Stained Glass

Chapter 30

When I’d witnessed Duke and Jenner change from human to animal and back, it had been a fluid process, a smooth and untraumatic transformation from two legs to four. Features distending, hands turning into paws, that sort of thing.

Mason exploded. His body ruptured with spines of shattered glass flung in all directions, shards that punctured my flesh with such ease that I barely felt anything at first, just the deep pressure of penetration in belly, thigh, neck and hand. It was the impalement through the hand I felt first, because my vision cut in a white torrent of sensory noise. Then the pain hit.

A filthy white tiger the size of a pony staggered off my chest to its feet, leaving its payload of broken glass behind. I tried to scramble back, hiccoughing with shock and agony, and accidentally put my hand on the ground. The glass pushed deeper and my arm collapsed out from under me, and GOD help me, I screamed.

“It’s over!” The priest shouted.

The tiger advanced low to the ground, its face a twisted mask of rage. But it was wrong. The body of it was misshapen and distorted, the spine arched too high, the chest too deep and narrow. Mason’s hindquarters and the left side of his upper breast bristled with jagged, bloody, crazed glass. Every stalking step was accompanied by the weirdly mechanical sounds of glass breaking, reforming, and tinkling to the hard floor.

“It’s not over until I say it is, pizdets.” I limped back on ass and elbow, drawing the Wardbreaker with my left hand.

The tiger roared, drooling blood and foam onto the floor, and was on me faster than I could move. I almost saw the paw that slapped the gun from my hand, but not the one that took me across the face and knocked me into the floor. It was just a pat, really, no claws. As my skull bounced off concrete, I remembered all too vividly how Duke had nearly decapitated Kir.

Mason put one dinner plate-sized foot against my chest, pushed, and flexed his claws. They pierced my ruined shirt and the skin of my pectoral, right over my heart. The hint finally got through. Yes… I was done.

“Now hold on a minute… I remember you.” The priest spoke in unaccented English. His voice sounded artificially deep, thick and lazy from the endorphin rush of the fight. Just like Mr. Patroclus, he had a Texas accent, though it was nearly nowhere as thick. “Well, what do you know? I thought Nicolai would’ve made a lampshade out of your skin by now.”

While I seethed in silence, the priest turned to look over his shoulder. “Ivan. You know this little mage, don’t you?”

I rolled my eyes to glare across the charred and bloody ground. Vanya was downed near the altar, panting with excitement and terror. He’d taken bullets to the leg – I could see the exit wounds. He was still clutching his loose pants in one hand, but as the Blind Priest spoke, he began to nod. “Yes, Deacon. His name—”

“I know his name. Don’t speak it: Names have power.” He pointed at me with a long hand. “The Father has presented us with a unique opportunity. A double conversion. It is a sign of his blessing and power that you live, mageling, while the others do not. He wants you, and he will have you. Ivan. Take the knife and come here.”

Vanya’s piggish eyes fixed on me. His expression was hungry, greedy. He reached for the edge of the altar and hauled himself up to his good leg.

“That’s it. Come here, son.” The priest’s voice was kindly. By the divine right of Kings, give what belongs to the Father, back to the Father.”

The Deacon held out the glass knife, and Vanya collected it on his way past. He limped towards me; I struggled for a moment, testing the alertness and intelligence of the tiger standing on my chest. As soon as I twitched, the claws returned, and the pressure increased. My weakened rib popped with a low ‘crunch’ that I heard in my back teeth and felt as a wave of fresh spasming pain through my chest and gut.

“You,” Vanya rasped. “I always hated you, you prissy little fuckup. Grisha was the only real man in your whole family. He should never have gotten with that Jewish whore… he should have stuck with us. His brothers.”

I couldn’t speak. My breath rattled through my teeth, frothy with blood and pleurisy.

“You’re a freak!” He advanced on me, dragging his leg, and dropped into a clumsy kneel beside us. “A fucking… freak! You and Vassily! Faggots! Freaks!”

My face flushed hot with rage, and I tried to struggle up, flailing out for the gun just beyond reach of my fingers. “Don’t you ever speak of Vassily like that again.”

“He was fucking guys in prison, loser.” Vanya reached out with a callused hand, pushing me down by the neck as he shoved my shirt up as far as the spears of glass allowed for. “Wanna know why I took him out? He got that gay disease in there, is why.”

By way of reply, I lunged up and sunk my teeth into his forearm until I tasted blood. He shrieked and raised the knife above my stomach with his other hand, warring with the need to stab me and pull his arm away as I dug my blunt teeth through gristle, muscle and skin. My last gift to the Organization.

There was a sharp bang. All heads turned as the door exploded inwards, showering the four of us in debris. Mason twisted his head, letting off me as three big cats charged in from the stairwell: a tiger as big as a horse, a leopard half her size, and a mountain lion who screamed like banshee as they fell on the room in a tornado of fur and claws. The glass-eaten tiger started up from me with a roar, fangs bared, and charged to meet them.

The Deacon got out of the way, nimble and well trained. He lifted a hand, barking words of power. Vanya tore his arm free from my mouth with a scream, and promptly collapsed as his leg gave out from under him. He pitched to the ground beside me, dropping the knife. Without a second thought, I caught it up, heaved myself on top of him, and put it to his throat.

Jenner hit her mutated partner with a flying four-footed leap, met by the opened arms and claws of her opponent. They were equal in size, and tumbled to the ground in a blur of snarling, flashing teeth, raking claws, and striped muscle. The leopard went for the priest, who finished his spell with a shout and a gesture.

Time slowed in a cone of effect that froze me, Vanya, and both tigers in slow motion, winding down my heartbeat to painful slowness. But even as The Deacon tucked his chin down, arm outstretched in concentration, the animals fought the tide of inertia and then broke through. They flew back into the fray at normal speed, while the dust around them bloomed in slow motion.

But I suffered. And as my body fought the temporal flux and Vanya wobbled in his efforts to escape, he pushed my injured arm aside and I dropped the sacrificial knife. It fell slower than a feather to the floor beside his head.

Before we could adjust, the priest took a full-grown, fully-temporal leopard to the face. The spell snapped, and I collapsed onto Vanya’s flabby bulk with a sharp exhalation and the taste of blood. He was on me in a flash: rolling us over, pinning me down as he shouted, raining spittle down at my face. We flailed for the knife, neither of us able to get a grip on it. My groping fingers found the end of the hilt, but it flew away at speed before I could grasp it. It flew up, turning end over end to smack solidly into the priest’s hand. Duke had taken him down, and it was trying to maul him as he somehow held it at arm’s length. I shouted a warning, but too late – the masked man slammed the unholy glass weapon deep into the leopard’s flank.

“Duke!” I roared his name, struggling with Vanya.

The cry caught the attention of the mountain lion, who was mauling the blind cultist on the ground. When he saw what was happening, his ears flattened, and he lunged for The Deacon with a cry of rage. The priest staggered to his feet, clutching his face to keep the mask over it. He hissed a harsh word, and then bolted for the opposite side of the building, the wall of empty window frames overlooking the canal. Zane was almost on him, front paws lifting to slash, when The Deacon vanished into the shadows and dematerialized.

The ruined white tiger kicked Jenner across the floor with a bellow, sending her careening into the remains of the grain shuttle, and limped up to his feet. He was panting, his empty sockets leaking fresh blood. The wounds Jenner had raked across his belly and flank were rapidly filling with spines of glass, shards that ejected from its flesh to bristle like spearheads as he turned tail and ran in the same direction as the escaping Deacon. Jenner started after him, but put a foot into one of the holes that had caught my foot. She tripped forward, her jaw hitting the ground with an alarming crunch. Mason didn’t vanish – he leapt from the window, eight stories off the ground, and plunged out of sight as Zane bellowed and skidded to a halt before he fell from the precipice. A few seconds later, there was a distant splash from the canal below.

Duke made a low, mewling sound as he tried to get to his feet, the knife still buried deep in his ribs. Sensing distraction, Vanya tried to scramble up on the slippery floor. I punched him in the side of the face with my left fist, pitching him to the ground, and lay myself on top of him to stop him from fleeing.

“The knife!” I shouted. I couldn’t hear myself properly after all the gunfire, but my throat was vibrating enough to let me know that I could still make noise. “Get that knife out of him! It’s cursed!”

“You fucks!” Vanya shrieked. “You cowardly fucks! They fuckin’ ran! They ran!”

The screaming beside my ear blinded me. My ears were ringing, mouth and nose full of the smell of old pennies. I struck Vanya across the face. “Shut the fuck UP!”

The orange tiger had picked itself up. Jenner shook herself with a deep-bodied grunt, and then slouched across to me, eyes burning gold-green even under the black lights. She paused for a moment, surveying me with all the arrogance of a born ruler before she loped past us towards the leopard.

While I scuffled with Vanya, I heard the distant sound of tearing meat. When I looked up, the mountain lion was gone, and Zane stood in its place. He was nude from the back, the glass knife in his hand. The leopard was folded around the injury on his side, panting and moaning, his paws kicking along the floor. Even as I watched, he managed to get his forelegs under him and sit up, tongue lolling from his open jaws.

Zane looked over his shoulder at me. His eyes were a paler jade green than Jenner’s, but just as unnaturally bright and piercing. He didn’t look pleased to see me.

Jenner put her paws on the altar, nearly upending it, and shifted back: a smooth, fluid transition from animal to human. Fur poured back under human skin in a wave; bones popped and resized, organs moved, and all that was left was a wave of iridescent liquid that poured down her body and spattered to the floor, disappearing as soon as it touched the dirty concrete.

“You fuck,” Jenner said, by way of greeting. “That was Mason. Mason’s fucked up, you knew where he was, and you didn’t tell me?!”

“I came to find this fat piece of shit.” I kept the knife in against Vanya’s neck, but not too close. He was a secret fanatic; I wasn’t going to let him martyr himself. “This wasn’t in the plan—”

“I saw the fucking photos, Rex.” Jenner stalked towards me, her small human form just as predatory, just as deadly as the tiger who had fought only a moment ago. “The video was in YOUR apartment. YOU brought that computer in. Mason was here, with YOU. What the actual fuck? Talya was freaking in the clubhouse when I got up… something about you and the Russian Mafia being involved. You—”

Something in me snapped. Bristling with broken glass, one hand impaled through the palm, being blamed – once again – for other people’s problems, I couldn’t stop it.

“You WILL fucking listen to me!” I pushed myself off Vanya, leaving him to flail on the ground at my feet, and swaying on my feet. “You want someone to blame for this? For your boyfriend? Blame yourselves. All of you, you fucking useless, undisciplined, conniving, back-biting HACKS! YOU let this take place under your noses! Your shapeshifter ‘Elders’ are not ‘very good people’ – they were cultists and perverts and pedophiles. I came here because I figured something out, like I was supposed to, and you want to scapegoat me too?”

“Shut the—”

“No! You shut the fuck up!” I felt the parasite strain in my chest and belly as a wave of aborted power surged and was immediately cut off. “Vanya was about to rape this man on the table. He was going to rape and murder him after he swore his vows to this crazy fucking cult – which, I might add, Lily and Dru were almost certainly part of. I just saved Angkor’s life after Mason turned into some kind of fucked up mutant beast and tried to kill me, and you. And if you can’t handle the truth, then that is not. My. Problem.”

“Let me get a word in, will you?” Jenner’s entire face trembled with tics, and she opened her mouth to say something just as Duke transformed from leopard to nude human male. I was so furious that I didn’t even care that all three of them were naked.

“No. Fuck you all. I don’t care.” I caught sight of Vanya just as he tried to get up and limp away, and I kicked him right in the exit wound just for the spite of it. He pitched back down with a squeal. “I’m sick of him and I’m sick of all of you. So take your Spook and apologize to him for whatever fucked up shit they’ve done to him, and fuck back off to Screw-Up Town while I go and live my GOD-damn life somewhere else!”

“Hey. Alexi.” Zane called from up the back of the room.

“He killed Vassily!” I screamed back at him. “And you think I had something to do with this?! They killed the only people who ever mattered to me!”

As my voice bounced off the walls like gunfire and faded into stunned silence, a clicking sound began to echo through the room. I looked down. Vanya was laughing underneath me. A horrible fake, forced, repetitive laugh.

“Laugh it up, fatty.” Jenner said. “You’re gonna wish we killed you before tonight’s through.”

I had never wanted to do anything more than what I was about to do. I didn’t look at her. “No. Take Angkor and leave.”

“I’m not gonna do that,” Jenner replied. “Mason—”

“I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. This is between my people and me,” I replied, as crisply as I could with twelve pieces of glass stuck through my torso and limbs. As the battle fury began to lift, I was stiffening up, beginning to feel the pain. The one in my forearm had gone all the way through. “And if you don’t fucking leave, now, I’m going to kill every fucking person in this room.”

“Jenner…” Zane spoke up again, moving closer to us. “Just leave him.”

“No. I’m not leaving.” She lowered her head, eyes narrowed. “You’re coming with us, Alexi. We’re doing this together.”

“I don’t take orders from you.” I bared my teeth at her, warring with the dual urge to make good on the promise to wipe the room, and rope them in to help me with Vanya. I wasn’t going to be able to carry him in my current state.

She rolled her eyes. “Look. Just forget it, okay? I lashed out. My old man’s dead and your friend’s dead, and I lost my shit and you’re right, you don’t take orders from me. Alright?”

In the pregnant pause after her almost-apology, Binah jumped onto the altar and began to nose the bodybag and its concealed occupant, meowing plaintively.

“You ain’t getting nothing from me,” Vanya slurred in English. “Stupid cunts. You’re dead. Every fuckin’ soldier in this city is gonna come for you. Deacon’s gonna come for you. You’re fuckin’ dead!”

“Your new friends ran, Vanya.” As much as I could with one shaking hand and a body full of broken glass, I straightened my shirt and tie. “And now, you will tell us about Lily and Dru Ross and their children.”

“I ain’t telling you shit,” he said. “The fuck you gonna do? Sergei told me he cut you off. You ain’t no fuckin’ wizard no more.”

The three Weeders in the room shifted restlessly, but I forced myself to stay fixated on Vanya. “I don’t need magic to make your life a living hell for the next year, Vanya. All I need is a quiet room, a battery, and some copper wire. Just you and me and some electrified exploration of your intimate places. Do you think you’ll cry, Kommandant?”

He spat at me. Jenner stalked across, and slapped him so hard that his neck cracked. He fell to the ground, coughing, while the tiny woman shook her hand out and hauled him up to his knees with unnatural strength. The wiry muscles of her torso stood in sharp relief. “You can count me in on this fat fuck.”

“Nice tits.” Vanya leered.

Jenner kicked him in the bullet wounds on his leg. Vanya howled in agony.

“Fucking prick.” Jenner dragged him off by the front of his shirt as if he weighed thirty pounds instead of three hundred, kicking broken glass out of her way. Duke stumbled on past, and I whistled to him. He turned, and I threw him the Glock. He caught it, gave me the thumbs-up, and joined his President as she maneuvered Vanya out the door and threw him down the first flight of stairs.

“Hey, Alexi.” Zane regarded me somberly as I limped to the altar. “That uh… that looks like it hurts.”

“I don’t want to know.” I zipped up the bottom of the body bag, struggling one-handed to put the unconscious man’s feet back inside. “We need to milk Vanya for everything he’s got. I put a lot of information together tonight… but I can’t explain most of it.”

He stared at me suspiciously, soulfully, and then jerked his shoulders in a restless shrug. “Fine. But we want to know what the fuck we burst in on.”

“I was hoping for something less arcane.” I hobbled to the head of the bodybag and fumbled the zipper it with my better hand. I was shaking so hard that it took more than one try, an attempt which was not aided by Binah, who batted at the zipper as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “We should… ah…”

“What?” Zane frowned.

Tongue-tied, suddenly hot with mingled wonder and confusion, I couldn’t reply. The body bag was opened to chest height, and I’d pushed the plastic back to reveal the most beautiful man I had ever seen.