The Beautiful Dead (27 page)

The. Only.
One. Left …

She pleads,
“Winter, my darling.” She implores, “The world is dead. It’s time to embrace
that truth. It died long, long ago.” She insists to me, “The Humans killed it.
We all deserve to die. Take my hand.”

She extends a
hand, her lips moving. “Join me,” she nearly sings, “and rule this wasteland at
my side.”

Whatever. “Why
the hell would I do that?”

Here I am,
going on asking her questions, delaying the end when really I should just cut off
her head.

“Because I never
said I love you, darling.”

These words,
coming from a faceless face.

“Because I ruined
you,” she goes on. “Because I didn’t listen. Because I gave you everything you
wanted and nothing you needed, dear, but I can change all that now!”

This poor, sad
remnant of a mother. She sees me as her daughter, my hair reminding her of a
little girl she lost when she was alive, obviously … But I am
not
her
daughter, and it may take putting my sword through her for her to realize that.

“Because,” she
concludes, “you are the key to it all, dear … The only Deathless who can wield
a steel blade!”

“I am no
Deathless!” I cry back, gripping my sword and shaking all over with violent
anger.

Something to
her side draws my attention. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it now, but a
tall birdcage rests next to her. A birdcage filled with heads.

Need I ask, what
in the
hell
is that?

And then I
feel something else entirely. Like needles to my skin, a cold wave of nausea, I
feel a force trying to influence me, trying to grip me from within. The way a
bad lunch tries to eject itself from your system. But I’m well aware I haven’t
had a crumb of food in a few centuries, so I cannot explain why I’m suddenly
fighting off two extremely alluring urges: one to heave, and one to sleep. I squint
groggily ahead and notice the shorty focusing on me, his green eye shining like
a headlight.

Hey!—That damn
Lock is trying to put me out!

“Stop doing
that!” I shout, slurring like a lush.

Belatedly, the
amazing thing occurs to me: Why isn’t his power working?

“Whatever you
wish to call yourself,” the King insists, “Deathless or not, Winter or
otherwise, you cannot change who you are.”

Still slurred,
I say, “Speak for yourself …
Malory
.”

A hush befalls
the entire Square. I hadn’t meant for the name to pack the punch that it did.
First, the people of the Square seem confused … struck by the mention of that
little name. Piece by piece, whisper by whisper, I hear the resolve forming,
even in their hushes. They see it too. The obvious thing that’s before all of
them, standing there in plain sight … The Deathless legend written on the
King’s very face.

Or lack
thereof.

“Yeah,
Malory,” I repeat, confidence rushing through me like electricity. “The one who
clawed off her own face. You heard me right.
Malory
. I know who you
are.”

The King, even
without a face, I can tell I hit her at home, her neck straightening and teeth grinding.
If that isn’t confirmation of her identity, I don’t know what is.

“The heads,”
Grimsky mumbles, quivering all over. “In the cage. Winter …”

Confused, I
look back at the birdcage the King carries in her right hand. Men’s heads,
women’s heads, even children’s … and all of them are awake. Aware. All of them
silently stare at me with imploring, desperate eyes. What is Grim trying to
point my attention to?

And then to my
astonishment, I spot the pair of eyes he was hoping I’d see: Helena’s.

“Let them go!”
I cry, losing my composure at once. “Let them go!—All of them!” I raise my
blade for a clean score to the King’s head—So help me, I will cut her down.

But the ill
sensation strikes me first, again, this time twice as bad, enough to fold me
over and bring me to my shaky knees.

I glare at the
Lock from the top of my face. “I’m going to put a sword through your—”

And then my
left hand starts to disintegrate.

It was only a
matter of time. The Lock, at last able to turn me to dust … My left hand gone,
my left arm begins to crumble.

So, this is
how it ends. This is my end.

It isn’t until
he’s gone up to my elbow that I think to drop my sword and grab the box of
stones I’d fastened to my belt … the stones Megan gave me. One finds its way to
my palm …

The stone,
white-hot, it burns my unliving flesh.

The effect is
instant. My arm stops crumbling to dust, and the queasiness vanishes. The stone
I’d pulled out, it’s furious and green in color, vibrating.

My left arm
might be gone, right up to the elbow, but this stone, green and angry, it protects
me.

“Nice
eyeballs!” I shout at the Lock. I reclaim my weapon, bare my teeth, and throw it
blade-first at him like a mighty javelin.

I was never a
good aim. The thing goes past him and hits the pavement with an ugly clang,
missing its target entirely.

But my action
inspires many others. From nowhere I can see, war cries bellow out from all
directions, and chaos explodes. From the tops of buildings, people emerge
throwing shrapnel and steel pieces, much to the pain and agony of Deathless
below.

Even the just-a-second-ago
organized crowd of the Town Square has scattered into screams.

My eyes
instantly search for my companions in the crowd, for Jasmine and Megan and the
others—but all is chaos and rage and noise.

Then I spot
the Warlock disappearing in the crowd. Clouds of ash fire out as if from
cannons, but to my great pain, I know otherwise: He is without restraint
killing any Undead in his way from here to the gates.

Too quickly to
have noticed right away, the King—or shall I call her by her true name,
Malory—is rushing away just the same, and only in a matter of seconds is lost
to my eyes.

Even bladeless,
I will not give up.

“Don’t you run
away from me you coward!” I scream out, darting off the stage. I don’t even
regard the cage of heads that the King left behind which Grimsky is now
gripping like a blanket, passing it on my race to catch up to Her Mad Highness.

The stone
burns in my quiet fist, my only remaining weapon.

As I cut
through the crowd of dueling Deathless and Undead, I narrowly miss someone’s
arm flinging by my face. The next moment, a piece of metal slices through the
air like a ninja star, lodging itself in the back of a decayed man-thing.
Pursuing the King and her dwarven minion, my right arm pushing through the
battling mobs, I realize how I might mirror my own Raise, the remainder of my
left arm dangling …

The Warlock,
wherever he is, was, and has gone, left a frighteningly thick ashen trail in
his wake. I cringe, even running as I am now, at the thought of how many of my
friends he’s turned to dust in his effort to escape.

When I round
the corner of a building in pursuit of Mad Malory, I’m frozen by the sight of John
in the midst of hacking at a walking skeleton-thing with no jaw.

John.

He grunts, one
final dramatic blow, and slices the thing in half, crying out, “Die, you
murderous, soulless, damned!!”

Even in
pieces, the skull twitches like a bug on its back, dancing in slow desperate circles.

“I think you
killed it,” I mutter.

He faces me as
though prepared to fight, his eyes intense, his mouth locked. I can see the
anger’s overtaken him like a drug, every minute of his tortured history
extended violently through his hand to the sharp and deadly tip of his blade. With
my left arm nearly gone, I wonder if he recognizes me at all … if he even
regards me as one of the enemy.

Then he says,
“I’ll never be able to kill it.”

The agony in
his eyes … I know what he really means with those words. If only it were so
easy to reach into him and fix all the agony and loss he’s had.

“I should’ve
told you sooner,” I tell him heavily.

His gaze is
heavier, and he says, “The camp believed in you. The chief led them here. They
are fighting too, the living among your dead.”

My face
softens. “Don’t die, John. I kinda need you.”

“You sure?”

Getting back
to the priority at hand, I ask, “Did you happen to see a faceless nightmare
race by?”

“That way,” he
points stoically, “and take this.”

He hands me a
blunt blade he must’ve gotten from camp. And in this moment of accepting the
weapon, I realize the scene I’ve entered. All around us, the Humans from the
camp are also fighting off the terrifying visions of death before them. They’ve
followed us, led by the mighty chief who, in all his glory, is cutting down
Deathless like weeds in a garden.

But that isn’t
what strikes me. Among them, citizens of Trenton are fighting too. I wonder if
either know who they’re fight alongside. Just a glance over the battle, I can’t
tell one apart from the other … Human or Undead.

Human and
Undead.

“Winter!” I
hear from the edge of the street. My eyes seeking its source, I find Jasmine
armed with a jagged piece of—something—and she’s waving me over. “Here! Winter,
they’ve gone down here!”

“Go,” John
tells me, turning the blade in his hand and bracing himself for another
encounter. “Go and make this right.”

His hard tone,
the anger I know he harbors, I fear I’ll never make this right for him. Or
anyone. Really, what will putting out a few more immortal lights solve?

YOU DID THIS
TO YOURSELF.

“Stay alive,”
I order him.

“You too,” he
orders back.

Against all my
instincts, I leave him and rush forth to join Jasmine. “To the gates,” she
tells me as we break into a run down the chaotic, steel-and-bone clattering
street. “They’ve headed to the gates.”

As we run, I
carefully press a stone into her palm. “Do not drop this,” I urge her. “It will
protect you.”

“I saw you at
the Square,” she breathes back excitedly. “These things really worked a charm,
didn’t they?”

Rounding a
corner, we’re two streets away from the closest gates where the Lock and King
are rushing. With a jolt of fear and excitement, I see the top of the King’s
crown over the hordes.

“Fight on,
ladies!” exclaims a boy from a nearby rooftop. I look up and nearly fall when I
realize who it is. Benjamin, my Necropolis buddy. “Yeah!” he yells out, a broad
smile spreading across his face, encouraged by my spotting him. “Shoulda taken
my arms too!” he shouts, grabbing a bucket full of metal junk and dumping it in
the thicket of Deathless below. “Back to the grave, suckers!”

I want to stop
and say something, shout out an encouraging word, express my utter joy at
seeing him alive, but too soon we’ve rounded another corner and the gates grow
closer and closer.

And so does the
end.

Pressed
against the wall, there’s the King, watching as her hateful, squinting Warlock
faces off a crowd of oncoming, too-brave Trenton citizens from all directions. Someone
at the foot of the crowd crumbles apart like a sand castle. Another, a blonde
lady, disintegrates too.

Before I make
a move, someone I wasn’t expecting appears at my side, as if she was always
there. “Get ready, Winter of the Second,” says the Judge, “because this scene
is about to get impolite.”

Brandishing
the longest steel blade I’ve ever seen, the Judge looks as ready as a panther
to pounce on our unrighteous adversaries. To her confusion, I fasten my third
and final stone to her wrist, figuring that to do the trick. “This will protect
you,” I tell her, my voice shaking, “from the one with the eye. Beware, Enea.”

“Ah,” the
Judge grunts. “Been a while since I’ve heard my name. Such sweet sentiment.”
Her eyes soften. “My first mother, in my First Life, called me Miranda.”

Another two
fall to dust before us.

“Miranda …” I
say, touched by her sudden sincerity.

The Judge
braces herself. “Never thought the day would come,” she mutters, snarling, “that
I’d get the pleasure of sinking my steel into a Lock.”

And then she tears
away from my side, her sword up high, crying the greatest war-scream I’ve ever heard.
Every fiber of her being drives her weapon toward the heart of the metal-legged
shorty who, in all his squinting angst, cannot affect her with his deathly
talent.

What the Judge
did not see was the Deathless who was charging for her as well … A Deathless
with a long blade of his own …

A blade that
slices cleanly through the Judge’s arm.

Clang, to the
pavement it falls, along with her sword.

“Enea!” I cry
out.

The Judge
without missing a beat brings the sword up from the ground with her other hand,
still charging for the metal-legged man, her war-scream unbroken. What a sight
it is, her unmatched bravery, her fury, her power.