Slay

by Kim Curran

  JD sat in a corner, gently strumming on his guitar. A part of things and yet somehow distant from the others.

  Milly watched them as they sang, laughed and danced and she felt the tension finally start to lift. If they were so confident that the nightmare was over, maybe she should believe them.

  Tom was the first to notice her. “Milly! Come and join us!” He put the keyboard aside and patted the sofa next to him. Milly sat down, sinking into the soft seat.

  “I hear you saved my boys tonight,” Gail said.

  “I don’t know,” Milly said, looking down at the bundle in her lap. She hadn’t recognized herself earlier. After she had killed the Jaguar Warrior, all she had wanted was to keep on killing. She hadn’t known she had so much rage inside her – it was like the Blade of Shadows had somehow brought it all out.

  “You should have seen Slugger, Gail. She was like, bam!” Connor said. “Totally saved JD’s backside.”

  Slugger? Milly thought. She’d been called worse.

  “She was…amazing,” JD said.

  Milly’s cheeks glowed at the compliment and she felt warmer than she had standing in scalding hot water.

  Niv gestured fluidly and even though Milly didn’t quite follow it all, it was still beautiful to watch. He was signing something about a blade.

  “Can I see it, Milly?” Gail asked.

  Milly blinked a few times at the use of her name and looked up. She dug around in her bundle of clothes and pulled out the knife. It was so beautiful. She liked the way it was no colour and all colours at the same time.

  Gail nodded encouragingly towards the black blade. “Milly, can I see it?” Gail asked again, snapping Milly out of it.

  “Oh, right,” she said, placing it down on the table in front of her. “Sure.” As soon as she let go of it she felt more together, more herself.

  Gail picked it up and turned it over in her hands. “Obsidian with a bone handle.”

  Could be human, Niv signed.

  Milly felt suddenly sick. “Human?”

  Niv patted his arm, pointing to his humerus bone. It sent a shiver down Milly’s back.

  “Diaz is looking into ways to destroy it,” Tom said.

  Although she knew it was the right thing to do, Milly felt a strange sadness at the idea of destroying something so beautiful. “But what if it’s useful?”

  “It certainly worked on the jaguwere,” Connor said.

  “The what?” Zek asked.

  “The snarling thing that nearly killed JD. Half-man, half-jaguar. Jaguwere,” Connor said, looking pleased with himself.

  Zek just shook his head.

  “Until we know what we’re dealing with, no one is to touch it,” Gail said, standing up and crossing the aisle of the bus. She pressed her hand against the wall and a section swung open. Inside was a set of shelves filled with all sorts of weapons and tools. She dug around and pulled out a silver briefcase, about half a metre long. Instead of locks there were two smooth panels on either side of the handle. Gail pressed her thumbs against them and they lit up. A blue light beaded along the length of the panels, scanning Gail’s thumbprints, and then the case clicked open. Gail placed the blade inside and closed the lid.

  “It stays with me from now on. No one is to so much as look at it again till I say so, okay? We’re working on nothing but theory and guesswork,” Gail said. “And I don’t like it.”

  “But Mourdant is dust!” Connor said. “And he was the mastermind behind all of this, right?”

  “You killed his host, yes. But a demon as powerful as him can sometimes…” She drifted off, as if an idea had occurred to her.

  “‘A demon as powerful as him can sometimes’ what?” Tom said. “I hate it when you do this.”

  “Nothing. I’ll worry about Mourdant another time. For now, we have to find Zyanya.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard,” JD said. “Without Mourdant, she’s just a regular demon.”

  “I’d hardly call a demon priestess ‘regular’. How many times do I have to tell you boys: d—”

  “Don’t get cocky!” the five boys chimed and they all laughed.

  “We did good though, Gail,” Tom said. “Can’t we just enjoy tonight?”

  “He’s right, Gail,” JD said. “For once. We can get back on Zyanya’s trail tomorrow.”

  “Can we have just one glass of bubbly, Gail?” Connor said. “Please! It doesn’t even have to be the good stuff.”

  Milly remembered the last time she’d drunk champagne and suddenly the inside of the bus felt too hot. Too full of people. She stood up and pushed past Zek, almost knocking him to the floor.

  “I need some air,” she said, throwing the door open.

  It was raining. The bus hadn’t moved from under the railway bridge, where they were safe from prying eyes and, according to Niv, prying CCTV. A curtain of water fell over the edge of the bridge, running into drains that were already overflowing. Milly sat down on the bus steps and closed her eyes, letting the air cool her face. Her head buzzed like an untuned radio. Too many thoughts. Too many voices. She couldn’t make them stop. Demon priestesses and Jaguar Warriors. Blades and summonings. A few days ago, the only thing she’d had to worry about was whether someone would steal her homework. Now, everything she thought she knew about the world was gone, like someone had untied the bowlines on her life and it had all drifted away. She was lost and she didn’t know how to find herself again.

  “You okay?” Tom stood in the doorway, one hand resting against the frame, the other tucked into his pocket, like he wasn’t sure if he should have followed her. But she was grateful.

  Tom was the only one who had made her feel truly welcome in the strange group. Connor and the twins tried, but she wasn’t sure how comfortable any of them were around girls. As for JD, he was still so unreadable.

  She shrugged in reply.

  “Sorry, dumb thing to say,” Tom said, sitting down on the step next to her. “How can you possibly be okay right now with all of this? But you will be okay. I promise.”

  “My feet hurt,” Milly said, wiggling her toes on the step.

  “Heels will do that, or so I’m told. My mother called them instruments of torture.”

  “She wasn’t wrong.”

  Tom laughed. “She loved them though. I still remember the delight on her face when she would open one of those white boxes and slip on a pair of new shoes and make me dance with her. And the look of pain when she came home later and threw them across the room.”

  “I think I’m more of the throwing kind of girl than the dancing.”

  “Here, give me your foot.” He reached his hands out and Milly hesitantly placed her foot in his palms. “I’m pretty good at foot massages.”

  He wasn’t lying. As he worked his thumbs into the ball of Milly’s foot, she felt the pain ease away.

  “What happened to your mum?” A look of pain flashed across Tom’s face. “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

  “No, it’s all right,” he said. “My mum was a model, when she was younger. She met my dad when she was only eighteen and he was nearly forty. He was this big movie star and I guess they fell in love.”

  “A movie star?” Milly asked.

  “Kit Wills? He was big in the eighties.”

  “Your dad was Kit Wills?” Milly said excitedly. “The action star? I’ve watched all of his films.”

  Tom laughed. “Well, that’s more than I ever did. He walked out the day I was born. He paid for my education and sent me cheques on my birthday, but that was all I ever had to do with him. He died in a plane crash when I was ten. Turns out he had a gambling problem and so there was no money left. After that, Mum sunk into a kind of depression. For a couple of years she would hardly leave the house. But then one day, her friend came over and told her about this new pill that would fix everything. She’d be happy, look young again, and could even have her modelling career back. The pill was called Possession.”

  “Oh, no,�
�� Milly said.

  “Oh, yes. So you can guess how that went. I was there the day it happened. Of course, I didn’t know that it was a demon that was trying to kill me. I still thought it was my mum…”

  Milly realized what he was saying. “Oh, God, Tom. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, I guess. Gail arrived in time and saved me. She then set it up to look like my mum had OD’d.” He stared out at the rain. “Sometimes I forget. Like, I catch myself thinking, Oh, I must tell Mum about that. It’s been two years and I still think I see her in crowds.”

  “It’s the same with my dad. JD said it never goes away.”

  “He might be right. But I guess it becomes a new normal.”

  “I don’t think my life will ever be normal again.”

  They sat in silence watching the rain ease up and eventually stop. Tom gently swapped Milly’s right foot for her left, and she became very aware of the feeling of his hands on her skin.

  “Thanks,” she said, retrieving her foot. “That’s better.”

  “Any time.”

  Silence stretched between them and Milly felt the need to fill it with something, anything, to distract herself from the butterflies dancing in her stomach. “You know, I get being in a boy band. I even get fighting demons, now I know they exist. But both?”

  Tom considered this. “Do you know what it takes to fly all around the world tracking these things down? What it really takes to go up against them?”

  Milly tried to think of an answer. “A death wish?”

  Tom laughed. “No, I meant money. A butt-load of cash. The weapons, the vehicles, the tech. Fighting evil doesn’t really come with a pay cheque, so Gail had to think of something that would. She’d been in a band when she was young, before…”

  “Before what?”

  Tom opened his mouth as if he was going to explain. But then, with a small shake of his head, he changed his mind. “Just before. So when it came to making money, that’s the one thing she knew how to do.”

  “But now you have the money, why not quit the band? It can’t be easy balancing these crazy lives.”

  Tom rolled his shoulders back, stretching out tired muscles. “Because we love it.”

  His smile was infectious and Milly couldn’t argue with it. “But don’t you ever wish you could just walk away?”

  “To what? I don’t have anything except the boys and Gail and Agatha.” He patted the side of the bus.

  “You don’t want a home?”

  A look of sadness passed across his face. “Sure, one day maybe. When I’m ready to settle down. Wife, three kids, a dog.”

  “I’m allergic to dogs,” Milly said, and then choked, realizing what it had sounded like.

  Tom smirked. “I’ll remember that.”

  They both watched the rain for a little longer.

  “You were really impressive back there,” he said. “In the museum.”

  “I’ve never so much as thrown a punch before.”

  “You’ve never been in a fight?” Tom asked.

  “I was in one.” Milly thought back to when she’d been caught in a corner by a particularly vicious school bully. “But only on the receiving end.”

  “Well, we have to do something about that.”

  Tom stood and gave Milly a hand up. He led her onto a small patch of grass growing in the shadow of the bridge. She wriggled her bare feet on the damp ground.

  “What are we doing?”

  “I’m going to teach you how to throw a punch.” Tom grinned.

  “Can you teach me to block too? Like in the movies?” Milly threw her arm up and made a “Waaaa” noise like she’d heard fighters make in kung fu films.

  Tom laughed again. “Sure. Only not like that.” He stopped Milly windmilling her arms around. “Basics first,” he said. “How to stand.”

  Tom started showing her how to place her feet, before moving onto attacking moves. “When you don’t have much strength, you have to compensate with speed and surprise. Use your elbows, your knees. Anything to give you an edge.” He talked her through elbow punches, knee strikes. “If you’re fighting someone bigger than you, you have to get in close. Use their strength against them. Here, let me teach you a throw.”

  He stood behind Milly and put his arm around her neck. She could smell the clean talc scent of his deodorant.

  “So, um, try and throw me.”

  Milly twisted this way and that, trying to tip him over. But she only succeeded in making Tom laugh a lot.

  “First, you need to grab hold of my arm really tight. Okay, then bend forward, pulling me off balance.”

  Milly did as instructed, so that she felt Tom’s weight against her back.

  “Now turn!” Tom said.

  A moment later, Tom landed on the muddy ground with an “Oof!”

  Only Milly forgot to let go, so she came tumbling down on top of him. Their faces were barely centimetres apart. A strand of her hair brushed against the side of his cheek. He reached up and tucked it behind her ear, and a small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. His lips parted and she felt his breath on her skin. The world narrowed to the space between their lips. It grew smaller, smaller…

  “Her stance was all wrong.”

  Milly jerked her head up to see JD leaning in the doorway, arms folded. How long had he been there?

  Flustered, she quickly rolled off Tom and clumsily pushed herself upright. Tom jackknifed back onto his feet in a move that she could have sworn was meant to impress her. It worked.

  “Better than when you first started, JD,” Tom said, brushing some dirt off Milly’s shoulder. “You should have seen him when he first turned up. He was so bad. He used to just charge at me, all snarls and flailing limbs. Rebecca used to call him the mongoose.”

  “Rebecca?” Milly asked.

  “The woman who taught us to fight,” JD explained, jumping down off the steps. “Gail met her back when she and her band were on tour in Israel.”

  “Tiny little thing, but, boy, was she fast.”

  “Yeah, she kicked our butts over and over till we got it right.”

  “It just took a little longer in JD’s case,” Tom said, punching his friend playfully on the arm.

  “I can take you down, Tommy boy, and don’t you forget it!”

  Tom held his hands up in surrender. “He’s right. What JD lacks in technique, he more than makes up for with aggression. Isn’t that right, mongoose?”

  Lightning-fast, JD wrapped his arm around Tom’s neck and pulled the boy into a headlock.

  “I give. I give!”

  JD knuckled Tom’s hair and then released him.

  “Well, come on then,” Milly said, bristling a little from JD’s criticism. “If you’re so good, you show me.”

  JD looked Milly up and down, and she felt the brush of his gaze almost physically.

  “All right then, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Milly placed her feet the way Tom had told her – a shoulder’s width apart. JD took a step closer, and then another. He was shorter than Tom, but broader, his muscles more defined. Whereas Tom had made it all feel like a game, JD’s intensity unsettled her. When JD looked at her, it felt like he was looking deep into her soul, really seeing her in a way no one else ever had.

  JD walked around in a circle before coming to stand in front of her again, even closer this time. His eyes were light grey and he had a small mole on his left cheek, just above his dimple.

  “So,” he said, and Milly felt her stomach clench as he looked her up and down again, “what would you do if an attacker came at you like…this.” JD lunged, grabbing hold of Milly’s neck.

  Without thinking, Milly lashed out, burying her fist into JD’s stomach. JD’s eyes widened. His mouth dropped open. Then he made a soft, mewing noise, before crumpling to the ground.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” Milly dropped to her knees next to JD, who was now rocking back and forth in the mud. She’d hit him in self-defence, but she hadn’
t meant to hurt him. “JD, speak to me.”

  She looked to Tom for help, but the other boy was also curled up in a ball on the ground. For a moment she panicked that she’d hurt him too somehow, then realized he was laughing. “Stop it, Tom, I think I really hurt him.”

  “He was all…let’s see what you got…and you…” Tom couldn’t speak for the laughter. “You… Bam!”

  “Stop it!” Milly got to her feet and kicked Tom in the ribs. Only gently. It was bad enough that she’d hurt JD.

  Tom managed to get his laughter under control and clambered to his feet. “It’s okay, he’s only winded.” Tom crouched down and helped JD sit up. “Come on, JD, breathe through it.”

  JD nodded, and slowly the colour returned to his cheeks. “I’m okay,” he said, waving Tom away and getting to his feet. “Just give me a second.”

  “JD, I am so sorry,” Milly said, “I don’t know what happened, I just reacted.”

  “Yeah, pretty good reactions, I guess,” JD said, his arm still wrapped around his stomach.

  Tom looked from one to the other and burst out laughing again. A moment later, Milly was laughing too and finally JD joined in.

  “Have you lot finished beating each other up?” Zek’s head appeared through one of the bus windows. “Diaz is on the line.” He gestured for them to come back inside.

  Milly climbed the steps behind JD, who was pulling off his muddy T-shirt and revealing a toned body. She tried to avert her eyes, but it was proving tricky.

  “Have you found something?” JD asked as they stepped inside.

  Diaz’s face was on three of the video screens. Behind her glasses, her eyes were bloodshot. “I think so.”

  Milly sat down in front of the screens and stared up at the professor.

  “I just spoke to one of my Nahua advisors from the excavation of Teocalli-Ome.”

  “Teocalli-Ome?” JD whispered to Milly.

  “The pyramid she was excavating,” Milly answered quietly.

  “He is one of the last remaining Aztec descendants and his people have heard of the blade. It is said to be carved from a shadow and blessed by Tezcatlipoca. It’s virtually indestructible.”