by E. A. Copen
A man stepped up to the edge of the chasm next to me. No, not a man. A god. He was tall, dark skinned with heavy lines under his eyes. In place of the golden jackal he’d worn the last time I saw him, Anubis wore nothing more than a plain, white tunic. He left his bald head uncovered.
“You’ve made a mistake,” the god said without looking at me.
“Dammit, I knew I should’ve switched my car insurance.”
He regarded me with a cool glare. “You gave yourself to an Archon, knowing he would use you for evil.”
I turned to face him. “If I hadn’t, he would’ve crushed Emma. Probably Moses too. He’d have hurt untold numbers of innocents to get to me. At least this way, it’s only me dying.”
“Dying?” Anubus’ eyebrows shot up. “You think he will allow you to die? Did you not see what he did with the last Horseman in his service? If I allow you to return, you will find no reprieve in death.”
I shivered. He’d said if he let me go back, which meant there was a chance this time I wasn’t going back. My hand went to my bicep where the ghoul bite was. Did I even want to go back? He was right when he said I wouldn’t die, not without some intervention on my part.
“He hasn’t won yet,” I said. “I don’t care. I’m still free. He can’t take the sky from me.”
Anubis frowned. Apparently, he didn’t get it. “You’re making light. This is serious. The time for levity has passed, Horseman. Now that he knows your weakness, he can compel you to do as he pleases. All he needs to do is threaten your loved ones.”
“And you’re missing my point. He caved, and all I had to do was put a knife to my neck. I’m worthless to him dead. I’m not all out of bargaining chips just yet.”
“Do you think he will give you another chance to harm yourself?” He shook his head and turned back to face the chasm. “I’m sorry, Lazarus, but even if he does, this can only end with your death. The bite you’ve suffered has festered, and if the corruption is allowed to spread, it will poison your mind, just as it did with Dominique. You’ll lose the will to resist. A ghoul seeks a master. They are drawn to strength. You’ll be helpless to do anything but obey.”
He was quiet for a time. I stood next to him, listening to the supernatural silence, knowing it should have been too loud for me to hear my own thoughts, let alone hear him speak.
“Give me until sunrise tomorrow,” I said. “By then, the Archon will have either cast his spell and be done, or I’ll have found a way to defeat him. Either way, that should be before I turn into a ghoul. Maybe even long enough I can fix some of the damage the Archon has done.”
He sighed. “Much can happen in twenty-four hours.”
I cocked my head to the side and raised an eyebrow at him. “Come on, man. You afraid I’ll cheat death? Look at who you’re talking to. I know better than anyone you can’t cheat death. Death always wins.”
He looked down his long nose at me. “I suppose a single day will make no difference either way. Not for you anyway. And it may actually do some good for the state of the world. But there will be consequences. I cannot send you back and risk the Archon misusing your powers.”
“I’m tapped anyway.” I shrugged. As far as I was concerned, Anubis taking my magic away for my last day on Earth was a good thing. For one, the Archon couldn’t force me to use my powers to hurt people. I needed to retain my Horseman powers though, or I’d never be able to put Jean and Kaitlynn back together. “What about the Soul Vision and the Horseman bits?”
He rolled his long, white sleeves up. “As I am not the bestower of such powers, I cannot rob you of them. However, since you will no longer have magic to draw upon, each time you use your Horseman powers you will be drawing on your own life as a source of power. Do so with care. The more you draw, the faster you will decay. I do not know where the limit is, but you would be wise not to test it.” He held his hands out in front of him, palms up.
“It’s only twenty-four hours,” I said, wiping my hands on my pant leg. “I shouldn’t burn out that quickly.”
I put my hands in his expecting some sort of magical explosion or at least to get zapped with magic. Nothing happened.
“So, um, do I need to do something or do you?”
“Patience, Lazarus.”
I huffed out a breath, realizing I’d somehow been holding it that entire time. As I did, a new sound echoed through the valley, a sort of whistling whumpa-whumpa-whumpa. The wind picked up around us, tugging at my clothes, pulling my hair. I tightened my grip on Anubis’ hands. Behind him, the conical shape of a tornado loomed, creeping closer. My ears popped. Pressure built inside my skull, the blood pounding in my brain to the same beat as the tornado’s spinning. I thought my eyes would pop out of my head. To keep that from happening, I squeezed my eyes shut tight.
A wall of wind hit me, pulling my feet from under me. Invisible debris pelted my face, arms, and legs but I still held my grip on Anubis’ fingers. Spinning rain turned into lances of ice water that hit hard enough to leave bruises. It lasted maybe a minute before the wind died and left us suspended in mid-air.
I opened my eyes and looked up. It was like looking at raw power. Lightning bridged the gap between the spinning walls of wind, zigging and zagging in fractal patterns. Dirt, trees and whole buildings crumbled like nothing against the wall of gray-black wind, which would have been invisible if not for all the debris.
The hair all over my body suddenly stood on end. Power surged through me from my feet up through my head. My body went rigid as a bolt of lightning tore through me to strike the ground.
There was a blinding flash of light, intense heat crawling all over my skin, and then suddenly I was lying in the back seat of a Mercedes, sprawled over Khaleda’s lap. She drew a hand over the side of my face and pressed a finger to her lips.
I scowled at her and closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, the car was stopped, and two skinny guys were fumbling with my body to get me out of the back of the car. Khaleda shoved one of them aside with a hard push to the shoulder, and my feet hit the pavement. I let out a small grunt. Being jostled hurt a lot more in the joints than I expected.
“Not like that, you idiot,” Khaleda said, opening an umbrella and handing it to the goon that had dropped my legs. She took his place, lifting my legs onto a gurney, the kind ambulances used. “Do you want him to hit his head? If he stays unconscious much longer, your master’s going to be looking for someone to take out his frustration on.”
She pulled me onto the gurney with the help of the two very skinny men. Starving men, I thought. Skinny implied there was some muscle left. These two had the sunken faces, the bloated bellies and rotten teeth of decaying corpses and yet they moved around, very much alive.
I closed my eyes and tried to pull on the life around me. I knew it was there, even if I were somewhere in a cement jungle surrounded by monsters hovering on the brink of death. There should’ve been grass, trees, bugs, something for me to draw on to heal myself. Life had always been the key to a quick recovery after overusing my powers.
But nothing came to me. True to Anubis’ words, he’d taken my powers and left me with nothing. To test the theory, I was tempted to call up my Soul Vision, just to make sure the Horsemen powers were still there, but it wasn’t worth draining my life just to see.
“You’re going to need to recover quickly.” Khaleda’s voice was low, but not quite a whisper. Whispering would’ve been pointless this close to the Archon’s goons.
I rolled my head back and forth. “I’m spent. No more necromancer magic for me. Joke’s on him if that’s what he was expecting.”
“The master has plans,” said one of the goons. A hiccoughing hissing sound followed. It took me a minute to process that it was supposed to be laughter. “The Horseman will obey, or we get to eat. Please disobey him. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted a morsel of food.” A pale tongue ran over thin, chapped lips.
I shuddered. If I didn’t do exactly as he ordered betwee
n now and the blood moon to the best of my ability, he’d probably send those things, whatever they were, to hurt people. He’d promised not to kill anyone, but that deal only held as long as I kept up my end of the bargain. I had no illusions about how things would go if I did find a way to off myself either. He’d be furious and go after my friends, starting with Emma. I’d have to walk a fine line, stall as much as I could and think up a way out of this that took him with me.
Of course, I was starting from scratch. I knew almost nothing about Archons, least of all how to kill them. My one sort of ally, Khaleda, had already admitted that she didn’t either, but she did know someone who probably did. Someone who had already made a point to protect his investment. I just had to find a way to get word to him.
I tried to lift my head to look around, but my shoulders wouldn’t cooperate enough to get them off the surface of the gurney, so I just turned my head. By the smell of mud and fish, I placed us near the riverfront. The hollow echo of Khaleda’s heels and the uneven way the gurney rolled told me we were on a wooden surface. I’d already guessed we were on one of the docks. The question was, which one?
Raindrops struck water to my right, the wind rocking the few boats docked there. The boats didn’t look like ferries, and no paddle boat appeared to be waiting silently in the water, which meant I’d never been to this particular dock. White boats swayed against the water, small, day craft that casual fishermen took out to catch bass. The channel between the dock we were on and the other side was narrow, far too narrow for a boat of any size to dock. Buildings passed by on the other side. Nothing seemed to have a sign, meaning there was no way I could tell exactly where we were.
The goons lifted the gurney up a half step and rolled it just a little further down before stopping and spinning it ninety degrees. My stomach lurched and left a burning feeling in my throat. My gurney tilted and we started up a gangplank toward a massive, white boat.
Despite growing up in New Orleans, I’ve never been on a boat except for the one time Pony thought it’d be a good idea to teach me to fish for my supper. Within fifteen minutes of setting out, I’d capsized the boat, and we wound up treading water for forty minutes while the Coast Guard came to get us. I don’t do boats. As such, I know next to nothing about them.
I couldn’t tell the big, white boat I was being dragged onto from any other, but I guessed it was probably a yacht. It looked too nice to be called a sailboat. In my mind, that word was reserved for a boat that had a sail, for one. This one didn’t. There was a large deck with a cabin on top that looked sort of like an oversized, squished car with a sunshade on top. All of it was pristine white.
I rolled up onto the deck still strapped to my gurney. The goons spun it again and marched me down another ramp into what looked like a kitchen. They dropped me the last foot without any support. Had I not been strapped down, I’d have bounced right out of the gurney.
“Careful now,” said the Archon’s voice, though I couldn’t see him. “He’s still our guest.” A moment later, he appeared at my side, a delicate looking glass of wine in his hand. His smile reminded me of a shark. “And I see our esteemed guest is awake. How are you feeling, Lazarus?”
“Like I won the bad luck lotto,” I quipped. “Let’s cut out the small talk. You wanted me for a reason, and you’ve got about eight hours until the blood moon rises. I assume you brought me on Boaty McBoatface for a reason?”
His smug smile turned into a frown. It touched my heart to see a villain so irritated. “You’re aboard the Dulcinea. True, she’s no Dorada, but times change. So too do a pirate’s needs.”
“Privateer,” I corrected.
“Excuse me?”
“The real Jean Lafitte wouldn’t call himself a pirate.”
The Archon took a step forward, looming over me. “The real Jean Lafitte was a slaver, an alcoholic, and a puffed-up idiot with an over-inflated ego and a distorted sense of his own existence. He was as despicable as I am, I’m afraid. Or maybe worse. Yet this putrid, stinking city celebrates his one act of bravery as if that makes up for a lifetime of cowardice and despicable behavior.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong. Jean Lafitte—the real Jean Lafitte and not the one New Orleans liked to celebrate—made his fortune on the backs of slaves. It wasn’t excusable just because it’d been two hundred years and I wasn’t going to defend his poor choice of profession. The one thing I wasn’t going to let slip was this monster calling him a coward. “No man who hunts monsters like you for a living can be called a coward.”
The Archon’s grin widened. “A monster hunter? Is that what he told you? I’m afraid you’ve been lied to.”
“Yeah? If he wasn’t looking into things, what was he doing on board the ship the night he found you and your pile of bloody bones?”
“Running,” said the Archon matter-of-factly, “from me. Only I suppose he didn’t know it at the time. Not until it was too late. He and his crew thought they’d happened upon an easy score in the Gulf. Instead, they sprang a trap that eventually gave me the use of their bodies. You see, Lazarus, I get what I want. Even if you think you can trick me, you’ll lose.” He finished his wine and stepped out of view.
I threw a hand out to grab the railing of the gurney, first on one side and then the other. With a little help from Khaleda, I pulled myself into a sitting position. The cabin was nice. Everything was either the same pristine white as the rest of the yacht or a light-colored wood paneling. Two sofas lined either wall with comfortable-looking padding. A small, square table sat in front of one sofa. Red plastic cups sat on it along with an open pizza box. All but two slices of the pepperoni and mushroom pizza were gone.
Three children sat on the sofa, terrified looks in their eyes. One, a little girl, sat curled up with her knees drawn to her chest, her breathing fast, eyes unfocused. The boy next to her trembled like a frightened puppy. A cute blonde girl with curls sat next to him, repeatedly running her fingers over the hem of her white dress.
My heart leaped into my throat. Morningstar had said he’d need to kill twelve children total before the blood moon. We’d confirmed six bodies, with a suspected seventh. Morningstar suspected we’d missed a few. Maybe his ghoul had eaten too much of them to identify. But these kids, these three pre-pubescent kids, would probably be all he needed to complete his ritual.
The Archon leaned against the counter that separated the kitchen area from the second sofa. “I made a mistake with the last one.”
He didn’t look like a guy who’d made a mistake. He looked smug, proud. Almost excited that he’d gotten caught.
“Families with only one child are much more protective of their children than those who have children to spare. With two parents to love them, it is much more difficult to steal them away, even if they are problem children.” He gestured to the children. “These won’t be so easily missed. Mommy’s at work. Stay inside and don’t open the door for strangers. I’ll call to check in. But they don’t call, not if they forget. If work gets too busy. If someone else holds them up.” The Archon’s chuckle was slimy, like an oil slick of sound. “And you’d be surprised how many children will still invite a stranger in if he has a puppy.”
“Help,” shrieked one of his goons in a mocking tone. “This puppy was just hit by a car! Please let me in, little girl, so I can call an emergency vet!”
“Excuse me, little boy,” chimed in the other, “I’ve lost my dog. I saw him in your backyard. I’ve no idea how he got in there. Would you mind letting me in to get him?”
“Bastards,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “I’ve met some bad guys in my time, but you really take the cake.”
The Archon shrugged as if it were no big deal. “I could do worse. So much worse, Lazarus.”
“What’s worse than kidnapping and murdering children?”
His eyes glittered. “Feeding them to a ghoul while they’re still alive. He liked to hear them scream, you know. It took him two days to finish the first one. He’d have taken
longer if I hadn’t told him to hurry up.”
I turned away, unwilling to look at him anymore. Rage boiled in my chest. Monstrous didn’t even begin to describe what this Archon was.
“I see you’re able to move on your own,” said the Archon, his tone changed. Back to business then. Good. The gloating was making me sick. “How long until he’ll be able to stand?”
It took me a minute to realize he was talking to Khaleda and not me. She gave me a pensive glance. “Eight to twelve hours without intervention. His magic is drained, and the wards on the boat will keep him from drawing much power. However, he is the Pale Horseman. He can heal himself by devouring souls just like any other Horseman.”
“Bitch,” I snarled out.
“I’ll own that,” she said, smiling before turning back to the Archon. “Now, about the money.”
A chill ran up my spine. Money? What money?
The Archon slid a covering off the sink and lifted out a white envelope bulging with something rectangularly shaped. He tossed to Khaleda who caught it, opened it, and thumbed through a thick stack of green.
The bitch had sold me out. I didn’t know what her end game was or how she’d managed it, but I’d played right into her hands. She was the only one I’d told about Dominique. She’d known the when, the where, and the how. Khaleda had also been the only one to know how bad the ritual would drain me. And she’d told the Archon all of it, where to find me, when to come, and how I’d be weak as a kitten and unable to defend myself.
I don’t know why I was surprised. She was a monster after all, and she’d warned me not to trust her.
I lowered my head. “Just whose side are you on anyway, Khaleda?”
“I thought you’d figured it out, Lazarus,” she said without looking at me. “I’m on my side.”
“And what about daddy dearest Morningstar?”
She didn’t answer, but I had a feeling I already knew what she’d have said anyway. She’d have sold him too for the right price.
