"I'm leaving."
I jerked my head up from my examination of the sketchpad to regard Anna. I'd been sitting at the kitchen table, only occasionally pausing my work to take a sip of Coke or stare at the point where the brilliantly azure sky met the cerulean waves in the distance while I compared notes with Lasciel. We were in the process of creating a few companion pieces to the Vespel firebombs, intending to sell them as a set. I'd managed a recent success with a tricky bit of earth magic that would increase the gravity of the surrounding air and crush an unwary insurgent flat.
These ones I was designing now were designed to be thermobaric, but I was having a hard time getting the spells just right to maximize impact.
Lasciel's image appeared to lounge in one of the handle back chairs that huddled close to the glass table, coppery hair tucked beneath a floral print beach hat, sipping a mimosa. I was beginning to suspect she was a bit of a hedonist, getting an illicit thrill when she experienced tastes and physical sensations through me. She was making me want a mimosa too. With the exception of an occasional glass of white wine with Anna, I'd largely avoided alcohol. After all I'd done, it was odd that underage drinking was the line I'd decided not to cross. Work in tandem with a literal demon? Sure. Knock back a daiquiri or two? Sacrilege. My priorities were jacked, to be sure.
"What?"
Anna stood a little way off, arms folded over her modest chest. Her face had gotten lean, of late. She was paler than normal with purple smudges beneath her eyes. I saw her every other day if I was lucky. She was out of the house often, coming home only when she thought I'd be asleep. We moved like ships in the night, narrowly avoiding collisions with one another. Any time we did end up in the same room of late, there was an argument.
I'd braced for one when she'd walked in, low-heeled shoes tapping on the tiled floor. The entire kitchen had a spacious, modern feel. Open floor plan, white cabinets, faux marble countertops, and copper accents. She was leaning against the sink heavily like the words weighed on her.
"I said I'm leaving, Molly."
"Okay. When will you be back?"
She shook her head. She really did look awful. Her hair was lank like she just couldn't summon the energy it took to care for it. Her skin had lost a lot of its luster and there were new lines on her face. She looked drawn. Unhealthy.
"That's not what I meant. I'm going home. Back to Chicago."
My pencil slipped from my hand and rolled across my sketchbook, finally clattering onto the glass.
"What? Why? You said you'd stay."
Anna's expression was bleak, her eyes glassy. She seemed to be looking straight through me.
"I don't see why I should. I'm a liability. I do next to nothing for the Fellowship."
"You said you'd stay for me. Tell me if Lasciel's prodding me toward evil."
She fixed me with a hard stare.
"If I thought I'd have any effect, I would. But I can't keep doing this Molly. I can't stand on the periphery and watch helplessly as she takes you away from me. You're disappearing. Bit by bit, hour by hour, day by day. You're not you anymore Molly. And it kills me that you can't see it. So here's the white flag. I surrender. Tell Lasciel she can throw a fucking party if she likes."
Sharp, unreasoning hurt twisted like a knife in the space below my heart. Anna was leaving? Giving up on me?
"I haven't changed that much," I argued, voice thick. My throat was trying to constrict around the words. "I've gotten tougher, maybe. But we're in a war, Anna. I can't afford to go around with my feelings flopping around my elbows."
"Tougher? Try callous. Angry. Arrogant. Myopic."
My hand balled into a fist on the tabletop. "That's not true. You're blowing things out of proportion."
Anna threw up her hands. "And there it is. It's like it all goes in one ear and out the other. Does she even let you hear what I'm trying to tell you?"
"Lasciel is trying to help me."
Anna just sort of gaped at me for a second. "Goddess, do you even hear yourself? She's a fallen angel, Molly. Nothing she does is done to benefit you."
"So you're just going to up and leave? For someone who supposedly cares so much, you're keen to leave me with her."
She closed her eyes and when she opened them tears beaded on her lashes.
"You think I want to go? I hate this. You're dying slowly, Molly. And I'm not strong enough to stay to watch it. I'll be boarding a plane tomorrow. I've told the others already. We're going to meet at the cafe at seven. Hannah says you should be back from your sale by then. We'll have dinner and I'll leave in the morning. She's rented it out. The last supper."
The reality hit me like a punch to the chest, and my lungs seized, trying vainly to suck in air.
She was leaving me. We'd had one fight too many. She was going to go this time.
"You cannot allow it, my host," Lasciel murmured over the rim of her glass.
I cut her a curious glance. I'd been with Anna on this one. I'd expected her to throw a party. Maybe do a celebratory jig, if she was feeling giddy.
"Why not?"
"Her erroneous concern is for the state of your immortal soul. To whom do you think she will turn the second she returns to Chicago?"
Oh God. Lasciel was right. Anna would find my dad. She'd tell him everything.
"You can't," I blurted.
Anna's eyes narrowed. She didn't need to know what Lasciel had said to know what I meant. Her mind was already there. If I'd had my empathy turned up higher, I'd probably have sensed it. But allowing Lasciel to lower her protection felt like getting hit with gale-force winds.
"Someone needs to help you, Molly. You said they're designed for this."
"Designed to kill us!" My voice came out a shout, surprising us both.
"Do you even think about what he must be going through, Molly? We've been gone for over half a year. And you ran away long before that. He hasn't seen you in what, a year now? More? He probably thinks you're dead. He at least deserves to know you're alive, even if you're not well."
"I ran away to protect him!" I said, volume climbing with every syllable out of my mouth. I rose from my chair and stalked toward her, bare feet slapping the tile, marching to an angry beat. I stopped when I was mere feet from her.
"I couldn't put him in that position, Anna. I couldn't force him to make that choice. I'm not sure if he could kill me. But if he could, I know for damn sure it would break something in him. He couldn't be a Knight if that was forced on him. He was born for that. I can't take it away from him. I won't. And I won't let you do it either."
What little color remained in Anna's waxy cheeks fled at those words. Horror and betrayal spasmed across her face. Fresh tears dewed on her lashes and finally spilled down her cheeks.
"Don't, Molly. Please."
"It is the only way," Lasciel purred into my ear, appearing at my side at once, the literal devil on my shoulder. "You have no guarantee otherwise. Render her unconscious. I will help you excise the pertinent memories. There will be minimal damage."
My hands twitched, magic already dancing eagerly in my fingertips. It would be easy. She wouldn't remember a thing.
Instead, I curled them into fists and turned on my heel, snatching the sketchbook and pencil, making for the door. I needed to be gone before I did something I'd regret. Besides, I had a meeting to get to in San Pedro in two hours. I could afford to be a little early.
"I'll be back at seven," I told her. "We'll talk then."
I slammed the door behind me and tried to ignore the choked sound of terror and the sob that followed.
I was still fuming four hours later when I returned to Belize City. It hadn't helped that our potential buyers had flaked, canceling last minute. It meant I had an enormous amount of explosives in my car when I returned home to change. I tried not to keep them nearby, just in case there were any mishaps.
The question remained. What to do about Anna? Psychomancy was the obvious answer. Sedate her and then sponge away the memories of ever meeting me. Replace the panicked weeks after the assault into a sudden urge to travel. The vacation turning into a more permanent situation until homesickness had set in a week ago.
It was tempting. But it was also wrong. Even I knew that. Anna had given up a lot for me. I wouldn't repay her by mucking around in her head. What options did that leave me?
I still didn't have an answer when I left the house, nor when I walked to the front door of the cafe. It was a small place, with good vegetarian options and an option to sit on the back deck and eat dinner by the sea. If Anna was half as pissed as me, that's where I'd find her. The ocean was sometimes the only thing that could stop the furious spinning of my head sometimes.
But when I pushed the door open, I knew immediately something was wrong. Wafting out on a balmy evening breeze was the scent of blood.
Here's the thing about blood. I'd learned a lot about it, in the last year. I'd seen or smell edit in some form every month. Blood didn't perfume the air like Eau de morte and hang heavy like death's freaking halitosis. Not unless there was a lot of it.
I was rooted to the spot, hand clenched so tight around the knob that I was leaving finger-sized impressions in the metal. I unlocked them one-by-one and forced myself to clench my fist, put my shoulder to the door, shoving inward.
The interior of the cafe looked like a small and bloody battlefield. The tables and chairs were overturned, most of them split in two like Bruce Lee had gone on a vengeance quest against the result of every shop class in the world. One half of a flat-screen television was visible from the whole in the bar. The picture sparked every once in a while, showing a chipper news announcer who was predicting yet more sun in the forecast and warned about unusual dry spells.
Person-sized holes had been punched into the walls, blood splattered across every surface like lurid paint. There were...parts, everywhere. It looked like Jason Voorhees had been set loose in a butcher's shop.
I waded inside, extending my magical senses, forced to drop my shields enough to try and find anyone lurking within. I couldn't force my eyes to see beyond the carnage and never in a million years wanted to see this with my sight. It meant this obscene violence, the clear joy the attackers had taken while they carved my friends up would stick with me forever, captured in a snapshot of perfect clarity. I wanted the distance of time.
I found Thorn's head first. Perched inside a case where the owner's small display of bowling trophies were. The sick bastards had swapped his head out for the ball, tipping the lucky pin to smack him in the forehead.
The rest of his body was tucked away in various little alcoves like this was some sort of sick Easter Egg hunt.
They'd torn apart the owner, his wife, and his Golden Lab as well, piling them in the middle of the floor. Innocents, all of them. And they'd been punished for the mere crime of associating with us.
Nixon had been left mostly intact, which was somehow worse. There was a sense of surrealism that clung to the other bodies. It was like separated into their component parts, they were less like people and more like a stack of blocks to be piled into shape later. Nixon's big, strong body was slumped over our favorite table, hand still clamped around the base of the green bottle of Heineken. His throat was completely missing. His blood puddled on the surface of the table. It wasn't even clotted yet, which meant I'd missed this attack by a small margin.
Why hadn't I been here? I could have done something to prevent this massacre. I could have protected my friends. And instead, I'd been sulking in San Pedro, trying to figure out how to stop Anna from snitching to my father.
Anna. Oh God, Anna! Where was she? I hadn't seen any limbs that had her complexion. I dropped to my knees and began digging through the still-warm pile. The thick slide of blood along my fingers was vile.
No, no, no. This couldn't be happening. My last words to Anna had been an implicit threat. Had she died believing I'd ransack her mind and take away her free will? Had she died still terrified of me?
Tears hazed my vision and I scrubbed them away furiously. There could still be enemies lurking about. I didn't sense anything, but that meant very little. Death clung to everything here, like a putrid fug. I couldn't make out anything solid through it. I wrangled the screams that were building, shoved them down, held onto that furious, anguished howl until I could be sure it wouldn't get me killed.
Something moved in the nook near the back, where the bathrooms were hidden. A set of dark drag marks led in that direction and I followed them cautiously, withdrawing both my gun and my wand. I didn't have my sword in hand and a gun was a better option in close quarters anyway.
A shape crouched near the women's restroom under a veil. It was very shoddily made and wouldn't fool anyone who knew what they were looking for. She'd never been good at them, no matter how hard we practiced. I'd never be an elemental mage. She would never be good at verisimilomancy.
"Hannah," I breathed and dropped to my knees at her side.
Hannah let out a sound that was both sigh and sob and dropped her veil. I got a good look at her then, turned sideways, and retched.
Someone had skewered her over and over again, keeping her wounds shallow enough to kill slowly. She looked like a pincushion. Hannah probably would have died if she hadn't been a stone-cold badass and cauterized her own wounds with magic. Dozens of charred holes scattered all over her body. The smell of burned skin and hair clogged my nostrils and I retched again.
"What happened?" I demanded breathlessly, tugging the half-conscious woman into my arms. "Hannah, what happened?"
"Reds..." she said faintly. "Were...waiting for us. Ambush. They killed...oh God, Catherine...Thorn, Nixon..."
"What about Anna?" I asked, fingers digging into her shoulders. "Where are Anna and Salem?"
Salty tears spilled onto my hands.
"He has them, Catherine. The Count. Santiago Cavallero. He has them."