Romancing the Dead

by Tate Hallaway

  He smiled. “You’re insatiable. Let’s go.”

  I felt kind of relieved, like my worries were over, when a coyote stepped out into the middle of the highway. The brakes screeched and Sebastian yanked at the steering wheel. Being a vampire with preternatural strength and hyped-up reaction speed is normally an advantage bar none. But when traveling at sixty miles an hour, suddenly turning your wheels at a ninety-degree angle is not, shall we say, a factory-recommended move.

  The car flipped.

  Time compressed, and it seemed like I had hours to reflect on what might have caused us to become airborne. I also watched with horrified fascination as the ground rose up to meet us. I had two instincts that I acted on without conscious thought.

  One, cover my face.

  Two, call up Lilith.

  My guts dropped out as we hit the ground and began to bounce. Metal rent. Glass burst with a shattering pop. All around me the car exploded into pieces. But other than the nauseating sensation of being on a badly managed roller-coaster ride, I felt nothing. I cracked open my magical eye to see Sebastian and me enveloped in a dark static cloud—a kind of Dark Goddess airbag.

  When the car finally stopped, we sat in the demolished frame, which was still miraculously completely intact. That was one thing about old, solid cars, they hung together well. However, we wouldn’t even have had seat belts if Sebastian hadn’t installed them himself.

  Meanwhile the steering wheel was crushed beneath Sebastian’s knuckle-white grip. His eyes were squeezed shut. I had curled into a fetal ball around my seat belt, from which I slowly started to unwind. The car landed in the grassy median between the two sections of highway. Traffic around us skidded to a halt, but no one else seemed to have gotten in an accident.

  “Sebastian?” I said.

  The stench of burned rubber and overheated engine filled my nostrils. Slowly, he cracked open an eye. He stared grief-stricken at the remains of the car all around us, then looked at me. “Are you okay?”

  I started to say yes when I noticed a sudden and profound emptiness deep in my belly. I unbuckled my seat belt and scrambled out of the car.

  “Where are you going?” Sebastian shouted.

  “Micah!” I shouted at the stalled, gawking traffic. My eyes scanned the landscape, frantically searching for any sign of him. “You tricky bastard! Give Her back!”

  I struggled up the weed-tangled embankment. Once up the slope, long black skid marks pointed me to the direction we last saw Micah. Sebastian appeared beside me and grabbed my hand as I started to try to cross the highway. “Wait,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I can’t believe he’d pull a stunt like that,” I said, holding back a sob. “I could have been killed. You could have been killed. Any one of these people . . .” With Sebastian in tow, I dashed through the slowly moving vehicles, despite yells of “Are you people crazy?” and “Do you need an ambulance?”

  “You’ll never catch him on foot,” Sebastian said.

  I gave him a startled glance. “Are you about to tell me you can fly?”

  “No, but I can move a lot faster than you can.” He started to break from me, but I squeezed his hand in restraint.

  “Don’t go alone. He wants us apart. That’s why he buried you,” I said with sudden clarity. We slid down the ditch together on the other side of the road. Tall, thick stands of ferns and grasses scratched my bare legs. We stumbled over scraggly mounds of yellow-flowered crown vetch.

  “We should try to head him off in the astral plane,” Sebastian said.

  My toe caught on a chunk of sandstone rock, nearly sending me to my knees. A low, barbed-wire fence stood between us and a pasture filled with grazing Holsteins. Near the horizon, I could just make out a black-tipped tail darting through a stand of willow growing along a shallow creek. My shoulders drooped in defeat. “But I’ve lost Her, Sebastian. How can I?”

  “You are a powerful Witch, Garnet, with or without Lilith. Besides, like you said, we should do it together.”

  I tried to squeeze myself through the gap in the fence only to come away scratched and frustrated. “Okay,” I said, though I really wanted to keep moving. I couldn’t see Micah at all, only the sway and ripple of movement through the underbrush.

  “Look into my eyes,” Sebastian said.

  Pulling my gaze away from the retreating form of the coyote, I reluctantly did as he asked. When our eyes met, I was instantly drawn in. Power pulsated in the golden streaks that encircled his pupils. I felt it flow into me, through me, awaking something buried, old, and unused.

  “You, my darling, have forgotten that you are a Goddess,” he said. Then, he kissed me, strong and hard. His urgent touch sent an awakening tremor through my body— sexual, but also something more. I felt a call ring deep into my soul, fanning embers nearly extinguished from neglect.

  Suddenly, I remembered.

  Raw strength—my own—drew power from the alfalfa-scented air, up from the sunbaked grass, from the tinkling of the nearby creek, from the blazing heat, and from . . . here. Me. The center of it all.

  The grass rustled, and a coyote bounded over the barbed wire. Seeing Sebastian and me, it did a very human double take and sat down hard on its haunches. It looked behind it and then back at us. Shaking its ruff, it glanced behind again.

  “Neat trick,” Micah said, standing beside us without a visible transformation. “But, it won’t do you any good. I’m keeping Her this time.”

  “Against Her will?” I asked, turning from Sebastian to face him. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  Micah’s smirk crumpled slightly, but he recovered quickly. “You’re just a mortal now,” he reminded me. “You’re out of your league.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But stealing fire gets you burned.”

  “Ha!” he laughed, and a flock of crows that burst from the field echoed his cry as they soared overhead.

  Approaching sirens wailed in the distance. All too soon, the real world would intrude. I decided to make my move. Without warning, I leaped at Micah, hitting him squarely in the chest with my head and shoulders. We tumbled backward into the tall grass.

  It was the same tactic he’d used on me, after all—catch him off guard and strike while his defenses were down. I wrapped my arms around his chest and squeezed in two places at once, here and in the spiritual realm.

  I could feel Micah begin to resist. I didn’t have much time before he would overpower me physically and spiritually. Letting my spirit seek out Sebastian’s, I held on to the magical bond we’d formed and, with our joint strength, I opened my heart.

  With my heart bared open, I made an offer. Lilith, I sent, if you want me as your vessel, I am yours. In a heartfelt whisper, I added, “If not, I bless you, thank you, and release you. I remain your loyal devotee.”

  Thing was, as I lay there on top of Micah, smelling the rich scent of grass and baking earth, I meant it. Sebastian had reminded me that I didn’t need Lilith to be strong. I had my own magic. And, regardless of what happened at this moment, I would nurture it again, as I had in the days before Lilith. I felt a strange peace settle over me.

  Coyote howled.

  That’s when I knew She would return. Seconds later, I felt it, the electricity searing through my veins. Normally, when Lilith entered me, it hurt. This time, though, sparks of purplish light danced along my skin, I felt something completely different. Something shifted across my chest, painful, but not unbearably so. Where normally Lilith burned me, heat slowly began to spread along my limbs, almost like warm water or a massage.

  Just then, Micah rolled us over. My head bounced on the grass and my back slammed into the ground with a painful slap. Micah grabbed my shoulders and started to shake me. Sebastian throttled him around the throat. I started kicking.

  But, like it or not, Micah was a God.

  Thrashing against him in the physical world wasn’t doing much damage. In the other realm, I could feel his weight pressing against me, like a vise
, squeezing the life from me. I gasped for air, though it wasn’t breath that failed me.

  Floundering, I clutched for any kind of magical purchase. Lilith hadn’t completely reentered me, and I sensed her straddled between this world and that. Sebastian must have sensed Micah and me grappling in more than one way because, suddenly, I felt Sebastian’s strength flowing along the old blood-bond connection. I knew then that the three of us—Sebastian, Lilith, and me—could defeat Micah together.

  I stopped pushing against Micah. I went completely limp and allowed myself to completely surrender, to be a conduit.

  Lilith rose.

  But this time, instead of blacking out, I merged with Her. We were Goddess incarnate. Sensing the change, Micah’s hold loosened. Fear flickered through his eyes. A wicked grin spread across my face. Time, I thought, to separate the God from the man. We reached up a hand and plunged it into Micah’s heart.

  He screamed. I could feel the heart of chaos, of Coyote, slither in my grasp. Slowly, I began to draw my hand out. “If you love something, set it free,” I murmured.

  “No.” Micah gasped, his face graying. “You’ll kill me.”

  At first, I/Lilith thought Micah’s panic was a clever ploy to invoke our sympathy, causing us to weaken our hold on him. But, the pain in his eyes seemed real. I paused, my fist inches from open air.

  “I am Coyote,” Micah said. “We’re one. He and I merged hundreds of years ago. If you tear him from me, we’ll both cease to exist.”

  Should I buy it? I squeezed my fingers tighter, eliciting a gasp from him. “But I saw you in the ritual,” I said. “You were separated there to no ill effect.”

  “Only for a second,” he rasped. “Like you, I’ve become a hybrid. Man-God.”

  I released Coyote back into Micah and removed my hand gently. “I believe you. But you leave me with a problem,” I said, my hand resting lightly on his chest. “How can I trust you not to try to steal me again?”

  “How about a peace treaty?” Micah said with a gruff laugh.

  “Doesn’t seem right, somehow,” I said with a smile. Bees buzzed on a tuft of nearby clover.

  Removing my hand from Micah’s chest, I pressed it against my own heart. Pantomiming turning a key in my fingers, I locked my own heart. “There,” I said. “That should do it. Now I’m bound just like you.”

  “Uh,” Sebastian said from where he knelt. “Garnet? Was that smart?”

  “I think so,” I said with a little smirk, and Lilith disappeared quickly inside me like the fall of a curtain at the end of a show. “Oh, Goddess, what did I just do?”

  “You and Lilith are really one being now,” Micah said. “Forever.”

  Micah let me go, and I struggled into a seated position. He bowed his head. “It’s over for me.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said, holding out my hand. “I would have given you what you needed, if you had just asked.”

  “Why would you give anything to me?”

  I shrugged. If Lilith and I were really going to live forever now, I might find myself in Micah’s very position some day. “I might call in a return favor in a couple hundred years,” I said, laughing at how preposterous that sounded.

  Micah nodded seriously. “Done.” Micah’s hand grasped mine. I reached my other out to Sebastian. We formed a circle of three in the grass. “He needs to remember his own inner God,” I explained. “He needs an energy boost to stay alive.”

  A simple, quiet transmission passed between us. I drew a bit from Lilith, but also, as I had before, I used the energy of the earth, air, sun, and water to fill Coyote. He drank it in slowly, as though savoring a fine wine.

  We sat there in the grass like that until the emergency vehicles arrived. As the first police officer walked toward us, I let Micah’s hand go, confident the magic had worked. He nodded at me in acknowledgment and gratitude. Then, he stood up and walked into a tangled patch of buckthorn. A coyote came out the other side. Sebastian and I spent the next hour filling out accident reports and trying to convince the police that we were serious that we didn’t need to go to the hospital.

  My hand rested against my belly, but I no longer felt Lilith there. She was everywhere in my body now, like she had stepped into my very skin. While cops and emergency personnel filed around me, I kept returning to what Micah had said—forever. How long had Coyote and Micah shared the same body? How long did I have now? And what of me—my sense of self? Coyote seemed to imply that Micah and he shared a merged personality; would I become more like Lilith as time passed?

  Finally, they let Sebastian and me go. Staring at the pasture before taking a seat inside the squad car that had offered us a ride home, I wondered if I would ever see Micah again.

  When the cop car pulled up to Sebastian’s farm, Mátyás met us at the end of the drive. Wordlessly, he embraced his father. Sebastian returned the hug warmly. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” Mátyás said once they separated.

  “We’ve been through a lot,” Sebastian admitted tiredly. Then, as if it only just now occurred to him, he added, “My car is totaled.”

  “Not the roadster!” Mátyás gasped.

  Sebastian nodded sadly. They lamented the loss of a fine vehicle as they moved up the drive toward the house. I lagged behind, giving them some room to bond.

  On the wind, I heard the lonely call of a coyote.

  Epilogue

  I never thought of sitting in an accountant’s office as particularly romantic, but after the seventeenth time Walter asked Sebastian, “Are you sure about this?” the more Sebastian’s calm, insistent response sounded like, “I do.”

  “Okay,” said Walter with a melodramatic sigh. “Sign here.” Sebastian did.

  Then it was my turn. Walter didn’t even meet my gaze he was so furious at Sebastian for “merging assets.” Larry, however, who sat at a nearby computer terminal, ostensibly doing office work, gave me a broad wink and a big smile. I signed on the dotted line.

  “Well,” Walter sneered. “That’s that, I guess.”

  Sebastian, who sat next to me in a hard wooden office chair, reached a hand to my chin and gently turned me to face him. He leaned over to kiss me softly, but intentionally, as though sealing a deal—or pronouncing us man and wife.

  A tear welled in my eye.

  “That’s so beautiful,” Larry said. Walter grunted something unkind.

  “I’m thinking about a December wedding,” Sebastian said. “What do you say?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”