Treating the Hammers of God with courtesy, I saw, had been a mistake. Their rules of engagement approved deadly force from the start, while mine had been about disengagement. If I had laid into them with all the gusto they’d shown in coming after me, I wouldn’t be in these dire straits now. I’d be in different dire straits, to be sure, but perhaps not so personally threatening.
It’s bloody difficult to concentrate properly when you’re dying of renal failure and all your brain can do is squeal. I turned down the volume on my pain centers from eleven to one and then refocused on knitting up my kidney. It didn’t leave me much room to deal with the Hammers of God. My clever, half-formed plan to ditch them somewhere in the maze of shops in Hayden Square would never see fruition. Drawing Fragarach and making a valiant last stand wasn’t going to be possible either. One lucky knife throw in a half-assed ambush had put me down for the immediate future, and I still had another knife in my shoulder I couldn’t reach. The cobblestones weren’t letting me get through to the earth; there was cement underneath them, no doubt. Every bit of magic in my bear charm would have to be used in keeping myself alive, so I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to muster as a defense when they came to finish me off.
Raised voices cut with equal parts fear and anger dimly registered in my head, and the clapping of approaching shoes against pavement signaled more grief to come.
“Vot on,” someone said in Russian. Here he is. My field of vision quickly filled with black shoes and the severe garb of the Kabbalists.
Then, suddenly, there were a pair of jeans and Converse All Stars inches away from my nose.
“Hello, gentlemen, can we talk for a second?” a voice said in Russian.
A chorus of heated Russian snarls greeted this request, all of them tersely demanding that the first speaker get out of the way, bugger off, and mind his own business. A couple wondered where he had come from.
“I will move, but we will talk first,” the voice said firmly yet calmly, and I recognized it as that of Jesus. We were completely surrounded by men in black now. I hoped none of them had picked up the knife with my blood on it. That would be bad. Though I couldn’t imagine how it could be worse than sticking it in my other kidney.
The tight whip of Yosef Bialik’s voice lashed out at Jesus. “Why do you interfere? This does not concern you.”
“I beg to differ,” Jesus said, switching to English. “You interrupted my lunch, and my friend has yet to pay the bill.”
“You are a friend to this man? This man who consorts with demons?” Bialik replied in the same language.
“Your mom consorts with demons,” I said, though it came out as more of a phlegmy cough than a confident assertion. That was about all the fight I had left in me. I didn’t have the strength or will to move an inch. The kidney is a complex organ; I’d need a lot more power and leisure than I currently had at my disposal to make it work properly again. I’d knitted it up to keep it from polluting my insides any more, but it wasn’t functional. I already had plenty of nastiness to neutralize in my veins, and that was draining me quickly.
“He no more consorts with demons than you do,” Jesus said. “You have misinterpreted his actions and have harmed one you should help.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Jesus Christ.”
They didn’t even blink. “Step aside or we’ll kill you too.”
“Thou shalt not kill, gentlemen.”
One of the Kabbalists—not Yosef—drew his knife from his coat and brandished it threateningly. “We are serious, crazy man. Get out of the way now.”
“Let us talk about Atticus O’Sullivan first.”
“You asked for it,” the Kabbalist growled. He stepped forward and stabbed Jesus in the shoulder joint—not a kill shot, but still a tad excessive if you want someone to move. I heard the fabric of his shirt tear; I heard the shik of the knife sinking into flesh; yet Jesus didn’t stagger backward or show any sign of the impact beyond the stark fact of the knife protruding from his peace shirt. The Kabbalist might as well have knifed a wooden post for all the recoil he got.
“I tell you truly, that was extraordinarily rude,” Jesus said. “I begin to think you do not keep your covenant.” He calmly removed the dagger from his shoulder, as you or I might remove a seed stuck between two teeth. He was as immune to the enchantment on the hilt as I was. It came out cleanly, without a trace of blood; I noticed that last bit when he dropped it to the ground.
“What are you?” Rabbi Yosef demanded. “Are you a demon?”
“Hardly,” Jesus said. “Rather the opposite. I’ve already told you once. But no one believes words anymore. I imagine you will need visual proof.”
A new source of light blazed above me—not hot, just bright—and I squinted upward to see a white glowing circle hovering above Jesus’s head. It began to rise in the air, and then I belatedly realized that Jesus himself was rising. I darted my eyes back to the ground and saw that his shoes had left it. He was levitating.
“I am the Christian god,” he patiently explained. “A prophet to your people, Rabbi Yosef. I am a Jew. Will you not pause to listen? I promise you that Mr. O’Sullivan will not be going anywhere.”
No one said anything for a few seconds. It’s not every day you see a tie-dyed man with a halo floating above the ground. You want to take time to let that shit sink in, store it in your long-term memory.
“We will listen,” Rabbi Yosef finally said, working through what he was seeing. Demons can’t manifest a halo—it’s against the rules. Angels can do it, but they’re not the sort to lie and say they’re something they’re not. Jesus nodded once before descending back to earth. Once his shoes touched the cobblestones, he turned off his heavenly neon.
“You have sensed traces of my friend’s magic in places where demons have been, but rather than consider he may have been fighting them, which was the case, you assumed instead that he was summoning them.” Jesus continued to explain that it was Aenghus Óg who’d opened a portal to hell in the Superstition Mountains, and I had not only sent most of the demons back to hell personally, I’d also taken care of the fallen angel Basasael.
“But he has befriended a vampire and a pack of werewolves! Witches too!” the rabbi said. I took that as my cue to speak up, albeit weakly.
“I am removing the vampire and the alpha wolf tonight,” I said, which was technically true. The Hammers of God would interpret that to mean I’d be killing them, but that’s why I enjoy ambiguity. “Or at least I will if I feel up to it. And the witches have agreed to leave the state.”
“There, you see?” Jesus said. “You have been persecuting a man who is playing for our team. He offered to buy you beer and you tried to kill him.”
“They might still manage it,” I said, wincing. I couldn’t afford to suppress the pain anymore; I had to use my last dregs of magic to pay attention to blood toxicity. It’s just very hard to focus through a haze of torment. “Hey, Son of Man, a little help here?”
“Please be patient, Atticus,” he replied. “I need to get an answer from the rabbis before we proceed. Will you, sirs, leave this man alone henceforth? He has done us all great service.”
The rabbis all looked at Yosef. He was the one who had called them here. He glared down at me with hatred in his eyes. He didn’t want to let me go. Or perhaps he didn’t want to admit he’d been wrong. He was having trouble coming up with a reason to pursue me, however. What was he going to do, call Jesus a liar to his face?
“There will be a vampire war for this territory,” I said by way of a peace offering. “Pick up today’s newspaper and you’ll see it’s already begun. If you’re all about killing the evil minions of the dark lord, there will be plenty coming here in the next couple of weeks.”
All the other rabbis looked a bit excited about that. They were nodding their heads, and fires lit in their eyes. They probably already had wooden stakes hidden in their jackets.
Yosef saw that he could do no more. “Very well,” he groused. “I suppose this man is free of hell. We will pursue other prey for now.”
“Excellent!” Jesus beamed at him. “Now go and stake some vamps. Especially the sparkly emo ones.”
Yosef and the other rabbis just looked at him with dumb incomprehension.
“Never mind,” Jesus said, waving them off. “Go in peace.” A couple of them bent to get their knives, but Jesus requested that they leave them behind as a gesture of goodwill.
The Hammers of God turned and walked away as sirens began to wail and police drove into the parking lot. They didn’t say good-bye and they didn’t say they were sorry for ruining everyone’s lunch. They didn’t even tell Jesus it was nice to meet him.
Jesus watched them go and then clapped his hands together once, keeping them clasped together in front of his chest. “Right. Well, they’re certainly filed in the right folder, aren’t they? Skilled magicians, but sour dispositions. Let’s get you out of sight of the police so we can talk.” He bent down to pick up all the silver knives, including the one with my blood on it, but left the last knife lodged in my back. I felt this was an egregious oversight at first. Then I realized what he had in mind as he picked up my left wrist and began hauling me prone along the cobblestones toward the Mission Palms Hotel. New pain exploded inside me, and I felt something tear loose in my shoulder where the knife blade had given the muscle a head start on a trial separation. I lost a few minutes there.
I woke up sitting hunched over in the courtyard of the Mission Palms. It can be accessed from the outside without ever crossing the lobby, but still, I wondered why we were unmolested. No one had noticed one man dragging another man across the courtyard? Even supposing I might have been drunk, didn’t the knife handle sticking out of my back raise a red flag? Jesus noticed my look of bewilderment.
“I work in mysterious ways. Let’s leave it at that.”
I grimaced as my ouchies strongly reminded me that they were still there—nerves slapping my brain and saying, “Hey! You paying attention? This shit hurts.” I was completely drained now; I couldn’t shut anything off or heal myself at all. “Thought we were buddies,” I managed to say through clenched teeth.
“We still are. But pain is often instructive, where whiskey and beer are not. Call it tough love.”
“Okay, okay. What’s the lesson? I’m listening.”
“I want you to think about how you got here, Atticus. What was the decision that led you to this moment—a moment where you were almost killed by witch hunters? Follow the causes and effects backward.”
It didn’t take me long. I had already been thinking of this back in Mag Mell. “It was when I decided to stop running and kill Aenghus Óg if I could.”
Jesus nodded. “That’s right. When you decided to kill a god, you set in motion a series of events that led you extremely close to your death. Had you remained meek, you would have inherited the earth—”
“What?”
“No, let me finish. And now that you’ve killed the Norns—yes, I know about that—you have no idea what possible futures lie ahead of you. The aftershocks of that act have yet to be felt, and you’re going to be paying for it like you’re paying now for Aenghus Óg. Killing Thor would only make it worse, Atticus. Much worse. In all seriousness, there are few ways ahead in which you survive, your deal with the Morrigan notwithstanding. And there are few ways ahead in which the world survives, Atticus. Do you hear me? The world is at stake—this world. Killing Aenghus brought you to the attention of these Hammers of God. Who knows whom else you’ve attracted by killing the Norns?”
“I’ll bet you have a pretty good idea,” I said.
“Well, yes, I do, and that’s why I’m here to warn you. Things are already looking grim for you, my friend. You’ve unleashed a significant aspect of Fate, and it rarely chooses a more peaceful and orderly path when given the opportunity to pursue its own course. Please do not make it worse. Killing Thor will set in motion forces you cannot comprehend. The pain you feel now will be a sensual massage compared to what awaits you should you continue.”
I signaled that I understood with the barest of nods. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to sit. It hurt to be conscious.
“Lesson learned?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Right. You won’t be needing that anymore, then.” Jesus stood up from his patio chair and leaned over me, yanking the knife from my back.
“Gaaaaah!”
“Wah, wah, wah, you’re such a crybaby,” he said. “It’s just a flesh wound, as the Black Knight would say. Stand up.”
“Wait. Did you just quote the Holy Grail?”
“Why not? It was an inspired piece of filmmaking.” He winked at me. “Now stand up.”
“You don’t mean divinely inspired, do you?”
Jesus rolled his eyes. “One needs the patience of Job when speaking with you. Come on, I’m trying to help.” He hauled me to my feet by my left arm, eliciting another howl of misery. “Remember this the next time you think it would be macho to face down a god.”
“Why not let me die if I’m so dangerous?” I asked, leaning heavily against him for support.
“Because you’re also the only one with a hope of preventing the worst cataclysms from happening.”
“What cataclysms?”