by Chloe Garner
“So that they won’t mistake themselves for gods,” Samantha said. “I know. I’ve met a number of humans who have gotten that confused.” She squeezed Heather’s hands. “I worry, too.”
Heather watched her for a moment more, then nodded firmly and dropped her hands.
“Good. Then the gift has gone to the right person.”
She said a Kiowa blessing over Samantha, then turned and went back into the house. Samantha watched her all the way through the front door.
“Load up,” Jason said, opening the driver’s door.
“Are you sure you should be driving?” Sam asked.
“I’ve driven eighteen hours non-stop across the country with you convulsing in the back seat and a bullet in my shoulder. I’ll be fine,” Jason said, starting the car. He looked at Samantha.
“So you really had an out of body experience, huh?” he asked. “Ever do that before?”
“No. I told you that before,” she said, remembering, a bit slow, that he would have no clue what she was talking about.
“Weird,” Jason said, then clucked his tongue. “And to think, you almost died a virgin. You really should do something about that.”
Samantha laughed.
“That was a lot more charming when it was gallows humor.”
Sam figured it out before Jason did.
“He was with you,” Sam said. She nodded.
“Was not,” Jason said. “I’d remember.”
“You were, too. I watched you say goodbye to Sam.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Jason said.
“You did, and I was touched. Touched, Jason.”
“You’re lying,” Jason said. “I would remember.”
“Carter,” Sam said. “You said ‘Carter’ when you woke up.”
“I wasn’t sure he’d remember long enough to do it,” Samantha said. “I figured that was the only chance I had.”
“Why do you remember, if I don’t?” Jason asked.
“You haven’t crossed over a bunch of times like I have. You get predisposed to remember different things, as your mind gets used to crossing.”
Jason looked over at Sam.
“Did she just answer the question I asked, or was that the answer to a different question?”
“Carter didn’t save you,” Sam said. “You did.”
“Yeah, but I had already given up on waking up, before he got there. I was just trying to keep the demon from possessing me.”
She had forgotten about the demon.
“Wanna try that one again?” Jason asked. “Demon?”
“I forgot. There was a demon who showed up to possess me. Carter scared it off. I should probably do something about that.”
“Like what?” Sam asked.
“Another time, another place, I’d cross and go figure out who it was,” she said.
“How?” Sam asked her, turning in his seat now.
“Cross. Walk back on my timeline. Watch it again. He wasn’t easy to see, from here, but from there, it should be pretty trivial.”
“You can watch the past?” Sam asked.
“The past is fact. Getting back from there is tricky, but it isn’t even that long ago,” she said, realizing even as she spoke that she wasn’t making any sense. She shrugged and continued, anyway. “I would want to know who was after me to figure out whether I need to do something to head him off, or if you two were in danger.”
“Can I go?” Jason asked.
“I don’t think so. That’s a truly terrible idea.”
“Why?” Sam asked. “Why can’t he go? Or me?”
“You’re a special case, Sam. You absolutely can’t go. There would be an uprising. But he can’t go because… He isn’t trained. He isn’t strong enough. And I don’t want you guys tangled up in that stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Hellcrossings. The hell plane. Demon scouting. History runs. Us.”
“I still don’t believe you that I thought I was dying,” Jason said. “I want a shot to prove that you’re a liar.”
“I don’t lie,” Samantha said. “Out of the question.”
“Are you in danger?” Sam asked. She shrugged. It was possible.
“Can Carter find out who is after you?” he asked. She laughed.
“It’s more a question of would he. He wants me to come back. He isn’t going to do anything to make it easier for me to stay feral like this.”
“So I think Jason should do it,” Sam said. She boggled.
“You’re kidding. You would let your brother cross over into Hell, basically out of curiosity? I can’t even begin to tell you how dangerous it is,” she said. “People cross and never come back.”
“You did it,” Jason said.
“I did. But Carter caught me, and I knew what I was getting into,” Samantha said.
“Did you?” Sam asked. It hadn’t been true when she said it, even if she hadn’t meant to lie. She sucked on her lips and looked out the window.
“No.”
“I don’t like things happening to me that I don’t remember, and if there’s a demon hunting us, I want to know about it. We’re decided,” Jason said. She laughed.
“So we’re calling this two votes to one, but you can’t possibly cross without me helping you,” she said. “So my vote is the only one that counts.”
“Sam, I think it’s the right call,” Jason said. She threw her hands up.
“He would have no idea what he was doing. He couldn’t follow the timeline back, not to mention forward. He wouldn’t know how to identify the demon. All he’d do is cross, get soulburn, wander around like he was lost, and then maybe, maybe come back. It’s pointless.”
Sam’s phone rang.
He held up his hand and answered it, listening for a moment.
“Okay,” he said, then hung up. Samantha waited as Sam stared at his phone, bemused.
“Carter says he’ll catch if you’ll push him through. I think it’s three to one, now.”
Samantha unleashed a torrent of hellspeak abuse and reached for his phone. He held it away, concerned. She waved her hand at him, demanding it.
“I need to find a hardware store, and then a junkyard.”
<><><>
“We’re looking for a good open space with a lot of steel piled up around it,” she said, pulling the iron rods out of her backpack. Sam watched her closely. She still felt like she might make a break for the car and lock herself in again. He pulled the iron fence posts out of the back of the Cruiser and closed the door, making sure that Jason had locked the rest of the doors. Samantha frowned at him mentally.
“Cars work?” Jason asked. They found a clearing where a fork lift would have worked to stack flattened cars. She nodded and sighed.
“This is it. Put those down there,” she said and motioned to a spot in the middle of the clearing. She pulled out of her bag the auger that they had bought with the fence posts and began to dig holes. He started to offer to help her but she growled.
“Don’t talk to me,” she said.
The work was slow - the ground was hard from the heavy equipment that worked on it - but she finally had a circle of holes drilled and ruts dug between them. She laid the iron rods out in a pattern, connecting the holes from point to point in a complex pattern, then started placing fenceposts in a seemingly arbitrary order. Finally there was just one missing. She turned to Jason.
“You can’t go back from this. This is like Sam deciding to be psychic. You become much, much more important, and you paint a target on your own back for the rest of your life,” she said.
“You mean they come to me?” he asked. “Sold.”
She sighed.
“In the size of the history of the world, almost no one has ever done this. It’s dangerous, even with Carter helping you, and plenty of the people who have tried it have died.”
“There’s something after you,” he said, stepping closer to her. Sam turned away to give Jason room to speak, staying just in hear
ing range. “If I can go find out what it is without you risking exposing yourself, that’s what I want to do. Besides, Carter is going to help.”
“You think about what that means?” she asked. “He’s only helping because he thinks you’re going to be the first step to getting me back. He isn’t doing it to be helpful, or else he’d go on his own.”
Jason shrugged.
“That’s fine with me.”
She nodded, then went and got her bag.
“For your first crossing, you’re still going to be pretty hard-tied to your body. You should be able to drink this to pull yourself back across, if you really get in trouble.”
She handed him a vial. He shook it suspiciously.
“Holy water,” she said. “You’re armed?”
He showed her the gun at his hip and the hunting knife on the other side. She pulled the gun and went back to her backpack, coming back with the gun Sam had carried two nights before.
“Steel,” she said. “More useful. But don’t count on combustion working right. Things are tricky. Trust metal.”
He nodded and holstered the second gun. She took a step back and looked at him.
“To those who are about to die, we salute you,” she said, then said some more words in Angeltongue. Sam watched as she put her palm on Jason’s forehead, still speaking, then she nodded.
“Okay. Let’s do this,” she said. “Sam. I need your phone.”
<><><>
Samantha put the phone to her ear.
“You ready?” she asked when it stopped ringing.
“Give me the count,” he said. She nodded, then took Jason’s shoulders and steered him to the iron cage.
“You’re going to hate me after this,” she said softly, turning him to face her. “I understand. Believe me. It’s okay.” He cocked an eyebrow at her.
“You underestimate me,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”
She smiled resignedly and nodded toward his feet.
“Watch your step. Left foot first, then right, over the rods. One smooth, even motion. Ready?”
He nodded and she shifted him back into the cage. She looked over her shoulder.
“Sam, I need you to be behind the cars. This won’t take long, but you’re going to be sensitive.”
“No,” Sam said.
“I’m going to break the ring. There is going to be a huge amount of leakage. I don’t want to trigger an event. Back off.”
She still had her hands on Jason’s arms, speaking over her shoulder. Jason was quiet.
“No.”
She stood and turned.
“You could seize. I am not going to be able to help you. I need to be focused on him. Please.”
“No.”
She looked at Jason, who shrugged.
“I know better than to argue with him.”
She gritted her teeth.
“Fine,” she said, walking over to Sam. “This is going to hurt.”
She shoved as much white hot light into his head as she could, turning her head to the side at the sharp pain she felt him ignore.
“Hold on. Don’t go out walking,” she said.
“I don’t know what that means,” he told her. She shook a finger in his face.
“Yeah. You do. You stay here.”
“Problems?” Carter said into her ear. She growled.
“Are you ready?” she asked Jason, picking up the last post. He shrugged his shoulders loose and nodded. She put the last post in, then reached out to put her hand flat on his chest, fingers outspread. It felt like her arm was stretching over yards.
“Time is weird,” she said. “You probably won’t be gone more than a fraction of a second. Lock your knees and find a spot where you’d be stable for a second or two.”
He looked down at the iron rods.
“You can step on them, now.”
He spaced his feet out just wider than his shoulders and shifted over them for a second, then nodded. She hissed air in through her teeth at the burn through her body as she acted as a conduit, but she looked up at Jason.
“Set, Carter?”
“Just waiting on you,” he said. She nodded.
“Close your eyes and keep your body still. It’s going to feel like I’m pushing you, but I’m not. Don’t lean on me.”
Jason nodded and she closed her eyes, feeling the core of his spirit, centered deep in his chest. His heart beat under her hand, and she gritted her teeth, slowing time and focusing on the heart beat. She pushed lightly, just seeing how much force it was going to take, and Jason grunted, then shook his shoulders out again and stood.
“Carter. Eight, seven, six,” she said, four beats per heartbeat, a slow, even rhythm. He joined her at four. “Three, two, one.” She pushed Jason through.
<><><>
Jason blinked, looking around. It was like she’d shoved him, but he was still standing on his feet, and the posts of the little cage were still there. The problem was, the world had gone red.
“About time,” Carter said. Jason jerked. Carter wiped his palms together and raised his eyebrows. “You need a break, kiddo?”
“Shut up,” Jason said, not sure what the appropriate reaction was. There was Samantha, standing in front of him, hand on his chest, but as he moved, she didn’t. Her palm disappeared into his chest as he wavered forward, then he was looking down at a second copy of his own chest.
“Weird,” he said. Carter gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Any day, princess.”
“What?” Jason asked. “How do I get out of here?”
“You tried walking?”
Jason put his hand out, finding all of the images around him, the bars, Samantha, himself, to be intangible. He put a foot through a bar tentatively, then walked out, turning back to look himself in the face. At any distance at all, everything lost all color and turned redscale, the color palette of rust. He looked up at the sky and out over the landscape and found more of the same.
“This is Hell?” he asked. Carter blinked at him then took a broader stance and pointed.
“Hellcity is that way, so we’re going this way.”
Direct opposite.
“Okay,” Jason said, hoping to cue more explanation. Carter started walking.
“Please keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times,” he said. “You put your feet where I put mine. You fail, you’re on your own finding your way back.”
“Pretty sure Sam would kill you if you lost me,” Jason answered, looking over his shoulder as he followed Carter. His footsteps were pretty close to matching Carter’s, and Carter was just right there. It was ridiculous how melodramatic everyone was being about this.
“She knows the risks,” Carter said. “Angels and demons get lost out here all the time. I take one step to the side at the wrong time, go all fuzzy, you’d never find your way back. Die out here.”
Jason focused a little harder at matching Carter’s steps.
“So exactly what happens here?” he asked, watching the red sandstone go by.
“We’re going back in time,” Carter said. “Do it right, we actually see what happens.”
“Sam can see the past any time she wants?” Jason asked.
“She doesn’t come over here much any more, from the looks of her parasite troop. Doesn’t want to smudge her pretty white dress.”
Jason wasn’t a hundred percent sure what that meant, but he was pretty sure it was rude.
“You’re a jerk to her.”
Carter laughed.
“I’m a jerk to everyone.”
“But she doesn’t deserve it.”
“I’m doing her a favor,” Carter said, glancing back over his shoulder at Jason. “You make me regret it, she can come looking for you herself.”
Jason watched the other man’s shoulders for a few seconds then grinned to himself.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he said. “You’d make the threat all day long, but you’d never cross her like that.”
Car
ter turned and tilted his head to the side.
“You’d be surprised what I would do, pond scum. You can believe that or not, it’s up to you, but underestimating what I’m willing to do when pushed is often the last mistake people I know tend to make.”
Jason shrugged, still feeling like he had won as Carter turned back around.
“So what’s Hellcity?”
“I’m not a tour guide.”
“We got nothing better to do,” Jason said.
“Fortunately, I’m very comfortable with silence, and we haven’t far to go,” Carter said. Jason started to answer that, then though better of it and closed his mouth and followed.
<><><>
Samantha let go of her hold of time as she pushed Jason across, feeling him slip across the barrier. He gasped and stumbled. She pulled her hand and put it on the next post, listening to the vibration in the iron. She smiled and pulled out the final post, tossing it to one side. She threw her arms around Jason’s neck and laughed. He staggered, then got himself upright and put his arms hesitantly around her waist. She tossed her hair back then kissed his lips playfully.
“You’re back,” she said.
“It wasn’t after you,” Jason said.
“What?” she asked, dropping back onto her heels and pulling him out of the ring. Sam was immediately behind her. “Help him,” she said, motioning Sam forward. She looked back at Jason, who nearly dropped to his knees.
“It was after Sam,” he said. Sam caught him and held him up. Samantha dropped a foot behind her to partially kneel, looking at his eyes as he hung his head.
“Tell me,” she said, reaching up and touching his chin.
“He looked at me.”
“Sam,” Carter said into her ear. She had almost forgotten the phone.
“We’re moving,” Samantha said, hanging up the phone and throwing it at Sam. She took the fence posts and scattered them among the cars then came back to kick dirt over the pattern she had made in the packed earth.
“What’s going on?” Sam asked.
“Get him in the car. Now. Lay him in the back seat. You’re driving. I am fifteen seconds behind you,” Samantha said. She scuffed the markings as much as she could, leaving a section of the extremely flat yard slightly lumpy, but no one should be able to replicate the pattern by accident, then picked up her iron rods and shoved them into her backpack, running after Sam.
