by Rob Cornell
He admired the thing, turning it back and forth in his hand.
“You met a larger member of this arsenal. Weapons that look like something from an alien spaceship. But they don’t come from outer space.” He turned his attention back to Jessie. “Would you believe these came over with the elves? Somehow all the story books have elves shooting arrows and swingin’ swords. Who knew they actually use laser beams?”
There was always something more to learn about the paranormal. In all her adventures, Jessie had never met an elf, though she knew they existed. But the whole fleshy laser gun thing was new to her.
He shook the thing. “This one here is more like a Taser. Nothing like that shoulder cannon. Don’t get me wrong, it packs a wallop. Knock you out cold. But it ain’t meant to kill ya.”
“You planning on using that on me?”
He snorted. “No need. I got you right where I need you. But we’re about to have a visitor that’s gonna be a little unruly.”
As if he’d queued the whole thing, that’s when the unicorn burst into the room.
Chapter Forty-Eight
IT TOOK JESSIE BACK. WAY back.
The dead unicorn. The one they had forced her to Return, like a criminal cleaning up evidence from the scene.
When the door swung in, a gust of wind blew through the room, killing some of the candles and shaking the remaining flames, which cast wild shadows crawling across the walls, the ceilings, and Chucky’s grinning face. Behind the unicorn’s charging silhouette, sharp white light blazed in through the doorway and stung Jessie’s eyes.
Jessie squinted, but kept her gaze on the unicorn as it trounced in, then came to abrupt halt at the sight of Chucky. The brighter light from outside made one of the unicorn’s flanks shine like a bike reflector. It took a second for Jessie to realize the reflection was caused by blood soaked into the unicorn’s white hair. At the top of the shining blood, a knife’s hilt stuck out of the unicorn’s side where its neck met shoulder.
The unicorn reared up on its hind legs and its red mane fluttered like a flame down its back. Its focus was entirely on Chucky. After it came back down on its forelegs, it crouched, ready to spring forward and trample him.
Chucky already had the elven weapon aimed, though. A green and blue flash of light blinded Jessie, five times brighter than what came from the open door. The incense smoke swirled around like a hurricane with Jessie caught in its center. But the dominant smell turned to burning hair.
A ghostly image of her last view of the unicorn clung to Jessie’s vision once the weapon’s light died.
Even with the door open, the room looked almost too dark to see.
But as Jessie’s eyes adjusted and the shadow tableau faded from sight, she could see plenty, and it dropped a stone of guilt in her belly because of the way it reminded her of the first and last time she’d seen a unicorn. When Returning corpses became standard Agency policy.
The unicorn lay in a heap on the floor only a couple feet from the edge of the blood pool. The knife in its side stuck up like a rude gesture. Not far from the swath of blood, closer to its belly, the unicorn wore a new mark, black and smoking. It must have been where the weapon’s beam struck.
Chucky whistled. “Whoa-wee. I ain’t never seen a unicorn. Least not in her normal form.” He crept toward her, his weapon lowered but still tight in his hand. He wore the wonder of a child on his old face. If the circumstances had been any different, he would have looked like somebody’s grandpa admiring his grandkid’s finger painting.
He turned toward Jessie. “Ain’t she a beaut?”
The bright flash had brought tears to Jessie’s eyes, but she wasn’t sure all of them running down her cheeks were because of the light. Parts of her body had gone numb from sitting tied up for so long. She could barely feel her hands. But she didn’t feel numb in her gut or around her neck or across her scalp. Those parts of her body felt aflame.
And the longer she looked at Chucky and his stupid smile, the hotter she burned.
“You sick son of a bitch. Why did you do that?”
His smile dropped as quick as a cut string. All the wonder drained out of his eyes.
“This ain’t nothing. This is a nice nap. Right now, I’m doing the bitch a favor. It’s when she wakes up after we’re done here is when the real hurt starts.”
“Why?”
“You sure ask a lot of dumb questions. But it’s fun knowing so much more than the world’s special snowflake savior. You been working for that agency a long time, and you’re dumb as a tick in a dog’s ass.”
Jessie jerked against the ropes around her wrists. A lame gesture. She just caused the chair to roll a couple inches through the blood.
“Enlighten me then, Chucky.”
He cocked his head. “What’d you call me?”
Jessie shrugged. “Just a pet name I came up for you since you never told me your real one.”
He looked a little pissed. Didn’t seem to like his nickname.
“Why that one? Chucky.” He said Chucky as if he wanted to upchuck.
“Because of that dumb chuckle you do. You’re worse than Bevis. At least he had some stoner charm.”
He curled his lip and brought the elven laser thingy up, aimed in her direction. “My name is Earl. And you best…”
Jessie didn’t hear the rest. She couldn’t over the burst of laughter coming out of her. It bubbled up like freshly poured soda. She wanted to stop, but couldn’t. The laughter had run out of self-control’s reach. She felt like the Joker, and as worthy of a cell at Arkham Asylum.
“What’s so damn funny?” Earl shouted. He waggled his elf gun at her, which only made her laugh harder.
“My…name…is Earl…” she repeated. Her abs ached. Tears streamed from her eyes. All this blood at her feet, the bones of Earl’s “friends” stacked in an altar before her, an unconscious unicorn with a knife in its side not far away, and yet she could not stop laughing.
All I’ve seen, all I’ve suffered, and an unintended reference to an old sitcom is what’s going to turn me crazy.
Nicely done, Earl.
“Stop fucking laughing, you idiot.” He stood right at the edge of the pool and leaned forward as if he could barely keep himself from stomping back in. “Stop laughing or I’ll kill you right here.”
All at once, she did. From uncontrolled tittering to dead silence in less than two breaths. All the heat she’d felt a moment ago had evaporated, leaving behind a dead coal as cold as a corpse.
“Do it,” she said.
Earl’s eyes narrowed. His hand trembled, which made the weapon wiggle slightly. While the bazooka-sized version had looked as menacing as…well…a bazooka, this small one looked like a stage prop, like a rubber knife. If she had had any humor left in her, Jessie would have cracked a joke.
“Do it,” she repeated.
Earl shook his head. “No. Uh-huh. You ain’t gonna trick me into throwing this all away. Not when it’s just about done.”
“Killing me was your idea.” She lifted her chin and looked at him down the length of her nose. “You afraid of what Gabriel might do to you if you screw his chance at coming back?”
“You can’t do it, little girl. I won’t be goaded.” He lowered the weapon and turned away.
“Pussy.”
He ignored her. Returned to his makeshift table where he set the weapon down and picked up the hacksaw.
“What are you going to do with that?” Jessie asked, though she didn’t have to. She had a pretty good idea, and it brought up the taste of bile to mingle with the persistent taste of her own blood draining down the back of her throat.
Earl shook his head. He looked genuinely disappointed. “Another real stupid question.”
Then he crouched beside the unicorn and, with hacksaw in one hand, gripped her horn with the other.
Chapter Forty-Nine
THE FAMILY COTTAGE IN NEW Hampshire always recharged Elka. Especially after a hard semester at school. She lov
ed learning, but the stacks of books and Miami’s sickly humidity made her feel claustrophobic after a while. She needed the salty breeze off of the Atlantic. The sound of the white-crested waves hushing against the rocks jutting from the water like old statues from a forgotten age, worn from years in the ocean to unrecognizable shadows of their original forms.
And speaking of original forms.
The massive stretch of acreage between the coast and the cottage left the whole family free to shift and gallop in the open, their secret guarded by a thick row of raw forest lining either side of the property.
Uncle York would tease Elka with a joke about some boy from school he thought she had a crush on, some mortal boy. Elka would make a face and tell him how gross that was, then shift and chase him, forcing him to shift and run away.
The wind streaking down her mane would send soothing chills down her back clear to her tail. The sunlight would glint against their horns and bring out the majestic sparkle in each. Or, at night, they could let their natural energy flow into their horns without worry of drawing the attention from hunters. When they ran, they would draw streaks of light through the dark like rippling rainbows.
At night, in the cottage living room, they would watch old movies on the big screen, or listen to Dad relate stories about unicorn legends, heroes who stood up against the hunters, who gave their lives so the rest of their kind could escape from the Great Hunt.
He would tell their family’s own story, how they came to find a home on the mortal plane, how the three-legged seer had cut a hole in the fabric between realities and let Elka’s family slip away moments before hunters arrived and butchered the seer when she refused to open the path and let them continue their pursuit.
Elka stood on the beach, the sand in her mane, the cool wind whipping around her body. Over the waves, she could hear her Auntie Velka’s laughing whinny. She and Elka’s father had just begun a game of Ulstraute. Auntie always won against her little brother. Had since their youngest years together.
Cousin Delson had shifted into a sytar so he could stand on hoofed legs while, with his human half, he could play a pan flute. His songs were often chaotic and improvised, but always beautiful.
I never want to leave here.
But as soon as she thought it, the waves turned dark, almost black. Elka knew better, though. The water had gone a pitch shade of red. The water had become blood.
Her aunt’s laughing cut short with a shocked scream, as if someone had pounced on her from the shadows. A hunter, armed with a spear, a sword, a bow, a gun. Any of the wicked tools of a hunter. They all killed the same in the end.
Elka wanted to turn and run to her aunt. Something in the blood ocean had trapped her attention, though. Something moving. Coming closer toward the beach at a smooth, even pace, until it reached a shallow enough point for it to break the surface.
Her father cried out, his voice the twined sound of human and unicorn, as if he’d been stabbed or shot mid-shift.
Delson’s music stopped on a flat, strangled note.
Still, Elka could not turn. Her gaze held to the thing coming out of the water. It rose, dripping, from the flood, stopped being a thing and became a person, a human. The blood obscured the details of the human’s features, but Elka could tell it was a man.
The blood poured off of him as he reached the shore, coming away clean, not even leaving behind any dampness. The man, out of the ocean now, stood as dry as the sand under his feet.
Elka recognized him immediately.
She had only just seen him. Couldn’t remember where. Not right away.
Then he crossed the beach to the grassy patch of sand where Elka stood and she remembered.
She had seen him in a painting. His dark eyes, his sharp jaw, his intensity.
Impossible. She hadn’t reached that point in her life yet, when hunters had tricked her into their trap, brought her into their underground warren, caged her in one of a dozen or more metal rooms with glass windows. Rooms with dead and nearly dead creatures who had the misfortune of stumbling onto the mortal plane only to be captured and exploited by the monsters who called them monsters.
That all happened after she lost her family. After the girl with the dark hair and the blue lightning ruined Elka’s life forever. None of that had happened yet. Couldn’t have. She was with her family at the New Hampshire cottage.
Elka shuffled back away from the man from her future.
He held out a hand to her. “It’s all right,” he said. He had a strong, deep voice, but he didn’t sound wicked. And the man from the painting was as wicked as they came. He was the one who had put all those poor creatures in the cages and left them to die.
She remembered his name.
Gabriel Dolan.
One of the most horrid mortals to walk the plane.
Gabriel Dolan shook his head and held out a hand. “That’s not me.”
He had read her mind somehow. Magic. Which mortals only knew one way to conjure.
Elka looked past him to the ocean of blood. What size of sacrifice could bleed so much? What amount of power would it give this evil man?
“You don’t understand,” he said. He tried to step closer.
Elka chuffed and swung her horn in an arc in front of her, driving him back.
“Please. You have to listen. There isn’t much time.”
Unicorns, in natural form, had no true language. They communicated on a level beyond words. Not exactly telepathy. More like a connection between souls. In her true form, she couldn’t speak the things she thought. But when she did think—
Get away from me, beast.
—he somehow heard her. And he responded exactly the way another unicorn would, not by magical means as she had originally thought, but by sharing a conduit to his soul.
“I’m not Gabriel. You can tell that now, right?”
Her heartbeat quickened. Yes. She could tell that. Now that he had opened himself to her. How? How could a mortal communicate like a unicorn? It was impossible.
“Not impossible,” he said. “This is a dream. And I’m not a mortal. Not anymore.”
“You’re not making sense.”
The red ocean’s waves rolled in higher and more quickly. The sky on the far horizon turned the color of rust. Brown clouds whirled with red embers dancing inside of them. The air smelled like sulfur.
“A man is about to cut your horn from your head,” he said. “He will take every bit of your power with it, assuming you survive.”
The blue-green flash. The last thing she remembered before finding herself at the family cottage.
Earl.
He had shot her with something after she came through the door where she had found him with the girl in the middle of a ritual. Probably the very ritual he needed her horn for. One hell of a powerful ingredient for any kind of magic a mortal could unleash.
She couldn’t guess what he planned to use it for.
The man on the beach told her.
“He’s trying to bring Gabriel Dolan back from the dead. He means to put Dolan’s soul in the girl he has tied up.”
Stupid mortals. Their hubris never ceased to astound her. “If this is a dream, then I’m as good as dead.”
“I can wake you up.”
The breeze off the ocean blew hot. The clouds of dust and embers rolled in like a hellish storm. The sky opened up and rained blood. Elka felt it soaking her, smelled it as it trickled over her muzzle.
“Please,” he said. “Time’s running out. But you can still save yourself and the girl.”
Elka shook her head. “Why would I want to help her?”
“Because if you don’t, it won’t matter if you live or die. Gabriel Dolan has gained enough power here to do serious damage if he gets hold of her.”
Has gained enough power here? Where was here?
“You know where.”
“The Inbetween.”
He nodded.
The rain poured harder. The thick patter of it a
gainst her back and the roll and churn of the ocean deafened her. It was a good thing she didn’t need to hear to communicate with the stranger.
“I don’t understand. If you’re not…him…who are you?”
“My name is Craig Lockman,” he said with an intensity that cut straight to Elka’s heart. “And the girl that man has is my daughter.”
Chapter Fifty
TIME MEANT NOTHING IN THE Inbetween. The past happened in the future and the present happened before and after both. Craig Lockman could travel the length of his lifetime, back and forth, reliving every moment as the actual moment, only burdened with the knowledge that he could change none of it.
Dark things lurked here. Things that could peer into his lifeline the same as him. Many times they had tried to trick him so that he would give away a portion of his soul from some instant in his life.
But Lockman didn’t fall for it. He wouldn’t give up even a second of his life before death, certainly not to some demon that would taint it like a drop of poison in a large pool.
He clung to every moment of his life like precious jewels. They were all he had left in this hellish nowhere.
When he first found himself in the Inbetween, after an eternity of nightmare riddled sleep, he immediately tried to find a way back. But the wolves had devoured his body. He had nothing to go back to. And unlike Gabriel Dolan, Lockman would never force his soul into another’s body.
So he had to say good-bye to Jessie.
That’s when he started looking for Kate.
He tussled with all manner of wicked things during his search. He began to learn the rules of this place. He could use the memories of his life to shape the world of his death. He could feed himself, shelter himself, arm himself. And while much of the experience melted into an abstract blur, as if he and the world around him had as little substance as a mist in a spring rain, he could create vivid, real instances that mimicked his corporeal existence.
The deeper he traveled into this jungle of souls, the more evil he had to wade through. It seemed the worst of the souls and spirits caught here congregated together, like minds conspiring with like minds, but preying on one another whenever a back was turned.
