by Jake Richter
“It was before they cast a reducing spell on it,” Alex said. “A spell that made it really, really, small.”
“Are you lying to me?” Grimwood asked.
“How could I lie to you? You’re the all-powerful Lord of Souls and like you said…I’m just a gnat.”
“That is so true.”
Alex nodded and Grimwood drew back. In that instant of Grimwood letting down his guard, Alex plunged his hand into his pocket and withdrew the pearl.
Alex brought the pearl around and Grimwood chopped it from his hand, casting off a burst of friction sparks.
The pearl hit the ground and began thrumming, glowing.
“GET BACK!” somebody screamed and Alex did, scrambling back as Grimwood rose and then—
The pearl burst into flames.
Or, more particularly, a wall of flames that rose twenty feet into the air and ran from left to right, forming a barrier between Alex and the others, and Grimwood and his minions.
Ash and the others saw this and shouted for Alex to run. He didn’t need telling twice.
He ran back and rejoined the others, receiving a hug from Ash who gestured at the wall of flames. “It won’t hold them for long.”
Alex nodded. “Let’s get outta here,” he said.
20
Grimwood stood in the field of battle, feeling the heat from the wall of flames, staring at the bodies of his small army, the possessed and the shapeshifters, who lay in all attitudes of death.
The wall of flames had shifted, forming a kind of wreathe around him, Dante, and his minions. He sighed, realizing what he would have to do to extinguish the fire.
Reaching out a hand, he touched the flames and felt a powerful current surge through his body, sending spikes of pain into every muscle, every neuron. His mouth opened and steam issued from it. His eyes rolled back and slowly, very slowly, the fire began to ebb.
In seconds, there was but one wisp of flame left, a tendril of orange fire at the tip of his finger. He blew on it, extinguishing the flame, his body wracked by spasms.
Grimwood turned to the sound of clapping hands.
Dante was peering at him, smiling hugely, applauding, and trying to get the others, those still alive, to do the same. Grimwood favored Dante with an icy look.
“This could have gone better,” Grimwood said.
Dante nodded, wiping sweat from his brow. “I did my best, sir.”
“Your best sucks, Dante.”
Before Dante could utter a word in reply, Grimwood twirled a finger.
There was a flash of light and Dante was transformed into a gray, slime-slicked, bug-eyed snail, inching along slowly at Grimwood’s feet.
Grimwood gritted his teeth and brought one of his boots up, intent on dashing Dante to pieces when he heard a sound in the distance.
Police sirens.
Lots of them.
Grimwood realized he certainly had the abilities to obliterate whoever came to investigate, but what good would it do? It wouldn’t help him to find the sickle and would likely serve only to delay things. No, the destruction of the mortals didn’t make sense given the situation.
Grimwood twirled his finger again and the life went out of the three remaining possessed people. Their bodies dropped to the ground and the shapeshifters, the ones he’d summoned up from the Underworld, simply vanished into thin air. He realized that he wouldn’t be able to rely on any of them anymore. He would have to go it alone.
His eyes strayed to the ground. Dante was still there, rubbing up against his boots. He dropped to the ground and plucked Dante up, and then he struck off for the motorcycle, which was damaged but still serviceable.
Firing up the bike, Grimwood peered down at the snail.
“I-I have an i-dea, sir,” Dante said in a tiny snail voice.
“The fact that you can still talk is freaking me out,” Grimwood replied.
Dante nodded, his tiny beady eyes rotating around as he coughed up a ball of what looked like snot. “I know where he might be going.”
“You’ve got ten seconds to tell me before you’re escargot.”
“The boy only has two relatives left alive.”
“Yes, yes, the grandfather,” Grimwood said. “We’ve already talked about him and we both know he’s vanished, gonzo—”
“The grandmother still lives.”
“She’s an old woman, Dante.”
Dante considered this, then said, “But the odds are that she knows something.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting we go there right now.”
“You do know what you’re asking me to do, don’t you?”
Dante nodded, his eyes wagging. “The ‘T’ word.”
Grimwood brooded on this as the sirens grew louder. He dropped Dante to the ground and twirled a finger a final time. Dante assumed his vaguely human look once more. He dusted himself off and climbed onto the back of the motorcycle.
“Teleportation is a serious matter, Dante. It’s a card we only get to play twice a day.” This was all true. The energy it took to transport from one spot to another would almost completely drain Grimwood, particularly after what he’d endured in snuffing out the wall of flames.
Dante nodded. “Yes, sir, I know it is. But it’s the only card we have left.”
21
Alex and the others drove in silence for a good ten minutes. Then finally, Spence, having caught his breath, looked up. “Can I be the first to say it? Back there was…fucking awesome!”
Spence cheered as the others looked on, smiling, exhausted from the battle.
“We beat the bastard,” Alex said.
Ash nodded and mustered a smile. “He’ll be coming again soon though. He won’t give up until he finds the sickle.”
“So we’ll kick his ass again.”
She registered this. “The only problem is he’s got the time and the watches, Alex.”
“What does that mean?”
“We can’t destroy him. He’s too old, too powerful, and has access to things we don’t. If we want to end this and make things right, we need to find the sickle.”
Alex nodded. “Which is why we need to get to my grandmother’s house as quickly as we can.”
Ash nodded, leaning back in her seat as Alex drove on.
The Challenger accelerated toward Alex’s grandmother’s house, which was located at the end of a dirt road in the wilds of northern Illinois. Alex peered outside at the farmland that whipped past, taking in green and amber fields dotted with horses and cows.
“You know this place well?” Ash asked.
Alex nodded. “Spence and I did a lot of cutting up around here. Parents would go on these long fancy vacations, right?”
Spence nodded. “Spence-cations. They never wanted me with him.”
Alex shook his head. “Maybe they just knew you had more fun with me.”
Spence rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
Alex continued. “Hey at least you still have your parents. Mine bailed
when I was little so I grew up around here,” Alex said.
Ash quirked an eyebrow. “They just…left?”
Another nod from Alex and a wistful smile. “It was just as well anyway. Some people are meant to be parents and others, well, others are like my old man and my mom.”
“I’m sorry,” Ash said.
Spence interjected. “Don’t be, ‘cause Alex’s grandparents were two of the very best people you’d ever want to know. They treated me like family, and they loved them some Alex.”
Ash focused again on Alex as he commanded the Challenger, the thoughts of his childhood still playing in his mind’s eye. “I hope your grandmother can help us, Alex.”
“Me too,” Alex replied, looking over at Ash who was sliding translucent shells filled with a green liquid dotted by what looked like dirt into her shotgun. “What’s in those?”
“Mystical liquid,” Ash replied.
“Sounds like a cool name
for a band.”
Ash smiled wearily. “It’s actually water from the Well of Zamzam in Mecca that’s been infused with shavings from the Tree of Life. Do you know what that means?”
Alex shook his head.
“It means the liquid is blessed and will definitely take a bite out of anything from the Underworld that tries to mess with us.”
“Which makes me wonder how you’re gonna be received when this is all over.”
Ash chewed on her lips. “The Grand Reaper’s dead and Grimwood’s gone rogue, so there aren’t any rules anymore.”
A few seconds of silence stretched between them.
“Who were you before?”
She blinked. “Come again?”
“I mean…you were somebody once, weren’t you?”
“I still am somebody, Alex.”
“I didn’t mean—what I meant is, you were like one of us before, weren’t you? Somebody back here on Earth? A…mortal?”
Ash sat there for a second, brooding on this. “What’s your earliest memory, Alex?”
“Falling on the cement porch at the back of my house. I split my chin open and had to get stitches.”
“How old were you?”
“Almost five.”
“And yet, you were alive before that. You were doing things and making memories from the very time you were born.”
“But I barely remember any of that.”
“Just flickers and flashes of people and events, right?”
Alex nodded.
“That’s kinda how it is with us. I know I had a life once. I know I was like you, but I can’t really remember it. I can see faces, my mother, father, and the dog we had and I know I was happy once, and that’s about it.”
“Does that make you sad?”
She turned away. “Nobody’s ever asked me that before.”
“What’s the answer?”
“No, I suppose not. I mean I have memories and still have dreams. And if you have dreams that means you lived a life that was worth living and remembering once. That gives me comfort.”
“This may sound strange but I’m glad things went down like they did, Ash. I mean I know the universe is on the line, but if I hadn’t passed your test and saved that girl’s life back at the bar… we all would’ve been fucked.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I never would’ve met you.”
Ash blushed and Spence leaned over the seat. “Hope I’m not ruining the warm and fuzzies, but we’re here.”
Alex looked up and jammed on the brakes, the Challenger going into an unchecked slide on the gravel road, nearly taking out a picket fence.
The vehicle came to a stop, and Alex looked outside.
It was just as he remembered.
The aging Ford F-150 parked in front of the Victorian home with its peeling white paint and sagging black shutters.
There was no sign of the ubiquitous chickens or dogs that Alex’s grandmother had always kept around, but there was movement.
Something wavered the air.
A spiral of black smoke coming from the window near the kitchen.
Alex turned off the Challenger and bolted from it, running up onto the porch.
He threw the front door open and nosed inside, smelling the acrid funk of smoke.
In the kitchen he spotted a pot on the stove, its contents burned, the blackened dish casting off the smoke he’d seen from outside.
A fire alarm shrieked and Alex grabbed the pot and moved it off the stove as the others appeared.
“What’s that smell?” Spence asked holding his nose.
Spence smiled, but Alex wasn’t in a joking mood.
“Grandma!” he shouted. “It’s Alex!”
Nothing.
Not a sound.
“Alex. You don’t think?” Spence asked.
Alex shook his head but that’s when he saw it in the dust on the floor at his feet.
A few speckles of red.
A blood trail.
Alex felt a punch to his gut. “Something is definitely wrong.”
22
“No,” Alex muttered to himself. “No!”
He followed the blood trail out through the back door and it was there that he stumbled over the first body.
One of his grandmother’s chickens.
The head on the small creature had been ripped off and its blood had been used to scrawl a message on the dusty, wooden boards: “How ‘bout a trade? The old lady for the sickle.”
Alex fell to his knees and screamed.
Grimwood had come!
He’d come and taken away his grandmother and it was all because of him. Alex fought his rising anger, rage and pain of possibly losing the woman who had raised him. He breathed deeply, but his thoughts were getting darker.
Flashes of what he would do to Grimwood and Dante scattered across his mind, and Alex could see himself taking a flamethrower with incredible power and vaporizing them both. Their flesh turning into ashes that sprinkled the farmscape with the quiet of winter’s first snow.
Alex punched the ground. Spence tried to comfort him, but he shrugged him off, standing, turning to see Ash.
“Where is he? Where the fuck is Grimwood?”
Ash didn’t respond for a few heartbeats. There was absolutely no emotion on her face. “I don’t know where he is, but I know the only way to solve this situation is to find the sickle.”
“How can we do that?”
“We have to find a way into the Otherworld.”
“How do expect us to do that, Ash, huh? You’re the one from down there.”
“I don’t know the way in.”
“Then what good are you?”
Anger flashed in Ash’s face. “I’m the one that saved your ass, Alex.”
“And cost my grandmother hers. I should never have done any of this.”
“Then give up,” Ash replied coolly. “Just go out and sit on the hood of the car and wait for them to come for you, but it won’t solve anything. Your grandmother will still be gone and the Unwinding will still happen.”
Alex looked up. “Then what do we do?”
“You said it yourself, Alex. Your grandparents were involved in that church. Somebody there might have the answers we need. We just need to figure out how to get there.”
Alex massaged his face as his world spun. He thought about his grandmother and Grimwood and what he might be doing to her. On the verge of hyperventilating, a face and a name came to him. His great-aunt, Esther.
“I-I know somebody who might be able to help us.”
“Who?” Camille asked.
“My grandmother’s sister. My Aunt Esther. She was part of their church. She might have the answers we need.”
Camille smiled. “That’s great news.”
“Yeah, but there’s a problem because she’s kept in this building.”
“What kind of building?” Minnie asked.
“The kind with straitjackets and rubber walls.”
“Then we need to bust her out, baby,” Spence said.
Alex looked at Ash, who nodded. “It might be the only way,” she said.
23
Alex led the others out through the front door toward the Challenger. “Your aunt?” Ash asked. “Where’s the place where she’s being kept?”
“About two hours away in Panora, Iowa.”
Spence shrugged. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Alex patted Spence on the back. “Relax. Even Iowa hasn’t heard of Iowa.”
Tires squealed. Exhaust and gravel shot into the air. The Challenger sped away from Alex’s grandmother’s house, driving under the brushstrokes of an angry sky, headed toward Iowa. Alex drove, Ash by his side, while Spence and the Belles sat in the back, keeping watch in every direction.
Alex was tired but kept a wide-eyed stare, his face a mask of desperation and eager anticipation. He wanted to exact revenge on Grimwood. The taking of his grandmother was not what he had expected, but at the sam
e time, deep down in the pit of his stomach, he knew that if Aunt Esther could help them, he might be one step closer to tracking down the sickle and saving the world.
He glanced over at Ash. There wasn’t much to see outside, scenery-wise, so he stole a few glances at her. He realized he knew so little about her. She was an enigma to a large degree, and he hungered for more information about who she’d been when she was just another mortal. Ash’s eyes were closed and Alex savored the view. There was something about the tasteful side boob shot that always turned him on. His mind wandered and he began thinking less about revenge and discovering new worlds, and more about a rest stop right here. He envisioned his tongue flirting with Ash’s, the two of them hot, sweaty when—
The Challenger slammed into something and Alex stood on the brakes.
The car gouged to a stop and Alex saw something skittering across the road up ahead, caught in the illumination from the Challenger’s headlights.
“What is that?” Spence asked.
“Leave Behinds,” Ash said.
Alex flicked the car’s high-beams. “What are those?”
Ash grabbed her Bitch Killer gun. “You don’t wanna know.”
Alex let up on the brakes and then more forms appeared out in front of the car. He looked back to see shadowy figures rising up behind it as well. They were boxed in.
Before Alex could juice the engine, Ash had leaped outside.
There were flashes of light as she fired her Bitch Killer and then Alex grabbed a pistol and jumped out with the others, all except Spence who now jumped behind the wheel, ready for a quick getaway.
Backlit by the Challenger’s headlights, Alex, Ash, Camille and Minnie confronted their unseen attackers. Alex watched Camille use her firestarter abilities to provide illumination. Wisps of flame shot from her fingertips as she waved them back and forth, spotlighting the attackers who were toiling in the shadows.
Ash used the light to target, blasting away at several dark cutouts in the nearby cornfield. “There are more of ‘em!”
She turned and screamed, “Behind you, Alex! On your six!”
Alex swiveled and lifted his pistol, spotting a mix of flesh spirits and demonic reptilian creatures. In the half light, there was a flash of scaled flesh and silver teeth. The beasts vaulted into the air, but Alex blasted them back with his pistol.