 
The Deeps

A. Sparrow

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 by A. Sparrow, All Rights Reserved

Prologue: The Horus

And I looked and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire engulfing itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of its midst as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

Ezekiel 1:4

A rumble like a distant and perpetual thunderclap heralded Karla's exit from the Liminality and transition to the Deeps. She twisted through the null space that joined all existences, emerging in a deep and cold patch of pinkish dust as fine as talcum.

In a blink, she shed all her physical pain. Worm-like Fellstraw had tunneled into her spine and sent every branch of her nervous system jangling. But the agony they had inflicted was gone.

She lay on her side, knees drawn up to her chest, basking in the luxury of numbness. Not only did she feel no pain, she felt no discomfort, no pleasure, nothing—a complete absence of sensation.

If only her emotional distress could have attained such a state of ease. She overflowed with anxieties. How would her little sister Isobel survive without her? How could she cope in such a brutal world alone?

And James! Her last glimpse of his face lingered. His panic, pity and despair. She should have felt bad for making him feel so bad. But he was no stranger to tragedy. He would get over her. Her heart summoned tears, but she had lost the ability to shed them.

The distant rumbling grew to a din like a hundred oncoming subway trains. Lifting her head, she spied its source—a massive haboob—looming over the near horizon like a rolling mountain, a tsunami of dust.

She watched it come until the wall of thick, brown dust plowed over her, obscuring everything, while the droning engine of its animation remained unseen behind this heavy veil. This was no mere dust cloud. It bore the varied texture and the intricate activity of a living thing. Puffy billows tumbled and boiled in strands and sheets and layers; vertical, horizontal, slanting; parting and clashing; merging, disengaging this way and that, like muscles and sinew and hide.

Dust coated the insides of Karla's nostrils and caked her eyes. Bitter, biting cold pervaded all. It had already sunk deep into her flesh, seizing her bones, penetrating their cores. She felt no urge to shiver, even though the frigidity went far beyond what a living human could survive.

If she wasn't already dead, the cold alone would have killed her.

She realized she hadn't been breathing and gasped for air, but found it wasn't needed. Good thing, because there wasn't much to be had. The atmosphere carried too little oxygen to sustain life. She commenced to breathe more out of habit than necessity, the rhythmic action a vestigial reflex, leftover from life.

Her body had changed. She had become less a biological entity, more a sham collection of dormant organs and empty veins. Her heart no longer beat. Her muscles functioned without fuel, her blood carrying no oxygen, no nutrient, no waste. This new flesh was a functionless, human-shaped receptacle for her soul, its former parts only approximated.

She lifted her newly dead flesh off the ground and took her first steps, striding blindly through the miasma of dust over dunes that rose and fell like ocean swells. She walked aimlessly, stumbling across the undulating plain, ankle deep through the frigid sand. The wind carried voices—organized chants, solo cries, even some singing.

She nearly tripped over another naked form, a woman with skin as gray as the slab of bedrock on which she reclined. She might as well have been carved from stone. Karla looked at her own hand and saw that she was the same. She was a Duster now, or whatever souls called themselves down here in the Deeps.

A roar like a thousand Niagaras thundered close, the precise location of the engine of its animation obscured by blowing dust. Curiosity made her stick around, even as her instincts told her to run.

She veered towards a brighter area, a thinning in the dust that enveloped her. She stumbled onto a crowd of people milling about aimlessly in the haze. Some knelt facing the source of the rumble, foreheads pressed against the soil. Some chanted and sang what sounded like prayers.

And then, as abruptly as someone flipping on klieg lights, the wall of dust peeled away and the world became completely and starkly transparent, the air so clear and sharp it could have been a vacuum. Rolling dunes and hills, devoid of vegetation, surrounded her, rising in all directions as if they were in the bottom a basin. The horizon looked blurry, the sky the same shade as the landscape. This was no basin, it was a bubble. That was land up there, not sky.

Directly overhead hovered a small and dim orb with an orange-brown cast—what passed for a sun in this place. And there, barely a mile off but moving away fast went a gnarled and twisted shaft of dust and wind, a gargantuan tornado beneath a flat-topped mushroom cloud. It dragged a ragged shroud, a skirt dark with dust around its point of contact with the land. It looked and sounded like a bomb exploding infinitely.

"Rats! Missed us again," said a man whose skin hung from his arms in shreds.

"It just wasn't our time ... yet," said a woman who looked youngish by virtue of her lack of weathering.

"It never is," said another man, wearing scraps of what I hoped was leather covering his loins. "Never will be."

"Don't say that!"

"It's always teasing us. Testing our will," said the shredded man.

"Shut up, all of you," said a woman with eyes lodged far too deep in her sockets. "Everyone, get down and pray. Maybe it will come back."

"Pray? To that thing?" said Karla. "But it's just a storm. A dust storm."

"Not just any storm, you foolish thing," said yet another man, kneeling, who had thus far remained silent. "It's the Horus."

"The what?"

"The Horus. Our last hope or final doom," said the shredded man.

"Blasphemy!" said a woman with eyes too deep in their sockets. "I know the Horus to be bliss. Pure bliss."

"Heaven's gate," said the un-weathered girl.

"We hope," said the shredded man.
Chapter 1: Deported

The Border Agency van rolled through terrain, green and familiar. Through the misted windshield, the rumple of the hills in the west made me think of Brynmawr. The sight of them made me pine for my friends at the goat farm. I wondered if I would ever see them again in this life. Not that I was expecting to die anytime soon. It was even worse. I was being deported.

Turns out, you need a special visa to work in the UK or to even stay in country beyond six months. I knew all that. I just hadn't bothered with the formalities. I never expected to stick around Cwm Gwyrdd farm as long as I did.

As one who commuted regularly between the realms of life and death, the whole idea of visas struck me as ridiculous. Earthly borders were a meaningless abstraction. No one needed a stinking passport to visit the brink of Hell, and there were certainly no limitations on how long you could stay.

Showers pissed down through clouds layered in sheets and wisps, burnished in every possible shade of silver and gray. I studied the road signs for familiar names. Neither Crewe nor Nantwich rang a bell. But I was getting all excited over nothing. We were probably nowhere near Brynmawr. The hill was just a hill.

It wasn't like we could just drop in for tea, anyhow. I was in custody. My itinerary was in the hands of Mr. Osborne and Hank, the middle-aged, mustachioed Border Agency guards tasked with getting us out of the country.

I shared the back of the van with two Jamaican guys, Frankie and Rudolph. None of us were considered a flight risk so we weren't handcuffed or anything. I don't even think they carried any weapons beyond their cans of mace. They were basically a glorified, one-way livery service.

I considered making a run for it. What stopped me was my failure to imagine a single positive outcome. If I ran, I wouldn't get far. The UK was a freaking island for Pete's sake and I had no cash on me, whatsoever. A stunt like that would only delay my deportation a couple of days and ensure that I was transported out of the country under much less amiable arrangements.

Still, the idea tempted me. How nice would it be to have one last meal at Cwm Gwyrdd farm.

***

Hank proved quite the Leonard Cohen fanatic. He had kept a 'best of' compilation running on continuous loop ever since we pulled out of York. I had never paid much mind to this Cohen guy before. Everybody knows 'Hallelujah,' from Shrek if nothing else, but I had managed to go through life completely unaware that he had written anything else.

The guy can't sing worth a lick. The last thing I expected being force-fed his stuff in the back of this van was to be turned into a fan, but that's exactly what happened. Those brooding lyrics and melodies bored into my brain as surely as Fellstraw.

This kind of thing probably happens to every lame-ass, lovesick kid, but there were moments I was convinced those songs were written about me and Karla. She and Isobel were the 'Sisters of Mercy.' Her old chamber in Root was where she, like 'Suzanne,' fed me tea and oranges that came all the way from China. And even though it made no sense whatsoever, the third time through the cycle he had me believing that I was the guy with the 'Famous Blue Raincoat.'

Frankie coughed and tapped Hank on the shoulder. "Mr. Henry, sir, could you please put on something more cheerful?" said Frankie. "I mean, anyting. Even Tom Jones. Elton John. The white boy here looks like he is about to cry."

"This is my van and I am the driver, thank you very much," said Hank. "You two can listen to whatever you want once you're back home in Kingston."

"I am serious, mon. I tink you've killed my cuz." Rudolph's cap was pulled low over his eyes, temple propped against his palm, head wobbling with every bump like a bobble head doll. He gave his cousin a jab with his elbow. Rudolph shrugged fitfully and growled, before settling back into his stupor.

Frankie and Rudolph Barrett had come to the UK on a lark. They had scrounged enough money to show up uninvited on the doorstep of an aunt in Manchester, only to be completely astounded to find her door slammed in their faces. No one back home in Jamaica ever bothered to tell them that their fathers were persona non grata amongst the UK branch of the family.

So they roamed the north of England, accepting whatever casual labor came their way, crashing in the flats of distant cousins and college students they managed to charm.

Frankie was by far the bubblier of the two. He reminded me of Karla's late friend Linval. Both shared a certain savoir-faire in the presence of doom. Linval kept calm and collected right up to his last hours on earth despite having endured a series of beatings far more brutal than mine. The circumstances didn't compare, but Frankie was similarly accepting of their imminent deportation.

Rudolph might as well have been the Stone of Scone for how little he spoke. Frankie said he was taking the deportation very hard. Apparently, there was a girl involved. Isn't there always?

Rudolph didn't show his eyes much, but when he did, I had seen livelier expressions in the bargain rack of a fish market. I knew that look. This was someone who knew Root.

I wondered if Rudolph knew his cousin was suicidal. I wondered if I should tell him.

***

Frankie finally succumbed to the music, slumping in his seat, snoring all wheezy like a girl. When he collapsed against my shoulder, I nudged him back firmly but gently against his cousin. His clothes carried a pungent musk, as if he hadn't showered in days. At least I had gotten to wash up at the NHS hospital before my release.

I was pretty much all healed up now. Those NHS docs had patched me up good, managing to avoid any major surgery. They let me keep my spleen and kidneys despite some nasty bruising and lacerations. They told me I would be achy until my splintered ribs fully healed but there would be no lasting damage.

Karla's death had mystified the docs. Natural causes were the best the pathologist could come up with. But I knew better. The causes were far from natural. And I couldn't help but feel responsible. She had been looking for me when she stumbled onto that Fellstraw. I had watched it all happen in front of me. If I could have shouted just a second or two sooner, I could have warned her.

We passed a sign for Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford, coming up on Birmingham. We couldn't be more than a couple hours away from Heathrow and our free ride across the pond. The State Department still listed Florida as my home of record, but I had no intention of going back to Ft. Pierce. I didn't care where I ended up. I didn't plan to spend much time on earthly business anyway. My soul had a promise to keep. I had an appointment with the Deeps.

***

I had no clue how to go after Karla beyond the obvious—to off myself. For now at least, that was off the table. I was still hoping for an easier way to get to the Deeps, something more reversible.

Urszula had been there and back again, like all the Dusters. She got all squirrely, though, when I tried to pick her brain. All she would say was that no one came that way anymore, that the way was closed.

I was hoping for more info, something that might tell how I might open things back up. But she said it was impossible from this side. It was only something that could be managed from the Deeps. She wouldn't tell me what she meant by 'way.'

I tried not to think about what poor Karla might be going through in the Deeps. Not that I had the faintest idea what the place was like. Urszula wouldn't talk about that, either.

A piece of lint on the door handle was curling and uncurling like it was alive. I didn't think much of it at first. It could have been the humidity. But then I noticed that the fibers were moving in time with my breath. I could stop and restart the curling at will. It never occurred to me that my powers of Weaving could cross between worlds. Good to know. It might come in handy someday.

A sign came up overhead:

M42. London. M5. The South West. Worcester.

We exited towards London. This was the point of no return. I was certain now that I would never see Cwm Gwyrdd Farm again. My deportation order specified a ten year exclusion from the UK. I would be long gone from this Earth, if I had my way.

Hank drove us straight to Heathrow. I never even got to catch a glimpse of London proper. We pulled into this gray windowless alley with metal walls and no windows. Airport security was expectant and waiting for us at a utility entrance.

They shepherded us though a staff security checkpoint and gave us an opportunity to use the loo and wash up in a sink. They brought out some bins of left and donated clothing, used but clean, some neatly folded, some tangled in knots.

I managed to find a pair of brown jeans and a Manchester United T-shirt that sort of fit me. A swatch of black cotton caught my eye and I practically dove onto the table to snatch up an oversized black hoodie, just like the ones I favored. I couldn't believe my good luck.

Frankie chose a pair of painter's pants that were about four inches too long. Rudolph came out looking quite natty in a sport coat over dress slacks that were only a little bit too tight.

We had our own private waiting room, no windows, no clock. They brought us a nice box lunch with some kind of salty lunch meat on stale bread.

"Hey, Mr. Osborne. How long we got to wait?"

"Wish I knew," said the guard. "They're still trying to scrounge some space for you on a flight."

I wanted out of here now. I wanted to crossover to the Liminality and tea with Bern. Because I wanted it so much, I knew it would keep me out.

It was a tricky thing, this crossover business. You couldn't be too eager to reach your destination or else it would buoy your mood enough to gum up the works. It worked better if you could just make yourself feel bad and let it take you wherever you wanted. You tended to end up in the last place you had been, which was generally a place you wanted to be, unless you regressed.

Any sort of optimism and longing seemed to make the forces that controlled these transitions skittish. You had to lure them close, fool them into thinking that you were the one being trapped.

I stared at the eight-pointed Home Office patch on Hank's shoulder, undoing the threads holding it on, one by one.

"Hey, Mr. Osborne," said Frankie. "Are you and Hank coming with us all the way to America?"

"Nope. We're going straight back to Yorkshire as soon as we hand you off. Some private security types will be escorting you the rest of the way."

"They're running late," said Hank, whose shoulder patch now dangled from his jacket.

"Any chance they are putting us on Virgin?" said Frankie. "I hear they have a video screen on every seat."

"Who knows?" said Mr. Osborne. "Could be anything. Charter. Cargo flight. Whoever has got the space. Depends on how many other miscreants are headed across the pond today."

An airport official ducked into the room. Hank and Mr. Osborne had a hushed conversation with him before Hank nodded and went off with him.

"Well now, gentlemen," said Mr. Osborne. "Looks like you'll be flying commercial. No restraints since you've been so nice and cooperative. We put in a good word for you. And you'll get a hot meal like everybody else. You'll be boarding soon. They're just waiting for a young lady the Reliance folks are bringing over. Looks like it'll be just the four of you today."

A door opened and a sleepy-looking security guard in a white shirt and tie came floating in.

"Speak of the devil!" said Mr. Osborne. "All rightie, then. My friends will take it from here. Guys, it's been nice havin' you, but please don't come back anytime soon." He dipped his brow and stepped out of the room.

A tired-looking girl in a purple bandanna entered. A female guard led her to a seat next to Frankie. She had big eyes, a beak of a nose and long, strawberry blonde hair that was a bit stringy and unkempt but not unclean. She wore a suede leather jacket, slick at the elbows and cuffs from wear. Her jeans had patches in places you wouldn't expect them, for color and character more than repair. She had a streetwise urchin look about her, though she seemed more on the wholesome, trekker end of the spectrum.

"And who do we have here?" said Frankie.

"Excuse me?" said the girl.

"I am asking your name? Me, I am Francis. And that is Rudolph, my cousin. The skinny, white boy in the corner is our friend, James."

"Um ... I'm uh ... A. Ellen Greywacz."

"A? What kind of name is A?"

"Oh ... uh ... sorry. I've been filling out too many forms. The A comes from my grandma. But I don't use it, except for signing my name. Most people call me Ellen."

"So what does the A stand for? Annie?"

"I'd ... uh ... rather not say."

"Antoinette? Alice? Amanda?"

"Agatha?" said Rudolph. "Aretha?"

"Please. Just call me Ellen."

"And what horrible crime against the Queen have you committed that these people want you out of their country so badly?"

"I ... uh ... overstayed my student visa."

Frankie reacted in mock horror.

"Oh my God! Such a criminal! Too much education! You overdid your studies."

"Well, actually ... it was the opposite," she said, sheepishly. I quit school but stuck around. I've been working in a pub. One of the Polish waitresses turned me in. I don't know what her problem was. Didn't like Americans, I guess."

She seemed a little more perked up now. Frankie seemed to have that effect on people.

"So why are they kicking you guys out?"

"If we tell you," said Frankie, lowering his voice in mock gravitas, "We have to kill you. Actually, I tink they got too many Jamaicans, they don't want any more of us."

Ellen's gaze fixed on me and hovered like a pesky gnat. I glanced away quickly. I wasn't feeling very sociable.

"So who's the shy one?" she said.

"I told you. His name is James."
Chapter 2: Transit

They ended up putting the four of us, plus two private security guards on a British Air flight to Newark, one guard for the Jamaicans and one for me and the blonde girl–Ellen. I'm not sure why we needed so many chaperones. Me and my new friends were all pretty docile and good-natured and resolved to be going home. We weren't going to cause anyone any trouble. If anything, I was the surliest of the bunch.

The British Air folks had us deportees board first, even before any parents with small children or disabled folks needing extra assistance. They wanted to make sure we were in place and buckled down before they let the regular folks on.

Our seats were in the very last two rows of the plane, next to the washrooms. Frankie and I took window seats. They kept the Jamaicans together. Rudolph while Ellen sat next to me. The guards, both American, took the aisles.

They were both wary and taciturn with us, way less pleasant than Hank and Mr. Osborne. Frankie got told to sit down and shut up when he tried to kick up a chat with a lady the next row up.

That was fine with me. I wasn't in any mood to talk. I think Ellen sensed this, because she didn't pry. I appreciated that.

Ellen was an old soul. I could tell that from her eyes. They held wisdom and sadness beyond their years. She had seen a lot of stuff in her time, some of it quite bad.

It amazed even me that I could tell that from a glimpse. I had never found myself particularly empathetic or perceptive, but Root had taught me a lot about people.

She caught me looking at her a little too long and I blinked away, pretending it unintentional. But in that glance, I found a confidence and optimism that contrasted greatly with Rudolph's twin pits of doom. She might be bitter about life, but she had come to grips with it. I was pretty sure she had never seen Root. Few people do and even fewer live to tell about it.

Overhead bins slammed. The aisles cleared. Ellen picked up a Sky Mall catalog and commented on some strange cat toy. I stared straight ahead and grunted.

She probably thought me rude or standoffish, but I was just trying to settle down and get my head into that fugue state where Root could come and take my soul away for a while. Then again, even when I tried to be friendly, my social graces had never been anything to brag about.

We taxied. Stowed our electronics devices. Ignored the safety briefing. And the plane took off.

Still not a glimmer of Root showed itself. I wanted to go back there so badly. Too badly. That was the problem.

Once we got up to cruising altitude and the stewardesses brought the beverage cart around, I gave up trying and broke out of my shell.

"Where you from?" I blurted, out of nowhere.

She put down the 'in flight' magazine and looked at me like I was some piece of furniture that had miraculously acquired the power of speech.

"Um ... well, I grew up in Connecticut, but I had been going to school in Maine ... before I came out here."

"What school?"

"Bates," she said.

"Oh!" I said, feigning recognition even though I had never heard of it before.

"Yeah. They say it's a really good school, I guess. I ... uh ... wasn't a very good student. I kind of hung out with the townies—my Somalian friends in downtown Lewiston. I really only went there for the study abroad."

"Why didn't you just go to college in England?"

"I ... I wasn't sure I'd like it. I had never been there before. I just thought it'd be cool, I mean ... I was a big Harry Potter and Dr. Who fan. Turns out, it's more like 'Skins.'

"Skins?"

"A series on E4. Dysfunctional teens. Suburban blight. You know. That sort of thing. The slimy underbelly."

"So ... you going back ... to Bates?"

"Nah. I'm done. I'm done with college."

"Me too," I said.

"Oh? Where did you go?"

"I didn't."

"Are you even ... college age?"

"Um ... yeah. Don't I look it?"

"You look young," she said. "Younger than me."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"I'm ... almost twenty," I said, truthfully, though I was tempted to lie.

"Hmm. You look even younger," she said. "Except ... except for your eyes."

I wondered if she could see the Root in me the way I saw it in Rudolph. Would she realize what she was looking at if she did? Doubtful.

"So where did they nab you?" I said. "Did I hear you say you were working in a pub?"

"Yup. In Cheltenham."

"Sounds ... familiar."

"It's a nice, little tourist town on the edge of the Cotswolds."

"Oh, right. I think I've actually been there. I was working for a while on a goat farm in Brynmawr."

"South Wales. Yup. I know it. We were practically neighbors." said Ellen with a big smile that betrayed as much bitterness as it did sweetness.

***

As the meal cart inched its way down the aisle, I leaned against the window and stared through the broken clouds. Ponds took turns glinting at us, one by one. We passed over villages—clusters of cobble and slate, nodes in a network of roads and walls. And then came an abrupt and jagged line of bluffs and beaches, waves breaking in frothy arcs.

It pained me to watch all that green terrain slip away into open ocean. I hadn't felt half as bereft leaving Florida for good, and I couldn't understand why.

The feeling of connection I felt with the British Isles was a little difficult to explain. I was three generations removed from my Dad's Irish ancestors. Was it because this was the only place I had ever known the earthly version of Karla? Could it be that simple?

All my pondering spurred an involuntary but familiar chain reaction. I stifled a sly thrill, disengaging my mind, nurturing the process, letting things fall where they may. Any attempt to guide the outcome would make it all go away. This is what Karla called 'surfing.'

And wouldn't you know, those dang tendrils came for me, entangling my soul, pulling it free from my body. I felt myself tumbling through the floor of the plane. It didn't matter if a soul was six feet under or cruising at thirty-nine thousand feet when the Liminality calls.
Chapter 3: Grave

Low clouds dumped a steady rain. Drops pocked every puddle. I was back in that hollow, nestled against the foothills of the massif harboring Frelsi and its dead sister city from which I had raised an army of Old Ones.

Rainy season had set in with a vengeance. The once dainty trickle of a waterfall that drained a hanging valley was now an engorged and dirty torrent that pounded into its bowl. My little pond was a sea, submerged by the overflow of the flooded creek. The few patches of high ground were now islands.

One such island surrounded the big old weeping willow I had created from a shrub. Its droopy and pendulous branches swayed in the wind. It amazed me that it had not already come undone. At its base, flood waters lapped at Karla's grave mound.

The sight jolted me. It was still difficult to believe that she was gone. My pulse pounded. I had a pilgrimage to make.

I waded through knee deep water across the shelf of sediments that formed the banks of the pond in dry season. The hilt of the ancient sword I had found in the ruins where I had awakened Mr. O protruded above the surface, right where I had jabbed it into the mud beside my throne of clay. I yanked it out and swished it around in the water to clean off the mud. Not a hint of corrosion marred the gleaming metal.

Keeping my eyes on that willow, I swung around in a wide arc, working my way over to the other side of the pond, probing the mud with my toes to avoid ledges and holes obscured by the murk. The water was surprisingly warm, but then again, my body didn't seem to sense temperature extremes as acutely in this place.

When I reached Karla's grave mound, my heart plunged like a slug of molten lead. It dropped me to my knees. I lowered my forehead to the moss covering it.

I remembered the first morning after dad's passing. I woke up, half alert, assuming he was still alive, just like he had been every other morning of my life. That our family was intact. That it was the beginning of another ordinary day.

Then it was like, oh shit! He's gone! He's really gone!

Seeing this pile of dirt that I dug out by myself, knowing who lie beneath it because I put her there, that made the reality hit home. This wasn't a dream, either. She was really gone.

I reared my head back screamed, my wails echoing off the walls of the canyon, reverberating until the roar of the waterfall swallowed it back up. Leaning heavily on the sword, I got back up on my feet.

I couldn't stand the thought of Karla's body down under all this mud, protected only by that thin, cloth shroud. The image greatly disturbed me.

But what was I going to do? Dig her up and move her body to higher ground? I told myself that body down there wasn't really her. It was just a receptacle for her soul, one of many probably associated with every manifestation of existence. This particular shell of hers might be ruined, but there was another one somewhere, right now roaming the Deeps.

That sort of made sense, but I wasn't sure I believed it. It sure felt like she was gone forever.

I turned and faced the exit to the canyon, gazing out over the pitted plains. I needed to pay a visit to my old buddy Bern.
Chapter 4: Attack

I picked my way along a pile of stony rubble at the base of the canyon wall, the only dry land between the cliffs. The plains at least would be dry once I got beyond the fan of outwash that spilled from the mouth of the canyon. Those pits and tunnels were good for drainage, if nothing else.

Stones clattered down from the opposite bluff. Something bulky moved across a cleft in the boulders topping the promontory. Someone was up there watching me.

Duster spies, perhaps? Urszula? I beamed a smile up into the rain and waited for her to show herself on her mantis.

But nothing budged. The rain continued to pour down. A puff of cloud drifted down and veiled the rocks, but otherwise all was still. Maybe the stones had been loosened by the rain.

Suddenly self-conscious of my nakedness. I plucked some leaves from a shrub and expanded them into a cottony fabric that I shaped into my typical black hoodie and blue jeans. If I was about to have company, I had to make myself look presentable. No one wanted to look at my skinny behind.

I continued on my way. A pair of leathery triangles rose out of the mists at the crest of the butte. Wings. But they belonged to no dragonfly or mantid. They were dark and jointed and angular like a pterodactyl's.

The beast that owned them looked like a winged maggot. A horn-like proboscis projected forward from its narrow snout. The damned thing was a Reaper—one of the mutant variants the Frelsians had gotten so good at breeding—spiker with wings.

The beast that owned them launched itself off the precipice. It dove straight at me.

I looked for a place to flee, but didn't have much choice. I was trapped between the flooded creek and the canyon wall. I gripped the sword in both hands and braced myself. The thing was neither nimble nor strong as a flier. It was more a glider. When a blast of wind knocked it off course, it struggled to curve back around.

I tried to stay calm. I held out the sword and tried to summon a spell. But the two goals worked at counter purposes. Staying calm was not compatible with powerful spell craft. So I let the fear take me. I let myself be annoyed.

I was running out of time. The spiker crashed and skidded on the bank of the creek, wing joints and rear claws scraping a deep groove in the damp sand. It was an ugly thing, with a semi-translucent hide through which the outline of its organs was faintly visible. It jabbed its elbows in the ground and clambered after me.

I had no choice but to use my sword as simply a blade. The spiker lunged, trying to impale me with its proboscis. I dodged aside and took a swipe, slashing a furrow in its hide. With a groan, it wheeled around and came back at me. I danced away, taking advantage of its clumsiness on the ground. But it made up for its unwieldy wings with vicious determination.

I backed away down the narrow strip of dry land along the canyon wall. It was all I could manage not to trip on the loose rubble. I scanned the sky over the plains for a friendly mantid or two, but all I saw were low-hanging clouds, rumpled and quilted beneath.

Across the canyon, another shower of gravel came spilling down a chute. A second winged spiker surmounted the butte and stretched its wings. Things were about to get twice as hairy.

A strange cloud appeared over the ridge-top and a swarm of smaller things came zipping through the cleft harboring the waterfall.

The first spiker took advantage of my distraction to hurl itself at me. Only my reflexes saved me. I leaped back and batted its lance-like snout aside with the flat of my blade. It crashed headlong into a cliff. I scurried away, crab-like while it regathered its ungainly self.

The second spiker came gliding down, aiming for an outcropping of bedrock between me and the outlet to the canyon. The damned thing was aiming to trap me. I got up and ran, tripping and sliding over the loose stone underfoot.

The gliding spiker adjusted its flight path, squealing with anticipation as it homed in on me. I fell, dropped the sword, retrieved it, frantically.

Panic thrummed my nerves. The first spiker flailed at me with a pair of hooked claws projecting from its wing tips, just missing. I dove into a pocket in the rubble as it slashed its other wing where my head had just been.

The first beast was so close now I could smell it and it reeked like spoiled meat. This was a Reaper through and through, an enemy of the soul. Its mere presence inspired a primeval hatred to ignite in me, for all the humanity this breed of demon had dragged to destruction.

Something switched on inside my heart. The sword became more than a sword. I took a deep breath as something loosened inside me and a buzzing energy filled my nervous system.

The first monster reared up over me, aligning its proboscis with my chest, ready to plunge.

Without any conscious effort on my part, the energy building inside me released. It broke loose like a dam with too much river piled up behind it. A beam of diffuse light came pouring out of the sword tip, bending at random like a lazy lightning bolt.

It struck the spiker full on in the snout and blew its head to bits. Its body instantly slumped.

The second spiker crash-landed behind me, sending up a shower of wet grit. I rolled to face it, to do battle with it next but it was already writhing in the rubble pile with a half dozen giant bees attached and a dozen more swarming about in tight, angry circles, itching for a sting.

One bee flew over and landed right next to me. Oblivious to its battling sisters, it regurgitated a drop of nectar and offered it to me. I wasn't in the mood for refreshment. I shooed it away.

The headless spiker slashed its claws about blindly before collapsing in a pool of its yellowish blood. The other beast lay crumpled on its side, as the bees continued to pump it with venom.

I got up and staggered off towards the outlet of the canyon, anxious to put some distance between me and the now spiker-infested hollow. A few stray bees did some loops around my head before buzzing off.

That little sneak attack had totally wrecked my composure. This had to have been a planned hit. The damned Frelsians were out to get me. I expected mutated Reapers to come bounding from every crevice and overhang.

I made my way up the shoulder of the nearest of the two bluffs that flanked the outlet of the canyon. The tilted slabs of bedrock made for easier footing, even though the stone was slick from rain.

I paused at the brink of the pitted plans to get my bearings. The creek here fanned out into a lacework of channels. Beyond this wash, the plains looked fairly homogeneous. There weren't many landmarks once you got away from the hills.

My eyes homed in on a heap of what looked like wreckage on the rim of one of the nearer pits. I shook the grit from my clothes and clambered down to the flats, keeping my sword at the ready.
Chapter 5: Caravan

Rattled and confused, I left the bluffs behind. I half-believed I should have let those spikers impale me. That would have sent me straight to the Deeps. Didn't I keep telling myself that was where I wanted to be?

But somehow it seemed important for me to get there on my own terms, preferably with a round-trip ticket, though I wasn't sure such a passage was possible anymore, even though the Dusters seemed to have managed. I guess I also wasn't quite ready to cut my ties with that place called Earth, despite what the darkness in my heart tried to sell me.

A million puddles and rivulets saturated the plains, but though landscape was too porous to harbor any actual lakes or ponds. Green shoots and rosettes were sprouting up everywhere, many with flower buds ready to burst. This place was going to look spectacular once the rains stopped and everything blossomed.

I traced a meandering path along the drier creases of land that crisscrossed the flats, detouring around the few small pits I encountered. I worked my way towards that heap of wreckage I had spotted earlier.

It was perched on the rim of one of the larger sinkholes. The whole mess looked like the aftermath of some battle. But it couldn't have been Dusters. They tended to obliterate objects down to their elemental particles with their spell craft, as Bern and Lille discovered with their first attempt at building a cabin up top. This looked like the work of Frelsians.

I didn't remember seeing any man-made structures on the surface before. Before our raid on Frelsi no one would have dared build anything in such an exposed location. This wreckage suggested that it still was not a wise choice.

As I got closer, I recognized the distinctive alternating arrangement of faux cedar shakes sheathing the flattened walls. Lille and Bern had used that pattern in every cabin I had ever sat with them for tea from Luthersburg to Frelsi.

My stomach clenched. Suddenly, I worried for Bern. It struck me, though, that even though the parts of this cabin lay in a heap, it was an orderly heap. Things were sorted into piles: thatch here, walls there.

A thick but leafless tree thrust a limb out over the sinkhole, dangling a system of pulleys and rope. And then, out of the pit clambered Bern, all spry and vigorous apart from his usual limp. He was too absorbed in his work to notice my approach.

"Hi," I said, when I was only about ten feet away.

Bern stumbled back, tripping over a beam, pointing his cane at me like it was a laser cannon, which it was, sometimes.

"Oh my Lord!" He clasped one hand to his chest and lowered his cane. "Don't you ever surprise an old man like that! You just might give an old man a boost into the next world."

Bern regained his footing and hopped down from a pile of unbundled thatch. A huge grin spread across his face as he came over and hugged me. "Long time no see," he said. "But that's good news, right? Life must be treating you well."

"Not really," I said. "I just got deported."

"Oh. Well, that was to be expected. But I presume you're healthy again ... in the earthly sense, I mean? Certainly, your soul is still a basket case. Aren't we all?"

"Yeah. Well. I'm all patched up. No permanent damage. Just some aches."

"So you're going back home, then?"

"Home? I'm not sure what that is," I said. "I don't think I have one. I almost think of this place as a home."

"That's absurd," said Bern. "No home of mine has demons that patrol the sky on the backs of insects the size of horses, and carnivorous worms that could best an elephant in a tug-of-war. Not mention, now that it's wet season, it rains more than Scotland."

"Looks like the flowers are about to pop," I said.

"Oh yes, I noticed. Too bad Lille isn't down here to see it."

"Have you heard from her?" I said.

"No. And I don't expect to, not with the brain-washing they put those Hemi-souls through. Though I suspect she's a Freesoul by now. They have assassins, you know., for that sort of thing."

"Yeah, I know," I said. "I was there when she told you."

"Ah. No matter. I'm a bachelor now. I did just fine down below even before I met her. I'm a contemplative man, you know, and now I have more time than ever to spin my fantasies."

"Fantasies? Do you mean stories? I didn't know you were a writer."

"I'm not. I don't write, per se. I spin fantasies. Carve them into memory. I find paper and print much too fixed a medium."

"I'd love to hear them," I said.

"You can't. They're just for me."

"But ... doesn't a storyteller need someone to tell his stories to? Otherwise you're just a—"

"What for?" said Bern. "When a tree falls in the woods, does it require a person to witness it to make it real? Why not create for the sake of creation? Why does one need an audience?"

"Would you share one sometime? I bet they're ... interesting."

Bern looked at me, his face all stiff and somber. I don't know why it was such a big deal. They were just stories. "Perhaps," he said, finally. "Maybe once I'm settled, and if you decide to stick around. But I have to warn you, Lille never cared to my tales. Even when she was around, I tended to keep them to myself."

He looped a cord around a bundle of thatch and pulled it tight.

"So what happened to your cabin?" I said. "Who attacked you?"

"Nobody. This is all my own doing. I'm just relocating. It was getting too soggy down in the pit. I was hoping for the rain to stop before making the move, but fat chance that will happen any time soon. I thought it worth risking the exposure now that I'm on friendly terms with the Dusters. It's been ages since I've heard a Reaper patrol the plains. The Frelsians are buttoned up in their little city on the hill."

"Not quite," I said. "I was just attacked in the hollow. Two spikers ... with wings."

"What a nasty development," he said, scratching his chin. "I wondered what all that screeching was about. Perhaps I should reconsider my little project here."

"I don't know. Maybe you're out far enough. Wouldn't hurt to be a little more vigilant, though. You didn't even see me coming. I could have spanked you with my sword, and I wasn't even trying to be sneaky."

"I doubt they're interested in coming after me," said Bern. "You're the marked man, after what you did to their place."

"You need to take better care too, Bern. This war isn't over."

"Yes, well. Maybe I should build the place a little sturdier this time. Some Reaper-proofing might be in order. First things first, though. I just want to get a roof over my head and get out of the bloody rain. Listen, let me start a fire and I'll treat you to some tea. How about it?"

***

Bern made a batch of his relatively flavorful but absolutely colorless tea, its taste largely compiled from memory. He still didn't have Lille's knack for color or taste, but it was certainly hot and certainly equal to the second dunk of a tea bag.

We sat under a lean-to we made by propping up one of his disassembled walls. We set it with the open end leeward so it blocked the slanting rain. The wind made it wobble, ever on the verge of collapsing on our backs.

"You're not still thinking of heading down to those nasty Deeps, are you?" said Bern.

"Actually, yeah. I am."

"Good God! I was hoping you'd find some sense."

"I made a promise," I said.

"She couldn't possibly have meant what she said. She cares too much for you to wish such a fate—"

"You should have seen her eyes, Bern. She was really scared."

"Well, imminent death makes people say things they don't mean. I'm sure she didn't intend to take you with her."

"But ... she's alone down there."

"So? That's how the universe operates. We all leave each existence alone. Death is not a beach party. She's going to have to get used to it sooner or later."

I bit my lip hard. "If there's a way to get to her, I'm gonna find it."

"Oh, there's a way, alright," said Bern. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to find it. Plenty of cretins over the ages have—"

"Bern. I'm aware of that path. But I have bigger ambitions. I want to bring her back."

"But ... how?" he sputtered. "That's absurd."

"No it's not. Look at the Dusters. Where do you think they all came from?"

"But that ... that was a fluke ... a temporary flaw in the fabric of the universe that they managed to exploit. That rent has been mended. It was a one time occurrence. It will never happen again."

"Bullshit," I said.

"What was that?"

"It happened twice," I said. "Two waves. First, the Old Ones, of which Yaqob is the last of his breed. And then, Urszula and the smaller group she crossed over with."

Bern shook his head. "Well .... I still think that bringing her back might be wishful thinking. From what I hear, that door is closed. And it's not surprising. How many times can you expect to play Jesus before the powers-that-be stamp their foot down?"

"One more time, is what I'm hoping," I said. "If I can just figure out a way to get over there without destroying myself here. Then all would need to do is find a way back."

Bern sighed. "Easier said than done. Here, help me get this wall set."

I helped him lift the wall vertical, fighting the wind, holding it steady while he augered a stout corner post into the ground with a swirl of his cane.

"There we go," said Bern.

"Uh ... are you sure that's deep enough?"

"Oh, don't worry. It's knitted together with the root matrix. Nothing's going to knock it down. Don't let the bedrock fool you. The crust is a sham; all for show. Don't ask me why. But the Root we love so dearly lurks just below the surface."

"Not up in the mountains," I said. "Those mountains are real."

"Perhaps," he said, wrestling the wall into place. "This place ... is a hybrid. Two worlds glommed together. Makes ... no sense."

I held the wall steady while he grabbed a mallet and hammered in the pegs to affix the wall to the post.

"One down, three to go." He selected another stout pole from a pile of posts and beams. "I'm going simple this time. Four corners. One room. It's all I need, really. I'm going to live like Henry David Thoreau this time around."

I noticed a waterlogged violin propped against a stone. "Play your fiddle much?"

"Not at all," he said. "Don't have the time or inclination. Lille used to enjoy hearing me play. Don't know why. I sounded like a strangled cat. Anyhow, the damned thing's useless and waterlogged now. It's coming apart at the seams."

He got the second post spinning and plunging into the soil, pegs in mouth, attacking it with his mallet the moment it stopped its descent.

The flimsy wall, secured at both ends, bowed and flapped in the middle like a sail. Bern limped over to rest of the stack of walls. They were shells, with the appearance of being much thicker than they actually were, like something from a low budget movie set. He selected one that was about six feet wide and eight feet tall.

"I do appreciate the help," said Bern. "Between the two of us, we shall make short work of this. I was afraid I might have to spend another night out in the open."

"How's your leg doing, by the way?" I said.

He sighed again, deeply. "Reverting. Almost back the way it was when I injured it on the other side. The wound is cursed and resistant to permanent repair. Not even the best flash Weaving seems to last. Maybe in Frelsi they could have healed me ... but ... we all know how that boondoggle went." He nodded to me. "Now hold this in place, please, while I fetch another post."

He attached the second, narrower wall to the second post with more dowels. The cabin now had a corner.

"One would think our bodies should arrive here with a clean slate. Seems unfair that our infirmities persist between existences. Doesn't always happen, though. There's no consistency. I've heard of amputees that show up here with their limbs restored. Why some of us are cursed and some carry our earthly punishments into the hereafter is just one of those mysterious ways in how God gets things done."

An object appeared on the horizon, in the direction of the hills. "Oh crap. Someone's coming." Bern shielded his eyes and stared into the slow but steady rain that continued to fall.

I went and grabbed my sword from where I had left it by the tea kettle.

"No worries," he said. "This one looks like a bug. Not a worm."

"A mantid," I said, judging from its bulk and ungainly flight.

"That can only be good news," said Bern. "The Dusters are my friends now. I'm a regular stop on their patrols. Someone or another visits me almost every day. Unlike some people I know. They're a surly bunch, but they do seem to care for my well-being."

The giant bug, buffeted by a strong wind, wobbled from side to side as it descended. Its left wing case had a tear in a very familiar spot. This had to be Seraf, Urszula's mount and the lithe rider sitting tall in her saddle could only be Urszula.

Seraf landed hard, planting her tarsi deep in the muck. Urszula passed no greetings, betrayed no hint of being glad to see me. Her long, frizzy hair was braided and bound tightly by metal rings. She squinted so hard I could not make out her eyes.

"You must leave," she said. "You are under attack."

"What the hell are you talking about?" said Bern, looking about. "By whom? From where? The skies are empty."

"Fools!" she said. "Look towards the plains."

I looked across the pit to find what looked like a circus parade coming our way It was led by horses bedecked with tassels, flanked by packs of dogs. The marchers bore a gaudy array of pennants and banners that fluttered in the wind. A faint tinkling music drifted in and out with the shifting breeze.

"What in tarnation?"
Chapter 6: Encounter

With no warning, I snapped back to that window seat on the British Air flight. My head spun. My stomach did a loop in my belly. I slumped forward and moaned, banging my head against the seat back video monitor.

I had no idea a transition was coming. Usually there was a tingling aura that warned of its imminence. And there were usually visible signs. I think Bern would have mentioned something if he noticed any translucent spots on my skin. Had it happened more abruptly than usual or had we simply been too distracted to notice anything?

Ellen put her hand on my shoulder. "James? You okay?"

I could only grunt and mumble, finding it hard to shape words. I wasn't ready to come back. Bern needed help. He might be under attack.

But at least he had Urszula with him. Both could escape on Seraf's back, if need be.

"James? Did you hear me? You feeling alright?" She palmed my forehead to check if I had a fever.

Finally, my consciousness caught up with the rest of me. "Yeah," I said. "I'm fine. Just ... disoriented. You know. From waking? I came out of a ... a deep sleep."

Her face was all business, rapt with concern and puzzlement as her eyes flitted back and forth assessing my condition.

"I saved you a meal," she said, patting a foil-covered tray on her little fold-down table. "Pasta with pesto. It was either that or the chicken, but airline chicken is usually pretty awful."

"Thanks ... uh ... good choice. But, uh ... I'm not hungry right this moment. Maybe ... in a minute."

"I tried to nudge you when they came by with the cart, but you were really out of it."

"Yeah. I'm a ... a deep sleeper. I said. "How long was I out?"

"I don't know, maybe an hour. More or less."

My innards settled down, my organs no longer acting like a sack of drowning rats. But this sense of physical ease conflicted with a spiritual malaise. A deep melancholy sank into every corner of my being. I really didn't want to be in this world any more. I didn't belong. There was nothing left here for me.

That feeling, in turn, conjured a sense of something ripping loose, like a boat yanking free of its mooring. Part of me began to drift away, before snapping back like a broken elastic.

My soul's presence here was unstable. These waves that came drifting past, unseen. I sensed they could float me right back to Bern if I could catch them just right and surf. That was quite a revelation for me. I had been aware of these waves before but had never sensed them quite so acutely. The discovery thrilled me, but I had to keep it stifled. I didn't want to scare them away.

"Come on," said Ellen. "You should try and eat something, before it gets cold. Believe me, you don't want to eat it cold. You might feel better if you ate something."

Too late. In that moment of inattention, a wave had latched on and seized me. Entangled in the fabric of Root, my souls was already on its way back.

***

I splashed down on my back in a puddle, staring up at a tufted sky that continued to shed a fine drizzle. Seraf's segmented underbelly hovered overhead, her wing beats creating a wash and drone not unlike a small helicopter. My first though was that Urszula and Bern were leaving without me, but then there was Bern, leaning over me and reaching down a hand.

"That was quick," he said. "I didn't expect to see you again for days."

He hauled to my feet, and went back to working on his cabin. He had all four corner posts and three walls up and the frame of the roof was in place. He sat astride a bundle of thatch, cinching tight a loop of twine to pull it together.

His nonchalance startled me. There was no urgency in his actions.

"What are you doing? Aren't you ... weren't we under attack?"

"Yes, well, it turns out it a ... eh ... false alarm."

"What do you mean?"

My clothes were still heaped in a pile where I had last vanished. I pulled them on hastily. I was glad to see that none have the fibers had reverted to their natural root-like state as they were often wont to do. Either I was gone too short a time or I was getter better at Weaving objects that persisted.

"We're not, actually ... under attack."

I climbed onto a stack of timbers and looked out over the pit. The caravan was still there, pennants waving in the wind. But they were halted.

"But ... who are they? What do they want?"

Bern smirked. "It's an old friend and his entourage."

Those gaudy colors. The packs of dogs.

"Luther?"

"Who else would travel with a bloody circus?"

"What's he doing up here?"

"A better question might be, what took him so long?"

People came out of their wagons and stared at us from across the pit. I scanned the crowd, but couldn't pick out anyone who looked like Luther. But who knew what he looked like these days? He was a master flesh weaver—a man of many manifestations.

There were no freaks among them, as far as I could tell. Luther often preferred to take on the most bizarre forms. He liked to make himself stand out in a crowd.

Seraf landed with a heavy thud and tucked her gossamer wings under their cases. Urszula pitched herself out of the saddle and landed nimbly in a patch of moss.

"I have passed a message to a bee. She is returning to the mesa to muster reinforcements."

"I'm telling you, Urszula, it's not necessary," said Bern. "This man is just a merry prankster. He's all bluster. He can be a bit of a bully sometimes, but I doubt he means us any harm."

"And what if he is allied with Frelsi?"

"He's not. That, I can assure you," said Bern. "He's had more than a few unpleasant encounters with Freesouls. I'm fairly certain he views them as his competitors."

Urszula gave me that look of haughty disregard that seemed to be her default expression.

"Um ... hi," I said.

"Why did you flee?" she said. "Were you scared? Did I scare you?"

"Scare me? No. I'm not scared of you. I just ... I don't know. I don't control these transitions. At least ... not completely. They just happen. I'm learning, though. I'm getting better at riding the waves."

Urszula looked confused. But how could she understand? She had been dead for centuries. She did not oscillate between existences like me and Bern.

"Yes, well ... I've never cared much for all this back and forth business," said Bern. "I've decided I'd rather spend the bulk of my time here, Lille or no Lille. I try to maximize my time here. Any travel back is for maintenance purposes only."

"They're moving again," said Urszula. I noticed she had a scepter with a shaft riddled with dark knots that culminated in a fluted burl resembling a flame. "They're coming this way."

Bern climbed atop a stool and waved a hankie. "Now don't provoke Luther when he arrives. Show him some deference. He enjoys having his eminence acknowledged. Just a little bit of respect will put him at ease."

"I thought you said he was no threat?" said Urszula.

"With the proper handling, no, he's not. Just do as I say and go through the motions. It's not as if you have to believe it."

The wind carried the wavering strains of some faint calliope music.

"Oh my God," said Bern. "I was being metaphorical but he really is leading a bloody circus parade. I wonder, is he actually aiming for such an effect? Does he realize he is such a clown?"

The pack of dogs leading the vanguard split into two groups and came arcing around either side of the sinkhole, yipping and baying at us.

Urszula looked nervous. "I never cared for dogs."

"Oh, don't worry. They won't bother you. They do exactly what their master tells them."

"Look how they move. They're not even real," said Urszula. "They are animated by spells."

"Woven flesh," said Bern. "But don't ask me what he uses as a basis. They're more than a pile of roots, I'll tell you that."

Luther's dogs were a strange breed this time—mutts with the shape and color of lanky Yorkies but as big as wolf hounds. Their behavior seemed much more natural than some of his prior models. For one thing, their responses and movements seemed independent. No longer did they move in lock step as if they shared one brain.

"No Frelsian could craft such a beast," said Urszula. "Who is this mage? How does he do this?"

"The man has talents," said Bern. "If only he would apply them to something useful."

The dogs ran circles around us until someone shouted a gruff command and they stopped and sat perfectly erect, shoulder to shoulder, like a curving wall of canine statues.

The rest of the caravan, on foot and in wagons pulled by some kind of antlered elk, marched and rolled after them, skirting the edge of the sinkhole and stopping just behind the dogs.

Three men came striding up out of the collection of horses and wagons, passing through a contingent of abnormally muscular soldiers bearing ornate pole axes. Dozens of other souls, civilians I suppose, fanned out to watch the proceedings. They all dressed brightly and exotically—like extras from the Cirque du Soleil.

The leader among the three—he could only be Luther—dressed like a foppish pirate. He wore an iridescent suit of teal and gold and a wide-brimmed purple hat with a feathery plume. There was a hint of Michael Jackson to his aesthetic sensibility.

Harvald, his lieutenant, dressed more conservatively in a suit of amber suede and a black head wrap. The two were accompanied by a seven foot plus tall bodyguard whose limbs bulged in proportions too grotesque for nature, more like some low budget video game artist's vision of a level boss.

Luther's own body bore no sign of distortion for a change. He was man-sized and man-shaped—a younger and healthier version of the hunched and wheelchair-bound old man I had met in Switzerland.

Even his face was genuine, youth-infused and prettified, but recognizably his own visage. In fact, there was no sign of his former younger, hunkier blonde avatar anywhere among his entourage. Maybe he had gotten over his infatuation with the thirty-something physical therapist from whom he had borrowed his name and who had inspired his original avatar.

In comparison to his usual entrance, the effect was startling. Had Luther been humbled? Was that even possible?

"Bernard? Is that you?" said Luther, tilting back the brim of his hat. "Hah! So this is where you all ran off to. What the devil are you doing hanging around these wastes? Surely you could have found a better place to settle. Look at this place. There's a whole world out here."

"Yes, well. Don't you know there's a war on?"

"A war? Here?"

He took in the remnants of the cabin with disdain and panned the surroundings until his gaze settled on me. He didn't seem to recognize me right away, but my presence obviously disturbed him. Something flashed in his eyes. He remembered me.

"You! You're that boy! The one who visited me at the hospice. The one who made off with my grand-daughter."

"James," I said, holding out my hand. "James Moody."

He looked at my palm as if it was covered in leprous tubercles.

"So where is she? Is she here?" He peered through a gap in the wall of the tiny cabin.

"No," I said, sighing. "She's ... in the Deeps."

Luther acted more appalled than grieved. "How? How did it happen?"

"She got caught up in this stuff called Fellstraw."

"On this side? She died in this realm?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's too bad." He shrugged. "I suppose I should have expected as much. That girl had a knack for trouble. If she weren't my own grand-daughter I would have never taken her into the ville. She had no business being saved ... otherwise."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," said Bern. "She may have started off slow, but she was a quick learner."

"And what about Lille?" said Luther. "Is she off to the Deeps as well?"

"We're ... uh ... separated," said Bern.

Luther scrunched his eyes. "Really? You two? I never would have guessed that was ... possible. What did you do to drive her away, you old bugger?" He noticed Urszula glaring at him. He narrowed his gaze at her. "Who is this gray creature who keeps staring at me?"

"She's Urszula," I said. "She's ... from the Deeps."

"You don't say? Well now, that makes for yet another impossibility. I have to say, this is a day for miracles."

"So ... uh ... what ... eh ... brings you up here?" said Bern.

Luther took in a long and deep breath before exhaling his answer. "Fresh air, among other things. The Reapers were getting a little too feisty for comfort. Don't know what irked them, but they've been on a bit of a rampage. Wouldn't respect the boundaries of the 'Burg the way they used to. So I thought it was time to break camp. Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted."

"Well, I don't quite my roof on just quite yet, but when I do, I can certainly invite you in for some tea," said Bern.

"You want a roof? I'll give you a roof. While we're at it maybe we can add a villa to this ... closet .... you've been working on. Harvald, get a crew together and see what you can do for us. A patio with a view of the hills would be nice. Actually, this location may not be so bad after all. Far enough from the hills to get a wide perspective. This might be where we want to put our village. You have excellent taste Bernard."

"Well, thank you ... but ... no thank you. I actually came out here for the privacy."

"What are you talking about? Privacy. There's mile after mile of empty wasteland behind us. You want privacy. Take a walk."

"It is not wise for any of you to settle in these flat lands," said Urszula.

"Oh? Why's that?" said Luther.

"We are at war. You would become a target for the Frelsians."

Luther grinned. "So the Frelsians have other enemies. Not just me. That's good to know."

"I can't promise how my people will react to your presence if you settle here. They know Bern and James. They don't know you. They may assume you are Frelsians or one of their allies."

"Well, you know better. Don't you? Perhaps you can illuminate them. Provide an introduction. Tell you what. If you have a leader, why don't you invite him over for tea with us. That will give us a chance to get acquainted."

"You want tea?" she said. "With Yaqob?"

"Why not? It will be like a welcoming committee, but in reverse. A newcomer hosting his neighbors to be. Why can't that work?"

"Yaqob. He is not very sociable."

"So why don't we socialize the man? It's never too late. I don't care if he died a thousand years ago."

Seraf clattered her palps against her mandibles, drawing Luther's attention. He reached a hand to caress the waxy plate between her bulging, multifaceted eyes. Seraf scuttled back and hissed, drawing up her barbed forelegs defensively.

"Oh, what a fine beast!" he said. "What a splendid feat of Weaving. A true artist at work. Who did this, may I ask?"

"Seraf's not Woven," I said. "She's real."

"Really?" he said, his voice tinged with awe. He touched a finger to his chin. "How do you suppose she got here? Leakage between existences? But ... is she really that big, or are we the ones who are small?"

"I've asked myself that same question," I said.

"Oh well. No matter. It all works out the same in the end. Though the plants here seem normal-sized."

"Most of them," I said. "There are some freaky vines growing up on those mesas."

"Marvelous. I would love to see them. Would you show me sometime?"

Some of Luther's entourage set to work, expanding the cabin. The stacked walls were literally flying together and new structures were being woven on the spot. The humble cabin that Bern had envisioned was now a mere foyer to a sprawling villa with multiple wings, a tiled courtyard and balconies looking out to the foothills. The thickly bundled thatch was expanded to cover a steeply pitched roof.

And as the first house was completed, more structures began to rise around it, connected by cobbled lanes. A village was literally taking shape before our eyes. Except for the lack of a church, it echoed the Central European character of Luthersburg.

Bern looked on, stunned and helpless. "Fabulous," he said. "Just fabulous. But don't you think it's a bit much?"

"Not at all. Look at the weather. If we plan to settle here, my community needs comfortable accommodations."

Bern blanched, as he fussed with his teapot.

"Oh, don't worry. I'm only joking," said Luther, grinning. "I know you have your hermit-like tendencies, Bernard. The absence of Lille only makes it worse, I'm sure. Please be assured that this is only a temporary encampment. I realize you all probably came here to get away from me. But I actually have eyes for those mountains. I can only imagine the view from up there."

"Oh no," said Urszula. "Not there. That is Frelsi. There is a war on, remember?"

"Ah, no matter. Bern? How's that tea coming along?"

"Ready!" he said, as he set out five small tea cups at the little round table in what was now a courtyard. It was hardly big enough to seat three.

Luther took a stool and Harvald sat across from him. He patted the stools to either side and motioned for Urszula and me to squeeze in, while Bern came around and poured us each some of his steaming brew. Meanwhile, Luther's bodyguard and his little security force took positions around the structures that were still rising all around us.

"The tea's a bit on the weak side, I'm afraid," said Bern. "I do apologize."

"That Lille could sure brew a killer cup, as I recall," said Luther.

"Yes. We know," said Bern.

"Your people, Miss Urszula, are you many?" said Luther.

Urszula seemed reluctant to answer, or to even meet his gaze. "Active? No."

"Active? As opposed to what? Ah, do you mean this dormancy business? Are there some among you who have achieved the long sleep?"

"Of course," she said.

"And James here happens to have found a way to awaken them," said Bern.

"How horrible. Why would he want to go and do that? I have heard it is quite the nirvana. I can only hope that some day my soul is replete enough to sip from that well."

"It was an accident," I said.

"But it was for the better," said Urszula.

"I sense you have leadership qualities, my dear," said Luther. "Are you perhaps, queen of the gray folk?"

Urszula turned a slightly darker shade of gray.

"We have no leaders. We cooperate via anarchy."

"Cooperation? Anarchy? That's an oxymoron. Makes no sense at all. What about this Yaqob fellow? Might he be a leader?"

"He is a mentor. He may be influential, simply because he is old. But not all of us ... follow him ... or seek his advice."

"Factions! How exciting," said Luther. "And how do you fit in with all of this? If not a queen, surely you must be some sort of princess."

"Please. I am not. I am just ... just ... a girl."

"A girl, she says!" Luther grinned. "How cute and humble. A mere girl, she thinks of herself."

"Miss Urszula is a warrior," said Bern. "You should see her in action. The Royal Marines would be lucky to have more the likes of her."

"Don't listen to her," I said. "Urszula is every bit as much a leader as much Yaqob."

"Then wouldn't it be fascinating to have them both at the same table. How can we invite him down here?"

"Yaqob does not deal with the living," said Urszula.

"The living, she calls us! As if we have lives."

"Well, maybe you can pass a message to this Yaqob that there's a new man in town and I might have something to offer against these ... Frelsians."

"You? What do you possibly have to offer?"

"Get him down here and we can talk about it. Let's just say that I have resources. I have intelligence that may be useful to your cause, that is, if you anarchists actually have a cause other than hating the other side ... which ... I suppose counts as a cause."

"I can ask," said Urszula. "I cannot guarantee that Yaqob comes. He has a mind of his own."

"If not, so be it. Maybe you and I can work out a deal."

"Deal? What do you want from me?"

"Some of those winged beasts of yours might be nice to have around. Certainly better than hoofing it up into the hills.

"They are not beasts of burden," said Urszula. "They have minds of their own and choose their own masters."

"Whatever." Luther shrugged. "I just seek a chance to be chosen." He looked at me and sighed. "So sad about Karla. She was such a clever and vigorous tyke. It's just too bad she had to end up here in the first place, but what would you expect with a family like that? I'm surprised her little sister didn't end up in a pod down below."

"She did, actually," I said. "We freed her."

"Huh. Imagine that. But not her big sister is dead and in the Deeps. I don't suppose that helps keep her out of this place."

"Not for long," I said.

"What's that?"

"I'm going after her. I'm going after Karla."

"To the Deeps? Hah! What's the rush? We'll all end up there eventually, if the powers-that-be have their way."

"Except I'm going to bring her back. And I plan to get there ... without the death part."

Luther grinned. "Ah, I see. You don't wish to pay the price of admission. I'm afraid that's not possible. Existences are like a ratchet. Once you leave one, you can't go back."

"But Urszula did it. And millions before her."

"Flukes. A million souls are but a drop in the bucket of eternity. How do you propose to pull off such a feat?"

"I was hoping Urszula would help. Her people ... they got out. I figure, if there's a way out, then there must be a way in."

"It doesn't work that way," said Urszula.

"Then how? How does it work?"

"We tamed the Horus and created a crack in the firmament. A temporary fissure."

"What's ... a Horus?"

"The ruler of the Deeps," said Urszula. "It wears a dust storm as its cloak. It is a massive entity that reaps souls into the next existence."

"So it's another kind of Reaper?"

"No. It is more than that. Much more. It is an object of worship."

"Like ... a god?"

"A power," said Urszula. "Not a god ... not a devil."

"This fissure. What is it, like a crack in the ground? And you just climb through?"

"Not quite," said Urszula. "It is not a physical crack. It did leave a mark on the land, but the passage itself was not physical. It was a part in the substance of this particular universe. However long it lasted, it's long gone now. None have come back from the Deeps in ages."

"Can you show me the place where this happened?"

"I could, but it won't help you. There is nothing to see there. The rift is long gone."

"I want to see where it happened. Can you show me? Please?"

All I wanted was a clue for how the whole deal at happened.

Luther rubbed his chin and smirked. "I may know a better way in, young man. Never tried it myself. But it made a good friend of mine disappear once. I'm pretty sure it will get you to where you want to go."

"What do you mean? A Reaper's gullet?" said Bern. "He's already thought of that ... and perished the thought. I hope."

"Not at all," said Luther. "There is another way in, a path in that you can take entirely under your own power. No chewing involved."

A thrill trickled down my spine. This was exactly what I was looking for. "Can you ... show me?"

"Depends," said Luther. "What do you plan to do there?"

"I told you. I want to find Karla. Bring her back here."

"Hmm. That's certainly a worthy cause. It would be worth knowing if it could be made to work. I have some dear friends unfortunate enough to end up there who I would love to rescue. Karla, too, of course. I'll tell you what. I can show you how to get there intact. No Reapers. An alternative entryway, so to speak. But getting into the Deeps is never the problem. It's getting out that is the issue. If Heaven is like Harvard, the Deeps are like Cornell."

"What?" I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Never mind." He shook his head.

"Listen. I'm game to go. As long as there's a chance to get back. I mean ... there is, right? These guys did it."

"It's not as easy as you think," said Urszula. "You could not do it by yourself. It requires a collective action."

"Perhaps," said Luther. "But someone of sufficient talents might be able to manage on their own. Existences are fragile and flawed things. They have their own quirks and weaknesses, their Achilles Heels. You just need to be clever enough to find them."

"When can we go?"

Luther leaned back in his chair.

"Well. First I need to see some sign of commitment that you plan to stick around here a while," said Luther.

"What do you mean? I'm here. I'm ready to go now."

"No, you're not. You're fading again."
Chapter 7: Newark

I never did get to eat that pasta Ellen saved for me. It was gone from her tray when I opened my eyes. But my soul did return in time to nibble on a ham, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich.

This time Ellen slept through the meal service, so I snagged an extra for her one, wrapped in foiled paper. The flight map showed that we were already over Maine. We didn't have that much farther to go before beginning our descent so I nudged her awake so she could eat while it was still hot.

Thankfully, she was a much lighter 'sleeper' than me. Most people were, when their souls weren't traveling between worlds.

She didn't say much but a quick thanks. She just gulped it down and chased it with a plastic cup full of orange juice.

She kept giving me funny looks like she expected me to go unconscious again. But this time, there was no sign of any waves. I felt numb. No depression. A touch of anxiety. Some nervous excitement over Luther's offer, but also a little fear over what was to come in the Deeps.

In short, I had mixed emotions, not a condition conducive to transporting my soul to the Liminality. For that, I would need a good and pure dose of fatalistic despair. Until I could get a handle on my mood, I would be sticking around this existence for a while.

Our flight arrived over Newark about an hour behind schedule. Once the plane landed, we were kept on board until all the other passengers had deplaned. A US Marshal came down the aisle. He had a pot belly that threatened to burst the lower buttons of his uniform shirt. He made straight for the Jamaicans and cuffed them both.

"Hey mon! This is not necessary," said Frankie. "We won't cause you any trouble. We are well behaved. Just ask our friends here from Heathrow."

"Procedure." That was all the guy said as he maneuvered Frankie and Rudolph out of their seats.

Ellen and I got up followed after them, uncuffed.

"Hey mon, how come we get the special treatment? Is it because we are black men?"

"You two aren't US citizens," said the marshal. "I'll be escorting you straight to your next flight."

"James! It has been a pleasure to know you," said Frankie as he swayed and wobbled down the aisle. "May the road rise up to meet you, or however the saying goes. Watch out, Kingston, here we come!"

"Take care, guys." Rudolph looked back at me with eyes deep as catacombs. I wasn't the only one on this flight to visit Root.

***

"Welcome home," said one of the immigration officials as we entered one of the back rooms of the Customs and Border Patrol area. Our privately contracted escorts delivered us into their custody almost immediately upon exiting the plane. I presumed they got to spend the night before heading back to the UK. Weird job, shuttling back and forth like that. I suppose things got more interesting when the deportees were less passive than me and Ellen.

They had us sit on a bench and wait, while a lady went through some files and forms that had accompanied us all the way from London. I don't know why, but I had thought we would be turned loose immediately upon reaching US soil. I still had a valid passport and I hadn't committed any crimes while I was in the UK, other than working without a permit.

I wondered if my absconding with Dad's pickup truck from the county probate lot might finally catch up with me. It hadn't felt like stealing at the time, more like getting something back from a lost and found, but I'm sure the authorities thought differently.

I had visions of being taken aside and placed into custody once they discovered whatever arrest warrants were active under my name. Not that it mattered. A jail was pretty close to ideal for someone who planned to spend most of his time commuting to Root.

But amazingly, nothing of the sort happened. My records check must have come up spotless. They made me sign some kind of waiver acknowledging my lack of resources and that was that. Maybe that truck 'theft' of mine got pinned on the druggies who had ended up with it.

When they were done with my paperwork they made me wait for Ellen. They probably assumed that we were a couple even though our body language gave them nothing to base that on. She hardly spoke to me or made eye contact. I suppose that didn't mean anything. To their eyes, we might be a couple lovebirds in the middle of a spat.

When they were done with her, they insisted on accompanying us out to the baggage claim and made me wait even though I had no luggage. Ellen fetched this big, ugly tartan suitcase with leather-reinforced corners. It had a balky wheel, so I head to help her wheel it around the queue.

At least we didn't have to wait with the long lines of people struggling to get through customs. We got special treatment down the lane usually reserved for pilots and flight crews.

I got to see the contents of Ellen's bag, whether I wanted to or not. Tons of dirty, rumpled clothes. Kitschy knick knacks. A deflated soccer ball. A jar of Marmite. All the while customs was going through it, one of the Border Patrol folks stuck with us, looking over our shoulder.

"We free to go now?" I asked, when customs finally waved us on.

"Hang on a sec," said the Border Patrol guy. "There's a rep from social services coming by to give you a quick interview."

We were ushered into yet another office and were joined shortly by some lady with a stack of bulging binders. She seemed harried, almost as if she had a car double parked outside the terminal.

"Do either of you have family in the New York Metro area?"

"Connecticut," said Ellen. "My grandma lives in Connecticut."

"Do you have the means to get there?"

"Um. Sure. I guess," said Ellen.

"And what about you?" she said, turning to me.

"Um ... no. I don't really have any family. Period. I mean ... except for an uncle in Cleveland. And I'm not really interested in seeing him."

She handed me a brochure and went over my options for public assistance, including the addresses for homeless shelters in the Newark area. And with that, she turned us loose and we passed through some double doors into the public part of the terminal, and a crowd of anxious, prying eyes—people waiting for other passengers to get through Customs. A guy with long, dark hair kept glaring at us, as he prattled on a phone.

"Well, good luck," I said to Ellen as she dragged her oversized suitcase with the bum wheel that kept sticking and throwing her off balance.

"You want to share a cab?" she said.

"Um. I don't actually know where I'm going," I said. "And ... I don't think I actually have any dollars."

She fished through her ratty little purse. "Yeah, well. Come to think of it, neither do I. Not enough, anyhow. Not for a cab."

She studies the signs overhead pointing the way to various forms of ground transportation. "Hey! Looks like the Air Train can take us free to the actual train station."

"Go for it."

"What about you? What are you gonna do?"

"I don't know. yet"

"You can't just stay at the airport."

I was tempted to say, 'why not,' but that sounded weird. I honestly had no interest in going anywhere except back to the Liminality. Any old bench or toilet stall where someone would leave me alone for an hour or two was all I needed to accomplish that. I had crackers stashed from the plane that would do me for fuel for a while.

"Come on," said Ellen. "If we don't take a cab, I've got enough extra to buy you a train ride to the city. How about it?"

The city? I assumed she meant New York, a place I had never been. I shrugged. Why not? It seemed as good a place as any to get lost for a while. Scads better than the airport. And it was the birthplace of the Occupy movement, something that had intrigued me since Rome. I could even make a pilgrimage to Zuccotti Park. Not that there would be anything to see. The movement had been crushed by the NYPD and Homeland Security. Now all they did was hurricane relief.

"Um, okay. I mean, if you're sure. You really don't need to do this ... but thanks."

"No problem. It's the least I can do. If you're gonna be homeless, NYC is a much better place than Newark."

If my aim was to descend into complete misery and accelerate my re-entry to Root, I probably should have stayed put. It unnerved me, how easily she was able to distract me from my mission. But I couldn't resist a chance to see the fabled New York City. My curiosity got the better of me.

The entrance to the AirTrain stop was outside and down a sidewalk at the end of the terminal. I took over dragging her suitcase, to give her a break. It was a real pain in the ass, that sticky wheel. The thing squealed and snagged, making me stumble repeatedly.

At the glass doors at the entrance of the Air Train stop, a guy stood holding a neatly printed placard. It was far from the limousine stands and seemed an odd place to be waiting to meet someone.

He was a short fellow, compact and muscular, with a carefully trimmed mustache. He wore a tailored suit that fit him like a second skin. Smoke rose from a fancy pipe perched on his lips. He didn't look like someone who belonged in this century. This was not your typical limo driver.

As we got closer, he tilted the placard towards us. My full name was printed in block letters.

I grabbed Ellen by the elbow.

"Something's wrong."

"What?"

"Nobody knows I'm here," I said. "Nobody."

I was about to take off running when a car squealed up beside us and a pair of guys came bursting out. They grabbed me and Ellen and muscled us to the car.

"Get in!" growled the guy with the long hair, who had been glaring at us at the exit to Customs.

"What the fuck?" I looked around for some of the usually ubiquitous cops, but they were nowhere to be seen.

"I said get in!" One of the guys pressed something hard and massive bulging from his jacket pocket against my ribs.

I hesitated. It would have been okay if he had shot me right there and then, as long as the wound was non-fatal. What better place to tune out of this world and enter the Liminality than an ICU? And even if I died, worst case, I would and up in the Deeps.

That's what I assumed, anyhow. But a moment of uncertainty gripped me. Was I all that certain that my death here would send me to the Deeps? If I resisted and got shot, it might not technically be suicide. Might there be other places a soul could end up on the other side?

I saw the distress on Ellen's face, and I figured I'd better go along. It was me they were after, I was sure. She had no business getting entangled in my mess. Once they realized she was an innocent bystanders, maybe they would turn her loose.

So I climbed into the back seat. The other guy shoved in after me, slamming the door shut.

As we pulled away, the guy in the fancy suit was still standing there. He had lowered the placard and was staring, with an odd expression that seemed stuck between annoyance and amusement. He winked and waved as the car pulled away.
Chapter 8: Barrens

The car hurtled down the surface streets, running lights, crossing lanes to get around backups. Sudden turns flung us against the door and against each other as we careened past hangars and warehouses.

Ellen sat with her knees drawn up on the seat, trembling and hyperventilating. Occasionally, a whimper escaped her breath.

I patted her hand in a lame attempt to console. I could think of no encouraging words. I knew who these guys were and had a good idea what they planned to do with us and it wasn't going to be pretty. My escapades in Cleveland and Pittsburgh had finally caught up with me.

The three men in the car didn't talk much, not even to each other. The long-haired guy in the back seat with us kept some kind of boxy automatic weapon pressed against my ribs. If it happened to go off I was pretty sure the bullet would slice right through my innards and into Ellen—two for the price of one. Ellen, the poor thing, didn't deserve what was coming.

"Don't worry, I'll get you out of this," I whispered.

"How? How can you possibly—?"

"I'll find a way."

She stuck her mouth close to my ear. I could feel her hot breath. "Who are these people? What do they want?"

"You two! Shut the fuck up!" said the long-haired guy. "No talking!"

I squeezed her hand, making sure I caught her eye, nodding, to re-emphasize my promise. She had no business getting entangled in all of this. Me, I didn't care so much about. They could do whatever they wanted with me, as long as she got away. I just didn't want to be responsible for another lost soul.

***

We drove for a good hour and a half down the New Jersey Turnpike. We got off at the exit for Atlantic City, but instead of seeing casinos, we entered this seeming wilderness of swamps and forests of scrubby pine. The terrain was nothing I expected out of New Jersey.

The guy in the front passenger seat took a call from someone named Sergei. From the way his voice changed, higher in pitch and oozing with deference, I took it that this Sergei guy was his boss. I wondered if and how he was connected to that Cleveland racket. Seemed so far away. Could their territory range this widely? But then again, these guys had tentacles stretching all the way to Europe. How else would they know I was being deported?

That name—Sergei—gave me a focus on which to train my will. My nemesis now had a name. It wasn't hard mustering ill feelings. He had been cramping my style and making me anxious for months, getting in the way of me and my Karla, and now here he was terrorizing poor Ellen.

There was a wad of cash, hundreds and twenties, clipped together on a tray between the driver and the guy riding shotgun. I got the topmost note to curl up at one corner, all the way to the clip, and then relax in time with my breaths. My displeasure was manifesting itself.

I folded one corner down and then the other like I was making a paper airplane. It had no purpose. I was just exercising my abilities. Because I could, I made the bill inch its way out from under the clip like some kind of flat caterpillar.

I happened to glance over at Ellen, and all this time, she had been staring at the money, too, watching me do all this. The distraction put an end to all the curling and uncurling. She looked straight at me and mouthed the word: "How?"

I looked at her and shrugged and looked away.

***

We reached a place where some of the pines had been cut back away from the road. They had gone to the trouble of uprooting all the stumps, which were piled in a heap in a corner of the lot. A work team with a dump truck was putting together a stone wall, setting mortared blocks into a frame of rebar and wire mesh.

A broad and rolling lawn, seams still visible in the newly laid turf, rolled like ocean swells up to some kind of half-finished McMansion, its exterior walls clad in some fancy white vapor barrier. Unlike some of its brethren, this house made no attempt to mimic an English estate mansion. This was just a big, 100% American house, an overinflated Cape gone all cancerous and bloated.

A guy came over and yanked me out of the car, but he left Ellen in the back seat. Before I could even react or even protest, the car drove away.

"Hey! Where are they taking her?"

"Relax. She ain't going nowhere. Sergei wants to talk to you alone."

"Sergei who? Who's this Sergei?"

The guy just chuckled and hauled me up a concrete sidewalk with sides still encased in wooden forms, right up to the McMansion all encased in yellow vapor barrier.

The unfinished interior was a mix of dry wall and skeletal framing. The floors were plywood, though bundles of exotic, tongue and groove hardwood lined the far end of the great room, awaiting installation.

He hauled me upstairs, down a hall and into one of the more finished rooms, the floor gleaming with blonde, lacquered maple. It seemed to be a master bedroom, but the only furnishings were a portable banquet table piled with blueprints and invoices and a couple of folding chairs.

There were a couple of guys with guns already up there and waiting. They made me sit at one of the folding chairs while they rolled in one of those fancy mesh-backed executive office chairs from the next room. A girl came in and plopped down a Starbucks grande and a couple of cinnamon scones.

I sat there and fidgeted. The minutes dragged by. I could see the car that brought us here out the window, parked next to an outbuilding that looked like an overblown carriage house.

"Where the fuck is he? His coffee's getting cold."

"Shut the fuck up. He'll get here when he gets here."

I didn't like this guy treating me like I was some dog turd. Another little fire stirred in my belly. I stared down one of the invoices on the table and got one of its corners to curl. I cultivated that feeling inside me, stoking it like a hunter tossing splits of hardwood on a camp fire. That curled corner kept crinkling until the entire sheet of paper was crumpled up in a ball. The assholes watching over me, too busy staring at their iPhones, didn't even notice. I went to work on the next sheet of paper and then the next until there was a whole pile of crumpled paper balls on the table.

A door slammed below. I heard some loud voices guffawing and carrying on. Some of them were conversing in a guttural language that sounded Russian, though not quite. It was something Slavic, for sure.

Four more guys piled into the room, all with baggy jackets bulging with God knows what kind of hardware. A fifth guy followed. This one had to be Sergei. He had a high forehead and a bad haircut. He looked thirtyish—younger than I was expecting. He was wearing a sports jacket over a T-shirt and shiny, pointy-toed dress shoes. The others didn't look at him directly. They didn't get too close to him, either, letting him maintain a large personal bubble.

He plopped down into the mesh chair and glared at me.

"This little twerp is the guy? Him? Really? He doesn't look at all like the pictures."

Sergei's English bore only the faintest trace of Eastern Europe. His accent made me think he had left his native country before his teens, but had lived in a household of non-native English speakers.

"Must be all the crappy food in England," said one of the cronies. "He's freaking scrawny."

"Meth," said another guy, spitting onto a potted plant.

"I've ... been sick. Injured," I said.

Sergei's brow crinkled and his dropped. He thrust back in his chair, his face gone apoplectic.

"What the fuck? Who crumpled up all my invoices?"

I kept my stare fixed on him steady and cool. His eyes were scrunched with irritation as his swiveled his gaze around the room. His guys were clearly uncomfortable. Being the object of his scorn had consequences.

"I mean, what the fuck? Who the fuck did this? Why?"

The other guys just sort of shrugged and mumbled and looked away.

"It was like that when we got here," said the guy who brought me into the room, though he and I knew better.

Sergei reached over and began un-crumpling the sheets one by one.

"Shit man. This shit is important. I mean, look at this. Invoices for the plumbing and the electrical. What the fuck're you guys thinking, crumpling my shit like it was scrap paper?"

"Wasn't us, Serge," said one of the braver men. The others could only cringe.

"Then who?"

He glanced up and found me staring, all calm and focused. I could tell that my something in my expression disconcerted him. He wasn't used to people looking at him like that.

He glanced away and wriggled out of his sports coat, leaving him in a T-shirt over dark jeans. The guy worked out. He had the biceps of a gymnast. No tattoos. Not an ounce of bling. This guy was old school.

He gathered himself and stared back at me.

"You put us on quite a wild geese chase, Jimmy. You had quite the adventure. No?"

I shrugged. "You don't know the half of it."

He smoothed out his crumpled invoices with a straight edge. "Well, it's all over now. No more running."

"So what are you gonna do? Off me?"

Sergei frowned. "Listen. I'm a busy guy. Got things to do, places to go. I'm done with you wasting my time, so let me get right down to it. This is your last stop, Jimmy. You did a very bad thing, taking off with my property. You know you did wrong. But did you own up? No. You kept on running and running. Slippery little bugger, you are. You wouldn't believe the amount of resources I put into finding you. Good thing I got cousins on the continent. We couldn't let you get away clean. You're a bad example. Bad for business. We can't have guys like you pulling this kind of shit and getting away with it. Time to pay up. But we're gonna get it on video. You're gonna be a lesson for any other asshole who decides to get a wild hair up their butt."

"Never would have happened if your guys didn't stiff me."

"Shut up, twerp!" The brave guy came charging up to me, brandishing an assault rifle, stock first. "Who said you could talk?"

"Back off Joe. What the fuck, let him talk, while he still can. Let's hear what he's got to say." He leaned back in his chair and meshed his hands behind his head.

I squirmed up taller in the chair. "I made that delivery. Wasn't my fault it was late. If they had paid me what we agreed, then none of this would have ever—"

"Yeah, but then you ran off ... with the goods. So, technically, the delivery was never made."

"They paid me half what they promised!"

"Because you took twice as long to get to Cleveland as it should have taken."

"Wasn't my fault. The truck broke down."

"Doesn't matter. Bottom line is, you didn't get there on time. And what do you do? Instead of sticking around and explaining and negotiating like a reasonable person, you take off with the goods. Sell it for cheap to a bunch of losers in Pittsburgh. Next thing you know, we're chasing you all over Europe. Rome. Paris. London. Even fucking Scotland. What the fuck were you thinking? That we would just forget about it? You know, word travels fast. Everybody was laughing and joking about the kid who got away from the Serge. Even our associates in fucking Guatemala were laughing about it. Do you know what happens when the respect goes away? That is bad. Bad for business."

I just shrugged. I didn't give a shit about his petty problems. I didn't care what he had planned for me.

Sergei rose up out of his chair. "No matter. The joke ends right here. Nobody's gonna be laughing at Sergei after we make an example out of you and your girl. Jozef, bring him down to the gym."
Chapter 9: Snuff

A pair of Sergei's goons shoved me out the door and down the walk to that overgrown carriage house. The builders had tried to make it look quaint, with all this fake, Victorian gingerbreading, but the place was big enough to hangar a blimp.

Sergei strolled lazily behind us, chatting on his phone with some subcontractor about a concrete delivery. His behavior confused me. For all his absorption in the building, one would have thought that the drug trade some minor hobby. He switched gears so effortlessly.

The carriage house turned out to be a private gym with a caged weight room and a basketball court with a parquet floor. The goons led me to a bench and cuffed me to the backrest facing center court.

The floor was covered with large sheets of clear plastic to protect the finish. There was a makeshift table at center court—two boards spanning some saw horses. Tools were arrayed like surgical instruments across the top—a reciprocating saw, a soldering iron, a pneumatic hammer, a power sander. Orange extension cords coiled like snakes. A couple guys wearing all black were setting up equipment.

Sergei swooped by the bench and leaned over me, smirking. He still had a phone pressed to his ear, on hold, probably.

"Look at him, so cool. Not even rattled. What is his deal? Does he not know what is going to happen now?"

"Tough guy," said a man in black jeans and T-shirt, who was setting up a heavy-duty tripod. "That's good. I love tough guys. Nice contrast. They're all cocky up front, and then you get the transition to when they finally crack. Makes for great video. It's the whiny ones bore me to tears. There's a market for it, but that's not my bag."

There was video equipment everywhere. At least three cameras. Lights and reflectors. All of it arranged around an old wooden chair with an arched back. Above it dangled a microphone and a set of cables and chains suspended from the rafters like some kind of circus trapeze.

"What's all this?" I said.

"Meet your director, Jimmie," said Sergei. "You're gonna be famous. We hired a real pro. Mr. Raoul, here. An artiste. Master of snuff. He's making me an instructional video. What not to do if you work for the Serge. You're gonna be all over the internets."

This Raoul guy glanced at me, but he refused to make eye contact. Apart from the name, which was probably fake, he looked pretty straight-laced. Conservative haircut, rosy cheeks. He could have worked for H&R Block.

His assistant, on the other hand, working on the chains, was a real basement dweller. Sunken chest. Acne-pocked face riddled with piercings. A mullet that looked like road kill. He had no trouble at all fixing his gaze on me.

I wasn't thrilled about the situation, but I knew I could handle it. I was no fan of pain, but I had been through this before. I had ways of tuning out, of vacating my body and senses. If death was on the agenda, so be it. It was not a deal killer. I knew my soul would persist. I had friends in other places.

"Ooh yeah!" said Sergei picking up a drill fitted with a massive bit. "Look at this baby! Nobody's gonna mess with me after this. No one's gonna be laughing at the Serge anymore."

"Whatever," I said. I frowned and shook my head.

Sergei chuckled. "Listen to him, acting all brave! Bring in his girlfriend. Let's see what she thinks about all this."

As Jozef, his right hand man, pulled out his phone, a jolt ripped through me.

"She's ... she's not my girlfriend," I said.

I was half-hoping, expecting they would leave her out of all this, let her go. Sergei was watching my reaction closely and grinning.

"Woohoo! Did you see his reaction? Did you get that on tape?"

"Camera's rolling," said the director.

"But she's not. I don't even know her. She's just some girl who happened to be deported same time as me. They sat us together on the plane."

"That's fine," said Sergei. "How about we pretend she's your girlfriend, just for show? What do you think, Raoul? Doesn't that add a little more drama to the situation?"

"You betcha," said Raoul, as he untangled a knot of microphone cords. "I think it's sweet how much he cares ... about a stranger."

"Listen. She's got nothing to do with what I did. You guys ... you should just let her go."

"Nuh-uh. No way," said Sergei. "She's gonna be your co-star. Your leading lady. A pretty face will only help make my point."

"But I'm telling you, I don't even know her."

"Then why do you care so much?" said Raoul. "Let it go."

Sergei kept grinning. Catching me had really made his day. I must have really been a bug up his ass.

"You're gonna have to go with the flow, tough guy. So what if she's not your girl? It's all for show. It adds to the story line."

I looked at those tools spread across the table and my gut tightened. This was no longer just about me.

A door flew open and one of the flunkies shoved Ellen out onto the parquet, hands bound behind her back. They marched her down and had her sit in a chair facing me. Her face was flushed and streaked with tears.

"James, what's going on?"

"Don't worry," I said, in a low voice. "I've got this."

Sergei snickered. "Listen to him! All brave in front of his girl. This is going to be one hell of a show, Raoul. Too bad I have to run. Got stuff to do. People to see. Not to mention ... I'm a little squeamish—in person. Don't like blood. But don't worry, I'll get to see it all on the video, all clean and neat. Hasta la vista."

He turned and headed for the door, taking along most of his entourage, including Jozef. My eyes latched onto Ellen's. There was a touch of patience and confidence in her gaze, an unwarranted calmness that told me she had faith in me, that I would somehow keep my promise. I couldn't help but think of Karla, in the Deeps, if she felt the same.

***

Sergei left two of his guys behind to watch over us. They hung back near the main entrance to the gym, leaning against the padded wall, assault rifles dangling from shoulder straps. As the video guys set up their booms, I pried at the backrest with my fingernails, working at a crack on the edge of one of the slats. I managed to peel off a splinter a couple of inches long and tucked it in my palm. Instinct told me I would need it to focus my will, the way Urszula used her scepters.

The rope they had tied me up with was some cheap, coarse and scratchy hemp. I held the splinter tight and closed my eyes, imagining the cut ends of the hemp slithering back through their knot. I strained to make it happen. Slowly the knot began to respond, loosening slightly, enough to give me a better grip on the splinter.

The splinter buzzed and writhed in my grip. It almost wriggled right out of my hand. Something powerful was flowing out of me and into it. I kept it contained. When the release came, I wanted it to be something big and focused. I chose my target with care. I might only have one shot and had to make it count.

My eyes kept gravitating to the pretty hardwood underneath all that plastic sheeting. It was expensive stuff, slab-cut birds-eye maple with the curly figure and sheen of the back of a fancy violin. All those ripples looked three-dimensional, like a landscape.

This wood had character. I could almost picture the big, old rock maple it had been harvested from, growing all alone in a hilly meadow, its branches sprawling unhindered, majestic in profile, scarred beneath its burls and knots and healed-over wounds from ancient lightning. Me and this dead tree, we had a connection. I could feel it grow.

The video guys were still fiddling with the lighting. I kept my eyes on the skinny one. I was pretty sure I could take him down if I got the chance. Of course, there were the two flunkies with the assault rifles I needed to think about. But then again, I had that squirming splinter tucked firmly against my palm. I would have no trouble focusing my ill will this time. Poor Ellen, quivering again over there on that chair like some scared bunny in the paws of a coyote, she didn't deserve any of this. Sergei and his zoo were going to pay.

Raoul's assistant grinned at me, again exposing those gray teeth that had probably never been flossed. It looked like he was going to part of the show as well. He slipped on a bright yellow rubberized apron, matching gloves and a pair of goggles. He picked up a pair of garden shears and walked over to Ellen.

I worked the splinter out to my fingertips and let the pointy end protrude. It quivered like a divining rod. It was all I could do to hang on.

He grabbed a fistful of Ellen's hair, snipping off a hunk down the middle of her bangs. Ellen whimpered like a puppy with its paw caught in a door. Raoul laughed from behind his main camera, which was sighted over Ellen's shoulder straight at my face.

The assistant mugged for the camera. "Foreplay," he said and turned to wink at me.

He picked up a reciprocating saw, leaving it switched off for the time being, dragging its teeth across her face until it etched red lines into her dermis. Raoul had two cameras live. One on her. One zooming in on me.

"Don't worry, baby," he sang in a high and tuneless falsetto, providing both lead and backup, call and response. "Everything will turn out alright."

Something writhed and uncoiled deep in my belly. The parquet floor began to creak as if an invisible elephant had stepped into the room.

"What the fuck was that?" said the assistant.

"New house. Still settling," said Raoul.

Boards snapped through their tongues and out of their grooves. They keeled up, lifting, ripping the plastic. Turning to expose their protruding nails, the pieces came together in a swarm, bound by an invisible force that shaped them into a column not unlike the tree trunk that spawned them.

I twirled the splinter in my fingers and it responded like a joystick. The subtlest twists and tilts were all it took to bend the column over and whip it across the room like an extension of my own arm. The assistant had dropped the saw and was hauling ass, stumbling across joists exposed where the sub-flooring had peeled away and crumbled into a mass of splinters that now communed with the main body of my wood-conjured beast.

I swung an iron-studded tentacle, catching our would-be torturer in the back of his legs, cutting him down. He howled like a stuck pig as the nails bit and fell between the joists into the crawlspace.

Sergei's guys already had their rifles on full automatic and were pouring slugs into the beast, to little effect. More wood broke away. My beast continued to grow extending its reach forcing the gun men out of the building.

Raoul remained at his post, on a patch of flooring that had so far not been affected by my spell. I sent a sub-tendril coiling after him, smashing his camera to bits, swatting him aside like a moth. He screamed as he thudded across the court, slamming into the wall beneath a digital scoreboard. One camera remained standing on its tripod, untended but still rolling. I let it stay. I wanted Sergei to see who he was dealing with.

I diverted my attention to the rope binding my wrists. The strands were eager to do my bidding, sliding in and out of their knots. That moment of inattention, however, took all the oomph out of my parquet monster. It had gotten too big and acquired too many limbs to hold itself together without my will fully exerting itself.

It collapsed, but from the wreckage, three smaller creatures, vaguely resembling crabs, reassembled themselves. Sergei's men had reloaded and returned, appearing at the doors to either end of the gym. The crabs rushed them, oblivious to the spray of bullets pouring into them. I wasn't even controlling them anymore. Not consciously, anyhow. They seemed autonomous.

A pincer seized one of the gun men and flung him through a window. His partner disappeared in a tornado of splintered wood. I shrugged off the still writhing rope, popped up off the bench and ran over to Ellen, still bound to that chair. I had never seen eyes so wide. It was almost like she was scared of me.

"Don't look at me like that! I'm coming to help you."

"H-how are you doing this? Who ... what ... are you?"

"Never mind. Let's get the heck out of here." I grabbed a set of pruners off the table and snipped her free of the chair.

"Come on!" I grabbed her hand and ran for the middle door, where one of the crab things waited to escort us. We had to take the long way around the edge of the gym. The whole middle of the court had been torn up, exposing the concrete of the crawlspace.

We passed some heaped up along one wall. Someone had left a canvas courier bag on top of them. On impulse, I snatched it up.

One of the wooden crabs was blocking the door. I twiddled the splinter but couldn't get it to move. The thing was truly on its own now.

I went instead to the windows, slid one open and punched out a screen. I hopped down onto the soft, deep cedar mulch surrounding a fresh planting of rhododendrons in the flower bed and helped Ellen do the same.

Two of the crabs were charging and menacing another of Sergei's men who had tried to make his way down from the main house. The car that had brought us here was gone, along with a couple others that had been parked in the drive, including the Mercedes SUV that I had assumed to be Sergei's wheels.

But there was another car parked halfway down the drive next to a heap of uprooted stumps. A Cadillac, old but gleaming. A guy in a suit and raincoat stood by the door, waving at us, waving us over. It was the guy from the airport, the one we had seen holding the sign with my name on it.

But there was no way I was climbing into another stranger's car, not after all this, and from the way Ellen balked and veered away from him, I could tell she felt the same.

We dodged through piles of gravel and boulders, parts of some fancy water feature under construction—an unfinished koi pond, a fake brook and waterfall—and plunged into the piney woods beyond.
Chapter 10: Trains

We hurried over springy beds of rusty, fallen needles, through one of the few patches of woods the landscapers chose to preserve. I worried we might find ourselves hemmed in by chain link or barbed wire, but there was only a low stone wall, freshly quarried, lichen-free, marking the boundary.

Back at the house, a motorcycle engine roared to life and whined through its gears. We hopped the wall and descended into dense and swampy underbrush.

"This ground's all soggy!" said Ellen, hesitating.

"Better wet than dead! Come on!"

We pushed into water that started ankle deep but steadily deepened. Our footsteps kicked up the musky odor of decay.

The viny tangles soon gave way to an open understory beneath a stand of large cedars. It was even swampier here though, with little hummocks of bright green sphagnum moss like micro-islands among the amoeboid pools.

"Stick to the hummocks," I said. "Some of those pools are deeper than they look."

"I don't know about this, James. We could get lost in here."

"That's the whole point," I said. "Would you rather be found. By them?"

The motorcycle was moving closer, and another throatier rumble that sounded like a Harley, had joined it.

"I suggest we keep slogging ahead. These guys of Sergei's ... they don't strike me as the most outdoorsy types. As long as we stay away from any roads, we should be alright."

She just stood there and stared at me. "I still don't understand," said Ellen. "How did you do ... what you did?"

I shrugged. "Don't understand it myself. It's not supposed to happen here."

"Here?"

"This world. This side of reality. I mean, there are places I know where dreams rule and anything is possible. But not here. Crap like that isn't supposed to happen here. This place is supposed to be solid. Or so I thought."

"So what are you? Some kind of witch? I mean ... a wizard?"

"I have some skills. Let's leave it at that."

I knelt on a hummock and patted the side of the courier bag. There was something heavy and hard inside. I opened the flap, reached in and pulled out a gun. 'Pietro Beretta. Made in Italy,' was inscribed on the side of the barrel.

"Holy crap. This'll come in handy."

"Do you know how to use it?"

"It's just a gun. What's there to know?" I said. "You pull the trigger, right? I mean, maybe there's a safety."

I fished around in the bag again and pulled out a tightly coiled wad of hundred dollar bills secured with a heavy elastic.

"Now, this will really come in handy," I said.

"Whoa!" said Ellen.

I sorted through the rest of the contents, keeping a fleece pullover, a lighter, a pack of throat lozenges and some extra ammo. I ditched the porno magazines and packs of cigarettes.

"You shouldn't just toss that stuff. They'll see that we came this way."

"Somehow, I doubt they'll be sending out the bloodhounds. They ain't coming this way. As long as we stick to the swamp till nightfall, we'll be okay." I tossed Ellen the fleece. "Chilly? Put this on."

I leapt over a pool to the next hummock and pressed on deeper into the swamp.

***

Hours later, we were still slogging through the mire. Ellen was a real trooper. Even though she had taken a couple flops into some of the deeper pools, she kept right up with me, never flagging. She was soaked and muddy from head to toe. Twigs twined all through her hair. She bled from a scratch below one eye.

Those damned motorcycles persevered, weaving up and down the back roads. I'm sure those guys would much rather be out looking for us than trying to explain what happened to Sergei.

We tried to stay away from roads, but there was one, a state route with a double yellow line down the middle, that we had no choice but to cross. Traffic wasn't the problem. Hardly any cars went by. We could hear the motorcycles coming from a mile away and we could even tell if they were getting closer or not by their engines' Doppler effect.

We hunkered in the bushes until everything seemed clear.

"Now!" I said, and we scurried across.

"Oh crap!" I said, looking over my shoulder.

"What's wrong?" said Ellen.

She took one look at the roadway and she knew. Our soggy shoes had left behind two clear sets of wet tracks on the dry pavement. I ripped off a branch and tried smearing them around, but that didn't work so well.

I stood there on the shoulder, pondering my work, when the treble in the roar of a four-stroke engine inched up a notch. A motorcycle had turned in our direction.

"Run!" I said.

We hauled ass, splashing through the swamp as fast as we could. We got ourselves behind a screen of trees as a motorbike roared by, its black helmeted rider visible between the gaps.

He kept on rolling, thank God. Good thing Sergei's guys weren't too observant.

It was starting to cloud over. I hoped for rain. That would cover our tracks for sure if we needed to cross any more roads.

But Ellen had taken another plunge and was shivering like a jackhammer. At least I had managed to stay dry from the waist up.

"Hang on, let me see if this works." I grabbed a hunk of dripping sphagnum, squeezed out the water and placed it on the bark of a fallen tree. I retrieved my magic splinter and touched its tip to the moss.

Nothing happened.

"Shit. So much for my special powers."

I pocketed the splinter, turned and walked away. Ellen shrieked.

"It's ... growing!" she said.

Indeed, the clump of sphagnum was expanding. I got out the splinter again and went to work, lengthening the fibers, weaving it into cloth, working from the memory of a Patagonia jacket my mom had got me when we went up to Cleveland once for Christmas. Quilted nylon shell, stuffed with down. Mine came out looking a little crude. Might not be fashionable, but at least it was functional.

She peeled over her sodden fleece and pulled it on.

"Now try to stay on your feet," I said, taking the fleece back from her and wringing it out. "Take small steps. Watch out for holes."

"Thanks," she said. "It's actually ... quite cozy. But what about you?"

"I'm fine," I said, swinging the fleece over my shoulder. "I can wear this one when it dries. And if I need to, I can make another jacket."

"You are ... amazing," she said.

"Yeah. I'm special," I said, with bitterness.

Something splashed behind us. Footsteps. Lots of them.

"Oh crap."

Ellen dropped to her knees and crawled behind a bush. "Are we ... are we being followed?"

"Shush!" I fumbled to retrieve the gun from the courier bag and slipped behind the trunk of a big cedar. I fumbled with it, unable to figure out how to undo the safety and chamber a round. But then something clicked. It seemed ready to fire. I guess I would find out.

We kept still, waiting under cover as the splashing continued, very regular, almost mechanical. Whoever, whatever was following was taking a bee line straight for us. It was more than one person, or at least, more than one set of legs.

I looked at that little gun and felt inadequate. Sergei's people were likely to have some heavy firepower. Automatic weapons. Assault rifles. There was no way I could survive a tussle with them.

But this swamp was big and occluded enough that maybe they would just pass right on by. But as I looked back the way we had come, I could see all the muddy patches where our footsteps had disturbed the water. They led right up to where we were hiding.

"Listen. If things get hairy, you take off running and don't stop. Got it? I'll try to hold them back."

"James, no! They'll shoot you."

"Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. Worry about yourself."

The splashing picked up its pace. They were zeroed in on us now. I took a deep breath and moved out from behind the tree, gun at the ready.

Ellen dared to look, and shrieked.

A scraggly collection of planks from Sergei's parquet floor stopped dead just before us, straddling a pair of hummocks. It was shaped vaguely like a spider, with two forelegs bristling with nails, waving like feelers.

"What does it want?"

"I don't know."

"I think ... I think it's a piece of my will. My weaving might have summoned it."

"Make it go away," said Ellen, her voice rising in pitch. "I ... don't like spiders."

"I ... uh ... I don't know how."

"If it's a piece of your will, then will it out of here."

"I told you. I don't know how! This has never happened to me before. I mean, usually, the things I make, don't persist. And they certainly don't walk around looking for me."

"We can't have it following us," said Ellen. "I can't handle it. And ... and it'll attract attention."

"Shoo!" I said. "Go away."

The thing just stood there waving its feelers.

I looked around and there were some bleached-out leaves clinging to the dead branch of a beech tree. On a whim, I took out my splinter, pointed it and twiddled it.

A whole branch full of leaves plucked themselves free and fluttered over to the parquet monster. They hovered for a bit, defying gravity, before alighting on what passed for the creature's head. As soon they touched, the planks collapsed en masse, splashing into a pool. But whatever had animated them moved into the leaves, which folded and wrapped themselves into a headless bird-like thing the shape and size of a sparrow.

It flew over and landed on my shoulder.

Ellen gawked. "Well, that's a little better, I guess. Still freaky, but ... better."

"We gotta keep moving," I said. Those damned motorcycles still zipped and buzzed down the network of roads as they scoured the countryside.

Ellen couldn't stop staring at my new familiar. "So that's your will, huh?"

"Yeah. A piece of it, I guess."

She gave me a goofy smile that was oddly sexy. "How about we call it Billy, then?"

I just shook my head and looked away. "Let's go," I said, pressing on.

***

It was getting darker, but I couldn't be sure it wasn't just the clouds getting thick. I wore no watch and neither did Ellen.

High above the tops of the cedars a helicopter appeared, gliding sidewise with the wind.

"What are the chances that Sergei guy has an air force?" said Ellen.

"That's probably a traffic chopper," I said. "In which case, that might be the Jersey Turnpike over there."

"So should we head that way?" said Ellen. "I mean, if we can find a rest stop, we could ... like ... catch a ride, with a trucker or something."

"No. I don't like rest stops," I said. "Too obvious. Too many shady characters. I say we just keep walking. Find a town."

It was getting darker by the minute. This was no mere change in the weather. Clearly, the sun was going down.

The motorcycles had finally fallen silent. Maybe they had given up, or we had just moved out of earshot. Or maybe they were waiting in ambush. At least the darkness would conceal us. I wondered if a guy like Sergei might own stuff like night vision scopes for midnight drug deals and such. Not much we could do but stay alert.

As night fell, we came to a causeway carrying a set of train tracks across an open marsh. I had enough of slogging through the slop. The time had come to take our chances on dry land. Ellen certainly didn't object. We had both had enough of the swamp.

Atop the graveled berm, I stared both ways down the tracks. There were lights in both directions. Civilization beckoned.

"Which way do you think we should go?" I said. "Left or right?"

"From the looks of the sky, I'm pretty sure left is north," she said.

"Okay," I said. "Is that what we want."

"Well, it's ... home," she said. "Used to be, for me, anyhow. I grew up in Maine."

"So, you want to go home?"

"Not particularly," she said. "My parents kind of ... uh ... disowned me."

"Well, I don't particularly want to go south," I said. "Too many bad memories."

"Let's go North, then," said Ellen. "I'm still friendly with my Grams. And she knows how to keep a secret."

We followed the tracks across the marsh, and into sandier, drier terrain, thick with pines. I got nervous as we approached an overpass, worried someone might posted there and watching for us. I didn't see any parked cars, so we kept on going.

"How about we follow this road?" said Ellen, hopefully.

"Uh ... I'd rather not. They might still be out looking for us."

"If a car comes, we can just duck into the woods."

"Nah. Not yet. I'd feel more comfortable if we put a little more distance between us and the swamp."

Ellen sighed. "Oh. Alright."

As we passed beneath the road, a truck rattled over our heads. It was pitch black. I had to tap the rail with my foot to make sure I was going straight.

"I've always been liked the darkness," said Ellen. "Makes me feel cozy. I've got great night vision. I guess I'm a night person."

"It shows. In your complexion."

"I'm not that pale, am I?"

"You're pretty pale. In a good way."

"Right."

We emerged under a starless sky. But the clouds caught the glow of a nearby town. We had to be close. It was somewhere around the bend.

"Maybe we can find a station. Get you on a train headed north."

"Me? What about you?"

"I'm not so sure I want to come along. It doesn't really matter where I go. As soon as I can stash my body somewhere, someplace safe and cozy, I'm tuning out. I've got business ... elsewhere."

"What do you mean 'stash your body?'"

"This is gonna sound kind of weird, but ... I travel. Not me, physically. My spirit. I go into these trances and my spirit just kind of ... goes off. It doesn't matter where I am. I can where I need to go from anywhere. So—"

"I knew it! You're like, some kind of shaman."

"What? No. I'm just—"

"You are a shaman. That bird thingie on your shoulder is your familiar."

"O-kay. Whatever. Listen, I don't need to cramp your style. You should just go home, or ... to your Grams or wherever you were going before we got waylaid."

"I still think you should come with me. Sergei will find you here. How far did we walk. A mile or two? We're still in his backyard. You can't hang out here. They'll get you. At least, go to a city or something. Or, just come with me to my grandma's in Naugatuck, Connecticut. She remarried, so she's got a different last name. Sergei would never expect you to go to Naugatuck. I mean, who goes to Naugatuck?"

"Hey, listen. You really don't want to be caught up in all this. I'm bad news. Hang around me, I'll only bring you trouble."

"Yeah, well, maybe I want some trouble in my life."

"Wait a minute. I'm no Charles Manson. I don't need no Squeaky Fromme."

"Huh? What the hell you talking about?"

"That cult guy. From the sixties."

"Cult? Get over yourself. I'm not worshipping you. I'm just ... interested ... in whatever it is you're up to. I mean. It's not like I have anything else going on in my life. You know ... I've never seen ... magic ... before."

"What I do isn't magic."

"Then what is it?"

"It's ... weaving."

Ellen said nothing. She just walked beside me in the dark.

We came to a place where the rails split and switched into multiple sets of track.

"Should be a station here, I think," I said. "Looks like a decent-sized town up ahead."

A road converged with the tracks and followed parallel. Street lights appeared and became more numerous. We came to a concrete platform flanking one set of tracks.

My chest tightened as my train station anxiety kicked in. My little leaf sparrow, Billy, took to the air and flitted about, reflected my nerves.

"Not much of a station," said Ellen. "There's nobody here. The platform's empty."

"It's not even a stop," I said, relaxing. "It's a maintenance platform, for the guys who work on trains."

***

We continued into town, where we found a real station, on the Atlantic City Line of New Jersey Transit. I couldn't bring myself to go in. I peeled a hundred of the roll and gave it to Ellen to buy us tickets, and went around the corner to a little pocket park where a couple of winos were sharing a bottle of something in a paper sack.

The place was called Hammonton. Never heard of it, but then again why should I? I had never heard of Naugatuck, either, but that was now my destination, only because it made sense to get the heck out of Jersey. Sergei had proven that there was no limit to the lengths he would go to teach me a lesson. The latest incident probably only deepened his obsession.

I found myself a bench as far as possible from those two guys. It was a nice enough little park, well-lighted with a playground in the corner. Hedges and rose bushes. Angled walks. Benches and ledges.

If it wasn't so close to Sergei's base of operations, I could imagine myself summoning the roots right here. I certainly felt hopeless enough. A wave was building. It would be nice to see Bern again, just to have a break from all this madness. Even being with Luther would seem sane after what we had gone through with Sergei.

Maybe I should have let Sergei's flunkies shoot me and be done with it. But it was getting pretty obvious that I wasn't ready to abandon my connection with this world, and my ability to choose. That realization alone should have been enough to keep me out of the Liminality forever.

But I was beyond that, having crossed a threshold reserved for more ordinary folks. I was learning that there were no hard and fast rules in this universe. Exceptions and workarounds existed for everything, including life and death.

"James?" It was Ellen calling out from behind a hedge.

"I'm over here," I said.

She came bustling up in a fluster. "There's a train coming at 8:45. We've got ten minutes."

"To where?"

"Philly," she said. "Thirtieth Street Station."

She grabbed my arm and hauled me off the bench. The winos were staring at us. One of them reached into his jacket and pulled out an iPhone. Maybe I was being paranoid again, but I couldn't help thinking this guy was another link in Sergei's network.

We hurried out of the park and down the sidewalk.

***

Turned out there was no real station in Hammonton, just a rain shelter and some vending machines.

We stood there alone. Ellen took my hand at one point. I didn't even notice at first. I didn't care. Whatever. As long as she didn't get any other ideas about us.

The train announced its imminent arrival with a flash of light and a bleat of its horn.

Ellen was looking at me funny.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"What do we do about ... Billy?"

The dang creature was still on my shoulder, like a pirate captain's parrot. I brushed him off and he took wing, looping around me before alighting on my other shoulder.

"Scram! You can't come along."

I grabbed him and flung him into the bushes and he disappeared into the darkness. He got the message this time. He didn't come back.

***

Our train was full of old people from some senior center in Pennsylvania, returning from an outing in Atlantic City. Man, were they sloshed and rowdy.

We drew lots of stares. For good reason. Our faces were bloody and smeared with mud. Our clothes were sodden, ripped and stained. We were aromatic with sweat and swamp.

"So this is the plan," said Ellen. "We switch train in Philly. Take the Amtrak up to Connecticut. We can stay with Grams as long as we need, until we figure things out."

"Figure out? What's to figure out?"

"How ... to be safe from them," she said. "A place where they can't ever find us."

There she went again, talking about us as if we were an item. I barely knew this girl. Sure, traumatic experiences spawned intimacy, but I still had Karla on the brain, 24/7.

But I went with the flow. There would be plenty of opportunity to slip away later.

My mind began to drift. I sensed that wave of hopelessness again, that things were only going to get worse from here on out. That was a good thing, but I didn't let myself believe it, not in the front of my mind, anyhow.

"Listen," I said. "I'm gonna try and tune out for a bit. Okay? I've got places to go, people to see."

"Okay," she said. "But it's not that long a ride to Philly. A little over and hour, maybe."

"That's all I need. You see, time gets compressed in funny ways when my spirit travels."

"Okay, but ... once we get there, how do I get you back?"

"Just hit me."

"Hit you?"

"Yeah. And don't be afraid to get rough ... and loud. That should do the trick."

She sighed long and deep. "Um. Okay."

***

The train passed through yet another broad stretch of pine barrens. I kept my mind unfocussed, baiting the Liminality to come get me, but snatches of vision and sense kept intruding into my thoughts. I had this feeling that part of me was zooming along a hundred feet above the train. As if I needed more weirdness in my life.

It had to be Billy—that little piece of my will—sharing snatches of his senses with me. How a headless bird-thing even had any senses was beyond me.

Between him and all these loud, old people it wasn't happening. I was too distracted.

But somehow I did manage a quick nap. Not quite the spiritual transport I had in mind, but my body appreciated the rest. Ellen apparently assumed that my spirit had wandered off to some distant universe from the way she slugged me when he got to town. That girl could sure pack a punch.

I stumbled out of the train rubbing my shoulder in a daze of grogginess. So this was 30th Street Station. Just of the look of the place resurrected all the phobias I had acquired in Europe. I had no tangible reason to be afraid. Sergei had no reason to expect us here. And I had no fear of death or dying. Who said anxieties had to be rational?

I gave Ellen a couple more bills and she bought us a pair of tickets on the Amtrak. People here seemed a lot less annoyed by our filth than those old folks. Maybe they were more used to homeless people or something.

It was getting late. Some of the shops and food stands were beginning to sweep their floors and stack their chairs in preparation for closing.

"Can I ... uh ... have a couple more of those hundreds, if you don't mind?"

"Why should I mind?" I said. "It's not my money." I reached in the courier bag and peeled a couple more bills off the stack.

Ellen looked me over. "What size shirt do you wear?"

"I don't know ... uh ... medium?"

"I'm gonna see if I can get us some fresh clothes. I'm tired of smelling like a freaking cess pool."

"Get some food while you're at it. What time our train leave?"

"We've still got another hour," she said, as she brushed bits of swamp from her hair with a comb she had found.

I sprawled out on a broad wooden bench and closed my eyes. I wondered what had happened to Billy. Maybe the force that had animated him had finally dissipated.

Then and there, I found myself homing in on the wavelength that had eluded me earlier. The roots were beckoning. My breathing grew slow and deep.

"Oh!" she said. "Is this how you do it? Are you going away? Is this how you go ... to that place you go?"

"Yeah," I said, drawing out the vowel on one long exhalation.
Chapter 11: Alliance

Heavy rain splattered my face. I lay on my back at the edge of the sinkhole, lukewarm water sloshing against my side. I finally get dry in one world, only to be back in the slop of another.

I got up and shook myself off. The building Luther had grown from the seed of Bern's dismantled cabin was now a bulbous, multi-turreted monstrosity. It loomed over a wall-like arc of one-story cottages tucked cheek to jowl against each other like so many lumps of monkey bread. Curls of smoke corkscrewed into the sky from many narrow chimneys.

This new Luthersburg seemed perilously exposed and undefended. It had no walls or palisades.

Residents lounged under awnings and porches as if they were on beachfront property. I suppose it would seem that way to those who had only known the Liminality from those caverns down below, where the only light came from luminescent roots.

A pair of riderless mantids prowled a scrubby hollow where flood waters pooled and spiraled into a pit in a mini-maelstrom.

A guard sat watching me—a youngish, Asian fellow sitting under a black umbrella that looked like it had been stitched together from the wings of giant fruit bats. I recognized him, but I couldn't remember his name.

"Hey! You're Karla's friend. Remember me? You guys rescued me from that Reaper?"

He said nothing. He just sat there, looking nervous and confused, holding an ornate black powder musket in his lap.

I shook his limp hand. Slowly, some recognition seeped into his expression. "How is Karla?" he said. "Do you see her?"

That was already more English than I remembered him being able to speak.

"She's dead," I said. It seemed a blunt and insensitive thing to say, but the word somehow lacked the potency and finality that it used to hold with me. It felt the same as telling him she had gone off to college.

"Is Luther around?"

"He is meeting with the gray people."

"The Dusters? You mean Yaqob's here?"

The kid just shrugged. I nodded to him, and walked off across a muddy space where a gang of workers was fitting heaps of river stones into carefully raked beds of sand, adjusting their positions with whacks of a wooden mallet. It surprised me to see them do it the old-fashioned way—no weaving. Maybe Luther wanted this place to last longer than the first 'Burg.

A garden took shape near the entrance, with real plants—local varieties that someone had selected and transplanted—the beginnings of an arboretum. The mansion and its outgrowths had now totally engulfed Bern's cabin. I thought I recognized part of Bern's wall embedded in the patchwork.

I came upon a group of soldiers milling and chatting beneath a tiled portico. They wore swirly armor that looked almost elfin, designed more for ceremony than battle protection. I walked right past them, heading towards a propped-open door.

"Oh, no. You can't go in there!"

"The hell I can't."

One guy started after me, but his buddy whispered something to him and he let me go.

I entered a lobby that could have been at home in some corporate office building, without the receptionist booth. There were some slapdash sofas strewn about, crudely woven, not Luther's style at all. They were likely temporary placeholders. It would take some time to get the place properly furnished.

I heard some voices so I went straight through into an airy, circular chamber with a transparent dome. This was to be another, interior garden. Walkways were interspersed with flower beds not yet populated with plants. At the center, stone benches rose in tiers like a mini Roman amphitheater.

Here they were, Luther in the center seated cross-legged on a thick carpet. Urszula and Yaqob sat together on the first bench, while a smattering of Dusters and Weavers occupied the upper tiers. Bern was here, too, wearing a suit and a bow tie. He stood part, poking around the dirt with his walking stick. He beamed when he saw me.

"James!"

Luther only blanched and rolled his eyes. He clapped his hands.

"Karina! Please bring the wonder boy a robe or something. My goodness."

The intensity of Urszula's probing gaze unnerved me. Yaqob, on the contrary, barely glanced in my direction.

A lithe young woman came bounding out of one of the adjoining rooms carrying a neatly folded bundle of terry cloth, presenting it to me with a little curtsy. I accepted and shook it open. It was Navy blue, with big, floppy sleeves and a tie around the waist.

"Hope I'm not interrupting anything," I said.

"Oh, no. Not at all. We were just finishing up," said Luther. "So how goes it in the land of the living? It has been ages since I have gone back. Any new terrorist attacks? Financial disasters?"

"I figured out how to Weave," I said, pulling on the robe, and drawing it tight.

"Well, congratulations. They do call us Weavers for a reason."

"No. I mean, over there. On the other side. I got it to work."

"On Earth? Life? I don't think that's possible. Is it?"

Bern stepped forward onto Luther's carpet.

"Actually, I've always expected as much. Why should any single plane of existence be more real than the next?"

"Watch your shoes, please," said Luther, glaring at Bern's muddy footwear.

"Sorry." Bern stepped back.

"Any you did, I doubt it could have been very significant. There are severe constraints in that world, I am sure, as compared to here. There is a reason why there is so little magic on Earth."

"Actually, I ... uh ... I made a ... a monster, and—"

Luther rolled his eyes and waved me off. "Please. You can tell us all about it, later."

"I need to go," said Yaqob.

"Of course," said Luther. "But first, let us celebrate our treaty with a toast. Karina! Bring the wine, please."

I looked to Bern. "There's a treaty?"

Before Bern could even execute a nod, Luther answered for him.

"It's all gone smashingly well. We and our allies have identified substantial mutual interests. Simply put. We all hate the Frelsians. And with that common denominator, a beautiful alliance is formed."

"So ... you're joining the war?" I said.

"War? What war?" said Luther. "There is no war. Only detente."

"The Frelsians stay on their mountain," said Urszula. "They don't dare visit the plains anymore. Not even at night."

"They send only their beasts now," said Yaqob. "Only a few. Enough to harass us. Inferior creatures. Unfit even as prey for our insects."

"Pardon me for saying this, but this place seems kind of vulnerable. No walls. No guards, really. You make, kind of a tempting target for them."

"Let them come," said Luther. "We are better defended than you think."

The girl who had brought me the bathrobe came around with a tray of stemmed glasses filled with a clear fluid.

"Everyone, take a glass," said Luther. "To our budding alliance."

I sniffed at the liquid. It looked like water, but smelled like wine.

Yaqob grunted and drank his down before Luther had a chance to raise his own glass. Like a true diplomat, he shrugged and went ahead with the toast.

"To all who persevered in the dens of Reapers to rise above. To our friends who have cheated fate to seek a better world. To us! To our alliance!" He rose his glass high and quaffed it.

I took a little sip, just to be a team player. The stuff tasted awful, worse than that cheap ass Mad Dog stuff that all the winos in Ft. Pierce used to drink.

"Ah! Not the best," said Luther. "We'll put out a call for someone who can Weave us a decent wine. Still, it is reminiscent of the real stuff. No?"

"Our fermented nectar is much better," said Urszula.

"Excuse me?"

"Our aphid dew. Fermented. It is superior, like a fine mead. I will bring you some."

"I ... I would enjoy that," said Luther. "So, dear people, the vision I have is to use this station as a center for recruiting renegade souls. No longer, will they all go to Frelsi. We shall compete, and by virtue of out location ... and our virtues, I am sure souls will decide they would rather be with us. We shall offer them an option to the totalitarian misery lorded over by those so-called Freesouls."

"Where's Frelsi gonna get their Hemis?" I said. "They're not gonna like that up there. They depend on a steady supply of new souls."

"Not my problem," said Luther. "Frelsi will get their share. The name alone has cachet down beneath, thanks to the freaks they send to recruit. But we, at least, offer the chance of a freer, more democratic existence."

Bern and I looked at each other. He sure didn't sound like the dictator we knew below ground.

"What makes you think they're just going to sit around and let you?" I said. "They're gonna try to take you down. They have an army, you know."

"As do we," said Luther. "Harvald and Astrid are leading patrols up into the hills as we speak. Our friends, over here, are supporting us by air."

"I keep telling him," said Bern. "It's a big army, they have. They weren't really tested in the last fracas."

"Numbers are less important than ingenuity and skill," said Luther. "From what I hear, Wonder Boy here illustrated that famously in the raid that claimed my granddaughter."

"And my brothers and sisters are much more interested in fighting, these days," said Urszula. "Our success has inspired them."

"If nothing else, these patrols serve as good bait for our ambushes," said Yaqob.

"Don't sell my people short," said Luther. "They have talents in the fighting arts. Ballistics. Incendiaries. An arsenal of spell craft diverse and deep."

"We shall see," said Yaqob, rising. He strode across the domed garden without a good bye.

Urszula nodded to me. "I guess, we are off." She followed after the Old One, her relative subservience startling to me. As the Duster dignitaries exited, souls emerged from the surrounding chambers to converge on Luther.

But before they could reach him, I sidled over and whispered to him. "Hey ... um ... ready that place you were gonna show me. Well, I'm ready to go."

He looked at me like a third eye had sprouted on my forehead. "Place?"

"Yeah. You know. That alternative entry? To the Deeps?"

It took a moment for him to realize what I was talking about. "Oh. Of course. Yes. Certainly. And I'd also love to hear more about your trans-realm weaving experiences. But not right now. Things are a little too. Give me a day or so, perhaps."

"Another _day_? But ... I might not be here."

"I am sorry, it's just ... there are so many demands on my time."

Two men came charging up to Luther, jabbering on about some architectural dispute.

Bern, who had been hovering close enough to overhear, sidled up to me. "So, you still plan to go?"

"Well, yeah. If I can get Luther to take me. He said he would."

"Good luck with that," said Bern. "He's completely obsessed with constructing his new empire. Now that he's modified my cabin beyond recognition, I have half a mind to take my things and relocate a little farther out into the plains. There's no privacy here, whatsoever. It's bloody awful."

I glanced into the front chamber just in time to see Urszula slip through the door.

"Sorry, Bern. Will you excuse me?" I ran through the chamber and into the muddy yard outside the mansion. I grabbed her arm. She swung her around and brought her scepter up against my head. I was an instant from being blown to bits, and if her eyes alone could channel her will, they would have eviscerated me.

"Never! Never, surprise me like that! Understand? Announce yourself next time!"

"I'm sorry. I saw you leaving, and I was afraid I wouldn't get a chance to ... to ... uh."

"I chance to what?" she said, sneering.

"Can I ... can I ask a favor?"

"What kind of favor?"

"That spot, where your people entered this world. Can you take me there?"

Her brow crinkled. "What for?"

"I just ... I want to see it."

"There's nothing to see. The rift is sealed."

"Well, yeah, but ... maybe ... it can be unsealed."

She shook her head. "Don't waste my time with your stupid thoughts."

She pulled away, continuing after Yaqob, who had paused at the head of an alley puncturing the outer cluster of residences.

"Stupid? Why is it stupid? I can do things others can't. Right? So maybe it's possible. I'm not bragging. It's just the truth. I'm ... I'm a freak."

"There's nothing left to unseal," she said. "The rift is gone. Not a trace remains."

"Can you ... just show me?"

She kept on walking. "I thought Luther said he would take you to his special place down below."

"Yeah, but ... he can't right now. He's too busy."

"Well, so am I. Yaqob and I need to rejoin our patrols."

Yaqob looked on, stone-faced. "What does the boy want?"

"He wants to chase his girlfriend to the Deeps. And he thinks he can get there through the old rift."

"That rift is long gone."

"I explained that. Maybe he thinks he can unseal it."

"Show him," said Yaqob, shrugging. "Take him. Show him where it happened. What can it hurt? He has earned this one favor, at least. No? I'll look after your patrol. You can rejoin us later." He stuck his fingers in his mouth and blasted a whistle that his mantid could probably hear from miles away.

***

Urszula heeded Yaqob's request in silence. She clapped for Lalibela to hover down from her solitary patrol overhead and motioned for me to join her on the saddle. She wouldn't even look at me as we mounted her dragonfly.

I admired those long, many-celled wings, that intricate mesh work of veins. Raindrops beaded and ran off the waxy, transparent membranes. Her thorax began to vibrate, and with a tap of her scepter, Urszula signaled her mount to transfer the energy to her wings.

We rose and wheeled over Luther's new domain. From up high, it had the fragility and impermanence of a castle made of cards. A strong enough wind could have blown it all away. We leveled off just below the cloud tops.

I much preferred riding dragonflies than mantids. Seraf was built like a tank, but she flew like one, too, constantly struggling to maintain elevation, lurching left and right. She needed to set down onto the ground every few minutes to rest. And God, what a racket she raised with those tattered wing cases! My ears would thrum for a good hour after a long flight.

Lalibela, in contrast, might be less battle worthy, but she hummed like a sports car and handled like one, too, despite the heavy rain and fidgety winds.

We swept wide around the buttes and into the main valley. The scrub lands below had exploded with greenery with the coming of the monsoon. The braided channels we had once crossed on foot were joined as one into a swollen and turbulent sea, brown with sediment.

Low, hanging mists obscured most of Frelsi, but a few towers and walls peeked through this veil. I saw no evidence of any battle damage. Spell craft, no doubt, had allowed for a swift reconstruction. I hoped that Luther wasn't being too complacent about his defensive positions.

Urszula steered away from the massif and into the Table Lands, which began as a collection of isolated mesas but transitioned into a deeply corrugated landscape etched with ridges and canyons.

Tiers of angular mountains reared out of the chaos in the distance, their summits faceted like crystals. The tallest of them buried their heads in the clouds, revealing their frosty slopes in the occasional shift of wind.

The plant growth here was of a gargantuan scale, not just trees but vines as thick as telephone poles. Blossoms as wide as kiddie pools. Everywhere fluttered giant leaf hoppers and moths. This was clearly prime hunting grounds for the Dusters' beasts.

As we passed over a group of mantid riders straddling a knife-edged ridge, another squadron of mounted dragonflies swooped down out of the clouds to investigate us. Urszula waved off her fellow Dusters and we continued on deep into the Table Lands.

Urszula steered us towards a cluster of lower, flatter mesas, arranged like cubes of cheese tossed at random onto a platter. Rivers rushed through the deep clefts separating them, clashing and parting without seeming direction or purpose, though clearly the big valley was the only outlet to this watershed.

Lalibela glided down to a blocky mesa that seemed more devoid of greenery and topsoil than the others. It had been scoured clean, exposing greyish stone that stood out like a leprous lesion in this otherwise verdant land.

At the center of the scar was a perfectly concave bowl about a stone's throw across and deep enough to keep a gang of skateboarders amused. It would have been a pond if not for the deep crack running through the center, draining it into the mess of ravines below.

As we touched down, Urszula twisted around on the saddle.

"This is it. Happy?"

"This is the portal?"

"There is no portal. Not anymore. I told you that before we came. This is where the rift occurred, where the shaft came down."

"Shaft? What's this shaft?"

"The rift. The seam between worlds."

"But it came _down_? Really? From the sky? But I thought the Deeps were below us ... hence ... the name."

"The name is only a metaphor. You should know that physical position is all relative with realms of existence. Up can be down. Down is up. In is out."

"So then, where are they ... these Deeps?"

"Elsewhere," she said. "Everywhere. It is a separate realm. But ubiquitous. It connects to this place and other places in spots and seams."

"So this hole in the rock is ... an interface?"

Urszula rolled her eyes. "No. This is just a hole in the rock. It was made by the shaft ... the interface when it came. It came and damaged the land and left ... leaving behind this ... this footprint."

"So, there's like no trace of this shaft anymore?"

Urszula sighed. "No. It's gone! I keep telling you!"

I climbed off the saddle lowered myself into the bowl. It looked like one of those potholes that form in the stone of a riverbed. Its surface was polished, with a glazed crust that seemed to have formed at high heat.

"This shaft. Was it ... like a doorway?"

"It was like a rip ... a flap between worlds, like someone had taken a sharp knife to a bed sheet. When the Horus collapsed it was left dangling, naked in the sky. Transparent, but it bent the light like a lens. It wasn't clear what it was, that it would lead to this place or any place for that matter. But some among us remembered the songs about how the Old Ones passed from the Deeps, and some believed that it was a path to the Singularity. When some of the braver and more foolish among us passed through unharmed, we could see that the story of the Old Ones was true. And that is how we escaped into this place. It persisted for nearly an entire cycle before the Horus returned and wrested it back. But by then, thousands of us made it through. And in those days most of the first generation of renegades—the Old Ones—they were still active and alert, although they were already starting to pass into the Long Sleep."

"So there were two events? This happened twice?"

"Correct."

"So that means it can happen again."

"Possibly, but it is rare the Horus is defeated. Only twice in all the ages has it happened. First for Yaqob's generation—the Old Ones—and then for us new folk. Never since."

"How long were you down there? In the Deeps?"

She shrugged. "Who knows? In a place like the Deeps, one does not measure time the usual way. Not everyone there cares, but those who do, share songs, and ... it was many song cycles. I still keep them in my head, though ... they have faded."

"Why songs? Why not .... sunsets?"

"Because the sun never sets. There is no darkness, just constant light. There are no days in the Deeps. No seasons. Time has no shape without songs."

I crouched down and ran my hand along the smooth rim of the bowl that had been scooped out of the stone. This was real stone, not just reconfigured roots.

I wondered if Karla was already singing those Duster songs, if she was already a Duster, down to that coarse, gray skin. How else she might be different now? Was she recognizable as the Karla I knew, or had she become something else entirely? It made me wonder how different Urszula had been in life.

"What year did you die?"

"Year?" Urszula stared down at me, her face blank and bored. "I don't remember. Years mean nothing to me now. That world is too far removed from my existence."

"But was it before or after ... World War II?" I was trying to get a handle on what era she had lived. It might help explain why she acted the way she did. That hardness.

"I ... don't know. But who cares? The only war I care about is with the Frelsians."

She clapped for Lalibela, who was skimming the vegetated rim of the mesa, diving into flocks of dove-sized gnats that she caught and devoured on the wing.

"So how did you die?" Was that a rude thing to ask a dead person?

She scrunched her face at me like I was an idiot. "How else do you think? The gloom overtook me. I shed my own blood."

That, of course, was a no-brainer. Suicidal tendencies are what brought most souls to Root. That was the whole basis of the place—to sort the truly hopeless from those who deserved a second chance. But I was more interested in the details.

Lalibela resisted Urszula's summoning. The poor creature must have starving hungry. She made another swirling pass at a cluster of gnats before turning to obey her mistress.

"Did you have a ... a rough life? A bad family?"

"Not at all. I had a comfortable life, and a wonderful family. The gloom can descend on anyone. The bold. The meek. It plays no favorites. It needs no rationale."

"Well, I had good reason to be gloomy. I lost both of my parents."

Urszula shrugged. "Not all orphans are as unhappy as you." She clapped again for Lalibela, who had started to come, but had been distracted by yet another cloud of gnats. "She's reverting to the wild, again," said Urszula. "I haven't been riding her enough."

"Where did you live, on the other side? What country?"

"Silesia," she said. "The hills south of Breslau. A lovely place—back then. Fields and forests. Tidy villages. My father was a cooper. He made barrels." She took a deep breath and looked up into the mountains. "It has been so long since I thought of him. I remember his hands. So thick. Like a bear's paw. But gentle." She blinked and looked startled. "I ... I remember the year, now. It was nineteen-nineteen."

Lalibela flew down beside us and proceeded to munch a collection of gnats she had mushed together in her forelegs. Urszula went up to her and took hold of her reins. She stroked the bristles behind her dragonfly's bulging eyes. She gazed wistfully into the mists.

"I had a friend. My best friend. Liesel." Urszula's voice lost its usual edge. She spoke quietly, wistfully. "Loveliest creature I ever knew. We went everywhere together. Talked about anything and everything. Spent every waking minute of every day together. But ... her mother caught us ... caught me ... kissing her. They sent her away. Forever. I never found out where. I passed a letter to her brother, but he refused to bring it to her."

"I tried to find her. I only wanted to tell her some things I never had the chance to say, to exchange some last words. I understood that we had to be apart. That was how things were then. My world."

"Is that how you ended up here?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. But, even before Liesel, the gloom already had me in its grip. Roots had visited me. They probably would have taken me even if Liesel had never gone away. It was my fate. But knowing Liesel brought ... respite. She helped me feel normal ... hopeful ... for a time. Gave me reason to get up in the morning. Without Liesel, there was nothing to hold it back. It dug in and took complete control."

"I took my life behind our school, lying in the snow, making snow angels. Bloody ... snow angels. I had cut my wrists. The cold made it easy. I had no reservations at the time, no reason to regret. I was looking forward to the next place. If I had known it would be a place like the Deeps, I might have ... I might have reconsidered."

"So the Reapers got you?"

Urszula nodded. "Quickly. They wasted little time. I got to know nothing of this world above the roots, or even ... within the roots."

A familiar tingle spread through my fingers. I held up my hand to find my thumb and pinkie already mostly gone.

I sighed. "Looks like I'm on my way out."

Urszula looked alarmed. "Wait! Not yet. I should return you first to the plains. Otherwise, you will be stuck here, when you return."

"Sorry, I ... I can't help it. It's taking me."

She gritted her jaw and grabbed me around my shoulders in a bear hug, as if she could defy the will of a world that wanted me back and soon.

I expected to vanish under her grip, to leave her clutching air. But as she clung to me, a blotchy translucence spread from my flesh to hers. She was fading, too!
Chapter 12: Northbound

I opened my eyes to Ellen clubbing me in the face with a rolled-up magazine, while a naked girl—a lighter-skinned, slighter-framed version of Urszula—stood atop a bench in the waiting area, buck naked, shrieking at the top of her lungs.

"Noooo! What have you done? Send me back!"

"Where the fuck did she come from?" said Ellen, cringing.

"She's ... she's not supposed to be here."

"You know her?"

I nodded. People stared. Some clicked pictures with their iPhones. Nobody intervened.

Ellen shook her head. "Listen, we gotta go. I waited as long as I could, but the train is due on Track 5 in two minutes."

"We're gonna need a ticket for her, too."

"You're kidding. She's coming with us?"

"Well, we can't just leave her here."

Ellen sighed. "There's no time to get a ticket from the counter. We'll have to buy one on the train." She shoved a plastic sack into my sacks. "Get her to shut up and put these on. We have to go. Now!"

I peeked inside. It contained a blue and yellow Drexel T-shirt and a pair of matching sweat pants.

Urszula's cheeks were all inflamed. It was so odd seeing all that color in her face. It took away from her aura of invincibility, making her look quite mortal.

"What is this place? You had no right to bring me here!"

I held out the T-shirt, which was oversized even for me.

"Put this on and we'll talk okay?"

Noooo! This is not possible!" She screamed some more.

"Urszula! Just put this on!"

She ignored me. She just stood there, shaking on the bench, her face dripping with tears.

I opened up the bottom of the T-shirt and swung it over her head. She fought back, swinging her elbows, but one arm found its way into an arm-hole, and she got the point and wriggled into it. I handed her the sweat pants, which were blue, adorned with yellow dragons.

"Quick. The train's coming," said Ellen, heading to the stairs leading down to the platform. She showed me a Wendy's bag. "I got us a bite. Hope it's enough."

A transit officer came running over from a coffee shop, arms swinging loose at his sides, alert eyes tracking left and right, as he assessed the situation, his hand hovering over the canister of pepper spray on his belt.

"Alright. What's going on here? Why has she got no pants? She tripping?"

"No ... she's, uh ... my cousin. She's off her meds. We're taking her home."

"Take your hand from your weapon!" said Urszula, in a growl that was more nasal than intimidating. "Don't you look at me like that! I'll pluck your eyeballs."

"You shut the fuck up and get down off that bench!"

Urszula felt for the scepter she no longer carried. In another world, the transit officer's skull would have already been turned to dust.

"Officer! Please ... you're agitating her. That's not gonna help. Trust me."

"Well, you better get her calmed down, and get some clothes on her, or I'm gonna have her admitted. Got it?"

"Here, step into these." I held the sweats open. Urszula hesitated, but then she hopped in, the waist band rising up to her chest. Ellen rolled them up at the ankles so they wouldn't drag on the ground. I cinched the drawstring as tight as it would go. Rolls of fabric dangled off her butt.

Ellen glanced up at the arrivals screen with concern. "We'd better get down to that platform.

***

I took Urszula by the elbow and guided her gently down the stairs. She wobbled like a drunkard, barely able to keep herself upright. It was hard to believe this was the robust soul I knew in the Liminality. She was just a wisp of a waif. Seemed younger than thirteen, until you looked into her eyes.

"Where did she come from?" said Ellen.

"That place I go? She's from there."

Ellen shook her head in disbelief. "But how?"

"I don't know."

Urszula rubbed at her fingers. She must have noticed that she had no claws anymore, just blunt fingernails at the ends of long, delicate fingers.

Ellen gasped. "They're here!"

"Who?" I turned my head.

"Don't look!" Ellen grabbed my chin and forced it back. "It's that guy, Jozef. Sergei's right hand man. He's standing by the southbound tracks."

"Holy crap! They must think I'm going to Florida."

A pair of headlights appeared in the tunnel, growing until the massive fuselage of the train filled the space between us and the next set of tracks.

"I think they spotted us!" said Ellen. "They were heading up the stairs."

The doors opened. "Come on! All the way to the front. The more crowded the car, the better for us."

We made our way through a half dozen cars until we could go no more. The front-most car was only about half full, but it was easily the most occupied.

We found a pair of facing seats with a little table between them. "Get low," said Ellen. Stay away from the windows till we get rolling." I kept Urszula tucked under my arm. She buried her face in my chest and brought her knees up tight.

Ellen peered over the back of her seat. The damned doors of the car stayed open. People continued to enter the car. I held my breath and counted the seconds until they finally closed.

"Do you think they got on?" said Ellen.

"I have no idea. You're sure they saw us?"

"I don't know for sure"

The trained lurched forward and began to pull out of the station. I reached into the bag and cupped my hand around the Beretta.

"You still have that gun?" said Ellen.

I nodded. My heart was pounding and I was still breathing hard as was Ellen. Urszula was the only calm one in the bunch. She stared out the window, her body relaxing, as every last bit of tension oozed out and she surrendered herself to her fate.

Ellen reached over and tried to smooth her tangled hair. Urszula slapped her hand away and growled.

"You do not touch me!"

"My, she's a fierce one," said Ellen. "Oh shit. I almost forgot. Here." She handed me a crumpled Wendy's bag holding a cheeseburger and some cold French Fries. "See if she wants some."

"Want a bite?"

She kept silent and shook her head. Her tears had ceased. The icy glare that she had perfected on the other side was beginning to creep back into her expression, evicting the temporary innocence that had overcome her.

"I do not wish to be here," she said, but with much less conviction than before.

"Yeah, well. You're here," with my mouth full of cheeseburger. "Don't ask me how. But you're gonna have to make the best of it. Come on, have some fries."

I offered her the sack. She pushed my hand away.

Ellen leaned close to my ear. "Does she do the kind of magic that you do?"

"Well, yeah. On the other side. I'm not so sure about here."

"On ... the other side. You mean ... the spirit world?"

"Yeah. The spirit world." I was too tired to try and explain things to her.

"Show me how you do this spell craft here," said Urszula. "I want to see."

"Yeah, well. I'm not in the mood. The truth was, I was still getting these snatches of sensation from outside the train. That piece of my will was persisting, outside of me, and it seemed to be following the train.

"Her accent, it's interesting," Ellen whispered. "Where is she from?"

"Silesia," I said, peering over the seat back, half-expecting Jozef and his crew to come barging into our car any second.

Urszula narrowed her eyes at me. "Why are you so nervous?" she said. "Are you under threat?"

"Well, yeah ... there are some bad guys after me and Ellen."

"Enemies?" That bit of news seemed to jolt her into alertness. She unfolded herself and sat upright. She plunged her hand into the courier bag after mine. "Ah! I see you have a weapon. That is good."

"You know, you're kind of cute without the gray skin and claws," I said, risking an ocular evisceration.

"Bah! I am weak now. This flesh. It is inferior. It disgusts me."

"You'll get used to it."

She met my eyes with a flat, cold gaze. "I don't plan on remaining here. I will find my way back."

"How?"

"The same way I left this world the first time."

"You'd off yourself? A little extreme, don't you think? This place really that bad?"

"It is not my world. Not anymore. I was comfortable in my skin."

I sighed and crumpled up the wrapper of my cheeseburger. "I don't know what you're doing here in the first place. I thought you told me you were dead."

"I am," she said. "I am dead. Or at least ... I was."

"She ... was dead?" said Ellen.

I took a deep sigh and shrugged.

"She ... is resurrected? You resurrected her?"

"I wouldn't go that far."

"What else would you call it?" said Ellen. "She was dead, and now she's not. Some people would call that a miracle."

"I guess it beats seeing Jesus in a burnt tortilla." Ellen's eyes were darting all over. "Stop it! You've got that Squeaky Fromme look again."

Urszula slid over on the seat and pressed her nose against the window. "I see only stone. Only walls. Where are we?"

"We're under Philadelphia," I said. "Don't worry. We'll be above ground soon."

"This is America?"

"Yeah."

"I always wanted to come here, when I was small."

"Well, here you are," I said. "Dream come true."

The door at the back of the car suddenly opened, and from the way I flinched, it was a wonder I didn't fire that gun. But It was only the ticket-taker.

I finally let myself relax. If Jozef and crew had boarded this train, they would have found us by now.

***

We all napped on and off in a huddle on that seat. Urszula spent a lot of time at the window, squinting into the darkness.

Things were running late because there was a disabled car in Hoboken. I didn't care. I was in no hurry to get anywhere. I was just waiting for my hope to fade a little more so I could get back to the Liminality. With any luck, I could bring Urszula back with me, put the poor girl out of her misery. Though, for someone who hated this existence so much, she sure spent a lot of time staring out that window.

Ironically, it was presence here that was making it difficult for me to surf my way back. I couldn't help thinking that whatever had brought her here could also bring back Karla, if I could only get to the Deeps and track her down. The sad part was, the more I let such happy thoughts intrude, the less likely I would make it out of this world.

But even that realization would eventually work in my favor once I convinced myself how screwed I was. It was all circular that way, these cycles of hope and despair. Funny, how one could breed the other.

The train finally got rolling again. I braced myself for another confrontation as we passed under the Hudson and into Penn Station. It seemed an obvious checkpoint for Sergei's crew, but nothing too weird happened when the doors opened. A few guys in suits got off and on, and we were on our way again, passing through Manhattan and out and over the East River.

That little bit of distraction from all the dramas going on in my head was all that was needed to summon the roots. The feeling, when it came, kind of snuck up on me.

Ellen's head bobbed with each bump and her mouth hung half-open. She was sleeping. Urszula, on the contrary, was drowsy but awake. She brooded, picking at a loose thread in the seam of the seat.

"Listen ... Urszula. I feel something coming on. The roots, they're near. When I tell you, you hang on to me. Hang on to me tight!"

Urszula didn't bother to wait. She just swooped in and engulfed me in her arms. And it was a good thing she acted when she did, because when those roots decide to pounce, they don't give you much warning and they do it quick.

Something uncoiled at the base of my spine. Our souls broke loose from this world, like a pair of boats, free of their moorings.
Chapter 13: Below

And just like that, with a little twist of space and time, Urszula and I were back on the mesa, at the edge of that bowl the rift had scoured and polished in the stone.

The rain had stopped and the winds had calmed, but a solid bank of clouds still filled the sky.

Lalibela cruised high overhead. When she spotted Urszula she curled down and alighted on a gathering of gnarled vines as thick as fire hoses.

My terrycloth robe still lay where it had fallen, soggy, but intact, the fibers having yet to revert to their original, rooty state. I wrung it out and pulled it on.

Urszula laughed and rubbed her arms, glorying in the return of her thick, gray hide. Her throaty chuckles trailed away as she stooped to retrieve the bits of her scaly armor.

"That visit. It was so brief. Is that all there is to be?"

"Beats me," I said. "You being there at all kind of boggles my mind."

"Does this mean I am dead ... again?" She pressed the scaly segments of her armor against her torso and somehow they clung to her skin.

"You sound disappointed. I thought you hated it there."

"I just ... I didn't have the chance ... to absorb ... what was happening."

"Don't worry about it. I mean, what's wrong with having another option? Another place to go?"

"I fear ... losing control."

"It's simple. Don't touch me when I'm fading."

"But do you suppose ... I might fade on my own now? The way you do?"

I just looked at her and shrugged. "You're asking me? Nothing makes sense to me anymore. It's like nothing's permanent. Nothing's irreversible. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing."

"I wouldn't mind ... going back," she said, her eyes wistful. "For another taste."

"Well, first let's get your bug and get me back to the plains. And pronto, in case you're on a quicker cycle than me. I need to spend some time with Luther."

She summoned Lalibela with a sharp clap and a click of her tongue. The dragonfly responded immediately, clambering off the vines and lowering her thorax so we could climb into her saddle.

Urszula held her insect's harness, and stroked the back of her head, gazing out into the mist. I had already climbed onto the saddle.

"So? Are we going?"

She clenched her eyes and shook her head, before hauling herself up onto Lalibela's thorax. "Sorry. I am just not used to the idea of having two places to be. This was never a possibility before. It can be awkward, no? Whisking back and forth without warning?"

I sighed. "Welcome to my world. You're just gonna have to learn how to surf."

***

The village looked like an anthill that had just gotten stomped by a boot heel. Everyone was in a tizzy over a raid the Frelsians had just attempted. One of the turrets of Luther's mansion had been blown apart. Piles of smoking debris littered the roofs of the cottages beneath.

Survivors were fleeing back to the foothills, harried by mantids and a contingent of Luther's militia. The massive carcass of a dying Reaper lay upended on the plains, its stubby legs re-absorbing into its default, undifferentiated, slug-like state.

As Lalibela came in low, skimming the ground, I spotted Bern among the milling crowd. He was dressed for battle in leathery shoulder pads and an antique helmet with a wide brim. He had converted his walking stick into a stout staff taller than himself. An opening at one end flared wide like a blunderbuss.

I hopped off Lalibela before she had come to a halt. I tumbled, rolled and popped to my feet. "Hey Bern! What the heck happened here?"

Bern was all out of breath, his face all flushed. "Surprise attack. Nothing serious. I suspect they were only probing us. I don't think they expected as much spell craft as we sent their way. Luther certainly has this crew trained up well. They may not look like soldiers, but they are fighters all. I suspect we are in very good hands."

Several squadrons of mantid riders gathered in a circle on the plain, tending their wounds. A steady flight of bees provided refreshment. I had never seen so many mantids gathered in one place before. The Dusters had mobilized in a big way.

Urszula slapped Lalibela's side, sending her off on patrol. She strolled over to the mantids and shared a few words with her comrades.

The Reaper looked like a giant pincushion, riddled with long lances, each bearing a pennant with a blue and red harlequin pattern.

"I wonder where Reapers go when they get reaped." I said, thinking aloud.

"You don't really believe those beasties have souls?" said Bern. "Do you?"

Several dead Frelsians still lay where they had fallen, some trapped beneath the Reaper. Their wounds were variously fibrous or powdery, depending on the source of the spell craft that had struck them.

I couldn't help feeling bad for them. They weren't evil, they were just Hemisouls like me and Bern. They fought under the promise of freeing their souls, but like most, they never got their chance to go free. Now they were likely torn from their lives forever and any possibility of eternal existence in the Liminality. They were down in the Deeps now, most likely. It felt weird, that I planned to join them.

"How'd they manage to get so close?" I said.

"Sneak attack," said Bern. "They came from below, out of the pits."

"Holy crap. There are sinkholes all over the place out here."

"Yes. Well, it won't be so easy next time around. Luther is already planning a bit of an engineering campaign to secure our perimeter above and below. I have to say, I've abandoned the idea of going off on my own. I'm recognizing that there is safety in numbers."

A flamboyant figure appeared from behind the Reaper. He wore a plumed hat and a metal breastplate. He was accompanied by a large entourage of bodyguards and attendants.

Bern sighed. "And there goes Luther, touring the battlefield. I dare say he seems quite thrilled by this whole affair. The sick bastard seems to find this all entertaining."

"I need to talk to him."

"I take it, you didn't find your back entrance to the Deeps?"

"Well, Urszula showed me the place where she came into this world. But, whatever had let her in, well, it's not there anymore."

"I could have told you that much," said Bern. "Spared you the trip."

"I did warn him," said Urszula, coming up behind us.

"I know ... I just ... I had to see for myself."

"Listen, James, I know it how much it hurts to lose Karla. I feel it too. But you need to let her go."

"I promised I would find her."

"It is pure folly to go there. The more I hear about it, the more horrible it sounds. Why risk getting stuck there?"

"It was my fault, we lost her."

"That is not true!" said Urszula. "You tried to warn her. She was careless."

I shook my head. "I should never have come back here for the raid. I should have stayed with her in Inverness."

"But we needed you," said Urszula. "You were the key to our success."

"Yeah, well. Maybe it wasn't worth the price."

"Yes, well, what good does it do you ... or Karla ... for you to be stuck in the Deeps?" said Bern.

"Doesn't matter," I said. "She is everything. I ... I have no purpose here." Tears popped out of my eyes and trickled down.

Bern and Urszula's eyes were drawn to something behind me. I turned to find Luther standing there alone, as his entourage looked on in a gaggle a good twenty paces behind us.

He crinkled his brow. "Spare us the drama, Wonder Boy. Getting to the Deeps is no big thing. If you really want to go so badly, I can show you a way in that doesn't involve Reapers. But you'll have to promise to do me a small favor."

"Of course! Anything."

He waggled his finger at me and sneered at the sky. "Let's go inside and talk. Looks like it's about to rain again."

***

The sprawling mansion that had begun as Bern's humble one-room cabin had sprouted even more extensions while I was away. And with working parties now assembling to erect walls and battlements, it was well on its way towards becoming a castle.

Luther led me to a chamber, with a stout wooden desk and an antique chair bulky and ornate enough to be a throne. I took one of the three thinly padded chairs facing it. I don't know why, but the situation reminded me of Sergei's office in the McMansion. The sheer déjà vu rattled me

Luther sat down and shuffled through some parchments, selecting one that was covered with a fine, inked scrawl.

He rolled it up and tied it with a ribbon.

"This ... is for a man I knew. Once ... in both worlds. His name was Olivier. He was a dancer, and a man's man, if you know what I mean. One of my ... early obsessions. An enigma. Never satisfied, no matter how great his successes. But never discouraged, no matter how terrible his failures. He was different from most people. From you and me and most of the self-pitying mob that end up here in the Liminality. He had verve, this one. How _he_ ended up in Root, I have no idea ... because his spirit was indomitable. But I heard, on the other side, that he was having trouble, so I went and found him in the tunnels. He refused my rescue, insisting on remaining in his pod. I couldn't force him to submit, because he had the craft in him ... strong. As much as you or more. But the Reapers got him before he could come to his senses, before I could convince him to join us in the 'Burg."

Luther formed the faintest smile and he looked straight at me.

"And so ... I've always wondered about his fate. I suppose He's there ... somewhere ... in the Deeps. He was always one to thrive in challenging environments. There are other paths, other destinations, of course, but let's assume he has stayed put. So, since you're going to be prowling the Deeps ... I was hoping you could keep an eye out for him. And if you happen to find him, give him this missive. It's an accounting of his posthumous fame. He's quite a legend in the dance world these days. His choreography was ground-breaking. Seminal. I bet he would be tickled to know of his legacy. Now, I know the odds of finding him are slim, but if anyone could make a splash in the Deeps, it would be him. What I would give to have him up here to help run my little Kingdom. He's like Harvald, squared. No, Harvald to the nth!"

He handed me the parchment roll.

"So ... his name's Olivier? Is that all I have to go on?"

"Basil Olivier Oswald Metz is his full name. 'Boom,' to those close to him. I know it's a needle in a haystack proposition. The Deeps are probably brimming with lost souls. But finding him may be easier than you think. This man makes an impression everywhere he goes. People remember him."

Something bothered me about Luther's level of obsession with this Olivier guy. "What about ... Karla?" I said.

Luther shrugged. "What about her?"

"Aren't you interested in finding her?"

"Of course. That goes without saying. She's .... blood. But I know you've got that part handled. Now come. Let's get you to the Deeps."

He pulled a blunt twig from his pocket and extended it into a long, slender wand.

***

Back outside, we found Bern helping some folks repair the wall of a cottage that had been damaged in the attack. The mantid riders had taken flight and were now specks against the foothills. But Lalibela still circled overhead, riderless.

"Where's Urszula?"

"Don't know. She seems to have vanished."

"Literally?"

"I don't believe so. But why would you say that? Do you know something I don't?"

"I brought her back ... to life ... the last time I faded. To Philadelphia."

"Holy cow. Philadelphia. Her?"

"Yeah, I know. Weird, huh?"

"Wonders never cease with you, do they boy?"

"And that's why we call him the Wonder Boy," said Luther. "We're going down below, Bern, in case you care to join us. Who knows, it might be the last we see of our friend."

"You're taking him down? To the Deeps?"

"He insists," said Luther. "He'll find his way there one way or another. Might as well ease his passage, don't you think?"

"Yes. Of course," said Bern, a bit stunned and glum. "Your back door beats the alternative. I just wish it was an exit as well as an entrance."

"Ah, I wouldn't worry. A boy of his talents should be able to find his way back."

"I can only hope," said Bern. He hobbled over to a nook between two cottages and retrieved a cloth bundle. He came over and handed it to me.

"Your sword," he said.

"Whoa! Thanks! I thought I had lost it." I unwrapped the blade, which was swaddled in various items of clothing I had woven on previous visits. They were all looking a bit ragged as some of the fibers had partly reverted, but they were more dignified than that filthy blue bathrobe. I discarded the robe and pulled on the jeans and hoodie, almost more grateful to have my old clothes back than the sword.

Once I was dressed, we ambled together to the edge of the sinkhole, which was now ringed by at least six waterfalls, fed by ditches and streams that drained the village.

Luther examined Bern's crude rope ladder, crinkling his nose. "What kind of dross is this?" He slipped out his wand and expanded the rungs, converting them into an elegant spiral staircase with grooved treads and polished mahogany handrails. Water channeled onto it and dripped on our heads as we descended.

"Ugh! I truly hate this season," said Luther. "Can't wait for the droughts to begin. But it benefits the poor souls down below, I suppose. Feeds the springs and all."

"Are you sure you don't mind if I come?" said Bern, looking a mite sheepish, atop the staircase.

"Not at all," said Luther, Glad to have you along, Bernard."

Bern rolled his eyes and proceeded down the stairs after us. "I spent years trying to find a way out of the tunnels. I can't believe I'm going back in."

At the base of the staircase, we splashed into the dark pool that now flooded the rocky shelf where Bern had built his last cabin. Exhalations from the network of tunnels below rippled the otherwise still waters. We waded over to a black slot that gashed the wall of the sinkhole. Here, the stone transitioned to a dense matrix of the root-like fibers that gave this place its nickname.

I tried ducking into the tunnel, but the walls were pinched shut.

"Sorry," said Bern. "That's my doing. I sealed them all up to keep my cabin safe from Reapers. Here, let me blast that open."

"No. Leave it sealed," said Luther. "An open tunnel is an invitation to attack. We can squeeze through. Can we not? We're not that chunky, are we?"

I pressed myself into the slot and scraped against the roots. Bern shoved me through. Luther followed and by that time the passage had loosened enough so that Bern breezed right through.

The air changed on the other side of the constriction. We were fully immersed in the thick and dank atmosphere of the tunnels. There was a time I found comfort and refuge in that mustiness, but I just found it oppressive.

A few steps in we rounded a bend, and apart from some trickling rivulets, there was no hint that we were anywhere near the surface or that there could possibly be an exit to this place. The only light came from the flashes and pulses of the roots themselves.

Bern clasped a hand to his chest. "Never thought I would miss this place after being up top. But there are lots of good memories tucked away in these stinky tunnels. I met Lille, here. She changed my life. I'd be in the Deeps myself already, if not for her."

Bern and I had that much in common. I could have said the same for Karla, but I kept silent. There was no question she had saved from an eternity in the trash bin of existence. Perhaps, that would turn out to be only a temporary reprieve, but not if I could help it.

Funny, how what we were never able to find in the 'real' world, we found here, and then we both lost it. At least I was doing something about my loss, as unlikely and desperate as my quest seemed.

But Bern, in many ways, was in a better position. Presumably, Lille was still around, somewhere up there in Frelsi, hopefully unharmed. He wouldn't need to cross worlds to find her.

The tunnels dried out the deeper we went as the runoff seeped into the matrix of roots, collecting into pools or cascading deep down unseen but thunderous torrents.

The first pods appeared, full of moaning and squirming souls, some pleading, most incoherent. Luther passed beneath them without as much as a glance, as if they were sides of beef in a meat locker. But I had to stop. I wanted to help and give someone the kind of chance that Karla gave me.

"Oh, stop your dawdling," said Luther. "None of these souls are worth saving."

"How do you know that?"

"Listen to them. All that whimpering. They've given up. Every last one. Not an ounce of spunk or fortitude among them. Believe me, I've got an ear for good recruits, and none of these qualify. And even if they did ...."

"You wouldn't help them?"

"This is an active passage. The Reapers will be by shortly.

"All the more reason to help them."

He shook his head. "We need to stay on task. I need to get back up to my people. We've got patrols to manage, defenses to build." But then he paused and glanced over at me, lowering his voice. "Maybe on our way back, if they're still here, Bern and I can give them a more thorough vetting. Never hurts to have fresh blood. But not now, for God sakes. We've got to get you to the Deeps, boy!"

I was actually beginning to get cold feet. I was still determined to go, but I regretted rushing the process. The potential permanence of the transition ahead of me was disturbing. I would be sealing myself in a world with no obvious exit. Was I ready for that?

And what about Ellen on the other side? Shouldn't I have first gotten her safely to where she needed to go, instead of abandoning her on the train? What if Sergei was waiting on the other end?

I pressed forward, nonetheless, following behind Luther who took long, confident strides down a winding passage so dark I could barely make out the floor. We came to a crazily illuminated junction of five tunnels. Beads and bubbles of light whizzed along the lengths of roots, their colors changing as bubbles collided and merged, shifting between coral, chartreuse and lapis lazuli.

Luther grinned. "Oh yes, this is the place. We're in my territory now. My old stomping grounds. The branching becomes more frequent the deeper you go from here. And these messages you see, they converge on the core, sending information on every soul in this existence. I am convinced that the powers-that-be have some connection there, though they have never shown themselves here. Not surprising, I suppose. The Liminality and the Deeps are not exactly showcases of the human soul. We are disappointments to them, all of us. Waste only fit for disposal. Why they bother to monitor us at all, I wonder."

"They? You're sure they're a They? Not a He or a She."

"Isn't it obvious?" said Luther. "A monstrosity of an afterworld like this could only have been designed by a committee."

"Who's to say it was designed?" said Bern. "Maybe it just evolved. Spontaneously."

Luther bobbed his head from side to side. "Nature? Nah? Nature is more orderly and logical. Now, if I was God, I would run this place much more efficiently. I wouldn't pussy foot with all of these clumsy Reapers and giving people second chances. I would get souls to where they needed to go and that would be that."

Somehow, I was glad that Luther wasn't God, no matter how much neater and efficient Root might be. Nazi concentration camps had also been models of efficiency.

As we moved deeper into the network, it didn't take long to find evidence of Reapers. Their spoor befouled passages where the pods had all been ripped away.

And then a tremble shook the walls. Something big was heaving itself along our tunnel. Growls and groans emanated from the darkness below.

Luther poked his wand into a knotted wall of roots and they spread away from the tip, creating a wide circular opening.

"Let us take a shortcut. There's a little much commotion for my comfort down this passage."

We ducked into the opening and into a jungle of unconsolidated roots that formed a patternless mesh. There was no floor, really. We clambered like monkeys through the tangles, cutting across two more passages before finding a tunnel that met Luther's approval.

With a pass of his wand, the hole in the wall sealed like a sphincter. The fibers re-organized, leaving no sign of our passing.

"Well, that's certainly nifty," said Bern. "Wish I could get my cane to do that."

We strode on down a broad, slick-walled tunnel devoid of pods or rumblings.

"Ah, now we're talking," said Luther. "This is the kind of avenue I have been searching for."

"So ... whatever happened to the 'Burg?" I asked.

"It is still there, I suppose. I hope. Not all of the populace wished to relocate up top. No ill feelings. I wish only the best for those who stayed behind. But who knows what kind of shape it's in now, though I do hope that they're keeping it tidy. One needs constant vigilance to keep these blasted roots at bay. Turn your back and they overgrow everything."

"Why'd you leave?"

Luther looked uncomfortable.

"It was time to go," he said. "You stay in any one place too long, and eventually it becomes too much like a prison. Even ... for the warden."

The tunnel corkscrewed ever downward. We passed junction after junction. Some led up tunnels befouled with the excrement of Reapers, but there were smaller conduits with walls smooth and pure, their roots all parallel and flowing with those colored beads of light.

"We're getting close," said Luther. "I can feel the energy change. Can you?"

I felt nothing but scared. Things were moving way too fast. My heart thumped with the anticipation of entering yet another existence from which I might never return.

I wondered what would happen to me in the world of the living. Would I just blink out? Would I physically die and leave Ellen to have to deal with my carcass on the train? If so, I felt bad for dumping her with the trauma and responsibility that involved, but I had to do this. I was committed, regardless of the consequences.

Lost in my trepidations, I had gotten ahead of Bern and Luther. As I came around a bend, the tunnel seemed to end. The light from the roots grew faint—not much more than the phosphorescence you get from a watch dial. There appeared to be a mound of something blocking our way.

It smelled sickly, like a combination of dumpster juice and porta-potty leakage.

"What the ... what hell is that?" said Bern.

I held out my sword to prod it.

Luther grabbed my arm. "No! What the hell are you doing?"

Too late. The point of my blade penetrated the mound. It exploded with a roar, heaving itself up off the tunnel floor. Awoken from a deep torpor, the Reaper bellowed and lunged at us, its flesh-fouled maw open wide, feelers reaching. I stumbled back into Bern.

"Oh my God! That's a big one," said Luther.
Chapter 14: The Core

Luther swiped his wand and the tunnel walls came alight, glowing a fierce and ghostly green that revealed the Reaper's creased and crusty hide. The creature cringed at the light, blinking its half-dozen eyes. This was a full grown beast, with scars on its scars, a veteran of many battles.

It bellowed like a moose, rattling the loose flesh deep in its gullet, and flung itself at us. A spiky feeler came whipping at my head. I ducked and swatted it away with the flat of my blade.

"Step aside!" said Luther, brushing past me.

I stumbled back, knocking into Bern again.

"What does he think he's doing?" I said.

"Luther ... uh ... he ... uh ... he has a way with Reapers," said Bern. "Kindred spirits, I suppose."

Luther walked right up to the agitated beast, one palm raised, keeping his wand tucked at his side. He patted its knobby blubber and touched his forehead against the creature's flesh, cooing something soft and creepy in a language I didn't recognize, but it sure as hell wasn't English.

The beast slumped and fell calm, retracting its feelers, lowering its torso to the tunnel floor. It rattled out a long and smelly exhalation like the beginning of a snore.

"You can pass now," said Luther, softly. "Go on ahead. Slowly. Try not to bump it. Don't even touch it."

I pressed myself tight against the curve of the tunnel wall and squeezed through the narrow gap, trying my best to avoid the beast's warty tubercles. This thing had to be the ugliest, grungiest Reaper I had ever seen. The garish green glow Luther conjured did it no favors. The creatures the Frelsians had domesticated seemed sleek and pretty in comparison.

Bern struggled to follow me through the tight space. He lacked flexibility in his bad leg, and seemed on the verge of losing his balance. I reached a hand out to steady him before he plunged into the thing's blubber.

"Keep on walking!" said Luther, as we came around the backside of the Reaper. "Put some distance between you and it. Don't worry about me, I'll catch up."

We strode into a darkness that was nearly absolute. I worried about stumbling into another slumbering Reaper. Yet, every step we took triggered a flash of green phosphorescence that persisted behind us leaving a trail of glowing footprints that marked our path.

"Shouldn't we wait for him?"

"He said not to," said Bern. "And for good reason. Those Reapers can be unpredictable."

So I plunged ahead, taking it on faith that I wouldn't step on a monster or plunge into a bottomless pit. The tunnels grew colder, the footing firmer, the deeper we went.

Something strange seemed to be happening to the gravity. Looking back, our glowing prints seemed to spiral around the entire circumference of the tunnel. Either the tunnels were slowly twisting behind us as we walked or the relationship between up and down kept shifting.

This strange sense of topsy-turviness affected more than our flesh. Something was prying at the glue connecting my consciousness to my body. I felt a weird pressure inside my skull and chest, as if my essence was trying to wiggle out of my heart and squeeze out my ear holes. It was a different feeling from switching worlds. I found it even more disturbing and uncomfortable.

A brilliant white glow grew behind us. Luther appeared, the tip of his wand ablaze like a strip of magnesium. As he came around the bend, his body was leaning at a good forty five degree angle in relation to me and Bern.

That clinched it. What I had noticed was no illusion, the gravity really was all screwy down here.

It made me dizzy and queasy, watching him approach like that, his posture going upside down and then horizontal before coming around to match our orientation. I took a deep breath and told myself that everything was okay, that this was normal.

"It's surprisingly chilly down here," said Bern, hugging his arms to his chest.

Until he mentioned it, I hadn't even noticed, so distracted was I by all the other weirdness going on.

"Oh, it's just awful," said Luther. "But it's nothing like the Deeps." He pushed ahead of us.

"So how'd it go with that Reaper?" said Bern.

"Oh, no worries," said Luther. "It's back deep in its slumber. But I do suggest we return another way, Bern, if you don't mind."

"By all means," said Bern. "I'd just as soon follow James into the Deeps than have another run-in with that beastie. I don't care if you are the beast-whisperer."

As we strode along, each of our bodies at a different angle, Bern yanked a knife from his belt and slashed a chunk of roots from the tunnel wall and proceeded to weave himself another item of clothing. He made himself a crude poncho, basically a blanket with a hole in the middle for his head. He made no attempt to align the warp and weft or to transform the roots into something more like yarn.

He caught me gawking at his handiwork. "Another reason to miss Lille," he said. "She was much better at this Weaving stuff, than me. Particularly when it came to cloth. But ... whatever. It does the job." His gaze stuck on me when he looked up. "James ... uh ... there's ... there's something wrong with you ... with your complexion."

"My what?"

Luther whipped around to see. He tossed up his head in exasperation and rolled his eyes. "I don't believe it. You're leaving us again? Now? What is wrong with you? We are almost there."

"I'm not fading. Am I?"

Bern nodded. "Sorry James. But yes. I'm afraid you are."

I held up my hand and found stubs where my fingers had been.

"Wait! I don't have to go. I can hold myself back. I've done it before."

"This close to the Core? I'm afraid not," said Luther. "You have no control whatsoever down here. The forces are too powerful. Your soul will go wherever it wants to be and there's nothing you can do about it."

"Crap! I'll ... I'll be right back. I promise. You guys will wait for me. Right? _Right?_ "

I was gone before they could respond.
Chapter 15: Bridgeport

Rumbles and rattles told me I was back on the train. On my right, I could hear Ellen chattering excitedly with Urszula.

Urszula!

So she was indeed now cycling between life and the afterworld on her own. She was alive. Reincarnated. And I was the one who had brought her back from death. The implications stunned me.

James Moody, life bringer? Like Prometheus? Dr. Frankenstein? Jesus? Why would I, of all people, be given such powers? It made no sense. I was such a nobody.

Ripples roiled my stomach. I kept my eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the wave of nausea to pass and for my head to clear.

Ellen giggled giddily and nervously. I couldn't help myself. I wanted in on the joke.

My eyes popped open. "What's so funny?"

The two girls looked at me. They sat in facing seats in the booth across the aisle. The car was half empty now.

"Urszula just had a run-in with the conductor," said Ellen, her face all red. "Don't be surprised if we get kicked off at the next stop."

"Why? What happened?"

"Well, when the guy first came by, both of you were sleeping, and you were hunched over your courier bag, so I couldn't get at the cash. He said, no problem, he'd come back again after he made his rounds. Well, when he did, you were still sleeping and neither of us could rouse you. I mean, you were really out of it. I was worried. I had to check your pulse to make sure you were still alive. Well, he thought you were drunk or stoned and he gave us this big, long lecture about next time purchasing tickets before we board. But the way he said it kind of rubbed Urszula the wrong way."

"Stupid man. High and mighty," said Urszula. "I hate hubris. Especially in a man."

"She ... uh ... threatened him," said Ellen.

"He should have minded his own business."

"Checking tickets is his job," I said. "We have to pay to ride on trains."

"Makes no sense to pay in advance," said Urszula. "What if the locomotive never reaches the place we need to reach?"

"She ... she threatened to roast his testicles ... and eat them."

"Urszula! That's not cool. You can't do that kind of thing here. It's not how we do things."

She shrugged. "It was just an expression."

"The way he stomped off, I think he's gone to get security," said Ellen. "But we're almost in Bridgeport and that's our stop. Get ready to skedaddle as soon as the doors open."

"She didn't actually touch him, did she? I mean, that could be seen as assault."

"He wishes I touched him!" said Urszula, sputtering. "Why would I want to touch a cockroach like him?"

I smirked. "I don't know. I thought you liked insects."

Ellen's eyes widened. She leaned forward and whispered. "You know ... that's the other thing. We were talking and ... she says she rides giant bugs."

"Well ... maybe she does," I said.

The trained braked, thrusting us forward.

"This is our stop," said Ellen, rising from her seat. "We change here for the Metronorth." She reached into the overhead rack for her plastic sack. "Get ready to run!" She kept her eyes trained on the adjoining car, where the conductor had likely retreated.

As the train pulled into Bridgeport station and rolled to a stop, a man stood on the platform, holding a placard. It was him! The guy with the old Cadillac.

"Ellen! Get down. It's that guy! The one who's been following us."

"But ... we need to get off. This is our stop."

"Stay on the train! We'll get off the next one."

"But ...."

"Ellen! We can't get off."

"What is happening?" said Urszula, her brow all crinkled.

"Look straight ahead! Keep away from the window."

The guy stood calm, displaying his placard to all who exited the train: 'James. I won't hurt you. I just want to talk.'

***

The doors closed and only when the train picked up speed and passed into some marshes flanking a large river, could I breathe normally again.

"Next stop is New Haven," said Ellen, peering at a timetable.

"Can we get to your grandmother's from there?" I said.

"I suppose ... but not by train. We'd have to take a bus or something."

"How far a drive is it?"

"I don't know. Maybe an hour or so by car. But ... I don't see why we didn't get off. I mean, this guy just wanted to talk. Maybe he just wants to help us."

"But how do we know that for sure?" I said. "How does he know who we are? And how does he always seem to know where we're going?"

Ellen took a deep breath. "I don't know, but it doesn't seem like he's one of Sergei's people. I mean, like at the airport, he wasn't with those other guys."

"You think we should go back to Bridgeport?"

"Yeah," said Ellen. "I say let's chance it. We've got time to make our connection. And even if we miss it, there's a train every hour in the afternoon."

The idea of going back was beginning to appeal to me, but not because I wanted to talk to that guy. I wasn't convinced he was so benign. I just saw it as a nice bit of misdirection to go to New Haven and double back to Bridgeport. Whoever was after us would be left kissing our dust in New Haven.

"Wish I had a phone," said Ellen. "I could call Grams to expect us for dinner. But I'm sure it's no problem if we just show up. She loves having company over. She's a great cook. I'm sure she could whip something up."

The door connecting the cars opened and a uniformed conductor stepped through.

"Oh, crap!" said Ellen. "He's back."

The conductor looked to be in his early thirties. He had a droopy mustache that could have used a good trim. He had his sleeves rolled up revealing arms that her hairy and duff. He definitely worked out.

When he spotted us, his expression went sour. He rolled his eyes.

"What's the deal? I thought you guys was getting off in Bridgeport?"

"We ... missed our stop," said Ellen. "We were ... confused."

"Confused, my ass. We announce every stop three times. What the fuck? You trying to get to Boston for cheap?"

"Listen," I said. "It was my fault. I was snoozing and they couldn't wake me. Honestly. We wanted to get off at Bridgeport. And I promise we'll get off at the next stop no matter what. And ... I can pay the extra. Cash. Whatever the cost."

"Just do me a favor and get the fuck off my train in New Haven. Okay? I don't want to see you guys ever again. Especially this one." He flicked his chin towards Urszula.

Urszula forced a sickly sweet smile that was weirdly incongruous to her disposition. She slipped by Ellen and sidled close to the conductor.

"Sir? I want to apologize for being so harsh with you before," she said, moving closer to him as he backed away. "My friends tell me I was rude."

She leaned forward, invading his personal bubble, she wanted to give him a hug or peck him on the cheek. He lurched back, but she kept on coming.

"Get her away from me! Get this bitch away from me."

The few people left in the car stared at us.

I grabbed Urszula's arm, restraining her. The conductor wasted no time in skittering back down the aisle.

"She's on drugs," he muttered over his shoulder as he fled. "Gotta be. You guys need to get her some help. She's a menace. She really shouldn't be out in public." He escaped into the next car.

"I just wanted to say I was sorry," said Urszula, pouting.

"Are you? Really?"

"No," she said, with a smirk.

"Didn't think so," I said.
Chapter 16: Haven

The train rolled into New Haven before we had even time to gather our wits and agree on a plan. We burst through the doors the moment they opened, and then stood around confused and wary on the platform.

"So what do we do now?" I said.

"We need tickets for the Metronorth," said Ellen. I was glad that at least one of us was capable of thinking clearly. "Two legs. West back to Bridgeport and then north up to Naugatuck. Grams' house is a short walk from the station."

My eyes flitted between every person on this platform and the next, looking for signs of Sergei's watchers. My train station phobia had already kicked in big time, palms sweaty, heart racing.

Ellen was already waiting by a stairwell. "Come on, you guys. We need to go out to the lobby for tickets."

So we followed her downstairs and through a tunnel that led beneath the tracks. As we came back up into the lobby, I paused before we reached the top.

"Hang on," I said, holding up my palm. "Let me scope out the room."

Ellen and Urszula waited several steps down while I peered over the top step and checked things out. The lobby wasn't exactly crowded, but it was certainly busy. It was kind of late for commuters so the clientele were skewed towards retirees and students, some probably headed to Manhattan for shopping, Broadway shows and stuff like that, I supposed.

No one paid any attention to us, except for some blonde girl standing near the doorway with a cup of Starbucks, who was staring at the stairwell. She was way too young and nicely dressed to trigger any worries, not quite the type who would have anything to do with Sergei's racket. She was probably just waiting for a friend.

"Let's go get some tickets," I said, nodding to my girls.

As we came around a column here was a kid standing there I hadn't seen from the stairs. In his early twenties, he wore ripped jeans, and a knit cap even though it was like seventy out. His piercing eyes met mine as he slipped out his iPhone.

I stopped in my tracks. Something about this guy reminded me of the thugs who had come after me at that train station in Inverness. He acted a little too interested in us. I mean, he couldn't stop staring. I had to admit, we must have looked pretty strange between my mud-smeared clothes and Urszula's ultra-baggy sweat pants, but his gaze dwelled on us a little too long for comfort.

"What is wrong?" said Urszula. "Why are we standing here looking at this man?"

"He ... was looking at us."

"Oh? I'll fix that." Urszula clenched her jaw and marched up to the guy. "What are you staring at, worm?"

"Huh?" said the guy. "I ... uh ... I wasn't."

"Keep your eyes on your own business! Yes?"

"Sorry, I ... I didn't mean ...."

Urszula gave him a good shove and stalked back to us.

"Jesus!" said Ellen. "Not everyone is out to get us, you guys. I think you two need to cool it."

"Doesn't hurt to be vigilant," I said.

"That isn't vigilance. It's paranoia." She walked past me and claimed a spot in the ticket queue.

"Listen, you're gonna have to trust me. I've been running for months. Pittsburgh, DC, Rome, Paris, the UK. Sergei's got people after us. Not just his people. He's got a whole network. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a price on our head."

Ellen was probably right about the kid. He was a false alarm. But as we waited in that ticket line, I sorted out a good half dozen other suspects in the lobby.

Of course, my staring only begot more stares. But I was determined to see them coming this time before they saw me. I was tired of being imprisoned by maniacs like Edmund and Sergei. I was going to make pretty damned sure I didn't lose control of my fate this time around.

Ellen's turn came and she went to the counter with the cash I had given her. My wad was starting to dwindle but there was still plenty left. We had at least a couple thousand to play with.

"Got 'em!" said Ellen, holding up three pairs of tickets.

As we turned to leave, I noticed the tears dripping on Urszula's face. She silent, but there were big, gloppy tears running down her cheeks.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"Nothing," she said. She refused to look up at me.

"Something's wrong. What is it?" said Ellen.

"I told you, nothing," said Urszula, getting shrill. "It just comes. I don't know why."

"Low blood sugar," said Ellen. "Poor thing. We should get her something to eat. She must be starving."

We found a pizza vendor and got us three cheese slices. It wasn't the best. In fact, it was pretty bad. But that didn't stop us from inhaling it.

Two guys came into the station lobby, hands thrust deep in the pockets of their coats. There was cold calculation in their eyes. A chill ran down my back. These two were a whole different order of threat than the vagrants and loners I had a knack for spotting.

They hadn't spotted us yet, but they were scanning the crowd, obviously looking for someone. I tried not to look at them directly, but I couldn't help it. I had a bad feeling about them.

"Let's get out of here," I said.

"What's wrong now?" said Ellen, rolling her eyes.

"Those guys over there. I think they're trouble."

"Let me handle them!" said Urszula, gripping the folds of her baggy sweat pants.

"No!" I grabbed her before she could move.

"Are you sure?"

"No. Just being careful. What time's our train?"

"We got about twenty minutes," said Ellen, her eyes darting around the lobby. "Now, you're giving me the heebie-jeebies. In here! Come on, guys. Let's get out of sight."

She made a bee-line for the toilets.

"But that's ... a lady's room," I said.

"Perfect, hiding place" said Ellen. "Come on!"

***

So the three of us huddled together in a locked stall in the ladies room. God knows what all those other women who came in there thought, seeing three pairs of legs beneath the metal partition. But whatever their impressions, they kept them to themselves.

It was quiet for a bit, in a lull between trains, but then a pair of high-heel clogs came clicking into the washroom. I peeked through the seam between the door hinges at a girl in an ankle-length raincoat. She stood in front of the mirror and straightened her long blonde hair.

She wore eye shadow and lipstick that was way overdone, but it couldn't hide her extreme youth. She had a doll-like face, reminding me of those kids on 'Toddlers in Tiaras.' She was pretty tall, though. She had to be in her mid-teens, at least.

She turned away from the sinks, For a moment, I thought she was leaving, but then she wheeled around and came straight to our stall, rapping her knuckles against the door.

"Open up."

"It's ... occ-u-pied!" said Ellen, in a sing-songy voice.

The girl smirked. "Listen. I know who you are. Open up. I'm with Wendell."

"Who?"

"Wendell. You know Wendell. Don't you? He's on his way over right now He said he'll be picking us up in front of the station."

"Who is she?" whispered Ellen. "And who's this Wendell?"

"I don't know." I whispered back. "I've never seen her before."

"Listen, guys. Wendell just wants to talk. It's no big deal. He wants to make you an offer. Don't worry. We're not bounty hunters. And there aren't any in the station. I checked. Even if there was, don't worry. I got this." She pulled a boxy automatic weapon from her shoulder bag.

Urszula undid the latch and flung open the door. She barreled out and slammed into the blonde girl, knocking her down. Her weapon flew free and skittered across the tiled floor. She slid against the sinks and struggled to regain her footing.

"Stay down!" said Urszula, shoving her back down.

"Guys. This is really not cool," said the blonde girl. "Wendell's gonna be pissed."

"Go!" said Urszula, to Ellen and me, as we gawked from inside the stall. We burst out into the lobby and down to the tunnels leading to the platforms. As we reached the tracks, a train was pulling up. We got on without even checking if it was the right train.

Urszula rejoined us just before the doors closed. That girl was right behind her, hair askew. She strode across the platform and came right up to our window. From the look on her face, I was certain she planned to shoot us. But she just stood there and glared, mouthing the words:

"You guys are gonna be sorry."
Chapter 17: Wendell

It was a short train ride back to Bridgeport. The three of us had barely caught our breath when the stop was announced. We hovered inside the door until the last possible moment, craning our necks out like wary chipmunks, ensuring no one was waiting to waylay us.

And this time, there was nobody. No watchful loners poking at smart phones. No weird guys in fancy suits holding placards. No blonde girls with compact machine guns in their purses. A bunch of people got on the train, but once they did, the platform was clear. Nobody got off but us.

We huddled beside a vending machine while we waited for our connection, which arrived only a few minutes later. As we boarded, some of the stress that had been weighing me down just melted away. It felt strange but marvelous to worry a little bit less for a change. We had shaken both Sergei and the guy with the Cadillac. And now we were headed to some obscure town where we could further disappear. I mean, who had ever heard of Naugatuck and who would ever want to go there?

I plopped down into a fake leather seat and granted myself the luxury of calming down, letting my nervous perspiration dry for a change. I needed a shower badly and my clothes were ready for the trash bin. They reeked of swamp and sweat. Silt stains streaked my jeans, the cuffs were shredded. Clumps of debris remained in my pockets from all that bushwhacking we had done.

What was worse, I kept having this crawly sensation in my midriff that made me wonder if I had bugs in my underwear. Weirdly, the feeling vanished whenever I brought my hand towards the spot, before I could even touch it. I didn't even need to scratch. I thought it was probably some kind of skin condition related to bad hygiene.

Ellen was positively giddy about seeing her Grams. "She makes a homemade mac and cheese to die for. Real Vermont cheddar. Bread crumbs sprinkled over the top. And she cans these homemade dill pickles that are way better than anything you can find in a store."

I had no desire to visit Ellen's grandmother. If I had my druthers I would have stayed in Bridgeport and slunk away on my own, blending in with the local homeless population, slurping soup at some charity feed trough, sleeping in a cardboard box under some highway overpass. That was the kind of lifestyle most conducive to me focusing my attention on the Deeps. Basic survival. No distractions.

I still had every intention of ditching the girls as soon as it became practical. I figured Ellen would be safe with her Grams. And Urszula would be fine on her own once she got over her weepiness. If she could handle the Deeps, she could figure out Connecticut. The time was coming for me to concentrate on my main mission—keeping my promise to Karla.

"She doesn't know we're coming," said Ellen, babbling on. "But that's no big deal with Grams. I used to drag my friends over to her place all hours out of the blue. She'd always find a way to feed them. That's Grams for you?"

"I hope she doesn't mind if I conk out at the dinner table," I said, as my eyelids slipped to half-mast. "I'm getting pretty sleepy."

Ellen chuckled. "Been there. Done that. In high school, Friday nights, me and my friends used to get totally sloshed, and we used to show up at her house after football games. And she would come downstairs in her jammies and feed us! I used to have a bit of a drinking problem."

Urszula was snuffling silently again, her face buried in her drawn-up knees. She kept her gaze fixed out the window, watching the outskirts of a small industrial town slide by, with its weathered brick mills and concrete flood barriers and what seemed to be a helicopter factory.

I wondered how different this place looked from the world she left behind a hundred years ago. I knew nothing about Silesia, only that it was on the far side of Europe, halfway across the world. I pictured a greener place with farms, dirt roads and tidy villages. I'm sure they had trains, but not nearly as many cars.

Twin freshets recommenced their flow down either side of Urszula's nose. Her face bore the same contours, but it looked so much more delicate on this side of existence. I wondered if she really was more fragile here or if it was the gray skin that made her look more rugged on the other side.

She snatched up a swath of her baggy sweatshirt and blew her nose. She glared at me fiercely. "Why are you staring?"

"Just wondering if you're okay."

"Of course I am okay! I am fine. I am just not ... stable ... right now. I hate not having control over my emotions."

"Do you feel ... different here?"

"What's different is ... that I feel. Too acutely. The numbness ... it is gone ... and I miss it."

"What's wrong?" whispered Ellen. "Why is she crying all the time?"

"Oh, she's still adjusting to this place," I whispered back, though loud enough for Urszula to overhear.

"This is not my world," she said. "No more. If ever. I was made for Neueden. That is ... my Heaven. And some day I dream I will sleep the long sleep ... and join the Singularity ... and that will be good as well."

"I don't know about that. Doesn't sound so great to me. All those souls packed together in one brain."

Ellen looked puzzled. I didn't bother to explain.

"You, obviously have not spoken to your friend, Mr. O," said Urszula, training her stiletto-like gaze on me. "The Singularity is glorious. God-like. You can spread your soul far and wide. Be in many places at once."

I just shrugged and leaned my head against the window, closing my eyes, probing my own psyche, hoping for some sign of those roots, but there was no sign of anything stirring. Instead, Billy, my familiar, got in touch, flashing me images of a slate gray Cadillac zooming through a red light along a road lined with strip malls. And whatever sense of ease I had cultivated, evaporated just like that. I could only hope that the vision came from someplace far away.

"See that?" said Ellen, pointing to a brick building on a hill. "That's St. Michael's. The Catholic school I used to go to when I was little. It's a senior center now."

"You lived here?"

"Until I was ten. We moved to Naugatuck when my dad took a job up in Torrington."

The train crossed over a big steel trestle flanked with wide swaths of Phragmites marsh. We had come to the confluence of two rivers.

"So, what town is this here?"

"Well, at the moment we're in Derby, but we're just about to cross over into Ansonia."

Again, I felt something scurry and squirm under my shirt. I slapped at myself, trapping a lump of something in a fold of cloth beneath my arm.

"What's wrong?" said Ellen.

"There's something ... in my shirt." I reached into my neck hole and got my hands around a clump of leaves or something, but it slipped out of my fingers and out of my reach.

"Jesus Christ! Do I got roaches on me?"

"What?"

More snatches of vision intruded, as Billy shared birds-eye glimpses of the gray Cadillac rolling through a residential area of small ranch homes with tiny yards, newly leafed trees, gardens freshly tilled.

The train slowed and crept into a station. We rolled past a man in a wide-brimmed hat and mirror shades standing on the concrete slab of the platform. He held a long cardboard cylinder—the kind people used to carry rolled up maps and posters. His dark suit was cut from a fabric that seemed to defy gravity, the way it floated off his limbs. It shimmered with a cryptic texture that only revealed itself at certain angles of light.

"Holy shit! That's him!"

The train stopped. The doors opened. A few got people off. I twisted around, gripping the corner of the seat, in time for a glimpse of that suit swirling into our car. "He's getting on the train!" I scrambled to open the courier bag, putting my hand around the grip of the pistol.

"What do we do?" said Ellen.

"Keep your eyes straight ahead."

"What is going on?" said Urszula, emerging from her mopey reverie.

"Keep still," I said. "Whatever you do, don't look back."

But the guy strode right up the aisle and came straight to our seats. He stood over us, smirking. I looked up, sheepishly. He had taken off his shades revealing deeply pitted eyes, but they contained a surprised amount of warmth and mirth.

He had a pale complexion on a weathered, closely shaven face. Deep creases and a smear of gray in his temples and sideburns. If I had to guess his age I would have said late thirties, early forties.

Ellen looked to me for reassurance. I was at a loss for words.

"You're a hard man to pin down Mr. Moody. Honestly, one would think you were afraid of us for some reason. But I mean no harm."

My finger trembled over the trigger.

His gaze followed my arm into the courier bag. He frowned and did this little swirly thing with his finely manicured hand and the gun suddenly became too hot to hold. I yanked my hand off the grip. Something sizzled. A strand of acrid smoke snaked upward.

"I wouldn't bother with that now," said the man. "Those rounds are duds. I just made sure of that. But don't worry. The gun's still usable. You just need some new ammo."

"Who the fuck are you?"

He thrust out his hand. "Wendell Thomas Franks. It's great to finally meet you. I've been looking forward to it. You had us on a real goose chase there for a while."

I stared at his hand before taking it reluctantly and shaking it. He had unusually long nails, but his fingers were soft, like a surgeon's.

Urszula scowled, but kept herself contained. Funny, how now that we had an actual threat standing before us, she managed to control herself. But she had just witnessed what this man could do. Maybe she was just being cautious.

"What do you want from us?"

"Us? It's only you I want to talk to. I've come to make you an offer." He glanced at the girls and frowned. "Maybe we can go someplace a little more private? Don't worry. I don't work for this Vukovic guy. I'm an independent operator ... in an entirely different field of enterprise. But you and I, we've got a lot in common. And anyhow, I just want to have a quick little chat. Alone would be better ... for all involved."

"No. I'm not leaving my friends. You want to talk to me, you talk to me right here."

The man sighed. "Suit yourself." He sat down next to Ellen. "But I have to warn you. Discussing this stuff in public puts your girls in a little extra jeopardy."

Urszula bristled. "You lift one finger again, you jeopardize your ass."

"Whoa, now!" The man tilted his head back and squinted at Urszula. "Will you listen to that sass? Now that's my kind of gal!"

"What is it you want?"

"Let me put it simply. Your escapades in the war managed to impress some very important souls."

"What souls?"

"Let's just say they're of the Sanctuary. Home to the most illuminated folks in the Liminality. You see, Mr. Moody, I hail from Frelsi. And I've been sent to woo you. Not as a fighter. As a facilitator.""

Urszula gasped. She balled her hands into fists and started to clamber over me to go after him.

The man brought up his hand. Bulges and protrusions sprang from the upholstery. Amoeboid appendages wrapped around Urszula's thighs and dragged her back down.

"Holy cow! I knew it! The girl's a Duster! You're a long way from home, little darlin'. How did you ever manage that?"

Urszula hissed back at him.

The guy cuffed my shoulder. "It was his doing, wasn't it? Of course! I should have known. What a neat trick. I bet you don't even know half of what you're capable of. I see what they mean now by your potential."

"What you guys do ... it's magic ... isn't it?" said Ellen, in a small voice.

"Well, let me tell you, hon. A man named Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Not that I would call what we do technological. It's just ... nature. But a part of nature most people don't have access to." He scrunched his eyes and scratched his chin. "And there's something else he said. Oh yeah. That the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. That's actually pretty relevant to our present situation. It kind of defines what your learning process will be, Mr. Moody. Though, it seems like you've already done a bit of venturing."

"What is it that you do exactly? And what do you want from me?"

"Well, don't be shocked, now, but some people tend to call my line of work ... assassination. Personally, I like to think of myself as a Facilitator."

Ellen's face blanched. Urszula struggled against her restraints, which responded to her squirming by growing more and thicker appendages.

I chuckled. "So you've come to kill me?" I'm not sure why I found that funny.

"No. Not necessarily. We would actually prefer that you come work for us. I've basically come to make you an offer. A chance to become my apprentice ... or ... more like my understudy ... a helper ... a fill-in, because, even though I'm really good at what I do ... I can't be everywhere at once."

"You want me to kill people?"

"Well ... yeah. But we're talking people who want to be dead ... for the most part. Other than the ... uh ... special cases we get now and then. It's not murder ... usually. It's basically assisted suicide. You know what kind of people end up in Root. Our targets are happy to see us. It's a pretty nice gig ... for a hit man." He winced. "Though, I don't care for that term. Sounds ... crude."

"Why me?"

"Well, duh! It's obvious you've got the skill set. It's not common, what folks like us can do. Everything's made of the same stuff, in any plane of existence. But that matter on this side tends to be a little less malleable. You know ... because it's supposed to be reality." He gave a quick chuckle. "But actually, it just takes a little more oomph to get it shifting. Believe me, those skills are rare. Souls like you and me, we don't grow on trees. And you're just learning. You have no idea, kid, what you're gonna be capable of some day."

"So ... what are you offering?"

"Clemency, for starters. Full forgiveness for all the chaos and destruction you wreaked on our fair city. For waking the dead. Aiding our enemies."

"I don't need or want anyone's mercy. What I did, I would do it again."

Wendell's face went sour. "Fair enough," he said. "You don't have to like us. I'm pragmatic. But before you say no, at least let me at least spell out the entire offer."

"There's more?"

"Hell yeah, there's more. For one thing, there's a very generous compensation package. Tax-free and very discrete. To start, two hundred Gs wired every month to an offshore bank account. All expenses paid. Plus bonuses. Our clients have no use for money where they're going. There's no shortage of resources. Some of these people have huge estates and even the little ones add up. And since they're not dead ... yet ... we have zero issues with heirs or probate. It's a gift. We always insist on payment in advance."

"Oh my God!" said Ellen.

"I've only been at this a few years and I have an eight figure bank account. It might look like I drive an old beater, but I just have this thing for classic Caddies. That's my working car, anyhow. I've got others, too. Range Rovers. Teslas. Townhouses in Montreal, Boston and New York. Five acres and a beach house in Maine. Once you're up to speed, you'd have your own territory. We're thinking of having you cover the Midwest, let's say Ohio to Iowa. You've got roots there, from what I hear."

"You want me go state to state and kill people?"

"Well, yeah. But remember, these are suicidal people. Passive, harmless, grateful people. It's easy as pie. I can show you all the ropes. There are so many ways to do it clean, evade forensic analysis, make it seem like natural causes. Because you and me, we have the craft. We can touch without touching."

Ellen seized my arm. "James, you can't do this. No matter what he gives you. It isn't right."

"But that's not all," said Wendell. "I've got another perk you might be interested in. There's a guy who's been giving trouble, a certain Mr. Sergei Vukovic. He's onto you, James. He knows you're in Connecticut and it's only a matter of time before he homes in on you. I can get him off your back. Permanently. You agree to come work for us, and I will personally remove him. He and his people won't be bothering you anymore."

Now that, I had to admit, was even more tempting than the money or clemency. Life would sure be a lot easier on this side without Sergei and his goons chasing me around.

"No, James!" said Ellen. "You can't do this. Killing is wrong. Even if people want to be dead. It's not up to them. We're put here to live our lives."

"Yeah, well. That's a nice thought," said Wendell. "But mistakes happen. Some of us are better off going elsewhere."

"No!" said Ellen. "That's just wrong. He can't just go around killing people."

Wendell shrugged. "Why not? It's no big deal. There's no blood. I can show you how to do it clean. And most of our targets are willing and grateful. We just grease the skids, so to speak. Yeah, sometimes, there's ... special cases. Strategic interventions. Restorative justice. But that's not the bulk of our business."

I noticed Urszula attempting to outwit her restraints. She would sit back and pretend to be calm and compliant until they relaxed. Then she would casually reach down and try to peel one off her legs. But they were wise to her manipulations and sent out a new lobe for every one she pulled off.

Ellen looked at me, shaking. Her eyes teared up.

"Nah. Listen. I can't do this. I'm not cut out for it."

Ellen swooped in and hugged me.

Wendell just stood there and studied me. His chest heaved and he let out a long and deep exhalation. "Well, kid. I was hoping it wouldn't have to come to this, but I have to tell you. This offer of mine, it's not all carrot. There's some stick involved, as well. If you don't help me out. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you some other incentives to reconsider."

"Like ... what?"

"These girls, for example. Simply put. You don't cooperate. I kill them. One at a time. You take your pick who goes first. And I won't stop with them. I'll go after anybody you care about, and I've got a long list. Your buddies from Brynmawr are on it. Yep. I know all about those folks. James. Renfrew, Helen, Jessica, Sturgess. I did my homework on you. And there's another girl—Isobel. She's a special one. Maybe I should put her on top of the list. I promise, one by one, I'll take them out."

"What? What kind of crap is this? Those guys, these girls have nothing to do with what I did."

"Doesn't matter. All that matters is that you care if they're harmed, and it's obvious you do. It's all about persuasion. So, they all become targets until you come around. And if you don't? If it's clear that even that approach won't sway you? Then it's time to cut our losses. The clemency is voided and you James, become my target."

"Jesus Christ!"

"Now, I don't expect a final decision right here and now," said Wendell. "I understand it's a big step and I've given you a lot to chew. So I'll give you time to think about it. You'll be hearing from me in a couple days. And don't try to run from me. I'll find you. I have ways."

The train was already pulling into the next station. Wendell handed me the cardboard tube. "Here's a little present for you. Ciao." He passed down the aisle and waited by the door.

Something twitched under my jacket. I slapped at it as it scurried down my sleeve and out the cuff, dropping onto the floor with a solid clop. It was a clump of folded leaves, twigs and bits of paper. It was about the size and shape of a mouse, but had too many legs to be a mammal.

"Is that ... Billy?" said Ellen.

"No," I said. "It's not ... mine. It's his."

The little creature scuttled down the aisle after its master.
Chapter 18: Grams

A slate gray Cadillac idled beside a tiny station, little more than a brick kiosk and a few parking spaces. The blonde girl we met in that bathroom in New Haven stood leaning against the fender. Spotting us through the window of the train, she winked and waved.

Wendell swept through the parking lot, the fabric of his suit shimmering in the wind. That little mousey centipede creature zipped along the pavement and caught up with him, scurrying up his pant leg. Wendell kissed the girl on the lips and swung around through the open door into the driver's seat.

Only as the train began to pull out of the station did the appendages restraining Urszula relax and subside. Freed of their grip, she exploded out of her seat and screamed in frustration, drawing nervous glances from an older couple seated at the far end, the only other occupants of the car, who had so far been oblivious to all of these strange happenings.

The tracks paralleled the main road. We picked up speed and passed the gray Cadillac as it stopped at a traffic light at the edge of a decrepit downtown. Ellen scrambled for her plastic sack, fishing out an eyeliner pencil still wrapped in plastic.

"What are you doing?"

"Writing down his p-plate number. Th-that was a death threat, guys! We have to report him."

"To who? The police? What are they gonna do?"

"He threatened to kill us!" said Ellen, scrawling numbers onto her hand. "New York. FRLC 888. I mean, the guy admitted ... outright ... that he murders people!"

"I wouldn't exactly call it murder."

"Say what?"

"He was right. These people want to die. It makes a better situation for them. A lot of them would have ended up killing themselves anyway, and that would have sent them to a worse place."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this from you, James."

"I know what I'm talking about. The Liminality can be a nice place to hang. Parts of it, anyhow. A lot nicer than some people's lives."

Ellen gave her head a shake. "Okay. What's this Liminality thing you guys keep talking about?"

"It's ... the place I go when you see me tuning out."

"What, like a dream world?"

"No dream," I said. "It's very real."

"I don't understand. Where is it? How do you get there?"

I sighed deeply and rolled my eyes. "It's hard to explain exactly where it is geographically speaking, but it's connected to here. It's some kind of threshold ... a front porch, foyer or lobby or something... for the afterlife. The place collects suicidal souls. I don't mean like mopers and sad sacks. I mean people who are really serious about wanting to die. I mean like on the brink of offing themselves. I don't know if it's supposed to be some kind of 'scared straight' deal. You know, to give people a second chance to reconsider. But some souls only last a few minutes before they're reaped. And then there's other folks who go back and forth for years. Like me for instance ... and Wendell ... and Urszula, for that matter, though she's a special case. We've learned to game the system. It's our hangout now. Like a second life. These people who Wendell ... facilitates ... they want to spend all their time there. Forever. Make it permanent, without all this back and forth I have to do. Only, setting that up is tricky. If you off yourself, you just end up in the Deeps, which is a sort of waste bin for souls. Hell, I guess. But not like the Hell you read about. Are you following me?"

"I ... think so," said Ellen. "It sounds so crazy, but what else is new? Who am I to argue after all I've seen you do?"

"I take exception," said Urszula. "The Deeps is not a 'waste bin.' It is simply another plane of existence."

"Well, there you go." I shrugged. "She should know. She's from there."

Ellen's jaw dropped a little lower and narrowed her eyes at me. "From ... Hell? You mean ... she's a ... a demon?"

"Don't use that word," I whispered. "She doesn't like it."

I removed a white plastic cap from one end of the tube Wendell had given me. The tube contained a samurai sword identical to the one I had conjured down in the tunnels, right down to the golden tassels and the electric blue silk wrapping the hilt.

"Oh my God!" said Ellen. "Are you like a ... ninja too?"

"Nah. Hardly. I don't even like ninja flicks. Except for 'Kill Bill,' but that's not really—"

"You have it! Your scepter!" said Urszula, her eyes gleaming.

"Yeah, but this thing's not very practical on this side. I mean, I can't very well go waving it around in public."

"Save it. For special occasions," said Urszula.

I slid the sword back into the tube and replaced the cap. Throwing back my head, I stared up at the ceiling. "Guys. I'm so sorry for dragging you into all this. I should have let you both go on your way back in Philly."

"On my way? What way?" said Urszula. "I have no business here. I go wherever you go."

"Same here," said Ellen. "I was in deep even before Wendell showed up. I've got Sergei after me too, you know. And ... I want to help you. To get out of this ... uh ... situation. And to do the right thing."

"Yeah, well. I guess you're right. It is kind of too late now. Considering that both you guys are on Wendell's hit list."

"I still think we should report him," said Ellen. "The police may be able to protect us."

"Pfft!" I sputtered. "No, way. If he wants somebody dead, he can make it happen no matter where we go, police or no police."

"I am not afraid of the Frelsian," said Urszula. "He is just another Weaver. Once I find a suitable scepter and recover my spell craft I will put him in his place. The two of us, against him? He has no chance whatsoever."

"Holy cow!" said Ellen. "You do magic too? So you're like a .... a witch or something? Wow! Wizards. Witches. Escapees from Hell. I feel like I've stumbled into the middle of some vast conspiracy. I mean ... I had no idea."

"No conspiracy here," I said. "It's just the way the universe operates. Standard operating procedure, apparently. But I know what you mean. Who knew? Right?"

"It is not the way the powers-that-be intended," said Urszula. "The ancient pathways have been warped and exploited."

"In other words," I said. "The afterlife has been hacked."

***

The train rattled past a series of defunct factories and up into a river valley that grew narrower and rockier, guarded by ever taller bluffs.

"Next stop, Naugatuck," said Ellen.

"Thank God," I said. "I'm getting sick of riding these fucking trains."

"Wish I had a phone. I could call ahead to Grams."

"Does her village happen to have a market?" said Urszula.

"You mean like a supermarket?"

"I'm guessing she means more like a farmer's market," I said.

"Um, sure," said Ellen. "But I don't think it starts up till June. What are you looking for?"

"Some stouter clothes," said Urszula. "Some sewing implements. Perhaps a shank of pork. Some cabbage. Beets."

"Oh, don't worry. Grams will hook you up, I'm sure. There's a Super Stop&Shop just down the street and a TJMaxx right next to it. Maybe James can spare a little cash."

"No problem," I said. "I wouldn't mind hitting the TJMaxx myself."

"Yeah? Well, we're gonna have to hose you down first," said Ellen, pinching her nose.

"What? No hot showers? Where does your grandmother live? In a barn?"

"Of course you can have a hot shower. She's got a nice little house on a hilltop, with enough bedrooms for each of us."

"Bedrooms? For sleeping?" said Urszula.

"Um, yeah," said Ellen. "Did you ... have something else in mind?"

"I have not slept ... since my life ended. I think I may have forgotten how."

"Don't worry," I said. "It's just like riding a bicycle. It's not something you forget. Just close your eyes and think of dragonflies. It'll happen on its own."

Ellen stuck out her lower lip and looked at me. "She doesn't sleep?"

"News to me," I said. "I didn't know that about Dusters."

"Dusters?"

"It's ... just a nickname for souls who escape from the Deeps."

Ellen gave her head another shake. "Stop! You're giving me a headache," she said. "You know, there's still another thing I don't understand. This Wendell guy. Why does he need to murder suicidal people? Why can't they do it themselves?"

"I told you. Suicides end up in the Deeps. It's just how things are. Somehow, if it's an accident or someone murders you, it's different. Only, to make it work you have to be away from the influence of the Core—the center of the Liminality. That means high altitude. Mountains and glaciers. It's like ... another way to game the system ... a loophole. Does that ... make any sense?"

"Not ... really."

"Yeah, well. It's not something you really need to worry about. A person as bubbly as you is never gonna end up in a place like that."

"Thank God for that," said Ellen. "I only hope you're right."

The train rolled past yet more factories, crossing a road lined with strip malls. It squealed to a stop next to another small platform. Across the tracks sat a squat brick building that looked like a classic old train station, but now sporting a sign for the Naugatuck Historical Society.

The doors opened. We all popped up and rushed outside. I exited without any hesitation this time. I didn't care who was there to greet us. I just wanted off the damned train.

I didn't have to worry. The few folks hanging around had their own business to attend to. Nobody gave us a second glance.

The doors closed. The train rumbled off, leaving us alone in the sun and a swirl of breeze.

"We can walk it," said Ellen, beaming. "It's not even a mile."

Urszula reached over and snagged my arm and took Ellen by the hand. We went up the road like Dorothy and her two flawed friends. All we were missing was Toto. Don't ask me which one of us was Dorothy.

***

We strolled away from the river and tracks, up a hill through neighborhoods dense with multi-family houses on small, unkempt lots. Urszula found a fallen maple branch on the ground and stripped it of its wilted leaves. A woman pushing a stroller dared allow her gaze to linger too long. Urszula glowered at her till her smile evaporated and she hurried on her way.

And then, the weirdest thing happened. I could see the three of us on the sidewalk from a height above the treetops. There was Urszula kneeling in someone's yard stripping her maple branch. Ellen walking several steps ahead, urging us to follow. Me, standing with my hand clasped over my eyes.

The vision spiraled closer, swooping through the canopy, homing in on me. I opened my eyes to a bird-like creature that came gliding down through the branches. I flinched and dodged but it matched my maneuver and landed nimbly on my shoulder. The way it shared its visions with me, I knew it had to be Billy.

I watched as he shifted his shape from a sparrow to something with claws on its wings, like a tiny bat. It clambered down the front of my hoodie and into my pocket.

Ellen turned around. "What's wrong?" she said. "What are you gawking at?"

I didn't want to freak her out any more than she already was, so I didn't mention anything. "Ah ... nothing. Just catching my breath."

The road climbed and joined another street spanning a hilltop. The houses and lots were bigger here and the street was lined with big, old oaks. Sloped yards fell away, providing views of a glistening ribbon of river flanked by an elevated highway. The denser part of town filled the flats below us.

Ellen picked up her pace, her eyes bright with anticipation as she skipped up to the summit of the hill and veered down a cinder drive towards a shapely old house with a Mansard roof and dormers in the attic.

The house had seen better days. Several clapboards were missing and those that remained had flaking white paint gone gray with mildew. A dinged up Camry that could have used a good wash was parked in the driveway.

Ellen skipped up cracked front steps onto the porch and rang the doorbell, turning to blind us with her toothy grin. Urszula and I caught up to her and stood off to one side while we waited.

"It takes a while for her to get to the door," said Ellen. "Grams doesn't move too quickly these days."

"This is your house?" said Urszula. "Where you were raised?"

"No. Actually, we lived up the river, out past Waterbury. A town called Thomaston. But we used to come down here a lot."

Urszula craned her neck up at the rooftop. "It is big. How many families live here?"

"Oh, it's just Grams by herself. Gramps passed away a few years ago."

She turned back and knocked on the door. There was no sign of anybody home. "Hmm. Her car's here. Maybe she's taking a nap."

"This is not a good sign," said Urszula. "Not with assassins about."

"Don't talk like that!" said Ellen. She rummaged through an array of flower pots bearing dead geraniums and the bleached remnants of chrysanthemums. She came up with a corroded old key on a Mickey Mouse key chain and stuck it in the lock. The door squeaked open and she bustled in.

"Grams? Grammie! You home?"

Urszula and I followed her in as she rushed through the sitting room and kitchen in a panic, peeking into the downstairs bathroom before trotting up the stairs. "Grammie?"

Urszula looked at me gravely.

A chill ran down my back. "You don't think ... Wendell was here? You don't think he ... killed her?"

Urszula looked at me and nodded.

Floorboards creaked overhead. A succession of doors squealed open. Ellen came walking calmly down the stairs slowly, her face ashen.

"Did you find her?" said Urszula.

"No. But her bed is ... unmade. And her suitcase is empty. I don't think she's just gone off visiting."

I poked my head into the kitchen. The sink was full of dishes.

Ellen plunked herself down on an easy chair and stared straight ahead at a boxy, old Sony television with a picture tube.

"Why don't you call your parents? Maybe they know something."

"I don't speak to them," she said. "Haven't, in almost a year. They don't even know I'm back in the country. Let's just hang until Grams comes back. Maybe she just went shopping .... with a friend ... though ...." She glanced towards the kitchen and her face sank further. "Her purse is on the counter."

I stood next to her chair and rubbed her shoulder. She reached for the clicker and turned on the TV. Some jewelry sale on QVC came on.

Urszula was making a hell of a racket, slamming drawers and jingling silverware in the kitchen.

"What the heck are you doing in there?" I poked my head in.

She said nothing, granting me barely a glance. Closing a cabinet, she brushed past me carrying a large butcher's knife and a small, sharp parer. She brought them into the sitting room where she settled onto a rocker and proceeded to whittle away at the knots and branch stubs on her maple bough.

"I promised you guys a hot meal," said Ellen, sighing. "I should go cook us some dinner."

"Never mind," I said. "You look beat. We can scrounge, or order take-out or something."

She switched over to CNN just as a story about a kidnapping and a hostage situation was being presented. She clicked away quickly over to Animal Planet and a show with nothing but baby animals—cubs and kittens and pups.

"I can't imagine where Grams ran off to." She turned and looked at me. A slight tremble quivered her lip. "You don't think ... could ... Sergei ... have something to do with this?"

"No way," I said. "I mean, how would he know where to find her? You yourself said she had a different last name than you?"

"He took my purse," said Ellen. "My luggage. My passport. There might very well have been something in there linking me to Grams, like ... her phone number." Her eyes widened. "Oh crap! There was a post card! A post card I never sent, addressed to her."

"I think it was the Frelsian," said Urszula. A pile of wood shavings accumulated on the carpet as she whittled away on her scepter.

"But how could he get here so quickly?" I said. "Could he have taken her in advance?"

"Why would he take my Grams?"

"I don't know. Maybe as collateral?"

"My own grandmother? Collateral for you? But you've never even met her."

"He doesn't know that. He probably thinks you're my girlfriend."

Ellen's eyes lingered awkwardly. I had to glance away. "Grams has friends in town," she said. "Maybe I should call them. See if they know anything."

"Uh, maybe that's not such a great idea. We'd better lay low for now. The fewer people who know we're here, the better, don't you think?"

Worry was beginning to gnaw away at Ellen's optimism. I could see it in the way she kneaded the cushion and picked at the loose threads.

"You realize," I said. "If he has her .... I'm going to have to accept his offer."

"No. You can't. You shouldn't."

"But if he threatens to hurt your Grandma...."

"Makes no sense. Why would he hurt such a nice, old lady?" Ellen sank a little lower in her chair.

"To get me to go to work with him. And if that doesn't do the trick, you do realize he's coming after you guys next?"

"Let the Frelsian come," said Urszula, swiping her blade aggressively against a particularly stubborn knot. "It is simple ... we kill him before he kills us."

"Don't know if that's possible," I said. "He's got some wicked skills."

"Your magic is strong, too," said Ellen. "What you did in New Jersey was amazing."

"His is stronger," I said. "And he can summon it in a flash. My stuff doesn't always work right away ... especially here ... on this side."

"Once I bond with my scepter, I will be able help you," said Urszula. "This wood has promise. I can feel it in the flow of the grain. I just need to open my soul to it."

"Gramps had a shotgun," said Ellen. "I bet it's still tucked away in a closet somewhere."

"Shotgun's no good against Wendell. And I'm not so sure we should reject Wendell's offer. I mean, think about it. Wouldn't it nice not to have to worry about Sergei? The people they want me to kill; they want to be dead. So it's not really murder."

"I can't believe you," said Ellen, mouth agape. "That you are seriously considering—?"

"And ... and he'd pay me... us ... an enormous amount."

"We have money," said Ellen, nodding at the courier bag.

"Not a whole lot," I said. "It's going fast."

"Whatever he would pay us, we can't accept it. It's dirty money. Blood money."

"But I could use it to send you guys away somewhere safe and far away. Wherever you wanted to go."

"Without you?"

"Well ... yeah. You'd be safer that way."

Ellen frowned. Her gaze shifted and drifted about the room. "What if ... you got him to pay you something in advance ... like a signing bonus? I mean, if you said yes."

"I guess. I don't know for sure. We could ask."

"So, what if you did that and bluffed him?"

"Sorry?"

Ellen was getting really animated now. "What if you said yes? Say yes. Get Grams back. Collect that first payment ... before you actually have to kill anyone? Tell him you'll do it, but don't go through ... don't actually kill anybody."

"He's probably gonna want to see results."

"We can take off. Make him chase us. He said he sticks to the northeast. So we go west."

I inhaled long and deep. "I don't know, Ellen. They've got assassins all over the world, I would think. And we're not even sure this guy works this way, with all this up front stuff. He might want to see results first."

"But you could ask. You could negotiate it."

"I guess."

Ellen's face brightened and she sat up a little taller in her chair. "So do it. Say yes and go through the motions. That would buy us time to escape. We could leave the country, maybe. Go to Canada or back to Europe."

"So you're saying I should take his offer?"

"Only if it's going to be a bluff. And if we make sure we get Grams back."

I sighed. "Wendell wasn't born yesterday. He's gonna want some kind of guarantee."

"What are you saying?"

"I mean, if he really does have your grandmother. Maybe he hangs onto her until I do the first job or something."

The doorbell rang. Ellen and I both went rigid. Urszula rose and stalked towards the door, wielding her scepter like a rifle.

Ellen popped up and scurried over to the window, peeking between the curtains. She expelled a hearty puff of breath and laughed.

"Guys, relax! It's Mrs. Fiorina from next door." She strode out of the parlor and swung open the front door.

"Ellie? Is that you?" said a stout, dark-haired woman in a purple cardigan. She engulfed Ellen into her arms and kissed her on the cheek. The woman looked askance at Urszula with her tufts of hair poking in random directions, holding onto that rather phallic rod. "I thought you were still over in England."

"Well ... I'm back! Came over to surprise Grams, but she's not here. Do you have any idea where she might be?"

Mrs. Fiorina scrunched her face. "Didn't anyone tell you? Hanna took a bad fall back in April. Broke her hip. Had to have surgery with plates and screws, the poor thing. She's up at the rehab hospital in Waterbury. Doing better, but it's going to be another couple weeks before they release her. She had some complications. I'm shocked that you don't know any of this."

"Well. My coming back was kind of unannounced. It was meant to a surprise for everybody. But I guess the joke's on me." She forced a weak laugh.

"Well, it's lovely to see you, dear. I saw the light on in the kitchen I thought I should come over and check up on things. Don't want any burglars mucking about. But you know what? I'm going up to see your Grandma tomorrow afternoon. Would you like to tag along with me?"

"Um. Of course! Love to! Sure!"

"Alright, then. I'll drop by tomorrow after lunch. Have a good night. And stay away from that liquor cabinet."

"Oh, but I've gone dry now, Mrs. Fi."

***

Ellen went out on the stoop to see Mrs. Fiorina off. When the old woman reached the end of the walk, Ellen turned into a dynamo. She swooped in, locked the door and wheeled to face us. "That's it. We're leaving. Now."

"What?"

"Grams is fine. So we need to leave. If we stay here, Wendell will link her to us."

"It's probably too late for that," I said. "He already knew we were coming to Naugatuck. So he probably knew about your grandmother."

"The more contact I have with her, the more I put her at risk. So we're getting out of here. We can take her car, go up to Vermont. My uncle has a summer cottage on Lake Dunmore. I doubt anyone's renting this early in the season. From there, we can figure out where to go next. Maybe upstate New York. From there ... I don't know ... maybe Toronto. Maybe Oregon."

"But I thought you wanted me to bluff him."

"The situation is changed. We don't need to now. We know Grams is safe, and I want to keep it that way. Come on, guys. Out to the car. We're going. Now. We're not letting him come anywhere near us again."

Urszula seemed amused and even pleased by Ellen's transformation. I wasn't nearly as thrilled.

"Jeez! Can't I at least wash up? Change my clothes?"

"Do it quickly."
Chapter 19: Danbury

One visit from a well-meaning neighbor dashed a whole passel of modest but selfish desires. I was glad that her grandmother was okay, but Ellen's wanting to leave right away meant there would be no home-cooked meal, no catching up on TV, no quiet night in a cozy bed. But I was determined, at least, to get myself showered and shaved.

"The upstairs bathroom is nicer," said Ellen. "You'll find towels in the closet in the hall. And if you look inside the master bedroom, I think Grams hung onto most of Grampa's old clothes. He kept fairly slim. Some of his stuff might actually fit you."

"Does this mean we're not going to TJMaxx?"

"Well, you need something to wear in the meantime, don't you?"

"True."

Urszula stepped out of the laundry room holding up a cotton floral print dress.

"Can I have ... this one? It has pockets."

"Um ... sure," said Ellen, with some hesitance in her voice. "That looks like one of her favorites, but ... go ahead. You need some better clothes, too."

Urszula proceeded to whip off her baggy sweat suit right in front of us, revealing her pale, undeveloped but wiry. She wore no underwear.

I just shook my head and started up the stairs. As I unzipped my hoodie, the clump of leaves and twigs in my pocket began to writhe. I really had to resist the urge to slap at it. It climbed out, shaping itself back into something much like a bat as it ascended my shoulder. It took flight, zipping around the room, exploring every corner and window.

Ellen screamed and grabbed a broom. "Oh my God! It's back."

"It's okay. This one's mine; I'm pretty sure."

"What is this creature?" said Urszula, now practically swimming in the voluminous fabric of her dress.

"It's just the leftovers from a spell that refuses to fade. A piece of my will."

"That's ... Billy?" said Ellen. "Where's he been all this time?"

"Oh, he's been around," I said. "He shadowed us all the way up from Philly."

"Really?" said Ellen, putting the broom down. "He's like a ... a faithful dog. How sweet."

***

The shower was glorious. Scalding hot water and plenty of pressure. I had to shampoo twice to get all the crap out of my hair. I couldn't believe some of the stuff that littered the floor of the tub. Bits of spider web. Little pine cones. Dead bugs.

I turned that bathroom into an aromatherapy sauna with all of those flowery shampoos. I shaved with some five-bladed pink monstrosity of a razor and it was a real challenge maneuvering that bulky thing around the tighter contours of my face. I might have missed a patch or two below my nose, but I wasn't fussy. I just wanted to remove enough of my scraggly whiskers to avoid scaring young children.

When I was done, I wrapped a towel around my middle and skipped out down the hall and into the master bedroom. It felt weird standing practically naked in a stranger's bedroom, opening drawers at random and finding things like girdles and garters and voluminous skivvies.

Turned out, Grandpa had his own bureau—a massive stack of chests with drawers, the dark wood scarred and cracked, corners reinforced with ornate plates of stamped metal. He seemed to have an endless supply of long johns and thermal undershirts. I snagged a pair of boxers with a ruined elastic and found another drawer packed with green-gray Dickie's work pants and an astounding array of flannel shirts.

There was sort a walk-in closet as well, but the few men's clothes it held were scratchy wool suits and white dress shirts gone yellow around the collar. The old fellow had apparently had only two fashion modes.

So I went the work pants and flannel route. His stuff fit me well enough, a little wide at the waist but a belt took care of that. The pant cuffs rode a little high on my ankles, exposing baggy, white socks. Everything smelled like mothballs and old pine, but at least they were clean. This was just temporary cover anyhow, until I could buy my own clothes.

When I went downstairs, already Ellen had a pair of suitcases packed and ready by the door. She and Urszula were loading paper sacks with cans of soup, bags of rice and potatoes with eyes sprouting everywhere.

"Your Grams is gonna have nothing to eat when she comes home."

Ellen looked up and gasped. She clasped a hand to her chest. "Oh my God! You're like a ghost. You look just like him!"

"I look like your dead grandpa? Thanks a lot."

"It's just ... that's exactly what he would wear when we would come to visit ... and he would be out working in the yard."

Urszula knelt by the refrigerator and pulled out the crisper, retrieving a pair of onions and some wilted carrots. "No cabbage. No beets. No borscht."

"Don't worry Urs, we'll get you your cabbage," said Ellen. "Maybe up in Middlebury at the food co-op."

Urszula looked more girlish than I had ever seen her in that dress, and with her wild hair brushed back and restrained with a tie. "My mother ... it's been so long since I thought of her ... but she used to make it with sorrel. I saw some growing along the road as we were walking."

"Sorrel? Isn't that a weed?" said Ellen.

I scanned the corners of the ceiling. "Hey, uh. Anyone seen Billy?"

"I'm sorry, but he was freaking me out," said Ellen. "I had to open the door and let him out."

"No. That's fine," I said. "That's exactly what I was going to do. He's our early warning system."

"Okay, then," said Ellen. "Everybody's clean. We've looted the kitchen. Outside and in the car. We've got about a three hour drive ahead of us."

I picked up the suitcase, wondering if I should have grabbed more stuff from the old man's drawers, but I figured I was better off buying stuff that actually fit me and didn't make me look like a farmer from Newfoundland.

I was kind of sad to be leaving already. Even as empty and lonely as it was, this house really felt like a home. There was love and care in its organization, from the knick-knacks on the end tables to the pretty paper lining the silverware drawers. The place exuded an aura of family and comfort that I hadn't felt in a long time. If I felt this way, I could hardly imagine how this might be affecting Urszula.

Not to mention, we never got to meet Ellen's grandmother. As disinterested as I was in coming here back in Philly, now that I knew something about the lady, it seemed a shame to just slink away without as much as a hello.

I followed Urszula onto the porch while Ellen locked the door and tucked the key back among the flower pots. It was getting dark out. I didn't have a watch, but it had to be close to eight o'clock or so.

"I feel bad for taking her car," said Ellen. "But ... I figure she shouldn't be driving at her age anyhow."

"Why? How old is she?"

"I don't know ... she has to be in her seventies."

"Are you kidding? That's not old to be driving," I said. "People drive into their nineties these days. Tell you what. We'll buy her a nice new Camry once I start work with Wendell."

Ellen's eyes pierced straight through me. "You will not be taking a penny from that man. Not if I can help it."

"Just kidding."

We loaded up the trunk and climbed inside, me riding shotgun and Urszula in the back seat with her scepter and her knives.

The interior smelled sickly sweet with notes of vanilla and cinnamon. I couldn't stand it. I snatched the so-called air freshener sachet from the rear view mirror and tossed it out the window. Ellen frowned at me, but she didn't protest. As it was, I had to crack my window open a few inches to make things bearable.

"So ... can we stop at the TJMaxx?"

"To tell you the truth, I'd rather not," said Ellen, looking pained. "I'm kind of anxious to put some distance between us and here. There are places in Middlebury, though. How about we do that?"

"Fine. That's fine, I guess. You are gonna stop for dinner, though, right?"

"Of course. There's a Burger King on the way to Route 8."

***

We were on another highway—I-84, I guess—approaching a city called Danbury. My Whopper, large fries and large chocolate shake was making me sleepy. But before I could conk out, something gave way below me, as if the front seat cushion had collapsed. Fibers lengthened and wrapped around me.

Ellen sang quietly along with some pop song on the radio. From the blithe expression on her face, she detected nothing out of the ordinary going on in the seat beside her.

I wasn't ready to go. This was the first time in a long time I wasn't eager to cross. I would have much preferred just taking an ordinary nap and catching some Zs. But Root had come for me, without warning and against my will and there was nothing to be done but submit. Something or someone wanted me back.
Chapter 20: The End

I tumbled through the nether space that connects all worlds, falling no further than a person falls off a couch, re-materializing in a cozy room with curved walls, a bowl for a floor, and a dome for a ceiling.

A plush silk rug, round and boldly floral, filled the center of the floor. A glow reminiscent of a sunny day filtered through gauzy curtains. The windows were perfectly round. Even the door was round, just like a hobbit's. A curving bookcase lined the back of the chamber, stocked with everything from the classic to the obscure. I couldn't imagine how any of those books could be real, even though Luther had one open on his lap.

He reclined, propped on his elbow, in a day bed quilted with something plush and satiny. Empty beside him was a thick and blocky armchair of distressed leather, patches of suede marring the otherwise polished pebble grain. Bern knelt before a hearth, fanning pinkish flames that radiated a cozy warmth throughout the chamber.

"Oh my Lord!" said Luther, looking up from his book. "What took you so long? I thought you were anxious to see your girlfriend?"

"Where are we?"

"Where else? Same place you left us. On the brink of the Deeps."

Bern rose to his feet and hobbled over, bearing a stack of folded clothes.

"I was hoping we wouldn't see you again," he said, displaying a bittersweet grin. "It's never a good thing to come here, if you can help it. What's got you down this time?"

"Nothing," I said, as I was getting dressed. "It just kind of happened ... out of the blue."

"Oh, come on. That's not how it works. Something brought you back. Some emotional state. A feeling of distress. What was it?"

"Um. I was actually doing fine. We just had a nice dinner. We were starting a long car ride. I was about to nod off when something just came and took me." I gave Luther a suspicious glance.

"Who? Me?" Luther rolled his eyes. "I wish. If only I had the power, I would have dragged you back hours ago. Never would have let you leave. A waste of precious time, this is, though not if you manage to find my friend Olivier, I must say. And I have to admit, this is a nice respite from all the hubbub up in the village."

He swung his legs off the day bed. "But enough is enough. We should get moving." He tossed his book into the hearth, where it went up in a blaze of purple flames as it were doused in fuel oil

"Unless!" said Bern, holding up a finger. "James wishes to reconsider. He's had time to think about the folly of his decision."

"What folly?" said Luther. "I think it's splendid. If only more of us could be so bold."

"But there's no guarantee he ever make it back here, or to life."

"There are never guarantees, Bernard. Not even for us. Who's to say we ever see the sky again?"

"I'd say it's a pretty good bet, traveling with a snake charmer like you," said Bern. "And listen, James. The Deeps is not just another corner of the Liminality. It's a distinct place, with less porous borders, to say the least. And worse, Luther tells me there is some kind of roaming portal there with the potential to pack you away into an even more unpleasant and permanent existence."

"The Horus." Luther dismissed this concern with a wave of his hand. "From what Yaqob tells me, it is easily avoided. It's the deluded fools who worship the thing who suffer the consequences."

"So what do you say? You ready to pack it in?"

"No," I said, after a moment's hesitation. "I guess I ... I'm willing to chance it." But my own words rang hollow in my ears. The patter of my heart didn't lie. I was scared. Only the power of Karla's dying words kept me determined to at least go through the motions.

Luther pulled on a cloak that he hadn't brought with him, along with a floppy rain hat better suited for the surface where it was actually raining.

"Do you suggest we bundle up as well?" said Bern.

"Strictly optional," said Luther. "You gentlemen should be fine. I just prefer to keep myself covered." He wrapped a scarf around his neck. Bern looked at me and shrugged.

"It must be spring time by now on the living side. "Green leaves a-popping. Tulips blooming. Are they?"

"Actually, it's almost May. Practically summer," I said. "So when was the last time you made it back?"

"Oh, I still get hauled back regularly. Too often for my tastes. But it's hard keep track of the seasons. There are no windows in my prison cell. And I don't always partake of the fresh air and exercise opportunities, even when they offer a wheel chair. As much as a wreck as I am over here, over there I'm practically a vegetable on the other side. The human equivalent of a turnip."

"Maybe you should have gone free when you had the chance," I said. "Found yourself an assassin, like Lille." I instantly regretted mentioning her name.

"Do you really think she—?"

"I don't know. But you know what? I met one ... on the other side."

"Met one what?"

"An assassin from Frelsi. And he's trying to recruit me. If I don't join, he's gonna pick off my friends ... one by one."

Luther sat down on a chair and laced up a pair of calf-length boots with hobnailed soles.

"Which ... friends?" said Bern.

"All of them. And their grandmothers too. Starting with Urszula, and this other girl named Ellen."

Bern smirked. "Wow. Urszula's grandmother must be ancient. Is she a vampire?"

"I mean, Ellen's grandma, only ... we don't know that for sure."

Boot laces tied, Luther rose from the chair and clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Well, I wouldn't worry about that any more, young man. That won't be a problem much longer."

"Why's that?"

"Because you can't do any facilitating from the Deeps. Once this Frelsian realizes you've gone, he has no reason to go after your friends."

"So I can protect them all? By going to the Deeps?"

"Two birds with one stone. Or is it three? Four? However many."

"So the Deeps are that permanent?"

"There's a reason they call it the Deeps," said Luther. "Souls don't oscillate the way they do here. What goes in does not come out. At least that is how it is designed. The Dusters certainly made a lie of that."

"You really think he'd leave them alone if I was gone?"

"If he's a Facilitator, he's no dummy. There is no logical reason for him to go after your friends once you are no longer a viable candidate for his profession." Luther surged towards the door. "But enough dilly-dallying. Let's get you on your way."

Luther touched his fingers to the wall of the bubble. A hole appeared and grew, its edges rolling up, revealing a gaping cavity in the roots. The warm of their temporary shelter dissipated in the surrounding chill. Mist formed with each breath.

"Now, come."

Bern touched my arm. "James. Don't go," he whispered. "Just don't go. You don't have to do this. There are times in life you just need to move on from things. There's no guarantee you will ever find Karla. Let's just turn around and back up top. Don't worry about Luther. I think he enjoyed this little excursion."

"No. I'm going." Now that I knew that every person I cared about on Earth would likely benefit from my absence, I was more determined than ever to enter the Deeps. There was more at stake now than a futile promise to Karla. But that didn't mean I was happy about it. That didn't mean I wasn't scared.

***

Luther ensured that the path ahead stayed illuminated with a pleasant shade of whitish-blue. Again, we had to deal with the topsy-turvy gravity of the passages continued, but it no longer bothered me to see our bodies aligned at all different angles. I guess I was getting used to it.

It did make me feel a little intoxicated and clumsy. My feet refused to land quite where I expected them to, and it occasionally threw me off balance and caused me to stumble.

We soon reached a crazily jumbled confluence of tunnels that looked like they had been torn apart and reassembled many times. The passages leading downward pulsed with peristalsis and their walls were coarse and knobby, in places wide enough to drive a bus, in other places barely large enough to squeeze through single file.

"We're getting close, my friends," he said. "Keep your thoughts simple. It will ease our progress."

His words puzzled me until the walls ahead began to anticipate and respond to our approach. They shifted like wafting smoke, taking on shapes suggestive of tangible objects but never solidifying long enough to identify them.

"What's ... going on?" I said.

"We are approaching the Core," said Luther. "The matrix down here responds more eagerly to every whim and worry. Too eagerly, I must say. Blank your mind if you can. Think only of tunnels. Plain, bright, smooth-walled tunnels. We'll see what happens."

I took his advice and thought of the concrete culverts full of spiders and bats I used to mess around in back in Ft. Pierce. I tried to minimize the wildlife aspect, but instead of a culvert, the tunnel wall took on the appearance of a hallway, hung with picture frames. One of the pictures resolved into a black and white photo of my mother's grandparents. A rectangular digital thermostat with a liquid crystal display appeared beside the sketchy outlines of a bathroom door. This was the hall leading to my old bedroom.

On the opposite wall, half-formed faces and torsos followed with every step Bern took, each one dissipating as he moved along and a new one taking its place. When he paused to un-kink his leg, one of the shapes evolved into a full-length replica of Lille down to the scolding expression she sported when they argued. Apart from a few quick and nervous glances, Bern was unable to bring himself to face her directly.

Luther laughed. "You look pained, Bernard. Here, let me take care of that for you. He swiped his wand like a conductor and the images of Lille vanished under a rippling wave, replaced by a smoky replica of an old-fashioned cigar shop with a rack of newspapers and a candy display.

"What can I say?" said Luther. "I crave a good cigar."

I tried again, keeping my mind blank this time, and my eyes straight ahead. Looking at the objects as they formed seemed only to strengthen them. But I could tell there was some wild stuff happening at the periphery of my vision. Drug dealers. Relatives. Kids I knew as a teenager. Some of the specters even had voices, though I couldn't be sure that the mocking I heard didn't come from my own brain.

The tunnel widened, gradually at first, but then the walls flared open like the bell of a trumpet. The glow lighting our way abruptly vanished.

"Hold it up there, boy," said Luther. "This is it. The end of the road."

A chasm circled the entire circumference. There was no distinction between ceiling and floor. It didn't matter where you stood. Every edge dropped off into a deep, dark void.

"What's down there?"

"What do you think is down there, fool? This is the place you asked me to take you. This is it. The brink of the Deeps."
Chapter 21: Orb

I swooned at the depth-less darkness that lay beyond the brink, unable to discern up from down, down from up. We had descended to reach the end of this tunnel and yet it felt like we had climbed to the rim of a bowl.

The stale and dusty air moved, but scarcely enough to deserve being called a breeze. A nearly sub-audible drone hummed across the emptiness, threaded with the distant and muffled moans of a thousand Reapers.

"So what am I supposed to do? Climb down?"

"Climb?" said Luther. "Climbing will get you nowhere. You need to cross the void. A good running leap should do it."

"You want me to jump?"

"Preposterous," said Bern. "You can't expect him to just leap into the darkness ... just on faith."

Luther frowned. "Then let us show him what is there."

He took his wand and sliced a clump of roots free from the tunnel wall, balled them up, touched his wand again and they ignited, flaring as bright as magnesium. He tossed it over the rim into the emptiness.

The glow illuminated part of a perfectly round orb, smooth as polished obsidian, easily several miles in diameter. A void of about fifty meters separated it from a massive curving wall of roots pocked with the flared openings of hundreds of tunnels just like the one in which we stood. Water gushed from many, cascades spiraling down like threads looping into a loom, shaped by the bizarre gravity of this underworld.

"Bloody hell!" said Bern.

The orb seemed to hover in this socket, rotating ever so slowly. I stared, eyes pinned wide, jaw slack, bowels rippling; as the flare followed a spiral trajectory as it plummeted, snuffing out the instant it touched the glassy surface, plunging the void back into absolute darkness.

"What the fuck _is_ that?"

"That ... is your destination," said Luther. "The destination of most souls in the Liminality ... apart from the lucky ones."

"Bloody hell," said Bern, his voice this time more subdued.

"Don't forget this." Luther reached into his cloak and removed the scroll he had written for his friend, Olivier. "I would be grateful for anything you can learn about his fate, however you manage to get word back to me. Remember, the Singularity spans existences. If you can access it, it might prove quite useful to you."

"It's not too late, James," said Bern. "We can turn around and walk right back out of here."

My brain wanted to listen to Bern. And my heart concurred, from the way it thudded against my ribs. But another part of me, a hidden corner of my soul, less accessible to the living and almost an organ in its own right, insisted on proceeding.

If I had learned anything about this universe, it was that no barrier was impenetrable. No transition irreversible. No law unbreakable. There were exceptions for everything, and so far, my experiences in two existences had both proven exceptional. Why should the third be any different? This gave me the hope and confidence I needed to proceed, despite the protests of my physical being.

I leaned over the edge and peered into the darkness. How bad could it be down there, anyhow?

"Cross your fingers, Bern. Keep that tea kettle ready. I'll be back in a jiff."

"Yeah, right," said Luther, in a mocking tone. "In a jiff."

"And if all goes well ... we'll need an extra seat or two at the table."

Bern's eyes flickered, moist. He could hardly bear to watch.

I took a deep breath and inched my feet closer to the rim, struggling to stay braced and balanced between my vertigo and the weirdly changeable gravity. An unseen force alternately tugged me forward and nudged me back, like magnets sparring between repulsion and attraction, like the push of a wave and the suck of an undertow.

I leaned forward and tilted back. Leaned forward and....

"Good God! Enough already!" Luther lunged and shoved me with both hands. I hurtled into the blackness.
Chapter 22: Wasteland

Luther shoved me so hard, I went cartwheeling into the darkness, tumbling fast and far and out of control. I braced myself for a nasty impact, but before I could slam into that hard looking obsidian orb, a soft but powerful force seized me. I passed through something thick and soft like an invisible gel that sapped away all my momentum. I passed from utter darkness to blinding light, decelerating and floating gently down into a patch of powdery grit so cold I mistook it for snow.

A tingle shivered through me. Something shifted and left my body. I could tell that I had become something less than what I had been.

I wiped the grit from my eyes to find a landscape as bleak and desolate as the moons of Jupiter. All was bright, yet there was no sun. A diffuse glow spread across the sky, dimming gradually towards the horizon—a weirdly ubiquitous and source-less light that cast no shadows.

A fine haze hung in the air, blending earth and sky, smudging the distant horizon and rendering it barely discernible. Pink and gray dominated the landscape, mottled and mixed into diverse patterns and intermediate tones. A strong and constant wind sucked every last bit of residual heat from my body.

The sheer biting intensity of the cold shocked me, but no more so than my ability to endure it. The cold sank deep into my flesh, but my perception of it was in the abstract. The chill registered to my senses but I felt no threat from it, no biological imperative to get warm. It had no bearing on my ability to live, because I wasn't exactly alive anymore.

Dry ice would have shed no fog in a place like this. A puddle of liquid nitrogen wouldn't have even bubbled. The phrase 'cold as hell' suddenly had a new meaning. And to think I was drawing this frigid atmosphere into my lungs, if the twin cavities in my chest could still be described as such. But I felt no compulsion to breathe or blink and only did so out of habit.

Even more disconcerting was my lack of a heartbeat. The inside of my chest was as still as a crypt. Clearly, I was no longer a living thing, but something between a spirit and a human. I had entered another, more alien plane of existence.

I got up and looked around, trying to understand the layout of this place. The indistinct horizon rose all around me like the wall of some impossibly massive crater. The intervening landscape was all rumples and wrinkles. The terrain looked squashed, as if the mountains and hills that used to be here had been ground down to nubs.

I turned to face the wind and started walking. I had no destination, but I didn't know what else I could do. I glanced back after a few dozen paces at the shallow prints my feet had pressed into the dust. Those more than a few steps back had already been erased by the constant wind. There would be no chance of retracing my steps.

That realization made me panic. If the place I had landed was an entrance to this world, it might also be an exit. The problem was, there was nothing distinctive about it whatsoever; no landmark that would allow me to navigate back, not even any stray rocks with which I could build a cairn. I dropped to my knees and tried digging down through the dust, but only a few inches down I encountered seamless bedrock with the consistency of fire-hardened clay.

I got back on my feet, sucked it up and resumed my walkabout. Staying put was out of the question. I had come here to find souls, and there weren't any to be found out here in these wastes, and I couldn't very well expect anyone to come looking for me.

I told myself there was nothing special about the spot I came in; that it wasn't so necessary that I return to that exact place. But with every step, I could feel my anxiety ramping up.

***

Hours, I must have walked. Half a day, maybe, though it was hard to tell without a clock. The unchanging sky told me nothing. Its brightness never wavered, and it never revealed a source. It was perpetually sunless and twelve o'clock noon.

I kept on walking and walking. What else could I do?

A grim possibility began to plague my mind. What if Luther had led me to the wrong place?

My experience so far didn't square at all with what little Urszula had shared with me about her time in the Deeps. She gave the impression that it was a crowded place full of tumult, conflict and rebellion. Maybe this wasn't the Deeps after all.

And if so, what if these empty wastes were all I would ever know till the end of time? With no Karla, nobody to talk to, ever again. An eternity alone in my own personal Death Valley.

In another world, the leaden shroud that settled over my soul would have stirred suicidal thoughts and sent a legion of roots squirming after reach me. But this time there was no possibility of transport to an alternative existence. This was the end of the road.

How long would it be before I went completely mad; before I collapsed into a fetal position and retreated into my mind like those Old Ones? Unlike them, my soul was unfinished. I would never enjoy the luxury of communion with the entity they called the Singularity.

But still, I kept on walking. What else could I do? There was always a rise just ahead that obscured some of the landscape beyond. And whenever I couldn't see exactly what lay ahead, that carved a little space for hope. There could be anything on the other side. An oasis. A river. Maybe even a crystal city with glittering towers. I would only know for sure when I reached the top.

Each time I approached such an obstruction my spirits would rally and I would rush up the last stretch of slope. Going over the top, a vista would open up and there would be more of the same terrain, undulant and bleak, stretching to the horizon. Whoever had designed this little corner of hell for me could not have been any crueler.

***

I walked in a virtual trance for what seemed like days. Fatigue was not an issue. Neither was thirst or hunger. My exertions extracted absolutely no toll from my strange, new spectral body. Because it needed no rest or refreshment, I could walk without stopping. I was the ultimate perpetual motion machine, violating every law of thermodynamics. But I doubt that earthly physics had any bearing on what happened in this world.

Walking was my only possibility of salvation. There was no chance of ever finding anything better if I just up and quit. Once I stopped, it was game over and nothing about my situation would ever change again.

As I walked, I was beginning to get a feel for the pattern and rhythm of the landscape. A massive bulge would be followed by a series of narrower berms and then flats and then more berms and another large bulge. Repeat, ad infinitum.

When I approached the summit of one of the larger swells, an irregularity in the slope caught my eye. I veered and approached it. In another world, I would have never noticed it. It was just a bump. But here, bumps were anomalous.

It was half buried in dunes. I kicked and dug at the powdery sand, uncovering two low walls of stacked blocks forming a single corner, as if someone had started to build a structure and then abandoned it. Or maybe it was just meant to be a two-walled windbreak. The specifics didn't matter. The point was, this proved that there had been other souls present in this world. This was not my own private Hell.

I sat with my back wedged into the corner of the two walls, glorying in this orthogonal joining of brickwork that could only be human in origin. Each of the blocks was about the size of a shoe box and seemed to be carved from the chalky bedrock that underlay every square inch of this land.

I wondered why someone had even bothered to build this thing. Shelter seemed unnecessary in a place where the elements, however harsh, caused no discomfort. Maybe they did it out of habit. People built walls and roofs because that was what made us people. It was like the solitary and sterile female love bird my grandmother owned had that would constantly build nests out of shredded paper.

At last, I had myself a landmark, though it probably was not very detectable from a distance. I stepped onto the wall and tried to discern the pattern of the land around me so I would be able to find it again. As I stared, I found myself able to decipher more of the subtle character of the surrounding landscape.

Some of the dunes and berms were steeper than their sisters. Some were smooth; others etched by the wind. Some were broadly rounded at the top, some had sharp keels like overturned boats. This place wasn't as monotonous as it had first appeared.

I saw no other signs of civilization, but there was a cloud of dust in the distance—a big, rolling storm that crept perceptibly across the horizon. Out of curiosity, I turned in its direction even though it meant doubling pretty much back in the direction I had come, traveling against the grain of the terrain.

The same curious rhythm repeated itself, four or five narrow dunes followed by a broad rise descending to a flat. After the third iteration, I approached a rise that was quite a bit larger than the others. I climbed a slope that felt more like a tilted plain than a hillside. This one had altitude.

It also had a vista unlike any other I had yet encountered in this world. When I topped the rise, I paused to catch a breath that didn't need to be caught and nearly swallowed my tongue. A smear of grayish specks spread across the landscape below, following a broad, dark smudge where the paler dust had been scoured away from the bedrock.

It looked like a scene from the Ngorongoro Crater in the Serengeti, only those weren't wildebeest down there, they were thousands of bipedal, human forms swarming towards that storm on the horizon, which resembled something like a cross between a haboob and a tornado.

Gripped by a surge of excitement, I took off running, eager to commune with my fellow humans. But as I ran down the slope, voids riddled my limbs. My feet seemed to lift off into the air, though I knew it was impossible. I couldn't be flying. And I wasn't. I was doing something even more impossible. I was fading.
Chapter 23: Dunmore

A pressure grew outside my skull that made it feel like it would pop. Spasms racked my limbs. I lurched against the seat belt, gasping and wheezing. I had forgotten how to breathe, and it took me way longer than it should have to rediscover the knack. When warm, life-giving air finally flooded my lungs, I could almost feel every molecule of oxygen swarm into my alveolar capillaries and spread to every corner of my body.

And that thumping in my chest, like a frantic squirrel frantic to escape a cage. I had a heart again!

Ellen flung the wheel to the right and pulled off the road onto a shoulder flanked with massive, beech trees. A low canopy of boughs overhung the road. The headlights barely penetrated the dense forest bracketing us. It made me feel like I was back in Root.

"Are you okay?" said Ellen. "What's happening? Should I call 911?"

From the back seat, Urszula slapped and patted my back as if trying to clear mucus from a baby with the croup.

I couldn't talk right away. I coughed and snorted and wheezed until I got the hang of this breathing business again.

"Oh my God," I said, hoarsely. "You don't know how glad I am to be here."

"O-kay," said Ellen. "And ... where else would you be? Were you...? Did you go—?"

"The Deeps," I said. "I was in the Deeps."

"That ... is not possible," said Urszula, after a pause.

"You were with us ... the whole drive," said Ellen.

"My body, maybe. But my soul was in the Deeps. We've been over this. You know how it works."

"He is mistaken," said Urszula. "He could not have returned here ... to this place ... if what he says is true."

"Bullshit," I said. "I was there, and here I am."

"No. You are wrong," said Urszula. "Wherever you went, it was not the Deeps."

"I thought so, too. But then I saw that big ass dust storm. And the mobs of people swarming to it. Just like you described."

"The Horus? You saw the Horus?"

"I guess that's what it was. This big bulgy, knobby tornado thingie. And there's no sun there. Just a glow in the sky. Everything's all pink and gray. Cold as fuck. Dust everywhere. Does that sound about right?"

"How is this possible?" said Urszula. "How did you return?"

"Like I always do. I faded. And to tell you the truth, that's got me kind of freaked out. It means I'll have to go back."

Urszula smirked at me. "I told you it was not a nice place."

"It's ... horrible," I said. "I don't why I feel so strong about it. I mean, it's just a desert. But it's horrible."

I felt like a traitor to Karla. But I should have listened to Bern and everyone else who tried to talk me out of going. The only good thing about it not being a one way transition like everybody warned me? At least I could come back here for a breather every now and then.

Ellen patted my arm like she was consoling a nervous cat.

Urszula sighed. "One gets used to the place, eventually. I am still not sure I believe you are actually there."

"How do you want me to prove it? You want a pinch of dust? Christ, how long was I gone? It felt like ... days."

"No more than a few hours," said Ellen. "You had offered to drive partway, but we couldn't wake you. As it is, we're almost in Salisbury."

"Dang! Sure felt like a lot longer than that." I sat there, still panting and sweating, all agitated, almost feverish. I rolled down the window a bit. "Is it hot in here, or is it just me?"

Ellen was wearing a fleece all zipped up tight. "I think it's actually kind of chilly," she said. "I mean ... it's April in Vermont. There are still some snowy patches in the hills." She reached over and touched my forehead. "Are you feeling alright?"

"I ... I could use something to drink."

Urszula handed me a bottle of water that was two thirds gone and likely laden with her backwash. I didn't care. I guzzled it down.

"Well, we're almost at the cottage," said Ellen. "I'm gonna get back on the road. Okay? The sooner we get there, the sooner we can rest." She put the Camry in gear and proceeded down the tunnel of trees.

***

My wits returned slowly, and I managed to restore some semblance of calm. It was soothing to watch all that dark forest roll by after the unending glow of the Deeps. Images of that stark landscape stuck with me, almost overwhelming my actual senses.

I had had my window open wide and my head tilted out like a dog, basking in the rush of woodsy air, savoring each balmy breath.

My experience in the Deeps left me with a new appreciation of how much multitasking was involved in running a human body. My skin kept reporting all these little itches requiring attention, muscles and joints registering soreness, all while my bladder sensors vied for attention with the whole barrage of hunger, queasiness and bloating signals flooding out of my gut.

I won't even get into thermo-regulation and the complexity of sweating pore by pore.

"If you don't shut that damn window," said Ellen. "I'm gonna jack up the heat."

"Sorry." I rolled it up, reluctantly.

"I think you were never fully there," said Urszula. "You saw the place, but you did not go through the change. You were just ... like a tourist."

"Oh, I changed alright. I could feel it. I still kind of feel it."

"Maybe you adapted a little bit, but not fully. You did not commit to that existence. Maybe because of the way you entered"

"I ... suppose." Images of that bleak terrain refused to fade. It was almost as if I had left Billy behind in the Deeps. "All those people chasing the Horus," I said. "Why? Why do they do that?"

"We call them 'Seekers.' Most souls in the Deeps are Seekers. It is encouraged by the powers-that-be."

"But not you?"

"I was at first, yes ... because I knew nothing better. But I became disenchanted after a time. I joined with a group of heretics. We were a minority, but we were not few."

"These Seekers .... what exactly are they seeking?"

"The Horus, of course. They believe it a gateway to a better place. But in truth, it is merely a condenser of souls. The opposite of the Singularity. Only by bringing it down did we expose the rift to the Liminality."

"Christ. How do you ever bring down a big ass storm like that?"

"It is not simple. It took massive, collective spell craft ... and all the time we were fighting off the Protectors."

"Protectors? Jeez. Who the fuck are they?"

"Agents of the powers-that-be," she said. "Angels, I suppose. Serving both as shepherd and sheep dogs."

"Holy crap. If there's any chance of me going back, and I think there is—a good chance. You and me need to have a long talk."

"Certainly," said Urszula. "But if you can at all resist returning, I recommend that you do. It is one thing to be a visitor. It is another thing entirely to go through the change."

I wasn't sure what she meant by this change. I thought I had changed plenty in during my transition to the Deeps. And some residue of that change stuck with me, particularly my sensitivity to warmth. But maybe there was more to come. If that was so, I wasn't looking forward to it. It was going to make life in this world even more difficult.

"We're getting close," said Ellen. "Coming up on Fern Lake just ahead. Lake Dunmore's just a little farther to the north. We're looking for the turnoff to Hooker Road."

We zipped past a large car backed into a dirt driveway, facing the road. A flash of headlight briefly illuminated some people sitting in the front seat.

I whipped my head around as we went by. "Did you see that?"

"See what?" said Ellen.

"That car we just passed. Are my eyes fooling me or was that a Cadillac?"

"I didn't see any car."

"Well, it was a big old thing. I could have sworn it was a Cadillac."

"If you're thinking Wendell, there's no way he could know about this place," said Ellen. "They were probably just hikers. There are a lot of trail heads around here. A lot of folks go camping at this place called Silver Lake, perched up in the mountains."

That one brief glimpse left me feeling all unsettled. "Probably just my imagination acting up."

"Why don't we all just calm ourselves down, shall we? The cottage will be a great place to settle our nerves. We can take a day to just relax by the lake and figure out what to do next. Right? I mean, It's so quiet up here in the off-season. Summer folks don't start coming up till Memorial Day. We used to come every Spring and help my uncle get things fixed up for the season. Then, we usually had the cabin to ourselves for a week or two in August, depending on how the rentals fell ... at least until things started to get weird with my parents and me, last couple years of high school."

"Does it have electricity?" I said.

"Oh sure. I mean there's not much more than a hot plate and a grill for cooking. It might be rustic, but it's plenty cozy. We might need to get a fire going. The mornings are pretty clammy. But ... I used to love coming up here. There are these little newts—Red Efts—that come out after rain storms. They're so cute. Oh! Hey! Here's the turn off!"

We pulled off State Route 53 onto a well-graded but very narrow dirt road that passed through overhanging hardwoods just beginning to leaf out, weeks behind the oaks and maples in Connecticut. Dense and thorny thickets of multiflora rose encroached on both sides, scratching the doors of the Camry.

"Dang, Ellen. Where you taking us?"

"Don't worry. This isn't as remote as it looks. We're real close to Middlebury. In the morning, I can make a grocery run. Make us a nice brunch And then the rest of the day, we can rest up. No one will bother us up here. There's no internet. No cable. I don't even think there's a land line."

We passed over the top of a hill dominated by a thick stand of hemlocks, their branches interlocking into an impenetrable barrier. As we slanted down the slope, patches of a broad lake became visible, wavelets twinkling in the moonlight.

"Here it is! Just past that cairn."

Ellen turned abruptly down a cinder drive, through clearings dominated by the remnants of last year's garden. The drive ended at a graveled circle surrounding a cluster of white birches. The cottage was a modern looking bungalow clad with cedar shakes. It was cantilevered on the edge of a steep slope leading down to the lake shore. A wide porch furnished with rockers and rattan chairs surrounded it on all sides.

"Whoa!" said Ellen. "Uncle Tommy must have come into some money. This is all new. Not at all like I remember."

We got out and walked up a flagstone walk to a majestic front door of fine-grained oak with antiqued fittings.

"My, my. Uncle Tommy's been a busy bee," said Ellen. "This place has had a complete makeover." She flicked on the porch light.

I touched the door and my fingers stuck. I touched my hand to my nose and sniffed. "This varnish is still fresh."

Urszula kicked around the mulch in a flower bed. She reached down and pulled out a small shrub by the roots.

Ellen shined the small light on her key chain through a window. "Looks like the inside's been renovated, too."

She went over to a large gnome figurine, whose sun-faded paint job looked original and tipped it over. The base covered a section of pipe set vertically into the ground. She reached in and pulled out a key.

"I can't wait to see what Uncle Tommy has done with this place. This is amazing."

"Are you sure nobody's living here now?" I said.

"I doubt it," she said, turning the key in the lock. "Sometimes they rent it to skiers, but this time of year it's usually vacant."

She pushed the door open and turned on the lights.

"Oh my God! Look at this place."

Every room was elegantly appointed. The mud room was lined with hardwood cubbies for shoes and gloves. A pair of suede leather sofas faced a fireplace lined with river stones. A plush Persian rug covered the wide pine floorboards. Oil paintings of landscapes covered the walls.

"This can't be Uncle Tom's doing. He would never decorate like this. His idea of fine art is NASCAR and football."

I followed Ellen into the kitchen, which was equipped with a Sub Zero freezer and a Viking range with a convection oven. The counter tops were set with some sort of exotic granite with inclusions of rosy quartz.

Urszula opened the refrigerator and it was packed with food. I grabbed a carton of milk and checked the date. It was unopened and not even close to expiring.

Urszula stooped and opened the crisper. "There are beets here! And cabbage!"

"Really?"

"Hey, there's a note here," said Ellen. "Holy crap! It's ... for you."

"Me?"

"It's Wendell. He's responsible for all of this."

"But how? Why?"

Ellen scanned the elegant, purplish script penned on fancy linen-textured stationery.

"What does it say?"

"Oh my God! He ... he wants you to kill someone."

I grabbed the letter from her and started reading aloud.

" _Dear James and Co.,_

Welcome to Uncle Tom's Villa. Renovations and provisions courtesy of 'The Sanctuary.' I would have preferred that you had stayed in Connecticut. It's closer to the population centers. But hey, no problem. We've got business all over.

So here's your first test. There is a nice old gal up in Burlington (just up the road a half an hour). Her name is Miss Elsie Beedle. She has a gorgeous soul and was a beauty in her prime. I want you to pay her a visit for me.

Don't worry, she's expecting you. She's already told the staff her grand-nephew is coming to visit. If anyone asks, tell them you go to UVM.

Her address is:

The Lakeview Assisted Living Center, Room 29

335 South Winooski Avenue

Burlington, Vermont

In the door of the fridge, you'll find a bag of physiologic saline plus glucose. Elsie has issues with keeping her food down, so she has a tendency to get dehydrated. Betsy, her day nurse, tends to keep an extra unit on hand in the room for when she runs low. All I want you to do is swap that bag with the one in the fridge. Betsy will do the rest.

Careful not to puncture the bag. It's laced with microscopic Fellstraw. Once it gets into her system it'll seek out her sino-atrial node, that little patch of cells on the surface of the heart that regulates your heartbeat. Those fibers will muck up her natural pacemaker, stop her heart and that will be that. One more freed soul.

Real clean. One of my favorite methods. Gets rave reviews from the clientele. There's no pain. They just go to sleep. And it's untraceable. It's basically fibers of collagen. In an autopsy it will look like scar tissue.

Oh, and make sure you bring Elsie some flowers. She likes tulips.

One last note. Any delay in executing this task will be met by an escalating series of consequences (the same consequences we discussed earlier, and more.) I just want you to know that.

Sincerely,

Wendell

I took a deep breath and slapped the note back down on the counter. How did he know? How did he know we were coming up here? How did he have enough time to set all this up?"

"He must have access to the Singularity," said Urszula. "He sees the future. He reads minds."

"Actually, it might have been my fault," said Ellen. "Back in Newark, the immigration officers wanted me to give them an address. So I gave them this one. I thought I was gonna stay here. I didn't want anyone in my family to know I was back. Not even Grams, at first."

I sighed deeply. "I guess ... we should have expected this."

I stared out the window at the shimmering surface of the lake, wondering if Billy was out there keeping watch for us. I hadn't received any visions since we left Connecticut, though I probably wasn't accessible during my time in the Deeps. I wondered if Wendell had infested us with more of those mouse-like extensions of his alter ego.

"What if I went up to Burlington and did what he asked? It'd buy us some time."

"James. No. You can't just go and kill an old lady just because some guy asks you to."

"Why not?" said Urszula. "The woman wants to die. So go help her. It gives us more time to build a trap. What does it matter if there is one more Frelsian Freesoul?

"And what if he kills someone we know to set an example?"

"You want to kill, to stop him from killing? That makes no sense. Someone dies, regardless."

"Yeah, but at least ... it's a stranger."

"Guys, please!" said Ellen. "We don't have to do this. I know of other places we can go, out west, up north. Places I am certain I didn't mention to anybody. We can keep running."

"Enough running," said Urszula. "It is time we stand our ground. Let the Frelsian come to us. Soon I will have my spell craft and we will have the advantage. I am sure that my scepter and I are on the verge of forming a bond." She plopped down on one of the sofas. "Besides ... I like this place."
Chapter 24: Middlebury

For the first time in a very long time, I slept the simple, restful sleep I knew in the days when my mother home-schooled me. I would come home all tuckered out from youth league basketball and settle my weary bones into a little twin bed defended by a valiant stuffed Triceratops named Benny.

And there I would dream. Nice dreams. Not the angst-ridden psychodramas that would haunt my adolescence. But fanciful forays in the company of a legion of imaginary companions through landscapes that looked remarkably like my old neighborhood in the Cleveland suburbs.

And so here again in Vermont, with the spring peepers screeching, I slept the drowsy sleep of my childhood, falling into a deep stupor entirely free of roots and Reapers and lands of frigid dust. Instead, I dreamed of walking an endless beach, nothing but breakers and dunes to either side. Skittering crabs, tiny and pale, appeared and vanished like ghosts.

I followed a distant figure, dress billowing, hair flowing in the wind. Her footprints had been mostly washed away by the surf, but here and there, the traces were sharp and clear.

When I awoke, the frogs had gone silent, their duties taken over by the less frantic chirping of birds. Bright shards of reflected sunlight danced on the far wall. I was completely refreshed—bright-eyed, mind buzzing as if I had already guzzled a double espresso.

An ululating scream disrupted my reverie. I heard a thump and the sound of wood splintering. I nearly fell out of bed trying to scramble out of the room. I rushed out of the bedroom to find Urszula sobbing in the sitting room, a piece of scepter in either hand. She tossed both pieces into the fireplace and collapsed face down on the sofa.

"What happened?"

"What does it look like? I destroyed my carving."

"But why? I thought that was your scepter."

"No. It is just a chunk of wood. I tried all night, but I could find no resonance in it, whatsoever. And it seemed so promising. But no. It is useless, just like me. I am nothing. I have nothing here. No craft. Nothing."

"But I thought you said you were starting to bond."

"Wishful thinking. I thought it was the case ... but I was wrong. I tried ... very hard to find the flow. To have it channel. But there was nothing. No response. It is only wood. And I am only flesh. Nothing more. I am hopeless."

"Well, you didn't need to break it. I mean ... that was some nice carving."

She sneered it me. "Fool! I didn't carve it to be pretty for you to admire. The carving releases the essence, if there is any essence to be released. But there was none. It is just a hunk of wood. And me? I am worthless here. I am ... nothing."

Ellen appeared in the hallway looking all sleepy-eyed. "Is everything okay out here?"

"Oh, uh ... Urszula kinda had a tough night. Her spell craft isn't working."

"Oh. That's too bad. I'm sorry to hear that. Let me make us some breakfast. Maybe that'll cheer everybody up. How do you guys like your eggs?"

"Me? Over easy, I guess."

"Urszula?"

"I am not eating."

"But you have to eat something."

"What for? I am worthless. Let me waste away."

"Oh stop. You are not worthless. Look at me. I have never been able to do magic. Does that make me worthless? Now go and wash up. I'll have breakfast ready in a jiff."

***

While I helped Ellen crack a bunch of eggs and shred some potatoes for hash browns, Urszula avoided us. She went out back and started gathering sticks, hauling armloads up to the house and arraying them neatly on the porch. She carried hunks of driftwood up from the lake shore, tore the prickly lower limbs off hemlocks, and snapped all kinds of branches from maples, oaks and beeches, both green and dried, all vying for the opportunity to become her scepter.

The intricately carved length of knotty maple she had found in Naugatuck was just ashes in the hearth by now. It was a shame having to watch it burn.

Ellen was oblivious to Urszula's loss. She didn't realize how much a scepter meant to a Duster. They were naked without them. Scepters were the conduits of their will.

Ellen just kept tossing splits on the fire until there was a great, big roaring blaze. I couldn't go anywhere near it. My sensitivity to warmth was persisting. I had spent the night sleeping in the raw, uncovered and with the window wide open. Ellen, in contrast, was swaddled in a thick men's sweater with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. The cuffs kept sliding down and were already soiled with egg whites.

"I would have made us some pancakes too, but did you happen to see what kind of syrup they had in the pantry?"

"No."

"It's Aunt Jemima! Can you believe it? What sacrilege! Here we are in Vermont, of all places and there's Aunt Jemima in the cupboard. Well, we'll fix that when we go into Middlebury. I actually prefer the Grade B stuff, myself. It's darker than the top grade, but I think it's got more flavor. I'm making a list, by the way, for when we go into town. Anything special you want from the supermarket, let me know. I'm stopping by the bakery, too and get some nice, crusty bread."

"Mac and cheese."

"Huh?"

"It's been ages since I've had mac and cheese."

"You got it, mister, though there's plenty of stuff here to make it from scratch from real Vermont cheddar."

"No. From the box. I want it from the box. Just like we used to have in Florida."

"Suit yourself. Not a problem. I'll put it on the list." She leaned over and peeked out the window at Urszula, who had climbed a tree and was hacking away at a bough with a small hatchet. "Oh my God. That girl and her sticks! These eggs are almost done. See if you can get her to come in and eat something."

I stepped out onto the porch, although there was barely enough room to walk. Urszula was crouched town in the dirt, prying at a tree root. A cool breeze kicked up off the lake. It felt real felt nice.

"Yo. Come on in and have some breakfast."

Urszula didn't even look up at me. "I am busy."

"Oh come on, you've got to eat. You're a human now."

She just snorted. "Eat without me. I will make something later. Maybe I will make us some borscht."

I ducked back inside, turning up my palms to Ellen. "What can we do. She's fixated on finding a scepter."

"Well ... we're not gonna let these eggs get cold. Let's go ahead and eat. I'm famished."

***

So we drove to Middlebury after breakfast, Ellen and me. Urszula stayed behind, still absorbed in her ransacking of the wood lots for interesting lengths of wood. Irregularity seemed to be the only unifying characteristic of her chosen rods. She favored knots and scars and twists over anything smooth or linear. She had assembled quite a collection of candidates by the time we left.

It was a short drive to town. Ten minutes along, we had already reached the outskirts.

I had brought Wendell's letter with me. I was thinking maybe I could convince Ellen to drive me up to Burlington after we were done shopping, if it wasn't too far. I had smuggled the bag of IV fluid into the car and tucked it under my seat.

It seemed like such simple act, swapping this bag of fluid for another, and one that would go a long way towards easing the pressure on us from Wendell. It would sure be nice to stay put in a place more than a day for a change. But I struggled for a way to broach the topic with Ellen, without stimulating a knee-jerk response from her.

But the more I thought about what was in that bag under the seat, the more it troubled me. That was Fellstraw in the car with us. Yes, it was sealed in a bag, and likely programmed to go after one particular person, but it unnerved me just the same. It got me thinking about what else Wendell might have laced with the stuff.

"You know, I'm thinking maybe we shouldn't have eaten that food Wendell left for us."

"Why not? It seemed fresh enough to me."

"It's not that," I said. "It's the Fellstraw. If he could use it to doctor IV fluid, what's to stop him from slipping it into our food?"

"I'm sorry, but what is ... Fellstraw?"

"Well ... it's basically these fibers that attack the body. I suppose they're kind of like smaller versions of Billy—little fragments of will that do nasty things for the soul who creates them. It was Fellstraw that killed my girlfriend. Karla."

"Magic? You girlfriend was killed by evil magic?"

"Basically, yeah."

"So what should we do? Dump all that food?"

"Maybe."

She squinted and scrunched up her nose. "That doesn't make sense. Why would he want to poison you? He wants you to work for him."

"True. I know it doesn't make sense, but just to be safe, we should restock."

"Seems a damned shame," said Ellen. "Did you see those steaks he left? I was hoping to stick them on the grill for dinner,"

"Maybe it's fine, if we cook 'em well. I just ... I don't trust him."

"It's a little late for you to be worried, mister. The deed is done. We drank his orange juice. Ate his toast and eggs and potatoes. If anything was in it, it's inside us now. So ... why should we worry at this point?"

"I suppose you're right."

***

So we went with the assumption that Wendell's provisions were safe to eat and just stocked up on various condiments and treats at the Middlebury Hannaford's, stuff like hot sauce and Grade B maple syrup, sour gummy worms and Ben & Jerry's ice cream by the pint.

Serendipitously, there was a TJMaxx right across from the supermarket. So I picked up some jeans and stuff that actually fit me and didn't make me look like some old man farmer from Appalachia. Ellen bought a heap more stuff than me, but then again, she was buying for two, though I couldn't imagine seeing Urszula in the dress Ellen bought for her.

Ellen wanted to buy a gnarly walking stick for Urszula that was in a bin marked down 90%, but I put the kibosh on it. That girl had plenty of sticks to choose from in the woods. We didn't need to buy her one.

We were crossing the lot, back to the car when my vision went kablooey. I had this sensation of falling. I thought for sure I was being dragged back to the Deeps, but it was a false alarm. It turned out to be Billy sending me visions, and although I was glad to connect with him again, he was clearly in trouble.

He was hurtling through the treetops in a mixed conifer and deciduous forest. I caught snatches of his erratic, darting flight and glimpses of a gleaming expanse of water that looked remarkably like Lake Dunmore. It almost seemed like Billy was fleeing from something the way he pulled all these evasive maneuvers.

And them something latched onto Billy and started tearing him apart. He tumbled down through the branches and hit the ground hard. What was left of him gathered itself together and went scurrying through the leaf litter, taking refuge under a rock.

Ellen unlocked the door to the car and stood there watching me.

"You okay? You look like you're drunk ... or in a trance."

"Yeah. I'm okay.

"Is it that root place? Coming to get you?"

"No. It's Billy. He's in trouble."

"Where is he?"

"I think ... back at the cottage. We'd better go back. Now!"

***

I was a little bit relieved to see no sign of Wendell's car when we pulled into the driveway, because that was what I dreaded and expected. I relaxed a bit more than I should have.

Grabbing a sack of groceries, I whistled for Urszula. There was no response, but that was not so surprising. She didn't particularly appreciate being called with a whistle. She once told me that whistling was only fit for summoning dogs.

We entered the house. Something smelled good. There was a pot of what looked like borscht simmering on the stove. Piles of beet greens and cabbage trimmings littered the counter top.

There was an iPhone on the kitchen table that hadn't there when we left. It rang the instant I stepped into the kitchen. I picked it up.

"No more dawdling. Get your ass up to Burlington." It was Wendell.

"Yeah. I plan to. We had ... uh ... errands to run."

"Is it him?" hissed Ellen, eyes bugging at me.

I nodded.

"You might have noticed," said Wendell. "There's one less girl in your household."

"Urszula? What did you do with her?"

"Oh no!" said Ellen.

"Calm down. She's fine ... for now. Pathetic little thing. Obsessive-compulsive, from the looks of it. Did you see all those damned sticks of hers? As if a Duster could expect to find a scepter in this world. Sad, really."

"What did you do to her? Where is she?"

"You'll find out once you get your ass to Burlington and do what I asked of you. Technically, if you don't do anything, you'll find out too, but I guarantee you'll like the news a lot better if you do what I asked you. Now, it's not that hard. I laid all the groundwork already. You just need to consummate the act. And the sooner you get moving the more intact your little Duster friend will be. So enough dilly-dallying. Poor Elsie thinks she's been stood up yet again. Ta-ta for now. And don't forget the flowers."

He hung up.

"So did he take her?" said Ellen.

"I don't know. He didn't really say."

Ellen scrambled out onto the porch. Every stick Urszula had gathered was still neatly arrayed on the porch. I saw no sign of a struggle.

"Check every closet," she said. "I'll look down in the basement."

Ellen ran back into the house and clambered down the kitchen stairs, I didn't bother with the closets. I knew it was pointless. There was only one way to satisfy a guy like Wendell. I snatched the keys to the Camry off the counter and slipped out the front door.
Chapter 25: Elsie

I got in the car and tore out of that drive before Ellen could stop me. Through the dust cloud behind me, I caught a glimpse of her in the rear view mirror as she barged out of the cottage. She didn't chase me far. She pulled up on the road, all slumped and sad, watching me go. I wondered if she wondered if I would ever come back. I wasn't so sure myself.

I didn't exactly know the way to Burlington. But driving through Middlebury I lucked out and stumbled onto a signpost at the junction with Route 7 North, so I turned. It was as momentous a left turn as I had ever taken in a vehicle. Now that my course was set, my core filled with little needles that seemed to precipitate out of my blood. I'm not sure I was cut out for this assassin business.

But then again, I was more a courier than a killer. I was just making a delivery. It was Wendell who created the Fellstraw. And it was the nurse who would be committing the actual act. But I tried not to think about it too much. I just couldn't process the magnitude of the deed.

My first murder. The lead-up summoned a far different feeling from any of my other firsts. First time behind the wheel of a car. First date with a girl. This was just as nerve-wracking, but there was something fiendish and nightmarish about taking a life.

I was under no illusions that this little errand would get Wendell out of my hair. I could tell what he was doing, leading me along, giving me a taste of what it would be like to work for him and the Frelsians as a high-paid assassin. I had no intention of following him any farther down that path, but like Urszula had said, it would buy time. To what end, I wasn't sure yet.

At least it was pretty country up here. A lot flatter than I expected to see in a place called the Green Mountain State. Lots of fields and meadows. Cows and barns everywhere. There was supposed to be a big old lake up here. Champlain, I guess it was called, but I never caught even a glimpse of it from these flat lands.

I took care not to go too much over the speed limit. I had no license. No identification whatsoever.

When I got to town, I had to stop and ask for directions to Winooski Avenue. Turned out I had overshot it and had to double back. The houses here were a weird combination of quaint, rundown and majestic all interspersed within the space of one block. The configurations were diverse. No two built exactly alike, quite a change from Fort Pierce, where whole subdivisions had the same layout and palette. But I guess that's the way things are up here. People built their houses one at a time.

The Lakeview Assisted Living Center didn't look like much. It had no view of any lake, as far as I could see. It was just an old, bloated and triple-decker house with a fenced-in yard, surrounding by other houses in varying stages of dilapidation. Apparently, the winters were rough on paint jobs up here. It was not the ritziest neighborhood in Burlington.

As I stepped out of the car, I realized I had forgotten to stop for flowers. I racked my mind to try and remember if I had seen any florists on the way. But I hadn't really been looking for any.

One of the neighbors had some daffodils and tulips in the flower bed. Those along the front walk were kind of old and bedraggled, but there was a row of bicolor tulips on the shadier side of the house that had yet to come into bloom.

I looked up and down the street. There was no one around, so I bustled over to the next yard and snapped off a good half a dozen blossoms. It wasn't ideal, but it was going to have to do.

So I went back to the Center, ascending a rather steep, makeshift wheelchair ramp made of painted plywood and hit the switch for the automatic door. Inside, there was a small lobby with a threadbare all-weather carpet, mottled with random stains and bleach marks. The air smelled like a blend of urine and antiseptic.

A girl in her twenties sat behind a desk, reading 'Fifty Shades of Grey.' The name on her tag read 'Joyce.' She had the kind of eyes that made her look like she was always laughing, and a smile that had every right to be forced, but seemed quite genuine. I smoothed my hair and smoothed the bulge of the IV bag under my jacket.

"Visiting?" she asked.

I resisted the sarcastic urge to say 'no, I'm checking in.' I just nodded.

She slid over a log book with a green cloth-bound cover. "You need to sign in. Lunch starts in half an hour, just so you know."

"I'm just here to say a quick hello. I was passing through town."

Without thinking, I almost signed my own name. I went as far as scrawling a 'J.' Instead of James, I wrote John. John Beedle. I wrote in 11:01 as the time.

"Oh! It's you! You're finally here!"

"Me? What?"

"You're Elsie's grand-nephew! She's been expecting you. She's like ... all excited. Telling everybody about it for days. Elsie's the closest thing to a celebrity that we've ever had here. A famous artist. But you know that. But she hasn't had a visitor in the longest while."

"Yeah, I ... uh ... I don't get up to Burlington very often."

The girl stood and pointed her pen down a corridor. "Go right after the double doors. Her room is down the end of the hall, last door on the left. "Number 29."

I mumbled a thank you and shuffled away. I couldn't help thinking of that old folk's home in Switzerland, where I had visited the real Luther and his namesake.

I found the door to Room 29 partway open. I rapped my knuckles on it gently.

"Mrs. Beedle?"

"Yes?"

"I'm ... uh ... I'm here to visit ... uh ... it's ... uh ... John, your nephew ... er ... grand-nephew."

"Oh, John! Yes! Of course. Do come in!" Her voice was strong and cheerful.

I pushed through the door and closed it behind me. The first things that caught my eye were some stunning needlepoint tapestries hanging on the wall. They were swirly, blotchy impressionistic things had a complexity of color and composition that went way beyond the usual kitschy, folksy scenes you see of little kids and cats. I don't how anyone could have gotten the colors of all those threads to blend so smoothly, not without spell craft anyhow.

Mrs. Beedle sat upright on one of those adjustable beds. Some PBS cooking show was playing on her TV. Her hair was like a corona, pale gray mostly but with enough traces of blonde mixed in to make it look stained. She was quite alert but frail, a withered-looking thing. She reminded me of some of those partly mummified Old Ones I had awakened from the long sleep.

She had classic, symmetrical features, high cheekbones, well-balanced nose and chin. This was not just anybody's grandma. She had the air of an executive or a queen. She could have been a model or actress in her prime. This run-down nursing home seemed below her station.

The sharpness in her gaze told me she suffered no fools and took no prisoners. And yet, they weren't totally devoid of empathy. There was warmth in those embers.

"I brought you these." I thrust out my pathetic bouquet. One of the tulip stems had bent and the bloom had flopped over.

"Oh, they're gorgeous! Won't you be a dear and tuck them in that glass vase on the window sill. There's a sink in the bathroom."

My hands shook as I rinsed the vase and arranged the tulips so at least they weren't sticking in all direction. Once that was done, I just stood there sheepishly, shifting my weight between my feet, rocking.

"Don't be shy," she said. "The bag you're looking for is right there on my night stand. All you need to do is swap them."

"So ... you know."

"Of course I know. I commissioned this hit. I planned and specified it."

"Hit?"

She rolled her eyes.

"It's just ... should we really be talking about these things out in the open? What if somebody's listening?"

"Who's going to overhear us? Most of these octogenarians are deafer than me. And besides, that's why I paid for a private room."

I shuffled closer to the night stand, checking the corners of the ceiling for security cameras. "So ... uh ... how are things ... back in Frelsi?" I said, making small talk to allay my nervousness. I was acutely aware of that heavy, Fellstraw-infested bag tucked inside my jacket and anxious to be rid of it and yet I thought it rude to seem too hasty.

"The Sanctuary is coming together nicely, I must say. But the Hemi sectors are still a shambles. All thanks to you, Wendell tells me."

"Well ... I had help."

She gave me a wry grin. "Indeed you did. From the living and the dead. I'm just glad you're on our side now."

"Actually, I'm ... uh ... neutral, I guess. I've got friends on all sides."

She smirked. "Neutral? There is no neutral in the Liminality. You either support us or you don't. And what I see in front of me, is an act of support."

"I'm not doing this voluntarily ... to help Frelsi. I was coerced."

She sighed deeply. "Oh, you'll come around. You'll soon see that this is the best of all jobs. We go everywhere. See everything. And the compensation cannot be beat. Seems mundane, what we do. A service job. But we're the elite of the elite. There are not many like us, who can bring the craft to the living."

"We? Us?"

"Yes. I am a Facilitator, too. Was. Did Wendell not tell you? I've had a long and successful career, but ... alas ... thanks to my rheumatism ... I've outlived my usefulness. Can't very well do my job all cooped up in a nursing home."

"What are you doing in a dump like this? I thought you guys were like ... really rich."

Her eyes bore into me. "These are not my usual digs," she said. "But I thought a lower tier nursing home might be less intimidating to a beginner like you. Less security. Better cover as well. More plausible that my demise could be explained as medical errors if death by natural causes doesn't fly. Less likely to involve a quality autopsy or inquisition."

I slipped the IV bag out of my pocket and swapped it with the one on the nightstand.

"Now that's a good fellow. Welcome to the trade. It seem like a simple step you've just taken, but it's a large one, believe me. The psychological hurdle to taking lives can be immense."

"Your nurse isn't gonna get into trouble for this, is she?"

"Not at all. There's nothing traceable. Fellstraw is the cleanest neurotoxin imaginable. Even the best autopsy shouldn't find anything that isn't already there." She reached towards her bedside table and winced, grabbing her shoulder with her other arm. "Can you do me a favor dear and hand me that knitting basket. I have something in it for you."

I rounded the bed and fetched the basket, placing it gently on her bed. It was heavier than I expected for a bunch of yarn and knitting needles. She removed the oblong lid and reached into the bottom, grimacing at the strain it put on her arthritic fingers.

She fished around and pulled out a gun. A small gun, but real nonetheless. All blocky and serious looking.

I backed away towards the door and fumbled with the latch.

"Oh stop! Don't be silly. I'm not going to shoot you. Here, take this. I mean it as a gift. A token tool of our trade. Consider this is a changing of the guard." She handed me the gun, grip first.

I took it from her reluctantly, as if it were a hot potato.

"The gun, by the way, is not for use against clients. There are more efficient means for that, as I am sure you are aware. It's more for deterrence against those who might interfere with our tasks. Family and friends of the clientele sometimes get in the way. Understandably, they get the wrong impression about the service we're providing for their loved ones. They mean well, of course, but a little gun waving now and then helps to discourage them. And then again, there are special situations where only a gun will do. I mean, this one's not ideal. It's just a little .25 caliber Ruger. Its trigger action is light and gentle, perfect for someone like me with my rheumatism. Not much stopping power, but it will kill just fine if you aim for the right spots. Because sometimes, we do need to shoot people. In some walks of life, that is actually the least suspicious way to die, if you do it right."

"I'm not sure about this," I said. "I've never really used a gun. I'm not ... comfortable .... with them."

"Oh, just take it and put it away. Otherwise I will have to dispose of it in the shrubbery. It would reflect badly on me if they find it in my possessions when I pass. Might make some bored investigator a little too nosey about my past."

I stood there, my finger in the trigger guard, the gun dangling, me gawking at it.

"Put that away before the nurse comes by!" she hissed. She fished around again into the basket and pulled out a key.

"Oh, and here. This is for a safety deposit box in Rutland. The address is printed on the tag. You'll find my updated will for all my savings and properties. My entire estate. And as for territory, the entire East coast is yours if you want it. Wendell is just here temporarily. He's usually just a coordinator and I'm sure he'd love to get back to handling his celebrities, luminaries and special cases."

I just stood there and stared back at her. She smiled. "You're a young one to have so much craft. A prodigy. Just like Wendell had been when I first met him. You know, I was the one who put him through the ropes. And I had him kill my mentor for his first job, just like this. It's the circle of life. Oh come now. Give me a hug."

I went over to her bedside, hesitant. She leaned over and gave me a gentle squeeze and a peck on the cheek. I looked her straight in the eye. There was kindness blended with her coldness.

"I really don't have the stomach for this. I don't know why you guys picked me."

She rolled her eyes. "That's what they all say. It's a beginner's conceit. No one likes to kill, but it's not really killing that we do, is it? We facilitate transitions. It's more like a freeing. Opening up a door for a caged soul."

I just stood there and looked at her, at the half-drained IV bag trickling through a catheter taped to her wrist and then at the fresh bag I had just delivered, containing whatever devilish construct Wendell had crafted out of its carbon.

"Is there anything I can do for you? Buy you a magazine? Get you some take-out food?"

"Oh, you mean like a last meal? That's so sweet of you, but I'm perfectly fine and ready as is. I've been preparing for this a long time now. There is a celebration waiting for me on the other side, up at the glaciers. I'll be moving into a brand new tower in the Sanctuary. Thanks to your naughtiness, there has been some redevelopment and enhancement of our residential structures. The new towers are even more spacious and elegant than before. War isn't all bad after all, or at least, its aftereffects. It can be quite stimulatory. Creative destruction, you know?"

"Can I ask you a favor?" I asked.

"Of course."

"My mother lives there, in the Sanctuary."

"Really? I had no idea," she said, with amazement. "Does Wendell know about this?"

"I don't know what he knows. Doesn't seem like there's much he doesn't know. But my mom, I'm pretty sure she's already a Freesoul. Her name is Darlene. Darlene Moody. I saw her there once, when I was in Frelsi, but she didn't remember me. If you see here, can you tell her you met her son. Remind her, that she has a son."

"Well, this I can do, certainly but it all sounds rather odd. Why wouldn't she know she had a son?"

"I don't know. She acted like she had amnesia or was brainwashed or something. They re-engineered her. Made her look younger. I think they messed with her brain."

"Preposterous. They would do no such thing. Flesh weaving is strictly cosmetic."

"No. I'm telling you, she was changed. They did something to her. I'm just saying to watch out. The same thing could happen to you."

Her face went sour, but she kept her composure.

"I'll take note of her mother's name. The Sanctuary is quite exclusive. But it doesn't surprise me that she's there, considering your accomplishments and skills. Whatever you have, obviously runs in the family. Your mother should be proud, to have a boy so talented."

"Thanks," I said. I kept staring at that shriveled IV bag hanging on that stand, that tube draining into the catheter taped to her wrist. My head felt like it was starting to swell. My sinuses seemed to thicken.

"Good ... good luck." I didn't know what else to say. Before any tears could dribble, I turned and rushed out of the room.

***

I sat in the car staring out the windshield for many long minutes, wondering what to do, where to go next. I had strong reservations about returning to that cottage on Lake Dunmore. I wasn't sure I wanted to learn what Wendell had done to Urszula. Could she already be back in the Deeps, having lost her second chance at life?

And I struggled to decide what would be best for Ellen. Maybe I should do what she did for her Grams and break off all contact. Run. That would give Wendell no reason to take her out. He was just preying on my emotional connections. There was no reason for him to harm her if I showed no signs of caring for her fate.

The problem was, I did care. And it showed in my diffidence. If I really hadn't cared, I would have been on the road already, zooming westward.

But I failed to see how going back to the cottage would make things any better. Wendell could pull this shit all over again with another victim until I did his bidding. I wouldn't be an assassin's apprentice. I would be his slave.

I started up the car and visions from Billy started up, flickering at first and then with a steady barrage of imagery that made it hard for me to shift my attention to the road.

He had obviously recovered from his attack and was back out in the open, zipping around the woods and meadows like a manic hummingbird. He zipped down to the lake, skimming low over the water, past that blonde girl, Wendell's girlfriend, skipping stones. And then he zoomed up the bank past the cottage. There were two cars in the driveway: Wendell's slate gray Cadillac and a silver Subaru.

And then I realized that Billy was Wendell's tool. Even though Billy was technically part of me, I didn't have any control over him. As long as he provided these intrusive visions, Wendell could make sure I witnessed every brutal detail of whatever he wanted me to see. There was no way I could put the cottage and the girls out of my mind and unlink their fate from mine. I was a captive audience for Wendell's threats and retributions.

I slammed the Camry into gear and headed south, back to Lake Dunmore.
Chapter 26: Treegirl

Billy's visions sputtered to a halt soon after I left Burlington for the countryside. The last thing he showed me was a close-up view of a patch of moss growing in the crook of a tree branch, broken up into dozens of smaller pictures like a mosaic. I don't know if this meant he was in trouble again or if the image was supposed to help me somehow. I hoped he was okay.

I had completely lost my urge to run. I don't know what I had been thinking. Of course, I had to return to the lake. There were no two ways about it. I was the sole reason Urszula and Ellen were entangled in this mess. Until they were safe, I had an obligation. In fact, their safety was the only reason I had gone up to Burlington in the first place. I didn't care about the cash that Wendell promised.

But with each mile closer to the cottage, my dread grew deeper. I had no reason to be scared. I had done exactly what Wendell had asked, so he had no absolutely reason to be displeased. But still my stomach churned at the prospect of meeting him face to face again.

I guess it was his utter mastery of spell craft, the sheer magnitude of his all-knowing, all-powerful abilities that intimidated me. He had the power to take instant retribution and that was terrifying. He could take a life with the ease that most people spout a cuss word. One little burst of anger or impatience and someone dies.

By the time I turned onto that dirt road encircling Lake Dunmore, my heart was pounding like a jackhammer. I parked on the side of the road just before the driveway. That shipping tube was rolling around in the back seat. I snagged it, popped the cap, took out the sword and shook off the swaddling.

With a deep breath I stepped out of the car and pointed my blade at a dandelion. Being riled up as I was, it didn't take long to spin something loose. My elbow went numb. The tip of the sword quivered. The blossom shriveled and burst into flakes.

That made me feel a little bit better. Armed with a smidgeon of confidence didn't have a minute ago, I stormed down the drive past that horrid gray Cadillac.

There were no lookouts posted on the porch. No one came to the door to intercept me. And the door was left unlocked. I doubted it was because I had caught Wendell off guard. He simply didn't consider me a threat.

I flung the screen door open and stomped in. The three of them—Wendell, Ellen and the blonde girl—were sitting in the living room watching the local news. Wendell was wearing a slinky, taupe track suit with a pearly, almost metallic sheen. At first glance, it looked like Ellen was swaddled in a straightjacket, but it was actually her clothing, expanded and merged seamlessly with the fabric of the sofa. She had become one with the upholstery.

Ellen had been crying. Her face was damp and flushed. She sat there gawking at me, but I had a hard time looking her in the eye.

Both Wendell and the blonde girl had empty bowls and soup spoons perched in their laps. It seems they had both had a taste of Urszula's borscht.

"There he is! There's our guy, Meg! What did I tell you? I told you he'd come straight back."

"Why is he shaking?" said the blonde girl. "His face ... it's so red."

"You feeling alright, kid?" said Wendell, screwing up his eyes.

I pointed the sword right at his belly. "Cut her free!" I sputtered. "You fucking cut Ellen free and get the fuck out of here! And what'd you do with Urszula? Where the fuck is she?"

"Whoa! Calm down kid. Put down that freaking sword and have some soup. The stuff is great. Borscht, I think they call it."

"I did exactly what you said. You free her right now! And tell me what you did with Urszula."

Wendell's eyebrows bunched and tilted. "Oh, calm the fuck down or I'll weave you into the couch right next to her. Listen, she was acting up. Getting hysterical. I didn't have any choice; she had to be restrained. But don't worry, it's only cloth for Christ's sake. The fibers will relax on their own. Just give it time. She and the sofa will go back to exactly how they were. But never mind all that. This is a time for celebration. You passed your initiation, kid. Meg, pass the boy a beer."

The blonde girl, Meg, reached into a paper sack and pulled out a Heineken. She tried to hand it to me, but I pushed it away.

"I don't want any fucking beer. I want my friends free and I want you out of this fucking cottage."

"Put down that fucking sword before I stick it up your ass! Jeez guy. The only reason we stuck around here is so we could toast your success. Together. I mean, for Christ's sake, we brought you presents. That brand new Subaru in the driveway? That's for you. It'll help you blend in. Those things are popular up here." He patted a bundle of folders and envelopes. "This stuff is yours as well. All kinds of goodies here. Driver's license. Passport. Credit cards. Bank account. Everything you need to be human again. So c'mon, crack a beer with us. Let's toast your budding apprenticeship."

I just stood there with my lip quivering. I had lowered the sword, but my hands were sweating and trembling so much that the tip of the blade wiggled.

"Can't," I said. "I'm not twenty-one."

"So? Meg's not even nineteen."

"It's the law."

"Jesus!" Wendell rolled his eyes. "Old enough to kill, but not old enough to drink. What is wrong with this country? Oh, what the hell, looks like it's just you and me Meg." He clinked his bottle against hers and took a long swig. "Come on. Let's get out of here. Kid's not in a partying mood. Let's show him his other gift and let him have some rest." He got up out of his chair.

"I don't need any more gifts."

"Yeah, well. This one you gotta see," said Wendell. "This one's special. Trust me." As he brushed past, he flicked his wrist and the sword slipped free of my grip and slammed point first into the floor. The floor boards squeaked, the wood fibers tightening against the metal. I tried yanking it out, but the blade wouldn't budge.

"C'mon! Out to the driveway. Won't take more than a minute and I'll be out of your hair. I just want to show you something."

I looked at Ellen. "You okay?"

She nodded.

"I'll be right back."

I followed Wendell and the girl outside.

"The keys are in the Subaru," said Wendell. "There's an extra set with the title in the glove box. Everything's registered under your name."

He waved me over to the trunk of his Cadillac. My heart sped up. I was hoping it would be Urszula in there, and that she was okay.

"Consider this ... another peace offering," said Wendell.

He lifted the trunk. Inside, lay a disheveled, dark-haired man with a carefully sculpted beard and mustache. The sleeves and inseams of his cheap suit were fused together, appressing his arms to his sides, keeping his ankles crossed together. His tie had been grotesquely elongated and wrapped many times around his mouth. His eyes bulged with terror.

"Who the fuck is this guy?" I said.

"He's with Sergei's crowd. We caught him prowling around the MetroNorth in Waterbury. Check this out." Wendell pulled a fancy pen from his pocket and flicked it at the bound man. His shirt ripped open, buttons spattering wall of the trunk. The man's chest was tattooed with a huge cross, its central shaft spanning navel to sternum. A pair of onion-domed cathedrals flanked it.

"See that? Russian mafia." Wendell reached in and grabbed the guy's collar, yanking him up to a seated position in the trunk.

"Wait. What the heck are you doing?"

"He's your present."

"Wait! What am I supposed to do with him?"

"I don't know. Interrogate him. Keep him hostage. Make him your butt slave. I don't care. He's yours to do whatever you want."

"Why don't we just ... let him go?"

"Oh no. Can't. He knows where you live now. We let him go, he'll lead Sergei straight to your door."

"But ... I don't want to deal with him. I've got enough to worry about,"

"Fine. Suit yourself." Wendell shoved the prisoner back down against the floor of the trunk, took out his pen and wiggled it as if he were signing his signature in the air.

It was a death warrant. The man went still. His eyes turned glassy.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. "Holy fuck! Did you just ... kill him?"

"He had a bubble in his brain. What do you call it ... an aneurysm? It was gonna pop sooner or later anyhow. I just helped it along. That's part of the trade, pushing the right buttons. Everybody's got these triggers in their body. You just gotta know how to find them. I'll teach you how, when you're ready."

"You just murdered him. Right in front of your girlfriend."

Wendell rolled his eyes. "She's used to it. Don't kid yourself, kid. He would have done the same to you. He's a hit man."

"Just like you."

"No. Not like me. Not at all," he said, with annoyance. "I'm a Facilitator. I deal with lost souls. Nobody ever volunteered for this guy's services."

"Christ. What do we do ... with his body?"

"Don't worry about it. I'll take care of the disposal. It's just a matter of arranging a scene where death by natural causes looks plausible. Another thing I can teach you. It's kind of fun, actually. This is when you get to be creative."

He slammed the trunk and went to the door. Meg was already in the front seat, touching up her makeup in the mirror.

"Hey, wait a minute. What about Urszula?"

Wendell snapped his fingers. "Meg, give him the Garmin." Meg reached into her purse and pulled out something that looked like an oversized slab phone. She tossed it to me.

"There are two waypoints entered into that thing. One will lead you to your little Duster friend. The other's for your next job, but let's not worry about that just yet. I'll check back in with you in a day or so." He winked at me. "Enjoy your vacation. You did good kid. Elsie thought you were really sweet."

"You spoke to her?"

"You betcha. She's probably dead by now. But let me tell you, she was impressed. Told me you were gonna be a good one. Said you had a nice bedside manner."

He hopped into the Cadillac, the door slammed and they drove away, the sound system blaring some kind of Celtic drivel swarming with harps and dulcimers. I stood there in the drive, breathing their dust as they disappeared over the rise.

***

I went back in the house and found Ellen still sitting forced into that perfect posture on the sofa, the legs of her jeans knitted together like the poor guy in the trunk, the cuffs of her wrists connected to her lap.

"Are they gone?"

"Yup." I said, as I wrenched my sword out of the floor boards.

"Thank God!" She let out a long exhalation of relief.

I touched the tip of my sword to the couch, trying to undo Wendell's weaving. But either Wendell's spells were unusually resistant or I was still too flustered by the encounter to conjure even the feeblest spell craft. I gave up and started to hack at the cloth, intending to cut her free.

"Don't!" she said. "You'll ruin the upholstery."

"How else am I suppose to get you out?"

"Be patient. The fibers are coming loose on their own. See?" She pulled one of her arms free and lifted it. "It just takes time."

"Okay." I took a seat across from her, and we just sat there and looked at each other awkwardly. "Mind if I change the channel?"

"No. Go ahead."

I grabbed the clicker and switched it over to ESPN.

"Did she ... suffer?" said Ellen.

"Who, Elsie? Nah. I don't think so."

"Did you have to watch her ... die?"

"No. Actually, I just delivered the bag and left. I didn't stick around."

There was hurt in her eyes. She wasn't her usual smiley self. Not surprising. But I couldn't look at her directly. I had to keep looking away.

"Want some ... soup?" I said.

"I ... I'm disappointed in you, James."

"Yeah? Well, join the club. I don't like me that much, either."

"But ... it's not because of what you did to that woman. I understand that now. At least I think I do. Things are different with you people. Mortality has a different meaning to you all. I can't possibly know what it's like, not having gone where you've gone. But ... you didn't have to ditch me like that." Her voice cracked and a fresh stream of tears dribbled down her cheek. "Next time you go ... take me along. Take me with you. Promise?"

"Next time? Who said there's going to be a next time?"

She looked at me coldly. "Wendell."

"Let's not think about that right now. Hey look! I think your jeans pulled loose. Try standing up."

She tried to rise but the tail of her jacket was still connected to the couch and yanked her back down. She wriggled free by slipping her arms out of the sleeves and strode over to me. I thought she was going to slap my face or something, but instead she pulled my head into her bosom and ran her fingers through my hair.

I sat there, not knowing what to do. So I got up out of the chair. She hung onto me. I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I just let them relax onto the small of her back. The situation confused me. I had no idea that she had such feelings. And I really didn't want it to lead anywhere.

But she was the one who broke it off. "What's this?" she said, slipping her hand into my pocket and pulling out the device Wendell had given me. It was gray and scratched and ancient looking. It looked like it had been through a war.

"It's a GPS unit," I said. "Wendell said we could use it to find Urszula."

"Really?" Excitement and urgency returned to her voice. "Does that mean she's okay?"

"I ... don't know. He didn't say."

She stepped back and turned the device over in her hands. "Have you ever used one of these? How do you even turn it on?"

"Beats me," I said. "My mom had a TomTom, the kind that talks to you. This one's kind of old school."

She started pressing buttons, holding one down until the greenish-gray LCD screen came on.

"Come on! We need to go outside. Capture some satellites."

***

Ellen was a wiz with that GPS and its clunky and cryptic button interface. She got it figured it out in no time at all, locked in five satellites with an accuracy of ten meters. And while that was happening in the background, she found a screen listing two waypoints labeled: 'treegirl' and 'laurent.'

"Let's go for treegirl," I said, peering over her shoulder.

She selected it and pressed enter. A compass arrow appeared on the display along with coordinates and a proximity reading: 153 meters.

We charged off the porch and up the driveway. Crossing the road, we plunged into the forest beyond. Something small fluttered past my shoulder and into the underbrush. I wouldn't have put it past Wendell to have left some of his own creatures behind to spy on us.

We charged up a thickly forested slope. Ellen paused every few steps to consult the device. "Crap. We're losing the satellites under this dense cover. The arrow on this compass is swinging every which way."

"Let's just keep going the way we were going," I said. "There's a clearing up ahead."

We came to a woodlot where several trees had been harvested for firewood or whatever. Branch trimmings littered the ground, some still bearing least season's withered leaves. Ellen stood in the center and raised that GPS unit to the sky as if it were a torch and she the Statue of Liberty.

"Alright! We've got a fix again. Eighty-five meters. Keep going that way. Down that slope."

We entered a patch of old growth conifers, hemlocks, I think. Dead branches barred our way, but they were brittle and thin, so we just bulled our way through, snapping them off, absorbing their scratches.

On the other side, when the canopy began to thin, we checked again. Seventy-nine meters. Somehow, for all the walking we did, we weren't getting much closer, as if we had been circling around our target.

It occurred to me that Wendell might have rigged the device to torment us, but when we jogged to the right, along an old stone wall, the numbers again began to fall again.

The unit beeped when we were ten meters out from the selected waypoint. The display flashed: 'treegirl.'

We stopped and studied the forest surrounding us. We were surrounded by old sugar maples with scars where they had been tapped for sugaring.

"I don't see any sign of her," said Ellen. "Not even footprints. And the ground is soft. What exactly are we looking for?"

I didn't know what to say. The compass arrow was useless now, it kept wheeling around aimlessly with every stride, probably because we were so close.

Something scurried through the branches. Smaller than a bird. It was an insect. A cicada, to be specific, though it was at least two months early for cicada season.

The creature didn't share any visions with me, so I was a bit suspicious at first. But for some reason I had the strongest feeling that this was Billy, reconfigured after the mauling that Wendell's familiar had given it. Maybe he no longer had enough life force to sustain himself as a sparrow.

He raised his wings and buzzed off the branch, landing on a tree trunk across a swale.

"Follow that bug," I said.

"Really?"

"That's Billy. I'm pretty sure of it."

I splashed through the swampy meadow.

"Oh God, not another swamp." Ellen hesitated at the edge.

"Oh come on! It's not that bad."

When we reached Billy, he took off again and landed on another massive, old beech tree that stood out from the rest, its bark smooth and gray like an elephant's hide. The trunks of the surrounding maples were rough and corrugated by comparison.

I went over and stared up into the branches girding myself against the possibility of any 'strange fruit' dangling from a noose. Ellen came up behind me and clung to my arm, resting her chin on my shoulder. She was shivering, even though the afternoon was balmy.

"What are we looking at?"

"Dunno," I said.

I circled the tree slowly. Its bole bulged a good four feet in diameter at the base. Deep indents marked ancient wounds healed long ago. Even the first branchings were as large as or larger than the surrounding trees. It would have made the perfect platform for a tree fort, with its vast and horizontal spread of limbs.

A rotten hole surrounded by tumorous burls marked a place where a large limb had once snapped off. Ellen wedged herself into a knobby hollow and climbed up to the knot hole.

She peered inside and screamed. "Oh my God! There's a body in there!" She dropped down and bent over, sobbing.

It was then I noticed the miniature gardens of bright green moss growing in every juncture of trunk and limb. Billy had been trying to show me this very tree.

I scrambled up the side of the beech and forced myself to look into the hole. Deep inside, a delicate human hand protruded from a knot, fingers lightly clenched and hooked like a claw.
Chapter 27: Salvation

The cheers originated at the front of the column and rippled back through the crowd like a shock wave. Karla couldn't see what had prompted them, her view obscured by the dust kicked up by the myriad of marching souls, but she guessed it had something to do with the Horus. Her suspicions were confirmed by an ecstatic Seeker who ran back shouting the news.

"The Horus! It's turning!"

A thin man who had fallen back through the ranks peered through the dust, but there was nothing to see but more dust. More bone, than muscle, he must have looked just as grotesque in life, but like Karla, he had no obvious disability.

No one ate in the Deeps, but no one lost weight. No one ever aged either, but they weathered. Bodies were mere vehicles for souls until they broke down and became a prison.

"Big deal," muttered the thin man. "It has turned to us before, only to veer away at the last minute. It's only purpose is to torment."

"Keep your prognostications to yourself, Seeker," came a booming, authoritative voice.

The speaker was a milky-faced soul swaddled in pale muslin. He carried a staff shaped like a shepherd's crook, but with fine ceramic teeth studding its curve.

Karla hadn't even seen the Hashmal come up alongside them with his escort of Protectors—trusted Seekers deputized to enforce order in the column and defend it from infidels.

The contingent was shuttling from the rear to the head of the column. Their strides were long and quick as they hurried forward, now that their responsibilities had shifted from encouraging stragglers to managing entry into the Horus.

Karla scurried out of their way. The Protectors were not shy about cracking their staffs on a skull or two, and one of the first things she learned in the Deeps was that these hybrid bodies were brittle. This existence might be a few steps removed from the physical, but it was not a solely spiritual realm.

She had come across so many broken and discouraged souls in the rear of the column that even though she was able-bodied, she made it her mission to assist her own motley clique of the walking wounded. Someone had to protect them from the Protectors.

There was a man named Tomas, with shattered bones in his ankle who had trouble planting his foot without it flopping over on its side. Mary was a hunchback with a severed spine. She wasn't paralyzed as one might expect, but she could only remain erect by leaning on a pair of ceramic crutches fashioned from ceramic shafts salvaged from an abandoned infidel settlement. Ishmael was an African without hands or lower jaw, but who managed to convey his feelings with the most expressive eyes Karla had ever seen.

Those three were the core of her little clique, but there were those who occasionally joined them as they shuttled through the column. A frequent visitor was Renault, a man whose limbs were intact but whose skin hung in shreds from his frame like ribbons. Renault was a strong walker, but his grotesque appearance discomfited the luckier souls at the fore and he was often ridiculed and ostracized. Position in the column was a measure of status, but the pretty souls only deigned to be with other pretty souls, until they too inevitably accrued damage and had to fall back.

The Hashmal lagged behind, keeping pace with Karla and her group, and he could not stop staring. It wasn't hard to see that she had the only intact body in this collection of battered souls.

"Your body looks perfectly fine," said the Hashmal, squinting at her. "What are you doing with these cripples? You need to come to the fore where you belong."

"They need help," said Karla. "So I thought, why not help them."

The Hashmal shook his head. "That's not how the vetting and sorting is supposed to work. There is a reason they are back here. They have been punished by the powers-that-be. Only the virtuous get to advance."

"Is charity ... not a virtue?"

"Not here. Not anymore. The only virtue in the Deeps is self-salvation. The Lord helps those who help themselves."

"Salvation?" The thin man chortled. "What evidence for salvation do you see in that monstrosity?"

The Hashmal wielded his staff. "Infidel!" he shouted. The Protectors surged after the thin man, who was already dashing and dodging through the crowd with a squad of Protectors on his heels.

One of the marchers seized the thin man and dragged him down. The Protectors caught up and beating the thin man viciously with their staffs. Karla had to look away.

The Hashmal stood his ground, with a pair of bodyguards flanking him. They kept glancing nervously towards the dark shadow beginning to emerge from the dust clouds ahead. A rumble like a deeply buried subway train was slowly becoming audible.

"Let that be a lesson to you. I am a tolerant soul, but I will not tolerate subversion. If you want to keep your legs, keep your heretical opinions to yourselves." He looked straight at Karla. "And if I return this way and find any more malingerers among the cripples, I will make sure you receive some disabilities to match your friends.'"

Karla nodded, though she had no intention of complying. She would defect to the infidels herself before following any orders from this one. She had always had difficulty accepting arbitrary and unwarranted authority. Defiance was her natural response to such affronts.

The escort returned and the Hashmal strode off. Renault laughed a laugh as ragged as his skin.

"Don't worry, love. This Hashmal will soon be replaced by another who don't know ye. They rotate in like hockey shifts. None of their type can stand this land for long."

"I'm not worried about him," said Karla. She looked back to where the thin man had gone done and spotted his shattered form, writhing on the ground, beyond the reach of any help that she could offer.

"Was that man really an infidel?" she said. She had only observed infidels from a distance, standing on distant dunes watching the procession.

"Possible," said Renault. "They do infiltrate now and then, so he may be a spy. But at the very least he's a doubter, and that's just one step away from being an infidel."

"But don't you ... don't you ever doubt?"

"Of course I do, darlin,'" And he grinned. "Every bleedin' minute. But I'm not stupid. I don't share my feelings with the Hashmallim."

"Then what keeps you here, with us ... Seekers?"

"Morbid curiosity, I suppose. I want to see what happens when the Horus takes ye up into its maw, not that I have any intention of going there myself. I like to stay with the devil I know. Always been that way. Never moved on from my hometown. Died in the bed I slept in as a child."

"If it wasn't for you guys, I would be long gone from here," said Karla.

A look of incredible sadness overcame Ishmael and he crossed his stubs over his chest.

"Gone?" said Mary. "You mean off with the infidels?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. Maybe. But I think I'd rather go off and do my own thing. You know. Explore."

Tomas laughed. "What's to explore? There's nothing but dust here, and beyond that, more dust."

"You never know about a place," said Karla. "Until you have a look around."

"Then go," said Tomas. "By all means Don't worry about us. We'll be fine."

"Maybe someday," she said wistfully. "If the Horus doesn't take me first."

Not that she was scared of that eventuality. It was just another transition, another adventure, another place to adjust to and eventually master. No existence frightened her, not anymore. Root had trained her to make the best of any situation, no horrible it seemed initially, even the Deeps.

Here, it was always daylight and they were always on the move, seeing new terrain yet never getting tired, thirsty or hungry, sharing the camaraderie of some interesting and friendly souls. She would help her crippled friends chase the Horus until they could chase it no more.

And then she would go off and make friends with the myriad of lesser souls who littered the plains, their bodies too shattered to transport their souls, stranded for eternity or until the Horus plotted a random vector over them.

Those folks must be terribly lonely. She wondered what difference she could make, stopping here and there and talking to them, letting them know that they were still part of the human species.

She wanted no part of the infidels, seeing nothing to attract her in their squat, earthen warrens that she had glimpsed from afar through the cordons of Protectors that steered the procession away from their settlements.

As for the Horus, why not? She wouldn't obsess about it the way some Seekers did and the Hashmallim preferred, but if the opportunity came, she would enter it gladly.

Tomas tripped and stumbled on his floppy ankle. Karla rushed over and helped him to his feet.

Renault looked askance as he struggled to get his foot planted properly. "Don't know why ye don't go see the infidels. They can mend any bone. And they don't ask for recompense. I've known many a Seeker who've done so and returned to the chase. Just don't let the Hashmallim see ye."

"If that is true, then why don't get your skin fixed?" said Tomas.

"Because they don't mend flesh ye fool. Only bone. And besides, I fly my freak flag proudly. I don't need my flesh mended. It's a badge of honor. Look at me, I've been here longer than any of ye and I'm still going. And I plan to be here for the next crowd when you're all crippled on the plain or packed into that monster's gullet. But for you and that foot, they can't make it like new but at least they could attach it and you can walk on your foot's bottom again and not its side."

"In the Liminality," Karla, Weavers weave flesh."

"Not again about this Liminality place," said Tomas. "What good is it, if you can't get there from here."

"But you can," said Renault. "It's been done. The infidels sing of it. They are legends, maybe but—"

"They are not legends," said Karla. "It is true."

"But how?"

"If I knew, I would be there," said Karla, and she tried to smother the thought but it was too late. Thinking of James was always her downfall. She could deal with anything but knowing she would never see him again. And the miniscule hope that the Dusters' deeds offered only made things worse by intensifying her longing. Only by telling herself a reunion was impossible could she find any peace.

With one hand supporting Mary and the other propping Tomas, she marched into the dust kicked up by the thousand souls ahead of them, as the blurry outlines of a dark and sinuous column revealed itself gradually in the distance.
Chapter 28: Heartwood

I reached inside the hole and touched the hand, expecting the worst. I found it cold, but not as frigid as I would expect for a corpse. The fingers were passive yet pliable.

Like a sprung trap, they clenched, digging claw-like nails deep into my palm. A groan seeped out of the hollow at the center of the tree, muffled by inches of dense wood.

"Hang on, sweetie! We'll get you out."

I pulled my hand free and hopped down.

"She's alive!"

Ellen looked up, her face as open and hopeful as a full moon. "Urszula?"

"I'm pretty damn sure."

"How'd she get in there?"

"How else? Wendell and his spell craft. The bastard probably grew it up around her."

I recalled his reluctance at handing me that GPS, as if it were an afterthought. He probably wouldn't have minded one bit if she had stayed locked up in that beech. He hated Dusters, even reincarnated.

Something righteous brewed beneath my sternum. I could already feel the energy build and loosen.

"We need to get her out of there," said Ellen. "There's a chainsaw ... I think ... back in the shed."

"No," I said. "Too much risk of hurting her."

"So what do we do? Call the fire department?"

"Yeah, right. What are they gonna do?"

I held the sword loose in my grip and limbered up my arms and shoulders like a boxer.

"Step back," I said.

"What are you gonna do?"

"You'll see. Just get behind that boulder." I nodded to a glacial erratic on the slope behind us.

When I saw she was safely behind the rock, I lifted the sword and let fear and hatred for Wendell well up inside me. What he had done to Sergei's buddy was pure evil. I didn't care what bad intentions the guy had. No life deserved to be snuffed so casually.

The metal of the blade began to hum. I could already feel some of the energy transferring. I braced my legs and held the sword out straight in both arms, aiming the point at the center of the beech's trunk.

I let my feelings for Wendell fester and ignite. The energy separated from my core, swirling into my arms, shaking them as the power concentrated in the sword.

"Is everything okay?" Ellen stepped out into the open. "Are you convulsing?"

"Get back!"

Distracted, I lost control of the spell. The sword discharged prematurely. A shock wave surged from the tip, enveloping the tree. The wood twisted and groaned. A ripping sound gathered in the upper branches and worked its way down.

Ellen dove back behind the boulder. The beech tree peeled back like the sepals of a lily. Six arches of splintered wood surrounded the slender female figure within. Shafts of reddish heartwood poked upward like stamens. Urszula teetered and collapsed at the center of this giant, wooden flower.

The tremors in my arms ceased. I dropped the sword and rushed towards the shattered tree, kneeling beside Urszula's limp and shivering form. She was pungent with urine, damp and slightly sticky with sap, her clothes stuck through with splinters.

"Is she okay?" said Ellen, scrambling over.

"I don't see much blood. Seems to be nothing broken. I think she's knocked out, though. She might have a concussion."

"No. I am conscious," said Urszula, her voice hoarse. Her eyes opened and she gathered herself, squirming with surprising strength out of my grasp.

"Can you walk?"

"I think so."

"Let's get you back to the cottage." We helped her to her feet.

"Wait!" Urszula lunged for the core of the tree where a gently spiraling stave of ruddy heartwood jutted like a middle finger to the universe. She snapped it off at the base and clutched it to her chest.

"Now we can go."

***

Back at the cottage. Ellen helped Urszula into the bathroom to wash up. She was still a bit delirious and unsteady on her feet. I tried to take the beech stave from her, but she refused to give it up, cradling it like a little girl with a teddy bear.

"I searched for long and hard for this scepter. I will not be parted."

"Get a fire going," said Ellen. "She won't stop shivering. She might be hypothermic. Maybe that's why she acts so confused."

Urszula didn't seem that confused to me. And the weather didn't seem that cold. But who was I to judge? I was still not completely acclimated to earthly temperatures. Starting a fire was the last thing I desired, but it wasn't for me. I could always go out on the porch if the warmth got too much to bear.

As I arranged some splits and tinder and got them lit, there was a loud clunk from the bathroom. Something clattered to the floor.

"Everything okay in there?" I called.

Ellen ducked her head out. "We're fine. Urszula kind of passed out on her feet, but I managed to catch her. Poor thing can hardly stand. I've got her soaking in the tub. Poor thing's riddled with splinters. Go see if you can find some clean clothes. There should be something in the bedrooms. Check the drawers."

She glanced back furtively and reached down. "Oh, and here, take this," she whispered, handing me the heartwood stave. "Put it somewhere safe, away from the fire. There'll be hell to pay if you lose it."

I stuck the stave in an umbrella stand and went into one of the small bedrooms attached to the living area. The chest of drawers there was stuffed with brand news clothes still bearing their labels and price tags. I gathered up a stack of things that looked Urszula-sized, including some fuzzy pajamas and a pair of lambs' wool slippers, handing them into the steamy bathroom.

With the fire going strong, I took a chair at the far side of the room and started going through the pile of papers Wendell had left behind. There were all kinds of goodies in there, most notably fresh US passports and Vermont drivers' licenses for me and Ellen. I don't know what kind of trick he pulled to get hold of those, but they all looked official and legit. Even the pictures were current.

There was nothing in the stack bearing Urszula's name. That told me he wasn't counting on her surviving her imprisonment in that tree.

Something flat and oblong and dark fell out of a folder onto the floor. I picked it up. It was a Mastercard made of carbon fiber, with numbers and my name embossed a glossy black on black. I stuck it in my pocket.

Urszula barged out the bathroom in those fuzzy pajamas, her face plastered with Bandaids. She bulled right past me and went straight into the kitchen and took a seat at the little breakfast nook overlooking the lake, gleaming in the last oblique rays of dusk.

I followed after her. "How're you doin'? Feeling okay?"

"Feed me," she said,

I went and scraped what was left of her borscht into a bowl. There were some French rolls starting to go hard on the counter, so I grabbed a couple of those as well.

As Urszula dove into her food like a ravenous beast, Ellen emerged from the bathroom holding the clothes Urszula had been wearing. She double-bagged them and tossed them in the trash. She stood, hands on hips and watched Urszula eat.

"Man, look at you go, girl!"

"This soup is not enough," said Urszula. "I need meat."

"Can you cook up those steaks in the fridge?" said Ellen, turning to me. "I need a shower. It's been a long day."

I fired up the gas range, which had a built-in grill. While Urszula smeared hunks of bread through the remains of her borscht, I slapped five small strip steaks on the grill.

Her chair slid back. She snuck over and hovered behind me.

"I'm guessing you like yours rare?" Before I could turn around, she snagged one of the barely cooked steaks with her fork and carried it back inside to her dish.

"I guess so!"

She had polished off three of the five steaks by the time Ellen came back out with one towel around her midriff and another around her head like a turban. I had given up on fending her off, surrendering the pot of instant mashed potatoes. She ended up taking the whole pot, eating directly from it with a spoon.

"Take it easy, girlie. You're gonna explode," said Ellen.

"I need it," she said. "Something has changed in my body. I feel ... more alive. More so than before."

"I have to say you're looking a lot better," said Ellen. "There's a glow to your skin. Your eyes look brighter. Maybe we all should get locked up in beech trees." She opened the fridge and sorted through the crisper.

Urszula grinned. "Being struck by the Frelsian's spell was what I needed to get my own energy flowing. And I will use it ... to destroy him." She ripped off another chunk of steak with her teeth.

"So how'd you get so far out in those woods?" I said. "Did he bring you there?"

"I fled," said Urszula. "When he arrived, I ran. I knew I was no match. But he followed me. He made the trees come alive. They captured me. I never felt so helpless. I screamed and screamed. But ... it was not all bad. I got to go home."

"Home?"

"I saw your friend Bern. He was with a girl, who asked about you. I told them you were well. They were pleased."

"Girl? What girl?"

"Isobel."

My stomach plunged and I closed my eyes. "Damnit! That's bad news. I was hoping she'd stay out of Root. Did she say if she's staying at the farm?"

"She mentioned no farm. She said she'd been wandering and ran into some trouble."

"Shit! She never made it to Brynmawr."

"Ah, but you should see Mr. Luther's settlement. It is amazing ... like a fortress! I never expected to see such a city in those plains. He and Yaqob are already expanding their territories, planning new raids."

"Great. Just what we need. Get the Frelsians all agitated again."

An ember glowed deep in Urszula's eyes. "Let them. I will do my part. Both here and there. I will stand with my brothers and sisters." Her eyes went wide and her head whipped around. "My scepter! Where is it?"

I reached behind me to the umbrella stand and pulled out the long wedge of beech heartwood. It was trapezoidal in cross-section and sharp at the edges. I handed it to her.

Urszula balanced it in her palms and beamed broadly, exposing her fang-like canines. "It is already alive in my hands. And bound to me. I can feel it. It will need little modification."

"How about a nice salad, guys?" said Ellen. "And then we can have ice cream for dessert."

A spider descended from the rafters on a strand of silk. Ellen stepped back and squealed at the sight of it.

Urszula swung her scepter upward. There was a pop like a balloon bursting. A pulse issued forth. The spider disappeared in a puff of dust.
Chapter 29: R&R

It took us the longest time to calm down that night. Ellen and I kept snapping at each other over stupid stuff like who would wash what dishes. I knew it was only the jitters and the fatigue talking.

The wine helped. Ellen scrounged a dusty bottle of Merlot from the basement. I might not have cared to clink Heinekens with Wendell, but I didn't mind tipping a few glasses of wine with the girls. It wasn't like I was some teetotaler.

Our relations improved almost immediately. We had only needed a little something to take the edge off our day. Finally, I could relax.

Urszula didn't need any wine to get loose. She seemed not at all traumatized by her woody imprisonment. But she was certainly determined to get even with Wendell.

She finished up her huge meal by polishing off a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's while curled up on the couch. She kept running her fingers over the splintery hunk of wood she had salvaged from the ruined beech, fondling it like a kitten.

The alcohol made Ellen even talkier than usual. We got to hear all of her childhood tribulations, from latchkey loneliness to college disasters. I could have dredged up plenty of traumas of my own, but I didn't bother.

My past was irrelevant now. I had flushed it all away. All that moping over would-be girlfriends, it seemed so trivial now. I didn't even want to tell her anything about my time in Root, or about Karla, if only because it still felt too raw. I just let her talk, nodding my head, tossing in a word now and then. She didn't seem to notice that I wasn't reciprocating.

The late shows came on by the time we finally noticed that Urszula had conked out on the couch. We covered her with a blanket and retreated to our rooms. As I brushed past Ellen in the kitchen, she kept trying to read me with her eyes. There was something hungry and inquisitive in them that made me queasy.

I knew exactly what she wanted, but I pretended to not to notice. I just got myself a glass of water and went straight to my room. I mean, I can't say her unspoken offer wasn't tempting. I had no reason not to be attracted. She was charming and pretty enough. But things were complicated enough around here; I didn't need to complicate them further.

***

Again, I slept soundly, with peaceful dreams, waking up to wavy light reflecting off the lake onto the opposite wall. This made two nights in a row of genuine, restful sleep. I could get used to this.

As I lay in bed, basking in calm, thoughts of Karla came crashing into my head like hailstones on a pond. Coward that I was, I had dealt with my longings mainly by shunting thoughts of her aside. But I could never keep her away for long. She was part of my soul.

It made me feel guilty for avoiding the Deeps. I don't know if my attitude that was keeping it away or if I was locked out for good, but either way I was glad it hadn't come for me in my sleep.

The Deeps terrified me way more than Root ever did. Why such a bland, boring landscape devoid of Reapers should scare me so much. Maybe it was the life-robbing cold, or the absence of anything green.

Going there had sure improved my attitude towards life. Every moment I remained in the living world was a blessing. I truly hoped that my days of shuttling between existences were over. And if so, I hoped Karla would forgive me.

Imagining life without her, I hated to say, was getting easier and easier to accept. Her dying request would haunt me till the end of my days, but I could handle moving on without her. I saw a path where there had been none.

Sure, I would always have regrets, but regrets were nothing new to me. I could just add my failure to warn Karla about the Fellstraw to all the other baggage in my head. Like my paralysis of indecision when my dad collapsed with that aneurysm. Or being totally oblivious to my mom's fading health when an early intervention could have saved her. What were a few more suitcases for my attic?

***

Me and the girls spent the morning relaxing in a row of Adirondack chairs overlooking the lake. Urszula kept tweaking her new scepter. She would stare at the thing and run her finger along its facets and curves, before shaving off of a stray whisker of wood or scooping out a dimple. She saw patterns in the grain that weren't evident to an amateur like me.

"How come you're not hacking and carving this one up like you did the first one?"

She looked at me like I was a dunce. "Because it is already perfect. My soul entwined with it inside the tree. Now I am just making it ... more perfect."

"Any way you can amp up the firepower? Something tells me we're gonna need it to do more than squash spiders."

"The power all comes from me," she said. "The wood is just a conduit. You should know that."

"Yeah. I guess I should."

I kept glancing at that GPS unit sitting on a little rattan table between us. I was tempted to turn it on and check out that second waypoint—'laurent,' but I couldn't bring myself to look. I didn't want to know just yet. I just wanted to gaze down at the lake, and at the hills rising like a tsunami of evergreen along the opposite shore.

Both of my guns lay on that table too. They were no use against a guy like Wendell who could fizzle bullets with a glare and turn them into duds, like he did on that train. But I worried Sergei might send someone looking for the poor bastard Wendell had taken out. At least he and his ilk were still vulnerable to conventional weaponry.

I kept an eye on Wendell's iPhone as well. I had it set on buzz because I suspected I might shoot somebody if it went off. But thank God, not a single text crossed its screen while we lounged there. It sat as idle as a spinster's.

I knew he hadn't forgotten about us. But he was true to his word about letting us recuperate before the next mission.

Ellen got up and went into the kitchen. She had been quiet this morning. Hung over, I guess. Disappointed in me, maybe.

Pots and pans clinked and clunked. The faucet ran on and off, followed by some sizzling and the most delicious aromas. She came out a little while later with a skillet packed with some kind of giant omelet with potatoes and onions—a frittata, she called it. She cut it into wedges and served it us on paper plates. It was as scrumptious as it smelled.

Urszula's appetite hadn't waned one bit. She wolfed her portion down like a starving dog and dove in after more.

"I've been thinking," said Ellen. "Now that you've got that new car, maybe we can return the Camry to Grams. She should be out of rehab real soon."

I sensed an opportunity and pounced.

"Go for it," I said. "Take Urszula with you. I can stick around here and deal with Wendell."

Her jaw dropped. I already regretted making the suggestion, but it was too late.

"Why is it, every chance you get you're always looking for a reason to ditch us?"

"I'm not ditching you. We could ... keep in touch."

"Keep in touch?" She shook her head.

"Listen, I'm just thinking of your best interests. As long as I do what he says, he'll leave you guys alone."

Ellen scrunched her nose at me. "Oh, really? So what happened when you went to Burlington? He locked Urszula up in a tree and turned me into a couch."

She had me there.

"Maybe he thought I wasn't coming back."

"Oh? And why would he think that? Isn't he supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful?"

"Maybe ... not so much. Not as much as we thought."

She bit her lip. "We're safer if we stick together. I thought I made that point already. I thought we agreed."

"Fine. Then it's settled," I said. "We all go down with the ship. You realize he's gonna want me to do more jobs."

"Doesn't matter what he wants. Because you're not gonna do them, are you?"

"I don't know. I guess ... it depends."

"On what? If it's just an old lady he wants you to kill?"

"Listen. I didn't kill any old ladies. I just made a delivery. Maybe this next job is along the same lines. In which case—"

"No! Absolutely not. Don't you even think of it."

"But what if it's just another delivery?"

"At the very least, you're still an accessory to murder."

"Wait a minute. Technically, what I did ... or helped do ... it wasn't murder. It was assisted suicide."

"Either way, it's wrong."

I squirmed in my chair. "I'm just trying to do what's best ... for us."

"What is best," said Urszula. "Is that this Frelsian dies. Once he is dead, he can no longer threaten us, not in this world. And he is no longer making new Freesouls for the Sanctuary."

I smirked. As much as I admired her bravado, she was going to have to find a way to do more than vanquish arthropods to be any help in a tussle with Wendell. Not that I was much better. I could never count on my spell craft working when I needed it. I cast duds as often as not.

"So what do we do about your grandma's car?"

Ellen glared at me. "Nothing. Never mind. Forget I ever mentioned it. Grams is just gonna have to do without." She grabbed the now empty skillet and stomped back into the cottage.

Urszula smiled as she shaved another tiny curl of wood off her scepter. "Don't worry. Once we take care of this Frelsian, we can go wherever, whenever we want."

***

Later that afternoon, Ellen re-emerged from the cottage with a pitcher of iced tea. She no indication there was ever any tension between us. She was back to her old self, going on about her childhood vacations on the lake. She didn't mention a word about Wendell or our peculiar situation. I sure as hell wasn't going to bring it up.

"Oh, the fish! There are some real lunkers in this lake. All kinds of bass—largemouth, smallmouth. Even trout."

"Fish," said Urszula. "Can we eat some?"

"Well, sure!" said Ellen. "I'm pretty sure there are some poles in the shed."

Ellen went off and found me a pole, handing it over, even though it had been years since I baited a hook.

"You guys go on down to the dock. I'll see if I can wrangle up some more gear."

So Urszula and I moseyed down the steps, overturning rocks on the way to fetch worms. Out on the dock, one by one, I pulled in the little, bony bluegills that schooled around it. Urszula glared in disdain at the tiny creatures as I tossed them back. She kept that scepter all snuggled against her forearm like some extension of her body.

"In Silesia we had pike more than one meter long."

"Wow. Well, I don't think you're gonna find anything like that here."

"So I am presuming there will be no fish for dinner?"

"Not with me fishing. I'm just doing this for fun."

"Fun?" She went to the end of the dock and peered out over the water. "We need a boat. That is where we find the big fish."

I shrugged. "I suppose we could buy some at the supermarket."

"Boats?"

"No, I meant fish."

I had been itching to test out that credit card Wendell had given me. I suppose I could hop on that iPhone and order us a canoe or some kayaks from Amazon.

It hadn't sunk in that I was quite likely a wealthy man now, something I never imagined being in this life. Quite likely the highest paid delivery boy in the history of earth. I was going to have to go online and at least check the balance on my new account.

Urszula sighed and wandered back up the stone stairs to the porch. Alone on the dock, I gloried in glint of the water all around me, the little hungry fishes pocking the surface in a frenzy every time I tossed in a worm. The brisk scent of spring pervaded the air.

And then everything changed. A pall descended. All color seeped out of the landscape. I thought at first maybe a cloud had passed in front of the sun. But no, it was still there and shining, just grayer now and somehow dull.

A deep chill settled in and shivered my spine. Maybe I was coming down with something. I laid the pole on the dock and retreated to a hammock rigged between two pines. The chills intensified. A powdery sensation penetrated my nostrils. My skin began to steam. Ice flaked off and fluttered down like snow.

One world checked out. Another checked in.
Chapter 30: Hashmal

I never made it to the hammock. The lake evaporated, taking everything green and alive with it. Most of what made me human drained away, leaving my spirit rattling around the cold, numb husk that passed for a body in this realm. Transition complete, I lay crumpled and stunned in a heap of frigid dust.

I already missed Vermont. Missed the girls. Missed life. Missed everything. Desperately.

I even missed the pitted plains. That pale, blue sun. Even those giant bugs. The Liminality was a paradise compared to this place.

I would have sold my soul to Wendell if that would have kept me out of here. To think how I had begged and hounded Luther to show me the way. What an idiot. What a fool!

The wind rearranged the sand grains in front of my nose. I was in no hurry to look up. I just wanted to lay here and let the elements take me, bury me half in the ground like those Old Ones in the pitted plains. I would exist in my own singular singularity, a singularity of one, as it should be.

My gaze latched onto a splash of color that startled me right out of my trance. The sheer chromatic intensity of it jarred amidst all the muted taupe and rust surrounding me. It was a ribbon. Bright blue. The one Luther had tied around the rolled up note he had written for his old friend Olivier.

I gathered the courage to face my fate and sat up. Patience, I told myself. Like all things bad, 'this too shall pass.' That phrase was ancient and unattributable, but it was quite possibly the most comforting snippet of language ever written. If I had ever gone to high school and had a yearbook, I would have chosen it for my motto.

This time, at least, I had reason to hope my exile would not be permanent. Something would show up eventually to and transit me back. I couldn't control or predict when, but it had happened once before, why wouldn't it happen again?

I snatched up the note and hauled myself to my feet. A broad and shallow valley spread before me, its lowest reaches smeared with a gray blotch of humanity. A horde of marchers flowed downhill like a river seeking the path of least resistance.

Clouds of dust curled over their heads, dispersed by eddies of wind spinning off the weird, dark cyclone that impaled the farthest reaches of the valley. The storm, if that's what you could call it, receded from the procession, but it was evident from the chaos at the head of the column that it had plowed into the vanguard before veering off.

The column was headless now, the tight mob that had led the charge had been shattered and dispersed, a thousand souls blotted away in one swoop. Those who had marched behind them were now surging forward to fill the void.

The scene below, in a single glance, told me all I needed to know about the Horus. The damned thing was just another kind of humongous reaper. Only this time there was no need to confine anyone in pods. The souls here were eager and desperate to be reaped.

I had no interest in going or even knowing where it led. Maybe if I was stuck here for eternity I might feel differently. I was lucky that way. Special. I had an out. I had Vermont. God knows what the Horus intended for the poor suckers chasing it. Of course, they had no choice but to hope it was someplace better. The Deeps, though, seemed an unlikely way station for spirits destined for a higher existence.

I could imagine the despair of the people who had counted on the Horus being their ticket out of this existence, who with the storm bearing down, had been so certain their time had come, and yet it hadn't. Some of them had to deal with the realization that they might never catch the Horus.

I wondered whatever made Urszula's crowd think that they could ever take such a monstrous thing down. Talk about David and Goliath. What balls, what chutzpah they must have had to go after it the way they did and succeed. Twice! Of course, Urszula had never told me how.

I studied that storm with the awe and respect of a big game hunter scouting a grizzly bear from a hilltop. The problem was, I wasn't close to being loaded for bear. My only weapon here was a rolled-up piece of paper suited to not much more than shooting peas. I wasn't counting on taking the same route as the Dusters back to the Liminality.

It was the ugliest storm I had ever seen, a dense and opaque tornado with a central mass of mist and dust held tight to its core. Its surface writhed and boiled. Brownish growths bulged along its shaft, like tumors on a turd. The tower bent and flexed like a rearing cobra. The top, many miles tall, was obscured by a broad veil of fine haze that trailed away.

Its footprint was compact—less than a mile across. Scars traced the history of its passage, dark swirls and curlicues where the bedrock had been scrubbed bare of dust.

As I watched, that herd of humanity regained its form, re-consolidating its frontal mass, trailing a tail of stragglers like a human comet.

Human. Those were people down there. Ordinary folks and probably some extraordinary ones too.

That realization got me jogging towards the herd. These people were my antidote to the emptiness. I didn't have to be alone in this wilderness. Down there I could find someone to talk to. People who knew Fort Pierce and Cleveland and Vermont. Maybe even somebody I knew from life. Maybe even Karla.

A jog, a sprint, it didn't matter in a place where one never got winded, so I flew down that long, gentle slope as fast as my body would carry me. As I descended, I noticed other gray smears in the distance—other herds of souls just like the one before me, other human comets slithering out of other valleys, their columns bending to track and converge on the storm, which moved faster than any human herd could follow.

I realized then, that the collection of people below was only a small sampling of the total population of this place, only one of many herds scattered far and wide across this vast landscape. I couldn't just look at the crowd before me and assume that Karla was among them. It was only one of the possibilities. That realization put a hitch in my gait. I slowed to a walk.

But I kept on going. What else was I supposed to do? Despite my loner tendencies, I still had to be with people once in a while. And emptiness had a way of bringing out my inner extrovert. Being a hermit was no fun in a place devoid of substitutes or proxies for human companionship. No art. No books. No media. Nothing to take the place of a human soul.

So I plotted a course straight for the middle of that long, straggling column, aiming for a spot just behind the reconstituted vanguard, right about where the ranks began to thin. The closer I got, the granular the crowd became, no longer a smear of humanity but a collection of individuals.

When I got close enough to discern faces, I could see nothing special about these people other than them all being gray-skinned. They represented all genders, sizes, ages and races. A disproportionate number had Asian and African features, but that shouldn't have surprised me if this was a random sampling of Earth's population.

They were all walking briskly, not an idle Saturday at the mall kind of stroll, but something purposeful, like folks out for a charity walk. Nobody carried anything. There was nothing to carry here. And there was not a shred of clothing on anyone.

This was no big deal. I had gotten used to nakedness in Root. Too bad we humans are not the prettiest of animals, not that any of these folks were morbidly obese. The bodies people inhabited here seemed a compromise between the ideal and the worst case scenario. No one here was built like an Olympic athlete, but no one was a complete and utter slug.

I penetrated the outermost fringes of the procession. This sparsely-peopled zone was the domain of weirdoes—angry people, people who looked dazed, people babbling to themselves or giving me the evil eye. One guy came at me babbling and flailing his arms until some people grabbed him and held him back. It seemed unfair that folks should carry their hang-ups and mental illnesses into the afterlife, but it really seemed to be the case.

I slipped through these outcasts and headed into the main body of the procession. Whispers of "Hashmal" assaulted me from all directions. Some folks stopped in their tracks to let me go. Others shrank away as if they were afraid I might hit them. One lady collapsed to her knees and pressed her forehead against the ground.

My gaze flitted through the masses, searching for Karla. But there were so many souls, and the crowd only grew thicker as I moved towards the center.

The procession had the feel of a pilgrimage. Lots of hopeful faces—some praying, some chanting. A sad-faced man with a slouching posture approached me meekly, greeting me with a bowed head and a submissive smile.

"Hashmal sir, have you lost your cloak?"

"What cloak? Why is everyone calling me a Hashmal?"

"Is this ... a test ... your excellence?" he said, his smile forced and nervous.

"Test? What do you mean test?"

Something shifting in his eyes. His lip began to twitch. "Are you not of the Hashmallim? Y-you share their complexion."

"I'm not gray, if that's what you mean. I'm not sure why not. But what's all this hash mall business?"

A slender, kindly looking man came over. "Don't you see, Ibrahim? He cannot be a Hashmal. He doesn't know them." The man had a lilting Indian accent that was a joy to listen to. He touched my elbow and looked me in the eye. "The Hashmallim belong to a higher realm. They enforce the order. And If you have not met them yet, then you probably do not wish to. I would suggest that you leave us ... now. They simply do not tolerate—"

"Don't nobody talk to him," scolded a dour-faced woman. "He's anomalous. He's gonna be purged."

"Anomalous?" I said. "What?"

"Everyone, please ... move away from the impostor," said a bulky man, with a stern, military air. "Let the Hashmallim come and sort him out."

The Indian fellow bobbed his head side to side as he backed away. "I am so sorry, but they are right. You cannot stay here. They will come for you"

"But I just got here."

"I am so sorry, young man, but in their eyes you will be considered anomalous. This is simply not tolerated here."

"What the fuck? You mean ... because I'm not gray ... like you guys?"

"So sorry. It is simply how it is. How the powers-that-be ... insist."

The last thing I expected down here was for my complexion to be an issue. At first it frustrated and pissed me off. But as the hostility and fear I spurred spread up and down the ranks, I realized how serious my situation was. A frisson of worry kicked me into survival mode. I sidled away, retreating out of the core of the procession, back through the fringes and the crazies.

Where the valley snaked through a gap through a chaotic collection of dunes of all sizes, I left the mob behind entirely, climbing to the top of one of the tallest dunes. It stood far enough away from the main flow that if any of these Hashmallim came by to 'purge' me, I could see them coming.

I sat there and sulked, feeling sorry for myself. There was no way I could pick out Karla across the half mile wide procession. I wondered if I could recognize her simply from the way she walked. I probably could once, but my memory of such things was fading.

Sitting there, minding my own business, half a football field away from the main flow, I still attracted plenty attention from those who passed. I guess it was hard not to stick out in the midst of all this emptiness. Faces turned my way. Murmurs spread in waves through the marchers. At least nobody came over to hassle me. From a distance, I supposed, nobody could tell that I wasn't one of those Hashmal dudes.

This shit got old pretty fast. It was kind of like watching the back half of a marathon with all of the elite racers long gone, leaving only the pluggers and plodders to struggle onward. This wasn't exactly the kind of human contact I had in mind when I came down here to commune with my fellow souls.

On a whim, I scraped Karla's name in large block letters with my heel into the side of the dune. So many thousands of souls. I wondered if there were any Karlas among them. Was my lame attempt at signage even legible?

And then a shout went up. "Infidels!" The mob began to peel away from my dune, like plastic shrinking in the heat of a flame. Now I wasn't just anomalous, but I was an infidel? And that was worse?

I looked behind me, and there were two guys standing atop the next dune over, leaning on long, bone-colored staffs like shepherd's crooks. They went into a crouch when they spotted me, leveling their staffs defensively as if they were warding off projectiles.

They were gray-skinned, like the rest of the mob, but they wore layers of overlapping ceramic scales, much like the armor I had seen Urszula wear in battle.

"Hey! How's it going!" I shouted to them, not knowing what else made sense in this situation. I waved.

They looked perplexed for a moment, but then their postures relaxed.

"Yo," said the taller guy. "Better get your ass over here, before the hashers get ya."

"Pronto!" said the shorter guy, who had a broad and distinctly Asian face. "There's a squad hauling ass down the column. That's not good."

I thought it was a good sign that they seemed concerned for my safety, so I started down the dip between the dunes and scrambled up to them. They took off running as soon as I reached them and so I joined them, keeping pace right behind them.

I didn't question where we were going. I didn't really care. I had no idea where we were headed, but it really didn't matter. I was just biding my time until something came and dragged me back to Vermont. They seemed to know what they were doing. I got no vibe from them that they meant me any harm.

They hummed as they ran, something weird but catchy. Like one of those rare melodies that catches you by surprise, instantly familiar but completely original, totally resonant with some under-explored corner of the human spirit.

We ran back up to the height of the land, where they paused to reassess the situation. A small group of souls had left the main column and were standing on the dune we had just left.

"Hah! Look at 'em! Afraid to come closer. Probably think it's a trap. I tell ya, those are the bennies of a successful ambush now and then. The fuckers learn to leave us alone."

"Who are they?" I said.

"Oh, it's just a hasher and his goons," said the tall guy

"Protectors," said the Asian.

I had to do a double take at the tall guy's face. I hadn't really looked at him full on until now, but there was something terribly askew with his appearance. He was Caucasian in a beak-nosed Mediterranean way, but his skull and cheekbones were warped and displaced, as if he had a skull of wax that had melted partially and cooled.

"What happened to your face?" I said.

"What does it look like? It got crushed."

"Here, or in life?"

"Here. Yeah, we tangle sometimes with fuckers the likes we're looking at right now. Some hashers got spells that crush bone, and bone don't mend proper over here. Lady An helped, but she's no orthopedist. She just set the pieces best she could and froze them into place. Sorry, I ain't so pretty to look at anymore."

"Who you kidding? You never were," said the Asian.

"Oh shut up, gorgeous."

"So how come you guys aren't chasing the Horus like everybody else?"

"Oh, didn't you hear?" said the warped one. "We're infidels."

"Unbelievers? But ... what is it exactly that you don't you believe?"

The warped one spat. His face grew even more distorted. "That the hashers are better than us, and that they mean us well. That the fucking dirt monster over there is some kind of gate to paradise."

"Well, I'm with you about that storm thing. Does that make me an infidel?"

"Sure does. If you really mean it, you're one of us, alright."

"But what about the hashers?" said the Asian. "You believe they're higher beings? Angels?"

"Don't know. I've never actually met one."

"Funny, considering your rosy complexion and all, we had you pegged as one. Maybe a rebel."

"Nah. I'm no rebel angel. I'm just a visitor."

The warped one snickered. "Visitor, he says. Don't we all wish?"

"So you're anomalous."

"Why do folks keep saying that?"

"Mistakes happen," said the Asian. "Souls sometimes arrive here a little messed up. We should have known better. Color doesn't always mean anything."

"Don't worry kid. You're in good company," said the warped one. "You're not alone."

Somehow, I found that remark deeply comforting.

The Asian gazed out across the dunes. "Oh shit. They're on the move again. Coming after us. Hasher's got a longbow."

Without a word or even a glance, the pair again took off running, scales clinking with each stride. I followed off after them without a second thought, trusting my fate would be better off with them than with the wranglers managing that mob.

And somehow, even though we were being pursued by an armed gang, my desire to leave this place became a tad less urgent. The Deeps didn't seem quite so intimidating now that I had some companions.
Chapter 31: Lady An

We hurtled though the dunes, my mind a storm of confusion. In quick succession I had been honored, worshiped and feared by a mob of souls. They had cast me out and now a detachment of their overseers were trying to hunt me down. All because of the color of my skin.

This probably put a fork in my search for Karla. How was I supposed to find her if I couldn't go near any crowds? And the fact was, I had long lost heart. I was a coward and a weakling. I didn't deserve to find her. She deserved better. Though, now that was a moot point.

So I was relegated to tagging along with this odd couple of warrior infidels in tinkling armor. I had no idea where we were going. They spoke very little to me or even to each other. They just hummed and mumbled brief snatches of song that sounded like prayers.

They had a casual, disinterested air about them that I found oddly comforting. I could tell that I interested them, but they were not invested in me following them or not, which made me want to follow them all the more. I was like one of those stray dogs that attaches its loyalty to random strangers.

They gave up their names only after considerable prodding. Taro, the Asian, hailed from Manila. Brian had grown up and passed away in a suburb of San Francisco. Both were clearly veterans of the Deeps, though neither could say how long they had roamed these wastes. Years meant nothing to them now.

Neither were suicides, so they had no knowledge of Root apart from what they had heard from other souls.

Taro, surprisingly, had the rougher life. He had entered the Deeps directly, after a criminal and violent existence cut short by an accidental overdose of heroin and alcohol.

Brian's path to the Deeps was a bit more circuitous. He was more reticent about his lives and deaths. That he had been a pizza chef was about all he would say about his first life. His first death was accidental and had involved a fall from a ladder.

Before death number two, he had spent time on an island swaddled in fog, a place called Lethe, apparently another kind of threshold world like Root. His time there had ended abruptly. After an injury had left him immobile, a man with a scythe had come and cut him in two. There was obviously more to his story, but that was all he would say.

We passed up the rumpled flank of the valley, which was basically a ramp of dunes piled on dunes. We wound our way through a sinuous maze of sand, following their creases, trying to keep our heads out of sight of anyone who might be tracking us.

We kept finding footprints which I could swear were our own. I was certain we were walking in loops, yet Brian and Taro never faltered, fully confident in their navigation.

We finally emerged from the dunes onto to a wind-scoured plateau. There were no boulders or canyons, no place to hide, but at least we could spot any pursuers from afar. We headed for the largest in a group of broad, gentle hills that looked like shields laid flat. The curve of its domed summit was interrupted by lines and indentations where the natural contours had been modified by human hands. It seemed to be some sort of settlement.

We paused when we reached its base, not because we needed to rest, but because the guys were nervous about a swirl of dust on the plateau that was obscuring the view back to the dunes.

"That them behind that?" said Brian. "They using a screen?"

"Wouldn't doubt it," said Taro. "Doesn't look natural."

"Better get trucking."

"There!" said Taro, pointing to a dot and another curl of dust on a nearby hill.

"A runner," said Brian. "C'mon. Let's get our ass home."

We slogged up a long, smooth incline. About halfway up, we passed between two igloo-like structures of stone, with exits in the back and slotted windows arcing around their outer walls.

Taro sang a brief, lilting phrase. The melody was returned by someone in the nearest igloo, and then echoed and propagated down a series of other igloos stretching around the curve of the hill. The igloos were bunkers and the song was apparently some sort of a pass code.

"We're inside the perimeter," said Taro. "We're safer now. Relatively. Though, if there's trouble coming, we'd better get up and under cover."

"Got a tip for you," said Brian. "Get yourself on Lady An's good side early, volunteer for picket duty."

"Lady who?"

"An," said Taro. "She heads the quorum. The old souls that look after us ... infidels."

"Seriously," said Brian. "Take the watch soon as you can. It's the best way to convince the quorum to let you stay. Show them you're a good fit."

"Yeah, well. I'm not actually planning on sticking around."

"Oh? What you gonna do? Chase the Horus?"

"Nah. Not that. It's just that there's some people I need to find and—"

"Oh great," said Brian. "We got us another fucking Sally Ann."

"Huh?"

"What we call people who can't let go," said Taro. "Way back there was a woman who wandered to every corner of the Deeps, herd to herd, looking for her family. God knows how many cycles she hung on, but there wasn't much left of her to drag around in the end. Sure, you want to find your family, but you should realize, they probably aren't even here."

"Yeah, once you crunch the numbers, the odds ain't pretty," said Brian. "We're talking at least a dozen hordes. Let's say two hundred thousand souls apiece, some bigger some smaller. Another half a million souls lying broken on the land. Counting us infidels, that makes at least three million souls running around the Deeps at any one time. That might not seem like a lot compared to all of humanity, but it's still a needle in a haystack. And like Taro said, chances are, they're not even here. This is just one corner of the afterworld. There are other places souls end up."

"Believe me, I know. But ... the person I'm looking for, I know she's here. I made a promise. And I don't have much time to get it done."

"What's the rush?" said Brian. "Being dead and all, seems to me like you got eternity to play with."

"No. That's the thing. I'm not exactly dead."

"Whoa. Hang on there. What the fuck you talking about?"

"I'm alive. I go ... back and forth. This is my second time here."

They looked at each other, eyes bugging.

"There's little 'a' anomalous," said Taro. "And then there's big 'A.' If what he says is true."

"Oh, I ain't lying," I said. "You'll see. Just wait."

"We're taking him straight to Lady An," said Brian.

"Well ... we were going to anyway," said Taro.

"Yeah, but ... this is big stuff. This is news."

"Anomaly's always kind of been Lady An's thing," said Taro. "She's anomalous herself. I mean ... it's different. She's gray like us. But she can talk to sleepers."

"So where do you go, when ... if you go back?" said Brian.

"Um ... lately, it's ... Vermont."

"Fucking A!" said Brian. "I wanna go to Vermont. I'm fucking sick of this place."

"Nobody's keeping you," said Taro. "You don't like it here, you can go and chase the Horus."

"Well, that's not gonna get me to Vermont. But some day, Taro. Someday I might just do that."

***

They led me to the top of the hill, a dome so gentle it could pass for flat. The remains of brick and stone structures outlined the alleys and buildings and squares that used to stand here. The place looked like it had been leveled by a bomb. Nothing had a roof and no wall was taller than waist high. Only stubs and foundation holes remained.

"What the heck happened here?"

"Happened?"

"There're no roofs or anything. Did the Horus do this?"

"Who the fuck needs a roof? It never rains."

"But ... the ruins—"

"Fuck no. These ain't ruins," said Brian. "This is home. This is Rifugio."

Curious souls popped into view as we approached, like meerkats scouting for leopards. It became clear as we entered the settlement that what I initially took for foundations were actually sunken courtyards for an intricate network of catacombs. The entire settlement lay below the surface.

Brian and Taro led me to an opening in a wall that led to a stairwell of stone blocks leading down into the heart of the hill. The blocks had smooth curves with paper-thin seams, all joined without mortar.

"You guys stay put. I'll fetch Lady An," said Taro. He skittered down the stairs, disappearing into a passage off a landing halfway down.

"Have a seat. Relax," said Brian.

I settled onto a bench carved from the same chalky stone as everything else. People gathered in ones and twos while we waited. They came and lingered around us, sharing snatches of music, sometimes hummed, sometimes sung. It seemed like the usual greeting around here.

"Is he not a Hashmal?" said a guy clad in jagged, plate-sized scales that clanked as he moved.

"Nah. He just happens to be a little pink. He's one of them anomalies."

A woman grabbed my hand and kissed it. She laughed and held it to her bosom and wouldn't let go.

"Does he not sing?" said another woman.

"He's a newbie," said Brian.

"Then I will teach him," said the woman who had my hand.

"That's okay. I ... uh ... actually don't plan on sticking around. To tell you the truth, if I knew I was stuck here in the Deeps ... I couldn't handle it. I can see why people end up chasing the Horus."

"Oh come on! It's not that bad. We got some good people here. Get yourself a cozy chamber cut deep. Nice to get out of the light once in a while, if you know what I mean."

I got my hand back and kept it clasped over my privates, legs together tight. "Do you ... sleep?"

He looked at me funny and shrugged. "Don't even remember what it's like. I guess I do meditate. It's nice to clear your head and chill. And there's plenty of time for that. The Quorum requires short time duty one song per cycle, plus one full cycle every six. Long time. Me and Taro are serving long time right now. If they let you stick around, that's how it'll be. And the big thing is, we're safe. The Seraphim don't mess with us. The Quorum trains some bad ass fighters. And it's all Spell craft, you know. Magic. We're in good hands. Nobody slips through the cracks."

"That's nice," I said, distracted by group of dust devils down on the plateau. There were four of them and occasionally the wind would shear off one side and reveal a group of runners bearing weapons. There were objects in the sky, too, hovering about the runners, shimmery, semi-transparent things.

"Don't worry about them," said Brian. "They stage fake raids all the time. Trying to intimidate us. But they don't dare come onto the hill. If they did, we'd send them all back to kingdom come."

"Are they the ones who followed us?"

"Looks like they got some reinforcements," said Brian. "But I'm telling you. Don't worry. The pickets see them. Our warriors know."

"You're not—?"

"A warrior? Fuck no. I ain't got the chops for spell craft. I'm just a scout and do my picket duty like everybody else."

Taro reappeared at the bottom of the stairs, accompanied by a slight, but well-proportioned woman whose posture and demeanor exuded gravitas. Her gaze sought and demanded mine as she came up the stairs.

I couldn't look away if I wanted. Not because she was too beautiful or bizarre. She just had this tractor beam of a gaze that demanded attention. It had to be some sort of spell craft. No human could be so transfixing through charisma alone.

Her torso was covered with little, curly scales more delicate than anything I had seen, more ornament than armor. Overall, they gave the effect of a shaggy, tight-clinging dress.

Her deep-set eyes gave the impression of advanced maturity, but her face was ageless, as if she had always been thirty-five years old and always would be. But those eyes! They had hundreds of years of seeing behind them.

"Hello," she said. "I am An."

"I'm James."

She took my hand. It was strange touching someone so cold with my own cold and numb hands. It did not feel like any kind of human contact I ever knew.

"Taro has told me some rather unbelievable things about you. Do I understand correctly that you have the ability to transit to the birth realm?"

"Life ... she means."

She smirked. "Thank you, Brian, for clarifying."

"Yeah ... I go back. I come and go. Just like I did in the Liminality."

"And how do you summon these transitions?"

"Well ... I don't. Not here. It kinda just happens."

She just blinked at me, her eyes inscrutable.

A guy came bounding down an alley, skidding to a halt in the dust. "Lady An! A runner approaches."

"I forgot to mention," said Taro. "We saw him coming in."

"We already know," said Lady An. "He's from Tiamat. I'm not looking forward to the news he bears."

She turned her attention back to me. "I would love to have the chance to talk to you, when things are not so hectic. Taro, why don't you take our friend down below, get him under cover, get him situated. Brian, you stay with me. We may need a runner of our own, depending on what's happened in Tiamat. Nothing good, I'm sure."

***

I followed Taro down a stairway of concentric squares that led down into a huge, inverse pyramid of a pit. At each corner, there were openings every twenty steps or so, just as there would be in a football stadium. But we went down to the very bottom where four square passages were carved deep into the bedrock.

The stone looked like hardened talcum or chalk. There was no sign of any roots, just this uniform, fine-grained rock. Certain slabs luminesced under the influence of some sort of Duster spell craft not yet accessible to me. I knew that, because I tried to make some glow, without success.

Down in these catacombs I felt confined and anxious in a way that had never afflicted me in Root, even though its tunnels were no less narrow or deep. The matrix of roots was so loose and malleable, there was no sense of confinement as long as you weren't stuck in a pod. The tunnels here felt like shafts in a coal mine by comparison. Unlike Root, there would be no taking shortcuts between them.

"These are the upper spaces. Any chamber with a skylight or courtyard is not safe from the Horus. Keep that in mind if it ever comes around."

"I didn't realize you can have the damn thing come to you. I thought you had to chase it."

"It goes everywhere in this land ... every square inch. It doesn't come here often, but eventually it will come."

"The souls who enter it ... where do go?"

"Nowhere," said Taro. "Lady An says it exists to recycle failed souls. Tears them into pieces. Shuffles the deck. Reassembles them. Deals out a new hand. Creating new spirits. Hoping for better luck next time."

"So you're saying, by being here we're failures?"

"In someone's eyes, yes. To the Seraphim or the Powers-that-be. I don't believe so. I was meant to be here. Rifugio is my place, my people. I am happier here than I ever was in life."

We came to a hollow the size of a small auditorium, illuminated by a shaft to the surface, supplemented by glowing benches of stone that circled the room. The floor was crowded with gray folks, mostly with eyes closed. Their scales were sparse if they had any at all.

"This is the newbie chamber," said Taro. "So to speak. Some of the folks there have been here a long time. They're slow learners."

"What are they learning? Songs?"

"Yes, the song cycle," whispered Taro. "Sixteen songs, over and over with the same steady tempo. If you want to be part of this community. You must learn. Everything we do is based on the song cycles. We have no sun, no moon, no day or night. Only the songs. Singing is how we tell time. It's how we stay together ... as a community."

"Yeah, well ... I have to warn you. I'm pretty tone deaf. I even got kicked out of a church choir when I was nine. I'm horrible at remembering lyrics."

"No matter. You'll have plenty of time to learn. Everyone learns eventually. Even the slow ones. In the newbie chamber they sing out loud ... half the time. That way you get to hear the patterns and words and in between you practice staying in synch."

The room was still. Not a hum or a murmur broke the silence. "How come I don't hear any—"

The occupants erupted in full-throated song, bellowing out a wandering melody in an unrecognizable language. Most droned in unison, but a few lonely voices added harmony here and there about the room. Taro joined them. I just looked on, feeling awkward.

It went on for some time, the loose threads pulling together until everyone was in tune and in synch. And then the room went silent again.

"That was Rainsong," said Taro. "It is almost done. Riversong will soon begin."

"What ... language was that?"

"Pan, we call it. Proto-Anatolian, according to Lady An. It's a dead language ... the language of the dead ... of the Deeps. Used only for the song cycle. No one comes here knowing it. We all have to learn from scratch"

We went in and found a spot on the floor, not too far from the entry.

"Okay. What do we do now?"

"Patience," said Taro. "Riversong will begin soon. You will hear the first verse out loud. Don't worry about the words. Concentrate on the sound and pattern."

***

The silence and dimness lulled me into a trance. I had managed to keep my claustrophobia in check, aided by the cavernous room. My mind wandered back to Vermont, wondering how the girls were doing, hoping Wendell was letting our holiday continue.

Everyone around me had closed their eyes and let out their breath. I could feel that something had changed in the room. I looked over at Taro. He nodded to me. Held up three fingers. Two. One.

Out of nothing, a wall of thunderous vowels rose all around and immersed me in sound before falling away. And then again, it came like a wave.

Riversong began in fits and starts like that, almost like the beginnings of a rain storm, in spare, complicated syncopation. After a while, the notes coalesced and began to flow into a weird, trickling melody. I could almost hear cascades running over ledges.

Forget understanding the words. I don't think my mouth was even capable of articulating the sounds these people were making.

The tune deepened and swirled, building to a crescendo that ended as abruptly as it had started. In the silence that followed, I did my best to keep the pattern going in my head. But by the time the singing started up again, I was way off, having warped the melody and drifted off-rhythm.

Lady An and Brian came in and settled down beside us like churchgoers late to mass.

"It is good you came below," said Lady An. "We had a bit of excitement up top. A gang of Protectors attacked the mount. We repulsed it, but it is rare they challenge us so directly. It seems the Seraphim are interested in you."

"Seraphim? Angels?"

"So to speak," said Lady An. "But not what you think. Nothing ever is. But they are powerful in ways you can't imagine. If their avatars ever found you on the surface, there is nothing we could do to protect you. I suggest you stay below, until things calm down."

No. I have to go. I've got things to do. People to find. I didn't come here just to hide out."

"What about the runner?" said Taro.

"He barely avoided being cut down. Our pickets rescued him. He brings word that Tiamat is sending Old Ned for safekeeping. He's gone into the big sleep. I've already tasked the masons to prepare a chamber. We'll soon have a chamber for you too, James, down deep."

"Oh, I don't need one," I said. "I'm not staying."

"You can't leave now. The Seraphim have been alerted to your presence. If you leave now, you'll be hunted down."

I rose to my feet. "No! I ... I can't stay," I said, starting to panic. My claustrophobia returned. "I need to get out of here. I need some fresh air."

"Don't be silly. You don't even breathe. No soul here needs to breathe. I am only suggesting you wait until our enemy's interest wanes. And it will. They have plenty of other anomalies to occupy them in this place."

I made for the exit.

"Brian! Taro! Hold him!"

They lunged after me, grabbed my arms and hauled me back. I tried wriggling free, but others in the chamber joined in and dragged me down to the floor.

"This is for your own good," she said, looking down at me, her eyes sharing annoyance and sympathy. "You don't know what you are doing. You can't possibly know. We will hold you in protective custody until you have a better sense of where you are."

"Fuck no! Not again. You can't keep me here"

She leaned in close to me. "Please James, relax. You are not a prisoner. We're just keeping you safe until you have a chance to learn the risks of being an infidel in the Deeps. Particularly one who is not gray."

I took a deep breath and smiled, because a little shivery tingle told me that I was going to have the last laugh. My senses were returning. I could feel the coldness more intensely. And that could only mean one thing.
Chapter 32: Laurent

Searing heat penetrated my flesh, from the inside and out. I gasped and wheezed, sucking in air that again carried oxygen, my lungs again serving the function of feeding it to living cells and not just some ritual and pointless pumping of gases.

The girls must have carried me all the way up from the dock. I could hear them in the kitchen clinking pots and, laughing. Writhing and flexing my reclaimed body, I rolled off the sofa with a thump.

I lurched to my feet just as Ellen came rushing into the living room carrying a dish rag. I staggered into her, latching onto her shoulder to steady myself. But the warmth of her body burned me and I pulled away, collapsing back to the floor.

"Oh my God! Your hands are freezing. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I said, my voice croaking. "I just got back in the Deeps. Takes me a while to adjust to the heat. I need some water. Please?"

She rushed back into the kitchen, dodging around Urszula who stood pressed against the door frame, smirking.

A wave of dizziness made me swoon and groan. Somehow, involuntarily, that groan acquired melody. Like a dog imitating a siren, I wailed a string of notes that should have sounded flat or sharp if they hadn't resonated so perfectly with my soul.

Urszula joined in, her pitch quavery at first, but quickly locking into a sort of harmony.

"You guys ... what the heck?" Ellen hustled back, sloshing an overly full glass of water onto the carpet. "You giving me a concert?"

"It's ... from the Deeps," I said. "It's what they do ... in the Deeps."

"Riversong," said Urszula. "It has been a long time since I have summoned it. Good to know it is still inside me."

"That sounded so weird. Like ... Middle Eastern or Ethiopian or something. But ... that place can't be all bad. I mean ... if folks have time for singing."

"How long have I been gone?"

"I don't know ... a couple hours, I guess," said Ellen. "You missed lunch. But there's some extra chowder in the pot. I can dish you out a bowl."

"Sure. But first ... I need to cool down." I guzzled half the glass she had given me and poured the rest over my head.

"Jeez. Would you like some ibuprofen?"

"It's not a fever. It's just part of the transition. Bodies are different ... in the Deeps."

"Hmm. Maybe some wet cloth ... and some ice."

The girls fetched some towels and a tray of ice cubes from the kitchen and fashioned cold packs that they stuffed under my shirt.

"You do realize it's not even warm in here. I mean ... I'm wearing a sweater."

"It's all relative," I said. "Just takes a little time to adjust."

"Some texts came in on your phone, by the way. I didn't bother to check. That's your business. But there's plenty of chowder left, in case you want some."

"Umm. Sure. Guess I should try and eat." I picked the iPhone off the end table, and thumbed it on. There were two messages, both from Wendell.

The first one read: 'Holiday's over. Back to work. Call me for the details.'

The second message acknowledged my absence.

'My familiar informs me you ain't all here. Call, soon as you get back.'

I stared at the phone. I didn't feel like talking to the man, but what could I do? He would know I had returned. His familiar was crawling around here somewhere. It might even be that fly buzzing along the wall. So I rang him up.

He answered promptly. "Hey bud. Good to hear from you. Welcome back." It sounded like he was in the middle of eating. "Just wanted to let you know ... waypoint number two is a go."

"Laurent?"

"That's a street name. St. Laurent Boulevard to be precise. It's in Montreal. The coordinates on your GPS will lead you right to his doorstep. Kid's name is Simon Robichaud. Age 25. A willing target. Easy as pie. Can't walk. Can't talk. But a mind is as sharp as a whip. Lives with a very protective family. Nice people. Well-intended. But they're preserving him in a living hell. He'd rather spend his days fully mobile in Frelsi than a quadriplegic in Montreal. Can you blame him? He just got over a pneumonia he hoped would take him, but no dice. Fucking antibiotics saved him. He's getting tired of hanging around the glaciers. He's aching to get back to the Sanctuary. Next two days would be optimal. Family's shipping him off to Ottawa on Friday to see a specialist."

"So how ... what do you want me to deliver?"

"No deliveries. This time, the method's up to you. It's the next phase of your apprenticeship. On the job training. You call the shots. Gives you a chance to be creative, show off your talents. Anything goes. But the bottom line? End his life. Just ... be merciful. Our client's appreciate a clean separation. But you've got all the chops you need. Figure it out."

"Wait. You want _me_ to decide how to murder him?"

"There you go using that ugly word again. Remember, these are transitions we're facilitating. Heck, you go back and forth. You should know the deal. These transitions just happen to be ... permanent."

My nerves kicked up and made me antsy. "I don't like this," I said. "I'd rather you just tell me what to do."

"If you're gonna freelance with us you're gonna need to figure this shit out. I'll give you a hint. The kid just got over pneumonia. He's got breathing problems. Weak lungs. Maybe even a touch of asthma. But that's just one of the possibilities. There's all sorts of things you could do. If I were you I'd head up to Montreal tonight. It's only a couple hours drive. That'd give you two full days to play with. And I'll tell you what, I have a guy there I'll hook you up with. He can talk you through it, give you pointers. His name's Nelson. Don't freak out when you see him; he's a little rough around the edges. Anyhow, I'll catch you on the other side. Got some nifty new toys for you when you do good. You ever ride a motorcycle?"

"Not really. I rode a minibike once. Crashed into a tree."

"Well, time you learned. Nothing better for getting out of a jam. Ciao."

I put down the phone just as Ellen came out of the kitchen with a tray loaded with steaming chowder and hunks of crusty bread, her expression flat and sullen.

"That was him, wasn't it?" she said. "You just talked to Wendell."

"Yeah."

"It's not another job, is it? Already?"

"Yeah. Montreal."

"Well, you're not going there without us. Not this time. Not any more."

I just stared back.

"You okay? What's wrong? You look ill."

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't express how I felt. I didn't want to go anywhere or do anything for anyone. But it seemed like I had no choice, like I was trapped in a whirlpool of destiny too powerful for me to ever escape. It was going to take me down into the abyss, no matter how much I resisted.

I just looked back at her blankly as the ice water dripped from my melting cold packs and puddled on the hardwood.

***

All three of us piled into the Subaru. That was the arrangement. No more leaving anyone behind. I told Ellen I would just go through the motions, make it look like I was doing Wendell's bidding to give us time to figure out where to make our stand or run. In truth, I had no idea which we would end up doing. I was simply following the path of least resistance until I could get my ass out of the Deeps.

I had never been to Montreal, or Canada for that matter. But I insisted on driving. It was my car. I had earned it.

We caught Route 89 North in Burlington, driving through some otherworldly scenery even for someone like me who had actually been to other worlds. First there were these forests of lichen-crusted evergreens unlike any piney woods I had ever seen. And then, just after the border station where we got to flash our fake passports, the hills gave way to a landscape of big skies, enormous fields, lonely farmhouses and decrepit villages. All of a sudden, all of the signs were in French. All of this, just a hop, skip and a jump from Burlington.

I found this shit mesmerizing that the city of Montreal totally snuck on me. All of a sudden we were surrounded by office parks, apartment buildings, warehouses and shopping malls. And then the city proper loomed across one of the widest rivers I had ever seen. I was agog with it all. Me, who had visited three existences and half of Europe. Agog.

We booked a room in a hotel near McGill called the Omni. Nice place, but it must have looked weird, a guy and two women booking one room. But Urszula refused to share a bed and insisted on building a nest on the floor from bedspreads and spare towels.

I sat by the window with a map of Montreal in my lap and locked onto some satellites with the GPS. Turned out St. Laurent Boulevard was only a few blocks away.

Somehow, Wendell must have known we had arrived because my phone chimed with an incoming text:

'Tomorrow morning. Meet Nelson. Odd side of Laurent. Eleven fifteen sharp.'

I didn't sleep much that night.

***

I was hoping and counting on Ellen to talk me out of it over breakfast. But she was weirdly quiet. Urszula, at least, was her normal surly self. She expressed no qualms about the hit. She was just along for the ride. All she wanted was another crack at Wendell, any way she could get it.

It was ten-thirty when I paid the bill and laid my napkin down on the table.

"Shall we?"

Urszula nodded, scraping back her chair eagerly. Ellen rose from the table with extreme reluctance. Until now, she had made a point of all avoiding eye contact with me.

"We don't all have to go, you know. You guys can just hang out in the—"

Ellen flashed me a glare. "Excuse me? We had a deal!"

"Okay. That's cool. You can ... come along."

I had parked the car deep in an underground garage beneath an office building. The Metro rumbled unseen beyond the walls. It made me think of Reapers.

And it made me wonder. Was I as much a Reaper now as those loathsome, lumbering beasts in the tunnels of Root? Or that wicked storm, the Horus?

We drove several blocks, past the McGill campus and around the green mound of Mount Royal. We parked in a side street in a neighborhood dense with apartment buildings. Upscale, to my eyes, with their ornate brickwork and well-maintained pocket courtyards bounded by black-painted cast iron fences.

A couple, arm in arm, strolled by on this fine spring morning. I stepped out of the car.

"So you're actually going to do this?" said Ellen.

"I'm gonna check it out at least. You don't have to come you know."

She shoved open the passenger side door and bustled out. Urszula was already standing by the curb.

"I want to see for myself how willing these victims are," said Ellen.

"He lives around the corner, down half a block."

Urszula joined us and we ambled down onto Saint Laurent Boulevard through a mixed commercial/residential neighborhood. Most buildings had shops and restaurants on the first floor with apartments up above, but there were a few strictly residential buildings strewn among them.

Simon Robichaud lived in one of the latter situations—one in a row of triple-decker townhouses. We lingered in front of a charcuterie and a lingerie shop trying and failing not to look awkward. A homeless guy on the corner kept peering at us, trying to judge, I supposed, whether we were worth hitting up for a dollar.

"What now?" said Ellen.

"We wait," I said. "I'm not going to his door and ringing his doorbell."

"Why not?"

"What if somebody else answers? What do I tell them? I'm here to facilitate your Simon to the afterworld?"

"It's the truth."

"The truth ... is ... awkward."

"Then don't bother. Let's just leave. Drive north till we run out of road. To ... Labrador ... if we have to. Let's see if Wendell follows."

"He will," I said. "He'll come after us. Or send his familiars."

"Let him," said Urszula. "I am ready. Let him come. And then we make our stand."

"No. Not in the wilderness. He's too powerful, and out there he would have no constraints. In the city at least there would be limits to what he could do to avoid collateral damage. And there would be witnesses to worry about. But ... not here, either. Not Montreal. I don't know this place. I'm not comfortable here. If we do it ... it's gotta be the right place."

The homeless guy ambled over, sporting a broad, rubbery smile under a droopy mustache. Tufts of white hair protruded beneath his tuque. His nose was bulbous and webbed with purple veins.

He stuck out his hand. I fished around in my pockets for some loose change, but the way he held his hand, he clearly wanted me to shake it.

"Hello there," he said. "I'm Nelson. Nelson Prioleau."

"Wendell's guy?"

"Yep. You must be James. You're a heck of a lot younger than I was expecting. I mean, you're just a kid. And who are these gals tagging along with you? Fans? Groupies?"

"Listen. I don't need any help. I can handle this on my own."

"Yes, of course. But Mr. Franks asked that I come by and offer you some coaching. Don't worry. It's not a bother at all. You see, Quebec is generally my territory. Since you were in Vermont, he thought this might be a good opportunity for you to have a little practice. I don't mind. There's plenty of work these days. Plenty to go around. Almost too much, in fact."

"Listen. I don't need any coaching. I don't even know if I'm gonna—"

"Yes, well that's too bad. Mr. Franks asked me to coach you and so I will coach you. So far so good. You've come to the correct location at the appointed time. Demerits, perhaps, for being so conspicuous. A block away I had you pegged as a foreigner. And you might want to ditch the entourage. Pretty girls attract too much attention."

"Excuse me." Ellen bugged her eyes at him. "We are not his entourage, and we are most definitely not groupies."

"I'm just saying ... it's better for him to work alone."

Urszula rolled the shaft of beechwood between her palms and glowered at the man.

"Ah! So this must be the Duster girl! Mr. Franks told me about her, but frankly I didn't believe him. It seemed too unbelievable. Oh, look at that glare. That pout. You're not turning me to dust, are you dear? Right here? On the streets of Montreal? Look at her. She hates me simply because I hail from Frelsi. As if I was responsible for the suffering of her tribe."

Urszula hefted her scepter, cradling it in her arms like a rifle.

Mr. Prioleau chuckled. "These Dusters and their sticks. So quaint. I don't suppose you can summon any spell craft with that my dear? Now that would be a fine trick for a dead girl in the land of the living."

A custom van pulled up to the curb across the street. It bore handicapped plates and had been retrofitted with a wheelchair lift in the back.

"Ah! The guest of honor has arrived."

I checked my watch. It was a few minutes shy of the time Wendell had asked me to arrive.

"Alright then," said Mr. Prioleau. "So let me set the scene. The man getting out of that van is Simon Robichaud's father—David. The family has just returned from church. Once he is helped out of the van, on nice days like this, while lunch is being prepared, Simon likes to sit out on the curb and watch the world go by. In fact, it commonly affords him the solitude he requires to bring the roots a calling. It's been some time now since he's had the pleasure. He's been very ill, you see. And that was cause for excitement because there was a good chance the infection would claim him. But alas, he survived and a little optimism can be cruel in how it keeps the roots at bay. I suspect his mother will object to his sitting out today considering he's just gotten over pneumonia. But it's such a fine day. How could she not indulge him?"

"You guys expect me to off him right here in public?"

"Of course. And how you accomplish that is entirely up to you. Nothing messy or painful, of course. That is not how we do things. We try and keep hands off as much as possible. No projectiles, sharp implements or traceable toxins."

"Why does Wendell even need me, if you're here?"

"Because you are the apprentice. How else do you expect to learn our trade?"

Across the street, Simon's dad lowered the motorized wheelchair to the curb with a hydraulic lift. Once on the sidewalk, Simon powered up and zipped behind the van, backing into a tiny brick-paved nook in a garden facing the street.

"He's got some control," I said. "He's not a total quadriplegic."

"Yes. He can use his left hand a little, God bless him. But he was quite an athlete before the injury. Still is, as a Hemisoul."

"He's ... quite handsome," said Ellen.

"Ah, but you should see how he looks restored to full vigor in Frelsi. Even as a Hemi he has made quite a splash with the ladies of the Sanctuary." Mr. Prioleau frowned. "Oh ... pardon me ... does this one ... does she know of—?"

"She knows enough," I said. "Not first hand, thank God."

A little girl was unbuckled from a child seat and set down on the sidewalk. She ran over to Simon and kissed him on the cheek.

Ellen gripped my arm.

"You can't do this," she whispered. "Look how much his family loves him. They take such good care of him."

"For some of us, that would be enough," said Mr. Prioleau.

Last out of the van was an old woman who waddled up to Simon. She spoke to him like he was a baby. She even pulled out a handkerchief and daubed some the drool from his chin.

"Ah, the grande dame and matriarch, Madeleine. Unfortunately, she's not all with it these days."

Simon's father took her by the elbow and guided her into the townhouse.

"Alright, then. Your window of opportunity is now open. In thirty minutes or so they will bring him inside and we won't see him again till tomorrow. How do you propose to complete your task?"

"I ... uh ... I have no clue."

"You're telling me you came here with no plan?

"I could short out his chair. Make it roll into the street."

"James!" said Ellen, appalled.

"I wouldn't recommend that," said Mr. Prioleau. "Too messy. Too Painful. You can do better. But you'd better think of something quick. Loiter too long and neighbors get nosey. Police get called."

"Listen. I think it was a mistake coming up here."

"Cold feet? Not unusual for your first true facilitation. Your little errand in Burlington was just an icebreaker. An initiation."

Ellen took my hand. "Let's go," she whispered.

"Oh, come now. It's not that hard. Look at him sitting there so vulnerable. The poor boy is just aching to die. A sad story, I mean, we're all a sad lot, those of us summon Root. But Simon was a talented young man. A damn good cellist and an even better collegiate hockey player. Spring break, he and his friends were diving into a pool from a balcony if Fort Lauderdale. Great fun until his heel caught on the top rail and he missed the pool. He's mostly paralyzed from the chest down."

"That's too bad, because ... I've got nothing."

"You must ... try."

"No. I ... I can't do this."

"Then don't," said Ellen. "Let's leave."

"Leaving won't alter this young man's fate," said Mr. Prioleau. If James fails to take his life, then it is up to me. And all that accomplishes is to anger Mr. Franks. And he will make you pay. He is quite adept at extracting the most poignant penances."

Simon spotted us. He wiggled his one good hand at us and beamed a smile. He looked so eager and hopeful.

"Look at the poor kid," said Mr. Prioleau. "He's been so looking forward to this day. A previous appointment was canceled when we thought his lung infection might do the trick. We defer to natural causes whenever possible. Helps lower our profile. But ... he survived."

"Just leave, James," said Ellen. "Walk away. There is no reason for him to die. Think of his family. What his death would do to them. It's so ... selfish ... of him to want to die."

That word ... selfish ... struck a sour chord with me.

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call it selfish. I mean, who knows what's going on in his head, what kind of hell he's experiencing? He's got feelings, too."

"Listen. No matter how bad things are for this Simon ... it's probably only temporary. He's still adjusting to his injury. He can work his way out of it. Giving up is the easy way out."

"Not ... always," I said. "I've met people on the other side who are in impossible ... unbearable situations. Sometimes giving up on life is the only way to make things better."

"Bullshit," said Ellen. "I will never accept that. Life is always precious ... no matter what."

I looked at Simon, met his gaze, and he smiled back, nodding. That look drew something out of me. I narrowed my will to a pinpoint. I could feel it build and break loose like an extension of me. It just happened on its own. No sword. No pointing. Just another piece of my will venturing forth without me.

It attacked Simon like an angry bee, penetrating his sternum. And indeed, he lurched like he had been stung. I could see and feel inside of him. I found a spot on his heart where the waves uncurled and spread across its surface, triggering more waves that in turn triggered contractions in the fibers of his cardiac muscles, all in unison.

What if that first wave never uncurled? I realized then, how little force was required to stop a person's heart. So simple it would be, stifling that wave in that little spot below his aorta, easy as a thumb and forefinger pinching out a flame. I could murder everyone in sight with just my will, knock them off one by one, even Mr. Prioleau if I wanted. In that moment, I knew what it felt like to be Wendell.

"Look at you," said Ellen, agape. "You're seriously thinking of killing him! Well, go on then. What I say obviously doesn't matter. So go ahead. If you're gonna do this, then do it already. Get it over with."

"No," I said. "I can ... but I don't want to."

"Oh, don't be such a pussy," said Mr. Prioleau. "You didn't drive all the way up here for nothing, did you?"

"Yeah. I did. We shouldn't have come."

"Walk away," said Urszula. "Let the boy fester. Frelsi has too many Freesouls. One less is a blessing."

"Oh really?" said Mr. Prioleau. "So this is your contribution, dear? Your idea of sage advice? Why don't you take your useless scepter and stick it—"

Before he could finish, Urszula whipped her rod around and pointed it at his feet. The tip made a popping sound like a punctured balloon and the old man found his shoes suddenly welded to the concrete.

"You little bitch. You welded my shoes!"

I felt something jolt loose inside me, and it had nothing to with spell craft.

"Alright. We're done here." I started back towards the car. Ellen looked startled, but she skipped after me, as a grin spread across her face.

Simon, across the street, looked stricken and confused.

"Big mistake James," said Mr. Prioleau, stepping out of his shoes. "You have no idea what is coming down on you. Mr. Franks does not fuck around."

"Sorry. You guys are just gonna have to find yourselves another assassin."

Simon called after us. "Don't go! Please! Help me." His voice was strong but slurred. There was an odd facet on the left side of his forehead where the bone had been displaced. His accident had done more than injure his spine.

Standing in his stockinged feet, Mr. Prioleau pulled a TV remote out of his coat pocket aimed it across the street. Simon's sister was just exiting the townhouse with a mug of something hot and steamy when Simon jerked and slumped in his wheelchair. She cried out and rushed to his side, spilling hot cocoa all over herself. Mr. Prioleau strode away calmly in the opposite direction.

"He ... killed him," said Ellen. "That man, he—"

"Keep on walking," I said.

"Of course he killed him," said Urszula. "What did you expect? He said he would."

"I don't understand all this... this—"

"I'm sorry. I never should have dragged us all up here."

"Does this mean you're though with Wendell?"

"Through? With being an assassin? Yeah. With Wendell? I doubt it."
Chapter 33: Singularity

We drove east out of Montreal, missed the turn to Burlington and ended up in a town called Sherbrooke. It was not a problem, since we had no consensus on where we should be headed. Ellen wanted to go back to her uncle's cabin. Urszula wanted to go hunting for Wendell. Though, the two options were not mutually exclusive. As for me, I just wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

We all agreed that it was good to get the hell out of Montreal. Nothing personal, Montreal, but we had just witnessed a murder and badly needed a change of scenery. So we headed south down Route 55 towards the U.S. Border station in Rock Island. I worried about getting Urszula back across the border. I figured someone might notice that she had died a hundred years ago in another country.

She couldn't stop gushing about her scepter and what it had done to Nelson's shoes. I had never seen her so confident and cocky, but I kind of figured she was compensating for the weakness and self-loathing she had felt when I first dragged her back here.

She got a little nervous when we were waiting in the queue of cars trying to get back into the states. I got her to promise to leave the scepter on the floor. But we needn't have worried about the crossing. Wendell's fake passports did the trick for all of us. We flew right through the checkpoint without a search.

Urszula got talkative again once we were back on the road. But I didn't feel like talking shop. I just wanted to listen to the radio and clear my head, but there was no stopping Urszula.

"We need to choose a battleground that works to our advantage," she said. "Where he cannot ambush. With good sight lines ... so we can see him coming."

"That's nice. I don't want to think about it right now."

"We need to prepare. We defied him. A man so vain will not stand for such disrespect. I know his type."

"I'm proud of you, James," said Ellen, patting my shoulder. "Whatever happens, happens. You did the right thing."

"Whatever."

"No. Not whatever. You did a good thing, walking away."

"You know ... Urszula's right. This is gonna bring trouble."

"Let him come. I'm not scared."

"Might not only be him. Sounds like he's got a whole network of assassins out there. He's worse than Sergei."

"Well ... then maybe we should have stayed in Canada."

"Oh? You got any more uncles with cabins up north?"

"Unfortunately not."

"They maybe we should just keep moving. Get as big a cash advance off his credit card as we can, and then we just burn the damned thing."

"No more running," said Urszula. "We choose our battlefield ... and wait."

"Yeah, but where? Where would we have the advantage?"

"It is simple. We need three things. Visibility. So we can see him before he sees us. Cover. To protect us when he strikes back, but we will strike first. And ... an exit. A clear path for escape should it become necessary."

"O-kay. But that could be anywhere."

"Precisely." She looked at me with this blankly serious expression.

"Well ... maybe you're right. Maybe running just delays the inevitable. Maybe it's time to make a stand. Especially if you think you got your mojo back."

"Mojo?"

Something buzzed on the floor of the car.

"It's ... your phone," said Ellen. "Don't answer it."

"What if it's him?"

"Of course it's him. Who else knows this number?"

I reached down and snatched it up.

"James, no!"

"I want to hear what he as to say. What can I say? I'm curious."

I pressed the answer button on the screen.

"Hi," I said.

"So ... uh ... job didn't go so well, did it, kid?" He sounded surprisingly subdued. Weary. Almost sad.

"It went fine. Simon's dead. Isn't he?"

"Yeah, but ... the whole point was ... you were supposed to get it done."

"Oh well."

"Listen. I expected there would be hiccups ... starting out. Lot of folks get cold feet."

"You're not mad?"

"Well, I'm disappointed for sure. But like I said, I expected there might be growing pains. Some people ... there's an adjustment they gotta go through. Part of the process ... for some. Not everybody is a natural born killer. But ... I'm willing to give you another chance."

"Don't need one. We're done."

"Done?"

There was the longest pause. I thought I had lost the connection.

"You haven't ... you haven't even started."

"I said, I'm done."

"Kid. You ain't done until we say you're done."

"Fuck that."

"Kid. You gotta give me credit. I'm being real patient here. I could have had Nelson take you out when you walked away from a simple job. That would have been real easy, and I can't say I wasn't tempted. But adepts like you don't grow on trees. So ... I got another job for you ... a real job ... only a couple hours drive away."

"So ... you know where we are?"

"You know I do."

"You got a rodent? Where is he? Riding in the glove compartment?"

"Listen. I'm gonna give you one more chance to prove yourself. And like I said, this is a real job. A non-candidate. A target who's not waiting to get into the Sanctuary. Who's never even been to the Liminality."

"Wait. What?"

"Let me put it this way. This is an involuntary situation. Sometimes we get these ... strategic ... discretionary ... targets. People who don't necessarily want to die. People who get in the way of somebody's interests. Somebody influential who wants them offed."

"Murder. You're talking about outright murder."

"Yeah. I guess I am. This time, we're not talking about a facilitation. I know it's rushing things, but if you had only done what I asked you in Montreal, I wouldn't have had to put the pressure on you so soon. We could have ramped up a little more gradually."

"If I can't take out someone who wants to go, do you really expect me to murder somebody who I would guess wants to live?"

"Because you got no choice. You backed yourself into a corner, kid. You gotta prove to the Sanctuary that you're worth keeping ... that you're an asset, not an enemy."

"There's ... no way—"

"Let me offer you some incentives, then. Let's see ... how about a certain Isobel Raeth. How would you like to see a nice little obituary?"

"What? Why her? You didn't ... she has nothing to do with me."

"She's your dead girl's sister, isn't she? I figure you care enough about her to—"

"How do you even know about her?"

"We been watching you kid. Ever since you came after the Sanctuary you've been on our radar. You weren't just another Hemi once you pulled that shit."

"You can't possibly know where she is."

"Cardiff."

"You're ... bluffing."

"Want an address? She's rooming with some dropouts in Cardiff. She spent some time with some lesbian gals in Brynmawr but they had a falling out. You see, she's gotten kind of used to having no structure in her life and is not too eager to back go back to having limits and curfews and shit. She's gone feral."

"How do you know all this?"

"How? We've got Facilitators everywhere James. You think it's just here? This is a global operation. I can have her taken out just like that. Our man in Wales is an adept just like you and me. And if taking her out doesn't do the trick, we got a long list of people you care about. Doesn't matter how close you keep your girls."

"So ... where do you want me to go. Who do you want me to kill?"

Ellen shot me an anguished look.

"Now, you're talking! I'll text you the name and address. No GPS necessary. He lives in a dorm at Dartmouth. But you got one day to get this done. Tomorrow. That's it. If the target's still alive after that, I'll be taking out your friends, one per day. Even people you don't think about any more. Friends you left behind in Fort Pierce. Don't matter if you don't care enough about them to keep in touch, the point is, you'll feel something when you know they're gone, because of something you didn't do."

My lower lip trembled. I was afraid I'd sound flustered if I said anything, so I kept my mouth shut.

"Alrighty then. Once you cross the border, head straight down I-91 to White River Junction and then East on I-89. Follow the signs for Hanover. Dartmouth. I'll send you the details once you arrive. Ta ta for now."

The line clicked off.

"He gave you another job ... and you took it?"

"Not ... actually."

"But you didn't say no. I didn't hear you say no."

"Check the glove compartment. Empty it out. I think he's got something in here watching us."

Ellen just stared back at me.

"Come on! Open it! Check under the seats! He knows exactly where we are. One of his things is watching us."

There was nothing in the glove box but the registration and an owner's manual.

"James, calm down! He could be watching us from the air, like Billy. Right?" She slammed the glove box shut. "Speaking of which ... whatever happened to Billy?"

"He's gone. Frittered away. He was looking pretty sickly last I saw him."

"That's too bad. He was starting to grow on me."

"I do not approve of such devilry," said Urszula. "One should never divide one's soul."

"You know what else?" said Ellen. "That iPhone is probably traceable to a guy like him. Someone with unlimited resources."

I opened the window and was about to toss the phone out onto the highway, when I realized that Wendell hadn't told me yet who he wanted killed. And that was valuable information, if nothing else, to be able to warn the target that someone was after him.

"Calm down, James. It's only a couple more miles to the border crossing. As nervous as you are, you're not gonna pass their profiling. And you're ... you're actually steaming."

"Steaming?"

"What's that stuff on your hands? It looks like icing ... or ... ice."

"Oh shit! Not already. Ellen, grab the wheel! Quick!"

"Why? What's happening?"

I braked and veered over onto the shoulder.

"Take the wheel. Quick! It's the Deeps. I'm heading back to the Deeps."

"Jeez. There's never a dull moment with you, is there?"

I was gone before the Subaru had even rolled to a stop.

***

I returned to the narrow corridor outside the chamber where new infidels learned to sing. Apart from the occasional snuffle and scuff of a foot, they were silent now, practicing keeping time alone. I couldn't move right away. I just sat there in the dim and dusty passage, waiting for my wits to coalesce, for the chill to penetrate me through and through.

Again, I found Luther's rolled up note for Olivier. This time it was sitting on a slate on which a short note had been chalked.

'James. When (if) you return, go to the central courtyard. A sentry will summon me. Much to discuss. An.'

Screw that. I had no desire to see her. I didn't need any protection. Nothing personal against her or Brian or Taro, but I had no interest in their offer of protection.

I snatched up Luther's note and shot to my feet, but I was still too wobbly to walk. I was such a sitting duck during these transitions, on both ends of existence. If someone decided to ambush me I would be at their mercy for however long it took me to merge my soul with its latest receptacle. I would have to try to keep that in mind, and make sure I didn't fade out in compromising situations. Of course, it would help if I had some warning. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to my oscillations these days.

Soft feathers of light seeped along the walls, indicating the presence of one of the deep courtyards that penetrated the complex. I heard footsteps and voices down the brighter end of the corridor. Reacting like some cockroach or a rat, I scurried off into the darkness.

Protective custody, my ass. No one was gonna keep me locked away. I didn't care if Lady An's had good intentions. I mean I knew this was no Sergei or Edmund situation. She only wanted to keep me safe. But I was tired of being confined against my will.

The light quickly faded as I followed the curving contours of the corridor wall, skimming my fingertips against the surface. As the passage descended, the stone transitioned from the chalky and brittle stuff near the surface to a substance that was slippery, almost greasy, like soapstone or graphite.

At least the floor was flat and devoid of obstructions. Nothing to trip over. I passed a pair of souls coming the other way but they were too engaged in conversation to acknowledge my presence. It was far too dark for them to notice my non-gray complexion.

I descended farther and deeper, far below the courtyards and ventilation shafts, away from the light and the places the souls seemed to gather. I was headed for the absolute depths of these catacombs, wondering if like Root, this might lead to a portal. But if that was the case, why wasn't anyone using it?

It wasn't looking like there would be any alternative exits the way I was headed. But it didn't really matter. I wasn't exactly in the mood for company or eager to be above ground. I just wanted a place to gather my thoughts where I wouldn't be bothered.

Somehow the darkness made the place seem bigger. I didn't feel as claustrophobic as I had in the lighted spaces. In fact, there was something cozy and womb-like about these passages. The walls' solidity made me feel secure. And the utter silence told me there were no Reapers to worry about.

If I had to be stuck in the Deeps, I could see myself biding my time here between excursions to the living world. Maybe a cold, dark place devoid of pain or emotion was just the ticket for me. It beat having my heart broken again and witnessing the ugliness that souls inflict on each other in every other corner of existence. It could serve as my own personal sensory deprivation chamber, a place to stash my soul and meditate?

But speaking of senses, something acrid and musty penetrated my awareness. This was the first time I had perceived anything close to an odor in this world. It almost didn't matter that it was a bad smell, any odor at all was a welcome discovery. As long as it didn't smell like Reapers.

I plunged as deep into this underworld as far as the ever-narrowing corridors would take me. A pattern of echoes suggested chambers opening to either side and I ducked into one, finding it spacious and airy. This might be one of the bunkers Taro told me about. Havens from the Horus. It was vacant now, but I could imagine how crowded they could get when the refugees came down from the upper catacombs.

The corridor continued on the level for a short ways beyond the havens before descending descended steeply in a tight spiral. The walls were rougher here and there were heaps of stony debris that had not yet been removed. This was new construction, relative to the rest of the place. Though, who knew how many millennia this settlement had been here? How long had humans been humans? How long had souls been souls?

The spiral ramp bottomed out in a circular passage the diameter of a traffic rotary. Narrow openings led to rooms smaller than the havens, based on the echo of my footsteps. I made two complete circuits before realizing that I had reached a dead end.

It was actually damp down here. Almost clammy. There was water in the stone. Not much, but enough to add some humidity to the brittle air.

It wasn't as cold either, not that it mattered to my numbed senses. But clearly, this place was different from the upper reaches.

No sign of any portals. Not a hint of any human activity going on above me. Nothing but stony, deathly silence. Most graves were probably livelier than this place.

I squeezed into one of the small chambers, finding myself in a room no larger than a small kitchen. It was so dark inside, I had to feel my way along the walls by sliding my fingertips.

Bumps and indentations in the surface that I first thought were irregularities, I realized now was some sort of decoration or maybe even text. There were shapes that were repeated, but nothing I could recognize from the Roman alphabet. They were hieroglyphics or cuneiform or something altogether different and they covered the chamber's walls from ceiling to floor.

My foot bumped the edge of something hard in the middle of the room. I pawed at it to gauge its size and shape. It was an oblong block of stone. Furniture? I slid my hands across the smooth top, only to bump them into something leathery and stiff—a corpse.

Repulsed, I drew my hand back, creeped out all the more by the fact that I couldn't see it. But then again, why should I be? I had found Mr. O in pretty much the same situation. Lady An had implied that the long sleep was not unique to the Liminality and that there could be Old Ones in the Deeps. These weren't corpses. They were just the corporal vessels, anchors for souls that had moved on to something better.

Nevertheless, being unable to verify any of that in the absolute darkness allowed the unknowns to rule my fears and I left the chamber. I tried again to get the walls to glow, but clearly this place was not Root. The Dusters relied on a brand of spell craft that was alien to my intuition. Perhaps something you had to be dead to summon.

Several paces down the arcing corridor was another entrance, but this chamber too was occupied and so was the next one down. I had stumbled into an assemblage of crypts. Thinking back, they probably all had occupants, because Lady An had asked Brian to get a new chamber built for the guy who was coming—Old Ned.

And finally some rational thoughts broke their way through my panic. If these were Old Ones it was no big deal. They were just people. Dead people. But people. Every Old One I had ever met was a fine example of humanity. One did not attain the status of a fulfilled soul apparently without being some kind of a mensch. Maybe one reason Yaqob was still around despite being among the original wave of Dusters was that he happened to be a bit of a jerk.

That line of thinking calmed me enough to send me back into the next opening to a chamber. I skirted the edge of the central platform, retreating to the back corner. I sat down against the juncture of the two walls, my knees drawn up, my chin propped.

My overall numbness combined with the utter silence and lack of light contributed to an illusion of disembodiment. Devoid of sensory input, I was alone in my mind. I had never felt the futility of existence so acutely.

It came to me that there was no state of being anywhere in this universe where I could be truly happy. Life sucked. With Wendell and Sergei on my tail and no Karla spelled misery, no matter much money and toys I could get killing Frelsians on contract.

The Deeps were even worse, with the Hashmallim and Seraphim after me, would-be Dusters wanting to lock me away for my own good, and nothing to hope for but the Horus and its sketchy portal to existence maybe even worse than the ones I already knew. After what I had experienced, I had no faith that Heaven, if it existed, would be any less disturbing and dysfunctional.

But at least the Liminality could be tolerable despite all the warring. I kind of liked hanging out in my little homestead by the pond. And now, Luther's presence had improved the security situation in the neighborhood, not to mention, having made the pitted plains immeasurably more entertaining.

I imagined I could persist there like Bern, as some kind of unmarried widower. A couple more jobs for Wendell and I could afford to shack up somewhere comfy on the living side. When I got tired of that, a pilgrimage to the glaciers would set me up forever as a Freesoul.

But deep down, what I longed for was the best of both worlds. I wanted to be back on the farm with Karla and my friends from Wales. When the doldrums struck, we could surf back to the Liminality and explore its wildernesses on the backs of mantids and dragonflies. Together. Forever.

That was closest thing I had to a vision of Heaven. The impossibility of its attainment made it impossible to fend off the waves of despair that kept trying to drag me under. Destiny had already moved on, shrinking my future to a set of much less desirable options.

I got up and paced around the periphery of the dark room, trying to get some sense of the dimensions. It was perfectly square. About five and a half paces by five and a half paces. If I could find an unoccupied crypt that was unoccupied I could set myself up on one of those rectangular blocks. At least it was peaceful here. It would be a safe and restful place to bide my time between transitions.

I wondered if the slab in this chamber was occupied. Because if it wasn't, it would be awful nice to lie down and bide my time here until I too became one of them, if that was indeed how things worked.

I had never heard an Old One complain about being stuck in the Singularity. In fact, I remembered their tears in the moments after I had dragged them back to the Liminality. The place couldn't be too shabby if that's how leaving made them react.

I reached into the darkness and bumped something bristly. This slab was occupied. I don't know what I had touched, but the instant I made contact there was a flash and a snap like ears popping on a plane. Suddenly, I knew everything there was to know about the man whose soul was anchored here.

In that instant, I learned that the man—my host's—name was Rafael Fenestra. And it was as if we had always shared the same skull. His memories, his intellect, everything about him was laid bare to me.

Rafael had spent most of his life between Torino, Milan and the Dolomite city of Bolzano. He had been a Fascist and had retreated to Ethiopia after WWII to sire six kids with three wives. I even understood, whether I wanted to or not, why he had become a fascist.

I learned all of that in a single moment, and as a flood of information threatened to engulf my brain, I staggered backward and broke the connection.

But there was a wheezing on the slab now. Dry coughs like an emphysema victim on his last legs. Something bony snagged my wrist and an airy, ghostly voice spoke to me in Italian.

"Toccami. Toccare la mia testa."

I didn't even speak Italian, but I knew what he was asking. I tried peeling his fingers free but he hung on with a steely grip.

"Come," he said, this time in English. "Touch me. My forehead."

"No. I don't want to.

"Touch it!"

My hand lifted and drifted towards him, shaking. But it wasn't me making that hand move. I had no choice in the matter; the Old One was physically compelling me to comply. And when my hand contacted his brow, all of existence blew apart.

***

My consciousness exploded. The bits scattered like shrapnel, my soul torn into a thousand pieces and whisked away, out of the catacombs, all across the Deeps and beyond.

Threads stretched between my parts. I became a diffuse and attenuated blob, carried down a turbulent river of similarly dissolute souls, sipping, sampling sharing emotions, memories and hopes. There were no secrets here. But the torrents tore me away before I could resolve any details.

This had to be the Singularity. What else could it be?

It seemed I had access to all of creation, but that was an illusion. In truth, I had little control over where my consciousness ranged. It was creation that had access to me. The pieces of my mind were flotsam in a whirlpool, at the mercy of powers too vast to imagine.

I came to realize that shards of fragmented souls were the fundamental particles of the Singularity—its atoms, so to speak. I flitted between these particles, skipping between them, occasionally dipping down into the intact souls that comprised one of the marching hordes that chased the Horus.

It was sort of like sharing visions with Billy, only much more intense. Billy was part of me so it felt sort of natural, like having another set of eyes. But sharing images, ideas and emotions with countless strangers felt much more alien—disturbing but exhilarating. A giddy dread. Kind of like the one time I tried a hit of acid and regretted it.

A barrier I didn't even know existed gave way and something yanked me out of this world and into another.

I found myself looking at a white car driving down a highway from multiple simultaneous perspectives. From a farmer mowing hay. A state trooper in the oncoming lane. A pilot in a small plane coming in for a landing. A little girl propped in a child seat ignoring the Pooh video in the seatback monitor.

This was Route 91 South and the white car was my Subaru with me in it.

Something gave way and I tumbled through another barrier and found myself in more familiar territory. I skipped soul to soul, sampling the briefest impressions from a thousand points of view. Dusters and Frelsians and souls deep in the tunnels of Root.

Among these visions: squadrons of mantids on the wing. The dark interior of a pod. A twin-masted caravel crossing the massively swollen river between the massif and mesas. A long staircase from the top of a green tower in the Sanctuary.

Another ripple yanked me back to the Deeps and I was swooping through a horde traversing the plains and barrens. I moved through every spoke of humanity arrayed around the Horus like spokes.

But beyond, I sensed something bigger watching me, as big as a universe, as big as God. I was separated from it, from them, from Him, whatever, by a semi-permeable membrane. He/they/it could see me but I couldn't see them. A vague sort of knowing hinted of other worlds visible just beyond the membrane, but unreachable to me.

Gradually, the fragments of my soul sprang back to the center as if drawn thereby some sort of spiritual gravity. As my self re-annealed and accumulated mass, I gained traction and was able to resist the current and exert some influence over my direction.

And then came a revelation. There were souls I knew among those the hordes. No names. No faces. I just felt a peculiar kind of resonance that I can only explain as most slam dunk gut feeling a person could ever have.

Faith.

I was absolutely certain that amidst those galaxies of souls were some who knew and loved me. Who? That was the question. I could grasp no particulars.

All I garnered was the confidence that someone was there. And I was sad for them, whoever they were, that they hadn't ended up in a better place than this.

Could it be Karla? I had no way of knowing for sure. This sense I had was too general, too amorphous. I grasped and flailed to learn more, but the knowledge remained elusive, like a forgotten word that stayed just on the tip of one's tongue.

So frustrating.

And then a face as large as the moon imposed itself in my field of vision. Pores like craters. Creases like canyons.

Lady An.

Her eyes were pinched shut, but I knew, I just knew she could see me. "James? How? How are you here?"

"I don't know."

"Where are you now?"

"Down ... low."

"Rafael. He is with Rafael in the vaults. Go find him. And bring him here." The giant face retreated rapidly, shrinking to a dot and blinking out. In her place reared an enormous, boiling cloud of dust.

The Horus.

It burned a hole through the Singularity like a blow torch through paper. A black spindle like the slitted pupil of a snake revealed itself from behind the swirling dust. Staring me down. It hauled me into its zone of influence, accelerating me inward with the force of infinite gravity, smothering all perception.
Chapter 34: The Quest

I thought that was it. That I was gone, swallowed up forever by the Horus. Lured into a clever trap, an alternative portal to the storm's voracious maw, my soul about to be compressed and assimilated into its infinitely dense core.

But no. My senses returned. I felt myself being jostled and hefted into a standing position. Me, totally passive and inert, like a slab of meat.

Voices in the darkness, close to my ears. Taro and Brian bustled me out of the chamber, one arm slung over each of their shoulders. The corridor, devoid of light when I had traversed it, now was faintly aglow in a muted indigo, providing a dim suggestion of the passage's dimensions.

Control restored to my slack limbs, I reasserted my posture and began walking under my own power.

"You back?" said Taro.

The guys up to this point had been unusually quiet, sharing a terse whisper or two, as if they were afraid of waking the dead.

"Yeah. I'm back."

"So ... you like ... actually channeled, dude?" said Brian.

"I don't know what that means."

"Through Rafael ... he showed you the Singularity?" said Taro.

"Yeah. I guess so. I guess that's what it was."

"What was it like?" said Brian.

"You mean, you never—?"

"Fuck no. Nobody channels but adepts. Like Lady An ... and you. At least ... not before the big sleep."

"But then that's not channeling," said Taro. "You're ... uh .... actually there."

"Not to mention. Not everybody gets to know the big sleep. Adepts, for sure, but—"

"Rafael wasn't any adept," said Taro. "He was an ordinary soul like you and me."

"True," said Brian. "So I guess there's hope for us. Something to look forward to, I guess. Get a nice, quiet chamber all to your own. Cruise the universe."

We reached the top of the spiral ramp and went back the way I had come, past the piles of rubble on the floor, which I saw was not construction debris, but rather places where the roof of the corridor had partially collapsed.

The bluish glow followed as we walked, anticipating out approach and blinking out behind us. I peered into the large, vacant rooms that I assumed to be shelters from the Horus, stunned by the intricate, back-lit lighting that filled the walls from ceiling to floor.

"Where are you taking me?" I said.

"To Lady An's," said Taro. "She's sitting Old Ned till they get the new vault ready."

"Ned?"

"Ned Abelord. The guy the runner came to warn us about. I tell you, he's the last person I wanted to see hit the big sleep."

"Why's that?"

"Cuz it sucks to lose him. He's needed here. He keeps ... kept ... the settlements together. When someone's been around forever, I guess it just seems all wrong when they finally go."

"It's ... a better place," said Taro.

"So they say," said Brian. "Can't blame him for wanting some of that."

Light from the ventilation shafts now took over the illumination of the corridor. Past the song chamber, we turned down a well-lighted passage that skirted the central courtyard. Ventilation shafts were numerous here. These brighter chambers bustled with residents. It seemed like there were a lot more folks wearing armor and carrying staffs and spears and pole-axes. The place seemed to be gearing up for battle.

"Something going on?"

"Not anymore," said Taro. "But a gang of Protectors attempted a raid. Actually, broke through our skirmish line before we could turn them back."

"They should know better than to fuck with Tiamat," said Brian. "We took out half their number before they turned tail. We got them running back to their herd."

"Were they the ones who followed us?"

"Them ... and more. A decent-sized assault force. Three Hashmallim in the lead. They could have done some damage if we hadn't already mobilized."

They led me to a chamber that was much like the ones we had passed, its stone floor textured to resemble an oriental rug, furnishings carved straight from the bedrock.

Dominating the center of the room was a litter woven of porcelain strapping. Supported by a pair of stands, it bore a slight and shriveled man wearing only a loin cloth. On the other side, Lady An sat cross-legged on a bed of stone studying a scroll mounted on a pair of ceramic spindles.

She looked up at me, unsmiling.

"You should have told me you wished to channel. I would have arranged a better quality experience."

"It was an accident," I said. "I had no intention ... no idea that would happen. That guy ... the Old One ... he grabbed me, and—"

"Rafael? He touched you? Physically?"

"Well, yeah."

"How odd. You must have a strong aura ... for him to have sensed you ... and awakened."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to cause any trouble."

Lady An shrugged and put down the scroll. "No harm done. But ... you were trying to evade us. Why?"

"I just wanted to be alone. I needed time to think."

"If you were looking to escape, there was no need to run from us. You need to understand, you're not a prisoner. We would have let you walk right out of here unmolested."

"Would you?"

"Of course. Once we were assured you understood the risks of leaving."

"The guys told me those Protectors are gone."

"Yes, but clearly the Hashmallim have been alerted to your presence. And now ... due to your channeling ... the Seraphim know as well. They'll be on the lookout."

"Seraphim? Why Seraphim?"

"Because they monitor the Singularity and they recognize their ilk."

"What?"

"You're one of them ... or at least their equivalent. But don't be alarmed. So am I. Though, not all of us elect to follow their path. Old Ned here, was ... is ... quite the adept. Rafael, bless his heart, was not. Sadly, we are not all created equal. I've always found that hard to accept .... to understand. Caste systems just go against my grain. Let's just say it's not how I would have made the universe."

"You're telling me ... I'm an angel ... a Seraph?"

"No," said Lady An. "Not yet, anyways. But we both have ... had the potential ... perhaps that path is still available to you. You are ... alive ... as you say. But being here ... I don't understand how that is possible. But ... you are an adept. That much is clear."

"It's a curse, isn't it?"

"It can be," said Lady An, smiling. "It can also be a blessing. Don't tell me you've never benefited from your special skills."

I shrugged and looked away.

"This person you have come to find ... did you happen to find her? When you channeled?"

"No," I said. "It was all pretty vague. I mean, I had this feeling like she was here. Somewhere. But that's all it was ... just a feeling."

"Probably because you channeled through Rafael. His bulb doesn't shine the brightest."

She narrowed her eyes to a squint.

"Might you be willing to channel again? With me to Guide you? And this time, through Old Ned?"

"What good would that do?"

"I guarantee it would be quite a different experience. It would give me a chance to learn a little more about you. Why and how ... you came to be here."

"I told you why. Because I promised Karla."

"But ... how? This one of the lands of the dead. And you are ... not dead ... simply out ... an impossibility."

I didn't know what to tell her."

"So? What do you say? Shall we?" She slid over to the edge of her stone bed and offered her hand.

"I don't see what that would accomplish."

"Trust me. You will accomplish whatever you came here for. With Old Ned as the conduit and me to guide you ... I guarantee it."

"Um, okay ... I guess. I mean, it's worth a shot."

"Come, then." She got up off her bed and walked over to me. Taking me by the hand, she led me to the litter.

Old Ned was a wiry dude. Every fold and creases in his skin was filled with sand and dust. Even the corners of his eyes were packed with grit. It was as if he had become as much a part of this world as the bedrock below our feet.

"Brian, Taro? Would you mind stepping outside. Best we have no distractions."

"Sure Ma'am," said Brian, shuffling out of the chamber. "We'll be right outside in the passage, in case—"

"We'll be fine. Thank you Brian. Now please, leave us be."

***

Lady An brushed a strand of ropey hair from Old Ned's eyes with a sweep of her hand.

"Ned's been a good friend and a mentor to me. He used to guide this village. Cycles ago he left with a party of colonists to restore some ancient catacombs that had been abandoned. Abzu is smaller than Tiamat, but much older."

"So ... you're not alone."

"Not at all. Infidels have been settling these caves as long as humans have shed their souls. We have a string of settlements all through these Deeps. We cooperate with defenses and take on each other's refugees. Nothing's permanent, I suppose. Settlements fail to take root and peter out. Some achieve glory only to be destroyed. There will come a day when Tiamat will fall and be forgotten, I am sure. Poor Ned has seen it all. He's been here longer than anyone I know. Twice he witnessed the fall of the Horus, only to have it rise again."

"One of my best friends helped bring down the Horus. The second time."

She shook her head. "Those stories seem like myths and legends now. I can't imagine how they accomplished such a feat. Twice."

"She's in Vermont now ... with me."

Lady An looked puzzled. "Who is it you're speaking of?"

"My friend Urszula. She used to be stuck here in the Deeps. About a hundred years. I don't know what that is in song cycles."

"She's ... alive?"

"Well, yeah. She's not a zombie or anything."

"Alive, you say?"

"I know. It doesn't make sense to me, either. I used to think, once you're dead you're dead. But ... apparently ... that's not necessarily the case."

"Come," said Lady An. "I think Old Ned here will be very interested in meeting you."

I looked at the guy on the litter. He was short and scrawny, but somehow, even through the big sleep, he retained an intensity that made him very imposing. Maybe it was those squinty, deep-set eyes. That permanent frown.

He reminded me of the head groundskeeper who tended Dreamland Park in Fort Pierce. He used to terrorize me and my home-schooled buddies back in the day. The more I thought about communing with Old Ned's soul, the more nervous I got.

"Can we maybe do this later?" I said. "I'm still kind of unsettled from the first ... uh ... excursion."

"No worries. I promise you this will be a very different experience. Rafael is ... how can I say it kindly? Well, he's always been a little bit scatter-brained. It's unfortunate you received your first glimpse of the matrix through his lens."

"Actually, it wasn't that bad. It was still pretty impressive. Got a bit scary towards the end, though."

"Scary? I can't imagine what he could have shown you to get you frightened. No matter. This time you'll be in good hands. Remember, my soul will be right beside yours."

"The Horus ... it can't get me ... through this mind meld ... can it?"

She scrunched her eyes at me. "The Horus? What are you talking about? That beastly thing has no connection to the Singularity. None at all."

I took a deep breath, out of habit more than need, and stepped up to the litter.

"Okay. Let's do it."

"Spread your hand," said An. "Place two fingers on his temple and stretch your thumb under his chin. We'll try and make contact simultaneously so as to ease the shock and to let Old Ned know I'm accompanying you. I would not advise you ever doing this on your own again. In that way, you were lucky you went through Rafael. Brace yourself. You might feel a slight jolt."

I spread my hand and brought my hand to his face, hovering until I saw her make first contact. When I touched him, she wasn't kidding about the jolt. It felt like a horse had smashed a hoof clear through my face to the back of my skull.

Old Ned pounced on me as soon as we connected, clenching my soul tight in his grip like he was holding a frog. He spread his mental tentacles into every corner of my mind, but shared little of himself in return. Unlike Rafael, this guy kept his secrets close.

Once he had plundered everything there was to know about me, he loosened up and let some of his feelings slip, revealing the depth of his personality and intellect. He was an impressive man. Curious. Vivacious, for a dead guy. Clearly fond of Lady An. He made sure I understood that any friend of hers was a friend of his.

Lady An took advantage of the opportunity to rummage through my head. But unlike with Ned, her mind was completely open to me. She wondered how much of what I told her about Urszula and all was actually truthful. She wanted to know why I was really here and what I knew and didn't know about this place.

She thought for sure I must be hiding something. She didn't believe I could be such a simpleton. Now she could see exactly how much of a dumb ass I was and how much I regretted coming here.

Old Ned had already absorbed everything there was to know about me. There wasn't much, compared to him. Satisfied, he released his grip on us and diverted his attention elsewhere in the Singularity.

Me and Lady An were like a couple of ticks hanging onto a big dog.

She gave me a mental nudge.

"We can go now."

"Okay. But how? Where?"

And them something gave way like the gates above a spillway. We engaged with the Singularity's particles and began to flow. Picking up speed, we ping-ponged through the souls in the corridors, up through the catacombs to the guards manning the perimeter, the outposts and their skirmishers and out into the dunes and barrens through a wide scattering of lonesome strangers. The sheer velocity of our travel bewildered me.

"Slow down. Relax."

"It's not me ... doing this."

"Oh no? Then who? It's not me ... or Ned. We're not in any hurry to get anywhere."

"I can't ... I can't stop."

"Just ... relax."

We stopped in the head of a one-legged man just long enough to befuddle him before breaking free of this relay of minds and into the Singularity's matrix of soul particles.

We cruised across the sands at ground level, courtesy of Ned's disseminated soul. It was such a relief to be free of people for a change. But this freedom of the open spaces didn't last very long. We were converging rapidly with one of the closer hordes, perhaps the very one that had ostracized me.

"Should we ... go in?"

"That's up to you."

A collision seemed inevitable so I did nothing to discourage it. We plunged into the crowd of marchers, ricocheting among them like a supersonic pin ball, sampling psyches in the briefest of flashes, measuring the mood of this mob, zone by zone.

At the leading edge of the column, faith in the idea of the Horus as Heaven burned strong. These elites thought about little else, concentrating every iota of their attention on thrusting their tireless bodies after the dust storm, dreaming only of salvation, not assimilation.

No single faith dominated. Zealots of every stripe marched shoulder to shoulder. Hassids. Hindus. Presbyterians. Rastafarians. I even detected a Sedevacantist or two. Their prayers converged, all focused on the same goal—chasing a freaking dust storm.

Everyone's messiah came together in those ever changing billows. Whatever face they sought, they saw. Jesus, Jah, whatever.

I couldn't help myself. As we flitted among these people, like a little demon, I planted seeds of doubt into whatever minds porous enough to allow such ideas to take root. Most resisted. But some succumbed and I immediately felt bad for meddling.

I detected amusement in Lady An. She did nothing to deter me. To her, I was an experiment. A lab rat turned loose in a maze to see what it would do. She just came along to observe.

We worked our way back to the middle of the horde where the souls were just as able-bodied as those in the fore, but were simply less motivated. Pockets of doubt emerged here and there, though most believed, just not fanatically.

The doubters were a sorry lot, with no aspirations, nothing to look forward to ever again. They had how common such feelings were among their neighbors. It was not something they admitted. But if not for the threats of the Hashmallim, they would have already abandoned the chase.

Lady An paid close attention to these would-be infidels. They were prime candidates for recruitment, if only the Hashmallim and their Protectors didn't find them out.

Behind them, in the long tail of crippled but ambulatory souls bringing up the rear, the level of faith re-surged a bit. This was a self-selecting crowd as few non-believers endured the chase once they had gone lame. They became the damaged loners that haunted the empty spaces of the Deeps.

Here, we bogged down, dwelling too long and gathering way too much information about each individual. Life histories. Networks of relations and relationships. Details of their illnesses, injuries and deaths.

I sensed some annoyance coming from Lady An.

"So is she here?"

"I don't think so. No."

"Then why are we lingering?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

"Focus on why you came. Give the Singularity something to work with and it will take you where you need to go."

Not knowing what else to do, I reviewed the progression of events that had led me to the Deeps, from my promise to Karla to my interrogation of Urszula and finally Luther's offer to show me that portal at the heart of Root in return for a small favor.

The results were instantaneous. We were swept out of the horde and back into the more fluid and continuous medium of the Singularity. It gave the illusion of flying high in the sky but that was just one possible window out of this existence.

We could see the Horus hunched like an old woman, bending its shaft in the direction of its motion. It had just swept through another column, mischievously sampling the middle this time, perhaps testing the faith of the vanguard. Such a tease, that Horus.

Well over a dozen other winding columns of humanity twisted around it, each hoping to intersect its meandering path. From on high, the whole assemblage looked like a scraggly flower someone had mashed into the ground and twisted, the Horus its shaggy, rotting stem.

I expected us to dive into the next closest horde, but instead we plunged towards an empty place thick with scars of the storm's prior passages. Amidst the scrubbed bedrock was a patch of ground that had been spared. A repository of dust, a single, sandy hillock dominated the center of this odd terrain.

"Where are you taking us?"

"I don't know."

We corkscrewed down around the hill. There was a man on top. A mane of gray fringing a face pink like mine. He reclined atop an intricate platform that looked like carved wood, but was actually made of millions of cemented sand grains. He wore only a loin cloth and had only stumps for limbs. We approached him obliquely, circling like a cautious mosquito.

"Who is this man?"

"I don't know him."

"I thought we were looking for a girl."

"We were! I mean, I am!"

One moment we were swirling around his little platform and then we were inside his mind, which proved inscrutably baroque and opaque, full of music and math.

And then he was there, manifested in his own mind as a younger version of himself with limbs intact, clad in greasy coveralls. We were in a large room—a studio with a grand piano. He glared at us, holding a shotgun level at his waist.

"Go. Away."

He pulled the trigger and clouds of blackness swarmed out of both barrels, swirling up and obscuring all like squid ink. The stuff pushed us back out into the matrix of the Singularity.

"His name ... I caught it ... it's ... Oliver ... or Olivier. His name is Olivier."

"Oh! He's the guy I was supposed to look for. I promised a friend I would look for him."

"Nothing to be done. His mind skills are fierce. We'll need to reach out to him in person."

"But why did we come to him? I was thinking of Karla."

"A man of his powers probably has a larger footprint in the Singularity. He was easier to find. And I'm glad we did. This one is as rare a bird as you. Remember the lay of this land. We need to rescue him before his presence is discovered by Seraphim."

We orbited in lazy circles above the hillock, now obscured in thick, dark clouds.

"So what now?"

"That's up to you."

So I buckled and dredged up the thoughts that I least liked to dwell on—those last few moments with Karla at the gates of Frelsi. Just as I thought, they dragged into the hopeless exercise of wandering how differently it could have all gone. There were so many alternative scenarios that would have led to her survival. Like if I had taken the time to neutralize all that Fellstraw with my spell craft, or if I had simply locked the gate behind us. Better yet, if I had not returned to the raid and lured her to come after me, none of this ever had to happen. Her death would have been so easy to avoid.

We broke out of our holding pattern and began again to soar through the ubiquitous but invisible matrix of the Singularity, the ethereal relay of networked souls. It struck me that not all of these souls were bound to flesh. Many had no mortal anchor.

This realization made the claims of the Frelsians who called themselves Freesouls seem naïve and pretentious. Their souls were hardly free compared to these. Yes, they no longer risked delegation to the Deeps, but they were still bound to bodies in the Liminality. They were merely people who had exiled themselves from the land of the living.

As we glided across the landscape, our vision expanded beyond the single perspective that we had shared to an all-encompassing, almost God-like sense of knowing. It was almost too much for my mind to process, this seeing near and far, a thousand places at once. My natural response was to shut my mind down, and block most of it out.

"No. This is not the time to be a turtle. Come out of your shell. Use the Singularity."

I couldn't. I feared losing myself. Once I let my soul scatter, I might never get it back. I turned inward to a dark and cozy, womb-like place that was ever-present inside me but seldom visited. A place with no external noise, no demands. Heroin must feel like this the first time.

Before I could lock myself away, a blazing beacon erupted and seared through my shell. The Singularity reasserted itself, dragging me back into the light.

Close by, just one horde over from the marching column we had just visited, it had found a heart that resonated with mine, a soul whose core burned brighter than the rest. I opened up and fluttered towards it like a moth to a flame.

"Yes! You're doing it! Keep yourself open. Let it take you. It is finding what you seek."

I couldn't accept what was happening. It was too good to be true. Something had to go wrong now. Something would happen to make everything go to shit. That was the way of the universe.

We swooped into the next horde, a larger group, even more strung out than the first, flanked by well-organized squads of Protectors led by Hashmallim. Faith was vivid and strong in this group because they had recently met the Horus and it had taken hundreds of their number. Those in the vanguard who had witnessed the taking had become galvanized and all the more fanatical in their chase.

And there was my beacon, limping along in the back of the column. We circled cautiously. I held us back. But this had to be Karla. It could be no other.

"Go to her, you fool!"

Against my reluctance, we hurtled forward, and there she was, looking all gray and battered, dusty and fragile, but unmistakably Karla. She was damaged, somehow. There was a hitch in her gait. Her legs weren't working quite right.

The bits of our souls pressed forward and meshed with hers. She gasped and collapsed to her knees.

In an instant, I was privy to all that she had felt and experienced since we parted. Her initial fear turned to defiance and disdain, compassion for the broken souls in the column, a raw and recent memory of several encounters with Hashmallim, the latest resulting in a vicious attack. She had been clubbed and crippled as a punishment for lagging.

I found in her the seed of a desperate, burgeoning belief in the Horus, her last shred of hope. She had nothing else to cling to in this world. The Horus now offered the only possibility of escape.

She still held a place for me, sequestered deep in her consciousness, but it had atrophied in to a dusty keepsake, tucked away like a widow's shrine.

She felt my presence. It occurred to her that I might be with her, but she denied it. Her body tried to summon tears that could no longer flow. Instead, she heaved with sobs, swamped in a misery.

"I'm here, La. It's really me. I'm here."

But my message could not penetrate the wall around her soul. She sensed me only as a distant apparition from her own memory.

"She can't hear you."

"Why not?"

"She's not like you. She's not attuned to the Singularity. Let her go. You accomplished your task. You found her. But you can't stay. It's not good for her or you to linger."

Powerful forces began to build and tug at my soul. I didn't want to go. I clung to Karla like an ant to a leaf in a windstorm. I tried to help her, reaching out with every iota of my soul to give her strength, to heal her.

"Let her go. You're hurting her."

"But...."

"Let her go. You got what you came for. You found her, didn't you?"

"But if I go, how will I—?"

The Singularity surged and wrenched us away. I lost all contact. We soared up and out of the horde, whipping around the back of the looming Horus, over column after column of marchers arrayed around it like extra hands around a clock. Accelerating until all was a blur, we retreated over the hills and dunes to Tiamat and its catacombs, to Lady An's chamber.

I fell convulsing to the floor. My mind's eye filled with the image of a clock with the Horus at the center, Tiamat at high noon, the first horde at one, Karla at four o'clock.

Lady An stood over me, smiling, reaching out her hand. A hellish heat began to build. My vision began to fade.
Chapter 35: Dartmouth

Heat meant life. I opened my eyes to a partly opened car window smeared with bird poop. Scraggly-looking thunderheads were building in the west, but the sun still shone between them, glaring through the windshield, I felt like an ant under a looking glass, the rays focused into a beam concentrated enough to blister my exoskeleton. This was the one part of coming back from the Deeps that I would never get used to.

We were stopped outside a Wendy's just off the highway. The girls munched French fries and spicy chicken sandwiches. When Ellen noticed me alert, she reached for a sack and handed it to me.

"We got one for you, too. Have a nice nap?"

"Not ... a nap," I said, all thick-tongued and befuddled. "Four o'clock."

"Actually it's more like four-thirty."

"No. I mean ... I was just trying to remember something."

I was burning up, sweating profusely. My inside of my mouth felt as dry as leather. I grabbed a cold soda from the tray and began sucking it down.

"Um ... that actually my Coke you're drinking. But what the hell. Go ahead."

"Where the heck are we?"

"White River Junction."

"Where's that?"

"On the edge of New Hampshire. Close to Hanover, actually. We're only about twenty minutes away. Wendell's been sending texts, by the way. I think he wants you to call him."

I picked up the phone from the dashboard. The sun-warmed aluminum casing felt like a hot potato in my hands. I counted three messages from Wendell since I had been away. I rang him up.

"Hey guy. Good to hear from you. Nice to see you guys back on track."

"What's the address?" I said.

"Whoa. Chomping at the bit, are we? Did I touch a nerve there? Is it that little girl Isobel? She must mean a lot to you."

"Fuck you. Give me the fucking address."

"You already got it. Check your GPS. You'll find there's a new waypoint uploaded."

"How did you—?"

"Magic. What can I say?"

"What's his ... her name?"

"Just look at your GPS. I'll send you a picture once you're on site. I need you there no later than 6:15 pm. I'm a little worried about the weather, but it may not be an issue. In fact, it might work out to our advantage. I have to say, I like your change in attitude. I guess it takes all kinds. Some Facilitators ... all they need is carrots. A nice, fat expense account and voilà—it's like we got a natural born killer on our hands. But I guess you don't respond as well to material wealth. A guy like you needs a good stick. Something for the personnel file, I suppose."

"Yeah. Whatever. Bye."

I pulled out the GPS, turned it on, clicking through the screens until I found that a third set of coordinates had been added to 'treegirl and 'laurent.'

'JasonCollins.'

I glanced over at Ellen. She was staring at me, trying to bore into my psyche again.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You're sounding a little too eager to find this next guy."

"Don't worry. I know what I'm doing."

"But ... we agreed—"

"Shush! You gotta trust me, Ellen! I've got a plan. Now, how do we get to Hanover?"

Ellen slumped and crossed her arms. She wouldn't look at me.

"Ellen?"

"We need to double back on the highway. 91 North. I think it's the second exit. We drove right past it on the way down, when you were snoozing. I had a craving for spicy chicken so we went hunting for this Wendy's. Had half a mind to keep on driving. Probably should have."

"Start up the car," I said. "Let's go." I winked at her. "You need to have more faith in me, kid."

***

As we crossed the bridge into Hanover, the darkened skies began to spit and sputter. Tired thunder growled, barely registering over the sound of the radio. The storm, however strong it might have been, was now feeble and spent. The sun, which had never completely left us, sent shafts stabbing through the gaps in the tattered clouds. Sun showers.

The brick and ivy of Dartmouth soon made its imposing presence known over the green and the fancy little restaurants and shops clustered at its base. This was a college town, through and through.

"I've got a friend from high school who goes here," said Ellen. "She's probably a senior by now."

"Looks like a nice place," I said. "Looks expensive."

"They all are these days," said Ellen. "Even the shitty ones."

"How'd you end up in the UK."

"Thought I told you. I went to Bates for a year. And then to St. Andrews for what was supposed to be a semester abroad. But I liked it too much. I didn't want to leave. I stayed on, till they caught me working without a visa."

Something about that time line clashed with my perceptions.

"How ... how old are you, exactly?"

"I turned twenty-one a few months ago"

"Huh. Go figure. You could have been buying us drinks all along."

She scrunched her eyes at me.

"Why? How old are you?"

"Nineteen. I think."

"You seem ... older."

"Must be my gravitas. What can I say? I had a rough life these past couple years. Nothing like Urszula, though. She's thirteen, going on a hundred."

"That, I can see. She seems pretty mature ... for her age."

Urszula wriggled out of her slouch in the back seat. "Are you people talking about me again?"

"Hey, have you gone back ... since—"

"Yes."

"How are things back there?"

"Good. Things are good."

***

It was all trial and error trying to home in on Wendell's coordinates with that old school GPS unit. No sexy robotic to guide you along step by step. Instead we'd take a turn and find ourselves rolling farther and farther from our destination. I don't know why Wendell couldn't have just given us the damned address. Or at least, a better GPS.

We knew we lucked into the right street when the unit started beeping on the fringes of campus, just past a hill crowded with dorms. I pulled over immediately and checked the display. That name—'JasonCollins'—was flashing.

I checked my watch. It was a little after 5:30.

"We're a bit early," I said. I turned off the wipers. Raindrops immediately speckled our view.

The iPhone chimed in a text. It was a photograph, just like Wendell had promised. A red-haired kid with freckles and flowing locks. I shared it with the girls.

"Oh dang," said Ellen. "Look at that smile. He looks so nice."

"Yeah, well. Someone in Frelsi doesn't think so."

"Please tell me you're not gonna hurt him."

"Trust me, Ellen. Okay? I know what I'm doing. I just don't want to talk about it in the open."

Urszula grinned broadly, as if she could read my mind. Ellen remained wary and puzzled.

"As long as ... you're doing the right thing. That's all that matters."

"Pull the car forward," I said. "Slowly."

We crept ahead until the proximity reading on the GPS unit fell to fifty meters, then twenty.

"Stop right here."

We found ourselves in the middle in the middle of an athletics complex. A gate in a chain link fence led to an array of rain-slickened tennis courts. Dark blue in a sea of green.

"Maybe ... he's an athlete," said Ellen.

"You think?"

A windswept drizzle kicked up and spattered the pavement. There was nobody around.

"What if the rain keeps him away?"

"Not much we can do." My eyes scanning the pine trees, their trunks wet and dark. Lush lawns sloped up to some brick buildings atop the hill. They looked too barren for dorms, but their facades crawled with ivy.

"Funny. And I thought the ivy thing was just a name."

"My dad really wanted me to come here," said Ellen.

"So why didn't ya? Too much money?"

"I didn't get in," she said. "Busted my butt all through high school. Took every AP class. Field hockey. Volunteering. Anything I could to make my Dartmouth app more competitive. All for nothing."

"Bates? That doesn't sound like nothing."

"No ivy. The whole point of my life up to then was to get into an ivy."

"Weird," I said, shrugging. "I don't see what the big deal is. A school's a school."

"Not ... quite," said Ellen.

"Ivies help you get places in life ... that you otherwise would have a hard time reaching. So they say."

"Yeah well. Life isn't the be all and end all of things."

"But you only get one."

"No, you don't." I smirked at Urszula. "She doesn't have a clue, does she?"

"What about you? Did you—?"

"College? Never applied. Mom made me take ACTs. Did pretty good—a 32. But after she and dad passed, college was out of the question."

"What do you mean? Why?"

"Well ... I didn't see the point. I was kind of preoccupied with ... other stuff. And besides, who was gonna pay for it?"

"What? No one ever told you about financial aid? An orphan with a 32 ACT score. I bet there were a lot of places willing to give you a free ride."

"Dartmouth?"

"Not likely. You have to be pretty special to come here."

"I'm special. So is Urszula."

"Magic doesn't count."

"Well, it should."

"What about you, Urszula? Did they have colleges where you came from?"

"No," she said. "Only coal mines. And war."

A text chimed into the iPhone: "Plan B if you need it. Second floor of Bissell. Choate dorms."

Another burst of rain spattered the windshield. The drops congealed and ran down the glass. Puddles formed on the tennis courts.

"I've always hated tennis," I said.

"Why? It's just a game," said Ellen.

"It's that culture. All those prissy people in the white skirts and all."

"Oh, it's not like that anymore. You ever see Serena Williams?"

"I don't care. I still hate it."

Ellen sighed. "It's not even worth hating. It's just a silly game."

My gaze drifted to a clump of dead leaves stuck under the wiper blade. I had seen it before and didn't think anything of it, but now I noticed it curling and uncurling weakly. Whatever force of will had animated it had dissipated or returned to its source. It was kind of sad to see.

But was this actually Billy or some leftover piece of Wendell? I felt no connection to it, but I couldn't be sure it wasn't Billy. So I let it be. Wendell probably had plenty of other ways of keeping tabs on us.

It was ten after six. I wondered how long we should hang around after the designated time. It sucked that we couldn't just get this all over with tonight.

The back door opened. Urszula stepped out and strode into the middle of the street, wielding her scepter like a rifle and scanning the neighborhood like a soldier walking point.

I rolled down the window. "Get back in here. Someone's gonna think that thing's a gun."

"Someone is coming," she said.

I craned my head around. A kid with tousled ginger hair came loping down the walk with a sheathed racket tucked over one shoulder, carrying a gym bag bursting with tennis balls. He dressed more like a snowboarder than some preppie tennis player.

He gave Urszula a long glance, but went right past her through the gate into the sodden courts. A thick and steady drizzle was still coming down.

He unsheathed the racked and started whacking overhand serves. Ball after ball whipped across the net on wicked curve, each one splashing into a puddle in the far corner, flirting with the back line but always landing with at least an inch to spare.

"Man, he's good," said Ellen.

I sighed. "I guess I should go see if this is our guy."

"Wait. I'm coming, too," said Ellen, eying me suspiciously.

We got out and slipped through the gate. Droplets of drizzle collected on my fleece.

"What the heck is he doing out here in the rain? A place like this must have indoor courts. A practice bubble?"

"Maybe he likes to handicap himself with the elements. Or he just likes to practice alone."

"Cross country, I could see, but tennis?"

The kid tossed a glance our way as we approached, but he kept firing away. When he had blasted the last ball, he grabbed the empty gym bag and trotted over to retrieve all of the stray balls. One rolled up right in front of me and Ellen. I picked it up and brought it over.

"Thanks," he said, holding open the gym bag, avoiding eye contact.

"Are you ... uh ... is your name Jason Collins by any chance?"

"Yeah. That's me. Why?"

"Okay. This is gonna sound weird. But we thought we should warn you, someone wants you dead."

Ellen startled me with a squeal and plonked a kiss on my chin. She squeezed my hand and made sure I noticed the approval in her eyes.

"Yeah?" said the kid. "What else is new?"

He didn't seem the slightest bit perturbed or surprised. I thought it prudent not to mention that the 'someone' who was supposed to do the deed was standing right in front of him.

"You already know?"

"Well, yeah. I've been getting death threats for ... well ... it's been a while. But ... all last year ...."

"Do you know happen to know why would anyone want to kill you?"

"You guys can't be cops. Why do you care? Who are you people?"

"We're just ... people. We found out and thought you should know."

"Yeah, well ... the threats kind of stopped a couple months ago."

"Any idea who threatened you?"

He gave a deep sigh. "Well, I'm pretty sure. He's ... he _was_ ... another tennis player. Steven Chen. Went to a high school near mine in Connecticut. Damned good. I mean, top-rated. One of the best in the state. But somehow I always found a way to beat him. I mean it was weird. I wasn't not even the best player on our team. Just seemed to have his number. Guess I matched up well. He always took it real hard."

"So then he ends up going to Yale and it was the same thing. First three matches we played, I beat him. Then I knocked him out of the league tournament in the first round. Right before regionals, that's when the death threats started. I'm pretty sure it was him, but I could never prove it. He ended up losing to some other guy. And right after ... I heard he attempted suicide. Overdosed on pills. They pumped his stomach in time to save him. Dumb ass. All over some dumb game. And then ... about a month ago ... it was weird ... I heard he just kind of died. Natural causes, apparently."

"Nature had nothing to do with it I guarantee you."

"What? But they just found him dead in his room. The autopsy came up negative, nothing in his system."

"Of course they didn't find anything. The people who took him out have got this down to an art."

"You're saying he was murdered?"

"No. He probably wanted to go. He just had help. But now he wants to take you with him."

"But ... he's dead."

"Doesn't matter," I said. "You see, in Frelsi—"

Ellen elbowed me. "Don't confuse him with the details!" she whispered.

"Well, anyhow. We thought you should know. You see ... I'm the guy he hired to take you out."

The kid had this befuddled look on his face, as if he didn't know whether to be angry or amused. He showed no fear at all, which was a bad sign for his future well-being.

"Why are you telling me? Go tell the cops or something."

"Because that won't stop it from happening. If we walk away and you're still around, he's gonna send someone else to finish the job, if he doesn't do it himself."

"Go!" said Ellen. "Get your ass somewhere safe. Don't go out. And don't eat anything that you didn't cook yourself."

"Fucking hell! I can't just go and hide. I've got a tournament on Friday. I got finals coming up. I'm not gonna listen to a bunch of any weirdoes that just show up out of the blue, telling me—"

"Jason. This is real," said Ellen. "You need to take this seriously. Because the guy who hired James. He's serious. He'll get it done himself if we back out. And he'll get it done, alright. We've seen him kill with our own eyes."

The kid's face got all flushed and red. Beads of sweat mingled with rain drops. "Jesus Christ." He began to hyperventilate. Our message was finally sinking in.

"What the fuck? Why haven't you gone to the cops with this?"

"Wouldn't do any good," I said, shaking my head.

"Why the fuck not?"

"Because the people who want you dead, they've got ... special skills."

"Jesus Christ! What are they? Ninjas?"

"Worse," I said.

Jason fumbled with the sleeve of his racket.

"Alright. I'll skip classes the rest of this week. Get the notes from my friends. I'll pretend I'm sick on Friday. Skip the tournament. I mean, it's just a freaking game, right?"

I looked at Ellen and smiled. "This kid got into Dartmouth for a reason."

***

We helped him round up the rest of his soggy balls. As he zipped the bag and strode off down the puddled sidewalk, we stood in the drizzle, watching him go.

"Well, that felt like a good deed," said Ellen, beaming.

"Not ... really," I said.

"What do you mean? We saved his life."

"We bought him a couple of days. If the Wendell wants him dead, though, he'll find a way to get it done. Even if he doesn't do it himself, he'll send Nelson or someone we don't even know about yet. There's nothing we can do to stop it."

Urszula stepped out of the shrubberies in which she had been lurking. "I say we use the boy as bait. Kill anyone who attempts to hurt him. This way, we can eradicate a lot of Frelsian assassins."

"Not a bad idea. Not something we can do in public, though."

"You really think Jason would agree to acting as our bait?" said Ellen.

"Who's asking him for permission?"

A little pizza delivery van came squealing around the corner and pulled up abruptly beside us.

"You James Moody?"

"Yeah."

"Cool," he said. "Got a pizza for you. It's all paid for."

The driver slid a box from an insulated sleeve in the front seat, stuck a brown paper bag on top of it and handed it to me.

"Enjoy," said the delivery guy, before he zoomed away.

I popped open the box. Inside was a large artichoke and olive pizza with a crispy crust.

"Christ. He even knows my favorite toppings." I stuffed it into a trash can. No one objected.

The iPhone went off with that gypsy jazz ring tone. Minor chords. Chugging guitars. A warped fiddle. It was Wendell, of course. I set it on speaker so the girls could hear.

"Hey. What's going on? The kid. He's walking away."

I didn't want to say anything. I didn't want to talk to him. I almost wanted to dash that phone against the pavement and stomp on it.

"Jesus Christ! What's the deal? Rainy day. Empty street. No witnesses. You guys wasted a perfect opportunity. And ... you trashed my pizza?"

"We're done, Wendell. No more killing."

There was a long pause.

"You ... little ... shit. I had a feeling you'd pull this crap. After Montreal."

"So ... what are you gonna do about it?"

"What do you want me to do? Give you a medal?"

A chill ran through me as I remembered his threat to take out Isobel if I didn't carry out this last task. I didn't dare bring up the subject, hoping maybe he'd forget. Maybe he would sense that nothing, no amount of negative persuasion would make me change my mind. I was firm in my rejection of his apprenticeship. It was the best I could hope for.

"We won't use your credit card. Alright? I'll cut it up."

"I don't give a fuck what you do with it. Might as well enjoy yourselves. Get you and your girls something to eat. Better eat while you can. You're not gonna be around much longer.

"Last meal?"

"Yeah. Probably. Unless, you turn things around right quick, it's gonna be clear to my bosses that you're no longer an asset, you're a security threat. And you know what happens to security threats."

"You eliminate them?"

"That's right. So let me offer you one last chance. It's more than you deserve ... but what the hell. So I'll tell you what ... you got till first light tomorrow to get this job done. If you don't, I'm coming for you, kid. Got that?"

He hung up.

"Don't listen to him," said Ellen, touching my arm.

"Don't worry. I meant what I said. "I'm done."

"So what do we do now?" said Ellen.

"We choose our battleground," said Urszula.
Chapter 36: Expedition

Hanover had a curated feel about it, like it was some upscale, money-fueled restoration of an idealized New England town. It didn't feel like real people lived here, at least not in the town center. Think Disney World. Then again, that could just be my Florida in me talking.

Dartmouth dominated everything. Pieces of campus had metastasized into various houses and buildings sprinkled through the downtown area. Seemed like we found a Dartmouth sign lurking around every corner.

Despite the gentle rain, there were plenty of people hanging around the village center. I studied them like an anthropologist, curious to know who got to live in a place like this, wondering if it had room for someone like me. I kind of doubted it. I had felt more at home in Brynmawr and Luthersburg than here.

We cruised the streets on a dual mission: one, to find a place to make our stand. Two, to replace Wendell's pizza with one less likely to have Fellstraw as a topping. Fellstraw or not, that artichoke and olive pie of Wendell's had smelled awful good.

Downtown was out of the question for a showdown—way too much potential for collateral damage. I didn't care about the fancy shops with their pretty facades, but there were, in fact, too many real and innocent people living here.

Young parents idling with their toddlers in a playground. Grandmas gossiping in front of the post office. Townie teens gathered in the parking lot of an ice cream shop. Wendell may not have cared what happened to them, but I sure did. We needed to find a spot that was a little more isolated and that had a little more room to unleash our spell craft.

We had better luck finding our pizza. The place was called 'Everything But Anchovies.' An unfortunate name, because telling me what I couldn't have only made me want them more. And I didn't even like anchovies.

We ended up getting sausage and pepperoni because Urszula insisted on meat. This pizza didn't look half as good as the one Wendell had ordered for us, but at least we knew it was safe to eat. We paid with that black credit card. I figured, why not?

After we ate, me and the girls went on a shopping spree at Talbots and the Hanover Outdoor store. We all got new clothes because what we had been wearing was getting a little ripe and we didn't have time to mess around with laundry.

We loaded up on all kinds of camping stuff. Fleece pullovers, rain jackets, sleeping bags and pads. Freeze-dried meals. A water purifier. A propane stove.

I didn't know what conditions we would find ourselves in during the days ahead, or even if there would be any days ahead of us in this world. For all I knew, our current existence might only be measured in hours.

This atmosphere of uncertainty put an edge to our wanderings in the village. Every corner was a potential trap, every person who looked at us funny, a killer.

Our last stop was at a liquor store. I picked up a six pack of Heineken. Ellen got a bottle of Merlot. Urszula—a pint bottle of some kind of fancy schnapps-like crap with little gold flakes floating inside.

And then we were back in the car, searching again for the perfect battleground. We cruised back and forth across campus, weaving through leafy residential areas, across parking lots, past a hockey rink and an old, refurbished mill.

Night fell. Street lights flickered on. Still, we hadn't found what we were looking for.

"Maybe we should just keep on driving around in random circles," said Ellen. "That would confuse him."

"We're not trying to confuse anybody," I said. "We're just trying to gain a tactical advantage."

"I do not recommend we stay in this vehicle," said Urszula. "It confines us and the Frelsian can ambush if he detects any pattern to our routing."

"What do you suggest?"

"Height. Open space. Clear lines of sight."

"Maybe a church steeple or a clock tower?" said Ellen. "Someplace sturdy and tall?"

"Perhaps," said Urszula. "If it is surrounded by open ground. A piazza maybe?"

"You're not gonna find anything like that here," I said. "But hang on, there was a place we passed when we first got to town that looked ... promising."

I turned back onto campus, cutting across the hill to the athletic complex. The rain had finally stopped and a moon just a sliver short of full was poking through the clouds. A delicious chill was settling over the town. I don't think the girls appreciated it as much as I did, considering how they bundled themselves up in their fleeces and shells.

I pulled the car into a lot beside one of the subsidiary soccer fields on the outermost fringes of campus. The nearest residential buildings were a block away. There was nothing nearby but a field house and a parking lot. Across the field, was a dark hillside covered in pines.

"What do you think?"

Urszula got out of the car and gazed up into the stands.

"There," she said, pointing at a press box perched atop the aluminum bleachers. Large windows all around commanded the turf fields below it as well as the parking lot where we stood.

We loaded the gear into our newly purchased backpacks. I strapped my samurai sword in its shipping tube along the side where it would be instantly accessible. We climbed the stands only to find a sturdy padlock dangling from a hasp on the press box door.

"No worries," said Urszula. She held the tip of the scepter against the laminated steel. It gave a little shudder. The metal shattered into flakes like a tulip dipped in liquid nitrogen.

"Whoa! You go girl," I said. "I guess you do got your mojo back."

Inside the press box was a line of tall, swiveling directors' chairs behind a built-in counter. We had a three hundred sixty degree view all around. The field lights were off but there was plenty of illumination along the access road surrounding it and in the parking lot behind us. No one was gonna be able to sneak up on us.

"So what do you think?" I said. "Is this strategic enough for you?"

"I would have preferred a watchtower on a barren mountain top surrounded by desert. But this will have to do."

"These walls seem a little flimsy don't you think?" said Ellen.

"All that matters is that we see him coming," I said. "I have a feeling this fight isn't going to be settled with bullets."

"So what am I doing with this gun in my purse?"

"I'm just saying ... you saw what he did to that gun on the train."

"Way to make me feel useful."

I reached into my pack and pulled out the gun that old lady in Burlington had given me. I handed it over to her.

Ellen looked at me as if I was covered with green warts. "Oh, great. You tell me guns are useless. So the point of having two is...?"

"Ellen. Who knows? Maybe it'll come in handy. We need to be prepared for anything. You do know how to use these, right?"

"I'll figure it out," said Ellen. "It's not exactly rocket science."

I cracked open a beer. I offered some to the girls, but they weren't in the mood for drinking just yet.

We just sat there in the dark in awkward silence. A light fog began to settle over the field below. So far it wasn't so bad but if it got any thicker it would mess with our visibility.

The reality and futility of our task began to wear away at whatever bravado I had been able to muster. I don't know what made me believe we had a chance against Wendell. This was a guy who made his living killing people quick and clean, with methods that bordered on the supernatural. Who was I kidding?

A moth fluttered up and plonked against the window. Silhouetted against the security lights, I watched it crawl across my line of sight, wandering in circles as if it were trying to find a way through the glass.

As I watched, its wings shriveled and reabsorbed into its body. Its legs shortened into stubs. It was like watching a metamorphosis in reverse. It had turned itself from a moth to an inchworm.

A horrified chill tore through me when I realized this could be an agent of Wendell's come to murder us. But crude, mosaic images of my face flashed from the other side of the glass told me otherwise.

"Holy crap," I said. "That's fucking Billy."

"That bug?" said Ellen. "Oh. But he's so small."

"Hang on."

I pulled my sword from its tube and touched its tip to the glass right against the little larva. I closed my eyes and summoned my will. It took almost no effort at all to get the looseness stirring in my interior. That was a very good sign.

Billy vibrated, transfixed before the point of my blade. His wings grew back and lengthened. His body acquired mass and limbs. He was a moth again, growing larger. Growing fur and teeth. A pug nose. He became a small bat and then a larger one and then one of those giant, tropical fruit bats you see in zoos, the kind that sort of looks like a chihuahua with wings.

"Go!" I said, lowering the sword and Billy leaped into the darkness, swooping and arcing in radical curves low over the street lights.

"So ... is he gonna be our lookout?" said Ellen. "How does he even know what to do?"

"Simple," I said, shrugging. "He's me."

Ellen placed her hand over mine, and yanked it away as soon as she made contact.

"Oh my God! You feel cold. You should put on your fleece."

"Actually ... I'm fine. Comfortable."

She brushed something from my cheek. It dropped onto the table and melted.

"Oh ... shit."

"What's wrong?"

"The coldness. It means—"

Ellen's eyes flared with panic. "No! You can't conk out on us now! We need you here!"

This woozy, tired feeling came over me. I crossed my arms on the bench and laid my head down. I just had to rest my eyes a bit.

Big mistake. As soon as I did, the Deeps came calling.

***

Something hard and cold pressed against my back. My eyes filled with light. I found myself looking at a sweeping curve of chalky stone.

It took me a long minute to realize I was looking at the ceiling of a domed chamber. Panels of thin, translucent stone separated a convex wall from a busy, open courtyard. A pair of shafts brought the light down from the surface.

My head wouldn't stop spinning. I lay crumpled, my body a glob of Jell-O, my soul yet to reconnect with its physical manifestation in the Deeps. A resonant and penetrating hum filled the frigid air. Lady An was kneeling on a mat beneath a skylight in the center of the chamber, synchronizing her song with a small circle of women.

This was not Riversong or Rainsong, the only two I had heard sung so far. The cycle had moved on to whatever came next in the ring of sixteen.

I groaned. "Fuck, no. I can't be here!"

The singing ceased. Lady An's gaze darted to my corner. "You're back!" She shot to her feet and bustled to my side, peering down at my limp form. "You poor thing. I thought you'd left us for good. I thought ... hoped ... the Singularity would have gotten you straightened out and sent you back to where you belong."

"I can't be here. Not now. Wendell's coming."

"Wendell?"

"He's from Frelsi. He's a Hemi ... a Facilitator. He works for the Sanctuary."

Lady An blinked back at me in complete non-comprehension. I might as well have spoken to her in Swedish.

Somehow, I had just assumed she was wiser than me to the workings of the universe. But come to think of it, she had probably never visited some of the places I had seen.

"He's ... from the Liminality—a place connected to here, where suicides go. He kills people to free them from the Core, so their souls become free. Untethered to this place. He was trying to recruit me. To be an assassin. But now ... he's after us."

"My, you do lead a complicated existence, James. How many worlds are you currently juggling?"

"Too many," I said, as the last bit of residual warmth was expunged from my flesh and I settled into the latest version of my body. "But they need me there ... in Hanover. Because Wendell's coming, and...."

My senses were seeping back, and with them the realization of what I had come here for. "I ... we saw her. Karla. She's here. And she's hurt."

"That woman from the horde? Was that her? Your long-lost friend?"

"Yeah. Did you see? She needs help. And she's headed for that Horus."

"They're all heading for the Horus, dear. That's the whole point of these hordes."

"But how can she? Are they forcing her?"

"Once they get marching, it's like moving with the tide. Most don't even need the Hashmallim to egg them on. To folllow the Horus becomes the path of least resistance."

"I can't believe she's fallen in with them. That's not her at all. She's never been a follower."

"Put yourself in her shoes. What choice does she have? She doesn't know about any other possibilities here. She doesn't even know that dissent is an option. I was in her shoes once, until Old Ned came strutting by on a patrol and showed me there was another path."

"She's lost hope. That's what it is. Once she knows we're here. She'll change her mind. She's a fighter."

"Do you sense she was aware of our little visit?"

"Yeah. I think she felt me. My presence. But I don't think she knew I was real. She probably thought I was a dream."

"Crap. I need to be in both places. Because Wendell's coming ... and Karla ... that storm looked awful close ... and the way it was bearing down ...."

"Well, that's not possible," said Lady An. "You have only the one soul. It can't be in two places at once. You need to make a choice."

"But it's not up to me! The thing just comes and takes me whenever it wants."

"The thing? What thing?" Lady An narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. "You mean ... you are not controlling these appearances?"

"No. I used to be able to ... a little bit."

She sighed. "Well you're here now. Might as well make the best of it."

Lady An returned to her friends, who hovered all nervous and shy back at the mat. While they conferred in whispers, I rose and took a wobbly step.

The women all turned and stared.

"I have a proposition for you," said Lady An.

"Excuse me?"

"We will secure your passage, wherever you wish to go. Though, I presume you intend to go look after your friend."

"You're gonna let me go?"

"You've always been free to leave. What I am offering is to provide you with a well-armed escort. Your own personal expedition, as it were. But I do have one special request."

"Shoot."

"This man we channeled to ... this most interesting man ... the broken one ... Olivier ... on the hillock. I would like you to visit him. He is a high order adept ... like yourself, perhaps. He's not safe where he is, despite his ingenuity. I would like to bring him here to Tiamat. For safekeeping."

"And Karla?"

"Her too, of course. Why not? They're both roughly in the same sector."

"Let's go, then. I don't want to dilly dally. I've got business back home, and who knows when I'll be dragged back."

"I have to warn you. Any excursion is risky, but this one is riskier than most. Your presence has already attracted attention, so any party leaving Tiamat will invite scrutiny. Normally, our patrols go unmolested, but in this case I expect to be harassed. So we will need to do something about that pink complexion of yours or we'll get nowhere. Taro!"

Taro, who had apparently been waiting just outside the chamber, ducked his head inside.

"Assemble some volunteers. Something larger than a regular patrol. We're going on a little hunt."

***

Taro bustled off into the catacombs.

"Come," said Lady An. "Let's turn you gray."

She led me across the courtyard to another well-lighted chamber, this one loud with chatter and busy with infidels. Its interior was cavernous and boomy, the floor cluttered with urns and bowls and bins. They brimmed with every hue and texture of powder and grit to be found in the Deeps. The ubiquitous fine, taupe sand. Dusts as yellow as pure sulfur. Pellets of carbon blacker than coal.

People sat together on the floor, working at low tables, shaping lumps of clay that needed no water to bind it, no kiln to cure it. They took pinches of dust, and with a twist and flourish of their fingers, bound the dust to itself, softening and congealing it to the consistency of wax, creating a stone-like ceramic in any shape desired, that they could re-soften and re-harden at will. Their spell craft made all matter and energy malleable and transmutable.

They produced mostly weapons, it seemed—lances and staffs, scepters and clubs. In an existence where no one ever ate or drank, there was little need for much else, apparently—no cooking implements, bottles or storage vessels.

But then Lady An led me to a corner where a couple folks were cutting strips from flat and flaccid sheets of what looked like homemade pasta. She went up and whispered to a woman who had beads in her hair from roots to tips. The woman nodded. She fetched a small bowl of gray powder from a cubby in the corner.

Lady An patted a slab of stone the size of a couch. "Lay down on this block, please. Imelda's going to cover up some of your pink."

"Makeup?"

"In a sense. Though this will be a little more permanent."

I stretched out on this slab of stone. The woman offered me a ceramic neck prop to support my head.

"Thanks!" I said. It felt surprisingly comfortable, lying like that.

The woman leaned over me, beads dangling and clattering and she smiled. "I am Imelda." Her face was decorated like an Etruscan urn, with raised patterns of chocolate brown paisleys and twining helices, like scars covering her cheeks and brow.

Imelda pressed her hands into a bowl of fine dust the consistency and color of the ash left over from charcoal briquettes. Lifting her hands free, they came away with filigrees of dust clinging to her fingers like iron filings to a magnet. She passed her hands over me and the dust leaped onto my skin, spreading thinly, insinuating itself into my pore.

She repeated the process at least a dozen times, going over my face, my torso, my limbs. When she was done, she held up a dented mirror for me to see.

I was gray like everybody else.

"Now you're pretty like us," said Lady An, smirking.

"Don't worry, darling," said Imelda. "You are still pink underneath. The dust is only fused to your skin. It will wear off with time. Though, not too quickly, I hope. But from a distance ... or even up close ... you will look like one of us."

"We did this for a Hashmal once," said Lady An.

"You had a Hashmal ... here?"

"For the briefest time. It was a bit tragic. He was such a nice man. He had defected from horde duty. Sadly, he was hunted down. Taken from above, by the Seraphim, we suspect. The powers-that-be have no tolerance for swapped allegiances." Lady An sighed. "Might as well get your armor done while we're at it." She motioned over one of the folks cutting those sheets of pasta-like clay. "What's more important to you James, mobility or protection?"

"Umm. Both, I guess."

"Then we'll compromise. Give him a few large plates but keep his joints flexible."

Imelda brought over a tray heaped with something that looked like freshly made gnocchi. She scooped up a handful, breathed onto them and sang a brief verse. They sprang to life like leeches and swarmed about in her hand.

"Now this may tickle a bit." She smeared them against my torso and they organized themselves in neat ranks, overlapping and alternating like scales before solidifying against the contours of my flesh.

The larger slabs were not quite as animated. They just sort of drooped and melted over me. Once they hardened, Imelda rapped them with her knuckles.

"These will protect your more vulnerable points. You don't want be beheaded or cleaved in two."

"I ... uh ... agree."

Imelda tucked her chin and glowered at me as her beads clattered together.

"This is a serious business," she said. "Lose your head or too much of your corpus and you've lost your anchor. Your soul will be cast adrift."

"So ... uh ... where do they go?"

"No one knows for sure," said Lady An, looking on with something between boredom and amusement. "To the Horus, I suppose."

"There's one way to find out," said Imelda. She tossed me a pair of boots with a wrap of ceramic mesh to protect my ankles and shins.

"No helmet?"

"Pfft!" said Imelda. "It's not like you have a brain in there worth protecting."

"Hey!"

"I'm not mocking your intelligence, son. In this existence, any smarts you have are hard-wired into your soul. It's not about the sweet breads anymore."

Brian ducked his head in, winked at me and ducked back out.

Imelda carried the empty tray back to the work bench. "We are finished."

I had scales and plates along my neck, above my hips and lower back and behind my knees, but my chest and abdomen remained fully exposed. Lady An smirked when she saw me patting my ribs.

"Don't worry about your so-called vitals, because you don't have any. You have no real heart, no blood. There's nothing happening inside you that you can't do without. This isn't life. All that matters here is that you retain a critical mass for your anchor and we preserve your mobility. Everything else is just for looks."

"What about his weapon?" said Imelda. "Does he have a preference?"

"That's okay. I don't really need one," I said. "I've got this." I held out the rolled up note from Luther, which was looking quite crinkled these days.

Imelda sneered. "That? But that's not ... you can't expect to ... not with that."

She looked to Lady An.

"Remember, the boy's an adept. For some adepts, fingertips, thoughts are enough."

"Alright, then," said Imelda. "I suppose he's ready."

"Taro? That you lurking in the corridor?"

Brian stepped in, grinning. "Just me, ma'am. Taro's up top getting the raid organized."

"Raid? Who said anything about a raid? How many volunteers were you able to muster?"

"Um ... about forty-five. Not counting me and Taro."

Lady An's eyes popped. "Almost fifty souls? That's a bloody army!"

"What can I say?" said Brian. "Folks been cooped up too long. Itching to get out and about."

"I appreciate the enthusiasm, but we need to pare things down. We'll take fifteen ... at the most. Enough to keep the Protectors at bay, but not overly concern the Hashmallim."

"You know," I said. "I can do this on my own."

Lady An made a sour face at me. "You have absolutely no idea what's out there, do you?"

"Guys with clubs, from the looks of it."

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Brian ... on second thought. Don't turn away any volunteers. Let's divide them into three groups. Choose your best fighters for the main escort. Keep the rest in reserve, split between the dunes and the skirmish line. It might be nice to have backup if the Seraphim discover the prize we're hiding."

***

We joined the main escort already waiting with Taro at the skirmish line, a hundred yards out from the outermost excavations of Tiamat. They were assembled in a circle, as usual, synchronizing their songs.

I hadn't expected Lady An to accompany us, but I welcomed her presence. It was like having a mom along. A tough one.

In total, nineteen souls set out for the dunes. A second group waited back at the catacombs, ready to tail us into the dunes once we had crossed the plateau. The third group would augment the thin line of skirmishers already on duty in case we were pursued back to Tiamat.

All of this careful strategizing made me leery of what lay ahead. It couldn't be that bad. Nothing worse, surely, than the mutant Reapers we had tangled with in the Liminality. But clearly, Lady An was prepared for war.

It took no time at all to descend Tiamat's perforated central mountain, but it seemed to take forever to cross the plateau. Though Tiamat receded steadily behind us, the rim and its dune fields were always a little farther ahead.

My brief taste of the Singularity had spoiled me. After traversing entire landscapes in a blink, travel on foot was such a drudge. We flesh-bound souls were like slugs traversing a garden.

When we finally reached the rim of the plateau, we stopped to reconnoiter before descending through the dunes. The horde from which Taro and Brian had rescued me had moved on, visible as a streak of dust on the distant plain. But the vanguard of a second, shorter column was just now passing through the defile.

These stragglers, ironically, were in a better position to reach the Horus because since I had last seen it, the great dust storm had slashed across the landscape to a point beyond the next plateau. In fact the original group appeared to be curving back towards the valley in futile pursuit of the capricious storm.

"Seems so pointless," said Lady An. "They're almost better off settling down and waiting for the Horus to come to them. Because it will. It always does."

"Maybe they're not chasing," I said. "Maybe they're running away."

Lady An sighed. "That's an interesting way of looking at it. But we know better."

If my mental map from the Singularity was accurate, Karla wasn't in either horde. She marched with a third column farther on, not visible from where we stood. My 'four o'clock' mnemonic meant nothing now that the Horus had shifted. In any case, it was fairly certain we would have to cross the valley to reach her.

Lady An was already plunging over the rim and into the dune fields heaped up along the valley wall. Of course, she had a different goal in mind and seemed pretty certain how attain it. So far, our interests seemed to converge, but I suspected things would get interesting once they didn't.

We snaked down through the dunes in a loose gaggle, flowing like water down the bottom of every wrinkle, following the path that gravity would have chosen for us, the path of least resistance.

Everyone but me was armed with a long staff or a short scepter. Every weapon was made of that fused dust, apart from one man's club-like scepter that looked suspiciously like a real human femur.

With the last rank of dunes between us and the shuffling horde, Lady An waved her hand and drew us all together in a huddle.

"We need to cross this valley quick as cats. I don't believe this gang is large enough to have an escort of Hashmallim, but I may be wrong. Do not engage anyone. We're only passing through. Understood?"

People nodded and muttered.

She looked us over. "Everyone ready?"

No one responded in the negative so she took that as a yes. Without another word, she darted up and over a crease between two dunes. The group responded without hesitation.

And suddenly, there they were, at the base of a sandy slope—the second horde—a sparse and sorry lot compared to the first group. We dashed into the mob just behind the leaders. Even their best were a weathered and beaten bunch. People stopped and drew back when they saw us coming, variously cringing, gaping, smiling, glaring. Some couldn't even bear to look at us.

The ranks parted as we approached and we made for the gap.

But Lady An was wrong. A Hashmal and her squad of Protectors came hauling ass from the front of the mob to intercept us.

"Keep running!" said Lady An. "Do not engage them till we reach the high ground."

We dodged through the marchers, bowling over whoever got in our way.

"Cheeky buggers," said one of the women volunteers, running beside me. "Look at them, how they come at us all righteous."

"Rookies," said a man with deep set eyes. "They train their new folk on the little mobs."

I tossed a glance over my shoulder. The Protectors in pursuit were a motley group of males, mostly naked though some wore kilts and loin cloths. I don't know how they got their hands on cloth in such a place, but maybe it was provided by Hashmallim.

Their lone Hashmal was a lithe and nimble woman fully clothed in leggings and a long smock. She carried a long bow much too large for her petite form. I couldn't see how someone so slight could even draw its string. The slanting quiver on her back was stuffed with arrows large enough to take down a moose.

None of her mob carried such a weapon. They bore crude clubs and slings. No guns. No blades. Primitive. Like a bunch of stone age tribesmen. If the powers-that-be were truly powerful wouldn't they have better equipped their faithful agents?

But my escort had not much to brag about either when it came to armaments, which basically consisted of a bunch of sticks, long and short, not to mention the rolled up note from Luther. Spell craft, of course, could potentially make anything, even a finger as potent as a Glock. I could only presume that there was more to these sticks than met the eye.

None of the rank and file marchers challenged our traverse. As far as I could tell, everyone made it unscathed to the far fringes of the procession. Here, the land slanted up towards the opposite wall of the valley, which was quite a contrast the sister slope that we had just descended.

Here, we faced no dunes but bare stone, as if every mote of dust and grain of sand had been gathered up and piled deep and high on the opposite side of the valley.

Projectiles came whistling through the air—stones the size of a child's fist. Most flew over our heads but smacked into a volunteer's armor square and sent shards shattering.

"Take cover!" someone shouted.

The exposed bedrock of the valley wall had shattered and collapsed in some ancient calamity. Rock falls had carved chutes which seemed to have been eroded by flowing water at some point, there was no trace of it now, and no chance it could exist very long as a liquid. This place was drier and colder than Mars had ever been.

Most of the volunteers and swarmed to the nearest defile whose narrowness caused them to bunch up at its entry. Panicked and impatient, I rushed to another crevice further along the heaps of slabs and ledges that had broken off the headwall.

A huge arrow whistled past my ear and cracked into the cliff face barely a foot in front of me. The shaft, as long as my arm, splintered and dropped at my feet.

"Did you see that? She targeted you," said the man with the deep set eyes, coming up behind me. "She knows."

"Knows what?" I said, as I inserted myself into the crevice that slanted up the valley wall. I kept low, behind a fin of stone, to avoid the impressively relentless barrage of stones that the Protectors kept flinging our way.

"She knows you're special. She didn't go after Lady An. She targeted you."

"But how?" I said, ducking the stones that kept flying our way. "I'm gray. Like you."

"Their eyes," said a woman coming up behind us. "The Hashmallim can see through your cover. You might as well have stayed pink."

"The Protectors can't do the same, though. And there's tons more of them to worry about."

The gully narrowed and steepened as we rose out of range. Several of the volunteers kept our harassers at bay with modest spells ejected from their scepters. These were not the diverse and powerful blasts I had seen Urszula summon in the Liminality, but little burps of energy, barely visible and hardly enough to stagger a man.

Lady An waited atop the plateau, adding us to her head count as we joined her.

"James. Francesco. Beth makes nineteen. You three are the last but certainly not the least. Now, we took quite the pounding there. Was anyone hit?"

"Aye!" said a man, raising his hand. Brian strode over and examined the shattered scales on his hip.

"Your flesh looks fine. Let's replenish your armor."

He reached into a sack and handed over a fistful of dormant scales. The man sang them to life and pressed them against his torso. They clung and slithered into place, inserting themselves into the gaps before setting firm.

"Beth took a nasty hit as well," said Francesco, the man with the deep set eyes who had accompanied me up the valley wall.

"Just a flesh wound," said Beth. "Took out a divot. Nothing that can't be patched."

The wound looked awful. A chunk of skin had been torn right off. And yet the wound was dry and bloodless. I wondered if I too was like that inside. I imagined so, only because I had yet to feel my heart beat. And I had no hunger, no thirst, no biological needs whatsoever. And come to think of it, I had yet to see anyone take a bite of food in the Deeps, not that there would be anything to eat or drink in a place like this, anyhow.

"Can't afford to linger," said Lady An. "This Hashmal will be flashing news of our patrol to every corner of the Deeps."

She broke into the effortless and graceful stride of a seasoned marathoner. In a blink every volunteer ran after her, leaving me flatfooted. I had to sprint to catch up. And I kept on sprinting until I had caught up to Lady An, who had Brian and Taro at her heels like a pair of loyal dogs.

"That woman who got hit. Beth. She said that this Hashmal knew I was different. That she could see through the gray."

"Nonsense," said Lady An. "I though Imelda did an excellent job. Don't you?"

"But Beth said that these Hashmals ... they have eyes for this sort of thing. They can see right through—"

"If that were true, then why would we have bothered to disguise you? Believe me, they see no better or worse than me or you. Our people wrap them in this aura of invincibility that bears no relation to reality. Apart from their pinkness, they're just ordinary souls. Reasonably skilled but far from adept. I wish I could put a stop to this kind of thinking but it's too ingrained from everyone's time in the hordes. The Seraphim coach their servants to cultivate these impressions through trickery. It breeds fear and respect among the sheep."

"But she shot an arrow at me. At me! Only at me."

"Coincidence," said Lady An. "I guarantee there is no way she could have known who you were."

I wasn't convinced, but Lady An exuded such self-assurance, who was I to argue.

We entered an area of gently rolling terrain of mounds and dimples with deep soils, but no actual dunes. I dropped back and jogged alongside Brian and Taro. Like loyal dogs, they kept close to Lady An's heels.

"Are you guys like her lieutenants ... or bodyguards?"

"Gofers, more like it," said Taro. "She likes to keep us close."

"She don't need us to protect her," said Brian. "That's for damned sure."

"I kind of wish she stayed back at the ville," said Taro, lowering his voice. "Would have been nice be in charge of something for a change."

"Lady An's a bit of a micro-manager," said Taro. "In case you haven't noticed."

"That's why me and Taro like to do our own patrols," said Brian. "Sometimes a man just needs to get away, if you know what I mean."

Lady An pulled up abruptly at the edge of a deep gash in the land, where all of the loose soil and stone seemed to have been sucked away. The terrain beyond was gashed and gouged every which way as if by a hundred bulldozers driven by chimps.

Occasional islands of debris remained here and there between the mishmash of intersecting tracks. And in the center of the area of greatest chaos stood an island of utter calm, an untouched hillock with smooth contours and a gently rounded summit.

A ripple of remembrance wobbled through me.

"I ... I know this place."
Chapter 37: Olivier

The hillock rose steeply from the scarred plateau. The heap of sand had steep slopes scalloped by wind. Lanes as wide as air strips, scrubbed clean to bare stone, intersected at its base, separated by the remnant fins and ribs of soil and rubble. The mesh-work of tracks formed a pattern of pentagrams and hexagons that seemed intensely familiar to me, as if I had come here many times before.

I don't know why I was so startled to see this landscape again. We were headed here, after all. Lady An and I had seen it together via Old Ned's channel into the Singularity and she had made it her principal destination. Finding Karla was secondary as far as she was concerned. I had no excuse to be standing there all befuddled and tongue-tied.

"I was here ... we were here ... we came here. This is where we saw that guy."

"Yes. Of course," said Lady An. "And there he sits, atop that hillock."

"Where?" said Brian. "I don't see nobody. Ain't nothing there but a pile of sand."

Lady An gave him a lopsided frown. "Look closely again at that summit. Notice something a little off?"

"Not really," said Brian.

"Looks ... a little hazy," said Taro.

"Bravo Taro! What we're seeing at is a mirage. A ruse. Look at all these tracks, the way they crisscross around the hill. Do you think it is chance alone that the Horus keeps returning here only to avoid that one spot? It's been toying with him. Or perhaps ... it fears him."

"You make it sound like that thing's intelligent," I said.

This time she shared her impatient look with me.

"Smarter than us, at any rate. At least it wants to be here."

She clambered down the bank onto one of the scoured tracks.

"Hah! He must see us coming. His veil grows thicker."

The misty translucence that had topped the hillock now appeared completely solid and opaque.

"On guard, everyone. Keep the formation loose. This man could well be dangerous."

We fanned out at the base of the hillock and started up the slope. Lady An began to sing. The volunteers joined her. Even I couldn't help but hum along.

We climbed to a place where tiny spinning dust devils kicked up in the hollows cut into the slope and danced across the hillside. Lady An paused to watch them. Brian continued to climb, but he reached a point where his foot refused to make contact with the ground. It was repulsed like a magnet turned pole to pole.

"Stop right there, Brian," said Lady An.

I reached and touched the ground with my fingertips and the same thing happened, the sand dimpling inward without me touching it. What appeared to be a solid slop of sand was actually a shell only a few grains thick, suspended in the air.

"Hello!" called Lady An. "Mr. Olivier? We mean you no harm. We've just come to see how you are."

Silence.

"We know you ... we've met ... in the Singularity."

The hillock began to rumble, the vibrations building with a violence that dashed most of our party to the ground, including me and Lady An.

A stentorian voice roared down from the hilltop.

"Flee! Danger! Fuggire! Pericolo! Gefahr! Fliehen! Fuĝi! Danĝero! Flykte! Fare! Fuir! Danger!"

"Oh please! You can dispense with the theatrics," said Lady An. "We are not ... impressed." She picked herself up off the ground. "Will you please show yourself now?"

A wind kicked up, splattering grit against our faces. The tremors persisted. A whirlwind of gargantuan proportions—a miniature Horus—shape atop the hill, flinging us against each other and onto the ground. It spawned a series of smaller dervishes that came spinning down the slope directly at us. One of them grazed a volunteer before she could dodge it, ripping off her scales and shredding the flesh on her leg.

They howled past us and turned like heat-seeking missiles, coming back at us up the slope.

Lady An issued a blast from her scepter that sent a glob of glutinous energy winging into its core. Strands of goo wrapped around the dust devil and smothered it. The spiked and barbed particles comprising it collapsed into a heap.

The volunteers followed Lady An's lead and issued forth their own blasts from their staffs and scepters. Their conjurings were far less impressive than hers, even feeble, but collectively proved effective in taking down the dust devils one by one.

The screaming remnants of the last one refused to die, as if it were possessed by something more potent. It spun through our group. Volunteers dove out of its way. And just when it seemed ready to collapse it made one last gathering of its energy and veered straight for me.

"James!" Brian barreled into me as the dervish flew past. A glancing blow ripped the scales of my arm and carved a dashed line down my forearm. I groaned out of habit, There was no pain. I hit the ground and rolled in the dust, winding up on my knees, staring at that bloodless wound with a mixture of fascination and horror. God how dry my body was inside!

Francesco came over and attended to my rips, pressing pins like doubled fishhooks into my skin. They responded to his whispers, contracting like staples, sealing the gaps tight. A couple of the volunteers had gotten nicked up as well, so he moved along to help them.

Lady An stood her ground and glared up at the wall of sand, whirling like some poor man's version of the Horus.

"Stop this nonsense at once!" she said. She planted her staff firmly and a bubble of calm spread out from it, deflecting the eddies and flurries of dust that kept flinging her way. "We only came to talk!"

The central whirlwind lost its momentum, teetered on its invisible shaft. The sheet of sand shrouding the hilltop collapsed. Dust and grit rained down on us, piling up around our shins, filling our nostrils. We would have choked if our bodies were alive.

The dust cloud contracted and retreated up the slope, leaving behind a lacework fence of human bones—humeri, rib cages, tibia, spines—fastened together with cartilage and sinew. It ringed the hillock. I saw no gate.

Most of the bones were dull and gray, but the occasional cream-colored femur or pelvis stood out among them. Skulls with jaws and without topped many of the longer bones. One in particular caught my eye. It was a pure and brilliant white, standing out even from the beige bones.

There were also appendages in the latticework that did not appear human. They were waxy, tubular and branched. Some retained shreds of a transparent membrane, like the wing of a fly or bee. Did giant insects also inhabit the Deeps? Was that even possible? Was anything impossible in this universe?

Lady An caught me gawking. "Pay it no heed," she said. "I doubt any of it is real. It's all for show. "

She leveled her staff at the stockade and sent a mild pulse that made a large section of it crumble like a dried out sand castle.

"See? This man is a liar and a braggart. I can't wait to meet him."

We passed through billows of dust through the gap in the fence and up the first tier of a multi-tiered patio, one of four arranged like the levels of a step-pyramid. The structure was unfinished. Part of it remained a quarry with blocks partially cut from the underlying bedrock, others stacked and ready for placement.

A blocky-faced man peered down from the edge of the uppermost tier. I took him for a dwarf at first because he was so short, but then I realized he had only stubs for limbs. Both arms and legs had been amputated above his elbows and knees.

Lady An climbed to the penultimate tier and stopped. Only Brian, Taro and I joined her. The other volunteers lingered below, all nervous and anxious.

"Visitors?" said Olivier, in a voice lightly accented and reduced in timbre and volume to more human proportions. "It is not often I get friendly visitors. Assuming ...."

"Is it any wonder?" said Lady An. "The way you welcome people leaves something to be desired."

"I must beg your pardon. Those who come here usually aim to exterminate me. But you ...." He squinted down at us. "I know you, don't I? You come from the settlement across the ravine. We are practically neighbors."

"Tiamat," said Lady An. "Our patrols have passed this direction many times. Why have you have never shown yourself to them?"

"Consider it a favor. Those who associate with me tend to meet their doom. My enemies are legion in this domain. Do you blame me for not wishing to be sociable?"

"But ... we share the same enemy. We too do not pursue the Horus. We have that in common at least."

"On the contrary. I am eager to meet the Horus. Whenever it comes near, I shed my shroud and invite it to come and take me. But it never takes the bait. It always veers away. Curious, don't you think? Almost as if it fears me."

Lady An crumpled her brow. "But why would you want to? Someone like you ... should know better."

"The same reason as most of the souls in those hordes," said Olivier. "Boredom. Fatigue. This place ... this existence ... is tiresome. Change for the sake of change can be attractive ... for better or worse ... no matter how worse."

"Something tells me there is more to your motivations," said Lady An. "You don't strike me as desperate. You're after something."

"And what about you? What do you want? From me? How did you even manage to find me? I must be slipping."

"We've met," said Lady An, striding up a ramp of carefully fitted stone block, with mortar-less seams so tight they would have made an Inca stone mason envious. "Don't you remember?"

"Ah. Of course! You are one of the channelers who visited me from the smudge."

"Smudge?"

"Singularity, if you prefer. It is just a smudge of humanity. A smearing together of souls."

"That's not a very kind way to put it."

"There was another with you ... in the smudge. A young man."

"That was me," I said, stepping around Brian. "I ... uh ... I've got something for you. I held out Luther's note, badly crumpled and frayed at the edges.

Olivier reacted as if I had leveled a bazooka at him. He flung himself back on his stubs, out of view.

"But it's just a note!"

The scary voice returned. "Be advised. Any act of aggression will be met with deadly force!"

"It's ... just a note."

Olivier peered over the cornice that skirted the uppermost platform, his eyes wide.

"I don't care. You put that thing down! Don't you dare point it at me or I'll flay every shred of skin off your—"

"Now, now, Mr. Olivier. You are clearly over-reacting," said Lady An.

I brought the note down to my side and held it in both hands.

"A note, did you say?"

I nodded. "From a friend of yours ... in the Liminality."

"A ... friend?" He said the word as if it were something preposterous, like a pink platypus.

He gestured with one stub of an arm. I think he was attempting a wave. "Come forward!" he said.

I took a step towards the next tier, a wall of huge rectangular blocks that topped out a good meter over my head.

"Close enough! Stop! Now put it down on the ground."

I laid the note down at my feet. A tiny whirl of dust came spinning down from the platform, capturing the note in its vortex, carrying it upward. The ribbon pulled loose. The note unfurled and hovered, inches before Olivier's blocky face.

"Who sends this?" He crinkled his brow. "Luther? I don't know any Luthers."

"He said he knew you before you came here ... in the Liminality ... in Root. His real name is Arthur. Arthur Knebel."

"Arthur?" Olivier's face filled with knowing. "Oh Lord. Is he still there? I do know him. Knew him. But ... friend? Rival, maybe. Annoyance, for sure." His gaze lifted to the sky where a pair of bright specks glided high above the plateau. "I remember now. Luther was the young doctor Arthur was so infatuated with ... in life. Is he dead?"

"No. The real Luther is still alive. So is Mr. Knebel. He modeled his new self after the real Luther. He even took his name."

Olivier frowned. "Ah ... the flesh-weaving. I see. How pathetic. He was just getting into that business when I left on my little adventure." Untouched, the note crumpled and dropped to the ground.

"So ... uh ... what did he write?" I asked.

"You mean you haven't already read it?"

"Can't say I wasn't tempted. I figured it was private."

Olivier blinked at me as if he was puzzled by my restraint or incuriosity

"He wrote for me an apology. But it is not accepted. If you ever see him again, you can tell him so."

"Apology for what?"

Olivier shrugged. "It doesn't matter anymore. I am here and he is there. But ... what is this nonsense about a new village on the surface?"

"It's true."

"There is no surface. Not there. Root is Root. The transition between here and life. The smudge spans all, but there is nothing in between."

"But there really is another place," I said. "Up top. With ponds and rivers, mountains and canyons. Trees. Flowers. And wildlife—of a sort."

"That's not possible."

"It is. I've been there. That's ... where I come from."

"Scheisse!" said Olivier.

Lady An put her hand on my shoulder. "Ask him to come with us," she whispered.

"What does the woman want?" said Olivier, scrunching up one eye.

"She wants you to join us," I said.

"Please," said Lady An. "Your presence here is not sustainable. We can offer you refuge."

"Unsustainable? Says who? I have outlasted all who have challenged me. Did you not see their bones?"

Lady An smirked. "Yes. You are very brave and very potent indeed. But they have eternity on their side. They will wear you down. They already have, somewhat. There is less of you than there was, isn't there?"

"I have no need for your charity. In my present condition I am no threat to their interests. They may no longer fear me. But I have their respect. As long as my soul has an anchor, they cannot harm me."

"But you're just another adept. They've taken adepts down before with little trouble."

"I am still here, aren't I? I have taken all they could throw at me and here I still stand."

"Not quite as tall, I must say," said Lady An. "We could provide you with a secure chamber. You need not integrate yourself into our community ... only if you want to. But your soul ... it's far too valuable to waste."

"Refuge? You want to lock me away like some relic. Not a chance. I'm not going to sit in some cave. What do you have to offer that I can't have here?"

"Community," said Lady An. "A chance to be with other souls ... other adepts. With no obligations. Occasional counsel at your discretion. That's all we ask. You're far too valuable to be left out here on your own."

"I'm better off alone ... and you ... without me," said Olivier, lowering his gaze "I once had my own community here. A band of disciples. My ... skills ... made them targets of the Hashmallim. They were guilty by association. One by one, my people were eliminated, until ... there was only me. So don't waste my time. The best thing for us all is for you to leave right now. Look ... you are already attracting scavengers. Damned hyenas!" He gazed out over the scarred plateau.

A band of warriors had appeared on the rim of the valley wall from the direction we had come. The Protectors who had harried us appeared to have been augmented by another larger group. High overhead, another bright speck had joined the two that had been circling.

"Scheisse! And now you've attracted the vultures as well."

I squinted up at the specks in the pinkish glow above. "What are those?"

"Seraphim!" said Lady An. "Everyone! Disperse across the structure! Tactical positions ... now!"
Chapter 38: Marked

An augmented force of several dozen Protectors and at least two Hashmallim advanced on the hillock, following the exact route we had traced out of the valley. They carried lances of bone and sinew, clubs blunt and spiked, long slings with stones at the ready, loping loosely like eager jackals, confident they could take us, despite their primitive weapons. They outnumbered us two to one. Only spell craft gave us the edge.

Though most of our volunteers had limited skills compared to someone like Urszula, they could strike from a distance with enough force to knock a man down. Working in concert, they might inflict some real damage.

I had yet to see any Hashmallim employ spell craft and I wondered why? Were they simply incapable? Or were they prevented by some sort of edict from the Powers-that-be? Some taboo?

Maybe they held their skills in reserve to show discipline and restraint, or as a trump card, getting foes to underestimate them and then unleashing their magic when it was least expected for maximum effect. Hard to believe the Powers-that-be would send incompetent overseers to police the Deeps.

Perched at the edge of his platform, Olivier propped himself up on his stubs and studied the approaching force like a chess master contemplating a tricky sequence. As we watched, they had split into two groups. Even I could see they aimed to flank or surround us, to divide or disperse our defenses.

"Their numbers worry me," said Lady An. "Even if we prevail there will be casualties. I suggest we retreat. If we leave now, we can stay well ahead of them."

"Go, if you want," said Olivier. "I don't need you here."

"We'll take you with us," she said. "I doubt they'll pursue us very far and leave their flock unattended, We can then circle back to Tiamat or ... bring you back here ... you wish."

"I am not going anywhere," said Olivier. "These fools don't worry me."

"I'm not only worried about them," she said, eyes tracking the bright specks circling like stratospheric gulls high above the hillock.

"It appears the Horus has taken a turn," said Olivier. "Perhaps you are better off sticking around. It is not a good time to be caught out on the flatlands ... for an infidel, at least. Some lucky horde will be delirious with joy, I am sure."

My head swiveled across the other side of the plateau. Olivier's platform partly obscured it, but the knotty, brown columns of the Horus now loomed twice as large and tall as it has before. I could only assume it was twice as near and closing rapidly.

I freaked. "What the fuck? How—?"

"It knows something is up," said Olivier. "I have seen it surge like this before. Sometimes ... just feints. Sometimes moves of aggression. But don't worry, it can't ... won't ... touch us within the bounds of these fortifications. I have some special .... repellency ... you might say."

"That mob will reach us long before that thing gets here," said Lady An. "I suggest we focus our attentions on them."

Olivier's eyes drifted heavenward. "Strange to see three Seraphim together like that." A flicker of worry flashed into his face.

Lady An stared up at the bright dots, which had glided steadily lower since we spotted them.

"You don't expect they'll intervene?" she said.

"Hard to say. How often do they see such a concentration of infidels and adepts out in the open? Who knows how they will react? Usually they come to observe, but ... they may sense an opportunity for mayhem."

Personally, I didn't give a damn about the mob or these angels or whatever they were. That Horus had my full attention. I knew Karla's column was in the crease of land just over the opposite rim of this plateau, and that storm was hurtling straight for it. Before it reached us, that storm would be plowing right through those folks, sucking their souls up like a vacuum cleaner. I could sense chances of a reunion slipping away with every passing moment.

Ghost tears welled in my dry ducts. It had been so long since I'd seen her, I couldn't even put together in my mind how she looked. I had never taken a photo of her, not that it would do me any good in the afterlands.

What I did recall in vivid detail was the feeling of being in her presence. Snippets came back to me with the power of fever dreams, starting with that glorious moment, waking and finding myself in the back seat of a car with her and her sister, speeding along Loch Ness. Her body pressing against mine. Fingers brushing strands of sweaty hair from my eyes.

And then a cascade of remembrances tumbled forth. The first time I laid eyes on her in real life, walking towards me on that Inverness sidewalk. She took me into that sunken park, impossibly green. It felt like a faerie had taken me into her realm. The triumphant moments after she and Isobel rescued me from that bounty hunter in the train station before I knew she was about to leave me.

That would have sent the tears tumbling had there been any moisture in this strange, husk of a body I inhabited. We never had a chance. Never a fair chance to establish anything together, not since we left Root, not since that almost mythical time cuddling in her cushy chamber at my suicidal depths. It was my fault as well as hers, for not insisting that things be different. For trusting her clouded judgment. For listening, believing words over feelings.

I went to the edge of the tier and stared out at the approaching mob, halfway across the plateau now and still carrying themselves with a righteous swagger. I didn't give a fuck about these people or their cause. Enlightened or unenlightened. Believer or infidel. Whether they wanted to chase the Horus, the more power to them. I had no dog in this fight. I just wanted to be left alone.

Lady An had Olivier and the volunteers to help fend these guys off. They didn't need me and my unreliable spell craft. I slyly sidled away from the group. Brian and Taro looked befuddled and nervous. They didn't even notice me move away.

Olivier rocked back and forth on his platform muttering some incantation. It wasn't the way most people I knew conjured spells in the afterlands, but it certainly worked for him. A skirt of dust rose around the upper periphery of the hillock, concealing our positions behind a veil of dust. Unfortunately, it also kept us from seeing the attackers.

Before the dust completely obscured our view, I turned to get a fix on the position of the Horus. Some of the volunteers were moving along the tiers, spreading out to cover the backside of the hillock. I followed, pretending to join them. No one gave me a second look.

As the curtain of dust rose and thickened, I climbed down one tier, right to the very edge of the screen and let it envelop me. I felt guilty already, before I even did the deed. Immersed in dust, I kept climbing until I emerged on the back slopes of the hillock itself.

This wasn't cowardice, I told myself. I wasn't doing this out of fear or disloyalty or anything like that. It was just me looking out for my best interests, taking advantage of a dwindling opportunity.

I passed through the sheath of dust and burst into the clear. I broke into a dead run, aiming straight for the Horus.

***

I sprinted along one of the bare stone tracks, its bedrock gouged as if by glaciers. This Horus had claws that dragged or perhaps an anchor that kept it connected to the ground.

I kept glancing back over my shoulder to watch the curtain of dust rise and thicken all the way to the topmost tier of Olivier's pyramid. He kept his platform thinly screened so he could monitor the plateau. I was pretty sure he had already seen me fleeing. That meant Lady An knew I had left, most likely. What passed for a stomach sank in me just like a real one.

Little wisps formed along the basal fringes of the screen. Olivier was conjuring yet another crop of spike-studded dust devils to harry his attackers.

One of the bright specks above had separated from the others and was swooping low the red-tailed hawks in Fort Pierce used to dive over our yard to check out the neighbor's kitten.

I realized I had left that note with Olivier. I had no sword, not even a stick, nothing to help focus my will. Any conjuring I did was going to have to be unassisted by aids.

Some voices ahead made me pause. They couldn't have been part of the mob of Protectors we had seen from the hillock. They were coming from the wrong direction.

I climbed up onto one of the fins of debris to see who was coming. And then that bright thing, no longer a speck but an object, a weird fluttery assemblage, like some kind of six-winged bug, hovered directly above me, about a hundred feet up, marking my exact location.

"Crap."

Another mob of Protectors, only a handful compared to the other group, approached down a parallel track. They spotted me immediately, cue no doubt by the Seraph or whatever it was, hovering overhead. A pair of them scurried over the dirt ridge to flank me.

There was no point in evading them. They were between me and where I wanted to go. I held my hands loose at my sides so they could see I carried no weapons.

For their part, they stayed calm and made no attempt to threaten me with their clubs and maces and shit. Just like the other guys, the stuff was fashioned from lengths and shards and chunks of human bone, seemingly glued or fused together.

They almost seemed more concerned about the Seraph hovering above me. All those floppy and fluttering translucent wings made it seem like some mutant butterfly. Gaps revealed the man-shaped form carried within in only the briefest glimpses. A bubble of haze or diffraction seemed to spread around it, as if it carried a bit of his own world embedded into this one.

A tall, wiry man stepped out from the gaggle before me. He carried a huge long bow slung on his back along with a quiver stuffed with extra-long arrows.

He was lighter-skinned than the other Hashmallim I had seen, almost albino, and devoid of all facial hair. It made his face seem boyish, almost feminine, contrasting with his rugged, well-muscled physique.

"Why do you pass here alone? Where is your congregation?"

"Just ahead. Down below the rim. I ... uh ... got separated."

"Preposterous. We come from there. I never saw you before. Who is your Hashmal?"

"I'm new here."

"You are not an infidel?"

"No," I said. "Duh. I'm heading for the Horus, aren't I?"

"But you were with them ... the infidels?"

"They found me. Tried to convert me. But I escaped."

"Then why does this Seraph want you marked?"

"I don't know. Why don't you ask him. Or her. Whatever it is."

That prompted a nervous glance up at the fluttery creature watching over us.

The Hashmal looked confused. "You have ... the mana."

"The what?"

He reached over and smeared his thumb against my cheek. It came away coated in gray dust. "Why have you not Ascended?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Our home. Nidus. The domain of Lar."

"Listen, man. I got no clue what you're trying to tell me."

"Who are you?"

"I'm James." And I strode ahead, right up alongside him and kept on walking by.

I stepped right through his little gang of gray-faced folk. They parted readily. No one attempted to stop me.

A screech not unlike a hawk's emanated from that tangle of wings overhead. Shouts from the base of the hillock indicated that the battle had been joined. Olivier's dust devils spun through the mob as they charged the hillock.

"Stay," said the Hashmal.

"Can't," I said. "I've got places to go, people to meet."

"I said, stay!"

"I told you. I can't." I kept on walking, climbing back down into the wide lane of grooved bedrock. It was easier walking there than on the loose dirt. Almost like a sidewalk. A very wide one.

The butterfly man—I couldn't bring myself to think of it as an angel just yet—shrieked in an unearthly pitch, almost beyond hearing.

I was only a dozen paces away when one of the Protectors wound up and threw his club at me. It tumbled end over end. I saw it come with an uncanny clarity, as if I were able to slow everything down. It was big and blocky, like the hammer of Thor, but forged of stone and bone.

I reacted instinctively and defensively, throwing up my hands to ward it off. Some force loosely connected to my core broke free as effortlessly as sneezing. It struck the hammer in mid-flight and shattered it. Fragments rained down, marking a line on the bedrock in the direction I fled.

I sprinted away, heading for a moraine wall that would put some cover between me and the little gang. I had almost reached it when the Seraph shrieked again.

I turned to look over my shoulder barely in time to spot something linear flexing through the air, a living sin wave, a flying snake

Before I even had time to flinch, the arrow pierced my back, slipping through my flesh and bone like a stick through a rotten pumpkin. The point emerged just to the left of my sternum.

The Hashmal lingered just long enough to make sure I had been hit and then continued onward with his crew to Olivier's hill, where myriad pops and shouts and explosions indicated that a full-fledged battle was underway.

I stared down at the sharp point studding my chest. Not a drop of blood beaded around the arrowhead, which was the most elegant weapon I had ever seen, every facet fluted and converging to a translucent razor's edge. It was carved from a waxy stone much different from the chalky stuff that seemed to make up much of the Deeps. It was the kind of thing I would have been thrilled to find in one of those caches you find in Florida near old Seminole encampments.

Too bad I couldn't hang around to admire it. My consciousness blinked out as swiftly as a thumb and forefinger pinching a candle wick.
Chapter 39: Meg

I thought I was a goner, committed to some other even lower realm I had yet to experience and would have to learn about the hard way. I never expected to return to life. But return, I did, to that press box on the Dartmouth campus, screaming with all the volume I could muster.

Because the pain was twelve on a scale of one to ten. Searing through my heart and ribs and back. And I was hot. Stifling hot. Which only made it worse.

Ellen pounced on top of me and covered my mouth.

"Quiet! You're gonna give us away," she whispered.

"I'm not dead?"

"No, you're not. You were just sleeping ... as usual. You must have had a bad dream."

"Not a dream," I muttered. I felt my chest. There was no arrowhead. No blood. But there was pain. A bit less now. But still plenty. All that one would expect for being impaled by an arrow. I pulled up my shirt.

"It wasn't a dream," I said. "Where's a flashlight? I need to check something."

"Can't. No lights," said Ellen. "There's some guy prowling around the opposite stands. And it's like four in the morning. Urszula went down to check it out. Jeez guy, you were snoozing away half the night. We needed you here. And as usual, we couldn't wake you."

"Couldn't help it. It just came and took me. There was nothing I could do."

I felt around with my fingers and found a hard, cross-shaped lump on my skin just to the left of my sternum. "There!" I took Ellen's hand and placed it there. "Feel that?"

I sure felt it. The pain was much less now, but it was still tender. Call it a five.

"It's ... like a scar. So?"

"Feel my back. Directly across."

She ran her hand under my shirt. Her chilly fingers felt so nice and soothing. My skin still burned. It was stuffy in this press box. Like being trapped in a room that was on fire. Of course, Ellen was all bundled up in her fleece.

"Yeah. There's one there too. What about it?"

"I didn't have these yesterday. I just got impaled by an arrow."

"Well. What can I say? You heal pretty quick."

"No. What it means is ... my injuries are spanning existences. How? And what does it mean? Can I not go back? Am I dead there? Am I stuck here now?"

"Stuck? You call being here stuck? This is your life, James. That other place. That's not ... it's not where you're meant to be right now."

"The hell it isn't. Ellen. I need to be there. I'm this so close to finding Karla."

"Well maybe ... like I said ... maybe that ... it wasn't meant to be."

"What the fuck? Fuck you! I'm this close! This close to finding her." I held up my thumb and forefinger so they were almost touching.

Ellen withdrew her hands and let my shirt flop down. She retreated into the darkest corner of the press box. She fell silent.

"Listen. I'm sorry. I lost my cool. I just ... I was in the middle of something. And I'm running out of time. I wasn't ready to come back just yet."

"But we need you here," said Ellen, her voice cracking a bit. "We need you here, too. Don't you understand? We're in trouble, James. Remember Wendell? Hello? He's coming after us. Urszula's been all wonderful ... and brave ... but we need your help, James, if we're gonna have any chance against this man."

I sighed and tilted my head back till it thunked against the wall. "Okay, well. You got me. I'm here. Right now. Whether I wanna be or not."

Sobs rippled out of the darkness. Why was she crying? I reached for Ellen but touched only air. It hurt to stretch, so I withdrew and hugged my arms tight to myself. The pain had eased a bit more. It didn't seem so unbearably warm in the room now. But those scars on my chest and back still throbbed.

The sky was looking pale. Only the brightest stars now showed through the broken clouds. Sunrise was approaching.

A foot skidded on the concrete steps out on the bleachers. Ellen scrambled to her feet. Slid one of the guns off a table.

Whoever was outside the press box rapped an intricate syncopated beat on the door.

"That's Urszula!" said Ellen. She hopped to her feet and rushed to the door, unlocking it.

Urszula slunk in and closed the door quietly behind her.

"So?" said Ellen.

"He was nobody. Just a man from the dart mouth. He is just checking the property."

"Dartmouth security?"

"Yes. Like I said. Dart. Mouth." She leaned over me and squinted in the weak light reflecting from a street lamp. She nudged me with her foot. "He is back?"

"Yeah. Sleepy head just woke up."

"I wasn't sleeping."

"You always say that. Could have fooled me, the way you were snoring."

"We have breakfast now?" said Urszula.

"Sure," said Ellen. "I've got granola bars. Fruit. What would you like?"

"Meat. I would prefer some meat."

"Well, we've got jerky and pepperoni. I was kind of saving them for lunch but—."

"Give me." Urszula grabbed a bag of jerky from Ellen and ripped it open with her teeth. "You stay a while, James. Yes?"

"We'll see," I said.

"You stay," said Urszula, sternly.

***

I stayed, reluctantly, all through sunrise and beyond. We were all kind of grumpy but I was by far the grumpiest of the bunch despite being the only one of us who had gotten any significant sleep. Supposedly. I didn't feel that rested.

But I really, really didn't want to be here. I knew that time was warped and a few minutes here were like an hour on the other side. I could only think of that Horus moving closer and closer to Karla. It was like watching a truck bearing down on a pedestrian and being powerless to stop it. The strain was unbearable.

"There is a carriage coming," said Urszula, keeping watch from one of the tall chairs, while Ellen and I slumped across from each other on the floor.

"You mean a car?" said Ellen.

Urszula grabbed her stick. "Not the big one, the one that the Frelsian rides. But this one ... it is suspicious."

"Suspicious? Why?" I rose to my feet and saw immediately what she meant. The car pulling into the lot was far from ordinary. It was some kind of Italian sports car. A Lamborghini or Maserati or something. I could never tell those things apart.

It parked close to the stands in a handicapped spot. A gull-winged door flew up and a blonde girl stepped out. Not just any blonde girl. Wendell's girlfriend. Meg.

"Oh crap, this is it," I said. "The shit is coming down." I scrambled to retrieve my sword from its case.

"Is it just the girl?" said Ellen. "Is she alone?"

"Looks that way. But it might be a diversion. Or ... could be she's the assassin. I wouldn't put it past him to have trained her up in the craft."

Urszula opened the door and slipped out. "Lock it behind me," she said.

"But ...."

"Lock it. I will take her down by myself."

"No way. I'm coming with you," I said.

"Jeez guys," said Ellen. "Remember, I'm the one with the guns."

"We don't need any guns," I said, as I stepped out onto the bleachers. "Lock the door, like Urszula says. Stay here. Stay safe."

To reach the press box, assuming she knew where to find us, Meg was going to have to pass under the bleachers through a kind of a tunnel leading to the field. Urszula and I took positions on the stairs to either side of the opening.

We waited but she didn't come. She should have passed through already. A whistle sounded beneath the bleachers.

"Yoo hoo! You guys here?"

Urszula and I looked at each other. Speaking out would reveal our little ambush. So we kept mum. Hard soles clattered on concrete. She was passing through. The moment she turned the corner onto the stairs, Urszula slammed into her hard and knocked her down. Her purse went flying. She bashed her nose against a railing and collapsed against onto the steps.

I stood over, straddling her, the point of my sword nicking her throat.

"Where's Wendell?"

"He ... he ... sent me."

"Why you, not him?"

"Well. He figured you guys would be immediately hostile if he showed up. I guess he was right." A runnel of blood gushed from her nostrils. "Oh crap! I think I ... I think I broke my nose."

"He sent you? To kill us?"

"Heck no. He wants to give you guys another chance. He likes you, James. He really, really wants you to work for him."

I sighed. "This guy can't take a hint ... can he?"

"Yeah, well. I think he's got the message now, loud and clear," said Meg, eyes teary from the pain. "I think this seals the deal. You guys are done for."

"Get up. Walk ahead of us. Up those stairs."

Ellen came trotting down the steps. She suddenly looked aghast.

"Guys! Her purse! It's moving."

The purse, a gaudy little tasseled bag of turquoise and gold silk, bulged and writhed like a sackful of rats. Something bulky and muscular was struggling to squirm free of a rent in the fabric.

Ellen took three quick shots at the bag, missing twice and chipping the concrete. The third shot tore open a corner, and a scaly, spade-headed serpent with eyes far too cunning for a reptile came squirming out. They were Wendell's eyes and I knew then he was watching us through his familiar, this extension of his will.

One of Ellen's shots had nearly severed the snake in two. It struggled to crawl towards us, brandishing enormous fangs oozing with venom.

I raised my sword for the coup de grâce, but Urszula beat me to it. She blasted it with a spell that sent it bursting into flames. It went up like a bunch of briquettes soaked in lighter fluid, far too flammable for anything flesh and blood. It reared up and tried to strike out, expiring with a furious hiss.

"Jesus Christ! Empty your pockets!"

"I don't have anything. Just my keys and my phone."

"Take off your blouse. And your pants."

"What?"

"James. Really?"

"We've gotta make sure she's not carrying anything else with her."

Meg handed over her phone. Ellen reached for it. I lunged and slapped it away before she could touch it.

"Don't touch it! Don't touch anything of hers. It might be contaminated."

Meg stripped down to panties and a bra revealing a nasty tattoo of what looked like a Reaper.

"Now walk ahead of us up to the press box."

Meg smirked. "What are you gonna do with me?"

"We're gonna use you as a hostage ... collateral."

She guffawed.

"Why are you laughing?"

"You think Wendell cares? He'll tell you to go ahead and waste me."

"And why's that?"

"Because ... you'd be doing me a favor. I'm in line to be a Freesoul. In fact ... I can't wait. The sooner the better."

***

We let Meg get dressed before walking her up to the press box and locking ourselves inside. I could hear her phone ringing down on the steps. And right after, my phone rang. I didn't answer. I knew it had to be Wendell. A couple of texts chimed in but I refused to look at them. I didn't want to hear that bastard's voice or read his words ever again.

"So what now?" said Ellen.

"Ball's in his court," I said. "This forces him to come after us in person."

"Not necessarily," said Meg, pronouncing her n's like d's because her nostrils were stuffed with the Kleenex Ellen had given her.

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see," she said, cheerily.

"Shit. That guys a bigger coward than I thought."

"Oh, he's not afraid of you. He's just ... slick. He likes variety. And he's like a cat. He likes to play with his prey."

"What do you mean? What the hell is he gonna do to us?"

"Just wait. You'll see soon enough."

My stomach sank. I didn't have the patience for this shit. I didn't say it out loud, but I so didn't want to hang around here to find out what he had up his sleeve. The feeling was so strong in me that I could feel the power of my will uncoil, and before I could take anything back ... I got my wish.
Chapter 40: Debris

My head spun. I was on the plateau, still impaled by that arrow, feeling a weird mix of relief and guilt for willing myself back. But what else could I do? I couldn't be in two places at once.

Karla needed me now more than the girls. Ellen and Urszula had firepower and hostages enough to give Wendell pause, to delay him. But a gimpy Karla had no chance against the Horus. Particularly since she seemed to be chasing it when she should have been fleeing.

I lay my head down in the dust and luxuriated in the absence of pain. The way the cold sank deep into my bones felt almost cozy now. There was something exciting about its absoluteness, how thoroughly it penetrated. One could get used to the Deeps, comfortably numb no matter what, never thirsty, hungry or tired.

Once the transitional fuzz cleared out of my head and I spotted the Horus looming on the next plateau, anxiety filled the void. My mind flooded with worry and urgency. Mental anguish was one thing a soul could never escape.

I looked around, trying to get my bearings, searching for Olivier's dust-shrouded pyramid. But the hilltop was bare, the fortification razed down to a ragged heap of rubble. Fighters rushed through orphaned swirls of blowing dust, voices raised, some retreating all frantic and desperate, others cocky and triumphant. One side had prevailed, but I couldn't tell who was who.

There were two bright dots high in the sky now, higher than before and soaring even higher, retreating from the scene. Between me and what was left of the hillock a crumpled mass of something pale and floppy was draped over a boulder. A Seraph had fallen. Big things had gone down while I was away.

I tried rolling over on my side, but the shaft of the arrow wedged against a seam in the bedrock. I pushed harder, making it flex. All that torque against my wound should have been excruciating but all I felt was a little pressure, like a dentist's drill under Novocain.

I threw my full weight against it. It bent almost in two and snapped. I picked up the broken end and got to my feet, the splintered stub still sticking out of my back. The tail was fletched with tufts of what looked like human hair, glued together in flat, glassy fins to mimic feathers. The shaft itself was made from slivers of laminated bone.

A group of fighters gathered around the fallen Seraph to gawk at the remains. I hung back, unsure of who they were, until their distinctive scaly armor told me they were infidels not Protectors. I was a bit nervous they might treat me like the deserter I was, but curiosity got the better of me. I came up behind them and did some of my own gawking.

I nudged one of the Seraph's broken wings with my toe. It was a fascinating creature. Four of its wings, fore and aft, were rounded like a butterfly's, with a translucent whitish-green membrane stretched between cells framed by tubular elements as thick as soda straws. The middle wings, long and pointy, were jointed like a gull's.

But then I realized that this collection of wings was not physically part of the Seraph but rather a mechanism fastened via straps and a harness, powered by an elaborate system of coils and springs that amplified the movements of his actual limbs.

The Seraph embedded in the wreckage was just a man. A broken one. He had multiple fractures with bones protruding. His blood spattered the wings and had frozen immediately on contact with the frigid, arid atmosphere.

Real flesh ... and blood. Not a mummified replica of a human like the rest of us souls here, whether pink or gray. This was a real man who had eaten and breathed in these afterlands and had probably felt pain.

Traces of the air bubble that had sustained him still lingered, trapped beneath the membranes of his wings. He cradled some kind of weapon in his broken arms, a cross between a blunderbuss and a broom, its fluted business end ending in a cluster of bristles and tubes. The intricately carved stock had multiple triggers and bulges that seem to be removable canisters.

Stylized newts and salamanders decorated its length. I wondered what they meant. Some personal obsession of its owner or some general symbol of his realm? Heaven or some sub-dominion? Was that where he came from? I could only assume.

My gaze wandered to the hillock where a group of fighters were combing its surface searching for something, the wounded and the dead perhaps. I couldn't help but notice there were more souls here now than the fifteen volunteers who had accompanied us from Tiamat.

One of the gawkers finally noticed me. His eyes bulged at the sight of my wound.

"Oh my God! You've been tagged."

"Yeah, well ... that's putting it mildly."

"The Hashmallim. They have marked you. You're a target now ... for elimination."

I shrugged. "What else is new?"

A woman came over and studied the arrow sprouting from my chest. The wound remained completely dry.

"It's ... lovely," she said.

"It's a beaut alright," I said. "Can you help me get it the fuck out?"

She gripped the feathered shaft protruding from my back and gave it a firm tug. It wouldn't even budge.

Brian strolled over. He was missing an ear and had a deep gouge across his forehead. "I wouldn't bother. The point's probably fused to his breastbone."

"So I'm just supposed to walk around with this thing sticking out of me?"

He sneered and without any warning, he raised his staff in both hands and jabbed the end of it against the flat of the arrowhead, snapping off the point flush to my skin.

"Better?"

"I suppose."

"When we get back to Tiamat, folks there can trim it off, polish it up, make it look pretty."

"Scatter!" Fighters were running off the hillock, shouting.

"What's going on?"

"Run!"

I looked up at the sky. A pair of bright blue pinwheels were hurtling down from the pair of retreating Seraphim, like balls of cold fire. The first slammed down onto the remains of Olivier's fortifications. It hit more with a splash than an explosion, flattening into an irregular disc that seeped into the stone and crumbled the blocks into grit and dust.

The second ball struck the fallen Seraph, causing his flesh to sizzle and bubble, dissolving his wings and weapons into a sludge that set in mid-flow like instant concrete.

The Seraphim that had unleashed these were barely visible now, pinpricks in the sky.

"Cowards," said Brian, picking himself up out of the dust from where he had dived. "Didn't have the balls to do it in range of Olivier's mana."

I nodded towards the Seraph's remains. "So is he the one who—?"

"Sure did. Knocked him right out of the sky. He took a bad hit, though."

"Is he okay?"

"Still kicking ... so to speak. Missing a few more parts, though."

"Dang. I missed quite a show."

"Missed. Weren't you—?"

"Nah. I went back ... to Vermont ... er ... New Hampshire. Just got back a little while ago."

"New Hampshire, really? Fuck, I'm jealous."

"What happened to the Protectors? Was this all Olivier's doing?"

"Mr. Olivier had his hands full with the Seraphs. But it let us kick some ass and then some. Helped to have the cavalry come. Reserves saw what was up and came to help. Good thing."

"James?"

Lady An spotted me and came bustling over. One of her arms hung limp. It wobbled disconcertingly as she walked, flexing in places where there should have been no joints. She leaned into me and gave me a light hug. "I thought you had gone."

"Well ... that was the plan," I admitted.

Those who had evacuated the hillock returned now to gather the remains of the fallen, their bodies ravaged and still, devoid of souls. Seemed unfair, to be forced to undergo a second death. As if one were not enough to endure.

And these victims were not merely dead, they were shredded, ripped open, decapitated and eviscerated. There wasn't much left of them to contain a soul anymore. I guess that was the point.

One body being dragged back, I was shocked to see, was Taro. His head trailed behind as if tethered, attached to his torso by only a twisted strand of skin. The rest of his body had been shattered and torn. Brian stood right next to me, certainly aware, but he never once glanced at his friend.

"He's in another place now," Lady An whispered, patting Brian with her one good arm. "Can't say it's any better, but I'm fairly sure it's different."

One of the corpses was set apart from the rest, propped on a fancy stretcher-like contraption even though the man looked well beyond saving. He was armless, legless, missing everything in fact, from his pelvis on down. All that he had left was a head and a ribcage. The corpse twisted around and looked at me.

"Figures, the deserter would get away without a scratch." It was Olivier.

"Please don't call him that," said Lady An. "He was never bound to us. I'm sure he had his reasons for leaving ... and he's not exactly unscathed."

I couldn't help but gawk with horror at Olivier's injuries. He looked worse off than some of the dead. It hadn't affected his swagger one bit. He shouted orders and insults to some of the volunteers searching the rubble.

Lady An sighed. "Be nice," she said. "They're doing their best."

"What are they looking for?" I whispered.

"His egg, he calls it. He insists we stay until we find it."

"And he ain't coming back to Tiamat with us," said Brian. "He refuses."

"What's he gonna do? Rebuild?"

"No point in that," said Lady An, lowering her voice. "There isn't enough left of him to persist for very long in this realm. His situation is precarious and he realizes it. He wants to meet the Horus. But not without this egg thing of his. So we're honoring his wish. And then we'll then return to Tiamat to lick our wounds. You're welcome to join us."

"No thanks. I need to find Karla ... and quick."

"I figured as much," said Lady An. "Since you're interests seem to have converged, I suggest you accompany Olivier. We'll provide an escort, of course."

Olivier overhearing, turned to me and grinned. "Glad to have the company. As long as you're aware of the risks. Because this is my last hurrah. I want the Horus to take me. I once wished to destroy it, but no longer. I wish to learn what is on the other side." He chuckled. "Look at me. I never thought I would become one of the fools who chase it."

"I don't care about any risks," I said, wrinkling my nose at the oily exudate creeping out of Olivier's skin.

"Fatalism! Now, that's the spirit!"

"What's that stuff all over you?"

Olivier shuddered like a dog shaking its fur and the dark material seeped back in. "What you see is the substance of our souls. The same resides in you, usually compressed and obscured by our flesh. But there is little mooring left of me. Another reason why it is time to move on." A lobe of darkness was already oozing back out of his shoulder.

"Why is it black?"

"No reflection on my character. Simply the nature of all souls. You're all just as black as me inside, I assure you."

A cry rang out. A bunch of volunteers rush over to a debris field strewn with the remains of Olivier's fortifications. A creature was crawling across the rubble, towards us. It looked like a cross between a watermelon and a legless armadillo. It used its scales for locomotion, reaching and scraping its way along the hillside.

Brian leveled his staff at the creature, ready to blast it.

"Put that damned stick away you fool! This is the egg we've been looking for. My precious repository."

"Of ... what?"

"You might call them spells. Liberated fragments of id. Ego. Willpower. Whatever you want to call them. It is an infinite resource, the human will. Endlessly generated and regenerating. When you accumulate enough bits ... you can fit an enormous amount in a very small space ... and when you do, you have something very powerful. How else does one knock a Seraph out of the sky?" He winked and grinned. "Alright Miss An, load it up and I'm ready to go."

Brian and Lady An looked at each other.

"Brian, you're sure you want to do this?"

Brian kicked at the ground. "Yeah. Whatever."

Lady An looked to me. "He's going to need some help carrying the palanquin. Are you ... able? And willing? We can't have you slinking off again, you understand?"

"I didn't ... I mean—"

"And no disappearing."

"That, I can't promise. I don't control that."

"You don't?"

"No. If I had my druthers I never would have went back. Honest."

"Do your best, is all I ask."

They all looked at me expectantly. Did they really think I was going to say no?

"Okay, then. Let's go."
Chapter 41: Pilgrims

From our original host of fifteen volunteers, only ten souls remained. Of the survivors, only six remained capable of transporting themselves back to Tiamat. Thus, Lady An solicited volunteers from the reserve group that had suffered the least damage in the fighting. It was a much smaller group this time.

She led the stalwart group of seven to where Brian sat chatting with me and Olivier. Olivier had managed to dampen the oscillations of his dark material so that it stayed within its bounds, showing its shadowy fringes only occasionally.

"Here is your escort," she said. "They will get you in close. Once you reach the horde, though, you're on your own. They'll wait for you, Brian but I don't want any in the horde to see them. Fanatics can be dangerous."

"Appreciate it, ma'am. With two adepts along, I'm not so worried."

"Yes. You should be fine," she said, although her face belied her worry. "I don't expect much trouble from Protectors. When we routed them, they mostly fled in the other direction."

We rose up and lifted the open palanquin, basically a tray with handles. It wasn't heavy at all. Olivier retained only a third at most of his original body mass. Not that we couldn't have carried his full weight without issue. Muscle fatigue simply wasn't a factor with these bodies. There were limits to strength, but not endurance. We could have carried an intact Olivier _and_ his brother to kingdom come.

"Take care now," said Lady An. "And Brian ... I want to emphasize ... I've instructed the escort to wait for you to re-emerge from the horde. Make sure you link up with them. I don't want you traveling alone."

"Will do, ma'am."

"And James ... will we see you again? In this realm?"

"I expect not, ma'am."

"Then Godspeed you, for whatever that's worth."

***

It took a while to find our rhythm. Brian had longer legs and a bouncier gait. But once we hit our stride, we covered ground quickly across the back side of the plateau. Our escort shadowed us, keeping about a hundred yards behind our left flank to perhaps divert some of the attention we might have attracted had we traveled together. That was the idea, anyhow.

We had the hardest time keeping Olivier upright. He kept sliding down and flopping over on his face. He tried his best to help prevent that by shifting his weight and wriggling back up, but he didn't have much to work with anymore. There was only so much he could do with two stubs for arms.

His egg, however, had no trouble hanging on. It shifted its shape, becoming one with the palanquin, sinking hooks into the porous ceramic. It served its master as backrest and restraint, and once it managed to wrap an amoeboid appendage or two around Olivier's chest to stabilize his ride.

I couldn't look at that creature without thinking about my Billy. I wondered how much the shape of these 'familiars' had to do with one's personality. I sure as hell couldn't imagine conjuring something abstract and alien as this 'egg.' Cute bugs and fuzzy creatures were more my style.

Brian walked in front, his eyes constantly on the terrain ahead or the sky. As a consequence he kept stepping into crevices or stumbled over ledges. One stumble nearly sent Olivier tumbling off the palanquin. His precious egg thrust out a lobe to keep him on the platform but he ended up wheeling around, facing back.

He looked me in the eye, completely unfazed, as if he had intended to face me.

"So how is it you came to know my friend Arthur?"

"Same as you, I guess. I met him in Root."

He crinkled his eyes. "Odd. You don't seem his type. He likes his boyfriends more muscle-bound."

"Oh. God no! I wasn't his boyfriend. It wasn't anything like that. I knew his grand-daughter. I mean, I didn't even know they were related at the time. But—"

"Grand-daughter? You mean that man sired children?"

"Apparently. Though his son ... Karla's dad ... he's kind of screwy in the head. He's a Sedevacantist."

"Is it any wonder?"

"But I met Luther ... Arthur ... in real life. He was just an old man in a wheelchair. Hard to believe it was the same person."

"In ... _real_ ... life?" He cocked one eye at me.

"Yeah. In Switzerland."

"What makes you think things are any more real there than here?"

"I don't know. The Flesh and blood for one thing. Not this mummified crap we have for bodies here. There's a reason it's called life, right? I mean, we only get one."

"Do we? Seems to me these Seraphim have gone back for seconds, no? They seem pretty lively to me."

He had a point. The Seraph had bled and had needed that bubble of air for life support.

"I was in France at the time and would have looked up Arthur myself had I not been so ill. My Parkinson's made it impossible for me to travel. Nasty disease. I don't know how or why I hung on as long as I did."

"So you're ... dead?"

"Quite."

"Suicide?"

"Oh no. That would have been the easy way to get here, I suppose. But I came here, I suspect, the same way you did, through the Core. I was pink like you, when I arrived. Hunted down relentlessly until I passed away on the other side. That's what turned me gray. I suspect the same will happen to you once you're here long enough. There's no going back."

"Actually—"

"Stop! It is a hopeless, pointless pursuit. I know. I have explored every avenue, every wrinkle, every possibility. You will only drive yourself insane with hope."

"But I go back and forth all the time. Others ... millions of souls ... returned to the Liminality from here."

Olivier looked at me as if I were delusional. "Yes, I am aware of these legends."

"They're not legends. They really happened. Have you ever heard of the Dusters? They came from here. They were rebels. Infidels."

"I don't see how that is possible," said Olivier. "The realms of the afterlands feed into each other like a ratchet. One flows into the next through a series on one way transitions. There's no going back."

"But that's not true. Like I said, I go back and forth."

"Because you are alive."

"But I brought a girl ... a Duster named Urszula ... back to life."

"She must have still been alive as well. Oscillating."

"She wasn't. I mean, she is now, but she'd been dead over a hundred years."

Olivier's face pinched with annoyance. "Denial is only natural. Part of the cycle of mourning."

I sighed and kept mum. Let him be stubborn. I didn't need to pick an argument.

"I know the legends," said Olivier. "Those that tell of a brilliant shaft of light that lies within the center of the Horus. Seems much too convenient to me. Of course the Hashmallim would want their sheep to believe that crap. What better way to keep them motivated?"

I returned a weak smile. If he insisted on being skeptical, so be it. I didn't intend to follow him down the rat hole. I changed the subject. "So how did you manage to find your way here?"

He shrugged. "I was an explorer from the moment I left my pod. Dodging Reapers. Cataloging every cavern and lake. Finding the portal was simply a matter of deduction. The Core is where the Reapers go to evacuate their bowels ... and release the dark material ... souls ... contained within. I figured it had to be a portal to another place. I took the risk that it would be someplace tolerable and preferable to Root. And I was correct."

"Tolerable? Maybe. Preferable? I don't think so."

Olivier looked a bit pensive. "Well, remember. Back then all we knew of Root were the tunnels. I had no idea there was anything above the surface. I didn't even know there was a surface. And I still find that ... hard to believe."

There was a commotion ahead. A skirmish had broken out near the far rim of the plateau. Our escort had reached it before us and flushed a small group of Protectors who had retreated there. No Hashmallim seemed to accompany them.

"Hypocrites," said Olivier. "They profess to guide these flocks into the glory that is the Horus. But I suspect they only do it to delay their own demise."

The Horus remained fixed in place on the next plateau, beyond a rumpled depression too shallow to be called a valley. Our proximity the revealed intricate details of its brown vortices and feeder bands. Up close, the thing looked solid, more a whirling mountain than some gathering of clouds and dust. For the first time, I could hear its voice, a blend of thunder and cat screech with something muffled in the mid-ranges that sounded almost like congregation praying in unison.

As we approached the waiting escort, some of them began to sing. It was a new song. The cycle had moved on. Brian joined in.

"Stop that bloody awful singing!" said Olivier, squeezing his eyes shut. "If only I had fingers I would plug my ears."

"S-sorry," said Brian. "It's Meadowsong ... just starting."

"Well don't do it around me. It assaults my sensibilities. I never could stand that wandering microtonal pap."

Our escort let us pass but remained at the rim to watch over our descent. The Protectors they had flushed fled for cover towards a rugged patch of fells that sprouted like warts from the otherwise smooth plain.

We made our way down through a notch in the shattered rim, descending a gentle slope towards a horde much larger than any other I had seen outside the Singularity.

Each horde had a distinctive girth and density corresponding to the abundance and fanaticism of its followers. This shape was its signature. The crowd before us was front-loaded, with an eager majority bulging out the vanguard, trailed by a sparse and ragged tail of stragglers. It was this tail, unfortunately or fortunately, where I hoped to find Karla.

Naturally, they were turning towards the Horus, to where it perched, churning over a dune-rich plateau, turning the vast deposits of sand collected there into extra vortices that bolstered its width, grinding its main vortex into the bedrock like a gargantuan drill press.

The denser mob at the head now marched at right angles to the tail, the crippled and less hopeful less responsive to the latest changes in the trajectory of the Horus. Not that it mattered, from what I had seen. Chance had as big a part as human will in determining who got to converge with it, not to mention the discretion of the Horus and its masters.

"Look at that thing lurk," said Olivier. "Teasing, daring them to come close before it darts away. The beast is almost coy, playful ... cruel in its whims. I wonder if it senses me coming. Is that why it hesitates? Is it sensitive enough to detect the identity of a single human soul? Or does it respond to the collective consciousness?"

I wasn't paying much attention to Olivier. I was studying the mob, trying to remember where exactly I had seen Karla. She was certainly in the tail, but how far back?

A bright spot appeared in the sky alongside the dark columns of the Horus. And then another appeared, and then a cluster of five more. Seven in total, they swung around the Horus and crossed over the depression.

"Something's going on," I said.

"Out to revenge their fallen friend, I imagine."

"Crap. Any chance Lady An and her gang made it back to Tiamat by now?"

"Doubtful," said Olivier.

"Crap!"

"Guys, uh ... this is about as far as I'm wanting to go," said Brian, with a bit of quaver in his voice.

"Please. Just a little closer," said Olivier. "I promise you have nothing to worry about. The storm is not even moving at the moment. And no one will bother us. I guarantee."

"I'll take you into the main flow but I'm sorry, that's as far as I go," said Brian.

"Thank you. I appreciate your courage. It can't be easy after all you've been through."

We kept our eyes on the Seraphim as we passed through the fringes of the horde, populated as usual by recluses and eccentrics not tolerated by the main column. Physically, these people seemed fairly intact, just a little less focused on their pursuit of the great dust storm.

An eighth Seraph appeared around the edge of the Horus, trailing the others. The sheath of dust enveloping the storm had peeled away to allow us a glimpse of its internal structure, most notably the core of downward thrusting winds that met the ground in a continuous explosion. The weirdly bright core contrasted with its black and brown vestments. Only moments later, the shroud swung back around to obscure.

We pushed on through to the core of the column, reaching a contingent of marchers who were earnest and even desperate in their pursuit of the Horus, but lagged due to various infirmities—unsound limbs and joints, broken backs and necks. They could walk okay, just not as fast as the fittest in the horde. From the wear and tear on their hides, some of them had been chasing the Horus for a very long time.

"We have to move back," I said. "These people look way too healthy."

"Better for me," said Olivier. "I can blend better with the cripples."

The crowd parted for us as we picked our way back through the flow. We drew plenty of worried or annoyed glances, but no one challenged us.

Brian kept gazing up to the rim of the plateau where the seven Seraphs had flown and where his escort awaited.

"We're being followed," said Olivier.

I glanced back over my shoulder. A pair of bone-wielders were threading their way through the masses. They didn't look that sure of themselves. Protectors-in-training maybe, perhaps left behind for a reason.

"I don't see a Hashmal with them," said Brian.

"No worries," said Olivier. "I can handle them."

We reached a mass of limping, lurching wretches more reminiscent of the group in which I had glimpsed Karla with from the Singularity, their powers of locomotion compromised by serious injuries.

Some recoiled from us, minds scarred perhaps by the acts of violence that had ruined their bodies. One man had little left but bones and sinew and shreds of skin. And yet he walked.

An eyeless woman recoiled from us as if she could see, suggesting that eyes had nothing to do with sight in this world. Not surprising. For most of us, biology was a sham in this realm, flesh little more than a frame to hang a soul. We were basically zombies, even the prettiest of us. At least we didn't eat people.

"Guys ... this is the end of the road for me," said Brian. "That storm's giving me the heebie-jeebies."

"You do what you have to," I said. "I'll stick with Mr. Olivier."

"Oh? What about finding your girl?" said Olivier.

I sighed. "I don't even know if she's here. I'm not a hundred percent positive this is the horde I saw."

We set down the palanquin gently. My arm brushed against the egg. It bristled and hissed at me. I jumped back.

"Don't worry," said Olivier. "He won't bite you."

A legless man maneuvered past us, remarkably nimble in the way he planted his arms and swung his rump.

"Okay, listen guys. Gotta run," said Brian, looking all spooked and antsy. "It's been nice knowing you. Good luck and all."

"See ya. And thanks ... thanks for everything."

He took off sprinting like the devil was chasing him.

***

I sat cross-legged beside Olivier and his egg, studying every face that passed, lingering on every female form, struggling to remember Karla's physique. A quartet of ravaged souls, each missing at least one leg, had paused to watch us. They chatted in subdued voices between giving us the evil eye.

"Look! A coffee clache!" said Olivier. "I don't suppose we'll be invited."

"If they don't move on, I'm gonna give them something to talk about."

"No worries. They're harmless. They're just curious what a big strong man like you is doing back here with a dropout."

"This is horrible," I said. "It's a parade of horrors. I don't see why they put up with all this marching."

"What do you want?" said Olivier. "They are pilgrims."

"They can't all believe, can they?"

"What other choice do they have?"

"Well, there's Tiamat."

"That place is not for everyone," said Olivier. "I can certainly vouch for that."

He caught me staring into the passing crowd.

"This girl of yours. What does she look like?"

I drew a blank. I knew I would recognize Karla's face the instant I saw it, but for some reason I couldn't think of how to describe it to Olivier. I couldn't even summon more than a fuzzy, wavering image of her in my mind's eye.

What did that mean? Was she not important to me after all? Or did we simply not have enough time together for her visage to indelibly penetrate my psyche? Maybe it was the mind's way of protecting one from pining for someone you had loved and lost. Though, I could picture my dad's face from his bushy eyebrows to the pores on his nose. Mom? I didn't want to think about what had happened to her.

"I ... don't know," I said, finally. "She's probably gray ... like you ... like everybody else."

Olivier squished his eyes and looked askance at me. "Well, that's not very helpful."

High above us, looking like one of those deep sea birds that rarely touches down on land, the eighth Seraph altered course and descended in a long, lazy spiral. Its body combined with the long and slender middle wings made a cross in the sky, with the subwings adding embellishments.

With horror, I saw that his course was converging with Brian's. The anomaly of an able-bodied soul fleeing from the Horus had attracted its attention. Our escort was still hunkered down in some dunes just below the rim of the depression. I doubted they would be much help against a Seraph.

A hubbub passed up and down the column. The approach of a Seraph was clearly a momentous occasion.

"Mr. Olivier? We've got a problem."

"Oh?"

"A Seraph is going after Brian."

"Too bad. That's his problem. We didn't ask him to leave."

"But ... we have to help him."

"We can't. It will draw attention to us."

"But he's a sitting duck!"

"Actually, he seems to be running quite well. He seems fit enough to dodge. And if he can't. Oh well." Olivier must have seen the disgust on my face. "Listen. I can barely hold myself together as things stand. I would not last in a tussle."

"What about your familiar, your ... egg?"

He shook his head. "Can't afford to deplete it. I may need it for myself. And I need it strong ... as strong as possible."

"Someone's got to help him!" I shot to my feet and starting running after Brian who was already leaving the edge of the horde and was halfway to the rim. The bone wielders who had been watching us, followed after me warily. He was pretty far away, but I shouted after him anyway.

"Brian! Watch out! Up high!"

He kept on running, giving no indication that he had heard me. But escort up on the rim, leaping and waving their staffs, managed to get his attention. Brian wheeled around, looking upward, just as the Seraph swooped low and with a brittle pop, let loose a swarm of objects that organized themselves a hive of angry hornets. Brian tried to evade them, veering hard to the right and hard to the left in an attempt to shake them. But the intelligent swarm reacted and followed his every move.

Realizing his plight, he spun around to face them, spraying a feeble cloud of his own conjurings from his staff. They managed to deflect the leading elements of the Seraph's swarm but the rest tore through his porous shield and slammed into him. Brian roared and collapsed, his legs bending grotesquely as if suddenly rendered boneless.

I stopped running at the edge of the horde. "Jesus Christ!"

The Seraph so far hadn't even noticed me as it landed gracefully between me and Brian. The harness burst open and the angel stepped out of his wings, his entire body enveloped by a misty bubble that glowed, almost like a halo.

A familiar feeling boiled deep inside me. I stalked after him full of piss and vinegar. I liked Brian and it pained me to see him hurt like that.

The Seraph strolled right up to Brian and kicked away his staff as Brian quivered on the ground. He was speaking to Brian. From this distance, I could make out the stern and mocking tone of his voice but not his words.

I stuck out my arm and pointed my finger at him, not quite knowing yet what I expected to accomplish. I was flustered, discombobulated, consumed by hate and revenge both for Brian and for that arrow still stuck through my middle. This time that familiar loosening drew from far beyond my core, deep into the marrow of my bones.

Brian stared straight at me, his eyes wide with terror. The Seraph turned to see what he was looking at and the instant he did, my will burst free. I pictured an arrow and an arrow it became, a lance of energy aimed straight for his chest.

The Seraph calmly twitched his weapon and my arrow curled aside like a Frisbee caught in a stiff breeze. His weapon, the same kind of bristly thing the fallen Seraph had possessed pointed my way.

I panicked, struggling to conjure another burst, but my fear stifled any possibility of a second volley. I had shot my wad and that was that.

But my arrow, though it hadn't struck the Seraph, it had somehow pierced his bubble and a plume of gas was jetting out the exit hole. As the air gushed out, the bubble rapidly shrank.

The Seraph panicked and tried to mend the tear, but the bubble continued to contract until it was flush against his skin. He gasped and collapsed to his knees, shivering uncontrollably. He tried pointing his weapon at me but his arm jerked too hard to aim it properly.

Confidence restored, I strode right up to him, pointing my finger. My will gathered and loosened inside me, ready for another blast, if needed.

It wasn't required. Scaly crystals of frost formed on the Seraph's face and hands. His eyes glazed over in a permanent stare of incredulity. He keeled over into the dust.

I kept my eyes on his weapon. I wanted it, even if I had to snap his fingers off to get it.

"James?" A voice with a familiar lilt came out of the small crowd who had paused to witness the spectacle.

And there she was, one leg limp and dangling, her arm around the shoulder of a slender girl with a mangled foot.

The joy that rose in me at the sight of Karla was curtailed by the rictus of horror and disgust distorting her face. She spat her words at me, spacing them for emphasis.

"You ... freaking ... idiot! What the hell are you doing here? You ... son ... of ... a ... bitch! Why? Why do you come?"

And before I could hug her or kiss her or utter a single word in my defense, I blinked out of this realm. Just like that.
Chapter 42: Amy

High above the depression, the Horus hunkered down like a tethered beast, grinding its stalk into the bedrock, flaunting its power, howling, roaring, taunting all who approached. Karla felt like an Eloi responding to the Morlocks' siren. Arm in arm with a fellow cripple, she limped after it, her mind resolute, her heart equivocal.

She should have had nothing to lose, nothing to fear. The Deeps was not a tolerable place. Any change was a change for the better. The Hashmallim promised the Horus was a step up in the universe, but could they really be trusted? But who cares if it was a portal to some place worse? At least it would be different. Not this Arbuda—the cold hell of the Hindus—as some of the more negative nabobs in the crowd liked to call it.

But inside her, another smaller voice of dissent said no. Maybe it was better to roam. Though all this futile wandering got tiresome, at least she knew what to expect here. She would not complain if the Horus turned fickle. She could simply return to this hopeless but comfortable limbo.

She took some comfort in the storm's history of quirky, unpredictable movement. She had never seen it sustain a steady course or linger very long in one location, especially not with a mass of humanity about to cross its doorstep. Rarely did it sample more than a taste of each horde before slinking off like some runaway groom.

Every step she took, her knee crunched like a sack of shattered marbles. At least the joint worked. No swelling. No pain. A small consolation for the permanent damage, but the implications were huge, making the difference between independence and immobility.

Gasps propagated up and down the column. A gap had appeared in the curtain dust and cloud shrouding the Horus, providing a rare glimpse of its inner structure—braided cords like bundles of rope, writhing like a nest of snakes. And then even that peeled away, revealing the brilliant shaft of its central vortex. Streaked with hints of turquoise and gold, it glowed as if illuminated from within by worlds beyond. It peered out like some reptilian iris until a wall of cloud drew the veil closed.

Fellow cripple Amy rested her arm on Karla's shoulder. "You would think ... if that was such a good place, if we were being rewarded, God would have made it pretty."

"Maybe it's pretty on the inside," said Karla.

"Or we don't deserve pretty."

Seven pale specks emerged from the haze, darting through the outer bands of the storm, further exciting her fellow chasers. The Seraphim, normally as rare as raindrops, had been numerous of late. Necks craned en masse to track their flight over the depression.

"Look at that! A whole flock of bird men," said Amy. "What the heck's going on? They going south for the winter?"

"I wish you would not call them that," Karla whispered. "It is disrespectful. They are not ducks. They are angels. And not only angels, but Seraphs."

"Listen to you, Miss Goody Two-shoes. What's gotten into you?"

Karla shrugged. "People overhear. People report ... to Junger."

Amy sighed. "You'd think these dead people would mind their own business."

"I don't blame them. People are desperate. Eager to please."

"Been a while since the hash goons came around. Wonder what's up."

"Please! They are Hashmallim. They are angels as well."

"Pfft! Yeah, right. Angels. In name alone."

"Let's not talk about it here. People are looking at us."

"So let them. No need to be so paranoid. Not everybody's a rat, you know."

"It's not that they are rats. They see what Junger does. They fear him."

"And what's with the caste system? I would have expected more equality."

"You know nothing about angels, do you?" Karla could say that, because she knew plenty. The ex-nun who had provided her Sedevacantist catechism had fancied herself an angelologist. Sister Beatrice's detailed taxonomy of the afterlife had thus far proven remarkably accurate.

"What do you want from a heathen?" said Amy.

"You are no heathen. You told me you are a Presbyterian."

"Yeah. A Presbyterian atheist."

"That's an oxymoron."

"Not really. I only went for the social aspects—the church picnics and all. Never cared much for the holy mumbo jumbo."

"But now you know, some of the mumbo jumbo is true."

"Is it really?" Amy bugged her eyes out at Karla. "No one ever told me there'd be seven layers of Purgatory and no Heaven, no Hell?"

"Of course there is Heaven. Why else are we marching?"

"I'm ... not so sure anymore."

"The place of the Seraphim and the Hashmallim. That must be Heaven, no?"

"Hope not. It'd be no place I'd want to go."

"Why not?"

"Because it's full of hash goons. Worse than here. And bird people."

"Please! They are Hashmallin and Seraphim. Angels. Call them by their right name."

"They don't behave like angels," said Amy. She kept her eyes locked on the bright speck as it looped a broad spiral through the sky. "Frankly, they remind me more of vultures."

"You are a troublemaker," said Karla. "Keep your voice down."

"Look! There's another!" said Amy, as an eighth speck appeared from behind the storm.

Despite their frequent spats, Karla was glad to have found Amy. She never had a real girlfriend growing up. She had female acquaintances, but never a confidante her own age, outside Papa's church, with whom she could share her deepest existential doubts.

Amy was American, but had spent a year in Rome as an exchange student about the same time Karla had lived there with Isobel and her father. They might have even crossed paths in Vatican City, though in those days Papa rarely let her out of the flat unaccompanied.

Step and swing. Step and swing. Arm in arm, that was the system that Amy and Karla had worked out for walking. Their bad legs were lashed together with a leather thong of dubious origin. They took turns stepping with their one good leg. And then together they would swing their bad legs forward. It was like a dance. One. Two. Swing. One. Two. Swing.

For some reason the Hashmallim took no issue with two cripples helping each other, but Heaven forbid an able-bodied person aid an invalid. Their edicts made no sense. Why not maximize the number of souls capable of seeking the Horus? Why did they insist every able body look out for themselves and themselves alone?

They approached a man hunched over on the ground, sobbing dryly.

"Uh-oh. Looks like Twinkle Toes took a fall," said Amy.

They didn't know his real name, but they knew him well as a cocky, mischievous fellow. Both of his feet had been severed at the ankles, but for the longest time he had managed to balance atop his stubs and outpace many intact souls. But now one of his shins had cracked and splintered. The absence of pain likely accelerated his degradation, letting him push his physique beyond what it could mechanically endure.

"I am surprised he lasted this long," said Karla.

They passed him by without a word. The man did not even look up at them.

Countless souls had dropped out since Karla had joined the march. Only the constant recruitment of new souls from the barrens kept their numbers from dwindling away to nothing. If she and Amy didn't reach the Horus this time around, it was inevitable that they too would eventually join the dropouts littering the wake of the horde. Their injuries only hastened this prospect.

Karla had her knee crushed at the hands of a Hashmal. Junger had warned her not to help any cripples or else he would have her join them. Turned out, he wasn't kidding. If she had known how quickly he followed through on his threats, she might have taken him more seriously.

Her assistance never amounted to much, so she didn't think anything of it. It was basic human decency. Helping people back to their feet when they had fallen. Lending a shoulder to those who needed a little steadying. She would have done the same for Junger had he needed it.

The Hashmal and his squad had happened by when she was walking with a man named Cyrus who had a bit of a wobble in his gait. A hand on his hip from time to time was all he had needed to remain upright.

Cyrus was an old soul, his skin smooth and glossy from his knees and thighs rubbing together. His face had been sand-blasted to a rough suede and his feet were shredded so badly it looked like he had pieces of shag rug stuck to them. The wobble was a recent development.

"Don't know what happened," he had told her. "Something swept over me and now I'm walking like a drunkard."

Karla had said nothing, but this was a bad sign, the beginning of the end. When bodies wore down, the 'glue' adhering souls to their vessels came undone and everything slipped out of synch. It would not be long before the dark shadows of his soul would begin showing around his edges.

The process was irreversible. There were rumors of 'shades,' naked souls ripped entirely free of their flesh, yet still roaming, haunting the landscape. Ghosts, in a sense. Shy and vulnerable things, subject to collection by Protectors. Karla had never seen one up close, but she had seen strange shadows flowing across the landscape on occasion.

Junger and his squad of Protectors had made their way down the column doing what they always did, scolding malingerers, urging all on two legs to move faster. His gaze fell upon Karla and Cyrus like a hawk's and he made a beeline for them, possessed with a fury far out of proportion to her offense.

"Insolent bitch!"

And that was all the warning she got. He reared back and struck her with a club-like mass of agglomerated bone that was his symbol of authority, its shaft all filigreed and etched in fishes and snails. The blow shattered her kneecap and sent her crumpling to the ground. Cyrus just shambled away looking cowed and ashamed.

"Let that be a lesson," said Junger, as he left her in the dust.

Karla had glared at his retreating form. She pointed a finger, quivering with hate, attempting to retaliate with spell craft she didn't even possess in this realm. She watching his retreating form dwindle, letting the crowd flow around her, rejecting all offers of assistance until Amy had happened by, dragging her famous left foot that had been smashed to bits by Junger's club in a prior incident, and for pretty much the same reason.

"You okay?" she had said.

"I am fine."

"Wanna walk with me?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"No."

"Come on, then."

She helped her up, and the rest was history.

Amy spoke some Italian, so they were able to switch back and forth from English. The way they got along with all the low-key squabbling and friendly disagreement kind of reminded her of being with Isobel ... or James.

Isobel. Karla thought of her often and prayed she was well. At least she was with good people. Ren and Jessica and Helen. Between them, someone would take good care of her ... and James.

He had been in terrible shape when she had last seen him in life, on the banks of Loch Ness. But she had left him too in the same good hands. The NHS would patch him up and heal him. And he would have returned to the goat farm. He loved that place. She only hoped his days of raiding and warring were over; that peace had come to the Liminality.

Because of the pain and regret it brought, she tried not to think about him too often. Her memories were more bitter than sweet. What could have been. What should have been. What wasn't.

There were times, though, when she could close her eyes and leave the Deeps behind, heart warmed by the idea that there was a boy in this universe who had loved her.

The first seven Seraphim disappeared over the rim of the depression. Sightings of higher angels were rare enough to stall the horde. Not that long ago, three Seraphim had crossed the column but only two had returned. And just before that, Junger and his men had been spotted leaving the depression. They had not yet returned.

Something big was going down. Karla wondered if it had anything to do with the recent movements of the Horus. Ever since she arrived in the Deeps it had been a distant feature on the landscape, keeping its distance like a spooked deer. But then it had surged across the barrens, convincing many in the horde that the end was near, that they were finally the chosen ones. But then just before reaching them it had stopped and hovered in place. And there it stood screaming in every audible register, waiting as the fanatics in the vanguard rushed up slope to meet it.

The eighth Seraphim, the straggler peeled away from the others and curled back around over the column.

"What's up with that bird man?" said Amelia. "Looks like he wants to land."

Heads turned towards the fringes.

"A man is running ... towards the mountain," said Karla.

"Hmm. Maybe the Horus spooked him?"

Karla could relate to the fear. It built in her too when her gaze lingered too long and she fathomed all its darkness and weirdness and power. It shook loose a memory of when as a little girl she once looked down from a quaking bridge into a river in flood and imagined the whirlpools and undercurrents taking her deep and never letting her go. The Horus promised much the same.

Something sprayed forth from the object in the Seraph's hand. Karla knew spell craft when she saw it. A cloud of globules the size of fat raindrops flew into the fleeing man and cut him down.

"Oh my God!" She paused, causing Amy to stumble. "Did you see that? He shot that man down."

Amy nodded. "He's no better than Junger."

The Seraph alighted gracefully on the slope and stepped out of his wings.

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Most kept on marching, but more than a few were rushing over to watch.

"Let's go see!" Karla tugged her towards the fringes. As made their way through the onlookers another man stepped out from the fringes and approached the Seraph with a frightening confidence in his stride. He lifted his arm and lashed out at the Seraph with a spell of his own.

Onlookers gasped as the Seraph's halo dwindled to nothing and the angel quickly succumbed. Until that moment, Karla had never suspected that Seraphim were mortal in any realm. How was this possible?

Many fled in fear, but had Karla possessed a functioning heart it would have exploded right then, because she knew this murderer of Seraphim. He was the boy who had so recently and vividly come to her in a walking dream.

But this was no dream. It was him for real—James—here in the Deeps. Maybe she should have felt joy, but no. A tsunami of dread and despair dragged her under. His presence here was a betrayal of all that she had hoped for him. It meant that his existence was now just as ruined as hers. And to top it all, here he was acting like a demon, murdering Seraphim of all things.

She spoke his name. He turned. Their eyes me, proving this was no delusion. Her frustrations boiled over. Angry words spilled before she could reel them back.

But before she could soften or qualify her attack, his flesh dissipated. As she watched, like a leaf consumed by an invisible flame, like a cloud in the desert sky, he dwindled away to nothing. Her anger became horror. She couldn't help but believe that she had scared him away for good, that this vanishing was all her fault.
Chapter 43: Scorpion

Talk about bad timing. Why was she so mad at me? What the fuck? I reached for her, but Karla evaporated from view before I could figure out why she was so angry.

"What? Wait! No! Not yet."

A maelstrom of visions and senses engulfed me. The ghost of that scene in the Deeps—Karla and Brian and the dead Seraph—lingered in my mental retinas. It competed with the more tangible feelings of simultaneously tumbling through the sky and lying flat and still on warm concrete.

Snaky tendrils like prehensile tails wrapped around me, cinching tight. Claws ripped through my wings, shredding their edges. And then I was yanked away to another iteration of myself, scalp all gritty, face all sweaty and feverish, listening to the girls chatter softly with each other. Meg participated, sounding less like a hostage and more like a BFF.

My confusion fell away. I understood what was happening. I was back in Hanover. It was Billy who had torn me out of the Deeps. He was in trouble and channeling his intense distress to me. What was so important to that couldn't wait for me to at least talk to Karla?

One eye blinked out with the rake of a claw. Pieces of Billy went flying off. Something vicious was laying into him, tearing him apart. But what? A real animal? A hawk, maybe? Or some figment? Another familiar?

Billy flashed images at me with his one good eye. He kept showing me cars. Three of them, driving through campus real slow like a funeral procession. Somehow he thought it was important and the thing ripping into him didn't want me to see.

I caught a glimpse of the tennis courts. Those cars were headed this way. Three carloads? Was Wendell sending an army of his assassins after us?

Billy sensed my wish to know more and valiantly buzzed the lead car with that other thing nipping at his tail. Through the tinted windshield, his insect eyes shared a brief mosaic of shaved heads, tattoos, body armor and automatic weapons.

A text chimed in on the iPhone. I dug it out of my pocket and gave it a peek.

Wendell.

"This should be interesting. Got my popcorn ready."

I shrugged off my fever and picked myself up off the concrete. The sooner I dealt with this, the sooner I could get back to Karla.

"Well, look who's back ... so soon," said Ellen. "Meg was just telling us about their little getaway on the coast of Maine. Twenty-three acres. Seven bedrooms. five and a half baths."

"I don't care about any fucking real estate. Listen guys. Someone's coming. We gotta get ready. Something just tore the crap out of Billy."

"The Frelsian?" said Urszula, scrambling for her scepter.

"Three carloads of Frelsians, looks like." I looked around for my sword. I didn't remember where I had put it. And I wondered now if I could even trust it, considering it was a gift from Wendell. What if he had rigged it with some kind of booby trap?

Meg had this big, shit-eating, told-you-so grin on her face that made me want to smack her.

"Make sure she's tied up good. I don't want her able to even wiggle a finger. Better cover her eyes. Lay her down on the floor, away from the windows. I don't want her to see a damned thing that we're doing."

"You think she can do that magic stuff?" said Ellen.

"I wouldn't doubt it, not if she's hanging out with the likes of Wendell."

I squinted across the field to a white van parked on a dirt access road along the edge of the piney woods. It hadn't been there before and it wasn't part of the images that Billy found important to share with me.

"That van," I said. "How long has it been there?"

"I don't know. Ten, twenty minutes."

"Anybody get out?"

"Not that I saw. I figured it was just some groundskeepers."

"That's not a Dartmouth vehicle. There's no logo on the side. Did you see that? There's no logo."

"So? It's just a van. It's certainly not Wendell. We know what he drives."

Meg just lay there, grinning under her blindfold, looking way too comfortable.

Something slapped against the window and slid down the glass. It looked like a lump of damp, shredded leaves. It had to be Billy, or what was left of him.

But there was nothing to be done about him right now. He had done his job, and the three cars pulling into the stadium parking lot commanded my attention.

They scattered, two to either end of the field, one parking smack in the middle, facing the back of the press box. Something about them looked familiar. I noticed the dirty-yellow New Jersey plates.

My phone rang.

"Wendell?" said Ellen.

I checked the display. I didn't recognize the number or the area code. 973.

"Holy shit! It's Sergei." I answered the call.

"Jimmy? So it is you up there in that shack? Hah! Mr. Wendell comes through for us. Such a helpful man. And he refused the bounty! This will save me a lot of money. Your bounty was getting very expensive."

"Fuck off, or we'll fuck you up."

"Oh, I don't think so. I brought my best team with me. My all-stars. No more running for you, Jimmy. No more messing around."

"I'm telling you Sergei, we'll mess you up if you don't leave. We've got ... skills."

"Hah! Skills? Like the bomb you used to mess up my gym? Go ahead. Use your bombs. We do not need to come so close. My boys are marksmen. Yusef was Serbian army sniper."

"That wasn't a bomb."

"Oh, it was a bomb alright. A special bomb. No shrapnel or traces. No singe marks. But I know bomb damage when I see it."

"Then you're an idiot."

"Oh now, be respectful. Or when we drag your ass away bleeding, I might not sparer you the torture as I was considering."

"Why the fuck are you talking to me?"

"I don't know. Maybe I like hearing your fear."

"I ain't afraid of you. You've got no idea what you're messing with."

"Hey Jimmy, who is this ugly girl sitting next to you? She is not the one you had before."

I muffled the phone and ducked below the window. "Fuck! He must be watching us with binoculars." I stuck the phone back on my ear. "The name ... is James." I clicked off and stuck the phone back in my pocket.

"Crap, guys. Wendell sicced Sergei after us."

"This is good, yes?" said Urszula. "He has no craft. We have the advantage."

"Stay low! They don't need any craft. They've got guns. Assault weapons. Ellen, you stay here in the press box and keep down. Me and Urszula will handle this."

Ellen, crouching by the door, glared at me, her chin set firm, both guns laid out in front of her on the floor.

Urszula took up her scepter and slipped out the door onto the bleachers. I followed right after her with my sword.

"You go that way, I'll take this side. Let's try to keep them out of the stands."

I worried about that white van parked across the way behind us, but figured it was probably some contractor out fixing sprinklers or something. Our most imminent danger was Sergei's crew.

I peeked over the top of the cinder block wall backing the stands. Sergei's guys were being cautious. They were standing behind their cars, scoping us out. That incident with the parquet floor seemed to have made an impression. They knew they weren't dealing with just another garden variety punk.

A dead leaf fluttered down out of the sky, hanging in the breeze a bit longer than seemed natural.

"Billy?"

He had followed me like some hurt puppy. Just my noticing and giving him a little bit of my attention allowed him to gather himself and strengthen.

Bits of leaf came together and annealed around the edges. Two wings sprouted. Again, it organized itself into something between a mouse and a moth. These fragments of will were like embers. Blow on them and they come alive.

"Billy, no screwing around. You know what to do."

My familiar fluttered off, making a bee line towards the white van across the field. But that wasn't where I had expected him to go. I had been hoping to get some intel on Sergei.

Meanwhile, the guys flanking the bleachers starting working their way towards either end of the soccer field, preparing to bracket us in a crossfire. Urszula was on top of things. A pulse rippled through her arm. Bursting out the tip of her scepter came a spell as massive and potent as any I had seen her conjure in the Liminality. As for me, I was still trying to get my mojo working. For some reason, I just wasn't feeling it.

Her blast looked like it would miss, but guided by her will, it curved right at the guys trying to flank her. It knocked the assault rifle clean out of one guy's arms and plastered him to the ground.

The other guy dropped to his knees and sent a burst of gunfire zinging into the concrete wall. Urszula had already ducked out of harm's way, her eyes ablaze with thrill as concrete dust sifted down over us. She winked at me and dashed to the other end of the press box, crouching beside the low wall backing the stands.

She popped up again and this time there was a flash and a sizzle from her stick. A ball of fire came rolling across the parking lot. It burned a streak across the blacktop and slammed into a Fedex receptacle, blistering its paint and incinerating its contents. Dang! Why couldn't I do fire spells?

That second shot made the guys reconsider their little flanking action. They hauled ass to the edge of the lot and dove into a drainage ditch.

But the guys on my flank kept on coming. Their rifles were fitted with strange looking blocky things on the end of their barrels, silencers I suppose.

I stood there, dangling my sword, trying to summon that loosey-goosey feeling that unleashes spells but I had a case of fucking stage fright again, everything all tight and bound up. My stalkers were seconds from rounding the edge of the stands and having me in their line of sight.

The press box door squealed open. Ellen reached out and sent five quick shots over my head.

"Ellen! Get back in there. Get down!"

But being startled help grease the skids inside me. At least now I felt connected to my blade. Now it was more than just a knife in a gun fight.

Meanwhile, Urszula had that scepter of hers working overtime, as she tapped what must have been an immense reservoir of frustration, sending volleys of bewildering variety at the guys huddled in the ditch, fire and crystals and showers of acid. You name it, she could conjure it. It was like a good fireworks show. The guys in the ditch had no way to predict what was coming at them next.

The guys hunkered behind the center car tried picking her off with some carefully aimed shots, but she seemed to be protected by a field that warped the light like a lens and deflected bullets. They pinged off metal posts and sent up puffs of concrete dust.

I lifted the sword high over my head. I could tell the thing building inside me really wanted to break free, but was stuck like a wild bear in a half-opened cage.

"Come on. Come on!"

The guys on my flank had disappeared behind the concrete abutment at the end of the stands.

The door of the press box flew open and Ellen popped back out, scattering a fresh bunch of shots out into the parking lot.

"Ellen! No! Get back in there!"

The gunmen behind the center car turned on her. Weapons on full automatic, they ripped into the press box. Tugga-tugga-tugga-tug! Windows shattered. Bullets pinged off steel supports. Bits of plywood flew as they shredded the flimsy walls.

Ellen cried out and crumpled to the floor. One of her handguns went skittering down the steps.

Her scream tore my heart open, but it also unstuck my gears, setting the machinery of some powerful forces rolling free inside me. But as that feeling broke loose, my chest and back began to burn as if run through with a red hot poker. The ghostly remnants of that Hashmal's arrow were making themselves known.

I clutched my chest, possessed with the urge to dig my nails into my skin and dig out the thing that had invaded me. But I knew there would be nothing there, nothing tangible, nothing a surgeon could ever extract, not in this world, anyhow, maybe not in any world. My spirit had been tagged forever.

"Fucking hell."

The iPhone chimed. Wendell. This time for sure. I ripped it out of my pocket and dashed it against the bleachers. The screen cracked, but it kept on ringing. I jammed it back in my pocket.

"Fuck it all. Fuck you! All of you!"

I swirled the sword not even knowing what would happen and I realized that Billy was back, flopping around on the ground in front of me, grown too bulky for his little moth wings to carry him.

Stray twigs, bits of trash and leaves adhered to him and added to his frame. And then some bleacher seats started popping their rivets and peeling up. Hunks of aluminum and plastic gathered around Billy and became part of him. He grew, drawing bleacher parts from a larger and larger radius.

I couldn't put a name on the creature he was becoming. It was something not of this world with five legs, a central dome and a club-like fists, a sleeker, more highly evolved version of the crab-like thing he had become in Sergei's parquet basketball court.

Two of Sergei's men came around the corner, rifles at their hips and sent a barrage flying up at us. I dodged behind Billy so he took the brunt of it. The bullets rocked him a bit, but he simply absorbed them and clambered after the guys, accreting more bleacher parts with each step.

The goons emptied their magazines, reloaded and fired some more, but Billy kept after them, taking off into a gallop once he reached the cinder track surrounding the field.

They turned to flee. Billy swung his knobby fists and clipped one from behind, sending him sprawling. He pinned the guy down with a two-clawed foot and pounded him into the cinders. I almost couldn't watch.

Fearing for Ellen, I made my way back to the press box, climbing the bare concrete foundation that had now been stripped of all seating. A string of bullets chased me up the stairs splashing the concrete like a summer shower. Billy put a stop to it, chasing the guy who was firing at me out into the parking lot.

Things had gone quiet on Urszula's flank. The goons there had stopped their shooting and Urszula was slinking down the footings and supports along the far end of the bleachers, stalking them like a deer hunter.

Billy upended one of the cars with the guys still in it. He then went after Sergei and the lead car whose occupants had already recognized defeat and were trying to flee. As it attempted to drive off, Billy slammed a fist down hard on its back fender and blew a tire. The differential dragged across the pavement, scraping a deep gouge. Billy pummeled the vehicle, smashing the windows to bits. Sergei and his men were at his mercy. Even if I knew how, I wasn't about to hold him back, not after I saw what had they had done to Ellen.

***

She lay on her side, half-in, half-out of the press box door, still clutching one of the pistols. Her chin quivered. She was looking awfully pale. Her sweatshirt was soaked with something dark and viscous. For a fleeting moment, I prayed it wasn't blood, but I knew better.

"I'm hit," said Ellen, her face slathered with tears. "And it's bad."

"Let me see." I tried to lift her hoodie but she had her hand clasped over her stomach. "Move your hand."

"I can't," she grunted, "It ... spurts."

"Jesus!" Through a gap in the cinder blocks, I glared out into the parking lot. A surge of hate went through me and straight into Billy who had pinned Sergei's car against a light pole. His parts pulled tighter, he strode a little taller, hit a little harder.

Across the lot, one of the guys Urszula had cornered scurried out of the ditch and hopped into the only intact car of the three. He managed to start it up just as Urszula sent a fiery blob of plasma after it. It singed his paint and cracked his windows, but he still managed to peal out of the parking lot and escape.

"You need help," I said to Ellen. "I'm calling 911."

She looked at me dreamily but said nothing. She could barely focus her eyes.

The phone rang just as I dialed nine. Wendell.

"Nice work there with your little monster. Shame you won't reconsider our offer."

"Fuck you, Wendell!"

"Yeah. I figured you'd be this way."

He hung up, and then there came this pinging sound from the visitor stands across the field. The steel and aluminum structure was rising up and folding itself into something with a vaguely human shape.

I watched the thing grow as I called for help.

"Hanover 911. What is your emergency?"

"There's ... there's been a shooting."

"Is anyone hurt?"

"Fuck yeah! Why do you think I'm calling?"

"Please. Try to keep calm, sir. What is your location?"

"Some stadium ... at Dartmouth. A soccer field."

"And the person who did this. Are they still on the scene? Are they still carrying a gun?"

"Some of them ... yeah." The metal man across the field was now complete. It stretched its lanky limbs and took its first stride towards us. It walked like Wendell.

"I ... uh ... I gotta go."

"Stay on the line, please. Are we talking about more than one weapon here?"

"Yeah. You might want to bring a tank, if you got one." I left the phone on, but put it down and started down the concrete steps, but I stopped, feeling ridiculous with that skinny sword. I was like a mouse going after a grizzly bear with a pin.

A crunch of cinder blocks behind me startled me. Billy emerged up the back of the bleachers dragging the shattered remains of a landscaper's trailer that had been parked in the lot. Sergei flopped limply in his other fist, apparently unconscious, his face all scratched and bloody.

Billy was bigger than before and he continued to gather more parts, incorporating bits of wood and glass from the press box. His body elongated and segmented into a thorax and abdomen. Tarps became wings stretched taut over a tubular metal framing from a picnic tent. A pair of barrel-like planters came together to form a head with axes as mandibles. Saws and machetes aligned themselves as spines on a pair of forelegs that came together as if Billy were praying. Billy had become a mantis.

Wendell's metal man turned wary, pausing in the middle of the field and taking a step backward. A shed behind him exploded. Its fragments and contents came tumbling across the grass. More aluminum benches in the visitors' stands popped their rivets and joined the train of material assembling and converging with the metal man.

It hunched over on all fours and began to transform itself, reabsorbing its head, sprouting extra legs and a long arched tail tipped with the blade of a scythe. Wendell's familiar was now a massive scorpion.

"I'm ... scared," said Ellen, feebly.

"Don't be. Billy's got this under control." But Billy was just standing there, watching. Sergei, clasped in his spiky forelegs started to rustle.

"I'm ... not ready ... to die."

"Stop talking like that. Nobody's gonna die."

"I need to know. The other side. It's not so bad?"

"Depends ... on where you go. You probably won't go ... where I go. And that's a good thing. But ... let's not even talk like this. I mean ... you're not going anywhere."

"I'm hurt bad, James. I can't stop shaking."

I pulled off my fleece jacket and laid it over her.

"I called it in. They should be here soon."

"James. They can't just come here ... not with this going on. You need to warn them. They need to know what they're dealing with. James?"

"What do I tell them? Watch out for mech monsters?"

Sergei's eyelids twitched and his eyes went wide when he saw me. He reached frantically into his coat and pulled out a gun. Billy clamped his hedge clipper mandibles over Sergei's forearm before he good get off a shot. There was a crunch of bone. Sergei howled. The gun fell onto the concrete.

Billy flared his wings and hopped around to face me, presenting Sergei clasped in his forearms to me like an offering.

Sergei's face was inflamed with fear and pain. Blood smeared his cheek and seeped down his shredded arm.

"Fuck you!" said Sergei, his eyes wild and crazed. "Fuck this fucking shit! What the fuck? How are you doing this?"

"If we let you go, will you leave us alone?"

"Not a chance," said Sergei. "We will get your ass. You kill me, I have brothers. This is not over until it is over."

"If you die, do you even know where you're going, Sergei? Huh? Do you have any idea where you'll end up?"

"I don't care. All that matters is that someone shows you how to respect me and the cartel. This shit is bigger than just me. We're talking about honor here. Honor!"

With a casual twitch of his forelegs, Billy tossed Sergei over the bleachers. He fell flailing his broken arms, hitting the pavement with a thud.

"Holy crap. Did I just do that?"

"You did," said Urszula, clambering up the shattered concrete. "And very well." She gasped when she saw Ellen and swooped to her side.

I caught a peek at Meg, lying unharmed inside the press box looking all pleased with herself. I had half a mind to have Billy toss her over the side too. But in truth, I was controlling none of this. Billy had his own mind, parallel but independent to my own, less enslaved by emotion, more prone to cold practicality.

With a leap and a burst of wings he took flight, landing on the track at the base of the bleachers. He lumbered onto the turf like a heavyweight boxer entering a ring. Wendell's metal scorpion wheeled around to face him, clacking its pincers.

Billy pounced and struck the first blow. His forelegs lashed out, lightning swift, raking his steel spines against the scorpion's shoulder. Chunks of aluminum debris went flying. The scorpion whipped its stinger at Billy's head. As Billy dodged aside it darted forward and seized Billy's foreleg in a pincer.

I narrowed my eyes and focused on Billy, straining to funnel every last bit of anxiety, anger and energy into him, to give him more strength. He slashed at the scorpion with his free foreleg, tearing chunks loose from its junkyard carapace. But Wendell's beast was nimble. It spun out of Billy's reach and slammed him with its stinger, impaling his abdomen, pinning him to the turf.

Billy bent around and snapped at it with his mandibles but a pincer lashed out and seized one of his forelegs, clipping off the end. Unbound by whatever force had kept them together, the parts constituting the severed limb disengaged and clattered to the ground.

The other pincer latched onto Billy's other foreleg and the battle was as good as done. He could only kick and claw with other legs and bite with his mandibles. The scorpion pinned Billy down with its tail while it systematically disassembled him with its pincers.

As I stood there, shocked and appalled by my impotence, my inability to give Billy even a fighting chance, Urszula raced down the steps and onto the field. She flung out her scepter and sent a goopy blast of plasma hurtling towards the scorpion's cephalothorax. Most of it missed but a few strands clung on and tethered the scorpion to the turf, though it still managed to turn and face Urszula.

Billy flopped on the turf, almost completely dismembered, most of him now rendered into a heap of inanimate junk while the scorpion remained largely intact.

The scorpion pounced towards Urszula, stretching at its binds, whipping its tail. Urszula dove aside but the stinger found her, piercing her shoulder, pinning her to the ground just as it had done to Billy. Her scepter slipped from her fingers and the scorpion kicked it out of reach.

"Nooo!" I trotted down the steps and onto the track, waving my crappy, little sword. Why did my spell craft abandon me when I needed it most? Why did it have to be so erratic? Two of my friends had now paid for my incompetence and Wendell had probably not even broken a sweat.

There was little left of Billy by this point, just a shapeless, writhing, uncoordinated junk heap, not a trace of the glorious, giant mantis he had just been.

A door slammed. Wendell exited the white van. He tossed aside a cigarette butt and strode across the field. The scorpion kept Urszula pressed to the ground with his stinger while it scavenged among Billy's parts, repairing itself, making itself even larger and stronger.

I hung back, trying again to get my spell craft churning properly while Wendell walked right up to Urszula's scepter and picked it up, running his hand down its length.

"Nice bit of carving. Love the bug motif. We ever get peace in Root, you guys should open up some curio stands. The Sanctuary folks would snatch these up for sure."

Urszula kept calm, though she was bleeding profusely from where the scythe/stinger had penetrated her shoulder. I went and stood over her, sword quivering in my hand, giving the pretense at least of protecting her from further harm. Wendell just looked at me and sneered.

"Put the fucking sword down or I'll snuff you out before you have a chance to say goodbye."

That power kept rolling like an ocean deep inside me. If only I could tap it. But somehow it couldn't gain any traction. It found no direction, no outlet even though the obvious target of my ire stood right in front of me.

The pain, aggravated by the ghostly remnants of the Hashmal's arrow shaft only made it harder. The more I pushed, the more it hurt.

"Put down the freaking sword already or I'll put it down for you! And I won't be gentle."

"What do you want from me? Why don't you off me already?"

He rolled his eyes and sighed. "Kid. In the off chance that we meet again in some other world, I want you to understand something. You think you're special and you are ... a little bit ... I mean a lot folks have this ability inside them ... but it doesn't come as easy for them. And ... as you can see ... it means nothing if you can't put it to any use. Shit like this has to be cultivated. And chances like this don't come around very often. So the next time someone offers to do you a favor, take them up on it. It'll be for your own good."

"Good? You think what you do is good?"

"Sheesh! Some of you guys, this messiah business goes to your head. You all think you're the Chosen Ones, sent to do good work for the powers that be. For the Lord. For God. Whatever you want to call it. But in reality, mister, it's every soul for himself."

He looked around the wreckage and carnage scattered around the field and parking lot. "Christ, what a freaking mess you made. You guys have made it really hard for me to conduct business up here for a long time."

Finally, I heard sirens. What was taking them so long? How many soccer fields could there be at Dartmouth?

Wendell leered down at Urszula. "You know this gal's got some spunk. I might keep her around a bit. Might be fun to play with. But this is it for you ... Jimmie. I'm done with you. Say goodbye to your girlfriend."

I narrowed my eyes at him and stared, trying to focus every smidgeon of my will against him. The forces in me were churning like the turbine of a jet liner. But the pain of that phantom shaft kept everything all bottled up.

Wendell scrunched his face. He noticed me clutching my chest. "Angel tag, eh? How convenient!"

He flicked his pen out of his coat pocket, clenched it in his fist and pivoted. Something hard and jagged raked against my heart and lungs, his pen a proxy for the phantom arrow shaft buried in my chest.

The pain dropped me to my knees. I couldn't breathe. My heart lurched.

"How do you like that? I may never be an angel, but it doesn't mean I don't admire the hell out of them. They got some good mojo. Man, I wish everyone had one of these implanted in their chest. It would make my job a hell of a lot easier."

He wrenched his wrist in the other direction. I gasped and screamed, collapsing to the ground.

Unseen by Wendell, Urszula stretched, her arm trembling, grasping for the scepter perched on an upturned clod of natural turf just out of her reach.

Wendell clenched his fist tight and brought it straight down this time. The phantom shaft plunged deep into my belly, bringing its fire to my stomach and kidneys.

"Oh hell. This shit ain't any good for killing," said Wendell. "Torture, maybe. But it's not doing any damage. Looks like I'll have to go with something more conventional."

Unseen by Wendell, Urszula stretched out her hand and made her scepter rise and drill itself into a patch of bare soil between Wendell's Italian shoes, polished to a mirror shine, but soiled with bits of dead grass and mud.

Instantly, it began to grow. Wendell didn't even notice until an inch thick stem had wrapped around his ankle. He tried kicking it away but his foot remained firmly planted to the ground.

"You little bitch." His pen disengaged from the Hashmal's tag and swung towards Urszula's head. Urszula glared with a nuclear intensity as the sapling surged up out of the ground, wood flowing upward like a geyser. A branch knocked Wendell's arm off-kilter just as a shock wave burst from the tip of his pen, denting the turf beside Urszula's head as if an invisible cannonball had hit it, the blow intended to crush her skull had it been on target.

The wood rippled and bulged, enveloping Wendell's flesh like one of those strangler figs that murder larger trees in the Brazilian rain forest. It was like one of those old nature documentaries with the stop-action, time-lapse photography, hyper-accelerated, years of growth compressed into seconds.

The bole lifted Wendell's feet off the ground. I lunged over and yanked the pen from his hand just before he was lifted beyond my reach. His face, barely visible now through a knot hole that was squeezing shut, was pinched and furious.

"You fuckers," he croaked with what little breath he could muster. "I'll hunt you down on the other side. Don't think I won't. I ain't resting till—"

The knot sealed shut, snuffing Wendell's last threat. One shiny shoe fell to the turf as his toes became completely encased in burl. All that was evident of Wendell was a bulge ten feet up the trunk of the still growing tree, leaves toothed, its bark smooth and gray—a beech.

The scorpion, paralyzed from the moment the tree attacked Wendell, now collapsed, forming a large junk heap beside the smaller pile that had been Billy.

I knelt down and brushed the hair from Urszula's brow. "You okay?"

Her lips curled in a faint smile. I could see some of that thirteen year old girl in her if I didn't look too closely into her world-weary eyes. A smear of dried blood curled down from corner of her mouth. The scythe blade still pinned her shoulder to the grass but I didn't dare remove it. Who knew what arteries were severed?

"It ... does not matter," she said. "I am done with this place. I am ready to go back home."

"But that might be ... to the Deeps."

"That is alright with me. It is ... a familiar place. I know how to be comfortable there."

"You're not gonna die," I said. "There's no reason. Help's coming. Do you hear it? And ... you're not bleeding nearly as bad as Ellen." The realization made my stomach sink. How much time had gone by since we had last seen Ellen?

"You forget," said Urszula. We were dealing with a Frelsian. Do you think he would create a scorpion without venom?"

Sirens wailed close. An ambulance was almost on scene. My gaze was drawn to the press box where Ellen lay.

"I'll be right back. Don't you dare move."

Urszula smiled up at me, palm tucked under chin, perfectly relaxed as if she were lounging on a picnic blanket without a care. How could she be so happy? I clambered up the concrete steps to the press box.

Meg was gone, her lashings all shredded on the floor of the press box. Ellen lay all limp and cold, the life all gone from her eyes. I crumpled to my knees and sobbed.
Chapter 44: Olivier's Will

Ellen's death was entirely my fault. To think of all the ways it could have been prevented. If we had avoided a showdown with Wendell and I had done his bidding. If I had ditched her and Urszula and gone off on my own, taking on Wendell mano e mano. Any other path would have led to a better result than the one I chose. Why did I always make the worst possible decisions?

Nothing I could do about it now. True, nothing was irreversible in this universe, not even death, but I couldn't help her if I didn't know where she had gone. I certainly wouldn't find her in Root or the Deeps. She had liked living. Those places were reserved for suicides and other criminals of the soul.

I had no desire to stick around Dartmouth and face questioning from the public servants currently screaming to the scene. What could I tell the cops that would make any sense to them? How could they possibly believe the truth, that all of this blood and destruction derived from a disagreement between a drug lord, a homeless kid and an assassin with one foot in the afterlife? What would they think about the hundred foot beech tree swaying in the breeze in the middle of the soccer field? Let them figure it out.

I saw that gun gripped in Ellen's hand and had to fight off an urge to take it and shoot myself in the head. But I didn't want to die. Not anymore. I did want to return to the Deeps, but I intended to dictate the terms.

I buckled down and closed my eyes, focusing my will like a laser on that one goal. I don't know whether it was the sheer intensity of my anxieties or mere luck but somehow I found traction. The world spun. I swapped existences with a surety and ferocity that I had never managed before. And this time my sword made the trip with me.

I knew I was back in the Deeps when my tears went dry and all the warmth sucked out of my body. I couldn't move right away, between feeling torn up about poor Ellen, and worried about what was going to happen to Urszula. Not to mention, I was freaked about how Karla had reacted to the sight of me. But I needed resolution. I had to find her again, explain myself, apologize for whatever I had done to disappoint her.

No one noticed me lying there among the other dropouts. I finally roused myself, got up and got my bearings. A man was trying to strap on the abandoned wings of the Seraph. All that fine webbing, those guy lines and pulleys, it looked like some impossible machine da Vinci might have sketched.

Their owner lay shriveled in the dust, though few marchers lingered to gawk at the murdered Seraph. A greater spectacle thundering down from the heights had drawn their attention. The Horus was on the move, creeping slowly but inexorably into the depression.

Most of the horde had rushed up slope to meet it, but a significant minority were content to wait and let it come and take them. A few souls with second thoughts had hightailed it up the other end of the depression, escaping to the plateau. These late-blooming infidels would be welcomed I'm sure by Lady An.

I wheeled around looking for Karla. I found Olivier first, his shredded body leaned up against his precious 'egg,' its surface etched with hexagonal facets that seemed sharper now, better defined. It seemed to be pulsing.

Brian, his legs shattered legs, lay beside him. His eyes were closed and he was singing or praying softly under his breath. Karla and some other woman, their backs to me, stood arm in arm watching the Horus slide down the hillside. At its current rate of creep, it wouldn't be long before it reached us.

Brian's eyes popped open as I approached. "You brought metal," he said. "How?"

"I don't know. It was just something I had with me."

"That's not ordinary steel," said Olivier. "Can't be."

"Whatever, guys. It's just a sword. Didn't do shit for me over there."

My eyes clung to Karla, taking in her finely sculpted shoulder blades, the subtle arch of her elegant neck. She had to have heard me talking. Why didn't she turn around?

My gut tightened as I waddled closer, hesitant and diffident. Olivier's sharp eyes tracked me, a wry grin building on his lips.

"What is wrong with you? Can't handle a little drama? The slightest bit of friction and you leave?"

"It wasn't ... my doing."

Karla finally turned around, mouth agape, eyes so wide.

"James!" She slipped away from her friend's support, took one gimpy step towards me and collapsed into the dust. She peered up at me from all fours, eyes pleading. "Please! Don't go yet! I promise I'll be nice."

I went over and helped her up. She clung to me like a monkey. I kissed her forehead, her cheek, her lips. Her skin was dry and leathery and tasted like dirt. I sensed some tension in her, some resistance. She did not return my affections.

"Why did you go?" she whispered, her face pressed against my chest.

"There was some heavy stuff going down on the other side. But I think I really botched."

"Always ... you always have something more important to do on the other side ... whatever side I am not on it seems."

"No. It's nothing like that. And besides ... what's the deal? You said you didn't want me here."

"I never said I didn't want you. I was mad that you came for me. I thought you had died. That you killed yourself to come find me here."

"I would have. If that's what it took. But no. As far as I know I'm still alive."

"For how long? The Horus will take you now if you stay. So now you should do. I am glad you came. But you must save yourself now."

"No. I'm not leaving you. Do you know how hard it was to find you?"

"Then you shouldn't have tried."

"I made a promise. You made me ... promise."

"But I was just babbling. I was desperate. I was dying and scared."

A shudder went through her body.

"Well, I'm here ... for now. However long that will be."

"You need to leave before the Horus comes."

"Don't you ... don't you want me?"

"Yes," she said. "But not if you have a chance to save yourself. Not if you have to waste your chance of living."

"It's not a waste." I held her closer, and kissed her again and again she kept her lips firm and unyielding, but she still clung to me tightly.

The Horus had plowed into and was already harvesting souls from the leading edge of the horde that had surged up the incline to meet it. But the skirt of blowing dust surrounding the core obscured exactly what was happening to them. We heard no screams, only truncated shouts of excitement. I took that as a good sign.

Karla's female friend looked at me and smiled awkwardly. She teetered on a mangled foot, little more than a dry sack of loose bones.

"James. This is my friend Amy."

Amy gave me a shy little wave. "Heard a lot about you."

"You guys know Brian and Olivier?"

"Please," said Olivier, rolling his eyes. "This is not the time for social niceties. These are to be our last moments in the Deeps ... if we're lucky."

"I'm not ready for this," muttered Brian.

"You don't have to come with us," I said.

"Yeah, right. You might have noticed. I ain't exactly ambulatory."

"We can get someone to help get you out of here," I said.

"Nah. What the fuck. I mean ... whatever. I had a good run here. It wasn't gonna be the same with Taro gone."

"Maybe your friend is one the other side," said Amy.

"If there is another side," said Brian.

"Looks like we have company," said Olivier, gazing over my shoulder.

I followed his eyes to the rim of the plateau where some folks who had reconsidered their commitment to the Horus had fled. A Hashmal and his Protectors were laying into the deserters with their staffs and clubs, cracking heads and limbs with abandon.

"That's Junger up there," said Karla. "The angel who hurt me and Amy."

This Junger was a big man, who carried a massive club and had an enormous bow strapped to his back. There was something familiar about the way he carried himself.

"I'm pretty sure that's the Hashmal who tagged me."

"Tagged?" said Karla.

I showed her the smoothed off stub of the arrowhead protruding from my sternum.

"Oh my," said Karla. "I thought that was just body decoration." She ran her fingers over my shoulder. "Your skin ... the gray ... it's coming off. You are pink underneath."

"Well, that's because ... like I said. I'm not dead. The gray is all for show."

Her eyes flared. "Please James! Run! I don't want you to die. There is no reason to give your soul to the Horus. Save yourself while you have a chance!"

"Karla, no. If the Horus doesn't get me, the Protectors will."

"You have your sword. You have the craft. You can fight your way out. Now go!"

She tried to peel away from me but I refused to let go of her.

"Karla. Enough! I'm staying and that's that. Jeez! Give it a rest, will you?"

"Such a waste. I just want you ... to have a life."

"Listen. I'm exactly where I want to be right now. I'm going with you, wherever that happens to be. We're gonna be together for a change. No more separation. Got it?"

She relented, resting her chin on my shoulder.

The outer winds of the Horus began to buffet us, splattering us with grit. Oliver squirmed around, positioning his body in front of his precious egg, protecting it from the Horus. The thing was bulging, straining at the seams, looking like it was about to hatch or explode.

Junger and his cronies went about their work, what I took to be standard protocol when hordes contacted the Horus. They were brutally efficient in mowing down and immobilizing strays and deserters. None escaped their net. Some who had fled reconsidered their prospects and came slinking back to the horde.

The logic of this place was becoming clear to me. The Horus was not anything holy, nor was it a portal. It was just a massive trash compactor. Conning these masses of unworthy souls to join the pilgrimage simply made the harvesting of souls more efficient. Like leading unwitting lambs to slaughter. But Junger was less a shepherd than a superintendent of a spiritual landfill, tasked with concentrating and eliminating all of this mobile human trash.

What made this collection of suicides and miscreants think they deserved better from this universe? They had rejected the investment the powers-that-be had made in them, opting instead for death. What made them think they had a right to any further existence?

The storm was close enough now that a cloud of debris obscured the shape of the Horus, rendering its core invisible. A roar shook the ground. Vibrations rattled my bones, harmonizing with Brian, who sang his last song cycle with abandon. I couldn't help but hum along under my breath.

The Horus skimmed the leading edge of the horde where the healthiest and most fanatical of the pilgrims had jockeyed for what they thought was a prime position. But they were being punked. In its typically cruel fashion, it curved around the bulk of the crowd, arcing over to us, the battered and broken, the stragglers and dropouts, gifting us the last laugh.

"I wish ... I wish I could cry," said Karla, quaking in my arms.

"Don't worry. We'll be okay," I said, reflexively, even though I expected that once the Horus it us we would cease to be altogether. But Karla harbored no delusions.

"These moments we have left ... they are our last," she said. "All that we will ever have. All there will ever be for us."

"It was worth it. Just so you know. All I ever wanted was to find you. To be with you again. And I did. All I wanted was to be with you. The rest ... doesn't matter."

A tear, a real one, formed in the corner of my eye and instantly froze. A small miracle. I had no idea I was capable, that this dusty and withered shell of a body held any liquid.

A huge feathered shaft came flinging out of the haze and slammed into Karla's back, passing through her soft parts and into my belly. The force of it staggered us, but we did not cry out, or even flinch. There was no pain, no blood. We were skewered together like hunks of meat on a kebab.

"That son of a bitch!"

I glared through the haze at our distant tormentor. My anger surged to a white-hot glory, stirring the forces contained within me. I raised the sword high above our heads, but just like had happened at Dartmouth, my power could find no outlet.

"What is this?" She ran her fingers along the strange, glassy fletching.

"Junger. The bastard tagged you ... us ... with an arrow."

Neither of us made any effort to extract it. Junger had done us a favor. There was no way the storm could tear us apart now, not that I had any intention of letting her out of my arms. We would face the Horus as one.

"This is it, James," said Karla, clinging to me tightly as the core of the Horus bore down on us. "You should have never come for me, but ... but I'm glad ... I'm glad you did." She buried her face against my shoulder.

"Everybody stand back," said Olivier. "It's show time."

I looked up. "Stand back? Why?"

There was a ripping sound behind us. Olivier, grinning like a demon, came squirming and writhing through the dust like an injured worm, trailing his wrecked torso. His egg expanded upward like a jumpy house inflating, doubling its dimensions with every outward pulse.

"What the hell?"

"Better get a move on," said Brian, dragging himself along with his powerful arms, as if he were swimming in the dust. "This is gonna be big."

As he passed Olivier, he reached out and gave the man a firm tug to slide him along. Amy hobbled over and latched on to us for support. We lurched away from the rapidly expanding dome.

Just as the Horus had begun to accelerate, it abruptly slowed as if sensing, fearing Olivier's object. But mass and momentum made it impossible to stop quickly enough to prevent it from plowing into the now house-sized dome now growing like a fourth stage lung tumor, creating new hexagonal facets along every seam, spitting out buds that also began to grow as they bounced and rolled past us. Some, lighter than air, floated into the Horus, captured by its wind.

"What is this?" said Karla. "What kind of spell craft?"

"Not mine," said Olivier, beaming like the proud father of a newborn. "It comes from the old lore of the infidels. Ancient, in fact. It took a long time to build and I've been waiting a long time to unleash it."

And then it happened, an event that made the multitudes of souls in the myriad hordes chasing after the great dust storm reconsider their firmly held beliefs, at least for a moment.

***

The outer sheath of the Horus slid over us, kicking up a thick wall of blowing that peppered our faces and bodies like a sandblaster. The humming core, glowing golden, came into view, consuming a few stray buds from Olivier's monstrous egg. They popped with dull but powerful reports and they continued to burst as the core barreled forward unimpeded.

We struggled to stand our glow as the yellow glow washed over us. I felt my soul pry loose from my flesh. Each of us became blurred by the shadows seeping from our skin. Karla clenched me tighter. She tried finding my eyes, but I must have had two sets to choose from, one pair just a hollow shell and the other the dark void of my true self.

The core slammed into Olivier's dome and it imploded with a sound too deep and vast for earthly thunder. Maybe on Jupiter such a sound was common, but I had never heard anything like it, and never wish to again.

The dust storm's droning winds began to wind down as if some massive turbine had lost all power. The dust it had carried aloft congealed and combined into clods of clay that fell like hailstones, pummeling the ground, piling around us in heaps.

The sheath of cloud that had shrouded the Horus collapsed, exposing its naked core, a stationary shaft of yellow light, as thick as a skyscraper extending out of sight into the pink heavens.

Ripples of light shuttled along its length, disturbing the purity of its golden tone. Green highlights spread and spawned threads of blue and purple that eradicated every trace of gold.

We watched with awe this vertical, changeable rainbow. But our souls continued to loosen from our flesh as the shaft drifted into, humming with a rounded, ululating tone, soothing as a lullaby.

In my heart, I felt certain I was glimpsing Heaven, or at least some part of it. I was consumed with an unexplainable elation. This was a beautiful strangeness, an unknown I did not fear, a familiar unfamiliar.

"Come!" said Olivier, who had already shed the remains of his body, and had become entirely a creature of shadow. "Into the rift! Don't know how long it will last. The beast might only be stunned."

He rose up on legs of shadow miraculously restored, walked into the yellow light and vanished. A cry went up among the dropouts, emerging from their ruined bodies like insects from exuvia. Freed souls began to run into the rift.

"Ah, what the fuck?" said Brian, erect but still dragging his partially shed corpse. "Can't be any worse than this."

Amy disengaged from our little gaggle and joined him.

Karla and I were a tangle of souls and flesh all pinned together by the arrow, its shaft unbreakable, the barbed head, inextricable. We shuffled and dragged ourselves into the ecstatic and jostling horde that were coming to the shaft from all directions.

Blue light flooded over us. Shimmering within its depths came glimpses of other lands, living landscapes of forests and meadows and ponds. Karla and I gripped each and stepped into it together. The ground gave way beneath us as if we had dropped into a chasm. We were whisked into the core. Blinding, burning pain bloomed where each of Junger's arrows had impaled me.

Karla screamed.
Chapter 45: Homecoming

Lille sighed. "Well, it was certainly a nice change of pace while it lasted. But there's more than meets the eye to those Frelsian folks. They're not nearly as polite as they make themselves out to be."

Three days now since Lille had graced his new cabin. Bern still could not stop basking in the miracle of her presence.

Her hair was shorn short as part of the humiliation Luther had so unnecessarily inflicted on the refugees who had made their way down out of the hills. Convinced they were spies or saboteurs he had them locked away in the depths of his new city until his advisers convinced that defectors and dissidents were a resource not a threat.

As she rattled on over tea about Sanctuary society and politics, Bern registered only the occasional sentence, his eyes fixated on this apparition before him, this mythical creature he was sure he would never glimpse again.

Lille's flesh-weaving had regressed a bit so that her burn scars were again visible. Bern was happy to see it, actually. Those scars were part of her. They were what made her his Lille. but on the positive side, most of her neuronal manipulations had reverted. Her sass had returned with a vengeance, though her wits remained perhaps a tad more dulled and slower than before the Frelsians had laid their hands on her, but it was only a matter of time before she regained her senses. Thankfully, the craft of flesh weaving was entirely reversible when neglected.

The window of neglect that enabled her old self to take root again coincided with the aftermath of James' raid on the Sanctuary. With half of Frelsi destroyed, the populace and their overseers became consumed with rebuilding and the rehabilitation of Hemisouls became a lesser priority.

This allowed her personality to revert to enough of its former self to realize it was no place she had wanted to be, especially not without Bern. So she had wandered away from a Sanctuary-sponsored nature walk and continued down the mountain, through the battlefields with corpses still unreclaimed, swam across the river still burgeoning with flood waters though the rains had nearly ceased.

And now here she was, in Bern's new cabin, across a swath of pitted plain from Luther's new village built now on an artificial hill looking like a cross between Montmartre and Mont Saint-Michel. They were enjoying they're third cup of tea that day while their bodyguard Quentin patrolled the garden with a pair of pruners and a battle axe.

Lille went on endlessly about Sanctuary intrigue, the political maneuvering, trysts and betrayals as they happened both before the raid and after the turmoil that had perturbed the social equilibrium and interrupted the regularity of her schedule of beauty treatments and brainwashing sessions.

Bern registered only about one out of every three words as he basked in the sight of the most significant and magnificent soul in his existence. His soul mate returned. He had honestly never expected to see her again for eternity.

She was dead now. Her soul free thanks to the services of an assassin/facilitator. It made Bern anxious now to realize that now there was no chance his soul would end up with hers once his living body died in prison. There were ways to remedy that, but not without the assistance of Frelsi.

It took a few moments to realize that Lille had stopped talking. In fact, she was now frowning at him.

"Blah-blah-blah. Are you even listening to me, Bern? The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. Isn't that right, Bern?"

Bern noted the twist in her lip and recognized from experience the imminence of danger. Luckily, he had chosen the right moments to be attentive.

"Utter nonsense. I happen to know it falls mainly in the mountains. The Pyrenees, to be precise."

"Hmm. That was a test. I could have sworn you weren't listening to a word I was saying."

"On the contrary dear. Your stories ... they are fascinating. The things that go on up in those hills. It's hard to believe."

"You were looking at me like I was a piece of meat."

"What? Not at all. I was simply fawning."

"To be exact, you were looking at me like I was a Tuscan Porterhouse steak with red wine and peppercorn jus."

"My favorite."

"Yes. I know."

A tremor rumbled through the cottage rattling tea cups, rippling the walls.

Quentin barged in, bits of vine clinging to his curly mane. "Sir! Ma'am! There's something going down across the plain."

"Frelsians?" Bern rose from the table abruptly, jostling and spilling both teacups;

"No. It's some kind of beam ... from Heaven."

They rushed to the door, Lille instinctively taking his elbow to brace his every gimpy stride.

In the near distance, less than a kilometer away, an enormous bluish shaft of light rose out of the ground and soared into the shelf of clouds that still lingered even as the rainy season had begun to fade.

"What the ... bloody hell?"

"It looks like a rainbow," said Lille. Except it's not a bow and it's mostly blue."

"It hasn't rained days. And the sun's not even out."

A gate creaked open in the outer bastions of Luthersburg, which had acquired not only a hill but a moat deep and wide. Horses with some distinctly characteristics pulled a carriage across a draw bridge. A squadron of cavalry mounted on similarly doggish horses came pouring out behind it, the riders heavily armored and wielding not sabers but cylinders resembling bazookas.

The party swung down the dirt track that led right up to Bern's cabin and the lead carriage rolled to a stop right next to them as the cavalry filtered ahead to form a protective screen.

The door of the sleek carriage popped open and Luther stepped out, his height only slightly exaggerated today, his flesh woven into something a little more mature than usual.

"Bernard! How goes it? You've been keeping yourself scarce lately."

"Yes, well. You know how I don't care that much for all the commotion."

"The 'Burg is booming these days that's for sure. In fact, we're thinking of expanding into the hills. A mountain retreat. You could be the mayor if you please."

"Thanks but no thanks. I'm happy where I am. And besides Lille and I have lots of catching up to do."

Lille had graced Luther with even a glance and Luther for his part did not even acknowledge her existence. She and her fellow refugees had been thrown into cells and interrogated when they first came down from Frelsi and Lille had yet to forgive the affront.

A Duster that Bern didn't recognize emerged from behind Luther and climbed to the roof of the carriage for a better view of the spectacle before them.

People were emerging from the base of the glowing shaft. Some of them staggered a few steps and collapsed. One stood tall, surveyed the surrounded and came striding straight for Bern's cabin which stood halfway between the shaft and Luther's fairytale village.

"Dusters!" said Luther. "A whole new crop of them! It's like ... a second coming."

"Third, actually," mumbled Bern. "That puts the Dusters two up on Jesus by my count."

"Please don't blaspheme in public, dear," said Lille. "Some souls take these things seriously."

"Oh, how marvelous!" said Luther. "Yaqob will be ecstatic. It bolsters our ranks just when the Frelsians are becoming more adventurous."

"I can't imagine the Frelsians will be too thrilled."

Lille touched Bern's elbow.

"Bern ... do you suppose ... that one ... the bold one ... is that James?"

"I'm not sure."

The one confident figure among the crowds now spilling from the base of the shaft came striding towards them, a certain jauntiness to his gait that seemed out of character for James.

"Olivier! Oh my God, that's my long lost Olivier!"

Luther went charging off down the road, accompanied by his four dogs.

"Who is Olivier?" said Lille.

"Long lost friend of Luther's," said Bern. "An adventurer,. Lost to the Deeps apparently."

"Him? The one who created Luthersburg?"

"Well, he only created the cavern, but yes, that's the one."

"Oh my Lord. Now we have two maniacs to deal with."

"Now, now dear. Luther's gotten much better since he's been on the surface. Come. Let's go find James. I have a feeling the boy has something to do with this latest breakout.

***

Bern and Lille searched the stunned faces that stumbling about, sucking in air like they were learning how to breathe again.

"Excuse me, did you happen to run into a fellow by the name of James Moody?"

It was a long shot, he knew. And his questions invariably drew blank stares.

They worked their way back to Luther's carriage as the refugees gathered in knots and clumps along the plains, marveling in the ponds and streams, drinking from them, splashing, caressing the newly sprouted grass and clover.

"Luther is going to have his hands full. Where's he gonna put them all?"

"But they're gray-skinned Bern. Surely they're the Duster's responsibility."

"They're just people, Lille, like you and me. It's an artificial distinction. I don't see why we can't all just live together."

"Yes ... I suppose. It's just ... in Frelsi ... I couldn't imagine such a thing."

Olivier was climbing into the carriage with Luther.

"Quick! Let's nab them before they slip away." They rushed over hand in hand, arriving just as Luther's footman started to close the door.

"Wait! Please excuse me sir, but may we ask you a question?"

This Olivier person had eyes too intense to linger one's gaze on too long. Bern had the distinct feeling that to do so would either set him ablaze or turn him to stone.

"Certainly." He draped his arm over the carriage door and waited patiently. He clenched and fanned his fingers over and over.

"Make it quick Bernard," said Luther with some annoyance. "Olivier and I have a lot of catching up to do ourselves."

"We're looking for a friend. A very special young man by the name of James. James Moody. Did you happen to see him on the other side?"

"Yes. I know James," said Olivier. "I was just with him. He helped me out quite a bit. In fact, he made this rift possible."

"Well ... would you happen to know if he's still there ... and if he plans on ... coming home?"

"Is he not here? He should be here. As far as I know ... he entered the rift with me ... he was right beside me when I did. But ... if he's not here ... there's no telling where he ended up."

"But you saw him ... you saw him enter? You're certain."

"He was right behind me. He was with a girl ... name of Karla. He was quite taken with her, apparently."

"Karla!" said Lille, piping up excitedly. "She is well?"

"She is dead ... like me. But yes, she was with him and they both entered the influence of the rift. They passed through before me, in fact."

Luther sighed impatiently. "Listen Bernard, if you're so worried about the boy, why don't you go for check for yourself? The rift is there and it is open."

"But no guarantee it would lead him back to the Deeps," said Olivier. "It depends on his natural tendencies. The rift spans all realms as far I can tell."

An annoyed Luther leaned over Olivier and slammed the carriage door shut. The dog-horses barked and took off in a trot for the city.

Lille squeezed Bern's hand and held it against her bosom.

"Well ... at least they were together," said Lille. "That's all that matters ... in the end. Isn't that right, Bern?"

Bern took her hand and gave her what he thought was a grin, but he could only imagine what it looked like given the strange brew of positive and negative emotions that was swirling through him.

A squadron of mounted dragonflies arrived on the scene, landing gently on the flats while their riders dismounted and went bounding over to aide their newly arrived comrades and assist those who continued to straggle through the rift.

"Let's go home, dear. There is much weaving to be done. These folks are going to need some help with blankets and shelter."

"Do you suppose they might like some tea as well?"
Chapter 46: Pain

Hellish, this blast of heat that engulfed her, inflaming her skin, assaulting her senses inside and out. Karla felt an urgent need to inflate her lungs beyond the habitual sort of breathing many denizens of Deeps opted to do.

But there were colors all around her now. The pink had drained from the sky, replaced by a misty blue. A sea of green and growing things swarmed the hills around them.

She choked on the steamy air, coughing and sputtering. James gently patted her back.

"Don't worry. It gets better. You just need to adjust."

"Where are we? Is this ... Heaven?"

"Nah," said James, his face expressionless, almost grim. "It's Dartmouth."

They lay sprawled in the wreckage of some sort of heavily-damaged athletic facility. Lights blue and red flashed all around them. Radios chattered with numbers and jargon.

Men carrying clear shields and bulky suits maneuvered carefully through heaps of twisted medal littering a football field. Other groups of men, in helmets with tinted face plates and all black body armor waited beyond a perimeter marked by yellow plastic ribbon. A row of emergency vehicles, the source of the flashing lights, waited on the street behind them.

James crawled over to the prone figure of a young woman, dark smears streaking her dirty blonde hair.

"What happened to her?" said Karla, alarmed.

"She was a friend of mine," said James, as he brushed the hair out of the woman's eyes. "We were deported together."

"Deported? So this is—?"

"New Hampshire," said James. "America."

"But ... who did all this?"

"It's complicated," said James. "It was partly a drug cartel, and partly a Frelsian assassin named Wendell ... and me."

"So this is why you had to go back."

James pulled open the door of a partially toppled shack riddled with bullet holes, every window shattered. He crawled inside and retrieved a plastic sack containing various items of clothing, all littered with broken glass.

"Here. Put some of these on. You may be warm now, but it wears off quick. Better you look presentable for jail."

"Jail? But what did I do?"

"You're here. An EU citizen in America illegally. At the scene of a crime. I'm surprised they haven't tackled us already. They must be afraid of bombs or something."

Already, the air seemed not quite as warm. She smelled lilacs. A tremor shuddered through her. A revelation.

"James. Don't you realize what this means? I'm ... we're alive!" She chuckled. "I've come back to life. Reincarnated ... as myself!"

"Yeah. So?" That face. So glum.

"This is impossible."

He sniffed. "You should know better than that."

He reached down and adjusted the young woman's head so it was a little less grotesquely askew and aligned in a position that would have been more comfortable, if comfort had mattered to her anymore. Her death had really gotten to James. This ... stranger. How long could they have known each other?

"What was her name?" said Karla, pulling on a pair of dark green sweat pants she had found in the bag of clothes.

"Ellen."

"Did you ... love her?"

James narrowed his eyes and scowled. "She was a friend. She got caught up in my business. Fucking ... sucks. That's all."

He got up slowly, bracing himself against the rickety shack and looked down over the field.

"Urszula's gone. They must have taken her."

"Urszula? You mean, that Duster girl? She's here too?"

"Yeah."

"But she's been dead a hundred years at least."

"Yeah."

"James. These are miracles!"

"Nah. Just loopholes."

He looked so grim. Yet here they were together. Alive! Certainly there were things to celebrate as well as mourn.

"James? Are you mad at me?"

James sighed.

"I just ... wish ... things had worked out differently."

"But we're here ... together. That's good, right?"

He took a deep breath and sighed, came over and gave Karla a hug. He took a step back. Looked deep into her eyes.

"Listen. This is how it's all gonna go down from here. Not that I can predict a future but it doesn't take a genius to know what happens next. I'm probably gonna go to jail. There's no avoiding that. But you, they might let go. There's no evidence you were involved in anything. But the thing is ... you're in America with no record of entering the country legally. So they're gonna deport you back to the UK."

"James, no! I'm not leaving you. We just found each other. And we just got here. It's not fair. How can we—?"

"It's not up to us! Now calm down and listen. It's not gonna be forever. It never is. They're gonna take you away from me. And I'll do my time if it comes to that. But even when I get out, I can never go back to the UK. Not legally. I'm banned in Britain. So we're gonna have to figure out another place to meet."

"What about Root?" she said.

"Maybe," said James. "If we can both find our way back there. But to tell you the truth, I'm kind of sick of the afterworld. I'd rather be with you here, however we can work that out."

"We can run from here! Hide."

"Really? Look around you. We're surrounded by SWAT teams. They'll gun us down if we try and scram."

"When? If they take you away. When will I see you? How? Where?"

"Listen. It doesn't matter where you go. I will find you. I've got the means. This guy Wendell gave me some money and I think I know where more might be stashed. If only I can get a few days out on bail, I'm pretty sure I can get there before the cops do. I don't think they're gonna to find his body right away."

"Why? Where is it?"

"See that big beech in the middle of the field."

"What?"

"He's inside, thanks to Urszula."

"How?"

"Let's just say she had a bone to pick with him. Now come over here, you. Hold me. This is gonna be our last chance for a while. But I promise, wherever you end up, I will find you. We just need to pick a place to meet. Anywhere in the world, but not the UK because I'm probably on a black list with immigration there. But you name the place and after I do my time, I will meet you there. I promise."

She struggled to get her lip to stop quivering so could speak.

"What about ... Roma?"

"Sure. Whatever you want." His eyes focused inward for a moment. "On the edge of St. Peter's Square, around the corner from St. Mark's, there are these columns. A passage leading out of the square. On the East side. You know it?"

"Of course."

"There are benches there. Out of the rain. I have no idea how long it's gonna be but I promise I'll get my ass to Italy as soon as I can. I'll go and sit on those benches every day until I see you."

"And I will go too. Every day."

"It could take a year Karla. Maybe more if they tie me to all this drug stuff, not to mention ... the killings. This is not just about me stealing my dad's truck anymore."

"I will write to you. I will visit."

He shook his head. "They ain't letting you into this country again, once you're out. You're in the same boat I'm in with the UK."

"How will I know where you are?"

"Just watch the news. Google me. You'll know when I get out. And I promise you, I will get my ass to St. Marks the day I get free. Got it?"

"I will go there every day and wait for you. Every day."

Tears rolled down Karla's face. So strange, that tickle of moisture, and ironic. How many times she had tried to cry in the Deeps and couldn't, and now that she wanted to be brave for James, the floodgates had broken loose.

She held him tighter, buried her face in his chest. "I'm not ready to leave you ... not yet. We just got here. I just found my life again."

James kept still and held her firmly. She felt him inhale deeply and turned to see what worried him.

A man from the bomb squad had given the all clear signal. The SWAT teams came storming across the barriers and onto the stands.

"This is it," said James. "Listen. These guys that are coming ... do whatever they say. Give them no reason to shoot us. Okay?"

Her heart ached, but something deeper and more tangible pained her as well, throbbing deep inside her midsection, filling her with an intense burning. She reached down and felt her belly but could find no trace of the Hashmal's arrow that had impaled the two of them, only that phantom but very real pain.

"Do you feel it, too?" she said, as a trio of men leveled weapons on them and barked orders to move apart. "This pain?"

"I do," said James.

THE END

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