“Whuuzzz,” he said. He tried to open his eyes before realizing he was lying on his face, trying to suck in blanket instead of air. He pushed a hand up, clearing the blanket away, then he opened his eyes.
“Rex?” Just James’ young face was close to his, leaning down. The kid looked excited, a little glassy-eyed maybe, but otherwise okay.
Rex felt something inside him relax a little. He tried for his voice again, finding it this time. “Hey,” he said. “What time is it?” His eyes focused past Just James, taking in the room they were in. Small, decent for an apartment, kind of bad for a house. Probably an apartment then, the furnishings looked new enough. Sky was standing a long way behind Just James, fussing around in a kitchen. He saw a silver briefcase standing against a wall, two men standing next to it. Possibly they’d been talking about the seven pounds of blond hash inside, possibly they were talking about the old man lying out cold on their couch. They both looked fit, somewhere between capable and dangerous. Too early to tell if they were dangerous to themselves or to others.
“Does it matter?” Just James looked around, anxious. “I mean, I can try and find a clock or something.”
“You don’t have a watch?”
“Watches are for old men,” said Just James.
“Hey,” said one of the men by the wall. “I wear a watch.”
Just James turned to look at him. “John? You’re an old man.”
The other one standing by — John? — standing by John laughed, turning, and that’s when Rex felt really awake, the kind of awake you only felt when someone had taken a big bucket of ice water and dumped it over you. He started up from the couch, swinging his feet under himself and swaying upright. “It’s…” He took a step back, his foot catching on the couch, and he fell backwards. “It’s you.”
And it was. The man who’d pulled him and Just James from that terrible crash, the one that had been Rex’s fault. Rex knew he’d never forget that face, the sense of care that came from the man. Except, this time, there was something not right. Rex felt it in his old bones, felt it in the twinge in his back.
“It’s me,” said the other man, stepping forward and holding out his hand. “We’ve never been introduced. I’m Val.”
Rex looked at the extended hand, then reached up and shook it. “Rex.”
“Like a dog?”
“Like a fucking Tyrannosaurus,” said Rex. He didn’t feel like this was real, he just sat on the couch shaking the other man’s hand, a big dumb smile on his face. “I mean. Not like a fucking Tyrannosaurus, just an ordinary one. Dinosaur. It’s a big lizard.” He trailed off.
“I don’t mean anything by it,” said Val, easing his hand from Rex’s. “You could say … you could say that dogs and I are the best of friends.”
John snorted, turning away and moving to the kitchen where Sky stood. He grabbed her in a hug, and they kissed. That’d be her man she was keen to get to. Rex felt something else unkink inside of him.
“Rex,” said Val, “I owe you some thanks.” He looked over his shoulder at John and Sky behind him, then turned back. “You brought some of my Pa… some of my family home.”
“No,” said Rex. “No, you don’t have to thank anyone.”
“I don’t follow.” Rex watched the concern cross Val’s face. “You … you brought her. Back to him. That’s something … I owe him a lot.”
“I’m here,” said Rex, it coming out in a rush, “because you pulled a dumb old man from a burning car.” He reached over and ruffled Just James hair, the boy pulling away with a half grimace, half grin. “You got Just James out. You got us all out. Son? You’ve got a gift. I’d say it was just being paid back.”
“Okay,” said Val, pulling away from Rex. “Okay. It’s not … it wasn’t a gift.”
“What?” Rex blinked at him. “You saved me and Just James.”
“He does shit like that all the time,” said John, from the kitchen. “What he’s trying to say—”
“John,” said Val, half-turning. “John, what are you doing?”
“I got this,” said John. “What he’s trying to say is that five years ago—”
“John.” Val’s tone had turned a little hard, and Rex looked between the two of them.
“You said I could tell her,” said John.
“Tell me what?” said Sky.
“I said we could tell her,” said Val. “There’s…” He gestured at Rex and James. “There’s other people here.”
“Oh, sorry,” said John. He looked over at Rex. “What’s your story?”
“This guy,” said Rex, jerking a thumb at Val, “jerked me out of a burning Prius. My wife wanted it, before she died.”
“A burning Prius?” John looked blank. “That’s a hell of a thing to ask for on your death bed. I mean, did she stop to think about how hard it would be to get a car on fire into … well, wherever you were. Hospital? Nursing home?” He looked at Val. “You never said you went to a nursing home.”
“Hospital,” said Rex, then shook himself. Talking to this guy was like trying to follow the damn bouncing ball on karaoke after seven beers. “She wanted a Prius. She died. I set it on fire.”
“That seems weird,” said John. “Why’d you do that?”
“I crashed it,” said Rex, then looked at Val. “Help?”
“It’s his thing,” said Val.
“What’s my thing?” said John.
“You know,” said Val.
“Okay,” said John. “What I’m not clear on—”
“You’re not clear?” said Rex. He rubbed his face, closing his eyes for a moment. “Look. It’s like this. I was thinking about women—”
“With you so far,” said John. He yelped as Sky punched him in the arm. “What? All I’m saying is that I empathize with the man. We’ve all been there.” He looked at Val. “Right?”
“Right,” said Val, then caught a look from Sky. “No, wait. Pretend I didn’t just agree with you. Sky? Seriously. It was an honest mistake, I didn’t mean to—”
Rex burst out laughing. Couldn’t help himself, it came from somewhere deep in his gut, and felt good coming out. When he stopped, he could see grins and smiles around the room. He nodded at John. “I get it.”
“What?” John blinked at him.
“I get what your thing is,” said Rex. “I get it. It’s … it’s good.”
“It is,” said Val. “Try living with it for a while before you decide, though.”
“You guys have no focus,” said John. He leaned his hands on the counter that stood between them. “We still haven’t heard what happened to the Prius.”
“So it was like this,” said Rex. He looked past Just James, then back to the group. “I was driving. I was distracted, thinking about women. It’s a thing that never stops, right? So I was thinking about women, or a woman in particular, and I got hit by a bus.” He rubbed a hand across his head, then looked at the fragments of burnt hair in his hand. That was a close one. “That makes it sound like the bus was at fault, but I was pretty sure it was me. Just James was on the bus. And we were going to die. I didn’t know Just James was there, I didn’t know him at all. But … but Val pulled me from the car. Just James, too.” His voice softened. “News said that it exploded after, some kind of fire. Be a hell of a way to go. Hell of a way.” He looked up at Val. “I promised. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“I know,” said Val, “but it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“You’re right,” said John, “because you already know. So does Just James. In a way, the only person here who doesn’t know is Sky.”
“Know what?” said Sky.
“Baby?” John led Sky around the counter, sitting her on the couch next to Rex. “Baby, there’s something you need to know.”
“You’re married,” she said. Her voice was flat, her arms crossed in a way that said and I always suspected.
John blinked. “It’s not that bad,” he said after a moment. “But it’s a little … I’m going to say, it’s a
little odd. This might come as a surprise.”
Rex looked at John, then Sky, then across at Val. Sky was angry, John worried — which is damn strange, guys like him never get like that — and Val was resigned. “What’s going to come as a surprise?” He looked at Val. “What’s going on?”
“Val has superpowers,” said Just James.
Rex tried for a second laugh, but no one joined in. “Come again?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” said the kid. “He can do things no one else can do, can’t tell anyone his real identity, and has a secret lair.”
“It’s an apartment,” said Val.
“I like the kid,” said John. “Good save on that one.”
“Val doesn’t have superpowers,” said Sky. “His girlfriend left him and he’s been staying in our apartment for the last six months. That’s pretty ordinary.”
“Baby?” said John. “Baby, five years ago Val was bitten by a werewolf. His girlfriend—”
“Danny,” said Sky.
“Danny is a werewolf too,” said John. “They turn into hideous monsters and get really angry. They don’t like silver, but near as I can tell they don’t get any older and they can’t die.”
She snorted. “There’s no such things as werewolves,” she said.
“That’s the common theory,” said John, “and usually I’d run with that. But this is real.”
“You are all,” said Sky, “on drugs.” She held up a hand. “Wait. Prove it.”
“Prove it?” said Val.
“Yeah. Turn into a werewolf.”
“I can’t,” said Val.
She snorted again. “Of course you can’t. Not a full moon?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” said Val. “It got … it was stolen.”
“Son,” said Rex, “and I don’t mean to intrude on what’s obviously a very personal moment, but clear something up for me. Assuming — and this is a big assumption, mind — that you are, in fact, a werewolf, how does one go about having something like that stolen?”
Val jerked a thumb over at the silver case, resting against the wall. “The case,” he said. “The case took it all.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Talin wiped his hand across a mouth red with bloody drool. The Night was gaining strength each time he used it, like a muscle that wanted to be flexed. The man, Everard, that he’d tracked across half a continent and more to get to this point, had wasted this strength.
Because that’s what it was. An inner strength, no matter how it shone to outside eyes with terror and power. Talin kicked the remains at his feet, a corpse that had been torn across the chest, teeth marks in the flesh. Some of these were large, like that of a bear or something even bigger. Others were small. Talin didn’t remember when he’d changed back, or if back was really the right term. He was becoming something else, a blend of two things with one glorious purpose.
He grinned, red stains on his teeth marring the white. Before, he knew his teeth had started to rot, decaying. It was a thing that happened to the houngan — the male priests of his faith — from time to time. The power they used, that they funneled and marshaled, twisted their bodies just as it perfected the world.
A week ago, Talin had been a tiny man, scrabbling for loose coins under the couch of life. His vodou had been weak; no l’wha had responded to his call. He’d had just a few simple tricks, used to turn the minds of men against themselves. Enough to bait a collection of traps, seeded along the trail of the Night. Because of that, here he was — and soon, ruler of the world.
Still. One thing at a time. He looked down over the city from his new perch high above. He’d moved to this tower, feeling drawn to the potential of this place named after the forgettable man who’d built it, a hotel for the rich. Such stories flowed through its doors, politicians and lovers and whores and thieves. The altar had stayed behind with the old leather chair, devices he had no need of anymore. Should never have needed in the first place.
The flat roof showed him all he had made in just short days. The zombi did as he wanted; a remarkable few of the city’s rabble still scrabbling for freedom as his horde took them on the hoof. He stared down at his hands, his arms, the body he had been gifted for his audacity to steal what could not be stolen. It was changed, strength coursing along limbs made young again, the physique of an Olympian shoving aside what had been old and withered.
There were only a few things he needed to resolve before he extended his influence into the wide world, borne on the wings of Night. Three perfect quests remained. Talin held up his knife, using the blade to carve lines into his flesh. They healed almost immediately, but the marks would be graven on his soul, weighted and measured, giving him strength. Three lines, for each thing remaining. He no longer needed the snakes and rodents, the vermin that had powered his magics before. They were dross, the tiny implements of a tiny man. The Night was power itself, and upheld its end of every bargain without flinching.
The first line was cut the deepest for the man, Everard. He yet lived, with the merest fragment of the Night remaining inside. Something had gone wrong, the trap Talin laid falling short of the mark. He was like an almost empty bottle of rum, barely a swallow left in the bottom, but Talin wanted it all. And he would have it — and the man’s lover too. She was coming and he would drain the Night from her just as easily as water from a glass. She would be left gasping and begging. Or perhaps she would join him at his side, a dark bride to walk down the centuries with. He discarded the idea almost immediately — power is not to be shared.
A second line joined the first, his flesh sizzling and smoking as the knife cut through it. This was for the shrew Raeni, who continued to be a thorn in his side. Always meddling, always following, dogging his heels to the end of days. She would have to be destroyed. He’d tried before, but had … failed. As a mambos she had held the true power always denied to Talin, riding the l’wha like the cattle they were. She could still be a threat, and her instrument would be broken upon the rocks of the Earth before the end.
A helicopter buzzed overhead, Talin watching it thud over the city where the rivers met, this Chicago, another relic of squandered, forgotten power. It rode over the skies like a fat insect, lights set in nose and tail flashing as night fell across the city. They were riding higher now since his zombi had pulled one from the sky with a whispered urge. This one was watching from above, no doubt telling its masters what happened here. So was marked the third of his quests, his skin scorching under the blade, the third and final line for the guardians who stood against his conquest. A thin line of men and women who had given their service for a nation carelessly spending their lives. It was a coin of blood Talin understood well enough, and he would spend it himself before this night was done.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
“His name was Thomas, and he was a soldier,” said Ajay. “Not a sailor, not something … in between, like me. A soldier first, last and always.”
“Something … hurts,” said the boy, his lashes long. They’d been the first thing she’d noticed when he’d come back like a kiss of mist on the dawn. “Something is missing.”
Ajay frowned as if he’d heard something faint, on the edge of the wind, then shot Adalia a look. “They do not always tell the truth.”
“Who the fuck doesn’t tell the truth?” said Carlisle, from the driver’s seat. She was looking across at Ajay — Adalia could see the side of her face from her perch in the back passenger’s side. Her mom was beside her, sitting behind Carlisle. You sit there, Carlisle had said, because I don’t want you punching through the seat and killing Ajay — before I do. Her mom had given that look, the one that said things Adalia didn’t understand, but had got in the back seat anyway. “You’re being strange again, like you’re having two conversations.”
“Sorry,” said Ajay. “I forget that not all of us here can see things that cannot be seen.”
Carlisle said nothing for perhaps two heart beats, then, “You need to quit that shit. S
ee, you’re not making any sense.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Danny, her hand clutching at the edge of Carlisle’s seat as she leaned forward. “What matters is what happened to Thomas. I can still … I can feel him, like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff.”
“The Cliffs of the Damned,” said Ajay.
“What?” said Carlisle.
“They have a name,” said Ajay. “It is where the dead go when they die.”
“That doesn’t … that doesn’t sound nice,” said Carlisle.
“It isn’t always,” said the boy, his feet up near his chin. He was between Adalia and her mom, somehow not touching either of them, the space in the back of the Yukon stretching in a way that made Adalia’s head hurt to think about. No one seemed to notice him there except for her.
She pulled out her phone. How do you know?
He looked at her sideways, face pale, eyes blue against the black of his lashes. “I can’t—”
Adalia waved a hand at him. Forget it.
“Soldiers spend their lives as a … you would call it a currency,” said Ajay. “Your GIs spend their blood to buy you a freedom. Thomas spent his blood to buy something else.”
“What’s that?” said Danny, leaning forward, her eyes bright.
“Time,” said Adalia. “He bought us time.”
No one spoke inside the car for a moment, then Carlisle said, “What?”
“Yeah,” said Danny. She turned to Adalia. “What do you mean, sweetie?”
Ajay sat silent, shoulders hunched as if something was bottled up inside. Adalia watched the back of his shoulders for a moment, and when he didn’t say anything, she said, “Can’t you see? We wouldn’t have made it to Valentine in time.”
“No time left,” said the boy, “to save the world. The world would have turned around only a handful more times before the end, if we hadn’t bought a road paved in blood.” He shivered. “But I still don’t … I don’t know why I’m here.”
Ajay shifted in his seat. “There was no way we could have made it to the city where the rivers meet before the end unless we stole a little time back from the universe. Well, not stole. That’s not right, because we needed … tribute.”
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