ADVISORY: CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF DOMESTIC ABUSE AND VIOLENCE.

CHAPTER ONE

Pain was the first sensation. A gray haze that floated at the edge of perception and reached deeper into his awareness with snaking, insubstantial tendrils. He drifted at the edge of consciousness, not quite sure he wanted to be awake, not yet ready to admit that he had survived. There was peace in the darkness, where there was no pain, no worry, no threat.

“Joe.”

The voice was sweet, a light and melodious sound that drew him from the shadows, coaxed him into rising from the murk. There was a pressure on his brow that he realized was a hand. Something tickled his cheek. Breath. He smelled roses, and soap, and antiseptic. The pain squeezed him, forcing his soul to surge upward and outward. Light blossomed wetly in his eyes. An angel was leaning over him, her eyes shining, beaming a million-watt smile at him.

“Hi,” Kelly said. “You're awake.”

He tried to smile but it hurt too much. “You're safe,” were his first words. She laughed, but it was good natured and happy, joyful. It was a sight to warm a dead man's heart.

Kelly touched his face gently. “I can't believe how brave you were,” she said. “He could have killed you. And you didn't back down. I think you're the bravest man I've ever met.”

Joe wasn't sure which he was blushing at more, the fact that she was obviously so enamored of him, that she thought he was brave, or that her proximity aroused feelings in him he had struggled so long to deny for fear of ridicule or rejection. He achieved the smile finally, and everything was right again.

Others crowded in, but Kelly would not be moved. She stayed by his side, clutching his hand while his mother's wrinkled face and the stern scowl of his best friend Tyler pressed for attention along with tsking nurses and sad-eyed doctors. It would have been nice to see more friends gathered around him, but he wasn't the type to have friends. He was lucky to have Kelly.

No, he was beyond lucky. Although, as the pain medication began to wear off, he thought to himself that luck was a very relative term. He was going to be just fine, the faces told him, almost as good as new. It would take some time to fully heal, that was all. The bruises would last a week, the broken bones would mend in months, and some surgery would realign his nose and fix the patch of hair he'd lost when Kelly's father had struck him with the baseball bat.

The memory hit him almost as hard as the bat had. Carl Jones was a massive man, easily six and a half feet tall and two hundred fifty pounds. He was daunting, especially to a kid who weighed half as much and stood a full head shorter. He was like a towering Goliath whose shadow smothered Joe. He was crazed, his face burning with unfathomable, murderous rage. And Joe was his target. Until a few moments earlier, Kelly had been the one Carl was going to kill with the bat. Her mother already lay unconscious behind him, the price for trying to dissuade the huge man. Kelly was screaming, begging Joe to run, to save himself. And he'd stood his ground. He'd stared into Carl's eyes and told him in a strangely firm voice that he would not allow Kelly to be harmed. Carl had laughed in response. The bat made a whistling sound as it rushed through the air. Joe never heard the sound of it making contact with his skull. The world vanished behind explosions of light inside his eyes. Between the flashes Joe saw Carl, always with his arms upraised, the bat preparing to descend. Joe took every blow, had miraculously stayed conscious until the police had arrived.

Then came the dreams. The long, dark dreams where he swam through inky skies above a fire swept plain. He'd heard the growling voice of God. He'd known he was going to die.

Yet here he was. Alive, with Kelly at his side. Carl was in jail and would stay there. Everything was going to be okay. He closed his eyes for a moment.

And opened them hours later, aware he had been asleep only when he awoke again. The sun was setting, had already set, shafts of burnished copper etching strange patterns on the far wall as they filtered through the plastic slats of the blinds. The air in the room felt cooler. There were less people now. Turning his head, Joe saw his tired mother dozing in a chair by the wall. The motion alerted Kelly and she was by his side in an instant.

“Hi,” she said, bright smile competing with the sun.

“You're still here,” he said.

“I told you I would be.”

He tilted his head. “You did?”

“The doctors said you might have some memory loss,” she replied. “It's okay. I'll remind you.” She leaned over him and kissed him. Her lips were soft. She smelled of raspberries.

Even her eyes were smiling when she pulled away from him. “I remember,” he said, and he did. He stared at her, drinking in her surreal beauty. Her blonde hair, normally the color of fine sand, seemed to shine in the twilight. High cheekbones bespoke Nordic ancestry, the finely chiseled features of a model. Her white teeth were perfectly straight, her blue eyes extraordinarily deep, ears perfectly level, lips full and red without benefit of lipstick. She was a cheerleader, and her toned athletic body had very little fat. She touched his face tenderly with long fingers tipped with pink-painted nails. Her skin was flawless, but milky pale. He looked at her, and he felt the same emotion ripping through him as he'd felt the first time she'd touched him this way.

“I love you,” he told her. The words were like a release. The world fell into perfect focus. He was centered, balanced, complete.

“I love you too, Joe,” she said, blushing. She kissed him again, wet lips lingering on his. “I'm yours forever, Joe. You know that.”

He knew. She'd told him that before, and he had doubted then. Not now. “We'll be together forever,” he told her. “Right?”

She looked pained. “Of course,” she said. “Of course we will.”

“You still want to get married, right?”

“Oh, Joe,” she gushed, laying her cheek against his shoulder. “I love you more than anything. I thought you were going to die. You know? I thought he'd killed you. I was so, so scared.” Her hand clutched the blanket covering him, partially pulling it off him to reveal his bare chest covered with sensors attaching him to the machines. “You're so much stronger than me. I could never...I couldn't have...”

He managed to put his arm around her, and to hold her closer to his side. She felt so sleight, like a trembling ghost. “Yes, you would have,” he said to her. “I know you would have. And if you'd taken a beating for me, I'd be where you are now. I'd be by your side, reminding you how much you're loved, and how much I'm committed to you. I'd tell you we were going to get married.”

She looked at him sharply, emotion clouding her eyes. “Married?” she repeated. Her quivering lips split into another of her wondrous smiles. “You mean it?”

“Of course I mean it,” he said. He risked a glance at his mother to make sure she was still sleeping. They'd get over that hurdle when they got to it. There was enough to worry about as it was. She lay her hand on the exposed part of his chest. Her touch made him shiver, and that in turn made her laugh.

“You've always been so ticklish,” she said. Her fingers made slow circles on his skin, leaving hot trails that seemed to sink into his heart. He shivered again, but there was fire in him now. A deep passion welled up from some unfathomable source. He wanted to embrace her, to hold her, to squeeze her until every bit of her essence merged with his own. She lay her palm flat above his heart. He gasped.

“Kelly,” he spoke her name like a paean. There was electricity in the air, in him.

“I want you to know that I've never loved anyone the way I love you,” she said quietly, continuing to press her hand to his chest. “I wanted to give you something special. It's all I have to give.”

“What?” he rasped, confused. She lifted her hand. The heat he felt spread rapidly to fill his body and, as quickly as it had come, it vanished, leaving him cold and shivering. Kelly kissed the spot where her hand had touched. She looked up at him, resting her chin on his breast, smiling. He didn't know what to say.

The nurse appeared in the doorway. “I'm sorry,” she said, grinning at them unapologetically. “Visiting hours are over.”

“I have to go,” Kelly said.

“I don't want you to.”

“I know.” She looked sad. Infinitely remorseful. “If anything happens, Joe,” she began.

“Why should anything happen?” he broke in, alarmed. He tried to sit up, but the IV restrained long enough for the nurse to reach his side and pushed him back onto his pillow. “You're going to be all right. Right, Kelly?” His voice was tremulous, his eyes intense. She almost cringed.

“Of course I will be,” she told him. “The worst is behind us, Joe. Nothing but smooth sailing ahead. Remember, you promised to marry me. I'm not going to let you wiggle out of that one.”

The nurse raised one eyebrow, obviously not all that impressed with the promises of young love. With pursed lips and a slight scowl, not quite aimed at Kelly, she urged Kelly to leave Joe's side, and she did so reluctantly, lingering until their fingertips were all that touched. Then she was gone, smiling through tears he could not quite decide were sorrowful or merely regret. Either way, it pained him to see her unhappy, despite the intense love obvious in her shining eyes. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

“Yeah,” she called back as she reached the doorway. It opened to reveal two policemen waiting in the hall. Joe's eyes widened in confusion, but his mother, awake again, was by his side and lay a restraining hand on his arm to calm him.

“She has to go into protective custody,” she told him. “Just a precaution.”

“But her dad's in jail,” he argued, still trying to rise. The door was swinging shut, blocking his view of her face, her shining eyes. He ached for her, wanted more than anything to jump from that bed and run to her. If he could wrap his arms around her, he knew he could protect her. “I don't understand,” he whined.

“It's a precaution,” his mother repeated. She didn't seem to understand her son's agitation. “They think he might have been into something, some kind of criminal enterprise. He might have had partners.”

Joe stared at the door, now closed. “That makes no sense,” he said. Yet, somehow, it did. There was something buzzing in his brain, thoughts he wasn't quite sure belonged to him. “She's in danger,” he said.

His mother mistook the statement as a question. “I doubt she's in any real danger,” she told him. “Whatever they were after I'm sure they won't expect Kelly or her mother to know about it.”

“About what?” he asked, more confused than ever.

She put her hand on his forehead. “I'm going to ask the doctor to come take another look at you. Maybe that concussion is worse than they thought.”

“What?”

“I told you all about this the last time you were awake,” she said patiently. “You don't remember? It's okay. It'll come back to you, I guess. She was here by your side the whole time. She's a good girl, Joe.”

His mind was spinning. So was the room. “I know,” he said. Something started beeping. His mother looked away. Shadows in the corners of the room seemed to stretch out like ghostly hands. He felt his pulse pounding, could almost hear it in his own ears. The world expanded until he had the sense that he was in a vast cathedral with sounds echoing from distant walls. A nurse appeared above him, face swimming in his vision. She spoke, but he couldn't make out what she said.

The shadows became shapes. Little men crawled over the ceiling, skin as dark as midnight, and they looked down on Joe from their high vantage with hungry charcoal eyes. He pointed at one of them, but the nurse grabbed his wrist and pulled the arm down again. Something sharp jabbed his arm. The shadow-men seemed to be laughing at him.

“Don't leave me, Kelly,” he said to anyone who would listen. His blood was a rushing flood in his veins, the roar of its flow drowning out the sounds of the world. Everything was slipping away, and dark laughter rippled through his soul. He wondered if this was what it was to die.

A sudden vision filled the air in front of him, like a picture torn through the atmosphere of a far-off place and time. Police lights flashed against suburban homes, illuminating a crowd of onlookers in their housecoats and pajamas. Uniformed men shuffled back and forth, eyes downcast or glaring sternly about, impotent in grief and frustration. He heard Kelly speaking to him, her voice muffled and broken, the words almost meaningless. She was telling him to not be afraid. She was telling him goodbye.

Joe sobbed loudly. The heat in his chest erupted into a volcanic flow. The shadow-men dropped from the ceiling toward him, spreading sinewy arms to embrace him. Something dark and powerful surged out of him to meet them, consuming them in mid-air. They shrieked and were gone. And everything around him swirled into indistinct haze, vanishing behind an ebony wall. He whispered her name again, so softly that no one around him could hear, and he dropped heavily into the well of sleep.

CHAPTER TWO

Sleep was a burden Joe could not carry well. He was haunted by the same dreams that rolled across his psyche in ever varying forms. He saw himself in a burning wheat field or buried in ice. He was as big as a redwood, or squashed into dark, rocky crevice. And always there was the sound of thunder from a midnight black sky. He would rise on ebony wings, no longer human, only to sink again into a sea of roiling dark waters. Eventually, the sedation began to wear off, and his dreams became truly disturbing.

School had never been pleasant for Joe. Always branded a nerd or some other term that kept him on the fringes of social groups, he had buried himself in studies, even those that were never assigned to him. His knowledge base expanded and his reputation as a geek affirmed. He never once dreamed he would get someone like Kelly to be interested in him. He sometimes thought that he must be the victim of an especially cruel prank, and yet no one ever jumped out to yell “surprise,” or to let him off the hook.

Certainly, Kelly never had. In his dream he was at the party again, the one he'd been accidentally invited to. He'd helped one of the football players pass a test, and that had been his reward. Two hours of lurking in corners nursing the same cup of warm beer, trying to pretend he belonged. Naturally the cheerleaders were there, and just as naturally the looked at him as if he were something gooey stuck to the bottom of a shoe. Until Kelly arrived, anyway. She was a vision, radiant and effusive, bringing smiles wherever she went. Joe had thought, when she spoke to him, that she was just being polite. The touch of her hand on his arm was warm and inviting, and her eyes were deep wells of azure, like captured summertime sky. It wasn't until later that he realized the smile she favored him with was not the same smile she gave to everyone else.

He relived it in his dream. Walking into the darkened bedroom looking for his coat. Finding Kelly sitting on the bed weeping. Sitting next to her uninvited and unspurned, comforting her, the way she sank into his embrace as if she had always meant to be there. When he'd kissed her, she had not flinched, she had not been afraid. She had returned every ounce of his affection with equally anxious emotion. The bedroom dissolved and became the grass commons at school, and she was still in his arms, still kissing him, not caring who saw them or what was said. The beautiful cheerleader and the quiet nerd, quite the odd couple. In his dream he didn't see the sneers or hear the rude comments. He had seen enough of her pain in real life, how she'd struggled against expectations to be true to her heart, as he so fervently hoped she was being. Time passed, seasons changed, their love deepened in unguessable ways.

And then had come the night everything changed.

Carl Jones was a large man, frightening in his appearance, and just as gruff as his demeanor suggested. Kelly brought him home to meet her family only once, and he'd been struck by the similarities to his own mother and father. Joe's mother, Loretta, was a soft-spoken woman who had suffered years of verbal abuse from her husband before finally leaving him. It had put her and her son into deep financial distress, but Joe had never faulted her for her decision. She was strong in ways he could only wish for himself. Kelly's mother had the same haunted look Loretta once wore, and it was easy for Joe to guess that Carl was much the same as his own father. Here, though, it was Kelly who was the strong one. She stood up to her father and escaped his subsequent wrath, though it left her wracked with guilt. Her father would not touch her, but her mother often received punishment for Kelly's actions. Such as choosing Joe over the star of the football team.

Joe felt himself rising through the memories like a balloon on the wind. He saw the faces of his friends changing from incredulity to surprised belief, Kelly's shining smile as they made love for the first and only time, the eventual acceptance from those who would not have preferred their cliques be compromised by such a union. He felt again the joy of burgeoning love, the terror of thinking he was going to lose her, the determination that death would be preferable to loss. It was why he had gone to her house that night. It was how he found the courage to stand up to Carl. It was why he was here, in a hospital, and Kelly was...

What? It was there in his mind, the answer. He already knew the outcome. He swam upward through his battering thoughts, clawing skyward, trying to scream but unable to make a sound. There was an angel overhead, bright shining wings and glowing halo, streamers of glory surrounding her lithe form. She beckoned to him, weeping his name, and he could not climb high enough to reach her. Smokey hands closed in like claws, tearing the sky asunder. The angel was thrown from the sky and fell past him in a fiery arc, and it was only in passing that he realized the angel wore Kelly's face. And the claws reached next for him as the rift they'd created widened to reveal Carl's snarling, laughing face with eyes glowing a dangerous crimson. Joe found his voice at last and screamed his anguish in a single word.

“Kelly!”

He sat up in bed so quickly he ripped his IV from his arm. Alarms sounded and moments later a nurse rushed in to find him trying to get out of bed, chest heaving and eyes wild with remnants of his dream. More hands joined the nurse's and they managed to get him back into bed. Someone produced a syringe, someone else held his arm. “No,” he told them. They didn't listen. He spoke his refusal again, more firmly, and the woman holding the needle paused.

“Stop,” Loretta told them, crowding in from the side. “He doesn't need to sleep anymore. He'll be okay. Please!”

The nurse with the syringe brought the needle closer to his arm, not listening. Joe spoke again, saying “No!” as firmly but as quietly as he could. The syringe flew from the nurse's hand as if slapped and embedded itself point first in the wall. Everyone froze and stared at it, then at him. He had not moved, could not have moved with so many hands holding him tightly. Then, as if a cloud passed over the scene, the nurses and orderlies released him. They backed away a bit confused, as though unable to fully recall why they were there. Loretta spoke to them, not noticing their condition, eyes only on her son. Eyes brimming with tears he was not at all certain were for him.

They left, leaving the needle sticking in the wall, forgotten. Loretta fussed with the sheets, smoothing them and easing her son back under them. The tension drained out of him. “I'm okay,” he told his mother, feeling the same firmness in his voice that he'd used on the nurses.

Her brow furrowed as if in confusion, and then she said brightly, “Of course you are. I kept telling them all you needed was sleep. Why look at you, the bruises are almost gone already.”

Startled, Joe touched his face and could feel it was true. The swelling had gone down dramatically, and some of the scabs flaked off on his fingers. “How long was I asleep?” he asked, alarmed.

“Just through the night,” his mother answered. Her cheerful demeanor faltered then failed completely. Frowning again, she told him, “Joe, there's something I need to tell you.”

Fear, like icewater, chilled him to the extremities. It was almost as if he knew what she was going to tell him. The vision of his dream flooded his thoughts, and the bright early morning sunlight filtering through the window seemed to dim. The door opened again and a doctor in a long white coat entered, scribbling on a clipboard. Loretta looked away from Joe in dismay, unhappy to be interrupted now when she'd finally gotten up her courage, when she had been waiting for him to awaken so that she could tell him...

Joe shook his head. It was almost as if he could read her thoughts, and what he found there was too unpleasant to contemplate. She turned away from him and to the doctor, asking about his health, his healing, when he could go home. Joe barely listened. He heard again Kelly's anguished scream, saw her falling like an angelic meteor from the sky, and relived again the helplessness of his nightmare. He looked up to find the doctor by his side, penlight in hand.

“How're we feeling, Sport?” he asked in mock cheerfulness. He pried each of Joe's eyes open and shone the light into them. “Looks like you're feeling better.”

“I am,” Joe replied. He winced as the doctor probed his ribs. The doctor chuckled as if he'd caught Joe in a lie. “When can I get out of here?”

“Probably tomorrow.”

“That soon?” Loretta asked, surprised.

The doctor nodded as he continued to probe Joe's body. “I'll take another look at the x-rays,” he said, “but I think the original diagnosis might have been too harsh. I don't see any sign of concussion here, and his broken ribs seem to be mending quite well. This accident occurred two days ago?”

“Day before yesterday,” Joe said. “I mean...I think so?”

“Tuesday,” Loretta said. “It happened on Tuesday. Today is Thursday, Joe.”

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Just past nine-thirty,” the doctor told him without looking at his watch. “Tell you what, I'll order another set of x-rays just to be sure. Maybe some more bloodwork. You really seem to be feeling better than yesterday.”

“Why wouldn't I be?” Joe smirked. “I'm in a hospital. Shouldn't I be getting better?”

“Maybe not this fast,” the doctor answered. He rested his elbow on one wrist and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I understand they had to give you a sedative last night. Nightmares?”

Joe frowned. “Yeah.”

“Do you think you'll need any today?”

“Why should I need any today?” he asked curiously. “I think I've slept enough.”

The doctor's eyes widened. He looked to Loretta and asked, “You haven't told him?”

Loretta, looking stricken, was unable to meet Joe's glare. “There hasn't been time,” she said weakly. “He only just woke up a few minutes ago. And then...” Her eyes drifted to the syringe embedded in the wall. The doctor, though, was staring hard at Joe.

There was a monster clawing at the insides of Joe's stomach. “Tell me what?” he asked, though he was already certain he knew what they would say.

“Um,” the doctor began, then cleared his throat expressively. “Son, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but...there's been an incident.”

“You mean an accident?” Joe spoke quietly, numb.

“No, Son,” the doctor replied. “I mean an incident. The girl who was here yesterday, the blonde, she was your girlfriend?”

Was, Joe repeated in his mind, rolling the word around like a bad-tasting lozenge. “What about her? Mom? What happened to Kelly?”

“Oh, Joe,” Loretta gasped, bursting into tears. “She's dead, Joe. I'm so sorry, but she's dead.” She clutched his arm as if she were the one in need of support, body wracked with grief. But Joe felt nothing. It was difficult to be shocked by what you already knew had happened.

“How?” was all he said.

The doctor spoke when it seemed Loretta could not. “From what I understand,” he said in a slow monotone, “her father escaped custody and found her. Two police officers died as well.” He added the last as if it might put Kelly's death in perspective, and Joe stared at him as though looking at an idiot. The doctor blanched under the scrutiny and took a step back. His apparently complacent bedside manner evaporated.

“You can go,” Joe said in dismissal. The doctor looked more relieved than surprised at being spoken to in such a way. Joe didn't pay attention to the man as he retreated out of the room, and instead reached for his mother who leaned against him shaking, sobbing. He held her, as though she were the one in most need of comfort, while inside he felt his soul withering. His heart had turned to stone. Right then, the world was less real than a dream, less tangible than the nightmare which had come so sickeningly true.

He continued to drift on that sea of dislocation, a part of the events which unfolded around him and yet separate, no longer anchored. The hospital therapist came to talk to him about dealing with grief. He listened politely. He had thought once that he was going to be the one who died, and he had been forced to give up his fear of death entirely. When he'd stood between Kelly and her crazed father, knowing Carl was going to kill either him or her, he'd made his choice. The grave held no terror for him anymore.

But it was one thing to lose one's fear of death, and quite another to accept the deaths of those you loved. It was like looking at the world through panes of glass, watching them shatter, and seeing that it was just a façade, a thinly veiled illusion behind which was only blackness, a vast emptiness that swarmed with wiggling shadows.

So, he remained patient throughout the parade of well-meaning visitors. He wanted to scream at them for their insane sympathy. He was alive. Kelly was dead. Nothing would ever, ever change that. He was not cheered when his best friend Tyler came by with his bad jokes and pockets full of Magic: The Gathering trading cards. He didn't feel better when late in the afternoon a group of Kelly's cheerleader friends came calling, faces wet and streaked with runny mascara, like they'd been weeping black tears. Two pastors, the school counselor, several of his teachers and even a group of old ladies from his neighborhood who trooped in with a cake and two pies, all tried to alleviate his grief as if they had any inkling just how deeply he was wounded.

Sunset came as a relief. Brown light faded against the wall as the sun crawled down into its subterranean lair. The stream of visitors trickled to a drip, and then ended. Someone took away the pies. Loretta ended the day as she'd begun, dozing in a chair in the corner, and Joe sat brooding in his bed. The IV had been reattached, the monitors chirped through their sentinel watch. Occasionally a nurse looked in, but mostly they left him alone. The only one who came in after visiting hours was drawn by curiosity, wondering how a syringe had come to be a wall decoration. Night came on like an oily tide. By the gentle light of the hospital machines, alone with only his mother's snoring, Joe finally gave in to his grief and wept. The tears leaked through his fingers as he fought to keep his sobs silent. He shivered as they wet his chest, as the pain drained out of him and left him achingly hollow. When he couldn't cry anymore, he pushed his face into his pillows and slept.

The dreams were different this time. He was a floating apparition hovering over his supine body. Everything was there in exquisite detail, more real than real, a world devoid of shadows wherein light diffused through everything. The world made of painted glass. He drifted to his mother and touched her cheek. She looked tired even in rest. She didn't deserve to have to worry over him anymore. He decided to leave. And with that thought he felt himself flying away, passing through walls and floors, dropping down almost without control until he arrived in a small, cluttered room with rows of half-empty vending machines, round tables, and plastic chairs. He had the overwhelming certainty that this was where he was supposed to be, where he had to be.

The door opened and two men entered. The first was in a set of the ubiquitous green scrubs, the second in white. Both were large black men, ID tags dangling from their chests. “I'm telling you, dude,” the first said as the door swung shut behind them, “it was fucked up. I was there and it was fucked up.”

“I've seen dead people before,” said the second man. He dug some change from his pocket and bought a cup of coffee from one of the machines.

“Not like this you ain't,” the first man said. “The guy must have been on crystal meth or something. Tore through the cops like they weren't there. And what he did to his wife. Damn! I didn't know people could do that to other people.”

“You should come down to the morgue then,” his friend replied. He took his friend's coffee from him, sipped it, made a face, and handed it back. “Too sweet. And you curse too much.”

“Don't start.”

“I'm just saying, a little faith in your life wouldn't be a bad thing. Jesus is who gets me through a shift.”

The man in green rolled his eyes, but Joe could tell he wasn't actually annoyed. He stared into the murky depths of his coffee, somber and introspective. “I heard they got them downstairs,” he said.

“You heard wrong.”

“Where else would they take them? You know our morgue is where they send the worst murder victims.” He shuddered.

“Not this time.” The man in white leaned heavily on the table. “I'm telling you, Robbie, I'm thinking about changing jobs. I used to think nothing of it. All those dead people didn't mean anything. I mean, their souls aren't there anymore. You know? But that girl...”

Joe was instantly alert. The man in green, Robbie, looked up at his friend, hearing something in the other man's voice that bothered him. “You said they weren't brought here,” he said.

“Not the mother, no. They took her to Columbia to study. The dead cops too. The girl, she wasn't touched, she was just dead. So, they brought her here. I'm telling you, I don't think she's all the way dead.”

Robbie snorted. “And here I thought you were the religious one, Charles. You think people get left behind?”

“That's not what I meant,” Charles said with a sharp shake of his head. “I know she's dead, and I know the angels come to take away the souls of the departed. It's just...I can't explain it. I put her into the cooler, and there was this presence. She's special, Robbie. Real special.”

Joe didn't wait to hear more. He knew what he had to do. The journey back to his body was swift, and when he opened his eyes he wondered, briefly, if the scene in the employee break room had been just another dream. Yet his dream about Kelly had come true. Carefully, he sat up in bed. His mother snored beneath a thin blanket, curled into her chair. He leaned over and flipped the alarms on the monitors off. It hurt to pull the IV out, but he didn't hesitate to do so. He wobbled a bit when he stood up. It hurt to take a deep breath. Holding his side, he made his way to the door.

The morgue was in the basement. He had to sneak past the nurse's station, down three flights, bypass whatever security there might be, and all that just to see the corpse of his dead girlfriend. He never considered that it might not be worth it. Something was compelling him to act, and he had no intention of resisting. He took the deepest breath he could and opened the door.

CHAPTER THREE

The floor in the hallway was cold on his bare feet. He was acutely aware that he was nude beneath the hospital gown because his extremities kept getting in the way of his attempts to crouch and be stealthy. He kept to the wall as he approached the nurses’ station. There were two nurses there, idly gossiping. Joe paused just beyond their sight, took a deep, slow breath, and then dropped down to crawl. He would have to get past them on the other side in order to reach the stairs, which he figured would provide better concealment than the elevator. The nurses were sure to see him, so he would have to run for it.

It hurt to crawl. His knees ached just slightly more than the bruises on his arms and chest. The nurses laughed and he froze. He tried to get lower but the pain in his ribs wouldn't let him. He gasped loudly as he fell forward onto his hands. The nurses stopped talking, and he heard a chair scrape as one of them stood. Joe pressed himself to the wall wanting desperately to vanish into it, wishing there was someplace he could hide.

His skin felt suddenly warm, the way it had when Kelly had touched him the day before. The nurse appeared, peering around the side of the desk. She looked right at him, and then away. Left, right, her head swung and her eyes slid over him without seeing him. “It's nothing,” she said with a shrug.

“I could have sworn I heard a gasp,” said the other, appearing behind the first. But she, too, looked past Joe as if he wasn't there. He was confused. He was in plain sight, so how could they not see him? Laughing, the nurses disappear behind the desk again.

Joe managed to get his legs under him and sat down on the cold floor. He wasn't sure what had just happened. Looking around to confirm he really was in the light, that he wasn't hidden or suddenly invisible, he couldn't explain it. The warmth on his skin deepened so that the tiles on his bare behind seemed frigid by comparison. The pain in his chest faded, and so did the ache in his joints. He felt curiously buoyant. His head felt light, as though he had lost mass. Confidence made him dizzy.

He pushed himself up onto his feet, tottered a moment, then walked slowly forward. The nurses came into view again, over the counter of the station. One faltered in the middle of a story she was relating, as though catching something from the corner of her eye, but neither of them seemed to see him. Joe wasn't in any condition to question it. It was a miracle, and he was going to use it to full advantage. Continuing to move slowly, he walked by the nurses and to the door leading to the stairs, never stopping. He opened the door carefully, wincing when the hinges creaked. He stepped into the stairwell, and when the door was firmly closed behind him, he sagged against the wall, the warmth and strange energy vanishing together. He shivered violently. The pain returned like a hammer, making him want to vomit, but he held it in check. No one came after him. The nurses, for whatever reason, really hadn't seen him. He sighed and started down the stairs.

The lights flickered a few times, giving him pause. Still, there was no sound of alarm. A door opened below. Joe paused as someone moved down a flight and exited the stairwell again. He reached the bottom level without incident and was almost disappointed. He emerged into a dimly lit area that smelled strongly of preservatives, cleaning fluids, and something he didn't ever want identified.

Later, he couldn't recall how he found the morgue among the labyrinth of corridors and rooms in the basement of the hospital. He would arrive at a conjunction of hallways, and something would tug him in one direction. The same way his dream-spirit had seemed to know exactly where to go to find the employee break room, his waking self or something beneath the surface of his thoughts was guiding him. He wasn't even aware, most of the time, that he was moving. The world seemed to glide past him while he stood still. And, perhaps because it was so late, or because he walked under the auspice of some divine providence, he met only one person on his journey, a bored looking guard who walked past the shadowy alcove in which Joe hid without a sideways glance.

The morgue was strangely clean considering the activity which took place here. On the left were three stainless steel tables beneath inactive surgical lights, with drains on one end and a hose at the other. The tile looked freshly scrubbed, almost as if it had never known the tread of human feet. Light came from small fixtures on the walls emitting a subdued blue light. Most of the walls were cabinets, and most of those were locked. Everything else was laid out in neat stacks or rows, kept in sterling glass jars, arranged in precise formations. It looked more like a museum set-piece than a place where the dead were violated.

The right wall was a bank of metal doors each two feet square. Perfect size for the bodies. Joe shivered and moved toward them slowly, reluctantly. He couldn't remember why he had felt it so important to come here. There was nothing more to be done. She was gone, stolen away forever. All that remained was a cold shell drained of everything that was vital and wonderful. But there was her name on a handwritten index card shoved into a holder on one door. He lay his hand on the steel hesitantly.

“Hello, Kelly,” he said softly. His voice echoed from the lifeless walls as though mocking his grief. Anger gave him confidence and he jerked the door open before he could lose his nerve. The body inside the cavity he revealed was sheathed in a white covering. With a shaking hand, he grasped the handle on the tray holding the body and pulled it out. The casters squealed and he jumped.  The body was only halfway out, but he couldn't bring himself to touch it again. Nor could he make himself uncover her. Whatever her father had done to her, it had left wounds that stained the sheet hiding her. He had really thought he wanted this, to see her one last time, but now he knew that he didn't want this to be his last memory of her.

Instead, he tried to just lay his hand on her, a gesture to let her know he was there, that he had not and would not forget her. He couldn't even do that. Tears splashed over his cheek in a salty hot ambush of emotion. He sobbed and had to clutch the side of the table for support. “Kelly,” he gasped as pain wracked him. His knees gave up their strength and spilled him onto the floor. All he could do was curl into a fetal position and let the sorrow take him where it would. Kelly was gone, an all the love he'd known had been turned to bitter ashes in the void she left behind in his heart. She had changed him twice, once by her life and again by her death. He wasn't sure who or what he would become next.

He hadn't noticed the lights dimming until he saw the shadows closing in through watery vision. A power outage, maybe, only the hospital had its own power generator. Didn't it? Yet the lights were dimming, were gone, leaving him in darkness. But not alone. He could sense something was there, a presence moving through the darkness. The darkness itself was alive, prowling a deeper black void like a predator stalking prey. And Joe was the prey.

He pushed himself to a sitting position, wiping and rubbing his eyes. It didn't help him see better. He'd gone blind in a world of deepest night. His groping hand found the wall of tombs and he pulled himself up as quickly as he could. A breath of frozen air caressed his ankles. A fetid smell seized the air, choking him, masking even the antiseptic reek of the corpses. Fear clutched his soul. It was primeval, an ancient terror that no amount of evolution erase. He knew what it was that stalked him. It was Death.

He straightened his spine and glared into the blackness. “You don't scare me,” he said, and was surprised by the firmness of his voice. “There's nothing you can do to me that's worse than what I feel now.”

Something in the shadows laughed at him. The sound was distant, like something heard from the far side of an open field. The walls of the morgue seemed much farther away. There was no echo to his voice anymore. The air grew colder, and he sensed wet footsteps approaching. A presence reached into his chest and squeezed his heart, making him grunt in pain. He swayed, dizzy, and nearly fell. His hand landed on Kelly's body.

Heat flared within him. He could almost see the blackness swirling around him like ebony wings. The chilly presence was thrust back. Encouraged, Joe stepped away from the wall, willing his strength to flow, to strike. He told himself he was just hallucinating, that shock and a buildup of sedatives was warping his perceptions. That had to be it. He was laying in his bed sleeping, sedated so deeply that the terrors of his subconscious had broken free of their bonds and risen in an attempt to seize his soul.

Then the darkness parted. Whatever it was that had assailed him was gone, and so was the morgue. He found himself standing in a field where fire had razed the crops to blackened stubble. Far away in the distance were the lights of a city, filling the horizon. Dark clouds hid the sun, hid the sky, choked the life out of the air itself. Hands, ebony and skeletal, rose from the earth to grasp at him, to pull him down. He screamed, and he wondered, if he really was asleep in his hospital bed, if he'd screamed in real life too. Because this was a dream. Only a dream, he told himself, as the hands pulled him down. He sank to his knees. He felt hard claws digging into his flesh, tearing at him. They were hungry for the taste of life, for something they had never known.

The clouds parted with a clap of thunder, and something shining with iridescent light swooped in from the heavens. An angel, he first thought. But angels don't ride gleaming chrome gryphons. She had golden hair that streamed behind her like a halo, and she was the source of the radiance. Or, rather, her clothing did. Instead of angelic robes, she wore armor of an unfamiliar type, like a blend of Roman and Celtic and Samurai, and it was colored black though it seemed to glow. Joe watched numbly as the angel swooped down on her steed, landing just feet away from him. When she dismounted, she floated to the blackened earth as though immune to gravity. Joe was down to just his head left above ground by then, and when bent over him he recognized her, and he was amazed he hadn't done so before.

“Kelly!” he exclaimed in shock. Not dead, not a corpse, but perhaps not alive if this was, as he feared, not a dream at all. Smiling, she pushed her hands into the ebony loam engulfing him. He felt her grip in his armpits, and then she was lifting him effortlessly, pulling him free of the hungry shades, into the air.

“You're going to be okay now, Joe,” she said, smiling beatifically. “You've crossed over.”

“I…I'm dead?” he asked, stunned.

Her laughter was a delight, and yet she still managed to look so sad. “No, Joe,” she told him. “You're not dead. I am.”

Unable to process what she was trying to say, he looked at his feet. There was no sign of the hungry shadows now. “You rescued me,” he said.

She smiled with her eyes instead of her mouth and said, “No, you rescued me. You're my hero, Joey. I'm sorry I had to do this to you.”

“It's not your fault,” he told her, reaching for her. She backed away, staying out of reach, a reproach he didn't understand. “I know you didn't mean to die, Kelly.” He didn't know what else to say.

A tear rolled over her pale cheek. “But I did, Joey,” she said. “For so long, all I wanted was death. And then you came, and you made me want to live again. I will always love you for that.”

He reached for her again, darting forward when she tried to back away. But his arms closed on empty air. She was there and not there, an ephemeral embodiment of memory. “I miss you,” he said, wanting to cry but finding himself unable to do so. There was no release for the horrible anguish that filled his chest and tightened his heart until he thought it would be crushed out of existence. “I wish we could be together again.”

And then she did smile, a real smile that appeared in the corners of her mouth and spread to the rest of her face. “Dear Joe,” she said. “My Joey.” She touched his face and caressed his cheek lovingly. The message was clear: he was the stranger here, the one who didn't belong, and he was not allowed any comfort unless it was freely given.

“You've taken the first step,” she told him. “We'll be together again soon. There,” and she pointed to the city, indistinct in the distance.

“What is this place,” he asked her. The field was not a field, the sky not a real sky. The land was flat beyond the limits of a normal horizon, traveling forever onward and away from where they stood. The city was medieval and modern and futuristic all in one, a Jericho transformed into bustling megalopolis. The roiling clouds overhead blocked any possibility of light, and yet everything he saw was lit just the same. The light was in the air itself, like a luminous mist clinging to every surface. “Kelly, I don't know what's happening.”

“You will, Joe,” she told him. “I'm not allowed to give you the answers yet. Not all of them. You have to come farther. Come to the City, Joe. The real City, not this vision. What you see is mostly memories in what I've given you, some from me, most from those who have worn the Mantle before. I didn't use it wisely. I was too afraid. I didn't really understand what I had. Now, you are the last, Joey. You're our only hope.”

“Hope?” he asked forlornly. “Hope for what? For who?”

“For the City of the Dead,” she answered. “And for those of us who reside there. You are the last hope. Don't let the shadows destroy it all.”

He shook his head, confused even more. “You're not making sense, Kelly. I don't understand any of this.”

“Neither did I, at first,” she said. “I couldn't believe in the things that were happening to me. I ran from what should have been my destiny. Only it wasn't mine. I knew that when you risked your life to save me. You were willing to sacrifice everything because of love, and because you knew it was the only right thing to do. You are the kind of person the City needs, not me.”

She touched his chest on the same spot she had in the hospital. “The power is yours now, Joey. You are the one who will save the world.”

A wind buffeted them, almost pushing him off his feet. “Things are going to change for you now, Joey. You're going to see things, unbelievable things. Don't let anyone convince you they aren't real. That's what I did. My father told me I was crazy, but he was a pawn of the Shadow King, and I was stupid to be such a coward. I don't regret my death, not really. He killed me because I'd given it away. Because I'd given it to you. He'll come for you now, but you are far stronger than he wants you to believe.”

Joe squinted as the wind stung his eyes. Black dust was swallowing everything. The City faded, the plain surrounding them faded, and even the impossible gryphon faded and was gone. Only Kelly was left, and she was blurring. He reached for her again, but his hand continued to pass through her. “Don't go,” he gasped desperately. “I don't want to wake up yet.”

“You're not dreaming, Joey,” she said calmly. “Life is the dream. Death isn't what everyone thinks it is, Joe. You'll discover that soon. Be strong. Remember me, and don't turn your back on destiny. Gather your friends close, you'll need them. And come to me soon. Alive, Joe. Alive. If you die, the Mantle of the Guardian can be taken away. Until then, you can choose to give it away, but no one can ever take it by force. Oh, you have so much to discover, Joe. I've always loved you. From the day we met to right now, and on and on. I love you.”

Joe stood erect, all trace of fear gone in a flash. “I love you too, Kelly,” he said to her even as the dust swallowed her. “I won't disappoint you. I swear.”

“I know,” her disembodied voice said, and then he was alone. The dust became stainless steel tables and sterile counters. Darkness became walls and blue light, tiled floor and a bank of high-tech crypts at his back. He stood in the morgue, alone.

Dizziness seized him and he slumped. He dropped to his knees, shaken by the vision, yet knowing it had been no vision at all. Kelly was gone, and what he had found here was just the remnant of her mortality, the shell she no longer needed. Just as he was a vessel for something greater, something larger than himself. It stirred restlessly inside him, wanting him to act. He only wished he knew what he was supposed to do.

“I won't let you down, Kelly,” he whispered. Shakily, he rose to his feet and put her corpse away. He didn't hesitate to turn his back and stride out of the room, all traces of fear blown away with the shadow-dust. He might be imbalanced, experiencing a psychotic break, whatever it might be called, but he wasn't able to ignore it. Destiny or fate or kismet, it was all illusion. He had a choice to make. He'd made it.

And damn anything or anyone who tried to stop him from seeing Kelly again, in the land of death, in the City of the Dead.