Tomorrow Wendell (White Dragon Black) (29 page)

The winged figure spun in the air as the rowan slugs caught it in the sternum.

Jonathan, wanting to make sure he hit it squarely, hadn’t moved until the last possible second.

The momentum of the soul taker’s leap had been enough that, even while the bullets smashed into it, it had slammed into Jonathan. He’d been knocked aside, a bowling pin spinning from the passage of the ball.

Jonathan shook his head. His chest had three long gashes that wept blood from the claw-like hands.

He tried to get up.

The first time, he didn’t make it, slipping and collapsing back to the floor in pain. But he heard the sound of wings, the rustling of the feathers once more.

Close now—a vulture over his shoulder.

Thrusting himself up, ignoring the pain, he saw his unwanted guest also pushing itself from the floor.

The feathers of his large, black wings looked like sculpted oil spread out from the back of the humanoid—a swallow from hell.

Jonathan looked about for his gun. He spotted it under the desk and lurched that way.

Using the edge of the desk for support, he tried to kneel down. The next moment, his right side slammed against the frame of the door.

His arm went numb and he dropped to the ground.

The soul taker wavered and doubled in his vision as it stalked towards him.

Jonathan took some gratification from the fact that, even with his eyes unfocused, he could see the pain the memitim was in.

With his arm not working right, Jonathan couldn’t perform any spell worth speaking.

This adversary would only be stopped by serious magic. Although he itched to call up that sort of energy, he was shit out of luck at the moment.

Jonathan hoped the wounds would be enough to slow the creature down.

Ignoring the pain threatening to envelope him, and the grief he was about to cause himself, he got his legs under him.

The moment the creature closed in, Jonathan vaulted up. He slammed himself into the body of the being keen for his client’s soul. It bellowed in pain as Jonathan aggravated the gunshot wounds with his own body.

He might as well have thrown himself at a parked van, but the creature staggered slightly. It was enough and Jonathan slipped past.

He dropped to the ground with a cry of agony but managed to snake his arm out and snag the weapon. Rolling onto his back, Jonathan brought the gun up and fired.

The memitim’s head snapped back and it crumpled to its knees.

Slowly, it toppled sideways, leaving Jonathan to gasp in breaths, each bringing sharp, constricting pain. He wasn’t entirely certain the thing was dead. For the moment, though, all he could do was sit.

Quite certain from experience that he had more than one cracked rib, Jonathan felt comforted by the fact that nothing seemed to be punctured or ruptured.

He had not been sure he could make the necessary shot with his left hand. However, it seemed unlikely that putting more shards of rowan into the creature’s chest would have had the effect Jonathan had been looking for.

He kicked out at the body of an angel-gone-bad. The creature gave no reaction—even when assaulted.

Jonathan remained unsatisfied.

The silence must have been too much for Wendell. His voice rang out asking if Jonathan was all right.

Jonathan chuckled at the question, then regretted doing so. “Matter of perspective, that.” He crawled around to the front of the desk to look at the memitim.

The shot had caught it just above the left eye. Any further over and he doubted it would have stopped the thing. It was certainly dead.

Mostly.

Using the desk, Jonathan struggled to his feet. From there, he slowly and cautiously made his way to the outer door. He raised the gun in his left hand, glad he had decided years ago to go with the compact three-inch revolver and not a cannon.

His right arm had starting to tingle like fire ants hosted a party there.

He leaned out and glanced down the hall. The corridor was empty and, though his head throbbed, it was just a good old-fashion headache—and possible concussion—and not because of anything stumbling over a symbol.

Returning to his office, Jonathan looked at the body on his floor.

He didn’t physically have the ability to do anything about it, but he was highly skeptical of the wisdom behind simply leaving it there.

Weighing the risks, Jonathan finally asked Wendell to come out to the front and give him a hand.

Even with the sights that had visited them last night, Wendell still did a double-take when he saw the corpse on the office floor.

“It’s a—”                                                                      

“No,” Jonathan interrupted, “but it has inspired some artists in the past.”

Then Wendell noticed just what shape Jonathan was in.

Before he could say anything, Jonathan cut him off again.

“Don’t ask. Look, I don’t want this thing in here, just in case, but I can’t move it. Think you can?”

“I’ll try.”

Wendell bent down and struggled to get the body over a shoulder. Jonathan ended up having to help. With the extra hand, Wendell managed to rise while bearing the memitim alone.

Jonathan could only guess at how heavy it was. He didn’t waste any time leading Wendell out into the hall and to the bathroom.

They could not afford the time it would take to try and dissolve the body, even if Jonathan knew what to use on this creature. However, his plan for bringing it to the washroom lay elsewhere.

He told Wendell to go to the back of the long room and dump the body on the windowsill. When he caught up, Jonathan opened the window which, unlike the ones in his office, was made from a single tall pane. It swung out on a side hinge.

“On three. Ready?”

“What? We are just going to—to push it out?”

“Yup,” he answered with nod. “Now, hurry up, I don’t like the look in those sparrows’ eyes.”

Jonathan kept watch on the large number of birds grouped on the power lines, fire escape, and rooftop of the buildings on the other side of the alley of which the washroom window opened.

“One. Two. Three!”

They both shoved the memitim out of the window.

For a moment, it looked like they would be forced to give it another push. Then, gravity took effect and the body slithered out, head first.

The corpse tumbled twice before the broad wings snapped open. Both men jumped back.

Jonathan saw the way the arms and legs still hung like a marionette with no puppet master. “Just the wind catching them.”

Even as he spoke, the corpse banked and one wing collapsed around the body. After that, it began to speed toward the concrete once more.

They both peered at it, leaning out in sick fascination, when the sparrows moved.

Jonathan hadn’t entirely stopped being aware of them. Pulling on the back of Wendell’s collar with his one good hand, he yelled, “Grab the window!”

Wendell grasped the small handle and hauled on it as he leaned back.

The window closed and Jonathan heard the lock catch as the sparrows, all in a group, swept past the window and down towards the ground.

Straining to watch their progress, both men pressed their faces to the glass.

The alley directly under them was covered with hopping, flitting, brownish grey shapes. At the center of the mass was a roughly human shaped mound.

Jonathan watched, flabbergasted, as the sparrows tore and pecked at the remains of the memitim. Gruesome and wrong in such a fundamental way, it made the Sluagh seem almost natural.

With a shudder, Jonathan turned away from the window.

“Come on, better get you back to the circle.”

W
hen Wendell was once more ensconced in the chair within the protective circle, Jonathan allowed himself to relax a little.

Gingerly, he undid his shirt and dropped it on the wastebasket. He opened the left-hand bottom drawer of his desk and took out a new shirt, still in the package.

Since his right hand still sent mixed signals, he had to wrestle it out one-handed. He managed to accomplish it, and got it on, but the buttons proved simply too much.

“Would you?” he asked Wendell, stepping into the circle.

“Of course,” Wendell said, rising, but his eyes stayed on Jonathan’s body.

Jonathan knew what he saw there, white lines and irregular circles, the flesh’s memories of past encounters. Now, new ones had been added. The scores made by the memitim had crusted over, even as his side was transfigured into a rotting bruise.

Wendell reached out and pushed the bottom button through the hole. He moved on to the next and blurted, “I didn’t . . .”

“Didn’t what?” Jonathan asked, looking past Wendell’s shoulder towards the window, as though he could see anything out of it.

“I guess I didn’t think about how I wasn’t the first you’d done this for.”

Jonathan nodded. “I remember each person I’ve fought to protect; the scars are just reminders of mistakes I made along the way.”

Wendell moved on to the next button, the shirt becoming taut against Jonathan’s back.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, looking down to see his shirtfront pulled away from his body.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Wendell glanced up, but looked down again quickly.

Jonathan couldn’t help but give a wry chuckle, “Don’t worry, Wendell. You’re not going to hurt me.”

Once nominally dressed again, Jonathan eased himself into his desk chair, filled his glass with bourbon, and lit a cigarette. He groaned as he drew in the first breath, a buzz of pleasure caught fast in a spider web of pain.

“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” Wendell queried from his chair.

“I don’t think I have more than three broken ribs and I lived through five once.”

“Shouldn’t you wrap them?”

“Nah. Never did any good. In fact, doctors now warn you against it.” He took a drink, and then, to self-medicate, another. “I might have a concussion, but then I don’t plan on sleeping for another twelve—thirteen—hours anyway, so that should be fine.”

He took another drink in hopes that it would quell the itch to cough rising in his chest.

“And to top it all off, I’m getting full use of my hand and arm back. Which, I must confess, is good because I have a feeling we are not quite done having visitors.”

“Oh. Well, then, as long as you’re good,” Wendell said, with a note of sarcasm.

“I’ll make it to tomorrow. Though I’d prefer to do it without anything punching, clawing, or throwing me, but I’m not holding my breath . . . though I kinda wish I could,” Jonathan admitted, placing his left hand against the right side of his chest.

Wendell reluctantly picked up the book he had been reading. Although he occasionally looked at Jonathan out of the corner of his eye, Wendell allowed him to suffer in silence.

Jonathan was good at suffering in silence. Normally he didn’t have anyone around, so suffering vocally was simply a waste of breath.

The sun had started to set, although it seemed it had only just gained its rightful place in the sky brief moments before.

This signaled the beginning to the end of the vigil. However, Jonathan knew the extra-long hours of darkness gave sun-scourged beasts more time to assemble and mass.

The western sky was banded with red and gold as Jonathan worked on finishing his third Bourbon since he’d sat down. Wendell dozed, the book between his hands slowly sliding open on his lap.

The effects of the alcohol had just started to dull the more acute of his pains, when Jonathan heard the elevator start.

With a groan ending in a whimper, he slid his chair back and stood up.

Wendell started when he heard the chair move. However, with a look from Jonathan, he remained sitting silently.

Jonathan slid his gun from its holster and, as stealthily as he could, walked to the front office. He didn’t want to waste precious energy on standing. He leaned against the ‘secretary’ desk—a theory whose principal participant always seemed non-existent.

He heard the elevator stop and the door open, only to slide closed a moment later. He listened, waiting for the sound of footsteps, bat wings, or maybe tentacles slapping against the faux marble of the hallway.

There was nothing.

No sound came after the elevator closed except for it moving again. Jonathan waited, but the symbol outside the elevator hadn’t been tripped either. He realized that, most likely, the confusion ward he had placed in the elevator worked against whatever was inside it.

He stayed, propped up by the desk, and once more heard the elevator being drawn up in its shaft.

The door opened . . . and closed once more without the sounds of anything leaving the elevator itself.

The third time this happened, Jonathan couldn’t decide if he should laugh or worry.

Whatever had gotten in the elevator had clearly been getting tripped up by the confusion spell. On the other hand, its determination to get to this floor bordered on compulsive.

As he waited for the fourth trip up, Jonathan tried to decide if he should go and confront whatever rode the elevator while it was trapped in the metal cube, or hope it just gave up.