9.9: Jehane and the Void

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"You lied about knowing Malachi, didn't you?" Kwan had asked her, as they waited for a car.

"Everybody lies," Jehane had said.

The teacher didn't argue. "I just want to understand why."

"Because we have something in common," she said, and Kwan had raised his eyebrows. That was a teacher for you, never willing to accept an answer. "I don't know what. Maybe we spoke the same language before we were born. I can feel it when I'm with him."

The teacher opened his mouth to argue with her, be reasonable at her, and she didn't let him. "I thought he'd come and find me before this. I thought he'd deal with things and get away. And he hasn't. I don't know everything. But I do know, after we open the emergence point, I'm going to find him and... I'm going to make sure nobody else has to fight him. Somehow. We have something in common, and I owe him that."

Now, as she clambered across a landscape that looked more like a war zone than a living city, she remembered the conversation. She had to find out why he hadn't left Hatherly, and she had to solve it.

She watched the bird drift ahead of her, and wondered what part of him it represented. It seemed to shed feathers constantly, with new ones growing to take their place, in a wide variety of colors. She picked up one of the crimson feathers and it melted in her hand, nothing but a dream of color. It didn't look back at her as she followed it, instead looking around with a keen but quiet interest. But it never got too far ahead.

She passed other people, but not many, and monsters fled before the cambion, so that all she had to do was navigate around the shanties and the crumbling apartments, the burned out cars and the furniture abandoned in the streets. Oh, and the bodies.

She tried not to look at the bodies. She tried not to think about closing the gate, removing the source of monsters. She tried not to think about the distant sound of gunfire. All she wanted to do was deal with Malachi.

Finally, the rainbow bird settled on top of a ragged building with a broken window still displaying half of a bottle of beer. When she pushed the door open, it crunched over the debris on the floor. Malachi sat at a table, many glasses in front of him. An old man stood behind the bar. Malachi had his sword held loosely in one hand, and there was a big and shiny gun on the counter. The old man stood as far from the gun as he could. His eyes widened as Jehane stood in the doorframe.

"Go away, girl," he said urgently. "The devil drinks here."

Malachi's head was on his chest, like he was asleep, but he pointed the sword at the old man. "I wish I could be the devil." Then the sword turned unerringly to point at Jehane. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you." Jehane picked her way toward his table. It was one of the few tables remaining in the bar, and the wreckage of the others made the floor dangerous to navigate.

He raised his head. He was unshaven and dirty, with bloodshot eyes. "Find Natalie. There's hope for Natalie." His voice was flat and empty.

"Why are you sitting here drinking?"

Instead of answering, he narrowed his eyes. "How old are you?"

"Fifteen," she said. The Tower records had said he was twenty, just barely twenty when Emily had died. She felt embarrassed and off-center by his question.

He transferred his baleful gaze to the bartender. "Give her a drink."

The bartender ducked his head. "Yes, sir." He poured amber liquid into a glass, then absently drank from the bottle himself before scurrying around the bar to put the glass in Jehane's hands. As he did, he whispered, "He is bound here until I run out of alcohol. I challenged him. I challenged the devil, to keep the devil here." There was a terrified pride in the old man's face. "But I am sorry you have been pulled in, too. God keep you, child."

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