Serpent's Storm

by Amber Benson

  I would’ve given myself a pat on the back for my quick thinking, but my plan pretty much ended there. I’d bought myself a modicum of safety, but that wouldn’t last very long once the Bugbears realized they could descend on me together and I’d be ripe for the picking. I racked my brain, trying to think of anything I could do to waylay them, but I was at a loss.

  Struck with what we’ll call Divine Inspiration, I started ripping the desk drawers out of their cubbies, digging around in each one, looking for some weapon I could use against the Bugbears. Drawer after drawer, there was nothing but papers. Finally, in the last drawer, I chanced upon a stapler and a red blown-glass paperweight.

  “They’re coming, Callie!” Clio screamed, having managed to worm her way out of her gag.

  I grabbed the paperweight, hefting its bulk in my hand. Maybe I could throw it at one of the Bugbears, and if my aim was good, I could knock it out—

  Oh, who am I kidding? I thought miserably.

  I was a softball dropout who couldn’t hit a garbage can with a crumpled wad of paper. It looked like the jig was up; I’d been outnumbered and outgunned and the best course of action was to just hold up the white flag of surrender (in this case it was a red paperweight of surrender) and hope the promethium killed me before my sister Thalia did.

  I took a deep breath and raised the hand holding the paperweight up in the air. Suddenly, my arm was enveloped in a red-hot poker of pain as the Bugbears directed their laser eyes at my exposed appendage. I screamed and I dropped the smoking paperweight onto the desktop, my fingers sizzling as I pulled them back protectively to my chest. I heard a loud crunch behind me, and I quickly scuttled around to the other side of the desk, stifling another scream when I found myself face-to-face with a dead Bugbear, its eyes black cinders in an otherwise untouched face. I reeled away from the dead body, crawling backward until I was in the safe zone again, then I reached up onto the desk, scrambling for the paperweight—but it was gone.

  “Clio,” I yelled, my voice hoarse from screaming. “Do you see the paperweight? Where did I drop it?”

  “It’s right here,” she said, her voice so close, I could’ve sworn she was right beside me, and when I looked up I found my baby sister standing over me, paperweight clutched tightly in her hand. “You got them both in one shot, Cal, when their laser eyes reflected off of the paperweight!”

  Instantly, I was on my feet, wrapping Clio in a giant bear hug.

  “But who untied you?” I said, squeezing her scrawny frame tightly in my arms.

  “The Bugbears spelled our bindings,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “They just fell off once you killed them.”

  I released her and stared down at my dastardly handiwork, my heart slamming nervously inside me. I looked around, half expecting a few Harvesters to show up with condemning countenances, butterfly nets unfurled as they made ready to disparage me for committing two more murders. Yet after a few minutes when no one had arrived to collect the souls of the dead, I decided to proceed as if the Bugbears had committed suicide (which they had, kind of) and chalked the whole thing up to blind luck.

  Still, the joke about Death being the worst mass murderer in history, well, it wasn’t really a joke. All you had to do was look around at the legacy left there in that office by one Death, a little luck, and a paperweight.

  twenty-seven

  “Who’s that?” Clio asked, her gaze fixed on Frank, who lay unconscious in the middle of the floor, his hair and muttonchops singed by the direct contact he’d had with the Bugbears’ powerful laser eyes. His face appeared innocent and peaceful in repose, but I knew it was all a front, that underneath the handsome exterior lurked the soul of a snake.

  “That,” I said, pointing at Frank, “is a son of a bitch.”

  “Whatever you say, Cal,” Clio replied, looking dubiously at the handsome stranger.

  “He’s another wannabe Death like me and Daniel,” I continued. “And he’s super bad news.”

  “We should tie him up,” Clio said, grabbing a lamp from a side table. “Use the power cord to bind his hands.”

  It was nice to have Clio in my orbit again. Her brain moved much faster than mine, meaning she could figure out the solution to a problem in record time—she was great to have around in the middle of a crisis situation.

  At Clio’s suggestion, I dragged an expensive metal standing lamp over to where Frank lay prone on the ground and used the cord to tie up his feet. It wasn’t perfect, but between my handiwork and Clio’s, we got Frank’s lanky body secured.

  Our next order of business was to figure out what to do with our mother. She hadn’t moved from her spot on the couch since I’d killed the Bugbears, and it didn’t look like she was going to be coming back to reality anytime soon. I debated leaving her where she was but quickly discarded that notion, not trusting that Frank wouldn’t find his way out of his bindings and hurt her.

  “We could take her to the cafeteria,” Clio suggested. “That’s where they’re holding most of the Death, Inc., employees. At least she’d be safer there.”

  “You’ll both be safer there,” I said, kneeling down in front of the couch and taking my mother’s hands in my own.

  “No way,” Clio shot back. “You’re not leaving me in the stupid cafeteria like I’m some kind of baby. I’m going where you go.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with her. Not because I wasn’t right, but because she was smarter than me and would win any argument she trapped me into.

  “Fine,” I said as a wave of fiery nausea hit me so hard I had to close my eyes to fend it off.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Clio said, concern written on her features, but I only shook my head. I didn’t have time to go into specifics, and besides, I knew she would only freak out if I told her the truth, and I needed her functioning on all cylinders to help me get our mom down to the cafeteria.

  “Just something I ate,” I said, ignoring the irony of those words. “Just . . . help me get Mom out of here.”

  I turned my attention to my mother, trying to catch her eye, but her gaze was fixed inward, lost in some inner dream world where my dad was still alive and Thalia wasn’t evil incarnate. I didn’t know how much time I had left before the promethium breached the jewel’s exterior and took full effect, but I at least had to try to get through to her while I still had the chance.

  “Mom,” I said, rubbing her freezing hands in mine. “I know that you’re hiding in there because you’ll fall apart if you come out, even for a second.”

  “We should really jet, Cal,” Clio said from the doorway, where she was keeping watch over the hall.

  “Just a minute,” I said to my sister, then I instantly felt bad about sniping at her and apologized. “Sorry, just, please, give me a minute, okay, Clio?”

  She nodded, watching my face intently for some sign as to what my damage was.

  “Mom,” I continued. “I just want to tell you I’m sorry. About Dad, about me, about everything . . . and that I love you. And I promise, if I get any say in what happens here today, I’ll make the Ender of Death pay for what he’s done to you.”

  I paused, my throat constricting.

  “And that’s all.”

  I leaned over and kissed her softly on the cheek, then I swung back around to face my sister.

  “Let’s get her out of here.”

  I grabbed one arm and Clio took the other and together we lifted her from the couch.

  “Boy, she weighs a lot for someone with bird bones,” Clio grunted as she slid her hand underneath our mom’s armpit. I did the same and we started hustling her over to the doorway. Clio was right, though—for someone so tiny, the woman weighed a ton in deadweight.

  “How’re we getting her over that?” Clio said, gesturing with her chin to where Evangeline’s body lay blocking the exit.

  “We just step on her,” I said. Evangeline had made her own bed and now she was gonna have to lie in it.

  “All righty, then,” Clio said, s
tepping onto Evangeline’s spine with a sickening crack. “This is just gross, Cal.”

  “No kidding,” I replied, repeating the same cracking step once Clio had made it over to the other side.

  We hustled our mother down the nondescript hallway, her weight pulling at my shoulder as her high-heeled shoes caught at the Berber carpeting. Our mother had always been small, but the shock of what’d happened to her seemed to have shrunk her density down to black hole-sized proportions.

  We got to the elevator and Clio slammed her fist into the down button. Immediately, the door slid open—it’d never had a reason to descend back to the lobby after Frank and I had used it—and we climbed inside.

  “What floor?” I asked, my gut churning, the fire pouring down my intestines and up my throat.

  “Twenty-seven,” Clio said without having to think about it. I’d forgotten she’d interned at the Hall of Death and therefore knew her way around the building.

  “Twenty-seven it is, then,” I said, grappling with my mom’s body so I could press the button.

  There was a shudder and then the door started to close.

  “I hate to do this to you, kiddo,” I said suddenly—and then I shoved my mom’s body toward Clio, the deadweight pinning my sister against the wall as I slipped out the elevator door. I hadn’t wanted things to go down that way, but Clio had left me no choice. I needed her and my mom out of the way in the event I died and they lost their immortality. Then, at least, when I was gone, they had a shot at getting away before Thalia could dispose of them for good.

  As soon as the elevator door had closed, I ran back down the hallway and, ignoring the burning in my stomach and throat, crouched down beside Evangeline. I stuck my face right up in hers and screamed:

  “Where’s Thalia?”

  The woman’s broken body shuddered and she opened her eyes, her dilated pupils inches from my own.

  “Don’t . . . know.”

  I grabbed her ear and twisted, eliciting a pathetic keening noise from somewhere deep in her throat.

  “Had enough?” I growled as she swallowed back a terrified sob. “Now tell me where she is.”

  She blinked back tears as I released her ear.

  “Hall . . . of . . . Death,” she hiccupped.

  “Are you lying to me?” I said, grabbing her smooth scalp in both hands and lifting her head off the carpet. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would make me disappear.

  “No . . . please, no.”

  “You better not be,” I whispered, leaning down so my lips were against the cartilage of her ear. “Or I’m gonna come back here and break all the bones in your face, capisce?”

  “Yes,” she slobbered into the carpet. “I . . . understand.”

  I dropped her head back onto the carpeting, leaving her to gag in her own spittle. My aggression spent, I stumbled back down the hallway toward the elevators, using the wall to hold myself up. I was getting worse, my body going haywire with the effects of the promethium, and time was not on my side. I was seriously starting to doubt I’d be able to get to Thalia before I kicked the bucket.

  Relief washed over me when I reached the bank of elevators, my hands raw from gripping the wall so fiercely. I was convinced that if I could just get into the elevator car, everything would be all right. I jabbed my finger into the call button, leaning against the wall for support as I waited for the elevator to come. I stood there, my stomach roiling as I was hit by another wave of fiery nausea. My eyes swimming with tears of pain and humiliation, I dropped to my knees, clutching my belly.

  “I don’t want to die, God,” I said, looking heavenward. There was no reply—but then I hadn’t really expected one. I wasn’t looking for an answer; I just wanted my opinion duly noted.

  The elevator door finally slid open and I fell inside, crawling into the back of the car as the door closed like an accordion behind me. I used the wall to hoist myself back onto my feet, my face pressing into the cold metal to steady myself. I’d been to the Hall of Death before with Jarvis and I knew there was a trick to getting the elevator to take me there. I racked my brains, trying to remember exactly what buttons Jarvis had told me to press the last time.

  “Seventy-three and twenty-one,” I shouted as my memory unexpectedly kicked in. I slid my finger along the panel, counting to seventy-three, then I depressed the button. Next, I drew my finger back down the panel and punched twenty-one.

  “Please hold on to the handrail,” an electronic voice chimed—but before I could comply with the request, the elevator began to plummet downward, my body slamming into the ceiling.

  “’rap,” I said, my face pressed against the ceiling’s smooth metal surface as the car dropped at G-force speeds.

  Suddenly, the elevator came to an abrupt stop, chiming twice to announce our arrival, and my stomach shot up into my throat as the elevator/carnival ride of craziness dropped me back the way I’d come, my shoulder smashing into the floor. The elevator door folded open and I winced, the right side of my face aching from the ceiling hit I’d taken, but that pain was eclipsed by the agony I felt when I tried to stand up and found that my shoulder had separated in the fall.

  I was still immortal. Which meant my cells should’ve started regenerating right there in the elevator, but the promethium was taking its toll on my body and all my energy was being funneled into just keeping me alive. So no matter how hard I willed it to move, my left arm remained immobile, hanging uselessly at my side. Part of me wanted to stay in the elevator and wait for the inevitable, but I fought against it, forcing myself to crawl out into the cramped antechamber marking the threshold of the Hall of Death. I vaguely remembered the space being painted a sickly mint green, but the lights had been dimmed, making it impossible to ferret out any real detail.

  Banging my shin once on an overturned chair, I made it across the room without further incident, but when I tried to push my way through into the Hall of Death itself, I found only a blank wall where the entrance should’ve been. I knew there was a door somewhere—I’d seen it the last time I was there—but then I remembered how it had appeared invisible to Jarvis and me until our guide had led us through it. Pressing my good shoulder against the blank wall, I ran my hand over every inch of the smooth surface until my fingers found a thin crack, which I exploited by hooking my fingers inside it. Using my own body weight, I yanked backward on the opening with enough force to widen the gap just enough to allow me to slip inside.

  Immediately, I stumbled over a fresh corpse on the other side of the door. In the darkness, I could see it was smaller than an average person’s body, with thin limbs, longish hair . . . and a shirtwaist dress. I didn’t stop to look at its face. Not because I meant the body any disrespect, but because I already intuitively knew it belonged to Suri, the Day Manager of the Hall of Death. I said a quick prayer for the dead girl in the doorway, who’d died defending this place from its enemies, but I didn’t stop to wonder how long it would be before I joined her. Instead, I forged steadily onward.

  The first time I’d been in the Hall of Death, I’d marveled at the beauty of the place: the humongous skeletal steel structure, the floors made from large cut limestone blocks, the oriental carpets bearing strange symbols I’d never seen before, and the walls hung with surreal and bloody medieval tapestries. All the disjointed architectural styles gave the space the austerity of a monastery coupled with the modernity of a skyscraper.

  Now the lights were low, hiding the carnage that had been wrought on the place. I found the floors slick with blood; the bodies of Bugbears, humans, and other creatures lay inter-meshed with the desecrated armor of the Hall’s knightly guards. I’d had a run-in with the knights the last time I’d been here, but we’d been able to resolve the situation without bloodshed. My sister and the Devil hadn’t been so lucky. Their people had been decimated here.

  I heard raised voices down at the end of the long hall and immediately tried to fade into the darkness, hiding myself in the arched doorway of one of the myria
d reading rooms that intersected the throughway of the Hall. I stood there a few moments without drawing a breath, using the wall as a support, but when I realized the voices were staying put, I relaxed. Whoever the voices belonged to, they had no clue about my presence. Emboldened, I stepped out of my hiding space and silently continued my journey down the hallway. I was careful not to make any noise that would give away my position, treading as lightly as my wounded body allowed. When I reached the end of the hallway, I slid into another archway and listened:

  “I want all of them!” a woman screamed.

  I peeked around the edge of the stone archway to see my sister Thalia pacing in front of the Hall of Death’s scarred cherrywood Main Information Desk, her firm body encased in a pair of snug hot pink Juicy Couture sweats. With her hair pulled back into a slick ponytail and her feet encased in a pair of those stupid round-soled Shape-Up shoes that were supposed to tighten your ass while you walked, it appeared she’d dressed down for the occasion.

  She stopped pacing and walked over to the desk, slamming her fists into its scarred top, making the giant sumo wrestler of a man sitting behind it quiver. I’d met the man, Tanuki, the last time I’d been to the Hall of Death, looking for a friend’s Death Record. Back then he’d been a bubbling bowl of Jell-O, with an easy demeanor that could be either catty or playful, depending on his mood. Now, with his eyes red and puffy from crying, he looked beaten.

  “The Hall of Death is an entity unto itself,” Tanuki cried. “It decides who receives the Death Records . . . and who does not.”

  Having worked up his courage, he spoke the last few words with a poisonous disdain.

  My sister was livid, her eyes wild as she pushed herself away from the desktop, walking around to the other side of the desk where Tanuki, nervous as a cat, sat in an oversized rolling chair. I thought she was going to strike the giant man, but to my surprise she walked past him, her eyes drawn instead by the allure of the humongous apothecary cabinet that towered over him, its face crowded with tiny wooden drawers. My sister stopped when she stood in front of its massive bulk, her hands running over the battered wood. Then, one by one, she began to yank the drawers out onto the ground like a whirling dervish, digging her hands into the empty cubbies, searching for something.