Death And Darkness

by E. A. Copen

  The whole process was embarrassing. Here I was, a grown man, and I couldn’t even sign my name. Couldn’t drive, couldn’t walk without assistance. It was as if I’d suddenly gone back to being a toddler in body while my mind remained acutely aware of all it had lost.

  After we signed, the warden collected our papers and stacked them. “I’ll be in touch if there are any issues,” he promised and left the room.

  “Do you think he will?” I asked Moses. Without the warden’s cooperation, we were screwed.

  “I think he genuinely wants what’s best for everyone.” Moses’ tone was careful. “Be careful how you approach him, Lazarus. If he thinks you’re going to be trouble, he’ll do everything he can to shut you down.”

  I nodded and stood, my hands firmly on the tabletop. “What time is it?”

  “Just after ten.” His chair rolled over the floor as he stood. “If we hurry, I think we can still meet your date for coffee.”

  Moses helped me find the door and led me into the hallway, holding onto my elbow.

  I hoped this Sandman would be open to negotiation. Now that my eyes were worthless, I hoped he’d take some other form of payment. Then again, luck hadn’t exactly been on my side lately.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Coffee was the best smell in the world to an exhausted brain. As soon as we walked through the door, I perked up and stopped drooling on myself. The familiar scents of magic caffeine beans, frothy milk, and sweet, sweet sugar painted the picture of a typical Starbucks. An upbeat pop number played on the stereo while a tired employee shuffled around, the sound interrupted by a counter.

  I’d always wondered what kind of person frequented a coffee shop at midnight. Caffeinating when you ought to be asleep had seemed like a sin a week ago. Now, coffee was my only lifeline on a fast-sinking ship. Even with dangerous doses of caffeine in my system, I still felt like I could nod off at any time. I had to keep topping off every twenty minutes or so, or else I’d pass out. A nap inside the dream circle in the upstairs of Paula’s bar sounded like the best thing ever.

  But first, I had to see a man about some magic sand.

  I shifted my grip on Moses’ arm and turned, stretching out my senses to see if I could feel anyone else in the coffee shop only to hit a wall. Not a literal wall, though it felt a lot like running into one made of brick. No, there was a place off to my right devoid of magic. When I tried to reach into the space with my power, the magic hit some barrier and fizzled to nothing.

  “That him?” I nodded toward the void.

  Moses shifted his weight as he turned to have a look. “Maybe, if your Sandman is supposed to be a paranoid-looking bum living out of a shopping cart.”

  Well, I’d met stranger people in New Orleans. If the Pale Horseman could be a broke and blind ex-con, why couldn’t the Sandman be a homeless guy? I turned us toward him.

  The smell made me stop in my tracks. He hadn’t bathed in a long while, except maybe a swim in the muddy river. He reeked of body odor and old swamp.

  “Whatchu want?” His coffee cup slid across the table as he pulled it toward him, a defensive gesture.

  “My name’s Lazarus Kerrigan. I believe you’ve been waiting for me?”

  He hesitated. “Who’s that?”

  “This is Moses Moses. I was in an accident recently. He’s helping me get around.”

  Moses let me go and presumably made a polite gesture. “Pleased to meet you. If it’s all right with you, I’ll excuse myself to go get us some coffee. How do you take yours, Lazarus?”

  “Tall and full of as much espresso as they’ll put in it.” I felt around for the chair and pulled it out, easing around to sit.

  The Sandman’s disapproval was strong enough that I could feel it as he regarded me. “You’re blind.”

  “A recent development.” I waved it away as if it didn’t matter. “Baron Samedi said you might be able to help with my Titan problem.”

  “Maybe, maybe.” He drummed his fingers on the side of a mostly empty cup. “But I usually ask for payment. Payment you don’t have. Without payment, how am I supposed to do anything? No. No, this can’t work.”

  Fabric slid against the table. I felt him brush against me as he tried to make for the exit. My hand shot out and closed around a grimy arm. He pulled, trying to get loose, but I held tight.

  “I don’t have my sight to give you, it’s true. But if you don’t help me, a lot of people are going to die.”

  His arm tensed as if he’d clenched his fists. “I ain’t gonna die, so what’s it to me?”

  Selfish bastard. I had to offer him something worth his while, or I was going to lose him. “What is it you want?”

  The Sandman pulled his arm away and slid back into his seat. Or, at least it sounded like he did, judging by the rustling layers of cloth and the way his smell receded slightly. “I’m tired,” he said matter-of-factly.

  The phrase made me scowl. What did this guy know about being tired? How long had it been since I’d slept? Three days now? But I had to keep it together. If I snapped at him, this would all be over.

  “A place to sleep. Is that what you want?”

  He made a choking sound. It took me a minute to realize it was laughter. “There’s plenty of places to sleep in this city if you know where to look. Lots of good food too. Only thing I can’t get on my own is a hot shower and a hot coffee. Gotta beg for change for that. But I don’t sleep. Can’t.” There was a brief pause followed by a loud slurping sound as he sucked down a coffee of his own. “Does your special vision still work?”

  He must’ve meant my Soul Vision. I hadn’t tried to use it since the prison, afraid that it might further damage my eyes. At least if that still worked, I’d be able to see where people were. It’d be better than pawing around blind in the dark.

  I closed my eyes, though there was no need, and took a deep breath. With a thought, I turned on the Vision and squinted at the bright light in front of me. The Sandman’s soul didn’t look like any I’d ever seen. It was hourglass-shaped and shifted like sand rather than being a glowing static ball like most souls. More rivers of sand flowed out from the hourglass, reaching into every part of his body.

  The chair creaked as I shifted to look behind me. Three souls near the counter, one of them with a tiny black spot. That’d be Moses. The other two probably belonged to employees. Both were human.

  “Seems to work just fine,” I said, turning back to the Sandman.

  His soul shifted, one river of sand moving to block the hourglass as he lifted something—presumably his coffee—to his mouth. After another slurp, he continued, “Then here’s the deal. You want my powers so you can defeat this Titan? The only way that works is if I surrender the mantle to you. I can do that, no problem, but there are rules about who I can give it to and for how long. I can’t, for example, give the Sandman mantle to someone who’s already got one.”

  “Meaning I’ve got to give up being the Pale Horseman first.” I frowned. If that worked anything like when I was given the mantle in the first place, it would not be a pleasant experience. Plus, I’d need Samedi to make it work, and he’d been flighty of late. At least I knew I could call him now.

  “We trade mantles,” the Sandman proposed. “For twenty-four hours, I become Death. You become the Sandman. I get to sleep. You get to beat the bad guy. Everybody wins.”

  Except that I might need my powers as the Pale Horseman, and there was no telling what kind of trouble he might cause while he was wearing the mantle. I also didn’t know if Samedi would agree to the transfer.

  I nodded to the Sandman. “Who’s your boss?”

  “Boss?” He sounded as if he’d just swallowed day-old coffee. “Ain’t got no boss.”

  “I mean, who gave you the Sandman mantle?”

  Tendrils of sand to the left and right of his hourglass soul rose and fell. He’d shrugged. “Last Sandman, I suppose. I don’t recall. It’s been a long time. Been a Sandman as far back as I can remember. But if you�
�re asking if I’ve got the authority to seal the deal, I do. Guess you’ll need to talk to Samedi?”

  I nodded.

  The Sandman sighed. “Figured as much. If you want to do this transfer, it works best at a transitionary time like dawn or dusk anyway. We’ve got about eight hours before the sun comes up. If you want to go through with this, you can grab Samedi and meet me out front at dawn. We’ll do it around back.”

  “What happens if I miss my appointment?”

  He coughed. “I’ve got places to be. Can’t hang around New Orleans forever. You don’t show, I’ll move on and you’ll miss your chance, so don’t be late.” His soul shifted as he stood.

  Moses returned along with the heavenly smell of coffee. He stopped right beside me. The dull thump of cardboard against the table told me he’d placed a coffee cup in front of me. I gripped it with both hands and savored the warmth a moment before picking it up and chugging as much as I could stand.

  “Leaving so soon?” Moses said to the Sandman.

  “Not leaving so much as going outside to wait. Coffee shop employees don’t like it when you sit at the table all night. If I stay more than an hour, they come and ask me to leave.” He hesitated. “One of them for me?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Thanks.” The Sandman’s arm stretched out and retreated toward his body as he took the coffee from Moses. “Don’t forget about me, Mr. Horseman. And whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I held my head in my hands as Moses slid into the seat across from me. The black spot on his soul slid out of view, blocked by the table. It was ironic that he would seal the angel part of himself away in darkness, and yet his soul had been so bright that it blinded me.

  “How am I going to beat this thing?” I asked, shaking my head.

  After going up against gods, Archons, and the Devil himself, the Titan might be the one thing I didn’t know how to kill. Without my powers, I’d be even more helpless. The Sandman’s sand might be a powerful weapon in its own right, but I’d have only twenty-four hours to learn how to use it, and then destroy the Titan, something a whole team of gods had failed to do.

  Locking him away wouldn’t be good enough, not with all the instability in the underworld. Since Morningstar was gone, other gods—and worse creatures like those from the Nightlands—would be fighting over control of his territory. Plus all the demons that’d be fighting for Morningstar’s crown. If I sent Ikelos back to Hades, he might just break out again. No, Ikelos had to die.

  “This Titan’s realm is dreams, right?” Moses asked.

  I nodded. “I figure I’ll have to fight him there. Transport myself into a waking dream. There are spells I can use, and the dreamcatchers that Littlefox mentioned should be enough to protect my body. Just to be safe, I’m going to have to secure it.”

  I’d need to be handcuffed to whatever bed I was in or otherwise secured. That would mean bringing someone else in to help. I hadn’t decided who to enlist yet, but whoever it was would have to be a Normal. I couldn’t risk letting the Titan feed on another wizard.

  “Once you get into the Dream realm, then what?”

  I shrugged. “I hope the Sandman mantle can help with that, but I don’t know what it can do yet. I was told Titans are immune to magic, and they don’t have a soul. That means I’ll just be facing its manifestation in the dream world. Its avatar.”

  “Avatar?” Moses repeated. “Like them blue aliens in that movie?”

  His response drew a chuckle out of me. It was good to laugh in the face of exhaustion and stress.

  “Sort of. I don’t know a lot about gods and magic outside of my necromancer expertise, but I do know dreams. Part of what I do at the shop is dream interpretation. Twenty bucks a pop, and I’ll tell you what your brain’s been trying to say while you sleep.” I gripped the coffee cup in front of me and turned it my hands, running my fingers along the cardboard ring in the middle. “When you sleep, your mind creates a representation of you. It’s you, but different. If you want to get all psychological, it’s primarily driven by the id, although sometimes other parts creep in. Basically, you’re a super awesome, superhuman version of you.” I hesitated a moment as a new thought struck me. “Do you even dream, Moses?”

  “I don’t. Not in so many words. I spend my evenings in meditation, prayer, and praise while the body I’m in rests. But this is all really interesting, Lazarus. I had no idea you knew so much about dreams.”

  “It’s part of my job.” I shrugged. “Anyway, dreams are also more inherently negative than positive, but nightmares aren’t all that common. Night terrors and sleep disturbances are even less common and typically signs of a deeper psychological problem or something like a haunting. I’ve had to learn to separate the two over the years. That means dabbling a bit in psychology myself. Honestly, most people are just nutcases.”

  I sighed and gulped down more of my coffee. It was already cooling beyond a palatable temperature, but I didn’t care. The coffee would give me up to a half-hour of lucidity, and I had a whole eight hours left to get through. My stomach, however, was complaining about the caffeine I’d sucked down in place of actual food.

  “Dreams don’t all happen in the same place either,” I said, tapping my fingers on the table, just to burn off some of the nervous energy coursing through me. “Meaning if I’m dreaming, and my next-door neighbor is too, we can’t just move back and forth between each other’s dreams unless there’s been some sort of magical connection forged. But if Ikelos is influencing all of us, he’ll have forged that connection like a system of highways, meaning all I have to do to find him once I get inside is follow the road back to its center. Of course, I’m assuming that Ikelos’ existence in the realm of dreams means he’s also an avatar with no physical body. That’d make him sort of like a disembodied soul, except that instead of being trapped on Earth and sealed off from the After, he’s trapped in the dream world and cut off from Earth.”

  “Which is why he’s trying to come through. And the prison is ground zero?”

  I nodded and rubbed my temples. All this thinking was making my head hurt. “My best chance of being able to hit him where it hurts is to be physically in the place where he’s trying to bridge the realms. Chances are good I’ll have to do this waking dream thing in a cell in Angola.”

  Something I wasn’t looking forward to doing. The last time I’d spent the night in a cell, it was in the New Orleans Jail, though I hadn’t been an inmate. Emma and I had gathered the fae of New Orleans into a cell as protection from a couple of gods who wanted to rip out their guts. I thought I was tired then and went to pass out in an open cell. Now I knew what the word tired really meant. My head was pounding, my eyes burning. I couldn’t remember what my face felt like or what real food was.

  Something vibrated in my pocket, prompting me to jump up. The sudden movement overturned my coffee cup and spilled its contents all over the front of me. With a curse, I felt around for the metal napkin container and ripped a few out to mop up the mess.

  “Answer the phone,” Moses urged, pulling out more napkins and slapping them into the puddle on the table. “I got this.”

  The phone. That’s what that buzzing was. It hadn’t even occurred to me that someone would be calling me. God, I needed rest.

  I fumbled to get it out of my pocket and hesitated with my thumb on the screen. Did I swipe left or right to answer? Right seemed more likely. I slid my thumb to the right and raised the phone awkwardly to my ear while dabbing at my coffee-stained shirt with the napkins in my other hand. “Lazarus. Who’s this?”

  “You don’t have me in your phone anymore?”

  Beth. Crap. Why was she calling me? The last time I’d seen her, Loki had roped her into becoming the next Famine. I’d almost felt bad until I realized she’d agreed to it willingly. Beth was in love with her career as an archeologist and had effectively sold her soul to the Norse god of mischief to keep her exhibit running.

>   Then it hit me. Samedi had said he’d contact someone about healing my eyes, but that it’d be complicated. Nothing was more complicated than my history with Beth.

  I swallowed the painful lump in my throat. “I can’t see the screen on my phone. I’ve sort of lost my vision, Beth.”

  “Sort of?”

  I sighed. “Okay. I have. I can’t see anything but black and streaks of red and green. Did the Baron contact you? I assume that’s why you’re calling me at…whatever time it is where you are.”

  Beth hesitated. “Loki told me to call you. Said you needed something and that I was to assist however I could.”

  The Baron must’ve talked to Loki directly. Dammit, Loki’s involvement was the last thing I wanted. He was probably sitting in his office—or wherever Norse gods hung out during the night—with a smug smile on his face, enjoying that I had to go to him for help.

  Beth cleared her throat. “So, how can I assist the Pale Horseman?” Her tone was cold as if she hated me.

  Once, Beth and I had been lovers. I thought she’d be the girl I married. I’d even bought a ring. But then I went to prison, and she became the curator of a traveling exhibit of ancient Egyptian artifacts. She outgrew me.

  I did my best to answer in the same short tone. If she wanted to play hardball, fine. I could play. “Well, getting my sight back would be nice. Doctors said my retinas were burned and might scar, so this vision loss could be permanent. It’s going to be awful hard killing your boss if I can’t see him.”

  “Don’t do it, Lazarus,” she whispered. “Leave Loki alone, or let someone else take him on. For your sake, back off.”

  For my sake? “That’s funny coming from the woman who embraced Loki for a pile of money.”

  “It wasn’t about the money, Lazarus. The exhibition is history. Those artifacts have survived thousands of years. When I’m dead and gone, they’ll still be there for the enjoyment of future generations. But you wouldn’t understand. All you care about is right now. Today. Screw the consequences. That’s always been you. Fix today and worry about tomorrow the next day.”