The Deception Dance (41 page)

I half fall, half crawl, down to
Stephen. He’s lying sprawled out on his back. His shirt is
balled up and held over his wound, he must have managed that while
Andras and I were fighting.

I lean in over his face, hands on
his chest, searching for any sign of life. But he doesn’t seem
to be breathing.

I almost jump back as he rakes in
a breath. His eyelids flicker; his chest expands. I lean in to hear
his breathing; his breaths are shallow with a definite gargle sound
to them. I’ve heard (from movies) that stomach wounds take a
long time to kill a person…maybe…

“He...”

I lean my ear in, not sure if he
actually spoke or if it was just his breath.

“He...” Stephen’s
words are quieter than a whisper. “He called your bluff.”
His eyes slide open to shift unfocused to the top of my head.

“It wasn’t a bluff,”
I place my hands on his shoulders, “Or at least I don’t
think it was. I said something really stupid at the end...”

“I heard you bargain...”
He swallows, “You did beautiful … you were amazing.”

“Stephen, we have to get
you out of here.” I say, “You’ve lost so much
blood; we have to get you to a hospital.”

He breathes a chuckle. “Don’t
be ridiculous, Raven. I’m not going anywhere.”

A large chunk of balcony meteors
into the marble knocking over a burning trashcan and flinging the
embers in to the air, they fall down like rain (from Hell). I cover
Stephen with my body but the embers fall short. “Stephen, the
building is collapsing; we’re going to be crushed.”

He coughs. “There’s
only one thing I want you to do for me, before I die...”

“Stop ... just stop
talking, we have got to go,” I say.

“No please, Raven,”
he grabs my wrist. “I only have one last request. All I want is
for you to give me a ... could you please just give me one ...
cigarette.”

My laugh comes out more like a
sob. He’s joking? Now? I shake my head. “I don’t
have any cigarettes, Stephen.”

“Ah, are you serious?”
He exhales heavily. “Well, you better help me up then; I can’t
die without one last cigarette. What are you waiting for?” His
unfocused gaze settles on me. “Did you know that you’re
naked?”

I didn’t, actually; but
when I look down, I realize all I’m wearing is a thin layer of
ash. For some stupid reason, (even after everything that happened) I
feel heat rush to my face. Grabbing Stephens’s blood soaked
ripped up jacket off the floor, I tie it around me. It’ll have
to do.

I pull at his shoulders to help
hold him forward. It is hard to determine the size of the wound in
Stephen’s back since his entire back is soaked; but if the
amount of blood (and possibly other liquids) still oozing out is any
indicator, the hole is big. Looking at his back, I know there is no
way any person could survive that wound, no matter what.

I’m being obstinate, I know
that; but, if I leave Stephen here to be crushed, I also know that
I’ll never leave this place, either. Not really.

Getting Stephen to sit up is
tricky, to stand, almost impossible. After five minutes of failed
attempts I’m worried we’re just worsening his wound, but
Stephen finally stays vertical. Pulling Stephen along is a lot like
dragging a sack of rocks, he keeps his muggy dazed gaze on me, as if
he’s wondering when I’m going to give up.

I grumble under the strain, “You
know you really should quit smoking.”

He huffs out a laugh, his voice
comes out slurred and drunken sounding, but I think he says, “What
a thing to tell a man who’s just been impaled by a sword."

Day
Fifty Seven

We step out into the morning; or
at least, that is what I hope the gray in the sky signifies. Stephen
is heavy on my shoulder. I examine the plaza as I hurry and stumble
down the stairs. There’s not a demon in sight; but every inch
of the plaza is crawling with movement. Large black birds cover the
space like a living blanket wriggling over the paving stones. They
spill out of our path as I flee from the building. Behind us, I hear
Copenhagen City Hall collapsing.

The ravens stare up at me, beady
eyes asking me something I can’t understand.

Stephen slumps farther, and I
struggle to hold his weight. I ache everywhere, every muscle
squeezing, cramping. One more step and then Stephen pulls me down to
the cobble stones.

“Don’t tell anyone
about the fire,” Stephen says feverishly, and then his
eyelashes flicker shut.

The ravens press in, watching us
greedily, as if we’re breakfast.

My flailing limbs make the
closest birds scatter, but there are hundreds more to replace each
one who flies away. I free myself from Stephen’s arms and
manage to my feet. I look over the sea of black wings. They don’t
fight or squawk or search for food; not a sound is made, not a
movement, they are waiting for something, something from me.

“Screw you!” I shout,
belligerently, “Screw every one of you little evil…I
hate you! Andras is gone!” I scream my next words, “So,
you can all just follow him to Hell!”

To my surprise, they seem to
listen; the sound of thousands of shifting wings whisper across the
courtyard. Simultaneously, every raven pushes off the ground and
takes to the air. They rise like a dark shadow lifting from the
world. I topple, hitting the ground hard, near Stephen, watching as
the cloud of birds disperse into the sky. “An unkindness,”
I whisper, remembering what a group of ravens are called.

I look to Stephen one more time,
his chest twitches.

I whisper, "Survive, please,
please..." My eyes slip closed.

Strong hands shake me.

I blink open my eyes. The hands
are big, Albert’s hands. I blink into Albert’s face.
“Albert,” I croak. My eyes close again. I shake my head
and force them open.

“Raven?” He says,
looking down at me. “What happened to you?”

“Albert. Stephen...”

I look over, where Stephen was
there only a pool of crimson.

“Are you bleeding?”
He demands.

I look down at my bloody coat
(that I’m using as a dress), then say, “Not mine...”

One of his hands lets go of me to
wave to the sky. Above him, the blades of a helicopter whirl. Its
hum, which I didn’t notice until now, quiets as the aircraft
speeds away.

“They’ll be faster
without us,” Albert explains as he gently sets me back on the
ground.

I push myself into a sitting
position then wince, the back of my thigh complains, every muscle
complains, I must have pulled… everything. I lean back again
holding my butt-cheeks off the ground. “Is Stephen still
alive?”

Albert sits down beside me on the
non-bloody side of the ground. He exhales and scrubs at his eyes with
his palms. Dropping his hands, he says, “Barely. He was
breathing, but that’s about all I could get from him. ”
He stares at me for a long moment with bloodshot eyes. He says, “Your
hair is...gone.”

I lift my hand to my scalp and
find only powdery silt covering smooth skin. Honestly, it’s the
least of my problems. Then, I remember Hayvee and turn to Albert,
“Hayvee. I saw...”

“I know, we have Hayvee,
she’s in Kastellet. I’d have stayed with her, but...
someone needed to come after you.”

I can’t keep sitting this
way; I lie back, curling up on the ground. “What happened?”

He growls darkly, “The
Chauncey puppeteer carried Hayvee through the front lines of the
battle we were fighting to hold back the demons and soul-bound from
Kastellet. She practically threw Hayvee at me. She told me that
Hayvee was a gift, from you
.
”
He snorts. “Right before her fangs snapped out and she tried to
tear into my throat.”

“Did you kill her?” I
squeeze closed my eyes.
Please
say ‘yes,’ please
.

“No,” he mumbles, “I
smashed her, hard, but she’ll heal herself. You have to damage
those puppeteers’ bodies until there is no way they can repair
themselves, or they’ll just regenerate.”

I open my eyes to look at him.
“And, Nicholas?”

“...is more alive than
Stephen, but still in danger.” He pulls his hammer from his
belt and sets it in front of him. “You go back to sleep Raven,
I will wake you when the Helicopter is back.”

I don’t need to be told
twice.

A jolt wakes me. I open my eyes
to discover I’m no longer on the ground. I have no idea where I
am. I’m strapped to a seat, next to an open window, a hundred
feet in the air. Albert must have carried me into the helicopter and
seat-belted me in without me even waking.

The sight below is a familiar
one: Leijonskjöld Slot. We’re descending to the launch pad
on top of the garage.

I let my head sag forward and
drift back to sleep. I wake again when we hit the ground.

I try to press the button to
release me from the seat belt but my hands are too weak. I fight with
the latch but it won’t release, and about every part of me is
aching. And I want out! And I can’t breathe again! I’m
stuck!

Albert has to duck to walk over
to me. With one press of his finger the button releases and the
straps loose around me.

I sag forward.

Albert helps maneuver the belt
off my shoulders and pulls me out of the seat. Without asking if I
need to be, he scoops me into his arms and carries me out. For a
second, I’m sure the hallowed ground won’t let me in;
that I’ll be rejected like the demons... but Albert exits the
helicopter, and nothing happens.

Albert is the third man who’s
carried me this way this trip, but being carried by him isn’t
like being carried by Andras or Nicholas. No, not at all.

I almost fall back to sleep when
I hear a nasally voice waiting for us just inside the garage. He says
something in Swedish, and I don’t really care that I can’t
understand.

“No, I’m taking her
to the hospital,” Albert thunders back.

“She needs to be
debriefed!” Tobias sniffs, “We need to know...”

“Raven, was your mission
successful?”

As much as I want to say, ‘yes’,
I realize, I have no idea whether or not the mission succeeded. I
bargained with Andras, made… no, proposed a deal with him; but
he tried to kill me and drag me into Hell anyway. So does that mean…I
failed? But, then, at the same time, he didn’t kill me, I am
not dead, he left me alive and he hasn’t opened the gates of
Hell...well, not to my knowledge. So, in that way, Andras hasn’t
broken our deal.

“Yes,” I say, even
though I am far from sure.

Albert charges forward saying,
“She’s debriefed. I’m taking her to the hospital.”

I open my eyes just for the sake
of seeing Tobias scurry out of the way.

Albert calls back, “You can
debrief her again when
she’s
ready.”

I smile up into Albert’s
big hairy face. He might be a jerk and a kidnapper, but I’m
pretty sure I’ve made an ally.

I’m lucky the guesthouse
was turned into a hospital, because nothing is better than when
Albert lays me into ‘my’ bed. The pillows are so soft, so
comfortable...

I open my eyes to a, “Tsk,
tsk, tsk,” sound and find that Albert is gone. Did I fall
asleep? I rub my eyes.

“Just look at you, the boy
puts you to bed this way? Tsk, tsk, tsk.” I peer around until I
can fix my gaze on Dina.

“You are bleeding?”
She steps up to me, examines my arms then starts to unwrap the bloody
coat.

“No,” I croak, my
arms are limp in her grip, “It’s not my blood. Do you
have water?”

She’s ‘tsk’ing
the entire time she walks away from the bed and returns with a full
glass.

I sit up to drink it but spill
half when I sit on my thigh. Oh, it aches so much, my muscles ache
everywhere, my face, arms, neck, legs, but nowhere so painfully as
the back of my thigh.

Dina grabs my hand before I spill
the rest of the glass and guides it to my mouth.

“You are so dirty. I need
to wash this blood off.” Dina doesn’t even acknowledge my
objections. She strips me bare, which isn’t hard, wraps me in a
blanket and hurries me to the bathroom across the hall.

The stream of water she pushes me
into is ice cold. When I try to push my way back out of the shower,
she holds me in easily.

“So much blood on you,”
Dina whispers, “Blood everywhere.”

“Not mine. Stephen’s.”
I shiver. Even though I don’t think I have anyone else’s
blood on me, I start listing off everyone who bled on me, “Nicholas,
and Stephen, Father Dixon. Father Dixon is...” I trail off. I
remember what Stephen said, that if we see today then we can mourn. I
wonder if Stephen has seen or ever will see today. How long has it
been since he was stabbed? An hour? A day?

“And yours...” Dina
said. “You are bleeding from the side of your neck. Only a
little cut, but it’s really bleeding.”