If I Should Die (22 page)

“Well,” said Violette, an amused expression crossing her features as she glanced behind me to meet Louis's eyes. “Now, isn't that a charming gesture? One might even say a
self-sacrificing
offer. How benevolent of you, Kate.

“You were right, Vincent,” she said, focusing her attention back on him. Her lips curved into a sick smile. “I
did
figure out what I did wrong last time.” Her eyes studied his face, and she tilted her head girlishly to one side. “I chose the wrong Champion.”

And, lunging forward, she plunged the knife into my chest. Her movement was so fast that I didn't know what had happened for a full second, until I looked down and saw it sticking out of my torso, still clenched in her tiny, porcelain-white fingers.

Then, grabbing the hilt with both hands, she pulled the blade in a quick upward motion, and I only had time to look toward Vincent and see the terror in his eyes before a rushing sound erased his scream and the darkness drowned me.

PART II

THIRTY-SIX

I'M SO THIRSTY. MY MOUTH FEELS FULL OF SAND,
but my lips part and I realize it's my swollen tongue that is choking me. I wrench my eyes open, but I am sightless. My lungs want to explode. And then my throat releases and I am gulping air, frantically inhaling it into my burning chest.

A hand takes my chin and holds it roughly as liquid is poured into my mouth and spills over my lips. But I am able to swallow, and the presence keeps feeding me until my mouth closes and my head settles back. My consciousness ends there.

 

I am cold, though I sense a fire close by. My body feels like it has been frozen solid and is now defrosting, sharp needles stabbing the entire surface of my skin. My muscles cramp painfully and I feel my arm jerk up to my chest, the joints in my fingers spasming, clenching my hand into a claw. I still can't see, and my mouth is parched. I hear footsteps and the hand is back, feeding me water—I can taste now.

Something brushes my lips and forces its way past my teeth. I bite down and taste the sweet juice of a fig and feel its pulpy texture fill my mouth. I swallow and take another bite, desperate to get the food inside my cramping belly. The fig is followed by walnuts. Three. I swallow them, and then immediately turn my head to the side and vomit them up, retching past the point of emptying my stomach. Retching and crying and shaking violently. The hand waits until I'm done, wipes my face, and starts over. Water. Fig. Three walnuts. This time I keep it down. The footsteps walk away and my mind shuts down once again.

 

I hear water lapping close to my head. My eyes fly open. I am staring at a wooden ceiling. I can see. I try to sit up, but something restrains me. I pull my head up far enough to see that I am bound to a bed by cords. I am dressed all in black . . . no, not black. Dark red—my fingertip brushes against my leg—and crusty. With horror, I realize that my clothes are saturated in my own dried blood.

Feeling panic, I try to get my bearings. The wall next to me is painted metal. I swing my gaze across the sparsely furnished room and out a window across from me to see an expanse of water stretching to a riverbank.

I'm on a boat. Tied to a bed.

“Ah, she's awake,” a voice says, and I crane my head to see Violette walk into the room. Behind her, Louis stoops to get through the low door.

I recoil as they come into view. Something has happened to my vision. The colorless inch-wide aura I used to see around numa has disappeared and instead there are mistlike crimson haloes encircling their heads. Inside me, something new screams that numa are near. As if I didn't already know. A nauseating fury overcomes me and I shudder and taste bile.

They stand above my head, upside down, staring me in the face. Louis looks worried and Violette triumphant. “Welcome to the afterlife,” she says.

I stop straining against the cords and gape at her. I try to speak, but my throat makes a croaking noise.

“This is so fascinating!” she says, clasping her hands together. “I've never witnessed an animation before. It never actually interested me until now.”

I don't understand what Violette's talking about for a minute, and then—suddenly and sickeningly—I do. She stabbed me, I remember. But did I die? No, I couldn't have. Violette has kept me alive, suffering and on the brink of death, so she can continue to torture me.

I struggle against my bonds, kicking and straining—uselessly, I know—but I am furious and the fight makes me feel better. I whip my head toward Violette and try to form words with my bone-dry mouth. “You . . . are . . . ,” I rasp.

“Yes, dear?” she says, beaming. “I am what?”

“A . . . psychotic . . . bitch,” I manage to say, pouring all of my hatred and fear into my words, willing them to hurt her with every drop of energy I still possess.

“Aww. Isn't that cute,” she says, laughing delightedly, and sweeps out of the room with Louis following closely behind. “And how appropriate as Kate's first words as a revenant,” I hear her comment as she shuts the door behind her. “Shows she's got spunk! This will be more fun than I thought.” And her voice fades as they walk away.

I lie there, stunned. What is she talking about? Me—a revenant? I can't be. But after a moment, I push aside the doubt and let myself consider it.

Not only would I have had to possess that mystical revenant predisposition or gene or whatever, but I would have had to die saving someone. Violette tried to murder me. I didn't sacrifice myself for anyone.

And then, with an icy chill of realization, I remember the scene in Violette's room at the Crillon when I offered to be her first human kill—for her to take me instead of Vincent. What had her words been?

I hear them as clearly as if she were standing in the room next to me. “Now isn't that a charming gesture? One might even say a
self-sacrificing
offer. How benevolent of you, Kate.”

Violette tricked us. She planned the whole thing so that I would die for Vincent. But why?

I check my body to see if I feel differently—and I do. It's in the way my heart beats more slowly and the sluggish pace that my blood pumps through my veins. But that could be because I'm dying. Bleeding to death.

No, something else has changed. Though I am weak and parched, it's like there's a sun—a flaming ball of white-hot energy—inside me that's radiating through my pores. There was my body's response, a painful physical reaction, when Violette and Louis entered the room that warned me numa were near. And then, there are their auras. The colorless penumbra I saw around numa before I died has been replaced by haloes of red mist, just like the
guérisseur
artists had presented around numa in their cave paintings. I see auras like they did. I have changed. I am no longer human.

“No!” I manage to scream before my voice gives out. I yank at my bonds again, kicking and pulling and thrashing my head around, until I finally give up and begin crying. No, not crying, sobbing. Weeping. The tears run down the sides of my face, and I try to lift my hands to wipe them away before remembering that I am bound.

 

Something pinches my arm. Hard. I open my eyes to see Violette's face hovering above mine. “It seems you passed out,” she says in a practical voice. “A typical symptom of animating after such a violent death.”

“Why are you keeping me here?” I growl. I wish I could get my hands free so I could gouge her eyes out with my fingernails. “You used me as bait to get to Vincent—he was standing right there in front of you. What could you possibly want with me?”

“Why?” she repeats, tapping her chin with her finger. “Because you, Kate, are the Champion. And I, Violette, want your power. It's as simple as that.” She turns to Louis. “Get the Champion some more water, please. We can't have her dying off before she comes into her true power.” Louis leaves the room.

I had thought through every possible response she might give me, but this is one I had not expected. I stare, incredulous, as Violette pulls up a chair to the bed and sits down next to me.

She's lost it
, I think.
Though she was questionably stable before, all of this power has driven her completely insane
. “You're crazier than I thought,” I say.

“Well, now, that would be one point of view,” she responds. “Another would be that I am very shrewd. Observant. Discerning, even. You see, my gamble that you were a revenant has already proven correct. And if Vincent isn't the Champion, which became all too clear when the power transfer failed so miserably”—she unconsciously rubs her amputated finger with her other hand, eyes narrowing when she remembers it's not there—“then there was a very good chance that it was you.”

I gape at her, uncomprehending, and she huffs impatiently. “The prophecy says that the Champion has anterior powers of communication, persuasion, and perception. I didn't understand that until I considered the word ‘anterior' as meaning ‘before becoming a revenant.' Having the gifts while you were still human.

“Thinking of it like that, the communication part was obvious. I thought Vincent was special for communicating with a human while he was volant, but it was the other way around. You were the one who was special.”

She scoots her chair around so she can watch my reaction as she speaks. “You had the kindred at La Maison eating out of your hand, including Jean-Baptiste, who doesn't deal with any human he doesn't have to. Vincent went against his better judgment to see you, and you wormed your way into the hearts of the rest of Paris's revenants. I would call that
anterior powers of persuasion
.

“And then I remembered that the night before our little scuffle up on Montmartre, Vincent had asked me if you could possibly have begun to see numa's auras just from spending time with revenants. I told him no. But if you had a heightened sense of perception, that would explain it.”

She smoothes her hair back, looking extremely pleased with herself. I want to tell her exactly what she can do with her ridiculous theory, but she isn't done talking. And I need to hear it all.

Folding her arms across her chest and tapping an index finger against her fight-toned bicep, she says, “And then there's the all-important fact that the
guérisseur
Gwenhaël told my men, under great duress I admit, that the Champion was he who killed the numa leader. I knew Vincent possessed you to kill Lucien, but it was you who threw the knife.

“Once I stopped focusing on Vincent and thought of you, it all clicked. And so you see, here we are. I'm not a
guérisseur
or a Seer so I can't tell if you have the Champion's fabled ‘star on fire' halo. Therefore, I'll just take my chances and destroy you once you're fully animated. How do they say it now . . . no skin off my nose?” Realizing what she's said, she rubs her amputated stub again and forces a smile. “And don't forget, you offered yourself to me. You gave me the Champion's full powers.”

No
, I think again.
She has to be wrong
. But I remain silent, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much she has shaken me. When I don't respond, Violette stands and walks over to a table sitting next to the hearth and, leaning over, begins scribbling something in a notebook.

I close my eyes and think about what she's just told me. I don't believe her. I can't. How can I be the Champion? The Champion is some kind of undead superhero.
Okay, so I fit one of those qualifications
, I think, pain ripping through me as, once again, I acknowledge that I am . . .
undead
. A tear rolls down my cheek just identifying myself with that horrible word, but I fight to pull myself together. I have to think.

Every time Bran talked about the Champion, he used the pronoun “he.” The prophecy he read us used the word “he.” That has to mean something, doesn't it? Everyone seemed to think the Champion was a man. Wouldn't Bran have said it differently if he knew I was the Champion?
Not necessarily
, I think. He might not have known. I wasn't even a revenant then.

And then I remember. It was immediately after the big event—when he touched Jean-Baptiste and became the VictorSeer—that he began regarding me strangely. I was always checking my hair around him, wondering what he was looking at. But what if it hadn't been my hair he was focusing on? What if it had been my aura?
It was a kind of weird squint
, I think with dawning horror. If my aura is as bright as a “star on fire,” no wonder he squinted every time he looked my way.

My thoughts begin racing, each realization stinging me like a crazed hornet. There was his insistence that the Champion wasn't here yet. He didn't even want to look at the other bardia to verify.
It was because he thought it was me
. There were the sideways glances when the subject of the Champion arose. And his willingness to let me visit the flame-finger archives.

And then I recall his words when I returned from the cave with his books. “I'm glad you went,” he had said. “It could well be your only chance.” Why would he say that? Bearers of the
signum bardia
are allowed to enter. But revenants aren't. He knew I was a latent revenant. And he knew I would soon be the Champion. Bran had known this whole time.

Shock hits me like a tidal wave, roaring in my ears and sending me spinning and crashing in its wake. I lie there powerless to do anything but watch the girl who is determined to destroy me.

“Any other questions?” she asks, snapping the notebook shut and slipping it into her jacket pocket.

“What did you do with Vincent?”

“He is of no value to me anymore,” she says testily. “I would have killed him along with you, but I didn't want to risk your sacrifice. You offered your life for him. I wasn't sure you would become a revenant if you failed to save his life. So I left him in the hotel.”

I close my eyes in relief.
He's safe
.

“Yes, you rest,” says Violette, walking back to the bed and standing directly over me. “It'll be at least another day before you regain your strength. Although, as you can see,” she says, glancing at the cords binding my body, “I'm not taking any chances.”

She begins walking toward the door. “Violette?” I call, craning my head so I can see her.

“Yes, Kate?” she asks, looking curious.

“I hope I'm not the Champion,” I say, my voice dead calm now, “because I would hate to give you any additional satisfaction. But if I am, I hope you have to chop off an entire hand this time and eat a raw cat in order to absorb me. And I hope you choke on it.”

Her creepily calm demeanor finally shatters. Making a noise between a growl and a scream, she stomps over to the bed and slaps my face as hard as she can. Then, spinning on her heels, she races out of the room, slamming the door behind her.