Requiem for the Living (The Reanimation Files Book 2)

by A. J. Locke

  Micah ran forward and tackled Ethan, who dropped the knife and crumpled under Micah’s weight. There were no possible words to describe what I felt. Tears poured down my face, and though I tried to keep screaming, no sound came out. All I could do was kneel there and stare at Ilyse’s slumped over body and the river of blood that poured out of her. Beyond that, Micah was slowly getting up, as was Ethan. At the sight of Ilyse and the bloody knife lying close by, Ethan screamed and covered his face with his hands.

  I don’t know how, but somehow I ended up in front of Ethan and was throttling him. He was wearing energy runes, provided by Renton no doubt, so my blows were able to connect.

  “You killed her! You killed her! How could you do it!”

  Micah grabbed me around my waist and pulled me off of Ethan, who just stood there sobbing uncontrollably. He was making incoherent sounds that I think were supposed to be words but I could make no sense of it. I could make sense of nothing. My body shook in Micah’s arms, like I was a leaf in the middle of a hurricane. I thought my bones would rattle to pieces inside my body. Micah held me tightly, but there was no embrace that would make any of this better. I just wanted this nightmare to end. Wanted to wake up and have none of the events from the past few months exist. I would be Rot-free and healthy, Micah and I would be in a happy relationship, Ethan would be in his body, and Ilyse would be alive and well. Please, please, let me wake up from this nightmare.

  But of course I didn’t, because this wasn’t a nightmare, it was my reality. I just didn’t know how to deal with it.

  “This is all my fault.” My voice sounded alien to my ears, ragged and full of pain. “Everything that has happened is because of me. Because of my reanimation power. I’m the reason Ilyse is dead. I’m the reason so many other people are dead. The reanimators whose power has kept me alive…all those people Isabelle’s beastie slaughtered. It all begins and ends with me.”

  “Shh,” Micah said over and over and stroked my hair. Did he really think that made a difference? There was no changing the facts, no bringing Ilyse or any of those people back. As long as my reanimation power existed, I didn’t see how I could stay out of trouble. Even if I took my power back from Renton and we put a stop to his experiments, sooner or later someone else would come along who would want to exploit me.

  I pulled away from Micah. He tried to keep holding me but I wouldn’t let him. I didn’t deserve to be comforted right now.

  “Selene, don’t do this to yourself.” Micah reached for me but I pulled away. I slowly walked over to Ilyse. I cupped her face with my hands and raised her lifeless head up. Her eyes were closed, and she looked so peaceful as I brushed the hair away from her face.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Ilyse, I’m so sorry.” I wanted her ghost to rise. I wouldn’t anchor it at least. I wanted to see her again, even as a ghost, to tell her how sorry I was that I had gotten her killed, even though those would be empty words. They would be no use to her now. Ilyse had been there for me for so many years, helped me in so many ways, been the closest thing I had to family since my Gran died, and now she was dead. Because of me. I lay a gentle kiss on her forehead.

  “Ilyse…” I could say no more than that. I collapsed into sobs, not caring that I was kneeling in a pool of her blood. Some feet away, Ethan had stopped screaming and had collapsed. Now he was curled up making whimpering sounds. I spared him a brief glance before I turned away. It was the most horrible déjà vu ever. Ethan had killed someone against his will and was messed up because of it. Last time I had helped him through it. This time I was not sure I could.

  Micah knelt beside me. I looked at his face. His was also pained. This plus the situation with his mother must be crushing him but he was trying not to show it. One of us had to try and be strong and there was no way it could be me.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked gently. Because obviously we couldn’t just sit here in our grief until the end of time. Ilyse’s body had to be taken care of. And there was still Renton.

  I inhaled a huge breath and let it out. “There’s only one thing we can do,” I said. “Call Tielle.”

  * * *

  Micah, Ethan, and I were sitting in Tielle’s office. It was about eight at night and the rest of the office was empty. Ilyse’s body was in the morgue some floors below us. It was still a hard truth for me to grasp; that Ilyse wasn’t at home, or in her sweet smelling office on the eighth floor, or working at a Leech House. No, she was lying naked in a frigid body locker, and her next resting place would be in the ground. I started taking quick, short breaths because I was on the verge of a panic attack. I just could not get a grasp on this.

  Tielle’s face was not happy. As should be expected. When she had arrived at Ilyse’s apartment with the police, shock was not the word for the expression on her face. We had been questioned within an inch of our lives, though Micah was the only one able to give coherent answers. Ethan and I might as well have been statues. Eventually Tielle desired that we all sit here and face her in order to try and untangle the massive mess we had dropped in her lap.

  I had repeated the story I had already told her, and added the development of Renton’s Alchemy project, which involved putting Andrew, along with his family, back into their bodies. We left no detail out. I’m sure it would have been too difficult for Tielle to decide what expression to have on her face, so she just settled for her usual blank, hard look. She had heard everything, but she said very little because I knew she did not quite believe us. She thought it was all lies and that I was behind everything and was trying to cover my ass.

  That’s why right now we were waiting. Waiting for the proof that would push things in our favor. Until we had that, Tielle didn’t want to hear another word from us, but I felt like I was slowly dying as we sat here in silence. The only warmth I felt was Micah’s hand tightly holding mine.

  Finally, there came a knock on the door, and after Tielle gave the word, one of the necromancers on her team came in with a box. He put it down at the side of Tielle’s desk then left. Tielle cast a sharp look at the three of us, then opened the box and pulled a few files out.

  The box contained Dr. Perlysse’s files, which had been obtained from Robin with a warrant. It had not been easy convincing Tielle to go after the files, but she had eventually relented and gotten a rush warrant executed. Now, with the truth of Renton’s past sitting in front of her, I hoped she would finally realize who she should really be hunting and get off my ass once and for all.

  Tielle took her time with the files. She did not look at us again, nor did she speak. She would look through a file, set some things aside, re-box the rest, then do it again with another file. About an hour later she was finally done, and now when she looked at us, her expression was uncertain.

  “It has taken every pull I could manage to keep you out of jail right now,” she said. “All fingers are pointing to you when it comes to this anchored beastie, Selene, and I had to convince everyone that needing convincing that I was handling you. And to many that means they think I am stripping your reanimation power regardless of the consequences to your life.”

  “Well, you did try that,” I said. “So it’s not like you’re lying. Unless you’re going to try again after this conversation is over.”

  She gave me a level stare for a moment before looking down at the files. “This is very hard to believe,” she said. I really hoped she wasn’t about to say I fabricated all of this and got in cahoots with Robin Perlysse. Because I might just launch over this table, rip her head off, then plead insanity at my trial.

  Tielle exhaled and momentarily closed her eyes.

  “For Renton’s true past to have been covered up so well from us…”

  “He is good at what he does.” It was Micah who spoke. “He is brilliant, Tielle. Extremely brilliant. He had everyone fooled.”

  “It would appear so.” Tielle’s voice was very soft, and her gaze shifted to me. “There are a lot of layers here, Selene. A lot to unravel
. Andrew’s second death, Ilyse’s death, Cecelia’s business and death, the anchored ghost monster, your stolen reanimation power…”

  “What it all boils down to is that Renton is at the root of it all,” Micah said. All I had heard from what Tielle just said was death, death, death. “Renton may be brilliant, but he is not sane. His endgame was to regain his family, and he has done exactly that. At a catastrophic cost. And it isn’t over because to keep his wife, daughter, and…my mother, he has to let them absorb anchored ghosts every day, and he will use that beastie to do so.”

  “I’m aware, as you’ve already told me this. The question is, where is Renton now? My officers reported his hideout to be empty. He took everything there was to take, not even a rune was left behind.”

  “We don’t know where he is now,” Micah said. “But when he unleashes the ghost monster to harvest more souls tomorrow, we will definitely know.”

  Tielle sat back in her chair and sighed. “I did not sign up for this when I came here to keep an eye on you, Selene. You have made my stay far more interesting than I ever wanted it to be.”

  “Should I apologize? You think I asked for any of this? You think I purposely set any of this in motion? My friend is dead! So many people are dead or wounded because of my power.”

  Tielle’s face softened. I wasn’t aware that it could do that. “Look, Selene, I know that none of this was intentional. And while I can sympathize with the fact that you never intended for any of this to happen, starting with having your powers evolve in the first place, you are the core element around which this all revolves. It is the reason I came here in the first place; to make sure nothing like this happened, and if it did to take care of it. Well, I must say I failed tremendously at my job, didn’t I?”

  “I would like to curl up in a ball and scream and cry until I was dead.” I barely recognized my voice, I sounded so hollow and broken. “That is the honest truth. After everything that has happened I’m having a hard time feeling like there is a reason to move forward. But Renton is still out there, and he’s still dangerous. So the job is not over and we do not really have time to sit here and point fingers at who’s to blame and who failed at their jobs, right? We’re all to blame and we all failed, but we’re not done yet.”

  “You speak like someone who has a plan,” Tielle said.

  “The first thing we need to do is make sure Renton can’t use Ethan as a weapon again. You should keep him here. In the room where you locked me up.”

  “Locked up?” Ethan’s voice had a thread of fear in it.

  “It’s for your own good, and everyone else’s,” I said without looking at him. “Renton can give you a command any moment he feels like it.”

  “You’re right,” Ethan said. He sounded extremely sad.

  “Agreed,” Tielle said. She picked up her phone, made a brief call, then hung up. “Go to the fourth floor. You will be held in a cell and kept watch over.”

  Ethan nodded and stood up, and Micah got up as well.

  “I’ll go with him.” He knew I wouldn’t be able to. I couldn’t do any hand holding with Ethan just yet. I nodded, and they left the room, though from the corner of my eye I saw Ethan cast a sad look at me.

  “So is there more to your plan other than locking Ethan up?”

  “It makes no sense using resources to try and track Renton down right now. Wherever he is, he’s holed up with his creepy family and is probably the happiest man on earth. However, tomorrow Renton and the anchored beastie will be on the prowl again. We wait until they make an appearance, then we stop him. You can have officers on alert all throughout the city, and even call up connections in the tri-state area in case he skipped town. That way we can try to bring him down without much destruction.”

  “And how do you propose we stop him? Even if I have officers snatch him, that doesn’t stop the fact that he is in control of a ghost monster that he can command to stomp us all out. As long as your reanimation power is in play, there is nothing that can stop this. It will only work if you can get your power back. Can you do that?”

  “Yes. Micah told me how. Once Renton has been apprehended, I will need to use a specific rune to draw my reanimation power out of him.” I pulled the rune out of my pocket and showed it to her.

  “A Power Absorption rune,” Tielle said, taking it from me and giving it a scrutinizing look. “This type of rune is rare and not in circulation among the paranormal community because it can be used to steal power.” She put the rune back in my hand. “And you’re sure this will work? This isn’t something we can just wing. The government is up my ass over what’s going on here. Tomorrow Renton absolutely has to be stopped. We need to make sure we hash this plan out completely.”

  I stood up. I felt weary, as though I was decades older and had finally come to the end of a long and tiresome life. “I just told you the plan. That is the only way to end this. I can stop him, and I will. You probably know more about these runes than I do, so if you know that they will work they way they are supposed to then you should be satisfied with that.”

  “If you expect me to have officers out there and put people’s lives on the line to wait for Renton to make an appearance, you have to tell me more—”

  “Look, Tielle, I’m tired. Exhausted beyond all measure. Today alone I’ve been tortured by you and Andrew, had a terrifying showdown with Renton, and watched the sweet, college boy ghost who likes to sit on my couch and play video games murder my closest friend. I just want to go home, take a shower, eat some food, and sleep in my bed. But before I sleep I’ll need to take care of my little dog because she has been sorely neglected. Right now all I care about is getting home to my dog. I told you I can stop it. Look into my eyes and know that tomorrow this is all going to end. Just let Micah and me go home. Please.”

  Tielle stared at me for a few moments, and I couldn’t guess what she was thinking. Though maybe that was because I wasn’t trying to. I could give a damn what Tielle was thinking. I just wanted to leave.

  “All right,” Tielle finally said, her voice just as soft as mine. “For the first time since I have met you Selene, I am going to trust you. I’ll see you tomorrow. Go home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Micah and I were lying in bed with Luna on her doggy bed on the floor next to us. She was fed, walked, and happy to know she hadn’t been abandoned, so now she was content to sleep. My eyes burned with the need to sleep but I didn’t think I would ever make it there. Micah had his legs tangled with mine, one arm tightly around my body, and the other stroking my hair. I was pressed against his chest while tears slid down my cheeks. I didn’t have the energy for sobbing but I couldn’t stop the tears.

  “I love you, Micah.”

  “I love you too.”

  “I know you did what you did because you love me.” I rose up so I could look into those beautiful, gray eyes. “And you know that I would have done the same thing too.”

  “Then will you let me continue to save you?” he asked. “I know that once you take your reanimation power back from Renton you will still have to deal with the Rot. I know how to do the treatment myself, I don’t need Renton. It’s a horrible price to pay, but I need you alive, Selene. So please, let me continue to help you. I have enough runes filled with reanimation power to last a couple months, then I will get more. Whatever it takes. Just say you’ll do this.”

  I didn’t say anything for a while.

  “Selene?” Micah’s voice sounded like he would shatter into a million pieces depending on what I said.

  I sighed.

  “OK,” I whispered. Micah hugged me tighter and kissed the top of my head.

  “I know it’s bad, I know. But we can get through this. You alive and healthy is all that matters—”

  “Can we talk about something else? I don’t want to think about any of those things anymore. Not the Rot, the treatment, Renton, what’s going to happen tomorrow…none of it. Can we just lay here and try to pretend everything is perfect? I ju
st want one moment where I feel…anything but this.”

  “OK.” Micah’s soft breath tickled my skin, and I snuggled closer to him and inhaled the scent of his body while I tried to relax. I was fairly certain there was no way I could pretend the nightmares away, but I needed to try.

  “Talk to me,” I whispered.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Anything. Tell me where you would take me on a date. Tell me where we would go on vacation. Tell me what you would want us to name our kids.”

  “You thought ahead that far?”

  I looked at him again. “I never seriously thought about having children until you. Never pegged myself for the maternal type. But with you I could see it. Maybe just one. A boy. I don’t think you could handle two of me.”

  He smiled. “All right. Let’s start with where we would go on a date and work our way up to kids.”

  “Good. Tell me our entire lives together, Micah. I want to know what it would be like.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Part of me expected to wake up to reports of the beastie on a rampage, but the news was still reporting on yesterday’s attack. It wasn’t lost on anyone that it could happen again seeing as the beastie disappeared as opposed to being sent to the afterlife. An evacuation order was in place for the city, but it wasn’t really needed. People were fleeing. With so many beastie attacks recently, I couldn’t blame them. As much as I would love to grab Micah and run to another corner of the world, I had to stay here and fight.

  I looked like a disheveled, monstrous mess as I stood in the bathroom staring at my reflection. Sleep had not been restful. I had tossed and turned, cried and screamed, and when I did sleep for any stretch of time, I was plagued with nightmares. I saw Ethan plunge that knife into Ilyse over and over, and I was afraid I would have a complete mental break.