Chapter 33

Caine tried to put Tonya down once they were inside, but she shook her head fiercely and buried her face in his neck. That put a wry smile on his beleaguered face. He shifted her to the side and held her up with one arm, like a mother with a babe on her hip. In his other hand, he carried a large jug by a loop over one finger. With practiced ease he moved it so it rested along the back of his forearm and tilted it to his mouth.

Shifting Tonya revealed his torso to the room. Both witch hunters’ jaws dropped. They were accustomed to wounds, but not like this. Caine looked like he’d been through hell. Blood streaked his entire body. It looked like he’d hastily washed most of it off, but the brownish red tint still clung to the creases of his body. His pants and boots looked like they’d been badly dyed black and brown. Little dark flakes broke off them as he moved.

Mercy took a hesitant step forward, her trained eyes telling her more as her brain rebuked. It wasn’t simply that he looked like he’d been through hell. He looked like he’d been there before, and kept going back. The multitude of scars on his torso were alarming on their own, but it was the fresher wounds that stole her breath. It wasn’t just the extent of them. It was that they all looked old.

His whole body was covered in mottled bruises and partially healed cuts. One of his shoulders had three large, overlapping gashes covered in thick raised scabs. His opposite thigh was striped like an animal. A matched set of parallel wounds sat directly over his heart. It looked like he’d been cut and stabbed half a dozen times, and shot at least once, but somehow he was still hefting Tonya like she weighed nothing.

Had these wounds been hiding beneath his shirt when they’d arrived tonight? It seemed impossible. There was no way he could have fought off Hector while he was so badly injured. His face was definitely different, an odd combination of swollen and leaner. The split lip was definitely new, as was the lumpy looking blackened eye, and so was the sunkenness to his good eye socket, and his cheekbones.

Sister Victoria’s horrified voice came unbidden, as if her words were escaping without her notice. “Warden’s blood, what happened to you?”

“Got in a fight,” Caine said flatly.

“With the whole Teach clan!?” Sister Victoria said in disbelief.

“Only the ones at the house,” Caine clarified flatly as he limped towards what was left of the table Hector had shattered in their earlier fight.

“The house? Teach Manor? That place is a literal garrison full of pirates! There are four Teach ships docked right now, plus the household guards!” Sister Victoria said, aghast.

Janie crossed the room quickly and started securing the series of locks on Will’s front door.

“Sounds about right,” Caine said with a tired nod. “Two came in today, right? Seemed like about half of them weren’t really prepared. Lucky timing for us.”

“Lucky?” Sister Victoria said, shaking her head in confusion. “Nothing about tonight has been lucky.”

“I still don’t understand why any of this is happening,” Sister Mercy added.

Caine sat down in Will’s big chair. He tried to put Tonya down first but she hung on tighter, so he settled her into his lap and shifted her so she wasn’t sitting on his more wounded leg. Painfully, he lifted the big jug to his lips and swilled the dark liquid down like water in big, thirsty gulps. Amber streams ran down the sides of his face and vanished into the bloody mess of his shirt. When the jug was empty his arm swung down limply, thumping the jug down into the broken wood surrounding the chair. He exhaled like he was deflating. “It’s complicated.”

“Clearly,” Mercy said sarcastically.

Victoria gave her partner a look, warning her against irritating this volatile man. For what they had planned, they needed him amiable. “To say none of this is what we expected would be the understatement of our lives. We really would like to help, but we need to understand what we’ve landed in the middle of.”

Caine looked at her skeptically. “Do you actually want to help, or do you just want to know what’s really going on?”

Victoria looked like she was developing a headache. “What I’d really like to know is why you turn everything we say into a conflict.”

Caine let out a mirthless laugh. Now that he wasn’t moving, he could feel a warm numbness spreading through his body. It felt a little like floating. He wasn’t sure if the fading pain was from the angel, or the rum, or both but it was the first time he felt relaxed since they’d taken refuge in the tower. It had been a long time since he’d been this exhausted. “Short version is, the Teach family is old family N’madi.”

The witch hunters both looked surprised. Mercy even looked a bit ashamed. “Oh,” Victoria said with a grimace. “I suppose that does explain some things.”

“Yeah. They don’t talk about it, or keep any of the old traditions, but the Old Man and most of his kids are survivors of the Purges. They hate the Magistrate. They came out here to get away from the church, but eventually you folks expanded all the way out here. By then, the Teach family had invested a lot in building a power base. They weren’t about to lose their home to the Magistrate again.”

“The church wasn’t stupid though. They knew this place had become a pirate haven. After the Barcolan’s kicked the Magistrate navy off this island, the Teach family moved in. They had two generations to cement themselves here before the Magistrate came back with six gunships and two companies of Legionnaires. Even with that force, it was a standoff. The Teach family had enough of a force that the Magistrate backed off. They left two hundred soldiers and craftsmen behind, and increased their naval presence, but they didn’t start a war. The old family heads knew better than to push their luck, but the younger generation wanted payback for what the Magistrate did during the Purges. That argument was the beginning of the family schism that led to now.”

“First it was just occasional random violence. Then people started turning up dead on both sides. Things started to escalate fast, but before they could spiral out of control the Old Man and the Prelate came up with an arrangement that mostly kept the peace. It wasn’t popular with a lot of the younger Teach kids, but it worked for a long time. Then the Old Man started losing his mind. The whole family has been getting more aggressive for about a generation now. His firstborn kids and grandkids don’t come to the island much anymore. They’re too busy leading their own little armadas in an arms race against each other while they wait for the Old Man to die. His great-grandkids hold down the fort here, but they’ve pretty much stopped caring about the Old Man’s rules. They’re used to feeling powerful because their family runs things here, and they want revenge for the things your people did to theirs. They think the Old Man went soft by allowing the Magistrate to be here at all. It’s been a powder keg for years.”

“All of that fits with the information we have about this area, but what does any of it have to do with you?” Sister Victoria asked.

Caine let his head roll back and closed his eyes. “I just lit the match.”

Sister Mercy looked pained. Sister Victoria sat down in one of Will’s other chairs. “What, exactly, does that mean?”

Caine opened one eye like it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. “Old Man Teach is dead.”

“Warden’s blood,” Sister Victoria swore under her breath.

“You just started a war!” Sister Mercy said, horrified.

“Yeah,” Caine agreed.

“Why!” Sister Victoria demanded.

“The Prelate asked me to,” Caine said with a barely perceptible shrug. “I didn’t ask her reasons.”

The pair of Inquisitors were flabbergasted. They looked at each other, both looking for insights from the other and finding only dumbfounded shock.

“What is she thinking,” Sister Mercy muttered darkly.

“Building a peace in this region has taken fifty years!” Sister Victoria snapped. “This is going to turn into another Barcola!”

Caine let out a rough laugh. “Maybe you should stop kicking your way into other people’s homes and telling them what to do?”

“The Barcolans worship demons!” Sister Mercy said fiercely. “This island is a lawless pirates’ nest!”

“That’s a bit hyperbolic,” Caine said wryly, still not bothering to open his eyes.

“It certainly is not! If anything, it’s an understatement. They have been after you for weeks! How can you still defend them?” Sister Mercy retorted angrily.

“Because I know them. Sure, there’s some assholes, but that’s true everywhere. I don’t have the right to put a boot on everyone’s neck just because some of them piss me off.” Caine said. “It ain’t your right either.”

“That’s not what we do,” Sister Victoria said, trying to get a word in.

“Tell that to the Barcolans,” Caine countered.

“The Magistrate protects people! We bring law and peace, and drive out dark forces!” Mercy said angrily.

“Whether they like it or not,” Caine said with a derisive snort.

“Yes!” Mercy said fiercely. “When we have to. The doctor doesn’t consider how a boil feels before lancing it from the body!”

Caine opened his eyes and turned his head to give Mercy a baleful look, but before he could open his mouth, Janie stepped in between them. “This is going nowhere. Do you have the answers you need?”

“He just murdered a pirate lord and broke a peace we’ve worked for years to maintain!” Sister Mercy said angrily, refusing to back down.

“Technically it was a duel,” Caine corrected.

“He just told you he was acting under orders from the Prelate,” Jaine said sternly. “Take it up with her.”

“And he was the one who challenged me,” Caine said, holding up one swaying finger.

Mercy turned on him again, but Janie held up her hand. Surprisingly, Mercy paused.

“Caine?” Janie asked.

“Yeah?” he said, opening one eye and looking at her sidelong.

“You’re goading them on purpose,” Janie said gently. “Quiet.”

Caine gave her a small smile and closed his eye again.

“This doesn’t make sense!” Sister Mercy said, turning her anger to Janie. “Surely you can grasp why this is important to understand?!”

“Yes, but we do not have any more time to bicker,” Janie said to the inquisitors in exasperation.

“So what happens next?” Tonya muttered against Caine’s chest. She sounded exhausted.

A long silence followed. All eyes were on Caine. He looked like he was trying to sleep.

“Of course now he decides to keep his mouth shut,” Sister Mercy muttered.

His lips twitched into a small smirk.

Victoria looked pained again. “Miss Castilian told him to be quiet.”

“Amazing,” Mercy said flatly. “He can be a disrespectful cad without uttering a word.”

Janie rolled her eyes in exasperation. “And yet you still need his help. We all do. Can you heal him?” she asked Sister Mercy.

“I believe so, but I’m rather disinclined,” Mercy said flatly.

Janie gave the Witch Hunter a look that would have been more at home on a Sister Superior admonishing a Novice. She said nothing. She didn’t need to.

Mercy glared for a moment, then angrily closed her eyes and muttered a traditional prayer for serenity and patience. Then she moved behind Caine’s chair and placed a hand on each of his shoulders. She didn’t bother being gentle with the criss-crossing cuts on his left shoulder, or the deep puncture on his right. He winced, but kept his eyes and his mouth shut as the priestess began her litany.

Nothing seemed to happen. Golden light poured from her hands, but rather than illuminating the wounds and closing them, the way they had when she healed Hector, the light simply disappeared into Caine’s body. Mercy looked surprised. With one hand she reached towards Sister Victoria and motioned for her partner’s help.

Victoria stood up from the table. “Tonya, can you get up?”

Tonya had been on the edge of falling asleep against Caine’s chest. She’d been running on nothing but worry and stubbornness for hours, and now that he was back her relief felt like a lullaby. She couldn’t ever remember being more exhausted, not even when she was on the streets of the Mainland, hadn’t eaten in four days, and kept getting run out of shelters during the middle of winter. She could barely keep her eyes open. The angry conversation felt like pointless background noise and the idea of moving made her think she’d prefer to just die. She shook her head petulantly and squeezed Caine around the ribs a bit tighter. It was all the energy she could muster. His face pinched in pain, but he didn’t stop her. He just rested a hand on her back and gave the Sisters a small shrug.

Victoria felt bad for Tonya. She really had worked hard tonight, and was clearly not used to the exertion or stress that life and death situations required. She decided to let Tonya stay and moved behind the chair alongside Mercy. Her hands joined her partner’s and her voice joined the prayer. She wasn’t much of a healer, but she knew how to lend her faith to Mercy. Together they continued the healing prayer. After thirty seconds Mercy looked concerned. After a minute, she became worried. After two minutes, horrified, but she refused to end the litany.

Slowly Tonya sat up, blinking sleepily. She yawned and looked over her arms and chest in confusion. “What the hell?”

Mercy glanced at her with a questioning look, but did not stop her ritual.

“What is it?” Janie asked.

“Uh, I’m ... awake,” Tonya said, not sure how to describe what she was feeling.

“What do you mean?” Janie asked.

Tonya struggled for words. “I felt like I was about to pass out. Now ... I actually feel pretty good. I’m not even sore anymore.”

The Sisters shared a glance full of suspicion, but continued their healing prayer.

“Caine?” Tonya asked slowly. “Do you feel that?”

Caine grunted his assent.

Sister Mercy stopped her prayer abruptly and looked back and forth between Caine and Tonya with suspicion. “Explain,” she said to Tonya.

Caine opened his eyes wearily. “You don’t have to tell them anything you don’t want to.”

Tonya shook head. “I want to. We gotta figure this out. We already talked about it!”

Caine painfully leaned forward and twisted in his chair to look at the Inquisitors behind him. “Did you now?”

“We were planning to tell you once you were healed,” Victoria said diplomatically.

“I’m healed enough,” Caine said flatly.

“You’re not healed at all!” Sister Mercy said, still shocked. “It didn’t work. You didn’t even rebuke the prayer, you just ... absorbed it. And nothing happened! I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Well, something happened,” Victoria disagreed, looking at Tonya with curiosity.

“I don’t care,” Caine said. “Start talking.”

Tensely, Mercy explained. “Tonya requested we use the Eye of Revealing to read her aura and determine the nature of the connection between the two of you.”

Caine’s swollen, bloody eyes narrowed angrily. He looked up at the compass rose on the ceiling of the library, then pointedly at the inquisitors. “And you thought you’d do it right here?”

“It seemed appropriate,” Mercy said cautiously.

“Yeah, I bet,” Caine glared.

“They can help!” Tonya insisted.

Caine looked her right in the eye, as serious as she’d ever seen him. “If they don’t like what they see, they’ll take you prisoner.”

“No!” The sisters protested.

“And if you try to stop them, they’ll torture you. Or kill you,” Caine added.

“We did come to an agreement about this,” Janie said, looking apprehensive.

Caine looked at Janie like she’d betrayed him. “You knew about this?”

Janie looked small for a moment, then stood up taller and nodded assertively. “Yes.”

“Deal’s off,” Caine growled as he stood up. His popping bones echoed through the empty library. He plunked Tonya down in the chair and turned to face the Inquisitors. “Time to leave.”

“Caine, will you please just listen,” Janie insisted.

“Not this time,” he said. “The Sisters can pack up their counterfeit Centurion and get their holy asses out of here. We’ll take care of ourselves.”

“Caine!” Janie protested.

“I know what the Eye of Revealing is for!” Caine snapped. He pointed up at Will’s ceiling. “I know what this room is!” he turned on Janie. “So do you! Hell, you built the damn thing! You really want to let them use the Eye here?”

Janie’s eyes went wide. “I hadn’t considered-”

“We have no intention-” Sister Mercy began, but Caine cut her off again.

“It doesn’t matter what your intentions are!” Caine snarled. “We both know you don’t have a fucking choice. Once you head down that road, you have to follow it wherever it leads. The rest of you might be willing to take that risk, but I’m not.”

“Caine, calm the fuck down!” Tonya demanded. “What do you think is going to happen?”

“You tell her.” Caine pointed an accusatory finger at the Sisters. “Don’t leave anything out.”

The pair looked at each other. Mercy took a breath, and composed her thoughts. “The compass on the ceiling is carved and enchanted with holy writ. I’m not sure why the church decided this was an appropriate place, but we are in a blessed chamber. It has wards anchored to it, and has a number of possible uses for the church. For us, it is where we would bring someone to reveal corruption and deception.”

“So?” Tonya asked, confused. “I was going to tell the truth anyway.”

“Tell her how,” Caine prompted angrily.

Victoria was tired. She knew what Caine was getting at, and really she couldn’t blame him. “Inquisitors can use circles like this to force people to tell us things they don’t want us to know. It is intended to facilitate exorcisms. It immobilizes the person bound inside it, to keep them from harming themselves or anyone else, and compels them to answer truthfully.”

“Yeah, Bella told me about those. It’s for the Questioning thing you do. I was in one when I did the whole witchy registry thing,” Tonya said.

“Close. When used for Questioning, the circle does not compel truth. It simply detects falsehood. What Mister Caine is concerned about is ... quite a bit more severe,” Mercy clarified.

“I still don’t get the problem,” Tonya said with a shrug. “I have nothing to lie about.”

“It’s called a Truthtelling. If they don’t like what they find out, they can lock you up inside your own body,” Caine explained. “They could take you hostage. Hell, they could capture all of us with one goddamned word.”

Tonya looked worried, then confused. “So why didn’t they do that earlier? To you?”

“I used the circle for a Telling few weeks ago,” Janie explained. “It ... got broken, and I hadn’t had a chance to fix it.”

“When we built the structure wards in the basement, we anchored them to the circle that was already here, and fixed it in the process,” Victoria explained. “It is fully charged now.”

Mercy gave Caine a pointed look. “Which, I remind you, was your idea.”

“Yeah, to get us out of here,” Caine said. “Not to let you control Tonya’s mind.”

“It isn’t mind control,” Mercy protested.

“More fucking hair splitting,” Caine spat. “It takes away someone’s free will.”

“So does prison,” Mercy countered.

“This still doesn’t make any sense,” Tonya interrupted. “If they were going to do that to me, they’d have done it before you got here.”

“If they did, it would drain the circle of its charge again. The structure wards wouldn’t work,” Janie explained.

“And they knew I’d be back,” Caine said darkly. “Better to wait until I was here so they could catch me in the circle too.”

“At the time, we didn’t even know what the structure wards you wanted built were for,” Mercy protested. “We still only have a vague understanding of your plan. We are trusting your word that you can get us out of here without wading through the war you just started. We are trusting that this nebulous plan of yours is still the best option for all of us. Why would we want to jeopardize that?”

“Because it doesn’t matter what you want,” Caine snapped. “We went over that. If you use the Eye, and you don’t like what you see, you have to take action. That’s your oath. That’s why you want to do it here. You were just hoping I wouldn’t know where I was standing.”

“We did discuss that possibility,” Victoria admitted. Mercy blanched as Caine’s expression darkened, but Victoria continued unheeded. “We decided it would be best to operate in good faith. We should have done that in the first place. We’ve learned from that mistake. Which is why we have no intention of activating the circle.”

“I. Don’t. Believe you,” Caine said flatly. “If you decide Tonya’s done something you don’t like, you’ll break that promise in a second. You’ll have some bullshit excuse about saving her from herself, and if we try to stop you, you’ll Wrack her.”

“We would have to fulfill our duty, but at our own discretion,” Victoria said. “We do not have time for a Truthtelling, or for another confrontation with you.”

“What’s racking me?” Tonya asked, narrowing her eyes a bit.

Caine raised an eyebrow at the Sisters.

Mercy looked pained. Victoria sighed in resignation. “One of the things the circle can do is cause pain. It’s called the Wrack.”

“It is a tool for exorcism,” Mercy added quickly. “To drive invading spirits from someone’s body.”

“Or just plain old torture,” Caine said with an accusatory look.

“We would never do that,” Mercy pleaded.

“What do you think the ratio is?” Caine asked. “How many demons driven out, versus how many people the Inquisition decided to punish in circles like this?”

“So all this only works if I’m standing in the circle?” Tonya asked, trying to stick to the point.

“Yes,” Victoria confirmed.

“So let’s go upstairs?” Tonya suggested. “We need to get cleaned up anyway.”

Caine rubbed his temples, unable to comprehend how Tonya could blithely dismiss the dangers of letting the inquisitors put her to the Question. “You don’t understand.”

“Yeah,” Tonya admitted. “I also don’t care. I’m still too fucking tired. It’s been a long night, and the only time you’ve stopped arguing with them is when you left us here on our own with a mob outside. I want to do this. You don’t have to like it, but you don’t get to choose for me.”

Caine’s face lost all expression. He watched Tonya for a long moment, then turned on the Sisters. “The Eye. Nothing else. You break your word, I’ll throw all three of you in this fucking circle, put you to the Wrack myself, and leave.”

Mercy blanched.

“Agreed,” Victoria said. “Can we get on with this?”

Tonya hopped off the table and marched upstairs without another word. The Sisters followed her.

As soon as they were out of sight, Caine sank back down to the edge of the table. Every part of him throbbed with a dull, stiff ache. He could feel the alcohol throbbing through his veins, making his whole body feel off kilter. That meant the angel inside him was drained to the point of collapse. Caine could still feel his soul-twin braided through his mind, but it was as though his other half was asleep. The silence and sense of detachment was unnerving.

Janie gave Caine a disapproving look that turned to concern as she realized how injured he really was. She offered her hand. After a self-annoyed sigh, he took it and slowly stood up.

Janie ducked under his arm and put her arm around his waist to support him. He didn’t like the help, but he decided it wasn’t worth fighting her about.

“You seem ... smaller,” Janie said cautiously.

Caine nodded weakly. “I am.”

“Why?” Janie asked. “How?”

“Magic,” Caine muttered.

“What happened when they tried to heal you?” Janie asked as they began to slowly cross the room together.

“Don’t know,” Caine said. He had two possible suspicions, but explaining them would require revealing more about his own nature to Janie than he was ready to.

Janie looked at him sideways and raised an eyebrow. She knew he was withholding information, and she wanted him to know she knew.

He rubbed his face with his free hand, gently prodding the swelling around his eye to see how bad it was. “Look, Tonya perked right up, right? And there’s that weird connection between us now? I think she stole it. Not on purpose, but I think it went to her instead of me.”

“I had the same suspicion,” Janie said.

Caine grunted in resignation. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

Together they started up the stairs. Every step threatened to buckle his injured thigh, and the alcohol made him annoyingly woozy. It occurred to him that drinking the rest of the jug of rum after his angel went into hibernation was probably a bad idea. The angel’s presence was still holding off the pain and accelerating his metabolism, but not burning off the alcohol as quickly as Caine was used to. Focusing was hard. He hoped it wouldn’t last long. For as much alcohol as he drank, he didn’t enjoy feeling drunk. Getting to the bedroom was slow going, and Caine’s irritation at his own weakness grew with every step. By the time they reached the top, Caine was glad for the help, but out of patience with the situation.

As they came through the bedroom door they saw Tonya sitting on the bed. Victoria stood in the doorway of the washroom talking to Hector, who was in the process of breaking down his makeshift firing position. Mercy stood next to Tonya speaking quietly and peering at her intently. Even with her face turned away from Caine and Janie, they could see the faint golden glow coming from the willowy Witch Hunter’s face.

Caine’s anger got the better of him. “You couldn’t fucking wait?” he snapped.

As soon as he said it, he knew he’d made a mistake. Mercy simply turned to glance his way and Caine felt his heart clench and seize. In a fraction of a moment the priestess’s second sight forced Caine’s twinned souls to choose a state of existence, fully joined, or fully separated. It was an odd, instantaneous tug of war. Caine wanted to wrap himself around his injured guardian angel, to protect his twin from the weakness and vertigo they always felt when they were forced apart.

The angel refused. His presence awakened instantly in that fractured moment. He had no time to assess the situation other than what he saw through Caine’s eyes and how Caine felt about it. Fully joining would hurt them both, and neither was in the right shape to endure it. He was still as wounded as he’d been when the sword that now hung from Caine’s hip had been thrust through his chest. He refused to put Caine in a position to endure spiritual wounds as well. The choice was easy.

Mercy’s eyes went wide as she saw what appeared to be Caine’s own soul fall out of his body and collapse. Caine groaned and sagged against Janie, one hand clenched to his chest. She didn’t have the strength to hold him up without help, so she lowered him to his knees.

To Mercy’s divine insight, two Caines knelt in exhausted agony, one of flesh and blood, closely surrounded by swirling gold sigils and chains, the other an opaque gold specter who’s form was marred by slashes of shadow so deep that she could see the stones of the wall through his body. Words failed her. The golden figure met her eyes, silently pleading. Revelation hit her like an avalanche. Without thought she fell to her knees.

Tonya leapt up from the bed in shock and confusion. “Caine!””

Victoria and Hector both moved in quickly from the washroom, but had no idea what was going on. To them, it looked like Caine was having a heart attack in the doorway, and Mercy was praying in his direction from the edge of the bed.

With inhuman effort, Caine kicked the door shut, then fell back into the curved stones of the stairwell. He would have fallen down the stairs if not for Janie’s quick hands.

Free of the Inquisitor’s divisive gaze, Caine and the angel reached for each other, both feeling a wave of relief as they comfortably superimposed again. Then Mercy yanked the door open. The golden light of her eyes filled the dark stairwell and shoved Caine’s souls apart again. His fist clenched against his injured heart again. The collapsed golden figure held a hand towards her in desperation, but she could not hear the angel’s pleading.

Janie stared in shock between Mercy’s golden eyes and Caine’s agony and made a choice she never would have thought herself capable of. She shoved the inquisitor away as hard as she could and slammed the door in her face. The agony and tension instantly left Caine’s body again. He sagged in breathless exhaustion. Mercy yanked on the door again, but Janie held it firm.

“Stop!” Janie snapped. “You’re hurting him!”

Mercy’s voice sounded awed and manic as she called through the door. “He’s a vessel!”

Janie looked back at Caine, sure the inquisitor must be mistaken.

“Close the Eye,” Caine rasped.

“Close the Eye!” Janie echoed loudly.

“But-” Mercy protested.

“Close it now!” Janie yelled.