by Hannah Marae
“Just let him drive,” Eden chimed in. “I don’t want to die in a car crash because you fall asleep at the wheel.”
“I’m not going to—you know what? Fine.” Lazarus glared between them. “You’ve got four hours.”
“Like hell,” Zeke shot back.
Taking out his phone, Lazarus set an alarm. He actually set an alarm.
“God, you’re the worst.” Zeke groaned. “Go to bed.”
It took all of ten minutes on the road for Laz to pass out. He slept with his arms crossed over his chest, head tilted back on the seat. Another ten minutes, and Eden joined him, her head drifting to lightly rest against Laz’s shoulder. The two of them were as predictable as if Zeke had dosed them both with sleeping pills.
Satisfied, he smiled to himself, content to be on his own with the radio down low and a beautiful sunrise.
The day’s end saw them somewhere in West Texas on a stretch of road that went on forever. Despite the fact that they’d driven over five hundred miles, it seemed they weren’t making much progress.
The miles were spent in comfortable silence, with only Zeke’s playlist whining out of the speakers. Occasionally, Lazarus would turn down the music and check in on Eden, ask her what she felt coming from the mark. Always, her answers were the same. Nothing yet.
It didn’t make much of a difference to him, though he winced whenever the fuel gauge made its way toward empty. But Lazarus couldn’t shake the liminal feeling, like he had become displaced in time, the world passing on around him as if he were a rock in a bubbling stream. The truth was, the feeling stuck to him like glue, had been a constant presence over the years. The only things that seemed to dislodge him were the jobs and the accomplishment of putting down a ghost.
If he wasn’t hunting, then who was he?
Beside him, Eden shifted. Lazarus was thankful his reverie was broken. He had ridden that train of thoughts frequently enough, and the destination was nowhere good.
On the other end of the bench, Zeke was passed out with his cheek pressed against the window, soft snores breaking the silence that clung in the air like a fog. Lazarus himself was feeling spent, had been since morning. Since last night. Since the spirit at the drive-in reached out and nearly dragged him back into the Good Night.
He rubbed at gritty eyes, a glance in the rearview showing they were still bloodshot and tired. At Zeke’s insistence, Laz had spent the first stretch of the morning sleeping, but it hadn’t done him much good. He imagined feeling himself fraying on the edges like his soul was busily trying to repair itself.
It probably would have been smart to pull over an hour ago when they passed that truck stop with a crappy little motel across the lot. But Lazarus was eager to get some ground covered, and the mage didn’t stop him as they rolled past the welcoming lights of the motel. Now, he was beginning to regret that decision.
Stifling a yawn, Lazarus tightened his grip on the wheel.
“I think Zeke’s got the right idea,” Eden commented. Lazarus spared a glance, rolling his eyes at the way his cousin was snoring with his face pressed against the window.
“He can sleep anywhere. And through anything. He’s always been that way.”
Eden covered a yawn of her own. “Yeah, well, maybe we should take his lead.”
“You want to stop here?” Sweeping fields lay on either side of the dark strip of road, a cloudless sky overhead. He and Zeke were no strangers to camping out in the truck and this was as good a place as any.
“Why not?” the mage replied. “It seems safer than having you fall asleep. And I don’t think you’re going to let me drive.”
Lazarus turned to her with what he hoped was a sarcastic glare. She laughed as he slowed and pulled the truck to a stop on the shoulder. Zeke remained fast asleep, not so much as stirring as his head slid along the window.
“Should I wake him up?” she wondered aloud.
“Better not.” Lazarus opened his door and climbed down, stepping back as she shimmied across the seat and slipped out behind him.
Eden stretched her arms toward the awakening stars. The night was quiet and still, with not even a wisp of a breeze to ruffle the warm air. Lazarus breathed easier on cloudy nights. Even now, five years later, the stars gave him pause. They always had him second-guessing his reality, making him wonder if he’d made it out of that place or if all this was just some twisted dream.
“Do you have a tent?” Eden wandered toward the back of the truck, stopping to pet the furry head that popped up from the bed. Panting, Hades exploded into smoke and reconstructed himself at her side.
Lazarus rolled his eyes at the hellhound. “We used to.” He walked away from the road, out into the shrubby field.
“Let me guess.” Eden trotted after him, Hades at her heels. “Shredded by a werewolf?”
“Zeke told you about Yellowstone?” Lazarus smirked. He wondered when they’d had time to get so chatty. During all those junk food runs, maybe. “I never got around to replacing it. Usually we just camp out in the bed.”
He came to a stop, reaching up to lace his fingers behind his sore neck. Lazarus sighed. “I can kick Zeke out of the cab if you want. It won’t be comfortable, but at least it’s got a roof.”
“I don’t mind sleeping in the back.” Eden came to a stop a few feet away, both of them looking into the night. “Honestly, I’m about to pass out right here.”
“Yeah,” Lazarus agreed, rubbing once more at his gritty eyes.
He turned to walk back to the truck, pausing when he realized the mage wasn’t following.
“I’m not sorry,” she said, her voice abrupt but uncertain.
Lazarus stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Thanks,” he said dryly before turning back around and continuing.
“Wait.” Eden came up behind him, grabbing at his arm to hold him back. “I’m being honest. I’m not sorry I touched the spirit. It was the right thing to do. But”—she released his arm, suddenly sheepish—“I should have told you. I am sorry for that.”
Lazarus didn’t respond, mostly because he had no idea what to say. He couldn’t condone her actions and was scared even to admit that he could relate. It was clear that Eden hadn’t understood what they were dealing with, not entirely. Purgatory was no place for a living soul, no place to brush against willingly. The fact that he had no idea how the visions happened was unnerving. He could only imagine that the contact somehow amplified her sigil, sending her power across the veil to wherever Mab was.
But it was possible that what Eden saw wasn’t a vision at all. It could be just another of Purgatory’s dreams, a manifestation of the soul’s desire. Hunters called it the Good Night for a reason.
Lazarus climbed into the bed of the truck. He offered a hand to Eden and helped her over the edge. She stood there as he busied himself digging into one of the waterproof duffels, pulling out an old quilt that had once belonged to his mother. Eden helped him move the bags aside as Lazarus spread it out.
She leaned against the pile of backpacks, burying her hands in the pocket of her oversized hoodie. “I just—I’d do anything for her, you know? She’s saved me in so many ways, and now that it’s my turn? I can’t fail her.”
Lazarus sat against the other side of the bed, absently stroking Hades’s thick black fur. “She’s your family.” He knew better than anyone what it was to give up everything for your family, how some debts could never be repaid—God, how he’d tried.
Eden swallowed. “My only family, honestly. We’ve been together since we were nineteen. More than four years now, but it feels like it’s been forever. Always getting into trouble or trying to get out of trouble.” She choked out a bitter laugh. “Somehow, we always managed to stay one step ahead.”
Lazarus chewed his lip. He knew they had been running from something, but what? Hunters seemed the logical choice. There weren’t many things in the world that could scare a mage.
“I’m guessing you moved around a lot?” Lazarus asked. “Spent so
me time on the road?” She nodded. “I know what that’s like . . . all too well. Zeke said you’ve been doing this a long time.”
“Yeah.” Lazarus looked toward the cab window and wondered just how much Zeke had been talking. “Like you said, it feels like forever.”
The mage lay down on the quilt, her wide eyes reflecting the stars. “Do you ever think about quitting? You could live a normal life.”
He lay down beside her, careful to keep his distance. Had he ever thought about it? Maybe once, before that night five years ago. Unlike Zeke, Lazarus never had anything like a childhood home. No backyards or barbecues, just an endless web of road and more monsters than he could count. When he was little, he’d wait in the truck while his mother went off tracking creatures or digging graves to put spirits to rest. Hunting was in his blood, as it had been for generations before him. Lazarus might have wondered about normal once upon a time. Now, he wasn’t sure what normal even looked like. Or how to get there.
“Nah,” he replied. Hades stood, climbing over to wedge himself between Lazarus and the mage. “This is what I do.”
It’s the only thing I know.
They were silent after that, stretched out in the quiet night. Before long, Eden’s breathing became rhythmic and slow. Lazarus tilted his head to see her curled up alongside Hades, long eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. With a contented sigh, he looked up at the sky and the stars that seemed too close. Too familiar. He couldn’t shake the idea that there were a thousand eyes up there in the black night, a thousand gazes settled on him, watching as if they were on the outside looking in.
Lazarus took a channeling coin from his pocket and rolled up the sleeve of his flannel. Then he pressed the coin into the sleep sigil on his arm and closed his eyes.
“Yeah. We’ll see you there.” Lazarus hung up the phone and set it on the dash alongside the stack of old books. Then he sat back in his seat with a sigh. He had just gotten off a call with Ignatius, and Eden had a feeling she wouldn’t like what he was about to say.
They were parked on the side of the road somewhere in the middle of Texas. It was late afternoon, the sun nudging across a cloudless sky. More than eight hours on the road, and it was starting to show. Zeke had been antsy for half the day, bouncing in his seat like a child, while Lazarus grew increasingly dour. She was pleased with the ground they covered, but Eden still found herself longing to pull into some roadside hotel. Stretching out on a bed, sharing pizza, and watching game shows with Zeke sounded like a particularly relaxing sort of heaven.
Then the phone rang.
When Lazarus hung up, a heavy silence fell over the cab, the calm before the storm. Eden turned her own phone over in her hands, the sigil beneath her skin thudding like a second heartbeat.
“What’d he want?” Zeke prodded. He sat with the door propped open and one leg dangling out, a can of soda balanced on his knee.
“Meyer,” Lazarus replied, mouth tight and eyes lost in thought.
Zeke scratched his head. “That shifty guy out of Kansas?”
“Is he a friend of yours?” Eden asked. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine Lazarus with many friends. There was Ignatius, of course, but he was just as quiet and bristly as Laz. It was no wonder they got along.
“He’s a hunter,” Zeke answered. “We’re all friends. Sort of.”
“Mm-hmm.” Lazarus continued, “Ignatius says he’s working a job a bit north of here. He was going to check in after but never did. Now Ig can’t get a hold of him.”
“Think it went bad?”
“Yeah, it’s not looking good,” Lazarus replied. “Ignatius was already on his way over, but I told him we could meet him at the site.” He leveled a glance at Eden. “Is that all right with you?”
Her first instinct was to be annoyed. This was another stop, after all, another delay that kept her that much further from Mab. Her friend may be alive, but Eden didn’t know how long that would last. And she still had no idea how much further they had to travel.
“Will there be a ghost?” she asked.
“That’s what he was after.” Lazarus eyed her down, brows furrowed in suspicion. “Tell me you’re not going to say what I think you are—”
“I need to touch it,” Eden cut in before he could finish.
On her other side, Zeke chortled. They ignored him. “That’s a terrible idea,” Lazarus objected. “You don’t know what happened to you last time. Or why. It doesn’t matter what you think, touching the Good Night is a bad idea.”
“But I saw her, Lazarus!” Eden protested. She shifted in her seat to face him. “If I could only do it again, I could focus better, and maybe I can see where she is. I swear, it was like I was looking through her eyes.” She looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “Please? Just give me a chance.”
He stared down at her, and neither broke the contact. Finally, he looked away, eyes weary as he ran a palm through his hair. “You’re going to do it either way, aren’t you?”
“Does it help that I’d rather have your blessing?” she asked sweetly.
With a muttered curse, Lazarus turned the key, and the truck started with a roar. Downing his soda, Zeke quickly tossed the can in the bed before climbing in and slamming the passenger door closed.
“No,” Lazarus groaned. “It really doesn’t.”
The sun painted the sky orange as the group trekked across the plains.
According to Ignatius, a group of kids in the town a few miles away initially reported the site. Meyer had been gassing up his truck as a herd of preteens wandered past, talking about the haunted RV in the middle of the plains. After pressing the kids for details—dead grass, animal bones, and harrowing screams—Meyer made the call.
That was four days before they’d passed through Ignatius’s place. That fact annoyed Lazarus. If there was a hunter in trouble, he should have been told.
“Listen,” Ignatius said, “at the time, he’d only missed his first check-in. That’s not unusual. You and Zeke have done it more times than I can count.”
“I can’t imagine Lazarus breaking any rules.” Eden walked a few yards ahead, picking her way through the long grass with all the enthusiasm of a kid on a field trip. She passed a half-empty bottle of cola back to Zeke, who drained the contents then shoved the bottle into the duffel bag he wore slung around his shoulders.
“Believe it or not, he’s got his moments,” Ignatius said. “Not many of them, but they’re there.”
“You still could have said something,” Lazarus grumbled, ignoring the barbs.
Ignatius adjusted his grip on his shotgun. “I did.”
Earlier, while they waited for Ignatius to arrive, Eden spent some time bolstering their arsenal. Hunting ghosts didn’t require much, just a mirror and a sigil, really, but Lazarus wanted to be prepared for anything. He didn’t know Meyer well, but he always assumed the man was a capable hunter. If something had gotten the drop on him, it must have been nasty.
As such, they now had pockets full of channeling coins and sunglasses perched on their noses. Eden also made extra sigils to sharpen the senses and boost stamina. When she passed Lazarus a scrap of paper with a mark scrawled in lipstick, he actually cracked a smile. He folded the note carefully and tucked it into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.
The most impressive part of their arsenal was the blades. A knife wouldn’t do anything to stop a spirit—though they could be disrupted by iron in a pinch—but Lazarus felt better knowing they were prepared. If a demon came spewing from a tear in the veil, he wanted to be ready for it. With Eden’s new marks, each blade would eat away at the strength of whomever’s blood it tasted. It was one of the only sinister spells in her repertoire. Lazarus had heard of powerful mages that could keep people enthralled, could kill with hidden symbols and cursed objects. With enough power, a mage could become nigh unstoppable. It was one of the things that made them so risky.
A few days ago, Eden’s spelled blades would have given him pause. Today, he was glad
to have them. Despite her lack of self-preservation when it came to spirits, Lazarus was happy to have the mage at his side.
A mile or so from the highway, they found the campsite. It wasn’t much, just an old RV parked alongside a partially collapsed tent, an unhitched trailer sitting a few dozen yards away. They stopped when they were still far off from the camp, hunkering down in the grass to watch.
Lazarus crouched in the grass beside Eden and Zeke. Something was off about this place. The air carried a preternatural stillness, no breeze, no chirping birds, nothing rustling through the long grass that rolled as far as the eye could see. There was no sign of Meyer. He shook off the pervasive feeling that they should not be there and should turn and run as far as possible.
“I’ll go keep an eye out.” Ignatius stripped off his clothing, and not long after, a golden coyote went loping through the grass into the growing darkness.
Lazarus turned to the others. “You two go for the tent and the trailer. I’ll check out the RV.”
Receiving a couple of nods, Lazarus turned, satisfied, back to the camp. Channeling coin in hand, he crept away from his hiding place and into the campsite.
He came to a stop in front of the RV, pausing with his back against the siding. A short distance away, Zeke and Eden approached the tent. Even further, a coyote circled the area with a watchful eye.
Silently, or as silently as he could manage, Lazarus eased the screen door open.
Climbing inside with Hades close on his heels, he surveyed the RV’s interior. The place was a wreck, empty beer cans piled on the floor along with a mountain of laundry that was past ripe. Weak light filtered through the blinds, the last vestiges of the day illuminating a kitchenette stacked with pizza boxes and empty cigarette cartons. Whoever the owner was, they had no standards for cleanliness. Lazarus was hesitant to move further, not only for fear of making noise but also because the need for a tetanus shot was looking like a real eventuality.
