The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL) (21 page)

And he was right. She’d shown up at Sea Verge like a momma bear protecting her cub, ready to fight, maim, or kill anyone who tried to hurt her daughter.

“Let’s kill it,” Kali said, stepping away from the headless corpse at her feet and crouching down beside Starr.

“No!” Clio said, physically putting herself between the Hindu Goddess and the unconscious Siren. “We need to find out what she knows first.”

Kali wasn’t impressed by Clio’s argument.

“What can she know, baby Death?” Kali said as she stood up, the front of her sari a blood-stained mess. “Very little about the fate of your sister. I can promise you this.”

“I don’t care,” Clio said—and she looked ready to throw down with Kali in order to get her way. “I want to hear what she has to say, then you can do whatever you want with her.”

Kali mulled over Clio’s offer, head cocked as she weighed the myriad of possibilities this presented.

“Deal.”

She offered her hand to Clio and they shook on it.

“I think we’d better get moving,” Jarvis said, looking nervously around the yard. “By wormholing here with an uninvited guest, Freezay destroyed the spell protecting the house. It’s how the Vargr were able to gain entrance to Sea Verge and I assume they won’t hesitate to press their advantage again—and soon.”

“Speak of the Devil,” Daniel said, as the plaintive baying of a male Vargr raised the hair on the back of his neck.

He turned to the others, his face grim.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

*   *   *

there was a
welcome committee waiting for Bernadette at the end of the tram’s loop. The twins had called in reinforcements, though none of the four Victorian-garbed young men they’d brought with them seemed very happy about having to chase a dead woman around an amusement park parking lot.

Bernadette didn’t blame them. If she could go back in time and change the outcome of the afternoon’s roller-coaster ride, by God she would. She didn’t want these crazy monsters chasing her any more than the monsters wanted to be chasing her. She used the word “monster” because in her mind, only monsters would steal another person’s soul—and she was pretty sure that’s what these odd people were trying to do.

“Before I even think about letting you take me, I want to know why,” Bernadette said, climbing out of the now-stationary tramcar.

She wished the tram driver would notice her, but like all the other living people she’d encountered since she’d died he seemed oblivious to the confrontation happening three cars behind him.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, the driver hopped out of his seat and jumped onto the asphalt, walking back toward her car as he untucked the tail of his white shirt from the waist of his pants. He stepped onto the running board of Bernadette’s tramcar and began to futz with one of the burned-out light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Though he was inches from her, he might as well have been a million miles away, and Bernadette wondered how often, as a living person, she’d been surrounded by ghostly figures without knowing it?

She’d never spent much time thinking about the mechanics of what happened to a soul after it died, other than the going to Heaven or Hell part. She’d just assumed you closed your eyes and died then when you opened your eyes again you were standing in front of St. Peter—or, if you weren’t so lucky, you opened your eyes to find yourself being prodded in the rear by the business end of a pitchfork.

These were her preconceived ideas on the subject, but they did nothing to prepare her for what she’d encountered during
the course of her death. All the hours spent in church, listening to the minister preach about charity, turning the other cheek, and believing in Jesus Christ above all else, had absolutely no bearing on the reality of what happened to your soul when you died.

The tram operator finished playing with the light bulb and returned to his seat. He started the engine with the twist of a shiny silver key and the tram gave a sharp jerk, shooting forward. Bernadette watched it zoom back toward the theme park entrance, leaving her in the lonely darkness of an empty parking lot.

While the driver had futzed with the light bulb, the twins had been conferring, their heads bent so close together their cheeks touched. Now that the tram driver was gone, they were taking their sweet time in responding to Bernadette and this made her edgy. When she finally got sick of waiting for an answer, she said:

“What if I won’t go with you? What if I fight you or go on the run?”

This got their attention.

“For our needs, you must come willingly,” the twins said in unison, their voices melding into one, only upping the creepiness factor and making Bernadette even more wary of their intentions.

“Well, how about I just keep running until you get tired of chasing,” Bernadette said.

The twins laughed, their voices a cohesive cackle. That’s when it dawned on Bernadette they had no intention of letting her go. They were just going to play with her until she gave in to them.

“We won’t stop with you. If you give us trouble, we will take your daughter, your grandson…We will steal the souls of all the people you love,” the twins said in their eerie, singular voice.

She knew they were using her grandson to manipulate her, but she couldn’t take the chance that what they were saying was true. There was no way she would do anything to jeopardize Bart’s life. Not now, not ever.

“If I go with you, you’ll leave Bart alone?” she said, her voice tremulous.

The twins nodded.

“You have our word.”

Resigned to her fate, she dropped her head and sighed.

“I’ll come with you.”

The twins shared a knowing smile. It was always easier when they crushed their prey’s spirit.

*   *   *

there were too
many of them to take one car, so they’d had to split up. Jennice and Noh had climbed into the backseat of Clio’s Honda, while Jarvis took the front passenger spot and Clio manned the steering wheel.

As Clio watched Freezay and Caoimhe loading the Siren into the back of Daniel’s car, she had the instinctive urge to change the lineup. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Daniel and Freezay—actually, she didn’t know who to trust anymore, but this wasn’t why she had the desire to switch passengers. It was all very simple: She wanted to be the one to deal with the Siren when it regained consciousness.

“We should go now,” Noh said, turning in her seat so she could stare out the back window at the pack of Vargr loping across the grass toward them.

Clio threw the gearshift into drive, slamming the accelerator pedal to the floor with her foot, and forcing the car forward. In the rearview mirror, she could see the Vargr racing to reach the cars before they made it onto the main road. By wormholing them into the backyard, their master had put them at a clear disadvantage and now they were trying to make up the difference. Luckily, this gave Clio and the others just enough of a head start to get away—and little did the hapless Vargr know that Kali, the bloodthirsty Goddess of Death and Destruction, was lying in wait for them just past the front entrance to Sea Verge.

Clio wasn’t surprised when Kali volunteered to stay behind and take care of the newly arrived Vargr. Anyone could see she took great pleasure in killing the beasts, ripping off their heads, and feeding on their entrails.

It was decided that once she’d taken care of the remaining Vargr she’d wormhole out of Sea Verge and hopefully draw whoever was monitoring the wormhole network, letting the
bad guys chase her until the rest of them could get to a safe place.

The new Vargr had descended upon them so quickly they really hadn’t been able to strategize. Their cobbled-together plan consisted of going to a pre-arranged meeting point so they could regroup and question Starr.

It wasn’t an amazing plan, but it would do in a pinch.

The meeting point was a long drive ahead of them, at a place Jarvis thought would be safe, but even this wasn’t a guarantee. If Sea Verge could be breached, then nowhere was truly safe.

Clio hit the main road going seventy, the wheels screeching as she made a hard right turn onto the asphalt. In the rearview mirror, she saw Daniel’s car easily keeping pace with her own and she was happy to notice he had a lead foot, too.

“I think we got away,” Noh said, catching Clio’s eye in the mirror.

Noh was right. Except for Daniel’s car, the road was empty. No sign of pursuing Vargr, irate Hindu Goddesses, or missing-in-action sisters. Clio hoped this meant the enemy had encountered “the force of nature” known as Kali and were already being turned into lifeless meat puppets.

In death, a Vargr returned to its human body—unless its head was removed from its body and then it stayed in animal form. Kali had wanted to make a point to the Vargr’s master, which was why she’d been ripping Vargr heads off left and right. She wanted Uriah Drood to know she meant business—and if the human police discovered these aberrations, these supernatural monsters that had no place in the human world, well, she didn’t really care.

Still, the thought of the human police finding, and then freaking out over, all the half-human, half-Vargr bodies strewn across Sea Verge’s front lawn worried Clio. The need for secrecy had been ingrained in her since she was a small child. Letting the human world know what you were, and the powers you possessed, was the ultimate of sins.

“How far away is it?” Clio asked Jarvis.

She only had a quarter of a tank of gas, which meant she was going to have to stop to fill up again soon.

“It’s not terribly far—” Jarvis started to say, but the words
were ripped from his mouth as the car suddenly shot forward, rocked by a massive explosion that came from behind them.

The velocity of the shockwave made the car start to fishtail as dirt and debris from the explosion filled the air. Clio spun the steering wheel hard, using all her upper body strength to keep the car on the road. She slammed her foot on the brakes, the car coming to a jerky stop, but still facing the right direction.

“What the hell just happened?!” Clio yelled, her whole body shaking with adrenaline as she turned around in her seat.

“Guys?”

Noh and Jennice were both staring out the back window. Clio followed their gazes and her mouth fell open…where Daniel’s car should’ve been was only a fiery, smoking crater. The shock was so great for a moment no one said a word, and then out of the silence, she heard Noh say:

“I think Daniel’s car just exploded.”

I used Jarvis’s computer to send Daniel a song. I knew it was cheesy, but I wanted him to know I was thinking about him. Even if everything worked out badly and I ceased to exist, I wanted him to know his face would be the last thing I remembered as I disappeared.

It’s funny what imminent destruction will do to a person. It clears out all the cobwebs in your mind, lets you see things the way they
really
are for once in your life. No more bullshit. No more false perceptions colored by our own egos: just the truth in high definition.

I didn’t just love Daniel. I was
in
love with him—which was a very different thing. I’d been fighting off this need to love another person my whole life, something I think stemmed from my not-so-healthy fear of loss. I’d lost my best friends in a car crash when I was a teenager, and now I’d lost my dad, my mom, my crazy-ass homicidal sister…Jarvis and Runt had been in harm’s way more times than I cared to think about—and the list just went on and on.

I’d met Daniel in the middle of all the insanity and I’d fought my feelings for him with all my energy, pushing him away and emotionally beating him up every chance I got. I
guess unconsciously I was just trying to prove he would go away, too, if given half the chance.

I’d made our relationship about sex because sex, to me, was safe. It was just a physical battle of the bodies. Two people intermeshed for a few minutes and then a release…and then disconnect.

No feelings, just fucking.

I was a big, fat coward. I was scared of love. I was scared of Daniel…and I was scared of taking responsibility for my actions.

To that effect, I’d hidden behind my own immortality, so I didn’t have to deal with what frightened me. You can only be laissez-faire about something that’s “a given” in your life. I could rail against living forever because it was a luxury I didn’t have to think about. I’d wanted to be a normal girl because I knew I was never going to be one.

I’d been living in Oblivious Land for a long time, in denial about so many important things in my life. All I wanted now was a one-way ticket out of there—and it seemed like dying might just be that ticket.

So I sent Daniel a silly little Dolly Parton song to tell him all of this. I wasn’t sure if he would understand, or if that even mattered. It was enough to know how I felt and to own those feelings for the first time ever in my life.

“Time to go,” Marcel said. He was crouched down beside me in the bushes, his face inches from mine.

The situation was not funny. Not even slightly funny, but I felt a hysterical laugh burbling up from my belly. I was able to contain it, so long as I didn’t look at the object of my inappropriate hilarity, which was the black shoe polish Marcel had spread across his cheekbones and nose. He’d tried to get me to do the same, saying something about how we were on a Black Ops mission and camouflage was essential, but I politely declined the proffered face blacking.

Though she was as much a part of this “mission” as I was, Marcel hadn’t offered Runt any of his shoe polish camouflage. I guess he thought her fur was dark enough already.

Runt had spent the past hour nestled against me, her head hidden inside the crook of my arm. I wasn’t surprised to discover
that her physical wounds were almost healed, but there was still no sign of her voice…and from what Jarvis had said, there probably never would be. I wanted to cry when I thought about her beautiful voice, lost forever, but I held my emotions in check. If I lost it, I would only be making it harder for her. So, I needed to stay strong for both of us.