Life and Limb

by Jennifer Roberson

  I opened my mouth to ask another question, such as why was it angels couldn’t do all of this on their own and leave us out of it entirely, but she was just—gone. Between one moment and the next. “You know,” I mused, “it would be helpful to be able to do that. Just translocate our heavenly asses right out of here.”

  Remi was staring at the ash and grit now smeared across the ground. Then he looked at me. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Is it clear?”

  So I let myself go, lost myself, sensed nothing of malevolence, nothing of evil. Just an absence. No colors at the edges of my vision, no blurriness, only an impression of emptiness. Then a little of the now-familiar comforting green eased itself in.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s gone. Nothing at all left here.” I looked at the scuff marks, boot impressions, paw prints. “So, what was it?”

  “What was what?”

  “What she said.”

  “Oh, the Latin? It means ‘Our father, creator of all things good, of all things holy, rid this place of the sight and sound of this pestilential beast of hell.’”

  I laughed. “Oh, that’s good, even if it is a mouthful. I like that. Pestilential beast of hell. Very cool.”

  Remi lifted his rifle, tipped the barrel back against his shoulder. “Let’s go, pestilential human. I’m fixin’ to go horizontal for a while, then eat half a cow.”

  I looked again at the absence of dog, absence of surrogate that had killed four people. The entire complex of ruins was free of demon, completely cleansed. Free, too, of the cloying scent of its perfume.

  I followed Remi up the low ramp leading out of the ball court.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Fifteen miles up the road from Wupatki, my vision went black, then red. I blinked hard, eyes wide, then squinted, tried to clear away the colors washing across my vision. Eventually I braked, slowed carefully and veered off road onto shoulder. My eyes felt foggy, but I could see.

  Swiftly I pulled my helmet, planted it on the handle bar, swung a leg over the saddle. Even as Remi in his truck pulled up I walked straight across the road, stood on the other shoulder. In the moonlight, against the stars, the huge cinder cone bulked black against the sky.

  I heard the truck door open, heard Remi climb out, slam the door closed. He crossed the road to stand beside me, but said nothing. He seemed to know instinctively when not to speak.

  My vision was clear again, but I knew all I had to know. “It’s a domicile.”

  “What, the cinder cone?”

  “I think it’s another black dog, though I can’t be sure.”

  “I don’t feel it,” Remi said. “I mean, I felt the angel, but nothing now. No sense of surrogate.”

  I looked at the top looming over us. “It’s up there somewhere. It owns this place.”

  Remi turned, walked back across the road, got into the truck and hauled out his rifle, a shotgun, another box of shells and bullets.

  His tone was completely casual. “Well, then let’s go kill us another demon.”

  * * *

  —

  The full moon helped us make our way. It bloodied the cinders, lit up swatches of yellowed grass, illuminated dark vegetation upon the flanks and sentinel pine trees. I knew that surrounding land was always more fertile after an eruption, but above the treeline the cone was all cinders, nothing more.

  We maneuvered across the broken lava field, trying not to sprain or shatter ankles in the process, until we reached the base of the massive cone. On the hike from road to base, Remi had nearly killed himself several times while Googling on his phone. Now that we had reached the cone, he was full of facts.

  “It’s one thousand feet high,” he said, “and one mile in base diameter. It erupted twice in the twelfth century. One lava flow traveled six miles.”

  “Does your phone tell us how to kill a demon in a black dog guise?”

  Remi sounded amused. “Well, I’d have to do a search on that.”

  “Do it,” I suggested pointedly, “after we’ve killed this thing.”

  McCue carried his rifle, not a shotgun. He had tucked a few spare bullets into the pockets of his jeans. I, on the other hand, did have a shotgun as well as my Taurus. Blessed cartridges in the shotgun, blessed bullets in the revolver.

  “Blessed” sounds a whole lot better than saying they were bathed in breath and spit.

  “You’re sure it’s up there?” McCue asked.

  “I’m sure one has been here, or is here. I’m the one who handles places, remember? You’re the one who’s supposed to identify demonic presence. Preferably from a significant distance.”

  Remi tipped back his head and gazed upward, following the line of the round-shouldered pyramid from base to top.

  “We’re not splitting up,” I declared.

  “Hell, no.”

  “So let’s climb this sucker.”

  Okay, so climbing up a mountain of cinders is not the easiest thing I’ve ever undertaken, especially at night with only the moon to see by. It’s like planting boots in dry, loose, pebbled sludge, and every time you try to push upward the cinders give way and you lose ground. It was one step forward, four sliding steps back. Slamming boot toes into the cone, as if we were climbing Everest with crampons, didn’t do much, either, because the cinders simply crumbled away under our boot soles.

  Remi said, in a breathy tone, “The elevation here is over eight thousand feet.”

  I was panting now, trying not to slide and lose ground I’d gained. “Do I need to know that?”

  “Well, it explains why we’re both breathing like a bellows.” He sucked air. “We’re not acclimated yet, either of us.”

  Plant—dig—slip—slide. Over and over again.

  McCue was right. The altitude was sucking breath and strength from us both. “Anything?” My voice was hoarse. I wanted water badly.

  “Hold . . . Gabe, hold—”

  I stopped climbing. Felt myself slide a few inches. Remi was a couple of feet down from me. He brought his rifle up to cradle it across his right elbow, the barrel snugged into his left palm.

  He shushed me when I tried to ask him a question, his face shadowed beneath the brim of his hat where moonlight couldn’t reach.

  “Oh yeah,” he said at last. “It’s here. And it’s another of those big bastards.”

  “Black dog?”

  “Yup.”

  “Two? They’re traveling in packs now?” I lost another inch or two as a shift of my weight stirred the cinders afresh. “That’s not like anything I’ve ever read. They are solitary beasts.”

  Remi said tautly, “It’s coming.”

  He and I went down on our bellies. I hooked my right elbow back so I had access to the shotgun trigger. All I had to do was rise up onto my knees and blast the sucker.

  That is, if it came close, and if it offered a large enough target.

  Moonlight painted the cinder cone. I saw the beast upon the flanks, literally slinking downward. Like water, it flowed.

  I saw, too, white eyes shining, broken now and then by a blink. And then it stopped blinking and just stared, even as it continued to flow like dog-shaped mercury down from the heights.

  “Go left,” I said tersely, “I’ll go right.”

  Because if we stayed where we were, so close together, it would be nothing for the black dog to leap into the middle of us and shred both our throats with no effort at all.

  As we split, it stopped moving, sat down on haunches and elbows, butt uphill, chest heading downward, and contemplated us. I saw it lift its nose to scent, as nostrils flared. Jaws opened.

  And it leaped.

  Remi stayed where he was, flat on his belly save for the rifle butt tucked against his shoulder. A Winchester ’73 is not a sniper rifle, it couldn’t be set up like a true-born s
niper rifle, but it did fire bullets.

  He got off two shots. Both missed, digging out divots and sending a spray of cinders into the air. As the black dog came down toward him, I rose up onto my knees and let go with one barrel, but as the beast fell sideways, too near Remi for comfort, I knew it wasn’t enough.

  “Keep your head down!” I shouted, taking huge sliding strides through cinders. And as the beast reared up, blood running black beneath the moon, I fired the other barrel and took out much of its head.

  “Okay,” I croaked, realizing how out of breath I was. I turned, sat down on my ass with boot heels planted downhill to arrest a slide, and tried to breathe. “By the way, alphas rule.”

  Cinders whispered, crunched, tumbled as Remi, on his knees, made his very awkward way closer to me. He collapsed on his belly, head uphill, rifle in one hand as he lay against the massive, mountainous pile of cinders.

  He was breathing hard. “Do you think Greg will come?”

  “Why would Greg come?”

  “To clear the domicile. I’m assuming this place remains fouled by the demon.”

  Oh, it was fouled. Definitely unclean. “Well, you know the Latin for it now, right, since she said it? Can’t you do it?”

  Remi shook his head. “I didn’t hear it in Latin.”

  “She said it in Latin.”

  “I didn’t hear it in Latin. It was, I don’t know, mumbo-jumbo.”

  “Aramaic?”

  He contemplated that a moment. “Better learn it right quick, hadn’t I?”

  “I heard it in Latin.”

  “Maybe you can do it, then.”

  “And risk saying something totally wrong? I don’t think so. We could end up clearing our own asses right down a rabbit hole.” I inhaled, tasted that awful perfume of demon death and decomposition. It coated my tongue. I spat, spat again, gagged, finally was able to speak. “Okay, we have to figure out how to do this. Because if we don’t, another surrogate will show up to re-establish a claim, people will die, and we’ll have to come back to kill it, too. Can you sound out what she said by ear? Do you remember enough of it?”

  Remi clambered to his feet. “I reckon I can try.”

  I summoned Yoda again. “Do or do not, there is no try.”

  “You’re just a regular fanboy, aren’t you?”

  “Pot, kettle. You get those references.”

  “Okay,” Remi said, ignoring that, “she assumed a specific position, put up arms and hands just so. Then she spouted the mumbo-jumbo.”

  We both set down our guns and stood facing upward, where we could see the body. I felt a little stupid putting my hands up in the air, and thought McCue looked stupid, too, but we copied what we’d seen her do.

  It looked better on a woman.

  So there we were, hands raised in the air, palms turned outward. Remi commenced chanting. And I heard it as Latin, even if he was trying out the Aramaic, or whatever language Greg had invoked. I waited for the whole pestilential beast part, but nothing happened. The body remained where it was, not exploding and not burning.

  In the quiet of the night, we looked at one another. “Go again,” I suggested.

  Remi rolled out the chanting a second time.

  Nothing happened.

  “Well,” I said, “apparently we need more schooling in the fine art of blowing up demons. I’ve got the magic phone; I’ll call Grandaddy. If he can’t come to clear the domicile, maybe he can at least tell me what we’re doing wrong.” Remi was frowning, not paying attention. “Earth to McCue. I’m calling Grandaddy.”

  “Wait,” he said. He looked at the ring on his middle finger. “High-five me.”

  “What?”

  “High-five me.” He lifted his arm up in the air, displayed his palm.

  I stared at it a long moment, looked at him, finally started the arc that would fulfill the gesture.

  Remi caught my hand, flattened both, one against the other, began the chanting a third time.

  Our rings met, clicked together like magnets, and the corpse blew up.

  We were close enough that we could not escape the flying body parts. As portions slid down our faces, fell off our shirts, were kicked free of boots, all the bits of the exploded surrogate caught fire. We did not, fortunately, though I didn’t understand why we hadn’t been burned at Wupatki, either. Maybe it was more of our celestial energy.

  Remi and I retreated as best we could, sliding in cinders. As the stench of the perfume rose, I pulled the top of my jacket across the lower portion of my face.

  “This is downright gross!” Remi exclaimed, unsticking his shirt from his torso. “And we can’t go around in public blowin’ up demons. It might could be a tad bit obvious.”

  “We didn’t blow up the ghosts at the Zoo. We didn’t blow up the possessed cop. Maybe it has to do with the Latin. What you just recited was different from the rite of exorcism. This was about clearing the domicile. Rick, Dick, and Candy did it for us at the bar—though it was cockroaches, ash, and grit—and Greg did it with the other black dog. And yes, it is gross.” I thought about it. “I guess if we kill a surrogate rather than exorcizing, we can just haul the body out of wherever it is, find a safe place, then do the Latin and blow it up there.”

  “We’ve got to ask more questions,” Remi declared. “They’ve got to tell us more than they have. It’s like going in blind. The guys before us who got torn to pieces? Maybe it happened because they didn’t know enough. In which case, the angels set them up for failure, and now they’re doing the same with us.”

  “Why? It makes no sense.”

  “How the hell should I know! Even Lily said angels were secretive . . . and Greg tracked you down in the bar to warn us about differing agendas.”

  My hair was damp and tangled, my leathers slick with—monster goo. Though I guess I should be grateful that my clothes hadn’t burst into flames. “Let’s go,” I said. “We’ve saved the world from two more demons, and I want to shower, have a celebratory drink, hit the sack. This whole sneaking around in the middle of the night is wearing.” I held out my hand, palm down, looked at my ring. “That was pretty cool, though, the ring-thing.”

  Remi thought about it. “Grandaddy gave us rings that help us. That don’t sound like a man who wants to get us killed.”

  “Maybe it’s not Grandaddy. Maybe it’s someone else.” I turned, began the descent. McCue came along behind me, crunching cinders as he slipped and slid. Hell, maybe it was everyone out to get us.

  But still. Greg was an angel—and it would probably piss her off that we called her Greg instead of by her true name, but Ambriel sounded too much like Ambien for me—and had indeed warned us. The angels with the porn star names helped us. Grandaddy had been helping us in one way or another since we were kids.

  Yeah, time to have a talk with the man—

  I stopped short, turned around, slipped a little, then fixed Remi with a glare. “You need to work on your aim.”

  McCue glared back. “You ever try to kill a charging black dog while lying on your belly praying not to slide down a volcano even as you do, and working a lever-action rifle?”

  Well. No.

  “Okay,” I said, “maybe we both need the practice.”

  But not tonight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  We returned to the Zoo after last call, which meant an empty parking lot. Once again we pulled around back, found the door unlocked—needed to ask Ganji about this—and went in. I wanted to go straight to the stairs, but Ganji—man, the dude was big—appeared to be waiting for us.

  “You have had an eventful evening,” he noted, viewing the state of our clothing. “And also, this came for you.”

  On the bar lay another manila envelope.

  “Well, damn,” Remi said wearily. “This shit’s startin’ to make me feel meaner than a skilletful of ratt
lesnakes.”

  “Did you see anyone?” I asked. “I mean, did you keep an eye on the mailbox in case you could see the person delivering the envelope?”

  “It was not in the mailbox,” he answered. “It was placed just outside the back door.”

  This time Remi grabbed the envelope and tore it open. He read it, then handed it to me. Same as the first time: letters cut out and stuck to the page by Scotch tape.

  But this message was different: ‘I know what you are.’

  I looked at Ganji. “Can you give me a drink? And then another one? Maybe even a third. Because I’d like to get some sleep, and now my brain will be making the jump to lightspeed.”

  Remi turned down a drink, said he was going to shower and go bed. I made it through one drink before the activity of the night caught up to me.

  Ganji said, “Go to bed. I, meanwhile, will go up the mountain and sing to her.”

  I rose from the stool. “Uh—don’t wake her up yet. At least let me catch a few hours of sleep. Then you can do a Pompeii number on Flagstaff.”

  As I started to turn, Ganji said, “I was there.”

  I blinked, turned back to him. “At Pompeii?”

  “I am at all eruptions. They happen because I sing them awake. I am their lord. But here, now—it is not yet time. You may sleep without fear.”

  I stared at him a long moment. “Give me another drink.”

  * * *

  —

  My brain eventually did slow down from light speed, and I slept. I dreamed about volcanoes erupting, black dogs exploding, and some whackjob sending us mysterious messages. And since I hadn’t eaten before going to bed, just showered after Remi then collapsed, I awoke ravenous and starved for coffee.

  Eggs, bacon, country potatoes, toast. I was feeling human again on my second cup of coffee when Remi showed up in the doorway. His face was grim. “The deep web’s working again.”