“Ma’am,” a voice said in front of her. “Ma’am, you can stop. He called for a ceasefire.”
But she didn’t stop. She wanted them to know. She wasn’t angry anymore, but they had to understand what their fight had cost them and their loved ones. Most of all, she needed them to understand it was over. She showed them images of the rest of history, showing other wars where the North and South fought side-by-side, and how the world had moved on.
“Ma’am,” Hatcher’s voice called to her. “Please stop. We don’t want to see anymore.”
Kate stopped. When she opened her eyes, every spirit on the battlefield was looking at her. Instead of battle formations, they had broken lines and surrounded her in a circle. She saw young men and older ones, many with tears in their eyes. There were thousands of them.
“Your fight is over!” she called out, and she knew they could hear her. “Some of you already know this. Some of you went home again, even if your soul remained here. Even for those who rose where you fell, you understand now. The war was over a long time ago. The fight you carry within your hearts must also end.”
She saw Hatcher and several others nodding. Still, she noticed a few angry faces in the crowd, shaking their heads.
“Do you wish to stay here?” she asked. “Do you want to keep re-fighting your old battles, nursing your old wounds? That is why you remained here. When you died, you saw the light. You knew there was a way forward, a path out. But some of you were confused, and many of you were still angry and grief-stricken. You didn’t want to leave. You weren’t ready. And so you remained here, waiting. And when I gave you form again, you chose to use it to repeat your old mistakes. Is that what you want? Or do you want another way?”
More men nodded.
“That is what I’m here to offer,” she said. “I am your last chance to move on. If you stay, you will remain trapped here until the end of time. But if you come with me, I can show you a new world and a new hope. To find it, each of you must put away the past. You cannot let it rule you any longer. I know how difficult that is, but I have done it myself. You can too. Let me show you how.”
She looked out at the sea of faces, many of them still with tears in their eyes. She had been angry at them, but she understood why they had acted as they did. Hadn’t she been the same? Instead of searching for a way to help Quinn, she had been trapped in her past, confronting an enemy she had already defeated. That was over for her; it would soon be over for them.
“I won’t lie to you; this is another battle,” Kate said. “But not against each other. It is a fight to overcome your past, to break down the walls that have kept you away from your loved ones and to build a new life. Are you ready for this?”
The crowd erupted in cheers, and Kate noticed that the lines of blue and gray had begun to merge. They were no longer looking suspiciously at each other, but focused on her.
“Come with me,” Kate called. “We have a long journey ahead of us — and more of your fallen comrades to find. But I will lead you away from all this. Follow me and I will bring you to your true home. I am the last and I will set you free.”
The spirits surged toward her and one by one disappeared, joining her invisible army. When she looked around the moonlit battlefield, she realized they were all now with her.
When she left, the battlefield of Manassas was truly silent — finally at peace.
Chapter 20
After four days of walking, Quinn forced his companions to rest at the bottom of a mountain.
He was amazed at their stamina and endurance. In death, they didn’t need to eat or drink, and they seemed to replenish their physical energy after pausing for only a few minutes.
He had no way of knowing for sure, but Quinn estimated they averaged more than 40 miles a day. The mountain that had been no more than a distant speck on the landscape was now in front of them.
The only flaw was they still needed to sleep. It was nowhere near as often as in the mortal world, but it seemed they couldn’t go too long without needing a mental break. Quinn didn’t know why. Maybe it was the nature of consciousness — it just couldn’t go an infinite period without rest. Certainly he’d felt refreshed and rejuvenated when he slept a few days ago, even with Sanheim appearing in his dreams.
There was also a darker possibility. Sanheim seemed to rule over dreams, which was how Quinn had first met him two years ago. Just as Sanheim determined who controlled various fiefdoms, maybe he ensured they slept so he could keep in contact with people. It raised the daunting question: would he dream of Sanheim tonight?
After they decided to camp for the night, Quinn all but collapsed into the red grass. A few minutes later, he was dimly aware of Buzz building a fire without matches.
“I was in ‘Nam, Janus, I know how to do this,” Buzz said.
It was the last thing Quinn remembered before he fell asleep.
It seemed like just five minutes later when someone put their hand on his chest. He started to scream but a hand covered his mouth.
“Shhhhh,” a soft female voice said.
With that, Elyssa crawled on top of Quinn and kissed him.
Quinn was immediately aware of two things. The first was that Elyssa’s tongue was halfway down his throat before he could tell her to stop. The second was that she was naked.
Elyssa was dangerous, ruthless and morally ambiguous, but she was also extremely attractive. He didn’t want to, but Quinn noticed how her breasts felt against his chest, and how her long legs wrapped around his hips.
He had a fleeting thought — “I wonder…” — but squashed it. Some part of him might wonder what it would feel like to have sex with Elyssa, but he was never going to find out.
Quinn pulled his head away, hoping that she would back off once he made his wishes clear. Instead, she stayed on top of him, her face hovering inches from his.
“Come on,” she said. “Kate’s not here, the others are asleep. You turned me down once. Why not find out what you missed?”
“Not going to happen,” Quinn said. “Please get off me.”
Instead, she pressed herself more tightly to him and started to kiss his neck.
“Get off, Elyssa,” he said more adamantly.
“Oh, I plan to,” she purred at him.
Quinn closed his eyes and shoved her off him. He tried to do it gently, but ended up using more force than he planned, given the adrenaline surging through his body. Elyssa tumbled into the grass beside him. She sprang back a moment later, once again inches from his face.
But this time her hands were out front and she was clawing at Quinn’s face. He managed to grab her wrists and hold them away with effort.
“How dare you?” she hissed.
“Would you stop trying to hurt me so we could talk for a second?”
For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t comply. She pushed her hand toward his eye, her long nail nearing his eyeball. Quinn braced his legs to kick her, no longer worried about being gentle.
But she suddenly pulled her hand back and stood up, allowing Quinn to see her naked body by the remaining glow of the fire. She started to walk away.
“Elyssa,” he whispered, noting the three others sleeping nearby. “Seriously, can we have a conversation? Or is it just fighting or fucking with you?”
She stopped.
“I was trying to make amends,” she said. “I thought after we saved each other…”
She drifted off and started to walk away again.
“I’m not your enemy,” Quinn said. “I’m happy you’re here. But I don’t want to have that kind of relationship with you, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” Elyssa said. “You’re the only man to turn me down, and you’ve done so twice. I won’t ask a third time.”
“Seriously, have you ever had a relationship with a man that wasn’t sexual?” Quinn asked.
Elyssa stared at him. She was still naked and apparently unconcerned about it.
“Is it my fault if men find me beautiful?�
�� Elyssa asked. “Well, most of them, anyway.”
“It’s not that you aren’t beautiful,” Quinn said. “It’s…
“What?” Elyssa demanded. “Kate? Why does every man that ever mattered always love someone else more?”
She stomped through the grass to find her clothes and started pulling them on, apparently more out of anger than embarrassment.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” muttered Carol, apparently not sleeping anymore.
“Stay out of this, Madame Zora,” Elyssa said, adding a sarcastic emphasis to the name.
Quinn got up and walked over to Elyssa. She was still buttoning her shirt, but he motioned her to follow him a little farther from the group. They sat down in the grass.
“Can we talk?” Quinn asked. “I’m not trying to start a fight with you, but it doesn’t help me that you use sex like some kind of weapon.”
“Of course I use it like a weapon,” she said quietly. She was pensive for a moment. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” Quinn said.
“Modern women think it’s all so easy,” she started, and paused. She ran her fingers through her long brown hair and pinned it up above her neck
Quinn sat quietly and waited for her to continue.
“I’m not closed off from the world. I saw what it became. But that’s not the world I was born into. I was born in 1879. My mother told me all I’d ever be good for was a nobleman’s mistress. I was too low-birth to hope for anything better. But I could live in wealth and splendor if I attached myself to the right man. That’s what she told me. So I had a plan. His name was Eustace Conroy. He wasn’t of particularly high class but his family had money and his wife was as plain as a winter’s day. I saw how he looked at me, how his eyes watched my every move. I had him wrapped around my finger. He would have given me everything. But then…”
“You met Sawyer,” Quinn finished.
“You say it like it was a small thing,” Elyssa replied. “When I met Sawyer, my entire world changed. How could I even let Eustace Conroy touch me when a man like Sawyer existed? He was so charming and intelligent. People hung on his every word. So what if Sawyer was married? I was born to seduce a man like that. So that’s what I did. How could I have known what it would lead to?”
“You mean becoming the Prince of Sanheim?” Quinn asked.
“No, that was the good part!” Elyssa replied and smiled with the memory. “I loved the power and attention. I loved the ability to turn into any animal I chose, to hunt in the darkness. I relished commanding others, to see the adoration in their eyes. It was the first time in my life that I had power, that I had choices, control. That’s not what I’m talking about. When I met Sawyer, I knew I wanted him. He wasn’t as wealthy as Conroy, and his ambitions were far less. But everything about him attracted me. When I seduced him, I thought I was in control, that I would have a devoted lover who would hang on my every visit. Instead, something far worse happened.”
“You fell in love with him,” Quinn said.
Elyssa just nodded.
“Trust me, that wasn’t the plan,” Elyssa said. “I never wanted that. I could see everything about him after that first night. I learned all his memories, all the good and evil he was capable of. When we fought off Aillen, his childhood fear, we did it together. We were a team. And if he loved another as well, that was all right. At least he cared about me.”
“But then Sanheim convinced Anne to kill herself…” Quinn said.
“And everything fell apart after that,” Elyssa said. “I was trapped in a play that I couldn’t escape, playing the role of mistress to a man who was no longer married, but enraptured with his dead bride. I was trapped that way for a century.”
Quinn heard a twig snap and turned to find Janus looking at them both.
“Uh, we’re having trouble sleeping because you guys are talking so quietly,” Janus said.
“Don’t you mean talking loudly?” Quinn replied.
“No, actually, that’s the problem,” he said. “We’re all straining to hear you.”
Quinn looked over to see Buzz stoking the fire and Carol sitting beside him, looking in their direction. He shrugged and got up, reaching a hand out to Elyssa to help her up.
“Come on,” he said to her. “Apparently this is going to be a group chat,” he added dryly.
They walked over to the fire and joined the others.
“I figured if there was a pity party for Elyssa, we’d all want to join in,” Carol said.
“Leave her alone,” Quinn replied.
“You’re defending her now?” Carol said. “She had me killed, do you remember that?”
Elyssa looked nonplussed.
“You were a threat,” she said.
“I was trying to get as far away from you as possible,” Carol said. “How was I supposed to know the next Prince of Sanheim would show up near me? It was a coincidence.”
“A pretty big one,” Elyssa said. “We assumed you were working with the next Prince.”
“She didn’t even tell us about the legend,” Quinn said. He turned to face Carol. “Thanks for that, by the way,” he added sarcastically. “It might have helped.”
“Don’t go blaming me for holding out,” Carol said. “I was trying to protect you.”
Buzz jabbed a stick into the fire and it let off a shower of sparks. Everyone turned in his direction.
“The past is done,” Buzz said quietly. “No sense re-fighting old battles. We all have things we would have done differently if we had known better. Personally, I blame myself for Janus’ death.”
Janus looked at him in confusion.
“How do you figure that?” he asked.
“If I’d gone to the police when I found out who Lord Halloween was, things would’ve been different, my boy,” Buzz said.
Janus shrugged.
“And if we’d scored more runs, we would’ve won the game,” Janus said. “The only person I blame for my death is Kyle Thompson, and he’s dead.”
“We need to work together,” Buzz continued, “If we don’t, we’re not going to make it.”
“Buzz is right,” Quinn said. “It’s why I saved you, Elyssa. If Sanheim wants you dead, you must be a threat. And if there’s one common enemy we have, it’s him.”
“And after he’s defeated?” she asked.
“That’s putting the cart before the horse, isn’t it?” Quinn asked. “But I have no intention of killing you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You say that now,” she said. “But I’ve seen how Carol looks at me. I’ve watched you whispering with her. She’ll turn you against me.”
Quinn looked startled.
“She hasn’t said anything about you,” he said. “All we’ve been doing is plotting against Sanheim.”
“Oh,” Elyssa said, looking almost put-out.
“Not everything is about you, honey,” Carol said.
Buzz stoked the fire, drawing everyone’s attention again.
“Look, we need to get a little more rest and in the morning — if it’s ever morning — we’re going to climb this damn mountain. Okay?”
Buzz looked at all of them. Elyssa was the first to nod and walk away. Quinn was relieved that at least she didn’t seem angry anymore. The last thing he needed was enemies within his own camp.
Quinn nodded at Buzz, who stopped poking the fire and lay down on the ground next to Carol.
Soon all five of them were silent again. Quinn thought it would be a long time before he nodded off. He was convinced he would lie awake thinking about all the ways this could go wrong. But even as he had those thoughts, he fell into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 21
Kieran looked around nervously while Tim hacked the security system to the sheriff’s administrative office.
“I still don’t understand why you couldn’t just ask him,” Kieran said.
Tim swiped the card across the security terminal and waited for the pad in fron
t of him to give results. His contact had promised him it would take less than 30 seconds.
“I don’t think Sheriff Brown would approve of stealing evidence,” Tim replied.
“Uh, he let a key witness and a suspected criminal get away,” Kieran said. “That doesn’t sound like someone who’s worried about proper procedure.”
“That was different,” Tim said, still waiting for the keypad. “He already knew he couldn’t contain Kate. God knows he tried several times. And I convinced him that keeping you would only lead to more harm to his officers and staff.”
Kieran shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Seems like it’d be worth a phone call.”
“And when he says no and it gets stolen anyway, who is he going to blame?” Tim asked.
“That’s a good point,” Kieran said. “But he’s going to blame Kate anyway. Which brings me to my next point. Why are we doing this instead of her?”
“Because in case you hadn’t noticed, she has more important things to do,” he said. “She’s off collecting spirits. We can handle the wet work.”
“I thought wet work was when you killed people,” Kieran said.
Tim looked at him.
“I thought it was just breaking and entering,” he said. “Stealing stuff, that kind of thing.”
“Well, aren’t we just the master criminals at work?” Kieran asked. “We don’t even know the names for the crimes we’re committing.”
As he spoke, the keypad in front of him flashed four numbers and beeped loudly. Kieran looked in several directions to see if they were being watched. Tim had already disabled the video cameras; Kieran wasn’t sure how. He watched as Tim calmly swiped the card to access the building, and then punched in four numbers. Kieran waited for an alarm to go off and lights to flash. Instead, the red light on top of the reader turned green. There was an audible click as the door unlocked.
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