Life and Limb

by Jennifer Roberson

  No, not something. Actual things.

  Things that were alive.

  I stopped dead, appalled. From the cop’s wide-open mouth, from his nose, his ears, poured streams of black, glittering carapaces. Like an army of ants on the march, the beetle-like things clustered upon the floor, then moved en masse in my direction.

  McCue cut off his ritual long enough to yell at me. “Get some water! Throw salt in it! Spit in it! Then pour it all over those suckers!” And went right back to chanting.

  Okay. Water and salt I could do. Spit, too; half-assed holy water, since I didn’t know the blessing, but Lily had pointed out we were ourselves a kind of blessing—hence, the spit, as with breathing on the bullets—so maybe it would work.

  I rounded the bar, grabbed a pitcher, filled it at the sink, dumped salt into it and basically hocked a loogie of saliva into the pitcher.

  I swung back around the bar, saw the river of—holy shit, were those cockroaches?—flowing toward the back door. I sucked in a breath, stepped right into the middle of that river, and began sloshing salt- and saliva-laden water over the roaches. Beneath my boots, they crunched. And once the makeshift holy water hit them, they burned.

  Carapaces cracked open like popcorn. Each gave up a spark. And they stank.

  I swore, took a couple of long staggering steps away, then stood staring at the field of roaches turning into crispy critters. The stench was acrid and eye-watering. I thrust an elbow across my mouth and coughed into it, knuckled involuntary tears away.

  McCue was no longer chanting. He coughed too, spat, then knelt beside the sprawled body of the young cop and placed fingers against his neck. After a moment he nodded, then carefully rolled the guy over onto his back. “Pulse is steady, so’s his breathing. Far as I can tell, he’ll do.”

  Yeah, well, maybe physically. But otherwise?

  I surveyed the field of the fallen. Little curled-up, crispified bodies. The stink was fading, but I still tasted it. Acrid, metallic.

  I leaned forward, spat. Wiped my mouth against the back of my hand. “Maybe we ought to add Roach Motels to the armory.”

  Remi, now standing, was shoving a booted foot this way and that, as if gathering dirt together. “I don’t get it. There aren’t any other roaches, or roach remains, from those two we killed here last night, right in this room. What the hell was this demon coming back for?”

  I went over, saw he’d boot-scraped together a pile of something. I had a vague memory of the two ghosts, once they’d ceased their weird deflating bagpipe noises and shimmering, basically collapsing into exactly what McCue had scraped together.

  I cast a glance over my shoulder at the carpet of burned little roach corpses, then squatted to take a closer look at Remi’s pile. Ash. Dust. Some sparkling grit, like obsidian. “I don’t get it, either.”

  The woman’s voice said, “That’s because they were ghosts, not possessed humans.”

  She startled me enough that as I lurched up I overbalanced and landed right on my ass. Lily Morrigan, standing just inside the main door, gave me a long look, then shook her head in resignation.

  “That matters?” McCue asked.

  Her green eyes were bright. “It does.”

  I pressed myself up off the floor with a one-armed thrust. “Why? I mean, ghosts aren’t real. I mean, not real real.”

  “Are they not?” She lifted her chin. “I’m an ancient Celtic goddess, and I am real. Now, come along. The young boyo will be awakening soon. He’ll be confused, but he’s still a cop. Best we be elsewhere to avoid awkward questions.”

  McCue indicated the swath of burned roaches with an outflung hand. “Can’t another demon come along and gather up the remains? Take ’em back to hell and bring ’em back to life?”

  Lily shook her head. The neck torc gleamed. “Rituale Romanum, holy water imbued with heavenly essence, and salt. No demon of this paygrade’s coming back from that. Same with the ghost remains. They were lesser demons.” She tilted her head. “Now, come. I hitched here; I’ll catch a ride with Remi, and we’ll go back to the rig. Time for debriefing.”

  * * *

  —

  Debriefing consisted of Lily interrogating us. What had we said; what had the surrogate in the host’s body said; what was our original plan of action; how had we carried it out, and how closely did our actions align with the plan for the evening, this whacking of two ghost-demons, and so on and so forth. I was bored within five minutes, and let Remi do most of the talking.

  The crow, upon the perch, rotated its head and fixed me with a bright and beady eye. I noted the powerful beak—throughout history, they pecked eyes out of dead and dying bodies, did crows and ravens—and shifted slightly backward in the armchair.

  I rubbed the pad of one thumb against the leather upholstery. “Look. We did what you wanted. We took out those surrogates in ghost form, killed off the reanimated stuffed animals, and exorcised a demon out of a human who’d been possessed. We saved him, right? So what more do you want? Didn’t we pass your tests?”

  “Barely,” Lily said, from the driver’s seat turned backward. McCue was behind the dinette table. The wolfhound lay close by. “You were sloppy last night, then walked into a situation this morning without a single weapon to aid you.”

  “We got it done,” I declared.

  She flicked a glance at McCue. “Did you?”

  He’d hooked his hat over the window valance, scrubbed a hand through short dark hair. “End result, yeah.”

  “And what might you have done differently?”

  He shrugged. “Thrown Latin at him sooner? Before he went into the building?”

  Lily leaned forward. Her legs were planted, thighs spread, and she rested her forearms atop them, hands dangling. “Do again what you did today,” she said, “and you’ll end up dead.”

  The wolfhound rose. She shook herself off from head to toe, then turned toward Remi and glowered at him across the dinette table.

  So, okay. We had the Morrigan mad at us, and her sisters equally pissed.

  I stroked loose hair behind one ear. “Just exactly how long are we to do all this surrogate-killing shit? What’s our tour of duty?”

  Lily said, “Until the job is done.”

  “And how long is that supposed to take?”

  Her tone was bland. “How long do you suppose ending the run-up to Armageddon should take?”

  “Overnight would be preferable,” I told her pointedly.

  “Well, those odds aren’t exactly good,” Remi observed. He looked at Lily. “You got a Bible on hand?”

  She rose. “Which flavor?”

  “King James, or New King James.”

  “Why does it matter?” I asked, as Lily walked past us to the cabinetry.

  Remi shrugged. “Scholars say both the King James versions are closest to the original texts. Ninety-eight percent. Other versions are a little more casual about the vocabulary.” McCue took the volume Lily handed him as she returned to the big driver’s seat. “Okay, let me look something up. I think it’s Mark . . .” Remi paged through rapidly, murmuring to himself about days and hours.

  I frowned. “What are you looking for?”

  “Here.” He planted his index finger against the page. “It’s Mark 13:32. ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.’ So it looks to me like the angels have no idea how long this might last. Just God.”

  “Huh.” I scratched an eyebrow. “What is it you say, ‘might could’? Well, it might could be helpful if God let us in on that intel.”

  “Signs,” Lily put in. “War, for one.”

  Remi quoted, “‘Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.’”

  Her eyes were bright. “I’m not the only one here. I have sisters other than Nemain and Macha. Co-workers, you mig
ht say, in the art of war. Athena. Kali. Bellona. Enyo—and no, not Enya, the Irish singer; I’ve heard that joke already. Ifri. Neith.” She shrugged. “Many of us have come. Male gods, too.”

  “So . . .” I thought about it a moment. “If you’re saying all the gods and goddesses of war are here . . .” But I broke off and clapped hands to my skull, squeezed my eyes shut. “No. No. I’m reverting back to the theory that I’m in a coma somewhere and this is all a hallucination.”

  “False prophets,” McCue added. “Fake news, maybe?”

  “But not all of it’s fake,” I said between gritted teeth. “The news.”

  “Politicians,” he went on. “Religious leaders. Misleading the elect.”

  I opened my eyes. “Okay, so now you’re saying some religious leaders predicting the Apocalypse are false prophets? I mean, how does that even make sense? If we’re on the cusp of it, according to Grandaddy and other angels, then aren’t the false prophets telling the truth?”

  Remi shrugged. “I reckon it depends on what they’re sayin,’ and how they’re sayin’ it.”

  “Moral decay,” Lily said. “Another of the signs.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “Cats and dogs living together.”

  “Yes, my kind are here,” Lily said. “We are here, but not all of us are working with the angels. Many are on the other side.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I mean, what brought you here from—wherever it was you were?” I caught Remi’s eye, shook my head in disbelief before turning back to Lily. “What would induce gods and goddesses to pop out of some kind of alternate universe, the whole space/time continuum thing, to join this battle between good and evil?”

  She shrugged. “We’re being paid.”

  It took half a minute to process that and then I was astounded. “So, what, you’re saying gods and goddesses are mercenaries? Seriously?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Then what the hell are they paying you with?”

  Lily smiled. “War.”

  I wanted to growl in frustration. “But the goal is to stop the war.”

  “The goal is to stop the end of the world,” she pointed out. “We’re using war to do it.”

  “But why are some of you on one side, while others are backing the devil?”

  “War,” she repeated. “Are you totally ignorant? There must be opposing sides.”

  I let that insult slide. “Besides war,” I said, “what do you get out of it?”

  Her pupils spread. They were still round, unlike those of the cat-eyed demon chick, but it was unsettling nonetheless.

  “To be known again,” she said; and her tone suddenly deepened. “To be in the world again. We are far more than words on a page or on a computer screen. People worshipped us.”

  The crow mantled, shifted on the perch. I eyed it uneasily. It eyed me back. Hackles rose on the wolfhound’s spine.

  Holy shit.

  “But this isn’t heaven,” Remi said.

  I blinked, the moment broken, and looked at him blankly. “What?”

  “The battle is to take place in heaven. Listen up—‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels.’”

  Lily had a quote of her own: “‘On earth as it is in heaven.’”

  Well, hell.

  I looked at the woman who called herself the Morrigan. “Goddess of Battles, is it?” I asked. “Prove it.”

  The sleeve tattoos on her bare arms writhed. “All right,” she said; apparently she’d been waiting for it. “Agus mar sin beidh mé. Téigh abhaile liomsa.”

  And the world whited out.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I woke up to the whistle of the wind, face-down, conspicuously asprawl, in grass wet with heavy dew. For a moment I was horribly disoriented, as if rousing up from a four-day bender: pounding head, mangled brain, dicey belly, shivers inside and out—and then the fragmented pieces began to coalesce.

  I opened my eyes. Peered at what I could see of the world.

  Grass. Tall. Brown. Dead.

  I lay there a long moment, putting together the concussion protocol: name, birthday, date, mother’s maiden name, the whole password recovery bullshit. Except, well, no capital letter, number, or an oddball grammatical symbol, apparently not understood by computer coders. Were they just unaware of the ampersand, caret, and tilde? Okay. Yeah. Me. Among the living.

  I dragged my elbows to my ribcage, took a queasy breath, pushed partially upright. Ducked my head and remained bowed down, elbows planted, skull clutched in my hands and ass stuck up in the air.

  After a long moment of even longer dire mutterings, I pulled my knees under my belly, rocked backward, and pushed myself into a seated position, more or less, butt planted, and boot heels, knees bent upright. I was dew-soaked head to toe, hair loose, tangled, soggy. I wiped vaguely at my face to clear it.

  My hand came away red.

  Not dew. Blood.

  Wet head to foot with blood.

  The breath gusted out of me, followed immediately by the F-bomb. And three more, raspy and slurred save for the hard k at the end, as I shoved myself upward, stood unsteadily.

  My t-shirt, beneath the open leather jacket, was wet and chill against my torso. I pulled it away from skin, felt at flesh, did a mental inventory, but other than a headache nothing hurt. Nothing suggested any part of me was bleeding at all, let alone enough to wet hair and clothing. I let the tee slop back.

  The wind yet blew, whispering now. Otherwise the quiet was almost uncanny. No birds at all, no insects. Just—silence. Save for the breeze and the rustle of tall grass.

  I smelled blood. I reeked of it, as did everything around me. And it’s a sharp, metallic taste, like copper, or iron, with a thick, throat-cloying fug. I pulled the loose flaps of my jacket aside, rattling metal buckles and studs. Noted that my black leather pants were smeared from belt to ankle.

  I scrubbed the back of a hand against a cheek, though probably all I did was rearrange blood. My gag reflex engaged, then eased before I hurled, though bile burned partway up my esophagus. With effort I swallowed it back down, then finally took a good look around.

  I wasn’t alone. Thousands of men were present. Before me, behind me, beside me. All lay sprawled upon the battlefield in attitudes of death: prone, supine, some limbs reaching skyward, others twisted, or hacked away. Eyes closed. Eyes open. Mouths agape in frozen grimaces, or features utterly slack. Long hair, braided hair, subtle plaid trousers and tunics of earth-born colors. Torcs glinted, as did brooches and wristlets. The wind caught at cloaks, fluttered cloth.

  I drew in a very deep breath, then blew it out hard. The sky above was a hazy blue, the sun muted. Still no sound beyond the wind and the sibilance of waving grass.

  No man moved, or moaned. No man cried out. No man gave any evidence of being alive. Empty of blood, what had been warriors were nothing now but sacks of flesh shaped like men, fallen helter-skelter across the plain.

  I began walking, stumbling, because there was nothing else to do. And as I walked, a slow, turgid urgency rose up.

  Remi McCue. The cowboy. I needed to find him; and that need set a band around my chest, squeezed my ribs and organs. Was he dead? Alive? Had the Morrigan also brought him here to this field of death? That they were Celts, I knew; she was a Celtic goddess, and this was her home. Was McCue, like me, surrounded by bodies? Or was he a body?

  I walked the plain, squelched through soil turned to mud because of all the blood. Felt the whip of grass against motorcycle leathers. No loom-woven, woolen trousers and tunic for me, no cloak, no torcs or brooches. I was as I had been in Lily’s motorhome, in leathers, a t-shirt, and motorcycle boots.

  Except for, well, the blood all down my front.

  Shit. Shitshitshit. Where the hell was McCue?

&n
bsp; I could search for days, pull bodies aside, tip sprawled forms over, and not find him, not amid so many. So I stopped where I was, cupped hands around my mouth and shouted for the cowboy.

  No answer. Nothing. Only the rush of wind across the plain.

  The quiet was just wrong. This was a battlefield. Dead lay everywhere. There should be carrion birds plucking out eyes, flapping wings, shrieking warning to others to stay away from claimed human prizes. And insects buzzing, chirping, rattling, humming on noisy wings.

  Then came sound. A voice, shouting my name.

  I spun quickly, saw a man in the distance. He was mostly indistinct, but I could see the unmistakable outline of a cowboy hat.

  Relief was palpable. I flung an arm upright, swung it back and forth, then shouted his name and broke into a jog even as he came on.

  When he was close enough, I saw that he hadn’t escaped the carnage. His clothing was soaked and richly red, and his hands and face were smeared. Twins in survival, we two: men who did not belong here.

  Remi halted. I saw a bloody handprint against the cream of his hat. He eyed me up and down, registering my condition.

  “Not mine,” I said. “You?”

  The tension in his body eased. “Mine, neither.” He took off his hat, rubbed a forearm through matted hair, and left another hand print upon the pale felt, though this one was lighter, smudged. “Well, hell. I reckon we got us our answer. She’s the real deal, all right. Let’s just hope she sends us back when she’s done making her point.” His eyes fixed on mine as he put his hat back on. “Guess she took it personal when you asked her to prove it.”

  I stretched out arms from my sides, let them slap back down. “Do you blame me? I mean, come on! This whole thing is unfuckingbelieveable.”

  He smiled a little. “That’s right, you believe you’re in a coma somewhere and hallucinating. So my question to you would be: Why the hell am I in it?”