Acheron Highway: A Jonathan Shade Novel (31 page)

I ignored the conversations as much as I could and didn’t really engage with anyone until lunch.
 
It had been the same the first time too, only that time I was thinking about what I might do if this or that happened.

“Here’s the plan,” I said at lunch.
 
“We’ll go to the center of the bridge.
 
Brand and Kelly, your only real task here is to keep civilians away.
 
I don’t want any innocent people to get hurt or killed.
 
I couldn’t live with that blood on my hands.
 
Darla, you’ll summon Charon, but I want you to focus hard on storing up enough magic to cast Persephone back to the Underworld.”

“What about Charon?” she asked.

“No worries, he’ll be between you and Persephone, so he’ll be swept back there too.
 
Your focus needs to be on sending Persephone away.
 
That way, when Sharon comes back, we can formulate a plan that will end this without anyone dying.
 
Cool?”

“Whatever you say.”

“Something you want to add, Brand?”

“It’s a bullshit plan, Shade.
 
Bringing up the current Charon is a bad idea.
 
It’s just going to piss off Persephone to the point where she’ll blast us all out of existence.”

“She said she wanted to be with Charon,” I said.

“You know who she means and throwing the other guy in her face is more disrespectful than not trying to punch me during sparring.”

“I can’t even get close to you in sparring unless you let me.”

“So you see what I’m saying, then.”

Back then, I didn’t see it.
 
I saw the clever ploy to throw her off guard.
 
Now, of course, I saw exactly what he was saying.
 
I feigned ignorance.

Brand shook his head.
 
“Whatever, dude.”

I turned to Kelly.
 
“Are you cool with this?”

She met my gaze.
 
Did I see disappointment in her eyes?
 
Concern?
 
I couldn’t read her even now.
 
“I’m with you, Jonathan.
 
I’m with you no matter what comes our way.”

She’d devoted herself to me when she thought I’d saved her from destruction so many years ago.
 
Her designing principle was that she would be with me through anything because in her view, if not for me, she’d have died back then.
 
I used to wonder if she’d have changed her mind if she knew she’d die today.
 
But looking into her eyes now, I realized that she knew death was on the horizon, waving to her.
 
She didn’t turn away; she simply waved back.

I looked at Darla, who had barely touched her salad.
 
She looked so young.
 
She glanced out the window, and I watched her.
 
I saw her hand tremble when she set down her fork.
 
She only nibbled at the lettuce because she was scared to death.
 
She knew she didn’t have a hope in hell of getting off that bridge alive.
 
She’d been loaned out to a moron who was going to get her killed.

A year ago, I’d taken the time to follow each of the players in this moment back through the previous few days.
 
I’d watched Darla beg Mike not to loan her out to me.
 
She wasn’t ready.
 
She didn’t have the power.
 
Mike told her to hum a few bars and fake it.
 
“Things always seem to work out for that Shade guy.
 
He won a Sekutar, scratch that,
two
Sekutar warriors to his side, and he’s defeated enemies who should have been able to tear him apart.
 
You’ll be fine.”

So I knew that for all her holding her head high and looking ready to take on the world, she was a scared little girl counting on me to keep her safe.
 
She put her trust in me, and she was wrong to do so.
 
In a few hours, she’d be dead.
 
I wanted to apologize to her.
 
I wanted to tell her to go back to Denver and pretend she’d never met me.
 
She didn’t deserve this.
 
She should be learning to use her magic and dating and taking big bites out of life.

As we left the restaurant, she grabbed my arm.
 
I faced her.

“Thank you for trusting me on this,” she said.
 
“I really appreciate you giving me a shot at this.”

“Is this your first field mission?”

She nodded.

“You’ll do fine,” I said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The meteorologists were way off base on their weather forecast of snow.
 
The temperature tipped into the thirties, but I barely noticed.
 
It could have been seventy or zero and it was all the same to me.
 
The sun sent its light and warmth and even knowing what was to come, I found the view was breathtaking.
 
Looked like a painting, all that.

Brand walked up behind me and slapped me hard on the back.
 
He looked down at the support struts and smiled.
 
I knew he was trying to distract me, but now, as then, my focus was elsewhere.

“You know what would be fun?” he asked.
 
“Swinging from bar to bar on those struts there.
 
You could go across the underside of the bridge all the way from one cliff to the other.
 
The spacing is perfect.
 
Just like the monkey bars back when I was a kid.”

Five years ago, I thought he was thinking about himself and how the magical engineering on his body would slowly fail and he’d feel pain again, but now I realized he was simply giving me a distraction from thinking about what was to come.

“That doesn’t sound fun to me.
 
Sounds dangerous.”

“Monkey barring across the bridge on the struts is a hell of a lot safer than your stupid plan.
 
You’re going to get us all killed.”

“You didn’t raise many objections at lunch.”

Brand shrugged.
 
“
Gotta
die sometime.”

Yeah, he knew it was coming, but he didn’t care.
 
He stood with me because Kelly had judged me worthy.
 
I could tell by the way he looked at me that he was still trying to figure out why she felt that way, but he was with her, and that meant that he was also with me come what may.
 
Whether it meant a great bar story about fighting a goddess or exploding at the snap of said goddess’s fingers, he would be stalwart and true.
 
He might bitch about it, but that was just his way.

Kelly approached and looked at the cliff walls and down at the river.
 
“What time is Sharon coming?”

I wanted to say she wasn’t coming, but at this point, I knew everything needed to be as it was the first time.
 
“Four.”

“I think the bridge closes at four.”

“I think that’s just the rides.”

“You sure about this?”

“Pretty sure.”
 
Now I realized she was saying we could still leave and she wouldn’t think less of me.
 
Did she suspect Sharon wouldn’t show?

“I think it’s stupid,” Brand said.

“Jonathan, I’ll back your play.”
 
Kelly held my gaze, and in her eyes I saw that she appreciated the time we’d had together and that she wouldn’t trade it for anything.
 
That only made what was coming that much harder to carry.
 
She knew she was going to die, but as long as she died by my side, that was all right with her.

It was not all right with me.

I took a deep breath.
 
This had better work.

#

Show time.

Three-thirty rolled around, and a light glowed about fifteen feet from us.
 
A rift opened and Persephone stepped onto the wooden deck of the bridge.
 
As before, Brand stood behind her to keep people away.
 
Kelly stood behind me.

Without hesitation, as soon as the rift opened, I strode right up to Persephone.
 
As I approached, I reached into my coat and pulled out two
katar
punching daggers.
 
As soon as the rift closed behind her and Persephone opened her mouth to speak, I punched the daggers up through her gut into her heart.
 
I pulled them out, getting blood all over me.

If something bleeds, it can die.

Persephone froze for a moment.
 
Sudden, unexpected violence will make damn near anyone freeze.
 
Before she could snap out of it, I plunged the daggers through her eyes into her brain and I gave them each a savage twist.
 
If she couldn’t see us, she couldn’t aim her magic at us, so she could never kill my friends.
 
I didn’t see her as a woman because if I did, I could never do what I did.
 
I simply saw her as the enemy who had murdered everyone I’d ever cared about, and there was no way in hell I’d ever let that happen twice.

I shoved her body to the ground and just to be safe, I used the blades in a scissor like motion to sever her head.
 
I dropped the blades, picked up her head with my right hand, and hurled it as far off the bridge as I could.

“Holy shit!” Brand said.

But I wasn’t finished.
 
I scooped up Persephone’s headless body and I raised it high above me so I could toss it over the safety fence.
 
I watched her body fall the 1,053 feet to the ground.
 
The body missed the river by a few feet and instead hit the rocks beside it then rolled into the water.
 
The swift current carried it away.

“Holy fucking shit!” Brand said.
 
“That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

Kelly approached me from behind.
 
“This was your plan all along?” she asked.
 
“Why didn’t you say so?”

I met her gaze.
 
“Some things are better as surprises,” I said.

She smiled.

She would get to continue smiling for years to come.

Emotions welled in me, but I took a deep breath and forced them down.
 
I was no longer the man who had set foot on this bridge to face Persephone five years ago.
 
I knew I’d have to carry what had happened that first time for the rest of my life.
 
I could never allow myself to be that careless again.
 
Not when people like Kelly and Brand were willing to follow me, no questions asked.
 
I owed it to them to not get them killed.

The air shimmered and glowed, and Charon appeared on the bridge.

“Bob,” I said with a nod.

“Shade?” he said, confused.
 
“What the hell am I doing here?”

“I want you to pass a message to Sharon.”

“I haven’t seen her since you guys left.”

“I know she keeps in contact with you.”

He gave me a slow nod.
 
“I’m listening.”

“You tell her that if I ever see her again, I’m going to kill her.
 
No chance at reprieve.
 
She’s not welcome here.
 
Got it?”

He looked confused but he nodded.
 
“I got it.”

“Good.”
 
I turned to Darla.
 
“You can send him back now.”

She had the magic ready, of course.
 
She let it loose and Charon vanished.

“Is that it?” Darla asked.
 
“I thought you wanted me to…”
 
She looked around.
 
“I thought…”

“You were Plan B,” I said.
 
“Thanks for coming.
 
We’ll give you a ride back to Denver, and you tell Mike that when he needs something, all he has to do is call me.”

“OK,” she said.
 
I could see the relief on her face.

She had no idea about the relief I felt to see her standing there, breathing and ready to continue on her journey of life.

Brand came up to me and held his hand up for a high five.
 
“Now I finally get why Kelly is so devoted to you.”
 
He kept his hand up.
 
“Dude, don’t leave me hanging here.”

I gave him the high five and looked at Kelly.
 
The smile still lit up her face.
 
We walked back to the car, and I made a note to apologize to Esther.
 
I had wronged her, and while for me that was ancient history, for her it was recent and painful, and I never wanted to hurt her or any of the people I loved.

For all the bad things I knew were on the horizon, I knew I wouldn’t be facing them alone.

More than that, I had a knowledge very few people truly have.

I knew who my friends were.

THE END