The Crescent

Chapter 34

The smile vanished from Baker's face, replaced with a clenched jaw and juxtaposed dimple. He retreated from Zacari, his eyes swallowing her for analysis. She registered the pucker of disappointment in the sleek divots of his face and the wrinkle of his small nose. He let out a dejected sigh. "And I had such high hopes. Turn around, and you'll find your journalist."

Zacari did so. It was the trench from her dreams, lined with bottles and jars of unsolicited specimens encrusted over with ice and dirt, and curled in a deeper section of the earth was the small, lifeless body of Will. There was frost in his lashes and a fine layer of snow stitched into the angular bundles of his clothes. Zacari stepped into the trench and crouched next to him, tugged on his shirt. It was so cold it felt like cardboard.

"Zacari, duck!"

She dropped just as a whooshing sound rang past her ear. She pivoted in the dirt to find Baker raising the shovel a second time and dove out of the way just as the second swing came down, nearly clipping the back of her head. Will sprinted towards her from the hospital.

"Watch out!" he yelled.

Baker growled and raised the shovel over his head and came down hard. The blade of the shovel sliced into the side of Zacari's calf and blood poured from the slit. She screamed as she scrambled out of the trench and towards Will. They collided in a tangle of hands as Will pulled her behind him. The body in the trench was as slight as a broken bird, but the Will in front of Zacari was larger than life. There was a soft light radiating from him, as gentle as the glow of a star.

Baker laughed maniacally, a distinct, high-pitched arpeggio. Zacari's toes curled against her flip-flops.

"Mr. Drachman," he enthused. "I was beginning to think you'd avoid me forever, considering how our last meeting went."

"I was afraid," Will admitted. "But that's over. You won't hurt anyone else."

"You've never understood your death, have you? You were collateral damage, no more. I only kept your death secret because the masses weren't ready for my sacrifices. I can see now that they still aren't ready." His hands tightened on the shovel. "I'll release you when I see fit."

"No," Will said shakily. "I'm not a prisoner anymore." Baker smirked. "I've come to know you, Dr. Baker. You try to perpetuate this image of a savior, but you are a creature of hate. And do you know what that makes you?"

Baker's eyes flashed. "Enlighten me."

"Weak," Will hissed.

Baker howled with laughter, but there was a snag in its cadence. "And yet you couldn't save Gloria."

Zacari took Will's hand, felt a blooming warmth between their palms.

Will stepped forward. "You are weak. You're rotting on the inside with hate. You're bound to fall apart any moment."

Baker raised the shovel threateningly. "I'll put you back in that hole, boy."

"Weak."

The air was electric, the smell of rot rising in waves.

"Stop it," Baker snarled, but he drew back to the edge of the trench.

Will looked at Zacari. "Help me?" She turned to Baker's colorless eyes.

"Weak," she said.

Will held out his other hand and sent Baker hurling into the trench. Baker's shovel flew from his hands as he landed. He scrambled to his feet, but he was wavering. He glanced down at Will's dead body in fear. Zacari observed how small he looked in the trench.

The warmth between Zacari and Will's palms flowered through their arms and filled the hollows of their chests, hitching Zacari's breath between her ribs. The cold was obliterated in a single burst, snow melting away into a bounty of dead nettle, capered and purple tipped. She squeezed Will's hand as the warmth snaked a path to Baker and took hold of him like a clenched, invisible fist. He let out an anguished scream as his skin began peeling away in sinewy strips. He tipped backward and writhed on the dirt floor as his muscles stretched and tore away. The stench of death and the weight of screams hung thick in the air.

Then he was the rot he'd been all along. A lumpy, oozing thing cast in cancerous shades of yellow, filmed in congealed stretches of blood, and black, rotting places from where maggots fell softly. The dark spots grew and encroached the thing in spidery tracks until the creature was a sludge of rot, then a puddle, then nothing at all. The screams halted abruptly.

A few maggots squirmed against the cold earth, then ceased movement altogether.

Zacari let her breath go and loosened her grip on Will. They were quiet beneath the crescent moon, warm in their patch of dead nettle. Will squeezed her hand. She turned to him. He was transparent, the rise and fall of snowbanks visible though the endearingly ugly green of his sweater. He smiled at her.

"Thank you," he said.

She flung her arms around him. He tensed, then let his arms settle around her shoulders. The world waned into warmth and stars.

When she opened her eyes she was in morgue, the cold and corpses gone, the single bulb lighting the swoop of Javier's chin and cheekbones in an artwork of breath and life. Lela licked Zacari's ankle and wagged her tail. She grateful scooped up the chihuahua in a cradle and kissed her on the forehead.

"They're done," he said. "Will's pictures."

Relief washed over Zacari. "Will, we've done it!" she exclaimed. "Will?"

But he was gone.