Iron Inheritance

by G. R. Fillinger

  I turned around, and my eyes connected with Josh’s for an instant. His face was void of emotion, and then he was gone.

  I blinked repeatedly as my heart dropped into the void. Had he just left us?

  “Get in that office!” Nate kicked a door off its hinges and cracked his green whip into existence.

  My ears rang as my mind failed to find its way through a fog. How could this happen? How could Josh have just left us like that?

  “This way,” announced Josh in a rush of wind, suddenly inside the sparsely furnished office. He glowed red, and the sound of Nate’s whip cracked behind him at the door, followed very closely by a squeal of pain. “Eve, I need you to bust through that wall behind you. Just get a running start and lead with your shoulder.” Josh’s chest heaved, his gaze darting to mine and then away. “Trust me,” he said more urgently.

  I swallowed my questions and nodded. I positioned myself near Nate and sucked in a breath, hoping my essence would kick in before my shoulder hit the wall.

  I jerked forward, only enough room for quick strides. I closed my eyes and felt a small amount of pressure on my shoulder.

  When I opened them, white dust and wood splinters covered my arm.

  Josh jogged up next to me even as I ran at full speed. “Turn right in twenty feet. One more wall, and you’re done.”

  I nodded, looked back to make sure the rest of them were following, and surged forward with a burst of speed I hadn’t known my legs possessed. This time, I kept my eyes open as I launched my body at the wall like a cannonball. Drywall and wood and the cement exterior crumbled against my limbs with only a small amount of discomfort on my end. Just before I hit the ground on the other side, I rolled forward onto my shoulder and sprang to my feet.

  Nate’s Jeep sat below a golden street light just ahead. The street was still deserted, but the hellish barks and the low grunts of the men following us shook the air.

  A streak of black flashed past me as Josh ran forward and opened all the car doors. “Get in!” he yelled.

  I looked back as Ria and Freddy ran. Nate stood at the hole in the wall with his whip out, fending off streaks of black essence that the men in suits shot from inside the building. Each bullet expanded like a black net of tar that stretched until Nate’s green whip sliced them in half. They didn’t disappear though, but kept flying forward—two projectiles instead of one.

  “Nate!” I screamed and ran for him.

  Nate flashed his arm forward again and again, slicing through and dodging a machinegun flurry of tar that flew at him until one tiny piece hit his arm and expanded to three times its size. It latched to his skin like a leech, and he dropped to his knees.

  My voice caught in my throat as he dropped, his whip gone. He held up his hand as the darkness sucked on his arm, shoulder, and part of his neck. “Stay there,” he said, almost ready to faint.

  I skidded to a stop and slapped my hand into his, pulling him out of the line of fire. The freckles on his face were almost pure white now, and beads of sweat dripped down his forehead.

  “Eve, come on!” Josh yelled as Nate’s Jeep screeched to a stop at the curb.

  Nate jerked his hand away from mine and crawled into the back with his jaw clenched. I climbed in behind him, unsure what to do.

  “Drive,” Nate coughed.

  Josh slammed the engine into gear and rocketed us forward as the black darts continued to pepper the street, a thick layer of tar like a river on the road ahead of us. At the end of the block, Josh swung the wheel around and sent us all reeling into each other. I held on to the support bars to keep from crushing Nate.

  “One day, I’m going to prove to you that I’m really your Guardian,” he said as he lifted his head, just before he started to shake.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Nate!” I knelt closer.

  Josh jerked the steering wheel to the left. “You can’t touch him!” he said, his eyes staring at me through the rear view mirror. “That’s dark essence.”

  “So get it off him.” Ria leaned back from the front seat.

  Josh smacked her hand away. “It’ll kill you. That stuff isn’t normal. It shouldn’t be hurting him like that.”

  I bit my trembling lip and leaned forward an inch more to peer at Nate’s neck. The right side was slathered with a pulsating black mass that seemed to grow by the minute.

  “We need to get it off of him,” I said, almost in a panic. This was all my fault. If he died, I’d never—

  “Let me look at him,” Freddy said, his voice deeper and more serious than I’d ever heard it before.

  Miranda was conscious again, sleepy but otherwise fine. She slid to the edge of the backseat so Freddy could twist around for a good look. “Eve, come sit up here. Just in case,” Freddy said as his eyes scanned the mass sucking on Nate’s skin.

  The wind whipped my hair back as I nodded, teary eyed, and clambered into the seat. Nate continued to shake.

  Freddy bent down over him and examined the dark essence closely, careful not to touch him. Nate’s feet kicked uncontrollably, and his back arched as if he was in pain.

  “Just help him!” Ria cried, unrelenting tears streaming down her face now. “Please, Freddy. You can do this. Just heal him.”

  Freddy bit his lip and grabbed the overhead bar for support as he straightened his back. “It’s not that simple. It’s not like his body is injured at all. This is his essence we’re talking about.” He leaned forward again to look at the darkness latched to Nate’s arm, shoulder, and neck. “It’s not a demon’s essence either. I’ve never seen it so thick before.”

  Nate stopped thrashing, and he moaned. He lay flat against the rough, metal cargo area, sweat pouring down his pale face, his hair sticking to his forehead.

  “I want to try something.” Freddy closed his eyes, his lips pressed together in concentration.

  I prepared myself for the snapping and hand twirling that had healed me so many times in the arena. The intricate patterns of essence that flowed out of his fingertips like he was playing the piano.

  Instead, he kept his hands completely still and began singing Amazing Grace. His voice drowned out the wind and the loud, diesel engine.

  He swayed back and forth, bobbing his head, pounding a rhythm out on the headrest. Miranda clapped her hands in time and sang a verse with him. “‘I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.’”

  Ria and I looked at each other, horrified. This was his secret weapon? The one thing he wanted to try when we needed his talent the most?

  Freddy started up again, louder, waving for all of us to join in.

  Josh went first—his voice off key and very loud.

  I couldn’t believe this. Nate was going to die because everyone around him needed a strait jacket.

  No. He was going to die because of me, because I’d wanted to track the demon essence.

  Ria sang under her breath, her eyes watering as she craned her neck to look at Nate’s completely still body.

  “Eve, we need everyone,” said Freddy in between a verse, his cheeks bright red as he summoned all the air in his lungs to pack every note.

  “‘The Lord has promised good to me, His word my hope secures…,’” I sang, my voice scratching my throat.

  We all increased our volume—a harmony of deafs blasting the verses out over and over again since none of us knew anything but the main lines.

  “Last time,” said Freddy dramatically. “‘…was blind, but now I see!’”

  Nate started to shake again, his whole body heating up as green light enveloped him like a cocoon until the dark essence sizzled and peeled off his skin.

  “Oh my—” I covered my mouth in shock.

  Ria clambered out of her seat and came up next to me. “It’s shriveling up; it’s gone.” She pointed to the metal where the darkness had fallen.

  “It retreated.” Josh scowled in the mirror, his eyes not wavering from the road. “Back into darkness.”

  Na
te coughed. “I’m the one who gets to be grim right now.” He strained, face pale and neck stiff as he turned to Freddy. “How did you know to do that?”

  “I didn’t.” Freddy shrugged embarrassedly and slouched back in his seat. “People usually like when I play music.”

  He was joking, right? That wasn’t the way I remembered that day in the cafeteria.

  “I remembered how sorry you were when you missed that song on your first day. It was the only thing I could think of.” He looked down like he’d failed.

  Josh pulled the car up to the curb outside the college’s gate. “We still have to get him to the infirmary.”

  “I’m fine.” Nate flicked the tailgate open and tried to get out, but his legs collapsed under him as he tried to stand.

  Ria scrambled out of the car and rushed toward him.

  “No, Ria!” Josh blurred out of the driver’s seat and caught her around the waist.

  Freddy got out and stood in front of her, his hands stretched out in placation. “It’s not safe for you to touch him. His skin is still full of dark essence. We just got the worst of it off.”

  I got out and saw thick black tattoos etched in Nate’s skin all the way from his wrist to the base of his neck.

  “Then how’re we going to get him to the infirmary?” Ria looked down at Josh’s hands like she was considering cutting them off if he didn’t let go soon.

  “Do you still have your knife?” said Miranda, a note of sunshine in her voice.

  Ria elbowed Josh in the gut, reached up the outside of her thigh, and pulled out a push blade from a black leather sheath.

  “Why do you have a knife?” I stuttered.

  “Pesahs need to be armed at all times. You guys are,” she snapped.

  Miranda took the blade and quickly slit the seat belts from their brackets. “Here, we can wrap these under his back and legs and carry him in.”

  We each grabbed a strap and slid it under him until all his weight was supported.

  “You need to lose a few pounds.” Freddy pretended to struggle against Nate’s small, skinny frame.

  Nate kept his eyes closed and his hands crossed over his chest, too weak to retort.

  We went in a side door from the courtyard and laid him on the first bed in the infirmary. Ria ran to the office in the corner and rapped on the door, the sharp echo doubling in the long hall.

  A gold light flicked on inside the office, and the door swung open. Ria launched into a breathy and labored explanation, words blurring together as Nurse Wright rushed out without making a sound. Her blue nightgown cinched her large waist, intricate flower patterns jiggling as she walked. In this light, she was like a grandmother ready to attend to one of her children. But the moment her face came into focus, I saw a battlefield medic, her eyes intense, her lips ready to give crisp, specific orders.

  She stepped up to Nate’s bed and pressed a series of buttons set into the wall as she bent down over him, her fingers signing a silent, invisible language over his whole body.

  All the lights in the infirmary came to life and shined on him. His lean chest pumped up and down with labored breath. Tiny black veins where the dark essence had latched on spread out like spider webs all the way up his arm and into his neck.

  “Just the facts,” she said, her eyes closed, hands moving.

  Freddy stepped up next to her. “Babylonian headquarters. Babylonians shooting dark essence. It latched on to him like tar. We got most of it off by singing Amazing Grace.”

  Wright stopped moving her hands. “Who taught you dat, Espinoza? Healing by song?”

  “No one. I just thought—”.

  She back-handed him in the gut. “It’s about time ya showed me some-ting. I knew you were smarta than half da dummies in dis place.”

  Freddy blushed, and Dean Morales walked through the double doors. “Ms. Wright?” She seemed more offended by the nurse’s last comment than the fact that there was presently a Guardian in critical condition in the bed right next to her.

  Wright raised her hand in repentance. Morales walked around to the head of Nate’s bed and pushed a blue button so it popped back out just as Denisov came in, too. The two glanced at each other for a moment, tightened their jaws, and looked away.

  Wright stretched out a plump hand and traced a golden, glowing nail up and down the veins in Nate’s arm. “It’s almost in his bloodstream by now.”

  Morales pursed her lips in a scowl, her eyelids fluttering like she was flicking through snapshots.

  “What are the options?” said Denisov, her broad shoulders and black tank top a decided contrast with Morales’ sweater and gold-rimmed glasses that hung from a chain around her neck.

  “Da Babylonians have concentrated it somehow.” Wright shook her head, not trying to whisper. “I’ve never seen any-ting like it. Da only ting that’s worked is Espinoza’s singing voice.”

  “A song?” Morales blinked several times at the new piece of knowledge.

  “Do we have to sing again?” said Miranda hopefully.

  “Not yet.” Wright smiled. “Normally, I’d cover ’im with praya.” Her round, warm face strained. “But it would only delay. Once darkness is in ya blood—” She traced her fingernail along Nate’s skin without the gold essence this time. The nail began to burn and smoke.

  Ria let out a squeak, her hands cupped over her mouth.

  “It’s like the darkness was weaponized,” said Denisov. “A sign of the times.”

  Morales exhaled through her nose.

  “I’ll do what I can.” Wright continued as if she’d pronounced Nate dead already.

  I looked from one to the other. They were giving up?

  Ria shook her head. “No. No, there has to be something you can do. You’re all hopped up on angel juice!” She looked from Wright to Morales, Denisov, Freddy, and me, her eyes pleading. “Save him!”

  The words sunk to our feet and held us there.

  I looked from Morales to Denisov. They were supposed to be the ones running things. All this power, and we couldn’t do anything? What kind of a God allowed that? What kind of God allowed friends, his own appointed Guardians, to die because evil was stronger?

  Ria stepped to Nate’s bedside and dropped to her knees. I struggled between wanting to join her and smashing head-first through a wall.

  “Would a Babylonian be able to cure this?” asked Josh.

  Denisov turned on him. “They’re the ones that come up with every damn disease known to man. They wouldn’t want to cure this. Even if they said they did, we couldn’t trust them.”

  Josh stared back, a recent decision stretched taut across his face. “I know one we can.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The eerie silence persisted past comfort but broke when a laugh gargled out of Nate’s throat.

  “You know a Babylonian?” said Denisov, widening her stance.

  “She’s an ex-Babylonian Pesah.” Josh stood at attention, his eyes harder to read than ever.

  What was he talking about? How did anyone stop being a Babylonian? It was a part of their soul.

  “No.” Wright shook her head, running a glowing finger up and down Nate’s arm. Each pass pulled the advancing darkness back from reaching farther into his veins. “Babylonians would have killed her if they knew she was a Pesah.”

  “What? Why?” said Ria.

  “Weakness,” Morales hissed, staring at Josh curiously.

  Denisov looked at him as if she expected him to sprout black wings.

  “They tried.” Josh’s head tilted down a fraction of an inch. “But she’s alive, and she owes me a favor.”

  “What did you do for her?” said Morales, a pencil thin eyebrow arching into her bangs.

  Josh’s chest expanded as he inhaled. He looked at Nate. “The Babylonians wanted to draw out her death. They strung her up on a cactus in the desert and left her there. I found her and brought her to a hospital. I thought she was just a human at first, but then she said Patrons really were bri
ghter than the sun.” He smirked at the warm memory. “Even pain meds don’t make you say things like that.”

  I sucked in a breath and tried to focus, but I couldn’t see his essence. I wished I could see him as easily as she had.

  “They’d been trying to force dark essence into her all day, but her body couldn’t take it—nearly split her in half. That’s the only way I think she could have had the ability to see my essence,” he added, his face now gaunt as he replayed whatever terrible images hid behind his eyes.

  I wanted to grab his hand in mine, to let him know that it wasn’t his fault, but something kept my arm at my side.

  “And you believe she will help you now?” Morales nodded, hand on her chin.

  Denisov shook her head. “There is no loyalty among Babylonians. We can’t trust—”

  “She repented,” Josh said so low it might have been a whisper. “I saw her in the hospital. I talked to her.”

  Denisov unfolded her arms, and Wright shared a surprised expression with Morales.

  “What does that mean? She said she was sorry?” said Ria, her eyes narrowed at Josh like he was holding yet another thing back that could save Nate.

  Wright spoke first. “It’s not just sorry. Repentance may not be some-ting humans take seriously, but Graced are different being so close to da spiritual world. We are spiritually changed with repentance. Change da heart, and you change da mind.”

  “It’s like becoming a whole new person, but that new person has to rip and claw at the old to tear him down and keep him from coming back,” said Josh.

  I licked my lips, about to point out that Josh’s friend wasn’t a Graced. She was a Pesah—a glorified human—which meant she could call repentance whatever she wanted. But this was the best option we had. Without her, Nate would die for sure.

  Josh’s face strained as Denisov and Morales looked at him. “This is the best chance we have.”

  I looked at Nate, and my shoulders drooped. He was even paler than when we’d brought him in. Dealing with another Babylonian after what just happened might be damned and stupid, but it was Nate—I’d do anything.