Sinners and Saints

by Jennifer Roberson

  She nodded. “So some whackjob is a copycat for Jack the Ripper?”

  “No,” Remi said, blue-bandaged arm resting against his abdomen. “We think it is Jack the Ripper.”

  Kelly now seemed to be a little more angry than she was frightened. I knew many of us find refuge in anger rather than lose ourselves to fear. “So, what—he’s been cryogenically frozen for decades, and someone’s thawed him out?” She shook her head, dismissing it. “What do the police say?”

  Remi and I exchanged a long look. I shrugged. “We haven’t contacted the police.”

  Kelly displayed the photo of herself. “Well, then I will.”

  “We haven’t contacted the police,” Remi began, “because we don’t believe it’s a human doing the killing.”

  She was incredulous. “Not a human?”

  With unflagging courtesy, Remi nonetheless was frank. “You came face to face with an angel on the mountain.”

  Kelly shook her head. “And I still don’t believe you.”

  Remi was unfazed. “Well, this version of the Ripper is likely a demon.”

  Kelly shot to her feet. “Are you crazy? Demons aren’t real!” She flung out an arm. “Stories aren’t real, or the creatures and people in them.”

  Macha, the wolfhound, had come to sit beside Lily, who stood in the center of the garage with legs spread, inked arms folded across her chest. She was a slight woman physically, but great in presence when she chose to be. She’d said nothing for a while, but now an eerie, unearthly light kindled in her green eyes. “Were I to name myself, were I to show myself—would you call me a liar, then?”

  I looked at Lily more sharply. The tone in her voice had changed.

  “Sit down,” Lily commanded Kelly. “Better to see it seated.”

  Mary Jane Kelly lingered a moment, then slowly sat down in the camp chair. She was completely still, and blatantly unhappy.

  Lily’s smile was slight. “Nemain!” she called. Then she placed her hand on the top of the wolfhound’s skull. “Macha.”

  It wasn’t the crow who entered, called from another room. And it wasn’t an Irish wolfhound sitting beside Lily. Women. Two women. Two red-haired women completely nude, garmented only in knee-length hair and a webwork of blue tattoos. Their eyes, as Lily’s, were green.

  She grinned at me and raised her brows. “No more wondering what’s under my clothes, Gabe.”

  And then she, too, was nude. She, too, had red hair reaching to her knees. But unlike the other women, empty-handed both, she was heavily armed. In her left hand, a spear, and barbed arrows. Hanging behind her back, suspended by a leather loop, was the round Irish shield, the sciath, made of brass decorated with concentric circles of Celtic knotwork and animal designs that were echoed in the colored tattoos on Lily’s bare arms. In her right hand, a claideamh, the ancient Gaelic sword.

  “Ní neart go cur le chéile,” she said. “There is no strength without unity.” She indicated the two women. “My sisters. Our tri-part unity. Should you insult one of us, you insult us all.” Her tone now was scathing. “Ask the great hero Cuchulainn about the subject.”

  The story of Cuchulainn, and what became of him, was probably one of the best known bardic tales in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. But the blank expression on Mary Jane Kelly’s face told me she knew nothing of it.

  “The Morrigan was Ireland’s Goddess of Battles,” I told her, feeling back in the classroom again, “and she took a liking to the great warrior known as Cuchulainn, the King’s Hound. But he spurned the Morrigan’s advances, which pissed her off royally, and so she prophesied his death. Wounded in battle, he tied himself to a standing stone with his own intestines so the enemy would not know he was dying, and thus would not attack.”

  Kelly made a sound of disgust.

  “But the Morrigan took crow-form and perched upon his shoulder, and so his enemies knew he was dead, and then, well . . . cut off his head.”

  “It took him too long to die,” Lily said. “But I played no part in the wounding of him. I merely relished the death.”

  After a long moment, all Kelly could manage was a rather weak, “Oh.”

  Of no one in particular, I asked, “She’s quite the cheery woman, isn’t she?”

  Lily smiled. “Then if I come to you, Gabe, to take you into my bed, you’ll know better than to refuse.”

  To which all I could manage was a rather weak, “Oh.”

  Mary Jane drew in a very deep breath, then let it out on whooshing breath. “I’ll take the whiskey now.”

  * * *

  —

  Thanks to Lily’s family tableau, Kelly now believed what we’d told her was true, though that belief seemed tentative. We departed the garage and went back through to the RV’s living/dining room, where the Morrigan’s sisters once again were crow and wolfhound, and where Lily, once again unweaponed, seemed less intimidating. She handed Kelly the tumbler of whiskey she’d only tasted before, then sat down on the floor where Macha placed a bewhiskered head in her lap. The golden eyes closed as Lily began to stroke an ear, which kind of squicked me out. I mean, she wasn’t actually a dog, but a sister.

  Whiskey wasn’t really to Mary Jane Kelly’s taste. She managed another sip before making a face and setting it down in the sink. She glanced around for a seat, ended up sliding into the horseshoe dinette across the table from Remi.

  “So, up there on the mountain, you thought I was a demon?” she asked. “A real live demon?”

  “Thought it was possible,” he answered.

  “And the other night, when you sang the exorcism ritual to the tune of Ave Maria . . . that was about a demon?”

  “Tryin’ to flush one out so we could kill it. Well, that is—if we’re actually killing them. We’re not certain-sure.” Remi scratched his head. “What we do know, so far, is that when they appear to be dead, when they look like bugs who’ve been popped in the microwave, other demons try to grab their remains and take ’em home to hell, where they get reconstituted. Or re-something. I reckon otherwise they stay dead.”

  “Which is why we’re trying to make sure the remains aren’t collected. But we’re still learning,” I said. “Remi and I kind of got thrown into the middle of a war we didn’t even know existed. We’re mostly learning as we go. So when you insisted on scooping up those remains . . .” I shrugged.

  “You thought I was a demon.”

  I nodded. “At some point Remi’s super powers will wake up all the way and let us know who is, and who isn’t, before we have to get that up close and personal, but for now we’re just kind of bumbling around trying things. That’s why he started reciting the exorcism up on the mountain. You wanted some of the bug-things that came out of the cat’s mouth. We didn’t know who—or what—you might be.”

  “I really just wanted to take them to an entomologist I know at Northern Arizona University,” Kelly said. “That stuff, the remains, came out of the cat? So the cat was a demon?”

  “Apparently so,” Remi said. “Demon snuck into it most likely to go after us.”

  “Like I said, we’re learning as we go,” I repeated. “But as it was explained to us, demons can take hosts. So yeah, the cat was basically borrowed. He—it; whatever—was going to take out Remi, until I took it out with a .357 round.” I left out the part about me bathing it in my heavenly breath. One thing at a time.

  Kelly nodded absently, thinking things over. “I don’t suppose legally changing my name might help?”

  I grinned briefly, then looked at Remi. “Do you think he’ll still come after her, now that we’ve found her? I mean, if he was basically gaslighting us—”

  “With murdered women.”

  “Yes, but we’ve found her. She’s protected now. Would he continue?”

  Remi was unconvinced. “He had a picture of her delivered here. What he wrote on the back can’t b
e anything but a threat.”

  We got next. Yup. I looked at Lily. “Any advice? You seem to know all the secrets.”

  A smile lit up her eyes. “I know many things, it’s true, but not everything. It’s the doing of the angels. I’m just here for the war.”

  I dug the magic phone out of a pocket, pulled contacts, hit Grandaddy. To Remi, I said, “Let’s see if he answers this time.”

  He didn’t. Well, he did, but not by live voice. Angels use voicemail, too. I announced that we were to meet him at the Zoo. Then Lily broke in to give him a message, and added that she was bound for New Mexico, that someone in Albuquerque needed help.

  “New Mexico?” I asked her blankly as I disconnected.

  “I have the entire Southwest Division, so to speak,” Lily said, “not just Arizona. I told you that before, that I won’t always be here. You’d best load up on ammo before I leave. Heavenly spit on bullets works on demons, but not on werewolves.”

  Kelly’s voice was faint. “Werewolves . . .”

  I stood up, Remi slid out of his dinette seat and grabbed his hat from off the valance. We were still damp; back at the Zoo we could shower, change into dry clothes.

  Lily tapped the dog to make her move, then rose herself. She smiled at Kelly. “You’ll be going with them, for now.”

  The ranger blinked. “I will?”

  “The Zoo Club has been cleared,” Lily explained. “No demon can get in there. You’ll be safe there. Here as well, but I’m leaving.”

  Kelly slid out of the dinette and stood. “I have a job. A regular job.”

  Lily shrugged. “So do they, and it’s to keep you alive.”

  “C’mon,” I said. “I’ll ask Grandaddy what he thinks we should do.” I looked at Lily, could not delete the picture that popped into my head of her nude but cloaked in rivers of hair, weighted by weapons.

  Lily’s smile was wicked. “Our tryst is merely delayed, Gabriel. In the meantime, consider poor Cuchulainn’s fate. Had he not spurned me, he might not have tied himself to a stone with his own entrails and had me perching on his shoulder as he died.”

  Remi laughed, the asshole.

  Lily quoted William Butler Yeats, Ireland’s great poet:

  Cuchulain stirred,

  Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard

  The cars of battle and his own name cried;

  And fought with the invulnerable tide.

  “He was a fanciful man, was Yeats,” she said. “But he did keep his entrails in his body.”

  I scowled, put a protective hand over my gut, headed back to the garage.

  The cowboy was singing, and this time it wasn’t country but R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World.” I grabbed Kelly’s unfinished whiskey and knocked it back. My head, thanks to Lily, was full of Yeats.

  I remembered other words. I’d loved them as a boy.

  The world is full of magic things,

  patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

  But I was impatiently waiting, and my senses as yet dulled.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  At some point pickup truck manufacturers quit making them with bench seats in the front and switched to bucket seats, AKA captain’s chairs. This meant you couldn’t squish passengers in between the driver and the person immediately next to the door anymore. But Remi had a dual-cab model and there was plenty of room back there for Mary Jane Kelly, her rain suit, and her daypack.

  Also room to set the muzzle of her reloaded 9-mil against the back of my head, or Remi’s, were she so minded, but we had established she wasn’t a demon. Merely a park ranger, albeit one still mightily confused by matters. We’d made it clear we didn’t intend for her to believe this was a kidnapping, that we truly wanted to protect her, but I wasn’t sure what was going on in her head.

  Grandaddy’s white ’63 Thunderbird was parked out front of the Zoo Club, so at least we actually were going to have an in-person conversation. I was hoping he had additional information about the demon who was mutilating women and sending us photos of their bodies, and perhaps suggestions how we might keep Kelly safe.

  “He’s . . . unique,” I mentioned as Remi pulled the truck in next to the T-bird; still morning, the Zoo wouldn’t open until much later, so we’d have the place to ourselves for quite some time. “But he could be a huge help with this whole mess.”

  “Who’s unique?” Kelly asked.

  “We call him ‘Grandaddy,’” Remi said, “on account of that’s what he told us to call him when we were boys. He’s not actually related . . . well, in the normal sort of way.”

  She blurted a choked-back laugh. “You already introduced me to a blood-thirsty Irish goddess and her shapeshifting sisters. So this guy is, what, King Tut?”

  I triggered my door lock. “Maybe we ought to ask him that.”

  Remi opened the truck’s back door before Kelly could, extended a hand to help her out. It crossed my mind to wonder if she’d refuse and climb out on her own—my ex-fiancé had insisted on doing all doors on her own for feminism’s sake—but Kelly laid her hand lightly in his, jumped down, thanked him, and let him close the door. Remi did the courtly little you-first gesture again, pointing her toward the front of the building. She thumped up the four wooden steps in her hiking boots and attempted to beat Remi to the big front door. She didn’t manage it because his arms were longer. He pulled it open, gestured her in with a warm smile.

  “Such a gentleman,” I said as I hip-checked him out of the way and made him bring up the rear.

  In daylight, all the copper, wood, glass, and iron inside blended into rustic simplicity. The ornate barback sparkled and gleamed; the mirror glinted, catching and throwing sunlight across the parquet dance floor. Polished tree trunks and glass stringlights glinted, though the latter reminded me of the orbs Shemyazaz had commanded. I eyeballed the strings wrapped around the trunks holding up the exposed beamwork, but they appeared to be perfectly ordinary light bulbs.

  No one was at the bar. Or in the booths. Or at the tables.

  And then I heard the crack of a pool table break and looked beyond the dance floor, the dining tables and booths, to the alcoved area by the back door. Ganji was bent over one end of the table, cue stick in hand. Behind the table stood Grandaddy, hands wrapped around a stick with the butt floor-planted.

  I shot a side-glance at Kelly. Grandaddy was an imposing man, and looking at him as if I’d never seen him before—as Kelly was—reminded me all over again that he carried an innate power. I didn’t know if it was because he was an agent of heaven, or just that kind of guy. And I wondered if his body was borrowed, too. If the body at one time had been an infant on the verge of death, only to have the tiniest spark of “heavenly essence” implanted that grew into Grandaddy. Who were his human parents? And how old was he?

  These were things I’d never asked him. He just was, like the Rock of Gibraltar. Permanent. Immovable. Could he even die?

  Tall, broad, brimming with vitality but also a quietude, rather like power carefully packed away so he could be in polite society without alarming anyone. He wasn’t young; silver-white hair flowed nearly to his shoulders, his beard and eyebrows were pepper-and-salt, heavy on the pepper. His face was creased beside the eyes, craggy below. He wore, as always, an old Western-style frock coat, as if he were mimicking Wyatt Earp and his brothers in the middle of a Tombstone street. Blue eyes watched us as we came across the dance floor toward the alcove.

  Ganji had broken, and three solids resided in pockets. He straightened, smiled at Kelly as we reached the alcove. Large, black, shaven-headed, with an affinity for black t-shirts and jeans. His dark eyes had clearly seen the ages pass.

  “Was that you?” I asked. “The earthquake? Did you sing the mountain awake?”

  “I sang to soothe her,” he said, in his African-accented English. “I sang for her
to soothe the broken angel.”

  Kelly looked at him sharply. “He’s an African god,” I told her helpfully.

  She blinked hard, opened her mouth to say something, but Grandaddy’s deep tone overrode her.

  “The letter is genuine,” he said.

  Remi was clearly surprised. “It’s the actual letter? The From Hell letter?”

  “It is.”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “The actual letter was lost over a hundred years ago from the police files, along with the kidney,” Remi said. “Fortunately they took a photo of it—it’s why we know what it said, what the handwriting looked like—but it was never proven to be genuine.” He frowned. “Studies suggested if any of all the letters received were the real thing, that one was, but so many letters were hoaxes that it created questions about all of ’em.”

  Kelly was frowning, clearly on the verge of demanding more answers.

  “The letter is genuine,” Grandaddy repeated. “Trust us to know better than the police and reporters, particularly of the 1800s when forensics constituted of little more than examining body parts.”

  Well, yeah, okay. Angels probably had a few more forensic specialists on their side.

  “The kidney was legitimately human,” Remi agreed.

  “What kidney?” Kelly asked.

  Remi looked hesitant. Too gentlemanly, I guess, to tell a woman the gory details.

  “Jack took a trophy and sent it to the police,” I told her.

  She was horrified. “A kidney?”

  I nodded. “This is why we want to keep you close.”

  “They knew it was a left kidney, which would be obvious,” Remi said. “They knew it came from a woman, liver damage proved she was an alcoholic, and it was delivered, preserved in spirits, three weeks after Catherine Eddowes’ body was found missing a kidney, so it all fit. And some were certain this letter, from among many, was written by the actual killer. Even modern handwriting analysis backs that up—well, as much as it can, based on a photo.”