The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion Page 8

  Brynn helped me get a black T-shirt tied over my face as a mask, then donned her own. The police had cameras, and it wouldn’t do much good to escape now only to be arrested later. Still, with everything that had happened, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it mattered. I had no real expectation of surviving the coming day.

  We made it to the bridge just as the police rammed the bus. The steel of the Humvee struck the steel of the bus struck the steel of the guardrail, and the whole bridge shook from the impact. Townspeople lined up to push broken-down vehicles up against the back of the bus. A band’s touring van—replete with black metal stickers—joined a DIY ice cream truck and a box truck as reinforcements. We set the brakes and slashed the tires.

  The police backed up to ram again.

  Again.

  With each impact, I prayed our side had been smart enough to drain the bus’s fuel tank.

  They gave up on ramming, leaving us with a moment’s calm, presumably while they awaited further orders.

  We crowded around Doomsday. I’d never realized she was so short, not until she was masked and hiding. Most people had their attention on the bus on the bridge and the police gathered on the far bank, but my friends looked elsewhere. They looked at the woods, at the street, at the masked figures gathered around. They watched for hands that might reach for waistbands.

  As unpleasant as it was to have the massed power of the state waiting to take us into custody, waiting for comrades to betray us was worse. The woods were inviting. I could make my way over the hill, and by daylight I might be out of range of police blockades and Uliksi’s wrath alike. Travelers, they say, watch out for themselves. The situation was hopeless. No reason for us all to go down.

  Brynn found my hand with hers, and her strength made its way into me.

  Collective safety, sometimes, trumps personal safety. Friends who aren’t willing to fight alongside one another aren’t friends.

  Ten long minutes later, a helmeted cop stuck his head over the top of the bus. Then another. Things were about to get worse.

  A masked figure threw the first stone. Her aim was true, and the cop dropped down from the edge of the bus. More rocks followed, a hailstorm to keep them at bay. They were too armored for us to hurt, but hurting them wasn’t the point. The point was to drive them back.

  Tear gas canisters arced through the sky, and people with work gloves threw them back or tossed them down to the river.

  Then flash bangs. You never get used to flash bangs.

  It could have been one, it could have been several. A blinding flash of light that stops your vision like a stuttering film that holds too long on a single frame. By the time I regained my senses, several cops had made it to the roof of the bus. Two had riot guns aimed at us. One had his pistol drawn.

  More tear gas rained down, and the poisonous smoke was soon indistinguishable from the morning fog. Visibility dropped to only a dozen yards. Only enough to see the bridge and the bus. The forest behind us was scarcely a silhouette. The cars on the far bank were invisible but for the red and blue light that lit up the air. It wouldn’t be long before dawn.

  “If I were Eric,” I told Doomsday.

  “I’d come now, with the fog and the gas. I know.”

  Five cops were atop the bus, and enough guns were drawn that some of the fight went out of us. Next to me, Thursday was sweating with fear. Both his hands were in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie, holding the gun. He wanted to use it. He knew he shouldn’t.

  I was living a nightmare.

  “When Uliksi comes,” Doomsday said, “I need three of you.”

  “I’m standing guard,” Thursday said.

  Which left Vulture, Brynn, and me.

  A public address system on the Humvee began an announcement. I scarcely registered it. Something about being under arrest. Something about our hands in the air.

  “Eric says he doesn’t want to hurt you.”

  I whirled at the voice. A masked figure stood a few feet from us. He must have come from the woods. Kestrel.

  Vulture put his body between Doomsday and his so-recently ex-lover. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Look, just, drop this. Drop all of this. Let Uliksi be.”

  I heard Brynn’s baton flick open, saw it flash through the air as she put all her not-inconsiderable weight into the blow. I saw Kestrel’s face twist to the side, his body soon to follow. He didn’t fall, so she shoved him. He dropped.

  “You told the cops about Doomsday. You beat Danielle with a crowbar. You think we’ll listen to you? Do you know who the fuck we are? Do you?”

  “Drop it!” A policeman atop the bus aimed his handgun directly toward us. Twenty yards through fog, if he fired, there was no telling whom he’d hit.

  Brynn dropped her baton. It clattered to the pavement not six inches from Kestrel’s face, and the shiny black steel glittered in the morning light.

  The morning light.

  The small crew of us met each other’s eyes, and we waited, breathless. Doomsday put her cold hand in mine. I took Brynn’s, and she took Vulture’s, and we were a circle.

  Uliksi crawled out of the river to the bank, then leapt thirty feet to the bridge. A policeman atop the bus dropped his riot gun, and it clattered. No one spoke a word. Only the sound of idling police vehicles fought against the subtle roar of the river.

  Uliksi bounded atop the bus, began weaving his way through the five cops, eyeing them.

  “Stop,” an officer commanded, as though he were speaking to a person.

  Uliksi lowered his head, three horns facing the man. He edged forward. The cop planted his feet, but the antlers pushed him back, back toward the edge of the bus.

  “Stop!” the officer shouted. He fired.

  Time froze. We froze with it, but Uliksi kept moving. The officer tipped over, collapsing atop the bus, and the demon punctured the man’s chest with his antlers. Time returned just as his death cries shattered the air.

  Another officer opened fire. His gun exploded in his hand, and his face went up in a flash of fire, searing his flesh to the bone. He collapsed, never to rise.

  I threw up. Fear? Revulsion? I don’t know. But the contents of my stomach were out on the ground. I wasn’t the only one.

  Uliksi turned toward the police, raised his front hooves, and slammed them down on the steel of the bus. Like startled birds, the police scattered to the woods, away from the river and away from our town, leaving their cruisers and compatriots behind. More of Uliksi’s magic.

  The wounded officer on the bus continued to cry out, sobbing. He kept crying until Uliksi pried open his ribs and masticated his organs.

  I couldn’t wish that on a soul, no matter how much I despised them.

  Doomsday started chanting, too low under her breath for me to follow.

  “Doomsday!” The voice came from town, and it was angry.

  Eric approached, unmasked and seemingly unarmed. He strode up like he owned the place, like everything was going according to plan. Never mind the corpses.

  Thursday turned, and his hand started out of his pocket.

  “Don’t,” Doomsday said, dropping the ritual. “He’s goading you. Uliksi is watching.”

  “Doomsday, you pretentious fuck, you don’t have an ounce of magical power in your body.”

  Thursday was twitching.

  I looked over my shoulder—Uliksi was staring, intently. Whatever we were going to do, we had to do it soon. We had to do it now. As soon as Eric was done trying to wield Uliksi like a weapon, the demon was going to turn on Doomsday. Who knew what would happen from there.

  Eric was trying to wield Uliksi like a weapon.

  It came over me in a flash.

  “Oh, fuck this,” I said. I dropped out of the circle and went to Thursday. I reached into his pocket, took out the gun, and pointed it at Eric.

  Uliksi bounded down from the bus and was halfway between us.

  Eric, a grin across his face, raised his hands in surrender.


  Uliksi looked at me, looked at Eric.

  “Don’t hurt me, Dani,” Eric said, in a mocking tone.

  Uliksi charged Eric. The beast took the young man by the throat and dragged him, thrashing, down to the river. He didn’t scream. As soon as his face touched the water, he stopped struggling. As soon as he shot Rebecca, he must have known how he would meet his end. He tried to meet it with dignity. We watched from the bridge, all of us strangely calm, as Uliksi drowned him in the waters.

  After Eric was dead, Uliksi let go of his throat and the body lay half in the river and half on the rocks. The water’s slow current tugged at him, gave him a strange semblance of life and motion.

  Uliksi stepped gingerly over the corpse to stand knee-deep in the water. He cast a long look back at us. I can’t pretend to read a deer’s expressions, and even less so a demon’s, but for once the beast’s eyes seemed passive. They didn’t pry into my soul anymore. They didn’t read my thoughts and desires.

  He stepped deeper into the river, until the water was at his neck. He ducked his head under, and he was gone.

  Thursday took the gun out of my shaking hand, and everyone turned their gaze from the river to me.

  “We thought he was hunting his summoners to save his own skin,” I said. “He wasn’t. He was hunting his summoners because his summoners were predators. Hands that dared to seize the fire. He attacked Eric, not me, because Eric was goading us to attack. Eric was trying to use him as a weapon. Uliksi knew that Anchor, Rebecca, and Clay used it as a weapon. Clay ran when he figured that out. Then he killed himself, because he knew Uliksi was right to be after him. I don’t know how many times he and I had talked about it. The revolution is about taking power away from the oppressors, not becoming them ourselves. Or in this case, not crowning an endless spirit as king. I thought Clay had killed himself because he couldn’t come back to Freedom. That wasn’t it at all. Clay killed himself because he recognized the full weight of what he’d done to the world.”

  “I was the innocent summoner,” Doomsday said. “Uliksi didn’t kill me because I was the innocent summoner.”

  “And you don’t need to go out like Clay, either,” Thursday said.

  “Is Uliksi gone, then?” Vulture asked.

  “On the twelfth page, ‘What hand dare seize the fire?’” Doomsday said. “On solstice. Today. Eric tried to use him today. Solstice thins the veil between worlds. Being used like a weapon today, it was enough to convince Uliksi to depart, since departure was an option.”

  I nodded. “That’s what Clay was trying to tell us.”

  The world was quiet there in the morning as people limped to their feet. The sirens still flashed, though no cops remained to drive the cars.

  Birdsong came, though, after some time, and the sun began to burn off the fog.

  * * *

  “What will you do now?” I asked Doomsday. Five of us were crowded into a booth at a diner in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota. Next to me, Brynn was cleaning her nails with a folding knife. Across from us, Doomsday and Thursday sipped black tea, their faces deadpan. Vulture sat with his legs astride a backward chair and he was grinning like the sun had never been brighter.

  “I don’t know,” Doomsday said. “Find somewhere else, I suppose.”

  “You guys, you guys.” Vulture tilted his chair dangerously forward to lean in toward us conspiratorially. “I was thinking, Clay and Rebecca can’t have been the only ones who knew magic like that, right? Uliksi can’t be the only endless spirit out there. So I was just checking my phone in the car, right, because Doomsday told me I wasn’t allowed to post any pictures that were going to incriminate us to Instagram so I had to waste my time some other way. And there’s this forum I found where people track things like Uliksi, and most of it’s bullshit but I don’t know, some of it’s probably not. Like, there’s this private club in Oregon and every couple of years local kids try to sneak in, but most of them go missing and some of them just go crazy, telling everyone about a bear without any skin. And there’s a coal mine in West Virginia where translucent dogs have been attacking activists and this bank in Canada that’s being guarded by a headless man, and . . . and . . .”

  He was actually hyperventilating. He waved his hands up and down, unable to control his joy.

  “And we could be demon hunters?” I asked.

  Coordinated, the Days reached down and sipped their tea. Brynn folded shut her knife and put it on the table.

  “Yeah,” Brynn said, “alright.”

  “Of course,” Doomsday said.

  Thursday nodded.

  I put my hand, still mottled with a lifeless gray though no longer painful, in the center of the table. The rest put theirs on mine. Vulture took a picture with his phone.

  “You can’t be serious,” Doomsday said to him. “We’re wanted. We shouldn’t even be talking about this here, let alone taking pictures.”

  “It’s for Instagram though.”

  She glared.

  “Fine. I’ll delete it. Jesus fucking Christ.” He was still grinning.

  The server brought our hash browns and refilled my coffee, and I swirled the thick black stuff of life around the mug as I sorted out my thoughts.

  “Looks like we’re all outlaws now,” I said. “The police will be back, and they’ll be investigating the hell out of Freedom, Iowa.”

  “It’s not so bad as you’d think,” Doomsday said. She pulled her hand off the stack, and the rest of us followed suit.

  “Oh?”

  “No matter who you are, you go through your life, every day of your life, sure that one day you’ll die. One day, the light will be gone from your world and the grave awaits. Right?”

  “Well, I don’t think about it as often as that,” I lied. I looked at each of my new friends in turn. The Days, stern and serious. Brynn, as walled off as me, a slight smile on her lips. Vulture, who clearly wasn’t happy about being awake while the sun was up and just as clearly had as much energy as the rest of us combined. It felt good to cast my lot with them. It felt good even to have friends to cast my lot in with.

  “One day you’ll die. One day you’ll be in prison.” Doomsday’s face was impassive as always, but I was learning to read its warmth. “Today, though, today you’re alive. Today you’re free.”

  About the Author

  MARGARET KILLJOY is an author and anarchist with a long history of itinerancy who currently calls Appalachia home. When she’s not writing, she can be found organizing to end hierarchy, crafting, or complaining about being old despite not being old at all. Her most recent book is the utopian A Country of Ghosts. She blogs at www.birdsbeforethestorm.net and says things @magpiekilljoy on twitter.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE LAMB WILL SLAUGHTER THE LION

  Copyright © 2017 by Margaret Killjoy

  All
rights reserved.

  Cover art by Mark Smith

  Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill

  Edited by Diana Pho

  A Tor.com Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark ofMacmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9735-5 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9736-2 (trade paperback)

  First Edition: August 2017

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