Life and Limb

by Jennifer Roberson

  “Remi! Wait up!” But I was pretty sure he wouldn’t.

  And yet, he did. He was waiting at the lip of the ravine, poised to take off again at any instant. “She went down here,” he said curtly. “There’s a way, but it’s chancy. I don’t think you can make it.”

  “I’ll make it. Don’t lose her!”

  He took off his hat, spun it onto the ground, went over the lip.

  When I got there, I saw why he called it chancy. It wouldn’t even qualify as a true trail, but there were opportunities to make your way down if you were careful.

  Even as I started descending, my brain worked overtime. Why would a surrogate run from us? They wanted us dead. All of them, I assumed. But this one apparently wanted nothing to do with us.

  Chaos. Chaos. A state of utter confusion, disorder, total lack of organization, unpredictable behavior.

  We had a demon on our asses who was very methodical, mostly predictable when it came to notes and photos, and certainly organized. Maybe chaos demons were only good for causing mayhem, not committing murder.

  Shit, the climb down was not fun. I clung precariously to rocks, brush, grass, leaned close to the wall of the ravine. I could see Remi’s boot prints in patches of soil and followed them. Granite outcroppings allowed for safe handholds now and then, and dirt-filled crevices permitted very careful steps.

  McCue was now down from the trail, hastily stepping toward the creek over water-polished rocks. I caught a glimpse of white above the water, as if La Llorona was floating there. And then she was. White clothes, black hair, a strikingly beautiful face with large dark eyes.

  Dark eyes, not white. Not like the black dog.

  According to the legend, she now and then left rivers to visit people, which explained why we’d tangled with her. Now she was back in the river, more or less, and I wasn’t sure if it would provide additional power, additional chaos.

  Remi splashed into the creek, took a stance.

  “Twelve o’clock!” I shouted. “Straight on!” Then recalled he could see her.

  He let loose of the third and last throwing knife.

  It went home in her heart. As had the ghosts in the bar, she pixelated, groaned like a deflating bagpipe, then fell right down into the water, where she dispersed. Remi hesitated, then waded out farther.

  I slid down the last step before level ground. “What are you doing? You got her. She’s dead!”

  “Lookin’ for my knife!”

  “Do you think you can find it in the water?”

  “It’s clear and still,” Remi called back. Then cried “Hah!” and bent down, pulled the knife from water. He was grinning to beat the band. “Okay. Now we go back for the other two knives.”

  “Well, they’re on the road somewhere.”

  “I’ll find ’em. And my hat.”

  I stood stiffly by the river rocks, trying to ignore overtaxed muscles. I waited until he was almost out of the water. “Don’t do that again!”

  “You would.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “That is the point.” He glanced back at the creek as if searching for remains. But La Llorona was gone. “Hey, look yonder!” Remi exclaimed, pointing. “Your bike!”

  Indeed, my bike, in water close to the bank. Wheels submerged, left side in shallow water, gas tank visible and part of the saddle, one handle bar sticking up.

  I wanted to cry. Of course, it was possible the bike was yet salvageable; we needed to get to it so I could take a look. But still.

  I waded through the water and reflected that at this moment I was behaving more than a little like La Llorona, hunting and mourning my drowned child.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  As we stood in calf-deep water, Remi bent and spread his legs, braced, reached down to grab part of the bike.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Don’t you want to get it out of here?”

  I agreed. “I’d love to get it out of here, but even working together we can’t lift a bike weighing over seven hundred pounds.”

  Remi, who had straightened, gazed down upon my drowned child. “Then—what do you do? I mean, you’re hardly the first who’s totaled a bike.”

  “First, it may not be totaled; and second, a wrecker. Here, though . . .” I shook my head, vastly unhappy. “I don’t know if they’ve got a winch cable long enough, and I seriously doubt anyone can drive down here. And a helicopter—”

  “Helicopter?”

  “—doesn’t have enough room to maneuver,” I finished. “But I can’t just leave it here.”

  Remi was exasperated. “You just named all the things that can’t be done! Is there anything that can?”

  I stared down at my half-submerged bike, then looked up at Remi. “Levitation?”

  McCue remained exasperated. “Then let’s levitate our asses out of here, and we’ll figure out what to do with the bike later.”

  I looked back once again at my poor motorcycle, reached down and patted the part of the saddle that wasn’t submerged. “We’ll be back.”

  Remi and I turned around to begin the sloppy walk back to the bank, when two white-swathed figures abruptly burst upward from the water and floated in midair. McCue and I both took a couple of steps backward made ungainly by the water.

  Children. In christening gowns, despite the fact they were much too old for the ceremony. Five? Six?

  They stared at us out of dull black eyes rimmed with blue bruises, faces a sickly pallor. As one, mouths moving simultaneously and tonal pitch identical, they said, “You killed our mother.”

  It took me no time at all. “La Llorona’s sons.”

  Remi was almost stupefied. “But she drowned them! Why are they mad at us?”

  “Because ghosts are pissy, and they’re not really ghosts anymore.” I eased a hand toward my shoulder holster. Two sets of eyes fastened on the movement. “Okay—if I distract them, can you shoot them? Or whatever?”

  “They’re kids, and considerably smaller than we are,” Remi said. “What harm can they do?”

  “They’re not kids!” I shouted, and then one of them came at me while the other flung itself at Remi.

  Oh, hell. I grabbed the gun out of the holster as I went down to keep it out of the water, managed to push myself into a seated position, snatched a quick look at the kid-ghosts to figure the angles, and fired twice.

  One of the shots went off-center. The other did not.

  I fought my way to my feet, bracing against submerged rocks, and saw Remi handling the big Bowie as if it were a butter knife. He sliced his kid-ghost across the throat, then stabbed him in the heart.

  Kind of overkill, you ask me.

  Black blood flowed down the ghost’s christening gown. Then, merely bodies in the water, he and his brother-ghost simply dispersed and disappeared. No sound. No smell. They just—became threads that were spun by the water into nowhere.

  I straightened, water running from me, still-dry gun held in one hand. “Okay,” I said, “Mom and the kids are one big happy family together in—hell. Can we go home, now?”

  * * *

  —

  It was the most uncomfortable ride I’d ever experienced, and I was willing to say it was the same for Remi. Both of us were soaked from mid-chest down. Our boots, so waterlogged, weighed a hundred pounds apiece. And jeans, when wet, adhere to the body, even feel like they are shrinking through an area where you really don’t want them to. And leather is worse. Neither of us mentioned it, but we were vastly uncomfortable.

  Remi rolled the truck behind the roadhouse and parked. As the evening before, plenty of customers. And since the back door led us into and through the pool tables, we got plenty of weird looks. Both of us tromped upstairs and disappeared into our respective rooms to shed clothing, particularly the boots, and dry ourselves off. I want
ed a shower, but I was too hungry to wait. In dry clothes, sock feet—I really didn’t care—I left my bedroom to check out the common room, see if the man behind the curtain was sending us messages again.

  I found plenty of normal websites, but the deep web didn’t come up again.

  It had been some time since Remi had left that message for Grandaddy. I didn’t know that I’d have any better luck, but I called him. Reached a voice with a one-word command: “Speak.”

  So I spoke. Told the phone that Remi had already called him, got no answer, and now it was me. Would two calls work better than one?

  But it was early yet, as time is measured in establishments serving alcohol, and it was entirely possible Grandaddy didn’t respond to phone messages. I’d never thought of calling him before. He just showed up now and then, without any advance warning.

  I’d never once wondered what he might be doing when absent from my life. For as long as I remember, he came and went. Never any explanation other than a nebulous I have business.

  Now I knew what that business was.

  * * *

  —

  Remi and I ate downstairs. For some reason the crowd of patrons provided a certain amount of relief. They were normal. They weren’t black dogs, or a ghost woman hunting drowned ghost children, or a Grigori, or a surrogate.

  Grandaddy did eventually arrive, and he carried a manila envelope. Remi and I both stared at it. Neither of us moved to take it.

  I was seated. Grandaddy was not. Ordinarily it was a deliberate positioning that might intimidate the ones who remained seated. In this case, whether or not that was his intention, it simply wasn’t successful.

  He dropped the unopened envelope onto the table, just shy of landing in our plates. “A young woman,” he said, “came to me as I arrived and asked me to deliver this to you.”

  I looked at the seemingly inconsequential envelope. Our names, as always, were printed on it. Gabriel and Remiel, not the shortened forms.

  McCue shoved his chair back and stood up abruptly. “Best do this in private upstairs.”

  I followed his lead. Grandaddy, with the envelope, brought up the rear. We went into the common room, where all three of us sat down at the table.

  “We need to know,” I said plainly. “What our roles are, what this war is, what the true agenda is—and how many angels are opposed to Remi and me specifically?”

  The light was kind to his silver-white hair, kind to his face. I had no idea how old he was. I had no idea if angels aged, or if they remained as they were, stagnant. “The agenda is to stop Lucifer from returning.”

  Remi’s tone was cool. “And just how do we do that?”

  “You are doing it,” Grandaddy said, “by being who you are, and by your actions.”

  I shook my head. “Not good enough. A Grigori came to me, warned us that we may be used for other purposes than the one you just stated.”

  His head came up, and his blue eyes burned. “A Grigori.” When we said nothing more, he looked at each of us individually, weighing us. He’d always done that with me, and I assumed also with Remi, but this time there was a sharpness to his gaze. “Who?”

  “Ambriel,” I told him.

  He pushed away from the table, rose, took three steps away, then turned back. “Your job, the one for which you were conceived and trained for, is to kill as many surrogates as is possible. Legends, mythology, tall tales, fictional characters, historical figures, and so forth. We must gain control before they do.”

  “Aren’t you omnipotent?” I asked.

  “God is. The rest of us are not.”

  I flicked a glance at the computer. “And just where is God in all of this? Hiding behind a dark web and feeding us a few scraps now and then? Is this Mission Impossible, with orders filtered by unseen beings? Charlie’s Angels, where Charlie was never seen, only heard?”

  Grandaddy neither confirmed nor denied. “In a handful of days, you have removed from the devil’s chessboard eight pawns. You did this working with very little information and only part of your powers; and be assured, they will grow. No one has accomplished what you have in so short a time. Yes, it’s true you will threaten some, even angels, because we are a political hierarchy as well as a celestial one.”

  Remi’s tone was very clear. “Are we targets? Targets of our own kind?”

  “No.”

  I stared him down. “Are you sure?”

  The lines in his face deepened. “What precisely did Ambriel tell you?”

  “That humanity may be caught in the middle of this heavenly battle, and instead of being the beneficiaries of a world without Lucifer’s threat, humans become collateral damage. Irrelevant.”

  “Irrelevant,” he echoed. Then he was back at the table without us seeing him move, and he bent, slammed a fist down upon the surface. “Who do you think we are doing this for? Not us; we hold heaven. But to save humanity, to keep the sacrifices of humans to a minimum. To stop Lucifer, to kill his children. That is your job.”

  “Then what exactly is Ambriel? Has she any stake in this?”

  He shook his head. “Grigori are to remain neutral. They are not to interfere. They have caused enough trouble in the past.”

  “When they fell.”

  Grandaddy was more than a little annoyed. “God doesn’t kill his children. Even Lucifer was merely flung out of heaven, not killed. But the male Grigori, who were merely to watch, began providing information to humans long before they could possibly be ready for it, and then they lay with human women and got children on them.”

  “Nephilim,” Remi said.

  “They should not exist,” Granddaddy said flatly. “They were never meant to exist. The Grigori in effect created a new race, and did it without permission.”

  Absently, I rubbed fingertips against the table. “Ambriel said—”

  “I don’t care what Ambriel said! No, she is not one of the fallen, but she takes their side. She wishes the Nephilim to live.”

  Both Remi and I stared at him, stunned. After a moment McCue took his hat off, set it upside down, ran both hands through his short hair and fixed Grandaddy with hard eyes. “So much for saying God doesn’t kill his children.”

  “He doesn’t. But the Nephilim are not his. They are not the children of God, nor are they the children of man.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “So they are expendable.”

  “They should never have been born in the first place.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re here now,” I said. “That horse is out of the barn.”

  He was stone-faced. “Your job is not to hunt Nephilim. Be glad of it. When one dies, a piece of heaven dies, and it damages us all.”

  I assessed him. “So Ambriel is the enemy?”

  “Ambriel has been misled. What she doesn’t realize is that Nephilim may at any time turn their backs on God and join Lucifer. They owe no allegiance to anyone.”

  “Mercenaries,” Remi said.

  I rubbed fingertips against the wood again. “If that is true, why doesn’t heaven pay the Nephilim, either to fight for heaven or at the very least to stay out of the argument. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about them joining Lucifer.”

  Grandaddy said, “That is not our way.”

  “But sending us off to kill for you is?” I shrugged. “Maybe it should be. Desperate times, and all that. I would think the End of Days is the most desperate time of all.”

  Remi indicated the computer. “If it’s not God on the other side, is it you?”

  “It is not. What I have to say to you can be said in person, not through a computer.”

  “Then who is it?” I asked.

  Grandaddy shook his head.

  The lazy drawl was back in McCue’s voice. “Either you can’t, or you won’t. Look, it ain’t no shame to admit you can’t when you can’t.”
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  Grandaddy shook his head again. “I can’t, because I don’t know. I suspect, but I don’t know the truth.”

  I looked at the sealed envelope he’d dropped onto the table. “Do you know what’s in there?”

  “No.”

  “We do. Go ahead. Open it.”

  Grandaddy studied us both a moment, then picked up the envelope. He slit it open with a fingernail, removed the note. As he unfolded it, read it, his eyebrows rose. He dropped the note to the table where Remi and I could see it, cut-out letters once again: And a fourth.

  I felt a crawling in my gut. Grandaddy removed the photo, was clearly concerned by what he saw. “Who is this poor woman?”

  Remi said, “You want to know her name, turn it over. It’ll say.”

  Grandaddy did so. “Catherine.”

  “She’s the fourth,” I told him. “Two notes without photos, followed by four additional notes with photos. All women, all butchered—and each manner of death worse than the one before.”

  My phone went off. Remi and I both jumped. I answered.

  Ganji said, “There is a delivery for you. A package.”

  I looked at the note, the photo. “Do we—do we have to sign for it?”

  “No. The delivery man is gone.”

  I looked at Grandaddy. “But you’re sure the delivery guy is not a surrogate?”

  He shook his head. “This building has been cleared. No demon may enter here.”

  I said into the phone to Ganji, “Grandaddy says no.”

  “Shall I bring it up?”

  “Please.”

  I disconnected, looked at Remi. “I take it you weren’t expecting a package.”

  He shook his head. “And I take it you weren’t.”

  I looked again at the note, the photo. “Catherine” was nearly unrecognizable as a human.

  Ganji knocked at the door at the top of the stairs. Remi rose, went to open it. He came back with a small parcel and yet another manila envelope.