Sabbath by Nick Mamatas

Author:Nick Mamatas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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Sabbath had to admit to himself that there were many things he just wasn’t good at. Even with Abathar’s gift providing him the basics of living in the twenty-first century, Sabbath realized that he was so out of place in this new world, he could barely function. He needed Jennifer to guide him back through the PATH station, and it was Miriam who reminded him, more than once, to watch for traffic in both directions when crossing the street, even if he was also supposed to entirely disregard the lighted pedestrian signals. “Everyone jaywalks!” she snapped at him. “But you have to be predictable. Waffling about whether or not to cross the street is a great way to get hit by a car.” They were like a pair of fish, these women, swimming down a stream whose currents they could sense easily, but that he was blind to.

That’s why he wanted to fight. It would make more sense, tactically, to try to bring the sins together in one place, set the building in which they met aflame, and then slice off the heads of the survivors, but Sabbath couldn’t understand what motivated them, what their plans were. The sins seemed happy to explain themselves—they mocked him with their disclosures, and even though his collection of heads weighed down his duffel bag, the sins had thus far made very little in the way of moves against him. Fighting was easy enough, and he was good at it, and he was winning, so that was what he’d focus on.

Sabbath didn’t bother to ask why Miriam hailed a yellow cab instead of summoning a car with her telephone, and why Jennifer paid in cash instead of with one of those miraculous money-cards. He didn’t know why Jennifer and Miriam had a quick and angry discussion about menthol cigarettes, nor why they spent several hours in a tavern where virtually nobody spoke the language he understood to be English, nor why the cigarette he was given to smoke was wet as if it had been dipped and drowned in some vile liquid.

He was especially confused by what appeared to be a king’s wood in the middle of the otherwise relentlessly urban concrete labyrinth of the city, and why Miriam started laughing at all the police cars and crime scene tape on the corner of Central Park West.

“We did this,” Jennifer whispered in his ear, which didn’t illuminate matters. He looked down at his tattoo—one of the sins was very close.

“Follow me,” he said, ducking under one of the NYPD sawhorses. Jennifer and Miriam scrambled after him.

“Perfect!” Miriam said. “The police aren’t bothering you. It must be time for a showdown, just like this morning.… Where are we going?”

Jennifer shuddered, then laughed sharply, like a seal barking. “Svinya!” she said, pointing. Sabbath noticed that her nose was a bit bloody, and she twitched.

“Of course,” said Miriam.

“Could somebody…,” Sabbath started. Something was happening to his lungs, his muscles. His aches hadn’t vanished, but they

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