I raced across the hallway and buried the stun gun’s metal fangs deep into Abraham’s back and squeezed the trigger. Blue arcs raced through the gun, and it shrieked its
tac-tac-tac-tac-tac
through the empty hallway.
Abraham arched his back and roared, his hand spasming and dropping Zack, who hit the tile floor like a sack full of potatoes. I held down the trigger, grabbed Abraham’s shoulder, and forced him against the wall. For a brief, terrified second I wondered if touching Abraham would zap me too—this proved not to be the case, another movie myth zipping past my head. I jammed my forearm into his back, slamming his face up against the wall, and kept the stun gun firing.
He jerked and sputtered under the shock, and for one brief moment I wondered if it would be possible to kill the bastard. But the longer I held the trigger, the more he began to fight. He pushed at the wall, weakly at first, but gaining strength. Zack made it to one knee, gasping for air, both hands cradling his throat.
“Dammit,” I whispered between gritted teeth, and tried to reach into my coat for the other weapon.
As soon as I took my pinning arm off of Abraham’s back, he bucked like a mule. I held the stun gun as tight as I could, and it lifted only an inch off of his coat, but that was all he needed. He spun, and with what looked like a casual one-arm push, flung me across the hallway. My back hit the wall and blew all the air out of me, and I landed in a tangle on the tile.
“When are you going to learn?” Abraham whispered, and I was happy to hear a catch in his voice. The stun gun had done something, anyway. “This isn’t good versus evil, Lucy. This is just nature. This is the way it should be. And you…well, shouldn’t. I only—”
Wham
. Abraham staggered, and turned around. I glanced up to see Zack, still wearing that hilarious paper gown, on his feet behind Abraham with a badly-bent IV stand in his hand. Apparently Zack had hoped his swing-for-the-fences strike would have a little more effect. His face twisted in disappointment.
“Son of a bitch,” Zack said, and tried to swing again. Abraham raised a thin arm and deflected the blow. His other arm swung around and hit Zack so hard I thought his neck broke. Zack’s nose exploded in blood, and he staggered. The pole hit the ground with a ring, and Zack tumbled to the floor. He didn’t move.
“No,” I screamed, and felt a wave of heat tingle up my arms. I didn’t even try to stop it. A blast of invisible force struck Abraham in the chest and flung him against the wall. Some part of me—some still-thinking part of me, outside of the curtain of red rage, made the effort to use that same power to push Zack down the hall, away from us, away from danger. His unconscious body slid a good thirty feet before coming to rest—gently—at the foot of a wall.
I stood up, and Abraham fought to escape the power holding him against the wall. His feet dangled a foot off the ground. I approached him, feeling waves of heat leech away. I knew I couldn’t keep this up long without burning every ounce of juice I had. Abraham’s thin, too-powerful arms corded and pushed against the invisible bonds.
My last chance.
Tears were sliding down my eyes, and I wasn’t sure why. But I leaned forward and pressed my lips against Abraham’s. They were hot—blistering. I opened my mouth, and so did he, out of instinct or fear or…who knows. I took a gigantic, chest-creaking breath and tried to drain him dry.
I’ve never been hit with a truck…but I imagine it wouldn’t have felt too different. A blast of lung-searing heat scooped into me, but it wasn’t the usual batch of essence. It filled me, and as I drew it in I realized my mistake. Abraham…the Mors…wasn’t human. He didn’t have essence to steal from. Or if he did…he had an unlimited supply. He was a conduit for it. As I tried to drain him, I felt an even more intense version of the happy-drug he exuded from his body. My legs wobbled, and a sudden blast of cold sliding up my spine told me I’d lost—his weird light was stealing mine. I began to crumple. I could feel him, along the edge of my peripheral vision, breaking free of the force holding him to the wall.
I triggered the stun gun. It wasn’t much—just a finger twitch—but the half-second of shock made Abraham twitch. I threw myself away from him, but he grabbed my wrist and twisted hard. My bones shattered, and I shrieked in agony. He pulled the stun gun from my hand and with a look of unmistakable satisfaction shoved the metal fangs into my neck and pulled the trigger.
My muscles twisted, and I had no air to scream. I jerked and bobbled in his grip, feeling the stun gun dump into me and turn my body into jelly. After what felt like an eternity, he stopped, and he let me fall to the ground.
“Stupid bitch,” Abraham growled. He wiped his hand across his mouth. “How’s that feel? Fun, huh?”
I tried to crawl away, but the combination of the stun gun and the suddenly biting cold made my body control go to hell. I managed to wiggle a little and slide away from him, but he just laughed bitterly, leaned down, and stabbed my hip with the stun gun. He zapped me again, the
tac-tac-tac
noise drowning out my whimpers. I writhed, but my body wasn’t my own. I didn’t stop until he let up.
I couldn’t sigh or move or talk, but when he looked at the stun gun in disdain and threw it down the hallway I felt a tiny measure of relief.
Abraham raised his leg and stomped on my outstretched arm. My elbow shattered, and this time I had the strength to scream. I rolled, but now both of my arms were useless. My left wrist broken, my right elbow shattered, I cradled them both to my chest, unable to stop the tears from rolling down my face.
“You…b….”
I tried to curse him between sobs, but I didn’t have the strength. An arctic wind blew across my body, and I knew I didn’t have long. This wasn’t going to be it, I decided, as I pushed myself across the tile with only my toes. Abraham stalked behind me, watching me try to escape with amused eyes.
Then he paused and seemed to gain his composure.
I pushed my head up against a door near me, and another shove of my toes pushed me through. I glanced up…I could see Morgan’s outstretched arm. She hadn’t woken up yet. I pulled my head up a little…Zack lay motionless where I had pushed him.
“This is it,” Abraham said. He crouched down next to me, and I tried to tug my cheek away from his outstretched hand. I sobbed as his hot finger ran down my cheek. “I got a little…carried away. I’m sorry. I didn’t…”
He looked down at my arms with genuine pity. I tried to spit at him, but I didn’t have enough.
“Just do it…” I whispered.
He dropped to one knee and began to pulse with that white light.
Euphoria slipped over me like a comforting blanket. His body, throbbing with light, cut a lean silhouette against the fluorescents in the ceiling. He covered my eyes with his hand, and the throbbing in my useless arms subsided. He leaned down, and his breath brushed my cheek.
“Goodbye,” he said.
I grabbed a handful of his lab coat with my grasping fingers and…we…flipped.
The world swirled away, and we landed hard on what had to be a rooftop. I could see the black tar of the roof, feel it underneath me. Around us, below us, the grey landscape rolled on. We were in the city…I could even see the train station, with its huge rusted spider crouched over the hub of three or four sets of rust-red tracks. Dilapidated buildings leaned in to the cracked streets.
A small shack sat on the rooftop—it took me a second to realize it was the stairwell down. A half-shattered wooden door hung twisted on bent hinges, revealing a triangle of shadow leading down into the building.
Above me, Abraham crouched, a freakishly long and lanky human-shaped white light. The grey clouds above him roiled, like a storm, shot through with flashes, pregnant with lightning.
Abraham looked down at me, just a monster made of light, and shook his head.
“Here,” I whispered, my body almost empty, wasted. The biting cold left me, but there was no warmth to take its place. I felt the bones crunch in my twisted wrist, and my elbow felt like it had been dipped in smoldering glass. I offered Abraham’s inscrutable glowing face a thin smile. “Here, you’re the freak.”
I emptied the last of my reserves. Behind me, all the way across the roof, the broken door ripped from its hinges, spun to correct itself, and flew at Abraham.
Part of it smashed into his chest. A long splinter of wood the size of a hockey stick broke off the side and impaled him through the stomach. The glowing figure lurched sideways, clutched at the spear of wood, and crumpled to the ground. No scream. No metal-tearing shriek. He landed on the ground next to me.
I was empty. I felt light…maybe what dying felt like. I’m not sure—I sort of screwed it up the first time. But I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and let it fade. Darkness swept over me, for a while.
Chapter Nineteen
Murder
My eyes popped open.
The grey storm clouds still swirled above me. I turned my head, slowly, feeling a bit more substantial. Like I might not just float away. Abraham’s lanky body still lay beside me, but it was moving. Wiggling. Still pulsing with that white light. Somehow dimmer.
I don’t know how I still lived…existed. I guess there, in the Grey, we have nowhere else to go. Maybe we couldn’t use enough juice to die. Something there sustained me—I knew that—the aching cold always disappeared, temporarily, when I went there. It was there, in the other place, the real place, that we had to burn so hot to stay alive. I let out a long slow breath and turned back to the Abraham-monster.
“I think I know how to beat you,” I said, finally. The solution had occurred to me only as my eyes opened. Something Puck had written, without even knowing it.
How is that?
A voice floated to me, maybe in my head, maybe not. It sounded tired. Abraham’s real voice, probably.
“Can I ask a question?”
The impaled, glowing form shook, and I marveled. It was unmistakably a laugh.
I’m not going anywhere.
“Were you going to kill me?” I asked him. Lying beside each other, broken, without the strength to stand, we made quite a pair.
Can’t kill the dead.
“What is it then?”
We remove you. We undo the damage you’ve done.
“Where do I go?”
Nowhere. You cease to be.
I didn’t talk, for a long while.
“What about my soul?” I felt childish asking it, but nothing had ever seemed so important.
Another long pause. Finally, the white-glowing form turned its featureless face toward the sky.
Haven’t figured it out? You
are
your soul. Naked. A light bulb filament without the glass. Burning so hot and so bright because it can’t not. It burns or it ceases to be—like you.
He sounded sad—I’ll give him that.
“But…why?”
Some people with great willpower who die in times of happiness…you couldn’t accept your death. And so you traded your soul. You used it…to live. Now, you take the bits of other souls to sustain yours. Fuel for the fire. And your’s is an inferno.
“If I die? If I…fade away?”
You’re gone.
“Heaven? Hell? Whatever?”
Not for you. Where does a burned up leaf go? The air, maybe. Maybe nowhere.
I closed my eyes.
“What are you? You sent by…God or something? You an Angel of Death, Abe?” I whispered, unable to disguise the wry laughter in my voice. I watched the brewing storm far above us with little interest.
I don’t know. I was killed by one like you…forty years ago. I was his first murder. I think that’s how it works.
“Puck?”
No. Life isn’t that interesting.
“This is revenge?”
It’s…my duty. My job.
I covered my eyes and let out a long slow breath. My cheeks were slick with tears. My breath came in hitches and jerks.
“I’m going to kill you now, Abraham,” I said.
I wouldn’t tell you these things if I thought differently.
I reached over and touched his hand. I jumped a little—his fingers curled around mine, like two lovers holding hands. I took a deep breath and flipped us.
Bright florescent light pierced my eyes, and I took a deep breath. Ice flooded into my lungs, and I jerked. It covered me, penetrated me. Defined me. I glanced down, not surprised to see my feet and calves had already faded. My thighs were turning transparent. I held up my arms…gone up to the elbows. No wonder they didn’t hurt so much. I laughed a sardonic, depressing chuckle. An upside?
Maybe I wasn’t gonna kill anybody. Maybe it was over.
I turned my head to the side. Human-looking Abraham lay beside me, his once white lab coat scarlet with blood. A wooden spike the size of a baseball bat stuck out of his stomach, and one of his long-fingered hands held it, cradling it like a baby. The other hand lay motionless beside mine…as soon as we had flipped over, he’d let go of my hand. He stared up at the ceiling, his skin paler than normal. He took shallow, raspy breaths. They were, I noticed, becoming stronger.
“Abe,” I whispered. “Maybe you win after all.”
Abe said nothing. I don’t think he had the strength.
We breathed beside one another, mine growing fainter, his stronger. I tried to move or crawl, but I didn’t have the limbs or the solidity. I looked up at the ceiling—I lacked the courage to watch my body disappear. Or my soul, I guess, if anything Abraham had told me was true. I think it was.
I’d never been a religious person. I guess being religious wasn’t terribly cool, and had gone out-of-fashion. But I’d thought about things. I’d thought about what happened at the end. The very end. Everyone does, once in a while, I suppose. We have to. At some point, we have to tangle with Death. The first bout is just a thumb wrestle—a question from a child.
Mommy, what happens when we die?
Not a fun question for mommies around the world. I remember when I’d asked my mom that very same question. I asked her with tears streaming down my eyes yet in a calm voice. I’d come from my talk with Dad about Scooter, our little beagle that had been run over by an old lady in a Volkswagen. He told me that Scooter had passed away—that he wasn’t around anymore. I thought that was a funny way of explaining that my little puppy, who licked the stray barbecue sauce off my face like it was communion, was now a red trail of guts thirty-feet long down Thistle Street.