Sister Margaret hadn’t been human in spite of the appearance of her corpse, though the authorities would never be convinced of that. Even if some police and prosecutors might credit the idea of demonic possession, no exorcist ever dispossessed an unclean spirit with a handgun.
Consequently, the body had to be rolled in a tarp and conveyed up to the alleyway behind Mater Misericordi? and loaded into the Mercury Mountaineer. Because the gunshots in the basement had not carried to the floor above, because even the late-studying students were in compliance with early-to-bed rules by eleven o’clock, and because the routines by which they lived comforted them through all awkward moments in the days ahead, the orphanage and school remained a happy place, and in fact happier than it had been in years.
We endured a long night that included a drive out of the city and the preparation of a grave in the desert. The long-promised storm of bugs and bats at last appeared, complicating the operation.
Sister Theresa needed to concoct a story to explain Margaret’s sudden decision to leave that order of Poor Clares. Fortunately, her training as a psychologist served her in that task in a way that her formation as a nun could not have done. I sometimes wonder about the priest who heard her confession and what he made of it.
Sparky Rainking lost some blood from the cut in his brow before applied pressure reduced the flow. Prior to trekking to the desert for the interment of the Nihilim, we employed psychic magnetism to find a doctor who lived above his office, who was willing to close the wound and provide antibiotics for five thousand dollars cash. He was seventy-one, something of an alcoholic, a believer in a variety of conspiracy theories, and claimed to have seen UFOs on eighteen occasions, but he did good work.
The Oasis story broke worldwide, doubling the ratings of the cable networks that thrived on sensationalizing scandals that were already almost too sensational to be believed. Some of the depraved visitors to the Oasis were condemned and destroyed by the media, but others equally evil were vigorously defended against avalanches of evidence. As always in these strange times, justice was thwarted as often as it was dealt out, and some of the worst offenders were able to metamorphose into victims and then into martyrs; I suspect that in a few years, some will be seen as heroes.
Panthea, Bridget, Sparky, Winston, and I continue to be sought by the ISA. We live on the run, figuratively speaking. In fact, it’s more like an amble, sometimes a fast walk, because we grow steadily more gifted. We use many names and alter our appearances in subtle but clever ways.
More useful than disguise, however, is a gift that three of us have developed and that we call identity projection. It’s a trick similar to that of the Nihilim. If I want to be seen as fifty and pudgy and balding, I project that image, and thus I am perceived. Yesterday, Bridget was a witchy hag with a wart on her nose, and Panthea passed for a tattooed biker chick. This power can be also extended to our entourage, which of course consists only of Sparky and our canine companion. Winston can pass for any breed that we think him into being, but we’ve never made him pass for a cat.
I am not the easygoing Quinn Quicksilver who I used to be when I wrote for Arizona! magazine, had a fear of parking garages, and fantasized that my father might be a mob boss, my mother a former supermodel now disfigured and living with a sack over her head. I’m okay with not being him, because I wasn’t in love with anyone then, and I am now. I didn’t have a family then, and I have one now even if it is unconventional.
I didn’t have a purpose then, either, except maybe to become a novelist. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed being a novelist. I used to think a novelist could change the world. Maybe some do, but maybe they as often affect it for the worse instead of for the better. They are human, after all.
Right now the world needs saving more than changing. And so we do our best, tracking down Nihilim and eliminating them when we can, a squad of vampire hunters without need of garlic or conventional wooden stakes.
In spite of Bridget and Panthea having foreseen tragedy, we have all thus far survived.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the former me and the new me is anger. It rarely troubled me in the old days. Now it can get its claws deep in me, and I must guard against righteous anger becoming something darker. I understand why the world is shapen as it is, that we should have free will and be more than ants, that we must know evil if we’re also to know good. What leaves me sleepless some nights is the conviction that if there were no Nihilim, evil would flourish no less than it does now. Too many crave power over others, their minds autonomous zones where consideration of truths other than their own beliefs are not granted entry, and though few will ever have the wealth and power of Bodie Emmerich, they will make themselves insane in the pursuit of it. My anger must forever be a shield, not a weapon. Love is the only wooden stake that will change an evil heart; we must sharpen it and keep it ready in the name of those we’ve lost, like Litton Ormond and Annie Piper. Anger and the action it inspires must be reserved for those whose hearts will not relent from the idolatry of power. How strange is the world and all life in it. How strange am I. How much stranger still—mysterious, wonderful—that there is a world at all, or me, or you.