Killing Rites

Page 8

And so when this demon whirled, her tiny heel slamming into my ribs like a hammer, and nothing happened to deflect it, it came as a surpriseeight="0em">
The impact knocked me back against the wall. I stumbled, my palms against the rough stucco, then slipped and landed on the floor. The left side of my chest felt like broken glass in a sack. Breathing was like being stabbed. She said something in a slushy voice too deep for her small body and pulled back her foot to stomp me like a bug. Tamblen—the big one—tackled her like a linebacker. She didn’t fall, but she needed both feet to keep her balance. I scrambled up, one hand pressed to my abused ribs. I couldn’t tell if it was the pain or the unearthly, stinking wind, but something roared in my ears. I staggered toward the double doors. Live-wire fear mixed with a sense of outraged betrayal.
I was supposed to be safe. I was supposed to be the one kicking ass. I got to the door, my weight more than my strength pushing the release bar. Behind me, Tamblen cried out. The door opened, and the wind spilled out into the world, hurricane strong.
I’d caught glimpses of the courtyard through the windows. I half fell out into it now. Once upon a time, it might have been a nice little garden for a couple of dozen monks or a place to pray during the bright spring days. In winter, it was brown, dusty earth and dirty, ice-glazed snow. A lone tree stood near the center, branches rising up into the pale sky like a shriek. I pressed my fist into my ribs like I was holding myself closed. The girl—the thing inside of the girl—boiled out past me. I slipped, landing hard on one knee.
She floated in the air, the bare tree behind her writhing in the unnatural wind. Her face glowed with delight and cruelty. She opened her mouth wider than she should have been able to, and I saw her tongue twisting black against the brightness in her throat. She raised her hands, and my ears popped as the air pressure dropped. The sky above me started to change, wisps of cloud twisting in and out of existence like snakes. It sounded like a freight train, and I didn’t think I’d make it off the tracks in time.
Please, I thought, pushing the word in toward the thing—magic, rider, whatever—that had always defended me before. Please, now would be a good time.
Father Chapin stepped past me. His Bible was raised in his hand, and he was shouting something in Latin. The black cloth of his pants fluttered against his ankles like a flag in a storm. Close-cut white hair danced on his scalp. Ex struggled by, his arms spread wide against the wind. He matched Chapin syllable for syllable, and for a moment the demonic wind seemed to stutter and fail.
I rose to my feet. The knee of my pants was torn out where I’d landed, and blood was slicking my shin. My ribs ached and my overcoat flapped around me like a cape. The smell of overheated metal assaulted me again, pressing in at my nose and mouth, and I felt the uncanny shifting of the world as the boundaries between reality and Next Door got thinner. I took a step backward. Miguel ran up to Father Chapin’s side along with another priest I hadn’t seen before, thick-featured and dark-skinned. Tomás, I figured. The double doors leading back inside slammed open and closed and then shattered into splinters and bent metal. A pair of black cellar doors bucked against their chain, like something was trying to rise up out of the earth beneath them.
“Daughter of Satan!” Chapin howled, the first English words I heard from him since the fight started. “You are bound! By the will of God, I bind you! By the will of God—”
Toward Ex.
I tried to scream, tried to warn him. But I couldn’t because, with an almost physical click, I wasn’t in control of my own body.
Two inhumanly fast, loping strides and I was at his side. The branch was shooting down toward us, but it and everything else seemed to slow. When I put my hand on Ex’s shoulder, I felt the heat of his skin and something more too. An echo of his mind, like a voice heard from the far end of a tunnel. His fear and his joy and a deep riptide of longing. His knees were bent against the wind, and I put one foot on his thigh, boosted myself up, twisting to put my other knee on his shoulder. I caught the branch in both hands. The weight bore us both down, but my legs went straight before I touched ground.
I stood in the tempest, Ex sprawled out beneath me. My coat tugged at my shoulders, pulled back almost straight by the wind. The branch was longer than a baseball bat, cold and rough and viciously sharp where it had torn free. I held it in both hands like a staff. The girl floating in the air stared at me, dark lips pulled back in square-gape rage. The sores and wounds on her body oozed black and yellow, pulsing with something like glee. I wanted to step back, but my body ignored me. The wind demon screamed. The power behind the attack was more than physical: raw magic pressed against me. I felt the answering force draw itself up my spine, filling me with a calm that bordered on serenity. I pressed it out from me, expanding it in a sphere that grew from my core. Above me, the tree still whipped and shuddered. The priests staggered under the storm, Bibles fluttering, voices lost in the roar. My coat hung softly at my back.
“Stop this,” I said.
The words were no more than conversational, but they carried over the pandemonium. The thing in the girl screamed again, but the attack seemed weak now. Futile. I walked toward her, and the dark, inhuman eyes widened with fear. Too late, it turned and tried to fly away. My body didn’t move, but something else did, reaching up for her, pulling her back down to me. The thing’s wail was all venom and despair. I dropped the branch and put my hands around her ankles, drawing her to the ground. As soon as her feet touched the dust, she collapsed down, gravity regaining its control. The thing was still in her, and it beat and kicked against me. There was power in the blows, but I didn’t feel any pain.
“It’s over,” my voice said. “You should go.”
Her hand shot out toward me, clawed and cat fast. I shifted out of the way, and she spat black bile on my shirt. I gripped the girl across the forehead like her skull was a basketball. The conscious part of me trapped just behind my eyes cringed, expecting something terrible and violent to happen. Instead, my body pulsed once, heat and dryness and solitude filling me, filling my arm, my hand, flowing into the little girl’s body. I felt the rider leave her like a joint popping back into place. Painful, a little disturbing, but also now made right.
The world clicked back to normal. The cold air rushed in. I was holding a little girl. Her hair felt soft and hot against my hand. The wounds and sores still marked her, but they were the red and pink of abused flesh now. Her eyes were tea-with-milk brown, and when she opened her mouth, no unearthly light spilled out. The only smell in the air was dust and pine sap. The smell of overheated metal was gone.
“Hey,” I said. I said. Not something else. I was in control of my body again. “I’m Jayné. What’s your name?”
“Dolores?”
I pulled off my coat. I’d been sweating, and the cold against my stained and soaking shirt felt like dipping into ice water. I ignored it. I hung the dark wool over her shoulders. She was weeping. No sobs, no running nose, just tears falling down her cheeks and splashing by her toes. Toes that were starting to turn mottled and dark from the chill. I scooped her up in my arms, my ribs protesting sharply.
“There was a bad ghost,” Dolores said. “It smelled bad. It tried to get inside me.”
“I know it did,” I said. “Now come in where it’s warm. I’ll make you some tea, okay?”
The priests watched me as I walked back inside: Tomás and Miguel leaning on each other like soldiers struggling back from battle; Tamblen leaning in the doorway with blood on his lips; Ex rising from where I’d pushed him down in the dirt; Carsey with his mouth in a smile that was as thoughtful as it was amused.
And Chapin, flat-eyed and empty. I stopped in front of him, the girl hugged close to my chest. I was starting to shiver and my earlobes hurt. He looked away. I took the girl inside.
UNFORTUNATE GOATEE’S name was Alexander. Ex rode with him and Chapin in the big, beat-up Yukon all the way back to the hospital in Taos. I followed along in Ex’s rented sports car. The others stayed back at camp, tending their wounds, fixing the broken doors, soothing Dolores with hot soup, and, I hoped, calling her mother to come take her home now that the worst was over. The good guys had won, demon driven out, like that. Go us.
I cranked up the music, singing along to the songs I knew by heart, even when I didn’t know the languages they were sung in. I was starting to feel the effects of the fight. When I got ready for bed that night, I’d have a bumper crop of new bruises. I was pretty sure the wind demon’s initial strike had cracked a rib, but I wouldn’t be positive until morning. If I could turn to the left, I’d be fine. If not … well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d broken a rib. I pretty much knew the routine.
The drive seemed shorter going back into town. Maybe it was just the sense of going back to someplace known. The steering wheel buzzed against my hands, the music celebrated and mourned. Pine trees gave way to smaller, twisted piñons. The dead grass at the side of the road lay buried in drifts of melted and refrozen snow. I grinned at the landscape—distant canyon, snow-clad mountains, pale sun in endless blue sky.
The fight had released something in me. Ever since the night in London when I’d realized that my so-called magical protections might be significantly creepier than I’d thought, I’d been waiting for the thing in my body to take over. I’d been second-guessing every move that I made—had I really reached for the salt, or had it been something else controlling my hand? I’d thought that when it happened, if it happened, it would be the creepiest thing ever. the event itself, since I’d been through that before plenty of times, but what it meant. Now that it had happened, I was all relief and rib pain.
When we got near Taos proper, my cell phone chirped. When we stopped at a traffic light, I checked the log. Chogyi Jake had called again, twice, and left voice mail both times. I’d listen later, when I wasn’t driving. I turned right, following the Yukon through the press of ski-racked SUVs and expensive trucks.