The Wrong Goodbye tc-2

by Chris F. Holm

  Ana laughed, short and bitter. “Years? Try decades. I first had to pinpoint the exact moment and location of the necessary celestial alignment —no small feat given how deep any mention of this ritual was buried. And even with a Collector’s unique skill set, getting money enough was a challenge. Transferring the funds from wealthy meat-suits to procure the land seemed simple enough, but it proved slower than anticipated —I had to do so without raising hackles. And then there was the matter of organizing today’s celebration.”

  “But the Dia de los Muertos has been celebrated in this square for over thirty years.”

  Ana laughed. “You think that’s by accident? Every year, this festival has grown, and every year, it’s free of charge to all who wish to come. Oh, I’ll grant you, the folks who throw it haven’t the faintest idea I’m involved —I’ve been careful to shield both my money and my more arcane influences from public view. And it all culminates in one night, in one moment —after which Danny and I will both be free. Danny, the Varela.”

  Danny removed from his pocket a swirling, grayblack orb. The Varela soul. I inched forward, but he once more trained his gun on me, and once more I stopped, chastened.

  “Danny, don’t. Don’t give it to her. You have no idea the hell on earth that you’ll unleash by going through with this.”

  Danny smiled then, his youthful expression painful in its naïveté. “Ana’s found a way round it,” he said. “A spell that’ll disperse the energy safely once it’s freed us. Those nearest the ritual —like you, perhaps, or the two you’ve brought —might not fare so well, but I assure you, those beyond the fence will be fine.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? Unlike you, she’s never lied to me.”

  “No? So it’s not possible she’s the one who turned Quinn in?”

  Ana bristled. “The Varela, Danny.”

  “She said herself she’s been working toward this night for thirty years. Tell me, have you known the whole time what she had in store? Or did she only bring you in when she realized she couldn’t pull it off alone? When she realized someone would have to stick their neck out to get the tools, the soul, the expertise she needed.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Ana snapped.

  “She brought me in five years ago,” he said. “But I never thought…”

  “What? Never thought that she was using you? That you were nothing but a patsy to her? Maybe that’s what Quinn was once, too —or maybe he overheard something he shouldn’t have. Twenty-seven years he’s spent shelved, and for all those twentyseven years, she’s told you it was me who turned Quinn in, while the whole time she schemed in secret, working toward this night. Tell me, Ana, was Quinn helping you? Did he prove a liability —a loose end in your plan?”

  “Quinn was a mistake!” she screamed, and then caught herself —her shoulders sagging, her face falling in dismay.

  “Ana?” This from Danny: quiet, unsure.

  “I never wanted this for him,” she said. “He was a friend. Hell, he was scarcely more than a child. I hadn’t thought when I asked of him a simple errand it would end so poorly, but then, I had no idea the boy spoke Latin.”

  “He was Catholic, Ana,” I said. “An altar boy. In those days, they all did.”

  “I’d sent him to procure a manuscript from a monastery in the south of France —a scroll of unknown origin that hadn’t seen the outside of the stone reliquary in which it had been sealed in centuries. I’d been tipped to it by a demon contact who swore he’d had a hand in writing it, and his tip was sound; it proved the fullest account of the Brethren I had ever seen. The problem was, young Quinn had seen it too —seen it, and translated its contents —and his enthusiasm at the prospect of escaping this life was too much for him to bear. He wanted to tell the both of you —to attempt the ritual immediately —and try though I did, I could not persuade him otherwise. So instead, I had to silence him.”

  “Ana,” Danny said. “Fuck. How could you?”

  “I did what I had to do,” was her retort.

  “And tonight?” Danny asked. “Have you really devised a spell that will protect against the Deluge, or are six billion fucking people an acceptable sacrifice for your freedom?”

  “For our freedom,” she corrected. “And they won’t all die. After all, many survived the last. And who are you to say this is a bad thing? It seems to me, a cleansing flood would likely do this cesspool of a world some good.”

  Danny’s face twisted in horror. “So your protection spell–”

  “–is one-way,” she said. “It will keep us safe from what’s to come. It’s all I could manage. It’s all we really need.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, to Ana or to me I wasn’t sure. But then he threw me the Varela soul, and said to her, “I won’t let you do this. I can’t.”

  I dropped the Varela in my pocket. Watched the two of them standing there inside the circle —Danny’s eyes brimming with tears, and Ana shaking with rage barely contained.

  “You have no right to take this from me,” she spat. “But if you don’t want to join me, you may prove useful yet.”

  She was on him so fast, I didn’t have a chance to react. She swung the skim blade down hard on his gun hand, its rounded edge connecting with his wrist in a crunch of shattered bone. Then she kicked out his knee, and he toppled forward. With speed and strength that smacked of magical enhancement, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and dragged him backward to the center of the circle. He knelt before her, his arms dangling at his sides, his face a mask of pain. His back arched as her knee pressed against it, the skimming blade poised above his breast.

  “What do you say, Sam —do you suppose our boy Danny’s soul is dark enough?”

  “Ana, don’t.”

  I eyed Danny’s gun, which lay ten feet from where I stood —three feet inside the circle. She picked up on my intent and said, “I wouldn’t.”

  “Sam,” Danny said. “I’m so bloody sorry.”

  “Hey,” I told him, “you can’t help who you love.”

  He laughed through the pain.

  “For what it’s worth,” she said to him, “I’m sorry, too. But this is my only chance. There’s only one way this can end.”

  I glanced around for a weapon —for anything to end this stalemate. All I saw was the silhouette of Charon sketched in crows —highlighted by the jittery spotlight of an approaching police helicopter, and standing there infuriatingly immobile as if he cared not what went on below.

  Or perhaps as if he was incapable of intervening.

  Danny tracked the direction of my gaze, and spotted Charon lying in wait. Then he nodded at me almost imperceptibly, as if he understood what must be done. As if giving me his consent.

  Such a small gesture —so small, Ana hadn’t even noticed it. And yet it was enough to break my heart.

  A lump rose in my throat then, and tears welled in my eyes. But I refused to let them spill over. Not when I had a job to do.

  “Wait,” I said, shouting to be heard over the helicopter’s din. “There is another way.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You’re going to go through with this regardless —I get that. Big boom. Big flood. But you and I both know Danny’s soul ain’t dark enough to break hell’s bonds; he just proved that by handing over the Varela you need. So I propose a trade.”

  Ana smiled —feral, vicious. “Varela for Danny, is that it?”

  “No,” I said. “Varela for my freedom. Danny’s, too, for that matter.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “It’s the circle, right? Those inside break free of hell’s bonds, those outside are shit outta luck. So you let me in, and I give you the Varela. You do your thing, Danny and I go free, and so long as we avoid the ensuing flood we walk away as happy as clams.”

  “You’re playing me,” she said. “The Sam I know is far too much of a Boy Scout to suggest a thing.”

  I stepped toward her. The three of us wer
e awash in spotlights, a second helicopter joining the first. Like heaven’s light shining down upon us. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.”

  “I’m too fast for you,” she hissed. “You’ll never reach the gun in time.”

  Someone shouted to us through a bullhorn, but their words were lost on the wind. I took the Varela from my pocket and held it out to her. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

  I stepped into the circle, scuffing my feet along the way.

  Dried blood flecked off beneath my soles, and broke the ring.

  Ana, realizing what I’d done, screamed in rage, and drove the skim-blade into Danny’s chest.

  Lines dropped down from above, police in riot gear rappelling from the heavens like God’s own army of angels, too late to do anything but watch. For a moment, the whole world felt as though it bent inward toward Danny’s prostrate form, which seemed to vibrate, to hum, his every pore erupting with white-hot light.

  So this is how the world ends, I thought. Turns out, it’ll be a bang after all.

  And in the instant before his soul let loose, bringing forth another flood, ten thousand crows streamed through the open roof, engulfing the lot of us in a fury of talons, beaks, and ink-black feathers.

  They swarmed the circle, coalescing into the vast, impossible form of a hunched old man two stories high.

  Just as soon as he had formed, he toppled over, engulfing Ana and Danny’s tangled forms in his teeming black mass.

  And just like that, he disappeared into the Nothingness.

  Along with Ana.

  Along with Danny.

  In the silence that ensued, I cried.

  31.

  “Good morning, Collector. Nice to see you’re amongst the living, so to speak. Though I confess I am surprised to find you here.”

  A week had passed since Los Angeles. Lilith and I were standing in a cemetery on the edge of Ilford, east London. The sky overhead was the color of slate, and a cool mist beaded up on my woolen pea coat. I looked down at the headstone at my feet. It was mottled with age, and bright green moss clung to one side of it. In weathered letters, it read:

  DANIEL ALLAN YOUNG

  BELOVED SON

  1903–1921

  For not the first time, I wondered about my own grave —I’d never seen it. I’d died penniless on the streets of New York, one more John Doe for Potter’s Field. Though all of Danny’s family money didn’t make him any less dead. Now, in fact, it seemed he was a fair bit more.

  “I thought I should pay my respects,” I said.

  Lilith scoffed. “To the man who nearly condemned you to an eternity of Nothingness?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” I confessed.

  “It always is.” Though this was a cemetery —and mid-morning —Lilith wore an evening dress of bright red, and lipstick to match. Neither showed any evidence of rain. “I knew,” she said. “About your little group, and what they meant to you. Truth be told, I was sorry when you and they parted ways.”

  “You knew? Why didn’t you ever say?”

  “Everyone’s entitled to their secrets. And everyone’s entitled to those little vices that help them to survive. Regardless of what my superiors might think. We’re all of us consigned to this life against our will, Collector. I no more blame you for my fate than you should me for yours.”

  She raised a hand, caressed my borrowed face. “So tell me,” she said, “were you tempted?”

  “Tempted? Tempted by what?”

  “By your precious Ana’s ritual. By the stories of Brethren, and by the freedom that they represent. Tempted to leave this task, this life, this punishment behind.”

  I thought about it. A simple answer eluded me.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. Anyways, the price was far too steep. I couldn’t take innocent lives to save myself. I’m not worthy of their sacrifice.”

  She frowned, but said nothing.

  “Lily, why are you asking me this?”

  “Because you need to know I would have been, if I were you. And if I’m ever faced with a choice like that, you’d best believe I’m going to take it —no matter what the cost.”

  “If that’s true, then why tell me?”

  “We’re not so different, you and I. We’ve both been sentenced to an eternity of torment without even being given a proper chance. The difference is, I aim to do something about it —no matter what the cost. And when the time comes for me to make my move, I’d suggest you stay out of my way. Are we clear?”

  “Crystal. Only you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Ana did what she did in secret. Convinced her friends to trust her, even as she betrayed them. And in the end, she didn’t care who her plans hurt. You, on the other hand, claim not to even like me, and here you are trying to ensure I steer clear should you ever make your move. I think you care more about me and my kind than maybe you let on.”

  Lilith smiled and shook her head. “Perhaps you’re right. Or perhaps you simply see what I intend you to. At the very least, we can agree it would be best for both of us if you’re never in a position to find out which.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  “Good. You should know, you did well last night, Collector —word is Charon is most pleased. And as the unrest between heaven and hell descends to allout war, he is an ally worth having.”

  “He used me, didn’t he? He knew I wasn’t to blame for taking the Varela soul. He just needed me to hunt down Ana. To breach the circle, so he could get to her.”

  “Is that so bad?” she asked. “Some jobs, you send a god. Some jobs, you send a monkey. This appears to have been the latter. Your Ana was quite adept at masking her movements —which is how she managed to waltz into Dumas’s skim-joint undetected. And she was a gifted mage —her protections without weakness. Had you not maneuvered yourself into the position that you did, no power in the heavens could have taken her. It seems to me Charon did exactly what he had to do, the same as you. Given the sheer volume of pathetic monkey lives he saved, I’d say you owe him thanks.”

  “Maybe,” I granted. “Still, I wonder–”

  But it didn’t matter what I wondered. Lilith was gone.

  I stayed a while at Danny’s grave, and said a prayer for his demolished soul. I wondered what it was like to cease to be, and then I pondered what a foolish thought that was —for who could ever know? My heart ached at the thought that I’d misjudged him —at the thought that he’d simply been victim to his heart in death as he’d been in life. And unbidden, my thoughts turned to Ana —so beautiful, so fierce —who to her last was still that frightened, feral child we’d thought we’d rescued, and never truly had.

  I thought of Gio, then, as well, who —after two nights spent shaking in his hospital bed, had at last opened his eyes. I thought of Theresa, who’d never left his side a moment —repaying him in kind for his time spent at her bedside so many years ago. She and I had wrestled him into a cop car amidst the chaos at Ana’s cursed building, and disappeared in the confusion —me wearing the body of a cop, the Jonathan Gray left dead for the forensics guys to find. I figured any manhunt would end once they ID’d the body, and then Theresa and Gio were free to disappear. Maybe Gio had a week before hell caught up with him. Maybe he had a decade. And who knows? Maybe they never would. Apparently, he wouldn’t be the first to beat the odds.

  Once I’d taken my leave of Theresa and Gio, I’d set out on a long walk, eventually burying the Varela soul in a sun-choked patch of grass outside a liquor store. Then I plopped myself on a bench across the street and sipped Maker’s from a paper bag until my Deliverants arrived to spirit him away. No doubt I drew my share of looks, getting good and sloshed inside my hijacked uniformed policeman, but no one dared challenge me, and I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew for sure the Varela job was behind me. I’d never seen Deliverants abscond with a soul be fore;
they arrived in dribs and drabs, eventually swarming the lawn and digging free their package by burrowing beneath it and pushing it skyward. Then they lined up single file and passed it gingerly from back to back until it disappeared from sight. It was morbid and oddly touching, an otherworldly funeral procession. Those who walked past it didn’t seem to notice —though somehow, not a one of them crunched a Deliverant underfoot, nor did they stand in the dark procession’s path. Perhaps the living are more aware of the magic that surrounds them than they’re given credit for.

  Tires splashing through a puddle shook me from my reverie, and brought me back to Ilford —to Danny’s grave. I turned around to find a massive, dove-gray Bentley parked behind me on the cemetery drive. Somehow, despite its opulence, it didn’t seem out of place among the graves beneath the stone-gray sky.

  The driver’s side door opened. Out of it stepped a man. Bald and broad-shouldered, he had a lantern jaw and a nose that looked like it’d taken a punch or twenty in its time. He wore a starched white shirt, a suit of black, and black leather gloves to match. A pewter cravat hung around his neck, and a matching scarf was draped across his shoulders. He looked at me in this borrowed frame —a rail-thin teenaged boy who’d been struck down by an aneurysm just last night —and said, in an accent that suggested Welsh, “Sam Thornton?”

  An icy finger of fear ran down my spine. “Never heard of him,” I said, in my best attempt at East End cockney.

  “Your accent is bloody rubbish,” he said. “And anyway, you’re him.”

  “OK, I’m him,” I said glibly, as though the fact he knew who I was didn’t terrify me. “And you are?”

  “Just the hired help. The boss would like to meet with you.”

  “Who, exactly, is the boss?”

  “That’s really for the boss to say.”

  “So I’m to come with you right now?”