Tales of the Unquiet Gods (6 page)

Mike realized he was staring at his hand. Not the skin, as he was used to it, roughened and scarred by years of hard work, both in and out of the gym. No, the vessels and muscles that lay under that workaday skin of his. He saw scar tissue where he'd cut his finger real deep as a kid, the broken or dislocated joints he'd suffered before he'd learned not to hit people in the head.

The coin flashed again, filling Mike's vision with gold, blinding him.

When he could see again, Mike looked at Yasmin. Her face was still there: the same olive skin, the same eyes shut tight with pain, the same mark on her cheek now deepening to an ugly purple in the dim light, with a thread of vivid crimson tracking down her face. Under it all, though, he saw her tissues. Her blood flashed in pulses timed with her heartbeat.

Unthinking, Mike rubbed the thumb of his hand over the bruise on her face. His other hand - the one holding the coin - slid around to cup the back of her head. Obeying some prompt he didn't understand, and wasn't even fully conscious of, and without moving a muscle, Mike pushed.

He gasped as his heart stuttered in his chest. His pulse raced to match time with Yasmin's, and all his muscles clenched at once. Physically, it was like when he went for a max weight lift at the gym, like he threw everything he had into one punch. Every muscle fired at once, driving toward a single goal.

Emotionally it was very, very different. Everything fell away: the smells of the street, the sounds of the city at night, the feel of Yasmin's skin and hair. All was stillness but for pure will, driving toward that same singular goal.

And like that, it was over.

Mike rocked back on his heels, drained. He looked around, gaze wandering, taking in everything, but seeing very little. The nameless warrior stood just to one side, watching Mike with an unblinking stare. Not a little disconcerting, actually.

"Mr. Runey?" Yasmin stared up at Mike, her dark eyes lustrous in the half light. Confusion and just a bit of fear filled her voice. Mike realized with a start that her head still rested in his hand. She looked much smaller now than she had when he'd been the one on the floor. "What are you doing here?"

"W-w-what d-do you remember?" The warrior asked, his voice as intent as his expression.

Yasmin lifted one hand and ran it over the back of her head. Her fingers stilled when they met Mike's. Her questioning gaze probed deep into his.

"I remember Sergeant Timmons bursting through the door. I remember he looked sweaty and feverish, all hunched over. I remember chasing after him, yelling at him to let me help him. And then-" She paled, her face shadowing with remembered horror. "Oh, God. That, that thing came out of his mouth and he tore his shirt off and there were more things on his chest." She closed her eyes and shuddered. "And then he hit me, and I blacked out."

"How do you feel?" Mike asked, his voice rough with sympathy.

"Good. Very good, actually."

"Do you hurt anywhere?"

"No." The word was music to Mike's ears. He was sure she should have a concussion from impacting the wall. At least, maybe serious skull damage. "I should, but I don't. Why is that?"

"Him," the warrior pointed at Mike. Wonder suffused his voice. "H-he's a healer."

Mike knew it was true, though he didn't understand it in the least.

"And, if y-you can m-manage it again," the warrior said with a wry smile that twisted the scars on his face, "I'd appreciate it if y-you c-could d-d-do it for m-me."

It was easier the second time. Not easier, actually, just faster. Or maybe just more familiar. After Mike saw to the warrior, who introduced himself as Tourney, he took care of Timmons for good measure.

Or tried to, at least. In what he was coming to think of as heal-vision, Mike saw a grayish shadow in the sergeant's chest. And a darker one in his head. Mike couldn't do anything about them, as there didn't seem to be anything physical about them. When he said so, Tourney nodded.

"W-what I thought: the shadow-beasts rode him hard."

He explained a little of his experiences fighting monsters under the city. Yasmin, who'd gotten to her feet while Mike tried to heal the cop, shook her head.

"I don't know how in the world I'm going to write the report for tonight."

"D-don't. It won't help. G-go to the park near the Flatiron Building tomorrow. Late afternoon. T-t-together. Listen to the f-f-f-" Their savior scowled. "Violinist. Watch the crowd." He stared down at the comatose policeman for a brief moment. "If he recovers, take him, too."

The tall warrior turned and started walking into the night. Mike called after him.

"Tourney, what about your coin?" He held up the little gold disc, which obligingly flashed in the dim light.

"Hold onto it, for now, M-mike. You'll know when it's time for it to move on, " he said as he stepped into the darkness. Just barely visible in the shadows, he stopped and turned. He smiled, eyes and teeth glowing. He spun his odd club around his hand. Mike's scalp tightened as the metal bar left flickering golden streaks in the darkness. "Me, I've learned a couple things."

Yasmin turned to stare into Mike's eyes. Both their mouths hung wide open. Hers was the first to close.

"Well, you heal people," she brushed fingertips across a cheek absent of enormous purple bruises, "why shouldn't he be able to make his own light-show?"

Mike nodded, and plucked up his courage for the scariest part of the evening.

"Yasmin, all that healing has worn me out." She turned to look at him, head cocked to one side. "Would you like to come with me and find something to eat?"

PART FOUR

BY HANDS AND KNEES

4

Anne Cavanaugh had barely a heartbeat to avoid the huge bruiser's backswing. His knuckles whistling toward her face put her in mind of the aggressive "fangs" of a police cruiser. Big, scarred and politely malevolent. "I'm only now choosing to crush you, but I could have done it all this time. Nothing personal."

Yeah, nothing personal. It wouldn't be personal if the fist connected. And - inconveniently - made a paste of half her face. It might not be much to look at. Just too square of jaw. Just too wide of mouth. Once broken nose. The catalog went on, but her attention didn't. Suffice to say, Anne's face verged on striking without quite hitting beautiful. But it was hers, and no bastard was going to mess it up. Even if he was two-fifty of solid beat-down.

Anne slid her point of balance back a fraction of an inch, and the fist brushed just past her face. She felt it catch at a few of the hairs - electric blue this week - that'd escaped her headband during the struggle.

The thuggish face carved itself into a scowl. A deeper scowl, really.

Mike always scowled while he fought. Anne had always thought it was kind of cute, really.

Sliding back that necessary fraction of an inch put her weight over her back foot, so she snapped the other in a low kick at Mike's groin. He took it on his thigh, and Anne was glad she used proper form. She didn't enjoy kicking rocks at all, and preferred to wear nothing lighter than steel-toed boots when she had to.

Mike threw a jab toward her chest. If it connected, the punch would drive Anne off balance, perhaps even land her on her back on the mat. So she didn't let it land. Anne rolled around that big, scarred fist. She tapped him on the underside of his wrist as it went past, hard enough to throw him off balance instead. A little footwork, a solid strike to the floating ribs, and the touch - and match - would be hers.

Anne floated sideways and planted her feet, rotating her hips to bring the strength of solid grounding into her strike. Mike was going to feel this one, side of beef though he might be. She twisted, rotating from her pelvis through her spine and her shoulder, and finally out her right arm in a textbook blow.

Right into the meat outside his interposed elbow. One moment, Mike's arm was extended out in front of him; the next it guarded his ribs, and her punch did precisely nothing.

She'd had him: she'd been certain of it. And in that moment of fouled certain, Mike struck back. He pivoted, grounded his foot just behind hers and spun. His spine uncoiled, and Anne flew threw the air.

She had a brief view of the mirrors lining one side of the studio, albeit upside down. Shelley's horrified face - again, upside down - flew by. Anne's little sister still resembled a bit the Ryan she'd been born as. But softened and about a million times more comfortable in herself than Ry had ever been. And then Anne caught sight of Mike's bag where he'd dropped it next to hers.

Suddenly, the bag glowed gold and the world - still upside down - seemed to shimmer. Anne was caught, suspended in a sliver of eternity while everything around her scintillated.

Everything but Chelle and the trio of dark figures in the mirror behind her. They looked human, but were horribly not so. Tall, still - too motionless to be human - the three stood shoulder to broad shoulder, everything shadowed, as though seen through heavily smoked glass.

Three beautiful faces, hard with ancient cruelty, loomed over Anne's oblivious sibling. Enormous eyes of no color Anne could describe rode cheekbones a model would kill for. Straight noses, thin and patrician hung over wide mouths. Mouths almost as wide as Anne's own, though these lips were thin where Anne's had always approached lush.

The world shuddered.

Chelle stared open-mouthed at Anne. One Chelle did, at least. Another Chelle - identical but for the bizarre golden tinge - crouched inside the mirror behind Anne's sister. That Chelle knelt, one hand palm raise to the inside of the mirror and pressed hard against it while the other pounded on the glass. That Chelle stared with wide, horrified, pleading eyes at Anne where she drifted ever so slowly through the air.

The mirror-Chelle mouthed Anne's name as the dark trio unfolded long, black-clad arms. They reached for her, and as one, their lips spread, revealing sharp, even teeth the color of charred bone in dreadful parodies of a human's smile.

Anne's marrow froze. Every muscle of her body tensed, just as time resumed its normal flow. A brief shimmer, and objects regained their colors. The figures in the mirror disappeared, and Anne had a split-second to realize she didn't have time to fall well.

Anne crashed to the floor in a jumble. The mat took the worst of the impact, and for a bare moment, she lay in relative peace. Nothing seemed broken or wrenched beyond the normal pain of taking a landing poorly. Lying still was good. So was breathing, for that matter.

"Annie!" Her sister's voice shattered her brief reprieve from conscious thought.

Anne opened her eyes and beheld Chelle's pale, oval face. Upside down, of course, as seemed to be a pattern recently. The fear in her sister's big brown eyes snapped Anne back into the bizarre vision. Her heart trip-hammered for one painful moment, as she seemed to see the terrible inhuman smiles reaching hungrily for her sister.

Chelle's face was soon joined by Mike's. An expression of confused concern replaced the bruiser's scowl, and then a curiously blank look. It was as though, for a moment, Mike was looking at something totally different without moving a muscle. Then his eyes refocused on hers, and he offered a hand.

"She's all right, Chelle," Anne's friend offered to her sister. The certainty in his voice tripped something in the back of Anne's mind. How was he so sure she hadn't hurt herself?

She grabbed his hand, and he hoisted her to her feet with an ease that took her breath away. She was shocked - as always - with just how strong her big friend actually was. He always pulled his punches, at least a little. There was something there, something in his past that he'd never told her. She was as sure of that as he seemed to be about her health.

Even as the thoughts flashed through her mind, Avi, their Krav Maga instructor and the nominal owner of the studio poked his mop of curly, blue-black hair out of the office.

"What was up with that, Anne? You haven't taken a fall like that since you started training." He crooked a bushy eyebrow at her. He'd often claimed to be a political refugee from Haifa, but Anne knew for a fact he'd grown up on Staten Island. Avi had a preternatural ability to know when one of his students screwed something up.

"I'm - I'm not sure," Anne said. She was still trying to wrap her head around what she'd seen. Or thought she'd seen. Her stomach muscles quivered with a tension whose source she didn't understand. Well, that wasn't true: she knew where it came from. She just didn't know why she'd seen the vision.

If she wasn't just seeing things. Her disturbing vision happened before she landed, and the fall didn't hurt her head any. She didn't drink anything but water when she and Chelley went clubbing, so hallucinogens were out.

"It-" Mike paused, cocked his head in thought, "-looked like you got distracted."

"It looked like you got overconfident," Chelle piped up.

Anne scowled at her sister, but couldn't argue against the veracity of the supposition. She had gotten overconfident. She hadn't thought so, but the results spoke for themselves. Instead of playing a long game and making Mike tire himself out, she'd gone inside his range for the quick kill. Not good against someone who knew what he was doing.