Death

by Madhuri Pavamani

  And here I hesitated as I stood next to the man I loved harder than anything else in any of my lives, my hip bumped up against his leg, his hand resting on the small of my back, not because I was embarrassed or ashamed or uncertain but because I had never before quantified Dutch, because the words did not exist. I fidgeted, twisting my fingers and my rings. And despite the fact I was a grown-ass woman, with grown-ass woman responsibilities and problems and concerns, I hardly felt adult at all. I was tongue-tied and embarrassed, and giddy with love and—gah!—I felt the fool.

  So of course Dutch saved me. That man would lay down his life for me, that man had laid down his life for me. This time, a few gorgeous words sufficed.

  “I can’t speak for Juma, but I can tell you that she is my light in a world of pitch dark, only she brightens the way. She is my honey and grass and love and laughter, she stops time and makes it run again. She takes away my lifetime of hurt with the touch of her hand. She owns my soul and lives in my darkest selves. She breathes and my lungs fill, she cries and I am nothing but despair. She is every reason I’ve ever needed to exist. And she is the only reason I continue.”

  Dutch stopped speaking and twined his fingers with mine, a slow smile curving his lips as he pulled me close and kissed my forehead. I stared him for a few extra beats and he kissed me again, this time on the lips with laughter in his eyes and I settled because I knew somewhere inside that tortured body and devastated soul, the man I loved existed and waited.

  For me.

  Always me.

  I smiled and kissed him back.

  “What he said, Ma.” I’d spoken into the silence that descended upon my parents after Dutch’s soliloquy and laughed and they laughed and I swore even Dutch laughed. Not a full belly laugh, not the way he barked out his amusement, but laughter nonetheless. It was a start and I’d take it and work on it and make sure by the time I was done with him, a little of his darkness was lifted in exchange for some of my light.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: JUMA

  “Dutch!”

  Avery shot his head out of the sliding back door and shouted, then caught sight of me and smiled the kind of smile that never reached his eyes and I glanced at Dutch and wondered what was wrong but before I could ask, Avery was outside and pulling me into his embrace.

  “Beautiful brown woman from the bar,” he said with laughter in his voice, but the sound was tight and forced and not happy at all. “That’s what I called you the first time this one—” And here he nodded in Dutch’s direction, Avery’s teasing tone a sharp contrast to his tense visage. “—saw you in that shit-hole of a bar.”

  “Hey!” I pushed Avery and feigned hurt, and decided I would ask him about his palpable stress later, when we were alone. “I love that shit-hole of a bar. My cousin owns that shit-hole of a bar.”

  “I don’t care who owns that place,” Avery said as he kissed my cheek and smirked, “it’s a goddamned shit-hole.” Pause. “Excuse my French, Dr. and Mrs. Landry.”

  Avery nodded in my parents’ direction, and I had to laugh at the formality. I couldn’t remember the last time someone called my da Dr. Landry—it was either Doc or Rufus, anything else sounded foreign.

  “We know that shit-hole very well, sweetheart,” my ma replied, and shot me a look as she wove her free arm through Avery’s and pulled him close. “Juma loves to spend far too much of her free time within its confines.”

  “Well, I suppose that explains how Mr. Darkness managed to catch your daughter’s attention,” Avery joked. “How he’s held on to it this long is a mystery to us all.”

  Dutch smirked, lit a smoke, and exhaled as a ghost of a smile appeared around the edges of his mouth, and although every inch of him seemed tense and tightly wound, underneath I could see the cracks in his façade, the slow slip back into himself, and I wondered what my ma thought of him. I knew my da liked him because Rufus Landry always felt an affinity for a quiet soul. But my ma was an enigma, forever difficult to pin down and predict.

  “If you ask me, I’d guess it had something to do with fate and soul mates and ‘opposites attract,’” my ma said before squeezing Avery tight and adding, “and plain old simple love.”

  And there was my answer.

  Apparently the Landry women had a thing for Mr. Darkness.

  Dutch flicked his smoke to the ground and stomped it out as a distinct blush crept up his neck, coloring him embarrassed, and I realized that this meet - the - parents moment was as bizarre for him as it was for me. He, too, had probably never done this before, this normal let’s-joke-about-the-kids-being-in-love kind of thing because just like me, he was anything but normal. I died my first death at age five, and by sixteen he was a bona fide killer.

  And now here we were, two adults, closer to middle age than our youth, feeling like teenagers caught making out behind the bleachers after school.

  “What?” Dutch asked as he caught my eye, my bemused expression no doubt piquing his curiosity, and again, a bit of my worry eased as it seemed his soul took another step out of its grave dug by The Gate. I opened my mouth to share my inside joke with him and my folks when Avery tripped over my words and demanded Dutch’s attention.

  “We need to deal with Rani.”

  At the mention of her name, Dutch retraced whatever steps he’d taken to exit the grave and landed somewhere dark and deep and, for the time being, unreachable. He tensed and grew cold and all of him was all kinds of irate.

  “What happened to Rani?” I asked, and my ma and da flicked their eyes in Dutch’s direction before turning back to walk into the house, and I sensed that whatever happened probably wasn’t good.

  “Unfortunately, not a goddamned thing,” Dutch said with a menacing growl, then turned to follow my folks into the house. “She’s perfectly fine, showered, clean, and comfortable, thanks to the Chinaman.”

  “She’s not dead, is what he means,” Avery corrected.

  “Far from it, thanks to you,” Dutch shot back, and disappeared into the house, taking his black cloud of a mood with him.

  “They came through the portal and he went in for the kill,” Avery said as we entered the safe house and walked into the kitchen. “I stopped him and he’s pissed. I don’t even know why I stopped him, but I did.”

  “You did the right thing,” I said to assure him while I watched Dutch push Rani into the room and take a seat across from her at the kitchen table. “Dutch promised me he would not do anything stupid.” I glared at my dark and dangerous love, and he seethed and stewed and oh-so-slowly calmed. “She helped save your life.”

  “You helped save my life,” Dutch retorted. “If I recall correctly, and I believe I do since I was the one strapped to the table, carved open and left to die, she insisted I was hardly worth saving.”

  “Because you’re a fucking waste of space, always crying and carrying on like a little bitch,” Rani spoke, and I wanted to kill her.

  “Shut up, Rani!” Avery shouted, slamming the flat of his palm on the table between Rani and Dutch. “Enough of this back-and-forth with Dutch. Everyone in this room knows you don’t hate Dutch, everyone knows years ago the two of you carried on for months in secret, and everyone knows you joined forces with James because Dutch would not let you in.”

  Everyone did not know that shit, I thought to myself as I listened to Avery’s amusing but not-very-surprising lecture.

  “And here this whole time I thought she was a tiny lesbian,” Frist said as she sauntered into the room snacking on an apple, caught my eye, and winked. I pulled her to my side when she neared and kissed her cheek. This wasn’t the time for overwrought hellos, but I was thrilled to see the Amazonian, now-blue-haired scientist.

  “Nice hair,” I said, and kissed her again.

  “Nice everything,” she replied, her eyes full of mischief as she gave me a long and lingering once-over. “Your parents are in the garden with Kash—who keeps holding his side and I swear if he doesn’t let me see what he’s got going on, I’m going to tie him down an
d examine him against his will—having their afternoon tea, which I now know is made cold and sweeter than anything one should ever ingest.”

  “You’re not a child of the South,” I said, “so I won’t hold your tea-drinking habits against you.”

  She rolled her eyes and we laughed and anyone watching us would have thought we were old girlfriends catching up with each other, rather than two women who barely knew one another but bonded over some murder and mayhem. That was our reality, though, our world, our lives, thanks to The Gate and Khan, Veda and the Black Copse. No matter how you cut it, we were forever bound in ways most could never comprehend.

  “Now that Juma is here and Dutch can focus and be present,” Avery said to no one in particular, “I would like some sort of explanation of what happened at Kowdiar.”

  Rani shifted in her chair and stared long and hard at Avery as if engaged in some heavy calculations concerning him and whether or not she would unburden herself at his request. She hated Dutch, that much I knew, and now I also kind of knew why—or maybe I knew why—I couldn’t decide if the story of Dutch’s dismissal rang true, it seemed far too trite and childish for Rani—but her feelings for Avery seemed more conflicted and full of shades of gray. As if she liked him and respected his power and authority within the hierarchy of The Gate, but she also despised him and maybe considered him effete and inconsequential.

  “I would like a drink,” Rani said in response, drumming her short black fingernails on the table, not in an impatient way but in a manner that struck me as more habitual than demanding.

  “Let me see,” Dutch said, leaning back in his chair, “which would you prefer, fresh-squeezed orange juice or perhaps a mimosa with our most expensive Dom?”

  Rani cocked her head to the side and watched Dutch, the two locked in some silent, ages-old battle that I knew eventually would result in someone’s death. Theirs or an innocent bystander’s, I could not tell, but if the story ended with the two of them, sworn enemies, as the last left standing, I would not bat an eyelash.

  “Water is fine.” Rani smiled at Dutch and she looked sweet and sincere, but all of us knew that given the chance, she would happily slit his throat.

  “Rani.” Avery pulled out a chair and sat down next to Dutch.

  “I repeat,” Rani growled, “I would like some water.”

  “Yes, yes,” Avery said while ignoring her flash of temper with the air of someone who’d seen it all before. “I know. And I’ll get you some—I’ll even dig a well out back, tap my own freshwater spring, and spoon-feed it to you—but first I want your story. And I want it without all the bullshit and bad attitude, sans smug comments aimed at Dutch or any other shit you’ve got up your sleeve. I’m doing you a favor right now, I expect my recompense.”

  “Recompense?” Rani asked. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Recompense for what? I don’t owe you shit, Avery Lu.”

  “Oh, little girl,” Avery said, and with a smile, waved a finger in Rani’s direction, looking anything but amused, “you owe me for not leaving you outside this house. With the door locked. Alone.”

  Avery let his words hang in the air without further explanation because none was needed. Rani knew exactly what he meant—that without any of us, she was as good as dead. She was a rogue Keeper, alone, and we were her only hope if she intended to survive one more day in this fucked-up game of lives.

  She remained silent and I guessed her soul needed a few moments of quiet and contemplation to come to grips with the fact that for so long she had played the game on the other side, the wrong side. The side she had assumed to be winning when in fact she was losing the whole time. And now here she was, surrounded by the very people she’d built a life upon torturing and tormenting. Even worse, she needed their help.

  It was total fuckery.

  For her.

  Me?

  I kind of loved watching it happen.

  CHAPTER NINE: DUTCH

  Life has a way of conjuring all kinds of nightmarish scenarios, bundling them together in a scary-as-fuck package, then dropping it on your doorstep, ringing the bell, and taking off to hide in the bushes and laugh as you open your door and step in the shit. And even though you become numb to the repetitive cycle of excrement, you don’t forget it. You carry it with you everywhere because it takes up space in the parts of yourself kept well hidden from prying eyes, brought out and parsed over in private, alone, when no one else can hear your fear.

  And it’s in those moments you plot and plan and prepare for the possibility you’re ever given a chance to draw back, cock your fist, and deliver a brain-shaking blow to Life’s left cheek.

  I’d had plenty of those moments, sitting alone in my apartment, the lights off and the only sound my belabored breathing after surviving another once-over by James and Rani, back when James was still alive and they were together, The Gate’s very own torture team. I’d swigged bottles of Old Scout and considered all the ways I would kill them, the songs I would hum as I butchered their bodies, the words I would speak as they inhaled their last breaths.

  But now, in this house in the middle of Oak Bluffs, at the end of a tree-lined lane, deep in the woods, surrounded by peace and quiet, with Rani just where I’d always dreamed of finding her, I couldn’t bring myself to reach across the table and slowly squeeze the life out of her. And not because Juma or Avery would stop me or because I’d already tried to kill her twice but because I just didn’t feel it.

  That need to bring some death, some hurt, some fear.

  To fuck her up and leave her for dead.

  Just as she’d done to me too many times to count.

  What I wanted was for her to stop bullshitting us, give us her story, and let me go to sleep. I wanted to crawl into my bed, pull the covers over my head, close my eyes to the misery, and rest my bones. It was the strangest feeling—after years of running on empty, full speed ahead with no thought or concern for the toll on my physical being—to want to slow it all down, close my eyes, and relax.

  I never relaxed.

  And I sure as fuck never slept.

  Ever.

  I watched Juma with Frist and wondered how any of this had happened. How did that beautiful brown woman cross my path and decide to love me? How did a brilliant scientist save my life in more ways than the obvious? How did those two women come to find themselves in this kitchen, laughing and chatting like friends, when all they really knew of each other was murder and mayhem?

  And me.

  I ran my hands over my face and through my hair and inspected my palms as they came away tinged with the blood that still soaked my hair from wounds that had not yet healed, as if reminding me that even when I was safe, I was never out of the reach of Khan and The Gate. I rubbed my hands on my jeans and stood and paced the kitchen.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Thrice.

  Fuck Khan.

  And fuck The Gate.

  “She was with Shema.” The truth spilled from my mouth, my voice giving it life, making it loud and real. I was sick of Rani’s hemming and hawing and carrying on with Avery. “She and Shema found me in the dining room. They were together and from what I could tell based on their conversations, had been that way for quite some time.

  “I’m not saying they’re lovers,” I said, and Rani scowled and it gave me a tinge of joy.

  “What?” I asked. “If you have something to say, just say it already.”

  “Fuck you, Dutch,” Rani spat, and sounded childish and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on but guessed that if I knew her better, I’d say it sounded like defeat.

  I ignored her and kept going, telling her story my way since she still refused to reveal her own truths. “But they were connected and it was intense. Shema seemed determined to free me from that table, but this one was more concerned for their lives. She wanted Shema to get out of the dining room before Khan returned. She pleaded with her to be careful and mindful of the fact I wasn’t worth the trouble.


  “It was both bizarre and fascinating, and I still don’t know what to make of it.”

  “Your mother helped you?” Avery asked, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.

  “And died doing it,” I said, feeling quite detached from the reality of Shema’s death. Yes, she was the woman who’d birthed me and shared a few moments of affection with me when I was a child, but that woman died years ago. And with her, so too lay buried my filial affection. Shema Mathew, leader of the Junta, esteemed member of The Gate, meant nothing to me.

  The same could not be said for Keeper Rani Rao. I got the feeling Shema Mathew meant quite a lot to her.

  Upon hearing my words, Rani stood suddenly and toppled her chair in the process, drawing everyone’s attention as she pressed her fingers into the table to steady herself.

  “Please. get. me. some. water.”

  Instead of fetching a glass for the tiny Keeper, everyone watched her in quiet stupefaction as she mouthed a litany of words to herself, head down, eyes closed. Finally, Juma moved toward the sink, filled a glass with tap water, and offered it to Rani. She downed the glass, asked for another, then uprighted her chair and reclaimed her seat, all in a very perfunctory manner, as if talking herself through all the motions, telling herself to hold it together, it would all be over soon.

  “Thank you, Juma,” Rani said, and nodded in Juma’s direction. And although she was being perfectly polite and kind, I wanted to kill her for glancing Juma’s way, for speaking her name as if she had the right, for allowing any idea of Juma to cross her fucked-up, psychotic brain. It was infantile on my part, but in my exhausted state, could not be helped or controlled, it simply was.

  “Don’t.” I glared at Rani and uttered the one word banging around in my brain, holding my anger.

  “Or what?” Rani asked, her voice low and dangerous.