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I get out the SIG and fire a couple of shots.
“Traven. Father Traven. Up here.”
The wind keeps blowing. Visibility is shit. If Traven was standing right in front of me in a prom dress, I don’t know if I’d notice him.
A figure comes trudging up the hill. It’s tall and haggard, with its coat wrapped tight around it. I start down toward it. His face is still pale and blotched with the same broken blood vessels from when he died.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he yells.
I push down the hoodie and kill the glamour. His eyes narrow.
“Stark? Is that you?”
He touches my shoulders, my face, still trying to figure out if I’m real.
“Ready to get out of here, Father?”
“To where?”
Oh. Right.
“I hadn’t really thought that part through. Why don’t we get out of the wind and we’ll figure it out.”
“I’d like that.”
We start up the hill. Stupid me. I’m so happy to see Traven that I forgot about the guard. He comes charging out of the blizzard with a knife in his hand. Slashes my left arm, my Kissi arm, which means he only manages to ruin yet another one of my coats. I take out the SIG and shoot him in the legs. That gets the attention of all the mobile souls on the hillside. They look around at us. Some start up the hill. When I take Traven out the gates, I leave them open. The guard crawls after us. He’s yelling something but I can’t hear him over the sound of the wind. Besides, he’s surrounded by freezing, damned souls. I don’t think he’ll be shouting much longer. I throw the keys into a snowdrift.
I take Traven into the Quonset hut. He stops for a minute by the door when he sees the dead guards.
“All this death just to save me? Why?”
“Because I’m Sandman Slim. A monster and damned and those are the kind of choices I make.”
Traven goes to the oven and warms himself.
“I pulled you out of that hole because I like you, but I don’t want your gratitude. I did it because sending you here was as much a sin as anything you ever swallowed on earth. And saving you is a message to the people who make the rules.”
“And what is that message?”
“Don’t be such assholes.”
That makes him laugh a little. It’s good to see his face in anything but a frown or lined in deep thought. This isn’t a guy who’s had a lot of fun in his life. I think this last month with Brigitte might have been his best days. I suppose there are worse times to die. But it was still too soon for him.
I take a coat from the soldier I stabbed and wrap it around Traven.
“There’s only one place I can take you right now. The Room of Thirteen Doors. No one can touch you there. That includes Lucifer and God. I’ll figure out what to do after you’re safe.”
“Can I see Brigitte?”
“No.” It’s a hard thing to say. “You’re dead and you’re not coming back. Let her grieve and deal with it.”
“You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Don’t sweat it, Father. It takes a while to figure out the rules of being dead.”
“You died and came back to life.”
“I’m not human.”
