Sudden Death

by Donald Hanley

  The alley ended on Moore Street, one block shy of Young, and I cautiously peeked both ways before emerging on the sidewalk. I hurried south towards Parker, feeling incredibly exposed. This is what the fox feels like, I thought, just before the hounds catch up.

  I passed another alley, glancing down its length to make sure none of my pursuers was lurking there, and went another twenty feet before I blinked and backed up to take another look. Tweener Amy sat atop a stack of crates covered in a canvas tarp, thumping her bare heels against the sides with a syncopated rhythm. She inspected her fingernails and heaved a sigh as I gaped at her.

  “Amy?” I asked incredulously, although of course she couldn’t hear me. I looked around for any sign of the others but she seemed to be alone. I was tempted to just leave her there, since she obviously wasn’t in any immediate danger, but maybe she knew what happened to everyone else. I hurried around to the back side of the stack, checked to make sure no one else was in the alley, and willed myself into my physical form. “Amy!” I hissed.

  I heard her slither off the canvas and a moment later she appeared around the side. “It’s about time you showed up,” she complained. Her icy blue eyes scanned me from head to foot and her mouth widened in a grin. “Is that a banana in your pocket,” she smirked, “or are you glad to see me? Oh, wait, you don’t have any pockets.”

  “Knock it off,” I told her irritably, although I looked down surreptitiously to make sure Little Peter wasn’t giving her any unwarranted attention. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you, duh,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Here?” I asked dubiously. “Why?”

  “Why not?” she shrugged.

  “I told everyone to meet up at the cemetery!”

  “And yet here you are.” She didn’t actually say Q.E.D. but her expression certainly implied it.

  “How could you possibly know I would come this way? I didn’t know it!”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she assured me with a careless flip of her wrist. “What matters is that we’re together again.” She slipped her arm through mine and batted her eyes up at me.

  “We’re not together.” I extracted my arm with some difficulty. “Where’s everyone else? Is Dad okay?”

  “He was fine the last time I saw him,” she admitted grudgingly. “But I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about us.”

  “Us?”

  “Us. You and me. Boyfriend and girlfriend.” She batted her eyes at me again and caught her lip between her stunted fangs, trying to look winsome. “Two star-crossed lovers cast adrift in a world dead-set against us.”

  “That sounds about right,” I told her, “except for the lovers part. I’m not your boyfriend. Get serious, Amy. We have to stop the incubus before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late, Peter,” she huffed, looking irked. “He won the minute he put on that ring. The rest of this,” she waved her hand around, “is just clean-up detail.”

  “I’m not ready to give up!”

  “Being true to your convictions is only a virtue if you’re right,” she scoffed. “Face it, Peter, there’s no hope. He has all the witches under his control and you don’t even have pants.”

  “Dara’s still out there somewhere,” I insisted, “and Olivia. We’ll find a way to beat him.”

  “Dara.” Amy made a face. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

  “We’ll find more help! Maybe she can summon Garrax for real. He could stop the incubus, right?”

  For an instant, Amy’s eyes flashed in fear, but she quickly composed herself. “Get serious, Peter,” she sneered. “Do you really think summoning demon lords is a good idea? You’ll just make things worse.”

  “Well, maybe we won’t have to. The incubus has to be reaching the limit of what he can handle. You said so yourself.”

  “I did?” she frowned. “Oh, that’s right, I did say that, didn’t I? Well, fine,” she sighed. “Let’s get this nonsense over with.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the street.

  “Wait! What are you doing?” I braced myself against the crates to keep from being hauled out into public view.

  “We need to get to the cemetery to meet up with your valiant band of freedom fighters, don’t we? Come on!” She hauled on my arm again, nearly dislocating my shoulder.

  “Ow! Stop that! I can’t go out looking like this!”

  “Well, you should have thought of that before you jumped in front of the Dread Lord’s curse,” she observed tartly. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

  “I didn’t decide to do that, it attacked me!”

  “Yeah, yeah. If you say so.” She started unbuttoning the front of her borrowed dress.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” I asked uneasily.

  “You can wear this,” she explained. “It’s not really your style but it’ll probably fit you.”

  “But you’ll be walking around in your underwear!”

  She paused, her fingers already down to her sternum, and smiled slowly. “No, I won’t.”

  “Oh, God, no. Stop right there! Just kill me instead.”

  “Oh, come on,” she insisted, “wearing a dress isn’t so bad.”

  “No, I mean kill me. Turn me back into a ghost.”

  “Really? I actually get to kill you?” The way her eyes lit up was very disturbing.

  “Yes, just make sure it’s quick.” I looked around and found a bent length of metal pipe leaning against the wall. I picked it up and swung it a couple of times like a baseball bat. “Okay, try this.”

  She took it from me and hefted it thoughtfully. “Should I beat in your ribcage or just crush your skull?” She sounded genuinely interested in my answer.

  “Oh my God,” I muttered shakily. I’d never had to plan my own execution before. “Just one hit, okay? Make sure it’s fatal.”

  “Spoilsport.” She perused our surroundings and pointed at a short stack of wooden pallets. “Kneel down and put your head on that. It’ll be just like a beheading, short and sweet.”

  I eyed the instrument of my death uneasily. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Well, an axe would be better,” she admitted, “but beggars can’t be choosers and all that. Kneel,” she ordered, snapping her fingers.

  I complied reluctantly, already regretting this plan. I winced as something sharp dug into my shins and positioned my head on the rough slats of the palette. Amy stood to the side and took a few slow practice swings to judge the distance, accidentally rapping me hard just above my ear on the last one. At least I assumed it was accidental.

  “Ow!” I jerked back, wincing as I rubbed my skull and checked for blood. “What the hell? I said one hit!”

  “Sorry,” she said. “My hand slipped.” She didn’t sound sorry at all. “Okay, let’s do it.” She lifted the pipe over her head in both hands, grinning like a kid about to eviscerate a piñata.

  I gave serious consideration to finding another car to jump in front of but we didn’t have time for that. I let my breath out in a whoosh and knelt again, closing my eyes. “Just make it fast.”

  “What’s the fun in that?”

  “Amy –”

  “Okay, okay. On three.”

  I gripped the edges of the palette, tensing as I waited for the fatal blow. And waited. And waited. “Amy?” I asked tentatively.

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be counting?”

  “All in good time. I’m just enjoying the view first.”

  “What?” I sat up again, to find Amy standing there ogling me with the pipe resting on her shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded. “Just kill me!”

  “Fine,” she pouted, “but now I’ve lost the element of surprise.”

  “You don’t need to surprise me, just do it!” I put my head back down on the palette again, more angry than nervous now. “Dying shouldn’t be this hard,” I grumbled. “I swear, if I ever –”


  I didn’t get to finish the thought before the whirr of something whipping through the air at high speed ended with the sharp crack! of the palette slats breaking under my head. I jumped back, startled, and found myself clothed and ghostly once more. Amy lifted the pipe out of the wreckage of the palette with a wild look in her eyes.

  “Oh, wow, what a rush,” she breathed. She slowly ran her hand down the length of the pipe. “Aw, there’s no blood or anything. Turn human again, Peter. I want to try it one more time.”

  “No way,” I told her, backing away uneasily. Amy was practically drooling at the thought of clubbing me to death again. No, I took that back. She was drooling as she looked around the alley for me, swinging the pipe back and forth like a batter warming up at the plate. “We need to go,” I said uneasily.

  Slowly, she came back to her senses, wiping her mouth with her forearm before reluctantly discarding her makeshift weapon. “I never get to have any fun,” she groused petulantly. “Come on, Peter, let’s get this over with.” She trudged out of the alley, turning south towards Parker Road.

  I followed her at a distance, heartily regretting stopping to talk with her. Was this the decision the Goddess warned me about? I wondered uneasily. Amy was always annoying before but now – well, now she’s kind of scary. No, I told myself firmly, none of this has anything to do with the ring. Great, so I still have that to look forward to. I heaved a sigh and trailed after Amy, worrying about what awaited us at the cemetery.

  21

  Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. We usually encounter Murphy’s Law while using some piece of equipment, like a car or a computer, but it applies equally well to less tangible concepts, like processes and relationships. If there’s an undesirable outcome, however unlikely, Murphy’s Law guarantees it will happen. What Murphy doesn’t address is when it will happen. You might make it through the day or the next week or an entire year unscathed, but Murphy is always lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce, usually at the most unexpected and least opportune time.

  The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. While it’s not clear what sort of plans mice have other than avoiding the cat, this aphorism echoes Murphy’s observation. No matter how carefully you plot things out, no matter how many contingency plans you come up with, something’s going to happen that you didn’t account for or even think of. Once that happens, you might as well wad up your blueprint and toss it in the trash, because it’s now completely useless.

  It’s always darkest before the dawn. This is another way of saying that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, that no matter how bad things are right now, they will get better. That’s all fine and dandy, but waiting for the dawn can be nerve-wracking, especially when all of your plans have gone awry and Murphy broke your watch. All you can do at that point is hunker down and pray for the sun to hurry up.

  Amy kept up a running commentary all the way down Parker Road, detailing what she intended to do to everyone who turned on her down in Hell, starting with Nyx and Metraxion and working her way through the demonic hierarchy. Her list of victims was impressively long but I tuned her out after a while. Even her gruesome imagination started to get repetitive after a while.

  Since she couldn’t see or hear me, it wasn’t clear why she was sharing her sordid plans with me. It certainly wasn’t giving me any incentive to reconsider my stand on becoming her boyfriend. The one couple we passed along the way gave her a wide berth, obviously figuring she was off her meds.

  Instead, I went back to scanning our surroundings for any members of Team Peter and Team Not-Peter. Most of Hellburn’s residents were already home for dinner, so the streets and sidewalks were sparsely populated, but I tensed up every time a car passed by. If someone decided to run Amy down, I couldn’t do a thing to stop them, assuming I could muster up any enthusiasm for making the effort.

  Amy, for her part, didn’t seem to have a care in the world, other than exacting revenge for every slight she ever experienced or imagined. Despite translating Dr. Bellowes’ journal for us, she’d remained on the periphery throughout the day’s events and I was beginning to suspect she was only here because it was slightly less boring than staying back at the apartment all by herself.

  The wrought iron fence surrounding the Hellburn Municipal Cemetery was only two blocks away when she finally wound down into silence, looking dissatisfied as she trudged on. With our goal in sight, I was tempted to run ahead and look for the others, but an eager hail from behind us turned me around.

  “Peter, wait up!” Olivia was doing the ghost-running thing, practically skating along the sidewalk as she waved her eagerly at me. “Thank God I found you!”

  “What’s up?” I asked uneasily. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “I couldn’t find them in the library,” she apologized, coming to a halt beside me. “They were still glamoured, I guess, and there were witches everywhere. You didn’t see them either?”

  “She’s the only one I found so far,” I told her, inclining my head at Amy, who was already well down the block. “She said Dad was okay but I don’t know what happened to him. I thought for sure you’d get here ahead of me.”

  “I got lost,” she confessed sheepishly. “I’ve only been here a couple of times before.”

  “Well, we’re almost there. Hopefully the others are waiting for us. Come on.”

  We caught up to Amy and matched her pace, aiming for the main gate. She showed no sign that she knew we were there. And yet she somehow managed to find me in a random alley, I thought. I can’t believe that was just a coincidence.

  “Amy,” I asked cautiously, “can you see us?” She didn’t respond. “Can you hear me?” Still nothing. “I’ve decided to become your boyfriend after all.”

  “What?” Olivia gasped.

  “It’s just a test,” I assured her hastily. “I’m trying to figure out if she can actually see ghosts.”

  “She never has before,” she pointed out.

  “She’s never admitted to it before,” I corrected her. “That doesn’t mean she can’t.” On the other hand, Amy never once mentioned Olivia during our ongoing battle with Lilixandriel and her demon lords, so it seemed pretty clear that her perceptions didn’t extend into the spirit realm. Or is she just really good at pretending not to hear us, I mused uneasily. But why would she bother? I don’t get it.

  An answer failed to present itself by the time we turned into the cemetery’s empty parking lot and passed through the ornate iron archway. The carefully trimmed grass was starting to suffer in the long Texas summer but the hundreds of headstones and monuments, some new, some weathered into obscurity, still marked the final resting spots of the dearly departed in neatly arranged rows. The three of us were the only living things in sight. Well, Amy was, anyway.

  There weren’t many places to hide but the war memorial in the center of the cemetery was fairly large and a few of the more elaborate edifices scattered around could shield a body or two. Amy followed one of the graveled paths looping around the property, with no explanation of why she picked that particular direction. We followed her for lack of any better alternative, peering behind the bigger headstones for any sign of our companions and checking the street outside the fence for any sign of our pursuers. We got nearly halfway around before Olivia pointed excitedly. “There they are!” she exclaimed.

  The war memorial curved in an arc beside a circular flower bed, where two marble benches provided a place for people to sit and commune with Hellburn’s fallen heroes. A bare rectangle of dirt marked the spot where a third bench should have been and I had a sneaking suspicion I knew where it ended up.

  More importantly, the remaining benches were occupied by three familiar faces, two of which I hadn’t expected to find here. Stacy sat beside Melissa on one bench, looking annoyed and anxious, and Susie lay curled up on the other, apparently asleep.

  “Stacy!” I called out in surprise. “How did you get here?” She looked up but her attention was on Amy.


  “What are you doing here?” she asked flatly.

  “Oh, don’t be like that,” Amy told her with a flippant wave. “We’re all in this together.”

  “Are you by yourself?” Melissa frowned, looking around. “Did you see anybody else?”

  “Peter’s around here somewhere,” she reported, studying the names and dates engraved on the side of the memorial. “The original one.”

  “Are you sure?” Melissa asked doubtfully. “I thought for sure Agent Morgan was going to get him.”

  “He’s surprisingly resourceful,” Amy said with a shrug, “or maybe just incredibly lucky. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

  “What about Dara, then?”

  “I imagine she’ll be along shortly.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Just a feeling.” Amy smiled in a way that made my skin crawl.

  “What’s wrong with Susie?” I asked. “What happened to her?” Susie wore her oversized pink-and-white silk robe, as if she’d just gotten out of bed and came straight here. She looked exhausted. Even closed, her eyes were sunken and bruised and she was unusually pale, even for her.

  “I thought the incubus got her,” Olivia said uneasily.

  “She must have gotten away. Thank God for that.” I surveyed the area doubtfully. “We need to find another place to hide out and plan our next step.” The memorial hid us from the patrons at the Whataburger but we were exposed to anyone coming from the west.

  “Like where?”

  “I have no idea,” I confessed. “Any place I think of, the incubus will probably know too. Maybe Stacy knows someplace we can use. We have to see if any of the others show up first, though.”

  “How long can we wait?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Not very long, but Susie can teleport whoever’s not here to wherever we end up. If she’s up to it,” I added with a grimace. I doubted she had the strength to stand up right now, let alone open magical portals for everyone.