Incorruptible

by Lilith Saintcrow

  The cook should have looked completely ridiculous, kneeling on mellow hardwood with his hair, like hers, full of sticky sugar and tile grit. Her skin crawled, a cheap polyester uniform turned into sandpaper; her skull was full of that strange roaring noise that inevitably accompanied catastrophes, even the small internal ones.

  The problem was, Mike didn’t look ridiculous. He looked intent, focused, and packed with muscle under his filthy T-shirt and dirty jeans. His blue eyes were altogether too vivid, and those tattoos—well, it went a lot better when she didn’t look at thin dark ink-lines on a man’s skin moving over flickering muscle and under sparse, wiry golden hairs.

  As long as she didn’t look at those, she could call the whole thing the product of an overworked brain, a mere neurological misfire, a goddamn stress-induced hallucination, and that was that.

  Only it wasn’t. That was, as Rach might put it, definitely not that. “Uh.” Jenna decided to focus on the most pressing problem first. “How the fuck did you get me here?” Everything else would fall into place once she had that answered.

  One of his brawny shoulders lifted microscopically, dropped. “Carried you.”

  Oh. Of course. A sensible, practical solution. “That’s very nice of you,” she managed, relatively diplomatically. The rushing in her head intensified. Are you okay? Rach had demanded, squeaky and breathless. It’s all over the news. Gas main or something. I thought you were at work today. Some clear instinct had stopped her from telling Rachel anything—it had been a while since Jenna heard that small, still, irresistible voice inside her skull, echoed by the queer certainty in her ribcage, but she still followed it. “I, uh need to leave now.”

  He regarded her for a few electric moments, blue eyes narrowed. “No.”

  Well, that was simple, wasn’t it? One small word. It didn’t get much easier to understand than that.

  “It wasn’t a request, Mike.” She didn’t even know his last name. And how the hell had he gotten her here? Carried a sleeping woman on the subway? Loaded her into his beat-up red truck and solicitously buckled her in? She’d never passed out from a panic attack before, and doubly never hallucinated during one.

  Well, first time for everything, her mother always said. It hurt to think of Mom, and Dad too. It hurt to think of anything, and now she could add Bob and Sarah to that list, and the trucker in the shattered counter, and…had Ace gotten out the back door?

  Mike said he had.

  It wasn’t an explosion, Jen. That strange certainty was back, filling her chest. Was she just in shock? Was he?

  He didn’t look particularly shocked. “I know.” Mike unfolded, rising with odd grace. Like a dancer, almost.

  A dancer who had put himself between her and the hallucinations. Not to mention thrown himself over her, a warm protective weight.

  “Great.” Whether this was a nightmare or hallucination was academic, she decided. “I, uh. I should go home.” Don’t antagonize him, don’t ask for permission. Just think this through, then get moving.

  She didn’t want to think about a good goddamn, as Dad might say. Jenna wanted to slide off the bed, march out the door, and not stop until she was safe at home. First she’d take a shower.

  Then she’d burn her uniform and open up the want ads. It was a great plan, if she could just get started.

  “That,” Mike-the-cook said, patiently, “is not an option.” He paused, perhaps to gauge her reaction, but Jenna simply stared at him. “They’ll find you there.”

  Jenna swallowed, dryly. “Those things,” she whispered. Wherever this place was, it was quiet. The door showing the bathroom had a lovely brass knob with a mellow gleam, the mattress was far better than her own, and the hardwood was seriously polished. What cook could afford this? “Those things are real.”

  She’d suspected for years, of course. But to actually see them when she wasn’t asleep was…she couldn’t think of a word other than terrifying. The only thing worse was hearing herself say it out loud.

  Mike’s shoulders stiffened, but he dropped his hands to his sides, carefully. “Have you seen them before?” As if he was talking about the weather.

  How was he so calm?

  “No,” she lied. The old instinct to lie, to misdirect, to keep herself safe, was irresistible as well. People fear what they don’t understand, Mom used to say. And when they’re afraid, they get angry. “No, never. I just…panic attacks. It was a panic attack, I hallucinated.”

  “You can think so, if you want.” Mike didn’t shift uneasily, his tone—soft and reasonable—didn’t alter. “But we’ve got to get you to an Eyrie.”

  A whatnow? “I don’t want to go anywhere but home.” She longed to pull her skirt down; at least he wasn’t staring at her legs.

  “You can’t.” He just stood there, hands dangling loosely, his hair filthy-stiff and small atoms of ground-up tile glitter-gleaming all over him. “They’ll follow your usual trail from the diner, they’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Who? Who will be waiting?” She had a sinking sensation she knew.

  From his expression, so did he. “The unclean.” A muscle flicked in Mike’s cheek. “You saw them.”

  Is that what they’re called? You learn something new every day. “It wasn’t real,” she tried again. “Right?” Maybe if she just explained that calmly enough, clearly enough, the bubble over her would pop and the world would get back on track. “None of this is real.” Certainly not nightmares come to horrible waking life.

  It wouldn’t stop; the absurdity just kept going. Mike simply regarded her, blue eyes cold and level. “Real or not, I’m here to protect you.”

  Boy, wouldn’t that be nice. Even nicer would be a nip of bourbon, no matter how cheap, and her own bed. “You’re a few years late,” she managed, numbly. That sounded good, it sounded like the old wisecracking Jen she’d been before Eddie.

  “My apologies, lumina.” He even bowed his head a little, like a penitent child.

  An overgrown, muscle-bound, penitent child twice her size. She slid her legs cautiously off the bed. “My name’s Jen.” Great. I’m getting semantic. She tugged at her skirt, trying to ignore the grinding and chafing. It was worse than getting sand in your bikini bottom. “I’ll, uh, just call a cab.”

  “I’ll be taking you to the Eyrie,” he replied, as if it was the most natural thing in the world and he couldn’t believe she wasn’t jumping on the train, so to speak. “You don’t have to worry about a thing anymore.”

  Oh, how I wish that were true. “I want to go home.” And shut my door, and crawl under the covers, and never think about this ever again. Except she’d have to. She’d have to find another job, too.

  And Christ, what sort of person was she that she’d just seen…what she’d seen, and she was thinking about a job?

  “You can’t,” Mike repeated. Calm and flat, just stating the facts, ma’am. He would have made an impressive cop. Those yards of muscle in uniform could probably stop a riot cold. “They will be waiting for you there, and they will kill you, ma’am.”

  “You’re crazy. I’m crazy.” She shook her head, and stood up. Or tried to, her legs turned wobbly and she sat back down again, hard. The mattress was so good it didn’t even squeak, just sighed, and it didn’t help that she’d lost a shoe. Dammit. I saved up for those. “You saw them too?” An awed, little-girl whisper, one she couldn’t believe came out of her own mouth.

  “They burn, and trail in sliptime.” He sketched a quick gesture, his fingers describing the odd, smokelike streaks following the creatures. “And they called you softling.”

  Oh, God. They had stepped out of the private chambers of her nightly terrors and invaded real life, again. Give us the softling, they hissed, and even in hazy memory the auditory wrongness scraped every inch of her raw, just like Sarah’s hurt cry as one of them yanked her over the table.

  Not to mention the hideous, unholy noises while Jen froze, eyes shut, swaying, waiting for the monsters to eat her. Because every child kn
ows that’s what monsters do, and she had been dreaming of those wrong, streaksmoke-fuming things all her life.

  That, and the redheaded man wrapped in a pall of greasy black smoke, smiling his wide white smile perched on the crumpled hood of a serviceable secondhand black Volvo.

  Fuck this noise. Jenna tried to stand up again. This time her legs simply wouldn’t obey her. It occurred to her all at once, with stunning suddenness, that she was in a strange man’s house. Or at least, he said it was his house, but it was too nice for a tattooed cook. The floor alone was too good. Maybe he was a slumming superchef? But why would he choose Bob’s diner, of all places?

  It hit her again, the diner smashed to bits and the body of the yellow-and-blue plaid trucker, thrown so hard the both corpse and counter had shattered. It wasn’t Bob’s corpse, or Sarah’s, both nearly unrecognizable, that made the world start revolving around her again, it was that goddamn trucker’s, and what was she going to do?

  “I want to go home,” she repeated, miserably.

  “I’m sorry,” Michael the cook said. “But maybe a shower instead?”

  Jenna clutched her phone and began to laugh, a high breathless giggle with a raw slicing edge. It rose and rose until she finally found the strength to stand, and she tacked drunkenly across the hardwood in one shoe, the laughter mutating into a ribboning scream that started somewhere in her belly and rose on an escalator.

  “Quietus,” the cook said, and he was suddenly there, looming over her. He didn’t so much move as blink across the intervening space, and she hit his chest with a thud. He grabbed her wrists, Jen’s phone skittered along hardwood with a crack she dismally suspected its case wouldn’t stand up to, and she inhaled to scream again. Her shoulders hit the wall next to the bathroom door with a curiously soft sound.

  “Pace,” he said, and her breath left in a rush. “Tacium.”

  Thick, heavy silence dropped over the entire high-ceilinged room, a glass bell smothering the small creakings, whisperings, and other humming unquiets that made up a building expanding and contracting with the weather.

  “Go ahead,” the cook said. The words were muffled, but clearly audible. There were faint lines of silver in his blue irises, and this close, gold-tipped stubble on his cheeks poked through grit and streaks of syrup, plus a faint dewing of sweat. Both of them smelled of sugar, but only Jenna reeked of acrid, sweating fear. “Scream all you want. It’s a natural reaction.”

  She did scream. Oh, she did. Smothering quiet ate the sound, closing softly and irrevocably around her. The cook still held her wrists, gently but firmly, strength thrumming through his fingers. Twisting did no good, and she was suddenly, painfully aware how ridiculous this all was.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she shrieked. Or tried to, anyway. The sound was a cricket’s chirp lost in deep snowfall.

  His own voice wasn’t subject to the deadening baffle. “Not who, lumina. What. I am of the Legion, a servant of the Principle. I am also your protector.” He frowned slightly, tensing a little, and Jenna frantically pressed her back into the wall. “In other words, I’m your best bet of staying alive.”

  Unfamiliar Territory

  That went well. Michael exhaled sharply, rolling his shoulders. The Greater Tacium kept her subdued, a narcotic blanket he hadn’t wanted to use once she was awake since an Incorruptible was not to be smothered. But the alternative was letting her damage herself with fruitless attempts to restore what she thought of as normalcy.

  Sooner or later, she’d find a different definition of “normal.” Until she did, he had to keep her in one piece, and as calm as possible.

  He opened the laptop, glancing at her. Jenna sat at his kitchen table, straight-backed, her eyes heavy-lidded and her distress struggling with the tacium’s weight. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “But I have to.” She was still dirty, he wasn’t much better, and the prospect of leaving his home—a legionnaire’s true home was technically wherever there was an Incorruptible needing protecting, preferably in an Eyrie—was no more appetizing than it had been when he arrived in this city.

  How many years ago? It troubled him that he couldn’t remember. Still, he had renovated this place from the bones up. A whole lot of work, and the unclean would piss in the corners and burn it down just for kicks.

  “Stop it,” she whispered. “Whatever you’re doing. Please.”

  “It’s called a tacium. I can teach you how to do it, just not right now.” The laptop’s screen lit and he tapped in the sequence of keys that triggered its hidden capabilities, hunt-and-pecking across unfamiliar terrain. A familiar winged glyph filled the greenish screen, and keying in the codes took a lot longer than he liked as he rummaged through mental storehouses to find the patterns.

  The screen blanked again. He waited, trying a few calming breaths. Grace poured over him again, needles pricking along his skin. His marks moved faster now, drinking in the force she emitted.

  “Your tattoos.” Jenna’s dark, drugged gaze lingered on his arm. If the way he was itching was any indication, she probably wanted a shower something fierce. “Why do they do that?”

  So she could see them moving. Normally, that didn’t happen until an Incorruptible had the Breath. Even the more sensitive of mortals could catch a glimpse, though, and Incorruptibles were nothing if not sensitive.

  It was a nagging question—just how strong was she? The tacium should have turned her glaze-eyed and tractable, but she was still talking. He didn’t mind; he liked hearing her. “To strengthen,” Michael said. “To conserve. To remind.”

  “Remind?” Her lashes fluttered. Fighting a tacium after the day she’d had showed some some real grit, not to mention a disconcerting amount of raw power.

  “I’m a legionnaire.” Michael could even say it with a certain, acceptable amount of pride in front of an Incorruptible. “I serve the Principle.”

  A slow blink, her mouth pulling down at the corners. “You are seriously weird,” she muttered.

  You have no idea, lumina. He had to tear his gaze away from the fascinating shape her lips made when curved like that. The screen finally, blessedly, lit again with another familiar greenish graphic—the sword and the wings, straight and pure. Code flashed in falling rivers, and to his relief, he could still read the ancient symbols, glyphs turned into binary and back again. He managed to dredge out of memory the string of letters and numbers required to alert every legionnaire in a few hundred miles’ radius that he had an Incorruptible, but instead of a flashing list of glyphs telling him to expect backup the screen simply blanked, background code falling in green rivers.

  A cold thin trickle of unease worked down his spine. The warehouse resounded around them, full of creeping, stealthy sounds as a winter afternoon wended its way towards early dusk. This was taking too long. He should have put her under heavy tacium at the SunnyTime and done this first, instead of stupidly going to her apartment. The craving to see how the first Incorruptible he’d ever found lived had been all but irresistible, but he should have resisted.

  Was he deviating? If so, he had to bring himself back to true in doubletime. He stared at the streams, his lips tightening and his shoulders tensing. “No,” he breathed. “I don’t…no.”

  “What?” Her alarm, dozy and faraway, prodded him. The last thing she needed was any uncertainty, especially from his quarter.

  “Nothing.” He tapped in a query; when the answer came back, he exhaled, hard, and closed the laptop. Then, with great deliberation, he brought his fist down on the slim silver case.

  Metal crunched, plastic popped, and he mouthed a quiet but hurtfully spiked word. Smoke rose as the stinging cursum settled over plastic, metal, and glass, burrowing in. By the time it was spent, there would be nothing recoverable in the lump of slag; their electronic trail would be muddied past repair.

  Jenna’s dark, beautiful eyes were very round. She sat, frozen, and sweat dewed her forehead, clumping on the small particles of acoustic tile and the dust that always rose during demolit
ion. Her struggling against the tacium grew frantic, and he cursed himself, again. It should have occurred to him what she’d take that little display as.

  “It’s all right,” he said, dismally aware he was anything but soothing. “I just have to make sure nobody can trace us.”

  She made no reply. The tacium tightened, a protective thickening of invisible fabric, and her eyelids fluttered. Her lips parted slightly, and it wasn’t just distress or unease radiating from her with the bright clear light of grace, it was outright fear.

  An Incorruptible should fear nothing with the Legion present. “It’s all right,” Michael repeated. “I promise, lumina.”

  She shook her head, the slow rolling motion of a woman in a nightmare, and Michael pushed his chair back, equally slowly.

  “We’re going to have to move,” he said, conversationally. “We’ll get a shower and something to eat in the next city. Let’s go.” Sick knowledge thumped in his stomach. What he’d thought was the closest Eyrie, fifty miles to the west, was no longer there. But that wasn’t the bad news.

  The real bad news was that there was only one Eyrie left on the continent, and it was on the West Coast. Even the sliptravel roads were closed; there was no access point in easy range. Traveling by slip was hard enough on a legionnaire, it could make an Incorruptible violently, deathly ill.

  Which could not be allowed, even if he found a forgotten access point.

  “Please,” Jenna whispered, pleadingly. “Please let me go. I’m sorry, please just let me go.”

  Now he’d outright terrified her. The fact that she sounded dismally used to pleading could be dealt with later when he had time to figure out who had taught her the skill—and just how he could teach them a lesson or two.