"Do I have to explain it to you, you dumb fuck?" asked his wife's voice. "I took this body while she took mine. Not hard. Even you could do it if you had the desire."

His wife. Constance. Married less than a couple of days.

She was dead.

"Do you hate me now?" said Terris through her body. Bill became vaguely aware of footsteps approaching, splashing through the river of blood. A pair of filthy white Converse, now more red than white, shone up at him in the bright sunlight.

Bill forced himself to stand. His kneecaps ached, but a part of his mind sent the red and gold energies to them. Without much awareness, he felt the aches and pains in them lift and lessen, until it was like he stood on a new pair of legs.

And he saw his wife's face in his. Her purple eyes glittered in the September sunshine. White blonde hair, stained with blood.

But it wasn't his wife.

Bill clenched his fists. Closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he saw that his wife held the blue knife at his head.

"Don't go anywhere," she said. "We have much to talk about."

She laughed. He let her take him by the arm, and lead him to the cab of the truck. Her hand was as cold as a stone in winter.

"You killed her," a functioning part of him said.

"Enough. You know the terms now, William. Should have absorbed them in the book."

Bill looked down and saw that indeed his feet were moving over the ground. Each pulse from every nerve was a burst of broken glass that melted into candy when it reached his brain. His body was a furnace and a snowstorm.

"Come on," she said. "Sit. Wait. You shall be fine once you adjust. Thank you for helping with Septimus."

"Not in the terms," Bill heard himself mumble. Some knowledge from somewhere burbled up into his mind, in a pattern of letters and numbers and sentences in languages he didn't understand. Or thought he didn't understand, before the book had been dumped into his mind. Legalistic, was the term that flashed on his mental screen. Very legalistic, everything.

"Excuse me?" Hearing his wife's voice speaking Terris Smith's words was a blasphemy. "Mr. William Wilfong, are you going to chastise me about laws?"

"I understand them," said Bill. He felt the ball of red and gold energy enter his throat. "Understand them perfectly well. You did not win against Septimus in ritual combat. You murdered him. Not supposed to touch him yourself."

Bill found himself floating into the cab of the truck. The shell of his wife pointed the blue knife at his chest. He allowed himself to be settled on the passenger's seat. With a wave of his hand he could have dismissed the forces working to move him.

And he knew the rules stated that Terris could not kill hima*

"a*outside of killing me with your army." Bill rubbed his head. Bursts and sparks of yellow interfered with his sight. "You yourself cannot kill me. It's the rules." Pressure of the book's words pressed the words out into the open, extruding them from his raw throat. He pointed to the back of the truck. "So how did you kill Septimus?"

The shell of his wife smiled. She spun the knife like a toy on her hand, the blade narrowly missing her pale leg.

"I did it when I was like this," said Terris through his wife's mouth. "Don't be so thick. I'm still me, but this is what killed him. Just like she killed all of them back there. This body. Me but not me. Mr. Logic approved of the...creative interpretation." She pointed the blue knife to the trailer.

"Oh, Jesus," said Bill.

"So," said his wife. "I am willing to give you this army, Bill. Willing to part with it in order to give you an easier life. I can get another one in no time."

He stared at her, dumbfounded. There was nothing there. Nothing. He might as well have been looking at a photograph, for all that remained. Constance wasn't there.

Constance was dead.

"Fuck you," Bill said.

He pushed himself over to the driver's seat. The rough fabric of the bench scraped across his jeans. He waved his hand and the energy from the motion slammed the opposite door closed, shattering the window and buckling the metal.

And he found himself behind the steering wheel of the truck. His fingertips curled around the wheel and a surge of the red and the gold energies shocked his muscles into tension. Something spat into the frame of the truck, curling through the wires and into the engine and through the smokestacks, and the engine exploded into life.

"Bill?" called the being that resembled his wife. "What are you doing darling?"

"Getting the fuck away," he said, and jammed his foot down on the accelerator.

Thirty-Four.

He remembered that Constance had driven the Jeep with absolutely no problem, shifting with assurance even though he knew she didn't drive a manual transmission. Because she could do pretty much whatever she wanted. Or Terris could do pretty much whatever he wanted.

"Now, I can do pretty much whatever the hell I want," he said, watching the road bounce underneath him as the truck accelerated. The engine fumed and rattled and the tires squealed on the pavement. "I can drive this fucking truck if I need to," he said. "I can drive this fucker right off the side of a cliff."

The truck lurched and swayed through the divider full of flowers. The flowers disappeared underneath the grille, and he felt them chewed up against the tight rubber of the wheels. From behind him, in the trailer, he heard bodies rolling around, slapping the metal with their hands and feet.

On the left hand side of the truck was the Jeep, both of its doors ajar. Bill drove close enough to rock the Jeep on its suspension with the gust of air that came off the truck, but was careful not to hit it. For some reason that seemed very important: keep the Jeep safe. His father spent a lot of money on it, and he didn't want to piss off the old man.

He and the red and gold energies aimed the truck for the casino's exit. The engine grew hoarse and high-pitched as he accelerated.

"Get the fuck away," he heard himself chanting. "Get the fuck away from here. Get the fuck away from here."

The casino entrance came closer, but he felt an interference in the truck's handling. An energy like his, only colored differently, surged through the truck's systems, peeling back the layers he had put down and stripping the vehicle's momentum.

"You can get her back, you know," said his wife's body.

Bill looked beside him and there she was, sitting on the bench, long white legs crossed. She had tossed the blue knife up on the dashboard, where it jiggled and rattled with the truck's movement like some kind of obscene ornament. "You know that you can get her back," she said.

Bill took his hands from the wheel. He didn't feel surprised or upset by the intrusion; it seemed like something that had to happen. Did he know it was going to happen? It had the weight of inevitability. Was he seeing into the future now, with the new abilities?

The truck shuddered. The brakes hissed like monstrous snakes and the tires squealed.

When they were motionless, Bill stared out of the window at the Indian statue. He didn't want to look at the shell of his wife. Her smell, of blood and something else he couldn't name, oozed through the cabin, tickling his nose.

"You have to fight," she said.

"There are ways around it," he answered. His voice came out rough, as if he'd inhaled the smoke of a thousand cigars. Was it still his voice? Could he change it? The red and gold energies tickled in his throat like post-nasal drip.

"There are?"

"Yes. You found out a way to get rid of Septimus. Why did you kill him just so you would have to deal with me?" Bill rubbed the skin between his eyes. The sunlight stabbed his retinas, but for once a headache wasn't forming in his skull. The red and gold energies eliminated any pain before he felt it, guarding his nervous system.

He felt rather than saw her smile. "There is more importance, sometimes, in the poetry of a gesture rather than its logic."

"What?"

"You should know this. It is a part of you. I enjoyed the idea of you fighting for Constance rather than yourself."

Bill stared straight forward, through the glass of the truck's cab.

"I know," he told her. "I could get you back. I know. I can get you back."

"I'm going to let you choose the place, darling," she said. He looked to her and saw that she had picked up the blue knife, and caressed the soft white underside of her chin with its sharp point. "We can stay here if it's easier. Or we could go into your hometown. Into the church where you were married, perhaps?" The knife's point drew open a wide fissure in her flesh, and a blood welled in the wound before it came to a crimson point and slid down her white neck, wicking into the pink fabric of her sweatshirt. Then the fissure healed itself, the edges knitting together into scarless flesh.

"No," said Bill.

"No?"

"No. We're going back to the woods."

"Back to the woods?"

"Yes. This is still technically my honeymoon. That is where I brought youa*Constance, I meana*and it is there that I would like things to end."

She smiled.

"Back to the woods," she said. "That sounds like a very agreeable plan, my darling. You have twenty-four hours to get back there. But don't dawdlea"your little gang in the back won't hang out for much longer. Start to smell."

"Yes," said Bill.

"I think I'm going to get recruits from a little town not that far from here," she said, gazing out of the passenger's side window, tapping the point of the blue knife against her thigh. "It's called....oh, East something-or-other. I don't think that anyone you know lives there."

His wife's body smiled.

And then she was gone.

Bill stared at the indentation in the bench for several minutes. The red and gold energies inside of him felt impatient, running across his nerves like rivers swollen with rain.

But he found his hands on the wheel. Again the red and gold energies slammed down through his nerves and threw the engine into the life. He didn't feel like stepping on the accelerator, so he let the energies do the work, slapping the pedal to the floor.

He went through the gates of the bow-and-arrow slinging Indians, and onto the straight black road. A few cars lined the medians, with their occupants in various states of death. He saw one blue Ford Escort, probably from the nineteen-eighties, with a woman with white hair leaning out of the door. She gripped her head in her hands, and Bill swore he saw her sobbing. In the passenger's side sat a man who was either very asleep or very dead.

"I have the power to raise the dead," said Bill. "I have the power to do whatever I want."

As he passed them, the old woman did not look up, even when a black plume of diesel exhaust blasted across her head.

Bill closed his eyes, and realized that he could drive with his eyes closed.

"I'm going to do you a favor," he said. "Gonna blow the shit right out of your ears, lady."

Bill focused.

A part of himself eased out of his body and sprinted over to the car. The part of himself slapped the dead man on the forehead and shouted one word.

The man's eyes snapped open and he shrieked. Before Bill drove away, he saw the woman raise her head from her hands and look around to the man. A look equal parts amazement and disgust deformed her wrinkled face before Bill allowed his body to reel back the other part of himself.

But Bill kept his eyes closed. He felt the pressure of his fingers on the wheel, and the sick thrum and whine of the powerful engine beneath his seat. He left the bordersa*the devil faces on the signsa*with only a token protest from the faces themselves. The faces whined for a moment but he silenced them, mentally decapitating them with the blue knife.

Bill eased back into the seat. He concentrated on the whining of the engine.

"I need to sleep," he told himself.

And after sparing a last thought to Constance, hovering before him like a ghost of a ghost, blood running from her white eyes, he went out.

Thirty-Five.

Bill opened his eyes.

He leaned forward in the truck's seat, and saw cracks dividing the windshield like lightning bolts. A red splash of blood discolored the glass.

"Shit," he said again, and automatically wiped his forehead. Blood slicked his hand "Welcome back," said a voice next to him. "I did not dare touch you as you slept."

Bill knew who it was before his head turned to face the voice.

"I did not think you were going to come back," she said. Her fat fingers fiddled with a golden necklace, one of many draped around her neck.

"Mary," said Bill, his voice a croak.

"You feel differently," said Mary. "You feel like one of them. Are you one of them?" Her voice squealed as if a rat were caught in her throat. "Did something happen to you, my dear William?"

Bill wiped his eyes again. Mary smelled like a slaughterhouse. The red and gold sensed his disgust, and transformed her odor into something like baking apple pie.

He focused on her face. A red slash, coated in grit and twigs, took the place of her right ear. Pink gums shone through her severed lower lip. Her white dress was covered in grime and blood.

"I'm so scared," she said. "Did you bring us help, Bill?"

"No, said Bill, rubbing his face. "No. I mean, yes."

"You're different," said Mary. "What did they do to you, my poor William?"

Mary reached for his face.