He carried the box over to one of the cluttered bookshelves. Sitting on a shelf in front of a few oversized tomes was a small, ancient-looking leather globe of the Earth on a polished stone stand. He pulled the globe forward, tipping it on a hidden lever in its base, and the bookshelf swung open on concealed hinges. Behind it was a metal door. There was no knob or handle, only a keypad. Isaac pressed a few of the keys in sequence, and the metal door swung open to reveal a doorway in the wall. Light poured out it, and a strange, deep hum.
Isaac’s vault. This was where he kept the dangerous artifacts he sent the others to secure. It was also what he was protecting, I realized. The reason he didn’t want any of his operations traced back to him. Unlike what was displayed around the room, the vault contained the big-ticket items, the truly powerful artifacts the Infected would kill for. If they got their hands on this collection, they would have the magical equivalent of a nuclear arsenal.
I couldn’t see much of the vault’s interior from where I stood, just what was on a few of the shelves by the door: a sword in a scabbard that glowed bright emerald green; a small statuette of a multiarmed figure that seemed to be vibrating like it couldn’t sit still; a fleshy, tentacled mass inside a Mason jar that thrashed its limbs angrily against the glass; and money. Stacks of it. I’d never seen so much money in one place before. I’d figured Isaac was loaded, he’d have to be to afford a place this big in New York City, but this was beyond the pale. If Forbes ran a list of the richest mages in the world, I was sure he’d be at the top.
Isaac emerged empty-handed from the vault, closed the metal door, and pulled the leather globe again. The bookshelf swung shut. “It’s safe now. Good work, everyone.”
A sudden, bursting splash of water came from behind us. I turned around. Thornton sat up in the tub with a guttural cry. Gabrielle, still holding his hand, nearly fell backward in surprise.
I rushed to the side of the tub with Isaac, Philip, and Bethany at my heels. What was left of Thornton’s shirt was translucent from the water, and through it I could see his skin had healed itself. The discolored patches of necrotic tissue were gone. The stitches had dissolved, and his scars had vanished. His face looked healthier, too. Fuller and less corpselike.
Gabrielle gripped his hand tightly in both of hers. “Thornton! Thornton, are you okay?”
“God!” he cried through gritted teeth. “It feels like I’m being skinned alive!”
“Your nerve endings are healing,” she said. “Give it time. The pain will pass, I promise.”
Thornton turned to her. He stared at her hands for a long moment, then murmured, “I—I can feel your hands.” He put his other hand over hers and laughed. “I can feel them!”
She kissed his hands. Her chin quivered with emotion. “Oh, Thornton, I’m so sorry. I should have been with you. I should have come running.”
“It’s not her fault, it’s mine,” Isaac said, putting a hand on Thornton’s shoulder. “But she put up one hell of a fight, believe me.”
Thornton smiled and touched Gabrielle’s face. “I bet you did.”
“I’m so sorry, Thornton,” she said again.
“I was worried I’d never…” He winced suddenly. “… see you again…” He grunted in pain. “Ungh … my whole body’s … on fire!”
“That’s just the Methusal spring doing its job,” Gabrielle said. “Your body is healing. Hang in there, baby. It’ll be over soon. You can do this.”
Gathered around the tub, Isaac and Gabrielle wore the same hopeful expression. Philip looked as enigmatic as ever, his eyes hidden behind his mirrored shades, his face neutral. And then there was Bethany. No matter how hard she was trying to hide it, she didn’t look happy. She’d had her doubts from the start that this would work. But she was wrong. She had to be. This time, just this once, maybe Bethany wasn’t right about something.
She’d said there was no spell that could bring the dead completely back to life, but Gabrielle’s plan was clearly working. Thornton looked like his old self again, the way he’d looked when I first met him. No, he looked better, actually—Thornton had already been dead the first time I saw his human form. Now he looked alive. This changed everything. It should have been impossible, but here he was, living proof that magic could conquer death after all.
Thornton finally noticed me squatting by the side of the tub. “You,” he said weakly. “Did anyone check this son of a bitch for a gun? He’s got a nasty habit of pointing one right at you.”
“It’s okay, baby,” Gabrielle said, stroking Thornton’s hair. “Everything’s okay. He’s with us now. We came to an understanding.”
“I’m sorry about before, Thornton,” I said. “I panicked and lost my judgment. I hope you can forgive me.”
Thornton looked up at Bethany. She nodded and said, “It was classic Trent, acting without thinking first. But it’s fine. Gabrielle read his mind. He’s not a threat.”
Thornton’s eyes focused on me again. “Fine, but do it again and I’ll bite your fucking face off. At least you stood up for us in front of those two creeps.” He winced in pain. Through clenched teeth he added, “Just tell me you didn’t give them the box. Tell me it’s safe.”
I nodded. “It’s in Isaac’s vault now, safe and sound.”
“See? Everything’s going to be okay,” Gabrielle said.
Thornton cried out suddenly, an agonized sound. He must have been in intense pain. We looked at each other around the tub, not knowing what to do. Even Isaac seemed at a loss. Thornton writhed in the water and banged the side of the tub with his fist, making Gabrielle jump.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice high with panic. She gripped his free hand tightly. “Baby, what’s happening?”
“The amulet,” he groaned. “Ungh, something’s wrong … Not now, I’m not ready…”
His whole body thrashed in the tub, the golden water sloshing over the sides. He was seizing. I tried to hold him steady, but he was shaking too hard. The others reached in around me, and together we stabilized him as best we could.
Tears streamed down Gabrielle’s face. “Baby, talk to me, what’s wrong?”
“It … stopped…” he said, his voice hoarse. His body thumped against the porcelain as another seizure rocked him. His contracting muscles felt as hard as rock under my hands. When the seizure passed, I let go of him, albeit hesitantly.
Gabrielle grabbed his head and turned his face to her. “Baby, look at me!”
He grimaced in pain. “I’m sorry, Gabrielle … I tried … I tried to stay…”
“Baby, don’t talk like that!”
He touched her face with his hand. She held it to her cheek, her fingers wrapped around the leather bracelet she’d given him. “But at least,” he said, “at least … I got to touch you again … and feel it.…”
He cried out suddenly. A shaft of blinding light burst out of the amulet. It shot from Thornton’s chest up to the ceiling, where it turned to billowing white smoke, swirling like a maelstrom between the chandeliers. The light kept pouring from the amulet, the blazing column disappearing into the center of the smoky vortex. There was a loud, sharp crack, as if the world itself had snapped in two, and then, as suddenly as it started, the light stopped. The smoke curled in on itself and vanished, leaving only the sharp smell of ozone in the air.
Thornton fell back limply, his head lolling against the side of the tub. His eyes were open, staring at me, but there was nothing in them anymore.
“No, baby, come on,” Gabrielle said. She took Thornton’s head in her hands and tipped it toward her. “Come on, stay with me.”
The room went quiet. We were too stunned, all of us, too shocked and grief-stricken to say anything. It looked wrong, how still Thornton was.
“Stay with me,” Gabrielle said again.
A quiet mechanical clicking sound answered her. A moment later, the amulet dislodged itself, rising up out of Thornton’s chest on its central spike. The four small red gems on its face, once so brightly
pulsing with the amulet’s energy, had turned smoky and dark.
Gabrielle shook her head defiantly. “No!” She put both hands on the amulet and pushed it back down, sinking the spike into the hole in Thornton’s chest again. The amulet clicked and lifted itself out again. She pushed it back into his chest over and over like some horrible version of CPR compressions, but each time it refused to stay down. “Not like this,” she insisted as she pushed it down one final time, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It doesn’t end like this. Not until we’re both old, not until we’ve done so much more.”
Bethany put a hand on Gabrielle’s arm, stopping her. In a hushed tone, she said, “The amulet only works once.”
Gabrielle finally let go of it. She collapsed beside the tub, sobbing.
“I’m so sorry, Gabrielle,” Bethany said. “The Methusal spring may have regenerated his skin and muscle, even his nerve endings, but Thornton was still dead. There was nothing you could do to change that. Nobody could.”
Gabrielle clung to Thornton’s hand. Even when Bethany tried to get her to let go of it, she wouldn’t.
I looked down at him, my breath coming in short, startled bursts. I drew my hand gently down his face, closing his eyes.
The full weight of it hit me then. Until this moment, Thornton’s death had seemed like a technicality—he was dead but still with us, still cracking jokes and fighting alongside us. The possibility that Gabrielle’s spell could reverse his condition had seemed so feasible. But Bethany was right. From the start, she’d said there was nothing we could do to save Thornton. I hadn’t listened, but I should have. Bethany was always right. It wasn’t fair, but she was always goddamn right.
Now, long overdue, it struck me with the force of a sucker punch I should have seen coming.
Thornton was dead.
Twenty-six
I helped them move Thornton’s body to the antique Queen Anne couch on the far side of the room. Philip went upstairs and brought down a white sheet. He covered Thornton with it. I felt like a hole had been torn inside me, a bitter, angry emptiness. Beneath that white sheet, Thornton’s body was good as new from the Methusal spring. Fully healed, yet still dead. It was a cold and merciless irony, courtesy of a world that didn’t give a damn.
Gabrielle sat on the edge of the couch, her head bowed in grief. The others gave her time alone with Thornton as they took the tub away and drained it someplace. I stood in the empty spot in the middle of the room where the tub had been. There were divots in the carpet from the tub’s clawed feet, the only reminder of where Thornton had died. Soon they would fade away, as if they’d never been there at all, and that only made me angrier.
I watched Gabrielle and thought of the goblin Binding Oath she’d taken with Thornton. It’d been the happiest day of her life. I could only imagine what she was feeling now. Gabrielle peeled back the white sheet to reveal Thornton’s face. With his eyes closed, he should have looked asleep, but instead he just looked … empty. She stroked his cheek.
The others came back. Bethany sat beside her, putting her arm around Gabrielle’s shoulders. Isaac whispered words of comfort. I stood apart from them, still an outsider. The four of them had a connection that bound them tight, a shared history and a trust that had developed over time. Those were things I’d never had with anyone, things Underwood had taught me were weaknesses to be exploited, but now, seeing the way they cared for each other, I understood it was what I’d been missing all along. A sense of belonging, of family. I wanted it more than anything.
Isaac came over to me. His face was long, and even paler than before. He sighed and said, “We still need to find out everything we can about Underwood. I could use your help.”
“Why bother?” I asked. “Stryge’s head is safe now.”
“Because I want to know why your boss wanted it,” Isaac said. “How did he even know about it? It’s not common knowledge.”
I shrugged. “He has buyers, people who commission him to find valuable items. One of them must have been familiar with the story.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. “Come with me, there’s something I’d like you to look at.”
We returned to the long table beneath the stained-glass windows. Isaac pulled up a chair and opened a sleek, expensive-looking laptop on the table. He tapped a few keys. The six video monitors on the wall flickered to life.
Faces began appearing on the screens, a different one on each monitor, and a few seconds later they were replaced with new ones. Some were photographs, others were paintings and drawings. The faces were male and female, old and young, every color and ethnicity; some were human and others, such as the tentacle-faced monstrosity that appeared briefly on one of the screens, were definitely not.
“What is this?”
“I’ve been putting together a database of the Infected,” Isaac said. “It’s far from complete, but it’s a good start. What I’d like you to do is watch the faces and keep an eye out for Underwood, or anyone you’ve seen him having dealings with.”
“Underwood isn’t infected,” I said.
“How do you know that?” he asked. “If he knows about Stryge’s head, odds are he knows about magic.”
He had a point, though I found it hard to believe. If Underwood were infected it would mean he had magic—which meant he wouldn’t need enforcers like Tomo and Big Joe. He wouldn’t need me, either. But I dutifully watched the parade of faces for a while, studying each one closely before moving on to the next. One resembled a woman who’d been genetically crossbred with a bat. Another looked for all the world like the pickled remains of a human head in a glass globe. “I really don’t think these are his kind of people,” I said.
“Just keep looking,” Isaac said. “Let me know if you see anyone you recognize, anyone at all.”
Another image flashed onscreen. This one caught my eye. A figure in a red hooded robe with a golden skull mask over his face. “Wait, hold on.”
Isaac tapped the keyboard and the image froze on the screen. “This one?”
“I’ve seen him before. I’m sure of it.”
“Where?” Isaac asked.
“Outside the safe house. He was standing across the street, watching the house. And then he disappeared.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Bethany demanded. She came over from the couch to join us.
“There wasn’t exactly a lot of time with the shadowborn trying to break down the door,” I explained. “After that, with everything that happened, I guess it slipped my mind.”
“He must have known we were in the house,” Bethany said.
“How? The ward was still active.”
Isaac tapped the keyboard, bringing up more information. The picture of the hooded figure appeared on five of the monitors, while the sixth filled with text. “He’s called Melanthius,” Isaac said, reading off the screen. “He’s half high priest and half manservant to an entity called Reve Azrael, also known as the Mother of Wraiths, and the Mistress of the Dead.”
“Sounds charming,” I said. “What do you mean by entity? Or do I not want to know?”
“No one has ever seen her,” he said. “No one knows what she looks like, or even what she is. All we know is that she’s a powerful necromancer.”
“So she can create revenants,” I said. “Like the one of Bennett that came to the safe house.”
“Precisely,” Isaac said.
“But what would she want with Stryge’s head?” Bethany asked.
He frowned. “That I don’t know.”
I stared at the picture on the monitor. Melanthius’s golden skull stared back at me, expressionless.
I spent another half hour reviewing the rest of the faces in Isaac’s database, but nothing else jumped out at me. No Underwood, and no one I’d seen him have dealings with. I wasn’t exactly surprised. Underwood was a violent and dangerous criminal, but one of the Infected? No.
“Damn. It was worth a shot,” Isaac said, leaning back in his chair. “So ei
ther Underwood’s new to the game, or I’m wrong about him and he’s not a player at all. Either way, we’re no closer to an answer than we were before.”
From the couch, Gabrielle said, “There might be another way.” She covered Thornton’s face with the sheet and came over to us, wiping away her tears.
Bethany touched Gabrielle’s arm. “Are you sure you want to do this? You don’t have to.”
Gabrielle patted Bethany’s hand and forced a thin smile. “It’s okay. Thornton would want us to carry on. He understood the importance of what we’re doing. Just … Philip, can you stay with him? I don’t want him to be alone.”
“He’s dead, he’s not going to care,” the vampire said flatly. Isaac shot him an angry look. Philip crossed his arms. “Fine,” he said, and went to sit beside Thornton’s body. “Humans. I’ll never understand you.”
Gabrielle turned to Isaac. She was putting up a strong front, but I could tell she was still in shock and deeply hurting. “There’s an old gas station in Brooklyn with a fallout shelter beneath it. That’s where Underwood operates from,” she said. Then, amazingly, she gave them the exact street address of the station on Empire Boulevard. She turned to me with a sheepish grin. “Sorry, I was in your head. I saw everything, even the street signs.”
Jesus. It was a good thing I didn’t have a bank account or I’d have to change my PIN number.
Isaac tapped furiously at the keyboard. A moment later, all six monitors lit up with images of the Shell station, each from a different angle, some far away, some as close as across the street. Rain fell across the images like strings of static. The sight of the station made my chest squeeze tight. I hadn’t realized how much I hated that place until now.
“That’s it,” I said.
“These are live feeds from security and traffic cameras all over the area,” Isaac explained. “I wish I could get closer, but this is the best I can—”
A bright flash on each of the video monitors interrupted him. The walls of the gas station blew apart in a huge, silent fireball—the cameras Isaac hacked into had no sound, only video. Towering gouts of flame shot into the sky. Weakened by the blast, the signpost tipped over, and I watched in shock as, from every conceivable angle, the broken HELL sign that had so aptly defined my life for the past year fell into the flaming wreckage.
Dying Is My Business Page 25
