M.L.N. Hanover - Vicious Grace

“Stop,” Ex said. I looked at him, almost understanding the word. It was like something with a cognate in my language. “Stop it, Jayné. We can drive the rest of them with a hammer. Just stop.”

Like a switch being turned off, the strength left me. Every muscle in my body trembled, and I looked around the room. It was like I was just waking from a nightmare, or just falling into one. I tried to say something, but there were still four nails in my mouth. I took them out, amazed by the blood soaking my hand and sleeve. My right palm looked like hamburger. I began to feel the pain, something huge and far away, but coming close quickly.

Had I done that? Driven nails with my bare hands?

“You beat it,” Kim said, awe in her voice. “You really beat it. How the hell did you—”

“We’ll finish it,” Ex said.

“Give me the pipe,” I said.

“We can—”

“Rider’s trapped. In there. Get a gurney. Chogyi Jake. ER.”

Ex looked back at the stairs. He’d forgotten. I couldn’t blame him, but I didn’t have time to argue about it.

“Go,” I said. “I can finish this.”

“Use a hammer,” Ex said. “Kim. Clear the barricade. I’ll find something to carry him on.”

“Aubrey—” Kim said.

“I’m fine,” Aubrey said. It wasn’t true. I could hear the buzz in his voice, the fever, the price of magic. “I’ll be fine. I can help.”

Kim handed me the pipe, and they stumbled up the stairway, Aubrey leaning against her, Ex alone with his shoulders hunched against his own fatigue. The coffin beside me bumped and shuddered. I looked over at the black planes. The ceremony wasn’t finished, but it was close. The danger had passed. Only a few ugly last details remained. I lifted the pipe in my bloody hand, picked up a nail. Four more. Just four more.

“Jayné! Stop!” David’s screams seemed to come from much farther away than an inch of black-stained wood could account for. “Please, wait. Something’s wrong. It didn’t work.”

I set the nail. My hands shook, and the pipe wasn’t a great substitute for a real hammer. It took three tries before the metal started biting into the wood.

“It’s not in here. Jayné, it’s not in here. It got out before you closed the lid.”

I hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was true or a ploy to trick me into freeing it. The lanterns hissed out their steady light. The air didn’t carry the oppressive, filthy feeling that it had before. I set the fifth nail and steadied myself. When I brought the pipe down, it only drove the nail about half an inch in, but the rider roared; David’s pleading voice turned to a stream of impotent rage and despair. I sat on the coffin to keep it from shifting and spoiling my aim. When the nail was in, the shaking was less violent, the shrieking more muffled.

My hand was slick with blood and every swing of the fake, improvised hammer felt like the nail was going into me. Above me, Ex shouted something, and Kim’s voice was a muttering reply. Something crashed, and Ex’s voice sounded more pleased. The wheels of an ancient gurney squeaked in protest and then faded. They were getting Chogyi Jake to help. My friends were leaving me and finding safety. I was alone in the deepest hole of Grace Memorial. Down in the dark, with only the lanterns, the sacrifice, and the beast.

I didn’t know when I’d started weeping. Maybe I had been all along. Driving the last nails became a long, slow torture. The pain in my hand was constant now, the flares that came with the blows hardly noticeable through the constant roar of exposed nerves and torn flesh. I didn’t have the strength, so I soldiered on with determination instead. I couldn’t believe that a few minutes ago I’d done the same job with one bare-handed strike.

The screams and threats floating up from the coffin felt light and powerless as fluff. I went through the punishing steps of my chore almost without noticing them. When the blow sank the last nail, I stopped for a minute. I wanted to collapse, to fall asleep and never wake up. And never dream. I’d been sandblasted, left outside in a desert storm, shocked and abraded until I was clean and pure and skinless. I told myself it would pass. A few days to recover, and I wouldn’t be empty. My brain would start working again. I would be able to feel something that didn’t hurt. I watched myself crying from a distance, as if the sobs weren’t related to me. The coffin still let out muted knocks and thuds, and far, far away, David Souder was screaming. He’d be screaming for the rest of his life. The best I could do now was make sure that wasn’t a very long time.

I stumbled up out of the grave, banging my shin against the crumbling concrete edge. I found a roll of gauze and a bandage pack in a yellowed paper seal, sterilized and marked a year before my mother was born. I opened it, pressing the old cotton against the new wounds on my hand. It sucked up the blood hungrily. The gauze held it in place. It felt almost like I had a lace glove. I didn’t have the strength to laugh at the incongruity. I hauled myself to the wall. The shovel David had used to dig the coffin out lay on the ground beside Declan Souder’s scattered bones.

“Well,” I said to the empty skull, “we did it. Just like the old days, eh? Evil defeated. Hell of a price, but we paid it. Go us.”

The skull didn’t do anything. I hadn’t expected it to. After all, it was just a lump of calcium phosphate. It didn’t have dreams or hopes or regrets. It didn’t have to live with what it had done. Still, I turned its eye sockets toward the wall. I didn’t want it to see me.

I picked up the shovel.

“Hey.”

Ex stood on the stairway. The shadows clung to his eyes, and his cheeks looked sharper than I remembered them. Pale hair had escaped his pony-tail, spilling down his face.

“What?” I said. It was the best I could manage.

“I got them on their way to the ER. Aubrey and Kim are with him. There’s nothing I can do there.”

“Nothing here either,” I said. “One shovel.”

I didn’t want him here. I didn’t want anyone here. I wanted my crimes committed in the dark, without witnesses.

“Never heard of taking turns?” Ex asked, coming down the stairs. “What kind of day care did you go to as a kid?”

“Don’t do this,” I said. “Please. Go. I have to—”

I was crying again. I hated it, but I could no more stop than I could will myself not to breathe.

“You have to what?” Ex said.

“I have to kill him,” I said, then folded. My knees gave way gracefully, and I hunched on the floor, supported only by the shovel. The words kept spilling out of my mouth. “I have to kill him. Oh God, I have to kill him.”

“Give me the shovel,” he said.

“No.”

“I can do this for you,” he said. His voice was so soft. So gentle. He wanted so badly to spare me this. To spare me something. Anything.

“No,” I said. The anger in my voice surprised me, but it also gave me a last sip of strength. “Don’t make this easy. Don’t you dare make this easy.”

Ex smiled. He understood. So maybe his being here wasn’t so bad after all.

“Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”

He held out his right hand, and I took it with my left. My legs were rubber and string. We walked together, side by side, to the edge of the grave. The rider was screaming obscenities somewhere. And when it wasn’t, David’s weaker voice wailed piteously. I wasn’t doing him any favors by waiting.

Ex stepped away from me, standing at the coffin’s head. He took something out of his pocket—a bottle of something that looked like olive oil—opened it, and poured it onto the coffin lid. Then he put his hands out, palms down toward the grave. His voice was low and resonant and rich. Almost like he was singing a dirge.