by Myke Cole
All, save one.
A long, rectangular building, certainly a single story, was nestled alongside the main building’s side, ringed with what Schweitzer guessed was tall fencing.
It was pitch-black.
That’s where they’re storing the bodies, he said to Ninip. It’s refrigerated.
He could feel the jinn’s impatience, but Ninip was slowly learning the benefit of taking his partner’s counsel. Why are they trafficking in corpses? Perhaps they have their own Gemini Cell.
Eldredge did say there were other Sorcerers besides Jawid. Maybe there’s another program, more Operators like us.
Ninip mused as they trudged along a ridge, keeping to the far side and just out of sight. Us against another pairing, with an ancient soul of its own? That would be a worthy contest.
Yeah, well. Hopefully that’s not what we’re running into here.
You hope for strange things. Schweitzer could feel the jinn’s hunger rising as they closed on the target. Schweitzer kept their shared ears tuned, the incredible fidelity filtering through a sea of sounds. The wind sighed along the ridge, insects foraged in the scrub grass. He could hear the high whining of the drone’s tiny engine, kilometers above them, the whispered conversation of the men back at the grounded helo. Somewhere to the northeast, a jackrabbit stomped its foot to warn of approaching danger. Schweitzer listened for a moment before deciding that it was at least a kilometer away.
Ninip ranged over the map as well, and Schweitzer was surprised to see him struggling with his own impulses, trying to consider the best breach point. We should go in from the back of the main building, the jinn suggested. The wall looks high there. There are no windows that I can see, and it is taller than the towers.
It’s not taller than the towers, Schweitzer said. You have to get used to looking at this kind of imagery. It’s deceptive. You need to count balconies. Anyway, that’s an awning. He flashed Ninip a slice of the image, a light gray patch on top of the building’s roof, closest to the far wall. If they’re at all security conscious, they’ve got men underneath it.
Then we will kill them. Ninip couldn’t resist falling back on his old habits.
Sure, we can. And wake up the whole damn place in the process. Here’s where we go in. He indicated a long stretch of wall farthest away from the towers, just opposite the refrigerated building. Eyeballing it from the top down, he put it at around thirty feet.
Easy day.
Normally, we’d have to blow a hole in the wall, bring the whole place down on us. Now we can just jump over.
Ninip was already flashing images of slaughter, the presence quivering with anticipation of the hunt. Schweitzer felt the infectious thrill, the temptation to give the jinn rein, to lose himself in the gory dance. Why bother acting the part of the hard operator when his body wasn’t his own anymore? There were only two marriages for him now, either to the feral monster who shared his body, or to the legions of screaming dead in the void beyond.
It was a familiar set of choices that any SEAL was long used to, bad or worse, frying pan or fire.
Despair and panic rose in him, stubbornly sticking in spite of his attempt to put them off with the old drill: tip the hat, do the job. Ninip, lost in his frenzy, didn’t bother to try to stop Schweitzer as he reached behind the armor and pulled out the engraved dog tags, looking at the outlines of his family’s faces, smiling as if the world were a wonderful place where all you loved wasn’t snatched away from you in an instant. The lines seemed clearer still, some of the rust shaken off against their chest.
He forced their dead lungs to draw a breath, deep and long, like he had used to. Ninip growled at the sight of the dog tags, began to resist, forcing the arm down. Schweitzer let him, focusing on the breath, the old reflexes, muscles moving, tissue expanding and contracting. He almost felt alive.
Which was why this way was better. Not for the chance at revenge. Not for justice. But because it was what Sarah would do. Because it was the best chance to visit his family’s graves someday, to see people inhaling and exhaling as he had just done. To hear voices speaking, music playing, to turn pages and stretch limbs. It wasn’t life.
But it was as close to a second chance as he’d ever get.
And if the price of that was that he kept doing the job he’d loved all his life, with just the one added task of keeping a muzzle on this rabid dog inside him, well, that wasn’t so bad.
There was still a ways to go before the compound, and Schweitzer found himself wondering about Jawid’s village. Was it close by here? Did it have the same broken landscape? He tried to remember the images of the burning wreckage of Jawid’s home that the Sorcerer had shown him when he’d first awakened into his new life.
He felt a stirring as the channel opened up between him and Jawid, as it had when he sat in the COP waiting for Ty to begin the briefing.
You are learning, Jawid said. You can reach out to me now.
Ninip stirred, began to sniff at the channel linking them, but Schweitzer didn’t want to lose this chance to speak to the Sorcerer and shoved the jinn sharply back. I’ve always been a fast learner. I saw a girl last time, Jawid. You were thinking about her. Who was she?
Grief filtered through the channel between them, but Jawid only sighed. That’s lost to me now.
Ninip said the same damned thing.
I gave you your answer, the jinn snarled. Leave the goatherd in peace.
He is right, Jawid said. Focus on the op.
Jawid, we’ve got another klick to cover at least before we reach the compound, and I can hear a rabbit taking a dump in the next valley over. Nobody is going to catch me with my pants down.
There is no sense in looking over our shoulders, Jawid said, sounding angry now. The past is the past.
You still sound just like Ninip. What is with you guys? You were both human beings. Hell, you still are.
I am not, the jinn groused. Do not compare me to that pathetic lot.
But you were, Schweitzer said. What the hell happened to him, Jawid? Is this what magic does to you? Turns you into a dried-up, bitter douche bag? Because I don’t see that happening to me.
The void, the soul storm, is magic, Jawid said. It is the wellspring, the source. I brought Ninip back just after you died, while your soul was still tied to your body. When Ninip came back, so did you.
So?
So, the void is a cauldron of magic. You . . . soak in it. It goes into you, changes you. It makes the soul of a man . . . something else. The longer you soak, the more you change. And when I bring the soul back, the magic comes with it.
Schweitzer thought of the horns, the claws, the burning silver of their eyes.
How long exactly was Ninip soaking in the soul storm? Before you brought him back? Schweitzer asked.
A long time, the jinn said.
A very long time, Jawid agreed. The longest of any jinn I have ever known.
And that is the root of our strength, Ninip said.
Would it happen to me? Schweitzer asked. If I . . . soaked in the void long enough?
It is happening to you, Jawid replied. You are steeping in the magic as we speak. It comes to you through the jinn.
I am your cauldron now, Ninip said.
Schweitzer thought of Ninip’s talk of an addiction to slaughter that was stronger than pure heroin. You’ve got the wrong guy, Schweitzer said. You two can chuck your humanity in the trash all you want. I am James Schweitzer, and that is never going to change.
You will learn, Ninip said, and Jawid sighed and closed the channel between them.
As the ridge finally gave way to arid plain, Schweitzer dropped them into a low crawl, pushing back against Ninip’s desire to run toward the compound. He shifted their vision into the infrared, seeing the faint heat outlines of a trio of jackals prowling about a klick out, the tiniest wavering lightnes
s indicating the compound in the distance.
Eyes on, he sent to Jawid. Approaching from the northeast, entry on target at point bravo.
Roger, Jawid sent back. The military radio jargon sounded silly coming from him with his beard and robes. A moment later, he came back with, Overhead reports no pickets in your zone of approach.
I already knew that, Schweitzer thought, but didn’t send, as they rose to a crouch and began to make their way more quickly toward the wall. The jackals lifted their heads, sniffed the air in his direction, bolted the opposite way.
Ninip swung the carbine onto their back and forced them down on all fours, loping along like an ape. It was faster than the duck walk, so Schweitzer didn’t bother trying to wrest control back.
A moment later, Jawid came back, his voice wooden, repeating words someone was saying to him. Adjust your approach to the east, enter at point delta.
Schweitzer pictured the map. Delta marked the back of the building, what Ninip had wanted. There’s an awning up there, Schweitzer said. That approach is covered.
Negative. You’re misreading the imagery. That’s your approach.
Fuck that. Not doing it.
Command has called point delta as the app—
I heard you the first time. I’m not doing it. Fire me.
Being dead had its upside.
Ninip moved them across the intervening distance, allowed Schweitzer to slow them back into the crouch, then finally rose from it, steady-stepping to the base of the wall, carbine at the low ready.
He could see the heat signatures in the nearest tower, but the man wasn’t looking his way, or if he was, Schweitzer and Ninip were lost in the thick shadows that swarmed the plain.
They crouched and sprang, watched the wall lengthen, then shrink as they crested it, landing in a light crouch that barely hinted at their impact. Their peripheral vision caught the man in the nearer tower. The enemy had tied a shemagh around his face to keep the blowing dust out, and a light-colored baggy tunic and trousers reflected the starlight, obviating Schweitzer’s need for infrared vision. An enormous antimateriel rifle was slung across his chest, a high-end nightscope perched on its Picatinny rail. Expensive stuff, and one hundred percent American manufacture.
Schweitzer filed the information away, sighted, and fired. The carbine emitted only a dry click, and the man gave a single short gasp as the back of his head came off, arcing out over the tower before clearing the wall and falling to the ground. The rest of him dropped, disappearing behind the tower’s low railing.
Schweitzer and Ninip crouched, listening to see if the shot had been heard, the casualty seen. The only sounds seemed peaceful enough; a muttered conversation between a man and a woman, a low-horsepower motor running steadily, goats in the courtyard crowding together for warmth.
He was beginning to believe that all was clear when Ninip asserted himself, forcing control of their limbs and leaping out over the tower railing, claws extending.
No, you fucking idiot! he shouted at the jinn. The ground was already rushing up at them, he glanced about wildly, trying to assess the layout. Heat signatures flashed by far too quickly for him to fix any one of them.
And then solidity under their feet, crunching, then soft, liquid spraying around him, a high, inhuman wail sounding up between his legs.
They’d landed on a goat. Ninip was even now driving a fist down into its skull, cutting the wail short. The rest of the goats were scattering in all directions, bleating madly. Ninip snapped their teeth at one of them, breaking through the chinstrap and knocking the helmet askew. Schweitzer raised one shared hand to rip it off and cast it aside while Ninip took control of the other, lashing out and slashing through one goat’s hindquarters, spraying blood and sending the animal screaming, dragging its limp hindquarters along the ground.
Congratulations. You’ve maimed a goat, Schweitzer said, but the jinn was senseless in his search for slaughter, and Schweitzer found himself yanking back on him to keep them from racing after the nearest animal, whose voice was joining the terrific noise that now echoed through the courtyard.
The first shot caught them in the back of their right shoulder, coming in from a high angle that told him the shooter was in the other tower. There was the weird sensation of the liquid against their skin suddenly going brick hard, and then they were rolling facedown through the dust as the force of the high-powered round bowled them over.
Ninip howled and spun them back to their feet, the heat signature of the shooter flaring in Schweitzer’s vision. He swung the carbine back around and raised it to fire.
But before he could draw a bead, Ninip crouched them deeply and leapt so high and long that Schweitzer briefly thought the jinn’s magic had enabled them to fly. For a moment, Schweitzer thought they would fall short by inches, slam face-first into the tower’s side, but then he felt their shared fingertips catch on the railing’s lip, gain purchase, haul them up until their boots came down on solid footing.
Their enemy was backpedaling to the far railing, his rifle hanging between his legs, barrel tangling in his baggy pantaloons. Ninip grinned, reached out with one shared finger, the bone spike entering the man’s eye, pushing through. Schweitzer could feel the brief resistance of the back of his skull before it gave way, and the man went suddenly limp, a rag hung on the clothesline of their claw. The jinn whipped their shared hand to the side, and the man flew from the tower, landing with a dull thud among the panicked goats below.
Shouts from the main building now. Ninip answered them with a shout of his own, deep and primal, their jaw unhinging, horns and spines sprouting, the thick tongue lolling out. The monster in full form.
Enemy in contact, shots fired, Schweitzer passed along to Jawid. We’re dynamic.
Roger, Jawid replied, do not engage any targets but Nightshade.
Ninip was already making them leap, clearing the tower’s edge, angling for the nearest balcony of the main building. Schweitzer knew they were going to miss it before they’d gone a quarter of the distance, watched the wall rise up as they fell, figures rushing to the balcony’s edge, pointing, aiming weapons.
He looked down just in time to see the long building beneath them, dark and cold, the low thrumming of a refrigeration unit sounding from the roof. The flimsy surface gave way as soon as they slammed into it, thin metal parting to drop them onto the concrete pad below.
The concrete held, the slight spring indicating the rubber pad beneath it that would protect the building against the cracking and shifting of the dry ground below. Expensive work, requiring skilled labor.
Ninip sniffed the air, smelled no life, snarled. Schweitzer looked around the room, a nasty familiarity dawning in him at the sight of the stainless-steel racks, the puddled shadows, the chemical smell of embalming fluid. The space was roughly the same size as the shipping container he’d seen the night before his death. Only three bodies lay still and silent, gray skin a field of rough scars where mortal wounds had been stitched closed. Two were male, one female, all with the Kushite features that told Schweitzer they were likely Pakistanis, or Waziristani locals.
And then Ninip’s lust for blood rolled through him like a tide, launching them backward and around, until they crashed through the door and back out into the courtyard.
Two men rushed toward them, firing rifles from the hip, undisciplined bursts of panicked fire that were in no danger of hitting their target. Ninip’s bloodlust became so intense that it blotted out Schweitzer’s vision, an orgasm in every dead nerve in his body, sweeping him under as the jinn took control of their shared body and rushed the enemy, decapitating one with a sweep of their claws and pinning the other to the ground through his knee, eliciting a shriek of agony that reverberated through the inner space the jinn and Schweitzer shared. Schweitzer and Ninip floated on the sound, delicious music.
Schweitzer struggled to free himself, come back to his
senses, but the bloodlust was so intense that he lost the boundary between his own consciousness and the desire to kill, to drink in the screams of the dying, to taste the coppery tang of their blood.
It steals men’s hearts, drives them like cattle, Ninip had said. Blood is the pulse of life. You do not realize that it drives you with an even greater force than this heroin.
Ninip lunged, pushing Schweitzer to the edge of their shared space, and this time he didn’t fight, couldn’t, staggering and drunk, heedless of the void beyond.
Ninip pressed their opponent to the ground, twisting the claws in his knee, slowly tearing his leg in half. The man cried out now, words that Schweitzer couldn’t begin to try to understand, as his entire being vibrated to the intoxicating screams. Ninip moved their hand to grab the man’s face, turning it toward them, staring into their enemy’s eyes and reveling in the terror written there. And then the jinn leaned their shared head forward, jaw stretching wide, and the screaming stopped with a snap.
Light flickered from a small, square window in the side of the building, light-dark-light, figures moving in front of an incandescent bulb. More screaming, high and distant. Women, maybe children.
Ninip lifted their head to look up at it. Schweitzer could feel the rent meat of the man’s throat sliding down their chest, red threads drooling from the corners of their mouth. He fought to keep from shivering with pleasure, tried to drag himself a millimeter back toward his humanity. Ninip barked something and set off running. Schweitzer felt a hiss of air as a round streaked past their ear, the fluid shear solid as another grazed their thigh, and then Ninip was making them jump again, stretching their hands out over their head, their legs behind, a diver moving in reverse, up into the sky. Ninip turned them gracefully, the momentum carrying their body through the window. He tucked their chin, rolling across the floor, popping up into a crouch, spinning the forgotten carbine in its sling out of the way of their hands.