Graves' end

  Pre-Columbian Caradura was up in half a second and Graves darted in to deliver a fast combination, opening with a jab at his face to get the King’s hands up. He followed that with a hard shot to his liver, then finished off with a devastating left hook that connected so hard with the side of Caradura’s head that it ruptured the cartilage in his ear.

  Graves had been in bar fights on three continents, and if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was throw a goddamn punch.

  He socked Caradura in the gut while the King was recovering his balance, driving him to his knees, and Caradura seized the opportunity to bite deeply into Graves’ calf. Graves bellowed and kneed Caradura in the face, knocking him aside and sending several teeth flying. Caradura shook his head, spraying strings of blood and spittle, and Graves tackled him with his full weight, sumo-style, before he could get to his feet again.

  They rolled across the earthen floor, grappling and tearing at each other’s hair. Before Graves quite knew what was happening they’d wrestled each other out the far door, and then they were spilling over the edge of the giant pyramid’s steep stone steps, with Mictlan’s gray sky spinning wildly above them.

  He caught a last glimpse of Hannah, framed up there in the rough doorway, watching them tumble away.

  “Oh, God, that can’t be good,” Han said, stepping out into the grayish, sourceless daylight and peering over the stairway’s edge to watch the pugilists roll and bounce as they receded down the Aztec temple’s stepped side. The artificial mountain was taller than seemed credible to her, like a structure in a dream.

  Ingrid’s skeleton hurried past her, after the combatants. She held up the hem of her skirt to keep from tripping over it as she dashed down the steps, and the bare bones of her feet rattled against them with a sound like dice being shaken in a cup.

  Hannah glanced back over her shoulder to see Riley standing on his tiptoes and craning his neck, trying to watch the action through the far doorway, from the safety of the outer office. He seemed to know instinctually that stepping through the portal was not a thing the living were meant to do. Hannah remembered feeling the same sort of existential dread when she first stepped up to the doorway, and she hoped that Riley wouldn’t try his luck against it in the same way she had.

  King Caradura and Dexter Graves hit ground level and continued to bash the crap out of each other down on the plain. Neither of them was doing any real damage here on this side of the barrier. Their injuries righted themselves almost as fast as they could be inflicted. Both combatants were too much a part of the realm of the dead to be significantly hurt within it, even by each other.

  “You wasted a witch, making me come back over here,” Caradura barked, snapping his head back to fore after taking a solid right across the jaw. “We’ll have to burn another one to effect the trade now.”

  “Gee, ain’t it a sin to be wasteful?” Graves mocked, ducking a punch that whistled over his head before throwing one of his own right back. “Maybe we’ll have to skip the whole damn thing.”

  “That, Dexter Graves, is not an option,” the King roared, lowering his head to charge like an angry bull. His solid battering ram of a cranium hammered into Graves’ midsection, expelling the air from his lungs as Lord Death seized him around the ribs and drove him backwards, tackling him to the dirt.

  Black Tom clung to the jamb opposite from Riley, watching as Hannah turned away from the pyramid’s magisterial view of Mictlan’s gray plain to come back inside the altar room.

  Her eyes went straight to Lyssa, Lady Madness, and her hostage, both of whom were still crouched in a corner of the sacrificial chamber. Lyssa had her pale arm wrapped around Lia’s throat. Lia’s eyes were empty and staring, while Lyssa’s crackled with silver static.

  Hannah approached the grinning Archon cautiously, speaking softly and making no sudden moves.

  “Lia said your name was Lyssa, I think,” Hannah said, keeping her voice gentle and pitched to soothe. It was, in fact, the very tone she’d needed to use with skittish young Lia years ago, when they’d first met. Tom remembered it well. He also remembered the gratitude he’d felt for this kind woman who’d come to love his girl as much as he did, back when she first appeared in their lives.

  “The Goddess of Madness, right?” Hannah prodded, easing nearer to the Archon and crouching down before her. “I think we’ve looked into each other’s eyes before.”

  Winston Fucking Watt wormed his way out of his bead-bracelet bonds before Tom knew what was happening and then the sweatshirt-clad skeleton was up and on his feet so fast, rushing at Riley’s back. Tom condensed into visibility as fast as he could, hoping to warn Lia’s oblivious friend, but he was much too late. Watt’s filthy bones collided with the thin young man in the narrow-cut suit, propelling him forward through the doorway even as he turned his head in surprise at Tom’s unheralded appearance.

  Riley’s flesh vanished when he fell across the threshold, in the manner Tom had come to expect. He shouted when he hit the second chamber’s cold floor on bony hands and knees. He jumped back up and tried to cross back over… but no. It was too late. Riley was a part of Mictlan already, just like that, and the empty doorway might as well have been a solid wall, as far as he was concerned.

  Women seemed to have much better luck when it came to that sort of thing, Tom couldn’t help but notice. He wondered sickly if his long lost Dulce might not’ve fared as well as Ingrid, Lia, and even Hannah, if his own stern warnings (based on the experience of watching Ramon go over) hadn’t kept her from ever trying.

  Watt dashed away, out of the King’s office and back into the world, and Tom almost chased after him, but he didn’t really know what to do about him.

  And besides, he wasn’t yet prepared to leave his Lia.

  He turned back to face the inner sanctum, where Hannah had never quit trying to communicate with Lyssa, Lady Madness. Tom realized that Han was so intent on the Archon and her captive that she hadn’t even noticed poor Riley’s unceremonious demise.

  Tom’s instinct was to rush across the barrier and wrestle Lia out of the Archon’s grip, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it. He’d be subject to el Rey’s will as soon as he crossed, and unable to intercede. Lacking words, he wouldn’t even be able to negotiate.

  Hannah at least could do that.

  “You’re mad,” he heard her say, addressing the insane otherworlder face-to-face, crouching to look into her static-filled approximation of eyes. “You’re angry. But it’s because you’re broken, and in pain. I know that. I know you. There was a time when I might’ve lost myself in you. You almost walked the world with me.”

  She seemed to have Lyssa’s full attention. Tom thought maybe the Archon’s grip on Lia’s throat had even loosened, a tiny little bit.

  “But then I helped to heal this girl,” Hannah continued, reaching out to touch Lia’s cheek with such tenderness that Tom could hardly bear to watch them. “And that wound up healing me.”

  She looked up, into the ancient entity’s silver eyes.

  “You can let her go, now, Lyssa,” Hannah whispered. “You can come to me. I have room enough inside to hold you now. Come, and let me show you peace.”

  Lyssa let go of Lia, allowing her slack body to slump against the wall, and tentatively stood to accept the embrace that Hannah offered. Tom wilted with relief to see his girl released, even if she remained as limp as a ragdoll.

  Hannah enfolded Lyssa and they merged together. Then Lyssa vanished, absorbed.

  Black Tom looked away, preferring not to witness what happened next to Hannah Potter.

  Instead he watched Lia’s blank expression clear. She blinked, coming back to herself by slow degrees. She sat up from where she’d been lying crumpled in the corner, but then she remembered where she was, as well as what was happening, and she looked around for her friends in sudden alarm.

  Her eyes grew wide and welled with tears at what she saw.

  “Oh, Hannah, no,” she whispered, and Tom forced himse
lf to look up again, too.

  Hannah now looked as skeletal and Catrina-esque as Ingrid, her human life having been used up in accepting Lyssa’s office. Her flesh had already dusted away. She looked down at her rescued friend, her daughter in every way that counted, and was obviously relieved to see her restored, although she also seemed anguished by Lia’s evident pain.

  When Riley’s bones stepped up next to Hannah, Lia broke down completely. The young skeleton squatted and drew her into his skinny arms.

  While Lia wept, grieving for her lost friends and family (even though they were, in some sense, still right there in front of her), Hannah looked over and spotted Black Tom standing alone in the outer office, wringing his insubstantial hands.

  She came over to the doorway and tested the invisible barrier with her bony palm, just to confirm that she really could go no further.

  “You’re Black Tom?” she asked straightaway. “Lia’s Tom?”

  He nodded. Hannah’s empty sockets now saw everything her living eyes never had-including him.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said. “You heard of a retired operator called Big Juan?”

  Hannah Catrina was obviously grasping at straws, but it seemed she couldn’t let herself stand by without doing something. Not when people who didn’t need to be were dead. Tom liked that about her.

  “Juan San Martin?” she continued. “He knows an old friend of Dexter’s, Charlie someone or other, in Sherman Oaks? You think you could find him?”

  Black Tom nodded again. Yes to both. Oscar’s boy Juan, Ramon’s grandson, was the one she meant. Tom would always be able to find him, if he tried.

  “Then I need you to deliver a message for me,” Hannah said. “The thing that killed Riley and Ingrid is loose in the world. It’s dangerous. You have to tell Mr. San Martin to, oh, I don’t know… to warn somebody, at least! He used to know about these things, maybe he knows people who can help.”

  Black Tom nodded a third time, agreeing that Juan San Martin might indeed still have connections. Winston Watt had also killed Juan’s father, Oscar, more than a century before, and Tom would be able to communicate his memory of that event directly, mind to mind. He imagined Juan was going to be quite interested in finding the King’s rogue manservant, even after all these years.

  Hannah Catrina returned his nod before turning away from the door between worlds. She went over to join Riley’s remains in trying to soothe an inconsolable Lia, leaving Tom to vanish in pursuit of his final errand.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Ingrid reached the bottom of the pyramid’s staircase at long last. She knew how she must’ve looked by now, stripped bare of her flesh but still draped in her long satin gown: like a redheaded version of LaCalaveraCatrina, a famous old piece of Mexican folk art.

  The King and his heir were exchanging futile blows down near the structure’s base, neither of them doing or incurring any damage that didn’t right itself within seconds.

  “Dexter! Mickey!” Ingrid’s breathless skeleton scolded. “This is pointless, you can’t hurt each other over here, so stopit.”

  “Sorry, mom,” Dexter said, infuriatingly. “But you don’t get to show up at this late date and start bossin’ me around.”

  “You have to push him out that door between the rooms at the top of the pyramid without you,” Ingrid told him, her ribs heaving for air even though she had no lungs to fill anymore. “You can’t beat him over here.”

  Mickey snarled at her, but he couldn’t silence her. Her voice was still her own, thanks to Lia. She would hold on to that much of her life’s free will until the lighter in her hand grew as cold as the corpse she’d left behind, back out in the realworld. Her King wouldn’t control her fully until then.

  “I will throw you through that door and burn away the life of your pet witch, Dexter Graves,” Mickey spat. “Why do you fight this? She will still be yours, yours in every way!”

  “Yeah, to dress up and pose and play with, like a frilly, pretty doll,” Graves sneered. “Right. Gifts like that don’t count unless they’re freely given. Like I once heard a wise woman say: people’s choices gotta be their own!”

  Dexter punctuated his declaration by throwing his father-figment over one extended leg and slamming him to the ground. “Thanks for the heads up, Ing,” he said, and then looked back down at Mickey, who was laid out flat on his back, dazed and staring up at them. “C’mon, dad,” Dex teased, planting his hands on his knees and leaning over to look down into Mickey’s face. “Let’s play catch.”

  He turned on his heel and raced back up the side of the pyramid, taking the narrow steps three at a time. Mickey leapt to his feet and powered right up after him. Neither of them experienced any physical limitation over here in Mictlan. They could behave like cartoon characters for an eternity if they felt like it, bashing away at each other relentlessly, without suffering any lasting consequence.

  Ingrid Catrina sighed and began dragging her own weary bones (which were subject to a very different set of rules) back up the endless steps after them.

  Graves led King Caradura in a chase back up to the top of the pyramid, running effortlessly, magically, as though they were in a dream. It was fun, if anything, but Graves was already coming to see that no escalation in the level of violence was ever going to put him on top of this situation. He and Hardface were too evenly matched for that. Ingrid hadn’t been lying. Not on that score, anyway.

  A re-awakened Lia and two new skeletons he was pained to recognize as Miss Hannah and that Riley guy all stood aside when he blew past them upon reaching the summit, ducking under the temple door’s low stone lintel and darting back into the King’s inner sanctum. He didn’t know how Lia’s friends had come to lose their skins, but this hardly seemed like the time to ask.

  Caradura burst into the dim, torchlit chamber after him. Graves positioned himself in front of the doorway on the far side of the altar stone, the one that led out into the empty antechamber and then the realworld after that, taunting the King.

  “C’mon, pops, gimme a push,” he teased.

  Caradura jumped up onto the altar and leapt at him from it, his small eyes glittering with rage. Graves dodged aside at the last second. Caradura nearly tumbled through the doorway barrier, but caught himself against the jambs before he fell. Graves tried to push him out of the chamber and across the dividing line before he could scramble back from the threshold, but the King grabbed hold of his arm and swung him hard against the mud brick wall. The impact was concussive enough to break Graves’ nose. It sent one of the torches that had flickered for ages tumbling from its sconce, and Graves’ injury evaporated before it went out in a burst of orange sparks against the cold flagstone floor.

  Ingrid’s elegant skeleton led Lia and the remains of Hannah and Riley back inside the temple, away from the Mictlan-side door. Lia was the only one of the bunch who still looked alive. There was no sign anywhere of the Archon who’d taken her captive. Graves assumed the creature had been dealt with-at the cost of Riley and Hannah’s lives.

  “Dexter,” Ingrid said, raising her voice to be heard over the ruckus he and the King were making. “If you go through that doorway first, what he is goes with you and it’ll take over your body. You’ll be him, not you. You’ve got to throw him through on his own, into the realworld, and someone on this side has to willingly assume his office, so he can’t come back.”

  “Who’s that gonna be?” Graves gasped, craning his head to see her as he struggled with Caradura at the doorway.

  “Me!” Ingrid’s skeleton said. “I’ll do it. I’m ready. And I bore his son, so I have a right to succeed him.”

  “Your tortures for this treason will never end, Ingrid Redstone,” Caradura bellowed, while Graves tore at his hair. “You’ve refused to be my Queen before!”

  “Oh, I’ll be Queen, Mickey,” Ingrid said. “I just won’t be yours.”

  Enraged, Caradura seized Graves by the shoulders and launched him bodily at the doorway to the living
world. Graves caught either side of it and felt himself stretched across the opening like a trampoline skin when Caradura slammed into his back with all his weight, fighting to ram him through. He peripherally saw the skeletons that had so recently been Hannah and Riley freeze into place before they could join the fray (according to their King’s will, he supposed), but Ingrid and Lia ran over to beat on Caradura’s back with their fists, trying to help.

  Caradura turned away from Graves for an instant, knocking them both aside almost without effort.

  Knocking Lia to the floor.

  Graves saw her fall and his vision went red.

  King Caradura hesitated just long enough to make sure his merchandise wasn’t damaged. Lia was the last living witch to’ve touched the lighter, so it was her life that would be forfeit if they made their trade now.

  Graves knew it too, and he seized the momentary distraction to come around punching.

  He caught Caradura straight across the jaw, first with his right fist, then with his left. He bashed Hardface across the room and out the far door, driving him back with blow after crunching blow to his face.

  Nobody hurt his Lia, Dexter Graves thought grimly. Nobody. Not even the big bad king of the goddamn dead. Not without answering to him.

  The King missed tripping over his own altar again by bare inches before he staggered out the far door, fighting to keep his balance under the onslaught. Graves discontinued his rain of knuckles when Hardface pinwheeled backwards on the very edge of the pyramid’s steps… then blew on him, sending him tumbling all the way down to the distant chaparral plain below.

  He turned to catch Lia up in an embrace when she ran to him, out the door and into his arms. It was the first time she’d gotten a good look at Mictlan proper, and she couldn’t help but exclaim over the breathtaking view from the top of the pyramid. The land of the dead seemed to go on forever, its low hills stretching off toward every horizon.