It lasted forever, pain and light trying to pull his soul from his body.
“Noooooo!” Damien screamed as his agony reached its zenith.
And then it was over. Lightning danced over the iron monster and died out slowly, a last climax of eerie, incandescent light. And then Damien’s world went dark. He was blind.
He was dead. Again.
But he had expected this. It happened every time. He would not be afraid—and he would not fail.
Damien reached down into the snow and felt for the adrenaline. It took a moment to locate the syringe with his clumsy fingers.
He touched his burned chest. There was no heartbeat. Feeling between the ribs, he found the correct spot and jammed the needle home.
Pain! Terrible pain as the adrenaline hit! But his heart was well trained and began to beat again almost immediately. The windmill of thought started back up in his brain, its sharp blades rotating through his head, slicing the veil that shrouded his thoughts. Clarity returned.
Gasping as his lungs recalled how to function, he felt for the second syringe. He ran his fingers along the large needle. Slowly his vision returned.
His first sight was Brice. Her mouth and eyes were open, her face a picture of frozen agony. But the wound in her neck had closed. It was, in fact, barely visible.
“Forgive me,” Damien whispered, shoving the medallion between her breasts aside. She, too, was burned, but the small spike wounds closed almost instantly. “I never meant to cause you pain. I never meant for this to happen. And if God is offended by what I do, His anger will be with me.”
He reached for her chest with clumsy fingers that seemed to have forgotten where their joints were located. Her heart was still—still and dead—and her face was absolutely colorless. But he could feel the spot where he needed to inject. It was marked with a small golden scar that glowed eerily even though the lightning had gone.
Reassured by this sign of potential life, and not allowing himself to reconsider his actions, Damien drove the needle into her heart.
“Start,” he pleaded, pulling the empty syringe away. “Live! God—You let her live! Don’t You punish her because You’re angry with me!”
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then Brice’s eyes and mouth moved, and she shuddered and started retching, trying to gulp in air with lungs that had forgotten how to do their job, trying to roll off the gargoyle and escape the cold and pain.
He grabbed her so that she wouldn’t fall off the roof and pulled her away from the narrow parapet that was slick with ice. The snow clung to her bare skin.
All at once, Damien could feel the cold eating at his body and knew that she would soon feel it too. They had to get back inside before their organs froze. For a short time, they would be vulnerable to the elements.
Trembling, he picked up her still spasming body and staggered into the library. He didn’t want her to regain awareness and see Dippel’s body, to awaken in the place where she had been killed. But they both had to get warm. Immediately. And inside was the only available fire.
If I am a poet, I owe it to the air of Greece.
—Byron (translated from the Greek on Byron’s Stone)
If my son were of age—and the lady properly disengaged—it is still the last of all connections that I would wish to take place.
—Letter from Byron’s mother to her attorney before his marriage
Brice’s eyes opened onto a world of dazzling fire, but she was not afraid because Damien sat between her and the flames and there was gentle music in the air.
“We have power back,” he said, smiling. “The good guys won.”
Brice nodded stiffly. Her neck hurt. “He meant that to be your crematorium,” she said after a moment, her voice a harsh whisper.
“I know. I’m not sure why, but his intent was fairly clear. Here—you must be thirsty.” Damien helped Brice sit up, using his body as a prop and a pillow. He offered her some brandy cut heavily with water.
“Are they all gone now?” she asked, certain they were because Damien was so calm. The worst of the storm must also have passed over them because his scars were barely noticeable.
“Yes. At least…well, they may not be completely dead yet, but they aren’t going anywhere.”
“I tried to glue one to the floor,” Brice told him, swallowing some more of the weak brandy. It seemed to be helping. The tightness in her throat eased, and she was beginning to feel comfortably warm. It was the first time in hours that the chill hadn’t gripped her bones.
“I saw that. It was ingenious.” Damien’s voice was gentle, as were his hands as he stroked slowly down her arms.
“Well, I tried conventional methods and they weren’t working. Strange to think that in a building this size I couldn’t find a single canister of mace or pepper spray.” She turned her face into Damien’s neck and inhaled. He was sweaty and smelled of cordite, but she drank in the scent because it was his.
A small eruption of sparks went up the chimney. Looking toward the fireplace, Brice finally noticed her nudity, and then Damien’s. She asked without much interest: “Where’s my robe?”
“Outside. With my clothes,” he answered. Then, diffidently: “Do you remember what happened?”
Brice touched her chest, tracing its new scar. Her hands were more or less clean, but there were traces of blood under her fingernails that he had missed when he wiped her clean.
“I…no. I know what happened—what you did—but all I really recall is being attacked by a murder of crows.” She looked toward the windows where the gargoyles perched. “Then, when I thought I couldn’t stand it, they turned into doves and everything went white.”
“An exaltation of doves,” Damien said. “That’s what they call such flocks.”
“An exaltation,” she murmured. “That sounds beautiful.”
Brice wasn’t certain that the crows and doves had been real, but she hoped they had headed south and weren’t trying to weather the storm. Enough death had come to New York that night; she didn’t want to see any more.
Damien watched his beloved gaze into the night, wondering what she was thinking, and also wondering when he would be called to account for what he had done.
As he had carried her inside, he’d thought about what he’d ended—both for Dippel and for Brice. His retaliation against his nemesis had been swift, brutal and merciless. He had become a feral animal that knew no compassion for the thing he killed. And he wasn’t the least bit sorry. Dippel had tried to kill Brice—had, in fact, succeeded. That Damien had later managed to bring her back was irrelevant. Her life as she knew it was over, taken from her without consent. Dippel deserved to die with fear of hell bright in his mind.
Damien looked at the impossible treasure in his arms. A wild zigzag of scar tissue bisected her body, unlike his own which was covered in fresh golden marks that still faintly glowed.
Brice turned to face him.
“Am I…will I live forever now?” she asked. Her voice held neither wonder nor fear.
“Not unless you want to. There will come a time when you will have to choose whether to go back into the lightning or face death.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. I made it almost fifty years before I was called the first time. You will know the moment, though. That wound in your throat will begin to ache and eventually bleed.” The words were hard to say.
“It’s bad? When it comes back?”
Damien nodded. Suddenly his eyes felt filled with acid. They flooded with bitter tears as he recalled the slow return of his epilepsy. It had seemed terrible. Things would be even worse for Brice.
“I see.” She touched her chest, tracing her scar. Would she think it hideous? A mark of shame?
“Damn it.” Damien blinked, hard. He hated weeping. He would not do it!
He also hated that he had reason to fear for Brice. More than anything, he wanted to spare her the pain she had endured and would endure again. But that was impossible. He abhorred this fact—this condition—of their existence, but that was the deal, the terms of survival. Damien kept his voice steady and calm as he spoke to her. He would not lie about this, nor would he weep in her presence. He had no right to burden her further.
Brice’s hand reached for her neck. The wound was closed, the scar barely noticeable. For now.
“I wouldn’t have chosen this,” Brice said softly.
Damien stopped breathing.
Then she smiled faintly and looked up into his eyes. “But I wasn’t ready to die tonight either—so thank you. Thank you for giving me back my life.”
Damien exhaled slowly and buried his face in her hair.
Forgiveness
, he thought.
So this is what a state of grace feels like
.
The stereo began playing Neil Diamond’s “The Story of My Life,” and Brice, listening to the lyrics for the first time, felt an odd stirring of emotion. Her eyes were misty with tears. The pain the song summoned was sharp and sweet. When was the last hour she had felt—or even believed in—a love like that?
She knew the answer, but didn’t look at it too closely. It belonged to another life, the life she’d had before she met this stranger whom she now knew better than anyone on earth.
Damien, looking at the salty diamonds on the ends of Brice’s lashes, thought she wore tears well, but he couldn’t bear to see them. There had been so much pain already. He stroked them away.
“Hush, love,” he said. And he took her in his arms and pulled her to her feet. By the light of the fire, they danced.
“I know that using the name Byron isn’t wise,” she whispered a few minutes later. “And Damien is a fine name, of course, but do you think in your next incarnation that you could be George? I’d be more at home with that. You might be too.”
Brice was her logical self again. Damien smiled.
“That can probably be arranged.” He kissed her hair, still reveling in his blessings, wondering if this meant that he would have to be less angry at God now.
Probably.
“You can choose another name for me too. When the time comes,” she volunteered. “I’m not fussy. Just don’t call me Gertrude. Or Mavis. I had an Aunt Mavis and absolutely loathed her.”
“You know, I must tip my hat in admiration,” Damien said. Awe and a bit of laughter filled him.
“It’s nothing,” Brice assured him. “I’ve always wanted a pseudonym.”
“No, not that. You were hit with what amounts to a natural impossibility—something that should have bent your brain into knots and landed you in a sanatorium—and you not only grasped the facts immediately, you also waltzed them twice around the floor before vanquishing your fear.”
“I shot those monsters too,” Brice bragged. She swallowed and cuddled closer, resting her cheek against his bare chest. “I’m glad I did it. Glad I
could
do it, so you didn’t have to. But I didn’t like it at all.”
“Yes, I know. But you did what you had to. You climbed a skyscraper in a snowstorm, braved the dark on your own, killed a zombie, faced a supernatural madman—and are still smiling. You are without any doubt the most valiant person I know. And I shall be grateful from now until my dying day that I have known you.”
Brice smiled. “Hopefully, that day is a long, long way off. Where’s Dippel now?” she asked after a moment. Her question was practical but her body was still relaxed against Damien’s. She was finally warm, and any other urgency was slow to show itself. Brice wondered if that was because the storm had not yet retreated, or if it was a side effect of all that had happened. After all, once you’d faced violent death, everything else was bound to seem less important.
“Outside. But let’s not worry about him for a few more minutes. We need to bathe and get dressed.” Damien didn’t add that it would probably be less distressing if the zombies quit moving before they saw them again.
“We’re going to have to get rid of the bodies, you know. There’s no explaining them,” Brice remarked, as though reading his mind.
“I know. Don’t worry. I have a plan,” he assured her. Then Damien lifted her into the air and spun her about.
Brice laughed softly. “Of course you do.”
“I’ve never known as much horror, fear and pain as I have this night,” Damien told her.
“I know,” Brice answered as she was set back on her feet. “Me either.”
“But you know what I feel now,” Damien said, standing still and looking deeply into her dark eyes. It was almost a question. There was a half smile on his lips. “It isn’t just the end-of-the-storm high.”
“Happiness,” Brice said. Her smile was wholehearted. And it wasn’t the storm that affected her either.
“Yes.” Damien pulled her close and kissed her.
Can you commit a whole county to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field and hang up men like scarecrows?
—Lord Byron’s speech to Parliament in defense of the poor, February 27, 1812
The enemy is without, and distress within. It is too late to cavil on doctrinal points, when we must unite in defense of things more important.
—Lord Byron’s speech in defense of freedom of religion to Parliament, April 21, 1812
“We must be practical,” Brice said as Damien blotted her hair dry with a towel. It was a relief to finally be rid of the last of the sandalwood oil. Though she had enjoyed the smell, she would now always associate it with the second-worst night of her life.
Or perhaps she was looking at this the wrong way around. She and Damien were still alive. Maybe this was the best night of her life.
“Of course.” There was enough of a smile in Damien’s voice that Brice felt compelled to push the towel away and make eye contact.
“Be serious. We have a real mess here.”
“Of course,” he said again. This time the smile was obvious.
“Do you have a digital camera?” Brice asked. She wasn’t sure what was prompting his grin. She had been filling in Damien on Dippel’s last minutes, telling him everything she could remember of their conversations— about the mob that had stormed his castle, about his belief that the only way he could achieve salvation was if all his creations were destroyed. None of it was amusing.
She had noticed that Damien wasn’t as forthcoming about how he’d spent his time away from her, but Brice didn’t press for immediate answers. The zombies were all dead, and he had been the one to kill them.
“I don’t own a camera, but Karen does. She keeps it in her desk. However, it might be unwise to take photos of this,” he said, knowing what she was thinking. “It isn’t precisely the thing to send out with the Christmas cards or put in the photo album. And it could be used as evidence against us if it were ever found by the authorities.”
“But it would also be proof of…of this craziness. If we ever start to doubt what happened. Or need to prove it to someone else.” Brice leaned toward the mirror and looked at her reflection. Her eyes were now as dark as Damien’s, and she looked as if she had spent a week tanning on a beach in Hawaii. There was also the scar in the middle of her chest that matched Damien’s.
“Do you really think
we’ll
ever need proof?” Damien asked. “I don’t know about you, but for me, this qualifies as something I’ll never forget.”
Forget? She might want to. Brice thought about Dippel as she had last seen him. Damien had dragged his corpse out onto the roof and left it to the elements. With its clothes torn aside, it was easy to see that the body was a conglomeration of mismatched limbs. A black tongue had poked out between rows of rotten teeth. The body also smelled heavily of chemicals. It could only barely pass for human, but
barely
was still enough to cause trouble with the police.
“I don’t think we can leave him out in the snow. Even if we roll him down onto the sidewalk, there is no way he will pass for a homeless person caught in the blizzard. I mean, he’s missing his heart.” Brice’s voice was calm. Hysteria might come eventually, but it wasn’t there yet. “That probably goes for the others as well.”
“I’ve thought about this,” Damien answered. “There’s an old furnace in the basement. Cremation would be the safest thing anyway—I wouldn’t want these creatures somehow getting into the food chain.”
Brice looked at her lover. He was calmly buttoning his shirt. They might have been talking about what to have for breakfast instead of destroying zombie bodies before scavengers like pigeons or rats or squirrels ate them and…and what? Became poisoned? Became zombie pigeons?
“Will it…” She paused a moment to gather her nerve to ask the next question. “Will it be hot enough to do the job?”
“Enough. It seems highly unlikely that these creatures will have recent dental records, even if the teeth survive.”
“We don’t know that for sure, though.” Brice pulled a sweater on over her head. She picked up her pistol. Damien did the same.
“No, but the ones I killed didn’t have any obvious dental work—no dentures or fillings.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want to have to rake through the ashes collecting bits and pieces.”
Damien smiled a little and handed Brice her boots.
Damn!
She really did not understand what amused him.
Thinking about another way they’d get caught: “There must be some sort of scrubbers on the ventilation system, but there may still be some odor. Those bodies smell hideous. Burning them…no one will mistake that for roasting goose,” Brice remarked severely. She was proud of herself for thinking of this. Usually her mind was quite flexible and quick, but she still felt as if her brain had grown a layer of rust that she would need to scrape away before resuming normal life—whatever normal life might be now.
She had thought a bit about what it would mean if she had to give up her present existence. It had been cloistered and she had no dependents—not even house plants. She did have a few friends, the odd distant cousin, but when she weighed them against a lifetime with Damien, her path was clear.
“Yes, the police may come calling—looking for a methamphetamine lab probably. But they won’t find anything in the way of drug paraphernalia in this building. And it may not occur to them to check the old furnace. They will likely assume it was disconnected years ago.”
“But we’ll have to get the place cleaned up by the time they get here—just in case they do look.”
Damien nodded, then frowned. He started toward the bedroom window.
“What is it?” Brice asked as Damien reached for the latch. She hurried to his side. “What the devil…?”
Could she really hear someone singing “God rest ye merry, gentlemen?” Brice peered down into the city. At the margins of the darkened block there stood a contingent of the Salvation Army. The cavalry had finally come with the sunrise, but they were too late, and much too far away. And promising salvation or not, this army was illequipped to handle the kind of evil that had visited New York last night.
Brice jumped at the sound of a horn in a distant street. Firecrackers followed. She knew what they were, but the sound still made her cringe. A few hours before, she had desperately wanted to escape into the world. Now it was too close.
“Easy, it’s just the Christmas throng,” Damien said, and Brice wondered if she was going to be nervous for very long. If she would always be somewhat wary of strangers now. Her experience certainly hadn’t improved her feeling about the Yuletide season.
Damien hugged her briefly and then closed the window against the winter. It wasn’t bothering her the way it had, because her body temperature had shot up and she seemed able to ward off the cold, but psychologically Brice still found the snow intimidating.
“Next year’s holidays will be better,” he promised.
“They certainly couldn’t be worse.”
“Hm—best not tempt Fate with statements like that.”
Brice sighed. “She’s a real bitch sometimes.”
“Often even,” he agreed. Absently he added, “It’s a loss, you know. Surgeons the world over could help their patients if they knew how to reattach limbs or graft donor digits.” He led the way back to the library.
“Maybe. But I don’t think the public is ready for this kind of cadaver-donation program. Think how freaky it would be to find yourself confronting a stranger wearing your grandpa’s arm. Or head. Anyway, you saw what happened to Dippel. There could be other psychopaths out there who would abuse the power. Think what would happen if his journal was posted on the Internet.”
“The mind boggles,” Damien admitted. “We may have to destroy it.”
“Destroy it or lock it up somewhere really safe. And speaking of mind-boggling…” Brice looked at the mess around them and sighed. Her shredded manuscript was replaceable, and the one Damien had been reading for review surely wasn’t the only copy in existence. “I’m glad your place is mostly granite and marble. It will be easier to clean up.”
“Yes. By the way, have you seen Dippel’s hand? It should be around here someplace,” Damien said. “I’m afraid I rather lost track of it while I was taking the body outside.”
Brice swallowed hard. And just when she’d thought things couldn’t get any weirder. “Have you looked under the desk? We really have to get the
bodies
cleared away.”
They stared down at the zombie. If anything, it looked worse without its head. “Are you sure you want to help with this?” Damien asked doubtfully.
“No, but I think I’d better. We don’t know how much time we have to get this done. The next shift of security guards might show up at any time.”
“I hope this tarp doesn’t leak,” Damien complained, grasping the zombie by arm and leg and heaving it onto the green oilcloth. He quickly folded the flaps over the corpse. “Hand me the string.”
Brice gave him the ball of twine and the scissors she’d been holding. She helped hold the flaps down, trying to ignore that the corpse was still occasionally twitching. Her stomach held firm until Damien was done, but then she bolted for the bathroom.
She didn’t linger long, and when she returned, she found Damien at the window.
“I wonder if we could drop him down to the sidewalk and then bring him in through the lobby.”
Brice joined him. They carefully scanned the windows of the adjacent buildings. So far they all remained dark. No eager beavers bucking for promotion had come in for the holiday.
“It’s a long drop. Do you think the tarp will hold?” Brice asked, her voice hesitant. She really, really didn’t want to have to shovel the body up again, along with a lot of bloody snow.
“The snowbank would cushion the fall,” Damien said.
“It will leave tracks when we drag it,” she argued. “Maybe bloody ones.”
“I suppose you’re right. And speaking of bloody tracks, I think we better avoid the main elevators as much as possible. We’ll take the service elevator instead—after I test it. It goes directly to the basement,” Damien added, stooping down. He stood rapidly, heaving the smelly bundle over his shoulder. He walked toward the elevators.
Brice wondered if she was stronger than she used to be, but decided she didn’t want to test her new muscles by lifting corpses.
“Why go that way? You said we should avoid the main elevators,” she pointed out as Damien headed in that direction. “The stairs are closer. Just one floor and we’ll be right by the service elevator.”
“Trust me. You don’t want to take the stairs. We’ll use the service elevator after this floor. I really need to test it.” After a pause, he explained, “There was a slight explosion in the stairwell.”
Brice glanced over at the fire door. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if maybe something was leaking underneath. Gore?
“Okay. I believe you.” Brice followed Damien. Her nose wrinkled. “Geez—he stinks!”
“I’m aware of that. I’d grab some room freshener, but I don’t think it would help.”
“Are they all this bad?” Brice asked, doing her best to not sound like she was complaining.
“Pretty much. Listen, you don’t need to help with this. Why don’t you find the janitor’s closet and get a mop and pail?”
“Oh, sure—leave the cleanup to the woman,” Brice joked. But she was happy enough to turn away. Watching the bundle on Damien’s back twitch and wriggle was getting to what was left of her nerves.
Two hours later, Brice and Damien stood before their impromptu crematorium, reeking of disinfectant cleansers. They’d been feeding it zombie bodies for the last hour. As impossible as it would have seemed, Brice had lost much of her horror at what they were doing. The only difficult thing for her now was picking up the tarps while they were still moving, because that brought to mind her persistent childhood terror of the witch from
Hansel and Gretel
trying to stuff children in the oven.
“Are things clean enough upstairs, do you think?” she asked. It was now after noon, but they couldn’t tell it, standing in the windowless basement. She was mainly concerned about the mess in the stairwell, which she had insisted on helping to clean up. She’d never seen anything like that in her life, and prayed she never would again.
“If no one starts looking for bullet holes outside the security office, we should be fine.”
They had decided not to destroy the guards’ bodies, partly because it would have been cruel for the families of the missing men. And partly because a missingpersons investigation would bring more attention than a plain old double homicide and theft.
Brice and Damien had argued for a bit about whether the guards should be thought to have walked in on a drug deal gone wrong, or to have interrupted a robbery. Robbery was chosen—it was easy to take stuff and hide it; providing bits of illegal drugs for the police to find would have been harder.
“And if they do start looking?” Brice asked, thinking of the hole blown in the wall where Damien had used the grenade. “That would make things difficult for you. Are you…prepared?”
“You mustn’t worry. All appearances aside, I’m as much an ant as a grasshopper. I have been meticulous about arranging an emergency escape for the day the unthinkable happened. If the truth is discovered here, I have the means to disappear.” Damien paused, then added, “I can arrange for Brice Ashton to disappear too. If that’s what you want.”
“I would have to?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“If it comes down to a large investigation, I fear so. Too many people know you’re here. And if you didn’t come with me, I could probably never come near you again.”
A thin thread of smoke escaped the furnace door and coiled toward the ceiling. The fire inside spread a bloodred glow across the marble floor, which was lightly spattered with droplets of the zombies’ clotted blood. The droplets glittered brighter than any ruby ever cut and polished. The view was almost beautiful, but all Brice felt was disgust and a small degree of hope that the gasolinesoaked monster would burn thoroughly.