A scream was building in the pit of my stomach. “For what?”
He cocked his head like he was listening for something. I do not know. Something.
“You don’t know? Something? Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said, running a hand through my hair and looking up at the blistering, red sky. The sun, or wherever the red light came from, broke through the clouds at intervals, and shafts of orange, gold and crimson kept appearing and dissolving within seconds of each other. The clouds boiled and shifted, harassed by a wind I couldn’t feel. I dropped my eyes to the ground and kicked the thin layer of red dust all around us. “What the hell else are we waiting for?”
As if to answer me, somebody screamed. I looked up just in time to see a body tumbling headlong out of a gaping red hole in the sky.
Ah, said Hades. He has arrived.
“Who has arrived?” I asked as the body hit the dirt.
“Oof!” it said.
Hades looked at me and pointed. Him.
“Jesus, kid, are you all right?” I asked, helping him to his feet. He was scrawny with shaggy, brown hair, cracked glasses, and an empty holster on his right hip. The gun was in the sand a few feet from us, its barrel-up. The red light made the old metal shine like wet paint.
“I’m good.” Taking a step back from me to brush himself off and retrieve his gun, he looked around before turning back to face me. “Am I in hell?”
I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. “No.”
He glanced at Hades and I could have sworn he saw him. “You sure?” he asked. “Um, ‘cause that dude looks like he could be the devil or like the Angel of Death or something.”
Well, that solved that mystery. “He’s not the devil,” I answered.
“Then you’re good guys?” the kid inquired cautiously.
“As good as you’ll find,” I answered.
The kid sighed and took a big breath before reholstering his gun and smiling at me from behind a pair of totally wrecked glasses. The left lens was a spiderweb of cracks and scratches. Light flashed off them whenever he moved, growing brighter where the cracks were deepest, like sunlight on a broken windshield.
“Sorry,” he said as he held out his hand. “I have no idea why I’m here or how I got here, but Henry Cotton, at your service, sir.”
I shook his hand. He had a firm grip. “Right,” I said. “You just fell from the sky.”
“I did, sir.”
“And you’re not at all fazed by that?”
“Don’t have time to be fazed, sir.” He looked around a little uncertainly as he sucked in his bottom lip. “Where are we anyway?”
“Inside a volcano or beneath it,” I said, “or something.” I turned to Hades and whispered, “Is he supposed to be here?”
Hmmm, said Hades. The question is not of presence, but of purpose.
“What does that even mean?” I asked, growing exasperated.
“So, if he’s not the devil, who exactly is he?” asked Henry.
“God of the Netherworld,” I said without thinking.
“Oh. Cool. Is he also a skeleton?”
“Yeah, he… hang on,” I interrupted myself as I turned to face Hades. “He can see you?”
Hades was staring at Henry, his skull forward, and a deep, rumbling murmur bubbled up from somewhere beneath his bones. Yes, he can.
“Why can he see you?” I continued. Henry’s skin was perfectly average, with no lights or lines or Netherworldian alterations visible. His eyes weren’t glowing, his nails weren’t longer, and he wasn’t turning furry. By all accounts, he appeared to be human but he wasn’t having an emotional breakdown. That normally happened to humans if they were exposed to a magical atmosphere without first being prepared. Yet Henry seemed perfectly calm. Perfectly human, and perfectly sedate.
Hmmm, said Hades, thinking about that.
I snapped my fingers in front of him. “Yo, Hades. Why can the human kid see you?”
Hades stared at Henry and didn’t react.
“Fucking whatever,” I said, fed up. I turned to Henry. “Okay, how did you get here, exactly?”
Henry pointed up, and I saw the heel of his hand was all scraped up. The kind of abrasion you get from falling hard onto concrete or gravel, not just sand. “I fell out of the sky.”
“Yeah, but how did you get into the sky to begin with?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, looking bizarrely nonchalant. His eyes were enormous behind his glasses, bulbs of wonder and curiosity. Maybe he was about to have a total and complete mental breakdown. I hoped not.
“I went to check on Agent O’Neil when the monsters came and an earthquake shook everything, and then there was a big, red line in the air and, I don’t know, I guess it sucked me in or—”
“Hold up,” I said, raising my hand in case he didn’t understand English. “Agent O’Neil? As in… Dulcie O’Neil?”
He beamed. “Yes! Do you know her?”
“I do. I, um…” I swallowed hard, not sure exactly what to say. “I work with her. Sometimes.”
“Nifty, so do I. I’m her new partner. Well, I was, before I ended up here.” Henry adjusted the glasses on his nose, which seemed to hang permanently askew. “Does the Lord of the Dead work with Agent O’Neil too?”
“Um.” I looked at Hades, who didn’t respond. He was staring into the clouds, his fingers clacking contemplatively on his staff.
“Sir?”
“Call me Knight,” I said. “And no, he doesn’t work with her. He’s new… ugh he’s new on the force.”
Beside me, Hades made a ripping-metal sound that might have been his attempt at a snort.
Henry nodded and put his hands on his hips, surveying the desert. He kept nodding for a while before he asked, “So… where ya going?”
“On a mission to kill monsters, I think,” I said. “You said you saw monsters before you ended up here?”
“I heard about them. Something attacked our precinct and mauled everybody inside it to death, and that same thing showed up again at Agent O’Neil’s friend’s house, although I don’t technically know if it was the same monster.”
I swallowed hard. “Mauled everyone inside your precinct?”
“Yeah. It was awful. Blood spatters everywhere, and ripped body parts. Agent O’Neil said she could feel something bad in the air too, that made her sick.”
“Then Dulcie is okay?” I felt my heartbeat start to calm down.
“Yeah, she’s fine. Well, she was, last I saw her.”
“Okay, getting back to the part about her feeling something that made her sick… what do you mean? Something bad? Like, magic?”
Henry nodded. “Something like that. She couldn’t identify it so it was really bugging her. She went home before I could ask her about it again.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well…”
I trailed off, watching Hades. He strode forward and touched Henry’s forehead. A light pulsed through Henry, and bright gold waves appeared under his skin.
Ah…
“Ah?” I said. “What ‘ah’?”
I had forgotten, Hades said, more to himself than to either of us. He dropped his hand and appraised Henry, cocking his head to one side, his ember-eyes flickering. Yes, you will do. He chuckled. The Universe always provides.
“Provides what?” I asked.
Henry looked up at me, trying his damnedest not to look at Hades. “Am I in trouble, sir?”
Hades walked behind Henry and placed a skeletal hand on his shoulder, one finger after the other as he leaned in.
Hold your breath, he said. And remember—you must be the one to kill Meg.
“Meg? I have to kill her? What?” asked Henry.
Your soul is unsullied, Hades said. Carry my power into the world, and use it to destroy her and the ancient evil she embraces.
“Oh, sure, you’ll answer his questions,” I said.
Hades ignored me and Henry looked down into the lava, taking a deep breath.
Then Hades pushed him in
.
“What the hell?” I shouted. I ran to the edge, but Henry was already gone by the time I looked down. I searched for his hand reaching up out of the magma, or what was left of the ripple his splash would have made, but I saw nothing. I glared over my shoulder at Hades. The lights under my skin flared and burned. “What the fuck, Hades?”
He looked back at me, but only radiated a calm demeanor. Is there a problem?
“Yes there’s a problem, you just pushed a human being into a boiling pool of lava!”
I certainly did.
I stood up and stormed towards him. “He’s not a Loki; he isn’t fireproof!”
His head joggled sideways, giving the vague inclination of someone rolling his eyes. Lokis, he said, are so impatient. He reached forward and placed his hand on my shoulder, preparing to push me in, too.
“Hey, wait a minute!” I grabbed his wrist and almost screamed—it was burning, hot as a red poker.
Brace yourself.
He gave me a hard shove before I careened backwards into the pit.
TWELVE
Sam
Something happens to you the longer you live like this.
We’d been some version of “on the run” every day for the last… Hades only knew how long. Even our average days, the good ol’ days, were filled with dreamstalkers, skinchangers, shapeshifters and every monster that had the gall to go bump in the night. Most of our adversaries are armed to the teeth with poisons, potions and deceptively small guns. We are the good guys: cops, technicians, witches, fairies, elves and lokis; it’s part of the gig. It’s the life we signed up for, filled with the perils we knew we’d have to face eventually, and we were trained to face them.
We didn’t, however, sign up for a gig facilitating the end of the world.
It’s like agreeing to foster a dog and receiving a dragon with a broken thirty-day chip from anger management stuck between its teeth. Then, more and more dragons are sent to you every day for the rest of your life because the Universe is brimming with monsters, and hey, you can handle them, right? You’ve been through worse, and dealt with all kinds of nightmarish creatures, so this should be a walk in the park. An egomaniacal vampire overlord sending abominations to kill and kidnap you and your friends?
It must be Tuesday.
It’s been Tuesday now for a really long time.
“We need to inform everybody we know, Dulcie,” I said. “There’s no telling how many abominations Meg has out looking for you.”
Dulcie appeared slightly nauseous. “What? Do you really think there’s more?”
“Why wouldn’t there be?”
She pursed her lips and snorted at herself, like her previous question was a stupid one. “No. I’m sure there’s definitely more. How many depends on how long it took Meg to make them, but… yeah. No way she stopped at only two.”
“So, we should start making those calls.”
Dulcie nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”
“I’ll call Agent Miles,” said Casey—referring to the guy that was heading the Splendor branch of the ongoing investigation. He’d be working in a lab somewhere with a bunch of witches, analyzing the weird energy signals left behind not just by Dulcie’s glamoured tantrum, but also the wormhole Jax used to spirit her away in the first place. Knowing Meg was alive would turn his team’s progress on its head.
“I’ll do it,” said Dulcie. “Text me his number and I’ll start telling him everything that happened. You can just…” She gestured toward his bleeding shoulder, finishing, “deal with that.”
“Probably a good idea,” I said. The bandages wrapped around it were already soaked through with blood. I needed to get Casey inside so he could drink something that would click all his blood back in place.
Casey cooperated, and Dulcie dialed. “Agent Miles? Yes, this is Dulcie O’Neil, Casey James just gave me your contact information. We have a serious situation. Meg is alive and she manufactured a series of monsters called abominations to search for me and the people I know. I believe one of these abominations killed everyone in my precinct. We personally dispatched at least two…”
Okay, we had to head inside and get to work.
“Bram, can you… Bram?” I said slightly louder. He was staring at Dulcie with narrow, pensive eyes as she talked quietly into her phone. His arms were crossed and he was leaning on one side with his head tilted. He appeared totally enthralled with her and was probably indulging leery, asinine thoughts about her. Actually, there was no “probably” about it. I was sure that was exactly what he was in the process of doing.
I snapped my fingers a few times, the way you do to get the attention of a dog. “Hey, Bram?
He jumped just a little, and turned toward me slowly as he inclined his head. His eyes cleared like he was pulling himself out of a daydream. He answered a little too slowly. “Yes?”
For a second, I didn’t know what to say. “Um.” I looked from him to Dulcie and back again, trying to ask the question using only my eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“What were you looking at?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “Would you like me to look at something?”
“No.” He was lying, which was normal, but now he did it badly. His eyes were shifty and he was just a little too sure of his answer. The longer I watched him, the more it seemed like he was trying really hard not to look at Dulcie again. Maybe whatever he’d been thinking was something embarrassing? But what thought could he have about Dulcie that would actually embarrass him? Everyone had heard plenty of horror stories about the kinds of things he demands in exchange for help. With hardly a stellar reputation to project, why did Bram look like cat that ate the canary for the first time since I met him?
Stranger still, he apologized. Like, on his own. Without any prompting or threatening and without even being particularly glib about it. He almost could convince me he meant it. And all that stuff he’d just done to free Casey from the Abomination and then helping him by removing the talons? What the fuck, Bram?
Whatever… I decided to take some time to parse him out, but later. “I’m gonna take a feather and see if I can track the other one,” I said. “Can you help me get Casey inside?”
“I can walk,” said Casey.
“Well, you’re not going to,” I said. “Just let Bram carry you, okay? Your phone’s still inside anyway.”
“Sam, I’m fine.”
“The hell you are,” I snapped. He started to protest and I clamped my hand over his mouth. “Just let the vampire carry you, please?”
Casey sighed a muffled, “Fine” through my fingers so I took my hand away and kissed his forehead.
“Bram?” I asked.
Bram nodded and walked over to him, scooping him up like a bride and starting for the house. I couldn’t restrain my smile. Casey grimaced and Bram deliberately avoided looking at him as he walked. If I’d been in a better frame of mind, I might have found the whole exchance hysterical. But with Casey bleeding out like he was, it was hard to see the humor. Dulcie followed when she saw us moving.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “We’re fine. Agent James’s shoulder was ripped to hell, but nobody died.”
An unspoken yet belonged at the end of that sentence.
We went inside and Bram set Casey down with surprising care and gentleness on a chair in the living room. Thankfully, it was a darkish red one, and not the white couch.
“Sorry I’m staining your furniture with my blood,” Casey said.
“Don’t worry about it,” I answered as I opened my cabinets, finding one of twenty pink phials. I walked over and handed it to him. “Drink this. It’ll kill the pain.”
Now, I had to find the other monster.
I took out the bowls and whisks as I went through the kitchen, along with the mortar and pestle and some stone implements which I arranged on the island with a deliberate clicking sound. Mason jars filled with ground herbs, bottles of commercial distillations, bat wings, newt tails, lizard tongues
and manticore claws were also in abundance.
Setting everything in as neat a pile as I could manage on one side of the island, I left the center clear for one large bowl and the mortar and pestle.
“May I assist?” asked Bram.
“You may,” I responded. “There’s a bottle of distilled…” dryadic sap, I was about to say, but Bram would have had no idea what that looked like. “There’s a bottle of green, sloshy stuff in the fridge. Upper left shelf inside the door.”
Bram nodded, opened the refrigerator and pulled it out, asking, “This?”
“Yes,” I said. “Put it right there.”
“What next?’
“Open it and pour, like, a tablespoon into the bowl.”
Bram uncorked the bottle and made a face. The smell was ripe even from here. Cloying sweet, it stunk like an olfactory explosion of long dead flowers and burning grass.
“Um,” he said, looking between the bowl and the bottle.
“What?” I asked.
“Exactly how much is a tablespoon?”
I almost laughed. “You’re how old? And you don’t know the basic measurements?”
“Shall I remind you that I am not a chef?”
“No, you shall not,” I said. The laugh stopped abruptly, almost as if I didn’t have enough energy to make the sound. I suddenly felt very hollow inside, like I hadn’t eaten in a hundred years. I opened a drawer and handed Bram a small, plastic measuring spoon. As a rule, I avoid keeping pure metals around the house. Lots of my friends are monsters that suffer from magical allergies, so it would have been rude as much as dangerous to have them nearby.
“This is a tablespoon,” I said.
He spent a long moment examining the spoon, as though he’d never seen one before. Then he reached into the jar and retrieved a little more than the tablespoon could hold. He knocked it lightly against the side until it evened out.
“I baked once,” he said, “but it was many years ago. It was dreadful.”
Years ago? I went stiff for a fraction of a second. During our very short and stupid relationship, he came home with me a few times and I persuaded him to bake with me once. We made chocolate chip cookies—but not from scratch. Dreadful was his description of them?
What Screams May Come Page 14