Incorruptible

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Okay.” Thankfully, she kept her hand in his; it was easier with the physical contact. Michael was glad they didn’t have to stop for fuel and touched the accelerator a bit, nudging them into an opening in the thickening flow of traffic.

  Now it was a race.

  Torqued and Tortured

  It would have been nice to enjoy the scenery. Instead, Jen held Michael’s hand, her head pounding and sweat rising insistently all over her, alternately feverish and sickly-cold. When she peeked through her eyelids, glaring sunshine speared her tender skull, twisting like a blade, and the strange floating sensation as Michael piloted the truck into spaces opening as if by magic unmoored her stomach.

  It was a good thing she hadn’t wanted much in the way of lunch.

  A painful, lurching half hour passed seamlessly under the Dodge’s tires, canyons eventually rising on either side and greening in ridiculous defiance of the desert. The engine sound changed, a long downhill slope pulling them towards the sea, and another curious sensation began along her fingers and toes.

  “Thank the Principle,” Michael said, as soon as she noticed it. “Feel that? This is a Legion city.”

  “Is that what—” She gasped again as her head gave another pounding jolt, spearing all the way down her neck and spreading into her back muscles. Would others like him give her a headache? “Ow!”

  “Anytime now,” Michael muttered. “Anytime. Come on, guys. Notice me, I’m begging you.”

  “Michael—”

  “Fine time to wish I had a phone.” He probably didn’t mean to sound so grim. “Just hold on, Jen. We’re almost safe.”

  The pain in her head crested again, Jen let out a blurting, surprised cry, and the world turned over as something big smashed into the truck’s much-abused canopy. Weightlessness swallowed them for a long, swimming second, and she had time to think that’s strange, it doesn’t hurt anymore before the fireball burst, a deadly beautiful flower, and for a moment she was bleeding under hot sunshine again, the red-haired man standing on the Volvo’s hood and laughing as greasy gasflames licked him with kitten-playful tongues.

  Gravity reasserted itself, the funnel of memory pinching closed, and a terrific jolt smashed the bright California afternoon. Flaming wreckage fell and she was rolling, her head bouncing hard on a hard-muscled shoulder and her terror raising a bright flaring ribbon of liquid gold, exploding like a firework in the smoggy sky above Rancho Cucamonga.

  Later she thought she must have only been out for only a few moments, but it felt much longer—especially when the headache, furious that she’d slipped its grip even temporarily, returned with a vengeance. A spatter of loud reports was gunfire, and her head bobbled as Michael pulled her upright. His jacket was scuffed and torn, its back almost shredded to pieces, but the T-shirt underneath was curiously unharmed and his jeans were pristine.

  The red Dodge, however, was a mangled mass of metal and exploding safety glass, great billows of oily black smoke rising skyward as it rocked to a halt on the interstate. Leggy, dusty-green sage and long withered yellow grass clutched at Jen’s legs as she stared at the burning, wondering blankly just how in the hell either of them had survived the impact.

  Mom? She shook her ringing head, the pain crunching all through her with vicious, serrated teeth, and Michael shoved her almost headlong into a stand of exhaust-stunted highway greenery. Crackling gun-reports were small next to the massive noise of the truck’s shredding still ringing in her head; the sounds were coming from him, and the malformed, shadowy thing amid the hungry flames screeched as he shot it, tiny puffs of amber ichor exploding free as bullets punched home.

  She rolled into a spiny mess of sweet-smelling sage, catching plenty of it in her hair, scraping her face and palms. Michael’s boots landed on either side of her hips and he kept firing, sunshine pouring over his blond buzzcut and turning his eyes incandescent. Now she could almost-see what he called grace, a stream of cascading light spinning around her like cotton candy, swirling towards his hard geometric gleam. It was beautiful, and for a moment she stared slack-jawed, forgetting the pain of her riven head and the terror of memory. The scar along her left forearm flushed with gold; she sensed a massive dozing presence beneath her, the earth ignoring insects crawling on its surface as well as their constantly repaired webs of concrete, not-quite-roused from a baking nap.

  They came from the other side of the freeway, fume-shifting shapes streaking between cars caught in a curious stasis. It was just like the diner, the entire world a bubble of stillness while they loped with that strange, wrong fluidity, and Michael was standing over her, his head down and his hands blurring as he holstered his guns.

  Yes, it was just like the diner—except she could move. She wasn’t trapped helplessly in a cocoon of hardened air. There was all the time in the world to look at the monsters, and a strange almost-pity speared her.

  They crouched inside human bodies, but torqued and tortured flesh past repair with their fury. It would be so easy to help them—just a featherlight touch here, another there, helping each one to shake off the twisting so they could grow straight and true. All they had to do was let go of the anger and they could step out of the steam-wafting sickness, shedding it like a too-heavy coat on a warm day.

  She longed to tell them as much, but something inside her—the calm, practical voice that had spurred her to simply walk away from Eddie’s apartment after he was denied bail—spoke up.

  They won’t listen. You know they won’t. Just keep them from hurting anyone else.

  It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair—but neither was life, and she wasn’t about to let these monsters hurt someone she loved ever again.

  Not if she could help it.

  Somehow her hands were underneath her, and her knees. She scrambled lithely from Michael’s protective closeness, levering herself upright with odd ease. Her head still hurt, her back threatened to lock up, and her left arm burned like it had just been sliced open again, but the pain was a sweetness, a spur instead of a warning.

  “No.” The word fell into the stillness like a rock, spreading ripples of brightness in concentric rings. “I won’t.”

  Michael turned, a supple, fluid motion. His hands ran with sharp-edged, sparkling energy, and there was a shadowy suggestion of great soft feathered shapes behind him, held high and buffeting in great sweeps. He shot forward to meet the shadows, and any question she had about his durability was answered twice over. He met the knot of leaping shadow-creatures with a great cracking, and Jen watched, fascinated, as sound waves spread slowly from the impact. Now she saw why the entire SunnyTime had been smashed—they blinked through space, and displacement or expended kinetic energy spread all at once when the battle was done and the knot holding the physical world aside was sliced cleanly in half.

  She also saw how to catch that spreading energy, shape it, and use it. Her mental touch was clumsy, unpracticed, but it was surprisingly easy. All she had to do was decide, and the world practically leapt to obey.

  But only within narrow parameters.

  Jenna tipped her head back, gazing at the infinite lens of the smog-touched sky, its blue broken by only a few high, fleecy clouds. We need help, she thought, as clearly and loudly as she could. Please, if you’re out there, we need help.

  Her mouth opened and a pillar of force broke free, pouring upward and blossoming into rosy gold as it hit the sky. It lingered, a second sun casting sharp inkspill shadows. Her hands fell back, her spine arcing, and one of the shadowed things crumbled as Michael swung a bright silver sword-length through its midsection, using the spin in the movement to carry him to the next hideous horned thing, its teeth champing and rank with venomous, dripping foam. A thin golden gleam scintillated around him, a shield she wasn’t aware of fueling until she felt it as the flare from her lips died and she staggered.

  Wow. The thought stuck in golden syrup, rotating lazily. What the hell was that?

  Her chin tipped back down, her eyes widening, just in ti
me to see a crafty, slinking shadow streak from her right, straight for Michael’s back. It leapt and hung in midair, straining and fuming, and another cry gathered inside Jen’s chest with the trembling heat of a star about to explode.

  Fragile Mortal Frame

  The half-dozen closest unclean were simply hunting hounds, fast and vicious but essentially brainless. The one streaking for his back was of slightly more concern, but he was ready to slip aside when it had committed to its final lunge, letting it drive itself into the knot of its fellows before him. He moved, and the thing clipped his shoulder, sending him spinning. Even that was fine, he could use the momentum, and he was moving so fast it didn’t even hurt.

  Then a warm, painless impact hit his back, pinning him like a dead, stretched butterfly. It passed through him, a ripple of force raying along patterns very much like his marks, and the pressure of many unclean massing for the real attack was pierced by multiple swords of light thudding to ground around him.

  His brothers landed amid sliptime-stalled cars, their boots thumping on pavement, gravel, or yellowed grass eking out survival between the petals of concrete cloverleaf. Hurtful brilliance radiated as legionnaires sensed an Incorruptible and their marks pulled hungrily at her clarity. Bright blades clove unclean flesh, and diaboli shrieked. Michael found himself in the middle of a unit, falling into their rhythm as if he was at practice in the abbeys just after his long-ago awakening. It was good to fight with them again, good to sense their unity, their strength, their nearness.

  He hadn’t realized how much he missed it.

  The unclean—reckless of them, to come out in daylight and in such numbers, but the prize of a semi-unprotected Incorruptible was too great—poured from the east and north, attempting to flank their prey. The alert had no doubt gone out in Victorville, putting a crowd practically on the truck’s back bumper. The approaches had indeed been watched.

  What is going on?

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the glowing core behind him, Jenna a volcano of force multiplied by each legionnaire drawing strength from the Principle enfleshed.

  She’s not ready. This much grace could burn a fragile mortal frame, and she had no practice regulating its flow.

  Sliptime trembled like a soap bubble, and the release of combat-pressure was almost painful. These were not mere legionnaires but centurions, and Celeres too, their swiftness outpacing both legionnaire and unclean even in sliptime. There were three—a red and two blues—bulleting through the malformed ranks of unclean and slaying as they went; there was even a Decurion in heavy armor chased with the light of grace, every sweep of his spear shattering a rank of diaboli.

  Michael was supposed to fight with the infantry, but he fell back, his place in the unit closing over like water smoothing sand. The battle was won, anyone could see as much—and that meant he had to reach Jen.

  She stood, straight and slim as a young sapling, her chin lifted and her dark eyes flashing. Her hair was a halo again, honey highlights glittering in thick California sunshine, and the egg of clarity around her almost hurt even a legionnaire’s eyes. He strained through sliptime as more of his kind thudded down on streaks of light, their appearance spreading ripple-circles; every car on the freeway was going to have a bad time when the battle was over and air, metal, glass, and other materials took their revenge.

  He couldn’t think about casualties now.

  Michael’s boots left the ground. He slid out of sliptime as his arms closed around her and they both flew, a hard shell closed around a tender inner core rolling through grass smoking just before it combusted from slip-friction. He took the shock of tumbling out of sliptime, a hideous crunching blow snapping half his reinforced ribs and also his left femur, a bright starry instant of pain before grace roared through him again, bathing hurts in electric honey.

  Even now she was holding the gateway open, allowing the Principle to speak through her. If she didn’t stop soon she was going to combust, and Michael would have failed at the last possible moment.

  No. Please, no.

  Rolling, tumbling, his flayed hand at the back of her head and silky hair tangling over his bloodied fingers, the marks howling with light as they repaired damage in swift merciless tugs, he swallowed a hideous barking cry and they came to a stop on the slight hillside with a bump. He lay on his back, arms and legs cradling his lumina, and a deathly gray doze threatened to swallow him.

  Stay awake.

  It was no use. He’d damaged himself, possible irreparably. The Legion clustered them both, Celeres streaking through sliptime and the Decurion giving a bell-like battlecry signaling disengagement. Battle-hardened hands used all the gentleness they could to lift the Incorruptible from Michael’s shattered frame, and they bore her away while more of their kind arrived in waves to cleanse the stain of diaboleri—and, not so incidentally, to cover the retreat as legionnaires carried her uphill to a long black helicopter descending in defiance of municipal codes. The wind-roaring craft barely touched the ground before she was bundled in, and it had lifted free by the time sliptime broke, signaling the end of the battle.

  The red Celeres halted next to Michael, whose spine bowed as the sudden absence of grace made itself felt. The officer looked down, a legionnaire with the characteristic high nose and sharp chin, his marks roiling at throat and wrist, covering the back of his hands, his gloves tattered and his boots smoking from sheer speed. The officer’s hair stood up angrily, a short crimson ruff, and he stared down with dark, dead eyes until the two blues, their hair clipped so short you could barely see a cerulean sheen on their skulls, lifted Michael and bore him away as well.

  During the Breaking

  The suite was quiet, and soft, and smelled faintly of vanilla. The bed was big enough to swallow Jenna twice over, gossamer netting falling from a great hoop hung overhead and pooling on pale carpet on each side, high wrought-iron finials rising from every corner of the four-poster. Evening indigo filled wall-to-floor windows, gems winking as the whole of L.A. turned on its lights. Rivers of traffic moved along the streets and other tall buildings clustered close.

  Everything looked different from this high up.

  The apartment was gorgeous. A gas insert fireplace stood sentinel in the spacious living room with its white leather couch and broad chairs, a ginormous flatscreen hung on one wall; the open kitchen had granite countertops and sleek stainless-steel appliances, the bedroom held a walk-in closet the size of her old place. An extremely high-end sound system lurked in a cabinet under the flatscreen; it looked like a space-shuttle console. There was a big tiled bathroom with a clawfoot tub big enough to support an entire pond ecosystem, and a smaller half-bath near the front door.

  Her legs were a bit unsteady but the devouring headache was gone, and she was ravenous. The capacious fridge held nothing, bare and white inside, but there was a brand-new, pristine filter pitcher on the counter next to the kitchen sink, and she found glasses standing at attention in one of the cabinets.

  It was like a stage set. Well, she was in L.A., after all.

  “We’re having groceries delivered,” Paulus said. He was the really thickset guy, even bigger than Michael, the wide lines of his tattoos moving slowly over his bare arms. A white T-shirt strained at his chest, and an observer might have thought he was Michael’s cousin. He had the same high-prowed nose, and the same diffident way of moving, as if he understood his own size and furthermore that the world around him was fragile. “Is there anything special you’d like?”

  She set the glass down, gingerly. “I don’t know.” Her stomach made a brief, unhappy sloshing noise. Good Lord, she hoped nobody ever dropped an egg in here. Granite was nice, but the cleanup was probably never-ending. And that white couch—who in their right mind would want furniture that easy to stain?

  “It can be overwhelming.” The bald one was Malachi, and his head-stubble showed a ferocious widow’s peak. The stubble was also the exact color of blue raspberry Kool-Aid mixed with two packets of powde
r to only one ration of sugar, and his eyebrows were black with a tinge of cobalt at the ends. He looked a little like Michael as well, except for his deep-set eye-sockets and the tiny glowing pinpricks in his pupils. Little blue stars, caught in a round black sea.

  Were they all related? Now there was a question, and one she didn’t really think she wanted the answer to. They came from elsewhere, and she didn’t think they meant Poughkeepsie, as Mom might have said.

  “Where’s Michael?” she asked, once more.

  And again, they exchanged a Significant Look, like her parents discussing things little Jenna shouldn’t hear. How much had Mom and Dad known about this? Anything at all?

  “Gabon is resting,” Paulus said, finally. “We have to make sure he’s not...”

  “Not what?” She restrained the urge to hug herself, but only halfway; she cupped her elbows in her palms and hunched her shoulders. They were bringing her clean clothes as well as groceries. Or at least, that’s what they said.

  “You have to understand, we didn’t even know you existed until this morning.” Malachi was the one who had lifted her onto the helicopter and held her waist while the thing lifted off, leaving Michael sprawled in the grass surrounded by those horrible things and the other legionnaires, all still fighting. “We got reports of diaboli activity coming down the road, and a trap-team got their hands on a few and questioned them. The unclean knew all about you, and we didn’t.”

  It was one thing to hear Michael talk about this stuff. It was another thing to be bundled out of a helicopter and into a skyscraper full of expensive fixtures, whisper-quick elevators, and humming activity, and to hear a bunch of brawny, strange-eyed men saying the same things he had.

  “That’s impossible. Michael called in.” She wished they’d just bring Michael to the room and leave her alone for a while. They’d been over this before, Jen’s story jumping around in time as she tried to make them understand, words tumbling out of her all mixed up and crossways. “He had a laptop, he did it days ago after those things came into the diner and—”