“Then what is he doing?”
Sveta snorted. “He is covering his ass.”
I pointed at her. “Exactly. I don’t know who this demon is, but I don’t think he’s picked a side yet. He’s trying to establish a power base so he doesn’t get plowed over in whatever is coming. Or, at the very least, gain a big bargaining chip.”
“This is not to be changing the fact that we do not wish him to be possessing these souls.” Ivan gave me a stern look.
I sighed. “Look, I’ll fight with all I have. You all know that. But…I’m not optimistic about this one.” That was unusual for me. I normally went into a fight believing that I’d triumph, somehow. This time… I reached for that confidence, and I found it sorely lacking. The way of the samurai is death. Something was coming. Something not good, or bad, but big. Bigger than my brain could encompass, at the moment.
It was also possible that I was starting to lose my mind.
“God is to be having a purpose for you still, Dawson. He will not desert you now.” The old man’s voice was steady, and I wondered what it would be like to have that much certainty in the bank. I also wondered just how far I could get, riding on Ivan’s faith alone.
“So…what are the scissors for?” Cameron picked them up from where they’d been placed on the desk, looking them over like I’d somehow managed to smuggle a secret weapon in under their very noses.
“To cut things,” I informed him, taking them away from him before he hurt himself. “Most specifically, my hair.” I offered the sharp implement to Sveta, handle first. “If you please.”
My hair was nearly past my shoulder blades now. Even braided, it was still long enough to be used against me, and I’d been down that route once. Then, it had resulted in a wrenched neck and not much else. I’d been lucky. Now, I was pretty sure my luck had been all used up, and I wasn’t about to take any chances that I didn’t have to.
Sveta looked at the scissors like I’d just tried to hand her a ticking grenade, and blinked at me in total confusion. I had a small bit of satisfaction knowing that, after all this time, I’d finally flummoxed the unflappable champion. “I…don’t…”
“Here. I used to cut my brothers’ hair.” Mary Alice took them from me, nudging me toward a chair so that she could begin the process.
“It doesn’t have to be pretty. Just hack it off. And make sure you don’t leave any of it lying around, after. I don’t want them to have my hair.” Magic could be done with leftover body parts, blood, things like that. Even if I intended to be dead, I didn’t want my enemies to have that. The last thing I needed was for something to show up at my door, wearing my face and getting close to my family.
“Hush. Let me work.” The little nun trimmed my long locks away with quiet efficiency, her gentle hands tipping my head to the side from time to time, making sure that she got the sides even and everything. Cameron and the Ukrainians watched in stoic silence, the only sound being the soft snip-snip of the scissors. Long coils of blond hair fell into my lap, and I rolled them between my fingers. Mira had never seen me with short hair. By the time we’d met in college, I was a card-carrying member of the hippy hair club. I was a little sad that she wouldn’t get to see me like this. I wondered what she’d think.
“After.” My voice bounced around the bare room, and Mary Alice swatted my shoulder for making her jump. “After, you have to see that Mira and the kids are protected.”
“Jesse,” Cam started, and I silenced him with a glare.
“Shut up, and let me talk.” They’d given us back our phones. I could have called Mira, one last time. Said things to her that needed saying. I didn’t. The four people around me would bear witness to my last will and testament, and I knew that they’d all see it carried out without fail. “I have a life insurance policy. Should be enough to pay off the house for her, with some left over.”
Mira was strong. In fact, she was the strongest woman I’d ever met. She’d be all right without me. And she wouldn’t be alone. My family was still there. My mom and dad adored her, and my brother Cole would always drop everything if she needed help. And my best friends, Will and Marty… Well, sure, Marty wasn’t exactly speaking to me anymore, with good reason, but he’d never let Mira down. I was certain of that.
The kids, though. Annabelle would remember me. Billy would not. I wouldn’t get to see them grow up, go to prom, learn to drive, get married, have their own kids. I’d never know if my daughter would play soccer or join cheerleading. I’d have no idea whether or not Billy would prefer science or art. I’d never get to explain to them how sorry I was for leaving them.
“Make sure my weapons and armor go to Estéban. Don’t let him get any stupid ideas about avenging me. He has issues.” That’s how I’d met my young protégé, the half-trained heir to his champion bloodline pursuing the demon that killed his brother across international borders. He’d grown up since then, settled, but I still wanted one of them to tell him “no.” He’d need to hear it.
“Take my paintball gear to Viljo. He’ll know what to do with it.” I was fond of the little computer geek. I wasn’t sure if we were friends, per se, but we were comrades, which was the next best thing.
I fell silent, realizing that I didn’t really have anything else that needed to be passed on. My normal things, clothes and the like, Mira would handle. My truck, she could sell, though honestly she’d probably have to pay someone to haul it off instead. I knew that Ivan and Cam would come up with some kind of cover story, something to tell the people who were better off not knowing about demons and wars in Hell. Terrorist attack, maybe. Choking on bad gelato. Hopefully nothing too humiliating.
“I’m done,” Mary Alice said, brushing the last wisps of hair off my shoulders into her hands.
I stood, running my hands over my close-cropped hair, and felt a bit naked. I hadn’t had hair that short since my mother was dictating my appearance at around age ten. Mary Alice had trimmed the sides and back as short as she could without electric clippers, and left the top a bit longer. It felt like it was standing straight up, as if it was startled to suddenly be so short.
In a weird way, I mourned my long locks. It had been a part of who I was, my very identity, for most of my life. But there wasn’t time to deal with that now. Rolling my head on my shoulders, I nodded at the others. “Help me with my gear.”
First, I donned a clean shirt and jeans, because it just seemed like I should meet this battle looking my best. Or at least, as good as I get. The two women turned their backs while I dressed, like modesty even meant something at this stage of the game. When that was done, Sveta and Cameron set about getting me into my padding, followed by the chainmail armor that went over it. They worked in silence, with the ease of people who have buckled a man into medieval safety equipment before.
It wasn’t fancy, my armor, but Marty had made it strong and durable. The mail shirt slipped over my head with a jingle, and it felt strange to not get my hair caught in it. The sleeves hung to my elbows, and from there, my forearms were protected with heavy leather bracers, the insides of which were etched with Mira’s protective runes. The lower half of me was covered with more chain from the waist to the knees, and from there to the ankle I’d taken to wearing heavy leather greaves, too. My steel-toed combat boots would do for my feet, leaving me as protected and mobile as I was going to get.
A thought occurred to me, about halfway through, and I snorted a soft laugh.
Cameron looked up from where he was buckling my metal chausses around my thighs. “What?”
“I’m wearing a shirt that says ‘In my defense, I was left unsupervised.’ I definitely do not meet the Vatican dress code.”
“No, no you do not.” Cameron shook his head, finally breaking into a hard-won laugh.
Sveta handed me my sword, and I slid The Way out of its scabbard a few inches, feeling the bone hilt warm at my touch.
“To be gathering around.” We all looked over at Ivan, who had been quietly observing up
to this point, and he motioned for the others to assemble around me. “He is allowed his protections. Therefore, we will pray.”
Without question, all of them knelt, their joined hands forming a circle. I stood in the middle and felt the air pressure change in my ears as their collective wills completed the invisible magic barrier. With his white head bowed, Ivan murmured softly in his native language, joined a heartbeat later by his daughter’s voice. Cameron and Mary Alice chimed in a moment after that, in English, but I knew from experience that their words would be the same. They were working the magic – sorry, saying the prayer – as a group, with Ivan taking the lead. I’d watched Estéban’s mother, Carlotta, do something very similar when we were in Mexico, but this was the first time I’d ever been the target. Frankly, standing there with four grown adults kneeling at my feet was a little awkward.
My passengers roused at the feeling of magic being worked, but they weren’t agitated. Instead, they seemed to roll over and over, basking in the glow of my friends’ prayers. I could feel layers of spells settling on my skin like spider webs. It tickled.
Sveta’s power was easy to pick out, her blue-white touch tingling like tiny ice crystals. Cameron’s spells – prayers – tasted faintly of cinnamon at the back of my tongue, and other warm, bright things, and were the color of burnished copper. The smell of wet granite and steel gray magic most definitely originated with Ivan, and it occurred to me that I’d never seen him cast anything before. I wished that it wasn’t going to be one of the last things that I got to experience. There was a wisp of light blue, airy and indistinct, that almost scampered as it wove between the other threads. Mary Alice’s magic was smaller than theirs, somehow, but possessed a keen, precise edge. Ivan was an anvil, falling from a great height, while Sveta was a keen sword flashing through darkness. Cam was dynamite, explosive and abrupt, and Mary Alice was the sniper, wasting no effort for maximum results.
Somehow, they made it work. Their combined powers spun around me, a vortex at a glacier’s pace, and I knew on some instinctual level that I would be faster, stronger, harder to injure. My body was still human, of course, and made of easily breakable stuff, but for as long as it would hold up, I would be damn hard to kill.
There was a small sigh, somewhere just outside my range of hearing, as they completed the spell and Ivan tied off the end, letting it drift down atop my head like a butterfly landing. The four released their hands, and the circle broke.
Mary Alice listed over onto her side, breathing heavily, and Cameron rested a hand on her shoulder. He looked pale himself, but didn’t seem to be suffering from the spell sickness too badly. Sveta’s lips were pressed firmly together, a faint hint of blue around them, and her breath misted when she breathed out.
“You all right?” Of all of them, I needed her at her best when the shit hit the fan. She would be the one to get them all out, if anyone could.
Slowly, she blinked, then nodded, the movement exaggerated and comical. Ivan draped his black coat around her shoulders, wrapping her in its warmth, and she didn’t protest. Hypothermia was one of the possible reactions to using magic. We just had to hope she could recover quickly.
Of all of them, Ivan seemed to be the least affected. He got to his feet with no trouble. “We are having twenty minutes more, if his words are to being true.”
Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes left to ponder the decisions that had lead me to this point. I didn’t regret any of them, by any means. If I had each one to do over, I’d take the same exact path. But, there were things in the future that I’d regret. I regretted not being able to protect the two hundred and seventy-five souls that had been bequeathed to me. I regretted not being able to see my kids grow up. At that moment, I really regretted the fact that I would never know the meaning of that stupid damn tunnel dream.
“Clear me some room. I’ll warm up.” They scooted to the back of the office, propping Sveta and Mary Alice up together for warmth and support, and I used what little open floor there was to begin stretching out.
I could lose myself in the katas, given the opportunity. My brain could stop whirling around, and my body could just move in the ways I’d taught it over the years. Step, thrust, pivot, step back, block, disengage. Again. The Way flowed in my hands, like always, feeling almost like a living thing in my grasp. Moving in the armor got easier as I reacclimated to it, until it too was just an extension of myself. Under normal circumstances, the katas would tire me out, and I would never have gone through so many just before a fight. But today, with the life force of the people around me bolstering me, lifting me up, I felt like I could have run a marathon in my armor.
When the knock came at the door, I was ready.
Chapter 17
It was Minion Lorenzo who had come to fetch us, with five of his very bestest friends. Apparently, he didn’t get the memo that we weren’t allowed to punch our way out of there. They marched us down the hallway to an elevator, Ivan supporting Sveta and Cam nearly carrying Mary Alice. The elevator was uncomfortably cramped, there being eleven of us in there, and none of the menfolk were small types. I was probably the skinniest guy there, but my armor and padding gave me bulk I wouldn’t otherwise have, so we were packed in like sardines.
The streets were eerily empty as we walked through them, our footsteps echoing against the buildings that loomed over us. A few lights glimmered in some of the windows along our path, providing us with enough illumination to see, but it was obvious that there was no one lingering behind those glowing squares. No one was here. No one would see.
St. Peter’s Square seemed impossibly large when we reached it, devoid of all human life. The only figure standing on the cobblestones was Giordano himself, and for just a moment I wondered if this was going to be the tunnel dream, forever stepping out into the open to see the Cardinal standing across the way. But no, the cobblestones under my feet were not the hard-packed earth from my dream, and the sense of the people behind me was not the quiet, painful desperation that plagued my nights. The Cardinal’s back was to the giant Egyptian obelisk that crowned the square, and that too was missing from my dream. It wasn’t yet time for the tunnel.
Giordano had traded his robes for black fatigue pants and a steel breastplate, his sword already bared and hanging loosely from one hand. The armor was going to limit my kill shots, which was the whole point of armor. Crippling blows, then. Get him on the ground, and go for the neck. Under my calm, analytical analysis of the situation, my stomach rolled with faint nausea. I was really going to do this.
Minion Lorenzo gave me a small shove out into the open area, then herded my crew to one side, his cadre of merc-priests keeping them surrounded at all times. Mary Alice was largely being supported by Cameron, and Sveta was still huddled in her father’s oversized coat. Ivan kept his arm around her shoulders, and when his eyes met mine, he nodded very slightly.
Okay then. Here we go. I drew The Way from its scabbard and left the case lying on the ground, hopefully far enough back that it wouldn’t become a footwork hazard. I strode out to the central circle of paving stones, stopping a few yards away from my opponent.
The older man inclined his head. “Shall we begin?”
Before I could answer him, time came to a stuttering halt, and what little ambient sound there had been became glaring, crushing silence. The scent of sulfur hit me like a slap in the face, and Giordano’s attention was suddenly no longer on me. Raising his sword, he pointed it at something over my left shoulder.
“You!”
“Indeed.” It was my voice, but there was no mistaking the demonic oiliness underneath it. Axel stepped into my view, his thumbs tucked nonchalantly into the belt loops of his jeans.
The Cardinal’s demon flashed a dull red behind his human eyes. “You are not welcome here, Architect!”
“I didn’t ask.” The blond demon’s eyes flared bright red, lighting up the square like a crimson strobe for just a moment. His power wasn’t trapped inside a human body, and he was flauntin
g that fact.
The demon-cardinal sneered, and I saw the ghostly image of another face moving beneath Giordano’s skin. “Here to protect your pet champion? You cannot interfere, or his souls will be forfeit.”
“I have no intention of interfering.” Axel shrugged his lanky shoulders, never once looking in my direction. “I am well aware of the rules. I wrote them. I am merely here as an observer, insuring that the rules, all of the rules, are obeyed in this contest. Violating the terms would be…unwise.” He glanced over at the tiny group of church knights surrounding my friends, and gave them a downright evil grin, the scarlet strobe issuing from his eyes again. “Very unwise indeed.” There was an uncomfortable shuffle in that area of the square, and I wondered how far Axel could push the trigger-happy priests before one of them took a shot at him.
“If you are merely here to observe, then clear the field.”
The punk-haired demon held up his hands, nodding his acquiescence. “Of course.” He backed away, to the outer edge of the square, his glowing eyes giving a constant indication of his location. He didn’t want the merc-priests to forget.
In a very strange way, I was glad to see him. Axel was nothing if not a stickler for the rules. He’d protect Ivan and the others if this all went south, simply because it was something that had been agreed to. A little of the tension went out of my shoulders, knowing that my own personal demon was watching over this little debacle.
I raised The Way in front of my face, a salute to the Cardinal. “I am Jesse James Dawson. Face me.”
It took a moment for the older man to reassert his control over his own body, but he finally dragged his eyes away from Axel and back to me. “I am Cardinal Salvatore Giordano, of the Ordo Sancti Silvii.” He sketched a similar salute with his own weapons. “Begin.”
A Line in the Sand Page 19
