Dying Is My Business (34 page)

“What weapon, what are you talking about?” Bethany demanded.

“Why, the most powerful weapon there is, of course. An Ancient,” Reve Azrael said. The discolored lips on Bennett’s dead face twisted into a smug smile. “With Stryge’s power, I can unmake this wretched city. I can bring it all down.”

Isaac sucked air into his lungs. “You’re insane … Stryge won’t do your bidding … He’s an Ancient, practically a force of nature.”

Reve Azrael grabbed his hair and pulled his head back until she was staring into his face. “I did not come here for advice. I came for the head. Where is it? Tell me and your pain will end.”

Isaac locked eyes with her, the defiance in his gaze burning like fire. “I don’t have it.”

He choked again, wheezing and gasping as his face turned red as a brick.

“It must be getting very hard to breathe,” Reve Azrael said. “Two lies is usually all anyone can muster before they die. Save yourself, mage, and tell me what I need to know.”

Isaac gasped like a beached fish.

“Stop it!” Gabrielle cried. “You’re killing him!”

“You mean I should show him mercy?” Reve Azrael asked. “I already have. I could have killed him, killed
all
of you, the moment we arrived, but I did not. I have no more mercy in me than that. But you can end this, woman. Any of you can. Just tell me where he has hidden Stryge’s head.” Her request was met with stony silence. She bent her ruined corpse face toward Isaac. “You’ve earned their loyalty. How endearing. I wonder, how will your loyal companions feel watching you die, knowing how unnecessary it is? Be smart, mage, and speak, because each moment that passes only makes me more determined. I can hear the heartbeat of this city in my head like a constant drum, the din of breath and metal, the cracking of its skin underfoot. It never stops, never gives me a moment’s peace, but soon it will. Soon there will be silence.”

“Seriously?” I interrupted. “You want to destroy New York City because it’s too loud? Why can’t you just move to Westchester like everyone else?”

Reve Azrael glared at me. “Because then I would not see its streets fill with blood, nor its buildings become tombs.”

I shouldn’t have bothered. You can’t reason with crazy.

She turned back to Isaac. “Feel free to die, mage. I do not need you alive. I am very good at finding things. After all, I found this place.”

Isaac looked up at her. “How?” he gasped. “The ward … should have … stopped you…”

Reve Azrael smirked. “We had help.”

“What do you mean?” Bethany demanded. “Who helped you?”

Melanthius stepped forward. “When soldiers scour the battlefields for their dead, they do not waste valuable time searching blindly through the tall grass. Instead, they let themselves be guided by the sound of flies.”

Beside me, Philip scoffed. “That Halloween mask must be cutting off your air supply. You’re not talking sense.”

“He means something led them right to us,” Bethany said. “Here, and at the safe house.”

I thought back to the safe house. The protective ward Morbius had cast around it had stood unbroken for more than thirty years, until last night. Now Citadel’s ward had been breached just as easily. Both locations, I realized, had one thing in common when their wards had been compromised. My stomach dropped. I should have realized from the start. Maybe I would have if it weren’t so awful.

“Something didn’t lead them here, Bethany. Some
one
did,” I said. “When the shadowborn attacked the safe house, I thought we’d been betrayed by someone on the inside. Ingrid thought so, too. But you were right, it wasn’t Isaac or any of the others. It’s just like you said, there’s only one person it could have been. Me.”

The color drained from Bethany’s face. “What are you saying?”

I turned to Reve Azrael. “I’m right, aren’t I? You said you know me. I’m guessing that means somehow you know how to find me, too. You found the safe house because I was there, the same way you found this place. You used me like a homing beacon. So what is it, do I just light up like a flare to you?”

“Come to me,” Reve Azrael said, and the revenants dragged me forward. They shoved me onto my knees in front of her, letting go of me in the process. I looked up at her. She gazed back at me, the telltale red glow of her magic filling Bennett’s dead eyes. She smiled a terrible smile. “Tell me, little fly, how does it feel to know all your buzzing has brought nothing but pain and suffering to those around you?”

The revenants had made a big mistake letting me go. I sprang to my feet and wrapped my hands around her neck. She didn’t try to stop me as my hands squeezed the cold, dry flesh. Instead, she laughed in my face. Coming from the mouth of Bennett’s corpse, it was a chilling sound.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “How do you know me?”

With a single swipe of her arm, she knocked my hands from her throat. Her strength was incredible. “Perhaps we can strike a deal, little fly. The answers to your questions in return for what I want.”

“Been there, done that, it didn’t work out,” I said. “I’m done playing the patsy.”

Her triumphant grin melted away. “So be it.”

From where he knelt on the carpet, Isaac croaked out, “Philip, now!”

In a flash, the vampire was gone. The revenants that had been holding him tumbled backward, tossed as effortlessly as paper dolls. A dark blur sped toward Isaac, and then Isaac was gone, too, leaving something spinning in midair where he’d stood. For a moment, a silence hung over the room. Then the object hit the floor with a heavy
clank
.

It was the Hangman’s Damper.

After that, all hell broke loose.

Twenty-eight

A moment after the Hangman’s Damper hit the floor, a blazing fire erupted in the far corner of the room. Its flames whirled like a funnel cloud, and through the conflagration I caught a glimpse of Isaac in the corner where Philip had deposited him, fire bursting wildly from the mage’s hands. The spinning cone of fire barreled forward and engulfed the nearest revenant, transforming it instantly to smoldering ash. This had to be the flaming dervish spell he’d mentioned earlier, I thought. Then the fire, like a living thing, moved on to engulf the next revenant.

I ducked as my two half-faced guards came up behind me and tried to grab me again. I bolted for cover behind a nearby marble statue of a woman wearing a toga and some kind of battle helmet. From behind the statue, I looked at Bethany and Gabrielle still held fast by their revenant guards, and wondered how the hell I was going to get them free without my gun.

On the other side of the room, Melanthius and Reve Azrael shrank away from the raging flames, retreating to the wall. The shadowborn went with them, their blades drawn, covering their retreat.

I didn’t see Philip anywhere, but I hoped he was still close by. With Isaac busy on the other side of the room, Gabrielle and Bethany still being held prisoner, and me stuck behind a statue without a weapon, our odds of making it out of this mess without the vampire’s help were slim to none.

A group of revenants rushed Isaac, too many for the flaming dervish to take out at once. A pale, emaciated corpse slipped past the fire and came up behind him. Philip appeared out of nowhere, dropping down from above like a spider, and tackled the revenant to the floor. He sank his sharp teeth into the revenant’s throat and tore out a chunk so large that its head flopped off its neck at a peculiar angle. The revenant stopped moving. The red lights inside its eyes snuffed out. Then Philip was gone again, nothing but a dark blur moving through the chaos.

A split second later, he was standing in front of me. He wiped something dark and oily from his mouth with the back of his hand, and spat on the floor. “For the record, revenants taste like shit. Here, catch.” He pulled my gun out of the back of his pants and tossed it to me. He was gone again before I even snatched it out of the air.

With my Bersa semiautomatic in hand, I jumped out from behind the statue and ran toward Bethany and Gabrielle, lining up a shot to start blasting their revenant guards. I hardly made it half a dozen steps before I was clotheslined by a thick, meaty arm. I fell on my back. Above, one of my old pals, the half-faced revenants, reached to grab me. I rolled away and came up on one knee, squeezing the trigger and putting a bullet in Half-Face’s shoulder. The revenant didn’t stop, but it did slow down. I spun around and saw that from this angle I had a clear line of sight to Melanthius and Reve Azrael, sandwiched between the shadowborn and the wall. There would only be time for a single shot before Half-Face was on me again. I had to make it count. Reve Azrael was the one calling the shots from inside Bennett’s body. I drew a bead on Bennett’s head and squeezed the trigger.

Bennett’s skull was already fragile from decay. It burst like a melon from the bullet’s impact. His body crumpled to the floor.

Throughout the room, the revenants jolted and spasmed like they’d been hit with ten thousand volts, then went still as statues. They were blank, empty, like radios that had lost their reception. My shot must have broken Reve Azrael’s connection to them. Putting a bullet in Bennett’s brain while her consciousness had occupied it must have shattered her hold, stunning her, weakening her control over the other revenants. That was the key. Destroy a revenant’s brain, or sever its head from its body like Philip had done, and Reve Azrael couldn’t control it anymore.

The shadowborn drew back to create a tight, protective circle around Melanthius. He didn’t move, didn’t attack or cast any spells. I wondered if he had any magic of his own.

The broken connection only lasted a few moments, but it was long enough for Gabrielle and Bethany to squirm free of their guards. As Reve Azrael’s consciousness slowly took control of the revenants again, the two women didn’t waste any time. Bethany ran toward me, while Gabrielle picked up a small, tubular object that had fallen out of one of the smashed display cases. She clasped her hands together around the artifact and chanted a few words in that same weird magical language Bethany had used. A bright glow seeped out from between her fingers, then grew longer, until finally she was holding what looked like a sword in her hands, only its blade was made of fire instead of metal. One swing sliced the head clean off the first of her revenant guards, and another finished off the second.

Bethany stopped suddenly, her gaze moving past my shoulder. “Behind you!”

I turned to see Half-Face coming at me again. “Come to me, little fly,” it said. Reve Azrael had found a new host body.

I swung my gun around, aiming for the head, but Reve Azrael swatted the weapon from my hand so hard my fingers stung. The gun landed on the carpet a few feet away. I backed away, and bumped into another revenant. It tried to grab me in a bear hug, but I ducked out of its reach and ran. Unfortunately, the only direction I could run in was
away
from my gun.

I sprinted across the room, narrowly avoiding the cold, grasping hands of revenants. Each dead thing whispered to me as I passed, Reve Azrael’s consciousness following me through the room, jumping from one corpse to the next. “I know you. I know the power you possess,” one said. “I would not be so foolish as to try to kill you,” another said. “Yet you amuse me so,” said a third. I ran past each of them, twisting and jumping to evade their clutches. I searched the crowd, but I couldn’t see Bethany anywhere. I’d lost her in the chaos. I caught a glimpse of Isaac. His flaming dervish spell had only reduced six revenants to ash so far, and was starting to peter out. More walking corpses crowded toward him.

Distracted, I didn’t see a revenant come up on me until it was too late. It grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me toward it. “Perhaps I will keep you as a pet,” Reve Azrael said through its crumbling mouth. “Have you kneel before me in the blood of your companions.”

Something flashed in the corner of my eye. The revenant’s hand released my shoulder and fell to the floor, severed cleanly from its arm. Gabrielle stood beside me, the burning sword in her hands. She swung it again and lopped off the revenant’s head.

“Where’s Bethany?” I asked.

“Just keep moving,” she told me. “Get to higher ground. The stairs.”

Then she was gone, running back into the fray. I charged for the staircase, but I only made it to the base of the steps before another revenant blocked my path. This one was a dead woman in a pantsuit, wisps of thin white hair floating above its bloated and discolored face. One eye was nothing but a dark, empty hole. The other fixed me with an unyielding gaze, the red glow of Reve Azrael’s magic burning in its pupil. Its bony, clawlike hands stretched toward me.

I jumped back, out of its reach, and accidentally knocked into the sculpture of the centaur that stood by the staircase banister. The iron spear rattled loosely in its marble hand. Loose enough to give me an idea.

I grabbed the top half of the spear and pulled it toward me. It slid easily free from the statue. It was awkward and heavy but well balanced, a good enough weapon for now. The revenant lunged at me again. I swung the spear. The tip caught the side of its head, tearing a chunk of flesh from its cheek.

“You should be thanking me,” Reve Azrael said through the dead woman’s cracked lips. “It is not everyone who knows what the future holds for them. The full measure of their destiny. Yours is to be in chains and crawl at my heels.”

“Lady, I’m done being anyone’s pet.” I stabbed the sharp tip of the spear through the revenant’s forehead and into its brain. It fell to the floor. The red light in its eye went out. I pulled the spear out of its head, stepped over the body, and ran up the stairs.

Bethany was already on the stairs, standing near the landing halfway between the first and second floors. Philip was there, too, pulling a revenant’s head away from its shoulder and sinking his teeth into its neck. He bit out a big chunk of rotting flesh, pulled the revenant’s head free of its body, and tossed both down the stairs. He spat again, his features twisting in disgust. “Ugh, I’m going to need a breath mint after this.” His mirrored sunglasses were spattered with dark blood. Even now, he still wore the damn things.