The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,28

neither she nor the weather announcers on the radio seemed to know exactly where they were going. For just a second, she imagined herself one of those desperate Midwestern tornado jockeys who risked their lives chasing storms, and for what? A few seconds of cable coverage on some weather channel. She could gin up twice the attention just by flashing a bra strap at the deli.

“Suckas.” She laughed, pursing her lips tightly to keep the condescension inside.

The sudden pickup of the windshield wipers, together with the wind and rain, wiped the smile quickly from her face, along with whatever expression the cabbie was wearing. She strained to look up through the glass. It was dark and getting darker, deep grays, purples, and blackish greens swirling above, looking to Lucy almost exactly like El Greco’s View of Toledo, the city lights obscured by clouds. It was as if she were staring directly into the eye of the gathering storm. The air was suddenly charged, electric. They could feel the clouds filling and the tension from their heavy breathing found an inconvenient home on the inside of the windshield, fogging them in, no matter how much she wiped at it with her couture coat sleeve. It was eerie, to say the least, and the cab driver was becoming more and more anxious.

“Enough. You’re drunk. Pull over or I’m calling the police,” the cabbie insisted, keeping his eyes warily on the road now and not on her, nervously clenching the handle above him.

“Save your minutes,” Lucy replied, dodging the hurriedly parked cars poking too far into the street and the few pedestrians that were still out and about, and gradually slowing down enough to notice the empty streets. “Where is everybody? I mean, it’s just a little bad weather. It’s not like the world is coming to an end or anything.”

The streets in Brooklyn Heights leading to Cobble Hill were deserted. It was as if the whole borough had sought shelter and gone into hiding. Strollers and French planters were pulled into the yuppie-owned brownstones while weathered religious statues, parked in the patches of grass and cemented over courtyards in front of old Italian ladies’ homes, were covered in plastic and prayers. It was more than unsettling.

“Most people heed desperate warnings,” the cabbie said impatiently.

The stress of the evening—the fight, Jesse, all of it—began to tire her. Whether it was the alcohol, the ineffective windshield defogger, the liquid dash air freshener, or the persistent rainfall that had made her bleary-eyed, she didn’t know.

Until suddenly she did.

A massive Gothic-styled building of blue-gray stone in the early stages of renovation, the length of scaffolding and steel trusses running up all sides of it almost giving the appearance of being on crutches, caught her full and undivided attention. The shredded protective black netting encasing almost the entire structure, from ground-floor entrances to the single soaring spire, snapped loudly in the wind, like loose bandages. There seemed to be an incredible amount of sculptural detail on the church exterior hidden behind all the metal and wood that was almost impossible to discern under the circumstances. Angels and gargoyles sprouted from the shrouded architecture, beckoning her, warning her.

Then she saw it.

Or it saw her.

Two eyes carved into the masonry, peeking out through the torn mesh.

Her two eyes.

Her charm. The one dangling off the bracelet around her wrist.

Staring back at her.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“The Church of the Precious Blood,” he said. “Used to be, anyway. Condos soon.”

She jammed her heel on the brake and skidded on the rain-soaked road to a screeching halt. The cabbie went headfirst into the dashboard, and Lucy slammed her forehead into her hands on the steering wheel, specifically the charm on her bracelet, which opened a small cut at her hairline, beneath her widow’s peak. Somewhat in shock, unsure if what just happened had really happened, she scanned for injuries through blurry eyes and turned her fractured attention back to the insignia on the church facade.

“Are you okay?” he asked her before he even knew if he was okay himself.

“I don’t know,” she said. Unable to focus on her physical problems, preoccupied by what might be her mental ones.

She took off her prized Pucci scarf. The vintage one she would never let her friends borrow, the one that became her staple in the rags.

“Here, take this and apply pressure.”

“I couldn’t,” he said, refusing politely to wipe his blood on such an obviously luxurious and expensive accessory.

She pulled the scarf back.

The driver reached