Die and Stay Dead

by Nicholas Kaufmann

  Okay, so there weren’t seven revenants. There were ten.

  They were fresh bodies, the kind that could pass for living if you didn’t look too closely, and there were so many people in New York City that no one ever looked all that closely. It made me wonder where Reve Azrael got her stock. Did she just hang around graveyards waiting for fresh bodies to arrive?

  Actually, I could see her doing that.

  “Looks like you still have a knack for finding me, Reve Azrael,” I said. “Yesterday you sent the Fetch, but today you’re actually gracing us with your presence. Or as close to your presence as you ever get, anyway. I’m touched.”

  “Do not be. You are not the only one I have come for,” Reve Azrael said. She approached Isaac. “You have something I want, mage.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Isaac said. “Why don’t you start doing your own legwork for a change?”

  “Why, when you can always be counted on to do it for me?” She pulled his duster open, reached inside, and pulled out the Codex fragment.

  Isaac glared at her. “You wearing Thornton’s face like that is an abomination.”

  She laughed. “I rather like it. His corpse is still strong from the spell his woman employed when she tried to save his life. It is a nice change from the host bodies that are usually available to me.” As if to illustrate the point, the other revenants pressed closer, the stench of their rot overpowering.

  “And you, little fly,” Reve Azrael said, coming over to me. “You have something I want, too.”

  I looked hard into those glowing red eyes. “I’m flattered, but I’ve got a girlfriend now.”

  “I am here to offer you another chance,” she said. “Join me in what is to come.”

  “What makes you think I’ll say yes this time?”

  “I can be very persuasive,” she said.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Give it your best shot.”

  She stepped aside. The crowd of revenants parted. I’d miscounted again. One revenant had been hiding behind the others, waiting to be brought forward. An eleventh.

  He looked just as I remembered him. The same clothes, the same bullish stance, the same dark sunglasses. But his skin was mottled and discolored now, decaying in patches. The ocean of cologne he used to wear to mask his rot was gone. He smelled sickly sweet and foul.

  “Good dog,” Underwood said.

  Twenty-Three

  The revenant I had once known as Underwood shuffled toward me with stiff, jerking movements. “Good dog,” he said.

  It all came crashing back then. The loneliness of the fallout shelter where I’d been kept like a pet. The torture room behind the black door. The threats, the violence and death he’d manipulated me into. All the damn lies about helping me while only stringing me along. Promises made to keep me under his thumb.

  “Good dog,” Underwood rasped again. Part of his cheek had turned green with rot. One spot had worn through, leaving a hole in which I caught a glimpse of his teeth. He limped closer.

  The horror-movie zombie act was just that, I knew—an act. Reve Azrael was making Underwood behave this way to play with my head. It was working. I couldn’t think straight.

  “Stop it,” I told her.

  “Does it bring back fond memories, little fly?” she asked.

  Underwood stopped in front of me and slapped my cheek lightly. His hand was cold and clammy like uncooked meat. “You’re my go-to guy.”

  “Call it off!” I shouted, struggling against Smiley’s iron grip on my arms.

  Now, at last, I understood why Calliope had drawn Underwood’s face in her sketch. It was more than a message. It was a warning. The spirits had known what would be waiting for me when I came here.

  “You’re not real,” I told Underwood. “You never were. You’re a trick, a lie, just like before.”

  “Careful,” Reve Azrael said. “You’re hurting his feelings.”

  Underwood straightened, the horror-movie charade over. He wrapped one cold, waxy hand around my neck and squeezed, choking me as his grip tightened.

  “Let him go!” Bethany yelled.

  Reve Azrael ignored her. She walked over to me. “You still have something I want, little fly.”

  Underwood squeezed harder, strangling me. I couldn’t get any air. A dark gray haze began to crowd the edges of my vision. I didn’t have much time before I passed out.

  “You can join me,” Reve Azrael said, “or I can take it from you.”

  “You won’t get it by squeezing it out of him!” Isaac yelled.

  “I gave him the chance to come with me willingly, and he threw it back in my face,” Reve Azrael said. “Clearly, he needs convincing.”

  I gasped, trying to breathe, but it was no good. Underwood was crushing my windpipe. I struggled against Smiley behind me, but the revenant was too strong and I was growing weaker. I tried to kick Underwood away, but there was no strength left in my legs. He continued to throttle the life out of me.

  “Tell me, little fly, after he kills you, whose life force will you steal to cheat death this time?” Reve Azrael asked. “There are only two living beings close enough to choose from. Will it be the mage? That would leave your little team of misfits weak and vulnerable, without a leader. Or will it be the small, annoying woman? Oh, how that would destroy you. Perhaps it is a good thing, then, that you do not get to choose. The luck of the draw, isn’t that what they call it? Perhaps after you come back from death and see which card has been dealt you will reconsider your refusal.”

  I would have spat in her face, but my mouth was too dry and my tongue too swollen.

  The gray haze started to turn black. I only had seconds left. I panicked. I would rather die and stay dead this time than let Isaac or Bethany take my place. I couldn’t let them die like this. Not because of me.

  “Let him go!” someone called out. Whoever it was, they sounded a thousand miles away.

  A sudden shock wave knocked me back, knocked all of us off our feet. It was like a bomb had gone off right in the middle of us, but there was no explosion, no fire or smoke. And yet, something forceful had sent us reeling. I landed in a heap on top of Smiley. Freed from Underwood’s choking grasp, I breathed in huge mouthfuls of air, my lungs aching and burning. My neck felt sore and bruised.

  Beneath me, Smiley didn’t move. The revenant’s skull had broken open against a rock, damaging the brain enough that Reve Azrael couldn’t control it anymore. Now it was just a harmless dead body.

  Still dizzy from the shock wave’s impact, I had trouble standing. I noticed Bethany and Isaac were having the same trouble, struggling to their feet and trying to shake it off. Unfortunately, the revenants were unaffected. Reve Azrael, Underwood, and the rest of them got back on their feet easily.

  “The hell was that?” Isaac demanded.

  Bethany pointed into the sky behind me. “Look!”

  I turned. My jaw fell open.

  Gabrielle flew through the air over Castle Clinton, moving toward us. Her leather coat flapped in the wind behind her. Her braided dreadlocks whipped in the air around her head like serpents. The air felt charged, electrified, and it was coming from her.

  Hovering above us, she shouted, “Get out of my fiancé’s body, you bitch!”

  She brought her arms together in front of her. The ground exploded under Reve Azrael’s feet, throwing her back several yards. She landed on her back, stunned. The other revenants froze as her connection to them was temporarily severed. I watched, astonished, as Gabrielle sent down another shock wave. The ground exploded again, hurling Reve Azrael through the air like a rag doll. When she crashed back to the ground, she didn’t move. The other revenants crumpled in limp piles. Gabrielle swooped down and landed.

  “Gabrielle, what…?” I fumbled for the words. “How…?”

  She turned to me, her eyes hard and angry. “Philip was right. I was weak and Reve Azrael knew it. She exploited it time and again. But no more. Now I’m strong. Now I’m ready for her.”

/>   Isaac regarded her cautiously. “You’re carrying magic inside you.”

  “You’re damn right I am,” she said. She opened and closed her hands into fists. “God, I’ve never felt so powerful. I feel like I could beat Philip in a fight now, if I wanted to. Where is he, anyway? I want to thank him for the good advice.”

  Isaac didn’t answer. He just looked at her, half angry, half alarmed.

  “Philip’s on a mission,” I said.

  Gabrielle didn’t ask for details. She didn’t seem all that interested. She shrugged and said, “It’s just as well. We don’t need him. Not while I’m here. Not when I can do this.” She looked down at the revenant at her feet, a heavyset, middle-aged, male corpse still in the dark blue suit he’d been buried in. All she did was point at him, and his skull shattered, crumbling inward as if a sledgehammer had pulverized it.

  Isaac watched her with horror. “Do you know what you’ve done to yourself, Gabrielle? How dangerous this is? You know what magic does when it gets inside people. It infects them. You’ve seen it. It’s what we’ve been fighting against this whole time.”

  “You’re carrying magic and you’re not infected,” she said.

  “I’m a mage.”

  “And I’m a woman with nothing left to lose,” Gabrielle said. “If I get the infection, then that’s the price I’ll pay. If it means I get to put that bitch in the ground once and for all, it’ll be worth it.”

  “Gabrielle—” Isaac started.

  “Save it,” she said. “You can either help me, or you can get out of the way.”

  She stalked over to Thornton’s corpse on the wet grass. She bent over him to take the Codex fragment out of his hand. She didn’t see his red-glowing eyes open. Reve Azrael had control of his body again. Before I could yell out a warning, Reve Azrael brought up the triangular fragment and drove its sharp, jagged point into Gabrielle’s side. It slipped under her rib cage like a dagger blade. The side of her shirt blossomed red. Blood splashed from the wound onto her dead fiancé’s chest, neck, and face, while Reve Azrael laughed and laughed.

  I ran toward Gabrielle, but a revenant stepped in front of me and landed a cold, meaty right hook to my jaw. I fell on the wet grass and looked up. It was Underwood. He loomed over me, his knuckles raw where the brittle skin of his fist had connected with my face. I tried to get back up. He kicked me in the stomach, and I went down again. Behind Underwood, the other revenants swarmed Bethany and Isaac before they could help Gabrielle.

  Reve Azrael grinned cruelly as she drove the sharp point of the Codex fragment deeper into Gabrielle’s side. Gabrielle cried out and throttled Reve Azrael, but of course it did no good. You couldn’t strangle a dead body. Her grip on Reve Azrael’s neck slipped as she grew weaker.

  “It is time you joined your beloved in death,” Reve Azrael hissed. Gabrielle let out a soft moan and started to fall over. Reve Azrael yanked her back up and pulled her limp body close. “Know this, witch. After you die, I will wear your body like I wear his. I will make you do terrible things. To yourself. To those you loved. Perhaps I will start with your family.”

  Gabrielle spat blood in Reve Azrael’s face. “You’re sick.”

  “No,” Reve Azrael replied. “I win.”

  With that, she tore the fragment out of Gabrielle. Its bloody point trailed an arc of red through the air. Gabrielle fell onto her side, bleeding into the wet grass. She shivered and curled up in the rain, hugging her midsection, her knees at her chest.

  “No!” Bethany yelled. She struggled furiously against the revenants holding her back.

  Reve Azrael stood, clutching the Codex fragment at her side. The heavy rain washed Gabrielle’s blood off the metal and into the dirt below. I got to my feet. This time, Underwood didn’t stop me. Watching Gabrielle lie in the grass, bleeding, dying, a white-hot rage built inside me.

  “You had your chance, little fly,” Reve Azrael said. “The witch’s death is on your head, not mine. All their deaths will be.”

  The revenants swarmed Bethany and Isaac until I couldn’t see them through all the dead flesh. I ran toward them, but Underwood grabbed me. He lifted me off my feet with unnatural strength and threw me to the ground. I hit the hard-packed earth. Pain shot through my back. I rolled over and stumbled to my feet. Underwood landed a hard punch across my face. I fell again.

  “Where you going, Trent?” Underwood asked. The rotten hole in his cheek gave his voice an airy sibilance. “I thought this might be a good chance for you and me to catch up. It’ll be just like old times.”

  I knew it was Reve Azrael speaking through the corpse, trying to trip me up, trying to keep me off guard. It was working. Underwood kicked me again, his boot striking me in the face. I flipped over and fell in the rain-soaked grass.

  “I’ll start,” he said. “Did you know that when I burned Tomo and Big Joe alive, Tomo screamed like a woman? But not Big Joe. He was a tough soldier to the end. I needed them both to die, but of course neither of them wanted to. Tomo screamed and screamed as the flames surrounded them, but Big Joe just stared at me. I could see the hatred in his eyes as I watched him die. So much for loyalty, huh?”

  I tasted copper on my tongue and spat on the ground. My saliva was tinged with blood. I rose to my feet.

  “It’s so hard to find good help these days,” I said.

  Underwood’s fist struck my face before I even saw it coming. For a dead man, he was quick. But then, that was the thing about revenants. They might be corpses, but they were fast and strong. The punch sent me reeling. I fell again.

  I got back up, wobbly and off-balance. “You’re lucky they took my gun.”

  “You should have remembered the Golden Rule,” Underwood said. “Never, ever lose your gun. You never know when—”

  I silenced him with a sucker punch to the face. His nose broke under the impact, the cartilage snapping like a twig. There was no blood, of course. Underwood’s heart had stopped pumping a long time ago. But the force of the punch sent him staggering backward.

  Damn, but that felt good. So good that I did it again, hitting him this time with a powerful haymaker that sent him reeling until he flopped back against a tree trunk. I punched him again. The rain had made his waxy skin slippery and loose. A patch of it sheared off under my knuckles. My fury numbed me to the pain as my fist scraped bone. Underwood’s face was ruined. His nose was a flattened turnip. Several teeth were missing. More of his skull had been revealed beneath his skin. My knuckles were raw and bleeding. I didn’t care.

  Underwood laughed. His jaw hung crooked.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  “That you think this changes anything,” Underwood said. “That you think this matters.”

  “It does to me,” I said. I hit him again. His cheek crumbled.

  He laughed more. “I taught you well. You can take the criminal off the street, but you can’t take the street out of the—”

  I hit him again, silencing him. His face was starting to look like hamburger mixed with jam.

  He grinned at me through the wreckage of his features. “Don’t stop now. Embrace your true nature, little fly. Let it out!”

  I punched him so hard his loose jaw came off. It hung on a strand of rotten flesh for a moment, and then the strand broke. The jawbone fell at his feet. Underwood’s black, withered tongue waggled beneath his upper teeth.

  I continued pounding my fists into him. Even as his body began to sag against the tree trunk, I kept whaling on him. Every punch was a weight removed from the load on my shoulders, a load Underwood himself had put there. Every punch brought back the face of the dead little boy in the crack house. Every punch was the punch I should have thrown when Underwood told me the boy’s death didn’t matter. I wondered why I had ever been afraid of this man.

  Underwood’s skull crumbled under my bleeding knuckles. After a while, I didn’t even feel the resistance of bone anymore. It was like putting my fists into pudding.

  Hands gripped my shoulder a
nd pulled me away. Trembling with rage, my blood pounding hot in my ears, I spun around, ready to keep fighting. Then I saw it was Bethany and Isaac standing behind me. I lowered my fists.

  “It’s okay, Trent,” Bethany said gently. “It’s over.”

  The grass was littered with destroyed revenants, their heads broken and cracked like eggs. Apparently, Bethany and Isaac had been busy while I was fighting Underwood. Catching my breath, I scanned the bodies. One was missing. The most important one.

  “Where’s Reve Azrael?” I asked.

  “She got away,” Isaac said. “Are you all right?”

  I looked down at Underwood’s body slumped at the base of the tree. His face wasn’t recognizable anymore. The blood from my knuckles ran in red streams down my fingers.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m good.”

  One of the revenants on the ground stirred, an elderly female corpse in a dirty, gingham dress. As she rose to her feet I saw the wound on her head was only superficial, not deep enough to sever Reve Azrael’s connection. The revenant lurched forward, groping for Isaac.

  “Look out!” I shouted.

  Isaac spun around, his palms crackling. He didn’t get a chance to cast his spell. Instead, the revenant burst apart in an explosion of dried meat, bone dust, and gingham. Behind it stood Gabrielle. She was hunched over, one hand clutching her wound. The entire right side of her shirt was slick with blood.

  “Reve Azrael thinks she wins?” Gabrielle snarled. “No. Wrong again, bitch.”

  We ran over to her, but she motioned for us to stay back. She pulled her hand away from her side. Her palm was wet with blood. She spoke an incantation, and a bright, green light spilled out of the wound. She winced in pain as the light filled the wound, then disappeared. Gabrielle lifted the side of her shirt to let the rain wash the blood away. Beneath it, she was completely healed, as if she hadn’t been stabbed at all. I blinked, amazed. I had never seen a healing spell like that before.