by Chloe Garner
“Very interesting,” Mahkail said. “Deftly done.”
“It suits you,” O’na Anu’dd said.
“Why would you… Ohhh,” Kelly said.
“Squiggles,” Jason said. “I’m staring at artsy squiggles on your back, man. That’s messed up.”
Samantha traced a finger along the symbol for Lahn then stepped away and Sam dropped his shirt again.
“You’re calling him Anu’dd Anadidd’na?” Mahkail asked.
“That’s one of the names they know him by in New York,” Samantha said.
“And yours is the inverse?” Mahkail asked. “I’d like to see it.”
Samantha held up a hand when Sam started to argue, reaching under her shirt to unbuckle Lahn’s harness and handing him the entire contraption, then pulling the back of her shirt up to her shoulder blades. She closed her eyes, focusing hard. Sam wasn’t in her head, watching her work. It was strange, and distracting in an odd new way. It took her several breaths to draw the focus to pull the image to her skin. It would be black, like all of the marks she took to her skin. She stretched her neck to the side, feeling the power it took to maintain the marks. It wasn’t a drain, so much as a reminder that she contained that much power. She opened her eyes to find marks cascading down her arms. She glanced at her palms, finding the dragon symbol on both, and closed her hands again, not wanting the angels to find the hellspeak mark. They were distracted.
“Parroah’na lahn,” Mahkail said. “The champion of victory. You’ve assigned yourself to me.”
“No, she made herself your peer,” O’na Anu’dd said.
“With respect, I could serve her as justly as you,” Kelly said.
“She is flawed,” Mahkail said.
“I am human,” Samantha said. “You must fight from the edges. I fight from the middle.”
“Fearlessly,” Kelly added. She didn’t correct him, trying not to let the surge of pride show.
She dropped her shirt and reached for Lahn. Sam handed her the blade and she stood facing Mahkail for a moment.
“For someone who has refused to take marks to her skin, you have many,” he observed. She let them fade.
“I must go,” O’na Anu’dd said. “I am glad to see you, Anadidd’na Anu’dd.”
“And you, O’na Anu’dd,” she answered. “Be well, and you have my gratitude for what you go to do.”
“May you serve with beauty and grace,” he said, vanishing. Mahkail looked at Kelly.
“You have what you need?”
“I do.”
He turned to regard Samantha.
“And you?”
“I need nothing you could offer,” she answered. He bowed slightly and vanished as well.
“Sometimes I swear you’re speaking a different language, with them,” Jason said, throwing himself on a bed.
“We are speaking a different language,” Samantha said. “We just condescend to speak it in English.”
“See what I mean?” Jason asked. “What’s for dinner?”
Samantha remembered that she was hungry. Sam went back to the phone where the room service menu was open, glancing at her like he still couldn’t believe it. Neither could she. She was afraid to be too happy, for fear that she’d find it was an illusion of some kind, something she couldn’t actually control. She unclasped the pin, just pushing the needle out of its hook, and the bond reasserted. Sam jerked to look at her, and the echoing relief between them was almost comedic. It wasn’t permanent. She set the needle back, and the space outside of her mind fell quiet, and she could no longer feel where Sam was, physically. She shook her head in disbelief.
None of the books she had read had suggested this was possible. They would either be bonded until the day they died, or they would sever the bond and fly apart like magnets facing the wrong way. There wasn’t a third option.
Sam sat on the bed and shrugged.
“I guess what do you want to eat?”
It was too much.
Too much to think about all at once.
Food.
That was the next step. The thinking could take its time. The food couldn’t. She nodded.
“Whatever looks good.”
“Here,” Jason said holding out a hand for the menu. Samantha went to sit in a chair, dazed. Maryann was watching her from beside the television, eyes seeming to see everything. Samantha had forgotten she was even there.
“Well done,” she said to the demon. Maryann dipped her head, then glanced at Kelly with sharp eyes and vanished. Samantha smiled. Like a pair of north poles.
<><><>
They ate. Samantha stared at Sam when he wasn’t looking at her, wanting to kiss him again. To feel him. To have done it. He looked at her and she looked away. After the food was gone, Jason stood.
“They’ve got a gym downstairs,” he said. “I’m taking Kelly with me.”
“I don’t need to work out,” Kelly argued.
“I’m taking you with me anyway,” Jason said, smirking.
“But it’s my job to stay here,” Kelly said.
“But they don’t want you here,” Jason answered, opening the door.
“Why wouldn’t they want me here? More allies is always better than fewer.”
“Oh, kid,” Jason said, grabbing Kelly’s arm and pulling him out the door. He left with the angel still complaining.
The door closed.
Samantha looked at Sam and then away, feeling self-conscious, like she was alone in the room with a new person. Sam apparently felt no comparable awkwardness. He pulled her out of her chair and kissed her, holding her face against his.
The things she had never noticed before.
The sharp draws of air and the low noises he made in his chest to tell her what he felt. How she answered.
The smell of him. She knew him by scent, but pressed against him, it was all there was. She’d read somewhere that people with complimentary antibodies liked how each other smelled. Identical antibodies didn’t. If she remembered right.
And taste. She thought it tacky to think about how someone tasted, so she didn’t. She felt guilty, being so aware of her own thoughts, and how they wandered, then realized that he didn’t know. Her thoughts were her own. Still her heart rate picked up as they hit the bed and he pulled the sheets back, pulling her down with him into the bed. Her body buzzed with currents of electricity between his mouth and his hands as he rolled his weight onto her.
As he edged his feet between hers, though, hooking one knee behind his, and the blankets closed behind her, she startled and pulled away, rolling to the floor in a cluttered heap and bolting away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no, no,” she said, hands shaking, heart not relenting in its useless flutter. She held up a hand at him, waving him away. “No.” She shook her head, her hand flicking harder as she turned away. Her arms shook and her knees threatened to give. It took her a few seconds to recognize fear. She swallowed, but her throat was dry. “No.”
“Sam, what’s wrong?”
Her heart beat harder, faster, and when he shifted to get up, she ran. The bathroom door slammed behind her - she didn’t remember it in her hand - and she sat down on the toilet, dropping her face into her hands and sobbing, barely able to hold herself upright her body shook so hard.
“Sam?” Sam asked through the door.
“Please,” Samantha said. “Just leave me alone.”
She would have pushed him away, but she couldn’t. She was alone in her own head, terrified of… nothing, wallowing in self-hatred for a reaction she didn’t understand.
He hadn’t done anything wrong.
Nothing they hadn’t done dozens of times before, either.
What was wrong with her?”
There was a long silence, then Sam opened the door.
“No,” he said. He sat own on the floor, leaning against the tub and stretching his legs out across the floor. He slid down until he could rest his head on the
tub. He didn’t look at her. For a moment she was afraid he was angry.
“I’m not leaving you. You can tell me what you want when you’re ready.”
She covered her face with her hands again, letting her shoulders collapse. Cried.
What was wrong with her? She kept waiting for Sam to try to pry her out, make her talk - it’s what she would have done - knowing she would lash out at him, drive him away when he did it, but he never did.
Jason came back a couple hours later, and Sam edged the bathroom door closed and turned on the shower. Samantha looked up at him and he shrugged. She folded herself off the toilet and across the floor, huddling against his side, hugging her knees to her chest. He put an arm around her and dropped his face onto the top of her head. What was he thinking?
She heard Kelly say something and Jason’s deeper voice answer, and she tucked her head against Sam. She didn’t know why she needed to hide. And why she wasn’t hiding from him.
“Hey,” Sam said finally. “You okay?”
She shook her head. It was true, but she couldn’t have explained it.
Terror.
Why terror?
He ran his hand down the back of her head, playing his fingers through her hair.
“I need sleep,” she said. She felt him nod. Maybe it was just exhaustion. Making her blow things completely out of proportion.
It wasn’t a good reason, because fear wasn’t the right reaction, under any circumstances, but it comforted her, anyway. He stood and helped her up. For an instant, she wanted to beg him to let her sleep in the bathroom, to not have to face Jason, but that was stupid. Stupid. She followed Sam back into the main room. Jason looked up from cleaning Anadidd’na’s harness. He grinned and opened his mouth to say something.
“If you say anything, I swear I will impale you on something not particularly pointy,” she said, taking refuge in the bed. Jason laughed.
“That’s more like you. That bad, though? Seriously?”
“Shut up,” she said, and he laughed again. She shuddered, rolling over to turn her back to him and, deciding there was no point being awake any longer than necessary, forcing herself to sleep.
<><><>
Sam got out a book and went to sit across from Jason, glancing over at Samantha from time to time, wishing he knew if she were asleep.
“So?” Jason asked finally. Sam looked up from his book.
“So what?”
“You really think you’re getting away with not telling me anything?” Jason asked.
“Leave her alone,” Sam said. Jason dropped his head to one side.
“You were showering together when we got back. I’m not allowed to tease her a little bit?”
“Why would they shower together?” Kelly asked. “Wouldn’t that be crowded?”
Jason snorted and started to answer the angel, but something on Sam’s face stopped him.
“What happened?” Jason asked, suddenly understanding more than Sam did.
Sam glanced at Samantha again, deciding that, even if she heard, she’d have known what he would say, any other time, anyway.
“She freaked,” he said. “I don’t know. Nothing was going to happen, anyway, but then she just freaked out.”
“So the conjugal shower…?”
“We were sitting on the floor next to the tub,” Sam said.
“Wow,” Jason said. “What did you do?”
It was an accusation. Mostly playful, but Sam knew the threat underneath it. He was offended that Jason would suggest something like that, but wasn’t surprised.
“Nothing,” Sam said. Jason raised an eyebrow. “Seriously. We got in bed, and then… She was just gone. Freaking out.”
Sam waited.
Jason waited.
“What?” Jason asked finally. “What do you want from me, dude?”
“What do I do?”
“Hell if I know,” Jason answered. “I go home with chicks who’re ready to go. Who know what that means.” He scratched his head. “Look. You said she needed someone to talk to? You’re right, but she won’t. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with her, and I bet she doesn’t either. I can’t help you.”
“Who would she talk to?” Sam asked.
“Other than me and you?” Jason asked. Sam grimaced. It was a valid point. He rubbed his face.
“I don’t know what to do.”
Jason rolled his jaw to one side.
“How about you stop acting like a little girl,” he said. “You two have a shot. Stop whining.”
Sam gave him a crooked smile, unable to argue with that. Jason got up and went to the fridge, pulling out a six-pack of beer.
“I got bored, so we went out for a walk,” he explained, sitting back down. He handed Sam a beer.
“Here’s to angels and demons and not having hit squads coming at us every two seconds.”
“It wasn’t every two seconds,” Kelly said. Sam looked at his book.
“Angel dust and dragons and new beginnings,” he said. It was a new book. He’d had it delivered to Doris’ house in Kansas City and had been keeping it away from Samantha. Somehow he’d finally decided it was time to read it.
Jason went back to cleaning, and Sam opened the book again, starting over at the beginning again.
My name is America and as a child, I played on the skin of a lion my father killed with his bare hands.
The author on the cover was listed as Sam Wilkinson, and most of the internet was sure he was a New England recluse. There were critiques that said that he didn’t understand what it was like to be a woman, or how a girl would really react to the situations America found herself in.
Sam looked over at the shape under the covers of the bed that he would sleep in that night. Wilkinson had been prolific for years, and then had gone quiet. Fans had written to his publisher asking for his next scheduled release, and his publisher had put up a brave face, but the rumors started to circulate that he had killed himself, or lost interest in the series. Then, about two years later, his next book showed up. And the next. And the next. He didn’t publish as frequently as he had before, but the books had hit shelves about every six months for a couple of years, now.
“Lot of hours, sitting in the back of a car,” Sam said. Jason looked up and grunted something un-argumentative and returned to his work. Sam looked back at those opening words.
Samantha had been nineteen when she’d written them. She’d told him once that the books were semi-autobiographical, a way to work through what she was discovering to be true about the world. That had been a long time ago, and he suspected she thought he’d forgotten. It was like reading her diary, but she’d never asked him not to. Her writing was directed at teens, a happier, optimistic way of shaping the horror she existed in, and he wondered if she hadn’t hoped he’d read them. There might be more truth in what someone wishes were true than in what actually is, he’d thought one night when he woke up to find her sitting on the floor in a pool of light, writing. She’d looked up at him and answered the un-formed question with, ‘sleep, Sam,’ and he’d gone back to sleep feeling lighter. Through the sloshy hangover and the grim darkness that had defined their lives, he’d felt lighter. He’d never had sex with her and she’d never stopped writing. He knew now, looking back, that if either of those had failed to be true, they probably would have managed to kill themselves. That she hadn’t given up so completely kept him from giving up hope, either, and they’d fought tactically rather than suicidally.
He looked at the first line again.
My name is America and as a child, I played on the skin of a lion my father killed with his bare hands.
She had such hope.
He settled lower in his chair, reading.
It felt like the time had come for change. The wait was over.
<><><>
She’d slept curled up against him every night for a week. It was like she was a fragile doll and he was afraid of breaking her; he was so ginger with her, so careful. It was e
mbarrassing, but it was better than trying to explain.
She’d sent him after the psychic twice, but she was well-guarded. Maryann could only point them at a city. Denver. She’d never looked at anything outside of the building, and apparently the psychic had finally seen her after she had stolen something from the altar of keycards. Samantha had given her Sam’s phone and asked her to get close, and call from where she ended up, but once she had ended up on the wrong side of the mountains and hadn’t been able to see the city at all. Samantha figured her accurate range was about twenty-five miles, and she didn’t have time to tear the city apart.
They kept at the plan.
One demon led to another which led to another.
They had a lead that brought them to Kansas City again, and they called Doris in advance to let her know they were there. There was a short argument on the way into the city on whether they should stay with Doris or not, but no one had the heart to argue against. The place was home, and they were tired of not being around friends.
Tanner was home when they got there, but left that afternoon, in search of a witch casting evil eyes, he said. Samantha worried about him, but Sam pointed out that they’d all been hunting witches since they were teenagers. Samantha called it the worst case of survival bias she’d ever heard of.
He would have impressed on her how unconcerned he was, if he’d been able to. She knew that, and it made it worse.
They ate a home-cooked meal and went to bed at a real bedtime hour for the first time in weeks, and Sam checked in with the demon they were hunting the next morning over pancakes.
He frowned, focusing, then pulled his glasses off of his shirt collar and put them on.
“What are those?” Doris asked as she heaped more pancakes on the table. Jason looked over from where he was frying bacon.
“Seeing-eye glasses,” he said.
“They help him focus his visions,” Samantha said, watching Sam.
“He disappeared,” Sam said.
“What do you mean?” Samantha asked.
“He’s gone.”
“Where did he go?”