Killing Rites bsd-4

by M. L. N. Hanover

  And then, like waking up without waking up, I was in the desert.

  For as long as I could remember, the desert had been one of the constant areas in my personal dreamscape. The wind-paved emptiness, the mountains rising on the infinitely distant horizon, the quiet. And as often happened, there were two of me. I saw the paired Jaynés from outside, like I was watching a movie, and I noticed that one of me was actually a mask. With the clarity that comes in dreams, I could see the hairline crack that ran around her face. The place where it would separate, and whatever was inside would come out.

  She was looking at me now. Looking into me. A profound grief washed over me, like I’d lost someone I loved. Like someone died. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t move my mouth. The other Jayné put a finger across my lips.

  Shh, she said. He’ll hear you.

  I knew she meant Ex. A frigid wind came across the empty plain. I smelled the weird burnt-cheese smell of exploded cyclopropane, heard the hiss of the fireplace and it became the hiss of the lantern under Grace Memorial, and I was being buried alive. I was in the coffin and I was shoveling dirt onto it. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. The world got smaller, darker. I was trapped.

  “Jayné!” Ex screamed from a different continent. “Stop!”

  The dream shifted. I was running, only it wasn’t me running. I was in the small, still place two inches behind my eyes, and my body was moving of its own accord. Bare feet skidded on the new-fallen snow, and fresh flakes drifted down like ashes from a fire. I was wearing my big black coat and my pajamas. My hair blew into my mouth and I spat it out without being aware I was going to do it. I leaped over something big and black and half-encrusted in white. The car. I’d just vaulted over the car at the bottom of the hill, and I was sprinting toward the highway.

  I wasn’t dreaming.

  “Jayné!” Ex screamed again, his voice growing fainter. “Fight it! Fight against it!”

  I panicked. I tried to scream. I tried to force my body to stop or slow or do something. I felt paralyzed, except that my body was moving frantically. My breath was a white cloud. Trapped inside myself, I thrashed, pushing out with my will against whatever I could find. Nothing happened. My body skittered down to the bottom of the hill and paused to look back. Ex was running after me: black clothes and white hair in a world of snow and winter-black trees. The rider bolted into the forest, working my legs faster than I could have. I didn’t just run, I bounded. Under the canopy, the snow was a little thinner, the carpet of pinecones and needles hushing under my steps. My feet avoided the snow, my footprints all but invisible. Ex wouldn’t be able to find the trail, not in the darkness. And even if he did, he couldn’t keep up.

  My body slid gracefully down a steep gully, and then clambered up the other side. I’d reached the road. Pale ice snaked up toward the ski valley and down toward Arroyo Seco, the little town at the base of the mountain. The rider paused, crouching at the shoulder. There were stones under the snow now, and a high bank of slush and ice where the plow had come through and scraped the worst of the snowfall to the side. A wide, low SUV trundled past, skis sprouting from the rack on its top like horns. My body waited until the red taillights vanished around the curve, then turned down the hill and started an easy loping run. Not sprinting anymore. Going for distance.

  Stop, I tried to say. Turn back. Stop running.

  Nothing.

  So okay, stomping at the problem like I was killing snakes wasn’t going to help. I tried to calm down, to find a still point in my tiny prison. I’d had a year of practice meditating, focusing my qi, doing small magics. It ought to be good for something. I tried to put aside the fact that every second was taking me farther from safety. I focused on the desert of my dreams, the stillness of it. The calm.

  I found I could feel my body a little bit, but everything was muted. My feet were screaming in agony, but from a long way away. My lungs hurt too. I had a stitch in my side I hadn’t known about; the rider was powering through the pain. It wasn’t the same as controlling my own flesh, but the fact that I was getting reports—even secondhand ones—felt like a start. Slowly, I brought my focus to my right hand, not trying to do anything with it. Just being very, very aware of it. How the fingers curled into a fist. Where the skin tugged at the scab across the knuckles. The numbness across the back where the air was icing me down. My body kept its rhythm. I poured everything I could into thinking about my right hand.

  And then I opened it. I did, not the rider. It closed again almost immediately, but for a second and for a few isolated muscles, I called the shots. It was such a small victory, but I rejoiced all the same.

  Behind us, there was a roar of an engine. My head turned back. Ex’s cute little sports car was somewhere on the road behind us, hidden by the curve of the road. Headlights caught the trees, and the rider shifted, sprinting toward the drift at the side of the road. Running for cover. I shifted my awareness to my knees, trying to bend them double. The rider stumbled, fell, slid against the frozen asphalt.

  Ex’s car came around the bend, fishtailing a little, and caught me in the headlights. The rider sprang up, arms wide, mouth a feral grin. I plucked at it from inside, but my body was still as stone now. The brake lights flared, and the car started to spin, back tires drifting toward the far side of the road. It righted suddenly, jerking toward me. Faster than a thought, the rider danced out of its way. The car stopped, the door spilled open, and Ex jumped out.

  “I command u to stop, devil,” he shouted, running toward me. In the headlights, something in his hand glittered.

  The cry that came out of my throat was rage and despair and grief.

  Get back, I thought, pressing the words out through the air. It’s not me anymore. It’s not safe. Get back.

  But Ex kept coming. His eyes were wide and wild, his jaw set and angry. He lifted his hands, and I felt the power coming off him when he spoke.

  “In the name of Christ, I command you. Release this woman.”

  “I saved you,” the rider said.

  Ex was in front of me now, the headlights silhouetting him. It made the steam of his breath look black as smoke. He lifted his hand. The glittering thing was a medallion, not more than two inches across. My gaze fastened on it like it was a snake. I could feel the rider trying to turn away, but the medallion held it.

  “I said release her!” Ex screamed, and it was more than sound. His raw will was in the word, pressing out of his body and into me. I felt the rider shudder, and then my body was mine again. The agony was transporting: my feet were freezing and cut bloody by running, my hands and face burned with the cold. I blacked out for a second, and when I was aware of myself again, Ex had his arm around me. I limped to the car, groaning and weeping with every step, then huddled in the passenger’s seat, curled in a fetal ball. The pain was immense.

  “It’s okay,” he said, tucking the silver medallion into my hand. “Hold on to this. It’ll make it harder for the rider to come back.”

  “What … is it?”

  “Sigil of St. Francis of the Desert. Tomás put it together.”

  “Couldn’t give it to me before?” I managed through clenched teeth.

  “It only lasts for a while,” he said as he started the engine and put the car in gear. “I was hoping we wouldn’t need it. Try to keep it against your skin.”

  The tires hissed and spun, but we turned around. Sensation was pouring back into my fingers and toes, thawing the places that were numb. I cried out, banging my fist against the door.

  “I can’t move,” I said. “I can’t. Oh God, why didn’t it stop to put on some freaking shoes? I’ll never get up that hill.”

  In the green of the dashboard light, Ex smiled wearily.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “If I have to, I can carry you.”

  I lay back on the car seat, letting the engine murmur to me, and thought about how nice it would be to have somebody to carry me safely home.

  Chapter Ten

  “This is goo
d,” Chapin said. For the first time since I’d met him, he seemed really happy. “Its fear is a good sign.”

  “Plus which, we brought more donut,” I said, a little bitterly. “Chocolate, even.”

  The night hadn’t been much kinder to Chapin than it had to us. His skin was still pale. The darkness under his eyes looked less like a bruise, but it was still there. The other four looked a little better, though Tamblen’s hair was standing up awkwardly in the back, like he’d just gotten up from his pillow. Outside, the snow had stopped and the clouds thinned to a colorless haze. The whole world from my little place up near the ski valley down to Taos proper and out to San Esteban was wedding-cake white, and where it wasn’t—bark, asphalt, the crows that huddled on the branches and wheeled across the sky—it was utterly black by contrast. All shades of gray were gone.

  My feet still hurt. When we’d gotten back to the hill, I had felt a little better. Ex and I sat in the car at the bottom of the hill for a while, letting the heater run. I’d thought about asking him to go up and get me some shoes, but I was pretty sure that leaving me alone in a running car wasn’t going to be high on his to-do list. Rather than put him on the spot, I’d gotten out of the car and done my best sprint for warmth. In the little kitchen, I sat on the counter running warm water over my ankles and feet until the cold stopped hurting. Once I saw that I’d avoided frostbite, I started feeling a little better. Ex went upstairs and came back with a first aid kit. We’d dabbed the cuts and scrapes with antibacterial goop, and Ex used an Ace bandage to press the little silver medallion against my arm, the metal securely against my skin.

  Twice in the night, the magical icon had woken me up, burning, but I’d managed to steal a couple of solid, dreamless hours before dawn. Sinking into the gray couch at the sanctuary now, I’d have been perfectly happy to tip over and sleep away the morning. Except, of course, that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Did you learn anything about the demon?” Tomás asked in his lovely whiskey voice.

  “Hints, maybe,” Ex said. “One thing that stood out was—“

  Chapin made a sharp sound somewhere between a cough and a shout.

  “Not before it!” he said. Then, to me: “Miss Jayné, you will excuse us. We are about to enter a very dangerous place in our battle. We must know all that we can, and we must allow the devil no entrance into our council.”

  “None taken,” I said. “You guys figure out what you need to do, and I’ll wait here. I just want to get this over.”

  “Very soon,” Chapin said, nodding solemnly. “Miguel, please sit with Miss Jayné.”

  “Yes, Father,” Miguel said.

  The others followed Chapin out, closing the doors behind them. I lay my head against the back of the couch and groaned. Miguel chuckled.

  “It’s been a rough week?” he asked.

  “Has,” I said. “And I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping.”

  “There will be time.”

  “You’re sure about that?” I said. “Because that last rite looked like it was aiming for days. And I dot think the thing inside me is weak.”

  “Different demons take different times to mature. The thing in the girl—“

  “Dolores,” I said. “Her name’s Dolores.”

  “In Dolores,” he said with a gentle smile. “It was very old and very sure of itself. The devil within you is still young. Your soul is, for the most part, intact.”

  I looked at him, sitting at the little table. His eyes were dark enough to pass for black, his face sharp at the edges but round in the cheeks.

  “Meaning hers wasn’t?” I asked.

  “Not entirely, no,” he said. “We saved her and the others the devil inflicted with his power, but exorcism doesn’t leave anyone entirely whole. She will be vulnerable for the rest of her life. There will be scars upon her that only God can heal.”

  He must have read my expression, because he nodded as if I’d spoken.

  “I forgot,” he said. “You haven’t accepted Christ.”

  “That’s not exactly right,” I said.

  “No?”

  “I spent most of my life accepting Him. It just didn’t take. I probably clocked as many church hours as you when I was a kid, and I held on to my faith as long as I could. And then …”

  I shrugged.

  “Can I ask you what happened?” Miguel said, speaking each words softly, like a doctor probing at a wound.

  “I stopped believing in hell,” I said. “I wanted to. But I couldn’t square up a God that loves us and cares for us and a place of eternal damnation without the hope of being redeemed.”

  “There are many people who consider themselves Christians who agree with you,” Miguel said. “You weren’t brought up in the Catholic Church?”

  “Evangelical,” I said. “Evangelical but pro-Hellfire. But when I started doubting Hell, that was just the first part. I started wondering about that, and then everything sort of came into question, you know? And the more I looked at it, the more it seemed like there were problems. I mean, did you know there’s no archaeological evidence for exodus of the Jews from Egypt? You’d think if a whole nation of slaves decamped after a bunch of serious God’s-wrath plagues, there’d be some record. There’s not.”

  “And that’s important to you,” he said. His voice didn’t make it a question.

  “Yeah, it is. It’s kind of the difference between truth and a pretty story. Doesn’t it matter to you? I mean seriously, you’ve given your life over to this. What if it turned out that the Bible was all third-century political metaphor and propaganda?”

  “That would be disappointing,” he said. “But I have seen too much with my own eyes that confirms my faith. I have felt the presence of God, and I have seen His work in the world. The evidence of Providence is all through my , and I can’t doubt it any more than I could doubt the sunshine. Take you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. We lost Chewy years ago. He was the best of us, but his soul was tested and he suffered. It was terrible for him, and it was terrible for all of us. We couldn’t help him.”

  “You mean with Isabel,” I said.

  “You know, then?”

  “A little,” I said. “She came to you guys for help. Ex fell for her. When it all went pear-shaped, he blamed himself. Felt like he’d let down God.”

  Miguel’s gaze focused on the empty air, and he crossed his arms. Outside, the crows called to one another. The little refrigerator hummed to itself.

  “It was a terrible thing,” he said. “She took her own life. He was with her when she did. After that, he couldn’t stay with us. Father Chapin only asked that he renew his vows and never again transgress against them. Did he tell you this?”

  “No.”

  “I was there when he was to take his vows again. He couldn’t. Father Chapin led him in it, but the words would not come from his lips. He wept silently, but he could not dedicate himself to the purpose again. Ever since, I wondered why God would have permitted it to happen. We are His loyal servants, and Chewy most of all. What reason could there be for him to suffer what he did? Chewy cast himself into the world. And then he returned. With you.”

  I shifted, the couch springs creaking under me.

  “So you think this was part of a plan?” I said. “That this other girl died so that Ex would drive himself out of the group here, go work with my uncle, and be around to find me?”

  “Chewy brought you here. You look so much like her, she could have been your sister. You are in need of our help, and you would not have found us if things had not happened exactly as they did,” Miguel said, spreading his hands as if offering something invisible to me. “What is that if not providence? I don’t know what God meant by bringing you here. I may never know. But I cannot doubt that He intended it.”

  “Really? Because I can doubt the hell out of it,” I said. “If it hadn’t happened that way, something else would have, and then that would be God’s will. With that kind of logic, any
coincidence is evidence of God.”

  Miguel’s smile was bright as sunlight on snow.

  “Yes,” he said, and without intending to, I laughed.

  “We’re just not going to agree about this, are we?” I said.

  “I have some hope,” Miguel said. “I believe that Hell is the absence of God. God doesn’t cast us into the fire. We cast ourselves there. And we hold ourselves there. It is not His fault that we burn, but the consequence of our own choices. I think you have turned away from God, and you live in the living shadow of Hell. And so I am glad you came, and that you will let us help you. And that you’ve brought Chewy to us, even if it is only for a little while. I pray that casting Satan out of your flesh will change your mind about the merciful nature of God.”

  “I don’t think it will,” I said. And then, “But thank you for helping me anyway.”

  “Of course,” he said. “What virtue is there in helping only the people you agree with? Are there any donuts left?”

  When, a few minutes later, the doors opened and Father Chapin led his cadre back in, Miguel and I had moved on to talking about the relative merits of the Swedish and American versions of Let the Right One In and breaking the last donut between us. The fatigue had fallen from the old man’s shoulders, and even Ex looked actively hopeful. I stood up.

  “Thundercats are go?” I asked.

  “I believe we are prepared, Miss Jayné,” Chapin said. “If you are ready to reject the demonic power within you, we will free your soul.”

  I almost said Nifty. Smarting off was a reflex now. It was the way I told myself that I could deal with whatever made my heart race and my mind start to fishtail under me. Just then it felt disrespectful and small.

  “Thank you,” I said instead.

  “WHEN THE time comes, you must reject it utterly,” Tomás said, squatting beside me on the floor. “It will try to trick you, but whatever happens, you must not waver. Be your strength.”