The Sainted Confessor, Part 14 and Fin
Oct. 13th, 2009 12:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tinhuvielartanis
The clear, clipped accent of Cadmus awoke Faust, who opened his mosaic eyes and breathed the air as a mortal for the first time in decades. He had forgotten how truly wonderful it was to walk the Earth in uncertainty and hope, wondering if your life would be snuffed out at any moment, yet carrying on with a force of Will surely driven by that Divine Spark that dwelt within everyone, if you could only find it.
“Me?” the man said, his voice drenched with mockery. “Me?”
“You…you are different.” Cadmus bent down and inhaled Faust’s breath, then backed away in a kind of disgust. “How can this be? You are…human.”
“Mortation?” the young moppet offered, smiling merrily.
“Mortation is a myth. It cannot be achieved…You are what you are.”
“Yet here I am, you bat-clad Abomination. Here I am.”
Cadmus frowned, his vast black eyes studying the healed and naked form on the ruined bed before him. Faust was mortal again. The Blood, if given to him in any quantity would kill him and a sip would only serve to addict him to the chalice. Cadmus could not vivisect the youngling without killing him. The boy was of no use to him. He looked down at the chalice of Blood, taken from another child running wild and free in the streets of Brooklyn. He’d brought it to fortify the Vampire before ripping into him again and bathing in the agony and Blood.
How had he done it? How had he achieved the impossible? Mortation…no Vampire had ever achieved mortation. It was a myth brought about by rumours and scattered prophecies said to be found in the Augury of Gideon. It was all rubbish to Cadmus, who believed nothing but the reality before him.
But that reality right now was a Vampire turned mortal.
“How did you do it, Faust?”
“Don’t call me Faust, Cadmus. I am Kallum again. After all these years, I am Kallum.”
“How did you do it?”
“I…had…faith.” Kallum said slowly, deliberately, and with not a small about of contempt for Cadmus.
“Faith? Is that what you call it? I call it some kind of freak occurrence. What am I do with you now?”
“Kill me Cadmus. Get it over with. I have seen the Face of God and I am redeemed. It’s time for me to go home. I’ve sung my last song here. I’ve danced my final dance. Someone else will have to make them laugh now, listen to their secrets and woes, comfort them and tell them all will be well. Someone else will have to keep the dream of creativity alive because, for my part, I’m ready to go. So do it, Cadmus. Let me go.”
Cadmus bent down slowly and sat upon the bed. He placed the chalice carefully on the side table, then took up the final two knives that rested beside Faust’s bare flesh. He cocked his head to the left, studying Faust’s mortal face. The pallor had left him, but his eyes remained the same – mosaic tiles of cerulean beauty. They were impossible to endure. In them could be found all the light that Cadmus’ eyes lacked. How such a creature could exist was untenable in Cadmus’ reckoning. He wanted to torment the light out of those eyes. He wanted to maim and harrow and desecrate until Kallum’s eyes were as flat as his own.
“I could keep you alive for a very long time, you mortal bit of filth. I could make your life one of prolonged suffering the likes of which you could never imagine.”
Kallum laughed a full, throaty chortle. He was truly unconcerned with Cadmus’ threats. He knew that the first blow would kill him and then there would be no more pain. There would be freedom and love and blessedness. He was going home… But there was one thing he wanted to do before he returned to the Sacred Heart. One thing only…
“Cadmus don’t you realise?” Kallum smiled with genuine affection glimmering in his eyes. Every part of his face smiled. It was not something Cadmus expected from someone whose organs had been brutally removed and then replaced without regard. A person who had experienced such a horror as that should not be smiling with every ounce of joy within him…not like this. Ire began to rise within the Pariah’s depths of philosophical apices. Ire was one he knew well. It often led to rage.
“I realise everything,” Cadmus said with a quiet menace. And Kallum laughed again, his mirth fully directed at Cadmus. Cadmus ire grew to full umbrage.
“You realise nothing Cadmus, you Abomination! You realise nothing,” taunted Kallum. “You have nothing left to threaten me with. Nothing at all. You’ve done your do, bimbo. With all your knives and threats and menacing posturing, you have nothing to do that can touch me now. You have nothing.”
Kallum laughed some more, his indigo eyes dancing along the flawless face of Cadmus as he watched the Abomination’s eyebrows draw together in dark thought and the realisation of the philosophical apex of fury. Cadmus could no longer tolerate those merry mosaic eyes resting upon him in full-on mockery. With one swift move, he lodged the last of his blades into Kallum’s beautiful eyes and, further on, into his brain.
Kallum seized in his death throes and was then still. Cadmus heard a fluttering at the window of Kallum’s bedroom and turned to see a white dove sitting there, it’s blue beady eye resting upon the Vampire and the body beside him. He turned away, uninterested in the creature.
But the dove remained and watched with interest as Cadmus removed the knives from Kallum’s eyes and proceeded to desecrate the body so thoroughly, what was once Kallum McCreary was nothing more than a pile of minced meat. The dove cocked it’s head and cooed sadly.
Cry not, the Angel said, drifting beside the dove. You felt nothing of it and that body, though you inhabited it for so very long, is nothing more than a shell now. We cradle thee now in the arms of consecration, dear Kallum. And, as a sign that you are sainted, your body shall endure. For you shall need it again someday.
What do you mean?
You’ve so much more to do, Kallum my Love. But, for now, it’s time for you to rest and heal. It’s time for you to sleep the sleep of ages in the arms of your Creator, who loves thee so very dearly. Shall we go, then, Columba my dove?
No, sweet Angel. There’s one thing I need to do before we go. I won’t be long, I promise.
And off he flew, his soul in dove form, the manifestation of his name Kallum, the dove of Scotland. High over the city he flew, soaring through the smog and the sounds and the sights of New York. He was looking for someone…looking, searching, seeking out the one who would set things into motion. There she was sitting on her front stoop drinking a Slurpee, trying to ward off the unusual heat that had oppressed the Big Apple this year.
He fluttered down near her and watched her for a moment. She took no notice of him, so he fluttered closer. This time he caught her eye. The moment she looked at the white dove, Kallum threw every ounce of Compulsion he’d possessed as a Vampire at her. He Compelled her to do the right thing, to report what she had seen. For two days he visited her and threw Compulsion in her direction. On the second day it worked. She was once again on her stoop with a Slurpee, looking at the odd white dove with blue eyes. He slowly hopped over to her, cocking his head and giving her the Compulsion to tell the authorities, tell them everything she’d seen. Immediately, the woman stood up and walked inside. Kallum could hear the rotary on her telephone clicking like a song as he flew off to rejoin his angel.
When he returned to his apartment in SoHo, the Angel was there, drifting and waiting as though time meant nothing to her. He supposed it wouldn’t. In a state such as this, Grace intertwined with Eternity.
Behold, the Angel said to him, and Kallum looked into the bedroom window at his body, fully restored and lying in repose.
What does this mean? I thought my body would be gone completely.
You are incorruptible, dear Kallum. Your body must remain for you shall someday need it.
The Rapture?
Of a kind, yes, Kallum, of a kind. And it also means that you are sanctified in the eyes of the spirit of Creation. You’ve beheld the Face of God and God has beheld you in all your humble kindness, and despite your state of accursedness. It’s time now, time to fly not with the wings of a dove, but upon the wings of spirit. Come with me Kallum. Come with me to the realms of the unimaginable!
And Kallum reached out to her, his beloved Angel, sloughing off the body of the bird that carried his name and, together, they flew into the ember at the center of the flame within the heart of freedom.
Cadmus entered the apartment to do away with any evidence of his play and to remove the geasa from the doors and windows. When he found the body of Kallum there, whole and perfect as though Cadmus’ fury visited upon his body with knives and teeth and tearing hands had never happened, he found himself on the brink of perplexity. He walked carefully over to the body, bent down and explored it more closely. There was no sign of life, but a light essence of flowers wafted up from the skin of Kallum’s body. Curious, Cadmus took his dragon claw knife and plunged it into Kallum’s belly. Very little blood came forth and the wound healed almost immediately. Cadmus smelled the blood. It was human blood, mortal, yet Kallum healed like a Vampire…in death.
“I visited that apartment every day for a week and found the same thing, Orphaeus,” Cadmus said grimly. “The incorruptible body of Kallum McCreary, lying in repose, giving off the scent of flowers and frankincense. I tried a couple of times ripping the body asunder but, before I could even leave the domicile, there he was again, whole and some might say holy.”
Aghast at the story he had just heard, tears trembling on his auburn eyelashes, Orphaeus struggled to find his voice. “You are a monster, Cadmus Pariah. A monster with no boundaries, no hope of finding peace for the things you have done.”
“My aren’t we the judgmental little Beast?”
“What did you do with him? With Saint Faust the Confessor?”
“Oh is that what we’re calling him now?”
“He was obviously sainted by finding God through his suffering, you miserable creature. Have you never heard of the stories told from the Dark Ages, when the beloved of God wouldn’t decay and gave off a sweet smell?”
Cadmus crooked an eyebrow at Orphaeus. “You forget, Little Prince…I lived through those days and I know full and well what Kallum’s state in death might have meant. It could have just been a side effect of mortation. Perhaps all the old saints in Christendom are dead Vampires who had achieved mortation. Some revelation like that would certainly make me laugh…and I might even mean it.”
Ignoring him, Orphaeus seethed and wiped away his tears, tears shed for his brother in the Blood, the vagabond saint.
“What did you do with him?”
“Nothing.”
“Wha-aat do you mean?”
“I left him there on the bed and I left the geasa in place. Even the superintendent forgot an apartment was there. When the building was demolished in 1981, the body of your Saint Faust was either carted off to a landfill or garbage barge, or he was buried underneath the new building built there in 1982. As far as I know, he’s still intact, being all saintly.
“I left that wretched city behind on the 10th of August, the day they caught the Son of Sam, based on information given to the police by a women nine days prior. Even as I departed New York, it grew more banal by the moment. As he was being hauled off to jail, I was flying back to England to never look back…or at least not look back for a while.”
“You are an Abomination.”
“And you are a fool; yet, here we are working together because of the tidbits of information I got from your tragic little Saint Faust the Confessor. And who knows what else he told me that might be to our advantage as we span this barren globe, making our way ever closer to the Blood Crown?”
Orphaeus only shook his head and turned away from Cadmus Pariah, who felt a true sense of satisfaction at obviously horrifying Orphaeus. After a time, he heard Orphaeus singing softly.
“Home is behind
The world ahead.
And there are many paths to tread.
Through shadow,
To the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight
Mist and shadow
Cloud and shade
All shall fade
All shall...fade.*
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…….”
And, with that, Cadmus blocked out Orphaeus’ tiresome litanies. He closed his vast eyes against the moon that beckoned so, and he relived again his precious time spent with his Little Confessor.
*Lyrics by Billy Boyd for “The Steward of Gondor”
from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
A note about Faust's mortal name: being of pale blue Scottish blood myself, I have a certain fondness for All Things Scottish. Early on in the story, it was pretty much determined in my mind that Faust would be of mortal Scottish descent, thanks to his secondary anchor James McAvoy. At first the name was just Kal, but I changed it Kallum, because the name is the Scottish variant of the name Calum:
Variant spelling of Calum, the Scottish Gaelic form of the Late Latin personal name Columba ‘dove’. This was popular among early Christians because the dove was a symbol of gentleness, purity, peace, and the Holy Spirit. St Columba was one of the most influential of all the early Celtic saints. He was born in Donegal in 521 into a noble family, and was trained for the priesthood from early in life. He founded monastery schools at Durrow, Derry, and Kells, and then, in 563, sailed with twelve companions to Scotland, to convert the people there to Christianity. He established a monastery on the island of Iona, and from there converted the Pictish and Irish inhabitants of Scotland. He died in 597 and was buried at Downpatrick. The name has recently enjoyed considerable popularity throughout the English-speaking world.
His last name, McCreary, is a nod to the extremely talented composer, Bear McCreary, who is prone to wearing a Triquetra pendant he picked up at the Highland games in Washington State.
So that's just to say that, over the course of this composition, Faust became an amalgamation of souls and heritage, not to mention a vessel into which I poured a good bit of my own soul. I guess what I'm saying is that he's become like Cadmus Pariah, indefinable in a way and, therefore, a sentient being unto himself.
And, no, we haven't seen the last of Kallum McCreary.
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small typo?
Date: 2009-10-13 05:27 am (UTC)I believe the 'my' is supposed to be 'by'.
Not nitpicking, I think it's bloody beautiful.
Re: small typo?
Date: 2009-10-13 05:31 am (UTC)Lucky her!
And I'm glad you like it. I'm hoping people will enjoy reading it much more than I enjoyed writing it. Harming Faust was probably the hardest thing I've ever done.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 12:35 am (UTC)