“Do you?” Chapin said. “You think it plausible that I am the victim of the devil’s cunning. You have brought a woman to me who is now using the aid we have offered her to tear apart the trust and camaraderie that we rely upon. Are you certain that you are not the one who is wrong? Ah?”
“I’m not certain,” Ex said “It’s possible the Black Sun put the whole thing together from the start to undermine you and this group. I don’t think that’s what happened, but no, I can’t be sure.”
The sense of betrayal, of loss, was like getting punched in the gut. The air actually went out of me.
“Ex,” I said, and Chogyi Jake put his hand on mshoulder.
“I am a little confused by all this, though,” Ex said, waving at the room. “This is something we can test. Akaname are subtle, but they’re not perfect. Now that we know what to look for, it won’t be that hard to figure out whether it’s true or not.”
Chapin folded his arms. His face was flushing red.
“You would do her bidding, then?” Chapin said. “Take the weeks or months it would require to cleanse us all and in the meantime let the devil rule the countryside?”
“Won’t take weeks,” Ex said. “We can get this done in ten minutes.”
Ex drew a small velvet box from his pocket. For a second, I pictured him going down on one knee in front of Chapin. Ex opened the box and casually withdrew something wrapped in a bit of white cloth. I looked over my shoulder, but Chogyi Jake shook his head. He didn’t know what Ex was up to either.
“I have the Mark of Taiqing,” Ex said. “I got it a few years back when I was tracking a noppera-bo. I didn’t wind up using it then. So …”
He held up a bright silver disk. Chapin shook his head sadly.
“There is no holy magic save that which is given us by Christ,” Chapin said.
“It won’t do anything more than identify the presence of a bakemono. It’s folk work, but it will do for what we need now. If nothing comes from it, then we can stop screwing around with it.”
Chapin shook his head in disgust, but held out his arm, as if daring Ex to touch the little silver disk to his skin. Ex shook his head.
“Not you, Father,” he said. “Just Tomás.”
All eyes turned to Tomás. His thick shoulders, his well-worn face, the brown of his eyes. After the oil-black eyes and filthy tongues of the Akaname that had possessed Dolores and Soledad, the pistol in his hand seemed weirdly prosaic.
“Umm,” Carsey said. “Tomás, my dear, you seem to be pointing a gun at us?”
“My old friends,” Tomás said, his voice rough and sweet as salt and honey. “You will step aside. Now.”
Chapin’s expression was disappointment and disdain.
“I will not let you leave, demon,” he said. “I have been humbled enough for one day. In the name of God, and of his Son and the Holy—“
Tomás raised the gun almost casually. The report was louder than I’d expected. Father Chapin doubled over, clutching at his belly as the rest of us jumped into motion. I ran toward Tomás as Miguel threw himself onto the shooting arm, dragging the gun down. The second shot dug a hole in the brick floor. Ex and Tamblen got to the rider a half second before I did.
“The gun! Get the gun!” Carsey shouted from someplace behind me as I plowed into Tomás like a linebacker trying to knock down a fence. I felt the bones creaking in my shoulder, and the rider stumbled back, the four of us weighing it down. And then the Black Sun took over, and I dropped to my knees. Ex had Tomás’s gun hand now, helping Miguel push it down. Tamblen was behind Tomás, wrapping him in a bear hug. From where I knelt, my fists went out in a flurry of straight punches to Tomás’s groin, ending with a furious uppercut. Something under my knuckle went soft in a way that felt painful even to me. Tomás staggered, his mouth gaping open and his eyes closed like a caricature of agony. I shifted back, rose to my feet, and sank my right heel just below his rib cage. The gun went off again, but my gaze didn’t leave the rider. When his eyes opened again, they were a perfect black.
With a roar, the Akaname lifted its arms, tossing Ex and Miguel backward to the floor. The stench of sewage rolled through the room in a nauseating wave. Tamblen, behind the thing, had his arms around its neck. Faster than a snake, the black tongue flickered out of Tomás, wiping across Tamblen’s lips and forcing its way into his mouth. He fell back gagging, and the rider lifted its arm toward me.
It still had the gun.
“I forbid this,” my voice said without me.
“You forbid me nothing,” Tomás said, his voice lisping, slushy around the inhuman tongue.
I felt something behind me, soft and warm, like someone had turned on a heat lamp. Like knowing someone from the sound of his cough or a single footstep, I recognized Chogyi Jake’s gathering will. The rider’s dark eyes flickered away from me. It was all the chance we needed.
I kicked hard, the front of my foot hitting squarely on the butt of the gun. The pistol went off again, the bullet hissing past my ear, but the rider lost its grip. The gun spun through the air, landing with a clatter by the far wall. Dark blood poured from Tomás’s hand, and his index finger bent at an improbable angle. The rider howled in pain, the raw power of the sound staggering us. In my peripheral vision, I saw Chapin trying to sit up, Carsey at his side.
The Akaname was becoming less human with every second. Slime bubbled out of Tomás’s skin. His hands and face lengthened, his mouth pressing out from his face and growing round as an O. Its tongue whipped out faster than I could dodge, wrapping around my ankle and pulling. There was no way to stay standing, so I didn’t try, dropping to the ground instead and rolling away.
“In the name of Christ, I bind you! In the name of God, I bind you!”
The voice was Ex’s, but the power in it felt strange. I looked over for a quarter second. At the side of the room Ex was kneeling, Miguel and Tamblen at his sides, their heads bowed, their hands in his. The force in his words was the three of them, joining together. The Akaname turned toward them, and I kicked the back of its knee, staggering it.
“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, I bind you, demon! You have no power here.”
The words carried their collected will like hammers falling on an anvil. I’d felt something like it before: the relentless, punishing assault of the rite of exorcism. It wasn’t the most powerful magic I’d seen. Calling upon God to help didn’t seem to give them any more power than three disciplined, trained, practiced minds joined together might give.
It was plenty enough for my purposes. I rolled up to my feet, using rque to drive my elbow up into the bottom of its jaw. I felt the jawbones come together hard as pincers, and the three feet of reeking, corrupt tongue fell to the floor, writhing. The rider pressed both hands to its mouth, black, clotted blood gouting between its fingers. I willed myself to attack again, to beat its skull concave and end it, but my body wasn’t my own. Instead, my hands lifted the severed tongue. It shifted against my palms, pulsing and alive. It was about the texture of liver, but rougher. I held it over my head.
“I am Sonnenrad, who you denied. I am the Voice of the Desert. I am the Black Sun and the Black Sun’s daughter!”
What Chapin and his men had gnawed and beaten and pried to get came out now like a flood. I felt its will burning, rising up from the base of my spine, through my belly, my heart, my throat, and I screamed it out. For a flickering moment, we weren’t in the snowbound sanctuary but the desert. My desert. The tongue in my hands tugged and whipped itself in the heat and dryness and vastness.
When I spoke again, I could feel the words tearing at my throat like I was screaming them, but they sounded barely louder than a whisper.
“In my own name and the name of my mother, I bind you. You are ended. Go.”
My will detonated, the wave front running out in all directions, as I stood at the center, the Akaname’s tongue lifeless and dry as ash in my hands. A profound silence took the room as I lowered my hands. Tom
ás lay on the brick floor, curled in a fetal position. Blood poured out of his mouth. His eyes were glazed and empty, but he was breathing. Chogyi Jake came to my side, his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m fine,” I said as I turned and almost fell to the floor. “Okay. I’m not.”
Carsey helped Chapin to sit on the table. There was blood sheeting down the old priest’s belly and leg. Wide red streaks marked his face and neck. But the tough old bastard was smiling.
“Well done,” he said. “Oh, well done, well done.”
I leaned forward, resting on my elbows. I couldn’t catch my breath.
“That was a good day, I’d hate to see your bad ones,” I said. “Ex!”
“I’m right here,” Ex said. He was maybe six inches to my right and I hadn’t seen him. I was distantly aware of the others moving in the room. Tamblen walked by. He was weeping, but he still looked bored. Something about the shape of his face, I guessed. Chapin’s blood smelled hot and coppery, and I realized the stink of the Akaname was gone. Also, I’d been going to say something, but I couldn’t think what it had been. I let my head sink down for a second, resting my forehead on the table between my wrists.
Beating the wind demon hadn’t done this to me. To us. I wondered how much damage the exorcism had done to my rider, and how—if—she would ever recover.
“Mark of Taiqing?” I said. “Where’d that come from?”
“Actually, it was just a quarter,” Ex said. “Figured the bluff was worth trying.”
“We’re going to get the car ready,” Carsey he stroked Father Chapin’s hair. “Tamblen can drive and I’ll apply pressure. We’ll have you to the medics before you can finish doing penance.”
“No,” Chapin said. “We cannot leave. Our work is not done. It must be bound. We cannot leave the beast free.”
“It’s more than bound,” I said. “Seriously, we kicked its ass.”
Chapin looked at me, and then grasped at his wounded gut, hissing in pain. His face was pale as paper, but he shook his head.
“We do not take sides in the wars of Hell,” he said. “We do not have alliances against the will of God.”
“He’s delirious,” Miguel said. He had a massive bruise forming on his cheek. It actually looked kind of good on him. Rakish.
“He isn’t,” Carsey said grimly.
“I will not leave while the beast is free,” Chapin said, his jaw tight. His eyes were bright and fierce. They bored into me like a message I was supposed to understand but didn’t.
And then I did.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean me?”
Chapter Twenty-three
The room went silent. I fought to clear my mind, but the effort of the battle made clarity hard. Miguel and Carsey stood on the opposite side of the table. Ex stood to my right, Chogyi Jake to my left. Father Chapin lay on the table between us. Alexander and Tamblen had almost lifted the blasted shell of Tomás up to a sitting position. Carsey and Miguel looked at me, the relief and exhaustion and fear on their faces shifting. They looked hardened. Resigned. They looked like sailors who’d just figured out that the calm wasn’t the end of the storm but the eye of the hurricane. I figured I probably did too.
“There is a demon inside of her,” Chapin said. “It is the reason that you brought her here, Xavier.”
“You have got to be kidding,” I said. “Did you just miss the part where you’ve had a ringer in your group for … I don’t know. Years? Or that I just got rid of it?”
Chapin’s lips went tight and he shook his head.
“I have many failures,” he said. “Many, many failures. I will not be turned from my calling. The beast is here. It is within you, Miss Jayné. You have done us all a great service, and I will not leave you in the claws of Hell.”
I stepped back from the table, my legs still unsteady. Chapin tried to sit up. Blood poured out of his wounded side.
“Don’t be frightened,” Chapin said. “We will save you. Even if we are saving you from yourself.”
“Well,” Carsey said. “This is less convenient than I’d hoped.”
“Has to be done,” Tamblen said from behind me. I turned toward him as wide, strong arms wrapped around me, lifting me off the floor I kicked back, but it was only my own strength. Even when I hit something soft, the only response I got was a grunt. The grip didn’t go slack.
“No,” Ex said. “Stop. This is a mistake.”
“There can be no mistake, Xavier,” Chapin said. “Nor any room for compromise. It is through exceptions and weakness of will that Satan wins the world, and so—“
Chapin winced, clutching at his wound.
“Put me down,” I shrieked, twisting my weight. Tamblen turned, and someone—Miguel—grabbed my ankles. Lifted in the air, I turned toward Ex.
Over the years I had known him, I’d seen him in a hundred different moods. I had seen him in the depths of rage and joyous, exhausted past the point of illness and sleeping with the sunlight in his hair. I had felt the passion and guilt and longing that he kept bottled up in his soul, and I had wondered what he was thinking when he closed himself off from me. For less than a second—less than a heartbeat—as I screamed and twisted and fought against Tamblen’s arms, I saw Ex, and the desolation in his eyes was unfamiliar and terrible. I thought, This is what a nightmare looks like, and the gun went off again.
Chogyi Jake lowered his doubled fists until the barrel was aimed unmistakably at Tamblen’s heart. His smile was the same one he always wore.
“I’m going to ask you to put her down now,” Chogyi Jake said. “Next time, I will not ask.”
I stopped struggling. Tamblen shifted my weight but kept me on his shoulder.
“You don’t understand,” the big man said.
“You won’t be the first man I’ve killed,” Chogyi Jake said.
He won’t? I thought, and Ex stepped between them, his hands held out. Where he stood, Tamblen couldn’t reach the door to the courtyard without pushing him aside, and Chogyi Jake couldn’t shoot Tamblen without the bullet passing through him.
“All right, we’re just going to calm down now,” Ex said. “No one’s getting shot. I mean Father Chapin is, but no one else.”
“I know you love these men,” Chogyi Jake said. The gun hadn’t shifted an inch. “But they are zealots, and—“
“Just don’t shoot them,” Ex said. “Just wait.”
Chapin coughed and swung his legs off the table. He tried to stand; he cried out in pain. Miguel put an arm around him.
“Chewy,” Miguel said. “Please. We don’t have much time. He’s losing blood.”
Ex swallowed, nodded to himself, and turned to face Father Chapin. My old friend looked about six years old, lost and determined and frightened to the bone. He licked his lips and I tried to turn so that Tamblen’s shoulder wasn’t digging into my liver.
“Father Chapin,” Ex said. “I know Jayné. I trust her, and after tonight, I think she deserves your trust too. She wasn’t wrong. She was the one who found the taint in our society, and she stopped it. She wants to be free of this thing. She only made common cause with it when we forced her to. Us. Ask her to renounce it. She’ll come back again just like before.”
Chapin’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Tamblen and nodded. The big man lowered me to my feet.
“Is this true?” the old priest asked. The blood on his cheek was dry and dark and flaking. “Do you renounce the Black Sun, and will you swear to me on peril of your soul that you will return here and complete the rites that you began?”
I took a breath. It was what I’d come here for. It was the reason I’d been running like hell since Chicago. One of the reasons, anyway. I thought of the hours I’d spent waiting for my body to move without my willing it, watching for evidence that I wasn’t in control of my own flesh. It had been terrible. All I had to do now was say that I still felt the way I had then.
But I didn’t. I’d made my truce with her, and she hadn’t betrayed me. There weren
’t all that many people I could say that for.
“No,” I said. “No, I won’t renounce her.”
Ex’s cry of despair broke my heart a little. He sank to his knees, his eyes closed. I thought he might be crying. It was all spinning out of control now. All of the people he wanted to keep safe were destroying themselves and each other, and all his efforts to protect us were falling through his fingers like sand. I stepped forward and put my hand on his shoulder. He was shaking.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am.”
“Father Chapin? I think you’re making a mistake.”
Everyone turned toward Alexander. He was stroking his terrible little goatee thoughtfully.
“You think … what?” Chapin’s voice was a rasp. “A Princess of Hell stands before us in the flesh of this poor sinner who came to us for aid. Tomás’s corruption was terrible, and the price we will pay for it will beggar us, but there is this thing still before us that we can do right.”
Alexander pressed his fingertips to his lips, scowling.
“No,” he said. “If she wants our help, I’ll do whatever I can to help her because I think she has a good soul. But if she doesn’t want it, we can’t force it on her. She’s not even a Christian, Father.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you shouldn’t have accepted her in the first place,” he said. “She’s only here because you and Xavier killed that girl years ago, and somehow she’s supposed to make up for it.”
“Well, there’s an uncomfortable perspective,” Carsey said. “So we should just open the door and usher her out into the world? With what she is?”
“We will not!” Chapin shouted. “We will not free the devil! What I have done wrong, I will answer for, but I will not sin again. I refuse to. I will die here if I must, but I will not leave while she is free!”
didn’t even turn to see what the commotion was about. I knew that some riders did more than lurk in the back of a mind. Some kicked the original owner out, taking the body whole. If the Akaname were like hermit crabs, taking over the bodies that other riders had already opened up, that meant Tomás had been ridden before, and maybe that first rider had killed his soul years before. Maybe he was only qliphoth now, an empty shell without self or rider. And even if there was something of the man left in the body, he was broken in ways that wouldn’t ever be made whole.
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