James Baldwin - Stained Glass

Retching, eyes streaming, I locked my jaws and sighted down again, this time on the huge face pressed against the hole in the door. The nose was flaring as Talya sniffed, and sniffed, and as I tried to shunt myself into the killing trance.

“Hold off,” Angkor said breathlessly. He lay a hand on the pistol and pushed it down. “Look.”

Talya moaned, a short, almost solemn sound, and pulled her muzzle back in a shower of shattered woodchips and paint. She began to paw at the threshold to the room, stropping her claws on it, but gave up after a few seconds with a snarl. The spotted gray flank swished by the hole in the door again, and I recupped the grip and re-aimed. But she passed by, chuffing with agitation.

“Oh wowww. That’s a North American lion,” Angkor said. He had turned an interesting shade of bronze-green. His eyes were watering, his voice thick with mucus. “A real life Panthera atrox . There hasn’t been one of those for at least eleven thousand years. Holy shit. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Sure, wonderful. But Super Govno isn’t going to hold her off forever,” I said. “He, she… IT can still hear us.”

“Hey, don’t be rude. She’s a woman when she’s human, male when she’s not.” Angkor nearly collapsed to his knees beside me. Up close, he was pouring sweat. Sweet, floral sweat that chased the stench of what I assumed was prehistoric lion shit out of my nostrils. “My GOD, that is amazing.”

“Cover ears.” I put the Glock down and pulled the Wardbreaker instead.

“What?”

I tucked my ear against my shoulder, pressed my hand to the other, and fired. The Wardbreaker was usually quiet – part of its enchantment made it nearly silent when activated with a suppressor – but I couldn’t activate it, and so the shot still rang out like a cannon, loud enough that my ears popped. Angkor winced, covering too late. Binah, terrified, shot out from her hiding place and began to flail uselessly at the walls and window in her efforts to find a way out.

The lion outside bolted in alarm, squeezing herself back towards the front door as the bullet zinged. I let out a tense breath, and lowered the pistol.

“Ow, shit…” Angkor let go of his ears, slumping into a wilted kneel on the floor. “You could have warned me.”

“I did.” I turned to glower at him, still tense. Talya had retreated, but it wasn’t over. “You were busy admiring the wildlife.”

“Okay, fine. You got me there.” Angkor rubbed his face. His eyelids were heavy, skin ashen and damp with sweat. “GOD, I feel awful. I was… uhh…”

He was staring at me: First in consternation, and then, with recognition and what even might have been awe.

“What?” My eyes snagged on twin crescent-shaped scars on his chest, cuts about an inch across just below the areola on both sides. They had thick keloids, as if someone had cut around his nipples or tried to take them off. Angkor didn’t say anything. Instead, he licked his lips, nose working like a dog’s.

“What?” I was louder this time, more peevish.

“I’m sure I’ve met you before.” Angkor slid in closer to me, far too close for comfort.

I blinked twice, glanced to the door to see if we were still likely to be eaten within the next thirty seconds, and then turned back. I extended him a gloved hand. “Well, now that we’ve established that our relationship is likely to be both brief and awkward before Talya eats us, perhaps we should start with our names. My name is Alexi. I believe you are Angkor.”

Angkor was in no way put off. He grasped my hand in his and shook, his grip surprisingly firm and steady. I held his hand a moment. He was not shaking. He had the air of someone who was used to working under stress.

“Seung Min-Joon,” he replied, eyes alight with inner fire. “But yes, call me Angkor. And no, it’s not a Korean name.”

“The more you know.” I let go, and used the wall to pull myself to my feet, wincing. My head spun, and for several long moments, every sound was muffled by the cotton-thick pounding of my heart in my ears. Blood had seeped to the surface of my dressings. Woozily, I staggered across to one of the beds and chirruped, seeing if I could coax my terrified familiar from her hiding place.

“You’re really badly hurt, Alexi. Can you lie down for a minute?” I heard him get up behind me. Weak as he was, he was still moving easier than me.

“Why?” Lying down was the last thing on my mind. All I had to do was get Binah, but I had to crawl onto the mattress to do that. Get the cat. As soon as I tried to look down between bed and wall, my vision and temples throbbed alarmingly.

“Trust me, okay? I’m a doctor.”

I turned on hands and knees, glowering at him. “I have to get my cat.”

“Look. You need to lie down.” he said. The affable smile had left his face, and he did indeed look like a doctor: the kind of cynical, care-worn kind you found lurking in the ER. “Your blood volume is way under, you’re in full ketosis, your micro-nutrient profile has gone to shit, and if I don’t help you now, your blood pressure is so low that you’re going to faint the next time your head is higher than your knees.”

“How ridiculous. I just need my cat.” I knelt up, and then immediately fell back down.

At first, I thought I’d blinked and woken up somewhere else. I was flat on my back, stretched out on top of the covers. Binah was licking my face with a sandpaper tongue. My shirt was open, and Angkor was pressing around the now-visible sigil figure on my chest. My body felt as light as air, cavernous and free. I could draw deep breaths, but my hands, nose and feet tingled with pins and needles.

“You know, I don’t recall much about that one time I’m pretty sure we met,” he said, with a sigh. “But I do remember that the other you was way better at taking orders.”

“What did you do to me?” I made a valiant attempt to speak, but the words came out as a slurred word salad.

Angkor made a sympathetic sound, apparently understanding anyway. “Don’t worry about it. Who did this to you?”

My brain had to whir around for a while before I could reply. “Sergei. Old upir’ .”

“A Feeder,” Angkor murmured. “Of course. Look, wait here and don’t move. I need to go and see if our kitty-cat has calmed down.”

Wait here? A fresh wave of fear stabbed through me. I was partly undressed and prone, and the lion was out there somewhere. I struggled to rise as Angkor left the bedside, flailing out to the side for my gun. Neither action was particularly successful. I knocked the pistol to the floor and ended up leaning on my face, tangled in my open shirt. Straining with effort, I could only watch as Angkor let himself out into the hall. Binah resumed her impromptu bath, grooming the frizz of stubble beside my ear.

For several breathless, spinning minutes, there was no sound outside. Then Angkor returned. He saw me trying to reclaim my dignity and scowled. “Seriously. Stay down, or you’re going to pass out again.”

“I don’t like to be undressed.” As he closed in on me, I fought his hands out of principle. Angkor efficiently pushed me down, and to my confusion and consternation, spooned honey into my mouth before I could do anything about it. The sweetness burned my tongue and I coughed, swallowing reflexively.

“Just eat the damn honey,” Angkor said. “Life is way too short for bad patients, okay? I’m going to heal you, and you’re going to let me.”

He put one hand on my head and held the other out behind him to the door, and for a moment, nothing happened. And then I felt an intangible wave of energy pass through my body. The honey abruptly dissolved into a thin liquid that ran down my throat and into my gut, burning with the warm fire of liquor. The stomach parasite stirred warningly, and I winced.