M L N Hanover - Killing Rites

“I’m open for suggestions here,” I said low enough that my rider would know I was talking to her. I waited a few seconds, but I didn’t get an answer. Either she wasn’t listening or she was stuck too. I knelt at Dolores’s side, putting my eyes even with hers.

“Hey,” I said. “You have anything you want to have happen, because the options are looking pretty bad to me.”

“I want to go with you ,” she said.

“I’m going someplace dangerous,” I said.

“I don’t care,” she almost shouted. There were tears in her eyes. She turned away from me. “I want to go home.”

“We can do that,” I said. “But your sister might be there. And she’s still got the demon inside of her.”

Dolores was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t want to go home,” she said.

“Jayné,” Chogyi Jake said. The two syllables of my name were all it took to carry a truckload of meaning. She’s a kid, so stop asking her to take responsibility and This decision has to be yours and I’m sorry. I hung my head.

She had been through so much that she hadn’t deserved. I wanted to give her her own voice in whatever happened next. I wanted her to have power, or at least to feel like she did. That giving her that was also another burden on her shoulders seemed profoundly unfair. The kid needed someplace safe and someone to watch out for her, and she also needed to stand up on her own. I didn’t know how to get that for myself, much less for her.

“Okay,” I said as much to myself as to anyone. “Dolores? Sweetie? I need you to be a big girl right now, okay?”

She turned back to look at me. Her eyes were wet, tears streaking down her cheeks. She looked about as unlike a big girl as humanly possible. She didn’t have her family. Didn’t even have her own clothes. I’d saved her from riders twice when everyone else around her had failed or betrayed her, and now I was going to abandon her. The thought rested uncomfortably in my gut. I nodded to her and smiled, hoping it would get her to smile back at me.

“I’m going to go try to stop the thing that’s been doing these things to you and your sister. And I need you to stay here and take care of Ozzie while I do it.”

The dog’s ears shifted forward at her name, and she started wagging her thick tail. Dolores sniffed wetly, looking from me to the dog. She knew it was bullshit. I’d have left Ozzie alone or even curled up in the back of the SUV a hundred times before I left a little girl by herself.

“What am I supposed to do?” Dolores asked in a small voice.

“You just stay here with Ozzie. There’s a TV upstairs and I’ve got some snack food in the car. If the dog needs to go out, let her out. When she wants in, let her in. There’s some dog food for her. And I can help you find a bowl for that and her water before I go.”

“What if she goes out and she never comes back?” Dolores asked, and I knew from the high, rough voice that we weren’t just talking about the dog anymore.

“She’ll come back. It might take some time, but she will come back,” I said. “And I will too. Your job is to hang out here for the night and be safe. Knowing that you’re okay is what’s going to let me do the things I need to do next, okay? Can you do this for me?”

Dolores hesitated, then nodded. She wasn’t looking at me. I leaned close, kissing the top of her head.

“Thank you,” I said.

Twenty minutes later, the rest of us were piling in the SUV. I had my laptop and the leather backpack I used as a purse. Chogyi Jake had meditated in the master bedroom, focusing his qi and calming his mind. If you had to pick whether Alexander or Ex looked worse, it would have been a hard call. Next door, three snowboards were leaning against the little fence, and four guys about my age were shouting at each other about how to get a grill started. They sounded drunk. I ignored them, climbing up behind the wheel. Chogyi Jake took shotgun, looking back at the lights shining in the condo’s windows as the sun began its winter descent among the high peaks in the west. All around us, the pines had gone from green to black. I started the engine and paused.

From the time I’d arrived at Denver International Airport, just shy of my twenty-third birthday, until Chicago, I’d driven only when I was alone. Aubrey was our default driver before he left, and Ex had taken over in the weeks since. Now I was sitting behind the wheel, and it felt as natural and obvious as something I’d done every day. I had the feeling it meant something. I hoped it was something more than If this all goes south, it’ll be my fault.

“Will she be all right by herself?” Chogyi Jake asked.

I followed his gaze. The condo was dark, already in shadow despite the blue still showing in the sky and the glorious gold and pink cloud lace of the coming sunset. It was like a Magritte painting made real. One of the upper windows began to flicker the television’s blue.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably.”

“I can stay,” he said. “Take care of her.”

“For how long?” I asked. “Her home won’t be safe unless we win this. So unless you’re thinking you’d like to flee the country and raise her yourself, you’re better off coming with us and making sure we win. There are kids her age and younger all across the world who are dealing with worse than having a place to themselves for a night.”

“It just feels wrong,” he said.

“Really does,” I agreed, then slid the SUV into drive and headed down from the mountain.

NIGHT FELL as I drove. The twisting little road down from the ski valley was thick with skiers heading down from their day on the slopes. The music on the radio was all “Winter Wonderland” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” every jolly note and unseen smile like a parody meant to make the evening feel more threatening. Once, neaision̵e last cliff on the road, a fallen boulder squatted in the middle of the lane, and I had to swerve around it. The snow and ice made everything slow and dangerous.

In the backseat, Alexander’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping. His hand was pressed to the wound in his chest. I shifted the rearview mirror to catch a glimpse of Ex. He was brooding at the darkness. He’d tightened his ponytail, until the skin at his temples looked stretched back. It reminded me of war paint and smiley-face stickers on combat helmets. The ritual preparation for violence.

This was everything for Ex. His past with Father Chapin and his failure with Isabel and his redemptive drive to care for me. By slipping into Tomás, the Akaname had managed to threaten all of it at once. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have everything in your life come to a single point like that. An event where it could all be won or all be lost. For a moment, I was in Chicago again, in the basement, driving nails into the coffin while an innocent man screamed inside it. The sick dread and fear flowed into me with the memory, and also Ex’s voice reciting in Latin. Performing the last rites over the man I was killing in part to save the man’s soul, and in part to be there with me during the worst of it. Making sure I didn’t go through it alone.

“It’ll be all right,” I said to myself, and then in an almost perfect imitation of me, my rider took my throat and spoke. No one listening would have noticed the transition.

“One way or another.”

I didn’t know what she meant, but a chill climbed up my spine that didn’t have anything to do with the teeth of winter all around us. I looked back to the road, reached up to shift the mirror away from Ex and closer to where it was supposed to be, and headed for San Esteban for the last time.