Fic: Always Darkest Before Dawn, Part Two

[sunspot]

Death was there and Death saw, in the way that Death can see anything and everything if that's what Death wants to see. Death didn't feel things, but Death imagined other people might feel sad.

--

"How long has it been?"

Hardison checked his watch. "Since he went in or since you last asked?"

"Either."

"Sixty four seconds since he went in, nine since you last asked me."

Just as Parker started to say something, the tone of the darkness in the room changed. It was still dark, but it wasn't the scary, preternatural darkness. She ran in blindly, with Hardison right behind her, flipping on the overhead lights.

They blinked with the sudden invasion of light, but soon the dark, swimming spots cleared and they saw Eliot heaped on the floor. Someone screamed (no official decision on who) and Hardison and Parker both rushed over to him.

Parker called 9-1-1 while Hardison checked for a pulse. He wasn't entirely sure how he was supposed to be doing it, but he tried anyways. "Parker, he's not breathing."

"Hurry," Parker snapped into the phone.

"Should we do CPR? How do you do CPR? Oh, dammit, Eliot, wake up, you're the one who knows this stuff." Hardison sounded like he was in the messy process of losing his mind. Parker got down on the floor next to him and tried desperately not to look at Eliot.

"I don't know, Hardison, I never learned CPR."

"No, no, no," Hardison muttered, shaking Eliot roughly by the shoulder again. Parker laid her hand across his arm, half to steady him and half to steady herself.

Parker's stomach butterflies were doing loops and circles, and she felt like she was going to be sick. They waited in silence as the ambulance sirens got louder. "This is my fault," she whispered.

"Parker... no. Just... Come here." Hardison was still shaking, but he took her hand and they got out of the way of the paramedics when they showed up. Neither one of them noticed the broken trunk and the missing souls.

--
"Move," the creature with the hissing voice said, drawing himself up and fluffing out his sides.

Heller stood his ground.

"Move! I killed him, and I'll kill you too, beast."

The dog glared. The rumbling growl started in the very centre of him, and, by the time it had reached his mouth, it had gathered enough strength to knock the monster backwards a few stumbling steps.

The darkness around them swirled angrily, tied to its master's mood. A person, or even any normal animal, would have been absolutely blind in this level of darkness, but Heller saw the shrivelled little thing for what it was.

Finally fed up and eager to get back underground, the darkness creature tried to duck under him without dropping any of his treasures, but he didn't make it all the way free of the enormous dog. Heller grabbed the monster by the ankle and yanked him up.

The creature screeched but hung onto the souls. Heller shook him twice, and the monster thought briefly about taking the power from another one to get away, but the next part of the plan couldn't go forward if he used them now. Just as it seemed like he had no choice if he wanted to get away, Heller made the decision for him by pulling off his leg.

He hit the ground and slithered right into the closest sewer grate, chuckling laugh echoing off the old stone and blood thicker and blacker than tar trailing after him. Heller growled and trotted off with the sticky black leg drooping from his mouth.

--

"Oh my god, what's going on?" Sophie said, high heels slipping slightly on the tile floor in the emergency waiting room as she dodged an intern to get to Parker.

"It was... It's..." Parker sighed. "Not here, okay?"

"But what the hell happened?"

Parker looked helplessly at Hardison who was a lot calmer now that they were in the emotionless, sterile hospital. It's exactly where Parker was starting to break down.

"Not sure exactly what happened, Soph. The paramedics revived him en route to the hospital, and he's apparently okay now, but they have no idea what's going on."

"Eliot?" Nate said, looking perplexed.

"Yeah."

"What was he doing? Where are the doctors? No, never mind." Nate was quiet for a moment. No one interrupted him while he thought. "Hardison, go in there, find out what exactly is going on. Find out if he's... how he's... You know."

"Yeah," Hardison breathed.

"We'll be right here," Nate said, pointing Sophie and Parker down into uncomfortable plastic chairs.

"I'll be right back." Hardison breezed through the swinging doors like he owned the place.

Nate sat between Parker and Sophie and they waited.

It seemed like they waited for hours, though it couldn't have been more than thirty minutes. They waited for any news at all, hoping for anything other than 'absolutely terrible', but expecting the 'worse than absolutely terrible'. And they were so focused on trying not to focus, no one thought to peek outside the glass doors, where they would have seen a dark fog creeping across the ambulance bay.

"How did this happen, Parker?" Sophie asked quietly once they determined Hardison was about to get thrown back out on his ass.

"It's so, so complicated," Parker sighed. "I don't know where to start."

"The beginning?" Nate honestly wasn't trying to be a smart ass. He knew Parker had a tendency to get way off-topic when she tried to talk about something she was uncomfortable with. Not that she was usually straight and to the point.

"Crooked contractor job in Topham last month. I picked up a necklace. Hardison stole a book out of the mail. Eliot fought with the shadow thing, and then he was dead. I don't know where Heller went." Parker pulled her feet up on the edge of the chair and hugged her legs.

"Dead? Oh god." Sophie pressed her hand to her heart and the tears sprang into her eyes immediately. Nate sat back in his chair and looked at the wall.

Parker pressed her face into her knees when her own tears threatened to start. "It's my fault. This whole thing. I shouldn't have touched that necklace."

"Parker, there's no way this is remotely your fault. In fact, I don't think --"

"He's okay. Eliot's okay. I mean, he's not okay, 'cause he was dead. But he's not anymore." Not even the burly security guard holding him two inches off the ground by the back of his obviously stolen scrubs was able to erase Hardison's grin.

"Oh..." Sophie breathed, taking her hand from her chest and wiping her eyes. "I can't handle this."

"'Authorized personnel only' means authorized personnel only," the security guard told them all sternly. "I understand you're worried about your friend, but the doctors will let you know as soon as possible. Stay here until then." He dropped Hardison on the floor and walked away.

"The EMTs revived him. They're thinking myocardial infarction, but... how does that even make sense? There's barely any scratches on him. Not new ones, anyways. Apparently he's dehydrated, too. But, they think he's going to be okay."

"You came in with John Francis?" It took Parker a moment to remember the fake name in Eliot's wallet.

"Yes. Yes, we did."

The nurse in the Flintstone's scrubs smiled that sweet, sorry, nurse smile that always made Nate's stomach twist at some wished-he-could-forget memories. "Okay, we're running a few more tests, but you can go in and see him for a few minutes. I'm sure he'd like that."

They followed her up the hall, and all tried not to trip of each other when she stopped short in front of a door.

"I'll just warn you now, we're still trying to determine the cause of the incident and he's... well, he's not exactly cheery about the whole thing. That's why the Doctor thought he might respond a little better if you visited with him for a few minutes. Tell him it's not the end of the world."

'Not exactly cheery' actually sounded a lot like Eliot, but then 'not the end of the world' thing was not something Parker was sure she agreed with. Maybe it was the end of the world. The events of the day weren't really comforting her against that thought.

The nurse showed them into the little room and half-closed the door behind them, reminding them she'd be back in a few minutes.

"Eliot?" Sophie said tentatively, edging around Nate towards the bed.

The overhead lights were off. With the small amount of light coming through from the hall, shadows played all around the room and made Parker and Hardison feel a little uneasy.

Hardison couldn't imagine Eliot wanted to sit around in the dark after what had happened any more than he did. "Do you want me to turn the light on?" he asked, really, really hoping the answer was 'yes'.

The shadowy figure leaning back in the bed that was probably Eliot shrugged.

Hardison flipped on the overhead light. It took a few seconds for everyone's vision to clear, but when they could see again, Sophie gasped aloud.

"Hmpf," Eliot sighed.

"Your eyes!" She reached out to touch him, but stopped right before contact. "Oh, Eliot."

"So," Nate said, choosing to gloss right over the unsettling sight of Eliot carefully regarding them when he clearly couldn't see through jet black eyes. "You were dead. How was that?"

He actually drew a chuckle from Eliot, surprising to everyone except maybe Nate, who remained impassive.

"Not bad," Eliot said. His voice was as thin and crackly as an onion skin, but he was alive and talking and that was more than anyone had been prepared to give him half an hour ago. "M'okay, Soph," he assured her. Even if he couldn't see her; her nervous energy was filling the small room.

"Right, okay then. They want to keep you for more tests, presumably to figure out what exactly is going on and if you're going to drop dead again. So while you get some rest, we're going to try and piece together our own version. Parker has a very long story to tell us, but I'm guessing you knew that." There didn't seem to be any accusation in Nate's voice, but Parker and Hardison traded a bit of a guilty look anyways.

"Any idea what attacked you? Because even an idea is more than we have right now."

Eliot sat silently for a few moments before he shook his head suddenly, shaking off the thoughts. "Uh, I can't really... I mean, I didn't see anything." He laughed again, completely humourless. "Whatever it was, it wasn't human. It was like it was made of the darkness in the room or something."

"Do they know what caused your eyes to... do that?"

Parker had barely looked at him the entire time they'd been in the room, because she had a feeling she couldn't exactly name. It felt like guilt, but it was tinged over with something else. She didn't like it. She looked up at him then and his eyes were black and clouded over, almost like when he was attacked, a little of the darkness crawled up inside of him and was starting to show through. Parker knew he couldn't see, but she felt, crazily, that maybe he still could. He was Eliot, after all, and he was staring right at her like he could read her thoughts. She would never put it past him.

Eliot shook his head again, wincing a little.

"Excuse me," said a nurse, pushing open the door and wedging herself into the room around everyone. "Need to get in here." She hung another bag on the IV pole next to the bed and fiddling with a few tubes and needles.

"It's time for Mister Francis to get some rest," the nurse said, pausing in the doorway and smiling that half smile nurses were apparently mandated to take a course in. "Visiting hours begin again at 10 am tomorrow."

"We'll see you tomorrow, uh, John," Nate said, smiling tightly even though Eliot couldn't see him exactly.

"Try to get some rest," Hardison added, smiling genuinely because he was just so grateful everyone was still alive. Or alive again, anyway.

"Yeah," Eliot muttered.

--

Back in Nate's apartment, Sophie made tea and Hardison ordered Indian food. Nate and Parker got comfortable on the couch. They both had the feeling that it was going to be a long night.

"I know you're stressed out, Parker, you've been stressed for a couple weeks now. But whatever this is, we'll all get through it. We always do."

Sophie brought over the tea. She pressed mugs into Parker and Nate's hands and tried to find the right words to say. It wasn't easy, mostly because she had no idea what was even going on.

"Alright, I think we should start with the book." Hardison said, touching Parker's shoulder. "All yours."

"What book?" Nate asked, cocking his head and trying to get a look at the cover.

"'The Great Big Book of Death'," Hardison said, sliding down the back of the couch and landing between Nate and Parker. "It's no Lord of the Rings, but definitely better than The Hunger Games."

"'So Now You're Death'? What is this?"

For the second time that day, Parker started the story of finding the strange pearl necklace. She got interrupted right around the part where Heller followed her for a week when the delivery girl knocked.

As Hardison scrawled a big, fake signature at the bottom of the receipt, Heller slunk through the door under the delivery girl's arm.

"Hey whoa whoa whoa!" she said, jumping back. "That your dog? He's a giant! And what's that he's got in his mouth?"

Hardison patted Heller on the head as he went by. He really didn't want to know what he had in his mouth. "Uh, I'll have to look into that. Thanks, have a great night!"

"Okay, so we have our creepy book thing, our creepy dog thing, and our delicious, I'm-praying-to-every-god-I-can-think-of-not-creepy dinner. I think we're ready to really delve into this. Get all messy with the details. Suss out the -- oh my sweet, dear, why? What the actual hell has your freaky dog got in his mouth, Parker?"

Heller gave Hardison a pointed look, which was a feat for a dog, and made Hardison take a small step back.

"It's... Hmm." Of course, unrattle-able Nate was the one to poke the limp, hanging thing in Heller's mouth first. "It looks like a frog's leg. But blacker."

Sophie was refusing to let her mind move on to severed legs when it still hadn't fully processed the dog's arrival. "So this is Heller? He's... big. Very big."

"Too big," Hardison said, skirting carefully around the dog to set their dinner on the table.

Parker shrugged at both of them. "I said he was big, didn't I?"

"Well then, maybe big is not the right term. Maybe gigantic?" Sophie said, just striving for literary correctness.

"Huge?" Hardison started opening the take out containers and spreading them over the coffee table.

"Enormous?" Sophie tried.

"Fuck-off big?"

Sophie paused with her fork hovering over the container of pork vindaloo. "'Fuck-off' is not really a modifier for 'big', Hardison."

"I still think it fits."

"Okay, okay." Parker felt like she was in the middle of an argument from a Mensa-funded preschool. "He's very large. Moving on. Pass the naan."

Nate refused to let anyone eat in peace, though. He pried the leg from Heller's mouth and held it gingerly between his fingers. "Look at this leg though," he said. It dripped a single drop of thick, black something onto the table.

"Aw, ew, come on! We're eating here!" Hardison had never considered himself to be squeamish, but he had very little tolerance for gross things while there was food present, especially after all the food at his place had started tasting like eldritch horrors.

"Sorry," Nate said, feeling very little remorse. "What do you think this is made of?"

"Well, considering the fact that it's goo-ing up the table? Flesh and bones and blood and stuff. Can you put it down and wash your hands five hundred times now?"

Nate was as adamant as Hardison was irritated. "But what does it look like it's made of?"

"It sort of has scales," Parker said, leaning in and squinting. "But it's so dark, it's hard to... Oh."

"Oh?" Hardison squinted too, to see if he could see the 'oh'.

Sophie put it together, but then wished she hadn't. "You think this could be a leg off whatever attacked Eliot?"

Hardison shook his head. "No way. What is it that it can go chill without it's leg? How many legs does it have?"

"Maybe it's dead somewhere," Nate said, setting the leg down carefully on the floor (away from the food so Hardison didn't explode). Heller immediately lay down on top of it like a dragon protecting his hoard. Of legs.

"Not a chance," Hardison said, shaking his head again. "If it were dead, he would have brought us the entire thing. Look at that thing. The level of cute is directly proportional to the level of crazy. I can make you a graph if you get me some markers."

"He's right," Parker said around a mouthful of food. "He can draw lots of things with markers."

Hardison rolled his eyes, but decided to take that as meaning that yeah, he was awesome. "So, Eliot says it looked like it was made of living darkness, Heller brought us a leg that looks kind of like it came off a scaly frog, and we know whatever it is can cause heart attacks and the black, demon-looking eyes of vision loss. Oh, and it wants souls and can go on without a limb. That seems specific enough that I should be able to figure out what we're dealing with."

"How do you know it wants souls?" Nate asked, finally helping himself to dinner.

"Oh. Right." Parker relayed the previous day's events, starting with her panicked call to Eliot and ending with leaving Paul's place. She glossed over some of the exact details about how they got the information from Paul to begin with. Eliot had done enough for her that she didn't want to implicate him if she could help it.

"Some guy says 'forces of darkness' and we all jump right on board with that? Did we research this guy?"

Hardison waved his phone. "Yep, came out clean. Besides, a lot of what he said was in the book too."

"Index," Sophie said, flipping the book open. "You wouldn't have expected Death's book to have an index. It's almost like he knew we'd be in a hurry to get to research."

"I'd thank Death's editor, if I were you," Hardison joked.

"I think we can safely say this is not going to end well if we don't intervene," Sophie said slowly, all joking suddenly aside. She turned the book around so everyone could see the full page illustration she had just found.

The top half of the page looked like a child scribbled over it with black wax crayons. It was just a big, swirling mass of thick black lines. As the black tapered off towards the middle of the page, the gleefully insane artist had drawn stacks of the same little cartoon bodies that graced the front of the book, all dead with missing limbs, eyeballs gouged out and entrails becoming ex-trails. But, besides the implication that everyone would be very dead and mostly dismembered, all scattered among the piles of cartoon corpses were the most inexplicably well detailed monsters, with distended jaws opening wide to swallow pieces of the dead, bulging eyes, twisted bodies, claws, wings, fangs, dripping venom and everything and anything else terrifying and completely stomach-turning. Where the rest of the book was cartoony and brightly coloured (the chapter dividers were happy skulls with smiling daisies for eyes, for god's sake), this picture was dark and monochromatic and upsettingly realistic in its horror. Maybe it was just the contents of the picture, but the whole thing gave out chills and goose bumps like party favours.

"I, uh. I don't remember seeing that picture before," Hardison said, unconsciously taking Parker's hand.

"Well, I'm just showing you now," Sophie said, closing over the book.

"No, I mean, I've read through this book probably three times, cover to cover. That was not in there before. What chapter is that?"

Sophie flipped back a few pages. "It's called, um... oh, no."

"Oh no?"

"It's called 'Why You Can't Screw This Up, Parker.'"

There were a few seconds of silence and then Parker pulled her hand from Hardison's and ran out of the room.

They all looked at each other, unsure of what to do and feeling helpless.

"Alright," Nate said after a long moment. "I'm going to talk to Parker. Hardison, you try and figure out what exactly we're dealing with as far as forces of darkness go. Anything you can get us would be good. Sophie, you --"

"I'm going to help him. Two heads are better than one, even if one of them is Hardison. I know how to read, Nate, I might actually be good at research."

"Good, okay." Nate stood up and glanced at the food. "Is anyone else even remotely still hungry?"

Sophie and Hardison both shook their heads. Sophie even looked a little ill.

"Okay. Then Heller? Your job is to clean all this up."

--

"Parker?"

"I don't want to talk," she sighed, pressing her face into her arms.

"I don't want you to talk. I want you to listen," Nate said. He hung over the railing of the fire escape and looked up. Her voice was coming from over the lip at the edge of the roof, but he wasn't sure how she got up there except that 'she's Parker' which was not helpful if he also wanted to get up there.

"I'm not coming down."

"It's okay, I'm coming up."

His shoes slipped a little on the railing when he climbed up on it, so he got down quickly and took them off, throwing them back through the window and earning strange looks from Sophie and Hardison at the counter.

"... Fine," said Parker's disembodied voice.

Nate pulled himself over the top of the railing and started to climb. It was only one more floor and then over the concrete ledge, but it seemed like miles.

"Nate?"

He didn't reply because he was focused on not plunging four storeys to his death.

"Nate?" Parker said again, sounding a little more frantic. Her worried face appeared over the edge a few feet above him, framed in blonde hair.

"Almost there," he assured her, feeling for a sturdy place to put his foot so he could make a grab for the edge of the roof. "Aha!" He pulled himself onto the roof and lay there for a moment, pretty damn proud he'd made it without being injured.

"Nate?" Parker said, nudging him with her foot. "You know that door marked 'emergency exit and roof access' at the end of the hall next to the elevator? 'Roof access' means stairs, usually." She pointed to the door a few feet away, still standing open.

"...Good to know," he muttered. Nate sat up and shook the dust off.

"So," he started, not wanting to waste time when time seemed to be in very short supply. "I'm still not one hundred percent I understand what's going on. Between you and the souls and the dog and now Eliot... Obviously whatever's going on isn't really like anything we've dealt with before."

Parker hid her face and tried to force down the bitter bile taste in the back of her throat.

"I don't even know where to start," Nate chuckled dryly. He wrapped one arm around her shoulder and wondered briefly if maybe he should have let Sophie do this heart-to-heart, but then Parker started to cry into his jacket. Something in him that he thought he had lost years before switched on and Nate soldiered on through hostile, emotional territory.

"And, I mean, whatever this is, we can't let it beat us. Does that sound like us at all? We're ignoring the fact that Eliot died because he's ignoring it. We're not going to blame you for this even though something out there obviously wants us to. We're family, Parker.

"So the forces of darkness want to kill us all? Fine, we'll let them try. Parker, this is not the end of the world. We won't let it be. I have things to do and I'm not going to let a one-legged scaly frog monster tell me those things aren't important. I want to see the pyramids. I've never been on the Maid of the Mist. You've got things to do too, don't you?"

Parker nodded and tried not to wipe snot on Nate's lapel. "Bunnies."

"You... bunnies?"

"I always wanted a pet bunny."

"Well, come on then! Let's get downstairs and help the research twins figure out what's going on so we can stop it."

"But... What if this is bigger than we thought?"

"Isn't everything?"

"I'm not being philosophical, Nate," she sighed. She slid the book out from wherever it was Parker hid things on her person. "The book has a chapter on the Illuminatus. That's like... Big Death. Capital-D Death. They say Death commands the hounds of hell, that Death can give the gift of death with a single word. That Death will come and pass final judgement when the days of darkness are upon the world."

Nate shrugged. "So? Let him judge."

"What if...? I mean, the girl who got hit by the bus... I was right there. And Heller does whatever I tell him to. And the book said that all that bad monster stuff would happen if I screwed up. Nate... What if I'm Death?"

He looked at her for a moment. "Oh. I didn't think of that. Well, if that's the case then... we should still help Hardison and Sophie figure out what's going on so we can stop it."

In the weak, orange rays of a weary sun, which had been blocked out by creeping, dark shadows all over the city for the better part of the day, Parker threw her arms around Nate's neck and hugged him tight. "Thanks," she whispered.

Nate patted her awkwardly for a moment, then relaxed into it and hugged her back.

"Come on," he said after a moment, very sure he wanted to take the stairs this time. "Let's do this. For your bunnies."

As far as catchy, fear-inducing battle cries went, it wasn't the best. It probably wouldn't even win a contest for 'halfway decent tag lines for B movies', but something about it resonated with Parker.

"Yeah, for bunnies."

--

Death thought little bunnies were quite nice as well.

--

"Find anything yet?" Nate asked when they got back to the apartment.

Hardison looked up, startled. "Well, maybe, but --"

"No 'but's, tell us what you've got."

"Nate, I really think this 'but' is --"

"No, Sophie, I don't want any distractions tonight, we need to get some serious information so we can ahead of this thing."

"Well, I think we should --"

"Hardison! Just tell me what you know."

"No, but Nate," Parker said, tugging his jacket sleeve like an impatient child. "Look."

Eliot crossed his arms over his chest. "Okay, can we all avoid shouting things like 'look' and 'see' unless it's strictly necessary? I feel like I'm getting left out of something." It was a weak attempt at levity, but it stopped anyone from asking too many questions right away.

"Eliot --" Nate started.

"No, not having a conversation about it. What are you guys working on? It seems interesting."

Hardison looked between him and Nate. "Uh…"

"Hardison, come on. I'm giving you carte blanche to talk to me about anything in the world and I'll even pretend to be interested. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you, man."

"We're trying to figure out what attacked you and what's been messing with Parker," Hardison said, still looking strangely at Eliot. "And, uh… I'm not sure if it's making any sense, but I think we might be on to something." He flipped back and forth through a few pages on the heavy book sitting between him and Sophie on the table.

Eliot nodded. "Good, good. Let's hear it."

"Like I said, not sure if it makes sense."

"How much is it not making sense?" Nate asked, sitting down next to Sophie and putting his elbows on the table.

Parker sat on the arm of Eliot's chair and tried not to stare at him from the corner of her eye.

"Well, if we're set on the forces of darkness part, I think we might have actually cracked it. You're not going to like it."

Nate frowned. "I knew I wasn't going to like it when Eliot ended up dead."

"Thanks, man."

"No problem. Let's hear it."

Hardison pushed away from the table. "Sophie can explain it better; I am just a little out of my element here."

Sophie scoffed. "Oh thank you. My element is the primordial forces of darkness and scary monsters that kill people and your element is what? Sunshine and puppies? Fine, fine. But I'm taking the credit for figuring it out then. We think it was Kuk, the Egyptian god of primordial darkness. The idea basically goes that there were four of these gods before the rest of the Egyptian gods existed, and Kuk represented darkness. The other ones were air and water and that sort of thing."

"And heart."

"Captain Planet didn't try to kill me, Hardison," Eliot snapped. "Go on, Sophie."

She grimaced and sort of waved her hands over the book helplessly. "That's pretty much it. There's not a lot of information because there's… just not." She frowned at the book, as if being cross with it would convince it to give up hidden secrets.

Nate wasn't discouraged, or, if he was, he was better at hiding it. "Okay, good starting point. But why do you think it was this… Kuk?"

"Well, the darkness, for one. You should have seen Parker's place, Nate, it wasn't like anything I've ever seen. It was like the darkness was alive." Hardison shuddered at the memory. "And Eliot ended up… well, blind, right? And look at his eyes."

Eliot sighed. "You think maybe you want to stop pointing out that I'm a freak?"

Hardison looked sheepish, then felt sheepish for looking like anything when Eliot couldn't see him. He cleared his throat. "Then there's this leg. We said it looked froggy, right? Well, these four god dudes, in their male forms were frog people, so that fits too."

"And Eliot's chart at the hospital said he was very dehydrated when the brought him in," Sophie added.

For some reason, probably the lingering effects of previously being dead, Eliot took that to be a personal attack. "What the hell does that got to do with frogs of darkness?"

Sophie glanced at Hardison, who shrugged. "Egypt, desert, lack of water… Makes sense to me."

"That seems like a stretch," Eliot snorted, unimpressed.

Hardison slammed the book shut and startled everyone. "Fine, man, whatever, do you want to read through all these books and try to find the right evil monster bad guy? I didn't think so."

"You… Really?" Eliot said quietly after a moment. "You actually went there?"

Hardison looked around for some sort of help. Everyone else had slightly shocked looks, like they too could not believe he had gone that far.

"Hey, imagine that, it's past everyone's bed time," Nate said, getting to his feet and gripping Hardison by the arm. "I think we've all had a pretty strange day and everything will look…. Everything will be better in the morning once we've had some sleep and some coffee. So let's all just relax and get some sleep here tonight. It's easier for me to look after… To keep an eye… To watch… Just everyone stay here and go to sleep and not kill each other."

There was a tense moment when he thought it wouldn't work but it did, and they mumbled 'good night's, and no one got punched in the throat even though it was evident Eliot was still considering it.

Nate poured himself three fingers of scotch and leaned on the kitchen counter. Heller gave him a look that was definitely not very dog-like and went to find Parker's feet so he could sleep on them.

"Good boy," Nate muttered, tipping back his glass.

--

The sun rose the next morning, and Eliot wasn't the only one who couldn't see it. The local news station said the amount of pollution in the air was unprecedented, but Hardison said that was only because Boston had never been swarmed by the forces of darkness before.

"I don't like it," he said, drawing the curtains over the window before he sat back down in front of his breakfast. "Everything, everywhere. All of Boston has gone crazy. Good potatoes, Eliot," he said with his mouth full. "Look here," Hardison continued. "A guy went to milk his cows and instead of milk, it was blood. That's just messed up."

Parker leaned over the laptop and snagged a piece of toast off Hardison's plate at the same time. "A guy was milking his cows… in Boston? That's messed up."

"Okay, the Greater Boston area has all gone to hell then. Seventy-nine automobile accidents in a two hour span on the same road. A lot of the drivers claiming they just suddenly 'couldn't see anything'. Oh, and thirty-six of those were fatal, too. Six babies disappeared off the maternity ward at Massachusetts General in between nursing shift changes. I don't even know how many tweets about weird stuff, little stuff."

Nate frowned intensely into his cup of coffee. "This is not good."

"Augh, oh no." Hardison cringed away from his computer. When he opened his eyes again and saw the quizzical looks, he assured them they absolutely didn't want to hear about the bad things happening at the baby bunny sanctuary.

Parker was suddenly not interested at all in stolen toast. She dropped it into Heller's conveniently waiting mouth, followed quickly by the rest of breakfast off her plate, and then the plate as well.

Nate wasn't overly attached to his department store place settings, so he didn't bother to say anything. Instead he launched into the itinerary for the day. "Parker, Sophie, I made a call last night and Professor Fanous from the Egyptology department at Yale is waiting to meet with you. I told her you'd be there around noon, so you have some time to make up a better back story. I just said you were writing an article." Sophie immediately started working on the details and, for some reason, counting things out on her fingers.

"Hardison, you're also going undercover. Saint John's Seminary. Find out what you can about Death, as in the Grim Reaper, and the nature of souls and that sort of thing. I'm interested to know what information is out there about the possibility that Death could be a person."

Nate paused in thought. "Yeah, that's everything. If I think of anything else, I'll text you. I'm going to pay a quick visit to the city planning office. I want to see if I can turn up any old plans of the sewers and tunnels. Maybe there's something there that we might be able to use."

Eliot tilted his head, his blank, black eyes staring unnervingly at nothing. "And me?"

"Take the day off, Eliot. You're still recovering, and there's no sense in stressing over the little stuff if we can take care of it."

That went over about as well as a screen door on a submarine.

"'The little stuff'? Like finding what killed me and is now trying to kill all of Boston? Yeah, that's nothing I'm worried about," Eliot said, voice surprisingly even. "I'm fine, Nate. If I was not fine, I would take a day off. But I'm not not-fine, so I am going to do my job like the rest of you. And just so you all know, I am fine. The only thing I need right now is the same as what you all need, and that's to find out what's doing this and stop it."

Nate looked like he had something else to say, but he stopped. "Okay. You go with Hardison, find out what you can. We'll all meet back here ASAP." There was a flurry of activity when everyone got ready to head out. Heller whined by Parker's boots until she told him was coming along.

"Be careful," Nate said, pulling Sophie away from Parker and the hellhound for a moment. "I don't think we've seen even half of what this thing is capable of and if it's targeting Parker…"

"We're going to be fine, Nate. You be careful too."

--


Nate's trip to the planning office went well enough, and he got back to his place with an armful of blueprints. Parker, Sophie and Heller were waiting for him.

"Got everything that we need?" Sophie asked, mouth quirking as a few rolled sets of plans tumbled to the floor.

"I hope so. Lots of stuff for us to sift through, anyways."

"Oh goodie, I do love research. And another thing," she asked, smirking to Parker. "How exactly do you know the lovely Professor Fanous? She had so many nice things to say about you, and oh so many questions."

"Oh, IYS insured some things a few years back for a loan from Alexandria, that's all."

Sophie gave him a look that said 'oh, I bet that's all,' and 'I also bet you never noticed she was a stunningly attractive, intelligent woman who thinks you're fantastic,' and a hundred other things Parker had no idea one look could say. She stayed out of it. She'd stayed out of most of the conversation with Professor Fanous as well, content to let Sophie work her conversational magic. Unfortunately, this gave all the uneasy, painful, complicated thoughts time to catch up with her.

"You okay, Parker?" Nate asked when he caught her faraway look.

"Fine," she said quickly. "Just thinking about bunnies."

"Good."

As if she had just realized how quiet Nate's apartment was, Sophie looked around. "Where are the boys?"

"Not back yet. The last text said they'd run into a bit of a snag and were on their way back." Nate shrugged. "Whatever that means."

Twenty minutes later, when Eliot and Hardison burst through the door, it turned out to mean 'Eliot is so terrible at being subtle, it was physically painful.'

"And I mean that literally," Hardison clarified. "Because every time I tried to reword one of his questions so it was less creepy and accusatory, he kicked me."

"Not hard," Eliot grumbled.

"It doesn't help that he has freaky demon-looking eyes," Hardison said. He held up his hands defensively when Eliot turned and gave the spot on the wall just past his shoulder a withering glare. "No offense, man, but you do."

Before it all escalated into something Nate wasn't prepared to finish, he redirected. He sometimes felt most of his job involved redirecting. "Parker, what did you and Sophie get from Dellandra? I mean, Professor Fanous?"

At a quick glance from Nate, Parker launched right into an explanation about the primordial gods of Egypt so Sophie wouldn't comment on the accidental first name usage.

"In the time before time, there were four gods, or maybe eight, because they could each be male or female but not at the same time or maybe at the same time. The writings are sort of complicated about all that. But these four-slash-eight gods were the primordial -- that means sort of the original or earliest form of anything -- they were the primordial gods and they were all brothers or sisters or brothers and sisters or whatever. But then they started fighting with each other and when the new gods, like Ra and Osiris and all the ones you've heard of started showing up, the old gods decided to retire, kind of. Except the god Kuk. He wanted to keep being powerful. So his brothers and sisters took all his power and his shape and exiled him into nothingness and he disappeared."

Sophie jumped in. "Because he was the god of chaos and darkness, his brothers and sisters couldn't fully take that from him. None of them were really stronger than any of the others. So when they banished him, he took a scrap of darkness and a scrap of chaos, and, because those were the only things he had, that's what he became. The old writings say that he waits at the end of the world to destroy everything his sisters and brothers once sold him out for, since they are long dead now."

Hardison loosened his collar and started undoing the buttons on the sleeves of his cassock. "Okay, what did they sell him out for though?"

"The new gods. And the people who made the new gods." Parker shrugged. "Professor Fanous thinks it's all mythology and everything, so we couldn't outright ask her if she thought it was all happening."

"Destroy the people who made the gods…" Hardison trailed off in thought, but Eliot apparently was having approximately the same thought.

"But isn't Boston in the twenty first century pretty much the furthest you can get from ancient Egypt?" he pointed out.

Nate was waiting for both of them at the station when that awful train of thought finally pulled in. "I think it just wants to destroy people in general. Have you seen any of the latest news? It's not just Boston anymore. Rockport, Plymouth, Providence… The accidents, missing persons, the mysterious air pollution blocking out the sunlight… This Kuk guy has big plans."

Eliot twisted in his seat. Uncomfortable thoughts had a tendency to manifest as uncomfortable feelings with him. "What does this all have to do with Parker."

"It's the souls," Parker said. She put her hands on Heller, stroking the soft fur between his enormous ears to help herself relax. "Kuk can tap the power from the souls and use it to take on a shape, a real, solid shape. I missed some. I'm supposed to be picking them up, right, and I missed some and he got them and now he's real and he's ruining everything."

Heller huffed his agreement and dropped his head into her lap, causing the whole chair to shake a little under the weight.

"Eliot, tell them what we got," Hardison said suddenly, pulling his laptop bag out from under the couch and rummaging around.

Normally Eliot would argue on principle, because he felt that any chance to argue with Hardison that he didn't take was a little bit of happiness he'd never get back, but something in Hardison's tone told him to skip the bickering.

"There used to be a widespread belief among both religious people and non-religious people that Death was a big, tall skeleton man with a cloak and scythe. Mostly a Middle Ages theory. But in modern history you don't usually see that belief outside of television and heavy metal albums. The Church's official viewpoint is that no, there is not a Death per say. There is a Death in the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, which outlines how the end of the world is going to happen. Uh, nothing in there about ancient Egyptian frog gods though."

"Also the priest at Saint John's said that souls can't be recycled or whatever Parker's supposed to do with them, but he did say that they’re very powerful things," Hardison added without looking up from the computer screen, fingers flying over the keyboard. "He doesn't believe in hellhounds. Sorry Heller. Hey, Heller. Hellhound. That's funny."

However funny it might have been, no one was laughing, because the screens on the other side of the room were showing what Hardison was working on. It looked like a whole bunch of tiny flying letters and numbers, but then that window minimized and the screen showed a map of Massachusetts.

"Okay," Hardison said sighing. "This is us." A dark black circle appeared over Boston. "There's Providence, Exeter, Rockport, Plymouth, Nashua… All the places that those strange reports have been coming in from. I wrote a little program that will watch all the major news sites and update the new cases. The keywords are a little vague, so some of these might be unrelated, right, but it'll get most of them."

As he spoke, a few more black dots appeared on the map, as far north as Mount Washington.

"Then, we figure if the darkness is not just in these places but obviously has to travel between them because we know he has a physical body…" Hardison hit a few more keys, the rapid fire clacking sounding more than a little ominous in the quiet apartment. The black dots morphed and spread out, stretching out to touch each other like friendly drops of ink. The final product was anything but friendly.

"You can't say he's not getting stronger. It’s Tuesday," Hardison said, glancing down again. "If this rate keeps up, by Thursday at noon, this is what we'll see." The screens shifted and panned out, showing a map of North America with a big blotch of black across everything east of Colorado.

"Assuming oceans are not a problem, here's Friday morning." Another few clicks showed all of North and South America blacked out.

"And then Sunday, just after church lets out." There were a few places around the North and South Pole and, strangely, in the middle of the Australian Outback that were untouched by the creeping blackness.

"I don't fancy the idea of moving out there," Sophie shuddered.

"Neither do I," Nate admitted. "So let's see what we can do about a plan then."

--

The plan was inelegant and almost fumbling, but it would serve them well enough considering the restricted time frame.

Nate was grimacing over the tunnel blueprints for the west part of the city. The ice cubes tinkled in his glass of scotch. Parker knew he rarely watered down his drinks with ice. Maybe this exception meant something important.

"These maps are ancient," Hardison complained. "Hang on, I can get new ones like that." He snapped his fingers 'like that.'

"No, older is better. Kuk is ancient, old, from before time. He's going to feel more at home in the oldest sections. The parts so old that they've dropped off the new maps. Trust me," Nate said. And of course they did.

He seemed unsure of himself, balancing a red marker in his hand, staring at the map. "Hardison, can you bring up all the earliest events on the map of Boston? And add Parker's place in there too."

Once it was up on the screen, Nate moved a bunch of the blueprints around on the counter and frowned harder.

"Oh," Hardison got up and moved around to the other end, looking at everything from a different angle. "What are you thinking, that that's where his nest has to be?"

While Nate and Hardison went over possible hide outs for the forces of darkness, Parker was walking herself through the steps involved in breaking into the underground storage area at the National Art Museum of China to help herself relax, but when she'd done the entire job in under thirteen minutes, she started to lose interest.

"Eliot, pick a number," she said. He was doing something with his knife and a piece of leather, something that was making a scratchy, rasping noise that reminded her of heavy breathing and the promise of something worse to come. Parker knew that the little things Eliot did with his hands were the same as the imaginary heists she planned in her head because they made him feel better when he was having a bad day, so she didn't ask him to stop even though the noise made her feel uncomfortable.

"A million," he said.

"No, a realistic number."

His hands paused and turned towards her. Parker still felt a little shock of surprise and fear when Eliot turned his eyes on her. It was starting to turn, she noted. It was still surprise, but it was more surprise and anger now, rather than fear.

"Parker, a million is realistic, especially for us. How often do we deal with that much money?"

"Okay, a realistic number of security guards you might find in a Chinese museum on an overnight shift right before a new exhibit opens and they're moving everything around upstairs."

"Oh." Eliot thought for a few moments, his hands taking up again with the knife and the leather. "The National Museum or Guangdong?"

"National."

"Eight. Or six on Sundays."

"Right."

The imaginary Chinese heist took seventeen minutes when she accounted for the additional guards. Just as she started to do it a third time, this time with the guards and a small rabbit-shaped accomplice, Heller butted his head against her leg and gave her very concerned doggy eyes.

"What's his problem?" Eliot asked, setting down the knife again.

"Don't know. Heller, what's that?" Parker pulled the slightly damp piece of paper from his mouth and regarded it strangely. "Paper?"

Eliot smirked. "The dog brought you a love letter?"

"It's just an address," Parker told him, looking at Heller. "What is it?"

Heller just pawed at the sheet of paper and gave her a more desperate look. "I'm going to go check it out," she said, standing up and brushing dog hair off her lap. "It's three blocks from here, and I'll only be a minute. Heller will come too," Parker said quickly, when Eliot stood up to follow her.

She slipped out of the apartment before anyone could call her back. The place was close by (Parker never really lied to the team) and, even though the evening was prematurely dark, it was a nice night. Any good feelings the fresh air and light wind gave her, however, were dashed hopelessly against the rocks of nasty reality when she got to the address on the paper.

The street in front of the little grey brick building was lined with cars and people coming in and out of the door were dressed all in black. 'Funeral Today, Park Up The Road', said a little sign in the window.

Of course it would be another soul she had to pick up, and, of course, it wouldn't be sitting in the garden. Parker screwed up her courage, pointed Heller to an unobtrusive spot behind a recycling bin and went inside with a group of older ladies who were all trying to talk over each other in the polite way that older ladies do.

Some of the people looked sad, but most of the people were laughing and chatting. Parker had only been to one funeral in her life and it had been really sad, until they got home and Sophie wasn't really dead. This was a wake, she decided, looking around, but she still felt it should be sad.

"How did you know Eugenia, dear?" asked one of the older ladies, just noticing Parker for the first time. She was wearing a horrible green pant suit, complete with matching straw hat.

"Oh, she was my… friend?" Parker knew it was a terrible answer that sounded like a question the moment it left her lips, but without Sophie or Hardison in her ear coaching her through, this grifting business was damn hard work.

"Really? What's your name?"

"Par… tridge." She really hoped that an asteroid would coming screaming and flaming down to earth and land on her head right at this moment, because Parker was sure that would be preferable to the woman's scrutinizing eyes.

"Oh, you must be one of those hippie kids she met down at the Whole Foods. Nice to meet you, Partridge, I'm Opal."

Parker shook her outstretched hand. "Yes, that's it exactly," she said, not quite sure how she'd managed to pull it off. "It was sad how Eugenia um… died."

"Of course, cancer's never pretty," Opal said, giving Parker another sideways look. "But then again, did you hear about all those car accidents on the highway this morning? That would be a terrible way to go."

Parker nodded in agreement. She glanced around the house. It was nice, tastefully decorated. Sort of boring, really, and nothing caught her attention or stood out. Nothing was glowing. Parker had never been sent to a specific soul before, she had just sort of stumbled onto them. The book claimed she was supposed to have been told about each one a few days before it was due to be collected, but, not for the first time, Parker thought the book was an idiot. She wasn't really sure where to start, except… "So… This is a wake, isn't it? Shouldn't there be a body somewhere?"

Opal stared at her for a second, then laughed. "I like you, Partridge, straight and to the point. Reminds me a little of a younger Eugenia. And yes, you can pay your last respects in the sitting room. Come on with me, then we'll see what sort of goodies Maude brought. I saw her carrying a tray in from the car earlier."

They entered the sitting room and Parker saw the open casket first. She shuddered internally, instantly getting the creeped-upon feeling she associated with dead bodies. The second thing she noticed was the soft, red glow coming from inside the coffin.

"Oh no," she muttered. Opal patted her elbow consolingly.

"I know it's hard," she said. "By my age, you'll have been to a thousand, and I swear it never really gets easier. You just make the best and soldier on."

Parker approached the casket and bent her head like she wanted to pay her respects. The source of the light was a silver hairpin in the shape of an 'E', nestled right in the woman's white hair. The dead lady in the coffin looked nice enough, other than being dead, and her hair looked very nice. Parker took the little glowing soul, careful not to leave a strand of hair out of place. "I'm sorry," she whispered, sliding the hair pin into her pocket.

"And I'm sorry you're dead, too," she added after a moment. "Although if the next twelve hours don't go exactly according to plan, you might be glad you are."

When she walked back to Opal, the old woman smiled a little half-sad smile, a funeral smile. "Feel better?"

"No," Parker said truthfully.

"That's okay," Opal said, pointing Parker towards the kitchen. "Let's get something to eat."

--

"I brought you guys some sandwiches," Parker called out when she got back to Nate's apartment. "And there were crab puffs, but Heller got them all before I could stop him."

Everyone was crowded around the counter, and they all looked up expectantly when she came in.

"Was it a soul?" Hardison asked. "Did you get it?"

"I did." She pulled the silver E from her pocket and held it out. Hardison took it carefully and turned it over in his fingers.

"But how can you even tell? It's just a hair clip."

"It's glowing," Parker said, setting down a parcel of snacks on top of the blueprints and loose leaf paper spread over the counter.

"You're the only one who can see it though," Hardison said, frowning. "It's so weird, it doesn't feel warm or anything. It's just… a thing."

"Ooh, butter tarts," Sophie smiled, diving into the food like she hadn't eaten all day and there wasn't a human soul four inches from her face.

"So, the plan then, once more for Parker," Nate said, taking a sandwich from the pile and biting into it. "Ew, ham." He pushed it into Eliot's hands and reached for another one.

"So this is how it's going to go down. We found the section of tunnels most likely to be a hideaway for a god of chaos and darkness. We even found a way in, though it's not going to be easy. We now have bait," Nate pointed to the soul still in Hardison's hand. "And we think we have a weapon." He paused, waiting for the weapon to be flourished. It was not.

"Oh, right, here's your weapon," Eliot said around a mouthful of sandwich. He set a container of salt on the counter.

"Salt…" Parker said slowly, wondering if maybe Eliot had grabbed the wrong weapon, or if his brain was still a little scrambled from being dead.

"Salt," he repeated. His tone gave Parker the idea again that he could read minds and did not think highly of her scrambled brain theory.

Sorry Eliot, she thought, just in case.

Hardison explained. "The popular theory out there is that unclean, evil things can't handle being touched by pure things. Salt is pure and clean and all that. Also, this is an Egyptian god, right, and the Egyptians used salt to preserve mummies. We're thinking it'll be a double whammy."

"I thought it was a special kind of salt," she said, recalling everything she knew about expensive Egyptian artifacts.

"Natron," Hardison said. "But that's hard to make and even harder to find. Besides, it's just fancy salt." He rattled the cardboard container. "This'll work."

"There's also a lamp," Nate went on. "It's a special UV light, like the sun, so with a nice, long extension cord, maybe that will help too. And we'll have to find a sword or a knife, maybe something iron."

Sophie looked awkwardly at Parker over the end of her butter tart. "One thing. The book is sort of leading us to believe this is something you have to do alone."

All of Parker's insides tried to jump two feet to the right at the same time. "What? No, I can't! I don't know how, I don't know… Remember what happened last time I tried to do a job alone?"

Eliot snorted. "Yes, that's why you're not going alone."

"But Sophie said --"

"I said the book was leading us to believe you should go alone," Sophie corrected, taking another tart.

"And since when do we do anything by the book?"

"Oh man, Hardison, how long you been waiting to use that one?" Eliot groaned.

Hardison beamed. "Shut up, man, that was slick."

Parker's heart rate came down from humming bird levels, but she still wasn't fully comforted. "But if the book says I should be alone and it had that awful picture of what would happen if I messed it up…" she trailed off, unwilling or unable to finish the thought.

"This is the way we see it," Hardison said. "Sorry," he added in Eliot's direction without missing a beat. "The way we are thinking about it is that either a) none of it works and we all die, but at least we die together, or b) it does work and we kill this Kuk thing and then something else comes along to get us because we broke the rules in the ugly ass picture book and then we can either beat that or die trying, or c) we kill this Kuk thing and nothing else bad happens and we can all live happily ever after. Whatever way, though, we're not going to let you go into the sewer to fight some god demon monster thing that blinds people for fun and uses bunnies for -- no, never mind the rabbits again. Not going to let you go in there alone, Parker."

"Yeah, I think I proved that doesn't go very well," Eliot said dryly.

"So, we lure him out of hiding with the soul, then bam, we attack him with all we've got," Nate finished, wind taken out of his sails somewhat after Hardison's heart-warming little speech.

"And if that doesn't work?" Parker asked.

"Like Hardison said. At least we die together. But it will work." The last part got tacked on at the end, like Nate only just remembered to say it. Parker didn't like that either. Nate was always positive about the plan. The unconscious pessimism was like the ice in the scotch. He didn't seem like himself right now.

"Okay, one more sandwich each," Nate said, heaving a sigh and heading for the kitchen to refill his glass. "Then we've got to go. Every minute that goes by, he's getting stronger out there." No one risked looking at the map on the screen behind them for fear of being further disheartened.

"Nate?" Parker said, following him away from the others. "Can I talk to you?"

He was rinsing his cup. "Sure, what's up?"

"Are you okay?"

"It's the end of the world," he shrugged. "I guess I just have a lot to think about." Nate put the clean glass away in the cupboard above his head, then straightened up the tea towel hanging from the front of the oven.

"It's going to be okay, Parker," he said, with only the barest hint of a sigh in his voice.

"I was going to say the same thing to you," Parker said. She gave him a smile, the bravest she could. "Only with your name instead of mine."

"Of course."

"Ready?" Sophie asked, popping in behind Parker. "We're all ready to go when you are."

Parker and Nate traded a 'now or never' look, and they left together.

--

Getting into the tunnel turned out to be a little harder than they had originally anticipated. "Nothing to it," Parker assured them when she saw the forty foot climb straight up into the barred storm drain opening over the river.

"But all of us?" Sophie said doubtfully. "I mean, with the dog? And I'm sorry to say it, but Eliot if you can't see…"

"Don't worry about me, you just worry about you."

"It hasn't rained in what? Fifteen, sixteen days? It should be fine," Parker said, mostly to herself. "Oh, and I wouldn't worry about Heller, he has a way of being able to get wherever I am pretty easy."

"Then why did he have to ride in the truck? Couldn't he have just found his way out here?" Hardison was still feeling a little squashed and, therefore, less charitable.

Parker didn't answer because she was already halfway up the wall, finding even the smallest hand holds on the rough stones. "Looks good from here," she called out, throwing down a rope when she got to the top.

"Y'all know I got an A+ in skipping gym when I was in school, right?" Hardison grumbled, staring up at the rope. As he stared and tried to figure out where exactly to start, a dark nose and a set of floppy ears peered back down at him. "Oh, come on, how is that even possible?"

"Hurry up!" Parker shouted down.

Sophie nudged Hardison out of the way and started pulling herself up the wall, shoes sliding slightly on the rock as she climbed. Nate went next and left Eliot to smirk at Hardison in the last rays of the quickly fading daylight.

"Go on," Eliot smiled. "You can do it." It was the least encouraging encouragement Hardison had ever received.

"No, it's cool, you should go ahead. I'll, uh… spot you?"

Eliot laughed, not entirely cruel, but a little less than fully kind. "I'll be fine, it's you that should be worried." He crossed his arms and waited.

Hardison made it halfway up the rope before he decided he didn't really care if the world ended.

"You're doing fine," Sophie called down. She and Nate each reached down, offering help, and, from as high up as he was, he could barely hear Eliot's chuckling.

Hardison finally hauled himself over the ledge into the mouth of the sewer pipe and breathed a sigh of relief. Then he immediately wished he hadn't. "Oh, ew, sewer smell." There was a general noise of agreement.

"It's only going to get worse once we get past these bars and into the sewer proper," Parker said, already producing a file from one of her many hidden pockets. "They're rusted pretty bad, we should be able to get through easy enough."

Eliot caught the end of what Parker said as he appeared over the edge of the culvert and pulled the rope up after him. "Think we can just force them apart?" he asked.

"Jesus, how did you get up here so fast?" Hardison exclaimed, shrinking away in surprise. "Was one of your parents a freakin' spider monkey? Are you secretly Matt Murdock?"

Eliot gave him the classic 'oh, honey, please' look and edged through the crowded space to the bars. "Oh, yeah. These will come right down." With one big tug, the rusted bar came away in his hand.

"I swear," Hardison said, still gaping. "You're kind of a freak."

"If he's a freak, what does that make me?" Parker asked, while she stood back and let Eliot yank out another bar. Heller helped by grabbing a third in his teeth and pulling it out. He looked at Parker hopefully, and, when she gave him a nod, he gobbled down the rusted metal gleefully.

Hardison laughed softly. "We're all freaks. You, me, Nate, Eliot, that dog. Sophie's actually pretty normal, but she hangs out with us, so that makes her a freak." On a passing whim, he reached out and took her hand too, squeezing it gently. "But that's a good thing. It means we might actually have a chance. No one ever expects the freaks to win; we have the element of surprise on our side."

She wasn't sure she believed him, but she was comforted by the effort.

"Who's going first?" Sophie asked once Heller and Eliot had wreaked enough destruction on the metal bars keeping them from their target.

Parker wasn't sure what it was -- the way Nate looked at her with something in his eyes approaching pride, the warmth of Hardison's hand on her own, the determined stance of the dog she'd come to think of as her protector, maybe some combination of all of those things, or she was just going crazy, but Parker hefted her flashlight and led the way.

Heller ran ahead, splashing in the mucky water and acting just a little too excited to be traipsing through Boston's ancient sewer tunnels towards what might be their collective doom. He bounded back, tail whipping fiercely and almost vibrating in an effort to keep from barking.

"I think we're getting closer," Eliot said, from closest to the wall of the tunnel. "It's getting darker."

Hardison seemed about to ask how Eliot knew, but Eliot's expression was one of thunder and wrath, and Hardison shut his mouth with an audible snap.

"And warmer," Sophie said, closing her eyes to try and feel it better. "Drier."

Nate made the connection first. "Like the desert?"

The tunnel ahead of them opened suddenly into a large room. Parker's flashlight beam got lost somewhere in the middle.

"Okay," Nate whispered. "You all know what to do. It doesn't have to be perfect --" Sophie grimaced and he waved her off. "It doesn't have to be perfect. Just get in there and get it done."

Hardison touched the hairpin in his pocket and then sighed. "This is the craziest plan we've tried in a while. Eliot, there's a bit of a step down."

Eliot had been about to step into the room, but paused at Hardison's warning. "...Thanks," he said after a moment, stepping down without so much as a hitch.

The plan was mostly inelegant and a little obvious, but the hope was that it was so obvious that no one would ever guess that it was their plan at all. Take the soul and use it as bait to lure Kuk in close enough that they could attack him. Obvious, inelegant, but hopefully effective.

"Oh man, Eliot," Hardison said, suddenly sounding loud and bright. "It's been a really crazy week or so. All those terrible things happening, all those people dying all over Boston. It's almost like it's the end of the world or something."

"Laying it on a little thick?" Eliot muttered under his breath before affecting his own falsely play-acting voice. "I know, isn't it crazy? And I wish Parker had given us more information about this errand. She just wanted us to get rid of this thing." He followed the sound of Hardison's footsteps, further into the pitch darkness of the wide open room.

"She was pretty adamant that we get rid of this little trinket. I think she was drunk or something. She said it was glowing red."

"Yeah, that's pretty crazy."

Edging her way along the wall inch by inch, Sophie cringed with the insincerity of it all. It offended her on both a personal and professional level, but as time was really of the essence, she kept the majority of her complaints to herself. "Absolutely not convincing," she whispered. Nate shushed her from a few feet behind.

In the middle of the blackness, unseen but unfortunately not out of range of hearing, Hardison and Eliot continued their almost-transparently-bad acting.

"She told me it was a soul. Like, a person's soul," Eliot said, trying to affect a conspiratorial tone, and it actually kind of worked. Some tendril of consciousness picked up on the key word and the hushed tone and something in the darkness stirred.

"But that's ridiculous!" Hardison said, feeling the air shift and all his fight or flight instincts kick into high gear. He tried to ignore it all and focus on, as Sophie put it, selling the bit and not getting kidnapped by Russians to do it.

"I know, she's lost her mind, but that's what she told me." If Eliot felt the changes in the room, he didn't let on.

Hardison pulled the hair clip from his pocket. "I guess we'll leave it here, like we promised."

The darkness around them came alive.

--

Death was there, in that sewer, in those pipes. Not in the way that Death could be anywhere Death needed or wanted to be, but in the physical sense. Death was wearing shoes, which Death thought was rather novel, and drawing air into lungs made from flesh, which was just a little more novel than the shoes.

--

The loud, mouth breathing humans had found him. He'd been expecting that. He had to admit he expected them to be more clever. Their little charade was not at all convincing, and, though he couldn't quite figure out what they had planned, they obviously thought they could hurt him, maybe even try to stop him.

The strong one was alive, and that was not expected, but whether it was four or five come to call, he was confident he would be sleeping in a warm nest of their intestines before the moon came out that night.

But then one of them was holding a soul. It didn't look like much, just a regular little mortal soul trapped in a useless little bauble. The creature that was made of darkness had gotten strong over the last day, strong on the power of the hoard it had found in the girl human's home, and even stronger on the dizzying power of violence and torture.

On the off chance that these humans and their beast hound had some sort of plan and this was meant to lure him out, he would ignore them instead. When they got frustrated and lashed out, he would take them then, culling the whole stupid herd of them, and he would make a quilt out of their corpses.

--

Nothing was happening, and Parker was getting more and more keyed up. Heller had wandered off into the dark the moment the guys had started talking, and Nate and Sophie were far off somewhere on her right. She felt more cut off in the oppressive blackness than she ever had on a job before, even including the time she'd been stuck in the old dumbwaiter shaft without being able to use her earbud or scratch her nose for five hours.

And she suddenly became aware that their plan wasn't working but she wasn't sure how to get the message to the others without giving away that they had a plan in the first place.

"Did she tell you whose soul it was?" Parker heard Eliot say. That had not been in the original script. Her heart did a metaphorical flip. Maybe Eliot had an alternate plan. Maybe his plan would work. Maybe they would defeat all the forces of darkness and they could all go home and she could get an ice cream float and stop seeing souls and dead people and everything would go back to normal and Hardison would go with her to China and they could break into the National Art Museum and everything would be okay after all. Maybe, just maybe...

Maybe that would have happened in any other situation, but in this particular situation, Hardison's improv skills apparently had been left at the bottom of the culvert. "She said the soul was... Santa's."

Maybe they were all going to die messily in a sewer pipe and no one would ever find any bits of them bigger than a fingernail.

In her mind's eye, Parker saw herself putting her head in her hands. She also saw Eliot kicking Hardison in the face for being a damn fool.

"Santa's... soul." Eliot's tone made it clear he was sharing Parker's vision. This was not lost on Hardison, because Eliot could be about as subtle as getting run down by a monster truck, but Hardison clearly thought he was too far in to back out now.

"Santa Claus, yeah, can you imagine?"

"I cannot."

"I mean, if it really were Santa Claus' soul and this wasn't just Parker getting into your stash of absinthe again? Imagine how insane Santa's soul would be. All that power, all that life, right here in this little thing."

There was the briefest hint of movement in the darkness, like a fat, sleepy cat opening one eye at the sound of kibble in a dish. Just the tiniest spark of interest. But it was enough. Now they had the mark hooked and it was only a matter of reeling him in.

--

Something about the name had stirred recognition. All the souls he'd hungrily devoured, all the knowledge and the experiences that coursed through him, something in him perked up when the stupid men talked about this Santa Claus. The thing made of darkness that had been small, without a shape, and was now large and powerful and very real, scrunched up his face while he tried to grasp onto the complicated little things swimming in him that had once been human thoughts.

Santa Claus was ten hundred years old. Santa Claus could fly around the world in just one inky black night. Santa Claus judged all the people in the world and delivered appropriate rewards and punishments. Names poured into his mind; Santa Claus, Olentzero, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, Saint Nicholas, Božiček... All around the world, people knew this Santa Claus and people believed in his power.

The weak, red glow pulsing in the man's hand flickered for a moment and grew stronger as he watched. The colour and brightness drew him in, circling closer to the men in the middle of the room and further from his hiding place. If the soul of Santa Claus was really right before him, all he had to do was reach out and take it and only these few were here to put up any fight, which he already knew from experience was not really any fight at all.

Closer and closer to the bright red flicker of power, close enough to smell the stink of uneasy fear on the man holding it, close enough to almost taste it.

Heller leapt from behind, teeth and nails sinking into the back of the creature, pinning it to the floor. It screamed an unworldly noise and twisted against the hellhound, but just as he freed his arm and reached for the dog's neck, someone shouted.

"Hit the lights!"

Lights blazed around him, catching him very much with his guard down. He felt his new skin start to sizzle, melting and twisting under the onslaught of light, and he screamed again.

The noise was too much for Hardison, who ducked and twisted with his hands over his ears. The scream was like nothing he had heard before and it made him instantly want to throw up, which was one of his least favourite past times. The soul trapped in the metal E tumbled to the floor.

Kuk just had time to watch it happen, feeling his blood, thick with midnight, dripping and pooling around him where the dog's teeth had ripped, before his eyes burnt up to nothing in the bright lights. He reached blindly, drawn magnetically to the soul, but just before he felt it under his fingers, a foot came down heavy on his arm.

"No," said the voice above him. "Not this time." He recognized the voice of the man he'd killed and cursed aloud that he hadn't done the job properly.

"Kuk kukk kiii," he spat, then struggled harder to free himself. His body was trying to rebuild itself even after the damage it had taken, but it was taking strength from other parts of him. Words escaped him, and he was unable to properly tell the humans exactly what he wanted to do with their lifeless corpses once he had kill them and eaten their eyes in vengeance.

With the man pinning his arm and the dog standing on his back, Kuk felt small and compressed. He struggled to draw a breath, and, when he exhaled, he tried one of his craftier tricks and exhaled living darkness around them all. He was weak, pathetically so, and the darkness only swirled around their ankles, biting and scratching where it could, but falling flat and dying when it couldn't draw strength from its master.

Heller released him finally, pouncing on the dying darkness and tearing it in half. Kuk used this opportunity to twist against the weight on his arm, pushing and pulling and trying to get free. He hissed again, in a language long lost and longer dead, but his hate turned to agony when the salt touched him.

It was not an eternity he spent lying on the floor and convulsing against the pain. Kuk had lived an eternity before the stars and before the world and the terrible pestilential humans swarming around on it. He'd had an eternity with his brothers and sisters in the warm, primordial waters and in the cold space between worlds since they banished him. The time he spent in pain was not an eternity, but it may as well have been.

"Is it dead?" Hardison asked after the creature finally lay still.

Sophie approached slowly, still pointing her flashlight directly at it. "I don't know, how can you tell with a god of darkness?"

It was a sodden shape of twisted black, heaped on the floor. Its shape hinted at frog in the legs, but was also vaguely reminiscent of crow, beetle and bear in different ways. No one was volunteering to check for a pulse. Slowly, Eliot stepped back, being careful to scrape his boots on the stones lest he track any bits out the way they came and contaminated anything.

Parker drew closer, patting Heller reassuringly and not even noticing the sticky, black tar substance dripping from his jaws. "He's not dead," she whispered, straightening up. "I don't think any of this can kill him."

"You're right," said an unfamiliar voice. Light filled the room, the soft, misty light of a spring morning, though they were definitely still underground. They all looked up, startled, but the light didn't seem to be coming from anything and no one was there.

No one but Nate.

"I'm sorry," he said, shrugging in a very un-Nate-like way. "The small deception was necessary to ensure my security. I hope you understand." Something about his voice had changed and though he looked like Nate on the surface, he moved in a way that was foreign.

"Who the hell are you?" Eliot snarled, reaching out and pulling Sophie's arm when he found it, bringing her behind him.

The person who was suddenly not Nate inclined his head, as if seeing Eliot for the first time. "Eliot Spencer," he said, and Eliot set his jaw a little tighter at the voice that sounded like shotgun shells hitting linoleum saying his name. "Your friend dropped the soul. I think you should pick it up." He didn't say where it was, and, of course, Eliot didn't see it fall, but slowly, he bent and picked it up, finding it immediately.

Parker let out a little scream and everyone (except the Nate-shaped stranger) jumped. It was only the second time she had seen a soul finding its new body and flitting out of the object it was stored in, and now that she knew what it really meant, she found it shocking and far too personal.

Eliot dropped the little silver hairpin like it had stung him and squared his shoulders, ready for any number of fights, but then he seemed to crumple in on himself momentarily. When he straightened back up, he looked around, and for the first time in two days, he saw.

The darkness had receded from his eyes. He whispered something under his breath that no one really heard, but Nate nodded like he knew exactly.

Hardison looked wildly around, still trying to identify the source of the light before he bothered trying to explain what had just happened to Eliot. "Wait, no, how did that happen? What's going on? Nate?"

But Parker knew. "It's not me, it's you," she said, taking two quick steps towards Nate but then freezing in her tracks and just staring.

"Nate tried to comfort you, to reassure you it could not be, though he didn't know why on a conscious level," he said with a voice that, to Parker, sounded like the way an old charcoal drawing smelled (when she tried to describe it, that was the only way she could fit the words together).

"Nate?" Her hand hung in the air between them. She wanted to touch him, to confirm he was solid and real and the Nate she knew, but she was so terrified she might be wrong that she couldn't bring herself to close the last few inches.

"Sometimes," Nate said. "Usually. I had my brother create this body for me, so I could travel undetected. My brother gave this body life, form, thought and dream. Freewill, too, and memories and feelings, all the things that make up a person. I am content to watch the world pass by through Nate Ford's eyes most of the time, intervening only when strictly necessary. Now, for example." He reached out and touched Parker's hand and she felt the tears spring unbidden in her eyes.

"Nate..." Sophie said, finally finding her voice again.

"Sophie," he said, smiling easily and dropping Parker's hand when he stepped forward. "This must be difficult for you. She knows me in her heart," he motioned to Parker. "And he challenged me and now knows it to be true." He indicated Eliot, then Hardison. "And he will never say when he thinks or feels in his secret thoughts, but outwardly will deny anything and everything put to him about this night. But you will have a long struggle with this, and I only hope you don't take it out on Nate. He's a good man." The Nate form paused in thought. "Although sometimes he is only the good man by playing the bad man. The concepts of good and bad are sometimes confusing."

Sophie was confused, frustrated, and beginning to get angry, and Nate sounded exactly like her Uncle Fred. It was churning up a lot of bad memories, which only made her feel worse. "What the hell is going on? Why are you talking like that?"

"Death," Parker said, still facing away from the rest of them. "Capital-D Death. The Illuminatus. Just like the book said."

There was a noise from the wrecked form of the former god of darkness.

"If you don't mind," Death said, kneeling next to the agonized creature with no regard for the cleanliness of Nate's pants. "Go, little one. You have lived a long time in happiness and pain, and your time is over now." A gusty chill came through the room, in one tunnel and disappearing out the next, when Death waved Nate's hand over what was left of Kuk. The body seemed smaller, suddenly, as the last remaining darkness seeped out, somewhere between a liquid and a gas.

"This world is filled with things that I do not understand," Death said in a voice that sounded different to each of them. "Human things. I am fascinated and terrified, I think. But the death of this world is not now. His death was. You all fought bravely." Death stood slowly, stretching out Nate's body like the muscles and skin and bones were the most intriguing things.

"Heller, come." The dog came over, looking as solemn as possible with a mouth full of half-chewed sewer rat. "You did well. You will continue to carry out your orders until further instructions become available to you."

"What instructions?" Parker asked, looking from Death to Heller and back again.

"He is to protect you and aid you. You will also continue to carry out your duties. People die every day and their souls will need to find their rightful places." Death frowned with Nate's face and glanced around to Hardison, Eliot and Sophie. "The book has very serious things to say about outsiders, does it not?"

Parker shrugged. "I never really read it cover to cover," she said mildly.

"No. You should though. It covers many rules and guidelines you'll want to break." The frown turned into a smile, though no one was really sure which was worse. "The three of you are charged, henceforth, with the same duty as the hellhound. You will protect the soul collector and aid her in any way you can. Nate will help as well, if you ask him."

No one moved and no one spoke. Sophie was still trembling with frustration and with the knowledge she would never fully understand what was happening. Hardison was thinking and feeling secret things he would never speak about and it gave him an overwhelming feeling of melancholy. Eliot was looking at everything in a new way, literally and metaphorically.

Only Parker felt comfortable talking to Death. "What are we supposed to tell Nate when he, um... Gets back?"

"Whatever you wish to tell him. I'm just a passenger; you are his family."

Nate blinked a few times, and Death was gone back to wherever it was Death went. Nate's left ear canal, maybe, or his big toe. Parker made a mental note to ask next time Death stopped by for a chat.

"It worked," he grinned, hugging Sophie and then quickly realizing there was a time and place and sewer was really not the place. She looked at him, still feeling dazed.

"Nate?"

"Yeah? Is everyone alright? Is he dead?"

"He's dead. Very dead. Dead in a way that leaves no further questions," Hardison said quickly. He slammed a secret door in his soul, locking up thoughts and feelings and immediately feeling better. "I think we should go before Heller eats any more of those rats."

They were halfway down the tunnel and feeling fresh air on their faces before Nate stopped them and exclaimed. "Eliot, you... You're all fixed!"

"I was never broken," Eliot growled, and he refused to say anything else.

Hardison drove back to Nate's. Barely anyone said a word. They had just saved the world and no one had anything they wanted to say. Nate wanted to celebrate, but everyone else wanted to sleep.

"It's been a really rough couple of days," Hardison said, sounding apologetic, but unable to meet Nate's eyes. "Maybe dinner tomorrow night?" They agreed on dinner and then Sophie told Nate she wanted to talk and Parker slipped out with Heller and Eliot right behind them.

"Thanks for everything," she said quietly when they parted ways at the bottom of the stairs. Eliot gave her a long stare. It wasn't a fierce stare or a hard stare, it was just long.

"Good night, Parker," he said.

--

Heller tried all his most dog-like tricks to cheer Parker up, because she seemed a little off. He did 'lie down', he did 'shake a paw', he did 'pull the screen door off the closest building and drag it home and offer the share it as a snack', but she didn't smile.

Two hours after they got home, there was a knock on the door. Heller didn't growl because he knew what was on the other side.

Hardison smiled awkwardly when he asked to come in, and Parker let him in without a word. They sat in silence for twenty minutes before Parker finally broke down and told him she was afraid.

"Afraid of this, of all of it. What if something else comes to kill us? What if more people die because I screw up? What if --?"

"What if anything, Parker," Hardison said, fiddling with the handle from the broken screen door.

"What?"

"What if anything. We could say 'what if, what if' about anything, but that doesn't change what is. Look at what we just survived. Look at all the impossible things that have happened to us in the last three days and look where we are."

Parker looked around. Her place was a lot more empty than it had been, minus the giant stack of everything she owned that wasn't in storage being stacked by the door on account of it was all broken and destroyed. There was a large, obvious bloodstain on the concrete floor between the door and the bed where Eliot had bled out just the previous morning. The repeated invasions of living darkness had given everything a vaguely smoky smell.

She started to point out all those things, but Hardison stopped her. "I meant we're alive, girl, and you know it. We're alive! The whole damn world is our oyster."

There was another knock on the door, and, this time, Heller ran over as the door opened, pouncing Eliot to the floor and slurping happily on his hair. Eliot pushed futilely against Heller's chest, but gave up after three tries and waited for Parker to call him off.

"That better not become a thing," Eliot warned, but he was grinning. "Want to go for a walk?"

Hardison groaned. "You don't think we've done enough today?"

"Let me rephrase that: put your damn shoes on, Hardison, we're going for a walk."

--

"It's not far," he assured them, walking backwards to face them.

"New lease on life or something, man?" Hardison asked. Eliot ignored him. It wasn't that new.

Parker had never even known there was a park near her place, but there was, and it was a nice one. The kind with swings, right near a group of tall trees to climb. She decided to bring Heller back in the day time.

"I cut through on my way home," Eliot said as he stepped over some fallen branches easily, then picked one up to brandish it fearlessly. It was a lie, because Eliot's way home went in a completely opposite direction, but who was going to argue with the man with a branch? "I thought I should show you guys."

He pointed down a little embankment towards the sound of running water. When they got to the creek, Eliot pointed upstream a little. "See?"

The mother duck and her six babies were swimming lazily in circles and figure eights. Mother duck watched her fat, yellow babies and squawked when they got too far out of sight or played too rough with each other. There were very few things in the world that would upset a duck and that fact became evident as they watched.

Eliot crouched on the bank, the toes of his boots almost in the water, and watched the ducks with the utmost attention. "We saved the world tonight," he said quietly, not taking his eyes off the birds. "We saved all of this. All these things."

There was something so awed in his voice that Hardison and Parker found themselves captivated by the swimming birds as well. They watched in silence as the ducks passed by, little feet paddling hard under the surface, but drifting along calm and serene otherwise.

Finally, the birds were out of sight. Somewhere close by, a little string quartet of crickets sang a farewell. Heller found them and ate them immediately. The moment was dented, but not ruined.

Everyone said 'good night' for the second time, and Parker walked home with the giant dog at her side, feeling much more at peace with the whirlwind of recent events than she thought she ever would.

--

Dinner the next night was good. Eliot made tortellini, and Heller made sure there were absolutely no leftovers. They drank wine and talked about how lucky the world was to be safe again. No one told Nate he was the unwitting host to a very strange passenger or that there was a chance he was not born so much as wished into existence, because, whatever he was or was not, he was definitely still Nate.

It was almost surprising how fast things went back to normal.

--

Death reclined comfortably in a chair that maybe existed in a place that certainly most likely existed somewhere that might have been inside Nate Ford or maybe just in his mind or possibly in Delaware, and watched the world go by. Death saw Hardison and Eliot bickering over anything and everything, but good-naturedly. Death saw Sophie give much-needed hugs and heard her say things that were sweet and kind to everyone at one point or another. Death saw Parker grow into her new responsibilities with the help of her friends that were really family and Death saw her smile more and teach the hellhound to do tricks no hellhound had ever done before (especially the trick at the National Art Museum of China).

Death thought many things and nothing all at once, because that's what Death can do, but when Death watched through Nate Ford's eyes, Death thought the tricky human concepts of good and bad were not so tricky after all.