Almost Alive (The Beautiful Dead Book 3) (13 page)

He can’t seem to finish another sentence, so I throw my arms around the Chief, squeezing as hard as I can manage and sparing him the need to finish one. He accepts the hug by simply patting me on the back with a lazy hand.

When I pull away, the Chief is smiling—though it looks far more like a wince; he was never much the smiling kind. “What you may not have been told yet, Winter, is that there’s a reason we’re all turning to dust, and it’s not that we’re all reaching some imaginary expiration date.”

“What do you mean?” The question comes from John, his eyebrows pulling together with concern.

“Shee found something,” the Chief reveals.

“She?” asks John, confused. “You mean Helena?”

“No, Shee.
Shee
, the Spider Lady, the Monster Lady.” The Chief turns his gaze onto me. “Shee was not popular among the people of New Trenton. It took a very trying
vote
for her to even be allowed to assimilate into our city. Shee was mocked, made fun of, ostracized from the community in many ways. Her insistence on keeping her insect lower torso might have contributed to that, but it’s who she was, who she’s always been … Spider Queen … Empress Scorpion … Shee, the Buzz Monster. There were stupider names; I’ll spare you.”

He continues to tell the story of Shee, and to my sick surprise, I feel a swelling of dark sympathy in my gut because her story reminds me a lot of someone else’s. Shee never fit in, mocked by others for her past actions and her strange appearance, and she always had a flock of three or four giant spiders following her, though they weren’t technically allowed in the city. Every day she would run away into the wilderness, the only place she felt at home, and she’d dig holes to let off her steam. One of those digs produced a peculiar, glowing artifact.

“What the hell did she find?” I ask, gawping.

“Think of Megan’s Warlock eye,” describes the Chief, making a ball shape with his fist, “and then, say, multiply that by ten or so.” He expands his fingers as if he held within them an invisible football. “Something like that.”

“A giant Lock-stone? That’s it?” I shake my head, feeling skeptical. “But … But how do we know that’s even the cause of what’s happening? Shee is nowhere to be found, right? How is she and an enormous rock the reason Helena … fell apart?”

He leans into the counter. The Chief’s eyes are the same as I remember: fierce and steely, even as an Undead. “The day Shee returned here to New Trenton with her big treasure, Megan claimed it from her, insisting that a thing of such power needed to be kept safe. Shee thought she had earned the respect of her peers after that, but she had not. Nothing changed. Shee wanted to be loved so badly. You could see it in her eyes. She even said so, how lonely she was. Heartsick, twisted creature Shee was. That’s when the Spider Queen made a fateful decision and went to the hospital, requesting for a certain … operation. When she emerged, she had
two human legs
.”

The Chief went on to say, even Shee’s drastic effort at fitting in physically did not help her much. Her efforts at walking were clumsy, as she was unused to the strange uncomfortable, fleshy legs. Also, she still insisted to keep the one functional wing she still had—as I’d torn off the other during the fall of Garden—even folded to her back as it was. When the city gathered for an announcement from the Mayor, Shee was called up to join her at the podium. On her way, she tripped over her ghastly, clumsy legs, nearly falling on one of her spider friends that had followed her, and the titters from the crowd were all it took for Shee to lose her mind. The chaotic tantrum she then threw was the worst any had paid witness to, worse than Mad Malory of the Old Trenton days. Empress Shee tore off her new human legs, then ripped the legs of her loyal spider friends off—effectively killing the few that had followed her—and attached them to herself grotesquely, the crowds hushed and horrified. Then, Shee burrowed her way into the Mayor’s Treasury to steal back the treasure she believed was rightfully hers.

“When she emerged from the Treasury to flee the city,” the Chief continued, “a number of foolish Undead attempted to block her way. Each, one by one, turned to dust before our eyes. By the time Shee broke free from the city, we’d lost sixty-three Undead souls.” He gives me a moment to react to that number; I do. “It was very clear: that stone had more power than any Warlock I’d ever known. What was also clear, however, was that Shee did not know what she was doing. She seemed shocked when each Undead fell to dust before her.

“Days after Shee left, and after a heated debate among the Mayor and her officials, the woman everyone knew as Julianne took off in pursuit of the Empress Shee and her stone. This woman called Julianne was revered as a hero, the Warrior Julianne, run off to save us from the infernal and frightening power of Empress Shee.” He shakes his head. “‘Julianne the Jubilant’ has not returned.”

I had risen from my barstool. Now I’m seated right back on it, staring despondently at the floor, my mouth hanging open in a stupor. Enough time passes for me to catch a family of flies in it.

“Some will still talk of her,” says the Chief. “The hero of Trenton, but I know the secret that Megan and Helena and Marigold know. I know Julianne’s truth. Deathless. Malory. Your mother is a warrior, Winter. She always has been, even when her mind was clouded by the ambition of the Deathless King she’d become. Helena admired her greatly. Helena was one of the few who went to fetch her from the bottom of the cliff. Helena was … well, you knew her well, too.” He clenches his jaw, sighs.

Helena admired my mother … even after she nearly forced me to cut Helena into pieces long ago to be ground to dust at the top of the Black Tower. I suppose whether by my hand or by time’s hand, Helena ended up as dust regardless. We all will, if Shee is not found.

“How long ago did my mother leave?”

“To pursue Shee?” The Chief sighs, takes the drink he’d abandoned into his giant palm and guzzles the remainder of it. He sets it on the counter almost gently and answers, “A year ago. Maybe more.”

“A YEAR??” I can’t help my outburst, quite suddenly risen again from the barstool. “You mean to tell me Shee and my mother have been gone for twelve months and
no
one
else
has followed to see if they’re okay?”

“To be honest, I wonder if any of the Living care. I would be surprised, very surprised, if Julianne is not yet turned to ash and bone. I’m sorry to put it this way. I should really limit my drinking.” He sweeps his cloak, cinching it at the waist, then moves toward the door.

“Chief? … Brock?” His footfalls are heavy as he crosses the room. He reaches the door and places a heavy hand on it. “We need to find her!”

“Don’t bother, sweetheart. Please, just let her go. Let Helena go. Let nature have its way; the planet doesn’t want us here anymore than the Humans do, that much is clear.”

“Chief.” He turns the doorknob. I raise my voice. “You
can’t
just give up on this! Why’d you tell me the story if you didn’t mean for me to do anything about it?”

“Enjoy time while we have it, Winter. It’s suddenly so, so precious. You and John have another chance. Don’t waste it.” With that, he leaves.

I close my eyes, listening to the whirring vacuum of nothingness in the room. The air is still, the night is still, the world is still. Then I hear John’s weight shifting, the floorboards groaning, and then his soft voice at my back: “Another chance …?”

I don’t face him and I don’t open my eyes, allowing myself the calmness for once. Do I run after my mother, desperately seeking the Spider Lady Shee and her treasure in some futile mission to save us all from doom? Or do I let it be, just as the Chief suggested? A year, maybe more has passed. They could literally be across the world. They could
both
have turned to dust. I mean, Shee didn’t know how to use the power of the stone, so for all we know, the chaos-loving Shee Monster could’ve mistakenly turned its power on herself. Finding them could prove as hopeless as John’s impossible mission of finding Garden, long ago.

On the other hand, we did, in fact, succeed in finding
a
Garden.

Opening my eyes, I discover that John’s handsome face is there to greet mine. He’s come around the counter and he is dark and brooding, just the way I knew him long ago. I’m struck by the sight of his brawn, his stoicism, the power in his muddy brown eye and his other. What is it with this world and strangely-colored eyes?

“You knew me in my First Life?” he asks, the hammer still in his hand, his arm flexed as he holds it.

I study his face and all the flawlessness of it. His chiseled, sharp jawline. His strong, dominant nose. The curve of his full, once-Humanly lips.

What’s missing from those lips? Ah, I know: mine.

“I knew you,” I answer John, then draw my lips to his. He inhales suddenly, stunned, then gives in, and between two cold Unliving, the world learns its first warmth.

His kiss in this Life is as powerful as it was in his last.

When we pull part, his eyes are bright and drunk with joy. “Winter. Did we …? Are we …?”

“Yes and yes.”

“How’d you know I—?”

“Because we’ve done this all before,” I answer him, not even certain what the question was he meant to ask. And before he can waste another useless breath on another useless word, I press my lips to his once again and struggle to remember the man with the heartbeat.

C H A P T E R – S E V E N

L O V E
   I S   E A S Y
/
T I M E   I S  
N O T

“It gets
sooooo
boring up here,” Ann admits to me one day as we sit atop the wall, “and the Humans are such wimps. Ugh. Intolerable, really. None of them want to work the nightshifts, all of them too
scaaaared
. Oh.” Her face softens, eyebrows lifting. “I’m sorry about Hel.”

“Me too, Ann.” I stare into the infinite, grey distance. “I met Brock, finally. Chief. He told me all about Empress Shee and—
Julianne
—somewhere out there. Still haven’t learned why Shee insists on being called Empress.”

“Shee was quite a weird one, she was.” Ann drums her fingers along the wall, creates a rhythm. Then, very quietly, she adds: “I’d like to think your mother’s still out there too. It’d be a shame for you not to have reconnected with her in this Unlife, know what I mean?”

“Are you still with Jim?” I suddenly think to ask.

Ann pulls off her helmet, sets it to the side. “He goes by
Jimmy
now.” She rolls her eyes. “As if he can escape getting older. We knew this would happen.”

I remember the gangly, pale, awkward Human with whom she fell in love; he had a flat blemish of black hair that sat on his oddly-shaped head. “He’d be … twenty-something by now, wouldn’t he?”

“He lies to me every year.” She takes the opportunity of not wearing her helmet to crack her neck, bending it one way, then the other. “He says he’s twenty, but I think it’s more like thirty. I’ve lost track. We share a house. He’s pursued a career in
politics
.” She gives another roll of her eyes. I’d be careful if I were Ann; those eyes of hers are likely to roll right out of her face. “Megan and him don’t get much along, I’m afraid. It just so happens, clumsy, cute-and-stupid boys grow into clumsier, cuter-and-stupider men. Anyway, enough about my sorry life.”

I pull off my helmet and, for the remainder of the nightshift, we stare together into the silvery-grey oblivion and chat about nothing important at all. Every now and then Ann says something to make me laugh, and I cling graciously to every stupid, little laugh.

Time is ticking.

On the way home, I find myself thinking about the horrors of my not-so-recent Undead past. Like a waking nightmare, I start to see green flames. Everywhere, above me, beneath me, hugging me, the green flames. Within those flames, I see Grimsky, the only one who ought to be green at all. I see him emerge from the flames of my hyperactive imagination and he looks the same as the day I met him: the poet on the street, the spiky bangs of black hair on his forehead, the impossibly pale complexion, the dimples that crushed his face when he gently smiled, and two normal eyes. “We meet again, Winter,” he says in this vision of mine, the green flames licking him from all directions, whipping and recoiling and playing.

Where is he now? Has his Second Life ended, or does he live in some secluded, faraway cave by the sea? Has he found a Tower Of Despair from which to rule, still bent on ending all life on the planet? I may never see him again; his fate after the fall of Garden remains a mystery.

I blink and the memory is gone with the flames, and I am alone. With a frustrated sigh, I push into my building.

John is waiting for me at my door. He turns when he sees me, his eyes heavy and strong and smoldering. I’m caught by surprise. “Winter,” he says for a greeting.

I’m sure I look positively sexy as ever, decked out in my bulky, horrid suit of black armor with only my helmet removed, hanging from a heavily-gloved hand. “Hey, John. Do you … mind if I change?”