Chapter Fifteen
“Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.”
—Emily Dickinson
I was pleased to find that the motorbike I had left discarded on the mountainside when we entered Xiangu’s territory was still there, covered in road dust and pine needles. I was even happier not to see Trivials congregated around it, waiting to give us trouble once we emerged. But where were they? Did they live nearby? Were they camping? They had seemed hell-bent on keeping a close eye on us that their absence now was odd. Surely one of them would’ve been waiting to alert the others if we came out of hiding.
There wasn’t time to worry, however. Wherever they were, they weren’t here, getting in our way.
“Ready to ride with me?” After I secured Dudley into the tank bag, I patted the backseat of my two-wheeled steed, wearing a deliberately crooked smile. Brent’s disgust with having to drive that unsavory Mary Kay pink Porsche back in Quebec was at the forefront of my mind. He would prove to be a changed Reaper if he hopped on the back of my ride without complaint. But he would ride on the back. We wouldn’t leave until he agreed to it.
Brent was stubborn, but I was the true mule in this relationship.
“My ass won’t fit on that little seat,” he said, giving the backseat unwarranted scorn. “But your cute one will.”
As he tried to pilfer my bike, intent on my backside riding on the rear as he maneuvered it through the mountain passes, I stopped him.
“My bike. My rules.” I gripped the handlebars. In case he needed more to show that this was non-negotiable, I swung my left leg over the seat and settled into the rider’s position. I gave Dudley a scratch on the head. “Dudley never argues about his position on the bike.”
“Dudley eats poop.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“He does not!”
“I saw him do it. Must be like little donuts to him.”
“You’re telling lies.”
“Why would I lie about your dog eating poop?”
As an Eidolon nearly a foot taller than me, Brent might have coerced me into giving in to him in years past. Not today.
I patted the backseat and grinned. “Hop on. I promise I won’t go too fast.”
He groaned, but the important thing was that he climbed onto the bike and slipped his arms around my waist for security. Having Brent curled around me like a koala bear latched to a tree trunk, I couldn’t help but be happy. I could get used to having him this close as I guided us into unknown places. There were so many secret, less-traveled roads in the remote places of the world that deserved exploring. How nice it would’ve been to discover them on two wheels and leather and all with him. Well, and Dudley, the dung eater.
“Did you really see Duds eat poop?” I had to know. Was this a habit I’d need to correct?
“I might’ve.”
So he is going to be coy now, eh?
“Oh, for Hades’ sake, Ollie,” Brent grumbled when I handed him a black helmet that hung from the handlebars.
“Safety first.” I pulled on my own helmet. The visor was down, chin strap locked.
“I’m a Reaper. Don’t I decide what’s safe and what isn’t?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
I rolled on the throttle and peeled off with Brent, Dudley, a few items of necessity, and a firm determination to get Styx back on track. We had a couple thousands of miles to ride. There was no guarantee that Delia, Papa, and Nicodemus wouldn’t be in Quebec City when we arrived.
Time was limited. Haste was vital.
We had covered a few hundred miles by dawn. The white-knuckle, steep Rocky Mountain roads gave way to the city of Denver and then after its metropolitan expanse, quaint high plains towns dotted the long, lonely eastbound highway. Brent gripped me tighter like he was holding onto me for fear that I’d somehow escape him again. Having spent so long away from him, yet yearning for his closeness, I grew dizzy with bliss, eager to fold into him and live there for the rest of my life. Would it have been so hard to give up now and let the rest of Styx handle this mess while Brent and I lived our perfect happily-ever-after? Was it so wrong to ask that of Styx? There had to be a limit to how much one Stygian was asked to give to the greater good. Maybe if we weren’t always running, always in danger, if we surrounded ourselves instead with the mundanely sweet, I’d be able to shake the foreboding I felt around him.
“We need to stop by my family’s homestead in Kentucky on our way back north,” he said during a pit stop as he pumped gasoline into the motorcycle. I was bent forward, fingertips pressed to the ground, head hanging as I stretched my hamstrings and lower back. His taped hiking boots were all I could see of him.
Dudley sat next to me. I watched the dog keenly in case he spotted something unsavory on the ground to eat.
“You think they’re still there?” I stood up and the blood from my head poured like melted butter down my neck and shoulders.
“I don’t know for certain.” He put the gas nozzle back. “But I have to find out. I want to get them involved in our plans. They can help us. And they can alert other rebel cells to begin heading back to Quebec.” He paused. “I need to know my family is okay.”
I watched him screw the cap on the motorbike’s tank. He turned it a little too far, but the cap didn’t crack. But he clutched the gas cap like it would fly away. The veins in his hand popped like small mountain ridges.
“What is it?” I placed my hand over his and felt his anxiety.
His face darkened. “Corrupt Stygians have been strategizing their moves to take over as Head Reaper,” he said. “We know that because who else would set up those broadcasts to fool everyone into thinking Marin is still alive? You’re about to announce to all of Styx that Marin is gone. That’s going to set fire to this powder keg. Trivials are going to run amok, too. I’m worried what they’ll do or what they’ve already done.”
I understood. I had thought of that myself, though I hadn’t shared it with anyone.
Brent went on after a pause, “We might be wading into an ocean of shit by trying to set things right.”
“You don’t think that any rebel is qualified for the Head Reaper job?”
“No.” A second passed as if he thought about it, and he grabbed my hand, lacing his fingers with mine. The feel of my hand dwarfed by his was easily comforting. At least that much was still true between us. I had been forced into being strong for myself for so long that melting into another’s strength—albeit physical—was alluring.
“Who is good for the job of Head Reaper?” I nudged.
“Not me. I have no interest in that job.”
“You’d be perfect for it.”
“No, I wouldn’t, darlin’.” His reply was stated with such finality that I dared not to push the subject further. But I did wonder who he thought would be a just replacement for Marin because it was a very real concern.
“Then who do you see in the fancy-pants role?”
“I see a group of people. A council. An honest, transparent democracy.” He pointed to Dudley, who was sniffing a discarded candy wrapper next to the gas pump.
“Come on, Duds.” I scooped up my dog before he could ingest the chocolate-smeared wrapper and placed him in his spot in the tank bag. “Maybe Dudley should lead Styx.”
“Well, he’d do a better job at it than Marin.”
After that, very little was said for the remainder of our journey back east. I preferred to ponder the idea of a council and not one leader. History had proven that communal leadership is safer than a singular person. Had Marin had others to keep him in check, Styx would be a very different place today.
But would it be so easy to implement a council after everything?
I chose to linger silent for hours, knowing that I was in no place to make such a decision. I may have been part of the reason Styx had a new chance, but I was by no means a leader or of the level of expertise to suggest who should or shouldn’t or how they should or shouldn’t lead.
And, to be honest, like Brent, I wanted nothing to do with it after making sure that whatever was put into place was for the betterment of Styx.
When we reached the Kentucky state line after more than a dozen hours crammed together on my motorbike, I was compelled to pull over, fall to the ground, and kiss it because we were close to our first—our penultimate— destination. Riding with a six-foot tall Eidolon was no different than riding with a six-foot tall man. Both are heavy. Both taxed the engine of the motorbike.
No matter how badly I wanted to stop riding, I couldn’t. Brent’s anxiety grew as we approached Kentucky, and it nearly became unbearable as we wound our way through tree-covered country roads. Beattyville was the town. Home of the Woolly Worm Stampede. The town center was as I remembered it—small, old brick buildings with good ol’ Southern folk strolling the sidewalks. This visit, however, was not in the beginning of spring, but the beginning of winter. The world had lost its color. Everything—trees, buildings, people—had faded into shades of brown.
I couldn’t explain why, but this observation sent chills through my limbs.
Brent instructed me as to where to turn as we got closer to his family’s homestead. Some parts of the journey looked familiar, and others did not. But the left turn onto the bumpy, unpaved road was strikingly familiar. My motorbike groaned as if it knew the road would not be kind.
I put both feet down and killed the bike’s engine.
“We walk from here,” I said through my helmet, already unbuckling Dudley from his restraints.
Brent popped the shield of his own helmet up and gave the road a discerning glare. He remained silent, which, from my memory, was exactly as he had been the first time we came upon this road. I waited for him to point out one of the many forgotten ghosts hiding in the woods, but there was nothing to see. The expanse of brown trees and dead leaves gave no hint of the forest of spirits that had been here during our first visit two years earlier. Brent’s sister-in-law had somehow harnessed them as protection around her homestead. Brent had sent the group of wayward souls to Lethe by luring them into the sky through the smoke of the burning barn.
This time, Dudley and I stayed right on Brent’s heels. We hiked for what felt like miles before we spotted something between the trees. Two and a half years earlier, there had been a two-story log cabin with floral curtains blowing in the open windows and little Reaper children playing in the yard. There had been Stygian rebels and Brent’s family, the Grim Reaper leaders of the rebel cell. The homestead had been active with life and hope for a better world.
There was none of that this time.
“Son of bitch,” Brent said quietly.
We stood, side-by-side-by-side at the creek’s edge, staring at what was left of the Hume homestead. I fixated on the log cabin that was a pile of rubble now. It looked like it had been partially burned to the ground. The scent of charred wood was aloft. Whatever happened here in Beattyville, Kentucky, had happened within the past day or so.
“Do you think Marin’s lackeys did this?” I asked as I fingered the tops of Dudley’s velvety ears to ensure he was still close.
Brent raked his fingers through his dark hair. He was quiet at first. I expected him not to say anything at all but instead cross the creek and begin surveying the remains of his former home.
He spoke in a soft baritone I didn’t recognize. “Even after his death, he haunts us, doesn’t he? It’s like he’s worse now in death than he ever was in life.”
I let Brent’s sad words linger on the brisk, wintry air. He was hesitant to step across the creek, so Dudley and I went first. It took several long strides to reach the abandoned, rusted out car that I had first seen his nieces and nephew playing in all that time ago. The car didn’t look any different. The house behind it did. We carefully approached what was left. The front porch remained, and so I put both feet on the first step and looked out across the demolished home. Everything was silent, even the birds who still hadn’t flown south for the winter. Even Brent’s footsteps as he crossed the creek and joined me on the front stoop never made a sound. Nothing existed here. It was forgotten. Alone.
“What’s that?” I pointed across the rubble at something moving in the woods.
Brent was sprinting around the home’s remains before I finished my sentence. Eidolons move faster than any living thing that I knew of. I couldn’t keep up with him, and I couldn’t hope to, either. He stopped short of entering the woods, and after a few seconds, I skidded into his backside, running as fast as my short legs would carry me. The collision didn’t send him off balance. As I started to dart around him, his left arm closed around me, stopping me from pushing ahead.
Once I understood why he stopped, I didn’t fight him. My body went rigid. Fear moved through my veins. What I had seen moving was not a living being. It was a white baby blanket covered in little ducks. The blanket was tied to a tree branch, flapping in the winter breeze. And it was stained in blood.
Had Marin sent his cronies to destroy the former rebel camp and the Hume homestead, he would order any evidence of a massacre removed. As we moved closer, walking as closely as possible, we spotted limbs on the ground that once belonged to living beings. We stepped around them, and the trail of gore led us deeper into the woods and past the flapping, bloody baby blanket.
My heart was in my throat. I could not look at the blanket. I wouldn’t. Yet even though I made sure to keep my distance from it, a little wisp of blanket brushed my shoulder as if to ask me for help. I nudged closer to Brent, whose hand was nearly crushing mine. Brent wasn’t scared of what was still lurking. He was scared of what he knew he’d find. And he was right to be scared when we came upon a neatly stacked pile of bodies or what was left of bodies.
A note had been pinned to the shirt of one torso. Blood pooled around the remains. Leaves crunched under our boots. The air, which had grown colder, nipped at my nose and earlobes. But my chest…my chest burned with heat.
Brent leaned forward and read the note. I had already scanned it.
“This wasn’t Marin’s work,” I said as a whisper in case there were any around. Dudley stood next to the remains of the house, sniffing.
“Trivials,” Brent growled.
“You’re right,” said a voice from the shadows between two large trees. I didn’t need to hear more from him to know who he was. Some voices, however little you have heard of them, are recognizable. This one was Neema’s punk rock follower from Denver named James.
I checked for Dudley. Somehow he sensed the threat. The little dog knew. Hopefully the Trivials wouldn’t find him hiding underneath a beam of wood from the old house.
Brent started toward James, but I stepped in front of him, my back pressed to his heaving chest. He would rip the Trivial apart without asking questions first. In this new, fragile world between Marin’s tyranny and new leadership, our actions had to stay rational and justified.
But Brent’s aggressive move was enough to show us that this Trivial was not alone. In fact, as Brent and I glanced from side to side and forward and back, we realized something dangerously grave.
“We’re surrounded,” I said when I spotted about thirty Trivials move from the woods. Had Brent counted more? Had he spotted others?
I had said I was scared of what we’d find, not of what was out there, but I now felt crippled with a real, visceral terror. Trivials could do to us what they had done to the rebels and Brent’s family. Trivials were soulless Stygians. They were not bound to Styx’s rules. Therefore, they could manipulate, attack, torture, and toy with anyone. Worse, they had abilities to manipulate their bodies into spider-like nightmares. But most horrifying of all was the Trivials could not be killed through the ferrying of their souls. There was no soul to ferry. They had to be ripped apart, limb from limb, until they were rendered useless. Being a Master Scrivener and Eidolon only got us so far when there were more than two dozen Trivials converging around us.
“Been following you. When I realized where you two were headed, I called on some locals take care of things here,” said James. “Figured we needed them out of the way so that you can begin paying for your crimes, Eidolon Hume.”
Brent’s hand gave mine two deliberate squeezes. This was not a command to run and hide in the woods like he had told me to do the night the Watchmen cornered us in this very spot. This was him asking for help, for us to use our talents that Hades had given us.
Match. We’d have to. And we’d have to hope it was enough to bring down a gang of soulless Stygians.