A Line in the Sand

by K. A. Stewart

  First, at no point in human history did katanas clash with broadswords on the battlefield. They are completely different weapons, for both being swords, requiring totally different fighting styles.

  Second, my usual strategy when fighting a demon was a war of attrition. Slice a bit there, snip a chunk here, each tiny bit eating away at the creature’s power. A demon bout could last upwards of an hour, if I was quick enough to stay out of its clutches.

  This fight wasn’t going to be like that. Sure, there was a demon walking around in that man suit, but the human mind was still there, and before he had been a demon-possessed cardinal, Giordano had been a champion.

  I had a split second to admire his smooth footwork as he closed the distance between us, and then my attention had to be all for the fight. He was good. He was really good.

  The broadsword was light and lithe for something of its ilk, and the Cardinal wielded it equally well with either hand. My plan had been to dart in and out, ducking under his reach to slice at his exposed legs, but I never got the chance. I was on my heels in a second, angling my sword to let his blows slide past, scared that a true strike from the heavier blade might shatter mine.

  The cobblestones were just uneven enough to make me worry for my own footing as he backed me across the square, the sounds of metal on metal ringing out like a pealing bell. In the nick of time, I recognized a feint for what it was, and spun the opposite way instead of standing where the broadsword would have hacked into my right shoulder.

  It gave me distance and a chance to strike back. I didn’t aim for the body, encased in its protective steel shell, but instead snapped a strike at his hands. If I could get him to drop his weapon, I could end this quickly.

  Of course, ending it meant killing him. I wasn’t under any illusions that I could get Giordano to surrender. Even if he would, his passenger would not.

  And damn he was good. Giordano retreated, retracing the ground I’d just covered, but he did it in such a controlled manner that it looked like I was the flailing idiot chasing after him. Twice, my strikes missed by a hair, and the third time he caught my blade on his guard, attempting to wrench it out of my grasp with a deft flick of his wrist. I disengaged, spun left, and aimed a backhanded swipe across his ribcage. The sword clanged against his breastplate, but he grunted from the force and took a heartbeat longer to follow me.

  We danced back and forth like that for what seemed like forever. Neither of us could land a decisive blow, but we were each too close for the other to relax. The tip of his sword caught my thigh in passing, ripping links out of the mail but leaving the padding beneath miraculously intact. I got one good shot across his lower back, where his armor gaped, but I came away with nothing more than a rent in his own gambeson. Both our chests were heaving, and despite the strengthening spells on me, my arms burned with my efforts. A katana wasn’t meant for a protracted bludgeoning type of fighting. Eventually, he was going to beat through my defenses with sheer brute force.

  Dimly, I became aware that people were shouting. I heard Cameron’s voice, calling encouragement, maybe, and Ivan’s gravelly bark with orders for me to focus, to center. They were slow words, stretched out in a bizarre fashion like a malfunctioning film reel, and only then did I realize how fast the Cardinal and I were moving. If the demon gave him super-speed, the spells that Ivan and crew had cast on me more than allowed me to keep up. The endless minutes we’d been fighting must have been seconds, the pair of us whirling through our maneuvers at speeds a human body was never meant to move, and I became increasingly certain that the only reason our bodies hadn’t ripped themselves apart was the extra strength we had also gained from our benefactors.

  Even with the words comically elongated in the hyper-fast world I briefly existed in, my muscles responded instantly to Ivan’s command, and I brought The Way back to center just in time to catch the next overhand strike at my head, shoving it off and away in a move that left me all up in Giordano’s personal space.

  The look in his eyes when I head-butted him was priceless. Blood burst all over the both of us from his shattered nose, and before I could blink the goo out of my eyes, he clubbed me with his free hand hard enough to send me to my knees. Instinctively, I rolled, feeling the breeze as his kick just missed my stomach. He followed me, a snarl on his face as his boots tried to stomp down on any part of me that couldn’t get out of the way. All I could do was keep scrambling, never getting enough space to find my feet again.

  Finally, I picked my spot, planted my free hand and lashed out with my heavy boot, catching him in the side of the knee. The crack as it folded sideways was audible, but instead of buckling, falling, he snared my ankle with one hand, bringing his sword down in a vicious overhand. I had no leverage to jerk away, so I lunged forward instead, forcing him to drop my foot or lose his balance. I came up inside his guard, catching him in the gut with my shoulder, and we both went down in a tangle of limbs and blades.

  A fist found my kidney, painful even through chain and padding, and my elbow found his already crushed nose, eliciting a hiss of pain, the first sound I’d heard him make since we started. A hand grabbed at my face, and I bit down out of reflex, tasting blood right before something caught me in the left temple and lights exploded behind my eyes. Before I could get clear, get myself some recovery space, he clouted me again with the heavy steel pommel of his sword, tumbling me across the stones as my passengers screamed alarms inside my pounding skull.

  The Way was still in my hand, I thought with a sense of groggy triumph, at almost the same moment that a booted foot came down on my wrist. I felt the small bones snap and I screamed, my fingers instantly going numb. The bone hilt of my katana fell from my grasp, and my digits refused to obey my commands to pick it up again.

  It happened in a heartbeat, a literal split second. I could feel the onrushing air as the broadsword came down at my unprotected neck. The souls burst forth, blazing hot with every intention of incinerating the Cardinal though it would cost them their very existence. Heat enveloped me, and then something cool and black moved over me, inserting itself between me and my certain death.

  The broadsword struck home. I heard the meaty thunk as the heavy blade lodged in something solid, but oh so vulnerable.

  Turning my head, I found Ivan standing over me, as tall and straight as he ever was despite the sword that had cleaved through one shoulder and halfway into his chest.

  There was an instant of perfect stillness, the very rotation of the Earth shocked into immobility. The Cardinal stared at his unintended victim, mouth just beginning to gape open in surprise. Ivan’s knees folded ever so slightly, the slow, inexorable fall of a mighty redwood. My left hand found the hilt of my sword, snatching it from the ground in the same motion that brought me to my feet, screaming things that had no words. Bright metal flashed, the spells twined around the metal burning themselves out in that moment of contact. Warmth sprayed over my face, soaking me in gore.

  The Cardinal’s head bounced twice as it hit the ground, the face still staring up at the sky with shock written on the dead features.

  Time stuttered back into motion.

  They were screaming. They were all screaming. People, souls, the choirs of heaven for all I knew. I caught Ivan as he pitched forward, but it was all dead weight. Somehow, I became aware of someone mumbling “nononononono” over and over again, and later I would realize it was me.

  The piercing blue eyes were already clouding, and the old man’s lips were free of blood, which meant that his breathing had stopped almost instantly. His neat white shirt was a sea of red, and no amount of pressure was going to stop the gushing from the grotesque wound, though I tried, covering myself in sticky blood. There would be no tender goodbyes, no last words of wisdom. Ivan was gone.

  “Foooool….” Behind me, the headless body shuddered, and I thought for one horrific second that it was going to rise again, shambling at me like the zombies of my earliest nightmares. Instead, a black geyser erupted from the
corpse, raining bits of Giordano down on us. Shards of the burst armor zinged past my face, one of them drawing a line of fire across my cheek. The seething ball of darkness heaved and pulsed, a massive thing no longer confined by its meat prison, gradually taking form. “His sacrifice means nothing. I will devour you whole!”

  The Cardinal’s demon loomed over me, a tidal wave at its peak before it crashed down and crushed all beneath it. I saw wings unfolding, bat-like things that spanned twice my height. Horns curled from within the seething mass of sentient darkness, and it just kept growing larger, forming its body from blight and sheer will. My sword was on the ground near my feet, but all I could do was hold Ivan’s limp body in my arms and watch.

  NO.

  The word rang out with such force that the half-formed demon was flung back, scrabbling at the cobblestones with its shadowy talons, and every window facing the square shattered in a cacophony of broken glass. The demon’s red eyes flashed out of the formless cloud as it shrieked, “You cannot! You cannot interfere!”

  You have violated the terms. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, and a few seconds later, I realized it sounded a little like me.

  “Not I!” The tolling voice was painful to the demon, and it writhed in agony as it lodged its protests. “He! He violated! A fighter on the field who was not allowed!”

  My brain knew that it was Axel who stepped into my bloodstained field of vision, but my eyes saw only golden light, the kind that could burn out your retinas and make you happy for the pain.

  The champion did not fight. He was unarmed. You struck down a life that was not yours to take.

  I’d seen a fallen angel before. You could see what she’d once been, the glory of her being now tarnished and tethered indelibly to the earth by the evil she’d become.

  The angel before me was not fallen.

  I’d been forced to turn my gaze away from an angel’s true form the first time I’d seen one, my grip on sanity tenuous at best. My mind could conjure a memory of white-gold light, so bright it rang in my ears like church bells, and then it would shut down, protecting me from myself. Now, I couldn’t have looked away if my life depended on it, and I could all but feel the contents of my skull coming to a boil.

  You are forfeit. The angel that was Axel raised one shining hand and whispered a word in a language I never wanted to understand, but felt like a punch that went right through my guts and maybe into the bedrock far beneath me.

  The cloud of unformed demon screamed in a tone above the human range of hearing, folding and warping in on itself. What could have been wing spars snapped into fragments, and the gigantic horns flaked away like ash until the proto-demon was disintegrating faster than it could bring itself together. As if impossibly massive hands were wadding it up into a ball, it compressed tighter and tighter until it winked out of existence. The silence that followed was deafening.

  The angel turned its gaze toward me without moving at all. “Close your eyes, Jesse.” A normal voice. Axel’s voice. My voice.

  “Can’t,” I managed to choke out. It was all going fuzzy between my ears, liquefying into soup and I still couldn’t tear my eyes away. I couldn’t tell if my tears were burning hot streaks down my face, or if my eyes were pouring blood.

  “You must, or you will die. Close your eyes. We will still be here when you open them again.”

  It took every ounce of strength in my body to slowly lower my eyelids, one excruciating millimeter at a time. Once closed, I could still see the angel, burned on the back of my corneas maybe, but it didn’t make my brain slosh around inside my skull anymore. I only knew that I’d keeled over when my forehead met cobblestones with a resounding clunk.

  Approximately four hundred and twelve years later, gentle hands cradled my skull – which was doing its best gong impression – and slowly lifted my head off the cobblestones.

  “Get him on his feet.”

  Fuck you, Axel, I thought, but my mouth couldn’t seem to get its act together enough to say it out loud.

  It must have been Cameron who was holding me, because the voice came from right above me. “He’s injured. He needs a hospital.”

  “If you do not get him on his feet, we will have two for the morgue instead of one.” That elicited a hiss from nearby, and a scrape of metal as someone picked up one of the fallen swords. “You are welcome to try if you wish, Svetlana, but it will not change what has happened here tonight.”

  Christ, these idiots were going to get themselves killed if I didn’t pull myself together. What I tried to say was, “I’m up.” What came out was something like, “mmfffp,” but it was enough to get their attention.

  “Jesse? Jesse, can you hear me?” Cam had to have been leaning right down in my face, and I swatted at him with what little energy I had. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten my broken wrist, and the agony sent bright streamers through my head. My eyes snapped open, boggling at the pain, and I was belatedly relieved to see that Axel was just Axel again, his lean face frowning with concern over the heads of my friends.

  Someone had taken Ivan’s voluminous coat from Sveta, and laid it respectfully over his body. As Cam helped me into a sitting position, I was grateful that I wouldn’t have to look at Ivan again like that. I couldn’t process that, not yet. Of course, Giordano’s exploded corpse was also still nearby, his head tucked at his side with his mouth open like he was singing to the stars, and nausea rolled in my gut. I couldn’t process that yet, either.

  “Get up, Jesse. We are not finished.”

  “Mmrfglgle.” Of course, everybody knew that what I meant was, “Why? The bad guy is dead.”

  “The entire world knows where I am now, and they will be coming. I have altered things to make it difficult for them to simply appear here, but it will not last, and it will not stop them from manifesting in the city and simply walking in. Get up!” Axel’s eyes flashed crimson, and I shook a finger at him chidingly. That wasn’t right, an angel walking around being all demon-y.

  Once Cam figured out that I was going to obey, he helped me to my feet, supporting more of my weight than I was at the moment. I gave him a thumbs-up with my uninjured hand.

  “Come. Quickly.” Axel started toward the entrance to the chapel, walking backwards to make certain we were following.

  Cameron and I hesitated until Mary Alice said, “Go. We’ll stay with him.” With Ivan, she meant, and I glanced that way to see Sveta kneeling at her father’s side, face blank and eyes distant. “I will pray for him.”

  “Go.” I nudged Cam, and congratulated myself on managing an actual word. Slowly, we tottered after the lanky blond demon-angel-whatever-he-was. It seemed like it took forever for us to cross St. Peter’s Square, and it never occurred to me to wonder where we were going. Stepping through the doorway to Sistine Chapel, I realized too late that blood was dripping off my fingertips – not my blood, his blood, Ivan’s blood – and felt a little bad that I was marring the holy site.

  Once through the door, my passengers buzzed and fizzed under my skin, excited to once again be near the ceiling. Axel led the way to the center of the structure, pointing to a place on the floor for Cameron to stop.

  “We must deliver the souls, before the Adversary arrives to take them.”

  I snorted, feeling just slightly drunk. Y’know, if being drunk felt like being run over by a steamroller. “Can’t. Dunno how.”

  “But you know, don’t you?” Cameron fixed Axel with a somber look. “You’ve always known.”

  A ghost of a smile crossed the punk demon’s lips. “I am the Architect.”

  I found the strength to jerk my head up, focusing on his smug face. “It’s not in the paint.” He shook his head no. “It’s in the building itself. Something in the way it’s constructed.” He nodded. “You…built this place. Like, you actually built it.”

  “I designed it. Human artisans did the actual construction. But yes.” All this time, and I thought his moniker was more metaphorical. The one who wrote the rul
es, the one who orchestrated the game. But all along, he’d been an architect in truth, building a wonder of the world that no one knew about.

  “You’re the one that has been seen here, escorting the souls into the ceiling.”

  “Not alone. Never alone.” I opened my mouth to ask another question, and the angel-demon’s eyes flashed red. His patience had obviously run out. “I owe you explanations for many things, but we do not have time.” He pointed at Cameron. “You are necessary for this.”

  “Why me?”

  The blond demon smirked. “Because you are a man of faith. Repeat the words I will say to you.”

  I couldn’t tell you what they said. I’m guessing it was Latin, since Cam was prone to casting his spells using that dead language. Axel would intone a phrase, to have Cameron dutifully repeat it back, and I felt the tingles of magic settle around my shoulders. Instead of their usual alarm, my passengers rose to meet it, doing an oddly frenetic skip and hop around my skin. I watched the white tattoos appear and disappear at random over what skin I could still see, each one alighting for only an instant before it was gone again. As Cam and Axel’s game of Simon Says continued, the lights on my skin became lights in front of my eyes, and then lights dancing all around my head, filling the air with tiny little will-o-wisps that twirled in increasingly complex patterns.

  Cam’s shoulders, which had been so sturdily propping me up, trembled with the effort of whatever he was casting, and it was my turn to take his weight on me, doing my best not to wobble and throw off his concentration. Higher and higher, the teeming multitude of fireflies rose, until they reached the painted artwork above us. They flashed then, and my mind heard it as a shout of joy, as the two hundred and seventy-five souls merged into the structure, safe at last with their brethren. The spell ended with a single word that ended on some kind of pure, crystalline chime.