Beautiful City of the Dead (15 page)

I did as I was told.

Frankengoon was behind the wheel. Scratch was in the back seat. "Your precious little friend has taken off. Mr. Knacke's gone after him."

S
O THERE
I
SAT IN
the front seat, thinking about those Stranger Danger movies we had to watch in grade school. I remembered all sorts of stuff from them, warnings and rules. Don't accept rides. Don't take candy from strangers. But never once had we been told what to do when the assistant principal pulls up in some seedy neighborhood and tells you to get in. Or when your bio teacher turns out to be an evil firegod who's kidnapped your best friend.

The car stunk. I guess that was from Scratch, who had on his nastiest old bum coat. His teeth were brown, like he'd been eating dirt by the handful. He didn't say much besides hissing "Yes, yes," as Frankengoon told me what we were going to do.

"We'll find your friend." I'd never heard anyone make that word sound so horrible. "And we're going to make sure he never runs away again."

Tearing down the road, we went through some red
lights, and practically killed a lady as she crossed in front of us. I guess when gods are using their full powers, they can drive as fast as they want. No golden heavenly chariots. But no police waiting to give us a ticket, either.

We drove north on Plymouth Avenue, toward the glittering lights of downtown. The snow had let up, I guess. But the wind kept stirring it into whirlpools and sudden blinding blasts. The huge Kodak and Xerox buildings loomed ahead, with a few windows winking off and on, and the tops lost in the night sky.

"The bridge," Scratch said. "Yes, the bridge."

Frankengoon turned onto Broad Street and slowed down.

"There. Up ahead." Scratch was leaning over the front seat, peering through the windshield. I could smell him: B.O., unwashed clothes, ancient coffee breath. "There he is," he hissed.

Knacke stood in the middle of the bridge, his arms raised and his head thrown back. Snow moved like brilliant curtains around him. Globes of fire glowed in both hands.

At first I thought it was a freestanding shadow that faced Knacke. Every move he made, the shadow made too. Only as we got close did I see it was Relly.

Knacke waved his arms, flames pouring out his fingertips. Relly did the same. Knacke punched at his own chest. And I saw a heart made of red burning coals. Relly copied that move exactly. It was horrible to see, fires glowing inside his naked rib cage.

Frankengoon stopped his car and told me to get out.

"Good, good," Knacke said when he saw us. "All together again. Now we can finish this up. All's well that ends well." He hawked up a gob of blue fire.

Frankengoon took me by one arm and Scratch took me by the other. They dragged me forward and threw me at Knacke's feet.

Knacke made a broad gesture and a ring of flame licked around me, there on the sidewalk. It burned at my legs. I choked on the foul, oily fumes.

Only then did Relly break his mimic trance. With a sweeping motion of his arm, he seemed to gather up the flame, take it into himself. In a second it was gone. Only the faint wisps of smoke remained. And they were soon swept over the river gorge and were gone.

Knacke laughed, the way a grownup might laugh at a little kid's cute trick. "Didn't I tell you, Zee? He's nothing compared to me." A jet of flame roared out of Knacke's outstretched hands. He aimed over my head. This was all for show. He was still trying to convince me that I should join him and his tetrad.

"He's a pitiful little cigarette lighter. And I am the
sun!" As though he'd flicked a switch, his face lit up brilliant as a car's headlight. "He's a little crumb of rust and I am a globe of burning gold."

Now Scratch and Frankengoon had Relly by the arms, dragging him to the edge of the bridge.

"He has promise. I don't deny that. He has the power," Knacke said. "But I have a thousand times more. And when you've linked yourself to us, Zee, then we shall defeat death itself."

Relly seemed to give up. No more fire from him. No more resistance.

"Dearly beloved," Knacke said, like he was a preacher and this was some evil wedding. "We are gathered as gods to welcome our fourth. We have come here to complete our tetrad. We have our offering and we have our newest, truest, youngest power."

I was in a daze, I guess. I listened and I watched. But this was all so unreal. I think part of my brain just shut down. Knacke's plan was clear now. They were going to toss Relly into the gorge as a human sacrifice. Right here where the ghost of the canal crossed the shadowy river. One was gone and the other was in darkness, though I heard the rushing black water. Right here at this place of power in the middle of the city.

Here the four directions crossed. North and south—the river. East and west—the canal.

Here was the perfect place to sacrifice one young god and welcome another.

The snow blew above our heads, parting and closing like gauzy curtains. I looked across the river. And as the whiteouts faded for a moment, there was the statue in the sky. A Mercury made of copper. A heavy metal god floating in the blizzardy air.

Frankengoon and Scratch had Relly up on the stone ledge now, ready to push him into nowhere. The river surged on below, secret and inky black. The sound was beautiful and horrible too. So much power, an endless north-rushing flood.

"We offer up this boy. We offer up his fire as a sacrifice." Knacke was yelling now, though his voice was swallowed up quickly by the wind. "We offer him up to open the way for our fourth. As he is taken by the river, so shall our Zee be taken by us. Welcome, Zee." He reached for my hand.

"Y
OU PROMISED
," I
WHISPERED.
"You said if I joined you, then Relly would be safe. You promised."

He clapped his hands to shut me up. Sparks blew out from his fingertips. Again, I tried to argue. And he yelled me down, his awful growls turning to flame in midair.

Knacke made a claw of one hand and dragged it downward. He left four glowing marks that hung like luminous ribbons. He snarled and I thought he would turn into a beast right there. A mad dog with fiery breath.

"Now?" Frankengoon asked.

"Now?" Scratch repeated, pressing Relly backward over the abyss.

"Now," Knacke said.

The squeal of tires and the drumming of a powerful motor broke the ritual moment. There, coming at us down Broad Street was the Buttmobile, like a black hammer slamming through the white veils of snow.

Butt aimed his van straight at us, like he wanted to smash us all, throw us plummeting into the gorge.

Knacke screamed, Scratch howled, Frankengoon groaned the word No like a foghorn blast.

Butt pounded his brake pedal and threw open the side door. He leaned out, grabbed Relly, and yanked him into the van. I heard Jerod's voice too, yelling for me to follow.

I guess the fever came back to me in a burning wave. Because what I saw next seemed so unreal, and what I did was impossible. Fearless now, or maybe so crazy that fear didn't even count, I grabbed the four quivering ribbons of light out of the air and whipped them across Knacke's face. I felt pain, real and intense, going deep. But it was like my hand was not connected to my brain. It just grabbed. I lashed Knacke with those four burning whips and he fell back, snarling like a wild animal.

When my blurred daze fell away, I was in the Buttmobile, speeding with my three friends away from the bridge.

Relly was in bad shape, real bad shape. He'd looked at death and death had looked back at him. The abyss had been ready to take him. And he'd been ready to go. Now he was safe again, at least for a little while. Only it was like that black emptiness was still looming before him.

Butt had his foot to the floor. The van was shaking and tires whined as we took the snow-slicked corners. I was
with Relly in the back, holding him, trying to get him all the way back to us. He shook. And this made me hold on tighter, like maybe I could draw some of the fear and the fire into myself.

"We're in big trouble!" Jerod yelled. "They're right behind us."

Relly's shakes started in again, worse than before. "There's no way," he whispered. "We're dead. We'll never get away from them."

Through the van's muddy rear window came two powerful streams of light. There was Knacke's car, with all three of our enemies in it. Their faces looked like white rubber masks, bulging and twisting in rage.

"R
ELLY!
" B
UTT YELLED BACK.
"Do something. Now! He's cooking the engine." Butt pointed to a dial on the dashboard. The little orange needle was tapping all the way to the right. "We'll burn up in about two minutes."

Relly crawlad to the front. Already the smell of roasted rubber and scorched metal filled the van.

Wisps of poisonous green steam floated from under the dashboard.

"Do something!"

Relly tried to concentrate on the van's motor, drawing out the excess heat. He started to sweat and shake again. I put my arm around him, but drew back quickly. "Stop it! This isn't going to work. It'll kill you," I said. His fever cooked right through his coat. It hurt, bad. And it scared me. But I went back and hugged him again. Fever came out of him like venom from a snakebite. Out of him and into me.

Now smoke was billowing from under the hood. I
could hear the heat gauge ticking like a bomb. Relly let out a breath that stunk of car exhaust.

"We're dead," he said. "We'll never escape them."

A sudden bloom of red light filled the windshield.

"It's on fire!" Butt yelled and slammed on the brakes. "Out! Out! Get out now!"

He lunged from the driver's seat. I yanked crazily at the door handle. "Come on!" Butt was shouting. Flames shot from the van's front end. I stood there looking stupidly at the broken lever in my hand.

Relly finally came all the way out of his trance. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me from the van.

We hadn't run far when the whole van was swept into a ball of flame. "Let's go!" Jerod yelled, shielding his eyes.

The van had come to rest right at the front gate of Mount Hope Cemetery. The hills, the bare trees, the endless ranks of white stones faded in and out of the snowstorm.

Mount Hope was locked up for the night. Relly, me, and Jerod were skinny enough to squeeze between the iron gates and flee inside. Butt, being a lot bigger, couldn't get through. He rattled the bars frantically, spitting curses.

Now Knacke's car had pulled up right behind the van. As the headlights died, the fire suddenly stopped, like it had been sucked into a gasping hole in the earth.

All three of us were yanking on the gate now from the inside. "Under. Under!" I yelled. Butt threw himself to the
ground and crawled beneath the rusty bars. His coat caught and ripped. But he made it through.

We were in Mount Hope, and for a few minutes at least, the spiked iron fence would protect us from Knacke and the others.

"Come on!" I shouted, and we ran up the cobblestone roadway into the graveyard.

W
E REACHED THE TOP
of the first hill. Below us, Knacke struggled to break through the gate. Flames seethed from his hands. Even from a distance, the groan of old melting iron was sickening.

In the olden days, Mount Hope was called the Beautiful City of the Dead. But that night, it seemed more like an entire country. There were hundreds of little hills, roadways that led everywhere and nowhere. Below, in the first valley, a few dozen tombs were laid out like an ancient stone village. In the other direction stood arches of stone, pyramids of stone, eight-sided shafts, and tiny stone churches.

"We can't win," Relly panted. "There's no point in running." No matter where we fled, our tracks would be perfectly clear to Knacke.

I paused a minute, turning inside myself. I was a god of water. Underground streams, yeah. The river, yeah. But
also snow and ice. I let myself feel the water pouring through me. And I let myself feel the icy wind. Soon the snow was ten times thicker in the air. And our tracks were blotted out.

We ran on, into the hills where two hundred thousand people lay in eternal sleep.

I saw a tree stump full of water, like a rotted black cauldron. I saw a carved angel whose arms had fallen off and whose face had dissolved. Still, I could tell she was looking heavenward. I saw rank after rank of stones like soldiers hunched over in the drifting snow.

Knacke got through the gate and aimed his car up the first rattling brick roadway. I heard him somewhere behind us. Then I saw the bright jets of his headlights poking through the empty branches above us.

"We're dead, we're dead," Relly moaned. "We can't outrun a car."

"No, but we can hide far from the road."

He stopped, blowing on his fingers and stamping his feet. "We'll die of the cold or they'll get us. What difference does it make?"

"I don't get it," I said. "Why, after everything we went through, why are you giving up?"

"Because
you
did."

"What are you talking about?"

"You sold us out! You agreed to join up with Knacke."

"That was to save you!" I yelled. "I thought if I went with them—"

Relly tripped and went headlong into the snow. I grabbed for his hand, but he slapped it away. "You gave up on us," he hissed at me.

"I did not! I was trying to save your life."

We looked down at the marker that had caught his foot. It was a dissolving white lamb, a gravestone for a little child. "Just one year old," I said. "Didn't even have a name. 'Our Baby.'" For a hundred and fifty winters, the lamb had stood guard over this spot.

"We should just give up," Relly said. "I'm freezing to death. I can't keep going all night." He rolled onto the grave and rested his head on the lamb like it was a pillow.

I'd read somewhere about people freezing to death, how they get warm first and sleepy. "You got to keep moving," I said. "Come on. It's not much farther."

"What's not much farther? More graves, more snow?"