Kicking It (4 page)

The news anchors didn’t even pause to shake their heads in mock sympathy. They just went on to the next story, which featured one of the protesters earnestly explaining why what they were doing was right and good, and of course they didn’t approve of the
violence
, but didn’t the Bible say . . . ?

The reporter seemed sympathetic.

I shut it off. I’d lost my appetite, too, though the burrito was delicious; I wrapped up the rest and put it in the fridge, along with the others. I couldn’t take anything to Andy, since he would be locked in the ritual for hours to come; any interruption, however well meant, would ruin the spell.

I went to bed cold and alone, and I dreamed of snakes slithering through the house, up onto my bed, and twining around my neck to choke me.

I woke to find Andy sitting next to me on the bed, his hand gentle on my forehead. Beyond him, the windows were still dark. The clock said it was four in the morning.

“She’s ready.”

—

I
have to admit, this one was hard. Harder than most, because I knew Portia, at least slightly. She was an overweight, kindly lady who’d been vain about her dyed hair and her skin; she’d been obsessive about skin creams and wrinkle prevention, and given that she was lying naked, pale and still on the table, all her faults and flaws laid bare, it seemed a very sad memory to be holding. I tried to think about other things, like the way she laughed, shy and quick, as if afraid she might be caught at it.

This body didn’t hold the wounds of her death; it was her in the moments before the damage was done, as close as could be achieved.

Now for the hardest part.

Andy let me take the lead, because he’d done the tough work of making the shell, but he stayed close, in case of trouble. I opened Portia’s mouth, poured in the potion, whispered the words, and then sealed it with the kiss of life—infusing the potion with my own breath, my own will, my own energy. And through it, reaching through the other side to Portia.

I felt it when we connected; it was a physical shock, like grabbing hold of a hot wire. I felt myself spasm all over from it, and only long experience kept me there, my lips touching hers, as I felt her spirit traveling through the dark, writhing and clawing and fighting and screaming and then
present
, sinking into that silent form.

Her lips warmed beneath mine, and she took a breath like a sob, and I tasted death flooding out of her and into me, a taste like rancid meat and grave dirt. It was a natural part of the spell. That didn’t make it any better, and I swallowed convulsively, my eyes pressed shut, to make it pass faster.

By the time I’d managed to control myself, she was breathing normally, and her own eyes were fluttering open.

I helped her sit up. She was as clumsy as a newborn, and just as confused; the colors and sharp edges of the world sat hard on those resurrected.

I glanced at Andy, and he moved forward with a warm, soft blanket that he wrapped around her. She tried to help him, but her hands were still too weak to grip things firmly, so I took charge and held it for her, tucking it into a tasteful approximation of a toga.

“Portia,” I said then, as I took both of her cold hands in mine. I could feel her pulse. It was racing fast, very fast. I could also feel the magnetic pull of the dark inside both of us—a pull that would draw her inexorably back to it. There was no such thing as cheating death, in the end; there was only a way to fool it for a while. As a witch, she knew that as well as I did. “Portia, honey, do you know who I am?” Often they didn’t, even if I’d known them before. They had to be reminded, over and over. “It’s Holly Anne Caldwell.”

She licked her pale lips and said, “Resurrection witch.” Her dark eyes shifted focus, to Andy. “Mr. Toland.” That was a very good sign, I thought. I kept holding on. Physical contact helped, in the early stages. “Am I dead?”

That was a question they all came to, eventually. It usually happened right before the memories rushed in—the ones that death held back, at first, out of kindness.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m right sorry, Portia. Do you remember?”

That was the trigger. I felt it hit her through the link we shared. You can’t keep yourself truly separate in this kind of business; it’s messy and sweaty and intimate and personal.

I not only felt her remember it.

I
felt it.

A crush of terror, blind and unreasoning terror. The smashing impact of a crystal ball on my upraised arm, shattering bone. Then again, on my shoulder. My ribs, breaking like glass. My skull cracking, then bursting.

And then, as life ebbed, the hot line of the cut across my throat. A sacrificial bloodletting, unnecessary except for ritual, because he’d already done enough damage to kill me. No,
her.
Portia.

She was staring at me with huge eyes, shadowed with horror. “I know,” she whispered. “What he did, what he did to me, I know—”

“Who?” I had to keep her focused. This was the hardest moment of all, harder even than the pain of her death. “Who was it, Portia?”

“You know,” she said. “It was the man in the boots.” She shuddered, and her eyes rolled up until the whites showed. “He isn’t a man.”

“No,” Andy agreed. “He’s a demon. Portia, you have the gift, and we need you to tell us. You know what we need to know.”

It was shocking, how suddenly her eyes rolled down to focus on his face again. “Yes.” The dark pupils expanded, consuming the brown around them until her irises were completely eclipsed. “There’s an abandoned train station next to the Amtrak station. That’s where he’ll be. But you have to get there fast.”

“Does he know we’ll be coming?”

“He made me tell him where you’d come to kill him,” she said. “Before I died. But I lied. I told him you’d kill him at your house.”

That made me cold, because she’d warned him we’d kill him
in our house
, and his response? Go to our house. Spit in the face of destiny.

That was just how confident our serpent was of his ultimate survival.

“Thank you,” I said, and I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’ve been very brave, Portia. You’re a hero.”

She smiled, just a little. “I just got murdered, that’s all. But you’ll get him for me, Holly.” The smile faded, and the darkness in her eyes grew to terrifying proportions. “Beware the dog.”

I couldn’t hold her, and I knew it. Some resurrections are like that—minutes, at best. I’d been able to manage more than a day only a handful of times—and one of them had been Andy Toland, resurrected from his Old West slumber, more than once.

But Andy, the most powerful resurrection witch who’d ever existed, had simply refused to leave that last time. And still he stayed, because of me.

Portia couldn’t. She said nothing more, but she silently begged me to let her go, and I did. It was as simple, in the end, as letting go of her hands. The bond severed itself in our minds at nearly the same moment, snapping like a thin silk thread, and her body sighed and sagged and Andy and I eased it back to the steel table. Empty once more, and still.

“I’ll see to her later,” Andy said. That, too, was something done by his brand of magic, not mine; he could unmake a dead body back to the tiny fragments of skin that had created the shell. In the hands of some witches that was a clinical, cold process, but not when Andy did it; he would see her put to rest gently and with respect. “We ain’t got much time now.”

“I’ll get the case,” I said. My potions case—a square leather bag with holders for vials, each one filled and labeled—contained all the secrets the two of us knew, and that was considerable. Was it enough? It was hard to tell.

First, though, we had to get out of the house.

Lyons had dispatched new emissaries—a different group, larger this time, simmering with ugly energy. They crowded the sidewalk and overflowed onto our lawn. Andy, without being asked, loaded the shotgun and extra shells, and strapped on his gunfighter’s rig, with two six-guns. He also put on his leather duster, and a cowboy hat he particularly liked.

Loaded for war.

I just settled for a good pair of sturdy lace-up boots, a leather jacket, and a bad attitude.

“Ready?” he asked me. I nodded, and hit the garage door opener. It rattled up, and I already had the car in gear, moving slowly but with purpose. I managed to get the garage closed again before anybody thought to rush the opening, at least, but that left us pinned, with the protesters swarming around us like angry wasps as we crept slowly down the slanted driveway.

They were climbing onto the windshield, the hood, the roof. Clawing at the doors and hammering on the glass. Something metal hit the windshield and left a mark.

“Go,” Andy said.

“I can’t!”

“Do it.”

We didn’t have much choice, but I felt sick as I nudged the accelerator. It was even odds someone would tumble under the tires, but somehow, miraculously, nobody did.

The car broke free.

As I accelerated, the crowd howled after us; those who’d crawled on lost their grip and tumbled off. One man raced faster than the others and threw a brick that bounced off the trunk and onto the back windshield, leaving an ugly crack.

But we were moving.

I let out a slow, trembling breath, and Andy squeezed my shoulder.

“Good job. Don’t get comfortable,” he said.

I didn’t.

—

T
he old train station was one of those places constantly under discussion around Austin—quaintly decrepit, decidedly in need of upkeep, and unused for fifty years, since the thunder of the road had killed the romance of the train. Amtrak now ran out of a smaller, more modern location, one with all the elegance of a cheap strip mall, as the older structure sat in limbo.

It had always struck me as full of darkness somehow. As we parked along the side, in its shadow, I felt it again, only stronger—that vile sensation of snakes and decay. I shuddered, zipped up my jacket, and joined my gunfighter lover on the station’s porch as he pulled off a stubborn piece of plywood to reveal an open, blackened rectangle of doorway.

The potions case dragged on my shoulder, but at least that left my hands free to use the flashlight. I shone a beam ahead, and it lit up a streak of dirty marble. We were entering at one end of the long main terminal hall, strewn with trash and the rat-chewed remains of the furniture that had once graced it. Some things had stood the test of time: the barred ticket cages, still flecked with gilding that looked surprisingly rich; the concrete arches, with an elegance that echoed a hundred years past.

But the whole place stank of rot and corruption, and I heard the hiss and rustle of disturbed animals. This place would house worse than rats and black widow spiders, though.

Portia was never wrong.

“One thing you ought to know about demons,” Andy said softly, as we moved forward. He had the shotgun in both hands, steady and controlled, and his attention stayed riveted on what was around him. “They ain’t all-powerful. A demon inhabiting a human body has to let it cool off, or it overheats and burns up. If he’s been using Pete Lyons as long as I think, he’ll have to let ol’ Pete rest a spell.”

“Here?” I probably sounded more appalled than I meant to, but . . . ugh.

“Here’s a good spot where he won’t be bothered. Pete’s married, got kids. Can’t trust anybody to leave him alone and unobserved at his home. Here, he’s safe.” Andy did a slow quarter turn, checking out a sound, but it must have been nothing to worry about, because he resumed forward motion. “He’ll have to rest without those boots on. Those are where the demon lives, when it ain’t in him.”

“Destroy the boots, destroy the demon.”

“May not be so easy,” he said. “But that’s the answer. Thing is . . .”

He broke off, because something echoed through the thick, fetid, empty space.

A growl. A thick, harsh one, ratcheting up in ferocity until it sounded like a chain saw howl.

“Thing is,” Andy said with unbelievable calm, “he won’t be unguarded.”

And that was when the devil dog opened its red eyes and stepped out of the shadows ten feet ahead of us.

It was
massive—
some kind of muscular attack dog breed, but bigger than anything I’d ever seen. Unnaturally bulked up. And those eyes were definitely not something that occurred in nature.

Andy didn’t need to mention that we were in trouble, and he didn’t have time to, either.

As the dog leaped for him, Andy dodged to his right, aimed, and fired both barrels as I dove left. I already had one potion out of my box, and now I dropped the flashlight, threw the potion vial to the gritty marble floor, and stomped on it. The glass shattered, and an explosion of light filled the room, white and clean. It lingered on every surface and angle, and gathered around the black dog as if drawn to him. He shook himself, but the swirls of light just thickened like fog around him.

Andy emptied two more shots into the dog, to no effect, and I opened the potions box, took out two more vials, and tossed them both to him.

He dropped the shotgun, grabbed both bottles out of the air, and smashed them together.

The smell of roses and incense filled the air, and something else, something as sharp as knives and as soft as feathers . . .

And the light around the dog rose up into a column, twisted, spread into wings, and as the dog snarled and snapped at it, it took on a breathtaking form. I could not exactly comprehend it, or see it directly, but the impression of wings and light and the stab of a golden spear burned through my closed eyelids.

The dog gave out a howl that pitched higher and higher into a scream, and rolled over and over on the floor, struggling to free itself.

It ripped loose of the light, and I saw its bloody eyes fix on me.

Beware the dog,
Portia had said.

I had nothing else to fight it, but I wasn’t going down easy . . . not even to this hellhound. As Andy dove for the shotgun, I backed up to the wall, braced myself, and as the dog launched itself for my throat, I kicked.