Maybe not to you. To me it’s horrifying.
“Me, too,” Claire adds.
I set it on the edge of the tub beside me. “You two, out of here,” I order. “I need a shower.”
Her, too? You sure?
I grab the board and toss it Frisbee style into the hallway. Claire puts a cap on a last tube of ointment and stand up.
“You sure?” she asks quietly. Somehow, when she looks at me, I don’t think she’s looking at my scars now.
I feel torn. My shirt is too big for her slender body, hanging open at the throat and drifting tantalizingly around her toned midriff. Even though her hair is heavy with sweat and her cheekbones are smudged with graveyard dirt she’s almost indescribably beautiful. Her eyes are wide and clear, with no hint of indecision.
“Can I see your tattoo?” I ask suddenly, and my heartrate jumps just a bit.
“Not from there,” she says, breathing through her lips.
I stand up too fast and lean heavily against the sink as my ribs sing a short but loud song, the kind Claire would be proud of. “I might need a rain check.”
She looks thoughtful, then blows the look away with a small huff. She walks out with grace and dignity and the slightest backward glance. I can only assume Jamie follows her.
I wrap the bandage with a plastic garbage bag to shield it from the water and turn on the shower. I stand under the hot spray for less than half the time I’d have liked, but I get clean and that will have to be enough for tonight.
I towel myself off, feeling a bit restored. Funny how a long, hot shower at just the right time will do that for you. I wrap the towel around my waist. I have a robe hanging off a rack on the back of the door, but the thought of Claire in her sports bra and borrowed shirt slips into my mind and I leave the robe hanging. Clad in my towel, I pad into the comparatively chilly hallway.
“Feeling better?” Claire’s voice calls from the kitchen. She comes into view, a bottle of water with half its contents gone dripping with condensation in one hand.
“Human, at least.” I let her reach me. She’s washed her face and arms, the skin looking fresh and pink. She’s even managed to clean her close-cut hair, which is slicked back from her face in a smooth, glossy layer.
“You clean up nice,” she says, her voice hitching in her throat.
I think again of the robe hanging on the bathroom door. It can stay there. “Product of clean living, I guess.”
She holds the bottle up. “Hope you don’t mind. My throat was a little raw. Want some?”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“You sure? I’m thinking you could use the hydration.”
That’s when I notice that the three measly buttons that had hold the shirt closed have mysteriously come undone. Underneath her sports bra is a vibrant pink, the Lycra stretching in most interesting fashions. Her skin is smooth as damp silk, the muscles in her arms nicely edged.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say, taking the bottle from her. I raise it to my mouth.
Before the water touches my lips, a tremendous force wrenches the bottle from my hand and flings it down the hall. It hits the floor and bounces, spraying water all over the place.
“Jamie?” I cry out, looking around for the ghost. “What the hell?”
“What’s he doing?” Claire looks spooked, eyes darting.
“I have no idea. Jamie, what’s the matter?”
The ghost gives no answer.
“Come on, Ian,” Claire says, taking me by the hand. “I think we should go. Maybe the Cleave has driven him crazy.”
I’ve known the ghost for a long time, and he’s never acted up like this before. Claire could be onto something. I duck back into the bathroom long enough to grab the Cleave off the edge of the tub. If being close to the razor is affecting Jamie, then removing it from the house should be a start towards him getting himself under control. I don’t know if the things that followed us are still outside, but we’ll take our chances on the porch. I take Claire’s hand again and together we go quickly into the living room.
I see it coming but have no time to react. The small object shoots across the room with alarming speed, bouncing off my bare chest and falling at my feet. Surprised, I stop, crouch down and pick it up.
It’s a small medicine bottle. A couple of months ago I had a sudden attack of post-traumatic stress. It happens, unfortunately. This time it caused unconquerable insomnia. I went days without sleep. The doctor had given me a prescription for Nembutal, a strong sedative. I had taken two of the pills, decided I didn’t like the way I felt on them and let the stress take its course. It was a rough week but eventually, and with a great deal of herbal tea, I slept. Afterwards I took the pills and stashed them in…
In my first aid kit.
I turn to Claire. She has taken several quiet steps back. The look on her face hits me harder than any of her songs ever could.
“Ian,” she begins, but I cut her off.
“You too?” I snap. “After everything that we went through tonight, you’re just going to steal it from me? We saved each other’s lives tonight, for God’s sake.”
“I know,” she says. “I don’t want to, Ian. You have to know that.”
“Prove it, then. Go home. Just leave.”
She looks down. “I’m sorry, Ian. I can’t. Not without that razor.”
Pain is something I’ve become used to over the years, but this is different than what you feel when a monster bites you. This pain run deeper. I’d rather the pain of a broken bone than broken trust. I have trouble looking at her face.
“Who is it, Claire? Is it Moira?”
“No, Ian. Remy Danaher.”
I blink in disbelief. “When did you talk to him?”
“He called me after you left his office. Before you went to see him today. He told me that you were looking for the Cleave, and if I brought it to him he’d reward me.”
“What did he promise you?”
“You saw me with the coven. I spoke with her voice, Ian! Even after all this time Moira still has her hooks in me. Danaher will cut them if I bring him the Cleave.”
“Claire…”
“You don’t know, Ian,” she almost shouts, her face squeezed in pain. “You don’t know what it’s like to have someone that deep inside you that you can never get them out again. You don’t know what it’s like when she draws you in and you know there’s no chance in hell you can get out again. She’s like a goddamn whirlpool and I’m a rowboat. I’ll never be free of her, Ian! I can never be strong enough to do that! But Danaher is, and he’s promised to free me. So, I’m sorry, you don’t know how sorry. But I have no choice.”
“Then I’m sorry, too, Claire. But I cannot let you take him the Cleave. You know why.”
Her shoulders sag. “Ian, he’s your friend. I’m… I care about you, too. We can all be happy if we just let him complete the ritual.”
“Not all of us,” I say, my voice hoarse. “Somewhere in the world, someone will mourn a loved one of their own. I can’t let that happen, Claire. I just can’t.”
She nods and gently takes her hand off the knob. “I understand!” Her head lashes forward as if spitting, the last syllable ringing out as a strong soprano note.
“What…” is all I manage to get out. The song’s power lashes at me, washing over me like a stream around a boulder. It doesn’t affect me (though it does blow the remaining water off me, along with my towel), but the rest of the room behind me explodes as if a bomb has gone off. Chairs go flying, my desk flips on its side and slams into the wall, paintings and pictures fall to the floor in a shower of powdered glass and splintered frames. She stands there in a halo of dust and debris, staring in disbelief at me.
For a moment I can only stare back in shock. She’d just attacked me, and it hadn’t been any ordinary attack. If I were anyone else my whole skeletal structure would have been pulverized by the magical pulse. Death would have come in seconds.
“What the hell are yo
u doing,” I yell.
“What I have to,” she says, and lets out another warbling note that varies in pitch. As the note grows I see the shadows of what furniture is still intact lengthen dramatically, radiating outward at straight angles from Claire. I guess she’s conjured up a magical light in an attempt to blind me. A wise choice and a good guess on her part, thinking that the light, once generated, might affect me the way natural light does. Luckily for me, she’s wrong. The note turns into a curse as she sees the light doesn’t affect me, and I jump aside before she can load another tone.
I dive behind my overturned desk as a wave of crackling energy arcs through the room, and I duck my head against the shower of debris her assault causes. When she is forced to take a breath I look wildly around the room, looking for anything I can use for a weapon, and my eyes fall on the shattered remains of a slender glass case that moments before had been hanging comfortably on my wall. I lunge for it, cutting my right hand on tiny splinters of broken glass as I plunge it into the pile of debris.
I snatch up the old Peacemaker and roll out the cylinder. Six forty-five caliber shells are nestled comfortably in six smooth chambers, looking as ready for duty as they had been when they’d been loaded. I stand in a fast wheeling motion, bringing the gun and lining up the sights on her heart in one smooth action.
The firing pin had been removed when I’d gotten it. I’d had replaced it a week later.
For the barest second we both freeze, her with her lungs full and me with my finger on the trigger. Our weapons are locked, each waiting to be unleashed, but in that infinitesimal time neither of us can go through with it. The memory of our kiss, branded into my mind, my heart, is so fresh I can still taste her, and I can see longing in her eyes, sorrow in her lips, but most of all a choice being made in the same heart my sights now are now resting on.
Then the moment is past and I fire the gun.
As I squeeze the trigger a fresh song fills the room. The bullet runs into a new wave of power and shatters as if it had hit a concrete wall. Half a heartbeat later the wave breaks over me, knocking the gun from my hand, crashing past me and slamming into the wall. The force of the wave pounds the wall convex, shattering windows and sending plaster dust pouring down from the ceiling – the charms that had been laid on the structure have evidently been designed to only protect from outside attacks. I’ll have to bring that up with Pale, if I live to see him again.
My only thought now is to reach Claire. I remember back in the cemetery, when her magic was muted while I was touching her skin. If I can make my way to her, touch her, I can end this now. But first I have to get to her.
I leap at her but, slowed by fatigue and by my injuries, she’s far too quick for me. That damned note rings out again like a clarion, this time angling her face down. The floor at my feet crumples and flexes, the floorboards rippling like waves during a storm at sea, the upheaval dumping me on my bare ass. I gasp as the pain again envelops my left side.
I lunge, feeling momentarily like a ghast, and lock my right forearm behind her knees. I haul and she topples with a curse, her right leg escaping my grasp when we hit. As I try to wrestle my way up her body towards her bare arms, determined to shut down that awful voice, she swings her fist hard into my throat. Gagging, I can’t hold her as she struggles free and jumps to her feet.
I look up to see her snatch up a tall lamp from where it had fallen. She lines up on me like a golfer and swings for the green. The thick base of the lamp strikes on the side of my head though I manage to roll with the impact, thus saving myself from a probable concussion, but the blow is enough to make me see stars. I sink to the floor on my hands and knees, head spinning.
“Jamie,” I croak. “Jamie, take the Cleave. Get it out…”
A small, sneakered foot places itself on my shoulder and shoves. I collapse in a heap. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open, though their focus is wavering. I try to rise and fail miserably.
It doesn’t take much for her to pull the Cleave out of my weakened grip.
A second later my arms are pinioned behind my back and I feel some kind of plastic cord wrapping around my wrists. Firmly bound, I have no response to offer when she rolls me onto my back. She stands over me, haloed by destruction. She no longer looks beautiful. Her face, once so kind, is now a Kabuki mask that shows just how far down her chosen path she has gone.
“It didn’t have to be this way, Ian.”
She rears back, chest arching, arms splayed wide as she draws in a mighty breath that never seems to end. Her chest, her whole torso, expands inhumanly, and I can see tiny sparks of green light trickling down her throat and glowing through her skin. The glowing motes multiply until I can see the outline of her lungs shining through her hyper-inflating body, the glow building and rising until it reaches her throat and spills outward, lighting the room like a diseased star.
This time she doesn’t sing. She screams.
Her body jackknifes forward in a brutal, vomiting motion, and the scream blasts out of her like the afterburn of a space shuttle booster that never seems to end. Everything in the path of her power violently explodes into green fire, and as the hateful sound fills the room flames began to flow up the walls, fueled by Claire’s magic. Within seconds the room is fully engulfed, the heat already searing my naked flesh, and suddenly I know what she’s doing.
As long as my house is intact, the death spell that ensures I’m the only one who can go through the door is, too. Fire is a purifying element, and an inferno like this inside where the spell is laid is certain to eat the spell down to nothing in no time. Brilliant move. It’s her only way out. Oh, and it’ll kill me in the process. A twofer.
When she finally runs out of air she takes a deep, refueling breath and runs for the door. I’d like to think she gave me one last look, but the heat is destroying the air and the smoke is already filling my vision. I see her lithe form bound through the door, which slams shut behind her.
Then she’s gone.
Part Three
Nemo repente fuit turpissimus (No one ever became evil in one step)
Juvenal
Prologue, Part Three
Once we were alone it was impossible for them to hide their stares. They were looking at me like I was some kind of alien who had landed in the middle of their cocktail party. Since we were alone in the elevator, I had no qualms about sharing my feelings.
“Why are you staring at me?” I snapped.
“Sorry,” Susan said. “It’s just that we’ve never met anyone like you.”
“Never even heard of anyone who was naturally immune to magic,” Remy added.
I breathed deeply. My forearm was beginning to ache. “You’re not going to dissect me or anything, are you?”
“No,” Susan assured me quickly.
“Probably not,” Remy amended with a quick twitch of a grin. Susan punched him in the arm.
In the lobby nobody tried to stop me leaving, though I did get some concerned looks from the security guards that I knew. Probably they wanted to stop me, but after seeing the expression on my face not one of them rose from their seats.
Outside the cold air was bracing. The parking lot had been efficiently cleared of snow, but the air was full of its crisp promise, biting deep into my skin. After so many days of languishing in a hospital bed it was like getting slapped in the face with a cold, wet towel. My head cleared, fueled by the fresh mountain air.
“We’re parked over here,” Susan said, leading me to the left. The Danahers had rented a tough 4x4 pickup for the trip, one with an extended cab and a big enough back seat for me to fit comfortably in. I arranged myself and bucked up while Remy fired up the engine. He gave it a minute to warm up while Susan took several items out of a small bag at her feet, then once she was done he began to drive.
Once we were out of the parking lot Susan, gave me my first glimpse of magic at work. While Remy drove she held her left palm out flat in her lap. Looking back over shoulder, she noticed me tryi
ng to see what she was doing and moved her hand so it was in between the seats, giving me a clearer view. In her hand was a sliver of straw about four inches long, one end wrapped loosely with a long, heavy thread.
“This is a strand of Oliver’s hair,” she explained. “It’ll lead us right to him. Watch.” Then she focused on the straw and, to my shock, it levitated off her palm and began to spin in a flat circle. After two complete turns, it settled and stopped. The end with the hair bound to it was pointing radically left. Remy noted the point and, at the first available intersection, turned the truck to follow it. As the truck turned so did the straw, maintaining its point.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“You still thought we were messing with you?”
“Part of me did. I mean, before now this kind of stuff only came out of Hollywood. Now it’s happening right in front of my face. We’re hunting a monster. A real monster. No visual effects, no CGI. Something real.”
“We can take you back to the hospital.”
I shook my head. “I’m not backing out. I want to be there when you kill him. I’m just starting to think I’m in over my head.”
Susan smiled.
“That’s funny?”
The smile stayed but turned up just a hair as she shared a glance with Remy. “Someone wise once told me that when you’re in over your head, you only have two choices.”
I watched their interplay. Clearly this was a private joke, but I had to ask. “And what are they?”
“You can either drown…” Remy said.
“Or you can swim like hell,” Susan finished.
“Inspiring. I’ll have to remember that one.” I sat back in my seat while the truck hurtled forward, eating up the distance between us and the monster. For half an hour we drove on, the snow-blanketed hills looking naked under leafless trees.
I knew these hills. I knew these roads, and I knew the people who we drove past on our way, but none of it looked the same to me. None of it looked safe. Before this happened the worst thing we had to deal with was the weather. I had grown up in these mountains, so they had never caused any kind of fear in me. Until now. A single night had changed that all.
Swim Like Hell: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 20