Page 30 of Concluded (The Bureau #13)

“A chilles?” Dee sounded close to panic, and the hand clutching Achilles’ tightened enough to hurt.

Despite the pain—and his own deep unease—Achilles squeezed back. “Yeah, this is it. As far as I can tell, anyway. You did it, Dee.”

“I’m…. Can we rest for a minute? I know we’re not safe, but….”

“But that was hard work. Of course.” Achilles lowered himself, gently tugging Dee along, until they sat side by side.

As before, there was an absolute absence of light.

Sounds carried oddly—Achilles hadn’t registered that during his first visit since it had been just him.

Even though he knew that Dee was only inches away, it sounded as if he was across the street.

Dee shuffled a bit nearer until their knees touched. “My clothes are gone.”

“Oh. Mine too.” Last time he’d assumed that Dunn had stripped him before sending him here, but it appeared that wasn’t the case.

“That means my pocket’s gone. And the amber that was in it. The one I was supposed to use to get us home.”

Shit. That was an unwanted complication. Achilles kept his tone light because there was no use spreading his own fears to Dee. Not when there was nothing they could do about the situation. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Okay.” A noisy, shuddery exhale. “Sorry. I feel like I’ve run a marathon and gone a week without sleeping.”

“You transported two grown men to… I don’t know… another dimension? That’s a huge feat. You’ve earned a rest.”

Dee sighed again, this time longer and quieter. “What do we do next?”

“You catch your breath. Just, um, don’t dawdle over it, okay? I don’t like this place.”

“I’d give it one star on Tripadvisor.”

Laughter might have sounded weird here, but it felt good. For what might have been ten minutes—or might have been a century, for all Achilles could tell—they sat there silently. Holding hands, knees touching.

“Hey, Dee? Tell me something joyful you’ve experienced.”

There was a long pause. “Happy Meal,” Dee whispered.

“Hamburgers?”

“No. That was the name of a dog my mom gave me—a wish she granted me right before she walked out of my life. He was just a mutt, but he was the most wonderful dog in the world, you know?”

Achilles gently squeezed Dee’s hand. “That’s a great memory. Thank you.” He meant it. Thinking about Dee as a lonely little boy, finding someone to give him unconditional love… that made the darkness feel less oppressive.

“How about you?” Dee asked. He sounded less exhausted.

“Eight years ago. I had an assignment sort of near Seattle. Someone had seen something weird in the woods and the Bureau got notified, so Townsend sent me to see what was what. It was out in the rain in the middle of nowhere, wet and cold and just… green stuff dripping everywhere. I was in a pissy mood. Then I came to this clearing and….” He stopped, smiling at the memory but unable to convey how magical it had been.

“There were these little creatures. If they stood still, they looked like mushrooms. But they had tiny drums and whistle things and they were dancing. When they saw me they rushed over and spoke to me, but I couldn’t understand a word.

They weren’t hostile, though. They seemed welcoming.

And soon they were dancing around me, and it was so weird , I started dancing too.

Carefully, so I didn’t step on anyone. After a few songs they wandered off into the forest.”

“What were they?”

“No idea,” said Achilles with a chuckle. “Agent Afolabi looked them up but drew a blank. Townsend didn’t know either, which was incredibly rare. But I hear some strings were pulled and that stretch of land was bought by a private conservancy. I hope they’re dancing still.”

It was Dee’s turn to squeeze his hand. “So you rescued them.”

“I don’t know about that. If so, indirectly. But the world… sometimes it sucks so bad. But it’s also full of wonders.”

“I’m ready now,” said Dee.

So was Achilles.

Together they stood. There was no point in wandering around blindly, so they just had to hope that Dee’s magic had placed them conveniently close to their target.

Achilles took a deep breath. “Hey!” he shouted. “Hello! Are you here? We’d like to help you.” His call rolled away as if they stood on a vast plain.

Nobody answered.

“Together?” Dee offered.

“Good idea. One, two, three. Hello! Are you here?”

The two of them together were greater than the sum of the parts. Not only was the shouting louder, but it had more depth. It felt more real.

This time, a response arrived like a whisper carried on a breeze. “You here.”

“What direction was that from?” Dee asked.

“Can’t tell.” Achilles said much more loudly, “Call again!”

There was a pause, then, “Call again,” weaker this time.

Dee made a frustrated noise. “What if that’s just an echo?”

“It’s all we’ve got.” But they needed more info to locate the source. From somewhere in the far reaches of Achilles’ brain, an idea surfaced. “Sing-along time.”

“What?”

Achilles cleared his throat and bellowed. “The other day!”

“Day.”

“I met a bear!”

“Bear.”

“What the hell, Achilles?” That was Dee, not the… whatever.

“Some things are easier if you sing. And boy, I’ve met some bears.” He continued the song, which he’d probably learned during some school event as a kid. “Out in the woods!”

“Woods.”

“A way out there!”

“Out there.”

When Achilles repeated the stanza, Dee joined him… and so did the faint third voice. So he continued. “He looked at me!”

“Looked at me.”

It was coming from ahead and to the right. He was almost sure of it. Joined with Dee—physically and vocally—he walked slowly in that direction, singing the whole way and listening for responses. And they grew stronger. Soon the third person was repeating the entire line, loudly. They sounded male.

Dee and Achilles got to the end of the penultimate stanza—“Caught that branch, on the way back down!”—and the answer came right there.

They tripped over something and landed in a heap on the ground.

Achilles felt around frantically and nearly sobbed when he touched someone who wasn’t Dee.

This someone was cold as the grave, skin stretched tightly over bones, and…

. “Feathers!” Achilles exclaimed. His heart was beating too quickly and he could barely breathe.

The someone was in a ball, cowering.

“Get it together, Spanos,” Achilles muttered to himself. Then he set a gentle hand on what he hoped was the person’s shoulder. “I’m Achilles. This is Dee. We came here for you.”

“I’m lost,” the person whispered.

“But we found you.”

“I’m broken.”

“I’ve been broken too. Friends helped me heal. We can help you.” Achilles hoped very much that this was true. “What’s your name?”

The answer, when it came, was barely audible. “Ish.”

Although the Bureau had given Achilles a fair bit of training on demons, there had been little discussion about angels.

That was because, with rare exceptions, angels kept to themselves.

The Bureau almost never had to deal with them.

So Achilles didn’t know whether angels, like demons, had distinct names, and if so, whether Ish was one of them.

That was something they could work out later.

“Okay, Ish. Just give us a minute and Dee’s going to get us out of here.”

“No charm,” said Dee, sounding panicky again.

Right. That. There was nothing here but the three of them, all of them bare, and?—

Something grabbed hold of Achilles’ ankle and jerked, making him yelp with pain.

It was cold and hard, like an iron band, and when he kicked violently, it didn’t let go.

He reached down to dislodge it but felt nothing against his hand even though he was now being pulled away from Dee and Ish.

He tried to get to his hands and knees, but the force only jerked at him again, and when he scrabbled at the floor he couldn’t get any handholds, any traction.

He was being dragged away.

He vaguely registered someone calling his name, but it was very far away.

Unimportant. The futility of resisting hit him like a heavy, wet blanket, and he collapsed entirely.

What was the point of fighting? He would lose anyway.

They were all going to lose, and there was nothing a nobody like him could do about it.

Gods, the despair was too much. He curled into a ball and felt his heart thudding slowly, uselessly, his lungs dragging in and out, the weight of every mistake he’d ever made pressing into him.

He’d killed his parents. He’d killed Orson.

He’d killed Santiago Bautista. And now he’d killed Dee as well, and?—

Dee.

He wasn’t sure whether he’d said the name out loud, but he definitely heard the response—“Achilles!”—and now a pair of hands grasped his upper arms.

“No use,” Achilles moaned. But the hands were warm and strong.

He knew those hands. Those fingers had threaded through his hair during a kiss, had applied antibiotic ointment and butterfly bandages to a bullet graze on his shoulder, had brought him water when he lay parched in chains. Had given him literal magic.

Achilles rose to his knees and took both of those hands in his. “Did I lose Ish?” he asked hoarsely.

“Caught that branch,” Ish replied, very close.

The hopelessness didn’t entirely flee, but now there was an equal measure of optimism in Achilles’ chest. They could win this. Together. Because he was neither powerless nor alone, and when he gave his support to his formidable allies, they could work wonders.

When Achilles reached out with one hand—the other still had a death grip on Dee—he brushed against feathers. A desperate little noise escaped him as he groped until he found Ish’s thin wrist and held that too. “Don’t let go.” Meant as a command to Dee, it came out more as a plea.

Achilles’ brain felt slow, as dark as their surroundings, a machine whose batteries had nearly run out. It would be so much easier to give in to the inevitable and become the nothing he knew he was.

“Happy Meal,” said Dee, quite clearly. “Dancing mushrooms. The starry sky in the desert.”

Achilles was not nothing.

“Ish, can we have one of your feathers?”

“My feathers are the branch?”

“Yes, yes!”

“Take a twig.”

So Achilles released Ish’s wrist, but only long enough to yank a single feather from a wing—Ish didn’t even twitch in response—and hand it to Dee. “Our charm,” he explained.

When Dee laughed, the darkness momentarily lightened. Only a little, but even that much was a miracle. “Perfect. Make your wish, Achilles.”

He had so many wishes, all of a sudden. One was paramount, however. “I want to return safely to White and Marek’s house with Dee and Ish.”

He waited, and after a minute or so Dee moaned. “It’s not working. I can’t do it.”

“You can.”

“I’m not strong enough.”

“You are. You’ve rescued me how many times already? You saved me just now.” Achilles put all his conviction into his words. Because sometimes if you believed in other people, then they believed in themselves.

Dee huffed, squeezing Achilles’ hand while trying again.

“Can’t!” Dee sobbed.

They were going to be stuck here forever. And without Dee, without Ish, with the battle lost, the war would be lost as well, and then?—

“She’ll be coming ’round the mountain!” Achilles bellowed.

“Um, what?”

Not bothering to explain, Achilles simply continued singing. Badly, but that hardly mattered. “She’ll be coming ’round the mountain, she’ll be coming ’round the mountain, she’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes.”

“She’ll be… driving six white horses?”

“Fuck yes! She’ll be driving six white horses!”

Together they yelled the stupid song, and as they did, a slight tingle began at their joined hands.

It was weird but not unpleasant, and it grew as they continued through the verses.

By the time they reached the final one—“We’ll be singin’ ‘Hallelujah’ when she comes”—Achilles’ entire body felt electrified.

He was sweating, his cock hard and throbbing, his heart racing so quickly it was a wonder it was still in his rib cage.

And then Ish joined the song. He didn’t sing in English or any other language that Achilles had ever heard; his syllables sounded as wild and alien as the mushroom creatures’ music.

But Ish kept to the same tune as Dee and Achilles, and now a current ran through Achilles, from Ish in one hand to Dee in the other.

Achilles twitched with it, literally dancing with pleasure and pain, until they all reached the song’s final word.

“Got it!” Dee shouted triumphantly.

This time, all three of them laughed, and the darkness brightened as if dawn was on the verge of breaking. That lasted only a moment, which was long enough for Achilles to see Dee’s beautiful, almost ecstatic face.

Then Dee pressed the feather between their clasped hands, Achilles repeated his wish, and a supernova exploded.