His hands were stained with blood. Perhaps the Sandman’s murders had not been committed with Halliwell’s own hands, but the difference mattered little to him. He was a part of this barbaric, murderous thing. There in the maelstrom at the center of the Sandman, he was sure that he had felt their souls crying out as they died, felt their spirits brush against his own. As vicious and brutal as their murders had been, some part of him had been envious. They were free, while he was trapped with those eternal monsters.
The Sandman’s hands. The Dustman’s hands. Ted Halliwell’s hands.
He hated himself, now. Show a little backbone, Detective, he thought. There was a cruel bit of humor in there somewhere, but he hadn’t the heart to find it. Hadn’t the heart. There you go again. He hadn’t a heart or a backbone now, of course. But these were spiritual as well as physical things. Heart. Backbone. Courage.
There was a major disconnect in his brain. Courage wasn’t the absence of fear, he reminded himself. It was action in spite of fear.
Ted Halliwell visualized himself standing on the riverbank. He saw through the Sandman’s eyes, watched the water stream by, watched as they slipped toward the woman in the fox-fur cloak—Kitsune—and the man with whom she spoke.
He knew what would come next.
The Sandman had been looking forward to this moment ever since the three of them all rose together in this single form—sand and dust and bone, three beings in one. Kitsune had to die. Then the Sandman would travel to the dungeon where Oliver Bascombe was imprisoned, and in that darkened cell, they would murder the helpless man.
Halliwell stretched out his fingers. The ground felt solid beneath his feet. But there was what he saw through the Sandman’s eyes and what he saw in his mind. The sand still shifted around him as though he had been buried alive. He felt its weight and warmth and texture on skin he no longer had.
In his mind’s eye, he turned. In the sandstorm that enveloped him, he sensed the shape of the other—the Dustman, with his greatcoat and bowler hat.
“What are you doing, Detective?”
Halliwell sneered at him. “You know exactly what I’m doing.”
“I’m not sure it’s possible,” the Dustman said.
Halliwell imagined himself breathing evenly. He imagined his flesh rippling with a constant shift of sand. He stared out through the Sandman’s eyes and felt with the Sandman’s hands as the monster shook Kitsune like a rag doll. She clawed at him and down there inside the Sandman, Halliwell cried out in pain, feeling the ragged furrows she dragged in his/their sand-flesh.
His fingers twined in her hair and he yanked her head back.
The Sandman’s fingers twined in her hair and he yanked her head back.
“It has to be possible,” Halliwell snarled to the Dustman. “We’re all in here. You said so yourself. That means we have a choice. I can’t bear any more blood on my hands.”
The Dustman hesitated. Halliwell could feel it. Perhaps he didn’t believe they could do it or perhaps he was only afraid of his brother. The Sandman’s ferocity gave him the strength to subjugate them—or it had, so far.
Halliwell saw the terror in Kitsune’s jade eyes. He watched the way her beautiful, elegant face became ugly and twisted with fear, and she opened her mouth and screamed. Her anguish tore at him.
The Sandman thrust out his tongue and licked Kitsune’s eyes. Her cry became one of pain as the rough sand obscured her vision. The monster dangled her at arm’s length and reached out with one prying, knifelike finger to dig her eyes from their sockets.
“I wish we had more time together,” the Sandman said.
At first, Halliwell didn’t understand these words. Then noises flooded into the maelstrom and he heard shouts and felt something shaking the riverbank beneath his feet. A low growl came from nearby. The one-eyed coyote rose on his haunches, issuing a menacing snarl. Wind whipped around them suddenly, tearing at the Sandman’s cloak. Something loomed against the night sky—a giant, lumbering toward them.
“Alas,” the Sandman said.
His talon cut the skin beside Kitsune’s left eye.
Halliwell remembered the first time he saw one of the Sandman’s young victims, a girl named Alice St. John. He allowed himself to recall, now, the screams and blood and ravaged faces of the victims the monster had taken since their substance was joined.
He could feel the riverbank underfoot, shaking with the giant’s approach.
Truly feel it.
Sorrow and fury swept Halliwell forward. He felt as though he were surfacing from a sea of sand. New screams came from inside his mind, but now they belonged to the Sandman himself. Halliwell tossed Kitsune away. She hit the ground and rolled halfway into the river, then shot up to a crouch, staring at him.
I did it, you bastard, Halliwell thought.
The Sandman howled. He could feel the monster inside him, and the Dustman as well. The Dustman remained still, though he had begun to churn and flow, and somehow Halliwell knew the Dustman had begun to move closer to the Sandman, down there in the maelstrom.
For a moment, Halliwell was in total control. He could feel the grains of his substance, the swirl of sand, the wind whipping his cloak. Then pain raced up the back of his neck and a terrible weight crushed down upon his soul, trying to force him into the maelstrom again.
Kitsune stared at him.
“Run,” Halliwell told her. “He’s going to—”
The coyote hit him from the side, driving him down to the dirt and glaring down at him from its one, remaining eye, gore still dripping from the crater of the other. The impact jarred Halliwell, and when he tried to move, he could no longer feel the Sandman’s body—only his own bones, scoured by the maelstrom. He could see and now he could hear.
You wait and see, a voice in the maelstrom said, the Sandman talking directly to him, and perhaps to the Dustman, too. Your presumption will cost you dearly. Whatever spark of you remains, it will be extinguished.
Halliwell expected the Dustman to be troubled by this. Instead, he felt a grim satisfaction coming from him. “If he could have done so, he would have done it already.”
“All of a sudden you sound pretty sure of yourself.”
“Your spark survives. Your spirit’s continued existence is proof enough.”
So the Dustman had used him to see if the Sandman could be thwarted without repercussion.
“You’re an asshole,” Halliwell said.
The Dustman did not reply.
Halliwell concentrated on seeing out of the monster’s yellow eyes.
A being hung in the air, the center of a blossom of starlight that illuminated the entire riverbank. Halliwell saw the others, now, warriors with hammers and swords and axes, all racing toward him. Kitsune had stepped out of the water, copper fur glittering with droplets, and the coyote trotted to her side to face the Sandman.
Too many, the Sandman’s voice echoed into the maelstrom. I will take her another night.
They burst into a drifting, eddying mass of sand and floated off across the river, with the shouts of Kitsune’s comrades—Borderkind or legend or whatever they were—chasing them into the dark.
You dislike being a killer, tasting the blood that stains the sand of my fingers. There is a village nearby with many young children. Perhaps we should pay a visit to each and every one. I can almost feel the pop of their small eyes between my teeth now. Can you feel it, Detective?
“I’ll stop you,” Halliwell replied.
No. I felt it just before you stepped into me. Now I know what it feels like, and I will be on guard. You are a little puppet, mimicking my every move.
Ice gripped Halliwell’s heart. Courage seemed far away, now. Where was the Dustman? If he could combat the Sandman, why had he withdrawn so deeply into the maelstrom that Halliwell could no longer even sense his presence?
No. Not the village. A far more satisfying punishment occurs to me, the Sandman thought, resonating inside Halliwell’s head. It will kill what’s left of you, extinguish that spark, and you will surrender your soul willingly. You will beg for oblivion.
Her troops shone with pride and renewed vigor that stemmed from their victory in the battle of the Oldwood, and Damia Beck indulged them such feelings, for now. Her fleet-footed messenger, Charlie Grant, raced from one detachment of the king’s army to the next, delivering and retrieving information. In an hour, Charlie could travel ground that would take a soldier on horseback a day or more, and never seemed to tire.
The southern invaders had been routed. King Hunyadi’s forces had turned them back at every step, in spite of the Atlanteans scattered in amongst the Yucatazcan army. Now the army of Hunyadi was driving them further and further south, and the soldiers believed that victory had arrived.
Damia tried to dispense with such illusions, but could not bring herself to be brutal with them. Not yet. There would be time enough for that later, when the army of Atlantis began its own incursions into Euphrasia. A few Atlanteans in amongst ordinary troops was one thing, but the army of Atlantis merged with Yucatazcan forces, and the reinforcements that were even now crossing the Isthmus of the Conquistadors—that would be a very different sort of war.
Her cavalry units rode at the front of their southern march. They had suffered a number of casualties at the Oldwood, but more for riders than horses. Half a dozen infantry men and women had been promoted to cavalry. The infantry hiked tirelessly southward, singing soldiers’ songs and calling out to one another with ribald jokes and braggadocio.
Soon, when they drew closer to the new battlefront, Damia would gather her troops and give them a speech that would sober them up quickly. She would give them an idea of the odds that they were facing. Hunyadi had sent notes with Charlie Grant, coded messages that detailed their troop strength and indicated where the king felt the true battle would unfold. The facts were clear. With Atlantis joining the war, the odds would be stacked against the king’s army.
Damia missed Blue Jay. She wished she could hold him in her arms and stroke the length of his lean, muscular back. The smell and feel of him seemed so distant to her now and she did not want to forget. In his eyes, she’d always seen mischief, but she had also seen adoration. Men had always lusted after her, and sometimes feared her, but no one had ever looked at her the way Blue Jay did.
A shout rang out.
Her fingers tightened on the reins and she spurred her horse on, breaking away from the rest of her mounted troops. Somewhere a bugle sounded—celebratory and playful—and she decided she needed to speak to her troops sooner rather than later.
A single figure stood on the road ahead; a tall, stooped, ugly thing—one of the ogres from her Borderkind platoon.
She snapped the reins, and her mare surged into a gallop. Damia sat forward on the saddle, letting the rush of the moment wake her up from her musings.
“Report!” she said as she approached the ogre.
The ugly northlander did not salute, but Borderkind were not regular army. Such protocol was not required of them.
“We’ve caught and killed three outriders, Commander.”
Damia frowned. “Not together?”
As she spoke, the ogre glanced at the trees alongside the road. Two of his brothers lumbered out from the shade beneath the branches. The Nagas, Old Roger, and Howlaa had been sent in other directions, spread out to search for any Yucatazcan or Atlantean riders who had been left behind or sent back to the north as spies.
“No, Commander. Over the past several hours, we’ve caught two headed north and one, a messenger we think, headed south.”
“Were you able to decipher the message?”
“Afraid not,” one of the other ogres said.
Something was wrong. Damia frowned as she studied the three of them.
“So you brought the messenger back, of course,” she said hopefully. Their orders were very clear. If a spy had been caught with a communiqué, they were to attempt to decipher it, or to coerce the messenger to decode it. And if neither of those things was possible, they would bring the messenger to her.
The ogres shifted nervously, glancing at one another.
“Not exactly.”
The rest of her troops had almost caught up with her. Damia lifted a hand to signal that they should keep going and the cavalry began to thunder by. Damia shifted in her saddle. The mare danced to one side, just a bit, as she looked around at the ogres.
“Where is Gaka?”
A grunting laugh came from the woods. “Slow,” came a rasping voice.
The Japanese oni stepped from the trees, a snarl on his face. He carried a corpse in Yucatazcan battle dress over his shoulder. All three of his eyes stared at the ogres for a moment and then he turned to Damia.
“I could not move as quickly as these ugly donkeys, or I would have told the story a bit differently,” the demon said, hefting the corpse on his shoulder. “I questioned her, but she would not cooperate. My efforts to coerce her were unsuccessful. I’m sorry to say that I broke her.”
Gaka tossed the woman to the ground. Inside the armor, she was a bloody mess of broken limbs, which flopped at terrible angles when she landed.
Damia stared at her a moment, then looked at the ogres. Their eyes were on the passing troops—infantry now, the cavalry had already gone by. The commander turned and saw that her soldiers were staring at the broken, shattered corpse.
“Get her out of here,” she told Gaka.
He narrowed his three eyes, but nodded. “Yes, Commander.”
As he lifted the corpse, she addressed all four of the Borderkind. “Dispose of the body. When you’re through, spread out again. We’ve got a ways to go and I want all outriders stopped. This was ugly and unnecessary, but they’re better dead than free to roam. Next time you find a messenger, though, I expect you to bring her to me alive.”
The three ogres actually saluted her.
Gaka nodded solemnly, shouldered the dead soldier once more, and turned to go back into the forest.
Damia watched them vanish into the shadows of the woods, steadied herself, then spurred her horse on. Killing in battle was one thing. Torturing to death a girl who only fought because she’d been commanded to do so by generals tricked into doing the bidding of Atlantis was something else entirely.