Harsh Gods (23 page)

“I trust you, Wingy,” she whispered.

I could see the beads of the rosary where they twined around the prominent bones of her wrist. It took everything I had not to simply rip them away, but that would wreck the trust I’d gained, and I needed every shred of it for what I planned to do once Terhuziel’s token was out of the way.

Licking dry lips, I swallowed almost as hard as she had. Cutting him out of my head had sucked. I hoped I understood the technique well enough not to give her a stroke.

“He’s lying to you, Halley,” I repeated. “He’s lying, and he only wants to hurt you. Give me the rosary, and I’ll show you how to make him go away for good.”

With the xylophone rattle of ceramic beads, she slid the rosary slowly from her wrist. Depositing it on the mattress in front of me, she whipped her hand back under the covers without another word.

Beside me, Father Frank expelled a pent-up breath. Worry stitched deep seams in his face.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Now I cut every tie he’s ever made to her.”

Lying there against the pale expanse of the sheet, the little coil of pink and green beads looked harmless enough, but the minute I touched Halley’s rosary, there was no mistaking Terhuziel’s token. I could feel his twisted, alien mind pressing against the raw spots where I’d cut his presence out of my head. It stirred unpleasant memories from the incident in the museum.

I slammed down on every shield I had practiced over the past few months, fighting the impulse to hurl the beads across the room.

“Playing on her devotion to her grandfather. That’s low,” Father Frank growled. “I hope you hurt this bastard good.”

I held the gaudy string of thick ceramic beads closer to the soft light of the call button mounted near the bed. Expecting to find the Name scribbled on the back of the plastic crucifix, I saw only a MADE IN CHINA stamp. Then I went decade by decade, inspecting each individual bead.

In the five decades of her rosary, a sequence of ten green beads marked the ten Hail Mary prayers. Carefully tied knots separated each bead. At the end of each decade was a broad, flat bead with the raised pattern of a rose stamped on one side. Shell pink, it sat between two larger knots. That was where the faithful would pray the Our Father before moving onto another set of ten Hail Marys.

The Our Father bead shimmered with an opalescent coating, so the ceramic looked more like mother-of-pearl. As I turned the bead around on its string, a slightly deeper pink caught my eye. Closer to fuchsia and riddled with round specks of glitter, the darker color picked out the first symbol of Terhuziel’s Luwian Name in painstakingly delicate strokes.

“Nail polish. Fuck me running,” I muttered. “She painted it on with nail polish.”

Father Frank leaned over my shoulder, squinting at the prayer beads in my hand.

“First time I’ll admit I need bifocals,” he grumbled.

Smooth ceramic whispered against my calluses as I advanced to the next decade. Sure enough, the second glyph was painted on the back of the next Our Father bead. I held it up closer to Father Frank, though with the dim lighting in the room, I didn’t expect that he would see it.

“As long as she wore this, Terhuziel could reach her, even if she was nowhere near his domain,” I explained, “but at some point she had to enter his sphere of influence for him to notice her. Where did she go, around the time her grandfather died?”

I set the prayer beads onto the nightstand, unwilling to handle them any further. Smashing them seemed like the best course of action, but that was going to make a lot of noise—and the ass-ogling night nurse was sure to come running. Maybe Lil had something useful tucked away in that purse-of-holding she toted around.

“The funeral, of course,” Father Frank responded. “Before that, she visited him twice at the hospital. They had him at the Cleveland Clinic following a massive stroke.”

Under her covers, Halley whimpered, then tentatively extended a hand. She pawed at where the rosary had been.

“I miss Papaw.”

Father Frank moved his hand within her orbit. Her fingers fluttered near his briefly, then alighted for a swift, consoling touch. I wondered how much she read from the priest through that contact—and, given his ties to me, how much he was able to sense in return.

“The guy who brought Terhuziel into this country is a doctor,” I said. “He was with Doctors Without Borders in Syria, but maybe he also worked at the Clinic. Bobby will know. What about the funeral?”

Father Frank shook his head. “They didn’t go through Holy Rosary. That was all her father’s side of the family. I can ask Tammy once my cell’s back online.” He avoided mentioning that he’d worn the battery down with useless calls to me all day. I knew enough to feel a pang of guilt.

“A cemetery’s a good possibility. Plenty of statues,” I mused, “but not very defensible. The Rephaim are used to temples. I can’t see this guy settling for some rinky-dink mausoleum. Not with his ego.”

Halley patted Father Frank’s hand, and then rolled onto her side under the covers. A moment later, she lifted an edge to reveal part of her face. “I tried to talk to Papaw when they put him in the ground. Are you mad at me, Wingy?”

“Why would I be mad at you?” I asked.

She hid her face against the mattress for a moment, then looked up again, making eye contact briefly through the tangle of her hair.

“Because I let Whisper Man start talking to me.”

“I’m mad at him, Halley, not you. I—”

The door swung open and Lil burst in. Her gray eyes flashed fiercely in the dark.

“What the hell is taking so long?” she growled.

Halley squeaked and clapped her hands to her ears. Father Frank shot Lil a sour expression.

“Cool it, Lil,” I said. “You’re scaring the kid.”

“I just had to burn my trust charm to get that nurse off my back. She’s not an idiot—she knows it doesn’t take this long to sign a damned form.”

“Halley’s skittish,” I answered. “We can’t rush this.”

“I was saving that charm,” Lil snarled. “You owe me, Anakim.”

“Put it on my tab,” I replied.

She glowered at me, all teeth and fury.

Halley pulled the covers back over her face, scooting away till her back hit the railing of the bed.

“Now look what you did,” I grumbled.

“Ten minutes, Anakim,” she gritted. “You take any longer than that, and I hit the Whitethorn address by myself.”

“You keep talking like that, and it will take another ten minutes just to calm her down again,” Father Frank warned.

Lil narrowed her eyes in his direction. I expected a scathing retort, but all she offered was a throaty, “Hrmph.”

“If you’re bored out there, take this,” I said.

Scooping up the rosary beads, I tossed Terhuziel’s token at her. It traced an elegant arc of pink and green across the room. Without so much as a glance, Lil snatched it from the air once it neared her. The instant her fingers closed round the thing, she nearly dropped it.

“Warn a girl next time,” she growled. She held the offensive item out stiffly, pinching the bottom of the crucifix between the nails of her forefinger and thumb.

“I trust you know how to break it?”

An eager gleam lit her eyes. “I can do that.”

“Quietly,” I suggested.

“Of course.” The smile she flashed carried its own wind chill factor.

“Good. Make with the smashy.” I turned back to where Halley cowered on the bed. “I could use one less complication for what I’m about to try.”

Lil started pulling the door shut behind her. “Ten minutes,” she reminded us before it fully closed. Father Frank scowled at the space she had occupied.

“You seriously trust that woman?” Disapproval was thick in his tone.

“With the kind of enemies I’ve got, I’m not sure I trust anyone,” I sighed, “but for now, she’s helping. I’ll take it.” A muscle in his cheek ticked as he clenched his jaw, but he held his silence.

From the hallway came a dull crunching sound, like glass ground under the heel of a boot. All too readily I could picture Lil dancing a wild Tarantella on the Rephaim token. The sound was accompanied by a backwash of power that battered against my shields. Halley twitched. The room filled with the cloying, sick stink of dead worms after a hard rain.

“You told her to break it,” Halley cried accusingly from within the depths of her blanket cocoon.

“I did,” I admitted, “but can you hear Whisper Man any more?”

She held her breath, listening.

“He’s real quiet now.”

“But you can still hear him?” Father Frank asked. He turned a worried frown to me. “I thought he was getting at her through that thing. Why can she still hear him?”

“The token was the easy part,” I admitted. A twist of anxiety knotted in my chest, slowly winding its way through my guts.

The old priest worked to hide his concern, but I felt it clearly enough. Halley peeked out from under the covers, watching us from the corner of the lone eye she dared to expose. I had counted on her listening. It was easier than trying to work her up to have the conversation directly.

“He’s been weaving ties into her, like fishhooks in her brain,” I explained. “I can’t say how many exactly, but he’s been at it for weeks. Chances are, he’s in deep.”

Father Frank clenched his fists in his lap and regarded them gravely.

“But you know how to fix it,” he said.

Halley had pushed far enough out of her cocoon to expose her whole face. Now she held the blankets tightly at her chin so they wrapped around her hair like a veil. Her gaze darted between the padre and me. I turned my full attention back to Father Frank before she caught me looking.

“That’s the thing,” I said. “I can’t fix it.”

The old priest’s stiff back slumped just a little.

“That’s not to say it can’t be fixed,” I amended quickly. “But she’s the one who has to do it. It can’t be me.”

“You can help her at least?”

I glanced again at Halley. This time I waited for our eyes to meet. She couldn’t hold my gaze for long, but neither did she try to hide her face.

“I can help her, if she lets me.”

My own head still felt raw from where I’d slashed away the vicarious tether I’d picked up from Fish-Knife Lady. I had no idea how Halley would fare when it came to cutting his connections to her.

“It’s not going to be easy,” I added. “I can’t do it from out here. She’ll have to let me into her head, and even then I don’t know exactly how well things will go.” I drew a breath, surprised when it didn’t shake. “I can tell you, whatever happens when we cut him out, the things he’s got planned for her are worse. Much worse.”

With slow resignation, the old priest nodded. He slumped forward as far as his taped-up ribs would allow, but gave no heed to the injury. The anxious ache he felt for Halley eclipsed any discomfort in his own battered flesh.

He jumped when Halley touched her hand to his side.

“Don’t be sad,” she breathed. He reached around awkwardly and gave her fingers a little squeeze. She allowed it.

I extended my own hand to Halley—my right one, though I tended to favor my left. The hungry power of the Eye would play no part in what I sought to accomplish with the girl.

“I need you to make a place in your mind for me to meet with you,” I explained, turning all of my focus her way. I vividly imagined my own process from only hours before at the museum, willing her to understand.

“Memory palace,” she murmured. “Like
Sherlock
.”

The lift of my brows betrayed my surprise.

“You know what I’m asking you to do?” I pursued.

She nodded, lifting her eyes to meet my gaze. No words passed her lips this time, but I heard her with ringing clarity.

Show me how to cut his ties.

She scooted forward on the bed, pushing some of the covers away. Trailing the IV, she reached her hand to meet mine.

Our fingers clasped and the dimly lit hospital room abruptly faded.

I found myself floating in the debris-field of Alderaan. At least, that was the closest thing I could relate to the spreading tangle of chaotic perceptions that confronted me on the outer edges of Halley’s mind.

Up, down, right, left—debris floated in every conceivable direction. Reflexively, I spread my wings, struggling to get my bearings. The concentric rings of neural clutter spiraled around a central point—brilliantly intense, like a vast, white spindle. Her memory palace. I knew it instantly, but it was so far away.

Halley’s voice rose plaintively from that internal locus. Too faint for words, the tone nevertheless called and encouraged. I struck the air with wings of light, leaving blue-white trails through the inky black as I dodged spinning chunks of memories. The space rang with recollected sound—her father’s voice, Tyson’s squeal of delight. The rich, resonant rumble of her paternal grandfather’s laughter.

Reaching her wasn’t going to be easy. This intermediary space was the jumbled junk drawer I’d previously encountered, multiplied by a power of ten. It took all of my concentration not to get kicked right back into my ordinary awareness, where my body lingered in the hospital room.

I skirted the sharp edges of a scintillating trauma only to run face-first into a cluster of emotional imprints from the psychic landscape of the hospital. The misery of the boy who had occupied the bed before her, chemo from his cancer treatments making his blood turn to poison. Father Frank’s adrenaline-drenched flashbacks to a jungle war zone, punctuated by the face of every friend who had died there. Echoes that I recognized as my own thoughts—images of Terael, Lil, and then the heavy, gleaming gold of Neferkariel’s Eye. In its central setting, the rough carnelian gemstone wept tears of blood.

With a hoarse shout, I reeled away from the looming icon, reasserting the walls inside my own head. The last thing I needed was to spill into her the way Terael had spilled into me—that would spell doom for the both of us. But the image of the Eye stubbornly lingered. Somehow she’d picked up on it through the barriers of the oath.

I dragged myself away from the uncomfortable reminder of how hard I’d screwed myself last fall, orienting toward the central point once more. A bewildering array of material cluttered the spaces between the more recognizable perceptions, and each time I allowed my attention to be caught by something, it sucked me down as surely as the whirlpool maw of Charybdis.