Incorruptible

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Luggage in the back,” Michael said, and as long as he thought only of the next thing and the next, he could get her through the evening with little incident.

  Or so he hoped.

  Indignity of Survival

  It was more expensive than any place Jenna could afford, even when she and Mom had pooled their resources for trips. The staff didn’t seem to mind that she and Michael were disheveled and covered with goo, and honestly the instant a shower was possible, even in a great marble-and-glass cavern of a bathroom, Jenna longed to scrub the entire day away under a torrent of hot water.

  This high up, city lights were a river of stars under a purple, sleet-lashed winter dusk. If not for the absence of the river, she could imagine she was back home. Except at home there weren’t two full-size beds, each with foil-wrapped mints and a paper-wrapped welcome packet on the fluffy cream-colored pillow shams. There definitely wasn’t a pleather binder on the dresser was full of plastic pages detailing amenities—massages in room or at the spa on the first floor, a truly staggering room service menu, a map to exercise rooms and two swimming pools as well as saunas, the list went on and on—in hushed, breathless prose at home either.

  “Here.” Michael dug in the smaller of two black canvas duffel bags extracted from the back of the truck, coming up with a handful of pale sweatshirt and drawstring pajama pants. “You probably want to clean up. There should be everything you need in there. You can wear these after, okay?”

  They were obviously his, large enough for her to swim in; she couldn’t tell if this was a comforting development. If he carried women’s clothes around in that bag, it would be a sign he did this often. Jenna took the armful of material, holding it gingerly away from her stiff, rasping uniform. “They didn’t seem to notice we’re all messed up.”

  “Just a little illusion to make us look normal.” No big deal, his tone suggested. The grit and sugar coating him looked uncomfortable, tiny pieces of acoustic tile glittering on his cheeks caught in rising dark-blond stubble. “You can do it too, with some training.”

  That sounded really useful, but it made her head hurt. Sleeping against a car window had given her a neck-ache, too, and her stomach would have been rumbling if it wasn’t tied in knots. “Great.” The hideous mental images—Bob, Sarah, the trucker in blue and yellow plaid—kept coming back now that she wasn’t in a moving vehicle with a deep, buttery engine-purr lulling her.

  “Go ahead.” Michael stalked to the windows—huge expanses of glass, the heating bill for this pile probably went through the roof—and glanced at falling night, falling ice-pellets, and the wide, shuttered sky, only a faint venomous line of orange to the west showing where the sun had gone to sleep. “We’re safe enough here tonight. I’ll have to do some thinking about our route.”

  There’s a route? “Where are we going?” She shifted uneasily; nobody had noticed she was missing a shoe, either. Her exposed sock was filthy, and rough nylon carpet scratched through the hole in the heel.

  “To the closest Eyrie.” Michael looked over his shoulder, electric light glowing in his blue eyes. The tattoos kept moving in slow clockwork increments, describing the edges of his muscles, crawling up his neck. “Maybe we can take the train. Not sure about flying.”

  Good luck getting a kidnapped woman on a plane. She bit back the sarcasm—it would be, in Eddie’s words, getting off the straight and narrow. Besides, if Mike could keep hotel employees from seeing what they really looked like, could airline employees be any different? “So…” There was a bigger consideration, one she hesitated to voice. “Can those…those things fly?”

  “Some of them can glide, but true flight is lost to them.” He turned away from the window, regarding her somberly. With his weight balanced just-so and his hands clasped behind his back, he looked like a recruit at parade rest. “You have a legionnaire with you, Jenna. You don’t have to worry.”

  Yeah, well. “I can’t help it.” She backed for the bathroom, awkward in one shoe. “I’m going to lock the door.”

  “Go ahead.” He freed his hands and made a small shooing motion, muscle flickering under his torn T-shirt. “Whatever you need.”

  “I need to go home.” There, she’d said it. Again. The heavy drugging invisible weight didn’t come back, but she sensed it hovering just out of range.

  “I know.” Mike’s expression—distant, listening—didn’t change. Neither did his posture. “I’m sorry.” Genuinely regretful, and just a touch weary. Any other inflection would have sounded ridiculous.

  Jenna’s throat had gone dry, and she fled to the bathroom’s dubious safety without another word.

  It was in the vast shower, with chevrons of rough plastic antislip on the sloped floor, that the shaking hit. She hugged herself under a spray of gloriously hot water, trembling so hard her knees vibrated against each other. She’d read of going knock-kneed from terror, and it was disconcerting to actually feel it.

  Think about reading, Jenna. Think about watching movies. Think about something, anything, other than this.

  Her library books were sitting patiently in the bag on the kitchen counter for her usual weekly trip. She was going to have a helluva late fine. Maybe they’d send the Library Police to drag her back. Wait—there were two weeks left on everything in the bag, because she’d had a whole two days off, plenty of time to get down to the library and carry her prizes home to her dull, cheap little studio that was better than anyplace else because Eddie had never set foot inside.

  Rent wasn’t due until the fifth, which was—what a coincidence—two weeks away as well. Not like she’d make it much past that, without a new job.

  Bob. Sarah. Strange how she couldn’t quite remember either of their…corpses. The one that kept showing up in garish detail was the trucker in plaid, thrown through the counter so hard flesh had almost liquified.

  She got out of the shower, almost slipping because she hadn’t set the bathmat, and her eyes stung because her hair was piled with shampoo suds. Which meant she had to put the goddamn mat down and restart the water, stepping in and wondering who was making that soft, broken moaning noise.

  It was her. Jenna sobbed under hot water, her eyes watering furiously with salt and soap, until the tears dried up and the indignity of having survived reasserted itself, like it always did.

  Because she was cursed.

  The sweatshirt smelled like someone else’s fabric softener, not the cheap harsh kind she used but not the fanciest either. It also smelled like dry testosterone and a faint male spiciness. Maybe he wore it to work out in, but there was no tinge of sweat or weird stains in the underarms, thank God. Faint smears of white paint smudged along the hem and his big warehouse home had white walls; maybe he’d done them himself.

  The thought of big blond Mike carrying a ladder and paint buckets was blessedly normal, blessedly sane, but she was still in a hotel room a hundred-plus miles from home with a man she didn’t know, chased by things that shouldn’t exist—strange, smoke-streaming figures with nasty inhuman eyes and hiss-moaning voices, loping through alleys and lurking outside windows, ready to take a bite out of a child’s flank or swallow a scream whole.

  People were dead, but she was safe and showering in a fancy hotel.

  Jenna edged out of the bathroom. Mike was at the suite door, glancing over his shoulder. “Room service,” he said, cheerily. “You have good timing.”

  The flatscreen was on, local news turned down to a mutter. Jenna stopped and stared, riveted, as a duo of uniformed teenagers brought in a rolling cart gleaming with silver platters and covers, not to mention an ice bucket with a green glass bottle poking its tiny head over the rim, snug in a bleached white linen jacket.

  Oh, my God, did he order champagne? The question died on her lips.

  The news was full of fire. Literally. An apartment building was ablaze in rainy dusk, the fire spreading to buildings on either side. Jenna’s heart gave a huge, thundering leap and all the shower’s forgiving warmth drained away. Her
hair dripped, curls tensing up and shedding water, and for a brief moment she couldn’t remember if she’d wrapped a towel around her head to dry the mass.

  Wait. Wait just a minute.

  Mike tipped the teenagers, a flash of green and two young, grateful smiles. The suite door closed, the kids vanishing like genies. Back into the bottle, after bringing snacks.

  Well, there were monsters in the world, why not genies? Why not unicorns, ghosts, or a rich man’s kindness, too? All sorts of things could exist once monsters did.

  “I didn’t know what you’d like,” Mike started, and pushed the cart gingerly over plush, scratchy carpeting. “So I got one of everything I thought might…oh. Yeah.”

  “That’s my building,” Jenna managed, numbly, lifting a trembling hand to point. Don’t be rude, Mom whispered in her head, and her hand fell back to her side. “That’s my building.”

  Now it was, a broken, blackened cup full of spreading, greasy orange flame. Gas Main Explosions Rock City, the chyron at the bottom said, and the footage was from a circling helicopter, its light stabbing down white and useless. It looked like half the block, including the corner bodega, was getting in on the act, a crowd of onlookers pressing against safety barricades. The inset was a reporter on the corner of Vine Street near the Riverview subway entrance, his mouth moving aggressively as he stared into the camera, damp slicking his dark hair.

  “Yeah.” Michael hunched so he could push the cart. The kids had made it look easy; he looked like a trained bear fiddling with a machine too small and delicate for its paws. “Pretty sure they’ll find my place too. It’ll just take them longer.”

  “That’s…them?” Who else would burn your house down, Jen? Arson wasn’t really Eddie’s style, and she couldn’t tell if the realization was a relief or not.

  “Yeah. Looks like.” Mike shrugged—it was an everyday occurrence, his expression said, just like being attacked by monsters or putting eggs on a grill. “It could be a coincidence. Listen, I’d like to wash up. You have something to eat, okay?”

  Oh sure. They murdered everyone in the diner, my entire block is burning, and I should just have some cookies and milk before bed. “Uh.” Her throat was dry, her hair was cold, and goosebumps rose all over her, hard and prickling. “I don’t…Jesus. Jesus.”

  The problem wasn’t that she was just finding out the things were real, and that they wanted her dead. It was far deeper. She’d known all along, on some level, and had just been marking time until the nightmares found her again. She was a Typhoid Mary, bringing destruction to everyone within range, and now she had Bob, and Sarah, the customers, and everyone who lived on her block as well, on her conscience. If her neighbors weren’t dead their home was gutted, and those apartments weren’t for people who could afford a disaster.

  At least Eddie hadn’t found her, sure. But it might have been better if he had.

  “Jenna.” Mike was suddenly right next to her, taking the filthy, neatly folded uniform from her nerveless hands. “You’re tired, you’re hungry, you’ve been through a lot today. It’s okay. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

  She nodded, speechless, more to get him to stop talking than to agree with anything he said. The words were a jumble, they made no sense while flame licked over the shattered shell of what had been a reasonably decent, though desperately poor, apartment building.

  It looked like a bad special effect. Why was it burning so hard while sleet came down in waves? Nothing made any sense. Just like the accident in San Francisco, that slick, hungry flame sending up billows of black smoke while the car bucked and the man on the hood grinned at her…

  “Tacium,” Mike said, grabbing her hands. The dragging, drugging quiet returned, wrapping around her like a blanket, and Jenna went limp underneath it, guiltily glad. She let her knees buckle, barely aware of Mike catching her on the way down. He moved with eerie, graceful speed, and for a moment she believed he’d fought off those terrible, smoke-fuming monsters.

  Unclean, he called them. Well, Jenna was dirty too.

  Mike set her in one of the white leather chairs, the cart right handily close, and turned the TV off. Its blank glass eye watched her while he disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar, and the sound of water running crept forlornly into the luxurious, impersonal suite.

  Jenna’s cheeks were wet. She sat, her hands folded in her lap, and wished with sudden and familiar vengeance that she was dead.

  A Lumina's Displeasure

  The food wasn’t bad. He didn’t exactly need it, but it was satisfying and would refuel him when there was no access to grace. Plus, it was camouflage whence went among mortals. And it probably helped a newly found Incorruptible remember that the normal world was still there, and required even their protectors to eat and shower, if not sleep.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the reminder was going to do a lot of good in this particular case. Jenna sat staring at the blank television screen, and he wished he hadn’t turned the damn thing on in the first place. It rotted the brain, but he needed intel. He’d been hoping for nothing, just the usual mixture of voyeurism and capitalism in a glass bowl spread over cable news and injected into the veins of the body politic.

  Instead, not only had the diaboli fired her home, but it was messy and…public. It could be a coincidence on a slow news day, but something about it made Michael’s nape tighten. Not quite gooseflesh, not an itch either, but the consciousness of something wrong. A break in the pattern, a splinter-twisting of the Principle, or just a predator’s invisible gaze drifting over terrain and settling on another predator’s unprotected back.

  Alone, he could eat as if he was in a barracks. With an Incorruptible, however, manners were called for. He took a bite of steak—a little too well done, but not bad otherwise—and regulated his chewing. Jenna, paper-pale, her cheeks spotted with drying tears, stared bleakly at a plate containing a club sandwich and a pile of fries. The fries were a little soggy; whoever was running the kitchen either hadn’t had the time or inclination to make sure they stayed otherwise.

  It would hopefully be a long time before Michael worked a deep-fryer again, but he was tempted to go down to the kitchens and show them how.

  “Try to eat.” He glanced nervously at the ice bucket—the champagne wasn’t his idea, but apparently it was complimentary when you ordered a triple-tier cart from room service. “It’s still warm.”

  She shook her head, then reached slowly across the cart. The tacium hung from her in diaphanous veils, imperfectly masking the clarity of the Principle. She’d stopped fighting the protection, retreating into apathy. Her fingertips brushed the sweating-cold metal pail, frostflowers retreating from living warmth. “You ordered this?”

  “Just the food.” Michael shook his head, speared another reasonable bite of steak. Continental style was the only way to wield the tiny weapons required for eating. “But I guess they thought we needed it.”

  “Bourbon would be better.” She blinked, fresh tears welling in her dark eyes, and each one was a sharp, precise pain in the upper left quadrant of his chest. “Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know.” He’d get her a bottle if she wanted, but a hangover might make tomorrow more difficult. On the other hand, some Incorruptibles were fond of stating preferences and letting their legionnaires hop to obey. “It all tastes like paint thinner to me.”

  A flicker of interest stirred. She wiped at her cheek in slow motion, weighed down by the tacium’s grasp. “What about beer?” The sweatshirt slipped sideways, the too-big neck showing a generous slice of her shoulder, the high beautiful arch of her collarbone—and the sweet, soft beginning slope of one breast, but he wasn’t supposed to look.

  He stared at his plate instead. “Beer’s good.” He was American at the moment, and they liked hops and malt. “It used to be thicker, though. Like bread.”

  “Used to be?” The flicker returned, curiosity overpowering fear. “Wait, no. The tattoos. Maybe you should start there.�
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  “Oh.” He laid knife and fork down, straightened his back. An Incorruptible deserved full attention whenever they expressed interest, no matter how small the subject. “Normal people just see tattoos, and they’re similar, I guess. They move because they’re protections. Like armor, and support.” It was an oversimplification, but a reasonable one.

  “Oh.” She dropped her dark gaze to her own plate. Her hair, free of confinement and drying rapidly, was a soft honey-tinted halo, curls stretching and turning to waves. “What are those things? I mean, what are they really?”

  “Diaboli.” He pronounced it clearly, slowly. This was far better than numb silence. “You could call them demons, I suppose.” Every mortal culture had names for the dark things that hunted—and those who fought.

  She nodded, slowly. “And you’re a…legionnaire.”

  “One of the Legion, yes.” He sensed her newfound calm was brittle, so he kept his hands flat on the table, his gaze fixed on his plate, and the rest of him as hunched-small as possible. “I’m just a soldier, a kind of bodyguard. We’re meant to protect people like you. Incorruptible.”

  “Huh.” At least she wasn’t screaming. What kind of bravery did it take for a mortal used to everyday, humdrum existence to compass the Legion, let alone the unclean? “So these things, they come from…hell?”

  “Not as you’d understand it, I guess.” Her courage all but shamed him. Michael studied the grill-marks on his steak, the piped mashed potatoes, the haricots. “Most of them were mortal once. Human, like you. Some of them—the wingèd unclean—were like me. But they’re corrupted now.”

  “Corrupted?” At least she didn’t ask what do you mean, like you?

  “Yeah.” Twisted by hatred or rage, the wingèd ones had a deep well of strength to draw on while their protective marks faded. They forgot what they were bit by bit, craving dominance, blood, murder, and other foul nourishment. A legionnaire served because otherwise a legionnaire fell, not the controlled, chosen First Descent but a spiraling into chaos and darkness. That was why the deviant hunted the Incorruptible, the Authorities said. To see what they had lost by turning away from discipline and obedience fueled the darkest of their rages.