Dragonsword

by Chloe Garner

  “I know. But it was time.”

  “You know he’s going to lose. It’s going to damage his confidence.”

  “You can’t protect him forever,” Abby said.

  The first rain of blows came fast, in a frenzy of motion, glitch, block, and counter-attack that Samantha let run at full speed, pulling the sequence apart in her head after she saw it to understand it.

  “How have you been?” she asked Abby.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” the woman answered. “They knew when you got here, and things changed.”

  “I didn’t ask about the city,” Samantha said. Abby pushed a thicket of hair behind her ear, putting her chin on her knee.

  “I’m fading away,” she said. “My life is in what I see, not what I do.”

  “I don’t think that’s okay,” Samantha said.

  “It’s my skill,” Abby said. “I can’t go chasing after Sam to slaughter the unjust. But I can tell you when he needs you, the way I did with you and Carter.”

  Samantha swallowed.

  “And you will again,” she said. “I’m going to get him back.”

  Abby gave her a sad smile.

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “But he’s still alive, right?”

  “How much longer?” Abby asked. “I can’t see.”

  Samantha frowned. She had no answer.

  Anadidd’na clashed against the curved angel blade, Kelly using the backwards-facing barb to catch Anadidd’na and try to pull Jason off-balance. Deep in his bent time, Jason had no issue keeping his weight over his feet. She had had amazing raw material to work with, but she was deeply proud of how good Jason was. As much as she had sworn she would never claim credit for other people’s accomplishments, she felt like she had molded Jason all on her own.

  Abby leaned against her for a moment as they watched.

  “He’s come a long way,” she said.

  “They both have.”

  “Would you hate me if I said I missed him?” Abby asked.

  “No,” Samantha said. “I do, too.”

  “I know,” Abby said. “You two were special.”

  She stood and walked back over to the wall, sliding down to the floor and wrapping her arms around her knees, her eyes dropping vacant. Samantha turned to watch Kelly and Jason again. She couldn’t fix Abby; she couldn’t even help her. She just had to get Carter back.

  Jason was fast, but Kelly was realizing the power of glitching, and the many decades of disciplined training he had showed. The clean, perfectly-formed nature of the angel’s attack made it predictable for demons, and the drunk-boxing version of battle demons did suited Jason well, but there was a hole where Jason was vulnerable to the perfect execution of movement over and over again. He stumbled back over his heel, and it was over. Kelly leaped forward, swinging himself around Jason’s shoulder to pull him, overbalanced, over his own feet again, and drew the barb of the blade across the back of Jason’s neck.

  Samantha had seen it coming, but was too slow reacting to stop it.

  Kelly landed on nimble feet and tumbled away, glowing with victory, and Jason reached back to cover the cut across his neck. Samantha was on her feet, pulling his hand away from the shallow cut, reacting on instinct. She licked the length of the wound with a wide, flat tongue and kept going, heading at Kelly. He realized what he’d done and dropped to his knees.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, dropping his head low and offering his sword up to her. She snatched it and held it overhead, an instant from splitting him in two. He didn’t move as Jason caught up to her and grabbed her wrist.

  “Sam,” he ordered. “What’s going on?”

  “He shouldn’t have done that,” she said, gritting her teeth.

  “Done what?”

  “Kelly.”

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  “What’s the big deal?” Jason asked. “You licking me was probably worse.”

  He put his hand back to his neck again, and she leaned back to see what he would find. The cut was gone. He looked at his hand and grimaced.

  “What was that about?”

  “Angels mark each other. It’s a ranking system to their fights. Someone with more marks has been beat more often, and each angel can identify the marks he’s given.”

  She pulled Kelly’s head further forward - unnecessary, but she was angry.

  “Show me,” she said. A forest of white scars appeared across the back of Kelly’s neck. Hundreds, maybe thousands.

  “And now the ones from Parroah’na Anan’ae.”

  They diminished to two, one shallow, a teaching mark, and the other deep and all the way across Kelly’s neck, like it had glanced off bone part of the way across.

  “Put them away,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Kelly said.

  “So?” Jason asked.

  “Angels do not mark humans. It isn’t appropriate for them to assert dominance like that. Win or lose, we are both divine races. And humans don’t agree to the rules of angelic contest.”

  “And that’s worth killing him over?” Jason asked. Samantha swallowed. There was no way Jason could understand the importance of it, but Kelly did. His reaction was right; he had forgotten himself and offered no defense.

  “No,” Samantha said. “But it’s worth making him remember, next time.”

  Jason shook his head.

  “We’re all on the same side here,” he said. She didn’t fight with him. She reached down along Kelly’s jaw and pulled his face up. His eyes were terrified, but he wasn’t afraid of her. There were shortcomings - getting beat because he didn’t see something coming - there were mistakes - seeing something coming and making the wrong split-second call - and there were errors. Angels were not accustomed to making errors. She held his eye for a moment, not disgracing him by acting as though his error had been of no consequence, then held his sword out across her palms for him to take it back.

  Forgiveness was not openly expressive; it was in a specific language of action and trust. He dropped his head again, humbled, then looked up at her and took his sword. He pressed his mouth, clearly wanting to apologize again, but forgiveness was granted. Apologies after that were unacceptable.

  Samantha drew a breath and stretched her neck, feeling the sharp twinges from too-fast motion after too little. When she opened her eyes, Maryann was standing in front of her. Ash filtered down through her fingers, and Samantha’s heart jerked at the expectation that the girl had been wounded and was bleeding out.

  “I killed him,” Maryann said.

  “Killed who?” Samantha asked, looking at the ash. Dark. Dark like powerful, but not one of the apex demons.

  “The rat-bastard spy I’ve been stalking for all this time,” Maryann said. Samantha choked herself to contain the laugh.

  “You got him?”

  “He was quick, and he was hard to find, but I got him,” Maryann said, watching the last of the ash sift down to the floor. She looked strange. Samantha frowned, remembering.

  “Kelly, go watch over Doris,” she said.

  “But,” the angel complained.

  “Now. She could be in danger, and you are qualified to protect her. Maryann can’t.”

  He vanished, and Maryann’s eyes rose to find Samantha’s.

  “How do you feel?” Samantha asked.

  “Funny,” Maryann said, the first word that occurred to her. A brow creased and she shook her head. “Afraid. Powerful.” She twisted her face. “Sick.”

  Samantha nodded.

  “I understand.”

  “Why?” Jason asked.

  “It’s her first kill,” Samantha said. He frowned and she rolled her eyes. “Do you even remember your first kill?”

  “Hedge imps,” Jason said. “No big deal.”

  Samantha shook her head, exasperated.

  “I don’t even know what that is. You people are dangerous, you know that?”

  He shrugged, and she turned back to Maryann.<
br />
  “Kneel.”

  Maryann dropped to two knees, watching Samantha with earnest eyes. Samantha put both hands on the girl’s head.

  “Done in my name,” she said. Maryann dropped her face and took several loud breaths.

  “He was there, and then he wasn’t,” she said. “I didn’t realize…”

  “You didn’t think about it until it was done,” Samantha said. “That’s normal.”

  “I don’t ever think about it,” Jason said, rubbing the phantom wound on the back of his neck.

  “That could be me,” Maryann said. “Just a pile of ash.”

  “Someday, it probably will be,” Samantha said. “But you bear my mark. I can call you back through it, if you accept it again.”

  Maryann shuddered, and Samantha stepped away.

  “We need to go.” Something new occurred to her, and she went to the counter in the kitchen, finding a pad of paper and making a list of addresses. She wrote a short statement and handed the sheet to Maryann.

  “Go to these addresses and give them this announcement. Make sure that you speak to the person I put on the list, specifically, not one of their minions. Identify yourself as my agent, and once you’ve delivered the message, get out. They’re not above killing the messenger.”

  Maryann looked down the list and nodded.

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  Samantha bit her tongue and waved the girl away, finding her backpack against the bed and checking Lahn out of habit.

  “Where to?” Jason asked.

  “Cassie is here. I’m going to find someone who can tell me where.”

  <><><>

  They hunted.

  She spilled an ocean of ash, no longer training Jason actively in his swordwork, but letting him learn the dance on his own. Time bent hard, they worked as a team that provided little opening for attacks and fewer mistakes to exploit. Anadidd’na sang, and Lahn worked with her accustomed grace and inevitability through the demons of New York.

  She missed Sam. It didn’t matter how good Jason was, it couldn’t replace the confidence of fighting as one mind in two bodies. He called a couple of times; the thirsty man eluded him in Seattle, but he hadn’t had as long to get away, and Sam thought he had a decent lead on where the man had gone. Mostly, he talked to Jason; when she got the phone, words felt insufficient without the ability to send context that she had grown to rely on, and their conversations stalled. Jason had always already told him everything they had done, and Samantha had gotten the two-sentence distillations of what had happened to Sam from Jason.

  “I miss you,” she would say.

  “Yeah, me, too,” he would answer, and that would be it.

  She consulted Nuri, but the woman couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her where Cassie was - there were rules, even between friends - and Ozy had disappeared. Samantha wasn’t certain whether he had gone to ground or been assassinated by an opportunistic subordinate. Marvin was glad to see her, but could only say that long-established power structures were crumbling and everyone was trying to grab as much as they could.

  Twice, they found demons outside of a building they’d been working in, but they didn’t have the caliber of the assassins who had come for her before; these were demons looking to settle scores or hoping that they’d get a lucky shot that would result in the payoff of the inevitable bounties on both her and Jason. Carter didn’t tolerate earth-side bounties on the gray, but the city was clearly feeling his absence.

  The city experienced a rash of murders, disappearances, and random violence, and sitting at a human bar one afternoon, Samantha jerked her head toward a television, where a reporter was covering what the city planned to do in response.

  “Fighting a war with Nerf guns,” she said. “We can only hope they don’t get any real leads.”

  Jason swirled his beer.

  “Any of them ever figure it out?”

  She snorted.

  “Did you?”

  He grinned and finished his beer, motioning to the waitress for another.

  “Guess not.”

  “Guess not? You told me about drinking with vampires.”

  He shrugged.

  “So now I drink with demons. It’s just a name.”

  “A demon will feed you any name he thinks is going to get him what he wants,” Samantha said.

  “So what will they do?” Jason asked, motioning at the television again.

  “Form a task force, angst a bunch, and pat themselves on the back after we fix everything,” she said. “This is why Carter and Peter only have a city to worry about. You get this concentration of miscreants in one place, and there’s nothing the humans can do to protect themselves when the politics spill over.”

  “This happens a lot?”

  She watched the statistics that flashed up on the screen, drinking her own beer.

  “Not like this.”

  “We could call in the Rangers,” Jason said. “Try to help with crowd control.”

  “All due respect, but they aren’t much better,” Samantha said. She chewed her lip. “If I were serious about doing a good job replacing Carter, I’d be taking notes on all of these murders and going out and punishing the demons involved.”

  They drank in silence for a few minutes.

  “I should probably sleep tonight,” he said. She nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “You should, too.”

  She started to fight with him, but sighed and shook her head.

  “You’re right.”

  “You work too hard.”

  Samantha gritted her teeth.

  “She’s here. She’s like a ghost, but she’s here.”

  “And she hasn’t gotten hold of Carter yet. Everything is still chaos. They haven’t found each other yet, the demon who has him and Cassie.” He paused. “Who is she, anyway? If she isn’t from here, who is she?”

  “I have an idea, but it’s just a guess. It doesn’t really matter. I’m running out of time.”

  Jason’s phone rang, and he took it out.

  “It’s Sam,” he said, answering it. “What’s up, man?”

  He paused for a moment.

  “All right.”

  He took the phone away from his ear and hit a button, then laid it on the table.

  “I’ve got her,” Sam said.

  “Who?” Samantha asked.

  “Cassie. It was just a flicker, and I can’t get it back, but she was in Knoxville,” he said. “I’ll text you the address”

  “What else did you see?” Samantha asked.

  “She isn’t going to be there long,” Sam said. “I saw her in the future. She shows up and goes into a room I can’t see, and then the vision ended. I went through it again to get the location, and then after I couldn’t see it any more at all.”

  “Probably another trap,” Jason said.

  “Or a distraction,” Samantha said. “But we can’t pass it up.”

  “It’s possible she missed the shielded room and it… Misses the shielded room and it’s going to take them some time to fix it,” Sam said. “I don’t know. If I hadn’t been watching, I wouldn’t have seen it at all. Maybe I miss a lot of them.”

  “We’ll leave now,” Samantha said. “Thanks.”

  “You guys doing okay?” Sam asked. “You sound tired.”

  “Lot going on,” Samantha said. “How about you?”

  “Kerk has us on something in Iowa,” Sam said.

  “You’re actually working for him?” Jason asked.

  “Trying,” Sam said. “As long as we’re out here, may as well do something useful.”

  “Call if you get in over your head,” Samantha said.

  “What would you do about it?” Sam asked. “It’s not like you could come help.”

  “I could send Kelly.”

  The angel was back from watching out for Doris, and Maryann had returned. The demon seemed happy to spend time with the woman, and Jason said from talking to her, it sounded like Doris appreciated the
company.

  “Like he’d go for that,” Jason said. “He really doesn’t think you’re the boss of him.”

  “I’m not,” Samantha said, “though I’m within my rights trying to make him do what I want him to.”

  “We’re okay,” Sam said. “You guys just take care of you.”

  “How’s Carson?” Jason asked.

  “Says hi,” Sam said. “You should go. You’ve go a long drive.”

  “Yeah,” Samantha said. “We’ll let you know what we find.”

  Jason put the phone to his ear and spoke for another minute while Samantha settled the bill, and they left.

  “You can sleep in the car,” she said.

  “You really should get some sleep, too,” he said.

  “When we get back,” she answered. It wasn’t sincere, but it was the earliest she was going to have time to think about it again.

  <><><>

  “What is it with you people and huge houses?” Jason asked as they drove up the long, winding driveway through a forest of oak trees.

  “If you had as much money as we do, you’d only buy big houses, too,” Samantha answered.

  “Any idea how much further it’s going to be?” Jason asked. She peered at the phone.

  “This is probably good enough. We can walk from here.”

  She pulled off the driveway and grabbed her backpack, keeping her guard up. Jason stood with Anadidd’na out, eying the trees, and Kelly vanished and reappeared.

  “I can’t get into the house,” he said.

  “Times like this I miss Sam,” Jason commented.

  “Only these ones?” she asked. He shrugged.

  “I guess he’s okay to be around,” he said and grinned. “You set?”

  She nodded, and they started across the forest, running parallel to the road as best they could, and trying not to get too tangled up in the underbrush. The house was a half-mile further along the gravel drive, most of the way uphill. Twice they had to scramble across narrow streams coming down off of the mountain.

  “I didn’t take demons for this kind of nature freaks,” Jason said as he shook his foot out of a thicket of briars. Kelly stood on the far side, waiting for them without saying anything.

  “Isolation is good, when you’re making big plans,” Samantha said. “This wouldn’t be a bad place to hold the negotiations.”

  “I thought those would be in New York.”