M. Hanover - Unclean Spirits

“No! Candace! Get Aaron and get back in the car!” I said, stepping between them. Then to Coin, “Leave them out of it.”

“As you’ve left Alexander out?” Coin said. He meant the big one. The one we’d killed.

“Alexander was mine too,” I said. “They were all mine. You want this stopped? I’m the one. Just me.”

Coin looked back over his shoulder, toward the body of his fallen man. I thought I saw something like sadness in his eyes. Then he turned back to me and nodded.

“Just you,” he said.

He closed his eyes, balled his fists, and shouted. The sound was deafening, a thousand times louder than anything human, and more complex. There were storms in his voice. Earthquakes. Huge beings moving underground. I felt my body tip back and thought I was falling.

When I looked down, the streets were a hundred feet below me. Aaron and Candace were gone, but I saw her car, just beginning to move, finishing the long arc to the south. I saw the tangle of cars and trucks, semis and motorcycles that had piled up behind us. The stolen Hummer, its black doors standing open. Coin’s car with its crumpled hood. The huge man’s body. I could even see the pool of blood.

And then it was two hundred feet below me. And then a thousand. I dropped the rifle, the small black stick flipping down through the empty air. The great asphalt cloverleaf of the highway spun in the distance. I felt a sudden regret. My plan hadn’t worked any better than Eric’s. I wondered what I could have done differently. If there had ever really been a way to win.

Something profoundly cold touched the back of my mind, and the gray world went black.

I was cold.

Slowly, I became aware of other things. My knees hurt. There was a crick in my neck. All I could hear was a soft wind. When I moved, it made a scraping sound like gravel. But mostly, I was cold. I shifted my head, and something soft and chilly moved under me. I let my eyes slit open. My backpack. My head was resting on my leather backpack like it was a pillow.

I tried to remember where I was, how I’d gotten there. I had a sense of urgency. It was all very, very important. If I could just put my mind back together…

I sat up. The city spread out below me, streets marked by the glowing yellow lines of their lights, the shifting red of taillights in traffic. The western sky was red and gold, the sun already set. All around me was pebbled gray gravel, wide sheet-metal ductwork on raised steel beams. Something partway between a radio antenna and the Eiffel Tower rose up to my left, a red beacon glowing at its tip.

A skyscraper. I was on top of a skyscraper. I tried to stand, but my knees were weak beneath me. I turned slowly. There was a door-green and rust with a dead bolt lock. Coin was sitting beside it. Five inches above his open hand floated a small cylinder of metal that came to a point at one end. The bullet.

The thing in Coin’s body looked over at me, then back at the artifact floating above its hand.

“Nasty piece of work, this,” it said. Its voice was conversational, deep, inhuman. “Ya’la ibn Murah and St. Francis of the Desert both. Unpleasant.”

I tried to think, to focus. I had to say something.

“Fuck you,” I slurred.

It made a soft tsk-tsk and shook its head.

“It isn’t yours. I know that,” the thing said. “Heller designed it. It’s his style. Oh yes, I know my enemies. And I’ve known Heller quite well. You, though, I confess I didn’t expect. You’re Jayné, yes?”

He knew how to pronounce my name, and for the first time since I’d come to, I felt the deep, penetrating rush of fear. Far to the south, a storm cloud still hung on the horizon, lightning flashing so far away there was no thunder. Coin nodded.

“The niece,” it said. “The heir. Eric’s next incarnation. I thought we had put an end to all that, but here you are. And Alexander gone because of it. I suppose I should have guessed. Heller was the past master of putting things in motion.”

“You killed my uncle,” I said. My voice sounded steadier now.

“Yes,” Coin said.

“You’re going to kill me,” I said, sure as I did that it was the truth.

The rider narrowed its stolen eyes. The bullet slid down through the air to land on its upturned palm.

“Possibly,” it said. “If it’s necessary.”

I almost had my feet back. The city below us glittered and darkened. Somewhere out there, down below us, Midian and Chogyi Jake were running for their lives. And Candace and Aaron and Kim. Every minute I kept Coin focused on me was one that its attention wasn’t turned to them.

Run, I thought. Wherever you are out there, get the hell away from here. Live.

“How much do you know?” it asked.

“Enough,” I said. It was silent for a long moment, then nodded.

“And you have made yourself part of this,” he said. It was almost a question.

“Yeah,” I said. The thing in Coin’s body sighed.

“You are a woman of great power. Great potential,” it said. “You needn’t take your uncle’s path. Even with the hurt you’ve caused me, you don’t have to die here.”

I looked at it. The ink marks on its pale flesh seemed to shift, letters forming and re-forming. Something in the pit of my stomach warmed and rose, and against my own expectations, I laughed. Coin looked nonplussed.

“You’re saying I could join up with you?”

“That’s an option,” it said, vaguely offended.

“Next you offer me all the nations of the world?” I asked. When it looked confused, I gestured to the wide, empty air around us. “Temptation. High place. Devil.”

“Ah,” it said, nodding. “No, I’m not Satan, and you’ve little enough in common with Christ, for that matter. I wasn’t offering to purchase your soul. Only that I would rather we not end this in violence if there isn’t need. If alliance isn’t interesting to you, armistice at least remains a possibility.”

“What? ‘Oops, my bad. Won’t do it again,’ and you let me go?”

“Of course not. I’ve underestimated Heller’s reach, but that doesn’t make me a fool. Renounce your vengeance and there will be an agreement. A binding of intention. Then, yes, you can walk away.”

“Really can’t,” I said.

Coin stood. The man’s body was only a little taller than mine. The business suit looked perversely in place with the arcane designs on its skin. I raised my chin.

“You killed my uncle,” I said again, and shrugged.

“And you are determined to walk in his footsteps,” Coin said. It wasn’t a question, but it was the last chance I had.

I shifted my feet, the gravel crunching under me. I was a thousand feet above the ground, facing a supernatural evil that had already said it was willing to kill me. I didn’t have another bullet or a rifle with which to fire it. Eric’s protections might have been stripped away by Kim’s cantrip. I didn’t have any friends or allies. I was alone, and if I didn’t do what the thing in Coin’s body wanted, I’d be killed. Or I could say no, accept whatever binding it had in mind, and live as its slave and subject until I found a way to slip my leash. If I ever did. But at least I’d be alive. All I had to say was No, I’m not.

“Yeah,” I said. “Really am.”

Coin nodded, its expression resigned and unsurprised.

“This gives me no pleasure,” it said, and drew in its breath. I jumped at it, swinging low. Coin danced out of reach, lifted its hands, and shouted a single syllable. The sound was louder than anything I’d ever heard-like a jet engine about two feet from my face. There were other voices inside it. I heard a chorus of shrieking words, a high wailing, and something deep and chthonic and inhuman. Sound pushed at me like a storm wind.