by Chloe Garner
Life: 1, immortality: well, Mother was still winning, but that had been the point from the beginning.
One of the tendrils of net snapped away, even as the grip on her brain strengthened.
“I am Mother. You cannot fight and you cannot win. I do not want to cause you pain, but I will if I must. Take the gift I offer.”
Samantha turned her head to one side, the details of the battle beginning to burden her even as the vast weight Mother used to weaken her did its work. Finally set defensively, she set loose the one side of her animal mind, weaving a brutish, indelicate spell and sending it back along the line. She felt it hit as the weight on her shuddered and waved in distraction and pain. She sent another, indulging a gleeful delight at using concepts she had only ever read about. She wove natural, light, and dark magic together into straining packages of unstable power, pushing them over the link with no regard to geography or time. It was as if she were fighting the woman at a distance of five feet. One and another hit, but then Mother retaliated, pushing heat and anger over the line and into the mass of weight.
Samantha knelt under it.
“You bow. You kneel before me because I am your superior. You are nothing to me. A spot of light in a dark sky, no more. I love you and I care for you, but you will bend your stiff neck to me, child.”
Samantha struck back with sharp pain, anticipating the escalation it would bring, but not caring.
“I will not give myself to you,” she said out loud. “Your magic doesn’t claim me and it doesn’t own me. You shall not have me.”
She blocked the next attack, but the squeeze on her mind now made focus difficult. Over the sound of cars on the road, she could hear Jason and Sam draw breath, their beating hearts, the electrical activity of their minds. It had to be her imagination. It had to be. But, real or not, they were no less tempting to her, no less painful to endure. She felt a deep lust to consume them.
“Into my mouth, I take your life.”
It was a thought in her mind, but it was in her own voice. Mother laughed. Samantha sent another volley of magic at her, then moved her foot further to one side, trying to get a wider stance that wouldn’t tip over under the weight.
She felt the woman weaken, even as the magic pulling and pushing at her neared completing its mission. Samantha was approaching exhaustion, but Mother was suffering, too. More threads pulled away, and Samantha grasped at them, trying to retain her grip. She sent spell after spell along the line as Mother worked frantically to untangle it, to pull free. Samantha had only rarely caused death with magic - real, human death - but she could feel the end game beginning. She just had to maintain her grip long enough. She had her.
The weight on her doubled, rolling with angst and sorrow and grief, and Samantha tumbled to one side, unprepared for the new tack. Mother pulled loose almost the rest of the way, leaving the one core line into her brain.
“I will have you,” she said. “I will have you and you will bring them to me, and the three of you will bow at my feet.”
Samantha snatched at her, but she was gone. Samantha found herself lying face-down on dark asphalt, gravel stabbing into her here and there where she hadn’t cleared a wide enough area. Sam came and helped her up the moment the push she had somehow maintained against him dropped.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Did you get her?” Jason asked.
“I was close,” Samantha said, unable to hold her weight over her own feet. “So close.”
Sam picked her up and carried her back to the Cruiser. In the cabin light, he cleaned her arm and prepared to re-bandage it, but the wound was gone, leaving the painted skin clean, traceless of the injury.
“You’ll get her,” Jason said as Sam climbed into the front seat and she stretched out in her seat again.
“And now she knows it,” Samantha said, drifting toward an unsettled sleep. “Now she’s afraid.”
“Good girl,” Jason answered.
<><><>
Sam had to carry Samantha in to Darin and Cathy’s. She didn’t wake up. He felt her dreams shift when he picked her up, then settle back into a sort of detail-frenzy. She was still chasing Mother.
<><><>
“You mind if we stop and get food?” Samantha asked the next morning, several hours after they had left the house. It was late for breakfast, early for lunch, but it was the first she had been alert since Andre’s. Jason found an exit and found an all-day breakfast diner and he and Sam ordered coffees and watched Samantha devour plate after plate of food. French toast, an omelet, steak and eggs, an entire platter of bacon and sausage. She finally asked the waitress to leave a pitcher of water at the table, given the rate she was going through it.
“Sam’s going to have to carry you back out to the car after this,” Jason said. She poured another glass of water.
“Where are we?”
“We’ll be in New York tonight,” Jason said. She nodded, stabbing a sausage link and eating it in two bites. She offered another one to Sam.
“We ate this morning,” he said.
Chewing, she looked at Jason, then took another drink of water.
“You ready?” she asked.
“For what exactly?”
She paused, picking at her teeth with her tongue, then twisted her mouth to the side.
“Socially, by training you, I’ll be claiming you as mine. Carter won’t make a big deal out of it because he’ll disapprove, but it’s a huge responsibility for me. Once I agree to train you, your success or failure reflects entirely on me. It’s why Carter called me his driver until after I died. He didn’t want me to be a burden on his reputation like that, not that he’d ever admit to caring. I accept that you may hate me, at the end, but I am committed to pushing you to the extreme of your natural ability.”
“I think I can handle it, Sweetheart,” Jason said. “How is it any different from Sam?”
“I bonded him. I’m not training him, so much as taking care of him and making sure he’s healthy and comfortable. There’s a loophole there.”
“Is that why you did it?” Sam asked. She glanced at him, tapping her fork against her glass.
“No.”
She looked back at Jason, holding her gaze steady, then slowly smiling.
“I actually think you’ll take to it better than I did. This may be fun.”
Jason shrugged.
“Ready when you are.”
She dropped her fork on her plate and snatched the last of the bacon, then stood.
“Let’s go then.”
<><><>
Samantha navigated to Carter’s building once they got to the city. Samantha knew Jason could have found it on his own, but he tolerated the directions nevertheless.
“Stop here,” Samantha said.
“Where?” Jason asked. “There’s no parking here.”
“Just let me out,” she said.
He rolled to a stop and Samantha hopped out, motioning for Jason to roll down his window. She went to a tall, solid black gate and put her hand on it, feeling the locks she had built herself click open. After a moment, it swung open and she waved Jason through.
“Wait for me here,” she said, pointing. He rolled past her and stopped as she re-closed the gate. She walked back along the Cruiser, looking around the small, unlit underground parking area. She pointed.
“Park there,” she said. “I’ll go get the lights.”
Jason pulled the Cruiser into the spot between the two shadowy shapes of cars and she smiled to herself as she found the light switch on the wall, waiting until he was out of the car to turn on the lights. She heard him gasp, and she grinned.
“Whose are these?” Jason asked.
“Mine,” Samantha said. “I bought them junked out and restored them.”
“Yeah, all you did was drive and read,” Jason said. “Sure.”
“I had to have something to drive Carter around it,” Samantha said, gratified at how few of her cars Carter had sold in her absence.
She walked to the black Mustang, kneeling in front of it. She put her hand on the hood.
“This is Justine,” she said, hearing Sam and Jason approach, behind her.
“Sixty-seven?” Jason asked.
“Yeah.”
“Original parts?”
“Mostly. I’m not taking her to shows.”
“Sure.” He paused. “You take her out?”
“Yeah. Up to Maine, once. Mostly around the city.”
“She’s gorgeous,” Jason said.
“Thank you.”
“You guys need a minute?” Sam asked. Samantha heard a foot scrape as Jason turned.
“I might,” Jason said. Samantha stood.
“I get the paint done professionally, but the rest of the work I do… did here,” she said.
“Where?” Jason asked.
“Welcome to my playground,” Samantha said, walking the rest of the length of the garage and sliding open a pair of aluminum doors and flipping a breaker to light the back yard.
The thirty-by-thirty foot area immediately outside the garage had a concrete floor and corrugated aluminum roof, with a covered pit for working underneath cars and an engine hoist covered with a heavy canvas in one corner. Shelf space on two sides was covered with heavy equipment, metal fabrication, cutting tools, light smelting equipment. She couldn’t do iron and steel here, but aluminum, nickel, tin, and a few others were within her reach. She breathed the welcome smell of dust and metal. Jason walked the lengths of the workbenches, admiring the tools he recognized, examining the ones he didn’t. Sam stood with Samantha in the middle of the space, just looking.
“You could supply an army with this setup,” Jason said.
“What do you think I do with it?” Samantha asked. In the beginning, Carter had put her on a seemingly-unlimited budget for car work. Once she started selling - cars, books, body parts - and as her equipment got more expensive, he stopped bankrolling her entirely. He would certainly use the things she constructed, but he called them her projects.
She walked out into the yard. One side was stacked with junked cars, and piles of twisted metal made a maze out of the rest. At one point, an apartment building had stood in the spot, but Carter had torn it down to make a large enough empty space for the things he had wanted to be able to do. Samantha had claimed it in pieces, until now he only came down to use the spaces she had set aside for specific purposes and, as far as she was aware, otherwise kept out.
She went to a shed at the far corner of the lot and started handing stylized, curved iron posts to Sam, then led him to a small circle of concrete.
“You can put those down there,” she said, motioning a wide area with her arm. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
Jason arrived from his quick tour of the yard.
“You did all of this?” he asked.
“What I didn’t do, I had made,” she said.
“And you can drive a fork lift?”
“You found Barney.”
“Dude.”
She grinned as she cleaned out the metal cups in the concrete and dusted off the iron pattern that had been pressed into it while it was still wet. High-precision. Some of Alastair’s best work. She went to the pile of iron posts, each curved in a quasi-flame shape that was slightly different from the next, each topped with a different jagged iron shape. Together, the bars would form a specific geometric shape that formed a point at the top; the tips fitted together in a complex puzzle, the last one locking the rest of them together.
“I need you to stand at the center of that design,” she said, pointing as she took the first three posts and dragged them over to the ring.
“Same as last time, then?” Jason asked.
“Except that you’re on your own,” Samantha said, placing the first post, then carefully weaving the other two bars against it. She went back and got the next three. “And I’m not going to help you cross. You’re going to do it on your own.” The posts went into their holes easily, the ends taking some work to get them lined up and locked in. She came back with the last five posts, putting them in place in quick succession. The entire structure became extremely solid as she locked the last post in place - it would stand up to a car pretty easily - and Samantha looked at Jason.
“You ready?”
He shrugged.
“Just tell me what to do.”
She looked at Sam.
“Are you ready?”
“For what?”
“Just asking.”
“I guess.”
She turned back to Jason, putting her hands on two specific adjacent bars, feeling the shimmering thinness of the barrier the structure was creating. She rubbed her palms along them, arms abuzz with the arcing energy the two planes sent at each other, then closed her fingers around the bars and nodded.
“”Feel the vibration the cage is creating,” she said. “That’s the power you’re going to use to cross.”
“Cage?”
“Cage. This one is much stronger than the one I built last time. You can practically blink yourself across the barrier, here. I’m holding it closed. You’ll have to figure that out on the other side once you get there. Take your time on the other side. You’ll probably be attacked - defend yourself. Keep in mind that gunpowder isn’t going to be very reliable.”
“Would have been helpful to know that before. I’ve only got my hunting knife.”
“I understand,” she said. “That’s the point. Don’t wander too far; it’s easy to get lost. The geography of hell is radial. The only straight lines are out and in. The shortest distance between two points is a V. The parasites are going to be after you. You’re an easy target. Do your best. Be careful. Just make sure you come back. Okay?”
“Don’t have to tell me that last part,” Jason said. “I’m not staying.”
She nodded, letting her body act as a magnifier of a kind, amplifying the energy bouncing around inside the cage. It wanted to get out. She gave it a small hole, but just turned it back and sent it in at higher speed.
“Feet shoulder width, get your knees relaxed, like you’re going to hop off a ledge. Grab the vibration and pull yourself across,” she said.
“I don’t know what that means,” he said.
“You will, the moment you figure it out,” she said.
“Yeah, that makes much more sense,” Jason said. She smiled.
“Focus.”
His brows knit as he did as she asked. Less than a minute later, she felt the power drain as he crossed, and she stepped through the bars to catch him as he fell. He grabbed her arm, and she sighed relief. He made it back. She held him up for a moment. His clothes were hot.
“You okay?” she asked. He tried to speak, but no sound came out. He nodded. She looked up at Sam, who was standing as close to the bars as he could without touching them. She touched a bar.
“This one,” she said. “Pull it.”
He pulled it out and the tense power in the cage vanished. She stepped away from Jason, letting him fall as she went to take the bar from Sam.
“Help him,” she said. Sam stepped into the cage and caught Jason by the elbow and pulled him up. She put the bar back in, re-locking the cage.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked.
“Jason? Jason, you aren’t done yet,” she said. Jason’s head rolled back to look at her. She knelt. “Feel the energies. That isn’t your brother in there with you.”
Jason struggled to his feet. Sam frowned at her.
“You really think I didn’t know you’d take advantage of the giant hole I ripped in the cage to snag him behind my back?” she asked. He twisted his mouth.
“I’ll bash him to bits,” he said.
“Jason. You can tell that isn’t Sam. It doesn’t feel right.”
Jason struggled with his footing some more, leaning against Sam in the tight space as he pushed himself upright. Sam drew back an arm to punch him in the face, and Jason grabbed hold of Sam’s shirt.
“Just push him ba
ck through, Jason,” Samantha said. Jason glared up at Sam and snarled. Sam staggered back, and Samantha pulled the final post again as they caught each other.
“Help him,” Samantha said as Sam made it upright and Jason’s knees gave again. Sam frowned.
“He isn’t okay?”
“He’s exhausted,” Samantha said. “That’s all he had left.”
She started pulling posts and stacking them again, watching as Sam helped Jason over to a pile of scrap.
“May as well go straight upstairs,” she said. “I’ll catch you by the time the elevator gets there.”
“Where’s the elevator?” Sam asked.
“In the garage.”
He nodded, shifting his shoulders under Jason’s arm again and half-dragging him back across the yard to the garage. Samantha got the cage disassembled and grabbed one of the bars, carrying it across the yard and throwing it into a pile of scrap where it wouldn’t be found and matched up by accident, then ran to catch the elevator. Jason’s head was hanging.
“That was…” he said. “It…”
“I know,” Samantha said.
“What? What was it?” Sam asked. Samantha pulled Jason’s head up to look into his eyes.
“It was more words than he has right now,” she said. “Top floor.” Sam pushed the button and Samantha looked in Jason’s ears and popped his jaw to look in his mouth. She looked him in the eyes again.
“Well done,” she said. He reached up and rubbed his face, then dropped his arm again. “It doesn’t get any easier.”
His head bobbed as he looked at the floor.
“Bring it on.”
She grinned, then leaned against the back of the elevator, answering Sam’s concern with calm. He had come through it well. He’d need to be aggressively disinfected, but she hadn’t had to go in after him, and he had kept his mind in what appeared to be good working order.
“Dark rot?” Sam asked. She shook her head.
“Doesn’t appear so.”
Sam nodded and she grinned.
“That isn’t the worst thing he could have picked up,” she said.