Ellen Guon has written three novels with Mercedes Lackey (Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Summoned to Tourney, and Wing Commander: Freedom Flight) and also a solo novel (Bedlam Boyz). She has also published short stories and numerous nonfiction articles, and is a former children's television screenwriter. She has worked since 1989 as a designer, writer, and producer of computer games for Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Disney, Sega, and other companies. She is currently a game producer at Monolith Productions.
The gunshot echoed in the small, confined space of the car. For a long moment, she just sat motionless, uncertain. She could smell the cordite, and looked down to see the revolver, still in her hand. The barrel was warm, as though a single round had just been fired.
That's odd, she thought. Shouldn't I be . . . I shouldn't be able to see anything, or feel anything. Should I?
Shouldn't it be over by now?
Something had to have gone wrong. Something other than everything else that had gone wrong in her life, all the false starts and failures and mistakes that had led her to this moment. This last, very last moment.
She stared down at the revolver in her hand, and then realized she was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car. Not in the driver's seat, where she had been a moment before. She turned to look to her left, and felt a shock like cold electricity run through her. She sat there for a long moment, unable to turn away from what was in the seat next to her.
"I'm sorry," a man's voice said. Startled, she jumped . . . and fell on the grass. The damp, cold grass overlooking the moonlit canyon, where she had parked the car an hour before. Her fingers were still wrapped around the revolver. That damned revolver.
I should never have bought it, she thought. I couldn't use it for competition shooting. Someone's hand appeared in front of her, looking as solid as her own. A male hand. He took the gun from her nerveless fingers, and then carefully pulled her to her feet.
She couldn't bear to look back at the car and what was in it, so she looked at him. A young man, with horn-rimmed glasses and black hair cut too short, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, a long sheathed knife at his belt.
"I'm sorry," he said again. "I couldn't get here fast enough. I tried to, but I couldn't."
He reached into his jeans pocket and took out several bullets, all of which had a faint, silvery sheen to them, as though illuminated from some distant, unseen light. He popped out the cylinder and shook out the single empty brass casing within, then began reloading it with six of the new, strange bullets.
"This time, I think they knew I was on my way," he said. "They're getting smarter about us. They're getting smarter, period." He glanced at her. "So, what do you want to do now?"
"Can we backtrack a little?" she asked faintly. "Aren't I dead?"
He nodded. "Well, yes," he said. "At least, you're mostly dead. I killed one of them before they could eat you. What's left of you. But I couldn't get here before you died." He gestured at the ground, and for the first time, she saw it.
Her first reaction was to run screaming. But somehow she stood there, staring down at it. It was shiny, and a shade of violet so dark as to be almost black, and about the size of a large dog. It looked as though it was made of glass, with too many arms and legs, and other alien body parts she couldn't identify. It was, thankfully, obviously and completely dead, which was the only good thing about it. Now, as she watched, it was slowly dissolving into a foul liquid, fading into the grass.
She felt her legs give way, and then she was kneeling on the ground, unable to stop shaking, tears threatening. The unknown young man continued talking, as he finished reloading the gun. "Three of them got away. Not good. We don't know what they are, exactly. They come when someone commits suicide. It's like killing yourself somehow rips open a hole in the world, opens a door for them. And they come through, and they eat the soul of the person who just killed himself. I've come across them in the middle of their meal, and let me tell you, it's not a pretty sight. The soul doesn't stop screaming until it's almost all gone. But this one can't hurt you; it's dead, or whatever passes for dead with these things." He practiced sighting with the revolver at an imaginary target. "There are more and more of them, all the time. It's not like they go home afterwards. They stay here, and they find other people who are right on the edge, close to suicide, and they somehow push them over that edge. And then eat their souls. Like they would have done to you."
He helped her to her feet. "Anyhow, it's time for me to go. We can't stay in one place, they'll come looking for us." He handed the revolver to her. "Good choice in a pistol," he said.
"I wish I'd never bought it," she said, fighting back tears.
"Don't we all?" he agreed cheerfully. "For me, it was a hunting knife." He pulled the long knife out from its sheath, and held it out for her inspection. Like the bullets, it had a faint, silvery light to it. "For some reason, those weapons that we . . . bring with us, they seem to work better than the ones that are made for us afterwards. So a six-shooter, that's good. Six bullets are usually enough. Too bad no one ever commits suicide with a grenade launcher." He paused, as though listening for something. "We have to leave, right now. They aren't that far away. And they're about to feed. I'll take you with me."
Before she could say a word, the world blurred around her. And then she was standing somewhere else. Still on the cold, damp grass, but now in a city park, faintly lit by distant streetlights. Maybe twenty feet away, a woman lay on a plaid blanket on the grass, sobbing quietly. Even at this distance, she could see the light reflecting off her tears and the orange bottle of prescription pills on the blanket.
And circling like vultures, impatient and silent, were the creatures, like glittering shadows, sharp-edged and malevolent. There were five of them, clearly hungry and waiting for the feast.
The revolver was clenched in her hand, so hard that her fingers began to ache. She looked around in a panic for the young man, and realized she was suddenly alone. Completely alone, holding a revolver that could, in theory, kill those monsters.
Six bullets, he'd given her. Six would be more than enough. If she didn't miss. If she didn't freeze. If she didn't screw this up like everything else in her life. If they didn't eat her before she could kill them.
I'm a good shot. It's the one thing I'm good at. I can run away, or I can do this . . .
The crying woman on the blanket blindly fumbled for the pill bottle. The creatures seemed to shiver in anticipation, and edged even closer.
She slowly raised the pistol, took careful double-handed aim, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet caught the first creature squarely, a clean shot. To her surprise, it burst into hurtling pieces, as though it genuinely was made of glass. She blinked, too startled for a moment to take her second shot.
In that instant, the other creatures turned and scuttled toward her, moving inhumanly fast. She fired again, this time only winging one of the monsters. It fell away, landing in a silent heap on the ground, twitching but still alive.
Three to go, she thought, and then the creatures were almost upon her. She dodged the reaching clawed limbs and flung herself to the ground, rolling to bring the gun back up and fire again. Two gunshots in rapid succession, and the shards of the creatures exploded around her. One tiny piece hit her cheek and burned like fire. She couldn't take the moment to even react to the pain, as the last creature surged towards her, alien claws grasping and snapping . . .
She raised the pistol, only inches from the creature's head, and fired one last time at point-blank range. The report echoed loudly, followed by a dull thud as the creature was thrown back from her, landing ten feet away in a shattered pile.
She fell back and lay there on the ground for a moment, just trying to catch her breath, to slow her racing heartbeat. What an odd thing, she thought. Why do I feel my pulse pounding? Or even have to breathe? Why do I still feel pain?
Why couldn't everything just be over, like it was supposed to be?
A few feet away from her, the woman sat up slowly, looking around as though trying to hear something, or see something that wasn't there. The bottle of pills fell from her hand, disregarded on the plaid blanket.
"Nice shootin', Tex," the young man said from nearby, sitting on a park bench. He hadn't been there a moment before; she knew she would have seen him.
"You could have helped, you jackass," she said, sitting up.
"Yes," he agreed. "But if you'd frozen, you could have gotten us both killed. I don't take chances like that, not anymore. Next time, I'll help you." He walked over and helped her to her feet. "If there is a next time, that is. You still have one bullet left."
"So what?" she asked. Her cheek still burned from where the fragment of the monster had hit her. She touched her cheek, half expecting to feel a trickle of blood, but felt only smooth, unmarked skin. The pain was already starting to fade.
"So, you can use it." He mimed holding a gun to his head. "If you really want to."
"And then what?" she asked, feeling very cold.
"I don't know. You'd really be gone. So maybe . . . nothingness? Oblivion? It'd be something different from this, anyhow. Whatever it was you thought you wanted, before. What we all thought we wanted," he added, almost too quietly for her to hear.
It was a long moment before she could speak. "I thought that was what I wanted. An end to the pain. But now . . . I'm not so sure. Do I have an alternative?"
"Come with me," he said immediately. "Try to stop the monsters. You can't save yourself, it's too late for that, but you can save someone else." He drew the long knife from his belt, and walked away from her, closely inspecting the creatures she had killed. "You've entered a different world, with things you could never have imagined. Ghosts. Monsters. Powerful magic. Like the bullets. A thousand-year-old Mage makes them for us. Those weapons are all that works against those . . . things. And we're the only ones who can see them, and fight them. You and me, we're dead, nothing can change that. And eventually, we won't even have this half-life. None of us last very long. With every suicide, more of them come through. You'd have six months, maybe a year, before the monsters kill you. But in that time, you'd hunt them, the way that they hunt suicides. And when you kill the monsters, you've saved someone else's life . . . like what you did here, tonight." He leaned down, and with a single deft motion, cut the head off the creature that was still twitching, being careful not to touch it with anything but the knife's edge. The alien head and body immediately began to dissolve, leaving only a faint, oily mark on the ground. "It's your choice. You can try to . . . atone, for bringing more of them into the world. And for what you did to yourself, and to everyone who cared about you."
The bottle of pills and the blanket were on the ground, forgotten by the unknown woman, who was walking away, slowly making her way across the park to the street. The young man reached into his pocket and took out another handful of bullets, all shining faintly. He held them loosely in his hand, watching her, silent.
She thought about it. It was not, she decided, the death she had chosen. Then again, she hadn't realized what death she had chosen. What would be worse than killing yourself and then realizing you weren't actually going to be dead, but were about to be devoured by soul-eating monsters? Knowing you were going to be eaten, that's what. And knowing you'd feel pain for every last second of it, until you were finally, completely, irrevocably dead.
But at least she would die trying to save someone else from that fate.
"Right," she said, and held out her hand. "I'll need all the bullets you can give me."