A Line in the Sand

by K. A. Stewart

  Cam didn’t look happy with that answer, and I raised a brow at him. “If they’re taking us to a torture chamber, I’m going to be really pissed at you.” He didn’t answer me, not even to chide me for my language, and that’s when I got a bit worried.

  The elevator took us down the three floors I knew the building had, and then continued, the indicator above the door still insisting we were at the ground floor. Just because it was too damn quiet, I crossed my fingers and whispered loudly, “Please be Batman, please be Batman.” Cameron looked like he might have a stroke, but the Cardinal laughed.

  The elevator shuddered gently as it came to a stop, and the doors slid open. At Cardinal Giordano’s gesture, we stepped out first, finding ourselves in a stone hallway. The low ceiling barely cleared my head, so Cam had to hunch a little or break his cranium. There was barely room for two of us abreast, and the souls in my skin gave an uneasy ripple. It was a good place to ambush someone, and all the potential bad guys were behind us.

  “I’m afraid that you will find no caped crusaders down here, Mr. Dawson. And our Batmobile is in the shop.” The Cardinal gave me a grin as he stepped from the elevator last.

  I sternly bit my own tongue, and managed to keep my next question to myself. Did it break a wheel, and did the Joker get away? No one appreciated my jokes.

  Awkwardly, in the cramped passageway, the Cardinal worked his way to the front of our group, squeezing between Cameron and me to take the lead. As his arm brushed against my chest, the souls in my skin went haywire, and I could swear I heard my back sizzling with the force of their agitation. Through sheer will, I held myself very still, pressing my shoulders firmly against the stone wall. I forced myself to breathe very calmly through my nose. Stay there, just stay under the shirt… My mental conversations with my passengers were never answered, but no telltale scrawls of white writhed their way down my arms, so I counted it as a win. The painful tingling, like pins and needles on steroids, subsided.

  Magic. I could taste it at the back of my tongue, something like a cross of black licorice and molasses. Thick, and dark, and so very strong. There was so much magic in the holy man’s person that the barest touch of his clothed arm nearly short-circuited my brain. That was something to remember for later. No matter what, never let the Cardinal get his hands on me.

  My “episode” had been noticed. Cameron gave me a sidelong questioning glance, and I subtly shook my head. It was a story to tell later. Much later.

  The narrow hall thankfully gave way to a much wider, and taller, passage within a few yards. The Cardinal paused there turning to look at Sveta and me.

  “What you are about to see is…not public knowledge, for reasons which will become obvious. While I do not mind if you share this information with Mr. Zelenko, I would expect discretion in all other situations.”

  We gave him nods, of course, but inside I was thinking, Yeah, but if I find aliens down here, I’m damn sure telling somebody.

  While the entryway had been old brick, the subsequent hallways were more modern, nondescript white paint over cinder block on the walls, very boring fluorescent lighting in tracks above us. The floor beneath our feet was institutional tile, and air smelled filtered, sterile. There was a faint hint of dampness, but I could hear the soft hum of dehumidifiers as they worked to keep the wet from seeping into everything.

  We passed several doorways, again so generically normal they almost screamed “secret lair here!”, before I asked “What is this place?”

  “This is the lowest level of our headquarters. On the floors above us, we have training areas, armories, libraries, research rooms and the like.” The Cardinal halted our procession in front of a large double door, one that had a numerical keypad. “Through here, however, you will find our holding cells and our infirmary.”

  “Holding cells. For prisoners.”

  “Yes.”

  I glanced at Cameron, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. He’d known, then. “And just who do you keep prisoner?”

  “Come and see.” Cardinal Giordano punched in a seven digit code – I only got the first, third and last two numbers, dammit – and the door opened silently.

  A trio of men greeted us in the first room, their Kevlar vests and holstered sidearms looking strange in contrast with the white priest collars they all wore. Each of them sported the same cropped hair cut, one that I’d seen on Cameron too, when he’d first joined us, their shoulders and arms broad with muscles that spoke of use, not of trips to the weight room. The uniformity between them, and the three that followed us, was creepy, if I stopped to think about it.

  My guard-souls did little flip-flops, uneasy but not alarmed. It’d be six on three now…seven, if Giordano fought. I didn’t like our odds if this all went tits-up. (I had to give myself a little smirk and a high five for that thought, though, because really, I’m like twelve years old in my head and thinking that word in the presence of multiple priests seemed like the perfect form of rebellion.)

  Though I could swear she’d been at the back of the line the whole time, I suddenly found Sveta beside me, and her fingers brushed against mine like she was seeking comfort. Since I highly doubted that, I let her take my hand, and palmed the tiny blade she pressed into it. I raised a brow at her, but her gaze was only for the six men surrounding us. I could almost see the calculations ticking off inside her head. Which one to take down first, where the weapons were, what cover we could find if we had to.

  The room itself wasn’t going to offer much in the way of shelter. Most of it was taken up by three banks of video monitors, obviously set to observe the building above, in addition to the cells within. It must have been laughably easy for them to spot us coming in, and I heard Sveta grumble under her breath as she realized the same thing. A barred gate on the far wall separated us from the deeper recesses of the building, and I recognized the retinal scanner on the left side only because I’d seen them in movies from time to time.

  Giordano stepped up to let the machine read his eyeball, and the metal locked clicked softly as it disengaged.

  “Gentlemen, if you would remain here. I will escort our guests.” The blond man nodded to the small cadre of guards he’d suddenly assembled, and gestured for us to follow him down the hall.

  Cameron halted at the door, catching it when it would have closed and locked behind us. Realizing that not all of us were following, the Cardinal turned to look. “I’ve seen it. I’ll stay here.”

  “As you wish.” When the older man turned away, Cam gave Sveta a small nod, his face serious. I wasn’t sure if I felt better that he was watching our backs, or worse that he felt the need to.

  While Giordano wasn’t looking, I slipped Sveta’s small knife into the front pocket of my jeans, making sure the hilt was tucked down out of sight. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with a blade that little – maybe clean someone’s teeth until they begged for mercy – but it did make me feel better to have it.

  “So.” My voice bounced off the smooth walls, punctuated by the sounds of our shoes on the linoleum. “Who do you have down here that requires this much security?”

  “I’m certain that you know, Mr. Dawson. Or have at least guessed. I understand that you had a run-in with a blood sorcerer earlier this year.”

  Magic came from the soul. It was the first thing Ivan had impressed upon me, even knowing that I didn’t seem to possess that talent myself. A caster sliced away pieces of their very life force for their magic. Little pieces resulted in little wounds, ones that would heal over with time and rest. Bigger pieces could cause permanent harm, and in the most extreme cases, death. Magic had limits, unless you were willing to risk your life for it.

  For those who were not content with the finite amount of power within their own bodies, there were ways to access more. It usually started with small sacrifices, I was told. A few drops of blood here, a deeper cut the next time, and so on. Eventually, the magic user’s own blood was not sufficient, and that’s when they’d move on to bigger
things. Mice, maybe. Chickens. Cats. Goats. And when that failed to suffice… Well, that’s when they would start sacrificing the lives of even bigger things. They could power their magic with the blood of other humans, and a death was the most powerful jump start of all.

  Those that took that last leap were not redeemable. All the research I’d done since the encounter in Mexico told me that. Blood sorcerers couldn’t be saved, couldn’t be rehabilitated. There was only one way to deal with them, beheading usually being the recommended cure. The one time I’d seriously questioned Ivan about it, he had been quiet for a very long time. Finally, he said “Sometimes, the choice is to being made for you.”

  I didn’t like to think about Ivan running around lopping people’s heads off. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it, if confronted. I hoped I’d never find out.

  Perhaps Sveta’s thoughts had gone along the same lines. “How do you confine them? Prevent them from casting?”

  “Heavy sedation, mostly.” We paused next to a door with a single, narrow window, and he gestured for us to look inside. “Restraints, when necessary. Extreme wardings on every surface within the room.”

  The room beyond the window was white and bare, the large hospital-size bed appearing to be the only furniture. The occupant of that bed had their face turned toward the wall, so all we could see was the wild tangle of matted black hair crowning the head. A woman, I decided, judging by the general size and shape. She was painfully thin, almost emaciated, her bony wrists looking like sticks bound down by heavy leather restraints. A strap went across her thin chest, and two more cuffs trapped her ankles. The buckles on all of the restraints bore industrial looking padlocks.

  “Is that really necessary? She’s tiny.”

  “The day she was captured, she killed four men. And in the three years she’s been here, she killed another two, and permanently crippled a third. Do not judge her power based on her physical size.”

  As we turned to move on, I saw the woman’s head swivel toward the door, and a pair of dark black eyes locked with mine. She was young, I realized, maybe in her early twenties if that. Her dark brows stood out against her pale skin, and her lips were a strangely bright red, dainty like a doll’s painted face. Marring that look, though, was the thick mouth guard, and I saw her jaw muscles work as she clamped her teeth against it.

  “Why the mouthpiece?”

  “Her teeth are filed to points. Without the guard, she slices her tongue and lips open for her spell casting.”

  As if she knew she was being spoken of, she blinked once, slowly, her lashes making brief shadows on her white cheeks, and then she smiled around the bite guard. For all that her features were delicate, fragile even, there was a malevolence in that gaze that chilled me to the very core. The souls in my skin rose up, coiling around my neck and down my arms, and I let them, suddenly needing the warmth they provided.

  “We are currently housing fifteen blood sorcerers who have been deemed too dangerous to return to the world. All but one of them require around-the-clock monitoring, medication, and confinement.”

  I glanced into two more rooms as we passed. In one, the occupant sat in a chair with their back to the door, looking oddly like someone had put them in the corner for being naughty. I could see no more than the repetitive pattern of a hospital gown, and a large nasty scar down the back of the person’s shaved head.

  In the second room, there was furniture, a bookshelf, a television. The man inside glanced up and nodded a greeting, putting a thumb in the book he was reading to mark his place. He seemed sorely out of place, dressed in neat tweed with wire glasses perched on the end of his pointed nose. His graying hair was cropped short, and his mustache neatly trimmed. He could have been a college professor anywhere. Hardly the picture of a psychopath.

  “Allen is one of our well-behaved guests,” the Cardinal explained, when I asked. “I have always felt like he finds his confinement here a relief, safe from pursuing his unclean addictions.”

  “So you trust him.”

  “No. As I said, they are all closely monitored.”

  Sveta peered into a door on the opposite side of the hallway, and wrinkled her nose in distaste at whatever she saw. I didn’t go check. “How long have they been here?”

  “It varies. Our newest has only been here a few months. And I am about to introduce you to our oldest resident. He has been here for nearly fifteen years.”

  The oldest resident, it turned out, had a room to himself all the way at the end of the hallway. The long line of cells gave way to an open medical bay, and we followed the sounds of softly beeping machinery to the curtained alcove on the far side. The Cardinal drew the curtain aside with a rattle.

  “This is Jeremy. He has been with us for a very long time.”

  Jeremy, if that was his actual name, was a still, pale figure on the hospital bed. Wires and tubes attached to him everywhere, like tentacles, and it was easy to see that he had been immobile in that bed for…I couldn’t tell how long. Long enough that his muscles had wasted away, and his skin hung sallow on his frame.

  “Is he…conscious?”

  “No.” Giordano picked up a file folder from the bedside table and offered it to us. “He has been in a persistent vegetative state for fourteen years.”

  I ignored the chart, but Sveta took it, flipping through it idly. “How did he get this way?”

  The older man leaned against the table, clasping his hands in front of him. “Jeremy was an interesting case. Not only was he a blood sorcerer, but he actually went so far as to invite demonic possession.”

  That got a surprised snort, even out of Sveta. I knew it could be done. Axel had told me as much. But I’d never heard of it actually happening.

  “He actually had a demon inside him?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. We didn’t know this until after his capture, and there were casualties before we determined the cause. After that, it was decided that he should be exorcised.”

  “Like…really exorcised? Rotating head and pea soup and all that?” What? My frame of reference was limited.

  The Cardinal only nodded, however. “More or less. I was part of the team that attempted it. I did not become head of the Order until a few months after that.”

  “Attempted it. You did not succeed?” Sveta handed the folder back to him, and he examined it again like he’d never seen it.

  “We succeeded in removing the demon, if that is what you mean.”

  “But?” The older man gave me a questioning look. “I heard a big ‘but’ in there.”

  He sighed, and nodded. “But. We were unaware that he was possessed. He showed no adverse reaction to holy artifacts, had no problem crossing warded thresholds, nothing that would give us an indication that he was anything other than human. It was only when he was already inside our protections did the thing within him expose itself. When the demon came to the fore, it imbued Jeremy’s body with extraordinary strength and speed, and a resistance to injuries that would have incapacitated a normal human. What began as a religious ceremony devolved into a battle for all of our lives. We succeeded, at the loss of four men, including the then-leader of the Order. In the process, Jeremy’s mind was irretrievably damaged. He has been as you see him here ever since. Enough brain activity that we cannot truly call him brain dead, but he will never wake or be a functioning individual again.”

  I shuddered a little, and my skin crawled in a way that had nothing to do with my passengers. A fate worse than death, this. Locked inside a broken body, with no way of knowing if he could still hear, or feel. Horrific. “Does he not have family? Someone who is looking for him?”

  “There are generally two outcomes, when a person chooses this path in life. The first is that their demeanor becomes so repugnant that their families cut all ties.”

  “And the second?” I knew the answer already. I’d seen Estéban’s cousin Paulo start down that path. My protégé would have been his first human sacrifice.

  “The families are
often their first victims. To my knowledge, Jeremy has no living kin.”

  The antiseptic smell was starting to irritate my nose, and the sterile white walls pressed ominously on every side. This wasn’t exactly the best tour I’d ever been on. “So why did you bring us down here?”

  “I believe that Jeremy offers a unique opportunity, one that I would encourage you to consider. It is not ideal, by any means, but it may be all you have.” He gestured toward the sad, pitiful form on the bed. “Here is a vessel into which you could deposit your souls. He would not be able to use them for his own ends, obviously, and his body is well protected here. The souls would be safe, and more importantly they would be out of the hands of those who would use them for evil.”

  Instantly, my brain rebelled at that. Stuffing two hundred and seventy-five souls into that living shell, keeping them there while the body wasted away around them. The very idea was abhorrent, and I felt bile rise up in my throat, only to be swallowed down again.

  But, that little voice in my head whispered, they would be out of you. It would be the Church’s problem, then. Mira and the kids would be safe…

  “You don’t even know that it would work.” My voice sounded a little raspy, and I cleared it loudly. “To pass the souls that way would require a contract, and a contract requires consent. He can’t give it.”

  “I believe that we could maneuver around it, working within the mandates of the original contract governing possession of those souls. Brother Cameron did send us details at the time, and I have had men researching it.”

  The original contract had belonged to Gretchen Keene, a genuine Hollywood starlet who had paid for her rise in fame with her soul. The collection riding under my skin had been hers once, collected from an astounding variety of lovers in her brief years. A loophole in her contract had allowed her to pass the souls to me, effective upon her death.

  “The previous owner had to die. I’ll pass, thanks.”

  “I don’t believe it would come to something so extreme, Mr. Dawson.” He offered me a smile that I’m sure was supposed to be encouraging, or fatherly, or wise or some shit. I just wasn’t feeling it. “As I said, this would not be an ideal solution, but it would be a solution. And you seem to have those in fairly short supply.”