by Myke Cole
Shouts. Silhouettes at the end of the hallway, moving toward them.
Contact, Schweitzer sent up to Jawid. Multiple . . .
Ninip hauled on the trigger and the carbine barked. One of the silhouettes spun, dropped. Schweitzer had no idea where the round had impacted. SEALs took pride in knowing precisely where each round was placed, making them as effective with a .22 as they were with a monster-caliber weapon like the one they were holding now.
But Ninip would not be denied. The jinn drew on the fragments of gun lore he had learned and hauled on the trigger again, sending a large-caliber round digging into the floor a foot before the target. The silhouettes vanished, the shouts louder.
Ninip threw back their head and answered them, their shared throat constricting to let out a howl that channeled all of the jinn’s predator joy. Schweitzer knew that howl didn’t sound human, knew it would cause the hairs of whoever heard it to stand on end.
Your boy is out of control, Schweitzer passed up to Jawid, felt Ninip’s scorn as the jinn leapt forward. Return fire now, the whining of rounds streaking off the walls. Amateurs, then. One lucky bullet clipped their side, the liquid armor hardening at the blow, sending the round skimming off. Even the glancing hit would have put a normal man on the deck, but their magically augmented core locked up, keeping their body stable, moving them forward as if they’d never been hit.
A door flew open off their elbow. Schweitzer had been so focused on maintaining some purchase on his body that he hadn’t noticed his shooter’s vision taking over, his eyes beginning to rove instinctively in search of targets. The widened range caught the door, the face of the man beyond, contorted by rage, swinging a long-handled engineer’s wrench.
Ninip took the reins, reaching out one clawed hand, raking their enemy’s stomach open. The man’s face went white as his guts came out, filling Schweitzer with a queer sense of déjà vu. Not long ago, he’d worn the same expression, staring at his own life falling away from him.
Ninip lashed the lengthened tongue out, curling it around the man’s neck, yanking him in. Schweitzer felt their jaw unhinge, their neck tensing as their head jerked forward, the jaws clamping on the man’s face. It collapsed under the pressure, the screaming cut off, the bones crunching as their jaw muscles engaged, and the jaws snapped shut. Blood filled their mouth, their throat convulsing to gulp it down, spraying over their shoulders, trickling down behind their armor.
Their skin tingled at the touch. The metallic taste was ambrosia. Schweitzer knew he should be horrified, but he could barely feel the edges of himself in the midst of Ninip’s exultant storm.
He threw the carbine back into the sweet spot, hoping the familiar battlefield drills would anchor him, but it was useless. Ninip pushed the weapon back down, gnashed their teeth, and flexed their claws. We do not need it.
Schweitzer drowned in the bloodlust as they raced the rest of the way down the hall.
The man they’d dropped was kitted out in secondhand gear. An amateur playing at war. The .50 caliber round had punched a dime-sized hole through his sternum. He stared sightlessly at the ceiling, lips still trembling.
Ninip put their boot on his throat and stepped down.
A rusted steel railing stood before them, flaking green paint, metal staircases descending from either side. Before them was a broad gallery that had likely once been a factory floor. It was now somewhere between a camp and a hospital. Foam bedrolls were laid out at regular intervals, some still sporting rumpled sleeping bags. Three steel, wheeled worktables stood in the center of the room. Each one bore a body wrapped in bloody bandages.
Men and women were scrambling from the gallery floor, dressed in the same patchwork military clothing as the corpse under their boot, wielding the same secondhand weaponry. The stink of fear was sharp in the air. The enemy did their best to look determined, but it wasn’t working. Schweitzer could see the panic on their faces.
Save one.
A man in a suit stood beside the worktables, bald head reflecting the gleam of the fluorescent lights. His face was warm and open, his forehead creased with concern as he bent over one of the bandaged bodies.
Jackrabbit.
Contact Jackrabbit, Schweitzer sent to Jawid. Engaging.
Jackrabbit looked up at Schweitzer and Ninip, his face registering resignation, sadness.
But not fear.
With that gaze, something punched through the cloud of Ninip’s hunger. The jinn snarled, and Schweitzer felt the current more closely, as if it were another presence, made of the same stuff as the jinn itself.
Jackrabbit reached a hand toward them, and the current intensified. He frowned. Whatever he’d expected to happen, it hadn’t.
Schweitzer felt one of the liquid cells on their shoulder go solid as a bullet impacted. Jackrabbit crouched, gathered his current in, then his thighs bulged impossibly large, splitting his pants along the seams, and he jumped.
He cleared the hundred feet between them easily. Schweitzer had enough time to slash to his left, laying open the throat of one of Jackrabbit’s followers, and then Jackrabbit’s arc brought him down onto the railing, his muscles returning to their normal size.
Schweitzer got the carbine up, not bothering with the sights at this range. The gun kicked.
Schweitzer felt the current intensify and Jackrabbit’s side folded inward, his rib cage suddenly gone to jelly, sucking the shirt with it to create a notch that let the round pass harmlessly through. Then the flesh shot back to its normal position with all the spring of a released rubber band, and he was upon them.
Schweitzer let the carbine drop onto its sling and took Jackrabbit’s fists in their balled hands, claws sinking into the backs, screeching against bones gone suddenly dense and hard as steel. Jackrabbit’s current rose, and his hands swelled to the size of bowling balls, until even Ninip’s magical strength broke and they stumbled backward. Schweitzer could see the crowd gathered behind Jackrabbit, watching, expectant.
Jackrabbit came on, his current a pungent cloak around them. One giant hand receded into a stump, a spike of bone shooting out, flattening into a cleaver edge, so sharp it gleamed like metal. He crouched.
“And now they send the dead after me,” Jackrabbit said. “You do realize my answer isn’t changing. It won’t change no matter how many innocent people you kill.”
Schweitzer only had time to capture the image, send it up to Jawid before Ninip growled and launched them forward.
“I’ll be sure to send your head back to your bosses,” Jackrabbit said, stepping into the attack. Ninip brought their claw down into Jackrabbit’s shoulder, but the flesh went tacky, allowing their hand to sink to the palm before holding it fast.
Jackrabbit bladed away from them, raised the cleaver, brought it down on Schweitzer and Ninip’s opposite arm. The shear-thickening fluid was designed to harden at the supersonic impact of a bullet. The bone cleaver sliced through it like ripe fruit. Schweitzer could feel it sink deep into muscle, slamming hard into the thick ball at the top of their humerus, splintering halfway through before grinding to a stop.
Ninip howled in rage and snapped at their opponent’s face, but Jackrabbit’s neck snaked away, suddenly flexible as rubber.
The angry animal act isn’t going to cut it, Schweitzer said. Let me take this.
Ninip’s answer was an incoherent snarl and a projection of solid red across their vision. He felt the cleaver twist, widening the wound until the fibers of the muscle gave way and their shared right arm hung useless at their side. Jackrabbit was smiling at them now from the top of his plastic neck, dancing just out of reach. “Does it hurt?” he asked. “Can you even feel anything?”
He’s going to cut us to pieces, Schweitzer shouted. This body doesn’t heal! Are you trying to lose?
Ninip growled again, but he felt the jinn give way. Schweitzer leapt to control their body, dropping thei
r center of gravity and letting their lower half fall. Their boots shot forward between Jackrabbit’s legs, their shoulders and head hitting the floor.
Their claws, still embedded in the Jackrabbit’s shoulder, took their weight, yanking down. Jackrabbit was only able to yank his head out of the way before his elongated throat smashed flat into the concrete floor.
Schweitzer wrenched their clawed hand up, slicing through Jackrabbit’s flesh and popping free, dragging chunks of something purple and wet. The speed with which Jackrabbit’s body shifted and changed made it impossible to be certain, but he guessed it was the top of his target’s lung.
Jackrabbit sprawled on the floor behind them, his tide focused inward now, probably repairing the damage Schweitzer and Ninip had just done. Schweitzer leapt them onto his back, thrust with their good arm, the clawed fingertips digging into Jackrabbit’s back. He could feel the brief resistance of Jackrabbit’s rib cage, then they were punching through, reaching upward, fingers scrabbling, even as Jackrabbit’s current changed focus, and his shattered ribs became spikes, punching into Schweitzer and Ninip’s wrist and forearm.
At last their hand closed around Schweitzer’s target, felt the tough meat pulsing against their hand. He grunted and yanked back with everything they had. Jackrabbit’s heart came free in a spray of red so deep, it bordered on purple, and he pitched forward on his face.
Schweitzer stood, feeling the heart beating in their hands. With the threat neutralized, fatigue gripped him, the effort of battling Ninip for control of their shared body hitting home at last. The jinn felt it, and surged forward, battering Schweitzer aside and spinning them to face the men and women clogging the hallway behind them, going slack-jawed at the sight of their fallen leader, lying facedown in a spreading pool of blood.
Ninip grinned, held the beating heart aloft. Schweitzer watched Jackrabbit’s followers’ wide eyes fix on it. He knew the fight had gone out of them. They were lambs for the slaughter.
Jackpot, Schweitzer managed to send. Jackrabbit down.
Then Ninip crouched, snarled, leapt into the midst of them, good arm already going to work.
Schweitzer tried to pull him back, lacked the strength. Ninip knocked him aside and leaned into a shove that sent Schweitzer scrambling to hold on to his slice of real estate in their shared body.
Schweitzer felt the faint pulse of Jawid’s attention. The Sorcerer was saying something, but he didn’t care what. He turned inward, curling into the blackness, trying not to sense what the monster wearing his skin was doing.
CHAPTER IX
ASHES TO ASHES
“Come on, little man.” Sarah’s knees ached from the hours she’d spent on all fours, only the hotel’s thin carpet between her and the concrete beneath. Patrick twirled the toy truck idly in one hand, looking at it as if it were some strange living thing that he wasn’t sure would hurt him or not. He was silent, as he had been for hours now, had been for over a month since the hospital had seen fit to let him come home.
Panic swamped Sarah for the hundredth time. The therapist said it would take time, but the thought of Patrick never coming out of this semicatatonia was always hovering at the back of her mind. It was enough that Jim was gone, that she hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye, that she wasn’t sure if the people who’d done this to him wouldn’t soon be coming for her. That there was no way to avenge herself on them, no answers, and no resolution. The thought of caring for Patrick alone, while he was like this, filled her with exhaustion so bone deep that she just wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep. She choked back tears, conjured the image of the man beneath her, gurgling out his life as she plunged the canvas knife into his neck again and again. Anger. That was good. Anger she could use.
She clung to the emotion desperately, reeled it in, directed it at herself. Lock it up. That’s what Jim would have said. Crying won’t solve anything. Patrick needs you strong. The only way to lose is to quit.
So she swallowed, ground her knees into the floor. The pain jolted her into action, and she smiled the warmest mommy smile she could muster, making rumbling noises as she pushed Patrick’s trucks along the floor. He had loved them all his short life, and he would again.
Her cell phone buzzed a reminder, and she gathered Patrick into her arms. “Uncle Stevie’s coming over soon. You want to play with Uncle Stevie?”
Patrick looked up at that, some glimmer of excitement in his tiny face. “Stevie,” he said.
Relief flooded her, and she fought back tears again. Thank God for Steve, their rock in all of this. The one connection to the family the navy claimed to be, had instantly ceased to be the moment Schweitzer’s corpse had gone cold. She was sure the navy wives would take her in, hold her hand, talk mealy-mouthed bullshit about God and plans, fling a chaplain at her. This was the thing about religious types she hated so much. They never missed a chance to proselytize. No tragedy was sacred, no setback off-limits. They would solemnly enter your private space, regal and pompous as crows, full of righteous self-importance. Then, when she was at her weakest, they would tell her why the unacceptable was acceptable, why it was okay that she’d lost the love of her life because an invisible man in the sky (and it was always a man, wasn’t it?) had willed it.
Sarah’s fingers itched for the canvas knife. She’d gladly plunge it into the throat of any god who’d done this to her, to her son.
Her cell phone’s message indicator had a large red 5 in the upper right corner. They were voice mails from her mother, from Peg, her sister in the Shenandoah Valley. She often went weeks without talking to either of them, but a month was a stretch. She’d put Peg off with a short, “Things are complicated right now. I promise we’ll talk about it later.” Her mother she hadn’t spoken to. She didn’t trust herself to hear her mother’s voice and keep her composure.
The doorbell rang, and Sarah set Patrick down, went to answer it. The panic rose in her again, the state of hypervigilance Jim had called “living in condition yellow” screaming at her to slow down, that she didn’t know what was on the other side of that door, that she had to be ready.
Sarah mourned this most of all. When those men had come into her home, they’d pulled back the curtain on a world she’d always suspected existed but was able to ignore. It was a world where human lives were truly fungible, where death was meaningless and random, where being good and hardworking and loving your family meant absolutely nothing, where you were utterly powerless to keep anyone safe.
Sarah knew this was the space Jim had lived and worked in, that once that curtain was yanked aside, it could never be closed again, not really. Oh God, Jim. I don’t know how you did it.
She paused at the door, fought against the urge to use the peephole. She knew it was Steve outside, not some armed thugs sent to finish the job they’d started. But the demons whispered to her from behind that open curtain, refused to allow her to let her guard down. Her hand was shaking as she forced herself to throw the latch, turn the doorknob, open the door at a normal pace.
Steve stood in the hallway, a steel can under one arm. She saw a glimmer of her face reflected in his dark eyes, knew that he alone could read her expression, the tremor in her hands, could truly understand the guarded twilight that would be her life from now on.
The tube had been removed from his chest and he looked healthier now, standing up straight, with color in his cheeks. She was embarrassed to admit how relieved she felt to see him, his nightly presence in her home an addiction. Steve brought peace with him, bags of groceries and toys for Patrick. More importantly, he understood the value of being quiet, of simply being in the room and letting Sarah grieve on her own. He respected the space her grief required, had an uncanny sense of when it was okay to move into it, to provide comfort when she was too weak to hold herself up.
Very few people could understand what Jim was to her, to the world. Steve was one of those few. He brought calm, he brought companionsh
ip, he brought the last shred of her husband that didn’t live in her dreams of rose-petal trails.
“Uncka Stevie.” Patrick stood and toddled over to him, holding up his truck.
Steve knelt, setting the can down at his side. “Hey, guy! Is that your truck?”
Patrick nodded shyly, holding it out to him.
“Thank God,” Sarah said. “He hasn’t said a thing all day.”
Steve reached out for the truck only to have Patrick snatch it away, suddenly shy. He picked the boy up instinctively, hoisting him in the air. Patrick nestled against his chest, his expression losing some of the confused distance it normally wore these days.
“You feel like his daddy,” Sarah said, the truth of the words making her throat swell.
“Yeah, well,” Steve said, embarrassed. “I guess all guys feel sort of the same.”
She’d been so happy to see him that the can had gone unremarked. It hit home now, the silver lines of its exterior suddenly coming into sharp relief. It shone from the floor, a cylindrical metal star.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
Steve set Patrick down on the floor and tousled his hair as the boy clung to his leg. “It’s his ashes.”
She started to pick them up, stopped. Somewhere along the way, she’d brought a hand to her mouth, looking like a stupid girl. She dropped it with an effort. “Oh, my God,” she breathed. “How did you? You said that . . .”
“Yeah, they weren’t going to turn them over. They gave me every excuse in the book. They didn’t have them, they’d gotten mixed up with others. They were still doing testing. The hush-hush bullshit can get pretty damn thick at times.”
She finally bent and picked up the can, saw her fun-house reflection in the curving surface. She’d overcompensated for its anticipated weight. She had to clutch it to her chest to stop herself from tossing it in the air. Even with the metal, it was . . . was this all that was left of Jim? A pinch of dust? “It’s so light.”
