Christopher Golden - Lost Ones

The shadow became solid.

A hand thrust past Julianna, gripped the assassin by the neck, and hoisted him off the ground. He let go of her hair as he twisted and fought, kicking at the tall figure in its dark hood and cloak. His fingers pulled away the hood and Julianna knew what she would see-the hideous, lemon eyes of the Sandman.

How it could be, she did not know. Kitsune had warned them, but she had seen the Sandman and his brother, the Dustman, die with Ted Halliwell.

The Sandman pulled the struggling assassin to him and put the other hand over his face, smothering him. His palm sealed the assassin’s mouth-he clawed at the hand suffocating him, to no avail. Sand spilled from the assassin’s nostrils. His eyes were wide and frantic, but in seconds his struggles slowed and then ceased completely.

The monster let the assassin’s corpse fall to the ground. Then the Sandman bent, grabbed his head in both hands, and twisted it, breaking his neck with the snap of dry kindling.

“Julianna, run!” Collette shouted.

But she could not. At best, she had time to stagger back a few steps before the monster murdered her as well. Yet when the Sandman turned toward her, he made no move to attack.

The sand of his features re-formed itself, flowing and sifting. His cloak became a jacket. Julianna shook her head in disbelief. The Sandman and Dustman had destroyed one another, the substance of their bodies merged forever on that eastern mountain plateau with the bones of Ted Halliwell.

But she stared, now, into Halliwell’s face. Sculpted of sand, yes, and with the bowler hat and thick mustache of the Dustman, but she would know the detective anywhere. They had spent weeks together, searching for Oliver, searching for answers, trying to find a way home. Sometimes they had been friends, and sometimes strangers. But she knew him.

The eyes were his.

“Ted?”

This Halliwell-the creature of dust and sand-nodded.

“Julianna?” Collette ventured, coming closer, moving around to stand almost beside her, staring. When she inhaled sharply, Julianna knew she had recognized him as well.

“How?” Julianna asked.

The Dustman shrugged. “Some things are impossible. Doesn’t mean they aren’t real. We learned that one, didn’t we?”

A hand fluttered to her mouth. A kind of giddy relief went through her, despite all the horror that continued there in that place of war. Ted Halliwell had died before her eyes, but somehow he lived.

He lifted his gaze to her and one side of his mouth lifted in an odd grin, twitching his mustache. “I made it home. I saw her. I can go to Sara any time I want, now.”

Bittersweet tears threatened at the corners of her eyes. She felt so happy for him, but a sour knot twisted in her gut. Ted had died, but somehow it had freed him of this place. Julianna could never leave. And if dying was the price, she didn’t think she could pay.

“That’s wonderful,” she said.

But his eyes narrowed. He saw her pain, and understood.

“I wanted to come back, though. Had to make sure you were all right. That Hunyadi didn’t lose his throne.”

Collette glanced down at the assassin’s corpse. “That’s what you came back for? Justice?”

“Once a cop…” the Dustman replied, with Ted Halliwell’s voice.

Footsteps came from behind them. Julianna and Collette turned to see a wounded man come around the side of King Hunyadi’s tent. He had a hand over his stomach, blood soaking his bandages. In the other hand he carried a long dagger.

“Justice?” the man said, the word barely more than a grunt. “What does a monster know of justice?”

Collette grabbed Julianna’s arm, tried to pull her back. “Who the hell is this?”

Julianna blinked. The grim man’s face was familiar, but it took her a moment to place him. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she and Halliwell had sat on the patio at the cafe in Twillig’s Gorge, where they’d met Ovid Tsing for the first time.

“Mister Tsing-”

Ovid stalked toward Halliwell. He pointed with the dagger.

“You murdered my mother, detective.”

Halliwell flinched. “The Sandman-”

“No!” Ovid snapped. “I saw your face. I remembered you. You plucked out her eyes, and you ate them, and you smiled at me!”

Julianna froze.

The Dustman shook his head, and the sand sifted again, and now he was just Ted Halliwell. Still made of sand, but no bowler, no mustache, no coat. Just that cantankerous, aging cop who loved his daughter with his whole being.

Ovid lunged.

Halliwell did not move. He let the dagger come.

“No!” Julianna screamed, putting herself between them.

She felt Collette grab at her arm, trying to stop her, but the dagger plunged into her abdomen. All the breath rushed from her in a hiss of air and her body went rigid. Her eyes widened and she stared into Ovid Tsing’s face in surprise, then fell to her knees.

A flash of regret was the only sign that Ovid even noticed he had stabbed her.

Collette screamed her name and went to her, lifting up her head and talking to her. Julianna could barely hear the words. Collette pressed a hand against the knife wound, trying to stanch the bleeding, and then she began tearing at Julianna’s shirt.

But Julianna only stared at Ovid, the man who’d done it to her, and who advanced on the Dustman yet again.

Halliwell let him come.

“I’m sorry,” Ted said with sorrowful eyes. “I couldn’t stop him. I was…the Sandman kept me trapped inside and I couldn’t get out. I’m so sorry.”

He kept apologizing even as Ovid plunged the dagger into him again and again, stabbing his chest and neck and even his face. The blade slid in and out of the sand with a dry shushing. Ovid screamed and stabbed harder, gripping the dagger in both hands.

Halliwell had become the Dustman again, but still had those grieving eyes.

Ovid fell to the ground, the wound in his abdomen leaking blood badly now. Julianna saw that he had stabbed her in almost the precise spot where he himself had been injured.

He wept in frustration and helplessness.

Julianna looked up at Halliwell. He started toward her. His lips formed words of concern. Her head lolled to one side, and she looked up at Collette and smiled.

A single voice cut through the cloud of shock that had enveloped her.

“If you’d stayed in the dungeon, you’d have saved us all a great deal of trouble.”

The shadows cleared from her vision for just a moment and she shifted her gaze to see the pale face of Ty’Lis only a few feet away, hateful features framed by that yellow hair. His robes moved as though in some breeze that Julianna could not feel. The sorcerer had come for them. For Collette. For the Legend-Born.

Oliver, Julianna thought, wishing for him, as though upon a star.

Then she slipped away, into the darkness.

With the warmth of Kitsune’s body in his arms and her blood soaking into his shirt, Oliver stared at the figures floating in the air around the ice mountain Frost had made. Atlantis trembled, the water surged upward, now only ten or eleven feet below him. The winter man stood on a higher peak, the dead blue bird in his hands, and Leicester Grindylow beside him carrying the body of Cheval Bayard.

“They’re all Smith,” Oliver said.

He stared around at them-the giant and the female, the fearsome warrior, the scarred monstrosity, the thin wizard-and knew it had to be true. Each one of those figures, somehow, was the Wayfarer.

“Do you know what’s going on?” he asked Frost.

The winter man had become a jagged skeleton of ice. He shook his head, mystified.

Oliver turned his focus to the aged, withered Smith whose left eye socket was a scarred pit. At first, he’d thought this the Wayland Smith he knew, but then the others had come.