The Resurrection Game

by Michelle Belanger

  “If it’s dead, what good will that do me?”

  “Not a thing,” I said as I fished a bottle of rubbing alcohol out from under the sink, unscrewing the cap. “I just want to get you out of my hair for a minute.” Leaning over the tub, I dumped half the bottle across my throat, sucking air through my teeth as white fire spread along every millimeter of the cut.

  “Gimme that,” Lil growled, sweeping into the cramped room and yanking the alcohol from my grip. She grabbed a clean washcloth from the rack and soaked it with the rest of the bottle, dropping the empty into the tub. The plastic sounded hollow as it hit the porcelain.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Remy called.

  “No!” Lil and I cried in unison. From her look, she trusted him as little as I did—not that close to my blood. He’d never crossed the line like that, but the Nephilim as a tribe had an unnerving relationship to the red stuff. I didn’t want to take any chances.

  Lil seized my jaw, twisting me to get a better look at the cut. Our height difference made it hard for her to get the right angle. With a muttered curse, she went up on one foot and I thought she was going to kick me out of sheer spite, but all she did was slam the toilet seat shut with the toe of one boot. Roughly, she shoved me in that direction.

  “Sit.”

  Mutely, I did. When Lil took that tone, arguments were futile.

  “Close your eyes,” she ordered. I narrowed them instead, skeptical as fuck. She lofted the alcohol-soaked washcloth and started for my face. “This’ll sting a hell of a lot worse with them open,” she said. “But suit yourself.”

  Just as the cloth descended, I squeezed them shut. Roughly, she scrubbed the material across my face, grinding the nap into every scrape and abrasion from my earlier battle. Much more delicately, she daubed the bigger wound, teasing the edges apart with the fingers of her other hand to gauge its depth.

  “Ow,” I objected.

  She only probed deeper. A little slip of her long nail at the outermost corner felt intentional. I peeled open my eyes to glower. Lil stood so close, I could see striations of gold and green in the center of her steely irises.

  “Good news?” she said. “It went through both layers of the dermis, but it doesn’t seem to have hit anything beneath that.”

  “Peachy,” I snapped. “I figured that much because I can still move my head.” The fumes of the alcohol made me tear up and I blinked rapidly to clear away the sting. “And the bad news?”

  “If you were anyone else, I’d send you somewhere for stitches,” she answered. “You’re healing for shit and the cut’s long enough, it’ll just keep opening whenever you stretch the skin.”

  “So, like, every time I move,” I grumbled.

  “Pretty much.” Straightening, she pushed loose curls back from her face. “What do you have in your kit here? Butterflies? Steri-strips?” Before I could answer, she started rooting around in the medicine cabinet. “Some superglue would be nice.”

  “Not there,” I said. “Under the sink.”

  Crouching down, she continued her search, discovering the hefty first-aid kit I kept in a long tackle box in the back of the cabinet. With an appreciative sound, she pulled it out and balanced it on the side of the tub. Throwing the latches, she scanned the many compartments.

  “At least you’re prepared.”

  “I like my body, too,” I said, leaving off the flirty lift and wiggle—with me, the gesture wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive. A soft step resounded from the hall and Remy peeked in through the open door.

  “Are you certain there’s nothing I can do to help?” His eyes flicked from me to Lil to the bloody washcloth she’d abandoned to the floor. A stitch of worry creased his brow. Seizing a pack of steri-strips, Lil shoved them at him.

  “Open these.”

  Obediently, he took the package, tracing one manicured nail along a seam. Peeling away the plastic-coated paper, he withdrew a single sheet of the long wound closures. Wordlessly, he held them out. Lil made an impatient gesture.

  “Give them to me one at a time,” she said. “But be careful. Only touch them along one edge. I need them to stick tight.” Remy nodded. Before long, he wore half a dozen of the thin, white bandage strips, tacking them to the tips of his fingers like streamers. Lil plucked them off one at a time.

  “Hold still,” she told me, turning my chin in the direction of the bathtub. “And angle your face like that.” Huffing, she slapped my leg with the back of her hand. “Relax your neck, already. You’re cording your tendons, and that’s not gonna help.”

  “Little tense here,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Well untense, unless you want this thing to be a bunched-up mess.” She slapped the side of my thigh again, just enough for me to feel it. Doggedly I focused on the pattern in the tiles on the far side of the tub. It didn’t help.

  “I really don’t like being touched,” I grumbled. Lil’s fingers pressed against my neck and I was struck with the warmth of her hands. We were rarely in such close contact.

  “Cry me a river,” she shot back, pressing another of the steri-strips into place. Remy loomed in my peripheral vision, a silent statue blocking the door. I didn’t think of myself as claustrophobic, but this many people in so small a room wasn’t helping to keep my blood pressure low.

  “You almost done?” I demanded. My voice cracked.

  “This is precision work, Anakim,” she answered. “Don’t rush me.”

  The sound of adhesive unsticking from skin—that was Lil taking another closure from Remy. The press of fingers, fever-hot. Through my nose, I exhaled a long stream of breath, struggling not to move—or punch anyone. Some people had a fight or flight response. Mine was all fight.

  “So tell me about this imposter,” Lil said as she fixed another strip across the wound. Maybe it was her idea of soothing me. It sort of worked. “When did you first notice him?”

  “Earlier tonight,” I answered. My hands fisted in my lap, fingernails digging shallow half-moons into my palms. “Couldn’t sleep. Went out for a ride. Stopped at this gas station when the tank ran low and shit went sideways.”

  “You always have the most colorful expressions,” Remy mused.

  “Pear-shaped. FUBAR, fuck-o bazoo,” I supplied. “I could go on.”

  “Please don’t,” the vampire said.

  Lil chuckled as she worked.

  Again, I loosed a long breath, this time trying to ease the tension crawling up my neck. Holding this position was awkward. Muscles were starting to cramp all across my shoulders and back. “There were a couple of cacodaimons,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut again. “One was a sleeper. I think it woke up because I was there.”

  “They do that,” Remy observed.

  “Well,” I sighed, “it killed the guy working night shift and its buddy made a move to ride his skin. I put an end to that, but the first one made a break for it.” Vividly, the whole scene replayed on the insides of my eyelids. I blinked. “Anyway, I chased the fucker down before it slunk back in the lake.” I almost told them about the third cacodaimon—the weird one that trailed me after that—but something held me back. Nothing so clear as an inner voice, just… a feeling. Chewing on too many layered implications to unpack, I fell into silence. Lil nudged my arm.

  “Not to diminish your crusade to rid the world of the Unmakers,” she said, “but how’s this tie to your imposter?”

  “Asshole stole my bike,” I spat. At the memory, I clenched my fists so hard the nails bit into the crease of each palm. One of them tagged the scar and I stopped as it ticced in protest. “When I got back from fighting the bastards, the police were all over the station. My Vulcan was still at the pump, along with my helmet and keys.”

  “You left the keys with your motorcycle?” Remy choked. “In that neighborhood?”

  “Cacodaimons,” I reminded. Without thinking, I started to turn so I could face him. Lil sharply caught my chin.

  “Not done here,” she snapped.<
br />
  I scowled and focused on the tiles again. “I’d wanted to save the clerk.” I sighed. “Dropped everything once I saw the first one go after him, but it was already too late.” My body held its rigid posture, but my wings slumped. No one could yell at me for that.

  “So, your motorcycle thief,” Lil urged. “Notice anything odd about him?”

  “Aside from the fact he was wearing my face?” I asked. “He even had a twin of my jacket.”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “He was wearing that when he rolled up here.”

  “He was here?” Fuck holding still—I whirled on her so fast, she didn’t have time to react. Lil glared with her hand still raised, strip dangling from the tip of her middle finger.

  “You’re lucky this is the last one,” she snapped. “That would have ripped the whole thing open again.”

  “What were you even doing here?” Remy asked her.

  Lil tossed her wealth of red curls in an extravagant gesture of derision. “I have a life outside of your club, husband dearest,” she sneered. “You’re hardly the only thing that interests me in this town.”

  “So you’re stalking me again,” I said.

  Her full lips curled provocatively. “Again?” she mused. “That implies I stopped at some point, doesn’t it?”

  Annoyed, I lurched off the toilet seat, pushing past her to the mirror. Lil had an uncanny way of keeping track of me—one I hadn’t been able to spot. Yet. Making a show of checking her work, I stretched over the bowl of the sink. This put me directly between Remy and Lil.

  “All that crap about my wards,” I grumbled. “Was that just some kind of misdirection?”

  She shook her head, rising fluidly from where she crouched on the floor. Darting in close, she applied the final steri-strip with a triumphant flourish. This took her perilously near all my bare skin, and she pressed the advantage—literally. The crush of her soft curves along my naked side made it hard to concentrate.

  “Your wards are solid.” Warm breath tickled the lobe of my ear. “I was just checking your defenses. I do that every once in a while.” A rush of spice and vanilla filled the tiled room. She’d held her angler-fish tactics in check while patching my cut. Now the floodgates were wide open. Tingling gooseflesh rushed down my neck, chasing itself across my chest and arms. Without a shirt, there was no way to hide the reaction. Lil loosed a throaty chuckle.

  “Mmm,” she purred. “Good boy.”

  I flinched away before she could pat me on the ass. I knew she was thinking about it. Remy observed our interaction with mild curiosity, one brow delicately Spocked. If he had any objections, he wisely didn’t voice them.

  “Do we know why someone is trying to impersonate you?” he asked after Lil gave up on groping me.

  “I’m more interested in how,” I said. The room was still too cramped, and Lil wouldn’t budge to give me space. A teasing grin split her face. I shouldered past her, then Remy with a muttered “sorry,” making for the living room. I dug through the pantry along the way, snagging one of my protein bars. My body needed fuel. The flat rectangle of soy and peanut butter wasn’t steak and potatoes, but it would have to do. “If I understand how, maybe I can counter it. When I checked for a cowl or some other kind of obscuring magic, the guy came up blank—like he wasn’t even there.”

  Lil trailed after me, stopping at the mouth of the back hall. Remy lurked a few steps behind, his impossibly blue eyes reflecting the light from the living room. Weary and frustrated, I dropped onto my couch, ripping open the wrapper of the bar. The line of steri-strips along my neck itched as I chewed. I stretched against the tension bunched across my shoulders, rolling my neck as far as the bandages would allow. The motion through the cushions sent my jacket sliding heavily to the floor. The SIG inside thunked against the hardwood. Lil grew tired of her game, going from sultry to serious in the blink of an eye.

  “The first time I saw him, I thought he was you,” she pronounced. “I don’t make mistakes like that.” She strode into my kitchenette like she owned the place and started rinsing out my coffee pot. Her voice, flat with annoyance, rose to carry over the sound of running water. “Whatever spell he’s got, it’s tight—but it isn’t foolproof.” Regarding me from across the breakfast bar, she laid one finger along the length of her nose. Rhinestones glittered from her nail. “He didn’t have a scent. That’s what tipped his hand. Nothing natural is like that.”

  “You mean it isn’t Lil-proof,” I corrected. “Not all of us have the nose of a bloodhound.”

  “Or a fox,” she mused. Dumping a double handful of fresh beans into the grinder, she muttered a polite warning. Then she hit the button. Ear-shredding sound ratcheted through the apartment. Remy clapped a hand to his ear, but in spite of this, he still winced.

  The energy bar was already gone. Somewhat baffled by its rapid disappearance, I crumpled the wrapper, aiming for the nearest trash can. I missed it by a mile. Didn’t care. Reaching over the side of the couch, I snagged my jacket, fishing through the pockets for my phone. The charger lay on the coffee table and I plugged it into the power strip I kept on the floor. The phone was so dead, only the charging screen came on. Bobby had to be going crazy, wondering where I was.

  Hopefully he could wait another few minutes.

  “I’m going to guess by the state of your clothes that you fought him,” I said.

  “Of course I fought him,” she replied, plucking a filter from the stack and filling it directly from the grinder. “He knew how to handle himself, too. Definitely not mortal.” Pushing her heavy curls back from one ear, she revealed an uncharacteristic bruise. Remy made a startled sound. Lil was virtually impervious to harm, so if this guy had managed to tag her, he wasn’t fucking around. My own expression wasn’t lost on her. “He wasn’t interested in me, Zack,” she said. “The minute I got the upper hand, he disappeared.” Snapping the basket into place, she stabbed the button with a painted nail and set the whole thing to brew.

  “I’ve seen how you operate, Lil,” I responded. “How does anyone get away from you once you’ve got them in your crosshairs?”

  “No,” she insisted, “I meant it literally. He disappeared into thin air.” She swept from the kitchenette and settled onto the cushions, dangerously close. Poignantly, I became aware that I still wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  “Disappeared?” Remy echoed.

  “Poof,” she said, gesturing for emphasis. “Not just invisible, but gone.” She jabbed a pointy nail into my ribs, causing me to twitch. “Only one tribe can do that.”

  I slapped her hand away. “You think he’s Anakim?” The thought was staggering. Outside of the four trapped in binding jars, I had yet to encounter any member of my own tribe. From all the research I’d done, only a rare few still roamed free in the world. Someone had been hunting us for a couple hundred years.

  Rising from the couch, I stepped well out of Lil’s reach, in case she felt a further need to poke. I needed to think without distraction. Drifting to the kitchen, I helped myself to some of the coffee. It wasn’t finished brewing and I was too tired to care. Steady spatters sizzled on the hot plate while I stole the pot to pour.

  “If he was one of my tribe, shouldn’t I be able to tell?”

  “I don’t know,” she mused. “How good’s your memory?”

  “Low blow,” I growled.

  “But not untrue,” she retorted.

  Scowling, I took a sip of bitter coffee. It was hot enough to scald. “How the fuck is he even doing it?” I demanded. “I should be able to see these things. So should you.”

  “Forget about how,” Lil said. “You’ve seen Tuscanetti magic. They could do it, so could a dozen others. But for an illusion like that to be this convincing, you either need a boatload of personal items—hair, blood, nails—or you’ve got to know the subject really, really well.” She pivoted on the cushions, the better to fix me with her steely glare. “So what you’ve got to ask yourself, flyboy, isn’t how, but who. Who’s got that kind of acces
s? And what do they want from you?”

  Behind her, Remy fell unnervingly still, like he’d forgotten how a body was supposed to work.

  “Where did this fight even go down?” I asked. I swept from the kitchenette to pace a loping circuit before the hearth. “There isn’t a Crossing near here he could have used. The closest one is at the entrance to Lake View Cemetery, and that’s a mile away.”

  “He could have used a relic,” Lil reminded. “Either way, I don’t think he was casing your apartment with the intent of dropping off a gift.” She cut her gaze pointedly in the direction of my desk. We both knew what lay in the locked and warded bottom drawer—the four jars containing my tribe’s Primus and his lieutenants. Those jars were the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

  With a sharp heave of breath, Remy came suddenly to life. He moved so unexpectedly, I sloshed coffee over the lip of the mug.

  “Are we certain it’s one of the Anakim using a disguise?” he asked.

  “I know Shadowside transit when I feel it,” Lil said, insulted by the question.

  He shook his head like she hadn’t fully understood, then, with a shrug of dismissal, joined me at the hearth. The look he fixed on me was strange, almost pitying. “If another has come,” he said, “then it is time we discuss why you live in a city run by Nephilim.”

  “You say that like I’m here as a punishment,” I ventured.

  Tellingly, he refused to meet my eyes.

  Suddenly, a memory came flooding back—something our sibling Malphael once said. He’d wagered the life of a very special girl—Halley Davis—to get me to join a crusade. Malphael was Gibburim, and throughout their bloody history they had hunted Nephilim and Rephaim alike—with the full support of the Anakim. As we’d dueled for Halley’s survival, he’d made it clear he saw me as a traitor—not just to him, but to both our tribes.

  “Remy,” I growled. “You’d better start talking. Now.”