Suddenly, every injury I’d ever had in my entire life hurt again, and my skin felt like it was too large, draping over a scrawny, weak frame. I was empty, alone, for the first time in months. I felt like a shell that would blow away in the first strong breeze.
Above us, the souls swirled and pulsated for a moment, growing ever dimmer in my sight until it was once again simply paint on the ceiling. I knew the souls were there, but I could no longer see them. My magic sense was gone with the souls that had granted it to me.
“Can I lie down and die now?”
Cameron managed a drained snort. “Seconded.”
“I would prefer it if you did not.” Axel didn’t smile, not quite, but it felt like he wanted to. “You have more to attend to.”
He was right. Coming out of the chapel, we looked across the square to see the distant forms of Mary Alice and Sveta kneeling near Ivan’s body. For a moment, for just a second, I swore there was someone else there, someone with coffee-colored skin and dreadlocks decorated with bits and scraps of colorful yarn. That other figure knelt between the two women, a hand on each of their heads, but when my eyes forced me to blink, it was gone. Felix?
“Freaking angels, just showing up when the party’s all over…” It would be right, though, Felix being here. Ivan had encountered the angel before, still disguised as an eccentric, homeless sage. He’d like it if Felix came to comfort his daughter.
“He’s safe, you know.” I glanced at Axel, and the demon-angel refused to meet my gaze. “Your Ivan. His soul was spoken for long ago, and he is at peace.”
After a moment, I nodded. “I’ll tell Sveta. I think she’ll appreciate knowing that. Not sure she’ll appreciate knowing that you got him killed in the first place.” Hey, when did I start managing complex sentences again? Go me.
Axel’s eyes flared, but just for a heartbeat. “I didn’t.”
“Sure you did. That’s what your little speech was all about, before the fight. All that going on about the rules? You were letting Ivan know what he could do to save me. Not to mention that there was no way he could have crossed the square fast enough to get between me and his holy demon-ness, not at the speed we were moving.”
He was silent for long moments before answering. “He acted of his own free will. He chose. Do not take that away from him.”
Cameron’s voice was steady, for all that I could feel the tremors shuddering through his body as we took turns holding each other upright. “We have to get out of here. We’re gonna wind up in jail if we don’t move.”
That reminded me that we hadn’t been alone when this nightmare started. “Hey, where are the minions?”
“They ran,” Cameron informed me. “The second the demon came up out of the body, they bolted.”
“Do not worry about the remains. They will be disposed of before they can be seen.”
“No.” Axel raised a brow at me. “Not Ivan. She gets to bury him, you understand?”
He pursed his lips, but nodded. “You will find him at the hospital morgue, then. He passed in his sleep, peacefully, from the growths that invaded his body.” Without another word, he disappeared into thin air, leaving behind only a whiff of sulfur. A scream of denial and rage issued from across the square, Sveta knowing only that her father’s body had vanished from under her very hands.
“Get her,” I told Cameron, releasing my hold on him and folding down to the ground as gracefully as I could manage. “Explain. Tell her he wasn’t taken.”
It was the best I could do. I watched Cameron stagger his way to the two women, nearly hitting the ground himself as Sveta lashed out in her grief and rage. Whatever he said, he got her to hear him, and I saw him enfold her in his arms, Mary Alice petting the other woman’s hair like she was a small child. Svetlana’s sobs rang against the cobblestones, against the empty buildings that surrounded us.
My whole body was pain, crowned by the throbbing in my brain and the high pitched whine in my wrist. Maybe, if I closed my eyes for just a second, I would be able to get up again. The darkness drifted in from the corners of my eyes, and it took me a moment to realize it wasn’t just the fragments of my contract tattoo flaking off and wafting away. The blackness was soft, soothing, and I let it wrap me up and cradle me in a place where nothing hurt anymore. I didn’t know anything after that.
Chapter 18
They excommunicated Cameron, which sounds like it would be something really painful, but is really just the Church saying “you can’t play in our sandbox anymore.” Most of the merc-priests scattered like cockroaches in the aftermath, leaving behind the bewildered and shaken remains of the Order of St. Silvius to pick up the pieces. Somewhere in all the chaos, the blood sorcerers all disappeared from their cells beneath Vatican City, including the comatose guy. The Church had to find someone to take the blame, and they chose Cam.
He wasn’t nearly as upset as I’d expected him to be.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to him about it until we were already at the airport, heading for two different gates as our paths took us in different directions, at least temporarily. “What will you do now?”
The ex-priest shrugged, shifting his backpack on his shoulder. “I think maybe I’ll go home and have sex with my girlfriend.”
“Dude. TMI.”
He gave me a wicked grin, and another shrug. “I still have a job. I’m still a librarian, officially. I still have Bridget, if she’ll keep me after I go home and tell her the absolute truth. She’s going to kill you, by the way.” Man, didn’t I know it. “I think… I think this is a good thing. God and I…we’re good. I don’t need the Church to tell me that.”
“Well listen, if you’re still keen on the whole champion gig, I know a guy who’s hiring.” It was a crappy joke, but they were the only ones I had left. I had no idea what was going to happen with our own very loosely organized group of miscreants. Recruiting seemed to be the least of my issues.
Cam got on a plane for the States, with Sister Mary Alice to see him off. The plucky little nun was determined to stick it out in Rome, helping the Order rebuild itself.
“Regardless of who and what Cardinal Giordano was, the Order has served a noble purpose. It can again.”
I shook her hand – with my left, since my right was encased in a sturdy cast – as we parted ways at the airport. “Well, keep me posted on who they choose to replace him.”
“Will do.” She eyed our hands for a moment, then threw her arms around my neck to give me a tight hug, nearly leaving her feet to do so. “Be careful, Jesse. God be with you.”
“We’ll see about that.” Theoretically, my life had gotten a lot safer, now that my burden had been lifted. No extra souls hanging around meant that no one was going to come kicking my door in to get at them. I could be out. I could just never accept another champion contract, and walk my happy ass away like I’d promised Mira.
Except we all knew I wasn’t going to. Ivan had entrusted the lives of his champions to me. He could have chosen any of us. Estéban’s mother, Carlotta, maybe, or Terrence. Someone who had been at this longer, or actually had some magical ability of their own. But he’d picked me, for reasons I still couldn’t fathom. Regardless, I couldn’t let the old man down.
Sveta and I boarded a flight for Ukraine, Ivan’s body in the cargo hold of the big jetliner. She hadn’t talked much since the fight, making quiet phone calls in her native language that I wasn’t privy to. I was tempted to nudge her a bit on the plane, to try to get some conversation going, but she spent most of it staring out the window and seeing nothing beyond what was going on in her own mind. I let her. I hadn’t lost a parent yet, and she was about to bury her second one. What could I possibly say?
We laid Ivan to rest in a cemetery that had graves older than my country of origin. Ornate statues and heavy granite monuments looked down on us as we stood next to the casket and listened to a priest speak words I couldn’t understand.
The day was bright and sunny, for all that winter was right
around the corner, and there were a handful of people there who came to clasp Sveta’s hands and say all the things you say at funerals. Through it all, she was dry-eyed and silent. Only after the other guests departed and the caretaker began the rather undignified process of filling in the grave with a backhoe did I tug at her elbow, guiding her out of the way a few yards. We watched the heavy machine do its work for probably half an hour before she said a word.
“My mother is buried a few yards that way,” she said, pointing. “I was eleven years old when she died, and I went to live with him. I do not think he understood what to do with a girl child, and so he taught me the only thing he knew.”
I stood and quietly listened. It’s what friends do.
“If I could have, I would have put them nearer to each other. My mother was the one who ended things, but she never stopped loving him, I think. She would tell me stories of him, of his bravery and determination. She would tell me ‘Sveta, you be just like your father, and you will be a good person.’” A faint smirk crossed her face. “I am not certain this is what she intended.”
I recalled a conversation Ivan and I had had on a cold California beach what seemed like an eternity ago. “He loved her.” She wouldn’t take her eyes off the heaps of dirt, cascading into the open hole in the ground. “He loved you, too.”
“That was never in question.”
I felt like I should be saying more. Offering some kind of deep philosophical insight into death, or maybe just giving her a hug. The hug would probably get my other wrist broken, and the best I could manage on short notice was, “This sucks.”
A hint of a smile ghosted across her face, and was gone. “Yes. It does.”
“What are you going to do now?” We hadn’t talked yet, about after. Everything had been focused on getting through this moment, discussions of “after” had seemed pretty inconsequential up to this point.
“I will see that you return to Kansas City safely.”
“And then?”
“I…have not decided yet.”
“You’re welcome to stay, you know. Even if I don’t really need a bodyguard anymore.”
That earned me a sidelong smirk. “You will always need a bodyguard. You are a hazard to yourself and others.”
“You’re not wrong.”
I slept through most of the flight from Ukraine to the States, a combination of pain killers and exhaustion finally catching up to me. We changed planes in Chicago, and Sveta surprised me by collecting her luggage there. “Surely you can get the rest of the way home without causing yourself major bodily harm.”
“Stranger things have happened.” I offered her a fist to bump, which she returned with a roll of her eyes. “You gonna be okay?”
“We will see. I will keep in touch with Grapevine, if you need me. Do not hesitate to call.”
“Will do.” I wouldn’t. Unless the hordes of Hell were snapping at my heels, I would let her have her time, to do her grieving her way. I watched her walk away, wending through the crowds like a shadow until she simply disappeared from my view, and I wondered if I’d ever actually see her again.
It was another few hours before my feet hit the ground in Kansas City, and then, only then, did I call my wife.
I hadn’t spoken to Mira since we’d left, nearly two weeks ago. I knew that Cameron had spoken to her, assuring her that I wasn’t dead, so she wasn’t waiting at home fretting. I also knew that there were things that I had to say, decisions that I had come to, that were going to change things. They were going to change everything, actually.
She picked up on the second ring, and we both sat in silence and listened to each other breathe for a few seconds. “Jesse.”
“Hey.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the airport. Back in KC.”
“Oh. You didn’t let me know. I could have come to pick you up, or sent Estéban or…”
“I know.” I found a spot of empty wall and slid down it, taking shelter behind my luggage and weapons crate. “I thought we should probably talk first.”
When she spoke again, her tone was wary, sensing whatever it was that I was about to drop on her. “Okay.”
“Ivan’s gone. Cam told you, right?”
“He did.”
“You know that he wanted me to take over for him. He wanted me to take care of everyone, keep the group running, keep everyone safe.”
“I remember.”
“I think…” I sighed, running a hand over my close-cropped hair and finding the sensation frustratingly unsatisfactory. “I think that we can’t keep going on like we are, just running around and reacting to the bad shit that happens. This war that’s coming, whatever it is, I think they have to get through us to make it happen. If we sit around and wait for them, they’ll pick us off a few at a time and there will be nothing left.”
“So what will you do?”
I’d thought about it a lot, since the square. Scraps of conversation from here and there, things Axel had let slip, things I’d heard from Felix. Things that I’d deduced on my own. I’d asked an angel once why God hadn’t sent help. His answer was, “What makes you think he hasn’t?”
“I think we’re the help, Mira. I think, whatever this demon war is, we’re supposed to be the thing that stops it. If this happens, we’re all – the human race, I mean – we’re all going to get trampled. These armies are going to bowl right over us and never even look down to see what they’re stepping on. It’s not a matter of helping someone win, we have to stop it before it happens.”
I could hear her swallow through the phone. “And?”
“And I’m going to go pick a fight.” Not soon. I had at least six weeks of broken arm to heal, and then there was the matter of gathering up as many fighters as I could muster on my own. Not just my own champions, but whoever I could find. Cam’s friends in the Order, Carlotta’s family if they’d come. A few others. But soon. Soon, I would call Reina up, and we would end this, one way or another. It was the only thing I could think to do.
Mira’s voice was thick with a sob that she refused to let out. “I can’t let you come home. You can’t bring this to our door, Jesse. I can’t… I can’t risk this, anymore. I’m done.”
“I know.” She had to. For the sake of her, for the sake of our children, she had to. I’d known that, going in. There was only one way this conversation could have ended, which is why I hadn’t called her to come pick me up in the first place.
That didn’t change the fact that my heart was cracking into two jagged halves.
“I’ll let you know when I’ve found a place to stay. I’ll probably call Will.”
“Okay. We should…we should at least get together for you to see the kids. Anna misses you a lot.”
“I miss her.” There was no burning sensation in my eyes. I was resolutely not blinking back tears. “I’ll call you soon.”
“Okay.” There was an awkward pause where she tried to decide whether or not to say “I love you.” Finally, she settled on “Be safe.”
“You too.”
I sat there for probably half an hour, ignoring the looks I got from the travelers who passed me on their way to wherever they were going. It had to be this way. I knew it. Ivan, long separated from the woman he loved and the mother of his child, had known it. It was just the way the world worked. Finally, I called my buddy Will, in the hopes that he’d let me crash on his couch.
It was weird, settling into a bachelor’s apartment. I’d never had one myself, having moved straight out of college dorms into the first apartment Mira and I had shared. I guess it wasn’t as bad as sitcoms would have you think. There were no weird stains on the carpets, no laundry scattered in inappropriate places. The fridge actually had food, not just beer. I couldn’t detect any funky smells, and Will was more than happy to cook for two instead of one. If it wasn’t for the fact that my bed was a lumpy sofa that was too short for my six-foot-one frame, and that nothing in the place smelled like sage and strawber
ries, I could almost forget that I wasn’t living at my home, with my wife, and my children.
A few nights after my return to Kansas City, if not to my actual home, something scratched at the balcony door around midnight. Henry’s moon-shaped eyes peered in through the sheer curtains, reflecting the light of the TV I kept playing for noise. I did a quick glance around to make sure that Will wasn’t within earshot and slipped outside, hugging my hoodie around me. The weather had taken a turn for the colder, promising an early winter.
“Hey, Henry.”
“James Dawson! I have returned! I finded you!”
I couldn’t help it. Demon or not, the little guy made me chuckle. “Yes, yes you did. Well done.”
The small demon perched on the narrow railing, his clawed toes curling around it like a bird’s talons. “I finded the information! Much danger, very brave is Henry!”
“I have no doubt of it.” When he went to open his mouth to divulge what he’d discovered, I held up a finger. “The thing is, Henry, I don’t care anymore.” Whether Reina had been the one to make a run at my family, or if Axel himself had done it to get me off my ass, it was no longer important. What’s done was done, and I had to go forward.
The demon’s bat-ears visibly wilted. “But...I finded it.”
“Yes, you did. And I’m going to pay you for it. I just…don’t want to know what you found out.” I fished a ping-pong ball out of my pocket and held it out to him. There was a faint tingle at my fingertips, but nothing like I’d felt before. My hyper-sensitivity to magic had gone with the souls, and I hadn’t had time to decide if I missed it or not.
Henry’s eyes lit up red for a heartbeat, and he snatched the plastic toy out of my hands with a coo. “Oh so pretty, oh so shiny…”
“Thank you for your hard work, Henry.” The black mark on my wrist itched as it flaked off, the contract fulfilled. I scratched at it, and tried not to think about how much my other arm itched too, confined in its plaster prison.
He made over his treasure for a few moments, then looked up at me, tilting his bald head with a slight frown. “Is James Dawson well?”
A Line in the Sand Page 21
