The Medium

Chapter Sixteen-1

Chapter Sixteen

Lenny slammed down into something like self-awareness. It was unfamiliar, uncomfortable. He’d gotten used to watching without being, seeing without feeling, slipping away quietly when even watching became too much to take. This wasn’t happening to him, it was happening to someone else, someone artificial. He wasn’t ready to be real again.

He tried to escape again, but the shaman wouldn’t allow it. Every time Lenny tried to sink back wherever he had been before, the shaman tore away another layer of lies, unearthed another memory, and tied Lenny down to it. It was violent, almost cruel when compared to Sebastian’s subtlety, but the old man knew what he was doing, and Lenny couldn’t stop him.

Like pulling off a Band-Aid, the shaman said into Lenny’s mind.

It was nothing like pulling off a Band-Aid. It was like cutting out a tumor with a belt sander and chopsticks, and he was doing it on purpose. Lenny could feel the shaman’s little silent grin every time he ripped something away. As much as it hurt, though, it was helping, too. The pieces torn out didn’t belong to Lenny, and when the shaman rearranged things, tidying things away and filling holes Lenny hadn’t known were there, it built something that, on the surface, seemed whole.

And he remembered.

He remembered everything that had happened to him, but this time, it was real. He remembered everything Sebastian had done, the things he stole, the things he slapped together to replace them. There were vast stretches when Lenny had been too dry and there was no memory, and those times were a relief. Thirst was agony, but it all condensed into a single point, like a flash, and all sense of time faded away. He remembered every time he woke to find a corpse beside him, and he remembered why he shouldn’t be ashamed. Whatever Sebastian thought, Lenny knew what it felt like to be responsible for death, and none of the lives down there had been extinguished by his hand.

And he remembered Kate, and the memory had a face, and it was like losing her all over again. He’d spent years crying for her, and he cried again on the floor in that kitchen.

At some point, the spirit walk stopped, but the onslaught didn’t. It was as though part of him was trying to find something specific, buried among the years he’d just regained. He remembered home, his family, the crossing, and Kate, always Kate. The moment he reached out for her and came up against the ragged, amputated hole where their bond had been. Moving east, always east. Abilene. Mara. I used to be someone. I used to be real.

Whatever he was looking for, he couldn’t find it. Either it was too well hidden, or it was gone.

A hotel. Green wallpaper. Cellar. Then a small light. Lighter. Fire. A girl with dark hair, barely more than a kid. She didn’t let him burn.

But he was more than memories. There was a hard floor underneath him and florescent light on the other side of his eyelids.

The most important thing, though, the thing that captured all of his attention, was the overwhelming absence of pain. It’s hard to appreciate not-hurting except in the few moments after the pain is gone.

“Wuss,” a voice growled. “Not a lick of fight in him. Coward, too. Would probably have just sat there and let you kill him if you felt like it.” It was true enough.

Lenny looked up, blinking. The speaker was the old man. Lenny remembered they called him after some animal, and it wasn’t hard to recognize him as the one who had been messing around in Lenny’s mind. Coyote didn’t look like someone who could take you out with a thought. He was shorter than Lenny and developing some impressive stubble, and a hairy paunch drooped over the waistband of his jeans. He was appropriately weathered and leathery, but parts of his tan were more orange than copper, and a shiny, raised scar on his left bicep showed the vaguely feminine outline of a defunct tattoo.

The cowboy stood next to the shaman, outrageously tall, younger, and wearing nothing but shorts and tall socks. Lenny thought the cowboy’s name was biblical and somewhat unlikely. He had a revolver in each hand, and he held them with the familiar ease of a man who shoots dimes out of the air in his spare time. If he decided to shoot, Lenny might have time to see it coming. Might. There was an odd sensation around the man, a feeling of bone-tired restlessness, like he’d gotten too old but couldn’t move on. His heart was still beating, though, and humans couldn’t get too old. When they got too old, they died. It didn’t make sense.

Then there was the wizard. Kim. She had a pistol also, a lot newer than the cowboy’s revolvers. She held it close to her chest, pointed at a spot about a foot above Lenny’s head. Barely more than a kid, just like he remembered. The blood on her throat had dripped down onto her chest and was beginning to dry, flaking around the edges. There were tracks in it where she’d scratched some away. She freed one hand to push her hair out of her face, and she watched Lenny, waiting to see what he would do. She was careful not to meet his eyes.

He didn’t want to disappoint her, so he doubled over and heaved onto the floor. Nothing came up, but he wished it would. He had violated her, forced himself on her, and the proof was inside him. Proof and power. He had a dim memory of her demanding he undo it, that the reason they had shoved him back into himself was so he could fix the mess he’d made, but he didn’t know how. When they figured that out, the obvious solution would be his death. It was hard for him to object to that.

“Wuss,” the shaman said again. “Not even a little dangerous. Dependent personality. Little bit of a weird feel, some kind of defect. Might be one of your Broken things. Might just be broken. Can’t tell without going in further. Not a direct threat, though.”

“Do you think you’ll need to?” the wizard asked. She sounded reluctant, for which Lenny was grateful, because the thought of Coyote going in further terrified him.

“Nah. Got out all the big problems. Everything else he should be able to work out on his own, with some time.”

That was a lie. Lenny could feel the inside of himself, and the shaman was partly right; he was harmless, defective, broken, a coward. He’d been someone before. He’d been real. He’d been someone who could trust people, trust himself, who never looked for trouble but whose first instinct wasn’t to cower. That was gone, and he was never going to work that out on his own.

Clothes rustled as one of them moved closer to him. The only one with any significant amount of clothing was the wizard. The one he had hurt. He shied away from her. Wuss.

He looked up and found her hand outstretched toward him. He didn’t take it. He couldn’t.

“Okay,” she said softly. “We’re starting over, okay? Hi. I’m Kim.”

It took him a moment. The knowledge was there, but he wasn’t sure where to look. After a few seconds, it came back to him.

“Hugo. I-I-I mean Leonard.”

She tipped her head and winced as the movement tugged her wound. Lenny winced, too.

“Which is it?”

“Leonard Hugo. He…” — A shudder wracked his frame — “…c-called me Hugo.”

“So you want to be called Leonard?”

He thought about that. He didn’t want to be called Leonard, either.

“Lenny.”

“Lenny, okay. Okay. You know we’ve got kind of a big problem. Do you remember?”

His hands shook. “I…” The most accurate word was one he couldn’t make himself say. It took him a few seconds longer to come up with a substitute. “I stole your b-blood.”

She crouched and took his hands in hers. He knew she was trying to come across as kind, to put him at ease, but his muscles tensed reflexively in preparation for pain. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had crushed his bones. Nothing happened.

“Yes and no,” she said. “As far as blame goes, I think I’d rather say we’re both victims, here. That puts us on the same side. The problem is that Sebastian Duran has a hold over you, and now you’ve got a hold over me, and if he can get to me through you, we’re all in trouble. You know anything about contagious magic?”

That name brought feelings he didn’t want to think about. It was almost like love, if love was slimy and false. His throat closed, and he could only nod.

“Yeah, well, if you could cut that cord, that would be good. I can’t help you if I can’t help myself.”

“D-don’t know how.”

“If you need to think about it for a while…”

“I don’t. I d-don’t know how.”

She looked over at the old man. “Coyote?”

Lenny could feel him in his head again. It was a lighter presence, this time. He wasn’t rearranging things, just checking.

“He doesn’t know,” he confirmed.

So that was it. The other option was his death, destroying the chain by destroying the middle link. He didn’t want to see it coming. He shut his eyes. Wuss.

“Mom might know,” the wizard mused. She let go of Lenny’s hands, and he heard her move away.

“That’ll be a fun conversation. How long you reckon she’d have you locked away for somethin’ like this?”

“If the options are getting locked up or being a vampire puppet, I’ll gladly take the former. Besides, she got me on this job in the first place. She can’t really complain if the occupational hazards get me.”

“I guess the real question is whether she’d send someone to finish the job or just let Duran get away.”

“Depends on whether you can work contagious magic through a degree of separation and if you can, whether they can get me out of it. They wouldn’t just let me stay compromised.”

No one got started on killing Lenny. In fact, they left the kitchen.

He dared to open his eyes and saw they were in the other room. The old man, Coyote, had taken a chair, while the cowboy buttoned on a shirt and the wizard rummaged through her books. She looked over at Lenny and forced a smile. It looked painful. She gestured for him to come.

He used the edge of the counter to haul himself up, but something squished under his foot and almost burst before he could process the sensation and step back. There was a small pile of plastic bags, each filled with a pint of plasma. She’d told him to finish them. He picked one up and stacked the rest beside the sink.

“Ainslie might know,” she said. “She’s got thousands of references piled up, by now. She could probably give me a place to look. Wouldn’t hurt to ask Tony and Edith, too. Looks bad on them if someone they pay gets screwed over.”

Coyote harrumphed.

“Tony and Edith are busy licking their wounds,” he said. “Besides, they’re more worried about beating the crap out of Duran than about keeping you safe.”

Kim nodded. “Truth. Someone give them a call anyway. They need to know where to center their search.”

She turned to Lenny, a stack of books in her hands.

“If you have any idea where he might be headed,” she said. The question trailed off.

They planned to kill Sebastian. That was probably necessary to keep him from killing other people, to keep him from doing to someone else what he’d done to Lenny, but the thought made Lenny’s stomach lurch. He didn’t believe the overwhelming need to defend Sebastian was his own. If he felt anything but disgust and fear, it was only because Sebastian had planted that in him. But without Lenny, Sebastian was alone.

“He m-mentioned San Francisco,” he heard himself say. Wuss. Traitor.

Kim nodded and signaled to the cowboy, who already had the telephone receiver up to his ear. Lenny could hear the slow ringing on the other end.

The wizard picked up a book and leafed through the pages. She snapped it shut again with a sharp thud and dropped it onto the table. Then she turned to look at Lenny. Her dark eyes were intense. He had to look away.

“You know him?”

“I… I g-guess.”

“Probably better than me. I mean, I’ve been following him, but I never actually met him. Do you think he’s more likely to stand and fight, or just run away?”

He didn’t want to answer. He didn’t want to be useless, but he hadn’t exactly been in peak observing condition for most of his acquaintance with Sebastian Duran. If he gave them bad advice, they could get killed. If he gave them good advice, they could kill Sebastian.