Do you think that I don’t know what you are doing? Do you think I’ll stand by and allow it to happen again? Were it not for the Great Truce, for the rules to which we three agreed, I would not abide the Nine at all. But now it seems that truce is crumbling, and with it my patience for your games. I assure you I will not abide a tenth.
The creature grabbed my wrist and squeezed. My wrist bones ground sickeningly against each other. My stomach roiled with sudden nausea. My vision dimmed. I shrieked, and damn near fainted.
“I swear to you, I have no idea what you’re talking about —I’m not trying to do anything! The soul you’re looking for was stolen —stolen by another Collector! Maybe he’s the one you’re looking for! All I want is to get it to where it belongs!”
That’s precisely what the other said. I suspect the both of you are lying —lying to protect each other. Lying to buy yourselves time. But I assure you, it will not do you any good.
“The other —you mean Danny? You know where Danny is? Just tell me, and I promise you, you’ll get your soul.”
I fear you misunderstand the nature of our relationship, Samuel —it is I who makes the demands. You may persist in this lie all you like, but I assure you, I will not be taken in.
“That’s great, except I’m not lying.”
Even if you aren’t, it hardly matters. The soul is in your charge. If you speak the truth, then your negligence is no less an affront to me than would be your rebellion. And for that, you must be punished.
The creature plunged its hand into my chest, grasping tight my soul as I had done to so many in my time.
No —not like I’d done.
This was worse. So much worse.
The man-thing squeezed, and what I felt was so awful it made all the pain I’d ever experienced seem like a fucking spa treatment. Death itself was but child’s play compared to this. To being swallowed whole by Nothing.
A horrid emptiness pressed in on me —chilling, absolute. The muted colors of the pre-dawn desert seemed a thousand rainbows strong compared to the terrible void that engulfed me. My thoughts were stripped away —my very sensations —until I found myself longing for the agony of my broken and bloodied physical self.
Until I longed to feel anything at all.
As I plunged ever deeper into the abyss, cast alive into the creature’s unholy In-Between, I heard its voice as if from somewhere high above.
Three days, it said, so quiet I could barely make it out. Though the words were as light as the last scraps of Being that surrounded me, and my self was but a fading memory, I knew exactly what the creature meant.
And just like that, the Nothingness lifted.
I was in the desert.
I was in the desert, and I was alone.
14.
“Sam!”
A single, barked syllable. Urgent, it seemed, but I couldn’t make sense of what it meant, and anyways, it was so very far away. My eyes fluttered open for a moment, only to be assaulted by grit and wind and morning light. Then my lids came tumbling down. I didn’t see the point of stopping them.
“Goddamn it, Sam, stay with me!”
I felt a slap across my face. The words seemed louder now, their meaning more apparent. I recognized my name, at least, if not the person saying it.
“I swear to Christ, Sam, if you die, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you.”
Gio. Right. The tough-guy cadence was a dead giveaway. What I didn’t know was why he was making such a fuss.
And then it all came back. The desert road. The sudden stop. My little chat with the old man.
No, that wasn’t quite right. That thing was old, but not a man. It was a monster, a horror-show, a walking abomination —a wretched beast that claimed it was a god.
God or not, that thing had plunged me into Nothingness —horrid, empty, complete —and given me an ultimatum. Three days, it had said. Three days to find the soul that Danny had stolen from me and lay it to rest.
Three days before the Nothing was forever.
That last thought got me moving. I sat up, or tried. It didn’t take. Gio was saying something, but I was having trouble hearing him. I once more opened my eyes. The world was kind of blurry, and a little gray around the edges, but at least this time they stayed open. Seemed like progress to me.
A sudden lurch, and I was off the ground. Gio wheezed and grunted as he hauled me over to the ruined Fiesta, cursing all the while. My head lolled back, and I spied the patch of dirt that I’d been sprawled out on. The desert sand was darker there.
Dark like rust.
Like blood.
We reached the car. He tossed me in. Like the plot of land I’d left behind, his hands and shirt were slick with blood —my blood. Gio’s face was a mask of concern. I tried to tell him not to worry, that I’d be all right, but the words died on my lips. I couldn’t find the breath to speak, and my chest hurt like crazy —a sharp, burny sort of pain. After a couple minutes of struggling to speak, I forgot what I was trying to say in the first place. And a minute after that, it didn’t matter.
I was once more asleep.
A prickle in my sinuses, a sudden burning in my throat. My eyes fluttered open, and consciousness returned. Gio sat, expectant, beside me, a vial of smelling salts cracked open in his hand. The backseat of the Fiesta was littered with gauze and tape and spent tubes of ointment. I think a good half of that ointment wound up on my face, slathered over my numerous contusions and leaving me a sticky mess. My ribs were now taped, and though it still hurt like hell to breathe, the pain was of a more manageable sort. My right arm was in a sling —the shoulder back in place, it seemed —and the wrist the creature’d squeezed throbbed in time with the beating of my heart. No big, I thought, this meat-suit was a lefty anyway.
“Wh-where…” My voice sounded thick and wet and wrong. Gio must’ve thought so, too, because he frowned.
“Round back of a twenty-four-hour pharmacy.” He caught me eyeing the gaping hole in the Fiesta’s windshield, and smiled. “Don’t worry; nobody saw us pull in, and I didn’t steal this shit or nothin’ —I bought it with cash outta the morgue dude’s wallet. How you feelin’?”
“Peachy,” I croaked.
“Yeah, you look it. You wanna tell me what the hell happened back there?”
“Long story.”
“Seems to me, we got a while.”
No, I thought, we don’t. But what I said was, “You remember the bug back at the mortuary?” My Ms sounded like Bs. My Gs rattled like phlegm in the back of my throat.
“Yeah?”
“I just tangled with a few thousand of his friends.”
“Wait —you’re telling me bugs did this to you?”
“More like a bug monster, but yeah.”
“A bug monster? As in, a monster made of bugs?”
“Pretty much.”
“Shit.” He looked stricken, and cast a furtive glance from side to side. “This bug monster —you think it’s comin’ back?”
“If we don’t track down what Danny took, and soon, you can count on it.”
He swallowed hard, and did his best to put on a brave face. It wasn’t terribly convincing. “Guess it’s a good thing I patched you up then. You gotta be in tip-top shape so you can kick its insect ass the second time around.”
I laughed. It hurt.
“Listen,” he said, “speaking of patching you up, I got some good news and I got some bad news.”