CHAPTER 4: MANOR
There was a hollow silence around the break table in Phillip's shop. Neither witness nor Mrs. Graham dare speak a word as they slowly watched the last flares of life leave Mr. Graham's decrepit form. What was left of him was huddled on the ground, twitching every few seconds- the flick of his fingers the only indication that his heart still carried a pulse. After seven uninterrupted minutes of silence, the twitch stopped.
Ichabod mentally recorded the time. 6:32pm: the moment Elizabeth Graham became a widow.
Abbie sat closest to the door, a natural instinct, the reaction of fight or flight ingrained into her subconscious; if it were to be the latter, she wished for the quickest escape route. Ichabod was at Abbie's left, long legs jutting up and down rapidly beneath the table top. She wanted to reach a hand out and silence the rapping of his heal but restrained herself, allowing Crane his small vice. Elizabeth sat across from her, beside the window. The last chair sat pathetically empty, its intended occupant lying expired on the floor.
Mrs. Graham, who sat with her husband's still corpse on the ground beside her, made no attempt at conversation and waited patiently (if reluctantly) for the Lieutenant and her partner to begin their inevitable barrage of questions.
Abbie was the first to speak.
"Did you know someone was after you?"
"Yes." Elizabeth's face revealed nothing, and in the orange light of dusk, a ray of receding sunshine dashed across the room to light her aging face.
"Are you aware of what is after you?" Ichabod asked.
"I know Moloch sent his minions to kill me the night I was attacked. I know they just killed my husband." she spoke as if she were ticking items from a grocery list. "And," she turned and gave Abbie a stern once over, "I know you're more than just a police lieutenant."
Abbie tried not to appear phased. "If you knew this was going to happen, why didn't you do anything to protect Phillip? You could have given him some mistletoe, right? That's what you use to protect yourself." She nodded to the berries fastened to Elizabeth's overcoat.
Elizabeth cleared her throat, moving her hand to the wooden table top, and restlessly spread her fingers across it, clearing away nonexistent dust particles. "I did love my husband very much, but I have a higher purpose. And if exposing my knowledge or identity to him would have saved his life, then allowing his death was a sacrifice I am willing to make."
"That's sick."
"That's life," Elizabeth sneered through clenched teeth.
Crane coughed. "If you don't mind my asking, what is this higher purpose? Why is Moloch after you? You seem to be knowledgeable in the occult, but that is not reason enough to be considered a threat."
"It's not what I know that he's after," she said, "it's what I have hidden away."
What? Abbie searched the newly widowed woman's face for answers but found nothing. The creases and wrinkles that stretched across her face were wan with age, and the short greying bob that sat at her rounded chin shifted slightly was she turned to meet Abbie's eyes.
"You're a witch." Ichabod stated clearly, eyes widening.
She nodded. "The Sisterhood entrusted me to protect an item I keep in my possession. Moloch-" she swallowed hastily, clenching and unclenching the hand resting on the table, "He wants it. He needs it."
"Well, care to stop being vague and tell us what this mystery item is?"
Crane shot her a disapproving look, but she didn't care. She was past niceties. All Abbie wanted was to get this over with. She wanted to go home, draw herself a hot bubble bath, and not think about Moloch for the next fifty to one hundred years.
"The Morning Star." Elizabeth received only blank stares. "It was a gift from God to his Archangel Lucifer, a stone that has the ability to transcend space and time. Moloch wants it."
Ichabod nodded, attempting to put the pieces together. "Is that why the Horde of wraith deamons attacked the Sisterhood in 1749? To get the Stone?"
"No, that's not why," Elizabeth shook her head. Closing her eyes lightly, the witch lowered her head, as though it were a memory she'd prefer to not rediscover. "Rumors spread like wildfire that year; whispers in the dark. People spoke of the First Witness being brought into the world. Many tried to kill the babe but all were defeated but the Sisterhood."
"Me?" Ichabod's voice was small. Abbie could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen him cower in fright.
Mrs. Graham nodded. "In the blue moon of 1750 a mate was born, raised and sworn to protect the Witness from infancy."
"Katrina." Abbie murmured, meeting Crane's sad eyes.
She nodded again. "You married her, Ichabod. It was her duty to protect you, long before your paths ever crossed."
Abbie could see that Crane was slowly being drawn into himself, and would soon be too lost to find his way home again. His eyes were downcast, full of sadness and longing- she'd seen him this way before, when he was especially homesick or parched of his darling wife.
The Lieutenant wanted nothing more than to have the strength to pull him out again, before he drowned in his reverie. "So if Moloch wasn't looking for the Morning Star in '49 why does he want it now?" She thought perhaps changing the subject would pull him out of his funk- maybe a Cornetto when they got home, too.
"He wishes to kill the First Witness before he is borne to his proper time."
Crane sighed, "Unsurprising. Moloch seems to have an affinity for trying to kill me."
It almost made Abbie laugh how right he was- though the thought also made her want to cry. Why was it that she and Ichabod were the Chosen Two? Why couldn't the burden be carried by someone else, namely someone much stronger.
She sighed. "So what's the game plan? How do we stop Moloch from getting the Stone?"
Elizabeth grinned now. Not a reassuring, supportive grin but an abrasive, forced tug of the lips. "It's simple really." She pushed back from the table and stood, smoothing out her collar and with it, the clipping of mistletoe. It rustled as she walked around the table and into the showroom of the antiquities shop. Both Witnesses craned their heads around the door frame to see what the witch was doing. There was a fierce rumbling, followed by a crack, and from beneath the floorboard of her shop Elizabeth pulled a brick-sized mahogany box, blithely wrapped in a deep crimson velveteen sash.
Setting the box upon their table, she remained standing and began mechanically removing items from the case. A small glass vial of a curious blue substance. Deerskin surgical gloves (which Mrs. Graham did not put on, but instead bypassed and laid on the table beside Ichabod). And lastly, a baleful looking syringe- empty- but Abbie assumed that was what the blue tonic was for.
"It's simple," she repeated, nodding to Abbie, "Miss Mills will be suspended using the Stone, and placed in a time more apt for stopping Moloch from retaining the Dagger. Without it, he will have neither the power or ability to steal the Stone from the Sisterhood."
Ichabod squinted his eyes and cocked his head to the side as Elizabeth began assembling her needle, blue tonic being sucked into the syringe.
"Do I get any say in this?" Abbie questioned, backing up in her chair as Elizabeth neared her, syringe in hand. "Because I really don't have any inclination to go time travelling."
"I'm sorry Miss Mills, the decision has been made for you."
"By who?"
"By the Sisterhood." Elizabeth said plainly.
And then the witch was upon her, syringe stabbing into Abbie's forearm before either the Lieutenant or Crane could register that the witch had moved.
"What is that?" Ichabod shouted, as the needle was ripped from Abbie's flesh once more and the power of a foreign tonic in her veins began to surge towards her heart.
"Something to help her sleep, I assure you."
Abbie opened her mouth but already her tongue felt like drying cotton against her lips, "I don't want to sleep," she managed.
Elizabeth cocked her head and grinned, feigning confusion, "Well it's too late to back out now, you're already halfway there."
"What does that mean?" Abbie questioned. Her head was beginning to spin.
"Twenty minutes ago, when you entered my shop. I enacted the Stone the moment you crossed the threshold."
"You're insane."
"On the contrary, Miss Mills, I knew you would not go willingly, but this mission is one that must be completed by the Second Witness."
Forcefully, Abbie pushed herself from the table, trying to distance herself from the witch. Upon standing however the world tilted and blood rushed from Abbie's head. Crane rushed to her side, though not quickly enough to sustain her entire body weight. They crashed to the floor together, his arms protectively wrapped around her waist as she gasped up at the witch's face.
Mrs. Graham towered over them, magic like a flame emulating from the tips of her fingers, outstretched from the rest of her body. From beneath her crisp collar Elizabeth pulled the Stone, gleaming bright in all its glory, crimson against its shining gold chain. Her being glowed with it. Elizabeth's eyes, previously blue were now flames as well, a surging force pulsing in time with the slowing beat of Abbie's heart.
"You will know the Bringer of Light, Grace Abigail Mills." she said, "If you do not succeed: Death, Pestilence, War, Famine- all will follow in your wake. If the Witness dies before he is borne, all will be lost."
Above the bellowing of Crane's impossibly loud voice trying to resurrect his partner, Elizabeth's managed to be velveteen soft; caressing Abbie into a placid stupor. Abbie reached up, trying to fight off her inevitable sleep. Grasping above her, she tried to make contact with the edge of the table and pull herself up again. The world tilted and rocked as she felt herself hitting something hard: she lost her grip on the wooden surface and had fallen hip first onto the unpolished plywood floor. Hard ground met Abbie's face in a painful haze.
The only thing she could see as her vision began to tunnel were the dead grey eyes of Mr. Graham laying beside her, life stolen from his features. The last thing she could find herself holding onto were Elizabeth's vague instructions as the Lieutenant felt the world leaving her. But she couldn't fight the current anymore, and as Abbie's eyes finally closed she felt herself delve into a long desired rest.
Everything was black. Crane's voice faded into the distance. Elizabeth's words held in the center of Abbie's receding consciousness.
"You must destroy the dagger before it is too late."
And then, Abbie's heart stopped beating.
There was a hostile pounding in her brain as Abbie pushed away the comforter, almost as if someone was deliberately pouncing on her head.
Too many vodka-tonics? Jenny would say not enough will power.
There was way too much light shining in through the curtains of Abbie's bedroom, and she supposed that she must have either slept through her alarm or not even bothered to set it, because the sun never normally shone through her window during her normal wakeup call at 6 am.
Actually. Come to think of it, she never remembered the sun ever shining through her window, in the whole history of living in her South-facing apartment.
So... this wasn't her apartment then? Maybe she had been with Crane and crashed at his, this wouldn't be the first time that's happened. But. She also didn't remember ever having anything to drink. Or doing anything at all after leaving Graham Antiquities.
No. Not leaving.
Blacking out.
Abbie shot up in the foreign bed, attempting to gauge her location as quickly as possible. All four walls of the modest and unfamiliar bedroom were beige and void of any decoration- save for a wood-framed oil painting (the piece was a landscape of Tarrytown Lakes, a local nature reserve not far from Jenny's old ward. At the moment, Abbie deemed it unimportant, but would probably go back to it later) that hung on the left of a simple white door.
At her right was a bed identical to hers, made and ready for its owner to climb in and get a night's rest. At the foot was a simple wooden chest, also identical to her own, emblazoned with the initials V.S.F. in the same place that hers were written as G.A.M.
Grace Abigail Mills. The fleeting memory of Elizabeth shouting her name felt like a thousand knives flirting across Abbie's back, leaving a path of stinging flesh in their wake. Beneath her cotton shift, her skin finally began to feel the penetrating winter air seeping through the small window of her bare-bones room, making her feel naked to the world.
Racing to the window, Abbie attempted to not trip over herself as she latched onto the low windowsill, peeking outside.
"Holy shit."
Her breathing suddenly became ragged as she frantically tried to calm down. Her grip on the windowsill puttied, sliding down the wall and folding into herself; the white of her shift dramatically ghostlike against her dark and sunkissed skin.
Was this a dream? No it couldn't be. Even when she'd visited Purgatory in her dreams, there was always the smallest inkling that she could escape, that she could find her way home again. This was completely real. Her skin itched under the nightgown, eyes adjusting painfully under the almost-light of the early morning sun. Over stimulation was something she'd never be used to, her whole being screaming at her to go somewhere familiar, anywhere that wasn't here.
Anywhere but here.
She turned over her shoulder and peeked out the window again, hoping the world had vanished.
It hadn't. The modest dirt road still remained, where it was lined with sickeningly lovely white and blue flowers, still somehow alive in the dead of winter. A chicken, an honest to God chicken made its way across the dull grass as a maid followed the bird's tail, carrying a basket of linens under her arm. Her dark skin contrasted against her dress as Abbie's did, but instead of a night shift, she was outfitted in a plain sienna work dress; the empire waistline cut off by the starched apron at her hips.
No. No. No. This couldn't be happening.
She couldn't escape Graham Antiquities but she could escape this. Flight, it was.
The rush of adrenaline surging through her veins pushed her forward as she flung herself at the door and tore it open, dashing out into the hall.
It was dark here, maroon walls not yet lit by the light of day.
She escaped the room from the right of the hall and continued to run through the Georgian style house until she reached a flight of stairs, nearly tipping over the banister.
She ran down the steps, dashing past dozens of well furnished rooms, all full of mahogany furnishings and master works of art, not unlike the piece hanging in her own room. The house was a blur in her mind however, and Abbie feared that she would continue to sprint never finding an escape, until a pounding force stopped her abruptly; grabbing her by the forearms as she crashed into the immovable chest that hollowed with a sudden thud of gravely breath.
The voice was boisterous enough that she'd know it anywhere. The piercingly blue eyes however, leered at her with a nervous restraint Abbie hoped she'd never have to endure again.
"Miss Mills, are you quite all right?"
A/N: You guys... I'm the worst author ever. I left you hanging for two months and barely wrote anything! I finally found some inspiration to write, which I hope will last long enough to get through the next few chapters, but I still feel really bad.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Hopefully another will come soon
-Howl