Child, page 36
part #6 of Sam and Sam Series
Except today.
Today, she spun and wove in the center of her space, unaware of him, almost unaware of the music itself. The ear-splitting silence underneath the loud music was finally enough, and she slid to a halt, her hunting boots giving her soft traction on the floor. She faced Toby and he took a step forward into her space.
She stepped toward him, defiant.
This was not the way the dance normally went.
The music pulsed on, the grim, throbby stuff that demons tended to prefer, manic and irrelevant as Samantha and Toby stared at each other.
And then she spun away, dismissing him in a motion that didn’t even acknowledge him.
She was just the girl who danced with Kara. Unencumbered by the social expectation that she be dark and powerful and self-aware. Toby roared and Carter stood. Samantha was across her space in a moment, standing in front of Toby with defiant eyes. The single word carried across the room like an echo.
“Hush.”
Toby looked dumbfounded. Sam realized he and Jason were both standing, as well. Samantha resumed dancing, her mind not buried under the music with the sense of lost glee she was capable of, but nor was she putting on an act for Toby. He didn’t matter.
Toby continued to look dumbfounded.
And then there was shouting.
It took everyone by surprise, as it came from outside of the room. There was a shrill squeal and more yelling, some of it in hellspeak, some of it averbal, full of effort and intensity.
“Anadidd’na Anu’dd!” came a voice. Samantha froze. The entire room turned, as if reoriented by a magnet.
Who in the world would dare to speak in angeltongue here?
Samantha was already in motion as the doors burst open and Kelly threw off a demon, the sword in his hand flaming a bright blue. Samantha and Sam drew to each other by instinct, and Sam heard Anadidd’na draw out of her sheath on Jason’s back, behind him.
“What is it?” Samantha asked, coming to stand next to Kelly. The demons in the hallway drew back from her, and the ones in the room formed a circumference. “He is mine,” Samantha said loudly, for their benefit. “He will be tolerated.”
There was muttering at this, but no one would take the first step to find out what she would be like, angry.
“Kelly, what is it?”
“They attacked the apartment,” Kelly said. Sam wasn’t sure he had ever heard Kelly breathless before. “I fought them, but there were too many. I don’t know what happened to Ash.”
There was a beat of silence as the music throbbed mindlessly on, then Samantha nodded toward the doorway, eyes hard.
“Go.”
<><><>
The door was hanging off the hinge at the apartment, big, red symbols drawn on the partially shattered wood. Samantha paused, looking at them.
Kha was there.
She looked at her palm reflexively, where the mark had been as she’d searched hell for Jason, then back at the door. Inside, the apartment was trashed. She could see from here that the living room table was shattered and the curtains were torn. They’d destroyed it for the sheer joy of destroying it.
“I told him I would be okay,” Kelly said. “I think he got away.” He paused. “I hope he got away.”
“They shouldn’t have been able to get in,” Carter said, reading the marks. Samantha was good at hellspeak. One of the best alive. Carter understood it on a level that Samantha would never begin to fathom. “This is strong magic.”
Samantha realized they were all standing in the hallway. She pushed against the doorway and found the resistance she had subconsciously expected.
“I can’t go in,” she said.
“What?” Carter asked. He shook his head. “No.” He looked at the corners of the doorframe, then held out his hands in front of him, fingers curled as he flexed them against the power of the enchantments on the door, a doorway that he had guarded himself. “No. You will not come in here and do this again. This. Space. Is. Mine.”
With a roar that tore out of his chest, he pulled apart the magic that guarded the doorway and rushed into the room, drawing Diana and holding her out above his head as he yelled. No one mixed angeltongue and hellspeak with such abandon, or effectiveness, as Carter. Samantha found herself standing with her back pressed against the wall in the hallway, watching numbly as his fury spiked. She could feel the wild strains of magic ripping and re-forming around him, like a cocoon, drawing tighter and harder and faster. Abby spoke hellspeak enough to shop and conversational angeltongue, but this was above her head. She just stared at Samantha, reading the power of what Carter was doing on Samantha’s face.
Jason waited maybe thirty seconds before charging through the door, disregarding Carter, and beginning to search the apartment.
With loud, commanding tones, Carter set the last pieces of the spell into place and the magic hardened, a new, novel shield set up against the uninvited. Samantha drew breath, realizing that she had forgotten to, up until now. She found Kelly standing next to her with his hands over his ears and a snarl on his face.
“Get in here,” Carter said. “They’ve attacked my psychic for the second and final time. I expect you to tell me who they are.”
Samantha found a resistance at the door, but this one was familiar, like a sweater whose owner she could identify by smell. It pushed back at her in Carter’s cocky way, just letting her know it was there, then allowed her through.
“How is she supposed to find them?” Sam asked, following her.
“It’s what she does,” Carter said, half-sneer.
“There’s nothing here,” Jason said, returning to the main room. They trashed the whole place.”
“I can’t get in,” Kelly said from the doorway.”
“That’s the point,” Carter said, turning his head to look at the angel but leaving his body facing Samantha. Her heart was racing. Ash was gone. He had been her charge, and she had left him alone with just Kelly to guard him. His parents were dead and he was alone. It was her fault.
“Sam,” Carter said.
“What?” she and Sam both answered.
“That one,” Carter said roughly. “Will you stop having your petty little panic attack and tell me who attacked my psychic?”
“She was with us the whole time,” Jason said dismissively.
“Shut up,” Samantha said.
“Me?” Jason squealed.
“By making this about me instead of about Ash…” Abby hinted.
“Damn rules,” Jason muttered. Abby began picking through the ruins of her home.
“Abby,” Samantha said quickly, softly. The woman looked up at her and Samantha gave her a quick head shake. No. Not yet. She needed the patterns.
She closed her eyes and breathed. Ash had been here. She felt the shape of the room, the shape of the chaos, the order of it. He’d been… there. She found the timing with her hand, weaving it through space and breathing. She pointed at the door.
“What does it say?”
Carter waited for a moment, eyes solid on her, then turned and went to look at the remains of the door. Kelly stood in the hallway sullenly.
“Street slang. A lot of it’s new.”
“Cockroaches,” Samantha muttered.
“What did you say?” Carter asked.
“It’s what the pitlords call the demons who run around squealing nonsense and calling it language,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” Carter said. “They didn’t use the holes Ash put in the shielding here to get in.” He turned to face her. “They used you.”
“How does that work?” she asked, dropping her hands to her side and going to stand next to him.
“That’s your mark, isn’t it?”
“It’s a word,” she said. He rolled his jaw and shook his head.
“No. That’s your mark.”
“You’ve seen my mark. Sam’s got it on his back.”
“Sam’s got what?” Jason asked.
Huh. Forgot to mention that one.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Carter said, dragging it out of her. She glanced at him, then held her palm up to the door, feeling the familiar power as the symbol radiated at her. She couldn’t pull the mark to the surface of her skin on this side, but she remembered the feel of it, anyway.
“What the hell did you just do?” Jason asked, coming to stand next to her. The kha on the door had spread outwards, like a straw blowing on wet paint. She stared at the pattern.
The sunburst pattern.
That connected the rest of the symbols.
“I need to look in the mirror,” she said suddenly, bolting across the room and down the hallway to the bathroom.
“Always with the bathroom,” she heard Carter say behind her. She looked up at the florescent light above the mirror, remembering the last time she’d been trying to identify a group of demons that had broken into this apartment, then shoved the memory aside. She’d been so young…
The mirror was cracked.
She’d expected that. There wasn’t much in the apartment that wasn’t broken.
What was also unsurprising, but much more useful, was the piece that was missing.
“Compulsion,” she said softly, taking one measured step to her left.
“What is it?” Jason asked.
“You managed to miss that?” Carter asked, standing in the doorway. Sam was helping Abby clean up the kitchen. Her teacups were broken.
Samantha could breathe.
It was bad, but at least it was something.
“What did I miss?” Jason asked.
“The giant piece of glass stuck to the wall, there.”
“Oh. Huh. Yeah.”
Samantha shook her head.
They’d broken the glass like they’d broken everything else, but one of them had taken a loose piece and stuck it to the wall, forming an angle with it such that you could see the infinite in it, when you stood in the right place, like a hotel corridor.
“The Curl,” Carter said, reaching up to pull the glass down. Samantha winced as it shattered on the floor, feeling for her poor friend, but she had more important things to worry about.
“Is Cecil still running them?” she asked. Carter shook his head.
“No, they went back across.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Someone made them the right deal,” he said. “No telling what’s happened since they left.”
“Who’s still here?” she asked.
“Boris, Dama, a couple of the ones I never cared about,” Carter said, chewing his lip, his eyes sharp. “Boris is with the Cusp now. Dama went free agent, last I knew.” He snapped. “The twins.”
“What about us?” Jason asked.
“Not you,” Samantha said, watching the long sequence of reflections stretching away from her.
“You feel like a raid?” Carter asked.
“Isn’t justified,” Samantha warned. Carter shook his head.
“Doesn’t count with a demon.”
She nodded. She’d never liked the twins, anyway. She looked up at the ceiling, simply because it made her feel less self-conscious.
“Maryann, I need you.”
There was a thump and some off-color hissing in the hallway.
“Mistress, are you in there?” Maryann called. Samantha frowned at her reflection.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“What else would she call you?” Carter asked. Samantha went out to the living room and looked out the doorway, where Kelly was looking even more sour.
“I can’t come in,” Maryann said. Samantha nodded.
“New security.”
Maryann sniffed, then wrinkled her nose.
“It stinks in there, anyway.”
“What do you smell?” Samantha asked. Maryann stood still for a moment, eyes closed.
“Calcium.”
“What does that mean?” Sam asked.
“What does calcium smell like?” Jason asked.
“Where is Ash?”
Samantha appreciated that Abby, at least, remained on point.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Carter said, staring at Samantha. “Calcium.”
Samantha nodded at him. She knew exactly what it meant.
It was happening again.
Only this time, it was hers.
“The twins,” she said. He nodded.
“The twins.”
<><><>
“Maryann,” Samantha said, pulling the demon aside as the whirlwind of prep continued in the apartment.
“Yes, Mistress.”
Samantha shook her head, seeing the spark of insurrection in the girl’s eyes. That made it fractionally more tolerable, but only just.
“I need you to find the boy that they were after,” she said.
“Won’t he be with them?” Maryann asked. Samantha had forgotten that she hadn’t told Maryann about Ash. She was still hesitant to give a demon information about him, even if she physically couldn’t do anything that she knew was against Samantha’s orders or best interests. She was just going to have to do it, though. She needed Maryann’s skillset.
“I hope he isn’t,” she said. “He can glitch.”
“He’s a demon?” Maryann asked. Samantha shook her head
“Human.”
“That’s not possible,” Maryann said. Samantha shrugged. “I still need you to find him.”
“Does he soulvest?”
Samantha wondered who had taught her that. She knew Maryann spent time with other demons. She could be wherever she wanted to be at any given time, so while she did spend a lot of her time with Doris, a mind that was no longer capable of sleep needed something to do overnight, at least. Likely, she spent even more time than that with her own kind.
“I don’t know. He’s a nice kid. He probably does.”
“I just need to know where he lives,” Maryann said. Samantha could have slapped herself in the forehead. She hadn’t stripped the house of soulvested items, while she’d been there. How slow-witted could she be?
“Kelly can show you,” Samantha said. She heard Kelly make a noise in protest, behind her.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You can join us after you show Maryann Ash’s house,” Samantha said. “It won’t take long.”
She knew that it was being in league with a demon that the angel found distasteful, but she didn’t have time or luxury to respect that, right now. She returned her attention to Maryann.
“I didn’t, while I was there. I need you to clean it out.”
“What do you want me to do with his stuff?” Maryann asked.
The right answer was that she should burn it, but Maryann knew that Samantha wouldn’t have the heart to do it.
“Take it to my room at Carter’s,” she said. “I’ll sort through it there.”
Maryann nodded, then looked over Samantha’s shoulder at Kelly.
“You and me, angel boy.”
Kelly grunted, then Maryann nodded her head at Samantha.
“I’ll find him.”
Samantha nodded. She had no doubt. The question wasn’t finding him this time. It was getting him somewhere where they wouldn’t have to keep finding him. Where he wouldn’t have to keep running.
“Keep him a secret,” she said. “From everyone. I don’t care what you find out about him or what you think anyone else knows. The only people you may discuss him with are myself and Sam, and then only when you are sure that the conversation is private. You are bound by this.”
Maryann dropped her head further, submissive. Samantha had never used language like that before with her; she knew that Maryann wasn’t looking for a way to wriggle out of her binding, but this was important. At least the demon didn’t seem to mind.
“Is that all?” she asked. Samantha nodded.
“Go. Kelly will want to get back quickly.”
Maryann gave her a quick salute, then went to talk to Kelly. Following across a glitch was a technical thing that Samantha didn’t have time or spare attention to learn, right now. Maybe another day, she thought wistfully.
Carter was outfitting Sam and Jason with a selection of magics that he had stored in Abby’s apartment. Stuff that not even marauding demons would mess with.
“Your eyeliner is running,” Samantha said to Jason.
“Dammit,” Jason said, rubbing his eyes again and leaving wider black marks under his eyes. His hair was wet; something Carter had picked had required pouring it over him. Samantha had a few guesses, but they weren’t important right now.
“You at power?” Carter asked her.
“You really have to ask that after tonight?” Abby asked from the doorway. She’d found an unbroken teacup somewhere and had managed to boil water. The chaos of her life strewn about the apartment was untouched, and it broke Samantha’s heart to think of her best friend, left on her own to put it all back together after they left, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Fair enough,” Carter said. “The twins are smug, but they aren’t dumb. They’re going to know we’re coming for them.”
“Because of calcium?” Jason asked.
“It’s a life symbol,” Samantha said.
“Of course it is,” Jason muttered. Samantha shrugged.
“Where do you find calcium?”
“Salt,” Sam answered.
“Elemental calcium,” she said. Carter sighed.
“I”m going,” he said. “Try to keep up.”
Samantha checked Lahn and saw Jason reach up to touch the dragon head over his right shoulder as Carter started out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” Samantha murmured to Abby, pressing her hand as she passed by.
“This is life, love,” Abby said. “Kick their asses.”
They made it to the stairwell and started quickly down the stairs.
“I give up,” Jason said. “Where do you find elemental calcium?”
“Really?” Sam asked.
“Why not?” Jason answered. “Haven’t got anything better to do. I’ve missed her.”
Samantha snorted.
“Limestone is a good place, but limestone is really just a seafloor’s worth of mushed up crustaceans.”
