by N. D. Wilson
Sam was hit in the chest. Maybe badly. Maybe he wouldn’t be using any arms at all anymore.
The motorcycle was sinking. Even though Sam was limp, Speck was steering. But not well.
Samra was alive. And fighting. Well. She wasn’t always a princess.
Glory was angry. That’s what the crashing in her ears was all about. Anger. Rage. Werebeasts were attacking her people. Her Sam. They might be undead, but she had a blade for that.
Glory brought down her right arm, and her Reaper’s scythe of black sand came with it, stretching out like a long beach of death above the water, hissing and seething and flickering to the slow time of Glory’s sight.
Anything that existed in time could be parted by time. . . .
As her heartbeat ended, Glory Hallelujah swung her blade.
Too fast for any bear.
Thunder shook the bones of space and time.
The water’s surface leapt with the shock.
Samra’s eardrums burst. Windows exploded on top of the island.
Glory’s blade parted stones all the way into the heart of the island. And every man and beast in the water or standing on the shore, fell into two halves.
The motorcycle hit the shallow bottom with hissing pipes and engine, and then kicked forward, bouncing to a stop on the now perfectly silent shore.
Glory reached around Sam and turned off the key. The bike sputtered and died. Steam was coming off it around her. Speck still clutched the throttle.
The Lost Boys stood in silence above her. Samra rose slowly in the sidecar. The mouth of the dark arch was crowded with disfigured beasts and men and women in rotting furs. The water was full of floating, spasming parts of the same. The leviathans wouldn’t mind.
“There’s nothing for you here!” Glory yelled. “Go back to your darkness!”
The crowd did not retreat.
Sam stirred in Glory’s grip, and then sat up, breathing hard. Coughing. His left arm and Cindy were still limp, dangling at his side.
Samra began to thump around in the sidecar, trying to reload her bow.
Twin pale-skinned men with yellowing beards pushed to the front of the crowded arch. They wore only loincloths and their skin matched the snow falling in front of them. The dark furs of great wolves were grown into their backs, and thick tails swayed between their legs.
“He lives?” one of them asked.
“And the bear who struck him does not,” Glory replied. She raised her blade again. “I will do the same to you if you do not go back into your darkness.”
The other wolf-man spoke. “We must take him to the Vulture. We have sworn. But he did not say the boy was yee naaldlooshii.”
“You won’t be taking him anywhere,” Glory said. “Ever.”
“Did you not see what just happened?” Samra laughed. Her voice was too loud, like someone shouting under headphones. “She just split at least fifty of you at once!”
“I’m ready,” Sam said. “Lead me to him, and I’ll come.”
“Sam, no!” Glory leaned her mouth up to his ear. “You can’t,” she whispered. “You’re hurt.”
“Glory, yes.” Sam smiled faintly. “This is what I’m for.” Then he looked down at the blood on his chest. Opening his right hand, he winced at the wound on the palm that Speck had earned him.
Realizing that his left arm wouldn’t move, he looked down at Cindy. The bear claw was no longer burning, but it was still sticking through Sam’s hand and out Cindy’s left eye.
“Lift my arm up,” Sam said.
“Sam . . . ,” Glory whispered. “Please. I can make them leave.”
“Just lift her.”
The two wolf-men splashed out of the doorway into the water.
“No!” Samra bellowed. “Back!”
Glory twitched her right hand, and both men leapt back up into the doorway, wet tails lashing. Then Glory reached around Sam and raised Cindy and his drooping left arm in front of his chest.
Sam stared at the huge bloody claw sticking out of Cindy’s head and his hand. It looked like one of her horns had sprouted into a tusk.
“Do you know how big a rattlesnake’s brain is?” Sam asked.
“No,” Glory said, glancing up at the watching crowd. “I don’t.”
“The size of a pea,” said Sam. “Easy to miss.” Grabbing the claw with his right hand, he jerked it down out of his palm and tossed it into the water.
Cindy’s remaining eyelid fluttered. She blinked and her slit pupil focused on Sam.
“Wake up,” Sam said. “I know it hurts, but I’m going to need you.”
“Sam!” Jude yelled from up beside the house behind them. “We’re coming down!”
“No!” Sam yelled back. “You’re not! Stay right where you are!”
Speck turned the key. Sam kicked the bike back to life and swung his limp left arm up onto the handlebars. His fingers closed slowly. Looking down at Samra in the sidecar, he smiled.
“You ready for more?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Not really.”
“Good,” he said. “Neither are we.”
Revving the motorcycle engine, Sam tried to blink his head clear. Cindy was feeling a little bit less like dead weight.
“Tell the Vulture we’re coming!” he yelled. “Now give us some space. I’m not riding into a crowd.”
Sam waited until all the shapes had backed away and the dark arch above the water was completely empty. Then he throttled the bike slowly forward across the water and bumped it up and in, out of the snow and into the darkness.
17
Dark March
TWO HUNDRED YARDS IN, SAM STOPPED THE BIKE, AND THE engine kicked and sputtered into a low idle. Glory could feel his heart beating beneath her palm and his ribs rising and falling with his surprised breaths. But there was no light at all. And they seemed to be completely alone. She couldn’t even see the rattle that brushed her jaw as Cindy grew nervous. She was glad Cindy was conscious enough to do anything.
“What just happened?” Samra asked. “Where did they all go?”
“We . . . ,” Glory started, but she didn’t really know.
“None of this is in the comic,” Samra said.
“Enough about the comic,” Sam said. “You were cool there for a while.” A switch clicked as he turned on the old motorcycle’s headlight. “Come on,” he said.
“Is the watch moving?” Glory asked. “Maybe just drive a bit and keep your eye on it.”
“Pointing forward,” Sam said. “I’m on track.”
“Gaaaw,” Samra moaned. “I feel sick. It’s awful in here.”
A pale mangy shape crossed through the headlight. It was one of the wolf-men, but on all fours now, huge and gray, with pale human skin for its belly.
“There we go.” Sam clicked the bike into gear and throttled it forward. “We follow the yee naaldlooshii.”
The bike bounced and wandered up and down dark slopes, just barely keeping the wolf’s outline visible.
“Sam!” Glory squeezed him from behind and whispered in his ear. “To your right!”
A man was running beside them, with what at first looked like a deer on his back. But his face snarled at them from inside the deer’s chest, and then he dropped down onto all fours and raced away, passing the wolf. And more shapes were creeping in on every side, all moving in the same direction, all barely visible on the perimeter of the light, and some quickly dashing across it. Hundreds. Thousands. It wasn’t hard to imagine what would have happened if they had all managed to reach the island.
“The watch is pointing this way, too,” Sam said. Glory could see it floating in the air above his thigh, and it was tugging in the same direction as the monstrous herd.
“Even if they didn’t tell him,” she whispered, “he has to know I’m coming.”
A tall woman with short white hair stepped in front of the bike and Sam locked his brakes just in time. Her eyes were hidden behind a blindfold of shadow. Her body was wrapped in m
ummy strips of the same darkness, all but her pale hands and feet.
On each side of the woman, stretching away beyond the reach of the headlight, men and women dressed all in ragged skins stood shoulder to shoulder, facing inward like human fences containing a road. None of them were armed, but all were wild, misshapen, animalian. Some had blood caked down their jaws and chests, and scabbed and blackened all over their hands.
The blindfolded, shadow-bound woman raised a pale hand to her chest. When she spoke, her voice was cold and lifeless.
“I am called Laila,” she said. “I will guide you to the Vulture.”
“Perfect,” Sam said.
But as they moved, Glory’s face pressed into the back of his shoulder. He could feel her whole body shaking, and the heat of tears found his skin. Glory was undone.
“Sam,” she whispered. “She was my mom.”
SAM DROVE THE MOTORCYCLE SLOWLY, KEEPING A LITTLE distance from their shadowy guide. As they rode, the rows of male and female skin-walkers and shifters and werepeople closed behind them like a zipper, and lumbered behind them in silence, lit only occasionally with the red of Sam’s brake light.
Dark foul-smelling air pressed in all around them, fogging his brain. Sam was alert only through hunger and pain. And because Cindy was fully alive and very, very angry, boiling with threats of violence and vengeance against those who had taken her eye. Samra slumped over, asleep in the sidecar, and Glory leaned against Sam’s back in complete stillness. She may have been awake. She may not have been. He wasn’t going to ask. Not after what she had told him. His back and shoulders ached from Glory’s weight, but aches could be ignored. He had worse pains.
When Laila stopped, there didn’t seem to be any marker that Sam could see. No doorway. No gate.
The motorcycle idled. The army in the darkness behind them continued, stopping just one stride behind the bike. He rolled the bike forward a few feet. The army moved forward a few feet—without so much as a footfall. Sam couldn’t even hear them breathing.
“Well, that’s unnerving,” Glory whispered into Sam’s shoulder.
“Matches the rest, I guess,” Sam said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. “Sorry. I mean . . .”
“I know,” Glory said, and she sat up, sliding back on the seat. “Should I talk to her?”
Sam straightened his back and rolled his shoulders. “Maybe,” he said. “But you know what side she’s on.”
“Does it matter?” Glory asked.
“Yes,” said Sam. “Or no.”
A tall crack of pale light appeared in the darkness. The sound of rattling chains echoed through it, and the crack widened, revealing wide sandstone steps that rose into a massive cavern with a roof so high, it at first looked like stormy sky.
“Come,” Laila said. Turning, she began to climb.
“Well,” Glory said. “I guess we walk from here.”
“No,” said Sam. “We ride. I’m not leaving the bike.” Sam rose on his foot pegs, and attacked the steps.
Samra jerked, kicking and flailing with each bounce. Glory rose on her own foot pegs, with her hands on Sam’s scaled shoulders, just below the rattles.
Sam passed Laila, and the blindfolded woman seemed unsurprised. He rode up until he was blinking in the red light of the underworld city, and damp cool air filled his lungs.
At the top of the steps, the bike surged and bounced out into a cobbled city square bigger than a California stadium. The square was lined with columned buildings and spires, all of sandstone, and enormous yellow banners bearing a black two-headed vulture slowly floated from the buildings, pushed by a slow breeze.
The square was filled completely with men and women in ragged skins, organized in rough phalanxes, but there were no children anywhere. The wild sea parted, opening a path to the center of the square.
Sam drove forward, aware of how strange they must look, aware of how visible Cindy and Speck were to every pair of eyes they passed. He was known here. Completely.
With wet clothes and wet skin, Sam shivered and flexed his jaw to keep it from chattering. Glory’s arm tightened around him, and he was grateful.
“Where are we?” Samra asked. “What is this?”
“Somewhere I’d rather not be,” Sam said. “And that’s all I know.”
And then he saw the Vulture.
El Buitre was wearing a billowing buffalo coat that merged with his long black hair below his ears, and he had his arms crossed behind him. His beard had been freshly waxed to a point and he was smirking with obvious pleasure. Six golden watches floated above him and a seventh broken chain pointed at Sam from the outlaw’s vest as the motorcycle approached. Sam could feel the seventh watch tugging on his belt with the gentle insistence of a magnet.
“That’s really him,” Samra hissed, scooting back in the sidecar. “Turn around, Sam. Turn around!”
But Sam’s eyes were locked onto the Vulture’s. Speck and Cindy were both seething in his arms, rippling scales, tensing muscles, desperate to strike.
“Don’t look back,” Glory said. “The crowd is closing behind us.”
The Vulture was accompanied by Mrs. Dervish, dressed all in black with a golden vulture clasped at her throat, and two men stood together off to the side, both in black—one older and bald with a thick white beard, the other young and tall, with the sides of his head shaved, and his hair combed straight back in a slab on top. On the ground between them, there was a heavy block of pale bleached wood with a neck notch on top. A long-handled ax with a black blade leaned against it.
Glory’s arm clamped so tight around Sam’s ribs that he gasped in surprise.
“Alex,” she whispered into the air. “Sam, my brother. Alex.”
El Buitre spread his arms wide, grinning.
“Sam Miracle!” he said, and his voice echoed off the buildings and over the crowd. “Gloria Spalding! Welcome, daughter of Leviathan! This is my City of Refuge, although many call it the City of Wrath. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Sam turned off the motorcycle. “Vulture,” Sam said. “I am here to kill you.”
Samra sank herself as low in the sidecar as she could go. Glory slid off the back. Sam swung his leg over the handlebars and dropped onto the cobblestones. El Buitre eyed the guns on his hips, and his lips twitched a smile.
Glory stood beside Sam, flexing her right hand around the glass burned into her palm. But her focus was on the tall boy with water for eyes.
“Skin-changers!” El Buitre shouted, and his watches danced above his head. “Gentlemen and ladies, werefriends one and all. We are here to witness the execution of a monster! A creature who should never have been created!”
“Yes,” Sam said. “We are!” Cindy’s mind was hot, her eye socket stinging. She began to rattle harder than she ever had. Speck wasn’t far behind.
“He is not worthy to stand in the presence of yee naaldlooshii! He has not passed through death, nor can he change his skin, nor has he slain a kinsman. He chooses to stand against us and all who dwell in the darkness! What shall I do with him?”
“KILL!”
The crowd stomped and groaned and snarled and wailed, and the Vulture basked in the echo. As it died, Sam spoke.
“I have passed through death!” Sam yelled. “How many times, Vulture, have you killed me but I have risen again to face you? How many times did my soul move in and out of shadow?”
Sam looked around at the mob and raised his twisting arms high. Blood trickled down his scales. “Is this human skin?” he asked. “How many men have vipers for arms? Viper minds sharing their thoughts?”
The spirit of the crowd dwindled to a moan.
“Kinsman!” a voice shouted. “Kinsman or you’re false!”
“All right,” Sam said. “If the yee naaldlooshii must have slain a kinsman, ask the Vulture how many of my sisters are buried in the garden he lost. How many, Vulture? And how many of those deaths did you blame on me?”
The crowd went silent.
; “I am Sam Miracle, and I have come to kill the Vulture!”
El Buitre laughed, but the crowd was silent. He spread his arms and beckoned the crowd to join him.
“Blood!” he shouted again. “Slay them and take them. There are three here for you to feed upon! Blood!”
“Yes, please,” said Sam.
“Your blood, boy!” El Buitre snarled. “I will drain you. And this time, there is no priest to sweep you away.” Throwing back his huge coat, the Vulture drew both of his guns. “This time, Miracle, I will cut out your heart and give it to my dark birds for their necklaces.”
“Dark birds?” Sam asked. “You mean those awful women? They’ve gone to pieces. I wouldn’t expect them back for quite a while.”
Sam dropped his bow and focused on his guns. He could feel the gold watch pointing, and he watched six others rise up around his foe.
The crowd was silent.
Glory put her hand on Sam.
A strange and powerful stillness poured through him. Black fire burned behind his eyes and behind the three eyes in his hands.
“Are you going to run, Vulture?” Sam asked. “Are you afraid?”
The Vulture’s eyes hardened. “Today you die, Miracle. Forever.”
Sam smiled. “After you . . .”
In a flash, El Buitre’s watches warped the time around him, and he had drawn both of his guns. Alternating blasts flashed light across his snarling face. But Glory’s touch was on Sam, slowing the world and quickening his always quick hands. Speck was firing, not at the Vulture, but at his bullets. Lead collided with lead and ricocheted away across the cave. Cindy was firing, too, not at the Vulture, but at his golden watches.
Watch after watch exploded in bursts of glass and springs, while Speck defended Sam and Glory.
Sam’s hands were too fast. Loose gold-and-pearl chains rattled down around the Vulture’s legs and he staggered sideways, gasping.
El Buitre had fired five times.
Sam had fired eleven.
Five bullets blocked. Six watches shattered.
Speck had one round left.
William Sharon had lost his wings. Time whistled past him as it whistles past any normal man. The Vulture was no arch-outlaw. He was just a killer with the guiltiest of souls.
