James Baldwin - Stained Glass

“I have to help them.” Angkor rubbed a hand back through his hair, damp and sticky with sweat and dirt. His hands were shaking from the cocktail of adrenaline and exertion. “But my Phi is REALLY low. I don’t think I can do much good.”

“We have more important things to do. If Vanya still has the children, he’s going to be moving them from their current location to somewhere else.” I sheathed the machete and started for the bedrooms. “We have to talk to Josie.”

“Hey. Before you go hassling Josie, you need to talk to me.”

Angkor and I turned as one to face Ayashe. She was still nude, tall and Amazonian. She wore her skin like a suit of armor, as if her lack of clothing meant nothing to her.

“Was that you who led the charge? The one with the horns?” I averted my eyes anyway.

“Might well have been,” she drawled. “Jenner SOS’d me when the first wave rolled in. A bunch of guys went in and shot up the club to start with, and then this. I tried to contact the Pathrunners and only found five or six of them still sane. They filled me in with the rest. I had to round up the combatants in the Fires.”

“Well, thank you,” I replied. “You probably saved our lives.”

“It’s my basic duty to kin and kine. Besides that, you saved Josie from the worst sort of people,” Ayashe said, rolling her shoulders back. “Jenner told me you fought DOGs for her, that you were badly injured fighting to protect Angkor from your old gang and from this ‘Deacon’. You got us that computer, and the wave of arrests starts tomorrow. I don’t like your methods, but I owe you an apology for doubting your motives.”

“Accepted,” I said. “I understand you occupy a difficult position.”

“Yeah.” Ayashe rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m gonna have a hell of a time explaining this one to my supervisor tomorrow, believe me. They’re going to arrest everyone here on principle, but I doubt it’ll go anywhere. The Vigiles just ain’t ready to handle a Morphorde attack of this size. Their first solution is just to shoot everything. That only makes it worse.”

“Look, I’m sorry to rush this, but if we don’t start moving, then Vanya will,” I said. “Lily and Dru were using the home as a cover for trade in drugs and children. I think that Vanya was providing transport and protection for the goods, as well as participating in the production of the pornography. They weren’t killed with glass: they ejected it from their bodies when they died. They had some kind of virus, some kind of disease that made them sick in the head. Mason has it. Duke got it when he was stabbed with a payload in a StainedGlass shard.”

“Yen,” Angkor said. “That’s what it’s called.”

Ayashe sighed, and turned her head to the side as she sucked a tooth in thought.

“Just before I left the Organizatsiya, my Avtoritet said something strange,” I continued. “He wanted me on a last minute cleanup job. One of the couriers was killed when he went to go and pick up a ‘regular delivery’. He said something about him being torn apart, something about symbols being left on the ground at the murder site. I think that Lily and Dru must have killed him, and then they were killed and the kids taken by force when whoever is controlling this realized that they were getting out of hand.”

“When was this?”

“Late August,” I replied.

“Spotted Elk initiated them as honorary Elders into the Four Fires around that time,” Ayashe said. She exhaled thinly through tight nostrils, frowning. “He has a bottle of some potion he’d gotten in a lifetime ages ago, and it’s supposed to clear out disease. You have to take it to be an elder in the Fires. He told me that’s how he can weed out anyone with ill intent.”

“Did you drink it?” I asked.

“Me? I couldn’t. I was already with the Bureau and they have a total ban on any Vidge consuming potions or unknown substances, magical or not.” She shook her head.

“Weird. The only thing I know of that’s anything like what you describe is called ‘whimsy wine’,” Angkor said. “It’s a really old draft that preserves Gift Horse blood in a suspension of elderflower cordial and honey. Literally lasts forever, if the Gift Horse who donated the blood is still alive.”

Ayashe blinked rapidly. “That sounds like it’d be sweet. The stuff he had wasn’t. I didn’t drink it, but I got a whiff of it once. It was like red wine, but really bitter. There were herbs in it.”

“Well… euun…” Angkor rubbed his chin, struggling to come up with words. “I don’t know many herbs that are capable of cleaning out a Yen infection. None of them are bitter. Morphorde are killed with honey, peppermint, sweet lemon oil, things like that. You know, I was supposed to tell people something about him or something he said. It about was a talk we had, but I can’t remember any of the last month.”

She guffawed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No, seriously.” Angkor frowned. “The last thing I really remember before I was captured was… we were talking with about Korea and agreeing that I needed to look into the Templum Voctus Sol angle…”

“Templum Voctus Sol? The TVS?” Well, that was one mystery explained. “What happened at the bunker?”

“I got hit from behind by a really powerful Phitometrist,” he replied. Then he glanced at Ayashe. “The Deacon. He’s a Temporalist, a mage who can affect time.”

“Can he see the future?” I asked.

“Probably.” Angkor nodded.

She nodded. “Do we have any idea who this guy is?”

Angkor shook his head. “I was locked into a magic-suppressing collar and blinded for however long I was out, but I know for sure that he’s male.”

“I think that this Yen disease must have originated in the Pathrunners,” I said. “Michael must have been the vector. He gave it to his flock, then Lily and Dru, then Mason. He must have killed John Spotted Elk when they went to Lily and Dru’s changing ground.”

Ayashe pinched the bridge of her nose. “I know. The ghoul squad went to the changing ground yesterday to pick him up. I have to go I.D his body tomorrow… that’s going to be rough. Why do you think they killed him?”

“No idea,” I replied. “Maybe they thought he was too close to learning about their goals. Maybe he said something on the way up.”

Ayashe suddenly seemed very tired. When Jenner walked up and offered her a coat – Vassily’s old trench – she took it and slung it on, belting it at the waist like a robe.

“You get a good look at him?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Jenner replied. “They caught him mid-shift, too. He was all fucked up. Half man, half deer.”

Ayashe’s face fell. “Hang on. What?!”

“Yeah, I know.” Jenner rubbed her mouth, grimacing. “It was really—”

“No, Jenner. You don’t get it. It’s not John,” Ayashe said, nearly tripping over her words. “That’s Michael. Michael changes into a white-tail deer.”

“Holy freaking shit,” Angkor said.

All of us were frozen as the terrible gravity of betrayal settled over us like a leaden shroud. Zane blanched, his warm brown skin turned the color of weak coffee. Jenner didn’t seem to absorb it for a long moment, before her eyes widened and she coughed, putting a hand over her mouth.

“Jesus fuck,” she said. “I… I just assumed…”

“We all did,” Zane said. “I figured, that… you know…”

“No. Michael’s the deer,” Ayashe said. “I’ve seen him shift. Us herbivores hang out together in the good grazing spots sometimes.”

“What is John’s Ka?” I asked.

“I…” Ayashe looked aside at Jenner and Zane, then back to Angkor and I. “I don’t know. He never shifted in front of me. He had his own changing ground… he went there alone.”