M L N Hanover - Killing Rites

“The fact that we’re here at all,” Ex said. “The rider can take complete control of you. We know that. But it wasn’t able to keep us from coming here. That means your will still trumps it most of the time. With a mature rider, you’ll usually see it running things all the time. That yours is … I don’t know. Intermittent? That makes it seem like it’s not full-grown.”

The warm feelings I’d had before were fading fast, and the hiss of the gas flame started to bother me. Anxiety and impatience nibbled at my skin, and I shifted to sit farther from the fireplace. Ex didn’t notice, or if he did, he didn’t care.

“Chapin’s working hypothesis is that it can’t take over for a very long time. A few minutes here and there. And usually in extremis. If you’re not threatened somehow, it can’t take the reins. Influence you, maybe. Steer you. But not the all-out control like we saw today.”

“So as it gets older, it gets more powerful and I get … what? Slowly eaten?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s more like a cocoon. The control dynamic stays right about where it is until the rider’s fully formed. Then it breaks out of the chrysalis, and the rules change all at once.”

The cold feeling in my gut got worse. I’d had the sense of rider and magic before, and this wasn’t it. It was old-school, please-Jesus-get-it-off-of-me fear. I had to change the subject, and I had to do it now.

“So, Che ?” I said, forcing a grin. “What’s that?”

Ex chuckled. When he sat up, he winced, but he didn’t lie back down.

“Father Ignatius. He was my unofficial mentor when I was a novice. He had this long beard, and when I started my regency with Father Chapin, I tried to grow one too. It didn’t go well. One morning, Carsey said it made me look like a Wookiee. I was clean-shaven by afternoon, but it stuck.”

His smile was gentle—chagrined and embarrassed, but gentle.

“What did Father Ignatius think of it?” I asked.

“Oh, he never saw it. There are a couple of years of study between your novitiate and regency. The last time I saw him was when I took first vows. I’d have been … what? Nineteen years old?”

“What kinds of vows do they make you take at nineteen?”

“The usual ones,” Ex said, his voice exhausted and melancholy. “Poverty, chastity, obedience. At the time I thought it was better that way. Disassociate myself from sin before I’d ever experienced it. It’s hard to miss a place you’ve never been. Worked great in theory.”

“But in practice, not so much,” I said.

“Well, I made it through my first studies and regency,” Ex said.

“You keep saying regency . Do you have to dress up in a double-breasted tailcoat and an ascot or something?”

“Sorry. It’s a Jesuit thing where we were supposed to really commit to apostolic work. Lasts three years.”

“You went three years with Chapin?”

“And Tamblen and Carsey. Miguel came in my second year. Tomás finished his regency the year before I came in, and then went on mission. He took his final vows in Japan and came back just before I left, so he was sort of before and after. The new kid. Alexander? I didn’t meet him until today.”

“Wonder what Carsey calls him,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t see your attempt, but when it comes to un-dignified facial hair, Alexander pretty much takes it walking.”

“It did look kind of … pubic, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly it,” I said. “So why’d you do it?”

“Leave them, you mean?”

“That too, I guess. But I meant why did you go in the first place? When I was nineteen, I was about trying to get out from under the church. Anything secular was cool. Why take vows?”

Ex breathed in deeply, held the air inside himself, and then let it seep back out, but it wasn’t exactly a sigh. It seemed more like he was steeling himself for something more painful than the wounds on his back.

“I was wondering when you were going to ask me that,” Ex said. “God called me.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

I tried not to smile or roll my eyes.

“He stopped by the bedroom one night after prayers? I mean, how does that happen?”

Ex shrugged.

“It’s different for everyone. When I was ten years old, I wanted to be a soccer star. Didn’t have the build for football. That was my brother’s thing, anyway. He was on the varsity team at the high school, and he’d have ground me into the turf if I’d tried to horn in on his territory. I went to youth soccer, I watched all the games I could find. I had an old poster of Pelé in my room. And then one morning I got up, and I knew I was supposed to be a priest. I took down the poster, and that was that.”

“You just knew ?”

“I did. I didn’t tell my father about it for a few years, but by the time I did, he’d already figured out what I was up to. He didn’t like it. Always suspected I was playing some kind of angle. The idea that I’d actually been called just didn’t seem plausible to him. But I finished high school a little early, I had good grades, and I’d gotten to know all the priests at church. When I applied to become a novice, it was easy. I taught catechism. I worked with the poor and the homeless. I studied. It was more like being home than being home ever was. When the time came for vows, I didn’t hesitate. I was … certain. God called me. I answered. Everything was just the way it was supposed to be. I felt blessed.”

“Never looked back, then?”

“Not then. During first studies, I found myself drawn to the rites of exorcism. I read about possession, the way the soul can be corrupted. There’s a special program for people with a talent for that kind of ministry, and I fought to get into it. I was good. Had a talent for it like no one had seen in a generation. When Father Chapin agreed to take me on, I knew that this had been the plan all along. God had made me to fight the devil and save the innocent, and He’d put me in place so that I could do it.

“I was a weapon in His hand. Tamblen and Miguel and Carsey. Father Chapin. I was going to spend my life with them. They were more than family. They were the other guys in my foxhole. And we saved people. We really did.”

Ex shifted his weight and winced. A dark spot was blooming on the towel draping his shoulder where he was bleeding through the bandage. The blanket pooled in his lap, and one bare leg shifted out toward the fire. His pale skin, the angle of his thigh, the distant expression, all conspired to make him seem like a sculpture worked out of marble. Something hard and beautiful and cold.

“And then?” I said.

“And then,” he echoed, like he was agreeing with me. “And then we lost one. Badly.”

“Isabel?”

His eyes went a little wider, but he nodded.

“The first guy … Um. Miguel? He mentioned the name when we got here,” I said. “That’s all.”

“Yes, Isabel.”

“You want to tell me aut it, or would that be too weird.”

“She came to us for help, and I betrayed her trust. I broke my vow to God.”

The fireplace hissed.

“You slept with her,” I said.

“I did. And because I lost perspective, we lost her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and he shook his head, refusing even that weak comfort.

“It’s different this time,” he said. “This time, we’ll win.”

When a little before midnight I got to bed, I was asleep almost before my eyes closed. My consciousness fell away like shrugging off a jacket, and I slept through to morning without a single nightmare. I woke up with sunlight struggling in past wooden shutters and only a vague sense of where I was. With all the travel I’d done in the past year and a half, I’d built up a strategy of sorts for waking up in unfamiliar beds. First thing was not to get uptight, this happened all the time. Memory always wandered back eventually. The second was to find coffee.