If I Should Die (27 page)

FORTY-FIVE

I HADN'T SEEN THEM COMING. I KICK MYSELF FOR
not being more attentive, but my focus had been on saving Louis and not on protecting my own. I glance around to see how many we are. Ambrose, Charlotte, Vincent, Arthur, and the four revenants in Arthur's group. With me, that makes nine. Ten if Louis fights with us.

The other groups, another fifteen bardia, are somewhere on the outside. Or at least, they were. Either they have already been defeated or they can still come to our aid. In any case, at the moment we are outnumbered by double. But for some reason, this doesn't scare me. It just feeds my determination.

Breathing deeply, I draw my sword and bounce on my toes, adrenaline sizzling in my veins.
I am ready for this,
I think, and run at the first numa I see, attacking before he can get to me. I catch him by surprise and slash at his sword arm before he can lift it. He drops his weapon and crouches down to recover it. As he stands, I lunge. My sword pierces his chest. I drive it deeply in and then quickly pull it out.

He stares at me, eyes bulbous. Grabbing his chest, he coughs up a small stream of blood and then falls forward, his sword clattering to the ground beside him.

I can't believe I just killed someone. I expect to feel sick like I did at the riverside, but instead I feel exhilarated. It's us against them: bardia versus numa in a fair fight.
Death in this case serves the larger good
, I tell myself. But with a pang of realization, I know those words are to comfort the old Kate. New Kate has more numa to kill.

Charlotte is fighting like a madwoman. Geneviève's body has been pushed to the side of the passageway, out of the melee. Arthur and his four are standing back-to-back with us, fighting the numa coming from the other end of the passageway. Louis stands behind me, weaponless.

Are you with us?
I ask him silently.

Nodding, he sweeps his long brown hair behind his ear. I scoop his sword from where Vincent had kicked it aside, and meet his eyes as I hand it to him. With the slightest of smiles, he moves to my side and we advance on two numa. “What in the . . . ,” says the one directly in front of me, gaping when he sees Louis beside me.

Louis's sword skills aren't very good, but thanks to the split second of surprise his kindred experience when they register his defection, he's given the advantage, and together we take out our opponents. As more rush in to take their place, I see that two in Arthur's group are down. Ambrose smashes away at an opponent with one arm, the other dangling uselessly by his side.

We have formed a small circle facing outward as we fight off numa that number twice our ranks. “What do we do?” I yell to Vincent as I strike at a dusky-skinned numa with a mustache.

He pulls a second sword from his belt. “We do our best,” he answers. “And if we die, we hope that our backup arrives to rescue our bodies.”

I ready myself for my next opponent when, from behind the line of numa, I see the worst possible thing: More fighters approaching. Another ten at least. My mouth fills with a metallic tang. I can taste our defeat. We are lost.

These newcomers are like no numa I have seen before. Their punk hair is bleached and dyed in every possible color, and their skin is covered with tattoos. And as they stride through the arched gateway, the noise of battle is suddenly drowned in a wave of speed metal. One of them actually carries a boom box on his shoulder, which he swings down and places near the entrance of the passageway. He pauses to turn the music up to maximum volume before straightening and positioning himself with his compatriots, hands on waists, across the width of the entrance.

The fighting stalls as everyone looks their way. And then I notice their auras. Not red. Gold.
They are bardia!
I realize with astonishment. They draw their weapons, and one of them steps forward.

His long hair is black, tipped in red, and stands on end like a lion's mane. His eyebrow and lip are pierced and his eyes are lined with kohl. He scans the fighters until he spots Charlotte, and one side of his mouth turns up in a grin. “Hey, sis,” he calls.

Charlotte is stunned, her sword hanging by her side and her eyes wide with shock. “NO WAY!” she yells, and then with a whoop of joy she springs back into action, swinging at her enemy with such intensity that she beheads the distracted numa with one blow.

Chaos descends. Charles's kindred shout some kind of battle yell in German and plunge into the fight, swinging curved sabers and battle-axes.

The numa facing Arthur and his men fight fiercely for another minute, pushing us forward into a tight band of flailing limbs and flashing weapons. But as our defensive circle widens, confusion takes over. A couple of numa run toward the passageway's exit. They are quickly followed by more, one or two pulling wounded kindred with them, but most thinking only of their own escape.

In five minutes it is over. The blaring music mixes with the moans of our wounded foes, who are quickly dispatched. The owner of the boom box marches over and turns the music down. He shrugs when he sees me staring. “Hey, noise pollution elicits fewer phone calls to the police than screaming and battle sounds. At least, that's the case in Berlin,” he says.

“Are you okay?” Vincent asks, and seeing that my worst wound is a slice on my shoulder, kisses me quickly. We gather to assess the bodies. Ten numa lie dead on the ground. A couple of others were carried out by those who escaped. Nicolas's body is still here, his fur coat a gory mess, soaked in blood. Three of Arthur's team are dead. And Ambrose sits propped up against a wall, his arm bleeding profusely as Charles and Charlotte attend to him.

Someone is missing
, I realize with alarm. Scanning the passage again, I yell, “Geneviève! Where's Geneviève?” Our group scrambles around, looking for her. “She was just over here,” I say, pointing to the place I last saw her body.

Charlotte raises her hands to her mouth in horror. “NO!” she screams, and runs to the end of the passageway with Charles close on her heels. They frantically scan the street on the other end, but it is clear that whoever took Geneviève is long gone.

The twins stand together, dark silhouettes under a black arch, their bodies backlit by the illuminated street beyond. As Charlotte begins to cry, her brother wraps his arms around her.

FORTY-SIX

WITHIN FIVE MINUTES, AN AMBULANCE HAS
pulled up to the passageway and the bodies are loaded on. “No, man, I don't need an ambulance,” says Ambrose, resisting Vincent's efforts to have him ride with the dead and wounded.

“Well, you can't walk home like that, and you're going to bleed all over a taxi,” Vincent says, helping him up to a standing position.

“I'll ride with you,” says Charlotte in a small voice.

Ambrose looks over to where she stands with Charles's arm around her. She smiles a sad smile at him, and he nods his head, defeated. “Yeah, okay.”

Vincent turns to where I shelter Louis with my body as Charles's German clan eyes him suspiciously.

“You're still here,” he says darkly.

“I am,” says Louis. He lifts his chin slightly, but looks like a scared adolescent in spite of his bravado.

“Kate, will you please tell me what went on back there?” Vincent asks.

It looks like volant revenants aren't the only ones I can communicate with telepathically.
I lob the thought toward him, and he starts in surprise.

“Okay,” Vincent says, shaking his head in confusion. “So you telepathically offered this numa amnesty?”

“Louis told me his story on the boat, Vincent. Violette wasn't the only one unhappy with her status. And Louis is still new.”

“Six months,” Louis clarifies. He's staring at his shoes, his face beet red.

“What he did sounds bad,” I say, “but he doesn't want to follow that path.”

Vincent looks at the ceiling as if the solution lies above the plate glass. “Kate, what do you expect me to do? I don't understand what you're asking for.”

“I don't know either,” I admit, “but taking him in is the right thing to do. You just have to trust me.”

Vincent stares at me, not knowing how to respond. “Kate. I trust you. But I don't trust him,” he says, throwing his gaze toward Louis, who scowls and pushes his hands into his pockets.

“I take full responsibility for him,” I say. Vincent raises his hands to his head, like he wants to tear his hair out. A strangled sound escapes his throat as he walks away. He says something to Arthur as he passes him.

Arthur walks over to us. “I've been told I'm ‘on you like glue,'” he says to Louis, and waits, making it clear he's not leaving the numa's side.

As we walk toward the exit, Arthur is very obviously checking Louis out. “What?” Louis asks finally.

“So you're Violette's new consort,” the older revenant says, amused. “You're with her for six months and you want to run away? Try five hundred years.” Louis's jaw drops.

I leave them to follow Vincent, who is talking to the head of Charles's group. “We'll stay as long as you need us,” says the girl in German-accented English. She looks like Lisbeth Salander's tougher little sister, her wiry body painted with tattoos, face dotted with piercings, and blue hair cropped short and sticking out as if she used a live electrical wire to style it.

“There's not enough space at La Maison to give everyone a room, but across town . . . ,” begins Vincent.

“We don't need beds,” the girl says. “No one's dormant this week.”

“But space to put your things . . .”

“We share everything, including personal space,” she says, amused by Vincent's concern. “Seriously, it's better to keep everyone together. Plus, you say the big battle's about to go down. Well . . . just consider us inseparable,” she says, crossing her middle finger behind her index.

“Regrouping at the Frenchie's house,” she yells to her crew in English and then repeats herself in German. The group has been busy cleaning up the passageway, stowing dropped weapons and mopping up blood with T-shirts that are summarily thrown into trash cans outside. When we leave, the space looks like nothing ever happened. Charles's kindred bare their ink-decorated chests like medals beneath their leather jackets, jostling one another and joking in German as we begin the walk home.

We make two stops on the way to join up with our groups that were attacked by numa. There were no deaths within their ranks. Whether it was because they were too exposed to fight for long or if the numa were only distracting our backup from supporting us, they had engaged quickly and then had run off.

As Vincent rounds everyone up and sweeps them along with us toward home, the German leader keeps close to me, studying me unabashedly from beneath her blue shorn spikes.

“I didn't get your name,” I say finally, looking her straight in the eye.

She doesn't flinch, seeming to like the direct attention. “Uta,” she says. “You're the Champion.”

“I guess so. Not that that did us much good tonight,” I concede. “I'm glad Charles got Charlotte's messages. Otherwise, we'd be toast.”

“Charles didn't get Charlotte's messages,” Uta says, lifting a pierced eyebrow. “At least, not until we were halfway here. We were on a wilderness motivational retreat. No cell phone service.”

“Then . . . how did you know to come?” I ask, confused.

She smiles widely. “I'm a Seer. Saw your light. Brighter than anything I've ever seen. Spotted it from hours away. Knew it was something we had to check out. It just took us a while to get here.” Uta laughs at my bewildered expression.

“Gotta be weird being the Champion,” she says. “What are your powers?”

I feel kind of embarrassed. As if she asked me to list the things I like best about myself. I focus on the things I'm most worried about. “The prophecy says I'm supposed to have ‘preternatural levels of strength.' Not sure if you noticed back there, but I'm no stronger than anyone else.”

Uta nods and thinks for a second. “Maybe in your case it's not physical strength. Seems like you've got a lot in here,” she says, thumping her chest with her fist. “Doesn't always take muscle to be mighty.”

I think about the hippy-dippy in-touch-with-their-feelings label that Charlotte had used for Charles's kindred, and try not to grin.

“You know, we had a Champion in Germany,” she continues. “A few hundred years ago. There was a load of political and social infighting—lots of chance for betrayal. Numa had overrun the place. Champion came in. He led a battle against our enemies.”

“What happened? How did he do it?” I ask, my pulse accelerating. This is the first thing I've heard about a German Champion.

Uta shrugs. “Don't know. He succeeded. I mean, the numa were wiped out and our region started with a clean slate. But how he did it? Meaning what kind of powers he had—I can't tell you.”

“Why not?” I ask.

Uta hesitates and then says, “Because he didn't survive the final battle.”

I try to keep my face emotionless. No wonder Vincent doesn't want to talk about what I am. Being the Champion doesn't mean I'm going to win. Uta's just confirmed that.

But I don't regret what I've become. I could be dead right now. If I hadn't been a latent revenant when Violette stabbed me, that would have been it. This is a second chance, not only for me but for Paris's bardia and its unsuspecting human population.

I try to imagine what the city would be like overrun by numa. Evil would reign supreme. Images of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Francoist Spain come to mind. Of Third World countries run by dictators or generals who seize the resources and let their population starve. Genocide. That is what can happen when the balance of good and evil is disturbed. In this light, it seems impossible to me that I can make a difference.

But I was given the chance to see my grandparents and Georgia again. Not to mention Vincent. I look over to where he is talking with Louis, and his eyes meet mine before returning to the young numa. Even when he's involved in something else, Vincent's attention never leaves me. I know I'm lucky to have been given more time with him.

And I decide that if this is all I have, if we all die today, well then these precious extra minutes will have been worth it. Excusing myself to Uta, I hurry to catch up with Vincent.

Without slowing his pace, he flings an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close to him, bending down to kiss the top of my head before continuing his conversation with Louis. As the newly formed numa finishes telling his story, Vincent looks troubled.

“All I have wanted since I transformed into this monster is to go back and erase what I did. To turn back time so that I could do things differently. I want out,” the boy concludes.

“There is no out,” Vincent says just loud enough for me to hear.

“Even so, you should know that I will do anything to escape that fate,” Louis says fervently.

As we walk past the Louvre and onto the bridge to cross back to the Rive Gauche, Vincent nods to Arthur, who takes Louis by the arm. They drop back to let us talk alone.

“Okay, Kate. I see why this guy made you think,” says Vincent. “But that doesn't change the fact that he is numa. His destiny has been decided, and nothing can change that.”

“Vincent, I know this doesn't make sense. But there's something different about him. Not only in the feeling I get from him, but his aura is different.”

“His aura?” Vincent says incredulously. “Doesn't he have a numa aura?”

“Yes,” I admit. “But it's not the same. There is this golden kind of glimmer inside. I think it means something. Like there's some good in him. Some hope. I know this goes against everything you've learned—what you believe is right. But . . . Louis has to come with us.”

Vincent slows and then stops to face me, and the others flow around us like a tide. He touches my face, and then laces his fingers through my hair. He holds me like that for a full minute, studying my face like I am a book written in a foreign language. Then he leans forward and presses his lips to mine.

When he steps back the sparkle has returned to his sapphire eyes. “Okay,” he says.

“So, you agree with me?” I ask.

“No. But . . . well, Kate, you're the boss.” He takes my hand and we resume walking, bringing up the tail end of the procession.

“Yeah, right,” I sputter. “You're the head of France's kindred.”

“Yes, but you're the Champion,” he says with a wry smile. “And I've never seen an actual leadership flowchart, but I presume that means you're the boss of me.”

My mouth drops open in amused dismay. “I don't want to be the
boss
of anyone.”

“Too late,” he says with false flippancy. “You're already talking directly to people's brains, persuading the enemy to untie you while in captivity, and attracting help all the way from Germany with your billion-watt aura. It's not like you can take it back now and just be a regular revenant.” He's doing his best to joke, but I know he is just as overwhelmed by what I have become as I am.

“Too bad I didn't get everything that was promised. I did okay back there, but some superstrength would have come in handy,” I say.

“Prophecies are always spotty at best,” he says. “Maybe the strength bit will kick in later.” He pulls me closer, as if his proximity alone can shield me from what is to come.