Death

by Madhuri Pavamani

  Our gear was tossed on the kitchen table and I started wrapping my holster around my waist as Dutch spoke to Frist, fitted another around my shoulders, sheathed Simone at my hip and two of Dutch’s smaller blades on my back. I knew whatever had happened was bad and we needed to go. I scrolled through my phone, ascertained the coordinates for Dutch’s house, then located my hub in a back room of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela—a quick run from the house. It was an all-purpose hub and would get me anywhere I needed to be, and I thought to myself at least something in this life made sense.

  Dutch ended his call and, without a word, set about gathering his gear from the collection scattered atop the kitchen table. His favorite holster was tangled around two shoulder holsters, all of it looking like a mess of knotted leather straps. I watched him as he quietly tried unwinding the pieces, all of him determined and focused on the task at hand. Then I saw his hands shake and I moved into his space.

  “Here,” I said, and took the leather from him, “let me help you.” He waited patiently while I unwound all the leather and rescued his holster from the pile. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t move, he just watched me, and I knew something was horribly wrong. Moving back in front of him, I wound the dark timeworn leather around his hips, low-slung and not too tight, just as he liked, buckled him, then rested my hands on his hips.

  When I glanced up, he was watching me, his eyes unreadable pools of dark devastation. He grasped me behind the neck and pulled me closer and I braced for whatever lay before us.

  “We have to go.” He kissed the top of my head and released me. “Kash died.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: JUMA

  He stunned me speechless.

  And immobile.

  Dutch moved around the kitchen and ran upstairs, his footsteps overhead loud and determined, and when he returned, I was still standing at the kitchen table, right where he’d left me.

  “Juma—” He touched my hand, his voice all business and certain. “—come on, gorgeous,” he instructed as he looped a bag across his body, checked his blades once more, and readied to leave.

  “Dutch,” I finally pushed his name across my lips and he stopped what he was doing.

  “Where’s your hub? Do you know or is there something I can check for you?” he asked as he approached me, and I wondered at his calm and capability during a moment when I knew he felt as if everything were collapsing around us.

  I shook my head and held up my hand, curious as to my inability in the face of all his can-do motion. He took my hand and kissed my fingertips and when our eyes locked, I knew the thread holding all of him together was as thin and frayed as mine.

  “I know where I need to be,” I gathered myself and replied. “The cathedral. I already mapped it—I know where I’m going. You just worry about getting where you need to be.”

  He shook his head.

  “No. I’ll walk you to the cathedral.”

  “I was going to jog over there,” I replied.

  “We’ll walk over there together,” he said, and it sounded final. But still.

  “It’ll be faster if we—”

  “Juma!” Dutch cut me off and his eyes flashed fire. “Drop it. Kash is dead, so whether we arrive in ten minutes or thirty is not going to make a goddamned bit of difference. Got it?”

  I wanted to say sorry for all kinds of things too many things everything as he stood there looking dark and dangerous and more devastated than I had ever seen another soul, but I knew the last words he needed to hear were those that might draw attention to his outburst. I was fine with his outburst. Instead, I followed him out the door and watched as he locked it behind us.

  “Got it.” I stepped onto the gravel path and into the sunshine. “It’s a nice day for a walk anyway.”

  Without another word to each other, we headed into town, him lost in his thoughts, me lost in the duplicitous nature of our reality. Everything around us was vibrant and warmed by the sun, so different from our dark and death-filled lives. The brook along the side of the road gurgled around the bend and the air hinted at long hot nights full of laughter and friendship. I wanted to imprint the quiet beauty of this place into my deepest selves, a favorite moment for when I had nothing left but my memories.

  “That house right there.” Dutch dragged himself out of his grief and back into the moment and pointed to what appeared to be a carriage house. “Once I drop you at the cathedral, I’ll come back here, step in through the side door, probably curse at the Dosha for leaving the place such a fucking mess, and portal back to Kash’s house,” he said, then added, “and you.”

  I reached for his hand, twined our fingers, and smiled the kind of smile I felt deep in the furthest corners of my soul. He was beautiful and alive and I loved him desperately. And I knew all of it mattered little, that we were mere pawns in this horrific game, nothing more, but still it bore noting. A little testifying, as my ma would say. Dutch brought my hand to his lips and pressed warmth and tenderness into my skin, and right then I knew if I could prevent him any more hurt, if we could destroy Khan and undermine his reign of torture and terror—no matter the consequences to myself and my nearly nonexistent collection of lives—it would all be worth it.

  He was worth it.

  Dutch.

  My sweet dark dangerous Dutch.

  We entered the town square looking much like any of the other folks walking about, finishing their pilgrimage, enjoying a beer in the afternoon sun. Just a man and a woman, wrapped in the cocoon of each other, happy and in love. We enjoyed the anonymity of the crowd, getting lost in the nearness of each other, taking the longest route possible to the front steps of the cathedral, where we both stopped and stared. I glanced his way and wondered if he, too, felt that we’d probably never be back here together. I squeezed his hand and he cupped my face and all of him felt like love. He pressed his lips to mine and swallowed my sob.

  “Right here. With me. This moment, gorgeous,” he whispered in my ear, kissed my tears, and led the way into the cathedral. We wove through the crowds and disappeared into the back and even though he could have left me right at the front door, I knew he also could not. He needed to watch me disappear and I needed him to know I would see him as soon as I exited the portal.

  “Back at the house—” Dutch started to speak what sounded like an apology, and I pressed a finger to his full lips.

  “Just tell me where I’m headed,” I said. “Nothing else matters.”

  And he kissed my fingertips, then pulled out his phone.

  “I’m texting you the address to Avery and Kash’s château in Aquitaine,” he explained as he typed. “They have a secret portal on the property, kind of like the one I have back at the house, so I can be there in minutes, but I worry about you.”

  “Don’t.” I smiled and pulled out my wand and he chuckled low.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” He took it out of my hand and it throbbed with light and heat as it always did whenever he held it because I think it secretly loved him. “This piece of junk also serves as a magic carpet.”

  “This piece of junk does all kinds of things.” I snatched it back with a laugh, and for a couple of beats of time, amazed at the wonder of us, two souls locked in a world of such grief, yet able to find tiny random moments to laugh, share a joke, feel alive. “And will get my fat ass right to your doorstep.”

  Dutch pulled me to him and kissed me hard. “Do that. Please. I love your fat ass.” He smiled and it suggested all kinds of wickedness and all of me fell for him for the millionth time in our togetherness. He kissed me again, then let me go and I walked toward a black door about ten feet from us.

  I put my hand on the knob and turned back to him.

  “No one’s ever watched me enter a hub.”

  He smiled once more, jammed his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels, and looked tall, brown, and gorgeous. “That’s because no one’s ever loved you like I do, princess.”

  “I really hate that nickname.”<
br />
  “I know you do,” he replied with a smirk because he knew I was lying through my teeth. All of me found it mellifluous when that word rolled off his tongue. My eyes filled as I stood there and took all of him in one more time and I told myself, Hold it together, Juma.

  I blew him a kiss and without another moment’s hesitation, stepped into my hub, coming out the other side minutes later to find myself in the middle of a dark movie theater, showing Jean de Florette to a near-empty house. I slipped out the side emergency door and into the bustling village center during an afternoon teatime full of busy sidewalk cafés and fresh fruit vendors. Wandering down to the farthest cart, I bought the most perfect red apple I’d ever seen, then headed down the winding road leading out of town, just another brown girl enjoying the late afternoon sun. After a half mile or so, when all I could hear was the sound of my own footsteps and one random, lonely bird calling to another, I took out my wand, twisted the top to mark the proper longitude and latitude points, pushed it in, and—BAM!

  I was stretched flat, rolled over, and ironed with the hottest coals while a New Orleans brass band playing off-key and up-tempo blasted in my ears and my eyeballs filled with the fires of hell. Then as fast as it had begun, it mercilessly ended and I was dumped in a painful heap in the middle of a field of swaying green grass and small purple wildflowers. Ahead of me, up the way looking all majestic and beautiful stood Château de Lunas, a twelve-bedroom, sixteenth-century masterpiece, complete with its own stone-clad chapel and ten-horse stable.

  Avery and Kash’s home.

  Kash’s final resting place.

  My heart hurt just looking at it.

  Then the rest of me followed suit as the strangest sensation began in my toes and rippled upward and I wanted to scream a warning, text it, anything, but it was too late. I stood in shocked horror and watched as a black ribbon of death wrapped itself around the enormous home and began climbing the façade, pushing its way inside through doors and windows, raining down hell on those who had already suffered too much.

  The muted concerto of the Black Copse, with Khan Mathew as its new maestro.

  I considered how prescient we’d been, Dutch and I, standing before that cathedral in Galicia, faces to the heavens, kissed by the sun, and full of a heartbreaking awareness that our time was nigh. We didn’t speak on it, but he and I knew, we simply chose to focus on all our remaining right here, with me, this moment instead. And as that black ribbon of the Copse wove its web of devastation and death against the backdrop of a beautiful French sunset, I thanked the gods we’d had those last moments together, his touch, my laugh, our broken beautiful smiles.

  A tear rolled down my cheek and went unnoticed because for seconds or minutes or maybe it was only fragments of moments, it was as if I ceased to exist and I wondered if this was what my final death would feel like or maybe this was my final death or maybe I’d never existed at all. Then a cry from inside the home caught on the wind and reached me in that field, shaking me from my stupor, and where seconds earlier I had been rooted to the green of the earth, I now rushed forth on wings of fury, my tongue breathing fire, my blood a black death all its own. I drew my blades and charged into the middle of the madness,

  slicing

  stabbing

  cutting

  killing anything moving.

  They flew at me from every direction, those nefarious bastards of silence and doom, and I sensed they recognized me from that forest of dread and all things evil and on a most basic level, somewhere in their collective psyche existed a growing comprehension that to continue their campaign of muted death, they would need to kill me first. And it mattered little whether they acted under the auspices of Khan or of their own volition, their magic ran deep and dark and it had metastasized into something far more terrible than any of us could have expected.

  I slayed as many of those beasts as possible as I made my way toward the house, hacking and clawing at them, my war cry as savage as their silent screams. We danced this death around and around while underneath all that madness a strange shift seemed under way. And where they came at me full of cataclysm and aggression, now they seemed something altogether more horrible.

  An exodus.

  Like a black carpet of death they swarmed and where they had once sought my blood on the tips of their steel, they now simply sought to flee. And where they usually seemed so orderly and contained, they now evoked unrestrained disarray, as if they knew not what to do with themselves and so tumbled and tossed all about, running to and fro, willy-nilly, all in an effort to escape that house on the hill and make for the woods. Hands to my face and blades drawn in protection, I moved through the madness, eyes full of their black capes and black eyes.

  Until.

  His boots caught my eye before the rest of him registered in my awareness because I was overcome and hardly expecting it. Custom-made Ferragamo steel-toe shitkickers I had called them that evening on the Vineyard when we all chatted around that dinner table late into the night and I joked that only he could dare to wear such expensive boots and not look a fool.

  Avery.

  Dutch’s dearest friend and protector.

  Caring soul with a deadly roundhouse.

  Widower.

  And now captive of Khan and his mute minions.

  Lofted high atop those waves of black, bloody and unconscious and most likely full of poison, I saw him and watched him being stolen away. And where I was once determined to make it inside that home on the hill, I was now running away as fast as my feet would carry me, straight into the chaos of their evanescence, determined to snatch Avery back from Khan’s clutches.

  So long as I never lost sight of the white of his shirt, I kept running through that green grass dotted with purple flowers.

  And running.

  And running.

  Until the last wisps of their black faded into the woods and they were gone. And so was he.

  I stopped at the tree line, bent over and out of breath, and screamed loud into the evening sky, my rage lifted to the heavens, my grief on display for an audience of none. This was the only way to give it voice, acknowledge the lifetimes of hurt trapped inside myself, and not sink others into the abyss of my heartbreak. I had to grieve when no one was watching.

  And when there was no more shout left in my lungs and the skies had heard enough of my carrying on, I gathered myself, pulled all the pieces of me tossed about that field back into my body, breathed deep, put one foot in front of the other, and trudged back toward that house. The quiet the Copse had left in their wake was still and devoid of life and as I stood in the bloody remains of Avery and Kash’s home, I felt terror like no other.

  Everywhere I looked lay bodies dead or dying, and what must have been a house of love and friendship and all things magic was ripped at the seams and covered in the carnage of Khan’s creation.

  “Dutch!” I called out as I stepped into the grand foyer, machete in hand and ready, despite the fact I knew the evil beasts had fled, called back from wherever they’d come, leaving behind little more than their foul stench and black blood. Stock-still, I listened to the distinctive sound of steel meeting steel and felt the chill of Keepers and knew whatever battles continued raged between those who’d picked sides long ago in this twisted game of lives.

  “Dutch!” I called again because I needed to find him and let him know I’d made it to this hamlet in a meadow at the end of a long and winding dusty road near a town of the sweetest fruit and a lonely classic film. I needed him to know I was here and very much in our moment. I needed him. And so I kept myself to the darkened corners of the house, pressed against walls and made small, and continued my search.

  I called his name again and again until my throat scratched and my ears rang with the sound of steel meeting steel and bodies going thunk. And the old me, that version that had a shit-ton of lives to live, would have stopped to pause on one of those thunks and recalled a night many nights ago when a man full of dark and danger expos
ed all my vulnerabilities and made me cry, then conveniently collapsed at my feet. But this me, last-life-to-live me hardly noticed those thunks, this me just kept searching and calling.

  A flash of lavender outside the window caught my eye and there at the back of the house overlooking a beautiful blue pool and what felt like miles of manicured gardens stood that brilliant woman of science and cunning and mystery with an RPG on her shoulder, a gas mask at her hip, and death in her eyes.

  Frist.

  Mowing down the last of the fleeing Black Copse as they tried to escape out the back windows and evade her massive gun filled with weaponized powder, and for a moment I lost myself in the beauty of her one-woman attack.

  It was like liquid death.

  Then the moment passed and once again, all of me became about all of Dutch. I crossed back to the foyer and ran up the majestic spiral staircase that soared two floors and appeared to touch the stars. I paused on the cusp of the second floor, and for two beats of a moment, the black of my boots in contrast to the blood red of the floor captured my attention and I thought, Avery definitely did not choose this carpet color, and choked down a sob. But before I could fall victim to the grief of my memory of his being carried away on the cloud of black death, I took a step forward.

  And another.

  And another.

  And then I heard him.

  Dutch.

  I would know his footfall, his breath anywhere.

  Up up up I went until I found myself alone—so high, I felt able to touch the rafters and kiss the stars.

  “Dutch,” I whisper-rasped his name into the quiet the still the solitude and wondered whether my desperate mind had conjured him because suddenly he seemed nowhere at all. And I panicked because what if like with Avery, I was too late and he had already succumbed and what I heard was his ghost tickling at the edges of my subconscious? What if he, too, was stolen by those muted motherfuckers? And while I combed this house for a trace of him, he was already strapped to that table back in that palace, suffering all kinds of untold horrors?