Dying Is My Business

Thirty-seven

I gasped air into my lungs and opened my eyes. I didn’t know where I was. I’d been dead again, that much I could tell, but what had happened? Above me, the sky was dark, rippling and swelling as though I were looking at an ocean wave from the bottom of the sea. A moment later, my vision cleared. What I’d thought was the sky was actually a mass of gargoyles circling overhead.

I looked down and saw a hole in the front of my shirt. The whole lower half of my shirt was soaked with blood, but as usual, I had come back whole and uninjured. I sat up quickly, the memories rushing back. The Black Knight was already gone, I saw, a dozen crows flying up into the gargoyle-filled sky.

I turned and looked under the bleachers, dreading the sight of a mummified husk of a child, but the four kids were still there, all of them still alive. Relieved, I let out a sigh. Amazingly, miraculously—impossibly—Bethany’s charm had worked. The children shrieked at the sight of me, this big, blood-soaked man who’d come back from the dead before their eyes. It was enough to finally get them to leave their hiding place and run for safety.

I pulled myself up to my feet, still sore and disoriented. The tournament field was empty. The crowd had dispersed. The fighting gargoyles and revenants were gone, leaving their fallen behind. Bethany lay facedown in the grass farther down the field. I started toward her and heard what I thought was a cough. She moved, just slightly, and coughed again. I broke into a run, and knelt down beside her. I could see the wound on her back, only it wasn’t what I’d expected. The Black Knight’s sword had cut through her cargo vest and shirt, but beneath it, her skin was unbroken. There was no injury, no blood, just the fiery feathers of her phoenix tattoo peeking out at me.

“You’re alive! Oh my God, you’re alive!” I couldn’t stop myself from laughing with relief.

I turned her over gently and cradled her against my knees. She blinked at me, groggy. “Trent? What happened?” She glanced around the tournament field. “Where’s the Black Knight?”

“He killed me and left,” I said.

“How rude of him,” she said fuzzily. Then she shook her head clear and said, “Wait, what?”

“The amulet worked, Bethany. No one died when I came back,” I said. “By all counts, you should have been dead, too, but the blow only knocked you unconscious. I think your tattoo saved you.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “The sigil of the phoenix only protects me from magic, not from swords.”

She had a point. So why hadn’t the Black Knight’s sword cut her in two? It had sliced through the chassis of my Explorer like it was cream cheese. A single swipe had knocked a police car right off the road. The sword could probably cut anything, so why had it spared her? I didn’t know. And frankly, at the moment I didn’t care why it hadn’t killed her, I was just relieved that it hadn’t.

I looked down into her eyes, marveling again at how bright and clear they were. “For a while there, I thought I’d lost you,” I said. “I didn’t like it.”

“It wasn’t a whole lot of fun for me, either,” she said. If she meant to say anything after that, she didn’t have the chance. I was already kissing her. It’d been building up in me, riding the crest of the immense relief I’d felt that she was still alive, and I simply couldn’t contain it anymore. I kissed her, and she put one hand on my cheek and the other on my neck, smaller and warmer than any hands I’d ever known. She pulled me closer, kissing me with a ferocity I hadn’t expected from her. Time seemed to slow, then stop altogether. But then she broke away, and pushed me gently back. “Wait. I—I can’t do this.”

I wasn’t expecting that. I leaned back on my haunches, confused. “I’m sorry, I thought…”

“Don’t,” she said. “This is hard enough already, please just let me say this, okay? Remember what you told me when you left, how you weren’t any good to anyone until you knew for sure that Underwood was out of your life? Well, I’ve got something like that, too, something that makes me no good to anyone either until I can put it behind me.”

I nodded. I had a feeling I knew what it was. “Your parents,” I said.

She nodded back at me. “I have to know who they were, what happened to them. I can’t get involved with you, Trent. I can’t get involved with anyone until I can put it to rest. It’s too big, it takes up too much of me. There’s just no room for anyone else right now. I’m sorry. Does that make sense?”

I sighed. It did make sense. If anyone could understand what it was like having big questions hanging over you, it was me. “Just do me a favor and let me know when some space opens up in your life again. Because this thing we were doing just now? I kind of want to do that some more.”

She laughed, her cheeks reddening, and brushed her hair back from her face. “I’ll take it under consideration. Provided Stryge doesn’t kill us all first.”

She had a good point. We were running out of time, and we still hadn’t figured out how the hell we were supposed to stop an unkillable Ancient before he took us all out. Only one man had done it before, and he was so infected he couldn’t even remember—

And then, suddenly, the answer came to me. It was like a lightbulb switching on in my head. I snapped my fingers and said, “The Black Knight’s sword!”

She knit her brow. “What about it?”

“It’s no ordinary sword,” I said. “It’s magic. It’s as much a magical artifact as the Anubis Hand is. I figured out that the Black Knight is Willem Van Lente, or what’s left of him anyway, and that sword must be what he used to cut off Stryge’s head.”

“The Black Knight is Willem Van Lente?”

“Was,” I clarified. “I don’t think there’s anything left of him in there anymore.”

I heard someone call out to us and looked up. Isaac, Philip, and Gabrielle were walking toward us across the field. I stood up, held out my hands to Bethany, and helped her to her feet. Her hands burned warm in mine. For a moment, our bodies were pressed together. Her breath hitched, and she pulled away quickly.

“Are you two okay?” Isaac asked.

“We’re fine,” she said tersely. We filled them in on everything that had happened.

“Everyone’s evacuating the park,” Isaac said. “We’ve only got half an hour before the equinox, and we still haven’t located the entrance to Stryge’s tomb. Show me the woods where you saw the revenants. They had to be heading somewhere before the gargoyles attacked them.”

I picked up the Anubis Hand and started to lead them out of the tournament field. A piercing shriek from far above stopped us in our tracks, followed by more, a cacophony of screeches and cries. In the sky above us, the gargoyles had broken into two warring factions, grappling in midair. The rebellion had begun.

“What the hell is happening up there?” Isaac asked.

“Civil war,” I said. “It’s been a long time coming. Come on, we’d be smart to stay out of the way.”

We returned to the woods and climbed the hill from which Bethany and I had seen the battle between gargoyles and revenants unfold. Below, the forest floor was carpeted with hacked-up gargoyles and shredded revenants. The air smelled foul and coppery from blood. Nothing moved. In the distance, the Cloisters rose like an ancient stronghold. The swarm of gargoyles above it roiled and undulated with clashing factions, their wings steaming in the sunlight. The gargoyle civil war was spreading across the sky.

We descended the hill, making our way carefully through the dead bodies and across the field toward the Cloisters. I stepped over bones and body parts, broken tusks and crushed skulls. Pools of blood sucked at the soles of my boots like mud. This was only the start, I knew. The whole city was on the verge of becoming a killing field. The end of everything was breathing down our necks, and we only had half an hour to stop it.

A flash of movement between the trees caught my eye. A figure in a hooded, bloodred cloak walked quickly in the direction of the Cloisters. He turned to look back at us over his shoulder. A golden skull mask peeked out from within his hood.

“Melanthius!” I took off running.

Melanthius ran, too, weaving confidently through the trees. Apparently he knew the terrain well. He moved fast, but it wasn’t hard to keep my eye on him. His vibrant red cloak stuck out against the brown, yellow, and green of the autumn forest. I jumped over tree roots and skirted around boulders, pushing myself faster. Ahead, Melanthius ran toward a rock outcrop in the distance. I hurdled over a log, only taking my eyes off him for a second, but that was all he needed. When I looked up again, Melanthius was gone.

I drew to a halt, breathing hard as the others caught up to me.

“What did I tell you about running off like that?” Isaac said.

“Sorry,” I said, scanning the woods for Melanthius’s telltale red cloak, but there was no sign of it. Where could he have gone? That cloak was impossible to hide. My eyes went to the rock outcrop again, a formation of boulders poking out of the earth. It was the last place I’d seen Melanthius before I lost him. “Wait here.”

I approached the outcrop cautiously, pulling my gun with my free hand. The carpet of dead leaves crinkled loudly under my boots. If Melanthius was waiting for me on the other side of the rocks, he knew I was coming. I circled around to the other side, holding the gun out, ready to fire, but he wasn’t there. Instead, I saw an old, rusted iron gate standing framed within the rocks. It was unlocked and slightly ajar. Wide stone steps led down into the dark. I waved the others over.

“Do these stairs go where I think they go?” I asked.

Isaac looked over his shoulder at the Cloisters towering above us. “Stryge’s tomb must be right below us,” he said. He pulled the gate open wider, its hinges surprisingly quiet considering how old they looked, and we entered, descending the steps inside. The sunlight coming through the open doorway lit the way, but the deeper we went the murkier it got. By the time we reached the bottom, nearly a hundred feet down, there was more shadow than light.

We found ourselves in a wide tunnel of rough-hewn stone that extended off into the inky black distance. The walls were pitted with dark recesses, vaulted nooks that at one time must have held statuary or treasure, but now stood empty.

A shadowy figure stood in the dark before us. I lifted my gun. “Melanthius.”

“Not this time,” came a familiar voice. The figure stepped closer, out of the shadows, and Gabrielle gasped.

It was Thornton, his eyes glowing red with Reve Azrael’s magic.

Gabrielle ran at him, hefting the morningstar with her good arm. “Get out of him, you bitch!”

A hulking revenant stepped out of the dark between them. It grabbed Gabrielle’s neck with one beefy hand and yanked the morningstar out of her grasp with the other. More revenants appeared, crawling out of the darkened nooks like roaches. They surrounded us, took our weapons, and tied our hands behind our backs with thick cords of rope. I felt two revenants behind me tightening the knot around my wrists. Others pulled back Philip’s hood and slipped a thin chain over his neck. He cried out and fell to his knees, clutching at the chain until they tied his hands behind his back as well.

“It is silver, vampire, to keep you in your place,” Reve Azrael said. “You will find I do not make the same mistakes twice.”

Isaac struggled to break away from the revenants that had tied his hands. His palms began to sizzle and glow.

“Stay your hand, mage, or my revenant will snap Gabrielle’s neck like a matchstick,” Reve Azrael said. Isaac stopped struggling. The glow faded from his palms. Reve Azrael turned to Gabrielle, who was gasping for air in the revenant’s strangling grip. “That is your name, isn’t it? Gabrielle? It’s the name your lover Thornton has for you in his mind, though there are others as well. Private names; names that exist only between you. He has so many memories of you, Gabrielle, each with such strong emotions attached that I feel almost as if they are my own.” With Thornton’s hand she stroked the side of Gabrielle’s face.

Gabrielle flinched away. “If you’re going to kill me, you better do it quick,” she said. “Because if I get free, this time I won’t hesitate. I won’t hold back.”

“No,” Reve Azrael said. “I imagine you wouldn’t.”

The revenant let go of Gabrielle’s neck. She doubled over, coughing, but before she could recover and make a move against Reve Azrael, the revenant pulled her injured arm out of its sling. She cried out in pain as the revenant yanked both her arms back and tied them together.

“You sent Melanthius to lead us right to you,” Isaac said. “Why? What do you want with us?”

“I have use for this one.” Reve Azrael stepped up to me, studying my face. She was so close all I could smell for a moment was the rot of Thornton’s dead body.

“What do you plan to do with the rest us?” Isaac demanded.

“Watch you die,” Reve Azrael answered. A revenant clubbed Isaac in the back of the head with the metal Anubis Hand. The mage fell to the floor, unconscious.

“Stop!” I shouted. “I’ll stay, I’ll do whatever you want, just let the others go.”

“But I already have you, my little fly. Why would I strike a bargain now? I’ve waited so long for this moment. I even prepared for your arrival. As you see, I wanted you to feel at home.”

The revenants behind me spun me around to face them. They were both severely burned, their faces reddened and charred. Yet even grossly disfigured by the fire that had killed them, I recognized them. How could I not?

“How you doin’, T-Bag?” Big Joe’s corpse said. The red glow of Reve Azrael’s magic danced in the burned wreckage of his eyes. Next to him, the corpse of Tomo started laughing.