Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2)

by Daryl Banner

  She lifts her head off the ground, bewildered. Her human arms don’t seem to work, and half of the scorpion legs have melted off her body, floating lazily in the water. Two of her limbs twitch, shudder, and then she croaks: “My friend. My friend, friend, friend, friend. You’ve come to save me?” She slowly grins with teeth, the creepiness of Shee returned to her eyes for only a moment. Then, her head drops heavily back to the earth, as if taken by sleep.

  I sit there on the bank, the stone gripped so tight in my hand that I wonder if I’m trying to bury it there in my palm. I grow numb to the pain of the water stinging my Undead skin, regarding it not at all.

  If I had breath, it would all be stolen away. My eyes, they would be welled with tears of exasperation. My heart, it would be yearning for that day in the meadow, that day when I thought I’d found a true peace in this dead, peaceless world. I remember it all, Grim.

  What’s happened to you?

  I stare at Shee’s unmoving body. It isn’t until a full ten minutes later that I realize I’m still clutching the broken wing with my other hand. Letting it drop to the soil, I bring the stone up to my lips with both hands and kiss it. The Warlock’s Eye that I’d given to John, who then gave it right back to me for protection. My little piece of John.

  “Winter?”

  Coming from behind, John has emerged, taking a few steps in front of me. He observes the creature on the other side of the river, cautious, alarmed.

  He turns back to me. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes.”

  “How … How did it find us?”

  “Grim.” I say, “I don’t think he has control of her anymore. When she wakes, if she wakes, she’ll be herself again.” I look up at John, despair in my eyes. “He knows where we are. We went up into the sky. He saw Garden. Or maybe he knew all along. I feel like …” I can’t even say it, the words trapped in my chest.

  John crouches down in front of me. His eyes focused, stern, fiercely connected to my own. “Don’t keep nothing from me,” he demands. “I see it in your eyes.”

  I kiss John, if just to interrupt his sudden rage, our lips touching for a second, before I finish: “I feel like he was … making his final plea to go willingly, before he …”

  “That Green Monster doesn’t belong here. He knows he doesn’t. He can bother the whole rest of the world with his killing wishes and his green-eyed curses, but he can’t have you.” John pulls me in for another kiss, and then we drop to the bank. I lay myself on his solid body where I get to feel the pleasure of every twitch and squirm and movement of his muscles beneath me. His arms squeeze so tight, I fear I could snap.

  John tells me the moon is bright tonight just before he drifts off to sleep and the deep breathing takes him over. “I love you,” I whisper to the side of his sleeping face, holding him close. Full and pale and bright, that moon, and I imagine what it might see if it could peer down on the two of us. I wonder if it could tell our kind apart, Human and Undead, or if it would simply see two lovers on the riverbank … trapped in one another’s arms.

  Not an hour later, there is a distant scream.

  John stirs, flicking open his eyes. We both sit up, listening to the eerie, distant cries. Are they coming from Garden?—or is someone screaming in the wilderness? I almost can’t tell. Our panicked eyes find each other.

  Quickly, we tear through the thorns and the vines and the deadwood, rushing toward the crater. The screams sound distorted and strangely hollow, whisking through the trees on their way to my ears. Twisted coils of color bleed into the sky. My feet can’t carry me fast enough. John trips twice, falls behind, but I’m still running.

  At last, I reach the wall of the crater, pull myself up to the lip of the ridge and peer into the valley.

  At first glance, it looks like Garden’s being showered mercifully by a gentle rain which, by the light of a sun that is not in the sky, casts a rainbow upon their world. But there is no peace in the surprise invasion of Grim’s Burning Army as they pour like ants from an enormous hole in the earth. Grim didn’t need to get past a silly moat; he learned from the mastermind Shee, the insect queen, and burrowed his way in. Spiders and scorpions and dragonflies and hundreds of other bugs I can’t name are swarming with such angry temperament, one might think them a buzzing black storm cloud that’s descended on Garden. But the thunder one hears is in the form of men screaming for their lives, of women shouting like wild animals, of steel licking steel and sparks flying. Among the madness down there, I know that Marigold and Helena and countless others are, against their will, fighting on the wrong side of this war. Until it’s over, there is nothing good I can do to stop them.

  In a flash, John rushes past me, flinging himself over the ridge and tearing down the steps of the crater. I hardly flinch before John’s thrown himself into the chaos.

  “JOHN!” I cry out. “DON’T!”

  But my plea is lost on the Human with which I’m in love, the Human who must charge in to save his friends. Seeing as Jasmine is not here, she must have run down there too. Somewhere else in that madness, the Green Death himself, Grim, is working heartily to claim every last ounce of my happiness left in this world.

  I plunge onward, teeth bared and ready. It’s time for his green reign of fire to end.

  C H A P T E R – N I N E T E E N

  T H E N E V E R D R E A M

  The closer I get, the closer the green gets.

  Every step is a fateful step into the Garden in which I never thought I’d permit myself. Somewhere deep within the imagination of me, a heart thrashes.

  Thump, thump … with my every step.

  I’m still running and the first blades of grass become the first victims of my Undeadly presence. I keep on, and soon there is plenty of green beneath my feet. But behind me as I pass, it’s green no longer.

  The screaming swallows my skull until it’s all that I am. Megan’s scream is in there too, and the Chief’s, and Gunner’s … and somewhere lost in there, John’s. In the earthen bowl of Garden, there is no escape from the sound and the sights and the hellfire.

  At once, I spot Grim, his green fire burning in an unnatural hue contrasting horribly with the green of the world around us. He’s perched on a stone, calling out to the warring crowd: “Come willingly and this chaos will end! The world is doomed anyway!”

  And doom he casts here, doom he casts there. The flames of the Undead swallow the cries of the Living, until I can’t even hear the bite and scrape of steel anymore. Buzzing and skittering among them are unrested bees and flies and critters with too many legs.

  Even with the flames burning, I can’t for a while distinguish Humans from Undead. I push through two people and narrowly miss receiving an ugly haircut from someone’s throwing axe. Somewhere ahead of me, a fiery Undead reaches out desperately to take hold of the Human’s sword that’s swinging toward his head, but he is too late, and where once he was one part, now he is two, and then three, and then four …

  “Incapacitate them!” cries out the Chief, bursting forth from a throng of dizzied Undead. “Hands! Heads! Chop them off! Hands! Heads! Hands!”

  One such hand goes flying in a pretty arc in front of me. To my side, a head follows, and if I hadn’t stopped short just now, I would’ve caught it like a football. The thing rolls by my feet and I care not to identify to whom it belongs. My only priority right now is finding John.

  Instead, I find Grim again. He’s moved farther away, his phantom green flames burning so bright, I’m shocked he hasn’t burned away the cabins and the trees, even with his fake fire. I fear the level at which his necromancy must be engaged, to somehow orchestrate every limb and look and swing and chop of his enslaved Dead.

  But he is not perfect, and many of the Undead turn clumsy, their swings of blades missing the Human heads they aim at. The Humans cling to this fortunate lack of accuracy, retaliating with brutal, calculated force.

  An arm lands two strides ahead of me, still gripping a sword. Uncaring who it belongs
to, I snatch the weapon, its hilt made of wood, prying it from the fingers.

  Maybe this is Jasmine’s weapon. Or Marigold’s. Or …

  I spot Gunner atop the roof of a cottage next to me. He nocks an arrow and cries, “Not today!” before loosing it at his target. It zips through the air so fast, I can’t even follow it, and then suddenly I’m watching Grim reaching at an arrow that’s stuck in his shoulder. Gunner seems disappointed by his hit, however, as he likely was aiming for Grim’s pretty eye. “But I never miss,” Gunner says, amazed for only a second before the blunt side of an axe slams into his head, throwing him off the side of the cottage.

  “Gunner!” I cry out, but as I charge in his direction, a wall of fire forms, blocking my way, and each flame is made of a person with a face more filled with malice than the next.

  I’m blinded by the flashing and twisting of colors. I’m driven deaf by the screams of throats and steels. I can’t distinguish a single face that blocks my way …

  Until Helena is standing there with a sword hanging to the ground, its point cutting a waterless creak in the earth as she marches toward me, dead-faced and wordless. Her steely eyes are locked onto mine as she lifts the sword to slay me. Is it Grim in there, still? Is any part of the Grim that loved me watching this, watching me through her eyes, desiring me to be cut into bits before him?

  “Sorry,” I tell Helena before slicing her in half across the waist. Without even a grunt of surprise, she falls to the ground almost gracefully, now in two pieces. Her arm is still trying to cut me with her blade, so I chop it off too and apologize yet again.

  When this is over, I promise to put her back together.

  Hopping over her, I find myself climbing onto several Undead who’ve seemed to become a confused, wriggling pile of limbs. It’s atop this heap of Dead that I spot Megan, completely unarmed, confronting two burning men. With only her hand, she seems to be channeling their Anima and releasing them from Grim’s control. The recovered men look bewildered, staggering helplessly. “You’re free!” Megan shouts. “Wake up! Help us! Pick up a weapon!”

  An Undead is coming for her back.

  “Megan!” I cry out. “Behind you!” I’m racing toward her, lifting my sword in the air, prepared to make a swipe of it at her assailant.

  In one quick motion, Megan’s grabbed a sword off the ground and thrusts it through its head, right in the looker. “Eye for an eye,” sings Megan, driving the now-impaled Undead away from her by walking it into a tree. “Take that, Grim! You have no power over me, you hear that??”

  He hasn’t any power over her, but he still has power over too many. We won’t win like this. It doesn’t end until Grim does. I can’t protect my friends; they have to fend for themselves now. The green fire began with him and it will perish with him.

  I grip the wall of a cottage and hoist myself up onto its roof to get a better vantage point. Across the cacophony of blades and screams and fire, I see Grim. He’s rushing up a ladder that leads to a very high treehouse of sorts that connects two mighty trees like a bridge. As he ascends, the tree itself seems to turn grey at his touch …

  I see John as well, boldly chasing after him.

  “JOHN!” I cry out.

  He doesn’t have a Lock’s-Eye. Grim will kill him.

  I tear off the cottage, throwing myself through the crowd in wild pursuit of them. Several faces pass by, faces of Humans, of Undead, of Humans that very recently became Undead … and among them I see Ash, her glass eyes throttled as an axe takes her in the back, and I see Nelson among the mobs, fire swallowing him as he swings his axe dumbly at anything that moves.

  Even the Chief; his life has been forfeit, given to the Undead. I see him searching listlessly for a Human to slay. The Chief. My heart is up in my mouth. The Chief …

  How many more sacrifices must we make before Grim is ended?

  And then I realize the reason: the Chief gave his stone to John. That’s the only explanation I can think of. He knew John was going for Grim, so he gave him his stone to protect him. It’s only speculation, what may have transpired, but it’s all I have when there’s no one left to tell me what’s happening, to explain to me the reason for this madness. Everyone has turned Undead all around me, I can’t bring myself to observe who is left. Did Ash give herself willingly to the Undead because her lover had been taken? Was it her way of ending the nightly tears? Did Nelson join her so she wouldn’t be alone?

  There’s a scream to my left, shouts of murder to my right, and spiders skitter across the dying grass, hissing and clicking as I race by. Only John matters, now.

  Garden was so full of colors bright and vivid before the Undead came, and now it is even more full of colors, but in the form of fire. And as the Undead spread further out, the color slowly drains from the world. Every purple flower wilts gently to grey. Every bright yellow blossom, every leaf, every single blade of grass dies its own, private death. Where the fire leaves, it takes its color permanently with it. Ever slowly, ever patiently, Garden suffocates, its color bleeding into the empty embrace of grey.

  I slam into the bottom of the ladder and begin my urgent ascent. John is far ahead of me, already nearing the top. The further I climb, the more difficult it is to manage getting my hands on the next rail. I have never been more focused on a target. My dead, dumb limbs can’t keep up.

  The world falls below me. The chaos and the furious little fires that know not what they fight for.

  Fourteen more steps and the final destination will be reached. “John, stop!!” I call out in vain. Twelve more steps. Nine. Eight. The treehouse is so far up, I won’t dare look down. Even my nerves that don’t properly exist are already shot beyond repair. “John!” Four more steps. Three more. Two more.

  One.

  The ladder spills me into a beige, wooden room with no furniture, floor-to-ceiling windows that line either wall like giant eyes … and Grim. He stands at the other end of the room, blanketed in furious green tongues of flame. The sounds of the war beneath us hiss into the room through the cracks in the floorboards. Even the rainbow haze of the Undead fire seems to float in the dusty air like a death sentence.

  I rush to John’s side, gripping my sword and watching Grim with deadly conviction. John hardly seems to notice my arrival, as his eyes aim furiously ahead at our enemy.

  “We end this,” growls John. I’ve never before seen a fury so deep in his eyes. Not ever, not even in the Battle for Trenton. “You cannot harm me. You cannot touch Winter. You pull out that eye and you—”

  “And what? I cannot die.” Grim is composed, calm. “You must readjust what you are witnessing, John. Your friends are not dying. Your Chief is not dead, no more than Winter is.” His cold, poet’s eyes survey me. His voice is so level, it’s like he believes he can actually reason with us. “Remember your first days in Trenton, my love?”

  “DON’T SPEAK TO HER!” John shouts, the sword in his grasp shaking so terribly, he’s making diced meat of the air in front of him. “DON’T YOU DARE!”

  “You were my first love. I was yours.”

  “I WILL CUT YOU INTO PIECES!” screams John. There are tears in his eyes. I realize he’s afraid. He doesn’t know what Grim is capable of, whether by the power of his fire … or the power of his words. John won’t simply charge at Grim because there is no certain victory here.

  “Do you remember?” Grim asks once more.

  I step gently in front of John. If there’s anyone on this cold dead planet who can reason with Grim, it’s me. “I remember meeting you. I remember that you made my fake Second Life in Trenton bearable at first. I remember your kindness and your care and your … poetry.”

  “Don’t speak to him,” John begs me from behind. “He will lie to you. He’s evil. His mind is warped. He doesn’t deserve to exist after what he’s—”

  “I was created Deathless for one purpose, and one purpose only,” Grim goes on, drowning out John’s pleas. “I was sent to confirm that you had been Risen. I was sent to
collect you. I was sent to recruit you. I was not sent to fall in love with you.” His eyeless face wrinkles, but for the green stone that flashes. “But I did.”

  I take John’s hand and give it a comforting squeeze, then drop my weapon and take a step toward Grim. “You did?” I ask, encouraging him to go on, and I hope John’s rage aids him in seeing through what I’m about to do, while Grim’s so-called love continues to blind him.

  “When the Deathless fell and the Mayor fell and the Necropolis burned … I knew what was next for us. The world must burn, Winter. What are we after our Waking Dreams, but prisoners to our past? What is the world of the Living, if not a punishment for our having died? Death is blameless. Every life is spent dying. Even he, that man named John, even he is dying.”

  I am slowly crossing the room, unarmed. The hissing sounds of the war below plays into my ears and tickles my neck like an unwelcome friend. “Waking Dreams can be pleasant,” I tell him.

  “And I will never know. I won’t stop until I’ve even killed the Waking Dreams, every last one,” he whispers, and I hear his every last word. “There is more than one kind of dying. There is more than one kind of Dead.”

  I come to a stop only two strides away from Grim. This close to him, his Eye pulsates with such a violent green light, it looks nearly blue.

  “I wanted to build us a world,” he whispers, and I remember the poetry in him so well. I remember our time together like it was only last week. John says my name again, warningly, but I continue to listen to Grim. I’m so close, I might be able to pluck his eye right out. I’m calculating whether or not I’d be quick enough; one misstep and the whole world burns. “But I cannot live in it alone. Please, Winter. Wake up from this dream you’ve built yourself with this … Human. It won’t work. Even if I turned him Dead, Winter, he would not belong to you, and you would not belong to him—but if you were mine, Winter, just think—”