In Cavanaugh’s day, the coachman who did something similar would earn a curse at best, and a brawl at worst.
The mortal was chanting in Latin, between ragged gasps. “In nomine Patris—”
“Et filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” Hal joined the litany. “But you are not facing one of your usual enemies, priest.”
The mortal’s wet, clean-shaven face, speckled with blood—he coughed, spitting more claret—contorted. “Diabolus,” he hissed, pushing himself upward. It was amazing, to see how so fragile and shattered an organism could force itself to move. His hat had been knocked away, and without it, he looked even younger.
Hal shook his head. “No, my friend. Your god has no quarrel with me.”
The priest raised his gun; Hal stepped sideways to place himself before the barrel’s small, angry mouth. There was a deathly silence behind him—his bearer had not been harmed. He would know, and in any case, the pillar he had placed her behind was quite capable of deflecting—
Hal realized his mistake just as the mortal lunged. Perhaps it was desperation that gave him such speed, or his god. In any case, he rammed the black-bladed sword through Hal’s chest.
Pain, faint and faraway behind a queer draining sensation.
How interesting. His hand flashed out, caught the mortal with a short, sharp cracking sound, and the priest went flying again.
Normally he would simply step sideways into the incorporeal, but the blade was a black, rusted nail holding him to physicality. Hal grasped the swordhilt, pulling it free inch by inch. One of his knees buckled. Ah, I see. The Church has loosened its restrictions on the older ceremonial sorceries. The blade stung his fingers when he sought to clasp it instead of the hilt, which was rapidly becoming awkward. His arms simply weren’t long enough. “Ah.” From very far away, he heard his own voice, baffled and somewhat hoarse.
“Hal?” It was Emily, right next to him. “Oh, my God, Hal!”
He motioned at the sword. She let out a sobbing breath, both hands clasped to her mouth, her hair gloriously mussed and her eyes wide as saucers.
She was concerned. Fearful. For him.
He motioned again at the swordhilt and grabbed what he could of the blade, ignoring the fresh pain through his palms. He pulled, and there was very little time. The priest was somewhere to his right, near the lift, and possibly still had his pistol. Emily was vulnerable, and Hal could not move.
So this is what fear is. The thought was very slow, and now he saw the true power of the blade. All it had to do was hold him for long enough, and the priest would attack his defenseless mortal bearer; a bullet to her heart or head would send Hal back to the castle in a rage of…
Emily grabbed the swordhilt. It was wrong, her beautiful hands should not have to touch such a thing. Her mouth moved slightly. She was repeating Hal, over and over again. It was a fine time to wish he had a true name, one he could give her, hear her lips shape.
She pulled, squeezing her eyes shut, and the sword eased free of his chest just as the priest, slow as a damaged engine but just as powerfully determined, lifted his head from the shapeless heap he had become near the lift doors. Sound, color, breath all roared back into Hal, and he heard Em’s sobbing breath and her “My God, a man with a sword, what the fuck—”
She let go of the hilt as if it burned her, too, and the sword hit concrete with a loud metallic clatter. The priest lifted his remaining weapon, and Em’s head snapped to the side. She saw the pistol rising, and her mouth opened as if to cry warning.
The rushing of power filled Hal’s ears, and he moved.
Neat Trick
“Stay still.” Em swallowed, hard. Her stomach was still unhappy with the whole blinking-from-the-parking-garage-to-home thing. It was a good thing she hadn’t eaten lunch. “Oh, Jesus. We should really get you to a hospital.”
The genie was bleeding, thick trickles of wrong-looking dark red fluid about the consistency of glue. The hole went right through him, and she sloshed peroxide over a wad of cotton balls. The whipped-cream house had a white-and-gold bathroom right next to her bedroom, and along with her usual clutter under the sink was a first-aid kit she definitely didn’t remember buying. It had just sort of…appeared, while she was digging frantically for the cotton balls.
Gauze. She needed gauze, for God’s sake.
“I will be well enough.” He winced, looking down at his chest with detached interest. His shoulders were absurdly broad, and with the blue sweater off he looked…well, if there hadn’t been the two big bleeding wounds on him, she might have had a few moments of artistic appreciation of that torso. Maybe the sweater had been like genie Spanx, hiding him. His arms were pretty respectable, too; she could have sworn he’d been much leaner before.
“This might hurt.” She bit her lip and pressed the wad of cotton and disinfectant to his chest. “Did it nick your spine? Jesus. Seriously, this needs medical attention, and right now.” The lights over the mirror were shaped like lilies, and gave out a warm golden glow. There were two bathtubs—a cast iron one she’d seen in a Restoration Hardware catalog and a sunken one she didn’t ever remember coming across. Who needed two goddamn bathtubs?
It was insane. Everything about this was.
“I am not mortal.” Hal winced, lifting his hands. His ponytail had loosened a bit, and without his hair scraped so severely back he looked a little younger. A little softer, too. “You do not need to—”
“The hell I don’t!” What was with him? He was acting like…like…she couldn’t even find a word for it. “You just got stabbed with a sword! By that guy outside the CopySend, I might add.”
“He was the strange man you saw?” His hand closed gently over hers. Very warm, very solid, and not shaking in the slightest. “He followed you, then. You should not have left the library.”
You will not blame this on me, goddammit. “Excuse me? I am an adult, I can go where I damn well please. Do not try to derail this conversation. You got stabbed.”
“It is already closing. Look.” He peeled her fingers away, and the stained cotton balls gave her another burst of that queasy feeling.
The edges of the stab wound, flushed and raw, were sealing up, slowly but surely. The blood, except where the peroxide had touched it, was helping. It welled thick and gleaming, then somehow faded to skin color as the hole in the genie shrank.
“You’re going to need a bandage.” Her voice shook. This was worse than the car accident and Steven’s bloody nose. “Two bandages.” I should have gauze on hand. I really should.
“Emily.” He plucked the sloppy wad of cotton and too-red genie blood from her, closed it in his free hand. When he opened his fingers, no trace remained. “Thank you.”
“For what? That’s a nice… We have to at least disinfect it, you could get…” Did genies get infections? Could she just smear some antibiotic ointment on it and call it good? Jesus.
He squeezed her fingers, gently. “All is well.” He was trying to sound reassuring, she realized. “In an hour or less, I will be fully healed. That particular weapon is unpleasant, but I am on my guard now.”
“Well, fantastic. That’s just great.” She tried to pull her hand away, but his fingers clamped down. Not painfully, just very decisively. “He could have shot you!”
“He certainly tried.”
Thanks, that’s ever so helpful. “Why?”
“He is a priest. Almost certainly of the Order of St. Bartholomew. He perhaps thinks me a demon. It is very interesting.”
“Fascinating, I’m sure.” Em tugged again, but he wouldn’t let go. “First werewolves and now this.”
“They were not ever human; they are Appetites, not werewolves.” He shook his head a little, winced again. The wound was making a very small, very definite sucking noise as it healed. It was so quiet in here, other than the two of them, that she could hear it. And her own breathing, and his. Plus the ragged stamp of her heartbeat in her ears. “And this priest was no doubt sent by the Fratres. Normally, they
do not engage the help of the Church.”
So there are actual werewolves. Good to know. “My mother is a Catholic.” As if it mattered. “Look, you…I… He shot at you—”
“At you, actually.”
Oh boy. She swayed a bit, and the peroxide bottle in her other hand sloshed. “Why…why would…”
“They think almost anything…abnormal…is witchery. In the old days, people were more pragmatic.” He exhaled, a long pained breath. “The Fratres will have much explaining to do to our friend.”
“Well, he’s probably dead. He looked like he had a bunch of broken bones, and—” It hit her all at once. Good God. A priest. A human being.
Dead. Someone was maybe dead.
“Their god gives them certain dispensations. Priests of his kind are durable, for mortals.” He shifted his shoulders to ease his back, and Em shook her head. This surgically clean, luxurious bathroom was nice, sure, but she really, really wanted her apartment with the familiar, persistent stains in the grout and the fact that she could reach for anything without looking, knowing exactly where everything was.
“You got stabbed.” I’m repeating myself. “Someone shot at us. And whatever those hairy things were, you know what? It doesn’t matter. I didn’t sign up for this.” Finally, she worked her wrist free of his grasp, even though he probably could have kept it. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’m in it. Goddammit. Someone’s dead. There’s been a murder, and I’m an accessory.”
“No. He is still alive.”
Well, thank goodness for that. “How do you—no, wait, don’t answer that.” She shook her head vigorously, her hair whipping back and forth. One of her curls almost ended up in her mouth. “No way, no day.”
“Emily—”
Well, at least he wasn’t calling her mistress anymore. Yay. “You are going to sit right there and get bandaged.” She glared at him, wishing her head didn’t feel so funny and light. “Then we are going to get some dinner, and we can go through everything I found at the library today, and we’re going to discuss just exactly how to get you free of this thing.” And everything back to the way it was.
Hal’s face settled back into severe somberness, but his gaze was uncomfortably direct. “You assume I wish to be free of it.”
Well, yes. Yes she did. Wouldn’t anyone? “Well, don’t you? You said you’re a slave.”
“I was.” He gazed at her, dark eyes dancing-alive. Had his face changed a little, too? The nose a little shorter, the cheekbones a little muted? A genie could probably look like whatever he wanted.
“So, do you want to be free, or do you just want me to give the ring to someone else? Someone who knows about all this stuff?”
“No, Emily.” He spread the hand that had held hers against the glaring wound, and his eyelids dropped to half-mast. When he pulled his fingers away, there was nothing but a short, livid scar. Just like Dad’s bypass surgery. “I do not wish another bearer.”
“Oh.” She swayed again, the peroxide almost falling from her slackening hand. “That’s a pretty neat trick.”
“Nobody has ever insisted on bandaging me before.” His mouth turned up at one corner, slightly.
Em set the bottle down on the marble countertop next to the shell-shaped sink. “Yeah, well, your former, uh, bearers, were dicks.”
With that, she blundered out of the bathroom, almost barking her shoulder on the doorway, and set off to find the kitchen again. This place was a pile, and she couldn’t even imagine living here. It was only slightly better than a hotel, because all her stuff was here.
Halfway down the hall she stopped, feeling blindly for the wall. A slightly bluish white paint made the corridor light and airy, and it certainly smelled better than the apartment building’s public spaces. She had to lean against the wall, heavily, as her head swam. There were limits to what a girl could handle, for God’s sake.
At you, actually
Shot at. She could still hear the huge booming, feel the lurch of the world around her that was Hal just blinking into being next to her, then somehow she was behind a concrete pillar and hearing the zing-pop of bullets. It was nothing like it was on television or in the movies. In real life it was just loud and terrifying, and it made you want to pee because your entire body was too heavy and you couldn’t run without dropping some ballast.
At least she hadn’t pissed herself. There was that to be grateful for. Maybe.
It had all happened so fast. Peering around the pillar and seeing Hal, the point of the strange sword sticking out his back and dripping with that thick red gel, and coming face to face with her own cowardice—because she knew the right thing to do was to run out and help him, but she had frozen.
All her life she’d been the one to play it safe. Where had that gotten her? Still, it was probably too late to change.
So she pushed away from the wall, set her shoulders, and found herself twisting the ring on her finger, back and forth, meditatively.
It moved easily.
Rendering Unto
The old man paced. To the window, and back. To the study window again, once more back to the desk. Outside, sleet slapped down in waves, beating on soggy grass and a few stray leaves blown in on a restless, chill wind. Slow, measured footsteps. Every time he stopped at the desk, he glanced at the map, which still stubbornly refused to show any more than it had the last fifty times he’d checked it.
“It’s taking too long,” he muttered, sometimes softly, sometimes a little louder, as if daring Peter to disagree.
That was a dare Peter did not take. Instead, he focused on the newspaper. The obituaries were a sad crop—looked like Eldridge Moss was being called “a loving father” and “pillar of the community.” Repressing a snort at this marvelous but completely necessary misstatement, he glanced over the paper’s rim, enjoying the flickering warmth of the fireplace. “Perhaps the brothers of Bartholomew have grown cautious.”
“Levity is unhelpful.” Thin lips lifted in a snarl, and the nose-bulb twitched in time to the syllables.
Yes, indeed, the old man was in a mood.
“I was not attempting it, sir.” The lie came smoothly. “I was merely remarking that the Church has to keep certain things below the sightline. As do we.” The leather-clad books in this room made small creaking sounds, responding to the charged atmosphere. The old man was throwing off concentrated waves of frustration and impatience. Powerful fuel, but unreliable.
“At least the spirit will disappear when the thief is dead.” A baleful glare directed at the window, as if the old man suspected the ring’s current owner—who, to be fair, probably had no fucking idea what she’d picked up, and probably didn’t even use the damn thing—to be standing out on the sodden lawn. “That will convince them of the Devil.”
And what if the priest takes the ring? But that was unlikely—they did not strip the bodies of their victims anymore. They preferred to go after targets with moderate estates, and add those to church holdings; the corpse was left for the authorities to fold into their statistics for the year, rendering unto Caesar the problem of where to bury those who dabbled with the wrong sort of powers according to Rome. It would be a simple matter to retrieve the ring from police impound.
Once the creature was removed from play and the map cleared up, nothing would be easier.
The hilt pressing against Peter’s spine was still comforting, but also painful. He didn’t dare alter his posture. He slept clutching the knife under his pillow, and just this morning he had taken the whole thing, sheath and all, into the shower with him as well.
You couldn’t be too careful. When the map changed, the old man would be distracted, and Peter would rid the world of a monster. Then, his reward would be waiting to slip onto his finger. Nice and easy.
It was a plan even the old man might have liked.
Peter settled further into his the chair and listened to the footsteps. Back, a pause, and forth. The fire popped and crackled, and he wished the old man would take a bath
or something. His ancient scrawny frame was rank as a goat’s, and it made the whole room smell.
Lost in HELL’S HOLLOW
Hal’s chest ached. It had been a long time since he had met a weapon that could wound him, that was indeed half the pain.
The other half…well.
Em sat on the hardwood floor, priceless Persian rugs spreading their jewel tones around her. She’d pushed the exquisite curve of the coffee table away and settled her back against the pale leather couch. Drawing up one knee, she scanned a piece of paper, set it carefully in one of the piles arranged on the floor before her. She’d tried to confine her hair in a braid, but curls worked free every time she forgot and tried to run her hands back through it, in frustration or fascination. She absorbed much more slowly than he did, but she wanted to sort through the papers first, and he found he did not mind. While she read, he could watch her, and that was…satisfying.
She had insisted on his partaking of dinner with her—the large dining room was too much, so it was the breakfast bar in her lovely new kitchen with its blond wood cabinets and the Corian countertops, artificial stone in many colors. The food, delivered by a cheerful young man in a metal chariot who had thanked her kindly for a gratuity, was still hot. Indian, she called it, and the explosion of tastes and textures was quite novel indeed. Hal did not eat for fuel, but it was pleasant to consume, and even more pleasant to watch her sate mortal hunger.
Sometimes she played with the ring while she read, and each time his breath would threaten to stop. She appeared not to notice the ease with which it slid upon her finger, instead of being fused to her flesh. If he could have held her hand just a little bit longer, he might have thought to seal it to her, and his almost-disobedience might well have gone unnoticed for some while.
“Here’s something,” she said, finally, holding up two closely-printed sheets and tucking her pencil behind her ear. It almost vanished into her hair. “Give this an eyeball, see what you think.”