Christmas, Florida turned out to be a wide place in the road, due east of Orlando. There couldn't be many roadside attractions in a berg like this, Shadow thought, and when he saw a sign for 'Historic Fort Christmas', he hung a left and sped down the two-lane road. It was early, just after eight a.m., and he suspected they'd have to wait for the place to open.

His suspicions were confirmed when he halted the car in front of a pair of black iron gates and looked at the sign displaying the hours of operation. Damn, they were way too early. Dean was curled up in the back under his coat again. Shadow doubted he was sleeping. He was showing some of the tremors he'd been having on the plane; if he'd known where to find some sage, Shadow would have smoked the car like a salmon.

When a gleaming pick-up truck pulled in beside their vehicle, the driver got out with a key to the gate, and Shadow's hopes soared. "Excuse me, are you Ruben?"

The man looked over at him. "You're looking for Ruben?"

Shadow nodded, his heart beating faster.

"He doesn't work here, he's at the museum. Go back down this road til you get to 50. It's there on the left, where the perpetual Christmas tree is."

Shadow turned the car around and retraced the way back to the main highway. Sure enough, there was a huge Christmas tree, decorated, right there on the corner. Museum? It sure as hell didn't look like a museum. There was a brightly painted Santa Claus nearby, complete with sled and reindeer, but nothing that looked remotely like a museum.

"You think this is it?" he asked Dean dubiously.

The sick man lifted his head, a slow, pained movement. Then he smiled broadly. "This is definitely it."

Shadow could see someone in coveralls walking toward the car as he turned off the engine. Dean was dragging himself out of the back seat. "Hello, Ruben!" Shadow heard him greet the other man as he opened the driver's door.

"Good morning," said the caretaker, as if perfectly accustomed to being greeted by name by strangers early in the day. He looked Latino, Shadow thought, fiftyish, thinning dark hair threaded with white and a stocky build--he felt an odd sense of familiarity, but couldn't imagine from where. "You're here for the spring, I take it?"

"Yes, please," Dean said. He had that look on his face, Shadow saw. Auras again!

"It's through the trees there, behind the first and second crosses." Moving over to where Ruben stood, they could see a small meadow with three crosses on the far side. Ruben looked at Shadow. "The path is probably overgrown; come with me, I have a machete in the tool shed that you can use."

There were several little paths through the area. Shadow glanced around curiously. A stone's throw back from the road, amidst a lush, tropical garden, a small, one-story building labelled itself the Christmas museum. Ruben led him around back to a lean-to, where he began rummaging through its contents.

"So, that's where that went," the caretaker murmured, setting aside a spattered canvas drop cloth. He was unhurried; Shadow was torn between wanting to hang out with the guy---to figure out where he knew him from--prison, maybe?!---and wanting to fling things out of the tool shed until the machete emerged and drag Dean down to the spring and see if it would help. Then Ruben groaned; the sought-after machete had been hanging above the tool shed's door all along. "That's where I put it....I don't use it very often anymore. Here, go take care of your brother."

Shadow accepted the machete Ruben handed him, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and went back to the car, only to find Dean gone. Had he been gone long enough for his friend to make it across the meadow, or was there a more sinister explaination?

As he was worrying, a high velocity roar came closer as a motorbike veered off of 50 and rocketed to a stop in the parking area. Somehow, Shadow wasn't surprised to see The Blonde step off the bike and drop her helmet beside it as she produced the axe. Her face still bore the marks of Crusher's attack; her left eye was swollen almost closed.

"Are we gonna start this again?" he asked her. "Because, sweetheart, I am more than ready to finish it." This was it; this was the confrontation that the others had been a prelude to. Ruben's cryptic words seemed to indicate that this spring could heal his friend, and Shadow was willing to sacrifice himself to make it so.

She glanced from him to Ruben, looked across the meadow at the looming crosses and winced. "You can't have him," she said, shaking her head.

Ruben smiled at her. "If his taint is washed away, you can't take him."

"And you." Her green eyes flashed and there was venom in her tone as she glared at Shadow. "Where do you fit into all this?"

"Good question," he grinned, which only served to infuriate her more. She leaped forward with the axe; he raised the machete to block her stroke. Considering what he'd already seen her do with that particular axe, he moved carefully. It was early enough that there was still dew on the grass, and if he fell on his ass again, odds were that he'd be dead this time. Her axe was sharper, but the machete had a longer reach, especially at the end of Shadow's arm.

The Blonde kept looking anxiously toward the distant treeline. Clearly, she wanted to stop Dean, but she couldn't get to him, not without going through Shadow first. He got a piece of her, the long blade biting into the outer edge of her forearm. She switched the axe handle to her right hand and her chopping became wilder. She made growling screams as she attacked him, wails of pain and rage emerging together from her throat.

As blood from her damaged arm dripped to earth, little sprigs of grass went from green to black. Shadow dodged her vigorous thrashing, swinging the machete as her arm was fully extended and her stance was open. He was rewarded as the steel blade slashed across her abdomen. "That's for Crusher," he said with satisfaction.

Shadow was able to avoid her, but twice the slick, uneven ground almost had him down. Once he went down to one knee, but she was badly wounded enough that he managed to rise before she could press her advantage.

His adversary was bent half double, her wounded arm over her wounded belly, her ruined face contorted with rage. Injured though she was, Shadow knew better than to underestimate her. He had to buy time for Dean to reach the spring, if he could...not knowing how far off it was, or if the sick man had collapsed somewhere just out of sight From the darting glances she shot toward the far side of the field, time was obviously a factor.

"Come on, bitch," he said, deliberately goading her to distract her from thoughts of pursuit. "You've been messing with my friend, what, I'm not good enough for you? My feelings are hurt." He made an obnoxious kissing noise.

With a feral cry, she leaped at him, and he had to dance away from the axe's flight. "Is that the best you've got?" He remembered what Dean had blurted that hellish night in the motel. "Or maybe you don't want to get too close? Is that it? You're afraid of me?"

The Blonde was furious, but he could see her weakening from loss of blood. Her sagging head came up with a start--for a moment, Shadow thought she'd found some supernatural reserve of strength that was going to get him killed then and there--but her gaze was fixed on the woods beyond the three crosses, and she wailed, "Nooo!", raw grief on her face. "Damn you!"

Then, in a rage, she threw the axe at Shadow as hard as she could. She'd misjudged her trajectory; if the blade had struck his chest, it would've buried itself into his heart, but instead, the haft hit him and bounced harmlessly to the ground. Seizing advantage of her defenseless position, Shadow swung the machete in a two-handed grip with all his strength. A crunch travelled all the way up his arms as the blade met her cervical vertebrae, then the resistance was gone, and the steel concluded its arc. Blood fountained from her severed neck as she collapsed in two pieces on the ground.

Shadow stood there, panting, staring at the body whose blood was tainting the earth it lay upon. He looked up at Ruben, who didn't seem to be shocked, horrified, or any other predictablereaction. The caretaker shrugged, looked at the blackened earth, and said, "I could always put in a rock garden...."

The chuckle Shadow wanted to give the remark was overshadowed by a tremor that ran through him. The blade wobbled in his hand. He'd just killed a woman. Even if she was some kind of demon from hell, she looked like a woman, and he'd just cut her head off, he thought, and remembered a phrase from an old children's story. Cut it clean off...not clean though...that spurt of blood....

There wasn't much in his stomach to bring up, but what little there was spewed onto the blackened grass. Shadow raised his head after the nausea had passed, only to see something else coming toward them from across the field. It was man-shaped, but green and swift-moving, and he straightened up, preparing himself to fight again.

"How do you feel?" called Ruben, throwing the drop cloth over the mess on the ground.

To Shadow's stupefaction, Dean's voice answered from the green man. "Great!"

Shadow lowered the machete as his friend joined them. Up close, he was covered in algae from head to toe, but he moved lithely, with none of the hesitancy that Shadow was accustomed to.

"I see you found the spring," Ruben said to him.

Dean laughed. "Fell right in." He looked from Shadow, to the tarp covering The Blonde on the smoking black grass, to the machete Shadow was still clutching in his hand. Looked at Ruben. "Shadow, I think you can give him his sword back now."

"That's a machete," said Shadow, relinquishing the hilt to the caretaker.

"Okay, if you say so," Dean grinned. He looked...happy wasn't the right word...joyful, that was it. Under the coating of pond scum, his hair was dark and his face no longer wizened with age.

"I have a hose around back, if you'd like to rinse off," Ruben said to him.

"That would be wonderful. Thanks."

"I'll get you some clean clothes out of the car," muttered Shadow, and went in that direction, confused by his conflicting feelings. Dean was healed, The Blonde was dead, why did he feel so out of it?

Finding his way through the maze of paths in the little park wasn't as simple without a guide. Shadow took a trail that he thought would lead him to the tool shed, only to find himself standing in front of a flat-roofed stone structure, open to the elements. Inside was a brightly painted nativity scene. Well, sure, it is called Christmas, after all...he thought, staring at it.

"There you are!" said Ruben. "Are you okay? You're looking a little shaky."

The statues...his coveralls...caretaker...Adoration. "You're an angel!" Shadow blurted, remembering the painting from Louisville.

Ruben smiled. "Come on, I think Dean's ready for his clothes by now." Shadow followed in a daze. Give the man his sword back...of course, he'd need a sword to defend a place like this...and a paintbrush to keep it tidy....

Back by the tool shed, Dean was drying himself with a clean rag. He wasn't skin over bones any longer...lean, yes, but healthy and comfortable in his own body. There were streaks of silver hair at his temples, and the beginnings of lines on his face, but no more than might reasonably be expected on the face of a 41-year old man.

Compared to a couple of days ago, when the guy'd had to sit and catch his breath after pulling his pants on, it seemed extraordinary to watch Dean casually dress himself. Dean and Ruben were carrying on a bizarrely normal conversation about nearby motels. Something on the beach....

"Give me the keys," Dean said to Shadow after a while.

"What?"

"Shadow, you look like you're about to fall over. Give me the keys to the car. It's my turn to drive."

Yes, dear Reader, there is a Christmas museum on Highway 50, exactly as it's described (with the exceptions of Ruben and the spring). On my first visit there--long before this story was a gleam in my eye--it made me think ofGaiman's description of places of power. I'm certain this little park is one of them, and I knew while planning Wisdom's Gate that Christmas was where Dean Corso was going to be cured.

Extra special thanks to Mojave Dragonfly, whose request for angels sparked Chapter Eight, and Ruben.