour; he could hear muffled sounds beginning to sharpen, a faint aroma begin to reach him. This had not happened before. The cathedral began to soar before him in all its imposing, soft grey beauty, every aspect of it coming into sharper focus.
He hadn’t been aware of himself as flesh since Angelina kissed him but now he was aware of her body more than his own. And she was pulling away from him in a slow, gentle slump. Her once beautiful dark, smoky greyish eyes gave him a listless gaze in return and he could see the life leaching from them. Her grip around his waist was loosening but all the while the wetness that he recalled feeling, was increasing. It was not his desire … it wasn’t even hers.
It was blood.
He could see its red brightness, gleaming and glistening. He’d been stabbed! Angelina’s blade. She’d stabbed him and his hands were covered in his life’s blood. As he thought this, he became acutely aware of Angelina’s naked body becoming entirely limp as it fell away from him. There was a soft smile playing about her generous lips that had been kissing him so deeply just moments earlier.
And he realised with deeper shock that it was Angelina who was dead. And the knife was in her belly … it was her bright blood, her life taken.
He had killed her, just as she’d asked.
He looked around, desperate for help, the name of Reynard springing to his lips, but he was no longer in his apartment and he was no longer near his cathedral. He was nowhere at all that he recognised.
Reynard burst through the door of Gabe’s apartment with an anxious-looking concierge following hot on his heels and making loud protests. The small man fell instantly silent when they saw what was lying on the bed.
The ghastly scene and the iron smell of freshly spilled blood combined to make the concierge gag and he rushed for Gabe’s kitchen sink, retching helplessly before raising his head, his complexion ashen and expression filled with horror.
‘This is monstrous,’ he wailed. ‘I’m an old man, I shouldn’t have to —’
‘Go downstairs and call the police now!’ Reynard ordered him.
The man obeyed blindly, staggering out of the apartment.
Reynard approached the body of Angelina, her belly ripped open like a macabre smile. Blue-grey ropy intestines spilled in a glistening, gelatinous mess from the gash of the fleshy grin. Her eyes were open, distant, as though looking a long way past the horizon, but they were seeing nothing. He knew that. This was simply the corpse that some poor bastard would have to clean up and he could imagine all the forensics and pathology tests that would now follow. Few questions would be answered. And he would be here for none of it.
Next to her lay the blood-spattered weapon that had inflicted the damage. He nodded, turned away and walked to the French windows. As he moved, his attention was caught and held by the slender box with its navy satin that he’d given Gabe on his birthday.
