Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

For the first time since I’d known him, Warren looked injured. He could just take her from me, of course, but he wanted her to come willingly. Like the Tulpa, he very simply wanted her . “Please. Let me help you.”

Some silent thing passed between them, some old conversation that had probably ended unresolved, because there were feelings there I couldn’t understand. Slowly, Zoe shook her head. “Save Jo. That was the agreement.”

Warren gazed at Zoe with a mixture of confusion and softness, and licked his lips, eyes on hers. Oh my God, I thought, surprise rocketing through me. He loves her.

Then, probably scenting my shock on the air, he looked at me. There was no confusion in that look, and certainly no softness. Just bitterness for causing his love story to come to this, as if it was both my doing, and purposeful.

“Warren…” Zoe’s voice was a warning.

He lunged, and my hands were empty before I blinked. Zoe was suddenly gone-tulle and touch, strength and frailty-the only thing remaining behind were gold flecks and elongated screams. “No! Go back! Joanna! Jo!

Help her!”

The cries faded quickly, Warren fleeing as fast as he could. I had a moment to wonder what exactly he was trying to outrun, but then the Tulpa froze, head jerking up. Determination rode his face like a stampede, and he shot to the sky like a reverse comet. Skamar didn’t hesitate. She followed in an equally earsplitting blast.

I slumped, dazed, to find myself alone on the dais, my raspy breath breaking the eerie silence of what looked like a mass suicide. Yet the Tulpa’s absence released the mortals of his magic. They began popping up from the pool bottom like colorful mushrooms, coughing and sputtering as they swam to the pool’s edge, helping others do the same. The water, in turmoil, appeared shark-infested, and sure enough, no sooner did I have that thought than a roiling pressure ruptured the surface.

Out of that-stiff, dripping, and bloody, but with bowler hat firmly in place-Sleepy Mac rose like a specter. His blind, mad gaze was already fixed on me.

Every person asks themselves how they’re going to die. Most people wish for something gentle and in the night, a scant few petition the skies for adventure, to go hard and young, guns blazing-sometimes literally, sometimes not. Over the past year I’d faced the question a number of times, not because I wanted to, but because it presented itself to me like an unwanted hooker in a lineup. I mean, once the choices were narrowed down, you had to pick something, right?

So this was how it would happen: Mackie would lunge, carve into my mortal flesh with that blade, and what remained of my soul would join his, trapped inside that fisted iron, while my body finally fell to dusty silence.

Well, it wasn’t exactly how it would happen, I thought, easing my hand around to the gun at my back.

But then, like a crosscurrent, she landed. Positioning herself at the point where the aisle met the pier, one foot on each side, she halved the distance between Mackie and me. Pointing her nose straight into the air, Skamar sniffed, then angled her head my way. “Smell that, Jo?”

I didn’t move, fearing whatever I did would be wrong, she’d leave, and I’d be headed for the glue factory again. Yet I was screaming inside. Scoop me up! Take me away! Deliver me from this particular evil, and I’ll never take your name in vain again!

But Skamar was preoccupied with something other than escape. “It’s not your fury, nope. Not like the last time we met. That smelled like the aftermath of a traffic accident. It’s got quite a nice hook to it, actually.”

“Skamar…?” I ventured, seeing Mackie list her way, and thinking it was an odd moment for philosophical musings.

“Nope, not even the despair I sensed when this walking miasma killed your cat.” She ignored the grating metallic whine rising from Mackie again, but I couldn’t. It was a noise associated with homicide.

“Skamar.” Maybe intoning her name would snap her out of it.

Inexplicably, she closed her eyes and tilted her sharp, slim jaw up to the sky. “No, this is fresh and floral, like spring’s blossoms and green wood. This,” she said, turning her back on Sleepy Mac, “is life. ”

“What are you doing?” I said, panicked as Mackie’s head lowered, blade lifting.

She continued to foolishly ignore him, opening eyes both determined and sad. “I’ve decided you’re right. It is time for something to touch me. To prove I’m more than animated flesh. Not like this half-life behind me.” The sadness left her eyes. “It’s time, in other words, to pick some bones.”

Mackie clearly had other ideas. He grinned so widely his black stub of a tongue showed between his teeth. His laughter was ground iron. Skamar’s smile didn’t meet her eyes, sincere, severe, and still fastened on mine. “But you might want to look away. ’Cuz when I pick ’em? I pick ’em clean.”

She pivoted as Mackie lunged, and for a second’s frac tion pulled back, as if bracing herself. Then she dove forward so quickly it was like she expected to move clean through him. She didn’t, of course. Sleepy Mac didn’t give ground, had never needed to before…though seconds later I bet he wished he had.

His scream rose like a tornado siren, jagged and uncertain, but too late. I cupped my hands over my ears- countless people behind the dueling creatures did the same-but stayed focused on the whipping dervish just as Skamar bit down and ripped the nose from Mackie’s face. She didn’t spit it out, didn’t even chew. Just swallowed it full and swung back down for another bite. First one bony cheek disappeared, then the other. She had his wrists pinned, and though he didn’t let go of his blade-he’d never do that-he flailed in panic, jerking his head from side to side as he tried to avoid the tulpa’s barbed teeth. He was struggling too hard for her to get a good bite, so I shook myself to my senses and shot him twice. That enabled her to find his throat, and his grunts and screams gurgled into silence.

That’s when his arm started swinging.

Skamar lifted her head, blood blanketing her chin as she stared right at me. “Shoot me!”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard right, and kept my aim on his body. “What?”

“Shoot me,” she repeated, head lowering. “Quick!”

As she began shredding fingers from his free hand, I remembered what happened when you shot a tulpa…and lunged for the bazooka. Narrowing my gaze, I pointed the giant barrel at her middle and fired. She grew a foot with the first rocket, and another six inches with each additional shot. It didn’t sound like a lot, but it was six inches in circumference, and after the first two strikes, Mackie sure as hell knew the difference. He turned his head on what remained of that sinewy neck long enough to growl at me, hate naked in his black-socketed stare, the skeletal face now missing so many of its features.

The warning movement cost him. I shot again and Skamar engulfed him with her jaw, crunching down on his skull like a nutcracker. His expression literally shattered before me. His black tongue lolled from his mouth, then fell, severed by his own teeth.

But his flailing blade finally found a home in Skamar’s side. I shot him again, but it was too late. She twisted, her face scrawled in agony, but dove in once more. I turned the weapon back on her, causing her to jerk but also causing her to grow.

Her jaw was the size of my head now, and she easily engulfed the whole of Mackie’s crushed skull, right down to the base of his neck. And she bit. After snapping it, after his muffled cries fell silent in her mouth, she jerked back, ripping it from his body. Mackie’s shoulders slumped, his posture both defeated and confused, and from there it was an easy thing for Skamar to dismantle the rest of his body.