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Sister Mary Loquacious was on a very important mission. Well, she had been told that it was important, anyways. Bishop James DeVille himself had sent her, and that certainly felt important.
The Bishop was not a man to enjoy a great many sweets, but he did have a certain weakness for tinned shortbread biscuits. The kind with the pink icing. He’d asked her to pick up ten tins of them, as they were on sale, to restock the Satanic larders. The World Market at Chez Mall was the only store in New Orleans that carried them, and Sister Mary Loquacious had been chosen to fetch them.
The Bishop had winked at her when he’d asked. It left her stomach fluttering, but then, the Bishop had that effect on most of the ladies of the church. He was a short man, but he had excellent posture, and a quiet way about him that seemed to absorb a person. His eyes were greenish and lovely, and his hair was black as the pits of Hell. He was not a handsome man, but Mother Superior tended to describe the Bishop as charming. That felt like a good descriptor. He was a charming man, in looks and mien, and so every errand that he tasked her with felt like a gift.
It’s not like he was asking her to pay for the biscuits out-of-pocket. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, being a Satanic nun did not pay well. Sister Mary Loquacious was also a labor and delivery nurse. This turned out to be a great advantage, as she was on-hand when the Bishop’s wife went into labor on Walpurgisnacht.
Hers was the first face that the Bishop’s little child saw.
She remembered the silence of the room, the heavy smell of blood and the loamier smell of birth. The altar was slicked with fluids, and almost all of the men waited in the hall, unable to stomach the natural process of birth. She remembered pulling the membrane away from the little face, and the bright blue eyes peering up at her. She’d attended precious few silent births, fewer still where a cauled child did not start wailing when the caul was removed.
This little one was different. The blue eyes that looked into hers were ancient and knowing. And the child did not cry out until she slapped him hard on the flank. The sound that the baby made was unlike anything she’d heard before or since.
He screamed--high as any infants’, but without the thin quality of a child’s wail. Remiel had a commanding voice, even a few moments after birth.
Yes, it was an absolute honor to have delivered the Bishop’s child. Unfortunately, Sister Mary Loquacious was also the one who toweled him off, counted his toesie-woesies, and saw what was between his chubby little legs. She was the one tasked to tell the Bishop that something was wrong with the baby.
Her mum had told her once that tears from the left eye meant sorrow, and tears from the right eye meant joy. (Or was that the other way around?) Women cry copiously from both at the birth of their children.
As with mother’s tears, she had found that with every bit of bad news that life handed her, there was always some good.
The Bishop’s child, little Remiel, was healthy. He was just different. And Sister Mary Loquacious had delivered the only true Baphomet in the church!
He (“they” she corrected herself) was every bit the goat that their father was. Stubborn, willful, commanding. Their parents had given up on attempting to raise them, leaving that to Madame Tracy and their fencing coach. The church valued Remiel (“Beelzebub” she corrected herself) for their very fine LSD.
Beelzebub would be the Bishop someday, and Sister Mary Loquacious would be able to say that she’d delivered a Bishop! Wouldn’t that be something!
After obtaining the Bishop’s biscuits, Sister Mary Loquacious thought she would take in the sales. Perhaps, she’d go and see the child that she’d delivered on a warm April night. But first, a slice of that decadent double chocolate cheesecake that the fat boy in the spiked collar made at Center Court Coffees.
She’d heard the noise as she walked past the Brookstone’s, and watched as Madame Tracy’s familiar zipped by on his Segway. Cheesecake forgotten, she followed the silly old man.
A riot! Sister Mary Loquacious stayed well away from it, but watched, fascinated. The Christians were rioting! Housewives were hitting college students with pool toys, and parcels littered the fake cobblestones. Adult men were facing teenagers armed with yellow wiffle bats.
This far away, she couldn’t see much. It was enough, though. And she had no idea if this insanity was going to spread.
In the chaos, she ducked into the crowd that churned around the entrance to the Pacific Sun. From the store where the local stoners bought their elephant-leg pants, Marilyn Manson encouraged his listeners to “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
It looked to Sister Mary Loquacious that the denizens of Chez Mall had taken Manson’s message to heart.
Besides the looky-loos who tended to congregate around events like this, Sister Mary Loquacious could also see young Anthony Crowley standing on his desk, surveying the scene. She pressed to the front, and ended up at the corner of his kiosk.
She’d delivered him, of course. The Satanic Nuns did not have an overabundance of college-educated labor and delivery nurses. She was chosen specially by the Crowleys, so she was told.
It was a cold night, when young Crowley was born. He was born on Longest Night. It was a long labor, and difficult. The father had absconded as quickly as he could, but that was expected. Men were, most unfortunately, weak. They were not intended for the birthing room.
Then again, it struck Sister Mary Loquacious in the first hour or so that Mrs. Crowley would have happily joined her husband if she could have. Some women were natural mothers, and some were intended to eat their young. Mrs. Crowley struck her as the baby-eating type.
She was quite fresh out of her apprenticeship with Mother Superior, and Sister Mary Loquacious got the distinct impression that she had NOT been chosen on the virtue of her fancy nursing degree. Most likely, the Crowley child’s birth was either a test or a punishment from Mother Superior--the only other degreed nurse in the Sisterhood.
The mother would not push, seemingly completely disinterested in the process occurring around her. This is how Sister Mary Loquacious discovered that many women in the Satanic community self-medicated.
After four hours of heavy labor, the baby finally crowned. Instead of a pulsing fontanel, Sister Mary Loquacious was greeted by a chubby butt.
On top of Mrs. Crowley’s opium habit, the baby was breech!
Sister Mary Loquacious was suddenly grateful for her tiny hands. She waited for the contraction to end, shoved the butt back inside, hard, and then turned him.
It was unorthodox (and dangerous) to manually position the baby, but she couldn’t escort the incredibly inebriated Mrs. Crowley to Tulane Hospital and expect her drugged state to go uncommented on.
The point was moot. Before Sister Mary Loquacious had the time to worry about whether the cord was tightening around the baby’s little neck, he shot out of his mother and into her welcoming arms. She toweled him off, a healthy baby boy. Long and slender, a look that she would always associate with the children of opium users (and she’d seen many of those over the years), he wailed the sorrows of the newborn into the uncaring face of his mother. She held him to her breast, and he refused it.
That was his entire relationship with his mother, in a nutshell. She offered him poison and was displeased when he refused it.
Sister Mary Loquacious had bottle fed him his first meal, after Mrs. Crowley demanded that she take him away, and don’t give him to her sister.
Mrs. Crowley’s sister (her twin), disliked her greatly, and the feeling was mutual. Undoubtedly, Linda Gardiner DeVille would have cared for her nephew. Most of his raising had eventually fallen to her anyways. But at that moment, Alice Crowley demanded silence and didn’t want her sister. So, Sister Mary Loquacious obliged her.
She remembered how quickly the baby quieted around his bottle. How easily he latched and fed. She’s stroked his little head, covered in a thick thatch of scarlet hair. His eyes were brown at birth, but they’d lightened to their current amber color in the first year. He’d grown into a strikingly handsome youth in the sixteen years since she’d delivered him.
Ah, but most of the Satanic youth was beautiful--or at least interesting to look upon. Beelzebub had ended up with a queer mix of their father’s charm and their mother’s poise. Crowley has ended up with his father’s height, and his mother’s slender build. Oddly, he ended up as expressive as his uncle, Bishop DeVille. He’d also gotten a heavy dose of the temperamental mettle that the Gardiner sisters shared.
He did not look haughty now, but concerned, as he watched the crowd. His current wreath, an orange and black banded fluffy thing, sat forgotten beside his chair. A bundle of wire and tiny pliers sat next to his feet on his desk. His hot glue gun was a distance from that.
Safety first.
He squinted at something in the distance, and tilted his head. Even behind his shades, Sister Mary Loquacious could see his eyes widen.
A gun fired in the middle of the crowd, and the voyeurs around Sister Mary Loquacious screamed.
Anthony cringed, but quickly stood straight as the flood of humanity ran past him. His desk protected him, and Sister Mary Loquacious clung to the kiosk to keep from being swept away by a crowd armed with plastic bats and pool noodles.
He stretched to his full height, leaning back slightly. His hands went to the non-pockets on the butt of his women’s pants, sliding one thumb in each as he craned his neck up.
He hissed through his teeth in displeasure.
Very distinctly, Anthony mouthed the word “fuck” as the sea of shoppers and their wibbly pool noodles and their bright yellow bats swarmed, unimportantly, around his desk.
The crowd left finally, and Sister Mary Loquacious felt like she could say something. “Anthony?” she asked. “Are you alright?”
He looked over. “Yeah, Sister,” he replied, a casual hand slipping to the back of his head. He flushed. “You?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart!” she replied, brightly. “Just out here to pick up the Bishop’s biscuits. There was a sale at the World Market, and they are his special favorites.”
Anthony looked over her bags, two of them, stamped with “WORLD MARKET” in blue and cookie-tin shaped bulges in them.
“Hm,” he said, in his non-committal way.
“What started it? Did you see?” she asked him.
“No, Sister. I didn’t,” he answered. “But Shadwell finished it. He shot the skylight, the absolute madman.”
“Did it shatter? I didn’t hear it shatter.”
“It didn’t shatter, but someone’s going to have to get into a cherry picker and take a look at it,” he said, and sighed. “Probably me.”
Sister Mary Loquacious heard the light footfalls and slight squeak of tennis shoes, running and running hard.
“CROWLEY! CROOOOOOWLEEEEEEY!”
It was little Warlock Dowling. She had not delivered that child. She’d been assigned to the unexpected guest who arrived that night. Their birthing hospital was very small and very exclusive. The Dowlings were welcomed as a matter of course. Harriet Dowling was a good friend of Alice Crowley’s. And Thaddeus Dowling was a business acquaintance of the Bishop.
The Satanic Church had always maintained certain Christian associations. Thaddeus Dowling was one of those. Harriet Dowling, who followed every instruction that she’d been given by the sisters, had a quick and easy delivery. Mother Superior delivered Warlock Dowling herself.
The unexpected guests were unexpected...and desperate. The Youngs weren’t going to make it to any other hospital. The law was very clear, and that law said that a birthing center had to accept any patient that came to it in active labor. And so, (less than ten minutes after his parents arrived) Adam Young had dropped into Sister Mary Loquacious’ arms, looked straight into her eyes, and screamed.
Two little boys, and two very different families. Adam Young had love, an abundance of it. Loving mother, old-fashioned father who was strict, but kind. An extended family of aunts and uncles and grandparents who welcomed him into their lives.
Warlock was not so lucky. Another sad little boy whose parents had better things to do than take care of him. Thankfully, he’d fallen in with Crowley and Beelzebub, who had taken up the slack for a self-involved mother and an absentee father.
And now, Warlock was careening through the mall, his eyes wild and his mouth desperate.
Sister Mary Loquacious heard the click of very high heels, and saw Emily Dagon running up from the Eastern Gate.
“What the everloving fuck?” she called out.
“Warlock!” Sister Mary Loquacious answered. “He’s in trouble.”
She also heard the heavy tromp of beat cop shoes on the cobblestones. Granny boots followed, not far behind.
“Crowley!” the boy cried out.
He seemed to stop running in mid-step, flailing his arms out towards Crowley. His feet ran out from under him, and his mouth became a round “O” of surprise.
More sneakers pounded the cobblestones behind Madame Tracy’s familiar, but nothing was louder than the man himself.
“Gotcha!” he cried, his eyes gleaming with triumph. “I’ve got you now, you little shite! And yer gonna pay for this one, mark my words!”