Dying Is My Business (36 page)

I stepped back, moving out of their reach as they clutched at me. Without the ability to phase, the shadowborn were stuck fast and not going anywhere. They looked absurd, pathetic even, but I had no sympathy for them. As far as I was concerned, if I ever saw another one of these undead ninja assholes, it would be too soon.

I turned around, expecting to see Reve Azrael and Melanthius, but they were gone. The polished wooden door that led out of Citadel was open. They’d run off, escaping into the same city they wanted so badly to destroy.

Thirty

I ran outside into the rain. The storm clouds had turned the late afternoon as dark as night. It took me a moment to get my bearings. I hadn’t been awake when they brought me to Citadel, so I didn’t know where I was. There was no street outside, no sidewalk or lamps either, just grass, and a thick forest in the distance. The familiar skyline of Fifth Avenue loomed above the trees, illuminated windows glittered against the clouds. I was in Central Park, I realized, closer to the East Side than the West.

There was no sign of Reve Azrael or Melanthius. Not even footprints; the grass had already been pounded flat by the small army of revenants they’d brought with them. I scanned the forest edge in the dark, but I knew they could be anywhere by now. Central Park was more than eight hundred acres of forests, grottos, and hidden paths. I couldn’t even tell which direction they’d gone.

I turned to go back inside, and got my first view of Citadel. An imposing three-story building of gray stone and stained-glass windows, it took my breath away. At each corner, a stone tower topped with crenellated battlements rose two additional stories above the domed roof. Suddenly the name Citadel made sense. It looked more like a fortress than a home. A paved path, just wide enough for a Parks Department vehicle, snaked past and forked in two. One path led back into the woods. The other ended in a patch of dirt beside Citadel, where the Escalade was parked.

Funny, I’d been through the park numerous times and never noticed this building before. But then, I wasn’t supposed to. No one was. That was the point of wards.

I went back inside. Isaac had burned the shadowborn while I was out, leaving only a spear sticking out of the wall and a mound of ashes beneath it.

“Reve Azrael is gone,” I reported.

“Of course she is, she got what she wanted,” Isaac said, his tone bristling with anger. He cast another spell to burn the bodies of the revenants scattered on the floor—either as a precaution or because he was so furious, I couldn’t tell—and in a flash the carpet was so thick with ash the room looked like the inside of a cremation furnace.

“Isaac, I need your help,” Bethany said. She was crouched over Gabrielle’s unconscious body on the other side of the room. She’d torn open the shoulder of Gabrielle’s shirt and was applying pressure to the bullet wound to stop the bleeding.

Isaac hurried to her, telling me to go look after Philip.

The vampire was still on the middle landing. He’d regained consciousness but was weak. I helped him down the steps. He leaned his weight on me, his body as hard and heavy as stone. I finally got him onto the antique Queen Anne couch where we’d laid Thornton’s body earlier. Even as he settled onto the couch, breathing hard and sweating, he never took off his mirrored shades. I took that as a sign that he was probably okay.

Philip winced as he adjusted himself to get comfortable. “Hurts like hell,” he said. “Take it from me, never be on the wrong end of a shadowborn’s sword.”

“Too late,” I told him.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. You’re the man who doesn’t stay dead. Must be nice not having to worry about it.”

“Not as nice as you’d think,” I said. “Anyway, what’s it to you? I thought vampires were supposed to be dead already.”

“You’ve been watching too many movies, man. I’m as alive as you are. Vampires just live longer, that’s all. And we’re a hell of a lot harder to kill.” He poked gloomily at the long tear across the fabric of his shirt. “Damn. This was the last of my black turtlenecks.”

“If it’s any consolation, my shirts get ruined all the time, too,” I said. “You learn not to get attached.”

Philip pointed at a small marble box sitting on an end table. “Do me a favor and hand me that box?” I got it for him. When he opened it, I saw it was filled with dirt, as rich and dark as coffee grounds. He took some in his fingers and smeared the dirt on his wound. He winced again, like someone putting antiseptic on a fresh cut, but the dirt seemed to lessen his pain.

“Is that …
magic
dirt?” I asked. This was what my life had become. Asking if dirt was magical.

“It’s just dirt,” he said, but didn’t explain further. He rubbed some more on his chest. “I’ll be fine now. You don’t need to stand over me like a mother hen.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

Philip seemed to be recovering fine. Gabrielle had me a lot more worried. I went over to where Isaac and Bethany were crouched over her. They hadn’t moved her off the floor yet. They didn’t dare move her at all until she was stabilized. Isaac was holding a wooden bowl filled with some kind of fibrous green goop, while Bethany scooped out handfuls and patted them over the bullet wound. I knelt down beside Gabrielle. Her face was coated in sweat from shock, but she was still breathing and I could see the faint throb of her pulse in her neck. “Is she going to be all right?”

“She hasn’t lost too much blood,” Bethany answered. “The Sanare moss will stop the bleeding and help the wound heal faster.”

“The bullet went right through her,” Isaac said. “The exit wound is pretty bad, but at least the bullet missed the brachial artery in her shoulder.”

She was lucky. It would have been a lot worse if the bullet had stayed inside her. I knew that from personal experience.

I watched Bethany apply more of the Sanare moss to Gabrielle’s shoulder. “Why did you give me the charm instead of using it yourself?” I asked her.

“It wouldn’t have worked otherwise,” she said. “There was something wrong with my containment spell, remember? Reverse engineering is never as good as using an original spell.”

“But still, you gave it to me,” I said. “You thought it would work if I used it?”

She looked up at me. “It did, didn’t it? That’s what happened last time, so I took a chance it would happen again.” She shrugged. “Somehow, magic just seems to work better for you.”

“That was a hell of a chance to take,” I said. “If it hadn’t worked…”

“But as she said, it did,” Isaac said. “How often does that happen to you?”

“How often does what happen?”

He looked at me curiously. “Is magic
always
more powerful when you’re in contact with it?”

I shrugged. “Damned if I know.”

“It happened with the Anubis Hand, too, didn’t it? When you used it, it didn’t just stun the gargoyles, it killed them. Burned them up, that’s what Bethany said. And then there’s the shock Gabrielle experienced when she went too deeply into your mind. She said it was like feedback. Her own psychic energy coming back at her, but stronger…” He trailed off, tapping his short red beard in thought.

Great, I thought, more reasons to think of myself as a freak. But I’d seen magic in its rawest form, and it was terrifying. If it was connected to me somehow, I had to know. “Okay then, so what does all this mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Isaac said with a sigh. “Magic is an element of the natural world, no different from wood or fire, even if it has been tainted by the Shift. Casting a spell is just channeling and transforming that elemental energy, but even so, the energy should remain constant. If the charm didn’t work for Bethany, it shouldn’t have worked for you either.”

“What about you?” I asked. “You’re a mage. Aren’t your spells supposed to be stronger or something?”

He shook his head. “It’s not the same thing. Mages have access to a different level of magic, and through study and a greater understanding of the element we’re manipulating, it can be carried inside us with less chance of infecting us—”

“Wait, less
chance
?” I interrupted. “I thought mages were immune.”

“Nothing is foolproof,” he said. “There have been mages who’ve become infected. Some were weak-willed, or had an affinity for darkness already. Others … well, fending off the infection can be a struggle even for the most powerful among us.” I didn’t like the sound of that. Did it mean Isaac could become infected, too? At any time? “But, Trent,” he continued, “even a mage can’t make a faulty charm work, let alone operate with the kind of increased intensity that one did. That was all you. Somehow, you’re like a shot of caffeine to magic. A supercharger.”

“How?” I asked. “I don’t even know when I’m doing it.”

“The real question isn’t how, Trent, it’s
why
,” Isaac said. “Why does magic become stronger around you? Why can’t you die? And why is Reve Azrael able find you whenever she wants?”

Isaac had studied magic enough to become a mage, and yet even he didn’t know what to make of me. That wasn’t exactly comforting.

“Guys, she’s coming around,” Bethany said.

I looked down at Gabrielle. Her eyes fluttered open.

Isaac smiled at her. “Welcome back. You gave us quite a scare.”

With her good arm, Gabrielle pushed a few loose dreadlocks out of her face. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse, gravelly. “I’m sorry. I saw his face and I—I just couldn’t do it.”

“It’s all right,” Bethany said. “Don’t move. Just try to relax.”

Gabrielle groaned as the pain of the gunshot wound finally sank in. “At least tell me you stopped them.”

Bethany scooped more of the Sanare moss onto Gabrielle’s bullet wound. “I wish I could, but they got away. They took Stryge’s head with them.”

“They took Thornton, too,” I said.

Tears welled in Gabrielle’s eyes, and she turned away. “So that monster is still walking around in Thornton’s body, doing God knows what with it?” She choked back a sob, but then she couldn’t hold it in anymore and her body shook as she wept.

“I need you to keep still,” Bethany said.

“Keep still?” Gabrielle demanded, her sadness shifting to anger. “How the fuck am I supposed to keep still? She has his body, Bethany. She’s wearing him like a fucking dress. We have to go after her.”

“Opening that bullet wound again isn’t going to get Thornton back,” I said. “Let them fix you up.”

“While she takes him farther and farther away?” Gabrielle raged. “How can you say that? You know what he was to me. You fucking
saw
it!”

“It doesn’t change anything,” I said. “You’re not in any shape to go running after her.”

“What is she talking about?” Bethany asked me. “What did you see?”

“Something happened when she was inside my mind,” I explained. “Somehow, I got inside hers too for a second, and I saw … something.” I stopped myself there. It didn’t feel right that it should come from me.

“He saw that Thornton and I were engaged,” Gabrielle said, closing her eyes. I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for her to say the words out loud. How much it hurt. But she braced herself, opened her eyes again, and said, “It happened a few days ago. He wanted to tell you all right away, but then the new job came up. Securing the box. Thornton only took the job so we’d have money for the wedding.” She closed her eyes again, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “It was my idea to wait until after the job was over to tell you, so we could celebrate properly. I thought we had time.”

“Oh, Gabrielle,” Bethany said, stroking her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Isaac said.

“You want Stryge’s head back. I want
Thornton
back,” Gabrielle said. “We have to go after them.”

Isaac didn’t answer.

“I won’t let her use Thornton like this,” she insisted. “I won’t let her desecrate his body. He deserves better than that. Isaac, we have to go after them!”

Isaac looked down at the floor. I could see in his eyes that he was wrestling with something inside. A promise he’d made long ago.

“She said to tell you she was wrong,” I said.

Isaac looked up at me. “What?”

“Ingrid,” I said. “She was still hurting from Morbius’s death when she told you to keep your head down and not get involved, but she regretted it. Right before she died, she asked me to tell you to keep fighting the good fight. To not let Morbius’s dream die with her. She said she was wrong. She wanted you to know that.”

Isaac nodded and closed his eyes, as though a great weight had been taken off his shoulders. When he opened them again, he said, “I spent so much time worrying about drawing attention to myself that I asked others to risk their lives for me, and all the while I stayed hidden away here in Citadel. Thornton paid the price for that. No more. It ends today. Reve Azrael brought the fight to us. Now we’re going to bring it to her. Together.” He started pacing the floor, thinking out loud. “She’s crazy if she thinks she can just wake Stryge up and make him do her bidding. He’ll kill her the moment he opens his eyes.”

“So why don’t we let him?” Philip asked, coming over from the couch. He’d taken off his black turtleneck and draped it over his shoulder like a towel. Remarkably, the wound had already closed and scabbed over, leaving only a thin white scar across his hairless, dirt-smeared chest. Apparently dirt helped vampires heal faster. Good to know. I filed it away with the hundred other ridiculous and impossible things I’d learned over the past twenty-four hours.

“And then what?” Isaac asked. “Once Stryge is awake, there’s no way to stop him.”

“Willem Van Lente did it four hundred years ago, right?” I pointed out. “We could do it again.”

“How? No one knows how Van Lente brought Stryge down, and he didn’t leave any clues behind.”

“Reve Azrael’s plan doesn’t make any sense,” Bethany said. “There’s no way to control an Ancient.”

“Maybe she found a way,” I said. “Maybe there’s a spell no one knew about.”

“It’s possible,” Isaac said. He sighed and brushed his hands through his cropped red hair. “Reve Azrael craves control. It’s why she surrounds herself with revenants. All that nonsense about the city being too loud, that’s just a symptom of her madness. It’s
life
she hates. Life is messy and loud, and she can’t control it the way she controls the dead. She wants to snuff it out.”