Resurrection Road

by Hannah Marae

  “You ready?” Mab asked, hands planted on her hips.

  “Yup,” Zeke replied, feeling only marginally better. “Head in the game. Let’s do it.”

  Mab and Zeke followed Hades out of the kitchen and into the manor’s foyer. The hellhound slipped into a cloud of smoke that floated along the room’s edges, peeking into open doorways and corridors. Around them, the house was silent as a grave. Mab imagined the thralls somewhere upstairs, shut down for the night, and tucked dormitory-style into a long row of beds. Or maybe they were all hung up in a closet. That would make sense considering Laurent liked to wear them like masks.

  Moving across the foyer, Mab couldn’t help holding her breath. The first time she had come here, she’d been hopeful. Scared, yes, but positively brimming with hope. Laurent had promised the one thing Mab always wanted. Always needed. The power to find Florence. She didn’t regret that desire. Ever since she’d found Eden lost and broken with no memory and way too much magic, Mab had known she needed to prepare.

  To be ready.

  She let her breath hiss out only when she and Zeke were tucked inside the stairwell leading down to the vault. Peering into the gloom sent a shiver down her spine. Mab remembered the rough hands on her, tightly gripping her arms as she kicked and screamed. All the while, she knew Laurent could have taken her blood and made her do what she wanted. But she didn’t, and that fact scared Mab more than anything else. And when she saw the vault, she had known she would never leave.

  “C’mon,” Mab muttered. She was finished being ruled by bad memories, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to let them get in the way of saving her only friend. “Let’s get Pyke in here so we can grab Eden and get the hell out.”

  She descended slowly, eyes sweeping the walls and ceiling for hidden wards. The fact that she didn’t spot any was making her anxious. She couldn’t remember seeing them before, though she hadn’t exactly been looking. Now, it seemed crazy the stairwell was largely unprotected. With every step, Mab waited for some kind of alarm to blow up in her face.

  At the bottom of the stairs was a heavy door with a ward she did remember. Taking her knife, Mab carefully carved a line through the symbol. She admired her work and turned to Zeke. “Ready?

  Whoa . . . you okay?”

  He had stopped to lean against the wall, face slick with sweat, breathing quick and shallow. “I’m fine.” Zeke reached up to rub his arm. “Let’s go.”

  “All right.” Mab shrugged, chalking it up to the fact he’d just chugged an energy drink. Moron. “Give me a hand?”

  With Zeke’s help, she pushed the door in and propped it open. Mab stepped into the vault. She went straight for the plinth where Eden’s body lay, sleeping the eternal sleep. God, she looked so peaceful. Like she was lost in a dream.

  For years, Mab had made it her purpose to protect her. From the world, from herself, from the past that neither of them could decipher. There was a reason someone had dumped Eden there, on the side of a forgotten road. There was a reason Mab had gotten that message from Florence, nothing but a set of coordinates and a date.

  What came after was what they built. And they were beholden to no one but themselves. They’d had their highs and lows—God knew the lows seemed to last a lifetime—but they were together now. Soon everything would be all right.

  Mab took her hand, cold as the Good Night, and gave it a squeeze. “I’m here now,” she whispered. “Always.”

  As soon as the ceiling ward was broken, she called for Pyke.

  The reaper appeared on the other side of the plinth. He leaned over Eden, tilting his head as he inspected her. With a quiet yip, Hades bounded across the room to sit at Pyke’s side.

  “Well,” Mab demanded, “can you do it?”

  “It will take time,” Pyke said, eyes still focused on Eden’s sleeping form. “It is strange. Her soul is not where I found yours. I will have to search for her.”

  “Not where you found mine?” Dread curled in Mab’s gut. They didn’t have time for this. In and out before anyone noticed what was going on. That was the plan. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means exactly what I said,” Pyke replied. “Wait here.”

  And he was gone.

  Ignatius stood with his ear pressed against the bathroom door. Behind him, Lazarus backed into the sink, spelled blade at the ready, breath held in his lungs as the footsteps outside faded around the corner.

  A few minutes passed before Ignatius said, “I think it’s clear.”

  The house was supposed to be dormant. Mab had been here a few times before her deal with Laurent, had even stayed the night once when her bike broke down out front. She described the place as eerily quiet, like everyone inside just dropped off the face of the Earth. Either one of the thralls had gotten up for a midnight snack, or they were in trouble.

  “Think they’ve been discovered?” Lazarus wondered aloud, his voice carefully low.

  “Nah.” Ignatius rubbed his chin. “Too slow. I think it’s a patrol. That sounds like something this blood mage would do.”

  Lazarus thought of the thrall who answered the door, how her eyes went from tranquil emptiness to flashing anger, almost as if someone else had taken control. Josephine knew Mab was out there. If he was her, he’d have the thralls walking circles around this place. “Yeah, that sounds about right. We gotta get down there. Fast.”

  Slipping into the hall, Lazarus and Ignatius moved quickly. They walked past darkened rooms and closed doors, breaking every ward they came across. They were near the foyer when the footsteps returned. Ducking into an open doorway, they pressed side by side against the wall. Lazarus flexed his palm around his blade as the thrall walked by.

  Once the patrol passed, Lazarus moved. They were in a sitting room, a white sofa against the far wall beside a sideboard filled with dark liquor in crystal decanters. Above the couch, a series of photographs caught his eye. Framed in gold, they seemed to travel through time, from a stiffly posed Victorian to vintage black and white to something approximating a modern snapshot. The subjects were women, all of them young with the same wicked gleam in their eyes. Below each was a note.

  “Josephine Laurent,” Lazarus read. He surveyed the pictures, counting twelve in all. “Do you think they’re all . . .?” he trailed off, feeling too foolish to finish.

  Ignatius grunted. “The same person? Shit. There’s gotta be a reason she’s in this soul business, right? A reason she was keeping Mab’s body. Maybe this is it.”

  A body emptied of its soul, a vessel waiting to be filled.

  An opportunity to cheat death.

  It was one fucked up loophole. Lazarus recoiled at the thought. “All the more reason to get our asses to the vault.” With any luck, Zeke and Mab had already made it down there and let Pyke in. Maybe Eden was already awake. He could picture her sitting up and rubbing her eyes, hugging Mab and Zeke, stopping to pet Hades like she always did. This could already be over. The day could be won.

  He had to keep moving.

  At the end of the corridor, they emerged into the foyer. Lazarus could see the front door with its broken sigil across the large room. Their primary escape route. Unless it all went to shit, they’d be creeping out the door just a few minutes from now. He pushed, moving quickly through the open room, eager to get downstairs.

  They were near the stairs leading down to the vault when a thrall came out of the room ahead. He was a tall man with an angular face, dressed in a black suit. For a long moment, they stared at each other. Lazarus didn’t know what he wanted to do. Mab said the thralls were ordinary people under Laurent’s control. He didn’t want to have to kill one, but Zeke and Eden and the others were down there, and Lazarus wasn’t about to let anything keep him from reaching them.

  He reached for his spelled blade as the thrall moved, wrenching up his sleeve to press a coin to the sigil tattooed on his forearm. But the thrall opened his mouth and screamed.

  The shrill sound filled the air, and Lazarus jumped,
spitting out a curse. He threw up an arm to stop Ignatius from shifting. “It’s too late,” he said over the banshee shriek. “Just go.”

  Backing away, they moved toward the entrance of the vault and raced down the stairs. Down in the chamber, Zeke and Mab waited with Hades.

  “It’s about damn time.” Mab scowled and planted her hands on her hips. “Pyke is off—”

  He knew she was still speaking, but Lazarus couldn’t make sense of the words. His eyes had fallen to the platform near the center of the room. The mage lay with her delicate hands folded over her stomach, the connection sigil that once glowed beneath her shirt gone dark. Long lashes brushed against her flushed cheeks, pink lips slightly parted. She looked like something out of a fairy-tale, a princess waiting for—

  Behind him the door slammed shut. A scraping sound followed as Ignatius moved one of the platforms to give them cover. Lazarus realized Mab was staring at him and remembered that she had been trying to tell him something about the reaper.

  “What?” he replied dumbly.

  She sighed. “Pyke left. Disappeared. He said Eden’s not where he found me, and he has to look for her.”

  Lazarus felt himself go cold, a knot forming in the back of his throat. “What does that mean?”

  Mab blew out a breath through clenched teeth. “I have no fuckin’ idea.”

  Across the room, Ignatius checked his shotgun. “It means we’ve got to settle in.” He motioned toward the door. If Lazarus strained, he could hear movement in the house above. “They’re coming.”

  Zeke jumped as something slammed against the door.

  He sat with his back against one of the platforms, hands gripping Ig’s shotgun so tight he thought it might crack beneath his palms. Beside him, Lazarus sat with a look of grim determination, pistol in one hand and Eden’s spelled blade in the other. Mab and Ignatius were with Hades behind the other platform. Ig had already shifted, leaving the mage flanked by coyote and hellhound. Together, their chances had to be good, right? Two hunters, a shifter, a hellhound, and a mage. Plus a reaper if he ever managed to show the hell up.

  Another slam, the sound of fists pounding against the door. It was holding for now.

  Zeke closed his eyes. His head was killing him, his brain shriveled inside his skull. The lights in the vault were bright and invasive. Even when he closed his eyes, the light wormed its way behind his lids and sent shooting pain through his head.

  “You all right?”

  Opening his eyes, he spared Lazarus a glance. The concern on his face scared Zeke, made him worry that all this wasn’t just something in his head. He knew he was breathing hard, that adrenaline was shooting into his veins, making him hot and jumpy. At first, he was scared. Of the thralls, of being trapped here with a blood mage on the other side of the door. Of failing. Now, he just wanted to get it over with. His body yearned to push up, clench his finger over the trigger, and be the hero. Somewhere, a voice reminded him that the thralls were once people. Their souls had been stripped away, their bodies commanded by blood magic. It made him wish he could rip Josephine Laurent’s throat out.

  “I’m fine,” he said, willing himself to believe it.

  The door cracked under the thralls’ assault, and Zeke pushed up to his knees, turning to face the door. A breath in. A breath out. Slow. Steady. Purposeful.

  The door broke open.

  Thralls flooded the room, climbing over each other to get into the space. There were so many of them. A dozen. More. All of them bore unnervingly blank faces as they scrabbled over the splintered door like a horde of polite zombies.

  Zeke pushed up, firing a warning shot at the ceiling. Debris showered down on the thralls, but they didn’t slow. Puppets or not, a blood mage stood on the other side of those empty eyes, and Zeke wasn’t about to let her win. Adjusting his aim, he fired at the nearest thrall, sending him jerking back to fall on the floor. The others paused, but only for a moment, as Laurent fed them orders from somewhere inside the house.

  He bit his tongue and grinned. In unison, the thralls surged forward, and Zeke laughed. He fired another shot, vaguely aware of Lazarus shouting something beside him. His head was swimming, the gunshots and words blurring into the background until all he could hear was his own breath and the beating of more than a dozen hearts.

  Mab fired her own gun, teeth bared around a battle cry. Hades and Ignatius leaped over the barricade to enter the fray. The thralls took shots to their shoulders, their chests. Blood seeped from the holes, but still, they kept coming. They would keep coming until every last one of them was on the ground, and the room was painted in red.

  The idea of it wafted through Zeke’s mind, and he grinned. He wanted it. God, how he wanted it. Beautiful, beautiful red. This room was a blank slate, a canvas, and now he would make it his masterpiece.

  In the back of his mind, he knew something was happening to him. These weren’t his thoughts. This wasn’t who he was. Something inside of him was wrong.

  Red. Red. Red.

  So much red, closing in his vision, seeping into his eyes until it was all he could see.

  This wasn’t him.

  This was something different.

  Red.

  Red.

  Rage.

  The rage consumed him, eating him alive from the inside until every cell buzzed with brilliant, blinding fury.

  The woman cried out. She rushed across the room, sweeping past Eden as if she were invisible. Zeke remained frozen at the bottom of the stairs like he was trapped at the threshold of two worlds. His eyes were wide and glistening, and he raked trembling fingers through his hair.

  Eden turned. The woman collapsed heavily at Lazarus’s side, the cement floor biting into her knees. She pressed her fingers into the pulse point on his neck, then withdrew them to smooth the hair around his face. She took his hand in her own and slowly pressed her forehead against his unbreathing chest.

  She was Lazarus’s mother, Eden realized. She remembered the gas station, standing among the donut displays and cold cases, listening to Zeke tell this story. Magdalene. Her name was Magdalene.

  “He shouldn’t have come in here alone,” she said, her voice shaky and hoarse. “He didn’t have to prove himself. Not to me.”

  Zeke trudged over, his eyes carefully avoiding Lazarus lying there on the cold ground. He swallowed. “Is he dead?”

  “Not dead,” Magdalene replied, lifting her head. “Displaced. His soul is trapped in the Good Night. His body . . . it’s confused. He’s alive, but he isn’t.”

  “Shit.” Zeke paced a few steps and returned. “Then what’s going to happen to him?”

  The woman sat back, running her fingers over Lazarus’s cheek. Eden stepped closer. Leaned in. He looked so young, so unburdened. For the first time, Eden realized she was seeing him at peace. Lazarus always seemed like his mind was halfway elsewhere, present but also far, far away. This was it. This was the weight he carried everywhere he went.

  “Go upstairs, Zeke.”

  He hesitated, pushing his hands into his pockets and removing them. “What?”

  “I said, go upstairs.”

  “But—”

  Magdalene turned her head, not quite able to meet Zeke’s gaze. “The less you know, the better. Trust me. Lazarus is going to need you when he comes back, you hear me? You have to be here for him.”

  Zeke shook his head. “When he—”

  “Go, Ezekiel. Now!”

  He flinched as if she’d slapped him. But he obeyed. Zeke turned, trudging back up the stairs and closing the door behind him. As the door clicked closed, Magdalene seemed to relax. She sat back, hands loosely clasped in her lap. Closing her eyes, she whispered a name.

  “Pyke.”

  He appeared as if by magic: a tall man, broad and handsome with black hair and ember eyes. When they settled on the woman, the red glow faded to a warm brown. A reaper, Eden realized, like the one who’d sent her here. But how did Magdalene Morgan know to call on a reaper?


  “Mags?” The reaper looked around the basement, taking in the open rafters and water-stained walls. When he noticed the body at his feet, the color drained from his face, eyes briefly flashing orange. Pyke dropped to his knees beside Lazarus’s mother, drawing her into his arms.

  “How did it happen?” He held her tight as she buried her face into the crook of his neck. When she finally broke away, Eden could see her cheeks were slick with tears. Eden felt her own cheeks flush, and she knew she was seeing something private. Intimate. But there was nowhere to go, nothing to do but watch the scene unfold.

  “He took on too much.” Magdalene spoke in a quiet voice. “It never mattered what I told him, what I did, Laz always believed he had something to prove. But I never thought he’d—”

  “So”—the reaper wiped a tear from her cheek—“he’s just like his mother.”

  This made her laugh, a weak chuckle that felt painfully out of place in the cold basement. She seemed to regret the sound, growing somber once more. “Pyke,” she began. “I want you to bring him back.”

  Eden knew how this story ended. The reaper said yes. Lazarus’s mother was gone. Still, she expected him to resist. To offer another way. Pyke obviously cared about her, so how could he take her soul? How could he do this to her without at least seeking another way? But he didn’t resist. Instead, he slowly nodded. “He won’t be happy.”

  “He’ll be alive,” the woman pressed. “And he’ll have Ezekiel. That will be enough. It has to be enough.”

  “Okay,” Pyke said. He drew her in close once more, whispering something in her ear. When they sat back, the reaper threaded her fingers through his own, placing his other hand on Lazarus’s chest.

  “Wait.” Magdalene stopped him. “You have to make sure he can’t undo what I’ve done. If my body lives on, Lazarus will never stop looking for a way to bring me back. He’ll waste his life looking.”

  Pyke swallowed. “My partner will make the arrangements. You don’t have to worry about anything. Not anymore. It will be like a dream and, then, Paradise.” He looked from her to the body on the ground, reaching tentatively to place a hand on Lazarus’s cheek. “Thank you,” Pyke whispered, “for saving him.”