“And me,” Ira said. “I can put in a good word for you with the Man Upstairs.” He gave a saintly smile and pointed toward the treetops.
“And us, too,” the rest of the gang chorused.
Rod held out his hand, “Okay. Give it to me.”
I stepped back, holding it out of his reach. “You first. You have to decide which of us doesn’t graduate.”
“I don’t give a skeg. Just give me a second here.” He rooted through his pack, drawing out one of each token and stuffing them in his jacket. “Okay. Here’s the rest. You put the skull down and I’ll put the pack down. Then we both pick up the other item. Okay? One . . . Two . . .”
I bent to place the skull on the ground, but that skegger grabbed the skull from my hand and charged toward the edge of the clearing without dropping the backpack.
Now he had everything—all the tokens and the crystal skull!
“He has retained the objects!” M’Kimbi shouted.
“He’s getting away, dudes!” Amber cried.
“Kali, don’t!” I cried as she raised all of her arms, a terrible and powerful glow emanating from her eyes.
I crouched low to the ground, petrified when she turned her glowing gaze in my direction.
“Relax, girlfriend,” she intoned. “I’m just going to stop him.”
Fire crackled from all thirty of her slender fingers and a tree crashed loudly, just out of sight.
“Oh, skeeeggg!” Rod’s voice drifted back to us.
Before we could head toward the sound, Rod reappeared in the clearing, a nasty scratch on his right cheek and twigs sticking out of his hair. Dante, who also sported a few twigs of his own—although on him they looked good—gripped Rod’s shoulder with one hand and balanced the skull in the other.
Something was different about my Reaper. Or rather, something was the same, again. After nearly a year’s absence, his scythe bounced at his hip, once more Velcroed to his belt loop.
Horace rushed to Rod’s side. At first I figured he was stupidly going to defend his former friend, but instead, he ripped the backpack of tokens out of Rod’s hand. “Give me that carrion luggage, you skeg-hole!” He lugged the pack over to the middle of the clearing, knelt on the ground and began to rifle through it.
“Hold up! Everyone. Time-out! Vieni qui subito!” Dante shoved Rod roughly to his knees in the dirt next to Horace. He handed me the skull. I clutched it to my chest as Dante gestured for us all to gather around.
“I need everyone to be quiet for a moment. Look through the trees. There.” He pointed to a space between a huge cypress and a Douglas fir. The fir was all matted.
“What are we . . . ?”
“Shhh! Dante commanded, laying a finger on his lips.
We watched in silence, having grown used to taking direction from Dante in his role as teacher’s aide. And maybe I had taken direction from him on a few more intimate occasions. Although come to think of it, it was usually me giving the directions, like “Oh, yeah. Right there.” And “Don’t stop.” My attention was yanked back to the clearing by the voices that floated toward us. I could just make out the back of a tall woman with dark hair . . . and six arms! She was talking to a gal with dark hair and paintbrush-tip ends and another with a mouse-brown shag.
“. . . need to stay off the main channels. Open channel D.”
“B?”
“Did you say P?”
“D. D. As in death.”
“Who’s Beth?”
“That’s us!” I whispered. I ran a hand over my hair. How often do you get a chance to see yourself from the back? I wiggled a bit, wanting to ask, “Does this forest make my ass look fat?”
“We had that conversation about three hours ago,” I said.
“Or right now,” Kali added. “What’s it mean?”
“It means,” Dante whispered, “we’ve got a bigger problem to solve than finding fur, fins or feathers.” He gestured for us to follow him back to the clearing.
In order for this to be happening now, it had to have happened the first time round, right? Dante and all of us had to have watched Kali, Amber and me setting out.
We hadn’t heard him before.
If we heard him now, would that change the future? The past?
My head hurt.
But I knew what I had to do. What we had to do, even if it meant we all failed the course.
“Guys, I think it’s time to go see the engineers,” I said.
“Guys, I think it’s time to go see the engineers,” I said.
“Guys, I think it’s time to go see the engineers,” I said.
Kali slapped me.
“Hey!” I cried, rubbing my burning cheek. I knew she’d pulled her punch, but still. “It’s not me. It’s time and . . .”
But it had worked. Her slap had stopped time from looping back on itself like a broken record. Why had it worked? I had an idea.
“Kali, when did time start going weird? Really weird, even for Hell time?”
“Uh, it’s hard to know. When you’re a millennia-old immortal, you don’t really pay that close attention to the date.” She raised her hands in a gesture of apology.
I got a little seasick looking at all those waving palms.
“Amber? You’d know exactly when it happened, right?”
“Sorry.” She shook her bangs out of her eyes. “I’ve only been here a few . . . let’s just say not that long.”
“Dante. When did Hell time go all wonky?” I waited for him to think. “Yes. When you were grounded, right? Like when I came to Hell, right?”
“Sì,” he said. I could see him gradually getting a clue.
So everyone who’d told me it wasn’t all about me was wrong—dead wrong. It was, in fact, utterly and completely about me. Sue Sayer was the only one who’d said so, way back then, but I hadn’t put two and two together until this very unstable moment.
I was the problem.
And I needed to deal with it.
Now.
But I needed help. Could I ask everyone here to sacrifice their Reaper careers to help me fix something I’d set wrong on my first day in Hell?
I raised my gaze and spoke to the entire group. “So, my friends. Do you want to finish the test and graduate and gain everything you’ve been working for these past two semesters?” I paused, gazing out at the sea of uneasy expressions. “Or do you wanna go see some guys about a time machine?”
I listened to the eruption of voices. The general consensus appeared to be “What the skeg?”
“We don’t have time for long explanations. In fact, we don’t have time for any explanations. Let’s just say Rod was right. I am the problem, or at least I created one the day I got here and I need your help fixing it. It’s like everyone said all along—I killed time!”
“We haven’t got time for this!” Rod snarled, tearing away from Dante’s grip.
“We’ll just have to make the time,” Kali replied, hands on hips and head and heart. “I stand by my friends.”
In that instant, I loved her so much I practically worshipped her.
“Thank you. Who else is in?”
Amber raised her hand. So did Ira. Horace glared at his former friend and moved over to stand beside me.
“Will it count toward our final grade?” M’Kimbi asked. Suck-up.
Dante cleared his throat. “We’re all going. It’s not optional. Remember that Reapers are Hell’s own SWAT team and we need to go swat something.” He crossed his arms over his chest and I went all tingly inside.
At that moment, I might have loved Dante, too. More than usual.
“Okay, then. We’re all in this together. Amber, you saw the map. The big black spot we were told not to go to? Well, we’re going there. Which way is it?”
“This way,” she answered. “I just hope we’re in time. Or if that’s even possible anymore.”
We charged through the underbrush, following Amber, who led us straight and true. Ira flexed his wings and rose above the t
rees to travel as the angel flies. I ran with the pack, managing to jog my way to a space beside Dante. My lungs burned even though breathing wasn’t strictly necessary. Still, I needed to know. “What’s with . . .” I panted. “The scythe.” I eyed the pewter cylinder dangling at his waist.
“Schotz ordered me to take it in case I needed it. Just for this emergency. I have to give it back after . . .” He kept his gaze on the path, but I knew he was thinking the same thing I was: Would there be an after?
Despite time being off—or because of it—we all arrived at the time machine clearing in just a few minutes. And there we stopped dead.
Over the time terminal, a giant whirlwind roared and spun—the steroidal cousin of the one that had swept my two former classmates from our classroom. The tornado pulsed like a beating heart, if hearts were black, filthy and expanding rapidly. A seagull swooped toward us, flying too close. A horrific squawk scraped across my eardrums as the poor bird disappeared into the swirling maelstrom. A single feather drifted toward the earth and I made a mental note to grab it later—if there even was a later.
The sound of tearing fabric practically deafened me. I remembered now. I’d heard it the day I’d arrived, when I pushed the miswired emergency button.
The engineers and their people had set up a crisis center at the edge of the clearing. Plans and blueprints covered the ground, weighted against the sucking wind by rocks and tools.
One of their documents whipped loose and bounced along the ground toward the terminal. A workman dived for it, but he never hit the ground. Instead, a swirling tentacle of wind separated from the main mass and shot toward him. He tumbled and spun, out of control. The tentacle whipped around his waist, drawing him into the gaping maw of the tornado. The last thing I saw was the sleeve of his red shirt as he disappeared from view.
This thing was sentient. And it was coming for me and my friends!
“Kirsty!” Lord Seiko cried, rushing toward me. “It’s a vortex between this dimension, Hell, and Heller, the next one over. We must have started it that day when we . . .”
“When I bumped the lever by mistake, causing the dry run to be a dress rehearsal. And then I hit the defective emergency switch. I screwed up.”
“It was an accident. On all our parts.” Even in a crisis, Seiko was still gracious. “The fact that you exist simultaneously on both planes, coupled with the surge of energy in the time machine, must have caused a rip in the fabric of the universe—or at least the curtain between Hell and Heller.”
I gawked at the huge tear in the air. The rip must have been expanding a fraction each day for nearly a year, sending time into a tizzy.
Seiko turned back toward his coworkers, the wind whipping his hair. His foot hit a hole in the ground where a rock had been sucked away. He stumbled, waving his arms to keep his balance and staggered into the danger zone.
“No!” I screamed, charging toward him. Just as a tentacle of evil whirlwind reached for him, I tackled him, throwing us both to the ground. I clung to him, making us an immovable object in the face of the irresistible force. I realized I was still holding the skull and tossed it aside so I could use both hands to grip my fallen friend.
“Nooo!” Rod charged in, diving for the skull. He grabbed it, only to make the worst fumble in history—MVP my ass. The skull shot from his grip. It bounced along the ground, coming to rest in a clear patch of grass near the doorway into the machine itself. Rod charged after his prize. Wind tore at his clothing, sucking at him, sucking him in. A starfish of tendrils reached for him, wrapping around his body like a giant windy squid. He rose into the air slowly, legs still pumping. He hung suspended for what seemed like an eternity and may well have been. Then the vortex howled and snatched him away. His screech hung in the air long after he’d gone. Finally, it died away.
On the ground, I held on to Seiko, unable to move, unable to scream.
“Make a chain!” Horace yelled above the wind. “Now!”
Kali charged in first, able to grip both Seiko and me, two arms apiece, leaving two free. Dante threw himself down next, feet practically in Kali’s face. She shouted something about there being Hell to pay when this was over, but she wrenched her ego under control and wrapped her last set of arms around his ankles. Horace copied Dante’s move so Dante was able to grab his legs and then M’Kimbi did the same. Ira and Amber held onto one of M’Kimbi’s arms each, functioning as anchors. The air filled with white feathers as the wind ripped at Ira’s wings. The tiny part of my mind still fixated on graduating wondered if we could steal a black Magic Marker from Schotz and fake a couple of seagull feathers. Look, I was desperate. But saving my aunt and getting my life back had to wait until I’d saved my friends.
And the world.
I’d met the other two engineers who comanaged the project with Lord Seiko when I’d first stumbled onto their time machine. Now I watched as Lord Roland, his great-great-grandson Lord Tim, and some of the workmen rushed over to help. But even with the additional manpower, there was no way they could haul six people along the ground while a malevolent vortex yanked our chain.
The wind surged, becoming a giant vacuum determined to eat its fill. I’d finally found the evil incarnate I’d always expected in Hell. And it came from the dimension next door! There goes the neighborhood.
“I can’t hold on much longer,” Kali screamed, the wind snatching at her words.
We pulled and heaved in the tug-of-war to end all wars. I thought my arms would rip out of their sockets. I silently thanked Sergeant Schotz for all the physical training. Now I knew why it had been important. No strain, no gain.
“Climb the chain. Furthest out first!” Roland shouted, deerstalker cap and accent both whipped away in the wind.
That would work. I wanted Seiko to go first, but he pushed at me until I realized this Chip ’n’ Dale routine only wasted time while the wind grew stronger. Still holding onto me, Seiko passed me to Kali, who helped me crawl up to the next person. By the time I reached Dante, the wind’s grasp had lessened a little. Great news, since Dante didn’t have an extra set of arms to support me and still hang on to the person in front of him.
I crawled over Dante as quickly as I could, which wasn’t very. Seiko crawled up behind me.
When we’d raced out of the clearing toward the time machine, Horace had donned Rod’s backpack containing the tokens we needed to graduate. I used it now to drag myself over him to the next person in line. First one of the straps gave and then the other. Trust Rod to have bought a cheaply made backpack. I shoved it aside and grasped Horace around the neck. The wind grabbed the backpack immediately and it flew, along with all our hopes of graduation, into the vortex. Now Rod would have all the tokens he’d wanted so badly. Poor Rod.
“How do we stop this?” I screamed, once I’d scrambled onto safe ground.
“We must shut it down!” Roland shouted.
“Yeah, man. Shut it down,” Tim seconded.
But how? The vortex pulsed and roared like a great sucking chest wound between Hell and Heller. As we’d fought for our lives, it had expanded to encompass nearly the entire clearing, vacuuming up everything in its path. It tore at the time machine building, ripping off the lion heads and tearing away the weaker sections of paneling. The terminal now resembled a desiccated body—chunks of tortured materials clinging to the shuddering skeleton of rebar and I-beams and concrete. The metal frame twisted and shrieked. Having torn holes in the roof, tendrils of evil descended into the building, giving birth to tiny new twisters that spun through the interior. How could anyone enter the building now? How could we shut the time machine off?
“Won’t the time machine just get torn apart and stop working?” Horace shouted over the roar.
“No. We relocated the main engines underground not long ago,” Seiko explained. “It would take a nuclear attack to destroy it. All you see aboveground are the controls. Once they’re torn away, we won’t be able to shut it off and the vortex will suck all of Hell and the M
ortal Coil into its ravenous belly.”
And the Mortal Coil! Oh, no! “What about when it runs down?” I yelled in his ear. “You guys told me it runs on spices.”
“That’s so last millennium. It’s thermal powered now. We hooked it up directly to the Earth’s core when we planted the engines underground.”
“Did you ever hook up the computer systems I suggested?”
“Yes, we did, but we kept the older systems in place just in case.”
“How, then, can one deactivate this device?” M’Kimbi asked, eyes wide with fear, mouth a firm line of determination.
“There’s an emergency button inside.” I said, looking to Roland for confirmation. He nodded grimly. Then he sneezed, knocking a fair amount of grit from his mustache.
“I’m afraid our Kirsty is correct. There’s a button inside that must be depressed. It will turn the machine on.”
“On?” Horace asked. “Don’t we want to turn the skeggin’ thing off?”
“No. No,” Seiko said. “It has been set off. We now need to turn it on. That will stop the fluctuation of the time parameters in terms of the juxtaposition of the . . .”
A glint caught my eye. The crystal skull still lay where Rod had fumbled it. On a patch of grass. Why grass? Everywhere else the grass and soil had been torn up until the bones of Earth lay bare. Boulders and massive tree roots were all that remained where lawn and topsoil had been swallowed up by the swirling menace.
Atop the building, a huge box comprised of metal ribs and filters perched just above the door—the massive air conditioner I’d noticed the day I arrived. The AC unit shuddered and wavered, metal screaming as it torqued, its welds and bolts threatening to give at any second. For the moment, though, it held and in doing so, blocked the terrible sucking wind, leaving a clear path just in front of the open door. I looked around.
“I’ll go,” Dante volunteered, tearing off his robe.
“You’re a brave young man,” Roland told Dante, who was quite possibly several hundred years his senior. “But ’tis clearly my responsibility. I’ll go.” Roland gripped his pipe between his teeth resolutely.
Scythe Does Matter trr-2 Page 9
