6. Cain #3
He must've taken it from the drawer after I left, or perhaps he never put it away.
The metal glints between us, small and bright and useless.
His knuckles blanch as he holds it out, arm shaking.
His lips begin to move, and the Latin comes out in a rush, the familiar cadence of seminary prayers sharpened by terror.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii…"
I stand still as the words pass over me like air through a dead house.
The cross doesn't blaze. The walls don't tremble.
I don't recoil, don't hiss, don't become simple enough for his fear to survive intact.
I watch him realize, syllable by syllable, that the weapon in his hand can't make me into the monster he knows how to defeat.
"Aven," I say when the prayer breaks on his tongue. "I'm not what they taught you to name me."
"Stop."
"I'm not a demon."
"Stop."
"And you're not damned because touching me made the world quiet."
The cross lowers by an inch. His hand's shaking so badly that the chain rattles against his fingers.
He looks at the metal, then at me, and the realization moves through him like ice water.
His prayers aren't enough. The cross isn't enough.
The thing that makes the world quiet isn't holy in any way his teachers would bless.
"Get out," he says.
I don't move. Not because I intend to disobey him, but because everything in me refuses the first shape of the command.
His face crumples around the effort it takes to harden again. "Get out."
"Aven, I can go. But I need you to understand that leaving won't make this untrue."
"Get out!" he screams.
The force of his voice sends a ripple through the room.
Spirit energy snaps outward, wild and bright, knocking a stack of books from the shelf and making the light overhead flicker hard enough to die.
For half a second, the room's dark except for the grey press of spirits gathering again at the edges, waiting for the space I occupy to empty.
I want to tell him that the silence won't hold once I step through the door. I want to tell him I'm afraid of what the dead'll do to him when I leave. I want to tell him that I'm afraid of what I'll do if I stay.
Only one of those truths matters.
He told me to go.
I turn and walk out.
I don't look back when the door slams behind me.
The lock clicks into place, small and final.
I stand in the hallway for one breath, then another, listening because I'm not good enough to stop myself.
The first sob breaks through the wood, and the bond twists in my chest until it feels as if something inside me has split open.
Cold night air meets me at the entrance as I rush down the stairs.
The bond's screaming now, every step away from him pulling like skin torn from bone.
I can feel him behind me, the spirits rushing back into the space I left.
He's moving, not physically yet, but inside himself, the frantic recoil of a man searching for any direction that isn't me.
Above me, something crashes. I look up before I can stop myself.
The bond jerks hard enough to make my hand close around the iron railing beside the stairs.
Aven's moving now, not only inside himself but through the apartment, the panic in him breaking loose from the room I left behind.
I hear the scrape of a drawer, the thud of something hitting the floor, the ragged edge of his breathing through wood and brick and distance.
Then his apartment door opens. For one impossible second, I think he's coming after me.
He comes down the stairs barefoot and half-dressed, moving too fast, one hand braced against the wall as if the building itself has tilted beneath him.
He doesn't see me in the shadow near the entrance.
His eyes are wide and unfocused, fixed on something I can't see, the spirits following him in a grey, restless press that makes the air around him tremble.
"Aven," I say, too quietly for him to hear.
He hits the sidewalk and keeps going but every instinct in me lunges after him.
The bond pulls hard enough to hurt, demanding I catch him, hold him, drag the quiet around him until he stops shaking.
I don't. Not yet. If I step in front of him now, he'll only see the monster he tried to pray away.
If I touch him without permission, I'll become every warning he's ever been given.
So, instead, I follow from the dark.
I keep enough distance that he can't feel my hand on the back of his life, close enough that I can turn him away from roads, from alleys, from anything waiting with teeth.
He runs toward the older district without knowing why.
Or perhaps he knows and refuses to name it.
Somewhere across the city, old magic hums, the shape of a door I haven't earned the right to open for him.
Soren's shop waits in that direction.
I don't know whether Aven will find it because of the bond, because of fear, because of the spirits pressing him forward, or because some older mercy has finally chosen to move. I only know that the pieces are moving without my permission now.