George Chesbro: The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

I raised my gun with a badly trembling hand, trying to track Kitten, but did not pull the trigger. Both men were constantly spinning and circling, darting in and out of the smoky light, and I would have had a hard time telling which was which even if my vision hadn't been constantly slipping in and out of focus. Also, blood had soaked through the rag I held over my forehead and was once again seeping into my eyes. I wiped away blood with the back of my gun hand, then sidled along the wall, angling closer to the two figures, looking for one clean shot.

Limping slightly, Henry Kitten stepped back and began slowly to circle Veil, who had stopped moving and was now standing calmly in the center of the patch of moonlight, the flashlight beam highlighting his head and shoulders. Suddenly Kitten attacked with what was to me blinding speed, faking a side kick with his left leg, then spinning counterclockwise and launching a flying high kick at Veil's damaged right arm. Veil spun the other way, inside the kick, and drove the point of his left elbow deep into Kitten's momentarily unprotected groin. Kitten cried out and doubled over while he was still in the air. He landed on his side, immediately sensed the danger and managed to scramble to his feet, although he was still clutching at his groin, inhaling and exhaling with great whooping sounds. He tried to back away, but he wasn't fast enough. Veil's fist shot out and landed squarely on the other man's bullet-damaged shoulder. Kitten screamed, took one hand from his groin to clutch at his shoulder. For a moment I thought he would go down, but he managed to keep his balance while he spun around and began to stagger toward one side of the loft. Veil facilitated Henry Kitten's attempt at walking by stepping up behind the man and grabbing his belt, lifting him up on his toes. In what seemed to me an astonishingly brief time, Veil had achieved zanshin — total physical and mental domination of his opponent. He steered the other man around and marched him toward the end of the loft. When they were a few feet from the bank of windows, Veil flexed his knees, and with a mighty pull and shove hurled Kitten through the air. The ninja assassin disappeared into the night in an explosion of glass. Henry Kitten didn't scream; amid the tinkling of glass came the sound of his body landing in the mounds of jagged junk and mushy, rotting garbage in the narrow alleyway four stories below. When Veil turned away from the window and came toward me, he didn't even seem to be breathing hard.

"Not bad for a painter," I managed to say before the gun slipped from my fingers and I slumped unconscious to the floor.

I awoke to find myself lying on Veil's bed, with Veil bending over me applying the finishing touches to taping a thick bandage in place on my forehead. The smell of turpentine was strong in my nostrils, and I suspected it was coming off me. The lights were back on, and I could hear the thrumming of the two giant exhaust fans in the work area as they carried away the last traces of the acrid smoke from the fire I had started. A teakettle was whistling in the kitchen behind the thin partition beside the bed. I started to sit up, but Veil put his hand on my chest and gently but firmly pushed me back down on the bed.

"Easy, Mongo. You've lost a lot of blood. Start moving around too quickly, and you'll pass out again."

"How long have I been out?"

"A little more than an hour; you had a nice nap, but considering the shock to your system and the blood you've lost, it probably wasn't long enough. The lights came back on about ten minutes after you fainted. I cleaned you up a little, and managed to stitch the wound."

"Jesus. With one hand, no less."

Veil shrugged, then wiggled the fingers of his right hand. "The arm may be in a cast, but I can still use the hand. Suturing is a little skill I picked up out of necessity during the war, when I had to tend to my own knitting, so to speak. I think I managed to clean out the wound pretty good with peroxide, and the sutures will keep it closed until we can get you to a plastic surgeon to have it done properly."

"I'm sure the sewing job you did is as good as I'm going to get anywhere."

"Wrong. You could end up with a nasty scar, and I can't be sure there won't be an infection. I poured a bottle of peroxide in there, but the rag you used to stanch the bleeding was covered with green paint; you looked like a Christmas decoration. As soon as I get some herbal tea down you, I'm going to drive you to a hospital emergency room."

"The wound bled a lot, right?"

"Indeed."

"And the stitches you put in will hold until it heals?"

"As long as you don't do a lot of walking on your hands or opening doors with your head, they should."

"Good. I'll pass on the trip to a hospital. I'm too old to worry about my looks, and a scar on my face is probably just what I need to put a good scare into my enemies."

"Mongo-"

"I don't want to have to answer a lot of questions, Veil," I said seriously, "and that's what will happen if I go to a hospital emergency room. I can't very well claim I cut myself shaving. I can always claim I was slashed by a mugger, but then somebody's going to want to get the police involved. Considering our somewhat complicated situation, I don't think that's a good idea."

"You could have a point." Veil paused, grinned. "All those cute little co-eds who already think you're so sexy will really go crazy with lust if you show up in class with a huge scar on your forehead. Then again, you may be asked to head up the school's German dueling society."

"I'm not teaching any longer," I said, trying and failing to keep the bitterness I felt out of my voice.

Veil raised his eyebrows slightly. "No?"

"You don't know about it, but the university lined up with everyone else who tried to squash Garth and me while we were looking for you. Madison's people got to both the police and the school. The NYPD suspended Garth, without pay, for supposedly aiding and abetting a criminal-me; Christ, they assigned him to tag along with me and then busted his ass for doing precisely that. The university took all my classes away from me and started making noises about taking away my tenure on the grounds of moral turpitude. Then they offered me a raise and the chairmanship of the department after it was all over. I told them to shove it, and I submitted my letter of resignation yesterday. I wanted nothing more to do with those people."

Veil studied me for a few moments, then slowly nodded his head, perhaps sensing that my aborted teaching career wasn't something I felt like talking about. "I'm going to make you some of my super-duper herbal tea," he said at last. "It will perk you right up."

"I'd rather have Scotch."

"Somehow, that doesn't surprise me at all," Veil said, walking away toward the entrance to the kitchen. "First, the tea."

"I feel like a Goddamn old lady," I called out, slowly sitting up on the edge of the bed, then bracing myself with my hands and closing my eyes when the room started to tilt.

"Why?" Veil called from the other side of the partition.

"I don't usually pass out so easily."

"Hey, my friend, when somebody bounces a shuriken off your forehead and you lose as much blood as you did, the only reasonable thing to do is pass out. Ask anybody. You're lucky you have a thick skull. Incidentally, I'm sorry I wasn't able to stop him from doing that. I should have kept a closer eye on him."

"You're sorry you weren't able to stop him?! I was the one with the gun, remember? By the way, that was some number you did on him. But why the hell didn't you just bop him on the head with your nunchaku, or stick a knife between his ribs?"

"You'd already put a bullet in his shoulder," Veil replied dryly. "It didn't seem quite sporting for me to use weapons."