James Baldwin - Stained Glass

“You fuck,” Jenner said, by way of greeting. “That was Mason. Mason’s fucked up, you knew where he was, and you didn’t tell me?!”

“I came to find this fat piece of shit.” I kept the knife in against Vanya’s neck, but not too close. He was a secret fanatic; I wasn’t going to let him martyr himself. “This wasn’t in the plan—”

“I saw the fucking photos, Rex.” Jenner stalked towards me, her small human form just as predatory, just as deadly as the tiger who had fought only a moment ago. “The video was in YOUR apartment. YOU brought that computer in. Mason was here, with YOU. What the actual fuck? Talya was freaking in the clubhouse when I got up… something about you and the Russian Mafia being involved. You—”

Something in me snapped. Bristling with broken glass, one hand impaled through the palm, being blamed – once again – for other people’s problems, I couldn’t stop it.

“You WILL fucking listen to me!” I pushed myself off Vanya, leaving him to flail on the ground at my feet, and swaying on my feet. “You want someone to blame for this? For your boyfriend? Blame yourselves. All of you, you fucking useless, undisciplined, conniving, back-biting HACKS! YOU let this take place under your noses! Your shapeshifter ‘Elders’ are not ‘very good people’ – they were cultists and perverts and pedophiles. I came here because I figured something out, like I was supposed to, and you want to scapegoat me too?”

“Shut the—”

“No! You shut the fuck up!” I felt the parasite strain in my chest and belly as a wave of aborted power surged and was immediately cut off. “Vanya was about to rape this man on the table. He was going to rape and murder him after he swore his vows to this crazy fucking cult – which, I might add, Lily and Dru were almost certainly part of. I just saved Angkor’s life after Mason turned into some kind of fucked up mutant beast and tried to kill me, and you. And if you can’t handle the truth, then that is not. My. Problem.”

“Let me get a word in, will you?” Jenner’s entire face trembled with tics, and she opened her mouth to say something just as Duke transformed from leopard to nude human male. I was so furious that I didn’t even care that all three of them were naked.

“No. Fuck you all. I don’t care.” I caught sight of Vanya just as he tried to get up and limp away, and I kicked him right in the exit wound just for the spite of it. He pitched back down with a squeal. “I’m sick of him and I’m sick of all of you. So take your Spook and apologize to him for whatever fucked up shit they’ve done to him, and fuck back off to Screw-Up Town while I go and live my GOD-damn life somewhere else!”

“Hey. Alexi.” Zane called from up the back of the room.

“He killed Vassily!” I screamed back at him. “And you think I had something to do with this?! They killed the only people who ever mattered to me!”

As my voice bounced off the walls like gunfire and faded into stunned silence, a clicking sound began to echo through the room. I looked down. Vanya was laughing underneath me. A horrible fake, forced, repetitive laugh.

“Laugh it up, fatty.” Jenner said. “You’re gonna wish we killed you before tonight’s through.”

I had never wanted to do anything more than what I was about to do. I didn’t look at her. “No. Take Angkor and leave.”

“I’m not gonna do that,” Jenner replied. “Mason—”

“I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. This is between my people and me,” I replied, as crisply as I could with twelve pieces of glass stuck through my torso and limbs. As the battle fury began to lift, I was stiffening up, beginning to feel the pain. The one in my forearm had gone all the way through. “And if you don’t fucking leave, now, I’m going to kill every fucking person in this room.”

“Jenner…” Zane spoke up again, moving closer to us. “Just leave him.”

“No. I’m not leaving.” She lowered her head, eyes narrowed. “You’re coming with us, Alexi. We’re doing this together.”

“I don’t take orders from you.” I bared my teeth at her, warring with the dual urge to make good on the promise to wipe the room, and rope them in to help me with Vanya. I wasn’t going to be able to carry him in my current state.

She rolled her eyes. “Look. Just forget it, okay? I lashed out. My old man’s dead and your friend’s dead, and I lost my shit and you’re right, you don’t take orders from me. Alright?”

In the pregnant pause after her almost-apology, Binah jumped onto the altar and began to nose the bodybag and its concealed occupant, meowing plaintively.

“You ain’t getting nothing from me,” Vanya slurred in English. “Stupid cunts. You’re dead. Every fuckin’ soldier in this city is gonna come for you. Deacon’s gonna come for you. You’re fuckin’ dead!”

“Your new friends ran, Vanya.” As much as I could with one shaking hand and a body full of broken glass, I straightened my shirt and tie. “And now, you will tell us about Lily and Dru Ross and their children.”

“I ain’t telling you shit,” he said. “The fuck you gonna do? Sergei told me he cut you off. You ain’t no fuckin’ wizard no more.”

The three Weeders in the room shifted restlessly, but I forced myself to stay fixated on Vanya. “I don’t need magic to make your life a living hell for the next year, Vanya. All I need is a quiet room, a battery, and some copper wire. Just you and me and some electrified exploration of your intimate places. Do you think you’ll cry, Kommandant?”

He spat at me. Jenner stalked across, and slapped him so hard that his neck cracked. He fell to the ground, coughing, while the tiny woman shook her hand out and hauled him up to his knees with unnatural strength. The wiry muscles of her torso stood in sharp relief. “You can count me in on this fat fuck.”

“Nice tits.” Vanya leered.

Jenner kicked him in the bullet wounds on his leg. Vanya howled in agony.

“Fucking prick.” Jenner dragged him off by the front of his shirt as if he weighed thirty pounds instead of three hundred, kicking broken glass out of her way. Duke stumbled on past, and I whistled to him. He turned, and I threw him the Glock. He caught it, gave me the thumbs-up, and joined his President as she maneuvered Vanya out the door and threw him down the first flight of stairs.

“Hey, Alexi.” Zane regarded me somberly as I limped to the altar. “That uh… that looks like it hurts.”

“I don’t want to know.” I zipped up the bottom of the body bag, struggling one-handed to put the unconscious man’s feet back inside. “We need to milk Vanya for everything he’s got. I put a lot of information together tonight… but I can’t explain most of it.”

He stared at me suspiciously, soulfully, and then jerked his shoulders in a restless shrug. “Fine. But we want to know what the fuck we burst in on.”

“I was hoping for something less arcane.” I hobbled to the head of the bodybag and fumbled the zipper it with my better hand. I was shaking so hard that it took more than one try, an attempt which was not aided by Binah, who batted at the zipper as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “We should… ah…”

“What?” Zane frowned.

Tongue-tied, suddenly hot with mingled wonder and confusion, I couldn’t reply. The body bag was opened to chest height, and I’d pushed the plastic back to reveal the most beautiful man I had ever seen.

Angkor was still deeply unconscious, and in remarkably good condition for someone who had been struck in the head hard enough to knock him out for this length of time. His features were strong, fox-like, the lines of his skull spare, his face somehow both utterly masculine and utterly feminine at the same time. His skin was the color of rich amber; his lips were full, his upturned throat long and gracile. And that was where I got stuck, not because of his beauty, but because of the collar. He had a narrow, seamless glass band welded around his neck. It superficially resembled the hazed glass of the knife the priest had passed to Mason, but it wasn’t as brittle-looking as the dagger. I touched it, and an unpleasant sensation vibrated up through the tips of my fingers. It was magically active.