Part Thirteen
The remainder of the sword was less than a foot long, jagged at the end and so covered in gore that it startled Lindsey in the rare moments when it still managed to gleam. Lindsey had been unable to stop himself from feeling slightly sorry for the Guardian as he had walked up to its corpse to retrieve the weapon, in the same way that he would feel sorry for a rabid dog right before he pulled the trigger. They were both trapped by what they had been designed to be.
Illyria drifted along on the rooftops above Lindsey's head, every few minutes dipping back into sight as a blue gleam beneath the moon before she disappeared again. Lindsey thought that Illyria was doing far more to aid him than her sentinel-like appearance would suggest; he had gone without harassment since leaving the corpse of the Guardian behind, though he could still things cavorting through the darkness just beyond his line of sight. There were a few times when Illyria would reappear on rooftops and for a moment seemed to glow red.
Lindsey knew that Illyria was there in an abstract, distracted way, but he could not force his brain on her for more than a few seconds at a time before his thoughts would flow away again, back towards the looming portal. The air was growing thick again, sticking to the back of Lindsey's throat and nearly strangling him. A jog was the fastest pace at which he could force his body to go. It would have to be good enough.
Lindsey's hand tingled at the place where An had been gripping him before, sending out quick sparks of energy that traveled into his brain and began to bounce gleefully about his skull. There were quiet whispers and faint images that always darted out of reach before he could wrest them under control, singing and almost seeming to taunt him. Lindsey hoped very hard that this did not mean that An's particular form of weirdness was contagious. He did not believe so, for the images themselves made him feel like nothing so much as a short wave radio standing in the shadow of a mammoth broadcast tower. He could only imagine how strong the images echoing through the kids' heads must be. Even the faint forms in Lindsey's own mind tugged him forward like a magnet would pull iron shavings, drawing him ever closer to the surface. He could have told whichever intelligence behind the source that it did not need to bother; he could find the way home himself.
It was not a dramatic thing like the vortex that had drawn him into the Senior Partners' own version of suburbia gone mad. There were no flashing lights, no screams of the damned, and no rushes of air that choked the throat with sulfur. The air began bit by bit to take on an indigo cast like the color of a fresh bruise, as the starts and the flames slowly dwindled until they did not seem to be there at all. The air grew thicker by the second, until Lindsey could drag his hand through it and watch ripples being cast in its wake, but his lungs no longer needed to draw in air. Unless Lindsey struggled very hard he no longer remembered to draw in breath at all. It was not a necessity in the territory that he was entering, and his body was remembering quickly what his mind did not want to. When a tremendous popping sound like being on the world's worst airplane ride reverberated through his ears, Lindsey knew that he had arrived.
He wanted to yell a warning to Illyria wherever she might be in the thick purple nothingness and tell her some of what she could expect, here, but he clamped his lips down around the words before they could escape. And he would tell every ugly thing that lurked in those shadows exactly where they were, sure, that would be a great idea. Illyria could take care of herself better than he could ever hope to, Lindsey told himself. It would have to do. Hell, there was even a chance that she had helped to build this place.
Lindsey shifted the remainder of the sword in his hand and felt the handle twist with a slickness that was neither blood nor sweat but some new foulness, carried on the air. He kept going. The environment surrounding him grew thicker and black, wet like the most poisonous womb that had ever been brought into existence. Lindsey had seen the children that this monster spit out. He could imagine what sort of beacon the smell of his adrenaline must be sending to them.
All round him, the air felt as if it had eyes. Lindsey found himself anxiously tipping his head upwards to scan what served as the sky more than once. How quickly the habits of living returned; he should know by now that the only warning the Guardians would given on their approach would be the sound of their wings.
Lindsey, necessity of breathing be damned, soon found himself beginning to pant from the combination of nerves and thick, oppressive heat. He had worn goosebumps across his skin like a coat for a full day and a half after he had emerged from this place, before. He wondered if he would experience them again, should he manage to do the impossible a second time.
Lindsey shook off the unwelcome introspection with a physical shudder, like a dog throwing water from its back. Instead, he chose to hone in on the trembling, whispering echoes which still bounced at intervals through his mind. When he focused down hard enough, his skin began to feel as if it were being swarmed with maggots.
Maggots crawling swiftly across a cobbled road, jostling against one another and making a sound not unlike that of…scales. Lindsey's entire body came alive with a jolt of adrenaline, and he threw himself to the side.
There was no smell of sulfur. That only occurred when they were trying to cross over into the living world. Or maybe, Lindsey thought cynically, he had only readjusted back to the home turf so quickly that he did not notice. He hit the ground on his shoulder and rolled, feeling the earth sag beneath him for a moment and then seem to hurl him back to his feet in a way that cement never would have done. Lindsey stabbed the remainder of the sword deeply into the ground to control his progress and knew that he was not imagining the shiver which rolled up in response. Not his problem, not now, not with the thing that was eating up the ground behind him.
Lindsey pulled the blade free and rolled further, a move that was short on grace but long on efficiency. Good for him, as he felt a burst of hot air streaming over his leg less than a second later. The air was replaced in even less time than that by teeth that tore a long line through both his jeans and his flesh. Hot blood began to pour forth immediately. There was no pain, though, and Lindsey thought that it must be a first for this place. The virtue of still being in possession of a living human body meant that, even here, he still had the option of going into shock. He wasn't going to complain about the lack of hurting, but that still didn't say a lot of good things about his long-term survival prospects. If there were any worse places in the universe to be dizzy and off of his game while still covered in enough blood to serve as an emergency flare to every predator for miles around, then Lindsey did not care to know about them.
He rolled to his feet again and wrinkled his lips back from his teeth into an expression that a saint still would not have been optimistic enough to call a proper smile. Lindsey's newly injured leg threatened for a second to buckle before agreeing to take him again. Ah, now there was the pain that he had been missing. Flickers of electricity crackled up and down the torn flesh, growing stronger by the minute. He could pause to get reacquainted with his old friend later, after he made sure first that he survived long enough to grant himself that luxury.
The soul eater drew its head back when Lindsey whirled to face it, arching his spine and looking more like a snake than ever. If it was here, then that said some very worrisome things about Angel's own chances of survival. Lindsey shocked himself by being more alarmed by this than he was the gushing wound in his leg. Some obsessions were designed to last forever.
"Hey there, buddy," Lindsey said to the garden snake that had binged itself on steroids, panting slightly as his vision blurred around the edges and his limbs began to feel cold and heavy. There were not yet any phantom swirls of purple or yellow dancing in the edges of his vision, though. He would be all right for a while longer.
Lindsey planned to survive this solely so that he could thank Angel for making him so familiar with the symptoms of blood loss. "You're not so big, are you? Just an overgrown version of what I used to kill all the time with a shovel back home. Cut their heads right off." Lindsey pulled his lips back again into that grimacing smile that felt so natural on his face. The blood was growing sticky across the remainder of the sword, making it easier for him to maintain a steady grip on it. "You might take a little longer, but I'd be willing to give it a try if you would."
The soul eater made a sound that hissed like a train's whistle and convinced Lindsey once and for all that it was capable of human speech before it lunged forward. Lindsey became Jack staring down the giant without the aid of magic beans or a writer's sympathy on hi side, and he lasted for about as long. The soul eater's jaws closed about him with a surprising gentleness before it threw him back into the air and back down its throat with such a light touch that it scarcely left more than a few fresh bruises.
'Of course not,' Lindsey thought dizzily. 'We wouldn't want to damage the merchandise.' Lindsey fought back as he tumbled down an esophagus and goo encased him on all sides, kicking out at whatever he could reach. He twisted the short blade in his hand and plunged it as deeply as he could into the soft inner flesh of the monster's throat. Lindsey's downward motion pulled the sword along with him, turning a stab wound into an eviscerating tear. The great shudder that ran down the soul eater's length and battered him to and fro must have been what it felt like to feel the monster screaming from the inside. 'Heal from that, you son of a bitch.'
There was not the darkness, perfect and screaming, that there should have been, but instead a tremendous sense of blazing and impersonal white that was almost worse. When Lindsey came to, he was flat on his back and staring up at a section of sky that he had hoped never to see again. Guardians swooped and dove in lazy packs as the ground beneath his fingers shivered and rolled.
And leaning over him was none other than Lilah herself. Crude black stitching held her neck together; her heart had been ripped straight out from her chest. Through the remains of her suit Lindsey could still see her aorta throbbing faintly. Beyond that, she was as cold and lovely as always.
"Hello, Lindsey," Lilah said when she realized that she had his attention. A smirk turned her lips as she gestured up towards the sky. A Guardian screamed overhead and dove for something that Lindsey could not see. "Welcome home."
End Part Thirteen