Stained Glass

Chapter 31

Angkor was still deeply unconscious, and in remarkably good condition for someone who had been struck in the head hard enough to knock him out for this length of time. His features were strong, fox-like, the lines of his skull spare, his face somehow both utterly masculine and utterly feminine at the same time. His skin was the color of rich amber; his lips were full, his upturned throat long and gracile. And that was where I got stuck, not because of his beauty, but because of the collar. He had a narrow, seamless glass band welded around his neck. It superficially resembled the hazed glass of the knife the priest had passed to Mason, but it wasn’t as brittle-looking as the dagger. I touched it, and an unpleasant sensation vibrated up through the tips of my fingers. It was magically active.

The only sign of injury was the powdery residue of dried blood – a lot of it. But Angkor had few cuts or bruises, and instead of the smell of filth, all I could smell was flowers. With the smell came a memory. Zarya. Zarya had smelled like this… a scent like mingled jasmine and temple incense, a scent that transfigured to a tactile sensation in the mouth. A deep, bright, vibrant blue scent, holy and inhuman.

“My GOD,” I whispered, still staring down at him. “Is this Angkor? Your mage?”

“Yeah.” Zane was looking between him and me with an odd expression that I couldn’t read. His gaze swept over me, lingering on the bristling shards sticking out from the front of my body, and then down. “Why?”

“I was just wondering.” I flushed as I pushed back some of Angkor’s hair, thick and silky even through gloves, and found the site of a skull fracture. “He’s badly injured… or he was. I was sure I heard one of the byki crack his head against the car.”

Angkor did not stir at our talk of him, though the lump on his head was continuing to shrink slowly as we watched. It was so gradual that you couldn’t see it, but for a man with hands as sensitive as mine, I could feel the tissues shifting slightly when I took the glove off and pressed my bare fingers in around it. He still had a pulse, which I also felt. Slow and steady.

“I can’t carry him,” I said. The admission was embarrassing, the kind of shame that sucked a little more strength out of my already weakened body.

“I’m surprised you can carry yourself. I’ll take him,” Zane said. He made a shooing motion as he advanced, and rolled Angkor’s prone form into his arms with a grunt. This other Phitometrist couldn’t have weighed that much… a hundred and sixty, at most. What I had seen of his body was perfect: lean and long, muscular, broad-shouldered. As Zane slung him up, one of his hands fell from the side of the open body bag. I could only see the highlights and shadows of his fingers in the fading moonlight, but my mouth turned dry. I had to look away, pulse hammering, as Zane swept past and I trailed him with my cat and a deepening sense of confusion and baseless discomfort.

“You… uhh… you have glass sticking out of your chest,” Zane said.

“Please. Really. I don’t want to know.” I was struggling not to stare at my throbbing hand, my throbbing arm, my thigh and abdomen and chest. There was no point looking. “Get me home. I’ll fix it.”

“No, hell no. You need to get to the ER. Can you walk?”

It took a few syrupy moments before I could process what he said, form a reply, and then speak. In light of the argument, I was still curt. “Why would I pay someone ten-thousand dollars for something I could do myself?”

He blanched. “You don’t have insurance?”

“What? You mean like ‘injuries gained during violent criminal acts’ coverage on the Illegal Wizard Plan?” I made a sound of disgust. “Give me your arm and get me to the GOD-damned car.”

Ovar and the men outside were gone: Sent packing, no doubt, by the arrival of three bullet-proof big cats. There were no bodies outside. They hadn’t been killed: they’d fled.

The long road back to the street was agonizing, and by the time I eased into the back seat of Duke’s Buick, every joint and muscle in my body was shrieking and stiff. Duke was half-dressed, pale and shivering as he recovered in the passenger’s side. His arm was pressed in against his ribs. Talya was in the driver’s seat, her hands white-knuckled on the wheel, a sawn-off shotgun lying across her lap.

“You told me not to worry, Rex.” Her voice was high and thin with fear. “But I worried. I worried a lot.”

“Given the circumstances, I’m not complaining.” I was breathing heavily, but as long as the shards didn’t move too much, I wasn’t going to bleed to death. Carefully, I eased into the back seat. “I figured out that the senior management of my old Organization were all tied up in this TVS cult.”

“The cops are going to be all over this tomorrow,” Duke wheezed.

“I doubt it. The cult leader will tell Nicolai what happened, and Nicolai will clean it up.” I was parched, aching for want of water, but there was no way to hurry things. Jenner was stuffing Vanya into the trunk by herself, his cursing punctuated by the smack of her fist into his flesh and the resulting yelps of pain. I heard her close the lid down on him, and then she peeled around the end of the car to get her clothes. She dressed, then took Angkor while Zane did the same. They then carefully got inside, laying the bodybag across their laps.

Now that the battle was over, I was in terrible pain. Wracking, awful pain. With gritted teeth, I eyed the shard buried in the palm of my right hand. The leather had stopped it partway, but there was still half an inch of improvised skewer trapped between the tendons of my index and middle fingers. I couldn’t move them. The glass had to stay until I had antibiotics, painkillers, and the tools to safely stop the bleeding.

“You still alive, Rex?” Jenner glanced over me, then arched an eyebrow.

“Yes.” I tried to sit back, but no matter what I tried, something was inevitably driven deeper into my body.

She licked her lips, suddenly downcast. “You… see any reason that Mason was there with those freaks? Did they have him tied up, or anything?”

“I wish I could say that he’d been captured,” I said. “He was unfettered. The ritual was some kind of initiation for Vanya. He was just standing there, watching it.”

Jenner said nothing for some time. Talya reversed all the way down the drive and turned onto the street, an arm over the back of the driver’s seat and one hand on the wheel. She was gentle enough that I only winced a little.

“That ain’t my old man,” Jenner said, once we were on the street. “That thing I fought. It was wearing his skin, but that ain’t Mason.”

“Can’t disagree, Prez.” Zane was leaning against the window looking out. “What the hell can turn a Weeder into something… someone who looks and acts like that?”

“Morphorde,” Jenner said. “I don’t know what kind. John or Michael would have known.”

Zane grunted, and looked back at me over Jenner’s shoulders. “Why are we taking this guy? And what’s his name?”

“Vanya,” I replied, trying to breathe through the pain. The air in the car was close with the smell of blood and bodies in need of food, and I was momentarily aware that I was bleeding in the presence of three hungry big cats and… whatever Talya was. “He was in photos we found on computer. Vanya Kostyovych Kazopov… he is the Kommandant of Red Hook operation.”

“Wait. He’s the boss of the fucking Russian Mafia?” Jenner turned on me, her eyes wide and white.

“Not top boss. He is… middle management.” My English was failing me. I had to be hurt quite badly for my English to go. “Still important. Still pedirasti.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Jenner scrunched her hands into her face, and made a sound of frustration. “You know if any if that super-Spook can track him to the clubhouse?”

“I have no earthly idea,” I replied. My voice sounded strained, even to me. The punctures were oozing, leaking blood under my clothes. “Depends… on what type of mage The Deacon is.”

“The Deacon?” Zane echoed.

“That is what Vanya called him. He’s a… Temporalist, I think. Time mage.” I thought back to Kutkha’s instruction on the basic categories of Phitometry. “And evil magic, Pravamancy. Maybe Inotropy, magic with gravity. He’s surely an archmage.”

Jenner rubbed her hands. “Well, we’re going to have to go to Strange Kitty to pick up your medical supplies, and then you’re going to a safehouse. You, Duke, and Talya can babysit Lord Lardass and Sleeping Beauty while we meet with Ayashe about those photos. We can release your chubby friend into her custody after an interview or two.”

“Me?” Talya squeaked.

“What? It’s a safehouse. It’s a house that’s safe. I’ll send a couple guys with you to watch the place while you soften this guy up.”

“I have work tomorrow!”

Jenner sighed and rolled her eyes. “Come on, kid. You chose to sign on to the Tigers. This your job now, until we approve your petition.”

Talya stiffened in her seat. “Petition?”

“Yeah. You think you can just stroll into the club because you’re John’s Kid Wonder? You’re a petitioner right now. I ain’t even taught you how to ride a bike yet.”

“I grew up in the country. I know how to ride a motorcycle,” Talya replied, huffing her cheeks.

Jenner laughed, but compared to her usual shameless, raucous laugh, it was muted and stiff. “I mean a real bike, not one of those shitty little Russian putt-putts. We’ll build you a chopper that’s better than any vibrator you’ll ever own. It’ll hum so hard it’ll send you straight to Heaven.”

“Oh my god, Jenner.” Talya’s accent finally bled through to her otherwise-perfect English. “Shut up.”

“What? You haven’t ever gone and polished the pearl in public?”

“Polish the- No! Jenner, no!”

It bought a chuckling wheeze out of Duke, folded up beside her, and even a rueful smile from Zane.

We dropped Jenner off at Strange Kitty, got our things, and headed east and north. The safehouse was a tattoo parlor close to Strange Kitty, a small store on an unquiet street in Williamsburg. ‘Hand of Glory’ was written in looping font on the glass. The place was a bit nicer than the Bronx, in that most of the buildings hadn’t been set on fire at some point in the previous decade, but every window had bars and every storefront here had roller shutters with large, effective padlocks.

We pulled up at the curb: us in the big powder-blue Buick, Zane in another, darker blue car, and two other Tigers on their bikes, neither of whom wore the Big Cat Crew patch that identified the shapeshifters of the gang. With more room in the back, we’d brought my surgery kit with us. Talya carried it one-handed, the shotgun clutched in the other. She opened the path ahead for us all, as Duke took Angkor, I took myself and my cat, and the other three Tigers quickly and discreetly dragged Vanya – gagged and bound – from the trunk and inside the parlor.

“He goes downstairs, we go upstairs,” Zane said. “Go treat Rex and Angkor. We’ll take this guy down and chain him up.”

Vanya mumbled something dark and unintelligible, struggling as he was hauled off towards the back of the parlor and out of sight. Talya let us into a stairwell leading up to the next floor, a door that had once been green, but that was now a leprous mix of flaking colors and exposed wood. We entered a narrow L-shaped hall that smelled like old cigarettes and unwashed laundry. All of the rooms were to the left of the entry: a tiny open den with a kitchen connected by an arched doorway, two dingy bedrooms with fold-out beds, and an equally close and sweaty bathroom. That was where I directed Talya to place my tools.

“Home sweet home,” She trilled. She set the surgery kit down with a thump. “Do you need anything?”

“Maybe,” I replied. “But I can’t undress while you’re here. Send Duke to check in a couple minutes. If I’m dead, you know I cut something important.”

Her lips pursed for a moment, before she silently ‘Oh’d and then turned and left without another word.

Once the door was closed, I limped to the sink and fumbled for the tap, trying to push through the brainfog. When I looked at myself in the mirror on the back of the door, I saw why it was so difficult. All up, I was stuck with probably two feet of broken glass, plus or minus the smaller shards that bristled from my arms, chest and face like porcupine quills. My clothing was ripped to hell. The white shirt I’d worn under the jacket was now variegated pink and red: red where I was bleeding, pink where my sweat had tracked blood through the weave.

Gingerly, I began to take off what clothing I could, hanging the ruined jacket and torn shirt, cutting around the slacks and freeing them from around the punctures. When I was done, I grasped the piece of glass in my hand and pulled it free with a low, breathless snarl. The pain peaked, and then ebbed as blood pulsed sluggishly from the wound. I tugged the damp glove off to find my hand crusted dried blood that was liquefying as the new stuff flowed across my palm and ran down to patter on the floor. I wouldn’t be fighting anything for some time, not with this hand. I gingerly flexed my stiff fingers, and got a small spasm of motion from them. The nerve wasn’t severed, at least.

There was a knock on the door, and it opened to reveal Zane’s burly tattooed arm as he held the Wardbreaker out to me, grip-first, and waved it back and forth. “Hey, man. You forgot this.”

“Come in.” I was picking glass out of my face, dropping the pieces of it into the sink. They were stained, dirty-looking things, and not just because of the blood. The glass itself was grimy, with little particles of matter trapped inside. “How is Duke?”

“Fine. He’s a Weeder. They heal fast.”

“They?” The question was an absent one, thought out loud as I opened the kit and got the materials I needed to patch up my hand. Painkillers, first of all, and anti-inflammatories. Saline, antibiotics, dressings.

Zane sighed, a testy little sound. “We, whatever. How long do you think you’ll be?”

I glanced at him, and then returned to working on my palm. “Until I’m done.”

He looked like he was about to snap at me as he fought for his next words, but was apparently struck mute as he watched me pick a four-inch piece of glass out of my arm with forceps.

“Jenner’s called a meeting,” he said, thickly. “She’s mad, Alexi. Really mad. I think she’s going to do something stupid.”

“Gang politics.” What more was there to be said? It was the same in every gang, clique, mob and company. “Those with power always want more.”

Zane frowned, and looked down. “I know. Jenner’s good people, Alexi, but this has wrecked her. Seeing Mason like that… She blames Michael and John for all of this.”

“John’s dead,” I said. “I’m not certain why she blames him when he was murdered and her partner is still alive, however demented he may be.”

“Yeah. Zane watched me in the mirror while I dabbed styptic on the wounds in my face. It stung terribly, but the powder stopped the bleeding.

I supposed this was as good a time as any to bring up the fight. “So I needed to ask you som—”

He awkwardly and accidentally spoke at the same time as I did. “I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”

My hand froze, poised to dab the stinging powder onto the oozing cut just below my cheekbone.

“I uh… I lost people, too. I mean, have lost them.” Zane shuffled uncomfortably, massaging the flesh between thumb and index finger with the other hand. “Maybe not in the same way. But no one can talk about their deaths, you know, and no one ever does. Not without being fuckheads about it.”

I resumed my delicate work, eye ticcing as the styptic set the nerves in my face alight. “People here love to call for war, but they ignore the soldiers who die unless it’s politically useful.”

“Not Vets,” he said. “Gay men.”

I froze again, this time in confusion.

“You just struck a chord in me back there, I guess,” Zane shrugged, nervous and jerky. It was odd to see a man of his size in that kind of posture of defense. “You said you were angry that people were lying to you all the time. I… lied over breakfast that one time, after getting off the phone with Caleb.”

“I know,” I replied. “But I didn’t think to remark on it.”

He laughed uncomfortably. “Well, you have to admit that mafia guys generally aren’t real tolerant of anything outside of their zone. I know a few guys that got killed coming out of clubs and bars. People beat on them.”

I was unsure what to make of that information. I fell back on the default that I’d learned from growing up with Mariya and Vassily: Thank people for their time and at least pretend to be grateful. “Thank you. If I seem unresponsive, it’s because I am in a lot of pain.”

“No worries. I just figured I’d show you some honesty. Might be the last time I have the chance. No matter what Jenner decides, I have to back her.”

“You don’t have to back Jenner.” I stopped for a moment, turning my head to regard him with what I hoped was a steady eye. “It doesn’t matter if she’s an Elder or not. Power only exists when people comply without question.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” With a final uncertain smile, as brief as it was forced, Zane left me to the plink, plink of falling broken glass, and the frustrated recollection that I still had to talk to him before Saturday.

Healing was uncomfortable work, made more uncomfortable by the sudden emotional intimacy I’d neither wanted or expected from a man who was not yet my friend. My knowledge of homosexuality was limited to assertions by adamantly heterosexual muzhiki that gay men were cross-dressing, confused people who were dangerous to children and/or ‘turned’ in prison. Given what I now knew, their hatred of gays was as shallow and suspect as everything else the Organization accepted as being ‘right’. Anyone who could fuck and torture children didn’t have any right judging someone like Zane.

Grinding my teeth, I grasped the largest piece of glass in my leg and pulled it free, holding it up to the light to get a better look at it. I could see the same crackled texture within the material that I’d seen in the knife. Now that it was under normal lights, the pattern was far subtler… but as I studied it, looking for some reason why it was still strong enough to stab with when it looked like it should have crumbled, I noticed something.

The crackle was formed by tubules: tunnels, like a tiny ant colony. I waited, breathing through my teeth as I fixed my gaze. There were things crawling inside the tubes, tiny translucent mites so small that they were invisible unless you got within nose distance of the surface.

The vivid image of Mason vomiting broken glass flashed through my mind, and I stared down at the pile of discarded, bloody shards in the sink as realization dawned. Mason’s chest wound. The knife. Duke.

“Meni tse treba yak zuby v dupi!” I threw it down with a clatter, and stumbled off at a limping run, Wardbreaker in hand.