The Quick and the Dead

by D. B. Sieders

  The entity laughed. “You certainly live up to your reputation for recklessness and audacity. I cannot grant your greatest wish. You shall always be a soul broker in this life.”

  “And the next?”

  “That is not for me to say. But the mambo and I can give you something else you crave. Half your payment in advance, the full payment upon completion of your end of the bargain.”

  Before Vivian could ask what the entity meant, Mrs. Briggs’ face changed. The malevolent smile faded, replaced by an expression of awe, wonder, and…love. Vivian took a step back as the old woman rose from her chair, handkerchief falling away. Whatever had taken over the mambo’s body didn’t seem to harbor ill intent, but she’d seen too many spirits to believe that this one wasn’t dangerous.

  Whatever it was, it was powerful. The energy pouring from Mrs. Briggs nearly brought Vivian to her knees.

  “Don’t be afraid.” The voice was female, oddly accented, as if English wasn’t its native language, but Vivian couldn’t place the accent. The spirit paused, running the mambo’s tongue over teeth and working her jaw as if testing the host’s capacity for speech.

  But Mrs. Briggs could speak on her own. Whatever had afflicted the old woman had ravaged her mind, not her body. Perhaps the spirit had suffered some speech impairment in life? The body of Mrs. Briggs took a tentative step forward and then reached out and grasped Vivian’s arms to steady herself.

  Power coursed through Vivian’s body, rolling in waves that threatened to pull her under. Images flashed through her mind—blurred faces, amorphous shapes, some moving, some still.

  She desperately wanted to track the shapes. Her heart ached when they moved out of her narrow field of view. Sometimes she could will her head to turn, but mostly it did what it wanted. At least she could track them by sound. When they didn’t turn on the noisy machines and when they weren’t all so loud, she enjoyed hearing their voices.

  They sometimes spoke to her. She tried to speak to them, but the noises she made didn’t sound like their words. Though she’d stopped trying to mimic how their mouths worked long ago, she grunted and could often manage to touch one of them. She liked it when they stroked her cheeks and hair, when they gave her food and drink, when they gave her something she could grasp in her hands. Her hands didn’t work like theirs either, but she liked the way the strips of fabric wound around and through her fingers.

  She liked the girl with the red hair. The one they called Sister.

  Vivian reached out with a shaking hand and stroked the old woman’s cheek. The entity inhabiting the mambo’s body sighed and leaned into her touch, and then placed a hand over hers. Between the lump in her throat and tears streaming down her face, it was hard to speak. But there was so much to say, so much she wanted to tell the spirit inhabiting Mrs. Briggs, so many questions she needed to ask.

  But she sensed the time for their visit was short.

  “Mae,” she whispered, voice hoarse with emotion. “I thought I’d never…see you again. How? I thought you’d moved on to the next place. A better place.”

  The look of horror must have registered on her face, since Mae laughed through the mambo. Strange. The face and form belonged to Mrs. Briggs, but some subtle shift in expression or gesture made it clear when someone other than the old mambo was speaking. More than that, it was her eyes. The gaze that shone when Mrs. Briggs had been alone in her person had shown confusion, the bleary-eyed vacancy that came with dementia or, in the few moments when she was herself, wisdom and cunning. The first spirit who’d possessed her, the ancestor, had held cunning and cruelty as well as wry amusement.

  The spirit of Vivian’s sister shone through the mambo’s gaze with love, childlike wonder, and power. So much power. It moved through the body Mae inhabited and then surged through Vivian like a jolt of lightning, making it hard to breathe. The energy Vivian normally absorbed from the living and those ready to cross was potent, but nothing compared to this.

  Did Mae still carry the spirit energy that had been trapped within her while she lived?

  A horrifying thought made Vivian grab the mambo by the shoulders. It was like latching on to a live wire. “You aren’t still trapped, are you?”

  “No,” she said. Then, noticing Vivian’s discomfort, she pulled the spirit energy back within the mambo’s body. “I am free to come and go, but it is…difficult to speak with the living without a conduit. I would have come sooner, but you’ve been hidden.”

  “Yeah,” Vivian said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I got into trouble with the guardian spirits and had to go on the run.”

  She cocked Mrs. Briggs’ head to the side as if thinking. Then she nodded. “You are here to fight them. Good. They are greedy. They take too much and leave souls in limbo. I would feed them all if I could but I, too, am on the…run?”

  “From who? Did the guardians get to you, too? Mae, you can—”

  Mae held up the mambo’s hands. “Slower, please. I have to use the mind of this woman to…understand your words and reply. Speech is strange.”

  Oh, God. Of course it would be.

  In life, Mae’s disabilities left her completely helpless, incapable of speech, most voluntary movement and, Vivian had thought, comprehension. Based on the memories she’d shown Vivian, Mae had some limited perception of the people and things around her, as well as a deep longing to interact with those people. Profound frustration had flowed through Vivian’s mind, Mae’s frustration with the inability to express her wants, needs, and feelings.

  “I will see you again,” Mae said. “Soon. The other spirit promised. I am safe and fighting with you. He is with me. Our guardian. I will carry the light this woman’s body holds to spirits in need, as I have each time her kin have brought it to her. Bring more. As much as you can. We almost have enough.”

  “Enough for what? And who is with you?” Vivian now understood part of the mystery of Briggs’ operation. He and his rebels mediated spirit crossings at a discount and took the energy they collected to Mrs. Briggs, a woman who still held the power to commune with spirits in spite of her mental decline. Spirits like Mae could take that energy and distribute it to other spirits in need, mediating more crossings.

  But that last part, the part about almost having enough, gave her pause. What else was Briggs up to?

  “I have to go,” Mae said through Mrs. Briggs, with obvious reluctance. “Find the one who is working against Waylon and bring the light he has hidden. We need all we can before we strike.”

  “Strike? Wait, Mae, are you telling me we’re going to war with the Archangel Guardian Council?”

  This time the smile that graced the mambo’s face was full of battle lust and the zeal of a new soldier. “Yes, and we will bring them down. Every. Last. One.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  To his credit, Briggs didn’t ask too many questions about Vivian’s chat with his Gran. When she’d stumbled back into the living room, he’d simply arched a brow and asked if she had what she’d come for. She’d said yes and then told him she had some things to do before she came back for another visit to sort things out with the reaper.

  If he was curious, confused, or troubled, he didn’t let it show. He’d simply nodded, thanked his aunt for her hospitality, and after giving Vivian and Darkmore a chance to do the same, he drove them back to base.

  When they got to the apartment Vivian shared with the reaper, Darkmore excused himself out of courtesy, giving her a chance to speak with Briggs.

  “Work on your aim,” he said. “We’re going on a raid in two days. Got a lot of trapped souls holed up at the old asylum. I need you and Chet at my back.”

  That was surprising. “Thought you weren’t impressed with my demo.”

  “Never said that, Miss Tennessee. I pushed you to see what you could do. Next to me and Chet, you’re the best we’ve got, especially out of these new trainees. You saw that for yourself.”

  True, but something else bothered her about the situation. “Who else do
you have on board besides the other trainees? You’ve been at this for a while. Where’s the rest of your team?”

  Briggs grinned. “Most of those who pass our boot camp go on to other cells. The other rebel cells aren’t organized enough to know their elbows from their asses. Dangerous. We send out our fighters to keep their people alive. Most of them end up running the show once the regulars figure out their leaders are shit.”

  “I get it,” she said, sardonically. “Plant enough of your guys in the other factions and you can get them all on your side.”

  Briggs’ grin widened. “I plant my gals, too, Miss Tennessee. Spirit light fighting requires skill, not brute strength. And I’m keeping more of us alive. Not many living soul brokers out there. We need as many fighters as we can get. And, yeah, I want them on my side. We need strategy, unity, and discipline if we’re going to win this war.”

  “And spirit energy?” she said.

  His smile faded and he started to pace. “What else did Gran tell you?”

  She leaned against the door and forced her body to relax. It would do her no good to rile her new boss up. She needed him to trust her if she was going to save his operation from the traitor in their midst. Briggs may be arrogant and ruthless, but he was right. Even in the short time she’d spent in his camp, she could tell it was a well-organized operation that protected its members while giving them the skills they needed to protect themselves and others. It wasn’t just ruthlessness and fear that inspired loyalty to him. The soldiers he’d planted in other rebel groups could just as easily decide to split and work for their own interests and agendas once they rose through the ranks to become leaders.

  But they hadn’t.

  The records she and Gutierrez reviewed showed that most, if not all, of the rebel groups scattered throughout the Americas trusted Briggs to manage their finances, and Gutierrez had heard that Briggs spent hours on the phone and Internet discussing strategy and coordinated attacks.

  His former trainees appeared to trust him implicitly.

  “Okay,” she said. “Tell me more about this mission, and the war that’s coming.”

  “The mission is just what I said. A raid on the Mississippi Asylum for the Insane.”

  A cold chill crept up her spine, one that had nothing to do with the reapers. “Insane Asylums are still a thing? That seems so…barbaric.”

  Briggs shrugged. “Not really. It shut down in the 1930s, but it was open long enough to accumulate a bunch ghosts who can’t pass on—and some the guardians won’t let pass on.”

  “Won’t let? I don’t understand—”

  The blood froze in her veins as realization dawned. Those bastards. Guardian and reapers spirits coveted people with mental challenges and illness as much as those with physically incapacitating disabilities. They accumulated an abundance of unspent spirit energy as a side effect of their conditions. Rather than offering a peaceful crossing to the afterlife, one that would free them from the suffering they’d endured while living, it seemed the guardian spirits in charge of this part of Mississippi had exploited the souls of the inmates and kept them as an energy source.

  “They’re using them as batteries. That’s sick!”

  “It is,” Briggs agreed. “We’re going to set them free and take what energy we can from them, hopefully enough to make a move on the Archangel Guardian Council.”

  It seemed like a good strategy, and yet… “How does that make us any better than the guardians?”

  Briggs scowled. “You want all of that energy to go to the enemy? Or get wasted?”

  “No,” Vivian said. “I want the spirits we liberate to use it. I’ve seen what they can do. My sister,” she paused, fighting the lump in her throat and unshed tears. “When she died, she set millions of souls free from the reaper’s realm, and she used only a fraction of her power. We should get these spirits on our side.”

  She braced for a fight. Briggs wasn’t the type to take unsolicited advice, especially from someone he considered a subordinate. He had no reason to trust or believe her. There was only one way to convince him, but the prospect filled her with more dread than her visit with the mambo had.

  But she’d seen into the depths of his soul. Whatever happened on that far away war zone had nearly cost Briggs his life. He’d only survived by becoming a living soul broker. Like her, and the others in his camp and in scattered cells throughout the US, his near brush with death had left him between worlds. As if that wasn’t traumatic enough, he’d become an unwilling agent of the guardian spirit who’d claimed him, forced to serve and deliver spirit light until he managed to break free.

  The least she could do was share her story, which would also show Briggs the truth of her words.

  Before he could pull away, she channeled a low burst of light from her fingertips and grasped him by the arm, focusing on her memories.

  Car crash, blood, a dying man.

  Zeke.

  She took his hand and he filled her with the cold of the reaper and the heat of the guardian, two powerful forces vying for his soul. Breath and life were leaving his body, and she couldn’t stop it. She wanted, needed to save him.

  She failed.

  The vision of a friendly looking old redneck flashed through her mind. Ezra, the guardian who was supposed to collect her soul, his warmth and comfort soothing the ache of the man’s loss—of Zeke’s loss—and the well of sorrow she bore by caring for her disabled, dying sister.

  Memories of Darkmore, the reaper Ezra had cheated by taking Zeke instead of her, flooded their connection. The reaper’s icy rage found a target in her soul. He reached into the darkest corners of her heart and soul and unleashed unspeakable horrors.

  At the center of it all, the heart of the matter, was Mae.

  Filtering through the worst parts of that horrible night when the reaper almost inspired Vivian to harm her helpless sister, she showed Briggs her story. She and Zeke working to protect Mae from the reaper, only to find out that Ezra had his sights set on Mae, too, eager to harvest the spirit light that coursed through her broken body.

  Finding out the truth—she’d been meant to die, but Ezra let her live and took Zeke instead, robbing the reaper of his soul and making a play for the prize that was Mae’s soul. Losing Zeke. She’d lost them both, and there was still a gaping hole in her soul that hadn’t healed from the loss, might never heal.

  She willed the memories forward, unwilling to relive the pain of betrayal, loss, and longing.

  Bracing herself against him, she fed Briggs the memory of her sister’s soul crossing through Darkmore’s dark realm, unleashing her spirit light to set free the souls trapped there in hell, purgatory, or whatever other name encompassed the despair embodied in that horrible place.

  Light flashed, Mae’s light, and then Vivian’s mind went dark.

  “Damn.” Briggs’ voice sounded hoarse and ragged.

  They were on the ground. Shit, had she passed out? Double shit, she’d fallen on top of Briggs, her limbs tangled with his and her body pressed tight against him. Vivian fought the urge to scramble, which would likely result in more friction than either of them needed or wanted in this awkward situation.

  Oddly enough, the physical awkwardness went a long way to alleviating the emotional aftermath of the encounter.

  With great care and near painful slowness, Vivian rolled her body off Briggs and scooted away. He sat up and scrubbed his face with both hands. She didn’t know if he was hiding tears or exasperation, but she took the opportunity to wipe away her own tears and regain her composure.

  “How long was your sister…”

  She smiled in spite of herself. Seemed she wasn’t the only one suffering from an acute case of awkward shyness. Briggs didn’t usually have trouble being blunt. “You mean how long was she severely disabled? All her life.”

  “Huh,” he said. “At least Gran had a good run when her mind was there. I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” Vivian wasn’t sure he’d heard her whisper u
ntil a large, warm hand landed on her shoulder. She patted his hand and met his gaze. “So will you think about recruiting some of those hostage souls? If they can do a tenth of what Mae managed, they’d make powerful allies.”

  “You think you can get through to them?” He stood and stretched. “They weren’t all there in life. Can’t imagine decades in the tender care of their guardian captors has helped.”

  That was true enough. In her experience, lost and lonely souls were too scared or too far gone for conversation, let alone reasoning with—though she’d had some success with an old lost and lonely ghost who’d latched on to a friend’s young son and became his protector. Maybe Junior could help?

  She’d have to figure out how to summon him, but that would be the least of her worries. Briggs was planning a raid. The damaged, vulnerable, tortured souls would be even more traumatized by a battle. Some of them might even get injured in the crossfire. It would be better, smarter, to find a way to get a message to them, let them know to stay out of the way or be ready to rise up against the guardians holding them captive.

  That thought was on the tip of her tongue, but something held her back. If the vision she’d received from Maeve, “kindly” interpreted by the loa she’d encountered earlier, was to be believed, Briggs had a traitor in his midst. That traitor might be after spirit energy, sabotage, or a coup to oust Briggs as leader. No matter his—or her—motivation, the souls at the asylum were at risk. She couldn’t stop Briggs from sharing her advice with his inner circle, though she could ask. But she could protect those poor souls by warning them ahead of time that they couldn’t trust anyone but Briggs.

  And she’d have to do that in secret.

  “All I can do is try,” she answered. “If we can take out the guardians keeping them captive and do it quickly, I’ll give it my best shot. If they’d rather just cross over, we can go with your plan and harvest a bit of their energy as they go. But if even a few want to join, it might give us an edge when we go against the council. What have we got to lose?”