Breath touched his ear, and a whisper. “Skip the clothes. I’m not in any hurry to find out what you hid under your shirt. I’ve seen naked men before. Some of them even uglier than you.”
Okay, maybe she actually
was
a seer. Just like with the cane by the stairs, his little habit of keeping weapons scattered around his home included a few close by his bed. Not a knife or gun—a can of pepper spray that wouldn’t be too particular about exactly
where
she hid behind that light.
He felt less touchy about clothes than most people, especially when it came to keeping all his internal organs where God or evolution put them. And he did
not
offer any quotes from the Prophet about modesty and the proper demeanor of women. He was capable of learning, under sufficient duress.
“The note’s on my kitchen table, like I said.”
She let him turn, keeping the knifepoint just touching his skin. No sudden moves, they walked like slow-dancers through the darkness to his kitchen. Still nothing sudden, nothing to startle that knife hand, he reached across to the wall and switched on a light. Blinding brightness. She spun him away with a kick to the back of his knee that stole his balance. He fell, smacking nose and cheek against the refrigerator. He leaned there blinking, stupid, mixing dazzle and dizziness. Feeling warmth oozing down his upper lip. More blood? He licked it. Salty.
He groped at the counter, bracing himself. His hand bumped something chilly and hard, cylindrical: a can, a full can of sour cherries. He’d thought to make some strudel in the morning, in memory of the bakery window that had betrayed him into a photograph. Maybe make it after he’d slept the clock around again, to have the energy and patience.
His fingers closed on the can and he spun and threw, aiming for the sound of her breath, at the shadow of her head forming in his dazzled eyes. Vertigo took him and he sagged back against the cold door of his refrigerator, blinking. He heard a dull thud, the sound of can against flesh and bone rather than a wall or the floor.
When he could focus again, she was on the far side of the kitchen table, staggering, her gun replacing the knife in her right hand. The hand jerked, the gun jerked, and he saw the orange flash of half-burned gunpowder at the muzzle,
felt
the boom of a large-bore pistol in a small room, saw the dull gray lead and shiny copper jacket of a bullet. His brain traced a straight line from the bore to his chest and knew he was about to die. But she’d said the demon said she couldn’t kill him . . . yet.
Somehow the bullet took its damned time as the muzzle jerked up and settled back on target and jerked again with a second shot. A second bullet. Slow in the air. Hanging in the air, a few inches behind the first. Impossible.
A shadow formed and became solid black between him and the bullets. A black hand plucked the first bullet from the air, squeezed it until the molten gleaming lead core popped from its red copper jacket, and then did the same with the second slug, gathering the pieces together, molten lead in one black palm, molten copper in the other. One hand tossed the lead into a mouth that formed as the shadow grew human shape, swallowing. Albert could see the throat muscles pulsing. The moves repeated with the other, the copper.
“You may not harm Simon Lahti. We commanded this.”
Another damned demon. Or the same one.
The black fingers plucked glittering brass from mid-air, the ejected cartridge cases also defying physics and refusing to submit to gravity. The brass melted and followed the lead and copper into the demon’s mouth.
Albert’s eyes adapted and he could see again. Her knife had landed on the floor in the scuffle. He inched toward it, reached for it. Settle this vendetta once and for all . . .
The knife skittered away and levitated, settling on his table at the far end from the feather and the note from Mother. The far end from Albert.
“
You
may not harm
Noshaq.
We command this.”
Damned demons. “You told me you could not guard me or help me.”
“We may enforce our commands.”
Thus proving that the Afghan bitch’s demon was the same as his. Legion.
Apparently Legion could
not
command whoever was abusing the salamander, whoever damaged and then stole King Solomon’s Seal. Demon laws, or another demon got there first?
The demon reached out toward the woman, the woman in dark coveralls
without
patches or a badge this time, Albert could finally see details, and plucked the pistol from her hand. “Defiance must cost. We do not wish to reduce your value by damaging you.”
The pistol disappeared into the demon’s mouth, somehow it fit even though it seemed too large, and again Albert could see it lumpy and collapsing in the “throat” of that black shape. The demon belched after swallowing, muffled popping sounds echoed off the plaster as the remaining cartridges exploded in whatever passed for a demon stomach, and a final belch or fart left the smell of brimstone in the room as the demon faded into nothing.
“You bastard, that was a custom Gold Cup! Cost me two weeks pay!” She lifted her hand and touched the side of her head, exploring a patch of short hair where Albert had last seen a bandage and shaved scalp. Either his time-sense was totally gone to hell, a bad metaphor in this case, or she healed damned fast. Her fingers came away stained with fresh blood.
The can. He’d always been good at throwing things. If he’d hit the same spot on her skull, she ought to be dead or at least out cold.
She focused on him. “You owe me a new weapon, little man. That’s worse than blood.” Another pistol appeared in her hand, smaller but looking no less deadly, pointed at him.
He shook his head. “You want to lose that one, too?”
Dark eyes blinked. Then she glanced down at her hand as if she was surprised. “Reflex. Always carry a backup.” The pistol vanished into her coveralls.
Sirens echoed from the street below, several different directions, converging. He sorted memories and cities and decades in his head. Police cars—this city used different sounds for police and fire and ambulance. When he looked a question at her, she had a handheld police radio next to her ear and lifted her free hand in a “shut up” gesture. But she didn’t answer whatever she heard. The radio vanished. He’d never run into anyone who moved that fast, faster than he could see, even staring straight at her and not blinking.
Was she human?
Whatever
she was, she cocked her head to one side and listened. “Anyone live upstairs, either side of this dump?”
“No. North side, for two buildings over, nothing but pigeons above some second-floor offices. South side doesn’t even reach this high, one floor lower. The upper floors have been empty for ten or twenty years. Building codes.”
She nodded. “Report of gunshots. They won’t be able to locate a source. And they won’t search too hard in this neighborhood. Afraid they might find the shooter still holding the gun . . . ”
That last sentence came with a sneer—didn’t look like she thought too much of her fellow officers: not up to Afghan hill-tribe standards. Then her eyes narrowed into a glare. “You don’t want to talk to them.”
No, he didn’t. For any number of reasons, most of them nothing to do with her. Hell, he didn’t want to talk to
her.
But she wasn’t giving him any choice.
“Even if you keep your mouth shut, you still owe me a weapon. And blood.”
He sagged back against the cold enamel of his refrigerator, adrenaline gone and with it his muscles. “A demon eats your gun and you blame
me
? You break into my home in the middle of the night, slap me out of bed, threaten me, try to kill me, and it’s all
my
fault? Shove it up your ass.” He pushed himself upright. “I’m getting dressed. You can leave by whatever way you got in.”
He paused, propped up by one hand against the frame of his bedroom door. “I don’t make guns. I’ve never seen or touched a gun that had even a piece of a soul. They’re just machines.”
She was still there when he came out of his bathroom, dressed, hair damp from a quick swipe from a cold washcloth. His scalp had quit bleeding. He felt a little steadier on his feet, a little clearer in his brain. But she was still there, the too-solid remnant of a bad dream.
She had rummaged through his refrigerator while his back was turned, had a full pan of sausage on the stove and some cinnamon-raisin bread toasting. Damned familiar of her. Also, rather trusting on the ingredients of that lamb sausage, if she made any pretense of devout submission to the will of Allah and the words of the Prophet . . .
“I don’t think that lamb is
halal.
Farmer’s market, the butcher didn’t make any claims, I just buy for the flavor . . . ”
“
Halal, haram
—Allah is more compassionate and merciful than the beards want us to believe.”
The knife lay on the table next to her flashlight, he didn’t recall where that had ended up in the scuffle, and she was staring at the feather and the note. “Who the hell has the nerve to call herself Balkis?”
Short and to the point. “That might be Mother. She’s as casual about names as I am.”
She gave him a long stare, squinting. “You have a
mother?
”
“Most people do.”
She stared at him some more.
“What’s with the feather?”
“Family code. Maybe. I haven’t touched that, either.”
She stepped back from the stove and hovered her left hand over the note and then the feather, not touching—he guessed that a broken wrist and cast didn’t dull whatever sense she used.
“Look, can I get past you to the refrigerator and put some ice on my nose? Stuff some tissue in my nostril? I hate cleaning up blood.”
A lifted eyebrow. “I’d bet the Prophet’s best mare that you’ll stop bleeding in another minute or two. Like that scalp wound.”
So she’d noticed, or expected, that. She knew some things about him, about his family, that she shouldn’t have known. They could be killed, but it wasn’t easy. They all healed fast. They didn’t get infections. Something like her broken wrist would slow him down for a week, maybe two. Mother had told him that his broken leg had been closer to amputation, a loaded beer wagon rolling right over it with an iron-shod wheel.
He had to take her word for it. Which, with Mother, complicated matters.
He studied the blade without touching it. Gentle double-curve of watered steel, keen and with some wear of use and sharpening—“Persian,” yes, and no flat-faced long-furred kitty-cat about it. Isfahan steel with the faint yellow tint peculiar to the composition of iron and alloys of that province. The smith had worked it to display the
Kirk Narduban
pattern, the ladder that the faithful ascend to heaven. Two hundred years old, at least, probably more, a museum piece of Islamic craft. Good steel, good forging, work
he
could have been proud of.
The design, less so. Whether smith or after-finish, someone had narrowed the tang to fit the fancy curved pistol-grip of a Persian
khanjar,
paired flats of lapis and amber and then lapis again to the heel, bound with thick silver spacers between the sections of stone and a small silver guard at the blade, all the metal engraved with what looked like calligraphy, well worn. Much more wear on the grip and guard than on the blade, speaking of decades spent inside its sheath. Whoever had carried it hadn’t needed to use it much.
Something dark and curled and pointy, perhaps a tiny scorpion, sat trapped in the amber on the side he could see. Pretty knife, conspicuous wealth, but the abrupt shoulder cut between blade and tang would concentrate stress, and that stone grip would turn greasy with the first hint of sweat or blood . . .
“A fancy-blade,” he said, with some contempt. “I hope you never trust your life to it.” He looked up. She seemed to have been studying him as he studied the blade.
“That’s a strange thing to tell an enemy.”
“I never meant to call you my enemy. You scared the shit out of me the other night. What I did was reflex, like you with your second pistol. Nothing more.”
“You should not have crossed the crime-scene tape.” Then she cocked her head to one side and her eyes narrowed, her face turning cold and harsh again, like her mountains. “Little man, I’ve thought of a way for you to wash out the blood between us. Forge me a blade to kill a god. Then we’re even, for both the blood and that Colt.”
The flat tone told him she meant it. All of it. He thought she meant Legion, and agreed with the intent. But he remembered and the ache of old broken bones woke in his wrists and hands.
“You want me to set up my forge between the salt water and the sea sand, while I’m at it?” He didn’t expect her to catch the reference, but “Scarborough Fair” had ruled even
his
radio for a brief while . . .
“Gods aren’t immortal. Although some of the bastards would like to think they are.”
So she
did
understand his meaning about impossible tasks. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I forged a blade like that, once. Someone offered me a pile of gold. I needed it. The blade worked.” Then came the unpleasant part. “He’d seduced her and left her, so she slit his throat and cut his body into seven pieces and scattered them on the Lake of the Dead for her fish to feast on . . . ”
“The blade worked. But the god didn’t stay dead. And they hold grudges.”
She froze and stared at him across the kitchen table, one eyebrow lifted. But she didn’t ask the obvious questions. He replayed what he’d just said, in his memory.
“No. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t remember his name, I don’t remember her name, I don’t remember where or when or what tribe’s Lake of the Dead that was, whose gods they were. Haven’t thought of that for years. Centuries. My brain is falling apart.”
He shook himself. “Forget I said that.”
She was still staring at him. “Falling apart, or falling together? I’ve remembered things, the last few days . . . ”
And then she added, “I still want that blade.”