Work Text:
9:00 AM
“Wow, what a shithole.” Genji made his proclamation in English, which meant he wanted it to be understood by anyone in earshot. Japanese was not a commonly encountered language in this part of the rural Southwestern United States, after all; Hanzo was the only one in sight to have a visible reaction, but it did not mean he was the only one to hear .
“If you anger them before we even step inside, this case will be much more difficult than necessary,” growled Hanzo with the particular tone reserved for older brothers who often found themselves responsible for trouble caused by younger siblings. “I, for one, do not intend to be hospitalized because you critiqued someone’s taste in decor.”
Genji rolled his eyes.
“This country is so young. They barely have any ghosts over two hundred years old, anyway.”
Hanzo smacked him in the back of the head.
“There were people before then, and there are spirits even older still,” he snapped. “Do not underestimate our work here based on simple presumptions. Or do you wish to repeat the lesson you learned in Nepal?”
“Do not bring the monks into this,” Genji grumbled.
“Then pay attention.” Hanzo gestured to the front door, a rickety, rot-dark conglomeration of wood planks held together with rusted nails. “The dragons have been agitated this whole time. Something strange is happening here. Very strange, if they have not identified it yet.”
The spirit dragons bound to Hanzo’s soul hissed quietly as they undulated across the decaying porch. Their heads moved back and forth in constant seeking, tracking unseen trails.The faint shimmer of their azure scales seemed muted against the sun-bleached wood, sharpening the sense of unease that scraped against Hanzo’s nerves.
Genji responded to their caution by drawing his sword and letting his own dragon climb along the blade. The dragon’s green glow turned sickly sallow as it came closer to the house.
“We’ll be done by dinner,” he assured his older brother and Hanzo, having heard such words proven false many times before, just shook his head and sighed.
9:30 AM
There was no proper architectural description for the house. The kindest thing to call it was “historic”. It was old, and it was big, and it was ugly in the way things built entirely for functionality were ugly: carelessly cruel to the eye and soul. At some point in its long and busy existence, someone had tried to make it a home with sturdy furniture and amateur interior design. Their efforts, desperate and tenacious, were ultimately a failure that only enforced the atmosphere of stagnation.
Hanzo particularly hated the curtains, which were an off-white faux-gauze material that yellowed atrociously with age. In some places it was impossible to tell where the curtains ended and the cobwebs began.
“I’ll say it again,” Genji’s tone strayed dangerously close to sing-song, “shithole.”
Hanzo hushed him, but it was too late. The door slammed shut behind them so quickly that it caught the edge of Hanzo’s ribbon and severed it as neatly as a surgical scalpel in a door frame too warped to even close cleanly.
“Whoops,” said Genji as Hanzo turned a glare on him. “What? It’s your own fault for standing so close to the door. That was what, like, our first lesson in site cleansing?”
If looks could kill, the house would have had another ghostly tenant. Hanzo spun on his heel to look for alternate exits, only to find they were no longer standing in a well-lit parlor, but a dim and windowless hall. Sparing another scathing glance at his brother, he summoned his dragons closer to him and let their light guide him.
10:00 AM
The hallway kept going.
10:30 AM
And going.
11:00 AM
And going.
11:30 AM
Turning around revealed the still-closed front door just behind them, as if walking for an hour in a straight line only covered twenty feet of space. Crossing back revealed it remained as sealed as if it had been painted onto the wall. Genji gave Hanzo a cherubic smile and shrug as they discovered that even spirit-enhanced weapons and strikes could not so much as scratch it.
11:55 AM
Genji sat cross-legged with his back to the door while Hanzo and his dragons scoured every inch of the hall.
“There is something here, but it runs through the whole place, far larger than what I can reach,” he murmured. “It spreads out… out like… veins.”
“Visceral,” replied Genji, laying a hand on his sword. “Shall we see if it bleeds?”
“If there are veins, there must be a heart…” said Hanzo. “Something to fuel it… something that focuses it…” He opened one eye and gave his brother a half quicksilver smirk. “In your case, that would be the stomach.”
“If you are going to talk about stomachs, you cannot complain when I get hungry.”
“I do not complain that you get hungry; I complain that you whine incessantly–”
A deep tremor ran through the hall, knocking Hanzo slightly off balance. He caught himself just in time for a second quake, this one accompanied by a twisting web of red-gold and red-black that flashed through the grain of the wooden floors and walls. The brightness burned a pattern into the back of Hanzo’s eyelids that remained for several seconds after the last vibration died out.
“What was that?” Genji stood up. “It felt like…”
“... a heartbeat?” Hanzo blinked several times while trying to clear his vision.
At some point during the tremor, the hallway abandoned its designs on infinite length and instead modestly branched into a kitchen on one side and a workroom of some kind on the other. The furnishings showed only normal signs of wear and repair, all traces of decay and rot vanished as if they’d never been there at all.
“Did the request mention anything about this?” Genji asked, stepping closer to a nearby window and tapping on the glass. Outside the world stood black and empty with no hint of sun or stars to give depth to the darkness that nevertheless felt vast and watchful.
“No, and I am going to have words with–” Hanzo followed him into the kitchen, but as soon as he crossed the threshold, the room changed again.
Bright, warm daylight drowned out the cold blue and green of spirit fire. A man sat at the wooden table, one hand splayed across the surface and the other resting on his knee as he laughed. He wore dark clothes embellished with armored notions, buttons and spikes engraved with protective symbols and leather tooled with more subtle variations on the same.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” said the man in a tone both grateful and grieving, his smile stretching full lips.
Hanzo turned to see who the man could be addressing, but the instant he moved the scene was gone again, leaving the brothers staring at an empty chair at the table.
“Was he… talking to us?” Genji asked hesitantly. “That did not feel like the usual sort of haunting.”
“No, no it did not. It felt almost like someone’s memory,” Hanzo replied. He made his way to the table and touched the place where the apparition’s hand once rested on the wood. The figure seemed so open, without aggression or defensiveness. “I can count on one hand the number of times I have heard of a ghost benevolently and directly welcoming a visitor. And yet…”
“Definitely not the usual sort of haunting.” Genji glanced around and frowned. “Do you want to wait and see if it will repeat, or do you want to explore and see if we can trigger a different reaction?” The way his fingers played on the tsuba of his sword showed his vote would not be one of patience. Hanzo sighed and peered closer at the table. The surface wore countless imperfections from a long life of service, but not all of them seemed unintentional. One small carving, just at the right of the now-empty chair, composed of two crude initials: C.C. and a half-finished heart. He found himself reaching out and tracing the missing half of the shape. His dragons crawled down his arm and sniffed at the engraving, promptly sneezed, and communicated angrily at each other with sonorous tones.
“Hanzo?” Genji prompted.
“Let us go,” he replied, stepping back. “I think I saw stairs over this way.”
1:15 PM
The stairs lead to another, thankfully mundane, hall. Three of the four doors along the wall stood closed, but the fourth was cracked open enough for more warm golden light to spill out. Something inside moved quietly; even the trained ears of the Shimada brothers nearly missed the subtle creak of well-worn leather. They exchanged ideas without words: Genji suggesting a surprise attack with a strike to the door, Hanzo leaning to the side of remaining stealthy and doing more recon first. Genji rolled his eyes, and Hanzo bared his teeth in the grimace of older siblings trying to bring logic to any kind of disagreement based in impatience. As ever, Genji’s hot blood won out, and the younger brother burst through the door with his sword drawn, leaving his elder to watch his back.
“Freeze!” Genji yelled, imitating the American police shows he binge watched when he heard they were going to the United States. The man on the floor wore the same coat as he had in the kitchen, only now it ended in jagged tatters around mid-thigh. His hat sat beside his hip, undoubtedly because his entire front half was shoved under a bed.
“I thought the Guild wasn’t sending anyone,” came the muffled, lilting voice. “Mind if I slide out for a proper introduction?” Another wordless argument between the brothers came to nothing as the man shimmied out from under the bed and stood up to face them. His head cocked to the side ever so slightly as if listening to a distant conversation. “You can call me Cassidy.” To their mounting dread, he reached out and shook a hand neither of them could see. As a warm smile bloomed across his face, both he and the red-gold light faded away.
“Did he just say the Guild?” Genji’s voice was thin. “Like the old European ones? From before the wars?”
“The Americans had their own corollary. Briefly.” Hanzo swallowed at the thought of becoming the kind of thing that they sought to banish: restless dead and still trying to complete a mission long ago failed in the worst possible way. “Though I suppose we see what happened to them.”
“Doesn’t really narrow it down that much, though,” Genji chewed his lip.
“You were the one who said this country only had young ghosts.” Hanzo walked over to the bed that the spectral hunter had examined. He didn’t want to think about how much dust the old woolen blankets could have accumulated, so he sent his dragons to investigate in his stead. The spirits chattered in annoyance, and for several minutes there was only the soft scrabbling of claws that never actually touched wood. When the spirit finally resurfaced, its pale blue lights contended with the warm golden glow of a bullet shell in its grasp. Hanzo took it and found a stylized engraving of a sun on the base.
“A talisman?” Genji quirked an eyebrow.
“Of a Solar Cleanser, no less.” The glow slowly faded, leaving only the spent bullet casing on his palm.
“How much trouble do you think we’ll have because we moved it?”
At this, Hanzo scoffed.
“If you paid more attention to the theoretical parts of the lessons, you would remember that Solar techniques are temporal and only last as long as the Cleanser is alive to maintain them. This is most likely from the echo of that power, like the echo of the man who placed it there earlier.”
“”Most likely.” You aren’t sure.” Genji smirked, and Hanzo scowled.
“Anything that can make a ghost of a Solar Cleanser will be trouble,” he snapped. “Moving a talisman, powered or not, will not change that. Be on your guard.”
3:40 PM
Closed doors refused to open regardless of the force brought against them. Hallways looped back on themselves without any noticeable turns. In a fit of pique, Hanzo even tried to smash a window, but the glass remained as solid as a steel block.
“Is this because I called you a shithole?” Genji called up to the house in general. “If so, I am very sorry.”
Hanzo didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when a door cracked open in the dark, spilling more of the warm rose-gold light across them.
They stepped into a surprisingly well-stocked library; an exorcist’s library, they quickly saw. Archaic weapons and arcane armaments adorned the spaces between maps full of pins and towering bookcases full of journals and hoarded knowledge. In this light, the windows looked over not darkness, but endless fields of corn.
Hanzo took a cautious step forward and an arm shot out to block his way.
“Careful,” said the ghostly hunter Cassidy, “Reyes has this palace rigged six ways from Sunday. Can’t let just anyone go digging around in his life’s work.” He glanced back and winked, and for a moment Hanzo was almost certain they made eye contact. Then the specter turned his attention back to the room and continued whatever conversation he’d been having. “I told you, call me Cassidy. None of that formal stuff; where I come from, “Mister” is a fighting word.” Another turn and wink, and Hanzo felt the ghost’s gaze linger on him, go through him; he could almost shift slightly to the side and be the entirety of the man’s focus…
“Hanzo!” Genji hissed, and his dragons sank their claws into him, grounding him with the electric thrum of their power.
“C’mon, follow me.” The man called Cassidy began carefully moving through the room, footprints lingering in faint glimmers. “There’s something you’ve got to see.”
“And we are supposed to trust the word of the restless dead?” Hanzo muttered and shook off the worst of the nerves.
“I ain’t led you astray yet, have I?” There again, that damned overlap. To whom was the apparition speaking? If it was merely caught in its own past, that was one thing, but if it was aware, if it was acting on intent… “Here.” Cassidy pointed to one of the books on an old wooden desk. He moved as if to pick it up, but then he vanished, taking all the light and warmth with him.
A moment passed in silence.
“Well, I want to see what that book was,” Genji said, beginning to cross to the desk. “Do you think he was right about–” His foot came down on a plank – one completely identical to those around it, save it had never been graced by the ghost’s glimmering footprint– and only years of training gave him the reflexes necessary to deflect the flurry of darts that shot at him from a hidden panel.
“It seems his warning was true,” Hanzo mused and did his best to recall the ghost’s path. The pattern of steps and shifting balances came easier than he thought it would.
In the dark, the books on the desktop were no longer stacked neatly. A few were more haphazardly piled, a few had migrated to the seat of the accompanying chair, and one laid prominently open, handwritten pages detailing names and places and differing levels of efficacy. One note scribbled in the margins caught his eye:
Jack thinks I’m near my limit, and I’m about ready to agree with him. Cassidy, when you go through my kit (and don’t pretend for one instant that we both don’t know you will, you ingrate; you’re reading this now, after all) don’t let Jack hold on to anything for the memories. There’s a creepy doctor asking around – O’Deorain– and I don’t want her getting her hands on any of it. Burn it or seal it and I’ll consider our books even.
“Obviously that has not happened,” Hanzo muttered, glancing around the library. There was a brief flash of heat from his pocket, and the echo of words in his ear: “ I’ve been a bit busy! ”, but by the time he pulled out the solar bullet shell, it was already cool and dark, and it was clear Genji heard none of it.
“What happened? Did the talisman react? I told you it would be trouble–”
“”I told you so” is the domain of older brothers who paid attention during training,” Hanzo snapped, “and whatever it was, it is over and does not seem inclined to repeat itself.”
“Yet.” Genji pointed out. Hanzo rolled his eyes and hoped he would not be proven correct.
4:23 PM
Hanzo found another bullet case on the stairs, this one tucked into a corner of the railing. His hand lingered over it long enough for Genji to reach past him and take it first, and he had to swallow an irrational sense of jealousy to see it in his brother’s palm.
“I don’t hear anything,” Genji said, and the jealousy turned to smugness before Hanzo could stop it. “I don't see anything, either.”
He tossed it to Hanzo, who caught it one handed and had a brief vision of the man Cassidy sitting on the steps below them with a lit cigar in one hand. The scent of smoke and herbs wafted past his nose; whatever was in that cigar was not tobacco, but something cleansing and sharp. Cassidy shifted as if turning towards him and Hanzo saw the corners of his eyes and mouth pulling to a smile before it all vanished.
“Okay, now that’s just not fair,” Genji huffed. “Why do you get all the weird stuff?”
“Being haunted is not something to envy, Genji.” Hanzo gave himself a shake. “That is why our entire profession exists. Besides, it is probably because I picked up the other talisman. The events before were seen by both of us.”
The new bullet shell joined the first in Hanzo’s pocket where occasionally they clinked together, reminding him of the sound of Cassidy’s spurred steps.
5:45 PM
The brothers found the kitchen again by luck or the machination of some force outside their scope, and they took a moment to rest in relative normality. They rationed their water and food as they tossed theories back and forth: what could have happened to warp space so much in the little farmhouse, the identity and nature of the mysterious author Reyes and his relationship to the even more mysterious Cassidy, and what it was they had both tried and failed to destroy.
“If I knew how, do you think I’d still be stuck here?” Cassidy appeared at the table with a hangdog smile, the light around him as warm and golden as always despite his melancholy air. Hanzo and Genji both pulled back, startled.
“Are you lucid?” Hanzo demanded. “Are you addressing us?”
Cassidy’s gaze dropped to the tabletop where his fingers skimmed the half-heart carving.
“I’d hoped Jack would have reached the Guilds by now. That old man always was the fastest runner out of all of us, even at his age.”
“Who is Jack? The journal upstairs mentioned him as well–” Hanzo fell silent as Cassidy’s ghostly hand reached out to grab someone else’s and fell to a place slightly to the right of his.
“Was he still out there, running for help? Did you give him peace? Did it–” Cassidy swallowed and ducked his head. “Sorry. I’m just… I’m just sick of not knowing. It’s the waiting that’s killing me, faster than anything that damn doctor is doing.”
Cassidy’s head snapped up suddenly, turning in the direction that the front door would be in without the distortion that held the place captive. A bone-deep and timeless weariness settled across his face, and he rapped his knuckles on the table.
“Time for me to get this show on the road,” he sighed and heaved himself to his feet. “It’s going to be a long night.” Another bullet casing rolled out from under his hand as he stepped away and vanished. All three dragons slithered forward and sniffed at the brass shell. Their intense examination ended with each of them arching up and baring their fangs and spirit flames at the talisman.
“How is this different from the others?” Hanzo asked quietly. Genji poked it with his sword, and it made an unenthusiastic clink.
“It seems pretty normal to me.”
The casing rolled off the table and onto the floor. It bounced: once, twice, three times, and hit another casing hidden by Hanzo’s chair leg. Suddenly Hanzo’s ears filled with a sound like a whirlpool: water and air and mud dragged down inexorably and creating a certain doom as they collapsed into each other. Cassidy’s voice filtered through distantly, along with the sharp bark of gunfire.
“I’ll hold her off! Get help!”
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
And then, the echo.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
One.
One.
Two.
Two.
Three.
Three.
Four.
Four.
Five.
Five.
Six.
Six.
Six.
Six.
Six.
Six.
“Hanzo!” Genji’s shout broke through the cacophony, helped along by the violent shake he gave his brother.
“I can hear you,” said Hanzo, drawing back. “How long was I…?”
“A few minutes, I think,” Genji answered with a pensive look. “As far as minutes count for anything, here. I’m starting to think we should just let the dragons burn the whole place to the ground to purify it.”
Hanzo looked out the kitchen window into the endless night beyond. Was it his imagination, or did he see something golden moving faintly through an inescapable field of black corn?
“I do not think that would work,” he said cautiously. “For one thing, whatever this is, we are still in the middle of it, and dragonfire will burn us as much as the spirits here.”
Crossing his arms, Genji scowled.
“And the other thing?”
Hanzo pressed closer to the window. On the horizon rose a fat, full moon: golden, but not in the same warm light as appeared with Cassidy. The moon was gold like aged and impure metal, tainted by careless handling. Instead of gentle rays of light, it hungrily pulled wisps of darkness into itself in ways more reminiscent of a black hole than any luminous celestial body.
“In the journal, Cassidy was asked to seal Reyes’ effects. Perhaps that is what he did, and this place and its labyrinth are meant to keep something inside from getting out.” He opened his hand and stared down at six empty bullet shells. He could almost imagine them full of captured daylight, a moment frozen in time…
Genji came up behind him and stared outside as well.
“If we get out of this, I’m going to charge the client triple.”
“Genji?”
“Hm?”
“Who was the client?” Hanzo turned to his brother with growing dread. “I cannot recall.”
Genji opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again.
“Neither do I.” He gripped the hilt of his sword until his knuckles turned white.
“Come. Let us see if we can find our way back to the library. I think we missed something there.”
9:00 PM
Seventeen identical rooms, an hour-long staircase, a hallway with only right turns at evenly spaced intervals, and a completely mundane (if old-fashioned) bathroom later, they found the library again. When they walked in this time the air reeked of blood and smoke, and the warm light flickered like a guttering candle. They made it halfway to the desk when Cassidy suddenly burst into the room behind them, breathing heavily and clutching his side. He slammed the door and put his bloody left hand flat against it. The bright glow of daylight burned his sun sigil into the wood just before a damp gurgle filled the hall outside. Hanzo and Genji stared silently in surprise as Cassidy fought to catch his breath. Then, from just outside the door, came a low, lilting voice.
“Hide in there if you like. I’ll carve the Umbral secrets out of his flesh, and your pathetic tricks can’t stop me. An eclipse is coming.”
“Not today, witch.” Cassidy grit his teeth and pushed another array of beams out of the sigil. The voice outside laughed and faded, but he remained. He shuffled so he could lean back against the door as he slid to the floor. The dark coloring of his leather gear hid the full extent of his wounds, but there was sufficient shine to the material to indicate a lot of lost blood. Eyes unfocused, he reached out to them with his bloodied hand. “Sorry you had to see that. Let me just… catch my breath…”
Hanzo found himself taking a step forward and reaching back. A heart-shattering smile spread over Cassidy’s face as he dropped his hand to the side.
“Would that you could, but you didn’t, so you can’t,” he mumbled. “Every damn time.” He shook his head slightly and took a deep breath. “Tell me, archer, what’s home like for you? Mine’s obviously seen better days.”
Words came to Hanzo’s mind, but even as he thought them he watched Cassidy’s mouth trace them as if he’d heard them a thousand times and folded them into the closest part of his heart.
“He’s done this before,” Genji whispered in equal parts awe and horror. “He’s seen us before.”
“How many times?” Hanzo croaked. “How many times have we done this? Answer me! Answer me, Cole!” He grabbed Cassidy by the shoulder. Light and heat consumed him.
??:?? ??
“How many times have you done this?”
A dark room illuminated only by spirit light. Two men sit side by side, their shoulders pressed together to prop themselves up against the exhaustion that has already taken the younger brother into sleep. Though heavy leather and cool silk separate them, those few inches of contact feel as powerful as bare skin.
A laugh, low and slow like molasses warmed by an afternoon of summer sunshine.
“I stopped counting a long time ago. That way lies madness, and I have to keep my edge until help arrives.”
“Help is here. I am here.”
“You walked into this mess unprepared. Much as I appreciate your company, you weren’t here for us, and don’t even try to pretend otherwise. You came for a ghost running through the cornfields, not… this.” A grand and sweeping gesture encompassing everything and nothing. “Hell, all you gotta do is get out of the house and you’ll have a whole new day.”
“A feat we have repeatedly seen to be easier said than done, thanks to your teacher’s curse.”
“It ain’t a curse, he was just trying to help. Anyway, you’ll make it out just fine. Let me put my mark on you and you’ll be able to break through.” Dry, chapped lips press an impossible heat –sun-kissed and light-drenched– to the palm of a hand. “There. That’ll get you through the dark. Just keep going. Don’t look back. I’ll hold them here as long as it takes.”
“Eventually, they will break you.”
“Have a little faith. I’ve kept it together so far, haven’t I?”
A quiet chuckle on both sides.
“Are you going to kiss my brother’s hand, too?”
“Eh… maybe you should just hold on to him.”
Another round of laughter fades into tense silence.
“What will happen to you when we are gone?”
A pause. A breath in. A longer breath out.
“Same thing that always happens. I’ll say my goodbyes during the day and fight until I have to rewind the clock at midnight. The sun doesn’t care if it sees the same show every day.”
“But your day has changed. We became part of it. Even if we leave, you said your memory persists. Are we to be another set of ghosts that haunt you?”
A hiss, a sound of pure frustration and fear.
“I don’t know, all right? It’s not like there’s a damn instruction manual for getting Solar and Umbral exorcisms mixed up together.”
“An oversight on both your predecessors' parts.”
Sullen silence.
“It’s not like your predecessors were so much better at multicultural sit-and-shares.”
“Not then, no. But we improved.”
“What, really? When?”
A cautious pause.
“There are many things that have happened in the world since you last took part in it. Some were great, some were terrible, and some were both, to the extant that they have never been tried again. There is too much to explain, even in a day that repeats forever, but I will say this: when powers come together, the world holds its breath and trembles. Sometimes with fear, and sometimes with joy.”
Wistfulness, daydreams and the slightest tinge of despair.
“Wish I could’ve seen it.”
“I, as well.”
Declension. A moment lost. Eyes close, throat fills with the bile-burn of resignation.
“C’mon. You and your brother better get if you want to make it out of here by midnight. O’Deorain’s got to be breaking into the basement even now.”
“Cassidy–”
“I thought I told you to call me Cole.” Teasing, even with the finality of a man walking to the gallows.
“Did you?” Hanzo can’t clearly remember, and that frightens him. Frightens Cassidy, too, by the look on Cole’s face.
“It’ll catch up, sooner or later.”
11:30 PM
Hanzo blinked. Cassidy sat, warm and solid beneath his hands where his grip creased the leather of the man’s coat.
“Ha… Hanzo?” He reached up and touched Hanzo’s wrist with bloody, trembling fingers. His eyes, wide and dark, darted back and forth across the brothers, who stared back at him with equally growing surprise. “What are you doing? You never– this isn’t– you can’t–!”
“Cole Cassidy,” said Hanzo, “you are a fool.”
Cassidy swallowed a protest as the dragons rose up on Hanzo’s shoulders.
“You were supposed to get out.” His brow creased with a nauseated mix of confusion and despair. “I gave you my mark. Didn’t it work? How many times–”
Hanzo’s hands moved up to Cassidy’s face, cupping it as familiarity clarified into memory.
“It does not matter,” he said, “because this will be the last . For all of us.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the solar bullet shells and offered them to Cassidy. The etched sun on the base of each glowed faintly with dragonfire. “This time, we are ready.”
“I am so confused right now,” Genji grumbled. “Brother, you owe me drinks for a week for all of this. And snacks. The good kind.”
“When we get out of here, I will be happy to oblige. For now, Cole Cassidy, take us to where the end begins.”
11:50 PM
When Cassidy put his hand on the basement door, it first lit up in red-gold, then red-black, the same pulse that once rocked the entire house.
“Reyes used to come down here to recover from bad hunts,” he said, pushing open the deceptively simple panel. “Between the two of us, there wasn’t much that could get in or out without permission, at least not until he passed.”
Hanzo nodded distractedly, all his attention bound up in the balance of yesterday-today-tomorrow-then-now.
“The body passes, but the feelings remain.” Genji said, trying to hold his own in a conversation of which he’d missed more than half. “If he was as strong-willed as you say, he may still be trying to help.”
Cassidy nodded with a slanted smile.
“That’s what you said then, too.”
The bottom of the stairs opened to a large room. An elaborate circle had at one point been drawn on the floor in what vaguely looked like blood, but it was too thick and had a strangely violet luminescence. In the center of the circle, splayed out and stripped to the waist, laid the body of a man. More dark and purple symbols carved deep furrows into his dark skin. Above him loomed a tall, red-headed woman, one hand bathed in tarnished gold light and the other pulling strands of darkness from the circles cut into the man’s flesh.
Instantly, the pressure in the room increased exponentially. Every repetition etched the moment deeper and sharper into the fundament of the universe and eroded away possible deviations. Cassidy threw up his left arm. Red-gold consumed it from fingertip to elbow, and the feeling of time’s passage began to slow.
“Reyes!” He yelled. The body in the circle opened black and red eyes, inhuman and infernal. Cassidy set his jaw, and the incandescence climbed further up his arm like a hungry coal fed fresh air.
Hanzo could see it play out, had already seen it play out: Reyes’ body and soul, fighting through the doctor’s stolen and corrupted powers, colliding with Cassidy’s call to the sun, dark space and bright time twisting in on one another over and over and over…
“Genji!” He shouted, thankful that his brother knew him well enough that a look was the only instruction he needed. Genji leapt at Dr. O’Deorain as Hanzo grabbed Cassidy and shoved the man’s own revolver into his hand. Startled, the glow to Cassidy’s arm burned out and left the limb blackened and ashen.
“Hanzo?” he didn’t quite flinch as Hanzo thrust the bullets at him, blue spirit fire filling in for borrowed time.
“Make the world tremble .” He caught Cassidy’s eye. “I will see you tomorrow .”
Cassidy swallowed but did not hesitate further; he rolled, loaded his gun in that same motion, and brought it up with a steady hand and sunset eyes.
Bang.
9:00 AM.
“Wow, what a shithole.” Genji made his proclamation in English, which meant he wanted it to be understood by anyone in earshot. Japanese was not a commonly encountered language in this part of the rural Southwestern United States, after all; Hanzo was the only one in sight to have a visible reaction, but it did not mean he was the only one to hear .
“I don’t know, I think it held up pretty well, all things considering.” Cassidy opened the door and stepped out onto the rickety porch with the hesitance of a newborn colt finding its legs for the first time. He blinked in the bright morning light, came walked down to stand by the brothers and looked back at the house that had, in many ways, consumed his life. “... yeah, no, you’re right. It’s a shithole.”
Hanzo laughed sharply and guided him back to their car.
“Come,” he said, “today is a good day for a fresh start.”
Cole smiled and offered him his hand.
“Howdy. I’m Cole. Nice to finally meet you.”