Switchblade Goddess (7 page)

“You crazy fuck,” I choked. I couldn’t make any tears. I was so dehydrated I should have been dead, and my heart kept seizing up as it struggled to pump thick blood through my veins. But Lake had enough magic to keep me alive and suffering. When would this hell end?

“Can’t have you trying to run away again.” Lake impassively threw down a hacksaw and two lengths of rubber hose. “I want those legs off above the knee. And trust me, you don’t want me to come down there and do it myself.”

Cursing, I swiped the bitter memory out of my face with my shield hand, pulled myself back to the present. My eyes just had enough time to register that the slimy little devil had unscrewed another jar, and I braced myself—

I was a child, Cooper as a young boy of seven. I sobbed into my pillow, feeling so scared and miserable I wished the earth would open and swallow me whole. I lay on a single bed inside an eight-by-eight-foot chain-link dog pen in the corner of the basement. The
cinder-block walls were bare beneath the harsh light from a single hanging bulb
.

“It’s not right; I don’t want to hurt them,” I wept
.

“You’ll do as I tell you, or I’ll have to kill your mother,” my stepfather, Lake, replied, standing somewhere in the shadows beyond my locked pen door. “And you don’t want that, do you?”

With all the effort I could muster, I pulled myself out of Cooper’s lost memory and furiously wiped my face clean, the heavy liquid falling from my fingers to the floor. The devil had its foul little pseudopods around the lid of another jar, trying to open it, but the jelly trembled with fatigue and was having trouble unscrewing the old trauma.

Whether it was truly exhausted or not, there wasn’t a second to lose. I swung my weapon down in a sweeping arc, hitting the devil with the flat of my blade. It couldn’t keep its grip on the jar and hurtled through the air, splatting into the far wall.

Before it had a chance to recover I was on top of it, pounding it over and over with my bronze shield, unleashing my anger with every blow, until the jelly had been utterly crushed flat. Panting, I straightened up, staring down at the devil. It certainly
looked
dead. But I’d torn its heart out in our previous battle, so clearly I couldn’t count on it not regenerating itself even after heavy damage. I had to figure out some way to contain it until I could dispose of it for good.

What could I do with the monster? Putting it in the wall where it had hidden my weapons surely wouldn’t work. As I set my sword and shield aside, my gaze fell on the silver puddles of spilled horrors and their discarded containers.

“You seem to like my trophies,” I said, reaching down to grab an empty jar. “Maybe you’d like a closer look?”

I scraped the remains of the jelly into the glass, leaving not even a speck of it behind on the floorboards. And then I scooped Cooper’s father’s memory in on top of it and screwed the lid on tight.

“There!” I said brightly. “You can be Corvus for a while. That’ll be fun, right?”

I held the jar up to the light, watching the red jelly shudder weakly as the heavy memory sank down into it, drowning it in unrelenting pain. A hell within a hell. I’d have almost felt sorry for it if I hadn’t seen the horrors it had wrought on the people in Cuchillo. Perhaps smallpox viruses suffered in their locked vials, too.

I set the jar down with the others, then put Cooper’s worst childhood memory back into its container and straightened the pile. Housecleaning finished, I stared down at the softly glowing jars, grimly admiring my handiwork.

And then, for just a moment, I caught the smell of clove cigarettes and gingerbread, and then a sudden warmth like a man standing close behind me. I snatched up my sword and whirled around … but nothing was there. I was alone in my domain.

It had just been my imagination. Surely. Feeling uneasy, I willed the bed back into place, leaned my weapons against the dresser, and went to the portal door so I could return to the living world.

A
fter I came out of my hellement, I woke Pal and we ventured downstairs to see if we could find some food. If anything I was even more achy and feverish, but putting the devil in its proper place made me feel darkly cheerful; my appetite had returned with a vengeance.

A few culinarily inclined Talents had opened up the hotel kitchen and set up a makeshift buffet supper of whatever they could find left in the pantry: rice, canned peas and mushrooms, tuna patties, mac and cheese, vanilla pudding. It wasn’t fancy, but they had enough for everyone, and I could eat everything but the tuna. Well, actually I
could
eat the fish; I just didn’t feel like reliving being speared in the gut or suffocated in an icy ship’s hold or however it was that the albacore died once it got hauled up in the net. As side effects of performing necromancy went, this definitely wasn’t the worst I could have suffered—I could have become unfashionably undead, for instance, and would be watching my extremities rot off in the heat—but tasting death was frustrating.

After I filled my plate and got some silverware out of the basket beside the buffet line, I surveyed the strangers sitting at the round tables, feeling like the
new kid at school who didn’t know anyone and who had already gotten a reputation for being a dangerous weirdo.

My anxiety returned, the weight of the ticking minutes pressing down on my mind, and for a moment, I thought about just dumping my tray on the conveyor belt, turning, and leaving to get my shotgun and go find Miko. But … how? I didn’t have so much as a fingernail clipping to use to track her. My body was trembling from fever and hunger. I doubted I had the strength to walk around the block, much less chase anyone through the desert. I knew I should just get some food and sleep, take my medicine, and wait until morning for the guys to come back. I
promised
I’d wait.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. I’d wait. It was the best thing to do.

“Are you okay?” Pal peered at me with concern.

Yeah, I’m fine
, I thought back to him.
So where do you think we should sit?

“How about over there?” He nodded toward a table occupied by two fifty-something women. “They look pleasant.”

And they did. Both of the ladies had gray Afros and orange-and-black cotton mudcloth dresses and matching hair wraps; if they weren’t actual twins, they certainly seemed to be playing up their resemblance to each other. Caramel-spotted rats perched on their shoulders, eating tidbits their mistresses fed to them. I didn’t see any rat droppings, so I suspected they were familiars and not pets; nobody wants a familiar that randomly craps all over everything.

Well,
probably
nobody. Talents can be a strange bunch.

“Hello,” I said, approaching their table. “May we sit with you?”

“Sure thing,” the lady to the left said. “Long as he doesn’t—”

“—try to eat our ratties,” the lady to the right said.

“Pal would never do that.” I set my tray down and pulled out a chair.

“Oh, but he’s—”

“—surely thinking about it!”

“You can see it—”

“—in his eyes.”

I gave Pal a look as he placed his tray on the table beside mine. “Really? Seriously?”

He blinked, seeming abashed. “They do smell delicious.”

Eat your tuna and stop eyeballing their rodents
, I thought to him, annoyed.
Don’t you have any sense of professional courtesy?

“I’d be doing them a favor, really.” He wolfed down a patty in one bite. “Familiars killed in the line of duty often receive a reduction in sentence.”

“Well, he’s not going to hurt your rats,” I announced to everyone at the table. “Otherwise I’d have to kick his ass.”

I paused. “So, I’m Jessie Shimmer. And y’all are … ?”

“Callirhoe Jackson,” said the lady to the left. “You can call me Callie. And my rat is named Bosworth.”

“Involucrata Jackson,” said her sister. “People call me Poppy. And this is Pierre.” She gave her rat a little
scritch on the top of his head between his ears and he gave a cheerful squeak.

“Pleased to meet you all,” I said.

“Likewise,” the sisters said.

“So, are y’all from around here?” I asked.

“Yes, we are,” said Callie. “And we’re very much—”

“—looking forward to things getting back to normal,” Poppy finished.

“Um.” I lowered my voice. “There might be kind of a hitch with the whole ‘going back to normal’ thing.”

Callie laughed. “You mean other than the town being wrecked?”

“And nearly everybody dead?” added Poppy.

“Well, that, yeah,” I agreed. “But also … well, did you two meet Sara Bailey-Jones before Miko caught you?”

“Sara,” mused Callie. “She’s the one—”

“—with the dozen cats?” finished Poppy.

“Yes, her.” I said. “Only now there are a lot more than a dozen cats. And they’re actually devils. Don’t know what kind, but they seem to feed off chaos. And Sara’s acting mayor. And she’s crazy. And I mean
bad
crazy, not ‘Ha-ha, she’s so much fun at parties’ crazy. I mean like Pol Pot shooting people in the head just because they wear glasses crazy.”

“Oh my,” said Poppy. “That could certainly be—”

“—a problem. But I’m sure that if all us witches and wizards join together—”

“—we can get her to see reason.”

“Or teleport her into the desert.” Callie pursed her lips.

“Whatever works,” agreed Poppy.

A
fter we finished eating, I said good-bye to the Jackson sisters and dropped our dirty dishes onto the conveyor belt. Pal and I went back to our suite where I took my antibiotics and some Advil for my fever. And then I collapsed into the queen-size bed and quickly passed out.

I slept pretty hard, but my dreams were unsettling. In all of them, I was a little girl back in my parents’ house in our old Lakewood neighborhood in Dallas. My mom was still alive. Even though I was only seven or eight in the dreams, I had all my adult memories. I knew how—and why—my mother had died.

When I was eleven, I was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer that the mundane doctors couldn’t treat. Mom had been convicted of grand necromancy before I was born and was forbidden from associating with other Talents or casting even the smallest charm. Almost immediately after she performed a spell to save me, Virtus Regnum agents quietly executed her for her crimes. I was the one who found her cold body on our kitchen floor.

In those not-quite-nightmares, I was desperate to warn her about what was going to happen. But whenever I opened my mouth, I couldn’t get any words to
come out. Or if I found my voice, my mother would disappear into mist, or turn a corner and vanish. I ran through the empty house, crying for her, but she was gone.

The dreams finally ended when the alarm clock buzzed at dawn. I dragged myself from the sweaty, twisted sheets, feeling absolutely horrible: sticky eyes, shivers, cramping stomach. Everything hurt—my muscles, bones, teeth, seemingly even my hair.

When I tottered into the bathroom and turned on the light, I was faced by a reflection that looked a whole lot like one of the corpses I’d burned the day before. I poured myself a tepid, bitterly mineral drink from the sink faucet; whatever magic the hotel’s resident Talents were using to keep the plumbing going wasn’t doing much for the water quality. My hands were shaking so much it was hard to hold on to the hotel glass.

Yep. I was
totally
ready to take on the death goddess who’d destroyed nearly the entire town. Maybe if I gushingly bled out on her she’d slip and break her neck in some new and different way that her regenerative powers couldn’t cope with? Yeah. Sure.

After I washed my face to try to wake myself up a bit more, I went back into the bedroom to rouse Pal, who was snoozing on the thin sofa-bed mattress. I wasn’t sure how quickly a creature like him was supposed to heal, but it looked to me as if some of the claw marks on his legs were getting worse rather than better.

“How are you feeling?” I asked as he lifted his shaggy head and blinked at me blearily in the dimness.

“I’ve felt better,” he admitted.

“Do you want to see if I can find some more help?”

He shook his head and licked his muzzle. “I spent some time listening in on conversations while you were otherwise occupied; I don’t think anyone here has much more than basic skill as a healer. Apparently there was one white witch who was attending to the people in Miko’s spell-circle, but she tried to escape and Miko killed her. That’s why Miko resorted to the mundane nurses. At any rate, if Bettie’s and my own efforts at healing my body have come to naught, I don’t expect anyone else here will do better.”

“Are you sure?” I hoped his pride in his own magic wouldn’t keep him from seeking what healing assistance he could get. “It wouldn’t hurt to try again, would it?”

“I’ll be fine.” He gathered his legs under him and stepped off the sofa bed. “But how are
you
feeling?”

“Completely craptastic. It’s taking pretty much all I’ve got just to stand up. I think my meds have reached their limit of usefulness. So I’m going to try something else. But before I get started … do you think you can carry me back to the clinic at the university if this goes horribly wrong?”

He nodded. “What, may I ask, are you going to attempt?”

I bent down to get into my backpack; the movement sent a jag of pain through the front of my head, ocularis to eyeball. Ignoring it and the sudden wave of nausea the headache brought on, I retrieved one of the stainless-steel bottles my brother had given me and straightened up.

“I’m going to try one of these energy potions.”

Pal looked concerned. “Do you think that’s a good idea on an empty stomach?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think I can eat for a while. And Randall didn’t tell me I had to take it with food or anything. He just warned me to chug it and not sip it. Some of the ingredients are pretty foul, so … yeah.

“But no, I haven’t had this before,” I continued, “and no, I don’t know what it’ll do. For all I know I could barf, have a heart attack, turn into a newt. No clue. But as shitty as I feel right now, I’m willing to risk it in the hopes that this will make me even slightly more functional.”