by Daniel Marks
Velvet panted, licked at the girl’s lips in violent anticipation. Make it brutal, she pleaded without speaking.
Make it worth it!
Nick plunged the knife into the man’s leg hilt-deep and cried out from the pain. His ghost stumbled forward, breaking free from his Bonesaw suit and landing next to her on the floor.
“Ugh!” The man lurched a bit, snatching the knife from the wound in his leg and falling to the floor, moaning. As he did, Nick shot upright.
Velvet wasted no time stripping the rest of the restraints from her ankles and was nearly halfway to the door when the man reached out and snatched her ankle, drawing her body to him. She swung around him, climbing atop him rather than pulling away, figuring he wouldn’t expect it.
Another thing he wasn’t expecting was her index finger widening the hole in his leg, scratching at the bone, twisting the sinew. Bonesaw screamed, a loud mewling sound that rolled over Velvet’s borrowed flesh.
She heard another sound and realized it was laughter.
Her own, projected through the girl.
“Damn,” she heard Nick say, and she pulled herself off Simanski.
He lay beneath her, eyes closed, his breathing shallow.
Velvet looked up at Nick. His mouth hung open, and he wiped it with the back of his hand. “Is he dead?”
Velvet shook her head. “Still breathing.”
Standing up, she surveyed the scene. The man’s body was twisted in the center of a puddle of blood that pooled around the guy like ink draining from a broken pen. His rubber apron was bunched up around his waist like a tire, and the wound gurgled from a spot high up on the inside of his thigh.
Velvet felt like she should know why there was so much blood from such a little cut, but it was Nick who answered the question.
“Femoral artery,” he said somberly. “I wasn’t aiming for it. I promise I wasn’t.”
Bonesaw spat, and his eyes crept open, training on Velvet, and he started screaming.
She couldn’t take another moment in the same room with him, and the farther Velvet could take the girl’s body, the better. She turned, threw open the door, and bolted, Nick breezing along behind her.
They ran not back toward the road but around to the back of the shed. Velvet expected Simanski to come tearing around the opposite side and head them off at the pass, but he was still screaming from inside. Cursing her. No. Not her.
Cursing the girl.
Velvet hefted her body onto the back fence and tossed herself over, never breaking speed. A path zigzagged through the forest and on the other side let out into a children’s playground, thick with mulch to pad the inevitable fall from jungle gyms or to cushion heroic leaps from the swing set, her personal favorite activity when she was a kid.
“Help!” Velvet screamed.
A pair of mothers in designer tracksuits sprang to attention from a nearby bench, and upon seeing the girl covered with blood—so much blood—began shouting insanely. One grabbed her cell phone and called 911, and the other drew Velvet up into a hug.
“Oh, my God. What happened? What happened?” The woman’s eyes pored over the cuts on the girl’s arms, and she brushed the girl’s greasy hair away from her face.
Velvet spoke a single word and pointed toward the path to the shed. “Bonesaw!”
And then she fell out of the girl and onto her back, exhausted.
Nick ran up amid the clamor of the two women caring for the teenager and gathering their own children. He kept swiveling back toward the forest, an expression of dire emergency on his face, as though he were sure that Bonesaw was bound to come barreling toward them, fully prepared to kill both the girl and her rescuers, but he didn’t come. Nick crouched down onto his knees, and Velvet curled close to him, resting her head in his lap. She was crying, but the tears weren’t wet; they were clear and dropped to the ground like pearls.
“Are you all right, Velvet? What can I do?” He wiped the tears from her eyes as she shook her head.
There was nothing he could do. Nothing anyone could do.
Nick lowered his head to hers and planted soft kisses on each eye.
“It’ll be all right. Everything will be fine.”
It was later, as Nick supported a sobbing Velvet in his arms and led her back down the path, giving the psycho’s property a wide berth, that she realized that she was crying out of relief, but now there was a new issue.
Nick knew.
And not only did he know that Velvet was totally guilty of haunting; now, in effect, so was he. And it was all her fault.
“You don’t think I’m horrible, do you?” Velvet asked, the words muffled in his sleeve.
Nick reached down and pressed his palm against her cheek, turning her toward him. “Never. You’re wonderful. The most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“You can’t tell, Nick. You shouldn’t have followed me.”
He shook off her words. “I’m glad I did, and I won’t tell a soul unless you want me to. Not a soul. Ever.”
They held each other for a while, Nick’s back pressed against the dead tree with the lightning-blackened crack, and Velvet against him. His breathing was soft and shallow against her face. He stroked her hair and cradled the back of her neck as he gazed into her eyes.
“We have a secret. It bonds us.” He nodded, suggesting she should agree.
And she did. They settled onto the squishy loam of the glen floor.
“You want to tell me what was going on back there?”
Velvet’s brow furrowed, and she looked away. “It’s what you think it is.”
“Haunting?”
“Yes, but …” She jerked away from him. “I didn’t mean for it to go on like this. It’s just that he’s such a monster and he kept picking up new girls. I couldn’t let him. It wasn’t right.”
Nick finished her thought, “No matter what the consequences.”
She slunk back into his arms. “No matter what.”
They lay like that for a few moments, a pair of gelatinous ethereal creatures, barely visible except for the shimmer of dew that caught on their flesh for brief moments, before drifting through them and settling on the clumps of dry pine needles carpeting the glen.
Velvet felt herself drifting away, losing herself, slipping through time. Bonesaw’s blood had been so black. It pooled and pooled, and he screamed and screamed.
Still alive.
She shot up then from the waking dream, startled, and crawled toward the gap in the trees. Nick chased after her, catching her around the waist.
“I have to go back. I’ve got to finish this. I can’t go on. Not now that you’re involved. Now that I’ve sentenced you to the same fate as me. The lies. There are so many to keep track of. I’ll be caught eventually. And now … you.” Velvet rolled onto her back, and Nick crawled across her until their eyes met.
“What you’ve done is right. No matter what the rules of purgatory are. And if saving that girl’s life means that neither of us ever get to dim and move on to heaven or hell or wherever, then I’m fine with that. There’s something here.” Nick reached up and placed his hand over his heart, and then gestured toward Velvet’s chest. She reached up and gently took his wrist, drawing his palm close to her breast.
“And here,” she agreed. “It’s true. I know it.”
“So you understand that it doesn’t matter to me if they find out. As long as I’m here. With you.”
Velvet sighed and started to turn her head, to resist.
“Shh,” Nick whispered, and pressed his lips to hers, softly.
Velvet moaned quietly.
Nick studied her face. She smiled for him.
“Well. That’s a welcome change.”
“The kiss?” she asked.
“The intent and the smile. You should do it more often.”
She poked him in the ribs, and despite the fact that they were both technically ghosts and shouldn’t have had any access to physical sensation at all, somehow
the two of them were connected. Attached by something bigger than them, bigger than purgatory, and much bigger than the dark secret they shared.
“What are you going to do if I fall in love with you, Nick?” she asked.
Nick nodded slowly, eyes intent on the question. “I don’t know. That sounds kind of dangerous.”
“Good answer.”
Chapter 22
Velvet pushed herself up from the rubble beneath her. Her ankle was twisted between the tangle of Nick’s legs. All around them purgatory was crumbling, stones dropping free from mortar shaken back into powder. She heard screams in the distance, the warbling moans of the injured, and couldn’t help but think that what they’d just done was completely to blame.
Her second thought was that her first impression was ridiculous.
“Shadowquake!” she shouted, pounding against Nick to get moving.
She reached for a mound of stones that rose a bit taller than the others and dug out the crate where she’d left her clothes. She pulled them on recklessly, inside out, torn, the boots finding the correct foot by sheer chance.
“Hurry up, Nick!”
He scrambled up next to her and slipped his hand into hers.
“Follow the walls when we get out to the street. There’ll be stuff falling everywhere,” she said, and pulled him after her.
They were nearly past the Paper Aviary when a building up ahead exploded into a cloud of dust. The gaslights shot flames into the air like Roman candles.
“I guess we’re not going that way,” Nick quipped, and pulled her in the opposite direction, across the street and around the block.
Souls trying to get to the safety of the station crowded the nearby funicular platform, and Velvet searched the faces for Logan and Luisa, but they weren’t there, or if they were, they were obscured in the stampede of frightened denizens, most of whom had abandoned hope for a railcar and were shakily traversing the tracks in droves.
“Look at that!” Nick yelled.
In the distance, one of the spires of the cathedral cracked apart and plummeted to the square below, crushing the gaslights and bringing down their hoses. The souls rushing into the church for some chance at safety screamed and scattered.
Velvet sped off toward the next street and at the intersection was relieved to see the dorm at the far end still standing, its columns unmarred by cracks. The front door was open, but plastered there like a threat were hundreds of flyers for the revolution. But these were different from before.
These read:
The Departure Is Now.
Velvet tore one from the door and stumbled across the shaking breezeway and into the courtyard, Nick hot on her heels. What she found inside chilled her to the bone.
One of the gaslights had broken open, and a fire blazed up the interior wall. Beyond that, a group of souls gathered around the foot of the staircase. A shower of pebbles created a haze in the air, and as Velvet and Nick broke through the crowd, Velvet saw why.
The frieze from above them had fallen and crushed someone, the impact diminishing the victim to ash. Velvet screamed. She dropped to the floor next to the shadowy remnants. Luisa crawled in beside her.
“It’s Miss Antonia,” the little girl said softly.
A low moan loosed from Velvet’s throat. Miss Antonia was gone. Velvet couldn’t imagine it.
“She asked for you in the end,” the little girl said, her face a study in sorrow.
Velvet shook her head, not understanding. “For me? Why? What did she say?”
“That you’ll fix all this.”
Velvet gasped and stared at what was left of the Salvage mother’s face, a crumbling mask of curled ash, like the flaking of aged paint peeling away from garden statuary. The pieces dropped away and caught on the wind that lapped the inside of the courtyard like waves.
“What did you mean, Miss Antonia?” Velvet murmured. She felt strong hands on her shoulders and knew they belonged to Nick. She sensed his warm feelings and somehow knew that everything would be all right. A shadow crossed over the crowd, and she looked up to find Logan standing there, a shallow smile playing across his lips.
“The shadowquake didn’t get her, Velvet. She dimmed. It was her time, and she was fine with it.” For some reason, Velvet had found, little kids were much more accepting of the whole dimming thing than she was. And despite the bravery on Logan’s face, Velvet wanted to scream.
Nearby, another chunk of the frieze fell and shattered into a pile of rock and pebbles that scattered across the courtyard, popping against the uneven pavers like popcorn.
It was almost too much to take.
What had just happened with Bonesaw, the secret she’d been keeping about haunting, the revolutionaries, the shadowquake, the revelation of Nick’s feelings—hell, her own feelings about him. The thoughts wound around her brain like searing-hot barbed wire. And now this—Miss Antonia’s death. She sighed, closed her eyes, and tried to make sense of it all.
She refused to believe that her brief trips to hinder Bonesaw had caused the current catastrophe. The level of the disturbance and her intent didn’t even compare to killing a teenage boy and trapping his soul in a crystal ball. So she planned on shelving that theory in the not category.
Velvet knelt beside Miss Antonia’s ashes, thrust her hand inside, and drew a fistful back. She smeared it across her face like a warrior’s stripe. When she glanced back at the pile, she caught sight of something bright glinting in the mound. She reached in and pulled out a tiny, familiar red key. Velvet recognized it immediately.
It was the same as the one Manny had had hidden in her drawer.
Velvet casually palmed it, not wanting to start a conversation or draw any attention to the item. She wasn’t sure what it meant, whether the women were in some sort of secret club. She just didn’t know.
Nick smiled empathetically. He squeezed her shoulder and pressed in close to her ear. “Time for you to do what you do best.”
Velvet glanced to her right and left. Logan stood stoically amid the dark clouds of gas swirling about them from the whipping broken hoses that fed the lights. Luisa gave her a quick grin and a thumbs-up. And from the breezeway another figure stumbled into the courtyard.
Kipper.
He held his head up high and strode toward them.
“You’re gonna need all the help you can get,” he offered, his face resolved.
“Thanks, Kipper,” she said. “I’m definitely taking you up on that.”
She stood and trod to the center of the courtyard. A fire lapped up the wall that used to be covered in posters of exotic travel destinations and musical acts. Now curled and charred to ash, the posters fell in piles like snowdrifts against the walls. But the flames were subsiding. The building, constructed primarily of stone, didn’t lend itself to feeding the fire much, and soon the blaze would be out. Above her, from the balconies, she heard the whimpering and cries of the tenants. “Mrs. Lawrence!”
The Collector mother popped up from a crouch by the stage.
“You’ll have to take charge of both dorms,” Velvet said. “Make sure our people are safe, and if it looks like the building can’t take much more, evacuate them to the funicular track.”
Mrs. Lawrence nodded and ran toward the stairs. “Clear the floors!” she called out.
Velvet summoned her team around her.
“We’re going up to the station. Manny will know what to do. Though I suspect this operation is going to be our hardest yet.” She glanced at Nick.
His expression was grim. “Am I really prepared for this?” he asked. “Haven’t really had a ton of training, have I?”
Kipper stepped in next to him and addressed Velvet. “I’ll watch out for him.”
Velvet knew that if anyone could protect her team, Kipper could. But there was something there, a struggle in the tension of his jaw, in the tight balls of his fists. He had been very close to Miss Antonia. She knew he’d be taking it hard, but with Kipper, for all his macho posturin
g, you never could tell when he’d break down and let his emotions flood out. The last thing she needed was another pile of ash right then. She cocked her head in his direction and asked, “Was the mission to Vermillion successful?”
He shook his head and looked away. “Nothing.”
“Damn.” Velvet had been certain he would find a lead to Clay. She straightened. “Well, then, if we could just catch some luck and find the railcars in working order,” she said, leading the team toward the breezeway. “That’s probably asking too much.”
Logan sped past and into the street. The black clouds were finally descending into the streets, signaling the coming of the fiercest quakes. Visibility was about to become impossible.
Velvet turned to Luisa and grabbed her hand. She slipped it into the back of her waistband and balled it up. “Tight,” she ordered, and then raised her fist to the others. “Tight, like this. Link up. We’ve got a long hike, I’m afraid.”
They were just barely connected, a string of fragile pearls amid the sharp edges and falling buildings. All around them walls crumbled and metal screamed as it bent and gave way to the weight. The ground shook and the quintet stumbled and sidestepped on their trek to the ramp at the far end of the block.
Velvet led them up and over the curb and onto the tracks. She stooped, gripping the tracks as she had done only a day ago, and felt nothing. Nothing besides the tremors they’d felt everywhere else. No movement.
The funicular wasn’t engaged. It was broken. Velvet’s eyes turned skyward, toward the monolithic mountain and the station and the miles of track between them.
She screamed in frustration and stood up.
“Let’s go!” she called back to her team, eyes lingering on Nick’s solid frame bringing up the rear. Velvet thought she saw Kipper notice the exchange. He stood just beyond Nick, and she could see a question forming in his eyes, burning there like coals. Velvet wondered if he’d be the one to tell, out of jealousy or whatever. She definitely didn’t have time for the argument, though.
They traveled close to the rails, trying to keep a steady pace as the tracks began to slope upward toward the great mountain of the station. It wasn’t long before they found themselves crammed into a crowd of refugees, all with the same idea, heading for safety. The tracks were probably tight with the thousands of residents of the Latin Quarter all the way to the tunnels, a veritable logjam. The darkness had descended, and as they squeezed along to the track wall, pushing past the throngs of moaning, frantic souls, Velvet felt Luisa’s small hand slip from the waistband of her pants.