Katherine

The church smelled as it always smelled-- damp and musty, with the acrid overtone of incense that burned her nose and made her eyes water. She sat in her usual pew, up at the front of the congregation. As a girl, she had loved sitting there. It made her feel important and favored in the eyes of God, proud of her own propriety as she sat with hands neatly clasped and legs tucked primly up beneath her, gazing with adoring eyes at her father as he preached the Sunday sermon.

After marrying Jacob, she felt less like a favored child of God and more like a sinner in the deepest dungeon of Hell, on a stage of Satan's making, ogled and mocked by the amassed souls that inhabited the dankest corners of damnation. All the sinners and demons, delighting in this chance to turn their judgment outward.

She couldn't tell which version of herself she was now-- prize or refuse. Maybe neither, because she was no longer sitting in the front pew. She sat in the back. No, she wasn't sitting. She was on her knees on the cold, hard ground. The pew before her rose up, up, up to the dark and vaulted ceiling, the cross beams shaped like the straining, slender branches of the pines. She stared up at the ceiling and thought she could see stars through the slats in the wood.

Heat seared her cheeks, and she looked down as horror choked the scream that fought its way up her aching throat. The ground beneath her was crumbling, hardwood burning to cinder by the fire that raged below. She reached for the pew before her to clamber to her feet, but her hands were clasped together as if sewn, locked in the prayer position. Her knees were rooted to the ground as if they had melted into the varnish on the wood.

And then she looked up and all the noise and clamour of the collapsing earth fell silent. Jacob strode down the aisle between the pews, his eyes shadowed, his ivory skin glowing white as if the moon were shining on him. She looked up and, indeed, there was the moon-- full and bright, casting its splendor on the worst of God's creeping, crawling creatures.

Isobel sat in the crook of Jacob's right elbow, her arms looped around his neck. She rested her head on his shoulder, her own eyes as shadowed and fathomless as his.

Katherine's knees were locked to the floor, her hands melted together, her lips sewn shut. All she could do was kneel and weep silent, bloody tears as Jacob drew to a halt beside her.

"Why, Katherine?" he spoke, his voice echoing, so loud her head screamed from the pressure as it battered the inside of her skull. "Why do you reject God's will?"

You are not God's will!

She wanted to scream the words at him until the fire that burned her from below snatched him into its embrace. But she could not damn him, not while he held her daughter in his arms.

She fought to wrench her mouth open, her lips tearing at the seam that bound them shut, sharp pricks of pain stabbing the ravaged skin. When she spoke, it was not with defiance or vigor. It was a muffled, pitiful plea.

"Please," she whimpered, reaching for her daughter with clasped hands. "Please..."

Jacob's face split into an evil grin and he plucked Isobel away from his body, holding her by the back of her dress as he dangled her over the yawning chasm that had opened down the center of the church. The hell below coughed out a blistering belch of fire and darkness.

"Ma!" Isobel cried, grasping for her as her body swayed over the flames and darkness below. The earth trembled and groaned until Katherine could barely stay upright.

"Izzy," Katherine moaned, each syllable a monumental struggle against the vice that squeezed around her aching middle. "Izzy, no. No!"

"You've chosen this, Katherine," Jacob said, his glinting eyes meeting hers across the distance. "You've chosen sin. You've chosen darkness. You've chosen to watch her fall."

With a twitch of his hand, he released his hold on Isobel. She screamed as she fell, swallowed by darkness, her cry stretching out into eternity as Katherine collapsed at the edge. She'd have thrown herself after her daughter, but her knees were still locked to the earth. So instead she lay with her bound hands outstretched toward the flames below, but there was no sign of Isobel. Only the putrid stench of death, emanating up from the warbling, inky darkness.

"Izzy!" she cried, her voice growing stronger as rage and despair rushed through her. "Izzy, no! Izzy! IZZY!" She threw herself forward, finally tearing herself loose from the earth. She fell into the pit, her belly lurching as she plummeted into darkness, flailing for purchase.

"Woah. Easy." Jacob clasped her wrists and snatched her from her freefall. She could still hear her daughter calling for her, so she fought him. "Jesus, Katie. Stop." Jacob didn't sound quite right. He sounded... rough. Not his usual glossy self. She glared up at him. He didn't look like himself, either.

"No!" she cried, and found that her hands had finally come unbound. Her body screamed, but she clawed at his face, kicking at his body where it pinned hers to the bed.

The bed?

And it was a bed-- firm but gentle against her back. The sky overhead was not a criss-cross of branches or a star-strewn sky or the vaulted ceiling of the church. It was a plain wood-paneled ceiling, too ordinary to be a tool of the devil.

"Kat, you gotta stop," Jacob said, releasing her flailing hands and clasping her face between his. Jacob usually had soft, sweaty palms. These hands were dry and rough, and gentle. "You're scaring Isobel, honey. Please calm down."

"Izzy," she gasped, straining against him to sit. She had to find her daughter. She had followed her down here, to this strange, gentle Hell. Now she had to find her and bring her home.

"She's right here. C'mere, kid. Let your mama see you. No, c'mon now... Christ, don't cry. She's alright, she just needs to see you."

His words made no sense, but then his harsh face was replaced by the only image that could calm her manic frenzy-- wide eyes and a sweet, rosy-cheeked face.

"Izzy," she breathed, choking back a cry of pain as she threw her arms around her daughter and dragged her close.

"Ma." The word was a gasping sob, and then the body in her arms began to shudder. Katherine's muddled mind finally began to piece together fragments of reality. So much of the world was a meaningless blur, but two facts came into intense focus.

First-- Jacob was gone. The jagged male presence hovering over her was dark and hard but she knew by instinct alone that he would never cause her harm.

Second-- her daughter needed her.

"Hush, Iz," she rasped, forcing her sore fingers to stroke up and down the girl's back. How was it that even her hands hurt? It was as if the pain was too much for her wounded parts, and had overflowed into the rest of her body. "S'alright, baby girl. Hush."

Katherine clung to her tenuous hold on reality, unwilling to sink back into the cold and blissful darkness until her daughter had settled. As she waited, she struggled to make more sense of the blur of intense sensation that surrounded her. She smelled clean sheets and blood, and the lingering musk of summer mud. She heard Isobel's stifled sobs and the distant, meaningless chirp of songbirds. She tasted iron on her tongue. She felt pain. Nothing but pain and terrible heat and bone-deep cold.

As Isobel's sobs gave way to hiccoughs and sniffling, Katherine became aware of more. That other presence. She smelled soap. She heard a low voice, speaking to her daughter, speaking to her. She tasted fresh water as a large but careful hand lifted her head and tipped the smooth rim of a cup against her lips. She felt the same firm, gentle touch smoothing hair back from her face and adjusting her blankets.

She knew who he was. It came to her on a rush of fresh pain. This was never her intent. She had never meant to wind up back in his bed, with his hands touching her with such kindness, such love that she didn't deserve. She had only wanted to give him Isobel, to leave the brightest soul she knew with the only darkness deep and pure enough to protect her.

"No," she moaned, turning her face away from the touch. Didn't he understand that she was filthy and broken and tainted? Shredded and rotting? What use was there in petting and comforting something so far beyond salvation?

His touch disappeared, and she realized too late that he was the only thing anchoring her to this awful, pain-filled place. Although Isobel still lay warm in her arms, the loss of him jostled her loose from the cliff face and she fell, slowly as if through water, sinking deep into the waiting flames.

* * *

She had finally died, and it turned out Jacob was right. Jesus didn't love sinners, or at least He didn't love her because she was, without a doubt, burning in the pits of Hell.

There were demons all around, stabbing her and kicking her. They wore Jacob's face at times, and the faces of his loyal flock at others. They mocked her and spat on her bleeding, burned body. She was naked and helpless, debased at the hands of a vengeful God.

She had no strength left. She'd left her courage, her light, in a dimly-lit brothel under the care of Satan's strongest demon. She hadn't nothing left with which-- for which-- to fight, and so she surrendered. She wept when they beat her, and pleaded when they threw fuel on the flames that burned all around her. She whimpered when her limbs were restrained by some invisible force. Her body, a wretched construct of the devil's making, rebelled against her. When sweet water taunted her tongue, she vomited. When she sought to run, her heavy legs scarcely twitched at her command. She didn't want to give such evil the satisfaction of her pain, but ragged, agonized moans escaped her parted lips on each labored breath.

There was another presence somewhere beyond the demons, a cool, dark audience to her agony. All this time, through all her earthly torment, she had thought herself at least loved by God. She had fantasized about the release of death, and the return of her soul to His loving embrace. So when she felt the presence of the angel, she had hoped for a foolish moment that it had been sent to whisk her away to someplace better.

Such was not the case.

The angel teased her with glimpses of salvation. It fed her cool water and brushed a soft breeze over her singed skin. It tended to her myriad hurts even as the demons added stabbing pains to throbbing aches. It taunted her with comfort but never took her away, even when she begged.

"Be still," it said, when she pleaded and scrabbled at the warm solidity that hovered over her.

"Quiet, Katie," it soothed when she cried out in pain.

"You'll feel better soon," it lied as she writhed, her skin burning, her soul a blackened core of ice.

All she wanted was to leave, but when she tried to tell the angel, her voice came out raspy and choked. The angel shushed her and poured more water down her throat. She swallowed eagerly, savoring the taste of heaven and love, and all the rest that was otherwise denied her, here in Hell.

She blinked up at the angel, and smiled at the familiarity of its features. Silly fools were always painting angels as fat, pink-cheeked babies or ethereal, fey beauties. Katherine was no such fool. She had read the Holy Bible, front to back and back to front and back again. She knew that angels were terrible in their power, with voices of thunder and limbs of fire.

She should have known her angel would look so much like a quiet, fierce demon she had once loved with all her heart. Orange light limned its silhouette, casting its dark hair into flames, and when it spoke the sound rumbled through her like rolling thunder on the plains.

"Go to sleep, Katherine."

The demons still clawed at her, but she closed her eyes as her angel rested a hand against her face. It would protect her, she decided. Once she had paid her penance, it would step in and stop the torment. Once the scales were even, it would pick her up into arms like pillars of flame and spread its wings and carry her away from all of this.

Satisfied with that promise, she obeyed its command and she slept.

* * *

When next she woke, she was no longer in Hell. Nor was she in Heaven. She was, to her dismay, on earth.

Without opening her eyes, she shifted her body carefully, clenching her teeth as pain shot through her, stabbing at her chest and raking claws over her arms and face. Despite the pain, she could tell she rested on a bed, with pillows beneath her aching head and soft sheets draped over her naked body. She could also tell that it was not her bed.

Cracking an eye open, she turned her head on the pillow and blinked at the small room, struggling to wrap her mind around what she was seeing. She couldn't even determine whether to be afraid, which was so contrary to the way she usually came awake-- alert and terrified.

The ceiling and walls were dark, slatted wood, with no paintings or other adornment to break up the monotony. Across from the bed was a door, and beyond the foot of the bed was a hearth and a small table with one chair. The other chair sat beside her bed, and it was not empty.

Katherine stared at the man who sat vigil beside her as her mind sluggishly dredged up memories. Jacob beating her. Jacob hitting Isobel. Running through the woods. Falling into darkness while she lay beside the river. Pain and movement. Feverish nightmares.

Gabe.

He was slumped in the chair, his chin tucked to his chest, and from the slow weight of his breathing she could tell he was asleep. It didn't surprise her to see him there, nor did it surprise her that she'd found her way back into his bed. She was too weary to feel any shock at the pain in her body, or any agitation or worry for the future.

What roused her was Isobel.

Her daughter did not lay beside her in the bed, but had instead made her home in the lap of their rescuer. Dressed in what looked like a man's undershirt with the sleeves rolled up, she sat sideways across his legs, her own feet dangling toward the ground. She leaned with alarming trust and comfort against his chest, her face relaxed in sleep, mouth slightly open and no doubt oozing drool into the fabric of his shirt. She was so relaxed, she'd have turned to a puddle and slipped right to the ground if not for the arms banded around her, holding her in place.

Katherine could only stare. How long had she been asleep?

She wanted to wake him and ask questions, to warn him about Jacob, to beg him to care for Isobel as if she were his own. She wanted to thank him for rescuing her, and tell him she was sorry for disappearing from their friendship. She wanted to ask him for some water.

Unfortunately, her body had other notions. Exhausted by her injuries, and by the fever she could still feel creeping in her periphery, her body had no interest in staying awake any longer. Her eyelids drooped, a powerful heaviness settling over her. She heard the slow, sucking thump of her heart in her ears as weariness dragged her under. Not back to Hell, but into the deep, cool darkness of healing sleep.