The Resurrection Game

by Michelle Belanger

  “This way,” Sal said after a moment, urging me down the deeper hall. I hesitated, fixed on the door that led to the silver-spattered lounge in the other direction. Sal gave me a hard look, stopping short of grabbing me by the scruff of the neck. I stepped to the far side of the corridor before she could change her mind about it.

  “I need to take care of something first.” It came out as a half-hearted mutter, reluctance telegraphed through my every word.

  “What are you up to, Anakim?” she snapped.

  Unhappily, I gestured toward the door. “You’ve got a club packed with people and energy to spare,” I said. “I’ve got to use that while I can.” It hurt to admit, but after Bruce the Goose, I couldn’t take any further chances. Not with the hungry curse of the Eye hanging around my neck. I stuffed both fists into my pockets, hoping to hide my left palm before Sal could spot the tic. Her eyes went right to it—I wasn’t fooling anyone. After silent consideration, she dipped her head in a subtle, solemn nod. She knew what it had cost me to say even this much.

  “Do what you must,” she said. “Meet us around front in ten minutes. Be prompt.”

  Shoulders hunching, I nodded. We both avoided eye contact. Without further comment, Sal hastened down the corridor that wound deeper into her hidden domain. Dressed as she was in her clinging suit of armored leather, she blended seamlessly with the flat black of the ceiling, floor, and walls, until eye-trickingly, she seemed to be a disembodied head bobbing toward the vanishing point.

  Lingering at the crossway a moment longer, I struggled with distaste for what I knew I had to do. Month after month, I put off feeding as long as I could—it was the most awkward part of my Anakim nature, a weakness that made me feel like a thief, maybe even a rapist. But Lil had been right. I needed to get my shit together on this. Every tribe had their burden, and all the scruples in the world weren’t going to change the fact that my magic required power.

  Remy needed me at my best. I couldn’t let him down.

  I hit the door to the silver-spatter lounge, glad to find it empty. Marshaling my focus, I started peeling away my shields. Layer by painstaking layer, I stripped myself bare, all the while staring at the black leather couch where Remy had taught me how to put the shields up in the first place. My unlikely Nephilim mentor had used the image of a closed fist to help me focus, and now I used that in reverse, pulling both hands from my pockets and uncurling fingers stiff with nerves.

  Anxious reluctance spun a knot inside my chest—I didn’t like feeling this exposed. The cowl that hid my nature was linked inextricably with my shields. When I dropped the final layer, the cowl went, too. My wings rose reflexively behind me, a wall of living light stretching from one side of the room to the other. On the Shadowside they were a beacon. Without the cowl, anything inhuman could spot me a mile away.

  I rushed through the door to the club proper, eager to get this over and be on my way. The first step across the threshold brought me straight through the bitter stain left behind by poor Alice. Her final moments clung like a sticky membrane, and they threatened to drown my thoughts in dizzying waves. Panic, pain, and terror numbed me briefly. Tottering, I made it to the railing and seized the glossy wood as if it were the only thing that could keep me from being swept away.

  Below the observation deck stretched the main floor of the club, a writhing mass of bodies molten with glitter and sweat. The music pounded and the lightshow burst in scintillating patterns timed to its driving, electronic pulse. That pulse guided the collective emotions, too—seduction, yearning, passion, naked lust—higher and higher, a heady distillate of mortal pleasure. It surged wildly, as terrifying and awe-inspiring as any tsunami.

  Instead of shrinking away from the surging force, for once, I dove in. Emotions closed over me—utterly overwhelming at first. In the rush of sense and feeling, I floundered and nearly lost myself. Drowning felt like this—no up, no down, just whirling disorientation and water all around. I struggled to breathe against the panic. Slowly, distinctions appeared—my thoughts, their thoughts, my feelings, those of the crowd.

  This was hardly the first time I’d sipped power from a collection of people, but never in such an intense environment, and never so many mortals at once. With effort, I became cognizant of where I ended and where everyone else began, even as their stolen power coursed through me, rich with all of the different flavors of their minds.

  Cresting like a surfer atop a curling wave, I found I could ride it, this wild flood of mortal passion. The surging chaos became harnessed momentum, a great and rolling force that washed over me, through me, and carried me swiftly along. Entranced by the swirling energies that grew increasingly visible the more I drew upon them, I drifted from the observation deck, down the ringing metal stairway, to walk among the crowd.

  Bodies pressed around me. I shoved none of them away, but neither did I reciprocate their eager, flirtatious grasping. My focus wasn’t flesh. Hands fluttered against the rasp of my cheek, through tousled strands of my hair, and one dancer—male or female, it hardly mattered in this crowd—clung to the sinews of my thigh with enough exuberance that, briefly, their partner followed, murmuring invitations for me to join them.

  Breathing deep both their expectation and disappointment, I moved on. My wings spread across the crowd, gossamer beneath the strobes. Rather than over, they passed through the swaying, ecstatic bodies, tugging further power from the hidden chambers of their hearts. I dragged that energy into my center, swallowed it down, made it a part of me. Here and there, a head snapped up, eyes fixing vaguely in my direction as some mortal sensed the otherworldly touch. No one seemed to fully understand. Mesmerized by flesh and music, their focus swiftly faded and they melted back into the mass identity of the crowd.

  Taut with stolen power, I passed from the dance floor to the still-bustling foyer. Suited guards—two of them clearly Nephilim anchors—warily tracked my progress. Caleb wasn’t among them.

  As I bee-lined for the exit, the crowd parted before me, and I wondered what the guards saw. To my own perceptions, energy crackled around me in a wild nimbus from top to toe, focused especially around my hands. My cupped palms where I held it felt thick and hot, fingers almost swollen as I soaked in the stolen light. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, just unaccustomed. There was a sense of saturation and I knew I could only take so much before I had to do something with it.

  Blue-white fire kindled behind my eyes as I focused, and a pale haze blossomed across the world. Again I cloaked myself in a cowl, uncertain that the filmy veil could contain so much pulsing light. Then I pulled my wings against my back, and the cascading obfuscation dropped like a soft curtain, muffling me from the world.

  Shields next, layers and layers of them. Some to protect, others to distract. I ran my fingers across the thin line of symbols etched into the cuffs of my jacket, along the seam of the zipper, over the tongue of the belt that cinched the creaking leather at my waist. Silently, I renewed the subtle spells—armor that kept things like cacodaimons from piercing my flesh through the coat.

  Still, an overflow of energy leapt like lightning in my hands. I touched the pommels of my blades and felt them drink the power, their metal warm and thrumming in their hidden Kydex sheaths.

  Finally, I slipped a hand to my inner pocket. All the bouncers tensed, but I only sought the Stylus. I held my other hand loosely open, hoping to telegraph harmless intent. No one opened fire on me—yet. Head down, I kept walking. With one finger pressed against the sigiled case, I fed the intricate weave of magic that hid the ancient artifact. From everywhere and nowhere, the lust and joy of all the dancers continued calling, as if I’d left a piece of myself standing on the main floor of the club.

  Ignoring it, I shouldered through the doors to emerge beneath Heaven’s blood-red awning. Power coursed through my finger, refreshing all the magic burned into the little box. As the doors swung shut behind me, the lure of the dance floor faded. Not entirely gone, but dim enough to make it more manageab
le. Shaking the last dregs of excess energy from my hand, I scattered gleaming droplets like molten sapphires. They cascaded toward the pavement, winking out before making it halfway down. The center of my chest—normally hollow with my persistent state of near-starvation—felt hot, expansive, as if I’d swallowed a star.

  It was a wild and giddy sensation. I struggled not to enjoy it.

  Around the Denali, every face was fixed on me. Saliriel’s eyes reflected not yellow but blue fire, and I knew, in her way, she was seeing everything, no matter how thick my cowl.

  “Are you quite finished?” she called with forced nonchalance. She held her mouth tightly and a certain pinched look around her eyes made me think that, for a moment, Saliriel, a Decimus of the Nephilim, was genuinely afraid.

  Of me.

  The shrinking expression—so foreign on Sal—faded in the blink of an eye, replaced by a haughty mask, as derisive as it was jaded. Her ponytail plumed in the wind, diminishing the effect somewhat.

  “Unless you would prefer to delay us further while you pillage more of the power from within my club?” She framed it as a question, the final word hanging upon the air.

  “I’m good,” I said. My voice hit three notes at once, one of them so deep it registered more as sensation than sound. Swallowing against a rising sense of inhumanity, I curled my fingers around prickling power and stuffed them brusquely into my pockets. Some of the bluish tint to the world faded as I pulled myself together. Nodding toward the SUV, I took a halting step forward. Ava was already in the driver’s seat, Tanisha and Javier standing like heavily armed statues on either side of their gigantic mistress.

  “Let’s go.” My voice was my own again. Not that the other wasn’t also me.

  I just didn’t like it much.

  40

  Sal took shotgun, which surprised no one. She still had to adjust the seat to allow more room for her legs and those wickedly heeled death-boots. This wasn’t her regular vehicle—normally she tooled around in the back of a massive limo, when she deigned to leave Heaven at all.

  With no desire to sit close to either of the two suited bouncers, I waited for Tanisha and Javier to pile into the back. Javier alone, a flint-eyed, broad fortress of a man with cheeks like pitted granite, took up two peoples’ worth of space. Half of that seemed to be the hand-cannon that made all the wrong kinds of angles beneath the lines of his suit. Tanisha let him squeeze himself through the door first, eyes restlessly ticking to me. She looked away just as quickly when she caught me looking back.

  “What?” I demanded.

  She just shook her head, and angled herself into the far corner of the wide and cushy back seat, leaving a thick, demilitarized zone of space between herself and Javier. It wasn’t easy—on both of them, their shoulders were broad enough to carry a swing bridge. Sitting there next to the massive Latino, Tanisha almost looked like a woman of average size.

  I wondered what Sal had been thinking, tapping her for this detail. Tanisha exuded all the cold instincts of professional military, but she didn’t parse as an anchor. Since I’d strode from the club, every chance she got she stared at me like my face was turned inside out. I pulled the cowl a little tighter. Maybe it was doing a shittier job than I’d intended.

  Tanisha kept staring.

  “Fuck it,” I muttered and climbed into the middle section, yanking the side door closed behind me.

  “Address?” Ava asked. Sal’s driver leaned with her fingers poised over a screen built directly into the dash. A brightly colored GPS program awaited her input. I rattled off the street number for Marjory’s home, with the warning, “It’s a bitch to find.”

  “I’ll find it,” Ava assured. She adjusted the brim of her chauffeur’s hat, neatly tucking a strand of dark hair behind one ear. Like Tanisha, Ava didn’t parse as an anchor—lithe and curvy, she moved like a dancer, when Sal didn’t have her in chains. She shouldn’t be here, either, I mused. Zuriel would kill anyone he could, in the most excruciating manner that occurred to him.

  I buckled in quickly as Ava pulled away from the club, accelerating through the crowded parking lot at a pace that would have impressed even Lil.

  Once we were moving, Sal turned around in her seat and held something out. “This is for you.” It was a spare magazine for my gun. Baffled, I took it. I didn’t even ask how she knew to give me the right caliber. This was Sal, after all. “How many should we expect to fight?” she asked.

  “I’ve only seen Zuriel,” I said, “but he’s got this charm around his neck. An illusion. I’m pretty sure it’s Tuscanetti magic.”

  Sal gave a derisive sniff. “Those witches sell their magic to the highest bidder.” She turned her face to the window, watching the bricks of graffitied buildings streak by as Ava gunned it out of the Flats. “There will be repercussions if I find out which among them is the supplier.”

  “Veronica,” I spat. “I’d bet money on it.”

  My sister allowed me a sidelong glance. One perfectly plucked brow arched toward her hairline.

  “You’ve crossed swords with Lartha’s unwisely ambitious grand-daughter?”

  “Great-great-grand-daughter,” I corrected.

  Sal merely smiled. “Is that what she told you?” Languidly, she returned her gaze to the window, but the chilly detachment was nothing more than an act—I’d seen it before in situations worse than this. Underneath, Sal felt the same driving worry that I did.

  “I don’t really care what her relation is, so long as she isn’t part of this,” I said. “Veronica is bad news.”

  “They all are,” Sal agreed. “Now tell me the nature of this Tuscanetti illusion.”

  “It makes him look like me,” I said at length. “But he’s just a kid. Sixteen, seventeen tops.”

  “Anything else?” my sister said. All the others in the car remained stoically silent, save for the crisp, electronic voice of the GPS. Ava took the turn without even tapping the brakes for deceleration, controlling the hurtling Denali on a sharply curving on-ramp with the ease of a stunt driver. The whole vehicle shifted heavily right, Javier’s ballast the only thing keeping us from going up on two wheels.

  I gripped the seat as the tires squealed.

  “He can project the illusion—not just his image, but it also throws his voice.” Centripetal force made my own voice strain as I struggled to remain upright—relatively speaking. We merged onto the highway, Ava snaking between a semi and a panel truck in a maneuver I thought impossible for the big SUV. Convulsively, I swallowed.

  No one else so much as blinked.

  “No clue if there’s a limit on its range, but it makes him a bitch to shoot.”

  “Noted,” Saliriel replied.

  Smoothly Ava crossed into the fast lane. As she urged the Denali past the ninety mark on the speedometer, a text vibrated on my phone. I twitched, holding my breath as I dug the device from my back pocket. Saliriel caught the motion. Hell, she’d probably heard the buzz even through the muffle of my body.

  “Don’t respond to that,” she snapped. “They escalate once they get a response.”

  “They escalate if they don’t,” I replied.

  While she didn’t concede my point, she broke eye contact. “It pays to draw it out as long as possible,” she said to her window.

  “He likes it that way,” I muttered. Easing a breath between my teeth, I brought up the text, fully expecting another grisly close-up of my captured sibling. But it wasn’t from Remy’s number. The text was from Father Frank.

  Why is Lil here? She won’t go away.

  The starkly glowing letters managed to convey his flat annoyance without the benefit of inflection or emojis. Every muscle I hadn’t realized was straining abruptly relaxed.

  “It’s not Zuriel,” I assured as I started tapping a response. Saliriel turned in her seat long enough to glower at me while I bent over the screen.

  I asked Lil to watch you both

  You with Halley?

  Three dots showed that he was alr
eady typing before I hit send. Our responses crossed in the digital ether, overlapping on arrival.

  She’s making the family nervous.

  You know how I feel about her.

  The padre trusted Lil about as far as he could throw her spectral lioness—which, of course, he couldn’t. I was trying to compose something appropriately reassuring and doing a bad job of it when a second message followed on the heels of the first. The smartphone’s vibration was a bright burst of sensation in the palm of my hand. It was his answer to my initial text.

  Yes. I’m at the Davis house.

  Almost as soon as that came through, another rattled the device.

  She doesn’t need to be here.

  Hurriedly, I mashed the delete button until the cursor ate all my painstakingly chosen words, leaving a freshly blank field. Sal was glaring. So was Tanisha. Both their gazes hung on me like weights.

  “Domestic troubles?” Saliriel inquired archly.

  “Ssh,” I hissed. “Let me think.” My finger hovered over the tiny on-screen keyboard while the cursor winked tauntingly.

  “You better put that thing on silent once we get where we’re going,” Tanisha warned. “All that buzz-buzz will give your position away in a heartbeat.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, settling on a foreshortened message. I tapped the words, fixing a couple of ridiculous autocorrects because my spelling went to shit when I rushed on such a tiny surface. Then I hit send.

  I’ll explain later. Let her do what I asked.

  And thank her.

  If I knew the padre at all, he was scowling unhappily at his phone, holding the device at arm’s length because, even at seventy, he still refused the necessity of reading glasses. But he stopped arguing, as attested by his swift, solitary response, as terse as Father Frank ever got with me.

  OK

  I was just glad to know they were safe. I tapped a quick thanks, and that was the end of it. Before I put away the phone, I backed out of the series of texts and brought up Remy’s bloody photo. That solitary eye, the iris such a startling blue even without all that crimson to frame it… I tried not to think what Zuriel might be motivated to do to those unearthly eyes. As much as I dreaded another text from the sadistic Anakim, I half-hoped he’d send more pictures. I needed more to go on. Aside from heading vaguely toward Marjory’s, I had no idea where Zuriel had taken him.