Afterlife

by Merrie Destefano

  “Immortality,” I said. “Eternity. There’s one injection left.”

  Neville chuckled. It looked like he was going to do what I wanted. His pressure on the knife lessened slightly. He took a step forward and leaned toward me, reaching out with his other hand. Only a few more inches and she’d be free. I stretched my hand toward his, ready for this exchange to be over.

  Just then a wild growl sounded from the shadows.

  Neville turned his head slightly, frowning. “What the hell is—”

  Before either of us could react, Omega bounded out from a crevice between the tombs. He had been stalking Neville, had worked his way closer through the maze of tombs and now he was flying through the air, teeth bared, claws like talons, a rumbling snarl deep in his throat.

  “No!” Angelique cried out, her voice strangely muffled.

  In an instant, the dog struck Neville in the back, the force of Omega’s weight pushing Angelique away. But in that same moment, Neville instinctively dug his knife deeper.

  A widening pool of blood spread beneath her.

  She slumped to the ground, uttered a long moan and then fell quiet.

  Neville still clasped the knife and now he lunged toward me, propelled by the momentum of the dog. His left hand grabbed mine and we both clenched the vial, pressed inside our palms.

  With his right hand he drove the blade into my gut. Six inches of steel honed in on that sweet spot between my ribs.

  Meanwhile, dagger-like teeth latched onto Neville’s throat. The dog buried his muzzle in flesh and bone; he snapped and tore and thrashed until bones crunched and blood sprayed out.

  Then all three of us tumbled backward in an endless arc of pain until finally my spine slammed against the cement, an agony of torn muscle and broken vertebrae. A second later, our fists hammered the ground in unison. I felt the bones in my wrist shatter and then a hundred tiny knives sliced into my palm.

  Somewhere beyond horror and pain I realized what was happening.

  But I was helpless to stop it.

  Neville’s body thumped on top of me and he cried out with his last breath. He struggled to break free from the dog’s relentless attack, but his strength waned as his blood continued to flow. The force of his fall drove the blade even deeper into my chest until it found the ultimate prize.

  My heart.

  But that was when the real nightmare began, when he finally stopped flailing, for his left hand was still clasped with mine.

  We were dying, both of us.

  Our hands were locked together. And inside our palms, the shards of broken glass cut like a thousand needles, ripping through flesh and cartilage, intersecting blood vessels and capillaries.

  And now the serum was flowing into both of our bodies.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  In Between

  Chaz:

  Once, centuries ago, we thought the world ended at the horizon, thought the world was flat. Oceans spilled over the tabletop edge and mountain ranges crumbled to dust. The sky burned black; the sun faded away. At the edge of our understanding, the universe ended. All reason converged to a flat plane, became something we could never traverse.

  This imaginary vista tormented adventurers, kept them sleepless in cradled beds as they bobbed across surging oceans, as they were propelled into the unknown.

  And then once we had crossed the Great Unknown Beyond, we lost all memories of that flat vista, we decided it was imaginary, something made of dreams and visions.

  But now I know it was made of nightmares. And it was real.

  Because that was where I stood right now.

  The battle for life faded away as Neville’s knife plunged deeper, found my heart, stopped me from going forward into Year Number 39. For a moment I flashed back and forth. One second, I was lying on the cement, pain in my back, my chest, my right hand. Then I was standing on a foreign horizon, unable to comprehend, my mind too small to grasp where I was. Another broken breath and I was back in the City of Dead, fighting a dying man to possess the key to immortal life.

  I became transparent, invisible, two places at once.

  Part of me felt like I was being ripped in half; the other part felt more complete than I had ever been.

  Then the flashing stopped. I found myself standing on a flat plane that seemed to stretch forever, shrouded in all directions by a foggy mist. And the battle wasn’t over.

  “Lets me go!” Neville growled. “Gives it to me.”

  My right hand clasped his left, almost like we were glued together.

  Then he cried out in pain and I realized that this place wasn’t what I thought it was. There was a division down the middle. I stood on one side, he on the other. Suddenly the mist cleared, as if a great solar wind surged it away, and I saw flames moving around him. No. People. Or what had once been people. Now engulfed in sulfuric fire, they writhed in torment, an unending holocaust.

  Hell. He was standing a foot inside hell.

  “Lets me out of here!” he cried. He stumbled, yanked me toward him. I felt the searing breath of hell sweep across my face, the stench of eternal damnation filled my nostrils. I fought and wrenched away, leaned back into a peace that surpassed anything I had ever experienced. Golden light bathed my skin, washed away the horror. I couldn’t see them, but I could sense them behind me.

  A heavenly host. More than I could count. I heard the sweet thunder of angel wings, inhaled the incense of ancient prayers.

  And he was there, somewhere behind me. I was never allowed to look square into the face of heaven, but I knew that he was there, waiting for me.

  My father.

  Meanwhile, Neville and I stood, fighting for freedom, each of us looking into the eternity that could have been ours, if we had made different choices along the way.

  Curses rolled from his lips as he struggled to break free from my grip, venomous words that fell to his feet like spiders, then scurried away. Overhead the sky hung black and red, scorched and barren of moon or stars; mountains loomed in the nether distance, too great to cross. They stood like a massive prison fence. And on the edge of the mountains I saw it, an orange-red lake of fire, more like an ocean really, with waves and whirlpools. It roared in the distance, like a hungry lion, waiting to be fed.

  Waiting to surge, endlessly, dining on the souls that wandered across the hopeless horizon.

  I wanted to let Neville go, to turn and enter the land that beckoned behind me, but I couldn’t. We were bonded together, born like Siamese twins into this land of eternity.

  Then lightning flashed across the sky. It tore the world in two, and a voice sounded like thunder, speaking words I couldn’t understand. I trembled when it spoke and fell to my knees. When I looked up, I saw that Neville was on his knees too, that every creature near and far had fallen prostrate when the voice spoke.

  The hellish vista faded.

  We were back in the City of the Dead. Alive, clothed in flesh and blood. On our knees, facing each other, our hands still clasped together. His knife lay on the ground, and behind us Omega crouched over Angelique, as if protecting her.

  Neville blinked, wordless, then he pulled his hand from mine. He swept up the knife instinctively, brandished it in my direction, then, as if realizing what could happen if we fought again, he held it low as he staggered to his feet.

  I didn’t react. My mind was still scorched with images of hell, a part of me felt as if I had been dead for a thousand years. I struggled to breathe, felt the muscles in my heart still mending, sensed fresh blood flowing through my veins, life returning.

  I heard him running away then, footsteps that echoed through dusty temple-lined corridors, and I didn’t care. I knew where he would end up eventually. I lifted my hand, glanced at the scars in my palm, scars that weren’t healed, that would never heal, slashes from the fragments of glass. One shard had pushed all the way through the bones and flesh, left a hole in my right hand.

  I stood on shaky legs, stole one complete mouthful of oxygen, sent it pl
unging on knife-sharp wings through my lungs. Turned toward what really mattered, more than anything, more than the demon that had been set free from hell, more than the thunderous applause of angel wings.

  Angelique. My bright piece of heaven on earth.

  She lay in a widening pool of blood, Omega, her snarling guardian, at her side. He growled and snapped as I approached, then seemed to sense the sorrow in my heart. He turned back toward her, licked her wound, slid a rough tongue over her neck and then lifted his head to hollow skies and howled.

  But it had no effect. She didn’t move, she didn’t breathe.

  Whatever power this dog had to bring his own mate back to life didn’t work here.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  Chaz:

  There was a point, at the beginning of all this, when the earth rolled out beneath turquoise skies, when heaven touched our horizon. Some say that back then, the first man and the first woman gave up eternal life, sacrificed it on some unknown altar. Maybe it was so they could stay together. She went alone, along a path of death and enlightenment, deceived perhaps. But then he followed, willingly. To be with her.

  In that moment, when I held Angelique in my arms, I understood all of it.

  Sometimes love propels you to do something you would never do otherwise. Like stand on the edge of eternity and fight a demon, to free a little girl from a life of hell. Like hold the woman you love and beg God not to take her.

  Please not this. Not eternal life alone.

  Please don’t let me stand with heaven forever at my back, staring into torment.

  I don’t know how prayer works, don’t think any of us will ever really know how spoken words can change the world we live in, how or why God would choose to stop the universe and listen. Like I said, I don’t know how it works. I only know it does. I only know that someone stands on the other side of an invisible curtain and nods his head.

  I held Angelique in my arms and wept. I knelt beside her and remembered seeing the sky of heaven rip in two because I didn’t belong there. But I didn’t belong here either. Already I could feel the earth fading away, as if time no longer mattered; as if I stood still long enough I would see the city crumble to dust around me, I would watch another generation rise up. And they would be just as hungry for immortality as the one before them.

  Don’t take her, please.

  Words tumbled from my lips, tokens of the emotions that raged inside. I found myself saying all the things I wished I had spoken—before all this happened. But every word hung hollow in the air, seemed to fall flat on the cement and crash against worn tombstones.

  She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

  Omega continued to watch over her, a restlessness in his eyes. He howled again and paced around both of us, then finally he lay down beside me, his dark fur pressed against my leg, his head in her lap.

  Overhead, the lowering sun sparked through a bank of trees. It dragged a host of shifting shadows through the cemetery. They stood in the empty spaces between the tombs and then lingered there, as if watching me. Tall and slender, the dark wavering shapes always stayed just out of my line of sight, moving whenever I turned my head.

  My throat was sore and her body was cold.

  I knew that the empire my family built would collapse soon, tumble over like a house of straw. The Number Nines would rule the world for one brief moment and then it would all burst into flame. Soon there would be no need for Babysitters. I would wander through eternity alone, like some sort of unclean spirit, chasing down back alleys in search of Neville. I would catch him eventually. There might even come a point when the two of us would be the only two people left, our journey across a charred landscape forever destined to cross paths—at the intersection of heaven and hell.

  My tears continued to fall and I shuddered, pulled Angelique’s body closer.

  Throughout it all, the dog stayed at her side, faithful. Perhaps he was unable to understand Death since it had no power over him. A chill wind whisked around us, ruffling the dog’s fur, whispering Angelique’s hair. And at the same time, the shadows moved nearer, no longer hiding—they surrounded me now and the City of the Dead seemed to pulse with a strange, rugged energy, something primitive, almost supernatural. I could feel the presence of that eerie horizon, the border between heaven and hell. Maybe it never left me. Maybe part of me was still there and I had pulled these spectral shadows back with me. I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

  Light danced across Angelique’s hand, almost made it look like her fingers moved, like some part of her was still alive.

  I leaned forward and cradled her face in my hands. Every touch left a stain of her blood behind, a smear on her cheek, fingerprints on her forehead. My hands were red with it now.

  I wished I could see the sparkle in her eyes once more.

  I pressed my lips to hers, my heart crying.

  One kiss. To say good-bye. It was our first kiss, really.

  Imagination and hope can be cruel partners. In that moment, they worked together to create a lifetime of what could have been: Angelique and I together, laughing, finding some existence apart from my family’s empire. I even thought that I felt warmth, that some part of her responded to my touch and I couldn’t bear to let her go.

  Then the dog howled again, long and plaintive and mournful, the sort of cry that breaks your heart because it’s so wild and raw and alone. I wanted to howl along with him, wanted to rip this bad dream apart with claws and fangs. But it was time to let Angelique go. My arms were still wrapped around her and I knew Skellar would be sending a medical team soon. They would be too late, but still, they would take her from me, get her body ready for the grave.

  Please don’t take her away from me, I begged one last time.

  Then the shadows moved even closer until they engulfed both of us, and that was when I realized that they weren’t made of darkness. They were like holes in the fabric of the universe, each one of them filled with pinpricks of light, each one whispering and calling her name.

  Calling Angelique to return.

  That was when I felt it, when her chest was pressed against mine. It was so faint, so fragile. Almost like a distant echo, deep inside her.

  A heartbeat. But only one.

  I pulled away. As I stared at her, the ragged slash across her neck began to disappear, the wound closing. And then a moment later, a pulse centered at the base of her throat. Warmth began to return to her limbs and a pale color returned to her skin. Her cheeks and lips darkened to a soft rose and then, finally, her mouth opened a fraction of an inch and I heard her take a shallow breath.

  “Angelique—” I whispered.

  Omega lifted his head, his ears up, his tail wagging.

  Another breath. I could tell it was painful, I could almost feel the sharp bite of knives deep inside, I wished I could take away the pain. Then the shadows moved away from us, dissolving in the autumn sun.

  In that instant, her eyes fluttered open and she stared into the sky for a moment, as if saying good-bye to something. Then she looked at me and I saw it.

  The sparkle in her eyes that said she loved me, that she wanted to be here with me. That maybe immortality wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

  And I knew then that I wouldn’t have to spend eternity alone.

  EPILOGUE

  Chaz:

  “Promise me, Uncle Chaz. Promise me that when I’m gone you’ll burn it. All of it. Promise me that you’ll get rid of me, and that the Nine-Timers will never be able to bring me back.”

  Her voice echoed across the years and I kept my vow.

  We raised Isabelle as our daughter, Angelique and I, in that hidden South American villa Russ had stashed away. My niece lived a long, beautiful life, got married and had children of her own. After the Nine-Timer scenario began, there were no more rules about how many children you could have, so Isabelle had five. Two boys, three girls. I loved all of them like they were my own.

  But the Nine-Timers didn’t stop, just be
cause their plan to live forever had failed.

  Their DNA had broken down. So they went on a scavenger hunt for more. Hunting through the graves and medical storehouses, they began resurrecting One-Timers, people who had died hundreds of years ago, people who had died yesterday. They treated them like lab rats, using them to create fresh clones, desperate for a way to make resurrection work beyond Number Nine.

  And they succeeded.

  So now Angelique and I travel around the world, performing Freedom Ceremonies, secretly teaching others our methods.

  When Isabelle passed away, we gathered every trace of her DNA, every sample of blood and tissue, every scrap of hair, and we burned it. In a way, her Freedom Ceremony resembled a pagan funeral, her body on a pyre, all the DNA samples in earthen jars beside her. Her oldest son lighting the fire with a torch. The flames scorching the heavens.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  The world is fading, just like I knew it would, color bleeding away as each person I love dies. I will blink my eyes and Isabelle’s children will pass away, I will turn around and then her grandchildren will be gone.

  But the amazing thing is, with each generation, this family of mine grows.

  We live in the mountains, hidden from the world. Omega and his mate, Alpha, are with us. He brings her back every time she falls, with a kiss. The wolf prefers to roam through the jungles, but Omega always comes back to be with Angelique.

  From time to time, Neville pulls me back to the edge of eternity. Every time he dies. We are linked, ’til Judgment Day. Our hands clasped as we stand on the edge of heaven and hell, we fight, we struggle to be set free from each other, from this horrid destiny.

  I have tried to turn my head around, to see that which is behind me. Streets of gold, chariots of fire, angels with skin like brass. My father, my mother, and now, Isabelle.