Touched

by A. J. Aalto

  “God, oh God,” Chapel panted, curled in a ball around me.

  “Get in the house,” I breathed, my eyes filling with hot tears. “Harry can't block me from this. I'm going to be forced to share it.” But it was us, not me, and I didn't have time to wonder why.

  I forced my eyes away from the hateful spot at the end of the dock where Harry had slipped out of my life; I had no time to grieve. Things had to happen quickly now. If I didn't keep my head, Harry's efforts would be wasted and three of us would pay dearly. Harry trusted me to figure this out fast.

  At the same time as Chapel went into convulsions, the back door slammed open, but no one came out. Shots fired; again, muzzle flare spot-lit the cold air. I palmed Chapel's head, thrusting it down to cover him as he seized under me, then came up on my knees, lips peeled back in a snarl. Propping the paintball gun under my armpit, aiming the gun at the muzzle flash, I fired off repeatedly at the empty night, spraying paintballs randomly into dead space.

  Wrinkled old lady forehead appeared under a splotch of brilliant yellow paint. I aimed lower, covering her face with splat after splat. Rubber boots struck snow and ice quicker now, full tilt. My Beretta, abandoned from her hand, appeared as it left her spell area and skimmed across the snow. Out of bullets? So, why was she still coming? I fired more, furiously, to uncover what was approaching. Yellow paint hit hand, knuckles, and the grip of a long, narrow cook's knife I recognized. Harry's favorite eight inch carbon steel Sabatier. Lord and Lady, don't let me fall to Harry's own knife.

  I straddled Chapel protectively, firing until the paintballs were gone. With a desperate shout, I threw the paintball gun aside. Ruby was closing the distance between us too fast, her hate-filled face streaming yellow rivulets. Chapel had a short stake in an ankle sheath, and I grabbed it. Struggling to my feet, I braced myself, facing her with my useless stick, eyes glued to that knife in the air, flexing my left forearm up to defend my head. Her strike would go right to the bone, knowing how Harry kept his kitchen utensils sharpened. Closer. I braced for it.

  The water beside me plumed; something shot up and out. Long white arms slid out of the water in terrible slow motion. Electricity zinged across my skin, tickled in the crevices as Gregori Nazaire's ancient power heaved across frothing water. The jet of energy from the elder hit me like a surge from a wall socket, and I hit the ground belly-first. Icy currents purled through the yard, invading my lungs, filling the air with the smell of burnt licorice and the rich crumbling earth of the grave.

  He rushed over my head, driving me forward to protect Chapel's twitching form. Impacting Ruby, he took her in a rolling flip over the other side of the dock and into the shallow water. Ruby's hand grasped wildly into the night. The water churned. I crawled over Chapel's shoulder to the side of the dock.

  Gregori Nazaire's gaunt, hollow-cheeked jaws clamped around his misbehaving DaySitter's neck while Ruby's figure kicked and thrashed, pumping blood from her jugular into the frigid waters of Shaw's Fist.

  “Stop!” I shouted, wrapping my fingers tighter around the stake. “Just hold her, revenant! Batten!”

  Gregori's shoulders bunched as he sank enamel deeper into Ruby's carotid.

  “Batten! I mean it, Gregori, back off, let her—”

  Flesh tearing, wet smacking noises, and Gregori's face came up over his right shoulder with a giant flap of pink meat caught between a double row of teeth. A crimson jet struck the underside of his chin. My gorge rose while his eyes lit with victory. Without thought, I drove forward, bringing the stake up in a high arc and slamming it down on the broad target of his back, just under his left shoulder blade.

  Good thing I blinked. A cloud of ash hit me in the face and I choked, whipping the stake back in towards my chest. Hauling breath, I coughed hard to expel fourteen hundred years of dead revenant out of my lungs. No air, I couldn't get air. Pounding on my chest with my fist didn't help as wet ash clung inside me, in my nostrils and coating the roof of my mouth and the back of my tongue. He tasted like moldy felt, tart charcoal and overcooked beef. When I opened my eyes, all I could see was Ruby gurgling around her torn throat, flayed open to the tonsils, floundering knee-deep in grey, dust-powdered water.

  I dropped the stake with a little splash and hauled her by the armpits onto the dock. With two hands I covered the wound in her throat, rasping around ash. “Don't move, I've got you. You're under arrest for the murder of Kristin Davis and Danika Sherlock, and conspiracy to murder me. Keep still, I'll call for an ambulance. Batten!”

  Gregori's last thought flashed into my awareness with a push of forced psi, though I couldn't tell you why or how, dulling my awareness of Ruby and the pressure to get her help. Avision of warm summer nights in Paris, (why are my hands warm and wet?) all the glories of the City of Lights offered up to him as swelling bosoms and swan-like necks bent to his will, cherries on a plate of gold, (something thrumming, barely fluttering now, under my palms) the heavy fragrance of absinth, all the passions of the blood lulling him in his final seconds. He was not afraid.

  I needed Mark. I glanced over my shoulder at Chapel's still-twitching form. Correction: we needed Mark. I pressed down harder on Ruby's wound, trying to stem the flow of blood, palms slippery with the heat of ebbing life as it pumped out under my hands. Horrible sucking noises slopped from her collapsing trachea.

  As though I'd summoned him by thought, Batten finally broke out of the back door with a huge revolver in his hands, trained at the ground. I'd never been happier to see Jerkface. His approach to the dock reminded me of a movie, old shots of soldiers picking their path cautiously through the tangled jungles of a Hollywood Vietnam set.

  Eyes everywhere, he set one foot on the dock and barked, “Where's the vamps?”

  “Over,” I got out, before my throat clamped shut.

  “Who got dusted?” he demanded. “Did you dust one?”

  “Get your cuffs,” I ground out. “I've got her.”

  “Marnie—”

  “Call for an ambulance.”

  “Let go,” Batten said, his voice dropping as he went to one knee. He tried to peel my hands away.

  The gears in my brain wouldn't click forward. “No, I've got her, I've got her.”

  “Look at her, Marnie. She's gone. Let go.”

  I looked down at Ruby through eyelashes gluey with wet ash.

  “I had her.” My fingers had pressed so hard in my fervor to stop the bleeding that the wound had torn, but that wasn't what killed her. Her own companion had done that. She was dead. It was all over. The thought didn't make sense. Shock, I thought. I can't focus. I can't think. I nodded wordlessly, as though somewhere in my brain, the skeleton of language was dangling high in a rafter, unreachable. While Batten ran a hand over my face to clear the damp ash, I coaxed words enough to choke:

  “I tried to do the right thing. I swear I tried, Mark.”

  “I know you did.” He started to pull me towards him when he looked down at the dock. “Gary?”

  I gazed down at Chapel's shuddering and finally gears clicked. Chapel's lips were blue. His too-wide eyes tried to focus up at my face and failed.

  “Oh shit,” I breathed, head spinning. “Get Gary inside.”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Chapel's sympathetic hypothermia wasn't the worst of his problems, but it was the only thing we could fix without Harry. I suspected Gary had committed to something much more serious. I should have known a lot sooner, and would have if not for all the distractions. While Batten ditched Ruby's spell junk out onto the front lawn and made his horrible interpretation of coffee, I gathered warmer clothing for Gary, tossed firewood and crumpled paper in the woodstove and lit it, then ran to fill a hot water bottle and grab Harry's electric blanket from his casket. As we fussed over Chapel on the couch, I could tell Batten wanted to ask but was afraid of the answer. I wasn't in a place yet where I could supply any comfort so I didn't broach the subject.

  “There's a bucket under the bathroom sink,” I said. “You better grab it.
”

  “Do I want to know why?”

  I clipped, “I don't want your boss blowing chunks on my couch, that's why.” Bad enough the faint stench of ghoul slime still hung in the air. Harry had done a thorough cleaning, but some things clung, the smell of putrefaction being one of them. I grabbed my pink Moleskine mini and jotted down anything I had noticed that might help me put my finger on whether or not Gary Chapel had made a commitment, something a fair bit more serious than just covertly feeding someone else's revenant. I wrote: last time I felt pain? Healing stitches? Harry's shooting? The hypothermia? My hand… I looked down at my right hand, the flesh punctured, weeping, something inside possibly broken. I felt nothing.

  Batten hesitated, looking lost.

  I sighed. “Look, do you want to explain to assistant director Johnston how and why SSA Gary Chapel died of sympathetic hypothermia while working this case?” I appealed. “Imagine the paperwork.”

  “Why is this affecting Gary?”

  “Do you remember I told you about dry hypothermia, regular non-feeding wraith state. A form of temporary death in which the revenant thinks and feels nothing? Harry and Wes have plunged into gelid hypothermia. It's more like cryostasis. They'll not reach the same deep resting state. They'll be alert through every freezing minute of it. God.” I rubbed my arms, horrified. “Harry hates being cold. Why did he…”

  But there was no sense asking that, and the answers were too upsetting. He was being used as a weapon against me, and he wasn't going to allow anyone to fuck with our Bond any more than they already had.

  “Oh, Harry,” I breathed. I tried to fight the tears away, not entirely sure how Batten would respond. I didn't think I wanted him to comfort me. Still, my tear ducts wouldn't obey. They spilled over. I didn't bother to wipe them. I made notes instead, putting my emotions into clean columns to parcel them out: missing him already. Need to warm him. Need to be near him.

  “Chapel's fed Harry more than just that once,” Batten guessed. “He's created some kind of sympathetic link between them?”

  “It's more serious than that, unfortunately. He's taken on a rather regrettable role, but before you freak out, it's not something Harry did without Chapel's permission. Chapel would have had to ask for this. He'd have to volunteer. Knowing Harry, Chapel must have done some fast talking to convince him.”

  Chapel darted off the couch for the restroom.

  “I'll go,” I told Batten, putting my Moleskine down. “Could you build the fire up a bit more?” I wrapped my afghan around my shoulders. His arm outstretched across the doorway stopped me.

  “Marnie, what happened out there?” Batten asked.

  I paused, wondering how much of Gregori Nazaire was still smeared across my face. I'd never killed anyone before this week, living or undead, and so far I was blessedly numb about the whole thing, but the fact that his remains were strewn on the surface of the lake and dusting my snow-and-ice-speckled dock made me feel squinky. I opened my mouth to explain, but after a moment of pained silence in the face of a man who had a hundred and five kills under his belt, I shuffled off after Gary without a word.

  When I found Chapel, he was clutching the toilet seat, retching like he'd eaten a whole pail of bad oysters. I ran the warm water in the sink, wet a monogrammed wash cloth (my petal pink, not Harry's forest green) and laid it on the back of his neck. I lowered my voice because I knew my psi-headache was only half of what his would be; his would be mental fireworks and grey-cell implosions.

  “If you weren't my boss, I might tell you that you're a moron.”

  He groaned, then vomited hard.

  “You've been taking my pain away,” I said, not a question but a statement. “After the hospital, my healing pain should have been worse than it was. When Harry was shot at the funeral home, I didn't feel a bit of his pain. I should have. Now this…care to explain?”

  “We needed to keep you focused.”

  “We,” I repeated, and guessed. “This was decided after the Ten Springs Motor Inn?”

  “I need an ambulance.” His voice echoed in the toilet bowl. “I need a doctor. I need…”

  “The hospital can't help you, Gary. If they give you something to stop the vomiting, it'll just delay this. If they change your body temperature too fast, the excess ms-lipotropin in your system will cause calcium to cross the membranes of your brain cells too quickly, flooding them and probably popping a whole bunch. The PCU needs its Special-est Agent to stay brainy. Not to mention, when ms-lipo pops on the tox screen, the hospital staff would have to report it. Your superiors would know about your feeding a revenant.”

  Gary's back arched as he heaved again. I closed my eyes, breathing out slowly to ignore the smell, and drew him a glass of cool water from the sink. “Drink this. You're going to get dry heaves if you don't.”

  “There's no Special-est Agent,” he muttered, his fingers scrambling on the water glass as he took it. I took his glasses off the bridge of his nose and set them on the counter, then used the damp washcloth to clean his chin for him. He looked up at me, bleary-eyed and sallow-cheeked.

  “Yes there is,” I told him, trying to smile. “I really hope you brought a tooth brush.”

  His shoulders fell. “I'm sorry.”

  “Don't be.” I handed him the cloth. “Just tell me the truth.”

  He hurried to hug the bowl again, but nothing happened. He just sat there panting into the toilet. A shudder rocked him. He drank some more water.

  “I found mention of the dhaugir,” he said finally, gulping air. “When I read your report on the history of slaves and revenants in France in the early fourteenth century. I asked Harry how it worked.”

  I sat back on my haunches. “The dhaugir isn't enslaved to a revenant, he's a human slave who belongs to a DaySitter, who channels any negative effects of the Bond. A sort of mystical whipping-boy.” I watched the side of his face for a change in his expression; it was clear I wasn't telling him anything new. “I'd have been a lot more careful if I'd known I was sharing my pain with you.”

  Chapel waved it away, and closed his eyes. “Harry didn't want you to know.”

  “Betcha didn't think I was this much of a walking disaster,” I leaned against the counter. “Harry gave you some pretty bad advice. You do know it's not up to him how this ends?” He floundered. I let the other shoe drop. “Harry can't release you from this type of Bond. Neither can you. That's up to me, and I'm not exactly sure how it's done.”

  “Swell,” he mumbled, and I could have sworn his spitting in the toilet had less to do with the taste of bile and more to do with regret.

  “You must have fed Harry a whole bunch of times,” I surmised. “He said it was your idea, that you had personal reasons to approach him. He said that was none of my business but I beg to differ.”

  “You deserve an explanation. In the past,” he rasped, sitting back on his heels. “A fairly old revenant offered me the Bond. I turned it down, but always wondered if I'd made a mistake. Maybe the biggest mistake of my life. For decades, I've hunted the lawless ones, the monsters, as if to prove to myself I'd made the right choice. But seeing you so happy with Harry…”

  “This is happiness?” I smiled weakly.

  “It made me wonder again if I screwed up, out of fear. I had to know what it was like, to feed one.”

  “I should have warned you both: you can't offer Harry a warm vein. It isn't something he has the willpower to refuse. He won't hunt someone, but if it's laid at his feet…”

  “I had to know. And I'm sorry. It wasn't what I thought it'd be like, at all. I'm sorry. It's so much better. So much better. Like a drug. I'm sorry.” He whimpered before emptying his guts again, panting and sweating. “I know I did wrong by you, Marnie. I knew even before I did it, I won't pretend I didn't. It was selfish. I tried to make up for it, by offering the dhaugir…”

  “Made yourself a little pact with the devil, hunh?” I said, not without sympathy. “So, boss: I killed our victim, her killer, and her k
iller's killer. Am I fired yet?”

  Chapel said weakly into the bowl, “I was hoping you'd consider working for me directly, full-time.”

  Was I really considering a job opportunity after I'd killed two ghouls, dusted a fourteen hundred-year-old poet and let an old seer bleed to death? Could my life get any weirder?

  “In what capacity?” I asked. “Official screw up?”

  “Preternatural biology consultant.”

  I laughed out loud. It was harsh in the little bathroom, even to my ears. My robe was hanging on the back of the bathroom door. While Chapel's head was hung, I slipped out of my snow-and-ash-crusted clothing and belted the dry robe tightly, taking a little comfort from the warm terrycloth against my cold damp skin. Then I washed my face, ignoring the feather-grit drippings in the sink that swirled around the drain but didn't go down, lacing the white marble with streaks of grey-black.

  “You better stick with Gold-Drake & Cross,” I advised. “My brand of help is not good times for anyone.”

  Chapel stared up at me seriously. “I want you.” Then, maybe in case I misunderstood, he added, “I want your brand of help.”

  I looked from one of his eyes to the other, wondering how much of that had to do with his infatuation with Harry, and how much he actually wanted my help.

  Batten called out from deep in the cabin, his voice an exhausted re-revving like a tired mule getting to its feet again. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what he was yelling about this time but rushed into the mudroom anyway while he unbelted his well-worn kit.