Age of Blood

37

Walker and Jen lay in her single bed, blankets twisted around them. Jen’s head lay in the pocket of Walker’s shoulder. Their breathing was still quick. Sweat shone on their skin from the light coming through the window.

“I wish I could stay like this forever,” Walker said.

Her barely audible words were spoken directly into his ear. “Then why don’t you?”

“Because we’d get hungry eventually,” he offered.

She punched him in the chest. “Seriously.”

“Because I’m a SEAL,” he said simply.

Jen didn’t need any more explanation than that. She got it. She knew. Just like every other woman who’d dated a SEAL, she’d hoped she could change him. Part of Walker wished she could. But another part—the part of him that needed to be at the center of everything—demanded that he be a free ship in the patriotic storm.

“Still, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Will you, now?”

She was quiet for a while, then asked, “What took you so long?”

He looked at her in surprise.

“Not that, silly.” She punched him again. “I meant getting up here. Where were you?”

“Laws wanted me to help him with something down in the catacombs,” he said. “I hurried as fast as I could.”

“I thought Commander Holmes said not to…” She looked at him. “Oh. It was one of those.”

“One of those?”

“You know, the ‘I’m telling you not to do something in order to make it clear I want you to do that.’”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead.

“Sure you don’t.” She snuggled closer and pulled the sheet tighter.

“Part of me wishes you weren’t even here,” he said.

“Thanks a lot.”

“You know what I mean.”

She pretended to have a deep voice. “‘I’m not a big tough Navy SEAL so I might be in danger.’ Is that sort of what you mean?”

He chuckled. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“But I’m safe now.”

“We don’t know what’s gonna go down in Mexico City. We might even be hijacked on the way. There are things going on with the cartels we don’t understand.”

“I’ll make sure I stay behind and out of trouble.”

Walker knew better. He understood the vicissitudes of combat much better than she did and knew that there’d be at least a moment during the next few days when this woman he loved was in the crosshairs. He just had to hope that when that happened he would be there to keep her safe.

They both lay still, staring at the play of light across the ceiling and listening to the celebrations from the streets.

“Do you think YaYa is going to be okay?” she asked.

“He seems fine.”

“But is he really?” Her voice was on the edge of sleep.

“There’s no medical procedure I know of that can tell if a person is possessed. The priest says he’s okay and so does YaYa. My own little fucked-up radar hasn’t been going off. I suppose we’ll just have to keep an eye on him.”

Her breathing became regular. He looked down and saw that she was asleep. He should be so lucky. He was worried about YaYa more than he was willing to let on. He knew how a demon could lurk inside a person, then creep forward to assert control. For all his comments about the power of mind over blood, part of him was worried it still might happen again, even after all these years.

As he fell asleep to the gentle breathing of his girlfriend, he thought about dancing naked and peeing on the old Filipino man. It was always the Filipino man. It was as if his repayment for his mistreatment was to haunt Walker’s dreams. So it was that Walker fell asleep with the gnarled old man grinning at him, possessing the knowledge of what had been done, his look carrying condemnation through eternity.