Dying Is My Business

by Nicholas Kaufmann

  I thought back to the safe house. The protective ward Morbius had cast around it had stood unbroken for more than thirty years, until last night. Now Citadel’s ward had been breached just as easily. Both locations, I realized, had one thing in common when their wards had been compromised. My stomach dropped. I should have realized from the start. Maybe I would have if it weren’t so awful.

  “Something didn’t lead them here, Bethany. Someone did,” I said. “When the shadowborn attacked the safe house, I thought we’d been betrayed by someone on the inside. Ingrid thought so, too. But you were right, it wasn’t Isaac or any of the others. It’s just like you said, there’s only one person it could have been. Me.”

  The color drained from Bethany’s face. “What are you saying?”

  I turned to Reve Azrael. “I’m right, aren’t I? You said you know me. I’m guessing that means somehow you know how to find me, too. You found the safe house because I was there, the same way you found this place. You used me like a homing beacon. So what is it, do I just light up like a flare to you?”

  “Come to me,” Reve Azrael said, and the revenants dragged me forward. They shoved me onto my knees in front of her, letting go of me in the process. I looked up at her. She gazed back at me, the telltale red glow of her magic filling Bennett’s dead eyes. She smiled a terrible smile. “Tell me, little fly, how does it feel to know all your buzzing has brought nothing but pain and suffering to those around you?”

  The revenants had made a big mistake letting me go. I sprang to my feet and wrapped my hands around her neck. She didn’t try to stop me as my hands squeezed the cold, dry flesh. Instead, she laughed in my face. Coming from the mouth of Bennett’s corpse, it was a chilling sound.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “How do you know me?”

  With a single swipe of her arm, she knocked my hands from her throat. Her strength was incredible. “Perhaps we can strike a deal, little fly. The answers to your questions in return for what I want.”

  “Been there, done that, it didn’t work out,” I said. “I’m done playing the patsy.”

  Her triumphant grin melted away. “So be it.”

  From where he knelt on the carpet, Isaac croaked out, “Philip, now!”

  In a flash, the vampire was gone. The revenants that had been holding him tumbled backward, tossed as effortlessly as paper dolls. A dark blur sped toward Isaac, and then Isaac was gone, too, leaving something spinning in midair where he’d stood. For a moment, a silence hung over the room. Then the object hit the floor with a heavy clank.

  It was the Hangman’s Damper.

  After that, all hell broke loose.

  Twenty-eight

  A moment after the Hangman’s Damper hit the floor, a blazing fire erupted in the far corner of the room. Its flames whirled like a funnel cloud, and through the conflagration I caught a glimpse of Isaac in the corner where Philip had deposited him, fire bursting wildly from the mage’s hands. The spinning cone of fire barreled forward and engulfed the nearest revenant, transforming it instantly to smoldering ash. This had to be the flaming dervish spell he’d mentioned earlier, I thought. Then the fire, like a living thing, moved on to engulf the next revenant.

  I ducked as my two half-faced guards came up behind me and tried to grab me again. I bolted for cover behind a nearby marble statue of a woman wearing a toga and some kind of battle helmet. From behind the statue, I looked at Bethany and Gabrielle still held fast by their revenant guards, and wondered how the hell I was going to get them free without my gun.

  On the other side of the room, Melanthius and Reve Azrael shrank away from the raging flames, retreating to the wall. The shadowborn went with them, their blades drawn, covering their retreat.

  I didn’t see Philip anywhere, but I hoped he was still close by. With Isaac busy on the other side of the room, Gabrielle and Bethany still being held prisoner, and me stuck behind a statue without a weapon, our odds of making it out of this mess without the vampire’s help were slim to none.

  A group of revenants rushed Isaac, too many for the flaming dervish to take out at once. A pale, emaciated corpse slipped past the fire and came up behind him. Philip appeared out of nowhere, dropping down from above like a spider, and tackled the revenant to the floor. He sank his sharp teeth into the revenant’s throat and tore out a chunk so large that its head flopped off its neck at a peculiar angle. The revenant stopped moving. The red lights inside its eyes snuffed out. Then Philip was gone again, nothing but a dark blur moving through the chaos.

  A split second later, he was standing in front of me. He wiped something dark and oily from his mouth with the back of his hand, and spat on the floor. “For the record, revenants taste like shit. Here, catch.” He pulled my gun out of the back of his pants and tossed it to me. He was gone again before I even snatched it out of the air.

  With my Bersa semiautomatic in hand, I jumped out from behind the statue and ran toward Bethany and Gabrielle, lining up a shot to start blasting their revenant guards. I hardly made it half a dozen steps before I was clotheslined by a thick, meaty arm. I fell on my back. Above, one of my old pals, the half-faced revenants, reached to grab me. I rolled away and came up on one knee, squeezing the trigger and putting a bullet in Half-Face’s shoulder. The revenant didn’t stop, but it did slow down. I spun around and saw that from this angle I had a clear line of sight to Melanthius and Reve Azrael, sandwiched between the shadowborn and the wall. There would only be time for a single shot before Half-Face was on me again. I had to make it count. Reve Azrael was the one calling the shots from inside Bennett’s body. I drew a bead on Bennett’s head and squeezed the trigger.

  Bennett’s skull was already fragile from decay. It burst like a melon from the bullet’s impact. His body crumpled to the floor.

  Throughout the room, the revenants jolted and spasmed like they’d been hit with ten thousand volts, then went still as statues. They were blank, empty, like radios that had lost their reception. My shot must have broken Reve Azrael’s connection to them. Putting a bullet in Bennett’s brain while her consciousness had occupied it must have shattered her hold, stunning her, weakening her control over the other revenants. That was the key. Destroy a revenant’s brain, or sever its head from its body like Philip had done, and Reve Azrael couldn’t control it anymore.

  The shadowborn drew back to create a tight, protective circle around Melanthius. He didn’t move, didn’t attack or cast any spells. I wondered if he had any magic of his own.

  The broken connection only lasted a few moments, but it was long enough for Gabrielle and Bethany to squirm free of their guards. As Reve Azrael’s consciousness slowly took control of the revenants again, the two women didn’t waste any time. Bethany ran toward me, while Gabrielle picked up a small, tubular object that had fallen out of one of the smashed display cases. She clasped her hands together around the artifact and chanted a few words in that same weird magical language Bethany had used. A bright glow seeped out from between her fingers, then grew longer, until finally she was holding what looked like a sword in her hands, only its blade was made of fire instead of metal. One swing sliced the head clean off the first of her revenant guards, and another finished off the second.

  Bethany stopped suddenly, her gaze moving past my shoulder. “Behind you!”

  I turned to see Half-Face coming at me again. “Come to me, little fly,” it said. Reve Azrael had found a new host body.

  I swung my gun around, aiming for the head, but Reve Azrael swatted the weapon from my hand so hard my fingers stung. The gun landed on the carpet a few feet away. I backed away, and bumped into another revenant. It tried to grab me in a bear hug, but I ducked out of its reach and ran. Unfortunately, the only direction I could run in was away from my gun.

  I sprinted across the room, narrowly avoiding the cold, grasping hands of revenants. Each dead thing whispered to me as I passed, Reve Azrael’s consciousness following me through the room, jumping from one corpse to the next. “I know you. I kno
w the power you possess,” one said. “I would not be so foolish as to try to kill you,” another said. “Yet you amuse me so,” said a third. I ran past each of them, twisting and jumping to evade their clutches. I searched the crowd, but I couldn’t see Bethany anywhere. I’d lost her in the chaos. I caught a glimpse of Isaac. His flaming dervish spell had only reduced six revenants to ash so far, and was starting to peter out. More walking corpses crowded toward him.

  Distracted, I didn’t see a revenant come up on me until it was too late. It grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me toward it. “Perhaps I will keep you as a pet,” Reve Azrael said through its crumbling mouth. “Have you kneel before me in the blood of your companions.”

  Something flashed in the corner of my eye. The revenant’s hand released my shoulder and fell to the floor, severed cleanly from its arm. Gabrielle stood beside me, the burning sword in her hands. She swung it again and lopped off the revenant’s head.

  “Where’s Bethany?” I asked.

  “Just keep moving,” she told me. “Get to higher ground. The stairs.”

  Then she was gone, running back into the fray. I charged for the staircase, but I only made it to the base of the steps before another revenant blocked my path. This one was a dead woman in a pantsuit, wisps of thin white hair floating above its bloated and discolored face. One eye was nothing but a dark, empty hole. The other fixed me with an unyielding gaze, the red glow of Reve Azrael’s magic burning in its pupil. Its bony, clawlike hands stretched toward me.

  I jumped back, out of its reach, and accidentally knocked into the sculpture of the centaur that stood by the staircase banister. The iron spear rattled loosely in its marble hand. Loose enough to give me an idea.

  I grabbed the top half of the spear and pulled it toward me. It slid easily free from the statue. It was awkward and heavy but well balanced, a good enough weapon for now. The revenant lunged at me again. I swung the spear. The tip caught the side of its head, tearing a chunk of flesh from its cheek.

  “You should be thanking me,” Reve Azrael said through the dead woman’s cracked lips. “It is not everyone who knows what the future holds for them. The full measure of their destiny. Yours is to be in chains and crawl at my heels.”

  “Lady, I’m done being anyone’s pet.” I stabbed the sharp tip of the spear through the revenant’s forehead and into its brain. It fell to the floor. The red light in its eye went out. I pulled the spear out of its head, stepped over the body, and ran up the stairs.

  Bethany was already on the stairs, standing near the landing halfway between the first and second floors. Philip was there, too, pulling a revenant’s head away from its shoulder and sinking his teeth into its neck. He bit out a big chunk of rotting flesh, pulled the revenant’s head free of its body, and tossed both down the stairs. He spat again, his features twisting in disgust. “Ugh, I’m going to need a breath mint after this.” His mirrored sunglasses were spattered with dark blood. Even now, he still wore the damn things.

  I hurried over to Bethany. “Are you okay?”

  She was holding the guns she’d confiscated from Tomo and Big Joe, one in each hand. “I’ve had better days,” she said.

  Isaac came bounding up the stairs next. Below, the room looked like a slaughterhouse, the floor littered with chunks of skull, bone, and severed body parts. But there were still far too many revenants still on their feet for us to get comfortable. Over by the bookcase, Gabrielle hacked away at them with her burning sword.

  “You cut that one much too close, Isaac,” Philip said. “I thought they were going to kill you with that damn amulet.”

  Isaac nodded, catching his breath. “Sorry about that. I had to get her talking, find out what she was planning and how she got through the wards. Now we know.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “You wanted to know what I was going to do. You were testing me.”

  “Maybe some of that, too,” he said. “You could have told her where the box is and spared yourself a world of trouble, but you didn’t. I’m sorry I misjudged you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry I thought you were crazy and trying to kill everyone,” I said.

  Below, four revenants lurched toward the staircase, their glowing eyes fixed on us. Bethany lifted her guns and fired them both repeatedly. The revenants’ foreheads blew apart, and they fell to the floor.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

  “The Saint Aurelius Home for Orphaned Girls.” She raised the guns again and blew the heads off two more approaching revenants.

  I looked across the room at the polished wooden door that led outside. It was the only exit I knew of, but it was too far away to do us any good. Even if we managed to destroy all the remaining revenants, we wouldn’t even get close before the shadowborn stopped us. I scanned the room, searching for another way out. When my gaze fell on the couch near the door, my blood went cold.

  Thornton’s body sat up slowly. The white sheet slid off him as he stood up. His clothes were still wet from the Methusal spring, dripping onto the carpet and leaving a trail behind him as he crossed the room toward Gabrielle. She didn’t see him. Her back was to him as she chopped and swung her blazing sword at the other revenants, sending heads, arms, and hands flying. They were no match for her, but they kept coming like cannon fodder, keeping her distracted.

  “Gabrielle, behind you!” I shouted.

  She spun around, raising the burning sword in her hands, expecting to see just another revenant. She froze the moment she saw it was Thornton.

  “Hello, baby,” he said. “Did you miss me?” Pinpoints of red light burned in his eyes.

  Twenty-nine

  Bethany started down the stairs but didn’t make it far. Both shadowborn vanished from Melanthius’s side and reappeared at the bottom of the steps. They lunged. Bethany stopped short and fell backward, their blades passing over her. She pulled herself upright and scrambled back up the steps.

  The shadowborn charged up the steps toward us, their katanas cutting the air so sharply the blades practically sang. Bethany leveled the handguns at them, double-fisted, and started squeezing off shots. The shadowborn disappeared, reappeared closer. She shot at them again, forcing them to vanish once more. As long as she kept them on the defensive they couldn’t launch an outright attack, but it was only a temporary fix. Eventually she would run out of bullets. As it was, the shadowborn were already adapting. They split up, one appearing above us on the landing between the first and second floors, the other appearing right in front of me.

  I still had the iron spear in my hand, and brought it up to block the shadowborn’s katana. I lunged before it could swing again. The shadowborn vanished a split second before the spear pierced its chest.

  Chaos raged around me. Bethany’s gunshots echoed in my ears. Isaac blasted fire from his hands. The shadowborn popped in and out of the material plane all up and down the stairs. And through it all, I watched Reve Azrael in Thornton’s body creep closer to Gabrielle down below. Gabrielle had finished off all the revenants but one, a skinny corpse with a mohawk and a leather vest. It backed away as Reve Azrael approached.

  “You can put the sword down now, baby,” Reve Azrael said. Her approximation of Thornton’s speech pattern was eerily perfect.

  “Don’t call me that,” Gabrielle said, shaking her head defiantly. “You’re not Thornton.”

  Reve Azrael smiled. The red glow danced in her eyes. “No. Even you would not be so foolish as to fall for that. But the memories housed in this body, his thoughts of you are so sweet. So exposed. Did he ever tell you the nickname he had for the mole on your lower back?”

  Gabrielle’s face hardened. She drew back her burning sword. “You leave him be!”

  “Or what? You’ll strike me down? Do it, and you’ll destroy your lover’s body. All that remains of him. Are you prepared to do that?”

  Gabrielle gritted her teeth, the muscles of her arms tensing.

  “Your beloved, cleaved in two by
your own hand,” Reve Azrael said. “Could you perpetrate such violence on him? Could you live with the memory of it for the rest of your life?”

  The burning sword seemed to tremble in her hands, and her face registered a mix of emotions: confusion, outrage, revulsion, grief, and a paralyzing uncertainty.

  Swing the damn sword, I thought, but I could tell she wasn’t going to. Reve Azrael had gotten to her. She couldn’t bring herself to destroy the body of the man she loved, the man she’d planned to marry. If we didn’t do something to help, she was going to get herself killed.

  I hurried down the steps, but Philip sped past me. But as fast as he was, the shadowborn were faster. One materialized in Philip’s path and swung its katana in a wide, forceful arc. The blade caught Philip in the chest, knocking him backward onto the steps. His shirt had been sliced open to reveal an angry red gash across his chest.

  It could have been a lot worse. Frankly, I was surprised it wasn’t. A blow like that from the shadowborn’s katana probably would have cut me in half, but Philip, who looked skinny enough to wriggle through a roll of paper towels, only seemed to have suffered a flesh wound. Just how hard was a vampire’s skin?

  Bethany opened fire at the shadowborn again, covering Isaac as he bolted down the steps. He grabbed Philip under the arms and dragged him back up the stairs to the landing.

  “If you’re going to strike me down, do it now,” Reve Azrael taunted Gabrielle. “Cut Thornton’s head from his shoulders.”

  Gabrielle’s eyes glistened with tears. She slowly lowered the blazing sword. “I can’t.”

  Shit. I started down the steps again, but this time both shadowborn appeared before me, blocking my way. Damn. The higher ground of the stairs had been perfect for fighting the revenants earlier, but now we’d inadvertently trapped ourselves. I backed away. Bethany came storming down the steps, pulling the triggers on both guns, but they were empty. She tossed them away and reached for her vest. The shadowborn stalked up the steps toward us.