by Rhys Ford
“Okay.” Beckett’s upraised hand passed through her face, and he watched as she ghosted away from him. Resting his forehead on his fist, the magus composed himself before the driver knocked on the car window. “Faith. I promise we’ll be together. Even if I have to cut the boy open myself and see if it worked. I will get to you.”
FAITH STOOD on the sidewalk, watching as the car slipped away from the curb. Her heart ached, missing Beckett’s gentle touch. When hands closed on her waist, she jumped, nearly swallowing her tongue.
“How are you, sis?” Charity kissed Faith on the cheek, resting his chin on her shoulder.
They’d spent nearly a century together, their lives increasingly hampered by their callings and the general state of humanity. Over time, Faith grew sour about her role, slowly convincing Charity that things could be different. When she fell in love with Beckett, they’d both taken it as a sign that their dreams weren’t outside of their reach.
“I’m fine.” Faith sighed, leaning into her brother’s arms. “I hate humans. Well, not Michael, but I just want to be free of them and live my own life.”
“Careful, love. The more you think about not wanting to be Faith, the greater risk you have of leaving.” Charity pressed a finger to her lips. “The very last thing we want is to lose you. Michael and I both need you to be Faith for just a little while longer.”
“I know.” Turning to slide her shoulders against Charity’s chest, Faith wrapped her brother’s arms around her, cradling his forearms and rocking slightly. The police lights played over the motel’s outer walls, turning their faces red and then blue.
“We’re going to miss having Frazier around. Beckett needs to have a puppet,” Charity said.
“Michael doesn’t need a puppet,” Faith replied with a frown.
“Puppets are good for doing things for you,” Charity reminded her, rubbing his thumb on her pout. “And if you’re going to make faces at me, I won’t tell you what I found out.”
“The police know where the boy is, and we can go get him ourselves as a present for Michael?” Faith mimicked Charity’s grimace back at him. “I knew it couldn’t be that easy.”
“No, although that would be sweet. It’s even better,” the Third of their grouping reassured her, holding Faith tighter. “The blood on the ground isn’t our boy’s but one of the Horsemen. And, I think, the result of our clumsy human’s bodyguard and his gun.”
“Are you sure?” She pulled away, shock registering on her face. “How?”
“I think the boy’s alteration rippled the Veil so much that when the gun went off, it actually struck one of the Four,” Charity said. “I could smell the remains of Hope’s calling and followed it down, a prayer that someone wouldn’t die.
“I’m guessing it was the boy who was calling Hope. Even immortal, he’s still got a soul. I think he still counts as human,” Charity continued, holding up his hand for Faith to see the specks of blood caught under his fingernails. “I was surprised to taste one of us on my fingertips. I’m guessing it was one of the younger Four. I think Death and War would have burned my tongue black with their age.”
When Charity had lifted his fingers to his lips, he’d been rocked back with the power held in that dab of blood on his tongue, far greater than any other immortal he’d encountered. He’d tasted Faith’s blood before, a small puncture wound made by a crazy woman’s fingernails on his sister’s face. Nothing prepared him for the taste of a Horseman. Nothing ever could.
“But that’s impossible.” Faith’s hushed whisper held her heart, wondering at the implications of what they’d done. “Do you think the Veil will thicken and go back to how it used to be? We can’t risk wraiths finding a doorway into this world.”
“I don’t know.” Charity shook his head. “We knew this was going to change things. What we’re doing is going to shake the Veiled world. Once we use this drug to step away, there will be no going back to what we were. We’ll be fully human again with free will and still immortal, if Michael does his job right. That’s what we planned on. You have to keep that in front of your mind.”
“I know.” She breathed in deep, trying to calm her fears. “I am scared that we’ll come so very close and it will all disappear from our grasp.”
“What crossed the boy over will free us,” he reminded her. “It’s nearly been done before. We’ll be the first to succeed. You know once we shake off the calling, nothing can touch us, not even Death.”
“We need to find the boy quickly, then,” Faith asserted. “If the Horsemen are so close to him, they might already have him, and we don’t know what they’ll do to him. They probably were the ones who killed Frazier. War wouldn’t blink at killing the boy if he thought it would mean that it kept the world intact. Not even Death could argue against that.”
“Death would hesitate to kill the boy in cold blood. Besides, he might be immortal by now. Without a calling but still one of us,” Charity replied. “We did learn something from this.”
“What?”
“With the Veil that thin, one of us can probably be killed. We can use that to our advantage.”
“If the boy slid fully behind the Veil, it won’t thin near him anymore.” Faith shook her head, feeling a call run down the shadows to her. She tested its strength, seeing if it needed her immediate attention or if it was something she could ignore. With every day, Faith found herself responding less and less to smaller devotions, only attending to things she felt would be noticed if she didn’t appear. As their goal neared fruition, her slavery to humans chafed at her.
“You’re forgetting the one place where we exist fully outside of the Veil.” Charity tapped her on the nose. “We are exposed where we live, sis. And if the Horsemen have the boy, they probably have taken him to where they now reside. It would be simple to go to where they live and take him from them. A very easy and distracting thing. Something they wouldn’t expect.”
“There is no way either of us can fight off Death or War,” Faith argued.
“We won’t have to. I’m guessing that if a gun works on us when the Veil is very thin, then it would also work where we live.”
“I’m not risking Michael.” She watched the darkness churn, her mind working at their problems. The shadows were clustering again, small tidbits of wraiths creeping out of the Veil’s torn edges, lapping at the spilled Horseman blood on the pavement. “I’m not risking you either.”
“You can’t make these decisions for us, sis,” Charity said. “I know Michael would agree with me. Give me some time, and I’m sure we can bring death to the Horsemen’s doorstep.”
KISMET SHIVERED in the cold wind whipping down the alley, his thin T-shirt and torn jeans more suitable for the high-desert climate of San Diego’s hills than the rolling fog of San Francisco. He tried to imagine how they’d gotten to the Bay Area, but his brain began hurting when he probed too hard at the memory of traveling. Instead, he sat huddled in the curve of a nearby building, hoping to minimize the cutting breeze before it chilled him down to the bone.
The man everyone else called Death sat on a curb nearby, his long legs stretched out into the street, hands tucked into his jeans pockets. The young man shivered again when the wind picked up, the chatter of Kismet’s teeth catching Death’s attention.
“Come here.” Death patted the space next to him. “Use my body to block the wind. You’re sitting right in its path.”
Rubbing at his arms, Kismet warily stood up, moving slowly over to where the other man sat, his gaze suspicious. The aching in his blood had yet to reach critical mass, his addiction still lulled into a slumber by his recent hit. Kismet figured he would have at least half a day before he would start craving more heroin, a long enough time to shake the Four. Settling down near Death, Kismet made sure he was at least an arm’s length away, figuring he was no match for the other man’s strength and speed.
“Better?” Death asked, his eyes returning to the door of the apothecary.
“Thanks.” Ki
smet relaxed in the relative warmth of the spot. A heating unit for the restaurant at the front of the street pumped out warm air over them, washing the cold from Kismet’s skin. He felt sensation coming back to the spot between his shoulder blades and the chill work free from the stainless-steel barbell piercing his left nipple. Goose bumps rippled over his pale skin, a taint of blue creeping out of his lips.
Working up his courage, the young man asked, “What are you guys going to do with me?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know,” Death responded, his eyes fixed on the shop’s door. “How much do you know about what’s going on around you?”
“Just what Mal told me from before,” Kismet said. “I didn’t believe him, and now it looks like he wasn’t fucking with my mind. He was telling me the truth.”
Death winced at the sound of the youngest Horseman’s name on the boy’s lips. The others took names to establish an identity outside of their callings. Those names were never shared outside of the Veil or even with other immortals. Yet Mal broke that rule easily, trusting his name to the complication now thrust into their lives.
“You don’t know Mal. He’s very honest.” Ari’s words came back to Death. It sounded to him like their youngest member had practically handed every immortal secret to the young man sitting next to him. “I’m surprised that his being hurt is bothering you.”
“I’m worried about him.” Kismet’s voice was strained, emotional and thick. “He’s a nice guy. I don’t meet a lot of nice guys. I don’t want him to die.”
“He won’t die from this,” Death said. “He’s strong enough to want to stay with us. Mal won’t leave now. He’s got too much to be curious about.”
“Guess if Death tells me someone’s not going to die, I should believe him.” Kismet’s mind stretched at the sheer breadth of what he was supposed to accept as truth. “Are we really in San Francisco? Or is my mind just all screwed up?”
“No, I think your mind is doing just fine.” Death heard the young man snort under his breath. “Yes, we’re in San Francisco. I carried you through the Veil. That woman can help Mal. She can take the bullet out of him.”
“Well, then, it’s the first time in my damned life that my mind is doing just fine,” Kismet retorted.
“If you have any answers to what happened to you, I’d like to hear them,” Death said.
“Shit, I don’t even know what really happened,” Kismet replied, leaning back on his palms.
Realizing they no longer hurt, Kismet sat back up, staring down at his hands. “This is crazy. If I heal like this, why isn’t Mal?”
“More than likely, a piece of reality was torn by the bullet entering him and is lodged in the wound. It’s happened before.” Death touched his bicep. He wasn’t going to mention the Wisdom that died, but she’d refused help. Hopefully they’d gotten Mal to the Seer in time. “I had that happen to me once with a spear. When the Veil is thin, reality and the shadows are mingled. We run the risk of getting a piece of the real world inside of us.”
“So someone’s got to take it out?” Kismet slanted a look at the man sitting next to him. “Why can’t one of you?”
“Because none of us would be able to grab at the reality, no matter what instrument we used,” Death explained. “The Four, and other immortals, are too connected to the Veil. Only someone who exists in the real world would be able to cut down into the wound and release it. Once she touches the space, she connects that slice of reality to the real world, like an electrical circuit.”
“This is still insane.” Kismet rubbed at his forehead, an aching tangle of thoughts clustered behind his eyes. “And I’m supposed to be one of you? Be like you?”
“How much did he tell you about us? About who we are?” The eldest Horseman turned to face the newly created immortal.
“That there’s a world outside or inside of the real one. I’m not really sure about that part of it.” Kismet wrapped his arms around his belly, wondering when the chill on his soul would subside. “I really thought he was fucking with me. Or the smack was just making everything make sense. It does that sometimes. Makes everything right, and then the world goes back to how it was before I shot up.”
“Not so much outside as wrapped around. I’m guessing the drugs helped you manage how you saw the Veil. It happens that way for others like you,” Death corrected, his words soft and without reproach. “We live behind what we call the Veil. Did he tell you why we live here?”
“He said you were called the Four Horsemen, even though one of you is a chick.” The young man’s stomach growled, empty and needy. From the looks of things, food was a far off idea better left unspoken. “I’ve got to admit, I was a bit stoned, and well, it sounded like he was crazy.”
“Mal is probably the most sane one of the Four of us,” Death admitted with a smile. “You don’t know who the Four Horsemen are?”
“I’ve done it as a tattoo. But it was copied from a piece of art. And I know it’s a song.” Kismet tried to remember the lyrics. “Um, Time, Pestilence, Famine, and Death. Right?”
“Close, and Ari really hates that song,” Death said. “War, not Time. Time doesn’t exist as an immortal. It’s a linear construct, not a manifestation. And by the look on your face, I think I’ve lost you.”
“Public school kid.” Kismet shrugged. “And that’s when I bothered to go.”
“It’s a biblical reference, although we predate the written text. One of the insane slid us in near the end of the writings for some reason. We’ve been called by other names in different cultures, but the Four Horsemen reference comes the closest to what we do and are.” Death saw the disbelief on the boy’s face, Kismet’s world bending under the weight of the Veil’s reality. “There are four of us, Death, myself, War, the tall blond arrogant one, Pestilence, whom you know as Mal, and Min—well, Famine.”
“The girl,” Kismet interjected.
“Yes, the girl, but I wouldn’t call her that to her face.” Death nodded. “The Horsemen and others like us exist to provide humanity with the concepts of existence. I’m not sure why you came into being. None of us have ever crossed over the Veil and retained our identity. So I have to conclude that something unnatural happened to you.”
“You’re telling me walking around as Death is natural?” Kismet heaved a shuddering sigh.
“Well for me, it is. It’s all I’ve ever been.” The man leaned forward, hearing a cry coming from the shop. Mal’s torment had begun, worry for their youngest eating away at Death’s will. With a focused effort, he canted his head and faced the young man next to him, Kismet’s face paling at the sound of pain from inside of the shop. “Who we are is all we’ve ever known.”
A squat form scurried out from behind a dumpster. From a distance, the boy thought it was a dog, but the horns curled back from its sloped head and its wide curve of a mouth set into an oblong face quickly changed his mind. Pearly greenish-gray skin stretched over its rotund, misshapen body, slender arms hanging from the barest hints of shoulders. Strong haunches moved the creature forward, sometimes shuffling on all four legs, reaching up on powerful back limbs to crane into mounds of discards.
“What the fuck is that?” Kismet followed the creature’s progress, its furtive shuffling circling it around the clusters of shadows clinging to the alley’s brick walls. Dropping down to sniff at a grate, the creature glanced at Death, its eyes rolling back before it flattened to minimize itself as a perceived threat.
“That is a troll,” Death said. From the broken end of one horn and the slack skin around the creature’s neck, he put its age near the end of its life if the limp in its back leg got much worse. “It’s one of the creatures that live behind the Veil. Very distantly related to the darkfae. Like a monkey is related to a human.”
“What the hell is a darkfae?”
“They’re sentient Veiled, usually living in clans that are attached to the UnSidhe Court. The Fae consider darkfae to be lesser beings, but they are intelligent but brutish even by
Ari’s standards,” Death explained. “There are a lot of people, for lack of a better term, that live behind the Veil. Most don’t deal with humans, living in unpopulated areas, but there are a few Fae and darkfae that interact or even live outside of the Veil.”
“So that’s like a Veiled monkey.” Kismet grunted at Death’s nod. “What is he doing?”
The young man leaned forward. The movement froze the troll in its tracks, still exposed by the light from a nearby window but staying quite clear of the wall’s relative shelter. When nothing feinted toward it, it snuffled back into the garbage, rooting out a bag from the bottom of the pile.
“It’s probably looking for something to eat. And they’re an it, really. They switch genders depending on what other sex is near them.” The Horseman glanced at the rapt attention on the boy’s face. “Trolls aren’t very intelligent. More animal, really.”
Looking at the troll, Death tried to imagine how the creature would look to someone who’d never seen one before, a curious cross of reptile and capybara. Its pink tongue darted out past its thin blue lips, its loose wattle jiggling as it shambled to the next garbage bag that caught its interest. One of its horns was broken off a hand span from its root, its uneven end probably a result of a territory battle or failed mating ritual. Dried blood crusted over a wound on one of its back legs, a black bubble of decaying flesh along its hind.
“It can’t just eat those shadow things we’ve seen?”
“No, it’s not like a wraith. Those are evolved from the Veil, born from very strong emotion, and usually can only eat other shadows. This is… flesh, like us.”
“That damned dog thing ate at me just fine,” Kismet pointed out.
“That’s because it was big enough to eat flesh. A wraith can be summoned or evolve to that point if it eats enough small wraiths. If left unchecked, a wraith that large can decimate an entire community,” Death said. “Trolls are flesh, like something from the Courts. It needs food to survive.