Harsh Gods (42 page)

I heard Bobby Park before ever seeing him.

“Where did you even come from?” he gasped. The young detective’s words barely registered. He stood maybe twenty feet away, his service pistol drawn in gloved hands. His grip wavered as he aimed in our direction. Shock grayed his features.

“Zack?” he called. “That’s you, right?”

I crouched over Halley in an open stretch of undisturbed snow.

“No… Halley,” I cried. “No!”

Her lips were already turning blue.

“There aren’t even footprints,” Park muttered. He pointed the muzzle of his weapon toward the ground as he approached.

“Bobby!” I yelled. “Do you know CPR?”

His eyes grew wide, only now taking in the prone form of the girl. He holstered his weapon and rushed over.

“Sorry. I didn’t see her.” He ducked his head as he breathed the apology. “Yeah, I do.”

Struggling out of my leather, I lifted Halley’s shoulders to slide the jacket beneath her. Bobby peeled out of his own coat, shuddering as he shoved it my way. I wrapped the girl’s legs as he bent an ear to her mouth.

Frowning, he flicked his eyes to mine.

Without saying anything, he cleared her airways, tilting her head back and lifting her chin.

“Hold her like this,” he said. “Forehead back, chin up.” He spoke rapidly as he matched word to gesture. “Pinch her nose. Close your mouth around her mouth and breathe. Two full breaths, not too deep. I’ll do the chest. That’s the tricky part.”

“We have to get her out of the cold,” I said.

“We have to get her breathing first,” he insisted. “
Now
.”

While I bent over and breathed for Halley, Bobby picked off his gloves and moved his fingers around the base of her ribs, searching for the place to begin compressions. He found it.

Two breaths from me, and then Bobby shoved hard against her sternum. Ribs crackled, but he didn’t even blink, just pushed the heels of his hands about halfway into her thin torso, repeating the gesture with swift and steady speed as he kept a whispered count.

I bent to breathe for her again, but he shook his head sharply.

“I reach thirty, then two more,” he said. “Next round, grab my cell off my belt and call 911.”

“I thought you
were
911. Where are the others?”

Evasion darkened his features. “I came alone.”

“What the hell?” I demanded.

“Breathe—
now
,” he hissed.

Two more breaths. Bobby started back up with his thirty-count, muscles on his neck cording.

“You were supposed to be the cavalry,” I said. “Didn’t Father Frank tell you to bring backup?”

He didn’t look up from Halley this time.

“Garrett’s involved in this, isn’t he?”

My silence was all the answer he needed.

“He’s a good man, Zack. You know that.”

I didn’t bother with the tired refrain. Between us, Halley lay pale and unresponsive. The blue tint around her lips had lessened somewhat. That was something, at least.

“Shit went wrong the minute we walked into that house,” Bobby continued. His voice vibrated a little with each compression. CPR took real work. Despite the chill, beads of sweat stood out on his brow. “I can’t explain it, but it’s not him doing these things. I know it. I had to give him a chance to make it right, before calling it in.”

I held my silence, bending once more to breathe. Mentally, I reached for Halley, seeking any sense of her locked within her body or drifting as a spirit nearby.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair.

The faintest contact brushed my mind in response, clinging like strands of spider silk.

This time, Snow White
, she corrected.

With that uncomfortable symbolism at the front of my thoughts, I locked my mouth around hers and filled her lungs with breath.

Halley’s body jerked with a spasm. Bobby stopped the compressions. She sucked air on her own, then sputtered, choking.

“Turn her head, turn her head,” Park instructed. He drew back from his work, swiping a hand across his brow.

I rolled her onto her side, and just in time. She vomited into the snow.

“That happens,” he said. “It’s normal.”

All our focus was on Halley when Lil’s voice rang through the air.

“You wrecked my car, you bastard!” she yelled.

Both our heads snapped up. The Lady of Beasts stood about ten yards away, legs spread in a firing stance. Her wild curls blew back from her brow, revealing a purpling bruise at her hairline. The wound was shocking—I’d never seen Lil with so much as a paper cut. She straddled the path to the front gate, holding not her Derringer, but a much larger pistol. It looked a lot like Bobby’s gun.

“What the hell?” Park demanded.

From the opposite direction, a familiar voice boomed, deep and flat.

“A fair price for your interference, bitch.”

Malphael strode toward us, wearing Garrett’s body, a blood-smeared messenger bag slung across his chest. With each step, it bounced heavily against his thigh. There was little doubt what it contained.

“Zaquiel,” he called. “I am holding to our bargain. You will give me the girl, and then I will leave.”

“That’s close enough,” Lil called. The gun never wavered.

“Zack, what’s going on?” Bobby hissed.

Mutely, I hunched over Halley. She curled around herself, still spitting weakly into the snow.

“Call off your woman, Anakim,” Malphael boomed.

“
His
woman?” Lil barked. “I will feed you your balls.”

She sighted the pistol a little lower.

“Drop the gun, lady,” Park called. He grabbed his own weapon again, and held it at the ready.

“She’s on our side,” I hissed.

I mostly believed it.

“He’s unarmed,” Bobby insisted.

“Hardly,” I replied. To Malphael, I called, “You got what you came for. Now get the hell out of my city.”

Bobby’s grip on his pistol wavered. He looked pleadingly toward his partner. “What’s he talking about, Dave?”

Malphael didn’t even spare him a glance. His smoldering eyes remained fixed solely on me. “I will take her by force.”

“Like hell you will.”

I leapt to my feet, the daggers drawn before I even thought about it. Blue-white fire danced on honed curves of steel.

“Holy shit!” Bobby choked, nearly losing his gun.

Malphael beckoned me closer, his cruel smile spreading wide through David Garrett’s battered features. The scent of sulfur grew thick upon the air as he brought his hands together to call his own flame-kissed blade.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Lil spat. “Not this again.”

She shot him.

The bullet crashed into Garrett’s shoulder, right at the joint. Blood flecked with fragments of bone speckled the drifts at his feet. He staggered back, bellowing in pain, arm dangling uselessly. The coalescing energies of his two-handed blade dispersed like smoke on the morning air.

“Jesus, no!” Bobby cried.

The basso notes of Malphael’s unearthly voice drowned out Garrett’s as he howled with wordless rage.

“Aw, did I break your meat-sack?” Lil taunted.

Halley shrilled in the wake of the gunfire, arms curled round her head.

“Bobby, get her out of here,” I said.

“Your friend shot my partner!” he yelled.

“You gotta know that’s not Dave any more.”

Bobby faltered a moment, avoiding my gaze. Shuddering with more than the bitter temperature, he holstered his pistol and bent for Halley. He cradled her awkwardly, struggling to keep her wrapped in both of our coats. She was nearly as tall as he was.

Lil chambered another round.

“His vessel’s a cop, Lil!” I warned.

“I haven’t killed him yet, flyboy,” she snapped. She kept the gun trained on Malphael, stepping sideways in a wide arc until she had a clear line of fire well away from the rest of us.

Bobby paused in an ankle-deep drift halfway to the main path. Halley clung weakly to his neck.

“You can’t let her kill him,” he pleaded. “There’s a good man in there. You don’t remember, but—”

“Get the kid to a hospital. I’ll handle this.”

Still, he hesitated.

“Go on, Bobby,” I urged. “You’ve got to trust me on this. It’s not safe for either of you while he’s still here.”

With a doleful glance toward Garrett, he turned with his burden, hurrying toward the cruiser parked further up the hill.

Beyond us, Malphael fumed as the body he’d overtaken teetered awkwardly. Blood sluiced freely down the wounded arm. His good hand twitched to put pressure on the wound, but in the next instant it jerked away. His features warred with themselves.

Lil drew ever closer.

“I will see you bound in the desert for your interference,” he spat.

“Shut up and bleed on the snow,” she replied.

Malphael tried moving the injured arm as he called his power again. I held my blades at the ready. Garrett’s face went a doughy gray as Malphael struggled.

“Joints are such a bitch,” she taunted. “Don’t you need two hands for your favorite toy?”

The Gibburim raised an infuriated cry. His vessel’s knees buckled. Sputtering curses, he sank heavily to the ground. The figure of smoke and flame that overshadowed Bobby’s partner reared back, hatred spilling from his twinned sets of eyes.

“Can’t get it up?” He didn’t respond, and Lil kept the gun trained on him, circling in an ever-tightening spiral. “Stretched yourself too thin. Even left your pistol behind after you tried to off me. Sloppy.”

Malphael muttered scathing imprecations. Closing now, Lil jammed the muzzle of the weapon against the back of his head. At the contact, one of them—the Gibburim or Garrett—twitched.

“Better jump ship now,” she said breathily against his ear, “unless you want the full experience of a bullet through the brain. If the vessel dies with you still in it, don’t you get stuck here till some new sucker comes along? How long you think that’ll be?”

“Just knock him out, Lil,” I said. “We can deal with Malphael later.” I moved to put action to words. As I leaned closer, a spasm rolled through the muscles of the fallen man’s face. His whole body seized and for one brief moment, Detective David Garrett looked up at me with eyes that were wholly his own.

“Kill me,” he choked.

“You don’t have to ask me twice.” Lil slid her finger over the trigger. “Zack, move out of the way.”

“No—there’s got to be a way to save him.” I fumbled for something to tie off the bleeding arm. Abruptly the body went rigid as Malphael struggled to reassert his control.

“You are the honorless cur, and I refuse to count you as my brother,” he snarled, lips and words now jarringly out of sync. “This isn’t over. I will come back for what is mine.”

A terrible cry ripped from his throat, and he vomited a gout of black, sulfurous smoke. Lil danced to the side as the man’s spine bowed, his head practically kissing his heels.

The shadow of the Gibburim rose up, spreading tattered wings. He launched himself heavenward, his shape more like a dragon than a man. His bottom half spooled out from the body like thread being yanked from a badly stitched seam.

As the last bit unwound, the fiery shadow tore free, and Garrett crumpled empty at my feet.

David Garrett lived. He wished he hadn’t.

When he woke up from surgery, he started screaming about all the people he had murdered. No one in recovery paid attention at first because for some patients, waking up from anesthesia is like tripping balls—they say all kinds of wild things that they never remember. After a while it becomes white noise for the nurses.

Then Garrett ripped out his IV and tried killing himself by jamming the needle repeatedly into his throat. He knew to go for the carotid artery, not the jugular, so hospital staff had a real mess on their hands before they got him sedated.

They moved him into a psych ward after that.

Nothing was going to go to trial until he started giving up the dump locations for the bodies of no less than thirteen vagrants. He described their murders in explicit detail. His buddies on the force still didn’t want to believe it, but DNA evidence linked him decisively to the mutilated corpses.

His lawyer had no trouble submitting a plea of insanity.

* * *

I got the ongoing details of the trial secondhand from Bobby Park. He’d been working behind the scenes to keep my name out of the mess.

We walked along Ford to Euclid, heading for Brewster’s Coffee next to Ninja City. Across the street, the black polyhedron of the MOCA building caught lights from the evening traffic in countless angled windows. Students from Case and the Cleveland Institute of Art took advantage of the balmy spring night, hanging out in the concrete park that sprawled around the Uptown museum. They lounged with books at picnic tables or chatted beneath slender birches, sleeves rolled up and jackets tied around their waists.

Snippets of their conversations carried intermittently over the sounds of horns and motors, full of youthful speculation on the nature of life, debates on world politics, and one rhapsodic monologue praising the elegance of physics.

“They can’t find records of that friend of yours anywhere,” Bobby said. “The prints on the gun belong to a dead woman. The wrecked Sebring is registered to a lady in her eighties who has Alzheimer’s so bad, she doesn’t remember her name, let alone whether she bought a car in the past ten years. Officially Lil’s a ghost.”

“This is my shocked face,” I replied, pointing to my deadpan expression.

“Is she like you?” Bobby pursued. “What was the word? Anakim.”

The term still felt strange rolling from his tongue, and I fought an irrational urge to shush him. Still, I’d been the one to open that door—after everything he’d witnessed at Lake View, Bobby had earned some insight into my world, so I’d offered. He’d jumped at the opportunity, meeting every revelation not with terror or incredulity, but with open curiosity.

I hadn’t told him everything, though. Just enough.

“Not exactly,” I hedged. “She’s something else.”

Bobby pulled ahead to be the first through the door to the coffee house, short legs pumping. Inside, the place was packed, the line threading halfway to the door. The scent of dark roast and flavored syrups hung heavily on the air.