A Line in the Sand

by K. A. Stewart

  “Is he following?” Sveta wouldn’t turn to look, so I passed the question back to Cameron.

  “Cam, glance behind and see if you see a guy in a dark gray hoodie with the hood up. But don’t look like you’re looking.”

  “Um…okay?” I heard a scuffle of shoes, as Cam pretended to trip, and when he spoke again, his voice was lower. “Yeah, he’s back there. I think he has a friend, about half a block behind him. Didn’t get a look at the face, they’ve both got hoods up.”

  Sveta grunted in response, then took a darting right turn, leading us across a busy street to the tune of blaring car horns. “Four now.”

  Daring a glance back myself, I saw two more hoodie-wearers fall in behind us, too carefully spaced between the first pair to actually be coincidence.

  “Two more ahead. Left.” At Ivan’s quiet orders, we changed direction again, and we weren’t even pretending we weren’t running anymore.

  “Cam, get her out of here.” Sister Mary Alice didn’t deserve to get caught up in whatever this was about to be, and I had hopes that whoever the mystery men were, they wouldn’t follow if the priest and nun broke off the other way.

  “Wait, don’t go down—” Mary Alice’s warning came too late, as our next corner took us into a dead end alleyway, surrounded on three sides by windowless brick walls of the neighboring buildings.

  “Son of a bitch.” We’d been herded, clear as day. With that certain knowledge, the affirmation that we truly were being targeted, the full force of the power inside me surged forth, and beneath my long sleeves, I could feel my skin blazing with intricate white sigils. They spiraled over my palms, the backs of my hands, up to cover my scalp beneath my hair, and spreading down my thighs under my jeans. Without even looking, I knew I was shining like a floodlight to heaven. I heard Alice gasp “Oh!” and knew that she was one who could see the extraordinary amount of life force currently covering every inch of my skin. That would require explaining, when we got out of this. If we got out of this.

  “Backs to the walls,” Sveta growled, and her hand sprouted a vicious looking K-bar knife, the blade black and ominous.

  The Ukrainian woman took up a stance on my left, Ivan on my right, and I only hoped that Cameron had the good sense to protect Alice behind us. I took two deep breaths, then dropped into an easy fighting stance. I may not be armed, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t make a few of them pay for whatever they were about to do. A “snick” sound beside me revealed that Ivan had an asp in his own fist, and I had to wonder why I was the only one who didn’t have some sort of weapon on me.

  “You guys gotta learn to share your toys.” A dark figure appeared at the entrance to the tiny box we were cornered in, followed by two more. I stilled my mind, pushed aside all thought, and relaxed my gaze to take in everything at once. My weight balanced on the balls of my feet, ready to leap in response to whoever moved first.

  And because I learned a long time ago on a mountain in Colorado, that danger comes from above, I looked up. Sure enough, two of our shadows were coming over the lower roof just behind us. “Cam!”

  The priest turned just as one of our assailants did some kind of parkour jump down the side of the building. Without hesitation, Cam threw out one hand and shouted “Detorqueo!” With the souls all up in my vision, I could see the copper-colored shield of power leave the priest’s body and slam into his attacker, tossing the black hooded man into the wall like he weighed nothing.

  The second man had waited, however, and he hit the ground on light feet, tucking into a roll and coming up between Cameron and the feisty little nun. And then Sveta barked “Incoming!” and I couldn’t watch anymore.

  The number blocking our exit had grown to four, and two of them had advanced to engage the Ukrainian duo. I saw one of them attempt a flying kick to Ivan’s chest, which landed, forcing a pained grunt of out of the old man. Instead of crumbling beneath it, though, Ivan caught the man by the ankle and wrenched violently. The wet sound of the knee popping was loud in the close quarters, and immediately drowned out by the man’s agonized scream. Ivan dropped him on the cobblestones like a blob of wet paper towels, then swung the asp backhand to take out the other knee. The old man didn’t play.

  Sveta, in the meantime, was toying with her opponent. Her face was split by the most feral grin I’d ever seen, and she tossed her knife back and forth between her hands, daring him to come close enough to snatch it away from her. Whoever the man was, and they’d all donned bandana masks under their nondescript hoods, he was already sporting a couple of blood slashes along his arms, proving that he’d learned the penalty for dancing with the cold-eyed mercenary already.

  The other two strangers shifted forward, moving to join the fray, and Ivan snapped something at Sveta in their native language. I couldn’t speak it, but I understood the sound of “quit fucking around and drop his ass” well enough. The woman only snarled, whether at the command or her opponent I couldn’t tell.

  Well, time for me to earn my keep. One of the men went for Ivan again, who had proven that sick or not, he could take care of himself. But two-on-one was bad odds for Sveta, I don’t care how good you are, so I moved in to eliminate the other unoccupied fellow.

  Apparently, they hadn’t expected me to join in the fight, because the second I lunged toward the hooded man, he nearly fell on his ass to reverse direction. Either that, or I looked really scary. “If you make me chase you, I’m just gonna get pissed!”

  While he didn’t go into full on retreat, he ducked every swing I sent his way and never returned a single strike. We must have danced all over that alleyway, and I used every trick I could think of to get close enough to actually have a decent fight. He was fast, I had to give him that. As fast as me, and that’s saying a lot. But I had something he didn’t, and he hadn’t realized it yet. I had friends, and his were all unconscious or screaming on the ground.

  Sveta had dropped her assailant the moment that I’d stepped into the brawl, proving that she could have at any moment before that, and with my target concentrating so hard on not hitting me, it was easy to maneuver him around until his back was to her. One blow to the back of the head with some brass knuckles she’d produced from somewhere, and it was nighty-night for the men in black.

  Ivan’s second opponent was down too, a dark bruise blossoming nicely across his temple before it disappeared under his bandana and hood. The old man had a hand braced against the wall, rubbing at his chest with a grimace, but when he caught me looking, he straightened immediately and gave me a cold glare.

  Only then did I remember to check on Cameron and Mary Alice. Cam was down. That much I’d expected. He had a bad penchant of using magic first, and punching later, and it was going to get him killed someday. Sister Mary Alice currently had his head resting on her knee, examining the dilation of his pupils, and the two wall-crawlers were heaped in a corner like yesterday’s garbage. I couldn’t tell what had happened, but the nun’s knuckles were bloody on her right hand.

  “How is he?” I asked, at the same time that Sveta said “We must go.” We could all hear the distinctive sound of Italian police sirens closing in from blocks away.

  “…can walk…” His words were slurred, but with help, we got Cameron on his feet. Sveta took one arm and I took the other, and we mostly dragged the priest out of the alley, the last of us vanishing around the corner just as the blue cars with “polizia” on the side pulled up.

  Chapter 9

  With Mary Alice’s directions, we made our way through side streets, back across the Tiber. We forced laughter and chitchat as we walked, pretending to be a bunch of American tourists escorting their inebriated friend back home, but all the while I kept an eye on Cameron’s vitals.

  The pulse under my fingers was erratic, beating wildly one moment, then dropping so low that I was certain we’d lost him on at least two occasions. He responded to only one out of every four questions, and the answers had very little to do with reality. When I called him an assh
ole under my breath, though, that he heard, and he chided me with fuzzy words. “Bad Jesse… Very bad…”

  “Just stay with us…we’re almost home…” I’d nearly broken my fist saving his life once, after a bad spell reaction. I wasn’t going to let him go now.

  Home, unfortunately, was going to be as elusive as all the poets ever claimed. My soul-sight had eased back a little, once we were clear of the alley, but any magic user could have spotted the new wards overlaying our own on the front door of the bed and breakfast.

  “Can you tell what it’s for?” We eyed the strange spell work from across the street, propping Cameron up against a wall to give Sveta and I a rest. Slender the man may be, but light he was not.

  “An alarm, I think. They will know we are here.” Sveta’s blue eyes swept the streets around us, watching for any sign of our pursuers. “The windows are warded also.”

  The only choice was to go check out the garden gate, but none of us were surprised to find it trapped as well, a thin line of burnt orange magic lying over Sveta’s intricate icy blue web and the simpler, but stronger, copper threads of Cameron’s spells. We obviously couldn’t go to ground here.

  “We need our gear.” Both Sveta and I were reluctant to leave our weapons behind. “Do we break the seal and then run like hell?”

  Mary Alice stepped up to the garden wall, running her hands over the old bricks, her slim fingers prodding at the gaps between the old stones. “No. We go over.” And just like that, she scrambled up the ten foot wall like it was a ladder, and disappeared over the top.

  “Did anyone else see that, or was it just me?”

  Cameron, practically draped over Ivan at the moment, made some kind of affirmative noise, but I didn’t think his testimony was going to be worth much in his condition.

  After a moment, the nun’s head, veil and all, popped back up over the top of the wall. “No one’s here, and the inner doors aren’t warded. Where are your things? I can pass them out to you.”

  Though I was certain there was more to the good sister than met the eye, none of us believed she could get the heavy weapon crates up over the wall by herself. Wiry as I was, I was elected to go over next, and managed it by planting my boot in Sveta’s laced fingers for her to heave me upward. There was a bit more scrambling on my part than the nun had displayed, but I made it over without injury to myself or others. Win.

  On the ground again, thanks to the patio table Mary Alice had pushed over, I gave her an appraising look. “You look different without your costume, Spider-Woman. The nun thing is probably good for a secret identity, though.”

  She chuckled at me and rolled her eyes. “I free climb, when I have time.”

  “As a nun does.”

  “Of course!”

  We retrieved our belongings, handing the weapon cases back over the wall with Mary Alice perched precariously on top. Cam was looking better by the time my feet were on the outside again, and he was at least leaning under his own power. While Sveta went to retrieve our van, I asked the all-important question, “So, where do we go now?”

  “Perhaps we can to be finding shelter with the Order—” Ivan began, when Cam ground out “No!” We all turned to look at the priest, color slowly returning to his ashen cheeks.

  His head still swayed drunkenly as he shook it emphatically to the negative, but his eyes were clearing by the second. “Can’t go there. It was Frank.” His energy expended, he slid down the wall, all the while mumbling, “It was Frank.”

  I crouched at his side, keeping him from keeling over entirely. “Who was Frank, Cam?”

  It took him a few deep breaths to find the strength to talk again, but finally he managed, “Man from the roof. Saw his face. Was Frank.”

  Mary Alice knelt beside me, peering closely into Cam’s dazed eyes. “Brother Francis? You’re sure?” Cam nodded, then forgot to lift his head back up, just leaving it flopping there at the end of his neck. The nun frowned, an odd expression on her usually cheerful face. “Brother Francis is part of the Order. Why would the Order attack you, Jesse?”

  The fight had been replaying in my head, and I knew the answer to that question. “No one attacked me. In fact, they went out of their way to come nowhere near me. They were after all of you.”

  “But why?”

  I shrugged. “Same reason as everyone else in the world. You saw what I’m carrying around in me. Everybody wants it, and they needed to remove my protection to get it.”

  Before we could discuss it any further, our van pulled up at the end of the street, and I hauled Cameron bodily up over my shoulder. “I’ll get him stowed, then we can get our gear.”

  We had our stuff, and transport, but we still had no idea where we were going. Once I informed Sveta about our assailants’ identities, she looked sternly at the little nun. “You cannot return to your home. They know you. They know you were with us. They will look for you, and us, there.”

  Mary Alice nodded. “I’m apartment-sitting for a friend, across the city. I don’t think anyone knows. We can stop there, at least long enough for Brother Cameron to recover.”

  “Tell me the way.”

  “Wait a second.” I hopped out of the van, leaving the door open. “May as well let our friends chase their tails for a bit, right?” Walking back to the garden door, I eyed the locking mechanism, then stepped back to get the distance right. With a mental apology to our lovely hostess Lorena and a savage front snap kick, I splintered the jamb and sent the old door careening on its hinges to smack against the wall. The second my boot crossed the threshold, I felt the thin thread of burnt orange magic snap, sending out whatever signal it had been programmed to send.

  Dashing back to the vehicle, I jumped in and slammed the door. “This has just become a good place to be from.” Sveta, for her part, didn’t quite squall the tires as we pulled out into the neighborhood.

  Watching out the back window, I caught a brief glimpse of two identical black cars converging on the bed and breakfast, and then they were out of sight. I hoped Lorena was going to be all right.

  I don’t know who Sister Mary Alice’s friend was, but their apartment was to die for. Cameron was deposited on the nicest leather couch I’d ever seen, and Ivan and I took turns watching out the windows for any unwanted guests while Sveta again laid down painstaking wards on the doors and windows. When she started to look a little gray around the edges, Mary Alice appeared at her side with a bar of dark chocolate and a small smile. Surprisingly, Sveta took it without arguing, munching on the candy like her life depended on it. Jokingly, I asked for a bite, and that got me a snarl worthy of Gollum himself.

  “All right, first. Aside from Cam, is anyone hurt?” I’d gotten the easy side of the alley brawl, and I knew it. Ivan had taken at least one hit that I’d seen, and I wasn’t sure what exactly had taken place between the nun and the men from the roof.

  “M’not hurt,” Cam mumbled into the couch cushion.

  Mary Alice sat down at his feet, pulling them into her lap to make room. “No, but you are a very stupid man sometimes. You know better than to throw spells around like that in combat.”

  She was right. The powerful spells, the flashy ones with all the pyrotechnics and laser lights, could effectively stop an enemy, it was true. But the toll it took on the caster meant that the user was going to faceplant in pretty short order after that, which was always bad in a fight. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen Cam resort to magic – and I mean big magic – first, and damn the consequences. And they said I was reckless.

  Cameron waved a hand around as best he could, dismissing her concern. Slowly, he managed to roll over, so he was a least not talking into the leather sofa. “We have to get to the Cardinal.”

  “Uh…how about no? Did you forget the part where your own people just tried to take your head off?” That’s it, the spell sickness had scrambled his brain.

  “I don’t think they did.” Using Mary Alice’s arm for leverage, he managed to prop himself upright. “I
think that was just those men, those few. The Cardinal wouldn’t have had to send men after us. We were coming to him anyway. All he’d have to do is wait.”

  Ivan, seated in a plush leather arm chair, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “You are thinking they are to being…rogue agents. Corrupted.”

  “Yes. Someone got to them. Using them to come after Jesse and the souls.”

  We all knew who that someone likely was. Reina. If anyone could corrupt a church knight, it was her. “So we don’t know who to trust.”

  Mary Alice reached out and took Cameron’s hand, squeezing gently. “You can trust me. You know that.”

  He offered her a weak smile, but it faded quickly. “I think he may know there is some kind of problem. The orders I was given yesterday make more sense, now.”

  “What orders?” Sveta’s cold voice could have cut through glass.

  Cameron’s eyes fixed on me. “I was supposed to keep you away from Vatican City. More specifically, keep you away from the chapel. He knew, you see? He knew that you weren’t safe there.”

  “The Sistine Chapel? What’s that got to do with anything?” I tucked the minor fact of Cameron’s split loyalties away in my brain to hash out with him later. Still don’t know who to trust.

  The priest shook his head. “I’m not sure you’d believe me even if I told you. But we need to get you there. It may be the answer to everything. We can’t wait to be summoned to the Cardinal now, and we can’t trust any summons we do receive. We’ll have to get in on our own.”

  “They will to be watching for you. No doubt, your faces are to being known.” Ivan made a good point.

  “Woohoo! Disguises!” No one else seemed to be as excited as I was by that prospect. “Oh come on. None of you ever wanted to try to sneak into somewhere in disguise?” I got blank looks from the rest of the group. “You guys are no fun.”

  At least Mary Alice looked slightly amused. “Your best bet is to try to get inside with a large tourist group, but we’ll be limited by what kind of disguise you can use. There’s a dress code.”