Cheat the Grave

his inhalation, or his nails clacking as he shut the door behind me.

“That where the psychic part comes in?” I asked, struggling to keep my back to him. I wouldn’t be able to stop him from killing me now. And why would I want to see death coming anyway?

“It’s merely obvious. Question is, do you know?” He appeared in front of me. Just like that. One sharp clack of toenails like talons and his breath was on my cheek. He angled his head, his beard forking right. “Quick-what do you most desire?”

“Protection,” I said, sighing deeply. There was a relief in speaking openly again with someone about the underworld and my former place in it. It was like the first breath after taking off tight clothing worn too long.

“To arm myself. I need help.”

“Then you shall have those things.” His lacquered nails glinted in the slanted light as he gestured to the chest.

“We all manifest our true desires. As long as we name them, of course.”

Because desires were the emotions that most heavily controlled our thoughts, and the Zodiac world had taken the “it’s the thought that counts” principle and turned it into a religion. Thoughts-precise, applied, fixed- determined action. They could create living beings and walls and plant life out of nothing. Our minds were our might.

I smiled wryly as I crossed the shadow-drenched room. I should have gone for the man, the munchkins, and the picket fence. I’d have made a kick-ass soccer mom.

Dismissing the pipe dream, I traced the symbol centered on the chest’s carved and silken top. The one I’d drawn from memory and that had so interested the Tulpa. “May I?”

“Do you believe you are the Kairos?” he asked.

Jerking my head, I flipped open the lid. “I believe I still count.”

He made a considering noise in the back of his throat. “That’s a start.” Then a pause. “My name is Caine.”

I nodded to acknowledge I’d heard, but the odd arsenal before me was a shadowy attraction, like death beckoning. All four weapons I’d seen before were here; maybe Arun Brahma was an ally. I tested the hinge on the trident, a thrill reverberating up my arm as the blades winged open with a definitive snap. It was older than me by at least two lifetimes, but still sharp, which was all that mattered.

It’s also magical, I thought, retracting the blades and tucking it into my oversized bag. Conduits were allegedly taboo for me now. Most often they turned impotent in mortal hands, though in some cases they backfired. Seeing the gun with the coolly glowing liquid vials again, I was too juiced to care. It felt like a part of me, long buried, had just lifted the casket lid. Better to die armed than stand flatfooted against a magical blade.

I placed that into my bag too, though the saber with an additional firearm was too large to tuck away. Good thing it was winter. It could be concealed in a long coat. I decided to leave the cane, with a blade at its pommel, out. Carrying it as Olivia Archer would either be attributed to affectation or need. It was well known I’d only recently rehabbed from a near drowning. As to actually using it, or any of the conduits, I guess I’d test the backfiring theory when the time came.

“Don’t forget the additional ammo,” Caine said, jerking his head. His beard did the pointing for him. “That’s all there is.”

Because the weapons were so old. Their controlling agents were long dead…as were the weapons masters who’d created them. Every paranormal weapon was made for a particular agent, and most effective in its original owners’ hands. However, they could also be inherited, which was how I’d once gained my palm-sized bow and arrow.

I sighed, still wishing for my conduit. Nothing else was so perfect an extension of my body, as if my skin wrapped around it to draw it closer to my bone. I glanced up to see Caine’s attention on me, despite his sunken gaze. He would know of my losses. No reason he couldn’t tell me about his.

“What happened to your eyes?” I asked, with the same directness most Seers used. People who could intuit others’ designs and deeds before they occurred had no need or patience for pretense. I’d learned that from Tekla.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” He shifted so his face fell into the fractured light. “My visions are gifts from the Universe, but a great gift requires a great sacrifice. As you know.”

I did. Tekla’s gift had taken a good chunk of her sanity. She slept sporadically, mumbled to herself, obsessed over her charts. Screamed in the night. I used to feel sorry for her. Lately I’d found myself thinking, So what?

She had more than enough power to compensate, and so did Caine.

I turned. “I don’t want to give any more.”

“That’s your problem.”

“My problem,” I snapped, “is that no one will leave me alone.”

He shrugged. “And that you wallow in self-pity.”

“Fuck you,” I said, drawing it out. It felt good to say to a person who could snuff me like a cigarette. I muttered it again, even lighter.

“Thank you for confirming it.” Caine’s tone was taut, like it was threaded with a thin strip of wire. “But don’t dare say that again. Your losses have nothing on mine.”

We had losses in common? Doubtful. But it’d been a long time since anyone wasn’t patronizing me. “I’m sorry.”

“I understand your wish for less weight on your life,” he said, inclining his head. “But what you should really be wishing for is more strength to bear it.”

“Wishes don’t mean shit.”

“True.” He closed the distance between us again, his nails clicking like children’s jacks against the scuffed wood floor. “You must take action. Which is why I sewed my eyes shut as soon as I began to See. I knew the narrowing of my sight would make me stronger than the distractions’ full vision would allow.”

“You…did that to yourself?” I shuddered at his nod. Tekla had nothing on this guy’s madness. “Let me rephrase my earlier statement. It’s not that I don’t want to give any more. I don’t want to lose anything more.”

Including my eyesight. I turned quickly and headed for the door.

“Better to know what you do want than what you don’t.” Caine clacked over to the window, and I wondered if he’d counted out feet from one side of the room to the next. Without touching the wall, he pointed between one of the boarded-up holes like the view was a good one. “Like him.”

My hand slipped from the doorknob. “Who-”

The homicidal whine started up then, a long, loud throat-burn that made me wonder how he, it, breathed.

“Mackie.”

Caine stepped aside as I ran to the window, hunching to peer through one of the fist-width slits. Caine remained still, head tilted, the nails of his right hand clacking lightly against the wall, like mice fleeing up its sides. Meanwhile, Mackie tore into the Bentley. Face hidden beneath his inky bowler hat, he hunched on the shining hood, knife plundering sheet metal like scissors slicing rice paper. Ripping strips of the hood back with one hand, he then dropped inside, his guttural whine pitched high as he went to work on the oiled leather seats.

Shit. How’d he get there so fast? I’d never even driven the Bentley before. From the way Mackie was shredding it, I wouldn’t do so again. “He wants to kill me.”

“More than anything.”

Caine’s nails snapped louder, and I glanced down to see the black bone tattooed on his forearm flex with his fingers. I didn’t think he was doing it consciously, but the motion proved mesmerizing. In the dim room I could almost be lieve the bone moved, inky against the skin, defined and liquid all at the same time. Looking up, I saw his nostrils widen, opening and closing like fish gills, seeking to discover exactly what sort of monster Mackie was. He was also sensing Mackie’s destructive rage in a different way than I ever had.

One, I thought, looking back down, I’d never even conceived of before.

The bones on Caine’s body continued a sinewy, almost sexual dance that traveled up and then back down the length of his body. Yet all the energy was derived from and concentrated in his fingertips. They vibrated finely, black nails banging into each other like wooden wind chimes. He almost appeared elegant, feeling out the world not through sight like everyone else, but through little implosions of movement on the air. I tested the theory by waving my hand at my waist, as if motioning him away. His pinky darted in my direction, taking on an unnatural angle before twitching and falling back into the reading rhythm of his other fingers.

His head was still upturned, but if he had eyes, they’d have been closed. A moment later he finished this vibrational reading and dropped his arms to his sides. “Oh. He’s new.”