Life and Limb

by Jennifer Roberson

  I swore, raked a spread-fingered hand through damp hair. Grimaced because it was blood, nothing so benign as rain or dew. “Hell if I know. But what I do want to know is where Lily is. I’d like to take a shower, change clothes, you know? Get rid of all the blood, knock back a couple of drinks.”

  His brows ran up. “You always drink so much?”

  I scowled at him. “Give me a break. Making up for lost time. It’ll pass.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Might could do with a drink myself, seein’ as how we got, what, translocated?”

  I felt helpless, which made me surly. “Let’s just say Scotty didn’t beam us here. But I’d like to figure out how to get back. Because unless Grandaddy means for us to hunt demons in Roman-occupied Britain, we’ve got no angelic mission here.”

  Remi looked across the field of the dead. The look on his tanned face was pensive. The wind rippled his denim shirt, snatched at the points of his collar. “Which battle do you suppose this was?”

  I stared at him in surprise. We’d been taken through time, and he wanted to know what battlefield we were smack in the middle of? “Why does it have to be a specific battle?”

  His gaze came around to mine. Something bright sparked briefly in his eyes, and then he smiled faintly. “Just trying to figure out where—and when—we are. So we know what comes next. I’m thinkin’ it might could be important.”

  Well, there was that. Hands on hips, I turned in a full circle. Still no carrion birds, no insects. Still just the wind hissing through the grass.

  Finally I shook my head and met his eyes. “Could be one of many battles. The Celtic tribes were always killing one another.”

  He shrugged. “Seems like a lot of men for mere tribal squabbles.”

  Okay, yeah. McCue was right. I looked around again, saw the narrow plain was bounded by trees on two sides, and the distant uncertain darkness that suggested trees behind us. I turned in a circle, then gave up. “Yeah, no, I’ve got no idea where or when—”

  But I wasn’t allowed to finish, because suddenly Lily was standing six feet away. The wolfhound was at her left side, and the crow flapped and soared idly in the air. Piercings and torc glinted in the sunlight, and the red shock of her hair was bright under the sky. The remarkably fine bones of her face stood up beneath pale skin.

  “Look again,” she said. “Are all of the dead, men? Are all of the dead, Celts?”

  Remi stared at her a moment, then moved hastily to several bodies. Two he turned over, then straightened, turned, and looked once again at Lily. His face was taut. “Okay,” he said; and there was no lazy drawl in it, only tension. “Women, too. Is that what you want us to see?”

  Lily’s smile was luminous. Otherworldly. She looked beyond—or through—me.

  I swung around abruptly, following her line of sight, saw the field shift before me. I blinked my eyes wide. Men, yes, but now also women, as McCue had noted. The body count abruptly increased.

  “Holy shit,” Remi said.

  “Look again,” Lily repeated. “Feuch dè bha, faic dè tha. See what there was, see what there is.”

  McCue and I glanced at one another, then did her bidding.

  Now chariots, where there had been none. Unhitched, upended, broken, wheels missing, and the scattered bulks of slain horses.

  Ten, maybe fifteen paces away from me, a Roman soldier, complete with armor of leather and metal strips, the iconic helmet with cheek-guards and upright plume. But only one Roman. All the other bodies I could see, male and female, were Celts.

  I closed my eyes, burrowed inside myself to find the part that sensed, as Grandaddy had called it. Beneath the sun of a younger earth I let it come to me, the knowledge. Heard the clatter of shields, of javelins; the wet slop of Roman gladii against wool-wrapped flesh. And the war cries, the screams of horses, the shouts of men, the ululations of women who wanted nothing more than to throw off the Roman yoke.

  I opened my eyes. I knew.

  “Boudicca,” I said grimly. “Her final battle against Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, 60 or 61 Common Era.” I gestured, indicating three directions. “Narrow plain hemmed by trees, and a forested gorge behind, cradling the Roman formations. No Britons could sneak up, or lay ambushes. It could only be a frontal attack. And it was disastrous.”

  “Why disastrous?” Lily asked, watching me closely.

  I gazed across the plain. “Eighty thousand Britons died, with maybe, and only, four hundred Roman soldiers lost.”

  “Jesus,” McCue murmured.

  “I was there,” Lily said simply, “as I am here. At war, I am always present. And this is a war, boyos, never doubt it. Apocalypse, Armageddon, End of Days, Ragnarok . . . call it what you wish. This war is the end of all, unless it is won.”

  The Morrigan, Goddess of Battles, stood before us clad in knee-torn jeans, a tank top, bare feet. The multi-colored spirals and angles of her sleeve tattoos writhed upon her forearms, as if alive. Her eyes were vastly bright.

  She smiled faintly at McCue. “Those cowboy boots of yours aren’t precisely ruby slippers, but I’ll wager if you tap the heels together three times, we’ll go home.” She paused; the wolfhound yawned prodigiously. “Well, to what you boys know as home.”

  Remi blinked at her, looked at me with brows raised.

  I shrugged; who the hell knew? I sure didn’t.

  So he gave it a try. Three taps of his boot heels, and the world once again whited out.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I came to my senses much as I had in Roman Britain, save there was no blood in my hair, on my face, or a blood-glued t-shirt stuck to my torso. Nor was I lying face-down upon the ground. I was however, sprawled partly upright and wholly inelegantly in the motorhome recliner, arms hanging over the sides, legs outstretched loosely, and my ass nearly off the edge of the seat.

  I was so close to landing on the floor that I flailed without anything approaching coordination, grabbed hold of the chair arms and shoved myself upright, which wasn’t necessarily the best idea in the world for my innards, though it took precedence over doing an ass-plant on the floor. No, what this abrupt movement did was set my head to aching and my belly to churning. Bile—or something more—once again climbed my esophagus; and once again I swallowed it down. Then closed my eyes tightly, pressed a hand across my eyes, and cradled either side of my skull with thumb and fingers.

  All I could manage was a tight-throated rasp. “Can we not do that again? Jesus Christ. That’s not how they do it on TV and in movies, the whole—” I waved a hand in an indistinct circle, “—scrambling the atoms thing. It never appears to be painful, you know? Nobody ever hurls.”

  “You challenged Lily to prove something,” a deep voice said. “That’s a very foolish thing.”

  My eyes snapped open. I registered McCue across from me, clean again, hat bearing no bloody hand prints, forearms resting on the dinette table, but looking tight around the mouth. He squinted at me, then poked a finger in the air to direct my gaze elsewhere.

  Oh. “Hey, Grandaddy.”

  He stood tall and solid in the aisle, shoulders thrown back in his frock coat, silver-white hair flowing to shoulders. He was patently displeased.

  “Well, what the hell did you expect us to do?” I disliked my defensive tone at once. Better to be a little belligerent, under the circumstances. “Just believe some tatted-out chick in a red Mohawk and piercings who claims she’s a Celtic goddess?”

  “I am a Celtic goddess,” Lily stated. “Do you require another trip to a battlefield? Perhaps the American Civil War?”

  It was Remi’s turn to speak, and he sounded no more pleased than I as he looked at Grandaddy. He seemed relaxed as he leaned back against the dinette cushions, but the flesh at the corners of his eyes was lined. “You piled our plates high. Might could explain a little more, don’t you think?”

  Grandaddy’s blue
eyes weren’t unkind, but certainly serious. “No man—even one born of heavenly matter—who is raised as a human can take everything in at once. It’s not like sticking a flash drive in your USB port and downloading, since you don’t have USB ports.”

  I muttered, “The number 42. And Johnny Mnemonic.”

  Grandaddy looked perplexed, and McCue just gazed at me blankly.

  I waved my hand again. “You know—Life, the Universe, and Everything. Could be cool if it was just downloaded, you know? Into our heads.”

  Remi looked at Lily, who was seated on the floor with a wolfhound head in her lap. The rest of the dog lay stretched out behind her. “Did he order scrambled eggs for brains during that trip back?”

  “It can be disorienting,” Lily replied, “but I think this is just Gabe.”

  “Just me,” I agreed, then clasped hands behind my head and cracked my neck. “So, Grandaddy, we don’t know everything there is to know about angels and demons and gods and goddesses and monsters and all kinds of shit that goes bump in the night, and even the kitchen sink being thrown at us, for that matter. Oh, wait—can a sink be haunted? Hey, maybe you’ve got a textbook for all this bullcrap. That would help. I’m a pretty fast reader.”

  Grandaddy didn’t crack a smile. “You’ll be given information as circumstances require it, as time goes on. At this point, it’s for you both to find out what you can do, how to do it, and how to back one another up.”

  “Hey, he’s the one got me translocated,” Remi protested. “I was just fine with believing she’s a fictional character out of fictional Irish folklore, no questions asked.” He flicked a wary glance at Lily, then looked at me with accusation in his eyes. “I don’t call that ’zactly backing me up.”

  “How the hell did I know she could actually do it?” I threw back. “But now we know, and we can proceed accordingly.” I looked up at Grandaddy looming in the aisle. “Is there anything in particular that brought you back here? Like, it’s time to provide more of this angelic intel we’ll need?”

  “Not intel,” he said. “An assignment. Time to clean out the rat’s nest. Clear the domicile.”

  Remi shot a frown at Lily. “You used that word before. ‘Domicile.’ Beyond someone’s house, what’s it mean?”

  “Demons move in,” Grandaddy said, before Lily could speak. “It may be into a body—or, now, into creatures from legend and folklore—or into a place. If it’s the latter, they set up shop, make it a home. That’s what they did at the cowboy bar. Two took on host bodies, made them corporeal, and damn near killed you both.”

  “‘Host ghosts’?” I suggested. “Naw—‘ghost hosts’ sounds better. So, what about them?”

  “The ghosts were owners of the roadhouse. Or rather, the ghosts of the owners, right?” McCue seemed to be picking his way through a minefield, apparently unwilling to just blurt things out the way I did. So much for having my back. “So the surrogates, in ghost-form, legally—and spiritually?—now own the bar. And they made it a domicile?”

  “We killed them,” I pointed out. “Or disappeared them. Or whatever it was we did to their demonic little asses.” I shot a glance at McCue, was inspired. “All they were was dust in the wind when we were done with them.”

  “Don’t start up with Kansas,” Remi suggested, “or I’ll be singin’ country music again.”

  “Oh, God. No. I’ll even beg.” I started to cross forefingers in a warding sign, but Grandaddy’s big hand came down and closed upon mine, damn near crushing my fingers.

  “No,” he said; it was enough to stop me cold. “Do no such thing!”

  I sat frozen in place. So did Remi, and Lily. Grandaddy was bent low to capture my hands with their linked fingers, now folded down. Behind his shoulders I saw the shimmering pixilation, the prism, the pressure, the impression of wings.

  “This is real,” Grandaddy said; there was neither kindness nor patience in it. “Do you not understand? Everything is real! Would you place a warding sign on him? To consign him elsewhere, to damn him, when he is your greatest support?”

  Holy shit. I swallowed tautly, coughed a little. “Uh—no?”

  His hand did not release my own. My fingers protested. “Think, Gabriel. You studied folklore. Legends. History. Remi knows how cultures believe, how they worship. You are neither of you stupid, but foolish, oh yes. Now, grasp this. As I told you explicitly, but let me say again: Everything you’ve read of legends, fairy tales, folklore, mythology, even Bible stories, is now made real.”

  In the sudden absence of speech, I heard the wolfhound’s heavy breathing. She slept hard with her head in Lily’s lap, twitching and damn near snoring. Not exactly goddess material.

  Okay. Okay. Lily Morrigan, the Morrigan, had proved herself real.

  I drew in a deep breath, nodded, and Grandaddy released my hands. I shook them out, rubbed knuckles, plowed on. “So, we also took out that other demon. The one in the cop. He said the others were lesser demons, and his paygrade was higher.” I debated saying the next thing, said it anyway because it was true. “We still took him out.”

  Grandaddy straightened and gazed down upon us. I decided then and there we should never sit in the man’s presence again, unless he was sitting. The man, as seraph, was downright intimidating.

  He could be dryly, and subtly amused, could Grandaddy. I’d seen both. But he was neither at this moment. “Your mission tonight is to go back to the Zoo Club. Eat, drink, dance, shoot pool—it’s immaterial. Merely be there. And wait.”

  I was wary. “Wait for what?”

  “For the surrogates, of course.”

  Remi went wide-eyed. “More demons?”

  “Oh, shit,” I muttered, remembering. “That demon chick knew we were there. She said she felt it when we clasped rings and lit our heavenly asses right up.”

  Remi sighed deeply, rubbed a hand through his unhatted hair, then absently attempted to finger-comb it back into order. “That cop demon said something, too. That we’d be hunted.”

  “You are now prey,” Grandaddy said, “but also predators. Tonight you’ll be bait. And any who come to you, any and all, who attempt to snatch the lions down from the heights, are to be destroyed. The bait shall bite, and clear the domicile.” He paused. “You have an hour before you go. Make use of it.”

  I chewed my bottom lip for a long moment, turning things over in my mind. Then looked at Lily. “You got a whisk broom and dust pan? You know, for demon remains?”

  “Stop,” Grandaddy said sharply. “Gabriel, stop this. You must understand—”

  It exploded from me as I shoved myself to my feet and stood but two feet away from him. “I do understand! How could I not? I was raised to handle guns, raised to understand folklore and legends, raised to—or imbued with—this primogeniture bullshit, and a useless ability to sense places. Holy shit, Grandaddy, I was just at Boudicca’s final battlefield! I tasted death there. Heard it. Smelled it. And it reeked. It stank. Blood, bowel, urine: men, women, and horses . . . yes, I get it! I get that a stranger is now bonded to me; I get that I have a holy GPS unit in me; I get that you want me to destroy surrogates . . . but I was raised a human and I’m scared shitless. What makes you think I can do this?”

  The syllables were exquisitely clear. “You killed a man.”

  My knees literally went weak. I locked them rigid and held my place. I felt hollow, a little sick, and hyperaware of McCue’s sharp, startled attention. Limbs prickled, like cold sand running out. “And I went to prison for it.”

  Grandaddy’s face was terrible. “Who do you think sent you there?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I stared at the man I loved more than my own father. Felt tears gather in my eyes. Literally felt sick to my stomach.

  Thought: How could—? Why did—? But couldn’t finish either question, aloud or in my head.

  “Yes,” Grandaddy said, knowing exactl
y what I couldn’t bear to ask. “Yes, I arranged it. I didn’t force it, but I manipulated certain things, I nudged, made sure various details were in place so the goal would be reached as it was intended. Yes, the man is dead; yes, you killed him; yes, you went to prison. Because all that was necessary.”

  I stared at him, still in disbelief. “It was necessary for me to kill a man? Necessary to go to prison?”

  “It was.”

  “Why?” I was now able to ask it. “Why on earth would you do such a thing? Why was it ‘necessary’?”

  His tone was unrelenting. “Because you must be strong. Because you must understand. There will be hardships. Challenges. Things you wish not to do. Times when you are helpless, perhaps even a prisoner. You will be required to kill, Gabriel, and you must not hesitate.”

  Okay, creepy cult leader talk. “But—”

  He cut me off. “When a man comes at you with a gun in his hand, it’s possible he’s not a man at all, but hosting a surrogate. Until Remi can tell demons from humans at distance, you must be prepared. No, we do not advocate killing possessed humans—always do your best to save them—but there will be occasions when killing surrogate and host is best for the greater good.”

  My breath ran choppy from my lungs. I stopped seeing Grandaddy, saw instead the Asian woman, the Grigori, warning me that not all angels were on the same page. That some had an agenda, and humans could very well be collateral damage.

  I swallowed hard, refocused. It was Granddaddy before me again. I cleared my throat, looked at McCue. “You ever kill anyone?”

  His face was tense, eyes unblinking. I couldn’t read his expression. “No.”

  Grandaddy said, “It was not required of him. You are the alpha, Gabriel.”

  I did not look away from McCue. His opinion mattered. “Could you kill someone? Someone who looks like a human?”

  I saw a shift in his blue eyes, some unnamable emotion. “I don’t know.”

  I weighed him, as best I could; he was a stranger to me, whatever he was intended to become at some point. Sealed to me.