Chris Holm - The Big Reap

Word was, her fingerprints came back inconclusive. Which is what I woulda told the press, too, if I’d run ’em and they came back matching a missing six-year-old girl’s. DNA results were pending, said the news — but the state was backlogged, their lab drowning under the rising tide of pending cases, so it could be weeks before they had anything to report. In the meantime, no one came forward to identify the woman, which made sense, because Lilith was pretty damn sure she was Ada. She told me as much a few days back, after popping in on me from out of nowhere and damn near scaring me right out of my borrowed skin.

“Like the duds,” she said. “Very… ironic. I hear the kids are into that these days.”

The duds in question were a paunchy, lugubrious sixty-something Italian man with deep-set eyes, a gentle voice, and delicate, uncalloused hands, upon the third finger of the left of which he wore a clunky gold ring, absent jewels but stamped with the image of the crucifixion. A cardinal’s ring, which made sense, on account of he was a cardinal. A cardinal Lilith damn near killed by sheer force of startlement, if his race-horse heartbeat and resulting dizziness were any indication.

I tugged free my meat-suit’s Roman collar, setting it on the scarred wooden desk of the study carrel at which I sat, and gulped air in an attempt to calm him. He was a pious man, well-intentioned yet ill-equipped for the recent turn his life had taken, meaning me. The carrel was piled high with books, half of them older than the European conquest of the Americas, plucked from the shelves of the Vatican’s Secret Archives in which I sat. The place was deserted; all the Vatican was abuzz with Easter preparations, leaving few with time for study or quiet reflection. It was five months or so since I’d vanquished Magnusson, four since the nameless creature in the desert, and I’d spent the ensuing days doing my damndest to locate any mention of the remaining feral Brethren, to no avail. Lilith figured it was best to take them out first, before tackling the ones who’d been tipped to hell’s hate-on for them and would therefore see me coming. Problem was, they were the very definition of off-the-grid. Even the Pope’s own private library didn’t have shit-all on them, though I did find some peculiar references to Christ’s own purported bloodline (which, apart from the fact that it shouldn’t exist since scripture never mentions him fathering a child, seems to include two heads of state, four saints, and all three Bee Gees) and a centuries-old reference to a near-apocalypse ushered forth in a great city by the sea as a consequence of the damnation of an innocent girl — only to be foiled by one of the devil’s own.

But I didn’t put much stock in prophecies.

“Nothing ironic about it,” I told her. “I needed access. This guy had it. End of story. Besides, you’re behind the times. I hear irony is dead.”

“Yes, well, so are you,” she said. “Although I can’t help but notice this meat-suit of yours is not. That makes what — eleven live ones in the past five months alone? Dare I hope you’ve lost your taste for piloting the dead?”

“Dare all you like, but it won’t make it any truer,” I told her. “Like I said, I needed access, and this guy had it. Dead cardinals are hard to come by, and anyways, even if I could find one, it wouldn’t do me any good. He’d raise a few eyebrows if he was seen walking around.”

“And here I thought his sort was big on resurrections.”

“ Resurrection ,” I corrected, “as in singular. Now, what’re you doing here, Lily?” I confess, that last was testier than I intended, but truth be told, her teasing hit a little close to home. I had been taking a lot of living vessels lately. I kept telling myself it was on account of access or some other necessity, but the fact is, the Sam of old would have found another way. When it comes right down to it, taking living vessels was… easier than it used to be. Less hand-wringy. Maybe my heart was growing harder. Maybe something inside me had given up. Or maybe being so close to the dark energy released by Ana’s failed ritual in LA — the one that resulted in Danny’s death — had tarnished me in ways I’d yet to understand. Whatever the reason, it troubled me, but not enough to stop. That alone was enough to make me wonder if I’d lost something fundamental to what made me me .

“I have a lead,” she told me. “A little girl who disappeared four years ago from her Colorado home just reappeared. Only she’s not so little anymore.”

“Look, Lily, I don’t mean to criticize, but that sounds kind of flimsy. I know you haven’t been among the living for a while now, but kids grow up. It’s hardly news, let alone evidence of Brethren involvement.”

Lilith gave me a look that could have shattered glass. “I don’t mean to say that she got taller, you fucking dolt, I’m telling you she wandered out of the woods an old woman.”

I sat up a little straighter in my chair. “She what?”

“You heard me.”

“You sure she’s not a nut?”

“That’s what the authorities believe, of course,” she said, “but they’re wrong.”

“And you think there’s Brethren mojo behind her aging act?”

“Do you recall what Jain said to you?”

I narrowed my eyes at her in puzzlement. “Jain?”

Lilith shook her head subtly — more to herself than to me — and clarified. “The one you killed in Mexico.”

I thought back. “If I could be killed,” I quoted as best as I could remember, “my mountain cousins would have found a way. They begrudge me my appetites, as if their method of procuring sustenance is any more humane.” Realization dawned. “You think the mountains are the Rockies, and the humane methods are sucking her life-force dry bit by bit but leaving her alive?”

“I do indeed.”

I looked around. Slammed closed the book that I’d been poring over. A plume of dust that smelled like dried vanilla poofed out of it and pricked at my sinuses, daring me to sneeze. “Then fuck this place,” I said. “Let’s find me a new meat-suit and head to Colorado!”

“Excellent,” said Lilith. “As it happens, I have just the candidate.”

The police combed the woods, of course, aided by countless volunteers from as far afield as Fort Collins and Durango, sweeping through the brush in dotted lines of men and women with only ten feet in between. But despite the fact the area surrounding Colorado Springs was too dry for any significant snowfall to accumulate the terrain was steep, uneven, and tough to navigate, and there was just too much of it to cover with any degree of confidence. After a week spent trudging back and forth along a grid two square miles centered on the spot the woman had been found, the police called off the search.

Lucky for me, the Monster Mavens hadn’t, and who could blame them? Their fifteen minutes of fame had brought them endorsements, late-night talk appearances, even the promise of a book deal. They were gonna milk it for all that it was worth, and with a YouTube audience now numbering in the hundred-thousands, that meant trying to find the mysterious cabin of which the old woman spoke. And, of course, the strange, subhuman creatures within.

Did they believe the woman to be Ada? Hard to say. Nicholas, based on what little I could glean from the not pot-dulled bits of memory I’d been able to access, didn’t, but Topher and Zadie seemed earnest enough. Lord knows they played it up whether they believed it or not. And the internet gobbled it up like so many McNuggets. The old woman had her own Wikipedia entry, and the comments section of the Monster Mavens’ blog was chock-a-block with speculation. SCULLY58008 was betting, against all odds, on some sort of hillbilly brainwashing cult, while LilMsGlinda was leaning toward a coven of witches looking to fatten up the old lady Hansel-and-Gretel style so they could eat her. VanH3llsing, predictably, guessed vampires. And Area69 said dollars to donuts it was aliens, or a government cover-up of same.