by N. D. Wilson
“Check the watch,” Glory repeated.
“I like ground,” Sam said again. “We should find the bottom. I wish we still had the motorcycle.”
“Peter moves like this,” Glory said. “So did the Vulture. We can, too.”
Sam looked down at his belt and then laughed in surprise. The watch wasn’t just pointed forward, tugging on its short taut chain, but it was also glowing. Faintly, but in such total darkness, it was like a golden moon.
“Do you have any sense of where we are?” Sam asked.
“Not really,” Glory answered. “But I don’t need to. Look.”
In the darkness ahead of them, too faint to judge distance, a cluster of tiny lights like fireflies blinked in and out of view. Six of them.
“The other watches glow, too,” Glory said. “Wherever they’re going, we’re going.”
RHONDA FELT ALEX’S BODY STIFFEN, AND THEN HE RAISED his head, his features glowing in the light of his timepieces.
“Did I die?” His voice was barely a croak.
“No,” Rhonda whispered. She was sure they were being followed. Her eyes kept jumping to black shapes in the blackness. Every change in smell or texture sent her heart racing. “You got shot in the neck.”
“Did I see my parents?” he hissed.
“Maybe in your dreams,” Rhonda said.
“Snake arms,” Alex said. “Woman with sand.”
“Yeah,” Rhonda said. “They were there. And crazy. Then younger versions came and the other versions both died.”
Alex groaned and then shifted his floating weight, trying to rock forward against his watch chains.
“Died?” he gasped.
“Yeah,” Rhonda said. “The old ones.”
He reached for the watches. “Have to go back.”
Rhonda pinned his arms down. “No! We’re going to Paris. Then we find a hospital. After that . . . whatever.”
A shriek pierced the darkness to their left. Another on their right. Below. Above. A heavy shape slammed into Rhonda’s legs. Foul-smelling feathers brushed her face.
THE FIRST VULTURE HIT SAM SQUARELY IN THE CHEST WITH heavy talons that tore his skin. He flipped over backward and lost his grip on Glory for a moment. Cindy struck upward in the darkness, slamming his left fist into a massive beaked face. She struck again to his left, and something vile screamed in his ear as Cindy ripped out a fistful of feathers.
And then talons plunged into his right shoulder. He had no defense on that side, no Speck to strike in the dark.
“Glory!” Sam shouted. And below them, the darkness between times ripped open on reality with blast like thunder. Glory was only twenty feet away, her hair lashing in the wind, and a long glassy blade in her hand. She had ripped the darkness open. They were reentering time. Escaping. Maybe. Falling. Definitely.
Cold air washed around Sam, spinning him free of the talons. A moon. City lights far below him. They were thousands of feet up. And at least a dozen two-headed vultures were diving after them. Glory’s blade flashed like lightning and a vulture tumbled into halves. Another lost a wing, and then the vultures fanned out to avoid her strikes.
The dark gash in the sky that they had fallen out of was shrinking away quickly, but Sam saw three more shapes emerge from it in the moonlight. An enormous owl, as ghostly as a cloud, with wings as wide as sails, and the Vulture’s heir—his son?—floating with his six watches and a girl clinging to him.
Glory was shouting, and Sam twisted onto his stomach to try and get closer to her. Below him, he saw the Eiffel Tower and a sprawling web of lit Parisian streets. They were still high, but Glory was going to need to slow them both in time soon.
“Glory!” Sam shouted again. He managed to spin closer to her. She looked at him and nodded. He was close enough for her to encase them both in glass or cut another door back into the darkness outside of time. The wind was forcing tears out of Sam’s eyes and up his forehead. His nostrils felt like they might fall off his face. And his chest and shoulders were burning. He rolled onto his back and let his eyes close for a moment. He wasn’t worried. Not yet, anyway. He was with Glory.
He opened his eyes just in time to see a vulture plummet past them in a dive. Glory’s scythe blade nicked its tail feathers. Tucking her head down into a dive, she followed it. As the big bird slid beneath them both, she raised her blade.
The vulture fanned its wings suddenly, slamming up into Glory’s face, snapping her head backward with bone shattering impact.
The glass scythe blade vanished.
“No!” Sam yelled, but his voice was swallowed by the wind.
Glory’s unconscious body flipped and tumbled, trailing black sand out of her hand like smoke.
Sam tried to swim through the air to her, but his right arm was useless. And Glory was falling faster now.
The remaining vultures were watching now, circling, waiting for the end.
The massive cloudy owl ripped through the heavier birds. Stretching out enormous claws, he grabbed Sam around the torso and tried to pull him up.
Sam slowed slightly, but then tore through the huge grip as if it were no more than vapor. The bird grabbed Glory with both feet, but she tore free, as well.
Again and again the owl tried to slow them while the carrion birds watched, but it wasn’t working.
A cold peace came over Sam.
He had died before. He knew what was coming.
The cloudy owl dove past them both and then fanned his wings. Sam and Glory punched through his feathers. It didn’t even hurt.
Sam glanced down and then looked away quickly as terror gripped him more firmly than the owl could.
But he tore through that grip, as well. No. He wouldn’t fear the end. Sliding toward Glory, he grabbed her with his left hand, and pulled himself down beside her. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at Sam with eyes full of fear. Her neck was broken. Her body was as limp and useless as Sam’s right arm.
Sam held her as tight as he could. There was no one he loved more.
The owl dove down beside them, no longer huge and ghostly. Feathered and real, but too small to help.
“Thanks, M!” Sam yelled. “For trying.”
And then even the owl pulled up. Sam knew the end was only seconds away. Closing his eyes, he pressed his lips against Glory’s head and whispered words only God could hear.
In the city below, a boy stood waiting in a very particular spot in a particular cobbled street, a boy Sam and Glory had both met before, a boy named Ghost.
WHEN RHONDA AND ALEX TOUCHED DOWN IN TRAFFIC and the watches went limp around them, Rhonda dragged Alex out of the street, and then sat him down with his back to a lamppost. Honking Parisian cars raced past them, and she looked around for help. Bicycles. Pedestrians.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Anyone here speak English? We need a hospital.”
No one stopped. Something more tragic was going on just down the block. Sirens were screaming. Police lights were flashing.
That would be where the other two had landed. She had seen it all happen, and she never wanted to think about it again.
A tall man with long legs was walking toward her through traffic, weaving through the small cars as if none of them could touch him, ignoring the honking and cursing drivers.
He wore boots to his knees, necklaces bounced on his chest, and his black hair was tied back with a bloodred scarf. She had seen him in the fight. He was the one who could turn into an owl.
His face was hard with fury, and he was carrying a long knife in his hand. His eyes were locked on Alex.
Rhonda jumped in front of him and held up her hands.
“He needs a doctor.”
The man brushed her aside and dropped into a crouch in front of Alex. “I am a doctor,” he said. “But I cannot cure the evil you have done to the world.” He tore open Alex’s vest and shirt and with his left fist, he grabbed all seven golden chains where they entered his chest. Then he held up his knife. “This is going to hurt,” he s
aid.
“Help!” Rhonda shouted. “Someone help!” Pedestrians stopped, and when they saw the knife, they all began to shout, as well. Much shouting, but no one felt quite up to intervening.
“Wait,” Alex whispered. “My parents.”
“Dead,” said Manuelito. “As you will be soon.”
“You were there,” Alex said. “Owl. At my house. When Dervish . . . when she . . . gave me these.” He looked down at the chains in his chest. “Take me back there.”
“These chains bind your soul in all times,” Manuelito said. “You knew they were El Buitre’s. You knew Dervish was a witch. And you received them like a fool.”
“Take me back home,” Alex said. “1982. Please.”
“I am already there,” Manuelito said. “So are you. You’ll die.”
“Yeah,” Alex croaked. “I will. Take me close. But in the darkness. Can you do that?”
14
A Death Well Died
AT 7:43 P.M. ON DECEMBER 18, 1982, IN THE FRIGID AIR outside his mustard-colored duplex, trapped in a frosty column of snow with his neighbor Rhonda, and bathed in the green-and-blue flickering light that surrounded the arch in the air, Alex stepped back, raising one arm to shade his eyes.
“How did my dad die?” Alex asked.
“Do you want your inheritance?” the young man with the liquid eyes asked.
“Sure,” said Alex. “I want it. But tell me how my dad died.”
Two men strode out from the arch and swung their torches through the swirling walls of snow. Instantly, the cylinder collapsed, and sharp cold air washed in around Alex, prickling his skin.
“He has chosen!” the young man shouted, and he spun back around, grinning, liquid eyes dancing with torchlight. “His guardians will come now. Send up the hunters!”
Scipio whistled back into the arch and two misshapen winged creatures lumbered out of the darkness.
Rhonda screamed.
They were two-headed vultures, with bare human arms visible in the wings, fingers curled in the black feathers. The creatures leapt up, flapping, and the stench from their wings rocked Alex backward.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “What’s . . .”
A short thick woman stepped onto the sidewalk, wearing a black dress to the ground with a high waist cinched tight, lace just beneath her plump jaw, and a two-headed vulture brooch at her throat. She was holding a golden spear, tipped with a deadly barb. Seven thin watch chains dangled from it, down to her fist. And just below her grip, six watches were swinging.
“Mrs. Dervish,” Alex gasped. The woman behind El Buitre. Grabbing Rhonda, he slipped trying to turn away, unable to run.
Through the arch, looming in the darkness behind Mrs. Dervish, he saw the Vulture himself. Towering above the plump woman with his black pointed beard and his broad buffalo coat. But the arch-outlaw was injured, pale and bloody, leaning for support on . . .
Rhonda?
Alex felt something ice cold shiver inside him at the sight of the man. His heart kicked and tightened.
Mrs. Dervish stepped forward, raising her golden spear, aiming directly at Alex’s chest.
And then a gun fired, and Mrs. Dervish stumbled. Blood seeped through her blouse, and then trickled from her mouth. Her spear clattered to the icy ground, and all at once she collapsed at Alex’s feet.
The two liquid-eyed generals raced toward her, and the gun fired from the darkness two more times. Both men fell, their wounds splashing water instead of blood.
It wasn’t the man doing the shooting. He was dead on his feet. Old Rhonda was the one with the gun in her hands.
At the sight of her older self, Young Rhonda yelled in pain and dropped to her knees.
The big man in the buffalo coat staggered out of the dark and slumped into the snow—lifeless.
Old Rhonda stood alone in the darkness between times as the opening closed. Just as the arched doorway collapsed, the pair of foul vultures leapt at her.
Two more gunshots. A third. And the opening was gone. The wintry night was itself again.
Beside Alex, Young Rhonda gasped, inhaling sharply.
The door to the duplex banged open and grown-up shouting and worry filled the street. Alex didn’t hear any of it. But he heard the distant sirens.
Leaning forward, he unhooked the seven watch chains from Mrs. Dervish’s golden rod. And he reeled the watches in, with his eyes on the body in the buffalo coat.
Somehow, he knew he wasn’t looking at the Vulture. Strange memories rattled in his skull, and whether it was from the adrenaline or the fear or the surprise, his insides—his soul—made him feel like he was overflowing. Mostly with relief. The plump woman had almost skewered him with her spear. The watch chains would have been inside him. If it hadn’t been for that older Rhonda . . .
Reaching up, he touched his throat, halfway expecting to find a bullet wound.
His beard itched—or some part of his mind thought it did—and he scratched his chin. But he didn’t even have much peach fuzz yet.
Neighbors stepped out of every front door on the street. A few held shotguns.
Rhonda’s parents had already picked her up off her knees.
Millie and Jude were pulling Alex to his feet and dragging him away from the bodies. He managed to put the loose watches in his pocket. If they saw, they didn’t say anything.
AT 8:32 P.M. ON DECEMBER 7, 1970, SAM AND GLORY STOOD outside of the big house lined with fat-bulbed Christmas lights that they had made their home. They could hear the laughter inside. Glory took her husband’s hand—palm to palm, her fingertips barely reaching his scales.
Their breath mingled into a single cloud, lit orange and red and green by the blinking lights behind them.
“I feel sick,” Glory said, and leaned her head against Sam’s shoulder. “Almost dizzy. Like we’re falling into something we can’t control.” Speck ground his arm against her like he always did, like a cat in need of friction.
Sam nodded, checking the gold watch with the broken chain that he had clipped to his belt.
“And I feel old. Where are we going?”
“France,” Glory said. “1914.”
“Oh, gosh.”
“Yeah,” Glory said. “Gosh.”
Wind swept the street in front of them, and a dancing sheet of sand dropped onto the ice.
A young priest limped toward them.
“Peter?” Sam asked.
The priest nodded. He was the same age that he had just been upstairs, sending them on this very mission. But now he was hurt. Badly.
“Are you okay?” Glory asked.
“I’ll heal,” Peter said. “Forgive me. Both of you. But you can’t go. And you can’t stay.”
“But what about Alex?” Glory asked. “Dervish?”
“Alex and his neighbor killed her,” Peter said. “They claimed the watches. She was the last of her kind, the last of her line, and after her, there will be no more. But if you stay here, Alex will never strike her down. The timepieces and the gardens will remain hers. She will create heirs, for herself and for the Vulture.”
“What are you saying?” Glory said.
“I’m saying . . .” Peter paused. “I’m saying that Millie and Jude will love your son, and they will raise him well. You must trust them with his childhood.”
“What?” Glory gaped at Peter, and then looked back at the house. “I can’t do that! I can’t!”
“Twelve years,” Peter said. “Go to him after his victory. 1982. He needs you then, in ways Millie and Jude cannot help him. He walked down the path of villains, but he became a hero in the end. He has the timepieces, and they have touched his soul forever. He must learn to walk in the darkness between times and wield power without rage. If you stay here now, he will always be your son. A boy to love and protect. And the victory will remain in doubt.”
Glory stared at her own front door. Tears spilled onto her cold cheeks and she covered her mouth with her hands. Sam slid his arm around he
r.
“Twelve years? His first words? Learning to read? He’s only ever had one haircut!”
“It’s okay,” Sam said. “It’ll be okay. Can we see him now?”
“He’s tall,” Peter said. “Quiet, but strong. A dreamer. A better son than either of you two deserve. And he’s met a girl.”
“If you’re wrong,” Glory said. “So help me, Peter Atsa Eagle Tiempo, I will ruin your life.”
Peter smiled. “I’m not wrong. And haven’t you ruined it a dozen times already?”
Epilogue
ALEXANDER MIRACLE STARED AT HIMSELF IN HIS CLOSET mirror. Bright morning light was pouring in his window, bacon was sizzling in the kitchen, and Rhonda was standing in his doorway watching him. The room looked just like it had before Christmas, but there were new books piled on the desk, and hanging beside the old Tolkien calendar on the wall was an owl feather and a big black-and-white photo of Manuelito, the last free chief of the Navajo.
Alex shrugged. The buffalo coat was huge. Wide. Heavy. Long.
“You can’t wear that to school,” Rhonda said. “Kids will crucify you.”
“Think I care?” Alex asked.
“I think we should bury it. Have a funeral. Say something nice, and put that poor animal in the ground.”
Alex turned and walked toward his high window, peering outside.
“Why would I do that?” he asked. “It’s in all my dreams. Have you read my dad’s books yet? It’s in there, too.”
“Yeah, it’s there, but the dreaming thing is weird,” Rhonda said. “I don’t get how you can like them. All mine are horrifying, the worst nightmares I’ve ever had, and I always end up alone in the dark attacked by huge two-headed birds.”
Alex’s heart practically stopped. Two people were walking up the front sidewalk. They were arm in arm.
One of them definitely had snake heads on the backs of his hands.
The other was a woman with white hair and smooth skin, dusted with freckles. She looked right at him, and her eyes were suddenly the brightest he had ever seen.
And then he saw his mother smile.