James Baldwin - Stained Glass

Mason looked like a wolfish parody of the man I’d seen laughing and talking with Jenner in the clubhouse. He stood in paralyzed silence as Vanya dragged the body-bag closer and zipped it open from the feet up. The cultist next to him took the knife and held it in a ritual posture while the Kommandant heaved his bulk up onto the table and got into position over the prone man on the altar. The crazed glass blade glowed black and purple under the black lights.

My eyes narrowed. Time to end this.

With the lips of the carton clenched in my teeth, I came up around the pillar and unloaded the clip in three short bursts from right to left and back to center before ducking, rolling, and coming up behind the grain shuttle hanging from the ceiling. There were screams, piercing through the haze of propellant and smoke. I slammed the spare clip into the gun and came around again, glanced a flash of purple light reflecting off a muzzle, and ducked down as three deafening shots sucked my eardrums in and blew the chute off the shuttle. Head pounding, I dropped to my belly on the floor, braced, and fired off a second spray at knee-height.

Three men went down. Two cowered behind the altar, but the blind priest stood tall amidst the chaos. He had his hand raised, the bullets trapped in ageless suspension in front of him, and I had an awful feeling as to what was coming after that.

The bullets vaporized, bursting into inky liquid that splashed and hissed across the floor. As the fluid whipped up from the floor in ropey strands, called by the mage’s conducting hands, Mason fixed on me and snarled . His teeth glowed in the black lights. Vanya was down and scrabbling away from the gunfire behind the altar. The big blind guy was getting back up at a run. I threw the empty PP-90 at him as he barreled towards me, and ran for new cover as the black tendrils suddenly focused on me like hydra’s heads and lashed out from across the room, tearing the grain shuttle apart on their way across. I dove and rolled: a piece of metal caught me across the calf on the way down, slashing open my pants leg and the flesh beneath. Then something cold caught around my ankle and took me to the floor. The bottom of the milk carton hit the concrete and splashed up into my nose.

“Get him! Get him!” Someone was screaming from the back of the room as I was dragged kicking and struggling from behind a metal pillar and into the open. A wild glance showed me that G.I No-Eyes could still somehow ‘see’ well enough to train me with his pistol. Fighting not to cough from my milk bath, I fumbled for my knife and threw myself forward, rolling underneath the shots. The first went over me; the second was so close to my head that powder burned my face as I rolled to my feet and charged.

I was not afraid. I was angry and sick after what we’d found on the computer. And I still had half a carton of milk.

The Deacon slashed with a hand, and I let the black mass of tendrils rush around me in a slithering wave… a wave that screeched and fled as I dumped the rest of the milk on it and myself and pushed to close in, the knife in hand. The priest dodged away from the blade as I swiped for him, better than anyone wearing a mask like that had a right to, put his guard up, and slammed me in the side of the head. Wonderful. A fellow boxer.

Years of training kept me on my feet as I bit my tongue and came right back at him, knife in hand. The blade unzippered his guarding arm from wrist to elbow and sent him stumbling away with a shout, clutching at the wound. I stumbled back, briefly disorientated, and put my foot right into one of the empty black pits that peppered the floor. I tripped to one knee, and got a ringside view of Mason’s festering heart wound as he rushed me. It was all I could do to pull my leg free and scoot back on my ass as the tackle connected.

Mason’s dead weight carried us in a slide against the cold concrete, enough of a ride that I was able to get a hand between him and me and ram the knife straight into his ribs. The blade went in like I’d punched it through a side of beef. He snarled in agony, then roared. Roared , like a lion or a tiger might. His body pinned me from the hips down, hands on my neck even as I stabbed and struggled, driving the blade into his shoulder, lung and neck. Mason faltered on the sixth stab, collapsing onto me as his boots kicked out between my legs in a position far too intimate for sanity.

Still clutching onto my throat, his eyeless face only inches from mine, he threw up. He threw up blood and shards of broken glass onto my face with a garbling howl of agony, and then, he transformed.

When I’d witnessed Duke and Jenner change from human to animal and back, it had been a fluid process, a smooth and untraumatic transformation from two legs to four. Features distending, hands turning into paws, that sort of thing.

Mason exploded. His body ruptured with spines of shattered glass flung in all directions, shards that punctured my flesh with such ease that I barely felt anything at first, just the deep pressure of penetration in belly, thigh, neck and hand. It was the impalement through the hand I felt first, because my vision cut in a white torrent of sensory noise. Then the pain hit.

A filthy white tiger the size of a pony staggered off my chest to its feet, leaving its payload of broken glass behind. I tried to scramble back, hiccoughing with shock and agony, and accidentally put my hand on the ground. The glass pushed deeper and my arm collapsed out from under me, and GOD help me, I screamed.

“It’s over!” The priest shouted.

The tiger advanced low to the ground, its face a twisted mask of rage. But it was wrong . The body of it was misshapen and distorted, the spine arched too high, the chest too deep and narrow. Mason’s hindquarters and the left side of his upper breast bristled with jagged, bloody, crazed glass. Every stalking step was accompanied by the weirdly mechanical sounds of glass breaking, reforming, and tinkling to the hard floor.

“It’s not over until I say it is, pizdets .” I limped back on ass and elbow, drawing the Wardbreaker with my left hand.

The tiger roared, drooling blood and foam onto the floor, and was on me faster than I could move. I almost saw the paw that slapped the gun from my hand, but not the one that took me across the face and knocked me into the floor. It was just a pat, really, no claws. As my skull bounced off concrete, I remembered all too vividly how Duke had nearly decapitated Kir.

Mason put one dinner plate-sized foot against my chest, pushed, and flexed his claws. They pierced my ruined shirt and the skin of my pectoral, right over my heart. The hint finally got through. Yes… I was done.

“Now hold on a minute… I remember you.” The priest spoke in unaccented English. His voice sounded artificially deep, thick and lazy from the endorphin rush of the fight. Just like Mr. Patroclus, he had a Texas accent, though it was nearly nowhere as thick. “Well, what do you know? I thought Nicolai would’ve made a lampshade out of your skin by now.”

While I seethed in silence, the priest turned to look over his shoulder. “Ivan. You know this little mage, don’t you?”

I rolled my eyes to glare across the charred and bloody ground. Vanya was downed near the altar, panting with excitement and terror. He’d taken bullets to the leg – I could see the exit wounds. He was still clutching his loose pants in one hand, but as the Blind Priest spoke, he began to nod. “Yes, Deacon. His name—”

“I know his name. Don’t speak it: Names have power.” He pointed at me with a long hand. “The Father has presented us with a unique opportunity. A double conversion. It is a sign of his blessing and power that you live, mageling, while the others do not. He wants you, and he will have you. Ivan. Take the knife and come here.”