Dragonsword

by Chloe Garner

“And tell him…” Jason stopped. Shook his head. “You’re doing a great job. You just keep doing what you’re doing.”

  “You’re sure you won’t stay?” Janelle asked. Jason shook his head.

  “No. We need to go. Got people to save.”

  There was a flash of pity that the woman covered.

  “And you won’t give me an e-mail address so I can send you pictures?”

  Jason shook his head again, taking a step away.

  “Too dangerous. You just keep doing what you’re doing. Tell Craig I said so.”

  She watched after them as they started away, then went back to her bench next to another mom. They walked most of the way back to the motel in silence. Jason was distant.

  Carson and Sam were leaning against the Cruiser waiting for them. Samantha looked at Jason before they got into earshot.

  “Hey,” she said. He looked at her, blinking as though he were returning from somewhere else. She nodded at him. “You did right.”

  <><><>

  It happened like hitting a trip wire.

  One moment the car was silent; they were approaching the end of the mountains and the sun was setting out over an ocean they couldn’t see yet. They were all off in their own thoughts. The next moment, Sam was convulsing, Carson was yelling, Samantha was climbing between the two front seats, and Jason was giving orders that no one was listening to.

  For a few terrible seconds, Samantha didn’t know whether to pull her hair pin and risk demon attack, or to remain blind and helpless. She put her hand on his chest and pushed light into him and he eased. The car’s weight shifted out as Jason rounded a corner, and Samantha went shoulder-first into the window, but she held her hand on Sam’s chest, gathering herself to hit him again. He trembled as the second charge of heat and light hit him, and then went slack. Carson grabbed the waist of her jeans and put a hand firm against her ribs, steadying her as they rolled through three more corners. Samantha took Sam’s pulse and waited, knowing if he didn’t wake up soon, she would risk getting all of them killed in an ambush to be sure he was okay.

  He gulped air and flung his arms out, looking for something to hold on to. Samantha fell backwards into Jason’s seat, and Carson tried to pull her away. She didn’t let go. Sam’s eyes flew open and he looked around, disoriented. He found her and stared for two counts, then drew a raw breath and shook his head. She relaxed.

  “Is he okay?” Jason asked again.

  “I’m okay,” Sam said.

  “Tell me,” Samantha said. He looked at Carson, then at Samantha.

  “I know who she is,” he said.

  “Who who is?”

  Sam shuddered.

  “Her,” he said. Samantha shook her head.

  “I need more, Sam.”

  His forehead wrinkled and he closed his eyes.

  “She’s waiting for us. She knew me. I couldn’t get away.”

  “Who is she?”

  He shook his head.

  “She’s the one.”

  She kissed his forehead, wishing she could pull the information directly out of his head.

  “The one we’re looking for,” he said.

  “The psychic? You found her?”

  “Yeah, well, she was there, too, but…”

  “Sam, what did you see?”

  “I saw through her eyes. She talked to me. She was… everywhere. She wanted me to see.”

  “A demon?”

  “Yeah. They had a little girl in a white dress tied to a table…”

  He turned his face away.

  “It was like being possessed again.”

  “I’m so sorry, Beloved.”

  “She said… ‘Sam. I’ve been waiting for you. I’m very eager to meet. I understand you’ve been looking for me. Bring her to me.’” His eyes were distant. “It was a recording. A message. She knows we’re nearby, but I don’t think she knows where.”

  “Keep driving,” Samantha said, pulling Sam’s eyes open and looking in his ears. He opened his mouth without being asked, and she checked his pulse. She reached for her pin, not to unfasten it, but because she was considering it, and Sam reached for her wrist and pulled it back down.

  “No,” he said. “I’m okay. It was a message. And I’d forgotten what it felt like to not be in control like that. She didn’t hurt me.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said.

  “But I don’t know that she did hurt me,” he answered. “I’m not going to let you risk all of us for you to be sure. You can run a full diagnostic when we’re somewhere safe.”

  She nodded, and let the momentum of the car tip her into him as Jason started back downhill.

  “Where to?” Jason asked after a minute.

  “Seattle,” Samantha said. “We keep our promise.”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Mendocino,” he said. “She’s in California. We know where she is. She’s the one who’s after Carter. That’s what we’ve been looking for all this time.”

  “California,” Carson said. “Worst comes to worst, I can call Tanner and Krista to go to Seattle.”

  “Mendocino’s a trap,” Jason said. “I think we should keep going, do our thing in Seattle, and not turn up in the middle of an ambush at the exact moment they expect us to be there.”

  Sam and Samantha kept eye contact through several corners, mentally battling without being able to touch. She didn’t need to hear his feelings to know his thoughts. He finally spoke them out loud, anyway, putting his hands on either side of her face.

  “He kills one person at a time. Quick. She’s feasting on live children. Holds them for fear, drains them for pain and blood. We know where she is, and we need to find her. We can’t blink now, just because it’s dangerous.”

  He was right. She knew he was. But she didn’t like being jerked around, and she didn’t like demons using Sam to get to her.

  “If I show up every time a demon sets a trap for you…”

  “It’s negotiating,” he said. “I get it. We have to go.” Simple, short phrases. No arguing.

  She nodded, letting him drag the agreement out of her.

  “Mendocino,” she said.

  “You sure?” Jason asked. “I was willing to strip Carson of his vote and call it a win.”

  “He’s right,” Samantha said. “I’m sure.”

  <><><>

  They left Carson at a fast food joint. He put up a fight, just to prove that he wasn’t afraid, but he’d heard enough stories at this point to not mean it.

  The house Sam brought them to was a villa built in a great sprawl over a clifftop a hundred feet above the sea. The gate was open and black and silver balloons twisted on ribbons from the lamps on either side of the driveway.

  “So much for the element of surprise,” Jason said, driving slowly. “What do you want to do?”

  “Pull off here. I think we should walk in,” Samantha said. He found a space between columns along the drive way and pulled onto the grass. He stopped the engine and went to the back of the car and started arming up.

  “Sam, can you see?” Samantha asked.

  “Everything but you,” he answered.

  “Good,” she said. “I want you guys to stay out here. You can cover me from the outside, and leave yourself space to fight if you need it.”

  “I don’t see anything in the house,” Sam said.

  Jason found the rifle that shot the marked steel bullets and started to load it up.

  “It’s possible that they’ve already left, and what you saw was old,” Samantha answered.

  “There are spaces in there that are murky. They’ve been shielding themselves pretty hard,” Sam said. Jason checked to make sure the first bullet loaded into the chamber and set off perpendicular to the road, looking for cover that wasn’t going to get in the way of a sword.

  “You don’t go in until you’ve drawn out any traps,” Jason said. Samantha walked with him, leaving Sam standing by the car, searching in a vision for a few strides before h
e loped to catch up.

  “You got it,” she said.

  “You get in trouble, you break a window and pull down the curtains. Tell me where you are and get me a shot.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t get killed.”

  “I’ll put it on the list.”

  “You aren’t going to like it, but you should take Kelly,” Sam said.

  “He’s going to be the one who doesn’t like it,” Samantha answered.

  “Yeah, but it really is his job,” Sam said. “I convinced him to stay based on the fact that we were hunting a human.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Samantha said. “You’re right. He’s just not going to like this. Call Abby.”

  Sam took out his phone and dialed Abby’s cell, feeling the psychic buzz as he pushed the last number. Phones. Weird.

  “We need Kelly,” he said.

  “Okay,” she answered. A fraction of a second later, Kelly appeared.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The house down there,” Samantha said. “We’re going to search it, you and I.”

  “Why do you need me?” Kelly asked.

  “Because it’s probably a demon trap,” Jason said, looking through the sight on the gun and dialing in optical controls. Flags snapped merrily on poles around the property. Pretentious, yes, but at least they told him the wind.

  “Then why are we going in?”

  “Because it’s the demon hunting Carter,” Sam said. “She told me she would be here.”

  “And you just came? And you’re just going to walk in?”

  “That’s the plan,” Samantha said. Kelly seemed to register Jason laying on the ground for the first time.

  “Why aren’t they coming?”

  “This is tactical,” Jason said. “One of us has to go in, one of us should be a surprise. You tank, we fly.”

  “Then why isn’t Sam coming? I only see one gun,” Kelly argued. “Why are we going in at all? We should go.”

  Jason ignored most of what the angel asked, squinting his eye to focus.

  “I can’t be up here on my own. I’m laying here on my belly and a demon glitches out, I need someone who’s got my back.”

  “You said you were only hunting humans,” Kelly said.

  “And we called you when we knew different,” Sam answered. “You should go. The longer we stand here, the more likely it is they’ll have noticed us.”

  Jason turned his head to watch as Kelly put his head up, scenting like a hound.

  “I don’t sense any demons here,” he said.

  “And I don’t see any,” Sam answered. “Doesn’t mean they aren’t here.”

  “Let’s go,” Samantha said, drawing Lahn. “I’ll pull the pin if we get into serious trouble,” she said to Sam. Jason put his eye back the scope and scanned the front of the building. Sure, Sam could see better than he could, but he was going to have to be the one to make the shot, if she needed it. Samantha made her way down the hillside, across the wide green lawn toward the house.

  “Surprised you didn’t fight with her,” Jason observed.

  “I thought you would,” Sam answered.

  “Are we seriously crazy for just going along with her?” Jason asked.

  “She always seems to be right,” Sam answered.

  “Split up?” Jason asked. “When is that ever a good idea?”

  “When one of you is psychic, one of you has a high-powered demon-killing rifle, and one of you is an angel,” Sam said. “You know you can probably hit him with those bullets and they won’t hurt him?”

  “You think?” Jason asked.

  “Eighty-twenty,” Sam said.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Jason answered, lifting the gun a few degrees as Samantha got in range of the sight. He watched with his other eye as she and Kelly made their way around the front of the house, peering in windows and trying doors. The massive paired front doors pulled open and she and the angel looked into the building carefully.

  “Anything?” Jason asked.

  “I can’t see any more,” Sam said.

  “What?”

  “That’s how big the area is around her that she cancels out,” Sam said. “I can’t see anything in the building.”

  “But you can see us?”

  “I’m watching around us about a second in advance,” Sam said.

  Jason didn’t ask.

  If it worked, it was fine with him.

  He kept his eyes on the windows, listening for broken glass. He hoped he’d be able to hear it over the sound of the ocean.

  Samantha pulled a curtain back, fastening it out of the way, and he got a small view into the house as she moved. Room after room, she opened the windows and pulled the curtains, and so he tracked her through the entire front half of the first floor. Twenty or thirty minutes later, she stuck her head and shoulders out a window and shrugged. He didn’t like having her in his sights like that, but it was what he needed to know. They were going to work their way back into the house.

  He steadied himself.

  “Anything?” he grunted.

  “No,” Sam answered. “They were here. I saw all of this.”

  They waited.

  “Will you know if something goes wrong?” Jason asked.

  “Only if she dies or pulls out her hairpin,” Sam said. “Otherwise, Kelly is going to have to tell us if they need backup.”

  “Fat chance of that,” Jason said.

  “No kidding,” Sam answered.

  “I’m glad you had her take him, though,” Jason said.

  “Dammit, I wish I could see,” Sam said.

  “You remember what it was like, before?” Jason asked. “Go through a door and not know what was on the other side?”

  “Feels stupid risky, now,” Sam said. Jason snorted.

  “It does,” he said. “And yet, look at the risks we take now.”

  More time passed, with just the sounds of insects and water, and then there was motion through the front door. Jason zeroed in on it.

  “What the hell?” he asked.

  Samantha made her way through the doorway, wearing different clothes. She glanced furtively around, then dashed across the driveway and hid around a corner of the house.

  “What’s going on?” Sam asked.

  “Where’s Kelly?”

  Jason searched quickly, every window, looking for signs of life or threats, but found nothing.

  “No,” Sam said.

  “What?” Jason asked.

  Samantha started a quick trot away from the house, high on her toes, face back toward the building.

  “Jason, that’s not her.”

  “Sam, that’s her.”

  She looked up at Jason, as if she could see his face at that distance, eyes lined in worry, active awareness. Her attention darted away again, and Jason looked for whatever it was that was following her.

  “No. It isn’t,” Sam said. “Shoot her.”

  “Sam, you’re crazy. That’s Sam. I can see her.”

  “So can I,” Sam said. “And I can’t feel her. It isn’t her.”

  Jason started to answer, but grunted instead.

  “Sam, I’ve got crosshairs on your girlfriend’s chest. You seriously want me to pull the trigger?”

  “Jason, where’s Lahn?”

  He looked harder, as Samantha turned, looking back at the house again. He couldn’t see the shape of the sheath under her demon-hunting tight top, but he couldn’t always find it, anyway. True, if she were in danger, she should have had the blade out…

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Can you see her boots?”

  “Yes, I can see her boots.”

  She was getting closer, having crossed maybe half the distance from the house. There was still no sign of anything behind her, but she kept watching.

  “You see her knife?”

  Both legs were devoid of the boot knife.

  “You want me to shoot her.”

  “It isn’t her,” S
am said.

  “Hope to hell you’re right,” Jason muttered, bending time. He felt the throb his heart made through his body as it beat, waiting until it had passed to make sure he had the shot lined up, then pulled the trigger. It was surreal. He watched the bullet as it made its way toward her, and he heard the mechanisms in the gun move as they ejected the shell and loaded the next round. The moment they finished, he pulled the trigger again. The first bullet had almost reached Samantha, and if his body had had time to keep up with his brain, he would have felt sick. He shouldn’t have done it. He had just shot his best friend in the chest because his brother had told him to. He should have shot Sam.

  Her arm glitched from her side to directly in front of her, catching the bullet and glitching again to hold it up where she could see it. There was a space of time as she held the bullet up to the light while the second bullet made its way, during which Jason wrestled disbelief, then she caught the second in her other hand. A geometric pattern of blue and black spread across her eyes and temples, and Jason caught sight of a similar pattern on the back of her hand. She flicked her eyes toward him and vanished. He started the muscles necessary to get to his feet and draw Anadidd’na, using what limited information he had out of his off eye to try to find her.

  “You guys are ballsier than I gave you credit for,” Samantha-the-demon said. She was standing a few feet away, rolling the two bullets in her palm. “I thought it would have been fun, but… It was Sam, wasn’t it? How did you know?”

  “Dammit, Sam. How many demon versions of her do we need?” Jason asked.

  “Who are you?” Sam asked.

  “Cassie,” she answered, looking from Jason to Sam. Jason had Anadidd’na ready, and Sam was armed and angry. She laughed.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. Brandt learned that one the hard way, didn’t he? She takes it so… personally.”

  She raised her shoulders and shivered dramatically, rolling her mouth to the side in the exact way that Samantha did when she was dealing with demons. It was uncanny. Jason still couldn’t force himself to believe it wasn’t her.

  “What do you want?” Sam asked. She raised her eyebrows.

  “Only to know where you are,” she said. She nodded at the ground. “You’re here, which means you… aren’t in New York, doesn’t it?” She paused, then grinned. “I only hung out to see if I couldn’t… Well, it didn’t, did it?”