"No! Run!"

"No," he said. "Let her go."

Sawyer shook Beth's head back and forth.

"Beth says she wants to stay. Oh, Peter, she's so wet for me."

"Let her go."

"Fuck off, Nancy," Sawyer spat.

"No, fuck you," said Peter, and drew the black sword from behind his back. He strode forward, his hand shaking, even though he was just a shade in this place of death. He didn't need to shake, but the spirit remembered the body long after death.

Beth shook, too. She felt her neck bones grating together as her head was pulled back, even though she had no neck anymore than she could feel physical pain.

But this was the tower. Rules were different here. This was his realm, a realm of the dead, but where flesh still ruled. The people fucking and rolling below like worms were real enough to feel pain and hatred and to inflict terrible wounds. The place healed dead flesh so it could be severed again.

She didn't understand the rules. Peter shook, she shook.

Sawyer just laughed all the harder.

Peter roared and charged at the beast. He slashed down at Sawyer's neck with all his might, but when the sword hit it wasn't a sword any longer. It was just a feather.

Chapter Seventy-Two.

Tears streamed down Miles' face, and each drop glittered in the strange light that surrounded him. His expression was too old for such a young face. No eight year old boy should know such sorrow.

But he knew it well. He knew what was to come.

He'd been dead a long time. He'd seen the other side. He'd seen lifetimes played out, deaths untold, enough pain and sorrow to break the soul of the living.

A long time dead, though, and stronger for it.

He knelt by the hole and watched as Coleridge's eyes rolled up into his head, only the whites showing. The big man had heart and he made Miles happy. The boy sensed in Coleridge a simple soul. One much like his own. He wouldn't let him die if he could do anything about it.

He knew his role. It wasn't to give, but to take. He couldn't break the rules. But maybe in this one thing he could slide them.

Coleridge slumped across Beth's body, blood still flowing freely from his wound. Miles looked down into the pit again.

He could hear his mother's screams rising from the well. His father's terrified cries joined hers.

Coleridge was dying. Time was short.

But the dead were unbound by time. His mother thought she knew this, but she hadn't experienced it. She couldn't. She hadn't seen the other side.

Miles had.

He stepped away from the hole, closed his mind to the agony coming from behind him.

He reached the stove. Concentrated and turned the knob. Flames flicked high.

He took out a heavy metal skillet. It was no more difficult for him to carry than a plate or a sofa or a car. It wasn't his physical strength that moved the skillet over the flame.

When he judged it hot enough, he lifted it from the flame and pulled Coleridge's leg between his arm and his chest. Held it firm, in a grip like iron. The big man was liable to wake and fight.

Coleridge would never get his foot back, but he wouldn't die.

Miles held the skillet against the stump of Coleridge's leg. His flesh seared and stank. Miles could smell it well enough. Smells, sounds, sights, so much touched him, made his soul sing with wonder and horror.

Coleridge woke and fought and screamed, but then he passed out again.

The skillet cooled.

Miles hefted it. A thoughtful look passed his face. He nodded, listening to a voice only he could hear.

"OK," he said. Took one step over the hole and in the next step he stood before the man who'd stolen Death's throne.

Chapter Seventy-Three.

Sawyer's fist lashed out, and Peter flew backward, rolling and coming to rest at the edge of the chasm. The dead strained to reach him, but the throne was too high.

Beth threw herself at Sawyer, knowing it was pointless. Still bound by the rules of the living, she fought nail, fist, foot against stone. Her knuckles cracked and her nails tore. Her foot broke and she felt the pain, and even though she knew it wasn't real it took the fight from her. She couldn't hurt him.

He laughed at her while she struggled against him. Then, bored, he took her bottom lip between his talons and pulled her face toward his.

"Give yourself to me. I'll let him go."

The pain was immense. She couldn't concentrate. She fought to hold onto herself. He twisted her lip so hard the only thing she could do was turn her head away, try to turn out of his grip, but he pulled, and she could only go where he wanted. He drew her head down to his lap. He was naked and every part of him was like stone.

Repulsed, she spat at him.

Her spit seeped through his flesh, like he was thirsty. He thrust himself at her, and she bit down, breaking a tooth. It hurt him though. It must have, because he roared and tore her bottom lip from her face.

He put his palm in her face and pushed her down to the floor.

No blood, she saw, kneeling and looking down. No blood.

It's not real.

You're dead, Beth. Remember? You're dead. He can't hurt you. There is no pain.

"There is no pain," said a new voice. Someone else here.

"There is no death," Miles said. Beth saw him and thought for a second she might cry, dead or not.

But he wasn't her eight year old son. Not anymore.

Miles looked the same as ever, an eight year old boy. But something was inside him. Something other. He was beautiful, his voice soft yet strong. It was a confident voice like a young man's might have been, the young man's voice he might have grown into, if she hadn't killed him.

He shone so brightly she had to close her eye against the light, and still she could see him.

"There is no other God," he said, standing a foot in front of Sawyer, "But He who lives in me."

Sawyer slashed Miles' face but his talons passed through, hitting nothing but still air.

Miles ignored Sawyer's roar and held up a hand for silence.

In his other hand Beth saw that he held a skillet. Her skillet, from the kitchen.

Did he intend to fight him with it? Beth realized she wasn't the mother here. Peter, crouching and spitting teeth that didn't really exist, he wasn't the father anymore. Miles was somehow set above them.

She watched him, and though she felt so many conflicting emotions at the sight of her son, above all she felt pride.

As though he could sense her thoughts, he smiled at her. Gone were his wounds, the gaping throat, the ribs, his smashed skull. But the Lara Croft T-shirt remained, and for some reason that made Beth smile, because whatever was within her son, he remained her son, and he always would.

Miles stood before Sawyer, and the beast flailed at him, raking him with filthy black nails, but Miles was untouched.

"You think you're the angel of death. You style yourself the Devil, but my father threw him down." Beth didn't think he was talking about Peter anymore. "You are nothing in His eyes. You are less than the lowest beast. Less than the basest demon. Nothing man. Bird man, hollow bones and hollow soul. I am judgement. His hand, in me."

"I'm going to fuck your god like I fucked your mother!"

"No."

Simple. Elegant in the face of brutality, and beautiful. So beautiful.

Peter stumbled toward Beth on weak legs, and she held him up. Stronger now, without pain, without fear.

Knowing. Seeing the other side made flesh. Seeing the power and the love and the fury that waited for everyone on the other side of life.

Miles stepped into the circle of Sawyer's flailing arms and held him tight. Squeezed him hard enough to make Sawyer scream in terror. The light blazed and sweet smells blew away the foulness.

The light faded, and Miles held a raven in one fist and a heavy iron birdcage he had made from the skillet in the other. He put the birdcage on the throne of bone and flesh and pushed the bird inside. It pecked at his fingers but drew no blood.

Of course it didn't, Beth thought. The dead don't bleed.

And, as suddenly as it had come into being, hell was gone.

Chapter Seventy-Four.

They were a family again, for the first time since she'd killed the boy sitting on the couch between her and her husband. She knew it couldn't last. She knew it wasn't real. But she could feel the solid warmth of her boy nestled against her chest, his pale hair tickling her chin. She could feel Peter's slender fingers against her neck. The sun shone through the living room window.

She knew it wasn't real, because this was her home. It had never been their home. Her family had ended before she even knew the home by the sea existed.

So warm, though. Dust motes shifted and drifted lazily in the sunlight beaming through the window. She could see the road and the dunes beyond. She could hear the murmur of the sea behind her, through the open window, gently lapping the shore.

She wanted to close her eyes, drift and fall asleep with her boys in her arms. She felt a tinge of fear at the thought. What if this was all a dream, and upon waking it blew away to dust?

She wanted to speak, but if this was a spell she never wanted to break it.

Peter's fingers touched her neck, and hit something rough. She reached up and took his hand, and in doing so her fingers brushed against her neck. The flesh there was torn and her fingers sank into her own flesh.

Her breath rushed out, but there was no breath.

So it was all a dream, and this is what death was like.

Then she remembered. The Devil in his tower, her boys, fighting him. So brave. So strong.

Being dead didn't matter half as much as she thought it would. She put Peter's hand back on her neck and left it there. She didn't want to look at them. Not yet. Just let this moment of peace last a little longer. Forever wouldn't be too long.

But Miles broke the spell. He had to. She knew that. They couldn't stay, and she could. She saw it all. She wasn't meant for the other side.

"You know we can't stay, Mum."

"We want to," said Peter, and finally he looked at her. His flesh was pale from drowning. The dead wore their wounds in this limbo where they waited before they crossed over.

Her son and her husband waited to say goodbye to her.

"I don't wish it on you. It's not hard here. But it's going to be lonely. I've missed you both so long, and now you're gone, really gone..."

"I know, Mum. I missed you both, too. But you can't come."

"He won't let me in. I'm cursed. I cursed myself."

Miles shook his head and pulled free of their embrace. He knelt on the floor in front of his father and his mother. He didn't seem sad. Prepared. Ready to go.

"Blessed, Mum."

"Blessed, cursed...in His eyes it feels like the same thing."

Miles shook his head, softly, and took her hand, gently. "He'd let you in. It's you that won't let yourself cross. He can't change the nature of a soul."