A Line in the Sand

by K. A. Stewart

  “He did this on purpose, you know,” I groused to Cam. “We’re getting screwed in favor of the little geek’s love life.”

  Cameron chuckled. “It’s cute, in a weird sort of way. And she obviously returns some of his feelings.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “He’s not dead yet.”

  Hunh. I hadn’t thought of it that way, before. Cam had a good point. Sveta allowed Viljo more leeway than I had ever seen her bestow upon anyone. Maybe she did have a soft spot for the awkward little hacker. “Still, I may kill him, after this.”

  “You may as well just settle in. We’re stuck like this for fourteen hours.” Cam had made himself at home next to the window with the ease of a frequent international flier. “Nudge me when they come around with the drink cart, would you?” He leaned his head against the side of the plane, cushioned on the complimentary little wafer they called a pillow, and closed his eyes. Almost immediately, his breathing evened out and he slept.

  I was going to kick him in the shin, too.

  There wasn’t much to say about a fourteen-hour plane ride. Takeoff was uneventful, and the safety lecture was equally boring and terrifying. I mean really, there is no water landing. There is a long plunge into the dark depths of the Atlantic, and no seat cushion is going to save you.

  I confess, I always found it a bit disconcerting, flying east into the night that fell quicker than it should. Like I’d lost a day of my life, from the already precious few I had left. They rolled a movie I’d already seen, and darkened the lights in the plane for those who wanted to try to sleep. I allowed myself to doze, a little, trying to make up for my previous sleepless night, but it was hard to relax with so many strangers moving about in the space around me. Any of them could be a threat in a way that the TSA could never scan for.

  I caught myself eyeing the four-year-old two rows ahead, to see if his eyes ever flashed red, and that’s when I knew that I was a hairsbreadth away from a neat white jacket and a padded room. Get a grip, Jess.

  “Sleep.” I glanced over, realizing that Cameron was awake again. “I’ll stay awake. I’ll watch.”

  I studied him for long moments before sighing. “I look that bad, do I?”

  “No. But I’ve seen others like you. Soldiers who never left the battlefield. I’ve kept watch for them too, so they could sleep.” The priest gave me a small smile, and displayed the book he’d picked up at the airport. “I’ll read, it’ll be fine. I’m more used to this trip than you are anyway.”

  With mental apologies to the poor soul behind me, I reclined my seat back just enough that I could stretch out a little. “Do you go back often?”

  “Couple times a year, usually. This year in Kansas City…this is the longest I’ve been away since… Since I joined.”

  “And when was that?” Cameron looked to be about the same age as me, and I was still on the younger side of thirty-five.

  “I was eighteen when I went to seminary. Twenty when I was recruited into the Order. They liked my ‘athletic potential’. So…fourteen years or so?” A small frown creased his brow. “Seems like a lifetime, already.”

  I snorted a little, trying to get comfortable. “At eighteen, I was just figuring out how to pick up girls and bluff my way into buying beer without an ID. Can’t imagine knowing that I wanted to dedicate my life to the priesthood at that age.”

  Cameron’s face was shadowed, lit only by the flickering movie screen at the front of our section. “It’s all I ever wanted to do. From the time I was small. My mother would take me to church, and we would sit there with the stained glass throwing beautiful colors all around us, and I could just feel God looking at me, smiling. I knew that I wanted to not only feel that, always, but to help other people feel that as well. That total, all embracing love.”

  “Don’t think I’ve ever felt that.” God and I, we had a tenuous relationship at best. I was willing to reluctantly admit that He might exist, but if I ever met Him, we were going to have a stern discussion about how He was running the world.

  The dark-haired man sighed quietly. “I still feel it. Moments when I know that He’s there, and He’s watching over us. But they’re not during church anymore. I sit in the pews, and I pray, and I feel like my words are echoing up into the ceiling but there’s no one there to receive them.”

  I sat quietly for a moment, trying to decide what to do with Cameron’s confession. I finally settled on a noncommittal “Oh?”

  He smirked a little, probably the only cynical look I’d ever seen on his face. “I know you’re thinking it’s because of Bridget. And it is, partly. I didn’t expect that, with her. But it’s not only that. The Order hands out these edicts and commands, and I’m just…not sure I agree with them anymore. They’re playing games with people’s lives. Your people’s lives, other lives, it doesn’t matter. And if we’re all serving the same cause, that seems a little…wrong.”

  “You can always quit, y’know. Come over to the dark side. We have cookies.”

  He rolled his eyes at me, but smiled. “I don’t know if quitting is something I can do. Hoping this trip will help me figure it all out. But, regardless of my own mid-life crisis I have going on, I truly think they can help you, Jesse. We’ll get this worked out. I believe that.”

  I hate to admit it, but with Cam on watch, I fell into a coma pretty quickly. I think it was my body’s way of reminding me that I wasn’t sixteen anymore and that a missed night’s sleep must be repaid threefold. No dreams, no mysterious visions, just boom, I was out cold. Reina herself could have handed out the peanuts, and I’d never have known. The next thing I knew, a nice lady was prompting me to return my seat to its upright position, and we were landing in Rome.

  “What the hell time is it here?”

  Sveta smirked as she shouldered her way past me. “Day.”

  “Oh bite me, you had leg room.” So, maybe I don’t wake up well.

  Once off the plane, Cameron pointed us toward the luggage claim. “Go wait for our stuff. I’ll be back in a minute.” Hefting his carryon over one shoulder, he disappeared into the bathroom.

  I shuffled along behind Ivan and Sveta, doing my best to appear abused and tormented, but no one cared, and I soon gave up. With my brain still sleep-fuddled, I turned to bark a command at Estéban, only to remember just in time that he wasn’t with us for this trek. It was strange, not having my junior shadow beside me. The kid had been on my hip for almost two years. I missed him.

  As my head cleared, I started to pay more attention to the world around me. Ivan was speaking to a uniformed personage in Italian, and I had to wonder if he spoke that any better than he spoke English. Sveta had found a good vantage point against the wall, her icy blue eyes scanning the people around me with a predatory air. Trusting her eyes to find danger before mine would, I took a few deep breaths and turned my attention inward, feeling along the whispery lines of connections to the souls in my skin.

  They were quiet, at the moment, which I found a bit strange. Normally, a crowd would rouse them to at least watchfulness, a tiny thread of tension humming along just above my range of hearing. I realized after a moment that they felt sleepy, and I wondered if their humans, the people they actually belonged to, were dreaming just then. It would be sometime in the wee hours of dark back home, and it stood to reason that most of those souls were U.S.-based at one point in their existences.

  Sleep well. There were times when I was forcefully reminded that the bits of energy riding around in my body were actually people. They were living, breathing creatures with lives and hopes and dreams. They’d made some dumb decisions, obviously, but that didn’t mean they were bad. And I was their last line of defense.

  “Have they brought the crates up yet?” I glanced up at the sound of Cam’s voice, and blinked a few times. Then I rubbed my eyes, and looked again.

  He’d combed his short hair neatly, and looked about twenty times more refreshed than I did after the long flight, but that wasn’t what was throwing
me for a loop. Gone were the khakis and casual polo shirt. Instead, he’d donned black slacks and an even blacker shirt, if possible, which made the glimpse of white at his throat stand out like a beacon.

  Cameron smirked at my expression. “What, did you forget I was a priest?”

  “Did you?” I’d never seen Cam in his priestly garb before. It was strange. Like seeing Sveta in a frilly pink dress. It just didn’t belong.

  Ivan interrupted us with his deep gravelly growl. “They are to be bringing a vehicle around for our use.” A long cart had magically appeared beside him with our luggage, and Sveta was checking over the locks and wards to be sure that nothing had been tampered with.

  “Listen, I need to go check in, so I’ll catch up to you guys later, all right?” Cameron moved to pull his own weapons case off the pile, propping it up on its little plastic wheels. “Viljo sent the hotel arrangements to my phone. I’ll join you in a little while.” Without really waiting for an answer, he trundled off, wending his way through the crowded terminal like he lived there.

  After a moment with no response from anyone else, I muttered, “Well fine then, but you’re at the back of the line for the shower.”

  I will preface this next bit of the tale by saying, if you value any of your life at all, never drive in Italy. And if your sanity is also a thing that you’d like to hang onto, do not, for the love of all that is good in this universe, let Sveta drive you around Italy.

  I’m sure that the surroundings from the airport into Rome itself were very lovely, if seen at normal, mandated-by-law-and-common-sense speeds. We passed businesses, railroad tracks, and what looked to be farmland all within a few miles of each other. Residential houses butted up against new commercial developments, and in between gripping the seat in front of me (I’d wound up in the middle section of a rather generic van), I found myself wondering if an It store would do well here, and if I could talk the company into letting me transfer. Italy didn’t seem so bad, provided that I didn’t die smeared all over one of its scenic roadways.

  Sveta, for her part, took absolutely sadistic glee in scaring the crap out of Ivan and me. Though, come to think of it, the white haired giant seemed rather stoic in the front seat, and I even caught a glimpse of a faint smile at the corner of his mouth. So maybe it was just me that spent the trip terrified, seeing all my past sins flashing before my eyes.

  Getting into the city itself wasn’t any better, and there seemed to be a rather large number of questionable drivers with whom we were now sharing the narrow city streets. Horns blared around tight corners, we jounced over genuine cobblestones, and when we finally pulled up in front of the lovely little bed and breakfast Viljo had found for us, it took everything I had not to fall to my knees and kiss the ground under my feet.

  “Never again,” I told Sveta, and she just grinned at me. “Y’know, the speed limit is in kilometers, not miles.”

  That only made her grin larger, and more evil. “Was it? It has been so long since I have been in Europe, I have forgotten.” She even whistled as she shouldered her bag and dragged her weapons crate inside.

  Ivan gave me a raised silver brow at my grumbling, and sauntered inside after her, smirking all the way.

  “No one appreciates me, that’s what it is,” I groused to myself, since no one else was listening. Or, maybe someone was, because my statement was greeted with a soft, if eerily familiar, chuckle.

  Glancing up, I caught sight of a tall, lanky figure strolling down the street, a block away. His back was turned, but there was no mistaking the distinctive blond mohawk, nor the glint of the sun off the many piercings in his ears. As he turned to round the corner at the end of the block, Axel glanced back over his shoulder and shot me a smirk before vanishing.

  So. He was here, too. This was going to be interesting.

  Our lodgings were quite lovely, just a quaint little bed and breakfast with only four bedrooms, which meant that we were occupying the entire establishment. The proprietress was a stunningly beautiful woman who might have been in her forties, but looked like her twenties. Her name was Lorena, and she was most effusive in her excitement at having us as her guests for the foreseeable future. Dressed in a pale blue sun dress that bared her shoulders and (I admit) rather shapely legs, she made a point of tossing her flowing mane of raven hair about when she laughed, casting sly smiles my way until I waggled my ring finger at her, displaying my wedding ring. That only got me a small shrug, and a not-so-sheepish grin in return.

  The building itself was a single story little villa-type thing (you know better than to ask me about architecture), with each bedroom opening out into a common walled garden where a fountain tinkled away merrily. With shared wicked smirks, Sveta and I quickly claimed our preferred rooms, leaving Cam with whatever was left. Apparently, the time honored tradition of calling dibs was a universal constant.

  Making note of the convenient dresser that I could push across the door – to keep out demons and amorous innkeepers, of course – I tossed my luggage in a corner and flopped down on the bed. The mattress had to be actual down, because I sank into it like it was full of whipped cream. The quilt looked to be handmade, a riot of colors from a random assortment of fabrics, and all I wanted to do was drag it over myself and fall into a coma. Instead, I allowed myself a few relaxing breaths, knowing that if I closed my eyes even for a moment, jet lag would take over and that’d be all she wrote. Reluctantly, I pried myself up off the cushy mattress and went to explore our temporary dwellings.

  Sveta had taken the room to my immediate left, leaving the one farthest away for Cameron. Ivan was on my right, and I poked my head into his room just to scope it out. It looked the same as mine, though the quilt sported different patchwork hues, and he had a small writing desk tucked into one corner that my room lacked. His bags were there, but there was no sign of the man himself. Frowning a little in puzzlement, I continued on, finding a small, but functional kitchen, and then the single bathroom, which had the door partly propped open.

  Normally, I’m not the kind of person that tries to peep on someone while they’re doing their private business, but the door was open, and the sound of wet coughing from inside sounded horrendous. Leaning on the door jamb, I calmly pushed it the rest of the way open and crossed my arms over my chest, raising a brow at Ivan.

  He was bent over the sink, his once-broad shoulders now shrunken and shaking with the force of every cough he tried to bite back. Though he tried to hide it from my view, I could clearly see that the plain cotton handkerchief in his hand was spotted with bright red blood.

  Inwardly, I felt a deep, cold chill. That was so not good. On the outside, however, I reverted to my first instinct, which was to be a pain in the ass. “Still gonna pretend I don’t see anything?”

  “Go away.” He couldn’t even get the words out without another bout of coughing wracking his once-impressive frame.

  “I’m really not going to do that.”

  “You will to be doing what I tell you.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, no. You’re sick, man. Like, really sick. Do you need to see a doctor? Or a hospital?”

  “No. There is nothing to being done.” He wiped pink stains from his lips, then turned the water on to rinse the spots of crimson from the white porcelain sink. “You will not speak of this to the others.”

  I pressed my lips together as I weighed the pros and cons of that. “All right. For now, it’s just between you and me. But if I find you collapsed on the floor at any point in this trip, I’m damn sure telling somebody.”

  “This is to being fair.” He straightened up, doing his best to stand tall and imposing as he always had, and failing miserably. Whatever it was, it was eating him alive, I could tell. Just decimating him from the inside out. He held my gaze with his piercing blue eyes, and for the first time in ever, he was the first one to look down. “Thank you, Jesse.”

  “Psh. No thanking me. Pretty sure you need your ass kicked for this, and in your condition, I might even be abl
e to take you.”

  That earned me a small, weary chuckle from him, which was the best I could hope for under the circumstances. “If you are to being very fortunate.” He clapped me on the shoulder as he squeezed past me into the hallway, gripping just hard enough to prove that he could still draw a wince out of me. “I will to be resting until Cameron returns. That is all I will to be needing.”

  “If you say so.” I had my doubts, but Ivan was well past eighteen and perfectly entitled to make his own decisions. “I’ll knock when he gets here, or when we figure out a meal.” I had no idea if it would be lunch, or dinner, or what. Where the hell was a clock?

  Ivan nodded and vanished into his room, leaving me to watch his closed door for a few moments, listening for any more of those wracking coughs. After a long bit of silence, I shrugged and went to gather my things for a nice, long shower since I’d been so clever as to discover where the bathroom was.

  Chapter 7

  Of course, Sveta beat me to it. There was a brief scuffle in the hallway as we both tried to shoulder our way through the narrow door first, and all I’ll say is that Sveta fights dirty. She got the shower and I retained my ability to father children in the future.

  By the time we both felt human again, we’d cycled through every bit of warm water in the country, it seemed, and were seated around the table out in the garden having a light dinner, lovingly prepared by our hostess. And by light dinner, I mean I ate four helpings of everything in sight. Ivan made no appearance at all, though Lorena assured us that she’d taken him a plate. Sveta frowned at that, more than her usual expression of universal disapproval, but she made no move to go check on him.