Death

by Madhuri Pavamani

  Fear clouded my judgment as I crept along the hall, weapons drawn, heart cracked and bleeding everywhere, awash in despair for his maybe, maybe-not fate.

  Until.

  My breath trapped in my lungs and all of me ceased motion of any kind and I locked eyes with those reflected back in the mirror across the hall. Dark pools of untold danger that I had known to dance and laugh and express immeasurable love but now remained hooded and betrayed little more than brief recognition.

  Dutch.

  He was standing near the back wall of the room to my right, placed in such a way we could see each other reflected in the hall mirror. He fisted his blades in each hand and held my gaze, so still and serious, the only betrayal of emotion a clenching and unclenching of his jaw, and in a flash I gathered he was not in that room alone. I remained rooted to my spot and watched his reflection, blood-splattered and bruised, with a gash splitting his brow and another his lip. Injured but alive.

  Very - much - in - this - moment alive. And even though part of my soul soared with this realization, the rest of me—that being who rose from the ashes of her despair to kick off her own purposeful reign of death and destruction, dismantling The Gate one Keeper at a time—slipped into the shadows and reassessed.

  Because of the design of the room, one way in one way out, I really had only two options: play the aggressor or a game of wait-and-see. I knew which I preferred, but there was Dutch to consider. And he seemed in no position to comment. I ran along the hall toward the back window and looked down into the backyard, that last space I’d seen Frist and her weapon of mass destruction. But she had since taken off and was pacing along the far tree line, giving those monsters the run of their lives—she would not be helping me anytime soon.

  I turned on my heel, pulled out the small blade on my boot, and grasped it between my teeth. Then I heard him.

  “You fucking piss-poor waste of space.”

  The words.

  The disdain.

  The goddamned accent I would recognize anywhere.

  Khan.

  I stood a little straighter and laughed to myself and thought, This motherfucker really wants to die. Then I took off down the hall to finish that monster once and for all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: DUTCH

  In a timeline made up of moments that felt far too ephemeral, this one topped the list. So much of Juma and me was too short or never enough, which was why it made perfect sense that the one time I’d prayed our seconds apart would drag out into long minutes into hours maybe more, there she was, standing in the hallway, staring at me with eyes of oblivion.

  Back in the cathedral in Galicia, as she held that doorknob and looked at me with tears in her eyes, and all of me shattered at her feet because I could not bear her sadness, her voice shook with a tremor and she told me she’d see me soon. And sure enough, that’s what she did. We were apart maybe forty-five minutes. Forty-five very significant minutes made up of quiet condolences and tears, and then Avery and I shut off from everyone to be alone with Kash and our despair, and then everything exploded in a black cloud of the Copse and Khan.

  Forty-five fucking minutes.

  I’d wanted hours.

  Because Juma had only one life left, and I sure as fuck didn’t want it wasted on these assholes. Because I loved her and wanted to protect her from all things evil. Because Juma was beauty and light and I needed just a few more moments of her.

  Instead.

  Those eyes—big and kind-of-brown, kind-of-gray, and so fucking intelligent—stared back at me from that classic gilt mirror in the hall. Eyes that didn’t miss a beat, caught even the slightest shift. Eyes that saw all the shit I spent lifetimes burying so deep, even I didn’t know where to find it. Eyes that knew.

  Right here, this moment—shit was fucked up.

  No two ways around it.

  Eyes that let you know she was ready for a little murder and mayhem, care of a many-pointed astra and a blade named Simone, so bring it, motherfuckers.

  Juma might not have known the details of what was happening inside this room, but the way she stood stock-still and held my stare and barely breathed at all let me know she knew it wasn’t good. And that I shouldn’t act the hero, that this play was a two-person show.

  And then she was gone.

  I wanted to shout a warning sound an alarm, do something anything to get her the fuck out of there, send her far far away, but I didn’t dare. I remained as is, motionless, and seemingly focused inward so as not to deflect attention from myself and place it elsewhere. On her. Or in her vicinity. Because the truth of it was, right now, while Juma remained on the other side of the four walls of this room, doing whatever she was out there doing, Khan and his fuckboys had no idea she even existed.

  Khan and his fuckboys thought it was all about them.

  “It is amazing to me how the simplest of tasks when dealing with you requires mountains of effort.” Khan paced and panted, and all of him looked like a caged beast despite the fact this motherfucker was free as a bird. He kept running his hands up and down the end of his leather whip and I couldn’t help wishing a little of its black magic would seep into his skin and rot him from the inside out. Then I laughed to myself because that asshole was already rotten through and through. “What the fuck is so funny, Dutch?”

  “I was thinking about how decrepit you are inside,” I replied, my tone conversational and light, as if I weren’t in a room outnumbered fourteen to one, looking right into the face of certain death.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he bellowed, and cracked his whip and opened the side of my face. Much to his chagrin, I pretended it was no big thing, and even though it hurt like a million little fires lit up my cheek, thanks to Shema, his magic could do me no more harm than it did himself. I, too, was immune to the darker arts of The Gate. “I can’t decide if I should kill you now, or bring you back to the palace and strap you to that table once more for posterity’s sake.”

  “Without Veda there to assist you, I would imagine it wouldn’t be the same,” I replied, invoking my dearly departed twisted sister, knowing it would break him and infuriate him and get under his skin like nothing else. “Don’t worry, she didn’t suffer. Much.”

  Crack.

  To the other side, this time a deep gash to my brow.

  “You don’t know the meaning of ‘suffer,’ Dutch,” Khan hissed, and recoiled his whip. “I’ll show you the meaning of ‘suffer.’”

  “You’ll have to kill me here because there’s no fucking way you’re getting me back in that goddamned palace.”

  Khan stared at me and then laughed. And when his fuckboys realized it was okay to join in the merrymaking, they started laughing as well. But it was a nervous sound and I knew Khan—in seconds he would become annoyed.

  “Shut up!” he shouted in their direction, and they quieted and some quaked and all of them looked nervous and not sure what to expect from their madman leader.

  “How do you blindly follow this asshole?” I asked no one in particular and all of them at once as the room fell into a hushed silence. I knew they would say nothing, I simply wanted the words out there for Khan to sit and stew over and go a little crazy about the fact he could not bend me to his will. And it struck me how similar Juma and I were to one another, both locked in battles of wills with forces so central to our lives, so full of unchecked power and hungry for the capitulations of our souls at their feet. The god of fuckery, that asshole I was going to have some words with whenever I escaped that despair-riddled white room Juma educated me on, definitely had his fingers all over whatever magic brought Juma and me together. I only wish we could have figured out why.

  “‘Blindly follow?’” Khan asked, then ripped out another laugh. “Is that what you think of them, Dutch? Mr. Moral Authority and All - This - Killing - Hurts - My - Soul? That I’ve somehow bullied them into being here, standing at my side? That by my side isn’t exactly where they want to be, near the seat of power, helping to steer The Gate into tomo
rrow?”

  I’d lived through hundreds of these moments before, where Khan got to lecturing and listening to the sound of his voice and falling in love with the bullshit he spewed, and maybe if I were able to remain quiet and let him finish, much of my life would have been different. But fuck that shit.

  “Follow or die seems to be the way it works around you,” I replied, and shifted slightly to the right as a few of the fourteen inched my way. I knew most of them, had known some of them my entire life, as they’d been family friends and around since I could recall, ties going back generations, long lines of interwoven bullshit. Others seemed fresh and new, like eager puppies with little desire beyond pleasing the master. All of them were motherfucking assholes upon whom I wished long and agonizing deaths.

  “I’ll tell you who’s going to be doing some following around here, Dutch,” Khan spun suddenly and bellowed, “you are, because we have unfinished business!”

  “Fuck you, Khan,” I spat, and fisted my blades, ready.

  “Fuck me?” he asked with a laugh as he paced, and snapped his whip at my feet and I realized that without Veda around to do his dirty work, laugh, and call him Daddy, Khan seemed older and not so larger-than-life. The rage that had fueled him all those years, twisted his brain, carved out his heart and served it up in some devil’s deal he signed many lifetimes ago, all of it remained, but now it made him appear almost comical in his ranting. And maybe that was partly due to the fact he’d already taken so much from me, there was little else I feared at his hand. But the other side of the coin was that now, I, too, had taken something from him. We weren’t equals, but I had definitely earned a notch in his belt of pain. And it might have been anathema for him to admit, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t the goddamned truth.

  I knew it, and so did that bastard.

  And that knowledge gave me a spark of hope.

  Not that I would make it out of this room alive, nor would he. But Juma might escape, and that’s all that really mattered. Because, yeah, she and I talked around her last life and pretended her death was something we could manage and be okay with. And all the beautiful moments we had together made our permanent parting less devastating. Plus, we were bringing down The Gate and Khan and all things evil and dark, so losing her was understandable and justifiable and maybe even expected. We got it. We understood her death was a result of being mere pawns in this game of lives.

  Truth be told, though, there was not one fucking thing manageable about a life lived without Juma in it.

  Not one.

  But I could never tell her that, because I didn’t want her doing in the shadows and away from me what I knew she would do anyway—try to protect me, save me from a fate I could never outrun no matter how much evil she destroyed. I knew if she saw me breaking apart over her deaths, losing pieces of myself every time I lost another piece of her, that she would slip from my side at night or stay away for longer periods of time to hunt and stalk and kill. I wanted whatever moments we had left to be spent together, and so I pretended I could handle losing her, that the lives we’d lived together were enough.

  But there would never be enough Juma Landry.

  Never.

  I could be promised every morning, noon, and night with that woman for eternity and I would argue for more.

  So yeah, standing there trapped in a game of too many against one, in that home ransacked and ravaged by dread and doom, a tiny part of my dark heart cracked open and let in a little light because there was a slim-to-nothing shot that motherfucker Khan was done. His reign of terror would come to an end in this room of oversized Renaissance paintings, golden candelabras, and Versace rugs, and someone else would take over and although I had no idea who that individual might be, at least it wouldn’t be a goddamned, cursed-as-fuck, blackhearted Mathew.

  Sparks of hope.

  One day someone would write a poem of the man with the spark and the hope and how the two came together and led him to entertain feats of greatness and bravery and inspired him to believe in the impossible, and what a dangerous state of grace that was.

  One day someone would whisper the truth: that neither the spark nor the hope were the roads less traveled, they were the ones to avoid at all costs.

  One day wasn’t today.

  “Yes, Khan,” I replied, “fuck you,” and as one of the fuckboys tried to slip into the shadows behind me, I slid my blade across its throat and silenced it forever, all without taking my eyes off the rest of those spineless bastards in that room.

  Khan raised a brow and nodded in my direction. “Somewhere buried under all the bitching and moaning and pussy antics lives a killer after all.”

  “The Mathew blood runs deep in these veins,” I replied, and his eyes flashed and I knew without speaking her name, his mind filled with his precious Veda and her death at my hands. “Like I said, she didn’t suffer—it’s not really my preferred style when bringing an end to my victims, Veda included because, yes, Daddy,” and here I imitated her voice and her very special way of saying “Daddy,” my inflection so very her, “your precious Veda was one of my victims.”

  He charged into me, cutting off my Veda-filled soliloquy when he could bear to hear no more. For an old man, Khan moved fast and still wielded the strength of an ox in those bones. I landed in the wall with a thud, the air momentarily knocked out of me and per all our other father–son moments, he used this one to pound his heavyweight-fighter fists into my sides. Bap! Bap! Bap! Fast and powerful, made-you-see-stars kind of painful.

  But that fucking spark of hope.

  Made me let him keep going because I knew he would tire and he would do so faster than he expected and when he did, I would kill him. Just as I’d killed Veda. I wouldn’t announce that shit or make a big thing about it. I would just let him wear himself out on my body, my thirty-plus-years-younger body that was lean and strong and had lifetimes of training under his very hands to withstand whatever he dished out. And when he was breathing hard and needing a break to rebuild his energy and begin again, I would drag my blade across his throat. Just as I had Veda’s.

  Because he didn’t expect it.

  And because hope.

  I had a little of it—that goddamned spark—and was going to use it to my advantage.

  And all of it was going to be to Khan’s disadvantage.

  So I let him pound away at me because his time was coming. The clock on his cesspool of a life was ticking down.

  Until.

  “Khan!”

  That voice. I knew it well.

  My uncle Darsh. Khan’s youngest brother, just twelve years older than I. We were closer in age but couldn’t be further in disposition and stature. Where I stood tall and lean, he was short and fat. My speed and capability as a Keeper seemed only to highlight his ineffectiveness and worthlessness as a Ren. And he hated me for all of it. Which was perfectly fine because the feeling was mutual. I despised that motherfucker the second I exited the womb, promptly vomiting all over him the first time he held me.

  “Yar!” he bellowed into Khan’s hunched-over back. “Take a look,” and his voice sounded smug and dangerous and somewhere in the depths of all my darkness, that spark of hope flickered and fought. “This one’s a goddamned beauty, she is.”

  And then went out forever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: DUTCH

  do not speak to me of

  darkness and evil

  and things that go bump

  in the night

  for I have spent lifetimes

  shrouded in black

  nightmares have throbbed

  a beat in my veins

  and moonsets have trembled

  upon the mere mention

  of my name

  only speak to me

  of her

  with her darkness is light

  evil is magic

  and the nighttime is

  for all kinds of

  tenderness and touch

  with her there is life

&n
bsp; moments full of laughter

  and everything matters

  with her

  I am home

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: DUTCH

  Merriam-Webster defines “déjà vu” as “something overly or unpleasantly familiar.” Then as a courtesy to its readers, the dictionary gives an example of the phrase in a sentence: “The team’s poor start to the season was déjà vu for its long-suffering fans.” I wonder if that example would remain the same if the good folks at Merriam-Webster walked in my shoes?

  “She” was Juma.

  As soon as Darsh uttered his “This one’s a goddamned beauty,” I knew it was her. Even though I told myself that if I didn’t look, it wouldn’t be her, or if I made Khan remain focused on me, it wouldn’t be her, or if I didn’t hear her voice or her breath or her footsteps, it wouldn’t be her. I still knew it was her.

  Juma.

  Always Juma.

  Even when I didn’t want it to be Juma, it was.

  Khan straightened and stood tall, and where seconds earlier he had punched the energy and life out of himself, now he seemed bright and refreshed. His eyes flashed death and despicable acts, and I recognized it all because I’d seen it before, played nine times over many moons ago, in a small Mexican apartment on a quiet lonely street where my youth perished in a vortex of screams and blood and all things horrific.

  But I was young then, and so new to the ways of evil and Keepers and all things The Gate. And Shema was at his side with her hands of black magic and her look-the-other-way eyes. And Kajal was by no means Juma.

  No one was Juma.

  So I grabbed the knives that had fallen to the floor and I reached him before he could reach her, slashing and stabbing his chest and arms with vengeance and fury, determined to render him sliced and diced and full of screaming pain. His shirt turned red with the blood I drew as he held his chest in shock and cursed. And his fuckboys attacked just as I had known they would, but I had already landed my fatal blow. Plus, I was ready for those bastards. Under over and around I moved, too fast for them to know where or when I would attack, dropping them like the motherfucking flies they were, immune to and unaware of the slashes and gashes to my body, my blood splattering everything, a most deadly masterpiece in the making.