The Resurrection Game

by Michelle Belanger

  My own muscles sang with adrenaline, but I held still, waiting to see how this would play out. At last, Saliriel came to a stop in front of me. She didn’t pose or get up in my face—not this time. Instead, she held herself loose, as ready as I was for this to erupt into a deadly fight.

  “I know you have it.” Her voice was a low, inhuman growl, three separate tones at once. “I can smell it on you. I could feel the clinging tendrils of its power the instant you walked into this club.”

  Mutely, I met her yellow gaze and knew this for a precipice. However I jumped, there was no going back, and the bottom stretched so far out of sight, there was no predicting the fall.

  I made my decision.

  With fingers that trembled more with shame than with fear, I slowly unclenched my left hand. So there was no mistaking my motion for an attack, I lofted the hand by stages, palm open where Saliriel could see. All the while, the scar ticked and jumped as if it sought to tear from my flesh. A wet heat like blood rushed all down that arm.

  “I’m not lying,” I said. “But I’m still fucked.”

  37

  “You didn’t,” she breathed.

  “Sorry to say, I did.” A little tremor gripped my splayed fingers, but otherwise the lurching of the scar had stopped. I kept the guilty hand raised between us, a rigid gesture of both surrender and salute. Adrenaline drove my heart, its hammer-strokes measuring not fear, but stark relief.

  No more hiding anymore, at least not from Saliriel—not on this.

  My sister hovered in that gelid pose I’d come to expect from the Nephilim, as if she’d forgotten she had a body. As she digested my revelation, the leaping rush of her thoughts was too great a distraction.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to yourself?” She’d forgotten to breathe, so the words were little more than a hoarse whisper. Shock drained all of her threat. I let my hand drift loosely to my side. Goaded by her failing, I took a deep breath and slowly puffed it out. Then I did it again. I felt steadier for the process.

  “I’ve had a few hints,” I admitted. I didn’t elaborate. It took real effort to meet her cat-like gaze. “But I didn’t come here to bare my soul, Sal. I really need to talk to Remy.”

  Saliriel also struggled to regain her composure. The ancient mind that peered from beneath her sculpted features already ticked ten scenarios ahead of anyone else.

  “Remy’s not here.” This time, she remembered to breathe. Life returned by stages to her porcelain limbs, and I saw her body as I thought she must—a pretty manikin she happened to ride, useful to a point, but completely disconnected from her true self.

  “When did you plan on telling me this?” I demanded. She rolled a naked shoulder, seamlessly resuming her mask.

  “Whenever it became convenient, brother mine.”

  “That’s just great,” I snarled. “The Eye’s old news, Sal. I’ve got more pressing problems. Things that can’t wait—”

  “If you think, for an instant, that the Eye is not a pressing concern,” Sal hissed, “then you are far more foolish than I have ever assumed, Anakim.” With blurring motion, she reached for my arm. I tried to jerk away, half a second too late. Her fingers—cold as iron and stronger by far—dug into the tendons at my wrist. Mercilessly, she bore down on a pressure point until my hand flopped nervelessly open. Unnerving in her focus, she peered at the scar, and all I could think was how much she looked like a hawk about to snap up her prey.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why would you even do this to yourself? You’ve never been one to seek power, Zaquiel, not for ages. Why this? Why now?” As she spoke, she shook me, rattling my arm until my teeth clapped together with transmitted force.

  I almost didn’t tell her—Sal would certainly use every morsel of information against me, but the secret was out, the big one. No point in clouding the waters with omissions and half-truths.

  “Dorimiel stole everything from me with the Eye, Sal,” I said. “My life, my memories, every bit of useful knowledge accumulated over millennia of existence.” My voice hitched as I staggered in the enormity of the admission. Because of her oath, I’d had no genuine recourse to talk about this to anyone—not my guilt, not my fears, and certainly not my pain. For a moment, I couldn’t even go on. My chest tightened as the events on the lake came flooding back—Dorimiel’s final attack, Lil’s last-minute intervention, my breakneck decision to claim the Eye.

  “I could have let that all go, but he’d taken Lailah,” I said. “Only Dorimiel knew the passphrase that would release her soul from its prison. I saw no other way to take it from him.”

  Saliriel shoved me away with a cutting hiss of disgust. Hands fisted in her teased mass of platinum hair, she paced before the dais of her throne, white stilettoes striking the tile in a series of resonate whip-cracks.

  “Oh, you stupid, noble, sanctimonious fool,” she cried. “Your whole tribe are the blood-drenched, breathing embodiment of that mortal saying about the path to hell.”

  “Sal,” I objected. “He wasn’t just dying as I chased him. You saw it. He’d fed on the power of cacodaimons. Their darkness was eating him from the inside out. Any hope to free Lailah and the others was going to sink into the void.” It was a sight I couldn’t bring myself to describe, all those black and glistening bodies surging from the depths. Dorimiel had called the cacodaimons his new brothers, and the swarm had swallowed him whole.

  “What was I supposed to do?” I asked.

  “Not. That.”

  The phone in my pocket buzzed and I jumped as if struck with a cattle prod. One short burst of vibration. Not a call, then, but a text. I remembered Remy’s flurry of worried messages, all left unanswered. My hand went to the phone, but I stopped just short of checking it. A sick suspicion—irrational but nagging—clawed from the depths of my brain.

  “Where is Remy?” It was a simple enough question, but my voice wavered. My grip tightened on the unchecked phone.

  “That again?” Sal demanded.

  “Humor me,” I said. “I’m stupid, remember?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He left.”

  “When?”

  “Zaquiel, I don’t monitor his every move.”

  “Pull the other one,” I said. “He’s your lackey. You keep track of him. I know you do.” In my pocket, the phone buzzed again—a reminder for the text. While Sal dithered around her answer, I slipped the device into my hand. Polite or impolite, I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to see.

  Remy’s name flashed on the screen, but the message was nothing he would write.

  ru santa, bro?

  My blood ran to ice. Hurriedly tapping my passcode, I stared at the foreign syntax, struggling to decipher its import. Remy’s name gleamed atop the text. His number, no doubt. Another message buzzed through even as I studied the first.

  cuz u giftwrapped this for me

  Dumbly, I fixed on the glowing letters. I couldn’t breathe. Sal took my slack expression completely the wrong way.

  “You dare insult me with your inattention?” she bellowed. Striding purposefully, she curled her talons to strike the phone from my hand.

  Another buzz. Another message. This time, a photo, dim, unfocused. There was so much glistening red, my brain at first refused to parse the face beneath. One sunken eye, azure as the waters of a tropical cove, bulged at the center of the grainy image.

  “Fuck,” I breathed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Faster than Sal could slap for my hand, I shoved the phone in her face.

  “What is it now?” she snarled, reeling back from the glowing screen.

  “He’s got Remy.”

  The world dropped away.

  38

  Sal peered minutely at the screen, so close, the blood-drenched image reflected perfectly in the narrowed pupils of her eyes. Spitting like an angry hunting cat, she ripped the phone from my grip, brought it closer, stared some more. She knew as well as I did the startled, inhuman blue of that central feature—probably better.

 
; “Who?” she demanded. “Who dares to threaten what is mine?”

  “Zuriel.” The Name shivered on the air, cold as his power.

  “One of yours,” she spat. “Typical.”

  “Spare me the history lesson,” I said. My palms were slick. Restless, I wiped them on my pants legs. “We don’t have time for it. This guy’s not fucking around.”

  “Clearly,” Sal observed acidly. She looked as if she was going to hurl the slim rectangle of smartphone, but then handed it back with exaggerated care. No further texts came through on the glinting screen—Zuriel had made his point, and thoroughly. I started to type a response, but what good would it possibly do?

  Sal caught the motion and shook her head.

  “Don’t,” she cautioned. Without another word, she turned and strode to an alcove behind her throne. A slim door was set into the wall against one side. She did something to the handle—nothing related to a punchcode or traditional lock—and it swung soundlessly inward. Heels clacking sharply, she disappeared into the shadowed interior. No lights flicked on, but then, Sal didn’t really need them.

  I didn’t even bother to ask what she was doing. Instead, I studied the brutal image on the screen, blowing it up so I could examine every gruesome detail.

  Zuriel had been smart. It was a close-up, intentionally angled, just enough for recognition. The bloodied section of Remy’s face filled the entire picture so no hints of his surroundings were visible. Without a background, I had no clues on his location. Tilting it this way and that, I tried to glean any useful data from the taunting picture. The lighting suggested another basement, but even that was pure conjecture, based solely on where Zuriel had kept Tabitha.

  Killed, I reminded myself. Where Zuriel had killed Tabitha. A shiver of guilt swept over me, laced with the bitter bite of sorrow and, with effort, I shoved it away. Guilt was useless, for as much of it as I carried, and the dead I could mourn later—once we’d kept my soft-spoken brother from joining them, piece by piece.

  Which raised a very salient question.

  “What I want to know,” I called to my sister, “is how can Remy look so rough?” Only vague rustlings came forth in answer, followed by the sharp sound of a zipper. She was getting dressed. Finally. “I’ve shot you guys. Bullets are like bee stings,” I continued. “Not even. That’s a fuck-ton of blood. He’s immortal—next best thing to a vampire. Shouldn’t he be healing?”

  Sal emerged from the little side room and I almost lost track of my question. From neck to ankle she was clad in heavy, skin-tight leather. The clinging catsuit had a futuristic look, with jointed sections of body armor attached above and beneath her ample chest, down the arms, along the hips. The sectioned armor had a rib-like pattern that made it look like she had killed an Alien queen just to skin her for her chitin. Similar sections of xenomorphic armor ran all down the back of the suit, following both the shape and placement of Saliriel’s long spine. I had no idea where the suit hid its zipper—it wasn’t visible.

  Producing a smooth, black hair tie from who knew where, Saliriel swept her bleached blonde mass into a severe ponytail, completing her transformation into Battle Barbie. The effect was only intensified by a sturdy pair of over-the-knee boots, as armored as the body suit. Like the strappy heels they’d replaced, the boots sported wicked stilettos, steel-bright and gleaming.

  “Heels?” I said, momentarily at a loss for anything more coherent. “Don’t you have sensible footwear?”

  Sal’s response was to sweep one leg in a vicious, blurring roundhouse. The heel sliced the air at roughly throat level and could have gone higher with little effort. Air rustled my hair with the nearness of its passage. I barely had time to stumble away before her foot was back on the ground. Her balance never wavered.

  “Don’t be fooled by the vicissitudes of fashion,” she declared. Bending nimbly at the waist, she adjusted a strap at her ankle. “And to answer your previous question, your tribe has hunted mine since the fall of the Great City. What you lack in physical strength, you make up for in magic and cunning.” Fluidly, she straightened, striding past me for the door. Aside from the strike of her deadly heels on the tiled floor, her passage was whisperingly silent. Supple and oiled, the leather of her catsuit didn’t even creak. “He’ll have some item, prepared ahead of time. The zealot Judges always do.”

  “Shit,” I breathed. I knew exactly what she was talking about—I’d worn the damned things myself. As confirmation, I brandished the fading damage at my wrist. “The Thorns of Lugallu.”

  “What?” At the sound of that name, Sal stopped and rounded on me a foot from the door.

  “He had these handcuffs,” I said. “Used them on me—called them Thorns of Lugallu.”

  Thickly, she swallowed. It was rare for Sal’s practiced features to betray anything that she didn’t want them to, but the momentary slither of fear seemed genuine—and then some. Lips parting, she drew a breath. Resolutely, she composed herself. When she spoke again, her voice was tight and hushed.

  “That would do it.”

  The total absence of canned bravado frightened me. I resisted the urge to check my phone again to study that awful image. Just the taunt and the picture—no demands. No questions. That didn’t look good for Remy.

  “He can’t kill him, can he?” I asked. “Not permanently, I mean.”

  “Nothing is permanent,” she whispered, as if reassuring herself of the fact.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Lightly, she rapped her knuckles against the hard chestguard of protective plates, directly over her heart. “A well-placed strike can discorporate us, if enough power is run through the weapon. I know you’ve seen this. I’ve not forgotten how you murdered our sibling Kessiel.”

  Murder was a funny way of saying “self-defense,” but this wasn’t the time to quibble. I bit the insides of my lips to keep from saying anything, and let her talk.

  “Physical death is unpleasant,” she said. “Even though we are immortal, none of us actively seek it. There are costs to our reclaiming. Inconveniences. It takes effort and we can face certain… hurdles.”

  “Like the handcuffs?”

  Her sharp chin dipped once in assent. “If Remy is killed while he’s wearing them, they’ll interrupt his reclaiming.” Grimly, she added, “Depending on how well the bonds are crafted, they may prevent it entirely. That kind of delay is… damaging. He could be lost for centuries.”

  Mutely, I digested this revelation. I wasn’t stupid, though—I knew she was leaving out as much as she revealed. This was Sal, after all.

  But something that interfered with the reclaiming—that was no joke.

  Each of the tribes had a different way of incarnating. Reclaiming was the Nephilim variation on rebirth. To me, it was the creepiest of all of them. The Voluptuous Ones literally inhabited their blood—vampires of the purest sort—and when they sloughed off their mortal shells, that blood quested forward like a great, crimson parasite. The Nephilim blood-soul would escape to the Shadowside and seek another host—always one of their anchors.

  I had no idea if the blood-soul could take over anyone who wasn’t an anchor, or what happened to the person rightly born into that anchor’s body once the blood-soul came home to roost, and I didn’t really want to ask. I’d seen the process play out once with Kessiel, and I still had nightmares about it.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I asked. Nothing was free in her world, especially not information.

  “Because tonight, you and I have a common enemy, Zaquiel,” she responded. “And, above all else, I want us to win.”

  39

  In the hallway, Tanisha remained stiffly at attention, one arm resting at the small of her back, the other hand lingering on the butt of her pistol. Her head snapped our way the instant Sal hastened through the door.

  “Get Caleb on the comms and tell him he’s in charge until further notice,” Saliriel said crisply. The towering guard—still dwarfed by Saliriel’s leather-cla
d form—didn’t even blink. She had the walkie in hand before Sal was completely finished, waiting only to hear if her mistress had any further orders. “After Caleb, call Ava. Have her bring the car around. I want the Denali, not the limo.” Again, Tanisha nodded, eyes clear and focused. “Get my weapons and get Javier. You’re coming, too. Be prepared for a battle. Remy’s been taken.”

  The first subtle hint of shock touched Tanisha’s dark face. Muscles in her throat worked. Beyond that, she stood rock-solid. After the briefest hesitation, she nodded.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As the suited guard moved to carry out her orders, Saliriel motioned impatiently for me to join her in the hall.

  “Where are we going, Anakim?” she snapped. “He sent the photo to you. You must have some idea.”

  “Parma,” I said. “It has to be. Remy was on the phone when I crashed—”

  “On top of your every other disaster tonight, you’ve wrecked my beautiful car?” she demanded.

  “Are you serious?” I replied. “Forget the fucking Hellcat. It’s a thing—irrelevant.” With rushed, sweeping steps, Sal began to thread through the maze of back halls. I followed at her heels, for once the one who had to hustle to keep up. Her stride was enormous. “But the last thing Remy heard was a near-collision. We’d been talking about Marjory. When I didn’t answer right away, he must have gone to her house, looking for me.”

  “Off to your rescue again,” she growled. “You’re going to get him killed, Anakim.”

  “Not tonight,” I vowed.

  “You’d better hope not.” There was no mistaking her threat.

  The crackle of a walkie and Tanisha’s marching gait echoed from the corridor behind us. Saliriel paused at an intersection, one black hall leading deeper into the maze of Heaven’s back rooms, another angling in the direction of the lounge and dance floor. She canted her head, listening, I realized, to both sides of the walkie conversation. To my ears, Tanisha’s ceaseless flow of orders was nothing more than a husky rhythm punctuated by occasional crackles and bouts of silence.