Page 127 of Dead Beat

Hec’s face fell. “You want to walk the Gauntlet? That’s no job for a wren, no job for anyone.” He turned to North. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“You can’t blame him,” North said. “Death is meant to be the end of suffering. Hell offers a different promise.”

It was why the dead feared demons as they did nothing else. Alex remembered the fear the thought of the gentleman demon had roused in the shades of the Borderlands. She thought of the yoke with its rows of garnet and onyx, beautiful in its own way, but a symbol of agony without end.

“I get it,” she said. “I truly do. But I’m not asking you to take on Golgarot—”

At the sound of the demon’s name, Hec began to fade. Alex couldn’t allow that. “Sorry, Hec. No more welching.”

She held out her hand and tugged.

Alex heard Dawes gasp in understanding. She registered the shock on Hec’s face, the look of betrayal he cast at the Bridegroom, and then he was with her. She tasted tobacco on her tongue, heard the grunt of bodies crashing into each other, the crunch of frost beneath cleats. The air was thick with the smell of old leather and wet grass.

The gents in the Hall weren’t a bad lot, and he liked their times together, but he knew he was a little slow to keep up. Rudy never let him forget it, but the cuss wasn’t all bad either. On the field, none of that mattered. Best believe he hated practice, especially when the weather turned cold, taking the big old bus out to the Bowl. None of the windows would close all the way, and the whole contraption stank of engine fumes. But the games? Always a gasser. The cheering crowds, the gals in the stands, the feeling of getting it right again and again and again.

The armor. Alex pushed. Heart of Gold, Hand of God, Feet of—

The Wheel spun and she felt his dread. He was looking through the window and his mother should not be there, but she was and he’d broken her heart. “My sweet boy, why won’t you let me in?”

“You’re not my ma.”

“Maybe I’m not, because I couldn’t have raised a killer, could I? What did I do wrong? I tried my best to raise you right.”

“You did, Ma.”

“No son of mine could do such a thing. Kill an innocent man. I can smell the blood on you.”

They’d done that together. He and the others. Soldier, scholar, priest, and prince. They’d poured the poison into droppers and then one by one into the waiting mouths of the men laid out side by side in the old operating room that Bones liked to use. Lionel had shown them the secret entrance, a notch in the wall like in the picture shows. He’d thought that would be the hard part, the ugly part, but he’d gotten it so wrong.

He hadn’t been able to look at the other lads when they’d come back from … where they’d been. It hadn’t been at all what he expected, what Rudy said it would be. But he’d thought they were in the clear. Until his mother showed up. She’d been following him for days now. At first his salt guardian had gotten the best of her, his bulldog barking and yapping, biting at her heels. But then it was like she wasn’t scared of it anymore and she talked and talked, made him feel so low he didn’t think he’d ever get up again.

Maybe he was losing his mind and he’d end up in the nuthouse. It would serve him right.

He went to Rudy, begged him for help. He was the smart one. But Rudy had looked pretty rough himself, pale as a dead man and looking over his shoulder like he was being hunted. He wouldn’t come off the porch at Il Bastone, wouldn’t let Hec in either.

“It’s up to you,” Rudy said. “You have to make the ascent. You have to pull the demons back through.”

“I can’t do it. I need the rest of you.”

“Lionel went back to Sweetwell. If you don’t put on the goddamn armor, we’re sunk. All of us.”

“We need Danny. He can fence. He can fight. I went all the way over to that big house of his. But he won’t even answer the door.”

“It has to be you. Only you can save us. Soldier, your hour has arrived.”

In that moment, talking to Rudy, Hec believed he could do it. He would do it. His father had served. He’d come back from fighting the Huns, and Ma said he wasn’t right after that, couldn’t work, couldn’t sleep, like a ghost.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ma had told Hec. “You’re meant for better things than this. You’ll work a real job in the city and you won’t come home with your hands stinking of fish.” She’d believed in him. They all had. Rudy and Danny and Lionel. He was the soldier. He could face their enemies, save the day. He’d gone straight to Wolf’s Head to retrieve the Heart, but his mother was waiting at the gate.

“It’s the shame I can’t bear,” she said, “to know my son is a killer.”

They were all killers. It was for a higher cause. That had to count for something. Besides, this thing was not his mother, could not be his mother. She was back in Maine, taking in neighbors’ laundry because his father wouldn’t go out on the water anymore.

“Can’t keep my balance,” he’d told Hec. “The damnedest thing. I get in the boat and I can barely stand.”

Hector felt the same way. He couldn’t steady himself. The world was sliding away beneath him and he couldn’t get his footing back.

His salt guardian rushed at her, barking and snapping. Rudy had laughed when he’d pulled the little salt bulldog from the crucible. “You couldn’t be easier to read if I wrote you in a book, Hec.”