Salvage
Oz trudged for hours over an immutable landscape under a vacant black sky with Helli draped bonelessly in his arms.
She clung to him, muttering and lashing at times at unseen assailants, and at other times wrenching away from him
in agonizing pain. In those times, Oz cradled her to his bare flesh, feeling the heat of her wasted body burn into his
skin.
As he wandered, his thoughts drifted like scattered leaves in his brain: random, meaningless remembrances about
things he’d lost – his lime green Converse tennis shoes, a guitar pick he’d caught at a Dead Milkman live show, a well-
worn Spalding baseball glove stolen from the Sunnydale Diamonds dugout while he played Little League at 9 years old.
Odd, he thought, what monotony churned up in the mind. He’d loved that baseball glove, could smell its musky
leather scent even as he walked.
Oz thought Hell was sandstorms and baking flesh. But Hell was different for him. He had myriad memories, while Helli
– though physically close – suffered apart in unspoken worlds of horror.
Hours bled into hours, into days, and Oz walked. Helli grew still for longer periods of time. Oz did not know if he
should be more or less troubled by this. At least she was still alive. The wounds Luxe inflicted were cauterized, so
bleeding to death was not among their concerns. Oz shuddered. It was a gruesome thing to be thankful for.
Things continued in this manner for longer than Oz could calculate. The trackless sands effaced what was his life.
Those memories he’d sorted through, like a child selecting toys for a yard sale, were gone. The only thing to which
he clung was a promise he’d made, and though he had forgotten now the words he’d spoken, it was covenant.
Eventually his motives for movement were stripped away, and in that moment, when only his promise remained, Oz
found himself at a crossroads.
With a sensation like waking from a dream, Oz returned to himself. He sat cross-legged at the place where seven
roads met. Helli lay shivering in his lap, wrapped in the scrim of her tattered robe.
“Helli?” he croaked. The word strangled him. He doubled over, wracked with spasms as he coughed sand from his
lungs.
Oz raised his streaming eyes to find a grisly old man leering down at him.
“Lozenge?” the old guy asked. When Oz only stammered in reply, the old guy’s pale lips withered away from brown
teeth in a sardonic smile.
“Son, you don’t belong here,” the old guy said. He laughed, a powdery sound like bones clacking together on a
windless night.
“I know that,” Oz answered. He looked the guy over, from the top of his dusty hat to the soles of his scuffed black
boots, and decided the old dude looked implacably familiar. He wore a pale green kerchief shirt, a pair of frayed
jeans, and a faded canvas duster. Behind him, he dragged a travois laden with sundry body parts – plump, gleaming
kidneys; ropy coils of intestines; livers that quivered like raspberry Jell-o. Oz detected the faint odor of
formaldehyde.
Oz noticed the old guy noticing him. Neither dropped his gaze. Maybe it was the organs talking, but Oz didn’t quite
trust the guy.
The old guy chuckled. He stuck a toothpick between his lips and said, “I’m Walter.”
“Walter,” Oz repeated.
“Where you headed, son?”
“Home,” Oz said immediately. Home. It seemed as distant a place as Pluto, and somehow less real. In his arms, Helli
twitched once then fell still.
Walter chewed his toothpick. “Been a long time since I heard that one,” he smiled. “You know how to get there?”
Oz cleared his throat. “Uh. No?”
“Didn’t think so,” Walter said, grinning. “Need a ride?”
Oz glanced at the travois. “I like my insides inside,” he answered. “But thanks.”
Walter’s smile spread to a new level of toothiness. “These are the innards of the damned, son. Don’t want yours.
Hers, though…”
“Stay away from her,” Oz growled.
Walter laughed darkly. He unhitched the travois and stepped away from it, revealing an extra set of legs. When he
walked forward, it was on inordinately long quadruple spider legs. Oz slipped Anjelica’s body to the ground behind
him and stood before Walter.
The demon towered over Oz like a scarecrow, and while Walter was fully clad, Oz was naked and felt a whole world
of vulnerable.
Walter looked Oz up and down, and nodded. He said, “I’m what you call an Oracle. You hearda that?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m bound for the citadel,” Walter said.
“Citadel?”
“To Dis. You’re welcome to follow…”
“I have nothing to trade,” Oz said firmly.
“I’m not asking,” Walter said. He stared down at Oz, his brows furrowed over hard yellow eyes. He said, “Someone
pursues you across the endless sands. Someone I would like to have words with. Possibly more. You follow me; he
follows you. All’s fair.”
Oz looked back over the wasteland and continued to see nothing. Walter’s face appeared at Oz’s shoulder. “Lemme
guess. You don’t see nothing.”
Oz shook his head. “Nothing.” He swallowed. Saw nothing. Smelled nothing. Heard nothing. Felt… like something was
missing.
“You’re Mere Man,” the Oracle said, in his arid, musical manner of speech. “Your presence among the sandy shoals
has been foretold in prophecy and song, m’boy. You don’t see it, ’cause you ain’t supposed to see it. You gave up
every last thought and stitch. Now here you are with ol’ Walter who’s got a penchant to help wayward souls. I can
take you to Geulph’s Tavern. Someone there can help you on your way upstairs. Afterward, you may wager and dice
as you please.”
Oz considered for a moment. It took him zero time to figure that the thing pursuing had to be someone working for
Luxe. Oz understood clearly with crystal clarity that Luxe would not just let them go, not without a reason. This
left Oz and Helli at the pity of passing strangers: a none-too-comforting prospect in Hell.
The situation left Oz with little choice, and so he hesitantly agreed to follow Walter into the City of Dis. Walter
returned to his travois, buckled its straps about his waist and struck off down the road without looking back. Oz
lifted Helli into his arms. Her body felt cold, her limbs stiff.
A moment of panic struck him. Oz pressed his lips to her ear, breathing her name into the singed flesh. Only then did
he feel her faint breath on his neck, and he knew with relief that she was alive, for now.
Oz fell in behind the cockscomb of dust dredged up behind Walter’s gruesome travois. Time continued to pass
unmarked, but before long, Oz beheld the imposing slate cliffs that were the walls of the City of Dis.
The City of Dis looked like a Renaissance faire, only with demons in period clothing, rather than humans. Also,
instead of vendors or performers, various torture devices lined the streets. Oz, as he followed along behind Walter,
felt again like he was missing part of the Hell experience, not that he wanted it. What he saw was that the demons
in Dis gathered around empty racks, vacant vats of boiling oil, empty gallows. They labored over empty stalls,
shouting curses and lashing whips over empty air.
Oz understood what Walter had said. Oz only saw the tormentors in the surround-sound Hell scenario. He didn’t
know why, but knew that Helli saw the tormented, and suffered with them. It killed Oz that he could do nothing
about it, except follow a crusty four-legged Bruce Dern knock-off into yet another Circle of Hell, on the off chance
that it would lead them home.
After a while’s meandering through the chaotic streets of Dis, Walter led them to the entrance of a saloon. The
placard above the door – a weathered board swinging on hinges that honked like a pair of asthmatic geese –
proclaimed that this was Geulph’s Tavern.
“You wait out here, kid,” Walter said. He took the straps of the travois in his cracked hands and dragged it in
behind him through swinging double doors.
Oz lingered by the hitching post. He tried without much success to hear the conversation within, and so moved
closer to the door.
A woman’s voice, gratingly familiar, asked, “This all you got?”
“Prime cutlets, milady,” Walter answered. “Only the best.”
Oz sneered. He adjusted Helli in his arms, relieved to feel the thready pulse in her wrist.
“Seriously doubt that,” the woman went on. Oz heard the indistinct sound of her inspecting Walter’s wares.
“Okay,” she said. “Livers, I can use. Intestines… bleugh. And the kidneys? They’re like bean bags. What did these
people eat anyway?”
“Fast food,” Walter said.
The woman uttered a laugh. “Fine. I’ll give a thousand for the whole lot.”
“Done,” Walter agreed.
The woman snorted, offended. “That was anti-climactic. You’re usually a much better barterer-er.”
“There’s more,” Walter said.
Oz leaned nearer to the door. Helli moaned pitifully. He clutched her tighter, but neglected to notice the group of
lesser imps gathering like scavenging rats along the border of the plank sidewalk.
“More?” the woman was saying. “Oh, goodie. Something rare and delectable? Healthy lungs, perhaps. Brain of a mad
scientist?”
“The Mere Man.”
“Mirror Man? Walter, you’ve left the land of sense-making. I think you’ve spent too much time in the unbending
sands.”
“Unending sands.”
“Whatever…”
Walter spoke in hushed, excited tones. “The Mere Man: He who crosses the endless sands and Hell follows after. The
man of the prophecy. That man.”
“Oh, no no no,” the woman said. “I’ve had my fill of prophecy, thank you very much, and you can go now. I wash my
hands of…”
Oz heard a scuffling sound, and being absent his wolf-senses, he mistook it for something occurring inside rather
than out. A heartbeat later, the imp-rats surged forward, latching on to Helli’s bare legs with glimmering razor
teeth. Oz tumbled backward. With the rush of slick, scaly black creatures upon them both, he fell through the
saloon doors and into a hazy crowd of demonic patrons.
The imp-rats, detesting all brightness, unlatched and scampered, leaving Oz and Anjelica beside the travois of parts
and between six pairs of feet: Four were Walter’s; two belonged to a sprightly dressed blond tavern wench.
“Anyanka,” Walter said.
She backed away, looking hurriedly from Oz to Walter and back again.
Oz sat up. “Anya?” he asked.
Confusion clouded her features. “Oh, it’s you?” she asked.
“It’s him,” Walter said.
She smacked Walter’s sleeve. “It’s Oz!”
“Pretty much full time,” Oz said.
“You’re naked,” Anya observed.
“That too,” he said. “Look, Anya, we need…”
Anya’s expression turned grim. “Blanca,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Hold down the fort. Tavern. Whatever.
Just…” she bent to help Oz to his feet. “We’ll be in back.”
Anya had a cot in back, stuffed between jars of jellied body parts and barrels of ale. She also had a set of men’s
pajamas, dusky blue, covered in flying alarm clocks. They swallowed Oz, but felt much better than rampant nudity.
Oz placed Helli on the cot, while Anya poured a pair of drinks on top of a stack of crates.
With her back to him, she said, “What is it with you people haunting my afterlife?”
Oz settled on the edge of the bed, holding Helli’s limp hand in his. “Anya. You’re in Hell,” he said.
Anya shrugged. “I suppose,” she said. “I mean, it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? I’m here. I run a profitable
establishment at a crossroads between worlds. It’s not a bad existence.” She turned to him, a drink in each hand.
“I can’t,” Oz said, nodding at the drink. “I mean, I don’t think it’d be wise, at this point.”
“Oh, they’re for me,” she said, knocking the first one back. “Humans in Hell can never imbibe of the nectar nor
partake of the flesh blah blah blah. You know that, right? Did she?”
“No,” Oz said. He shook his head, as if to clear it. “You can help us.”
Anya drained the second glass, slammed them both down on the crate, and faced him, her hands on hips.
“I can try,” she said. “But don’t overestimate the role of barkeep. My powers are limited to information gathering
and shoulder lending, which I hope you’re not gonna need since I’m heading into a rush here. Unhappy hour.”
Oz ran a hand through his spiky hair. “We have to get out of here,” he said.
Anya glanced at the girl. “She’s bad off. Not much to salvage.”
“Don’t count her out, okay,” Oz said quietly. “She’s tougher than she looks.”
Anya went to a shelf in the corner. She broke out a kit and spoke while she assembled supplies – strips of gauze,
camphor, distilled water and an acrid smelling cream.
“This is all contraband,” she said. “Most of my trade is white market stuff. You can’t get it down here unless you
know the right demons. And, well, what can I say? I have always been adept at commercial endeavors. Scooch.”
Oz slid over. Anya peeled back the upper part of Helli’s robe, revealing the dried blood of a stab wound. She hissed
over her teeth. “These are bad,” she said. “You’re very lucky.”
“Lucky how?” Oz asked.
“You have wounds like these?” Anya asked, dabbed the caked blood with a swath of cotton gauze.
Oz shook his head.
“There you go,” Anya said.
Oz watched as Anya gently cleaned the wounds on Helli’s shoulder. He saw with some astonishment that the knife
wound looked smaller. Already, Helli was healing.
“The Oracle said you could help us get home,” Oz said.
Anya rolled her eyes. “Oracle, is he? If he’s an oracle, then I’m the Duchess of Kent. Walter is a charlatan. He sends
people here looking for a way upstairs, and when they find out I’m just a sexier-than-average tavern keep with a
way station, they succumb to despair, drink themselves to oblivion, and bam! Walter comes along with a clean-up
crew to aggressively bilk them for everything they have left,” she said. “Hence the viscera.”
Anya smeared a dab of cream onto her fingers and worked it into the seared meat of Anjelica’s wound. Helli flailed,
violently, her mouth ajar in a stunned but silent scream. Oz got under her, held her body against his, and whispered
to her until she calmed again.
Anya nodded to him. “Good,” she said. “But no. The only way you can get up there is if you have an offering of
human flesh, and it can’t be your own. It has to be something freely given and I can’t tell you how rare a currency
that is – why are you looking so hopeful? It’s very distracting.”
“We have it. The human flesh,” Oz said.
“It can’t be your own. I just told you.”
“No. We have something else,” Oz said. He opened Helli’s robe and reached into the inside pocket where she had
faithfully kept Nighna’s final gift. He passed the parcel to Anya.
Anya opened it and cupped her hand over her nose. “Well now, that’s gamey.”
“It’s Andrew’s hand,” Oz said.
“Andrew’s hand?” Anya echoed. She pouted. “Oh. Poor monkey. Is he? Did he… lose more parts?”
Oz said, “Andrew is fine… ish. He cut off his hand so Luxe couldn’t drag him down to Hell with him.”
Anya got up from the cot. “Luxe! That ambitious son of a bitch. I hope he roasts in…” she paused, considered, and
then said, “Well, I hope he roasts.”
Oz patted Helli’s arm. “Luxe killed Nighna, but not before she left Andrew’s hand to Helli. And then, Luxe did this.”
He closed his eyes and fought to keep from being sick. “But Nighna said the hand would be useful.”
Anya paced the length of the storeroom, muttering to herself and gesturing in obvious frustration. Helli sighed in
her sleep and twisted deeper into Oz’s embrace. She was healing. He could sense it, even without his werewolf
perception. Helli was improving with each second that passed.
Anya faced Oz. She brushed stray wisps of hair from her face, then planted her hands on her hips. “One thing about
being dead,” she said. “You’re really up on the big picture.”
Exhausted, Oz just shrugged.
“I mean it,” she continued. “You see the connectedness of all living things. Like this. Like, have you any idea how
infinitely infinite Hell is? Yet here we sit, chatting it up. Point is: it’s all related. It does mean something. There is a
purpose to everything, and it unites us all. Even beyond death,” she said, pointing at him with Andrew’s severed
hand. “It’s what you always wondered, right?”
Oz smiled, uncertain. “Yeah…” he began.
“Well, now you know,” she said. “And you know what else? Looks like we’re gonna need Walter after all.”
Oz trudged for hours over an immutable landscape under a vacant black sky with Helli draped bonelessly in his arms.
She clung to him, muttering and lashing at times at unseen assailants, and at other times wrenching away from him
in agonizing pain. In those times, Oz cradled her to his bare flesh, feeling the heat of her wasted body burn into his
skin.
As he wandered, his thoughts drifted like scattered leaves in his brain: random, meaningless remembrances about
things he’d lost – his lime green Converse tennis shoes, a guitar pick he’d caught at a Dead Milkman live show, a well-
worn Spalding baseball glove stolen from the Sunnydale Diamonds dugout while he played Little League at 9 years old.
Odd, he thought, what monotony churned up in the mind. He’d loved that baseball glove, could smell its musky
leather scent even as he walked.
Oz thought Hell was sandstorms and baking flesh. But Hell was different for him. He had myriad memories, while Helli
– though physically close – suffered apart in unspoken worlds of horror.
Hours bled into hours, into days, and Oz walked. Helli grew still for longer periods of time. Oz did not know if he
should be more or less troubled by this. At least she was still alive. The wounds Luxe inflicted were cauterized, so
bleeding to death was not among their concerns. Oz shuddered. It was a gruesome thing to be thankful for.
Things continued in this manner for longer than Oz could calculate. The trackless sands effaced what was his life.
Those memories he’d sorted through, like a child selecting toys for a yard sale, were gone. The only thing to which
he clung was a promise he’d made, and though he had forgotten now the words he’d spoken, it was covenant.
Eventually his motives for movement were stripped away, and in that moment, when only his promise remained, Oz
found himself at a crossroads.
With a sensation like waking from a dream, Oz returned to himself. He sat cross-legged at the place where seven
roads met. Helli lay shivering in his lap, wrapped in the scrim of her tattered robe.
“Helli?” he croaked. The word strangled him. He doubled over, wracked with spasms as he coughed sand from his
lungs.
Oz raised his streaming eyes to find a grisly old man leering down at him.
“Lozenge?” the old guy asked. When Oz only stammered in reply, the old guy’s pale lips withered away from brown
teeth in a sardonic smile.
“Son, you don’t belong here,” the old guy said. He laughed, a powdery sound like bones clacking together on a
windless night.
“I know that,” Oz answered. He looked the guy over, from the top of his dusty hat to the soles of his scuffed black
boots, and decided the old dude looked implacably familiar. He wore a pale green kerchief shirt, a pair of frayed
jeans, and a faded canvas duster. Behind him, he dragged a travois laden with sundry body parts – plump, gleaming
kidneys; ropy coils of intestines; livers that quivered like raspberry Jell-o. Oz detected the faint odor of
formaldehyde.
Oz noticed the old guy noticing him. Neither dropped his gaze. Maybe it was the organs talking, but Oz didn’t quite
trust the guy.
The old guy chuckled. He stuck a toothpick between his lips and said, “I’m Walter.”
“Walter,” Oz repeated.
“Where you headed, son?”
“Home,” Oz said immediately. Home. It seemed as distant a place as Pluto, and somehow less real. In his arms, Helli
twitched once then fell still.
Walter chewed his toothpick. “Been a long time since I heard that one,” he smiled. “You know how to get there?”
Oz cleared his throat. “Uh. No?”
“Didn’t think so,” Walter said, grinning. “Need a ride?”
Oz glanced at the travois. “I like my insides inside,” he answered. “But thanks.”
Walter’s smile spread to a new level of toothiness. “These are the innards of the damned, son. Don’t want yours.
Hers, though…”
“Stay away from her,” Oz growled.
Walter laughed darkly. He unhitched the travois and stepped away from it, revealing an extra set of legs. When he
walked forward, it was on inordinately long quadruple spider legs. Oz slipped Anjelica’s body to the ground behind
him and stood before Walter.
The demon towered over Oz like a scarecrow, and while Walter was fully clad, Oz was naked and felt a whole world
of vulnerable.
Walter looked Oz up and down, and nodded. He said, “I’m what you call an Oracle. You hearda that?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m bound for the citadel,” Walter said.
“Citadel?”
“To Dis. You’re welcome to follow…”
“I have nothing to trade,” Oz said firmly.
“I’m not asking,” Walter said. He stared down at Oz, his brows furrowed over hard yellow eyes. He said, “Someone
pursues you across the endless sands. Someone I would like to have words with. Possibly more. You follow me; he
follows you. All’s fair.”
Oz looked back over the wasteland and continued to see nothing. Walter’s face appeared at Oz’s shoulder. “Lemme
guess. You don’t see nothing.”
Oz shook his head. “Nothing.” He swallowed. Saw nothing. Smelled nothing. Heard nothing. Felt… like something was
missing.
“You’re Mere Man,” the Oracle said, in his arid, musical manner of speech. “Your presence among the sandy shoals
has been foretold in prophecy and song, m’boy. You don’t see it, ’cause you ain’t supposed to see it. You gave up
every last thought and stitch. Now here you are with ol’ Walter who’s got a penchant to help wayward souls. I can
take you to Geulph’s Tavern. Someone there can help you on your way upstairs. Afterward, you may wager and dice
as you please.”
Oz considered for a moment. It took him zero time to figure that the thing pursuing had to be someone working for
Luxe. Oz understood clearly with crystal clarity that Luxe would not just let them go, not without a reason. This
left Oz and Helli at the pity of passing strangers: a none-too-comforting prospect in Hell.
The situation left Oz with little choice, and so he hesitantly agreed to follow Walter into the City of Dis. Walter
returned to his travois, buckled its straps about his waist and struck off down the road without looking back. Oz
lifted Helli into his arms. Her body felt cold, her limbs stiff.
A moment of panic struck him. Oz pressed his lips to her ear, breathing her name into the singed flesh. Only then did
he feel her faint breath on his neck, and he knew with relief that she was alive, for now.
Oz fell in behind the cockscomb of dust dredged up behind Walter’s gruesome travois. Time continued to pass
unmarked, but before long, Oz beheld the imposing slate cliffs that were the walls of the City of Dis.
The City of Dis looked like a Renaissance faire, only with demons in period clothing, rather than humans. Also,
instead of vendors or performers, various torture devices lined the streets. Oz, as he followed along behind Walter,
felt again like he was missing part of the Hell experience, not that he wanted it. What he saw was that the demons
in Dis gathered around empty racks, vacant vats of boiling oil, empty gallows. They labored over empty stalls,
shouting curses and lashing whips over empty air.
Oz understood what Walter had said. Oz only saw the tormentors in the surround-sound Hell scenario. He didn’t
know why, but knew that Helli saw the tormented, and suffered with them. It killed Oz that he could do nothing
about it, except follow a crusty four-legged Bruce Dern knock-off into yet another Circle of Hell, on the off chance
that it would lead them home.
After a while’s meandering through the chaotic streets of Dis, Walter led them to the entrance of a saloon. The
placard above the door – a weathered board swinging on hinges that honked like a pair of asthmatic geese –
proclaimed that this was Geulph’s Tavern.
“You wait out here, kid,” Walter said. He took the straps of the travois in his cracked hands and dragged it in
behind him through swinging double doors.
Oz lingered by the hitching post. He tried without much success to hear the conversation within, and so moved
closer to the door.
A woman’s voice, gratingly familiar, asked, “This all you got?”
“Prime cutlets, milady,” Walter answered. “Only the best.”
Oz sneered. He adjusted Helli in his arms, relieved to feel the thready pulse in her wrist.
“Seriously doubt that,” the woman went on. Oz heard the indistinct sound of her inspecting Walter’s wares.
“Okay,” she said. “Livers, I can use. Intestines… bleugh. And the kidneys? They’re like bean bags. What did these
people eat anyway?”
“Fast food,” Walter said.
The woman uttered a laugh. “Fine. I’ll give a thousand for the whole lot.”
“Done,” Walter agreed.
The woman snorted, offended. “That was anti-climactic. You’re usually a much better barterer-er.”
“There’s more,” Walter said.
Oz leaned nearer to the door. Helli moaned pitifully. He clutched her tighter, but neglected to notice the group of
lesser imps gathering like scavenging rats along the border of the plank sidewalk.
“More?” the woman was saying. “Oh, goodie. Something rare and delectable? Healthy lungs, perhaps. Brain of a mad
scientist?”
“The Mere Man.”
“Mirror Man? Walter, you’ve left the land of sense-making. I think you’ve spent too much time in the unbending
sands.”
“Unending sands.”
“Whatever…”
Walter spoke in hushed, excited tones. “The Mere Man: He who crosses the endless sands and Hell follows after. The
man of the prophecy. That man.”
“Oh, no no no,” the woman said. “I’ve had my fill of prophecy, thank you very much, and you can go now. I wash my
hands of…”
Oz heard a scuffling sound, and being absent his wolf-senses, he mistook it for something occurring inside rather
than out. A heartbeat later, the imp-rats surged forward, latching on to Helli’s bare legs with glimmering razor
teeth. Oz tumbled backward. With the rush of slick, scaly black creatures upon them both, he fell through the
saloon doors and into a hazy crowd of demonic patrons.
The imp-rats, detesting all brightness, unlatched and scampered, leaving Oz and Anjelica beside the travois of parts
and between six pairs of feet: Four were Walter’s; two belonged to a sprightly dressed blond tavern wench.
“Anyanka,” Walter said.
She backed away, looking hurriedly from Oz to Walter and back again.
Oz sat up. “Anya?” he asked.
Confusion clouded her features. “Oh, it’s you?” she asked.
“It’s him,” Walter said.
She smacked Walter’s sleeve. “It’s Oz!”
“Pretty much full time,” Oz said.
“You’re naked,” Anya observed.
“That too,” he said. “Look, Anya, we need…”
Anya’s expression turned grim. “Blanca,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Hold down the fort. Tavern. Whatever.
Just…” she bent to help Oz to his feet. “We’ll be in back.”
Anya had a cot in back, stuffed between jars of jellied body parts and barrels of ale. She also had a set of men’s
pajamas, dusky blue, covered in flying alarm clocks. They swallowed Oz, but felt much better than rampant nudity.
Oz placed Helli on the cot, while Anya poured a pair of drinks on top of a stack of crates.
With her back to him, she said, “What is it with you people haunting my afterlife?”
Oz settled on the edge of the bed, holding Helli’s limp hand in his. “Anya. You’re in Hell,” he said.
Anya shrugged. “I suppose,” she said. “I mean, it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? I’m here. I run a profitable
establishment at a crossroads between worlds. It’s not a bad existence.” She turned to him, a drink in each hand.
“I can’t,” Oz said, nodding at the drink. “I mean, I don’t think it’d be wise, at this point.”
“Oh, they’re for me,” she said, knocking the first one back. “Humans in Hell can never imbibe of the nectar nor
partake of the flesh blah blah blah. You know that, right? Did she?”
“No,” Oz said. He shook his head, as if to clear it. “You can help us.”
Anya drained the second glass, slammed them both down on the crate, and faced him, her hands on hips.
“I can try,” she said. “But don’t overestimate the role of barkeep. My powers are limited to information gathering
and shoulder lending, which I hope you’re not gonna need since I’m heading into a rush here. Unhappy hour.”
Oz ran a hand through his spiky hair. “We have to get out of here,” he said.
Anya glanced at the girl. “She’s bad off. Not much to salvage.”
“Don’t count her out, okay,” Oz said quietly. “She’s tougher than she looks.”
Anya went to a shelf in the corner. She broke out a kit and spoke while she assembled supplies – strips of gauze,
camphor, distilled water and an acrid smelling cream.
“This is all contraband,” she said. “Most of my trade is white market stuff. You can’t get it down here unless you
know the right demons. And, well, what can I say? I have always been adept at commercial endeavors. Scooch.”
Oz slid over. Anya peeled back the upper part of Helli’s robe, revealing the dried blood of a stab wound. She hissed
over her teeth. “These are bad,” she said. “You’re very lucky.”
“Lucky how?” Oz asked.
“You have wounds like these?” Anya asked, dabbed the caked blood with a swath of cotton gauze.
Oz shook his head.
“There you go,” Anya said.
Oz watched as Anya gently cleaned the wounds on Helli’s shoulder. He saw with some astonishment that the knife
wound looked smaller. Already, Helli was healing.
“The Oracle said you could help us get home,” Oz said.
Anya rolled her eyes. “Oracle, is he? If he’s an oracle, then I’m the Duchess of Kent. Walter is a charlatan. He sends
people here looking for a way upstairs, and when they find out I’m just a sexier-than-average tavern keep with a
way station, they succumb to despair, drink themselves to oblivion, and bam! Walter comes along with a clean-up
crew to aggressively bilk them for everything they have left,” she said. “Hence the viscera.”
Anya smeared a dab of cream onto her fingers and worked it into the seared meat of Anjelica’s wound. Helli flailed,
violently, her mouth ajar in a stunned but silent scream. Oz got under her, held her body against his, and whispered
to her until she calmed again.
Anya nodded to him. “Good,” she said. “But no. The only way you can get up there is if you have an offering of
human flesh, and it can’t be your own. It has to be something freely given and I can’t tell you how rare a currency
that is – why are you looking so hopeful? It’s very distracting.”
“We have it. The human flesh,” Oz said.
“It can’t be your own. I just told you.”
“No. We have something else,” Oz said. He opened Helli’s robe and reached into the inside pocket where she had
faithfully kept Nighna’s final gift. He passed the parcel to Anya.
Anya opened it and cupped her hand over her nose. “Well now, that’s gamey.”
“It’s Andrew’s hand,” Oz said.
“Andrew’s hand?” Anya echoed. She pouted. “Oh. Poor monkey. Is he? Did he… lose more parts?”
Oz said, “Andrew is fine… ish. He cut off his hand so Luxe couldn’t drag him down to Hell with him.”
Anya got up from the cot. “Luxe! That ambitious son of a bitch. I hope he roasts in…” she paused, considered, and
then said, “Well, I hope he roasts.”
Oz patted Helli’s arm. “Luxe killed Nighna, but not before she left Andrew’s hand to Helli. And then, Luxe did this.”
He closed his eyes and fought to keep from being sick. “But Nighna said the hand would be useful.”
Anya paced the length of the storeroom, muttering to herself and gesturing in obvious frustration. Helli sighed in
her sleep and twisted deeper into Oz’s embrace. She was healing. He could sense it, even without his werewolf
perception. Helli was improving with each second that passed.
Anya faced Oz. She brushed stray wisps of hair from her face, then planted her hands on her hips. “One thing about
being dead,” she said. “You’re really up on the big picture.”
Exhausted, Oz just shrugged.
“I mean it,” she continued. “You see the connectedness of all living things. Like this. Like, have you any idea how
infinitely infinite Hell is? Yet here we sit, chatting it up. Point is: it’s all related. It does mean something. There is a
purpose to everything, and it unites us all. Even beyond death,” she said, pointing at him with Andrew’s severed
hand. “It’s what you always wondered, right?”
Oz smiled, uncertain. “Yeah…” he began.
“Well, now you know,” she said. “And you know what else? Looks like we’re gonna need Walter after all.”
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
It’s a shame we have to die, my dear
No one’s getting out of here alive…
This time.
DOA, Foo Fighters
No one’s getting out of here alive…
This time.
DOA, Foo Fighters