The Wrong Goodbye

30.

We were a mile north of Chino on 60 when I spotted the tail. The 60, I supposed they’d say out here on the left coast, but I was born back east, so no the for me. Just one black-and-white, a Statie I suppose, pulling out of one of those spots they don’t like you swinging U-turns through and sliding into traffic two cars and maybe fifty yards behind us.

“Dude,” said Gio, who was riding shotgun, “we’ve got company.”

“Be cool,” I replied. “He’ll leave us be.” And at the time, I actually believed it. I’d been speeding pretty seriously until I spotted him, but when I did, I’d eased off the gas, and coasted by at barely seventy. I figured if his lights weren’t on yet, he’d just hang behind us a while by way of warning, and then leave us alone. I didn’t realize at the time the traffic cam in Vegas slapped a big, fat arrow at the end of the dotted line of mayhem half a country long that indicated where we were heading —one that resulted in the Feds putting out a BOLO for us that stretched from Sacramento to the Rio Grande.

Five minutes after we picked up our first Statie, two more slid in behind him, all quiet-like, so as to not spook us. It spooked us.

“Uh, Sam? Our company’s got company.”

“Yeah, I see ’em, Gio —I’m not blind,” I snapped.

“Hey!” This from Theresa, in the back.

“Sorry,” I said through gritted teeth, my hands at ten and two on the wheel.

Three minutes later, we picked up a few more —two sliding into traffic from the Nogales Street entrance in Rowland Heights, and a third swinging through a turnaround at damn near sixty miles an hour.

I kept the needle right at sixty-five, and my eyes on the road before me, trying my damnedest to come up with some kind of workable plan. I was running out of time, and not just with the cops. The sun had already dipped below the horizon, and the sky ran the spectrum from goldenrod above to the deepest crimson as it met the western horizon. I’d heard tales of the smog in LA being responsible for some beautiful sunsets. I had no idea if it was the cause of this one. What I do know is it was the most gorgeous one I’d ever seen —which seemed fitting, since I had a little under four hours to get the Varela soul back and stop Danny from unleashing an apocalyptic flood; chances were, it was the last I’d ever see. For all its beauty, that sunset proved unsettling, if only because the amber hues above reflected dully off the white side-panels of the cop cars behind me, and the ensuing gold-and-black put me in mind of a swarm of angry bees. These past three days, I’d had enough run-ins with angry insects to last a lifetime.

As I drove, I watched the cop cars in my rearview multiply. They were still hanging back a bit, and they’d yet to fire up their lights —but they were creeping up behind us. If I had to guess, I’d say they were hoping to take us by surprise, end this chase before it started.

Funny; I kinda hoped to do the same.

I ran through the angles in my head. The way I figured it, they couldn’t use a spike mat to pop the Caddy’s tires, because there were other motorists aplenty on the road. Not as many as I’d expected though, this close to LA, which meant they’d likely closed the onramps once they spotted us. They were biding their time… but to what end? Not to get an unimpeded crack at us; they didn’t seem to be shunting any of the traffic already on the freeway aside. So why?

A low whump-whump-whump from somewhere in the distance gave me my answer.

A helicopter.

I fucking hated helicopters.

No, really: I hijacked one once —long story —and it was nothing but a grade-A ass-pain, up to and including when I had to ditch it in the middle of Central Park. But at least I now knew what was holding the boys in blue at bay: they were waiting for their air coverage. Waiting to have eyes on us. Once that hap pened, there was little we’d be able to do to shake them. Which meant the time to move was now.

I put the pedal to the metal —or, in this case, to Roscoe’s custom shag floor mat —and the Caddy’s engine sprang to life. Seventy-five. Eighty. The cop cars dropped back a ways, caught by surprise after ten plus miles of traffic law observance. Eighty-five. Ninety. By the time the lot of them found their accelerator pedals, I’d put a hundred yards between us —and at least a half a dozen cars.

Suburb after suburb blurred by, nothing but green foliage and rooftops half seen over the highway’s noise barriers. Places with names like Hillgrove, La Puente, Hacienda Heights. Exits on a highway, nothing more. The skyline of Los Angeles glinted in the distance like some dark gemstone against the bloodred velvet of the sky.

One hundred miles an hour. One-ten.

Cops behind us. Danny, with luck, ahead. And night falling fast. Three days whittled down to three hours.

One way or another, our exit was coming up.

“Gio?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a car guy, right?”

“Sure —why?”

I took a long look in my rearview. “Behind us, we got a mid-nineties Ford pickup; a minivan —Dodge, I think; a Corolla; a Hummer; an Impala. Which one’s got the best side airbags?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

Not the most helpful answer ever, so I took a different tack. “If it were you, and you had to roll one, which would you rather be in?”

“I dunno —the Hummer?”

Good enough for me. Only douches drive Hummers anyways.

“Cool. Grab the wheel. On my signal, be prepared to put your foot on the gas. And no matter what, don’t slow down, you hear me?”

Gio wrapped one sausage-fingered hand around the wheel. “I hear you,” he said. “What’s the signal?”

“Me dying,” I said. His eyes widened. “Don’t worry, though —I’m coming back.”

I twisted in my seat, locked eyes with the Bluetoothed asshat in the Hummer. He was wearing a powder-blue polo shirt with a popped collar and a pair of oversized aviators, and he was chattering away at whoever was on the other end of that phone call like his life depended on it. I focused on him with every ounce of attention I could muster. And then I hurled my consciousness at him with all the strength I had, like he was the nerdy kid in a game of dodgeball.

For a moment, all went black, and the cacophony of the freeway melted away. In that moment, my world was just a sickly nothing, a morbid amusebouche to whet my appetite for what Charon had in store for me if this idiot plan of mine didn’t pan out. And then all the sudden, BAM, I’m puking all over Asshat’s center console —the reflex action of any newly possessed meat-suit —while some jaded phone-sex worker asks me through my Bluetooth headset if I’ve been a bad boy.

Not yet, I thought —but I’m about to be.

I tugged Asshat’s seatbelt. On and locked. Rolled down the driver’s side window, and chucked his aviators and the piping hot macchiato in the center console out of it. I eased off the accelerator, and watched the cops expand in my rearview until they were a car-length or two behind. Up ahead, the Caddy swerved wildly as Gio tried to drive it riding shotgun, while the lifeless Jonathan Gray meat-suit lolled to one side in the driver’s seat.

One shot, Sam, I told myself. You only get one shot at this. You’d better make it count.

Right before I made my move, Asshat got wise to what I had in mind for him and his precious Hummer, and from whatever dark recess of his mind I’d stuffed him into, he started screaming at me to stop. I didn’t listen. Instead, I jerked the wheel as far right as it’d go. The Hummer’s tires squealed as the vehicle swung perpendicular to the roadway.

Then rubber once more gripped pavement, and the Hummer flipped.

That first roll was the longest second of my life. The Hummer was so tall, and the speed it had been traveling so fast, that it got three-quarters of a rotation around before it ever touched the ground. I went from right-side-up to upside-down to sideways as smooth and silent as if I were underwater —and then my world exploded in shattered glass, spent airbags, and rending metal as the passenger side slammed into the roadway.

I didn’t have much time. I tried my damndest to ignore Asshat’s myriad cuts and scrapes, the shuddering of the Hummer as it skidded along the freeway, and the shriek of steel on pavement. Instead, I visualized the meat-suit I’d left back in the Caddy. The way it moved. The way it smelled. The way my thoughts rattled round its brain. See, every meat-suit’s different. Every one I’ve ever inhabited has left an imprint on my soul, and in every one of them I’ve ever abandoned, I’ve left a little of what makes me me behind. It’s one of the bitches about being a Collector —eventually, subjugating vessel after vessel chips away at you until there’s nothing left but a ghost, a shadow, a feral creature that knows nothing but this cursed existence. But today, I was counting on that fact to save my ass.

See, hopping bodies is a bit like picking a lock. You need to hit all the right tumblers on your way in, or no dice. It takes concentration, focus: two things in short supply when you find yourself smack-dab in the middle of a traffic accident.

OK, maybe “accident” is the wrong word. But who’s ever heard of a “traffic on-purpose"?

Anyways, I was banking on the fact I’d been in the Jonathan Gray body long enough —and left it recently enough —it’d be like coming home. That my key could find the lock in total darkness. That I could stroll on in without whacking my shin on his metaphorical coffee table, or some shit.

Gimme a break —metaphors aren’t my strong suit.

Lucky for me, crazy-ass stunts like this one are.

I closed my eyes. Stretched my consciousness. Latched onto the meat-suit in the Caddy like it was a life-preserver. I’m pretty sure it was.

The transition was fast. Crazy fast. Almost no time at all spent in the Nothing that stretched between. Which is why, even as I was doubled over the Caddy’s driver’s side door puking, I could feel the impact of the cop cars slamming full-bore into the roof of the Hummer.

Holy hell, was it a sight to see. The Hummer was lying on its side in the road, its undercarriage facing us. When the cops slammed into it, it leapt a few feet off the ground and lurched toward us as if by magic, the remainder of its airbags deploying and filling the cabin like oversized popcorn. Then a cop car launched over it, twisting sideways in the air in a strangely balletic turn, and two others, trying to flank the automotive carnage, slammed into the concrete barriers on either side, loosing a flurry of sparks. One flipped, one didn’t, and when all was said and done, the Hummer, two dozen cop cars, and God knows how many civilian vehicles were unwitting accomplices to our escape.

Eh. The civilians were likely all locals, and they were headed into LA proper. This probably ain’t even the worst traffic they’ve seen this week. I just hoped the douchebag in the Hummer was OK.

But we weren’t out of the woods yet. The night was filled with the sound of sirens, and the low whump of the chopper was getting louder. I scanned the sky, and saw it slide in over the roadway behind us, a spotlight surveying the pileup behind us —but then, on orders from below I assume, its spotlight swung our way, a jittery circle of white tracking across the empty freeway, reflecting off the dotted yellow lines. Its wasp-like body tilted after it as though chasing its own light.

So much for shaking them.

I laid my hands on the wheel as my meat-suit’s urge to vomit subsided, and felt Gio yank it wildly to the right. I kicked his foot away from the gas, and yanked the wheel back. “Gio, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Atlantic Boulevard!” he shouted.

“What?”

He waved the chicken-scratch directions he’d copied down from the laptop back in Vegas. “This is our fucking exit!”

Fuck. More like was. By the time I got the message, we were past it. I yanked the wheel. Hopped the curb. Ran across a triangle of exhaust-browned grass, took out a smallish shrub. Hopped another curb, and wound up back on track.

Above us and about seventy yards behind, the helicopter followed, its spotlight skittering over us every now and again, only to slide off once more with a jerk of the wheel, a random tap of gas or brake.

The exit ramp ended at a light. Perpendicular to the exit was a broad commercial stretch, four lanes of traffic surrounded by strip malls, sidewalk storefronts, and auto dealerships, their brightly colored signs pushing back the falling night. The ocean to the west had doused the sun’s blaze by now, leaving the sky overhead that starless royal blue that passed for dark within spitting distance of any major city. Beside me, Gio shouted to be heard over the oppressive din of the approaching chopper, and gesticulated wildly. Though I could barely hear him, my eardrums throbbing from the thrumming of the helicopter’s blades, the gist was clear enough. Our destination lay on the other side of the intersection.

The light was red. Traffic flowed past us in both directions, dense and steady. But waiting for the green was not an option.

I laid on the horn, and goosed ol’ Bertha into action. She leapt forward like she’d been born to, and we shot out into the intersection like a bullet from a barrel.

Horns blared. Shouted curses peppered us in Spanish and English both. The chopper gave chase a moment, and then pulled back, mere inches from a tangle of power lines. The streetlight to its left was not so lucky —it wound up a fine dice as the helicopter peeled away. Sparks rained down. The mangled streetlight pole toppled, yanking free a phone line as it fell. Amidst the swerving, honking chaos, the chrome and steel seas parted. I saw my opening and took it. For a moment, I thought we were gonna make it. But the moment didn’t last.

You wanna know the problem with goddamn UHauls? I’ll tell you what the problem is: the fucking “U". I mean, sure, most truckers the country over are jacked up on coffee or meth or Pixy Stix or whatever, and not a one of ’em you encounter on the road has had a full night’s sleep in weeks, but at least they know how to drive their fucking trucks. I’ve seen the commercials late at night on cable; they’ve got to go to school and take a test and everything. But all you need to drive a U-Haul is a license and a bunch of shit to move, and it seems to me neither of those qualifications is a reliable indicator of your ability to successfully pilot fifteen tons of truck and cargo down a busy city street. Which is to say, OK, I ran the fucking light, but I still maintain that bastard should have swerved the same as everybody else when the streetlight came down, and he never would have hit me.

He did, though. Hit me. Well, hit Bertha, at least. Smack in the rear right tire. Spun us around like this behemoth of a vehicle was nothing more than a children’s toy, leaving the three of us clinging for dear life so as to not get thrown.

Could’ve been worse, though. If I hadn’t seen him and cut left at the last minute, Theresa would’ve wound up pasted to his grill. I’m guessing getting Gio’s woman killed would’ve made him a whole lot less cooperative —and, you know, I would’ve felt bad and stuff, too. So thank God for small favors.

Anyways, when our Sit’n Spin stopped going round, we found ourselves facing back the way we came. The chopper hovered wobbily above the offramp, its rotor damaged —more keeping watch than giving chase. That bought us some time till the cavalry arrived. Seconds, not minutes.

The Caddy was straddling a low hedge in front of a Staples and a Taco Bell, and tottering like a seesaw. Woozy and out of sorts as I was from the crash, all I could think was what kind of an idiot drops a Taco Bell smack in the middle of one of the largest Mexican populations in the country? I mean, I like Chalupa Supremes as much as the next guy —preferably with some of that caulk-gun guac they put on ’em if you ask —but seriously? Putting a Taco Bell here is like plopping a Red Lobster on the coast of Maine. The sight of it depressed me so, I half wondered if I should let Danny do his thing, and wait for the rising waters to wash the world clean.

But of course then I wouldn’t be around to enjoy it. So to hell with it, I thought —let’s go save the world.

Again.

Problem was, the Caddy wasn’t moving. I must’ve thumbed the ignition a half a dozen times, but she just sat there, engine ticking, refusing to move.

Poor Bertha, I thought. She gave her all. Of course, every war’s got its casualties —I hoped to God Bertha would be the only one tonight. I stole a glance at Gio and Theresa, and muttered a silent prayer to that effect. I’d lost enough friends in my life already.

Yeah, I called them friends. Shut up.

I glanced at the clock on the dash —an old, round analog dealie with light-up numbers at three, six, nine, and twelve. The second-hand was stopped dead, and the display read nine-thirty. Which meant I had no more than two hours and change before Charon plunged me into Nothingness. And that’s assuming bug-monsters are on Pacific time.

“You two OK?”

“Yeah,” said Gio, though he didn’t sound it.

“Never better,” said Theresa. “Did you really die back there?”

“This body did,” I said. “But only for a sec.”

“A sec. Right. ’Cause that’s a lot less fucked up than dead for good.”

“Not saying it’s less fucked up. But from where I’m sitting, it’s sure as hell preferable. Looks like we’re on foot from here. You up for it?”

“You askin’ ’cause I’m blind? That’s discrimination, friend.”

“Actually,” I said, “I was asking Gio.”

But Gio didn’t hear me. He was just sitting there, one hand to his chest, his face pained and slick with sweat.

I put a hand on Gio’s shoulder, tried to rouse him. “Gio?”

“I can feel it,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.

Theresa leaned forward, put a hand to Gio’s cheek. “Feel what, hon?”

“I can feel his hands around my soul! Clawing,

gouging, tearing it free of my flesh… Jesus, Sam, is this what it’s like to be collected?”

“Afraid so. And when we take you, we feel everything you’ve ever felt —up to and including your collection. Which means that’s what it feels like to collect as well.”

“But why… why didn’t I remember?”

“Shock,” I said. “But that particular get-out-of-jailfree card only comes up once a deck —next time, you’ll feel it, and you’ll remember.”

“If there is a next time,” Theresa said.

“Right,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell her sooner or later, there was bound to be a next time. “But right now what matters is that feeling means Danny’s close.”

Theresa cocked her head and frowned. “Let’s hope he’s closer than those sirens,” she said.

I listened for a moment. She was right. They were distant, but approaching fast. “We need to move.”

We set out at a trot past the strip mall down a gently curving street that some overzealous city planner likely thought of as “organic.” Arc-sodium orange from the streetlights lit our way past lowslung ranches on modest lots, and put me in mind of faded sepia photographs, pale golden-hued mementos of better times that never were. The night air was cool and crisp, low seventies at most, and was alive with mariachi music, spiced meats, and something more sinister —the faint ozone scent of magic. At first, we saw no signs of celebration save the makeshift altars set out on stoops and sidewalks: votive candles, marigolds, children’s toys, and sugar skulls surrounding pictures of the departed both young and old —the flowers, sweets, and trinkets intended as ofrendas to the dead. But as we ran —me out front, the shotgun held tight to my chest so as to attract less attention, Gio and Theresa hand-in-hand behind me —we happened upon passersby bedecked in their Dia de los Muertos finery: their outfits a garish funhouse reflection of their Sunday best, their faces painted up as skulls, or hidden behind ornate calavera masks. As they made their way westward toward the festivities, they laughed and hooted and whooped, and shot off rapid-fire Spanish at one another. If they noticed us, they gave no sign. It was as if we were the spirits that walked invisible among them.

Invisible to them, perhaps, but not to all. For all around us —on every streetlight, every rooftop, every fence post and power line in sight —were the jagged silhouettes of thousands upon thousands of crows. Their heads turned as one as they tracked our progress, their ink-black eyes unblinking as they watched us pass.

We’d lost the chopper when we abandoned the commercial strip right off the freeway and disappeared into the relative darkness of the neighborhood beyond, but it hadn’t given up on us. It hovered low over the rooftops, its searchlight tracing out a grid below. Searching. Probing. Advancing ever toward us. But the costume-clad around us paid it little mind. Even blocks away, the music from the festival was loud enough to drown out the thrumming of its rotor, and perhaps the sight of searching helicopters was all too common to the residents of LA.

“What exactly are we looking for?” asked Theresa. “Uh, metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Gio, where are we going?”

He considered the question, his face sweat-slick and deathly pale. “That way,” he said, indicating the direction most of the foot-traffic was headed —the direction of the festival.

Theresa frowned. “How do you know?”

“’Cause my gut is screaming bloody murder to run the other way.”

“Yeah,” Theresa said, flashing a wan smile, “you never were one to listen.”

We pressed on. As we did, what had begun as the odd passerby coalesced into a crowd. Into a party. Into a sea of deathly faces staring back at us. The neighborhood to our right gave way to a city park, its rolling lawn flush with people dancing, its parking lot a makeshift marketplace where booths sold sugar skulls and loaves of pan de muerto, cheap sombreros and calaca figurines.

The rooftops of the booths and tents were alive with crows —silent, watching. Tree limbs sagged beneath their weight. Occasionally, some celebrant would snap a cell phone pic of them, the flash piercing the night and reflecting off the liquid black of their feathers —but still, they did not move. They remained as stock-still as the Yeomen Warders who stood guard before the Tower of London, Charon’s own dark sentinels of the In-Between.

“Why come here?” Theresa said. “What attracted your Danny to this place?”

“Belief is a powerful thing,” I said. “If everyone you see here tonight believes a little bit —even if it’s only in that deep, primal place in their mind that still fears the dark and makes them cross themselves when lightning strikes —that this night provides a window between the land of the living and of the dead, their combined force of will is enough to nudge the universe such that it’s closer to being so. Believe me when I tell you,” I said, my thoughts turning to my encounter with Abyzou in the nightmare realm I’d traveled through to return from my unintended skim-trip, “you have no idea what might be pressing up against the glass right now and looking back at us. Or how easy it might be to crack that glass and unleash a cleansing fury on this world. And I hope to God you never find out.”

“Dear Lord,” she said, “I bet you’re fun at parties.”

Gio clutched his chest and took a knee. A woman in a tattered orange ball gown and a matching veil looked down at him as she pressed past us through the crowd, a churro in each hand. As she noted his obvious distress, her bone-white painted face creased with worry.

Her eyes met mine, her intent clear —does he need help? —but I shook my head and smiled what I hoped was a reassuring smile, the shotgun tucked behind my back out of her line of sight. She hovered for a moment until Theresa took Gio by the elbow and helped him to his feet, and then she disappeared into the teeming throng.

“You OK, hon?” Theresa, her voice tinged with worry.

“We’re close,” he said, sucking wind like he’d just run a marathon, his face gray and slick with sweat. “Too close, if you ask me.”

I caught a glimpse of flashing red and blue two blocks to our east, and shook my head. “Not close enough,” I said.

“Could he be masked? Mixed in with the crowd?”

“I doubt it. The kind of ritual he’d be working would require space. Someplace where he wouldn’t draw too much attention. Somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“So… somewhere like that?”

My eyes tracked to where Gio was pointing. Diagonal across the park from us stood a construction site, three-odd floors of half-finished building —all concrete, steel girders, and plastic sheeting, which billowed like curtains in the breeze. It was surrounded by a high chain link fence topped with three lines of barbed wire, which slanted outward overhead. Floodlights shone at ground level to deter any would-be trespassers. I shouldered through the horde of celebrants to get a better look, drawing my share of half-hearted Spanish curses —and shouts of alarm from those few who noticed the shotgun in my hands. One passerby, who looked for all the world like an undead bullfighter, shouted “¡Escopeta!” and panic rippled through the crowd. As I’ve said, I don’t know a lot of Spanish, but that’s one word I understand. Means shotgun. Means our chances of staying hidden in the crowd just dropped to nil. So I said to hell with hiding, and took off full-bore toward the building —the crowd parting before me, Gio and Theresa following close behind.

When we reached the fence, I saw the building was of a peculiar structure. Something about it set my Spidey-sense a-tingling, though at first, I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then I spotted it: a sign, graffiti-spattered and bolted to the chain link fence, proclaimed the site as the future home of Asphodel Meadows Condominiums, with a projected completion date of three years back. The sign was illustrated, showing an artist’s rendering of the completed building —six stories tall and complete with landscaping, rooftop pool, and smiling, happy tenants. And from the angle of the illustration, it was clear the footprint of the building was a five-pointed star —also known as a pentagram.

A pentagram is a common focal object for all manner of mystical rights. Upright, it’s said to represent the wounds of Christ. Inverted, the pentagram is the sigil of the demon Baphomet, long rumored to be but one aspect of the Morning Star himself, also known as Lucifer.

No telling from where I stood which way this pentagram faced. But it was fucking big. Which meant it was capable of channeling some serious power.

And lest I think it was a coincidence I stumbled upon a giant fucking pentagram in the middle of this Dia de los Muertos celebration, the name of the place had Danny’s fingerprints all over it. He always was a cheeky motherfucker.

According to Greek myth, Asphodel Meadows is the land in the afterlife dedicated to the dead whose lives straddled the boundary of good and evil without ever tipping to either side. Guess that classics education of his was finally paying off. But this building, if it were his, represented years of planning, investing, careful construction —maybe decades. The Danny I knew couldn’t be counted on to plan lunch.

I was beginning to think I’d never really known Danny at all.

Something else about the building troubled me, but it took me a sec to figure out what it was. The buildings across the street were covered in crows. Ditto the ones on either side, and the three barbed wires that topped the fence surrounding it. But despite the fact this place —with all its nooks, crannies, and exposed girders —should have been a perfect roost, its every perch was bare.

Then I noticed the birds perched atop the fence weren’t watching Gio, Theresa, and me like the others. To a one, they faced away from us.

They were looking at the building.

At Danny’s mammoth pentagram.

I couldn’t help but feel they were waiting for me to do something. I wished to hell they’d tell me what. Because if the red and blue that spilled across the crowd on either side of us was any indication, I didn’t have much time.

The music cut out to the angry protests of the deathly crowd nearest the stage, who were not yet wise to the crazed gunman in their ranks. Over the PA, one of the boys in blue insisted they disperse. He said they were in danger. That there was a killer in their midst. Both those things were true enough, I suppose —they were in danger, and God knows I’d killed plenty —but tonight, at least, the killer they should be worried about wasn’t among them, but hidden somewhere within the skeletal frame of the building before me.

The crowd reacted, some with jeers, and others with blind panic. A mob of cartoon skeletons, threatening to bubble over into chaos. Police cruisers dotted every intersection in sight —parked at harsh diagonals in the centers of the intersections, their lights and sirens a vulgar parody of the festivities they’d interrupted.

Officers, ten feet apart, had formed a line along Cesar Chavez Avenue to the north, and pushed southward into the crowd —no doubt hoping to drive me out. Some of the drunker celebrants taunted them or refused to move, while others fled —by reflex or necessity, I wasn’t sure. But though the cops’ progress was slow, it was unrelenting; they knew full well the freeway blocked any chance of egress to the south, and no doubt the routes to the east and west were covered. They had me cornered, and it was just a matter of time before they found me.

“Gio, listen —you and Theresa need to get out of here while you can. They’re not looking for you. You can use the crowd for cover. Just leave, and don’t look back.”

“Fat fucking chance, dude.”

“Gio, don’t be an idiot —there’s nothing more you can do for me. And remember, if you can sense Danny, Danny can sense you. If you encounter him, he won’t hesitate to collect you.”

“I ain’t leaving you.”

“Damn it, Gio, don’t you get it? I’ve been using you. No matter what happens tonight, things aren’t going to end well for you. Stopping Danny won’t change that. The best you can hope to do is extend the time you’ve got. Because once it’s done, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“You think I don’t know you’ve been using me? Shit, Sam, that’s all anybody ever does. We use each other to get ahead. To pass the time. To cure the boredom, kill the pain. Half the time, ain’t even nothing wrong with that. Shit, you see this lady here? A daily dose of her, and I feel like a better man than I got any right to. I done my share of nasty shit, Sam; you know it as well as I do. You think I don’t know how this’ll end for me? Some part of me’s suspected all my life. Truth is, I don’t mind.” He took Theresa’s hand in his own and smiled, his eyes wet with tears that wouldn’t fall. “Just knowing there’s a heaven’s good enough. But if you think I’ve come this far to give up now, you’re fucking nuts.”

Theresa laughed. “Baby, if you ain’t noticed, fucking nuts is our boy Sam’s specialty.” Then, to me: “But he’s right. We see this through.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, but she raised a hand to stop me.

“I go where my man goes.”

Great, I thought. The cops are closing in, and I’m off to stop a modern Deluge with a blind chick and a dude who needs a breather when he climbs a flight of stairs.

This should go well.

“OK, first we’ve got to find a way in.”

Turns out, there wasn’t one. Sure, the fence had a gate and all —one of those slidey deals with rollers and a track, big enough to drive a dump truck through, but it was fastened with a chain as thick as my arm, from which dangled a stainless steel padlock the size and shape of a child’s lunchbox. Disc tumblers, not pins, which meant I’d need an hour and a decent set of tools to pop the fucking thing.

“Hold this,” I said, handing Gio the sawed-off. “I’m going over.”

“The hell you are,” he said. “That barbed wire’s gonna tear you all to shit —and no way the two of us’re gonna be able to follow.”

“Speak for yourself, Tons of Fun,” said Theresa.

“Oh, excuse me,” Gio shot back. “I’m sure you’d scale the fence just fine once I point you at it.”

I eyed the barbed wire, the crows wing-to-wing atop it. “Give me your shirt to toss over it, and I’ll be fine.”

“You kidding me? I ain’t giving you my shirt. Then I’m standing here half-naked with a fucking shotgun when the fuzz shows up. Ain’t you ever seen an episode of Cops? It’s always the shirtless dude who gets arrested.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, boys —quit arguing!”

Theresa, who’d been feeling around the fence while we two bickered, grabbed the shotgun from Gio and made for the gate. Before I could shout at her to stop —that lock’d stop a load of buckshot without so much as getting scratched —she unloaded two quick blasts. They pierced the night like thunder, and set the crowd screaming. I only hoped the echoes were enough to mask its origin. Somehow, though, I doubted it.

But she hadn’t shot the lock. She’d shot the metal track the gate’s rollers were seated on. Ripped a hole clean through it. Then she grabbed the corner of the gate and pulled. Freed of its track, the gate swung outward until the chain halted it, leaving a triangle three feet wide at its base to squeeze through.

“You boys wanna hurry this along? We don’t have much time until the cops get wise.”

We crawled through the narrow aperture. Theresa first, then me. Gio was last, and it’s a damn good thing —the opening was so narrow, we had to grab his arms and pull. Once he was through, we yanked the gate back into place. Maybe it’d take our pursuers a couple minutes to realize where we’d gone.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take Danny that long to figure it out.

“Sam?” he called down from somewhere high above —the voice unfamiliar but the accent unmistakable. “Sam, is that you? So nice of you to stop by, mate! Of course, if you hoped to get the drop on me, you’d have done better to leave the Giordano soul at home —I can sense his presence, after all. You may as well have draped yourself in Christmas lights —but then, subtlety never was your strongest suit. I’d suggest you both turn your arses around and bugger off while you can. As I understand it, this ritual can get a little… unpleasant for those nearby.”

Son of a bitch. I was hoping to approach the place unnoticed —to get the jump on Danny before he ever knew what hit him —but thanks to the fucking coppers’ interference, it looked like subterfuge was off the table. I guess the lesson is, if you plan on sneaking up on somebody, don’t leave a trail of mayhem half a continent wide in your wake. That, or never stop for breakfast at Rosita’s.

Once we’d cleared the gate, we’d taken refuge between a pile of cinderblocks and a heap of warped, discarded lumber, which served to shield us from the building and the street both. From our hidey-hole, I shouted back, “Don’t do this, Danny! It’s not too late!”

“Would that that were true, old friend. But I fear it’s been too late for quite some time.”

“I’m coming up!” I said.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you. You’ll find the path is not without protection.”

I took the shotgun back from Theresa, popped the floodlight nearest us. Night engulfed our quarter of the building’s lot.

“Come on,” I said.

We ran toward the building at a crouch. I kept my eyes on the ground ahead of me, scanning the uneven, sun-baked dirt for obstacles that might trip up Theresa, who ran with one hand on Gio’s back. Halfway to the unfinished, plastic-clad first floor, a line of pale gray dust cut across the earth. It stretched out to either side of us, and wended its way around the building in a ragged circle.

Alder ash, I assumed. Part of an ancient Celtic rite intended to shield those inside from the underworld’s reach. Explained why the crows were keeping their distance. I scuffed my feet along the dirt to break the circle as we crossed the threshold.

When the circle was broken, the crows atop the fence took flight as one, and lighted on the skeletal building frame.

“A-a-ah! It’s impolite to crash a bloke’s party, Sam, and doubly so for bringing unwelcome guests with you. And in your case, I fear, the penalties are steep.”

The floodlights surrounding the building cut out just as we pushed aside the opaque plastic sheeting and ducked into the building. The sudden darkness was stifling. A hand out to halt Gio and Theresa, I crouched low against a concrete support, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

The structure was scarcely more than a shell. Steel girders and molded concrete provided a sketch of the building the architect had intended —the building it would likely never become —but it was absent any touch of warmth or light. The floor was a vast slab of concrete, broken here and there with squares of black both large and small —no doubt to run conduits for plumbing, wiring, air conditioning and the like through. In our case, they were simply pitfalls to be avoided, lest this mission of ours end with us bleeding out in a basement courtesy of a compound fracture.

The elevator shaft was empty —a square column of concrete stretching from floor to ceiling in the center of the massive lobby, its doorless passageway a deeper dark among the shadows. There wasn’t even so much as a cable running up it one could climb —not that Gio could have, anyway. That left no way up but the stairs.

There were two sets of them, to the left and right of the elevator, set along the lobby’s outside walls. Gio jerked his head to indicate the nearest of them, and I nodded my assent. Taking Theresa by the hand, he inched along the wall toward it, and I followed close behind.

Turned out, the first stairwell was a bust. A good six feet of construction detritus clogged the stretch from ground floor to first landing —scraps of two-byfours, twisted lengths of copper pipe, jagged hunks of concrete run through with rebar —making any attempt to scale the stairs impossible.

Gio indicated the second set of stairs. But this time, I shook my head. If that’s where Danny wanted us, it was the last place I planned on being. I was through underestimating him.

I scanned the room, spotted what I was looking for: a ladder. Then I braced it against the edge of a goodly patch of darkness on the ceiling —an aperture intended, I suspect, for an air duct —and began to climb, the sawed-off clanking dully against the rungs as I ascended.

When I reached the top, I paused, scanning the second floor for any sign of danger before I climbed off the ladder. Then I whispered for Gio and Theresa to follow. For about the thousandth time today, I questioned the logic of bringing a blind woman into this. And for about the thousandth time today, I decided it didn’t much matter; if we failed, she was as good as dead anyways —washed away with the rest of humanity in the next Great Flood.

It wasn’t a comforting thought.

Whatever her handicap, Theresa was lithe and silent as a cat scaling the ladder. Gio was another story altogether. By the time he reached the top, he was huffing and puffing like he had a bone to pick with some little pigs, and he didn’t so much climb off the ladder as collapse beside it.

“Jesus, dude,” he whispered. “Your buddy couldn’t finish the goddamn elevator? And did you bother to look down when you climbed up here? There’s a hole just like this one right below it, and I’m pretty sure it don’t stop there —if the ladder’d slipped, we woulda wound up in the second subbasement or some shit.”

“I told you, neither of you have to come.”

“And I told you, you ain’t getting rid of us that easy. Now, let’s go kick some bad-guy ass.”

He rolled over and scrabbled to his feet, and then muttered, “The fuck?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Dunno.” He leaned down, groped at his leg a sec. “No big,” he said, waving his hand at me like I could see for a damn by the faint light filtering through the plastic sheeting from outside. “Just got tangled in some wire, is all.”

“Gio, don’t move.”

But it was too late. From somewhere in the darkness, I heard a tinkle of shattered glass. And then, the room began to shake.

“Gio,” Theresa whispered, “what the hell did you do?”

I grabbed the wire from his hands and followed it. It terminated in the center of the room, its end tied around the jagged neck of a wine bottle, which had until recently been perched precariously atop a folding chair. But it hadn’t contained wine. The black stain that spread across the floor beneath the chair smelled of iron. Of death. Of blood.

I noticed something else, then, too. A pattern on the floor, encircling the chair and the growing stain. It glowed a sickly green, intensifying as the blood soaked into the concrete. At first, my mind could make no sense of its elaborate symbology, but as the glow intensified, it resolved itself before me. It was less a language than a sort of stylized image, one that conveyed greed, temptation, seduction, absorption —followed by a hollow eternity of oneness, of torment, of relentless hunger.

I might not’ve recognized the language in which it had been written, but I realized at once what these symbols said.

Abyzou.

“Guys,” I shouted, all pretense of stealth abandoned, “we need to move!”

I ran back the way I came. From behind me came a horrible rending sound, as if the very fabric of reality had torn apart.

And then a sickly wet slithering of tentacles against concrete.

And then the chitinous clicking of the demon’s beak.

“Don’t look at it!” I shouted.

“Don’t look at what?” Gio replied in alarm.

“No problem on my end,” Theresa said, though the bravado in her voice rang false.

I came upon the conduit so fast, I damn near fell in. Then Gio and I hoisted the ladder up through the hole, and tried to brace it against the one above.

But we were too late. A tentacle lashed out from the darkness, glistening in the watery light filtering through the plastic sheeting from the street, and swatted the ladder. It clattered across the room and skittered off the unprotected edge, tearing loose a sheet of plastic and toppling to the dirt lot a floor below. When it hit, it loosed a flurry of surprised shouts, and a pop-pop of startled gunfire. The police were closing in.

I aimed the sawed-off at the darkness, and it thundered in my hand. Then another tentacle wrapped itself around its barrel and yanked it from my grasp.

A wet dragging sound filled the air as Abyzou approached. I caught a glimpse of glistening gray skin, and felt a sudden pressure in my mind. Join us, it said. Join us and never be alone again. Luxuriate in ecstatic, excruciating want for all eternity.

I clutched my hands to my head, and tried to shake the thoughts. Only when I pressed tight my eyes did they ease, but even then I couldn’t banish them. Beside me, I heard Gio whimper and hit the ground.

“So hungry,” he muttered. “It’s so goddamned hungry…"

But there was no fear in his voice. Instead, he sounded full of sorrow. Sorrow and longing.

I fell to my knees. I knew if I didn’t do something soon, Gio would succumb, and he’d forever be one with this queen bitch of the underworld. But for the life of me, I couldn’t muster the will to stop her.

“Jesus Christ,” Theresa said, “what the fuck is wrong with you two?”

A wet fwack like hitting a waterbed with a baseball bat, and the cursed creature squealed. The pressure in my mind suddenly eased. Another couple, and I once more found my feet. I opened my eyes, and the pressure once more intensified, though not so badly as it had before. And what I saw amazed me: damn near seven feet of Afroed black woman going to town on a massive, squid-like hell beast with a length of rebar like it was some kind of unholy piñata.

If Abyzou had an ass, Theresa was seriously kicking it.

“You boys OK back there?” she yelled. Her voice was hoarse from exertion, and she was covered in green-black gore, but I could swear her tone was positively cheery. And still, she kept on swinging.

“Getting there,” I managed. “You?”

“Right as rain.” Fwack. “This bitch keeps trying to show me something,” she continued. “I can feel her rattling round my brain, trying to trick my eyes. Sucks for her they ain’t worked in years.”

“That’s my baby!” Gio cheered, though when I looked at him, I found he was facing in the wrong direction, his eyes buried in the crook of one elbow.

“Now, you boys got a job to do. I got this chick.”

“You sure?”

“Hell yes, I am. I’ma teach her a lesson for hitting on my man.”

Gio protested, but he was no help to her down there and knew it. So reluctantly, he came with. Since Abyzou had relieved us of our ladder, we were forced to take the stairs. I’d hoped we’d already avoided —or, in the case of Abyzou, triggered —any protections Danny’d enacted, but if I’m being honest, I knew damn well we hadn’t.

Each floor was separated by maybe twenty steps, with a landing in the middle. The stairwell was molded concrete, with no handrails, no windows, and nowhere to hide should trouble come. We crawled forward in utter darkness, worried with each movement some fresh hell would be unleashed. It wasn’t until we reached the landing I realized Danny’d been cleverer than that. After all, he didn’t need to kill intruders —just delay them. And this latest ploy of his would do exactly that.

See, that last flight of stairs leading up to the third floor was not so dark as the preceding stretch —and with thousands upon thousands of shards of skim to illuminate it, why would it be? Danny’d never struck me as one with much facility for magic, but it looked for damn sure like he’d been studying. God knows what trap he’d rigged up at the base of the stairwell, but summoning Abyzou had been a nifty trick —and this was no slouch, either. Countless shards of needle-sharp skim hovering in the stairwell, aligned like molecules in a crystal, each one aiming a pointy end our way. Each of them was so small, its glow was almost undetectable, but together, their faint phosphorescence reminded me of whitecaps on a moonless night, or of an early morning fog.

“We have to go back,” I said. “We have to find another way.”

“There is no other way,” Gio said. “We got no ladder. We got no time. The cops’ll be here soon, and you can be damn sure Danny knows it. Which means he’s gonna make his move, and quick. Here, take this.” Something hit me in the darkness. It was Gio’s bowling shirt. His Bermuda shorts followed shortly after.

“Uh, Gio —are you naked?”

“Relax, dude —I still got skivvies on.”

“If there’s a plan here, I’m not following.”

“Use my clothes to cover your exposed skin.”

I shook my head, and then realized he couldn’t see me by the skim’s pale half-light. “Gio, this won’t work. Skim’s too sharp. If you had a leather jacket, maybe, but even then there’d be no guarantee. And if I get so much as pricked, it’s lights out.”

“You don’t get it,” he said. “I got better than a leather jacket —I got me.”

“Gio, no. I can’t let you do this. You’re not among the living anymore —which means you’re not immune. This shit will knock you for a serious loop. I got dosed with a single shard, and I damn near didn’t come back. God knows what this many will do to you.”

Gio sighed, steeling himself. When he spoke, his voice was calm. “I ain’t worried about coming back. Long as my lady’s here, I’ll find my way. And as for God, I sincerely hope he’s watching.”

He was up before I could stop him. A short, fat man in boxer-briefs streaking wild-armed up the stairs, and screaming bloody murder all the while. The unlikeliest badass I’ve ever seen —and that includes his sightless lady-friend.

I had no choice but to follow after.

The shards of skim reacted like a swarm of killer bees when the plane was broken, homing in on him with laser precision. Each pinprick brought with it a bead of blood. Each shard that disappeared beneath his flesh dimmed the staircase slightly. Soon, there was no light left in the stairwell, save that which flickered like distant lightning within his flesh.

The flight was ten steps long. He made it five or six before he fell.

Then he was gone, swallowed by the skim’s forced slumber, and I was through.

The set-up of this floor was different from the other two. For one, half the damn ceiling was missing. Broken concrete exposed steel girders and night sky, and afforded me a glimpse of the storm clouds coalescing above us, blotting out what few stars pierced the city’s glare. On one distant hunk of crumbling concrete across the roof from where I stood sat a gathering of crows, their outline disconcertingly like that of a hunched old man.

This floor was also the only one to feature any internal construction. Metal studs framed out what looked to be a second, smaller pentagram before me, oriented opposite the one laid out by the perimeter of the building such that its outermost points touched the innermost of the larger one.

Two pentagrams set at odds to one another. Good and evil. Profound and profane. I wondered which the larger represented. I suspected I knew the answer.

Plastic sheeting was tacked over the metal studs, blurring the star-shaped room beyond from view. Beyond the plastic, candlelight danced, the light it cast through the plastic putting me in mind of a lantern’s glow.

I pushed aside a sheet of plastic and stepped into the room.

“Sam,” said the stranger with Danny’s accent, “so nice of you to join us!”

Us.

He said us.

Which made sense, on account of he wasn’t alone.

She was slight of build, and stunning in all the obvious ways. Sun-kissed hair spilled down over shoulders both shapely and deeply tanned. A spaghetti-strapped tank top of heather gray barely contained a pair of breasts just this side of ostentatious. A glimpse of midriff peeked out above a skirt that started so low and ended so high, in simpler times it would’ve caused a riot. Her legs gleamed with reflected candlelight, and went all the way to the floor.

In her hand, she held Psoglav’s skimming blade.

I turned my attention back to Danny, who was wearing a strapping lad of twenty-five or so, with pale blue eyes and teeth so white they seemed to glow. He looked unperturbed by my arrival. In fact, he appeared the picture of confidence in his yarn-dyed linen shirt and khaki shorts, a pair of leather sandals on his feet. “Who’s the skirt?” I asked him. The gnawing feeling in my gut told me I already knew.

“Who’s the skirt?” she repeated back to me, her crisp Balkan accent an added barb to her mockery. “Honestly, Sam, is that any way to greet an old friend?”

Ana. I should have known. All the magic. All the planning. Danny never could have managed this without her.

I took a step toward them. Danny raised a hand and waved at me a ludicrous revolver. Seriously, the thing was so big, Dirty Harry would’ve thought the thing excessive. And the way Danny was holding it, he was just as likely to break his wrist as hit me. But I knew him well enough to realize his carelessness was affected. He could put a round in my chest at twice this distance. So I stopped moving. Stayed put.

“That’s a good chap,” he said. “You’d be wise to stay outside the circle, or I fear I’ll be forced to get quite cross.”

I eyed the circle. I hadn’t noticed it until he’d called attention to it. The last one I’d seen was alder ash, the sacrifice of the trees’ lives enough to protect an entire building from the underworld’s reach. This one was smaller, only ten feet across, and made from blood.

“Yes,” Danny said, “the loss of life required for this little parlor trick, and the one you encountered downstairs, is unfortunate —but I assure you, I had the good grace to get the poor indigent who unwit tingly donated it nice and pissed on decent whisky before I tapped him. In all likelihood, it was a better death than he had coming.”

“Yeah, you’re a real peach,” I said. And then, to Ana: “How can you go along with this? Don’t you realize what’s at stake?”

“Go along with this?” she said. “Why, Sam, you’ve got it wrong. Do you think our Daniel could have planned a rite so intricate as this? Do you think he has the skills to carry it out? I learned long ago, Sam, no one is coming to rescue me —so I decided to take it upon myself to do so.”

Of course. It seemed so goddamn obvious in retrospect. Only Ana could have conjured Abyzou so easily. Only she would have the mystical mojo to pull all this off.

“So it’s been you all this time? You who set Danny up as a runner for Dumas? You who sent him to double-cross me?”

“I’m my own man,” Danny protested. “My decisions were my own.”

“Sure they were. So you’re saying it sat OK with you, stealing the Varela soul from an old friend?”

“It was a necessary evil; the ritual requires a truly corrupt soul. The energy it releases upon its destruction breaks hell’s bond of servitude as it fuses soul to flesh forever. Hence the young, choice meat-suits —we’ll be stuck with them from here on out. And besides, you’re one to talk of bloody loyalty. I’ve not forgotten what you did to Quinn.”

“Damn it, Danny —I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m not the one who got Quinn shelved.”

“Yeah, right,” he spat. “I suppose Ana didn’t hear you rat him out, then.”

My God. All these years, I’d had it backward. Danny hadn’t turned Ana against me. Ana had turned Danny.

And that’s when the pieces clicked into place.

“This building,” I said to her. “The design, the construction —the research to get the ritual just right. Inserting Danny into Dumas’s operation. Hell, calling in an angelic air-strike so you could get your hands on a grade-A skimming blade… the groundwork to orchestrate all that must’ve taken years.”

Ana laughed, short and bitter. “Years? Try decades. I first had to pinpoint the exact moment and location of the necessary celestial alignment —no small feat given how deep any mention of this ritual was buried. And even with a Collector’s unique skill set, getting money enough was a challenge. Transferring the funds from wealthy meat-suits to procure the land seemed simple enough, but it proved slower than anticipated —I had to do so without raising hackles. And then there was the matter of organizing today’s celebration.”

“But the Dia de los Muertos has been celebrated in this square for over thirty years.”

Ana laughed. “You think that’s by accident? Every year, this festival has grown, and every year, it’s free of charge to all who wish to come. Oh, I’ll grant you, the folks who throw it haven’t the faintest idea I’m involved —I’ve been careful to shield both my money and my more arcane influences from public view. And it all culminates in one night, in one moment —after which Danny and I will both be free. Danny, the Varela.”

Danny removed from his pocket a swirling, grayblack orb. The Varela soul. I inched forward, but he once more trained his gun on me, and once more I stopped, chastened.

“Danny, don’t. Don’t give it to her. You have no idea the hell on earth that you’ll unleash by going through with this.”

Danny smiled then, his youthful expression painful in its naïveté. “Ana’s found a way round it,” he said. “A spell that’ll disperse the energy safely once it’s freed us. Those nearest the ritual —like you, perhaps, or the two you’ve brought —might not fare so well, but I assure you, those beyond the fence will be fine.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Why shouldn’t I? Unlike you, she’s never lied to me.”

“No? So it’s not possible she’s the one who turned Quinn in?”

Ana bristled. “The Varela, Danny.”

“She said herself she’s been working toward this night for thirty years. Tell me, have you known the whole time what she had in store? Or did she only bring you in when she realized she couldn’t pull it off alone? When she realized someone would have to stick their neck out to get the tools, the soul, the expertise she needed.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Ana snapped.

“She brought me in five years ago,” he said. “But I never thought…”

“What? Never thought that she was using you? That you were nothing but a patsy to her? Maybe that’s what Quinn was once, too —or maybe he overheard something he shouldn’t have. Twenty-seven years he’s spent shelved, and for all those twentyseven years, she’s told you it was me who turned Quinn in, while the whole time she schemed in secret, working toward this night. Tell me, Ana, was Quinn helping you? Did he prove a liability —a loose end in your plan?”

“Quinn was a mistake!” she screamed, and then caught herself —her shoulders sagging, her face falling in dismay.

“Ana?” This from Danny: quiet, unsure.

“I never wanted this for him,” she said. “He was a friend. Hell, he was scarcely more than a child. I hadn’t thought when I asked of him a simple errand it would end so poorly, but then, I had no idea the boy spoke Latin.”

“He was Catholic, Ana,” I said. “An altar boy. In those days, they all did.”

“I’d sent him to procure a manuscript from a monastery in the south of France —a scroll of unknown origin that hadn’t seen the outside of the stone reliquary in which it had been sealed in centuries. I’d been tipped to it by a demon contact who swore he’d had a hand in writing it, and his tip was sound; it proved the fullest account of the Brethren I had ever seen. The problem was, young Quinn had seen it too —seen it, and translated its contents —and his enthusiasm at the prospect of escaping this life was too much for him to bear. He wanted to tell the both of you —to attempt the ritual immediately —and try though I did, I could not persuade him otherwise. So instead, I had to silence him.”

“Ana,” Danny said. “Fuck. How could you?”

“I did what I had to do,” was her retort.

“And tonight?” Danny asked. “Have you really devised a spell that will protect against the Deluge, or are six billion fucking people an acceptable sacrifice for your freedom?”

“For our freedom,” she corrected. “And they won’t all die. After all, many survived the last. And who are you to say this is a bad thing? It seems to me, a cleansing flood would likely do this cesspool of a world some good.”

Danny’s face twisted in horror. “So your protection spell–”

“–is one-way,” she said. “It will keep us safe from what’s to come. It’s all I could manage. It’s all we really need.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, to Ana or to me I wasn’t sure. But then he threw me the Varela soul, and said to her, “I won’t let you do this. I can’t.”

I dropped the Varela in my pocket. Watched the two of them standing there inside the circle —Danny’s eyes brimming with tears, and Ana shaking with rage barely contained.

“You have no right to take this from me,” she spat. “But if you don’t want to join me, you may prove useful yet.”

She was on him so fast, I didn’t have a chance to react. She swung the skim blade down hard on his gun hand, its rounded edge connecting with his wrist in a crunch of shattered bone. Then she kicked out his knee, and he toppled forward. With speed and strength that smacked of magical enhancement, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and dragged him backward to the center of the circle. He knelt before her, his arms dangling at his sides, his face a mask of pain. His back arched as her knee pressed against it, the skimming blade poised above his breast.

“What do you say, Sam —do you suppose our boy Danny’s soul is dark enough?”

“Ana, don’t.”

I eyed Danny’s gun, which lay ten feet from where I stood —three feet inside the circle. She picked up on my intent and said, “I wouldn’t.”

“Sam,” Danny said. “I’m so bloody sorry.”

“Hey,” I told him, “you can’t help who you love.”

He laughed through the pain.

“For what it’s worth,” she said to him, “I’m sorry, too. But this is my only chance. There’s only one way this can end.”

I glanced around for a weapon —for anything to end this stalemate. All I saw was the silhouette of Charon sketched in crows —highlighted by the jittery spotlight of an approaching police helicopter, and standing there infuriatingly immobile as if he cared not what went on below.

Or perhaps as if he was incapable of intervening.

Danny tracked the direction of my gaze, and spotted Charon lying in wait. Then he nodded at me almost imperceptibly, as if he understood what must be done. As if giving me his consent.

Such a small gesture —so small, Ana hadn’t even noticed it. And yet it was enough to break my heart.

A lump rose in my throat then, and tears welled in my eyes. But I refused to let them spill over. Not when I had a job to do.

“Wait,” I said, shouting to be heard over the helicopter’s din. “There is another way.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’re going to go through with this regardless —I get that. Big boom. Big flood. But you and I both know Danny’s soul ain’t dark enough to break hell’s bonds; he just proved that by handing over the Varela you need. So I propose a trade.”

Ana smiled —feral, vicious. “Varela for Danny, is that it?”

“No,” I said. “Varela for my freedom. Danny’s, too, for that matter.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It’s the circle, right? Those inside break free of hell’s bonds, those outside are shit outta luck. So you let me in, and I give you the Varela. You do your thing, Danny and I go free, and so long as we avoid the ensuing flood we walk away as happy as clams.”

“You’re playing me,” she said. “The Sam I know is far too much of a Boy Scout to suggest a thing.”

I stepped toward her. The three of us were awash in spotlights, a second helicopter joining the first. Like heaven’s light shining down upon us. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.”

“I’m too fast for you,” she hissed. “You’ll never reach the gun in time.”

Someone shouted to us through a bullhorn, but their words were lost on the wind. I took the Varela from my pocket and held it out to her. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

I stepped into the circle, scuffing my feet along the way.

Dried blood flecked off beneath my soles, and broke the ring.

Ana, realizing what I’d done, screamed in rage, and drove the skim-blade into Danny’s chest.

Lines dropped down from above, police in riot gear rappelling from the heavens like God’s own army of angels, too late to do anything but watch. For a moment, the whole world felt as though it bent inward toward Danny’s prostrate form, which seemed to vibrate, to hum, his every pore erupting with white-hot light.

So this is how the world ends, I thought. Turns out, it’ll be a bang after all.

And in the instant before his soul let loose, bringing forth another flood, ten thousand crows streamed through the open roof, engulfing the lot of us in a fury of talons, beaks, and ink-black feathers.

They swarmed the circle, coalescing into the vast, impossible form of a hunched old man two stories high.

Just as soon as he had formed, he toppled over, engulfing Ana and Danny’s tangled forms in his teeming black mass.

And just like that, he disappeared into the Nothingness.

Along with Ana.

Along with Danny.

In the silence that ensued, I cried.