Die and Stay Dead (34 page)

“I’m sorry to break it to you,” I said, “but Underwood doesn’t have a face anymore. In fact, he doesn’t have much in the way of a head anymore.”

“No matter. That body has served its purpose. I have no use for an Underwood now, or a Melanthius. The time for such games is over. The witch, Gabrielle, knows that. She knows it better than the rest of you. I almost respect her for it.” Reve Azrael studied my face. “It surprises you that I am aware she is still alive. I would know if she had crossed through the dark, but she has not. There is so much anger burning inside her. Even through the cold, dead flesh of my revenants, I could feel it. It reached through them all the way here, to me. Her anger gives her strength, and her strength makes her a threat.”

“What did you expect after you started playing dress-up in her dead fiancé’s body, a bouquet of flowers and a thank-you card?”

Reve Azrael walked deeper into the room. My gaze fell on a small table by the wall. Resting on it, tantalizingly close, was my gun. If I weren’t surrounded by revenants, and if my hands weren’t tied, I could have snatched it up in a heartbeat. As it was, the damn thing might as well be a hundred miles away.

On the table next to the gun was the fragment she’d stolen from us.

“I would have thought all this squabbling over the Codex Goetia was beneath you,” I said. “What do you want with it?”

“To tame the demon, of course. Should it prove necessary.”

“You know about Nahash-Dred, then?”

“Of course. The dead are abuzz with portents of catastrophe. Erickson Arkwright’s plan is a good one. To end all life on earth. I approve.”

“You’ve been keeping tabs on him,” I said.

“I have eyes and ears all over this city. No one is ever far from something dead. But there is a flaw in Arkwright’s plan. He has not made room in it for
me
. My existence means nothing to him. He would just as soon have me among the dead, instead of commanding them. I find that unacceptable. And here, I believe, we find common ground in our disdain for Erickson Arkwright. Join me and we can stop him together. I with my army of revenants. You with your … abilities.”

“And what happens after we stop him?” I asked.

“We will rule this world together. Arkwright has inspired me, little fly. Why stop with just a city of the dead? Why not a kingdom? Why not a planet?”

“I had a feeling that’s what you were going to say,” I replied. “You’re insane. The answer is no. It will always be no.”

Her thin face registered no emotion, not even disappointment. “It is a shame you refuse to use the power locked inside you for its true purpose. To use it the way I would. But I will not be denied my greatest weapon. And that is what you are. I do not need your consent. I merely thought it expedient to ask.”

She stopped on the other side of the room, before a freestanding, stone arch. It measured five feet across and about nine feet from the dirt floor to its rounded top. Its stones were a dusty gray, all except for the keystone at the top, which sat red and polished as a ruby.

“Do you know what this is, little fly?”

“Mail-order Stonehenge?” I said.

“It is the Prometheus Arch, an artifact that dates back to the earliest days after the Shift. It was created by the elves in an attempt to cure the so-called
Infected
.”

Elves. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard of them. Bethany had mentioned them before, though she’d said no one had seen them in decades.

“They used the Prometheus Arch to remove the magic from inside one entity and transfer it to another, usually some unfortunate animal they would then be forced to put out of its misery. You see, they thought if the Prometheus Arch took your magic, it would take the infection from you as well. But they were wrong. They misunderstood. It is not a disease to be cured. It is a gift, the legacy of the Shift. Once it takes hold, it is irreversible.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “The Black Knight beat it before he died. The infection
can
be reversed.”

She shook her head, but it was Oatmeal Face who spoke, a disorienting double act. “You are wrong. The Shift has lasted a thousand years already, and no one has ever reversed its legacy. It may last a thousand more. Tell me, who will come out on top then? Those who embrace its gift, or those who fight against it?”

I held my tongue. There was no point in answering. She was insane, and I already knew you couldn’t argue with crazy. I also knew what I had seen. The Black Knight
had
broken the infection’s hold on his mind. At the end, he was sane again. He’d died a hero.

Reve Azrael ran one hand along the smooth, ancient stone of the Prometheus Arch. “The arch did not cure anyone. But it was soon discovered to work well in other, unforeseen ways. It could do more than transfer magic from one vessel to another. It could transfer
power,
too. The strength and speed of a vampire. The metamorphosis of a shape-shifter. The second sight of a seer. And so, as men have done throughout history, they turned the Prometheus Arch into a weapon. An instrument of torture and theft. After the second Great War swept through Europe and Asia, the elves finally had their fill of the atrocities of man. They took leave of our world. It was said they took the Prometheus Arch with them so it could no longer be misused. But that was a lie; the Prometheus Arch was merely lost. Until recently, it was in the Black Knight’s possession. Did you know that? It was how he planned to steal Stryge’s power for himself. And yours.”

I hadn’t seen the arch while the Black Knight kept me as his prisoner-slash–experimental guinea pig, but it answered a few of my lingering questions. After the Black Knight died and the gargoyles took off for greener pastures, their cavern in the Palisades cliffs had been left open and unguarded. It would have been easy enough for Reve Azrael to steal the arch.

“Fun history lesson, but you’d better cut to the chase,” I said. “The others are looking for me. It’s only a matter of time before they find this place. So either make your move or let me go.”

Reve Azrael smiled. She knew I was bluffing. There was no way the others could track me here.

“You owe me for what you did, little fly. You robbed me of my chance to remake this city in my own image. The Prometheus Arch will rectify that. It will take the power locked deep within you and give it to me. I had planned to take your power from the Fetch, had it succeeded in its mission, but even then it would have merely been a facsimile, a copy of a copy. How much better to take it right from the source.”

She was as obsessive and single-minded as ever, still hung up on wielding Stryge’s power herself. Worse, she finally had the means to take it. I kept my poker face, trying not to look worried, but I doubted it was working. Stryge’s power was dangerous. It had completely overwhelmed me. It had nearly driven me to kill Bethany, Isaac, Gabrielle, and Philip, and tear the world in half. Even now I could still feel it inside me, a low flame that burned just out of reach. If the Prometheus Arch really could siphon it out of me, that kind of power in Reve Azrael’s hands would be unthinkable.

“Good luck getting Stryge’s power out of me,” I said, trying to sound confident. “It shouldn’t even be inside me anymore, but it’s holding on like it’s got claws. It doesn’t want to go anywhere.”

She laughed. That wasn’t the response I expected.

“You still do not understand. The power that sleeps inside you, the force that can unmake everything—it is not Stryge’s. The Ancient’s power merely awakened it, but it does not belong to him. The power is still inside you, little fly, because it is yours. It was
always
yours.”

My poker face fell. I thought back to that day in Fort Tryon Park when the raw power had erupted inside me. It had shown me the inner workings of everything around me, and the threads that bound it all together. I had plucked one of those threads, just one, and the earth had quaked and broken open. That limitless, destructive power … was mine? It came from
me
?

The voices of the oracles echoed in my head again, too insistent to ignore:
It is a threat. It is a danger to all who live.
But they were wrong. That wasn’t who I was. The power wasn’t mine, it couldn’t be.
A menace. An abomination. As long as it walks upon this world, it puts us all in peril.
I refused to believe that. It was a lie. Reve Azrael and the oracles were in on it together. I was human. I was Lucas West, damn it.

I shook my head vehemently. “No, you’re lying.”

I struggled to break free of the revenants holding me. I didn’t care if my hands were tied. I would beat her head to a pulp, make it a matching pair with Underwood’s.

From behind me, Eyeballs dug her hard, bony fingers into the tender flesh between my neck and shoulders. I cried out in pain as she forced me to my knees.

“You still do not know who you are.
What
you are.”

I looked up at Reve Azrael, gritting my teeth as Eyeballs continued digging her claws painfully into me. “My name is Lucas West. I’m human. Something happened to me beneath Battery Park. Something changed me, but I’m human!”

“Oh, it changed you, little fly. Just not the way you think.”

The revenants pulled me to my feet and dragged me toward the arch. I resisted, digging my boots into the earthen floor. But it was five against one. While the others held me tight, Oatmeal Face cut the zip tie from my wrists. I struggled to get away, but I was surrounded and outnumbered. There was no place to go. Eyeballs took one wrist, and Jawless took the other. Together, they pulled me toward a pillar of the arch, where two empty holes waited. I tried to pull away.

“You’re making a big mistake,” I said. “You don’t know what happens when I come in contact with magic. It goes crazy!”

Ignoring me, the revenants plunged my hands into the holes. Inside, the stone seemed to tighten around my wrists like the coils of a python. I shook and shouted and yanked my arms, trying to break free. A cold, dead hand on the back of my neck warned me to stop.

“Try not to resist. The Prometheus Arch is known for many things, but gentleness is not one of them.”

Reve Azrael put her own hands into two holes in the opposite pillar. She spoke through Oatmeal Face again, intoning a spell. The red keystone at the top began to throb slowly with a soft glow.

I gasped in pain. It felt like someone had stuck me in a food processor and hit puree. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, trying to endure it, but the pain kept building in intensity. So did the light from the keystone. I could see it through the thin skin of my eyelids, throbbing brighter, faster.

“Can you feel it pulling the power out of you? Pulling the wings off my little fly?”

“Go to hell!” I shouted back. Tears squeezed out from between my clenched eyelids.

“Once your power is mine, I will be the queen of this wretched city. I will command the dust and bone left behind.”

“You’re insane,” I said.

“No. Merely determined.”

The pain increased, a thousand serrated knives hollowing me out. I felt feverish, burning from the inside. Sweat dripped down my face. Moisture coated my body, sticking my clothes to my skin. I didn’t know how much longer I could hang on. If the Prometheus Arch killed me, would the thing inside me steal Reve Azrael’s life force before the transfer was complete? Or would Reve Azrael take
that
power from me, too? Was it all connected somehow?

The thing inside me—the thing that wouldn’t let me die, the thing that had made my life a living hell—oh God, had that been my own from the start, too?

The pain held my entire body in its searing grip. Through my eyelids, I could see the keystone throbbing so quickly now it gave off a consistent, unbroken light.

I opened my eyes. Everything looked different.

Reve Azrael was a dark silhouette filled with tiny black suns, diseased and corrupted by the infection. The revenants were dark silhouettes, too, but what filled them was hard and cold, like dead moons hanging in space. Inside the Prometheus Arch, atoms flashed and sparked and pinwheeled as it drained the power from me. I was too weak to do anything but watch.

“I can see it,” Reve Azrael said, awed. “The structure of the universe. The building blocks of life and death. I can bring it all crashing down!”

Thousands of silken threads filled the room, tying everything together. I tried to reach them with my mind, pluck them or cut them, but I was too weak.

And then I saw him, sitting in the corner of the room. A wolf. He didn’t appear as atoms and threads. He was something else, something bright and translucent. The wolf stared at me, panting with his long tongue hanging out of his mouth.

You’re being followed, too.… It’s not a person. It’s a wolf.

“Thornton?” I said.

I could have sworn the wolf smiled.

Twenty-Five

I knew what dying felt like. Over the past year, I had done it twelve times already. That was how I knew the Prometheus Arch was killing me. I recognized the sensation. My knees buckled under me, too weak to support my weight anymore. I slid down the pillar, my hands still stuck inside the holes, until I was on my knees with my arms over my head. My breath came in shallow bursts. My chest hurt, as if my heart were being squeezed by a massive fist. I’d been shot more times than I could count, had my throat slashed, been stabbed, but this was the worst death of all. I was being hollowed out, the power ripped out of me. My body shuddered and convulsed like I was holding a live wire. My thirteenth death. Unlucky thirteen. Maybe, like a video game character, I’d used up all my extra lives. Maybe this time it would stick.

Was that why Thornton was here? To be my guide to the afterlife and take me across the dark to the plains of mist and seas of ash? It wasn’t fair. I knew where my parents were now, but I hadn’t had the chance to see them. I knew my name, finally, but hadn’t had the chance to learn about myself. I hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to … to …

It was Bethany who came into my mind then, not Jordana. As I wondered why, the pain ripped even that thought away.