Die and Stay Dead

by Nicholas Kaufmann

  I’d seen those words before. “That’s from Calliope’s notebook.”

  “Hold on,” Bethany said. She bit her lower lip and squinted at the window. Then she started crossing off letters again, rearranging them once more along a third line. It went a lot faster this time. When she was done, a new name glowed back at us from the dusty window. And this time it was one I recognized.

  ERICKSON ARKWRIGHT.

  “He’s alive,” Bethany said. “Calliope knew it, she just didn’t know how to find him. That’s why she needed Yrouel’s help. This is the proof we were looking for. Erickson Arkwright is alive, and he’s got the Thracian Gauntlet.”

  “So that was Arkwright in Chinatown,” Philip said. “Damn. The son of a bitch is in good shape for someone who’s supposed to be dead. He runs like a goddamn Olympic sprinter.”

  “There, you’ve figured out your little puzzle,” Crixton said. “Can I go now?”

  Isaac held out his hand. “Not until you give me the ledger.”

  Crixton pulled the book close to his chest. “You already have the name you were after. The ledger wasn’t part of our agreement.”

  “We don’t have an agreement,” Isaac said. “Hand it over.”

  Crixton smirked. “Sorry, this is nonnegotiable.”

  With another flash of light and smoke, the ledger disappeared. Isaac’s face reddened. He thrust out one hand. Crixton flew up and backward, slamming into the wall halfway toward the ceiling. He hung there, laughing, writhing, and screaming all at the same time.

  “Bring it back,” Isaac said.

  Crixton laughed so hard, screamed so hard, that he spat all over his own face. “Or what, mage? How badly do you want it? How far are you willing to go?”

  “I want that ledger, Crixton.”

  Isaac closed his hand into a fist. Crixton screamed even louder. Whatever he was doing to the vampire, it sounded agonizing. Philip watched, looking smugly satisfied. He was enjoying this.

  “What do you care about the ledger?” Crixton cried. “You have the name you wanted!”

  “Because the ledger can point me to all the artifacts the Ghost Market sold. Every one of them. All the artifacts they’ve ever sold,” Isaac said. “I can get them back before anyone else gets hurt or killed. I can make this right. I can put right everything the Ghost Market did. So give it to me!”

  Crixton screamed as if the pain had intensified.

  “Do it, mage! Kill me! Feed the darkness inside you!” Crixton yelled. “Oh yes, I can see it. I can see the dark seed all that magic has planted inside you. Give in to it. Kill me and let it bloom!”

  Isaac stared in horror at Crixton, the steely resolve leaving his eyes. He lowered his hand. Released from the spell, Crixton dropped to the floor. He landed in a crumpled ball and gripped his stomach in pain.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Isaac.

  He nodded, but he was breathing hard. “Too many artifacts have passed through here and ended up in the wrong hands. I’m a fool to think there’s any way to make that right. We’d need a hundred of us, a thousand to find them all.”

  A strange noise came out of Crixton then. It sounded like a moan of pain at first, but then I realized he was chuckling. The chuckles grew into laughter as the vampire got to his feet.

  “Oh, mage, you were so close to letting that dark seed inside you grow. But it’s not too late. Not yet. Demonwar is coming. Can’t you feel it in the air? Can’t you hear it, like the burning hot scream of a furnace? Give in to the darkness inside you, mage, let it fortify you, and maybe you will survive what’s coming the way we will. You call us infected. We call ourselves sanctified. And there are so many of us. So very many of us.”

  Isaac shook his head in disgust. “Get out of here, Crixton, before I change my mind.”

  With a grin, Crixton started toward the warehouse exit. Philip followed him to the door, glaring at him. Before Crixton left, he turned to Philip one last time.

  “When your human friends are dead, your debt of service will die with them,” he said. “But don’t bother coming back to the clan. You won’t be welcome there. Not even by your father. You’re dead to him, Renshu. You’re dead to all of us.”

  Then Crixton pulled the hood of his yellow rain slicker up over his head and walked out into the sun.

  I wanted to tell Philip not to listen to him, but my tongue wasn’t working. No one’s seemed to be, because no one said a word. All I could see in my mind was Philip standing over the mangled, drained corpses of a family. An entire bloodline, wiped out in a single night. Grandparents, parents, children. A baby. Maybe that was all any of us could see.

  Philip let out a frustrated roar and put his fist through the wall. The plaster and concrete cracked and split like dry earth.

  Fifteen

  As soon as we were back at Citadel, I found myself thinking about Jordana again. I wanted to hear more of what she had to say, to be with her, to kiss her again—it was an undeniable urge, stronger than anything I’d felt before. But the doubts came back, too. Did she really know me? Was I really Lucas West? It was driving me crazy. I needed advice. I needed to talk to Isaac. As I approached the door of his study, Philip came stalking out.

  I thought of the dead family at the wedding again. The dead baby. I couldn’t help it. I knew Philip had a violent past. All vampires did, I supposed. But this was more than I could have imagined. I felt sick thinking about it. And yet, how many times had Philip saved my ass? Saved all our asses? Didn’t he deserve better than my disgust? As he approached, I pushed it down and forced myself to find my voice.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  He walked past me down the hall without a word. I watched him go down the stairs to the first floor. Philip wasn’t big on opening up. That was something he and I had in common. But I’d never seen him like he was at the warehouse before. I’d never seen anything get under his skin that badly. I supposed there was a reason I’d never heard Philip mention his clan before. Or his father.

  Maybe we had more in common than I thought. It seemed to me we were both haunted by our victims in our own way. I had my list of names. He had the memory of wiping out an entire bloodline. We both had things we wanted to make up for. We were both striving to be something better than what we were, but the ghosts of our pasts just kept coming back to rub our faces in it.

  I went into the study. Isaac was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  He looked up at me. “What can I do for you, Trent? I assume you didn’t come here just to check up on me.”

  I pulled up a chair and sat across the desk from him. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Something happened when we met with Jordana Pike today. Something important.” I told him that Jordana had recognized me, that she said my name was Lucas West, that she’d filled in some of the blanks of my past. Not all of them, just a few, the tip of the iceberg. There was so much more to learn.

  Isaac was surprised. “I thought for sure the Janus Endeavor would be how you found your identity, not someone you met by chance. What do you think? Do you trust her?”

  I sighed. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I want to trust her. It felt so real when I was there, but the more I think about it … I don’t know. I looked up Lucas West online, but I didn’t find anyone who looked like me. I thought that was strange. But then, the Janus Endeavor couldn’t find anyone who looked like me, either. I felt a connection with Jordana, one that makes me think she’s not lying. On the other hand, who the hell is Lucas West?”

  “When you say a connection, are you talking about a romantic history?” he asked.

  I thought of the kiss again, how it had thrilled through me like lightning, down to my core. “Maybe. What do you think? Should I trust her?”

  Isaac leaned back in his chair. “I can’t answer that for you. But I can tell you this: If she says she has information about your past, you need to hear her out. You can’t afford not to. Ri
ght now, she’s the only lead you have. You owe it to yourself to find out.” He tented his fingers under his chin. “What does Bethany think about this connection between you and Jordana?”

  The question took me by surprise. “Does it matter what Bethany thinks?”

  “Doesn’t it?” He studied my face for a moment. It made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like being in the spotlight. I preferred the shadows. “You and Bethany are close. I get the feeling that normally this is something you would talk to her about. So why come to me instead?”

  It was a good question. I didn’t know the answer. Why not talk to Bethany? Was it because she didn’t trust Jordana? Was I just looking for someone to tell me to go for it? Or was it something else?

  “Not that it’s my business, but you and Bethany are up in your room for hours every night,” Isaac said.

  “We play cards,” I said.

  He arched an eyebrow, clearly having trouble believing that. “You play cards. And that’s all you do?”

  The question made me fidget. I wasn’t just in the spotlight anymore. Now I felt like I was being dissected. “That’s all. Why?”

  “Never mind. I guess I was wrong about you two,” he said. “Today is one of those days where I’m wrong about everything, it seems. Even myself. I very nearly crossed the line with Crixton.”

  “How so?” I asked. “We’ve killed Infecteds before.”

  “This was different,” he said. “This felt sadistic. Cruel. But the worst part is that I didn’t care. I wanted Crixton to suffer for not giving me the ledger. I think I was going to kill him. It’s one thing to kill in self-defense, or the defense of others. But to kill him out of frustration? To kill him because he said no to me? I wanted him dead so badly it shocked me. That’s what brought me back to my senses. It’s why I let him go.”

  He looked tired, his face drawn. For the first time since I’d known this nearly sixty-year-old man, he actually looked his age.

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Isaac?” I asked.

  He sighed and waved off the question. “It’s just stress. We haven’t had much of a break since we started chasing down Infecteds. I suppose it’s catching up with me.”

  “The past is catching up to all of us,” I said. “I saw Philip in the hall just now. He didn’t look very happy.”

  “Philip and happy seldom go together,” Isaac said. “We may not see him again for a while. I sent him on a mission. He volunteered, actually. I think he needed to clear his head, and I can’t argue that. He never wanted that story to come out. He even kept it from me, and I thought I knew everything about his past.” He sighed and ran his hands over his face. “It’s a lot to process. I think some time apart may do us good.”

  “Did you send him to find the fragments?” I asked.

  “Something else, actually,” Isaac said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll find the fragments ourselves before Arkwright does, and prevent a catastrophe. But if something goes wrong, if Arkwright gets his hands on the Codex Goetia before we do, we’re going to need a way to tip the scales back in our favor. A Plan B. I sent Philip to get the one thing that will do that for us.”

  “A weapon?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, standing up. “Let’s leave it at that for now. It’s getting late, and I wanted to hit the books tonight to see if I can find out where the fragments are hidden. There have to be some clues out there. If there are, I’ll find them.”

  I stood up, too. “Need some help?”

  “Your head wouldn’t be in it,” he said with a patient smile. “Things are going to heat up soon, Trent. Once I figure out where the fragments are, I’m going to need all hands on deck with no distractions. If you want to talk to Jordana, you should do it now, while there’s still time.” He clapped me on the back. “And good luck. I hope she has the answers you’re looking for.”

  So did I.

  I went back to my room. Outside the window, the dusk cast a grayish-blue hue over Central Park. Kali stared at me from where she lay curled on my pillow. She’d claimed that part of the bed for herself and refused to relinquish it. It was just as well. I never slept. Someone might as well use it.

  I dug my phone and Jordana’s business card out of my pocket. I stared at the number she’d written at the bottom of the card, my thumb poised over the screen of my phone. I felt like I was bursting at the seams. There was so much I wanted to ask her, I hardly knew where to begin. But before I could dial, the doubts started nagging me again. If I was Lucas West, all-American high school football star from Norristown, Pennsylvania, why hadn’t the Janus Endeavor found my likeness anywhere? Why hadn’t there been anything about me online? Maybe I hadn’t searched deep enough. What if there had been something about me on the very next page of search results when I stopped reading? But damn it, I’d gone ten pages deep already, and the results had started to repeat. I had to face it. There was nothing about me online. Nothing about me anywhere.

  And yet … Lucas West. The name stuck in my head, impossible to ignore.

  Clarence Bergeron’s parting words were still fresh in my mind. He was a spoiled, privileged old asshole who thought his wealth entitled him to stand above the law. But even assholes could be right about some things, and Bergeron was right about this. The name Trent didn’t fit me. It had been given to me by someone I despised, someone who had used and manipulated me. I should have dumped the name ages ago, but it was the only one I had.

  Until now.

  If Jordana was right. If I really was Lucas West.

  I hated all these ifs. Somehow, being this close to the answer without knowing for sure made it worse. I felt like I was going to explode. Isaac was right. The questions were too big to ignore. I owed it to myself to find the answers.

  How did Lucas West get this thing inside him that wouldn’t let him die? How did he lose his memory? Why did magic go haywire around him? How did he know how to fight like he’d been doing it all his life?

  Who the hell was Lucas West that he could do these things?

  My aura wasn’t human. Neither was my scent. These things I already knew. So what had happened to Lucas West to make him … me? Had he taken magic into himself? Been changed by it, like Biddy and Crixton and so many others? But the thing inside me was more than magic, wasn’t it? Stealing other people’s lives to cheat death was something no magic could do. Bethany had told me that. Something else must have happened. But what?

  I felt like I was going round and round in circles. A knock on the door pulled me out of it. I put the business card and phone down on the dresser and opened the door. Bethany stood in the doorway, shuffling a deck of cards like a smooth Vegas dealer.

  “I was thinking this time I’d let you win for a change, just to see what it feels like,” she said.

  “Do you mind if we skip tonight?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrows. This was the second time I’d turned her down. “What’s going on?”

  I sat down on my bed and sighed. Kali decided I was too close now and jumped down, vanishing into the dark space under the bed.

  Bethany stopped shuffling the cards. She came a few more steps into the room and tucked the deck into the back pocket of her jeans. “Are you okay?”

  I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. “Am I ever?”

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Comparatively.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “Lucas West.” The name still sounded new to me. My tongue wasn’t used to saying it. And yet how many times had I said it before my amnesia?

  “Lucas West,” Bethany repeated. “Does the name ring any bells?”

  “No, but it wouldn’t. I can’t remember anything from before.”

  “You were sure some part of you would recognize your name if you heard it again,” she said.

  “I know. I thought hearing it would spark a memory, a feeling, something.”

  “Don’t you think it’s strange that it didn’t?”

  “I don’t know. Something took my memories away,
Bethany. All of them. Even my name. I know you’re skeptical about Jordana, but it feels like…” I paused, not sure what I was trying to say. Sometimes it felt like whatever had taken my memories also took my words when I needed them. “It feels like she’s all I’ve got.”

  Bethany came over to the bed and sat down next to me. Her hair smelled like lavender shampoo. “I know what it’s like not to know where you come from, or why you’re different from everyone else. But I also know how desperate it can make you for answers. It makes you willing to listen to anyone who claims to know something. I went down that road once, too. I wish I hadn’t. I wish someone had warned me. I wish I’d been smart enough at the time…” She trailed off. Apparently, this was a story she wasn’t ready to share yet.

  She shook her head at the memory, her dark brown locks sweeping and bouncing along the shoulders of her blouse. It was only then that I realized she wasn’t wearing her cargo vest. Funny, I was so used to seeing her in it that she looked even smaller to me without it. Delicate, even though I knew that was the furthest thing from the truth about her. But it made me feel protective. It made me want to keep her safe from that memory. From everything. I looked at her, marveling again at just how bright and blue her eyes were.

  Then I got up off the bed, uncomfortable being so close to her. I kept thinking about the kiss she and I had shared on the tournament field at the Medieval Festival—that brief, amazing moment before she’d pulled away and told me she couldn’t be with me. Then, as if my mind were flipping a page, I thought about Jordana and the kiss we shared in her office. Jordana hadn’t pulled away. Jordana hadn’t told me we couldn’t be together. I was confused, a drowning man floundering for purchase and finding none. I walked to the opposite side of the room and leaned back against the wall between the door and the dresser, crossing my arms.

  “You’re preaching to the choir, Bethany,” I said. “I believed Underhill for a long time when he was pretending to help me. But this is different. I felt something with her. A connection, like we … knew each other.”

  Bethany stood up off the bed and came toward me. I watched her. The air felt electrified, as if suddenly anything was possible, anything could happen, if we only wanted it to.