Killing Rites (4)

by MLN Hanover

  The contempt he shoehorned into the words easy way was pretty impressive. Ex was staring at his own toes, his face pale as the snow outside the window. An odd smell wafted through the room, hot and metallic, like a skillet left on the burner for too long.

  “Xavier of all men should have explained this. What we do here,” Chapin said. “It will not heal those wounds. If you are possessed by the minions of Satan, I may be able to help you to redeem yourself. But to be here now is a distraction, and to commit to these rites without need would damage you and degrade these ceremonies.”

  I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall next to Jesus. My scowl was etching itself into my skin. The weird smell was getting stronger.

  “Well, I don’t want to degrade any ceremonies,” I said. “But whether I feel emotionally at peace with—”

  Something detonated. Dark webs cracked the pale stucco, and the crucifix beside me swung like a pendulum. Father Chapin’s mouth was a tiny, surprised O. Ex was the first to recover, but Chapin and I were after him almost as soon as he moved.

  The kitchen was in disarray: table toppled and domino tiles scattered on the floor, minifridge door open and its internal light flickering wildly. The others were gone. Someone screamed from the other side of the building. The door Father Chapin had come through stood open. The door Carsey and Unfortunate Goatee had gone out when they were going to take his place in the exorcism. As I paused, I heard other voices—men’s voices—raised and shouting as if from a long way away. And something that was like a girl’s voice and also like a forest fire roaring above them. The air felt tainted. Something unreal brushed against me and blundered away again like a fish in a pond.

  “Possessed girl got loose?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Ex said.

  “Spiffy.”

  Father Chapin limped toward the fight, and we followed, moving through the rooms as quickly as his pained steps could lead us. A black, carved-wood door hung open; the places where its hinges had ripped out of the frame were pale and fresh.

  The room beyond had been a chapel or a lecre hall or both. The brick floors were so dark, they seemed to swallow the light. A tiny wooden dais stood across from double doors leading out to the courtyard. Chalked symbols on the floor shimmered like something seen through a heat haze, and the air tasted like hot copper. The priests stood in a circle, holding their palms toward the center or else clutching at black leather Bibles. All of them except for Unfortunate Goatee, who lay unmoving in a corner, limp as yesterday’s laundry.

  Between the men, I caught glimpses of something moving low to the floor. Ex took my shoulder and pointed toward the bunch of them, shouting, but I couldn’t make out his words. Father Chapin hurried forward, and I heard his voice, rising with the others, contending with the demon. Ex went to his side, holding out his hands and shouting down the devil with the others. I went to Unfortunate Goatee. He was breathing, but that was the best I could say for him. His eyes were wide and unfocused. A long, deep cut scored him from neck to belly, but the pink, exposed flesh didn’t bleed.

  “It’s okay,” I said, taking his hand. “Just hang tight, and we’ll get you to a doctor. Just hold on.”

  The demon shrieked, the sound sharp and rough as a bread knife. The priests stumbled back. Carsey lost his footing and dropped to his knees. They seemed to be shouting something in Latin, but I couldn’t be sure. The thing in the middle of the circle leaped up to the ceiling, clinging there like a spider.

  It was a girl, no more than eight years old. Her black hair was in mats and tangles. When she opened her mouth, a dim light spilled out past her teeth, and the same dirty brightness leaked through the sores on her body. The chanting men looked up at her, their voices more strident. They were getting desperate. She sat up, then stood, the soles of her feet on the ceiling, gravity reversed for her and her alone. When she tilted her head back to look down at me, I had the sense of something ancient, maybe something that had been beautiful once but was all septic madness now.

  I stood. I was aware intellectually of the fear. My heart was racing; the skin at the back of my neck felt like an invisible hand was stroking it just enough to raise gooseflesh. A wind whirled, stirring my hair and making the black overcoat flap around my ankles. I knew where we were headed. I took a deep breath, let it out, and spread my arms in invitation . Come on. Let’s do this. The little girl grinned, took two steps toward me, and dropped.

  I didn’t have a violent childhood. There was anger, yes. There was yelling and accusation and a combination of masculine self-righteousness and maternal submission that I would call less than healthy. But my father never raised a hand in anger, and I had a protective big brother who kept school as benign as he could. The first actual fight I’d ever been in came just after my uncle died, and I’d turned into some kind of ninja, spinning dishware through the air, disarming and defeating gun-toting wizards. Since then, I’d won every fight I’d been in. Oh, it had been close. I’d come out bloody. I’d hung on to the edge of a skyscraper by my fingertips. I’d had a voodoo god beat me until I couldn’t stand up. But each time, the sense of being trapped a couple of inches behind my eyes clicked in, and I’d watched my body do things I couldn’t imagine or predict.

  And so when this demon whirled, her tiny heel slamming into my ribs like a hammer, and nothing happened to deflect it, it came as a surpriseeight="0em">

  The impact knocked me back against the wall. I stumbled, my palms against the rough stucco, then slipped and landed on the floor. The left side of my chest felt like broken glass in a sack. Breathing was like being stabbed. She said something in a slushy voice too deep for her small body and pulled back her foot to stomp me like a bug. Tamblen—the big one—tackled her like a linebacker. She didn’t fall, but she needed both feet to keep her balance. I scrambled up, one hand pressed to my abused ribs. I couldn’t tell if it was the pain or the unearthly, stinking wind, but something roared in my ears. I staggered toward the double doors. Live-wire fear mixed with a sense of outraged betrayal.

  I was supposed to be safe. I was supposed to be the one kicking ass. I got to the door, my weight more than my strength pushing the release bar. Behind me, Tamblen cried out. The door opened, and the wind spilled out into the world, hurricane strong.

  I’d caught glimpses of the courtyard through the windows. I half fell out into it now. Once upon a time, it might have been a nice little garden for a couple of dozen monks or a place to pray during the bright spring days. In winter, it was brown, dusty earth and dirty, ice-glazed snow. A lone tree stood near the center, branches rising up into the pale sky like a shriek. I pressed my fist into my ribs like I was holding myself closed. The girl—the thing inside of the girl—boiled out past me. I slipped, landing hard on one knee.

  She floated in the air, the bare tree behind her writhing in the unnatural wind. Her face glowed with delight and cruelty. She opened her mouth wider than she should have been able to, and I saw her tongue twisting black against the brightness in her throat. She raised her hands, and my ears popped as the air pressure dropped. The sky above me started to change, wisps of cloud twisting in and out of existence like snakes. It sounded like a freight train, and I didn’t think I’d make it off the tracks in time.

  Please, I thought, pushing the word in toward the thing—magic, rider, whatever—that had always defended me before. Please, now would be a good time.

  Father Chapin stepped past me. His Bible was raised in his hand, and he was shouting something in Latin. The black cloth of his pants fluttered against his ankles like a flag in a storm. Close-cut white hair danced on his scalp. Ex struggled by, his arms spread wide against the wind. He matched Chapin syllable for syllable, and for a moment the demonic wind seemed to stutter and fail.

  I rose to my feet. The knee of my pants was torn out where I’d landed, and blood was slicking my shin. My ribs ached and my overcoat flapped around me like a cape. The smell of overheated metal assaulted me again, pressing in at my nose and mouth, and I
felt the uncanny shifting of the world as the boundaries between reality and Next Door got thinner. I took a step backward. Miguel ran up to Father Chapin’s side along with another priest I hadn’t seen before, thick-featured and dark-skinned. Tomás, I figured. The double doors leading back inside slammed open and closed and then shattered into splinters and bent metal. A pair of black cellar doors bucked against their chain, like something was trying to rise up out of the earth beneath them.

  “Daughter of Satan!” Chapin howled, the first English words I heard from him since the fight started. “You are bound! By the will of God, I bind you! By the will of God—”

  Toward Ex.

  I tried to scream, tried to warn him. But I couldn’t because, with an almost physical click, I wasn’t in control of my own body.

  Two inhumanly fast, loping strides and I was at his side. The branch was shooting down toward us, but it and everything else seemed to slow. When I put my hand on Ex’s shoulder, I felt the heat of his skin and something more too. An echo of his mind, like a voice heard from the far end of a tunnel. His fear and his joy and a deep riptide of longing. His knees were bent against the wind, and I put one foot on his thigh, boosted myself up, twisting to put my other knee on his shoulder. I caught the branch in both hands. The weight bore us both down, but my legs went straight before I touched ground.

  I stood in the tempest, Ex sprawled out beneath me. My coat tugged at my shoulders, pulled back almost straight by the wind. The branch was longer than a baseball bat, cold and rough and viciously sharp where it had torn free. I held it in both hands like a staff. The girl floating in the air stared at me, dark lips pulled back in square-gape rage. The sores and wounds on her body oozed black and yellow, pulsing with something like glee. I wanted to step back, but my body ignored me. The wind demon screamed. The power behind the attack was more than physical: raw magic pressed against me. I felt the answering force draw itself up my spine, filling me with a calm that bordered on serenity. I pressed it out from me, expanding it in a sphere that grew from my core. Above me, the tree still whipped and shuddered. The priests staggered under the storm, Bibles fluttering, voices lost in the roar. My coat hung softly at my back.

  “Stop this,” I said.

  The words were no more than conversational, but they carried over the pandemonium. The thing in the girl screamed again, but the attack seemed weak now. Futile. I walked toward her, and the dark, inhuman eyes widened with fear. Too late, it turned and tried to fly away. My body didn’t move, but something else did, reaching up for her, pulling her back down to me. The thing’s wail was all venom and despair. I dropped the branch and put my hands around her ankles, drawing her to the ground. As soon as her feet touched the dust, she collapsed down, gravity regaining its control. The thing was still in her, and it beat and kicked against me. There was power in the blows, but I didn’t feel any pain.

  “It’s over,” my voice said. “You should go.”

  Her hand shot out toward me, clawed and cat fast. I shifted out of the way, and she spat black bile on my shirt. I gripped the girl across the forehead like her skull was a basketball. The conscious part of me trapped just behind my eyes cringed, expecting something terrible and violent to happen. Instead, my body pulsed once, heat and dryness and solitude filling me, filling my arm, my hand, flowing into the little girl’s body. I felt the rider leave her like a joint popping back into place. Painful, a little disturbing, but also now made right.

  The world clicked back to normal. The cold air rushed in. I was holding a little girl. Her hair felt soft and hot against my hand. The wounds and sores still marked her, but they were the red and pink of abused flesh now. Her eyes were tea-with-milk brown, and when she opened her mouth, no unearthly light spilled out. The only smell in the air was dust and pine sap. The smell of overheated metal was gone.

  “Hey,” I said. I said. Not something else. I was in control of my body again. “I’m Jayné. What’s your name?”

  “Dolores?”

  I pulled off my coat. I’d been sweating, and the cold against my stained and soaking shirt felt like dipping into ice water. I ignored it. I hung the dark wool over her shoulders. She was weeping. No sobs, no running nose, just tears falling down her cheeks and splashing by her toes. Toes that were starting to turn mottled and dark from the chill. I scooped her up in my arms, my ribs protesting sharply.

  “There was a bad ghost,” Dolores said. “It smelled bad. It tried to get inside me.”

  “I know it did,” I said. “Now come in where it’s warm. I’ll make you some tea, okay?”

  The priests watched me as I walked back inside: Tomás and Miguel leaning on each other like soldiers struggling back from battle; Tamblen leaning in the doorway with blood on his lips; Ex rising from where I’d pushed him down in the dirt; Carsey with his mouth in a smile that was as thoughtful as it was amused.

  And Chapin, flat-eyed and empty. I stopped in front of him, the girl hugged close to my chest. I was starting to shiver and my earlobes hurt. He looked away. I took the girl inside.

  UNFORTUNATE GOATEE’S name was Alexander. Ex rode with him and Chapin in the big, beat-up Yukon all the way back to the hospital in Taos. I followed along in Ex’s rented sports car. The others stayed back at camp, tending their wounds, fixing the broken doors, soothing Dolores with hot soup, and, I hoped, calling her mother to come take her home now that the worst was over. The good guys had won, demon driven out, like that. Go us.

  I cranked up the music, singing along to the songs I knew by heart, even when I didn’t know the languages they were sung in. I was starting to feel the effects of the fight. When I got ready for bed that night, I’d have a bumper crop of new bruises. I was pretty sure the wind demon’s initial strike had cracked a rib, but I wouldn’t be positive until morning. If I could turn to the left, I’d be fine. If not … well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d broken a rib. I pretty much knew the routine.

  The drive seemed shorter going back into town. Maybe it was just the sense of going back to someplace known. The steering wheel buzzed against my hands, the music celebrated and mourned. Pine trees gave way to smaller, twisted piñons. The dead grass at the side of the road lay buried in drifts of melted and refrozen snow. I grinned at the landscape—distant canyon, snow-clad mountains, pale sun in endless blue sky.

  The fight had released something in me. Ever since the night in London when I’d realized that my so-called magical protections might be significantly creepier than I’d thought, I’d been waiting for the thing in my body to take over. I’d been second-guessing every move that I made—had I really reached for the salt, or had it been something else controlling my hand? I’d thought that when it happened, if it happened, it would be the creepiest thing ever. the event itself, since I’d been through that before plenty of times, but what it meant. Now that it had happened, I was all relief and rib pain.

  When we got near Taos proper, my cell phone chirped. When we stopped at a traffic light, I checked the log. Chogyi Jake had called again, twice, and left voice mail both times. I’d listen later, when I wasn’t driving. I turned right, following the Yukon through the press of ski-racked SUVs and expensive trucks.

  At the hospital, three men in white uniforms and a woman in green scrubs transferred Alexander onto a gurney. The long, deep cut wasn’t bleeding so much as starting to weep a little blood, but the wounded priest was able to move his arm a little and he was trying to speak. I took those as good signs. Chapin stood next to a doctor whose face made me think of India even though her accent was pure Boston. The sun was already edging down toward the western horizon, pulling our shadows out long and reddish. It wasn’t quite four o’clock yet. The night was going to be long.

  Once Alexander got rushed inside, Ex pulled himself back into the Yukon and drove it off toward the parking spaces. Chapin and the doctor exchanged a few last words, and the doctor went back inside. Chapin huddled down in his clothes. He looked older than he had before, his skin gray, his eyes bloo
dshot where they weren’t bloody. And there was something else. It was in the way he held his shoulders and the timbre of his voice. Anger maybe. Or fear.

  “I will stay here,” Chapin said. “Until we are sure he is stable. Xavier says the two of you will find rooms in the city. We will … regroup, yes? Once we have had opportunity to finish here, we will regroup.”

  “All right,” I said.

  We stood silently. In the distance, I heard the Yukon’s door crash open and closed, and then the almost subliminal sound of Ex getting in the sports car. An old man in a bright green parka walked out of the ER, speaking Spanish into a cell phone. Neither Chapin nor I moved. I figured that was as close as I was going to get to permission to speak.

  “So this stuff I’ve been seeing? The unnatural fighting and weird powers? I’m thinking it’s not just a psychological issue,” I said.

  “I see your point,” he said.

  “So we can skip the shrink?”

  “We can.”

  I never went skiing when I was a kid. Other kids in school did, but only the rich ones. They’d come back from vacation talking about exotic places like Lake Tahoe and Park City. A couple of kids from church—Jacob and Stacey Corman, putting too fine a point on it—always made sure to have a little sunburn when they came back to school after Christmas break. Snowburn, they called it. They’d show off their pinked skin like peacock feathers until their mother got angry, started lecturing about the sin of pride, and threatened never to take them again.

  Taos was apparently just the sort of place the Cormans went to. Finding a place to stay was harder than I’d expected, and Christmas vacation was exactly the problem. A few nights were easy. An open-ended stay-until-whenever widtd running up against previous bookings pretty fast. Jacob and Stacey were making my world less pleasant one more time. Ex and I sat in the Mercedes outside the hospital, the engine purring away just to keep the heater going, while I made a series of increasingly frustrating calls. In the end, I gave up and called my lawyer’s private line. She put me on hold for ten minutes and came back with an address halfway up to the ski valley where I now had a rental condo waiting. When she asked if I needed anything else, I almost laughed. I fed the address into the GPS.