“June,” I said. “Remember the end. When the pain went away. Slipping into the deepest sleep you’ve ever experienced.”
She flickered, and she was curled up on the ground, a blanket around her.
“Deep sleep,” I intoned.
She flickered, then disappeared.
No.
The impact I felt to the hatchet was feeble at best. Almost imperceptible.
The cold still swirled around me, but I could feel its effect weakening with every passing second.
Not what I’d meant for her to do. Experiencing her death so deeply that she died a little.
But it hadn’t been for nothing. The deer staggered. It shook its head.
I let go of Dowght, letting him fall. With quick, hurried strides, I crossed the distance.
The deer began to rouse. I broke into a run. The bite in my leg seized up, I stumbled, slipped-
I could see the deer recovering.
I found my feet, closing the last few feet, just as the deer lowered its antlers, points aimed at me.
I blocked the points of the antlers with the book that dangled from my hand, huffed out a gasp at the impact. Stupid, I knew, to use the book like this, but accidentally freeing the imp from his bondage was still better than dying. I was pretty sure.
I was able to stop the deer for just one instant. Any longer, he’d rear up, kick, trample me, or just try again and succeed in stabbing me.
I planted the hatchet in his neck, blade grinding against bone.
The deer collapsed like a puppet without strings.
“No!” Dowght hollered. “No! No!”
He crawled more than anything, closing the distance.
I only backed away. The temperature was normalizing, going from ‘cold’ to ‘still pretty damn cold’.
The animals were closing in.
Not just the animals that had managed to get inside the house. Every single damn creature in the neighborhood.
Dowght reached the deer, and he embraced the corpse. Openly weeping.
My hand throbbed where I’d used it to brace against the antlers. My leg throbbed from the running, and the various injuries.
All of me hurt.
The protection the ghost afforded was fading.
I looked around, at the animals that were poised on snowbanks, beneath cars, slinking forward.
In the houses themselves, I saw only drawn curtains, the lights on…
No. One person was watching. A boy. Eyes wide.
He’d probably seen the deer murdering scene, from the shock I could make out. I looked, taking in the scene, imagining how he might see it in the gloom.
Oh. Maybe that’s why he seemed so alarmed. There was a bear in the shadows between two houses. Hard to make out, but most definitely there.
“Fell,” I said, again. “Fell. Fell. Fell. Fell…”
I saw headlights at the far end of the street.
“Fell, Fell, Fell…”
The car approached. Stopped.
The door opened.
Fell stepped out, glancing around. I saw him throw a handful of sand around himself.
He drew his gun, pointing it at me. He paused.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” I said.
“I’d shoot you right here, but you look bad enough it might be a waste of a bullet.”
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
“In many circles,” Fell said, “Calling a practitioner that way is considered terminally poor manners.”
“Noted,” I said, eyeing the encroaching animals. “I’m new to this, I’ll keep it in mind.”
He didn’t lower the gun.
“I have the imp,” I said.
“Do you know what it’s like? When someone calls you like that?”
“Not so much.”
The bear was emerging from the alley.
“A jerk at your very being. Small jerks, but jerks all the same.”
“But you can’t shut off the connection because your master ordered you to help me.”
“I can’t use that connection that’s being formed against you, either, no. But if you think I’m his slave, you’re making a very dangerous assumption.”
“Slave, servant, lieutenant, I don’t know,” I said, my voice low. “All I know is I’m bleeding, I need a ride, and he wants this imp. I’m not sure what time it is, but-”
“Ten twenty.”
I’d thought it was approaching midnight.
“It’s ten thirty, he wants this imp by midnight. Give me a ride, and we can both enjoy the rest of our evenings. You go back to… watching late night TV, I don’t know. I go tend to my wounds and prepare for tomorrow.”
“Not my responsibility.”
“It makes it look like you went above the call of duty,” I said. “Show Conquest-”
“This base sort of manipulation is beneath even you.”
“Fair,” I said. My voice had a roughness to it.
Okay, the animals were dangerously close right now. If he got back in his car, I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do.
“I’m going to deliver you to Conquest,” Fell told me. “But I need you to understand one thing. The slight? Abusing my name? I can take my revenge, when all is said and done.”
I nodded. Too weary to speak.
“Come.”
“Him too,” I said. I pointed the hatchet at Dowght.
“Him?”
“Leaving him here means he dies.”
Fell looked at the broken man. “We won’t bring him, but we’ll secure his safety.”
I watched as Fell approached Dowght.
“Fucker,” Dowght said, sobbing. “Fuckers! Bastards!”
Fell cast sand around the man.
“Ahh! Fuck you! In my eyes! Fuck you, you crab-dicked fucker!”
Fell turned and left. He passed right by me, returning to the car.
I hurried to follow.
“He’s safe?” I asked.
“He will be,” Fell said. He tapped his phone, mounted on the dashboard. “Car. Dial nine-one-one.”
“The imp is deterring all emergency response,” I said.
“Stop talking,” Fell told me. “Unless you’re talking about your diabolism, I either know already, or I don’t care what you have to say. This is what I do. I clean up and handle details.”
The voice came through on the other end of the phone. “Toronto emergency services. What is the nature of your emergency?”
■
Not one word from Fell, the entire trip to Conquest’s lair. Which was nice in a way. It let me shut my eyes.
Fell led the way through the front door. I clutched the tome to my stomach, partially for the security. Partially to stem any ongoing bleeding there.
“Am I putting myself in danger?” I asked. “Bleeding out onto his rug? Can he use my blood against me?”
“It isn’t blood given. Could he take it? Yes. But he could do that regardless of your wishes, if he had a mind to.”
“Gotcha,” I said.
We ascended to the second floor. The decor was different.
A continuation of what he’d been doing before. A tower, white, as if hewn from a single, gargantuan piece of bone. Floors alternated between ones open to the outside world, ringed by pillars, and ones that were entirely closed in.
Conquest was in a half-human, half-monster form, when we reached the top.