The Resurrection Game

by Michelle Belanger

  This close, Tabitha looked rough. Both eyes were black and swollen. Blood clotted both nostrils, and with that gag in her mouth it was a miracle she could even breathe. I reached for the dirty wad of cloth, but she flinched before I could touch her. With an insistent grunt, she jerked her bound arms until the pipe rattled. Dust rained down from the rafters.

  “All right,” I said, “but watch your fingers.”

  The rope was a Gordian nightmare, looped so many times I couldn’t see how the handcuff played into the mess. That cuff was the real problem—I wasn’t sure I could pick the lock—but I had to get to it first. Covering her fingers to protect them, I started hacking where the twisted strands attached to the pipe. Tabitha’s skin was shockingly cold to the touch. She had to have been tied up like this for hours. As I sawed at the bindings, I kept expecting Zuriel to leap from the shadows, but there was still no sign of the bastard.

  “I wish I could have gotten here sooner,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry—both for you and your mother.”

  I shouldn’t have said anything. Tabitha’s grunts rose angrily, rage and heartbreak crashing from her in dizzying waves.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “Hold still. I don’t want to cut you.”

  She only thrashed harder. I paused my work with the dagger, and the instant I did, she twisted suddenly beneath me. She moved so fast, I had no time to react. Before I understood what was happening, she heaved herself up by the ropes at her wrists, wrapping her legs like a vise around my midsection.

  “What the hell?” I choked.

  Staggering beneath her unexpected weight, I nearly pitched backward. Still clinging fiercely, she pulled her hands free from the knotted bindings, slipping out of the tangle with a single, deft tug. The whole wad of rope unwound abruptly, dropping in a long tongue down to the floor. She seized a loop and trapped my upraised hand—the one with the dagger—pulling it closer to the pipe overhead. Handcuffs jangled, and even as I processed that this was an attack, she slammed the metal ring tightly shut around my wrist.

  “Tabitha!” I yelled. A flare of arctic-white sigils burst in a ring around the steel restraint, sending a jolt of power all the way up my arm. My hand spasmed, and the fire of my dagger winked out as if snuffed. The heavy blade dropped from nerveless fingers, tumbling tip over pommel to clatter ringingly on the floor. I yanked against the numbing bite of the magic, fighting panic.

  “What the fuck?”

  Furiously, she grimaced around the gag, clinging tightly. I flailed with my free hand, still unwilling to hurt her, and she strove to catch that wrist in a second loop of dangling rope. This close, it was hard to get any leverage against her, especially with one arm already pinned above my head. With every movement, she shifted my balance, and I strove not to lose my footing in the jellied blood. It felt as if my ribs might break, and we twisted madly around the fulcrum of my trapped hand. The steel of the handcuff bit deep into straining tendons. A worrisome, bitter chill wound gnawingly down my arm.

  Zuriel’s magic felt… hungry.

  Tabitha worked the gag off and sank teeth into my wrist, biting until the blood ran. Bellowing with shock and rage, I shook her off—but not before she’d looped the thick coils of rope twice around that arm. She wrapped me wrist to bicep until I had no range of motion at the elbow, and spat my own blood back in my face.

  “You monster!” she snarled. With one hand, she relinquished her hold on the rope, but only so she could flail that fist repeatedly against my face and chest and shoulders. Fury made her incredibly strong. “That’s for my mother,” she cried. She struck blindly, knuckles thudding against bone. “And that’s for me. How do you like it? How do you like it now?” She caught me on the jaw, in the eye, across the throat, still tender from the wound. I swung crazily as I dodged what blows I could.

  “For fuck’s sake, Tabitha, stop,” I choked. “It’s Zack. I’m helping you.”

  “He told me you’d say that,” she hissed. The dim candles made her tears look like blood. She blinked them away as she pummeled me. “You even look like him now. I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t!”

  “You think I’m him?” I roared. “He’s the one who stole my face.” A shrilling note of urgency rose in the back of my brain, fixated on the enchanted handcuff and what it was doing. The nerveless cold spread all the way to my elbow, and a breath-stealing pressure built in my chest as its advance continued.

  I needed to get free, and I needed to do it quickly.

  My strength waning, I pivoted into a spin, throwing my shoulder hard as Marjory’s adopted daughter came at me. I didn’t want to hurt her—I only wanted to throw her off, but the blow caught her right in the center of her broken nose. Cartilage ground against bone and she made a startled huffing noise as her head rocked backward. Her ankle-lock faltered, and she hurtled to the ground.

  Tabitha landed badly, sprawled on her back in the sticky morass of gelling blood. Her head whacked the concrete.

  “Shit,” I choked. The breath burned in my lungs. “Tabitha?”

  She didn’t move.

  “Fuck,” I breathed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Frantically I shouted her name, caught between the urge for survival and a drive to protect her. I couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. Shaking free of the rope, I clawed at the handcuffed wrist, struggling to unsheathe that dagger. It was useless. She’d snapped the handcuff around the pommel. It dug deep into my tendons, as trapped as my wrist.

  A soft, slow clapping came from under the stairs. Emerging from a space he hadn’t occupied before, Zuriel flickered from the shadows, wearing my likeness from heel to hair. My brain leapt several uncanny valleys. I even knew the feel of that lopsided grin. The laugh he brayed in the next instant ruined the illusion.

  “You should see your face,” he said.

  “I’m looking at it.”

  The golf clap continued, as infuriating as his smile. “Easiest trap I ever made,” he bragged. “Dangle something helpless, throw up a shitty barrier so you think it’s hard, and—boom—in you charge like a blind fool.” Dipping his head in Tabitha’s direction, he gave an exaggerated pout. “I think you broke my puppet, though,” he said. “Nice touch, having her try to warn you away, don’t you think?”

  “You sick fuck!” I snarled.

  I couldn’t get at my blades, but I still had my gun. The SIG was holstered for a left-hand draw. Only my right was free. I dragged it from my jacket while my doppelganger gloated. The Legion snagged briefly on the zipper, but I had it out and aimed before he could blink.

  “Boom,” I breathed and fired straight at that disgusting grin. The .45 crackled into the stairs behind him, coughing splinters to the floor. That couldn’t be. I was dangling like a side of beef and shooting with my off-hand, but there was no way I’d missed that shot—not at this distance. Sighting him again, I squeezed off a second round. The gun roared and my hearing dropped to a muted hiss.

  Zuriel didn’t even flinch.

  “You actually thought I’d be standing here,” he taunted. Spreading his arms wide, he offered me a stationary target. “I’m not that stupid.”

  The handcuff bit deep into my wrist, throbbing every time I sought to concentrate. I shoved the pain into a box in the back of my head. Closing my eyes so I could focus on his energy rather than his appearance, I strove to sense where he actually stood in the gore-soaked room. But there was too much chaff on my psychic radar. I couldn’t tell where anything was.

  “I thought of that, too, bro.” With the smarmiest fucking grin, he paced a slow circuit just beyond the puddled wax of the candles. He walked straight through the tacky edge of the pooling blood. His boots left no tread. “I thought of everything, so you’re just wasting bullets, and a noisy thing like that attracts the wrong kind of attention.”

  “Fuck you,” I spat, squeezing off another round just to spite him. It was dangerous, especially firing such big, slow slugs around all this concrete, but ricochet was as bad for him as it was for me—both of
us wore mortal bodies, and his had to be somewhere.

  The bullet crashed through some boxes over the dead realtor’s corpse, whining off the cinder block behind them and finally hitting something that made it stop.

  Sadly, it wasn’t Zuriel.

  “Bro, you get stupid when you’re desperate,” he laughed. “You want to try again? Maybe I’m in the ceiling. You got, what, eight rounds in that magazine, max? One in the chamber, if you shoot smart,” he said. “Five more to go, then, maybe less. You got no reload, not with one hand.”

  “You have a point?”

  “I’ve got plenty of—”

  Whatever it was, I didn’t get to hear.

  Tabitha twitched upright with a groan, and he danced back, genuinely startled. The faintest scuff of boots came from the furnace side of the room. I heard it, just barely, over the ringing in my ears. I strained to catch any further tells, but Tabitha’s hiccupping cries echoed through the room.

  Flopping as if her limbs refused to work, she floundered into a sitting position. Clotted blood from the floor covered her in messy streaks.

  “Hunh,” he said, recovering. “Guess she has some life left.”

  Frantically trying to wipe away the gore, Tabitha scrabbled backward as if trying to crawl away from herself. She didn’t seem to fully process where she was. A terrible keening erupted through her clenched teeth. When she reached the edge of the circle, magic crackled and she flinched away, yelping as if burned.

  “Tabitha, run,” I cried. “Don’t trust either of us. Just pick yourself up and get out of here!”

  She slumped on the floor. Inexplicably, she started tearing at the neck of her blouse. Buttons sailed and plinked into the blood. Half-exposing her breasts, she kept pulling, nails hooked to score her flesh. I yelled for her to stop, couldn’t figure what she was doing.

  And then I saw it, cut deeply over her sternum—a ring of sigils, just like the one he’d carved into Marjory.

  The one that made a prison of her corpse.

  “No!” I bellowed. Wretched loss hit in a smothering wave and white-hot fury came galloping after. My power rose sharply in response—but the handcuff bit deep, drinking everything down. Blue-white fire kindled at my hands, then sputtered. Gasping, I dragged against the thick metal pipe as my knees refused my weight.

  “Shit, bro, you think I’d let her live?” He brayed nastily. “That bitch is mine now, named and sealed. How else do you think I got her to stay put long enough to trap you with that cuff?” He snapped his fingers, derisive and imperious. “Tabitha Marie Kazinsky.” At the sound of her name, her head jerked up. Blind eyes stared without focus. “You lazy slut. Get off your ass and take that fucking gun. That guy murdered your mother, remember?”

  Tabitha moved like a doll whose batteries were running low, limbs stiff and lurching. She dragged herself onto her hands and knees and started crawling in my direction.

  “No,” I breathed. Shock robbed me of any volume. The dead woman stretched stiff fingers toward my pants leg, seizing it to claw her way up my body. Slow as seduction, she pressed cold flesh against mine, reaching for the gun. “No!”

  “That’s it,” he encouraged. “Isn’t she sweet? Almost looks like she’s gonna give you a kiss.”

  Straining from her noxious touch, I lofted the weapon above both our heads. Tabitha pawed mechanically, as if clear thought fled as her strength wound down. With nauseating clarity, all the pieces tumbled together—the taste of sacrificial magic, the spilled blood of the unfortunate realtor. He’d tied her to her corpse, but that wasn’t insult enough. He’d needed to make her his ally— willing or not. Everything in the circle was focused on animating Tabitha. The sparking wall of magic wasn’t just there to keep me out. That had been a convenient misdirect. The barrier held all that spilled life force in one concentrated space, the better to channel it into her.

  Dimly, I even recalled fragments of a similar spell, something that allowed murder victims to confront their attackers. Post-mortem justice. I shrank from the gruesome memory. It was my hand that scribed the forbidden formula.

  Zuriel watched closely as the emotions chased one after the other. “Now you’re catching up with the rest of the class,” he crowed. Fighting to concentrate, I twisted on the pivot of the handcuff as Tabitha flailed weakly against me.

  There was something else, just on the edge of recollection.

  Something about Names.

  At the core, ours never altered, but mortals were tricky. They changed their names all the time. Even when we bound them, it made them hard to control.

  Tadhana.

  Her name called her spirit, but Tabitha wasn’t the first name she had known. I couldn’t release her from his binding—not hobbled as I was—but maybe I didn’t have to.

  “Tadhana,” I cried. “Tadhana Villanueva. Listen to me!”

  “Shut up, bro,” Zuriel said. “You lost her.” I tuned him out, devoting all my focus to Tabitha. She groped like a malfunctioning robot, but a spark of awareness kindled in her bloodshot eyes. Before it could fade, I spoke again, breathing life and power into the syllables of her birth name.

  “Tadhana Villanueva.” As I worked my magic, icy agony flared beneath the cuff. I pushed past it. “He doesn’t own you. No one has that power. You’re bound in that body, but you still decide what you do with it.”

  “Idiot,” he growled. “She’s not going to listen to you. Far as that girl knows, I’m the one who came to her rescue. You’re the one that tied her up and smashed that pretty face.” He picked dirt from under his thumbnail, flicking it disdainfully toward the circle. “I’ve got her so twisted, she doesn’t even know that she’s dead.”

  Tabitha’s brows twitched.

  Dead. Bruise-colored lips tasted the word.

  Yeah, that’s right, I thought. Figure it out.

  “Tadhana,” I said again, but this time the handcuff’s bite stole the rest of my words. Gasping, I nearly lost my grip on the gun.

  “Aren’t those cuffs great?” Zuriel asked. He postured on the outside of the circle, blithely avoiding direct confrontation. The gun bothered him more than he was willing to admit. “Tashiel designed them. Called them Thorns of Lugallu or some puffed-up shit like that.” He strutted, confident to the point of arrogance. I strained to hear the least sign of his actual location. Nothing drifted from the direction of the furnace. “They’re brilliant,” he continued. “They feed on your power every time you try to tap it. Loop it right back into the spell. The cuffs get stronger, while you just fade away.”

  “Tadhana,” I repeated doggedly. “There’s a cord that ties him to you. You’ll find it, if you look.”

  “Shut up,” he snapped. “Tell me what you did with Tashiel.”

  I had a few guesses, but Remy was probably the only one who knew for sure. Not that it mattered now. Another wave of agony got me in its teeth. Gasping, I locked my gaze to Tabitha’s.

  “Follow that cord,” I wheezed. Suddenly still, she met my eyes. Hers seemed to clear. “That’s how you know who’s yanking your chain.”

  “Shut up,” he yelled. She flinched at the sound, turning slowly in his direction.

  “She’s going to see through you,” I said. “The dead know their murderers. That’s how we used this ritual. Back in the day. Once they get a hold of themselves, they can feel their killer’s guilt. It shines like a beacon.”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he bellowed—and his voice cracked, as if he was a petulant teenager too used to getting his own way. “Tabitha, take his gun, you stupid cunt!”

  She turned from him to me, blinking matted lashes.

  “He lied about everything,” she breathed.

  With a roar of righteous fury, she wheeled and launched herself straight for the barrier of the circle. Completely airborne, she hit the crackling energy like a diver, head tucked and arms outstretched. Her fingers hooked like claws, ready to tear his face off—but as soon as she passed through the sputtering power, the life sloughe
d from her body as if yanked on a ripcord. In a heavy heap, she dropped to the floor, ragdoll limbs tumbling in every direction.

  She came to rest against the foot of the furnace, her head twisted beneath one arm—but I had him. Following the line of her initial charge, I caught sight of the vaguest shimmer in the shadows at that end of the room. Man-shaped, it crouched in the cover of the hot water heater. Tabitha’s body gave a final twitch, and that shadow recoiled.

  Thumbing off the safety, I aimed for that shimmer and fired. The bullets sang off cinder block, missing the mark. My fingers trembled, further numbed by the weapon’s recoil. My second shot went wild and I lost control of the weapon. The Legion clattered to the floor, going off as it struck. The final bullet whined past my kneecap, so close, my jeans singed in the wind of its passage.

  Some shrapnel must have caught him. That broke the spell. Zuriel loosed a coughing yelp and abruptly flickered into view. Finally, I had eyes on my nemesis.

  He was a boy.

  32

  “Are you even old enough to vote?” I squawked.

  “Shut up!”

  Zuriel’s face creased with petulant fury. A rangy kid, he was sixteen, seventeen tops, with a straw-colored mop darkening at the roots. He was clad in a conscious mockery of my get-up—leather jacket, black jeans, dark T-shirt—with the addition of a silver locket on a chain around his neck. I’d missed the necklace back at the gas station. The locket glimmered with strange magic, dancing motes of power that I’d only ever seen in the hands of the Tuscanetti witches.

  That explained a lot. Their spells could twist perception like nobody’s business. Unexpected allies for sure.

  Even without the eye-tricking illusion, Zuriel’s features eerily echoed my own. He had the same craggy brow and, while it hadn’t fully filled out, I could see a match to my long jaw under his unshaven peach fuzz. It was like looking through an hourglass at a younger version of myself—and it confirmed everything I’d begun to suspect. Zuriel and I were twined together. Brothers who were closer than brothers. Shalish.