Killing Rites

I shifted, the couch springs creaking under me.

“So you think this was part of a plan?” I said. “That this other girl died so that Ex would drive himself out of the group here, go work with my uncle, and be around to find me?”

“Chewy brought you here. You look so much like her, she could have been your sister. You are in need of our help, and you would not have found us if things had not happened exactly as they did,” Miguel said, spreading his hands as if offering something invisible to me. “What is that if not providence? I don’t know what God meant by bringing you here. I may never know. But I cannot doubt that He intended it.”

“Really? Because I can doubt the hell out of it,” I said. “If it hadn’t happened that way, something else would have, and then that would be God’s will. With that kind of logic, any coincidence is evidence of God.”

Miguel’s smile was bright as sunlight on snow.

“Yes,” he said, and without intending to, I laughed.

“We’re just not going to agree about this, are we?” I said.

“I have some hope,” Miguel said. “I believe that Hell is the absence of God. God doesn’t cast us into the fire. We cast ourselves there. And we hold ourselves there. It is not His fault that we burn, but the consequence of our own choices. I think you have turned away from God, and you live in the living shadow of Hell. And so I am glad you came, and that you will let us help you. And that you’ve brought Chewy to us, even if it is only for a little while. I pray that casting Satan out of your flesh will change your mind about the merciful nature of God.”

“I don’t think it will,” I said. And then, “But thank you for helping me anyway.”

“Of course,” he said. “What virtue is there in helping only the people you agree with? Are there any donuts left?”

When, a few minutes later, the doors opened and Father Chapin led his cadre back in, Miguel and I had moved on to talking about the relative merits of the Swedish and American versions of Let the Right One In and breaking the last donut between us. The fatigue had fallen from the old man’s shoulders, and even Ex looked actively hopeful. I stood up.

“Thundercats are go?” I asked.

“I believe we are prepared, Miss Jayné,” Chapin said. “If you are ready to reject the demonic power within you, we will free your soul.”

I almost said Nifty. Smarting off was a reflex now. It was the way I told myself that I could deal with whatever made my heart race and my mind start to fishtail under me. Just then it felt disrespectful and small.

“Thank you,” I said instead.

“WHEN THE time comes, you must reject it utterly,” Tomás said, squatting beside me on the floor. “It will try to trick you, but whatever happens, you must not waver. Be your strength.”

“Stone strong and waver-free,” I said. “That’s me in a nutshell.”

He patted me gently on the back of the neck as he rose to take his place, and I tried to smile. I felt like I was about to jump out of an airplane. My chest was tight, and I didn’t want to breathe so much as pant. The place at the back of my neck where Tomás had touched me tingled, and the small of my back where the tattoo was itched like I’d sat in poison oak. I had to put it all aside.

I knelt on the floor more or less where I’d first seen Dolores. The six priests were all around me: Father Chapin in front of me, Ex to his right, Carsey to his right. Tamblen was directly behind me, and Tomás and Miguel to either side. We’d covered the windows, but the midday sun pressed in at the edges. The only other light in the room came from the single white candle. A single stick of incense gave the room a sweet smell. The bricks under me were cold. I wondered whether a space heater would have been too secular for the occasion. It seemed like it might be worth trying.

The consecrated ceremonial robe was rough cotton cut like a sack, and since I was only wearing it and the medallion-enhanced Ace bandage, I was pretty cold. I stared at the still, yellow flame, focusing myself like a meditation. The energy of magic—my qi, my soul, whatever name it goes by—was narrowed to that one bright spot. I could barely see the faces of the priests past it. When Father Chapin lifted his palms toward me, they were pale spots in the darkness.

He began reciting the names of saints, the others echoing him. After the first five or six, the flame began to shift back and forth—toward him and away and toward him again like seaweed in the waves. I’d been part of magical rituals before, and I could feel the combined will of men around me starting to cohere. By the time Father Chapin ran out of saints, the air around me was about equal parts oxygen and raw magic. Time seemed to stretch. I didn’t know how long they’d been chanting, but the candle had burned lower than just a few minutes could explain. I felt disoriented and had to work to pull my qi back into place.

“I come in the name of Christ, and in His holy name I command you, beast. Reveal yourself!”

It was like a bus speeding by, missing me by inches. The combined will of the men pounded past me, violent and intense and hot as a burning coal. In my gut, just below my navel and about three inches in, something shifted. Writhed. I gritted my teeth.

“Reveal yourself!”

Another hit.

Come on, I thought, pressing the words toward the thing living inside me. It’s going to happen anyway. Fighting’s just going to make it hurt worse.

“Reveal yourself!”

The candle flame in front of me ballooned, fire bursting up and out. By the light of it, I could see Chapin’s face clearly. He was smiling like this was exactly what he’d wanted. I felt my fists clench, but I hadn’t clenched them. The growl came from low in my throat, and it sounded like despair.

“In the name of God,” Father Chapin said, and the others repeated it. The words had a pressure like diving too deep underwater. My ears ached. “In the name of God, I command you. Reveal your name!”

“Why are you doing this to me?” my voice said without me.

“Reveal your name!”

“I am innocent.”

Father Chapin shook his head. The darkness around us weighed in against me, and I knew that whatever I was feeling, the rider was suffering a hundred times worse than I was.

“Innocence is the claim you make. What is your name?”

I felt my jaw clench. I had the sense that the rider had already made a mistake, already given up more than it had meant to. The candle sputtered, the flame fading to a pale blue sphere with a glowing ember at its center. I wondered, when this was over, whether I’d ever dream about the desert again. Was losing that emptiness and stillness part of the price of being just Jayné?

“Reveal your name!” they all shouted together. I could feel each of them. Chapin was like a strap of leather, hard and unforgiving. Carsey was like a knife, cold and focused and precise as mathematics. Tomás’s will was wide and deep and strong, like a pillow over the face. Tamblen—strong, silent Tamblen—felt like a request, the weakest of all of them, but implacable and patient and unbreakable. Miguel’s voice had the raw tenacity and violence of a bare-knuckle fighter’s jab.

And Ex.

In the midst of the riot of personality, I felt Ex. His guilt and his longing, his deep internal pain carried in silence and forged into a weapon. For a moment, I caught a glimpse of a girl who looked a little like me: dark hair cut in a bob, mouth a little wider than mine, cheeks a little more generous. Isabel, I thought. He was using Isabel, and I realized t could follow his lead. I brought the night in Grace Memorial, the guilt and horror of killing someone who didn’t deserve to die, and I wrapped myself around it. It was the most painful, terrible thing I ever experienced, and I held it like a knife so hot it burned me.

“Reveal your name!” they shouted again, beating at the rider. I stabbed at it too, adding myself to the assault. The thing inside my skin shrieked, but only I could hear it.

Something cold brushed against my neck, surprising me. I smelled sewage. What the hell was that?

“Reveal your name!”

“I am my mother’s daughter,” the rider said, almost too softly to hear. But Chapin had been waiting for it. He pounced on the words, pointing a finger at me—at it—as if in accusation.

“That is the path by which you have taken this woman. Reveal your name!”