Vicious Grace

TWENTY-FOUR

I didn’t think, didn’t consider. I dropped back a few inches behind my eyes, and my body leaped forward, shoulder hitting the rider’s side. It was like trying to tackle a wall, but the haugsvarmr stumbled. I swung around, driving my elbow in toward the small of its back, but the rider had already moved. It wore David’s body like a shawl. I could see the force of its will making the air shimmer, heat waves off a highway, and I noticed again that David was really a very large man. Ex scrambled backward, cursing furiously. Kim and Aubrey stood caught between fleeing and fighting. The rider’s hand shot out, grabbing me by the head, lifting me, and tossing me across the room like I weighed about a pound. I landed on my back, the wind knocked out of me.

While I tried to sit up, the rider turned its head, slowly taking each of us in. David’s flesh was changing under its influence: the skin taking on a starlit glow, the mouth starting to protrude. I’d seen riders transform their mounts before, the spirit’s nature curdling skin and blood and bone. This was no different. When it spoke, its voice was soft, friendly, and genteel. It made my skin crawl.

“So close, daughter-thing,” it said. “You were so close. Do you know what I thought? That you’d wrap yourself in the Mark of Forcas and hide until I slipped my leash.”

It laughed, a low and rueful sound. Its eyes shifted across the room where it had thrown me, its gaze skittering off me without quite managing to connect. I felt a stab of profound cold at the small of my back. It still couldn’t see me. I tried not to move, afraid that any sound would give me away.

“I looked through every pair of eyes I could find in this piss-pot Carcer, and then I turned away. I thought you were my second problem. And you were doing this. It was good. Oh, it was very good. I am all admiration and fear. Trembling,” it said, laughter in its voice. It pulled one leg up from the grave hole and onto the shattered floor. David’s jeans shredded when the rider bent its knee. It was getting bigger.

Ex crouched, and the rider turned to fix him with its gaze. It moved so quickly, it seemed like a jump cut made real.

“I know what you’ve got on those nails, boy,” it said. “Come close to me with them, and I’ll put them through your eyes.”

“Leave him alone,” I said. The rider’s attention snapped back to me, homing in on the sound of my voice.

“You care about the meat? She did too.” It stepped up, the concrete crumbling under its weight. “We don’t have to do this, little one. You’ve fought bravely and well. I respect you. But it’s over now. You can see it’s over.”

It took a step toward me, and my body moved, curling over until I was on toes and fingertips, tight as a spring. Aubrey and Kim were on the far side of the grave. He had a length of pipe in his hand: Ex’s improvised hammer. Don’t be stupid, I thought, trying to press the words through the air and into his brain.

“There are only two ways this ends,” it went on. “You enter into a pact with me, or I bind you. Ally or slave, daughter-thing. It makes no difference to me.”

It was lying. The difference between pact and binding was the difference between contract law and slavery. If it was offering up a pact with me, it wasn’t sure of the fight’s outcome. I grabbed onto the thought that there might be some hope, something I could do that would defeat the beast. I didn’t know what that was.

The rider took another step toward me. Aubrey handed the pipe to Kim and drew in a deep breath. The rider’s head snapped up a degree, and then back toward Aubrey. The glowing eyes went round, and Aubrey’s mouth opened wider than I thought possible.

The Oath of the Abyss rang out, Aubrey’s soul forged into a weapon and shaking loose from his flesh. The only other time I’d heard it, he’d been saving my life. The rider stumbled, glowing fragments of its flesh skirling out from it like fireflies. It bared its teeth and screamed back, the roar of its voice drowning out even the most powerful magic any of us knew. The walls shook and dust swirled down from the ceiling. In the lamplight, it looked almost like snow.

Aubrey hadn’t knocked the rider out, but he had knocked it back. This was my opportunity. Maybe my only one.

I felt myself jump, landing hard on the rider’s back. It staggered forward as I wrapped my arm around its huge neck and squeezed. With my ears still ringing, I felt its chuckle more than I heard it. My legs locked onto the thing’s back, holding it as close as a lover. Its skin shifted and bumped against me. I tightened my grip and hauled, fighting to cut off its air. If it needed air. My shoulders ached with the effort, and I felt something in me begin to weaken.

This, I thought, was the moment. Chogyi Jake had warned me, it seemed like a lifetime ago, that my protections would fail. And now I thought I felt them starting to go. It felt like despair. Desperately, the small part of me that watched the fighting tried to pull my qi up from my belly and press it out into my arms. It seemed weak and distant, a voice shouting in a windstorm. I closed my eyes, trying again. Not to control my body. The last thing I wanted now was Jayné-the-white-belt to start driving. I only pushed to feed the thing that was happening to me, support the spells and wards.

And the weakness and despair began to fade.

The rider lifted a huge hand. Its skin was black as the void and swimming with points of nauseating light. Its impossible fingers dug into my back.

“You’re weak,” I said. “Your days are gone.”

It tugged at me, trying to rip me free, but I was immovable. Something in its throat made a repulsive crunching sound under my arm, and it started to choke. The rider pulsed, its multiple soul gathering itself to break out of David’s body and flow back into the hospital and out of reach. I wrapped myself around it, making a net with my will. A prison. I was doing alone and on the fly what the four of us had struggled to do together.

I had the feeling it would work.

“I bind you, Daevanam Daeva. I bind you to the blood which you betrayed,” I shouted.

It swung me around, beating me against the walls. I felt the stab of a breaking rib like it was happening to someone else. Something like battle rage had flowed into me, lifting me up, widening me out past the confines of my body. The room around us seemed brighter now, even though there was no light. The rider spun, clawing at my arms and drawing blood. Ex and Kim were there too, beating at it with fists and pipe. Aubrey lay at the graveside, exhausted from his efforts. The rider swung hard, bending at the waist and knocking my head against the wall so hard my vision narrowed. For a moment, I was choking the man from my dream. I could smell the Brylcreem in his hair. He stumbled, falling to one knee. My feet hit the floor, and I took him by his collar and the waistband of his pants, lifting him over my head. Ex and Kim stepped back, their eyes wide and frightened. I took two steps to the edge of the grave and swung the body down hard enough that I was afraid I’d broken the casket. The dark wood held. I raised the lid up in one hand, keeping the other on the rider’s chest.

And it was David Souder again. I could feel the rider within him; it hadn’t gotten free. It had thrown its horse toward me like a shield. Human eyes looked up at me in horror.

“Wait!” he shouted.

I slammed the lid down.

“The nails,” I said. “Give me the nails.”

Ex didn’t hesitate. Seven long, silvery nails. The coffin lid thumped, David trying to push it open, but with his arms pinned to his sides, he had no leverage. I put the heads of the nails in my mouth like a carpenter.

“Kim!” Ex said. “The pipe? Where’s the pipe?”

I didn’t have time. I knelt on the coffin, my weight keeping it in place, and put the first nail at the lid’s dark corner. There was a rough hole where the previous one had been. I moved half an inch to the left, set the sharp point down. I gathered my will, drawing the power into my hand until I felt like I was about to catch fire. I screamed and drove my open palm onto the nail head. The metal slid home with a single blow. My palm was bleeding and bright with pain. I didn’t care.

“Oh my God,” Kim said. I ignored her. I drove the second nail home. I could feel the coffin grabbing onto the metal and its cantrips, weaving a seal between box and lid that was more than the simple physical connection. After the third nail, David’s struggles couldn’t even make the coffin shudder.

“Stop,” Ex said. I looked at him, almost understanding the word. It was like something with a cognate in my language. “Stop it, Jayné. We can drive the rest of them with a hammer. Just stop.”

Like a switch being turned off, the strength left me. Every muscle in my body trembled, and I looked around the room. It was like I was just waking from a nightmare, or just falling into one. I tried to say something, but there were still four nails in my mouth. I took them out, amazed by the blood soaking my hand and sleeve. My right palm looked like hamburger. I began to feel the pain, something huge and far away, but coming close quickly.

Had I done that? Driven nails with my bare hands?

“You beat it,” Kim said, awe in her voice. “You really beat it. How the hell did you—”

“We’ll finish it,” Ex said.

“Give me the pipe,” I said.

“We can—”

“Rider’s trapped. In there. Get a gurney. Chogyi Jake. ER.”

Ex looked back at the stairs. He’d forgotten. I couldn’t blame him, but I didn’t have time to argue about it.

“Go,” I said. “I can finish this.”

“Use a hammer,” Ex said. “Kim. Clear the barricade. I’ll find something to carry him on.”

“Aubrey—” Kim said.

“I’m fine,” Aubrey said. It wasn’t true. I could hear the buzz in his voice, the fever, the price of magic. “I’ll be fine. I can help.”

Kim handed me the pipe, and they stumbled up the stairway, Aubrey leaning against her, Ex alone with his shoulders hunched against his own fatigue. The coffin beside me bumped and shuddered. I looked over at the black planes. The ceremony wasn’t finished, but it was close. The danger had passed. Only a few ugly last details remained. I lifted the pipe in my bloody hand, picked up a nail. Four more. Just four more.

“Jayné! Stop!” David’s screams seemed to come from much farther away than an inch of black-stained wood could account for. “Please, wait. Something’s wrong. It didn’t work.”

I set the nail. My hands shook, and the pipe wasn’t a great substitute for a real hammer. It took three tries before the metal started biting into the wood.

“It’s not in here. Jayné, it’s not in here. It got out before you closed the lid.”

I hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was true or a ploy to trick me into freeing it. The lanterns hissed out their steady light. The air didn’t carry the oppressive, filthy feeling that it had before. I set the fifth nail and steadied myself. When I brought the pipe down, it only drove the nail about half an inch in, but the rider roared; David’s pleading voice turned to a stream of impotent rage and despair. I sat on the coffin to keep it from shifting and spoiling my aim. When the nail was in, the shaking was less violent, the shrieking more muffled.

My hand was slick with blood and every swing of the fake, improvised hammer felt like the nail was going into me. Above me, Ex shouted something, and Kim’s voice was a muttering reply. Something crashed, and Ex’s voice sounded more pleased. The wheels of an ancient gurney squeaked in protest and then faded. They were getting Chogyi Jake to help. My friends were leaving me and finding safety. I was alone in the deepest hole of Grace Memorial. Down in the dark, with only the lanterns, the sacrifice, and the beast.

I didn’t know when I’d started weeping. Maybe I had been all along. Driving the last nails became a long, slow torture. The pain in my hand was constant now, the flares that came with the blows hardly noticeable through the constant roar of exposed nerves and torn flesh. I didn’t have the strength, so I soldiered on with determination instead. I couldn’t believe that a few minutes ago I’d done the same job with one bare-handed strike.

The screams and threats floating up from the coffin felt light and powerless as fluff. I went through the punishing steps of my chore almost without noticing them. When the blow sank the last nail, I stopped for a minute. I wanted to collapse, to fall asleep and never wake up. And never dream. I’d been sandblasted, left outside in a desert storm, shocked and abraded until I was clean and pure and skinless. I told myself it would pass. A few days to recover, and I wouldn’t be empty. My brain would start working again. I would be able to feel something that didn’t hurt. I watched myself crying from a distance, as if the sobs weren’t related to me. The coffin still let out muted knocks and thuds, and far, far away, David Souder was screaming. He’d be screaming for the rest of his life. The best I could do now was make sure that wasn’t a very long time.

I stumbled up out of the grave, banging my shin against the crumbling concrete edge. I found a roll of gauze and a bandage pack in a yellowed paper seal, sterilized and marked a year before my mother was born. I opened it, pressing the old cotton against the new wounds on my hand. It sucked up the blood hungrily. The gauze held it in place. It felt almost like I had a lace glove. I didn’t have the strength to laugh at the incongruity. I hauled myself to the wall. The shovel David had used to dig the coffin out lay on the ground beside Declan Souder’s scattered bones.

“Well,” I said to the empty skull, “we did it. Just like the old days, eh? Evil defeated. Hell of a price, but we paid it. Go us.”

The skull didn’t do anything. I hadn’t expected it to. After all, it was just a lump of calcium phosphate. It didn’t have dreams or hopes or regrets. It didn’t have to live with what it had done. Still, I turned its eye sockets toward the wall. I didn’t want it to see me.

I picked up the shovel.

“Hey.”

Ex stood on the stairway. The shadows clung to his eyes, and his cheeks looked sharper than I remembered them. Pale hair had escaped his pony-tail, spilling down his face.

“What?” I said. It was the best I could manage.

“I got them on their way to the ER. Aubrey and Kim are with him. There’s nothing I can do there.”

“Nothing here either,” I said. “One shovel.”

I didn’t want him here. I didn’t want anyone here. I wanted my crimes committed in the dark, without witnesses.

“Never heard of taking turns?” Ex asked, coming down the stairs. “What kind of day care did you go to as a kid?”

“Don’t do this,” I said. “Please. Go. I have to—”

I was crying again. I hated it, but I could no more stop than I could will myself not to breathe.

“You have to what?” Ex said.

“I have to kill him,” I said, then folded. My knees gave way gracefully, and I hunched on the floor, supported only by the shovel. The words kept spilling out of my mouth. “I have to kill him. Oh God, I have to kill him.”

“Give me the shovel,” he said.

“No.”

“I can do this for you,” he said. His voice was so soft. So gentle. He wanted so badly to spare me this. To spare me something. Anything.

“No,” I said. The anger in my voice surprised me, but it also gave me a last sip of strength. “Don’t make this easy. Don’t you dare make this easy.”

Ex smiled. He understood. So maybe his being here wasn’t so bad after all.

“Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”

He held out his right hand, and I took it with my left. My legs were rubber and string. We walked together, side by side, to the edge of the grave. The rider was screaming obscenities somewhere. And when it wasn’t, David’s weaker voice wailed piteously. I wasn’t doing him any favors by waiting.

Ex stepped away from me, standing at the coffin’s head. He took something out of his pocket—a bottle of something that looked like olive oil—opened it, and poured it onto the coffin lid. Then he put his hands out, palms down toward the grave. His voice was low and resonant and rich. Almost like he was singing a dirge.

“Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam miserecoridiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per visum.” With this oil and His own gracious glory, may God forgive you those sins which you have committed by sight.

Last rites. He was giving David last rites. There was no magic in the words, no sense of the human will bending the world to account. But maybe there was something, even if it was only hope and respect. I sank the shovel into the pile of dirt, lifted, and poured it onto the coffin. Then another. David screamed every time more dirt struck the lid. I closed my eyes and kept going.

“Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam miserecoridiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per audtiotum.”

It took me half an hour, but I filled the grave. I buried an innocent man alive. At some point, the screaming stopped being loud enough to hear and became something I only imagined.

It sounded just the same.