Lucifer's Crown Read Online Free PDF Page B

blessings of All Saints’ Day be with you."
    "And with you, Ivan.” Thomas switched off the phone and thrust it into the pocket of his coat. Odd, how close the air of the chapel had become. Like that of a tomb, dank and heavy with an acrid odor he knew to be that of paint but felt was that of his own dishonored soul.
    He'd hoped to slip quietly through the End Time, passion spent, purpose fulfilled, redeemed at last. But that hope had always been presumption. Of course his nemesis would challenge him, now, at the end. Of course he would take up that challenge. As he'd taken up the challenge long ago, and then, at the sword's point, allowed the consequences to fall upon a bystander? Thomas clenched his jaw so tightly the muscle cramped.
    His relic was safe. But the Book, the relic he'd wishfully thought to be safe in plain sight, had been stolen. Would the secular authorities turn it up in time? He doubted it. And what of the others? It was long past time for him to stop assuming they were safe and ask. Ask most especially Alex Sinclair, who was not himself the guardian of a relic but a knight in its service. This secular world regarded many things as nothing more than quaint customs.
    "I know what needs doing,” Thomas said to the as-yet blank face of the Blessed Mother. “But now, more than ever, I am incapacitated by my guilt."
    Laughter echoed outside. The light bulb flared and winked out. And in that moment, between light and darkness, the portrait of St. Bridget blinked her compassionate blue eyes. The statue of Mary Magdalene looked down at him, her brown eyes gleaming with irony. The cloak of the Blessed Virgin rippled blue and green, like the sea encircling a holy island—St. Cuthbert's stormy Lindisfarne, or the antediluvian stone of St. Columba's Iona.
    Shadows gathered densely in the corners, but around Thomas himself they lay like gauze. An elusive odor of fresh flowers teased his nostrils. With a sharp inhalation of terror and gratitude mingled he dropped to his knees. “Blessed St Mary, Blessed St. Bridget, Blessed Virgin Mother.” He stared from face to face to face. Bridget's eyes were flat paint. Mary Magdalene's eyes were hollow carved wood. The Blessed Virgin's cloak was streaks of blue paint, incomplete. As the patterns of his life were incomplete.
    " Ave Maria gratia plena ,” Thomas began, and by the time he concluded, “ et in hora mortis nostrae ,” his hair was no longer prickling on his neck. “Thy will be done,” he said, and groaning he stood.
    How difficult it was to say “Thy will be done” and know it was indeed God's will and not his own. All he could do was be receptive to signs and portents. He had just been given three. Now what? He limped to the arrow-slit of a window. Crisp air curled through the opening. Outside this chapel, his cell, the garden bloomed in its fall reds and purples. An angelic voice said, “Hello there."
    Startled, Thomas saw a young woman sit down on the bench beside the hedge.
    "Come on, come here,” she said. Dunstan, the resident cat, leaped up and settled onto her blue jeans, gazing adoringly into her face as she stroked his sleek fur.
    As well he should. Thomas had noticed the same young woman at St. Mary's on Sunday, as well as at the All Saints’ mass only hours ago. How could he not? She was beautiful, with hair like spun gold and cheeks like rose petals. But today the curves of her brows and lips were pinched. Even the fairest flower could feel the frost.
    She turned her face to the sun, revealing eyes the same lucid blue as those he'd given St. Bridget. The ache in Thomas's heart eased. No wonder angels were often depicted as young women. A woman, Mary Magdalene, had been the first to recognize the risen Christ, the Word made flesh. A woman scholar had acknowledged the truth about the counterfeit Book...
    Truth. The truth might make him free, hard as it would be to confess outside the seclusion of the confessional. But who would believe his