The Graves of Saints (32 page)

Just thinking about it in such a mundane way, like the white-haired old Sicilian man they’d brought in was going to build a brick and mortar wall instead of some kind of magical shield
that would trap the demons in the city . . . it made the world feel soft and uncertain beneath her feet.

Now she glanced at the old Sicilian and wondered what would become of him.

‘Jess, come on!’ Gabe shouted. ‘We’ve got to go!’

He took her by the elbow of her uninjured arm and tried to rush her toward the transport truck that waited. Soldiers were running for it, leaping on board, while others climbed into smaller
vehicles or piled on top of the two tanks that stood ominously still about fifty yards away. Engines roared and orders were shouted in Italian. The lieutenant who had been so appreciative of
Gabe’s work on his wounded comrades – and had joined Gabe in urging Jess to evacuate with the others because her injured arm meant she could not help care for them – came racing
over, gesturing frantically to them.

Jessica shook loose of her husband, sending pain lancing through her arm and shoulder. She turned and looked back at the sorcerer, whose name she had never learned. From here she could see his
lined, leathery face and his bulbous nose. He looked more like a fisherman than a sorcerer, but there could be no mistaking that the barrier that shimmered and crackled between them and the city
came from his fingertips. It did not extend from his hands so much as it responded to them, as if the wall were made of music and he its maestro. When he moved his hands it bulged and billowed and
when he gestured to a place where the shield seemed to be breaking down it glowed again with its full force, lighting the darkness.

But it was crumbling, that shield. The fisherman-sorcerer had been standing there all night. Exhaustion burned at Jessica’s eyes and weighed on her bones, but she could not begin to
imagine how badly drained the old Sicilian must be. Now, after many hours of keeping the horrors back and buying the military forces the time to do what they needed to do for the evacuees, he was
faltering. Cracks appeared in the barrier, thin spots that seemed to wear through until holes opened, and he had to reinforce those thin places.

In the amber light from the old man’s magic, even from this distance, she thought she could see tears on his wrinkled face.

‘Jess!’ Gabe shouted, grabbing hold of her again.

She turned to stare at him and the lieutenant. ‘What about
him
?’

Gabe hesitated. He understood, of course, and she knew that the idea of leaving the poor old man to his fate must be gnawing at his heart the way it did at her own. But he was ready to go
– ready to run – and somehow she couldn’t make her feet move. She knew there was nothing they could do, but that only paralyzed her more.

‘Signora, please!’ the lieutenant cried. ‘We must retreat!’

Jess searched her husband’s eyes. Over the engines and the shouting, she could hear her own heartbeat.

‘What about our patients?’ she asked. ‘The helicopter never came.’

‘They’ve been loaded onto a truck,’ he told her, even though he had told her the same thing several times already.

It was an answer, but not to the question she was really asking. She knew they were on the truck, just as well as she knew that all three of them were going to die on that truck. Gabe and Jess
could have gone with them on a chopper, kept them stable on the way to a hospital, and there would have been medical supplies on the helicopter. But in the back of a truck, with no idea how long it
would be before they reached a hospital, all three men were as good as dead. The simple fact that Gabe hadn’t been asked to go with them in their transport was a silent and grim
acknowledgement of their fate. They might be dead already.

She felt numb. Shaking her head, she looked back again at the old Sicilian and felt a tight knot of nausea in her gut. When she tasted salt on her lips, she realized that she was crying.

Gabe took her chin in his hand and tilted her head back so that he could gaze into her eyes.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But please, my love. I can’t watch you die.’

‘I don’t want to die.’

‘Then we must
go
.’

The lieutenant swore in his native tongue and Jess turned to see him backing away from them, staring at the barrier. She and Gabe both turned to see it beginning to fail on a large scale, holes
appearing and spreading while the remaining parts of the wall dimmed and hissed. The old sorcerer staggered, thrusting his hands into the air, patching the holes as best he could, but it was
useless.

The tanks started to move out and the trucks followed suit. The lieutenant shouted at them, then turned and ran.

‘We’re going!’ Gabe said, grabbing her arm again and dragging her along behind him.

Jess let herself be pulled along in the wake of their fear, but she remained somehow numb. Her feet moved beneath her and she found herself running – they were all running, after the last
of the trucks, at the back of which soldiers screamed at them to hurry, to jump, to live – but all she could think about was that she did not know the old sorcerer’s name. If she had
known his name she could have called to him, let him know that he wasn’t alone, that someone would mourn for him when he was gone.

They were at the back of the truck, running after it as it kept rolling toward the narrow road into the hills. Most of the Italian and UN forces had already pulled back to a safer distance,
created a new perimeter while the sorcerer did his job. But the shield had never stabilized and now it was falling and she wondered if they had pulled back because they had expected this to happen.
Expected the old man with his big, Santa Claus nose to do his best and then just die.

The lieutenant jumped into the truck, helped up by other soldiers, and then turned to reach for Gabe and Jess. Her husband tried to urge her forward, to get her onto the truck before him, but a
noise like the world sighing came from behind her and she turned to discover that it was the sound of magic failing. What remained of the barrier crackled one final time and then turned to nothing
but wisps of glowing smoke.

The demons came through as if born from that smoke, screaming in the voice of Hell, beating their wings and darting through the air, talons bared. The first one descended upon the old sorcerer,
talons raking his face, ripping right down to the bone. He screamed as a second fell upon him, the smoky thing like some nightmare bird of prey. It plunged a fist into his chest and tore out a
dark, glistening mess that could only be his heart, and his scream ended . . . but it would linger forever in her mind, waiting for her every time she closed her eyes.

‘Go, Jess!’ Gabe cried. ‘Move it!’

He swore in Portuguese, calling for the Italian soldiers to grab her. Somehow she had kept running, stayed on her feet, and now she turned to look at the truck only a couple of yards ahead,
rolling slowly enough for them to jump on. The lieutenant reached for her again. Gabe had one hand on her arm and the other on the small of her back and she knew that he was about to try to
physically hurl her up into the truck bed.

‘Jump, love,’ he said. ‘Ju—’

She felt him brace his hand against her back, ready to push, and then it was gone. The other hand gripped her arm, digging painfully into her flesh, and she cried out as she turned. Gabe pulled
at her, no longer hurrying her ahead but now clutching at her, drawing her upward.

Jess stared up into her husband’s terrified eyes and saw the smoke demon above him. The harpy had him by the throat, its other arm wrapped around him from behind, clawing at his chest as
it lifted him into the air.

The truck rolled away as she screamed, crying as she reached for him with her injured arm, blinding pain shooting through her. But she grabbed him by the wrist of his outstretched hand and held
on. The smoke demon pulled and Jess pulled back and Gabe dug his fingers into her arm until she began to lift off the ground along with him.

His eyes went wide as he realized what he was doing. She saw the moment of his decision and the bottomless sorrow in his gaze just before he let go of his grip on her. Shrieking in anguish and
pain, she tried to hang on by her injured arm, to be an anchor for him, to keep him with her, but her fingers would not obey. Her grip slid from his wrist and she fell three feet to sprawl on the
road.

Scrambling to her feet, she screamed her husband’s name, thinking not of all the memories they had made together but all of the years without him that now stretched before her, so cold and
empty. Gabe did not scream for her. It might have been that the thing had already killed him as it rose higher into the sky, but Jess watched them go, breath hitching in her chest, the icy numbness
of denial spreading through her, killing even her pain. This could not be happening. She and Gabe had a life. They had love.

Screams from behind her made Jessica turn. The transport truck was under attack by several of the smoke demons, the harpy-things dragging soldiers from the vehicle or slaughtering them in
place.

She heard wings flapping above her and she looked up. Death had come for her and it was nothing but mist, a cloud of charcoal smoke in the shape of a monster. The demon had eyes the color of
butterscotch. In her numbness, that was all she could think.
Butterscotch.

It dove toward her and she froze, waiting, watching it come.

The bird that slashed across its path might have been a hawk or a falcon – she wasn’t sure of the difference. It flew at the ground as if it meant to dash itself to death against the
road, and then it changed. The air rippled and a figure took shape there as if a human being had been poured into creation, built from nothing in an instant.

A man stood before her, tall and dark-haired, his Asian features severe. He glanced at her for a single heartbeat, then reached to his hip and drew a long Japanese sword from thin air, with a
flourish worthy of a stage illusionist. The demon attacked, clawing at him without even realizing that he had already cleaved it in half with his sword. The twin halves of the demon fell to the
road, but they were made of some insubstantial, infernal mist that immediately began to draw and flow together again.

The swordsman – the Shadow, for that was what he was, she realized – stabbed it in the heart and then brought the blade down to split its head in two. The thing turned to viscous
liquid, black tar, and splattered the road. An eyeblink later that tar began to evaporate, smoke rising from the ground like a fire had just been put out.

Something moved to her left and Jess twisted away from it, thinking another of the demons had come for her. But the creature that stood above her was a man, not a thing of smoke and death. He
was, in fact, one of the biggest men she had ever seen, a literal giant, and he threw his head back and shouted at the demons darting across the sky in a language that might have been Greek.

Two of them swept down to attack him and the giant grinned, revealing fangs, and then his flesh rippled and fur sprouted and he transformed into the biggest bear she had ever seen. Like the
Japanese swordsman, he was also a Shadow.

‘Come,’ a voice said.

She tore her gaze from the bear grappling with the demons and saw that the swordsman had appeared just beside her. He offered his hand, intending to pull her up, but her numbness shattered and
she began to sob with grief, thinking of Gabe reaching for her . . . of the look in his eyes just before he let go.

‘Come,’ the voice said, softly now, in her ear.

He took her arm and helped her up, taking note of the way she held her injured arm.

‘My name is Kuromaku,’ he said. ‘Stay with me.’

‘What’s the point?’ she said, glancing up at the harpies circling above them, trying not to hear the sounds of screaming soldiers or see the giant bear tearing into the smoke
demons nearby. ‘The barrier’s down. You’re too late.’

‘No,’ Kuromaku said, finding and holding her gaze with his own. ‘There is another barrier. We brought mages with us, two of them, and they have created a new wall where the
military has made their camp.’

She stared at him, trying to take it all in.

‘The new perimeter,’ she said. ‘There’s a wall there?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that means that we’re . . .’

Kuromaku arched an eyebrow. ‘Yes. It means the barrier is up and we are on the wrong side. My friend and I came to aid you all,’ he said, gesturing around him. ‘To protect you
as you retreated to the new wall. I am sorry we did not arrive sooner.’

‘You’re too late,’ Jess said, gazing up into the night sky – now turning from black to indigo, just the barest hint of the coming dawn.

‘Not for you,’ Kuromaku said.

Jess looked at the place in the sky where she had last seen her husband.

‘Too late.’

Then the giant was beside them, no longer a bear, and the Shadows were hurrying her toward the army transport, where soldiers kept shooting at smoky things their bullets could not seem to touch.
But the Shadows and their weapons could kill the monsters, and Jess knew that if they were very lucky, some of the soldiers might be saved. And she knew, also, that if they were wounded they would
need her help. Despite her own injury, despite the grief that had gutted her, leaving only a hollow core, she would do all she could.

She was a doctor.

Lanquin, Guatemala

As seemed to be true wherever the faithful gathered, there was a small church in Cobán with a legend surrounding it. El Calvario church had been founded upon a hillside,
in a place where a hunter had seen a pair of jaguars resting in the sun on one day, and an image of Christ the next. Tour guides never attempted to explain the connection between jungle cats and
the son of God, nor did they give much credence to the legend that Saint Simon had been buried in the foundations of the church. Their disbelief could not alter the truth, however. The grave
existed and would never be discovered until the church was torn down.