Afterlife (7 page)

Chaz:

Some moments freeze forever in your mind, turn into icicle daggers that cover the landscape. I will always remember the cold breeze that swept across the verandah that night, the way it wrapped itself around me and made me hunger for warmth as if heat was a long-forgotten memory, as if it was something that had been stolen from me, something that I would never feel again.

I stood on the porch, one hand in my pocket, shaping and reshaping the liquid light between my fingers; I faced the unknown, my back to the party, my thoughts still on that upstairs room filled with frightened children.

An unnatural chill bled into my soul and I pretended that it didn't matter, focused instead on the dark shapes that moved between wavering, steamy lights. I tried to sense where the danger was, tried to feel the pulse of evil that dared to beat within my family gates.

In my mind, it became a night of voodoo magic, dark and thick as incense. I could almost hear the gris-gris chants and
the rattle of dry bones. Someone had invited a demon presence into our midst, and I knew that it hadn't been me.

Most of the guards had left their assigned posts to form a black shadow cluster on the right side of the front yard. Having no form or shape or substance, it parted as I approached. I unintentionally walked through a patch of night-blooming jasmine, crushing the plants beneath my boots, staining the air with the heavy perfume of death.

I saw a smaller shape emerge from the testosterone-charged troupe. Feminine and cat-like, it moved toward me, head down. It was a woman. Almost. A Newbie, still sparkling with the radiance that comes from resurrection.

“Chaz?” she spoke before anyone else, her velvet voice like a siren calling men to crash on the rocks. “Chaz, I'm so glad I found you.”

One of the guards grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.

I tried to focus on what was happening, but at the same time I knew something was wrong.

“She claims to know you, boss,” another guard said. He laughed. “Says you two were kids together.”

She leaned toward me, lifted her head, pointed a delicate chin in my direction. Dark eyes caught and held my attention. “Chaz,” she whispered, her words so soft they forced me to come closer. “Don't you recognize me? I'm Sadie.”

“Sadie?” I shook my head. “No, that's not possible.”

“Isn't it?” she asked. A tear formed, then cascaded down her cheek, reflecting moonlight like a jewel. “You remember when I went missing, don't you? The cell, our cell, we were right in the middle of studying for our Algebra finals. You and I worked together that night. You explained it all to me. But then I left your house and I never saw you or my family again.”

My heart thudded, a flame of guilt burned in my gut. I was the last person who had seen her. I'd always blamed myself for her disappearance. I'd had a crush on her and wanted to spend time alone with her, but maybe if we hadn't studied so long—

She lifted a hand to my face. “But it wasn't your fault. I know. I've played that night over and over in my mind for years. One of my bodyguards betrayed me, he sold me to a—to a slave trader.” She paused, and looked out into the black night sky. It seemed as if she was watching a play and reciting the actions of the performers, like the pain of everything had gone so deep inside that she was numb. “At thirteen years old I became both daughter and wife. My first child was born when I was fourteen.” Her voice became a flat monotone, a ribbon of silk with no ripples. “They let me keep my daughter for two months before she was sold. After that I lost count of the number of husbands and children that I had, of how many different homes I lived in, sometimes in chains, sometimes with as much freedom as I have now. Then finally I just couldn't take it anymore. So I bribed someone to help me and I jumped.”

At that point the guard released his grip on her and she slid into my arms. She pressed her head against my chest. She didn't look like Sadie or sound like her, but nobody looked the same after resurrection.

And yet, as much as I believed her, something still lodged itself in the center of my spine, a premonition borne without reason. Like a shadowy gray incantation recited in a wooded glen, doubt whispered something in my heart, over and over, nudging me. But I couldn't understand the words. Couldn't hear them.

“I'm glad you're safe,” I said, breathing in the fragrance of her dark hair.

She lifted her face, looked up at me, eyes filled with starlight. The essence of innocence reborn.

“How many memories did you keep?” I asked.

“As many as I could.”

I touched her chin. “Do you remember that time we snuck away from our math tutor?”

She nodded, a half smile on her lips.

I bent down, cupped her face in my hands and kissed her. It was long and sensuous, nothing like the kiss of a teenager, nothing like any kiss in recent history. I pulled away with great reluctance.

“I remember,” she said only loud enough for me to hear. “You were just a boy, but I will never forget that kiss.”

I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her away.

Already the alarms were ringing in my head.

“I was a year younger than Sadie,” I told her. “We were friends, but never more than that. Who are you and why are you here?”

Then I could finally see through it, the deception that hung over all of us. There were too many guards in front of the house. Who was guarding the back?

“Jacques! Andre!” I shouted. “Around to the back, hurry!”

“It's too late,” she said. A mocking grin broke through the kiss that still lingered on her lips.

Just then we all heard a sizzling crackle and I smelled the characteristic odor of liquid light. It was the smell of ash and fire and brimstone. A blast cracked through the upstairs windows and splattered out onto the lawn, a shower of glass and fire that fell all around us.

“Get inside!” I yelled to the rest of the guards. “Upstairs, to Isabelle's room!”

The woman who had pretended to be Sadie grabbed my arm, a grip almost supernaturally strong. She pulled me back toward her.

“Where is the dog?” she demanded, her voice hard as a knife.

I suddenly realized that she held a weapon in her other hand, something I had never seen before. I wrenched my arm free, but she struck me with a lightning kick to the groin. I knew then that she was dangerously different, some sort of genetically enhanced creature that could move faster than I could even think.

“What dog?” I asked as I struggled to catch my breath.

“Ellen and the dog,” she answered. Then she danced backward, just out of reach when one of the remaining guards lunged toward her. “Where are they? What did you do with the research?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

She punched a button on the cylinder she held, but I never could have anticipated what happened next.

Her eyelids fluttered and her body began to crumple to the ground. I grabbed her around the waist and tried to force her to stay, although I knew it was impossible. She was getting ready to jump, to download into another body, probably to an unknown safe house, one of the few that existed apart from Fresh Start.

She sagged in my arms, only a moment or two of life left.

“Consider this a warning,” she breathed. “Next time we won't be so—gentle.”

Then she died.

I dropped her body on the ground and ran toward the house, hoping that I wasn't already too late.

 

People huddled in self-protective swarms downstairs, some crying, a few screaming. But none of them made a move toward the stairs or the room on the second floor that held their children. The room that had just exploded.

I pushed my way through the ineffectual human mass that stood in my way, cursing them as I passed.

I dashed up the stairs, taking three at a time, only a heartbeat behind the guards I had ordered inside a moment ago. Smoke trickled down the stairs, a smell of ash, of singed hair.

It was the smell of death.

The door to Isabelle's room was shattered, but I didn't know if the guards had broken it on their way in or if someone else had done it, some savage intruder.

I jumped over cracked boards—the shards of wood that had once been the door to my niece's bedroom—and then stopped, overwhelmed by what I saw.

Bodies lay strewn around the room, children immortally frozen in positions of fear. Arms and legs pummeling air, they had all been running for their lives when the burning light caught up with them. Like a macabre game invented in the pit of hell.

Tag, you're dead.

The smell of charred flesh hung in the room, oily and thick, and remnants of the liquid light still licked the corners of the room, sizzling and crackling and hissing. It sounded like the laughter of demons, a horde from hell that had just stolen everything we loved.

I saw Russ and Pete rise from the ashes. They struggled to stand, then fell, wobbled on weak legs, collapsed and tried to get up again.

Then I realized that whoever had done this had intended to kill the children. The blast was set high enough for them, but low enough to let the adults survive.

“Consider this a warning.”

I scanned the room again, mentally sorting through the jigsaw puzzle of bodies that lay on the floor. I began to move through the room, hurrying from one lifeless form to another. I reached the window, picked my way through the
shards of glass, forced myself to count the bodies again. It was almost impossible to recognize the children by their faces, but their clothes—

There was no sign of a black body stocking and pink tutu.

“Isabelle,” I said softly.

Russ glanced up at me, a question in his eyes. He couldn't talk yet, his vocal cords were still immobilized.

I skimmed the room one last time.

Two children were missing. Two children and Angelique.

Then I lifted my head and saw the closed bathroom door, liquid light snarling and hissing around the edges. The door glowed like there was a fire trapped inside. It buckled and surged, as if breathing. Fighting against intense pressure.

Like it was about to explode off its hinges.

Angelique:

Nothing was the same after I walked through Russell's front door. Past and present fused, became liquid metal flowing through my veins; it turned me into an alien beast that stepped through time, from one life to the next. I couldn't stop the mad succession of images.

And through it all, I had to navigate in the present. I had to walk and talk and pretend like I didn't want to curl into a ball, my hands covering my head.

I pushed my way past dead husbands and forgotten friends, invisible hands that reached out from the grave. A haze of hallucinations hovered around me; they whispered and pawed at me, their slippery fingers tugging at the hem of my dress, latching onto the soles of my shoes. Suddenly I remembered my names from previous lives.

Catherine MacKinnon, Rebecca James…

Then I knew what was wrong.

There should have been one more name. One more life.

As far as I could remember, in my first life I had been
Catherine MacKinnon, and I had taken the resurrection chip when I was about sixty years old. Then that memory faded away, replaced by another: my second life as Rebecca James. In that life, I had been a lawyer and married a man named Jim. Then he got cancer and, even though I cared for him right up to the end, when he jumped, he deserted me. No matter how many lifetimes I have, I will never forget what he did. After that I wanted to change the way life plays out.

It was just a few months before my second death that I met him.

The bald man with the studs in his head, the man who put the marker in my hand.

He talked to me about the Nine-Timers, told me how they were working to solve the problems caused by resurrection. They were looking for faithful people to enlist. He recruited me, there and then, got me to agree to give up one of my lives for the cause, told me I'd get training, I'd get everything I needed. After I died, I was supposed to wake up in a fresh clone, custom-designed for the job I had to do. They were going to hook me up to their network, an underground mesh of agents working to change the world—

My lungs flattened as the last series of memories came back, too sudden, too strong. It felt like I was watching everything through a lung tunnel, images distorted, smells too strong. But it was me, I knew it had to be.

My name had been Ellen Witherspoon and I was reliving my death…

 

I worked late in the lab that night. Outside, thunder shocked the bayou and the world trembled beneath silver rain. The storm shook the windows, made me catch my breath. Everything was ending, sooner than I expected.

I turned in a quick circle, tried to think. I still didn't know
if I was doing the right thing, but it was finally time to make amends. If that was even possible.

I heard whimpering in the corner. Omega. He was still alive. I walked over to his cage and stuck my hand between the bars. He licked my fingers. After everything we'd done to him, that dog still loved me.

I was beginning to think he was more human than I had ever been.

I opened the cage door and slipped a collar and leash on him. The collar almost disappeared beneath the German shepherd's thick black coat. I knelt beside the dog for a moment and nuzzled my face in his neck.

Chocolate eyes stared at me, a rough tongue licked my cheek. Then his lip curled and a low growl sounded in his throat.

We had to hurry. Somebody might be outside.

Together we headed out the side door of the lab, ready to run toward the bayou. Suddenly I realized that I had made a mistake. I bent down and unhooked his collar. Like everything else around here, it probably had a tracking device.

Then I ran, as fast as I could, the dog loping faithfully at my side.

Into the woods. Into the black, wet night. Into oblivion.

About an hour later, I returned, jogging through the dark as rain pelted my face, puddles growing deeper with every step. I paused at the edge of the parking lot, stared at the baptism of cement and stone that waited: the laboratory, a man-made technological fortress. Behind me an army of oak and cypress seemed to taunt, green demons that swayed in the wind.

I barely made it back in time for my shift. I had changed my clothes and washed all traces of mud from my shoes and hands. The storm still screamed overhead; its intensity
seemed to drown out everything we'd been doing, making us seem insignificant. I felt like I had been playing a part from the movie
Frankenstein,
but I couldn't remember if I was the monster or the doctor.

I had switched sides so many times that I didn't know whose side I was on anymore.

Supposedly, there had been another undercover agent working in the plant, but I never found out who it was. And now, after what I had just done, he or she wouldn't back me up if I got pushed into a corner.

I had broken every rule, everything I ever believed in.

I wondered if Omega would make it, if he could push past his sense of duty and let survival take over. Duty would bring him back to the lab, to an unending series of horrific deaths. Survival would take him—well, there would still be an unending series of deaths. I couldn't undo that part of the equation. But he would be free. Alone, but free.

That was what I needed.

I entered through the front door. Only a few people here knew what projects I had been working on. I smiled at the anonymous faces I passed in the corridors. Along the way, I donned a white lab coat, joined the nameless crew that worked side-by-side in this factory of man-made horrors.

Just then the door to my lab swung open and a dark-haired man grabbed me by the arm.

“You're late,” he said as he pulled me inside and closed the door. Then, when we were alone, he kissed me. It was an impatient and selfish kiss. I think that was the only kind he knew. He slid his hands inside my coat. “I told you to get here early. My wife is out of town. We can spend the night in that bed and breakfast in the French Quarter that you like.”

“Yes,” I answered. I didn't want to go, but it would look too suspicious if I ended the relationship now. I needed to give Omega time to get away. And I had to make plans for
my own escape. It wouldn't be easy, the people I worked for wouldn't appreciate one of their top-level executives just disappearing. But if I planned it right—

“You must think I'm a fool,” he said, his touch suddenly turning rough. That was the first time that I noticed the fire in his eyes.

I pushed him away and feigned anger. “Well, yes, I do. I've thought that for a long time. Any married man who gets involved with one of his employees—”

He slapped me, slammed me across the room where I crashed into one of the empty cages. I could have fought back, but I needed to give Omega more time, if that was still possible.

It wasn't. That split second cost me a lot.

He jumped on me before I could get up.

“You're a government plant, a spy. You came here to steal my research—”

“I came to help you, to make sure you got it right. Finally.”

He hit me again. Already one of my eyes was swelling shut, but I couldn't let the pain distract me. I slammed the palm of my hand upward, toward his nose. A fraction of an inch to the left and I would have killed him, would have sent a shard of bone up into his brain. But I missed. Jammed him in the cheek instead. Sent him sprawling backward like a crab on his hands and knees.

I climbed to my feet and started to run into the plant. He wouldn't dare hit me in front of his employees. But just then my foot slipped in something wet.

Urine. That gen-spike junkie had peed on the floor.

He grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me down. My right arm slammed against the cement floor and a shock wave of pain rocked through my body.

“You let the dog go, didn't you?” he said as he pinned me
down. “You think that's going to stop me or my research? I still have all of our notes, all the files. I can just replicate the results—”

I didn't have to answer him. The grin on my face said it all.

“You witch! What did you do with the files?”

His hands were around my throat then and I think some sort of madness took over. He didn't care that his research was missing or that the dog was gone. I knew that later he would look back on this moment and wish that he had done things differently, that he had interrogated me, tortured me, done whatever was necessary to get the information back.

But instead, he just continued to press against my windpipe while I flailed helplessly.

Until everything turned black and I stopped breathing.

 

The memory faded and left me disoriented, confused. I closed my eyes and tried to remember more. For some reason, it had all been in shadows, the bayou, the laboratory—even my lover's face. The only thing that really stood out was the dog.

Omega. I could smell his fur, felt the scratch of his tongue on my cheek.

I wondered where he was and if he was still safe.