Something Deadly This Way Comes

And still the angel cried. “I’m sorry,” she said, beautiful in her sorrow. “I wish I could make it different, but all I’m made for is to protect in case your soul would revive and be renewed before you died, but it’s too late.” Her eyes—too bright to see—bore into Tammy, finding me somewhere inside her. Is it now? Or is it yet to be?

What? Tammy asked, but I was the one who jumped. She was talking to me. The guardian angel who had been with Tammy was talking to me. She knew I was here, living the future, and the angel didn’t know if what we were living was true, or just a maybe. God, I hoped it was a maybe.

A shadow covered the window, and the stink of wet stone. My pulse leapt as I saw the black wing slide into the room through the open window. Fear hit me, sour and rank, and Paul sensed my sudden terror.

“Her soul is dead, Madison,” the guardian angel said to me, not a hint of accusation in her voice. “It died three years ago, and I stayed with her, keeping the black wings from her in the hope that it might rekindle and grow anew, but it did not. She failed to nourish it, and it perished utterly.”

No! I shouted as the first black wing landed on her.

Tammy screamed, her body dead but something still aware in her. White-hot ice filled her thoughts, peppermint and fire. I tried to pull back, but I was caught in this hell and couldn’t escape. Black wings had found her, and her memories were being eaten as we watched, unable to move and stop them. The energy that she had stored as memory was being stripped from her, the dripping sheet of black tearing memories from her like a hyena over a kill.

And like hyenas, more came. One by one, they fought their way into the room and covered Tammy as she screamed and writhed in her mind, unable to escape, unable to fight back, her body flaccid and still.

Stop! I pleaded, feeling real tears slip down my real cheeks somewhere across time in a dark graveyard. The memory of having my own thoughts stripped from me returned, and I felt anew the burning lack, the fear of nothing being left behind. She was being taken apart, aware and watching. This? I thought in horror. This is what happens to lost souls? No wonder dark reapers kill them.

Someone please help me! Tammy screamed, her body peaceful but her mind in terror as huge chunks of her disappeared. She was becoming nothing. I couldn’t help her, and I cried, huge racking sobs as I tried to hold her together, failing.

Not this! I said, fighting off a black wing when the image of a sun-drenched car from Tammy’s memories filled me. There was laughter, a silly song. Nothing much, but there was happiness. This they couldn’t take, and I pulled it to me, hoarding it.

The black wing I took it from rose up, and I howled as it fought me for it, hungry and having gotten a taste. I shoved a memory to it, one just as precious but one of mine. The black wing melted into nothing, not knowing the difference. I curled myself around Tammy’s beautiful memory, crying and wishing it would all just end.

Slowly Tammy’s agony and terror ebbed as more and more was taken, and less and less was left, and finally it was just Paul and me. One by one, the black wings lifted, swollen and misshapen as they staggered out the open window, bumping into the glass like wasps until they found their way. My thoughts shaky, I reached for Paul’s presence, feeling like a great tide of poison had rolled over us and only we had survived. The guardian angel was still with us, her tears now ceased as the one she watched and protected, in the slim hope her soul would renew itself, vanished as if she had never existed. Hope, that’s all the light reapers bought with their guardian angels, a slim hope that the soul would rekindle. It was a hope that Barnabas had started with his beautiful Sarah, and heartache filled me at the travesty of it.

“Has this happened yet?” the angel asked me, her voice sad. “I can’t tell. Has this happened yet? Is it happening now? You’ve never been here before at the end.”

I felt raw, and even though I knew I was really sitting in a graveyard, I also knew I was here, in the future, talking to Tammy’s guardian angel that she didn’t have yet. It hasn’t happened, I thought, feeling emotionally drained. Cupped in the curve of my awareness was one bright spot of glory—Tammy’s memory too beautiful to allow to be eaten.

The angel rose up, her eyes going terrible and hard. “Make it stop,” she said, and it was as if she carried the voice of God in her. “Please,” she added, sounding helpless now. And then she vanished.

The world flashed red, and I let out a choking sob of relief. It was over, and I steadied myself for the gut- wrenching feeling of my consciousness being yanked back across the years of what-if to reality.

I woke up crying, curled up on the wet grass between Nakita and Barnabas, Josh standing awkwardly as if not knowing how he could help. They were silent and subdued, knowing that it had to be bad by the shape I was in. Meeting their eyes, I saw the tears in Nakita’s. Barnabas had cried his last eons ago, but the pain behind his gaze was no less. He had started this when Sarah’s soul had revived. I didn’t know if I should thank or curse him. It was awful.

Sitting up, I looked for Paul. He was standing hunched beside a distant tombstone, puking his guts out. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and he turned, wiping his mouth. Haggard, he faced me, looking more alone than I’d ever seen a person. I tried to get up, and Josh jumped to help. My hand was cold in his, and shaking.

“Are you okay?” I asked Paul, hearing my voice crack. “That was a bad one.”

“No.” His word was short, full of the dead terror we had endured. “That . . .” he said, hands shaking as he tried to find words. “That was hell. This job is hell!”

I couldn’t find fault with him there, and I staggered, listing sideways until Josh pulled me upright. “It’s not always like that,” I breathed. Sometimes you’re burned alive.

Paul turned away, his expression ugly as he tried to come to grips with what we had seen. I leaned against a rock—excuse me . . . a grave marker—and Josh let go after making sure I wasn’t going to fall over. “You okay?” he asked, and I nodded, not looking up at him.

“It was a flash forward,” I said, and Barnabas sighed, seeming to know what I’d seen. “We saw Tammy’s death. A few years from now, I’m guessing. I don’t know. She had a guardian angel so I think if we walk away right now, we fail to help her.” My words drifted to nothing as I thought back to what the angel had said to me.

“We have to do something,” I said, remembering the pain Tammy ended her life with, and then the utter nothingness, a nothing so complete that it was as if she had never existed. “If we can’t help her, Tammy’s life is worthless, no grace, no beauty. She didn’t do anything to nourish her soul. No art, no creativity, taking in nothing outside of eating, sleeping, living, and when she died, her soul was eaten by black wings.”

Bile rose, and I forced it back. She was gone. Except for the tiny bit I had kept. I could feel it in me, lost, alone, and not fitting in with the rest of my memories.

Nakita touched my arm and I jumped. Her eyes were brimming with tears, but it only made her more beautiful. “I’m sorry, Madison. I thought you knew that’s what happened to lost souls if they can’t rekindle them. That’s why I was so confused. Rekindled souls happen so rarely. So very rarely.” She was looking at Barnabas. His head was down, and it looked as if he was reliving his entire lifetime of lonely heartache.

“I didn’t know!” I shouted, and he looked up, tears in his eyes. “I didn’t know,” I said softly. “No one told me.” I glanced at Paul. Clearly he hadn’t known, either. My sorrow was shifting to anger, but it didn’t feel any better.

“That’s why we take them early,” Nakita said, giving Barnabas a soft glance. “To spare them that and save what we can. If Tammy is scythed tonight, a light reaper will keep her soul safe until she is welcomed home, remembered, loved. Like Bar-nabas was going to do for you until you stole Kairos’s amulet. But if she is given a guardian angel and her soul doesn’t rekindle itself . . .”

I finished Nakita’s thought for her. “A life of nothing, ending in the same.”

I turned from them, heartsick and confused. Maybe I should just give up and send reapers to cull souls.

“I can’t do this.”

It had come from Paul, and I looked up at him, his features hidden in shadow.

“I can’t be the light timekeeper,” he said. “This is insane!” He started to back away into the dark. “I can’t do it! I can’t!”

Barnabas pressed his lips together. Reaching out, he grabbed Paul’s arm. “You are the rising light timekeeper.”

“I don’t want it!” Paul said, panicking but unable to break Barnabas’s hold. “I can’t do that! I can’t send reapers out to put guardian angels on people if all they are going to do is be eaten by that sludge! It would be better if they died young!”