by S. W. Clarke
Percy half-turned his head to eye me. “We’re going back up, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, we’re going back up.”
“Fast?”
“Fast.”
“You ready, then? We’re going straight up.”
I took hold of the new grips affixed to the bridle, plastered myself to his back. “I’m ready.”
Without another word, Percy struck off over the street, ascending in corkscrew circles until he had enough velocity to bring us almost straight up the side of 432 Park Avenue.
I’d have to thank Ferris for this flight gear. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to stay on. Everything pressed against me, and it was all I could do to keep my hands in the grips and my feet firm in the stirrups.
Above us, the moon’s face laughed like some forgotten god in the sky. And I thought, not for the first time, that my father had sensed what my life would become—that he knew, somehow, and was preparing me for all the moments I would have to face death.
This wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.
A moment later, we blasted up over the side of the building. Percy brought us to a hover fifteen feet above the roof. Or, at least, what had once looked like a roof.
Now? It looked like carnage.
“Well,” he said, “that’s not good.”
“You said it, Perce. Very much not good.”
↔
We landed gently. Around us, death spread its tendrils through everything. Scarred lay fallen and broken, some mangled. Three of the crosses were down—they had either fallen forward or, horrifically, back.
Thankfully, Annabelle’s—and Annabelle herself—was still there. I couldn’t tell if she was still alive; she wasn’t moving, and her hair was covering her face. The other remaining descendants were also unmoving.
“Tara,” Percy whispered, “look.”
There at the center of things knelt Valdis himself. He bent over his knee, fingers touching the gravel, face down. Not dead, though; I could see the rise and fall of his back as he breathed. But vulnerable. Weakened.
And directly around him lay the remains of ex-vampires, pools of blood like scattered rose petals.
I slipped off Percy’s back, preparing to grab Bonnie and Clyde from their sheaths, when a yell sounded from the side of the building.
Seleema.
Shit, there he was. Vulnerable. Prone.
And on the other side, my friend was screaming. She was in trouble.
I was faced with one of the toughest decisions of my life: save my friend, or finally avenge my family.
In the end there was no choice. Not really.
I rushed toward the side, peered over.
There, hanging by both hands off the edge of the roof, was my impossible-to-kill houri.
“Thank the GoneGods.” I knelt down, grabbed her wrists. “You are something else, lady.”
“I do not know what you mean,” Seleema breathed, staring up at me as though she wasn’t hanging fifty-seven stories in the air. “I am only what I am.”
“That you are.” I leaned back, pulling her up. But there was no way I was going to leverage a seven-foot woman up. “Perce, if you would.”
Percy swooped off the edge and underneath Seleema, lifting her up and back onto the roof. He perched next to us, neck twisted around to survey the houri as she and I both breathed hard.
“Do you mean to tell me,” I said through heaves, “that you managed to grab hold of the edge of this building and hang on all this time?”
The houri inclined her head. “I did not mean to tell you this, because I felt it to be self-evident.”
I managed a tight smile. “Seleema, my dear, you and I need to work on our human-Other communi—”
Seleema bristled, straightening as her eyes lifted behind me. In the same moment, Percy’s tail swung hard and slammed into the side of the building.
“Snowdrop,” a voice beckoned from behind. The richness of it sent a shiver through me. “There you are. I knew you would not die.”
I turned, slow and methodical, to face him. And though I was prepared to be unnerved, I wasn’t prepared to be disgusted.
Valdis, now standing upright and leering at me, was covered in blood. But that wasn’t the worst part …
The gray was gone from his hair. That odd and awful light had returned to his good eye. Not exactly the same as when he was a vampire, but much like it.
“GoneGodDamn,” I began, but before I could load up a real zinger, he was at my side. It happened that fast—one moment he stood fifteen feet away, and the next he was scenting my hair through his blood-encrusted fingers. “Your smell is divine.”
My throat caught. Was he immortal again? Had he regained his vampirism?
That was impossible. Or was it?
I had just seen him move faster than my eyes could track.
Beside me, Seleema lashed out in a fury, her red nails swiping through the air. Valdis leaned away in a flash of movement, one arm coming around my shoulder and swinging me around with him.
He backed us up, his arm around me in an embrace too tight to be sweet, but not hostage-tight. All the same, my muscles felt abruptly slowed and dull, like they were stuck in molasses. This was his power—his vampiric power. “I knew you would come for me,” he whispered in my ear. “That you would find me.”
“To kill you.”
“So you thought, my dear. But I have only uncorked your natural fire.”
Percy roared, wings flaring as his throat engorged with flame. It was a threat; he couldn’t very well shoot it at both of us.
“What now?” I asked. “You may have done some strange hoodoo, but you’re nuts if you think you can fight your way past a houri and a dragon.”
“Oh, my dear, you have forgotten my power.” He kept backing us up toward the far side of the roof, and I stumbled over something and glanced down; Louise lay there, intact, on the ground. “I don’t need to use stairs any longer,” he went on.
Behind us, footsteps sounded. Metal clicked into place, and Valdis spun us around. We were staring into the barrel of a gun so enormous I doubted you could even call it a gun.
It was more like a small shoulder cannon.
Before us stood Erik the GoneGodDamn Norwegian, ruiner of my best-laid plans.
He leveled the cannon at Valdis. “I’m afraid the stairs are your only option tonight.”
Valdis remained solidly where he was. “Your magical interference device has no effect, human.”
Magical interference. So that’s what that firecracker had been—some kind of World Army tech to stop magic. Where did he hide a bazooka like that, anyway?
“No effect?” Erik’s eyebrows went up, and he took a step forward. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be burning years of time right now.”
My eyebrows pulled together. I knew Others were capable of burning their lives away to use magic, but it was at an enormous cost. If Erik was interfering with his magic so well he had to burn years, Valdis should be aging before our eyes.
But he wasn’t.
All the same, Erik seemed certain of what he was talking about.
“Time.” Valdis laughed, sliding one hand down the length of my arm until he reached the elbow. “You don’t know how meaningless time is to me now.”
“Don’t touch me,” I spat.
“My love, I have only one question for you tonight.” Valdis leaned close enough to my ear that his breath tickled the edge, and I sensed him reaching into his jacket. “Do you remember?”
His closeness sent equal amounts of disgust and hatred through me.
But it also elicited another feeling. A feeling I didn’t want to—couldn’t—acknowledge.
"If you could just remember our love,” he went on, “you wouldn't see me the way you do."
I glared at him over my shoulder. "All I see is a selfish motherfucker."
In his eye, I saw longing. Pain. Desire. "So much of what I do is selfish for you, for us, for our d
aughter. But not everything I do is for my family. There are monsters I'm trying to save the world from, too."
I took in a deep breath, my lip curling as my hatred overwhelmed everything else. "Me too. That's why killing you is a good first step, you geriatric beast."
“Ah.” Valdis seemed entirely unoffended. His hand, still on my elbow, came to grip my forearm. “I see you need more time. And encouragement.”
With the effort of a child splitting a twig, he slipped something from the folds of his jacket and jammed what looked like an icicle into my forearm. A moment later, he jerked it out at an angle.
The worst part: I felt the tip of it break off beneath my skin.
I know I screamed. I know I reacted like a feral animal, my mouth opening as wide as it would go. But none of those things registered above the pain—I experienced them only in some distant way, as though someone else was screaming and writhing.
“Take heart, Mariana,” I heard Valdis’s far-off voice murmur, “all will heal soon.”
A second later, red fingernails swept in out of the darkness—Seleema. Valdis leaned back once more, bringing me with him. He spun us around toward the only open side of the roof as Erik’s shoulder cannon followed, swinging around.
I’d learned this in the circus: you gave yourself a moment, and then you fought through the pain.
All at once, I was back in the world. I had to be.
The pain. It enriched my anger. Fueled it. Heightened my senses with bucketloads of adrenaline.
I remember you, I thought. And you haven’t changed one bit.
Valdis had spoken of my natural fire. Well, he would see it.
As we turned, I tucked my foot under Thelma’s grip, kicked her up with all the energy in my stupidly lethargic body. She sailed right into my unharmed hand like a magnet had pulled her there, and in the same motion, I snapped her over my shoulder and across Valdis’s face.
I don’t care if you’re semi-immortal—that shit has to sting.
And it sure did, because he loosened his grip just enough for me to drop out from under his arm and into a backward somersault, tucking my injured arm into my chest. I kicked up onto my good palm halfway through, landed on my feet next to Seleema.
Where had he gone?
Valdis wasn’t where he’d stood.
A low, mournful growl sounded from the far side of the roof. Up on the raised edge, I saw him. The bane of my existence. And he’d moved as fast as light to get there.
His single dark eye was fixed on me.
“You are not yet ready. Come back to me when you remember, snowdrop.”
Valdis stepped back like he could walk on air. Instead, he dropped off the edge of 432 Park Avenue.
Chapter 24
We all stared, silent, as the moon shone down on us.
For my part, I didn’t know if I could move even if I’d wanted to. I kept staring at the spot where he’d stood like I could will him back onto this roof for the proper showdown I’d waited five years for.
But he wasn’t coming back. I had to go to him.
Erik lowered his cannon. “Is he dead?”
Oh, you sweet summer child.
Seleema ran to the far end of the roof, peered over. The wind blew her hair back. “He is not down there.”
I pulled my arm tight to my chest, gritting my teeth as I did. “I know.”
The houri spun back around. “What?”
“He’s got his vampirism back. Jumping off a building is nothing to one of them blood-sucking fiends.”
“That is impossible,” Seleema breathed.
Erik sighed. “Not precisely.”
So the Norwegian knows a little something about vampires. I glanced at him. In profile, the edges of his face shone silver as he stared at edge of the roof. A fine face—one I didn’t mind looking at.
The houri returned to stand before us, hands on hips. “Explain.”
The only one who seemed to care about my welfare was Percy, who nudged under my good arm. “Tara. He hurt you.”
He sounded like a child worried about his mama. I supposed that was exactly who he was.
I pursed a smile down at the dragon. “I’ll be OK, Perce. You OK?”
“I’m OK.”
Erik pulled back the sleeve of his jacket to expose a watch. “He was burning years of time to do what he did. He didn’t age a day.”
“So what does that mean?” Seleema asked.
I kept staring at that spot where he’d stood. “It means, as he put it, ‘time means nothing to him now.’ ”
“He had a magical item,” Erik said. “I suspect it allowed him to lengthen his life. But I don’t think he’s immortal.”
“Because you shot a magical cockblocking firecracker into the middle of his ritual,” I said. “Which wasn’t part of the plan, by the way.”
Erik stiffened. “Well, it was actually a MI—”
My eyes fell on the crosses behind Erik. I started toward them. “Seleema, help me get these folks down. I imagine all their blood has run to their heads.”
If they still have any blood left.
Erik fell silent, but I could practically feel him bristling. Good—he was the GoneGodDamn reason I’d taken an icicle to the arm.
A couple minutes later, Seleema and Erik had gotten the descendants down from the crosses. And all six were, remarkably, alive. Drugged and dazed, but unhurt.
Percy followed me around, strangely awkward on his legs as he never was before. I could tell he was concerned about me.
Finally, I turned to him. “Are you tired, my peach?”
“No.” He stared at me with defiant—lidded—golden eyes. He was tired as hell.
I leaned toward him. “Fly back to the safety of the apartment in Brooklyn. Don’t let anyone see you—I expect there’ll be police involved tonight.”
“But ...” He didn’t move. “Tara?”
“Yes, Perce?”
“Did I do good?”
I smiled. “You did better than good, Percival. You did brilliantly.”
Seleema came to my side, set one ginger arm over my shoulders. “He carried me like a true warrior of Jannah.”
“Jannah?” Percy repeated.
She smiled. “It is the land I hail from. A land of strength. Soon I shall tell you all about it.”
“Are there dragons there, or just houri? And how do you qualify ‘strength?’ Why is it called Jannah, anyway?”
I laughed, set a hand on Percy’s neck. “Go easy on the gal. She’ll tell you later.”
As Percy took off into the night, I turned to the houri. “Seleema,” I began.
She raised a finger into the sky, pointing after Percy. "This dragon is good for you. He lightens your soul."
I glanced up. "Yeah, he has a good sense of humor."
Seleema turned to face me. "You misunderstand, human. This is not a phrase or expression—the dragon literally lightens your soul."
Oh.
This time I did more than glance into the sky. Percy had disappeared from sight, but I could still faintly hear his wings. “Seleema,” I murmured.
“Yes, Tara?”
“Thank—”
“If you mean to show gratitude,” she cut in, “I would prefer you did not. It was my honor.”
“Well, all right.” I glanced down at her hands. “You broke one of your nails.”
She lifted the hand. The red nail on the forefinger was broken off right at the tip of her finger. “We all bear the scars of battle, Tara Drake.” Her eyes drifted to my arm. “Some of us more than others.”
She turned slowly toward the survivors. Annabelle had sat up, her blonde hair a curtain over her face and shoulders.
She really was lovely.
Ten minutes later, we brought the survivors down in the elevator, all of us standing in silence as the elevator dinged from floor to floor.
Annabelle turned to me, her eyes finding mine through her mess of hair.
I smiled at her, and she managed a
cracked, deadened sort of smile back. Mostly the recognition was in her blue eyes, which were wide with feeling and gratitude.
Neither of us said anything to one another, but her hand did snake out from beneath the blanket wrapped around her. Her fingers found mine, and she squeezed.
I wasn’t any good at this sort of thing. But, I suppose, it’s in doing a thing that you get better. So I squeezed back, and we spent a few seconds hand-in-hand.
On my other side, I noticed Erik folding and unfolding his fists the way he’d done when we were ascending.
“You getting ready for a fight?” I murmured to him.
He glanced down at his hands. “Heights make me nervous.”
I blinked. “You mean that’s a nervous tic? A fear-of-heights tic?”
“Yeah. Don’t rub it in.”
Well hell. I probably owed him an apology for that headbutt.
But not right now. Right now, I needed a rum and Coke. Or seven. Especially because the police had just arrived when we got down to the lobby.
As had Frank, parked in his VW on the curb. As soon as she could, Seleema rushed into his arms, all her beads jangling. Frank was already crying by the time she got to the car.
Meanwhile, those who had been kidnapped, including the golden-haired Annabelle, were taken into police cars. They walked like the living dead, barely seeing, but at least they were walking.
At the last second, Annabelle glanced back at me. She gave me the same look she’d given me in The Singing Angel—the one that could make you fall in love.
Looks like Paul the singer will still have the pleasure of signing all his songs.
As it turned out, it was helpful having a World Army guy around; he did some hand waving as he talked to the police, and my guess was he’d claimed us as classified members of his “sting.”
A guess which was confirmed when Erik, stepping away from the cops after some mild questioning, told Seleema and I we were free to go.
“Come on,” he’d said, nodding toward an official-looking Jeep parked on the curb. “I’ll take you to Langone to see about that arm.”
I shook my head. “Nope. No sir. It’s just a scratch, anyway.”
He eyed me. “Nobody screams the way you did over a scratch.”