Beaten Path

by Martin Shannon

  “It’s over, Gene. I’ll give it to you, you sure made quite a show of it, but it’s still over. Now, I’m going to do you a favor. The first thing I’ll do after this is finished is end the House, and after that I’ll be paying a visit to Porter.”

  Little Ed charged at my Darkling, machete in hand, only to be blocked by Donnie and his tar-coated father. The Riders’ blades glistened in the light of the Thinning’s hole. “I don’t want to hurt you, Dad.”

  “You can’t.” Evil Gene grabbed my shirt and pulling me in. “He isn’t your old man anymore.”

  New Dead and the Riders circled the wooden boy. Inky eyes and clawing hands reached for the junior Demon Hunter. Little Ed kept his machete out in front and swung it wildly to keep the monsters at bay, but he wasn’t going to last long.

  Magick swelled in my Darkling, the Deep Magick of the House, and he held up the photo wheel. “It’s time to go home.”

  “Now, Sergeant!”

  My Darkling tilted his head. “Huh?”

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Translucent rounds erupted from the cemetery, their brilliant white light leaving stunning arcs in the evening air. Ghost soldiers in perfect formation fired with deadly accuracy, mowing down New Dead by the dozens.

  A spectral shot tore the paper wheel from Evil Gene’s fingers. “Argh!”

  I had my opening and threw an elbow into the Darkling’s gut. That quick jab sent the air rocketing out of his lungs and gave me the escape route I needed. The photo wheel flipped end over end and I chased after it—only to hesitate when I found Little Ed locked in a losing battle with the Riders.

  “Fire!”

  Another volley of spectral bullets sliced through the ashen damned, getting their attention and drawing the horde toward the cemetery gates.

  “Don’t stop shooting!” I shouted, scooping up Private Petty’s blade.

  More New Dead streamed through the hole in the Thinning. They crashed over the pavement and tore a path toward the cemetery.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Ghostly bullets by the hundreds ripped through their bodies, but the damned were too many—they outnumbered the righteous ten to one, and they knew it.

  Come on, Kaylee!

  My Darkling lunged for the paper wheel, but a perfectly timed slash with Private Petty’s saber forced him to pull back his hand lest he lose it.

  “Fine, if this is how you want it.” A brilliant black sword—a twin to Petty’s—appeared in his hand. “Nigh-infinite power and we’re going to swing swords around? Whatever, it ends tonight.”

  “You got that right,” I cried, spinning Private Petty’s saber around to separate my Darkling’s head from its body, but Evil Gene was faster. He parried my strike with practically zero effort and launched a counter assault of his own.

  “Gene!” Little Ed shouted. “A little help here.”

  The Midnight Riders had him surrounded, and it was taking all the wooden boy had to keep from being cut to splinters.

  Another slash from my Darkling forced me into full-on defensive mode, his strikes coming faster than I could defend. “I’m a little busy right now.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that—” Little Ed said, his words cut off by the ringing of steel on steel.

  Honk! Honk! Honk!

  Bright headlights cut across the dark pavement like a beacon—the Grayson Cadillac had arrived, and not a moment too soon. My pudgy apprentice kicked the driver door open and broke into what had to be the most labored run I’d seen in years.

  “Adam!”

  “I’m coming,” he shouted, his backpack bouncing comically behind him.

  My Darkling turned his blade and pinned my saber to the ground before pointing a hand at my apprentice. Magick surged in the evil thing’s fingers.

  “Hell no.” I swung for the Darkling’s head. “Adam, get down,”

  My apprentice jumped the salt line, then took a glancing blow of concentrated Magick to the shoulder. The inky blackness tore through his hoodie like acid, chewing at the soft cotton and peeling off the skin underneath in wet globs. My apprentice screamed, as did his mother, who still stood at the passenger door well outside the salt line.

  Adam hit the pavement hard. His impact sent the backpack’s contents skittering across the blacktop. The Five Star Toaster toppled end over end and landed next to Little Ed.

  “Eddie, don’t do it!”

  My Darkling was back on the offensive and it was all I could do to keep the black blade from separating my saber from my arm. Locked in his own battle, Little Ed parried another pair of slashes, but in doing had accumulated tar on his arms, along with dozens of cuts. The wooden boy might not have been bleeding blood, but the sawdust that dropped from his wounds told me all I needed to know. “Eddie!”

  “Tar burns, right?” the junior Demon Hunter asked.

  “Don’t—”

  Little Ed wedged his toe into the toaster slot and kicked it into the air.

  “Eddie, you can’t survive the Five Star Toaster.”

  “Good. I won’t want to live with myself after I do this.”

  The Demon Hunter tossed his machete aside and clutched the evil machine to his chest. “Tell my mom I love her.”

  “Don’t do it,” I cried, frustration boiling in my blood. “Your mom is coming. The cavalry is coming, damn it. You don’t need to—”

  Little Ed pulled the handles down.

  Click.

  No!

  Flames erupted from the Five Star Toaster like a malfunctioning firework display. Bright red and hungry, they consumed everything in their path. The white-hot bonfire raced up Little Ed’s arms, and he screamed, throwing the hot box to the ground, but once the Toaster’s arms had been triggered, there was no stopping it. The inferno blazed across the pavement and set fire to the Eternal Shame.

  I shielded my eyes, but that did nothing to stop the wooden boy’s cries.

  “Eddie!”

  Fire covered his face, licking at his eyes and cracking his features like dry kindling.

  In the confusion, Evil Gene’s slashing blade came at me fast—almost too fast—but somehow my saber was ready. It parried the strike and slashed back with a fury of its own. Little Ed burned but still the Darkling didn’t relent, and neither did Petty’s blade.

  “I got this,” said a familiar voice deep inside my head, a voice that seemed to resonate from the blade itself.

  Private?

  “Yeah.”

  But how did you—

  The saber pulled my arm down, parrying a cunning attack and responding with one of its own.

  “It’s really hard to talk and do this. Go, save him before it’s too late.”

  How—

  I didn’t get a chance to finish my thought before the ghostly private stepped out of my body. That little bastard had been hiding in the back seat all along. No wonder my saber work had been so damn impressive.

  “Go!” he shouted, taking the fight to the Darkling.

  Evil Gene’s surprise was palpable, but short-lived. Private Michael Petty pressed the advantage, while just beyond us the inferno roared. By now the Magickal flames had consumed the space occupied by Little Ed and the Midnight Riders and was expanding further. Solid pavement buckled like magma in the overwhelming power of the Five Star Toaster.

  I held a hand to my eyes to block the heat. “Eddie!”

  I found the young Demon Hunter burned like spent firewood deep in the white-hot center. His body was blackened and charred, and his arms barely moved in the shimmering waves of heat.

  “I can’t get to you!”

  He tried to wave me off, but his broken movements only drove me on.

  No, damn it. Think, Gene…

  I dug into my pocket, fumbling around with the drawstring top of a small pouch.

  This is madness.

  The flames rose higher, and I dug out a small white circle. I had no idea where this Lost Button would end up, but anywhere was better than ground zero with the Five Star
Toaster.

  “Catch!”

  The button tumbled end over end in the burning night air, a spinning drop of hope in the darkness. The wooden boy’s burning hand closed around it, and for a brief moment I thought I saw a smile.

  “Eddie!” Kaylee screamed, appearing at the tree line with a host of Bridge Trolls just long enough to watch her only son vanish in the hazy smoke.

  45

  In Your Eyes

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Ghostly bullets ripped past and pulled me from my mental haze. The fight was on and in full gear. New Dead continued to pour out of the hole in the Thinning at an unstoppable rate, and while they dropped by the dozens against the hailstorm of bullets from a well-positioned firing squad at the cemetery gates, for every one that went down two more took its place.

  “Eddie!” Kaylee screamed. Her voice sounded raw and aching, and it cut me to the core.

  The Five Star Toaster’s blaze expanded outward in all directions, turning the pavement and painted highway lines into a technicolor slurry. The Midnight Riders writhed within the column of flame—nothing, supernatural or otherwise, could survive the Toaster forever.

  “Ed and Donnie are in there!” I shouted, getting the Swamp Witch’s attention. “We’ve got to get them out before they burn to death.

  Kaylee’s shape rippled beyond the waves of heat.

  “Adam.” Angela climbed out of the Cadillac and made a run for her fallen son. The Swamp Witch’s bowl bounced in her arms. “I’m coming, sweetheart.”

  “Stop! Don’t break the—” I shouted, but it was too late. The senior Mrs. Grayson ignored me and ran straight through the salt line, snapping it, and taking away just about any chance we had of keeping the situation contained.

  The binding popped with an audible crack and the New Dead sensed it. Like a pack of hungry wolves, they changed tactics. No longer interested in the cemetery, the fiery damned streamed for the exit.

  I found the Swamp Witch barely visible through the flames and heat. “Kaylee, do something.”

  “But Ed and Donnie…”

  “They’ll be better off as Riders if we fill the world with New Dead.”

  The Swamp Witch said something to Stinkstone and the other Bridge Trolls, but I was too far away to hear it, and the Toaster’s expanding inferno was getting too close to the paper wheel for comfort.

  “I’ve got the bowl.” Angela set the Prussian Wedding bowl next to her son. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

  My apprentice tugged at his hoodie, pulling the melted fabric away from an oozing wound.

  “Stop, honey.” She tried to pour the contents of the bowl on his shoulder.

  Adam shook his head and pushed the bowl away. “I’ll make it, Mom. They won’t.” He pointed to the Midnight Riders caught in the inferno.

  Mrs. Grayson was clearly confused. “What do we do?”

  “There’s nothing you can do.”

  Evil Gene!

  I spun around to find Private Petty pinned to the ground like a mounted butterfly. “I’m sorry, sir.” The young soldier’s ghost pulled at the black sword driven through his chest, but it didn’t budge.

  The Darkling admired the Five Star flames. “Ah well, they’ve served their usefulness. Besides, they get that damn tar on everything.” Evil Gene got the paper wheel and was on me in an instant. I didn’t have time to react before we were face to face again. “Now, let’s get this over with.”

  With my back to the inferno, all I could see were its fires reflected in my Darkling’s eyes. Slowly those fires shifted, and what had been the tips of flame became me—me at my worst. Moments I wasn’t proud of rolled by in excruciating detail. I reached for the disc, but my hands were too tired, I couldn’t unmake it.

  More images flowed past, too many to count, and each one was a reflection of a lifetime of disappointment.

  “Gene!”

  Someone called my name, but I couldn’t hear their words; they were lost in the eyes of my darker half.

  A deep and rolling timbre washed over us. It wasn’t the roaring flames, or the cries of the New Dead. This was different. This was singing.

  The Bridge Trolls were singing.

  The Thinning and its hole shifted and twisted in their haunting melody. I didn’t know the words, but I could feel the Magick. They were opening a Hellgate. They were going to send the New Dead packing.

  What does it matter? I’m done. I don’t deserve to live.

  “Dad…”

  Cathy’s voice washed over me like a cool breeze. Even in the bullets and screams of the New Dead I knew that voice.

  Her beautiful face appeared in his flaming eyes. “Dad, don’t do this.”

  “Do what? It’s over, Cathy. I’ve failed. I’m a terrible father.”

  “No, you aren’t.” Her sly smile billowed wind into my sails. “You just aren’t seeing yourself how I see you. Let me show you who you really are.”

  The flames shifted, and I found myself in the photo wheel’s final still frame, a young Cathy’s bike at my feet. “You did great,” I said, my words somehow distant. “You’ll get it.”

  A young Cathy unhooked her helmet and angrily tossed it on the sidewalk. “No I won’t. I’m terrible.”

  “Hardly. You just fell down. Everyone falls down, Catherine. Everyone.”

  My daughter crossed her adorable little arms.

  “It’s true,” I said, as if hearing myself for the first time. “We all fall down, but the real trick, is getting back up.” I picked up the bike and pointed to her helmet. “Now, how about we try again?”

  Cathy vanished and the image changed. The Brighton Hellgate exploded across my mind in withering detail, my daughter clinging to the fiery edge. Once again, my words echoed back to me. “I will find you!”

  Cathy!

  The Hellgate vanished, and the vision of my only daughter returned, filling me with hope. “The real trick, Dad, is getting back up. Everybody falls down—even you.”

  “But…”

  Catherine shook her head. “Even you. Now, how about we try again?”

  “I will.”

  With a twist of flame my daughter vanished, but she’d given me what I needed, and it was more than any Darkling could withstand.

  Magick may be belief, but in this moment it doesn’t hold a damn candle to hope.

  I could sense the shift in the Darkling’s power. The reconciliation was a battle of wills, and he’d just lost his upper hand.

  “What are you doing, Gene?”

  Magick, vibrant and glorious, rolled through me. It was a Magick born of something far deeper, something I didn’t understand. Images popped into life on the photo wheel, pictures of my life, a life worth living, a life worth getting back to.

  “Going home,” I said, pushing back against the Darkling.

  I flooded his fractured mind with visions of that life. The love and joy I’d known and would know again. In that moment, I understood Delia. The Blood Queen had had nothing to remember, no hope, and because of that she’d surrendered to her Darkling.

  I was not Delia, and never would be, no matter what the House did.

  “Stop, Gene. You need me,” Evil Gene said, his face slowly fading. “Don’t you understand? The House fears me. I know things it doesn’t want you to know. I know what it’s planning. Without me things are going to get a lot worse. I know—”

  “You know nothing.”

  The Magick surged and my Darkling screamed, his body tearing apart in the moment of reconciliation.

  My soul was mine again, and damn did it feel good.

  The Bridge Troll’s song approached its climax, and as it did the tear in the Thinning began to pull the New Dead like a high-powered vacuum.

  “They’re dying!” Kaylee’s cries pulled me away from the gate and back to the roaring inferno. Even covered in the Eternal Shame, Donnie and Ed weren’t going to survive much longer inside the flames of the Five Star Toaster, but now there was something I could do about it—Magic
k crackled between my fingers.

  I’m back, baby.

  “Give me the bowl,” I said, crouching down next to my apprentice

  Adam’s mother placed the Prussian Wedding Bowl in my hands. Its Magick hummed in the night air and I knew what I had to do.

  “Gene?” Adam squeezed a hand against his shoulder. “Is that… you?”

  “Who else? How about you and me go save some peanut vendors?”

  My apprentice extended his hand. “Hell yeah.”

  I pulled the young man to his feet. “You know how this works now?”

  “I sure do, but it needs pure water.”

  “You don’t say.”

  I reached out with my Magick into the cool pre-dawn air. The boiling clouds above me felt my presence and could no longer resist my calls.

  “Pluviam!”

  The first drops of rain pelted my smiling face and soon the drizzle had become a down-pour, filling the Prussian Wedding Bowl and unlocking the Magick tied up in the enchanted porcelain.

  “Are you ready?”

  Adam nodded.

  “Then let’s do it.” I stepped into the Five Star inferno with Adam and the bowl.

  Flames roared around us, but thanks to my Magick we remained unharmed. I couldn’t say the same for Ed or Donnie. The Midnight Riders’ tar had all but boiled away, leaving them like spent matches on the melted earth.

  I placed the beautiful bowl between the two of them.

  “Redemption and forgiveness, right?”

  My apprentice nodded. “How did you know?”

  “The last gift of the bowl maker—I had a hunch.”

  Adam tilted his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “After a lifetime of screw-ups you have a new found appreciation for redemption… and forgiveness.” I lifted Ed Senior’s lifeless hand and placed it in the cool water as my apprentice did the same to Donnie.

  “On three. Ready?”

  Adam nodded. “Yes.”

  Ding!

  The appliance’s malevolent arms reached the top and the Five Star Toaster went cold.