Something Always Remains

by M. L. S. Weech

  Bob let his energy fade. Lynne scurried back into Bob’s pocket, howling the whole way. The spinning flower didn’t stop abruptly; it spun and hovered down to land inexplicably on Bob’s open hand.

  Once, a little girl had told him that flowers make everyone feel better. I wish flowers really were magical. The regret of the truth didn’t keep Bob from putting the flower in his jacket pocket. He stood and left the house out the back gate. He walked for a short time until he reached a small bus stop.

  Walter had said his wife of forty-one years would arrive there around three in the afternoon. She visited with some friends at her church and usually made it home in time for dinner. Bob sat at the bus stop and waited, both happy and frustrated that this Passing might be the easiest thing he’d do before he died. He placed a hand on his jacket over the pocket where his new flower sat.

  Flowers aren’t magical, and they don’t do a thing for pain. Strangely enough, each time Bob reached for it, he felt a little better.

  14

  A Wealth of Power

  Grimm waited in an empty tent as his Dark Sense intensified. They were building some tower or another. He’d long since stopped caring for the affairs of mortals, so things like banks, skyscrapers, and all elements of progress seemed irrelevant to him. The most-advanced mortals still had two things in common: they lived, and they died. In time, they would all die by his whim. Then he’d tear their souls apart.

  The tent seemed to be where the construction crew held various supplies. Slates of wood took up most of the space. Metal cabinets that lined each side of the tent were filled with tools. As a mortal, Grimm had never needed much more than a small bag in order to do his work. Now, all he needed were shadows. His Blacksouls were slithering all around him, feeling the impending deaths, crying in hunger for more souls to devour and turn.

  Eight people would die soon. A surge of annoyance hit Grimm. Trying to position himself in the right place meant trying to understand how the mortals would die. If he knew how they’d die, he would have more success in trying to kill them. Whatever stopped him from killing also stopped him from understanding how they were supposed to die.

  A ninth Dark Sense flickered. It seemed unlikely the ninth person would die, but if Grimm could arrange it, he’d be very happy. The Blacksouls began calling out again, a unique keening if one knew what to listen for. It was time. He surrounded himself with the Blacksouls and formed them into a pair of black jeans and a plain T-shirt. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn mortal clothes. He was surrounded in Death, and it made him feel as safe as he’d felt in two lifetimes.

  He pulled a hard hat off one of the shelves and stepped out of the tent. The Blacksouls that remained began fanning out along the shadows, already knowing what to do. It was a pleasant relationship. They knew he wanted them to fulfill their nature. They wanted to find and devour every soul, and he controlled them.

  The construction site was a single tower surrounded by a boarded fence that kept others from entering the area while huge machines designed for digging and smashing puttered around. The tower was little more than a frame. Dozens of metal beams were bolted together to reveal the general shape of what the building would become. Grimm counted fifty or so sets of beams that would eventually become floors of a tower of useless breathing creatures that had no idea what they would be, could be, if they only dared to tap into his power. Of course, Grimm didn’t know of that power before he had died a mortal death. He’d always believed there was more inside a person. He’d always sensed there was power to be discovered, but it wasn’t until his mortal life ended that he found the path to real power, real control of life and death. That control would lead to the ultimate understanding of existence.

  He walked to a cargo elevator, joining one of the mortals on the way up. The mortal, a fat man who Grimm doubted ever did anything significant in his life, stepped off the elevator on the fourteenth frame. Grimm thought he recognized the man, but he didn’t spend much time thinking of faces of people who’d all eventually die. Grimm watched his Blacksouls scurry along the inner edges of the beams. A group of mortals were welding support beams to link the frame of the floor to the frame of the structure. At least eight of those men were about to die. Grimm couldn’t wait to see it.

  The elevator rattled again and started a journey back to the bottom floor. Grimm kept his eyes focused on the environment in front of him. He wanted to make sure he was within range of his Blacksouls. Even if he learned to kill, he wasn’t immortal, just ever-young. If some scrap of metal flew into his skull, he’d be just as dead and useless as the next Journeyman.

  Some sort of machine designed to move slates of steel rumbled to life. He watched as the man controlling the machine lowered a piece of wire. A handful of workers attached a stack of steel platforms to the wire. They’d no sooner started to lift the platforms into the air when a Blacksoul screamed. Grimm looked to see what had angered it. That ... man, that would-be Death called Bob, of all the ridiculous names, was there.

  Grimm was about to summon a Blacksoul to restrain him, but as he began to focus his concentration, a pair of arms wrapped around him as tightly as chains. “Ye dinnea think we’d jus let ye have all the fun, did ye?”

  Grimm recognized the voice. Drisc was just an annoyance compared to Bob. While Bob was proving ... difficult ... to kill, Grimm was fairly certain he could kill the Senior Journeyman.

  “Do you really think you can stop me?” Grimm asked.

  “I’m thinking this bullet should,” the fat man who’d taken the elevator up with him said. He held a gun to Grimm’s head. Grimm cried out for help. His Blacksouls began to surge toward him, but Grimm could already hear the hammer of the gun click backward.

  The tower shook. Grimm felt one of the men die. No! Grimm cursed. He realized, too late, that the number of imminent deaths had caused him to fail to notice where exactly the mortals would die. The man controlling the tractor died somehow. That pretender sensed a single death in such a number of deaths, and I failed to see it? It would be funny if Grimm weren’t about to die.

  Only he was saved. The dead mortal must have knocked his machine out of control, because the stack of steel platforms swung into the tower, spilling steel slates all over the fourteenth floor. The collision caused the fat man with a gun to stumble. It also knocked Grimm and his attacker to the ground.

  Grimm didn’t waste a moment. He focused on the Blackouls that made up his shirt and attacked the Senior Journeyman. The fool shouted as two Blacksouls formed on top of him. Grimm stood and blocked the sun, casting a shadow so his creatures could work. They could stand light if they were touching him, but if they were away, they needed shadow. Drisc must have realized as much, because he rolled out of Grimm’s shadow. The Blacksouls hissed in the light and scurried to him.

  The fat man took aim again, but he was too slow. Grimm smiled as he watched his Blacksouls begin slipping along the tower. One reached out and grabbed the gun from the fat man’s hands. He let the weapon go. Then he stood between Grimm and Drisc. That’s when Grimm noticed Drisc Collecting a soul.

  Grimm stepped back to the elevator platform, where the sun couldn’t reach him. His Blacksouls slithered around him, and with them, he took his true form, howling in rage. They weren’t here to try and kill him, Grim realized. They were there to collect the souls before he could.

  They’d already gotten two souls from the man who’d died operating the crane and the mortal whom Drisc had Collected while Grimm was distracted. Grimm took a quick look around. One slate landed on top of a worker, crushing him. Grimm no sooner laid eyes on him than his Blacksouls scurried along the beams to collect the soul. The whole area was chaos. Workers either tried to gain their footing or help anyone who had been injured. Most of those who were meant to die had. Some had already been pinned, crushed, or had fallen to their deaths.

  The site of Grimm caused even more panic, which normally would have pleased him, except for the fact that the commotion made it e
asier for the pretenders to Collect souls before he could.

  Grimm sent three Blacksouls to deal with Drisc and two to deal with the fat man. Both men stood in the light, but they forgot about their own shadows. They spun and tried to force the creatures to retreat, but it gave Grimm time to Collect another soul.

  The fat man pulled out a flashlight and shined it at Drisc’s feet. As Drisc ran, his fat counterpart moved behind him, shining the light to keep the Blacksouls away. Drisc dove and Collected the soul of a man whose head had been crushed by a swinging steel plate.

  Bob had already Collected three souls below. Drisc had captured three more, while Grimm only managed to gain one soul. His Blacksouls managed to slither across the frame to take another soul. Everyone noticed the eighth victim at the same time.

  He was pinned under a steel platform. Someone was trying to pull him out, but Grimm knew he was perhaps a minute from death, probably from blood loss. A pool of blood spread from under the platform. The hero pulling his all-but-dead coworker didn’t have a clue, but a Dark Sense flickered around him.

  Apparently, Drisc noticed the same scene. Grimm surged forward. Two Blacksouls slipped into the shadow of the plate that trapped the not-quite-dead man. He started screaming. His friend pulled harder, taking note of Grimm’s approach. Drisc tried to make a rush for the scene, but Grimm was prepared for the move. The steel plate that trapped the dying man lifted into the air; a Blacksoul held the plate up while another gripped the dying man’s legs.

  The would-be hero saw the creatures and tried to leave his friend to die, but the dying construction worker grabbed his friend’s ankle. Grimm summoned his Blacksoul, and the creature yanked the dying man’s body. Grimm watched in awe as the man tripped his friend. The flickering Dark Sense flared. The man’s ankle went out from under him, and the ninth person fell to his death.

  Archie fell to his knees. He felt a wave of nausea, which was quickly followed by a pool of vomit in front of him. Pip rushed to his side and patted his back as another pool of bile ejected itself from Archie’s mouth.

  “You OK?” Pip asked.

  It was as if the world had stopped. He used clocks to keep the passing of a person’s physical life moving in perfect harmony, and every single one of them surged, as if something had stopped time for an instant.

  “No,” Archie told Pip. “No, I’m afraid that something very bad just happened.”

  Todd could hardly keep his eyes open. He and the thirty-some-odd Journeymen were on the floor of the hotel conference room he’d booked for the meeting. It was as if every single one of them caught the worst flu virus ever at the exact same time. Something had surged in the world. His Death Sense flared so brightly it seemed as though the Earth were destined to die.

  Groans and cries came from all around him. He felt like he’d died and woke up in some B-rated zombie flick. The Journeymen rolled in agony. Some of them had a second round of vomiting.

  The smell of it all hit him, quickly followed by another wave of ... wrongness. He couldn’t breathe. He could hardly gather his thoughts. The only thing he seemed to be able to focus on was concern. Drisc and Bob were supposed to go after Grimm today. Something told Todd it didn’t go so well.

  Bob’s ears rang. He sat on his knees, eyes closed, trying to get his bearing. It was as if every power he had surged for a moment and then went numb. He felt sick to his stomach. He could feel the fear of the soul inside him. He was scared as Hell himself, but until then, the soul that had become his was usually a source of comfort.

  He opened his eyes to see the man who had fallen. Bob Collected the soul, and the moment he did, the pain and sickness left. The pain was equivalent to the worst heartburn ever, multiplied to infinite levels. Once Bob Collected the last man’s soul, his relief was immediate.

  They’d failed. They’d meant to come and collect as many of the passing souls as they could before Grimm had a chance to let them sour. He wasn’t sure how many souls Drisc had managed to Collect, but somehow, Bob knew it wasn’t enough. They won a battle. It only cost them the war.

  A wave of ... wrongness ... came over Drisc. He stood, dumbfounded, and watched the man fall and die. Drisc fell to his knees and almost tipped off the metal beam on which he knelt. The surge was unlike anything Drisc had ever felt or sensed. It was like he fell into a tank of oil. It shouldn’t have been possible. It couldn’t have been possible. Grimm had managed to kill someone. A Journeyman had killed.

  His Death Sense flared so intensely he had to close his eyes against it. He huddled over and let the sickness escape his lungs. Drying off his mouth with the back of his hand, Drisc tried to focus on the specifics of what had happened. Grimm was responsible, but he didn’t actually kill the man. The poor bastard had had his foot yanked out from under him by the man he’d meant to leave to die.

  A soft chuckle broke Drisc’s train of thought. He looked up to see Grimm standing on the opposite side of the frame. The monster had dropped his Blacksoul cowl, revealing his face. Grimm smiled at him, and the sight was sickening. “I’ve done it,” Grimm said. “I’ve done it!” he repeated, shouting with a perverse joy.

  “You still can’t be the one to do it,” Drisc said, not sure he was telling the truth. “You acted through a living being. You still can’t kill with your own hands.” Drisc hoped to Hell he was right.

  “Let’s test the theory, then,” Grimm said. He turned to look at Richard, and three Blacksouls snuck out from the shadow of a beam and tripped him.

  Drisc dove, listening to Richard yelp in terror. He grabbed onto Richard’s wrist. Richard wasn’t fat, exactly, but the force of his fall nearly yanked Drisc’s arms out of their sockets. Drisc heard something pop and he grunted, demanding his hands to stay wrapped around the policeman’s wrist.

  Drisc risked a glance around. He caught site of Grimm rushing into the elevator. He had no doubt that Grimm would be very happy to watch another man die, but escape was his primary motive. Drisc looked down at Richard.

  “Hold on,” Drisc grunted.

  “You fucking think I mean to let go?” Richard yelled. “Pull me up!”

  “I think my shoulder is dislocated.”

  “What am I supposed to do, then?” Richard asked. He had managed to get over the shock and get himself under control.

  Drisc responded with the most inspirational thing he could think of. “Ummm.”

  “Can you hold on for a minute?” Richard asked.

  “I’m not sure how long I can give you,” Drisc said. He couldn’t feel his right arm. He wrapped his left hand around his right, hoping to keep both clamped as firmly around Richard’s wrist as possible.

  Richard began to pull himself up. Drisc hollered. Just as Richard was high enough to risk an attempt to grip the beam, his fingers slipped. Richard swung back down. Drisc’s shoulder felt like someone had stabbed it with a hot knife. He felt his hand open. No! Drisc gripped as hard as he could with his left hand. He felt Richard’s hand close around his. He swung perilously, pulling Drisc slightly further along the beam.

  “Try again,” Drisc said, trying to bury the agony in his voice with encouragement. A part of him noticed that Richard didn’t have any Death Sense. No red glow flickered around him. That didn’t encourage him to let go. He’d just seen the impossible once, and he didn’t want to risk Richard’s life tempting fate twice.

  “If I miss again, I might pull you off.”

  “Ye fucking let go, and I’ll jump down after yer fat ass! Now climb!” Bob always said Drisc had all the qualities of a great leader. The bookworm would know more about it than Drisc. One thing he knew how to do was keep at something till it worked out. “Pull!” he ordered.

  Richard swung and slapped his other hand around Drisc’s wrist. Drisc watched as the policeman pulled himself upward. The man’s gonna be a father, Drisc; you gonna let some kid grow up without a dad? Drisc shook the thought away. Lynne was an accident. He couldn’t do anything about her soul. He was trapped and unable to reach her.
But Richard was right there. Drisc had him, had his life, literally in his hands.

  Drisc leaned back and pulled. Inch by inch, he felt himself slide further onto the beam. Pull, you dumb bastard. This is the thing you have to get right. This is your shot at actually doing something. Their sweaty hands began to slide apart. Drisc took a breath and pulled.

  Richard whipped his hand up and grabbed the beam. Drisc held his wrist for a moment until Richard could get both hands on the structure. Then, grunting in pain, he helped Richard pull himself all the way onto the beam. They stumbled to the safety of the elevator platform and collapsed there to catch their breath.

  “Thanks,” Richard said.

  “You can thank me by cutting back on the food, laddie.”

  “If you give some lame doughnut joke, I’ll shoot you.”

  “That’d be a fine show of appreciation to the man who saved your life.”

  Ricard closed his eyes. “True,” he said. They both started laughing. There wasn’t anything remotely funny about the moment, but they laughed until Drisc felt tears in his eyes.

  “Tell you what,” Richard said between gasps of air. “I’ll go on a diet, if you hit the gym once in a while.”

  “Sounds fair.” They continued to laugh. Drisc couldn’t fill his lungs before he started laughing all over again. His arm hurt like hell. His fingers were numb, and he was cut and bruised from head to toe. He’d never felt better. I did it, Lynne. I saved someone.

  15

  Introductions

  Todd helped another Journeyman—he thought his name was Stewart—clean one of the tables. The only thing worse than thirty-some-odd Journeymen getting sick all at once was having to clean up after. None of them knew what had happened, but Todd knew it wasn’t good.