Cam and I just stared at each other for long moments, before he whistled lowly. “What the hell?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” I peered up the staircase, but we didn’t seem to be in danger of her returning. “I guess she has strong feelings about the Church.”
The dark-haired man shook his head. “Don’t we all?”
We spent the next few minutes in awkward silence, Cameron fiddling with his train diorama while I kept waiting to hear Sveta’s boots on the stairs. I had no idea why Sveta had lashed out that way. The first time I’d ever seen her in Ivan’s presence, I thought she was going to punch him, and they hadn’t exactly been on warm terms in the times since. The display of loyalty was unexpected to say the least. Her venom toward the Knights Stuckupidus was startling, too. I mean sure, I bagged on them all the time, that was mostly because I was a jerk, not because they’d done anything particularly bad to me. I wondered what Sveta’s story was. I wondered if I had the balls to ask.
“It wasn’t a gas leak, was it?” Cameron looked at me from across the table, one eye magnified comically by the single lens.
“You know it wasn’t.” Cam knew about the souls I carried. He could see them plain as day, just like any other magic user. It wasn’t hard to make the leap that someone, or something, had finally come calling for them. “Whatever it was, it blasted through every ward on the place. Just…wham, gone.”
I saw his face pale a little at that. He knew the strength of the spells that had protected my home until today. “What are you going to do?”
“Not sure yet.” I leaned my hip against the table, careful not to jostle any of the tiny plastic people. “Carlotta and Terrence aren’t making any headway, and if Axel knows how to get them out, he’s not telling.”
Cam’s lips pressed tightly together at the mention of the demon, but he wisely left it unremarked. The priest and the demon had tangled once before, about a year ago, and neither was fond of the other. “Is it time for me to call Rome, then?”
I didn’t believe for a moment that Cameron hadn’t reported my situation to his superiors months ago, but I let it go. “Yeah, probably. Let’s wait ’til Ivan gets here, though. We don’t want to have to hash this out twice.”
“Fair enough.” He bent down to adjust something on the roof of a miniature drugstore. “If it’s any comfort, Jess, I think they can help you. I really believe it.”
“Glad one of us does.”
It was another good hour before the kid got back with our new guest. To kill the time, Cameron regaled me with information about model trains and the keeping of such until I was almost ready to go up and face Sveta’s wrath instead. It occurred to me, though, about halfway through the torture, that this was probably how people felt when I started going on about bushido and Japanese history, so I nodded when appropriate and pretended to be interested. Those of us with weird hobbies have to stick together.
We could hear the doorbell ring from the basement, and by the time we got upstairs, the greeting committee had already beaten us to the door. I couldn’t help but smile as my feisty daughter flung herself at the large, silver-haired man, gleefully shouting “Tjadko Ivan!” Obediently, he caught her and hoisted her into the air, but I saw the faint grimace that crossed his face, and it made me look closer.
Ivan was a big man, topping me by several inches, and broader than two of me in the shoulders. (Come to think of it, with the kid’s recent growth, I was now the shortest adult male in the house by at least an inch. That sucked.) Despite his age, which I put at anywhere between fifty and a hundred and twelve, he moved with the grace of a fighter, and held himself with the rigid posture of a soldier. At least, he had.
Beneath the black trench coat he always wore, those strong shoulders were stooped now, thinner somehow. His mane of pure white hair, always neatly groomed into a sharp crewcut, seemed yellowish. The hollows of his cheeks were more pronounced, and there were dark shadows under his piercing blue eyes that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him, which was only a few months ago. When he moved to set Anna back on her feet, it obviously caused him pain, and he stood up again slowly.
Estéban, following behind with Ivan’s duffel bag, caught my eye and gave me a small frown. He’d noticed too. I shook my head at him slightly. Now wasn’t the time to mention it.
Mira presented herself next, hugging the old man gently, then introducing our newborn son. A smile split Ivan’s craggy face, and he held Billy for a few moments, murmuring softly to him in Ukrainian. The baby gazed at the new face with rapt attention, and again I had to wonder if maybe he understood everything the old man was saying. Whatever the case, Billy only fussed a little when his mother took him back.
Mira also introduced Bridget. Ivan bowed over the doctor’s hand, kissing it gallantly, and when he stood upright again, his eyes found me.
“Dawson.” The voice, that thick, gravelly snarl, was the same, so deep I expected it to vibrate the windows. That was the Ivan I expected, and I started to wonder if I was overacting to his changes in appearance. I mean, the man was entitled to stress like any of us, right?
“Ivan.” Stepping forward, we clasped arms like veteran warriors do. The hand the gripped mine was still strong, still vice-like, but the flesh had wasted away. I wouldn’t quite call it skeletal, but the tendons and veins stood out in sharp relief. Pushing my worry to the back of my mind for the moment, I stepped aside and gestured toward Cameron.
“Ivan, this is Cameron. He’s Doctor Bridget’s boyfriend.” Belatedly, I hoped that Estéban had briefed our esteemed leader on Cam’s covert status. Bridget didn’t know about champions and demons, much less that the love of her life was an incognito priest and warrior for the Catholic Church.
Regardless, Ivan didn’t say anything that would blow Cam’s cover. He shook the younger man’s hand with a stiff nod, and Cam bowed his head respectfully. “Sir.”
Ivan’s eyes swept the foyer where we’d all crammed in, and a frown crossed his face. “Svetlana?”
I opened my mouth to make up some excuse for Sveta, when her voice responded from the behind us. “I am here.” She’d obviously been watching us from the shadowed hallway, though why she hadn’t come forward, I didn’t know.
Her response was apparently sufficient for Ivan, because he nodded to her briefly. “I would like to be sitting, if possible. The flight was to being very long.”
“Sure thing. Kid, go drop his bags in the spare bedroom.” Sure, Mira and I were supposed to share that, but one look at Ivan told me that he shouldn’t be sleeping on the couch. My wife and I could bunk on the air mattress with Anna, and when Mira shot me a small smile, I knew she agreed with me.
Ivan relinquished his coat, and I was startled by how much his impressive frame had shrunk in the last four months. That was more than stress. I caught Mira and Bridget exchanging looks too, and I made a mental note to pick the good doctor’s brain later to see what her diagnosis might be.
Our strange group took up every inch of available space in Bridget’s living room, even with Estéban and me occupying the floor with my kids and our enormous dog. Dinner was determined to be pizza, after much negotiating about sizes and crusts and toppings. Ivan ordered pineapple and arugula on his which just about floored me. He had never struck me as a pizza fan, let alone someone who had such particular tastes about the cuisine.
Sveta perched herself on the carpeted stairs, silently watching as we all exchanged small talk and caught up on our lives. She ate a few slices of pizza when it was offered to her, but she made no effort to join us, and her blue eyes rested on the big man at our center more often than not.
For a little bit, we were just normal people, doing normal people stuff. We ate, we talked, we laughed. Ivan told some outlandish stories of his travels, highly edited of course, in his unique version of English, and was generally the very picture of a charming houseguest. I watched him closely, but his energy level seemed good, as did his spirits. Maybe I was seeing nothing,
flinching at shadows.
Eventually, the little ones started nodding, and Mira took her leave with that as an excuse. Bridget departed soon after, citing an early work meeting in the morning. Cam raised his face to receive a kiss, and promised to come along shortly. We all waited in silence for a few moments until we heard a door shut upstairs. Finally, we champions were alone. Almost immediately, the atmosphere of forced cheerfulness faded away, and the conversation grew somber.
“We are all to be knowing of the events of this day already, I assume.” Ivan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and fixed me with a look that should have drilled a hole right through my skull. “So I must ask… The creature you are to be dealing with. It prevented harm to your wife and the little ones. What is it to be asking in return?” I’d been dealing with Axel for years, but Ivan had only found out recently. To say he was unthrilled was a grossly exaggerated understatement.
“He hasn’t asked for anything, yet. In fact, he seemed offended when I mentioned it.” The demon had disappeared almost immediately, without calling in the favor. I found that both oddly out of character, and disconcerting. I hadn’t been able to parse his angle yet, and it was worrying me.
Ivan made some sort of disapproving growl in his throat. “It will. They are not to be doing good deeds for the sake of it.”
“Can they?” All eyes turned toward Estéban, and his dark skin grew ruddy with his blush. “Stop, I mean. Can they choose to stop being evil?”
There was a long silence after that, and I finally sighed. “The thing is, kid, I don’t think they think of themselves as evil. You gotta remember, every villain is the hero of their own story. To them, they’re just doing what they have to, to survive in their own world. Just like any parasite.”
Ivan snorted at that, but nodded slightly. “Nothing is so terrible as a man who is to be doing the wrong things for what is to being believed the right reasons.”
Inwardly, I flinched at that and moved my hand to make sure my hoodie sleeve hadn’t ridden up to reveal my demon contract mark to the world. It was still covered, and while I didn’t think that Ivan’s remark had been meant specifically for me, it stung. A lot.
The old man sat back on the couch then, and his gaze went next to Cameron. “You are to being in contact with Cardinal Giordano?”
“Um, not him directly, no. I’m a bit lower on the totem pole than that. But I can pass a message through the regular channels, if need be.”
“And how long will that to be taking?”
“If I flag it urgent, I should hear something back in a few hours. It can depend on the time difference.”
“Tell them the situation has changed. They will to be answering sooner, I think.” Ivan also assumed that Cameron had already told them all about me. “Everyone here is to be having their traveling papers, yes?”
We all answered to the affirmative, but I shook my head when Estéban opened his mouth. “You’re not coming.”
Anger flared into his dark eyes, proving that he hadn’t quite outgrown his adolescent temper just yet. “Why? Because I’m just a kid?”
I turned to look him square in the face, because that is what men do. “You stopped being a kid a long time ago. Long before Mexico, even if I didn’t see it yet. Now listen very carefully to what I’m going to say next.
“You’re not coming, because I need you here, protecting the three most important things in my life. You’ve worked with Mira’s magic before, you guys blend well together, but more than that, I know you love Mira and my kids as much as I do. Even if we weren’t leaving for Italy soon, you know I can’t stay here with them anymore. Today proved that. And so you’re all I have, Estéban. I’m putting my entire life in your hands.” I held my hand out to him, waiting.
The kid – I had to quit thinking of him like that – held my gaze for long moments, then nodded and grasped my arm tightly. “Sí. I will stay, then. And I will protect them with my life.”
I smiled a little, holding on when he would have pulled away. “Don’t forget to take care of yourself, kid. I’d be pretty torn up if something happened to you, too.”
He blushed again, and rolled his eyes at me in typical teenage fashion, yanking his hand back. Despite the show, I knew my faith in him had pleased him.
Ivan cleared his throat, the abrupt noise making us all jump a little. “Brother Cameron, if you would to be making your phone call. The rest of us should be getting what rest will come. We may to be having little notice before our flight.”
Sveta and Esteban made to bed down on the couches, and it didn’t escape my notice that the woman hadn’t said a single word since Ivan’s arrival. While she wasn’t exactly prone to excessive chatter, I’d never known her to not have an opinion on things, and her continued silence puzzled me.
Cam showed Ivan to his room, and I continued on down the hallway to where my family was sleeping, curled up on an air mattress in Bridget’s office. I opened and closed the door quickly, not wanting the light to wake the baby, but the brief glimpse showed me Mira, curled up protectively around Annabelle, with her other hand outstretched to touch the side of Billy’s portable bassinette.
What I’d told Estéban was true. No matter how many souls I carried with me at the moment, my soul, the only one I would ever own, was there on that air mattress. If something happened to them, I’d die. Simple as that.
Chapter 5
Unsurprisingly, my nightmares followed me into my sleep. They seemed evenly split between reliving old horrors and dreaming up new terrors to plague my night. Over and over again, my wife and children were torn away from me, screaming, and I would jolt awake with my heart pounding, ears straining for the sounds of an incoming threat that didn’t exist.
The glowing digital clock on Bridget’s desk ticked away an hour in ten minute increments, before I finally gave up for fear of waking Mira and the kids. Chunk, who had flopped down by our feet, raised his square head curiously as I rose, but I gave him the hand signal for “stay” and he lay his chin back down on his paws with a soft sigh.
I made it to the stairs before I heard soft bare feet padding behind me, a sound I automatically recognized as my wife. She slipped her hand into mine, and we made our way into the dark kitchen, mindful of the pair of jumpy champions sleeping below us in the living room. For a long time, we just stood there by the sink, me watching out the window while she wrapped her arms around my waist and tucked her head under my chin where it belonged.
“You know we can’t keep doing this.” Her quiet voice broke the stillness, and her breath tickled my bare chest. “I can’t keep doing this.”
“I know.” I buried my face in her wealth of curls for a moment, then leaned back so I could see her face. It was impossible to tell that her eyes were green in the darkness, but I knew they were. Knew exactly what shade of emerald they turned when she was serious.
Her fingers traced my jaw, reminding me that I hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. “I’m sorry, Jesse. You’re doing the right thing. You know I believe that. But…when it threatens my children, it’s too much. I just… It’s bad enough, not knowing if you’re coming home, but…”
Tears welled in her eyes, and I hugged her tightly to me again. “Shh. I know, baby. You’re right. You’re so right. You never signed up for any of this, and I just keep getting in deeper when I keep meaning to dig out.” God, I was an asshole. All of this, everything that had happened to us for the last six years, was my fault. Every close call, every sleepless night, every near-death encounter. A man shouldn’t do that to the woman he loved.
“They’ll fix it. We have to believe that Cam’s people can fix it,” I murmured into her hair.
“And if they can’t?”
I hesitated for a long moment before answering. “Baby, I can’t come home. So long as these souls are in me, I can’t come back and put you and the kids in danger.”
A deep breath escaped her, like she’d been holding it, and it felt like she shrank in my arms. �
�What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it, I guess. Estéban’s staying with you, though. Between the two of you, you can ward the house again, and he can help out with the kids when you have to work.”
“Does he know?”
“Yeah. He understands.” Looking down, I tilted her head up to make very sure she was watching me. “You and the kids are my entire world. Protecting you has to come before anything else. The second – and I mean the very second – these things are gone, I’m out. No more challenges, no more demons. I’m done.”
A ghost of a smile flitted across her face, but the sadness never left her eyes. “You say that now.”
“I mean it.”
“Jess.” She silenced me with her fingers against my lips. “I know you. I know that you couldn’t turn someone away if they were in trouble. And you shouldn’t. You wouldn’t be you, if you did. I wouldn’t ask that of you.”
“You shouldn’t have to ask it of me. I should have done this a long time ago.” I pressed my forehead against hers, just breathing in her strawberry scent. “I’m sorry, Mir. I’m so damn sorry, about all of this.”
And now it was her turn to soothe me, her small hands stroking my hair. “Shh. I know.”
We stood there for a long time, silently comforting each other, until a tiny, plaintive cry came from upstairs. Mira left me alone with a gentle kiss, and shortly after she disappeared, the house fell into deep silence again.
I stayed at the kitchen sink and watched the sky go from black, to midnight blue, to a faint tinge of gray emanating from somewhere beyond the housing addition. Dawn is a sneaky thing. One moment you’re staring out at the dark sky. The next, it’s blossomed into this pale gray with streamers of pink, and you’re never quite sure just when that happened.
One more sleepless night to add to my count. I still had no answers.
A Line in the Sand Page 5
