“What?” He gave a very good impression of being shocked. “Of course not!”
Dr. Gloria said, “You don’t believe that.”
“Why not?” I said to Edo. “You told me you thought everybody should be on it.”
“Yes, but a small amount. Not like us. God is … too strong in us. I would never do that to a child.” He stepped toward me, and I swiped at him with my improvised blade. He stopped and raised his hands. “Lyda, she’s been like us since the beginning. You have to believe me.”
“How about everybody else, Edo?” I asked. “How about dosing the world?”
The room went dark. Even the hallway lights winked out. I jumped back from Edo, keeping him and Esperanza in front of me. But they seemed just as surprised as I was.
Only Dr. Gloria’s figure was clear to me in the dark. Her appearance required only fauxtons. “What’s going on, Doc?”
Before she could answer, someone darted into the room: Sasha. She ran to Edo and threw her arms around his waist.
“It’s okay,” Edo said to her. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
The girl gestured frantically toward the kitchen. “It’s just a power failure,” he said. Her hands fluttered in exasperation, but of course with the power out, the walls were silent.
Esperanza moved toward the kitchen. “I’ll get the flashlights,” she said. Sasha threw up her hands, a clear No! But the maid did not see her and stepped through the arch.
Sasha was frantic now, pulling at Edo, and he tried to soothe her. From the kitchen I heard a thump, then a crash of metal, as if Esperanza had knocked over a rack of skillets.
“Esperanza?” Edo called. He moved toward the kitchen. Sasha seized his arm, trying to keep him from moving. “Please, Sasha—stay with Lyda.”
A silhouette appeared in the archway. “Howdy, folks,” the voice said.
It was the cowboy. He tilted back his hat and said, “Good to see you again, Lyda. And you must be Mr. Vik.”
Dr. Gloria stepped in front of me. Her wings snapped open in a blaze of white. “Don’t move,” she told me, “until I tell you to move.”
Edo had stopped in the middle of the room. “I’m sorry,” he said to the cowboy. “Who are you?”
The cowboy lifted his hand. Moonlight glinted on the barrel of the pistol. “Have the little girl take two steps away from you.”
Edo stepped to place himself in front of Sasha. “No,” he said.
“I’m going to count to three,” the cowboy said.
Sasha looked to her left, into the dark at the edge of the room. Then she looked back at the cowboy. She didn’t move from Edo.
“I’m a traditionalist,” the cowboy said. “And it’s customary to spare the child. But I will do what’s necessary.”
Sasha looked up at Edo. She gripped his hand in both of hers, and seemed to squeeze it.
“I love you, too, sweetie,” Edo said. “Now go on. Don’t worry about me.”
She let go of him and stepped away, moving not toward me, or even toward her bedroom, but toward the corner of the room where she’d been looking a moment before.
Edo raised his arms. “If you harm anyone else in this room, God’s judgment will be upon you.”
Sasha stopped, and picked up something from the floor. A length of metal, just like mine.
The cowboy hadn’t seen this—his eyes were on Edo. “Aw,” he said. “I thought you believed in a god of infinite love.” He fired: two loud bangs. Edo jerked and fell forward. His huge body crashed into one of the chairs, then slid sideways. The cowboy swung his pistol toward me.
Dr. Gloria shoved me backward. The fiery sword appeared in her hand. She raised it and rushed forward like a whirlwind of flame. The pistol fired twice more. I was jerked backward by some force, and then suddenly my legs tangled and I fell to the floor.
The cowboy screamed and fell to his knees before the angel reached him. “No more,” she said, and plunged the sword into his gut.
The cowboy looked down in amazement. The weapon was sunk to the hilt in his stomach; I could see its fiery blade on the far side of his body. After a moment he tilted sideways and collapsed to the floor.
The angel stepped back, withdrawing the blade as she moved. She seemed to be made of brilliant, rippling flame. She turned to me, and I could barely look at her.
“Do not be afraid,” she said. “Everything is going to be all right.”
The dark contracted around us, until I could see nothing but her light, feel nothing but her heat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Someone was holding my hand. And as soon I understood that, I recognized the cool, otherworldly touch of Dr. Gloria. I couldn’t move and didn’t want to; neither was I particularly interested in opening my eyes. But I could feel the doctor’s fingers around my own, and I thought, So. I’m dead.
I didn’t feel any anger about this, or disappointment. Only relief.
A decade ago I’d woken up in a hospital with Dr. Gloria sitting beside me, her hand in mine as it was now. My mind had been hammered flat by three facts: There was a Higher Power; It loved me; and there was no escaping It.
In the years that followed, I desperately tried to forget this revelation. Write it off. Discredit it with everything I knew about the untrustworthy brain, how NME 110 rewired it even further. Know it’s a trick, and don’t forget it’s a trick.
But I wanted to be wrong. I wanted that ol’ white magic. For a brief time, a decade ago, I’d become convinced that there was nothing to be afraid of. I had known that the universe was a living thing, and that it cared for me. But the moment had passed, and I’d become convinced that it was all a sham.
Now, finally, that certainty had returned. I could stop struggling now. Give up this body. Surrender.
“Not just yet,” Dr. Gloria whispered. I could feel her lips close to my ear. “Shhhh.”
* * *
I heard the roar of water. No, air. Air hissing into me, out of me.
I did not open my eyes, but the doctor became visible nonetheless. She sat beside me, her left arm in my right, but I could barely feel her. Her touch was light as mist.
I tried to speak, but my throat wouldn’t move, and suddenly I was choking. The doctor touched my forehead. “Easy, easy. It’s just the trach tube. Don’t try to talk out loud.”
And then I thought, Fuck. I’m alive.
“You’re in the ICU of St. Vincent’s, in Sante Fe,” Dr. Gloria said. “You’re going to be fine.”
Oh, I was pretty sure I was not going to be fine. Moments ago I was free, a liberated soul. Now I was caged inside a body, a body which itself was strapped to a bed with a length of plastic jammed down its throat.
“So close,” I said to her. I did not have to move my lips to speak with her.
“I’m sorry to do this to you,” the doctor said. “But that’s the way it has to be.”
“Let me go.”
“Stop it,” Dr. Gloria said. “We have no time for self-pity. There are others you should be concerned with.”
Others? Oh God.
“Sasha is fine,” Dr. Gloria said. “Untouched. She was the one who called nine-one-one. Rovil and Esperanza kept you from bleeding out until the ambulance arrived.”
I had faint memories of that: Esperanza pressing a towel into my shoulder; Rovil frowning, so scared he looked almost angry.
“And Edo?”
“You already know.”
It was true. I’d seen the spray of blood as the bullets left his body, the way his big body fell, slowly, like a century oak crashing to the ground.
“And me? What about me?”
“You were shot through the chest,” she said. “Your right lung collapsed. The bullet did a lot of damage as it tumbled around your chest cavity. You’re fighting an infection now.”
“So pretty good, then.”
She laughed. “You are not allowed to die, do you understand? Not for quite some time. And the man who is responsible for this will not bother you again.”