by D V Wolfe
But standing, in the middle, was a man. He wore a black trenchcoat and he stood with his back to me. His posture was tired and his hair was thinning.
“Oh Jessie,” the man said softly, chuckling. “Jessie Evans, Hell’s Exception. It’s been too long.”
It took me a few minutes to find my voice. “Really? Sorry to be rude, but I don’t remember you and I kind of don’t want to.”
He whipped around to face me so quickly that it seemed like he hadn’t moved at all and that he’d always been facing me. “Not too long since we’ve met,” the man’s voice spat, each word coming out like a quick stab of a knife. “Too long that you’ve been allowed to walk free. You are condemned and because of the idiocy of my colleagues, you were set free. Now, I am forced to come up here, to this pathetic excuse for existence, and freeze to finally finish you off.” This had to be Ornias. His pupils were red with a golden ring around the iris.
“Sorry to disappoint,” I said. “Or not sorry. Really, I don’t care. It sounds like you’ve spent the last ten years with a stiffy, just waiting for me to die. I mean I know you and all your kin are Taco Bell toilet paper smears but seriously, aren’t you wasting something? Time, energy, whatever on me? Shit, I’m going back downstairs in four months. That’s like a week in Hell time. Couldn’t you just sit back and wait?” I was trying to maintain the detachment I’d always clung to as I did the job. It was just a job. I had a number I had to hit. Like an arcade game. I played until I won or I ran out of time. Then it was over and I had an eternity of Hell to look forward to. I didn’t ask for much. I had a few laughs and I’d had some intimacy and I’d loved people, flesh, and blood imperfect people, who saw the same flesh and blood imperfections in me and didn’t care. But the fact that this demon was so hung up about taking the little time I had left away from me, was really starting to piss me off. I could feel the emotional wall I kept around my frustration, and guilt, and sadness, and worry starting to tremble as I waited for his answer.
“Because you are destruction incarnate,” Ornias said. “You are the disease that eats away at the tree that keeps the balance, keeps you vermin where you are.”
Ok, this guy was scary, but his babble made me realize that he was completely unstable. Was this what ‘ascending’ did to demons? Maybe it was like that thing that happened to scuba divers when they came up to the surface too fast. He was snarling now and I raised the sword. If he was as unglued as he sounded, I wanted to be ready. Ornias’ gaze lingered on the sword.
“So you found it, did you, the Ukkin sword? So it is too late,” Ornias said. “I will have to kill you and all the rest of you mortals to restore it.” He reached behind him and just as the Ukkin sword had appeared for Kosmas when he had reached for it, the twisted black handle of a sword that looked like wood, wrapped around fire began to appear from his back. “I will take your life and I will drink your spirit to restore the balance,” Ornias roared. He raised his sword.
Shots rang out from the other end of the warehouse and I saw blood and bone exploding outward from Ornais’ body. I hit the ground and yelled at Noah to do the same. From the sound of the ten-gauge hitting the floor, he was still near the back door.
“Get out of here, Noah,” I yelled.
“Bane,” Nya yelled when the shooting stopped. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I yelled back. I looked up to see Ornias looking down at himself. He turned towards Nya who had paused at the edge of the pentagram on the far side by the back door. She dropped her empty clips and reloaded, ready to fire again.
Ornias sighed. “You. You should know better. Iron rounds cannot kill me, you petulant child.”
Nya looked over at me and for what felt like a minute but was probably only a second, our eyes met and she smiled. Then she turned back to Ornias. I blinked and I almost screamed when my eyelids opened again and Ornias was inches from her. I could see the shock on Nya’s face as she stumbled back a step, emptying both clips into him at point-blank range as he advanced on her while she tried to back away. I picked up the Ukkin sword and started running at him, across the pentagram towards him, holding it in front of me with both hands. I was three feet from him when he swung his own sword. I saw what was going to happen before it did, and I felt my heart fall. Nya seemed to realize it too and her expression, for the first time in all the years that I’d known her, looked scared. That look tore me up inside, but then Ornias buried his sword to the hilt in Nya’s chest and the blood poured out of her mouth. She was choking on it.
I shattered. I hit Ornias full-force and buried the Ukkin blade all the way to the hilt in Ornias’ back. I could see the blade coming through his chest. He screamed and the unlit ballast lights above us shattered, raining glass and chemicals down on us. He staggered forward, pulling himself off the sword still in my hands. He fell forward on top of Nya’s body and that’s when I noticed the candles hadn’t gone out. They had fallen over.
Ornias was leaving a trail of black blood on the floor and one of the candles had rolled too near, igniting it like an oil spill. I was running to Nya before I registered the flames beginning to lick up Ornias’ coat and Nya’s body where he had fallen on her. I was on my knees shoving at his body. The heat was getting intense but I couldn’t get his body off her. Her eyes were glassy.
“Hang on Nya, I’ll get you out of here. Just hang on.” I shoved at Ornias’ corpse but he was an immovable object.
“Bane!” Noah screamed next to me. “We have to get out of here!” He had a hold of the back of my shirt and he was trying to jerk me towards the door.
“No! We’re not leaving her!” I screamed.
“She’s gone,” Noah screamed. “And if we stay here, we’re going to die too. And then what good was all that she did for you?”
I gave one last half-hearted tug but I knew it was no use. Ornias’ fire was consuming her. I stumbled back with Noah, the Ukkin sword still in my hand and the flames licking off of Ornias’ body were beginning to burn the roof. Smoke was filling the room and Noah and I started coughing. We stumbled in the dark, trying to remember what direction the door was.
Noah was almost completely dragging me. I was fighting against him, sure we were going the wrong way, sure she was still alive and I was condemning her to die by leaving her there.
Noah kicked at something and a wash of cool night air hit me. He was coughing and he let go of me, falling to the ground nearby. I was coughing too, but I was torn. Nya. My Nya. My sister, Mother Hen, best friend and confidant. She saw my worst and my best and she was kind enough not to tell me how little difference there seemed to be between the two.
“She’s gone,” I breathed. I felt Noah’s hand on my back and I fell forward on my hands and knees as the wall crumbled. I screamed and cried to the night. All the bullshit she had gone through because of me. She could have had a good life. She could have met someone and had a family, funded a trip to space, taught Napoleonic History at an Ivy League school, been a supermodel, or an actress. But instead, she chose me. My struggle, my suicide mission, my pathetic existence and she tried to protect me. And she died trying.
“Bane,” Noah said softly. “We have to move.”
He was right. I could hear the sirens.
22
I knew Noah was talking to me. but it sounded far away like we were at opposite ends of a long hallway. I was numb. I could see my hands on the steering wheel, but they may as well have belonged to someone else because I couldn’t feel them. They knew when to turn the wheel, the way my feet knew when to hit which pedal without my brain telling them. My brain was on a loop. That smile that turned to fear as Ornias turned on her with that sword, from Hell itself. Her scream and those pleading, innocent eyes, glassy and vacant, reflecting the flames growing around her. Then she would smile and the loop would start over.
Noah wasn’t screaming. I must have been driving normally. My body was in one piece. More than ever before, I was struck with the awareness that this body wasn’t me. It was driving
and breathing and living, but inside it, I was falling apart, ripping apart, threadbare at the seams. I was dying, bleeding out slowly, inside my own head where I could hold my sister. My sister, Nya, and close my eyes as the flames grew hotter around us.
I ran out of road and I realized I was in the parking spot next to Nya’s S10. I had shifted into neutral without noticing, but the engine was still running.
Noah was still talking to me. I was out of the truck now, walking to the door of number twelve and there was a key in my hand. The door was open and I stared around at the bags on the beds and the floor. My feet were moving. They stopped moving when my knees ran into a mattress. And I fell forward, collapsing, wilting onto the bed, on top of and wrapped around two of the reusable grocery bags full of Nya’s crap. I clung to them, pulling them against me like a drowning man holds onto driftwood in open water. If I could pull the things she had touched inside of me, maybe I could keep her there. Where I could always see that smile, hear her scolding me or teasing me. Hug her and smell that lemongrass crap she always wore.
I have no idea how long I lay there. It could have been years. The earth could have collapsed around me. I could have gone back to Hell and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was only aware now because something was buzzing, making an annoying sound somewhere near me, interrupting my eternity. What was it?
“Bane!” Noah shouted next to me.
I opened my eyes and saw he was leaning over me. His forever-frizz hair was practically vibrating as he tried to get me to focus on him. He looked scared and his face was pale. He was holding the cell phone out to me.
“It’s Rosetta,” Noah said. “Please, she wants to talk to you.”
I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to be anywhere or think anything or talk. I was waiting for the gut blow that would finish me off. Nya was gone. That beautiful, smart, loving woman was dead, because of me. She died young and she died painfully because of the mess that I dragged her into. For the first time since coming topside, I just wanted it to be over. Something inside of me that was as foreign as my hands had felt on the steering wheel made me take the phone.
“Bane,” Rosetta’s voice was soft and quiet. “Come here, Bane. Don’t think. Just get yourself and the kid in your truck and point yourselves this way. Just fold that shirt and put it in your bag. We’ll hang it up when you get here, ok? You have to get out of that town. If Ornias wasn’t alone, you’re not out of the woods yet. Tags is sending someone to get Ny- to get the S10. Just get Noah and yourself over here to Ft. Hope, alright?”
I didn’t have a voice. I just nodded and held the phone up. Noah grabbed it and I heard him talking to Rosetta. I looked back down at the black grocery bags I was holding to my chest and I knew I had to sit up. I could hear Nya in my head telling me to get up, to get my lazy ass in gear and get the job done. I didn’t know if I was going crazy or I just wished I was. The me that lived inside this Empty House didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I was doing both, at the top of my lungs. The body I was wearing got to its feet and started gathering bags, mechanically. The toolbox on the truck was open and all of the bags went in. When the last one was in, I had to struggle to close the lid. Noah had already put the guns and our bags back in the truck and he climbed in the passenger side after we did a final sweep of the room.
“We never seem to sleep in these motel rooms anymore, do we,” Noah said. I could hear exhaustion and sadness in his voice. My arm moved on its own and I felt his boney shoulder in the palm of my right hand. I gave it a squeeze and backed out of the lot. I paused to give Nya’s truck one final look and I saw that smile again in my head. My Nya.I reached down and felt the hilt of the Ukkin sword under the seat. I would protect it and I sure as hell was going to use it. It was Nya’s gift to me. She’d killed herself finding out it existed, how to find it, and then getting it and she’d died, protecting me, so that I could kill the demon who was trying to kill me. She was protecting her sister. I would protect it with my life. My last gift, from my sister.
I knew that we made stops. I never let us run out of gas. Noah didn’t complain or ask to stop more often. Every time we stopped, I’d hand him money for snacks or a meal and he’d bring me something. It would sit on the seat between us until it was cold and Noah’s stomach would growl and I’d say I was sorry it wasn’t hot anymore. He would say he didn’t mind it cold and he’d eventually eat it. I couldn’t remember how my mouth worked or what food was supposed to smell like. We got to Rosetta’s just after ten the next morning. Noah had napped in the truck. I realized that I hadn’t really slept in almost three days. I almost hit the horse chestnut tree behind her house. I could barely keep my eyes open. I was laying on the floor next to Nya. She was rolling her eyes and telling me to grow up about something stupid I’d done. Our heads were together, our shoulders touching and I could hear her breathing, almost a hum through her lips parted in a smile.
“Bane,” I opened my eyes and realized I was still in Lucy, slumped over the wheel. Rosetta had a hand on my forearm and one on my back. “We need to get you inside,” Rosetta said. Her voice was so soft, I felt my resolve cracking and I leaned on her, my breath coming in like a ragged wind blowing through ripped sails. I couldn’t hold it in and it wasn’t doing anything to calm the pounding in my head and my chest.
“She’s in shock,” I heard Rosetta say. “Stay with her a minute, Noah. I’ll get help.” I recognized Rosetta’s backyard. I could feel her splintery fence on my side.
Noah’s freckled hand was in mine now. Soft pressure as if he was afraid I would break. “Bane,” he whispered. “Hang on. Help is coming.”
The sound of running footsteps and the doorway behind Noah was filled with Gabe. The smell of leather and bacon and pine trees and the sight of blue eyes filling me, following the cracks in the wall that fell. He didn’t say anything. I fell sideways into his arms and the me living inside the shell finally found my mouth and eyes and I kicked the rest of the wall down. I wasn’t weeping. I was screaming into the void and the river was running over Gabe, but he didn’t fall. He didn’t even lose his footing. He was moving and so was I, but my legs weren’t.
He turned his head and I heard over the rushing in my ears, his low soft voice say. “I’ve got her.”
At some point, my eyes closed and I remember dreaming that I was in that hammock at the lake, laying next to Nya. She was telling me stories about her family and how she and her sister had laid in their hammock in the backyard, talking about life and boys and what they would do when they got out of the hammock.
I was warm and there was a bear-sized arm, holding me against a warm body at my back. I could breathe. My face felt connected to me again. The sky was magenta and violet outside the window down by the foot of the bed. There was a pair of holey black socks on huge feet, propped like a footrest under my bare feet. Gabe’s socks. He could never bring himself to throw the socks away until they completely fell apart. He said that if he threw them away when they got a few holes in them, it felt like he wasn’t being grateful for all the hard work they’d done for him over the years. He wouldn’t throw them away until they came completely unraveled and fell off. Nya had always rolled her eyes and called him a slob. An admittedly hot slob, but still a slob. I had always laughed and asked her what that made me then. She would tell me that I didn’t count because I didn’t have time to care about things like holey socks.
Nya. It all came crashing back and every muscle seized against the sharp stabbing pain in my chest.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Gabe said softly behind me. There were traces of worry in his voice, but I could tell he was trying to make an effort to smooth the worry away. “Deep breath,” Gabe said, taking my hand in his. “Come on, deep breath. I’m not going to shut up until you do it,” he said, his beard was tickling my neck and he breathed with me. We didn’t move for the next few minutes. We just breathed.
“Gabe,” I whispered.
“I’m right here,” he said.
�
�She’s gone.” It came out as a whimper and I felt the river trying to flow again, but something was wrong. The river bed was dry. My vision was getting fuzzy and the sheet under my head was damp and sticking to my face.
“Bane,” Gabe said, the worry was back in his voice. “Come on, I need to get you to sit up. Just don’t think. Just do. You can do this. We just need to sit up.” I struggled to roll onto my hip and sit, even hunched over. When I was finally upright enough for his satisfaction, he held a glass of water in front of me. “Now just drink. Don’t think. Drink.” So I drank. He got me to finish the whole glass and then it was standing. Then it was walking to the door. He told me I needed to eat. I was starting to get feeling back into my limbs. There was a scab over the fresh wound in my head. I tried not to pick at it. Don’t think, Gabe had said. So I tried not to think. I tried just doing. Stairs. We were going down the stairs at Rosetta’s house.
