Dragonsword

by Chloe Garner

  “So why not put their capitol there?” Sam asked. She laughed.

  “Would you pick Denver or Chicago over New York? Or London? Vienna? Constantinople? Alexandria? No. The real power demons go where they are proud to be. The ones with no ego and nothing to prove, they go where they can get more power. Most of them, that’s here, working for demons like Nuri and Kjarr. Ones that are off-grid…” She put her hands out dramatically, then dropped them. “They go suck power out of the ground. They’re harder to find, they’re harder to catch, and they’re harder to kill as long as they’re on one of the major intersections.”

  “And that’s where we’re headed,” Sam said.

  “That’s where they are,” Samantha answered.

  <><><>

  Samantha did something to Gwen. She took blood from Kelly and from Maryann, and she disappeared into the closet for most of an hour - Sam swore Jason would be better off if he didn’t see - and then he put the sticky black goop on Gwen.

  “You can take her to a car wash in an hour,” she said as she got into the car and lay down in the back.

  He knocked on the dash, making exact note of the minute and stopped ten minutes early in case of a line.

  “You’re lucky I like you so much,” he said, getting out to get gas. He wasn’t sure if she laughed or not; her eyes were closed.

  He drove through to Chicago, alert always to the possibility that a demon might glitch into the car and try to stab Samantha while he wasn’t looking. With Kelly in the far back, at least there was someone to sound an alarm, but he checked his rear view all the time, anyway. Sam woke her up when they got to the city limits, and they went hunting.

  <><><>

  Little Rock.

  Sam had his glasses on, watching the fight from outside of his body. Samantha and Jason were terrors to behold; Sam kept himself safe and took the shots he saw, protecting Samantha’s back in their own dance. He’d identified one of the demons as one who was involved in taking Jason - not just one who crossed the hellsgate, and Samantha and Jason were carefully keeping him alive as they tore through the rest of them. The strange messenger demon had appeared and disappeared somewhere else in the building, and Sam had slowed time, trying to follow, but the demon was too strong and too fast - he didn’t actually understand in what way he was too fast, but it was the only way to describe the sensation of being left behind - and Sam had lost him as soon as he left.

  He felt strange.

  Like he was running on auto-pilot, letting everyone else make his decisions for him, while his mind caught up with the ones he was supposed to be making. Something was coming, his instincts told him, and he was just waiting for the arrival.

  He fought with Samantha as a single life-form split into two bodies. She sent her concerns and he reacted to them; he watched over her and kept her away from surprises. She corrected his motion where his training was weak compared to hers, and kept him sharp, though he needed less and less of that these days.

  Watching, still involved, but like a television show viewer, pulling for this or that to happen as a gut instinct rather than experiencing it personally, he realized he was good.

  He was very good.

  He’d watched Jason fight, all those years, not so much against demons, but against other Rangers: half-drunk, half-serious, but fully committed. Jason just didn’t lose. Sam had accepted his role as the lesser, in that part of their partnership. He was the smart one, the focused one, the reliable one. Jason always came through, but sometimes only after you called Sam. He watched himself slash across a demon’s throat with Wrath - the blade screeched hot and powerful in his hand at the demon blood - and saw for the first time himself in the context of the Ranger he had been. The Ranger Jason had been.

  He was still the lesser of the Elliott twins, but he was great in his own right. He was powerful.

  Samantha felt the realization happen and crowed mentally at it. He smiled, mentally, seeing the expression emerge on his own face in fractions.

  They emptied the room and the remaining demon glitched helplessly around as Samantha and Jason attempted to catch him. Sam edged a fraction into the future, pulling Samantha away from where the demon was toward where he was going to be. She pulled a gold pin out of the fabric of her pants and threw at empty air, striking the demon as he got there. He screamed and growled, barking in his strange language, and Samantha and Jason were on him. Samantha mentally asked Sam to leave. She didn’t want him to see. He dropped his vision back into his own head and went to stand outside of the door. She let him go at that point, not pushing him further, and he sat down against the wall to wait.

  <><><>

  It wasn’t any better the second time. If anything, it was worse, because Samantha couldn’t disappear inside of herself while she was working. She was showing Jason how to do what she did. She was conscious, actively considering her choices, analyzing them so she could explain them.

  The demon wailed and cried loud enough for Sam to hear him; he felt Samantha answer it in hellspeak. There was a special kind of angry she had when she spoke in the demon language. It sickened him when she approved of Jason’s contributions to the work. He wished he could shut off the link and not know. The Rangers had never acknowledged the human-like nature of demons - most of them had never made the connection - and they’d never considered that they might be sources of information. Rangers just killed.

  That was bad enough.

  Remembering some of the pitiful, wounded creatures - human, humanoid, and other - that Jason had shot dead in cold blood still turned his stomach. Knowing that they would eat his face off his living body didn’t change anything. Torture was something they’d managed to avoid so far, and he loathed that Jason was learning it.

  He’d asked why Samantha had consented so easily to teaching it, and she’d given him a funny smile.

  “Because that’s where I belong,” she’d said. He’d sent her confusion and she shrugged. “Warrior, shaman. One step back, one to the right.”

  He hadn’t liked that at all, and he’d made it clear in their silent form of communication.

  “Should Merlin have taken it personally?” she’d asked.

  “My brother isn’t King Arthur,” Sam said. Her answer was sadness.

  “Neither was King Arthur.”

  He hadn’t considered what he thought about Samantha and Jason having a specific relationship like that. He suspected it wouldn’t bother him. They were a good match as friends and as fighters, but terrible in every other way, and he knew without doubt that Jason was not a competitor. What he suspected was going to bother him more, when he sat down and thought about it, was that Samantha was very carefully and very gently telling him that he wasn’t competing for her, either. It was cold and lonely, waking up by himself, when the reason she was doing it was to make the point.

  But he wasn’t thinking about that.

  Not yet.

  He listened to her, unobtrusively as he knew how, and waited. Under the horror and sickness, there was a certain satisfaction that scared him. She was good at what she did, and in a mechanical sense, she liked when things worked the way she thought they would. Trapping the demon in his body and using it as a pain pit, they would force him to tell them the answers to the few questions Samantha had: who had opened the hellsgate? what were they planning next? when would they go after Carter?

  Mostly, though, she said that they had to splash him because he’d been involved in taking Jason. It was a code of honor among her people. Strictly speaking, she hadn’t done what was necessary to make Jason hers, but she’d decided that the fact that she was willing to do it meant that she was allowed to. The demons would know the penalty of interfering with Jason or Sam in the future.

  And it had to be high.

  Just looking at tactics, Sam got that. She had to make the result as bad as possible, so that only the most motivated demons would come after them in the future. It didn’t mean he had to like it, though.

  It remind
ed him of the darkness that had radiated off of her while Jason was gone. Powerful, absolutely. Capable and terrifying, yes. But there was something out of control about it, how the power claimed her and used her back.

  It wasn’t the same. She wasn’t using dark magic, and she wasn’t making her decisions out of pure anger, but the way her brain worked while she was doing it was just familiar to him.

  She shrugged him away. He’d gotten too close. He sent her a quiet apology and turned his focus to what the eyes and ears of his physical body could pick up. The hallway was quiet, and dimly lit. Somewhere on the other side of the building, Kelly and Maryann waited. Maryann said that she had something she needed to show Samantha, but Samantha said the girl wouldn’t last through the death scream. She’d turn up later, after it had faded off of them some. Sam braced himself again for that terrible noise. Knowing it was coming probably wouldn’t make it any better, but he couldn’t help it.

  Kelly had wanted to be in on the hunt with them, but Samantha had insisted he stand guard. Three of them was enough, and he had an advantage against demons that made him a better sentry than the rest of them. Samantha hadn’t explained what that meant, but Kelly had seemed to understand.

  Sam got Wrath out and blew the ash off of the blade, then started cleaning his nails with the point. He knew it was dumb; if the death scream made him jump, he’d stab his own finger, but it was calming to have something else to focus on outside of the empty hallway or what was going on behind him.

  The wait was interminable.

  He put Wrath back away, stretching his feet out in front of him, then bending one knee and then the other when his butt got numb. He stood and leaned against the wall for a while, then sat again, picking at scabs on his hands and arms. The sounds coming out of the room got worse and worse.

  Then there was the pause.

  He remembered this part. Samantha’s mind cleared and there was an exchange of information, frustration - probably at Jason - and closure. He shifted. Samantha pushed him away again. He sent her exasperation. What else was he supposed to do? Her response was sarcastic, whatever it was. Then she was gone, working at a physical body like an instrument. The noise got louder, and less linguistic. All he could say for it was that it was shorter. Ten minutes later, he slammed his palms over his ears and slid sideways onto the floor, trying to get under the scream. His stomach turned and he clenched his teeth, enduring.

  And then it was over.

  He stood and waited - Samantha still kept him out of the room - and Samantha came out of the room and fell against him, still trying to hide from it. Jason came out a few minutes later carrying Samantha’s backpack.

  “That was worthless,” he said.

  “It served its purpose,” Samantha answered, turning her face sideways against Sam’s chest to speak. She stood, keeping herself away from him emotionally. They had to find a new equilibrium. He understood. He let her go and they started down the hallway. They reached a large open area, maybe an old cafeteria, when Kelly appeared.

  “There’s,” he started, then collapsed in a muffled grunt as a demon clubbed him over the head with his fist.

  “Demons coming,” Jason finished, drawing Anadidd’na. The demon looked at them and shuddered, and in the instant the death scream bought them, Samantha stabbed him in the stomach. He ashed, but the fight was only starting.

  Sam sprung out of his own mind, grasping for his glasses as a familiar force caught him in the chest and slammed him into a wall. Jason held his own. Samantha sent Sam an urgent query, and he found the snake of a demon who held him, pointing her at him, but calming her. He couldn’t cover her, but he was okay - his back would hurt for a couple of days and he was peripherally aware that his lungs were on strike at the moment - and she didn’t have to get him free if it wasn’t the first priority. Sam pointed her at the big-boned woman and tugged her at the shooter, far to her left where she couldn’t see him, as the first targets. She begrudgingly agreed, her arm mid-draw behind her back.

  There were new demons, and Sam slowed time further, taking a long time to look at each of them. It was clear that Jason was after the big woman, so Sam wrote her off for now, looking instead at the newcomers and letting Samantha know where they were.

  There were two huge, Nordic-shaped men wielding swords nearly as tall as they were, and a shorter man, maybe German, with a battle axe. Sam didn’t think he could ever recall having seen one in person, before. There was a wisp of a woman with long white hair who held her hands out at Samantha with focused eyes. Sam focused on her hands, trying to explain what he saw. Power. That he was afraid of. Samantha signaled that she understood, and he hoped she had. He turned his attention back to the shooter, realizing that Jason might be a target, as he held Anadidd’na over his head and charged the leader. Samantha felt his concern shift, and her head turned slowly, finding the shooter. Sam pushed her to the side as the first shot fired, seconds after Kelly had appeared, and before his body had completely settled onto the ground.

  Samantha stepped over him, spinning sideways to avoid a vicious swipe from one of the sword giants, and rolling under the axe, making for the shooter. Sam edged her sideways as the second bullet went past her shoulder and hit the other giant. The demon didn’t even notice. Lead killed humans well enough, but it was like shooting a demon with a water gun. Samantha rolled again, and Sam sent her a query, wondering if she was afraid. She answered him with a blood-stirring battle yell that only existed between their two minds. They’d tried to get the drop on them, and Kelly had spoiled it. She was organized, now, and she had Jason on her side. She wondered at him about the space behind her, low, and he took a very quick look at Kelly, unwilling to leave his focus from the shooter for long. The dwarf disappeared, but Sam paused long enough to verify that the angel was bleeding from a fractured skull - not ashing - and send Samantha a confirmation of life. Grim, but not sad. She understood.

  Sam slowed time harder, looking for the dwarf. He’d noticed Jason going after the leader and had glitched across the room to back up the woman. Sam sent Samantha concern over there, and a touch of cynicism. Of course Jason was getting himself into trouble. What else was he going to do? She answered with echoing concern but determination and distraction. She couldn’t help. Sam would need to warn her if Jason was truly in over his head.

  Now Sam was watching two fronts, the shooter and the two giants with Samantha, and the leader and the dwarf with Jason. Samantha had gotten close enough to the shooter to use the giants as body shields, and the shooter hadn’t yet realized the exposure Jason represented. For a few more seconds, they had a workable plan, whatever it was.

  Sam wanted to push Jason a step forward, to warn him of the sweep of the axe as the dwarf pivoted his weight against it, but his brother knew, somehow, dancing to one side as he again brought Anadidd’na down against the leader. She screamed something at him and he stumbled backwards, very nearly stabbing the spellcaster behind him by accident. She jerked her hands up and away, startled, and glitched away. Sam didn’t look for her, cuing Samantha that Jason might need intervention. He felt her tense. Jason dropped a foot back and put his knee down, ducking his head for the second rotation of the axe, then bringing Anadidd’na down hard on the dwarf’s head. The demon’s face was turned away, and he never saw the blow coming. He ashed. Sam sent Samantha victory, and felt her attention slack away from him again.

  She was fighting a two-fronted war, as well. She was dancing between two glitching giants, a forest of legs and swords, keeping one of them between herself and the shooter as she fought back against the magic the slight woman was casting at her. Sam brought his attention back to her, feeling her relax against the guidance he could give her from outside and directing more of her energy into magic. He wasn’t used to using her body as a puppet, though she had frequently done so with him as training, and for a moment he worried that she trusted him too much, but it wasn’t much different than the subtle nudges and corrections. Where he wanted her arm to
go, it went. Where it felt like her feet should be, they landed. He’d watched her fight so many times that it was almost an unconscious effort, using her body as a weapon against the two demons. He scored a few gashes here or there as the demons’ advantage disappeared.

  The spellcaster made a high-pitched noise that Sam couldn’t identify as a scream or words, but as Sam’s focus expanded slightly to find the woman, she exploded into a shower of ash. It surprised him to find her directly in front of him. There was an odd moment of realization that the cloud of ash had just coated a body that he had to think to identify it as his own. He brushed away the strange sensation, returning to Samantha, who had returned to her own fight with gusto. She was almost happy, angel-dancing the two demons, keeping them as cover and playing them against each other. Sam realized that the snake demon was distracted by the pitched battle between Jason and the female leader, and he sent Samantha a gentle tug. She saw it as well, drawing a knife out of her boot as she rolled across the floor, among three legs, an arm, and a sword point dug into the cement. She flicked it at the snake demon, who never saw the blade coming. One moment he was standing with a hand out and his head turned away, and the next he was staring at the hilt emerging from his chest as Sam slid down the wall to the floor. Sam drew Wrath as the snake-like man gently sloughed away to ash.

  He wanted the shooter.

  Shoot me, he thought. I can see it coming. He edged his vision out a fraction into the future, watching the man as he turned and found the threat coming at him, shooting at Sam three times, rapid fire. Sam didn’t watch his own reaction, just the shots. He moved out of the way of each of them easily. The demon glitched away, and Sam followed, pulling out his own gun. Samantha spun with the two giants, sending Sam news of hit after hit, and the room rang with the sound of metal against metal. Two more shots went past Sam like he’d never been there, and the demon glitched again. Sam shot at the other demon, hitting nothing but air. Two could play that game.