Ex-Communication

Twenty-Three Now

“EXPLAIN,” SAID STEALTH .

Max shook his head. “Okay, look, the whole reason Cairax Murrain can’t manifest is because any host needs to meet two major conditions. They have to be alive and they need to be durable enough to survive the process of possession. That’s why it was so important that George didn’t go past the barriers. It could kill anyone, but it could actually possess him.”

“Okay,” said St. George with a nod.

“Well, now there’s a body out there that won’t die. Regenerator can take all that damage and keep going. He’s viable. So the instant he says yes, Cairax is going to start moving in, just like I did. And once he’s got flesh he’s going to march in here and kill every single man, woman, child, and fluffy kitten in the Mount.”

“But we’re safe inside, right?” Barry waved his arm at the window. “That’s the point of the symbols.”

Max shook his head. “We’re not safe. This isn’t remotely safe anymore. This is like being out in the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles from anything, on a six-dollar pool raft with a great white shark circling you. Except the raft has a hole in it and the shark’s armor-plated, on meth, and has a laser cannon mounted on its skull. That’s about how ‘safe’ we are.” He started to pace. “The wards only block his essence. They meant he couldn’t make someone pop inside the Mount. Once he’s got a body he can walk over those hexagrams just like you or me. And then everyone in here dies.”

Danielle played with the edge of the map on the table. “You sure do talk a lot about how awful this thing is.”

“Because I know you’re not getting it,” snapped Max. His pacing carried him from one side of the room to the other. “You all keep thinking back to George beating up a zombie, half-breed version of Cairax and telling yourself it’s no big deal.”

“And this is worse?” asked St. George.

“It’s the worst thing ever. Period. Every book you’ve read, every movie you’ve seen, this is a thousand times worse. This is one of the things every single villain you’ve ever heard of is based off because he’s so evil, knowledge of his existence leaks between dimensions. He’s so terrifying that when a bunch of idiot Satanists set him loose in the fourteenth century his name entered the language and became the word for plague.”

Freedom crossed his arms. On opposite sides of the room, it made him and Stealth look like a set of mismatched bookends.

“Remember when he bit you?” Max asked St. George. “Yeah, you do, don’t you? First time anything had hurt the Mighty Dragon in, what, two years at that point?”

The hero reached down and rubbed his arm.

Max nodded. “You want to know what you tasted like, George? You tasted scared. Fucking terrified. I was dead and in a possessed body and I could taste your fear on my tongue. That’s how strong it was.”

He stopped pacing and pointed at the window. “That thing out there, his whole existence boils down to two things. Fear and death. Someone being scared of dying is like sex for him if sex gave you a full stomach and did your laundry. Someone dying is him getting that rush on New Year’s Eve at midnight. And once he’s got a host, believe me, it’s going to be midnight here in the Mount for a very, very long time.”

The room got quiet. They all stared at the window. Max put his hands on the table and let his head hang.

“Okay,” said St. George. “What do we have to do?”

The sorcerer shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said. “This is way bigger than anything I ever planned on. I mean, even in my worst-case scenarios I never figured he’d get a usable host. Once he’s flesh …” Max shrugged.

“You claim the demon was once set loose during the Middle Ages,” said Stealth. “How was it defeated then?”

“I don’t know,” said Max. “The details are fuzzy. The popular theory is Pope Clement the Sixth tricked him into touching the fisherman’s ring. Instant discorporation, but it killed Clement, too.”

“So we need to find the ring,” said Barry. “Okay.”

“It is reasonable to assume the ring is on the far side of the planet,” said Stealth. “At last report, Pope Benedict was sequestered in the Vatican during the outbreaks. It is likely the ring is still in that region.”

“Knowing where it is doesn’t help us if we can’t get there,” said Freedom. He looked at Stealth. “Unless there’s more you’ve been holding out on me, I don’t think we have a transcontinental jet anywhere in the Mount.”

“I could fly it,” said St. George.

“No offense, sir, but flying four hundred miles out to Krypton was tiring for you. We’re talking more than twenty times that, half of which is over open ocean.”

“Bigger issue,” added Danielle. “It all involves going outside and crossing those spell-circles.”

“The ring’s a nonissue,” said Max. He waved a hand at Barry. “The only one who could get there, find the ring, and get back in time would be Zzzap, and he wouldn’t be able to pick it up.”

“Why are you certain of this timeline?” asked Stealth.

“I told you, there’s a bunch of rules to this. For any sort of conscious possession to work, astral cords have to be intertwined, souls married, contracts have to be agreed on, all sorts of stuff. It takes time.”

“Contracts?” asked Freedom.

“Yeah, contracts. Agreements. A demon can’t just jump into your body like it’s a car with the engine running. You have to agree to it. It can lie and cheat and bend words, but there needs to be an agreement. A contract.” He shook his head. “I think our best bet is going to be killing him.”

“Killing him?” Freedom echoed. “Can we do that?”

“I didn’t say it was a good bet. I just said it was our best.” He pressed his fingers against his temples for a moment. “We’re trying to kill a concept, an idea made flesh. So we have to fight it with an idea that’s just as powerful. We’ll need a sword.”

“A sword?” repeated Freedom.

“Is there an echo in here?” Max furrowed his brow at the oversized captain. “Yes, a sword. A long piece of metal with a handle and a pointy end, symbolic since the Garden of Eden.”

“Does it have to be a certain type of sword,” asked Barry, “like a broadsword or a claymore, or would anything do?”

“We’re not going to beat it with a collectible lightsaber, if that’s what you’re asking,” Max said. “It needs to be a real weapon, not a display replica or something. Preferably silver or silver-plated. Even just silver inlays on the blade would be great. If it’s spilled some blood, too, great. Past that, anything goes.”

“There are three museums with historical edged weapons within a mile of the Big Wall,” said Stealth, “and very likely several dozen personal collections with functional swords. However, all of them are beyond your wards.”

“You said I was strong enough for the possession,” said St. George. “Does that mean I could make it out to find a sword?”

Max shook his head. “Strong enough to survive it. It’d still feel like getting kicked repeatedly in the balls by a horse, even to you. Plus he’s got a few million exes out there. Each body gives him a couple seconds to beat the crap out of you.”

“I could take it.”

“Be realistic, George. You know how hard he can hit.”

“I could fly—”

“Even if you flew out of here, he could go for the possession and then beat you unconscious when you fell out of the sky.”

“If we cannot go beyond the seals,” said Stealth, “how do you expect to fight Cairax?”

Max shrugged and stared at the table for a moment. “We wait for him to come here.”

“Whoa.” Barry raised his hand. “Weren’t you just saying him getting in here was extremely bad? Like crossing-the-streams, end-of-life-as-we-know-it bad?”

“We don’t have a lot of options,” said Max. “First things first. We need a sword.”

“The scavengers,” said Freedom.

“What about them?” asked Danielle.

“They carry a lot of nonstandardized weaponry,” he said. “Lady Bee tells me some of them use knives, machetes, other things they find out on runs. Maybe someone’s found a sword and brought it back here.”

“Only one of the scavengers carries a sword,” said Stealth. “Daniel Foe wears a replica katana in a back sheath. He wears it as an attempt to look imposing, hoping to impress Lynne Vines. He has never drawn it.”

“There could be others, though,” said St. George. “Maybe they don’t use it, but somebody may have found one and just kept it as a trophy or something. We should ask all the scavengers and guards.”

Freedom nodded in agreement.

“What about making one?” asked Danielle. “Maybe we could silver-plate a machete or something.”

Max shook his head. “It’s got to fit the symbolism, remember? The less we think of it as a sword, the less the chances it will work.”

“There are also the studio prop houses,” said Stealth. “It is possible there is a real weapon mixed in with the various fantasy and historical movie props.”

“Good call,” said St. George. “I’ll put Ilya and Dave on it.”

Stealth turned her attention back to Max. “What else would we require?”

“I’ll need to prepare a few spells and protections,” he said. “That should take a couple of hours. If any of you have a hotline to God, we could use an archangel to wield the sword for us.”

“An archangel?” asked Stealth.

Max looked at her. “You know, a creature born from the radiance and divine will of God and shaped in his image. Think of all the stuff you think of when someone says ‘holy,’ and an archangel is ten times purer than that. I thought you were the smart one?”

Stealth crossed her arms.

“Sorry,” he said. “A bit tense. Barring an archangel, we need the holiest, purest person we can find.”

The heroes glanced at each other, then all turned to St. George. “I don’t think any of us are that holy or pure,” he said. “Especially after the past few years.”

“I’m not,” said Danielle. “You’re the one named after a saint.”

“Not by choice,” he said. “I just kind of fell into it.”

Barry shrugged. “I guess I’m an okay guy, but unless I’m going to fight the monster in my wheelchair I couldn’t hold a sword anyway.”

“I would be unfit,” said Stealth after a moment. “I have been an atheist for thirty years.”

They looked at Freedom. He shook his head. “I’m only human.”

Danielle looked at Max. “What about you?”

He snorted back a laugh. “With all the magic I’ve done? I may not count as evil but I’m a long way from pure. It’s the nature of the beast. No pun intended.”

“Father Andy?” suggested Barry.

Max shook his head. “Nothing against the good father, but he’s not the warrior priest we need, know what I mean?”

“Okay,” said St. George. “We’ll work on that one. Let’s start with the sword and go from there.”

“So,” St. George told them, “that’s where we are. We need a sword and we need it quick.”

The scavengers and every free Wall guard were gathered at the Melrose Gate of the Mount, across from Gorgon’s cross. Freedom and First Sergeant Kennedy stood nearby. She still dressed in her full uniform with her hair pulled back tight under her headgear. The surviving soldiers of the Alpha 815th Unbreakables stood behind her in tight formation, even if a few of them were missing one or two elements from their ACUs.

Danny reached up and tapped the hilt stretched over his shoulder. “You can have mine,” he said.

“No offense, sir,” said Freedom, “but this needs to be a real weapon.”

“It’s real.”

“Real in the sense of actually made to fight with,” said St. George. “Something that’s not going to break apart on the second or third swing. I’ve got Ilya and Dave going through the prop house right now. Does anyone else have anything?”

“What about a Marine officer’s sword?” asked Billie.

St. George shook his head. “Same thing, I think. It can’t be ceremonial, it needs to be something that’s made to fight with.”

“They’re made to fight with,” she said.

He gestured at the folding table they’d set up in the street. “If you’ve got one we’ll give it a try.”

Al held up his square-topped machete. “I’ve got this.” A man across from him held up a similar blade.

“Same thing. I don’t think it’ll work, but we’ll try it.”

Hector de la Vega cleared his throat as the crowd began to rustle with unsheathed steel. “I know where there’s a sword. Just what you need.”

St. George looked at him. “What?”

The tattooed man shrugged. “My grandpapa, he showed it to me a couple times. It was some old family thing. An heirloom or something.”

Paul gave him a nudge. “Is it some Mexican army thing you brought up here?”

“Fuck you, babosa ,” he said. “My family had a ranch here before California was even a state.” He turned his attention back to St. George. “It’s an old saber from the eighteen hundreds or something. He told me once it killed over a dozen men.”

“That sounds perfect,” St. George said. “Is it here?”

Hector shook his head. “Never trusted my dad or me with it.” He smirked and shrugged again. “Mostly me. Think he was worried I’d hock it or something. Kept it all locked up in his house.”

“Which is where?”

“North Hollywood. Little place just past Universal City.”

“Might as well be on the Moon,” muttered Kennedy.

“We could put a small team together,” said Billie. “Go in fast with a truck or maybe even some motorcycles.”

“We could set up a distraction at one of the other gates,” said another one of the scavengers, Keri, with a nod. “Get the thing over there so they can slip out.”

St. George shook his head. “From what Max has said, it’s not possible to get past this thing. It’s got us surrounded, just the same way Legion does. We can’t go out past the wards.”

“I could get it,” said someone in the back.

The crowd shifted and parted. A few of them jumped away when they saw the speaker. Most of the guards and scavengers stepped back from her, and a murmur danced through the crowd.

Madelyn walked forward. She was wearing a black shirt that made her skin look pure white. Her sunglasses were pushed up on her brow, holding her hair back and showing off her dead eyes. “I could get it,” she repeated.

“You’re not supposed to be outside the hospital,” said St. George.

“She’s not supposed to be inside the walls,” said someone else.

The hero glanced at the crowd. “What was that?”

Makana shrugged. It made his dreadlocks kink and shift. “I thought that was one of the basic rules,” he said. “We don’t let her kind inside the walls, no matter what.”

“My kind?” said Madelyn. She gave the black man a look of disbelief that was clear even with her pale eyes.

“Look, corpse girl,” he said, “nothing personal, but you’re one of them.”

“She’s not one of them,” countered Keri. “She’s still got her soul.”

“Don’t use that soul crap as an excuse,” said Lady Bee.

“Let’s just toss her back outside,” said Al. “She’ll be fine and she doesn’t need to be in here scaring people and eating up resources.”

“Hey,” snapped St. George. A burst of dark smoke rolled from his mouth. “Let’s cut all this talk right now.”

The murmur continued for a few more seconds before falling. The dead girl’s mouth twitched into a faint smile aimed at St. George.

“Madelyn’s not an ex,” said St. George. “She belongs inside. She’s one of us.”

“One of you, maybe,” muttered Al. Billie gave him a light smack on the back of the head and he batted her arm away. The murmur returned and swelled into rumbling.

“I can get the sword,” Madelyn insisted, raising her voice over the noise. “Max said the demon’s after living things. And Legion can’t see me through the exes, so maybe this other thing can’t, either. I’m the only person who can do it.”

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.”