19

Vic

Leaving Sanctuary had been the right decision, but Vic still wished a little of its light had clung to the three of them.

“We shouldn’t have tried to stop them, right?” Jodi asked. “I mean, my mom and the hippies, what they’re doing to the other ghosts?”

“I don’t know how we would,” Vic said. “There are a lot more of them than us.”

“And they have a demon on their side,” Mel said.

Her face hadn’t softened since they’d left Sanctuary.

“Does it bother you, what he said about you?” Vic asked.

“It’s my fault,” Mel said with a sigh. “I came here. I caused the demons to quit doing what they’re supposed to do. I broke the rules, and the dead are suffering for it.”

“You paid a price too,” Vic said. “You’ve been down here a hundred years, remember?”

“Yeah,” Jodi said. “You did your time.”

Mel gave them a bitter smile.

“I don’t think either of you can understand,” she said.

“You sound like her, you know?” Vic asked. “Especially when you talk about the rules.”

“I know,” Mel said. “And she was right. I hate it, hate her a bit, but she was right.”

“It doesn’t seem like her style, to leave you down here so long,” Vic said.

“It’s always been different for me,” Mel said.

“Because you’re her kid?” Vic asked.

It was a guess, but they carried themselves in the same way. Mel and Sara, Mel and Death. Vic had good instincts. It was what would have made him a good detective.

“Yes,” Mel said.

“Who are we talking about?” Jodi asked.

Mel looked worried.

“She’s, uh, come out of the closet,” Vic said. “Recently.”

Mel blinked at the expression.

“I mean everyone knows who she is now.”

“That’s a surprise,” Mel said.

“Who are you talking about?” Jodi demanded.

“Most call her Death,” Mel said. “I call her Momma.”

“She’s always talking about the rules,” Vic said. “Who made them?”

“The universe did,” Mel said. “At the beginning. It was Chaos before.”

“How old are you?” Jodi asked. “I mean, if Death is your mom . . .”

“I was twenty-three when I came here.”

“You’re not immortal?” Vic asked. “Like one of the elves?”

Mel shook her head.

“I don’t know why she had me. I suspect she had some purpose. There’s always a purpose, some reason that usually has to do with the damn rules.”

Vic smiled.

“You came down here to defy her,” he said.

“I came down here to say goodbye.” Mel looked west. “But it’s all gone wrong. The dead must reach the sea.”

“How do we fix it?” Vic asked.

“I don’t know if we can,” Mel said. “But there was blue in the sky, a crack in the underworld that should not exist.”

She started walking, faster than before. Vic held in a sigh and followed her.

They’d gone on for a while, probably a few miles, before Jodi asked, “Where do you reckon we are?”

“Reckon?” Vic asked.

“Screw you, I’m from Oklahoma,” Jodi said.

Vic laughed, happy to hear her spite again. An attitude was better than the sad, sorrowful look she’d worn since they’d left her mother behind.

“I think we’re in Nevada,” he said. “We started in Cali, at the ocean. We’ve been going east, so . . . Nevada, maybe Arizona.”

“You sound like a douche when you call it Cali,” Jodi said with a snort. “I wonder if that place was supposed to be Burning Man. This all feels like a bad trip.”

“What’s Burning Man?” Mel asked.

“That would take a bit to explain,” Vic said.

“Later, then,” Mel declared.

He hadn’t expected the trees. Dead, pale, and stripped of their bark, they jutted from the ground like bones, often arranged like fingers trying to escape the sand.

Vic recalled Shepherd’s warning and the wolves before June and the others had found them.

Mel and Jodi kept close, but they marched single file, sticking to the center of the highway.

The pale sand darkened, turning to the color of fresh blood. The trees closed in, not looking any healthier. They curved overhead, reaching for them like grasping hands. It all smelled like burnt earth and salt. The air held a tension, like rain could fall, but no wind blew, no drops came.

The gloom settled into Vic’s bones.

He lost all track of time.

A ghost appeared. Pale, she drifted, the hem of her bathrobe making it look like she danced toward them.

Then she danced off the road, past the edge of the concrete. Vic tried to call out, to warn her, not that she would have heard him. The lost had never responded to him.

The trees closest to her came to life, something massive shook off the sand that concealed it. They were bones after all. The skeleton of a giant stood and snatched the ghost in a hand larger than a minivan.

She didn’t seem to notice, didn’t struggle as the skeleton’s rib cage swung open like a pair of doors. The giant squeezed her inside its chest. Then she twisted a little, imprisoned when the ribs swung shut. The skeleton fixed gleaming blue eyes on the three travelers. It stared them down as it sank back into the sand to await the next lost soul.

“See?” Jodi gasped out quietly. “Bad trip.”

“Yeah,” Vic whispered back. “Let’s keep going.”

The bone forest thickened as they hiked. Vic squinted, looking for gleaming eyes. It helped if he pretended the bones were trees, but the occasional skull cap, peeking out like a smooth boulder, didn’t help.

“What will happen if we die here?” Vic asked Mel.

“I don’t think we can,” she said, following his gaze.

He shuddered, unable to shake the idea of drowning in sand, buried forever.

It was his turn to pick up the pace, to get away from here.

The bone forest fell away and they were back in a desert. At least the sand here was yellow and brown, something closer to their world.

“The landscape keeps changing,” Vic said. “That’s good, right?”

“We have been rising this whole time,” Mel said. “So yes. It’s good.”

“What a dump,” Jodi exclaimed.

Vic couldn’t really argue.

The buildings ahead were more real and solid than Sanctuary’s, but the lines were all wrong. They’d been tilted and twisted in a way that made Vic’s eyes hurt.

Still, there were actual bricks and signs, though Vic couldn’t make out their lettering in the dim light of the one or two working streetlamps. There was even a filling station, though it looked old enough that it probably hadn’t serviced a car since the fifties. The pumps were rusted antiques.

“This whole world isn’t made from your memories, right?” Vic asked Mel.

“No,” she said. “This is hers. Her memories and dreams. I could only come here because she’d dreamed of me.”

Vic wondered if that was why he’d been able to open the way here. As far as he knew, he was the first Reaper to know he was a Reaper. Adam was the first warlock who’d maimed himself. Maybe Death had dreamed of them, and that had allowed Vic to open the way.

“Then why did she dream of them?” Jodi asked.

Vic followed her gaze to the ghosts idling through the town.

They wore uniforms, khaki coveralls with belts and boots. All men, they drifted in circles or stood frozen in place. Sometimes they bounced off each other.

“They are more of the lost,” Mel said. “They should be headed toward the sea.”

“Why are they dressed like that?” Jodi asked.

Vic squinted. “I think they’re Germans.”

“Germans?” Mel asked.

“Mom told me about this,” Vic explained. “They’re POWs, prisoners of war. There were camps all around the country after World War Two.”

“Really?” Jodi asked. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah,” Vic said. “There were a bunch in Oklahoma too.”

“I can’t believe you had another war like that,” Mel said.

“The second one was much worse,” Vic said with a frown. “We’ve had more since, but none as big, so maybe we finally learned our lesson.”

“Focus, people.” Jodi nodded to the prisoners. “Should we go around them?”

“They’re just ghosts,” Mel said.

She said it like it was so normal. This was his life now.

“You two really want to walk into a town full of Nazi ghosts?” Jodi asked, eyeing Vic and Mel with a pointed glare.

“What’s a Nazi?” Mel asked.

“Assholes,” Jodi said.

“She’s not wrong, but we’ll add that to the list of things to explain,” Vic said. “I don’t know what they’re doing here. Shouldn’t they be in their camp, not wandering the town?”

Mel squinted, trying to discern details.

“They’re thin. They probably walked through the walls. They should be on the road. They should go to the sea.”

“Too bad we can’t feed them to the skeletons,” Jodi said.

Vic looked at her.

“What?” she asked. “I might be a hick but they’re Nazis.”

“Can’t argue,” Vic said. “But we’re not leaving the road, right?

Mel and Jodi nodded.

They started forward but hadn’t gone more than a few steps before something cold flared in Vic’s chest.

Mel made a pained sound.

The earth shook as something collided with it. The three of them tumbled to the ground as the landscape bent and warped.

The town melted, caught in a glassy sphere. It streamed around the buildings and ghosts like murky water, shimmering like an oil stain.

Squinting, Vic could see the figure at the center. Arms outstretched, he held a familiar blade. Vic’s scythe shone like a sliver of moonlight.

The man who held it wore a black leather jacket and faded jeans. He was old, white-haired. He lifted the scythe and the ghosts burned away. Their ashes swirled, streaming into him.

“Damn it,” Vic said, finding his feet, looking back down the road. “Run.”

“What is it?” Jodi asked.

“It’s him. Your grandfather.”

“Great-grandfather,” Jodi corrected.

“Not really the time for an argument,” Vic said.

The sphere collapsed, imploding toward John. When the shimmer had cleared the ghosts were gone, consumed. Even the buildings had dissolved. Curved impressions showed where the sphere had ended.

John still wore the leather belts crossing his chest. His sickle, the blade he’d used to slice Adam open, hung from his waist. He looked like a cross between a biker and a farmer, but he no longer resembled a scarecrow.

The last time Vic had seen him, John had been gaunt, frail-looking but still dangerous. This wasn’t an old man on the verge of death. Blue fire streaked over John’s skin, bursting from it in cracks.

He’s figured out what Shepherd did, Vic thought. He’s eating the ghosts.

John spied Jodi and grinned. He pointed the scythe at her.

“Granddaughter,” he shouted, sounding gleeful. “Do you still want me to teach you?”

“Fuck you!” Jodi yelled back.

Good girl, Vic thought.

Not that cursing at the monster was going to do any good.

The Reaper squirmed in Vic’s chest, torn between him and John, a leashed hound desperate to return to its owner.

Vic tried to tug on it, to bring it to him, but John had the scythe and the Reaper was bound to it. It was stupid, just a piece of metal, but there was something else at work, something Vic couldn’t see, holding the Reaper in John’s grip.

The druid strode toward them now, taking long, confident steps.

He stopped at a familiar sound. They all stared, peering into the dark as headlights shone.

“Is that—” Jodi started to ask.

Eyes wide, John’s head whipped around in time for the Cutlass to hit him.

He flew to land with a crunch as the car came to a screeching halt. John wobbled to his feet, looking hurt as Adam leaped from the car, drew a pistol, and clicked the trigger to no effect.

Adam switched off the safety and put a round into John’s chest. Vic’s heart hammered as the gun boomed.

The connection between them surged. Vic could feel Adam’s hate for the weapon even as he took aim and fired again. He didn’t waver and fired a third time. Each shot hit home, a seven or better.

Hatred or not, Adam could shoot.

John stood, breath heaving, thick blood and blue light pouring from the holes in his chest.

He ran, moving at a blur. Before Vic could even track his movements, John grabbed Mel and flew into the air, heading north. She kicked and pounded her fists against him. Then Vic lost sight of them.

Adam took heaving breaths as Dr. Binder climbed out of the car.

Vic couldn’t say who moved first, but then Adam was in his arms. He kissed Vic hard.

Adam. Adam had found him.