by Paul Neuhaus
Quinn let all of that sink in then she stood and pushed in her stool. “She wants to kill all human Channelers? You’re sure about that?”
“Positive. It’s a long story. Pre- pre-history, but the Deva think we should’ve never taught you guys magic. They consider it a blasphemy.”
Henaghan stood. “Good talk. Thanks, Mister I-don’t-know-what-your-name-is.”
The Asura was baffled. “That’s it?”
“Yeah, I told you I wasn’t here to start trouble. I just wanted a little dirt… and to take your temperature.”
The little man straightened, and his eyes resumed their shifty pattern. “Okay. Fine. Great. ‘Bye then. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
“You don’t have a door.”
“Don’t let the metaphorical door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
“Will do.” Quinn walked back out onto Fremont Street in time for the hourly light show to begin. She decided to stop and watch.
“Just so you know, you’re in deep shit,” Yellen said. Quinn found the Israeli waiting for her when she got home. Now the two of them sat in Henaghan’s living room with Uriah in a chair and Quinn on the couch. Molly brought them both coffee and sat down next to Quinn.
“I’m not in deep anything,” the redhead said. “I’m out of the game. Retired.”
Yellen took a sip of the coffee and raised the cup to Molly to acknowledge a job well-done. “Retired? That for her?” he said, meaning Blank.
“For her. And for me.”
“Mmm. That’s nice. How long do you think it’ll be before they pull a Michael Corleone on you?”
Only Quinn got the reference to Godfather III. “Nobody’s pulling me back in.”
“Well… Good luck with that.”
“Why’re you here, Yellen? I don’t know if you remember but we haven’t exactly been buddies. First you performed nonelective oral surgery on me and then you absconded with one of my statues.”
“I have… regrets about our prior interactions. Mostly due to recent developments. Like you, I’m retired. I’m out of the witch hunting business.”
The first thing Henaghan had noticed about Uriah when she’d come in was that he wasn’t wearing his Hexenjäger get-up. She didn’t think much of it at the time. Maybe it’s casual Friday was her only reaction. “What happened?” she said.
Yellen drained his coffee and set the cup down on a coaster. Molly asked if wanted more but he shook his head. He turned his attention back to Quinn. “Long story short: I got mad at Wesley Tzu and bailed out of the Hexenjäger. In fact, when I told my men why I was leaving the organization, they scattered to the four winds. As of right now, the Hexenjäger exist in name only.”
Henaghan struggled to keep up. What the Israeli had said was dense with information. “Back up. What’s Wesley Tzu got to do with any of this?” Wesley Tzu was a Silicon Valley titan. First there was the late, lamented Steve Jobs, then there was Sergey Brin and Larry Page, then there was Wesley Tzu. In that order.
Yellen shrugged. “Do the math,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you the Hexenjäger had tech billionaires on its side? Tzu’s was always the biggest teat we sucked. He hates you guys. Thinks that magic’s an abomination. He wants a world where man does the whole bootstrap thing. Solves his problems with ingenuity rather than hocus-pocus. Anyway, he used to.”
“What do you mean?”
“You realize you have a Deva running roughshod over you right now, right? She’s been playing the Asura for thousands of years and now she’s focusing on Channelers in general. I don’t know all the history—that’s not my department—but apparently, she thinks the Asura that came here didn’t have the right to teach us lowly humans magic. In fact, she considers human Channelers an abomination. Remind you of anyone I just mentioned like thirty seconds ago?”
Quinn took her hand off of Molly’s knee and leaned forward. “Wait… Are you saying that Wesley Tzu has teamed up with our Deva?”
“I am. It seems they have shared interests. Cycling. Moonlit strolls. Wizard genocide.”
Henaghan plopped back against the couch. “Oy,” she said.
“Hey, that’s my line.”
The redhead thought for a moment. “Okay. Let’s cut to the chase. Here’s what I take from all of this: Wesley Tzu, your former sponsor has teamed up with a Deva. For you, that’s a bridge too far, although it does align with your organization’s stated goals.”
Uriah raised a finger. “Former organization’s stated goals.”
“So, you’re pissed at Tzu and you wanna feed me some dirt so he’ll wind up with egg on his face.”
The man with the disfigured face pointed at his nose then pointed at Quinn. “To be fair, it’s not that simple. The Hexenjäger may seem extreme, but it did always understand priorities. In the hierarchy of threats to Mother Earth, the Asura and the Deva pose a greater threat than human Channelers. We’ve never been strong enough to take on one of those creatures, but we sure as hell aren’t jaded enough to work with one.”
“I admire your integrity.”
“Ah, if only you meant that.”
“Hold on. Before we get into the nitty gritty, what happened to the statue of Set? You did manage to get out of San Francisco with it, didn’t you?”
Yellen’s entire upper body slumped. “Ah, that might be the deepest cut of all. Tzu made me give it back. He said we needed to stay on the Resolute’s good side, so we could keep selling them countermeasures. I found out later the Deva made him do it. Word around the campfire is the Deva’s responsible for the new and improved Resolute leadership. She gave Adam Johns his statue back, coached him on how to rise to power, loaned him a deamhan, all so he could wear the Il Duce suit.”
Again, Quinn was knocked for a loop. “Holy shit! That’s insane. But what does a Deva gain from having Adam Johns in power?”
“Think about it. Simple quid pro quo. The Deva gives Johns a boost, he pays her back by starting a war with the Tilted. From what I understand, this bitch is serious about wiping you guys out and she’s working multiple angles to make it happen.”
“I need specifics, what’ve you got for me?”
The three of them reconvened around the dining room table, Molly distributed more coffee and Yellen laid down a sort of blueprint. “This is the info I think you’re gonna find most useful.”
The style of the device depicted on the paper was a hybrid of cyber- and steampunks. It had copper coils, but it also had attached tablet computers for interaction and monitoring. There was no label and Quinn was hardly an engineer so she said, “What is it?”
“You ever watch Star Trek?”
Molly and Quinn answered on top of one another. Molly said “no” and Quinn said “yes”.
“This, ladies, is a cloaking device. This particular cloaking device, however, was not designed to hide starships in the Romulan Neutral Zone. It was designed to hide both Channelers and Channeling. I should’ve realized Wes was up to something when he started building this thing. I mean why would Hexenjäger wanna hide Channelers? The machine doesn’t exactly fit with our whole milieu.”
“So, what was the purpose then?”
“I can think of a few uses. Chief amongst those, however, would be hiding the Deva’s shit from you guys. If you can’t find her shit, you can’t exactly blow it up, can you?”
“Great,” Henaghan said. “But it seems to me there’s a catch-22…”
“Go on…” Yellen said, sensing where she was headed.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m assuming if I wanna stop the Channelers and the Channeling under the cloak from being cloaked, I gotta blow up the cloaker…”
“Go on…” Yellen said again, now certain he knew where she was headed.
“But if I can’t find the cloaker in the first place, how do I get on-site to blow it up?”
The Israeli did the slow golf clap. “Well done. Yes, that would be a problem, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. Do you
have a solution?”
Uriah grinned at them both. “Not really, no.”
Both women stood up straighter. “Thanks fer nothin’, Uri.”
“Relax,” the man said. “I don’t have a countermeasure for their countermeasure. What I do have is a tip…”
Quinn extended a hand toward her guest. “Please…”
“Take this with a grain of salt, but I did hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. I was an inside man for a while and I was privy to certain information… I overheard Wes say that any Channeler who’s unaware of the cloaker and not looking for it will never find it in a million years. But—and don’t ask me what this means since I’m not a Channeler—any Channeler who is aware of it and is looking for it will be able to find it.”
Blank folded her arms in front of her chest. “That sounds like a ‘If a tree falls in a forest…’-type deal.”
Uriah nodded. “Or some similarly baffling Zen koan, yes.” He picked up his blueprint and rerolled it.
“Can’t we keep that?” the redhead said.
“What for? I showed you what it looks like. If you see one, blow it up.”
“I’m not blowing up shit, but I’ll pass the info along. Thanks.”
“Whatever.”
Quinn scratched the tip of her nose. “Something occurs to me… If you’re still anti-magic and you left your whole screwy fraternity because Wesley Tzu’s working with a Deva, why’d you come to me? Aren’t I almost as bad a Deva?”
Yellen laughed. “You’re assuming I’m completely pure in my ethos. I’m not above compromising my principles just a little if it means Wes gets fucked.”
“I admire that,” Molly conceded.
“Also, there’s something I want in return.”
Henaghan rolled her eyes. “Oh, great. Here it comes.”
“Relax. I’m not gonna hit you up for three wishes. I’m recently self-excommunicated, I have no access to my former resources, and I’m flat broke. Can you give me a ride to Tel Aviv? I’m gonna get back into the choppers game.”
“Alright fine. But don’t do any of your patients the way you did me.”
“We’ll see. Depends on whether or not they pay their bills.”
Quinn sent Yellen to Tel Aviv and, after dinner, she and Molly retired to their bedroom. Josie had secreted herself into her own room and the house was quiet. “How you holding up?” Blank said as the two women prepared for bed.
“You wanna know something weird?” Henaghan said as she pulled a long nightshirt over her head. “I feel calm. Like really calm. Maybe for the first time since all this started. Knowing that I don’t have to deal with it anymore is liberating.”
Molly kicked off her shoes and slid out of her tights. “You say that now, but soon you’ll be puttering around the house, wondering what to do. You’re gonna be like Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond. All crotchety and shit.”
“Not me,” the younger woman said. “I’m gonna find something to do with my time. And I think I know what it is. My old friend writing. I’d like to think I was kinda good at it.”
“You don’t have to just think it. I’ll flat-out tell you. I read all of Company Town. You write like a motherfucker.”
Quinn laughed. “You know, hearing you say that right now and seeing you naked below the waist, I can’t help but think of a young Audrey Hepburn.”
Molly raised her arms and swayed her hips from side to side. “I’m nothing if not classy.”
Henaghan sat down and patted the bed next to her. “Get your classy ass over here.”
“Hold on,” Molly said, reaching two hands up the back of her shirt. “Let me get my sweater puppets out. This bra is killing me.” She pulled her bra out from under her shirt and removed her shirt. When she was nude, she repeated her dance. “Is this what mama likes?”
Quinn answered by sliding over to Blank’s side of the bed and throwing her legs over. She grabbed onto Molly’s hips and buried her face in the older woman’s belly, exploring it with her tongue. Molly stood there for a moment, enjoying her lover’s explorations and then she gently pushed the redhead’s face away. She then sat down on Quinn’s lap and Quinn set about licking and sucking Blank’s ample breasts. Molly moaned and pulled one of Quinn’s hands away and placed it between her legs. Quinn immediately set about stroking Blank and Blank let her head fall back as she moaned. When she was very near the point of climax, Molly pushed away so that she was lying full-length on her own side of the bed. “Kiss me,” she said. “Please kiss me.”
Henaghan stood long enough to throw off her nightshirt then she laid down on her stomach and honored Molly’s request. Molly arched her back and gritted her teeth, fighting off the orgasm as long as she could.
Then Quinn felt a tearing sensation as if someone had grabbed her head and another someone had grabbed her feet and the two had pulled her in opposite directions. A bright flash dampened her vision and then the bedroom became a black void. She spasmed wondering if this was what epilepsy felt like. She raised her eyes and, the belly above her was less pale. The breasts attached to that belly were less ample. The head at the top was covered with long, flowing blond hair. “Kiss me,” Ciara said. “Please kiss me.” Then the White Lady locked her thighs around Quinn’s head and began to squeeze. Tighter and tighter. More pressure than any human woman could apply. Henaghan stopped the flicking motion of her tongue and tried to pull her face away from Ciara. She could not. Ciara squeezed even harder. Quinn brought up her hands and grabbed hold of the other woman’s legs. She pushed hard to extricate herself and still she was held in place. She started to jerk and spasm like an animal angry at its restraints. Ciara became light. Bright white light still in the shape of a woman but amorphous enough to form wispy tendrils. The tendrils entered Quinn through her eye sockets and through her ears. Through her vagina and through her rectum. Throughout her entire body, she felt Ciara’s spiky touch.
Quinn tried to summon magic to blast the intruder away from herself but as soon as she accessed the maya deep within her core, she lapsed into the largest of her strokes. She seized up and felt a riot of contradictory instructions fire through her body. She felt as though she no longer had control herself. Her deepest self. The mind/body connection that was Quinn. Mind and body were disassociated in fits. Together and apart. Together and apart. She understood that, if she were not able to keep them together, one of two things would happen. She would live but she’d no longer be Quinn. Or she would cease to exist.
As more and more of Ciara’s light flooded into her, she lost consciousness.
The sound of water. Back to the primordial essence. The girl was neither here nor there. She did not feel, she did not see, she only heard. The gentle lapping of the sea. She had no thoughts. She had no memories. She was herself but only in the most minimal sense. Without her experiences, she was little more than a fetus, floating in the womb and waiting to become. She had no sense of expectation or of longing. She simply was.
Feeling returned, but only because she was touched. Two hands reached down to her and clasped her face, lifting it up and filling it with the warmth of shared energies. A voice spoke to her. She didn’t recognize it, but it was soothing. “Quinn,” it said.
That’s right, she thought. My name is Quinn.
One of the hands continued to hold her. The other gently caressed her right cheek. “Quinn,” said the voice again. “You’re alright. You’re fine. I’m here for you. Just for you.”
She tried opening her eyes. There was light, and at first it was blinding. Golden in color. She smelled sand and continued to hear the surf. A form hovered above her, blocking out the punishing rays of the sun. Henaghan tried speaking. At first, she didn’t recognize the words she spoke, so she hoped she was pronouncing them correctly and stringing them together in the right order. By the time she reached the end of her first sentence, she was confident the power to communicate had returned. “Where am I? How did I get here?”
The soothing voice, which began to sou
nd more and more familiar, said, “You fell away from yourself. I came after you. Do you want me to guide you back or do you wanna sit here a moment longer?”
The kindness of the gesture touched Quinn. The owner of the voice, her protector, radiated selflessness and almost parental care. A thought came unbidden to her then. I’ve never felt this before. I’ve never felt protected and loved in quite this way. She closed her eyes and opened them again, willing her vision to sharpen. Her vision sharpened. The presence above her had alabaster skin, a mane of dark hair and kind eyes. Still, she shouldn’t put a name to the face. But she didn’t need a name to know this woman would do anything to promote her health and well-being. To this woman, Quinn was more important than her own life.
“Someone tried to hurt me,” Quinn said.
The dark-haired woman’s brow furrowed. “I know. But that won’t happen again, Quinn. Not as long as I’m aware. Anyone who tries to hurt you will have to deal with me.”
Quinn nodded, believing the woman unconditionally. “I don’t like the beach,” she said.
The dark-haired woman laughed and cried at the same time, relieved. “I know. I know you don’t.”
“Will you take me back now?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Take me back, Molly.”
Quinn was in her bed, but she was not fully back. Her consciousness felt frayed around the edges. She looked down upon herself and Molly. Both of them were nude and Molly was wrapped around Quinn as tightly as she could be without being inside of the Quinn. The brunette held onto the redhead as though she were afraid the younger woman might turn to dust and fly away.
Henaghan dropped back into herself and sat up with a ragged gasp. Molly continued to hold onto her with all her ample strength. “Oh, god,” Quinn said. “Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god.”
“Shhh,” Blank said, holding on even tighter.
