He gasped from the shock of the pain. Finally, he could move his feet. The shadow released him and smiled, watched him back away with stumbling steps. He lifted his hand and held the knife lodged in his chest. He looked down at it with stunned, wide eyes. Backward and backward he stumbled. The ground felt like it was slipping out from under him. The white shadow grew dimmer and dimmer, until he tripped. He fell backward. He tumbled off the edge of a cliff he hadn't known was there. He fell and he fell and he fell. All the light of the world dwindled away as the white shadow grew smaller and smaller. Tired. He was so tired. Then there was only darkness.

"Weak," said a voice. His voice. He opened his eyes and gasped surprise to find himself still alive. His demented reflection was looming over him. "Humans are weak. Easy to kill. We aren't so easy to kill, hombre."

"But he just--"

His reflection laughed at him and grinned with fierce teeth. "Killed you? No. That was only a taste of things as they could be. That was the nightmare you forgot, mi amigo. The one you put away when you abandoned the Keeper and stopped dreaming."

"The Keeper?" He remembered. An inky black spirit that morphed himself to the shape of a man's worst nightmare. He had dreamed that dream many times, his friends and loved ones all slaughtered and him powerless to fix it, but the white shadow was a new touch. "He wasn't there before."

"He creates what needs to be created."

He shook his head. "No. He shouldn't be fucking with me." Surprised at himself, he lifted a hand to his mouth. Had he just swore? Was that like him?

His reflection chuckled, amused by the reaction. "Technically," he said, "now he can. You're dead, hombre."

"What?" He sat up quickly and looked at his morbid reflection, shocked. Himself only pointed aside with the tip of a dangerous claw. When he turned his head to look, he saw...

Thum-thump. A pulse. Weak. There was a flash of red that smothered the dark and the light and swallowed him whole. Thum-thump. He felt the sound. Cold and hollow on the first beat, then erupting in spreading warmth on the second. Thum-thump. The sound spread to his brain and slapped against his eyes from the inside out. His eyelids twitched. When had he closed them? Thum-thump. Restricted air passages snapped wide open.

A sudden influx of consciousness forced him to gasp for air long and hard. Oxygen swelled in lungs that had stopped working. Blood burned in a heart that had stopped beating. How long ago? Where was he? He was holding onto something. A solid object that was looming over him. Speaking. Whispering something he couldn't hear clearly. He should say something to this object. This thing. This person. Who was it? Did it matter? All the strength he had found in a desperately claimed breath slipped out of him when he exhaled. He felt himself fall backward, land against something hard and soft at the same time.

So tired. So drained. Let him sleep. He only wanted to go back to sleep. To die again. He had been talking to someone. They had been discussing something important. What had they said to each other? Need to "go ... back," he said. Had he spoken? His throat felt dry and his words scraped together like sandpaper.

Then he wondered: "Am I still...?"

Sin

The mist retreated and Sinjin fell stumbling back against the pews, bleary. He remember now why Ambrose said what he did; he remembered why everything he did ended in flames and could feel the burns crawling along his skin, unseen. It was Salvador's voice that pulled him from the mental flames.

He pressed his palms against his skull. "Fuck you, you're fucking alive." It probably wasn't the most.. reassuring thing he had said, no, but Sin's mind was beginning to break. What to do with him? Focus, Sin, Focus. House.

He prowled forward and moved to pick up Salvador, already speaking nonsense, pressing his languages together until they meant nothing at all. "You are dead," he finally reassured, and reached for the key. He didn't care if it was a church. A door was a door.

A voice. A familiar voice. Someone was speaking after all. Someone he knew. Who was it? Whatever was beneath him fell away and he felt himself floating again. Floating in between the darkness and the light. "You are dead," the voice reassured him. He meant to say something in return, to thank this person for informing him of that, but he was pretty sure all he managed to do was groan.

One. The devil is inside of you, boy. He knew that voice too. A greedy and hollow whisper that beat against his eardrums in time with the sluggish thumping of his heart.

Two. Don't listen to him. There was another one. These voices sounded different, though.

Three. Shut up, old man. Younger. All male so far.

Four. Honey, you shouldn't talk like that. Female. Was she the only one?

Five. I'm sorry, son, but I must go. A man again. That whisper came with sensation. He felt as if someone had split him open, only a small crack, to let the air out. He burned. He gasped desperately and reached to clutch at the air that fled his lungs, but oxygen was not a tangible thing to hold onto.

Faye's Epilogue

The milling congregation spoke in frightened whispers. Some still lingered to stare and make guesses as to what had happened and was happening. Some openly wondered why an ambulance hadn't been called. But look there, the boy was breathing again. The fearsome, growling man. What had he done? Disbelief and paranoia shook the walls of the church, only to be made still with murmured prayers.

Gold and silver particles. The hovering dragonfly lingered behind and watched the sinner carry off his charge. In time the priest had ushered most of the people out of the building. Only a small handful remained. The spirit's eyes watched and waited until there was nothing left to be seen. And then She saw, what few others could see.

Oxygen tore its way out of the boy's chest and gathered together into the form of the spectre. The ghost was a portly man late in his middle age. He had a balding head with a glossy shine, as if he had spent most of his life rubbing his scalp with worry. She watched this ghost stand apart from the two hunters and watch them take their leave. The wisp fluttered closer to him.

"I'm not sure what happened," said the ghost. None would hear him but the wisp and those ears attuned to hearing wayward spirits. "I went up to fix the bell. Something had got it stuck." He turned his head to look around the church. His eyes couldn't see any of the lingering bodies that might remain. But he could see the figure robed in black standing at his side, silent and patient.

The wisp listened to the ghost speak to the figure, to himself. "I died, didn't I." The hood of the black robe seemed to nod to confirm his suspicion. "This isn't my church," said the ghost. The hood then seemed to turn side to side as if the head shrouded under it shook to confirm that negative as well.

The spirit of the priest then turned his head to watch the sinner carry the boy through a door in the wall that had not been there before. "I understand," he said. "I can't help him anymore." He then looked back at the silent figure standing beside him and lifted his chin with confidence. "I'm ready."

The figure robed in black set a hand on the ghost shoulder. The wisp watched them both flicker and fade away. Her eyes hovered a moment longer, until the door was closed. Then she too turned her attention to other things.