by Chloe Garner
“I hope so,” Jason said skeptically. “People, huh?”
“People. Living people.”
He thought of the fire burning in the basement of the building behind them.
“Easier to kill them when they’re undead.”
She looked at him and bit her lip.
“I think you kill a lot more people than you know,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Spirits, creatures, demons. Only a few odd witches here or there.”
She jerked her thumb back at the building between swings with the crutches.
“Sorcerers,” she said. “Albeit, pitiful ones, but sorcerers, and therefore people. The night hag was a sorceress pulling immortality off of breath and skin. Still just a very old woman, if that was female.”
Jason looked at Sam.
“You buying this?”
“It does explain where they all come from,” Sam said. “Didn’t you ever wonder?”
In fact, no.
Samantha smiled at the ground.
“Angels, demons, people. Angels and demons are straightforward, if sometimes a bit unpredictable to us. People are complicated. This side, that side, Halfway, spirits, magic. Complicated. But, barring alien life, they are the only sentient life that originates on the earth plane.”
“Did she just say aliens?” Jason asked. Sam shrugged his shoulders as he found his pockets with his hands.
“She says its to head off argument, but I don’t see that it works,” he said.
“I’m a Shaman. I’m complete in my answers,” she said huffily.
“You seem awfully laid back for us having just wiped out a room full of human beings,” Jason said. She looked at him and smiled.
“My friend was there, at the end, waiting. Immortals make him hungry. He loves life. Anything that makes him that angry is better off dead, as far as we’re concerned.”
“That surprises me. They didn’t attack us. We went and attacked them, technically, and all they were doing was eating dead bodies. I would think that that would upset you, killing people who hadn’t done anything that wrong.”
“First. Anything that steeped in dark magic has deep-fry grit for a soul. Second, they will kill opportunistically and at random - any sentient life was long gone in those guys - and so we are protecting innocent people. Third, we only killed ones that were attacking us actively. And fourth, I only killed the one that bit me. You guys killed the rest.” She smiled with mock bliss. “Long live the sin-eaters.” She looked over at him with her jaw crooked and shrugged. “Seriously, though. There is an open mandate to bring death to those who have used hell’s power to avoid it. I have killed them. Always in the exchange of attacks, but that only because I can’t stab someone in the back. Can’t do it. They know I’m there to kill them, so it’s no moral excuse. You take the responsibility for being right - you run the risk of taking innocent life, but the distance between them and the nearest normal human being is all that stands between them and murder.”
Jason considered.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’m still going to sit up with a gun pointed at you, anyway.”
<><><>
Samantha had dozed off in her chair. Jason had watched as she had tried the next spell on her list to heal Sam - unsuccessfully - then they had settled in. Sam was in bed, unwilling to sleep as his stomach worried at itself, and Jason sat with his handgun in his lap, just watching. Samantha was making a point of carelessness, and her head had finally tipped back against the back of the chair a few minutes before. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. Jason grabbed his gun, but didn’t point it yet. Sam sat rigidly, watching.
“Huh,” she said.
“What?” Jason asked.
“How odd,” she said.
“Before he shoots you,” Sam pleaded. She grinned, mind still far away. She blinked rapidly.
“How odd,” she said again.
“Speak,” Jason said, standing. He had his arm straightened and his left hand cupped around his right palm. Prepared. Sam stood, instincts pushing him to step in front of Jason.
“Sam,” Sam said. “Please.”
She blinked again, looking at them.
“It is contagious,” she said. Jason raised his arm, and she shook her head, motioning dismissively for him to put it back down. “No, I’m not that easy.” She frowned. “She’s here. She’s pulling me. She doesn’t know what she’s got.”
She was out the door before either Sam or Jason could react, and Sam shoved his feet into his shoes, trying to get outside in time to at least see what way she had gone.
“I’ll get the car,” Jason called as Sam took off running after Samantha down the street. She ran one-sided on her cast and he caught her relatively easily.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he said. She wasn’t listening. He grabbed her arm and she spun on him, snarling, and for one heart-attack moment, he knew he was going to have to kill her.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he said.
“She’s here,” Samantha said.
“Who?”
“The mother,” she said.
“What?”
She put her nose up, closing her eyes as she listened to the night.
“No… she isn’t.”
Jason pulled up in the Cruiser.
“Where are we going?” he asked. Sam shook his head.
“She’s got a tiger by the tail, hasn’t she?” Samantha said.
“She who?” Jason asked. Sam waited, but Samantha just stood, eyes closed, head tossed back at the stars.
“The mother,” Sam finally said.
“What does that mean?”
“Wish I could tell you.”
Samantha started to speak strange words. Sam recognized Greek, Slavic, and Chinese, among other languages, and even a specific word or two, when he focused, but they were a blur out of her mouth. She spread her arms slightly away from her sides, a grin slowly spreading across her face. She paused and her grin grew.
“Oh, is that how it is? No, it isn’t going to be that easy, Lover.”
Jason got out of the Cruiser and came to stand by Sam.
“Has she lost it?” he asked. Sam frowned, watching her as she resumed her incantation.
“I don’t think so. I can’t tell you what she’s doing, but I think she knows.”
She took a breath.
“Hush. I’m echoing off the stars. Need you two to shut up.”
She resumed and Sam looked at Jason and shrugged. The stars? Jason mouthed. Sam grinned and shrugged again. Her arms rose, and he took another step to the side to keep out of her way. They waited. She took another breath and relaxed slightly, apparently still waiting.
“Oh, no no no no no,” she said chidingly. Her back arched and her hands closed to fists, then she gasped a breath out and bent over forwards, breathing hard. She looked over at Sam, then pulled the wrap off of her wrist. The bite mark was gone. She sighed.
“What happened?” Sam asked.
“She got away. I marked her, but she got away.” She grinned and closed her eyes, swaying a bit. Sam stepped aside so Jason could catch her. “I had her and she knew it.”
“Who was she?” Jason asked.
“She called herself Mother. I should have known that a congregation of sorcerers like that was unlikely. She gets bored going through time by herself, so she uses her power to create other immortals to play with, then when they get too broken, she makes more. Or they make more, as the case were.”
“I thought you said they couldn’t be contagious,” Jason said. She nodded.
“It’s about breaking the skin. Skin is your protective layer. She can’t manage that much magic without having something break the skin to get it in. Then she tempts them.” She looked at Jason, cocking her head to one side. “She waited until I was asleep, most susceptible to suggestion, to trigger it. When I woke up, I could hear your heart beating, and the sound of juices gushing aroun
d in your head. Intoxicating.” She grinned at the memory. “Very clever. Very powerful ideas.” Suddenly her mouth dropped into a frown. “We have got to find her and kill her. She’s doing this all the time.”
“Just tell us how,” Jason said. She shook her head.
“I don’t know. Abby?”
She paused.
“Check your phone,” she said to Jason. He pulled it out of his pocket and showed it to her.
“Anti-climactic,” she said. “Abby doesn’t know, either.” She nodded, turning to walk back toward the motel. “We’ll find her.”
“I can just drive, if you want,” Jason said. She looked over at the Cruiser.
“Oh. Yeah, okay.”
“Are you okay?” Sam asked as she settled into the back seat.
“Fine,” she said, “but we should probably move up our visit to Janice.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I don’t look forward to telling that woman I did something dumb.”
<><><>
“You chased a sorceress - without your crutches - down the street,” Janice said flatly as she cut the cast away. Samantha shrugged.
“More or less.”
Janice stared at her.
“I’d tell you to explain that to me, but since there is no conceivable explanation, we’ll leave it alone. Are you going to avoid running down the street this time, or should I just tie you to my table until you finish healing?”
“I’d like to see you try,” Samantha said.
“Where are your attachés?” Janice asked.
“Looking into a house rental,” Samantha said. “We figured we’d be based around here for a while; may as well try to make ourselves comfortable.”
Janice pulled the cast free and put her hands on Samantha’s leg, sensing the bone.
“You’ve done less damage than you could have,” she said, re-setting the bone. Without anesthetic this time, Samantha noted, gritting her teeth. After a few moments, the sharp pain quieted under Janice’s capable hands, and Samantha could feel the stretching, knee-to-ankle itching pain of bones knitting. Janice looked up at her wryly.
“Well, I was going to get in touch with Argo, but as long as you’re here and working against doctor’s orders, we need some help.”
“What’s going on?” Samantha asked.
“One of my normal clients brought in a friend whose teenage daughter appears to have been possessed. Are you able to discern between possession and teenage rebellion without cutting her open?”
“Easily,” Samantha said. Janice nodded, reaching for the fiberglass kit as she began to re-wrap Samantha’s leg.
“Then you have me beat. Will you see her?”
“Name a time and place. I’d be happy to,” Samantha said.
<><><>
Three bedrooms and a kitchen to themselves was nearly beyond their wildest dreams.
“Why haven’t we done this before?” Jason asked, sitting on the couch in the living room.
“I don’t know. We’re stupid?” Sam suggested. Jason shook his head.
“Or something.”
The rental had been Samantha’s idea. Their first thought had been to go stay with Heather, about six hours away, but all three of them had been hesitant to endorse it. They each had their own reasons to fear Heather’s stony wrath. Sam certainly hadn’t wanted to have to tell her the trouble his ill-considered relationship had caused him. If they could fix it and leave it in the past, that was perfect. If he died, instead, that was better than having to tell Heather.
Apparently, cities had places where people would stay on vacation, longer than a night or two. The furniture was soft and friendly, the kitchen had modern appliances and plenty of space, and the beds were in separate rooms. Sam had pulled all of his clothes out of his bag and out of the Charger and put them into drawers in the room he had claimed for himself. Now, he was sitting at the kitchen table, e-mailing Simon with updates from yesterday and letting him know that they were going to be in New Mexico for a while, and to let them know if anything local came up. Jason was chomping at the bit to kill a Mexican ghost.
While Jason talked to the manager, Sam had wandered the house, nodding to himself. If he had to pick a place to die, this one wasn’t bad.
Samantha returned - Jason had actually let her take Gwen on her own - and there hadn’t been a bartender involved - and walked through the house.
“This is nice,” she said. “Two weeks or three?”
“Three,” Jason said. “They had someone cancel.”
“You up for a field trip?” she asked. Sam sat up.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Mom who can’t tell if her teenage daughter is possessed or teenage.”
“You can tell if someone is possessed?” Sam asked.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Come watch,” she said.
“Surely that would have come in handy before now,” Jason said, thinking. “Allison, maybe?”
“I jumped to conclusions,” Samantha said. “I’ve been more careful, since then. She wants to meet at Janice’s office in about an hour. I was thinking we’d go grocery shopping, stop in, dispossess the chicka, then come back here and I’d make dinner.”
“You cook?” Jason asked.
“Very well,” she said. “Normal childhood.”
She looked from one to the other, then sighed.
“One of you was supposed to say that we should wait until after to go grocery shopping, so that nothing would spoil, and then I was going to be all, ‘oh, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem’ and stuff.”
“How would we know that?” Jason asked. Samantha shook her head.
“You two are no fun at all.”
<><><>
Sam sat in a corner of Janice’s front room, opposite Jason, watching Samantha. She sat quietly, her own focus on the skinny girl sitting in the middle of the room. Janice was giving the girl’s mother a cup of tea in the next room. Sam had never really looked at the waiting area before. It was more comfortable than Jason had made it out to be.
“Do you know why you’re here, Mackayla?” Samantha said.
“Mom’s freaking out over my boyfriend and doesn’t think my therapist is working fast enough,” the girl said, bored, staring down at her fingernails. She looked up, her expression smug. “You aren’t going to work, either.”
“It’s possible,” Samantha said, then spoke a pair of words in angeltongue. Sam was getting better at identifying the language by feel.
The girl hissed.
Samantha smiled and stood.
“Go quietly,” she said. The girl crouched and sprung, flipping over and sticking to the ceiling, hissing again. Samantha began to speak a string of words in angeltongue, and the girl paced on the ceiling. She jumped down and books and pictures began flying off the walls. Sam flung himself to the floor and heard Jason do the same as more things began to spin in the air, bouncing off of Samantha as though hitting a force field. Samantha never slowed her steady pace of words. The girl hissed and screamed, and Sam heard the anxious mother in the next room fighting Janice to come see what was happening. As quickly as it started, it ended. The girl melted into a motionless huddle on the floor, and the objects in the air fell to earth. A picture frame struck Sam corner-down in the middle of the back and he grunted, reaching up to pick it up and rub the spot as he stood.
“Sorry,” Samantha said. “I waited until it was clear of your neck. Thought it would make it further than that.” He shrugged. Jason stood, and the mother came rushing into the room.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Mom?” the girl asked, lifting her head.
“Get her something to eat and drink, and then lots of sleep tonight,” Samantha said. “Janice should be able to refer you to the right professionals if you have any other problems.”
Janice nodded, putting her hand on the woman’s shoulder.
“It’s over, Annie. You were right.�
��
“Mom?” the girl asked again. Her mother lifted her to her feet and hugged her. Samantha raised her eyebrows at Sam.
“Shall we head out? Before the milk gets warm?”
He grinned.
“Smug.”
<><><>
“Pretty slick,” Jason said, stuffing mashed potatoes into his mouth. “What did you say to make her angry?”
“It isn’t what I said,” Samantha said. “All demons understand Angeltongue, and if you’re fluent, you can feel it when someone understands. It’s more powerful. So I knew that she was a demon, and she knew that I knew. And that made her angry.”
“What did you say?”
“Hello.”
Jason snorted.
“Can you teach us?” Sam asked. She winced one eye and considered.
“Maybe. Angeltongue words take a long time to remember, and some people just can’t do it. You won’t be able to tell if anyone understands, but very few demons can help but react to Angeltongue, anyway.”
She stood and came back to the table and wrote two words down on a sheet of paper.
Anadidd’na anan’ae
“The ‘dd’ is pronounced ‘th’,” she said. “Anna-dith-na anna-nai. When you get better at speaking, the final syllable becomes more tonally important. Anna-dith-na, with a short pause then a short ‘na’ is slightly less formal, sometimes more sarcastic. Roll all three together, and you get the more formal. Anna-n-ai-i is the better pronunciation of the second word, but you have to have the ear for that. There’s no pause between the ‘n’ and the ‘ae’. You just pull breath on the ‘n’.”
Sam tried. The shapes weren’t familiar to his tongue, and his mind promptly forgot the pronunciation guide.
“What does it mean?” Jason asked. She pointed.
“Greetings. God. God’s greetings. It’s a simple, generic, relatively formal greeting, like ‘hello’. Not as complicated as ‘good day’ or as casual as ‘hi’.”
“What did the Angel of Death say to you?” Jason asked. She smiled.
“Good ear. Anadidd’na anu’dd.” She turned the page over and wrote it. “Anooth. It means hello friend. I call him O’na anu’dd. My friend.”
She flipped the page back and put it in front of Sam.
Anadidd’na anan’ae.