The sight of her and the sight of Jeremy—his long-ago Eusebius—made Tobias’s heart tremble in his chest. The light that was Jeremy’s life burned like a nuclear reactor core on overload he was so full. Life upon life was piled up inside of him and that was Tobias’s fault, the burden of all those lives laid upon the back of a single soul that was nearly crushed beneath the combined weight. The light of Jeremy’s life was sullen and twisted; unhealthy in its glow as he lifted his tear-streaked face to look up at Tobias. To gaze upon his beloved Thanatos.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way and the hubris of what Tobias had done came back to hit him over and over again. Such egotism was the downfall of any god great or small; thinking that they would always have the last word and all of the control. Making the decision to become at least very close to human came with exactly zero guarantees or that many exceptions. Birth was a long way to fall and at the end of the plummet there was so much to behold that it was overwhelming—and infinitely easy to forget. Tobias had consigned himself to such a fate out of love driven by arrogance and he had suffered a great deal for it. However, his suffering was small in comparison to Jeremy’s. He was the one who had really been damned by Tobias’s—Thanatos’s—actions.
What he had done to Jeremy—and all the people he had been before—was unforgivable. He had meant to bring them together for the first time in a long time, but in the end he had abandoned him more thoroughly than ever before. To look at him as he was now, insane, his soul a burning rag, tears streaming from his eyes and an expression of exaltation on his face, Tobias felt his heart break more completely than any one heart should have ever had to shatter.
He held his hands down to Jeremy and when he took them, Tobias lifted him to his feet. He drew Jeremy into his arms and kissed the top of his head.
“You heard me,” Jeremy said, tipping his head back, staring at him like he thought if he blinked, Tobias would disappear from his view forever.
“What have I done to you?” Tobias asked, staring down into Jeremy’s eyes. One pupil was slightly larger than the other and there were fading pinprick petechiae in the bruised hollows beneath his eyes.
Jeremy touched Tobias’s face, giving no sign he even heard him. He laughed then whispered, “I knew you would come. Thanatos, Thanatos, my Thanatos.”
“I am so sorry,” Tobias whispered.
He cupped Jeremy’s cheek and drew him in for a kiss, riding the tsunami of memory the touching of their lips brought on. Jeremy kissed him back hungrily, fingers tightening in the blood-crusted feathers of Tobias’s wings. Jeremy began to purr, a low rumble of sound coming from deep within his chest.
Tobias could never repair what he had done to Jeremy and all the people he was before, but he could fix this right now. He could at least atone a little bit for the huge betrayal, the way he had let everyone down with his sincere promise. He could at least let Jeremy’s torn up, mangled soul rest.
He held Jeremy tightly with one arm around his waist and with his other hand, Tobias reached out to grab Dawn Marie’s wrist as he began to draw in a deep breath. Jeremy jerked against him and made a muffled sound of surprise, but he didn’t fight Tobias like he thought he would. He relaxed against him instead, giving in and giving up, letting Tobias take the heavy weight of living so long off of him.
With one hand on Jeremy and the other on Dawn Marie, Tobias created a closed circuit through which life flowed from one and into the other. Jeremy drained away, chest hitching, body slowing down as it went to sleep for the last time. On the stone altar, Dawn Marie gasped and spluttered, dragged in a harsh deep breath. Against Tobias, Jeremy went limp.
He did it to free Jeremy, to give him peace. To release him from the torture he had sentenced him to down by the Euphrates on a hot summer night when the air smelled like river water and burning wood. There was no saving Jeremy, no fixing him or making it all better. Killing him was a mercy, but it was still murder. Everything was wrong except for the spluttering, sobbing girl lying on the cold granite.
Tobias laid Jeremy’s body down in the grass and kissed each eyelid after he closed them. He could feel a butterfly crawling up his throat, throbbing, pulsing with the enormity of the soul it carried. As he went to Dawn Marie and smoothed his hand over her sweaty hair, the butterfly crawled into his mouth. Instead of opening his mouth and letting it fly free, Tobias bit down on it and began to chew. The flavor was like licorice and the thin salt of tears.
He swallowed the remains of the butterfly down and took Jeremy inside of himself to stay for all of eternity. Once upon a time he had promised Jeremy that he would never let him go and he could keep that promise only one way without further destroying him. Never would he be able to make things right, but he could do that much because now he finally understood how to never let go: You carry it with you.
The tears running down his face smelled like incense, but he smiled at Dawn Marie as the fog began to clear from her eyes. She sniffled and sat up, swooning a bit to the side as she did, one hand going to her neck to touch the wound that was no more than a nasty scratch now.
“Toby?” she asked. Her voice was thick, slurring, her blinks slow and dazed. She had been close to death and even with all the life Tobias had fed into her, it would still take her a while to be fully functional again.
“Yes?” he said.
“Toby, you have wings,” Dawn Marie said. “Just thought… you should… know… that.”
Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell over. Tobias caught her in his arms to keep her from cracking her skull on the hard stone and lifted her up in one smooth motion to hold her close. He turned away from the altar to find Mooncricket staring, not at them, but at Jeremy’s body lying on the grass.
“I had to,” Tobias said.
Mooncricket was still weeping, eerily silent in his grief as he at last took a stumbling step toward Jeremy. Then another and another until he fell to his knees beside him and stroked his hair. He sobbed wet and thick as he began to rock and say, “What did you do to him? What did you do?” in a wail so awful Tobias’s insides shivered. “Why’d you hurt him?”
“I took his pain away,” Tobias said, his own voice thick, choking him with tears he was trying to hold back.
“Liar!” Mooncricket screamed at him. “Liar, liar, liar!” He laid himself over Jeremy and rocked their bodies in the grass. “Just go away.”
“I’m sorry,” Tobias said. “I am… You will never know how sorry I truly am.”
“LEAVE!” Mooncricket bellowed.
Tobias nodded then walked away with Dawn Marie, the wraiths weaving around his feet like affectionate cats. He left Mooncricket to grieve over Jeremy’s corpse. It seemed fitting that Mooncricket be the one to do it; he deserved to mourn more than Tobias did. Who was he to beat his breast and cry over the atrocity he had committed? Feeling sorry for himself would have only sullied the true object of sympathy lying in the tall grass. But grieve he did anyway, tears pattering onto Dawn Marie’s wan face as he stepped into the night, the air and trees filled with crows all waiting for him to return. Lenore landed on his shoulder with a soft cry like she herself was in mourning.
“Let’s go home,” Tobias said to her as he flapped his wings to lift himself and Dawn Marie into the air.
He still had work to do and he would not leave Jeremy’s body to lie there in that barn—that charnel house—to rot and be forgotten. Soon, he would come back to get him and bring him home as well. It was just that sometimes, even Death had to attend to the living first.
28
There was a lot of work to be done after Tobias killed his love. He took Dawn Marie home and put her to bed; he knew she would still remember when she woke, but at least she would be somewhere familiar and comfortable when she did. Perhaps it would allay her fears the tiniest bit; it was all Tobias could hope for.
Back at the barn, Mooncricket was still with Jeremy though he had moved them so he was leaning against the altar and Jeremy’s head was in his la
p. He opened his eyes when Tobias’s shadow fell over him, all anger gone, just a bottomless pit of shell-shocked sorrow in the blue holes of his eyes.
“I want to go home,” Mooncricket said in a small, faint voice. His bottom lip quivered. “I want to go home.”
“I’ll take you, if you let me,” Tobias said. Then he gestured at Jeremy. “But first, would you like to say goodbye?”
“You didn’t have to kill him,” Mooncricket said, a new freshet of tears rolling down his face.
Tobias crouched before him and said, “Yes, I did.”
Mooncricket shook his head and sniffled as he stared at Tobias, eyes streaming and bloodshot. “Who are you?” he asked. “I know your face, but you’re not the same. Your eyes are weird and… wings. Wings.”
“I barely know the answer to that any longer,” Tobias said.
“He told me a story once,” Mooncricket said, brushing his fingers over Jeremy’s cold face. “It was a about a man with wings, but he wasn’t an angel. Are you him?”
“Yes… and no,” Tobias said. “I’ve changed much since Jeremy first knew me. I didn’t intend to, but it happened anyway. As such things do.”
“He said you were coming,” Mooncricket said. “At first I didn’t know who he was talking about ‘cause he was just saying a name. But I think it was you.”
“What was the name?”
“Thanatos. You’re him, right?”
“Yes,” Tobias said.
“Are you, like, the Grim Reaper?”
“Do you see a cowled robe or a scythe?” Tobias asked. Then he tipped his head in a nod. “Fair enough though. Some people call me that. I’ve been called many things.”
“But you don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before,” Mooncricket said.
“Artists interpret things as they will,” Tobias said. “The Greeks got it closest to right and even then they didn’t get it exactly.”
“I’m talking to fucking Death,” Mooncricket muttered. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and let out a shuddering breath. “You didn’t have to kill him.”
“I did,” Tobias said. His fingers itched to touch Jeremy as well, but he refrained from doing so. “He was sick.”
“He was not.”
“He was and I made him that way. I destroyed him and I could no longer fix it,” Tobias said.
“Why’d you do that for?”
“Because I loved him.”
Mooncricket’s face crumpled and Tobias left him to it. He couldn’t tarry there all night, but he would no more snatch Jeremy’s corpse away from that sad boy than he would go home and slap Dawn Marie’s sleeping face. He walked through the barn, taking it in and looking around, searching for something that prickled at the base of his neck. He could smell it, too, like crushed ginger and sugared limes.
“Hello?” he called into the darkness at the rear of the barn.
“Tobias, help me,” Helen Miller said as she stepped out of the shadows. She was trembling, afraid and so very, very dead.
“Oh, no,” Tobias said.
Helen bit her bottom lip and nodded. “It was an accident,” she said. “I fell and hit my head and… God, I wish I could just forget. I’m so frightened.”
“I know,” Tobias said as he took her shaking shoulders in his hands. Now that she was dead, Helen was not the least bit uncomfortable around him. At his touch, she pushed closer and hugged him with a sob.
“I can feel you,” she said.
“And I you,” Tobias said.
“Why? How? I heard what you said to that poor young man over there, but—”
“It’s one of my… gifts,” Tobias said.
“Can you take me home to Mama and Daddy?” Helen asked.
Tobias shook his head after a moment; he thought he could move her if he really wanted to, but wasn’t sure if dropping her at Mr. Greene’s house was the best thing to do. Her mother, Rosetta, was one of the kindest, best people Tobias had ever known, but she was frail and easily upset. Having her daughter’s ghost rattling around the house might actually drive the dear woman insane after a while. Before he could say anything, Helen shook her head then cleared her throat; a very human reflex that she no longer needed.
“I know,” she said. “I just thought of it. I’d drive Mama bonkers, wouldn’t I?” She wiped at her face with spectral hands and sniffled again. “I don’t want to stay here though. I don’t care if this is where my body’s at, I can’t do it. This place is awful. The things he did and thought and said and those shadow creatures… Tobias, if you can, please help me.”
“How would you like to visit with Gary?” Tobias asked.
“Therapy for all eternity,” Helen said with a faint smile. “He will hate it.”
“Yes, but you might be able to help him if he has a bad day,” Tobias said. “You shouldn’t stop what you were so good at it even if you are no longer—”
“Alive,” Helen finished with a nod. “I don’t think a ghost shrink is going to make any of my patients happy.”
“You can still do some good,” Tobias said. “I really believe that. Look at how many people come through Greene’s each year, almost all of them grief-stricken, heartbroken and distraught. It’s a well-known fact that Greene’s Funeral Home harbors one ghost, so why not two?”
“You cannot be serious,” Helen said.
“Oh, but I am,” Tobias said.
She leaned closer and peered into his mirror-black eyes. “I think you might need counseling yourself.”
“Agreed,” Tobias said. “Shall we make plans to take you to Greene’s then?”
Helen shook her head then raised her hands up to her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “Why not?”
“If you don’t like it then I can assist you in… crossing over, as they say,” Tobias said.
“No,” Helen said, eyes getting wide. “Not yet anyway. I am not done, understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tobias said. “I must attend to Jeremy now, but I’ll be back for you.”
He didn’t go back for Jeremy right away though, instead he finished his examination of the barn. He found the room filled with poppies, breathed them in and felt an ancient pleasure at the scent and sight of them. What he was looking at were actual opium poppies, not the tamer California poppies that he grew in Gallagher House’s private cemetery. For years, Tobias had wanted some of his very own, they were beautiful and had an arcane allure to them that he found nearly irresistible. He touched a showy petal, touched a purple center, felt the slight grit of pollen on his fingertip. He would take these flowers, sow them into the ones already growing in the cemetery. He already had a plan to use the most beautiful of them all as Jeremy’s grave marker. Tobias took the time needed to pick that particular specimen from all the rest and made a note to come back for the others later.
With the pot in hand, Tobias left the room and went to Mooncricket. He set the poppy plant down on the altar and knelt before Mooncricket once more.
“It’s time to go,” he said.
Mooncricket shook his head and curled himself over Jeremy; Tobias waited him out. When Mooncricket relaxed back after a minute, he said, “I can’t carry him.”
“I can,” Tobias said. He took Jeremy from Mooncricket and hefted his deadweight in his arms like it was nothing at all. He didn’t know what to do with Mooncricket though. Then he did. “Put the flowers on his belly,” Tobias said, nodding down at Jeremy. Mooncricket looked unsure, but then he did it anyway. They walked out of the barn and when they were clear of the doors, Tobias stopped again and said, “Now climb onto my back.”
“Uh… Won’t your wings, like, be in the way?” Mooncricket asked. Then he repeated. “Wings. Fucking wings.”
Tobias spread his wings enough to make room for Mooncricket on his back. He jumped at the sight and fidgeted.
“I dunno,” Mooncricket said.
“Just hang on tightly,” Tobias said. “I won’t let you fall.”
“Just like you didn’t let
Jeremy die, huh?” Mooncricket asked, anger twisting his features once more.
Tobias nodded, that was fair, all things considered. “I think I can manage not to fuck this up.”
“Right,” Mooncricket said, but when Tobias bent enough to give him even more room, Mooncricket climbed onto his back and wrapped his arms around his neck. “Don’t drop me, man. Please don’t.”
“I won’t,” Tobias said. He spread his wings fully and flapped them while pushing upward with his legs. Mooncricket screamed, arms tightening as they left the ground.
Tobias buried Jeremy near Hylas, digging through the night and tamping the last shovel full of dirt down on the grave just as the first rays of the sunrise lit up the sky. He planted the poppy plant in the hole he’d already made for it and used his hands to scrape the dirt in around its roots. He murmured, “Take care of him,” and the plant’s leaves rustled ever so softly in response. Mooncricket saw and looked like he didn’t know whether to scream or run away. He settled for plopping down on his ass with a soft, huh sound.
“Come on up to the house, if you want,” Tobias said. “You can rest here for a little while then I will take you home if you still want to go.”
“I do,” Mooncricket said. He touched one of the poppy blossoms and cut his eyes up to look at Tobias. “Can I have a flower? So I can… can…” He choked up and just mutely waved his hand at Jeremy’s grave.
“Of course,” Tobias said.
When Mooncricket had his flower, Tobias led him up to the house and showed him to one of the ground floor bedrooms. Mooncricket wiped his face and looked over his shoulder at Tobias. “Is Dawn Marie all right?”
“She will be,” Tobias said as he pulled the door closed. “I’ll let her know you’re here and she’ll come visit you when she’s up or you can visit her, whichever. Now rest, Tristan.”
Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2) Page 39