Clutching the bottom sheet in one clenched fist, I swung my legs off of the bed. For one terrifying moment, my tiny feet found nothing, and I worried my plan was all for naught – that too much of the floor had torn away, and the flashlight had long since been swallowed by the abyss. But then my toes touched something solid, and my confidence returned.
I said a prayer and let go of the bed. The insane yawing cast me to my hands and knees. Around me, the voices of the creature's victims redoubled their efforts, shouting screaming begging threatening pleading until my only thought was
make it stop make it stop make it stop.
But it didn't stop. It wouldn't stop, unless I made it stop.
Fingers splayed, I dragged my palms across the floor, groping wildly left and right in a desperate attempt to find the flashlight. All around me, the darkness was alive with the voices of the damned, and the creature's wretched slithering.
My right hand bumped hard round plastic. My left ankle was ensnared by something cold and wet – tongue or tentacle I wasn't sure – and I yelped, my fear redoubling. My fingers closed around the flashlight as whatever grasped my ankle yanked me backward, an obscene mockery of my father's playful act.
I rolled onto my back, wielding the flashlight before me like an unignited lightsaber. Then the floor under me ended, and I was falling.
No – not falling. Swinging at the end of this appendage. Dangling over the gaping maw of this blasphemous creature – this beast that would consume me, that would make me part of it forever.
I thumbed the flashlight's switch.
The darkness shattered.
It was as though I'd switched on a bank of floodlights – as though I'd turned on the sun.
For a moment, I saw a tangle of mottled gray flesh, a gaping rust-colored beak – a wet, pulsing black gullet. Then the creature shrieked – my whole world shaking – and, in a wisp of oily gray-green vapor that put me in mind of rot, of sickness, of death, it simply ceased to be.
Just like that, all was silent.
Silent, but not still.
When the creature vanished, I was released from its grasp, and felt a sudden strange sensation – like falling, only upward. Despite myself, I dropped the flashlight, so disoriented was I by what was happening. It fell not upward with me, but down, and I soon left its blinding glow behind. But I did not fall in darkness. Phantom images swirled around me, a zoetrope of paths taken and not taken, of experiences long forgotten and lives never lived. For a time, the little girl and I were one, our experiences intertwined – every possible iteration of both our lives projected all around us as though in mockery of the path toward damnation we both chose. But slowly, that little girl and her experiences bled away, and with her, her sense of hope, of faith, of happiness.
Above me, something glimmered, like the surface of the ocean seen from below. Consciousness, I thought. I rose toward it without control, without volition, at once aching for the reality I'd abandoned, and for the fantasy from which I'd been so violently torn. All around me swam the demons of my past, the horrors of my present, the false promise of fu tures never realized. They reflected off the shimmering membrane above, funhouse images that seemed to mock the man I'd become.
Right before I broke the surface, I heard someone call my name, in a voice as beautiful as love, as sad as heartbreak. That one "
Sam
?" carried with it years of bitterness and sorrow, now long behind. That one "
Sam
?" somehow suggested eventual acceptance of who I was and what I'd done that fell somewhere short of forgiveness, and yet still seemed a kindness of which I was not worthy. That one "
Sam
?" conveyed an eternity of peace and happiness forever marred by my absence – an absence for which I, now made aware of it, would never forgive myself.
When I heard that solitary "
Sam
?" I wept like a child.
For the voice that spoke it was Elizabeth's.
27.
"Sam?"
I couldn't breathe.
My lungs burned in my chest. My limbs prickled from lack of oxygen. Blind panic gripped me, and I thrashed about like a man drowning.
"Sam!"
I heard her call my name. My Elizabeth, I thought for a moment, but it wasn't – not this time. Was it Ana? I wondered, feeling a pang of guilt at the notion – or rather, at the thrill that coursed unbidden through me, so soon after being in the presence of my life's true love. But it wasn't Ana, either. The voice was unaccented.
I opened my eyes, a monumental force of will, but everything was blurry and blue-black. I suppose that should have worried me, but it seemed secondary to the fact I couldn't breathe.
"For fuck's sake, Sam, would you hold still?"
A hand on my chest. Small. Dainty. Strong as a goddamn ox. It pinned me to the ground with such force, my panicked thrashing all but ceased. Then another hand cupped my jaw and, with forefinger and thumb, squeezed, forcing open my mouth. Only then did I realize why it was I couldn't breathe.
Two fingers in my mouth. Instinctively, I fought, but the fingers' owner paid me no mind. Instead, she carefully tweezed out the dry, scratchy bolus that blocked my airway, and tossed it to the dirt beside me.
I gulped air into my lungs, and the world around me steadied. My vision cleared, and I realized I'd seen vague blue-black because vague blue-black was all there was to see. I was lying in a small clearing on the canyon floor, the first faint tinge of morning light just bright enough to blot out the stars above, but not enough to allow me to make out the details of my surroundings.
I rolled over to one side, a dry cough rasping against the tender flesh of my throat. It felt like it'd been stuffed full of twigs. I poked at the ball that lay beside me, and realized I wasn't far off – it appeared to be made of feathers, bone, and sinew, bound together with coarse twine.
Then I realized the arm I was propped up on was the one I'd dislocated – and yet it held my weight. I sat up – my kidneys not protesting, despite the beating they'd just taken – and rolled my shoulder joint a couple times to test it. It felt fine.
"Feeling better, Collector?"
Lilith. I should have known. Who else could have found me way the hell out here?
I spat, or tried. My mouth was dry as dust, and tasted like death. Believe me, I wish that were a colorful exaggeration, but it isn't – and sadly, on this count, I'm in a position to know.
"Actually, yeah," I said. "Though I could do with a mint. How long was I out?"
"A day, I'd say, give or take a couple hours."
The news hit me like a fucking mallet. An entire day gone. Which meant I only had one left.
Lilith caught my wide-eyed panic, mistook it for anger. "Don't look at me like that – had I not come along to rescue your sorry undead ass, it would have been a week. Quite a mess you've landed yourself in. Two dozen of the Fallen slaughtered at the hands of their Chosen kin – the first overt offensive since the Great War. And the rumor in the Depths is you're to blame."
"How's that, exactly?"
"They say you led the Chosen here, though there's some debate as to whether that was by incompetence or by design."
"It wasn't me."
She looked dubious. "You were the only one Dumas's seers detected; no one else was sensed entering the canyon. It's possible they followed you without your knowledge–"
"It
wasn't
me," I repeated.
"Fine," she said, showing me her palms. "It wasn't you. Then who?"
"Whoever doped me up and left me here to rot," I said. "Danny, I'm guessing."
"But why? Why would he do such a thing? What would he stand to gain by inciting a new war between heaven and hell?"
"He doesn't give a shit about the war. What he needed was a distraction so he could steal Dumas's skim blade."
"To what end?"
"Believe me," I told her, "you don't want to know."
My body was wracked by a sudden coughing fit. I doubled over, hacking till I damn near puked. When I was done, the ground in front of me was littered with mottled gray feathers.
"Here," she said, passing me a leather canteen. "Drink this."
I did. It was filled with coarse red wine, which burned my savaged throat as it went down, and filled my belly with warmth. I shivered at the sudden shock of it, only then realizing how chill the night air around me was.
"Are you cold?" Lilith asked. I nodded, wine dribbling down my chin as I drank. "I believe I can remedy that." She snapped her fingers, and from her thumb and forefinger sprung a single dancing flame. She touched it to a rough-hewn, makeshift structure of scrub brush and gnarled wood beside me, about the size of a small coffee table – a structure that looked suspiciously like an altar – and, with a dry crackle, it caught fire, casting an ever-shifting circle of orange light across the canyon floor. For a moment I was blinded, and sat huddled by its warmth, seeing little of the world around me. Then, as my eyes adjusted, I realized there were shapes all round us in the darkness, lying immobile in a perfect circle at the edge of the firelight's glare.
I peered at them, struggling to see. A coiled snake. A bird of prey. A jackrabbit lying on its side, one ear jutting skyward. Possums, prairie dogs, armadillos, assorted sundry lizards – all gathered around us like they'd come to watch, to see what disturbed the quiet of this desert night.
But they hadn't come to watch, and they didn't see a thing.
They were all still. All silent. All dead.
Lilith caught me eyeing them and smiled, though her smile was tinged with sadness. "Sadly, all magic requires sacrifice," she said. "These creatures gave their lives to bring you back. Willingly, I might add. I simply bade them come and come they did, so eager were they to assist me in my task. You should be honored."
"Right," I said. "I'm sure they came on account of I'm such a great guy, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact the woman calling them is the embodiment of seduction itself."
"You flatter me, Collector," she said, in a husky tone that sent a shiver of longing down my spine.
"Just a statement of fact. And I see we're back to 'Collector' now."
"Excuse me?"
"As I was coming to, you called me Sam."
She laughed, then. Good Lord, did Lilith have a laugh. "I wouldn't get used to it, were I you. I was merely trying to guide you safely back to the land of the living – or, at least, what passes for it in your hobbled, damned existence. Said journey is not without its peril."
"Yeah, I gathered that right around the time I almost got noshed on by some angry calamari. I'm guessing that wasn't just some harmless nightmare."
"Nightmare, yes. Harmless, no."
"Had you been calling me long?" I asked, perhaps too casually.
Lilith cocked her head quizzically. "I suppose." My face must have dropped at that, because she followed it up with a somewhat put-out, "Why – should I
not
have brought you back?"
"No – it's not that. It's just… as I surfaced… I thought you were someone else, is all. My Elizabeth."
"
Your
Elizabeth? My word, Collector – don't tell me after all these years you still cling to the pathetic delusion of the living that is
love.
You've been around long enough to learn that love is nothing more than chemical attraction – meat attracting meat for the purpose of making more meat. Don't get me wrong – with human life as short and pointless as it is, one can hardly blame them for fooling themselves into thinking there's something more to it. But you of all people should realize there's not – and that thinking otherwise leads to naught but damnation and regret."
"You're wrong. Love isn't some kind of chemical accident – it's an expression of faith. Faith that somehow, despite the odds, there's something more to life than living in fear and dying alone."
"Ah, yes – 'God is love' and all that rot. Tell me, have you ever really stopped to think about what that means? Love is cruel. Love is vicious. Love inspires people to kill, to maim, to torture. Love ruins lives, fells cities, destroys civilizations. If you ask me, love's not all it's cracked up to be. But then, you shouldn't
have
to ask me – you should only have to reflect on where love has gotten
you
."
"I have no regrets," I said.
"Then you're a fool."
We sat in silence for a while, me rubbing my limbs to restore circulation after God knows how long lying exposed to the cold night air, and Lilith dressing and roasting one of the carcasses that encircled our little camp. I didn't realize how hungry I was until the meat spit fat into the fire, and filled the night with its scent. I was so hungry, in fact, I didn't dare ask what kind of meat it was, for fear it'd put me off my appetite.
Whatever it was, it was delicious, or I was hungry enough I couldn't tell the difference. My throat hurt like hell with every swallow, though, thanks to the ball of feathers, bones, and flesh Lilith'd lodged in it while I was out.
I nudged the ball with my foot. Lilith watched me, but said nothing.
"The fuck
is
this, anyways?"
"Buzzard, mostly. Consider it a calling card of sorts. A focal object for the spell that brought you back from the depths of your skim-induced slumber. A spell that, you'll note, has the pleasant side-effect of healing body as well as mind. You're welcome, by the way."
I tried to muster up a thanks. It wouldn't come. "A calling card?" I asked. "A calling card for whom?"
Lilith frowned, as if considering not telling me. Then she sighed, her decision made, and the frown lifted. "I suppose, Collector, we've come far enough together you've a right to know, regardless of what my superiors may think on the matter. Two days ago, you asked me to call your Deliverants off, and I told you I could not – that they fell outside of hell's dominion. Deliverants are creatures of the In-Between: the border that separates heaven and hell, life and death, being and not-being. The In-Between is both vast and membrane-thin, an infinity of nothingness contained in such a perfect join between worlds one can scarcely see the seam. The denizens of heaven and hell both are forbidden passage through the InBetween, and yet humankind must venture through it when they leave their world of rot and impermanence for the next – whichever
next
that proves to be. Which is why both sides are forced to employ your kind – and the filthy carrion creatures that assist you – to facilitate the journey. For you see, Deliverants are not the
only
inhabitants of the In-Between."