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"Victoria," I said. "Did you kill her?"
"What? No. I took what I knew, and I learned how, so that when I saw her again, I could."
"Good," I said. My chest was getting tight. Breathing was getting difficult. I closed my eyes. "Perhaps now you can try again."
I fell.
The last thing I heard was my assailant screaming as the rest of the cuckoos in and around Los Angeles--all the ones close enough to have heard my call--swarmed into the house with their own Barbs, mowing down the man who had come, who had killed me. They were my siblings and my enemies and my family, and they had never been my friends, but they would avenge me.
Oh, yes. They would avenge me. The math has to balance in the end.
The math always has to balance.
EVERYWHERE
A Pitchfork County Story
SAM WITT
The Pitchfork County series follows the struggle of the Night Marshal, Joe Hark, against the forces of darkness that threaten the world at every turn. When Joe discovered the Long Man, his mentor and long-time ally, had become one of the horrors they'd battled, he had no choice but to turn against his old boss. "Everywhere" pits the battered foes against one another once again, and sets the table for the final war against the darkness.
The Long Man was dead.
Mostly.
The Night Marshal, whom for decades the Long Man had trained and empowered to fight evil, had turned on the Long Man and shattered his body. After centuries of manipulating men and women for their own good, the Long Man's plans had finally become too convoluted for even one so ancient and wise as he to control.
He'd failed in his mission to protect humanity from the coming darkness, just as he'd failed to keep a leash on his most powerful and promising allies. He'd paid the price for his mistakes.
The Long Man was dead.
Mostly.
The Long Man crawled across the broken plain, his only companion the taste of failure's bitter ashes. He was debased and defiled, a broken shadow of his former glory. In his struggle to save those placed in his charge, the Long Man had become the very thing he fought against. All he wanted was to rest.
But, first, he had to return to the Father to confess his sins and accept solace among the ranks of the fallen.
The moon of mankind came and went a half-dozen times before the Long Man glimpsed the gates of the Father's home. The stumps of the Long Man's scorched wings twitched against his back and the many gaping sockets of his ruined eyes wept black tears. He had returned and he would, at last, know rest.
Time jumped and jerked and froze and then lurched forward again like a frame stuck in an old movie projector. The Father's voice fell over the Long Man like a shadow, at once ominous and soothing.
"You failed in your most sacred mission, my child," the Father intoned. "Like your siblings, you underestimated the sons and daughters of dust."
The Father swept his broken child up from the dirt and cradled the wounded wreckage to his bosom. The Long Man fought back tears as the Father's gentle hand swept ash and filth from his brow. Their hearts beat as one, and the Long Man's failure crushed him into the Father's embrace.
"I tried." The Long Man's words slithered through the vaulted hall of the Father's mansion. Their echoes bounced through the great entryway where his siblings hung, and their ruined eyes rolled in bleeding sockets as they sought out the last of their kind.
The prodigal son averted his gaze from his sisters and brothers. Shame and horror at what he'd done, what he'd allowed to happen, made him yearn for the peace of endless rest. He could not bear the weight of his failure any longer.
The Father lifted him like a doll and nestled him into a niche above the Eternal Throne. The golden stones embraced the Long Man. This was his home, entombed among his siblings. Together, they would watch the Father's world end in blood and shadows. Finally, they would rest.
Forever.
The Father lifted the golden raiment to clothe the Long Man, but his hands froze in midair. "What have you become, child?"
The Long Man would not meet the Father's gaze. The centuries had shaped him with the cruelties of necessity. He was not the creature who had left this place to protect the children of dust. "There is a darkness in the world of dust. It consumes everything."
The Father let the golden cloth fall from his fingers. It burned as it brushed the floor. "Even you, my child?"
