by Scott Colby
Billy didn’t even flinch. “You’re not going to do that,” he said nonchalantly, as if dictating a law of physics rather than responding to the threat of his imminent death.
Of course he’s going to do that! He’s going to blow your fucking brains out if you don’t let us all go!
“What makes you so sure?” Driff asked.
“Because you know the consequences.”
Yeah, that’ll stop him! Keep threatening him with paperwork! Or—gasp!—maybe he’ll get fined! The horror!
“So do you. I’m sure a man in your line of work has been privy to many a gaping head wound.”
Kevin flashed back to the time Driff shot him in his own dining room, focusing on and amplifying the brief burst of white hot pain as the elf’s bullet tore through his skull. He’ll do it! The man’s a stone cold killer!
Billy spun on his heel to face Driff, the barrel of the long silver six-shooter now firmly against his cheek. “If you were prepared to pull that trigger, you wouldn’t have wasted your time with all these idiots. You would’ve just done it.”
Driff scowled, unimpressed. “Last chance.”
“Same to you.”
For several agonizing seconds, nothing happened. The two opponents stared at each other, waiting for the other man to make the first move. Kevin watched in stunned silence, unable to comprehend the fact that Driff hadn’t simply blown Billy away and called it a day. How bad could things really get for the elf if he killed a reaper? Was there some big law against it that Kevin hadn’t been informed of? As Billy had suggested, that certainly would better help explain why Driff had worked so hard to get him back on the job rather than simply removing him and installing someone new. Kevin didn’t like the implications.
Billy moved first. He slowly raised his hand toward Driff’s face, daring the elf to pull the trigger and giving him ample time to do so. Driff didn’t even flinch when the reaper’s fingers settled over his nose—but neither did he fire his weapon. Kevin couldn’t understand it. What the hell was Driff waiting for?
“I won’t give you the satisfaction,” Driff said, the slightest quiver of fear in his voice.
The elf’s soul slipped right out of his face like all the others. Driff’s body collapsed, his revolver clattering to the porch with a sound that broke Kevin’s heart. If the Council of Intelligence wasn’t going to stand up to Billy and save him, who was?
The reaper shoved Driff’s soul into the travel cup and closed the spout, stepping over Ren’s lifeless corpse and into the Roberts estate as he did so. “Gotta make a quick stop to find something… special,” Billy growled. “Then it’s off to the Works to see Nella.”
— CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT —
Ominous gray clouds filled the sky above Fornication Point, blocking the sun and threatening rain. Although it was likely too late in the year, Kevin prayed for a raging thunderstorm. At this point, his best chance at escaping Billy’s clutches seemed to be a lucky lightning strike.
Nella will know what to do, he reassured himself weakly. He didn’t believe it. The water nymph had some interesting powers over her primary element, and she might still be able to make some sort of emotional appeal to Billy given their prior relationship, but Kevin wasn’t holding his nonexistent breath. Somewhere Kylie was laughing and shaking her head.
Billy stared down into the lagoon for a good twenty minutes. Though he neither moved nor spoke, emotion rolled off the reaper in waves like heat rising off an engine. His shoulders crowded up against his neck and his hands were white-knuckled fists. Looking up from his vantage point in the man’s breast pocket, Kevin was reminded of a cobra getting ready to strike. He decided it would be better to leave Billy to his own thoughts than to antagonize him further.
Nella’s decision to remain hidden while Billy simmered surprised Kevin at first. It would be hilarious, he thought, if the reaper had come all this way only to discover that she’d left town, but it was more likely that she’d chosen to force Billy to make the first move. Letting him stew on the situation could make him more likely to commit an exploitable error. Kevin worried the delay would have the same effect on Nella.
“Come on out,” Billy finally mumbled, his eyes vacant and his lips taut. “We’ve got some things to discuss.”
Below, the lagoon the frothed and bubbled angrily in response. A thick jet of water launched skyward, bearing Nella’s nude blue form atop it. She watched Billy from her perch for a moment, studying her opponent with a smoldering scowl, and then she strode confidently onto the land. The pillar of water plummeted back into the lagoon with a dramatic crash.
“Let Kevin go,” she said, favoring his disembodied soul with a quick wink and a friendly smile. Kevin had never seen anything more reassuring.
Billy ignored her request. “You fucking left me.” The pain in the reaper’s voice would’ve sent a chill down Kevin’s spine if he still had one.
Nella shrugged.
Gasping as if he’d been struck, Billy took a step toward her. “Why?”
Raising her eyebrows, Nella planted her hand firmly on her hip and addressed her former fiancé in a firm, no-nonsense tone Kevin had never heard her use. “Take a good, long look at what you’re doing right now. That’s why.”
Billy’s face flushed. “What I’m doing right now—”
“—is petulant and immature and unbecoming of an individual in your station and I knew it was only a matter of time before you flew completely off the handle just like this. Now you can’t have what you want, so you’re lashing out at everybody around you like a screaming five-year-old who can’t get over the fact that his younger brother got a new toy. I left you because you are a fucking child.”
Kevin couldn’t help being reminded of his mother. He wondered if Abelia had rubbed off a bit on Nella. The thought was disconcerting to say the least.
“It was charming at first,” Nella continued. “So many members of our peer group are so…dour. Sure, they’ve all got their eccentricities, but in the end, they’re all slaves to the rules. You were different. You filled your role, but you didn’t let it define you. You were Billy first and a reaper second. You reminded me of him that way.” She gestured toward Billy’s pocket. “But you are not half the man Kevin Felton is.”
A low growl rumbled up from the reaper’s chest. Kevin didn’t like the way this was going.
This time it was Nella’s turn to take a step closer. The narrow gap between them seemed to quiver with danger. “Kevin Felton knew what he was dealing with when he chose to befriend you. He knew there was a damn good chance he was going to end up right where he is, but he went through with it anyway. He is nothing compared to a reaper because he’s human, but he did what he had to do. He acted not out of anger or some sort of delusional sense of vengeance but simply for his own self-preservation, and he did it with compassion. Did he lie to you? Of course. What choice did he have? But he never exploited you. He actually enjoyed spending time with you. He’s your fucking friend, you fucking tool.”
I tried all that, Kevin thought. It didn’t really work.
“You’re one to talk about friendship,” Billy snarled.
“I never said I was perfect. None of us are.”
The reaper snorted. “You say that as if it’s something I didn’t already know.” Bending down, he removed the cover from the drywall bucket he’d retrieved from Ren’s basement. “Get in.”
“Fuck no.”
“Get in, or I will make your precious little Poofy regret it.”
“Leave Kevin out of this, Billy. This isn’t his fight. Hell, it’s not even his world. Let him go, and we’ll settle this like the eldritch forces of nature we are.”
I like the sound of that, Kevin thought. Do that.
Billy didn’t reply. Suddenly, excruciating pain tore through Kevin’s being. It felt like the particles that made up his soul were being pulled apart from each other. The world around him turned bright red, and he screamed in agony. Whatever it was that made Kevin F
elton really Kevin Felton was being ripped asunder by an unseen force.
If he could’ve willed his own death to make it stop, he would have.
“Stop it!” Nella shrieked. Her hard eyes went soft and her combative posture melted into a panicked cringe. The stern façade she’d wielded as an anti-reaper weapon disappeared in a flash, replaced by a woman terrified for her man.
As Kevin’s pain burned on, Billy pointed at the bucket. Her head hung low, Nella stepped inside.
“All the way,” the reaper snarled.
With a sad glance toward Kevin’s writhing soul, Nella’s form turned liquid, then collapsed downward into the bucket. Billy sprung as soon as she passed the container’s lip, slamming the lid on tight. The fiery pain in Kevin’s soul ended as abruptly as it began. Billy got to work wrapping a roll of silver duct tape around the drywall bucket the long way to keep the cover in place.
What the hell was all that about? Kevin asked angrily.
“You haven’t figured it out?” Billy snapped as he struggled with the roll of tape.
Enlighten me.
Finished with his work, Billy tore the tape and threw the remainder of the roll over the cliff and into the lagoon below. He tapped on the lid a few times, admiring his handiwork with a psychotic smile.
“I’ve taken all of the people you care about the most.”
And Driff, Kevin corrected.
Billy chuckled. “And Driff.” With his thumb and forefinger, he pulled Kevin’s soul up out of his breast pocket and held it up so the two of them were face-to-face. “And if you ever want to see any of them ever again, you’ll have to come get them.”
Um…what?
With a sharp flick of his wrist, Billy threw Kevin’s soul away as if ridding himself of a particularly gross wad of snot. Kevin registered his sudden freedom immediately and rocketed back toward his center of gravity—his soulless corpse. He traveled so quickly, so desperately, that the trip barely registered as more than a blink in time, a quick burst of kaleidoscopic color as he zipped through Harksburg at unspeakable speed to put himself back where he belonged.
— CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE —
The warmth and security of finally returning to his own body after an extended period away was like nothing Kevin had ever felt. It was joy, pure and unadulterated, better than all the sex he’d ever had all added together. But the feeling didn’t last; his subconscious reasserted control over the body it had been built to maintain, kickstarting his heart and his muscles and obliterating his happiness with wave after wave of rippling pain. His lungs roared open to take in a mighty, ragged breath. His fingers opened and closed involuntarily, his legs thrashed, and his bladder and bowels unloaded before he could even think about stopping them. Banging the back of his head repeatedly against the hardwood floor as his entire body spasmed didn’t help matters.
Although everything hurt like a son of a bitch, the fact that he could feel anything at all once again made him ecstatic. Every muscle contraction, every gasping breath, and every collision with the floor reaffirmed that Kevin Felton was once again alive, his soul safely residing in its proper vessel. Even the wet warmth of the filth in his pants was a welcome sensation. No shit had ever smelled as good as the shit soaking his drawers right then and there.
He lay on the floor for a long time, basking in the physical sensations as his body took its sweet time rebooting. He liked to think that it had missed him just as much as he had missed it. Except for that ugly mole on his elbow. He could’ve done without that thing.
When his fine motor control returned, he sat up and stretched his arms as far upward as they could go. Sitting felt good. Stretching felt good. Tracing his fingers down his chest to make sure it was really his felt good. He hadn’t realized how much he liked his body until he’d spent a few agonizing hours without it.
The thought snapped him back to reality. There was a reason for that out-of-body experience. Its name was Billy. Billy was pissed because Kevin had stolen his fiancée, so Billy had taken his anger out on the people Kevin cared about most. And Driff. Then Billy had dared Kevin to do something about it. In response, Kevin had valiantly crapped all over himself and flopped around on his dining room floor like a dying fish on the bottom of a boat.
Panicked, he tried to spring to his feet and promptly fell right on his ass when his weak legs refused to hold his weight. He tried again, this time by first raising himself onto his knees then slowly standing, his hand on the nearby wall for additional support. When his legs stopped shaking, he made his way into the kitchen with short, tentative steps.
He found his mother’s body on the linoleum where Billy had let it fall. The explicit wrongness of the scene was overwhelming; Abelia Felton, so full of life earlier that morning, had been reduced to a corpse by an asshole looking to prove a point. Kneeling beside his mother, Kevin checked her neck for a pulse. Nothing. Without her soul, Abelia’s body lacked the capacity to take care of himself. How long could it last in that condition? Kevin knew the term rigor mortis but had no clue how long it would take to set in or when Abelia’s body would begin to decompose. Could a human soul’s innate healing ability repair such damage? He didn’t know that either. He wondered briefly if he should find a way to shove his mother into the freezer to keep her fresh, then settled on simply moving her to the living room couch and covering her with a thin blanket.
Looking back at the winding trail of excrement he’d left behind him, Kevin considered his options. Whatever he was going to do, he needed to do it quickly.
“But what the hell am I gonna do?” he muttered to himself sadly.
What chance did he stand against an angry force of nature intent on royally fucking with him? A frontal assault would get him nowhere. Billy knew he was coming, and Kevin couldn’t compete with the reaper in a straight-up fight. The trick, he realized, would be to outmaneuver his opponent somehow. He didn’t have to incapacitate Billy; he just had to distract him long enough to release his friends. Freeing Nella would certainly even the odds if they could get Billy near a water source. But how could he keep the reaper occupied long enough to do that? He’d have to face Billy on his home turf, in Lordly Estates, which limited his options for making use of the environment. The one thing guaranteed to get Billy’s attention was Kevin Felton himself.
Which meant he needed help. Unfortunately, all of his obvious options were locked away in a travel mug or a drywall bucket. Involving Waltman and Jim Jimeson or Tom Flanagan or any of his other friends seemed like a bad idea. Not only did he not want to put any of them at risk, but he also didn’t think he could trust any of them to do the job properly. Besides which, how the fuck was he supposed to properly explain the circumstances so they’d believe him? He didn’t have that kind of time.
Shaking with fear, Kevin glanced out the window at the house next door and knew he only had one option. Mr. Gregson wasn’t going to be happy about the way things had gone down. He doubted the pixie would fight his battle for him, but if he approached Mr. Gregson with a solid plan that involved little risk to his own tiny person then maybe, just maybe, his crazy neighbor would agree to assist.
Although Kevin didn’t want to waste a single second, he took a quick shower and changed into a fresh pair of clothes. Showing up on Mr. Gregson’s front porch with a huge load in his pants seemed like a great way to get telekinetically thrown across the Harksburg town common. He absentmindedly lingered in the shower for a few minutes longer than he intended, lulled into security by the warmth and temporarily forgetting his troubles. After what he’d been through that morning, he couldn’t help enjoying a moment of peace. He angrily turned the water off when it dawned on him again that the clock was ticking.
Clean and dressed in fresh slacks and a black sweater, Kevin headed for Mr. Gregson’s. The front door creaked opened eerily as he scaled the steps onto the front porch. Kevin froze, a shiver running down his spine. He’d never been inside of his neighbor’s house. Heck, he’d barely ever caught more than a fleet
ing glimpse of the interior through the thick curtains on all of the windows. That Mr. Gregson obviously wanted Kevin to enter in spite of his obvious preference for privacy was rather ominous.
“Hello?” Kevin called out nervously. “Mr. Gregson?”
Did the door open a little further in response? Kevin couldn’t be sure. He began to wonder if this was just another part of whatever sadistic game Billy was playing with him. The reaper would’ve had plenty of time to travel from the Works and either incapacitate Mr. Gregson or recruit him to the cause. That latter possibility was especially frightening. Mr. Gregson would certainly be up for a rousing round of Fuck with Kevin Felton.
But that had to be impossible, right? Kevin had never mentioned Mr. Gregson’s interest in recent events to Billy, so the reaper would have no reason to think his target would run to the pixie for help, right? Likewise, Mr. Gregson couldn’t have found out on his own how badly Kevin had screwed up. The trick with the door was just another dumb game, and whatever new humiliation Kevin was about to suffer likely wouldn’t be fatal—or even the kind of temporary-but-nonetheless-painful sort of fatal that had permeated Harksburg recently. It would just suck.
Taking a deep breath, Kevin eased the storm door open and stepped into Mr. Gregson’s home. An intense sensation of not belonging washed over him as soon as he crossed the threshold, freezing him with his left foot inside and his right foot on the porch. “Mr. Gregson?” he tried again, his voice even shakier. Maybe the door had swung open simply because it hadn’t been shut securely. Maybe Mr. Gregson wasn’t answering him because he was asleep or showering or taking a dump. Maybe walking into his neighbor’s house uninvited would be the worst mistake of Kevin Felton’s life. Maybe he should turn around and find a way to deal with his reaper problem all on his own.
“Oh, fucking come in already!” Mr. Gregson’s familiar gruff baritone commanded from some indeterminate point ahead.
Kevin about jumped out of his shoes and would’ve shat himself again had there been anything left in his bowels. He scrambled inside, the storm door slamming shut behind him with a sharp crash, and caught himself on the wall just before he would’ve collided with a small table. His flailing arms just missed wiping out an arrangement of framed photographs. Forcing himself to breathe normally, Kevin found himself staring at a panoramic image of the biggest waterfall he’d ever seen, a seven or eight tier behemoth interrupted here and there with rocky cliffs and small islands like a pod of dolphins breaching the raucous waves. Beside that hung a smaller image of a jungle, a scene thick with flora of all shapes and sizes, all of it trimmed with rectangular purple leaves. His eyes traced half a dozen similarly fantastic scenes—deserts of obsidian, mountains of pure quartz, lakes turned pink with dense vegetation. At first, he thought they couldn’t possibly be real, that he was looking at some nerdy teenager’s collection of homemade desktop wallpapers, and then he remembered Donovan Pim’s magical forest and chastised himself for lapsing back into his former role as a stupid, naïve human. Set atop the table Kevin had almost crashed into was a tiny crystal castle, a glittering array of spiraling towers and soaring buttresses surrounding a sturdy central keep. Sunlight streaming in through the front door made it glow and dance as if on fire, its center a hot ember Kevin half expected to burn straight through the tabletop.