Arise (33 page)

But Gaby didn’t look relieved to see me. She didn’t look at me at all. Instead, she stared past me to Alex. Her eyes were wide, her mouth rigidly set, her fists balled at her sides.

“Gaby?” I whispered. “You know him?”

Still without looking at me, she nodded. “Oh, I know him. He’s my ex-boyfriend. The one who killed me and my parents. The one who should be dead.”

Chapter

TWENTY-EIGHT

W
hen Alex—Kade?—laughed loudly, my gaze whipped back up to his.

But Alex wasn’t looking at me, either. Instead, he’d locked his eyes on Gaby’s. As he stared at her, his grin became even crueler, if that was possible.

“Missed you too, babe,” he taunted. From the corner of my eye, I saw her shiver.

“How the hell are you alive,” she growled. “And why the hell are you here?”

Alex laughed again and started to pace behind the young Seers, who still sat dazed on the concrete. As he strolled, he patted each of them roughly on the head like he was playing some bizarre game of duck, duck, goose.

“I’m alive,” he explained, “the same way Felix is still alive; despite my best attempt to die and take all of you with me, I survived. That’s the ‘how.’ And the ‘why’ is because you and your parents just weren’t a good enough sacrifice to satisfy the darkness.”

Suddenly, Gaby’s frozen exterior melted. Before I had time to stop her, she’d lunged forward, racing across the footbridge toward Alex as if she intended to tackle him and claw his eyes out.

Alex’s amused expression didn’t change. When Gaby had only a few feet left to cross, he reached calmly inside his jacket, pulled something out, and pointed it at her.

The second I saw moonlight glinting off the silvery object, I screamed.

“Stop! Gaby, stop!”

Thankfully, Gaby obeyed. She skidded to a stop a mere foot from Alex, her eyes now trained on the gun in his hand.

I raised both of my hands in a gesture of surrender and hurried to Gaby’s side. I’d just grabbed her arm to restrain her from doing anything reckless when she shook her head and smiled, looking as though she’d just come out of a trance.

“Can’t kill me twice, Kade,” she purred at Alex. “So who’s the gun for?”

Despite the fact that Gaby had just blown a major hole in his defense plan, Alex flashed her a serene, close-lipped smile.

“It’s for her,” he whispered.

Then, holding his arm straight, he swung the gun toward me, just for a second, before pointing it downward.

At Jillian.

My entire body went cold. Before I’d even formed the words in my mind, I heard them snarling their way out of my mouth.

“Point that gun somewhere else or I swear I’ll find a way to grant your wish and kill you myself.”

Alex locked his cold eyes onto mine. With his free hand, he reached across and cocked the gun. Then he used it to gesture significantly at Jillian.

“Correct me if I wrong,” he said, “but I think I’ve got the upper hand here. I guess you could
try
to wrestle the gun out of my hands and shoot me yourself. But you can’t even touch living people now, so that might be a little difficult.”

I gritted my teeth. “How do you know that?”

Keeping the gun trained on Jillian, he broke eye contact with me and gazed over at Gaby. “Oh,” he murmured, “I’ve kept pretty close tabs on my sweet ex-girlfriend. I mean, can you blame me? Just look at her.”

“You bastard,” Gaby swore. “You never loved me at all, did you?”

Alex faked a sad face. “No, babe. I didn’t. But I
did
love your history: granddaughter of one of the most powerful Voodoo Raisers in history. Too good to be true, really. I bet you didn’t know your gifts were as inheritable as mine.”

“My what?” Gaby whispered, looking simultaneously confused and horrified.

Seeing her expression, Alex laughed. “God, Gabrielle, really? You didn’t honestly think you came up with that resurrection spell all on your own, did you? Voodoo is in your blood—the spells you found at the Conjure weren’t Marie’s; they were created by your own grandfather. It’s your birthright to raise the dead. Why do you think I choose
you
to sacrifice to the darkness? The dark spirits wanted your gifts, even if those powers were still latent when you died.”

“So you … you really were trying to kill me.”

For the first time since I’d met her, Gaby’s lip quivered. Alex, however, remained unaffected by her show of emotion.

“Of course I was trying to kill you—and I succeeded. But Felix woke you from the death-fog before I could finish what I’d started. I changed back to my old name to protect myself and reenrolled at school. But I still spent two years stalking you, trying to get you alone so that when I either killed myself or got the Seers to reopen the netherworld, I could take you into the darkness with me. I even sent the Quarter ghosts after you once; but, unsurprisingly, they failed. Still, I’ve got to give it to you—you really helped me out by Raising yourself. Without the ability to dematerialize at will, you’re a much easier target.”

“So why didn’t you just do it then?” Gaby spat. “Why not capture me yourself and get it over with?”

Alex sighed, sounding as though Gaby had brought up a sore subject.

“Like I said, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. The spirits were getting restless. Then, right around the time you transformed, Jillian began to call Annabel to talk about Amelia. After that, the voices demanded that I get them
both
of you. Which was just so much
work
. First, I tried to get Amelia to join the Quarter ghosts so that they could hand her over to the darkness themselves. Then I tried to get her to trust me, which obviously wasn’t going to happen. So I just went ahead and set you two up with each other. I knew you couldn’t resist making yourself a buddy, Gabrielle, after that failed encounter you had with the Quarter ghosts. And now, here you both are—two birds with one stone!”

As he finished, I gave Gaby a sidelong glance. Right now she looked too stricken to speak. So I sniffed imperiously and addressed Alex for the both of us.

“Well, thanks for confirming what your parents already knew: you’re a demonic nutbag.”

Finally, my words struck a raw chord. Glaring at me, Alex reached down and jerked Jillian up into his arms. Holding her against him with his gun-toting arm, he used his free hand to pull something out of his coat pocket.

I saw the glistening liquid inside the syringe, right before he plunged the needle into her arm.

“No!” I shrieked, but it was clearly too late.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” Alex sang, tossing the emptied syringe aside. “I’m not hurting her—I’m just raising the stakes.”

Jillian’s upper body flopped limply forward. As Alex hefted her up and across his gun-free arm, her head lolled backward upon his shoulder. She moaned softly, and her eyelids fluttered.

“What did you do to her?”

“I woke her up,” he stated simply.

“She doesn’t look very awake to me.”

Alex’s nasty grin returned. “Give her time.”

As if to illustrate, he slid his arm aside and let Jillian go. But just as she started to slump to the ground, he wrapped his fingers in her hair and yanked her to her feet. The pain must have sped up her awakening, because her eyes—now much clearer—darted around frantically. As she steadied herself, her gaze landed on Alex’s crazed smile.

And the glint of his gun.

The second she saw that, Jillian grew very still—motionless except for the panicked rise and fall of her chest. I wanted to run to her, to jerk her away from him, but the gun hung in the air like an impassable barrier.

Alex gave her a quick appraisal. “Welcome to the party, Jillian. I was just telling the girls here about how you overheard them discussing how to open the netherworld by slowing their fake heartbeats. So … Amelia, Gabrielle, get to it.”

“We don’t even know if that will work,” I said. “It was just something we were going to try to do to help our parents.”

Gaby must have recovered, because she finally stirred beside me. “You remember my parents, don’t you, Kade?” she snarled. “Those two really great people you killed?”

When Alex smirked, I snarled, too.

“Now that I think about it,” I growled, “I don’t care if it does work. Because we’re not helping you.”

Alex laughed and pulled Jillian closer. Without taking his eyes from mine, he pressed the barrel of the gun into her sternum. “One or both of you needs to slow your heartbeat now. Otherwise I’ll just have to slow Jillian’s.”

For the briefest moment I thought about calling his bluff. Telling him to shoot at me and prove that the gun was loaded. But when a tiny squeak escaped Jillian’s lips, I couldn’t believe I’d even considered the idea.

Of course that gun was loaded. This boy had been plotting this moment for years; he wouldn’t forget a tiny detail like that.

“Don’t,” I whispered, defeated. “Don’t hurt her. I’ll … I’ll do it.”

Gaby shot me a stunned look. “Amelia, we can’t give him what he wants.”

“We
have
to, Gaby. I have to. I can’t let him hurt her.”

Still pressing the gun to Jillian’s chest, Alex seemed to swell with triumph. I kept my eyes locked on his and reached out one hand to Gaby.

“The zombie juice,” I said softly. “I know you have it.”

For a long second she didn’t move. Then, with painful slowness, she reached into the pocket of her cape and removed a tiny bottle. I waited for her to press it into my palm. When she didn’t, I turned to face her.

I found her eyes darting alternately between me and Alex. Her gaze lingered on him the longest, and I automatically knew why. After all, she’d loved him once. It must have hurt on a number of levels to see who he really was. To see the horrible thing he’d become.

And now he stood in front of her again, threatening not only our afterlives, but also the life of another young girl.

Gaby’s eyes met mine again, and inexplicably, she nodded.

Then, in a flash, she uncorked the bottle with one thumb and slung back its entire contents.

I shrieked again, diving forward so that I could
shake
the liquid out of her, but she had already swallowed all of the zombie juice. She flung the empty bottle to the ground, and it shattered against the concrete.

“Why did you do that?” I cried, still shaking her shoulders violently despite the fact that the damage was already done.

Gaby kept her face stoic as she brushed my hands off of her.

“I’m not going to screw this up for you again, Amelia. Besides, this is my fight.”

“No, this is
my
fight. The demons want me. They always have.”

“I guess they want both of us,” she said quietly. “Now shut up so we can hear what happens.”

I opened my mouth to protest but then clamped it shut instead. What
could
I say? How could I thank her for what she’d just done? Slowly, gently, I took one of her hands in mine and gave it a light squeeze.

Then we fell silent. Listening.

For a while nothing happened. The only sounds I could hear were my ragged breathing and Jillian’s occasional whimper.

Then, suddenly, it began: a faint
thud, thud, thud
emanating from Gaby’s rib cage. She heard it too, because her eyes widened and flickered down to her chest.

Alex apparently couldn’t hear it. Behind me, he made a small, impatient sound.

“Well?” he demanded. “Is it happening?”

I didn’t answer him. I just couldn’t.

By now Gaby looked terrified, and for good reason. With each passing second, the thudding from her chest became louder. But despite the volume of the beats, the silent, empty spaces in between them grew longer.

If those silences continued to grow, then soon her heartbeats would stop altogether. And neither of us had any idea what would happen to her then. After all, how do the dead die?

Although I couldn’t answer that question, I had a pretty good idea about what was happening to our surroundings. Although it was already a chilly night in the French Quarter, the air was growing colder. Almost unbearably so, to the point where my teeth began to chatter with each falling degree. Shadows started to lengthen and change, shifting from their normal grays to more livid, sinister purples.