Child, p.9
Child, page 9
part #6 of Sam and Sam Series
He took another path through the graveyard, pulling weeds away from headstones to find names he vaguely remembered.
The third one, something strange caught his eye.
He ripped the weeds out by the roots and took a step back.
“Samantha?”
She was already on her way over.
“What did you find?”
She came to stand beside him.
“I swear, there was no one in the town records named Ashley,” he said. She was confused for a moment, then he felt her grin as she made sense of it.
“Sam, Neb isn’t a last name. It’s short for Nebraska.”
He didn’t put it together.
“The town,” she said, nodding. “This is Ashley.”
<><><>
She stood on the hillside in front of the short old man and waited. He stood with his eyes closed and his face turned up to the sky, blissful and silent.
“Was that Ashley?” she asked. “Was that what we were supposed to save?”
He smiled, but otherwise didn’t move. She sighed good-naturedly and nodded.
“I didn’t figure.”
<><><>
They meandered back to the hotel, quiet, just sort of stewing in the mix of thoughts that swirled between them. At the hotel, Samantha unpacked and repacked her backpack, making a list of things that she wanted to buy the next time they were in a city with a magic market, then sharpening blades while Sam cleaned guns. The industry felt good, and having the weight of the little town gone felt better.
Samantha felt a change and looked up to find Maryanne looking around the room.
“Why don’t you do better?” the girl asked passively. A lot of demons would have asserted an opinion with that question, but Maryanne was simply curious.
“Because we don’t need better,” Samantha answered. “The bathroom and the sheets are clean and the hallways don’t smell bad.”
Sam was amused by that. He and Jason had stayed in some dumps in their time. Maryanne seemed satisfied.
“She’s good,” she said. Samantha understood what it meant without having to ask. Maryanne had spent the last few months trying to track down a powerful psychic, one they had a lot of history with, because she still posed a threat to Samantha.
“Can I help?” she asked Maryanne. The demon went to go sit down next to Sam on the hard little beige couch.
“No. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Just working,” Samantha said. “How is everyone?”
Sam didn’t look up, but she felt him perk. She had asked for his benefit.
“Carson and Doris are fine. Tanner is no fun. And I’m seriously going to kill the angel if he gets any more eager to help.”
Samantha grinned at this. No surprise, there.
“Jason isn’t keeping him busy?”
“Too busy getting busy,” Maryanne said. “If they weren’t so good together, Merlin and Kerk would have split them up weeks ago.”
“When you see Jason again, tell him that ignoring Kelly isn’t on his list of options for how to deal with him.”
“Can I lie to him, to make him get Kelly out of Doris’ house?”
She knew the answer to that. Samantha raised an eyebrow at her and Maryanne sighed.
“Doris is nice to him,” the demoness complained.
“Doris is nice to everyone,” Samantha answered.
“Including you,” Sam added.
“I’m delightful,” Maryanne said. “We get pedicures and I help her with her flower garden. He practices forms in the back yard and he looks like a middle schooler.”
Kelly had come a long way since he’d been assigned to protect Samantha. All the same, she couldn’t blame Maryanne for making fun of him for how young he looked. Or how eager he was. He was a good kid, and she was glad he had stayed, but unless you had something specific in mind, you never knew what to do with him.
“You came to complain,” Samantha said, returning to her blades.
“We all miss you,” Maryanne said. “I wanted to see you.”
Samantha looked back up at her and smiled.
“We miss you, too. We won’t be away too much longer, I hope.”
“What are you doing?” Maryanne asked.
“Working,” Samantha said again. No one really knew about the search she and Sam were on for Ashley and she was still keeping it secret. She was tired of conspiracies creeping up on her while she wasn’t looking, so the fewer people who knew what they were doing, the fewer chances there would be that she would stumble into something huge and be the last one to know what was going on.
Maryanne heaved a huge sigh.
“Can I at least throw the ball?”
“Does that still work?” Sam asked. Maryanne’s face split in a malicious grin.
“Sometimes.”
Samantha rolled her eyes, trying not to smile.
“No,” she said. “Don’t throw the ball. And if Jason does, punch him in the shoulder, from me.”
That seemed to satisfy her.
“Doris is making a bear roast tonight. Someone brought her a whole bunch of bear meat. I’d never had any before, but it smells good. I’m going to go help.”
“Send her our love,” Samantha said. Sam nodded his agreement.
“Tell her we’ll be home soon, and if you see Carson, tell him thanks, that it worked,” he said.
“You aren’t going to tell me what that means, are you?” Maryanne asked. Sam smiled with his own little spark of malice.
“Nope.”
She wrinkled her nose at him, then glitched out.
“Better?” Samantha asked. Sam nodded.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“You ready to try again?”
“Hmm?”
“To find Ashley.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t think we were done, did you?”
The response, a touch of guilt, an eagerness to be off, the dawning realization of scope, told her that he had. She chided him mentally, and he winked.
“Let’s go, then.”
<><><>
Kelly showed up again that morning. Jason had told him that if the sun had been up less than three hours, he wasn’t welcome, but he was like a puppy that needed to pee. He got excited and he forgot.
“Maryann talked to them,” he said, as if continuing a conversation that had already started. Jason squinted and rubbed his face.
“Kelly… Gonna shoot you, one of these days… and not feel bad. What time is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Six,” Kara moaned, rolling over. Kelly blushed, but wouldn’t let Kara being in bed with Jason run him off. Not any more. That had only worked for about a month.
“Oh,” he said, looking bashful. “It’s too early, isn’t it?”
“Damn right, it’s too early,” Jason said, sitting up. “Now, what do you want?”
“Maryanne talked to them. Last night.”
Jason blinked, feeling slow. They’d been out until almost three. Most of that had even been work.
“Who?”
“Sam and Sam.”
“They okay?”
Kelly blinked and nodded.
“Yeah.”
As if it were obvious. The kid thought that Samantha had hung the moon, except that to actually think that would have been blasphemous and unthinkable. He didn’t have a great handle on idiom or artistic license.
“What do you want?” Jason asked, rubbing his face again.
“Sam says you have to give me stuff to do,” Kelly said, sounding eager. Tattle tales were the worst when they were eager and innocent.
“Which one?” Jason asked. Yes, it mattered.
“Um,” Kelly said.
“Sam, my brother, or Samzilla destroyer of worlds?”
“That one,” Kelly said. Jason stretched his mouth to the side then groaned under his breath.
“Fine. Get out of here. Come back at lunch time. We’ll figure something out.”
Kelly looked at him with that strange intensity, then vanished.
Sure, Jason felt a little bad, using Doris as a full-time babysitter for the kid, but he knew that no one actually minded that she had a demon and an angel living with her. Both were good things, with Arthur gone. Doris insisted that she was perfectly safe and perfectly busy, but she loved the two of them like her own, and everyone else appreciated how capable they were of protecting her, if things went bad.
Maryanne was happy with the arrangement. She had a place to go to at the end of each day, where she could spend as much or as little time as she wanted without being in the way. She had her job, and she did it well.
Kelly wanted to be in the thick of it, not flitting around on the edges, looking in, as he perceived Maryanne to be. He wanted to ride in the back seat of the Cruiser and vanquish foes and train and work and do.
Jason wanted to sleep.
With Kara, if at all possible, it turned out.
He rolled onto his side and pulled her against him, closing his eyes and disappearing into sleep.
<><><>
Kelly came back at ten-thirty, and Jason sent him away to get lunch. Kara got up and showered, and Jason dragged himself out of the bed a bit later, putting on the same clothes he’d worn the day before, because why not? He strapped Anadidd’na to his back and went to wash his face.
“Should we wait for Kelly?” Kara asked as Jason grabbed his duffel bag. He shook his head.
“He can find us.”
“You aren’t very nice to him,” Kara observed as they walked down the length of the motel toward the Cruiser. Jason laughed.
“Hasn’t made him like me any less.”
“He’s a sweet kid, and you’re going to be sad when he gets jaded.”
“Hell, I’m doing my best to jade him myself,” Jason said. Kara snorted and walked around the Cruiser.
“Hell, no,” he heard her say. “You think I ever get into a car without checking the back seat? What kind of amateur do you think I am?”
Jason walked around the car to find her standing next to her bag and pointing a shotgun at Gwen’s side. He cringed, wanting to protect his car, but knowing Kara was probably in the right. He lifted onto his toes to see deeper into the back seat and, despite the tinting, saw the shape that had tipped off Kara. There was someone laying back there.
“Get out now, slowly, and I won’t shoot you in the head,” she said.
She waited, then took a step forward, reaching for the handle. The door smashed open, throwing her hard to the ground, and a man sprung out, pausing for a moment to look at Jason. Jason frowned, trying to place that face. He’d seen him before. The stranger chanted a number of words, and Kara gasped, dropping the shotgun and grasping her chest. That’s when Jason recognized him.
“Hey,” he yelled, drawing Anadidd’na. He and the thirsty man locked eyes, then Kara made an open-throated noise, and the man smirked at Jason and turned to run away.
“Are you okay?” Jason asked, kneeling quickly next to her.
“Go get him, Elliott,” she said, pushing herself to her elbows. “I’ll be fine. Give him hell.”
Jason sprang to his feet and took off at a dead sprint after the thirsty man, but the man hit the end of the motel and turned the corner. When Jason got there, there was nothing but empty parking lot. He ran to the back side of the motel, but wasn’t optimistic. The man was like a fish. If you lost your grip on him once, you weren’t going to get another shot at him, this time.
He hopped on his toes, frustrated and pumped up on adrenaline, then jogged quickly back to Kara. Kelly was leaning over her, his hands on her chest.
“Is she okay?” Jason asked.
“Who did this?” Kelly answered. Kara looked a bit pale, and was holding one of Kelly’s wrists with a tight hand.
“The guy we’ve been chasing since before you were born,” Jason said. “Is she okay?”
Kelly said a few words in angeltongue, the language slipping from his lips like fluid, then stood.
“Stay here, okay?” Kelly said.
“Right,” Kara said sarcastically, pushing herself up again.
“Please,” Kelly said. “You need a minute.”
It was obvious he knew what he was talking about; Kara struggled to sit up, and then didn’t fight him when he pressed her shoulders back onto the asphalt. Jason’s adrenaline turned to raw panic.
“Dude. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine,” Kelly said calmly, coming to stand within a few inches of Jason, his back to Kara. “He’s too strong for her.”
Jason remembered that feeling. It had probably been the same spell that the thirsty man had used on him, when they’d stumbled across him at Samantha’s house in Connecticut. Intended to liquefy his organs, Samantha had told him. It hurt.
He didn’t know what to say, but Kelly apparently wasn’t looking for an answer.
“You need to take care of her. You’re something she isn’t, now,” the angel told him.
Jason jerked his head back.
“Where do you get off, being all grown up and knowledgeable?”
Kelly flashed him a boyish grin.
“I do know things, Jason.”
“Can you take him?” Jason asked. The corner of Kelly’s mouth disappeared into his cheek, revealing a deep dimple.
“Probably. I’m not made to fight him, but with that much evil in him… I think so.”
“Can he hurt you?”
“Only if he knows what I am.”
Jason nodded.
“Then that’s your job. You stay with her. That dude shows up again, you keep her safe.”
“I heard that, Elliott,” Kara said, pulling herself to her feet beside the Cruiser. He waited for the admonition that she didn’t need a bodyguard, but she shook out her hair and took a deep breath.
“Are we going, or what?”
Jason frowned, and she gave him a dismissive look.
“I know when I’m up against someone who can end me.” She pointed at Kelly. “You try to protect me from anything other than that freak, though, and we’re gonna have words. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kelly said.
“Doris teach you that?” Jason teased, tossing his keys in the air and catching them.
“Shut up,” Kelly said with a deep blush. Kara laughed and eased herself into the passenger seat. Jason looked at her for a moment, feeling the physiological reaction still fading. He would need to check in with Kerk. Soon. If the thirsty man was here, and looking like that, it meant he’d killed another kid. Jason was going to have to put a hole in him, the sooner the better.
“Get in here, Elliott,” Kara said. “I’m hungry, and the angel brought lunch.”
Jason tossed his keys again and caught them, then shook it off and went to go start the car.
<><><>
Sam found himself looking out over ocean cliffs, where waves crashed over gray rocks. The sound of the water and the wind was all there was for a few minutes, overwhelming. Sam was patient, letting the noise of the sea drown out everything else. The immortality of the ocean was beautiful, poignant. Eventually, he was able to pull away, and he found a beautiful, dark-skinned woman standing next to him, eyes lost as she stared out at the overcast gray waves. She sighed, then turned to make her way down a narrow path toward a car at the bottom of a shallow hillside. She got in and drove away. For a moment, Sam felt his tie to the place ease, and he backed away quickly, looking for landmarks or signposts that would tell him where he was. He quickly found a highway, following with one train of awareness as the car merged onto it, underneath a sign that read Seattle. He watched as the car sped toward the city and he felt the vision close.
<><><>
They took a room in a brand-name hotel outside of the city and got lunch, then went driving, following Sam’s directions out to the shore where he had seen the woman.
“If it’s not one thing, it’s something else,” Samantha had said. If it was easy to find the location, it wouldn’t be easy to find the person. If it was easy to find the person, it would be hard to find the problem.
Demons were so much easier.
They went to the edge of the rocks and sat with their feet dangling over the edge.
“Well, let’s see if this works,” she said. Sam nodded, putting on his glasses. She felt him slip away into the past, waiting to see the woman come to visit.
“This is a different day,” he murmured as he turned to follow her. Samantha felt the distant perception of him move in space.
“She comes frequently,” she said, and he nodded.
“I’ll go back further if this doesn’t work.”
She couldn’t imagine how it would fail, but somehow she figured it would, anyway. It just felt like that kind of a task. Point her at a room full of demons, she was good to go. Divine rescue mission, no, that was going to be complicated.
Sam was zipping through time, as he did, the obsidian glasses giving him control over his visions at a near-unique level. He was getting further and further away, toward the city.
“Huh,” he said.
“What?”
“You were right. As usual.”
“What did you find?”
“A wall.”
“Literally or figuratively?”
“Figuratively. Unless you count the building.”
She laughed to herself and waited as he continued picking at the timeline, trying to figure it out.
“No, I can’t get in, and… I’m not seeing her leave. Let me try another day.”
He came back to her and went further in time. Samantha swung her legs, smelling the salt air and the faint scent of fish from somewhere down coast. She felt him leave again, following a similar path to before.
“Same,” he muttered after a minute. She felt the front edge of a headache and jerked him back rather more abruptly than she really needed to.
“What was that about?” Sam asked, steadying himself.
“You didn’t feel the traps on the space you were trying to see?” she asked. He grunted, rubbing his forehead.
“Now that you say it.”
She looked at him exasperatedly.
“Sam, you’ve got to be more careful. Just because we don’t know that this is a high-level conflict doesn’t mean we can act like it isn’t.”
