Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (46 page)

Kirsten flung a lash upward from her left hand as Mariko stabbed at Dorian’s back. The flinching blade nicked his side rather than impaled him, but he still fell over and melted into a cloud of fog.

Mariko stepped up on Kirsten, raising the blade with a look in her eye as if she was willing to walk into a hit from a lash just to get a clean kill shot. The tip pointed at Kirsten’s heart, Mariko leaned forward, palm on the end of the handle. Power formed in the back of Kirsten’s weary mind, an opposition of strength between the two women.

Growling, Mariko forced the sword down an inch at a time, lost an inch, gained two, lost three. Kirsten’s nose leaked hot blood, flooding her mouth with the taste of copper. Exertion beyond her limit taxed her body to the point of self-harm. If she slipped, even a little, a solid metal blade would be through her chest in an instant.

Kirsten searched for any last trace of extra power.
Please… I can’t leave him helpless.

The dark shape hovering over her washed out with a sudden blinding light. Mariko crossed her arms over her face to shield her eyes, hissing. Kirsten blinked, having no idea what she just did.

Hot ionic downblast buffeted her as the patrol craft thundered overhead, two feet off the ground. Kirsten sat up as it passed, covered in crackling sparks and tasting ozone. She stared in disbelief as it crashed through the front wall of the Five Hundredth Street Sanctuary with Mariko wrapped over the front end. The armored hovercar slammed to a halt, flinging Mariko into the center of a bank of folding chairs by a pulpit.

The building filled with smoke and light, and a decaying roar sounding as if it came from a four hundred pound monstrosity rather than a four-foot-eleven Asian woman. All the electric lights in the place flickered, went dark, and then exploded.

Mariko shuddered and wailed. Patches of crimson radiance shone from cracks spreading over her augmented bodysuit. White smoke billowed off her, crackling with sparks. She lurched forward, trying to get to the door. Her leg collapsed, and what had once been Mariko Moriyama melted into a puddle of black ooze. Fingers clawed at the floor as she fought in vein not to sink out of sight. Her face receded into the liquid with a belabored final wail that faded off to silence.

The interior of the church went dark as the spectral glow from the disintegrating abyssal faded.

Fist pounding into her thigh did little good; Kirsten did not even feel it. Evan emerged from the patrol craft door, dragging her utility belt behind him. His face, red and tear-streaked, brightened when he saw her moving despite trickles of blood.

“Mommy!” He cried out as he ran to her.

Hearing
that
word come out of him for the first time brought tears to her eyes. Kirsten forgot about her numb leg and squeezed him. When the embrace relaxed enough to notice his fat lip and bloody nose, she almost panicked.

She fussed at his injury. “What happened?”

“Uhh. I just drove your car into a building.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.

Kirsten took a stimpak from the belt and pressed it to his shoulder.

“You need it more,” he said, grabbing another and stabbing her in the thigh with it.

The return of sensation to the leg was less pleasant than numbness. Kirsten clutched him, because he was there, and howled from freezing agony. Evan flailed.

“I’m sorry.” He cried again. “I wanted to hel―”

“It’s fine.” She squeezed. “Gimme another one.”

He did, making a noise like a stepped-on goose as she held on to survive the wave of agony.

Kirsten fell flat to the ground, paralyzed by the absence of pain. “Oh, yeah. I’ll feel that in my dreams for a few months.” Kirsten lifted her head; the smile she wanted to give Evan fell away when she saw all the color absent from his face.

Twisting to look in the same direction as his glassy-eyed stare, Kirsten’s heart skipped two beats at the sight of an intact Seneschal seething at them as if their happiness offended him. He peered at Evan, looking into the depths of his soul. Kirsten wobbled to her feet, shoving the boy behind her. Her legs faltered and she landed on her ass. Evan stepped in front of her; her one usable hand grabbed at his shirt collar and tried to pull him back.

He glared up at the former corporate solider. “Leave my mommy alone.”

Kirsten hooked her fingers through his belt and pulled him back. Another trickle of blood left her nose as she forced a lash into existence. With a final promising glare at the child, Seneschal dissipated into a mass of black fog and sank into the ground.

“No…” She turned, resting her chin over his shoulder. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

“Mom?”

Kirsten’s eyes leaked. She adored hearing him call her that. “Yes, Evan?”

He pointed at a foggy mass clinging to the ground. “Do stimpaks work on Dorian?”

van clung to her side, helping Kirsten stumble across the parking lot to the door of the Five Hundredth Street Sanctuary. The place reeked of bad eggs and wood smoke. Glass, scattered about from the crash, crunched under their feet. None of the local destitutes were in sight; hazy, dust-filled air was all that remained inside. Tilted nose-down, the patrol craft had lurched to a stop with its rear end propped up on the windowsill and the nose on the floor. Fog leaked through the armored doors over the still-retracted wheels, forming a cloud beneath the hissing vehicle. Not knowing which arm he could touch without pain, Evan guided her along by the belt, heading for a row of still-intact chairs. Both of them whirled at a sudden noise; Kirsten’s instinct to raise her E-90 resulted in a twitch of the arm, and a gasp as she clamped her good hand over the broken limb.

N0ra crawled out from beneath a pile of crumbled drywall. Kirsten let all the air out of her lungs, creating whorls in the aerosolized dust. The scarlet-haired teen dragged herself free of the collapse and leaned into the wall, proceeding to gnaw her anxiety out of her fingernails.

“What the fuck just happened?” asked N0ra, abandoning her nail biting due to the flavor they had acquired.

Kirsten let gravity plant her in the seat and pulled Evan into her lap. “My best guess is Vikram has been following me and overheard your confession. I bet what happened at the wharf was him trying to take revenge on you. I bet the ones I just ran into here showed up trying to kill him, and their distraction let you slip away.”

N0ra shivered, sliding down until she sat on the floor. “That shit is real?” She trembled hard enough to alter the sound of her voice. “B… But it’s not fair. He was doing evil shit and I just turned him in. I didn’t do anything bad.” For a few seconds, N0ra seemed about to sob, but then went placid.

Oh, shit. That’s not a good sign; she’s not handling it well.
“It doesn’t always work this way. Vikram should not have gotten out of where he wound up.”

“He’s going to keep coming after me, isn’t he?”

Evan looked at N0ra, lifting his face out of Kirsten’s shirt. “My mommy will get him.”

Kirsten kissed him on top of the head. Despite logic saying she should be worried sick, all she felt was proud and loved. Father Carlos Villera emerged from a rear hallway, waving his arms through lingering smoke and trying to clear his throat. Kirsten could not tell from the look on his face if he was more stunned by the patrol craft in the main room or by the utter lack of vagrants waiting for food.

Noticing the blood on Kirsten, Evan, and N0ra’s faces, he ran over. “God save us, are you all right?”

“I’ve had better days, but I think so.” Kirsten coughed from the dust.

Evan gave her a thumbs-up.

N0ra just stared into space.

“Father, would you please grab the bag in the back seat of the car?” Kirsten winced. “I don’t really feel up to standing right now.”

He nodded.

Dorian stumbled through the wall, looking transparent.

“What the…” The priest froze, aghast at the ground in front of the car.

The alarm in his voice caused Kirsten to struggle in an effort to stand. Evan squirmed off her lap and pulled her up by the unbroken arm. He held on, a living crutch supporting her as she ambled over to the crash scene. There, on the ground in front of the car, a black scorch mark stained the cheap orange and white tiles. Fragments of glowing embers remained, having settled to the ground in a pattern resembling some form of writing. From the center of the spot, a dark green wisp of sulfur-scented smoke wavered.

Despite the ominous appearance, Kirsten sensed no lingering presence. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now. At least this one didn’t scratch me.”

Father Villera shifted toward her muttering something in Latin before asking in English, “Scratches?”

Kirsten sighed. “Yeah, three lines down my back. Hurt more than it should.”

He put a hand on her shoulder, closed his eyes, and muttered Latin again for a moment. “That is the sign of a dark creature. Why it has marked you, I cannot say. Perhaps it watches, perhaps it weakens you against itself… I shall pray for you.”

Yeah, go ahead and do that.
She softened the bile in her stare. “Thanks…”
S’pose I’ll take any help at this point.

Father Villera helped her back to the seat and retrieved her bag, then fetched some stew for N0ra. She remained sitting on the floor against the front wall, staring at the steaming bowl as though she had no idea what it was. Evan fished out her armguard, which she used to call for backup.

Dorian limped over to the stain on the ground, and the matching smear on the hood. “Well, you were wondering if the choice of location did anything for Ritchie. If this is any indication, I’d say it did.”

Kirsten surveyed the room, sighing in her mind at the religious proverb posters, paintings of Jesus, and crosses. She frowned at Dorian. “I think Evan did it.”

Evan looked at her, then at Dorian, then back at Kirsten. “What?”

“Sent Mariko back where she belongs.”

“Ninjas are bad,” he said, one nod as a period.

Father Villera wandered out of sight into the hallway, returning in a moment with a broom.

Dorian glided closer and sat in the next chair. “You’ve got a rating in mind blast, and astral, and somehow found a way to mix them into the lash. They say you’re one of the strongest sensates known, and you’ve never been able to make a ghost spontaneously explode. Never mind an abyssal.”

Distant sirens grew louder.

“Maybe it’s how a mother can lift a car off their kid in a moment of extreme emotional distress.” Her face reddened. “She was kicking my ass.”

“Well… The NSK trained her how to kill since she was probably younger than him.” Dorian nudged Evan’s hair. “I bet her sanity was a matter of debate even before she died.”

The front windows glimmered with arriving patrol cars, and a MedVan.

N0ra ran and hid behind Kirsten. “I hate cops. They always give me a hard time.”

“You stick your virtual nose in places it shouldn’t go?” She cringed; pain shot through her broken limb.

“Sometimes.” N0ra sank into a chair in a row behind her, sniffing at the food.

“Well, stop doing that and they won’t give you a hard time.” Kirsten shot a pleading look at the two women in white coming through the door. “I don’t know if these things got to Vikram before they came after me. Considering they wanted to use you as bait, I think he’s still out there. I’m going to take you into protective custody for a little while until this gets sorted out.”