Gorgon Read online

  <><><>

  Sam was reading the script she’d given him.

  It was long.

  “I seriously have to read this to him?” he asked. She nodded at the road.

  “I thought about having you ride with them so you could read it to him in case he hits a new fragment before we get to New York. We need to keep track of the numbers, too. If we don’t, we’re going to have a really hard time telling when he’s finally out of the break.”

  “The whole thing,” Sam said.

  “Every word, exactly the same way every time,” she confirmed. He shook his head.

  “Why are you a bad person to take care of him?” Sam asked.

  “Because I figure out things for a living,” she said. “It’s like Schrodinger’s cat, only, if I figure out if it’s alive or dead, it dies. Or something. And there’s a bunch of diagnostic information on the outside of the box, and I have to try not to look at it.” She glanced at him. “You know I can’t do that. You’d do a much better job, but I told him to come to me.”

  “When?” Sam asked.

  “Some point in the future,” Samantha said. “Who knows how many fragments he’s been through, at this point. We have to tell him every time, and then you have to make sure he doesn’t talk to you about what happened in his past. Not until we’re clear of the break. Because if he does, there’s almost no way you’re going to avoid altering it. And you, of all people, understand how serious that is.”

  Sam nodded. Abby could watch the future. She had the discipline and the distance to do it. Sam didn’t even go there, anymore. Abby would watch up until Samantha spoke to her, and then she stopped. She’d do whatever she could to help, if that’s what Samantha had asked for, things like sending guns or magic stuff. Or Carter. And then she’d have to wait until her own point in time reached the point that she’d altered. That way, nothing she ever saw changed. Changing something you saw gave you the biggest headache of your life, having rendered Sam useless for days the last, and only, time he’d done it.

  Samantha was listening to him remember, silently sending him affirmation that he had it right.

  “Your mind is toughened up against that kind of stuff. Time is kind of fluid for you, anyway. Jason hasn’t got any of that, and he isn’t just watching. He’s actually living it out of order. If we change something he’s already been through…” She shook her head.

  “It’s happened, then?” Sam asked.

  “Where do you think we got the protocols?” Samantha asked, motioning at the page in his hand. “That’s thousands of years of trial and error. And it still fails often enough that I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “And this is Jason we’re talking about,” Sam said. “And rules.”

  She nodded.

  “Dragon,” she said. “Funny way of making things work out for them while they completely ignore the rules, but I hate to count on that.”

  Sam nodded.

  “So what about New York?” he asked.

  “What part?” Samantha asked. He shrugged.

  “It’s kind of getting complicated.”

  He was referring to the fact that, on top of everything else, Isobel was currently riding in the Cruiser with Jason, Kara, and Kelly.

  She thought she should have made Sam ride in the other vehicle, keeping Isobel back with her. Sam knew it as clearly as having heard her speak it out loud, but he wasn’t going to deal with that. She needed him here, and they both kind of passively knew that. Hard as it had been to go out and do stuff without Jason, he and his wife had been working together long enough that she needed him here to talk it through.

  She wasn’t settled, yet. She was still in that frantic part of her planning process where she was sprouting ideas and plans faster than she could knock them back, and feeling completely out of control.

  That didn’t bother him at all. He was used to being out of control, traveling around with Jason since they were teenagers. He just needed to keep her moving forward.

  “I don’t know why she’s coming,” Samantha said. “I don’t know why I said yes.”

  “Because you know if you left her there, she wouldn’t stay,” Sam said. “We both know it. Abby hasn’t got the force of will to keep her, the demons are getting their contracts, and you wouldn’t use them to keep her against her will, anyway. That’s not right. You could have asked David to do it, but I’m not sure it would have worked.”

  “But what am I going to do with her?” Samantha asked.

  “Why do you have to do anything?” Sam asked. “She’s gray, isn’t she?”

  He felt the surprise. She hadn’t thought of that, but he was right. He nodded.

  “So just bring her. She’s mysterious and fiery enough that she should help with the rest of… you. Maybe it’ll be easier to deal with her when she actually believes you.”

  “You think she doesn’t?” Samantha asked. Sam hesitated.

  “No.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You have a plan on how to get everyone together?” Sam asked.

  “No. Still working on how to convince Carter to summon them. It’s his problem, how to do it.”

  “Well, if anyone’s going to get him to do it,” Sam said. Samantha nodded grimly.

  “It’s me.”

  “Abby is going to find her,” Sam said. “It’s what she’s good at.”

  “On a map, those gaps look small and manageable,” Samantha said. “They actually constitute hundreds of square miles. If she actually knows where the boundaries are, that exactly.”

  “We’re going to find her,” Sam said.

  “I know,” Samantha said. “But she’s going to be dug in, when we do. And I still don’t know what to do about her.”

  “You’ll have as much backup as you could possibly want,” Sam said. “Haven’t you always wanted to throw one of them to the dogs?”

  “Ha ha,” Samantha said, glancing over her shoulder as she changed lanes. “Can you check to make sure Jason hasn’t hit a new fragment?”

  Sam expanded his vision, spreading down the length of the highway to where Kara was driving the Cruiser, then zeroed in, listening for a moment as Jason talked to Isobel.

  “Romans? Seriously?” he asked. “Did you know any Spartans?”

  “Child,” Isobel said disdainfully.

  “I don’t think so,” Sam said to Samantha, back in the Mustang.

  “What are they doing?” Samantha asked.

  “Jason appears to be making friends with Isobel,” he told her, noting that she caught his sarcasm.

  “I need to think,” Samantha said. Sam nodded, drawing back into his own head.

  “We’ll be ready,” he said.

  She sighed.

  “No we won’t. But we’ll win, anyway. It’s what we do.”

  He smiled out the window, watching the trees roll by outside.

  <><><>

  Kelly could hardly stand being in the elevator box with Jason. The car had been hard, but the metal box of the elevator was awful. He’d have glitched ahead, but Samantha was counting on him, and Jason needed him, so he’d packed into the elevator with the rest of them.

  The flash of power, uncontrolled, unharnessed, unbidden, nearly knocked him off his feet. The same as when Jason had broken time in the first place. He looked at Samantha, and she frowned at him, not immediately understanding, but she didn’t need any more explanation from Kelly.

  Jason fell over.

  “Whoa,” he said from the floor, struggling to his feet through a forest of legs. “You don’t get used to that.”

  “Who wants to read it to him?” Samantha asked. “He writes down two next time.”

  Sam and Kara looked confused for a moment, then Kara’s face changed and she got out the sheet of paper Samantha had given her.

  “I get it,” she said, helping Jason to his feet.

  “Dammit guys, I’m not an invalid,” Jason said as Kara started to read. “This is getting old.”

 
“Jason, go along or I’ll resort to more extreme measures,” Samantha said to the reflection of the elevator door.

  Kelly’s head hurt.

  He didn’t want to be there.

  Jason had no idea what he’d done. Samantha only vaguely understood.

  His every instinct told him to get out, but Kelly stood. They were family, and he would endure.

  <><><>

  “No,” Carter said.

  “I didn’t ask,” Samantha answered.

  “Who is this freak show?” Carter asked.

  “Missing your psychic?” Samantha answered.

  “Seriously, is there a shelter somewhere where you get these strays?” Carter asked.

  “Move,” Samantha answered.

  He stepped aside and she pushed the door open, leaning her back against it as the entirety of her present entourage went past.

  “Seriously,” Carter asked, his mouth by her ear, watching as each of them went past. “What have you been up to?”

  “I’ve been busy,” Samantha answered softly. “I need help.”

  “I’d say so,” Carter said with humor in his voice. For a moment, Samantha wasn’t sure if he was being a prick.

  She needed to talk to Kelly.

  The angel had known. She needed to understand that.

  Not just tactically.

  Personally.

  She needed to know what had just happened back in the elevator, but here she was, stuck in a negotiation with Carter. She tried to put it away and focus. This wasn’t going to be easy, and she needed to be on form.

  “You here on a hostile takeover?” Carter asked as Sam threw himself on the couch against the wall and Jason and Kara took seats at the kitchen bar. Isobel went to the far corner, all the way along the front wall where the light didn’t reach so well, and leaned in shadow. Kelly mostly just looked awkward, standing in the middle of the room.

  “I need you to call everyone in,” Samantha said.

  Carter scanned the room, his glance resting on Isobel for a long time.

  “I could take all of you.”

  Samantha sighed.

  “Are you willing to take that risk? There are an awful lot of us these days.”

  “Yes, but how good are they?” Carter asked, rubbing four fingers together under his chin and walking slowly the length of the room.

  He pointed at Kara.

  “Civilian.”

  Jason.

  “Broken.”

  Kelly.

  “Twitchy.”

  Sam.

  “Noncombatant.”

  Isobel.

  “Interesting. Who are you?”

  “Unimpressed,” Isobel answered. Samantha pushed the corners of her mouth back down with her thumb and index finger.

  “You’re special,” Carter said. “It’s all over you.”

  He spun, looking at Sam.

  “Can you see it?”

  “No,” Sam said. “She just looks normal to me.”

  “Interesting,” Carter said, spinning again to look at Isobel. “Angel-touched.”

  He heard Kelly’s intake of breath - angels technically didn’t need to breathe, so the gasp was a symptom of significant time around people. The kid was picking up human mannerisms.

  “Ah,” Carter said with a curling smile, coming to look at Kelly, who took half a step back. “You don’t approve of her.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Kelly said. Carter gave him a pouty little frown.

  “You’re a terrible liar, little angel.”

  “I consider that a compliment,” Kelly said fiercely, and Carter brightened.

  “So you don’t approve of her.”

  “I don’t know her,” Kelly said.

  “But you know about her,” Carter said. Kelly looked away.

  Carter twisted his head back to the side, his shoulders following the motion in a serpentine sort of a way.

  “Who are you?” he asked Isobel again. “Are you important?”

  “I’m no one,” Isobel said. Carter let his head drop to one side and there was a pause.

  “All right, then,” he said, turning back to face Samantha again. “I can definitely take all of you.”

  “A man who measures his force in terms of his own body is a fool,” Isobel said. Carter spun again.

  “You are interesting,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “I am Isobel,” she said.

  Carter took one step back.

  It was enough.

  Nothing ever surprised him enough for it to show. He was too much of a showman, too powerful and careless to let anything get to him.

  “Angeltouched,” he murmured.

  “Carter,” Samantha said. His head jerked.

  “Why did you bring her here?”

  His eyes were angry. Samantha shrugged.

  “I didn’t have anything better to do with her.”

  “I’m no man’s possession,” Isobel said.

  “I beg to differ,” Carter said, not looking at her. “You belong to one very specific person. She shouldn’t be here.”

  “Not my problem, right now,” Samantha said. Carter loosed a long stream of hellspeak, all of it just angry. Samantha sensed rather than saw Jason stiffen.

  “If Abby is a mountain of gunpowder, she’s a building of C4,” Carter said. “I don’t want her here. Not now.”

  “I need your help,” Samantha said. “The faster you do what I need you to do, the faster we’re out of here.”

  “What is it?” Carter hissed.

  “I need you to get everyone here,” Samantha said.

  “You said that,” Carter said, still short, visibly angry. “Why?”

  “There’s a demoness setting up hellfactories. Here,” Samantha said.

  “So?” Carter asked. Samantha flicked her eyebrows at him, and he answered by twitching his hands out and widening his eyes. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Hellfactories,” Samantha said. “Here.”

  “Bigger problems, grasshopper,” Carter said. “I don’t give a damn about your little issues.”

  Samantha had a hard time getting control of her temper, with the disbelief from Sam. He’d seen them. He couldn’t believe Carter would just blow them off.

  “She’s putting them on the gaps in the boundaries,” Samantha said. “And I don’t know how to kill her.”

  “So when you find her… wait, what?”

  Samantha shrugged.

  “Sam and I were there. And I had a couple of demon hunters with me, too. Jalice, one of them. We just only got out of there. She’s got hellhounds.”

  “That’s not a real thing,” Carter said.

  “Tell that to them,” Sam muttered.

  “Silence, puppy,” Carter said.

  “Mist demons, obviously,” Samantha said. “But she was powering them. Healing them, when we got a good lick in. She’s marshaling huge numbers of splash demons to do… whatever it is they’re doing,” she said, trying not to hear what Sam couldn’t help but feel. “And she’s strong. I never got anywhere near her.”

  Carter spent a long few moments looking at her, calculating, then he shook his head.

  “Still not my problem, Sam. Not yours, either, if it’s not in your region. You need to learn to live with the rules.”

  “Screw the rules,” Samantha said. She couldn’t help herself. She added a vintage hellspeak curse, one of the creative ones. “She’s been doing this for years, under our noses, by exploiting our weaknesses. The only way any of us are going to stop her is if we work together.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Carter said.

  “Bet you’d have a lot more time if you hadn’t driven Abby off. Literally,” Samantha said. His nose twisted, just an instant of visible fury, and then his face went still.

  “You don’t have the capacity for this, either,” he finally said, his voice calm, lacking its normal tone of mockery. “Between that one and this one,” he said pointing from Jason to Isobel ove
r his shoulder, “you’ve got everything you can manage.”

  “I’m no burden,” Isobel said.

  “Like hell you aren’t,” Carter said, spinning to face her. “I know who you are. Doesn’t that even begin to bother you?”

  “I don’t know who you are, and I’ve long since given up letting things like that bother me.”

  “Some demon is going to enjoy wearing your skin,” Carter said. “You’re too stupid to keep that from happening.”

  “My skin is my own,” Isobel said. “I’m not in the habit of sharing.”

  Carter laughed, once, as if by surprise.

  “No, I expect you aren’t.” He turned back, shaking his head. “You have no idea what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into, Sam. None. I’m not going to help you get yourself killed. Go home. When my thing here blows over, I’ll think about helping you.”

  “No,” Samantha said. It surprised her that he was surprised. She drew her eyebrows in. “What? Not used to having people say that to you, anymore? No. No, no, no. No. There. Get used to it. You’re calling everyone in. I’ll arrange everything, but we both know they won’t turn up just because I say so.”

  “No, they won’t,” Carter said. He looked at Sam, giving him a flash of a glare, then back at Samantha. “What’s in it for me?”

  “What?”

  Carter shrugged, his posture returning to its natural swagger. He went and sat down at the bar next to Kara.

  “You have collar bones like a coat hanger,” he said.

  “Thanks for noticing,” Kara answered. Jason didn’t blink.

  “You heard me,” Carter said to Samantha. “If I’m going to do it, I want something in exchange.”

  “Not likely,” Samantha said. “This is your job. Do your blasted job, Carter.”

  His eyebrows wiggled at her. Humor. It was always bad when he was amused.

  “I don’t see that you’ve got much space to negotiate. You want to find your demoness, and you need help ashing her. Probably need someone who can tie a nice bell to her, too.”

  “I can do a bell,” Samantha said scathingly. That was insulting.

  “Are you sure?” Carter asked. “I’ve been hearing whispers of a new generation of magic that gets just close enough to natural magic to get pretty slippery for a lot of our normal stuff.”

  “Blasphemy,” Kelly hissed. Carter ignored him.