Chris Holm - The Wrong Goodbye

For the voice that spoke it was Elizabeth’s.

“Sam?”

I couldn’t breathe.

My lungs burned in my chest. My limbs prickled from lack of oxygen. Blind panic gripped me, and I thrashed about like a man drowning.

“Sam!”

I heard her call my name. My Elizabeth, I thought for a moment, but it wasn’t —not this time. Was it Ana? I wondered, feeling a pang of guilt at the notion —or rather, at the thrill that coursed unbidden through me, so soon after being in the presence of my life’s true love. But it wasn’t Ana, either. The voice was unaccented.

I opened my eyes, a monumental force of will, but everything was blurry and blue-black. I suppose that should have worried me, but it seemed secondary to the fact I couldn’t breathe.

“For fuck’s sake, Sam, would you hold still?”

A hand on my chest. Small. Dainty. Strong as a goddamn ox. It pinned me to the ground with such force, my panicked thrashing all but ceased. Then another hand cupped my jaw and, with forefinger and thumb, squeezed, forcing open my mouth. Only then did I realize why it was I couldn’t breathe.

Two fingers in my mouth. Instinctively, I fought, but the fingers’ owner paid me no mind. Instead, she carefully tweezed out the dry, scratchy bolus that blocked my airway, and tossed it to the dirt beside me.

I gulped air into my lungs, and the world around me steadied. My vision cleared, and I realized I’d seen vague blue-black because vague blue-black was all there was to see. I was lying in a small clearing on the canyon floor, the first faint tinge of morning light just bright enough to blot out the stars above, but not enough to allow me to make out the details of my surroundings.

I rolled over to one side, a dry cough rasping against the tender flesh of my throat. It felt like it’d been stuffed full of twigs. I poked at the ball that lay beside me, and realized I wasn’t far off —it appeared to be made of feathers, bone, and sinew, bound together with coarse twine.

Then I realized the arm I was propped up on was the one I’d dislocated —and yet it held my weight. I sat up —my kidneys not protesting, despite the beating they’d just taken —and rolled my shoulder joint a couple times to test it. It felt fine.

“Feeling better, Collector?”

Lilith. I should have known. Who else could have found me way the hell out here?

I spat, or tried. My mouth was dry as dust, and tasted like death. Believe me, I wish that were a colorful exaggeration, but it isn’t —and sadly, on this count, I’m in a position to know.

“Actually, yeah,” I said. “Though I could do with a mint. How long was I out?”

“A day, I’d say, give or take a couple hours.”

The news hit me like a fucking mallet. An entire day gone. Which meant I only had one left.

Lilith caught my wide-eyed panic, mistook it for anger. “Don’t look at me like that —had I not come along to rescue your sorry undead ass, it would have been a week. Quite a mess you’ve landed yourself in. Two dozen of the Fallen slaughtered at the hands of their Chosen kin —the first overt offensive since the Great War. And the rumor in the Depths is you’re to blame.”

“How’s that, exactly?”

“They say you led the Chosen here, though there’s some debate as to whether that was by incompetence or by design.”

“It wasn’t me.”

She looked dubious. “You were the only one Dumas’s seers detected; no one else was sensed entering the canyon. It’s possible they followed you without your knowledge–”

“It wasn’t me,” I repeated.

“Fine,” she said, showing me her palms. “It wasn’t you. Then who?”

“Whoever doped me up and left me here to rot,” I said. “Danny, I’m guessing.”

“But why? Why would he do such a thing? What would he stand to gain by inciting a new war between heaven and hell?”

“He doesn’t give a shit about the war. What he needed was a distraction so he could steal Dumas’s skim blade.”

“To what end?”

“Believe me,” I told her, “you don’t want to know.”

My body was wracked by a sudden coughing fit. I doubled over, hacking till I damn near puked. When I was done, the ground in front of me was littered with mottled gray feathers.

“Here,” she said, passing me a leather canteen. “Drink this.”

I did. It was filled with coarse red wine, which burned my savaged throat as it went down, and filled my belly with warmth. I shivered at the sudden shock of it, only then realizing how chill the night air around me was.

“Are you cold?” Lilith asked. I nodded, wine dribbling down my chin as I drank. “I believe I can remedy that.” She snapped her fingers, and from her thumb and forefinger sprung a single dancing flame. She touched it to a rough-hewn, makeshift structure of scrub brush and gnarled wood beside me, about the size of a small coffee table —a structure that looked suspiciously like an altar —and, with a dry crackle, it caught fire, casting an ever-shifting circle of orange light across the canyon floor. For a moment I was blinded, and sat huddled by its warmth, seeing little of the world around me. Then, as my eyes adjusted, I realized there were shapes all round us in the darkness, lying immobile in a perfect circle at the edge of the firelight’s glare.

I peered at them, struggling to see. A coiled snake. A bird of prey. A jackrabbit lying on its side, one ear jutting skyward. Possums, prairie dogs, armadillos, assorted sundry lizards —all gathered around us like they’d come to watch, to see what disturbed the quiet of this desert night.

But they hadn’t come to watch, and they didn’t see a thing.

They were all still. All silent. All dead.

Lilith caught me eyeing them and smiled, though her smile was tinged with sadness. “Sadly, all magic requires sacrifice,” she said. “These creatures gave their lives to bring you back. Willingly, I might add. I simply bade them come and come they did, so eager were they to assist me in my task. You should be honored.”

“Right,” I said. “I’m sure they came on account of I’m such a great guy, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact the woman calling them is the embodiment of seduction itself.”

“You flatter me, Collector,” she said, in a husky tone that sent a shiver of longing down my spine.

“Just a statement of fact. And I see we’re back to ‘Collector’ now.”

“Excuse me?”

“As I was coming to, you called me Sam.”

She laughed, then. Good Lord, did Lilith have a laugh. “I wouldn’t get used to it, were I you. I was merely trying to guide you safely back to the land of the living —or, at least, what passes for it in your hobbled, damned existence. Said journey is not without its peril.”

“Yeah, I gathered that right around the time I almost got noshed on by some angry calamari. I’m guessing that wasn’t just some harmless nightmare.”

“Nightmare, yes. Harmless, no.”

“Had you been calling me long?” I asked, perhaps too casually.

Lilith cocked her head quizzically. “I suppose.” My face must have dropped at that, because she followed it up with a somewhat put-out, “Why —should I not have brought you back?”

“No —it’s not that. It’s just… as I surfaced… I thought you were someone else, is all. My Elizabeth.”

“ Your Elizabeth? My word, Collector —don’t tell me after all these years you still cling to the pathetic delusion of the living that is love. You’ve been around long enough to learn that love is nothing more than chemical attraction —meat attracting meat for the purpose of making more meat. Don’t get me wrong —with human life as short and pointless as it is, one can hardly blame them for fooling themselves into thinking there’s something more to it. But you of all people should realize there’s not —and that thinking otherwise leads to naught but damnation and regret.”