Sacrifices

by Jamie Schultz

  Anna couldn’t find an adequate response to that. She drove.

  * * *

  Through her eyes, Karyn saw a bewildering mess. The bar was crowded with dozens of overlapping figures, body parts elongated and meshed with objects like a Giger nightmare—the patrons of the place over the coming weeks or months, all at the same time. A garbled stream of sounds from a dozen different TV programs came from the corner, voices murmuring quietly, and, above it all, sounds of passionless fucking coming from the bar where, fortunately, she couldn’t see much of anything.

  She couldn’t even see Elliot with her eyes. The woman was buried in all the other crap. Nail, walking right behind Karyn, might as well have been a thousand miles away.

  It had seemed like a good idea to meet somewhere other than the municipal building, since word of Karyn’s constant visits there would surely get around if she kept it up, and it would likely be even more conspicuous in the evening after the building was closed. Maybe she should have opted for something less public, but she wondered if it really would have mattered.

  The demon image led Karyn to Elliot, who had seated herself in back and claimed the corner. Karyn frowned. “I don’t suppose you could . . .” She tipped her head toward the other seat, the one with its back to the entire room. Elliot rolled her eyes, but she got up and moved. Karyn wedged herself into the corner, and Nail pulled up a chair next to her.

  “You ready for this?” Elliot asked. Her teeth showed in a wide grin, and Karyn wondered just how isolated this FBI division was.

  “Let’s have it.”

  “First things first. The priest’s name is Alonzo Abas. Spanish. He’s no longer a priest, actually. He was defrocked in 1999.”

  “Okay.”

  “Moreover, he was actually excommunicated.”

  “Okay.”

  “For practicing witchcraft.”

  Karyn thought Elliot expected her to be surprised, and maybe she would have been if she hadn’t been so tired, but the news that the man was up to his eyeballs in the occult wasn’t exactly news. “Okay,” she said again.

  “They didn’t burn him at the stake?” Nail asked.

  Elliot’s grin faltered. “I don’t think that’s standard practice these days. Secular governments frown on religious authorities carrying out executions no matter what the reason.”

  “Thank God for small favors,” Nail said.

  She gave him an uneasy chuckle, as if she wasn’t sure if he was joking but was trying to humor him all the same. “I haven’t been able to get the details, but the excommunication happened after some kind of occult accident that left several people dead. The event was covered up, but the excommunication made a lot of noise. His family has priests in every generation going back at least to the seventeenth century.”

  “You’d think it’d be hard to keep that up,” Nail said. “Ain’t like being a priest is something you hand down to your son.”

  “They’re very devout, and they tend to have lots of kids. They managed. According to my sources, he tried to appeal the decision all the way to the top and got nowhere.”

  “Okay,” Karyn said. “He screwed up, outed himself as a practitioner, got some people killed, got tossed out of the church, and brought disgrace on the family name. So? What’s he doing here?”

  Elliot unfolded a large piece of paper, about the size of a place mat, with a drawing stretched over the whole of it, labeled in tiny letters. A family tree, it looked like.

  “Here’s Abas,” she said, pointing at a name close to the bottom. “What else do you see?”

  Don’t play games with me, Karyn wanted to say, but Nail put his finger on the paper right away. “There,” he said. “Moreno.”

  “Four generations back,” Elliot said, nodding. The grin was back, full force. “I don’t have records for that branch, but there were quite a few of them.”

  Nail leaned closer, squinting to read the small print. Karyn couldn’t see what he was looking for, but she could tell that the overall shape of the tree was nearly diamond-shaped. “They’re dying out,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Nail said. “Whole damn family’s getting pretty thin on the ground these days.”

  “Yes, it is,” Elliot said. “Abas must have searched half the world to find some outflung branch of his family tree.”

  “But why?” Karyn asked.

  Elliot shook her head. “I’m not entirely sure.”

  * * *

  Karyn and Nail didn’t go back to the welding shop after meeting with Elliot. Anna called, bubbling with news, moments after they left Elliot in the café, and declared that they absolutely needed to talk and she absolutely needed to eat. They ended up meeting at an old-fashioned diner, where Anna ordered the biggest steak on the menu.

  “‘Blue’?” Nail asked, after Anna ordered and the waiter had gone.

  “‘Very rare’ doesn’t quite cut it, and they look at you funny if you order it raw.”

  “Didn’t know you were still worried about that kind of thing.”

  “I’m trying, okay? And what’s with you people? You don’t eat anymore?”

  “Elliot bought lunch,” Nail said. “And that’s not all.” He brought Anna up to speed, and then Anna returned the favor. Karyn watched the exchange, still struggling to get anything useful from her visions. One moment Anna was gone, and the next she was there with a bloody gash in her forehead, laughing. Nail, surprisingly enough, was his normal self for once, with nothing weird about him. Once Karyn would have regarded that as a mercy, but right now it just felt like her pain-in-the-ass talent was being more of a pain in the ass than usual. Playing hide-and-seek.

  When they’d finished talking, Karyn put her hands on the table. “So, where does that leave us?” she asked.

  “Well,” Nail said, staring thoughtfully into space, “I think Freak’s got the right of it. This priest, Abas—he’s trying to get right with God.”

  “Huh?” Anna said.

  “The Abraham and Isaac thing he mentioned. The family connection. But look at the story—it’s not about Abraham and his son. It’s about Abraham staying on God’s good side. My guess? Abas is in the wilderness, so to speak. He fucked up. So now he’s down here digging up graves, defiling dead family, and doing his freaky acts of charity on behalf of these people because either it’s penance or he’s looking for a way to atone, or both. It ain’t about Moreno at all.”

  “Yeah, there’s something there,” Anna said. “You should have seen his face when I mentioned Belial, and Moreno’s kid says he’s been all excited and praying nonstop ever since.”

  “Can you hook us up with him?” Karyn asked her.

  Anna tapped the table with her fork and glanced toward the kitchen.

  “Anna?”

  “Huh?”

  “You with us here?”

  Anna shrugged. “What? I’m hungry.”

  She tried to suppress the feeling that she was dealing with a child, but that was the sense she had, and there couldn’t be a worse time for it. Karyn might have had a line on the future, sometimes, but when that didn’t work, Anna was the one who had a sense of people. “The priest. Can we meet him?” Karyn repeated, trying not to sound like she was lecturing an idiot and only sort of succeeding. “Can we trust him?”

  Anna stopped tapping the fork. She took it in both hands, pressed her thumbs in the middle, and bent it into a U. “That depends on what we need to trust him with, I guess. What are you thinking?”

  “We throw in with him. I think we might have common cause. He’s looking for the same relic we are. He obviously knows something, and if he’s really as focused on atonement as you think, I bet he’ll jump at the chance to help us neutralize Belial. He might even have answers himself that he’d be willing to trade for information.”

  “He said he can’t do an exorcism. He also might just kill Belial a
nd fuck me over.”

  “We have to talk to him. We have to find out. We’re no closer to finding that damn relic than we were a week ago.”

  Anna cast another glance toward the kitchen and sighed. “All right. I’ll set it up. I don’t think he’s gonna want to do me any favors, but maybe we can work something out.”

  Chapter 23

  Anna woke to a predawn light so thin and feeble it had yet to outshine the streetlights outside the window. She surfaced, tearing through a skein of tangled, violent dreams that seemed to cling to her skin in bloody threads. As if she didn’t need a shower already. Her skin was oily, her hair itched, and when she touched her face it felt coated in a light, greasy grit that came away on her fingertips. She rubbed it between her thumb and fingers. Oil from her skin mixed with—with what? Dust? Fine metal shavings from the shop below? Cobwebs?

  All that plus bad dreams, she decided. She ran her thumb across the whorls of her index finger in slow circles, watching the arcs of grime left in its wake. She could almost feel the individual particles, each one rolling up the high ridge made by her fingerprints, then sliding down into the valley before the next ridge. A tiny cut on the side of her finger, so shallow its white edges hadn’t even bled, caught the debris. The little slash became a blackened valley.

  “Are you high?” Karyn asked.

  Anna didn’t look away from her fingers. “Huh?”

  “You’ve been staring at your fingers for twenty minutes.” Karyn sat on the floor in front of her, her back to the main windows. “There’s nothing that interesting there, unless you’re high.”

  “That is kinda what it feels like.” She picked at the cut with her thumbnail, wondering without much interest if she was trying to push the grime down into it or open it up and let it irrigate itself. Either seemed fine. “It’s, like, totally intense, man,” she said, affecting an idiotic surfer-boy accent.

  Karyn closed a hand over hers, stopping the motion. Irritation swelled suddenly into rage and then was just as abruptly gone. Anna closed her fist, trapping her thumb inside. She pulled her gaze up to Karyn’s.

  Sharp shadows shrouded half of Karyn’s face, the yellow sodium lights casting the other half into bright relief crossed with impossibly dark valleys. Karyn was twenty-seven, Anna thought. She looked a thousand. Care and grief had worn new lines around her eyes, it seemed, in just weeks. There were permanent purple hollows below her eyes now, testament to how little she slept.

  Suddenly, Anna wondered how she herself looked right now. Worse, probably. Still pale from blood loss. Too thin, despite shoveling food into her face in grotesque quantities. Was her metabolism running hot these days, or just not processing anything at all?

  “Tell you what,” she said, summoning up a grin. “Let’s order some pizzas. Like, a dozen.”

  Karyn gave her a perfunctory smile in answer. “It’s a little early for that—don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know anything anymore. All I can focus on is bullshit. Getting in with Sobell, that stupid job, that was supposed to be the answer. That was supposed to end all this, and it only gets worse. I almost ate a rat yesterday. Would have, if I coulda caught the damn thing.”

  They didn’t get pizza, but Karyn made coffee. Anna drank it. It hit her empty stomach like battery acid and sat in a corrosive pool as the sun got higher in the sky. Few words were spoken, and then only functional ones. Anna was distracted, itching to get her hands on a pen and paper, to draw and to draw blood, and Karyn seemed too exhausted to try to draw her out. That was fine. If only she’d go do something, rather than sit and watch.

  Better this way, Anna reminded herself. Keeps me out of trouble.

  At about eleven, they headed down to the car. Anna still felt groggy, as if the cobwebs hadn’t quite shaken off, but the promise of meeting Abas helped clear them away. She was, she realized, gearing up for a fight. There was no reason this had to be a fight—Abas had been courteous enough on the phone—but she was already thinking of it like one. God, I’m fucked up right now. I need to end this.

  The trip to Doyle Gardens took far longer than she would have liked. Karyn said little, and what she did say mostly got on her nerves. Meaningless shit about traffic and the weather and hoping this would all come out all right. It wasn’t like her, and it pissed Anna off. She felt like opening the door and jumping out of the car, partly to get away from the bullshit chitchat and partly just for the hell of it, and once she caught her hand working toward the handle with that very purpose.

  She took the exit down into the Gardens. The kids at the corner watched her suspiciously as she approached. Strapped, every one of them, some with guns already to hand, others merely touching them, ready to pull chrome at the first rude word.

  Anna slowed, holding her hands open on the wheel, palms facing the kids. Freak was there, the oldest, it looked like, muttering reassurances as the others got ready to throw down. One of the kids was biting his lower lip, and two of the others had on the most fragile-looking tough-guy faces Anna had ever seen. “Kids” wasn’t the right word, Anna realized. That could mean anything all the way up to men in their twenties, depending who was talking. These were children. Cutting class so they could stand on a corner and mow down anybody who threatened their home, or, equally likely, die trying. She didn’t know whether to thank Abas for trying to protect them or hate him for escalating the situation. Would these kids have been okay if the other gangs had moved in, or would they be dead already?

  These are not my problems, Anna thought, but the thought didn’t stick.

  “Hey,” Freak said. “What’s going on?”

  “Need to talk to Abas.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think now’s a good time.” She lifted her chin and cocked her head, hooking her thumbs into her waistband and looking at Anna with all the considerable swagger she had at her disposal. Anna, who had felt an odd species of pity moments ago, felt a combative part of her well up, like she’d like nothing better than to get in some kind of pissing contest or, better still, get out and brawl right here. That ain’t me, she told herself. She wasn’t sure if that was entirely true, but she focused on it anyway. That ain’t me.

  “Ain’t never gonna be a better one,” Anna said.

  “What the fuck do you know?”

  It would take two seconds for Anna to grab her knife, another two to unfold it. Two more to get out of the car and get to Freak. Did she think any of these scared kids would pull a gun, let alone a trigger in that time?

  This ain’t me.

  “He said he can help me,” Anna said. “Said he can help the Locos, too, if I can get him something he needs.”

  “Yeah?”

  Anna nodded. “I can get him something he needs. He’ll want to talk with me.”

  Freak broke eye contact. “Eddie, you got the corner. Back in twenty.” A challenging look at Anna. “Open the door.”

  The younger woman got in the back and Anna pushed the accelerator. “You better not be fucking with me,” Freak said. “You better be for real.”

  “How’s your old man?” Anna asked.

  “He’s all fucked-up—what do you think? Still looks like he got run over by a garbage truck.”

  “Abas taking care of him?”

  “When I’m not. Yeah.” Freak swallowed, looked like she was going to spit, then shook her head, a disgusted look on her face. “Considering he’s the one fucked him up, he ought to.”

  “He did it for the Locos,” Anna said.

  “Awful nice of him.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that.

  They drove without further conversation. Anna parked the car in front of Moreno’s house. It looked smaller than she remembered, even since just the other day. Smaller and seedier, as if the neighborhood was leaching some vitality from it, or maybe its strength had faded with Moreno’s.

  Freak kicked
open the chain-link gate, walked to the front door, and let herself in without knocking. Karyn gave Anna a worried look, and then the two of them followed.

  “Yo, Padre,” Freak said, infusing the word with undisguised hatred. “You got company.”

  Abas sat on a chair next to the couch on which Moreno still reclined. Moreno looked pretty much as Freak had described, though better than Anna had remembered. More like he’d been run over by a garbage truck a few weeks ago than just now. He still sported an ugly purple bruise on his forehead, but the edges had begun to yellow and fade, and most of the other bruises had faded as well.

  Abas sipped tea from a chipped blue mug, swallowed, and put the mug down. He didn’t get up.

  “Hello, Anna,” he said. “And you must be Karyn.”

  “Hi.”

  “Call me Abas.”

  “Just . . . Abas?” Karyn asked.

  “Yes. Would you like to sit?” Before she answered, he looked to Freak. “Luisa, would you please get our guests some chairs from the kitchen?”

  “How about you get off your ass and get them yourself?” Freak said. Abas made a pained, long-suffering face.

  “It’s fine,” Karyn said. “I’ll go.” The kitchen was just a few steps away, and Karyn came back in moments with a couple of small but sturdy wooden chairs. “You want one?” she asked Freak, but the younger woman just crossed her arms and leaned against the wall.

  “I’m gonna skip the bullshit,” Anna said. “We know you’re looking for a relic. We need the same thing. How about we help each other out here instead of knocking our heads together?”

  “You’re mistaken. I have the relic I need,” Abas said.

  “Since when?”

  He said nothing, only smiled without humor.

  “What are you trying to accomplish here?” Karyn asked.

  “Here?”

  “In general. In Doyle Gardens.”

  “Doing God’s work the best I can. That’s all.”