by Ari Marmell
I made for the gate in the fence, L&G drawn and ready to do all sorts of unfriendly things to the latch, or to anyone who got in my way. But the gate was hanging open, and so was the chain that’d locked it—someone had taken bolt cutters to it—and if there was anyone lurking in wait, I sure couldn’t get a slant on ’em.
Bianca appeared beside me, Colt in her small fist, and said something I couldn’t hear through the wind. I leaned in, and she repeated, “Where to?”
I paused a minute, staring at the cracked, soot-blackened walls that were all that remained of the old church, opened my mouth to answer…
And the sound of gunfire reached us from around and to the right, though the gusts were so loud even that barely registered.
“Uh, I’m thinking that way,” I said in her ear. Her expression told me, without needing to shout at all, that I was an idiot.
We found the first body facedown in the dirt, just round the brick corner. Or, well, I shouldn’t say “facedown,” since there wasn’t any face left worth speaking of. Fella looked as though he’d tried to French kiss a sawed-off and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Bianca went a fascinating shade of green and her shoulders heaved once, but whatever was threatening to come up, she managed to keep it down. Maybe because the chintzy suit the guy was wearing made it obvious that this was one of Fino’s boys, and not Fino himself.
The second body, a little ways past the first, was just as dead but in better condition. Bianca and I both recognized him as one of the thugs who’d been guarding the house each time I’d shown up pretending to represent Credne’s Whatever. He’d been plugged a good three or four times in the breadbasket.
And the third, sitting in a small blood pool with his legs sprawled out in front of him and his back against the bricks… Well, the third “body” was pointing a smoking Smith & Wesson right at us. He breathed something between a gasp and a sigh when he saw who we were, and let the roscoe fall.
“You’ve looked better, Archie,” I said as I dropped to one knee beside him.
“Looked better. You’re a riot, Oberon.”
He’d been clipped twice in the leg—on the outside, thankfully, away from the artery—so he’d probably live, if the wound didn’t go untreated for too long. I helped Bianca tear a strip off my borrowed coat. Then, while she wrapped the wound, I threw a little of my will into Archie’s mind, trying to take the edge off the pain. I guess it worked, ’cause after another gasp when Bianca tightened the bandage, his breathing started to come easier.
“What happened?” Bianca asked.
“Some of our own boys fucking turned on us, that’s what happened,” he growled, shifting to take some of the weight off his injured leg. “Opened up on us before we even got a peep at Orsola. I dunno what that bitch paid ’em, but I promise you they’re all fucking dead men!”
Paid? I wondered if they’d been “paid” anything. Orsola coulda been slipping ’em some kinda potion or brew for ages…
Not that it made much difference on our end—or that I was about to convince Archie it wasn’t their fault, even if it wasn’t.
“We just scattered,” he continued, waving vaguely back in the direction of the bodies. “Boss and some of the guys broke left, we broke right, and… Well, here I am. I been taking potshots at those fucking traitors,” and here he craned his head toward a small hole in the bricks, “but I ain’t seen ’em much. Suppose they’re hanging back with Orsola, wherever she is. And I ain’t exactly in any condition to go looking.”
“All right,” I said. “We’ll keep our heads down. You got enough extra shells for that thing?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. Anybody comes round that corner ain’t you or the boss, I got more’n enough lead to go around.” He reached out then, snagged my collar and yanked me close enough that, even speaking over the wind, we wouldn’t be overheard. “You fucking brought Mrs. Ottati with you? Are you stupid?”
“You wanna try telling her to stay behind, Archie, you go right on ahead.”
“Tell her to stay… Huh. Nah, I, uh, don’t think I’ll do that.”
“Wise of you.”
I rose, keeping my back pressed to the brick, and began sidling toward the corner, Bianca inching along behind. “Mr. Oberon,” she hissed over the pseudo-storm.
“Yeah?”
“Archie…”
“Yeah?”
“My husband doesn’t know how much he’s helped me. He doesn’t know that I told Archie about Celia, or that he was keeping it secret for me. Archie had good reasons, but if Fino ever found out…”
I nodded. “No reason to tell him that I can think of.”
She smiled her thanks, I smiled “You’re welcome”… And then, wand gripped tight, I stuck my mug around the corner to take a gander at whatever might be waiting.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
What was waiting for us was a war zone, or sure looked to be.
The four main walls that were still sorta standing—not counting the big honking gaps scattered throughout ’em—surrounded heaps of wood that’d been too badly scorched to be worth salvaging, piles of ash-coated dirt, and the lingering remnants of a few smaller walls, now standing only a few feet tall. It really did look as though someone’d dropped a bomb on the place.
And of course, the scattered bodies just added to the imagery.
I couldn’t tell for sure, squinting as I was, but I thought most of ’em were still alive. I was fairly certain I saw a chest rising and falling here, an arm twitching there. But then again, it coulda just been the wind.
The wind which, even if I hadn’t already known, was now blatantly and obviously supernatural. It whipped around in a miniature cyclone, off in the far side of the ruins—where the altar once stood, no doubt—forming a curtain of dust and dirt, old papers and various other bits of refuse. Somehow, the rest of the winds we were feeling were gusting out from that spinning center, thumbing their noses at physics and nature as they passed. It wasn’t completely opaque, and I could see the figures moving beyond.
Or rather, one of the figures was moving, circling around—dancing around, if those spastic tremors and twitches weren’t just optical illusions caused by the windblown detritus—the other. And that “other” was…
Fuck me! Celia was crucified to a makeshift cross, a couple of simple broken beams lashed together. I could feel her screams, even if I couldn’t hear ’em over the howling, and I could only hope against hope that she’d been tied into place, not nailed.
I aimed and fired, sending magics pumping into the witch, stripping enough luck from her that even tripping on her own shoelaces coulda proved fatal—or I tried to, anyway. But whatever magics kept those winds blowing, they warded her from mystical attack just as well; I felt my efforts kinda sluice off to one side. Might as well have tried to punch through a wall with water from a garden hose.
Plan B, then. I aimed the wand down and twisted it in circles, drawing the ambient luck around me and winding it through my aura, and then I broke into a mad dash for the wall of winds. It was rough going, the ground made uneven by heaps of dirt and bits of brick and wood sticking out, but I was more’n able to avoid the worst of it and build up a pretty good head of steam.
Which is, of course, when the trio of goons that Orsola had bribed—or charmed, or whatever it was she’d done—slipped out from behind the far wall and opened fire. Three choppers spat a whole fusillade of slugs my way, and all I could do was leap, corkscrewing in the air, trying to clear their line of fire long enough to dive for more substantial cover.
It was an impressive little acrobatic display, if I say so myself; no human, and not a whole lotta Fae, coulda duplicated it. I dunno that it did me much good—the ginks coulda missed ’cause of the winds, or ’cause of that extra boost of good luck I’d given myself—but miss they did. Streams of bullets flashed overhead and off to my right, but none of ’em clipped me. I let myself hit the ground as I landed, my legs collapsing under me, and kept rolling left. The slugs kep
t spraying, chasing after me for a heartbeat or two…
And then stopped, if only briefly, at the sound of a quick pop-pop-pop from behind me. Bianca, bless her, was covering me, and if her Colt wasn’t a whole lot in the face of triple Tommies, she’d at least surprised the torpedoes into backing off.
My roll came to an abrupt stop as I fetched up against a small rampart of earth topped with a handful of bricks—pathetic cover, but the best I had without getting up and running some more. There I hunkered down, trying to work out what to do next, and saw that I wasn’t alone in my rudimentary shelter.
Fino Ottati lay sprawled in the dirt, the stock of his own Chicago typewriter clenched in one outstretched fist. He was alive—this close, I could tell at a glance—but he was completely out. He didn’t even look unconscious so much as asleep, and I even thought I heard snoring under the wailing winds.
Probably the same incantation or hex or whatever it was that she’d hit us with when she took Celia from my office. Made sense; she wouldn’t have wanted to hurt her son unnecessarily.
I wondered what, in her mind, would make it necessary.
“Hey! Fino! Wake up!” I slapped his cheek and the back of his head a couple times, first with an open palm, and then with the L&G, working to unravel the magic that held him under—or at least make myself lucky enough to wake him up in spite of it.
He snorted, then choked and spit out a mouthful of ashy soil, and blinked at me with groggy peepers. “Oberon? How the fuck—?
“Worry about how the fuck later. Right now, I need you to remember where the fuck.”
Another blink, and his face went stiff. “Celia…”
“Yeah.”
We both lifted our heads to peek out over our tiny redoubt. He muttered yet another variant of “Fuck!” when he saw the swirling barrier, and then we both ducked down as a barrage of shells hurtled our way.
But we’d both seen enough, even through the whirlwind, to know that the end was coming up quick. Orsola had drawn a foot-long kris—that’s a wavy-bladed dagger, if you didn’t know—and there wasn’t a lotta room for misinterpreting its purpose.
“Jesus… Oh fuck, oh, Jesus…”
“Fino!” He whipped his head my way, glaring, but at least he’d stopped gibbering. “Can you make the shot?” I asked softly.
“What?” I couldn’t hear it—I think, even if the wind had stopped dead, I wouldn’t have heard it—but I saw his lips move.
“Can you make the shot?”
His eyes started to glisten, and I don’t think it was from the grit in the air. “I can’t! Oh, Madon’, I can’t…”
“All right. Cover me.”
Fino’s entire face tensed up hard, and then went completely blank. “That,” he told me, “I can do.”
Fino Ottati rose with a roar to shame the winds, his own Tommy gun spraying death at anyone who might even think of shooting at us. With the pounding of the chopper as my drummer and herald, I charged.
Barrels swiveled and bullets arced my way, but the Shark was faster. His chopper roared, cutting down one of the galoots throwing lead at me and sending the others diving for cover of their own. Again charred wood and blackened stone tried to trip me, but other’n a couple stumbles, I leapfrogged over ’em and kept going.
And Orsola’s magics rose up to stop me.
It started with those same sticks and stones, suddenly jutting from the dirt, shoved by unseen things below. They poked and tangled my shoes, a few even poking through, scraping bloody furrows in the skin of my feet. I toppled into the dirt and rolled, barely dodging more of those makeshift spears that woulda poked right through my ribs and into God-knows-what parts that don’t need any more holes. I came back to my feet, limping even worse’n I had been ’cause of the injured hip, but I was almost there, almost to that wall of swirling winds…
Chunks of broken brick and razor-edged splinters flew from the artificial storm, ignoring the prevailing gusts, hurled by some phantom hand I couldn’t see. The bulk of ’em missed outright, and I juked around and between most of the rest, but a few clipped me good. Fino’s coat was starting to look even worse’n the one I’d left behind, and I was leaking red from half a dozen ugly lacerations on my arms and legs.
Another step, a second, a third, and those “phantom hands” weren’t invisible anymore. The dark spirits who did her will, called from the ether by her rites and rituals, lurked in the air around us, and now they wore their surroundings as gauntlets. On impossibly long, snaky arms, fists and fingers stretched from the winds and from the ash around my feet. They were spectral, translucent things, made of dirt and gravel, shattered glass and the bones of rats, broken beams and old nails—and I knew, no matter how intangible they looked, that I’d be a fool to let ’em so much as touch me.
I had the time, just, to question how this was even possible. I hadn’t seen magics that potent, that blatant, in centuries; not from a human being, anyway. No way Orsola, gifted as she was, shoulda been able to manifest ’em now. And I wondered, with a shiver that had nothing to do with the chill of the night or the blustery winds, exactly what names she’d called upon to do her works, and what price she’d offered in return.
But those spirits—however awful, and whoever they answered to—weren’t the only ancient power here.
I wielded the L&G as I would a rapier, dueling with the phantoms the witch had set against me, and y’know what? They never stood a chance. I stomped and spun and sidestepped, keeping my feet always just beyond reach as impossible fingers snatched at my ankles. I parried fists no more solid than smoke, and jabbed the wand deep into the wind-wrapped rubble that was their flesh and bone. And each time, with every stab and every thrust, I pierced the mystic ties binding the spirits to the bits of the surroundings in which they’d draped themselves. Magic collapsed in a flurry of misfortune; and the will of things that had never been real in even one world couldn’t contend with that of a creature whose reality extended through two.
For a few glorious moments, I reminded Orsola Maldera what the fate she so disdainfully dismissed actually were. I felt the spirits fading away as I danced, coat flaring and wand spinning, between them; I felt the strega flinch to her soul with each phantom I popped; and I rejoiced.
And then Orsola reminded me what it was to be a witch, with allies even older than me.
I reached the curtain. Beyond, now clearly visible despite the gusting dirt and garbage between us, Celia hung screaming from her jury-rigged cross, her arms and feet lashed—not nailed, thanks be for that!—to the broken, rotting wood. Her dress was tattered, her face filthy and tear-streaked, her chest heaving as she struggled to breathe. Around the base of the cross were scattered all sorts of mystical gewgaws—candles and decanters, silver goblets and bundled herbs, an Italian flag and what I figured to be graveyard dirt, and a dozen more. And standing before them all, draped in a white habit still shiny pristine despite it all, Orsola herself. Her voice was raised in a chant part Egyptian and part Hebrew, her hair had come untied and was whipping about her head like something from Wigs By Medusa, and that ugly kris protruded from her left fist.
Either we’d just happened to show right before the conclusion of the rite, or she was moving up the timetable a little because we’d shown up—if I had to guess, I’d say the latter—but either way, we were coming up on the ninth inning.
I braced myself, took a step into the barrier…
And screamed.
Oh, it hurt. You got no idea how bad. I was sure my skin was peeling off my flesh, layer by layer; my dreams doing the same from my mind. Magics of the foulest sort, tasting of curses and blood and despair, buffeted my soul; and only now could I feel the tiny particles of rusted iron swept up in the deluge.
I threw myself away from the curtain and tumbled a few yards across the jagged ground, arms wrapped around my chest to keep myself, or so it felt, from flying completely apart. When I finally came to a halt, gasping and biting back another chorus of screams, I made the mista
ke of looking down. The left sleeve of my coat and my shirt were gone, and the flesh of that arm was glistening red where it peeked through the encrusted soil and shreds of lingering skin.
Iron filings. Goddamn fucking iron. This would take me weeks to heal; maybe months.
Assuming I didn’t die tonight.
No way I could take down the barrier with my own magics, not without hours to work on it. I glanced desperately around me, hunting something, anything, I could use. Fino was standing out in the open, an easy target if anyone took a shot; the chopper dangled from his left hand, and he was crossing himself with his right. Bianca was squeezing off shell after shell until the piece clicked, but at that distance, through the whirlwind, she wasn’t coming anywhere near her mark. She dropped to her knees, hands clasped around her rosary, tearfully praying for a miracle she didn’t honestly believe was coming. The empty Colt landed beside her near a smaller piece, a revolver, also presumably empty.
“Donna Orsola!” Yeah, trying to reason with the wacky broad probably wouldn’t do me a whole lotta good, but since it was taking everything I had not to curl up into a ball and whimper, it was better’n trying nothing. “Orsola, don’t do this!”
She didn’t even so much as turn her head.
“Goddamn it!” Okay, so, maybe not the most politic phrase I coulda used. “Take a look at Bianca! At your son! Which do you think God approves of more, Orsola? Their prayers, or your mockery?”
I finally had her attention.
“Mockery? You stupid diavolo!” Maybe it was just the surrounding winds distorting the sound, but her words came back to me hollow, strange, even echoing. It sounded a little as if there were other voices hunkered beneath hers, speaking in unison. “My granddaughter gives her life in the battle against evil! She is a martyr, and so I honor her even as I honor our Lord!”
Wow. Every time I think I’ve seen the far horizon of her lunacy, she sails right on over it…
“And the innocents you’re about to murder? What’s God gonna think of that?”