“She’d be immortal. A spirit. Forever.”
“Just as she always dreamed. To walk in the dream forever.”
“That’s why she’s coming for me.”
“Partly.”
“Is the other part revenge?”
Mandu shook his head. “Those spirits, her kutji. She’s as much their slave as they are hers. When she dies, she too will be kutji. She won’t remember all of who she is. Only the strongest parts. And the parts strongest in her right now are her anger and her fear. The kutji want her dead. They’ll betray her given the chance, if it doesn’t break with their business.”
“She doesn’t just want me to give her her immortality. She needs me to.”
“Desperation is dangerous, especially with a spirit so strong as hers.”
“Why didn’t she just ask?”
“Maybe she doesn’t think she can. Would you trust the boy who left you in the desert with your nightmares?”
“But I didn’t!”
Mandu looked sadly across the fire. “No. I did. And if you don’t do this right, I’ll have sacrificed a friend for nothing. Her ending doesn’t have to be tragic. And no thing worth havin’ isn’t worth a little suffering for. Give her what she wants, Colby.”
“I don’t know that I can.”
“I hope for all our sakes that you can figure out how. But it won’t be easy. Not with what’s happening even now.”
“What’s happening now?”
“You’ll see. It’ll change everything.”
“Shit.”
“Yes.”
“What do I do?”
“Remember the fish. Do not stab or bait one at a time when you can fish the whole pond at once with a little preparation. You’ll know what that means when the time comes.” Mandu looked up at the stars once more. “It’s time.”
“Oh, Jirra asked me to—”
“Tell him I miss him too.”
“I’ll miss you, Mandu.”
Mandu smiled. “Most Clever Men only ever get to teach one other Clever Man. I got to teach three. All very clever. Very clever.”
“Three?”
“Yes, three. You, Jirra, and Kaycee.” Mandu stepped back toward the shadows then stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot. One more thing.”
“What?”
“Wake up.”
CHAPTER 51
AS SHADOWS FADE
Meanwhile, as Colby slept beneath the stars of an Australian sky, the skies above Austin had grown unexpectedly stormy. Clouds moved quickly, thunder rumbling without a flash of lightning to betray its origins. A sharp, cold wind blasted the streets, stripping the leaves off trees, dropping the temperature a good thirty degrees in the span of an hour. Winter was setting in and this front was its announcement. Below, a single figure strode flamboyantly, his pace quickening against the storm.
Aaron Brandon strolled down the street as if he was on top of the world. He felt virile, pumped, his parts still tingling. It had taken all night and fifty dollars’ worth of drinks to ply that girl out of her panties, and she could barely stand up by the time he had. After he’d finished, she could barely slur out her own name, let alone remember his. Last he saw her, she was still slumped in the alley, all but passed out in his juices, muttering something like, “Wait, where are you going?” before mumbling herself to sleep.
Aaron Brandon was a douchebag. A proud douchebag. All muscles, tribal tattoos, and twenty-four-karat gold. And he was of the decided opinion that if she remembered tonight at all, it would be a blessing to that girl—a memory she would cherish of the time she’d made it with a real man. After all, she was only a six, and sixes were lucky to get it at all from anything but neck-beard IT rats and balding men ten years their senior. She was lucky if she ever got anything close to him again. And now he was off to one of his favorite off-Sixth-Street dives to see if he could catch himself a closing-time loner for round two and a ride home.
Bill the Shadow stood in the darkest corner of the alley between two downtown buildings, just out of reach of the streetlamp up the block. He hated Aaron already. He’d seen him before, trolling the downtown bars for easy tail, and had earmarked him for a last-minute substitution on a light night. Usually Bill preferred darker souls than this—violent souls—but pickings were slim, he was hungry, and Aaron had it coming. The man was human trash, a worthless sperm machine pumping out mediocre sex in three-minute bursts to women who could barely tell what was going on around them.
It was an odd treat, drinking one of those. As big and badass as they might seem, they didn’t really understand their own darkness. They didn’t regard their own sins as anything of the sort. There was no remorse lurking in their gut. Only entitlement. But Bill loved destroying entitlement.
He crept behind him, keeping a safe distance, occasionally scuffing the pavement with his boot heel before darting into nearby shadow. Aaron was just drunk enough to be slow, but not so much that he didn’t pick up on the sounds.
Aaron repeatedly turned around, hearing the scuff, seeing a flash of dark out of the corner of his eye, a smudgy blur that vanished a second later, wondering if he was jumping at the sound of his own footfalls. By the third time, he began to grow anxious.
“Who the fuck?” he shouted the fourth time he heard it, chest puffed out, fists clenched, arms flexing like the hero on the cover of some old video game. “I will beat the fuck out of you. Who’s out there?”
A cigarette lit up in a deep shadow, the cherry peering out like a single tiny light in the brooding dark.
Aaron stormed over, brow furrowed and furious. “You homeless fuck. I will kick you until you piss bl—”
There was nothing in the shadow. Not even a cigarette. He looked around. Nothing. The streets were empty. There was a slight wind coming in off the river, the only sound a paper dancing across the street in the breeze.
“What the—”
Then he saw something. A shadow moving. A man, standing against a wall. Wide hat. Long coat. Aaron was shitting bricks now. That man wasn’t there before. And the more he looked at him, the less it looked like a man at all. Was it the shadow of a pole? An overhang?
He took a step closer, looking both ways despite there not being a single car.
“Hey! You!”
The shadow didn’t move. He raised his arm, fist above his head as if he had a hammer of some sort in it, ready to bring it down.
“I said you!”
Still nothing.
“Shit.”
Then he doubled over, vomiting into the street, spewing forth a thick spray of green and brown. Then just brown. Then brown and red. Then red and only red. He fell to his knees throwing up blood, his orange tan going pale white, the blood vessels in his eyes bursting purple from the heaves. Veins spider-webbed around his sockets, his eyes thick with tears.
The vomiting stopped and Aaron began to choke. He clutched his throat. Pounded himself in the stomach. Tried to swallow. But his mouth wouldn’t shut. His jaw gaped wide, wider than it should, then it broke, snapping out of place. Aaron tried to scream, his head tilted all the way back on his neck, but nothing came out. Just muffled awfulness. Whimpers. Choked pleading.
Two small black hands, neither quite the same size, clawed at the corners of his mouth, breeching a shadowy head out of the unhinged jaw. Then eyes followed. Then a large, square mouth. Within seconds a full-size kutji was squeezing its way up through his throat and out into the street.
Aaron died right there, collapsing, head smacking limply on the pavement, the kutji scraping his blood and vomit from itself in thick handfuls.
Bill emerged from his spot against the wall, bitter, ready for a fight. “Seems you’re a long way from home, hombre.”
The kutji nodded. “A long way. But in the right place.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
Then came the beating of wings, the sound of scurrying in nearby alleys. Bill took a step back, eyeing the street as over a dozen shadows emerged from the dark sp
aces of the city or out from the night sky. They surrounded him silently in a semicircle.
“Aw, hell. This is gonna be one of those nights, isn’t it?”
“Actually,” said the lead kutji, still shaking the last remaining bits of Aaron from his body, “it’s going to be that night.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, chief. It’s going to take more than a dozen of you to scare me.”
“We’re not here to scare you. We’re here to kill you.”
“So it is going to be one of those nights.” Bill sighed deeply. “All right. Let’s get this over with. I’m starving and there’s not a whole lot of night left.” Bill adjusted his hat, sliding it back on his head as he took one last drag off his cigarette. He popped his back, cracked his neck, pitched the butt, then growled.
He spat out a sudden cloud of fog as the kutji swarmed toward him. Bill ducked and weaved, the diminutive shadows grasping at him and catching nothing but empty air. One grabbed for his leg but he lifted it in time for the kutji to slip right beneath him as Bill brushed his jacket back like a matador. Then he snuck away, loitering on the outskirts of the cloud, listening as the miscreant mob swore, flailing about to find him.
Bill skulked quietly in the dense mist, his mouth yawning wide, more fog pouring into the streets by the second. Then came the flutter of wings, like an entire flock taking flight at once, their wing beats trailing off into the sky. There were no more scuffs or scuttles, no twitters or chitters. It sounded as if the streets were empty, fog drifting alone, transformers overhead buzzing loudly on their poles from the moisture. It was clear to Bill, however, that this was far from the end of his ordeal.
That’s when the thunder rumbled directly overhead.
The wind kicked up and thick drops of rain began to pound the pavement. A stiff gust blew, wiping the fog away from the street like a drawn curtain. And there, standing dead center, stood a tall, time-ravaged man, on fire from top to bottom, flames licking the air around him. The Holocaust Man.
“Hello, Bill,” said the demon, his voice deeper and more menacing than Bill imagined.
“I’m getting the distinct impression that this isn’t about me,” said Bill.
Amy shook his head, smiling a lipless grin, teeth charred black. Spatters of rain slopped steadily around them.
“I don’t have a dog in this fight, and if I don’t have a dog in this fight, why are we here?”
“Because you do have a dog in this fight,” said Amy. “And that dog thinks he can get the better of us. He doesn’t want to kill the girl. He has to; he just doesn’t know it yet.”
“So he’s supposed to think that she did this.”
“He will think she did this.”
“That’s a pretty shitty reason to die.”
“They’re all shit reasons to die, Bill, in the end.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
The rain stopped, the clouds bursting away, falling to earth in the shape of crows. They soared down, landing on buildings, lampposts, and awnings, watching like a circle of schoolkids, cheering with squawks and caws. Bill looked around at the mess he found himself in. Amy tapped his foot impatiently, the tinny, hollow sound echoing through the empty streets.
“I thought you lot had lost all these,” said Bill.
“Most. Not all. The rumors of the Queen’s utter domination of her lands are just that.”
“Well, I reckon you know that I won’t go down easy.”
“It wouldn’t look real if you did.”
Bill nodded, turning into a blob of shadow, flinging himself at Amy faster than Amy could react, bowling him over, knocking him to the ground. Re-forming, Bill towered above him, punching him in the face over and over, a foot on his chest to keep him down, his fists sizzling against the flames.
Amy reached out, grasping wildly for Bill.
Bill grabbed both sides of Amy’s face, grabbing him by the ears, staring deep into his eyes, Bill’s foot still standing right on top of him, mouth wide to swallow his soul. But nothing came. He breathed deeper, trying to suck something out of the man beneath him, but there was nothing there. Just a hollow shell brimming with hate. The Holocaust Man stared back at Bill, deep into the dark recesses of the boggart.
“What the hell?” mumbled Bill.
Amy flared up, blazing as if he’d been doused suddenly with gasoline, burning away the shadows surrounding Bill. The boggart was entirely illuminated. There was no flesh that Bill concealed in his darkness; he was entirely hollow, his features floating in what was ordinarily murk. Now he was naked, small bits of face and hands suspended in the air by forces unseen.
Amy laughed. “I see you for what you are, Bill. And there’s nothing to you after all.” Then the Holocaust Man exploded.
Bill was blasted backward, far across the street, slamming against a building some two stories up. He fell immediately to the ground, face-first, weakened, trying to re-form his shadows.
Bill coughed, spitting a bit of his soul out like phlegm, then rolled over on his back.
Amy’s fires died down and he looked once again like he had. He hopped to his feet, almost skipping on his way over to Bill. “It’s a shame it had to be like this,” he said. “But it did have to be like this. Sometimes the friends we keep are the source of our own undoing.”
He plunged a fiery fist into Bill’s chest, incinerating his insides.
Bill looked up at the clear sky, the clouds having cleared away with the kutji, the stars starting to grow fuzzy. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and put it in his mouth before fumbling with the lighter. His fingers were fading and the Zippo clanged behind his ear as it slipped out of them.
Amy leaned down, touching the end of the cigarette with a single smoldering finger.
Bill inhaled deeply, lighting it, then exhaled without pulling the butt from his lips, and died, the cigarette going limp over his chin.
Crows descended, the murder flooding the corpse, picking at the shadows with their shiny black beaks. They tore him away in chunks, swallowing Bill bit by bit as the shadows around him began to fade, light creeping in from streetlamps. Within seconds he was gone. Only his coat, hat, and lighter remained.
CHAPTER 52
WINTER OF DISCONTENT
Winter in Austin is brown and yellow, white being something most Texans only dream of. In the odd years, when the rains run long and heavy, late into the season, the grass and trees will stay green well into December. But even then the cold snaps come to chase the green away. The trees turn yellow first, then brown up slowly over the course of weeks. The grass goes yellow almost right away.
Winter is heralded by the day the first strong winds come and wipe the trees of all their leaves over the course of a single night. Then, from that point on, it becomes the long, lingering, earth-tone trod toward springtime, the nights chilly and crisp, but rarely cold enough to matter. The days are just slightly warmer. Winter. In all its sudden, spectacular glory.
It was winter again, and Colby Stevens felt the way the city looked. Haggard, raw, tired, stripped bare. All the mistakes, the worn cracked surface, exposed, covered in prickly stubble. Just a few nights before, it was a nice, brisk autumn. Now the city was in its winter slumber, ugly as it got.
He stood before the smoldering remains of the Cursed and the Damned and he felt his heart breaking. Yellow tape marked the area off that, along with swollen puddles, stood as the only proof the fire department had been there. Moments before, he thought he’d had it all figured out, that he was thinking steps ahead of everyone, that he was somehow playing their game better than they could. And now his arrogance was out in the open and he wondered just how deep in trouble he had really gotten himself this time.
Seere stood behind him, his expression almost as solemn as Colby’s. “There’s no one in there.”
“I know,” said Colby, unable to feel the spirits of his friends, dead or otherwise. “Do you know where they are?”
“Your friends?”
/>
“Yes.”
“I do.”
“Are they all right?”
“They appear to be.”
“Take me there.”
COLBY HOPPED OFF the back of the horse and onto the street in front of his house.
“Call for me,” said Seere, “and I’ll take you to the next of your appointments.”
Colby looked up to thank him, but he was already gone, horse and all. He took a deep breath and made his way quickly into the house.
Yashar sat on the couch. He looked up at Colby, unmoving, crestfallen.
“What the hell did you do, Colby?” he asked.
“Where’s Gossamer?”
“He’s under the bed. He won’t come out.”
Colby whistled.
Gossamer shot out from the bedroom, rounded the corner, and charged Colby, tail wagging, nuzzling between both of his legs. “Boss!” he said, ecstatic. “You’re home.”
“What happened?”
Gossamer and Yashar exchanged looks, neither wanting to be the one to say it.
“It was kutji,” said Yashar. “A swarm of them.”
“I tried to be a good dog. Tried to protect Yashar. But there were too many of them.”
“It’s okay, Goss. You did good. What’s important is that you’re both okay.”
“They got the bar,” said Yashar.
“I saw.”
“That’s not the worst of it.”
“How could it get any worse?”
“Bill,” said Yashar. “They killed Bill the Shadow.”
Colby’s heart dropped into his stomach, his jaw following soon after. His blood ran cold and it became progressively harder to breathe. He wanted to throw up. “How?”
“They tore him apart. There wasn’t much left.”
“Are you sure he’s—”
Yashar reached beside him on the couch, pulling from it Bill’s coat and hat. “Yes.”
Colby walked over, took the coat and hat into his hands, eyes misting as he examined them. He knew every fold, every contour. There was no dreamstuff left here, only djang—the etched-in power of who he was. “These are burned,” he said, chalky black residue wiping off onto his hands.
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