James Baldwin - Stained Glass

“What?” He spoke first. “You look like you’re about to choke on something.”

“You… mentioned something before,” I said, finally. “Something about a HookWyrm.”

Angkor didn’t look up from his rifle. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know anything about it except that it chokes my magic.” I had to force each word out. This was not how I wanted anyone to find out about my magical emasculation. “I haven’t been able to work the Art since the start of September.”

“I know what they are, but I only know one way to get rid of them without killing you. You need Gift Horse blood.” Angkor grimaced, shaking his head. He didn’t look up at me, focusing on the gun. “You said it was put into your body by an old vampire?”

I paused in my work as nausea panged deep in my belly. “Yes.”

“Okay. There’s a kind of creature that is commonly known as a Wrath’ree.” Angkor rubbed his face, leaning back against the wall. “They’re basically GOD’s white blood cells, okay? Their purpose is to eat Morphorde, and they’re really good at it. They seek out and consume corruption. Evil magic or anything that’s made of dirty Phi.”

“Right.”

Angkor gestured with a hand. “Feeders have a special relationship with Wrath’ree. That’s way too much to try and describe right now, but the short version is that some really old, really powerful vampires can enslave a Wrath’ree and turn them into things they use to fuck up your day with. That’s what this little guy is. He’s an enslaved Wrath’ree, and his native Phi-eating ability has been turned into a kind of magical trap that blocks you from the rest of GOD.”

“So that’s it? We can’t get rid of it without a Gift Horse?” I had no earthly idea where to find one. The only one I’d met was dead, and I couldn’t even remember her face properly.

Angkor sighed, and tipped his head back against the wall. It was a gesture that bared the long brown line of his throat and the depression at the base of his sternum. “Pulling it out will kill you both. The Wrath’ree doesn’t want to die, and they don’t really know how to… de-escalate a conflict or listen to reason under the best of circumstances. I’m sorry.”

I turned my face, So, that was it. Three tries, and the best I’d been able to do was unwrap the lousy thing from my organs. Until we had the resources, I wasn’t a mage. I wasn’t anything.

No. That was sissy-talk. Even without magic, I was still something. I had beaten my way through a GOD-damned wall. I’d survived the Tigers’ Den. I’d pulled Angkor out of the fire. Zane and Talya were out there, waiting for me.

I drew a deep breath, clapped my hands to my knees, and stood. “Then that is how it is. You did your best. If we can find a Gift Horse, we can remove it?”

His head snapped up, eyes dark and fierce. “If we can find my Horse, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. But the Feeder who did this – Sergei? – must be extremely old to be able to create one of these. If it’s anything, I know for a fact that this Wrath’ree isn’t any happier about this than you are.”

“I find it hard to have sympathy for something that’s cutting me off from my soul.” I tested my limbs, rolled my shoulders, cracked my neck. Everything worked, though I was still achy. My body was probably at about seventy-five percent. It would have to be enough.

“The HookWyrm is cut off from its hive mind, which is basically the soul of its kind.” Angkor shrugged. “Neither of you are in a great place right now.”

“My heart bleeds,” I said. “How do you know all this, anyway? I never found it in grimoires, and not for lack of trying.”

“That’s because it can’t be written down. It gets taught orally, person to person,” Angkor replied. “How do you feel?”

“A bit better,” I grunted. “I still hurt, but I hurt less now.”

“Healing is never comfortable.” Angkor leaned in towards me, his eyes hooding to dark crescent-shaped slits. He had very thick lashes. Before I knew it, he was close enough to kiss. “Anyone who pretends healing doesn’t hurt has never had to heal anything, right?”

The skin of my chest prickled with gooseflesh. “For a pretty-boy, you certainly do talk like an old man.”

“Funny you say that. I’m older than I look.” He licked his top lip with a short, sultry laugh, and sat back with a smile. I cleared my throat and stood.

“Well, let’s go and get Jenner and the others. We have to make our plan of action.” I caught up my shoulder holster and slung it on, settling it in place while I went to the closet. I pulled a clip on tie, hooked it over my collar, and straightened it until it looked tied and not clipped on. Angkor got to his feet, slung the rifle strap over his shoulder, and turned to his own preparations.

“Thank you, by the way,” I said. “For helping me.”

“My pleasure.” He winked at me sidelong, arched his eyebrows, and wound sinuously out of the room. “Come on, grasshopper. Let’s go kill some monsters.”

I snorted, shook my head, and followed him out. Pretty as he was, Angkor’s posture, his confidence and steady hands and gaze all spoke of the same thing. He was a ruthless killer with a side of chutzpah . As Jenner had said of me, I could say of him – I liked him despite myself, but I couldn’t trust him.

We tore up the nearly-empty highway from Brooklyn to Ossining, chewing up forty miles in under an hour. We quickly passed the city, leaving Manhattan far behind as we entered the wealthy forest suburbs north of Yonkers. The cabin of the car was tense and mostly silent, everyone preparing in their own way for what we might find at John Spotted Elk’s country home. Angkor was meditating over his rifle-and-ax combination in the front passenger seat; Zane was intent on the road, mouth grim whenever he looked into the rearview mirror and I glanced his face. Talya chewed her nails, popping the already short ends of them under her teeth.

I studied the map for half that time. The aging Tappan-Zee Bridge was the starting point for one of the major trucking routes from New York to Illinois. The house was at the end of a private lane off a narrow, winding forest road. We got onto the Taconic State Parkway, the road I normally took to get to Bozya Akra, and gunned north along the abandoned highway at twenty miles over the limit until we merged onto Saw Mill River Road.

“It’s the next left, Zane.” Talya’s voice was high and nervous. She had the radio, thumbing the trigger nervously. “Then take the second right, then follow the road to Marian Place. The house is the one right at the end of the cul-de-sac.”

“Roger that,” Zane replied, barely slowing as he took the hard corner and rumbled over the uneven asphalt. “Everyone ready to go?”

“As ready as I can be.” Angkor unwrapped his rifle and loaded a round, then wound his window down. We all did the same thing. Behind us, the motorcycle escort slowed at the entry to Inningwood Road, one of the two ‘mouths’ that opened up onto the highway. Looking back, I saw Jenner give us the thumbs-up.

From my position behind Zane, I could get the best view of the road outside. As we took the road deeper into the woods, flying at sixty in a thirty zone, I leaned out to get a look at what was coming up around the curve.

Three cars roared out of Marian Place just was we were coming up on it. They screeched as they swung around on the turn and rushed us headlong in both lanes.

Zane wrenched the handbrake and threw the wheel to drift us as the first car clipped our bumper and flew by, followed by the zip-zip of the other two as they passed at high speed. I was flung back into my seat by centrifuge as the Lincoln about-faced, coming to a smoking standstill as a semi-trailer clawed up the shallow hill like a dinosaur and thundered off down the road. There was a shipping container on the back of the truck.