Existentially Challenged, page 13
“I don’t want you to kill things,” said Leslie-Ifrig. “Doesn’t your boss make you do that?”
Victor’s anger came to a boil all at once, rising up and bursting out of him before he could stop it. He gave in and went with the flow, thrusting his arms out and roaring as everything in front of him whited out. The pounding of his heartbeat in his ears was like a door open to a thunderstorm, crashing rhythmically against a wall.
When the smoke and the steam cleared, the water level of the oxbow lake was looking a couple of feet shallower and the horseshoe shape had drifted into more of a serifed capital D. The area between the arms had been reduced to an obliterated mess, craggy with blackened glass.
Victor sagged, gasping for air, groaning with each breath to drown out the chittering at the back of his mind. Steam was drifting up from everything, and the entire scene wavered with a heat haze. He glanced around as his full thinking capacity gradually returned. It seemed that Leslie-Ifrig . . .
. . . was right next to his ear again. “Now do you want to talk about it?”
21
With the excitement of the impromptu ritualistic healing over and everyone already inside the house, Miracle Dad had turned on a playlist, cracked open a case of inexpensive beer, and made the evening change from “mass” to “house party.” The congregation had scattered themselves around the ground floor and the front garden, mingling their little conversation groups to compare notes on all of this El-Yetch business.
The largest gathering was in the living room, where Alison had been helped into an armchair to recover but now found herself under the uncomfortable scrutiny of Modern Miracle’s followers. They filled the room, sitting on the floor and perched on every available space like primary school children hearing a guest speaker. She hadn’t seen Diablerie or any of the LAXA people since she had been brought inside, and it was hard to find an opportunity to make her excuses and leave, not when people kept coming up asking to touch the healed scar on her forehead. Alison was starting to feel like a statue of Buddha.
“You have many questions,” said Miracle Meg, who was holding court from the arm of Alison’s chair.
Alison looked at her. “I do?”
“You wonder why I look like this”—she gave a little shrug—“even though El-Yetch is in me.”
“Oh yeah,” said Alison. “We were all wondering about that.”
“This realm has become more open to that of the Ancients,” she said, in a slightly ethereal voice. “Now that magic is no longer secret and those whom the Ancients touch are not shunned as they once were. And at the same time, the Ancients are becoming more open to you.”
“The Ancients are watching us?” Alison looked up and around absurdly.
“El-Yetch influences this world because she means to,” continued Miracle Meg. “She has seen us and she wants to help us. That’s why she didn’t change the way I look.”
“But why?” asked Alison, frowning. “What can she possibly be getting out of helping us?”
Meg seemed confused by the question. She looked to Miracle Dad, who was sitting on the near end of the sofa, nodding along to the things she said.
“Well, you don’t expect to get anything out of keeping a hamster, do you, but you still look after it,” he said bluntly, setting his beer to one side. “Maybe she thinks we’re cute. Maybe she gets frequent-flyer miles hanging out down here. Whatever, she wants to give us free healing magic, so why ask questions?”
Alison thought uneasily about the Shadow Crisis, and the look on Elizabeth Lawrence’s face whenever she talked about it. Whatever that Ancient had wanted out of the human realm, it may well have been the same thing motivating El-Yetch. And somehow Alison doubted that it was merely some Ethereal Realm equivalent of completing their Pokémon collection.
She looked at Miracle Meg again. While she gave every impression of being a perfectly mundane little girl on video or from a distance, there was definitely something inhuman about her when examined up close. There was a strange glimmer about her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice seemed to be coming from far away.
“But how does she provide free healing?” asked a member of the audience who was sitting on the floor.
“She, er . . .” Miracle Dad faltered. “Well, she touches them. You all saw.”
The audience member pushed her large spectacles up her nose, and Alison tensed up when she realized it was Rana. She was focused on Miracle Dad in a very deliberate manner that unnerved Alison even more than if Rana had been sitting there staring daggers straight at her. “I mean, magic healing has only ever worked by giving up the healer’s own life essence.” She was leaning forward, enunciating each word carefully. “How do you make it work without that happening?”
“El-Yetch makes all things possible,” said Miracle Meg dreamily.
“What she means is, El-Yetch has the power to create more life essence,” said Miracle Dad, just quickly enough to make Alison’s eyebrow raise.
“She can do that?” asked Rana.
“Hey, some people can create stuff from nothing, right?” said Miracle Dad. “That girl on the news could do it with salt.” He pointed a chubby finger to Alison, and she tried to subtly dig herself deeper into the armchair cushions. “The one you, you know, did the brain thing to.”
“She’s a life essence elemental?” said Rana, fascinated.
“Could be, yeah,” said Miracle Dad. “Look, I’m just a regular dad. I don’t pretend to understand this stuff like the government experts do. Speaking of which. Ms. Arkin?”
Alison had just successfully snuck out of the armchair unnoticed and had made it a princely seven or eight inches toward the door when all eyes suddenly fell on her again. She winced, frozen in midcreep. “Yes?”
“Those Bible types, like the one that beaned you in the face tonight? They’ve been getting worse.” His expression was suddenly dire and plaintive. “It was nasty emails first. Then letters. Then they started tying the letters to things and throwing them at the house. They don’t like new religions. We’re a threat to them.”
“Okay,” said Alison, glancing back and forth to the door as if she could will herself closer to it with eyeball movements alone.
“You have to go back to your bosses at the Department and tell them we want recognition. We’re not some cult, we’re not trying to brainwash anyone, we just want acknowledgment that we’ve got as much right to exist as any other religion. You tell them that.”
Some stubborn part of Alison’s mind—probably inherited from her mother—told her to ask to hear the word please, or perhaps for him to rephrase his words to sound more like a request and not a demand, but better instincts overruled it. “I will . . . go and tell them right now,” she said.
To her relief, that seemed to satisfy the room, and all eyes turned back to Miracle Dad and Miracle Meg as Rana pressed them with another question about how the magical healing worked. Alison had to wonder why Rana was displaying such interest in the matter, but then again, back at school she had been Alison’s chief rival for the teacher’s pet position, and in any case, the exit door was open wide and inviting and this wasn’t a question Alison felt was going to keep her awake at night.
Someone had set up a grill in the front garden to cook burgers and sausages for the lingering groups of El-Yetch followers, so by the time Alison had carefully navigated her way between the conversation groups, the healed scar on her forehead had acquired a colorful mix of ketchup and mustard stains from people wanting to touch it. The moment she was on the pavement and the garden gate had swung closed behind her, an enormous feeling of relief washed over her like a cool breeze on a stifling day.
It was augmented slightly by the appearance of Beatrice and Roger from LAXA, and even more so when she saw they weren’t filming. They drifted over to her from their concealed spot behind a hedge, both with hands buried sheepishly in pockets.
“Wow, so they really healed it, huh,” said Beatrice, admiring Alison’s scar. “What is that, like, ectoplasm?”
Alison touched it with a finger and inspected it. “No . . . Dijon, I think.”
Beatrice sighed. “Guess this whole thing was kind of a bust, huh. Still, it’s pretty cool that it’s real healing. Pretty cool to watch it happening as well. Bit gross, but overall cool. Just closed up like the zip on some trousers.” She blew a raspberry and jerked a finger upwards to imitate the motion.
“Yeah,” said Alison, glancing back at the house. Cool wasn’t the word that would occur to her. There was a lot about the evening’s events she was going to have to take away and process—or rather, tell Elizabeth about so that she could process it. All that Alison could say with confidence was that something didn’t feel right about Modern Miracle.
“So, guess the Department isn’t gonna be happy, since they wanted an arrest,” said Beatrice, watching Alison’s pensiveness.
“Yeah,” said Alison, feeling ill.
“Yeah, that sucks.” Beatrice offered a sympathetic wince and a half smile, then both disappeared in an instant. “Anyway, do you mind if we head off?”
“No, we should probably all go,” said Alison, turning away from the noise of the impromptu party behind her one last time.
Beatrice blinked. “Don’t you need to wait for your partner? Boss? Thingy?”
Alison shrugged. “He’ll probably appear at some point.”
“Oh sure, cool,” said Beatrice as they began to walk down the darkened street to the two vehicles. “My uncle has a cat like that.”
Beatrice prattled on, unheeded, as Alison worked her eidetic memory fit to burst. She was recalling every moment of the evening’s events in sequence. There was no doubt that she had been genuinely, magically healed. She had been uniquely positioned to notice if there had been any tricks in use. So did that mean Miracle Meg really was possessed by an Ancient that had somehow become benevolent to humanity? It turned everything Alison thought she knew about Ancients on its head. It was like hearing that a passing black hole had decided to support a specific football team.
Her conscious mind registered the sound of a barking dog and filed it at first with every other generic sound of a nighttime suburb, until the sound grew enough in volume to register that something was up. “Isn’t that your dog?” she asked.
“Oh yeah,” said Beatrice. “Probably.”
Arby was making distressed noises in a regular rhythm. Two or three barks, then a desperate whine, then a growl gradually transitioning into a fresh chorus of barking. As Alison drew close enough, she could see a hairy brown shape in the darkness at the side of the van, animatedly struggling against a very short leash and throwing itself against the van’s door.
“Arby?” said Roger the cameraman, jogging forward to free the dog. The leash had been trapped in the side door, and Arby had been attempting to run around and seek assistance with about six inches of free range.
“What happened?” asked Beatrice.
“Someone must have shut him out,” posited Roger, stroking Arby’s fur and trying to calm him down until he forgot to be upset and attempted to jump around in excitement again.
“David!” yelled Beatrice, hitting the side of the van. “What’re you doing in there?! There’s no Wi-Fi! You’ll use up all the data!”
Roger finally got the side door unlocked and hauled it open to free the dog, at which point David emerged. Or rather, gravity caused David to slump lifelessly into the street.
He was quite dead. It was only his LAXA T-shirt and ill-fitting jeans that made him recognizable. His hair had become pure white, and his skin was blotchy and sunken, as if a vacuum hose had been inserted into him and shrink-wrapped his bones to his skin.
“Oh my god,” said Beatrice, after a shocked silence. “Wow. He finds a way to ruin everything.”
LATER THAT NIGHT
22
It was past nine o’clock when Adam Hesketh received a call from Richard Danvers, commanding him to come in to the Department for an emergency briefing. After waiting about ten minutes to hopefully give the impression that he’d had anything better to do, Adam caught the next underground train to central London.
After hurrying through the deserted atrium of the Department’s building—an area that was filled with ominous echoes when not bustling with activity—he reached the Operations briefing room to find three people gathered around the front desk, embodying three different interpretations of the word sitting. Elizabeth Lawrence sat behind the desk in a fairly traditional, conservative manner; Richard Danvers was perched on the end of the desk with one foot drawn up; and Alison Arkin sat on a chair in front of them so bound up with tension that her posterior must have been hovering an inch above the seat.
“Mr. Hesketh,” said Danvers. He was in serious, no-nonsense chief inspector mode, as evidenced by having fastened his top shirt button. “Notice anything unusual about Ms. Arkin’s forehead?”
Alison dutifully leaned forward to let him see. “No?” he said, before a quick double take. “You mean, besides the fact it’s been magically healed recently?”
One of the layers of tension audibly vanished from the room as Danvers leaned back. “That’ll do for confirmation.”
“It definitely felt real,” said Alison. “It definitely seemed like something hard to fake.”
Adam was not quite prepared to internalize the notion that he had been called across the city at night to look at three square inches of forehead. He was an Investigator, and obviously he had been called to help Investigate. He leaned forward and dynamically raised one foot on the seat of the nearest vacant chair. “What happened? Fill me in.”
“Another vampire victim has turned up in Worcester,” said Danvers, after a moment’s surprised hesitation. “This one right on Modern Miracle’s doorstep—moments after Alison here received magical healing from someone who didn’t appear to suffer any ill effects from granting it.”
Adam’s eyes popped wide with excitement. He thrust out a pointed index finger so quickly that everyone in the room instinctively flinched. “I told you! This is exactly what I said! She’s got to be a cond—”
“Yes, yes, yes, I remember you raising that theory,” said Danvers, waving a hand. “I’d be interested to hear your theory on how she was able to drain life from this poor young man from an entire street away.”
Adam froze, jaw slack. With no conscious thought on his part, his defiant pointing finger slowly drifted to the top of his head and began scratching it. “It, er. Well. If they moved the body afterwards . . .”
“In any case, this girl was on camera, on multiple livestreams, clearly only touching Ms. Arkin and nobody else,” said Danvers. “We had a little conference call with Mr. Brooke-Stodgeley while waiting for you. He assures us that life essence transfer depends on physical contact. It can work through a layer of clothing or two, but not solid walls and empty air.”
“And, and,” said Alison, “he said it wouldn’t take a whole teenager’s worth of life essence to heal one small head wound.” This was something that had started particularly bothering her during the drive back to London.
“I’m inclined to agree with his theory that the girl is a genuine healer but uses scam-healing techniques most of the time and reserves the real stuff for very rare occasions, such as when someone in the government needs convincing,” said Danvers, nodding to Alison. “I’m sure the aging effect wouldn’t have been noticeable for a wound that small.”
“So what happened to David?” asked Alison.
Danvers puffed out his cheeks and shrugged. “There must have been a separate vampire on the scene. One we don’t know about. The same one that drained William Shaw.”
“It can’t be a coincidence,” pressed Adam, reasserting his dynamic lean forward. “An entirely separate vampire just happening to be there on the very same night?”
“On the very same night of a large public event,” said Elizabeth calmly. “Held by a group with a large percentage of extradimensionally infused members. Whose public message board appears to be a hotbed of magical extremism.”
“Turns out it can be a coincidence,” said Danvers tactfully as Adam’s face fell again. “It can quite easily be a coincidence. What does this message board turn up?”
“There is a public discussion on the subject of tonight’s sermon,” said Elizabeth, opening the laptop in front of her. “Mostly general agreement that it was a positive evening. Some anti-Christian sentiment after Alison’s wounding. After that, a lengthy sidetrack on Alison herself and an argument over whether what she did to Jessica Weatherby was justified—”
“Who thinks it was justified?” said Alison, suddenly buoyed.
“Nothing that seriously implies an intention to enact violence,” finished Elizabeth, barely pausing.
“In any case, I’m going to put someone onto monitoring this site,” said Danvers. “Someone in the Pacifications unit. They’ve been fairly idle lately—”
He was interrupted by the door flying open and Nita Pavani marching in. She was driving her heels into the floor as hard as she could, but she didn’t have the mass to match Sean Anderson’s effortless stomp energy. “Oh, excellent,” she said, drawing herself to her full height and planting her hands on her hips. “You’re all here.”
“Ms. Pavani . . .” said Danvers.
Nita ignored him and went to Alison, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Alison, it’s so good to see you all right. I saw the attack. It must have been very traumatizing. How do you feel?”
“Erm, fine?” said Alison, a little confused. While Nita had bent down to Alison’s level and was looking her square in the eye with an expression of deep sympathy, Alison couldn’t shake the feeling that Nita was actually addressing a point about six inches behind her head. “I got healed.”
