Whiskey and Water (44 page)

But in the air, he had the advantage. And
the stallion was hurt as well, blood filming one china-blue eye, pinking the
sea-slick shoulders and darkening the puddles under his hooves.

Whiskey sidled, snorting, silver shoes
pealing on the road like dropped coins, clear and sweet over the clang and
stink of gunfire as Don and Ernie tracked the rising arc of the peryton and
pumped shot after shot into him. The young woman stood against the wall,
pressed flat beside the empty window frame. And Marlowe crouched over Matthew,
who was conscious enough to have drawn up one knee and fisted one unchained
hand in the shirt Marlowe had ripped off and stuffed against his neck and shoulder,
but not much more. "Christopher," Whiskey said, "take him to
Morgan." Kit looked up, cold at the words, his bare chest daubed with
Matthew's blood. He was pale, wiry with muscle on a slender frame, much
scarred. He licked his lips, and glanced at the darkness beyond the lights. The
sirens were closing in. It had been perhaps fifteen seconds since Whiskey met
the peryton's fall, and though Peese's miracle had sealed the wounds on
Matthew's throat, the Mage had left a battle's ration of blood upon the road.
"Can you hold him?"

Whiskey tossed his head, swinging his
haunches left, turning around the forehand as he followed the peryton's flight.
If he was charged with killing Matthew, he would give up — for the time being —
as soon as Matthew was out of reach. "I
will."

"Magus" — Kit waved Donall
over—"help me get him up."

Don waggled his head without dropping his
attention, or his gun. "It might come back."

"I will be here," Whiskey
answered. The street was filled with the raw scent of his blood, of Matthew's
blood, of Geoffrey's. "Get them to safety."

Peese was standing again, cloaked in
grace, his weapon trained on the sky and pale glory whipping about him as if
lashed by a brutal wind. "Go," Peese said, to Don. "I'll stay.
Anyway, somebody will have to explain."

"You going to admit it's Fae this
time?" Don snarled, but he crouched and slid his gun into the holster. Peese
half smiled, and let his shoulders rise and fall.

"Geoff—" Lily stepped forward,
out of the shadows a little. Her hands twisted in front of her hips, but she
stood steady, boots planted, and her voice was firm.

"We can help him not," Kit said,
more gently than he had thought he would manage. "There remains only the
question of meting out justice.

"Justice?" Her incredulity
bordered on mockery.

Kit smiled through another man's blood.
"Come with us, and live to claim revenge."

She looked up. She looked at Don, who
crouched beside Matthew and lifted his shoulders while Kit helped him to his
feet. They heaved him out of blood sequined with broken glass, the wreckage of
his spectacles. Matthew reeled, eyes closed, still holding the wadded shirt
against his throat, his face a blood-streaked mask. Don steadied him, got under
his arm. "Lily," Kit said, "open the mirror."

She turned to see where he was looking. An
unshattered shop-window loomed behind her, glossy with reflections. "I
remember how," she said, and felt the strength prickle her fingertips.
"I don't know how to get where you said — "

"You just open. I'll guide."

She met his gaze, and then sucked her
lower lip into her mouth and nodded. "All right, then. Come on."

Orfeo's wounded wing burned as he banked,
turned on a feather-tip, and came back around, searching through darkness for
the light. The mortals crouched in the street, Whiskey towering over them like
a battle memorial: ears up, tail lofted, proud neck arched in mordant
challenge.

Waiting.

Orfeo didn't care to accept.

The sirens were coming, and the mortals
were moving the Mage. He had one more chance. A falcon stoop, no hesitation.
One blow to kill.

He waited until Whiskey had turned his
head to scan another quarter of the sky, and dove. The bullets that ripped
through his wings and breast made no difference, not even with an archangel's
power wreathing the hands of the man wielding the gun. Nothing could stop him —

One of the men dragging the quarry turned,
letting the other support all the Mage's weight. The little one, shirtless, who
reeked both of Fae magic and Magery. Those things meant nothing in the iron
world. Whiskey was moving, leaping, but Orfeo was faster, when the water-horse
had not taken him by surprise, and Whiskey would not be in time. The peryton
anticipated the impact already, the grab, the pivot and snatch, sailing upward,
out of the water-horse's reach, untroubled by the guns. He was going to enjoy
his supper tonight.

Orfeo prepared to spread his wings.

Damme,
Kit thought, quite reflexively, as the wind howled in
the predator's wings. And, bitterly amused at the irony of his choice of oath,
he had just time to raise his hands.

It was an old, sick power, rich and
nauseous and irresistible as any unhallowed love he'd ever known. It ran
shivery caresses up the inside of his skin, weighed a stone like desire in his
gut and his groin.

He hadn't touched it in almost four
hundred years.

He reached out with Lucifer's borrowed
strength, and ripped Orfeo from the air.

The peryton wailed, tumbled, and struck
hard on the asphalt. Whiskey was there when he fell, and Orfeo did not rise
again. Kit watched, expressionless, the gauzy vermilion that sheathed his hands
guttering back against his skin as Whiskey ripped feathers from flesh, hide
from bone, and strewed blood and entrails over the street. Crunching echoed;
boluses of meat distended his throat like a snake's as he tore and gorged, and
Lily—ever so softly — choked.

Red and blue lights painted buildings at
both ends of the street, and the wail of sirens bounced and howled between the
canyon walls.
"Go!"
Peese shouted at Don, waving over his
shoulder, as Whiskey snorted over his mutilated prey. "Get out of here.
I'll handle this."Don touched Kit's shoulder, and Kit stepped back,
shouldering his share of Matthew's weight again.

They must have made quite a ridiculous
prospect. Don was twice his size.

"Whiskey," Kit called.
"Whiskey,
now."

He thought the stallion wouldn't listen.
Doors were opening on the police cars and men crouching behind them as the
water-horse finally lifted his head and curvetted back from the crushed body of
the peryton, tracking dinner-plate hoofprints that shone glossy black in the
dim light. "Christopher?" He turned and lifted his muzzle, no longer
a white horse, but red.

"Go to your mistress," Kit said,
sharply, as Peese stepped into the sudden flood of spotlights and raised and
opened his perfectly ordinary hands. Whiskey shook out his mane, blood
showering, and vanished where he stood—a crash, as a tower of water in the
shape of a horse folded and splashed over stone, running this way and that.
Into the gutters, down to the sea.

Peese was shouting something about being
an officer, holding very-still, calling to the wall of white-and-black cars and
armed men that everything was under control.

Kit didn't wait to hear the details of the
negotiations. Lily stepped through the mirror, and Kit and Donall were right
behind her, dragging Matthew between them.

If It Be Your Will

K
it hadn't overstayed his welcome for a change. In
fact, this once, Lucifer could rather wish he'd lingered a little. Angels were
so
boring.
Even in Hell.

Mortals were livelier, and Kit more than
most—-although there was a transitory amusement to be found in the way the wine
smoked and bubbled in Satan's glass. Some stories carried a metaphor a little too
far.

Lucifer reached up one-handed and laid a
finger against the other devil's clawed, black thumb, while Christian and
Michael and Fionnghuala looked on. They stood in the center of the tiled
ballroom floor, under a wrought-iron chandelier that would not have looked out
of place in the Paris Opera House. :It tastes better unboiled.:

Satan arched a tufted eyebrow, membranous
wings folded tight against his back, looking down at the Morningstar. Satan
dominated the room, an eight-foot monolith the color of rusted iron, muscled
like a Renaissance statue. "If only thou gavest the concern to religion
that thou dost to beverages." His voice pealed in the echoing space, and
mortals and Fae winced at the crash like a miskeyed pipe organ.

"On the contrary," Christian
said, selecting a glass of his own from the tray of a ragged-winged angel, "he
thinks of nothing but. Except possibly politics." He turned back, and
lifted the glass in Fionnghuala's direction, an understated toast—whether to a
lady, or a Christian, or the one who wasn't an angel, she didn't know. The wine
in his glass was the color of straw, and it made his lips glossy when he
sipped.

Satan reached out and brushed Lucifer's
cheek, leaving behind the scent of urine and brimstone. Lucifer stepped away
from the touch.

"Politics
are
religion,"
Satan said. And then bluntly, archly, ignoring Michael as if Michael were not
even in the room: "Will you submit to Him?"

Lucifer laughed, as even the angel stared
at him. :
None left but by submission,
: he quoted, lifting celestial eyes
to meet the lash of Satan's fiery ones. :
And that word /Disdain forbids me,
and my dread of shame /Among the Spirits beneath
—:

Satan dropped his glass, so it starred the
tile with shards and burgundy. "Do
not,"
he said. "You
will answer the question."

As if in answer, Lucifer made shattered
glass and spilled wine vanish with a pass of his hand. :Pride,: he said coldly,
:we have in common. You object to my goals?:

"You have a Dragon Prince. Overthrow
Him." Satan's wings stayed folded tight as the great, nude figure gestured
to Keith MacNeill, who stood against the far wall, hands over his ears, the
mortal girl cringing beside him. "Unite the Hells. Relinquish
cowardice."

Michael startled. She folded her arms over
the dove-gray breast of her coat and cocked her head at Satan. Fionnghuala laid
a hand on the taut muscle of her forearm. "Bring me a war," Michael
said, lips thinning. "If you dare."

Satan grinned, showing ragged fangs, and
Christian laughed into his wine. "Ask, and you shall receive."

Lucifer rolled strong-bodied drink over a
forked tongue. :Would He take me back?:

"If you plead your case. Most
likely." The archangel wore beneficence, but never quite a smile.
"God is perfect love."

Lucifer snorted. :One Corinthians
thirteen,: he said. :Verses four through ten. The New American Standard text.:

Around the circle, Fionnghuala saw two
suppressed smiles, one sharp frown. Angels and devils
knew
scripture.
And s
he
knew it too: both the modern words and the ancient ones.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not
jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it
does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong
suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails; but if there are gifts
of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if
there is knowledge, it will be done away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in
part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

:Is the Bible His word?: Lucifer asked.
:Would He submit to me? Why then must my love be proved more perfect than His?:

"Because He owes you nothing,"
Michael answered.

Fionnghuala stepped away.

:No more,: Lucifer answered, :than the
lover owes the beloved, or the parent owes the child.:

Michael hovered on the verge of rejoinder.
She found it and framed it, and let it pass, as something more urgent came to
her attention. "An attempt has been made to bring the mortals and the
Faerie back into conflict."

"Have they ever left it?"
Fionnghuala had meant to remain silent, but some temptations were too much. :Where?:

"New York," Michael said.
"There has been another death, though not the death intended. I have an agent
there."

And while Christian and Satan turned and
stared, Lucifer pealed bright laughter, head thrown back, fanning his wings.
:Michael. You
cheated.:

"Angels do not cheat." Michael
glanced at the floor.

"Who died?" Fionnghuala said.
"Fae or mortal?"

"The mortal boy, Geoffrey
Bertelli." Michael's wings had fanned wide too, and between her plumage and
Lucifer's, the circle cast all but encompassed the gathered five. She raised an
eyebrow and looked from devil to devil. "And I suppose none here had to do
with the provoking of that?"

:Someone must inform Juliet,: Lucifer
said, ignoring the question, turning to look at the girl. She still stood
beside the Elf-prince, her arms folded over her breast, her mask pushed up,
revealing eyes bruised at the corners with tiredness.