M L N Hanover - Killing Rites

Beating the wind demon hadn’t done this to me. To us. I wondered how much damage the exorcism had done to my rider, and how—if—she would ever recover.

“Mark of Taiqing?” I said. “Where’d that come from?”

“Actually, it was just a quarter,” Ex said. “Figured the bluff was worth trying.”

“We’re going to get the car ready,” Carsey he stroked Father Chapin’s hair. “Tamblen can drive and I’ll apply pressure. We’ll have you to the medics before you can finish doing penance.”

“No,” Chapin said. “We cannot leave. Our work is not done. It must be bound. We cannot leave the beast free.”

“It’s more than bound,” I said. “Seriously, we kicked its ass.”

Chapin looked at me, and then grasped at his wounded gut, hissing in pain. His face was pale as paper, but he shook his head.

“We do not take sides in the wars of Hell,” he said. “We do not have alliances against the will of God.”

“He’s delirious,” Miguel said. He had a massive bruise forming on his cheek. It actually looked kind of good on him. Rakish.

“He isn’t,” Carsey said grimly.

“I will not leave while the beast is free,” Chapin said, his jaw tight. His eyes were bright and fierce. They bored into me like a message I was supposed to understand but didn’t.

And then I did.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean me ?”

The room went silent. I fought to clear my mind, but the effort of the battle made clarity hard. Miguel and Carsey stood on the opposite side of the table. Ex stood to my right, Chogyi Jake to my left. Father Chapin lay on the table between us. Alexander and Tamblen had almost lifted the blasted shell of Tomás up to a sitting position. Carsey and Miguel looked at me, the relief and exhaustion and fear on their faces shifting. They looked hardened. Resigned. They looked like sailors who’d just figured out that the calm wasn’t the end of the storm but the eye of the hurricane. I figured I probably did too.

“There is a demon inside of her,” Chapin said. “It is the reason that you brought her here, Xavier.”

“You have got to be kidding,” I said. “Did you just miss the part where you’ve had a ringer in your group for … I don’t know. Years? Or that I just got rid of it?”

Chapin’s lips went tight and he shook his head.

“I have many failures,” he said. “Many, many failures. I will not be turned from my calling. The beast is here. It is within you, Miss Jayné. You have done us all a great service, and I will not leave you in the claws of Hell.”

I stepped back from the table, my legs still unsteady. Chapin tried to sit up. Blood poured out of his wounded side.

“Don’t be frightened,” Chapin said. “We will save you. Even if we are saving you from yourself.”

“Well,” Carsey said. “This is less convenient than I’d hoped.”

“Has to be done,” Tamblen said from behind me. I turned toward him as wide, strong arms wrapped around me, lifting me off the floor I kicked back, but it was only my own strength. Even when I hit something soft, the only response I got was a grunt. The grip didn’t go slack.

“No,” Ex said. “Stop. This is a mistake.”

“There can be no mistake, Xavier,” Chapin said. “Nor any room for compromise. It is through exceptions and weakness of will that Satan wins the world, and so—“

Chapin winced, clutching at his wound.

“Put me down,” I shrieked, twisting my weight. Tamblen turned, and someone—Miguel—grabbed my ankles. Lifted in the air, I turned toward Ex.

Over the years I had known him, I’d seen him in a hundred different moods. I had seen him in the depths of rage and joyous, exhausted past the point of illness and sleeping with the sunlight in his hair. I had felt the passion and guilt and longing that he kept bottled up in his soul, and I had wondered what he was thinking when he closed himself off from me. For less than a second—less than a heartbeat—as I screamed and twisted and fought against Tamblen’s arms, I saw Ex, and the desolation in his eyes was unfamiliar and terrible. I thought, This is what a nightmare looks like, and the gun went off again.

Chogyi Jake lowered his doubled fists until the barrel was aimed unmistakably at Tamblen’s heart. His smile was the same one he always wore.

“I’m going to ask you to put her down now,” Chogyi Jake said. “Next time, I will not ask.”

I stopped struggling. Tamblen shifted my weight but kept me on his shoulder.

“You don’t understand,” the big man said.

“You won’t be the first man I’ve killed,” Chogyi Jake said.

He won’t? I thought, and Ex stepped between them, his hands held out. Where he stood, Tamblen couldn’t reach the door to the courtyard without pushing him aside, and Chogyi Jake couldn’t shoot Tamblen without the bullet passing through him.

“All right, we’re just going to calm down now,” Ex said. “No one’s getting shot. I mean Father Chapin is, but no one else.”

“I know you love these men,” Chogyi Jake said. The gun hadn’t shifted an inch. “But they are zealots, and—“

“Just don’t shoot them,” Ex said. “Just wait.”

Chapin coughed and swung his legs off the table. He tried to stand; he cried out in pain. Miguel put an arm around him.

“Chewy,” Miguel said. “Please. We don’t have much time. He’s losing blood.”

Ex swallowed, nodded to himself, and turned to face Father Chapin. My old friend looked about six years old, lost and determined and frightened to the bone. He licked his lips and I tried to turn so that Tamblen’s shoulder wasn’t digging into my liver.

“Father Chapin,” Ex said. “I know Jayné. I trust her, and after tonight, I think she deserves your trust too. She wasn’t wrong. She was the one who found the taint in our society, and she stopped it. She wants to be free of this thing. She only made common cause with it when we forced her to. Us. Ask her to renounce it. She’ll come back again just like before.”

Chapin’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Tamblen and nodded. The big man lowered me to my feet.

“Is this true?” the old priest asked. The blood on his cheek was dry and dark and flaking. “Do you renounce the Black Sun, and will you swear to me on peril of your soul that you will return here and complete the rites that you began?”

I took a breath. It was what I’d come here for. It was the reason I’d been running like hell since Chicago. One of the reasons, anyway. I thought of the hours I’d spent waiting for my body to move without my willing it, watching for evidence that I wasn’t in control of my own flesh. It had been terrible. All I had to do now was say that I still felt the way I had then.

But I didn’t. I’d made my truce with her, and she hadn’t betrayed me. There weren’t all that many people I could say that for.

“No,” I said. “No, I won’t renounce her.”

Ex’s cry of despair broke my heart a little. He sank to his knees, his eyes closed. I thought he might be crying. It was all spinning out of control now. All of the people he wanted to keep safe were destroying themselves and each other, and all his efforts to protect us were falling through his fingers like sand. I stepped forward and put my hand on his shoulder. He was shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am.”

“Father Chapin? I think you’re making a mistake.”

Everyone turned toward Alexander. He was stroking his terrible little goatee thoughtfully.

“You think … what?” Chapin’s voice was a rasp. “A Princess of Hell stands before us in the flesh of this poor sinner who came to us for aid. Tomás’s corruption was terrible, and the price we will pay for it will beggar us, but there is this thing still before us that we can do right .”