M L N Hanover - Killing Rites

Inside, the lights were soft orange-gold glows, barely enough to cast shadows. A little mood-rich, but they worked. Small kitchen, check. Recessed conversation pit by gas fireplace, check. Through the picture window in the back, I could see the dark lump that was probably a hot-tub cover. A thin stairway led to the second floor and more bedrooms. In a pinch, the place would probably have slept eight. It was plenty for us.

When I came back out, Ex was pulling himself out of the car, stiff and awkward. He walked in toward the house, silhouetted by the headlights so that I didn’t see how bad he looked until he was almost to me.

“Hey. What’s the matter?”

When I put my arm around him, his back was wet. When I looked at my fingers, I saw blood.

“What the hell ?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Just get me inside.”

At the little kitchen, I leaned him against the counter and ran back out to shut off the headlights. When I returned, he’d pulled off his shirt. Two deep gouges scored his back, one beginning at the shoulder and digging down to the middle of his shoulder blade, the other starting at the middle of his spine and running down over his kidney. A thin red smear mottled his skin, dark and dried at the edges, fresh and bright where blood still leaked from the wounds.

“Jesus!” I said, shutting the door behind me. “What happened?”

He chuckled, then bent over in pain, resting his weight on the kitchen counter.

“Well, there was this wind demon,” he said, smiling through the pain. “We had a little fight.”

“You’re hurt.”

“Little bit. Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you say something when I asked?”

“Like what? ‘Ouch’? That would have helped.”

I drew him closer to the sink. The hot water ran icy cold a few seconds before it went warm. I found an old dish towel in a drawer. Water and blood mixed, sheeting down Ex’s side. Under the mess, the skin around the wounds was red and angry. When I started cleaning out the actual gouges, he winced.

It felt strange, touching him. We’d been very careful over the weeks together to keep our physical contact down to taps on the shoulder or steadying hands. I was washing him now, my palm against his side, my fingers feeling the ridges and valleys of his rib cage. I pressed the wet cloth against him and watched him respond to it. He wasn’t wincing now. Even with the wounds to excuse me, it felt dangerous and sweet, and I found myself being gentler and taking longer than I probably needed to.

“You’re going to need stitches,” I said. “I can’t believe you, Ex. We were just at a hospital. I mean, we were right there. ”

“It would have attracted too much attention,” Ex said. “Father Chapin and I agreed that it would be better to keep outside involvement to a minimum. And I don’t need stitches.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t see your back.”

“He did.”

I stopped dabbing, but I didn’t take my hand away. Ex looked over his shoulder at me. His white-blond hair had blood in it, and his eyes held as much sorrow as exhaustion. I shifted my hand between his shoulder blades, and he looked away. I went back to cleaning up. When I’d done as much as I could, I left him there and went upstairs. There were towels in the two bathrooms, and I used them to improvise bandages.

We moved him to the couch where he could lie on his belly. Between the blood and the water, his pants were sopping, and I put a blanket over him so that he could pull them off without compromising his modesty. He pushed his clothes out from under it and collapsed forward with a sigh. I turned up the thermostat by the stairway, and the gas fire grate hissed to life, orange flames licking the ceramic logs.

“I can call in a doctor,” I said. “Seriously, I’ll call my lawyer, and she’ll find someone.”

“And do what?” he asked. “It’s all right. I’ve had my tetanus shots. I’m clotting up. There’s nothing to do but wait. What about you? Are you feeling all right?”

I tried turning. The pain was more a deep ache than a sharp stab.

“Bruised,” I said. “Not broken, I don’t think.”

“What about your knee?”

I looked down. I’d forgotten ripping my jeans there, but my kneecap peeked out into the room, grimy with dirt and blood of my own.

“Way better than your back,” I said, sitting on the floor. The warmth of the fire pushed gently against my neck.

“Well,” Ex said through his smile, “that’s a good minimum, I guess.”

We were silent for a moment, the only sound the muttering of the flames and the quiet ticking of a clock. Ex put his head down on his arms, his face toward me. He looked tired and distant. His hair was unbound, spilling across his face, softening him. Here I was, alone in a secluded mountain cabin with a man wearing a blanket. I watched the firelight flicker on his skin. It should have felt weird. It didn’t.

I knew Ex had a thing about me. Crush, call it. Or attraction or unrequited love. Pick a card. I’d even felt it once when we were doing a ritual that meant blending my mind and his. And my just-barely-ex-boyfriend Aubrey, and his ex-wife and still-significant Kim. We’d been in a lot of trouble at the time, and so all our attention had really been on the battle at hand. Looking back on it from here, it had been intimate in a way that almost nothing else in my life had been. I’d been able to feel Aubrey’s confusion from the inside, like it was mine. Kim’s desperation and hope. I’d been able to feel them become aware of me. But there hadn’t been words. I’d felt Ex’s desire and guilt and determination, roaring like a furnace, but not the facts and details of the life that created them.

He sighed. His eyes closed. He didn’t look like the passions I’d felt were in him. Even his usual almost-disapproving intelligence was gone right now. I wanted to take his hand, but I wasn’t sure what I’d want after that, so I didn’t.

“It didn’t want to come out this time, did it,” Ex said. When I didn’t answer, he opened his eyes again, pinning me with them. “When the wind demon attacked you, the rider didn’t want to come out, did it?”

“No,” I said. “I guess not.”

Ex nodded, his cheek brushing against the cushion.

“It’s aware, then,” he said. “Intelligent. It knew that manifesting would give the game away. More evidence that it’s not just spells and cants that Eric put on you. They wouldn’t have any reason to keep hidden. Or the intelligence to know when they should.”

I hugged my knees to my chest. Something in my belly felt cold.

“Did you and Chapin talk about that too?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Great.”

“It’s what we came here for. To talk about it. He agrees that whatever it is, it’s powerful. We’d knocked the edge off the wind demon, but the way you took it out was …” He shook his head without lifting it off his arms. “That wasn’t small stuff.”

“Did he have any idea why we couldn’t find anything before?”

“A few thoughts,” Ex said. “There are some kinds of riders that survive by stealth. They can live in someone for years and never show any sign, even when you know that you’re looking for something. This could be a particularly effective one of those.”

“Or?”

“Or the rider may be digging in deeper. Trying to get far enough inside you that we can’t see it to pull it out. Or it may be young. Or it may be that the thing where you’re hard to see with magic extends to the rider. Or comes from it.”

“And no way to guess which one we’re looking at.”

“Well, there are some other things that point toward it being young.”

“Really?” I said, wanting to know and not wanting to know.