by A. J. Aalto
“—deliver you to Hell,” she gurgled.
“For that, you would have to approach Hell yourself, little one,” Harry said. “Are you prepared to make such a dark and terrible journey with me?”
Ben the Unicorn moaned. I felt rather than saw Malas rise in the air and craned to watch as his cavalry boots levitated clear of the floor. The sight backed me up against the stage, and I tripped over Harry's violin case, sprawling on my ass. The force of his summoning stirred the room, tearing things from the table toward him, as though Malas was a swirling black hole of chaos, gobbling up, slurping down, chewing through the forces around him. He raised both arms in his effort to squeeze the last drops of kinetic sap from his surroundings, and the hair on my scalp stood straight up. His anger cracked the air like the sizzling snakes of downed power lines.
“How dare you come against me, Prioress?” Malas boomed.
Just as his arms drifted above his head, the black hen flew up from its spot on the floor, bearing a stake.
I was back on my feet, not knowing how I got there, words abandoning me. Helplessly, I shouted, “Fuckshitwitchystuff!”
Lucky for me, intent is often more important than word choice; I blinked through a bleak and windless limbo space, spilling from thin air directly in front of the killer chicken without a split second to think. The lack of time to consider what I was doing was probably for the best.
I slammed into her just as she leapt. The collision knocked both of us back; she landed with pissed-off grace, I stuck my landing in pure surprise. Anyone watching might have thought we'd done a celebratory chest bump until I lunged forward and tried to drive my knee into her cloaca. I felt my kneecap connect with squishy bits under her feathers and padding. She squawked, doubled, and her breath huffed out in a mewling whine.
I grabbed her wrist and bent it back sharply, twisting until she dropped the stake. I brought my knee to her chin, hard, and sent her flying spread-eagle backwards into the table. Food and dishes clattered while the candles jittered and began to topple, their meager flames whiffing out.
The air crackled a warning behind me; I hit the deck, covering my head.
Malas’ kinetic heat, a blast wave finally freed, roared past me; wavering blue fingers of psi licked around the killer hen like electric tongues, snatching her up higher and higher in a visible vortex. The woman inside the suit shrieked as every muscle in her body contracted as if pulled by a thousand tiny wires. Her puppet master was a speed fiend; each flailing jerk was frantic and eye-blurring. She hung at Malas’ mercy, airborne and arching, head whipping back and forth. Her helmet flew off, revealing a black woman in her mid-thirties who howled agonized nonsense.
Malas shot his withered hand forward. Released through the room, the revenant's power rocked everything in front of him to one side, shuddering the very air. The house trembled on its foundation. Hen buckled as her face caved in, a cascade of bone and bits of grey matter sprayed in a slimy fan as the rest of her sailed toward the stairs. Didn't even get a chance to see her face, I couldn't help thinking, as my brain digested the carnage. In her wake, the remains of the table tumbled end over end, contents tossed in an ear-splitting crash.
The giraffe was the only one who screamed; I felt the remaining Furries’ horror as a wave of empathic chill, but their terror froze them in place, desperately certain that this did not involve them, that when it was over they'd be safe.
“Yes, Prioress, you see now what you have stirred.” Malas turned on Harry and the girl, pointing down with his withered hand through the haze that enveloped him. The kinetic suction caused a second dormer window to shatter inward, showering the room with tinkling glass shards. “I will drink from the chalice of your battered skull.”
Harry urged, “Malas, you mustn't.”
Malas’ jaw unhinged, wider than humanly possible, a grey-pink strip of lip quivering around that single fang. “Come for me, Prioress.”
Kitty screamed her wordless challenge over the howling wind tumbling into the room. Under Harry's hand, she writhed. Her hair flew in rippling waves against the blue mat, a tossing whirlwind around her tiny face. “Return you to the dust, fiend. Return you to the abyss. You and your kind!”
Kitty cut her attention up at Harry; with a dagger no one knew she had, she hit him square in the throat.
Harry mouth's dropped open in a soundless cry. My feet were in motion before the fountain of his watery blue blood could jet across the mat.
“No, you little bitch, no!” I went for her, fingers crooked into claws.
Harry's arm clothes-lined me, sweeping me back. He struggled to grip the slick handle of the dagger with the other hand. Taking her chance, Kitty rolled twice, spun, and sprang to her feet, shooting her hands out in some sort of martial arts readiness position that made me feel entirely inadequate for the fight.
“You will not surrender, Prioress, though your efforts are futile?” Malas’ laugh was a snake's rattle.
Just before things went from bad to worse, I lost my breath to an unseen force. I heard the waking shuffle of something far more infernal than a revenant behind the push of Malas’ voice; Hell's brush stung my tongue (cinnamon hearts, the shock of tart-red pain) and tears sprang into my eyes. The next thing out of Malas’ mouth felt final, felt like something I should fight with every fiber of my miserably inept being.
“Servant of the Eversea…”
His voice, heavy with the authority of the Overlord now, hit me like a fishhook in the heart, and I stumbled toward him; he'd landed his shot, reeled me in. He said it again, and the barbs in my chest yanked tight.
“Servant of the Eversea: serve to me this insolent wretch, for her end.”
This is not what I'd come for, but there was little hope of freeing myself without having my face melted. With dread, I glanced at Malas to see if he for sure meant me; he was staring at me expectantly with gold-shot cornflower blue spotlights.
“Oh. Right,” I said. “Shit.”
Kitty's bright eyes settled on me. Harry struggled around the silver in his voice box. “MJ …you must not …”
“It's okay, Harry. I got this.” I circled closer to Kitty, arms out to block any tricks she might pull. “What's your name, kid?”
“I am the Hand of God,” she said.
Well then. “Are you currently seeing a shrink? They could write a paper on you. Make some doctor's career.”
Kitty looked confused for a heartbeat. “Are you not a servant of Hell's Second Circle?” she demanded.
“Uh.” I rolled my eyes back into my head to look for the answer. “Never been there, so, I'm gonna say no.”
“I do not kill innocents,” she told me.
“Might wanna double check your policy. There's a unicorn bleeding out around your stake.”
“Minion,” she spat, as though that explained everything. She avoided looking at Ben, tightened her mouth. “Protecting abominations. I cannot be held responsible for his mistakes. You're all to blame, and vengeance is coming.” She pointed at Harry, who was slap-dragging his way across the mat at her.
“Hand of God or not, you touch him again, I'll kick you so hard you'll piss out your mouth.”
She planted one boot on Harry's shoulder, staring at me the entire time, forcing him down though the springy, shaking tension in his arms fought her. He was completely in the clutch of his healing power now, as it began to overwrite every other revenant function in his body, including his strength. She grabbed her silver dagger by the handle, wrenched it from his throat. He swiped at her but fell; his agony ripped through the Bond as his slashed carotid emptied down his chest.
“DaySitter,” Malas commanded, “bring her to heel.”
Old power avalanched into me, spreading chills like the cold fire of disease. Harry let out a soul-shearing noise around the wound in his throat, but I couldn't feel my way past Malas’ influence and the Hell-shadow that lurked behind it. The elder revenant's command, paired with his compulsion to feed, fried my wiring. As th
ough the right hand path in me had simply dissolved in the mix, my intents began to trip along the left. I had to draw the line, manage this without the mantle of power that Malas was throwing at me.
Animal urges shifted to the surface through bone and quaking flesh; I bared my teeth at her. She crooked her fingers at me as if to say, bring it.
The Prioress saw me jerk and feinted with her dagger. My thug life, entirely in my imagination, saw me Mad Maxing the holy shit out of her; sadly, I lack a sawed-off shotgun and a bitching Interceptor, both entirely necessary to the task.
Fortunately, I had Chapel's tactical folder. Unfortunately, the knife was in an ankle sheath under a fursuit. She came for me. I tucked and drove my shoulder at her midsection, barreling up under her ribs and forcing her to double over. Scuttling toward the stage, I grabbed Harry's violin and, hearing feet thumping floorboards behind me, swung it full-circle. It shattered noisily in her face, a mess of bloody strings and splinters, breaking her nose with a crunch; the loosed strings lashing and flaying her cheeks with a discordant spang.
Harry scrambled to snatch her foot. There was a dull crack as her ankle broke under his titan grip. She slipped bonelessly out of his grasp, grimacing but still coming for me despite the pain. I wasn't sure she still had both her eyes.
I backpedaled on my palms and aimed a kick at her with one heel. It connected with her lip, which split and smeared sideways, blood streaming between her exposed teeth.
When she fell back, I whipped around to a sturdy, protective half-crouch near my Cold Company and warned her, “Stay down.”
“Malas,” Harry gurgled a plea. “Malas, end this.”
“Stay down,” the zebra echoed my order, far more authoritatively, repeating it several times before switching to, “Nobody move, everyone on the ground!” Disjointedly, I thought that cops were usually called pigs, and wondered if there were ever any who dressed the part.
“Enough!” Malas’ power was a whip-crack in the air as he thought-snatched Kitty off her feet and thrust her into the air. She arched violently, arms spindling to the sides as she cried out. She hit the ceiling with a thud, shaking the chandelier, scalding-hot candle wax spattering to the floor in noisy white droplets.
Her will stayed trained on her wounded prize: Harry's hanging head, her prey limping, struggling. Released, she fell to the mat, a madwoman ignoring a broken ankle, rebounded at Harry, bulldozing into him. Harry tore the dagger from her hand and tossed it aside, reaching for the Prioress with his bare hands to contain her, subdue her. Behind us, Malas drew energy from the room again in another rush, preparing another strike. Torn now between my need to shield Harry, my anger at her attack, and my need to defend this girl from further danger, I froze.
Kitty's hand came up over Harry's head. Something glinted in her fist and both revenants hissed and recoiled.
The gunshot rang out, shattering the brief tableau. Furries screamed and scrambled for cover, pressed against the walls. Psychic vortexes and flying bodies, and nobody moves a muscle, but one little gunshot starts a stampede? I thought in disbelief. The Prioress jerked once, her mouth opening in a gasp. Bodies hit the floor, mine under Harry's.
Surprise made Kitty list, clutching in astonishment at her Lycra-covered belly as a bright crimson hole bled through the bubblegum suit. She turned to frown blearily at the zebra, who had a Colt .45 trained on her in a teacup grip, propping himself on one elbow. His zebra helmet had been peeled back, and the deep-water blue eyes squinting at his target took my breath away.
Special Agent Mark Batten's hard jaw did the clench-unclench dance I was accustomed to ogling.
The Prioress took a last-ditch lurch toward Harry. Batten fired once more, demolishing her left shoulder in a spray of bone and gore. She brought her right hand in an arch through the air at Harry as she fell at us. I launched into motion with no plan. Chapel's tactical knife was in my hand and I didn't remember digging it out. With every intention of stabbing her, I stepped in front of my revenant, but Harry's mind bore down on mine in a way I'd never felt before. Through the Bond, his immortal command twisted my arm as though his brain, not mine, was instructing my muscles. My forearm went up in a block in front of my throat as I put myself bodily in front of my Cold Company. My lack of physical control was alarming but I allowed it, hauled around like a puppet on Harry's strings.
Harry brought my defensive elbow up at just the right second, rounding into the side of her face as she closed in, hard enough to knock her aside. Injured as she was, she went over easily, giving in to the pain at last.
As she hit the mat, her hand fell open. A silver cross, filed into a point at the bottom and capped with a rowan wood insert, tumbled onto the floor.
CHAPTER 5
IN THE OVERWHELMING SILENCE that followed, my squirrel helmet burped static that sounded like a soft fart. Any other time, I would have laughed my ass off. The shock of being struck had worn off Ben, and he made grunting noises as his fingers played across the stake in his shoulder. Blood had begun to seep through his suit. Neither revenant paid much notice, though their nostrils flared.
I went to help Harry first, but he waved my hands away, snarling incoherently around sloppy, blood-thickened words that might not have been English. A retch brought a fresh gout of bitter blue revenant essence into his handkerchief; it bled through his clenched fist.
Batten groaned and eased himself into a sitting position against the wall. I didn't trust myself to walk, so I crawled rapidly to Batten's side.
“Chapel?” Batten asked.
“He's…” Mindful of the revenants, one of whom we were actively investigating, I sidestepped it. “Busy elsewhere.”
Batten jabbed a finger at the headset in my helmet beside Malas’ throne. “We need a bus or two,” Batten grunted. “Baranuik, check on your unicorn.”
We had Harry healing a gash in his throat, a kitty down, a unicorn down — bleeding and panting but not dead — and a hen with a crushed head, but I had to focus on keeping Chapel's juggernaut of a vampire hunter alive. Trusting Harry to handle his own wound, I brushed Batten's hands away from his knee, where one was hesitantly exploring while he hissed through clenched teeth.
Despite the costume, I could tell his knee was screwed; there was a lump there that shouldn't be. If I moved quickly, before the ambulance got here …
“Close your eyes, tough guy,” I said in his ear, leaning in close enough to smell a weird mix of gunpowder, Juicy Fruit gum and sweaty costume fur.
Batten wasn't listening to me, but his eyelids drifted shut on their own. I had to act fast before Chapel returned.
The Prioress’ abandoned dagger was nearby. Mustn't touch the evidence, I chided myself, especially not bare-handed, but hefted it, turned it over in my hand to determine the make-up of it. Silver. No wonder it had weakened Harry so badly. The handle was carved rowan wood, sharp at the end. If she'd used that end in Harry's throat, he'd be wearing a permanent scar tomorrow. If she'd used it on his heart, he'd be a pile of ash.
For a moment, I thought about how close I'd come to losing Harry and saw stars; Batten's half-conscious groan brought me back to the pressing matter. I lowered my voice, and summoned anything I had left in my arsenal.
“Hail Hecate, mighty Crone/Flesh to flesh and bone to bone.” I glanced at Harry to make sure he wasn't listening. “Silver mend and blood sustain/Each to each be whole again.”
I drew the silver blade across my naked palm until it drew a slim line of blood, then dug up the leg of Batten's blood-soaked zebra suit, tried not to remember some other, more enjoyable times I'd run my hands across his skin, wriggled my hand inside his jeans with the blade folded into my bloody palm.
The break was bad; exposed bone split his skin. Blood still sluiced down his calf. He sucked in a sharp breath as my fingers got close to the injury, an appallingly vulnerable sound that made my shoulders bunch up. Working in tight quarters, I slid the cold tip of the dagger into the wound, extracted it, then placed my bloody hand pal
m-down on it. I dropped my voice lower so that even Batten would not hear it. “Lust for health and love for luck/ Hope my magic doesn't suck./Brimstone moon and witch's fire/Potent healing I desire.”
Batten's head fell limp to one side against the wall.
“Please work,” I whispered, and glanced over my shoulder.
Harry was giving me the stink-eye. I gave it to him right back; after all the nasty shocks he'd given me tonight, he had no right to scrutinize me.
“Someone check on the hen,” Chapel demanded into his microphone. I jerked guiltily; my boss had returned and was right behind me. I slid my hand out from up Batten's pant leg.
“Ben's wound is shallow, Marnie. How's Mark?”
“He'll live, but he should see a doctor,” I said. “The girl?”
She was still breathing but barely, and her eyes were unfocused. She swung her chin to one side when Harry went on one knee beside her.
“You should never have been a part of this, child,” Harry said with regret. “Why have you come?”
“Rot in Hell,” the girl snarled, panting weakly.
Blood bubbled in one corner of her mouth. She wouldn't last long enough for an ambulance to get here. I crawled forward, but Harry warned me away with an upraised hand. He indicated to the ornate silver cross, and I picked it up for him, showed it to her.
“Where is John Spicer?” he asked her.
She horked a mouthful of her blood in his face, which seemed to bother him more than it should have, considering. “My father is a fool. I know who you are, Guy Harrick, and what you've done.”
She said it so ferociously, with such conviction, that Harry's head pulled back. “What is this thing you imagine I have done, child?”
“The true abomination…” She choked on a throat full of blood and spit. “I know who…I know who you…father—” Her lips slackened and her stare faded far away over Harry's falling shoulders.
“And I know you, Christina,” Harry said sadly, extracting from his pocket a crisp white handkerchief with which to dry her blood-tinged spittle from her chin.