The Wrong Goodbye

by Chris F. Holm

  "Jesus Christ," Theresa said, "what the fuck is wrong with you two?"

  A wet fwack like hitting a waterbed with a baseball bat, and the cursed creature squealed. The pressure in my mind suddenly eased. Another couple, and I once more found my feet. I opened my eyes, and the pressure once more intensified, though not so badly as it had before. And what I saw amazed me: damn near seven feet of Afroed black woman going to town on a massive, squid-like hell beast with a length of rebar like it was some kind of unholy piñata.

  If Abyzou had an ass, Theresa was seriously kicking it.

  "You boys OK back there?" she yelled. Her voice was hoarse from exertion, and she was covered in green-black gore, but I could swear her tone was positively cheery. And still, she kept on swinging.

  "Getting there," I managed. "You?"

  "Right as rain." Fwack. "This bitch keeps trying to show me something," she continued. "I can feel her rattling round my brain, trying to trick my eyes. Sucks for her they ain't worked in years."

  "That's my baby!" Gio cheered, though when I looked at him, I found he was facing in the wrong direction, his eyes buried in the crook of one elbow.

  "Now, you boys got a job to do. I got this chick."

  "You sure?"

  "Hell yes, I am. I'ma teach her a lesson for hitting on my man."

  Gio protested, but he was no help to her down there and knew it. So reluctantly, he came with. Since Abyzou had relieved us of our ladder, we were forced to take the stairs. I'd hoped we'd already avoided – or, in the case of Abyzou, triggered – any protections Danny'd enacted, but if I'm being honest, I knew damn well we hadn't.

  Each floor was separated by maybe twenty steps, with a landing in the middle. The stairwell was molded concrete, with no handrails, no windows, and nowhere to hide should trouble come. We crawled forward in utter darkness, worried with each movement some fresh hell would be unleashed. It wasn't until we reached the landing I realized Danny'd been cleverer than that. After all, he didn't need to kill intruders – just delay them. And this latest ploy of his would do exactly that.

  See, that last flight of stairs leading up to the third floor was not so dark as the preceding stretch – and with thousands upon thousands of shards of skim to illuminate it, why would it be? Danny'd never struck me as one with much facility for magic, but it looked for damn sure like he'd been studying. God knows what trap he'd rigged up at the base of the stairwell, but summoning Abyzou had been a nifty trick – and this was no slouch, either. Countless shards of needle-sharp skim hovering in the stairwell, aligned like molecules in a crystal, each one aiming a pointy end our way. Each of them was so small, its glow was almost undetectable, but together, their faint phosphorescence reminded me of whitecaps on a moonless night, or of an early morning fog.

  "We have to go back," I said. "We have to find another way."

  "There is no other way," Gio said. "We got no ladder. We got no time. The cops'll be here soon, and you can be damn sure Danny knows it. Which means he's gonna make his move, and quick. Here, take this." Something hit me in the darkness. It was Gio's bowling shirt. His Bermuda shorts followed shortly after.

  "Uh, Gio – are you naked?"

  "Relax, dude – I still got skivvies on."

  "If there's a plan here, I'm not following."

  "Use my clothes to cover your exposed skin."

  I shook my head, and then realized he couldn't see me by the skim's pale half-light. "Gio, this won't work. Skim's too sharp. If you had a leather jacket, maybe, but even then there'd be no guarantee. And if I get so much as pricked, it's lights out."

  "You don't get it," he said. "I got better than a leather jacket – I got me."

  "Gio, no. I can't let you do this. You're not among the living anymore – which means you're not immune. This shit will knock you for a serious loop. I got dosed with a single shard, and I damn near didn't come back. God knows what this many will do to you."

  Gio sighed, steeling himself. When he spoke, his voice was calm. "I ain't worried about coming back. Long as my lady's here, I'll find my way. And as for God, I sincerely hope he's watching."

  He was up before I could stop him. A short, fat man in boxer-briefs streaking wild-armed up the stairs, and screaming bloody murder all the while. The unlikeliest badass I've ever seen – and that includes his sightless lady-friend.

  I had no choice but to follow after.

  The shards of skim reacted like a swarm of killer bees when the plane was broken, homing in on him with laser precision. Each pinprick brought with it a bead of blood. Each shard that disappeared beneath his flesh dimmed the staircase slightly. Soon, there was no light left in the stairwell, save that which flickered like distant lightning within his flesh.

  The flight was ten steps long. He made it five or six before he fell.

  Then he was gone, swallowed by the skim's forced slumber, and I was through.

  The set-up of this floor was different from the other two. For one, half the damn ceiling was missing. Broken concrete exposed steel girders and night sky, and afforded me a glimpse of the storm clouds coalescing above us, blotting out what few stars pierced the city's glare. On one distant hunk of crumbling concrete across the roof from where I stood sat a gathering of crows, their outline disconcertingly like that of a hunched old man.

  This floor was also the only one to feature any internal construction. Metal studs framed out what looked to be a second, smaller pentagram before me, oriented opposite the one laid out by the perimeter of the building such that its outermost points touched the innermost of the larger one.

  Two pentagrams set at odds to one another. Good and evil. Profound and profane. I wondered which the larger represented. I suspected I knew the answer.

  Plastic sheeting was tacked over the metal studs, blurring the star-shaped room beyond from view. Beyond the plastic, candlelight danced, the light it cast through the plastic putting me in mind of a lantern's glow.

  I pushed aside a sheet of plastic and stepped into the room.

  "Sam," said the stranger with Danny's accent, "so nice of you to join us!"

  Us.

  He said us.

  Which made sense, on account of he wasn't alone.

  She was slight of build, and stunning in all the obvious ways. Sun-kissed hair spilled down over shoulders both shapely and deeply tanned. A spaghetti-strapped tank top of heather gray barely contained a pair of breasts just this side of ostentatious. A glimpse of midriff peeked out above a skirt that started so low and ended so high, in simpler times it would've caused a riot. Her legs gleamed with reflected candlelight, and went all the way to the floor.

  In her hand, she held Psoglav's skimming blade.

  I turned my attention back to Danny, who was wearing a strapping lad of twenty-five or so, with pale blue eyes and teeth so white they seemed to glow. He looked unperturbed by my arrival. In fact, he appeared the picture of confidence in his yarn-dyed linen shirt and khaki shorts, a pair of leather sandals on his feet. "Who's the skirt?" I asked him. The gnawing feeling in my gut told me I already knew.

  "Who's the skirt?" she repeated back to me, her crisp Balkan accent an added barb to her mockery. "Honestly, Sam, is that any way to greet an old friend?"

  Ana. I should have known. All the magic. All the planning. Danny never could have managed this without her.

  I took a step toward them. Danny raised a hand and waved at me a ludicrous revolver. Seriously, the thing was so big, Dirty Harry would've thought the thing excessive. And the way Danny was holding it, he was just as likely to break his wrist as hit me. But I knew him well enough to realize his carelessness was affected. He could put a round in my chest at twice this distance. So I stopped moving. Stayed put.

  "That's a good chap," he said. "You'd be wise to stay outside the circle, or I fear I'll be forced to get quite cross."

  I eyed the circle. I hadn't noticed it until he'd called attention to it. The last one I'd seen was alder ash, the sacrifice of the trees' lives enough to pr
otect an entire building from the underworld's reach. This one was smaller, only ten feet across, and made from blood.

  "Yes," Danny said, "the loss of life required for this little parlor trick, and the one you encountered downstairs, is unfortunate – but I assure you, I had the good grace to get the poor indigent who unwit tingly donated it nice and pissed on decent whisky before I tapped him. In all likelihood, it was a better death than he had coming."

  "Yeah, you're a real peach," I said. And then, to Ana: "How can you go along with this? Don't you realize what's at stake?"

  "Go along with this?" she said. "Why, Sam, you've got it wrong. Do you think our Daniel could have planned a rite so intricate as this? Do you think he has the skills to carry it out? I learned long ago, Sam, no one is coming to rescue me – so I decided to take it upon myself to do so."

  Of course. It seemed so goddamn obvious in retrospect. Only Ana could have conjured Abyzou so easily. Only she would have the mystical mojo to pull all this off.

  "So it's been you all this time? You who set Danny up as a runner for Dumas? You who sent him to double-cross me?"

  "I'm my own man," Danny protested. "My decisions were my own."

  "Sure they were. So you're saying it sat OK with you, stealing the Varela soul from an old friend?"

  "It was a necessary evil; the ritual requires a truly corrupt soul. The energy it releases upon its destruction breaks hell's bond of servitude as it fuses soul to flesh forever. Hence the young, choice meat-suits – we'll be stuck with them from here on out. And besides, you're one to talk of bloody loyalty. I've not forgotten what you did to Quinn."

  "Damn it, Danny – I've told you a thousand times, I'm not the one who got Quinn shelved."

  "Yeah, right," he spat. "I suppose Ana didn't hear you rat him out, then."

  My God. All these years, I'd had it backward. Danny hadn't turned Ana against me. Ana had turned Danny.

  And that's when the pieces clicked into place.

  "This building," I said to her. "The design, the construction – the research to get the ritual just right. Inserting Danny into Dumas's operation. Hell, calling in an angelic air-strike so you could get your hands on a grade-A skimming blade… the groundwork to orchestrate all that must've taken years."

  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."