J Duncan - Deadworld

He pulled his mouth away, clamping his hand over the open knife wound. Sweat was dripping down his face from the heat inside the freezer. “Is it going to be enough?”

“Let’s find out,” she said. “And hurry. This is very difficult for me, too.”

Nick picked up Jackie, holding her tightly against him, and let the natural order of things follow, the order he had interrupted so many years ago in order to get his revenge. Now, ironically enough, he was letting it all go. The door yawned open, wider and wider, the breath of the dead blowing him through, but Jackie was not coming, not just yet, as she had not reached that brink, and Nick could feel her body slowly slipping from his grip.

“Laurel. Now would be a good time to kick it up a notch.” Nick dug his fingers into Jackie, clenching as hard as he could. She was not ready yet, and he didn’t have the force to get her through.

“Imagine a safe place, Nick. A safe place to take Jackie.”

His home was the only place he would take her. It was the only place he felt might be remotely defensible against Drake. “I can’t hold her much longer here, Ms. Carpenter.” Despite the strength of his grip, Jackie was slowly beginning to pull away. Even as close as she was to death. That little bit of life was enough to offset the pull of the dead.

Then Laurel’s whispering voice grew inside his head, slowly overtaking the howl of Deadworld. She was chanting, and Nick could not make out the words, or they were in a language he didn’t understand, but just like she had claimed, the door stretched itself, becoming more elastic, the louder her voice became.

Home. Take us home.

They broke free of that boundary, falling into the black void between the world of the living and that of the dead, a cold so intense Nick felt sure his bones would splinter apart into a million icy shards.

Take us home. Make her safe, please, God, if you exist and are there at all, get her through this. I beg of you.

The blackness began to fade into gray, a substanceless fog that gave Nick no sense of location. The howling wind of the doorway had faded, and it was now eerily quiet. There was the faintest whispering in the background. “Laurel?”

“Shhhh,” came the reply still echoing around inside his head. “Home. Keeping thinking of home. Almost there.”

Nick did his best to keep the images of his house fresh, the piano loft where he spent so many hours of his recent life, and where Jackie had felt compelled to kiss him. He desperately wanted a chance to do that again. “Trying.”

“Shhhh. No talking. They’ll hear you.”

She went back to her quiet chanting, and Nick wondered what she was talking about, but the whispers grew louder then, becoming nearly discernible voices. They were angry voices and many, but the words were jumbled, except for one, which he could make out because it was louder than all the rest. “Vampire.”

Laurel’s voice took on a fearful edge, the chanting becoming more frantic, and Nick took the cue and zeroed in on his house, the living room sofa, a fire, Jackie there, alive and healthy, sipping on a cup of the nuclear coffee he had made. Safe, comfortable, and home.

Something pushed at Nick’s back, and for a split second he panicked, thinking perhaps that crowd of voices was upon them, but then it took on more substance and feel, pressing against his back and legs, and Jackie’s body took on more weight against him as the gray fog dissipated into a serene background wash of color over everything. He was sitting on the sofa in his living room before his stone fireplace. It was a washed-out version of it, but his house nonetheless.

Resting against his chest, Jackie’s pale, bluish lips appeared to be kissing his shirt. Nick shifted and turned, easing her cold body down on the cushions, and pressed a pair of fingers against the soft flesh of her throat. For a moment, panic fluttered through his stomach, but then he felt her pulse, weak but still there. They had made it for now, but how long did Jackie really have?

Cold. Aching, biting cold. Did the dead feel cold? Jackie’s eyes blinked open, seeing little but foggy white nothingness, and groaned at the icy grip of the giant hand that clamped down on her body when she attempted to move.

“Hey, hon.” Laurel’s face immediately moved into view. “How do you feel?”

Laurel looked solid enough to touch. Jackie smiled, which even made her mouth hurt. “It’s fucking cold. My entire body hurts.”

She leaned down and kissed Jackie’s cheek, her lips the barest whisper against her skin. “I figured. I wasn’t quite sure if you’d make it or what would happen once you got here.”

Here. The other side. So Nick had managed to bring them across. “Am I dead?”

Laurel shook her head. “No, not yet, but I don’t think you can stay here long. The living aren’t supposed to be here.”

“How long?’

It was Nick’s voice, and Jackie realized he was sitting behind Laurel on a couch. Things looked oddly familiar. Jackie turned and noticed the massive slate fireplace of Nick’s living room. “This looks like Nick’s place.”

“A few hours maybe?” Laurel said with a shrug. “And, yes, hon. It’s Nick’s. We needed a safe place to come to.”

Jackie reached out tentatively and tried to touch Laurel’s arm but was disappointed to see her fingers pass right through, disappearing for a moment before reappearing on the other side. How creepy was that? She shivered. “Heat doesn’t work around here, I take it?”

“We’ll get you back as soon as we can,” Nick said.

Jackie stared at him for a moment, those depthless eyes surprisingly readable in the ghostly gray gloom. Laughter almost bubbled out of her mouth. “You don’t have a fucking clue, do you?”

He stared at her in silence and then finally offered up a grim smile. “No. This is all new to me. I’m hoping Laurel knows what she’s doing.”

“I’ll get us to Drake,” she replied, “but after that, it’s up to you.”

“We need to figure out how to get Jackie back first.”

Laurel’s answer was simple. “You have to take her back.”

“What?” He didn’t bother hiding the chagrin in his voice. “I don’t have the power to do that now. It took most of what I had to get us here.”

Laurel reached down and brushed a wisp of hair from Jackie’s face. “I know. You’ll have to get it back from Drake.”

Nick slumped back on the couch. “Ah. And I thought it would be something difficult.”

Jackie struggled to sit up. Every movement felt sluggish, as if she were moving through water. “I wanted to kill him anyway.”

“I don’t even know if he can be killed here,” Nick said. “The rules I knew don’t seem to apply anymore.”

“It’s not his blood you want, Nick. You want his power. He takes it from the spirits here, draining their souls away to give him strength to pass back and forth.”

“Okay, and if it’s not through blood, just how do I do that?”

Laurel looked at a loss. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.”

Jackie shivered again. The cold was seeping deeper into her bones by the minute. If this kept up, she would hardly be able to move, let alone function in this place of the dead. “So, where’s he at?”

“At the moment, I’m not sure,” Laurel said. “But he keeps everyone locked away inside the Hancock building.”

Nick snorted. “Seriously? I hadn’t thought him so corporate.”

“That’s almost thirty miles from here,” Jackie lamented. “I can’t walk that far unless there’s a ghost version of that Porsche sitting in the garage.”

“No cars.” Laurel stood up, backing around the coffee table that sat in the middle of the U shape of the sofas. She looked at both of them. “I just will myself to where I want to go. It’s very easy here. Crossing over, not so much. I’m hoping it’s an effect of this place and doesn’t require actually being dead to work.”