The Saint

by Melanie Jackson

  “I hurt,” the goblin-fruit addict whispered, but her body eased even as she spoke and sank in on itself.

  “Let go, sister,” Kris said a third time. “Hurt no more.”

  The woman gave a last, long, pain-filled sigh and then stilled. Adora didn’t see anything, but she thought she could feel the woman’s soul rush by as it fled the ravaged body that had been its prison.

  Adora’s knees gave out and she sank down in the dirt. Her hand found a tired, exposed root of a manzanita plant that clutched the ground with arthritic fingers. She didn’t pull hard, because she feared breaking the plant’s tenuous grip, and the thought of any more death tonight was unbearable.

  Kris closed the woman’s sagging eyelids, then picked a small, unnoticed bundle up off the ground. It let out a thin, exhausted wail that was raw with fear and outrage. He turned to face Adora, the baby in his arms. His expression was bleaker than she could ever have imagined.

  “That’s what goblin fruit does to humans. And, believe it or not, this woman was lucky. She died before she started eating herself, before she turned to murder. Before she sold her baby to the goblin gangs.”

  Unable to bear his expression, Adora looked down at the infant in Kris’s hands. Its sleeper was wet and filthy. There was also something wrong with the child. The head was shaped like a cinderblock, and its jaw was too jutting. She could see tiny teeth that looked like they belonged on a miniature xylophone. Its scruffy hair was so matted with filth that she could only guess at the color. It also looked malformed in the rib cage.

  “Will we take the baby to the mother’s family?” she asked, looking about for some sign of habitation and forcing herself to stop her useless crying. She wasn’t the one who had died. She was alive and relatively healthy.

  “No, they rejected that poor woman and her child. There will be no shelter for the baby there.”

  “And the father?” Adora asked, but she already knew the answer.

  “You don’t understand about the addiction process, do you?” Kris asked. Then he added, “Well, thank the Goddess you don’t. Their bodies are the first things some of these poor creatures sell to the goblins—they’re usually runaways and have nothing else. The transaction usually turns into a sort of gang rape, since the goblin-fruit pushers travel in packs. She probably didn’t know who the father was—and wouldn’t have wanted the baby with him anyway.”

  Adora shivered. Unable to bear the increasing cold and the proximity to the dead woman any longer, she reached for the baby, saying, “Give the child to me. You can’t drive and also hold the baby.”

  Kris hesitated, staring hard at her. “You want to hold this child?”

  “Want to? I don’t know. It just seems reasonable and right, given our circumstances.” Adora forced herself to meet Kris’s eyes. She knew that he could see into her and would sense her reservations. She didn’t know how to explain that her hesitation was half that the baby was so odd-looking, and half that the sight of any unprotected child disturbed her, made her anxious. “Look, I wouldn’t reject a baby just because it has birth defects and its mother was a junkie. What kind of heartless bitch do you think I am?”

  “The baby doesn’t have birth defects. It has its father’s arms and teeth,” Kris said.

  “Those aren’t its ribs?” Adora asked, looking again at the filthy bundle. She wasn’t sure if this was good news or not.

  “No. The mother tried to bind its second set of arms so that it would look more human. If you’re going to beg on the streets where normal people live, you need a human baby, not a cross-breed monster.”

  “Don’t say that—she’ll hear you!” Adora pleaded, though she knew the child couldn’t possibly understand their conversation.

  “I only speak the truth,” Kris replied. He glanced down briefly. “And it’s another sad truth that no one wants this baby. As far as the world is concerned, it’s inhuman garbage. They would see it as a kindness to leave it here to die.”

  Adora put a hand on Kris’s chin and coaxed his head up. She looked into his eyes. The sorrow and anger there was unbearable, a knife in her gut until he sensed what he was doing to her and pulled away mentally. She could feel a barrier slide up between them.

  “Except you,” she reminded him. “You want this child.”

  Kris nodded, his lips compressed. In the moonlight, his eyes seemed filled with an angry blue fire. His skin took on a silver glow.

  “But I want them all. Every last lost and broken body that has been thrown away like last week’s rubbish.” He shook his head. “The truly tragic part is that the cycle never ends. The junkies’ kids grow up unloved, outsiders, some little more than animals. Hungry and scared, they turn to their parents’ addictions, looking for some relief from their miseries. It’s an endless wheel. And there are always more unwanted babies.” His usually lovely voice was harsh and deep, and made her heart constrict.

  “Kris, you can’t save the world.” When he scowled, she added hastily, “Not all at once. But we can save this bit of it. Give her to me. It’s starting to rain hard now. We don’t want her to catch a cold.”

  Kris tilted his head to the sky as though only just becoming aware of the water that fell on them, and only on them. The line of demarcation was clear in the car’s headlights.

  “You can tell that she’s a girl?” he said, almost to himself. “That’s a good sign. I wasn’t sure you could see past her arms. You’ve been so resistant to the idea of having mixed blood yourself—and I can tell this child makes you nervous.”

  Adora didn’t mention that the sleeper was pink and she’d just been guessing about the baby’s gender. Nor did she protest that the situation was abnormal enough for anyone to resist accepting it. He was right. She was very resistant to the idea that she wasn’t completely normal or human.

  “Of course she’s a girl,” she said instead. This time, Adora reached out and took the child. She wrapped her frivolous pink coat around it and staggered to her feet. The baby smelled of the same sour fruit that covered her mother’s body. Adora added in alarm, “And her lips are turning blue. We have to get her someplace warm.”

  Kris nodded, shaking off the melancholy and anger that had gripped him. “I know a place. I hadn’t planned on taking you there just yet, since it’s a bit scarier than where my nephew lives, but I think Fate has just intervened. We need a refuge now. The baby is sick and will die without help.”

  “Where are we going then?” Adora asked. She pulled the child close, trying to shelter it. Her protective instinct, though unwanted, was exerting itself.

  “It’s part of what we call the tomhnafurach, but it’s an area long abandoned—a fey ghost town. I mentioned it before. It’s . . . it’s part of my nephew’s property, Cadalach, but an outskirt used by the Nephalim.”

  “Nephalim? Fallen angels?”

  “Giants, not angels—well, not exactly angels. Zayn and Chloe go there sometimes. They’ll take this child in. You can stay at the tomhnafurach while I see to the mother’s body. I’m not going to leave her on the road where the goblins can get at her.”

  Adora shuddered. Seeing, Kris quickly removed his coat. She couldn’t tell what it was made of, but it was softer than cashmere.

  “She’s dead. Why would they want her now?” she asked.

  “You have a lot to learn about goblin drug lords. Most humans only become really useful after they’re dead,” Kris answered, wrapping his coat around her, then wiping the rain—and her tears— from her cheeks. Again, he stared at his hands as though he could somehow feel her tears.

  “Kris, don’t put that on me!” she protested. “You’ll wreck your coat too. The baby and I are both wet and dirty.”

  “That is a tragedy, of course,” Kris said, finally smiling a little. His eyes had returned to normal and the rain had almost stopped. “And yet I am sure that with time I can come to accept a ruined coat.”

  Adora let out a slow breath, relieved that he was himself again. “Kris, if . . . if the
re’s any chance of the goblins getting at that body, let’s take it now. Put it in the trunk.” It took an effort to say that, and she couldn’t repress a shudder at the thought of riding with a corpse, but the thought didn’t bother Kris.

  He said he was a death fey, Joy reminded her. Why would a corpse bother him?

  “Okay. That might be best, if you truly don’t mind.”

  Adora did mind, but she realized that Kris wasn’t eavesdropping on her thoughts at the moment.

  “It’s fine,” she lied.

  He carefully eased Adora and the baby back into the front seat of the car, then reached over her to shut off the CD player. The time for music was over.

  Adora let the door close on their conversation. Pushing away the horrible thoughts of worldwide addiction his words about goblin drug lords had provoked, she tried to comfort the freezing baby. She hoped the child didn’t sense her ambivalence at being a nursemaid. Kris was wrong: It wasn’t that she hated the baby’s mixed blood, it was that she had never thought to be near any child at all. Children were not supposed to be—not ever—part of her life, because . . . because . . .

  You can’t protect them? Joy asked, her voice subdued.

  Adora flinched. Yes. Joy was right. Somehow she had always known that she wouldn’t be a good mother. She didn’t know how to protect anyone, not even herself.

  And a voice called to him in the darkness saying: Awake, awake, put on strength again, my son. For are you not the one who makes the road that shall lead the Redeemed? Arise and build a way of hope for your people who are lost and weary. And hearing the voice, Niklas pulled himself out of dust of the earth and was again made whole.

  —Niklas 5:19

  Maxentius ground his teeth and snarled at the “angel” that had appeared and smashed the two giant wheels upon which he had been set to break the body of the troublesome human, Catherine. He wanted to shout to the crowd that the angel was no angel at all, but the fey called Niklas. But he could not risk that in turn Niklas would reveal to the humans that their emperor was actually a goblin.

  “Thisss isssn’t over,” Maxentius hissed at the fey as he gathered up Catherine’s body.

  “It’s over for today,” Niklas said, and carried the woman away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A storm closed in, battering the car and howling like a beast in pain. The wipers couldn’t cope, but that didn’t seem to bother Kris, who was preoccupied and failed to notice—or at least be concerned— that they were riding around in the world’s biggest dishwasher.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s just Thomas’s jinn setting up a howl. The bad weather discourages people from messing around this back door, and will confuse anyone following us. It’ll pass off soon, and we’re not in a flood plain. Yet.”

  “You aren’t reassuring me. Can’t we stop until it passes? Or tell the jinn to go away?” Adora stared at the fussing baby, wondering if she should take it out of its sleeper. It had to be cold and clammy. Probably it should have a bottle too—though a bottle of what, she did not know.

  “Sorry about dragging you out in this weather and . . . well, everything,” Kris said, again pulling the car out of a slide and back onto what passed for a road. “This wasn’t a part of the plan.” Then he muttered, “Not part of my plan.”

  “Ha! Bet you aren’t sorry enough to take a room at that motel,” Adora answered as a small, illuminated sign flashed past.

  “It’s miles out of the way—almost a hundred. Kids put the sign out here as a joke,” Kris explained. “And it isn’t a proper motel anyway, just a couple of broken-down motor homes with rotting floors and colonies of biting insects.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re missing my point. I can tell that you’re upset about something and you wouldn’t halt now if there was a five-star hotel and the Angel Gabriel himself appeared carrying a sign that said: stop here.” That wasn’t fair. She knew he was worried about the baby and what had happened in L.A. Still, a part of her was certain that he was keeping something else from her.

  “If the Angel Gabriel appears—sign or no sign— we will stop,” Kris assured her with a smile. “I wouldn’t leave a friend out on the road on a night like this.”

  The words were hardly spoken when the storm ended abruptly. Kris smiled wider but didn’t say I told you so. Instead, he swerved off what was left of the road and started toward a cliff face that towered in the distance.

  “This entrance is almost never used—too close to the L.A. hive. But it’s the closest, and I want to get the baby inside. It’s safer for all of us.” But for the first time, Kris didn’t sound completely certain.

  “This is the back road into Cadalach?” Adora asked. She used the term road very loosely. There actually wasn’t one that she could see.

  “Well . . . it’s a back road to Cadalach now.”

  Adora nodded, her eyes widening with alarm. A wall of stone had appeared in the desert. The cliff rushed at them, and Kris only slowed when there was danger of actually striking it. The car skidded to a stop, dust floating around it.

  “What now?” Adora asked. “It looks like your road is closed. Permanently.”

  “Now we wait. We missed the moonrise, but there will be another chance at the lunar setting.”

  “Okay.” Adora cradled the child to her chest, as much seeking comfort as offering it, but eased the little girl away again almost immediately for biting her collar bone. Deprived of her shoulder, the child gave a small grunt and began chewing on its own fist.

  Adora looked around as the dust settled. This was an eerie place, a haunted one. Cracked rocks were scattered about—immense geological wreckage from when the earth was made. A dead cedar had wound its branches into the cliff face as though fearing it might be torn from the soil. For some reason, this idea put Adora on edge. She was already keyed up, and her nerves began to jitter as she looked about quickly, half-expecting an attack.

  North, south, east, west—nothing there. Just rocks and manzanita beaten down by the heat. Yet, there was something—something hovering just beyond the realm of her limited five senses. And it was growing, coming closer.

  “Kris, do you feel—,” she started to ask.

  “There it goes,” Kris said softly. “Watch now.”

  Suddenly, the air stilled. The remaining clouds parted in the sky. The cliff shifted in the silver light of the emerging moon, appearing suddenly as a chiaroscuro in gray and black, a picture of something, but she couldn’t say just what. And then it began to move, to fold in on itself.

  “That’s impossible,” she whispered, watching the stone turn smooth and glossy and then fold like curtains.

  “No. Just improbable,” Kris answered. Then he said formally: “Open to us, brothers and sisters of the rainbow wherein the magic dwells. Let us enter into the realm of the Goddess who watches the world with eternal unshut eyes, and find shelter there.”

  And with that, Kris put the car in gear and drove into the mountain.

  There were no lights inside, but this didn’t seem to bother Kris. He didn’t squint against the darkness and his hands barely rested on the wheel.

  Almost immediately Adora began to feel pleasantly stoned, and wondered what was causing the buzz. The baby too had quieted, drooling contentedly on its fingers.

  “Do you feel it?” Kris asked. His voice was melodious. “There are certain psychic locales where magic congregates—mystery spots, they’re sometimes called. Few pureblood humans can sense them,but to the fey, even of mixed blood, they are as obvious as a landing strip lit up at night—only a lot more exciting.”

  “We’re getting closer,” Adora said, smiling a little. A part of her knew that this was something she would normally be concerned about, but the rest of her didn’t care.

  Kris nodded. “We’re in the vein, and about to enter the heart of the country.” He stopped the car. “I’m afraid we ride shank’s mare from here. The car will age too much otherwise.”

  “We walk?” she asked.
>
  “Yes—well, sort of. Give me the baby.”

  Adora happily handed the child over and let herself out of the Jag. Her body was relaxed, anesthetized, as Kris joined her.

  “It’s best not to watch this part,” he said, taking her in his free arm and urging her head against his chest as they stepped forward. It meant she had to walk backward, but she didn’t mind. It was sort of like dancing. “It has something to do with spatiotemporal divergence—or so Thomas says.”

  “You know, you say the funniest things.”

  Kris looked thoughtful. “Do I? Hm—I suppose I do. It’s rather like having double vision, but a hundred times more confusing. You see things that aren’t there now, but were there and will be there, layer upon layer of unreality. It can drive people mad.”

  “Let me guess, this is all part of the laws-of-eternity thing,” she mumbled, not really caring. She was soooo mellow.

  “Yes. Stay close now and walk slowly. Don’t worry about the wind. It won’t hurt us.”

  Kris held Adora and the baby close, enjoying the physical comfort of having bodies pressed against him. It had been a long, long time. The impulse to keep Adora closer than plaster on a wall almost made him smile. Almost. They were in the Goddess’s realm of power now and she hadn’t waited to administer her first gentle nudge. Kris knew that if the hint didn’t do the trick, She would soon bring out bigger guns.

  That would be interesting. He had never refused her anything, so they’d never had a battle of wills. But this time he would refuse—would have to refuse—unless Adora was completely willing and informed about what such a union would mean. Maybe the Goddess couldn’t or wouldn’t understand or accept his judgment, but it was his belief that there was already too much hurt in this woman from past emotional betrayals. He would not add himself to the list of people who had done her wrong. If she didn’t understand and agree that there would probably be no rose-covered cottage and rocking chairs for their golden years, then this relationship was a nonstarter. He had no illusions. The fey were going to war with the lutins and mankind both. That the battle would not be waged with conventional weapons did not mean that there would not be fatalities. And he was the chosen general, the one who would be targeted by the enemies. Anyone standing near him would also be in the line of fire.