Life and Limb

by Jennifer Roberson

  And there it was, all tied up in a neat little bow. The present. Our futures. An explanation for it all.

  McCue sat rigidly on his rock. “But what about—?” Yet he broke it off abruptly, as if he’d seen the answer in Grandaddy’s eyes.

  After a moment freighted with tension, he reached down, pulled tough prairie grass from the ground, began to plait long strands. Whether he was thinking alpha vs. beta, or blue vs. red, or cat vs. dog, I didn’t know.

  He asked, “We have any start-date for Lucifer’s return?”

  “No.” Grandaddy was decisive and yet regretful. “There are signs, of course. Indications. But no timeline. The world doesn’t run like clockwork, despite humans swearing it does.” He nodded slightly, staring into space. “I’ve dumped a great deal on your plates. But trust in your hearts, follow your souls, and know that I would never set my grandchildren upon a false path.” He turned, reached into the pockets of his frock coat, drew forth items. One he tossed to Remi, another to me.

  I caught what was thrown, frowned. Looked at my grandfather in bafflement. “A shotgun shell?”

  “Powdered iron load,” Grandaddy said. “The best means of dispersing or destroying a ghost. Birdshot works, so does buckshot, if it’s silver, or iron. Same with bullets. Remi, show him what you’ve got.”

  McCue, smiling crookedly, held it up into the light. Displayed between thumb and forefinger, it gleamed pure and clean and silver: a .45 caliber bullet.

  “You can take down a werewolf with that,” Grandaddy said, “and a passel of other things. Now Gabriel, I do know you’re aware of the lore, of the legends. I taught you, and so have the halls of higher learning.” His smile was wry. “Even TV, movies, novels, and comic books. But what you have to remember now is that these are no longer tall tales. These beings are surrogates. They wear the guises of fiction and folklore.”

  “Grandaddy—” But I broke off as he held up a hand.

  “There’s a woman in town,” Grandaddy said. “Her name is Lily Morrigan. She’s expecting you. She’ll provide you with details of your first job, as well as with some items you’ll find helpful in the coming days. She’s unconventional, but completely trustworthy.”

  “‘First job?’” I echoed.

  “Why can’t you tell us what we need to know?” Remi asked; and I heard the first hint of tension in the cowboy’s tone. “You’ve been doing it all our lives.”

  Grandaddy smiled. His eyes were ageless. “Because you’re not my only grandchildren. There are others we’re preparing. Go to Lily. She’ll keep you updated, and I’ll contact you when it’s necessary.”

  I longed for scotch. But I longed more for the uncomplicated ignorance of two days earlier, before stepping foot inside a roadhouse in Northern Arizona and out of a life that was in no way perfect, or even comfortable, but was nonetheless free of such encumbrances as saving the world.

  “How do we find this Lily?” McCue asked.

  “Have drinks at the Zoo tonight,” Grandaddy said. “She’ll find you.” He turned away from the vista then, stood with his back against the sky and a staff in one hand. He put me in mind of Moses on the Mount.

  Or, yeah, Gandalf.

  “You’re trained,” he told us. “You’re ready. But it won’t be easy. Trust your instincts. Trust what I’ve taught you. Believe in what you’re doing. Commit, and never waver.” He smiled, and a glint was in his eyes. “Fight the good fight.”

  I realized then what was in the offing. “You’re leaving,” I accused. “You drop all this apocalyptic bullshit on us, then walk away?”

  Grandaddy marked me. Weighed me. Flicked a glance at Remi, who waited in the silence of tense expectancy. Then he nodded his head with its wealth of flowing silver hair. “Fair enough,” he observed. “You’re not boys anymore, to idolize every word I say without questioning it. I’ve never steered you wrong, but you’ve got minds, and were trained in school to accept nothing on faith.” He bared teeth in a broad smile. “Even if that is the key to all. So. Do this job. Then decide if it’s bullshit.”

  I was all out of patience, but schooled my tone into matter of factness. “Look, all this is normal to you. I get that. But I barely know this man you say I’m now sealed to and you expect me to trust a woman I’ve never met to explain to us a job we’re to do in order to serve heaven. Heaven! Cut me a little slack about being slow to buy into all this without questioning it, okay?” Without stirring a hair, he suddenly loomed extremely large against the sky. His shoulders stretched the seams of his frock coat. Behind him the world, the air, blurred into something like pixels. Pixels under a sheen of oily rainbowed water.

  Holy crap. Those were wings. I couldn’t see them, not clearly, not beyond impression, but those were wings.

  McCue’s tone was dry. “You want to ask that again, do you?”

  I did not.

  “It’s a broken road you’re on,” Grandaddy said, as the pixilation died, “and you’ll stumble, and you’ll fall, and you’ll likely be hurt, even badly hurt. Your bodies are human. You’re mortal. You can die, because soldiers do. But just spit out the blood, pick yourselves back up—pick one another up—and do the best you can.”

  I let that settle a moment. “God,” I muttered finally, “we’re verging on an Army commercial.”

  McCue quoted, “‘Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diabolus esto praesidium.’”

  I shot him a glance. “Seriously? Latin?”

  “Timing seems appropriate. ‘Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our safeguard and protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.’”

  I squinted. “When Latin evolved as a language all those four thousand years ago, I don’t think it was ever intended to be spoken with a Texas accent.”

  Grandaddy threw back his head, and his rich laughter rolled out into the day like the tolling of a bell. Maybe the voice of heaven? I shivered.

  Our grandfather grinned at us both when the sound died. “Yes, Michael would approve of you both. Most assuredly.” He drew in a breath, released it, and there was memory in his eyes. “I said this to you both many years ago. You needed to know it, to nudge you in the right direction, but it wasn’t necessary that you recall it then. Now, it is.” He looked at us both, one at a time. “There was a thunderstorm.”

  I smiled as memory snapped into place. “You said God was bowling.”

  “But he wasn’t,” McCue noted. “It was Thor.”

  I nodded firm endorsement. “God of Thunder. Damn straight.”

  Grandaddy looked large against the sky. “I say again what I said that night: ‘You’re sealed to it, now. Life and limb, blood and bone. The fate of the world hinges upon it.’”

  I remembered it so clearly. And I heard Remi’s Texas-accented voice overlay my own, as we said together, “‘The whole entire world—and everyone in it.’”

  Grandaddy nodded. “The information you’ll need to survive is everywhere. Much of it you’ve studied, much you’ll need to learn. Look to all cultures, all source material, judge for yourself what is evidence when you’ve experienced it—or when you’re certain you can trust whoever provides you with the intel. Sort out what is empirical, what is allegory, what is metaphor. Because even the writing on the wall may be false, or intended to mislead. Remember that dead languages are dead, and that a book written by many men, in many tongues, may be misunderstood, may in fact be mistranslated. And most certainly may be misquoted to serve agendas.”

  And then he turned away, set his staff, and began to walk down the mountain.

  I squinted, closed my eyes, rubbed my brow. But I looked at the cowboy, the only man left on the mountain who understood this confusion; hell, shared this confusion. And probably shared my inclination to disbelieve, which was, apparently—if one were to believe a man he’d trusted all his life—a doorwa
y to the devil.

  “You know,” I reflected aloud, “he really should just do it. Grandaddy.”

  McCue raised brows. “Do what?”

  “Plant his staff and announce to Lucifer: ‘You. Shall. Not. Pass.’”

  The cowboy laughed, then held up an object that glinted in the sun. “A silver bullet . . . for werewolves.”

  I inspected the shotgun cartridge I held. “A powdered iron load for killing ghosts.”

  Remi shook his head. “Makes me wonder if we’re supposed to cut our own stakes for, you know, vampires.”

  I sighed, tucked the cartridge into a back pocket. “Life just got a whole lot more interesting.”

  McCue rose, stretched, stared thoughtfully into the sky as he put his hat back on and, unexpectedly, quoted Shakespeare: “Cry ‘havoc’ . . . and let slip the dogs of war.”

  Well, if the Rhodes Scholar was going that way . . . I rolled my shoulders, cracked my neck. “And I’m no damn Chihuahua.”

  Remi smiled, and I smiled back. For that brief flash of a moment, even as strangers, we were in complete accord.

  McCue nodded, pocketed the silver bullet. “Come on, pit bull. Let’s go see a veterinarian, make sure you’re up to date on your shots.”

  I followed, heard McCue start singing—again—as he led the way down the mountain. After a moment of disbelief, I raised a question over the sound. “That more Charley Pride?”

  Remi broke off long enough to call back, “Rascal Flatts. ‘Bless the Broken Road.’ Grandaddy says we’re on one now—figured we might need every blessing we can get.”

  I couldn’t help the plaintive tone. “But does it have to be country?”

  “God’s music, boy. God’s music!”

  I wondered if maybe I could get a WiFi signal through my phone’s mobile hotspot. Because then I’d download a glorious oldie, all seventeen minutes of Iron Butterfly’s ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,’ and play it as loud as I could, even if it drained the entire battery. That song, too, was quasi-Biblical, since the song was intended to be ‘In the Garden of Eden’ when it was written, before it got totally booze-mangled.

  “Or I can sing a hymn, if you’d rather,” McCue called.

  I scowled at the cowboy’s back. “How about we just go with the sound of silence?”

  Which prompted McCue to shift to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

  Well. At least it wasn’t country.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Saturday night McCue and I grabbed quick showers in our motel rooms, steak dinner at a place called Horsemen Lodge—it, too, featured mounted dead animals, leaving me to wonder if this was required decor for Arizona; very different from the coffee bars of Portland—then on to the Zoo Club.

  It was crowded and noisy as I preceded Remi McCue inside. Live country music once again reverberated within the massive roadhouse: drums, guitars, and the broken nasal croon of a tenor voice sliding all around the notes.

  Crying in his beer, I reflected sourly, forcibly resolving not to insert fingers into ears. They were always crying in their beer about a woman. Or maybe about their dogs. Or their trucks.

  I worked my way through the crowd but shot a brief glance over my shoulder at Remi. I raised my voice to be heard above the music and crowd noise. “You ever cry over your truck? Or a dog?”

  McCue’s brows knit as he called back, “Am I supposed to?”

  “You’re a cowboy, aren’t you? Into country music?”

  “I’m more likely to cry over my horse,” McCue said. “And do you really think a cowboy bar is the best place to debate the merits of what country people do or do not do? Especially when it’s obvious you’re a biker?”

  Well. Possibly not.

  At the back near the pool tables, I found us an empty two-seater table shoved up against one of the tree trunks serving as load-bearing support for the beamwork overhead. String lights dangled, illuminating the glass eyes of a snarling stuffed bobcat as it crouched overhead. It put me in mind of the lions the old man on the mountain had mentioned.

  “I’ll get drinks,” I said as McCue dropped into a chair. “What do you want?”

  Remi was evaluating the surroundings; maybe checking for surrogates? “House draft’ll do.”

  I made my way through to the long slab of bar, ordered and fetched two brimming mugs, worked my way back. Handed one down to McCue, but paused as my attention was caught by the pool tables beyond, near the back exit, as someone indisputably female bent over the table.

  I do like a woman with a stick in her hand.

  Smiling, I wandered closer with mug in my fist.

  It was the young woman from the night before, the one who’d asked me to dance, then knocked back a share of my Talisker. Still with the blonde hair pulled back in a waterfall of ponytail, but tonight she wore black tank top, black jeans, silver at both wrists and in her ears, a doubled string of chunky turquoise on silver wire around her throat. And she wielded a mean pool cue.

  She played a man, and she beat him. The game had attracted onlookers; there was laughter, cash exchanged, elbows planted into ribs, muted jokes at the expense of the cowboy she’d defeated. Was she a hustler? Or just good at pool?

  As she looked up and met my eyes, I smiled. Inclined my head just a tad to acknowledge her win. Sent the invitation. Hell, Grandaddy’d said nothing about ignoring the attractions while we waited to meet whoever this Lily woman was. Hell, for all I knew, she was Lily.

  The light over the pool table was better than in the rest of the bar. I saw now that in addition to brown eyes, she had the faintest dusting of freckles across her nose. Other than bright lipstick, makeup was minimal; but then, she didn’t need it.

  It was hard to look at anything other than those red lips. Probably, she knew it.

  I saw the spread of her pupils as she stared at me across the table, the loosening of her mouth. She looked nowhere else as, with a slow smile, a lifting of brows, she handed off the cue stick to the man nearest her, who happened to be the cowboy-hatted man she’d just defeated. She hesitated an instant to keep my eyes on her, then turned and quietly slipped out the back exit.

  I was no fool. I damn well followed.

  As I stepped outside into the darkness beyond, as the door swung shut behind me, I smelled a hint of perfume. And then she surged close and her hands were on me, one reaching between my legs to cup, to tease, the other sliding up beneath my t-shirt to spread against my chest. She moved in close, stepped me back until shoulder blades and ass were against the logs of the roadhouse, and let me discover what those lips were all about.

  Well, alrighty then. If this was Lily, I’d be sending Grandaddy a Candygram.

  “What’s your name?” she asked against my mouth.

  At that particular instant I didn’t know. I didn’t care. My mind was on other things, such as all the blood heading south.

  “What’s your name?” she insisted.

  I smiled against her mouth, then cleared my throat. Was mostly breathless. “Hell, woman—whatever you want it to be.”

  This was—really fast. Like, holy shit fast.

  Motel. Motel would be good. Or a car, if she had one. Hell, even McCue’s truck, if I could get her around to the front of the roadhouse.

  Or maybe right there was good. Yeah, this could work. Even against the rough logs of a wall.

  Then her breath was unaccountably cold against my mouth. “You lit it up last night. I felt it. And it shines so bright, it does. It’s so very pretty. But now I’m going to extinguish it. I’m going to extinguish you.”

  What the hell—?

  “Call me Iñigo Montoya, for all I care,” she said, “I go by them all. Hell, call me Legion.”

  Well. Not Lily. And the woman had a knife.

  I caught her wrist as she thrust hard with the blade toward my belly. It was all
instinct, pure reaction, to catch and snap that wrist, to thump the heel of one hand against her breastbone in a short, sharp pop of impact that knocked her backward. I’d learned the hard way never to underestimate, never to hesitate, never to give anyone with a weapon in their hands the opportunity to use it—and I decided on the spot that gender damn well didn’t matter when outright murder was a real possibility.

  She’d have gutted me. I saw it in her eyes as she staggered, then backed away. She’d have opened me up, reached inside, yanked out my intestines.

  “I’d have tap-danced on them,” she said through bared teeth, clearly following my thoughts. “Or maybe fried them like pork rinds and chowed right down on them.”

  I’d hurt her. She backed off farther with her wrist clasped against her abdomen, breathing hard. Between us on the ground, glinting in fitful light, lay the knife.

  She glanced at it, looked at me. Her eyes remained brown, but the pupils stretched into an alien verticality, like weird-ass slitted cat eyes. The accompanying smile was feral. “Welcome to the war.” And she stripped off the necklace and flung it at me before she turned and ran.

  I ducked aside, but not before one of the silver and turquoise loops coiled around my neck and closed. I felt the throttling pressure, felt the stones bite into my flesh, felt the wire on which the chunks were strung close down hard on my throat, squeezing flesh.

  I caught at it with both hands, tried to dig fingers beneath the wire. All breath was banished, and black spots crowded in from the edges of my vision.

  Then my ring—Grandaddy’s ring—made contact with the wire. Silver on silver.

  Even as I heard the back door creak open, heard a Texas-accented voice questioning what the hell was going on, the necklace fell away. It spilled to the ground and lay beside the knife, silver wire all melted, charred turquoise chunks unstrung and scattered across the dirt. I sucked air in, gasped it back out again.

  McCue was beside me. “You okay?”