Incorruptible

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “I don’t.” Malachi’s smile was knife-edged. “But we will soon, Gabon. Come, let us find you something to wear. Our lumina is waiting.”

  Changed My Mind

  At least the bathroom was nice—too nice to pee in, frankly. The fixtures were all brand new, the sink had a lotus-shaped bowl, and every inch of it was clean as a whistle. The mirrored cabinet was empty and it looked like nobody had ever used the toilet. Even the big clawfoot tub was pristine, and the glassed-in shower glowed secretively.

  Jenna stood near the door leading to the living room instead of to the huge bedroom, listening intently. There was motion in the apartment, and soft male voices exchanging cryptic terms. The fridge opened, closed, opened again; cabinet doors were opened and closed as well. It sounded like her parents come back from the store, exchanging soft snippets of information while they worked.

  Her stomach rumbled again. Eventually, there was a tentative knock on the bathroom door. “Lumina?” It was the thickset fellow, Paulus. “There is an emergency elsewhere. Bernard is here, he’ll take care of you.”

  Which one’s Bernard? She cleared her throat, a small, forlorn sound. “Okay,” she said, then repeated it a little louder. “Okay. Thanks.”

  A long pause, then the front door closed. A tense silence descended, and Jenna reached for the doorknob.

  Don’t. Panic gripped her for a few moments. Don’t go out there.

  It was ridiculous. She was safe here. Michael had told her so, but her hand wouldn’t turn the knob. It simply refused, her fingers changed to ice.

  “He’s gone,” another voice said, a light, amused male tenor. “You can come out, little lumina. I’d like to see you.”

  Something about the words turned her stomach upside-down. Or maybe she was just hungry and paranoid. Who wouldn’t be, after all this?

  Stop being such a coward. She unlocked the door and swept it open, decisively.

  He stood in the kitchen, tall and broad-shouldered, and as soon as Jenna glimpsed him her mouth dried and her stomach stopped flipping, turning instead into a hard, roiling knot behind her breastbone.

  Long nose. Arched, coppery eyebrows. A sharp chin. And that hair, a little longer than Michael’s, standing up in a short, aggressive ruff.

  Red hair. Bright red. His hair was, in strictest fact, crimson.

  All the oxygen surrounding her vanished. She clung to the porcelain doorknob, staring wide-eyed as a kid on Christmas morning looking under the tree.

  This present had sharp white teeth, bared in a lazy, twisted grin. “I must admit,” he said, conversationally, “I never thought you’d survive. I visited the hospital but you’d already returned to the East Coast, and it was crawling with unclean. I thought it was only a matter of time, and surely you’d be collected and drained. Then, as the years went by, I started to wonder.”

  “You,” she managed, a cricket-whisper. Of course, something whispered, deep inside her memory. You knew this would happen. You knew, sooner or later, he’d find you again.

  “Yes.” The red-haired man smiled, rather gently. Warm electric light made his hair a flame, glinted on his teeth, glowed on his white T-shirt. Tiny red pinpricks danced in the center of each pupil, and they dilated as he returned her steady gaze. “They never even knew you’d been on this coast at all, once I tidied up.”

  “My mother…” Oh, God, this was a nightmare, and she couldn’t breathe. She smelled gasoline again, and the sick, thick, sweetish smell of roasting. “You killed my mother.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I was aiming for both of you, and you’ll be with her soon.” He took one step, another, flanking the kitchen island. “You’re quite possibly the last of your kind, mortal bitch, and once you’re gone, we can all go home.”

  Oh, great. Is that why? “But you chose to come here,” she managed. Her lips were numb, and so were her legs, not to mention her arms. “Michael told me. You chose.”

  “Yes,” the red-headed man who had crouched on the burning hood of her mother’s car said. His tone didn’t change—soft, reasonable, quiet. He kept moving, and he was almost around the kitchen island. Step by slow step, and once he was close enough he’d streak for her. She knew how fast they were, she’d seen it up close. “But, you see, I changed my mind.”

  He smiled, bright white teeth lengthening, and the clarity spilling through Jenna changed. It burned, spilling through parts of her still raw-sensitive from the earlier flood; she inhaled to scream, tensing to sweep the door closed. She could lock it, and there was another door into the bedroom. If she could reach that—

  “Don’t fight,” he said, and he’d almost reached the corner of the island. “I’ll make it quick and painless, if you don’t fight me.”

  It was something Eddie might have said.

  Jenna slammed the door, twisted the lock with sweating fingers, and bolted for the bedroom door.

  Very Naughty Indeed

  Maybe it was luck, maybe it was the Principle arranging things; Michael never afterward decided which. At the time, though, when the silver-shining elevator doors opened he was busy staying on his feet, weak from injury and the narcotic fluid of the healing-tank. His ribs were tender, his left leg was unsteady, and the body armor the Celeres had requisitioned for him didn’t help.

  Normally he wouldn’t feel the weight, but at the moment it was a lead suit.

  The Decurion was inside the elevator, frowning, and his mild dark gaze swung past the blue Celeres to Michael, who straightened automatically in the presence of an officer. If this was what promotion felt like, he’d almost rather remain a grunt.

  Get out, he wanted to bark. Where’s my lumina? But of course he couldn’t say it.

  “What are you…” The Decurion paused, then motioned them into the metal box. “Bernard said they wanted me in Control, and wouldn’t tell him why. Where’s Declan?”

  “I don’t know.” Malachi put his arm over the elevator door, holding it open. “There’s no emergency in Control, we just came from Requisitions. It’s relatively quiet down there, they’re just monitoring the city feeds—the unclean are furious, for obvious reasons.” He took a deep breath. “Paulus, I went digging in Records just as you asked, and someone has been very naughty indeed.”

  The Decurion’s expression shifted a critical few degrees. He was only relatively slow in battle, that change said, and not tardy at all above the neck.

  Michael lost his breath. “Jenna,” he said. Hurry up. I don’t care what you do, just get out of my way. “Where is my lumina?”

  “Come.” The Decurion beckoned, a short, chopping motion. A flame had kindled in his gaze, slow to light but difficult to extinguish, the battle-rage of the most stolid and patient of Michael’s kind. “Hurry.”

  At least they didn’t have to climb stairs. Malachi laid out his findings in a few clipped sentences, and Paulus’s face hardened into granite. “Treachery,” he muttered. “There may be an explanation.”

  “But not a good one.” Malachi, somber, glanced at Michael. “I’m glad I fished him out of the Baths early.”

  The lights fluttered, the elevator hesitated for a heartstopping moment, and every legionnaire on seventy-plus floors of Los Angeles skyscraper felt the burst of wild, spiking terror from the fortieth floor.

  Michael’s hands turned into fists. Jenna. He was stuck in this cable-dragged box, and she was in danger.

  “Principle preserve us.” The Decurion reached for the keypad and punched in a series of numbers, overriding all other functions. The doors slid closed and the elevator lifted with stomach-clenching speed.

  “We could burn her, pulling too much force.” The Celeres was pale, his blue stubble standing out in stark relief. Nowadays, mortals would simply think his hair dyed, but not so long ago hats and head-wraps were issued to keep their coloring from exciting suspicion.

  Another burst of terror flowered above them, swelling rapidly as the elevator lifted. It seemed to take forever to reach the fortieth floor, and once the doo
rs opened Michael didn’t wait for the Decurion’s signal or the Celeres’s precedence. He turned hard left, sensing Jenna at the end of long, light-filled hallway, and ran.

  The door was closed and quite probably locked, but he didn’t care. He would simply go through anything in his path, one way or another.

  All that mattered was reaching her in time.

  High Definition

  He was fast, streaking through their funny time-bubble trick and trailing fuming crimson. To make matters worse, he pulled at her, an invisible grasp tangling at her ankles, trying to throw her down. The pain was all through her, the glow they called grace a molten core in her chest; Jenna leapt over the bed, almost falling face-first on the other side as he bulleted past. She dropped instinctively, lovely pale carpet burning her bare elbows, and rolled.

  The redheaded man swooped aside, moving so fast his feet skated over the trembling window, the rest of him almost horizontal. Hair-fine stress fractures bloomed on the glass. The redhead screamed, a high nasty cry like the demons’ glassbreaking screeches, and she scrambled to her feet, caught in the syrupy stickiness of nightmare. She remembered everything, in stunning high definition, not to mention surround sound—the accident hadn’t been the semi’s fault at all, though that hadn’t helped anyone. No, the redheaded man had simply dropped onto the hood of Mom’s car, metal and glass crumpling and bucking wildly. Whatever chance had thrown Jenna free had also hidden her with a crowd of horrified onlookers, and now she understood the deep irresistible panic that had driven her from the hospital that evening despite the doctor wanting to keep her for observation.

  She also remembered the flames coming not from the Volvo’s ruptured gas tank or the semi’s crumpled front, but from the redheaded man himself, and right now tiny burnt streaks followed him as he spun, found his footing, and leapt for her again.

  Jenna scrabbled on hands and feet as the window shattered, sheets of glass exploding outward into a dry, keening wind. The roaring of altitude matched the noise inside her head, and if she could just get to the bedroom door she could run through the living room and maybe make it to the hallway outside—and then what? She didn’t know the layout here, and she didn’t think waiting around for the elevator at the end of the hall was going to be an option.

  Stairs. There’s got to be stairs. And wouldn’t Michael be proud of her for thinking of them. God, she hoped he was all right—

  All this passed through her head in a single, crystalline, adrenaline-soaked instant, and she all but erased the skin on her palms as she monkey-galloped for the door, the carpet burning with friction. Smoke rose; the redheaded man was beginning to fume like one of the awful demon things, smoke-steam trailing in curling ribbons as he charged again.

  This time she didn’t trip because she was already crawl-scrabbling. Instinct trumpeted inside her head and she went flat as he bulleted over her, a sharpness shearing the ends of her flying hair. Then she rolled aside and he crashed through the door to the living room, taking out a good chunk of wall on either side.

  Go the other way. The bathroom again. Move!

  Her head gave an amazing, razor-sharp flare of agonizing pain. A terrific, jolting crash shook the living room, and the building swayed.

  “WHY WON’T YOU DIE?” he roared, and more glass shattered.

  You know, at this point, I’m wondering that too. She gained her feet in a graceless lunge, cough-choking on fumes from burning carpet and scorched drywall. They were really high up, and it was cold—her breath puffed and she scrambled over the bed again, fighting through burning netting and drowning softness.

  More crashing, and he must have guessed she’d try for the other escape route, because the bathroom door exploded. She tumbled back, drywall and wood splinters peppering the bed and making sharp little sounds when they hit sharp, toothy glass shards clinging to the window’s edges.

  The cleanup for this is going to be insane. She strained desperately to turn, to slither away, to do something, anything—but he was too fast, his booted feet sinking into the bed on either side of her hips. The redheaded murderer bent, claws prickling her upper arms. His face, sharp and once handsome, had twisted, suffusing with ugly purple-crimson.

  He looked, in fact, very much like the thing that had stabbed Michael, but without the extra arms.

  The redhead hopped off the bed with a jolt, carrying her with him. Black flowers danced in Jenna’s vision as his left hand closed around her throat; something crackled near her larynx. Her feet dangled; she brought up a knee with hysterical strength and it sank in.

  Hard.

  The red-haired man howled right in her face, and he really did look an awful lot like Eddie, too. The echo was awful, and a great burst of clear, colorless fury flashed through her. I hope that hurt, she thought before he squeezed again, and she kneed him once more; at least she knew some of them were built like human guys. If he would just drop her so she could breathe—

  He bellowed, and the world turned over. He did let go of her, but Jenna couldn’t be grateful for that tiny mercy, because he flung her contemptuously through the broken window into a California night.

  Rejoin the Principle

  It was a beautiful suite, just the sort of cushioned light-filled nest an Incorruptible should have. Except now it was a smashed egg, windows shattered and smoke rising from smoldering streaks. The traitor was using his strength and speed ruthlessly despite the chance of discovery, and one lone, exhausted lumina had little hope of evading him for long.

  One last high-octane burst of terror almost in front of him, and Michael tore diagonally through the living room for a hole blasted in the wall that had probably once held a door. Water sprayed from broken kitchen taps and the bathroom was alive with hiss-billowing steam, and there was the red Celeres, holding a small, thrashing woman by the throat.

  Everything inside Michael Gabon froze.

  The treacherous Celeres howled in her face; he was already twist-fuming with deviance from the Principle, his mask slipping aside. How long had he been working in secret, sliding away from righteousness?

  It didn’t matter. The Celeres gathered himself, sliptime trembling bubble-thin at its expanding edge, and threw her.

  Michael bulleted past him, not even slowing to kill the traitor. The Decurion and the blue Celeres could handle that, should it need doing. He strained against his own weakness, his own too-slow, unwieldy, half-healed body, and lunged to catch her—anything, her wrist, her hair, her shirt.

  Anything at all.

  “NOOOOOO!” the traitor screamed, and something burst from Michael’s back, twin arcs of singing pain slicing through cloth, Kevlar, and ceramic plate; the two invisible feathered things beat frantically to slow him as his clumsy fingers closed around her slim wrist. The jolt was immediate and he tried to dig his heels in, hoping to break enough momentum. Jagged broken-glass teeth sank into his belly with a crunch, and the pain was a fire-whip, goading him.

  Thunk. The glass teeth tore down to his hips, stopping only when his pelvis arrested the motion with a shattering, crunching jolt. Her forward momentum halted, Jenna’s legs flew out, and Michael braced himself.

  This is going to hurt.

  Oh, it already hurt, but he kept his fingers braced around her wrist as she curved to smack against wall or window below, letting out a furious, wounded cry. The red Celeres was behind him, and now was the time, if the traitor had his wits about him, for the foul one to spear him through the back.

  Howling, crunching, high piercing screams. A hot wash of blood and great singing pain poured from Michael’s violated belly but he ignored it, invisible feathered masses pumping furiously from his back as he grabbed blindly with his free hand as well, finding her wrist once more and latching on even more securely.

  Now he had both hands locked on her; all he had to do was hold while the glass sank into his guts and Jenna’s head tipped back on its fragile stem of a neck, vivid bruising already beginning to mar her beautiful, lucent throat. She stare
d up at him, dark eyes wounded and wild, and white feathers streamed into the draft, exploding from somewhere behind and above him as he held on, held on, held on.

  He was losing blood and consciousness quickly, the sudden drop in internal pressure filling him with woozy, dozy alarm. He stared at Jenna, dangling by one wrist, and hoped her shoulder wasn’t dislocated. Her eyelids fluttered, and she almost dropped her chin to look down.

  No, he pleaded silently. No, please, look at me. Don’t go. Look at me.

  The darkness was coming. A massive grating noise behind him was a legionnaire’s death, more crashing and snapping as the red Celeres was given the only mercy he could possibly hope for.

  A swift end, yes, but not painless. Or so Michael hoped.

  His hands were slippery, whether with sweat or blood he couldn’t tell. If he passed out and his grasp loosened she would fall. The lights twinkling below would swallow her, the pavement breaking her fragile body. She would rejoin the Principle, and he would have failed.

  Hot blood soaked his boots. The glass grated against his spinal cord, and it hurt.

  Michael held on. It was simple; even if he bled out his dying bones would grasp her. They would draw her up through the hole, and now that the traitor was uncovered she would be safe.

  Hands reached his shoulders, someone was shouting, but he stared at Jenna and hoped she could decipher his mute pleading.

  Look at me. Just look at me, lumina, and hold on.

  The darkness took him, but Michael kept holding on.

  Good News

  Two days later a long tiled room was a forest of vertical glass tubes, most of them clean and bare but a few full of vile-looking green liquid and indistinct, floating shapes. One, separated from the rest by a row of empties, held what they were looking for, and Jenna shivered as she halted before it, relief warring with fresh unease.