Killing Rites

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“My name’s Jayné,” I said. “You just tell her I’m in town and that I want to talk. I haven’t told anybody what they are, but I still can. I’ll get a room at the Sangre de Cristo. They can meet me there in the morning if they want to negotiate. If no one shows up, I’ll start spilling beans.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, you crazy bitch.”
“She will,” I said, then turned and walked back to the SUV. The back of my head itched like someone had painted a bull’s-eye on my hair, but when I got into the car and started the engine, he still hadn’t shot me. I took a long, shuddering breath, started the engine, and backed out.
Five minutes later, I was at the hotel. I booked a room for three nights, got the key—a real key on a real key ring—and then took Ozzie out for a quick walk before she peed in the car. I’d been lying, of course. I didn’t have anything to negotiate. There was nothing that I wanted from the other rider apart from evidence that it really existed. But now they’d know where to find me.
And when they got there, I hoped to have a witness. Someone whom Chapin and Ex would trust. Or at least listen to.
When I got on the road, it was almost six o’clock and dark. Ozzie lay on the passenger’s seat, her nose tucked under her tail. The moon lit the night around us an unearthly blue as I headed back south toward Taos, and—maybe—help.
Chapter 17
Unfortunate Goatee—Alexander—sat in his hospital bed, playing solitaire with real cards. In a flimsy blue and white gown, he looked younger than he had in his priestly black. The other bed in the room was empty. The wound that the wind demon had dealt him was almost invisible apart from a bright pink dent at his neck that ran down to disappear under the cloth. A little white board on the outside of the door had KOPP written in looping purple letters. I didn’t know if that was the nurse on duty, the doctor, or Alexander’s last name. Not that it mattered.
I’d dreaded walking into the hospital, expecting the memories of Grace Memorial to haunt these hallways too. But the architecture here was so simple and clean, the colors so different, that it almost felt more like going to a dentist’s office than a hospital. The nurse at the station outside Alexander’s door was typing something and trying not to make eye contact with me. Her nails were bilious green and her makeup almost hid how tired she looked. I didn’t bother her. Careful not to pass in front of Alexander’s door, I walked down the hallways with a confidence I didn’t feel. Two turns later, a radiology waiting room had three people sitting in uncomfortable plastic chairs and watching a sitcom on a television that hung from the ceiling. A wheelchair waited by the door marked WARNING: RADIATION HAZARD. I went up to it, clicked off the brakes, and walked it away with the same bored air the nurse had used. Yes, I was stealing from sick people. It wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever done. And anyway, it was a hospital. They’d find another.
When I wheeled the chair into Alexander’s room, he looked up. His expression cycled through shock and fear to the wariness of a hostage negotiator in less time than it took to wave hello.
“So,” I said. “I’m guessing you remember me.”
He nodded. I closed the door behind me. His hands were flat on the little rolling table, the forgotten playing cards sliding onto the sheets.
“Who are you?” he said. There was only the slightest trembling in his voice. “I mean, who am I talking to.”
“Janyé,” I said. “The other one’s still here. The Black Sun. But I’m the one calling the shots right now.”
“Have you come for my help?”
I spread my palms.
“Yeah, but not exactly the way you’re thinking. I need you to come with me.”
“I’m not going to do that.” He didn’t miss a beat. I tried to look at this from his perspective: demonically possessed girl walks in, says come with me. It did seem like the kind of beginning that ended with the gruesome details of finding parts of his body. The set of his chin and the calm facade over raw panic didn’t remind me of Chapin so much as someone doing a decent Chapin imitation.
“Okay, look,” I said. “I know this is freaky, but I’m actually on your side. At least for right now. They told you what happened? How the exorcism went south and I got fooled by the devil into not rejecting it? Like that?”
“Yes.”
“There really was another rider that tried to get in during the exorcism. No. Stop. I know. Not possible. I got that. But it was there, and now I’m trying to track down proof. So here’s my deal. I think your group’s been infiltrated by something nasty. You think I’m under the influence of the devil. One of us is right, so let’s you and me get some evidence. I think I can show you that I’m not just making it up. If I can’t, you take me back in and we’ll do this the hard way.”
“I don’t think that would be—”
“If you don’tome with me, I’m walking out, and none of you are ever going to see me again. You know that, right? You didn’t get into this job to let demons walk away. So come with me.”
He bit his lip. He couldn’t have been more than a year or two younger than me, but he looked like a kid. A siren rose in the distance, the wail growing louder by the second until it cut off. He shifted his weight, the bed creaking under him. Somewhere nearby, a monitor chimed a low, steady alarm. He was wavering.
I had one more card to play.
“Alexander, what if there’s a reason you got hurt? You believe in God’s plan? Well, here it is. There’s a reason God took you out of the group when He did. You are the only one who wasn’t there when it happened, so I can trust you. Mostly. Some. God made it so that you could be the instrument of cleansing the group of its corruption. And He sent me too, so I could be here and now telling you to put aside your fear and do the right thing.”
“You don’t believe that,” he said.
“Not even kind of. But my faith’s not the one in question here.”
He swallowed, wincing a little. I wondered how deep the wound from the wind demon ran. I’d assumed it was just on the surface, but the damage could have gone all the way to the bone. It was bad enough they still had him as an inpatient, so it had to be serious. I wondered how much I was really asking of him, but not enough to stop.
“The danger,” he said, each word slow and considered, “of the beast inside of you … The power it wields could be—”
“If it wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now. Seriously. Neck broke, and me halfway to Phoenix. That’s not what this is about,” I said. And then: “Look, I know you don’t want to do this, but when God says go to Nineveh, you’re going, right? You came to fight demons, and you’re not doing it in here.”
He took a breath. His eyes were focused on nothing. Or maybe on something I couldn’t see.
“You really think you’re the whale to my Jonah?”
“No,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not.”
Alexander closed his eyes, his brow knotting. We were silent for a few seconds. His lips twitched like he was talking to himself. Praying on it. I wanted to interrupt, to make my argument, to convince him. I held back and tried to be patient. My fingers tapped nervously at my thigh. It seemed like forever before he heaved a sigh and opened his eyes. He looked a little nauseated.
“Let me tell Chapin where I’m going.”
“Leave him a note?”
Alexander nodded. I hopped out of the room to the nurse’s station for paper and a pen, glancing back over my shoulder every couple of seconds. Alexander didn’t go for the phone or try to make a run for it. I got two sheets of plain white printer paper and a pen with a huge purple pom-pom on the end that I assumed was there so no one would walk away with it. When I got back to the room, Alexander had pulled on a pair of black pants and was stripping off the gown.
widthht="0em" width="1em">The scar marking his body was as fresh and ugly as when we’d brought him in.
“Yeah,” he said, seeing me react.
“It hurts?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, pulling on his shirt. I handed him the paper and pen, and he sat on the bed, clearing away the cards. He took paper and pen, leaned over his little desk, and wrote. It didn’t take very long, but it did seem to eat up a lot of his energy. He sat down in the wheelchair carefully, sucking in his breath with pain. I pushed him into the corridor and turned toward the front.
“Excuse me,” the nurse said. “Where are you—”
“Lawyer needs to see him in the admin office,” I said, not breaking stride. “I told the attending about it. We’ll be right back.”
The hallway turned twice, then emptied into a larger waiting area. Alexander sat forward in the wheelchair, unconsciously guarding his wounds. I felt a twitch of concern. Maybe I should have tried to get a look at his medical records before I hauled him out into the middle of another fight. Now that I thought about it, they’d kept him in the hospital for an awfully long time. I was about to ask him how he was doing when we made the turn toward the front doors and the parking lot.
The doors were two sets of wide glass that slid open with a little airlock-like space between them. Ex and Chogyi Jake were just walking up to the outer pair. I saw them like a still frame, like something caught in a lightning flash. Ex’s hair was uncombed and rough. His hand was out to Chogyi Jake like he was making some kind of rhetorical point. There were dark bags under his eyes, like sleeplessness had bruised him. Chogyi Jake wore his usual sand-colored shirt under a denim jacket that looked too light for the cold. His scalp stubble was just getting long enough that you could see the gray coming in at the temples. His head was a degree forward and tilted in toward Ex, the platonic image of listening.
Joy and fear leaped up at the same time, and I turned the wheelchair around, pushing fast back around the corner. I wanted to run to the pair of them, but I didn’t dare. Not yet.