Killing Rites

Chapter Nine

The crows were there when I pulled up, watching me from the dead branches. The snow was coming down harder now, grabbing any stray ray of light and trading it back and forth until the world was a deep gray that never quite made it to black. I trudged up to the blue double doors through half an inch of fresh snow, humming the melody to “White Christmas” without any particular pleasure. My jaw ached with the tension of the drive. My hands were balled in my pockets. Winter drifted down around me.

I opened the blue doors, and the light spilled out. Behind me, the crows lifted into the snow-heavy air, their caws like threats and accusations. I walked into the warmth and shook the snow and water off my coat. In the darkness, the electric lights seemed even more out of place strapped on the ancient adobe walls. Jesus was staring down from his cross or collapsed on his mother’s lap in every room. I found them in the kitchen. Tamblen squatting like a bear and poking at the fire. The whiskey-voiced Tomás sitting across a checkerboard from Ex. Miguel looking even more like Benicio Del Toro sitting on the same gray couch as thin-bodied, thin-faced Carsey. And Father Chapin standing by the tiny window, looking out into the snowy courtyard.

He looked terrible. Shadows hung around his eyes, seeping into his skin. His hair was so short it could barely look disarranged, but it managed. The square of his shoulders and his upright head made me think less of strength and more of bloody-minded endurance. Yesterday, he’d been fighting a demon. Losing to it. And for weeks before that, tracking down the thing’s spawn. What Aubrey would have called the daughter organisms. And now, me. No rest for the wicked, no peace for the good.

“Hey,” I said, trying for a lightness I didn’t feel. “How’s it going?”

“Good that you’ve come back, young miss,” Chapin said. “We have a schedule set. If you are willing, we will begin tomorrow. The rite itself.”

“No more prep work?” I said, my stomach tightening and hope soaring up my spine. Nothing more to do, no more hoops to jump through, just getting whatever was in me back out and taking my real life back.

“None. Only, I must warn you of one thing. If we are to attempt this, you must be constant in your own rejection of the beast. Knowing as little as we do of this infesting spirit, there are longer paths we can take. Paths that are more certain, perhaps, but at the cost of time. But I believe, and my good friend Xavier agrees, that you are strong enough to reject the evil in your heart. If we are wrong about you, the rite will fail. Time and effort wasted.”

It felt like a challenge. I felt the distant touch of anger. I’d come here for help, not a lecture on how I needed to really mean it or else everything would be my fault.

“I can do it,” I said. “I mean, I’m not sure exactly what it is, but whatever I can do to make sure this works, I’ll do it.”

“Your resolve must not waver,” Chapin said.

“Won’t.”

He smiled and reached out, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Then tonight, rest. We will all rest. And in the morning, we will begin. We will find its name, and then God will free you of this burden.”

I took a deep breath.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate what you’re doing. For me.”

“Well, this should be quite the event, shouldn’t it?” Carsey said. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

“You should rest now, Father,” Tomás said, rising from the checkerboard, red and black disks abandoned behind him. “We all should.”

Ex appeared at my side. I’d seen him look worse, but only a few times. And besides the fatigue—within it—there was something else. A fierceness.

“We’ll be back in the morning,” he said.

We walked out to the car together. The snow was still falling, and there was already a scattering of white on the black of the car, the heat of my drive not enough to defeat the cold. The priests huddled in the doorway behind us, watching us go.

“For that, he made you wait?” I asked.

“Chapin wanted to see you when he asked if you’d keep your resolve.”

“Why?”

“He wanted to see if he believed you.”

“A little creepy, but okay, whatever,” I said. “How’s your back?”

“Hurts. Why? You want me to drive?”

“Yeah. It talked to me. After you called, before I got here. Makes me a little nervous about having the steering wheel.”

I passed him the key chain. We got to the car, and I slid down into the passenger’s seat. Ex closed his door, put the fob in place, and the engine purred to life. In the headlights, the snow was pure and perfect.

“What did it say?” he asked.

“It asked me not to do pretty much exactly what we’re about to do,” I said.

“Ah,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”

The road conditions were awful. I turned off the music and tried not to talk just so that Ex wouldn’t be distracted from the slush and ice and the New Mexican drivers trying to take the highway turns at seventy. In Taos, we stopped at a drive-through, fueling Ex on a greasy burger, fries, and a diet soda. Then it was back into the treacherous black.

When we reached our place, we didn’t even try driving up the hill; we parked at the bottom and walked up. The other condos were lit up, glowing in the dark. Someone in a bright green coat the approximate proportions of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was hooting and twirling around outside of one, his arms out to embrace the sky. I hadn’t thought about it, but it would be a pretty good night for skiers. He waved at us as we headed in toward our door. I waved back. He shouted something I couldn’t make out, but it sounded happy.

Once we were inside, Ex cranked up the heat. The gas fireplace ignited with a soft huff, then hissed. The sound left me anxious. I washed my hands more for the sound of the water drowning out the voice of the flame. Ex groaned and lay down on the floor, his feet to the grate.

“Did you get any food down there?” I asked. “Or was that burger the only food you’ve had since lunch?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just … tired.”

“Council of war took it out of you?”

“It was a little fraught. You can’t have that many men working together on something this hard without some fault lines. They’re all dedicated to the work, and they all love Chapin.”

“So if he says, it goes?”

Ex chuckled.

“With some grousing and argument, yes,” he said.

“You want to let me in on anything about that conversation? Spread out the inside dirt? Or would that be telling?”

“There are some things about this you shouldn’t know,” he said.

I thought of Midian, leaning against his RV’s galley. It wasn’t like I was sharing everything either.

“Yeah, all right,” I said. “Maybe after. When it’s over.”

He sat up. The shadows of the fire shifted on his skin. A few strands of white-blond hair had escaped his ponytail, draping down the side of his face. He looked up at me almost grimly.

“Jayné, when this is over … when you’re safe … there’s another conversation we need to have.”

My breath caught. I was very aware of being alone in a house with a man, away from the world, away from everyone I knew, and halfway to snowbound. With a hot tub three feet out the back door. I imagined what it would be like to sit back in that steaming warmth with the snow shawling down around us. I felt an echo of the furnace of longing and guilt that I’d touched back in Chicago when our minds had been less separate than they were now. Adrenaline was leaking into my blood, and this wasn’t even fear. Wasn’t anything like it.

It occurred to me for the first time that my shame about the rider really wasn’t the only reason I hadn’t told Chogyi Jake to rejoin us.

“Then we should probably get this over,” I said, my voice carefully even. “Right?”

“Right,” he said softly, and et gravity pull him slowly back down. “Oh yeah.”

“You really should have seen a doctor about that back,” I said.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Once you’re safe, I’ll be perfect.”

THE BAD dreams came fast that night, but at least they weren’t the vicious reenactment of past events I sometimes had. Instead, I was lost in a city I didn’t know. I was supposed to have studied the local language, but I’d blown it off. Now I needed to get somewhere, but I couldn’t find anyone who could understand me. Sometimes I had a phrase book but couldn’t read the script, sometimes I was just trying to string syllables together and hoping. There was always a sense of being late for something I couldn’t afford to miss. And of being alone in the middle of a crowd. Every time I thought I was about to get there, the dream reset, and I started again.

And then, like waking up without waking up, I was in the desert.

For as long as I could remember, the desert had been one of the constant areas in my personal dreamscape. The wind-paved emptiness, the mountains rising on the infinitely distant horizon, the quiet. And as often happened, there were two of me. I saw the paired Jaynés from outside, like I was watching a movie, and I noticed that one of me was actually a mask. With the clarity that comes in dreams, I could see the hairline crack that ran around her face. The place where it would separate, and whatever was inside would come out.

She was looking at me now. Looking into me. A profound grief washed over me, like I’d lost someone I loved. Like someone died. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t move my mouth. The other Jayné put a finger across my lips.

Shh, she said. He’ll hear you.

I knew she meant Ex. A frigid wind came across the empty plain. I smelled the weird burnt-cheese smell of exploded cyclopropane, heard the hiss of the fireplace and it became the hiss of the lantern under Grace Memorial, and I was being buried alive. I was in the coffin and I was shoveling dirt onto it. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. The world got smaller, darker. I was trapped.

“Jayné!” Ex screamed from a different continent. “Stop!”

The dream shifted. I was running, only it wasn’t me running. I was in the small, still place two inches behind my eyes, and my body was moving of its own accord. Bare feet skidded on the new-fallen snow, and fresh flakes drifted down like ashes from a fire. I was wearing my big black coat and my pajamas. My hair blew into my mouth and I spat it out without being aware I was going to do it. I leaped over something big and black and half-encrusted in white. The car. I’d just vaulted over the car at the bottom of the hill, and I was sprinting toward the highway.

I wasn’t dreaming.

“Jayné!” Ex screamed again, his voice growing fainter. “Fight it! Fight against it!”

I panicked. I tried to scream. I tried to force my body to stop or slow or do something. I felt paralyzed, except that my body was moving frantically. My breath was a white cloud. Trapped inside myself, I thrashed, pushing out with my will against whatever I could find. Nothing happened. My body skittered down to the bottom of the hill and paused to look back. Ex was running after me: black clothes and white hair in a world of snow and winter-black trees. The rider bolted into the forest, working my legs faster than I could have. I didn’t just run, I bounded. Under the canopy, the snow was a little thinner, the carpet of pinecones and needles hushing under my steps. My feet avoided the snow, my footprints all but invisible. Ex wouldn’t be able to find the trail, not in the darkness. And even if he did, he couldn’t keep up.

My body slid gracefully down a steep gully, and then clambered up the other side. I’d reached the road. Pale ice snaked up toward the ski valley and down toward Arroyo Seco, the little town at the base of the mountain. The rider paused, crouching at the shoulder. There were stones under the snow now, and a high bank of slush and ice where the plow had come through and scraped the worst of the snowfall to the side. A wide, low SUV trundled past, skis sprouting from the rack on its top like horns. My body waited until the red taillights vanished around the curve, then turned down the hill and started an easy loping run. Not sprinting anymore. Going for distance.

Stop, I tried to say. Turn back. Stop running.

Nothing.

So okay, stomping at the problem like I was killing snakes wasn’t going to help. I tried to calm down, to find a still point in my tiny prison. I’d had a year of practice meditating, focusing my qi, doing small magics. It ought to be good for something. I tried to put aside the fact that every second was taking me farther from safety. I focused on the desert of my dreams, the stillness of it. The calm.

I found I could feel my body a little bit, but everything was muted. My feet were screaming in agony, but from a long way away. My lungs hurt too. I had a stitch in my side I hadn’t known about; the rider was powering through the pain. It wasn’t the same as controlling my own flesh, but the fact that I was getting reports—even secondhand ones—felt like a start. Slowly, I brought my focus to my right hand, not trying to do anything with it. Just being very, very aware of it. How the fingers curled into a fist. Where the skin tugged at the scab across the knuckles. The numbness across the back where the air was icing me down. My body kept its rhythm. I poured everything I could into thinking about my right hand.

And then I opened it. I did, not the rider. It closed again almost immediately, but for a second and for a few isolated muscles, I called the shots. It was such a small victory, but I rejoiced all the same.

Behind us, there was a roar of an engine. My head turned back. Ex’s cute little sports car was somewhere on the road behind us, hidden by the curve of the road. Headlights caught the trees, and the rider shifted, sprinting toward the drift at the side of the road. Running for cover. I shifted my awareness to my knees, trying to bend them double. The rider stumbled, fell, slid against the frozen asphalt.

Ex’s car came around the bend, fishtailing a little, and caught me in the headlights. The rider sprang up, arms wide, mouth a feral grin. I plucked at it from inside, but my body was still as stone now. The brake lights flared, and the car started to spin, back tires drifting toward the far side of the road. It righted suddenly, jerking toward me. Faster than a thought, the rider danced out of its way. The car stopped, the door spilled open, and Ex jumped out.

“I command u to stop, devil,” he shouted, running toward me. In the headlights, something in his hand glittered.

The cry that came out of my throat was rage and despair and grief.

Get back, I thought, pressing the words out through the air. It’s not me anymore. It’s not safe. Get back.

But Ex kept coming. His eyes were wide and wild, his jaw set and angry. He lifted his hands, and I felt the power coming off him when he spoke.

“In the name of Christ, I command you. Release this woman.”

“I saved you,” the rider said.

Ex was in front of me now, the headlights silhouetting him. It made the steam of his breath look black as smoke. He lifted his hand. The glittering thing was a medallion, not more than two inches across. My gaze fastened on it like it was a snake. I could feel the rider trying to turn away, but the medallion held it.

“I said release her!” Ex screamed, and it was more than sound. His raw will was in the word, pressing out of his body and into me. I felt the rider shudder, and then my body was mine again. The agony was transporting: my feet were freezing and cut bloody by running, my hands and face burned with the cold. I blacked out for a second, and when I was aware of myself again, Ex had his arm around me. I limped to the car, groaning and weeping with every step, then huddled in the passenger’s seat, curled in a fetal ball. The pain was immense.

“It’s okay,” he said, tucking the silver medallion into my hand. “Hold on to this. It’ll make it harder for the rider to come back.”

“What … is it?”

“Sigil of St. Francis of the Desert. Tomás put it together.”

“Couldn’t give it to me before?” I managed through clenched teeth.

“It only lasts for a while,” he said as he started the engine and put the car in gear. “I was hoping we wouldn’t need it. Try to keep it against your skin.”

The tires hissed and spun, but we turned around. Sensation was pouring back into my fingers and toes, thawing the places that were numb. I cried out, banging my fist against the door.

“I can’t move,” I said. “I can’t. Oh God, why didn’t it stop to put on some freaking shoes? I’ll never get up that hill.”

In the green of the dashboard light, Ex smiled wearily.

“It’s all right,” he said. “If I have to, I can carry you.”

I lay back on the car seat, letting the engine murmur to me, and thought about how nice it would be to have somebody to carry me safely home.