M L N Hanover - Killing Rites

Alexander dragged himself to the bathroom and handed out his clothes. I stuffed all of it into the plastic liner, tied the top, and put it outside the room’s door. The sun was almost up, thin clouds glowing rose and gold in the immense blue New Mexican sky. I took the Do Not Disturb sign and hung it on the knob. Dolores was lying on her side now, her eyes glassy and empty. The show broke to a commercial for allergy medicine, and I turned off the TV.

“Get some sleep, okay?” I said. Dolores nodded and closed her eyes. There was an extra blanket in the closet, and I draped it over her. When I knocked on the bathroom door, it took a few seconds for Alexander to answer.

“Yes?”

“I’m going to hit Wal-

Mart for some fresh clothes. You stay here and guard the kid, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Don’t let anyone in.”

“I’m a Catholic priest in a hotel room with an underage girl and no clothes,” he said. “So yeah, I think I’ll try to keep a low profile.”

“Funny,” I said.

“Here all week. Tip your waitress.”

I unhooked the cable that ran from the telephone to the wall and shoved it in my pocket before I left. I didn’t think Alexander would call Chapin while I was gone, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. And it wasn’t a risk I had to take.

I got back two hours later with a sweater and two pairs of slacks, one of which would probably fit Alexander, pink sweats with a pattern of hearts and snowflakes for Dolores, a pair of jeans and a blouse for me, and socks and underwear for the masses. Alexander was in bed, still wrapped in his towel. The wind spirit’s wound looked fresh and pink and painful. Dolores was sleeping where I’d left her, above the bedspread and under the spare blanket, curled up like a comma. Ozzie looked up at me hopefully.

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t think about dog food. I’m kind of new at the whole pet thing,” I said, and she sighed and put her head back down.

I put the shopping bags down by the door and went to the far side of the bed. I lay down with my clothes on, fitting onto eight inches of mattress that the other two had left me. For a moment, I wondered if this was what it felt like having a family. A man, a woman, a child, all curled up in a bed that was a little too small, all with their own thoughts and dreams and nightmares. I tried to imagine my own mother and father on a vacation someplace when I’d been a little kid, or with my big brother, who was about to have a kid of his own. I couldn’t picture it. It wasn’t that it seemed wrong onny or improbable. It was just that when I tried to put them here where I was, my mind went blank. Part of that was the trickling exhaustion that came from a sleepless, anxious night, but part of it was something else. Part of it was not knowing anymore exactly who I missed when I missed my family. My mind wandered to the other people who belonged with me: Aubrey, Chogyi Jake, Ex. Maybe them. I could almost imagine them.

I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes until it had already happened. I left them that way, thinking I’d just rest for a couple of minutes and then go find some breakfast for us all, and woke up with the others a little bit after noon.

“YOU’RE SURE she came back wrong?” Alexander asked. “Is it possible that she was okay when we did the rite, but then the other demon was there waiting when it was over?”

Dolores took a bite of her hamburger. She’d gone for a weird Hawaiian thing with barbecue sauce and pineapple that smelled great. She chewed and shook her head. Her frown was entirely made of eyebrows.

“No,” she said. “And anyway, that isn’t what it did with me, remember ?”

“I hate to do the dog-pile thing,” I said, sweeping a french fry through my ketchup. “But that’s my experience too. The Akaname attack was going on at the same time as the exorcism.”

The restaurant was a few blocks off the main drag. The decor was prepackaged plastic in reds and yellows, but the food was good. We’d taken a booth near the back so that we could talk with something like privacy. The decision to get out of the hotel room and track down food had been easier than I’d expected. When I’d brought up the possibility that the police might very well be looking for us, Alexander pointed out that kidnappers usually didn’t hang out in restaurants with their captives, and that by staying in the room and never coming out, we’d actually be acting more like criminals. And then Dolores had calmly threatened to throw a screaming fit if she didn’t get to go out.

The more she talked, the more she impressed me. It wasn’t just that she’d been through two demonic possessions in the last few days and was now hanging out with two grown-ups she barely knew. There was a calm about her, and a maturity, that only broke on our way out of the apartment when Ozzie was apparently startled by her own fart. Dolores collapsed with laughter. And in fairness, it was kind of funny.

“I just don’t see how that’s possible,” Alexander said. “You were on consecrated ground—”

“When Soledad came back, it was already in her,” Dolores said. “She sat right there with your boss and it was inside her.”

“But are we sure that it was there during the rite? If the timing—“

Dolores put down her burger and lifted her eyebrows. It was an expression of challenge and disbelief that came straight off daytime TV, and not the good shows. I wanted to laugh, but I also wanted the conversation to keep moving forward. I tried to imagine what Chogyi Jake would have said if he’d been there.

“So, Alexander,” I said. “I’m hearing you say that you have a hard time beliving that the Akaname attacked when Dolores and I say it did.”

“I am,” he said. “All of the protections it would have had to go through. And the Mark of St. Francis. You were wearing that, Jayné. And we know it was working because it stopped the Black Sun from taking control. It wasn’t ineffective.”

“But my report and Dolores’s don’t convince you,” I said. “Why is that?”

Alexander opened his mouth, closed it, looked down.

“This isn’t easy to say.”

“Do your best,” Dolores said gently. Without saying a word, she’d seen what I was doing and started taking her cues from me. Seriously smart kid.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but Dolores has been through a lot. Sometimes when a person has been through the kinds of things she has, their impressions and memories can be a little scrambled. Disoriented. And you’ve still got a rider on board, so your report has to be treated with an extra level of scrutiny too. Not that—“

“You have one in you right now?” Dolores said, her eyes going wide.

“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s not like the ones you had. The thing that’s in me has been there for a really long time, and we’ve got a truce going.”

“Is it an angel?” she asked.

“I don’t think so, honey,” I said. “It’s just what I’ve got to work with. Alexander, I understand we don’t have enough evidence here to totally convince you. But can you at least see that we need to investigate?”

“Yes,” he said. “I mean, of course there’s a problem. If these things have been targeting the people we’ve helped, it’s absolutely our responsibility to go back and check on people. It’s just that I don’t see how a rider could be in one of the priests.”

The front door of the restaurant opened and a middle-aged woman ushered in two boys. She looked tired. Outside, an old man with a cane was trying to negotiate a sidewalk of melting snow.

I understood Alexander’s problem. He was an expert. Chapin and Ex and Tomás and Tamblen. All of them were experts on exactly this kind of thing, and that was the one thing that brought them all together. To say that they’d been tricked, that a rider had slipped through their defenses without being seen, meant rethinking everything that group meant. And, just like all of them, Alexander had given up a lot in order to be who and what he was. Dolores crossed her arms, scowling. All she saw was a grown-up who thought she didn’t know what she was certain of. There was a rage building in her that would explode if Alexander didn’t flex a little. I understood that too.