Stained Glass

Chapter 39

The reedy old man, false paragon Elder of the Four Fires, wore a black turtleneck and a shoulder holster. His hair was tied back. He was pointing the muzzle of the Wardbreaker at my head with an uncertain hand.

“Alexi Sokolsky,” he said. His face was graven and deeply lined with fatigue. “The Deacon warned me about you. I tried to put a stop to this nonsense. I tried being nice. I tried to get Ayashe to take you in. I respected you, because I know what it’s like to live in Russia during times of crisis. I did it once, long ago. Now look at this mess you’ve gotten yourself into. No one had to die like this.”

“Times of crisis? You mean during the chush’ sobach’ya?” I said. “The Revolution? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“Of course,” he replied, stiffly.

I laughed, for the first time in months and months. I couldn’t help it. His face became more and more graven.

“During the chush’ sobach’ya? ‘The Bullshit’? Really?” Once the laughter started, I couldn’t stop. “Bozhe miy, everything about you is a lie. You can’t even hold a gun straight.”

He looked down his nose at me, nostrils flaring with rage, and said nothing in reply.

“Pseudologica Fantasia,” I said. “Pathological lying. You weren’t in the Navy. You weren’t anything. The only thing you are is a good liar, and that just makes you a piece of shit. You’ve never even killed someone yourself.”

“I’m about to,” he said.

“Preserving your fantasy life was worth the lives of how many children, exactly?” I crawled back a bit, the knife in hand. “Twenty? A hundred?”

“They have to learn all of this sooner or later,” Spotted Elk replied, shifting his finger on the trigger. “When you’re as old as I am—”

I rolled my eyes. It hurt, but it was worth it.

“—and you see all the things HuMankind is willing to do to itself, you realize that none of it matters anyway.” His voice firmed, trembling with gathering anger. “I was in the trenches in World War One, I was in the Inquisition and I was hunted by them. No one ever noticed me watching them. After the first hundred cycles, I stopped pretending I was human. They’ll be reborn no matter what happens. Death is a lesson we all have to learn.”

While he was lecturing me, Jenner and Mason’s fight raged. They were chasing each other towards the side of the road, limping with ragged, gaping bloody wounds that weren’t healing. Beyond them, it was a bloodbath. Bikers were using the emptied escort cars for cover against the gunmen firing on them. Neither side were properly trained or properly armed. Three of the black cars were somehow on fire.

“What a load of bullshit. Rape and murder aren’t lessons appropriate for children,” I replied, focusing back on Spotted Elk. “You never cared about them. You knew what Lily and Dru were doing, and you didn’t stop it. You’re not even a shapeshifter.”

“I am the oldest and strongest Elder in this country!” he spat.

I flared my eyes and leaned forward. “Do it, then. Transform and eat me. Go on.”

His face contorted with anger. “I don’t have to prove anything to the likes of you.”

I curled my lip. “You. Can’t. Change.”

John scoffed, but he was sweating. It was pouring down his face, running off his nose. “You think you’re a killer. You think you’re all that. You’re just a loser. Everyone knows what I am, what I did for this community and for the tribes. I’ll tell them that I was kidnapped. They’ll believe me, and you’ll be dead.”

“Then fucking do it, suka!” I struggled up higher. Zane and Angkor were surely almost within firing range.

His finger trembled on the trigger. “You don’t want to be alive when the world is the way it is. It’s all wrong.”

“DO IT!” I roared.

John Spotted Elk was panting. He cupped the butt of the pistol, but he couldn’t control the weapon and he was confused as to why he couldn’t press the trigger. I knew it. He’d never shot a damn thing in his life.

The sweat dripping from his nose froze in mid-air, hanging like a tiny crystal. I couldn’t move… or that I could, but only with extraordinary slowness. My heart thundered in my ears. The blood bubbling in my chest and throat popped and gurgled in stop motion. Only my mind remained at normal speed.

From the direction, a figure strode forward. My eyes couldn’t track him fast enough: he phased in and out on his way to us up the road, past the truck, and around. His robe boiled shadow behind him. It was wet with blood, stirring like the hood of a jellyfish underwater. Only the mask was a constant: bone white, streaked with grime. The only features were three cruel, black slits.

“All this blood and misery,” The Deacon said. He looked down at me. “What a terrible tragedy, Alexi. It’s almost as if nothing cares about life, and living.”

I tried to speak, but my jaw wouldn’t move to form words. The Deacon took something out of his robe. At first, I thought it was a weird knife – another StainedGlass weapon, maybe – but I had all the time in the world to observe the yellowish, serrated arrowhead-like thing as he turned it around in his hand, and plunged it into John Spotted Elk’s back. He put both hands against it, ramming it in deep as the other man’s face slowly morphed from fear to agony.

“So now we’re here, you should listen to what I have to say.” The Deacon continued to work the weapon into John’s body, levering it into his frozen form. “You did everything I foresaw, and for that, I thank you. We are one step closer to the final showdown with a great evil… and you played your part to the end. The very end.”

How the hell was he holding a field like this? I fought to bring the knife around, but it was like trying to move through resin.

“For the service you have done, I’m going to show you mercy. Uncommon mercy. It’s something very few people deserve.” The Deacon reached out, and took the Wardbreaker from John’s hand as his fingers loosened on it and his skin began to streak through with thick violet veins, bulging and creeping under the skin of his throat and face. “Unlike this gentleman here. He’s a liar… a man so proud that he’d rather make himself up than live. There’s a reason that pride is the greatest sin in the Bible. It’s pernicious. You start thinking you can do anything, be anyone, but it’s just not true. We’re always stuck with ourselves, alone.”

Replying was out of the question. I was still trying to get up and run.

“It’s funny how things work out. When Jana made contact with Lev Moskalysk, I told him I would have preferred to meet you instead of Vanya, but I was warned that you would violently reject what the Father has to offer mages like you and me.” The Deacon pulled his glove off and pointed the weapon down at my face, gathering a deep breath. Beads of blood appeared on the pale skin of his forearm, drawn up by the wave of arcane power I felt rising in the air around us. The liquid collected like mercury, then slid up along his hand and filled the grooves and sigils that were engraved along the barrel. Each one of them flared to life in slow motion, burning a baleful red. “It’s a shame. You do good work. I remember this gun, for example… nice toy. We used it to get into your apartment. All of those books you wrote, all those instructions you left on your Phitometry… In another life, you’d have been my apprentice. You could purge the world of the filthiness you hate.”

I wanted to retort, to say something in reply, but all I could do was observe as he dropped the muzzle down. John was open-mouthed now, eyes bulging, his hands very slowly reaching for his face as he fell to his knees.

“But you’re too proud. That’s the problem with self-taught mages. You evolve in solitude, and know that you’re better than everyone else.” The Deacon’s voice was warm, even friendly, and I was sure he was smiling behind the mask. “But even so, I admire the will to power, Alexi. You tried for a high score before you lost the game, even took out a few other players. Better luck next time.”

As I fought to react, The Deacon leveled the Wardbreaker in a steady one-handed grip, and shot me in the stomach.