Master and Apprentice

by Bateman, Sonya

  On the left, a curtained shower ring had been fastened to the outside wall. The curtain was metallic silver, the stuff they made solar car windshield covers from. There were duckies embossed on it.

  Mercy stopped the mule in the front yard and waved at the house. “Go on and get him inside,” she said, still without turning around. “Just gonna get Zephyr unpacked, then we’ll see about setting that arm up.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “We really appreciate this.”

  She made a noncommittal grunt that could have been You’re welcome or Go to hell.

  I helped Ian down, who’d turned an unhealthy shade of green, and clumped across the yard with him. Hopefully he wouldn’t need too much time to recharge his magic. I wasn’t sure what Mercy intended to do with him, but I couldn’t exactly tell her he’d be fine once he could turn into a wolf again. At least he’d be resting.

  We made it onto the porch and through the door. The inside of the place looked a lot more organized than the outside. A pegboard just to the left of the door held a yellow rain slicker, a hooded sweatshirt, and a few empty hooks. There was a massive fireplace across the room, with the hearth and the inside grill swept clean and a few logs stacked in a metal basket beside it, and a sturdy three-foot cross mounted on the wall above. A couch and two chairs were arranged around a low coffee table on one side of the room, and behind the grouping stood bookshelves and a detached closet, with the folding door slightly ajar.

  The other side of the room contained a table with bench seats next to a curtained window, and a set of countertop cabinets with a two-burner propane stove. A coffee percolator occupied one of the burners. Next to the cabinets were a water pump and a metal bucket. A desk in the far corner held a newer model desktop computer with a flat-screen monitor, complete with active modem. That explained the satellite dish. I guessed anybody could have internet access these days, even if they lived on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Two open doorways led to other rooms, presumably the oddly shaped additions.

  I settled Ian on the couch but didn’t sit down myself. For some reason, the cross above the fireplace demanded attention. I moved in for a closer look. There were symbols carved on it. More djinn writing.

  “Ian. You see what I see?”

  He raised his head and grimaced. “Yes. It is a protection spell.”

  “What do you think? Should we make a break for it?”

  He breathed in, and a coughing fit overcame him. A fine spray of blood flew from his lips and spattered the floor.

  “Okay. I’ll take that as a no.”

  “She is human,” Ian rasped. “I do not perceive a threat here.”

  “Did you happen to perceive the shotgun?” Frowning, I paced back toward the chair. Maybe Ian was too injured to be paranoid, but I wasn’t. First the cave, now this cabin. If whatever the cross had on it was a protection spell, it might’ve been against the Morai we’d just killed—but who put it there? I couldn’t think of many reasonable explanations outside of Mercy knowing something about the djinn.

  Ian seemed convinced she was human. But we hadn’t seen her eyes. She’d made sure of that, and it was definitely deliberate. That was the thing about djinn. No matter how human they made themselves look, their eyes gave them away. They always retained the animal qualities of their clan—Ian’s were rounder than a human’s and ringed with black; Akila, like a hawk, didn’t have any whites.

  And all the Morai had slitted pupils, with swamp-mean hatred lurking behind a yellow-green gaze.

  I opened my mouth to say something and heard scratching sounds. Claws on wood. They were coming from the closet. My heart slammed a few times, and I tried to convince myself it was something domestic. Maybe a dog or a cat. I inched closer, cleared my throat.

  The scratching stopped. A low chittering took its place, an alien sound I was sure no self-respecting dog or cat could ever make.

  The front door flew open, and Mercy strode in clutching the shotgun. Her head turned toward the closet, where the disconcerting noise had grown louder. “You get outta there, Sister,” she said. “And you better not’ve touched that blanket.”

  A small, black, furry hand, disturbingly human looking, poked out and folded the closet door open. The rest of the animal that lumbered out after it was a damned big raccoon. I’d seen smaller pit bulls. For a crazy instant I wondered if there were any djinn raccoon clans, but it didn’t even glance at me or Ian. It went straight to Mercy and sat up on its hind legs, still making that weird chirring sound.

  The thing was wearing a pink collar.

  Mercy patted a pocket and produced what looked like a handful of dog food. She offered it to the raccoon, who took one piece in each hand, sniffed at one, and stuffed it in her mouth. “All right, Sister.” Mercy put the pellets back and scratched the animal behind its ears, like a cat. “Go find your little ones. There’s fresh fish outside.”

  Sister polished off the other nugget, dropped to all fours, and ambled away toward one of the smaller rooms.

  “You have a pet raccoon?” I said. Like an idiot.

  “Ain’t you a bright one.” Mercy racked the shotgun across two of the hooks on the board. She reached for her hat, hesitated, then pulled it off and dropped it on a peg. And stared at me.

  Her eyes were human. But it wasn’t hard to figure out why she’d hidden her face.

  Her features were split almost exactly down the middle. One half of her face was tanned and healthy—and the other was dark red, the color of wine, from her hairline, down her neck, and across her ear. The eye on that side was distorted, the lid open too wide and pulled down at the outside corner so it appeared to bulge. Blood red filled in where the white should have been. Her good eye, a pale and pretty amber, dared me to say something stupid or pathetic.

  “It must be a bitch finding the right shade of foundation,” I said.

  She struggled against a smile, and finally laughed. “Maybe you ain’t all dumb,” she said. “Donatti, you said your name was, and he’s Ian. Right?” She cast a look at the couch and frowned. “He still alive?”

  “Yeah. It looks worse than it is.”

  “Mm-hm. He gonna bug out if I check him?”

  “I will behave.” Ian smiled faintly without opening his eyes. “You have a lovely home, lady. We are indebted to your gracious care.”

  Mercy blushed a little. Most females seemed to have that reaction to Ian, even when he was bruised and bloodied. Especially then. But she shook it off fast and went back to being serious. She approached him, stopped. Frown lines furrowed her brow. “You’re burned.”

  “Campfire,” I said quickly. “That’s what he landed on. I yanked him out.” I held up my blistered hand for inspection and hoped I didn’t sound completely unconvincing.

  “Hmph. You two got no business up in these woods.” A tiny smirk said she’d humor us anyway. “You sit. I’ll be back quick. Need to get some supplies.”

  At once, sprawling in one of those cushioned chairs seemed like the best idea since the invention of room service. Even as I sat down, I thought of a dozen things I should do instead of relaxing—call and check in with Jazz, figure out why Mercy had something with djinn writing on it, come up with a better story than “We fell into a campfire.” I figured I’d just close my eyes for a few minutes and then worry myself into a good panic.

  Consciousness fell away from me almost before I leaned back.

  Eventually, a marginal awareness of someone patting my knee brought me swimming up from sleep. At first it was a dream. I was up against a wall, getting frisked—not a new experience for me, being a thief—but the cop’s hands were tiny, like doll’s hands at the end of regular-size arms. I asked him how he could hold a gun with those. He opened his mouth and chirred at me.

  I snapped awake, and found a furry face with a pointed nose and a black mask inches from mine. The shout on the tip of my tongue came out a fuzzy, “Howza-wha?”

  The raccoon standing on my lap was considerably smaller than Sister. I g
uessed he was a boy, because his collar was blue. He blinked bright black eyes at me, reached over, and started investigating one of the zippers on my jacket.

  Low laughter drifted my way. “Do you often attract woodland creatures?”

  “Yeah. Just call me Dr. Doolittle.” I glanced around the raccoon and found Ian shirtless, bandaged and splinted, seated upright on the couch with his singed jacket and vest folded beside him. “How long’ve I been out?” I asked. “And where’s Mercy?”

  “Nearly an hour, and she has gone to pour out the water.” He nodded at the open door. “I am sufficiently recovered,” he said. “We can leave when it is … socially acceptable.”

  “I’m surprised you know that term.”

  A brief, bitter smile surfaced. “Well, I am a prince.”

  I grimaced in sympathy and looked away. It couldn’t be easy for him, being the prince of a murdered kingdom. What the Morai had done to his clan, they’d done thoroughly. Ian was the last of the Dehbei.

  Hence his relentless pursuit for revenge.

  The little raccoon had gone from checking out my zippers to plucking at my shirt. I watched him for a few seconds, and tried to shift straighter in the chair. He flinched, freaked out, and grabbed handfuls of shirt—and hair—with a frightened bleat.

  “Ow,” I squeezed out, suspecting a yell would get me bitten. “Ease up there, little guy. That’s quite a grip you’ve got. If you let go, I promise not to move anymore.”

  “Ernest. Behave y’self.” Mercy’s voice from the doorway sent the raccoon chittering again. He released my hair, settled down in my lap, and sent a hopeful look at the lady with the food. “You wanna feed him?” she said.

  “Me? Uh, sure.”

  She came toward me, a hand in her pocket, and pulled out a few chunks of dog food. I held out my good hand, and she dropped them in. “Here you go, Ernest,” I said, pinching one between thumb and finger and offering it to him. “Dig in.”

  He took it, blinked at me, and jumped down to saunter off to the back room.

  I laughed. “What’d I do?”

  “He’s gone to wash it. The little ones wash just about everything they eat. Make a right mess of things.” Mercy opened a plastic tackle box on the low table. She must’ve brought it out while I was sleeping. It was full of medical supplies—bandages, ointments, pills, a few disposable syringes, and a bunch of stuff I couldn’t identify. She picked out a tube and a plastic-wrapped roll of white gauze. “Let’s see that hand.”

  I held it out and tried not to wince while she smeared gunk all over it. “Nasty job you did here,” she said. “Your friend’s worse.”

  “Yeah.” I forced myself not to babble on about campfires and falling off cliffs. The less I said, the easier it’d be to keep straight.

  She put the tube down, opened the gauze, and started wrapping. “I know you’re full of shit, you know. About fallin’.”

  Crud. My gaze flicked automatically to the shotgun. Still hanging by the door. I swallowed, but didn’t say anything.

  “Ernest likes ya, so you can’t be too dangerous. Don’t you worry none.” Her hands flew with the gauze, wrapping individual fingers with ease. “I know what it’s like. I got secrets of my own.”

  I managed a grin. “I bet you do. There’s gotta be a reason you live up here in Nowheresville by yourself.”

  “You mean outside my dazzling beauty?” She tied off the end of the gauze and looked up at me with a smile. “Yeah, I got reasons. Wanna know why my name’s Mercy?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “It’s the first word my momma said when I popped out.” Uncertainty flickered through her smile, and for a moment it was bitter. “First and last one. To me, anyway.” She stuffed the plastic wrap in a pocket and returned the ointment to the tackle box. “Either of you boys thirsty? I got a few beers chillin’ in the back.”

  “I’d love one, if you’re sure you don’t mind,” I said. “Ian?”

  “Water would be most welcome,” he said.

  “Whatever floats you.” She grabbed the box, headed for a back room, and returned in less than a minute with two brown bottles. She handed one to me, then looked at Ian. “Sure you jus’ want water?”

  “Please.”

  She shrugged and went to the pump. While she filled the bucket, I looked at the bottle label. The name printed on it was doppelbock. I didn’t think I could even pronounce that. Maybe that meant it was good. I worked the cap off with my teeth, took a swig, and decided it was better than good. “Damn,” I said. “Where do you get this stuff ? It’s amazing.”

  “It’s local.” Mercy filled a glass from the pump stream, stopped the flow, and took the water to Ian. “Pick it up in town now and again.”

  “You mean that bump in the road down the mountain? Resnik or Rickenback, something like that …”

  “Ridge Neck.” She popped her beer and downed a third of it without a pause. “Ignorance capital of Virginia. Might as well’ve called the place Redneck and been true about it.”

  I swallowed more beer to hold back a pained expression. Mercy didn’t seem like the type to welcome sympathy. “You said something about a militia,” I said. “Are they in Ridge Neck?”

  She shook her head. “Crazy shits got themselves a compound, round the other side of the mountain. Ever’body in town pretends they ain’t there. They got more guns than a county full of sheriffs, though, and there’s somethin’ wrong with them. Inbred, maybe. I seen …” She took another drink. “They ain’t nice, is all,” she said softly.

  I glanced at Ian. He frowned slightly, but didn’t say anything. After a moment’s silence, I said, “Can I ask you something, Mercy?”

  “Shoot.”

  “What’s with the cross, there? It looks like it means something. All those symbols and stuff.”

  She blushed, a lot deeper than she had from Ian’s flattery.

  “It’s Latin,” she said. “Cal—a friend gave it to me. Supposed to protect me from harm. Bears and such, I suppose.”

  This time the look I exchanged with Ian held a lot more concern. Whoever Cal was either knew about the djinn, or was one himself. And Mercy apparently liked him quite a bit. “That’s cool,” I said. “Like a spell, right?”

  “Yeah, it’s magic. I’m a witch. Watch out or I’ll hex your ass into next week.” She grinned, drank. “I wouldn’t mind hexin’ a couple rednecks. Mind you, just little hexes. Permanent hemorrhoids’d be a nice touch.”

  I had to laugh at that. Even Ian cracked a smile.

  We made small talk for a few more minutes and finished our drinks. Finally, I stood and stretched. “I think we’ve imposed on you long enough,” I said. “You have our eternal gratitude—especially for the beer.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Ian got up and gathered his clothes. Mercy walked us to the door. “I’m guessin’ you got a way back to wherever you’re goin’,” she said.

  “We do. Thank you, lady.” Ian caught her hand and kissed it. She giggled.

  I congratulated myself for not kicking him in the shin.

  “You’d better get checked out soon,” she said. “Both of you. That arm might not heal proper if you don’t, and you’re due for an infection.” She looked at each of us in turn. “Drop by again if you want. You can bring me a beer and pay me back.”

  “We will.” I smiled. Jazz would’ve absolutely loved her.

  By unspoken consent, we headed back the way we’d come, up the mountain. Ian would have to heal himself completely for the next leg of our return trip.

  Flying. My favorite.

  Chapter 3

  “So I’ve been thinking,” I half-screamed near Ian’s ear, “wouldn’t it be great to invest in a helicopter?”

  “We’ve no need for such a contraption.”

  A lone bird zipped past my head. I lurched aside and watched my life flash before my eyes, which I’d squeezed shut to keep from glimpsing the ground half a mile below us. “Why not? It’d be just as fast, and you w
ouldn’t get drained—”

  “No. They are too loud. We would lose the advantage of secrecy.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I raised my voice. “I ate food. Ten hours ago, but I’m still gonna lose it if you don’t land soon. Aren’t we there yet?”

  Ian didn’t answer me. That could’ve meant we weren’t even close, or we were but he was too stubborn to tell me. He knew damned well I hated flying. But short of a helicopter or a two-day hike through impenetrable mountains, there’d been no other way to get to or return from the cave where Akila had located the Morai’s tether.

  She could’ve flown this distance smoother than a Vegas hustler and twice as fast, being part hawk and all. Unfortunately, Ian—and myself by extension—hailed from the wolf clan. The Dehbei weren’t exactly suited to air travel. My personal flight ability rivaled that of a two-ton boulder, and Ian’s wasn’t much better. At least he could get off the ground. Still, he’d be exhausted again by the time we reached our hotel room, and we’d have to rest before we could open a mirror bridge to take us home.

  Home was where the women were. His wife, my Jazz. We’d been gone two days and I already missed her, and our son. I’d lost out on the first two years of Cyrus’s life and had spent the last year playing catch-up between Morai hunts. Now I couldn’t imagine not being his father.

  I risked opening an eye, and watched my sentimental thoughts vanish in favor of a deadly view. We’d passed the bulk of the mountain range and started over a stretch of jagged, rocky terrain. From our height the occasional flourish of vegetation looked like green bird shit dribbled across broken asphalt. Far ahead, beyond the wasteland and the rolling acres of forest that followed, a long whitish-gray smear represented Ridge Neck. We’d rented our usual Days Inn room. They had the biggest bathroom mirrors. If Ian gained a little altitude, we could be back on solid ground in fifteen or twenty minutes.

  Just when I moved to suggest higher ground, I realized the bird shit below had sprouted leaves. An instant later I recognized the sinking feeling in my stomach as a literal sensation. We were falling.