She’d told me she wouldn’t interfere. I’d told her that I was cutting out the rot.
Did this mean that, in her estimation, Gail didn’t constitute rot? That the ones who remained did?
I looked at the four who remained, my eyes averted from the blonde woman who was almost definitely a Duchamp and almost certainly an enchantress. All the same, she might have sensed something, because she turned back to look over her shoulder twice as I examined the other members of the group. I was forced to step silently back.
No, that was it. One member of the group. He wore a wedding ring. He was connected to her.
Once I knew the rules, I could take a closer look, avoiding looking at the husband and wife pair. Off to the side was one man, not fat but solidly built, with a leather jacket that made him look even bulkier, and a dark, wiry beard that didn’t go with the close-cropped hair on his scalp. He resembled the husband in the pair. A brother, perhaps.
The other man looked out of place compared to the two guys, who looked very much like bikers who had cleaned themselves up but couldn’t give up the general trappings. He had neatly parted brown hair, sharp eyes, and a cleft chin that might have been attractive if it wasn’t so pointed. He wore a scarf and a stylish, form-fitting jacket with four brass buttons arranged in a square, his pants cut to a slim fit, and he carried…
I saw his implement. A crystal ball with a skull in the center, tucked in the crook of his arm.
Looking at it, I was immediately reminded of the Bane. The undead thing with scythe-arms. A tormented soul.
Gail’s husband. Joyce had separated wife from husband. She’d done it very deliberately.
It was a leap in logic, but it somehow felt right.
“The tree looks like it’s going out. Something’s cutting down branches,” one of the large, bearded men said.
“The fire in the back, though,” Jan commented.
I hoped the fire hadn’t raged out of control. It shouldn’t have, but stranger things had happened.
My eye passed over Jan as she spoke. Once more, she looked back over her shoulder.
“Janice?”
“Something’s there.”
“Sandra said the Apple of Discord would concentrate attention on the house.”
“She did,” Janice said. “But the hairs on the back of my neck keep standing up. Something is there.”
Collectively, they turned.
“Was it something that affected Joyce?”
“Maybe,” Jan said, peering, as if she could make me out. “Maybe you were right. If the Thorburn situation is resolved…”
“The Sorcerer?” her husband asked.
I stepped further back into shadow.
Still, as the men fanned out in front, they kept moving in my general direction. I’d hopped the fence into a little bike path or a narrow road that was only a car’s length wide, and short of hopping over the fence, which would certainly get me spotted, I had nowhere to go but back, further down the unlit path.
I saw Jan draw an athame. Hers wasn’t wavy like Mags’ was, but curved like a crescent, the blade on the wrong side.
Images of faces flickered between the orb-encased skull and the necromancer’s fingertips, as he caressed his implement.
The two bearded men simply looked as though they might be able to kick my ass without the benefit of being practitioners.
As they shifted position to enter the alley, I saw Green Eyes behind them, crawling across the street.
Jan’s keen awareness alerted her. She turned.
I switched immediately from retreat to attack, striding forward.
They stopped in their tracks as they saw me.
The two bearded brothers broke into grins, the one in the lead first, then the one just behind his left shoulder.
Before I’d even finished thinking out the word ‘ominous’, Green Eyes had lunged. Jan caught her before the mermaid could bite, hands on Green Eyes’ upper arms, pulling her head back before the mermaid opened her mouth impossibly wide and then slammed her teeth together, a matter of an inch or two from her face.
Jan’s husband, beaded guy number one, was distracted by the noise, looking back.
Just in time to see Green Eyes bring her tail up and around Jan’s waist, encircling most of it, pushing shirt and jacket up, tail touching skin.
There was a term for what happened next. Working as a handyman, learning my trade, I’d heard the stories. Wear a ring while operating a lathe, or wear a watch when you miss a step on a ladder and get it hooked on a surface, well, sometimes you wound up degloving yourself. The angle and hardness of the ring or the watch trumped the tensile strength of skin, and the skin just… slid right off.
I’d never, however, heard of someone having most of their midsection degloved. The tail was strong, the hooked scales barbed, and Jan simply fell over, like she couldn’t process what had happened.
The necromancer reached out, and the images of faces danced out, much like a flash of electricity. Green Eyes took one to the collarbone, reeled, and then disentangled herself, ducking under a fence, a canvas of bloody skin still hooked to her tail.
The two black-bearded men were still caught off guard by what had happened. The one in the lead headed back to rescue his wife, while the one behind him focused on me. They almost collided with each other, in their attempt to deal with the issue.
My new opponent shouted something guttural, almost musical in single syllables, bringing his hand back as if he was going to swing a punch. “Moc, zlo, bru!”
I stepped back, expecting him to fling something my way. I didn’t expect an actual punch. His fist accelerated, and he covered far more ground than I would have expected, slamming his hand into the middle of my chest.
“Zlo, bru, ohenn!”
I hadn’t yet caught my balance when flame appeared, a roiling explosion a screaming face at the front of the forefront of it.
Rather than get burned, I let myself fall. The flame passed overhead.
“Ohenn, dolhu!”
The fire seemed to slow in the air, as if the explosion was suddenly happening in slow motion. The dark parts and the bright parts seemed to become more distinct.
The flame dropped, almost liquid, congealed. Napalm-like. Burning oil.
I rolled to one side. It splashed into the ice and snow where I’d been lying a moment before.
But in rolling, I found myself lying between fire and fence, my heels almost touching the wing-tipped toes of the Necromancer’s boots.
He hit me with distilled echoes, every single one of them a dying memory.
What I experienced was very similar to having my vision go dark, darkness creeping in around the edges, the vision that remained getting spotty. Thing was, it happened all at once. I might as well have been hurled into a deep, dark well, with only meager light at the top.
I could hear the Drains, the wind whistling out of sync with the creaking of unstable architecture in the Tenements, distant howling and screaming, the gnashing of machinery, faint songs or tunes that might have been a carnival. Disconnected from it all, I was aware of the existence of some monstrous bird-bat-thing, only partially formed of a dozen fluttering spirit-hearts. A shadow of a very dark thing, making itself known.
I didn’t deal with demons when it would have been a hundred times fucking easier. I didn’t deal with the lawyers. Why do you think I’d deal with you?
I had to claw my way back to reality. Out of the well, past the darkness that creeped in around the edges of my vision.