Die and Stay Dead (55 page)

“He’s gone. Again,” she said sadly. “He keeps … not staying.”

Philip’s booming voice came from one side of the ship. “Looks like I missed the party.”

Soaking wet, he pulled himself over the railing and onto the flight deck. His torn, sopping clothes trailed river water behind him as he walked over to us. Yet somehow his mirrored shades were still perched over his eyes. They weren’t even scratched.

“Heads up,” Philip said. “This isn’t over yet. Shit’s about to get a hundred times crazier.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s about a hundred revenants standing at the bottom of the river,” he said. “They’re not doing anything. They’re just standing there, like they’re waiting.”

Revenants? I ran to the railing and looked down at the water lapping at the hull below. I couldn’t see anything in the river, it was too dark. But if there were revenants down there, it could only mean one thing. Reve Azrael was still alive. She’d survived the fire. Damn it, would I never be free of her? What did she want? Why send her revenants here?

I stiffened as the answer came to me. Oh, God. Thornton had tried to warn me. It was why he’d wanted me to stop. It wasn’t because he thought I was in danger. It was because he knew what would happen if I killed Behemoth.

I started running back toward the others. “Get away from him! Get away from the body!”

But it was already too late. Behemoth’s enormous pupils filled with red light. The dead demon stood, rising onto his enormous centipede legs. Bethany and the others scattered, running past me. I stayed where I was. I knew what Reve Azrael wanted. Me.

“At last,” she said through Behemoth’s mouth. “A body worthy of me. Thank you, little fly. I knew I could count on you.”

“You survived,” I said.

“Barely,” she replied. “You could call that pathetic, half-burnt
thing
in my lair alive if you choose, but as a body it is useless. It always was. As you can see, I have a better one now. Stronger. Brimming with power. Such unimaginable power.”

She extended one hand. Caught in a gravity field, I began to float off the deck. I didn’t bother struggling. I knew I couldn’t fight Behemoth’s power.
Her
power, now. She lifted me until I floated before her.

“This is a thousand times better than Stryge’s power would have been,” she said. “And I owe it all to you. You are so easy to manipulate. All I had to do was leave a message to get your attention.”

“What message?”

“The woman you rescued from the lunatic in the park,” she said.

“Calliope?” I went cold. A pit opened in my stomach. “
You
killed her.
You
gutted her and nailed her up like that.”

“I suppose I have always had a flair for the dramatic,” she said. “When my revenants and I broke into her attic and entered her home, she surprised us on the stairs. I cast a quick spell. I meant only to incapacitate her. I wanted to enjoy her suffering before killing her, you see, but the wretched woman fell back and struck her head on the steps. There was so much blood. She was dead before she even knew what hit her. I found her death much too quick for my liking, and hardly enough of a spectacle to get your attention. So I took over her dead body and … played with it awhile. A woman has to have her fun, don’t you think? And this was very, very fun. With a knife, I made it cut itself open and play with its own innards. Then, when I grew tired of it, I had my revenants nail the body to the ceiling.”

Now I understood why there’d been such an excessive amount of blood on Calliope’s hands. Except for a bare, rectangular patch on her right palm. The size and shape of a knife’s handle.

“I am disappointed you did not recognize my message to you,” Reve Azrael said. “I stretched out her innards to make her look like a fly caught in a spider’s web, just for you. You
are
my little fly, are you not?”

I felt sick. Calliope wasn’t dead because she’d gotten too close to Arkwright’s secret. She was dead because of me. Because Reve Azrael wanted to send a message. She must have been spying on me the night I brought Calliope home. The guilt sat like a stone in my chest.

“She had nothing to do with you and me,” I said. “She didn’t deserve that.”

Reve Azrael cocked Behemoth’s head at me. “What does deserving have to do with it? I wanted her to die, and so I made her die. Her death led you where I needed you to go. It led you to this very spot. Led both of us to this moment, where I would have a body worthy of my ambitions, and you would discover the truth of who you are.”

“So you knew,” I said. “You knew who I was all along.”

“From the moment of your first death, I knew,” she said. “I know all who cross the dark. Though why you refuse to stay dead remains a mystery to me. You confound me and fascinate me in equal measure. That is why even though I have the power to crush you with a thought, or release you from gravity’s pull to float up into the cold, airless wastes, I know you would only continue to plague me.”

Bethany’s voice came from below. “Put him down.”

I looked down. She was standing beneath us. The sword blade sprang out of her bracelet like a warning.

Reve Azrael laughed. “Ah. The tiny woman. She is never far from you, is she? Shall I make you watch as I crush her bones to dust? Would that be fitting enough punishment for everything you have done to me? The pain you have caused me?”

“You’re going to have to get through the rest of us first,” Isaac said.

I looked down again. They were all there—Isaac, Philip, Gabrielle, and Bethany. They’d come back for me. They shouldn’t have.

“Go!” I shouted down to them. “Get out of here while you can!”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Bethany said. “Not without you.”

“Let Trent go,” Isaac said. “We defeated Behemoth once. We can defeat him again.”

Reve Azrael looked at me, amused. “He called you Trent. They do not know, do they? You have not told them.”

I didn’t answer.

“Surely they have the right to know for whom they are risking their lives?” she said.

“Trent, what is she talking about?” Isaac asked.

“Don’t,” I begged Reve Azrael. “I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t.”

The dead demon’s face split into a wide smile. Reve Azrael laughed and released me. I dropped to the deck. My ankle flared with pain. I collapsed onto my side. Bethany rushed over to me, the blade retracting into her bracelet. She knelt down and cradled me against her knees.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Go,” I said, tears squeezing out of my eyes. “Get away from here.”

“I am talking about his true name, mage,” Reve Azrael answered Isaac. “He has not told you his true name.”

Bethany glared angrily up at her. “He doesn’t know his name, you know that!”

“He knows it now,” Reve Azrael said. “Behold the demon. Behold Nahash-Dred in the form he took in which to hide. The form he took so he could forget.”

I could feel their eyes on me. Staring at me. Wondering how this could be true.

I lifted myself off Bethany’s legs and onto my knees. “I didn’t know,” I said, looking at each of them. “Please, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t know until now.”

“This was not how I wanted you to find out, little fly,” Reve Azrael said. “Not at first. But I promised you your defiance would not go unpunished, remember? I cannot kill you, we both know that. But I can destroy you. I can crush your spirit. And how better than with the truth you have been looking so hard for?”

“I didn’t know,” I repeated, looking up at Isaac. He, Philip, and Gabrielle stared at me, agape. I turned to Bethany. Reached out for her. “Please…”

She backed away in fear and confusion. If I could have willed myself dead, I would have done it in that moment. But then she paused. Collected herself. She took a step toward me—and another, quicker, and then she had her arms around me. She helped me to my feet. I held her close.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I repeated.

“You don’t have to be,” she said, her voice breaking. “I told you before, it doesn’t matter who you used to be. All that matters is who you are now. We all have choices to make. We all have to decide who we want to be. But that comes from inside, not from anyone else.”

“How touching,” Reve Azrael said. “A shame time is about to run out. Do you remember what Behemoth told you, little fly, right before he died? The memory is still fresh in this body’s mind.”

The sky flashed then, brightly and repeatedly, but it wasn’t lightning. Balls of fire fell out of the rift like comets. They splashed down into the Hudson River, rocking the boat with their waves.

“The Selenian Legion,” Reve Azrael said. “Behemoth’s personal guard. A force so destructive, so unrelenting that Behemoth’s enemies, including you, imprisoned them out of terror. They are the demons that even demons fear, and they obey only Behemoth. To them, I
am
Behemoth. When they look upon me, they will see their master, and they will obey me. Only me.”

Where each of the comets had splashed down, a gigantic shape burst up from the water. There were seven of them in all, each as tall as Behemoth. Their charcoal-black bodies looked more like stone than flesh, run through with glowing veins of fire. Enormous, bull-like horns crowned their foreheads. Slabs of iron had been bolted over their eyes, and huge iron collars circled their necks. They wore iron manacles on their wrists, from which dangled the broken ends of huge, iron chains.

“Run, little fly,” Reve Azrael said.

We backed away from her. When her army of revenants started to climb out of the water and onto the ship, we broke into a run. My ankle slowed me down, but Bethany held onto me, pulling me along.

“Run!” Reve Azrael called after us.

The seven demons of the Selenian Legion threw back their enormous, horned heads and bellowed. They waded toward the
Intrepid,
their colossal legs churning up waves that rocked the ship. Isaac lost his footing and fell. The Guardians’ scroll fell out of the inside pocket of his duster. It rolled across the floor and into one of the small fires still burning on the deck. The old, crisp parchment caught fire immediately, its ashes blowing away on the wind, just like the Guardian of Time had said it would.

Philip and Gabrielle helped Isaac to his feet. We kept moving as the Selenian Legion waded closer to the ship. Their stony bodies burned. Their immense horns seemed to scrape the sky.

“Run far and run fast,” Reve Azrael shouted after us. “Because this city, this
world,
is mine!”

Forty-Four

I tried to save the world. I tried, and I failed.

I was wrong about the horrors the oracles foresaw. I was wrong about what Calliope and the others knew was coming. It wasn’t Nahash-Dred. It wasn’t even Behemoth. It was Reve Azrael and the Selenian Legion. The city would crumble. Countless people would die. It was what some had seen and others sensed. It was why they ran. It was what Calliope had tried to stop, before Reve Azrael killed her. For nothing. For me.

And it was why
we
ran. With the Selenian Legion wading closer at our backs, we ran off the wreckage of the USS
Intrepid
. Already the towering demons were kicking up waves that crashed across the piers and onto Twelfth Avenue. Or what was left of Twelfth Avenue. The rubble from the destroyed overpass and the damaged storage facility had fallen to the street. Our Escalade lay somewhere beneath mounds of debris. Other cars did, too. And people. Pedestrians, drivers, the police and EMTs who had responded to the catastrophe. All of them killed by Behemoth.

Something stirred in the rubble. A block of concrete fell away from a crushed police car, and a uniformed officer pulled himself out. He straightened, standing on a hill of debris. Blood soaked his clothing and his face. One side of his body had been mashed to a pulp. A bright red glow emanated from his eyes.

“Run, rabbits,” Reve Azrael said through the dead officer’s mouth. “Run!”

More rubble shifted. Dozens of red-glowing eyes opened beneath the concrete and twisted rebar. More maimed, blood-soaked revenants pulled free of the ruins. I kept running, taking a moment to glance back at the
Intrepid
. On the ruined flight deck, Reve Azrael in Behemoth’s body gathered the Selenian Legion to her. Below, revenants climbed out of the Hudson River and onto shore.

We scrambled over the chunks of concrete and twisted scraps of metal in our path, but it felt futile. We didn’t have a car. We had no place to go. We’d never reach Citadel before we were overtaken.

“Look!” Gabrielle shouted, pointing.

It was Thornton. The glowing ghost wolf stood atop a mound of rubble, watching us.

“He wants us to follow him,” Gabrielle said.

“How do you know?” Isaac asked as Philip helped him over the debris.

Gabrielle knit her brow. “I—I can hear him in my head.”

“It’s your gift,” Isaac said. “Your ability to read minds. Somehow, he’s using the connection between you to tap into it.”

“I don’t care how he’s doing it,” Gabrielle said, her eyes tearing up. “I’m just glad to hear his voice again.”

We followed Thornton up Twelfth Avenue, away from the
Intrepid
. Slowly I began to recognize the neighborhood. I realized then where he was taking us. The only safe place left in New York City.

I heard screams behind us. The screeching of tires, the blasts of car horns. The unmistakable rumble of a building collapsing. I turned around in time to see the brown, brick UPS building across from the
Intrepid
fall over. The Selenian Legion had come ashore.

Bethany grabbed my hand. “We have to keep moving!”

I stared at the devastation unfolding behind us. Towering, horned shapes moved against the skyline. Another building collapsed into a cloud of dust and debris. More screams. I went cold. There was no one to help them. There was no one to stop this.

Bethany pulled me forward. “Trent, we have to go! There’s nothing we can do!”

I ran with her to catch up to the others. She was right. There was nothing we could do. But what if there was something
I
could do?