by Butcher, Jim
I sat up slowly, breathing hard, and found Anastasia Luccio standing in the open doorway to my apartment, her arms folded over her chest, one eyebrow arched.
Anastasia was a pretty girl—not glamorously lovely, but believably, genuinely pleasant to look at, with a fantastic smile and killer dimples. She looked like someone in her twenties, for reasons too complex to go into right now, but she was an older woman. A much older woman.
And there I was, apparently sitting up from kissing a topless girl, with a naked couple a few feet away, and the air thick with a pall of smoke and the smell of noxious fumes. For crying out loud, my apartment looked like the set of some kind of bizarre porno.
“Um,” I said, and swallowed. “This isn’t what it might appear to be.”
Anastasia just stared at me. I knew it had been a long time since she’d opened up to anyone. It might not take much to make her close herself off again.
She shook her head, very slowly, and the smile lines at the corners of her eyes deepened along with her dimples. Then she burst out into a hearty belly laugh. “Madre di Dio, Harry. I cannot for the life of me imagine what it does appear to be.”
I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. “You aren’t upset?”
“By the time you get to be my age,” she replied, “you’ve either worked out your insecurities, or they’re there to stay. Besides, I simply must know how this happened.”
I shook my head and then smiled at her. “I … My friends needed help.”
She looked back and forth between the Alphas and Molly. “And still do,” she said, nodding sharply. She came in and, as the only one actually wearing shoes, began picking up pieces of fallen glass from the broken window, literally rolling up her sleeves as she went. “Shall we?”
IT TOOK MOST of the day to get Molly to the hospital, gather the materials needed to fumigate Kirby’s and Andi’s auras, and actually perform the work to get the job done. By the time they left, all better and psychophage-free, it was after seven.
“So much for our day off,” I said.
She turned to consider me. “Would you do it differently if you had it to do again?”
“No. Of course not.”
She shrugged. “Then it was a day well spent. There will be others.”
“You never can be sure of that, though, can you?”
Her cheeks dimpled again. “Today is not yet over. You mourn its death somewhat prematurely.”
“I just wanted to show you a nice time for a day. Not get bogged down in more business.”
Anastasia turned to me and put her fingers over my mouth. Then she replaced her fingers with her lips.
“Enough talk,” she murmured.
I agreed.
BACKUP
—novelette from Subterranean Press
1
THE WARRIOR
—novelette from Mean Streets
I sat down next to Michael and said, “I think you’re in danger.” Michael Carpenter was a large, brawny man, though he was leaner now than in all the time I’d known him. Months in bed and more months in therapy had left him a shadow of himself, and he had never added all the muscle back on. Even so, he looked larger and more fit than most, his salt-and-pepper hair and short beard going heavier on the salt these days.
He smiled at me. That hadn’t changed. If anything, the smile had gotten deeper and more steady.
“Danger?” he said. “Heavens.”
I leaned back on the old wooden bleachers at the park and scowled at him. “I’m serious.”
Michael paused to shout a word of encouragement at the second baseman (or was that baseperson?) on his daughter Alicia’s softball team. He settled back onto the bleachers. They were covered in old, peeling green paint, and it clashed with his powder blue and white shirt, which matched the uniform T-shirts of the girls below. It said COACH in big blue letters.
“I brought your sword. It’s in the car.”
“Harry,” he said, unruffled, “I’m retired. You know that.”
“Sure,” I said, reaching into my coat. “I know that. But the bad guys apparently don’t.” I drew out an envelope and passed it to him.
Michael opened it and studied its contents. Then he replaced them, put the envelope back on the bench beside me, and rose. He started down onto the field, leaning heavily on the wooden cane that went everywhere with him now. Nerve damage had left one of his legs pretty near perfectly rigid, and his hip had been damaged as well. It gave him a rolling gait. I knew he couldn’t see out of one of his clear, honest eyes very well anymore, either.
He took charge of the practice in the quiet, confident way he did everything, drawing smiles and laughter from his daughter and her teammates. They were obviously having fun.
It looked good on him.
I looked down at the envelope and wished I couldn’t imagine the photos contained inside it quite so clearly. They were all professional, clear—Michael walking up the handicap access ramp to his church; Michael opening a door for his wife, Charity; Michael loading a big bucket of softballs into the back of the Carpenter family van; Michael at work, wearing a yellow hard hat, pointing up at a half-finished building as he spoke to a man beside him.
The pictures had come in the mail to my office, with no note, and no explanation. But their implications were ugly and clear.
My friend, the former Knight of the Cross, was in danger.
It took half an hour for the softball practice to end, and then Michael rolled back over to me. He stood staring up at me for a moment before he said, “The sword has passed out of my hands. I can’t take it up again—especially not for the wrong reason. I won’t live in fear, Harry.”
“Could you maybe settle for living in caution?” I asked. “At least until I know more about what’s going on?”
“I don’t think His plan is for me to die now,” he replied calmly. It was never hard to tell when Michael was talking about the Almighty. He could insert capital letters into spoken words. I’m not sure how.
“What happened to ‘No man knows the day or the hour’?” I asked.
He gave me a wry smile. “You’re taking that out of context.”
I shrugged. “Michael. I’d like to believe in a loving, just God who looks out for everyone. But I see a lot of people get hurt who don’t seem to deserve it. I don’t want you to become one of them.”
“I’m not afraid, Harry.”
I grimaced. I’d figured he might react like this, and I’d come prepared to play dirty. “What about your kids, man? What about Charity? If someone comes for you, they aren’t going to be particular about what happens to the people around you.”
I’d seen him display less expression while being shot. His face turned pale, and he looked away from me.
“What do you have in mind?” he asked after a moment.
“I’m going to lurk and hover,” I told him. “Maybe catch our photographer before things go any further.”
“Whether or not I want you to do it,” he said.
“Well. Yes.”
He shook his head at me and gave me a tight smile. “Thank you, Harry. But no thank you. I’ll manage.”
MICHAEL’S HOME WAS an anomaly so close to the city proper—a fairly large old colonial house, complete with a white picket fence and a yard with trees in it. It had a quiet, solid sort of beauty. It was surrounded by other homes, but they never seemed quite as pleasant, homey, or clean as Michael’s house. I knew he did a lot of work to keep it looking nice. Maybe it was that simple. Maybe it was a side effect of being visited by archangels and the like.
Or maybe it was all in the eye of the beholder.
I’m pretty sure there won’t ever be a place like that for me.
Michael had given a couple of the girls—young women, I suppose—a ride home in his white pickup, so it had taken us a while to get there, and twilight was heavy on the city. I wasn’t making any particular secret about tailing them, but I wasn’t riding his back bumper, either, and I don’t think eit
her of them had noticed my beat-up old VW.
Michael and Alicia got out of the car and went into the house, while I drove a slow lap around their block, keeping my eyes peeled. When I didn’t spot any imminent maniacs or anticipatory fiends about to pounce, I parked a bit down the street and walked toward Michael’s place.
It happened pretty fast. A soccer ball went bouncing by me, a small person came pelting after it, and just as it happened, I heard the crunchy hiss of tires on the street somewhere behind me and very near. I have long arms, and it was a good thing. I grabbed the kid, who must have been seven or eight, about half a second before the oncoming car hit the soccer ball and sent it sailing. Her feet went flying out ahead of her as I swung her up off the ground, and her toes missed hitting the car’s fender by maybe six inches.
The car, one of those fancy new hybrids that run on batteries part of the time, went by in silence, without the sound of the motor to give any warning. The driver, a young man in a suit, was jabbering into a cell phone that he held to his ear with one hand. He never noticed. As he reached the end of the block, he turned on his headlights.
I turned to find the child, a girl with inky black hair and pink skin, staring at me with wide, dark eyes, her mouth open and uncertain. She had a bruise on her cheek a couple of days old.
“Hi,” I said, trying to be as unthreatening as I could. I had limited success. Tall, severe-looking men in long black coats who need a shave are challenged that way. “Are you all right?”
She nodded her head slowly. “Am I in trouble?”
I put her down. “Not from me. But I heard that moms can get kind of worked up about—”
“Courtney!” gasped a woman’s voice, and a woman I presumed to be the child’s mother came hurrying from the nearest house. Like the child, she had black hair and very fair skin. She had the same wary eyes, too. She extended her hand to the little girl, and then pulled her until Courtney stood behind her mother. She peeked around at me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded—or tried to. It came out as a nervous question. “Who are you?”
“Just trying to keep your little girl from becoming a victim of the Green movement,” I said.
She didn’t get it. Her expression changed, as she probably wondered something along the lines of Is this person a lunatic?
I get that a lot.
“There was a car, ma’am,” I clarified. “She didn’t see it coming.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “Oh. Th-thank you.”
“Sure.” I frowned at the girl. “You okay, sweetheart? I didn’t give you that bruise, did I?”
“No,” she said. “I fell off my bike.”
“Without hurting your hands,” I noted.
She stared at me for a second before her eyes widened, and she hid behind her mother a little more.
Mom blinked at me, and then at the child. Then she nodded to me, took the daughter by the shoulders, and frog-marched her toward the house without another word. I watched them go, and then started back toward Michael’s place. I kicked Courtney’s soccer ball back into her yard on the way.
Charity answered the door when I knocked. She was of an age with Michael, though her golden hair hid fairly well any strands of silver that might have shown. She was tall and broad-shouldered, for a woman, and I’d seen her crush more than one inhuman skull when one of her children was in danger. She looked tired—a year of seeing your husband undergoing intensely difficult physical therapy can do that, I guess. But she also looked happy. Our personal cold war had entered a state of détente, of late, and she smiled to see me.
“Hello, Harry. Surprise lesson? I think Molly went to bed early.”
“Not exactly,” I said, smiling. “Thought I’d just stop by to visit.”
Charity’s smile didn’t exactly vanish, but it got cautious. “Really.”
“Harry!” screamed a little voice, and Michael’s youngest son, of the same name, flung himself into the air, trusting me to catch him. Little Harry was around Courtney’s age, and generally regarded me as something interesting to climb on. I caught him and gave him a noisy kiss on the head, which elicited a giggle and a protesting “Yuck!”
Charity shook her head wryly. “Well, come in. Let me get you something to drink. Harry, he’s not a jungle gym. Get down.”
Little Harry developed spontaneous deafness and scrambled up onto my shoulders as we walked into the living room. Michael and Alicia, his dark-haired, quietly serious daughter, were just coming in from the garage, after putting away softball gear.
“Papa!” little Harry shouted, and promptly plunged forward, off my shoulders, arms outstretched to Michael.
He leaned forward and caught him, though I saw him wince and exhale tightly as he did it. My stomach rolled uncomfortably in sympathy.
“Alicia,” Charity said.
Her daughter nodded, hung her ball cap on a wooden peg by the door, and took little Harry from Michael, tossing him up into the air and catching him, much to the child’s protesting laughter. “Come on, squirt. Time for a bath.”
“Leech!” Harry shouted, and immediately started climbing on his sister’s shoulders, babbling about something to do with robots.
Michael smiled as he watched them exit. “I asked Harry to dinner tonight,” he told Charity, kissing her on the cheek.
“Did you?” she said, in the exact same tone she’d used on me at the door.
Michael looked at her and sighed. Then he said, “My office.”
We went into the study Michael used as his office—more cluttered than it had been before, now that he was actually using it all the time—and closed the door behind us. Without a word, I took out the photos I’d received and showed them to Charity.
Michael’s wife was no dummy. She looked at them one at a time, in rapid succession, her eyes blazing brighter with every new image. When she spoke, her voice was cold. “Who took these?”
“I don’t know yet,” I told her. “Though Nicodemus’s name does sort of leap to mind.”
“No,” Michael said quietly. “He can’t harm me or my family anymore. We’re protected.”
“By what?” I asked.
“Faith,” he said simply.
That would be a maddening answer under most circumstances—but I’d seen the power of faith in action around my friend, and it was every bit as real as the forces I could manage. Former presidents get a detail of Secret Service to protect them. Maybe former Knights of the Cross had a similar retirement package, only with more seraphim. “Oh.”
“You’re going to get to the bottom of this?” Charity asked.
“That’s the idea,” I said. “It might mean I intrude on you all a little.”
“Harry,” Michael said, “there’s no need for that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Charity replied, turning to Michael. She took his hand, very gently, though her tone stayed firm. “And don’t be proud.”
He smiled at her. “It isn’t a question of pride.”
“I’m not so sure,” she said quietly. “Father Forthill said we were only protected against supernatural dangers. If there’s something else afoot … You’ve made so many enemies. We have to know what’s happening.”
“I often don’t know what’s happening,” Michael said. “If I spent all my time trying to find out, there wouldn’t be enough left to live in. This is more than likely being done for the sole purpose of making us worried and miserable.”
“Michael,” I said quietly, “one of the best ways I know to counter fear is with knowledge.”
He tilted his head, frowning gently at me.
“You say you won’t live in fear. Fine. Let me poke around and shine a light on things, so we know what’s going on. If it turns out to be nothing, no harm done.”
“And if it isn’t?” Charity asked.
I kept a surge of quiet anger out of my voice and expression as I looked at her levelly. “No harm gets done to you and yours.”
Her eyes fl
ashed, and she nodded her chin once.
“Honey.” Michael sighed.
Charity stared at him.
Michael might have slain a dragon, but he knew his limits. He lifted a hand in acceptance and said, “Why don’t you make up the guest bedroom.”
BY A LITTLE after nine, the Carpenter household was almost entirely silent. I had been shown into the little guest room kept at the end of an upstairs hallway. It was really Charity’s sewing room, and was all but filled with colorful stacks of folded fabric, some of them in clear plastic containers, some of them loose. There was room around a little table with a sewing machine on it, and just barely enough space to get to the bed. I’d recuperated from injuries there before.
One thing was new—there was a very fine layer of dust on the sewing machine.
Huh.
I sat down on the bed and looked around. It was a quiet, warm, cheerful little room—almost manically so, now that I thought about it. Everything was soft and pleasant and ordered, and it took me maybe six or seven whole seconds to realize that this room had been Charity’s haven. How many days and nights must she have been worried about Michael, off doing literally God only knew what, against foes so terrible that no one but he could have been trusted to deal with them? How many times had she wondered if it would be a solemn Father Forthill who came to the door, instead of the man she loved? How many hours had she spent in this well-lit room, working on making warm, soft things for her family, while her husband carried Amoracchius’ s cold, bright steel into the darkness?
And now there was dust on the sewing machine.
Michael had nearly been killed, out there on that island. He had been crippled, forced by his injuries to lay aside the holy sword, along with the nearly invisible, deadly war that went with it. And he was happier than I’d ever seen him.
Maybe the Almighty worked in mysterious ways, after all.
Another thought occurred to me, as I sat there pondering: Whoever had sent those pictures hadn’t sent them to Michael—he’d sent them to me. What if I’d put Michael and his family into real danger by showing up? What if I’d somehow reacted in exactly the way I’d been meant to react?