Looking around the inside of my Honda, I couldn’t believe that there was no harm from any of my activities. The hood and windows were intact. The bumper was unscathed, even after slamming into the Hummer, another mystery of this crazy profession I found myself in.

  For the second time since becoming an Endr, my shirt was covered in blood, but I didn’t have a change of clothes with me. If this were going to become a habit, I’d need to start packing a spare.

  More importantly, I knew I needed a hospital. Blood dripped from my left arm, which hung pretty much useless at my side, and my brain had ricocheted around pretty much every part of my skull, but I was somehow still conscious. Massachusetts General Hospital was probably only a mile away from me, and given that it was in the heart of Boston, it was no stranger to trauma victims in its ER.

  My route would take me by the police department on Main Street, but I had a feeling that nearly every cruiser would be a block further up on High Street, looking for a rusty Pinto. I already knew the standard police routes very well, as the department was located on the same block as the Halligan Club. When I passed the station, one officer turned on his lights and sped off up a one-way street, but paid me no attention. I was at Mass General in under five minutes.

  Pulling up to the emergency entrance, I got out and limped my way through the automatic doors, leaving my car parked illegally at the curb. A nurse at the front desk jumped up when she saw me, and at her shout, several more blue-garbed nurses came out and greeted me with a wheelchair. I accepted the ride, mainly because it’s not every day I get to be pushed around by nurses, and okay, because I was pretty damned tired.

  They started with easy questions, like my name and address, then moved on to the ones geared toward assessing whether I had any brain trauma. “Do you know your name?” “Did you drive yourself here tonight?” That sort of thing. But very quickly, the more difficult questions began to come at me. They weren’t even “gotcha” questions. The most challenging question I received from the trauma team was something like, “Can you tell me what happened?”

  I mumbled something about having been mugged in Boston, that I’d managed to fight off my attacker, who’d run off, and that I’d then driven myself here. I knew there was no way they could check my story or identify me as someone related to the events in Charlestown. They would check out my car, and the eyewitnesses in Charlestown would place a Pinto at the crime scene, not an Accord with no damage. Everything would be just fine.

  A nurse wheeled me back to a series of rooms labeled "Rapid Assessment,” and another team came out and huddled around me, rattling off instructions. My bloody clothes were cut from me, and I felt damp cloth and hands moving over me, quickly, then more slowly. After several minutes, I could sense that the mood in the room had changed. Worried looks turned into more furrowed brows. Several people began to quietly talk just outside of earshot. I had no idea what was happening.

  “Mr. Ryder,” a man wearing a mask said to me, looking up from the group. “Is this some sort of Halloween prank?”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Sir, we have real injuries and sickness to deal with here. We don’t have time for this nonsense.” He snapped his gloves off and tossed them in the trash before storming away, his entourage trailing behind. As the medical professionals exited, a security guard entered, motioning for me to follow him. I looked around at first to be sure his gesture was aimed at me, but I was the only one in the immediate vicinity, so I got up and made my way over to him, pulling the cut edges of my shirt together as best I could.

  Looking down at the exposed skin of my left shoulder, I tried to rub away the blood stain. Beneath the dark red sticky mess, I saw…nothing. No cut. No slash. No claw marks at all. What the hell?

  I walked with the guard down the hallway where I had entered, back toward the entrance, my thoughts swirling. Each sterile white room I passed by likely represented a dire case that required multiple staff members. I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t feel my injuries warranted medical intervention. Had I hallucinated the whole thing?

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  When we approached the turn in the hallway leading us to the emergency room intake bay, I saw a familiar figure exit a room and lock his gaze on me. At first, I couldn’t place him, even though I immediately sensed that I knew him. Then it hit me. It was the Reaper. “Haden?” I asked, stopping in my tracks.

  “Out, son,” the guard said in a tired but firm voice. “You’ve had your fun already.”

  “Max.” Haden turned to the guard and gestured to the room that he had come from. “Please, sir. I need to run out for a bit. Max is likely the only family he has left. Can I tag him in?”

  The guard sighed loudly and gave me a firm look. “If you pull any more of your bullshit tonight, you will be more than a visitor here when I’m done with you. You got it?”

  I nodded and shifted my attention back to Haden. We both quietly waited for the security guard to return to his post.

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to see into the room. “Who’s in there?”

  Haden cocked his head to the side. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?” His eyes scanned me up and down. “But I see you’ve changed greatly in the last few weeks.” I nodded, still hoping he would answer my question. He shrugged. “Dan is still mostly conscious, but you'd better be quick if you have anything you want to say to him.”

  As he walked away, his expensive shoes clicking on the hospital tile, I thought I heard him mutter, “Like thank you,” but he was already out of range to hear precisely what he was mumbling.

  The room was empty, other than the patient, with only a lone light on, next to the patient’s bedside. It was indeed Dan Driver, only a more emaciated and tired-looking version. Gone was the trim 20-something. In his place was a cadaverous middle-aged man who was very obviously on his deathbed.

  “By now, you know I’m not as crazy as you once thought.” His voice came raspy and slow. “But if you’ve already completed your first fare, you’re probably wondering if you made a terrible choice. Let me save you years and years of time on that conundrum. The answer is a bit of a mixed bag.” I took a seat next to his bed and let him continue. “If you have the stomach for it, you will develop into something truly amazing, serving a calling much higher than that of a regular man.”

  “And if I don’t?” I asked.

  “Then you can pass on the phone and end up like me. Death gets us all in the end, one way or another.”

  “Thank you,” I said, thinking back to what Haden had mumbled on his way out. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you before. You saved my life.”

  “That is debatable…”

  I rolled my eyes, thinking about the Jack Skellington creature I had just battled. “Actually, I have a question. I was attacked by something tonight, after I completed my fare.”

  “One of the Fines?” he asked with a knowing look. “It happens sometimes.”

  “Fines?”

  “Just what we nicknamed them… They only recently started popping up. Axel said they look exactly like Sofina from the D&D movie. So we call them Fines. Like “fiends,” but without the D. Short for Sofina.” He shrugged, painfully, and coughed, the sound wet and sharp at the same time. “Look, kid, I didn’t name them.”

  I handed him a cup of water, and he drank gratefully. “What are the Fines and where do they come from?”

  “We initially thought they were like angels who were trying to keep the souls in this realm, but they always come after we complete our fares. You would think, if they were trying to save people, they would try to stop us BEFORE we did our jobs.” He coughed again, hacking for a full minute before falling back exhausted.

  “What about dispatch?” I finally asked.

  With closed eyes, he made a noise reserved only for exasperated employees. “Dispatch works directly for the Fates.”

  “The women who share an eyeball?” I asked. “And cut the thread of life?”

  He just shook his head at me. “This isn’t a cartoon. You’re in the middle of something so much greater than yourself.” He paused again, then in a whisper, said, “I’m so tired…”

  I could have kicked myself. Of course, he was tired. The poor guy hadn’t opened his eyes in several minutes, and he was obviously fighting for every breath. I stood and quietly began backing toward the door.

  “Thank you again,” I said quietly.

  “Max!” Dan said, his eyes opening suddenly. “Find the other Endrs. They can fill in the gaps for you.”

  He didn’t know that Axel had already found me at least once, twice if he was also the one who’d been driving the hatchback near my apartment. When Dan fell quiet again, dropping into a fitful sleep, I exited his room, only to find Haden waiting in the hall.

  He nodded to me, slipping past me into Dan’s room, likely for the last time.

  - - -

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