Book 2: Mark of Cain

Cain's face softened. He pulled a green towel from a rock and wrapped it around his waist. "Right. Well, I suppose this is awkward. You look just like her. You are her. I thought that, if you saw me, you would remember. I just wanted to see you again. After what father did to you, to us, I never thought I'd see you again."

I squelched my shoe in some mud. "Um, Henry and I, er, your father and I aren't really a thing. Like at all. He's kinda a jerky Harry Styles lookalike."

Cain's lips, who had the same dramatic Cupid's bow as mine – urgh – parted.. "I wasn't talking about Adam."

"Uh… okay then. Look, sorry I look like your mom or whatever, but you're a stranger, and whoever your mysterious father is, if he's not Adam, I've never met him."

Cain laughed. All dark and earthy. God, he sounded just like Sam. Why?

The world's worst brother squeezed water from his long, luxurious hair. How the hell did he bathe and not get a rat's nest of tangles? "I'm sure you two are very close."

Dread gripped my stomach. Yeshua was busy blowing bubbles.

I sat down on a boulder, dizzy. "Wait, no. That's not what the Bible says! Sam doesn't have a fatherly bone in his deadbeat ossified body."

Cain deftly changed into a black and green cloak that hung from a clothesline. "Apparently you haven't been reading between the Biblical lines, or the Kabbalah, for that matter. That John fellow even calls me 'son of the wicked one' in the New Testament. I never did like the apostles."

Yeshua was sunbathing on a rock. "John liked to exaggerate."

"But Sam hasn't mentioned you once!"

Cain gave a wild laugh. "He inherited his parenting habits from his Father. Both like to sacrifice their sons and ignore their cries for mercy."

Yeshua rolled onto his stomach and sighed. "Dad's not all bad. Just consumed by his Work. I served my purpose."

Cain rolled up the sleeves of his robe. "At least your Father cares for you, Yeshua. Mine? He's an idiot."

My skin prickled.

Cain looked at me with eyes like green stars, or new onions freshly pulled from rainy earth, and laughed. "Deus in Absentia, I suppose. Deisim. The Clockword God. Now my Mark has been pulsating each night, the farther God wanders, perhaps he is busy creating a new Prodigal Son. First Lucifer-Samael, then you, dear brother. I was always the one of cursed fields, Havashem, Eve's renown. We are bitter herbs, mother, not meant for gentle song."

Goosebumps prickled my flesh, and I looked away, intimidated. Cain approached like a dancing serpent.

"Look into my eyes, mother," he hissed. "Tell me I am pleasing to my own dearest darling Creatrix." He cupped my face and brushed red hair back from my brow. "You look like Magdalene, like the Fallen Woman, like the Woman Clothed in the Sun. Only you are missing your angel."

I batted his hands away. I looked into his eyes. "Give us the Mark, Cain."

"Not until my lovely wife Naamah of the cymbals gives us dinner..." he whispered, then he grabbed my hand and yanked me forward. "Samael will be the death of you. Reject him, like his Father cast him out, like my grandfather cursed me. Our bloodline, the Qayin seed, bears only dragon kings, and you are not even twenty one. You stink of mortality. Kill God, kill Samael, kill Michael. Reject the Throne and Pit. You were not meant for gentle song." He bean to shake, then cry, his dirt-stained nails digging into my hand. Then, violently, he fell to my feet, clutching my knees, and wept, his long hair like Lazarus grown long from a corpsy shadowed grave. "Why did you leave, mother! The years are bitter wine without you. Abel is dead, Seth is dry bones. Why did you die? Why did I live on! Every day in Nod is exile of rancid meat, and all I eat is dust."

"Let go of me," I said gently. I tried my best to be motherly to this mad son, who had all of Samael's severity, and none of my innocence. I timidly patted his head. His tears were black, grimy and rainbow fractal like oil. "I'm... not sure what to make of you," I said, distraught but placid, trying to maintain my emotions. Cain was the roadmap to God. Without him, we were better off dead, Yeshua included. What Yeshua was doing fucking around Purgatory, I literally had no idea.

Yeshua watched us like an antelope on the slopes of Gilead. Like the cedars of Lebanon, he radiated a heavenly smell as he surfaced from the waters. "Cain, be gentle, my friend. Your hatred for your absent dad has nothing to do with her."

Cain's crying abated. He looked up at me and raised his hands in prayer. "Bless me, your Havashem as father called me..." he pleaded. "Bless me!"

"No!" I said, at wit's end. This dance was madness. This whole roadtrip to the galactic backwaters of Nod was complete and utter insanity, Yeshua and the Yugo included.

"Bless me, and I will relinquish the secrets of the Mark," he hissed, and suddenly his clover green eyes had slit pupils, and his nose became a snake's, and his skin was scaled and emerald, and fangs weeping poison jutted past his canines. "I will not ask again."

I steeled myself against this unforgiving scion. "I'm just human... son... what powers I have as an ascendant, they're limited, and I don't really understand them."

His eyes wept black poison. He lifted his hand and bit himself. Black blood welled up. He smeared it at my ankles. "Father bit you there once, bruising your heel," he said solemnly. "I have always hated the curse of Nachash, dear mother, shining serpent I am, bound to wander this gypsy life of gutters." He made the shape of an hourglass on my ankle, and the poison suddenly evaporated, and a violet mark like a black widow was left on my left ankle. "My poison blesses. This will protect you as you journey into the heart of darkness. I dare you to show it to fucking father. Unlike me, you will find bread at the table with freshly cut cheese and salvation wherever you go. An open door, kind friends, love. You are your own answer, Eve. You were tested by God and the Devil when I was young, and you clutched me and Abel to your breast and made the answer your own. You are as much God as Yeshua, Michael, Samael, and Yahweh. You will find your answer at the Ghent Altarpiece. That is the secret to Lucifer, the language of the serpent, the key to all. Look for the Blood, remember the heart. Both are needed to crown yourself."

"Quit the esoteric bullcrap, god Cain, you invented emo. And I don't invoke Father lightly!" Yeshua laughed, such a deep belly laugh for a small frame. "Let's go have dinner."

Cain rose and composed himself. He looked on me fondly, completely human again, snake madness and Samael's curse and God's rejection gone. "But of course. Naamah and I have only the freshest harvest for you. Greens, browns, rubies, purples, yellows, oranges. We are colorful gypsies. To nourish my mother is but what I have wanted all my life, when I squandered so much of her tears."