Die and Stay Dead

by Nicholas Kaufmann

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Go on.”

  She sighed. “The man I pictured was Patrick Stewart. I watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the foster homes back then. I guess I wished my father was Captain Picard. Or someone like him, anyway. Decent. Honorable. A man who lived a life of dignity, a life in control. The opposite of the life I had. I made up this whole story about how my parents never wanted to give me up, but were forced to for some epic, tragic reason. It was childish. I know that now.”

  “It wasn’t childish,” I said. “You invented a story you could live with. I did the same thing. I invented a lot of stories trying to come up with a past for myself.”

  “I’m sure none of them involved Captain Picard,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “Captain Sisko was more my style. He was a badass. He didn’t take shit from anyone.”

  She laughed. It was remarkable how much I’d missed that sound.

  “Remind me again how an amnesiac knows so much pop culture?” she asked.

  “A television in the fallout shelter and a lot of sleepless nights.”

  She sat up in bed. She switched on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in a warm, golden light. She had changed out of her street clothes and into a loose-fitting nightgown that presumably wouldn’t irritate her wounds. Her face scrunched in pain and she let out a small groan.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “The burn on my back is flaring up again,” she said. “I need more Sanare moss. Could you get Gabrielle? I’d apply it myself, but there are spots on my back I can’t reach.”

  “How about I do it for you?”

  She looked at me, surprised. “Are you sure?”

  I stood up. “I haven’t exactly been a good friend to you lately. I’m sorry for that. I want to make it up to you, but I don’t know how. Taking care of you seems like a start.”

  She regarded me for a moment, looking deep into me with those bright blue eyes. Then she nodded and pointed at a clay bowl on a table at the foot of the bed.

  I picked up the bowl. Inside it was a lumpy green goo. I’d seen Sanare moss in action before. It sped up the healing process at an astronomical rate. I hoped it would do the same for Bethany’s burns.

  Bethany turned her back to me and lifted her nightgown off over her head. Most of her back was covered with the tattoo of a fiery phoenix, a sigil that prevented magic from getting inside her and infecting her. But strong as it was, it couldn’t protect her from physical harm. A long band of red, burned skin stretched diagonally from her left shoulder blade to the small of her back, just above the waistband of her panties. But it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The previous Sanare moss treatments were already helping. Bethany held her crumpled nightgown to her chest, covering herself as she sat cross-legged on the bed. With one hand, she gathered her dark hair together and draped it forward over one shoulder so it would be out of the way.

  I sat down behind her, unsure what to do. I thought for sure if I touched her, it would hurt her. She’d already been hurt once today because of me. I couldn’t stand the idea of hurting her again.

  She sensed my hesitation and looked over her shoulder at me. “It’s okay, just be gentle.”

  I could do a lot of things. I could fight creatures twice my size. I could die and come back. I could pluck the threads of the world and make it shudder. But gentle was something I didn’t know if I could do. Gentle was something I’d never been.

  I dipped my fingers into the Sanare moss. It felt cool and gelatinous, tingling against my fingertips. I scooped out a dollop and began to spread it on Bethany’s back. The moss appeared green and lumpy in the bowl, but it went on clear and slick like an ointment. She shivered as I applied it.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “It feels good.”

  I spread the Sanare moss across her shoulders first, then worked my way down her back. In the few places where her skin wasn’t burned or colored by the tattoo, it looked as pale as china compared to mine. The burnt skin felt rough to the touch at first, but the moss turned it smooth almost immediately. The tattoo had essentially been cut in two by the long stripe of the burn, but it began to knit itself back together under the moss, tendrils of color joining together and becoming whole again. Clearly, the shaman who’d tattooed her had not used regular ink.

  Bethany was warm under my hands. Her body temperature had always been higher than normal, but now, touching her bare skin, she felt almost hot. It was like warming my hands before a fire.

  “It’s funny, usually you’re the one fixing me up,” I said, because suddenly I needed to say something. I needed to be doing something other than just touching her. The sensation was confusing me, making me feel things I thought I didn’t feel anymore.

  “It must really be the end of the world,” Bethany joked.

  “If it is, the Guardians don’t seem all that worked up about it,” I said. While I applied the moss, I told her about our visit with the Guardians and the scroll they’d given us. “It’s supposed to tell us the location where Arkwright is going to open a doorway between dimensions, but it’s in another language. I couldn’t read it. Isaac is trying to translate it now. He thinks it’s written in Elvish.”

  She looked at me over her shoulder again. “Elvish?”

  I shrugged.

  “Why would Arkwright need to open the doorway?” she asked. “Nahash-Dred is already here.”

  “I asked the Guardians the same question. They didn’t elaborate.”

  “It figures,” she said. “So you actually saw the Guardians? I never have.”

  I thought that was a good thing, considering the price of admission.

  “What did they look like?” she asked.

  “A bunch of old geezers with a serious ego problem,” I said. “They made a big stink about staying neutral and not getting involved, but in the end they helped. Sort of. If the scroll can be translated, they helped. If it can’t be, then they’re just assholes.”

  “It’s probably a little from column A, a little from column B,” Bethany said. She glanced at me again. “I’ve been thinking about why you asked me that question before. About whether I remember my family.”

  “It was on my mind, that’s all,” I said.

  “Because of Jordana. Trent, I’m so sorry. For all of it. I wanted to be wrong about her. I wanted you to be happy and know who you are.”

  “I’m the one who should be apologizing,” I said. “If I’d listened to you, none of this would have happened. I was too blind to see I was being played, but you saw it. You had suspicions about Jordana from the start. I suppose you’re dying to say ‘I told you so.’”

  “Not particularly,” she said. “In a way, Jordana was a victim in this, too.”

  That was true enough. The anger flared inside me again, hot and ferocious. “Arkwright knew exactly what he was doing when he infected her. He knew it would affect her mind. It would silence any doubts she might have about killing to protect him and his secret. He turned her into a murderer. He used her to get me to lower my guard and deliver the Codex right into his hands.”

  “Whoever Jordana was before Arkwright infected her, this wasn’t her,” Bethany said. “Not the real her.”

  I spread another handful of Sanare moss on Bethany’s skin, down near the phoenix’s tail feathers at the small of her back. “I guess I’ve always had bad timing with women, huh?”

  She looked back at me, arching an eyebrow. “There’s bad timing, and then there’s bad timing.”

  I chuckled, but it was short-lived. There was just too much weighing me down. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words stuck in my throat. They seemed so tiny compared to everything I felt.

  “I’m never going to know who I am, am I?” I said when I found my voice again. “Every time I think I’m getting close, it falls apart. Every time someone says they know, they’re lying. The kicker is, out of everyone, the only one who seems to know the truth is Reve Azr
ael, and I don’t even know if she’s dead or alive.”

  “I wouldn’t trust the answer from her, either,” Bethany said. “I guess at the end of the day you have to ask yourself if you’re okay with not knowing. If you can live without the answer.”

  Could I? I didn’t know. Every time I thought I was close, the answer was pulled away from me. The frustration and disappointment were chipping away at me piece by piece. How much more could I take? How much more until there was nothing left of me to chip away?

  “What about you?” I asked. “Can you live with not knowing why your parents gave you up?”

  “I’ve lived with it this long. If I have to go on not knowing, then I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

  I finished applying the Sanare moss. I stood and put the bowl back on the table at the foot of the bed.

  “You should get some rest,” I said.

  She slipped the nightgown back on over her head, then turned on the bed to face me. “Thank you.”

  I shrugged. “It was nothing. You’re an easy patient to treat.”

  “Not just for the Sanare moss, that’s not what I mean,” she said. “For still being my friend after I acted like an ass. For listening to me go on about my parents. For talking to me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you open up like that before.”

  “A friend once told me I needed to open up more,” I said. “I guess this is me trying to do that.”

  “Well, I like it,” she said. “This friend of yours must be extremely smart.”

  “Yeah, she’s annoying that way,” I said. “Now get some rest.”

  “I’ll be all right soon,” she said. “The Sanare moss works fast. Promise me you’ll come get me as soon as Isaac translates the scroll. Don’t go after Arkwright without me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  She lay down on her side and pulled the blanket up to her chin again. I walked to the door.

  “Trent?”

  I looked back at her.

  “He was no Picard, but Sisko was okay, too,” she said.

  Thirty-Five

  I left Bethany to her rest and started down the stairs to the first floor. I ran into Gabrielle on the landing halfway down. She was staring at the portrait of Thornton mounted on the wall, lost in her thoughts.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “I miss him, Trent. I miss him so much,” she said. “He still hasn’t shown himself to me. Not like he did to you.”

  “I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Do you think he … went back?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I have a hard time believing he would come all the way here without seeing you, even if just to say goodbye.”

  She looked up at the portrait again. “You never know how much time you’re going to have with someone. It’s not fair, but it’s the way life is. Time isn’t on anyone’s side.”

  She winced suddenly and doubled over, clutching her stomach. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, reaching for her.

  She backed away. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine,” I said. “It’s the magic inside you. It’s infecting you. You shouldn’t have done it, Gabrielle. You should have left it alone.”

  “I can make my own decisions,” she snapped. “We’re not all like you, Trent. We don’t all have the luxury of coming back to life. When people like me die, we stay dead. So we either die, or we find some way to even the odds. We all make the choices we have to.”

  “I didn’t choose to be like this,” I said. “I didn’t choose any of it. I’d give it up in a second to be normal. You know that.”

  She laughed bitterly. “What’s normal, Trent? In this world, what exactly does normal mean?”

  She winced again and doubled over, gritting her teeth. This attack seemed stronger than the last. She groaned in pain, but she still wouldn’t let me touch her. When it passed, she straightened up again.

  “I just need some air,” she said. She started down the stairs to the first floor.

  I followed her. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I don’t need a chaperone,” she said.

  “I could use some air, too,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  I followed her out of Citadel and into Central Park. The sun was rising in the east, silhouetting the tall buildings of the Fifth Avenue skyline. With the sun behind them, they looked like featureless, monolithic stones in a prehistoric landscape. For a moment, the world felt new and unspoiled. The autumn morning was crisp and invigorating. After all the rain yesterday, it was good to see the sun again. We walked across the grass and into the nearby trees, our boots crunching the dead leaves that carpeted the forest floor. Not all the leaves had fallen yet. Some still clung stubbornly to their branches, red and gold and burnt umber, all of them ablaze with the morning sun. Everything felt right. Everything was in its place. There was no indication at all that the world could end tonight at midnight.

  “You never really notice how beautiful something is until you realize it could go away,” I said.

  Gabrielle nodded, looking around her. She seemed calmer now. “The world is a beautiful place when the sun is up, and sometimes even when it’s down. But it wasn’t always like this. Before the Guardians came, the world was very different. Hot and barren, with nothing but rocks and fire and lakes of molten lava from one pole to the other. Back then, the world belonged to a race called the Voyavold. In Ehrlendarr, their name means Suneaters. They loved the dark so much they tried to eat the sun right out of the sky.”

  “I thought the Ancients were the first creatures on earth,” I said.

  “The first in recorded history,” Gabrielle said. “Legend says the Voyavold were here before them, when the world was young. We only know about the Voyavold from stories and books that were locked away from the public long ago. They were supposed to be violent, monstrous creatures. The Guardians drove them out and tamed the earth.”

  It was hard to imagine the Guardians getting off their asses to drive a race of monsters from the world. It was hard to imagine them getting off their asses to do anything.

  “Where did the Voyavold go?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Somewhere else.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Another apartment in the cosmic condo.”

  “Something like that,” she said. “But they say the Voyavold are always trying to come back. Always trying to take back what was theirs. You see, Trent? Even monsters miss things when they’re gone. Even monsters know all too well that nothing lasts forever.”

  The sound of snapping twigs froze us in our tracks. Gabrielle grabbed my arm and pulled me down behind a thick bush. She peeked over the top.

  “Look,” she whispered.

  I peered over the bush. A dense copse of trees stood in front of us. As I watched, humanoid forms peeled themselves off the bark along the thick, upper branches. They looked almost two-dimensional as they pulled free of the wood, but when they dropped to the ground they were as three-dimensional as the trees themselves. All of them were female, and all of them were unclothed, their skin the same color and texture as the bark, their hair matching every shade of the autumn leaves. They didn’t see us. Their expressions were somber as they walked single file away from the trees.

  “Dryads,” Gabrielle said. “Where are they going?”

  “It’s the exodus,” I said. “Yrouel told us about it before he died. He said he could sense something terrible was about to happen, and that others could, too. He said they were moving down to the Nethercity while there was still time, to be under Gregor’s protection.” I watched more dryads pull free of the trees and join the others in their slow, melancholy march. “Do you think they’ll be safe from Nahash-Dred down there?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Gabrielle said. “But it’s safer than being up here when the shit hits the fan.”

  The last of the dryads disappeared from view. The forest felt strangely empty, though nothi
ng had visibly changed. The trees, the grass, the leaves, it all looked the same. But there was a sense of loneliness to it now, as if the dryads had taken something essential with them when they left. We stood up again.

  “I’m sorry about what I said back there,” Gabrielle said. “I was out of line. There’s a lot of anger in me right now. I know that. It’s getting harder and harder to keep it under control. It’s just…” She paused and shook her head. “You can’t imagine how alone I am now. How alone I feel without Thornton.”

  “But you’re not alone,” I said. “The rest of us are still here.”

  “That’s different. You know that,” she said. “You don’t know how lucky you are. We don’t all have someone who’ll stay up all night with us playing cards just so we don’t get lonely.”

  “That’s different, too,” I said.

  “Is it? She loves you, Trent. She has from the start. She just doesn’t know how to say it, or what to do with it. She hasn’t had an easy life. She hasn’t let herself feel anything in a very long time. I guess for a long time it was safer not to let herself get close to anyone. But things are different now. I know you have feelings for her, too. I would know it even if I hadn’t crawled inside your head once upon a time. I saw the way you tore that library apart to get her back.”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t think she feels that way. She told me—”

  “I know what she told you,” Gabrielle interrupted. “What, you think she and I don’t talk? Please. You two need to stop dancing around this and talk it out. Because what I said before is true. You don’t know how much time you have left together. You know what’s coming. It could all end tonight.”

  * * *

  While Bethany slept, Gabrielle and I spent the rest of the day scouring Isaac’s library for demonology books. The library was extensive, taking up most of Citadel’s third story. The unfinished birch floor and row after row of maple bookshelves made the whole room smell like wood. But Isaac was right when he said his collection was woefully lacking in information on demons. We didn’t find much. Sitting at a table amid the library’s overstuffed bookshelves, Gabrielle and I pored over what little we found.