Peter Clines - Ex-Communication

The phrase “not a person” flitted from a few places in the crowd. St. George ignored it. Freedom gave the crowd his well-practiced glare and the rumbling died down again.

“You can’t go out there,” St. George said. “We can’t risk anyone going past the wards.”

“But if it can’t see me—”

“No one goes out,” he repeated. He turned his gaze back to the guards and scavengers. “We’ll take every blade we’ve got. Machetes, bowies, ninja swords, whatever. Start gathering stuff. Maybe between our stuff and whatever Dave and Ilya find, Max can find something usable.” He patted the folding table and pointed across the crowd. “You too, Danny. We need everything.”

“You heard the man, people,” bellowed Kennedy. She clapped her hands together twice. “Let’s get moving.”

The scavengers and guards scattered. Some of them emptied sheaths right there. A dozen knives and daggers appeared on the table with Al’s square-bladed machete.

Madelyn walked the rest of the way to St. George. “Let me do it,” she said.

Freedom shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

“I can do this. I want to do it.”

“We are not sending a seventeen-year-old girl alone into hostile territory.”

She glared at him. “Hello? In case you forgot, I spent the past three years in hostile territory.”

“And you don’t remember most of it,” said St. George. “We let you out there, it could be weeks before we see you again. Maybe years.”

“I’ll be careful. It won’t happen.”

He shook his head.

She crossed her arms. “You have to let me try. I mean, it’s like my duty and stuff, right?”

Freedom’s brows went up. “I’m sorry?”

“I mean, I’ve got responsibilities, even to some of those jerks. I’m like you guys, right?”

“How do you figure?” asked St. George.

“I’ve got superpowers,” she said, waving a hand at herself. “The exes can’t see me or hear me. They don’t sense me at all.”

Kennedy snorted. “I don’t think being dead counts as a superpower, ma’am.”

“It does for me,” Madelyn said. “Come on, it’ll be easy for me. I can just bike over there, grab it, and be back here in a couple hours. It’s … it’s dead simple.”

Freedom rolled his eyes.

“Dead clever?”

“Just stop,” Kennedy said.

“I’m also dead sexy,” she added, batting her eyelids at St. George.

“Okay,” St. George said. “Look at it this way. Suppose I let you go, you get out there, and it turns out the demon can see you. Then what?”

“I … I’d just keep away from it. I’d run.”

He shook his head. “What if it turns out it can jump into you the same way it jumps into the exes? What if you take two steps past the ward and you just explode like they’ve been doing?”

“I’m not like them,” she snapped. “I’m like them but different. I’m …” She lifted her arms and crossed her wrists over her heart. “I’m the Corpse Girl,” she said with a tight smile.

“You’re a seventeen-year-old we’re responsible for,” said St. George. “I appreciate that you want to help. I really do. But I think right now it’d be better for everyone and a lot less distracting if you went back to the hospital.”

“ FATHER ANDY?”

He looked down the aisle to the huge shadow blocking the church door. “Hello, Captain,” he said. “I thought you’d be out on the walls.”

Freedom walked down to meet the priest. He held his cap in his hands, and his boots thudded on the carpeted aisle. “Soon enough,” he said. “I apologize if you were finishing up for lunch, sir, but I have a request and I’m afraid it’s urgent.”

Andy met him near the midpoint of the aisle, brow furrowed. “Something from me?” He glanced around the church. “I don’t have much, but if it helps it’s yours.”

Captain Freedom stood at ease and explained what he needed.

Father Andy listened without a word. His jaw shifted when the captain finished. “I see.”

“Is there a problem, sir?”

“Possibly.”

“In Iraq and Afghanistan, the chaplains assigned to us would do similar things for some of the men.”

“Some of the men,” the priest said, “but not you?”

“Hopefully you’ll forgive me, father,” said Freedom, “but I’m actually a diehard Baptist. In this case, though, I’m hedging my bets.”

Andy reached up to run a finger along his collar, giving it a slight tug. “I’m not actually a priest, you know,” he told the captain. “I was never ordained by anyone. The responsibility was thrust upon me.”

“You wouldn’t be the first to say such things,” the huge officer said with a solemn nod.

“What I’ve been preaching isn’t really Catholicism. It’s more of a general Christian mishmash to give solace to as many people as possible.”

“I understand,” said Freedom. “We’ve all been a bit loose with our denominations over the past few years.”

“It’s just that what you’re asking for is … well, it’s pretty hard-core Catholic. I’ve never done it before. Never even seen it done, so I’ll be winging it. And this needs a lot of weight behind it, especially considering the circumstances.” Andy’s hand dropped away from his collar. “I just want you to be clear there’s a good chance this won’t work. Not the way you want it to, anyway.”

“All the same, sir,” said the captain, “I’d feel much better if you could.”

Father Andy turned back to the altar. “We’ve got plenty of candles. I just filled the aspersorium this morning. Let me go get my vestments.” He looked over his shoulder. “If you want it done right—at least, what I think is right—it’s probably going to take forty minutes or so.”

Freedom followed him to the altar.

Max ran his fingers along the futuristic katana’s blade. The engraving looked like printed circuits. He tossed it back on the table. “It’s crap,” he said. “The tang’s not much more than a steel bolt and it’s just riveted onto the blade.”

“What does that mean?” asked Billie. She’d supervised the pile of weapons being brought in from guards and scavengers. A few civilians had heard about the search and donated fencing sabers and ceremonial weapons.

“It means it’s crap,” said Max. “You could wreck this thing by twisting the pommel two or three more times. Hitting something with it will just make the blade snap off in your face.” The sorcerer waved his hand at the table of weapons. “Most of this stuff is crap. The only blades that are any good are ones that wouldn’t work for this.” He reached up and grabbed the back of his head and took a few slow, deep breaths.

“So,” said Stealth from the gates, “we have nothing.”

Max let go of his head. “Yeah.”

“There’s got to be something we can do,” said St. George. “You trapped this thing once before, can’t you do it again?”

“It took three years of preparation and an eclipse,” said Max. “If you can scrounge up an eclipse in the next seven hours, I’ll see what I can do about the rest.”

“Can’t you just make a stronger barrier?” Billie asked.

Max reached up to loosen his tie. “With the right materials and a few months of research, sure. This just isn’t something I ever planned on, facing off with a physically manifested demon.”

St. George drummed his fingers on the table. “Can it be hurt?”

The sorcerer raised an eyebrow. “Without the sword, you mean?”

“Yeah. Once it’s physical, can we hurt it?”

“Technically, yeah,” said Max with a shrug. “You’ve got to understand, everything we’ve got in the Mount—even some of the big stuff you brought back from Krypton—it’s going to be like hunting dinosaurs with slingshots. And if it’s possessing Regenerator, it’s going to have his powers, too. We’ll have a minute, tops, before it heals from whatever we do to it.”