Dying Is My Business (46 page)

I grabbed the mic with my free hand and raised the Anubis Hand with the other to make sure I had the crowd’s attention. “Everyone! You need to get out of here! Clear the stands!”

A murmur rippled through the crowd, peppered with a few nervous chuckles and some drunken applause, but no one moved.

“Damn it, listen to me! You have to get out of here
now
! You’re all in danger!”

Below, the security guards surrounded the dais but didn’t climb the steps. They barked into walkie-talkies, and a moment later a cluster of police officers came out onto the tournament field, walking toward me. On instinct, my chest tightened at the sight of them, but I pushed the feeling away. This time, the cops were just what I needed. Provided they would listen to me.

“Officers, you have to evacuate the park, everyone is in danger!” I shouted into the microphone.

The cops kept coming toward me. One look at their stern, stony faces told me they didn’t care what I had to say. Their hands hovered at their belts between their guns and their handcuffs, waiting until the last minute to decide which one they’d need to subdue the raving nut with the big metal stick.

I stepped back from the mic and looked around, trying to find a way out. The security guards were still at the bottom of the steps, blocking any exit that way. On my other side, the costumed announcer had found his courage and grabbed the mic again.

“No need to worry, folks. We’ll get the show back up and running in a moment,” he said. The crowd cheered. The announcer looked at me, then said into the mic, “Just another reason they shouldn’t serve alcohol at these things anymore. Am I right?” The cheers turned to boos.

The cops looked up at me from the field below. One of them spoke around the wad of chewing gum he was working over, “Drop the metal pipe, sir, and come on down.”

I backed away, clutching the staff tight. I had to make them listen, but I didn’t know how. “Please, get them out of here!”

The cop sighed. “I don’t like having to repeat myself, sir.” The group of officers started toward the dais stairs.

A commotion arose at the far end of the field. A handful of gargoyles and revenants smashed suddenly through the low picket fence and onto the tournament field, locked in a desperate struggle. It was too late. The fight had spilled over already.

The officers, not understanding what they were seeing, ran toward the fight to break it up. “No, get back!” I yelled, but it was too late. As soon as the officers got close, the revenants attacked them with their machetes, hacking them to pieces.

Like a spark hitting a tinderbox, it set off a scream of terror through the crowd. People stampeded for the exits. The costumed announcer jumped off the dais and ran across the field, where the horses were panicking, kicking and running in circles. The jousters didn’t stick around to try to calm their horses before scrambling away. But only one end of the field was safe from the battle, the side with the bleachers, and the exits between them were too narrow. People pushed and shoved, and before long shouts of pain and anger joined the screams of terror. It was pandemonium.

I jumped off the dais, gripping the Anubis Hand tight in case any gargoyles came at me. I scanned the surrounding chaos for Bethany, but I didn’t see her anywhere.

A vast shadow fell over the tournament field, as if something immense had passed over the sun. I looked up. The whole sky swarmed with gargoyles, so many that the heavens themselves were blotted out, relegated to bright flashes of blue between the winged bodies overhead.

“Bethany!” I shouted, looking for her again. Then, finally, I spotted her near the other end of the field. She was helping an older woman with a cane out of the stands and away from the fight. I started running toward her. Bethany got the woman to the nearest exit, then saw me. She started toward me across the field, shouting something I couldn’t hear over the din.

A flash of black caught my eye. A dozen crows descended from the sky and swooped down to the field. A moment later they were gone. In their place was the Black Knight, sitting astride his armored black horse.

Right behind Bethany.

I shouted, “Look out!”

She looked over her shoulder, saw the Black Knight, and started running. The Black Knight urged his horse into a gallop, chasing after her.

“No!” I shouted, running toward them. “It’s me you want! Leave her alone!”

The Black Knight drew his sword.

Damn it, they were too far away. I heard the distressed whinny of another horse and saw the chestnut stallion standing nearby, digging a hoof in the dirt and flicking his tail nervously. I grabbed the saddle strap, hooked a foot into the stirrup, and swung myself up into the saddle. The jouster who’d ridden him had left his shield behind, hooked to the saddle on the horse’s back. Perfect. I picked it up in my free hand. It was made of a thin metal, possibly tin. Fine for a jousting exhibition, but not so great against the Black Knight’s sword. Still, it was better than nothing, and I didn’t have time to complain. The Black Knight was already bearing down on Bethany.

I leveled the Anubis Hand in front of me, a makeshift metal lance with a mummified human fist for a point, and squeezed my knees together to signal the horse to move. The stallion broke into a gallop, his panic subsided as his training took over.

“Over here!” I shouted. “I’m right here, you overgrown tin can!”

But I was still too far away. The Black Knight swung his sword, the barbed blade striking Bethany in the back. She cried out in pain, her legs giving out beneath her, and fell facedown to the ground.

My heart crammed into my throat. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t release the anguished cry building like a head of steam inside me.

Bethany lay still in the dirt. Very, very still.

My lips pulled back in an angry snarl. I spurred the horse to run faster. The Black Knight turned the impassive, expressionless face of his helmet toward me just as I bashed the Anubis Hand into his chest. I’d hoped to knock him off his horse, but the Black Knight only rocked in his saddle a moment. Then I was past him, the chestnut stallion’s momentum taking me several yards away before I managed to slow the horse and turn him around.

The Black Knight charged at me, the pounding hooves of his night-black horse throwing up divots of dirt and grass. He held his sword high, ready to strike. I spurred my horse to a gallop, the stallion’s taut muscles flexing beneath me as I closed the gap between us. The Black Knight swung his sword. I raised the metal staff to block it. The blade clanged against it, nearly knocking it out of my hand. Then we were past each other as our horses continued galloping.

I turned my horse around. The Black Knight did the same, and we rode at each other once more. This time the Black Knight knocked the staff out of my hand completely, and as we passed each other, he brought his sword around to strike again. It crashed against my shield with more force than I’d expected, throwing me off my horse. The shield went flying. I landed hard on my back in the grass. Apparently, I didn’t have much of a future in jousting.

Or maybe not much of a future at all. The Black Knight slowed his horse and dismounted. The chestnut stallion deserted me, galloping off to the other end of the field. I couldn’t blame him; just then I wanted to be on the other end of the field, too. The Black Knight held his sword in both gauntlets and walked toward me, his heavy boots flattening the grass beneath them.

I stood up, holding my head. It felt like the fall had knocked something loose in there. “Wait,” I said.

The Black Knight swung the sword at me. I jumped back, narrowly avoiding getting cut in half at the stomach.

I put my hands up as if to ward him off. “Whoa! I thought you wanted me alive. What happened to stealing my power for yourself?”

He swung again, and I jumped back to avoid the blade. Clearly he wasn’t interested anymore. Maybe he’d decided I wasn’t as enticing a source of power as Stryge. It was hard to feel bad playing the bridesmaid in that particular contest, but unfortunately it meant the Black Knight had no use for me anymore, no reason not to hack me to pieces.

“Stop,” I said. “I know who you are. I figured it out. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

The sword cut through the air at my midsection as I jumped back again. The Black Knight came forward, his metal boots stomping the dirt.

“Please, listen to me,” I said. “No one put it together before because the clues weren’t all there. They didn’t know you were still alive, or that you’d forgotten your own name. Four hundred years ago, an alchemist vanished from Fort Verhulst. It was you, but you didn’t vanish, you snuck out to go fight Stryge, to stop him from killing your fellow Dutch settlers. You made the Anubis Hand so you could save your home and the people you cared about. You’re Willem Van Lente.” I pointed at the staff lying in the grass. “The fist on the end of that staff is
yours
.”

The Black Knight swung again, and I jumped back again. I wished I knew how much more room I had behind me, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off him to turn around. I hoped I wasn’t about to pin myself against the bleachers.

“In order to fight an Ancient like Stryge, you had to carry so much magic inside you. Every spell you could think of,” I said. “But after the Shift, that was a dangerous thing to do. All that magic changed you. It turned you into this.”

He swung again. I couldn’t tell if he was listening, but I refused to believe it didn’t matter to him. I refused to believe I couldn’t get through to him.

“In time, the infection twisted your mind. It made you forget who you are, forget everything about yourself. Except, maybe not
everything
. Somehow you remembered there were still people out there who could connect the Black Knight to Willem Van Lente, so you went back to Fort Verhulst, and you killed them. The infection made you kill the very same people you fought to protect.”

The sword cut through the air again, so close I could feel the breeze it made against my shirt.

“Willem, damn it, listen to me!” I yelled. “The infection made you forget the battle with Stryge. It made you forget so completely, buried the knowledge of how you did it so deeply, that even the oracles couldn’t see it. You forgot the man you used to be, the
good
man. You forgot your own name.”

The Black Knight drew back his sword to swing again, but hesitated. Was I finally getting through to him?

“I told you it doesn’t have to be like this. We can help you, Willem. If there’s a way back, we can help you find it, but first we need your help. Reve Azrael is about to wake Stryge up and undo everything you did. Please, you’ve got to help us. You’re the only one who can.”

The Black Knight tilted his helmet as though he were listening.

“I know how hard this is,” I said. “Believe me, I know better than anyone, because we’re in the same boat, you and me. Because if you want to put things right, if you want to save the city you love again … all you have to do is remember who you were.”

The Black Knight regarded me in stoic silence.

“There’s got to be something left inside you, Willem,” I said. “Some part of you that still gives a damn.”

By way of an answer, he drove his sword into my stomach.

I gasped and fell to my knees. The sword’s hilt and half the blade stuck out of my body like a third appendage. Blood poured out of me. The Black Knight pulled the sword out again, the barbs on the back of the blade shredding my insides even more. If the sword hurt going in, it was a hundred times more painful coming out. The Black Knight backed up a step but didn’t leave, preferring to watch me die. I looked up at him, desperately searching the cold, emotionless black helmet for some sign of the man he used to be, but there was nothing left of him in it. The infection had destroyed everything of the man he’d been, and replaced it with madness and cruelty.

The oracles were wrong. Willem Van Lente had died a long time ago.

I fell backward, landing right next to one of the bleachers. Bethany’s charm rattled against my chest under my shirt. As blackness crawled from the corners of my vision to spread over everything, I caught a glimpse of four small faces staring in horror at me from under the bleachers. They were children, three boys and a girl, their faces streaked with dirt and tears. They must have been hiding there since the moment all hell broke loose. They were so close I could reach out and touch them—too close, and too frightened to run.

Oh God, no, not again. In my mind I saw the little boy in the crack house, dead in his mother’s arms, and then the darkness came to swallow me whole.

Thirty-seven

I gasped air into my lungs and opened my eyes. I didn’t know where I was. I’d been dead again, that much I could tell, but what had happened? Above me, the sky was dark, rippling and swelling as though I were looking at an ocean wave from the bottom of the sea. A moment later, my vision cleared. What I’d thought was the sky was actually a mass of gargoyles circling overhead.

I looked down and saw a hole in the front of my shirt. The whole lower half of my shirt was soaked with blood, but as usual, I had come back whole and uninjured. I sat up quickly, the memories rushing back. The Black Knight was already gone, I saw, a dozen crows flying up into the gargoyle-filled sky.

I turned and looked under the bleachers, dreading the sight of a mummified husk of a child, but the four kids were still there, all of them still alive. Relieved, I let out a sigh. Amazingly, miraculously—impossibly—Bethany’s charm had worked. The children shrieked at the sight of me, this big, blood-soaked man who’d come back from the dead before their eyes. It was enough to finally get them to leave their hiding place and run for safety.

I pulled myself up to my feet, still sore and disoriented. The tournament field was empty. The crowd had dispersed. The fighting gargoyles and revenants were gone, leaving their fallen behind. Bethany lay facedown in the grass farther down the field. I started toward her and heard what I thought was a cough. She moved, just slightly, and coughed again. I broke into a run, and knelt down beside her. I could see the wound on her back, only it wasn’t what I’d expected. The Black Knight’s sword had cut through her cargo vest and shirt, but beneath it, her skin was unbroken. There was no injury, no blood, just the fiery feathers of her phoenix tattoo peeking out at me.