Lilith Saintcrow - The Damnation Affair

“Oh, Robbie, how can you ask? Do not be ridiculous.” She found, much to her surprise, that she could summon a crisp, authoritative tone. “What are we to do now? I am not sorry I came to find you.”

“I am. I’d have preferred you safe in Boston.” He half-turned, and she did not demur as he led her for the grisly doorway. “Will you faint, do you think? If you have to see…that…again?”

“I do not think so.” But she was not entirely certain. “Robbie…will my charing start to burn me, do you think?”

“Not until daylight. Look.” He faced her again, his jaw working and the mud and dirt on his face not hiding the incandescent fury. His free hand worked at his shirt collar, and he drew forth a leather thong. It was a charing, but not the silver and crystal confection that matched her own. Instead, this was a plain brass disc with a charter-symbol stamped upon it, lit with the same soft glow that sheened his eyes, and as she peered at the skin underneath she saw only a faint shadow and a dusting of wiry hair. Yet it was indisputably a charing-charm, and she found herself unwilling to question its appearance. “The damn chartershadow owed me. Anyway, consecrated ground, you know. It doesn’t burn me now. You have to trust me, though, Cat. We have somewhere to reach before dawn, and then…”

“Then what?”

He turned back to the doorway. “Then we will be cursed and outcast, but at least we’ll be together.”

“Oh.” She shut her eyes as he pulled her forward, and stumbled on her broken heel. Cursed and outcast, but his new charing doesn’t scorch him. This makes no sense. Who could consecrate a patch of this wilderness so thoroughly? “What must we reach before dawn?” The smell filled her nose, and she held back a retch by sheer force of will, trembling so hard Robbie actually drew her forward, sliding his arm over her shoulders. He was cold as the stone walls, and his flesh was as hard…but he was her brother, and he had found her in the dark.

“A place by some pretty jessum trees, Kittycat. Keep your eyes closed.”

The gotar shambled forward. Why are they attacking from the south? “Give ’em Hell!” Gabe yelled, and the men of Damnation went to work with flails and scythes. The mud-creatures were falling apart; Granger had actually thrown a charm-blessing that spread and sparkled between drops of rain, turning the water fair-holy. He stood upright behind the defense-line, holding the mancy active for as long as he could.

It was bad, but there was hope. Russ Overton had limped into town, madder than a wet cat and all over mud, his clothes scorched from the shattering of the west charterstone. A group of men were hauling a chunk of granite from behind Ma Hainey’s boardinghouse—she’d braced two boards on it and used it to chop off chicken heads, so it was already blooded—to the west border in Cam Salthenry’s rickety wagon, with Russ perched atop the chunk of stone muttering charter-charms to prepare it. The instant they heaved it upright among the shattered ruins of the other stone, he could repair the boundary—and that same group of men would go with him to ride the circuit and keep any undead off the chartermage.

It was now a question of how long they could hold. They still had the gotar bottlenecked south of Pig Street, but there were more of them every time thunder rumbled overhead. At least the rain had slowed.

Jack wasn’t sanguine, though. The sun was sinking, and if Russ and the stone didn’t get to the west in time, it could get ugly. Underneath the stormclouds, a furnace of gold was turning orange and red, giving the entire town a coat of wet gilding. The gotar gleamed like seals, too, but the sunlight raised steaming welts on their dirt-skins.

Where are all the other undead? Salt put a boundary around the graveyard, but—

“Sheriff!” A boy’s voice, high and piping. “ Sheriff! Sheriff! They’re here! Help us, they’re here! ”

It was Zachary Corcoran, and he was running down the street as fast as his thick little legs could pump, throwing up clods of mud and dirt. He gabbled, pointing to the northwest, and the pins-and-needles all over Gabe’s body were almost driven back by cold fear.

The dead from outside the boundary shambled, their jaws working, and Gabe finally had an answer for a question that had bothered him a long while. It had to do with the undead in the schoolhouse, and why they’d gone after Catherine.

It was Jack’s fault, actually. He’d buried Robert Browne in consecrated ground; Robbie would find charter-boundaries no bar to his passage. The thing in the claim had probably forced the boy to carry corpses over the line, to see if it could be done. Once over, those dead could spread contagion and break the charter-circuit from the inside .

They clustered in shadows, some of them freshly dead—he recognized Amelia Gerhardt from one of the outlying farms, her head stuck at a strange angle and her eyes blazing with unholy red pinpricks as she shuffled toward him on bare, flayed feet. The sun flashed, clouds scudding and tearing as the wind rose, and the thing that had been Rich Gerhardt’s wife squealed and fell, its flesh smoking.

Zach Corcoran was sobbing with fright. The gotar set up a chilling rumble-noise—their version of a battle cry, maybe.

I have had enough. Gabe drew in an endless breath. “ Keep them back! ” he roared, and pointed at Granger. “ Protect him! ”

“What are you doing ?” Emmet Tilson screeched at him.

What I should have done a long time ago. He faced north, and walked toward the approaching undead, his boots sinking in squelching mud. Zach Corcoran wailed, and the hiss-rasp of dead throats working as they tried to eat clean air was fit to drive a man mad.

Jack Gabriel spread his arms. The pins-and-needles of grace rose through him, and he stilled the fruitless inner thrashing.

The surprise was how easy it was. He’d spent so long hiding it, avoiding the questions, like a hooded horse, just plodding ahead and refusing to look. But the space inside him that had opened at his Last Baptism dilated, and inside it, the still small voice spoke.

Not for myself, but for others I may ask. Underneath the words was a single thought.

A pair of dark eyes and a sweet little face, dark curls and the feel of her against him. Her teeth sinking into his lip before the startlement passed, and then the sweetness and the thundercrack inside him as her name rose like the charter-bell’s clanging.

Catherine.

Grace burst free, a point of golden brilliance that shrank before it exploded outward. Time halted, and the wetness on his cheeks was not mud or blood or rain.

It was, after all, so easy. The Word spoke itself in silence, and the undead cringed from the sound. Their faces smoothed, the corpseglow leaving them in puffs of gold-laced steam, and Jack struggled to hold the place inside him open.

One question nagged him, though. From the north. Catherine. Dear God, Catherine. Please, if I have ever served You, let her be safe.

The golden light winked out, and he fell heavily to his knees with a splash of liquid dirt. The silence was immense, broken only by little Zach’s sobbing for air and Emmet Tilson’s wondering, breathless curse.

The charter-bell had stopped ringing. And now everyone in town would know what he was.

Gabe shut his eyes. I don’t care. Catherine. I have to see her.

But when his group of Damnation’s citizens reached the schoolmarm’s house, they found it afire like half the northern part of town, smoke rising into a rapidly clearing sky.