Mark of the Harbinger (Book 1)

4 - A Cross and a Scar

As it turns out, you can't just tell a cabbie "anywhere" and expect to get anywhere at all, even in Roccia Nera. Though I had walked out of Fiume di Sangue unscathed and Ishcer himself had stated he doubted the reputation attributed to me, I was nervous enough not to want to return home. Not tonight, at least. I had watched Emial behead someone just hours ago—and even if that someone had been a perverse, rampaging vampire, I didn't like to think that the Baron knew my name, or knew that I even existed. 

Perhaps I was being paranoid and overcautious, but I wagered paranoia would keep me alive whereas foolishness wouldn't. 

I rattled off an address. It was the first address to leap into my mind that wasn't home. The cabbie grunted with displeasure but the taxi nonetheless jolted into motion. The rest of my evening had been horrid, but this was a stroke of luck. Most cabs wouldn't take anyone out into the county limits, especially after dark and especially if the destination was on the eastern side of the aqueduct. 

Curious, I released the stranglehold I had on my ability and allowed a thin tendril to fall across my driver. The spark of his magic burned my probing thought, causing me to wince. The overweight cabbie was a magi, and judging by the tight coil of his magic revolving just beyond his being, the man was a practicing magi. That was good to know. 

The cabbie never knew I was inspecting him. He just fiddled with the radio and dodged slower cars with ease. It took about fifteen minutes to cross the bridge over the aqueduct, but after we did the driver increased his speed and drove almost recklessly through the abandoned streets and byways.

Soon Roccia Nera and its persistent magical fugue were shrinking into the distance and the dim, pitted ruins surrounding the roads thinned. Civilization was replaced with craggy woods of parched long grass and hoary oaks, though the ugly glow of the city remained constant on the western horizon. We rose through the drab foothills clad in wilting foliage. In spring the hills would be garbed in lovely shades of juniper and sage—but in November everything was losing its color to the onset of winter. The car's heater was on full tilt and I was sweating into the snug collar of my sweatshirt.

The taxi came to a stop along a gravel road on the outskirts of Roccia Nera's county. I had just enough folded bills stuffed in my pants pocket to cover my fare, and as I got out of the backseat to stand on the roadside, the cabbie flicked the light atop the car to 'out of service' and drove away. I toed the edge of a weedy culvert and sighed.

The old ranch house was small and dilapidated, two of the front windows boarded and part of the siding torn to bits. A bulbous, rusted truck was parked on the lawn next to a freshly waxed and detailed 1969 Mustang hogging the driveway. I knew the specifics of that car because its owner had drilled them into my head enough times for the information to be remembered.

The snap of twigs and dried pine needles was loud in the quiet as I walked up the drive, my hands shoved into my sweater's pouch as my thoughts reeled after the events in the bar. My eyes slid from the house to the tipsy shed—then to the shadowed barn still standing at the property's border. 

The sight of the barn stirred unwelcome memories. I recalled kneeling inside of it, unsure of the time or the day, desperately trying to cover my glowing skin with the mud and straw comprising the barn floor as John and Trinity's voices keened through the night, telling me the only way to rid myself of the devil was to repent for my sins. I recalled the gritty texture of the dirt under my torn nails, the rank smell of damp earth and unclean animals. I remembered the bitter taste of my tears and the sound of my screams sounding endlessly through the dark, begging for forgiveness for something I couldn't control and didn't understand.