Stained Glass

Chapter 18

The Museum of the American Indian was a sepulchral Neo-Classical sarcophagus in no way designed to showcase the diversity of Indigenous American history. Everything was white, as if in emphasis, and two distinctly European female sculptures flanked the intentionally intimidating archway. Like a church, it was open to the public on Sundays. At eight in the morning, it was a ghost town.

We parked the bikes off the road near the base of the stairs and clambered off. Binah wiggled out of my jacket and perched on my shoulder as I pulled my helmet off and hung it. As soon as it was off, she wrapped her tail around my face and peered at the nearby trees with interest.

“Fuck, I hate this place,” Mason grunted. He hitched his belt up. “Gives me the weebies.”

I studied the stairs and the open doors beyond them, running my tongue over my teeth. The Smithsonian ran this museum, which meant it was a Federal building. “Do any of you happen to have a pair of sunglasses I could use?”

All three Tigers pulled out a different pair of shades from a pocket somewhere on their person. Jenner was the closest, so I accepted her pair with a nod and slid them on, taking a moment to adjust to the change in light. They were mirrored aviators that would have done Hunter S. Thompson proud.

Zane stayed out by the bikes, keeping an eye on them while Jenner, Mason and I went inside. We were pulled up by security at the door. Before we reached the gate, I lay a hand on Mason’s arm and gripped his sleeve. He looked down in confusion, but didn’t protest.

One of the guards held up a hand, which I nearly bumped into. “Sorry, but animals aren’t allowed in here.”

I adjusted my glasses, and then felt out for Mason’s elbow. “She’s a service animal.”

He looked at my glasses, then the hand gripping Mason’s jacket, and then back to the cat. “I ain’t ever heard of a cat for the blind.”

“She’s an All-Seeing Eye Cat,” I said. “Mister John Spotted Elk is expecting us.”

Binah began to purr, tail lashing down my back.

“Uhh…” The guard looked between the three of us, and then stepped back. “Please just walk through the detector, sir.”

Mason and Jenner had to nearly strip off to their underwear to make it through the metal detector, but we were eventually admitted into the bare and sterile foyer beyond the checkpoint. There was no one at reception. Fortunately, Jenner knew the way: Spotted Elk’s office was upstairs, reached by an elegant spiral staircase that led up behind the main theater.

Talya was waiting for us beside the door in her brown skirt and pale yellow blouse, clasping and unclasping her hands. She jumped a little when we rounded the corner, and then flushed. “Thank goodness. Ayashe isn’t here yet, but John and Michael are waiting for you inside.”

“No worries, kitten.” Jenner kissed cheeks with her, and then Mason did the same. Talya glanced shyly at me before she rubbed her face against his, and then stepped back before opening the door for us.

The room beyond was beautifully appointed – gothic interior, red carpet, mahogany desk, glass-fronted bookshelves, and a small private display of unsigned Native American objects. Michael was examining them, meandering between two of the cases. He was dressed somewhat more nicely than he had been at the meeting, changing out the baggy jeans and basketball jersey for a neutral charcoal suit and a large golden Ankh pin. I wasn’t sure what he did for a living, and there’d been no mention of it.

Spotted Elk was perched on the sill beside the window, smoking a seaman’s pipe out into the breeze. He was dressed for work: nice cream suit and loafers, a bolo tie, his graying hair pulled back in a short ponytail. There was still something about his bearing that didn’t match the ostentatiousness of the room, a blue-collar manner that clothes could not conceal. An auto mechanic in Brooks Brother’s clothing.

“Hetep Hena Ten Jenner. Mason.” Michael turned to us as we entered, his hands folded behind his back. “John and I would like to talk with Rex alone before Ayashe arrives and we discuss matters as a group. Do you mind?”

“No worries. Come on, big guy. Let’s go and loiter on Federal property.” Jenner punched her partner lightly in the waist, and turned back the way she’d come. Mason gave us a flippant salute and followed her out without a word.

I took off the glasses, and waited until the door closed. Spotted Elk turned on the windowsill and dropped down the three or four inches to the ground, the pipe still jammed in the corner of his mouth.

“Take a seat,” he said, dropping into his own seat behind the desk. “The chairs are as uncomfortable as they look, but that’s the Government for you.”

I grimaced, and coaxed Binah off my shoulder as I complied and took the edge of the nearest chair. My thighs were still shuddering from the motorcycle ride, so I couldn’t hold the position for long. My familiar turned restlessly in my lap, fixing Spotted Elk and Michael with a baleful eye.

“This is your familiar?” Michael took his place beside Spotted Elk, not deigning to sit. “Her condition speaks of terrible abuse.”

Spotted Elk held out a work-worn, calloused hand. Binah replied with a hiss and a striking paw, claws extended.

“Indeed.” I gathered her against me. Binah growled, tense and wary in my arms. “She is also feeling somewhat antisocial.”

Spotted Elk smiled ruefully and sat back, rubbing the fresh red welts on his fingers. “No wonder. Looks like they roughed her up pretty good.”

“I don’t imagine she has much love for strange men.” Michael didn’t even try to pet her.

“She and I are alike in many ways,” I said. “We are here for business. What did Jenner tell you about our findings?”

“That you found child pornography in your old apartment.” Spotted Elk looked over at me. His eyes were as dark and patient as a horse’s: gentle, wary, and anxious. “That Duke lost control and the change took him over… and that you got carried away with your magic.”

They thought I’d used magic to blow the apartment? Well… if they thought I was that powerful, I suppose that was in my favor. Sort of. I rubbed Binah’s ears, massaging the tension out of her scalp. “They deserved it.”

“That is questionable,” Michael said. “Because now they cannot talk.”

I grimaced. “Kir was talking before Duke lost control.”

“So we heard,” John replied. “You had no knowledge that this filth was taking place in your home?”

Was everyone going to ask me that question? “No. I ever only really knew the business of my unit.”

“What business was that?”

Even after everything that had happened, I couldn’t tell them. Talking about some of the ins and outs with the likes of Jenner and the Tigers was one thing, but when it came to people like John Spotted Elk, self-proclaimed good guys tied up with the Feds, the business of the Organizatsiya was the Organizatsiya’s business alone.

I exhaled thinly. “Nothing involving children.”

“Hmm.” Spotted Elk stood. “Tea or coffee?”

I glanced up at him. “Coffee. Black, strong, no sugar.”

“Michael?”

Michael shook his head.

John disappeared out of sight behind me. When I turned around to track his position, I saw him at a small table with a kettle and a box of assorted packets and sachets. While the kettle boiled, he began to spoon dark, syrupy sugar into one of the cups. Two, three… six. I stopped counting at eight, and turned back in consternation.

“Ayashe told us about the explosion,” Spotted Elk said. “They found the remains of at least three men, and sniffer dogs picked up extensive drug residue. There were explosives and assault weapons scattered across the street. The entire top floor burned out, and the other floors were damaged. Fortunately, the building did not collapse. She says the apartment was registered to a man named Kostya Kalikov.”

“I lost the passport for that alias years ago.”

He made a short sound of amusement. “Are you going to stay when Ayashe arrives to speak with us?”

I mulled that over for a moment. “I assume no one has expressly told her that it was my apartment that was destroyed.”

“They have not.”

I shrugged. “Then there’s no problem.”

“There is a huge problem.” Spotted Elk said. “Because the entire purpose of the Four Fires and the Pathfinders is to unite shapeshifters in lawful, constructive ways.”

“Besides that, we have the Ib-Int,” Michael added. “The ancestral laws of all shapeshifters, passed through generations of Elders since Mesopotamia was a world power. They proscribe against killing for revenge.”

The word ‘law’ had a number of unpleasant connotations for people like myself, but knowledge was knowledge. Besides… whatever corner these men hoped to talk me into, I still had Nicolai’s notes. “Fortunately for you, I am not a shapeshifter, and therefore not under your aegis.”

“Listen to me. You’re a Phitometrist,” Spotted Elk said. “Which means you must have at least partial knowledge of the threat we face from the Outside.”

He spoke the word like a name. “Something of it.”

“Michael is the best one to tell that story.” He motioned to the other Elder, sipping at his tea. “My old brain gets too cluttered.”

Michael inclined his head in acknowledgment. “That may or may not be true, John. You have more years than I do.”

“You were reared in the cradle of the Law, Michael. I was born on a Rez.” He laughed briefly at his own joke.

“True enough.” Michael smiled faintly, the first time his face had relaxed in any way. “We have a long history of interaction with magi. To begin with, your soul and my soul were both born out of a great calamity. The oldest Gift Horses – one of the oldest beings in all Creation – all call it the same thing. The Second War.”

My eyes narrowed. I remembered the litany. The First War was not a war. It was a slaughter…. It came with the first star to ever light the Mirror of the sky.

“I know what a Gift Horse is, vaguely. The First War was when the DOGs came from the NO-thing, I believe,” I said. “I don’t know what the Second War is.”

Spotted Elk nodded, stirring his tea. There enough sugar in it that it was soupy. “Around about eight hundred years ago, I was living as a barley farmer in South Korea. I was visited by a great Gift Horse Stallion and his manservant. Michael knows him, too. He was a powerful elder of his people, and hard as tacks… stern, ruthless, terrifying.”

“Stallion?” I thought back to Zarya, but struggled to remember her face. “Gift Horses call themselves Stallions… and Mares?”

Spotted Elk laughed for a moment, and then shook his head. “They wouldn’t deign to call themselves man and woman, in case they’re mistaken for HuMen.”

“I see,” I replied. “So what about the Second War?”

Michael considered his words for a minute or so in silence. “As John has noted, I also know of this ancient Horse. He called himself Dust, and it was he who conveyed the story of the Second War to my mentor. For the purpose of this conversation, I will recount the short version. The White Land was the original skin of GOD, and by that, I mean the creature that we live inside… the acronym is a YESian term, nothing to do with the religions of the world.”

YESian? “I’m aware there is a difference.”

“Dust told us that the name of the White Lands was AZN, and that the AZN was destroyed at the end of The First War by a great evil known as the Morphord, no ‘e’. Dust said that his people, the Gift Horses, were the first beings in all of AZN to wear the man-shape, and with two legs to run, two arms to fight, two eyes to see and a head to turn, they stood a chance to drive the Morphord and his army – the Morph-horde – out of the territories they had now infested.” As the story progressed, Michael slipped into the rhythmic cadence of memetic recall. “To do this, Dust’s ancestors took up the shards of glass the Morphord had caused to fall from the broken shell of the sky. They made this glass into the first swords, and with them they fought back.”

“Their enemy, who Dust was very adamant was male, was clever,” Michael continued. “The Morphord observed the inhabitants of the AZN, and when he realized that he was going to lose to AZN’s Man-shaped host, he drew all of his soldiers and their victims back in to himself, and with their mass, created a form for himself for the first time. This form agonized him, because it was against his nature to take a shape, and so it was of the largest and strongest Man-shape he, in his great narcissism, could conceive of. He was thirty thousand miles tall, when he stomped a foot down on the White Land, he shattered the entirety of the shell protecting GOD, ending The First War and mixing himself into Creation forever in the process.”

I listened in heavy silence, the coffee steaming on the desk in front of me.

Michael closed his eyes. “The destruction of the White Land caused the formation of strata of different sorts, with the first being that of the Wra-Tha, who Dust referred to as ‘The PusLickers’, followed by HuMans, and then us: The Ka-Bat, or animal spirits, who bonded with some of the first HuMans even as Dust’s people and allies engaged the Morphorde again in The Second War. The very oldest of us came to consciousness as the whole of GOD writhed in agony from its wounds. The Ka remembers this anguish, Rex. Even the youngest of us remember bits and pieces, and with that memory, clear or faint, every Ka-Bah responds to the presence of illness and corruption in the world. They may accept the call or reject it, but those who choose to serve find allies, while the outcasts remain alone and weak. The Ib-Int is formed around this concept and is built around gathering like-minded Ka-Bat to rejoin the current War, the Third War, to fight the corruption imposed on Creation.”

Spotted Elk nodded. “The important takeaway – for you – is that episodes like Duke’s are not the exception: they are the rule. The animals we channel are furious, intelligent spirits of the broken Glass Land who want to do nothing else except hunt down and kill the Morphorde in every shape it takes. Problem is, it can take all kinds of forms. The Ka doesn’t just hate demons and unspeakable creatures, or evil sorcerers and shamans. Evil can be in normal people who have good intentions and make mistakes.

“Precisely.” Michael reached up to finger the ankh he wore over his heart. “If we let the Ka rule us, all we do is kill, and kill, and kill. Duke could not help himself when he smelled the evil of the Morphorde and his Ka overrode him, and that is because he doesn’t care about working within the law. He does not want to control himself. You understand?”

“I certainly understand the need for control,” I replied.

“I know, because you’re a predator. Anyone could tell that.” Spotted Elk leaned in over his desk a little. “I created the Four Fires for the same reason that Michael continues the legacy of the Pathwalkers. If we have to face an army one day, we can’t be a disorganized rabble. We must raise an army to fight an army.”

I mulled that over. “I understand. But while we’re on the subject, Lily and Dru were almost certainly not as virtuous as you make them out to be. I found delivery instructions for a very large quantity of heroin that was to be delivered to their address.”

Michael stiffened in place. Spotted Elk reared back in alarm, paling as his face settled into deep, hard lines. “Do you have proof of this?”

I unzipped my jacket and took the folder out from its place under my shirt, flipping through it until I reached the correct page. “We were able to rescue this from the apartment. It’s a—”

The office door opened behind us, and I turned to see Ayashe stalk into the room. She was still wearing her badge, and she did not look pleased to see me.

“You,” she said to me. “You have a whole lot of explaining to do.”

“Ah, Ayashe. Just in time.” Spotted Elk stood up to greet her.

Ayashe circled around his desk and slammed her hand down on the desktop as she leaned down to stare me in the eyes. “So. ‘Kostya Kalikov’? Is that your real name, or am I going to have to keep digging until I reach the bottom of the pile of bullshit?”

“I don’t know a Kostya Kalikov,” I said, scratching my familiar’s head. Binah stretched and yawned in my lap, and then curled back into an indolent ball.

“Don’t fuck with me, Rex,” she said. “People were killed last night. Witnesses say they saw you and Jenny-fucking-Tran in a big blue car that just happens to match the description of Duke’s Buick. You don’t think I’d know this shit?”

“You’re a Federal Investigator who is currently only cleared to advise the Bronx SSU on one particular case, and even if it were your business, it is currently out of your jurisdiction.” I held her furious gaze with my calm one. “I notice things, too, Agent.”

Ayashe stood, straight-backed. “I’ve got more than enough circumstantial evidence to detain your ass right here and now under RICO.”

“You don’t have anything you can arrest me for.” I forced myself to sit back. No point in looking nervous. “So what do you want to hear first? Do you want to know that the people who nearly killed me and hounded me out of my house are dabbling in child pornography with the Wolf Grove children, or you want to hear about how your exemplary Pathfinders were ordering large shipments of heroin from those same people?”

The agent’s expression went from cold hostility to hot intensity in a split second. “Prove it.”

I set the file down on Spotted Elk’s desk, and pointed at the relevant lines. “That handwriting belongs to the current Authority of Brighton Beach. It outlines the delivery instructions for ten kilos of black-tar heroin to dealers for distribution in exchange for an unnamed trade. Usually, deliveries like this one are sent to the head of a street gang. In this case, it was direct to Wolf Grove.”

Ayashe fumbled back, pushing her jacket aside to reveal a gun in a holster and a small black pouch. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from it and picked up the file herself. “That’s a lot of information you’re getting from a little writing.”

“Rumor has it the Avtoritet writes his directives in Russian military code.” I shrugged. “But the address is clear enough. It is dated for the 30th August.”

“It’s not possible,” Spotted Elk said. “Neither of them would do anything like this.”

“I agree. This is out of turn.” Michael’s voice was deeper now, more forceful.

I didn’t like the way the room felt, so I picked up Binah and joined them on their feet. “What does initiation entail that makes you so sure? Because the evidence to the contrary is quite literally sitting on your desk.”

“I have known them for years,” Michael said. “They were initiated eleven years ago, long before they became invested in their religion. They always honored the Ib-Int above all things.”

Ayashe shot me a dark look as she picked up the folder and riffled through it. John Spotted Elk regarded me with a similar expression to the one I had worn before: the tight-lipped reluctance of someone being asked to betray an entrenched secret.

“I told you about my encounter with the Stallion, Dust,” he said, haltingly. “Eight hundred years ago, he gifted me an elixir to induce awareness in Weeders on the cusp of sentience so that they might have control of themselves in combat. I have hidden that substance at the end every life I have lived, and recovered it on the next. One drop of it is enough to purge the Morphord’s influence. I gave it to them when I gave them honorary membership in my organization.”

I sighed. “Trafficking in drugs doesn’t necessarily mean they were doing anything related to Morphorde. Just that they might have angered someone enough for them to take revenge.”

“What purpose would revenge over such a petty thing serve?” Michael frowned.

“I have heard from my friends that a bratva man stabbed someone because they beat up his friend at a club,” I replied. “Knifed him in the gut. His brother wasn’t even that badly hurt… but in that culture, if someone hurts your friend, it is as if they had hurt you ten times more.”

Ayashe turned to look at me again. “Okay, so you got your hands on some instructions. Ten kilos of girl, I’ll take your word on it. Does any of this mention the children or the murder?”

“No.”

She reached back into her jacket and drew the pistol, and she was fast. It was in her hands and aimed before I’d done anything more than put the chair between her and me. “Then I’m arresting you under suspicion of trafficking narcotics and being involved in organized criminal activity,” she said. “You have the right to remain—”

“Ayashe!” Michael barked, moving around the desk. “What are you doing?”

“Hey. What’s all the shouting about?” Jenner’s voice rang out from the threshold of the doorway. She, Mason and Talya formed a wall just inside the room, blocking entry and exit. “I get nervous when someone screams and I’m not around. You won’t like me when I’m nervous.”

“You can hold the litany, musor. You have no grounds to arrest me,” I said. “A file without any of my handwriting, without my fingerprints, that points to the murdered couple you’re investigating? The problem lies with your vaunted Elders – I’m just the messenger, and you know it.”

“Get down on the fucking floor.” Ayashe swelled up on her feet, her lips peeling back in a silent snarl. I retreated as she advanced, holding Binah close to my chest.

“Now you wait just a goddamn moment.” Mason said. He and Jenner pulled up on either side of me, Talya hovering anxiously to one side between the standoff. “What the fuck is going on, Ayashe?”

“This guy is in the Russian Mob.” Ayashe wasn’t visibly angry now – she had taken on the cold brushed steel look of an experienced killer. “That’s reason enough.”

“Your accusation is flimsy compared to the evidence of your own people being in the ‘Russian mob’ as you put it. The drugs weren’t addressed to me.” I hadn’t come armed. More’s the pity.

Spotted Elk regarded us gravely. “In all honesty, I must agree with Ayashe. He admitted to us that it was his apartment.”

My eyes narrowed. Michael’s face flickered with an expression that was difficult to read, but he glanced at me and I knew that he hadn’t intended to tell Ayashe anything.

“Of course it was.,” Ayashe snapped. “You think it’s coincidence that he just shows up in our life and gets involved in this? That he starts off with our youngest member and manipulates her—”

“Don’t talk about me like I can’t think for myself!” Talya bristled, swelling on her feet. “It was a chance meeting!”

“What the fuck do you think he’s really doing here, Jenner?” Ayashe gestured at me with the muzzle of her pistol. Maybe it was my imagination, but I was sure I saw the black hole at the end of the barrel shudder and shiver like a liquid.

“Seems like he was helping us,” Jenner replied. “Or trying to.”

“I’m leaving. That is what I am doing.” I pulled my gloves up along my wrists as a deep tension wracked my stomach and tugged my stitches. “Go shove your badge up your ass.”

You have three seconds to get down on the floor before I decide you’re too hostile to live.” The barrel was aimed right between my eyes.

Mason put himself between me and the gun. “You and what friggin’ army, Ayashe? I can vouch that we found the damn film, that we got the motherfuckers who hurt Josie, that Rex honored his half of the deal. Or doesn’t the word of an Elder mean anything to you now you got a shiny badge and a pat on the head?”

“Mason, silence. She has a point,” Spotted Elk said. “We were wrong to trust a criminal presence. No matter what I said about him or what you’ve seen—”

“You came here alone, Ayashe, and I don’t think we give a fuck about what you say.” Jenner caught my arm and started me walking. “C’mon, Rex. Mason. Let’s go.”

“You ain’t going nowhere!” Ayashe snapped around Spotted Elk, shoving him aside with furious speed and strength. He hit the edge of his desk with a cry of pain, eyes wide with hurt and confusion in the moment before Jenner interposed herself Mason and Ayashe and punched the taller woman straight in the mouth. Ayashe stumbled back and snarled, and Mason left me to go to his woman’s side as they faced off.

“Stop this!” Michael raised his voice over the din. “This is crazy!”

Talya ran to me and caught my sleeve, her eyes wide and red-rimmed. I nodded, and without a word, she ran with me and Binah out into the hallway, took another door, and steered us down the fire escape. We clattered down to the ground floor and exited out a different entry to the outside.

“I can’t believe this,” she said. Her voice was shaking. “Ayashe’s so stubborn, and I just know she’s going to register you as a fugitive, and… all you did was try to help us. Rex, I’m so sorry.”

“Forget it.” I said. “If they cherish their pride more than the truth, they have no need for a mage. They need twenty-one caskets and a saddle for their high horse.”

Talya dug her nails into the doorframe. “I know, but we can talk with the Tigers and work something out. Jenner holds her own against the other factions here. Please don’t go.”

“If Ayashe’s serious, she will turn up at the clubhouse with a SWAT team. Jenner cannot prevent that.” I pressed my lips together. “I have spent my life outside of a cell. I want my freedom.”

Talya’s nostrils flared, an odd moment of body language for a woman as small and prim as she was. “You know, John and Michael have been trying to recruit me ever since I started working here. This is my first time inside of the Cycle, my first lifetime as a shapeshifter. Someone like John or Ayashe, they might have had twenty, thirty lifetimes that they can remember, and they still act like children. If that’s all they have to offer, that’s not the person I want to be.”

I regarded her in silence, unblinking.

“My point is… I believe you. Whatever it is you and the Tigers found, I believe it. We won’t let them arrest you. You’re the only one besides us that cares about something other than themselves.” Talya smiled a grim, bitter little smile, withdrew back into the stairwell, and closed the door.

Altruistic? Me? Perhaps I had stepped into a paradoxical other world, a world where I was something more than a bullet in Sergei’s gun. Perhaps she was full of shit, and I needed to leave before I was locked up for trying to impose truth on their unreality.

I stared at the side of the building for a moment, ruminating on my decision, and then turned and walked away.