“Not... now,” Sam said, her own voice sounding dim, as if coming from far away, as she reached for the pieces of the black mirror in her vision, slipping them together. She hissed as they cut her palms, blood slicking the edges. It was so hard to concentrate when you were in pain. So much easier when you let it all go. “I almost have it?—”
Strong hands closed on Sam’s shoulders. “Sam, you have to come back.” The pieces of the black mirror scattered.
“No!” Sam lashed out blindly.
Hel gave a strangled cry, and something warm splashed across Sam’s face. Sam opened her eyes?—startled; when had she closed them??—to see Hel falling.
“What?—” Sam said, disoriented, her hand going to her face. Her fingers came back red, but not from the cuts she’d thought she’d had on her hands, for those had evaporated with her vision. But then where...? Hel crumpled against the wall, the back of her tan coat rent bloody. Fear shot through her veins like a poison, her voice rising. “What’s happening?”
And then she saw it. You might say it was a cat in the same way a tiger was a cat, with a coat the shineless black of soot, its claws wet with Hel’s blood. Flames dripping from its too-sharp teeth.No. No no no no no.
What had she done? Had she summoned that?—that monster? Horror fought with revulsion as she remembered the feeling of Hel’s flesh tearing beneath her claws. Not just summoned it?—Sam had been it, somehow?—shehad done this.
This was what happened to channels.
“Hel!” Sam cried as the nightmare prowled toward Hel with leonine grace.
Glass shattered against the cat’s scarred hide, smoking up into the cloud-ridden sky. She felt more than heard its growl then, rattling through the softness of her belly, her nerves running through her fingers like water.Van Helsing.
Van Helsing stood outside, fumbling for more vials of holy water.
“Jakob!” Sam cried. The cat turned; it was always more fun to play with a live mouse.
“Stop the bleeding,” Van Helsing said as he fumbled with a strange-looking firearm. “I’ll deal with the cat.”
It leapt through the window at Van Helsing, who threw himself aside, his strange firearm shooting out a weighted net encrusted with exorcism salt. The cat yowled in rage, smoke rising off its pelt where the net bit into it, cutting its jump short. Van Helsing snapped the enormous book off his belt, his voice rising in an exorcism. The cat tore free of the net and leapt at him, but Van Helsing jammed its jaws with the oversized crucifix, and continued to read.
Sam rushed to Hel’s side. Hel looked pale, her face covered in sweat.
Sam’s eyes filled with tears. “Hel, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to?—”
“The case,” Hel panted.
“Right.” Sam could hardly breathe, her throat hurt so much. It wasn’t right to make Hel tell her what to do when all Hel should be focused on was not dying. The case had cracked against the wall when the cat?—whenSam?—had swatted Hel, spilling its contents on the stone. Sam fell to her knees, scrounging through the ash for the metal case carrying the needle and thread and bottle of iodine. There was no alchemical healing paste. They’d used it all the night before, when she’d cut the tattoo from Hel’s back. She was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.
Gingerly, she peeled off Hel’s coat and suit jacket, then started down the buttons on Hel’s shirt, her fingers trembling. Hel caught her hand and looked up at her dizzily. “I’m afraid it might be too late for the shirt, love,” Hel whispered.
She was right; Sam ripped Hel’s shirt open. There, splitting her back, were four claw marks, blood welling in them. Sam felt as if her stomach were turning itself inside out. There were no organs there, she told herself. Of all the places to get mauled, it was better than most. If only she could stop the bleeding. Outside, she heard the sickening crashing of wood and Van Helsing’s chanting rising louder. Sam flinched.
“Don’t... worry about him,” Hel managed, hissing as Sam upended the bottle of iodine on her wounds, her face growing paler. Her voice was strained. “The man hasn’t gotten to kill anything since we arrived in Ireland. He was probably going through withdrawal.”
“I wasn’t worried about him,” Sam said, blotting away what blood she could with the wound dressing. It saturated immediately. “I’m worried about you.”
Hel had been teaching her to stitch wounds, as promised, but it was harder when it wasn’t a fish they were cooking up for dinner, when it lived and breathed and cried out in pain. Harder still when her hands were shaking and slick with Hel’s blood.
What had she been thinking, letting the monster in? Even if it had worked the first two times, that had only been to lure her into a false sense of security, the way her mother’s first visions had been true only to give way to the false. This was always going to end badly.
“The bee?—it wasn’t sent by your father,” Sam confessed, working the needle in and out of Hel’s skin. “I sent it.”
“I know,” Hel said.
“Last night?—the teacup and the blood...” Sam stumbled to a stop. “Wait, you know?”
“Keep sewing,” Hel gasped, and Sam quickly resumed. “Shakespeare, remember?”
“If you knew, why didn’t you say anything?” Sam asked.
Hel looked away. “I wanted you to tell me.” And Sam felt a stab of guilt.
