Author: Wildbow

Finish Off – 24.a | Pale

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

The branches of trees extended, while the distant horizon -what Teddy’s art teacher at St. Victor’s called the horizon point- flexed and worked its way closer.  It didn’t do it in a straight line, but wormed, in a way that suggested that reality wasn’t alchemical earth, air, fire, and water, or spirit, or something else, but an Ordinary Family type thing on a grand scale, jerky and desperate.  Earth as a maggot world, a dying, thrashing limbless world.

Branches reached for and found points on the distant horizon to hook into.  Distant buildings loomed, surged, and buckled, walls bulging toward them, from the distant horizon until they seemed to be in front of Teddy’s face.  Windows bowed inches from his face, glass scraping and popping in the frame, individual sections of glass bulging, straining, and popping up like ulcers.

He could move his head, but it didn’t fix things, and didn’t change the effect.  The glass remained in front of his face when he turned away, even looked down, the strain intensifying, ulcers collecting, some with things inside them- on the other side of them.  People distorted like funhouse mirrors, like homunculi in bottles.

Grass reached up from below, sky reached down from above, and intruded on frame and glass, ulcer, and air, like everything else.

The glass popped, crackled, and hissed, until it exploded in Teddy’s face.  Beyond Teddy’s face.  Not just his face, but his neck, the back of his head, reaching below clothes to touch skin, past nose to sinus, throat.  Glass disintegrated, the people on the far end of glass dissolved and broke apart into fleshy fragments.  Every part of Teddy touched every part of every other thing, and was touched back.

It pulled, and it pulled by angles he shouldn’t be pulled by- a gentle touch at the front of the throat pulling with the same force as a firm grip at the back of the neck.  It pulled with grass, dirt, tree, building, and person, among many other things, inside Teddy, in throat, ear, mouth, intestine.  If the universe was a dying, thrashing snake moving on a timescale so slow to perceive, with everything mankind knew clinging to one wisp of one bit of skin that was in the middle of shedding, then that bit of skin hooked into Teddy and moved him.

Their entire group, with the exception of people who didn’t need help to cross great distances, was moved part of the way to their destination.

In the wake of that move, people who’d been unable to make noise while things were in process gasped and swore, even screamed, in one case.  Some doubled over.  A few vomited.

The last time there had been shrieks as people vomited things they shouldn’t, like grass, wood, bits of animal, and broken glass.  This time, Miller, Teddy’s mentor, had passed around some anti-emetics.

They’d moved to a town by the lake, a single road, two stoplights, a gas station, and a sprawl of houses and what could’ve been more houses, could’ve been cabins, sprawling out in the space between road and water.  If there were any streets or roads between the houses, they were buried under snow.  The presence of snowmobiles suggested it was easier to use those than to plow.  Similar to the Belanger enclave they’d raided, in that way.

“A reminder, you’re fine, you should be fine, and so should the people we knit with along the way.  Protections were woven and layered a handful of times by multiple experts, when one would have sufficed.  Glass you’ve taken into yourself won’t cut, heavy metals won’t poison.  But if you start vomiting, be sure to get as much as you can out.  The protections will fade eventually, and if you didn’t hold the contents of your stomach in place, they might remain behind to do their damage.”

“I can screen for anything with spirit surgery, if needed and asked for, if I have time,” Griffin said.  He winced.  It looked like he wasn’t doing great, even with Miller’s potion to settle his stomach.

The cold air rolling off the lake made the low temperature sharp and unforgiving.   Not that it bothered Teddy.

Teddy moved, stretching, rubbing his shoulders.  His stomach burbled like it wanted to be upset, and the blackness coursing through Teddy refused to cooperate.

The youngest two members of the Kims, a boy and a girl who could’ve been fraternal twins, tied off the Horror-styled teleportation ritual.  There were a whole run of practices that could dip into this kind of thing, but it was hard to imagine what was rougher than this.

“Very good for a first time, you two.  But slow.  You can do the next and final length,” one of the adult Kims told them.  “I want to see you get us across faster.”

“Yes, sir,” both replied in unison.

The adult moved on.

Maybe that was why it had been tougher.  Slower?  Teddy had no idea.

The girl, about ten, had long, black sewing needles that were three-quarters the length of Helen’s chopsticks, as Teddy thought of them, but many more in number, ten embedded under fingernails, twenty more held between fingers, either across the middle, or with points and ends pressing into flesh.

She wore a summer-length, short black dress with black lace and lace-textured black tights, and a long coat that reached her ankles, that she’d left open in the front.  The inside pockets were full of odds and ends.  She had similarities to Helen, nose straight, chin narrow, body angular, all very severe.

Her brother was similar, not seeming to care about the cold.  He wore a shirt that was summerweight, so light it was translucent with just a touch of lace at the front end of the collar and around the button holes, his coat not nearly as long.  both brother and sister had hair that was mostly straight, but twisted wildly in places, at the brow and ends.

He had the same sort of chopsticks as Helen, capped at the fat end with silver, silver etched with indicators.  They clacked as he gripped them all into a fist, and rattled as he slid them into a coat pocket that seemed specially made for them, a slot for each stick.

Teddy was put in mind of kids who’d gone to walk the runway at some fashion show, expecting to wear sportswear or something, and they’d been put in this sort of getup instead.  Which would be tragic, except, no, they were the type of people those fashion shows were for.  Or their families were.  More tragic.

“You’ve got, ah…” the boy said, trailing off, motioning at his mouth.

Teddy was, when he didn’t watch himself, breathing hard enough that spittle flecked and frothed between teeth, and by default, his mouth pulled back in an exaggerated grin that should’ve made his teeth hurt, especially since it had been that way for two hours, now.  Drool was a casualty.

Teddy wiped at his mouth.  “Not at you.”

“Good.  I thought so.  It’s hard traveling this way, for most.  But you and your friends endured.  Most of your friends.  Good for you,” the boy said.

Cocky, condescending, superior little asswipe, Teddy thought, without anger, venom, or judgment.  It was fact: the boy was a cocky, condescending, superior little asswipe.

The other St. Victor’s students were mostly okay.  Besides the main group, half of the ten or so recruits they’d managed had taken on a bit of Abyss stuff.  The other half were suffering right now- one had been tattooed, and had freaked out, the other was injured enough he was spending time more unconscious than awake.

Miller, Teddy’s mentor, was holding his own, which was pretty impressive, because he didn’t have the Abyss stuff running through him.  Helen, obviously, was perfectly fine.  Lenard, just like Teddy and the other St. Victor’s students, was hardened against the worst of it.

Towards the middle of the pack were Griffin and Joel, who were suffering, but who got to their feet.  Joel to walk out to the edges of the group, while Griffin tended to the people who’d been hit hardest.

The Allaires were managing.  This wasn’t a strength of theirs, as far as Teddy had even seen them, but they were made of stern stuff.  They’d been inducted into practice, Forsworn, and then kept as slaves and experimental fodder for practices, essentially, and upset stomachs were the least of what they’d dealt with.

Teddy wondered if that was why Seth had been hit hardest- because he’d endured less of the actual brutality of being Forsworn.  He was groaning, sitting on snow.  Cameron, Abyss running through her, leaned her front into Seth’s back, no real color in her skin, fingers in his hair, her light smile eerily soulless.

The girl in black lace was moving her fingers like spiders in fast motion, moving the needles, her face expressionless as she met Teddy’s eyes.  Maybe showing off a bit, by doing all that without looking.

Almost as one singular motion, she set two-thirds of the needles next to her throat, each needle lying lengthwise against skin, some penetrating the slotted ends, but mostly braced so they were held in place by two or three other needles.  It looked like the moment that house of cards collapsed, she’d have five different needle-points inside her throat.

Ten needles remained, sticking beneath her fingernails, the points driven to the nail beds, the black lines visible through translucent nail.  She brought the other ends up to her mouth, bit, and pulled them free.  Blood spilled, but fingers deftly moved those ten needles, and as they did, the ten fingers briefly seemed like twenty, maneuvering needles around, blood stopped flowing, freezing suspended an inch above snowy road not making contact, then moved like tendrils, and snaked back into finger, and the wounds and blood were gone.

She practically stabbed those ten needles into her throat, sliding them into the arrangement.  The finished, thirty-needle setup forced her to keep her chin high., unless she wanted the underside of the chin stabbed.  Then, looking at Teddy like she was disappointed in him, she strode off, things to do.

“Tell me how you do that,” Teddy said, to her back.

“I’d ask you what part you mean,” the boy of the pair said.  “But the parts I’d be interested in sharing with you, I shouldn’t, and the parts I can tell you, I’m not interested in.”

“Cat’s cradle,” Helen said, from behind Teddy.  “Start with cat’s cradle and knots, then transition into doing it with sticks, connected at the ends, instead of string.  Then you lose the connections, relying only on fingers, sticks resting on top of and against other sticks.  For me, they started me early.  I was in the crib or barely out of the crib when they had me playing with sticks, needles, and string.  Every year, I was told I wouldn’t get more toys or playtime unless I’d mastered that year’s lessons and techniques.  Some family branches don’t even give the kids toys.”

She indicated the boy and the girl with a jerk of her head.

“So, one way of interpreting what you’re saying, is that that kid showing off like she was, it’s kind of unimpressive, given how much she’s probably practiced,” Teddy said.  He’d pitched his voice to be heard by the girl in black lace.  She turned, glancing over her shoulder at him.

He grinned at her, to drive the joke home, and with the Abyss-stuff making muscles tense and taut, it was a wicked, rictus sort of grin.

The girl turned away, going to talk to an older female relative.  The boy went off.

“How are we doing, Seth?” Helen asked.

“Miserable.  It sucks fucks we lost Freeman, he was better at moving us places.  What the hell is all that?  It was worse that time.”

“Did you use the Sight while it was happening?”

“No, I was actually trained by a respected Augur, I know better than that.”

Helen made an amused sound.  “That?  That was the world by different angles.”

“I saw the world as a dying, thrashing snake, shedding its skin, and we’re one bit of that skin,” Teddy said.

“Is that what you saw?” Helen asked, smiling.  “I like that.”

“A collapsing box with jagged edges, an iron maiden,” Cameron said.

“It’s like looking at clouds.  We can all see something different.  See enough of the big picture, it can look like anything, everything,” Helen said.  “Get good enough, and you can make it into anything.”

“How good are you?” Teddy asked.  “All of you?  The Kims?  In terms of the world, rankings…?”

“We’re not world class, but practitioners who are still find cause to hire us now and then, to handle things, putting us at their periphery with room to climb,” Helen said.  “We work with them a few times a year, senior family handles that.  Most of the family’s work is securing dangerous practices for others.  Things that could turn a person into a horror if mismanaged.”

“Mind how much you share, Helen,” someone said.

“They’re our new colleagues,” Helen replied, smiling.

“Mind.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, smiling wider, meeting Teddy’s eyes for a moment.  He smirked.  Helen left Seth and Cameron behind, sidled past Teddy, past Dony, who was looking introspective, and past Travis.  As she got far enough away, she whispered, “I used the word ‘we’ when talking about my family, and he didn’t tell me off for that.”

She sounded pleased.

“Congratulations,” Dony said, without looking up.

“Speaking of minding…” Helen said.

She clapped her hands together.  The sound was much more pronounced than it should have been.  Heads turned her way.

“I know it’s late, we’re tired, some of you are recovering.  Let’s carry on with the same procedure as last time.  If you’re capable of standing, walking, and fighting, protect the rest.  Form a perimeter, patrol, don’t leave gaps.  They were on our heels last time, they might be still.  We recuperate and move on as soon as the most affected are up for it.  We’re two thirds of the way, we should be able to get there with one more move.”

“Abba and Agrippa will move us the last stretch,” one of the Kim leadership figures said, indicating the boy and girl.

Teddy wanted to spend a moment trying to get a better sense of the family’s leadership structure, work out who was on top, but lingering would look bad, and he had the impression that trouble had already found them.

That had been the case at the last stop.  He felt a moment of trepidation, looking out into the dark.

The Abyssal taint was starting to taper off.  It would take another two hours before he was ‘normal’, he guessed.  He wiped at his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and there was something black in the spittle.  He would have tried collecting it, his mentor would have wanted him to for the alchemy, but the Lost and foundlings were back.

In the meantime, he was able to… he wasn’t even sure how to put words to it.  Not ‘think more clearly’.  He thought clearly with the Abyss running strong through him.  The difference was that now he was undecided about words and feeling that trepidation as he looked for enemies.  That doubts were slowly creeping back in, suggesting he was less under the influence of the Abyss, and under the influence of humanity, instead.  He kind of preferred the former.

No, he hadn’t stopped thinking, there wasn’t a rage that took over, even when his muscles were tense, veins standing out.  He had blood pumping through him, but unlike any other time he’d felt this kind of surge, he wasn’t about to do something asinine like trying to show off in front of girls.  He felt more quiet and tense, not more driven, loose, or agitated.  With the Abyss running through him, he was humorless, which was weird when humor was a big part of his identity.  He felt dangerous.

He wasn’t seeing red because he saw black, instead.

He stretched, trying to -not enjoy, those feelings weren’t there- experiencing it while he could.  His shoulders were able to stretch in ways they couldn’t without the Abyss there.  Parts that should have hurt didn’t.  He could do weird contortionist shit with shoulders and limbs at weird angles.  Not that he would, here.  He did make his shoulders do interesting things as he extender arms over head.

He felt like the way his muscles were pulling, if he’d drank just a bit more Abyss, he could be taller, bulkier.  He was already gangly, skinny, weirdly proportioned.  A part of him wanted to play hard into that, exaggerating it.  Kira-Lynn was kind of doing that already.

Was it worth working with wormy-mouthed, pear-shaped, ‘smile to your face and then be casually cruel’ Lenard fucking Lily, though?

Fuck.  The parts of him that said ‘no’ were probably not the parts he should be listening to, he knew.  He thought that immediate ‘no’ because Lenard was such a worm of a man, and Teddy didn’t want to be gross like Lenard was.  He knew he should be worried about what his teacher had taught him and all that, about tolerances, limits, and whatever.  Or that he should be afraid of diving into this visceral darkness to get away from the real-world dark.

That didn’t really factor in.  He couldn’t bring himself to care about it.

“Saw one!  They’re out there!” someone shouted.  One of the denizens that had converted over, off to Teddy’s right.

Teddy’s eyes tracked the shadows.  Off to his left, Dony was crouched, staring out into the dark, expression gloomy, a two-handed black branch in hand.

Teddy had his own black, crooked branch that Lenard had made, which worked as a go-to weapon.  He also had a dragonslayer weapon from Joel’s arsenal, that Joel had opened up to all of them before the fight.  The twist of metal formed a claw shape, holding a nugget of cracked concrete that had an echo-like blur around it, and always looked like it was being viewed in the dark at night.  It was heavy enough to threaten to pull his pants down, hanging from the side of his belt, despite looking like it weighed only five or six pounds.

The ruined claw was a weapon against echoes, spirits, and other things like that.  Things without bodies.

He had some other trinkets and tricks.  He’d stapled a strip of seatbelt material to his belt and slotted some vials of alchemy into all but one of the slots.  One slot at the end had ended up too big and prone to having stuff fall through- so he’d jammed a multi-tool in there instead.  He had a paper lunch bag with a lump of meat inside that periodically moved and reacted- he could open the bag to have it scream, and disturb spirits around him.  He had black coins he could toss into a crack, vent, well, or other dark place, to get a temporary weapon or tool from the Abyss.

His real prizes, things he’d bartered at a loss for with the others, were a set of four cards.  Cameron had gotten the bangles from Seth, that had defeated Dog Tags.  Kira-Lynn had a weapon, Dony had a summon in a jar.  Travis had three items, because he’d traded away stuff like the card.  Two cards from Maricica’s involvement in Abyss and Undercity.  Two from the Blue Heron storerooms.  Each was from a different deck, he was pretty sure, and he’d talked to Miller and Joel about the possibility of turning the collection into something.  A growing deck of cards where every card was uniquely different from the rest.

A card that temporarily turned an item, magic or otherwise, into a goblin version of itself.  Interesting, but he needed time to figure it out.

A second card, one that dragged out the consequences of a gainsaying or other karmic penalty he or someone he designated suffered, making it only a quarter as bad -keeping seventy-five percent of his practice- but last ten times as long.  The card would get a hole burned in the middle, eating most of the way to the edges, then slowly healed, needing to fully close before another use.  Not as useful when he had the Carmine backing him, but it fit the set.

The third was a card that flipped practice in his immediate area over to his control and gave him claim over the surroundings.  It didn’t work on everything and would backlash against him if he tried something too strong for it, but when it did work, it let him turn someone’s practice against them.  Even summoned Others, sometimes.  The downside was that when he used it, it also produced a gang of goons, maybe undercity, maybe subhumans, maybe some mix, he didn’t know.  They were brought forth to go wreak havoc on the area, usually going on crime sprees until arrested.

That was more interesting to use, the consequences didn’t really touch him, but it would get harder to use as they got further along in all this.

And the last was a card with a man in an improvised jester costume on it, with a scraggly beard and an obnoxious face, which he held.

He heard Dony shout something, and he barely had time to process before something lashed out in his field of vision-

A bola.  Rope and weights, flying out and curving through the air to catch the joker card, wrapping around the card and Teddy’s hand.

That was what the card was for.  Drawing fire.  It made his karma worse while holding it ready, but also absorbed harm.

He held out the black branch, tracking the source as they ran through the woods, on the opposite side of the road to where the houses and snowmobiles were.  He shook his hand to get the bola loose, letting it drop to the ground by his feet.

He recognized this one.  It kept turning up, whenever they stopped to rest.  A foundling, wearing winter clothes, with a porcelain mask, the number ‘XVII’ on the forehead, and past the eye sockets of the mask, there weren’t eyes, or head, or shadow, but a distorted view of the forest behind the person with the mask.

Holding the black branch felt like holding a live wire.  The Abyss ran deep into the world, it ran through him, and it sat heavy in the branch.  Pushing himself into and through the branch felt like being on the verge of vomiting and forcing it to happen.  The body wanted to, he wanted to, even for the relief alone, and all it took was using uncommon mechanisms and biology, flexing muscles that didn’t get used that way.

Connecting the flow, making the blackness pump through him, out through the branch, in a violent release he wasn’t equipped to easily describe.  Like being mad enough to thrash someone, as a starting point, but black, not red, and not someone.  Everything.

He aimed for the mask.  The Abyssal energy flowed out and tore past tree, wood, grass, caught the back of one leg, and shredded it.

Which made the foundling stumble.

The foundling was slowed enough that the next surge of Abyssal energy, aimed at the mask, could rake along trees, branches, catching arm before arcing downward and clipping legs again, blowing both off around the knees.

The foundling tumbled, sprawling, and the mask bounced away.

I aimed at that fucking mask…

Teddy was careful to look for traps as he walked over, eyes scanning for where the mask might have fallen.  He didn’t stop looking as he idly kicked the body with one toe, so it lay on its back instead of its front, and the clothes collapsed and went limp the moment contact was made.  There was no face where the mask had been, only a stitched doll face.

He spotted the mask just in time to see a hand reach out from behind the tree to pick it up, pulling it on.  Teddy roared as he aimed the black branch, tearing past trees to try to hit the fleeing individual.

He hadn’t seen, but the ‘XVII’ was an ‘XVIII’ now, if the pattern held.  The foundling kept ‘dying’, only to survive because the mask did.

Teddy’s roar became a laugh without humor.

“Fuck these guys,” Teddy said, the rueful, humorless laugh trailing off.

A few trees creaked, wood popping and splintering, and they began to topple.

He blasted a few as best as he could before they could fall on him.  Another blast followed his, then a third, raking past trees to knock off branches, splinter trunk, and push back.

The shattered wood tumbled to the ground, plowing into snow.

Dony and Kira-Lynn were behind him.  Travis was further back but hadn’t participated.  Both held branches.

“Where the hell were you until just now?” he asked Kira-Lynn.

“Talking to the Carmine,” she replied.  Kira-Lynn seemed taller.  Her skin had gone nearly white, and the staining faintly swirled at the edges like smoke roiling at one-sixteenth speed, around her collar, cuffs, and hairline.  One of the black veins at the back of her hand had split, and was raw, blood mixing with blackness and losing out in the process.  Her expression didn’t twist, she didn’t give anything away.  She looked at home in that blackness.

She’d changed like Teddy had imagined himself changing, if he’d taken in more Abyssal energy.  Like she was walking the line of becoming a bogeyman.

“What do you and the Carmine have to talk about?” he asked.

“Maricica.  Stuff.  He’s occupied, he offered to talk about it with me later, when things calm down.”

Kira-Lynn had bonded hard with Maricica.  Being like this, she hadn’t even reacted, except to want to go hurt people, but then the Carmine had called her off, and then they’d left.  Kira-Lynn had gone with it.

Dony looked… bad.  Like it all weighed him down and he couldn’t quite straighten up.  He was a doughy kid, round-headed, built like a junior football player, but without the height, cheeks usually reddish with even the lightest amount of sun or slightest bit of cold weather, hair red-brown and short.

Dony had killed his dad.

Dony had killed his dad because the Abyss ran heavy and black through him and changed him into someone more vicious.

Dony had killed his dad because the Abyss ran heavy and black through him and changed him into someone more vicious, much like it had changed Teddy into someone who could casually joke and foster paranoia.  Telling Dony that it could be a body stealer, glamour, or doppleganger.  It wasn’t like the three witches didn’t live in a town small enough it wasn’t possible to figure out who their parents were, right?

So Dony had shot.  Dony’s dad had died.  Now Abyss leaked out of Dony, out of Teddy and Kira-Lynn, and they were inching toward a point in the near future where the emotional coldness would stop being as cold, and the feelings would be there.

A Lost darted by, followed by a thunderclap-like crash.

Teddy fired, and so did Dony.  The black lightning arced off to the side, tearing through fallen trees.

“Fuck!  Where’s Lenard?” Teddy asked.

“Not far.  I just saw him,” Kira-Lynn replied.

“Lenard!” Teddy hollered.

The man jogged over.

“How do I aim this?”

“You don’t.”

“Can I get a gun, instead?”

“Wrong mindset,” Lenard replied.  “This isn’t something where you fix it by refining your aim.  You fix it by not needing to aim at all.  Guns make bad practice.”

“Do they?” one of the Dog Tags accompanying Lenard asked.  “Anthem did alright.”

“Anthem has the clout to force it.  Here.”

Lenard wrapped some strips of black cloth around the branch, then added a chain.  He pushed Teddy’s sleeve up.  “Arm’s doing alright.  Wearing off?”

“Some.”

“We’ll be established by the time it’s fully gone.  If you can get any of our pursuers, that’s fine, if you can’t, don’t worry about it.”

It was surprisingly gentle for Lenard.  But he was weird like that.  Like an ordinary, good person was periodically taken over by the bad.

“I don’t want it to wear off,” Teddy said, looking out toward the trees.

“Study under me, you’ll pick up Abyssal taint over time, while also learning to live with it.”

I don’t want it over time, I want it two hours from now, so I don’t need to lie awake and stare at the ceiling, seeing what I’ve seen tonight.

“Maybe.  This change you made to the wand makes it stronger?  Anything I need to know?” Teddy asked.

“It’s stronger.  You’re fine.  Go easy on that arm, though.  If it hurts enough, you stop.  Don’t push through.”

Teddy nodded.

He waited, Lenard standing behind him, Kira-Lynn watching, until he saw movement.

The blast of lightning was forked, and each limb of the fork was four times as wide.  The darkness lanced up his arm and he felt the damage run through muscle and bone.

It wasn’t the masked person he’d hit, but he’d aimed for the head, and with the lightning-like strikes of darkness being as broad and numerous as they were, he hit the head- and just about everything else.

“Nice one,” Kira-Lynn said.

He flexed his arm, testing the damage, and then put the wand away.  He’d lean on different weapons.  A payment of a black coin let him reach between two rocks and pull out an Abyssal gun.

It wouldn’t be the first time the Abyss seemed to respond to recent prompts.  So soon after the conversation with Lenard?

He checked the road was clear, then jogged across, eyes scanning the trees.  There wasn’t anyone out there.  There was noise to the south, where Lenard’s bogeymen were.  Lenard watched Teddy with one eye, and the bogeymen with another.

He looked down at the dead teenager.  Obliterated.  There were chunks of muscle and they were still contracting and twitching.

The others were talking, and their voices faded into a mumble of background noise.

He watched until muscles stopped twitching.  The sound of distant fighting faded, which meant Teddy had to spend less time keeping an eye out for movement in the woods.

A hand at his shoulder made him flinch.  He swung and someone caught his arm.  Josef Miller, his mentor.

Others were gone.  It said something that the others hadn’t reached out to him, or come to stand watch beside him.  He wasn’t sure what it said, but it still said a lot.

The man had let his dark hair grow to chin length, and he had stubble on his chin, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.  He wore the alchemist’s leather apron, and a faint steam rose off his skin, suggesting he’d taken something to beat the cold.  The sleeves of his black long-sleeved tee were even rolled up.  No coat.

“Teddy.”

“I called, you didn’t answer.  I even said your name three times.  Are you gainsaid?”

“I have the card, so I wouldn’t go deaf to that anyway.  Lost in thought.”

“Hmm.  Good thoughts?”

Teddy shrugged.

“Did you collect samples?  Blood, tissue?” Miller pointed at the body.

“I’ll train you to do that automatically, whatever else is going on.  You’ll be a happier alchemist down the road, if you can get in the habit.”

“Feels weird.”

“It does.  It is.  But why now?  This isn’t your first kill.”

Teddy thought of a Belanger at the Belanger compound.

Dony’s dad, which was kind of his fault.

“First one up close.”

“We’re getting ready to go.  You don’t want to be a straggler.  We scared off the pursuers, but they’ll come in to get you if you trail behind and get so lost in thought you’re not properly listening.”

“Okay.”

“Use any alchemy tonight?”

“Earlier.  Plus the spirit surgery.  Similar-ish.”

“Similar-ish,” Miller agreed.

“You got anything for stuff like this?”

“Being blown into chunks?  Yeah.  Work in progress.  But you don’t want that.  It’s not pretty, it’s meant to fight back against things that can tear you apart like that.”

“No, not him, not that.  For the mental stuff.  I’m not disloyal.  I need to be part of this.  But this- Dony’s dad?”

“I heard about that.  Heavy.  I don’t have the stuff with me.  I’d need to set up a lab.  Come on.  If you’re still awake in a few hours, I’ll see about mixing up something to help you.  We’re getting ready for the next mass teleportation.  Last one before we get ourselves settled.  Then maybe even trying sleep.  Imagine that.”

Miller looked tired, but he was the kind of guy who looked like tiredness was a comfortable and usual state for him.

“Any way we can keep this Abyss thing going, instead?” Teddy asked.

“Why?”

Teddy shrugged one shoulder.  “I…”

‘I like it’ would be a lie.

“…don’t hate it.”

Miller didn’t stare at him, and even seemed mildly disinterested and disconnected, but his gaze felt penetrating.

“Just saying,” Teddy replied.  “It’s a war, and being tougher, more efficient, all the other stuff, it helps.”

“You can talk to Griffin about that.  If you’re after what I’m guessing you’re after, there are other ways,” Miller told him.  “Becoming a Hyde.  Dangerous game, I knew some who did it, back when there was more of an alchemist enclave in the area.  If you don’t trust someone to get a job done?  Take a potion, become exactly who you want for the job.  Hurting?  Give it the hurt.  Angry?  Give it the anger.”

Give it…

Teddy looked back down at the teenager with the shattered mask, most of the head obliterated, the hot blood had melted snow where it was piled up less at the foot of trees, overhanging foliage keeping the snowfall away, and it was hard to tell what was meat chunks, what was soil or old leaves, and what was residual Abyss-stuff.

“There’s a cure for all that ails,” Miller said, voice soft.  “Every problem in the universe, I imagine, has a solution.  But for right now?  Other problems take priority.  We don’t want to be left behind, that’s a good five to six hours in the car.  Five or six hours we’re at risk.”

“Yeah.”

“Seth says he’s got some inkling that our enemies are angling at you guys.  Might tie into what happened with Dony’s dad showing up.”

“Right now?”

“As in, it’s in the works.  One of a few things.  We’re trying to figure out the shape of it.  They block some of the augury, baffle it with that styan Seth described.”

“I think I can break that, now that I think about it.  But to do that, I need to be in a lab, and to be in a lab?”

“We need to go.  I get it.”

Teddy looked down at the meat, then turned to go, looking both ways down the road.

There was a car coming, just far enough away he felt like he shouldn’t jog across- especially with ice in the way, but far enough away it felt awkward waiting.

He waited, using his body to block the view of the gore in the snow.

The car -the truck, Teddy could see more clearly now- slowed as it got closer, prolonging that awkwardness- extending it further when the truck came to a near total stop.

It was a massive pickup, with heavily tinted windshield and windows, bright aftermarket high beams.  Teddy was just learning to drive, taking driving lessons at night, and he’d run into it before.  When the lights seemed to flood the interior of his parents shitty little sedan.

The truck idled, and Teddy started to cross the road, keeping his Abyssal gun at his left side, out of view.

The truck lurched, tires skidding on snowy road, and Teddy, in his alarm, fell.  He reached for the cards in his inside pocket, and had a moment where he had to decide which to use.  He’d already used the mocking card.  One to goblinify something?  No.  To reverse practice?

Teddy’s finger was on the card for managing karma when Miller reached into his coat, pulling out a vial.  Teddy felt something.

“No!” Teddy called out.

The truck found traction and surged forward, veering away from hitting Teddy, while avoiding a direct hit from the vial- it clipped the top corner of the windshield.

The contents were liquid for a moment, then flesh.  Flesh expanded, crawling across the outside of the vehicle as the liquid spread.

Teddy didn’t even get up, flipping onto his side before aiming the gun.

He fired twice, trying to shoot that patch of spreading flesh.

Miss and miss.  Maybe because he’d aimed high, not wanting to hit the passengers.  The truck, with truck nuts swinging from the back and a sticker that said something like ‘no fat chicks’ on the back hatch, carried on down the road, swerving slightly.

“Fuck,” Teddy swore.  He got to his feet, arm throbbing because using the gun wasn’t that much better than using the branch, the way the jolts had run through his arm.

The truck had stopped, turning sideways in the road.  A window rolled down.

A woman sat in the passenger seat, middle aged and worn-down looking.  The driver was a man, muscled, with short black hair and a receding hairline, large nose, and thick eyebrows.  He was smiling, but it was a weird, offputting smile, upper lip curled back to reveal teeth, eyes in a weird glare.

The fleshy thing clung to the top.  A puddle of everchanging flesh.

The woman noticed, and shrieked.  She quickly rolled the tinted window back up, using a hand to bat at the flesh.

The gunfire had drawn attention from others in their group.  Miller shook his head.

“The alchemy is being suppressed.  It’s not thriving.”

“Yeah.”

“You know what’s going on?” Miller asked.

“Innocents, or something.  Weirdly hostile, but… yeah.”

Miller made a sound halfway between snarl and sigh.

The truck peeled out.  The fleshy thing on the roof was losing its grip.

“What happened?” Griffin called out.

“Innocents.  Fuck.  Is the Carmine still around?”

“Yeah.”

Miller helped steady Teddy as they crossed a snowbank, moving toward the main group.

The Carmine was there, surrounded by the Allaires, Abraham Musser’s familiars, a Fae that was apparently Maricica’s friend, and the rest of their contingent.

“Innocents,” Miller said, with resignation.  “Spooked us.”

“You picked up bad karma,” the Carmine noted.  “Both of you.”

“Both?”

“Apparently the man is obsessed with guns.  Yours sounded weird.”

“Really?”

“And the bad karma is entangled.  They’re Aware.  One is a karmic filter.”

“They’re gone,” Seth said, looking at a hand of cards he’d drawn.  “Not in this realm?”

“That would be the other one,” the Carmine said.  “You couldn’t know, you took pains, Teddy Kilburn.  You’re absolved.  I’ll spend power to clear that up for you.  Everyone else, be careful.  This would be some of what Seth talked about.  The measures they’re taking.”

“First the annoying as fuck Lost and foundlings?” Teddy asked.

“That I’m sure Miss created with this sort of scenario in mind.  Harassers and harriers, hard to put down, keeping us on our toes.  They fell back after the bogeymen started pursuing.  They’ll keep coming, but now we’ll have to be careful there may be Aware mixed in.”

He raised his head.

The Aurum was there, sitting on the centipede’s head as the centipede weaved through trees.

“We can assign some of any karmic debt to the people who put the Aware on task?” the Carmine asked.

“They were careful to divorce themselves from direct involvement, but yes.  The argument can be made.”

“Good.  In any case, I think it would be good to move.”

“Abba and Agrippa,” one of the Kims said.

The boy and girl faced each other and began working with the sticks.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Cameron asked the head Dog Tag.  “We can compel you to say, if you do.”

“I don’t,” the Dog Tag said.

The Dog Tag was the only one that looked remotely at ease, like this.  Giving nothing away.

People were tired, or bloody.  The others who were tainted with Abyss had that Abyss-stuff draining away, and as it did, the costs of the night began to wear on them.  Teddy’s arm throbbed.  The Allaires and Kims were best off, the key players for some of the next phases in their bigger plan, but even they had traveled long distances and were up in the middle of the night.  The Kims seemed to wear it well, especially because they traveled a lot, but clothes were rumpled and coats were wet with damp snow.

Which made him think of bloody chunks in the snow.  He could still see that blown-apart teenager in his mind’s eye.

The Aurum moved on.  The Carmine remained where he was, wearing his red fur coat, a dark look in his eyes, not immune to the night’s costs either.

“Why aren’t we doing this in Toronto?”

“Because I made deals with Eloise Miraz’s extended family, offering them Toronto.  Were I to relocate my throne to the city, it wouldn’t sit well with them.  We’re close.  Three hours away.  Enough to be neighbors without stepping on toes.”

The location was apparently a peninsula extending up and into Lake Huron, northwest of Toronto.  The Carmine Exile liked cabins and being a bit removed from civilization, and this struck a balance of having nice cabins and things while still suiting his tastes.

The Kims were unfolding a house they’d brought with them, turning it from something horrored -they’d used some word he hadn’t caught- to ordinary.  Teddy went out of his way to avoid looking at it, because it pulled at his eyes.

The Allaires were very new to glamour, but the Fae were prepared to work with them, and they were eager.  Had been eager for a long time.  Promised magic and then forsworn instead.  The way they took to it, it was like the universe was trying to make it up to them.  They conjured buildings.

“Won’t someone notice a whole new area sprung up out of nowhere?”

The Carmine watched as the house rose up.  “Things are out of season, the only people coming by are ice fishers.  The Aurum can nudge civilization, I can nudge conflict, they can be left to think some unscrupulous developers pushed for this to happen, and now that it’s here, it’s too late to protest.  It’s easier if there are no Aware…”

He paused.

“The truck is out there.  Others are approaching.  This will cost more than it should, even with the debt split between me and them.”

“You have power to spare, don’t you?” Helen asked.

“They might think they can nickel and dime me, when I have hundreds of millions to spare, metaphorically speaking.  It will cost them more than it costs me.  Maybe if I hadn’t accepted the deal, it would be a different picture.  This could be a backfire of their plan.”

“Do you think it is?” Helen asked.  “A backfire?”

“I think they would have pulled back in some way, somehow, if it was.”

“Carmine, sir,” one of the Kims called out.

“What do you need?”

“Should we hide the building behind trees?”

The building was an old manor, with multiple wings and sub-buildings, a walled fence around the exterior, and exaggerated, twisting paths past gardens with the lightest smattering of snow on them, in contrast to everything else.

“It would be a good idea.”

“We’ve got a patch of forest we can lend over here.  Technically the trees are rooted in our folded neck of the Kingdom, back home, but we can stretch things and make it believable.”

“Good,” the Carmine said.  “Will it be long?  I have my throne to set down, and I don’t want us to get in one another’s ways.”

“Not long.  Then we can give people rooms for the short term.  The house is a bit of a bear trap to be living in, but it should be fine.”

“Bear trap?” Seth asked.

“Ready to be folded up at a moment’s notice.  Folding any intruders up too, stretching them out and compressing them, as needed.  But we won’t do that to our guests, if we can help it.  Later the Allaires will have finished more houses, and we’ll have defenses.  Others in the woods and along the road.”

“Carry on,” the Carmine said, arms folded, a glower on his face.

“Thaddeus!  The forest!”

Travis walked over.  “Do we have snacks?  Dony’s hungry.”

“Dony can’t ask himself?” Kira-Lynn replied.

“I figured I’d save him the trouble.”

“Joel has snacks,” Teddy said.  “Packs these big survivalist kits and MRE-type things.  Military rations.”

Travis met Teddy’s eyes, accusatory.  Teddy met them- not sure if it made him more of an asshole to meet the stare, or if it’d make him one to look away.

Then Travis stalked off, in Joel’s direction.

“Good call,” Cameron said, to Teddy.  “Remembering about Joel and all.”

It sounded like she was trying too hard to be nice.

Dony killed his dad.

Dony killed his dad because I suggested it.

“I’m going to patrol,” Teddy said.

“Good idea.  Want company?” Cameron asked.

“You said you’d stay with me tonight,” Seth said, reaching out for her, pulling her against him.

I guess he’s feeling better.  The third teleportation leap had been only marginally better than the second.

Teddy ended up doing two loops around the new area.  He familiarized himself with it, passed a sign that suggested only a thousand people lived here in this part of the peninsula, and saw little enough civilization that he wondered if all of those one thousand people lived here in the winter.

The cabins were nice, though.  Some had been co-opted, or broken in to, by members of their group.  Others were being conjured up out of glamour.

Glamour could shatter, Teddy knew.  Maricica had given them the rundown, and some lessons.

There was the chance they could be attacked, and even a few intruders could do a lot of damage if they could break up the houses before the glamour settled into being something real.  So Teddy did his full loops, trying to occupy his thoughts with observations, and by the time he’d circled around the second time, he could feel the last major traces of the Abyss leaving him.  He coughed a few times and spat up blackness.

The house the Kims had made was fully erect, now. Teddy found his hastily packed bag by one of the cars, undid the protective binding on it, and brought it with him, approaching the gate.  Two teenage Kims stood on guard.  Helen was outside too, talking to… two other Helens?  One with a different hairstyle, one a little younger than her.

One of the boys on guard told Teddy, “So you know, don’t hop the fence in the night or anything like that.  There are protections.  You’ll land on the other side with more limbs than you had when you started.”

“Okay.”

“Can we verify your identity?”

Teddy went through it with them.  They checked, called someone inside, and Teddy exchanged words and verifying details with them too.

“Okay,” the voice on the phone said.

The guard said, “You can go on in.  There’s food in the kitchen-”

“Not that hungry.”

“Then you can go up the first flight of stairs and turn left to go to the rooms.  Walk softly, it’s an old house.  If the room’s empty and the door’s open, the room’s available.  If you want to shower and warm up, use the showers by the kitchens, the servant ones, so you don’t make too much noise.”

“I’ll shower later.”

“There are Brownies available, to sort out minor needs, sewing, cleaning, furniture, and food, of course.  There are rules when it comes to the brownies.”

“I know, I was at the Blue Heron, before.  Not to acknowledge or thank them?”

“Yes.”

“So they came.  Okay.”

It should have lifted his spirits, knowing there’d be food that good, but Teddy felt heavier than when he’d had the Abyss in him.

The main staircase was framed by statues that had multiple limbs, one with a lower jaw that dipped as low as the stomach, like a wax sculpture that had a metal jaw, that had sunken when the days had gotten too warm.  The black carpet that ran from front door to the main staircase wasn’t straight, but cut an uneven path across the floor, even doing a little loop-de-loop as part of a left-hand turn.

He felt so tired that he figured the moment he lay down on the bed, he’d pass out.

He closed his eyes and saw bloody chunks.

Dony’s expression- the way Dony had held himself.  Like he’d been already feeling the weight Teddy was now.

The fact he was further from home than he’d ever been.

Dony’s expression.

Your actions and thoughts when Abyss-tainted are still you.  Words from Kira-Lynn, back in the new year.

The thoughts went in circles.  He could push some away, but others crept in.

He wished he’d done a better job of bonding with Kira-Lynn.  A part of him wanted to go to her, to- his thoughts went in two directions at once.  To be held and to hold.  To confide, to be confided in.

The room was so big.  A painting had aristocracy from some renaissance type era sitting around an old fashioned living room, and the image seemed ordinary at first, but the longer he looked, the more details became clear- a lady’s legs blended in with her dress, and the repeating pattern on her stocking became the repeating pattern on the floor, like she was the floor.  A man leaning over the end of a couch held a teacup, cane, and pet his dog, when he had only two hands.  The dog was an optical illusion that could be one in a play motion, head down, rump high, man scratching the point where spine met pelvis, or it could be a dog with head under the man’s hand.

On another wall, pages that might’ve been from an old textbook had been removed and framed.  Vitruvian-man style images of women with organs laid out in rows and columns beside them, many of the organs not humanly possible.  Another image of a woman with a linked diagram indicating a fetus in her belly, and another linked diagram with a man curled up into a ball within the fetus, manhood in mouth.

It was all very dark and heavy, and none of it was good in the way of a distraction.  Like, yes, it distracted, but it also depressed and intimidated him, and the moment the distraction failed, the depression made the return to dark thoughts easy.

Kira-Lynn had lost Maricica.

Travis was trying to help Dony.

Dony had shot his dad.

Teddy had encouraged the shooting.

The others were gone.  Joshua had bailed.  Nomi, Adrian, and Harri had turned traitor.  Cameron was with Seth right now… probably the happiest of them.  Knowing how she was with Seth, probably very happy.

She’d never really been a part of their group, hanging onto Seth like she did.

And there were others, but they were even less a part of things than Cameron.

“Fuck,” he swore under his breath.  Sleep wasn’t finding him.  He sat up on the bed.  His arm hurt.  Swearing helped, so he swore a few more times.  “Shit.  Fuck me.  Fuck Dony for listening to me.  Fuck, why couldn’t we have stayed in the Blue Heron?  Why the fuck does this have to be so hard?”

Saying things out loud made it easier to keep thoughts from spiraling, even if he knew he sounded like a crazy person.

“Fuck, shit, fuck, damn.  Goddamn it.”

His grandmother had once freaked out on him for taking the lord’s name in vain.  It hadn’t stopped him from doing it, but it had given the idea a special weight and presence in his mind, grabbing at his attention.

But swearing and even swearing about God had less weight the more he did it.  The room was big, ostentatious, and the decorations were disturbing.  His voice felt small in it.

He sighed, heavy and loud.  Trying to strike a balance where he wasn’t waking anyone up, but could fill the space with- with himself, maybe.

The space that was a bear trap, apparently.  Why did they have to mention that?

“Fuck.”

He sighed again, and found himself a bit out of breath.

The breathing quickened.  Meat chunks and the smell of those meat chunks, blood and Abyss stuff in the air, sprung up in his sensory memory.

The broken logic that flowed through his mind was that he’d exerted himself too much, bringing his bag in, and in his efforts to not be quiet, he’d held most of his breath for too long.  But that didn’t make sense, it had been fifteen minutes.

More broken logic.  It was the last traces of the Abyss leaving him.  Exhaustion rubberbanding back at him like a broken connection block.

Except that wasn’t how it worked.

He fought to catch his breath, stood, felt dizzy, and sat back down on the bed.  It squeaked and screeched beneath him, springs compensating for his weight.

He wasn’t sure what to do to break away from this.

He wasn’t sure where to go, in this strange place.  He wasn’t sure where to go tomorrow, what he was meant to do.  Miller would give him jobs but other stuff was happening and it all felt too big.

Meat chunks and Dony and fucking Aware and Lost and foundlings, more fighting, maybe, and they were setting up shop here, this would be the center of what the Carmine was building from here on out.  London had lend international aid and support, and that counted for so much, but there were still enemies who they’d have to confront.

More fighting.  More situations like with Dony.  Whose turn would it be next?

Couldn’t breathe.  His heart hurt.

Panic attack, he belatedly realized.  You stupid fuck, this is panic.

Putting a name to it didn’t make it better.  Because every time he’d seen a panic attack on TV and in movies, it had been someone who had someone near them, to walk them through it.

The room was big and empty and he was so far from home and everything he knew.

He couldn’t stay.  He didn’t want to go out there and have anyone see him like this but he couldn’t stay.  It felt like the paintings were moving, the faces above twisted bodies turning to stare at him  Like furniture was moving.

A dying snake and we’re its shed skin.

Meat chunks.

He pulled on clothes, and he left.

Into the hallway.  A labyrinth of a house he didn’t know his way around.  He knew there were people at the door outside, there might be some at the kitchen.  So he went the other way.  Further down the hallway, until he saw spiral stairs going up.  He went up spiral stairs.  Passed another hallway with people in it.

He banged his shin against stone stair.

He felt dizzy.  The spiral stairs didn’t help.

And he came face to face with a girl.  One of the Allaire forsworn.

In this place, with so much black, black lace, red, and macabre imagery, she wore a light yellow nightdress.  She sat on the top stair by a door.

He struggled to breathe.  He held his breath so he wouldn’t embarrass himself, which compounded everything else, and made him briefly feel like he could die.

“I needed to get away from things,” she said.  “I was outside a bit.  It’s nice… ish.”

He coughed out a breath and it came with a whimper.

“Hey.  Are you okay?” she asked, voice soft.

“Need air,” he gasped the words.  He could feel a faint cold draft, which she didn’t seem to care about.  Which set alarm bells ringing.

She scooted out of the way, but she also reached out a hand, and he caught it- gripping fingers together in one hand, hard.  She flinched, trying to pull free, and he held on, with crushing grip.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Alex Tatum.  One of the Allaire practitioners, but I hate being called that.  I’m loyal.  Can you let go of my hand?  It hurts.”

He couldn’t, any more than he could fix his breathing.

“Let go!”

He let go.  Guilt surged through him.  He would have apologized, but his breathing-

His chest felt like it was being crushed.

He felt dizzy.

“Look, take my hand, gently-”

He smacked her hand away, out of guilt, with enough force he knocked it into the stone wall to his right, her left.

“Fuck you then,” she said, standing, holding her hand.  “I tried.”

He didn’t-

“Move?”

He didn’t want to move.  He wanted help.  He just couldn’t-

His chest hurt.

She pushed his chest, moving him aside.  He almost tumbled down stairs, except there was a windowsill and the wall curved to go along with the spiral stairs.

She went down, taking the steps quickly.

He would have apologized, but he could barely breathe.  The door had a latch that had to be turned, and he turned it to get outside, stumbling.

Teddy collapsed onto a narrow strip of walkway, wrought iron railings on either side of him.  There were bits of snow, and he didn’t have a coat on.

The door banged shut behind him.

He’d wanted help, but he didn’t deserve it.

Dony’s dad had come and Dony had shot him.  His dad would have backed him up or something.  So Teddy, for his part in that, didn’t get backup either.  He’d fucked it.  He’d stacked one more bad thing onto a whole slew of them, hurting the girl, maybe making an enemy.  One more thing to dwell on, to keep the thought spiral going, to feed future ones.

He’d gotten the part in the TV shows where someone could help him and walk him out of this and he’d fucked it, so now he lay here, arm touching cold wrought iron, and he had to live with feeling like he was dying.  It felt as bad as he’d imagined a heart attack being.

Eventually, because the hurt and exhaustion from suffering through it all had worn him down enough his thoughts couldn’t spiral, he found breathing more under control.

Maricica had urged him to be a trickster.  To have his bag of tricks.  He was good at it.  He’d shown he was good at it, figuring out about the Aware, almost in time to stop his mentor from provoking them.  He had flexibility, he could be witty and funny.

But this, feeling like he’d just felt?  It was the opposite.  His thoughts so limited and locked in that even basic functioning like breathing had been fucked up.

He straightened.  The metal railing was cold, but necessary to get to a standing position.  His arm hurt.

It was cold, but not nearly as cold as it should be, if he was in Canada, frozen or partially frozen lake on three sides of the peninsula.  Because technically this house wasn’t here.

Onto a little strip of path that went along the peak of the roof, between the tower with the spiral stairs and some room at the far end.  Wrought iron fence ran along either side of that path.  More jumbled roof stood to his left.  To his right, he could look north and see the Carmine Exile erecting his cabin, setting up his throne here, like he’d done at the Blue Heron and in Kennet before it.  Cracks like broken glass appeared and then fixed.  The moonlight that shone off the lake and passed near the Carmine’s place came away red tinted.

Slowly, he pulled himself together.  He cried, and wiped tears away.  He stood there, watching the Carmine build.

The door opened.  Teddy wiped his face in a hurry, too slow to do it without being seen.

The lead Dog Tag.

Words failed Teddy.

The Dog Tag didn’t talk immediately either.  He put both hands on the railing, and looked in the Carmine’s direction.

“If things had gone differently, if I’d made it out this far, if this had been what was in Canada when I arrived, I think I could’ve been okay with it,” the Dog Tag said.  “A representative of War in power, offering fuel to the fires that keep me and my brothers and sisters going?  Not that bad.  If I didn’t know what I know now.”

“You’re not supposed to try to subvert or sway-”

“Not what I’m doing,” the Dog Tag replied.  He touched his neck, which was encircled with floating, slowly rotating runework.  “I’m thoroughly bound.  Your mentor or one of your mentors ensured that.”

“You kind of are doing it.  Suggesting the other side was better, changed your mind-”

“Not intentionally.  It’s part of who I am.”

“Don’t do it unintentionally either, take that part of yourself and put it away,” Teddy told the Dog Tag.  “Part of your binding is you’re supposed to listen to any and all of us?”

“Basically.”

“Don’t do that.  Can you go the fuck away?”

“Me going might break orders I’m bound to follow.  I’m supposed to act to preserve the life of you and your friends and mentors, and all of them.  There’s a boy in distress, standing on a rooftop.”

“If I say I’m not going to jump and it didn’t cross my mind, will you fuck all the way off?”

“I’d still worry, and I’m going to play this careful.  I want to get through this, somehow.”

“There’s no through.  This is it.  This is life from now on.”

Teddy’s voice broke a bit on that last sentence.

“Hmmm.  Maybe.  Is there any way this can be life from now on where, instead of me patrolling endlessly like some horse walking in circles all day, we meet on the regular, we talk?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“You enslaved me.  You enslaved my comrades in arms.  You made me shoot at friends with intent to kill.  I’ve wounded people I fought for, before.  I saw a friend, also enslaved, go out to fight, and he got shot through the forehead.  A funny, great-”

“You’re not supposed to-”

“Yeah,” the Dog Tag said.  He leaned into the railing.  “Jus’ saying.  It’s not like I trust you either.  But if this is where we’re at?  Can’t we meet, shoot the shit?  Be enemies who respect each other?”

“What the fuck would I have to say to you?”

“Talk about fighting?  War?  My buddy, he’s falling into a leadership role, he’d talk with the three witches, one in particular, about the costs of war.  How it’s really a thing where both sides lose, and one side tries to make the other side lose faster.  It’s not fun.  You don’t look like you’re having fun.”

“Fuck you.”

“What even got you into this?  I’ve heard bits and pieces.”

“Are you fishing for information?”

“I am not.  Genuinely.”

When they’d fought over who’d get what mentor, Teddy hadn’t had a great story.  Nomi had the dead mom, so she got the necromancer.  Joshua sacrificed for others, so he took Lenard so everyone else wouldn’t have to.  Cameron had come late, but she’d had the whole scandal with being a thief and all.  Harri’s mom had hit her or something.

Teddy was a below-average student with a quick wit, he’d had a long string of bad teachers, and it had felt a lot like any job he got, it’d be more of the same.  He’d changed schools, hoping to get better teachers, even though his parents couldn’t afford the tuition -it was barely anything, mostly covered by stuff for religious schools- but they didn’t have a lot of money.  But the teachers had been acceptable, not great, and that feeling hadn’t left him.  That there was no bright future, there was nothing ahead.  They talked about God and it sure felt like God had better things to do than look after him.

Everything he was good at was contrary to what he was being asked for. Being the joker, quick to come up with ideas?  Good instincts?  Nope.  Even when he was in a position to put those talents to use, he had to move as fast as the slowest student in the class.

And then someone comes along, saying hey, here’s an actual goddess who’s there if you ask for her, offering power.  Here’s a guy saying he wants to tear down the old system.  Here’s a chance to be your best you.

He didn’t like this, any of this, but the alternative felt worse.

The railing moved slightly as the Dog Tag leaned more into it, bending over, forearms resting against the bar, the spikes at the top very close to his neck and the runework there.

“You’re still here?” Teddy asked.  He’d gotten lost in thought.  He was tired, even if he hadn’t been able to sleep.

“Still here.”

Teddy felt a flare of anger.  He wanted company but not this.  Not- not a fucking enemy only helping because he had to.  He didn’t want company that stripped away more control, made this feel even more out of control.

“Hey.  If I ordered you to leave, take that gun and fuck yourself with it, and then pull the trigger right before you got to the happy part, you’d have to, right?”

“Guess I’ll be walking in circles like a horse tied to a stake, huh?”

“Huh?”

“Is that really who you want to be?  That’s ugly.”

“You’d have to, right?”

“Guess so.  Doesn’t get me to go away though.  Just means I have to humiliate and hurt myself after I did get around to leaving.”

“What the fuck does it take?  To get rid of you?”

“Name someone I can call on.  Something or someone you want.  If they replace me, I’m carrying out the orders that came from people with more say over my bound self than you have.”

Teddy shook his head.

“First person that comes to mind.  Who?  Just say it.”

“Kira-Lynn.”  Teddy thought of how she’d crossed his mind earlier, around the start of the panic attack.

“Kira-Lynn.”

“Closest person I have to a friend here.  Or a- I don’t know.”

“Surprising number of I-don’t-knows out there.  People that defy easy labeling.  Especially girls.”

“Not like that.  I- we’re not like that.  We’re friendly, but I want the Kira-Lynn where I set things up better.  Someone to be next to me.  Someone to listen.”

“I could call a buddy down there, get them to find out what room she’s in, call her up.  Even if you’re not there, you can work your way there.”

“Don’t.”

“Okay.”

“If I go inside, does that settle it?  I go to my room, sleep, you don’t worry you failed in some duty?”

“I guess.”

“Get out of my way then.  That’s what I’ll do, or try to do.”

The Dog Tag opened the door, leaning against the railing to make room for Teddy to pass by.

The door banged shut as Teddy got a few stairs down.

“Kid?”

The Dog Tag was sitting at the top of the stairs, back to the door, like the Allaire girl in the nightgown had been.

“What?”

“Two things.  First off?  If someone young as you wants someone to hold them and listen to them?  Take it from a soldier, sometimes that’s not your girl.  Sometimes you want to call your mom.  Don’t get the two confused, goes awkward places.”

“Uh huh?” Teddy asked, out of patience.

“And if you do end up talking to your mom?  I hope she doesn’t ever have to know you said the kind of shit you said up there.  The threat.  She might have fucked up raising you, but-”

“Shut up.”

The Dog Tag fell silent.

“Don’t talk to me or anyone else unless it’s mission critical or someone with more say over your binding than me asks you something.  Don’t talk to your Dog Tag buddies, don’t tell anyone about tonight, just fuck off, shut up, leave me alone, and walk in your circles, patrolling.  How’s that?”

The Dog Tag pressed his lips together and nodded once, sitting on the stairs.

“Don’t relax there for too long, you have a job here.”

The Dog Tag stood.

“Yeah,” Teddy said, voice soft.

Teddy jogged downstairs, slowing his pace when he reached the old wooden floorboards, so he wouldn’t wake anyone.  An ugly feeling chased him.

He found his room again, using Sight to help follow connections and make sure it wasn’t occupied, and let himself inside.

He got his phone and plugged it in, waiting a minute before turning it on, because it was tricky like that.  He saw the log of missed calls.  Then he dialed.

Six AM call.

“Teddy!  Oh my god.”

He could hear the exchange as his mom woke his dad up.

“I needed to call, I need you to not ask too many questions, just-”

“About the magic stuff?”

He felt that crush around his heart, like he’d felt with the panic attack.

His breath came out as a shudder, the panic threatening to return.

“Why’d you have to go and find out about that?” he asked, voice thin.

“They told us.  We were so worried, already, and with everything…”

He was silent.

“Teddy, we love you.  You can come home any time.  We’ll figure things out.”

“We love you,” his dad repeated.  “Whatever’s going on, it doesn’t matter.  Come home.  There’s a hug waiting for you.  We’ll take the day off work, whatever you need.  But come home.”

He opened his mouth, but didn’t know what to say.

“Teddy?”

“You shouldn’t trust them.  The girls that told you about stuff.  They have an agenda.”

“Okay, come and explain to us.  Honey.”

He almost said yes.

“Honey, Teddy, we love you.  We’re so worried, so scared.  Things we saw- if you’re tied up in that, risking getting hurt, I don’t want that.  Come home.”

But then his mind tripped over the question of how he’d get there.  He didn’t know a convenient practice.

“Teddy?  Are you there?”

This wasn’t really a thing they could back out of, anyway.

“Yes.  I’m here.”

“Come home?”

It sounded like she was crying.

How would he even explain?  The big things?  The little ones.  Crushing some nice girl’s hand?

“I’m in too deep,” he said, hanging up so quickly he wasn’t sure if they heard him finish the statement or not.

Teddy looked in the mirror and he saw the Carmine Exile.

The Kim’s place had a meeting room, and it incorporated an arrangement of mirrors that made things reflected look like oil paintings, and caught things at weird angles and refractions, so a person appeared to have more arms than they should, or Teddy could look straight on into a mirror and see someone else.

The representatives from Ottawa arrived.  Only a handful.

“Deals were sworn,” one of the representatives said.  “Things were secured.  We’re not to be harmed in any way, on your oath.”

“On my oath,” the Carmine said.  He’d moved his throne into the room, and sat there.  Half the room was taken up by his allies.  Teddy sat with other students.  Kira-Lynn and Cameron.  Not bad company, except by not wanting to sit near Teddy, Dony had ended up sitting at the far end of the half circle, kind of facing Teddy.  It was pretty obvious Dony didn’t want to look at him.

The Carmine addressed them before they’d even finished sitting.  “My position is secured by international powers, by verbal agreement with the Lord of London, head of one of the most prominent practitioner councils in the world.  We are, whatever happened before today, looking like we’re going to be neighbors for a long time.”

“So it seems,” one of the representatives said.

She didn’t sound happy.

“Things are in motion, some set that way last night, others still being put in order.  The last of my enemies are under pressure.  I’ve met with smaller powers and forces, the Aurum has met with others, and I know others reached out to Alabaster and Sable.  You’re the first major power I’m talking to.  This deal made with London is for your benefit as much as mine.  It’s one border you don’t have to worry about, it gives you an excuse to talk to London, and you curry favor by accepting the status quo.”

“And by accepting, we’re protected from you and your Lords?  Your business takes place in your borders, we converse as required for matters crossing jurisdictions, we may even do business, on pain of drawing the ire of London if we attempt to be anything but amicable and fair.  This is a hard truce and peace treaty.”

“Yes.  The deals and truce are to happen on my terms.  Things in my jurisdiction will be different.  There will be rolling effects, London knows and accepts this.  Some of it will inconvenience you, that’s the reality your council has to face.”

“If we accept,” the woman said.

“If you accept, yes.  You’re going to accept,” the Carmine said.  “The cost is far, far greater if you don’t.”

They exchanged glances.

“Then we accept.”

Teddy relaxed.

One step toward being out of the darkest, ugliest part of all of this.

“So agreed, so sworn?” the Carmine asked.

“So agreed, so sworn, as representatives of Ottawa’s council, speaking for ourselves, our council, and all under our jurisdiction.  Some may rankle, we will put in the effort to make them comply.  There are matters to arrange, we ask for your full attention, consideration, and evenhanded cooperation as we work through questions of mutual concerns, security, and trade.  This is a closed door meeting.”

“Agreed and sworn on our part as well.  That’s fine.”

“And on that token, allow us to put one current temporary member of Ottawa’s council forward, to outline matters…”

Teddy shifted in his seat.

The Carmine, for his part, put elbow on table, hand over mouth.

“I hereby announce myself! I am Percival Awarnach the second, of the one hundred titles!”

“An arrangement set forth before any deals, we agreed he would have time at the table today,” a representative said.

“Excuse me!  I’ve been interrupted!  I will restart!”

“You intend to occupy me?”

“We ask for your full attention as our temporary member handles proceedings.  I hope you’re prepared, there’s a lot of ground to cover, and he’s loquacious.  We’re prepared for a long meeting- I’m a chronomancer, time is no concern.  My colleague is a leprous martyr.”

“Suffering is power.”

“And the others of our accompaniment have made accommodations, in preparation.”

Teddy shifted in his seat.

The Carmine raised a hand, motioning for him to stay seated.  Not that he’d planned to go.

It’s that closed door a meeting?  We can’t leave?

“What do you think it will change?” the Carmine asked.

“I suppose we’ll see.  Get us started?”

“I, representative of Ottawa, Percival Awarnach the second, of the one hundred titles…”

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter