Through the fire, p.20
Through the Fire, page 20
"I'm gonna puke if I eat."
"That'll ground you too," she said unsympathetically. "Sit."
Nick met Chris's eyes, then nodded, still not much more than a tremor. Chris let him go and Nick all but dropped into his chair, falling so fast Chris wished he hadn't let him go. "'s'okay," Nick grated. "'s'okay. 'm okay." He didn't bother with a fork, just picked up an applesauced-biscuit and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.
Half a second later he looked like he wished he hadn't, but it was too late by then. He chewed his way through it as Chris cautiously sat, ready to jump to Nicky's aid again if necessary.
"You eat too," Grandma said.
"I'm gonna p—" He cut himself off, pretty sure she'd tell him the same thing she'd just told Nick, and instead ate a bite of applesauce and biscuit.
His appetite came back and for a couple minutes he and Nick ate without speaking. Grandma watched them, apparently until she was sure they wouldn't stop until they'd had their fill, before saying, "You boys already knew your mother was ill. There didn't seem any point in explaining the terrible details, not when you were meant to be kept out of it all. I thought your damn father was bounty hunting, and that was bad enough, but…."
"He said somebody had to take the freak bounties," Nick said roughly. "Somebody who knew what was really out there. So he did it, because he knew."
"And he still wouldn't bring you boys to me." Grandma's voice was filled with contained rage. "I'm sorry. I should have come and taken you."
A twist of regret hurt Chris's chest. He shoved it down, trying to breathe past it, and muttered, "Spilt milk, Grandma. You didn't know. Neither did we."
"Why didn't he tell us?" Nick sounded young and lost. "I mean, why didn't he at least train us better, if there were angels and demons and shit to hunt?"
"I dunno if it even matters, Nicky. Tracking skills are tracking skills, right?"
"Tracking an angel is tracking a falcon on a cloudy day level shit, Chris."
"Yeah, all right, you're not wrong." Chris put his fork down and rubbed a hand over his forehead. "Grandma, is…is there anything else you can tell us about Mom? Did she have the same kind of power Nick does?"
"I blow shit up," Nick supplied grimly, when Grandma looked like she'd ask.
"Then no. She seemed possessed, Nick. I'm sorry, but it's true. Like something dark would find its way into her, and eventually leave again. Not leave. Be burned out. She did have that power."
"Only dark things?" Nick asked hollowly, beneath that.
Grandma shook her head slowly, like she didn't know, not like the answer was no. "Mom believed the dark things came to Ruth because she was a beacon they couldn't resist. She would burn them up eventually, but Mom didn't understand that. She thought Ruth should just be able to fight them immediately, be able to…"
"Exorcise them?" Chris asked, and Grandma shrugged.
"She called it something else, but yes. But Ruthie never could, and finally something she couldn't burn away got into her."
Nick, grimly, said, "Was she pregnant with me then?"
Grandma sat back, surprise washing over her face. "I don't know, Nick. I don't think so, but she was strong. Maybe she hid it for a long time. Or maybe she didn't know. My mother said they were insidious, those things that took over human bodies and fed on their souls."
Chris said, "Jesus," to his biscuits, and Nick gave a short, dark laugh of agreement, then raised his head to look at Grandma again.
"Is that why you moved way out here after Grandpa died? To get away from those kinds of things? From that legacy?"
"I tried." The old lady sighed. "I should have come for you boys. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, Grandma." Chris looked at Nick. "But what the hell do we do now?"
"I can't hurt anybody out here. Maybe I should stay."
"Well, then, I'm staying with you. But you can't stay out here forever, Nicky, you're gonna go be a doctor."
"Just what people are gonna want, Chris, a doctor who accidentally blows shit up with demon magic."
"Grendel power," Chris said sharply. A little to his surprise, Nicky dropped his gaze, then nodded.
"You're welcome to stay," Grandma said. "I still think Chris ought to come out and see to that cow."
Chris laughed roughly. "Just like that? All back to normal?"
"That's the thing about life, my boy. It keeps coming, so you might as well adapt to whatever is happening as normal."
"Yeah, I'm not sure I've got that much philosophy to spare." Chris bared his teeth and stood. "Look, I'm gonna go call Lauren and see if there's any work coming up. I could use something that wasn't full-on crazy pants." He left the table to Nick asking Grandma something about the burning it up thing. The dog followed him into the bedroom and sat to watch as Chris put in his call.
Lauren picked up with her usual, "On Call Bail Bonds, what can I do for you?"
"Hey, Lauren, it's Chris Cassidy."
"Chris, hey, honey. How are you holding up?"
"I could really use some work to take my mind off everything."
"Mmm." She went quiet a minute, although he could hear paperwork and then the clicking of her keyboard. "You sure? I do have a job, if you want it. Dumb-ass kid who skipped bail on her third felony drug charge and disappeared."
"Third offense. So that's some real money." He sat on the bed, waving to the dog, who came over and puts his head under Chris's hand.
"You know I always try to give you the good ones, Chris."
"'cause I'm your fave."
"Because you're my fave," she agreed with an audible smile. Then her voice gentled. "You sure about this?"
"Yeah. There's a lot of shit going on and I just need some work to get my head out of it."
"If you say so." She hesitated before hanging up. "You and your brother doing okay, Chris?"
A spasm of grief hit him so hard he was abruptly glad he'd called, instead of video-phoning. "As good as we can be," he said in a voice gone suddenly tight. "Thanks for asking."
"Gimme a call if you ever just need to talk," Lauren offered quietly. "Or come on down to Denver and I'll buy you a drink."
"Might take you up on that," Chris said, still hoarsely. "Thanks."
"All right. I'll send those files on now."
"Thanks." Chris dropped the phone on the bed and the dog leaned against his knees, rolling its eyes up at him sympathetically. "Hey. That's a good boy. Who's a good boy, huh?" Chris lowered his head against the animal's furry shoulders, concentrating on its smell and warmth as he tried to get ahold of himself.
"Chris?" Nick stood in the doorway, sounding worried.
"'m fine. Lauren's got work for me."
Nick sighed. "Okay. I'll tell Grandma we're leaving this afternoon."
"What? Nick, no—"
"Well, I'm not staying up here twiddling my thumbs, Chris, and I don't think she knows any more secrets that are going to help me figure this out."
Chris dropped his head again, trying to decide if he had a headache or just felt like he should. "What'd you think about all that," he said in a low voice. "About grendel stuff being demon-powered. Or maybe angel, I guess, 'cause there was sure as shit an angel after us."
"A desanctified one," Nicky said harshly. "Whatever it did to me, or found in me, it wasn't good news, Chris. I mean, I believe it. What else can I do? Grandma said Mom used to be able to burn them out, kind of. That she'd kind of fill up with light and the possession would burn away. That's what happened to you when you got hurt. Or when Shy was working on, you, anyway."
"I filled up with light?" Chris lifted his head incredulously.
"Maybe you got the angel powers and I'm a fucking demon."
"Man, if either of us is gonna be an angel, it sure as shit isn't me."
"The thing is, does it even really matter? I still have to control it, right? And I can't go back to school until I'm in control, so I might as well go with you."
"Yeah, but Nick, up here there's nothing for you to—"
"Hurt?" The word came out like a knife, cutting at Chris for having the nerve to even start down that path. "No, just Grandma and some cows and the dog, right? I'm not gonna be any use in the world if I can't go anywhere except a ranch on the edge of nowhere, Chris. So I might as well go with you and get a handle on this thing and, I dunno, move on with life."
"Did killing Saboac level you up?"
Nick leaned back, like the question had been an attack. "What?"
"Are you stronger now than you were before?"
"I…" A frown line appeared between Nick's eyebrows and he pushed his hand through his hair. "I don't know. I did some of the repairs with the grendel power, but that was, like, practice. I was seeing if I could do something without losing my temper."
"Are you still hearing it?"
Nick's gaze skittered away, then came back defiantly. "No."
"Dude, don't fucking lie to me."
"Well, I'm not! Not…like before." He closed his eyes, rocking against the door frame. "The creek water, all deep and cold and fast and dark and able to sweep me away? That's what the power felt like." His eyes opened again and guilt creased his face. "I'm glad you came out to find me. Something...I think something was going wrong out there. But you stopped it. You stopped me." He rubbed his chest like he didn't know he was doing it, and took a deep breath. "I can still feel something in me. It's not as uncontrolled, though. I was just freaked out at Emerson's cabin, right? And at the trailer when Saboac hurt you. It was all panic and adrenaline and a storm inside me. But it's colder now. Calmer. Maybe stronger, yeah, I don't know. Like I could…"
Worry spiked in his gaze, making him look a lot older all of a sudden. "Like I could do some really terrible shit and not even care very much. Or at all, maybe."
"Well, that's not gonna happen. First because you wouldn't, and second because I won't let you."
"Yeah." Nicky refocused on him. "So I gotta go with you."
Chris squinted, then waved a hand. "Okay, you won that one somehow, but don't let it go to your head."
Nick produced a lopsided smile. "No way, man, I'm putting that down in the calendar. 'Today Chris said I won a round.' I'll be buying drinks to toast myself every anniversary of this date for the rest of my life."
"And I'll be buying 'em to drown my sorrows for letting it slip." Chris's phone buzzed and he picked it up, scrolling through the incoming email. "Daddy's little rich girl, it looks like. Rich enough to buy off bail but dumb enough to keep getting caught running drugs."
"Rich means hard to find," Nick protested.
"Rich could mean hard to find, but dumb usually means pretty easy to find. I can do it myself and come ba—"
"No."
Chris looked up at the set of his brother's jaw, then back at the phone. "So I'll tell her we're taking it?"
"I don't know, Chris, lemme see the files first. I'll get my computer. Easier to type in search stuff that way."
"Some of us have joined the modern world and use voice recognition."
"Some of us think we're real fucking funny."
Chris grinned at his phone. "Some of us do. That is true. Some of us are right, too."
Nick threw an imaginary object at him and Chris batted it away, grinning. About forty minutes of research and cross-referencing later, he texted Lauren to say they'd take the job, and went out to the kitchen to find out Grandma had packed up enough food to last them two days on the road. "It doesn't take a genius to realize you were leaving," she said to Chris's surprised protest. "I want you boys to come back soon, though, do you hear me?"
"We will." Chris folded the old lady into a hug and held on until she smacked his shoulder and made him let go.
"You'd better get going, if you're going to. I expect you've got a long way to travel. I wish you'd find a job that would let you settle down, Christopher."
"I'm good at this, Gramma."
"You're good at it because it's the only thing you've ever tried."
"Jeez, have you been talking to Nicky or something?"
"Not about this." She handed him a bag of food and he went out to the van as Nick came in to say goodbye. The dog followed him mournfully, as if they'd been best friends forever, and watched sadly from the porch when they drove off.
"There's an off-the-books property in Idaho that her Dad's second ex-wife has the title to." Nick had his computer in his lap and the wifi hooked up to his phone, after bitching that Chris didn't have a hotspot set up in the van. "She's got social media pictures from there, hashtag secret hideaway."
"Subtle," Chris said. "Anything recent?"
"Does a livestream count?" Nick turned the computer screen toward him and Chris glanced over to see a woman about his own age in a hot tub, waving champagne at her phone.
"Doesn't that just look like the life," he said under his breath. "Think Daddy's girl will marry me if I promise not to turn her in? I don't need much, just alimony and a beach house."
The camera turned to a young man also in the hot tub, and Chris shrugged, bringing his eyes back to the road. "Oh well, a guy could hope."
"Looks like that's her brother," Nick said after a minute. "For what it's worth."
"As long as it gets me the alimony, sure, I’ll marry him instead. I'll even wear white to the wedding."
Nick cackled and turned the screen back toward himself. "Every bride deserves to wear white, eh?"
"Damn straight. All right, where we going? Idaho, right?"
"Practically on the border, yeah. Who the hell goes to hide out in northern Idaho?"
"Rich people, I guess. It's way up on Upper Priest Lake, dude, I'm not even sure you can drive there."
Chris shot him a look. "Then how the hell do you get there?"
"I dunno, a boat? Float plane?"
"Well, fuck, Nick, can you fly a float plane?"
"No I cannot," Nick said, almost cheerfully. "Guess we'll have to cross that lake when we come to it. Except I guess we'll have to go around it, really. This drive is gonna be like Lombard Street."
"Like what?"
"That really crooked street at the top of the hill in San Francisco."
"Oh. Oh, yay, great. Boy, she better come easily after what it'll take to get to her."
Nick said something under his breath and Chris, pretty sure he didn't really want to know, said, "What?"
"Nothin', I just thought getting girls to come easily was part of your charm."
Chris leaned over to turn the radio way, way up, drowning out Nick's laughter with the music, and refused to turn it down until they'd been on the road a good couple hours. Nicky finally yelled, "I'm gonna get some of the lunch Grandma packed us," and Chris had to turn the music down so he could say, "I'll find somewhere to pull over," without bellowing.
Nick still looked pleased with himself as they parked the van, which was annoying and a relief all at the same time. It was normal, that's what it was, and even if everything was fucked up, Nick acting normal helped, even if it was at Chris's own expense. He bounced out of the passenger seat and into the back of the van before Chris had even killed the engine, saying, "I still can't believe you did this whole thing, Chris, it's so cool," from behind him. "Is there beer in the fridge?"
"You're not twenty-one for like three months, Nick."
"That doesn't answer the question, and you've been giving me beers since I was twelve." Nick opened the fridge as Chris crawled through the seats onto the bed. "Dude, there's no beer in here."
"I don't usually take her out in the winter. She's not stocked the way she would be in June or something."
"Yeah, no, that makes sense, no real clearance. Is she gonna be okay driving up to the lakes?"
"As long as the roads are maintained, yeah, probably. I mean, I'm not taking her 4-bying."
"Speaking of which." Nick settled down with a plate of food and waved one foot in the air. "I'm gonna need boots if we're trekking up to collect this girl. I can't hike through snow in sneakers."
"Wish you'd thought of that back at the trailer."
"I did. All my old boots are too small for me. So's the rest of my winter gear. We can hit a Goodwill or something and see if we can find anything to fit me."
"So you're telling me we're not going to get up to Priest Lake tonight 'cause we gotta drive into every podunk town between here and there to see if they've got a decent thrift shop?"
"I can look online so we don't have to drive around everywhere." Nicky sounded a little offended.
"You could call anywhere that looked promising and ask, too."
Nick recoiled. "Call? With a phone? And my voice?"
Chris grinned. "Yeah, yeah, I know. It's the worst."
"It's a good idea, though." He finished eating and scrolled through his phone, obviously searching for thrift shops, and even called a few. "Good news. There's a Goodwill in Ponderay that's gotten a bunch of men's winter gear in recently. They'll put the boots aside for me. And it's on the way, but we gotta get there before five or we'll have to stay there overnight."
Chris glanced at the time and muttered. "We'll probably just about make it. I'd rather camp out closer to the lake and get an early start, if we're gonna hafta hoof it up there."
"Yeah. Sorry."
"Yeah, well, the cushy college boy life in Cali doesn't really need winter boots, does it." Chris crawled back into the driver's seat and headed west again. And south. And north. And west. And way the hell south, until he said, out loud and uselessly, "Why'd they have to put all these fucking mountains in the way, anyway."
"Builds character."
"Builds continents, anyway."
Nick laughed. "We're almost there, anyway, and we can get the stuff and head…"
"Farther south," Chris said, glancing at the map.
Nick wrinkled his face. "But then we get to go north?"
"Very exciting. I know we were going this way anyway, but it better be worth it."
Maybe an hour later, looking at the sleek 'neon sunset' printed snowsuit that the thrift shop had proudly brought out for Nick, Chris, straight-faced, said, "It's worth it."
"Oh, shut up."
"It's very you."
"I said shut up!"
"I can't imagine why anyone would want to get rid of that."
