by A. Sparrow
Karla had her knee crushed at the hands of a Hashmal. Junger had warned her not to help any cripples or else he would have her join them. Turned out, he wasn’t kidding. If she had known how quickly he followed through on his threats, she might have taken him more seriously.
Her assistance never amounted to much, so she didn’t think anything of it. It was basic human decency. Helping people back to their feet when they had fallen. Lending a shoulder to those who needed a little steadying. She would have done the same for Junger had he needed it.
The Hashmal and his squad had happened by when she was walking with a man named Cyrus who had a bit of a wobble in his gait. A hand on his hip from time to time was all he had needed to remain upright.
Cyrus was an old soul, his skin smooth and glossy from his knees and thighs rubbing together. His face had been sand-blasted to a rough suede and his feet were shredded so badly it looked like he had pieces of shag rug stuck to them. The wobble was a recent development.
“Don’t know what happened,” he had told her. “Something swept over me and now I’m walking like a drunkard.”
Karla had said nothing, but this was a bad sign, the beginning of the end. When bodies wore down, the ‘glue’ adhering souls to their vessels came undone and everything slipped out of synch. It would not be long before the dark shadows of his soul would begin showing around his edges.
The process was irreversible. There were rumors of ‘shades,’ naked souls ripped entirely free of their flesh, yet still roaming, haunting the landscape. Ghosts, in a sense. Shy and vulnerable things, subject to collection by Protectors. Karla had never seen one up close, but she had seen strange shadows flowing across the landscape on occasion.
Junger and his squad of Protectors had made their way down the column doing what they always did, scolding malingerers, urging all on two legs to move faster. His gaze fell upon Karla and Cyrus like a hawk’s and he made a beeline for them, possessed with a fury far out of proportion to her offense.
“Insolent bitch!”
And that was all the warning she got. He reared back and struck her with a club-like mass of agglomerated bone that was his symbol of authority, its shaft all filigreed and etched in fishes and snails. The blow shattered her kneecap and sent her crumpling to the ground. Cyrus just shambled away looking cowed and ashamed.
“Let that be a lesson,” said Junger, as he left her in the dust.
Karla had glared at his retreating form. She pointed a finger, quivering with hate, attempting to retaliate with spell craft she didn’t even possess in this realm. She watching his retreating form dwindle, letting the crowd flow around her, rejecting all offers of assistance until Amy had happened by, dragging her famous left foot that had been smashed to bits by Junger’s club in a prior incident, and for pretty much the same reason.
“You okay?” she had said.
“I am fine.”
“Wanna walk with me?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
“Come on, then.”
She helped her up, and the rest was history.
Amy spoke some Italian, so they were able to switch back and forth from English. The way they got along with all the low-key squabbling and friendly disagreement kind of reminded her of being with Isobel … or James.
Isobel. Karla thought of her often and prayed she was well. At least she was with good people. Ren and Jessica and Helen. Between them, someone would take good care of her … and James.
He had been in terrible shape when she had last seen him in life, on the banks of Loch Ness. But she had left him too in the same good hands. The NHS would patch him up and heal him. And he would have returned to the goat farm. He loved that place. She only hoped his days of raiding and warring were over; that peace had come to the Liminality.
Because of the pain and regret it brought, she tried not to think about him too often. Her memories were more bitter than sweet. What could have been. What should have been. What wasn’t.
There were times, though, when she could close her eyes and leave the Deeps behind, heart warmed by the idea that there was a boy in this universe who had loved her.
The first seven Seraphim disappeared over the rim of the depression. Sightings of higher angels were rare enough to stall the horde. Not that long ago, three Seraphim had crossed the column but only two had returned. And just before that, Junger and his men had been spotted leaving the depression. They had not yet returned.
Something big was going down. Karla wondered if it had anything to do with the recent movements of the Horus. Ever since she arrived in the Deeps it had been a distant feature on the landscape, keeping its distance like a spooked deer. But then it had surged across the barrens, convincing many in the horde that the end was near, that they were finally the chosen ones. But then just before reaching them it had stopped and hovered in place. And there it stood screaming in every audible register, waiting as the fanatics in the vanguard rushed up slope to meet it.
The eighth Seraphim, the straggler peeled away from the others and curled back around over the column.
“What’s up with that bird man?” said Amelia. “Looks like he wants to land.”
Heads turned towards the fringes.
“A man is running … towards the mountain,” said Karla.
“Hmm. Maybe the Horus spooked him?”
Karla could relate to the fear. It built in her too when her gaze lingered too long and she fathomed all its darkness and weirdness and power. It shook loose a memory of when as a little girl she once looked down from a quaking bridge into a river in flood and imagined the whirlpools and undercurrents taking her deep and never letting her go. The Horus promised much the same.
Something sprayed forth from the object in the Seraph’s hand. Karla knew spell craft when she saw it. A cloud of globules the size of fat raindrops flew into the fleeing man and cut him down.
“Oh my God!” She paused, causing Amy to stumble. “Did you see that? He shot that man down.”
Amy nodded. “He’s no better than Junger.”
The Seraph alighted gracefully on the slope and stepped out of his wings.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Most kept on marching, but more than a few were rushing over to watch.
“Let’s go see!” Karla tugged her towards the fringes. As made their way through the onlookers another man stepped out from the fringes and approached the Seraph with a frightening confidence in his stride. He lifted his arm and lashed out at the Seraph with a spell of his own.
Onlookers gasped as the Seraph’s halo dwindled to nothing and the angel quickly succumbed. Until that moment, Karla had never suspected that Seraphim were mortal in any realm. How was this possible?
Many fled in fear, but had Karla possessed a functioning heart it would have exploded right then, because she knew this murderer of Seraphim. He was the boy who had so recently and vividly come to her in a walking dream.
But this was no dream. It was him for real—James—here in the Deeps. Maybe she should have felt joy, but no. A tsunami of dread and despair dragged her under. His presence here was a betrayal of all that she had hoped for him. It meant that his existence was now just as ruined as hers. And to top it all, here he was acting like a demon, murdering Seraphim of all things.
She spoke his name. He turned. Their eyes me, proving this was no delusion. Her frustrations boiled over. Angry words spilled before she could reel them back.
But before she could soften or qualify her attack, his flesh dissipated. As she watched, like a leaf consumed by an invisible flame, like a cloud in the desert sky, he dwindled away to nothing. Her anger became horror. She couldn’t help but believe that she had scared him away for good, that this vanishing was all her fault.
Chapter 43: Scorpion
Talk about bad timing. Why was she so mad at me? What the fuck? I reached for her, but Karla evaporated from view before I could figure out why she was so angry.
“What? Wait! No! Not yet.”
A maelstrom of visions and senses engulfed me. The ghost of that scene in the Deeps—Karla and Brian and the dead Seraph—lingered in my mental retinas. It competed with the more tangible feelings of simultaneously tumbling through the sky and lying flat and still on warm concrete.
Snaky tendrils like prehensile tails wrapped around me, cinching tight. Claws ripped through my wings, shredding their edges. And then I was yanked away to another iteration of myself, scalp all gritty, face all sweaty and feverish, listening to the girls chatter softly with each other. Meg participated, sounding less like a hostage and more like a BFF.
My confusion fell away. I understood what was happening. I was back in Hanover. It was Billy who had torn me out of the Deeps. He was in trouble and channeling his intense distress to me. What was so important to that couldn’t wait for me to at least talk to Karla?
One eye blinked out with the rake of a claw. Pieces of Billy went flying off. Something vicious was laying into him, tearing him apart. But what? A real animal? A hawk, maybe? Or some figment? Another familiar?
Billy flashed images at me with his one good eye. He kept showing me cars. Three of them, driving through campus real slow like a funeral procession. Somehow he thought it was important and the thing ripping into him didn’t want me to see.
I caught a glimpse of the tennis courts. Those cars were headed this way. Three carloads? Was Wendell sending an army of his assassins after us?
Billy sensed my wish to know more and valiantly buzzed the lead car with that other thing nipping at his tail. Through the tinted windshield, his insect eyes shared a brief mosaic of shaved heads, tattoos, body armor and automatic weapons.
A text chimed in on the iPhone. I dug it out of my pocket and gave it a peek.
Wendell.
“This should be interesting. Got my popcorn ready.”
I shrugged off my fever and picked myself up off the concrete. The sooner I dealt with this, the sooner I could get back to Karla.
“Well, look who’s back … so soon,” said Ellen. “Meg was just telling us about their little getaway on the coast of Maine. Twenty-three acres. Seven bedrooms. five and a half baths.”
“I don’t care about any fucking real estate. Listen guys. Someone’s coming. We gotta get ready. Something just tore the crap out of Billy.”
“The Frelsian?” said Urszula, scrambling for her scepter.
“Three carloads of Frelsians, looks like.” I looked around for my sword. I didn’t remember where I had put it. And I wondered now if I could even trust it, considering it was a gift from Wendell. What if he had rigged it with some kind of booby trap?
Meg had this big, shit-eating, told-you-so grin on her face that made me want to smack her.
“Make sure she’s tied up good. I don’t want her able to even wiggle a finger. Better cover her eyes. Lay her down on the floor, away from the windows. I don’t want her to see a damned thing that we’re doing.”
“You think she can do that magic stuff?” said Ellen.
“I wouldn’t doubt it, not if she’s hanging out with the likes of Wendell.”
I squinted across the field to a white van parked on a dirt access road along the edge of the piney woods. It hadn’t been there before and it wasn’t part of the images that Billy found important to share with me.
“That van,” I said. “How long has it been there?”
“I don’t know. Ten, twenty minutes.”
“Anybody get out?”
“Not that I saw. I figured it was just some groundskeepers.”
“That’s not a Dartmouth vehicle. There’s no logo on the side. Did you see that? There’s no logo.”
“So? It’s just a van. It’s certainly not Wendell. We know what he drives.”
Meg just lay there, grinning under her blindfold, looking way too comfortable.
Something slapped against the window and slid down the glass. It looked like a lump of damp, shredded leaves. It had to be Billy, or what was left of him.
But there was nothing to be done about him right now. He had done his job, and the three cars pulling into the stadium parking lot commanded my attention.
They scattered, two to either end of the field, one parking smack in the middle, facing the back of the press box. Something about them looked familiar. I noticed the dirty-yellow New Jersey plates.
My phone rang.
“Wendell?” said Ellen.
I checked the display. I didn’t recognize the number or the area code. 973.
“Holy shit! It’s Sergei.” I answered the call.
“Jimmy? So it is you up there in that shack? Hah! Mr. Wendell comes through for us. Such a helpful man. And he refused the bounty! This will save me a lot of money. Your bounty was getting very expensive.”
“Fuck off, or we’ll fuck you up.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I brought my best team with me. My all-stars. No more running for you, Jimmy. No more messing around.”
“I’m telling you Sergei, we’ll mess you up if you don’t leave. We’ve got … skills.”
“Hah! Skills? Like the bomb you used to mess up my gym? Go ahead. Use your bombs. We do not need to come so close. My boys are marksmen. Yusef was Serbian army sniper.”
“That wasn’t a bomb.”
“Oh, it was a bomb alright. A special bomb. No shrapnel or traces. No singe marks. But I know bomb damage when I see it.”
“Then you’re an idiot.”
“Oh now, be respectful. Or when we drag your ass away bleeding, I might not sparer you the torture as I was considering.”
“Why the fuck are you talking to me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I like hearing your fear.”
“I ain’t afraid of you. You’ve got no idea what you’re messing with.”
“Hey Jimmy, who is this ugly girl sitting next to you? She is not the one you had before.”
I muffled the phone and ducked below the window. “Fuck! He must be watching us with binoculars.” I stuck the phone back on my ear. “The name ... is James.” I clicked off and stuck the phone back in my pocket.
“Crap, guys. Wendell sicced Sergei after us.”
“This is good, yes?” said Urszula. “He has no craft. We have the advantage.”
“Stay low! They don’t need any craft. They’ve got guns. Assault weapons. Ellen, you stay here in the press box and keep down. Me and Urszula will handle this.”
Ellen, crouching by the door, glared at me, her chin set firm, both guns laid out in front of her on the floor.
Urszula took up her scepter and slipped out the door onto the bleachers. I followed right after her with my sword.
“You go that way, I’ll take this side. Let’s try to keep them out of the stands.”
I worried about that white van parked across the way behind us, but figured it was probably some contractor out fixing sprinklers or something. Our most imminent danger was Sergei’s crew.
I peeked over the top of the cinder block wall backing the stands. Sergei’s guys were being cautious. They were standing behind their cars, scoping us out. That incident with the parquet floor seemed to have made an impression. They knew they weren’t dealing with just another garden variety punk.
A dead leaf fluttered down out of the sky, hanging in the breeze a bit longer than seemed natural.
“Billy?”
He had followed me like some hurt puppy. Just my noticing and giving him a little bit of my attention allowed him to gather himself and strengthen.
Bits of leaf came together and annealed around the edges. Two wings sprouted. Again, it organized itself into something between a mouse and a moth. These fragments of will were like embers. Blow on them and they come alive.
“Billy, no screwing around. You know what to do.”
My familiar fluttered off, making a bee line towards the white van across the field. But that wasn’t where I had expected him to go. I had been hoping to get some intel on Sergei
.
Meanwhile, the guys flanking the bleachers starting working their way towards either end of the soccer field, preparing to bracket us in a crossfire. Urszula was on top of things. A pulse rippled through her arm. Bursting out the tip of her scepter came a spell as massive and potent as any I had seen her conjure in the Liminality. As for me, I was still trying to get my mojo working. For some reason, I just wasn’t feeling it.
Her blast looked like it would miss, but guided by her will, it curved right at the guys trying to flank her. It knocked the assault rifle clean out of one guy’s arms and plastered him to the ground.
The other guy dropped to his knees and sent a burst of gunfire zinging into the concrete wall. Urszula had already ducked out of harm’s way, her eyes ablaze with thrill as concrete dust sifted down over us. She winked at me and dashed to the other end of the press box, crouching beside the low wall backing the stands.
She popped up again and this time there was a flash and a sizzle from her stick. A ball of fire came rolling across the parking lot. It burned a streak across the blacktop and slammed into a Fedex receptacle, blistering its paint and incinerating its contents. Dang! Why couldn’t I do fire spells?
That second shot made the guys reconsider their little flanking action. They hauled ass to the edge of the lot and dove into a drainage ditch.
But the guys on my flank kept on coming. Their rifles were fitted with strange looking blocky things on the end of their barrels, silencers I suppose.
I stood there, dangling my sword, trying to summon that loosey-goosey feeling that unleashes spells but I had a case of fucking stage fright again, everything all tight and bound up. My stalkers were seconds from rounding the edge of the stands and having me in their line of sight.
The press box door squealed open. Ellen reached out and sent five quick shots over my head.
“Ellen! Get back in there. Get down!”
But being startled help grease the skids inside me. At least now I felt connected to my blade. Now it was more than just a knife in a gun fight.
Meanwhile, Urszula had that scepter of hers working overtime, as she tapped what must have been an immense reservoir of frustration, sending volleys of bewildering variety at the guys huddled in the ditch, fire and crystals and showers of acid. You name it, she could conjure it. It was like a good fireworks show. The guys in the ditch had no way to predict what was coming at them next.
