by Daryl Banner
“Oh? There are Humans among you?”
Is he playing with me? “Yes. Two.”
“Strange.” Grim bites his own lip in thought. The green flames lick his face and swim through the air around him like emerald serpents. “The only people we found were you, Jasmine, and Helena.”
I watch his eyes carefully. Or rather, his eye.
“If there were Humans among you, we did not find them.” He seems to be watching me just as carefully, though I can in no way say for certain. The green stone in his eye socket from which he “sees” has no pupil. The only means of expression he has with it is in the subtle slant of an eyebrow. “I see you care deeply for them.”
I say nothing. I realize anything I say can be a weapon he can use to hurt me.
“You’ve become even more beautiful,” he tells me. “Time’s only done you pleasant favors.”
Half my dress is singed or burnt, most likely. The flesh on my neck is probably charred and I’m pretty sure I look like I fell through a chimney. “Thank you,” I say anyway, running a hand through my white tangle of hair.
“No thanks needed. I was always fond of you. I know I betrayed you, but … if I recall … I also saved your life. Twice. I’ll never forget that cliff where we met.”
“Or the vile Warlock you stabbed in the gut. Didn’t kill him, though. Jasmine finished the job you started. Got him right through the eye, in fact.”
I know I sound hollow, I can’t help it. The last time I saw Grim, I’d clipped his binds and set him loose. The crowd of survivors in the Square booed and hissed and treated him not so kindly, throwing things, chasing him out of the city. The image is forever burned in my mind.
“Winter, there is so much I want to tell you, and—”
“This is all my fault,” I say suddenly, cutting him off.
Grim smiles at my words. Somehow, despite green flames and that creepy glowing Warlock’s Eye, he’s still strikingly handsome when he smiles. “There is no such thing as fault,” he says, as if educating me. “Otherwise, I’d hunt the world wide for someone to blame for Raising the first Undead that ever existed. Whoever he or she was, I pity them. Must’ve been quite a lonely day, don’t you think? I wonder who named them? I wonder if they named themselves? I wonder if they walked the planet nameless, lifeless, deathless …”
I realize I still haven’t let go of the adorable horror-movie glass shank I made. “I gave you that Lock’s Eye. It was mine. It saved my life, that little green thing.”
His smile quakes slightly. “I don’t hold any hatred for the people of Trenton. You saved them, Winter. You. All I did was invite fear and … and mourning. I will never be able to atone and they will never forgive me. But I can do them the ultimate kindness. I can do it now. I have the power.”
When he says the word ‘power’, his eye shimmers boldly, like a promise. Part of me feels like I should’ve ended his existence in the Trenton Square that fateful day long ago … but I didn’t. And to be honest, I’m still not sure if I could, even now.
“What’s with these ‘friends’ of yours? Why are they all on fire?” My Raise’s warning creeps into my mind. I am not the last. “Are you, like, the new Deathless King …?”
He chuckles lightly, as if I’d told a cute joke. “No. I have abandoned that name. They died along with … their Queen.” He winces. “She made a ceremony of consuming Living flesh and giving those who bled a reason to live in fear … No, no, that’s not my purpose. Not anymore.”
I glance at the window, worried sick over where John is. Did he escape the hotel somehow? Did he make it out of the bathroom window, perhaps, scaling down the side of the building? From the strangely intimate attachment Grim’s followers seem to have with him, I wouldn’t be surprised if they hear one another’s thoughts. If the flame-people found John, Grim would know, I’m sure of it.
Of course, Grim has lied to me before.
“What’s your purpose, then?”
He steps toward me, crossing the room. His boots slap against the wooden floors. Yes, wooden floors, and I can’t by any stretch of my dead imagination explain why the whole damn city hasn’t burned down yet.
“The end is always near,” he says. “Whether a man or a woman or a child … or a tree, or a little bug waiting for a foot to crush it, or a spider web. Death is a gift, Winter. You and I have it. Let’s share it with the world.”
“Um, okay. But some still happen to be alive, so—”
“And we’ll give it to them, too,” he murmurs. “Your friends. All the people of Trenton. They will thank us.”
“Um, no.” I grip the glass tighter, ready to give him something equivalent to a paper cut for our kind with this stupid glass shard. “It isn’t up to you who lives or dies. Grim, you sound just like the Deathless King.”
“You see the terror in their eyes, don’t you? How they fear for their lives every single day? How they slump with exhaustion, and grovel when they’re sick? How they turn rash enough to kill a friend when their stomachs growl?”
“It’s called being alive.”
“And we can save them from that. We can save all of them. If the whole population were Undead, every last one of us, there’d be no more suffering. Don’t you see? Until each tree has fallen, until every flower has wilted, until the sky is painted in permanent silver, we will know no peace. It is inevitable, Winter. Death is inevitable.”
“So … this is about killing all Humans, is it? Genocide? All you care about is hunting them down like some crazy person and ending their lives?”
“No.” He smiles almost kindly. “More than that. I’m describing a complete and total annihilation of all life on the planet. Tree. Grass. Berry. Fruit. Animal. Every last breath. Every last drop of blood. Every last ounce of fear.”
Without anything alive, there will be no more blood. I will never be able to see the sky again. Never be able to …
He says: “No one will ever suffer again.”
“You think the Dead don’t suffer?”
He shakes his head. “Not all suffering can be avoided. For instance, I really want to kiss you right now, but I am politely refraining so as to … respect you.”
“You’d burn half my face off anyway,” I spit back.
“My flame won’t touch you. It won’t touch a thing unless I will it to, in fact. Must be one of my Warlock powers. The fire is mine to control, just like my friends.” He reaches for my hand and I quickly raise the shard of glass higher, ready to slice and dice and whatever else I’ll be forced to do in self-defense. “It’s simple, Winter. Our fire burns until every last Human is freed.”
“ ‘Freed.’ Oh, Grim … Don’t you value life at all?”
“Yes,” he tells me very seriously, his face hardening. “I value life very much. But Winter …” He takes my hand, and I let him this time. He brings it to his chest. “This,” he declares. “This is life now. You and I. We, we, we are the life. They?” He points. I presume he means to point at all the Living that are left in the world. All the Living and Breathing and Beating-Of-Hearts out there. “They are not life. They are not even living—They are dying. They will always be dying … and I want to save them from that.”
“I don’t consider myself ‘saved’ Grimsky.” My eyes detach from his green one. Staring off at the window, or maybe miles beyond, I confess to him: “I consider myself Damned. I am Damned, eternally … Damned to no pulse and no passion and no hunger. This is no life.” I shut my eyes, furious … horribly, horribly furious …
Furious because a wretched, shameless and disgusted little part of me … agrees with him.
“Bring both of your friends to me,” he says; a request, not a demand. “If they die naturally, I cannot guarantee their eternal existence. If you bring them to me, however, I will Raise them Undead.” I open my eyes, staring at Grimsky long and bleakly. “You’ll watch the life dissolve from their bones and the Undeath take their bodies anew. Witness it yourself, Winter. It’s rather beautiful.”
I notice he’s still holding my hand to his chest. It’s the hand that bears John’s ring, and I’m watching steam rise from his chest. He isn’t so much as flinching from the obvious pain he’s feeling, pressing my hand there.
I’m drawn to it. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Yes,” he confesses, smiling.
“May I have my hand back?”
He lets go. I reluctantly reclaim my hand. The steam seems to follow, hovering around my fingertips like little hissing ghosts.
“I wish I could see you without all that stupid fire.”
His smile is gentle, hopeful. “Someday, you will.”
I move across the room, feeling somewhat braver now and hoping beyond hope that John has, somehow, found a spot of safety out there. I’m clenching my own hand, steam still softly rising from it.
“So they do whatever you say?” I ask.
“My friends? Yes.” He’s approaching me from behind. I’m letting him. “Think of them more as … extensions of my conscience. Just extra sets of hands. Once the mission is completed, I’ll let them go. All of them.”
“You control them? Like … zombie-slaves?”
“The gifts of the Warlock’s Eye are different for each person who uses it. I suppose when I got the hang of my own powers, it manifested in the creation of Undead. I don’t think the last Warlock could Raise anything.”
“Your Warlock powers seem pretty fond of fire too.” I say it with an acid tongue. “Or is the fire an illusion, and that’s why it doesn’t burn anything but yourselves?”
“I can’t explain why it works the way it does. I’ve had lots of time to … play with my new Eye. There could be many explanations. For one, the last Warlock was alive, blood in his veins. I am not.”
“You are not,” I agree, saddened, desperate to reunite with my friends and just go home … except I wonder if, in a matter of time, there will even be a home to return to. The Human-Undead drama of Trenton is even far more preferable to a world blanketed in Fires of Damnation.
“Winter.” He puts a hand on my bare shoulder. It almost feels cold, his skin. “Please, please, Winter. I’ve waited so long. When the others first arrived, I was so disheartened to hear you were not with them. Imagine my joy when I got news that you, in fact, had come.”
I wonder, had I not made the choice to follow my friends here, would Grim have captured John? Would his life be ended by now, Raised as an Undead …?
“I have nothing left to lose,” he recites like a poem, so gently into my ear I find myself shivering. I remember a time when I thought he was a poet. “When a person turns Deathless, they make a certain and permanent sacrifice.”
“What sacrifice?” I think on Helen … Brains. I think on Benjamin and what he may or may not be.
“They sacrifice their First Life. The Deathless will not experience the Dreaming Death. Somehow, the Deathless Queen convinced us how useless our Waking Dream is … the False Self, the Old World, the Spirit Truth, the Life Flash. So many names, none of them able to contain it.”
I turn to face Grim now. “You mean … You haven’t had your Waking Dream, and now you—?”
“Never will,” he finishes.
I stare at him. A part of me truly wonders, what did I gain from my Dream? A very long series of cruel, prickly memories? A horrible girl named Claire from which I try, every day, to dissociate? A tangled web of guilt and pain?
Maybe Grim’s the lucky one. Maybe I’m the one who ought to be pitied.
“I can’t let your Humans leave the city,” says Grim. “It would betray the philosophy of my whole existence. I have my Eye on them, Winter. You will see. They will see. Death is a gift.”
Suddenly, there’s the point of a sword coming out of his ribcage, and he’s screaming.
“Run!!” shouts a little girl’s voice from behind him.
Instantly, I’m horrified. The sight of Grim in pain, in fact, makes me hurt too. “Grim!” I shout, for a moment not knowing where to put my hands, how to help him. Then in the next maddened instant, I’m wondering why the hell I’m trying to help him.
“Winter!! Go, go, go!!”
But I can’t. Not just yet, because suddenly I’m taken by the obvious way to solve all our troubles. I grab Grim’s howling face like a high school crush’s, then reach in to take his eye.
He’s too quick, though, knowing precisely what I aim to do, and while clenching his eyes shut, while issuing screams that could shatter the glass of every nearby building, while cursing the world and the mystery-killer at his back—and me—he wrestles away, shouting words I cannot make out; I doubt they are kind ones.
I lunge again for his eye, and suddenly Grim’s armed himself with something very sharp and he’s thrashing it at me, swinging it blindly, his eyes shut protectively.
The blade cuts a slash through my dress. I can’t get to his face. He swings again and the blade slices through my cheek. Before I know it, the green fire he wears is burning so bright, I can’t even see his face anymore …
“RUN!!” the little girl screams.
And then I’m going. I grab the hand of the girl—Megan—and bolt for the door. The sword still impaling him, the green and fiery figure of Grim collapses to the ground in a rage, still screaming, twisting and reaching for a way to free the blade from his chest.
Neither I nor Megan stay long enough to learn if he ever frees himself.
C H A P T E R – N I N E
E Y E S
“This way, this way,” she beckons me, unafraid, as we avoid the stairwell and, instead, sprint down a hallway toward an open window.
“I don’t have a favorable history with jumping out of tall towers,” I confess.
“We’re not jumping. I found a door with a big long hole and a rope thingy we can slide down!”
“Huh?”
When we reach the opened door of an elevator shaft that’s missing the actual elevator car itself, I realize what Megan was describing. “I’m not a very good climber, admittedly, but—”
“Just let me ride your back and you slide down!” She pushes me toward the door, eager. “Hurry, hurry! They’ll be coming for us!” She begins climbing onto my back, not even sparing me a second to prepare myself.
Staring down the—oh my god, are we on the sixtieth floor or something??—elevator shaft, I feel my stomach drop to somewhere around my knees. Even knowing I could survive the fall from a cliff, it does nothing to ease my natural fear of heights. Tentatively, I reach out for the cables, hoping to get a hold of them first. My fingertips keep missing them barely. The steam still lingers, hissing from the ring on my finger. Grim, the effect my hand had on your chest still isn’t leaving me be, apparently …
“Brace yourself,” I warn my Human backpack.
“Go, go, go!”
Gripping the cable now, I leap and wrap my legs around it like a dear, sweet lover. Instantly I begin to slide downward, my hair flying up and the air of the tunnel rushing past my face. I think I hear Megan shriek for a moment, but I soon realize it isn’t from fear; the fall is downright exhilarating, actually.
“THIS IS FUN!!” she screams.
“Hush! Don’t draw attention!” I say, even with a grin of excitement plastered across my face, and I’m pretty sure my voice is lost in the rush of wind moving by our faces, throwing our hair.
I wonder for a moment if I could’ve negotiated with Grim, had I had more time. But when I consider the hot conviction in his eyes, how they burned with a dream he’d latched himself onto … No, there’s no changing his mind, I’m certain of it. He talks about the others being under his control, but it’s almost like he himself is the one who’s been brainwashed into some death-seeking world-annihilating zombie.
As we near the bottom, I tighten my grip, slowing our descent, until we safely touch ground. Carefully, I pull open the elevator door and emerge into the first floor hallway. I hurry through the exit door to my left and the street’s cold embrace welcomes me.
“That wa
y,” Megan points, still clinging to my back.
“Did you find the others?”
“John and Helena are hiding in a bread shop that’s just down the street from that horrible hotel you guys were staying in.” She leans in closer. “But I couldn’t find Jazz or Benny.”
Just as I round the corner, we’re spotted. Two blazing men start hurrying down the street in pursuit. I bolt the other way, praying I can run faster and not drop the little Human on my back.
“We need to find her!” I cry out, frustrated. I’m really beginning to panic, now. “We can’t leave without Jazz!”
When I turn another corner, I nearly crash into a lady with bubblegum-pink skin and bright purple eyes. When she looks at me, something is missing—her awareness, her mind, her thoughts, I can’t tell. But I get the eerie feeling that the men-on-fire are not the only ones Grim’s found a way to control.
“Come,” she murmurs almost lazily. “I have a safe place for you to—”
“Shove it, Grim!” I yell at her. “Leave my Living be! Let us go! If you ever loved me at all!”
I shove her into a wall, hurrying further down the street while the lady continues to call at my back, insisting that her hiding place will keep me safe, and I already know it’s just Grim in another face, another body. Is there anyone I’ve spoken to in this city who wasn’t controlled by Grim somehow? The desk clerk at the hotel? Oreo and be-a-tortilla? Were they all just Grim’s “extra hands” …?
“I’m sorry about Grim,” Megan says into my ear, gripping my neck tighter.
I don’t know if I am.
We turn down another street, Megan insisting to know the way, and suddenly a burning man is pursuing us. I have no idea where he came from. Then, from out of nowhere, another appears right in front of me, bursting from the door of a shop.
When our eyes connect, I feel like I’m looking into Grim’s eyes … what his eyes used to look like.
I dart the other way, racing down a side street that empties onto the main drag. “Hurry, hurry,” Megan cries into my ear, and I can’t help but feel like I’m being chased by ten Grims, by a hundred Grims, by a thousand Grims. All of them have his eyes, even the women, even the little fiery children. He is everything and everyone. I can’t get away from him, no matter where I turn.