Lesser Gods (35 page)

“Who’s Grace?”
asked Alia.

“She was, um, the sister of a friend,” I replied uncomfortably, wishing I had simply told Alia that the seventh snowman was Mark.

Alia instantly knew that she was onto a mystery.
“What friend?”

“A man named Charles.”

“You mean Terry’s uncle?”

“No.”

“Do you mean the Slayer you talked to on the morning we rescued you?”

In the past, I might have changed the subject or simply silenced Alia, but this time I answered her questions. I told her about Charles. I told her how I had killed Charles’s older sister, and how Charles still took care of me, keeping me alive despite his hatred of psionics. I explained that Grace had been killed by psionics when she was little. I didn’t tell her how.

When Alia ran out of questions, she stood silently holding my hand for a while, and then said simply,
“I’m glad we made Grace.”

I turned my head, slowly looking around at the neat row of snowmen, the hum in my left ear rising and falling as my proximity sensor moved over and between the frozen figures: Cindy, Terry, Alia, me, Laila, Cat... and Grace. I wondered what Charles would say if he were alive today.

I had never even met Grace. If she hadn’t been killed, would she have grown up to hunt psionics with the God-slayers like Charles’s other sister, Katie? Quite possibly, and no doubt I would have killed Grace myself just as unthinkingly as I had shot Katie in the forest clearing. But the truth of the matter was that Grace was never given the choice. Someone had made it for her when she was younger than Alia was now.

Who were the Sky Guardians? I might have asked Terry if she were around. Who else could I ask? Mark probably wouldn’t know. Cindy would know or could find out, but I wasn’t sure I wanted Cindy to hear of my sudden interest in Guardian history. Perhaps I could ask Laila when she returned, but then she might go discussing it with her mother.

Part of me feared the answer I might hear. What if the Sky Guardians really were in New Haven? I knew that the Guardians regarded God-slayers in the same way they saw us – as vermin to be exterminated. And every day of my life, I lived in constant reminder of what the Slayers had done to me. I certainly had no pity for them. But the killing of a six-year-old child somehow didn’t fit within the bounds of war, nor did the manner of her death. At least I had given the Slayers a legitimate reason to hate me. What was Grace’s crime aside from being born?

Back when I first discovered that the Guardians regularly tortured their captives for information, Cindy had asked if I really didn’t regret my decision to join the faction. I had kept my regrets to myself. Now I wondered what else the Guardians did that I might be happier not knowing.

I felt Alia tugging on my hand.
“Addy? I’m getting cold. It’s starting to get dark too.”

I nodded and said quietly, “Let’s go home, Ali.”

I let my sister guide me back to the penthouse. By now, I could easily navigate this part of town using my cane and the talking compass Terry had given me, but I was feeling the chill too, and didn’t feel like taking the time to tap my way back to NH-1.

By the time we were in the elevator, I had managed to put my thoughts about Grace aside, and for the next few days, my only concern was with Laila. Where she was, how she was, and whether she had found or at least heard about Terry. The peace envoy was reporting its progress to the Council every two days, but so far the only information Cindy could get for me regarding Laila’s trip was simply that it was progressing according to schedule.

Over a Friday lunch, Cindy reported to me what she heard during that morning’s Council meeting, saying, “They’ve just departed from Haddonfield, which belongs to the Avalon Union, so that’s the last of the larger independent factions. Next they’ll be moving on to the smaller settlements, including the Guardian breakaways. With any luck, they’ll make a few more friends at each stop.”

“And Terry?” I asked, entirely uninterested in the political side of the peace envoy.

“Unfortunately, the update didn’t include any information about stray Knights one way or the other,” said Cindy.

“Laila promised to sneak a call in if she found Terry, so I guess she hasn’t,” I said unhappily.

“They’ve only been gone a week and a day, Adrian,” Cindy reminded me.

“It feels like a month,” I said, letting out a long sigh.

Cindy giggled. “Somebody’s in love.”

Alia laughed loudly. I scowled at them both.

Then Cindy said, “Well, here’s some good news to take your mind off of things, Adrian. I got your new headset.”

I nearly jumped out of my chair. “Why didn’t you tell me when you got home, Cindy?!”

Cindy replied dryly, “Because I wanted you to eat a proper lunch before you rushed off to the shooting range.”

I gave her a sheepish grin. “I’ll learn how to catch a Frisbee later.”

The device was just as I had envisioned it. Once the headset was fit snugly over my ears, the left and right proximity sensors were both at eye level and almost perfectly parallel. The rechargeable battery, though somewhat heavier than the single-ear version’s, was good for six solid hours of continuous use. And I was especially pleased to discover that my headset had been carefully designed so that I could still hear all the sounds around me despite the hum in both ears.

The headset’s battery was already fully charged, so I stole my sister away from her afternoon studies and had her accompany me down to the shooting range.

By the sound of it, there were at least two, possibly three people practicing with guns in the shooting range when Alia and I arrived, but my regular door-side lane was open, so Alia led me there and mounted a fresh paper target on the rail.

With no more technological excuses to hide behind, I asked my sister to put the target ten yards downrange, and then proceeded to empty my entire clip without ever hitting the painted man.

I cursed silently when Alia told me the result. The problem wasn’t the headset. It was me. Even with my face pointed at the target, my hands couldn’t align the pistol correctly. Perhaps I needed to put a sensor on the gun barrel after all, but then I’d need to grow a third ear to interpret the data. No, I would just have to practice. If a blindfolded circus performer could throw a pair of axes at a live human being without amputating any limbs, then I could learn how to handle a pistol in the dark too.

“I really don’t like this place, Addy,”
complained Alia.

“That makes two of us,” I said, reloading the clip. “Just tell me when I hit something.”

I tried touching the top of the pistol barrel to my nose before stretching my arms out into a firing position. It helped my horizontal accuracy a bit, but still my shots were all over the place. I must have fired more than fifty rounds. I did hit the target several times, but far too accidentally.

“Alia, go on back upstairs,” I said heavily. “Cindy probably has some schoolwork for you.”

“What about you?”
asked Alia.

“I’ll practice alone for a while.”

“But how are you going to know if you hit the target?”

“Don’t worry about that. Go on now. I’ll be up before dinner.”

My sister seemed quite relieved to be let off guide-dog duty, and as I heard the door close, I let out a dejected sigh. There was no way for me to practice without Alia’s help, but I didn’t want to keep her down here against her wishes, especially since, if it weren’t for this stupid war, I wouldn’t be here either.

With enough practice, I still might learn to shoot without sight, and it could someday come in handy if there ever really was an attack on the penthouse. But as for other situations, who was I kidding? In an open area, an attacker could be much farther than ten yards away, and I wouldn’t even know who I was shooting at if someone wasn’t at my side telling me.

I still had one full clip, and I decided to fire it empty before heading back to the penthouse. Loading the clip into the pistol, I leveled my head on the paper target. High tone. I fired two rounds, but did they hit? There was no way to tell if my aim was straight.

“Straight!” said a deep raspy voice. A bony hand gripped the top of my right arm and adjusted the elevation.

I knew that voice. “Ralph? Damn it! Let go of me!”

“Try firing now,” wheezed Ralph as he released his grip on my arm.

I pulled the trigger. Ralph’s hands adjusted my aim again. “Keep it level. Head and arms together.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

I felt that my suspicion was more than justifiable. Terry’s grandfather, Ralph Henderson, was a lone-wolf Knight who thought nothing of killing anyone who got in his way. He was a psionic peacemaker and windmaster, which meant he could pacify a person into compliance and create gusts of wind strong enough to shatter windows, but as far as I was concerned, Ralph’s most notable feature was his unappealing personality that precluded any possibility of friendship.

“You want to shoot?” Ralph asked hoarsely. “Who else is going to waste time teaching a blind kid?”

“Why are
you
?” I asked again.

“It’s my time to waste,” Ralph replied gruffly. “Pull the trigger. Gently.”

I did.

“Bull’s-eye, lad,” said Ralph. “Now lower the gun once and see if you can find the same spot again.”

I couldn’t, but Ralph once again adjusted my aim. I still wondered why he was helping me, but I didn’t complain. There was enough water under the bridge between us that I didn’t feel any great animosity toward him anymore. If he wanted to teach me to shoot, I was more than happy to learn. Whatever our differences, I knew that Ralph was one of the Guardians’ most skilled soldiers.

Ralph continued teaching me for another thirty minutes or so, after which he told me that he was going to be staying in New Haven for ten more days before leaving on another mission, and if I came down here at around 5pm tomorrow, he’d be here to help me. I thanked him, albeit rather awkwardly, and returned to the penthouse.

The next day, Cindy caught me trying to leave the penthouse alone. “You’re not taking Alia?” she asked in surprise.

“I found a better teacher,” I replied.

“Who?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to mention Ralph. Terry had once told me that it was actually her grandfather who had, many years ago, avenged the last Guardian queen by killing Cindy’s husband.

“Who did you find to teach you, Adrian?” pressed Cindy.

“You don’t know?” I asked in mock-surprise. “You who knows
everything
that goes on in New Haven?”

“Adrian!”

“It’s Ralph. Happy?”

Cindy asked incredulously, “You asked Ralph to teach you to shoot? And he agreed?”

“Actually, he offered and I agreed.”

“I see,” Cindy said calmly. “Is your fight with him over now?”

“I’m not sure, Cindy,” I replied. “I doubt we’ll ever be friends, but as long as he’s willing to teach me...”

Cindy remained silent, and I asked hesitantly, “Is it okay?”

“As long as you’re okay with it, Adrian,” Cindy replied peacefully.

I nodded. “I’d better go.”

Ralph was already practicing down in the shooting range when I arrived.

“Adrian!” he wheezed. “I was wondering if you’d show up.”

“We have common enemies, Ralph,” I replied in a monotone.

Ralph spent half an hour helping me, correcting my aim and even reloading my pistol for me to save time. When we finished, Ralph was as blunt as Terry in his assessment that I had made absolutely no progress, but he agreed to keep teaching me. I was almost looking forward to the next session.

So it continued all through the next week. My proficiency in Grade Two Braille was now adequate to follow an academic program for the blind, which included dotted textbooks and a selection of listening materials. I studied in the mornings and early afternoons, and in the evenings I met Ralph in the shooting range. Our sessions got longer every time and I was regularly late for dinner, but my aim was slowly improving and it even kept my mind off of Laila’s absence to a small degree.

“I’m leaving New Haven tonight,” said Ralph at the end of our lesson in mid-January, “but if you like, we’ll continue when I return next month.”

“I would like that,” I said. “Thank you.”

Ralph just chuckled.

“Ralph, why are you doing all this for me?” I asked.

“I already told you, lad, it’s my time to waste.”

“Come on, tell me the truth.”

“Let’s just say that I like fighters,” wheezed Ralph. “And you are most definitely a fighter.”

Terry had said that to me before, and I didn’t believe her either, but I chose not to refute Ralph’s claim. Instead, I said, “Would you tell me something?”

“Depends on what you want to know. I have no idea where Teresa is, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Considering Terry’s relationship with her grandfather, I had guessed as much. I also suspected that Ralph didn’t frequent social gatherings, so as long as I kept my question seemingly innocent, he wouldn’t go blabbing about it.

“I want to know about the Sky Guardians,” I told him.

“What’s your interest in them, lad?”

I figured the truth was as good as any lie. “I heard about them from the God-slayers.”

Ralph’s tone sharpened a bit as he asked, “What did you hear?”

I shrugged. “I heard that they killed many Slayers.”

“That they did, lad,” said Ralph, chuckling quietly. “The Skys were one of the smaller breakaway Guardian groups. After they split from us, they specialized in hunting Slayers. They were hell-bent on destroying every damn Slayer hideout. Good men, all of them. They knew their job and did it well. My kind of people. You would’ve liked them too, lad.”

I ignored that. “Did they rejoin the Guardians here?”

“Well, the Skys were all but destroyed by the Angels a few years back,” explained Ralph. “The only known survivor today is their leader, who joined New Haven a year ago. I thought you knew all this, though, considering who you used to work for.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Who is the last Sky Guardian?”