“No, child: because I was a fool. Because I didn’t know, then, how little I’d care about hurting you at all, once the deed was done.” If he heard her little gasp, horror-filled and breath-caught, he gave no sign. “So I went out past the point where my home’s protective wards ceased to work, and I bared my neck to him. Even thoroughly infected, I had time to make my peace and write out instructions before falling into a trance; when I woke, Ruhel had already prisoned me inside the vault. of course, I understood why he wouldn’t try to free me himself—I’d designed it, after all. A dreadful place, and booby-trapped, to boot. But still I warmed myself over those intervening years with the idea that if and when, he’d surely be bound to come and meet with me, at last—just drop by for a little look-see, no social obligations assumed. No...pressure.”
“So you could kill him,” Anapurna suggested.
“Oh no. So I could thank him.”
Ruhel gasped again, the sound deeper this time, more of a half-sob; Anapurna jerked a bit, as if face-slapped. Then said, with a optimism she didn’t seem to feel: “But we have the book, yes? The Clavicule. So we can put it all back, the way it should be. The way you should be.”
“And how’s that, exactly?”
“Human. That was...the whole point, of all of this.”
With mild disbelief: “Oh, dear. My poor, sweet girl, really—why on earth would you think I would ever want that?”
And there it lay, at last, between all seven of them: the gauntlet. Dropped like it was proverbially hot, a mic, or a fuckin’ bomb.
“Well, there you go,” Dee heard herself observe, ostensibly to Anapurna, who she almost thought she saw give a tiny little nod in return—before Ruhel jumped in on top, crying out: “But you can’t possibly mean it, grandfather—you, who taught me to always keep fighting, no matter what! This isn’t your fault, for pity’s sake. You have a condition, but it’s curable, and with the book’s help, you’ll be exactly the person you were again, before all this...oh God, why are you still laughing?”
Because he doesn’t give a shit, Dee wanted to blurt at her, to grab and shake her, bodily—anything to keep her from abasing herself in front of this goddamned ghoul, this sacrilege, just because it wore a rough approximation of the person she’d once loved best in all the world’s face.
But—
“Well, one never does know ‘til one’s in it, so to speak,” Professor Maks explained, grotesquely reasonable. “But the fact is, I may have told you a bit of a fib, my darling, without meaning to—because so far as I can tell, I am exactly the same person I was before, right now.
I know what I’ve done. It’s just, as I’ve already said, that I simply can’t seem to bring myself to care.”
And: Oh, we got trouble now, Dee’s brain told her, stupidly. As though it’d somehow convinced itself they hadn’t had any, before.
Out of the corner of one eye, Dee saw Chatwin reach to slip her hand in Sami’s, brazen as ever—and Sami, with no other alternative, close her fingers on it, hard. Saw those sketchy sigil-letters start to light up all up and down her arms, hair haloed and lifting; saw the trucker hat pop straight off of Chatwin’s asshole head, as her own mane did much the same. And felt the power they were both suddenly funneling into her start to light her own medulla oblongata up like a bulb, switching her over to full berserker mode without her even asking. The machete’s blade glowed horizon-flash green as she struck out, burying it hilt-deep through the prof ’s long-dead bicep; he whipped ‘round snake-quick, all fangs, but Dee managed to dodge and slip anyhow, steering him straight into a twinned blast of arcane witch-juice from Sami and Chatwin’s upraised, fisted fingers that sent him reeling, almost flipping back into the fountain.
At almost the same instant, Anapurna pulled the trigger, firing into his side. White light bloomed, taking half her great-great-grandfather’s ribcage with it; he gave a shriek, spinning sidelong, then shrieked yet again when Ruhel discharged her own weapon, half-harpooning him with species of grappling-hook that chunked in deep and sizzled as she juiced him hard: once, twice, three times, ‘til his hair stood straight on end, smoking, and his eyes rolled up white in their sockets. But did he fall?
(No.)
Sharp teeth set and grinding, Maks Maartensbeck clambered grimly to his feet once more, shook himself like a wet dog, throwing off sparks. And began, by slow, tug-of-war degrees, to pull the cable between them ever tighter, reeling her steadily in.
Though Ruhel fought him all the way, it was a foregone conclusion; Anapurna scrabbled in her vest for another cartridge, tore her palms reloading, but his claws were already closing on her grandmother’s throat—so she threw a glance Dee’s way instead, too angry to beg, and Dee found herself punching Sami’s arm, gesturing at the book Chatwin still clung to. “Read it!” she yelled.
Sami’s brows shot up, startled by the very notion...just as Chatwin, predictably unpredictable, flipped the folio open one-handed, and started to do exactly that.
“O judge of nations!” she yelled out. “Ye who threw down Bethsaida, Chorazin, Sodom! Ye who raised Lazarus up, whose voice spoke out of the head of the tempest! Ye who made the bush of the Hebrews burn!”
“Lift up this carrion flesh, and make it clean!” Sami chimed in, scanning the page over Chatwin’s shoulder. “Ye who made wine of Your own blood and bread of Your own meat, heal even this mortal wound! Ye who harrowed Hell, put fear into this black and fearless heart! ”
At the first few words, a shudder straightened the professor’s spine, whip-cracking him erect. His mouth squared in pain, “You—” he began. “You, I—stop it. Damn you! Stuh, stuh—stop—”
Not likely, motherfucker. one more time, Dee glanced at Anapurna, who nodded, and whistled at Ruhel: a three-note phrase, very definite, clearly some signal. Still vainly fighting against the pull, Ruhel reached inside her jacket for a glass ampoule of some red liquid, which she broke open with her thumb and deftly tossed, splattering its contents across her grandfather’s deformed face. The bulk of it landed straight between those snapping jaws, sizzling as it went down; Maks Maartensbeck coughed smoke, then retched outright, bringing up a rush of hot, black, stinking mess. His hands slipped off the Taser?
??s cable, letting Ruhel leap away even as Anapurna jumped forward, landing a vicious kick to the small of his back that sent him crashing further down, face against the floor.
“Adjuramus te, draco maledicte!” Sami told him, every word a blow, under whose impact Dee watched him writhe. “Exorciso te! Humiliare, sub potente manu Dei!” To which Chatwin added, without any apparent shred of irony: “For my God is frightening in His holy places, since all places are those He has made, and thus it is His name before which all terrible things must tremble.”
The professor looked up, punished face-skin starting to darken and tremble, almost to melt and run—and was it just the light in here, or did his squinted eyes suddenly look less red, more blue?
“Whah wash thah?” he demanded of Ruhel, then spat yet more black, before continuing: “Ih fehlt...blashphemous.”
“Communion wine, blessed by the pope. The literal Blood of Christ.”
“Buh ohny a priesht—”