Rogue

  “Gah.”

  “There’s someone here!”

  “Bwa?”

  “I have an idea. You can fly up there and tell us what’s happening and who’s out there.”

  Driggs stared, then continued his streak of uttering nonword words. “Heh?”

  “If you’re part”—she still didn’t like saying the word “ghost”—“part corporeally challenged, then you should be able to fly at will, right? Or float? Bob? Something?”

  “I can try.” Driggs screwed up his face in concentration, but only managed to create the opposite desired effect—his body became denser.

  “You!” Lex shouted at Grotton, who seemed to have materialized for the sole purpose of watching Driggs’s failed attempts. “Help him!”

  “I’m along for the ride to help you save the world, or some such nonsense,” Grotton said testily. “I wasn’t hired for pilot training.”

  Lex and Driggs grunted in the exact same pitch and tone. “Try relaxing,” she told Driggs. “Stop thinking about making yourself transparent. Just let your mind go.”

  He started to fade.

  “Faster!” Lex said. “Relax harder!”

  “Relax harder? Never become a yoga instructor, Lex.”

  “Come on!”

  Taking a deep breath, Driggs shut his eyes and went limp. Three seconds later, his transparent form shot into the air, yelling “Holy f—!” as he dissolved into the ceiling.

  Lex went back to the kitchen to wait with the others, but she didn’t have to wait long; Driggs reappeared only moments later. He looked stricken, and his voice was thick as he choked out the last two words any of them wanted to hear.

  “We’re surrounded.”

  7

  “It’s Norwood,” Driggs said. “And about twenty others. They’re scattered all over the place. No guns, as far as I could tell, but plenty of scythes.”

  “Dammit,” said Uncle Mort. “They probably tracked our location through the Cuffs when Broomie called. I told her . . .”

  “I didn’t see Wicket anywhere,” Driggs continued. “Pandora was about to start the car and run everyone over, but I told her to wait until we figure out a plan.” He looked at Uncle Mort. “So what’s the plan?”

  Uncle Mort was pacing. “We don’t have one.”

  “What?” Lex jumped in front of him. “You have a plan for everything. All the time. What do you mean we don’t have one?”

  “I mean that all the weapons are in the car. This was supposed to be a safe house, no one knew we were coming here, and Wicket was supposed to have our backs.”

  “What about Crashing?” Pip said. “We can land right in the car and go!”

  “No more Crashing,” Uncle Mort said. “It hurts the Grimsphere. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “So what do we do? There’s gotta be something!”

  He shrugged. “There’s always your standard method of storming the door and hoping for the best.”

  Lex grunted as she gripped her scythe. “I can’t believe we’re storming the door and hoping for the best.”

  “Relax, spaz,” said Driggs. “We’ll make it. What do they have that we don’t?”

  “Numbers. Strength. Years of experience.”

  “Yes, but we’ve got the incorrigible spirit of youth.”

  Lex rolled her eyes.

  “Ready?” Uncle Mort asked them. “Up the stairs, then run for the car as hard as you can. Don’t engage, just run. Got it?”

  They nodded.

  “Go.”

  Uncle Mort’s method worked—but only for a moment. The second Lex burst out into open air, she realized how doomed they really were.

  Even in the scant predawn light she could see that Grave was swarming with Norwood’s men—Trumbull, Riley, the works. They’d clearly been planning on the Juniors Crashing out, and they were spread out all over the graveyard rather than in front of the bunker door—but they quickly recovered and launched an attack. Lex struggled not to panic. It was too dark for anyone to see what they were swinging their scythes at; they’d never hit their marks. Right?

  Pandora flashed the high beams of the Stiff, and Lex could see Pip and Bang lithely darting around and over the headstones to the safety of the car. For the first and only time in her life, Lex regretted never joining the track team; knowing how to clear hurdles would have come in extremely handy at a time like this. Or knowing how to throw a scythe like a knife. Or how to fly, as Driggs was currently doing, shouting instructions at the fleeing Juniors.

  But Lex did have one very important skill in her arsenal, one she’d been honing to perfection for years, and that was punching. So the first Senior to approach her got a fist right to the jaw, followed by another to the eye, and a grand-finale knee to the junk. As he sank to the ground, another quickly arrived to take his place, but Lex didn’t miss a beat, slamming him into unconsciousness as well.

  She was about to attack a third when a strange sight caught her eye—that of a single person standing off to the side, not involved in the pandemonium in any way. Whoever it was was handcuffed and wore a dark hood like a person about to be executed.

  Lex took a step toward the figure, but before she could get any farther, another Senior pounced on her back, followed by another. Her hands started to grow hot; the unquenchable urge to Damn was right at her fingertips, waiting for her to blow. And the more she fought, the more she wanted to do it, just let fly with her powers. She’d Damn every one of these Seniors if it meant keeping her friends safe.

  Yet she’d sworn to herself that she’d stop. That she wouldn’t cause any more damage to the Grimsphere. That Damning was wrong, period, no matter how she tried to justify it.

  But the heat kept intensifying.

  To try to cool off, she paused to take stock of the situation. Pip and Bang had made it safely to the car. Elysia had just knocked someone over the head with a scythe and was on her way as well. Uncle Mort was arguing with someone as they wrestled on the ground.

  But Ferbus was the one Lex couldn’t stop watching. The very first day she met the kid, he’d bragged about how Uncle Mort had trained him as the Vault Post to fight tooth and nail anyone who tried to break into the Afterlife. And she’d never believed him.

  She believed him now. Ferbus was a blur, fists and legs everywhere. He jumped, kicked, and hit in perfect rhythm, as if he’d choreographed the whole fight ahead of time. A pile of defeated Seniors lay around him, and more kept coming, but Ferbus took it all in stride, his face calm and stern as he dispatched them one by one.

  Still, it was becoming increasingly obvious that there were just too many of them. Someone else had jumped onto the Uncle Mort pile, and he was struggling underneath to free himself. Dora, Pip, Bang, and Elysia were holding down the car as the Seniors tried, with no success, to break the bulletproof windows, but surely the Juniors couldn’t last forever. And one look at Driggs’s panicked face, as he had an eagle’s-eye view of everything, confirmed Lex’s worst fears.

  They were losing.

  At that moment a series of shouts rang out from the trees. Dora flashed the lights of the Stiff, illuminating the newcomers: Wicket sprinting out of the forest, fiercely shouting war cries at the top of her lungs and leading a band of people straight into the battle.

  In the confusion, Uncle Mort managed to extricate himself from the tangle of Seniors and dropped in next to Lex. “Kilda’s recruits,” he said, grinning.

  Lex realized that she was looking at Croakers: at least two dozen citizens who’d decided that Norwood was the real enemy, not Lex.

  “Wow,” she whispered, watching them fight.

  “They’ll take it from here,” Uncle Mort said. The Seniors had recovered from the surprise and were now beginning a fresh attack. “Just get to the car.” He pulled at her hoodie and headed for the flashing headlights, whistling at Ferbus to do the same.

  But as Lex watched Riley wrap one of the rebels in a headlock, her hands got even hotter, her scythe blaz
ing in her hand. It felt wrong for her and her friends to simply escape like this, letting Wicket and all those other Grims on their side fight for them. It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t ask these people to put their lives on the line for her while she got to scamper away to safety. That was exactly what had happened with Riqo and Broomie in DeMyse.

  Not here. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

  She wriggled out of Uncle Mort’s grip and ran straight for the center of the fighting. “Get off of her!” she shouted at the man attacking Wicket, grabbing him, Damning him before she could stop herself. A plume of darkness erupted from the man’s body as he fell to the ground in flames—and from there, it was just too easy to Damn another, one of the Seniors who’d piled on top of Uncle Mort.

  “Lex, stop!” she heard Driggs shout from somewhere above her. Uncle Mort was yelling too, but she kept going, looking for her next victim, itching to feel someone else’s skin burning beneath her fingers.

  “I’d listen to them if I were you.”

  It felt as if someone had put the battle on pause. The noise died down, everyone stopping to watch Lex turn around. Someone in the Stiff even cracked a window.

  Norwood stood before her. Wicket also faced her, on her knees at his feet. His hand gripped her neck, her face defiant but flickered with fear.

  “You’re not the only one who can Damn, if you’ll recall,” he said, his eyes still blazing with that crazed fervor. “I know you’ve had a lot more practice than I have—What was the final count? Dozens?—but I’m sure I can make up for lost time.” He grinned. “So let’s make this a fair fight, shall we?”

  A whooshing noise sounded, followed by a brutal scream. As soon as the darkness cleared, Wicket plunged face-first to the ground, her body flaming.

  No one moved, not even Uncle Mort. Everyone was staring, waiting to see what Lex would do next. Even Norwood watched her, a hint of wariness passing through his otherwise smug face.

  And yet Lex felt a curious calm settle over her as she stared at the charred lump. The heat left her hands and was replaced by an odd, cool sensation. Her fingers tingled, as if they’d fallen asleep.

  She’d never felt rage this strong before. It seeped into her bones, turning her whole body to ice, the complete opposite of the feral fury of Damning. As if all the events of the past few months had culminated in this one moment of pure, perfect ire.

  She kept very still.

  “Lex,” Driggs whispered above her, drifting a few feet above her head. “Your hand.”

  Her eyes flicked down to her scythe. Both the weapon and her fingers were outlined in a strange dark shadow that was getting darker, like a roiling tornado.

  She didn’t even know what was going to happen as she raised her arm, but something compelled her. She had to plunge the scythe into Norwood’s chest, she had to—

  And then she was in the air.

  Someone had hit her with a flying tackle, colliding so hard that she soared across the graveyard, landing with a hard thump into the side of the Stiff.

  Dazed, she looked at her hand. It held her scythe, and nothing more. The shadow had disappeared.

  She looked up into Grotton’s pointy face, barely able to grasp the fact that he’d become solid, picked her up, and flown her out of the way. “Close call,” he said, his eyes inscrutable.

  Lex held on to his arm for dear life. She was so out of breath she was panting. “What just happened?”

  She didn’t get an answer, as the car door opened and one of the Juniors quickly pulled her—and, since she still hadn’t let go of him, Grotton—into the back. Uncle Mort was in the front seat, yelling something—yelling at Driggs—“Leave her!”

  Driggs was hovering over Wicket’s body, trying desperately to become solid.

  So that he can unDamn her, Lex realized.

  But he wasn’t doing it fast enough. “Come on!” Uncle Mort yelled again, and with a furious grunt Driggs tore himself away and flew to the car.

  Lex struggled to look out the window as Pandora sped off down the dirt road, leaving the rest of the Seniors to finish killing one another. In the light of the rising sun she managed to catch one last glimpse of Norwood, who gave the departing Stiff a friendly wave and Crashed away, still unaware that he was harming the Afterlife by doing so. Either that, or he didn’t care.

  For a minute, no one spoke. They’d all made it back to the car, a little roughed up but none seriously hurt. Ferbus and Lex both had bloody knuckles, Uncle Mort suffered a cut across his forehead, and Elysia was crying.

  “Calm down, Lys,” Uncle Mort said.

  “Calm down? He Damned Wicket!” she whimpered. “He didn’t just kill her, he Damned her.”

  “Lex Damned people too,” Ferbus said.

  “Yeah, but—those guys weren’t—”

  “What, people just like us?” he shot back. “You think they deserve eternal torment any more than Wicket, just because of the side they happen to be on?”

  “Ferb,” Uncle Mort said in a tired voice, “let’s save the ethics debate for another time. It’s a long drive to Necropolis.”

  Lex appreciated her uncle’s stepping in—especially to stop the sort of lecture that he’d usually be the one to deliver—but Ferbus wasn’t finished. “Seriously, way to Hulk out back there, Lex. That’ll definitely be branded into our nightmares forever, all those bodies bursting into flame like popcorn. And what the hell was that at the end, with your hand?”

  “I don’t know,” Lex said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.” She stared at the scythe in her hand. Her voice got quieter. “I have no idea.”

  “Let go of me,” Grotton hissed.

  Lex looked at her other hand, surprised to find Grotton at the end of it; she hadn’t even realized she was still clutching his wrist. She looked from her rigid fingers up to his face. He was uncharacteristically frustrated, upset.

  He stays solid when I touch him, she realized. Just like Driggs.

  She squeezed him tighter. “What happened back there?” she snarled. Everyone was listening now. “What was that stuff around my hand? And why did you tackle me?” Grotton squirmed like a snake, trying to jerk away, but his wrist was thin and Lex was pissed. “Tell me!”

  Grotton narrowed his eyes. “I’m not telling you anything.”

  His stubbornness was what tipped her off. “It’s the thing that triggers the reset, isn’t it? What I’ll have to do to destroy you?”

  Grotton’s eyes widened just for a second. Enough for Lex to know that she’d hit pay dirt.

  She dug her nails into his papery skin. “Very well! There is a fate worse than death, it’s true,” he said. “A fate worse than the Hole. Even worse than Damning.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Lex noticed that Bang was signing something to her: “Keep holding on to him.” Then she nudged Pip, who nodded and took his scythe out of his pocket.

  Grotton donned an oily smile. “Pity you won’t know what it is until it blows up in your face,” he told Lex, taunting her. “That’s what happens with everything you do, isn’t it, love?”

  “Now!” Bang mouthed. She gave a healthy shove to Pip, who then grabbed Grotton’s hand and, with a quick flick of the scythe, sliced off his thumb. Bang held out the mason jar she’d taken from the bunker, and the severed appendage landed neatly inside, its solidness dissolving into mist before it could produce a single drop of blood.

  Everyone sat, stunned—Grotton most of all. Lex even let go, allowing his body to turn to fog once again as he stared at the spot where his finger had been. Then, gradually, a smile came back to his lips. He leaned close to Bang’s face, his yellowed teeth only inches from her nose.

  “Well played, girl,” he sneered. “Happy reading.”

  With that, he floated back up to the roof. The Juniors stared at the ceiling, not daring to breathe, praying that he wouldn’t go solid again and Damn them all in the space of the next second.

  But he didn’t. And
Bang, it seemed, wasn’t even concerned. Strangely overjoyed at the grisly trophy she’d taken for herself, her head was already back in the Wrong Book. She held the jar with care, grinning as the words on the page popped to life underneath its cloudy contents.

  “It worked!” Pip said.

  Uncle Mort seemed to be having trouble finding his voice. “To put it mildly,” he croaked.

  “You guys are amazing!” Elysia said, her mouth agape. “You’re like superheroes! Or super villains! Something super!”

  “Shh,” Pip said as Bang read. “She found the reset page again.” Bang drew the jar over the page with one hand and signed to Pip with her other hand, which he then translated. “—the harshest punishment in the known Grimsphere. To trigger a reset, a soul must be sent to the Dark.”

  Uncle Mort and Pandora both inhaled sharply.

  “What’s the Dark?” Ferbus asked. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  Bang kept signing, her face getting paler as she read. “The Dark,” Pip said, his voice dropping as he went, “is a realm of pure nothingness. A total vacuum. The absence of life; the opposite of the Afterlife. Souls that are sent to the Dark cease to exist, as if they’d never been born at all. They do not reunite with their loved ones. They do not get to spend the rest of eternity in peace. They’re simply . . .” He swallowed. “Gone.”

  The car had fallen so silent, each pebble that crunched under the Stiff’s tires could be heard.

  “Forever?” Elysia asked.

  Bang nodded, then resumed reading. “Forever,” Pip continued, never taking his eyes off her. “Annihilation—the act of sending a soul to the Dark—is a fate that should be reserved only for the most evil of souls. For the utterly unforgivable.”

  Lex was shivering even harder now. “That’s what happened back there, with the shadow around my hand? I almost Annihilated Norwood?”

  Bang held up a finger as she read some more, then nodded again. “Sounds like it, with the shadow and everything,” Pip translated. “Because—it says that only a Grim with great power can Annihilate a soul. A Grim whose soul has already started to decay.”