by SM Reine
Lincoln resisted. “Are you doing this?” he asked once, in one time period, while leaping away from an arm lifting a gun.
Someone’s lifting a gun.
There was now another person standing in the kitchen who had never been there before.
It wasn’t obviously male or female. It had no breasts, but its lips were full, and its eyelashes were long. Its broad shoulders were encased in a long white jacket with ribs sewn down the back. It wore matching white leather pants, loose enough to hide a weapon on the calf, and gold-buckled boots with thick rubber heels. Its head was shaven except for a long mohawk hanging over one side of its face.
And it had a gun.
The gun was swiveling smoothly, turning toward…
Sophie.
This was an assassination.
Lincoln pulled the Historian against his side, arm tight around her shoulders. He was much broader than Sophie. Presenting his back to the assassin meant she was completely concealed by the wall of his body.
Spencer had also noticed the intrusion. He leaped over the table with a shout, scattering the mugs to the floor, shattering ceramic against linoleum.
He reached for the assassin’s arm.
A shifter was fast enough that no human would have been able to dodge the attack. Yet the assassin moved as though their interaction was coordinated. It turned, ducked, dropped to one knee, brought the pistol up again.
The muzzle was pointed right at Sophie.
“Your dagger!” Inanna shouted. She was at Lincoln’s back, curved around him as if to teach him how to bat.
“I know what I’m doing!” he shouted back.
The ebony handle leaped into his hand. He’d carved the grip to fit his hand perfectly, and he was grateful for the way it seemed attached to him. It meant that when time jumped again—mugs turned whole, table upright, roommates sitting down—Lincoln was still holding the knife.
The assassin was about to shoot Sophie as she came through the kitchen door.
Inanna shoved Lincoln, and he leaped forward, burying the falhófnir blade into the assassin’s side.
Time stopped jittering.
Lincoln’s roommates leaped from their seats, shouting. They were shocked to see a white-clad assassin bleeding out on their linoleum floor. Its gun had skittered under the refrigerator, just out of reach.
Sophie was just coming through the porch door again. Her eyes widened, and she froze by the counter. “Gods above! It’s that thing again!”
It touched a hand wonderingly to the stab wound on its side. “I didn’t see that coming.” The assassin’s voice was a neutral alto, and its American accent was all wrong. Like an Australian trying to sound Californian. Just one more thing about this weird, colorless person that was off. “How is it possible I didn’t see that coming?”
The kitchen started to lurch.
“Run!” Inanna shouted.
The assassin was recovering. Lincoln felt the rush of time about to distort.
This time, he didn’t fight against Inanna’s advice.
Lincoln plowed into Sophie. He swept her off the ground into his arms, and even though she was a woman with curves, she felt like she weighed nothing against his chest. Adrenaline felt like it could carry him a thousand miles and a thousand years without pause.
He only needed to make it to the car idling on the curb. He all but tossed Sophie into the passenger’s seat, and he slid over the hood to get behind the wheel before the time distortion could reach him again.
“What in the world is happening?” Sophie asked, clutching the dashboard.
“I’m protecting you,” Lincoln said.
He slammed his foot on the gas pedal.
Chapter 7
Reno Tahoe International Airport was one of the best-functioning services in the region. The Office of Preternatural Affairs had claimed it as their West Coast transport hub, since it was so close to their Fallon base; it had begun offering passenger flights only two weeks earlier.
The airstrip was surrounded by barbed wire fence and guards patrolling with battle rifles resting across their chests. Lincoln never got close enough to be sure, but he figured they were FN FALs. NATO countries had sent them to America by the shipping container after Genesis. In exchange, the OPA had sent experts worldwide to train staff at equivalent preternatural agencies. A lot of the earliest vigilantes registered had been recruited to the program—that was how Lincoln had lost his first roommate in Reno, in fact.
In this setting, the light automatic rifles were a clear message. RNO wasn’t the relaxed airport it used to be. There were no smiling TSA agents, no charming decor celebrating Nevada’s culture. It was a holding pen for human cattle waiting to board tin cans held together by duct tape. If the cattle acted up, they were gonna get mowed down. No questions asked. No quarter given.
Even Lincoln couldn’t do much to protect Sophie if one of those guards started shooting. He tried not to look like he was running from an assassin, or anything else.
On the bright side, airport security could probably take down the assassin, too.
“Are you okay?” Lincoln asked when they finally parked in the garage.
Sophie hadn’t moved or spoken on the drive to the airport. Even now, she stared out the windshield, blank-faced.
“It’s going to kill me, isn’t it?” Sophie asked.
“Not a chance in hell,” Lincoln said.
“You saw what it does,” she said. “How are you supposed to protect me from that kind of onslaught?”
“I’m less scared now that I fought it.” He got out of the driver’s seat, grabbed all of Sophie’s bags, and then opened her door to let her out too. The handle didn’t always work from the inside. “It’s a witch. Just a witch.”
“How could you tell?”
“I know what magic feels like. That’s weird, rare magic, but it’s still just magic. Plus, that ugly bastard bled red. Next time I see it, that thing’s not going to survive to hurt you.”
Sophie perked up. “I admire your confidence, Mr. Marshall. I feel validated in my choice of protector.” She reached for a bag, and Lincoln started walking away before she could take it.
Sophie was getting excited by the time Lincoln mumbled his way through the security checkpoint at RNO. She was trying to conceal it, but she vibrated with barely contained energy. Her wide eyes drank in every fixture, from the blue bucket seats to the unplugged slot machines and the bathroom signs.
Of course, it was likely that the woman had never flown from an actual airport in her life. It sounded like her guardians had been eager to keep her under lock and key.
Lincoln had been in too many airports. Whether before or after the end of the world, it was the same: crappy air-conditioning, lines that took much too long, and staff too comfortable feeling up Lincoln’s crotch for contraband.
The craft that would transport Lincoln and Sophie across the country only seated two people per row, and there were about a dozen rows crammed in. Luggage space was nonexistent because the overhead compartments were stuffed with medical supplies and fresh produce.
Lincoln had to sit sideways to get his knees behind the seat in front of him. Sophie’s shoulder was flush against his. There was barely room to breathe.
This luxury flight had cost Lincoln several thousand dollars. Five figures. The seat belt was frayed and wouldn’t cinch tight across his lap.
Even the flight attendants were wearing body armor.
“Is that normal?” Sophie whispered to Lincoln during the safety announcement.
“What’s normal?” he muttered back. Nothing about this looked normal, and armored flight attendants were the least of it. Other passengers were openly carrying firearms. Most people had to squeeze between cargo, and that included Sophie, who was still wearing one of her backpacks even though it forced her to hunch over.
The plane shook as it took off. Screws rattled in the bulkheads and Sophie didn’t even have the sense to look afraid.
Linc
oln couldn’t help white-knuckling the armrests. There wasn’t any way to defend against a plane plummeting from thirty-thousand feet. And if they were attacked, they’d have nowhere to run.
“Isn’t the technology produced by the mortal world without magical aid truly extraordinary?” Sophie asked breathlessly.
“It’s frail,” Lincoln said. He glanced behind him at the rest of the plane allocated to passengers. Two women in suits, a handful of OPA agents. A lot of empty chairs. “You can close your eyes if you want. I’ll keep watch.”
“I couldn’t possibly sleep when I’ve finally begun progressing on my translation.” Sophie snaked her arms down the inch of space between her body and the chair in front of her, wriggling a tote into her compressed lap. She removed a two-inch binder and handed it to Lincoln.
A book was tucked inside the front of the binder. It appeared to be a stapled photocopy of a much older text. The symbols were unreadable to Lincoln and didn’t resemble any language that he’d ever seen. Sophie must have known it: she had begun to translate the text on lined paper inside the binder.
“What’s this mess?” Lincoln asked. “Is this literal chicken scratch?”
“These are my copies of ancient cuneiform tablets—this one depicting a ritual used by gods’ oracles throughout the millennia,” she explained, flipping through the pages to show him, as if he could possibly understand anything. “The original text was written long before the Treaty of Dis made such magic illegal, so it fell into obscurity. Until now.” Sophie was beaming, somehow, while crammed against a window as she jolted and rolled through the air.
“Is it hard to translate?”
“Oh yes! Infuriatingly so! Early Sumerian texts often did not use the full grammatical structure. This ritual was likely annotated by a priest for use as an aide-memoire, so I cannot merely translate it, but adapt it,” Sophie said. “The adaptation would have been easier before Genesis but—ooh!”
They hit a pocket of turbulence and dropped a few hundred feet. Bright-gold sunlight panned up his lap and blazed into his face as the window’s relationship to the sun altered precariously. Lincoln’s stomach clawed up the back of his throat.
“Why aren’t you afraid of the plane crashing?” he asked, nails digging into the plastic armrests. “You trust mundane technology that much?”
“Not at all,” Sophie said cheerfully.
“You realize I can’t protect you if the airplane crashes, right?”
“Don’t be silly, of course you’d be incapable of such a thing.” She pointed over her shoulder at her backpack. “I have a parachute.”
Lincoln stared. “Why?”
“I’ve prepared for many survival situations. Why do you think I won’t be parted from my luggage?” Sophie asked.
“Why the hell did you come to me for protection?” he replied.
“I was getting to that, wasn’t I?” She patted her binder again. She had used permanent marker to inscribe whorls and squiggles on every inch of its cover. “With this translated ritual, and the aid of a witch, I believe that I will be able to speak to a Remnant of a god.”
“You mean you want to talk to Inanna?” Lincoln asked. “That’s why you came to me for protection. Not because you want me, but because you want her.”
Inanna occupied the seat behind Sophie. She crouched in the chair, whittling a dagger out of ash. The curls of wood vanished before hitting the ground.
She was eyeing Sophie as if considering whether she needed to slit her throat.
“I hoped it would be a benefit of our renewed affiliation,” Sophie said.
“The only benefit, I’d bet,” Lincoln said. “Nothing personal. Right?”
“Mr. Marshall—”
“It’s fine. What do I gotta do for you to talk to Inanna?”
She fidgeted with the edges of her translated pages, which had been hole-punched so that they aligned flawlessly. “Essentially nothing. As far as I know, the ritual should do no harm. I’ll be able to predict an outcome more accurately by the time I finish translating it, so you have time to make this decision. I wouldn’t ask you to commit to something potentially dangerous before—”
“I’ll do it,” Lincoln said. “So long as you finish translating that ritual in the next week or two, I’ll do it.”
“The next week or two? Why can’t I do it after that?” Sophie asked.
“I don’t want a foreign invader riding around in my head,” Lincoln said in a low voice, though he was pretty sure he couldn’t prevent Inanna from hearing him. “Luckily, I know a woman who once had a goddess in her head, and that woman also happens to be an exorcist. I didn’t originally mean to go home to Mortise. I’d been heading to Las Vegas to look for help.”
“You can’t mean to exorcise a portion of your very soul!” Sophie exclaimed. She was too loud for such a small space, even over the sound of the shrieking engines.
Lincoln lowered his voice even more in the hopes she’d follow suit. “That’s exactly what I mean to do.”
“Assuming that it’s even possible, I can’t believe that would be in agreement with your morals, Mr. Marshall. The gods made you what you are now. They chose this path for you. They gifted it to you. Who are you to question their plan?”
“I never got a letter of intent,” Lincoln said. “None of this stuff is in the only Holy Book I’ve ever read, and that means if—if—a god is involved, we’re only guessing at intent.”
“The gods communicate in myriad ways beyond any Bible your religion invented,” Sophie said.
“We didn’t invent the—never mind.” This wasn’t the fight he wanted. “You aren’t sure if you were supposed to wait in the Summer Court cottage. It got dangerous and you hightailed it without knowing if the gods willed for you to stay. I respect that choice. Inanna’s dangerous in my head. She does dangerous things, like drawing Dullahan to me. I’m gonna hightail it too, and I’d be mightily appreciative if you could show similar respect.”
“I see.” Sophie knitted her hands together, watching the clouds whip through the wind outside. “Who is this exorcist you hope to find?”
Lincoln’s lips pinched into a grim smile. “The Godslayer. My ex-girlfriend. Elise Kavanagh.”
Knoxville didn’t have what Lincoln would describe as an airport. It used to have an airport, but the terminal had been destroyed in The Breaking—an event where North America cracked open to expose Hell. They had erected a shack alongside the airstrip and cleared away the weeds, but there was no permanent building to speak of.
Security was shockingly nonexistent after the armed guards and barbed wire of RNO. There was nothing between Lincoln and the road as he descended from the airplane, taking careful steps down the jiggling metal stairs.
The tarmac was peppered with small aircraft like the one they just survived. His cousin was parked at the end of the landing strip, to the left of a few other cars. He recognized her at a distance because she was driving the truck that his dad had used for the last fifty years.
At the bottom of the stairs, Lincoln turned to check on Sophie. She was still standing on the top step, gripping the railings as she goggled at Knoxville. It was a lot greener and wetter than Reno. A lot of new stimulus for a sheltered Historian to absorb.
Lincoln reached a hand up toward her. “Need help?”
Sophie shook her head. “Just because I am a hidden treasure that must be protected for the sake of mankind does not mean that I am infirm.”
She followed this up by promptly tripping. Her toe had caught on one of the uneven stairs, and she gave a little yelp before sliding down two steps.
Lincoln caught her. “There’s no shame in being infirm, shortcake.”
Sophie blew a breath out of her nose and shoved him off. “Have your laughs, Mr. Marshall. Why do you keep calling me shortcake?”
“It’s a nickname,” he said.
“You consider me mentally infirm as well as physically?” Sophie rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s a nickname, but why have y
ou selected that one?”
“Lincoln!”
A blond woman was waving excitedly at them. Ashley had spotted Lincoln and stepped out of the pickup.
It was time to clear the tarmac anyway. Lincoln took Sophie’s totes and lugged them toward Ashley. She looked much the way he remembered: blond, with a wide mouth, and bright blue eyes. She’d gained a good thirty pounds and lost a half inch of height to slouch. But it was still Ashley with the pigtails, Lincoln’s childhood co-conspirator, and the reason for his adulthood damnation.
He set down the bags so he could hug her.
“Lincoln Logs,” Ashley said, squeezing him hard. “Christ, it’s been an age! Look at you. You look like you’ve been through a rock tumbler. What happened to the pretty-boy football star?”
“He survived,” Lincoln said. No thanks to his cousin Ashley and the trouble she’d rained down on him. He had forgotten how angry he felt until he saw her face, concealed by multiple layers of makeup and snake bite piercings on her bottom lip. She was the same trash she’d always been.
“Hello there,” Sophie piped up.
Ashley finally realized they weren’t alone. Her face shifted from delight to suspicion as she took in Sophie, still wearing that bizarre jacket, loaded for bear under several bags, with braided hair to her shoulders.
Her eyes fell on the wrist of Sophie’s jacket. A bracelet was peeking out from the hem. The charms glistened acid green against the dark brown of Sophie’s skin.
“Lincoln, get away!” Ashley shouted. She leaped forward, hands lifted.
Vivid crimson magic glistened on her fingertips.
Lincoln’s hand snapped tight around her wrist, locking her in place. Heat rippled over his knuckles. He remembered when his hands had burned like that—with hellfire inside of them.
He’d had all the demon blood purged from him by Elise. Ashley hadn’t.
She’d come back from Genesis the way she’d gone in: a warlock.
“What are you doing?” he snarled, shoving her hand down. He glanced around to see if anyone was watching. It was impossible to tell. The clustered cars reflected sunlight that burned into Lincoln’s retinas, and he couldn’t make out faces inside.
