Jim Butcher - Death Masks

An erratic burst of gunfire sounded. Michael drew the sword back out of the door. Blood gleamed wet and scarlet along the length of the weapon's blade. Michael put his back against the wall of the stairwell. The gun barked a couple of times more and fell silent. After a minute, blood seeped under the door in a spreading red puddle.

Sanya and I got untangled and got up. "You're hit."

Michael had already moved and stood behind Sanya. He ran his hands over Sanya's back, grunted, and then held up a small, bright piece of metal, presumably the round. "It hit a strike plate. The vest caught it."

"Progressive." Sanya panted, wincing.

"You're lucky the bullet had to go through a steel door before it got to you," I muttered. I readied a shield and pressed the door slowly open.

The gunman lay on the floor. Michael's thrust had taken him just under the floating ribs, and had to have hit an artery to kill him so quickly. His gun lay in his hand, and his finger was limp on the trigger.

Sanya and Michael slipped out of the stairwell. Sanya had his rifle in hand. They stood lookout while I bent down and pried open the dead gunman's mouth. He didn't have a tongue. "One of Nicodemus's boys," I said quietly.

"Something is wrong," Michael said. Blood dripped from the tip of the sword to the floor. "I don't feel him anymore."

"If you can feel him, can he feel you? Could he know if you were getting close to him?"

Michael shrugged. "It seems likely."

"He's cautious," I said, remembering how Nicodemus had reacted when Shiro came through the door. "He doesn't take chances. He wouldn't wait around to start a fight he wasn't sure he could win. He's running." I stood up and headed for the chapel. "Come on."

Just as I got to the chapel's door, it swung open and two more men came out, both of them slapping clips into submachine guns. One of them didn't look up in time to see me, so I checked him in the forehead with a double-handed thrust of my staff, getting my whole weight behind the blow. His head snapped back and he dropped. The other gunman started to bring his weapon up, but I batted the barrel aside with a sweep of my staff, then snapped the end of it hard into his nose. Before he could recover, Sanya stepped into him and slammed the butt of the Kalashnikov against his head. He fell on top of the first guy, tongueless mouth lolled open.

I stepped over them and into the chapel.

It had been a small, modest room. There were two rows of three pews each, a pulpit, a table, and subdued lighting. There were no specific religious trappings to the place. It was simply a room set aside to accommodate the spiritual needs of worldwide travelers of every belief, creed, and faith.

Any one of them would have felt profaned by what had been done to the room.

The walls had been covered in sigils, somewhat similar to those I had seen on the Denarians so far. They were painted in blood, and still wet. The pulpit had been leaned against the back wall, and the heavy table laid along it, so that it lay at an angle to the floor. On either side of the table was a chair covered in bits of bone, a few candles. On one of the chairs was a carved silver bowl, almost entirely covered in fresh blood. The room smelled sickly sweet, and whatever was in those candles made the air thick, languid, and hazy. Maybe opium. It had probably accounted for the slowed reaction of the second two gunmen. The candles shed muted light over the table's surface.

What was left of Shiro lay on it.

He was on his back, and shirtless. Torn flesh and dark, savage bruises, some of them in the clear outline of chains, lapped around from his back. His hands and feet were grotesquely swollen. They'd been broken so badly and in so many places that they looked more like sausages than human limbs. His belly and chest had been sliced up as I'd seen before, on the real Father Vincent and on Gaston LaRouche's corpse as well.

"There's so much blood," I whispered.

I felt Michael enter the room behind me. He made a soft, choking sound.

I stepped closer to Shiro's remains, noting clinical details. His face had been left more or less untouched. There were several items scattered around him on the floor-ritual implements. Whatever they had intended him for, they'd already done it. There were sores on his skin, fever blisters, I thought, and his throat was swollen. The damage to his skin probably hid many other such marks of pestilence.

"We're too late," Michael said quietly. "Have they already worked the spell?"

"Yeah," I said. I sat down on the first pew.

"Harry?" Michael said.

"There's so much blood," I said. "He wasn't a very big person. You wouldn't think there could be so much blood."

"Harry, there's nothing else we can do here."

"I knew him, and he wasn't very big. You wouldn't think there would be enough for all the painting. The ritual."

"We should go," Michael said.

"And do what? The plague has already started. Odds are we have it. If we carry it out, we only spread it. Nicodemus has the Shroud and he's probably out looking for a full school bus or something. He's gone. We missed."

"Harry," Michael said quietly. "We must-"

Anger and frustration suddenly burned hot and bright behind my eyes. "If you talk to me about faith I'll kill you."

"You don't mean that," Michael said. "I know you too well."

"Shut up, Michael."

He stepped up next to me and leaned Shiro's cane against my knee. Then, without a word, he drew back to the wall and waited.

I picked up the cane and drew the wooden handle of the old man's sword out enough to see five or six inches of clean, gleaming metal. I slapped it shut again, stepped up to Shiro, and composed him as best I could. Then I rested the sword beside him.

When he coughed and wheezed, I almost screamed.

I wouldn't have thought that anyone could survive that much abuse. But Shiro drew in a ragged breath, and blinked open one eye. The other had been put out, and his eyelid looked sunken and strange.

"Hell's bells," I stammered. "Michael!"

Michael and I both rushed down beside him. It took him a moment to focus his eye on us. "Ah, good," he rasped. "Was getting tired waiting for you."

"We've got to get him to a hospital," I said.

The old man twitched his head in a negative gesture. "Too late. Would do no good. The noose. The Barabbus curse."

"What is he talking about?" I asked Michael.

"The noose Nicodemus wears. So long as he bears it, he apparently cannot die. We believe the noose is the one used by Judas," Michael said quietly.

"So what's this Barabbus curse?"

"Just as the Romans put it within the power of the Jews to choose one condemned prisoner each year to be pardoned and given life, the noose allows Nicodemus to mandate a death that cannot be avoided. Barabbus was the prisoner the Jews chose, though Pilate wanted to free the Savior. The curse is named for him."

"And Nicodemus used it on Shiro?"

Shiro twitched his head again, and a faint smile touched his mouth. "No, boy. On you. He was angry that you escaped him despite his treachery."

Hell's bells. The entropy curse that had nearly killed both me, and Susan with me. I stared at Shiro for a second, and then at Michael.

Michael nodded. "We cannot stop the curse," he said. "But we can take the place of its subject, if we choose to do it. That's why we wanted you to stay away, Harry. We were afraid Nicodemus would target you."

I stared at him and then at Shiro. My vision blurred. "It should be me lying there," I said. "Dammit."

"No," Shiro said. "There is much you do not yet understand." He coughed, and pain flashed over his face. "You will. You will." He twitched the arm nearest the sword. "Take it. Take it, boy."

"No," I said. "I'm not like you. Like any of you. I never will be."