Deep Down (Hallie Michaels)

by Deborah Coates

  The passenger door opened and the white reaper was there, saying, “Get in!”

  Hallie struggled to her feet, realized she’d dropped her shotgun, and scrambled to pick it up. Her head felt like it was stuffed with iron filings and wire.

  Boyd grabbed Hallie’s arm and it startled her, like she was zoning out. “Come on,” he said. “Come on!” She stumbled toward the truck.

  Lily looked from the truck to Hollowell to Boyd.

  “Come on!” Boyd grabbed her arm.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Try,” he told her.

  She came, both of them past Hallie, who didn’t feel like she was slow, but she was, had to be because they were already past her and at the truck.

  The white reaper was swinging down, Lily had grabbed the door handle, and Boyd had his hand on her back to boost her up.

  Then between one step and the next, between Lily grabbing the door handle and her foot leaving the ground, between existence and extinction, the under disappeared and they were—all of them—in the Uku-Weber parking lot.

  Hallie knew it by the scrape of the north wind on her face, knew it before she saw the storm-dark sky, the building, or even the cracked concrete under her boots.

  The unmakers and Hollowell had crossed over too, were standing across the parking lot less than thirty yards away.

  Three unmakers and Hollowell.

  Hallie had one iron-loaded shotgun shell left.

  She stepped in front of the truck.

  “Hallie!” Boyd shouted from somewhere behind her, and she wondered briefly if he remembered her, Because they were out, right? Though there was still black creeping around the edges of her vision and she still felt like her bones were hollowing out. There wasn’t time for that, though, or to worry about Boyd.

  A shaft of sunlight broke through the thick gray blanket of clouds, and the unmakers, like the opposite of lights, winked out.

  Hallie blinked.

  Hollowell looked around like he couldn’t believe it either. Were they permanently back? Had the walls fixed themselves? Redrawn the lines?

  But no, because already Hallie could see bands across the parking lot, light then dark then light again. No wonder she still felt like she was fading, because she was still there—in the under—and here—in the world—at the same time. Too late. Maybe it was too late.

  No. It wasn’t too late; she wouldn’t let it be too late.

  She was facing the Uku-Weber building, and behind Hollowell she could see the fountain, black still pouring from it—billowing, smoky blackness boiling out, and where it touched—the clouds, a light pole, prairie grass—it changed. Like a photographic negative, like the light-dark-light across the parking lot, like the lines between the world and the underworld.

  The fountain.

  Hallie struggled to make the connections, felt stupid for not making them sooner or faster.

  “Get down!” Someone ran into her and knocked her to the ground. Her shotgun skittered across the parking lot. Something exploded. She felt heat and concussion. Something stung the back of the neck. She rolled over. Boyd hauled her to her feet and she almost blacked out. She could see Hollowell, could see that he was drawing power from the prairie, prairie grass dying in a long brown arc to the north. Could see the blackened crater where whatever he’d thrown at them landed.

  “We have to stop him!” Boyd shouted at her, though Hallie could hear him perfectly clearly.

  “No, we—” She stopped. Because they did have to stop him. They did. But the fountain. They had to.

  But … “No.”

  And it wasn’t just that she was having trouble seeing straight, or that she felt hollow inside, like emptiness consumed her. She was actually seeing some things a lot more clearly, like how it worked, like what they needed to do. “It’s not Hollowell. Or not all Hollowell, it’s the—” And it was obvious, what they needed to destroy. All back to Martin, to Uku-Weber, to the fountain in the courtyard spewing black into the sky—letting out the under. “You know what, Boyd.” She turned to him, put her hand on his arm. She looked straight at him and still couldn’t tell if he remembered her or not. “You need to hold him off for me. I need—I think I can stop this. Yeah. Stop it. I think.” Then, she stopped talking because she was repeating herself, sounding like, well, sounding like Death, which she didn’t want to—wasn’t going to—think about.

  Boyd frowned, not as if he didn’t like what she was saying, not afraid or doubting, more like he was taking what she’d just said in and trying to figure out how to make it work.

  “How many bullets do you have?” she asked him.

  “Five.” Then he turned and fired twice at Hollowell, who was forming another fireball to throw at them. Though Boyd hit him solidly in the chest, he flickered but didn’t disappear.

  Perfect.

  Hallie rubbed a hand across her face. What would destroy that fountain?

  Blood and steel and sacrament.

  Like a voice in her head, but not a random voice. Just hers.

  They needed more than a prybar, though. They needed big. They needed massive.

  “We need an explosion,” Hallie said.

  “Funny you should say that.” Pabby had left the truck and approached them. “Look in the back.”

  Hallie jumped up on the wheel well, almost stumbled, but grabbed the side of the truck, hauled herself up the rest of the way, and looked in the back of the truck. She grinned. Fertilizer. “Yeah,” she said. “That’ll do.”

  “We thought we might need it to get in,” Pabby said. She grinned back, like she hadn’t had this much fun in years. “I guess anybody can get in these days, though.”

  There was no time for finesse, no time even to consider if it would work. Because the light-dark-light across the parking lot was spreading to the prairie, was growing every minute, every second that they stood there. And there was Hollowell who had stepped back toward the prairie fields to the north, the ones he hadn’t reaped for power yet. If Hollowell knew what she had in mind, he’d do anything to stop her.

  “Where’s Lily?” Hallie asked.

  “She’s—” Boyd hesitated. He seemed uncertain what to say. “She comes and goes,” he finally said. Hallie looked to her left. Lily was flickering—light/dark/light. When she moved, it looked like an old movie reel, slow enough to see the individual frames.

  Hallie reached over and grabbed her. It made her look a little more substantial, a little more there. “I need help,” Hallie said. “I’m going to—” She hesitated, which wasn’t like her, but then, this wasn’t like anything she’d ever done before. “I’m going to try to fix things. Or destroy us.” Because either seemed likely.

  Lily looked at her for a long, discerning moment, then nodded, like she’d been waiting seven years for something, to do something that mattered.

  “That fountain,” Hallie said. “We’re going to blow it up. Not just blow it up—steel and blood and sacrament.”

  “Dead man’s blood,” Lily said, like she knew, maybe hadn’t always known, but knew now, now that she was here.

  “Mine,” Hallie said.

  “Mine too,” said Lily.

  It took Hallie a minute. “Okay,” she said. “Yes. Yours too.

  “Give Boyd the prybar,” Hallie said. “He has to hold off Hollowell.”

  Lily handed the prybar to Boyd. Before he turned away, Lily grabbed him, pulled him toward her, and kissed him hard. He looked startled, but she’d already turned away and he gave Hallie one wide glance before he moved past them both and past the truck toward Hollowell on the near side of the parking lot.

  The world began to blur. Time had run out for Hallie, and she knew it.

  She pulled off her flannel shirt, soaked it in the blood from her arm, the arm bleeding freely now, dripping onto the ground. She hadn’t had time to ask why Pabby was here or the white reaper or where Beth was. There wasn’t time now to say good-bye to Boyd or I’m sorry I wasn’t or didn’t or hadn’t
or couldn’t—

  She streaked blood along both sides of the truck, along the tailgate and the front grille and the big plow blade, then threw the shirt into the back to land on top of the bags of fertilizer. Lily borrowed Hallie’s knife, sliced across her left forearm, and gave it back with a grim smile. She painted small bloody X’s on each window, on the door handles, and great swooping gestures across each tire.

  They pulled the torches from the corners of the truck’s front blade and threw them in the dump bed. Lily threw the two torches from the back of the truck in as well. Then she climbed in the cab and started to reverse the truck before she’d even shut the door.

  Hallie grabbed the door handle and jumped up on the running board. “Wait!” She was afraid her words would be lost in the loud rumble of the truck and the overhead noise, like something was shattering—like everything was. Lily eased up on the gas and looked at her.

  And Hallie didn’t know what to say. Thought she should be driving the truck—she should. But it was—

  “Go,” she finally said. “Just go!”

  She jumped up on the runner, elbow through the mirror arm. Lily revved the engine and rumbled forward, gaining speed as she moved.

  There was a jolt as the truck jumped the curb. Hallie loosened her grip, grabbed the door handle. “Jump!” she said.

  Lily looked at her but didn’t take her hand off the wheel.

  “Jump!” They both said it, Lily not even looking at Hallie, her eyes fixed on the fountain and the blackness pouring out of it.

  Hallie waited until the last minute, then dived for the ground, didn’t even know if she was in the world or the under. Felt the rumble of the big truck in her bones as it sped past her. Then a shattering loud explosion followed by a wash of heat that felt as if it scalded her back. And screams. The screaming went on and on and on.

  Hallie tried to rise, got halfway to her knees, and almost fell back over. The fountain was burning, the blackness running along the ground now, flames pursuing it, turning the black red-hot, then solid, like hardened lava flows.

  Hallie heard a roar, like someone gone mad, saw Hollowell—Jesus, Hollowell—saw him hit Boyd hard, palms outthrust, and knock him backwards half a dozen feet. Boyd on his knees, Hollowell’s hands around his neck. Boyd struggling to reach the prybar, inches from his grasp. Losing. He was losing. Because Hollowell was stronger. And not human.

  Hallie was on her feet, stumbling into a run, reaching for her knife in its belt sheath.

  Hollowell would not kill Boyd. Hallie wouldn’t let him. Not after all this. Not after everything.

  The moment of death.

  The thought brought her up short. Reapers were vulnerable in that one brief instant, in their victim’s moment of death. That was what Laddie had told her, what the dead had told him.

  Jesus.

  It hadn’t worked, though. Not when Hollowell had tried to kill her. Because she was already dead? Had died? But it could work. Might work. What had Prue said? When it mattered. If she just—she stopped three feet away. Watched Hollowell squeeze Boyd’s throat, her jaw so tight, she could barely breathe. Hollowell didn’t even have to squeeze, because he was a reaper. He could kill with a touch.

  She waited.

  The light began to fade from Boyd’s eyes.

  She stopped breathing.

  And waited.

  Watched Boyd beg her, then not. Because she wasn’t saving him—and he knew. He knew her, knew it was wrong, knew she would always save him—wanted him to know but there wasn’t time and—

  Now.

  Hallie leaped, closed the gap between them, and slid the knife between Hollowell’s ribs with a thrust so hard, it almost broke her hand. His hands dropped instantly from Boyd’s throat. He looked at Hallie with a mix of surprise and confusion. Because it wasn’t supposed to work. Because no one had ever told him. Because he’d never believed in his own death, that he deserved to be a reaper, that he could die.

  He could.

  Hallie dropped to her knees. Cold ran up her arm as she held the knife hard into Hollowell’s chest. She looked up to see Boyd’s face—dispassionate and cold, one hand touching his throat. Did he think she hadn’t saved him? She’d done it to save him, to save everyone.

  The cold worked up her spine. Was this what it felt like to be unmade? She didn’t let go of the knife. Didn’t even know how to let go anymore. Someone yelled from a long way away. A buzzing in her ears grew so loud, it drowned out the world.

  She fell and she didn’t hear anything for a long time.

  35

  Full moon. Half moon. Quarter moon. New moon. Thin clouds in a black sky. Black water. White moon. White birch trees in winter. Hollow hills collapsed to dust. Empty gravel roads. Fog. Half-drowned mausoleum. Gargoyles. Dry river beds. Snow. Ice. Sunrise. 1963 blue Ford tractor. Footprints in snow. Smoke from a stone chimney. Pine boughs. Home.

  Hallie woke, but knew almost immediately that she wasn’t really awake. She’d been here before, at least one too many times. It felt almost real here, maybe it had fooled her the first time, back in Afghanistan. But it was too dark; the edges of things were too sharp and they changed too quickly.

  Besides, Death was here.

  He looked the way he did the first time she’d seen him. No longer young, white hair cut close to his head, thin face, pale eyes—two of them—long and lean, dressed in black. His gold-knobbed cane looked sturdy, though he used it lightly.

  “You look good,” Hallie said as she rose to her feet. “Am I dead?” She hadn’t asked that question the first time she saw him, way back. She hadn’t even known it was a question you asked. Even as a soldier, even in Afghanistan, she actually hadn’t thought that much about death. She’d thought about paying attention, about doing her job, about being ready. But not about dying. If she’d thought too much about dying, if she’d thought at all about dying, she wouldn’t have been able to do the rest.

  Death smiled, which wasn’t exactly comforting. “I want to tell you a story,” he said. “And then, I want to thank you.”

  Hallie didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to hear a story from him. She wanted to go home, wanted to know that she could go home, wanted to be done with this.

  “I was human once,” Death said, taking her silence for assent. “It was a long, long time ago now.”

  “The beginning of time?” Hallie asked, because there’d always been Death, right?

  Death smiled again. “No,” he said. He didn’t seem to do anything, but suddenly there were chairs, comfortable leather chairs. And a fireplace. The kaleidoscoping images that were always in the background when Hallie talked to Death faded, as if they were just in his library, chatting over brandy. Hallie wasn’t much for sitting or chatting or brandy, but she wanted to hear this. It had better be good. “I wasn’t the first. And I won’t be the last. But I have been Death for a long time.” He paused. “Some of it is routine. Much of it is boring. But it’s all … necessary.”

  “Okay?” Hallie said. She had no idea where this was going.

  “At first I was delighted. I had power. Death often just happens, but sometimes there are decisions to be made. Balances to be regained or upset. And it was fascinating. Like an eternal study of humanity and its nature. But—” He stretched one long leg in front of him, his right hand resting on the knob of his cane. “—inevitably, I suspect, I wanted to feel human again, to feel again. So I went off for a short while to experience life. Never completely human, of course. Never in the world. But near enough. I met a lovely woman.”

  “Lily and Beth’s mother,” Hallie said.

  “Yes. A lovely woman,” he repeated. “Smart, well read, and so pleased to have someone who saw that in her. I truly thought I loved her. Especially after Lily was born. To see a child born. It’s a marvelous thing, you know.”

  Hallie stood and started pacing because she was sitting here—wherever “here” was—sitting here with Death. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to b
e sitting. But, answers? She’d like to have them.

  “I thought I loved her,” he said. “But I couldn’t stay. And she couldn’t leave.” He plucked at a nonexistent piece of fluff on his jacket’s sleeve. “In the end, I think we can be clear that while I thought I loved her, I didn’t. I’m fairly certain, however, that she loved me. And I ruined her. She never left. She never reached her potential. She never found anyone who really did love her.”

  “Maybe that’s just the way it was,” Hallie said. “Maybe she was never going to leave or reach her potential—whatever that means—or be loved.”

  “Maybe,” Death conceded. “Still, I left and I barely looked back. I paid a bit of attention to Lily and Beth, but I didn’t prepare them for who they were or for the danger of someone as smart and desperate as Travis Hollowell.”

  “So, he really would have lived forever if he’d married Lily?”

  “That’s the way it works. If you marry Death’s children, then death doesn’t touch you. Aging doesn’t touch you,” he amended.

  “But your own children die.”

  “They can die.”

  “Seems pretty fucked up to me.”

  “It’s complicated,” Death admitted.

  “Yeah,” Hallie said. She looked at him hard. “Boyd was married to Lily,” she said. “Is that—is he going to live forever?”

  “She died,” he told her. He looked up at her, his pale eyes reflecting light from the fire. “After that, things become less … certain. And then—Hollowell killed him, you know.”

  Hallie felt something colder than a ghost’s touch run raw down her spine. “I stopped him,” she said. The words choked in her throat. “I stopped Hollowell. Boyd was fine. Right? He was fine.”

  Death looked at her. “Perhaps you did.” He smiled.

  Goddamnit.

  “He’s not dead. Right? He’s not dead.” She started across the room that wasn’t a room. He would answer her. Or send her back so she could find out for herself.

  “He’s alive,” Death conceded.

  “But—?”

  “He’s alive.”