Henry drew the power from this ghost as well, drinking in its anger, fear, and even the faint spark of hope that had trapped it in the shade lands. Henry tasted the sick bitterness of love betrayed and a body tortured in the embrace of an iron lady. He felt screams rock through him and heard laughter answer his pleas for mercy. He took those memories and many more.
He drained away every agony from the trembling soul, taking them for his own, until the ghost ceased its struggle. Its fury dulled in his hands. Its cold light dimmed and at last it lay, no more than a helpless cinder, in his palm.
“Your rage is mine now and I will not forget the wrongs done you,” Henry whispered to the ghost. “Leave this place and let your sorrow be mine.”
He spat on the cinder and slowly it kindled to a hot gold light. Then Henry hurled it upward and it ignited like a firework, tracing brilliant streaks across the gloom as it tore free of the shade lands. And for just an instant, the darkness fell back, exposing a rolling landscape as white as bone.
Then the dank atmosphere closed in again.
The remaining hungry ghosts drew back from Henry’s reach, receding into the darkness. The goblin’s remains were stripped nearly to its skeleton. At Henry’s side Jason lay as still and wide eyed as a corpse.
Henry touched his cold cheek and Jason blinked.
“It was beautiful for a moment,” Jason murmured. He looked hollow and haunted. Then he asked, “Can I go home now?”
Chapter Five
A searing acidic sensation flared through Jason’s muscles and then both darkness and pain rolled back from his prone body. His eyes watered as if burned by chlorine, but he still made out the familiar expanse of pale blue sky above him.
Falk’s silhouette loomed over him, seeming almost black against the sudden flood of sunlight.
“You’re safe, Jason.” Then Falk staggered and crumpled to the ground like a slack sail.
For one moment Jason simply lay in the narrow alley beside Falk, reeling between horror and disbelief. He didn’t even know if he could move his arms or legs. His entire body burned and tingled with numbness.
The sweet, rotten stench of trash surrounded him and black flies darted between a nearby dumpster and Falk’s prone form. Jason clenched his eyes closed. He wanted to howl from the turmoil that this day had made of his carefully balanced life. He’d wanted to sob like a seven-year-old boy. Anger, pain, and fear churned through him with a force that sent tremors through his body. Or maybe that was just shock, he thought. Maybe he was just going to have a nervous breakdown right here and now.
But he fought to keep his terror down—fought to keep a grip on himself and regain the control that he’d spent years mastering. This entire day had been strange and frightening—he didn’t even understand half of it—but falling apart wouldn’t make anything better. It never did, he knew that.
With an effort, he pulled himself upright. He’d lost his glasses somewhere in the HRD Coffee Shop, but as he gazed down at Falk, the battered man looked dull, as if a shadow had fallen over him, blotting out that luminous quality that Jason had grown accustomed to. The front of his coat was dark with blood and his limbs seemed oddly stiff, as if rigor mortis had already set in.
Horror welled through Jason at the thought.
Agent Falk couldn’t be dead, Jason told himself. But he’d seen corpses before and instinctively recognized the lifeless slump of Agent Falk’s form. Still, he didn’t want to accept it, because he’d just met Agent Falk—just started to warm to his rough looks and crooked smile. And if he was dead, then it was Jason’s fault, because he’d fought to protect him; there could be no doubt that those three goblins had come after Jason.
He can’t be gone. He can’t be…
Despite the clumsy numbness of his limbs, Jason groped at Falk’s throat, feeling for a pulse. When at last he registered a faint kick beneath his fingers, the relief that washed over him was out of all proportion, verging on pure joy.
“Agent Falk?” Jason’s voice sounded as rough as his throat felt. “Agent Falk?”
Falk opened his eyes. His gaze seemed far away and Jason couldn’t tell if he could see him or not.
“Agent Falk?”
“Yeah…” His response could have been a low groan, but then he dragged in a rough breath and went on. “I’m with you…Give me a minute…”
“Should I call an ambulance?”
“No…Waste of their time. Just give me…a minute.” He pulled in another ragged breath and a little color seemed to come back to his cheeks. He blinked and his gaze rolled to meet Jason’s stare. “I should be able to walk the worst of this off.”
“There’s blood all over your coat—”
“It’s nothing. Most of it isn’t even mine.” Falk rolled to his side and then slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. “I don’t know what’s worse sometimes, going or coming back.”
Jason wasn’t certain he wanted to know exactly what Falk meant by that. He didn’t think he could stand too many more revelations today. He already felt so helpless against the onslaught of weirdness that this day had been.
Falk scrubbed at his face as if he were just waking up. His fingers left bloody tracks across his cheek, but he didn’t seem to take note of it.
“What about you?” Falk asked. “Are you all right? You think you can walk?”
Jason would have laughed at the question coming from Falk in his condition, but in truth he wasn’t sure if he could even stand.
When he tried, he discovered his limbs were alarmingly clumsy and weak. Still, he managed to rise to his feet. He swayed slightly and then steadied himself against the hard edge of a dumpster. “I’m just a little dazed and bruised, but I think I’m okay.”
“Good,” Falk replied, but he hardly moved. “We’ll need to get you holed up and call this into HQ as soon as possible.”
“I don’t have a cell phone—”
“Not secure in any case,” Falk cut him off. “I’ll worry about that once we get to your place…” One of Falk’s legs twitched, but he didn’t rise. He glanced up to Jason and a faint blue flame lit his eyes. “Give me a hand with this old sack of bones, will you?”
Jason knelt at his side. Up close he could see the gleam of fresh blood seeping through the front of Falk’s coat. His body felt hard and cold as ice as Jason wrapped an arm around him and helped him up to his feet.
“It’s going to be all right,” Falk told him. “Just trust me a little, you’ll see.”
There was absolutely no reason to believe that anything would be all right. Jason’s entire world had been altered and as far as he could work out he’d become some kind of commodity to goblins and magicians. And yet Falk’s words did ease him; maybe it was that tone of experience or maybe some spell, but Jason nodded and steadied Falk as they stumbled forward.
They staggered out from their shadowy alley into the bustle of the post-lunch rush on Turk Street.
Fortunately, they didn’t have far to go.
The weathered Victorian sprawl of the Avalon Apartments slumped over a dingy liquor store and a concrete laundromat like the remains of a wrecked ship. Decorative woodwork and paint had long ago weathered away and the rickety fire escape looked like it had been thrown on in a windstorm. Two ground floor windows were boarded over and the entryway reeked of urine from the number of drunks who had pissed themselves after passing out on the stoop.
“Avalon.” Falk’s voice was little more than a whisper, but Jason still noted the tone of irony. He’d thought the same thing on earlier occasions.
Inside, the grimy yellow wallpaper displayed a Rorschach test of water stains. The cage elevator bore a perpetual “out of order” proclamation and for the first time Jason resented it.
In truth, there were only three things to recommend the Avalon Apartments at all. First, the rent was cheap. Second, the locks worked. Third—and most importantly, this afternoon—it was not the sort of place where anyone took much note of two beaten, bloodstained men staggering up the stairs together. With so many drunks, junkies, outpatients, and social outcasts in residence, the sight of him and Falk merited little more response than a bloodshot glance from a half-dressed transvestite traipsing down in the opposite direction.