The Beautiful Dead (17 page)

In the
cacophony of Queenly screams, the nine of them slowly approach, teeth bared.

“WHAT HAVE YOU
DONE!!” she belts out.

Backing away
from the guards, I stagger, my heels having reached the very edge of the
balcony. There’s nowhere left to retreat now but into the giant sky.

“YOU STUPID
LITTLE GIRL!!—YOU BRAT!!—YOU SPOILED, STUPID, SELFISH GIRL!!”

Here at the
edge of the tower, words Grimsky once uttered to me, warning me of how our
bodies tend to shatter, even persisting without breath or blood as they are,
swim in my ears as my heel hits the very edge of the floor where, hundreds of
feet below, the grassless streets of the Necropolis patiently wait like a
friend. I suspect this friend won’t kindly catch me.

“I chose you!”
the Queen growls, still as the nine guards cross the room toward me. “I’d
welcomed you home! You, the girl of impervious Anima … the girl who embraces
the dead. How could you do such a thing to your—to your
Queen??”

For a moment,
it was like she was intent on calling herself something else. What was she
about to say?

Balanced on
the precipice, I peer at my hand once more, the shimmer of John’s ring catching
my eye, and that’s when I realize …

John’s ring.
It’s made of steel.

My hope renewed,
I clench the ring tightly, this gift from John that just saved my life, and I make
a very rash decision.

“Because I
embrace the living,” I say for an answer, before jumping backwards from the
mouth of the tower.

C H A P T E R – T W E L V E

Blindly
tumbling through the colorless sky from the high, gaping mouth of the Black
Tower, for a wicked brief moment, I feel completely free.

Then I land.

For another
wicked brief moment, I imagine my body splayed out in pieces on some street in
the middle of the Necropolis. My arms somewhere, my legs somewhere else, my
head staring up into the silver nothing beyond, incapable of anything except
longing for my body to come back together by some miraculous force.

Then almost by
reflex, I sit up, shocked to find my body completely intact. Though it’d be
nice to just sit here and marvel at how durable my body must be, it’s probably
a better idea to get the hell up and run.

I quickly rise
to my feet … only to discover I did
not
endure the plunge as well as I’d
supposed; there’s clearly something wrong with my left leg, but I can’t tell
what. I take one step and my body buckles. I’m going to have to limp. Yes, like
some wounded, broken thing.

Of course I
don’t get a second to pity myself. Already there’s a frightful-looking
half-person hurrying toward me.  Fast as I can manage, I hop on my good leg
down the street, escaping the pursuing abomination.

Abomination.
Listen to me, I sound just like a Human.

Turning the
side of a small building, I race as fast as I can with just one operating leg.
In my race, I discover there’s something wrong with my left arm too, as it
doesn’t quite move the way my mind (or whatever) directs it to. Frustrated, I
hop myself around another building’s corner, edging down a narrow alley. I’m
lost, I have no idea where I’m headed, if an exit to this vile city is anywhere
nearby at all … I wouldn’t know which direction to head. Hopelessness quickly fills
me like a heavy liquid, each hop heavier than the last.

Breaking into
an area of cages, I realize I’m about to pass my old holding cell. I must’ve
unknowingly backtracked from the Black Tower. With a rush of hope, I hurry to
the cage of my across-the-aisle neighbor. I want to free him … I want to escape
this place together.

But Benjamin’s
door is wide-open. The cell, empty.

I sigh, so
very doubtful that it’s a good sign, so very certain that he’s been taken away
to meet his own end. No use loafing about. I push on, moving back into the dirty
streets of the city. I no longer hear a half-thing pursuing me, but realize it
still may be wise to hide. Awkwardly, I slip into a building through an opening
where a door surely used to be some distant decade ago. Inside, I see
astonishingly tall shelves full of what appear to be appendages. For a second,
I humor myself and assume this place is a mannequin factory, but I’m sure upon
closer inspection I’d change my mind right quick.

I drag myself
quickly as I can manage down an aisle. Looking for a place to take cover, I’m
just about to round another corner when I stop suddenly, hearing voices.
Peering carefully around a shelf, I see two ratty-looking half-men with
clipboards in the next aisle mumbling and muttering to each other.

Taking this
moment to breathe, I cover my face and beg forgiveness … from whom, I don’t
know. That last sight of Helena, her head having lost its body …

I can’t break
down now. I have to keep going.

But what if
there’s no one left? What if my other companions have also met their Final
Demise here? A pang strikes through my chest at the thought of Grimsky having
met his … The one who saved me over and over, and I’d be forever the selfish
friend who wasn’t able to pay back the simple favor just once in return.

“Please be
alive,” I beg under my breath. “Please.”

I shake my
head, shake it harder, trying to rid myself of the Queen’s screams still
echoing in my ears. Behind my eyelids, the final image of Helena … headless,
armless. That tool was in my hand—
my
hand. I did that to her, no one
else. I brought all of them to this place …

This is all my
fault.

The two
half-men walk away, leaving the path clear. As soon as they vanish from sight,
I take an imaginary breath and continue hobbling one-legged down another aisle,
twisting myself through this maze of body parts and shelves housing them. I’m
met by a wall with a door which, recklessly, I push open. Inside is a narrow
hall with a long row of cages holding a person each. To my disgust, I find some
of the cages only hold what seem to be pieces of people—a pair of legs here, a
ribcage there.

Steeled as I
may be to the many perverse things I’ve seen so far in my time here, no sight
has yet desensitized me to the villainy and unspeakable horrors that are clearly
committed in this place over and over again without seeming regret, reluctance,
or guilt.

I wonder, when
one joins the Deathless, do they lose their conscience? Does something within
us, something innately Human and aware and sensitive and empathetic, simply
disappear? How else can these abominations—
yes, I said it
—stomach the
things they do to these innocent Humans? Imprisoning them, pulling them apart,
eating them limb for limb, organ for organ, down to their very beating heart?

And for what?
To see the sun for a fleeting moment? To taste with tongue? To steal the human
experience which, arguably, never again should belong to us?

“Winter!”
cries out a little girl’s voice.

That bright
voice brings me to life in an instant. Excitedly, I hop down the aisle of
cages—many of their inhabitants stirring awake at the sound of the girl’s
voice—and find among them a cage holding a very familiar, very frightened
little girl.

Human girl.
“Megan,” I breathe, amazed at the sight of her dirtied face still wetted by
tears. “You’re alive! Are you hurt?”

“You
are
one of them!” she says, but her voice isn’t disgusted or afraid. Rather, it
seems fascinated.

“No. I’m not
one of them. I’m getting you out of this cage.” I reach up to grab the lock
and, with whatever laughable strength I have, try breaking it off.

“You’re being
bad, just like I was being a bad girl,” she goes on, hope lighting up her eyes.
“You are defying your crypter masters. You’re a rebel, Winter!”

“Yes, yes, I’m
a bad girl,” I agree, still struggling with the lock. “A bad girl who can’t
break a simple dumb lock.”

After
wrestling with the lock for so long—with one of my arms not fully functional,
at that—I take a break. Or maybe I’m giving up, exhausted mentally, which I
hadn’t taken to be a trait of my kind. I realize now that I have the attention
of every Human prisoner in this narrow hallway of cages. All of them watch me
with the same look in their eye: slightly hopeful, slightly scared to death.

If I can’t
break this one little lock, how can I possibly break them all?

A door at the
opposite end of the hallway flips open suddenly and a prison guard—or another
member of death’s tech support—staggers in, a mess of keys dragging behind him.
Seeing me, Miss Rebel, he starts to hurry in my direction, grunting, the keys
frantically rattling behind his disjointed body and his knobbed fingers
reaching out to seize me.

Yeah, that’s
not going to happen.

Bracing
myself, I squeeze the fist of my good arm and, with no grace whatsoever, I take
one very bold and awkward swing at the ghoul’s face the moment he’s within
reach.

Contact. But
now the fool’s screaming. The fist I punched him with bore John’s ring—How
could I have forgotten? This time with the intention not of hurting him, but
just shutting him the hell up, I throw another clumsy punch—and his entire jaw
falls off. Staggering now, he reaches out for me while producing a sickening
moan—how he manages that without a mouth, I can’t explain. Shamelessly, I
tackle him to the ground, feeling far more terrified than I’m acting, acting
far more valiant than I feel—and that’s when I notice the steam issuing from
his face where I’d punched him.

So I press my
ringed finger to his face. In a moment’s moment, he slumps flat to the ground.
A once proud keeper of keys, now reduced to a motionless mass on the floor, not
a scream left in his bony body.

“Winter, you
did it!” Megan shouts, overjoyed.

“He’s out,
that’s for sure,” I say, admiring for once the clunky steel thing on my thumb,
“but he will reawaken.”

“Find the
keys!” Megan begs me urgently. “Hurry before he wakes!—or someone else comes!”

“Yes, yes,” I
agree, distractedly throwing my attention back to where it belongs. I fumble
through the length of chain in pursuit of a key. The right key among hundreds.
“This … may take a while.”

“Hurry!”

Knelt in front
of the cage, one by one I bring a key to the lock with no winner. I’m
preoccupied, thinking about John’s innocent gift to me and how it inadvertently
saved my life. Twice. Or maybe John knew exactly what his gift would do … Maybe
he knew he was equipping me.

At Megan’s
suggestion, I throw a few lengths of chain at her so she can help too, picking
through key after key.

“You’re a
very, very brave girl,” I tell her after a while, pulling yet another
unsuccessful key from the lock.

“When I get
home,” she says, tossing aside a failed one of her own, “I’m
not
going
to tell my mom and dad where I buried it. But I will tell them that I’ll always
obey, no matter how bad I want to go running in the woods.”

“Let’s not get
ahead of ourselves. We still have a Necropolis to flee and a menagerie of
ghouls in our way.”

“Got it!” she
exclaims, twisting a stub for a brassy key, the cage door flipping open like
the turn of a page.

And then she’s
rushed up to me, crushing herself into my chest with a hug and a muffled,
“Thank you.”

I hold her,
stunned by this action. I can’t even bring myself to say anything like “you’re
welcome” because for some reason I’m not sure I deserve her congratulations.

“Over here!”
shouts a prisoner. “Me, me, me!” cries another. Some old man rattles the door
to his cage, unable to speak apparently. “Down here!” yells another.

Of course we
can’t free one without freeing them all.

I face the
cages. “When I free you from your cage,” I announce, like I’m addressing a classroom,
“stay behind me. It’s for your own good! Don’t go running off! I want all of
you safe. I can protect you.” This, coming from a person with half a
functioning left leg and broken arm.

And a steel
ring.

Megan,
arguably more able-bodied than I even in her hunger and weakness, unlocks every
cage that housed a living person. My party, now grown to twelve, stands
patiently before me, awaiting our next move.

But I don’t
know our next move. “Does anyone know the way out of here?” I ask kindly,
trusting my expression doesn’t look too devoid of hope in their presence,
seeing as they’re depending on me for their freedom.

Of course, the
one soul who should speak up is the one that can’t. The old voiceless man
shuffles his way to the front of the band of Humans, excitedly indicating with
a series of gestures that he knows where to go.

“Stay closest
to me, and,” I tell him, trying not to sound as disheartened as I feel within,
“lead the way.”

All too eager,
he does. Following him, we exit the far end of the hall and, tiptoeing,
shuffling and staggering as we are, empty into an alley.

Continuing
without pause, I cautiously peer around every corner before permitting us to
move. The streets coil through warehouses both occupied and abandoned utterly,
junkyards and burnt remains of buildings … Where this old man is directing us,
I’ve so little strength to debate. My trust in him may be modest, but it’s all
I have to keep throwing one good leg in front of a bad one.

When we round
a corner, I see a woman ahead of us digging a hole in the ground for no
apparent reason. Her hair falls like a cape around her shoulders, covering the
most of her, until she staggers somewhat in fighting with her spade, revealing
her face and part of her right side …

Her right
side, where half an arm is missing.

I can’t
believe I’ve found her. There is no mistaking it. I recognize the wholeness of
her face—the fact that she has one. Her hair, the same color it was when I drew
her from the earth. This woman is my Raise.

I rush up to
her at once. “You! It’s you! I can’t believe of all places, you ended up here!
… I’m taking you home.”

She gazes upon
my face slowly, as though she were heavily medicated—though I know that not to
be the case—and a look of confusion clouds her eyes.

I hesitate.
“Do you not remember me? I was the first person you met in this world. I’m the
one you—the one you ran away screaming from. My name is Winter … and your name
was … well, your name was going to be Helen, actually.”

I can’t help
it. I’m going to name her after my own maker. Call it a guilty conscience or
just respect, but it’s the first and the last name that comes to mind.