Dying Is My Business

Twenty-five

At the table under the stained-glass windows, Isaac and Philip inspected the box. The windows flashed with a sudden bright light, followed by the distant boom of thunder. A heavy rain began to patter the glass, then wash down it in sheets as the storm clouds that had been gathering all day finally opened.

Isaac glanced up at me. He still didn’t fully trust me. I couldn’t blame him. It was going to take a long time to earn his trust. The question was, would I stick around long enough for that to happen? What was my plan, exactly? I didn’t know. On the one hand, part of me wanted to stay. These people were freaks like me. I felt like I belonged with them, like I was a part of something in a way I never felt before. On the other hand, there were answers out there I needed to find, and I had unfinished business with Underwood.

Isaac ran his hand reverentially over the box lid, his fingertips tracing the words written along the metal crest. “In de eenheid, sterkte,” he read aloud. “Dutch for in unity, strength. It’s the family crest of Willem Van Lente. The box is authentic, the same one Van Lente hid away four centuries ago. The question is, is it still inside? Because if it’s not, we’re all still in danger.” He took a deep breath. “We’re going to have to open it.”

Bethany glanced nervously at the box. “Is it safe?”

“It should be. The equinox isn’t until tomorrow.” Isaac bent to inspect the lock. It was bulky and hinged, the kind of lock you’d see on a steamer trunk, but instead of a keyhole there were three rotating cylinders. A combination lock, only there weren’t any numbers, just strange, blocky symbols. Isaac tapped the lock with his finger, then narrowed his eyes and rubbed his tightly cropped beard in concentration. “It’s hexlocked. The box can’t be opened by force or by magic. Willem Van Lente didn’t want anyone finding it, and he certainly didn’t want anyone opening it. I should have known he wasn’t going to make it easy.”

Philip nodded, the box’s reflection bouncing in his mirrored sunglasses. “So what’s the combination? His birthday?”

“I doubt it’s anything so mundane,” Isaac said. “The symbols are a kind of puzzle. All we need to do is figure it out.”

“Like in Gregor’s tunnel,” I said. “Could it be Ehrlendarr again?”

“It’s not,” Isaac said, “but it’s definitely an older language. Hold on a moment.” He took a hand mirror out of one of the table drawers and held it up to the combination lock. “Ah! I thought so! Look at this.” All I saw in the mirror were the same symbols backward. Isaac, on the other hand, saw an epiphany. “It’s so simple I should have known. They’re Egyptian hieroglyphs, only reversed. Van Lente studied magic in Egypt with the Order of Horus before he relocated to New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century.” He spun the cylinders, examining each of the hieroglyphs. Then he grinned. “Oh, you clever, clever magician. It’s perfect.”

“What is?” I asked.

“The combination,” he said. “Back then, very few people would have known the password to the Order of Horus’s inner sanctum, especially in the New World. That’s how Van Lente ensured that even if the box were found, no one would be able to open it. Lucky for us, I’ve been to the inner sanctum myself. Now, let’s see. It’s been a while.” He started turning the cylinders one at a time. “First is life, the ankh. Then growth, the papyrus stem. And finally Horus, the falcon.”

The lock sprang open with a sharp clank. I moved closer. I wasn’t going to miss this. So many people wanted what was inside it, were willing to kill or die for it, that I had to see with my own eyes what could possibly be worth all the trouble.

Isaac opened another drawer in the desk, took out a box of thin latex gloves, and pulled a pair over his hands. Then he gently opened the lid of the box. White wisps of steam drifted out and dissipated in the air around him, as if the box were full of dry ice. He squinted into it. Then he tipped the box over.

Something big, round, and as gray as gunmetal rolled out, landing on the table with a heavy thud. Tendrils of steam clung to its every fold, crease, and tip. My mouth dropped open in surprise.

It was a severed head. A gargoyle head, to be precise, only it looked a hell of a lot bigger than the head of any gargoyle I’d seen. Its eyes were closed but its mouth was open, frozen in a silent roar that revealed rows of sharp teeth. Its tusks had been broken off, though whether from injury or simply to make the enormous gargoyle’s head fit within the confines of the box I couldn’t guess. At the stump of its neck, bone and dried gray muscle tissue were still visible where a clean, precise cut had severed the head from its body.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to see, but this wasn’t it. Not the head of a giant, dead gargoyle. It didn’t make sense. How could all the danger we’d faced, all the deaths, have been over this? Why would anyone want it?

Isaac lifted the head in his gloved hands and inspected it, as excited as an appraiser evaluating a rare, lost antique. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are in the presence of royalty. Meet Stryge, the first king of the gargoyles. It looks like he hasn’t aged a day since Willem Van Lente cut off his head four hundred years ago.”

Ingrid had mentioned Stryge was the king of the gargoyles before the Black Knight came along, I remembered, but that was all she’d said about him. “What happened?” I asked.

“For millennia, Stryge was the scourge of Europe,” Isaac explained. “He viewed all human life as vermin, an infestation deserving nothing short of extermination. Finally, in the eleventh century, the magicians of Europe banded together and banished Stryge and his gargoyles across the ocean to North America. Stryge continued his reign of terror here, leading the gargoyles in attacks on the natives and, later, the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam. By the time Willem Van Lente came to New Amsterdam in 1660, the gargoyles were regularly ambushing the trade routes between settlements. It was one massacre after another. No one came back alive. Some of the victims disappeared. Others were found in pieces, as if they’d been torn limb from limb.

“The authorities blamed the local Lenape Indians, but Van Lente suspected it wasn’t the work of anything human. He decided to run his own covert investigation and learned from the Lenape elders that the attacks were perpetrated by creatures they called Mhuwe, man-eaters. Van Lente recognized them for what they were: gargoyles from the old country. He knew the only way to stop the slaughter was to cut off the head of the snake, as it were. Kill Stryge and leave the gargoyles powerless and in disarray without their leader. So he made a deal with the Lenape to fight Stryge together.

“The battle lasted weeks. The sacrifices Van Lente made were unbelievable. He cut off his own hand to create the Anubis Hand, the only weapon that could hurt Stryge, though even that wasn’t enough. In the end, it took the combined might of all his magic and the entire Lenape nation to bring Stryge down.”

I looked at the black, mummified fist of the Anubis Hand poking out of Thornton’s coat pocket on the floor. Willem Van Lente’s own hand. It was a crazy story. Completely unbelievable. But something itched in my mind, a kernel of a thought. Something about the Lenape Indians. I’d heard the name before.

“There are no records of Van Lente after the battle,” Isaac went on. “He must have died from his wounds shortly after he hid the box. He gave his life to save New Amsterdam, but it was all in vain. Not long after, the Black Knight came out of nowhere, stepping in to fill the void as the gargoyles’ new king and leading them in further acts of evil to this very day. Nothing changed. Willem Van Lente fought and died for nothing.”

“Why did he bother hiding the head?” I asked. “I mean, we’re talking about someone who cut off his own hand to make a magical weapon, right? If Van Lente was half the badass he sounds like, you’d think he would have stuck the head on a pike or something as a warning to the gargoyles not to mess with them anymore.” Bethany and Isaac arched their eyebrows at me. “What? I’m not saying that’s what I would do, but…”

Unlike the others, Philip smiled at me. “Nasty. I like the way you think.”

I sighed. “Look, forget all that, you know what I mean. Why go through the trouble of a puzzle box and a hiding place? Why didn’t he want anyone finding Stryge’s head?”

Isaac gently replaced the head inside the box, closed the lid, and locked it again. “Lenape legend has it that if Stryge’s head is reunited with his body during the equinox, he will awaken. Stryge has immense power, enough to destroy New York City and everyone in it. With his hatred of all humanity, I have no doubt that’s exactly what he would do.”

“Hold on, I thought you said Stryge was dead,” I said.

“Not dead, exactly,” Isaac replied. “Just dormant. Stryge is an Ancient. No one knows the full extent of their powers. Their magic is as alien to us as ours would be to the simplest single-celled organisms. The equinox, the precise moment when the Earth and the sun are perfectly aligned, is when the Ancients’ powers are at their height. If Stryge’s head and body are reunited at that moment, there’s no telling what could happen. That’s why we had to get this box to safety first.”

“So Stryge’s an Ancient like Gregor,” I said.

“Only a hundred times worse,” Bethany said. “Stryge was the most violent and hateful of the Ancients. If he were to wake up, he would be a destructive force the likes of which this city has never seen.”

“But Ancient or not, how can he still be alive without his head? That doesn’t make sense.”

Philip pointed his thumb at me. “I agree with Mr. Head-on-a-Pike here. I’ve seen firsthand what taking off someone’s head can do. You don’t come back from that.” I didn’t want to know what he meant about seeing it firsthand.

“The shadowborn at the safe house weren’t dead when we found them, were they? Not even after their heads were cut off,” Isaac said. “The barrier between life and death isn’t as easily definable as you think, and it only gets harder to define when magic is involved. Consider this. Gargoyles don’t honor their dead or have burial rituals. They don’t give their dead much thought at all, except to cannibalize them for food during the lean hunting seasons. If they’re this keen on reclaiming Stryge’s head, it can only be for one reason: The Lenape legend is true. But what’s really got me concerned is that gargoyles don’t do anything without orders from their king. That means the Black Knight himself must want it. The only question is why. The Black Knight has ruled over the gargoyles for four hundred years. Why would he want to bring Stryge back? The gargoyles won’t serve two kings.”

“What if you’ve got it all wrong?” I said. “What if the Black Knight wants the head to make sure no one brings Stryge back?”

Isaac nodded. “I thought about that. If that’s the case, it’s the first time the Black Knight and I have ever seen eye to eye. But I suspect there’s more to it. Frankly, I’ll be happy if the equinox comes and goes without us ever finding out.”

He carried the box over to one of the cluttered bookshelves. Sitting on a shelf in front of a few oversized tomes was a small, ancient-looking leather globe of the Earth on a polished stone stand. He pulled the globe forward, tipping it on a hidden lever in its base, and the bookshelf swung open on concealed hinges. Behind it was a metal door. There was no knob or handle, only a keypad. Isaac pressed a few of the keys in sequence, and the metal door swung open to reveal a doorway in the wall. Light poured out it, and a strange, deep hum.

Isaac’s vault. This was where he kept the dangerous artifacts he sent the others to secure. It was also what he was protecting, I realized. The reason he didn’t want any of his operations traced back to him. Unlike what was displayed around the room, the vault contained the big-ticket items, the truly powerful artifacts the Infected would kill for. If they got their hands on this collection, they would have the magical equivalent of a nuclear arsenal.

I couldn’t see much of the vault’s interior from where I stood, just what was on a few of the shelves by the door: a sword in a scabbard that glowed bright emerald green; a small statuette of a multiarmed figure that seemed to be vibrating like it couldn’t sit still; a fleshy, tentacled mass inside a Mason jar that thrashed its limbs angrily against the glass; and money. Stacks of it. I’d never seen so much money in one place before. I’d figured Isaac was loaded, he’d have to be to afford a place this big in New York City, but this was beyond the pale. If Forbes ran a list of the richest mages in the world, I was sure he’d be at the top.

Isaac emerged empty-handed from the vault, closed the metal door, and pulled the leather globe again. The bookshelf swung shut. “It’s safe now. Good work, everyone.”

A sudden, bursting splash of water came from behind us. I turned around. Thornton sat up in the tub with a guttural cry. Gabrielle, still holding his hand, nearly fell backward in surprise.

I rushed to the side of the tub with Isaac, Philip, and Bethany at my heels. What was left of Thornton’s shirt was translucent from the water, and through it I could see his skin had healed itself. The discolored patches of necrotic tissue were gone. The stitches had dissolved, and his scars had vanished. His face looked healthier, too. Fuller and less corpselike.

Gabrielle gripped his hand tightly in both of hers. “Thornton! Thornton, are you okay?”

“God!” he cried through gritted teeth. “It feels like I’m being skinned alive!”

“Your nerve endings are healing,” she said. “Give it time. The pain will pass, I promise.”

Thornton turned to her. He stared at her hands for a long moment, then murmured, “I—I can feel your hands.” He put his other hand over hers and laughed. “I can feel them!”

She kissed his hands. Her chin quivered with emotion. “Oh, Thornton, I’m so sorry. I should have been with you. I should have come running.”

“It’s not her fault, it’s mine,” Isaac said, putting a hand on Thornton’s shoulder. “But she put up one hell of a fight, believe me.”

Thornton smiled and touched Gabrielle’s face. “I bet you did.”

“I’m so sorry, Thornton,” she said again.

“I was worried I’d never…” He winced suddenly. “… see you again…” He grunted in pain. “Ungh … my whole body’s … on fire!”

“That’s just the Methusal spring doing its job,” Gabrielle said. “Your body is healing. Hang in there, baby. It’ll be over soon. You can do this.”

Gathered around the tub, Isaac and Gabrielle wore the same hopeful expression. Philip looked as enigmatic as ever, his eyes hidden behind his mirrored shades, his face neutral. And then there was Bethany. No matter how hard she was trying to hide it, she didn’t look happy. She’d had her doubts from the start that this would work. But she was wrong. She had to be. This time, just this once, maybe Bethany wasn’t right about something.

She’d said there was no spell that could bring the dead completely back to life, but Gabrielle’s plan was clearly working. Thornton looked like his old self again, the way he’d looked when I first met him. No, he looked better, actually—Thornton had already been dead the first time I saw his human form. Now he looked alive. This changed everything. It should have been impossible, but here he was, living proof that magic could conquer death after all.

Thornton finally noticed me squatting by the side of the tub. “You,” he said weakly. “Did anyone check this son of a bitch for a gun? He’s got a nasty habit of pointing one right at you.”

“It’s okay, baby,” Gabrielle said, stroking Thornton’s hair. “Everything’s okay. He’s with us now. We came to an understanding.”

“I’m sorry about before, Thornton,” I said. “I panicked and lost my judgment. I hope you can forgive me.”

Thornton looked up at Bethany. She nodded and said, “It was classic Trent, acting without thinking first. But it’s fine. Gabrielle read his mind. He’s not a threat.”

Thornton’s eyes focused on me again. “Fine, but do it again and I’ll bite your fucking face off. At least you stood up for us in front of those two creeps.” He winced in pain. Through clenched teeth he added, “Just tell me you didn’t give them the box. Tell me it’s safe.”

I nodded. “It’s in Isaac’s vault now, safe and sound.”

“See? Everything’s going to be okay,” Gabrielle said.

Thornton cried out suddenly, an agonized sound. He must have been in intense pain. We looked at each other around the tub, not knowing what to do. Even Isaac seemed at a loss. Thornton writhed in the water and banged the side of the tub with his fist, making Gabrielle jump.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice high with panic. She gripped his free hand tightly. “Baby, what’s happening?”

“The amulet,” he groaned. “Ungh, something’s wrong … Not now, I’m not ready…”

His whole body thrashed in the tub, the golden water sloshing over the sides. He was seizing. I tried to hold him steady, but he was shaking too hard. The others reached in around me, and together we stabilized him as best we could.

Tears streamed down Gabrielle’s face. “Baby, talk to me, what’s wrong?”

“It … stopped…” he said, his voice hoarse. His body thumped against the porcelain as another seizure rocked him. His contracting muscles felt as hard as rock under my hands. When the seizure passed, I let go of him, albeit hesitantly.

Gabrielle grabbed his head and turned his face to her. “Baby, look at me!”

He grimaced in pain. “I’m sorry, Gabrielle … I tried … I tried to stay…”

“Baby, don’t talk like that!”

He touched her face with his hand. She held it to her cheek, her fingers wrapped around the leather bracelet she’d given him. “But at least,” he said, “at least … I got to touch you again … and feel it.…”

He cried out suddenly. A shaft of blinding light burst out of the amulet. It shot from Thornton’s chest up to the ceiling, where it turned to billowing white smoke, swirling like a maelstrom between the chandeliers. The light kept pouring from the amulet, the blazing column disappearing into the center of the smoky vortex. There was a loud, sharp crack, as if the world itself had snapped in two, and then, as suddenly as it started, the light stopped. The smoke curled in on itself and vanished, leaving only the sharp smell of ozone in the air.

Thornton fell back limply, his head lolling against the side of the tub. His eyes were open, staring at me, but there was nothing in them anymore.

“No, baby, come on,” Gabrielle said. She took Thornton’s head in her hands and tipped it toward her. “Come on, stay with me.”

The room went quiet. We were too stunned, all of us, too shocked and grief-stricken to say anything. It looked wrong, how still Thornton was.

“Stay with me,” Gabrielle said again.

A quiet mechanical clicking sound answered her. A moment later, the amulet dislodged itself, rising up out of Thornton’s chest on its central spike. The four small red gems on its face, once so brightly pulsing with the amulet’s energy, had turned smoky and dark.

Gabrielle shook her head defiantly. “No!” She put both hands on the amulet and pushed it back down, sinking the spike into the hole in Thornton’s chest again. The amulet clicked and lifted itself out again. She pushed it back into his chest over and over like some horrible version of CPR compressions, but each time it refused to stay down. “Not like this,” she insisted as she pushed it down one final time, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It doesn’t end like this. Not until we’re both old, not until we’ve done so much more.”

Bethany put a hand on Gabrielle’s arm, stopping her. In a hushed tone, she said, “The amulet only works once.”

Gabrielle finally let go of it. She collapsed beside the tub, sobbing.

“I’m so sorry, Gabrielle,” Bethany said. “The Methusal spring may have regenerated his skin and muscle, even his nerve endings, but Thornton was still dead. There was nothing you could do to change that. Nobody could.”

Gabrielle clung to Thornton’s hand. Even when Bethany tried to get her to let go of it, she wouldn’t.

I looked down at him, my breath coming in short, startled bursts. I drew my hand gently down his face, closing his eyes.

The full weight of it hit me then. Until this moment, Thornton’s death had seemed like a technicality—he was dead but still with us, still cracking jokes and fighting alongside us. The possibility that Gabrielle’s spell could reverse his condition had seemed so feasible. But Bethany was right. From the start, she’d said there was nothing we could do to save Thornton. I hadn’t listened, but I should have. Bethany was always right. It wasn’t fair, but she was always goddamn right.

Now, long overdue, it struck me with the force of a sucker punch I should have seen coming.

Thornton was dead.