Unclean Spirits Part 24

"Kim?" I said. "Are you ready?"

"She's ready," Candace said. "I'm getting in behind him. We're about to hit the on-ramp. Where are you two?"

We were coming to the intersection at Seventh Avenue. The last one before the highway. The light was red. We weren't going to make it.

"Hang on," Aaron said, then leaned on the horn and the gas pedal at the same time. The Hummer leapt forward like someone had goosed it as we cut across the intersection. Brakes screamed and I closed my eyes, waiting for an impact that never came. The engine roared, acceleration pressing me back into my seat. My heart was pounding like it wanted to get out. Aaron wove the great black box through traffic like he was playing a video game, cutting off a semi as we slid onto the on-ramp doing sixty.

"We're going to flip the car," I said.

"We aren't," he said through gritted teeth. "This is perfect. Candy! You with me? I'm coming up right on your a.s.s. Pull to your right."

"Slow down," Candace said.

"Not happening," Aaron said. "As soon as I get by, get in the middle of the road with your blinkers going. Don't let anyone past."

"Okay," Candace said.

"Put your mask on," he told me.

We buzzed past Candace's car like it was standing still just as we pa.s.sed under the great concrete bridge of a surface street. Coin's car was six car lengths ahead of us, pa.s.sing under the highway itself. We barreled toward it. My hands were on my knees, gripping so hard the knuckles ached. I couldn't unclench my fingers.

There was no sound that announced Kim's cantrip. She didn't say anything or call out physically, and yet there was no question when it happened. It was like the world clicking into focus when I hadn't realized it was out before. The car in front of us, the asphalt speeding by, the Hummer with its mingled scents of new car and old marijuana. Literally in the blink of an eye, all of it went from the rich, complicated, uncertain world I knew to a gorgeously complex mechanism. All emotion was gone, all sense of morality, of uncertainty, of fear or hope or dread. I could almost see the microscopic gears that made up the universe, the laws of physics triumphant. This was what the world looked like utterly without magic or emotion or soul.

Aaron drove up on Coin's left, sliding the Hummer's nose even with Coin's back tires, as if we were going to pa.s.s him on the inside of the curve. Then, violently, he cut the wheel right. The impact jarred us, and then Coin's car was fishtailing out in front of us, the driver's side of the car at a right angle to our oncoming grill. Gray smoke came off their tires like clouds. Aaron stamped the brake as Coin's car slammed into the concrete barrier. We were stopped in the middle of the long, slow curve that would lead to the highway. Aaron undid his seat belt and pulled on his ski mask. Of course he did. It was just physics. I undid my own, s.n.a.t.c.hed my rifle up from the backseat, and slid out of the car.

I walked out to kill the thing in Randolph Coin's body, and my mind was perfectly calm. I didn't remember picking up my backpack, but there it was on my shoulders. I'd need to go back for the laptop. I didn't want to leave that behind. Candace's car was coming around the curve and beginning to slow. There were other cars behind her. I lifted the rifle to my shoulder.

The driver's door burst open. The big man rushed out. There was blood on his face. Blood and ink. His pale skin was covered in markings and tattoos. He raised his hand to us, palm out, and I saw the markings on his arm writhe like living things under his skin. He shouted and something moved past me, something unreal and angry and rich with malice. I felt something like teeth touching my mind.

In my peripheral vision, I saw Aaron raise his rifle with fluid grace. The report was a single barked command. The big man staggered back. There was blood on the car behind him. The thing with teeth-invisible, abstract, magical-shuddered against me and fell away. Blood darkened the big man's s.h.i.+rt. His ill.u.s.trated face went slack, and he slipped to his knees and then to his side, lying on the dirty street in a pose that could never be mistaken for sleep.

Aaron dropped his rifle and motioned me forward. One of the bullets was gone. Used. One of the Invisible College's riders was dead or cast out of the world. The only bullet left was in my rifle, and I walked toward the back of Coin's car. Candace and Kim stopped by the Hummer. Kim was out of the car. I ignored them.

He was there, sitting at the far side of the seat. His glamour was gone, his face inhuman with glyphs and sigils. His eyes were wide and stunned. He looked old. I lifted the rifle again and he threw open the door and fell out on the car's far side. I sidestepped to my right, moving around the car's back. Its nose was crumpled against the concrete barrier. There was no place Coin could go.

"Move it!" Aaron shouted, pointing me forward. "Get him! We've got to get out."

I nodded and stepped forward, around the car. The traffic on the highway above us filled the air with the buzz of tires against pavement, the thump as they crossed the expansion joints. The smell of burned rubber was thick in the air, and there was something else. Blood. Death. Something.

Coin was on his knees, one hand to his chest just over his heart, the other pressed to his forehead. His lips, red striped with the black of his markings, were moving fast. His eyes were closed. I thought at first he was praying.

His eyes opened. There was writing on the sclera, tiny words worked on the whites of his eyes. He spoke a single word, but it resonated like we were standing in a tunnel, just the two of us.

"h.e.l.ler?" he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Hurry!" Aaron shouted. I heard horns blaring and the crunch of tires on gravel. Candace's car rolling toward me. I leveled the rifle at Coin's chest. I couldn't miss at this range. Even I couldn't miss. Coin shrieked, his mouth hinging open wider than I'd imagined possible. There was writing on his tongue. His teeth were like scrimshaw. I squeezed the trigger.

I didn't have the rifle snug enough to my shoulder. The kick was like a blow. I stumbled back as Coin's body folded forward. I stepped closer, the rifle still at the ready even though there wasn't a round left in it. A curl of smoke rose from the barrel.

He looked up at me.

He smiled.

He held out his hand to show me-s.h.i.+ning, clean, searing his flesh with the heat of the discharge-the bullet, its etched markings squirming as if they were in pain. It was my turn to shriek.

Aaron was at my side. I hadn't known he was there until he pulled me back. A black pistol in his hand fired three times, four. Coin stood up, brus.h.i.+ng the grit and gravel from his knees, ignoring Aaron as if he wasn't there.

"The car!" Aaron yelled. "Get in the car!"

I turned and ran. Coin shouted out words I couldn't comprehend, and something detonated. I skidded and fell on the pavement, my hands and knees skinned. I wasn't gong to make it to the car.

Candace was in the driver's seat, her face pale. She'd forgotten to put on her ski mask, or else had already taken it off. I saw Kim in the backseat, her hand pressed against the window. She could have been a world away. As I rose to my feet, I wondered whether she'd gotten my laptop. It was a disconnected thought, something plucked from the middle of a car wreck.

Aaron was on the ground. Blood flowed from his nose. His eyes weren't focused. Coin stood over him, head tilted like a man considering a crossword puzzle. I knew the next thing the rider would do would be to kill him. Or worse.

It was pointless. The Hail Mary throw. I gathered my qi the way Chogyi and Ex and Midian had taught me. In the thinned universe of Kim's cantrip, it seemed weak even to me. I pushed it out my mouth as I shouted.

"Leave him alone!"

Coin looked up. His eyebrows rose. His hand moved faster than a human's. The fabric of the world pulsed. The sense of being in a clockwork of physics faded. Someone was honking. I heard tires squeal. We were causing a traffic jam. If the plan had worked, Kim and Aaron and Candace and I would already be gone, speeding south on the highway, Coin dead on the road behind us. Aaron groaned, rolled over, rose to his elbows.

"Leave him alone," I said again. "He isn't your problem."

"And you are?" Coin asked. "My problem. It's you?"

"Yeah, it's me," I said. "So leave him the h.e.l.l alone."

We stood there for the s.p.a.ce of five fast heartbeats. I had time to hope that Midian and Chogyi Jake had gotten away. I heard a car door open behind me.

"You aren't Eric h.e.l.ler," he said. "Who are you?"

I pulled off my ski mask. I'd almost sweat through it in the few minutes I'd had it on. The air felt cold against my neck. I shook my head to get the hair out of my eyes. Candace stepped into my peripheral vision, a pistol in her hand. Coin didn't even bother to look at her. His eyes were on mine. I felt something cold traveling up my spine. Aaron rose to his knees. Coin stepped forward, and Candace started firing. Four fast shots. Someone off to my left started screaming. An engine revved. Coin looked at her, his lips drawing back.

"No! Candace! Get Aaron and get back in the car!" I said, stepping between them. Then to Coin, "Leave them out of it."

"As you've left Alexander out?" Coin said. He meant the big one. The one we'd killed.

"Alexander was mine too," I said. "They were all mine. You want this stopped? I'm the one. Just me."

Coin looked back over his shoulder, toward the body of his fallen man. I thought I saw something like sadness in his eyes. Then he turned back to me and nodded.

"Just you," he said.

He closed his eyes, balled his fists, and shouted. The sound was deafening, a thousand times louder than anything human, and more complex. There were storms in his voice. Earthquakes. Huge beings moving underground. I felt my body tip back and thought I was falling.

When I looked down, the streets were a hundred feet below me. Aaron and Candace were gone, but I saw her car, just beginning to move, finis.h.i.+ng the long arc to the south. I saw the tangle of cars and trucks, semis and motorcycles that had piled up behind us. The stolen Hummer, its black doors standing open. Coin's car with its crumpled hood. The huge man's body. I could even see the pool of blood.

And then it was two hundred feet below me. And then a thousand. I dropped the rifle, the small black stick flipping down through the empty air. The great asphalt cloverleaf of the highway spun in the distance. I felt a sudden regret. My plan hadn't worked any better than Eric's. I wondered what I could have done differently. If there had ever really been a way to win.

Something profoundly cold touched the back of my mind, and the gray world went black.

Twenty-five.

I was cold.

Slowly, I became aware of other things. My knees hurt. There was a crick in my neck. All I could hear was a soft wind. When I moved, it made a sc.r.a.ping sound like gravel. But mostly, I was cold. I s.h.i.+fted my head, and something soft and chilly moved under me. I let my eyes slit open. My backpack. My head was resting on my leather backpack like it was a pillow.

I tried to remember where I was, how I'd gotten there. I had a sense of urgency. It was all very, very important. If I could just put my mind back together...

I sat up. The city spread out below me, streets marked by the glowing yellow lines of their lights, the s.h.i.+fting red of taillights in traffic. The western sky was red and gold, the sun already set. All around me was pebbled gray gravel, wide sheet-metal ductwork on raised steel beams. Something partway between a radio antenna and the Eiffel Tower rose up to my left, a red beacon glowing at its tip.

A skysc.r.a.per. I was on top of a skysc.r.a.per. I tried to stand, but my knees were weak beneath me. I turned slowly. There was a door-green and rust with a dead bolt lock. Coin was sitting beside it. Five inches above his open hand floated a small cylinder of metal that came to a point at one end. The bullet.

The thing in Coin's body looked over at me, then back at the artifact floating above its hand.

"Nasty piece of work, this," it said. Its voice was conversational, deep, inhuman. "Ya'la ibn Murah and St. Francis of the Desert both. Unpleasant."

I tried to think, to focus. I had to say something.

"f.u.c.k you," I slurred.

It made a soft tsk-tsk and shook its head.

"It isn't yours. I know that," the thing said. "h.e.l.ler designed it. It's his style. Oh yes, I know my enemies. And I've known h.e.l.ler quite well. You, though, I confess I didn't expect. You're Jayne, yes?"

He knew how to p.r.o.nounce my name, and for the first time since I'd come to, I felt the deep, penetrating rush of fear. Far to the south, a storm cloud still hung on the horizon, lightning flas.h.i.+ng so far away there was no thunder. Coin nodded.

"The niece," it said. "The heir. Eric's next incarnation. I thought we had put an end to all that, but here you are. And Alexander gone because of it. I suppose I should have guessed. h.e.l.ler was the past master of putting things in motion."

"You killed my uncle," I said. My voice sounded steadier now.

"Yes," Coin said.

"You're going to kill me," I said, sure as I did that it was the truth.

The rider narrowed its stolen eyes. The bullet slid down through the air to land on its upturned palm.

"Possibly," it said. "If it's necessary."

I almost had my feet back. The city below us glittered and darkened. Somewhere out there, down below us, Midian and Chogyi Jake were running for their lives. And Candace and Aaron and Kim. Every minute I kept Coin focused on me was one that its attention wasn't turned to them.

Run, I thought. Wherever you are out there, get the h.e.l.l away from here. Live.

"How much do you know?" it asked.

"Enough," I said. It was silent for a long moment, then nodded.

"And you have made yourself part of this," he said. It was almost a question.

"Yeah," I said. The thing in Coin's body sighed.

"You are a woman of great power. Great potential," it said. "You needn't take your uncle's path. Even with the hurt you've caused me, you don't have to die here."

I looked at it. The ink marks on its pale flesh seemed to s.h.i.+ft, letters forming and re-forming. Something in the pit of my stomach warmed and rose, and against my own expectations, I laughed. Coin looked nonplussed.

"You're saying I could join up with you?"

"That's an option," it said, vaguely offended.

"Next you offer me all the nations of the world?" I asked. When it looked confused, I gestured to the wide, empty air around us. "Temptation. High place. Devil."

"Ah," it said, nodding. "No, I'm not Satan, and you've little enough in common with Christ, for that matter. I wasn't offering to purchase your soul. Only that I would rather we not end this in violence if there isn't need. If alliance isn't interesting to you, armistice at least remains a possibility."

"What? 'Oops, my bad. Won't do it again,' and you let me go?"

"Of course not. I've underestimated h.e.l.ler's reach, but that doesn't make me a fool. Renounce your vengeance and there will be an agreement. A binding of intention. Then, yes, you can walk away."

"Really can't," I said.

Coin stood. The man's body was only a little taller than mine. The business suit looked perversely in place with the arcane designs on its skin. I raised my chin.

"You killed my uncle," I said again, and shrugged.

"And you are determined to walk in his footsteps," Coin said. It wasn't a question, but it was the last chance I had.

I s.h.i.+fted my feet, the gravel crunching under me. I was a thousand feet above the ground, facing a supernatural evil that had already said it was willing to kill me. I didn't have another bullet or a rifle with which to fire it. Eric's protections might have been stripped away by Kim's cantrip. I didn't have any friends or allies. I was alone, and if I didn't do what the thing in Coin's body wanted, I'd be killed. Or I could say no, accept whatever binding it had in mind, and live as its slave and subject until I found a way to slip my leash. If I ever did. But at least I'd be alive. All I had to say was No, I'm not.

"Yeah," I said. "Really am."

Coin nodded, its expression resigned and unsurprised.

"This gives me no pleasure," it said, and drew in its breath. I jumped at it, swinging low. Coin danced out of reach, lifted its hands, and shouted a single syllable. The sound was louder than anything I'd ever heard-like a jet engine about two feet from my face. There were other voices inside it. I heard a chorus of shrieking words, a high wailing, and something deep and chthonic and inhuman. Sound pushed at me like a storm wind.

I set my feet, leaning forward toward Coin's gaping mouth and outstretched arms. The gravel under me s.h.i.+fted as I slid backward. My mind was jumping in a hundred different directions. I tried to pull up my qi, to force my will down into the soles of my feet to stick me to the spot. There was nothing.

The edge of the building came up behind me faster than I'd expected. The raw force of Coin's will had shoved me a dozen feet or more. The parapet came up to my thighs, the void on the other side. I dropped to my knees, trying not to pitch over it. My ears rang, and my eyes felt dry and scoured, like I'd been staring into a sandstorm.

And then I was in motion. I curled to the side, pus.h.i.+ng through my legs as I did. I landed on my shoulder, rolling gracefully through my back to end up catlike on my fingertips and the b.a.l.l.s of my feet. There was no surprise on Coin's face. It lifted its raised fists, and I jumped to the side as the roofing where I had been burst open, pebbles flying like shrapnel. I felt something dig into my leg, but I ignored the pain. My backpack was inches from my hand, and I swept it up and threw it, the leather singing against the air. It took Coin in the belly. Nothing more than a moment's distraction, but I was running forward, teeth bared.

My blood was a song, my body a weapon. My mind let go and let my flesh take control without me. Coin blocked a claw-fingered swipe at his neck, but not the kick that I sent hammering into its knee. I wanted to see surprise in its expression, but there was only momentary pain and then grim determination. I danced back, and Coin flipped up a handful of gravel, the unnaturally powerful stones hissing past my ear like gunfire.