to stop it. I raised the gun again, but Aubrey had his arms spread wide, like he was gathering in the air itself. I saw his ribs flex as he breathed in, and I realized his shirt had been ripped apart somewhere in the violence. When he shouted, it wasn’t a human sound. It rang like a bell, like there was music in it, like there was an angel speaking my name in a voice so low it deafened.
The beast twisted, shuddered, and sat. Its skin grew pale, its head thin, its face human. Aaron the fiance lay on the splinters of a couch, his body slack. Aubrey staggered and fell to his knees.
I crawled over, putting my hand on Aubrey’s thigh. He was trembling.
“Is it dead?” I managed to croak.
“Bound,” he said. “Sleeping. Should be okay until Ex gets here.”
“Good trick.”
“Eric showed me.”
“Could have tried it a little earlier, though,” I said.
“Yeah, I was thinking that myself,” he said, then smiled. There was blood on his teeth. I smiled back, and the dog came to us, licking Aubrey’s face nervously. I wanted to sleep, but instead I staggered to my feet and closed the blinds and the front door. The place was a ruin. Couch, coffee table, overstuffed chairs-all of them were broken. The walls were shattered in three places, and the glass shutters guarding the fireplace were shards clinging to strips of warped copper. I walked back to the kitchen, almost surprised to see it intact. I washed my hands until the shaking got too bad, and then I just stood there, leaning against the counter.
“You’re hurt,” Aubrey said from the doorway.
“No. I’m…” I looked down at my blood-soaked side. “Oh. Hey, yeah. I’m hurt.”
I laughed, and the pain shot out from my side to the base of my skull. Somehow that seemed hilarious, and I sank to the floor in a feedback loop of laughter and pain. I watched Aubrey’s feet come across the tile floor, felt his hands lift me up to sitting. When he pulled off my shirt, I didn’t stop him. I felt wrung out and quiet now. Through the door to the ruined front room, I saw the dog sitting, its eyes fixed, I assumed, on the newly human body resting in the wreckage. Aubrey’s left eye was swelling shut, and I could see a bruise darkening at his collarbone. His hands shook. He touched a warm cloth to my side and I winced.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No, I mean I’m sorry I brought you here. This was way more than I expected. It was stupid of me.”
“It’s okay,” I repeated.
“You could have been killed.” I was a little surprised by the distress in his voice. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. I took his hand in mine and drew his eyes up to meet my own.
“What would have happened to her if we hadn’t come?” I asked. Aubrey nodded as if accepting my point, but when he tried to look away, I squeezed his hand. “Really. What?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “In the short term, I don’t know. It would have tried to protect itself while it grew to maturity. Then probably it would have taken her over too.”
“The rider,” I said.
“Or its daughter organism, yeah,” Aubrey said. “This is how they breed. Or…well. I think it is. This is all coming from the parasitology filter. Ex would probably couch it in terms of souls and salvation.”
“I’ll take your filter, thanks. This is what Eric wanted you for,” I said. “To understand how parasites breed. And to stop them. And we did, right? So go us. Nice job.”
“I think this is going to need stitches,” he said.
I looked down at the ruined flesh where the rider’s claws had cut me. When I got dizzy, I looked away.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re right.”
The dog yipped once and rose to its feet. I heard the front door swing open then closed, and Ex came in, his pale eyes wide. Aubrey raised a hand in greeting, and Ex mirrored the gesture with an autonomic air.
“Turned out it was a little hairier than we thought,” I said. “Who knew?”
“The guy out front has a rider,” Aubrey said. “Probably jaette or haugtrold. The original soul’s in the dog. The house belongs to Candace Dorn. The horse is her fiance, Aaron. He’s a cop. Since there isn’t a SWAT team outside right now, I’m guessing the rider did something to keep the law away while he killed us.”
“And I need to go to a hospital, get stitched up,” I said. I thought I sounded very calm.
“Right,” Ex said, then a moment later, “Okay. I’m on it.”
And that, more or less, was that. Aubrey got me a loose blouse from Candace’s closet to preserve my modesty on the drive. I pressed a towel to my side and tried not to bleed on his minivan. On the way to the emergency room, we concocted a story that we’d been out on a date and got jumped by three muggers. Since it was Boulder, I suggested making them a band of roving neocons, and Aubrey laughed. By the time we staggered into the ER and plopped down to tell our story to the intake nurse, I almost felt human again. Parts of my body ached that I hadn’t known existed, the doctor who looked me over called for about eight different X-rays to see how many of my bones were broken, and the blouse we took from Candace wound up balled into the biohazard can.
When they asked about my health insurance, I took the money out of my pocket. Nine thousand nine hundred and change after pizza and beer. It was enough to cover treatment and a night’s observation. Barely. Even though he was falling down exhausted, Aubrey took point talking to the cops while I drifted in and out of consciousness. The hard, narrow hospital bed was the most comfortable place I’d ever been. Monitors strapped to my chest and arm let out low pongs and chimes.
When I let my eyes close, my watch said it was one in the morning. When I opened them a minute later, the morning sun was pouring in the windows, heating up the walls. Chogyi Jake was curled in the chair at the foot of my bed, a paper coffee cup forgotten in his dozing hand. My body ached badly, just lying there. But I was all right. I’d lived through it.
The sun tracked its slow way up the sky, and I let my mind wander. It was Sunday. Somewhere out there, far to the east, my mother and father were going to church in their starched clothes, ready to watch their preacher sweat and exclaim and witness to the power of a god I didn’t believe in. West, in Arizona, a new semester would have started at ASU. The dorms and apartments would be filled with men and women sleeping off Saturday night, just the way I had done this time last year.
Closer by, Randolph Coin-or the thing inside him-had already started leading its seven-year swarm into a dance that would take more bodies away from people like Aaron the German shepherd and Candace Dorn and give them over to these unclean spirits. At Eric’s house, Midian was probably frying up steak and eggs, with Aubrey and Ex either at his side drinking coffee or sleeping off the night’s exhaustion. Chogyi Jake murmured something and shifted his weight without spilling his coffee. I smiled at the man’s sleep-peaceful face and let myself sink back down into my amazingly expensive, thin, uncomfortable pillow. I had expected to greet this particular morning with a sense of despair and isolation, and instead I felt at home in my life for the first time I could remember.
It was Sunday, the fifth of August, and it was my birthday. I was twenty-three.
Eight
The doctors in Boulder released me that afternoon with precautions about not doing anything to pop my stitches or aggravate my knee. Chogyi Jake took me home in his van, but I was already fading. I fell asleep almost as soon as I got back home, and when I woke up Monday morning, the house was silent.
I slipped out of bed, careful of my various wounds, pulled on a thick wool robe that was a little too large for me, and padded out into the hallway. The door of the guest bedroom was ajar, and Aubrey was in the bed, his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open. I watched him sleep, watched his chest rise and fall and rise again. Part of me wanted to step in, slip into the bed, and curl up beside him. Before I could act on the impulse, I heard the front door open and familiar voices fill the space. Ex and Chogyi Jake. And then Midian, welcoming them.
“The one thing we know for absolute certain is that it didn’t work,” Ex said.
Midian coughed once and shrugged his shoulders. He nodded to me as I walked through the doorway.
“Hey. The resident skeptic rises,” he said, and I shuddered at the sound of his voice. Every morning, it seemed a little worse than I’d remembered it. “I figured you for sleeping in through noon.”
