Chapter 19

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

I didn't get to finish my train of thought until the next morning.

According to Zane, I blurted critical information after snapping awake from a dead sleep, then proceeded to crash again like someone had yanked my batteries out. The dumbfounded Thrall had to wait in eager anticipation of whatever the hell I'd been talking about until I roused from a deep slumber. He'd had to mill around doing laundry all night wondering what the hell I had been talking about, which all things considered, was pretty funny.

"Why do you think she's dead?" Zane prodded as I filled my coffee cup, the warm vapor of roasted beans guiding me from a groggy haze.

"'Cause I saw it." I had to set my coffee down to rub at my eyes, then shuffled along to the secondhand table placed near the kitchenette. Three of the four chairs around the stained countertop matched, the replacement being a wicker back armchair with peeling armrests. Sias sat in it like he was the natural king of the round table, ankle crossed over his knee with the easy posture of born royalty. Malphie had his head resting on one of the frayed armrests, panting happily as Sias stroked the bone ridge at the top of his skull.

At his side was the court jester, working on his morning crosswords despite our clearly annoying banter. Funus was peering over the puzzle with the concentration of a person pretending to not be eavesdropping, but his glowing eyes swiveled in our direction more than once. He didn't want to raise the ire of the jester, who sighed loudly as I bumped the table with my knee.

"What did you see, hunter?" Zane pressed, taking the last available chair.

"It's hard to remember now," I said after swallowing down more coffee. "But I know for sure I saw the inside of the Silent Steps tomb where we found the council. I recognized the tall catacombs with the necromancer skeletons right before I saw an arc of blood."

"You dreamed this?" Sias asked, and I shook my head.

"No, it was during the uh…" I paused, glancing at our table mates who were trying to ignore us. "The very end of last night. When I drank Zane's blood."

"You saw this in the void?" Zane's question finally forced Funus to drop his facade. I nodded my answer and the skull's eyes flared in amazement.

"Tell me what you saw, acolyte," Funus insisted, giving Barnaby a sweet "thank you" as he was rotated to face me properly. "Tell me each step from beginning to end."

"Okay, well, it started with these two placing a bet—" I started and dodged Barnaby's pencil as it whipped past my head.

"Not that part, you dolt. Start with you going into the void." Barnaby brought out a replacement pencil, which was evidence he had planned on using at least one of them as a projectile this morning. The man had literally woken up choosing violence today.

Malphie, eager to help as well as play a part in the circus, was able to achieve the first step in the fetch process. The pencil was tragically destroyed by his big teeth, shattered into bits before it could be dropped at Barn's feet.

"I'm just following orders," I pointed out, nodding to the skull, and got ready to see how many backup pencils Barnaby had stashed away.

"We can start with entering the void," Funus gently clarified. "You drank Zane's blood, yes?"

"Just a little bit to uh…you know. Keep me from being too sore today. My body had been through some heavy cardio, if you get my drift, and my ass needed some— HA!" I ducked the second attempt at lead assassination but was smacked in the back of the head by my bodyguard. The void hound repeated his pencil destruction with butt-wiggling enthusiasm. Sias laughed at me, which prompted Malphie to believe he was, in fact, doing a great job fetching.

Zane said his catch phrase, and I decided to focus.

"When I slipped into the void," I said, appeasing all the grumpy jerks at the table. "I was able to see more than usual. Normally, when I drink Zane's blood, I get lost. It's like falling through fog with no real direction. This time I had a safety net; Sias's threads kept me from dipping down too far. It was like watching the void out of an airplane window and seeing it from above the clouds."

"Above the clouds, you say," Funus marveled. "What did you see at that vantage point? How was it different?"

"It was beautiful," I admitted, unabashedly. "It's not endless nothingness, not really. There are pathways trailing all through it, connecting the plains together like veins. It has a rhythm of chaos and madness that can only exist between life and death." I shut my eyes to remember the vision, submerging myself in darkness to relive it more clearly. "I followed one of those pathways to Florence…and, I think I saw the moment she died. The blood arcing out came from her throat. And—shit."

"What?" Funus asked quickly. "What did you see?"

It made me wince to say, "Grunts. Lots of them. She was surrounded by vampires the moment she died."

"How many?" Zane pressed. "Manageable?"

"No." I rubbed at my eyes before I opened them, the exhaustion of hopelessness renewing an old headache. "Fuck no. We're never that lucky. It was a lot, Zane, if I'm remembering right. More than what I'm comfortable tackling with just the three of us."

"Four," Austin said as he meandered into the room, wearing just his jeans and Saint's Army dog tags. "If we're talking about killing vampires, I'm in."

"We're talking about Florence and her army of vampires bunkering down in the Silent Steps," I corrected. "Enough that we'd need a full team to crack through. These aren't just the wild, brain-dead grunts we're used to. These are controlled and have working bio magic."

"Fuck." Austin poured himself some coffee and leaned against the counter. "These are the tech ones DHAP was talking about?"

"Yeah. The scythe is with her, and she's in a fortress with a shit ton of walking death machines capable of overpowering us. They have death enhanced bio-magic. Even if we're able to gear up with some powerful magic blockers, which we do not have the money for, we're still outnumbered."

"I have a blocker and my tags." Austin touched his dog tags out of reflex. "I'm covered. You can't be turned, nor can the vampire. I'm assuming you're clear too." He looked to Sias, who lifted his coffee mug in an agreement. "That's one thing going for us."

"I'll need a blocker as well," Barnaby chimed in, and Funus's eyes grew pale.

"I dunno why you look scared, he almost killed me twice today," I told the skull, who didn't think I was funny at all. "Barns, you're not going to the murder tomb with us."

"If Funus is going, so am I." Barnaby crossed his arms and stared at his puzzle, now out of writing weaponry. "I will not argue this morning."

"Wow, in a mood today." I looked back to my brother. "How much equipment do you have?"

Austin looked a little guilty as he answered, "Enough for myself. I left in a hurry."

"That works," I told him. "One less body we need to arm and protect."

"I'm guessing you don't have a lot of favors you can call in for weapons, magic, charms, wards and gear, do you?" Austin sipped his coffee as I worked on massaging my headache into submission.

"Maybe after another cup of coffee I can work out a plan to break into Marthas's gun safe and leave an IOU. He usually has some good shit in there."

"Maybe don't do that," Austin pitched casually as Marthas showed up, looking very much like he heard me from the hallway. The gruff beard that had been growing on his cheeks had been shaved away, the bags under his eyes looked less bruised and exhausted than the previous night. With his hair combed and a change of clothes, Marthas was starting to resemble the ruthless leader of the Broken Horns, not a wraith haunting an abandoned club.

"I changed the lock from last time, Wilde, and put a thief ward in place that'll set you on fire from the inside out if you touch it. So please, take a crack at it. I'd love to start my day with a smile."

"You're welcome for helping you up your security." I shrugged when Zane cut me a look. "What? If I can get into it, it needs some guard rails. A safe that big shouldn't crack open with explosives."

"I take it you're trying to craft some idiotic plan to get to Florence if you're trying to break into my safe," Marthas said as he drifted over to the kitchen, starting another pot of coffee. As he grabbed the can of grounds from the cabinet, he passed Austin a shirt he had been carrying.

"Florence is at an old necromancy crypt called the Silent Steps with a horde of magic tech enhanced vampires," I explained. "So, breaking into your gun safe was a start, but it's not going to be enough to bring us home. We're going to need not only some serious firepower, but also protection, magic and a shit ton of luck."

"Why not just tell DHAP where she is and let them manage it?" Marthas shrugged one big shoulder. "They have all the things you're lacking."

"We can't let the scythe get into their hands," Austin said, tugging on the shirt that Marthas had passed to him. "I'm not convinced they'll destroy it if they know its potential."

"He's right," I agreed. "We can't take the chance that someone will get greedy and hold on to it. We need to make sure it's destroyed, not locked up, not studied, not stuck in a museum— destroyed . It's too dangerous and…whose shirt is that?"

Austin looked down at his shirt and scrunched his face in confusion.

"It's my shirt."

I narrowed my eyes at him, slicing my gaze into Marthas.

"Why did he have it?"

Austin rubbed at his face and exhaled through his nose as Marthas answered coolly, "He left it in my room last night."

Barnaby yelled at me as I shot up from the table, knocking over his coffee and getting Funus's jaw wet. Zane saved his cup before it toppled and Sias lifted his eyebrows up like he was enjoying the show.

I was frozen in place, pointing at the pair of harlots with my one remaining hand.

"EW!"

"Damnit," Austin groaned.

"The hell you mean ‘ew'?" Marthas straightened a bit. "Your brother's a good-lookin' dude."

"The ‘ew' was for you!" I stormed toward Marthas, who regarded me like I was an annoying, foul-mouthed gnat. "You're ‘ew!' Austin, you can do so much better. I have so many hot friends."

"No, you don't," Marthas cut back in. "Because no one likes you."

"Ugh, my poor sensibilities," I complained through my urge to heave.

"Will you relax?" Austin groaned. "It's not that big of a deal. We had a good night. It was fun."

Marthas's grin made Austin's cheeks warm.

"Yeah, we did," the big imp added, in his best attempt at sounding seductive. "It was very fun."

He sounded like a drugged elephant trying to flirt, which apparently was Austin's cup of tea, because the man blushed like he was being wooed by Prince Charming.

This time I gagged and Austin punched me in the arm.

"You're not allowed to give me a single ounce of shit, Dallas," Austin snapped. "You and your entire entourage had an orgy on the roof last night. Glass houses, asshole."

"For it to be an orgy it has to have at least six people," Sias said, adding nothing to the conversation.

"Wasn't the roof," Zane mumbled into his coffee, also notedly unhelpful.

"So glad you two are here to help with this situation," I told them. "Love that we're a united front right now."

"Can we get back to planning how to tackle this Florence situation?" Austin offered. "And move on from this incredibly uncomfortable topic?"

"This incredibly uncomfortable topic is less fucked than the situation we're currently in," I admitted. "Unless we can summon an army or some amazing magic, I don't know how we can storm the crypt without getting murdered."

"We have another issue, acolyte," Funus swooped in with more bad news. "I believe Florence bringing the scythe back to the crypt, and her subsequent sacrifice therein, might be a prelude to something much more nefarious than we previously thought."

"Sorry, did you say sacrifice?" Austin's eyebrows tried to high-five his hairline. "She's dead?"

"Pretty sure she is, yeah." I slid my finger across my throat. "Had a vision last night. I won't get into the details because I don't think Barns has anymore pencils, but I saw Florence getting her throat slashed at the crypt."

"Who killed her?" Marthas asked.

"I dunno. I didn't see who was wielding the blade. Whoever it was has somehow gotten through her big, badass bodyguard too."

"One of your guys?" Marthas asked Austin. "You guys were chasing her too, right?"

"The blade can't be handled by the living," I said. "They have to be a necromancer or undead. Saint's Army wouldn't have been able to hold it, especially with as much life magic shit they have on them at any one time."

"Rival necromancer?" Marthas pitched. "You're not the only insane human out there playing with dead bodies, you know."

"I'm fully aware. It's my job to take those freaks out. As for a rival, I can't think of anyone who'd be able to go toe-to-toe with her and her goons. Do you?" I asked Austin, who shook his head. I turned my attention to Zane, getting the same answer.

"Everyone I knew who would be powerful enough is dead." Zane shifted the attention back to Funus. "What do you believe is happening at the crypt?"

Funus's skeletal face was grim, yellow orbs flaring around the edges as his voice grew deadly serious.

"The Silence Steps aren't just a resting place for the Goddess's chosen. At its very core, it is a doorway. This morning when you spoke of pathways, Dallas, you phrased it better than you could have known. Each time a soul enters the void, it leaves a small trail of energy in its wake as it transitions from living to dead. Most of those pathways seal permanently. Necromancers have the ability to rip deep trenches through the void to summon their Thralls, or dimple the fabric by holding a soul between life and death. The Goddess doesn't only make pathways and trenches, my dear boy, she can make doors."

My chest grew cold enough to freeze my throat for a second, but I was able to chip my words free one at a time.

"The crypt is a door. The scythe is a key." I held the worried skull's gaze as I asked, "Where does the door lead to?"

"To her," he confessed, sounding a little afraid. "Meant for her disciple, her chosen. I'm afraid in a horrible oversight only a Goddess could manage, she failed to realize that it could also be used by someone who wants to knock her off her throne."

"Please tell me that's fucking impossible," I pleaded, knowing in my gut it was pointless. "Please tell me a Goddess cannot be ousted by a mortal idiot."

"The blade of the scythe is made of her blood, Dallas. It was meant to grant power, but it is a weapon. It can be used against her, and can grant godhood to a mortal."

"What does that mean, exactly?" Sias asked what we were all thinking. "What happens if someone dethrones the Goddess of Death?"

"I don't know," Funus answered, fear crystal clear in his shaking voice. "The Goddess gave her scythe to us to bestow on her champion, to keep the doorway safe from any who would mean to disrupt the balance between life and death. To shepherd souls and guide her necromancy teachings."

"Why the fuck would she even bring that into the living realm if it can have such catastrophic consequences?!" I demanded, panic kickstarting my fury. "She has to know we're a bunch of angry apes trying to kill everything all the time! That's like handing a loaded gun to a pissed off gorilla with an agenda!"

"The Gods of our world play by rules we can't understand, acolyte," Funus preached quietly. "Trying to make sense of them would be like asking that very same ape to explain the weight of a living being's soul. It's simply beyond us."

"Well, that's just fucking great."

Barnaby raised his hand. "What did Florence getting sacrificed have to do with anything?"

"Good point, Barnaby," Funus said, brightening a bit by getting asked a studious question. "In order to knock upon her door, it requires a sacrifice and a display of necromantic power worthy of her attention. Whoever holds the scythe borrows a bit of her power, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the ability has been honed to knock properly. Our only hope is that whoever has this scythe isn't trained, or at the very least, is having a hard time wielding the scythe's potential."

"So, the only thing keeping us from falling into some sort of necromantic apocalypse is someone being terrible at magic?" I asked incredulously, and Funus hummed in agreement.

"That's my assumption, yes."

"Ancestor's ass," Marthas exhaled. "That's fucking bleak."

"Yeah," I agreed, trying to smooth the prickling sense of dread trailing down the back of my neck. "And I'm about to make it bleaker."

"What do you mean?" Barnaby asked, glancing at Zane as the vampire felt the rock of responsibility press down on my chest. My vampire met my gaze, a lifetime of sorrow and joy tumbled through his eyes as he tossed me a knowing, bittersweet smile. Sias's eyes were a heartbreaking shade of teal, a blend of sorrow and love that I was never going to name. Malphie whined beside him as his master placed a hand on his head.

"We can't do nothing," I explained. "We go, we hit them with everything we have, and we stop the door from opening."

"We've just established that you don't have the equipment to make this successful," Barnaby reminded me.

"Yeah, well. My thinking is that it might be a one-way trip."

"A suicide mission?" Barnaby balked. "Heaven and Hell, Dallas Wilde, you cannot seriously be pitching something that stupid."

"It's not stupid," Austin countered softly. "It's what we're supposed to do when the fate of everyone and everything is at stake."

"I'm with the fussy one on this, Wilde," Marthas added wearily. "Not that I'm not thrilled to hear you're going to get yourself killed, but for the sake of playing devil's advocate, we don't need to rush into martyrdom just yet."

"Unless something profoundly tide turning is hiding in that gun safe of yours, Marthas, I think we don't have a choice," I said. "Optimally, we will somehow make it out alive, but we need to make peace with the fact that we're probably not going to. We're going to have to go through a hellbent necromancer armed with both the Goddess's scythe and an army of tech vampires."

Marthas scrubbed a wide hand over his face, pulling his phone from his pocket to check a notification. The device was shoved back into his pocket, and he turned to leave the room, tossing over his shoulder on his way out, "Don't rush off to die before I get back."

Austin set his coffee cup aside and pushed off the counter. "I'll go grab my supplies and see what I can spare. If we leave right now, we can try and make it there by tomorrow morning if we don't stop."

"Funus, talk some sense into them!" Barns was growing more frantic as we all stood from the table. "This is stupid! There are other ways to handle this besides rushing to your graves."

"We don't have time," I told him as gently as I could, but I knew it was a tall ask for him to willingly let us leave. "We need to get there and stop the damn world from ending."

Barnaby knocked his chair back as he shot from his seat, stomping around to jab a finger into my chest, his inky eyes glassy.

"Now you listen to me, Dallas Wilde. You sit your butt down right now and come up with a better plan besides ‘wing it and die trying.' That is unacceptable, and frankly pretty stupid, even for you."

"It's actually pretty on brand," I argued, hoping my smile would coax one out of him. It just made his eyes well up more. "Barns, I gotta try. I can't let everything go to shit because of me."

"This isn't on you," he pleaded. "This isn't your fault."

"Yeah, it is. She got the scythe because of me. I kicked the hornet's nest, so I gotta be the one that gets stung."

Abandoning me as an unsound mind, Barnaby turned to his fellow incubus. "Surely you're not about to stroll into this idiotic plan, Sias. You have a knack for wrangling in Dallas when he's being insane, I'll help you tie him down."

"As much as I'd enjoy tying Dallas down, I'm afraid he's right, Barnaby. The plan isn't to rush to our deaths, I have an empire to reestablish and a fortune to reclaim, but I won't have anything to return to if this maniac kicks open the Goddess's throne room and causes mayhem." Sias gave me a bittersweet smile. "I have to make sure I'm there to protect him."

"Zane," Barnaby turned to him as the last bastion of reason. "Please tell me you're not on board with this. Tell Dallas he's an idiot, force him to think of something better!"

"I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to bring Dallas back in one piece," Zane promised quietly. "But there's no avoiding this responsibility. There's no one else who can stop them."

Barnaby blinked up at the ceiling and tried to take a steadying breath. "I can't believe I'm the only sane one here right now."

He flinched when I put my hand on his shoulder and pulled him into a hug, his body wooden and vibrating with anger.

"I'm really sorry I never paid rent on time, and that I forgot to bring you intimacy crystals a lot. It wasn't because I didn't like you, I just was in my own, fucked-up orbit and couldn't see beyond myself a lot of the time. If I could do it over, I would have tried a little harder to be a friend to you."

Some of the stiffness relaxed in his arms, his breath coming out in one long exhale that helped ease the shaking rage.

"You weren't that bad," he admitted after a beat, tossing his arms around my neck to hold tight. "You were never unkind, just sort of an ass."

"That's probably the best compliment I've ever gotten from a landlord," I said around a laugh, not bothering to banish the tear that fell at Barnaby's stellar review.

"That was my friendship review. As a tenant, you were horrible." He laughed when I did, his arms tightening a bit. "But I suppose I'll admit that you've been something of an annoying sibling these past months. I'm so glad I got to see you navigate your way to happiness. I'm proud of you."

"Likewise," I forced through the swell of painful happiness that ballooned in my chest. It pressed against the awful feelings of crushing low self-worth I'd let metastasize over the years, grinding against the painful truth that this was our last goodbye.

It hurt as much as it made me feel brave, important and loved. I wasn't going to let anything happen to this fussy, loving, strange man, even if I had to throw myself into the void and never come back again.

Barnaby deserved a good life. It was going to be my final gift to make sure he did.

The sound of bone scraping against wood shattered the moment, both of us turning toward the sound as it cracked into the room. Ushen was trying to maneuver their antlers through the doorway but was failing, the tips taking a chunk of doorframe with it by the time they wedged themself into the basement. I hadn't seen the wendigo chef since I'd gone bearing questionably obtained human meat in exchange for valuable intel, and I had missed their adorable, deer skull face and casual destruction of property. In their long arms were various bags they held carefully, avoiding their long claws so as to not snag the plastic. Ushen's eyeless face turned to us as they placed the bags on the table, the incredible smell of food permeating the air around them.

Malphie had gotten to his feet, a bone splintering growl rumbling from between his teeth. The orbs in his skull flared a bright, putrid color of rage, ready to attack the large thing stumbling upon our little nest. Ushen regarded Malphie with a tilt of their head, then reached into a bag at their side and extracted a large bone of suspicious origin, still wet and sporting tender bits of meat around the joints.

"May I?" Ushen asked Sias, who was staring in confused befuddlement at their sudden appearance. Sias blinked and granted permission with a flick of his wrist, and Ushen handed the bone to Malphie. The void hound leaned forward to sniff through his nose hole, a vacuum sound coming in short, questioning bursts. The horrible color of his eyes melted into a friendly shade, and the bone was snagged between black, razer teeth. Ushen gave the fellow skeletal headed beast a pat with the flat of his hand and Malphie's whole body wiggled in delight.

Ushen snagged one of the little booties that had fallen from their antler while taking out a piece of door and tucked it back in place.

"Good morning, Dallas Wilde."

"Hey, Ushen," I said in a mild stupor, scrubbing some tears off my cheeks. "What…are you doing here?"

The wendigo pulled a container from one of the many plastic bags, back hunched over the table so their little booties weren't knocked off again. With a flick of their long, black claw, one of the containers was popped open to reveal scrambled eggs, some various meats, grilled veggies and tortillas.

"I brought breakfast," the chef explained, helpfully adding, "No human meat. Only animal products."

I stared at the food, my stomach growling even with the dizzying emotional whiplash I was experiencing.

"I'm grateful, but I don't understand."

"Wow, you guys look depressed," Dex announced as she followed Ushen's trail of destruction, kicking a piece of wood out of the way with the side of her foot. Her much more likable jinn counterpart, Kimi, strolled in after her, scanning the surroundings with a look of judgmental wonder.

"I mean…this place is kind of depressing," Kimi lamented. "Some decorations would keep it from looking like a hostage den."

"I don't believe I asked you to critique my basement, nose ring," Marthas drawled as he brought up the rear of the parade, pausing to assess the damage to his door. The big imp growled as he probed the gash with his fingers, but moved past it to join the circus. "Ushen, I've seen you duck before."

"I was too excited," Ushen said, their voice not changing in inflection or tone to match the statement.

"What the hell is going on?" I finally blurted, feeling a little like I was losing my mind. "Barns and I were having a sweet moment and growing as people and then the what-the-fuck crew rolled in."

Marthas motioned to the gaggle before me, Dex popping a bubble while Kimi started making a breakfast burrito.

"You tell me, Wilde. This is your what-the-fuck crew, not mine. The only reason I let them in is because Ushen has food."

"I have key information that may help in your fight against Florence Pierce." Ushen spread their claws to display the spread of food on the table. "But first, we eat."