by Amber Benson
“Hey, shithead!” I yelled, pounding on the glass wall with my fists.
Alternate Frank was still on the floor, not having moved from the spot where he’d landed after he’d missed the wormhole.
Obviously, he couldn’t hear what I was saying, but my movement caught his eye. He turned his head to look at me, a ribbon of blood on his chin where he’d split his lower lip on the concrete.
The Frank from my universe wore blond muttonchops which I would’ve called his “trademark” look, but Alternate Frank had no facial hair—and he was thinner than my Frank. Otherwise, they were exactly the same. Blond hair and eyebrows, light brown eyes, and a sexy sneer to their lips.
From the first moment I’d met my Frank on the porch of a magical house on stilts in the middle of the marshlands of Queens, New York, I’d been smitten. It was purely a visceral, sexual attraction, and like an idiot, I’d acted on it when I should’ve stayed far away. My indiscretion had almost ruined my relationship with Daniel—actually, who was I kidding, it had ruined my relationship with Daniel—but somehow we’d managed to work it out and get back together.
Which was an amazing feat in its own right.
“Come out here and try to kick my ass!” I yelled, banging my fists on the glass.
Alternate Frank set one hand on the floor, using it to lift his torso and head, then he rolled over on his side and pushed himself up into a sitting position, eyes latching onto mine. I could feel the hatred rolling off of him in waves—and I was happy I could incite so much emotion in an adversary.
Crawling over to the wall, he motioned for me to kneel down closer to him. When I didn’t move, he gestured again, shaking his head. I knew there was glass between us, so he couldn’t do anything too terrible to me, and this was what finally persuaded me to kneel down closer to him.
He leaned forward and spat at me, a ball of bloody mucus and saliva splatting on the surface of the glass. The action was so aggressive I sat back away from the glass wall.
“Schmuck head,” I whispered, annoyed with myself for letting him get to me.
While I watched, he maneuvered around so his back was to the window. Using the glass to brace himself, he slid up the wall until he was back on his feet, but still leaning on the wall for support. He turned around so his face was pressed against the glass, his brown eyes leering in my direction.
My Frank may have been an asshole, but he wasn’t a creepazoid. Not like Alternate Frank, who was just balls-to-the-wall freaky.
“Come out here and fight like a real man, you prick,” I said, catching his eye and leering right back at him.
Alternate Frank intimidated me, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him know that.
He stuck his tongue out at me and I noticed the tip was hanging from the rest of the muscle by a thread of flesh. I’d assumed the blood in his mouth had come from his split lip. I hadn’t realized he’d bitten through his tongue when he’d belly flopped onto the concrete.
He seemed to enjoy my reaction to his mutilated tongue—so much so, he smushed the thing against the glass, licking upward and smearing his bloody saliva all over the glass. I knew he was hoping to get a rise out of me, so I yawned, letting him see how bored I was by his “tongue show.”
“That’s gross,” I said. “Really disgusting. You’re nasty, you know that?”
He grinned, showing me his bloodied teeth.
“Someone should punch you in the testicles,” I added, giving him the finger. “We’ll see how big your grin is then.”
He laughed, more flecks of bloody saliva hitting the glass.
“I bet the girls stay far, far away from you back home.”
I dropped the bird, but if I could’ve jammed that middle finger up his nose, I would have.
I guess I was feeling too pleased with myself and this caused me to let my guard down. Or maybe I just believed I was safe on my side of the glass. Either way, I was startled when Alternate Frank thrust his hand through the window and grabbed my throat with his bony fingers, making it impossible for me to draw a breath.
I reached down and pulled the ball peen hammer from my tool belt and started beating the shit out of Alternate Frank’s wrist. The rest of him was still trapped behind the glass, so I couldn’t hear him screaming. But I could see his face and how much pain my hammer was inflicting on him. Watching him writhe while I battered at him with my hammer made me so damn happy I started giggling.
I’d done a lot of damage in a relatively short amount of time, my hammer busting apart the flesh around his wrist, shattering bones so they poked through the skin. I was ready to get my carnage on and do even more damage with the wire cutters in my tool belt, but Alternate Frank got wise and yanked his hand back through the glass.
“Yeah, you wanna mess with me, you better go all the way,” I hissed at him through the glass as he cradled his wounded arm to his chest.
He looked down at his arm then looked back up at me and smiled. I couldn’t figure out why he was grinning at me like that—but then he held out his arm and showed me what was so amusing: He’d already begun to heal.
I watched, in awe, as the bone shards knitted themselves back together at a whirlwind pace, the massacred flesh beginning to reconstitute itself over them as soon as they were done reforming. When it was over, his skin was flawless, with zero trace of the abuse I’d just inflicted.
“Bastard,” I murmured, wishing I boasted a healing time of 2.6 seconds.
Not knowing what else to do, I flipped Alternate Frank double birds and took off for the bushes, hoping he’d give chase—and I was not disappointed. Looking over my shoulder as I ran, I caught sight of my nemesis pushing through the spelled glass hands and face first. A second later, he was outside and in hot pursuit of yours truly.
I ran as fast as I could, jumping over the bushes where Marcel, Runt, and I had hidden earlier before heading out into the Purgatorial wasteland. The landscape was silent, no birds or insects chirping, nothing at all to mute the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears, or Alternate Frank’s footfalls as he closed the distance between us.
As I ran, I stuck my hand into my tool belt, removing the palette knife from its loop and palming it in my right hand. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to do with it, but I felt better having a weapon in my hand and I’d dropped my hammer back by Uriah Drood’s house.
I felt a stitch forming in my side, the pain lancing up my torso, and my body immediately started to slow down. It wanted me to know it was not built for such hard-core physical exertion and was much happier at rest, at sleep, or at dinner—basically, any activity that didn’t require too much physical activity. I was fast losing steam and I knew I needed to be proactive and come up with a plan, or Alternate Frank was going to catch me and then the ball was going to be in his court, not mine.
Stop, drop, and roll.
The words appeared in my mind like manna from Heaven and without any conscious thought, I did exactly as they demanded. I went down hard, using my velocity to roll to the left as dirt and sand flew into my face. I shut my eyes, but some of the debris made its way into my mouth and I found myself spitting out bits of sandy dirt.
I was still holding the palette knife in my hand as I crawled to my feet, so I brandished it in front of me, letting Alternate Frank see I had a weapon. He’d stopped a few feet away from me, and now stood watching, head cocked, as he tried to figure out what the hell I was doing. I guess it did look pretty odd, my whole stop, drop, and roll strategy, but I wasn’t about to second-guess my intuition.
“Whatcha think you’re gonna do with that stubby old thing?” he said.
I wasn’t surprised to hear he and my Frank both shared a slow-as-molasses Southern drawl.
“I dunno,” I said, shrugging as I looked down at the knife.
“It’s not a real looker now, is it, sister?”
I had to agree. The palette knife was nothing to write home about, but I felt way more secure with it in my hand than I did without it. Still, I knew there w
as room to up my game. I reached down, extracting the wire cutters from my tool belt and holding them in my left hand.
Now I could defend myself with two weapons instead of one.
“I know I’m running the risk of sounding real corny here, but whatever,” I said. “I don’t think it’s the size of your weapon, but how you stick it in that counts.”
With that said, I didn’t hesitate in my next action. I ran straight for Alternate Frank, my palette knife extended out in front of me like a sword aimed right for his chest. It was time to show Alternate Frank what I meant about “sticking it in.” I jammed the knife’s triangular head into his breast, the metal sliding through his shirt and flesh like they were made of butter.
He cried out, eyes wide with shock. He hadn’t expected me to act so boldly, and now he was paying for having underestimated me. I pushed the palette knife in deeper, and I knew I’d hit my mark: The blade had pierced his heart. Even with my knife inside of it, it continued to beat, the knife’s wooden handle reverberating with each contraction of the heart muscle.
I wasn’t stupid enough to think I’d killed him. I knew better than that. I raised my wire cutters and punched them, pointed tip first, into the soft flesh of his temple. I yanked them out, releasing a flood of blood that poured down his face and onto his shirt, then I stabbed him again in the exact same place. The first hit dazed him, but it was the second one that dropped him to his knees. I kicked him in the gut and he flew backward, landing on his side, blood dripping into the sandy dirt. I squatted down beside him and quickly rolled him onto his back before pulling the rope off my tool belt so I could tie him up.
Halfway through binding him, he started to regain consciousness. I needed more time to secure him, so I slammed the wire cutters into his forehead and this seemed to knock him out again. I felt a little guilty about beating the shit out of him, but then I remembered how he’d kicked Runt and I didn’t feel so bad anymore.
Tying his wrists as tightly as I could manage, I lassoed the other end of the rope around his ankles, pulling it taut and knotting it in place. It was a modified version of the hogtie, and I hoped it would keep Alternate Frank immobile and under my control.
“Take…it…out,” Alternate Frank murmured.
“What?” I said, leaning close to his face.
“Take the little stubby thing out,” he coughed.
I shook my head.
“Not gonna happen. You’re just gonna have to suck it up for now.”
Apparently, Alternate Frank didn’t like being told no, and to show his displeasure, he coughed up a disgusting ball of saliva and snot and spat it at me. It hit me in the neck and I immediately stood up, wiping it away with the back of my hand.
“You’re disgusting,” I said.
He only laughed at me.
“And you’re a pathetic attempt at Death, Calliope Reaper-Jones.”
He could say whatever the hell he wanted because he was the one who was hog-tied in the dirt, not me.
“I think it’s time to get out of here,” I said, as I stepped over him and grabbed the taut part of the rope linking his ankles and wrists together, dragging him behind me as I walked.
I could hear him coughing, but I didn’t give a shit if dirt and debris were flying in his face.
“Where the hell are you taking me, sis?” he yelped.
I didn’t answer his question. I just kept walking.
“Where are we going?!” he yelled, trying to intimidate me with anger.
But I remained silent.
“Bitch,” he grumbled.
I purposely veered toward a stretch of ground littered with small stones. It was fun to rake Alternate Frank over them, his yips of pain making me smile. I had no intention of telling my captive where I was taking him. He was the wily type, and I didn’t want to give him any advantage over me.
The very idea of me being able to subdue Alternate Frank without any help was absolutely ludicrous—the man healed in seconds, for God’s sake, and he was huge. Yet, here we were: me pulling him behind me like he was a little red human wagon.
It blew the mind.
I shook my head, happy to know I wasn’t a total putz at being Death.
We hadn’t gone very far when a cool wind kissed my face and I lifted my eyes from the ground, wondering where the hell the welcome breeze had come from in the emptiness of Purgatory. But my breath caught in my throat when I saw, like a much-wished-for mirage, a shimmering golden doorway standing open in the middle of the wasted Purgatorial landscape. I blinked just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. And then I saw who was waiting for me on the other side of the doorway: Runt and her father, Cerberus, the three-headed former Guardian of The North Gate of Hell.
With a squeal of joy, I began to run toward them, Alternate Frank bumping along behind me.
eighteen
Jennice had never heard of a “wormhole” before, but this didn’t stop her from going through one.
After it was all over, and she’d made sure her limbs were still in the right places, she suddenly realized she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. She was glad her stomach had been empty, or otherwise she might’ve thrown up all over the backseat of the car.
Even when she tried to think back to the moment when reality had done a flip-flop and everything she’d known about the world had changed, she still couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it. It seemed like one minute Noh was speeding down the highway with Jarvis yelling at her, and then the next minute a huge swirling storm cloud was touching down on the road in front of them.
When Jennice saw the dark gray funnel ahead of them, she closed her eyes and began to pray—as if this would save her and everyone in the car from imminent death. She prayed Noh would turn the wheel, the car would miss the eye of the storm, and certain disaster would be averted. She knew this was just wishful thinking. They were going far too fast for the car to do anything but sail into the middle of the melee, but still she held out hope something or someone would save them.
Then everything went all wonky and her sense of reality shifted. Her body was tossed upside down and her stomach lurched, bile rising in her throat as she felt like a lone tennis shoe rotating around inside an industrial-sized dryer.
Ignoring the rising nausea, she opened her eyes and was shocked to find the car no longer speeding down a Rhode Island highway about to be sucked into a humongous storm cloud, but coasting, instead, down a tree-lined stretch of road toward a massive wrought iron gate towering above them.
The gate was closed, a thick chain and padlock wrapped around the latch in an attempt to keep out unwanted guests. Noh drove the car right up to the gates, easing down on the brake as she did. She threw the car in park and opened her door, climbing out and jogging over to the padlock. She grasped the lock, lifting it up in the air, then jiggled it a little bit before letting it go. She came back to the driver’s seat and crawled inside, turning off the ignition.
“Well?” Jarvis asked.
He didn’t sound too optimistic.
“It’s spelled. But I know another way in.”
“I hope so, or we’ll be at their mercy again,” Jarvis said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“It’s pretty,” Jennice said, studying the large, Gothic building standing just beyond the gate.
It was the first real, coherent thing she’d said in a while—and both Noh and Jarvis turned in their seats to look at her.
“I don’t care where we are,” she added, leaning into the seatback. “I’m just glad we got away from the werewolves.”
It was true. She would’ve been happy in a maximum security prison, provided the guards could keep those hairy beasts away from her.
“They’re not werewolves,” Jarvis said.
“What are they, then?” Noh asked, as she got out of the car and slammed the door, leaving Jennice and Jarvis no choice but to climb out after her.
It took Jennice a moment to unbuckle her seat belt, so Jarvis and Noh were already
ahead of her before she’d even managed to crawl out of the backseat. She had to scamper to catch up to them.
“They’re called Vargr,” Jarvis was saying as Jennice joined them. “I can understand why you would call them ‘werewolves,’ but I assure you, they’re not.”
“I think they wanted to eat us,” Jennice said, shuddering at the thought.
While she’d tried to erase the last few hellish hours from her memory, flashes of Sea Verge and killing the Vargr, of the car blowing up and Clio disappearing…all the detritus of the terrifying day kept repeating on a loop inside her brain, the images making her stomach clench.
“Yes,” Jarvis agreed, “they would’ve eaten you and Noh—and taken Clio and myself hostage.”
Jennice hadn’t really wanted her fears confirmed. She didn’t like knowing there was something higher up the food chain than human beings.
“That would’ve sucked,” Noh said, but Jennice could tell she wasn’t really listening to their conversation, too busy tromping through the woods and looking for a way to bypass the all-encompassing wrought iron fence to really pay attention.
Every now and then Noh would stop and cock her head as though she were listening to someone—and then she’d continue on.
The fence stretched on ahead of them, the wrought iron supplemented now by the addition of large stretches of smooth stone walls, making the thing impossible to scale.
“What is this place?” Jennice asked, less curious and more worried it was getting dark and they were still outside, totally helpless if the Vargr decided to show up again.
“It’s called the New Newbridge Academy. It’s where Noh and Calliope attended boarding school. I chose it as our meeting place because it has magical wards protecting it—at least, if we can get inside the grounds.”
Jennice was sufficiently impressed by the fact Noh and her friend Calliope had attended boarding school. Having gone to a traditional public school, she was in awe of a place like the New Newbridge Academy with its Gothic buildings, lush grounds, and all-over “spooky” vibe.
Suddenly Noh stopped beside the stone wall, gesturing for them to do the same.