The Wrong Goodbye (35 page)

  "That's a good chap," he said. "You'd be wise to stay outside the circle, or I fear I'll be forced to get quite cross."

  I eyed the circle. I hadn't noticed it until he'd called attention to it. The last one I'd seen was alder ash, the sacrifice of the trees' lives enough to protect an entire building from the underworld's reach. This one was smaller, only ten feet across, and made from blood.

  "Yes," Danny said, "the loss of life required for this little parlor trick, and the one you encountered downstairs, is unfortunate – but I assure you, I had the good grace to get the poor indigent who unwit tingly donated it nice and pissed on decent whisky before I tapped him. In all likelihood, it was a better death than he had coming."

  "Yeah, you're a real peach," I said. And then, to Ana: "How can you go along with this? Don't you realize what's at stake?"

  "
Go along with this
?" she said. "Why, Sam, you've got it wrong. Do you think our Daniel could have planned a rite so intricate as this? Do you think he has the skills to carry it out? I learned long ago, Sam, no one is coming to rescue me – so I decided to take it upon myself to do so."

  Of course. It seemed so goddamn obvious in retrospect. Only Ana could have conjured Abyzou so easily. Only she would have the mystical mojo to pull all this off.

  "So it's been you all this time? You who set Danny up as a runner for Dumas? You who sent him to double-cross me?"

  "I'm my own man," Danny protested. "My decisions were my own."

  "Sure they were. So you're saying it sat OK with you, stealing the Varela soul from an old friend?" 

  "It was a necessary evil; the ritual requires a truly corrupt soul. The energy it releases upon its destruction breaks hell's bond of servitude as it fuses soul to flesh forever. Hence the young, choice meat-suits – we'll be stuck with them from here on out. And besides, you're one to talk of bloody loyalty. I've not forgotten what you did to Quinn."

  "Damn it, Danny – I've told you a thousand times, I'm not the one who got Quinn shelved." 

  "Yeah, right," he spat. "I suppose Ana
didn't
hear you rat him out, then."

  My God. All these years, I'd had it backward. Danny hadn't turned Ana against me.
Ana
had turned
Danny.

  And that's when the pieces clicked into place.

  "This building," I said to her. "The design, the construction – the research to get the ritual just right. Inserting Danny into Dumas's operation. Hell, calling in an angelic air-strike so you could get your hands on a grade-A skimming blade… the groundwork to orchestrate all that must've taken
years
." 

  Ana laughed, short and bitter. "Years? Try
decades
. I first had to pinpoint the exact moment and location of the necessary celestial alignment – no small feat given how deep any mention of this ritual was buried. And even with a Collector's unique skill set, getting money enough was a challenge. Transferring the funds from wealthy meat-suits to procure the land seemed simple enough, but it proved slower than anticipated – I had to do so without raising hackles. And then there was the matter of organizing today's celebration."

  "But the Dia de los Muertos has been celebrated in this square for over thirty years."

  Ana laughed. "You think that's by
accident
? Every year, this festival has grown, and every year, it's free of charge to all who wish to come. Oh, I'll grant you, the folks who throw it haven't the faintest idea I'm involved – I've been careful to shield both my money and my more arcane influences from public view. And it all culminates in one night, in one moment – after which Danny and I will both be free. Danny, the Varela."

  Danny removed from his pocket a swirling, grayblack orb. The Varela soul. I inched forward, but he once more trained his gun on me, and once more I stopped, chastened.

  "Danny, don't. Don't give it to her. You have no idea the hell on earth that you'll unleash by going through with this."

  Danny smiled then, his youthful expression painful in its naïveté. "Ana's found a way round it," he said. "A spell that'll disperse the energy safely once it's freed us. Those nearest the ritual – like you, perhaps, or the two you've brought – might not fare so well, but I assure you, those beyond the fence will be fine." 

  "Do you really believe that?"

  "Why shouldn't I? Unlike
you,
she's never lied to me."

  "No? So it's not possible she's the one who turned Quinn in?"
  Ana bristled. "The Varela, Danny."

  "She said herself she's been working toward this night for thirty years. Tell me, have you known the whole time what she had in store? Or did she only bring you in when she realized she couldn't pull it off alone? When she realized someone would have to stick their neck out to get the tools, the soul, the expertise she needed."

  "Don't listen to him," Ana snapped.

  "She brought me in five years ago," he said. "But I never thought…"

  "What? Never thought that she was using you? That you were nothing but a patsy to her? Maybe that's what Quinn was once, too – or maybe he overheard something he shouldn't have. Twenty-seven years he's spent shelved, and for all those twentyseven years, she's told you it was me who turned Quinn in, while the whole time she schemed in secret, working toward this night. Tell me, Ana, was Quinn helping you? Did he prove a liability – a loose end in your plan?"

  "
Quinn was a mistake
!" she screamed, and then caught herself – her shoulders sagging, her face falling in dismay. 

  "Ana?" This from Danny: quiet, unsure.

  "I never wanted this for him," she said. "He was a friend. Hell, he was scarcely more than a child. I hadn't thought when I asked of him a simple errand it would end so poorly, but then, I had no idea the boy spoke Latin."

  "He was Catholic, Ana," I said. "An altar boy. In those days, they all did."

  "I'd sent him to procure a manuscript from a monastery in the south of France – a scroll of unknown origin that hadn't seen the outside of the stone reliquary in which it had been sealed in centuries. I'd been tipped to it by a demon contact who swore he'd had a hand in writing it, and his tip was sound; it proved the fullest account of the Brethren I had ever seen. The problem was, young Quinn had seen it too – seen it, and translated its contents – and his enthusiasm at the prospect of escaping this life was too much for him to bear. He wanted to tell the both of you – to attempt the ritual immediately – and try though I did, I could not persuade him otherwise. So instead, I had to silence him."

  "Ana," Danny said. "Fuck. How could you?" 

  "I did what I had to do," was her retort.

  "And tonight?" Danny asked. "Have you really devised a spell that will protect against the Deluge, or are six billion fucking people an acceptable sacrifice for your freedom?"

  "For
our
freedom," she corrected. "And they won't
all
die. After all, many survived the last. And who are you to say this is a bad thing? It seems to me, a cleansing flood would likely do this cesspool of a world some good."

  Danny's face twisted in horror. "So your protection spell–"

  "–is one-way," she said. "It will keep us safe from what's to come. It's all I could manage. It's all we really need."

  "I'm sorry," he said, to Ana or to me I wasn't sure. But then he threw me the Varela soul, and said to her, "I won't let you do this. I can't."

  I dropped the Varela in my pocket. Watched the two of them standing there inside the circle – Danny's eyes brimming with tears, and Ana shaking with rage barely contained.

  "You have no right to take this from me," she spat. "But if you don't want to join me, you may prove useful yet."

  She was on him so fast, I didn't have a chance to react. She swung the skim blade down hard on his gun hand, its rounded edge connecting with his wrist in a crunch of shattered bone. Then she kicked out his knee, and he toppled forward. With speed and strength that smacked of magical enhancement, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and dragged him backward to the center of the circle. He knelt before her, his arms dangling at his sides, his face a mask of pain. His back arched as her knee pressed against it, the skimming blade poised above his breast.

  "What do you say, Sam – do you suppose our boy Danny's soul is dark enough?"
  "Ana, don't."

  I eyed Danny's gun, which lay ten feet from where I stood – three feet inside the circle. She picked up on my intent and said, "I wouldn't."

  "Sam," Danny said. "I'm so bloody sorry."

  "Hey," I told him, "you can't help who you love." 

  He laughed through the pain.

  "For what it's worth," she said to him, "I'm sorry, too. But this is my only chance. There's only one way this can end."

  I glanced around for a weapon – for anything to end this stalemate. All I saw was the silhouette of Charon sketched in crows – highlighted by the jittery spotlight of an approaching police helicopter, and standing there infuriatingly immobile as if he cared not what went on below.

  Or perhaps as if he was incapable of intervening. 

  Danny tracked the direction of my gaze, and spotted Charon lying in wait. Then he nodded at me almost imperceptibly, as if he understood what must be done. As if giving me his consent.

  Such a small gesture – so small, Ana hadn't even noticed it. And yet it was enough to break my heart. 

  A lump rose in my throat then, and tears welled in my eyes. But I refused to let them spill over. Not when I had a job to do.

  "Wait," I said, shouting to be heard over the helicopter's din. "There is another way."
  "I'm listening."

  "You're going to go through with this regardless – I get that. Big boom. Big flood. But you and I both know Danny's soul ain't dark enough to break hell's bonds; he just proved that by handing over the Varela you need. So I propose a trade."

  Ana smiled – feral, vicious. "Varela for Danny, is that it?"

  "No," I said. "Varela for my freedom. Danny's, too, for that matter."
  "I don't follow."

  "It's the circle, right? Those inside break free of hell's bonds, those outside are shit outta luck. So you let me in, and I give you the Varela. You do your thing, Danny and I go free, and so long as we avoid the ensuing flood we walk away as happy as clams." 

  "You're playing me," she said. "The Sam I know is far too much of a Boy Scout to suggest a thing."

  I stepped toward her. The three of us were awash in spotlights, a second helicopter joining the first. Like heaven's light shining down upon us. "Maybe you don't know me as well as you think." 

  "I'm too fast for you," she hissed. "You'll never reach the gun in time."

  Someone shouted to us through a bullhorn, but their words were lost on the wind. I took the Varela from my pocket and held it out to her. "I wouldn't dream of it," I said.

  I stepped into the circle, scuffing my feet along the way.

  Dried blood flecked off beneath my soles, and broke the ring.

  Ana, realizing what I'd done, screamed in rage, and drove the skim-blade into Danny's chest. 

  Lines dropped down from above, police in riot gear rappelling from the heavens like God's own army of angels, too late to do anything but watch. For a moment, the whole world felt as though it bent inward toward Danny's prostrate form, which seemed to vibrate, to hum, his every pore erupting with white-hot light.

  So this is how the world ends, I thought. Turns out, it'll be a bang after all.

  And in the instant before his soul let loose, bringing forth another flood, ten thousand crows streamed through the open roof, engulfing the lot of us in a fury of talons, beaks, and ink-black feathers. 

  They swarmed the circle, coalescing into the vast, impossible form of a hunched old man two stories high. 

  Just as soon as he had formed, he toppled over, engulfing Ana and Danny's tangled forms in his teeming black mass.

  And just like that, he disappeared into the Nothingness.
  Along with Ana.
  Along with Danny.
  In the silence that ensued, I cried.

  
  
  

"Good morning, Collector. Nice to see you're amongst the living, so to speak. Though I confess I am surprised to find you here."

  A week had passed since Los Angeles. Lilith and I were standing in a cemetery on the edge of Ilford, east London. The sky overhead was the color of slate, and a cool mist beaded up on my woolen pea coat. I looked down at the headstone at my feet. It was mottled with age, and bright green moss clung to one side of it. In weathered letters, it read:

 

  DANIEL ALLAN YOUNG
  BELOVED SON
  1903–1921

 

  For not the first time, I wondered about my own grave – I'd never seen it. I'd died penniless on the streets of New York, one more John Doe for Potter's Field. Though all of Danny's family money didn't make him any less dead. Now, in fact, it seemed he was a fair bit more.

  "I thought I should pay my respects," I said.

  Lilith scoffed. "To the man who nearly condemned you to an eternity of Nothingness?"

  "It's a little more complicated than that," I confessed. 

  "It always is." Though this was a cemetery – and mid-morning – Lilith wore an evening dress of bright red, and lipstick to match. Neither showed any evidence of rain. "I knew," she said. "About your little group, and what they meant to you. Truth be told, I was sorry when you and they parted ways." 

  "You
knew
? Why didn't you ever say?"

  "Everyone's entitled to their secrets. And everyone's entitled to those little vices that help them to survive. Regardless of what my superiors might think. We're all of us consigned to this life against our will, Collector. I no more blame you for my fate than you should me for yours."