M. Hanover: Unclean Spirits

“No!” I screamed.

He looked up as he pulled the trigger. The woman pitched forward, her skull split open. I dropped to my knees.

“You don’t need to look at me like that,” Midian said as he stepped over her body and toward the small man crumpled in the middle of the floor. The attacker had shards of the plate in his hair, his legs bent under him. His eyes were closed. I could see him breathing. “These aren’t people. They’re qliphoth. Shells. They’re what’s left after a rider’s taken over.”

“Please stop,” I said.

Midian fired twice into the small man’s head. I closed my eyes. The euphoria of the fight was gone, as if it had never been there. Tears ran down my cheeks, but I felt too sick to move. I heard Midian walk to the last man, the tall one I’d kicked.

“Don’t,” I breathed. “Please. Please don’t.”

The gun barked. My body spasmed. I doubled over, vomiting up the eggs and onions and brandy. I was crying with the same sense of illness, the same violence. Soft footsteps came toward me, and I was suddenly sure that he was going to kill me too. I put up a hand, thinking somehow I could push away the gun.

Midian knelt beside me. Skeletal hands slid under my arms, and he lifted me. Together, we stumbled toward the bathroom. I puked again as we passed the kitchen, but he kept pushing me on. Soon, I was on my knees in front of the toilet curled in fetal position. There was blood and sick on my sleeve. Midian sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching me collapse.

“Please,” I said. “Please.” I didn’t even know what I meant by it.

“The first time’s the worst, kid,” he said in his industrial ruin of a voice. “Killing someone isn’t like an action movie. You don’t just go bang real loud and they fall down. It does something to you. I understand that.”

My eyes were shut tight. I could feel my mouth open wide enough to ache at the jaw, like I was screaming. Only a whine came out. My heart felt as if something precious had died. Some tiny part of my mind, cool and observant, was surprised to see all the rest of me coming unhinged.

“They came in here, kid. They came after you. You did what you had to do. They weren’t even human, no matter what they looked like. Remember that. They’re just shells. All those folks were already dead.”

For the first time, I wanted to believe him. All the bullshit about Eric and the Invisible College and unclean spirits. I wanted it all to be true. I wanted to believe it.

I remembered the woman’s blue eyes. Whoever she was, she’d been a baby once. Her mother had held her in her arms. She’d had a first kiss. Someone had looked into those eyes with love. I saw her skull open under Midian’s bullets.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

“Take your time,” Midian said. “It’s gonna be okay. Just take your time.”

It wasn’t okay for a very long time. It felt like food poisoning, or worse. But eventually my strength gave out a little, and the violence of my reactions calmed. Midian had left me alone, so I locked myself in the bathroom and took a long, cold shower. The water seemed to ground me and pull me back to myself. When I stepped out and picked up a towel, I felt fragile, but I could function.

In the apartment, I could hear Midian grunting and talking to himself. The sweet, harsh smell of his cigarettes covered anything else. I was grateful for that. I sat on the floor and dug through the puddle of my clothes until I found my cell. I looked at it for a long time before I could bring myself to make the call.

Aubrey picked up on the second ring.

“Jayné?” he said, pronouncing it wrong.

“Hey,” I said. “I need to ask you something.”

“Sure,” he said. “Anything. What’s up?”

I could hear something in the background. Voices. Traffic. The real world. I took a deep breath.

“What do you know about the Invisible College?”

There was a pause that lasted years.

“Oh, thank God,” he said. “I was afraid Eric hadn’t told you about any of it. I was going to bring it up when I got you from the airport, but I thought if he hadn’t, I’d sound like a schizophrenic. Eric’s murder. It was about Randolph Coin, wasn’t it? Was he actually trying to take Coin on?”

I leaned forward, hunched over the cell. Mostly what I felt was relief. Even if it wasn’t true, if it was all stories and deceptions and madness, at least there was someone I could talk to. I almost started crying again.

“Jayné? Are you there? Are you all right?”

“You remember how you said I should call if I needed any help?” I asked.

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“I need help.”

The bodies were lined up on the wooden floor of the front room. Midian had erected a levee of towels around them and draped black plastic trash bags over their heads. I was grateful for that. The curtains were closed, cutting us off from the street and the city. With the windows covered, I realized how small the apartment was. Aubrey was leaning against the interior brick wall. Midian sat on the couch beside a rough pile of history books and loose papers, his cigarette filling the air with a dim haze. His clothes were streaked with blood. I perched on the remaining kitchen stool. The one I’d thrown in the fight had bent enough that it wobbled now. I knew how it felt.

“O-kay,” Aubrey said. Then, “Wow.”

“The upside is no cops,” Midian said. “I figure they set up some kind of sound-dampening cantrip before they broke in, or else…”

“Or else?” Aubrey asked.

“Brick walls,” Midian replied with a shrug.

Aubrey nodded. His expression was grave, but there was a businesslike quality to how he took the whole thing in. I scratched my arm. I’d found a sweatshirt in the back. It smelled like Midian’s cigarettes, but the white shirt I’d worn here was ruined. I tried not to look at the bodies.

“Well, we’ve got two issues,” Aubrey said. “We need to get rid of these guys, and we need to make sure you and Jayné are someplace safe.”

Midian smirked at the mispronunciation of my name, but didn’t correct him.

“My guess is we’ve got a little time,” Midian said. “Coin throws his ninja strike team at us and they don’t come home, he’s going to get careful for a while. But I wouldn’t want to wait until morning.”

Aubrey nodded. I wanted to say that I was sorry, but I wasn’t sure who I wanted to say it to. My mind felt like it had been sandblasted. Aubrey pulled out his cell phone.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Midian said, standing up. “I wasn’t keen on it when the kid invited you in. Who the fuck are you calling?”

“Friends,” Aubrey said. “We’ve all worked with Eric one time or another. They know the score.”

Midian frowned but didn’t stop him. I felt a rush of profound relief that Aubrey knew what to do next. I didn’t have a clue.

When I’d come out of the bathroom half an hour earlier and told Midian that Aubrey was on his way, the cursed man had almost lost his temper. He’d asked me everything I knew about Aubrey-who was he, who did he work for, how did he know Eric, why did I trust him-and it became clear that I didn’t actually know anything. Only that when I’d asked for help, he’d said yes.

After he’d arrived, there had been a brief dancing back and forth between them. Midian had given a Reader’s Digest condensation of the story he’d told me, and Aubrey had accepted it. Aubrey had explained that he and Eric had worked together before, and that he knew a little bit about Coin and the Invisible College, but that Eric had warned him off. Both men had seemed satisfied, at least provisionally. I watched it all like it was a television show.