And suddenly I was all about the self-sacrifice after all, wanting to sob, wanting to scream at them,
No, go back, get back on the bike and drive away! This isn’t your fight, what are you even doing here?
Which made no sense, of course, because I’d actually phoned Jacey and told him where to find us, but even so. Suddenly I didn’t believe in their rescue mission, only their imminent deaths, my fault. How did they even think they were going to fight fog-feller, anyway?
Maybe they weren’t thinking at all, they couldn’t be thinking or they wouldn’t still be standing there, staring up at him like victims only waiting for those long, long arms to reach out and club them down, if his sneaky fog didn’t claim them first as it had claimed the two of us. That was the fog-feller’s masterstroke, that fog. Oozing its way into the mind and body both, sapping the strength and the strength of will, marooning the soul in a body slack and helpless, with a mind all full of fancy...
It was his masterstroke, and it failed. It wasn’t working at all, not on these two, not with their sinuses all full of petrol fumes and their minds abuzz with streetlights, fog couldn’t touch them.
Not for the time it took Jordan to look up at the fog-feller, look straight at me, look sideways at Jacey – and do his fresh-prince-of-Hell thing, open a gateway to his father’s kingdom, take us all through it there and then without any of us needing actually to twitch a muscle.
And inside of course I was still screaming
no!,
still screaming
No, don’t you remember last time, Asher, have you forgotten what happened to Asher...?
But it didn’t matter, it was too late, here we were. Transposed, I guess. This wasn’t the way his father had done it, subtly, shifting me little by little through some intermediate space from one world to the other so that I barely noticed the change until I was there, unequivocally in Hell. This was abrupt, all but instant, almost painful, deeply shocking. Asher had been as quick, but not so rough about it; everything Asher did, he was always cool and always smooth. And he’d done it before, of course, a thousand times. This was all new to Jordan – and of course he was still half seventeen in his heart. Which made him gauche, awkward, clumsy, urgent, all those boy-things that only mattered more the more he tried to hide them, as he did.
The human body really doesn’t like swift transitions, moving too fast or too strangely, in unexpected directions. We get sick. Car-sick, air-sick, space-sick.
I got dimensionally sick, I guess. It was infuriating, when my body was so useless to me otherwise, that suddenly my head was swimming and my stomach wanted to rebel. Just when I most needed to be alert and focused, if only to keep terror at bay, to see that nothing was as bad as I imagined it.
We were in Hell, and oh, it showed. There must be other aspects to this place, but all I’d seen so far was red and dry and sour, dust and desert, and here we were again. On a hill this time – and maybe that was how transition worked: road goes to road, hill to hill? – but a long, long way from the hill we had been on before. The bike hadn’t come through with us; there was just us and our face-off, in a bare bleak landscape under a hot and heavy sun. Even the light seemed red, where it fell upon us.
This was no country for fog-fellers. His fog was burning off already, moment by moment; I thought he was burning himself, never used to any sun on that skin of his, let alone a sun like this.
Something else was burning off, his cold fog in my mind. I wasn’t strong yet, I couldn’t move much, I couldn’t help; but I found that I could lift my head, turn my head to watch him.
Watch as he blundered towards my two boys, reaching.
I still had that cold fear on my heart. I was still remembering Asher, how he brought us into Hell to fight the Green Man, how the Green Man had fought back, desperate and deadly.
How Asher died.
I thought I was going to see it all again, played out before my helpless eyes, with two boys for double the fun. I thought those long, lethal fingers would coil around their throats and choke them, break them, pull them apart.
I thought I’d be the one who had to call their parents.
Actually I was trying to do that now, right now, in a wishful-prayer sort of way. Jordan’s dad was master here; shouldn’t he know what was happening, shouldn’t he come? He’d found me easily enough before, surely he could find his own boy when it was needful, surely he couldn’t lose both sons the same damn way?
Or there was Thom, of course; a creature of fire should do well in Hell. I looked for him, and was relieved to see him moving, that at least – but he was barely moving more than I was, and less in control. He flickered between flesh and flame, a mortal figure and then a fiery one and back to flesh again. I didn’t think that was wilful on his part. I thought he’d forgotten quite what he was, this or that. So much for being both, either one at whim, the way I’d always loved him; so much for being any help at all, here and now.
So I turned back to the fog-feller and the boys, expecting to see disaster, ruin, horror acted out in front of me.
And did, I saw exactly that.
Oh, Jay...
He wasn’t even angry, that was the thing. I’d seen him every way he came, I thought – but not like this. Not clinical. I couldn’t even call it cruel, there wasn’t passion enough for that; and this was Hell, so nobody could call it cold. But...
Well. It was like the same thing in reverse, what the Green Man did to Asher acted out the other way around. By his brother, and without any of the frantic urgency of that dreadful other death.
I guess the fog-feller was doomed, from the moment he found himself in Hell. Doomed like his fog, baking from the inside out. His only hope would have been to kill Jordan quickly and hope to land us back where we’d started, on a fog-friendly moor. It had worked before for others, so...
Nah. The fog-feller was doomed. Whether he hoped or not, whether he was just lashing out in a final futile gesture, whatever might be happening in whatever fog-filled cavity made his mind. Jordan had died once this week already, more or less; he wasn’t about to do it again for the fog-feller’s convenience, or for his salvation. Or at all.
Which I ought to be glad about, even as that fist of fear unclenched itself about my heart.
I’m okay, he’s okay
– I should have been rejoicing. But, not like this. Not at this. Not to see him methodically take that wight apart, limb by limb.
He didn’t have to do that, the thing was dead already, near as dammit. Crisping. That wasn’t fog that came filtering out of his mouth and eyes, not now, no. That was smoke. He might be trying to reach the boys, trying to threaten them, trying to kill – but he didn’t stand a chance. He was moving in slow motion, barely able to keep his feet; nothing in that long lean body worked right any more. I could almost hear his joints crunching like charcoal as they grated bone on bone.
Actually, no, scrub that ‘almost.’ My Aspect came back, I felt it, like an apologetic dog cringing against me; I could move just enough to shrug it on, more from instinct than decision. Then I really could hear the fog-feller’s bones shattering inside him as he crept forward, as he kept on creeping forward, the poor fool.
Jordan could just have stood and watched, he didn’t have to go to meet the guy.
He didn’t have to seize one helpless arm and wrench it from its socket like an old limb dead on a tree, toss it aside like refuse.
He didn’t have to ignore the fog-feller’s whistle of agony and reach to do the same thing to the other arm, and...
I didn’t have to watch. I didn’t want to; he reminded me too much of me when I was playing Desi in his sight, just to make it so absolutely clear to us both that she was not Fay. Hunting vampires and slaying dryads and naiads and whatever else came our way, building myself up as the ruthless efficient killer without a qualm.
I like qualm. It was one of the things that drew me to Jordan so much against my better judgement, that he had qualms galore. My Aspect helps me to hide them or override them, but actually so do I.
I looked aside then for reassurance, for a glimpse of Thom, the best living evidence that I really wasn’t a cold assassin. He still didn’t look good – fog-sodden fire is never going to thrive, if it can keep itself alive at all – but he was doing better, at least. Holding himself together, not flickering now from one state of being to the other. Drawing strength, I suspected, from the same Hellish qualities that had destroyed the fog-feller, that ancient dryness and the inherent heat.
As I watched, he drew himself slowly up to sit hugging his knees, with his head hanging down between them.
Well, hell. If he could manage that much...
I pushed myself to my feet, or let my Aspect pull me; that was more how it felt, at least. Actually I thought the thing was feeling guilty, over-eager to help now that there was nothing much to do.
Nothing except this one astonishingly hard thing, to stand and walk over rocky ground towards two boys. One of whom Fay had loved, deeply and simply and disastrously; both of whom Desi had slept with; one of whom... Well. It was complicated.
My Aspect kept me vertical, at least, it was that much use to me. I felt rocky on my own account, amazingly shaky in my legs. Chilled and numb still from the fog-feller’s touch, but it was more than that. In Hell, but it was more than that. Unsure of everything suddenly, from the Aspect that was holding me up to the alien ground beneath my feet to my own place and purpose in the world, but it was more than that.
Walking towards the two people I had spent so much time running away from, and with good reason. Yes, that would pretty much cover it.
I wasn’t worried about Jacey any more, but Jordan – well.
I walked among the ruins of the fog-feller, strewn limbs still leaking smoke. His head lay some distance off, blessedly not facing in my direction, and I didn’t think I could even recognise the boy who had done that, even though I supposed – I had to suppose – that he’d done it for me.
Maybe he’d done it for Jacey, to build a friendship, to have an adventure together. Something exciting but not too risky, a first tentative step back into the Overworld, a way to say
Hey, look: prince of Hell, here I am, and see what I can do...
And, incidentally,
Hello, Desi. Here I am.
Maybe I’d like to believe that. Some of it, all of it. Something.
As it was – well. Hard, just to walk towards him. Harder when I had to keep looking down, not to step into the detritus of his victory, not to feel bones crunching underfoot inside their leathery skin. I’d far sooner have kept my eyes on him, just to prove that I could.
Prove it to myself, mostly. I didn’t suppose that he’d care.
Damn, I did hate being rescued.
I thought about that, those last few steps – and then I said it aloud.
“Damn,” I said, “I do hate being rescued. But thank you.”
Keep it light, keep it easy. Be graceful, and ironically sincere. I could do that.
Stand eye to eye with Jordan, I could do that too. The scar on his throat was livid in that red light, trying to drag my eyes down, but I resisted.
I resisted some. Might have glanced at it, down and back, just the once. Damn.
I turned to Jacey, to give him equal time, not to let him feel cut out or Jordan special: “Thanks from both of us. Thom may not be up to saying it for himself, not for a while yet, but I think he’ll be okay. Which he wouldn’t, neither of us would, if you hadn’t turned up just then. How did you...?”
He smiled, in that tired tight way that boys do when they’re really secretly pleased with themselves and are trying to be cool about it, trying not to whoop and high-five and bounce about like kids, but it’s a real struggle with all that adrenalin still piping around their system and the endorphins mixed into the cocktail and the heady smell of petrol in the air and a girl to impress and, and, and.
He said, “Oh, we were zooming in on the coordinates you gave me, only then we saw this patch of fog moving cross-country and there was no way that was natural, and it was coming from where you must have been, so we took a detour to check it out.”
“Well,” I said, “I’m really glad you did; but how...?”
Tired-and-exhilarated must be a good state for telepathy; my voice trailed out into hand-waving and bewilderment, but again he understood, and answered the question I couldn’t finish. “I just called Jordan, straight off. I knew he had his new bike” – well, of course he did: prodigal son freshly reunited with his parents after so long lost, they’d be slaying fatted calves left and right – “and I figured he’d want to play.” Meaning
race to the rescue
, but yes. Never mind how complicated his motives, of course he’d do this. And most likely he didn’t still want to kill me, I thought Jacey had probably been quite careful to check on that. I could relax, then. Though it wasn’t noticeably happening. “Turns out,” Jacey went on, “you can cover a lot of ground very quickly, on a bike that does a ton without thinking about it. When there are two of you to spell each other, and you don’t much care what the rules say.”
Two golden boys, of course they didn’t. They wouldn’t have been in touching distance of the speed limit, all the way up from London; if motorway traffic got bad, no doubt they’d raced up the hard shoulder. If any police had spotted them, well. One quick check on the bike’s registration, and that would be enough.
Let them go, don’t get involved, don’t risk it.