Ian Tregillis - Something More Than Night

by Ian Tregillis

  Until the lady in the turquoise serape came charging down the stairs from an El platform. The wind caught her serape and flung it behind her like a cape. Her stigmata drizzled spots of glistening crimson on the iron handrails. Invisible flames sheened her face.

  The possessed penitente vaulted the railing. A shadow passed over the sun as the thing inside her spread its transparent wings. The Cherub had switched into a different human host. But where was its partner? Or was this a third Cherub? She landed in a crouch, hitting the concrete with a thick dry sound like the cracking of a celery stalk. One foot splayed out when she straightened. The fragments of her shattered ankle rolled like marbles in a fleshy sock as she charged Molly and Anne.

  Molly yanked the scarf, put her arm around Anne’s waist when she stumbled, and heaved her around the corner into the shadows beneath the stairs. Like sweeping dust under a rug, she pinched the corner of a shadow lying on the pavement and lifted the edge overhead. She ushered Anne into a nothing-space that was neither shaded nor light. The edge of the shadow twanged like a banjo string when Molly released it. They stood in the lobby of Martin’s building.

  Molly said, “You’re doing great. How’s the wrist?”

  “I don’t like this,” said Anne. The glow of flickering biomimetic graffiti played across her face as she sniffed the fetid air. It stank of urine. “How much longer do I have to keep my eyes closed?”

  This was getting absurd. Molly had thought a couple quick detours through the Pleroma would throw the Cherubim off their trail. But those asshats were too stubborn. Strange that they relied upon human hosts for dirty work like this. They seemed reluctant to show their true forms in the mortal realm. Reluctant, or unable? Or was there something else at work here? Molly remembered what Bayliss had said about his attempt to talk to Father Santorelli, and the strange confused penitente he had encountered. She wondered if an angel had been riding inside that poor boy, working his puppet strings when he strangled the priest.

  Anne hugged herself, as though warding off the odors of piss and decay. She shivered, still waiting a response.

  “You can look now,” said Molly.

  Gently, gingerly, Anne opened her eyes. She said nothing while her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The glowing graffiti illuminated debris, mildew, and a man slouched on a canvas camping chair. A hood covered the tattoos on his head. Though it was dark in the lobby, he wore wraparound sunglasses, as though he’d stared at an eclipse and damaged his eyes. Perhaps he had.

  Anne said, “I don’t recognize this place.”

  “I’d be worried if you did.” Molly took her hand to examine her wrist. The burn looked superficial, yet she could see her own fingerprints marking Anne’s skin. “My brother lives here.”

  “The one you said—”

  “Yep,” said Molly. “That’s the one. But I need a safe place for you to hide for a while.” I don’t know if this is it, she said to herself, but I’m running out of ideas. Her plan—if it even counted as such—revolved around something she vaguely remembered Bayliss mentioned in passing. She wished she had time to explore it, or at the very least practice.

  Anne said, “Hide from what? Who are those people? And how did we get here? Did I pass out? I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “If I promise to answer your questions, will you trust me just a little longer? Please?”

  Anne hugged herself again. It was drafty in here. Canvas creaked as the guy in the corner shifted his weight, like somebody struggling to eavesdrop and stay invisible at the same time. His chin hung low, over his chest, but his breathing and his heartbeat gave him away.

  “Hey.” Molly snapped her fingers under his nose. “Remember me?”

  He slouched deeper into his camping chair, pulled the hood tight over his eyes. “I got nothing to say to you.”

  “Good. That means you can listen.” She thought for a moment, remembered her mother, and produced a thin gold ring from her pocket. Crouching, she waved it under his nose. “That’s a real diamond. Do something for me and it’s yours. But if you try to screw me over”—Here she yanked the eyeglasses down past the tip of his nose and met his eyes. Dense circuitry in his contacts gave them a mirrored appearance.—“it’s pillar of salt for you.”

  His gaze went to the ring. Luminous tattoos unfurled across his skull, lighting the inside of his hood like a jack-o’-lantern. He licked his lips. “What do I gotta do?”

  “Anybody comes by looking for us, you haven’t seen a fucking thing. If anybody happens to be a penitente or two, they don’t get past this lobby. They’ll be tougher than they look, though, so call your friends. Call your enemies. I don’t care. But you hold them off.” She thought a little more. “Don’t kill them. But it’s okay if you’re rough.”

  The Cherubim would eat this guy alive. Good. He fed Martin’s drug habit. But it might buy Anne some time.

  “Deal.” He reached for the diamond ring. She snatched it out of his reach.

  “Nuh-uh. I come back and find everything’s okay, you get this. I come back and find there’s a problem, you get the other thing.” Molly stuffed it back in her pocket. He pulled out an earbud as Molly rejoined Anne.

  Anne asked, with forced nonchalance, “Old friend?”

  Molly shook her head. “C’mon. We’re almost there.”

  She lifted an arm to drape it over Anne’s shoulders. Anne flinched. Molly swallowed hard, dropped her arm, and led her to the stairs.

  * * *

  They stood outside Martin’s door. The elevator was out of service, so they’d had to climb twenty stories. Anne was breathing hard. The squatters in the stairwell had left them alone, concussed by the heavy awkward silence as they passed.

  Molly said, “I can’t go with you. I have to take care of something.”

  “Don’t you dare abandon me in this hellhole.”

  “I’m not. I promise.”

  “You’ll come back?”

  “Promise.” Molly nodded toward the door. “Martin’s doing a little better these days.” She backed into the shadows. “He’ll do his best for you. Tell him you knew me, and he’ll treat you like a queen.”

  Anne raised her hand to knock, but paused, as though reflecting upon the vagaries of the past tense.

  * * *

  Molly skipped the stairs. She stitched together shadows and returned to the lobby at the speed of thought. It was brighter and noisier than before. Light and shadow spun through the lobby as three men covered in lustrous tattoos tried to hold a line against a hulking penitente. The Cherub rode inside a human body that had to be at least six foot six. It towered over the men blocking its path. Pleroma-light from its inferno face diffracted through the invisible wings folded tightly around its human shell, casting a complementary dance of anti-light and un-shadow through the lobby.

  The penitente stepped forward. Together, two men stepped forward and bulled him back. “You’re not coming in,” said the third.

  Molly checked herself before charging in. She watched from the shadows, still wondering why the Cherubim had felt the need to carry out their errands while shrouded in a human guise. She also wondered how quickly this Cherub’s patience would rub thin. In her experience they were neither subtle nor patient.

  The penitente stepped forward again. But this time when the two tried to force him to retreat, he pressed a hand to each man’s chest and shoved, hurling them across the lobby. One shattered the remains of the security door. The other slammed against the vandalized mailboxes. Both slumped to the floor, unmoving.

  The tinkling echoes faded away. In the momentary silence, Molly could hear the wheezing of lungs laboring under shattered ribs. The atmosphere carried the tongue-curling salty-iron tang of aspirated blood.

  The penitente headed for the stairs. The man to whom Molly had spoken fumbled under his shirt with trembling hands. He really wanted that ring. He couldn’t hurt the angel brushing past him, had no hope of slowing it down. But there was a danger he could hurt the Cherub’s human host, though.


  Molly threw herself into the fray, wishing again she’d had time to practice. With thoughts focused on Bayliss’s tale of sneaking into Gabriel’s locked Magisterium, she revealed herself to the indomitable Cherub. The last lingering shadows abandoned the lobby. The tattooed man cowered.

  “Hey, motherfucker,” she said. “Remember me?”

  The penitente didn’t, but the thing inside him did. It advanced on her …

  … while Molly imagined her consciousness unzipping, peeling apart like the skin of banana …

  And then she was standing in the damaged lobby, slightly less than she had been an instant earlier, while a detached sliver of her consciousness hid in the rubble. She held the Cherub’s attention, and struggled not to look at the tiny part of herself scuttling in the corners. She wondered if the Cherub could sense the hole in her.

  And then she was hiding in the rubble among shards of glass and the unconscious gang members, the merest fraction of what she had been an instant earlier. When she looked up, she saw a giant version of herself facing down an angry Cherub in an ill-fitting human suit. They filled the lobby. She wondered if the Cherub could sense her.

  The thing in the corner was too small and weak to move quickly. It wouldn’t manage to circle around before the penitente attacked. Molly stepped over a fallen gang member and sidled deeper into the lobby. The possessed penitente kept pace, always facing her. Molly couldn’t get behind him.

  She wormed through the grime, inching around the perimeter of the room, slowly making her way behind the penitente. But she was barely a wraith, a whisper of her full self. She was minuscule, the world huge. Skirting the rubble while monitoring the face-off took concentration and effort.

  But the detached part of her consciousness could.

  The penitente turned. It put her directly behind him.

  The Cherub unfurled its wings. Moondust sifted from the heavens, blazing silver-bright in the glare from the Cherub’s fiery face. Behind it, something reared like a viper.

  The Cherub unfurled its wings. Moondust sifted from the heavens, blazing silver-bright in the glare from the Cherub’s fiery face. She reared, impersonating a viper.

  The detached fragment of her consciousness wiggled like a cat preparing to pounce. Molly grabbed the penitente’s wrists.

  She gathered herself, pressing down like the coils of a spring. The giant Molly grabbed the penitente’s wrists.

  “Surprise,” she said, nodding to the sliver of herself.

  “Surprise,” said most of Molly, and gave herself a nod.

  It lunged. Molly yanked with strength both human and other, pulling the penitente off balance, and spun him around. The other piece of her blurred into motion. The Cherub saw it, but too late. The sliver of consciousness speared into the eyes of its human disguise.

  She lunged as the rest of Molly knocked the penitente off balance and spun him around. She crossed the gap moving at the speed of thought. The Cherub saw her. It tried to twist its human shell away, but it was too late. She hurled herself into the penitente’s eyes.

  A dull sliver tinkled to the floor. The Cherub disappeared.

  A dull sliver tinkled to the floor. The Cherub disappeared.

  The penitente slumped against Molly, unconscious. She laid him gently to the floor. She stopped holding her breath. Then she nodded to the wispy fragment of herself. It slithered closer …

  The rest of Molly caught the unconscious penitente and laid him gently on the floor. She released a long sigh, and then gave her a shaky nod. She slithered toward the rest of herself …

  The wormy fragment of her consciousness slurped into place like a spaghetti noodle, and then she was whole again. She gasped: assimilating the disparate experiences was even more difficult than multitasking her consciousness in the first place. She staggered under the weight of paradox. She tripped over the unconscious penitente and crashed against the dented and vandalized mailboxes. Molly’s memory of the past few moments—her sense of identity—had acquired the eerie unreality of a photographic double exposure. Incompatible experiences churned together, an immiscible froth of oil and water.

  It gave her a blinding, brain-shattering migraine. She coughed up something vinegary. She moved like an old woman when she knelt to pluck the leaden soul fragment from the floor. Her eyeballs felt ready to burst. Rather than move her eyes, she turned her entire body to face the drug dealer, who cowered in the corner.

  “Hey,” she said. “You got anything for a headache?”

  But he was staring at his unconscious companions sprawled on the floor where the Cherub had hurled them. Then he looked at the penitente. “Fuck,” he said.

  “Now would be a good time for you to call an ambulance for your friends,” she suggested. She fished in her pocket and tossed the ring. It bounced across the filthy floor and rolled to a stop against the toe of his boot.

  She shuffled closer to the unconscious penitente. Her headache throbbed in time to her footsteps. The fragment she had dislodged from the possessed man’s eye had followed her to Earth, much as the fragments Bayliss manipulated followed him to the Pleroma. She studied it, wondering how to make the man’s soul whole again.

  The dealer repeated himself. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah,” she said. But then she followed his gaze. A second penitente strode into the lobby.

  Molly felt herself deflating like a punctured tire. She retreated into the shadows, struggling to force the pain aside, trying to focus enough to split off another piece of herself. The second Cherub saw her. It continued to look straight at Molly while, slowly and deliberately, the hollow woman’s lips curled into a sneer; the glow of supernatural fire peeked through the corner of her mouth. It was wise to her trick. Rats.

  Speaking through the corner of her mouth, Molly said, “Go for the eyes.”

  But the dealer vaulted his injured companions and ran away. He did pause just long enough to take the ring.

  As the first had done, the Cherub directed its penitente host toward the stairs. Molly blocked her passage. The wounded woman lunged forward with arms outstretched, twisted her fingers into Molly’s coat lapels, and heaved. Molly’s toes left the floor. She tried to break the woman’s grasp, but couldn’t.

  “Crap,” she said, wishing she had taken Martin’s offer any of the countless times he’d spoken grandly about teaching her to throw a punch.

  The penitente flexed her arms, preparing to hurl Molly across the lobby. Molly clamped a hand around the woman’s forearm. She pulled herself closer, until they were almost nose-to-nose. The searing heat of holy fire washed across her face. Instant sunburn. She squinted, peering through the blazing Pleromatic overlay to the human woman’s face. Something glistened in the corner of her right eye.

  Molly flicked the first penitente’s soul fragment into the woman’s left eye.

  There was a scream, the death rattle of bifurcated light, and then Molly tumbled to the floor, alone. The migraine metastasized into her arms, legs, spine. She narrowly avoided choking on the contents of her stomach.

  Molly was still lying there when two pairs of shoes scuffled across the floor. She opened her eyes. Anne stood in the doorway.

  “Moll?”

  So did Martin.

  19

  THE FINAL CLUE

  The tunnel was long; the light at the end, warm. My penitente host’s body felt peaceful, all hurts and worries forgotten. There was music, and the soothing voices of loved ones called to him.

  We were in a clinic, lying on a gurney, staring at the ceiling. Poor sap had a bad case of tunnel vision. The mooks in the car had slugged him hard. The soothing voices said something about a subdural hematoma, and then the voices weren’t soothing any longer.

  Not that my host noticed. He was juiced to the gills on Class II painkillers.

  So I had no choice but to listen to the whole spiel while the quacks read the headlines to a pair of sad sacks I could only assume were the parents. I was waiting for a chance to flick the fragm
ent out of my host’s eye. By the time we came around they already had him junked up nicely. He had all the conviction and muscle tone of an anorexic kitten. I could have done a mean Lindy Hop on the head of a pin with half the effort it would have taken to lift his arms just then. I managed to flutter an eyelid. They thought it was brain damage.

  Somewhere in the Pleroma my essence sat at a table, staring at a pile of soul fragments. I hope it remembered to blink from time to time. Otherwise my peepers would sting like nobody’s business when I made it home. Meanwhile, my focus was embedded in the penitente while the quacks explained how we’d been dumped on the side of the road, apparently the victim of a mugging.

  What about the library, I wanted to ask. They were headed for the library, to kill another PI recipient.

  But they didn’t answer my question. They were too concerned with bad influences and brain injuries, the drips.

  I kept up the fluttering, working that eyelid for all it was worth, winking and blinking at everybody in the room like a happy-time girl at her first day on the job. Eventually, a nurse noticed. I hope they gave him a raise.

  He said, “He’s got something in his eye,” and reached forward—

  —and then I was back in my Magisterium. My eyes burned. I doused them under the kitchen faucet and then went to call flametop. She beat me to the punch, though, because the telephone rang before I had it in my hands.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  That’s not exactly what she said. It was bluer than that. Indigo.

  * * *

  I arrived to find three loogans sprawled on the floor and two birds, a twist and a mugg, giving flametop a wary eye. The mugg looked like a world-class cokie. The twist, though, now she was a dish.