Second Grave on the Left

by Darynda Jones

  But Uncle Bob obeyed.

  Reyes growled in annoyance. He stood fully robed, the black mass rolling in waves around him, his blade glinting even in the dark depths of the basement. They were closing in on him, and they just kept coming, crawling over themselves, oozing out of cracks and crevices and dropping from the ceiling, fighting for a front position among legions.

  My heart thundered in my chest as I scanned the beings around me. And just as Reyes had warned, they saw me. One by one, their skeletal heads turned in my direction. They seemed—in a nightmarish, optical illusion kind of way—to smile, their wide mouths and razor-sharp teeth forming an upturned crescent as they lowered their heads in preparation for attack.

  “Turn on the light,” Reyes repeated, his voice strained as he swung his giant blade when one got too close. “It’ll blind them, give you time.”

  “Charley, what’s going on?” Ubie called from the other side of the door. I looked up. The stairs were completely blocked now, packed with dozens upon dozens of real-life, state-of-the-art demons.

  It took a moment to absorb the reality of my environment. I stood transfixed, utterly stunned.

  Then Reyes was in front of me, the warning in his voice so desperate, so determined, it sucked the already fleeting breath out of my lungs. He held his blade at the ready, leaned in, and said, “Don’t make me kill you.”

  They were advancing. Reyes stood in front of me, ready to swing. Angel appeared at my side, his eyes wide with terror. And I realized between heartbeats just how much I had utterly and completely fucked up. I should have listened to Reyes. I should have heeded his warning.

  Then again, no. If I had listened to him, if I had stayed away, how long would this have gone on? How long would they have tortured him? How many pieces could they rip him into before he died?

  “Dutch,” Reyes said in warning. He raised his blade. “Please.”

  Wouldn’t they have found me eventually anyway? Wouldn’t I face this fight regardless? Unfortunately, it was a fight I couldn’t win. There were simply too many of them. Reyes was right. If they got through, if they found a way into the heavens, another war would begin, and it would be my fault. I could not be the catalyst for war. The portal had to be closed.

  I let my lashes drift shut for the last time, and Reyes didn’t hesitate. I heard the swing of the blade slicing through the air as if it were splitting atoms. And again, the world slowed. My heart stilled, and I decided to face my fate head-on. I opened my eyes just as a demon jumped, his gaze zeroed in on my jugular. The air rippled around me as Reyes’s sword swung full force. A microsecond later, I stood whole and uninjured, while the demon lay in pieces. Reyes had decapitated the demon in midair.

  Then time came crashing back as demon after demon attacked. Reyes turned and thrust as he sliced through each one, his skill with the blade undeniable. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I reveled in the fact that he didn’t kill me, that he was fending them off, fighting them for me. One by one they went down, but they still advanced. They still closed in. And they knew Reyes’s weak point.

  One demon stood in the midst of the turmoil. Watching the battle unfold. It seemed smarter than the rest, more determined. It studied Reyes, the way he fought, the cleanliness of his kills, then it looked down at the corporeal body beneath its feet and struck. Its long serrated fingers sliced through Reyes’s chest and the god before me stumbled. The robe that offered him protection evaporated and he grabbed his chest as dozens of demons descended like vultures, taking complete advantage of the moment.

  By sheer will, he crawled to his feet, shook them off, swung his blade, and persevered. His robe enveloped him once more, weaving around the hard contours of his muscles, linking over the expanse of his chest.

  But the moment it materialized, the demon struck again, burying its talons in his shoulder. The robe vanished again and he fell onto his palms. The sight of such a powerful entity being brought to his knees shattered me from the inside out. I shot forward, but he turned and pinned me to the spot with a glare, his shoulders hunched, the beast in him unleashed.

  “Leave,” he growled as he disappeared beneath a sea of demons. My lungs seized at the sight, and this time, my knees gave completely. I sank to the floor in shock, watching the pile of spider demons grow. Regret flooded every molecule of my being. Then the others turned toward me in unison. Dark fluid dripped from their teeth as they closed in, taking their time, their only obstacle clearly busy.

  “Charley, run,” Angel said, pulling me to my feet. I wobbled up and eased one foot behind the other only to be brought up short by the sting of breath on the back of my neck.

  Fear gripped me so hard, the world spun, the edges of my periphery darkened, and I realized one thing that was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I was about to die.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF. AND SPIDERS.

  —BUMPER STICKER

  My eyes drifted shut as the creatures closed in. I was the grim reaper, for heaven’s sake. Literally. Reyes said I could fight them, but how? I didn’t even own a sword. But I was bright, damn it. I had that going for me. So bright, the departed could see me from continents away. Or so I’d been told. If the demons had been banished from the light, why could they get close to me? Why were they not banished in my light?

  My eyes flew open.

  The moment I thought it, the moment the idea popped into my head, a visceral force sparked inside me, vibrated with energy, shook with need, churned and grew, building and building until I could no longer contain it.

  “Angel,” I said, unable to control the energy swirling within me, “run.”

  Three things happened simultaneously. Angel’s hand left mine, the prickly points of razor-sharp teeth pierced the skin around the back of my neck, and light exploded out of me in every direction, flooding the room with brilliance, saturating and swallowing every shadow. The roar of raw energy consuming everything in its path drowned out the screams of demons. They burst into flames, burned like paper into ashes, and when the light returned to me, tucking itself safely inside the core of my being, I stood for a long while contemplating the utter coolness of what had just happened.

  “Charley,” Uncle Bob said, bursting into the room, “what was that sound?” Dad was on his heels as they rushed down the steps.

  “Wait,” I called to them, holding up a hand. “Just stay there a minute.”

  “Is that Farrow?” Uncle Bob asked.

  “Call an ambulance.” I inched closer and realized that Reyes’s incorporeal self was nowhere around. My heart seized until I heard his voice echo off the walls.

  “It’s still vulnerable.”

  I swung around to see him crouching on a shelf, balancing on the balls of his feet, one hand raised, gripping the hilt of his sword. The tip of the blade was at rest on the ground in front of him. It was almost as tall as I was. His robe billowed around him, up and over his head to fill every corner of the room. It swelled and receded, and I felt like an ocean of dark mass had swallowed me. He was the most magnificent being I’d ever seen.

  And he was here. He was alive. “I thought I had vanquished you, too.”

  He turned his head, but I couldn’t see his face. “I’m no demon. I was forged in the light.”

  “The light from the fires of hell,” I reminded him. He didn’t respond. Suddenly I was angry. Why did everything about being a grim reaper have to be so difficult? “Why didn’t you just tell me I could do that?”

  “As I said, it would be like telling a fledgling it could fly. You have to know you can do it on a visceral level. Had I told you, I would’ve been doing you no favors.”

  “What if I hadn’t figured it out, Reyes?”

  His hooded head tilted to one side. “Why question such things? You did it. You succeeded. End of story. But that is still vulnerable,” he said, eyeing his corporeal body, the tattered, shredded shell of the man he used to be.

  “You’ll be fine
when we get you to a hospital.”

  “To what end?”

  I turned back to him. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think that was it? Do you think my father will just give up? That was a win for him. He now knows a portal walks the Earth. He’ll stop at nothing, and he’ll find a way to take you down. To rip you apart limb from limb to get at your core, your essence. And he now knows your weakness.” He glanced back at his body. “You don’t understand what will happen if my father gets ahold of me. There’s a reason I need to ditch my corporeal self, Dutch. It’s a chance I can’t take.”

  “Charley, I need to get to him. He’s dying.”

  I could hear the sirens of an ambulance growing louder. “Just one moment,” I said to Uncle Bob. I didn’t know what Reyes would do if Uncle Bob got near him. “What do you mean? What reason?”

  Reyes toppled from the shelf to land effortlessly in front of his physical body. “They can find me. They can track me through this body,” he said.

  “You already told me that. But there’s another reason. What is it?”

  He shook his head. “You cleared the path. Now I can finish this.”

  The realization of what I’d done stunned me to my toes. I stepped closer. “Why didn’t you just kill me when you had the chance? Why do this?”

  “Charley,” Dad said in warning, “what’s going on?”

  Reyes raised a gloved hand to my face. The heat that emanated from him caressed me like hot silk. “Kill you?” he asked, his velvety voice winding its way to my core. “That would be like smothering the sun.”

  I blinked in helplessness as Reyes turned and raised his blade, both hands on the hilt of the massive weapon. As he brought it down with a lightning-quick strike, I bolted through time, ducked under his arms, and covered his body with my own. The blade came to a stop millimeters from my spine.

  He lifted it with a growl. “Move,” he said, his voice edged with a hard warning.

  “No.” I couldn’t stop the evidence of emotion from bursting forth, from stinging my eyes. I ground my teeth as I lay on Reyes. Soaked with blood, his body was still like an inferno, hot, vital and alive. His heart beat underneath my palms. His pulse roared in my ears. “I’m not letting you do this.”

  He took a menacing step forward and lowered his hood so I could see the hard lines of his face. “You don’t understand what will happen if they find me, if they take me.”

  “I do understand,” I said, my voice pleading. “They’ll torture you. They’ll use the key to get onto this plane. But—”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  That was simple? “Then what? Just say it.”

  He worked his jaw, reluctance radiating off him. Finally, he said, “I’m like you. I’m the key.”

  “I know. I understand that.”

  “No, you don’t.” He rubbed his forehead with a gloved hand. “Just like you’re the portal into heaven—” He dropped his head as though ashamed. “—I’m the portal out of hell. If they get ahold of me, legions will come through, and they will not have to piggyback to get onto this plane.”

  I took a moment to absorb his meaning. It was hard to believe. We were so much more alike than I’d ever imagined. Both keys. Both portals. One to heaven and one to hell. Like a mirror.

  “They would have direct access through me, just like the departed have direct access to heaven through you. And the first thing they’ll do is hunt you down. They’ll have a way out of hell, and with you, they’ll have a way into heaven. Now, move, or I’ll move you.”

  He would do it, too. He would move me, throw me across the floor to get to his body. I felt such desperation when I looked up at him, such agony. So I raised my hand and spoke.

  “Rey’aziel, te vincio.”

  He stopped, his eyes widening in disbelief.

  “That’s right,” I said when he gazed at me in question, “I bind you.”

  He stepped back, the shock plain on his face. “No,” he said, grabbing at his robe as it disintegrated around him. His blade fell and seemed to shatter and disappear when it hit the floor, and he looked back at me, his eyes pleading. “Dutch, no.”

  The guilt that stabbed through my heart felt a hundred times worse than anything he could have done to me with his sword. The accusing stare, the betrayal in his eyes. Then he was gone. In an instant, his corporeal body came to life with a loud gasp. He seemed to seize, his teeth welded together as he writhed in pain, the agony on his face so evident, so absolute.

  “Uncle Bob!” I screamed, and he and Dad barreled toward me. “Please, help him.”

  * * *

  They loaded Reyes into the back of an ambulance. He’d already been fitted with oxygen and an IV. His steely body looked so vulnerable, so childlike. I wanted nothing more than to wrap him in my arms and make everything bad that had ever happened to him go away. But that would involve the magic of fairy tales. Even with my abilities, or possibly in spite of them, the last thing I believed in was magic.

  Uncle Bob, Dad, and I had rehearsed our story before the ambulance arrived. The three of us had been heading to my apartment, so the story went, for some paperwork on a case when I heard a sound in the basement. We found Reyes there unconscious and called an ambulance. It sounded good if one didn’t look too close. But after I’d told it about twenty thousand times, it got kind of old.

  I sat in the waiting room at the hospital, still wrapped in my dad’s jacket to cover my blood-soaked clothes and hoping for word on Reyes’s condition as another doctor drilled me with questions. “Look, that’s all I know. I have no idea how he was injured or what happened, and I’m sorry some of the injuries look days old. I just found him like that.”

  Neil Gossett, after dismissing the physician with a scowl, sat down next to me, two coffees in hand.

  “Thanks for that,” I said.

  “Where’s your uncle?”

  “He had to go back to the station. We just solved a pretty big case, and he’s taking statements.” He was also going to let Cookie know what happened. She’d be glad we found Reyes.

  “Well,” Neil said, handing me a cup and frowning at the blood still on my hands, “the way I see it, Reyes woke up in that long-term-care unit with amnesia. He was in a coma, after all, with a head wound. Didn’t know who he was, much less where he was. Can’t possibly be held accountable for escaping when he had no idea he was doing it.”

  I gaped at him. With a grin, he reached over and closed my mouth.

  “You would do that?” I asked, appreciation evident in my voice.

  “I would do that.”

  I sighed a breath of relief. “Neil, thank you so much.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said, taking a sip. “No, really, don’t mention it. I like my job.”

  I smiled. “Oh, hell yeah. Now I have something to blackmail you with. Hmmm,” I said, taking a long sip of hot java, “what do I need?”

  “Your head examined?” he asked. “Which, by the way, you don’t have to resort to blackmail to get. I know some people who know some people.”

  “If I want my head shrunk, I’ll talk to my sister.”

  “Oh, dude, your sister is so hot.” He sat back, his expression full of reminiscent thought.

  “Ew.” She was beautiful, but still. Neil Gossett? With my flesh and blood? Not likely. “I have to tell you something.”

  He straightened. “Sounds serious.”

  “It is. I bound him.”

  “What?”

  With a heavy sigh, I said, “I bound him, like tied him.”

  He leaned toward me and asked under his breath, “Should you be telling me this?”

  “Not like that.” After a backhand to his shoulder, I lowered my eyes, ashamed at what I was about to tell him. “I bound his incorporeal self to his corporeal body. He can’t leave it. He’s bound to it.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Apparently. It just kind of came to me.”

  “Wow.”

  “No,
what I mean is, he’s mad.”

  He paused and leveled an astonished stare on me. “What?”

  “He’s kind of furious,” I said, shrugging one corner of my mouth.

  Neil worked his jaw a moment, as if trying to figure out what to say. “Charley,” he said, apparently decided, “I’ve seen Reyes furious once, remember? It left an impression.”

  “I know and I’m sorry. He was going to essentially commit suicide. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “So you infuriate him then send him back to prison?” he asked, his voice a harsh whisper.

  I cringed. He made it sound so bad. “Pretty much.”

  “Holy shit, Charley.”

  “What’d she do now?”

  We both looked up. Owen Vaughn, the guy who tried to maim me in high school, stood over us in his black police uniform. Shiny badge and all.

  “Vaughn,” Neil said by way of a chilly greeting.

  Owen tapped his badge. “Officer Vaughn,” he corrected. “I need to know what happened in that basement.”

  Oh, for the love of Pete’s Dragon. “I gave my statement to Detective Davidson,” I said, challenging him with my eyes.

  “Don’t you mean Uncle Bob?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Owen looked down the hall each way, then leaned down to me. “Would you like to know what I think of you?”

  “Um, is that a trick question?”

  “Never mind,” he said, straightening. “I’ll save it for a more appropriate time.” He smirked in anticipation. “Like the day I haul your ass to jail.”

  As he stormed off, Neil asked, “Seriously, what the hell did you do to him?”

  “You were his danged friend,” I said, throwing a palm up. “You tell me.”

  Neil stuck around awhile; then Cookie showed up with food and a change of clothes. She tried to get me to go home, but I just couldn’t leave, not before knowing Reyes’s condition. Dad came and went. Gemma came and went. A doctor finally came out, his eyes weary. Reyes was in ICU, but he was doing remarkably well, all things considered. Still, I couldn’t leave. Angel showed up around dark and stayed the entire night with me. He sat on the floor beside my head as I laid claim to a small padded bench and slept as well as could be expected on a small padded bench.