Read Mathieu for Free Online

well-muscled. The overall effect was as before: he was painfully beautiful to human eyes.
    He simply nodded and hurried to a small hearth concealed in the corner of the room near her. As he struck flint onto kindling, he spoke quietly. “I apologize. I cannot feel the cold as you do.” He blew the sparks into a flame and then piled smaller pieces of wood to get a fire going. “I somehow think the monks at the Abbey would tell me that it was the fires of Hell keeping me warm. They always thought I was bound there anyway, what with all my...” He faded into an awkward silence while he fiddled with the fire.
    The small room grew warm quickly and Jenn unlaced her boots, peeled off the socks and inspected her feet. She shook her head at the damage, sighed and stretched her legs in the direction of the hearth.
    “Why are you here?” He asked from where he’d propped himself up against the wall in the farthest corner of the room.
    “We--I need your help. Something horrible has happened and you’re the only one who can help.” She wriggled her toes and put her socks back on with some regret.
    “And why would I want to help any of you? The last time we met you tried to enslave me. Your people have been poking and prodding at the edges of my wards for months. I’m amazed you would even think to come here and ask anything of me.”
    “Things have changed. I admit that we got off on the wrong foot, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t work together.”
    “Doesn’t it?” He crooked an eyebrow at her. “I still feel no overwhelming urge to do anything to help you or your people, no matter what has changed.”
    “ I think I can convince you.” She glanced around the empty church. “Or at least I can once I power down a Clif Bar and some water so my head will stop throbbing. I can do that in the corner. I wouldn’t want to eat where you pray.”
    He smiled at her, but the smile was sad and bitter. She could see it clearly in the firelight. “I do not pray anymore. God does not listen to creatures like me.”
    “Why so much effort, then?” She lifted an aching arm to encompass the room and everything in it.
    He snorted, a most undignified sound in what looked to be a holy place. “I rebuilt this. I realize you do not know, but long ago there was a hermitage here. The monks came here and built here with their own hands and lived a life of holy solitude. The monks would go years without seeing another soul. People would leave food and other goods in exchange for prayers.”
    “I’d heard the stories about the holy men who lived here when I crossed the mountains with the army on our way to the Holy Land years ago.” He absently stroked his thin beard as he continued. “The monks were long gone, of course. But I found some ruins and stacked stones and made the cross and all with my own hands so that I might partake in their peace.”
    “But why,” Jenn asked while looked around for her pack, spotting it in the corner. “Why all this work if you won’t pray?”
    He reached gracefully over to her pack and placed it in front of her—again very careful not to come close. “At first the work soothed me, I think. Then the quiet of the place did as well. I was crazed with the world’s pain when I arrived, and here there is no one or no thing that can hurt me.” He placed another piece of wood on the fire and then went back to his far corner. “Nor can I hurt anyone. This place is a sanctuary, a place of healing.”
    “Yes. I can see that. It’s beautiful.” She looked around, noticing the small details that only firelight could bring out—the shading of the stones, the whorls and knots in the wood, the shine of his eyes as the flames flickered.
    He shook his head and corrected her. “No. It’s empty. Soulless, like me. No matter what I do, I cannot bring God to this place or to my heart. God is dead to me. Gadreel made sure of that.”
    Jenn focused on the cross in the front of the church. “What do you