Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel (24 page)

I can do more,
thought Nathaniel.
To help win this battle
. Perhaps only for a while. Just as he could halt Time, but not end it—

He sensed the chasm inside him filling with awesome possibility. Something of which only his powers were capable. But which might also encompass his own destruction.

Such an undertaking might be possible for him—but it would call upon every resource within his being. It was another kind of spell, one that tore down the barrier between the worlds—and one that he had never attempted before. And worse—one that nobody had ever even contemplated before. The spells his master had taught him had merely helped him do his job of reaping souls. Anything else, he had been sternly instructed to put out of his mind.

Of course,
he remembered Death telling him,
it is possible to create new spells. Ones that no one has created before. But
you
cannot do that
.

He had demanded to know why. He had learned all the spells that Death had taught him, mastered them, gathered souls with them. Why couldn’t he make a new spell?

Because
—Death had patiently spoken—
for you to create a spell, to bring it forth from inside your being, you would first need to be the master of yourself. The spell would need to come from your own innermost certainties and desires. But for that, Nathaniel, you would have to know, at last, exactly who you are. And more … You would finally need to decide to which realm of existence you want to belong. To that other world, in which your body exists—or here with me, in this quieter world where the darkness inside you is at home. You would have to choose between life, and pain—and my existence, in which all such human burdens are but a memory that can no longer hurt you.

His master’s words faded from his thoughts.

It had taken him a long time—ten years—to figure out, but he had made his decision. His choice. The world to which he belonged. The will that his dead father had given him—that had been the last piece he had needed to complete the puzzle. The will that he had lost, that the Devil had stolen from him—that had been a child’s will, still immature and ignorant. What he had now inside himself, his father’s will, was one that had become mature, through grief and suffering.

And that was what had allowed the great understanding to unveil itself inside him.

Nathaniel gave a slow nod, the realization flooding through him.
I belong to both—the living and the dead
. He was at home here, in the world of those who still breathed, and whose hearts beat in their chests, and who still wanted so much, no matter the pain and cost, no matter how much those desires tormented them. But he would be at home there as well, in that other world, the one he shared with his master Death.
And that means,
he realized,
that any magic I create—it would work there as well as here
. In both realms. A spell for the living and the dead …

And that would be enough. Enough to assemble an army. One that could defeat the Devil.

He closed his eyes. He spread his arms, palms outward, feeling the power begin its slow, gathering course, up from the base of his spine.

The effort needed to create the spell, the demand upon his innermost resources, grew in tandem with the power he had summoned up. One would have to be greater than the other, he knew; that was the risk he had undertaken. Once committed to this course, there was no turning back. If there wasn’t enough power within him to complete the spell, then it would destroy him.

And pain—that was involved as well. More than he might be able to endure. Nathaniel could feel the pins that held his soul inside him begin to tremble. They were already weakened by all that he had gone through. If they gave way … then he would no longer be in the realm of the living. His master’s world would claim him forever. He clenched his open hands into fists, gritting his teeth against the agony that spread outward from his heart.

Time crawled, but did not stop. It crept on, agonizingly slow, as both the power and the need swelled inside him.

Then he could hear, beyond the sounds of battle and murder in the garden square, another sound. Other voices, other murmurs and cries, from those just beginning the journey he had already made, from the realm of the dead to the realm of the living.

In all of the city’s graveyards, the dismal territories of neglected tombstones falling amidst tangled weeds, every creature—once living, once human—who had suffered because of the Devil’s schemes and entrapments, now parted the dank grass above themselves. Their cold, pale hands pushed aside the lids of their pauper coffins, ripped aside the tattered winding-sheets in which they had been buried, and clawed upward through the clay and mud that had stoppered their gaping mouths. Dank soil, mingled with tatters of skin, slipped from the dead’s stark faces as they climbed into the starlit world from which they had been banished.

Iron hinges groaned as mausoleums’ heavy doors swung open. Those who had been rich and powerful in life, only to be rendered stiff and cold as any starved beggar, left their marble biers and stumbled out into the night. One by one, in the city’s morgues, the aluminum drawers slid open, the freshly dead climbing out, shrouded in hospital white and with paper tags looped around each one’s toe.

Still standing in the middle of the town house’s ruins, Nathaniel turned away from the garden square and opened his eyes to look across the dark streets behind him. He could see now the approach of the army summoned by his spell, one which none had dared assemble before. From all quarters they came, white bone showing where flesh had rotted away; others, more recently interred, might have appeared as though alive except for the cold pallor of their skin and their hollowed eye sockets. Their unblinking gaze revealed no souls within—no spell could return those—but the dim sparks of memory showed instead. Each grim figure remembered the Devil’s twisting schemes and malice, suffered while alive, unavenged in death—until this moment, this call to battle. As night-flying insects are drawn toward candle flames, the reanimated corpses trudged on in relentless silence, joining forces with their resurrected brethren in the garden.

The spell had taken a lot out of Nathaniel. He closed his eyes again, drawing in one slow breath after another, knowing that the final battle was about to begin.

21.

The storm woke her.

Even with her eyes closed, the shapes and forms of her dreaming were starkly illuminated by the lightning that leapt beyond the window. She was running in those dreams, both searching and pursued, through alleys so dark and narrow that her shoulders were scraped raw by her passage through windowless buildings, so tall that storm clouds crowned their tops. Suddenly, the crash of thunder struck with force enough to send her stumbling onto her hands and knees, looking up to see the sky transformed into one blinding blue-white expanse …

Another jagged stroke of lightning, and Ling’s eyes opened wide, the afterimage from her dreams confusingly layered over the harsh-shadowed angles of the room in which she lay. For a moment, it seemed as if the alleys through which she had been running now held her familiar closet door and dresser bureau. That frightened her; fingertips dug into the bedsheets on either side as she gasped for breath.

This is where he brought me,
Ling told herself. Back to her apartment, where she would be safe. She pushed aside the blanket that the giant hit man Hank had drawn on top of her. Her shoes lay on the floor, but she was still fully clothed. The clothes she had been wearing when she had run through the city’s real alleys and streets, not the ones inside her head; turning her face against her shoulder, she could detect the mingled scent of the city’s rain and her own desperation seeping from her pores.

More rain rattled the bedroom’s window in its frame. The storm’s onslaught grew more intense. From this floor of the apartment building, she could glance out the window and see the hooded streetlights just below, swaying and bobbing in the wet lash of the wind, like the lanterns of ships lost at sea.

He promised me.

Those words remained as Ling’s thoughts cleared from weary sleep. That was what Hank had done, out there in one of the city’s worst districts, as he had kept her from running away from him. He had sworn he would find Ren-Lei, save her, bring her back. No matter what it took. He must still be out there, searching—or killing, taking the necks of her daughter’s captors into his massive fists and snapping them like dry tinder. Whatever it took. A vision came to her, of the giant figure striding relentlessly forward, eyes narrowed in a face set hard against the sheets of icy rain. Shoving open every barred doorway, turning the city upside down to find nothing more than a scared child—

She thought she could almost hear her baby crying, somewhere outside.
That can’t be,
Ling told herself. She turned her eyes toward the window, letting the flashes of lightning play across her face. There was something she could hear, past the crack and rumble of thunder. Something human, and terrified.

The screams of her neighbors grew louder. As though they had seen something outside, beyond all comprehension, unleashing every fear.

Ling scrambled out of the bed and slid open the door to the apartment’s balcony. She stepped out and grasped the rail, looking down into the streets below.

She could see them then, the rain drenching the figures stumbling past, rivulets of water coursing down the rotted flesh, the bones visible inside the tattered shrouds. A dead army marched in grievous array through this street, and every other passage that Ling could view from her apartment. She looked to the side and saw the old lady who lived in the unit next door, transfixed on her balcony, screaming past the wrinkled little fist pressed to her mouth, but unable to tear herself away from the horrific sight below.

Something momentous was happening. Ling could see the spot to which the animated corpses were heading: the garden square at the base of one of the city’s office towers, its top hidden by the low-hanging storm clouds. Dark smoke rose from the area in front of it, twisting and writhing through the rain’s downpour. Even from this distance, with each breath she could taste the fumes on her tongue, cloying and foul.

All of this must have something to do with Ren-Lei; she was sure of it. One way or another, though she couldn’t understand exactly how. Maybe the giant hit man’s search for the infant had somehow unleashed these grisly forces.

She rushed back inside from the balcony, pausing only to slip on her shoes before running out the apartment’s front door. A few moments later, the lobby’s elevator slid open. Pulling her jacket tight around herself, Ling pushed open the door to the street.

Far above, the smell of decay and formaldehyde hadn’t struck her nostrils. Now it did, bringing bile into her throat. She drew back against the wall of the building, trying to avoid contact with the corpses filling the street. It was impossible; there were so many of them, filling the sidewalks as well as all the space between. Threadbare burial clothes and cold skin brushed against her as she flattened her hands against the wall and turned her face away, trying to hold her breath for as long as possible.

Fighting down her repulsion, Ling pushed herself away from the building and into the midst of the dead army streaming by. Their withered muscles kept them from moving as quickly as she could. She worked her way through their ranks, pressing forward to reach the garden to which their slow, relentless steps were being called.

Ren-Lei
. That was all she could think.
Maybe she’s there
—

Something on the street’s pavement tripped Ling. There was just enough space between her and the corpses ahead that she wound up landing hard on one shoulder, then scrambling quickly onto her back, terrified of being trampled by the dead massed behind. She found herself looking up into the hollow eyes of one of the dead. The corpse regarded her for a moment, then turned and shambled after the rest of the lifeless army.

She managed at last to reach the edge of the garden. The sight she beheld staggered her backward—

Two immense armies were locked in battle. Demons beyond her nightmares flew on claw-tipped batwings, filling the smoke-filled sky above their hideous brethren. Any one of them would have been enough to send a human being, shocked witless, running for a hiding place. Their fanged and tusked faces were lit by the fiery blades of the weapons held in their bloodied claws. Guttural howls broke from their throats, each snarl and cry lusting for the flesh of their victims. Ling cowered backward, her breath seized above her panicked, racing heart.

The other army was even more dismaying. All that she had seen before of the resurrected dead was eclipsed. Now she saw a seemingly endless throng of corpses, their white bones protruding through grey, rotted skin, stumbling forward from all directions. It didn’t seem possible that the earth had held so many graves. The dead of centuries past outnumbered the living.

All was chaos inside the garden’s confines, the dead locking into combat with the Devil’s horde. More smoke billowed up from hideous corpses strewn across the ground. On all sides of the slaughtered demons, the battle surged back and forth, like tidal waves crashing against a rugged coastline’s cliffs and rocks. From above, the storm clouds pelted torrential rain, through which the winged demons plunged with blood-reddened swords, or were caught and pulled down, then torn to pieces by lifeless hands.

Her thoughts had been stunned motionless by what she saw. All her hidden nightmares, which thankfully faded upon waking, seemed to have emerged from the confines of her skull. The vision challenged her sanity—it would be easy to let go and fall into madness, rather than believe such things could exist.

But she knew that if she did that, there would be no chance of finding Ren-Lei. As monstrous as the world had become, it was the one through which she had to search, if she wanted to save her child.