by Chloe Garner
“What do you think I’m going to do? Throw it?” she asked.
“C’mon. You’re not just going to shoot a pretty girl in the face at two feet,” Jason said. “He would,” he motioned to the furthest man in the group, “but not you. We’re on the same side.”
Samantha held out her hand and the leader considered it.
“You know what she is?” Samantha asked.
“Been killing my people, that’s what she is,” he said.
“That’s who she is. I asked if you know what she is,” Samantha said. Sam cringed.
“You got a big mouth,” the man said to her. She grinned.
“I’ve been told that.”
“Crazy little white chick,” he muttered, then unlocked the magazine from the gun and handed it to her. She held it up to the light then sighed.
“So… this just got more complicated.” She handed it back to him. “You guys need to go.”
“You guys were cops, you’d have already said so,” the second man said. The leader nodded.
“Not cops,” Samantha said. “Just the good guys. You three are going to get yourselves killed. We’re here to kill her. Give you my word that I’ll get her, or if I don’t, someone I know will. You need to go.”
The leader snarled at her, looking from her to Jason to Sam, then turned, motioning with his head toward the building.
“Let’s go.” He looked back at Samantha. “You follow us or try to stop us, we’ll shoot you, too.”
The three of them stood for a moment, watching the men as they left.
“Don’t know what else we could have done,” Jason said. “We can’t stop them.” He looked at Samantha. “They will shoot us.”
“I know. Go get the rifle and the demon bullets.”
“I don’t like holes in my body,” Jason said.
“Maybe if we come at her from another side, we can get to them fast enough to save them,” she said. “We need to move.”
She took out the pair of handguns out of her backpack and gave one of them to Sam, waiting in the reddening light for Jason to return with the rifle. She handed him the other, then, as the three men ahead of them went into the factory, they headed across the open lot.
“Far corner,” Jason said. “Looks like another door.”
Sam nodded.
“They’re going to get themselves killed,” Samantha said.
“The world could do with fewer of them,” Jason said. Samantha recoiled from that line of logic, but didn’t say anything. Sam considered. He hadn’t thought much about it. He didn’t want them to die, but if they threatened him for trying to stop them, that was their business. He checked the magazine and the chamber on the gun and then tested the grip. It was a nice gun, but it wasn’t his. At this point, his was mostly just for show, though.
They got to the building and went in.
“I’ll fly,” Jason whispered. “Be careful.”
He turned and went up a set of stairs immediately to the right of the door, and Sam and Samantha crept through the dark of the factory floor, past hulking black corpses of metal machinery. Their footsteps were muffled by the thick layer of dust and grime on the cement floor. Samantha popped up at the sound of gunfire, and Sam clamped his hand on her shoulder and pulled her back down behind a machine.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “Bad reflex.”
He nodded.
“Hero reflex,” he answered. She closed her eyes.
“Sorry.”
There were more bursts of gunfire and Sam and Samantha sped up, working around the debris on the floor where machinery had been gutted by looters, making their way to the front of the factory where the offices and the shipping area had been. Sam turned back, wondering if Jason could see anything from the catwalks above. Samantha’s focus spiked and he looked at her, then where she was looking. Through glassless windows, dark red beams of light cut thick with dust illuminated a woman walking down a steep industrial staircase. A long blue gown trickled down the stairs after her. The three men from outside were against the wall, staring at her.
“I wasn’t expecting company tonight,” the woman said. “I would have been better prepared for you.”
One of the men tried to say something, but his voice came out a hoarse wheeze. She put a finger to his lips.
“No no. You don’t speak. This is the first rule.”
“Yeah, I think that’s enough,” Samantha said, standing upright and drawing Lahn. The blade cut the wet air with a solid whirring noise as Samantha stepped into the open space. Sam followed. The woman put her hand out to them impotently, then smiled. She looked back at the three men and put a finger to her lips.
“Shhh. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“Let them go,” Samantha said. The woman in blue pouted her lips and scowled.
“Why would I do that? I like when they’re afraid. The life just seeps out of them like water.” She noticed Lahn and her frown became more sincere.
“The blade that was lost. What are you doing with that?”
Sam felt Samantha’s anger stumble. Something was wrong.
“Carter didn’t need her any more, since he got Diana,” Samantha said.
“It used to be they didn’t let children carry a blade like that,” the woman said. The stab of alarm Samantha felt nearly made Sam lose his balance.
“No! Jason! No!” she yelled.
“Oh?” the woman in the dress said, then smiled. “Ah yes. Another visitor. Tonight is a party. Come and join us.”
She waved her hand, and Jason fell off of a cat walk and dragged through the dirt until he caught against a machine. Sam glanced at the woman, who strained, the tendons in her hand becoming visible as she pulled at him. Jason slowly stood, staggering forward. His feet slid on the floor as he pushed against an invisible force, and Samantha grabbed his elbow. The fight was lost, and he stood easily.
“What was that for?” Jason asked. “I was in countdown.”
“She can’t glitch,” Samantha said. “She doesn’t know who Carter is, and she doesn’t know that Lahn is found.” She was looking at the woman. “She’s disconnected from the demonic world and has been for a long time.” Samantha let go of Jason’s elbow and stepped forward, standing straight as she stopped in front of the woman. “Demons talk to demons. Unless they’re hiding from us. What’s her name?”
“The human I’m wearing is called Missy. I’m Alainya.”
“Ten years, isn’t it?” Samantha asked. “The woman you’re wearing isn’t as young as she was when you took her.”
“I missed that much in ten years?” Alainya asked.
“You missed everything,” Samantha said. “You’re too backwater for me to even threaten properly.”
“How many years have you held life?” Alainya asked.
“Twenty-seven.”
Alainya smiled cruelly, putting her finger under Samantha’s chin. Samantha pushed the woman’s arm away with Lahn.
“I’ve been here in this body since you were a blushing young girl. Worse than you have threatened me.”
She reached behind her and made a clawing motion in the air and one of the men screamed. She tipped her head back.
“That noise I allow,” she said. Samantha said something in angeltongue and Alainya clawed at the man again. He screamed and cried. Alainya made a clicking noise with her tongue.
“You can’t pull me out of her fast enough to save those men an ordeal I believe you have no stomach for.”
“Do it, Sam,” Jason said. Alainya smiled at him.
“The doors are not open to you,” she said. “You will all die. She will die last, but her grip of protection on you will fade, and then she will watch you die with ribbons in your flesh. She is too soft to drive that lovely blade through the body of the sad, sad Missy, and so you will all die.”
“No,” Jason said. “Just you.”
He drew his handgun and lined it up. Alainya screamed as he took the shots, one, two, three, and killed all three
men against the wall. Samantha knelt on the ground, the point of Lahn chipping a hole in the cement as she held her forehead against her knee. Alainya charged, but Samantha held up a hand.
“No,” she said. Alainya froze, eyes wide. Sam could feel Samantha gritting her teeth as she battled the woman. She began a torrent of angry angeltongue and Alainya screamed, throwing her head back hard enough that Sam thought her neck might break. She began to thrash. Samantha pulled Sam toward Alainya, and Sam waved at Jason. Hold her.
They got her arms as she tried to throw herself against the ground, jerking and pulling against them as Samantha spat angeltongue at her. She screamed again, then the petite body went limp. The three men on the wall sagged to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” Jason said. “I figured it was her or the three of them, and she probably deserved it more than they did.”
Samantha sighed, dropping to the floor cross-legged.
“I don’t question what you did, because it needed to be done and I couldn’t do it.”
“Three lives for one?” Sam asked.
“She’s a psychic, isn’t she?” Jason asked. Samantha nodded. “Not a particularly strong one, but enough for the demon to put a good hole into the world and start amassing power. There’ll be a splash room around here somewhere.”
Sam shuddered. Missy sat up. Looked at Sam and Jason.
“Is it over?” she whispered.
“Yes, Beloved,” Samantha said. “She’s gone.”
Tears brimmed out of her eyes and down her cheeks, white sparkles catching moonlight through a distant window. She blinked, then began shaking. Sam picked her up off the dirty floor and held her as she threw her arms around his neck and sobbed. He closed his eyes, trying not to remember the specifics, but knowing exactly what she had seen. He hadn’t needed Samantha to explain what she meant by splash room.
Missy cried until a coughing fit interrupted her, and she pulled away from him to bend over her knees, coughing hard. She stood and looked at Samantha, then slowly squatted down, hugging her knees and burying her face in her arms. Sam knelt, but Samantha touched his shoulder.
“Let her be for a minute.”
“I’m going to take care of them,” Jason said, jerking his head at the three men.
“She told me things,” Missy said. Sam put his hand on her back.
“I know.”
“How? How could you know?”
“The same thing happened to me just a little while ago. Not for long, like you, but… I know.”
“Why?” Missy asked, her voice rising in a soprano effort to suppress tears. “Why us?”
“We’re psychic,” Sam said.
“She said that. Why does it matter?”
“It makes them more powerful,” Sam said. Missy looked at him with wet blue eyes.
“She couldn’t have done what she did if it weren’t for me?”
Sam shook his head.
“You can’t look at it that way.”
She jumped to her feet.
“How do we stop it? How do I keep her from doing it again?”
Samantha put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m going to get you help. Someone is going to make sure that you’re safe,” she said.
“How?”
Samantha smiled.
“There are a few ways, but mostly just being with one of us is enough.”
“You keep him safe?” Missy asked. “But one of them got to him.”
“It isn’t going to happen again,” Samantha said. There was a cord of steel anger in this that only Sam could sense.
“How can you be sure?”
Samantha sighed and shook her head.
“Nothing in life is sure. We just do our best.”
Missy looked at her hands.
“The things that I’ve done,” she whispered.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jason said, dragging away the third body.
“Can I have your phone?” Samantha asked Sam. “I need to call Lindsey. I have a few things to say to her.”
Sam handed it to her and she turned it on, twisting in the open space as she held it out.
“Big metal building,” she said. “No signal. I’m going to go outside.”
Jason returned as Samantha went out the door. He looked down at where Missy had curled up on the floor again.
“Go keep an eye on her,” he said to Sam. “I’ll stay with Missy.”
Sam nodded. The neighborhood outside was pretty rough and Samantha was distracted. He followed her out the door, glancing back once at the huddled blue form on the floor.
<><><>
Jason bent over the last body, pulling anything that might identify him easily, then went to the wall to dig out bullets. He heard Missy get up.
“Sam will know what to do,” he said. “She knows the right kind of people to help.”
His face smashed into the wall and everything went dark.
<><><>
Samantha was most of the way to the car, shouting into the phone as she went.
“A geek with a computer found her, Lindsey. You’re slacking off.” Pause. “Ten freaking years.” Pause. “There’s a difference between reducing risk and just ignoring it, and you know it. You didn’t even know she was here.” Pause. “Oh, no. You’re coming and getting her. You don’t show up here in the next six hours, I will call Carter to bring her to you.”
Sam laughed.
“Don’t go too hard on her,” he said. “You’re good cop.”
She grimaced at him, then returned her focus to the phone. The first shot pinged off a rock before he heard the gun report.
Sam dived to the side and Samantha crouched, the phone and Lindsey forgotten. Her backpack was back in the factory. She looked at Sam and they mutually decided to run for the car. He was up and running in a second, and she was already flying across the rubble. She heard him stumble and recover, then the second shot went off. They were nearly to the car when she felt the bullet bury into his chest and his heart explode. Everything went black.
<><><>
Samantha woke in the dark. Sam wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. It wasn’t possible. She knew it couldn’t have been what she thought it was. She moaned.
“No. No, no no. No.” She panted, trying to find him on the other end of the bond. “No.”
Jason heard her wake from where he sat with his head in his hands. At first he didn’t care. There had been numb relief when he had realized she was still alive, but now he felt nothing but the clutching, desperate sense that this could not be. He left the lights off because he didn’t want to see. He hadn’t known what else to do. Sam lay on the floor in the little motel room. Dead.
Samantha sobbed on his chest, unable to stand, unable to breathe. Jason couldn’t watch.
<><><>
Hours later, Samantha leaned, exhausted, against Jason.
“I can’t do this again,” she said. She looked up at him. “What happened?”
“There was a room full of guns. I didn’t know it was there. She got up in one of the windows and started shooting. She knocked me out. She was shooting.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
<><><>
Everything was numb, save the spasms of fix it. Jason had cried into Samantha’s hair. He swallowed.
“It’s time,” he said. He couldn’t even think about the next minute, the next second. He said words that he had heard in his head over and over. They couldn’t sit any more.
“What?” she asked, terror in her voice.
“You should go to him. Say goodbye. Tell him…” He licked his lips. In all the hours, he hadn’t thought of anything. He had hoped that the words would just show up when he put them together. Samantha collapsed against him, cringing dry sobs. She finally sat up and took a breath.
“He knows,” she said. “The two of you… He knows.”
“Tell him I wish I were there, with you,” Jason said. She nodded. He nudged her upright.
“Go.”
She took a breath and closed her eyes, then they flew open and she stood.
“Anu’dd!” she screamed. “Anu’dd!”
She turned her head sharply to an area of empty space.
“Why?”
There was an empty pause as she stared at the invisible angel.
“Take me to him,” she snarled.
“What’s going on?” Jason asked, forcing himself to stand.
“Echoes,” she whispered.
“What?”
“There are echoes.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the rules are more complicated than normal,” she said, glaring at the empty space.
“Why?”
“Usually because knowledge interferes with freewill or prophecy.”
“Sam’s in prophecy?”
“Not that I’m aware of. If it’s free will…” She paused, taking deep, hard breaths as she stared at the open space with open rage on her face.
“I’ve got a lot of free will rolling around in here just now, how about you?” she said.
“What does that mean?”
She glanced down at Sam, crumbling a bit, then took a step toward the space against the wall.
“I’m not doing this again. I’m not. Do you hear me? I won’t. I will not do it again.”
“What are you talking about?”
She spun wildly to him, eyes red in a pale face.
“Screw it. How far would you be willing to go to get him back?”
Jason looked down at Sam, heart thudding in his chest.
“Anything.”
She looked frantically from him to the open space, hands fidgeting in the air. She snorted three short squeezes out of her chest, then grabbed her bag.
“Right. Right. I’ve got work to do.”
<><><>
She sent him to the store for cereal and orange juice - lots of both, she said. He found an big-box store that was still open after a long search, buying what she had asked for, then returning to the motel. He walked back into the room to find Sam’s body hanging from the ceiling by his ankles. She had stripped away the drywall and anchored him to a beam, with a bucket under his head. He frowned. His neck was slit open. She was sitting cross-legged on the ground next to him, weaving nylon straps through a frame.
“This isn’t the weirdest or the most disturbing thing you’re going to see, if we do this,” she said without looking up. “Speak now.”
