Tony stood in the doorway, examining the frame and the damage his kicks had done. There were some cracks but nothing too severe. He would have been kicking for a while before anything was going to give. It was a strong door. He peered inside and noted a comfortable looking interior. A cosy living room with what looked to be a full kitchen in back and a set of stairs heading up to an open loft area and hallway.

"Holy s.h.i.t," Tony breathed. "This is some person's cabin?"

"Why?" Death was curious. "What's in there?"

"Place is better than my apartment."

Death leaned over, appearing in the doorframe at Tony's knees. He gauged the living room and creature comforts. A plush L-shaped sofa facing a wide screen TV. A fireplace. A decent looking kitchen. Table back there, too. Cosy. Death smiled. He approved.

"Some luck after all," he said. Tony looked down at the man, frowned and picked him up with great effort. He wasn't sure how far or how long he had carried him, but he was near exhaustion. He carried Death over the threshold like a limp bride and deposited him on one end of the sofa. Tony then closed and locked the door from the inside, and then went to the other end of the sofa. He groaned when he sank down into it. Heaven had to have sofas. Tony closed his eyes and let his arm hang over the edge. He took a breath and savoured the deep chill in his lungs.

"Hey," came Death's voice.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut tight. He willed for silence.

"Hey. Get up."

"I'm taking a break here, okay? I think I've earned it."

"Oh, really? Well, then sleep away. f.u.c.k if I care."

Tony's eyes cracked opened. "What do you want?"

Death wasn't even looking at him. He was staring at the thick wooden beams in the ceiling. It reminded him of old churches. "Better not sleep for too long."

"Why not?"

"Something's coming."

"What?"

"Something not dead. And plenty p.i.s.sed."

Tony slapped his hands to his forehead and face and slowly dragged them down, stretching his flesh. He groaned. He wanted the day to end. He wanted all of this to end. And he wanted to sleep.

"Can't you do anything about that?" Tony whined. "You are Death."

"What's that got to do with sc.u.m-sucking undead creatures of the night?"

Then, before Death could set off a further thought on the subject, something landed against the side of the cabin. Something ma.s.sive enough to make the heavy wooden frame shake all the way down to its foundations, something frightening enough to make Tony sit up straight and attempt to look everywhere at once. The sound came from the north wall, and it moved towards the shut door. It dragged itself along like something gunshot, leaning heavily on the wall for support. Timbers creaked. In the silence of the smothering snow, each groaning fibre made Tony feel as if his spine were being plied apart by a crowbar. With each long, heavy drag, the thing moved closer to the door, and the temperature inside the cabin dropped lower. Tony's eyes were bulging. His quickening breath was easily seen.

"What the f.u.c.k is that?" he whispered harshly.

From where he lay on his side of the couch, Death merely crossed his arms on his chest, mummy like, and stared at the ceiling.

Tony would spare no more attention on the boatman. The thing and its sound were drawing closer to the door. Wood squealed as the unseen weight pressed itself up hard against the cabin. Tony listened as if his senses were able to discern ghosts. His eyes darted from the wall to the door. What could he do? His heart was thumping in his chest, and his breathing accelerated. He took a breath and slipped off the couch, making a fist around the baseball bat he still carried.

"Hey," Death whispered.

Tony looked in his direction.

"Give me the booze," Death said, his fingers snapping in the air.

The thing hit the wall again, hard. Tony heard timbers crack. Without a thought he pulled the whiskey from his pocket and shoved it into Death's hands. It brought a fond smile to Death's lips. "Together again, my friend."

"Shhh," Tony hushed. The thing outside was perhaps no more than five feet away from the door. The sound of something sc.r.a.ping along the wood, gouging it, perked the dead air, and Tony felt a lump of dread forming up in his chest. What the h.e.l.l was that thing?

"Hey," Death said.

Tony's head nearly came off his neck it snapped around so fast. "What?"

Death had the tip of the Jack Daniel's bottle resting against his cheek. He was watching the man carefully. "Remember. It can't kill you."

That did not make Tony feel any better.

"And you can send it back."

"How?"

"Smash in the head."

"And that'll stop it?" Tony demanded.

"That s.h.i.t" will stop just about anything Death was going to say when the thing outside crashed against the door, stealing the words and their mutual attention. Tony's eyes bugged wide. He could see a greyish-white ridge of something pressing up against the wood through the broken window he had made. The rest of the window was curtained, but Tony had seen enough to know that whatever the thing was, it was big. It slammed its weight against the door again and the frame puffed inwards. Tony could see multiple places where the wooden frame shook and weakened. It struck the door, again, making it bulge. Tony realized if the door was. .h.i.t a third time, it would split.

It made Tony scream.

The scream startled an otherwise relaxed Death.

Breathing wildly and bat in hand, Tony charged the door only to turn at the staircase. He pounded upwards, out of sight. Reaching the second floor, Tony saw there was a short hallway with four opened doorways. Behind him, gloomy daylight came through a kite window. The fear had a hold of Tony now, but it was not the paralyzing fear that had crippled him around Freddie. This was a fear that was igniting into something else. It was fear that was beginning to burn, and rage was replacing it.

Baring his teeth, Tony charged the window.

Chapter 54.

With a roar, Tony crashed through the gla.s.s and thin wood like a man escaping a fire. He flew through the air, legs drawn up and bat held over his head. He glimpsed the thing below him, in front of the cabin door. If he had waited inside and done nothing but wait, the terror surely would have frozen him as solid as a cheap TV dinner. But fear was his friend now.

And rage was a tank of gasoline with a lit wick.

Tony landed in a snow drift just beyond the ma.s.s of bone and decaying flesh. He yanked his feet free and charged the beast, seeing that it was the rotting remains of a huge bear, almost five feet high at its bare-boned shoulder. Black flesh and rotten fur hung off its skeleton, and it raised its half-decayed head still armed with teeth in Tony's direction. Empty eye sockets regarded its attacker, and its maw opened in a tongueless hiss.

But the man was faster.

The bat crashed into the bear's head, crushing the skull with the sound of breaking clay. The impact froze the beast to the spot. Roaring, Tony swung again, smashing the skull to the right. Bone and teeth fell to the snow. He landed another heavy blow to the bear's head, and a chunk of black bone matter and tissue flew and smacked against the cabin's wall. The strike paralyzed it. Tony reared the bat up high and brought it down with whatever strength he could generate, smashing through the remaining brainpan, and removing what was left of the head.

The abomination stood still for a moment, almost as if considering what to do in this unexpected predicament, then collapsed. Its legs dropped its dead-again frame to the deep, white freeze of the surrounding snow, and the rest of its body sunk into itself as whatever energy sustaining it left in a deflating gush.

"f.u.c.ked your hibernatin' a.s.s," Tony quietly snarled at the corpse.

The wind rose up in reply and chilled his face.

When Tony was certain it was no longer alive, he went to work bashing and breaking every intact bone he could find, releasing his remaining fear like a bad meal being regurgitated. He smashed the legs, the paws, the back, and the ribs until the frame of the great bear was nothing more than a lumpy ma.s.s of shards and splinters. In the end, he kicked snow over its carca.s.s to cover the thing from the light of day.

Having done that, Tony fell backwards on his a.s.s in a snow drift.

Great breaths left his frame, and he stared at the newly buried corpse before him, believing and yet not believing that he had just kicked the s.h.i.t out of a zombie bear. The realization eventually brought a weak smile to his face. He was good at this. He had just faced evil and kicked its a.s.s with a bat, no less. He regarded the weapon still clinched in his hand, and his smile widened almost breaking into a laugh.

"Youuuuuuuuu."

The voice made Tony clamber to his feet. He whirled about to face the road, standing with his bat at guard. If there was another thing around, he discovered he still had enough energy to have at it.

There was.

The wind continued to pick up, driving the snow up in ghostly cauls of white and flinging it about. Standing just far enough away that Tony could not make out its features was a single figure that did not appear to have feet. It stood dark against the veil of snow that swirled around it. Its arms hung limply at it sides, and it made no movement, but it was looking straight at Tony. He felt it. A new freezing cold went through his frame, and he knew that it wasn't because of the weather.

"You, f.u.c.k off!" Tony screamed at the wraith, brandishing the bat like a crusader's sword.

The form did not move.

"Youuu," the voice came again right next to Tony's ears, it seemed. He flinched at the sound and spun about in the snow, making sure the cabin was at his back. Seeing that he was indeed alone, he faced the dark shape once again.

"Give him. To. Usssssss."

Tony bared his teeth.

"And you. Live."

"Come any closer, and I'll f.u.c.k you up!" Tony hollered back. He took two threatening steps to emphasize his intent and c.o.c.ked the bat to his ear as if the thing were going to launch a fastball at him. Instead, the shape merely stood on legs that did not seem to have any feet, in a snowstorm that was intensifying. It did not flinch. It did nothing in response to Tony's advances. Tony stopped after taking another step. Something kept him back. He did not want to see the thing's face. He knew if he did, it would probably haunt his nights for a long, long time. The snow was falling and blowing harder now, coming up to his shins. The thing was further up the road than Tony wanted to go and for a split moment, he suspected the ghost wanted him to come a little closer. It wanted him away from the cabin. It was attempting to lure him away. His fear rising, Tony glanced over his shoulder.

The cabin was still there, still close by. The door was still closed.

When he looked back, the thing in the snow was gone.

Baring his teeth, Tony ran back to the door in great leaps, flicking up snow in his wake. He reached through the broken window and unlocked the door from the inside, his fingers scrambling over the doork.n.o.b like a crab on slick ice. Once opened, he shoved his body through the doorway and slammed it shut behind him. He crouched and peered back out the window at the growing storm, searching for pursuers. There were none. He quickly locked the door from the inside, thought of the curtains, and almost tore them down in closing them. The hole was still there. Tony would have to do something about that. Perhaps there was a hammer around.

"What's up?" Death asked innocently from the couch.

Tony glared at him. "What do you mean, 'What's up'? Didn't you hear that thing?"

"What thing?" Death asked, clueless.

"That f.u.c.king thing, man!" Tony nearly shrieked, jabbing his bat at the door. "It wants you!"

"I thought you got it," Death said mildly "I heard you smacking something around out there."

"I did, but there was another thing! A man thing!"

Death's features slackened. "Oh," he said.

"And it wants you!" Tony thrust his bat in Frank's direction. "Said if I give you up, I can live."

Death snorted. "Yeah, right."

"You think I'm lyin'?" Tony snapped and took two steps over to where Death lay on the sofa. The bat rose up.

But Death remained cool. He met Tony's fury with the calmest of expressions. "What I meant was if you were to give me up, of course, you would live. You'd live for a very long time. At least, until the War."

"What war?" Tony demanded. His hands were shaking now; Death could see that. The man was controlling, or rather, had controlled his fear up until now, but he was slipping.

In response, Death offered up the forty ouncer of Jack Daniels.

Tony stared at the bottle for a moment and then s.n.a.t.c.hed it away. He stalked to the other end of the L-shaped sofa and fell onto it. Breathing hard, he took off the bottle cap and sipped at its contents. He made a face, coughed and sipped again. When he lowered the bottle to his lap, he arched his head back and stared at the ceiling.

"Why does... it want you, Frank?" Tony asked quietly, opting to use the more human name of his charge. He was gaining more control with each pa.s.sing second. Ol' Jack was a quick doctor.

Death shrugged. Outside the wind's howling rose and dropped. "They hate me. Just as much when they're dead as when they're alive. Maybe more."

Tony looked across the way at him. "Who?"

"You. People. The dead." Death looked very tired. "Like I said earlier, man, it's my job. It's just my job. But I get it from all sides. I get accused of everything. People die, I get blamed. The dead can't get back, I get blamed. I'm just the middle man. The transporter between here and there. I end the suffering. For that, I'm hated when I should be appreciated."

"Animals, too?"

"I take care of everything that has to cross over," Death confided. "Animals are just as scared as the people, but they don't fight as much. Usually."

"That bear was looking for you," Tony informed him.

Death's brow shrugged.

The wind lashed the house and made it creak. In the silence, it sounded loud and haunting, but neither Tony nor Death made any move. They simply lay still and were quiet, content to just listen for a while.

"Why are you afraid of me?" Death finally asked.

Tony blinked. "What?"

"You. Mortals. Mundanes. You're all scared of me. Why?"

The absurdity of the question made Tony smile. He leaned over and handed Death the bottle of Jack. Tony watched him sip.

"Because, man," Tony said after a while, "you're the f.u.c.king grim reaper."