Sins of the Fathers

by John Richmond

TIE STOOD OUTSIDE the cabin, holding Calvin’s duffel bag and valise, and tried to get her head clear. All the factors of her situation swirled around her like silken ghosts, brushing her face and hands, but impossible to wrap her fingers around. She was in trouble. She was happy. She was in mortal danger. She was in love. She was with a killer. She was safe. She was with a demon. She was with a priest. She was with a dragon. She was with a knight.

  Tie took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. A fountain of emerald aromas flash-cleaned her sinuses, her mind. The coffee tones of rich earth and ancient stones filled her head and rooted her feet. A bird sang a tune unfamiliar to her urban ears: a trickle of three simple notes, high, middle, low. “La, la—laaah,” she sang back to it.

  She blushed, half expecting someone to chide her for her foolishness. But there was no one around. She could do as she pleased. The only person she needed to consider was the man in that cabin, the one who loved her. He did. She could feel it as surely as she felt her own love for him. It came off him in waves with every little shared touch.

  She looked around the little clearing in which the cabin hunkered. Great oaks and what might be elms arched over the roof. A tree that made her think of giant neurons lifted from the ground in a reverse shot of frozen lightning, violent white. Tie wondered what you called those. She almost knew, almost. John Calvin would know. John. Johnny.

  Without warning, an image of Mason sweating over her, pushing at her from behind invaded her mind. She shook her head. No, he wouldn’t find them. Not here. It was too far and Johnny was smart, some kind of James Bond smart. He’d take care of her. Tie shivered the image away. It didn’t belong here in her church of green.

  She walked back into the cabin, ready to ask Calvin what the name of that big white tree was when she heard the voices. Tie lowered the bags to the floor and padded over to listen on the other side of the closed door. Her cheeks reddened a bit in knee-jerk shame, but she was an eavesdropper of old; a habit her daddy had tried to break her of, but with little success. Besides, on the run like they were and with a possessed kid, hell, she needed to know everything that was going on. Be foolish not to. She pressed her ear against the door and caught the familiar dual-toned rasp of the demon…

  “You truly plan to hurt this poor child to roust us from the meat?”

  Tie squinted, and held her breath so she could hear better as Calvin spoke.

  “Like I said, if it happens at the end of all of this that I get you out of the kid, then yeah, that’s beautiful, but mostly I’m doing this just to hurt you.”

  Tie pulled back from the door an inch. Was she hearing right? Was Johnny going to…?

  “You ruined what life I had left. I was a street kid, dying—no check that—I was fucking dead. Then you grabbed me back and used my body to hurt people. I don’t remember what you did to me in the process, but I’m sure as hell willing to bet there’s a reason for that repression.”

  As the rest of their conversation spun out, Tie’s eyes grew wide. Calvin was going to literally beat the devil out of the kid. He was going to take some poor ten-year old, already been through God knew what, and pain him some more. But it wasn’t just that. He said he was going to do it, not for the boy, for Jeremy, but for his own vengeance. Tie put her palms against the wood, warm now from where Calvin had been leaning on the other side. She lowered her head as the familiar sadness and cynicism rose like bile. Calvin was like all the others she’d chosen in her life, sick and wrong. Very quietly, she turned.

  And something—if it’d had a sound, would have been like a single clear voice in a cathedral—wrapped around her heart and reminded her. Tie stopped. “Oh yeah,” she sighed and turned back toward the door. She shook her head at herself and put her hand on the doorknob. It had just been so long since she’d trusted anyone.

  “If you torture the boy the woman will leave you.”

  Calvin lowered his hand.

  Tie pushed into the room.

  Calvin spun, looked at her. “Tie, I—”

  “Hush,” she put a finger to his lips, then looked at the demon. She spoke to Calvin, but kept her eyes on the boy. “I was listening at the door and heard most of it, I think.” Her eyes narrowed. “What can I do to help?”

  The smile melted off the demon’s face.

  For a moment, Calvin’s own face was a happy question, then he nodded. “Help me strap him down. Then we’ll talk and I’ll explain.”