by E. A. Copen
Down the second hallway, we encountered the two Tengu who’d wandered off earlier sitting on the floor in front of a go board overtop an overturned crate. They were blocking foot traffic so that no one could come or go without sliding past them first. Not that the hallway was particularly busy. We seemed to be the only ones occupying it.
The one furthest from me placed his tile and picked up four. “You’re alive. That’s good.”
“Better than expected,” agreed the other.
“Maybe not for long,” I said and wished for my staff. I lowered my voice so that it wouldn’t carry through the hall. The last thing we needed was a panic. “There’s a bomb somewhere in the arena.”
“A biological weapon,” Haru corrected. “It’s set to go off during the final round. We have to find it and deactivate it.”
The closest Tengu grunted and placed a tile, picking up two. “Any idea where to look?”
“No,” I said. “And that brings us to the second issue. The third Horseman is comatose and suffering from some significant head trauma. She was breathing when we left. No guarantees on how long that’ll be the case.”
The first Tengu finally looked up from the game and cawed once, his throat working. A black sheen passed over his eyes. It was damn disturbing to watch. “She lives. Can we assume you want her to keep living?”
I nodded. “If at all possible. Alive is good. Conscious might not be.”
“We’ll take care of it,” said the one who’d just cawed. “About the bomb. You needn’t worry. You two are protected.”
“Protected?” Haru let me go to adjust his shirt.
I stumbled and reached out to catch myself, but wound up catching the go board instead. It upended. Black and white round tiles flew into the air before clattering to the ground. I landed on my side.
The second Tengu snickered.
The first sighed and picked up the piece that had fallen in my ear. “Once I heard about your plan to confront Pestilence after your little fight, I put a spell on the burner. Took a few good hours of work, but I managed to infuse it into a most delectable drink. You had some earlier.”
I blinked and tried to clear my double vision. “You spelled the sake?”
He shrugged. “Naturally.”
The other Tengu cawed. “You spelled it, but you didn’t bother to warm it? Inconsiderate.”
“Baka! The spell works better cold!”
I sat up and winced when I put my hand down on half the broken board. “You got any more of that magic sake?”
The Tengu blinked and cocked his head to the side. “Of course. I made twenty gallons worth.”
“Why that much?” Haru asked. “That seems excessive.”
He shrugged. “I was having fun.”
The other Tengu stood and helped me to my feet. “I believe the Pale Horseman has a plan.”
I would’ve nodded, but my head was swimming too much. “I want you to give away your sake to the audience, humans and mortals first.”
“Excellent idea!” cawed the one who’d helped me up. “We could make a lot of money.”
“I like money,” said the other. “Gold is shiny.”
“For free,” I growled.
Their feathers fluffed.
Haru grabbed my arm and pulled it back around his head, holding me up. “He’s right. If we don’t find the bomb and defuse it in time, we’ll need to minimize the number of carriers who will bring whatever is inside that weapon back to Earth.” He winced and hissed through his teeth. “And while you two are doing that, we’re going to go get a boost and then spend the next few hours looking for the bomb. We only have until the final arena is crafted to find it.”
“Who’s making the last arena?” I asked.
Baba Yaga had made the arena for round one, and Loki for round two. I didn’t know who they’d gotten to make the arena for the round I’d just missed, which would’ve only been for the one fight. They’d have to change it again though to make sure our team didn’t have the advantage of knowing the terrain in the final bout.
“Rumor has it, Loki extended the invitation to Tiamat to acknowledge her loss,” said the Tengu.
Great. A dragon goddess of chaos? That arena was going to be a doozy. Nothing I could do about it. Might as well focus on what I could do.
The Tengu bent to pick up the remains of their go board. “We will prepare the sake. You two go and find that bomb.”
Haru nodded. “First, a boost.”
***
Haru took me to the arena. It was empty, the layout nothing more than the simple, white sand that had been there before. Whatever form the sand had taken for the last bout, it was gone now.
The ghosts weren’t.
Haru let go of me just inside the arena. “Do your thing and let’s go.”
I shook my head. It felt like something was rolling around in there. “What thing?”
“The souls?” He gestured toward the arena. “Use them. Heal yourself.”
I turned back to the arena. The tiger shifter that had been smashed by the giant in the qualifying round threw a few punches in the air. Death hadn’t slowed him down. A group of Amazonians sat in a circle, watching me with distrusting eyes. Two Lobos growled at each other off to my right. Jane was the only one close by. She squinted and pointed a finger gun at me.
A lump grew in my throat that wouldn’t go down, no matter how much I tried to swallow it. “I…I can’t.”
“What?” Haru exclaimed, exasperated. “Why?”
I turned around. “Because they’re sentient beings. Devouring them to heal myself is selfish. It’s no different than killing them.”
Haru growled through his teeth and raised his head to look at the naked ceiling high above us. He muttered something in Japanese that must’ve been aimed at me. “Fine. If you want to keep your concussion, I’m not going to argue with you. We don’t have time for this. We’ve got a bomb to find.”
He stepped toward the exit but paused. Someone was shouting in the hallway outside. Haru reached for Masamune at his side, but didn’t draw it as he stepped into the hall. With the assistance of the narrow walls, I followed him.
Two Valkyries had Khaleda by the arms, lifting her off the floor and escorting her back toward our apartments while she struggled.
She tried to elbow them but only caught their thick armor. “Let me go! I told you I need to see him!”
“Loki isn’t receiving visitors,” answered one of the Valkyries plainly.
I stepped into the hall and put a hand out against the wall to hold myself up. “Khaleda, what’s wrong?”
She twisted in their grip. “Lazarus, it’s Emma! You need to… God dammit! That hurts!”
A chill ran through me. Emma. I pushed off the wall and staggered to the center of the hall. “Let her go.”
The two Valkyries exchanged a glance.
Haru’s grip tightened on his sword. “We’ll see to it she gets where she needs to go.”
Finally, they let her go. She turned and started brushing invisible dirt from her clothes.
I pushed one of the Valkyries out of the way to get to her. “What about Emma?”
Khaleda’s muscles went rigid. She froze, but wouldn’t look at me. “The last round. Against the Romans. Father refused to abide by your agreement. When he killed that woman, the man she was with went crazy.”
A horrible feeling settled in my gut. I knew where this was going, but I couldn’t let myself believe it. “Where is she?”
Khaleda hugged herself and looked to the ground. “Morningstar made her fight. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Hands shot out to grip and squeeze her shoulders. They were my hands, attached to my body, but it felt like I was watching everything unfold through a television screen. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. I clenched my teeth. “Where is she?”
“The apartments,” Khaleda whispered. “But you don’t want to go there.”
I let her go and stumbled past.
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She called my name and tried to stop me, but I couldn’t stop. Emma. I had to get to her. Nothing else mattered. No matter what’d happened, I could help, and even if I couldn’t, I had to be there. No, I had to help. That’s what I did. This was my fault. She wouldn’t have even been there if not for me.
The walk was a tilted blur. I don’t know how I managed to stay on my feet as far as I did. With each step, the hallway tipped one way and then the other. It felt like walking on the deck of a boat in rough weather only less predictable. I would’ve walked through a thousand hallways like that if I could get there in time.
My legs failed just before I reached the final hallway. Haru scooped me up and helped me walk the rest of the way. I hadn’t even realized he was behind me.
There was blood on the floor outside the door, a big puddle of it. It was the first time I’d seen it, so maybe things weren’t so bad. Haru kicked the door aside and helped me through it. All hope that the wound was minor disappeared as we came through that door. There was blood everywhere in drops, in puddles, in uneven streaks. Bloody footprints led to where Morningstar stood next to the sofa. His suit was ruined, torn in three places and coated in more blood. It stained the side of his face from ear to neck.
Morningstar looked at me but said nothing.
I found the strength to stumble around the edge of the couch.
There she was, laid out like she was asleep, hands folded over her chest. Dark streaks of dried blood marked her face around a deep gash right along her jaw. Her forehead had been split open. A deep purple bruise had begun to form around the cut. Most of the damage was to her neck and chest. Someone had practically filleted her. With all the blood and open stab wounds, and the deep slice in her neck just above the collarbone, she would’ve been gone in a matter of seconds.
I saw it without seeing it. It still didn’t feel real. This couldn’t be her, not Emma. This was someone else. A replica. A cheap trick. No, Emma couldn’t be dead.
I went to my knees and pulled myself across the floor to kneel next to her. My jaw trembled. “Emma?”
My shaky fingers closed around hers. Cold.
I can bring her back. The Kiss of Life worked once. It can work again. Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true. The spell had limits. I couldn’t bring her soul back to her body when it was destroyed like this. It wouldn’t heal her. I’d just have to watch her die all over again.
A chasm opened in my chest and threatened to rip the world apart. What the hell would I do without her? She was everything that was good and right with the world. Even when I didn’t know what I was doing with Remy, I knew I could talk to her. No matter what time of the day or night, she’d pick up the phone if I called. Emma was always there. She couldn’t be gone.
My body started doing things on its own with no input from my brain, which was still trying to find the right spell to save her.
I screamed her name.
I sobbed alone.
I broke.
Inside, every defense I’d ever built up shattered in one move. The grave reached for me. It was everywhere, all around me, in front of me, beneath me. Death sank icy fingers into my flesh and I didn’t even try to keep it out.
“You missed the match,” Morningstar growled behind me. “I had no choice but to put her in. If you had been here—”
I moved so fast he didn’t have time to dodge. My fist cracked against his jaw. His head jerked to the side and he stumbled a step, staggered by the blow. I landed another before he could recover, a perfect uppercut. It would’ve knocked out a normal man. Morningstar tried to put his hands up in defense, but I grabbed him by the jacket and ran him to the wall with a growl that couldn’t have come from my throat. His back slammed against stone, and my fingers closed around his oversized neck, squeezing tight.
What was the last thing I’d said to her? It must’ve been during Haru’s fight. We chatted then about strategy, about something stupid. I just couldn’t remember what it was. Why couldn’t I remember? Had I made a joke? Did she laugh? It didn’t matter. She’d never laugh again.
It was his fault.
I squeezed tighter.
Magic exploded and sent me flying backward. My ass slid across the floor until I crashed into the couch. Wood splintered, but the couch didn’t give.
I spat blood and glared at Morningstar who stood with one hand extended toward me. “You killed her.”
Morningstar lowered his hand. “You killed her, Lazarus. I warned you to keep your focus on what was important. Instead, you’ve been out making friends with the enemy.” He gestured to Haru.
“You’re the enemy, asshole.” I put a shaky hand on the couch to push myself up. It brushed against Emma’s cheek. I should’ve kissed her. I should’ve held her. I should’ve been there. Against all odds, I stood and my legs held me. “I’m going to kill you for this. Slowly. Painfully.”
The bastard smirked. “You think you’re the first to threaten me? Get in line. You can’t take me.” He glanced at Haru. “Not even if you had three more Horsemen backing you up, which you don’t. All you have is one injured Horseman and you can barely stand on your own. Do you really think you can take me? Emma Knight’s soul is mine and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I charged him. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t win. I had to try. I had to do something. Grief threatened to rip my insides to shreds and I had to get it out somehow. He needed to hurt as much as I was hurting.
Haru stepped in the way and caught me before I could get to him. “Easy, Lazarus.”
“Get the fuck out of my way so I can kill him, Haru! I swear, I will go through you!”
Haru glared at Morningstar over his shoulder. “I suggest you find yourself somewhere else to be if you want to survive to the end of the tournament.”
Morningstar slinked along the wall like the coward he was. I watched his every move, ready to go after him if Haru let me go. He was wearing her blood like a trophy. He had no right to it. It took everything I had to keep from demanding that he strip and leave it. Morningstar wasn’t allowed to take any part of her with him. But I was so angry, so lost and hurting, that I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth.
And then he was gone.
I pushed Haru away from me. “What the fuck, man?”
“We’ll get him,” he promised. “I know you’re hurting, Lazarus. She didn’t deserve this. But we have a job to do. We have to find this bomb or there are going to be a lot more people hurting just like you.”
I looked over at Emma. Haru was right. We had to find the bomb before the match, but I couldn’t just leave her there alone. I knew it didn’t make any sense, but I didn’t want her body to be left unguarded. What if Morningstar came back and tried to do something to her? Just leaving her there in a pool of her own blood wasn’t right.
“I-I don’t know if I can. I know I have to, but I can’t. I need to be with her.”
“Lazarus,” Haru’s hand closed gently over my shoulder. “She’s gone.”
“I didn’t get to say goodbye.” The floodgates opened again. I should’ve been at least a little ashamed to cry in front of someone else, but the thought didn’t occur to me. “It’s my fault. I should’ve been here. I should’ve been in that match, Haru. I did this. I have to fix it.”
He was silent because he knew as well as I did there was nothing anyone could do.
Haru’s hand left my shoulder. “I understand. I’m sorry, Lazarus, but I have to go.”
My head bobbed up and down.
Even after he left, I just stood there, staring at her. She wasn’t there anymore, but just calling what was left a body still felt wrong. Human beings are not their bodies. Who we are is something more, a combination of physical and spiritual energies that work together to somehow create the magic of life. Without one, the other couldn’t exist. That was why something like an Archon was a disgusting abomination. It broke all the rules. But how people experience the world, that’s all filtered through the
body. It was as much a part of Emma as the missing soul and she deserved to be taken care of, even in death.
I tried to pick her up. On a normal day, it wouldn’t have been that hard. She was smaller and lighter than me, and all the crap I’d been through the last few months had made me stronger. With the concussion and all the other, smaller injuries that were still healing, however, it was all but impossible. She started to slip after just a few steps. Rather than let her fall, I went down with her.
“What are you doing, you idiot?” said Khaleda from the doorway. Her tone was a gentle admonishment, a rare tone for her.
“I couldn’t leave her like this. She needs to be cleaned up.”
Without another word, Khaleda came over, lifted Emma from my arms and carried her into the meeting room. As I slowly wandered closer, she came back out of the room and went into the bathroom, returning with a small bowl full of soapy water and a washcloth. She said nothing as she began washing the blood from Emma’s skin, and nothing as I stood in the corner, not knowing what to do with myself.
She lifted Emma’s hand and started cleaning it. “I should have stopped him.”
“Could you have?”
“I don’t know.”
The only sound for a few minutes came from her wringing bloody water back into the bowl.
“I loved her,” I said quietly.
Khaleda stopped what she was doing to give me a sympathetic look. “I know.”
I felt like I was going to cry again but forced myself to suck in a shaky breath instead. “God. Oh, God. He has her soul. He got it anyway, didn’t he? Jesus, I’m such an idiot.”
She put the washrag down and came over to stand in front of me, eyes appraising. I thought she might try to slap some sense into me. Instead, she took my face in her hands and leaned in to kiss me. The ache in my chest stuttered and faded leaving behind the seeds of warmth and bliss.
“No!” I pushed her back and doubled over as all the pain came crashing back. “Don’t take it. I need it. That pain is part of her. It’s all I’ve got left.”
