In the Flesh

by K D Grace

  That seemed to be enough for Magda, though. She gave a decisive nod and stood. “Good, then I suggest you get some rest. Michael will stay with me for safety’s sake and Alonso, if you would see to Susan’s safety, I’d appreciate it. When the time comes, when it’s fully dark, you’ll escort Susan and Michael out in what will be seen as your effort to keep your own people safe. I’ll find my own way to Chapel House, and by the time they arrive I’ll be waiting there. Oh, don’t worry,” she waved a dismissive hand at me, “I promise the Guardian will have no clue that I’m there. I’m good at hiding, and I’ve hidden from way scarier bastards than Him.”

  As everyone stood to leave, Michael strode out without so much as a backward glance, and I felt the lack of him as though someone had ripped my heart out.

  It was Alonso who supported me, whispering softly against my ear. “Let him go, my darling girl. Let him do what he must for Annie, for you.”

  Everyone filed out of the room except Talia, who came to Alonso’s side. “Cook’s waiting in your room. It’s his turn, and you need to feed.” Before he could protest, she said, “Now’s not a good time for you to be weakened, Alonso, now go and feed. I’ll take care of this one,” she offered me half a smile, “and when you’re done, we’ll be in her room.”

  Alonso dropped a cool kiss on my forehead and left the room with a quick backward glance.

  Feeling like I’d been gutted with a spoon, I followed Talia up the stairs to my room. Neither of us spoke, and though I was completely strung out, I knew I wouldn’t sleep.

  As she opened the door and stepped aside for me, I was just about to ask if we could go back for my computer when she shut the door and locked it. Before I knew what was happening, she pulled me into her arms, taking my mouth with a deep, probing kiss.

  I gasped and tried to push her away as her power overwhelmed me. My knees gave, and we half settled, half fell onto the Aubusson carpet.

  “Listen to me, Susan Innes,” she spoke against my mouth in between urgent kisses. “We don’t have much time. Michael asked me to give something to you after everything was all over.” She covered my mouth with her hand when I tried to question. “But I made an executive decision not to wait. I don’t believe in subterfuge, and I don’t believe in keeping vital information from people. It causes more damage than it does good, and you’re the scribe, not some silly helpless little girl. Now hold still, be quiet and let me give you what he wants you to have.”

  She kissed me again, and this time I wrapped my arms around her neck and kissed her back. The floor gave way beneath me. The whole world gave way. I knew that Talia was more than just a succubus—though that was frightening enough—but her powers were far more formidable. Michael had called her a living flash drive, and I understood why as she took my mouth in what was so much more than just a kiss, and suddenly it was Michael I was kissing.

  We stood together in the hallway by the stairs, him pressing me tightly against the wall, him caressing me, him holding me. But he slapped my hands away when I tried to undo his jeans. “There’s no time for that now,” he said, “I need you to listen to me, Susan, just listen. I love you. I’ve loved you since long before I ever met you. Angels have eternity stretched out before them. They can see all time as it plays out; no beginning, no end. It’s a terrifying thing to face time with no end. In order to stay sane, we choose a moment, an experience, a person, and we focus on them. They are our true north. You were mine long before my fall from grace. You were my reason for holding on and my reason for fighting my way back from the Guardian.

  “Perhaps this is the reason for my whole existence, and now that I’m human, now that I am mortal, I can give it all up and let it go knowing that you’re safe, knowing that you’ll go on to become the scribe you were intended to be. Listen to Magda. She’ll teach you. She’ll guide you, and she’ll comfort you when you feel you can’t go on. Only listen to her, and never forget that I love you. If anything of a person lives on, then let it be that, let it be my love for you.”

  And once again I was lying on the floor wrapped in Talia’s arms, struggling hard to get away. “He’s going to sacrifice himself. I can’t let that happen! Let me up, damn it! Get off me, Talia.”

  But she didn’t. Instead she straddled me and pushed me down hard to the floor, trapping my wrists in her hands. “What I gave you,” she managed, breathing hard, “that was from Michael. What I give you now is from me, what I’ve discovered, because you need to know. You need to know what’s happening.”

  This time the kiss was little more than a breath at first, and then it was as though I were standing on the battlement in the storm, and I was the one falling, endlessly falling from the tower. But all that disappeared with a jerk and a tremor, and I found myself standing in front of Magda Gardener’s little bothy, safely hidden behind a hawthorn thicket. Oh, it wasn’t me, of course. It was Talia, but I saw it all through her eyes. I knew I shouldn’t be there, but I had to know what was going on. Someone needed to know what Magda was up to, so I hid and watched and listened as she spoke with Michael.

  “You know there’s no other choice now,” Michael said. “If you turn me while the Guardian’s inside me, then He won’t be able to escape. He’ll be trapped.” His laugh was tinged with bitterness. “The bastard has inadvertently given us a way to trap Him, and what churchyard doesn’t benefit from one more stone angel?”

  “I can’t do that, Michael. You can’t ask that of me. You can’t.” The anguish in the woman’s voice vibrated through the whole room, even through the rocks of the foundation and the menagerie of sculptures around it.

  “Magda, Magda, listen to me.” He knelt in front her and took her face in his hands, careful not to disturb the glasses. “You have no choice and you know it as well as I do. He’s gotten into me. He won’t go away, and He won’t stop until He has Susan, and Annie is dead. Then, you’ve already said it, He’ll come after all of Alonso’s people, starting with Reese, just for revenge’s sake. And once that happens, there’ll be no one standing in His way. Magda, you know I speak the truth.”

  “Not you, Michael. Not you! You don’t deserve this.” The woman was actually crying. “No one deserves this.”

  “That’s right, no one does. But that’s not important, that doesn’t matter. Annie and Susan, keep them safe. That’s what matters. Susan, she is a scribe, a true scribe. She writes the truth of what happens, she writes the possibilities. You have to keep her safe. And besides,” he said, settling back onto a rough wooden bench, “I love her. You know I love her.”

  I heard the soft patter of something hard and tiny, like seed pearls hitting stone, but ignored the sound as Michael continued. “Don’t you see, once He’s inside me, He’s vulnerable. We can trap Him forever and it’ll all be over. Finally it’ll all be over.”

  Magda Gardener laid her glasses aside and buried her face in her hands.

  For a long moment Michael sat silently next to her. Then he reached out and took her into his arms. When she straightened, he turned and looked away while she reached for her glasses. And then she wiped her eyes with her fingers and the sound of seed pearls broke the silence.

  It was then that I saw it—the tears on Magda’s cheeks were wet only for a moment. I blinked and blinked again. Surely I was imagining it, but the tears were transformed to tiny stones, not much bigger than grains of sand as they slid off her cheeks and into her lap and fell onto the floor.

  “Do you understand?” The voice came from a long way off. “Do you understand now, Susan?”

  I glanced around me at the stone menagerie of every animal, no matter how small, perfectly carved in incredible, impossible detail. Another stone angel, Michael had said. When you change me, he had said. It couldn’t be. When I give the word, Magda had said, you close your eyes, you close them as tightly as you can, and you don’t open them for anything. Not for anything, until I say it’s okay. That’s what she’d said. That’s what she’d repeated. That’s what she’d stressed. She always
wore the dark glasses. She wouldn’t let me look at her when she came to me in the crypt. It all made sense now, and yet it was impossible, so totally impossible.

  “It can’t be. It just can’t be. It can’t.” I came back to myself sitting on the floor leaning against the bed, my head resting on Talia’s shoulders, repeating over and over again, “It can’t be. It’s impossible. It can’t be.” But I knew the truth at last, in my gut I knew the truth. “Magda Gardener—she’s… she’s Medusa.”

  Talia held me in her bright blue gaze. “Now you understand. And you needed to understand because you’re the scribe and you write the story.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “She’s going to turn him to stone. She’s going to trap the Guardian inside him. Isn’t she? Isn’t that what she’s going to do?”

  No answer was necessary, I knew the truth of the plan, and Talia didn’t bother to respond.

  “I have to stop her! I have to stop her from murdering Michael!”

  I didn’t make it to my feet. She pulled me down hard enough to jar the breath out of me and held my arm in a vice grip I was sure would leave bruises. “Sit down, stupid woman! Didn’t you hear anything she said? She doesn’t want to do this. Do you think she would ever, ever consider such a thing if there were another alternative?”

  “But she’s Medusa! She’s fucking Medusa!”

  “I fucking know who she is,” Talia said. “And so does everyone else in this household. She’s the woman who saved us all from our worst nightmares. She’s the woman who does what she has to in order to protect her own, and sometimes that calls for sacrifice.”

  “But it’s not her sacrifice, is it?” I said. “It’s Michael’s sacrifice.”

  “Don’t you think she would gladly give herself in his place if she could? She’d do anything for Michael. They’ve been together for a long time, longer than either of us has been alive, but the Guardian has left her no choice. Even if she were to refuse it, Michael won’t. For your sake, Michael won’t.”

  “Then let it be me! Let me be the sacrifice. Surely a stupid scribe can’t possibly be worth the value of an angel, and it’s my fault. This is all my fault!”

  “It can’t be you, little girl.” She released my arm and let me get up this time. “You can’t hold Him long enough to let Magda do what she has to. You can’t hold Him long enough to distract Him.”

  “How do you know?” I paced the carpet, eyeing the door, wondering if I could make a break for it, though not at all sure how to get to Magda’s bothy if I did.

  “I don’t know,” Talia said. “But as for your value, yes, a scribe is worth more than an angel. Much more. Haven’t you read there are myriad angels? They’re three for a pound at Sainsbury’s.”

  When I glared at her she backpedalled. “All right, the ones who leave heaven are few and far between, but that still doesn’t matter. A scribe is rarer by far, and a real one, one that could do what you did, is a precious thing. None of us has ever met one before, and neither has Magda.” She raised a hand before I could interrupt. “But even that wouldn’t matter to her if there was another way. Michael has been her friend and companion for a very long time. She does this for two reasons. Michael will have it no other way, first of all. And secondly, there is no other way, and your Annie’s life is not the only life at stake.”

  “I don’t care! I won’t accept it! I can’t. If I’m a scribe then maybe I can hold Him just like Michael can. Maybe I can distract Him.”

  Talia folded her arms across her chest and looked me up and down. “Possibly, but Michael would never allow you to make that sacrifice. Besides, such a thing is a waste of a scribe’s powers.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She stood and moved in front of me, blocking my path and, for a second, I thought she was going to kiss me again. Instead she held me in a hard blue gaze. “You’re a scribe. You wrote Him free. You wrote the Guardian free. Oh, it’s true that He deceived you into doing it, but at the end of the day you were the one who wrote the script, Susan. The proof is downstairs on your computer.” She nodded toward the door.

  I stepped back and nearly fell onto the bed. Suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the room. My heart felt as though it had gone into freefall. “Wait a minute.” My words came out thin and raspy. “Are you trying to tell me that I really could… write Him back into His prison?”

  Before she could answer, there was a soft knock on the door, and we both jumped.

  Alonso stuck his head in looking like someone had just run over his dog. We stepped apart and turned to face him, but vampires don’t miss much, or at least this one didn’t. He glanced at me and then at Talia and simply said, “You told her.”

  “She needed to know,” Talia replied, holding his gaze defiantly.

  “Yes, she did,” came the unexpected response. “I was coming to tell her myself, and then…” His voice drifted off and his gaze moved toward the window behind me, where the shutters were still tightly drawn from his last little run-in with daylight. He forced his gaze back to his familiar. “It’s just as well you did.”

  “You’re going to Magda,” Talia said, as though she were already certain of what Alonso would do. But then, she was his familiar and his friend and they’d been together long enough that they probably both read each other pretty well.

  “I am, yes. I’ll try and present an alternative plan.”

  “Do you have one?” I could see by his expression that he didn’t.

  “I am known for, what is the saying, pulling things out of my arse at the last minute. We shall hope that my arse will provide. Otherwise…” His voice drifted off for a second time, and then he forced a smile. “Otherwise I shall petition for a little more time, then perhaps we can find another solution, though I’m not hopeful.”

  “Does anyone ever call her Medusa anymore?” I asked, fighting a rise of bitterness in my throat at the thought of what was about to happen.

  “Not in a very long time,” Alonso replied, “and such a pity that the stories and lies about her have tainted such a noble name. Her name means to protect, to rule over. Did you know that, my darling girl?”

  “I… didn’t. No.”

  “And she is truly worthy of that name.” He stepped in so close to me that I could feel the breath he didn’t need against my cheek. “She paid a terrible price to be free of that past, and it’s no hardship for those of us who know her story to honor her with whatever name she chooses for herself. In truth, our parents give us names they choose, names that suit them, but only we can know our real identities.”

  For a moment, we all stood in silence. Then he squared his shoulders to the task at hand. “I’ll leave you in charge of our little scribe, Talia. I have asked that her laptop be brought up for her in case she should choose to chronicle the events.” He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t borrow trouble, my darling girl. The day is not yet lost and we must stay in the moment allotted to us.” He brushed my hair away from my cheek, then turned and left just as the maid arrived with my Mac.

  Talia took it from her and placed it on the makeshift desk, then she settled in the middle of the bed cross-legged, almost as though she were about to meditate. For a long moment, we both looked at the laptop as though it were about to explode, then I moved cautiously and sat down in front of it. Then I stood up and paced. “I don’t know how to do this, Talia. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Well I sure as hell don’t know,” came the reply that was only just this side of indifferent, though I’d learned never to take Talia at face value. “Shall I have Cook bring some coffee? Tea? Whisky?”

  I shook my head and kept pacing, and she kept watching from the bed. “What you did to me.” I nodded to the carpet on which she had pulled me down. “I was there. It was me, at first with Michael and then watching him and Magda together after. I was there. It was so real I could reach out and touch what was around me.”

  “It’s my little sp
ecialty,” she said, looking down at her nails, which I noticed were short, but well manicured. “One of my specialties.”

  “It was real. Completely real.”

  “Of course it was real. You were seeing what I wanted you to see, exactly what I wanted you to see.” She shrugged. “Michael, I like. I respect the angel, I always have. What he asked of me, I wouldn’t have done for most people. It’s…” A blush crawled up her cheeks. “Well, for me and for the person I’m with it’s very sexual, but if he had been someone I hated, or simply someone I wished to feed upon, I could have just as easily turned it all back on him. I could have just as easily given him night terrors, made him think that he had actually killed Annie on the roof, or even made him think that he wasn’t even on the premises when it happened, that he was in Manchester with a chick he’d picked up at a club, fucking her brains out.”

  I shivered and reached for the hoodie Michael had given me. “And you get off on that kind of thing.”

  She shrugged. “I’m a succubus. I don’t expect you to understand what drives me any more than I understand what draws you to that laptop to play with words for hours at a time. But there are some things that exhaust me, some things that drain me rather than energize me, and being a messenger for someone else is one of those things. That’s why I try to avoid it if possible.”

  “So you were exhausted after giving me Michael’s message.”

  “Not so much. His was a message of love. Those are easier, and the other… what I saw, well, it was mine to give.”

  I paced a little more and like clockwork, one of Cook’s assistants—I figure Cook was taking a little break after feeding Alonso—brought a tray with sandwiches and fruit and a pot of tea. The succubus poured, I sipped, had a bite of a smoked salmon and cucumber sandwich, then settled into the chair in front of the laptop.

  I was barely aware that I’d been writing, that there were words appearing in the open document until Talia leaned over my shoulder.

  “Bloody hell,” she whispered. “You do know what you just wrote?”