Killing Rites

Chapter Eight

“Lemme get this straight. You broke up with Captain Milquetoast, killed some poor bastard, and figured out your body’s got a dual-boot operating system all in the same week?” he said with a sticky-sounding chuckle. “No wonder you’re looking rough.”

I didn’t know where to start. Aubrey isn’t milquetoast or How do you know about dual-boot computers or How many cigarettes do you smoke in a dy anyway? Instead, I shrugged and leaned back on the little vinyl couchlike thing that was the closest Midian’s RV had to guest seating. Over the last half hour, I’d told him everything—the thing with the guy in London, our adventure in New Orleans, the catastrophe of Grace Memorial, each bit of my last year spilling out like I was talking to my best friend.

The RV was parked out behind the restaurant, and probably had been for the last decade. The tires were gray and tiny; dead-twig weeds had lived and died where the missing hubcaps let dirt accumulate. The interior was clean and neat apart from the patina of cigarette tar that turned the white surfaces amber. The combined scents of old smoke and coffee and garlic oil made me think of my grandfather. Midian stood in the tiny galley as if the four feet between us really made it a different room. His tiny espresso machine hissed and burbled as he steamed the milk for me. He still wore the white shirts and forties-style high-waisted pants he’d had in Denver. Zombie Bogart.

“What about you?” I asked. “You’re looking … wetter.”

He grinned, ragged lips exposing teeth like old stones.

“I try.”

“What happened to you? I had a plane ready for you at the airstrip. When you didn’t show up, I thought the Invisible College caught up with you after all.”

“Yeah, I appreciate the thought, but I figured it’d be better if I just took off. Headed south, kept my head down, stayed off the grid. Northern New Mexico’s not a bad place to vanish if you’re looking to. All the locals know you don’t belong, but they aren’t generally talking to anybody else, so it doesn’t get out far. And if you pull your weight, speak Spanish, and don’t start off every conversation with an Indian by pumping their hands, making eye contact, and asking ’em to tell you how they’re feeling, you can make a niche.”

“Even with the looks?”

“Yeah, well. I told ’em I’m a veteran. Burned in Iraq,” Midian said, then took a long drag on his cigarette, the cherry blooming red and fading to gray. “Actually, I feel kind of bad about that. But I figure passing myself off as a serviceman isn’t exactly the low rung in my hierarchy of sins, y’know?”

“You mean feeding?”

“I mean feeding,” he said. “I’m still trying to get my feet under me on that score. Turns out if you fast for a couple of centuries, it takes it out of you. I’ve been pretty much keeping to goats and rats.”

“Really?”

He looked over at me.

“That was a joke, kid.”

He poured the steamed milk into the espresso, the careful shaking of his hand forming a perfect rose in sepia and white on the surface. When he passed it over, the ceramic was hot against my fingers. His voice made me think of Tom Waits in the later part of his career.

“I’ve been trying to keep a low profile. Mostly I’m just harvesting the kinds of guys nobody misses. Some guy deals smack to middle school kids, no one really cares when he drops out of sight, ou know?”

“Misdemeanor murder.”

“Yeah. I love that term,” he said, then turned and leaned against his counter. It creaked under his weight. His eyes flickered over me with something like sorrow.

“So you want to finish the latte and we can get this over with?”

“Get what over with?”

“I know why you’re here. We don’t have to dance around it. You came to kill me, and I’m not up for dying just yet. So—“

“I didn’t come to kill you. I came for dinner. I didn’t even know you were here,” I said. “Besides, I wouldn’t do that. You’re my friend.”

I had never astonished a vampire before. He crossed his arms. A gust of wind pushed against the RV, rocking it gently on its ruined springs. I felt the breath of cold through the cracked window at the back of my neck.

“Damn. You have got it bad. I figured we were doing that moment of camaraderie for old times’ sake thing before we went all Bushido on each other,” he said.

“Just wanted some coffee,” I said.

“So if you weren’t hunting for me, what exactly brings you to the ass end of nowhere?”

“A bunch of Ex’s old priest buddies are up here. He was hoping they could scrape me clean.” The words came out more bitter than I’d intended them. I took another sip of the coffee. It was rich and warm and soft. Like a coffee-flavored cloud. Midian must have seen my reaction.

“Pretty good, eh? I get the milk straight from the dairy. Makes the difference,” he said. “So that bunch up in San Esteban are Ex’s crew, are they? Makes sense, I guess. I knew he fell from grace right around here somewhere. Add that things have been a little rowdy since we kicked over the Invisible College’s anthill. Anybody around here who’s in the habit of dealing with folks like me’s been doing bumper-crop business.”

“Folks like us,” I said.

He paused, considering.

“Yeah, you put it that way. Folks like us. What does Tofu Boy think about the whole exorcism thing?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I haven’t told him. Can I ask you a question? What does it feel like?”

“What does what feel like?”

“Being a rider.”

He took a long breath and let it hiss out between his teeth. The body he was in had died sometime in the nineteenth century, so I had to take his breath as an editorial statement. I looked down at my hands. I had a scab across the knuckles that I didn’t remember. Something from the fight against the wind demon, maybe. I couldn’t keep track anymore.

“Should I not have asked that?” I said.

“No, no. It’s all right. Just kind of a personal question is all. What’s it feel like? We, it feels … It’s like putting your face underwater. Look, imagine you’re by a lake or something. Nice blue water stretching out to wherever, right? Now you lean over, put your face in water, and open your eyes. Boom, there’s this whole other place with fish and plants and whatever junk the kids threw off the dock last year. This whole world you weren’t part of, but now you can see it. Be part of it. And everything there’s amazing, you know? There’s light and thoughts and sex and hunger and … being. Things exist. It’s gorgeous.”

He rubbed his ear, grinning. I’d never heard him sound excited or passionate about anything before. Maybe food, a little, but this was different.

“And so you dive in,” I said.

“No, kid. You want to. Worse than anything, you want to. But the only thing I can do is push in a little. I’m like an iceberg. Some of me’s in this body, sure, but most of me’s in the Pleroma. I don’t fit here. I don’t belong,” he said. Then, a moment later, “Why do you want to know?”

“Because I wondered. What if … What if I’m not really Jayné Heller at all? I mean I don’t know how long this rider’s been in me. Maybe it always was. What if the real Jayné never took a breath. Never had a thought. What if I’ve been the rider all along.”

“You’re spilling your coffee, kid.”

I righted the cup.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s all right. But anyway, the theory doesn’t wash. Who comes and kicks ass when you’re not calling the shots? Who does all this weird magic shit that you can’t? You’re not a rider, kid, no matter how pretty it’d be to think so.”

“Pretty?”

“Sure, that’s the point, right? If you’re the nasty evil boogum, then Jayné still gets to be clean. She didn’t kill that guy. The exorcism comes, and you get cast into the darkness where you belong. She gets to live her life innocent and free of sin. That’s what you’d be hoping for, right?”

The blush started at my neck and crawled up toward my forehead, feeling like a sunburn. It was a dumb idea, and I felt like a stupid kid for having said it.

“It was just a theory,” I mumbled. “Never mind.”

“Nah, I get it. You kill someone the first time, it’s traumatic. And then you find out you aren’t even in control of your own body? That takes a lot away from you. Makes a hell of a one-two punch. I figure you’ve got a right to be on the ropes.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“So how’re you gonna get off ’em?”

The silence lasted a few seconds.

“I don’t know.”

“Ah, jeez. Don’t start crying. Look, you had a bad run. You did your Oh, poor me, and that’s fine. We all get those sometimes. It’s just that being a victim gets to be a habit. You stay there too long, you get comfortable. Gets to where a victim is who you are. So game-plan it. Put on your big-girl panties and tell me what’re you gonna do.”

I took a deep breath. What did I need?

“I need to be all right,” I said.

“Good start, but maybe a little vague, right? How’re you going to get there from here?”

“I don’t know,” I said, choking a little at the end.

I couldn’t help it. I started crying in earnest. Tears and sobs. Head in hands. The whole thing. Midian’s sigh was like gravel sliding off the back of a pickup truck. The cheap, stinking cushion of the couchlike thing shifted under me as he sat down beside me. His arm around my shoulder was weirdly hot and hard as concrete. The smell of his cigarettes almost covered the garlic and onions and fresh basil. Kitchen smells. I leaned against his shoulder.

“It’s okay, kid,” he murmured. “You go ahead if you need to. It’s all right.”

It was bad weather. A storm that came up fast and washed away thought and awareness and then broke. I might have been there, curled up against him for a couple of minutes. It might have been half an hour. I couldn’t have told the difference.

When I pulled myself back together, he stood up, fished around in his pocket, and pulled out a linen handkerchief. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose. When I spoke, my voice was thick and wet.

“I need my body back,” I said. “I can’t have this thing living inside me.”

“Okay, then,” he said, walking the three steps to the back of the RV. “You’ve got a plan for that. What else?”

“I want to never hurt anybody again ever.”

“Tall order, but worth aiming for,” he said, grunting. I glanced over. He was pulling on a fresh shirt. I’d left a wide damp spot on the old one.

“I need to figure out who I really am,” I said. There was a weird sense of déjà vu in saying the words.

“Yeah, well. That’s never wrong. So here’s what I’m hearing you tell me, okay? No matter what comes next, the first step, you’re finishing up with the papists. After you’re calling the shots on your body, you’re spending some time actually getting your shit together. Which means not running around the world like a decapitated chicken all the time. Slow down. Figure out what your next step is. And—this is me talking now—no more stroking your inner victim. Bad for your skin.”

“Yes, Oprah,” I said, but I smiled when I said it.

“Hey. Fuck you too,” he said, grinning. He teeth were black where they weren’t yellow.

My phone rang at the same moment that something scratched on the thin metal and plastic of the doorway. I turned toward the sound of claws, ready for a threat, but Midian waved me back. I pulled my phone out of the leather backpack I used as a purse. It was Ex. Midian opened the RV door and the ancient Laborador from the parking lot hefted hersef up the stairs on arthritic hips. I answered the call.

“Is everything okay?” Ex said instead of hello. His voice was tight as a wire.

“Sure,” I said, trying to keep the aftermath of tears out of my voice. “Everything’s copacetic. Why?”

“You’ve been gone a long time. We were starting to worry.”

“No, I’m at O’Keefe’s,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe—“

Midian coughed. He stood in the galley, scratching the dog between its ears and looking at me. His yellow eyes were empty, and I understood. If I told Ex he was here, he would tell Father Chapin. If Ex told Father Chapin, the exorcists would come after Midian. If not now, then later. Maybe I should have felt some conflict about lying to Ex, but I didn’t. It was Midian.

“You wouldn’t believe how good the food is,” I said gamely. “I’m just luxuriating over a little coffee.”

“Did anything happen?” he asked. The tension in his voice sounded like a small accusation.

“I haven’t been taken over by the rider and hijacked to Juárez,” I said a little sharply. “I’m fine. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“All right,” Ex said, backing down. “We’ve got a game plan and a schedule. When we’ve gone over it, we can all call it a night.”

Meaning that until I showed up, Father Chapin wasn’t going to let himself rest. It was like looking forward in time to who Ex was going to be at sixty. His cranky, paternalistic streak shifted into a different frame. It wasn’t that he wanted to control how long I took eating dinner. He just wanted to take care of his uncompromising old teacher, and this was the closest he could come to saying that out loud.

“I’ll come home soon,” I said. “Promise.”

“Thank you,” Ex said.

We paused for a moment, neither of us with anything to say and neither one hanging up first. I could hear him breathe like he was sitting beside me.

“Thank you,” he said again, and dropped the connection. I put the phone back in my pack a little more gently than I’d taken it out. Midian stopped scratching the dog’s ears, and it turned to me, pushing its nose under my hand and wagging. It had gray on its muzzle and around its black, watery eyes.

“Vatican’s junior hit squad wants you back, eh?” Midian said.

“Guess so,” I said, petting the dog’s head, then scratching its breast. The dog smiled and turned to look over its shoulder at Midian. See, this is how you’re supposed to do it. “This one’s yours? I never saw you as a pet kind of guy.”

“Ozzie’s not mine. She came with the job. I don’t know how she got here originally. Being loyal to disloyal people’s my bet. Lived by catching rabbits and birds. When she got old and weak, she started hanging out at the back door, stealing scraps.”

“And now she’s part of the place.”

The dog chuffed happily.

“Sort of,” Midian said. “The guy that owns the place still wants to shoot her, but I let her come in when it’s cold out. I’ve got a soft spot for down-on-their-luck predators. Don’t know where it comes from.”

“Can’t imagine.”

“So we’re good?” he asked.

“Of course we’re good,” I said, but when I stood up to go, I found I didn’t want to. I wanted to sit back down and pet the dog and drink the coffee and talk all night. I had a powerful flash of resentment toward Ex and Father Chapin and all the rest. Men who were risking their lives to help me. I looked down.

“You want to talk about Eric, don’t you?” Midian asked.

“Yeah. And about a million other things.”

He lifted his beef-jerky arms to the RV like he was displaying a treasure.

“You know where to find me,” he said.

“All right, then.”

“Yeah,” he said. “All right. ’S good seeing you, kid.”

The wind outside was biting cold and it smelled like snow. Low gray clouds had rolled in while I wasn’t watching, smothering stars and moon. I wrapped my coat around me and ran around the side of the restaurant. The parking lot was nearly full now, and it took some maneuvering to get the car to the ragged blacktop. The heater roared discreetly, and I turned up the music to carry over it. China Forbes sang “Let’s Never Stop Falling in Love” and I sailed through the darkness, feeling something like peace for the first time in weeks.

I cried after Chicago without knowing particularly what I was crying about, but I had been alone and there hadn’t been any catharsis in it. Tears wouldn’t clean me. I’d thought at the time it was only because I was so thoroughly blackened. Now I wondered if it was just that I’d done it alone. If Chogyi Jake had been there instead of recuperating in Chicago, if I hadn’t broken the thing off with Aubrey, and there had been someone to talk to. Someone to confess to. Would it have been different?

I tried to imagine what it would have been like if I’d gone to Ex. On the one hand, it was kind of unthinkable. From the moment I told him I had a rider, he’d been focused on fixing the problem. If I’d talked to him about guilt, he’d have handed me over to God, and it was a long time since I’d taken comfort there.

But on the other hand, what if he’d listened? What if he’d put his arm around me and let me cry his shirt wet. Would it have stopped there? Would I have wanted it to? Maybe the kind of intimacy where I could tell him about what I was afraid of and guilty over would have led to the other kind. And maybe that was where we were going anyway.

The road went under the highway, and I reached the ramp up, signaling my lane change even though there was no one in sight. I swung the nose of the car to the left, crossed the oncoming lanes, and flew up toward the interstate like a crow taking wingirst fat flakes of snow spattered against the windshield, and the car knew to start the wipers without my touching anything. The GPS glowed, guiding me. There was more traffic, and I checked my blind spot as I merged.

“Please don’t do this to me,” something said with my mouth.

My heart started spinning like a bike wheel. My hands dug hard into the wheel, white-knuckled. I drove eighty miles an hour down a dark, mostly unfamiliar road, waiting for my body to speak to me again.