Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media book Club, book Club, book Club. It's
Speaker 1: the Cool Zone Media book Club, and I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Margaro Giljoy. This is the book club where you.
Speaker 2: Don't have to do the reading because I do it
Speaker 2: for you. And we are on chapter five of my book,
Speaker 2: The Barrel will Send what it may, the second book
Speaker 2: in the Daniel Kane series. And you could jump in here,
Speaker 2: I guess, or you could go back a little bit
Speaker 2: and listen from the beginning. The choice is yours. Okay,
Speaker 2: where we last left our heroes, I'm going to do
Speaker 2: the thing again where I read the last couple paragraphs,
Speaker 2: although it's a sad last couple of paragraphs. What just
Speaker 2: happened was that Heather died. What was the ora, Boris?
Speaker 2: I asked, new start? Brent said. She choked up a
Speaker 2: little on her words. She wanted a snake that eats
Speaker 2: its own tail to remind herself that things go in cycles,
Speaker 2: that it's never too late for a new start. There
Speaker 2: wasn't anything to say to that, there's always time for
Speaker 2: a new start, until one day there isn't holding each other,
Speaker 2: try not to think about the world outside that bedroom.
Speaker 2: We slowly let sleep come for us. Chapter five, Chapter
Speaker 2: you came here to listen to rise and shine. It
Speaker 2: was still dark out midsummer that far north. If it
Speaker 2: was still dark out, then whoever the fock thought it
Speaker 2: was time to get up was wrong. A soul is
Speaker 2: on the move, and mister magic death door man just
Speaker 2: left his house in his truck. It was Thursday banging
Speaker 2: on the door being wrong. Give us a focking minute.
Speaker 2: You've got thirty seconds meet us at the bookmobile. Another
Speaker 2: beautiful day in the demon on her business. Is there
Speaker 2: a coffee? Brynn asked, She was already standing, pulling on
Speaker 2: her work pants and buckling her belt. No, Thursday shouted back.
Speaker 2: Brynn was handsome. I knew that already. I mean I'd
Speaker 2: had a weird sort of crush on her since I
Speaker 2: first met her, But it kind of just hit me
Speaker 2: again watching her pull the shirt over her muscled Torso
Speaker 2: maybe I was delirious thinking about that instead of what
Speaker 2: needed thinking. Maybe I'd rather be delirious. Thursday drove conspicuously
Speaker 2: fast in the pre dawn light, taking turns far too
Speaker 2: quickly for a clunky old bookmobile van. Doomsday had stayed
Speaker 2: at the library to keep Vascillus from doing something stupid
Speaker 2: Brynn was sitting shotgun and I was in the back
Speaker 2: with the books shelves lined the walls with webbing straps,
Speaker 2: holding in the mysteries and romances and sci fi like
Speaker 2: how you batten things down on a ship, which was good,
Speaker 2: even though we totally weren't going to flip over, definitely not.
Speaker 2: I wasn't strapped down myself, though I was sprawled out
Speaker 2: on a bean bag, trying and failing to find things
Speaker 2: to hold on to every time we took a corner,
Speaker 2: while I also tried to keep my wounded shoulders safe
Speaker 2: for my vantage, I couldn't see out the window. All
Speaker 2: I saw were the brief flashes of street lights and
Speaker 2: head lights that fought against all that darkness. Not half
Speaker 2: a minute later, we stopped the side of the van
Speaker 2: slid open, and Vulture hopped in. He was panting, holding
Speaker 2: his side graveyard. He said, she's at the graveyard. Take
Speaker 2: this road another mile and then turn right on the
Speaker 2: first road after you see some tombstones. What's up, I asked.
Speaker 2: I saw a sola Lever house, he said, so I followed,
Speaker 2: and at warranted, waking us up. Mister Miller left his
Speaker 2: house shortly after Vulture said, dressed all in camo with
Speaker 2: a duffel bag. Okay, that warrants waking us up. Wait,
Speaker 2: Brynn said, they live on opposite ends of the town.
Speaker 2: How'd you see them both? I set up a camera
Speaker 2: outside mister Miller's house. Vulter said, what, Yeah, you just
Speaker 2: take an old phone and set it up as a
Speaker 2: surveillance camera. I set it to stream video to my
Speaker 2: main phone, video whenever I asked her a detected motion.
Speaker 2: Then I went to go watch a Solas place myself.
Speaker 2: We must have gone that mile at a breath taking speed,
Speaker 2: because Thursday yelled turn just as he jerked the wheel
Speaker 2: and sent those of us in the back sliding into
Speaker 2: one another. The books held, of all the ways to die,
Speaker 2: I think being pummeled to death by trashy hetero romance
Speaker 2: novels might be the worst or the best. Either way,
Speaker 2: it didn't turn out to be my fate. We screeched
Speaker 2: to a stop, which slammed us forward, and Thursday killed
Speaker 2: the engine. I opened the side door and stumbled out,
Speaker 2: desperate to stand solid ground. At the other end of
Speaker 2: the short gravel parking lot, a nineteen fifties pickup truck
Speaker 2: sat empty. We should split up, Thursday said, find her faster, Oh,
Speaker 2: Walter said, pulling out his phone. I know where she is,
Speaker 2: or at least her bicycle. He opened up an app
Speaker 2: called find my Phone, and a map filled the screen
Speaker 2: with a dot representing us and a dot representing presumably
Speaker 2: some third phone he'd hidden on a Sola's bicycle. Where
Speaker 2: do you get that many phones, I asked, I steal
Speaker 2: them from people, Walter said. The graveyard was surprisingly large
Speaker 2: for such a small town, and like the town itself,
Speaker 2: it looked like it had seen better days. Most of
Speaker 2: the stones were small and worn. Many were cracked or
Speaker 2: tipped over. Huge oaks sat atop hills and cast moonshadows
Speaker 2: across the haphazardly maintained lawn. Somewhere in all of this
Speaker 2: was a back from the dead woman, and a magician
Speaker 2: had pulled off the kind of miracles that people write
Speaker 2: bibles about, who had also just killed Heather. Well, maybe
Speaker 2: it wasn't fair to blame him for Heather. I wasn't
Speaker 2: feeling fair. Whenever I got out of this alive and
Speaker 2: not in prison, I was going to sit down and
Speaker 2: have myself a well deserved panic attack. Thursday had his
Speaker 2: gun held slack at his side as we moved through
Speaker 2: the graveyard. Brynn had her baton out. Mine was lost
Speaker 2: somewhere in Iowa, so I took out my knife. Vulture
Speaker 2: stopped to take a picture of a tombstone with the
Speaker 2: name Hardwood. We crossed to the very back of the cemetery,
Speaker 2: where an iron fence separated lawn from forest. Several of
Speaker 2: the vertical bars were missing, and Vulture led us through
Speaker 2: the gap and into the trees. Not much farther, he whispered,
Speaker 2: he was right. A muddy impromptu led us through young
Speaker 2: pine trees to a small clearing. A red bicycle leaned
Speaker 2: against a tree near us. Ten feet away, into light
Speaker 2: of vultus phones flashlight. Aasla stood over two unmarked impromptu tombstones.
Speaker 2: She still wore the same black slip dress, but she'd
Speaker 2: paired it with sensible hiking shoes. Don't know how you
Speaker 2: followed me, she said, without turning around. Cut wild flowers
Speaker 2: and blues and red sat at the foot of each stone.
Speaker 2: But you shouldn't have. Yeah, let me guess, I said.
Speaker 2: It isn't safe, It isn't What are you doing here?
Speaker 2: I asked, and she answered, I'm listening to advertisements uncool
Speaker 2: zone media, unless, of course, she had cooler zone Media,
Speaker 2: in which case she wouldn't have had to. She could
Speaker 2: just skip the ads, but if she didn't have that,
Speaker 2: she'd hear the ads much like you're about to and
Speaker 2: we're back. What are you doing out here? I asked?
Speaker 2: Her back was still to us, but she pointed at
Speaker 2: each stone in turn. Loki, Damien, what happened to them?
Speaker 2: The same thing that will happen to you, Sebastian Miller,
Speaker 2: I asked, I had seen magic close up and personal. Still,
Speaker 2: though it was hard to be afraid of some man
Speaker 2: while I had my friends at my side, armed and
Speaker 2: on guard. She turned to look at me. I doubted
Speaker 2: that she could see us because we had a light
Speaker 2: on her. She nodded, her blonde hair hung loose over
Speaker 2: her black slip and alabaster's skin, and just for a moment,
Speaker 2: I thought we were talking to a ghost. She was real,
Speaker 2: though she was alive, which was scarier. Are you working
Speaker 2: with him?
Speaker 3: I asked?
Speaker 2: Loki came to town in December, she said. Instead of answering me,
Speaker 2: they rode in on a salt truck that had picked
Speaker 2: them up hitch, and they showed up with a whole
Speaker 2: suitcase full of stolen books and one hell of a
Speaker 2: grin across their face. Said, we'd never believe it. They
Speaker 2: showed us the Book of Barrow, and yeah, they were right.
Speaker 2: We didn't believe it, didn't believe it was real. She
Speaker 2: sat cross legged there in the mud, resting her head
Speaker 2: against the stone she'd called Damien. So they said they'd
Speaker 2: prove it. Bacillisen. Heather tried to talk us out of it,
Speaker 2: but you don't talk Loki out of doing things. Loki
Speaker 2: talks you into doing things. So we went out with
Speaker 2: snow chains and snow shoes and snow boots and snow
Speaker 2: everything to a backwood spot where Damien once saw a bear.
Speaker 2: Figured we'd catch it hibernating, shoot it, bring it back
Speaker 2: to life. What could be easier?
Speaker 1: I said.
Speaker 2: He found us the first night. We barely made it
Speaker 2: three miles from the trailhead. He got us while we
Speaker 2: were asleep tranquilizers. I think, I go to bed in
Speaker 2: a tent. I wake up in a dark place, warm, damp, dark,
Speaker 2: gag in my mouth, shooters, muffs over my ears. Then
Speaker 2: I'm unconscious again. Then I'm awake that cycled who knows.
Speaker 3: How many times.
Speaker 2: Oh god, Vulter said, Oh God, he didn't torture me.
Speaker 2: I think he wanted us out cold the entire time.
Speaker 2: But I know that he killed me. It was so
Speaker 2: delirious the whole time. Yet when he killed me, when
Speaker 2: he put a needle in my arm and killed me,
Speaker 2: I knew. I've never been more certain of anything in
Speaker 2: my life. I knew I was dying. Then I was
Speaker 2: awake months later. Why did he let you go? I asked,
Speaker 2: Movement Thursday shouted. He held his gun in a two
Speaker 2: handed grip, tracking something through the trees. Brian dashed into
Speaker 2: the darkness, not toward the movement, not away from it, parallel.
Speaker 2: A crack, not as loud as gunfire, pierced the air.
Speaker 2: Thursday fired in response, and deafened us. Don't shoot, don't shoot.
Speaker 2: It took a while before the words registered, but Sebastian
Speaker 2: Miller came out of the trees and into the glow
Speaker 2: of Vultra's flashlight. With his hands above his head, a
Speaker 2: rifle held loose by the barrel, he wore camo head
Speaker 2: to toe. Hunter's camo, the kind with actual pictures of trees,
Speaker 2: and leaves printed on it. It had to be him.
Speaker 2: I barely recognized him from his own photo, not that
Speaker 2: he looked different, but that his face was so forgettable.
Speaker 2: It was like face Camo, being as unremarkable looking as
Speaker 2: all about. I turned back to a sola. Her head
Speaker 2: lulled from side to side, and she dropped forward with
Speaker 2: a confused look in her eyes. Her face struck the mud.
Speaker 2: Two running strides, and I was next to her, my
Speaker 2: hand feeling for a pulse for the second time in
Speaker 2: less than twenty four hours. If she's dead, you're dead.
Speaker 2: Thursday said, hear me out. Sebastian said, she's alive. I
Speaker 2: said her pulse was strong. Then I found the dart,
Speaker 2: a simple tranquilizer, a round projecting from her shoulder. He
Speaker 2: was a pretty fucking bad shot. No one aims for
Speaker 2: a shoulder. He was aiming center mass and hit high right.
Speaker 2: I pulled out the dart, kill him anyway. Vulture said,
Speaker 2: hear me out what Thursday roared, Well, maybe you should
Speaker 2: try these goods and services. He said, That's not what
Speaker 2: he said. That's what I said. Here's a bunch of.
Speaker 3: Ads, and Rebecca, one of you, asked why I'll let
Speaker 3: her go.
Speaker 2: I let her go because I'm not a monster. I
Speaker 2: won't keep a girl prisoner in my basement forever. And
Speaker 2: I didn't think I had it in me to kill
Speaker 2: her twice, but I should have. Why is that, Thursday asked,
Speaker 2: I don't know how much you know about any of this.
Speaker 2: Sebastian said, magic, resurrection, everything, but it's dangerous, real, real dangerous.
Speaker 2: You came here to kill her because you actually bothered
Speaker 2: finishing the fucking book, I accused him. You got to
Speaker 2: the good part with the apocalypse, and you had what
Speaker 2: resurrector's remorse? You could say that, he said, But listen,
Speaker 2: I've got everything under control. This will all be over soon,
Speaker 2: back to how it was, the world no closer to
Speaker 2: its end. Kill him anyway, Vulture repeated. Bryn appeared behind Sebastian,
Speaker 2: struck him with her baton. He stumbled, and she was
Speaker 2: on him. He was half again her weight, and she
Speaker 2: got him to the ground without a problem. Be gone,
Speaker 2: he shouted. His words, cut through the air, louder than
Speaker 2: I thought they ought to have a flash of light
Speaker 2: caused my vision to stutter. A series of bangs deafened me,
Speaker 2: and he was gone. Fuck Brent said, lurching to her feet. Fuck, fuck, fuck,
Speaker 2: I'm going to kill that man. We got a Sola
Speaker 2: to the van and drove back to the library in silence.
Speaker 2: Two doors down from a Solas squat, the shiny black
Speaker 2: suv was parked in front of the still operational bed
Speaker 2: and breakfast fence. Don't stay at bed and breakfasts, do they?
Speaker 2: Thursday pulled the van up alongside the curb next to
Speaker 2: the library. Our bikes were back, presumably Vulture had grabbed
Speaker 2: them the night before. Someone's got to get Gertrude. I said,
Speaker 2: oh fuck. Thursday said he would kill her, wouldn't he.
Speaker 2: I'll go. Brynn said, I'm coming with you. Thursday said,
Speaker 2: good luck. I said fear of missing out and protectiveness
Speaker 2: argued in favor of me going too. But if Brin
Speaker 2: and Thursday couldn't handle it, having me along wouldn't change that.
Speaker 2: Vulture reluctantly passed Brynn his phone and opened up a
Speaker 2: map with Gertrude's house pinned on it. Vulture had been busy.
Speaker 2: Brynn and Doomsday took off on bikes. Vulture and I
Speaker 2: carried a Sola into the library and up the stairs
Speaker 2: to lay her down in her old bed, where she'd
Speaker 2: lived with her since murdered partner, the bed she'd consciously
Speaker 2: avoided ever since her return. Still, we had to keep
Speaker 2: her safe, as safe as we could, safer than we'd
Speaker 2: kept Heather. Vasilis was sleeping in the living room when
Speaker 2: we came in. Doomsday was absorbed in a book, sitting
Speaker 2: with the window in sight and her handgun on the
Speaker 2: table next to her in easy reach. What happened, she asked,
Speaker 2: standing I'd been a bit jealous that she'd gotten to
Speaker 2: stay at home, but she moved like a woman three
Speaker 2: times her age, exhausted, presumably from the effort of researching,
Speaker 2: standing guard and consoling our host, Frank dard I said.
Speaker 2: Doomsday shot a look at Vulture, not me, he said,
Speaker 2: I don't even own a dart gun. Yet he was
Speaker 2: mister Miller, he was going to kill her again. How
Speaker 2: long is she going to be out, Doomsday asked, again,
Speaker 2: looking at Vulture. I don't know, because I've never tranquilized
Speaker 2: a human. Then he thought for a moment, I have
Speaker 2: never tranquilized a human with a dart, nor have I
Speaker 2: tranquilized an unwilling human. I also don't know what agent
Speaker 2: he used, and I basically have no idea. Screams broke
Speaker 2: into the living room from the bedroom not long Vulture
Speaker 2: answered authoritatively, I think he killed all three of us.
Speaker 2: As Soulas said, she was sweating, maybe from the heat,
Speaker 2: but probably from the drugs or just outright fear. I
Speaker 2: think he killed one of us to resurrect me. I
Speaker 2: think I was the test subject. Then he killed whoever
Speaker 2: was left to bring back Gertrude. Now, fuck, I said,
Speaker 2: I couldn't come up with a better way to comfort
Speaker 2: someone had been through worse than I would have imagined possible.
Speaker 2: You know what I've spent all this time thinking about,
Speaker 2: instead of thinking about things like how do I get better?
Speaker 2: Or how do I kill that man? What really keeps
Speaker 2: me up at night? What's that I asked? We were strangers? Really,
Speaker 2: I don't want to crowd her. I sat on the
Speaker 2: bed about a foot away from her. Doomsday sat on
Speaker 2: a chair next to us. I don't know which of
Speaker 2: them died for which of us. I don't know if
Speaker 2: Loki died to resurrect me or if Damien did. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. I know that I don't think anyone's soul
Speaker 2: has joined mine, but it it fucks me up. Barrow
Speaker 2: stands by the gate and he let me slip out
Speaker 2: into the land of the living when it opened for
Speaker 2: when it opened for who. I put a tentative hand
Speaker 2: on her shoulder. She jerked and I almost pulled it away,
Speaker 2: but she grabbed my wrist and held my hand against her.
Speaker 2: I haven't touched anyone in three months, she said, not once,
Speaker 2: not since before I died. Oh, honey, Doomsday said. She
Speaker 2: stood up from the chair, sat down next to me
Speaker 2: on the bed. Do you want us to hold you,
Speaker 2: I asked. She stared at the ceiling for a moment,
Speaker 2: then nodded. We laid down on either side of her
Speaker 2: and held her, and she cried. Nothing like the hacking,
Speaker 2: fearful sobs we'd heard from Vascillis the night before. She
Speaker 2: just cried. After a while, I did too. She'd killed
Speaker 2: me if I told anyone, I don't doubt. But I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure Doomsday did too. We need people. It's not
Speaker 2: really giving up our freedom to be close with people,
Speaker 2: because freedom only exists in relation to other people. I
Speaker 2: thought I needed to be left alone. I just needed people,
Speaker 2: good people like my murderous witch friend or this dead
Speaker 2: stranger Outside the window, the sun finally gracefully rose. Half
Speaker 2: an hour later, the library door opened and shut, and
Speaker 2: several pairs of feet tromped up the stairs. Hey, Thursday shouted,
Speaker 2: we're back. More shuffling as someone presumably Thursday, walk through
Speaker 2: the whole of the apartment. At last, he opened the
Speaker 2: door to the room we were in. Where's vacillas? Dun, dun, dun.
Speaker 2: That's a cliffhanger. You got cliffhanged. That's a terrible phrase.
Speaker 2: Don't use that. But if you want to know what
Speaker 2: happens next, one of your options is to wait till
Speaker 2: next Sunday. Another option is to go get the book.
Speaker 2: Those are some of your options. Anyway, I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: play with my dog. See y all later bye. It
Speaker 2: could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
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Speaker 1: You can find sources where it Could Happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,