Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2) (37 page)

“Incapacitate them!” cries out the Chief, bursting forth from a throng of dizzied Undead. “Hands! Heads! Chop them off! Hands! Heads! Hands!”

One such hand goes flying in a pretty arc in front of me. To my side, a head follows, and if I hadn’t stopped short just now, I would’ve caught it like a football. The thing rolls by my feet and I care not to identify to whom it belongs. My only priority right now is finding John.

Instead, I find Grim again. He’s moved farther away, his phantom green flames burning so bright, I’m shocked he hasn’t burned away the cabins and the trees, even with his fake fire. I fear the level at which his necromancy must be engaged, to somehow orchestrate every limb and look and swing and chop of his enslaved Dead.

But he is not perfect, and many of the Undead turn clumsy, their swings of blades missing the Human heads they aim at. The Humans cling to this fortunate lack of accuracy, retaliating with brutal, calculated force.

An arm lands two strides ahead of me, still gripping a sword. Uncaring who it belongs to, I snatch the weapon, its hilt made of wood, prying it from the fingers.

Maybe this is Jasmine’s weapon. Or Marigold’s. Or …

I spot Gunner atop the roof of a cottage next to me. He nocks an arrow and cries, “Not today!” before loosing it at his target. It zips through the air so fast, I can’t even follow it, and then suddenly I’m watching Grim reaching at an arrow that’s stuck in his shoulder. Gunner seems disappointed by his hit, however, as he likely was aiming for Grim’s pretty eye. “But I never miss,” Gunner says, amazed for only a second before the blunt side of an axe slams into his head, throwing him off the side of the cottage.

“Gunner!” I cry out, but as I charge in his direction, a wall of fire forms, blocking my way, and each flame is made of a person with a face more filled with malice than the next.

I’m blinded by the flashing and twisting of colors. I’m driven deaf by the screams of throats and steels. I can’t distinguish a single face that blocks my way …

Until Helena is standing there with a sword hanging to the ground, its point cutting a waterless creak in the earth as she marches toward me, dead-faced and wordless. Her steely eyes are locked onto mine as she lifts the sword to slay me. Is it Grim in there, still? Is any part of the Grim that loved me watching this, watching me through her eyes, desiring me to be cut into bits before him?

“Sorry,” I tell Helena before slicing her in half across the waist. Without even a grunt of surprise, she falls to the ground almost gracefully, now in two pieces. Her arm is still trying to cut me with her blade, so I chop it off too and apologize yet again.

When this is over, I promise to put her back together.

Hopping over her, I find myself climbing onto several Undead who’ve seemed to become a confused, wriggling pile of limbs. It’s atop this heap of Dead that I spot Megan, completely unarmed, confronting two burning men. With only her hand, she seems to be channeling their Anima and releasing them from Grim’s control. The recovered men look bewildered, staggering helplessly. “You’re free!” Megan shouts. “Wake up! Help us! Pick up a weapon!”

An Undead is coming for her back.

“Megan!” I cry out. “Behind you!” I’m racing toward her, lifting my sword in the air, prepared to make a swipe of it at her assailant.

In one quick motion, Megan’s grabbed a sword off the ground and thrusts it through its head, right in the looker. “Eye for an eye,” sings Megan, driving the now-impaled Undead away from her by walking it into a tree. “Take
that
, Grim! You have no power over
me,
you hear that??”

He hasn’t any power over her, but he still has power over too many. We won’t win like this. It doesn’t end until Grim does. I can’t protect my friends; they have to fend for themselves now. The green fire began with him and it will perish with him.

I grip the wall of a cottage and hoist myself up onto its roof to get a better vantage point. Across the cacophony of blades and screams and fire, I see Grim. He’s rushing up a ladder that leads to a very high treehouse of sorts that connects two mighty trees like a bridge. As he ascends, the tree itself seems to turn grey at his touch …

I see John as well, boldly chasing after him.

“JOHN!” I cry out.

He doesn’t have a Lock’s-Eye. Grim will kill him.

I tear off the cottage, throwing myself through the crowd in wild pursuit of them. Several faces pass by, faces of Humans, of Undead, of Humans that very recently became Undead … and among them I see Ash, her glass eyes throttled as an axe takes her in the back, and I see Nelson among the mobs, fire swallowing him as he swings his axe dumbly at anything that moves.

Even the Chief; his life has been forfeit, given to the Undead. I see him searching listlessly for a Human to slay. The Chief. My heart is up in my mouth.
The Chief
…

How many more sacrifices must we make before Grim is ended?

And then I realize the reason: the Chief gave his stone to John. That’s the only explanation I can think of. He knew John was going for Grim, so he gave him his stone to protect him. It’s only speculation, what may have transpired, but it’s all I have when there’s no one left to tell me what’s happening, to explain to me the reason for this madness. Everyone has turned Undead all around me, I can’t bring myself to observe who is left. Did Ash give herself willingly to the Undead because her lover had been taken? Was it her way of ending the nightly tears? Did Nelson join her so she wouldn’t be alone?

There’s a scream to my left, shouts of murder to my right, and spiders skitter across the dying grass, hissing and clicking as I race by. Only John matters, now.

Garden was so full of colors bright and vivid before the Undead came, and now it is even more full of colors, but in the form of fire. And as the Undead spread further out, the color slowly drains from the world. Every purple flower wilts gently to grey. Every bright yellow blossom, every leaf, every single blade of grass dies its own, private death. Where the fire leaves, it takes its color permanently with it. Ever slowly, ever patiently, Garden suffocates, its color bleeding into the empty embrace of grey.

I slam into the bottom of the ladder and begin my urgent ascent. John is far ahead of me, already nearing the top. The further I climb, the more difficult it is to manage getting my hands on the next rail. I have never been more focused on a target. My dead, dumb limbs can’t keep up.

The world falls below me. The chaos and the furious little fires that know not what they fight for.

Fourteen more steps and the final destination will be reached. “John, stop!!” I call out in vain. Twelve more steps. Nine. Eight. The treehouse is so far up, I won’t dare look down. Even my nerves that don’t properly exist are already shot beyond repair. “John!” Four more steps. Three more. Two more.

One.

The ladder spills me into a beige, wooden room with no furniture, floor-to-ceiling windows that line either wall like giant eyes … and Grim. He stands at the other end of the room, blanketed in furious green tongues of flame. The sounds of the war beneath us hiss into the room through the cracks in the floorboards. Even the rainbow haze of the Undead fire seems to float in the dusty air like a death sentence.

I rush to John’s side, gripping my sword and watching Grim with deadly conviction. John hardly seems to notice my arrival, as his eyes aim furiously ahead at our enemy.

“We end this,” growls John. I’ve never before seen a fury so deep in his eyes. Not ever, not even in the Battle for Trenton. “You cannot harm me. You cannot touch Winter. You pull out that eye and you—”

“And what? I cannot die.” Grim is composed, calm. “You must readjust what you are witnessing, John. Your friends are not dying. Your Chief is not dead, no more than Winter is.” His cold, poet’s eyes survey me. His voice is so level, it’s like he believes he can actually reason with us. “Remember your first days in Trenton, my love?”

“DON’T SPEAK TO HER!” John shouts, the sword in his grasp shaking so terribly, he’s making diced meat of the air in front of him. “DON’T YOU DARE!”

“You were my first love. I was yours.”

“I WILL CUT YOU INTO PIECES!” screams John. There are tears in his eyes. I realize he’s afraid. He doesn’t know what Grim is capable of, whether by the power of his fire … or the power of his words. John won’t simply charge at Grim because there is no certain victory here.

“Do you remember?” Grim asks once more.

I step gently in front of John. If there’s anyone on this cold dead planet who can reason with Grim, it’s me. “I remember meeting you. I remember that you made my fake Second Life in Trenton bearable at first. I remember your kindness and your care and your … poetry.”

“Don’t speak to him,” John begs me from behind. “He will lie to you. He’s evil. His mind is warped. He doesn’t deserve to
exist
after what he’s—”

“I was created Deathless for one purpose, and one purpose only,” Grim goes on, drowning out John’s pleas. “I was sent to confirm that you had been Risen. I was sent to collect you. I was sent to recruit you. I was not sent to fall in love with you.” His eyeless face wrinkles, but for the green stone that flashes. “But I did.”

I take John’s hand and give it a comforting squeeze, then drop my weapon and take a step toward Grim. “You did?” I ask, encouraging him to go on, and I hope John’s rage aids him in seeing through what I’m about to do, while Grim’s so-called love continues to blind him.

“When the Deathless fell and the Mayor fell and the Necropolis burned … I knew what was next for us. The world must burn, Winter. What are we after our Waking Dreams, but prisoners to our past? What is the world of the Living, if not a punishment for our having died? Death is blameless. Every life is spent dying. Even he, that man named John, even he is dying.”

I am slowly crossing the room, unarmed. The hissing sounds of the war below plays into my ears and tickles my neck like an unwelcome friend. “Waking Dreams can be pleasant,” I tell him.

“And I will never know. I won’t stop until I’ve even killed the Waking Dreams, every last one,” he whispers, and I hear his every last word. “There is more than one kind of dying. There is more than one kind of Dead.”

I come to a stop only two strides away from Grim. This close to him, his Eye pulsates with such a violent green light, it looks nearly blue.

“I wanted to build us a world,” he whispers, and I remember the poetry in him so well. I remember our time together like it was only last week. John says my name again, warningly, but I continue to listen to Grim. I’m so close, I might be able to pluck his eye right out. I’m calculating whether or not I’d be quick enough; one misstep and the whole world burns. “But I cannot live in it alone. Please, Winter. Wake up from this dream you’ve built yourself with this …
Human
. It won’t work. Even if I turned him Dead, Winter, he would not belong to you, and you would not belong to him—but if you were
mine
, Winter, just
think
—”

Enough thinking. I launch at him like a snake, my fingers going straight for his Eye—but Grim is just as keen and he deflects my action, having anticipated it, and I’m suddenly caught in his arms, my back to his chest, and I stare ahead at John.

“Let her
go
,” John growls, gripping his sword with both hands now. Where is his Warlock stone?

“Winter, please,” Grim whispers into my ear with the ease of a lover’s kiss. “Don’t trade
forever
for
just
now
…”

John’s teeth are clattering—I hear them across the room like the applause of skeletons. I’ve never seen him so afraid.

“Give me your Eye,” I bargain with Grim, “and you can have me.”

“Lie,” he hisses into my ear.

His squeezes my body, twisting me in tighter to his own, so tight I hear two snaps in my ribs and another near my hip. Grim could break me. Grim could break me and then what?

“You’re hurting me.”

“We don’t hurt,” he hisses, getting angrier. “At least, not in the way that a fool with a heart can
see
.” His voice is turning dark and full of malice. His hands and body have become stone. Even the green wisps of fire have turned black in the corners of my vision. “You lie to me again, I end you both.”

I’m losing this. I’m losing Grim and John is all the way across the room.

“Why are you lying to me, Winter? After all we’ve been through? Why?” Something loud and thick cuts into the underside of the floor. Then again, twice as loud. Is Grim directing his Burning Army to attack the treehouse? Are they throwing axes at us? “Why, Winter?”

“Calm down,” I beg him. Two arrows zip through the window and strike the ceiling. “Stop, please!” Another arrow soars in like a lightning bolt, narrowly missing John as he parries backward. “GRIM!”

“Isn’t that what every dying man says on his deathbed, every dying woman on hers?
Stop it
, they beg.
Stop it
… But you cannot, will not, will
never
stop it
,” he growls, like a promise. “Death cannot be stopped!”