Harsh Gods (37 page)

Slipping to the desk, I emptied out my pockets of cellphone and keys, dropping them in a heap by the three-way picture frame. Father Frank shrugged out of his coat as he watched me, mild interest vying with exhaustion in the lines of his face.

“You always do that,” he said. He gestured to the pile of electronics. “You never say why.”

“Wrecks the phone when I cross sides,” I explained. “Something about the energy.”

Thoughtfully, he grunted, then settled on the couch. I leaned over the side of the desk to reach the crucifix, lifting it away from its masonry screw. The old, charged metal buzzed against my palm.

I opened myself to it.

A host of visions unspooled within my mind—an elderly soldier praying on his death bed. Another voice prayed along with him, the whole scene guttering with golden candleshine.

The prayers faded and another sickroom took form. An elderly woman curled beneath a massive heap of blankets, gnarled fingers twined through the threads of a crocheted woolen comforter. A gift from her daughter. Handmade. She breathed her last, still gripping her treasure.

Next was a child, body broken and half her face a slushy mess. Her single eye fixed upon the ceiling, blessedly ignorant of her circumstance. Again the prayers and candles—and in her case, a silent plea for justice.

Death upon death upon death unfolded from the cross, each linked by the ritual of final absolution. A deeper imprint threaded between the rest—the death of the owner. Broad frame wasted to nothing. Mottled hands. Wisps of hair worn white by time, and the tabbed collar that he proudly wore as a priest of the Catholic faith. He clutched the precious crucifix to his breast as he lay dying, remembering a lifetime of last rites.

Seizing the steady, solemn weight of his emotion, I dragged myself across.

The transition stole my breath. Still gripping the crucifix, I waited for the world to stop reeling.

The century-old church rose as a palpable presence above me, the stone walls of its foundation standing as solid on this side as they had in the flesh-and-blood world. The age of the building, combined with its significance for a whole population of mortals, guaranteed that it stood sturdy and unassailable. The newer cinderblock addition, tucked away where very few people could see it and thus reinforce its existence, shouldn’t have held the same impenetrable weight.

But the wards changed all that.

Floor to ceiling, power wove through them, glimmering a deep, electric blue. In the approximate center of the main wall, finely written symbols picked out the lines of a doorway. A thick mesh of warding sealed the portal. I’d relearned enough in the past few months to recognize some seriously aggressive defenses. Whatever I’d stored in that room, I’d wanted it well protected.

Promising.

Pressing my palm flat against a central point of resistance, I struggled to recall what I needed to make it open. The lines of power leapt at my touch and I felt the magic recognize me. A familiar rush spread through my wings—the same sensation that flooded me when I called my blades through the intonation of my Name.

“It can’t be that simple, can it?” I murmured. But our Names were our magic, our station, our identity. There was nothing simple in that immutable truth.

Certain that I had the answer, I drew a breath and intoned the syllables of my Name. As the sound vibrated from my core, the sigils scribed around the threshold erupted in a play of silver fire. Threads of it leapt from the dense strata of warding, cascading across my face, chest, and wings. Testing me.

There was that recognition again, more profoundly this time. An instant later, the mesh of power flickered, and the door stood open.

“The soul equivalent of a retina-scan,” I muttered. Tucking the relic crucifix into the inner pocket of my jacket, I stepped through. The warded door snapped shut as soon as I crossed the threshold.

In the crowded space beyond, the boundaries of the secret room stood thick and inviolable. Ceiling, floor, and walls all were reinforced with glimmering rows of wards. Another series of sigils—larger and paler than the ward-signs—picked out a small circle on the ground, arranged in the middle of the hidden space. I instinctively understood what it was for.

Stepping inside the circle, I shifted back over to the flesh-and-blood world. The guiding lines of the circle guaranteed that I reappeared away from everything crowded together in the lightless space.

I emerged into utter darkness, stale air heavy with dust. A tiny pinprick of light filtered through a crack in the floor above me, serving only to reinforce the choking blackness of the interior space. Through touch, I got vague impressions of crowded shelves rising above a narrow stretch of unfinished wood. I fumbled at the rough counter in front of me, my hand brushing something that clattered to the floor. It struck the bare concrete with a fatal shattering of plastic.

“Shit.”

I stood very still, unwilling to crush more of whatever I’d broken under my boots. I felt all shoulders and elbows in the tiny space. With the walls so solid on both sides of reality, my wings were as cramped as the rest of me, heightening the overall feel of claustrophobia.

Light would make it better. At least I’d stop knocking things over.

A tattery memory of a candle and a box of strike-anywhere matches drifted from the depths of my mind, with no conscious sense of where in the room I might find these things. I screwed my eyes shut—not that it made much difference—and blindly struck out in the direction that seemed right. The edge of my hand impacted what felt like a brass candlestick. Jerking with surprise at my success, I heard it tip. Without thought and without being able to see it, I seized the candlestick before it tumbled to the ground.

“Why couldn’t you manifest the ninja skills five minutes ago?” I chided myself, still wondering what I’d broken in my initial foray. Plastic parts rattled as I gingerly shifted my feet.

I found the matches by setting the candlestick on top of them. Fighting not to rush and spill them everywhere, I grabbed the box and slid it open. I shook a couple matches into my hand, striking the first one on the wall next to me. The sudden eruption of light left me blinking.

Shelves everywhere—pigeonholes, really—crammed with a baffling assortment of stuff. Rolls of paper, little boxes, yellowed envelopes sealed with tape. I put the match to the wick of the candle, making sure the flame transferred before I shook it out. The candle sputtered once, then the flame burned straight and bright. The scent of molten beeswax mellowed the lingering sulfur from the match.

All too conscious of Halley’s dwindling time, I lofted the candle and dug frantically through the contents of the pigeonholes, searching for the weapons Father Frank had mentioned—tracking spells, scrying mirrors—anything that might be useful in the current situation. I dragged down stacks of silver certificates, thick rolls of more conventional cash, and checkbooks for accounts in a variety of names.

One newer-looking envelope disgorged a slew of fake ID cards, all of them bearing my face. Boxes of ammunition—9mm, .38, .45—were hidden behind tightly rolled papers that turned out to be pages cut from medieval texts.

“Fuck me running,” I snarled. “Where’s the stuff I actually need?” Seizing a promisingly paper-wrapped parcel, I discovered only a stack of assorted passports, several left over from the Vietnam version of me. Temper frayed, I slammed the heel of my free hand against the unfinished wood of the shelves. No blades. All my instincts clamored they should be here.

If they’re anything but a pipe dream.

The whole rack of pigeonholes jumped at the impact—nothing anchored it to the back wall. Packages and little boxes tumbled out in a riot of dust.

With faster-than-human speed, I tried catching one before it hit the plywood counter. I overshot, and my hand struck the box in mid-air. Its aged cardboard lid flew open, disgorging a swatch of black silk. This arced to the right, weighted with something inside. It came to rest on a sleek wooden chest angled at the far end of the counter.

The candlelight glittered off of gold and gems.

A ring rested in the folds of silk. I peeled back the rich scrap of fabric, sensation prickling my fingers—the cloth was delicately warded, tiny sigils stitched with blue thread around the seam. The ring itself shone in my vision, four mismatched gems gleaming with a depth far beyond their simple oval faceting.

Another relic. I knew even before I touched it.

Flickers of information danced across my brain as my fingers grazed the object—a child for each of the birthstones, even little Joey who didn’t see more than two days in the world. The dead son’s name hit with a wrenching sense of loss as brutal as a train wreck.

Hastily, I scooped the ring back into its protective swatch of silk, pocketing them both. A portable Crossing was never a bad thing to keep around.

A woman’s name—Mary Reilly—and a date—1956—were both scribed on the underside of the little box that had held the ring. It was my handwriting, faded with time. My distinctive scrawl was visible across a larger piece of paper resting where the ring box had fallen. An envelope. I nudged the container aside to investigate.

From Zaquiel, to Zaquiel
, I thought wryly.

Then an unreasonable feeling of dread seized me.

Despite this, I snatched up the envelope from where it lay diagonally across the wooden case. With numb fingers, I tore the seal. I had to set the candle down before extracting the letter within—my hands were shaking too much to safely manage both.

The single sheet of folded paper was covered in my angled cursive, both front and back. The letters were spidery with haste. A vertiginous feeling of unreality washed over me as I read the date at the top of the letter. November 3.

I’d written this the day before I woke on the shores of Lake Erie.

I took in the first paragraph in a glance.

Zaquiel—

If we’re reading this, then things went badly out on the lake—but we’re not stuck in some jar, so I hope we got the Stylus like we’d planned. If you’re not Zachary Aaron Westland any more, then all we did was get ourselves killed. That’s actually good news. The alternative is uglier, because if you don’t remember being me, that means Dorimiel got his hands on Neferkariel’s icon, and that’s a whole level of fucked I’d hoped to avoid.

“I wasn’t saving Lailah. I went to get the Stylus,” I breathed. “It was a suicide run.”

For a moment, my entire world seemed to come unhinged. I couldn’t bring myself to read the rest. Folding the letter up, I stuffed it hastily back into the envelope. I could deal with it, and all its gutting revelations later.

Assuming I have a later, once I go toe-to-toe with another decimus
, I thought bleakly.

I shoved the envelope into my jacket, but got it hung up on the crucifix. The instant I shifted to reach for the candle, the letter fluttered to the floor.

“Fuck,” I hissed, crouching so I could grope around under the counter. Mostly I found bits of broken plastic, then a palm-sized hunk of circuitry.

My goddam missing phone.

It looked like a cheap burner. With little hope that it was anything but junk after knocking it from the counter, I shoved what was left of the little flip-phone into my pocket. Maybe some data had survived.

Fat chance.

I found the envelope and stood, surveying the collected detritus of a life I no longer knew. I’d left the letter. I’d left the phone—all in hopes of what? That I’d remember enough to find this place? That I’d be able to piece it all back together once I did? I couldn’t have expected Father Frank to still be around, not at his age.

If Malphael was right, death and rebirth took conservatively fifteen years for me to get my head screwed on enough to remember who I was. Maybe I’d been counting on Remy to guide me. He’d done it before.

Did he know about this place?

Why hadn’t he told me before now?

Too many questions—and they all led down a rabbit warren of uncertainties. I didn’t have the fucking time. I reached for the crucifix so I could cross back out of the stifling hidden closet. There wasn’t anything in here I could use for the present crisis. I’d just have to wing it, so to speak.

Maybe Lil was having better luck.

As I gulped a breath in preparation for the crossing, something halted me. Too nebulous to be a hunch. More like one of those dream-flashes that feel shatteringly profound in the moment but scatter like smoke when examined.

Why was the letter on that particular wooden case?

The phone had been over there, as had the matches and the candlestick. Examining the patterns in the dust, I confirmed it. Everything on that corner of the narrow counter had been carefully arranged to create a tableau, with the chest at the very center. There had to be a reason for it—all the other junk in here was haphazardly scattered or stuffed artlessly into brimming pigeonholes.

As I pondered the intentions of a self I no longer knew, the broad case of polished wood called to me. It was a literal sensation of music, like a chime striking inside my head.

Wards crackled against my fingers the instant I reached to lift the smooth lid. Swift on the heels of their sting rushed a heady sense of triumph. I knew what rested inside this case, waiting to be recovered—knew it with galvanizing certainty.

The blades. They were real.

A simple brass latch secured the front of the case with what at first appeared to be a tiny padlock. On closer inspection, the lock turned out to be a magical seal crafted from wire and paper. Interwoven characters formed a sigil-phrase on the reverse of the “lock.”

Even as I turned it toward the candle for closer inspection, the words of the sigil-phrase rose unbidden to my throat—their knowledge stored so deep, it hooked more to muscle-memory than to thought.

The paper of the lock ignited in a burst of magnesium-white flame. In an instant, the whole thing sizzled away, leaving neither embers nor ash. A little twist of wire remained threaded through the brass latch. Despite the sudden light show, the metal wire wasn’t hot.