Our Lady of the Various Sorrows (Voices of the Dead Book 2) by Victoria Raschke

Author:Victoria Raschke [Raschke, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ljubliana, Murder mystery, Slovenia, speculative fiction, urban fantasy
Publisher: Griffyn Ink
Published: 2017-11-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Jo stood at the edge of a field, the woods thick and dark behind her. A half moon hung low in the sky, a sliver above the tree line. The sickly sweet smell of the dead lay like fog over the land. The living armies had quieted the roar of battle, though stretcher-bearers and a few scavengers could be heard in the darkness, rifling pockets. She gathered her shawl against the chill of the late September night and waited.

The first soldier rose and walked to her. His body was torn by shrapnel or ball; both were gruesome deaths. Ancient eyes bored into her from a weary, beardless face.

“What is your name, soldier?”

“Am I dead? Are you the angel come to take me home?” He reached out to touch her and pulled his hand back as if he’d suddenly remembered some injunction about touching creatures of heaven.

“I am no angel, soldier. I am sent to remember you and open the way for those without mourners.”

“Wilcox … John Wilcox.” He already struggled to remember who he was in life. It wasn’t unusual for the long-deceased she encountered, but these were newly dead men. Perhaps the many days and months of war erased a man’s name, just as wandering in the Inbetween did.

“John Wilcox.” A door opened behind her, and the young soldier brushed against her as he passed, moving as best a broken body could.

The others came then. Blue uniforms and gray ones. So many gray ones, and yet they had won this battle. Whatever that meant, to win at slaughter. The last man of no mourners came to her, musket in hand. His eyes glowed green but illuminated nothing.

“And what is your name, soldier?”

“Rebecca Wiley.”

“That is my name.” And she knew it was her end. Her mother had told her many a Voice met her death at the end of a hard battle. A door opened behind the soldier sent to ferry her from life. It had to be hers, as she’d never seen another’s door. It was not the way.

The green-eyed man leveled his musket to take aim. She ran toward him through the beckoning door before his musket ball could pierce her flesh. The retort rang through the trees as she slipped into the blackness beyond the threshold. There was nothing then but the sound of the wind in her ears as she fell through the void.

Dušan was waiting for Jo at the teahouse the next morning. Snow had drifted against the walls in the courtyard and covered the new planters in front of the shop. He was dressed, as always, in black with a slice of crisp, white shirt visible behind the turned-up lapels of his peacoat. Looking at him in his everyday form, with his human skin and musculature, it was difficult to believe he could be anything else. He was the man she had been naked with in the gloaming in the apple orchard the night Faron was conceived. That other being had to be a fever dream.

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