straight up and hung in midair for a second, her hand drawn back and contorted in some kind of kung-fu death claw. I saw black flames licking along the edges of her bony fingers.
When she came down, I wasn’t there. I did a smooth little backflip and launched myself through the air, landing in a crouch by the downed streetlight. I picked it up and swung it in a full circle before hurling it at her. There was a resounding gong when the streetlight smashed into her. It carried her through the open gate and slammed her into a tree that spread its naked branches over the driveway. I grinned and went after her.
This, it turned out, was a mistake. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I felt the strength drain out of me. It happened all at once, like I’d been running on borrowed fuel and the marker had suddenly come due. I sank to one knee and gasped; I didn’t breathe in that airless world, but I struggled to draw some strength back into my leaden arms and legs.
Whatever power I’d lost, it seemed to flow into La Calavera. Her broken body straightened and she rose to her feet. She picked up the streetlight and lifted it above her head, and then swung it downward like a club. I tried to summon the will to move-and will, I had finally learned, was all I really needed in this place. But I was too slow. The streetlight came down on my back and a spiderweb of cracks blossomed in the asphalt as I was hammered flat into the driveway.
I heard a sharp crack and turned my head enough to see La Calavera walking toward me with a splintered branch she’d torn from the tree. She raised it above me and drove it through the wrist of my gun hand, pinning it to the ground. My fingers spasmed and she kicked Ned away.
“Are you ready now, dear?” the spirit said. “Beg for your death and I will show mercy. I will throw you to the dogs.”
If I’d been in better shape, I might have challenged her peculiar understanding of mercy. Instead, I clenched my twitching fingers and then extended the middle one vaguely in her direction. La Calavera laughed and straddled me, sitting on my back. She grabbed my hair and pulled my head back toward her.
“Have you guessed how I will finish you?” she said. “How I will take your power and make it my own? It’s not so different from what happens in the pit.” She leaned down and ground her teeth together next to my ear. It sounded like old stone crunching underfoot. “This is how we do it on the other side of death.” Then her teeth tore into the side of my face. She ground them together, chewing, gnawing, and pulled a large chunk of flesh free with a savage twist of her neck.
“Oh, no, you didn’t,” I said, spitting the words through teeth clenched against my pain and revulsion. I reached across my body with my free hand and snapped the branch that impaled my other wrist. I twisted under her and grabbed the spirit in a headlock, knocking her hat loose, and then I drove the sharp, splintered wood underhand into La Calavera’s mouth. The point burst through the back of her skull, dripping black juice. I twisted it, pulled it out and shanked her again.
The flesh-eating zombie bitch still didn’t die. She grabbed the end of the stake and wrenched it from my grip, pulling it out the back of her own head. Then her body disintegrated, collapsing into a squirming heap of plump, white maggots. I jumped back and brushed a few of the disgusting creatures from my clothes and hair. The maggots churned and a form began to take shape from the wriggling mass, growing and solidifying. Then La Calavera was standing there again. She bent down and retrieved her hat, placing it at a jaunty angle on the remains of her skull. Snowflakes fell and stuck to the black magic that drenched her face and chest, and they winked like glittering diamonds from the ruin.
The spirit clenched her hands into gnarled claws and I saw the black fire dance along her fingers again. “You cannot defeat me here,” she said. “I will kill you now.”
She shrieked and launched herself at me, and I let her come. I extended my hand to the Peacemaker lying at the edge of the driveway. “Ned,” I called, and it leaped into the air, tumbling end over end until the smooth, polished grip settled in my palm. La Calavera crashed into me and I enfolded her in an intimate embrace. I felt her bony hands around my throat and the black fire searing my flesh.
I thrust Ned’s twelve-inch barrel into her chest and it tore through shattered ribs and gristle until it reached the black pit at the center of her. I held the trigger down and thumbed the hammer, firing again and again as her skeletal body jerked and twisted in my grasp. She raised her face to the sky and screamed, and azure fire burst from her eye sockets, nose and mouth.
Ghosts answered her call. They drifted out of the trees, silent and murderous, and came for me with grasping hands and empty eyes.
“That’s game,” I said. “I win.”
Honey and Jack spiraled down from the darkness, and the pixie dust they dropped on the ghosts was nearly invisible amidst the falling snow. When it touched them, the apparitions hardened and cracked like old china and crumbled to dust. Adan appeared at the gate with his rifle slung over his shoulder and his sword drawn, and he charged to engage the ghosts that made it through the piskies’ blanket of destruction.
I leaned in close to La Calavera. “No one,” I said, and pushed Ned’s barrel up under her jaw. “Tries.” I squeezed the trigger and the top of her skull exploded. “To eat.” I threw her to the ground and jammed the gun between her grinning teeth. “Me.” I fanned the hammer and let Ned kick and dance inside her mouth until the skull began to dissolve into black juice. I pumped a couple more rounds into the center of her torso and it, too, ran liquid, collapsing into a bubbling pool that spread slowly across the asphalt.
A high-pitched, keening wail tore through the stillness and then faded like a bad memory. With it went the feeling of oppression that had weighed on me since I crossed the threshold on La Calavera’s estate. The wind died, the snow stopped falling and the night seemed to brighten to a lighter shade of blue.
I regrouped with Adan and the piskies, and we walked up the driveway toward the house. We followed a stone-tile walkway around the side and down a set of wide stairs to the patio that spread out behind the house. The heart-shaped swimming pool was choked with detritus and stagnant water, and we skirted it to the lightly wooded lawns at the rear of the estate.
The ramshackle kennels were lit from within by the soft, golden radiance of the Xolos. As we approached, I realized we wouldn’t have to open the cages to free the dogs. One by one, the lights winked out as the Xolos crossed back to the mortal world. My friends had been right. It was La Calavera that held them there, not the pens or the pit.
Still, not all of the Xolos made it back across. The piskies flew through the warren of crates and cages, checking each one and counting the dead. There were seventeen of them. With their lights snuffed out, the dead looked no different from any other dog of their breed. We couldn’t think of anything else to do so we laid them out on the grass and dug graves for them. We buried them one by one. This was the spirit world and I wasn’t sure how much sense it made to return them to earth that wasn’t even real. But for the Xolos, perhaps it was fitting. The Xolo that had fought for me in the back room of the Mocambo club wasn’t among the dead. My Xolo had survived, and he came to me and licked my hand before crossing back to the mortal world.
Our work complete, we turned and walked back across the lawn toward the house. Without warning, a deafening roar crashed over us and a jagged line like cracked glass appeared in the air before our eyes. Hateful, red light spilled through the crack and waves of heat washed over us as it widened. Writhing tentacles curled around the edges of the crack and a dark, bulbous shape began to pull itself through from the other side.
“Demon,” Adan snarled, drawing his sword. I glanced at Adan and back at the gate. The thing that squeezed through the fracture looked more like an oversize octopus crossed with a hairy black spider than the almost human- looking giant we’d battled at the Carnival Club. Apparently, demons came in all shapes and sizes.
The massive, swollen thing oozed through the crack and plopped wetly into the grass, spider legs twitching and tentacles waving madly. Its maw looked more arachnid than cephalopod, with razor-sharp mandibles that clicked and scraped like fingernails on slate. Pearlescent slime dripped from the evil fangs, and the grass wilted and browned where it struck the lawn. The demon sat back on its bloated hindquarters and a fleshy slit opened the length of its abdomen baring row upon row of small, pointed teeth. Okay, so maybe that was its mouth and the bit with the mandibles was…some other disgusting part of its anatomy.
Honey’s musical voice brought me back to my senses as she began singing battle glamours. I opened fire with Ned and scrambled to my right, maneuvering along the demon’s flank. Jack dived, twisting in and out of the writhing tentacles like a jet fighter with a bogey on his six. Adan ran at the thing and then leaped in the air, flipping over the grasping tentacles and landing on its back. He slammed his sword two-handed into one of the demon’s eyes, and red-orange juice like lava boiled from the wound. The monster screamed and a tentacle snaked in and lashed around Adan’s neck. It lifted him into the air and he hung there for a moment, strangling, as he slashed at
