All the Rules of Heaven

by Amy Lane

  “Damien,” he mumbled, working not to squeeze his eyes shut. “I… I was so lonely….”

  “But you’re not now!” Angel appeared, right in his line of vision, and Tucker startled.

  “How are you staying in the circle?” he asked muzzily and then focused. “You’re floating.”

  “Yes, Tucker, I do that.” The words were Angel’s usual tone, but irritation glared from those bright green eyes. “Tucker, focus. Please. Please! You’ll never forgive yourself if you fail.”

  Tucker nodded, swallowing the bile and the failure. Angel’s hands on him, his innocence, his willingness to learn, his tenderness with the kitten, his gentleness with Tucker—all of it washing over Tucker in a wave of lavender and citrus, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to cuddle in that warmth, in that smell and—oh God.

  Tucker could lose Angel in this. They were making a giant pagan symbol, and Angel wasn’t great with those. It had burned Tucker at first too.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Careful, Angel. You’ll get burned.”

  “Augh!” Angel’s scream was enough to snap Tucker out of his haze completely. “Tucker, focus on yourself!”

  “Angel, I can’t see—where’s Josh?”

  “He’s about a hundred yards away,” Rae said calmly, securing the anchor wire and tugging another length for the final leg. She pulled out her snippers and clipped. “There’s another man there, yelling at him to get up and then pushing at him to stay down.”

  “Oh thank God. That’s James Beaufort. He should be on our side.”

  “That’s reassuring, because the rest of these fuckers want to eat us. Tucker, what makes you think Josh can get to the center of this figure? Your ghost friends seem to think it’s off-limits.”

  “Conklin has a body,” Tucker told her grimly. “He can go anywhere. If he hadn’t been trapped inside the boundaries of the house and yard for a hundred years, he would have realized he could have been halfway to Auburn as soon as Josh touched the paperweight.”

  “So why’s he going to try to get you, again?”

  “’Cause he hates me,” Tucker said. “He may not look like it now, but I did beat the shit out of him that night he broke my nose.” He tracked Josh’s painful progress toward the gate, grateful for the time Beaufort’s ghost was buying them and knowing it was going to get harder to see him as he got closer to the phosphorescent crowd grouping along the pentagrams. “I exorcised Sophie and Bridget. He didn’t have anyone left to bully.” Damien screamed his name particularly loudly, and his attention wandered.

  “You can’t have him,” Angel screamed. “He’s mine!”

  Damien and the ghosts grouped around him laughed openly. Tucker recognized them, recognized them all, the people he’d failed. The people who had died because Tucker hadn’t gotten there in time. Tucker had dragged them here. In his unconscious self-loathing, he’d brought them here, and now they were going to try to make sure a good man died.

  “Tucker!” Angel’s hard slap at his cheek didn’t have full impact—but it had some. Tucker swallowed and tried hard to focus.

  “Angel?”

  “Tucker, you’re mine. They can’t have you. You tell them that.”

  “I’m yours,” he told Angel, a modicum of peace seeping into him. He still felt his injuries, felt his pain, but for a breath, a heartbeat, he had the strength to put things in their box, deal with the important things first.

  “Tell them,” Angel said, and he was just solid enough for Tucker to feel his hands on Tucker’s shoulders and the little shake he was giving. A hug would have been sweeter, but the shaking was real.

  Angel was real.

  “I’ll tell them,” Tucker promised, swallowing hard. “Rae, where’s Josh?”

  “Getting closer. Are you with me?”

  “Mostly,” he said, forced to honesty. She gave another tug on the wire, and the last spool completely unwound. “Are we going to have enough?”

  She ran the wire toward the final spike and grimaced. “We’re about a foot short. Oh, gross!”

  Tucker had been soaking up the blood from his head pretty steadily, and he pulled the bandages out of his pocket. “It’s a head wound,” he mumbled. “It won’t stop bleeding.” He handed her two bandages, and she tied them together and then secured them to the end of the wire. She stretched the line again, making sure not to touch the ends, and then nodded.

  “We’re good.”

  He shoved the rest of the bandages into her hand. “Okay—you know the plan?”

  “Get him in the middle, close the circuit, push Josh out.”

  “And hopefully keep Conklin in,” Tucker affirmed, some of his purpose creeping back. “After that, we wrap Conklin in the wire and….” This part was iffiest. “Shove him back in the hole?”

  Thank God Rae looked like that made sense. “Bind him in silver and blood—I get the concept, Tucker, but why can’t you exorcise him?”

  Tucker scrubbed his face with his bloody hand. “I’ll try,” he said. “Angel said we tell their stories. There’s usually a core of their soul that remembers who they are. This guy—the drugs, the entitlement—I’m not sure if there was anything inside him that remembers enough to be exorcised.”

  Rae frowned. “Monsters are usually made. Most serial rapists don’t shoot out of the womb all excited about fucking up people’s lives.”

  “Have you seen the state of politics?” Tucker asked her, completely serious, but not as serious as the daggers she glared back at him.

  “Well, something probably happened to those douchebags too! I’m saying find out what his damage is. Find out what made him. You’ll have him trapped. At the very least, knowing that should make him vulnerable, maybe weak enough to shove in that damned hole!”

  Tucker nodded, getting it. “Okay, okay, are we ready?”

  Stupid question. They had their pentacle—the legs not traced in wire traced in the unbreakable imaginations of children—blocking the gate from the property. Whether Josh or Conklin was at the helm, if he was going to try to get off of the iron and silver of Daisy Place, he was going to have to go through their trap.

  The ghosts couldn’t get through it, but Josh could. If they could close the last leg of a pentacle and lock the ghost inside, then push Josh’s physical body out….

  Hopefully, they’d have a very confused Josh and the thing that had taken him over in two separate spaces.

  “It will never work, Tucker. It’s like every goddamned plan you’ve ever had! Do you think you can protect him? Do you think you can protect any of them!”

  “You were never mean!” Tucker cried, distracted, in pain. “Don’t be mean, Damien. Not now!”

  Angel shook him again, each shake getting harder and closer to being mauled by a real man, powerfully built and frantic as hell.

  “He’s coming,” Angel said, his voice choked. “C’mon, Tucker, I know you’re… oh God.” His hands tightened on Tucker’s biceps. “You’re weak. You’re so weak. But you need to hold on. You will never forgive yourself if you get lost now. Stay with us. When you fade out like that, Rae is in this all by herself!”

  Tucker looked at Rae, then closed his eyes against everything but the imperatives.

  “Get on the other side,” he said. “The dry side. Nobody can get you from there.”

  Rae nodded and strode through the pentagram field with no qualms while Tucker positioned himself in the center of the pentagram. Both of them ignored the bedlam of clamoring souls on the graveyard side and concentrated on the shambling figure of Josh, who had finally opened the gate with stiff fingers and was hovering, right before the shine of the silver wires.

  His face contorting with the effort, Josh opened his mouth to speak. Conklin’s voice came out.

  “Do you think I’m a child?” he sneered.

  “Don’t you want me?” Tucker asked, stabbed by real panic. This whole thing depended on Conklin wanting Tucker so badly, he’d disregard common sense—just like he had when he’d attacked Sophi
e. “I exorcised them, you know. That was me. Doesn’t that piss you off?”

  “We’ll see you rot!” Conklin spat. “But I’m not stupid enough to walk into your trap. What are you? A servant? A worker? A scholar?” The last word seemed to hold a particular distaste for him. “Do you think I’ll risk myself for you?”

  With a quick, no-nonsense step, Rae was in the trap next to him. Taking off her shirt and unhooking her bra so she could pull it up to her chin.

  “Look, Conklin—tits!” She shimmied shamelessly. “See them? Don’t they piss you off? I’m a woman, and I have an opinion, and I think you’re dogshit, and I’ve got tits!”

  Josh took two steps forward, eyes fixated on Rae’s chest. Suddenly he shook himself, the concerned husband shouting, “Woman, put those away. They’re mine!”

  “Then come get them,” she shouted. “C’mon, Josh—you, Conklin—first one here gets the first grab!”

  The struggle again, and this time it was Conklin. “Insolent woman! I will rip them off of your body.”

  “Yeah, sure. You’re all talk. I bet when you’re not riding my husband, you’re a limp-dicked disaster who can’t get it up!”

  Josh/Conklin took another step. “I’ll fuck you until you bleed,” he snarled.

  “Bet your balls are the size of marbles,” she snarled back. “And look, asshole, I’ve got a tattoo!”

  She turned her back to him and shoved her jeans halfway down, revealing a cheerful constellation of protective tattoos in rainbow colors, all clustered on her right hind cheek.

  Tucker snapped out of his wooziness enough to laugh. “Jesus, Rae—covering all bases?”

  “Josh always said I needed every god in the book to watch my ass.” Her eyes glittered with grim amusement, and Tucker thought it must be a bitch to admit your husband was right when your life depended on it.

  “Well, he’s a smart man.” Very slowly, careful to pick up his feet, Tucker edged sideways, toward the open leg of the trap.

  “He is. And he’s strong, so if Conklin decides to go for it, he’s going to be very—”

  “Confused.” Tucker knew this thing she was doing was dangerous as hell. Baiting Conklin with her insolent womanhood—that was one thing. But her husband would be driven by protection and desire. Both drives involved body-to-body action. Rae was a strong woman, but she wasn’t an athlete. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I hope you can tackle like a defensive end.” She turned her attention back to their target. “Conklin, I think men are stupid, useless fuckers. I think aristocrats should be exterminated and shot. I think your raping, whoring ass should have been reamed with the red-hot mast of a giant sailing ship and your dick cut into tiny pieces and fed to the chickens. How much do you hate me, asshole? You’re gonna let some silver wire on the ground stop you? You gonna let me win?”

  “Rae,” Josh begged, voice clogged with tears. “I can’t hold him back any longer.”

  “Don’t hold him back, sweetheart. Just make sure he picks up his goddamned feet!”

  Josh may not have understood the supernatural, but he damned sure understood his wife. He nodded at her for a moment, and then he was gone, Conklin’s snarl of rage contorting his face as he high-stepped over the wire, leaving the trap intact while he rushed to the center to attack his wife.

  It was a near thing.

  Tucker reached for the final rag that bound the trap and waited, his heart in his mouth, until Josh’s booted foot hit the center of the pentagram. Then he bound up the rag, screaming, “Conklin, you asshat, you’re mine now!”

  He felt it.

  The charge of the completed trap, buzzing the lines etched in silver. But it wasn’t enough—not for a ghost strong enough to attack a human, strong enough to possess someone as psychically blind as Josh Greenaway.

  Tucker ran through the next part of the trap and grabbed the connecting wire while Rae, her shirt in her hands, her body pale and vulnerable to the predator she’d enraged, backed slowly away from the thing in her husband.

  “Tucker?” she asked, and she sounded strong and not afraid, but he knew that cost her.

  “Can you keep him busy? Conklin, you pusbag, you’re trapped,” he screamed, connecting the second wire.

  A stronger pulse this time, running through the figures in the dirt.

  Conklin lunged for her, and she danced just out of his reaching hands.

  “Doing my best here!” she panted. It was a small space—she was dancing right outside of the inner pentagon, as reluctant as Tucker to test the boundaries.

  “You fucking whore!” Conklin sneered. “You dare bait me like I was a common laborer?”

  He lunged again, grabbed Rae by the upper arms and shook her.

  Rae kneed him in the balls and jumped out of the pentagon again. “Sorry, honey!” she called.

  “’Sokay,” Josh panted, hands on his knees as he recovered. He’d apparently been given lease on his own pain, if nothing else. “Good one, babe.”

  Tucker pushed up from his crouch and ran around the back of the figure, bending down to bind the final part of the trap while Conklin was recovering. “Conklin, may your soul grow roots and stay there!” Tucker snarled, and the howl that came from Josh’s mouth told him he’d succeeded in doing something.

  “Rae, stay out of there,” he called. “Run get the other circle!”

  She did, sprinting around behind the property line as he had, and as Conklin stood again, turning in a frenzy, they both reached for their final blood-coated wire.

  “What do I say!” Rae shouted.

  “Something just!” Tucker shouted back.

  “I hope you feel every assault you ever perpetrated in the pit of your soul!” Rae screamed, her desperation, her fear, screeching through the howl of the dispossessed spirits around them.

  Tucker was distracted for a moment, hearing the familiar note of Damien Columbus over them all.

  “Tucker!” Angel screamed on the outside of the figure. “Tucker, finish it!”

  Tucker closed his eyes. “And when you’ve suffered for your sins, I hope you find peace!”

  He closed the link then, and the energy of Daisy Place, of the old figures of safety and entrapment, of the combined psychic gifts of Tucker and the entire Greenaway family, bolted through the silver tracings on the ground. Conklin felt it, too late, and tried to charge out of the center of his pentacle, only to fall back screaming, cradling his hand, trapped.

  “Tucker!” Rae wept. “Tucker, he can’t get out!”

  “That’s not just Josh!” Tucker called back. “That’s both of them. We need Josh to concentrate. Move to the inside. You’re protected.” He stood, dizzy, and stumbled to the outside of the figures, now glowing in blue-white light on the ground. Then he removed his necklace and clenched it tight in his hand. He was going to have such a short window to do this. God, Goddess, whoever was listening, let him do this right.

  “Now talk to him,” Tucker called when they stood, three in a row, separated by silver, blood, and curses. “Make him remember who he is.”

  “Josh! Joshua Cambridge Greenaway. You listen to me,” Rae screamed. “You know who you are. You know who I am. I need you back, you big stupid moo, do you hear me?”

  “He’s whimpering like a fool,” Conklin replied. “Why would he listen to a whore?”

  “Who’s the fool?”

  The voice was new, and Tucker looked in surprise. “James?”

  James Beaufort stood, close enough to the trap for his face to be illumined in silver. “Who’s the fool, Conklin? You were killed by a railroad man and buried in an unmarked grave. Nobody came looking for you—do you know that? We waited. We were terrified. Someone should have come looking for you. But your wife was glad to be rid of you. Your son was off getting the pox, which killed him. Nobody came looking. Nobody cared. Your son’s wife lived a happy, long lifetime with her lover, with nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews. They were surrounded by children their entire lives, som
e of whom are alive today and bear their names. Who was the fool, Conklin? Who lived the good life? Who had the power to leave this world and wasn’t forced to live and relive their final moment of bloodshed? You were bested by women the minute you raised your hand to them, Conklin, and you’ve lived in torment ever since!”

  Conklin snarled and lunged for James while Josh reached out his hands for his own wife.

  Tucker saw the split between them, saw Josh’s flesh and blood go one way and Conklin’s poisoned spirit go the other.

  He lowered his head, squared his shoulders, and charged Josh Greenaway like a football player and a freight train in one. Conklin’s agonized scream rent the air as the power of the silver trap peeled his essence from Josh’s body like squashing potatoes through a masher to get rid of the skins.

  Josh was the skin.

  He and Tucker fell to the earth next to Rae with a thud. While Rae ran her hands over her husband’s flesh to see if he’d been burned or wounded—besides what she’d inflicted herself—Tucker fumbled with the pendant in his hand and looped it over Josh’s neck. And then, oh God, still dizzy, woozy as hell, he stumbled to his feet.

  They weren’t done.

  “Rae, get him out of here. Take the truck—get him home.”

  Rae scrambled up, offering her husband a hand. Josh looked at her with a pained expression on his already confused face. “Honey, you’re naked.”

  She stared blankly back. “You were just possessed by a serial rapist, and you’re worried about my tits?”

  “But you’re naked,” he said, his lower lip wobbling, and for a moment, Tucker felt a smile at the corner of his mouth.

  “He’s not worried about your modesty, Rae,” Tucker said, feeling wise. “He’s worried that you’re vulnerable. Fasten your bra and put the shirt back on. It’ll make him feel like he protected you.”

  Rae’s laugh was mostly tears, and she wiped her face with her palm before wrestling into her bra and shirt. “Better?” she asked her husband. “Now come on. We’re still not safe.”

  She offered her hand again, and he took it and rose, touched her face with trembling fingers. “I’m so sorry, honey. He was… he was in my head, and it was so ugly.”