We Will All Go Down Together

by We Will All Go Down Together (v5. 0) (epub)

  Mother Eulalia nodded. “Yes, I see.”

  “Do you? Rusk’s daughter, what does this angel do? What do we know it does, from your own evidence?”

  “It makes . . . copies of itself. Nephilim. Degrades human beings to breed children. Pretends to be a little Creator.”

  “Yes. And therein lies the only part of it—or parts of it—you can hope to harm. What hurts a possessed body will work just fine on Nephilim, and with far less fallout; they’ve never been human, after all.” Kentigerna gave a great grunt of effort, apparently settling back into whatever position they’d found her in. “Now go,” she muttered, voice fuzzing down into exhaustion. “You tire me, both of you . . . the pretender, too. Go dash your brains out against Heaven’s door and see what it gets you.”

  Eulalia bowed her head. “Thank you, Anchoress.”

  “I don’t want your thanks. Just a promise. . . .”

  “Name it.”

  A pause. “That you’ll leave me alone from now on,” that dry scratch of a voice replied, so hoarse now it made even Blandina’s throat hurt to hear. “Don’t try to make me talk anymore, or eat. Just send someone down to check if I respond, and when I cease to, plaster the slot door over. Screw the memorial plaque in on top, and let me sleep.”

  The despair in her tone was catching. And though not-quite-darkness pressed hard about them, Blandina could still see Cecilia’s moist eyes skitter this way and that, searching for what she already knew she’d find: similar beaten-bronze rectangles trailing away on either side, each bearing a name, a date.

  Only fit that they live out the rest of their lives in their coffins, she thought. Being already dead, and prayed over.

  Leaning forward, lips only inches from the grate, Blandina told the Anchoress: “I’ll do that part myself, unless you’d rather I not.”

  “Do as you please, Atia Rusk,” the Anchoress said, wearily. “You always do.”

  From then on, she was silent.

  This time, Cecilia barely waited ’til Mother Eulalia was out of earshot to turn to Blandina, demanding: “Something I should know?”

  “You? Lots, about a lot. I’m taking it you mean what she meant, though. When she called me—”

  “Rusk. As in the Five-Family Coven? Roke and Druir on the one side, Glouwer, Devize, and Rusk on the other. . . .”

  “That’s right. My birth-name traces to Judas, Alizoun Rusk’s son, born in the Witch-House at Eye. Fostered by good folk after his mother’s burning, he broke free and made his way to the Seychelles, where my kin come from. Made a pile out of ships and trading, old Judas, enough to buy Veritay Island; owned slaves too, and he did what masters do. My Mémé used to tell us bedtime stories about his great-granddaughter, a woman named Tante Ankolee, Angelique Rusk, powerful an’ puissant, who buy she-self out-bondage with her gift. . . . Her son, Collyer, would be my three times great-grandfather.”

  “Which makes you—”

  “Just another bride of Christ, like you, redeemed with His sacrifice. There’s nothing of Alizoun, Judas, or Tante Ankolee ever came down my way but freckles in summer. But Kentigerna felt it from the start, and she never took to me, even though Mother Apollonia chose to believe I meant what I said then, same way Mother Eulalia does, now. So I made my vows, and Christ alone knows I keep them.”

  “And only God can judge?”

  “He certainly hasn’t said any different, not in all these years.”

  They were almost to the armoury door, where Sister Prisca would have a raft of things for them to choose from—blades cooled in holy water, cold iron chased with silver, their cross-hilt handles carved from fully provenanced saints’ bones. Blandina felt her fingers curl, palms itching to find themselves filled, and the battle-longing rose up high in her, stronger than any other hunger.

  But there was Cecilia, still, blocking her way, nose wrinkled and eyebrows hiked. Not quite asking as talking her way through it all like some slow problem, logical to a fault—“Mac Roke made vows too, though. Didn’t he?”

  “Took them and broke them. You’ve seen his family.”

  “But you must’ve known, like the Anchoress did with you. I mean—it’s not as if he was hiding it. His name’s Roke.”

  Blandina paused, made herself think her next words over, carefully as possible. The very thought of revisiting Roke’s betrayal made her so tired she could have wept, but didn’t; her tears weren’t hers to give away, not anymore. They belonged to Him, like everything else.

  “I . . . felt something,” she agreed, reluctantly. “From him; for him. Thought it was just friendship, or maybe the other—I’m not old, or dead. But then. . . .”

  Christ, it really did hurt, still. Enough to make her blaspheme, at least interiorly.

  “We all have our something,” she finished, at last. “I’ve told mine. And even if he’d never told his, he might’ve done good work for us, he’d just kept his word. But—he lied.”

  Cecilia gave her a look that verged on pity. Good thing she couldn’t tell how it made Blandina want to punch her in the throat.

  “To you, you mean,” she said.

  Blandina snorted. “Who d’you think I think I am, sister? I mean to God.”

  She tapped the door-lock, felt it give way. Stared the eye-scan down and strode through as the blast-shielding slid smoothly apart, Cecilia following behind.

  “Would you ever submit?” Cecilia asked, unexpectedly. “Be immured, like Kenti—like the Anchoress?”

  “There’s no one can order you to do it, sister, if that’s your worry. You have to volunteer.”

  “Why would you, though? Why did she?”

  “Because she saw things she didn’t like,” Blandina told her. “Just sometimes, at first, then all the time, ’til she couldn’t see anything else. You can’t fight, like that. So she opted out, went contemplative; prays all day and night on the Ordo’s behalf, using her visions like a direct telephone line to Him.”

  “Roke said he saw something too, just before he withdrew. The thing that wasn’t an angel.”

  “He said a lot of stuff on his way out the door.”

  “Have you seen anything?”

  “Same things you have, all the bloody time. We fight monsters.”

  “Goddamn it, you know what I—”

  Blandina rounded on her, hissing: “Yes. But you don’t ever take His name in vain, Vicky-Cecilia, no matter what we’re talking about—not here, not near me. You don’t dare.”

  “I’m very sorry, Sister Blandina. I wasn’t aware you had a monopoly on faith, around here.”

  Huh.

  Looked like little Cecilia had a break-point, after all. Blandina studied her, measuringly, and was pleased to see her shift into fighting stance, though her hands stayed unfisted. As though Blandina’s attention constituted a threat in itself.

  Good, Blandina thought, approvingly.

  “I can’t do what Roke does,” she told her, at last. “Bad blood aside, I just don’t have that capacity. So no, I’ve never seen anything made me question my vocation, so I’ve never had to make the decision to stay or go. I do one thing only, well enough to merit the front-line, and no matter what every other Rusk before me might’ve got up to, I do what I do for God. Odds are, I’ll be long dead before I ever have to consider making Kentigerna’s choice.”

  “You hope,” Cecilia replied.

  It comes to pass now, just as I hoped for. The Ordo descends upon us with Sisters Blandina and Cecilia in the fore, Mother Eulalia and the others behind. They follow Rose-of-Sharon Hopkinson’s coordinates—a strip mall just across the streetcar tracks, where Mimico blends into the very last of Queen Street East—and find the bowling alley turned club where Penemue Grigorim sits in one of the farthest booths, waiting to be paid homage to by fresh potential victims. Blandina’s team arrives in an ambulance and comes in through the back, some dressed as paramedics, others as police; a tossed m
ixture of smoke bombs, flares, and flash-bangs goes in first to disperse most humans, who will later remember only the vague, traumatizing impression of a kitchen explosion, pulled fire alarms, a general scrambling rout.

  Blandina cuts her deft way through those who linger, a blessed blade in either hand—sparing anything that bleeds red and hamstringing anything that doesn’t, neat as any surgeon, while Cecilia and the rest field the ones she kicks aside. She is a pleasure to watch work even for me, and I have seen far more than my due share of suffering.

  All the while, I hear Mother Eulalia praying under her breath: calling on the contradictorily titled Saint Michael Archangel, Heaven’s foremost assassin, in her sister-daughters’ hour of need. A comfortless mantra, breathed hot through slaughter.

  Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

  The Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered the root of David.

  Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

  As we have hoped in Thee.

  O Lord, hear my prayer.

  And let my cry come unto Thee.

  O Glorious Prince of the heavenly host, St. Michael the

  Archangel, defend us in the battle and in the terrible warfare

  that we are waging against the principalities and powers,

  against the rulers of this world of darkness. Come to the aid

  of man, whom Almighty God created immortal, made in His

  own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the

  tyranny of Satan; help us against all the other unclean spirits

  who wander about the world for the injury of the human race

  and the ruin of souls. Amen.

  Amen, amen. Phantom bells tolling through the thick air, grating painful against my Maker’s faith-scarred skin. Blandina barely seems to hear them, though she moves to their beat, as if choreographed; they hook her muscles taut, loft her step, suffuse and encircle her with a core-hot protection that both cheers and wounds. It forms a shield for my siblings to break themselves against, severed or transfixed at the disinterested pleasure of He who made not only the board, not only the pieces on it, but the universe both board and pieces exist inside.

  A thin thread of extra longing winds upward, meanwhile, raising Eulalia’s prayers all the higher: Anchoress Kentigerna’s contribution to the cause, wafting nerve-thin from the pit she squats in. That concrete cocoon from which she hopes to break, remade, and enter through those gates such as I can never even hope to glimpse, let alone approach . . .

  Blandina is almost at the back, now. She can see my Maker, its long legs crossed, watching her carve her way through its offspring. Bleak and blazing in its barely there outfit, hair like a singing flame, eyes like lit glass. Penemue Grigorim, sower of language and artifice, for whom the word “exquisite” is nothing but a dull, crude insult. And now I am close enough to hear her thoughts: a memory of Maccabee Roke, telling her the real reason angels, as Rainer Maria Rilke tells us, are so terrible—

  “Because they’re evil? Ugly? Because whatever the Bible tells us they are, they’re not?”

  “No, B. Just the opposite. Because they’re so beautiful, they ruin you for anything else.”

  Lovely as a weapon, as a curse; yes, that is Penemue. Lovely as the very living breath of God.

  It could never get away with half the things it regularly does, were it not.

  As Blandina turns her swords our Maker’s way at last, my eldest sibling throws himself in front of her, only to find a blade piercing his throat. Something indefinite exits from him through the eyes, plunging sharply downwards to dissolve against the floor. The illusion of Penemue’s face observes this, but does not seem to react.

  :Atia Rusk,: it names her. :I expected you sooner.:

  Blandina pulls her sword free of my eldest sibling’s wreckage, already curling in on itself, drawing a puff of desiccated blood-dust. Correcting, as she does: “It’s Blandina—Sister Blandina. One name and a title. Not that hard.”

  :Yes, little zealot, I know. But it was as Atia our paths first crossed, yes?:

  “So you do remember.”

  Penemue nods in my direction. :Why not?: it asks. :I have him to recall his mother’s face to me.:

  This, then, is how we first meet. Blandina knows me at once, both from the security feed at Curia and her own images of Ronni Louvin, so well-loved—but that does not make her stare any less pitiless, or make her judge me any more worthy of mercy.

  :One could call him your cousin, I suppose,: Penemue muses. :A useful term.:

  “He’s nothing to me. None of them are.”

  :Oh, I believe you have been told differently, and not too long gone, either.:

  Blandina blinks, and again, her thoughts nudge mine, hearing Mac Roke explain: “. . . all monsters descend from the Grigorim, through their Nephilim: witches and warlocks, psionics, weres, vampires, the Fae. . . .”

  :I know where all my seed is sown,: Penemue tells her, :in its combinations, even unto its last generation. For even as Alizoun Rusk was Nephilim-born, at least in part, so too are you, no matter that you may have sworn yourself to my old master, the Maker of All.:

  “What makes you think I’m interested? Faith is my shield. I don’t have any magic—never did, never will.”

  :Are you so sure? You have lived a long time for one of your Order—survived incredible things, all but unwounded, when others fell about you. Fought toe to toe with horrors, made them fear your name. . . .:

  “His name. Only His.”

  :So you say. But if you claim you do not enjoy your reputation, you are a liar—and lying is a sin.:

  Blandina and Penemue speak quickly, voices low, while Sister Cecilia and the others continue to fight their way forward. Behind Penemue’s back, Mother Eulalia has just entered with fresh troops; she is less than a stride away, mouthing orders Blandina probably does not see, but Cecilia certainly does: Stop, desist, disengage.

  Time is ticking; someone may have called the real police, the real fire department. These incursions need to be brief by nature, and to leave no trace behind.

  “Enough about me,” Blandina tells my Maker. “Time to go, Watcher-no-more. We took a poll—you are very much not wanted.”

  :We both know you cannot do me harm.:

  Blandina smiles. “Not directly,” she says.

  And looks at me again.

  :You think to denude me of my Host? I can always make more.:

  “Not here, though. Or I kill each and every one of them, starting with him, and leave you to walk out of here alone.”

  :Your Ronni would be truly dead, then. All lingering trace of her gone from this world, never to return.:

  “She’s dead no matter what I do, so make your call.”

  Penemue laughs outright, a shaken ice-bell trill—something I have seldom heard, but often enough to know it presages nothing good.

  :I can do far worse things than kill you,: it tells her, rising. :You think you understand, but you do not. If you insult me further, I will do them all and revel in it.:

  Blandina nods. “Then stop talking and show me,” she says.

  As she speaks, Penemue is already in motion, so fast it slips between microseconds to occupy virtually the same space she does, very atoms turning sidelong until it is nothing but light and empty space. One hand solidifies around Blandina’s left wrist and flexes with a bone-break snap. The other arm plunges shoulder-deep through chest and ribage, barely missing her spine; its fingers emerge to curl around her hip, pulling her closer. One sword falls, the other droops, as Pememue’s glorious lips descend—that glowing mouth whose touch refts soul from body, tears grace in half, and spawns such as myself from the debris.

  Blandina fights with all her considerable strength, but it makes no difference. She grates out a prayer that covers her own lips in protective mesh, only to see it spark and wither apart against the
force of Penemue’s breath.

  :He thought, and we appeared, the first among all,: my Maker has told us, often enough. :This is why nothing we have done, or do, can separate us so far from Him that his Word can be used against us.: But though none of us ever doubted it spoke truth, this is the first time I have ever seen the claim tested.

  Most people do not fight an angel, not if they know what they face. Most people would not dare to try.

  Cecilia starts forward, only to meet my grasp halfway; I grapple her down, kicking, and press her to my breast. So it is Mother Eulalia who bridges the gap instead, twisting herself between them—Mother Eulalia who takes Penemue’s kiss like a bullet, single eye rolling back, overtaken too quickly to see her predicament draw the scream mere bodily pain never could from Blandina’s lips.

  The bliss of union is two-way, as ever. It distracts Penemue, letting Blandina slip free, her right-hand blade still tight-clutched, wet face intent. Her other wrist now limp-hanging, she levers herself up, raises the sword as Penemue stays crouched over Mother Eulalia, joined at the jaws; its halo spreads and thickens ’til it covers them both, like some sort of caul. Then humps up, an amoeba caught in mid-split, releasing a flesh-wrapped shard of Mother Eulalia’s raped soul to float free, like spume. . . .

  Thin crying spikes, muffled, mewling. My newest sibling, mourning for its own birth.

  Pinned beneath me, Cecilia—only now realizing what has taken place—flails and shrieks, bucking so hard she knocks her own head on the floor. Mother Eulalia’s chest pops, air-starved, ecstasy-smothered. And Sister Blandina thrusts her blade through the new-thrown Nephilim, pinning it to the wall—stabs into it, and watches it shrivel.

  Lucky, I think. And let my hold on Cecilia slip, rising to meet Blandina with arms outstretched.

  Later, recuperating, Blandina could only see the rest in snatches. Penemue Grigorim looking up, not quite startled, finally roused from its repast; Ronni’s “son” under Blandina’s sword, pinned like a bug. That thing its attentions had ripped from Mother Eulalia, first and last breath still lung-caught, already drying to dust.