The Quick and the Dead

by D. B. Sieders

  “Boy, you really are a fool.”

  Judging by the look on his face, he clearly hadn’t expected that response. Under normal circumstances she might have found it amusing. Instead, it filled her with a heavy sadness.

  She didn’t make eye contact or raise her voice. It wasn’t that kind of battle. Instead, she spoke quietly while she wrung out the wet cloth. “For someone who claims to be an expert on the human experience, you’re pretty lousy at recognizing the fundamentals.”

  After a long moment, he said, “Explain.”

  “Aside from pain and suffering, there’s a lot more to the human experience. This,” she said as she gently caressed the cuts and bruises on his cheek, first with the cloth and then with her fingers, “is caring.”

  Vivian traced the cloth along each wound on his face, his neck, and his chest. After she’d cleansed and rinsed his skin, she patted him dry with a clean towel as she whispered, “This is concern.”

  Vivian followed with a salve, and then trailed kisses along his injuries. “This is compassion, Lazarus.” The reaper slowly relaxed his rigid posture under her ministrations. His taut muscles loosened, his breathing calmed, and the bitter chill she’d experienced when she began to care for him faded. The sensation emanating from the reaper felt like a refreshing breeze.

  When she finished, she brought him a bowl of soup and a glass of milk. They sat in companionable silence while he ate. After she cleared the dishes and helped him brush his teeth, Vivian turned off the lamp on the nightstand and climbed into bed with him. Mindful of his injuries, she curled up next to him and placed her hand over his.

  “This is comfort.”

  Darkmore didn’t speak, but she heard his sigh and felt his fingers grip hers before he relaxed into slumber.

  Chapter Twelve

  Vivian left Darkmore safe in bed while she showered and got ready for training. Luckily, Chet’s soft knock at zero-dark-hundred didn’t rouse the reaper. Before she left, she kissed him lightly on the forehead and fed him more of her spirit light, smiling as she watched the cuts and bruises fade from his skin. He’d probably be a little pissed off at her for disregarding his request that she allow him to take his lumps like a man, but he needed his strength in order to face whatever battle might be coming, not to mention potential run-ins with their new allies. She shut the door and locked it with the key Chet had given her, and then followed Briggs’ second as he headed for the big field behind the apartment complex to meet the other recruits.

  Mississippi didn’t experience autumn’s chill to the same degree as Tennessee, but she found herself wishing for a sweater. Best not whine, though. Drill Sergeant Briggs didn’t strike her as the type to take kindly to whining, especially since he’d told her to dress warm. Briggs stood before the group of new recruits, not at attention or with the air of authority she’d expected.

  He looked bored.

  Maybe it was part of his tough guy act. The recruits looked anxious, though she didn’t understand why. It wasn’t like channeling spirit energy and zapping enemies was all that hard to muster or control once you got the hang of it, or got over the initial shock. She’d had plenty of practice during her time working for the guardians. Oh, and there was that brief but memorable trip to Darkmore’s realm where she fought off a gang of nasty monsters and helped liberate a host of trapped souls. She’d been thrown into battle, and while she hadn’t come out of it unscathed, she had emerged as a tested warrior. She’d survived.

  Maybe the others hadn’t endured the ordeals she had.

  “Listen up, people,” Briggs began, his voice booming. “Welcome to boot camp. I’ve met with each of you individually, so we’ll skip the whole going ’round in a circle playing get to know your new best friends. Do that on your own time. We’re here to train and train hard.”

  He had everyone’s attention, which was a good thing for a leader. Vivian was surprised he hadn’t brought any of his seasoned veterans along to help, though. Maybe he just believed in using a personal touch.

  “Before we get started, I need to know what sorts of bad habits and lousy skills y’all have picked up, fucked up, or God forbid, come up with on your own. Then we’re going break them and train you right. The establishment has some well-trained field agents, so we’ve got to train harder. It ain’t the fat cat higher-ups that scare me, it’s the newly dead on a mission. That’s how they roll.”

  Briggs was right about the newly dead, but in her experience, the fat cat higher-ups were plenty scary. Members of the Archangel Council who ran the guardian spirit operation had power. The tithes they collected from field agent spirits who mediated crossings kept them stocked with spirit energy. Their little pyramid scheme had actually created an energy crisis in the guardian spirit realm that helped inspire the rebellion. Uriel and his buddies were the bigger threat as far as she was concerned, but she was no master strategist, nor was this her rebellion. If taking out enemies from the bottom up had been working for Briggs and his mercenaries, she’d go along.

  “This, ladies and gentlemen, is how we roll,” he said. Then he shot a focused burst of red light out of his index finger. The tight stream hit the middle of the bull’s eye mounted to the bale of hay at least a football field length away. The shot was clean, leaving a hole roughly the diameter of a nickel all the way through.

  And it didn’t even ignite the hay.

  Impressive.

  Vivian’s blasts normally inflicted substantial collateral damage. She’d have to work on that.

  “Aim between the eyes of a guardian, or reaper and you’ll disable him, or her, long enough to grab the target and go. We’re saving souls here, people. You’re up first, Lewis!”

  A tall man, presumably Lewis, shuffled over to Briggs. Lewis carried himself with a hunched posture and could have easily been mistaken for a much older man were it not for his mop of honey blond hair and the smooth, unmarred skin of his hands. His eyes darted about and his hands shook a little.

  Briggs clapped him hard on the shoulder and said, “Don’t think about it too hard, brother, just do it.”

  Lewis adjusted his heavy-framed glasses, pushing them back up to their proper position on his narrow nose, and shot the equivalent of a lightning bolt from at least four fingers, which meandered toward the general direction of the target and splintered into at least three side branches. It hit the outer rim of the bull’s eye and set the adjacent hay ablaze. Some of Briggs’ minions appeared then and put it out with a fire extinguisher.

  “Power? Check. Aim? You’ve got to work your ass off on it,” Briggs said. Lewis nodded and walked back toward the crowd of recruits.

  “Gutierrez, you’re up!”

  A petite woman pulled her dark hair into a ponytail while walking over to Briggs. He’d moved to another target, though now that they’d put out the fire on the first one it seemed perfectly serviceable to Vivian. Gutierrez squinted, held up her right hand, and produced some impressive, multi-colored sparks. Apparently angered by the lack of oomph, she stood a little straighter and tried again. More sparks flew laterally, but she wasn’t able to muster any specific bursts toward the target.

  “¿La pasión? Sí. ¿El poder? No del todo,” Briggs said.

  “You have a terrible accent,” she spat, in perfectly unaccented English, before spinning around and stomping back to the group.

  The next few displays ranged from comic to downright frightening in terms of both raw power and utter lack of control. Briggs didn’t take notes, and kept his commentary to a minimum, which made Vivian question the point of the exercise. Maybe we’re just playing the spirit light version of “mine’s bigger than yours” or some other macho crap. She heard her name and walked quickly toward their leader.

  “Bedford,” he drawled. “Miss Nashville Tenn-e-ssee herself. Let’s see what you got.”

  Vivian stood straight, tensed her jaw, and focused her mind on tossing the light. She had a moment to admit to herself that she’d been pretty lax about practicing. True, s
he’d hit a rascal of a spirit called Junior not long ago, but he was a lost and lonely spirit at the time and pretty easy pickings. The child rapist she’d blasted had been incapacitated, and she’d fired from close range. She’d done a good job dispatching her rogue guardian stalker though, even if Darkmore had suffered collateral damage.

  No point in dwelling on it now. She fired.

  Her blast lacked the crisp, laser-beam quality of Briggs’, but it flowed clean and found its mark. The hay didn’t ignite right away. Not bad, overall.

  And then, she felt Briggs’ blast.

  It didn’t hit her outright, but her right cheek burned, and she smelled the acrid scent of singed hairs. Adrenaline prompted action first. She crouched low and fired again. This shot lacked finesse but surged with power. Briggs ducked. He wasn’t able to deflect the blow with his own light, she noted with grim satisfaction. Using his delayed reaction to her advantage, she fired again.

  He rolled out of the way and fired an invisible burst of energy that hit her in the chest and knocked her over.

  Briggs sauntered over to her as she recovered, placing his foot over her midriff. “That all you got?”

  He then crouched beside her and whispered in her ear, “You think I’ll go easy on you because you’re a woman?”

  That pissed her off.

  Vivian grabbed him by the throat. The element of surprise allowed her to wrestle him to the ground and straddle him. She had the good sense not to fire on him at such a close range, but she could deliver another kind of low blow. Focusing her mind, she inhaled deeply, taking in thin wisps of red light from Briggs as a barrage of strange, disjointed images flooded her.

  Everything is grey. The earth, the distant mountains in the horizon, the worn asphalt upon which they travel, and the buildings they sweep past. All is grey except a few patches of scruffy green along the road, and the brilliant yellow and red flames they’re heading for.

  The flames are almost obscured by billowing smoke.

  They’re surrounded by chaos. Men and women running or racing past in vehicles of desert camo that blends in with the surroundings, as do the camo-clad soldiers. A loud explosion behind them causes the road to tremble as their driver struggles for control.

  They swerve.

  Another impact and the vehicle is lifted from the ground and lands hard on its side. Screams of pain echo all around. Red floods the grey, as does charred, blackened flesh.

  Crawling from the remains of the vehicle, eyes fix on the spot of deep purple that interrupts the grey landscape. The spot moves closer. It’s a woman, judging from the curves beneath layers of billowing purple fabric. The form extends her hand. An electric jolt of raw power fills the broken, battered body as they grasp hands, flesh to flesh.

  “Hey, Tennessee! You all right?”

  Vivian opened her eyes and found, to her surprise, someone other than Briggs hovering over her. This man was younger, had a full head of hair that fell past his shoulders in dreadlocks, and looked more than a little alarmed. No wonder, given the show she and Briggs had put on. She recognized him as one of the new recruits but hadn’t caught his name. Thankfully, he helped her sit up.

  “I think so,” Vivian answered, shaking her head. After getting her bearings and swallowing back bile, she asked, “What happened? The last thing I remember is tussling with Sergeant Sneak Attack.”

  Vivian heard nervous titters and looked around. A crowd of other newbies surrounded her. She didn’t see Briggs.

  “Well, you had him in a choke hold and started putting on some kind of badass light show. You hit each other good. He did the same to you, and then y’all both passed out.”

  “So where is Briggs?”

  “He woke up first and took off in a rush. Told us to wait for Chet. What’d you do, anyway?”

  “Well, I got pissed off for starters. Being blindsided tends to do that.” She rubbed her sore neck and rolled her shoulders. The real soreness would hit later. For now, she’d let the adrenaline in her system keep it at bay.

  “I didn’t know you could shoot it out of your mouth.”

  “That wasn’t shooting, that was…” She struggled with the explanation. Channeling conscious spirit energy from a living person gave her visions of that person’s life, usually their worst memories, in vivid detail. The empathetic connection gave her a glimpse into the person’s soul while relieving them of their burdens.

  He’d taken some of her conscious energy as well, but damned if she felt lighter. Then again, Briggs didn’t strike her as empathetic. Maybe he got something different from the energy he collected. There was so much she still didn’t know about her own power, let alone the gifts—or curses—carried by other living soul brokers.

  She hated to admit it, but Briggs had reminded her how much she still needed to learn after putting her in her place.

  Best keep her answer simple.

  “I drew out his spirit energy,” she said with a shrug. “I guess he took some of mine too, so we’d be even.”

  The young man looked confused, but Vivian caught nods of recognition in some of the others. She felt a little jolt of giddiness at the prospect of comparing notes with them. If she hadn’t gotten herself into too much trouble with Briggs, that is. He might kick her off his team before she got the chance to learn anything.

  The man shook his head, chuckling, and then offered Vivian his hand and hoisted her up from the ground. “That was something else. You got some nerve, Tennessee!”

  “Thanks, I think. What’s your name?”

  “Barry, but y’all can call me B.”

  “So, now what do we do?” Gutierrez asked.

  “Start making yourselves useful.”

  Chet walked toward them, carrying a stack of clipboards. As he passed them out, he said, “When we’re not training, we all pitch in for operations. Once we sign you off, you can go on assignments.”

  “What kind of assignments?” Lewis asked.

  “Briggs normally handles the briefing, but most of our missions involve facilitating crossings for those souls the guardians leave hanging. We’ve recently started liberating targets from the establishment.”

  “Liberating? You mean kidnapping?” B asked, suspicious.

  Chet shook his head. “We prefer to think of it as apprising the clients of more cost-efficient alternatives for afterlife transition. The establishment steals their life force when they cross and barely leaves them enough to make it to the next life.”

  “What a minute,” Vivian began. “Your group can actually lead souls to other realms?” She thought they were here to fight the guardians, as in an outright battle. This sounded more like a rescue operation.

  “That’s right, Bedford. And we don’t suck all of their energy out in the process.” Of course, Briggs’ team could take a percentage of a deceased soul’s spirit energy while mediating a crossing. Even a much smaller portion than the guardians usually demanded would be powerful, especially if they didn’t have to give a portion to the guardian council hierarchy. With enough time and patience, Briggs and his mercenaries could accumulate enough spirit energy to fight and win a battle with some of the key players on earth.

  Not that it would do much good. The Archangel Guardian Council could easily replace field agents. If the goal was to take out the guardians, it wasn’t a smart strategy. Not that she could think of a better one, but she expected Briggs to have a better plan. Maybe he did. She hoped so.

  “But without the energy, how can you complete the journey? How do you navigate to the correct realm, and without detection?” An older gentleman asked. She’d been wondering about that as well.

  “Those are great questions, Long. We’ve identified several routes that the enemy uses infrequently, and we always send scouts ahead. As for energy, the journey requires far less than the amount guardians and reapers claim from the client.”

  That made sense. Good public relations move, too. While she’d like to think that giving souls a better option for crossing to
the next realm was reason enough for the operation, Chet seemed as shrewd and calculating as Briggs. It was a great way to recruit living soul brokers. Worn down and weary from the suffering they witnessed, not to mention exploitation at the hands of the guardians for whom they were forced to work, giving the new recruits something good to do would build morale.

  They’d be useful and in control, choosing their own cases and healing the departed. She couldn’t think of a better way for Briggs and Chet to build trust and loyalty.

  They certainly weren’t building good relationships with their sparkling personalities.

  Beyond that, it would be an excellent way to recruit bona fide guardians. Some of the souls they helped would likely be tapped for duty as guardian spirits, and they were much stronger and less vulnerable than living soul brokers with fragile, mortal bodies. That made more sense. Clever strategy, building an army by stealing new recruits from the evil empire.

  After being barraged by twenty different questions at once, Chet held up a hand and yelled for quiet. Once he had their attention, he continued. “All of your questions will be answered during the course of training. In the meantime, I need volunteers for daily operations. If you will kindly refer to your clipboards, you’ll see your assigned duties as well as those you may choose based on the skills you’ve brought with you.”

  Vivian wasn’t terribly surprised to see she’d been assigned to medical. She’d just started scanning the rest of the list when she overheard a couple of guys in the back sniggering. They pointed to Gutierrez, and one said, “I guess we know who’s on maid patrol, huh mamacita.”

  Gutierrez narrowed her eyes into angry slits and snapped back. “Actually, I have an MBA from Harvard. What do you two idiots do with your time that’s worth anyone’s while?”

  “Well, we don’t go stealing jobs from real Americans for starters,” one shot back.

  “I was born here, you idiot!”

  Vivian had enough scuffles over the past twenty-four hours. “I only have a bachelor’s degree, but I’ve worked in loans for over ten years,” she told Gutierrez. “Think they need help with the bookkeeping?”