“This is going to hurt,” he grinned before contemptuously shoving my head to the side so he could examine my Brand. “Madera’s blood,” he muttered to himself as he traced the sword inside the design. “No wonder she wanted you dead.”
Without warning de Oras turned and drove the knife deep into my broken shoulder. Pain exploded throughout my body, driving glass slivers down overloaded nerves. Behind me the crowd howled and cheered, drinking in my screams like nectar.
“You die slowly,” de Oras said as he twisted the knife. “And when you gone, I cut your ink and wear it as a scarf.”
Raising the bloody knife above my head de Oras ripped it through the air and began chanting. His voice started as a low rumble, like an echo of an earthquake before rising into an obscene hiss. As he spoke he worked the knife through twisted sigils and profane symbols that hung menacingly in the air.
I couldn’t understand the specifics, but I could see his intent. Maybe it was the tainted energies I’d drawn when I dipped into his coven’s well, maybe it was my proximity to death that bound me to his spell. Whatever it was, I could see the lines of energy he worked spilling from his fingers and into the open wound in my shoulder.
Deep inside I felt something respond as de Oras wove the currents together. At first it was only a gentle tugging, but it rapidly grew stronger until it felt like his fingers were probing inside me. Gasping and panting I tried to shut him out, to close off the door he’d opened in my body, but I couldn’t do it. Every time I drew close to the wound the pain threatened to overwhelm me.
Only moments before I would have welcomed unconsciousness, now I feared it. Instinctively I knew that if I slipped into darkness now, I would never return. Gasping, I sent my mind down the trails de Oras was blazing, searching for the object of his desire. I found it deep inside my core where it fled the polluting tide.
I should have realized it when de Oras built his circle with death’s head agate, though I’m not sure what good the knowledge would have done. Manx had told me outright, but I’d discounted his warning as simple posturing. The concept was too vile to accept.
De Oras was closing his grip around my soul, plucking at the anchors that held it in my flesh. I briefly wondered why he didn’t just kill me and free it naturally. It would still be trapped within the circle, still bound within the barrier until he let it go.
I’m a fucking idiot. Sometimes the answer is so obviously staring you in the face that you can’t accept it. It couldn’t possibly be so simple and yet it is. A freed soul is literally a spark of the divine. It is pure and absolute, indestructible. It is inside the flesh where a soul is weak. It is flesh that corrupts and blackens the eternal flame.
If de Oras killed my body my soul would seal and release its anchors naturally. It would leave my flesh and though it could be delayed, it couldn’t be kept from its ultimate destination. But if he ripped it out, tore it bleeding from my body it was an open wound. The polluted energy would steal inside, transmuting purity into corruption that could be fashioned and focused.
He would take that wounded thing and spread it dripping across his Graveyard Dust. I would become the catalyst, a disease that infected anyone who imbibed the drug. I would hollow out thousands leaving their bodies withered husks for the spirits de Oras commanded to fill.
And that’s why the Santa Muerte wanted me dead. It wasn’t just the fact that de Oras was stealing bodies for his allies, he was stealing souls. The souls he corrupted to make the dust were broken off the wheel of time, obliterated. He was stealing from death itself.
It made sense, but I knew I was missing something important. It was like working an equation, I’d filled in most of the variables, but the answer was still obscured. I’d missed something somewhere, but what?
I was tempted to turn away and try and reinforce my soul somehow. Tap into the energies I’d already gathered, but they were polluted. That was the trap that de Oras was driving me toward. If I used his coven’s energy I would only accelerate his working. I was out of options. Endgame. In a few minutes de Oras would win.
Her incessant scratching broke my concentration. I turned my eyes from the growing weave and found myself staring into the empty orbs of the Santa Muerte’s skull across the barrier. She didn’t seem so terrifying anymore. She’d tried to kill me, but there hadn’t been any malice in her actions. All the hate and anger that burned within those hollow pits was reserved for the man who stood behind me tearing at her prize.
I even felt a flash of sympathy for her. Saint Death, only a step away from divinity and yet she couldn’t stop this violation against her. If even she couldn’t stop what was happening, what hope did I have?
The last tumbling variable fell into place. I was an idiot! I’d seen it on the cliff face when I’d fought against her and yet I’d still brushed it aside. The Santa Muerte wasn’t a messenger of death, she was death itself. It couldn’t be possible for her to fail to kill something she hunted. It wouldn’t make any sense.
Fucking deities! That’s the real problem. When we reach out to them and try to comprehend, we are always coming from a limited perspective. We inherently squeeze down those forces that are beyond our understanding in an effort to relate. Every time, every fucking time we do, we focus on a pixel and miss the entire picture.
If the Santa Muerte wanted me dead, I’d be dead. She hadn’t been trying to kill me. She’d been driving me in a direction I hadn’t understood. She’d wanted me here, in this place and in this moment, but for what and why me?
There had been other souls de Oras had corrupted. Other sacrifices he’d made to create the dust in the first place. Why hadn’t she killed them? What made me so special that she knocked me off a cliff in order to ensure that I lay upon this slab?
Manx told me that too. That sniveling snake had told me while I was crumpled on the ground and I hadn’t listened. Gods damn it, why must the divine place its trust in fools?
I am a witch. Manx told me that de Oras had never carved a witch. The key had been there all along, but I’d been too blind to see it, too wrapped in my own selfish pain. I was a witch. I manipulated energies and I’d tapped de Oras’s well.
The same energies that he was using now, that ran down through my body also powered the circle that bound us together. I’d pulled back from his poisoned well when I touched the contaminated waters. I didn’t have enough to bring down the circle, but I could make a hole.
“Sweet Mother,” I prayed, “let me be right.”
I held out my left hand and invited the Santa Muerte through.
Epilogue
Sunday
Fort Benning
Words fail me. The Santa Muerte is a dark and endless ocean and within her waters pass all who ever were. If the mind of the forest stood at the edge of my comprehension, she eclipses even that. She is one and many, incomprehensible by us bound to limits and form.
Ramirez tells me that by the time they fought their way to the canyon floor it was all over. Most of the cultists were already dead or scattered. De Oras was nothing more than a pile of screaming meat. Mac put a bullet through what was left of his head, but even then, he took some time to finally die.
Manx wasn’t among the dead. Nunez found signs of a helicopter’s skids, but no proof that he or the OSS had been there.
Ramirez found the tarot card in the shreds of my shirt pocket and smeared it with my blood. I don’t remember any details from my second trip through Hell, though Mac insists I was awake and raving. He won’t tell me what I said; only that Ramirez and Stevens carried me the entire way.
It took two menders two days to knit my flesh and bones together and even then, they were surprised I didn’t die. Death didn’t want me they insisted. I should have died a hundred times.
Mac’s just finished telling me that the Captain will return tomorrow, whatever charges had been filed were lost. I know I should be happy, but I can’t help feeling that somewhere beneath all the bandages some part of me is missing. I feel
hollow and unclean, as if the sun will no longer shine.
I smile and nod when they tell me that I’m tired and should sleep. I wave weakly as they slip out through the door.
But I know better. The Santa Muerte traveled through me and though she stepped lightly, her touch will always remain.
There is one more thing that I must do before I rest, one last score to settle. I reach out to the Santa Muerte to form my circle. For what I must do now, I must do without my gods. I think I know how Madera must have felt when he chose to wield the blade. There are times when a little evil must be summoned for the greater good.
The Ghost Walk is easier now. I don’t need the scrying bowl to focus. I don’t need a thousand yards of charms. All I need is the destination and the will to murder.
I don’t know where Chamberlain’s office is and I don’t care. All I need is the target. This time it’s easy. I can feel the Santa Muerte riding with me, easing my way.
I stepped out into a wood paneled office, oozing English charm. Rows of book cases filled the wall behind me, but the office itself is dominated by a walnut desk. It’s one of those big ones, built to impress. It’s probably a century old at least, lovingly built back when people still made things with their hands.
I don’t see Chamberlain right away, but the leather chair behind the desk is turned away from me, facing the darkened windows. He must be here. He was the focus. The target.
I stalked towards the desk with murder in my heart. Right now, asshole. It ends right now. That’s when I see it. Jammed right through the center of one of those big calendars’ executives keep to prove how busy they are. A Thule dagger slick with running blood still quivers from when it was thrust deep into the wood.
Glancing down I see that someone has scrawled in blood, ‘all debts are paid’.
I step forward and swing the chair around so I can see for myself. Chamberlain’s body slumps forward, tumbling onto the ground. His throat neatly slit with the dagger now sunk into the desk.
A blue flicker catches my eye from the open doorway. It’s gone almost before I notice. A blue flicker, like an extinguishing flame.
Author’s Note
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The Dead Pools Page 27