The Saint (27 page)

The baby wiggled and began to chew on his coat. Her teeth were very sharp and she was grinding through the fabric, but he let her gnaw. He could sense her hunger and the irritation in her gums. She was still teething. She would need a dentist soon. Her human-sized jaw would not be able to accommodate a full set of goblin teeth.

Kris looked away from the baby and back down at Adora's shining hair. On top of concerns about himself, he was deeply troubled by the fact that he had hurt her back in L.A.—that he'd frightened Adora to the point of blacking out, had been forced to invade her mind to shut down the submerged rage that had come bubbling out of her subconscious at the
goblins that day at the farmers' market. Her resistance to his suggestion to calm herself and leave the scene had been abnormally strong—death feys were usually able to march right into whatever mind or body they wished to examine and have their way. But she'd fought—and was still fighting, still hiding. Since he didn't want to hurt her more, he'd had to remain on the outside ever since, eavesdropping on her stray thoughts whenever he could. This brain block she had in place—the thing she called Joy and a muse—felt like it was something separate from her waking conscience, and it was serious about its role as guardian at the gate. He'd had to overwhelm both Adora and Joy to cut off her rage at the goblins, and it felt like something very close to rape for both of them.

He didn't know what to do with this . . . this fragment of her personality that was Joy. It was clearly part of Adora's fey nature, deeply suppressed, probably violent when cornered, and he sensed it was guarding some part of Adora that was terrified and hiding, a small and perhaps defenseless memory from when she was young, a memory that whimpered every time he drew near because—for some reason—it expected to be attacked. He couldn't see the specifics, but there had been moments, especially when she spoke of her parents, that she had looked inward with the same mute misery and bewilderment as an abandoned dog left in the wilderness to starve.

He wanted desperately to comfort her, to offer reassurance of his intentions, but he could find no way to get near that part of her without damaging— perhaps even destroying—Joy. He couldn't risk that, not without knowing a whole lot more about
Adora and her personal history. He didn't know her magic. Destroying Joy might destroy her too.

He sighed again. Sometimes, life was tricky.

“Okay. You can open your eyes. We'll stop here for some water. We all need it.”

Adora opened her eyes, but it didn't help much since she was in darkness.

A familiar scent tickled her nose. It took a moment to place. It was the smell of a linen cupboard that had gone too long without cleaning. Kris said something in that musical language he had used with the dying girl, and a blue light slowly came up around them.

Adora stared. She wasn't frightened. Her capacity for alarm had been anesthetized when they entered the mound. But something about this space was not right, was not . . .
human.

“What is this place?”

At first glance, she thought the room was filled with carousel horses from some dismantled merry-go-round, but a second glance told her the truth: These were brightly painted mummies of fantastical beasts—griffins, satyrs, a sort of winged Cyclops whose face was painted garish colors. Beyond, the room sparkled under its layer of dust. There was a mosaic on the wall made of jasper, agate, coral and . . . mica? Surely it couldn't be gold! Some of the design had crumbled away, leaving colorful heaps of stone on the floor, but enough remained to show a pastoral scene of the room's dead inhabitants cavorting in a tropical jungle that had probably never existed on the human part of earth.

Kris's arms fell away. Adora turned slowly. The ceiling above was domed and ornamented with basreliefs of extremely fat, sneering cupids with unusually long arrows and oversized bows. There was no reason to believe that these cherubs were anything other than gilt paint on plaster, but somehow Adora was sure that they were. The detail was too great. It was as though someone had bronzed actual beings and then welded them to the ceiling.

“This way,” Kris said.

Adora stepped farther into the room and reached out with her inner sight, something she was barely aware of doing. There were deep shadows in the areas near the walls that should be cool but somehow weren't.

The feeling of this weird tomb was not hallowed; it was more haunted than sacred, perhaps even watched over by hostile ghosts. Obviously death had visited and left behind souvenirs that, had they been more recent or she less—

Drugged?
Joy suggested.

—might have overset her nerves.

Real or not, it was all a bit too much. The show of treasure should have aroused some avarice in her bosom, but all it did was make her vaguely homesick for a tiny house with its cheerful yard and sunny windows.

So, why not go home?

Why not, indeed?

Am I nuts?
she asked Joy.
I'm in a tomb—a tomb!
Why didn't I just pack my bags—

You did!

—and leave L.A. at the first sign of trouble? Was it really the hundred k?

Joy snorted.
I wish it was because of the money, but we both know better
.

Adora looked over at Kris. Even now, her attraction for him overrode all else. “It's like Aladdin's cave,” she said.

“Without the jinn,” Kris pointed out. “And there's no forty thieves about either.”

“Such color,” she finally said. “I've never seen anything like it. It's . . .”

Not normal.

He nodded. “The wine red comes from juice squeezed from rose madder. Strange, glowing roses used to bloom wildly down here. They're almost all gone now, surviving only in the garden at the heart of Cadalach. A bit of the perfume still remains, though,” he said, inhaling slowly. “The gleam in the sky comes from pixie dust gathered from fire imps. They mixed it with the blue chalk of ground mollusk shells. Those sea snails are now extinct too.”

Adora pondered. Maybe those were the ghosts she felt. It seemed not so frightening to be haunted by flowers and snails. Certainly it was better than being surrounded by the spirits of Cyclops and satyrs tied up in those painted bandages of eternal slumber—or so she sincerely hoped.

“Is it a mausoleum?” she asked.

“Not really. It's a sort of storage room for lost things that are the last of their kinds,” Kris said, suddenly matter-of-fact. “The Nephalim—the giants— collected them.”

“So, these creatures are all extinct?”

“In this place and time.”

“Does it bother you? Being with the dead?” she asked.

“No. The dead do not bother me—it's the dying. I have to stay away from active war zones where hate and anger thrive. The killing fields affect me, and in a terrible way,” he admitted. “I used to have more control, but now I'm . . . I'm easily affected. It's why Mugshottz is nearly always with me.”

Adora started to ask him what he meant, but he interrupted.

“Go to the back wall. There's a small stream there,” he instructed. “You need to drink deeply.”

She was used to him leaping about from the sublime to the mundane—though it was sometimes difficult to know at first which subjects were which. But this time she agreed about the urgency of drinking something. She was parched.

“I don't see . . .” But even as she spoke, water blossomed in the floor and wended its way along the wall Kris indicated. Light rose from it, showing the wall to be made of some kind of slag glass. She had seen samples before when lightning hit and melted sandstone. She couldn't imagine what force—short of a volcano—could have created this place. It also possessed a sort of eerie resonance that was almost like a living voice.

“Come. You and the baby must drink. In fact, bathing might be a good idea. I must see if she has any wounds.”

Adora nodded reluctantly. The baby certainly needed washing, and she herself was feeling more than a little slimy. That didn't mean that she was ready for a strip-down in front of Kris and assorted dead creatures. Eventually taking her clothes off with him sounded keen, but this was not the place.

So, you can wait?
Joy asked sarcastically.

While Adora knelt down to drink, Kris dipped his hands in the water and poured a trickle into the baby's mouth.

“Ah-abah,” the child said, swallowing happily. Kris smiled back as he cradled it and scooped up more water, which he poured over the child's head in a protective gesture that looked something like a
baptism. Watching them together reminded Adora of Sundays when she was a child and used to watch “Wild Kingdom” alone in the living room. She had actually envied the beavers and bears and other mammals who got to cuddle with their parents in a family den.

Envy is an ugly thing,
Joy pointed out.
Don't go there.

I know. I'm not jealous.
And she wasn't. She was just sad that she couldn't join Kris and the baby, that they were not her family.

“Ah-haaa,” the child said again.

Water tickled Adora's feet, urging her to wade in. It felt delightful even as it soaked her shoes, probably finishing the destruction started by the rain.

Adora put her hands in the eerie blue liquid and sighed. She agreed with the baby's happy evaluation, though she didn't coo out loud. The water, when she finally tasted it, was wonderful, and she could feel strength and energy pouring back into her body, easing away the cold stiffness that had affected her. She rubbed handfuls of it over her face and into her tired eyes, which suddenly cleared and showed things she hadn't noticed before.

“Let's get you changed,” Kris said to the baby, either unaware or uncaring that Adora was staring into space, lost in bemusement at the new colors all around her.

She moved her head slowly, enthralled at the radiant auras but also watching from the corner of her eye as Kris worked, more fascinated than appalled, as he laid the baby on the floor and peeled off its filthy sleeper. He quickly freed the child's strapped lower arms from their dirty bandage and then tickled her pink tummy. Adora could see now that the
rest of the baby's skin was actually a pale, glowing green—how had she not noticed this before?

The baby laughed and waved its arms and legs. Adora was oddly charmed in spite of the wrongness of the extra limbs protruding from the body. Feeling braver, she turned, looking openly.

“That diaper's probably filthy, but I don't know what—” she began then stopped as Kris pulled the disposable diaper away and tutted at how red the baby's legs and lower belly were.

Is that diaper rash?
Adora thought, staring at the red skin covered in small blisters.

How the hell should I know?
Joy answered.
It isn't like I've had kids either
.

“Don't worry,” Kris said. “We'll borrow some linen and make a new one. That will do for now.”

Adora glanced once at the animal mummies Kris was staring at, and then looked hurriedly back at the baby.

So, there's something scarier than a baby,
Joy said, amused.

Those are mummies—bandaged dead monsters
, Adora replied. She said to Kris, “I'll wash her. You get the . . . the diaper.”

“Okay.”

“Just . . . just don't get it from the Cyclops, okay? He looks mean. I don't want to piss him off.”

“Okay,” Kris said again. She could hear the amusement in his voice. Obviously, he didn't share her feeling of being watched. Or else he didn't care what the ghosts might think.

Adora kept her eyes firmly fixed on the baby and the dancing water while she soaked the only clean edge of the baby's sleeper, using it as a washcloth to scrub the baby's muddy face and head, and then to
trickle water over the angry red rash. She tried not to listen to the tearing sounds behind her, and she also avoided touching the baby's skin, fearful that she might somehow hurt the child even though the red welts and spots were fading quickly under the stream of soothing, dribbled water.

Kris returned to her side. He blotted the baby with a small shred of linen.

“Okay, little lady, time to wrap you back up,” he said, lifting up the baby and positioning her on an uneven rectangle of gauze. He tied her with a calm efficiency that said he had done this before.

“I think her sleeper's a lost cause,” Adora remarked. “But we can wrap her in my coat. The inside is still dry.”

“We won't need to wrap her,” Kris said. “It's warm enough here. And the others will be coming soon.”

“Others?” Adora asked.

“Yes. My nephew, Jack, and his wife, Io—and a doctor. His name is Zayn. Maybe others too.” Kris cocked his head as if listening. “Hm—it sounds like a veritable parade out there. Maybe they're all coming.”

“Zayn? He's the one you thought could help me.”

“Yes.” Kris got to his feet. He handled the baby easily, and Adora made no move to take the child back; she was okay with watching, and didn't really want to touch the child now that she knew it had a bad rash that might hurt.

You have noticed that Kris likes babies? Children of all types and sizes?
Joy asked.

Yes.

And you don't,
Joy reminded her.

No. At least, I don't know if I like them. They scare me.
And that was the truth. A child's vulnerability terrified her.

Adora looked up to find Kris studying her with a slightly creased brow. “How . . .” he began, then shrugged. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes. I feel good. I also feel . . .” How did she feel? Different—that was for sure. And it wasn't just physical. Something else had changed.

Adora turned slowly, surveying the room. It really was as though she were looking at a world through a special telescope that let her see with more than her eyes; and the room was filled with sentient things— things that shouldn't be alive but were. Rocks, water, even the mummies. From the corners of her eyes she could see something like movement where no one was. But no matter how quickly she turned, the flower or tree or stone had completed its transformation back into an inanimate object by the time she faced it. Surely it was some of that direct neural stimulation Kris talked about, but the effect was damned freaky.