Poe

by J. Lincoln Fenn

Well, this ring is supposed to let me command spirits, right? What did my father say when he exorcised Sorath? My mind scrambles for a few useful words—Think, Dimitri, think.

  “Khioniya Gueseva, I release thee!”

  A rumble from within the red light. Seems promising. “I release thee! I release thee!”

  Instantly Poe is freed, and together we fall back into the icy snow. There’s a high, keening screech, which causes the nearby trees to quiver, releasing flurries of snow. The red slice of light flashes brighter and then disappears.

  “Damn,” says Nachiel. “How’d you swing that?”

  “I have no idea,” I say, trying to catch my breath.

  A gentle breeze ruffles the dead tufts of grass that push out through the snow.

  Poe sits up, her lips trembling. “Can I ask favor?” she says quietly.

  “I thought I just did you a big one.”

  “Yes,” she says with a grim smile. “But I have one more. Let this be the end of Khioniya Kuzminichna Gueseva. She died in the well many years ago. She was not always a good person in life. And in death she was forced to do bad things. Evil things. Give me a new name.”

  “I already have,” I say. “Poe.”

  “Like the writer?” She thinks for a moment. “Yes, I like that. Now, we must hurry. I can sense where Sorath is, but when he learns you have broken my bond with him…”

  She doesn’t have to finish her sentence. We all know what he’ll do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE GREENHOUSE

  We don’t run, we fly through the snowy wood. Nachiel ploughs through the brush, Poe’s bare feet barely touch the ground—and when they do, they leave no trace—but what’s surprising is how strong I feel. My heart pounds, but in a rhythmic, controlled way. Sweat trickles down my back, my wet clothes are plastered to my body, but it’s a welcome chill, because my mind is icy, laser sharp. I want this fight—I’m ready.

  And then we reach the fragile, overgrown stone steps leading to the abandoned garden. Thorny bushes pull at my jeans, a few pierce my skin, but I don’t care; I’m beyond caring.

  Poe scouts the ground; she can move faster than we can. She raises her hand and points to the far edge of the garden, where a lone and barren sycamore twists up and over the wall. She takes off for it like a shot. We race to join her. There’s a small narrow path through the crumbling wall.

  “I still wouldn’t trust her,” says Nachiel quietly, before we get too close.

  “I don’t know if I trust either of you.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” he mutters.

  Poe pauses in front of two pairs of footprints—the smaller prints sometimes drag, as if the maker of them had been forced to keep moving against their will.

  Fear almost ruptures my heart. I start to follow, but Poe stops me.

  “Listen,” she whispers.

  For what, I don’t know—all I can hear is a babbling brook nearby, my own heaving breath, and the occasional crack as a frozen limb falls to the snowy earth with a muffled thump. The prints clearly keep going directly ahead.

  “What are we listening for?” I whisper.

  She raises a finger to her lips and then nimbly climbs the nearest tree, crouching on the highest branch. For a moment she sits there, frozen.

  Nachiel stands still, watching her carefully

  I place my palm against the bark. “What’s she doing?”

  “Probably signaling Sorath so he knows we’re coming.”

  “If you’re going to be such a pissant, you don’t have to come.”

  “Is that a threat or a promise?”

  Poe quickly drops down again. “A false trail,” she whispers, her brows furrowed.

  “Maybe you can call another murderous spirit,” says Nachiel. “Ask for directions.”

  “Your jokes not funny.” She peers closely at a bush, points to a broken twig. “This way.” She plunges into the woods where there is no path.

  Nachiel pointedly catches my eye. A warning. But I ignore him and follow after.

  The element of surprise, obviously, won’t be on our side—I make as much noise crashing through the woods as a drunk elephant—but the ring feels solid on my finger, like a talisman.

  We run. We stop. Poe looks for signs, listens for sounds I can’t hear, and then we run again, up hills and down hills, across the babbling brook. My feet slide on the icy rocks, plunge into the freezing water, numbing my feet, but I don’t care. A branch scrapes my face; I don’t care. Clouds pass across the shining face of the moon, cast the forest into darkness. I trip and fall, but I don’t care. Just please God, let her still be alive. Please.

  I am now keenly aware of last times. There was the last time I saw my parents, in the rearview mirror of my Mustang as I drove off for my final semester of college. The last time I saw Nate at the Eagle, crumpling a paper cup and tossing it a trash can. The last time I saw Ernest, closing his green front door, thinking he was going somewhere safe. If I don’t save Lisa, then the last time I saw her was outside the cabin, and she didn’t even look at me as I drove away. That’s not something I’m prepared to live with, especially if I really could live forever.

  Poe stops abruptly, raising her hand. My ragged breath heaves and drifts in the air like smoke.

  In front of us looms the broken ruin of a huge, whimsical Victorian greenhouse that’s been overtaken by blackberry bushes, small, gnarled trees, and dead ivy. From the center rises a decorative ironwork cupola, looking like some kind of lost Arabian turret. Most of the glass is broken, and large jagged slabs of it poke through the snow around the low stone wall. The exposed wooden beams are gray and weathered, listing slightly to the right like a ship being blown by a strong wind. Two moss-covered statues of cherubs stand guard either side of the open door, their noses and fingers broken.

  Nachiel looks wary. Like something might come out and bite.

  Daniel’s voice rings out in the crystalline air. “Khioniya, my humble servant. How’s tricks?”

  He’s here. The thought has the strange quality of an echo, so that I’m not sure if it’s my thought or someone else’s.

  “And you brought Nachiel. It’s a regular family reunion.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t let him play you,” Nachiel says quietly.

  I nod. Together we walk into the ruin.

  There, standing just under the turret, is Daniel. He’s even thinner in person, if such a thing is possible, his cheekbones sharp and pointed like a starving man’s. His eyes are two black orbs, a vacuum where humanity should be. Standing next to him, unbearably close, is Lisa, her beautiful hair twisted in his tight, bony fist. He holds a sharp knife to her throat, pressing it just enough to make an impression but not enough to cut. Yet.

  And then I notice something else, a dark pattern on the snow that covers the remains of the greenhouse floor. It’s a grid of numbers laid out with some kind of dirt. Daniel is standing in its center. A magic square.

  “Nicely done, Khioniya. Everything in place exactly as planned.”

  Nachiel is obviously scanning the numbers. He turns to me, alarmed.

  “You lie,” Poe hisses. “And you no longer control me. I am bound to him now.”

  “At least that’s what we want him to think, right? He really bought it, didn’t he?”

  Poe turns to me, a frantic look in her eye.

  “I release thee,” says Daniel. “You really thought that would be enough? Christ, did you even bother to read what little Ernest translated?”

  “I was cramped for time.”

  “Too bad for you. Kneel!” shouts Daniel.

  Poe instantly drops to her knees.

  A shudder runs through me. Was Nachiel right not to trust her? Or is Daniel too strong for her to resist? Suddenly I’m one card down in a game I don’t really know the rules of.

  “You might be your father’s son, but you’re not your father’s equal, not by a long shot,” Daniel says coolly.

  “Never said I was,” I reply carefully.


  Lisa’s warm brown eyes plead with me. “Dimitri,” she gasps, “he’s going to kill me anyways, no matter what you do.”

  “Now that’s not true,” says Daniel. “I’m a reasonable person. There’s always room to negotiate. You have something I want. And I have something you want.”

  Nachiel takes a step forward. “Sorath, I’m not going to let you—”

  Daniel mutters something softly under his breath, and instantly Nachiel’s blown back through the air like he just stepped on a land mine. There’s a crack as he lands on a pile of metal rods.

  I hold my breath.

  But after a moment Nachiel sits up, cradling his arm, which is bent at an unnatural angle, obviously broken. Now I’m two cards down.

  “I’d just sit this one out if I were you,” says Daniel with a leering smile.

  “You said something about a trade,” I say quickly.

  “Yes, a hard trade.”

  “So what do you want?” I let my arms relax just a bit. If I can push the gun out of my pocket without him seeing… I might not be able to kill the motherfucker, but a shot to the head would certainly be distracting.

  “No cheating!” shouts Sorath. The tip of his knife pricks Lisa’s pale skin, and a bead of bright red blood trickles down her throat.

  Instantly I freeze.

  “You’re family is always fucking cheating! Do you have any idea how irritating that is?”

  Anger churns in my stomach, and it takes every ounce of my resolve to keep my hands relaxed, to not give in. “Why don’t you just tell me what the fuck you want?”

  “I think you know. For the sins of the fathers—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got the message. Beheading Nate was a little unnecessary, don’t you think?”

  Daniel cocks his head, thinks a moment, and then smiles as if I’ve just paid him a compliment. “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “You promised me,” gasps Lisa, a few tears beading her eyes. “If I said run, you’d run. Dimitri, I swear to God if you don’t keep your promise, you’re so dead.”

  “If only it were that easy,” says Daniel mildly. “Poe, why don’t you tell our friend Dimitri here what I used to make this magic square.”

  Poe’s mouth is forced open, like a puppet’s. “Ashes,” she whispers.

  Daniel cocks his head, smiles. “Not just any ashes. Why don’t you be more specific?”

  Poe gives me a frantic look as she says, “Human ashes.”

  Nachiel tries to stumble to his feet. “Dimitri, remember—”

  “You know,” Daniel interrupts genially. “They really didn’t smell so good, your parents. All those months underground weren’t kind to their bodies. I had beetles in my car for days. So I think this is an improvement, actually. I mixed them in a very nice organic peat mulch to make them stretch. The even numbers,” he says, pointing to the ground, “are your mother. And your father, well, he was always a little odd anyways. Taking the ring off, bad idea. Sent a nice ping out into the spirit world, and then it wasn’t too hard to possess your mother long enough to grab the steering wheel of the car. So sorry for your loss.”

  I start to jolt forward with a surge of rage—I could tear his throat out with my teeth—and a look of maniacal triumph crosses Daniel’s face.

  Which is why we all miss the exact moment when Lisa stealthily reaches into her jacket pocket for the Taser. All I see is a small arc of blue light followed by a crackling zap, and suddenly Daniel’s dropped the knife, his back arching while his eyes grow wide with shock. And for a split second something flickers across Daniel’s expression, something human. His hand shudders, like there’s a fight for who controls it, and the trembling fingers relax just enough for Lisa to pull her hair out from his fist. Gasping, she falls to the ground and starts to crawl away.

  I look to Poe and, hot damn, she is on my side, because before Daniel can reach with a trembling hand for the knife, there’s a white flash, and she’s pinned his arm to the ground.

  Lisa is still crawling away—one hand reaches out beyond the boundary of the numbers—and now I’m past rage, past reason, and I pull the gun from my pocket, aiming for Daniel. The gun feels good in my hands, slick and cool, and all my fury rushes from my heart—this is for Lisa, this is for my mother, my father. Rage flows down the length of my arms to my hands like a white-hot electric current. My finger catches the trigger.

  And I forget. I forget what Nachiel said. What Poe said.

  I take a step.

  My foot touches the numbers.

  And everything—instantly—stops.

  Time doesn’t exist. Sound doesn’t exist. Everything is frozen, motionless. Even the minuscule flakes of snow, disturbed by the falling glass, hang midair like they’re suspended in some kind of viscous liquid.

  Everything except Daniel. Except Sorath.

  I want to scream at Lisa to run, but I can’t move or speak—I’m frozen in place too. And all I can do is watch as Daniel slowly frees himself from Poe’s grip, blood rushing down his arm from a gash, falling onto the snow and creating dark shadows. And all I can do is watch while he stands up and runs a bloody hand through his hair.

  He grins at me. A demented, heart-piercing, maniacal grin.

  Slowly he bends over, picks up the knife. Takes his time wiping the snow from its edge on his pants. Stares at me.

  No. Oh God, no.

  It’s just like the video, only this time I’m a captive audience and I can’t turn it off. I can’t even close my eyes as he nonchalantly walks toward Lisa, his feet sinking into the snow with each step. She too is frozen. I have no idea whether she’s aware, as I am, that Daniel is coming up behind her. I hope to God not. Slowly Daniel kneels by her side, almost lovingly brushing the hair from her forehead while my whole being is ablaze with fear—this can’t be happening; this is fucked up; this is so fucked up. The rage is gone; in its place a cold, chill abyss, which brings on the dull realization that he tricked me.

  This is what he wanted. If he can’t possess me, he’ll make sure I suffer. Lisa will be his sixth and final victim. For the sins of the fathers…

  Daniel tosses the knife in the air. It rotates once, twice, before he expertly catches it. He looks me in the eye—he marks me—as he pulls back her head.

  As he slits her throat.

  As he places a finger to her bleeding neck.

  As he lifts his finger to his mouth and licks it.

  He murmurs something, a word I can’t hear, and suddenly the ashes of my parents rise and mix with the floating snow to create a whirlwind. It’s blinding, like being in the middle of a sandstorm. I would fall to my knees, but I still can’t move.

  And then he’s gone.

  I know this because the ash falls, the snow falls, and I can hear the wind again blowing softly through the trees. Poe jumps to her feet, Nachiel cries out, and now my legs finally move, and I stumble toward Lisa, her blood darkening the white snow. But when I reach her, cradle her lolling head in my arms—oh God.

  There are no words.

  There are no words.

  No words.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: LIFE SUPPORT

  Frantically I try to staunch the flow of blood from the gaping wound on Lisa’s neck, but there’s too much, too much—it seeps through my fingers, hot and sticky, drips down my wrist onto the snow, turning it a deep, profane red.

  “Please,” I whisper. “Oh please don’t. Don’t go, Lisa. Don’t go.”

  I press my trembling hands against her neck while her skin turns pale—This is all my fault; oh God, this is all my fault. Her eyes are half-closed and glassy; they are beyond me, beyond this world, this moment. She warned me, oh God she told me not to go messing around with Daniel’s numbers, but did I listen? She said she knew how it would end, and now it’s too late.

  “Nachiel, do something.”

  Nachiel places a weighty hand on my shoulder, his broken arm miraculously healed.

  “You can save her,” I protest, sweat beading
my forehead. “I’ve seen you—”

  “It doesn’t work that way. A spirit can only heal the body it possesses.”

  A shudder runs through me. “Christ, I don’t know what to do,” I say, my voice breaking. “It’s all my fault. I’ve killed her, the one good thing—”

  “Dimitri,” says Poe with a fierce intensity. “Her life force is still there. Faint, but there. It will not be for long.”

  I glance up and see that Poe’s eyes have changed; they’re lighter now, a pale wintry blue. And I notice the morning is coming. Warm slices of sunlight reach through the trees, glint against the broken glass, and a small flicker of hope lights in my chest. “Cell phone,” I say quickly. “There’s a cell phone in my jacket. We can call an ambulance.”

  Nachiel looks down. “It won’t get here in time.”

  Lisa’s warm blood flows through my fingers, and she’s lost so much already. Why didn’t my father tell me more about this goddamn inheritance? But then he did. The inscription in the watch: “Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.”

  Which gives me an idea. How can I make time disappear? Maybe it’s not the most brilliant idea, but it will have to do.

  “She’s going,” whispers Poe.

  No, she’s not. The rest I’ll have to work out later.

  To say Nachiel’s pissed is an understatement. For the first time I’m actually glad to be immortal, because if I wasn’t, I think he might actually go over to the dark side and kill me. Cradling Lisa in his arms with a strength I envy, he charges through the woods—I have to jog to keep up. Not easy, since my feet are frozen and my teeth are chattering. I really need to get a decent winter jacket one of these days.

  “Uh, where are we going?” I venture to ask.

  “Nate had medical supplies in his pack,” hisses Nachiel through his teeth.

  But I really don’t care if he’s pissed, because Lisa, while still pale and unconscious, is now breathing, and with each soft breath I’m pushed a few more steps past punch-drunk into the giddy arms of hope. It only took a few seconds for the gash in her neck to heal, and