Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ A Touch of Death ❯ Chapter 6

WARNINGS AND DISCLAIMERS: These are all fictional characters and any similarities to anyone living or dead is completely incidental. And anyway, I'm not making any money off of this.

 

This is my NanoWriMo piece, which I managed to turn out in half the time allotted. If you don't know what Nano is, check out www.nanowrimo.org for information and a chance at a really good time.

 

“Unbelievable!”

Amber stormed through the night, her bag clutched in one hand and whole body practically fuming with rage.

“I can't believe this,” she snapped. “Like, what is wrong with you? I'm trying to work here and you're wrecking everything.”

“I'm wrecking everything?” Kathryn said. “I'm sorry that I got upset about you punching some sleeping kid in the face!”

“How else do you think that last tooth gets loosened?” Amber bellowed.

“The same way all the other teeth do?”

Amber's eyes narrowed.

“Don't get all high and mighty with me,” Amber warned. “What do you know anyway? You've barely been dead for a day.”

“Yeah, that's right. I guess my morals didn't die with my body.”

“This isn't immoral!”

“You punched a kid in the face!” Kathryn yelled as her finger pointed back at the house they had just left.

“It's not the first time,” Amber hissed. “Look, that last tooth is like, magic. It's the bridge between childhood and adulthood. It doesn't always loosen on its own. Some kids aren't ready to grow up, even when they have to, so we make sure that they do.”

“And you do that by breaking their jaw?”

“No,” Amber said. “I do that by loosening that last tooth. It's not like a boxing match or something. It's a precision hit. You have to make sure that you only loosen the one tooth. I mean, you don't want to make their adult teeth fall out or anything like that, you have to hit them just right. It takes skill.”

“To punch a sleeping child in the face?”

Amber groaned loudly and shook her head.

“What was your last job?” she snapped.

Kathryn stared at her and shrugged a little.

“Gremlin.”

Amber's mouth opened and then shut again. She cautiously stepped back from Kathryn.

“Did Cinna remove that from you before he assigned you to me?”

Irritation ran down Kathryn's spine and her eyes narrowed.

“Maybe.”

Amber glared angrily and shook back long blonde hair.

“He must have, the bus didn't crash.”

“The plane I was on didn't crash either,” Kathryn said haughtily. “But I was still a damned gremlin for a night.”

“Obviously you were just as bad at that as you are at this,” Amber answered.

“Oh,” Kathryn breathed dangerously. “What did you just say?”

Amber smirked as she pulled the glove from her bag and tugged it into place.

“Why don't we see if we can't like loosen up some of your teeth?”

 

***

 

“There was a spirit there,” Lathe said. “All the phantoms went after her. I've never seen anything like it. There was something wrong with her though, something that just didn't sit right.”

“Yeah, she's a special one,” Erec said as he dug around in his desk drawer. “She's actually the one I told you about, the special case.”

“The forty-six year one?” Lathe asked with a frown.

“Yup,” Erec said.

“What was she doing there?”

“She was supposed to be crashing a plane,” Erec said. “But that didn't really work out.”

“You made her a gremlin?” Lathe said, his hand noisily slamming down on the desk.

Erec looked up innocently.

“Just for a night.”

“Why? I thought you said she was special.”

“I've got my reasons,” Erec said and pushed some paperwork aside. “Don't I always?”

Lathe's lips whitened and he slowly sat down across from Erec. The blonde behind the desk fished around a little more and then finally pulled out a tall bottle of vodka.

“There we are,” Erec said happily. “There are a couple of glasses in the leg of your chair, if you don't mind.”

Lathe's eyebrow lifted slightly and Erec shrugged in answer.

“Ms. Anderson feels that drinking on the clock slows down my productivity,” Erec said conversationally. “I think that she's just uptight.”

Lathe set the shot glasses down and Erec smoothly filled them.

“So you saw the phantoms,” Erec said. “And without a tip from Rose Marie. You must have figured out some way to track them. What a chip off the old block.”

“It took some doing,” Lathe said, lightly sniffing at the liquor and ignoring Erec. “I had to wait until I could actually get to a scene before they had disappeared. After that…I could never forget the way I sensed them.”

“Then you don't really have a trail to follow?” Erec asked.

“They don't leave a trail,” Lathe said flatly.

Erec sighed and threw back his vodka, his glass clinking against the desk as he set it down and then refilled it. He slumped back in his chair and shook his head.

“That leaves us just where we've been for the last two years,” Erec said dully.

“No, they're getting bolder,” Lathe said. “That leaves us in a worse position than we've ever been in before.”

Erec sighed and let his fingers wander over the smooth glass top of his desk, occasionally pausing to fiddle with his glass or a stray pen.

“So what was supposed to happen at that airport that drew them in?” Lathe asked. “A plane crash?”

“Yes,” Erec said.

“That was the gremlin's job.”

“So he said,” Erec murmured absently.

“Then why didn't it crash?”

Erec was silent and Lathe set his still full glass back on the desk.

“Alright,” the man in black said. “Why don't you tell me why you think it didn't crash?”

Erec didn't say anything for a moment longer and then shook his head.

“How about this instead. Why don't you tell me why you think they went after her?”

 

***

 

“Is that all you've got?” Amber said as she turned and spat into the street.

“You're wearing a magic glove!” Kathryn snapped. “Of course you're going to be winning?”

A dangerous smirk pulled at Amber's lips, her make-up smeared now and one pony tail sitting lopsided on the top of her head.

“You want me to take it off?” she asked and flexed her fingers. “You think I can't like, hit as hard without it?”

“I'm willing to see,” Kathryn said and pushed some of her own hair back from her face.

For a painted up doll, Amber fought like a wild cat. There was none of that sissy clawing and fisting at hair, oh no, this girl came in swinging and didn't pull any of her punches. And Kathryn was pretty damned sure that the girl had been a tooth fairy for a long time. That was the only reasonable explanation for the arm strength behind each swing.

Amber chuckled lowly and carefully pulled off the glove.

“Just so you know,” she said lowly. “The glove just softens the blow so that the teeth don't like, shatter. I was being nice, but I won't worry about it anymore.”

Kathryn swallowed nervously as Amber raised her fists again.

“Prepare to spend eternity sucking air through some like, busted ass teeth.”

 

***

 

The door shut quietly behind Lathe and Erec rubbed at his temples as the last of their conversation played through his head. Damn that Cerberus, he had a way of getting Erec to tell him too much information. Erec shook his head and eyed the full shot glass that Lathe had left sitting on his desk.

One of these days the bastard was actually going to drink with him.

A quiet knock tapped across his door and Erec forced himself to look up.

“Come in,” he said tiredly.

Ms. Anderson poked her head inside and glanced around the office.

“I'm going home for the day,” she announced. “And you are still behind in all of your appointments. You're going to start losing clients soon.”

“I doubt that,” Erec said and smiled as he watched her eyes latch on the vodka now prominently on display on his desk. “Care for a drink?”

Her eyes narrowed.

“No. Thank you.”

Erec shrugged.

“Any time,” he said. “I always keep a spare bottle or two hidden around the office so let me know whenever you get thirsty.”

The door banged shut behind her and Erec chuckled as he leaned back in his chair, both hands now locked behind his head. She'd be discreetly tearing the office apart over the next couple of days while she looked for his stashes. This could prove distracting.

Again, his eyes strayed to the shot still sitting so lonely on his desk and he slowly reached out to pick it up. A soft hiss escaped him and his fingers jerked back. The glass was ice cold and the liquid inside was frozen impossibly solid.

 

***

 

Kathryn groaned a little as she sat down on the edge of the curb.

“When I get back to Elixir Design, I'm going to really regret this,” she said tiredly.

It was a weird perk of being dead, she guessed. The punch only hurt when it hit her directly and then it just frazzled away. Of course, when the next hit came, it brought all the pain of the earlier ones back with it. Kathryn sighed and shook her head.

“Why exactly do I flash to a form that can feel pain whenever I touch one of you guys?” she asked as she leaned back on her palms.

“It has to do with spiritual power,” Amber said, now joining Kathryn on the curbside. “Once you get to a certain level, you can control which form you have and have an affect on the spirits around you.”

She sighed and glanced at Kathryn out of the corner of her eye.

“I was hoping it would distract you enough to like, give me the upper hand.”

“It just made me more determined not to let you hit me,” Kathryn said.

“Huh,” Amber muttered. “I hadn't thought of that.”

They sat in companionable silence for a moment and then Kathryn stretched out her legs.

“So, how long have you been dead?”

“About seventeen years,” Amber answered. “The big C.”

Kathryn frowned and glanced over at the girl as she carefully pulled her hair back into place.

“Then…how do you still have time left over?” Kathryn asked.

“No way,” Amber said with a laugh. “I died when I was supposed to. I just…didn't feel like leaving yet, I guess. Mr. Cinna said I can work as long as I want before my judgment goes into effect. So for now, I'm just kind of enjoying doing what I do.”

“Punching kids in the face?”

“If we start that again, I'm like, really going to break some of your teeth out.”

 

***

 

Rose Marie liked the voices sometimes. Sometimes they said things that she needed to know. They told her where he was or when she should stay away or what was about to break a line into the after world. Sometimes they were nice.

She shivered and wrapped her arms tighter around her body.

But other times, they said things that she didn't want to hear. Things about killing and death and who they wanted next. She didn't want to know that. She never wanted to hear that. She closed her eyes and hummed softly.

And now the phantoms began to whisper in her head.

 

***

 

“Alright,” Amber said. “Let's take off. I want a drink.”

“Is that allowed?” Kathryn asked.

“It's not like we have vice police in the afterlife,” Amber said as she flipped a pigtail back over her shoulder. “Besides, I doubt you're like, going to change your mind and let me do my job tonight. So let's blow it off. Come on, I know just where to take you.”

 

***

 

Lathe knelt on the cold concrete, his gloved fingers absently spreading against it as he tried to pick up some sense of the things that had been here. A plane blew overhead, the wind from its engines enough to swirl back the long clothing he wore and make the darkness that clung to him mist and spiral.

Nothing.

Lathe rocked back on his haunches and let out a decidedly annoyed sigh. It was just like every other time he'd managed to find a scene where the phantoms had been. There wasn't a trace left behind of them, no imprints, no impressions, not even a piece of their broken forms.

He pulled his jacket tighter around his body and called for the scythe again. It cut into the air, that strange slice through to the dark that ran beneath everything hovering just a moment before him. And he paused. Lathe couldn't help a quick glance over his shoulder as he wondered what she had been doing there and just why the phantoms wanted her so badly.

 

***

 

Elixir Design was quiet and dark when Amber and Kathryn arrived, not even the dim little light over Ms. Anderson's desk lit. The place was like a little tomb and Kathryn cursed quietly when her leg slammed into the heavy glass coffee table in the center of the waiting room.

“Just when it would be convenient to have no real body,” Amber teased. “Come on, let's go.”

The tooth fairy eased open the door to Erec's office and then suddenly stiffened. The door clicked shut again and she turned around to grab Kathryn's hand.

“He's like, passed out at his desk,” Amber said and a noisy little girl giggle escaped her. “Come on, we'll sneak through.”

“Where exactly are we going?” Kathryn whispered.

“After world,” Amber said. “It's just through the door.”

She tugged a nervous Kathryn inside and slowly closed the door behind them. Erec snorted a little in his sleeping stupor and the faint smell of vodka filtered in the air around them. Kathryn wrinkled her nose as she watched him messily sleep, his desk propping him up in a farce of every single drunkard she had ever seen.

“Come on,” Amber whispered, now gripping the handle of the very door they'd just come through. “This way.”

“But we--”

Kathryn should have known better than to question it.

 

***

 

Erec thought about murmuring something ridiculous or even pertinent as they tried to creep through his office, but he had no desire to tempt them into staying any longer than they absolutely had to. The tooth fairy thing seemed to be working out, at least enough that neither one had burst back into his office demanding that Kathryn be reassigned. He wouldn't have put it past Amber to throw a hissy fit in the middle of his next client meeting. Wouldn't that be spectacular.

And no phantoms so far either. That was much more reassuring than the muffled laughter that his long haired tooth fairy was making as she tugged Kathryn back through the door to After world. Things would probably get quiet now.

The door shut and Erec sighed softly. Peace at last.

Suddenly, he sat up, both eyes wide and hands clutching at his desk.

“After world,” he said lowly. “She didn't…”

 

***

 

“Come on,” Amber said, still leading Kathryn around like a lost lamb. “This way.”

After world was like a dark film that hung over the living world. It was a mist that covered everything in a land of its own and made a place for the spirits to go. No one knew just where After world had come from or just how the dead knew to find it, but it was always there. Those that didn't pass on saw the light and it pierced through the shadows and brought them to After world. It was like a train station on the way to whatever came next and whatever had been before. The spirits lingered there, and did what they could to keep some semblance of life within them. Barriers were in place to keep the ghosts from filtering too much into the real world and the Cerberus were able to curb the pull that the living held over the dead. Plus, there was the darkness. The darkness ran between the worlds of the living and the dead like some great moat and crossing it took either great power or one of the special doors created between the two. Fortunately, Amber knew just how Erec kept his locked.

Kathryn blinked as Amber led her along, the street an eerily familiar mirror image of the one that had led them to Elixir Design. She glanced back over her shoulder and blinked as she saw the same discreet sign and huddled little building. Her eyes wandered over everything they passed and she was both comforted and uneasy with how closely this place matched the living world.

The only real difference were the colors. It might have been expected that the place would be intangible and cold and grey, but if anything it was the opposite. Everything was too bright and it seemed as if it had all been colored vibrantly to give the illusion of life to the place. Electric lights popped and burst out at the eye with neon intensity and garish paint covered everything. It felt forced almost, like some small city had woke up one more and decided to whore out Vegas.

“Here we are,” Amber said cheerfully and slammed open the door of a bright purple building that was a bank in the world of the living. “Like, ignore the stains and you can enjoy the drinks.”

“Hey,” the barman yelled at the loud comment. “You don't like it, drink somewhere else!”

Amber grinned and flounced to the bar, every piece of lace and frill seeming to float as she climbed up on one of the stools and leaned forward.

“Hi,” she purred.

“Hi yourself,” the rail thin man behind the bar answered with annoyance. “Aren't you supposed to be working?”

“Be nice to me,” Amber said. “I like, got beat up tonight.”

Instantly the skinny man went rod straight and both of his eyes narrowed so darkly that Kathryn thought maybe she should step outside for a while. Or…forever.

“What?” he said lowly.

“Mmm-hmm,” Amber continued. “Worried?”

“Are you okay?”

“You know no one takes a punch like a fairy,” Amber said happily.

“You're in a pretty good mood for having been through a fight,” the man said, now gently lifting Amber's chin to examine her face.

Kathryn could just make out a faint Southern accent in the bartender's voice, his dark brown hair falling over one blue eye as he looked the tooth fairy over. He sighed quietly and slowly pulled his fingers away.

“Nothing broken,” he said.

“No,” Amber said cheerfully and Kathryn could see faint traces of a blush on the girl's cheeks. “I'm fine. Here, let me introduce you. Hey, come over here.”

Kathryn nervously sidled up to the bar and nervously nodded at the man as she sat down.

“Kathryn, this is Mitch. Mitch, this is Kathryn. She's the one who beat me up tonight.”

Kathryn shrunk down in her seat as the bartender swung around on her. She definitely should have waited outside.

 

***

 

“She wouldn't be that stupid,” Erec grumbled as he yanked his jacket on and stalked towards the door. “That's impossible.”

He'd been arguing with himself for too long. He knew that Amber had done it, so he had no idea why he insisted on trying to deny it. The damned tooth fairy was running around After world with Kathryn in tow.

“Just what I needed,” Erec muttered darkly. “I'm going to rip those pigtails out.”

He stepped back suddenly as Rose Marie materialized from the shadows, her eyes foggily locked on him and a long black cane in her fingers.

“Have a good trip,” she said dully and shoved the cane at him.

Erec stared down at it for a moment and then forced one hand to slide out and wrap around it. The black wood felt cold and solid in his hold, and nothing else happened. There was no shock of electricity, no burst of whatever was supposed to come, but somehow, something inside him knew that there was a reason behind this and he was going to regret this.

Badly.