Something More Than Night (33 page)

Molly yanked the scarf, put her arm around Anne’s waist when she stumbled, and heaved her around the corner into the shadows beneath the stairs. Like sweeping dust under a rug, she pinched the corner of a shadow lying on the pavement and lifted the edge overhead. She ushered Anne into a nothing-space that was neither shaded nor light. The edge of the shadow twanged like a banjo string when Molly released it. They stood in the lobby of Martin’s building.

Molly said, “You’re doing great. How’s the wrist?”

“I don’t like this,” said Anne. The glow of flickering biomimetic graffiti played across her face as she sniffed the fetid air. It stank of urine. “How much longer do I have to keep my eyes closed?”

This was getting absurd. Molly had thought a couple quick detours through the Pleroma would throw the Cherubim off their trail. But those asshats were too stubborn. Strange that they relied upon human hosts for dirty work like this. They seemed reluctant to show their true forms in the mortal realm. Reluctant, or unable? Or was there something else at work here? Molly remembered what Bayliss had said about his attempt to talk to Father Santorelli, and the strange confused
penitente
he had encountered. She wondered if an angel had been riding inside that poor boy, working his puppet strings when he strangled the priest.

Anne hugged herself, as though warding off the odors of piss and decay. She shivered, still waiting a response.

“You can look now,” said Molly.

Gently, gingerly, Anne opened her eyes. She said nothing while her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The glowing graffiti illuminated debris, mildew, and a man slouched on a canvas camping chair. A hood covered the tattoos on his head. Though it was dark in the lobby, he wore wraparound sunglasses, as though he’d stared at an eclipse and damaged his eyes. Perhaps he had.

Anne said, “I don’t recognize this place.”

“I’d be worried if you did.” Molly took her hand to examine her wrist. The burn looked superficial, yet she could see her own fingerprints marking Anne’s skin. “My brother lives here.”

“The one you said—”

“Yep,” said Molly. “That’s the one. But I need a safe place for you to hide for a while.”
I don’t know if this is it,
she said to herself,
but I’m running out of ideas.
Her plan—if it even counted as such—revolved around something she vaguely remembered Bayliss mentioned in passing. She wished she had time to explore it, or at the very least practice.

Anne said, “Hide from what? Who are those people? And how did we get here? Did I pass out? I’m sure I didn’t.”

“If I promise to answer your questions, will you trust me just a little longer? Please?”

Anne hugged herself again. It was drafty in here. Canvas creaked as the guy in the corner shifted his weight, like somebody struggling to eavesdrop and stay invisible at the same time. His chin hung low, over his chest, but his breathing and his heartbeat gave him away.

“Hey.” Molly snapped her fingers under his nose. “Remember me?”

He slouched deeper into his camping chair, pulled the hood tight over his eyes. “I got nothing to say to you.”

“Good. That means you can listen.” She thought for a moment, remembered her mother, and produced a thin gold ring from her pocket. Crouching, she waved it under his nose. “That’s a real diamond. Do something for me and it’s yours. But if you try to screw me over”—Here she yanked the eyeglasses down past the tip of his nose and met his eyes. Dense circuitry in his contacts gave them a mirrored appearance.—“it’s pillar of salt for you.”

His gaze went to the ring. Luminous tattoos unfurled across his skull, lighting the inside of his hood like a jack-o’-lantern. He licked his lips. “What do I gotta do?”

“Anybody comes by looking for us, you haven’t seen a fucking thing. If anybody happens to be a
penitente
or two, they don’t get past this lobby. They’ll be tougher than they look, though, so call your friends. Call your enemies. I don’t care. But you hold them off.” She thought a little more. “Don’t kill them. But it’s okay if you’re rough.”

The Cherubim would eat this guy alive. Good. He fed Martin’s drug habit. But it might buy Anne some time.

“Deal.” He reached for the diamond ring. She snatched it out of his reach.

“Nuh-uh. I come back and find everything’s okay, you get this. I come back and find there’s a problem, you get the other thing.” Molly stuffed it back in her pocket. He pulled out an earbud as Molly rejoined Anne.

Anne asked, with forced nonchalance, “Old friend?”

Molly shook her head. “C’mon. We’re almost there.”

She lifted an arm to drape it over Anne’s shoulders. Anne flinched. Molly swallowed hard, dropped her arm, and led her to the stairs.

*   *   *

They stood outside Martin’s door. The elevator was out of service, so they’d had to climb twenty stories. Anne was breathing hard. The squatters in the stairwell had left them alone, concussed by the heavy awkward silence as they passed.

Molly said, “I can’t go with you. I have to take care of something.”

“Don’t you dare abandon me in this hellhole.”

“I’m not. I promise.”

“You’ll come back?”

“Promise.” Molly nodded toward the door. “Martin’s doing a little better these days.” She backed into the shadows. “He’ll do his best for you. Tell him you knew me, and he’ll treat you like a queen.”

Anne raised her hand to knock, but paused, as though reflecting upon the vagaries of the past tense.

*   *   *

Molly skipped the stairs. She stitched together shadows and returned to the lobby at the speed of thought. It was brighter and noisier than before. Light and shadow spun through the lobby as three men covered in lustrous tattoos tried to hold a line against a hulking
penitente.
The Cherub rode inside a human body that had to be at least six foot six. It towered over the men blocking its path. Pleroma-light from its inferno face diffracted through the invisible wings folded tightly around its human shell, casting a complementary dance of anti-light and un-shadow through the lobby.

The
penitente
stepped forward. Together, two men stepped forward and bulled him back. “You’re not coming in,” said the third.

Molly checked herself before charging in. She watched from the shadows, still wondering why the Cherubim had felt the need to carry out their errands while shrouded in a human guise. She also wondered how quickly this Cherub’s patience would rub thin. In her experience they were neither subtle nor patient.

The
penitente
stepped forward again. But this time when the two tried to force him to retreat, he pressed a hand to each man’s chest and shoved, hurling them across the lobby. One shattered the remains of the security door. The other slammed against the vandalized mailboxes. Both slumped to the floor, unmoving.

The tinkling echoes faded away. In the momentary silence, Molly could hear the wheezing of lungs laboring under shattered ribs. The atmosphere carried the tongue-curling salty-iron tang of aspirated blood.

The
penitente
headed for the stairs. The man to whom Molly had spoken fumbled under his shirt with trembling hands. He really wanted that ring. He couldn’t hurt the angel brushing past him, had no hope of slowing it down. But there was a danger he could hurt the Cherub’s human host, though.

Molly threw herself into the fray, wishing again she’d had time to practice. With thoughts focused on Bayliss’s tale of sneaking into Gabriel’s locked Magisterium, she revealed herself to the indomitable Cherub. The last lingering shadows abandoned the lobby. The tattooed man cowered.

“Hey, motherfucker,” she said. “Remember me?”

The
penitente
didn’t, but the thing inside him did. It advanced on her …

… while Molly imagined her consciousness unzipping, peeling apart like the skin of banana …

The wormy fragment of her consciousness slurped into place like a spaghetti noodle, and then she was whole again. She gasped: assimilating the disparate experiences was even more difficult than multitasking her consciousness in the first place. She staggered under the weight of paradox. She tripped over the unconscious
penitente
and crashed against the dented and vandalized mailboxes. Molly’s memory of the past few moments—her sense of identity—had acquired the eerie unreality of a photographic double exposure. Incompatible experiences churned together, an immiscible froth of oil and water.

It gave her a blinding, brain-shattering migraine. She coughed up something vinegary. She moved like an old woman when she knelt to pluck the leaden soul fragment from the floor. Her eyeballs felt ready to burst. Rather than move her eyes, she turned her entire body to face the drug dealer, who cowered in the corner.

“Hey,” she said. “You got anything for a headache?”

But he was staring at his unconscious companions sprawled on the floor where the Cherub had hurled them. Then he looked at the
penitente.
“Fuck,” he said.

“Now would be a good time for you to call an ambulance for your friends,” she suggested. She fished in her pocket and tossed the ring. It bounced across the filthy floor and rolled to a stop against the toe of his boot.

She shuffled closer to the unconscious
penitente.
Her headache throbbed in time to her footsteps. The fragment she had dislodged from the possessed man’s eye had followed her to Earth, much as the fragments Bayliss manipulated followed him to the Pleroma. She studied it, wondering how to make the man’s soul whole again.

The dealer repeated himself. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” she said. But then she followed his gaze. A second
penitente
strode into the lobby.

Molly felt herself deflating like a punctured tire. She retreated into the shadows, struggling to force the pain aside, trying to focus enough to split off another piece of herself. The second Cherub saw her. It continued to look straight at Molly while, slowly and deliberately, the hollow woman’s lips curled into a sneer; the glow of supernatural fire peeked through the corner of her mouth. It was wise to her trick. Rats.

Speaking through the corner of her mouth, Molly said, “Go for the eyes.”

But the dealer vaulted his injured companions and ran away. He did pause just long enough to take the ring.

As the first had done, the Cherub directed its
penitente
host toward the stairs. Molly blocked her passage. The wounded woman lunged forward with arms outstretched, twisted her fingers into Molly’s coat lapels, and heaved. Molly’s toes left the floor. She tried to break the woman’s grasp, but couldn’t.