Die and Stay Dead (31 page)

“I’m not leaving, not yet,” I said, only half listening.

Another crash came from somewhere behind us. I heard a rushing roar in the distance, the sound of things being knocked over.

“We have to go! Now!” Bethany cried. She grabbed my arm and tried to yank me away.

I resisted, pulling myself out of her grasp. “I was
here,
Bethany! Don’t you get it? I have to know why! What if there’s something else here I recognize, something that sparks another memory?”

Isaac glanced down the tunnel in the direction we’d come from, then back at me. His eyes were big and wild. “Move!”

He grabbed me by the trench coat, dragged me back into the main tunnel, and pulled me along with him toward the ladder up ahead. I tried to break free, tried to brake with my boots against the floor, but Isaac wouldn’t stop. He pulled me farther and farther from the rune on the wall, and I hated him for it every step of the way.

A loud rumble behind us made me glance over my shoulder. A wild, rushing wave filled the long tunnel, barreling after us.

That brought me back to my senses. I stopped resisting and sprinted down the tunnel toward the ladder. Was this the way I’d run before? A year ago, when I awoke without my memories in front of that Ehrlendarr rune, I’d been so confused, so scared, that all I could do was run. I didn’t have any memory of my escape, only that suddenly I was outside. I risked a glance back at the rapidly approaching floodwaters. Had something been chasing me then, too? Was that why I’d run?

Ahead of us was the ladder, bolted to the floor in the middle of the tunnel. It extended up into a wide, round shaftway in the ceiling. I didn’t know where it led, but we didn’t have much choice. The ladder was our only escape from the flood. Bethany reached it first and quickly ascended. Isaac tucked the Codex fragment inside his duster and followed her. The fireball went with him. In the dimming light, I looked back one last time. A hundred feet back, the rushing wall of water slammed into the corner where the two tunnels diverged, and then the place where I’d had my first memory was gone. There was only the water, pushing forward, coming at me. My chest went tight with anguish. The Ehrlendarr rune, the first physical clue I had to my past—I had no idea if it had been destroyed, lost forever.

The water rushed toward me. I jumped, grabbing high rungs of the ladder, and pulled myself up after the others as quickly as I could. As soon as I had climbed into the shaftway, the floodwater swept by beneath me. The force of it shook the ladder. If I’d been a second slower, I would be dead. Again.

I started climbing up after the others. My heavy, waterlogged clothes slowed my progress. Water dripped out of my hair and into my eyes. I tried to wipe it away with the back of my coat sleeve, but the sleeve was wet, too, and only made it worse. Water, water, everywhere. If I never saw water again, I would be happy.

My heart felt like a dense cannonball sitting in my chest. I hated leaving the underground complex behind without knowing why I’d been there before. But what choice did I have? We had to get the fragment back to Citadel before Arkwright made another attempt to steal it. All the answers to my questions were underwater now anyway, inaccessible, even if we had the time to go back and look. I knew all these things, and I hated leaving anyway.

The ladder went up three or four stories into an enclosed, dimly lit space. By the time I reached the top, my arms and legs ached from the effort of climbing. I rolled onto my back on the blessedly dry floor to catch my breath. We were in a room big enough to hold maybe ten men. In the center of the room was the brick-lined hole in the floor I’d crawled out of. There were no windows, but there were horizontal slits in the wall high above us that let in a little air and a small amount of light. There was a door in one wall. Isaac’s fireball was gone, no longer needed.

I coughed, feeling completely waterlogged. I sucked air into my lungs, grateful for it even if it was the stale air of this room.

“Where are we now?” Bethany asked.

Isaac looked down into the shaftway. “The entrance to wherever we just were, I’d say. This must be how you get in.”

I got on my knees and stared down into the shaftway. I couldn’t see anything down there. Whatever lay below, I’d lost it.

“I was so close,” I said. “So fucking close.”

“I’m sorry, Trent, I truly am, but we can’t stay,” Isaac said. “Arkwright’s still out there somewhere, probably looking for us. We need to go. But I promise you, we’ll come back when we can.”

“Provided there’s anything down there anymore that the flood didn’t wash away,” I said, shaking my head. “No. You two can bring the fragment back to Citadel. I’m staying. I have to know.”

Bethany knelt down in front of me and looked me in the eye. “If there’s anything to find, you’ll find it. That’s what you’re good at—figuring things out, putting things together that no one else sees. Which, come to think of it, is pretty remarkable for someone who tends to punch first and ask questions later. But you can’t go back down there now. It’s not safe. And neither are we, not until we get back to Citadel.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I knew she was right, but what I was feeling was too big to let go of just yet. “I was there, Bethany. Back when I was Lucas West. Whatever happened to me, whatever made me like this, it happened
down there
.”

“We’ll come back,” she said. “If we survive this, if we stop the world from ending, we’ll come back.”

“Those are some pretty big ifs,” I said, but I nodded. She squeezed my hand.

Bethany stood and walked to the door. She tried the handle and found it unlocked. She pulled the door open a crack and peeked outside.

“I don’t see Arkwright,” she said.

She pulled the door open wider, revealing trees and grass in a corner of Battery Park. We hadn’t traveled all that far underground. The three of us left the little room and walked out into the cold, hammering rain. I looked back and saw we’d been inside a tall, angular, concrete structure in the middle of a lawn. It was white and featureless, aside from a patterned black trim around the top. A ventilation building for the nearby Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, most likely. When Bethany closed the door again, it blended seamlessly with the rest of the concrete slabs in the building’s façade, utterly camouflaged. The secrecy only made me more curious. Whatever the underground complex was, it had been deserted, its entrance left unguarded. Whatever it had been used for, it no longer was.

I thought about the bloodstained pit again. Something violent and terrible had taken place down there. Why the hell had I been in a place like that?

As we walked away from the structure, I kept an eye out for Arkwright. The autumn treetops made excellent hiding places, and I already knew Arkwright had no fear of heights. But there was no sign of him. That surprised me. He didn’t seem the type to have just gone home. He was desperate for the fragment. He wouldn’t give up that easily. No, if Arkwright was gone, there was a reason for it. Something had driven him away.

When we turned the corner of the ventilation building, a group of people were waiting for us, blocking our way. The stench of wet, rotting flesh hit me before I realized what they were.

Revenants. On quick count, there were seven of them. Now I had an idea what must have spooked Arkwright.

Standing front and center amid the revenants, with his arms crossed smugly across his chest, was Thornton. Or rather, his reanimated corpse. His pupils glowed red from Reve Azrael’s magic. His pale, bloodless lips parted in a grin.

“Hello, little fly,” Reve Azrael said through Thornton’s mouth.

I had my gun out in a flash, pointed right at her head. After being submerged in all that river water, I didn’t know if the gun would fire, jam, or blow up in my hand, but one shot to the head was all I needed—

A revenant I hadn’t seen came up behind me and yanked the gun out of my hand. I glared at the revenant, a male corpse whose mouth was frozen in a twisted, rictus grin. Smiley tossed my gun to Reve Azrael, who tucked it into her belt. Then Smiley yanked my arms behind my back and held them there. Looking over at Isaac and Bethany, I saw two additional revenants had restrained them the same way.

Okay, so there weren’t seven revenants. There were ten.

They were fresh bodies, the kind that could pass for living if you didn’t look too closely, and there were so many people in New York City that no one ever looked all that closely. It made me wonder where Reve Azrael got her stock. Did she just hang around graveyards waiting for fresh bodies to arrive?

Actually, I could see her doing that.

“Looks like you still have a knack for finding me, Reve Azrael,” I said. “Yesterday you sent the Fetch, but today you’re actually gracing us with your presence. Or as close to your presence as you ever get, anyway. I’m touched.”

“Do not be. You are not the only one I have come for,” Reve Azrael said. She approached Isaac. “You have something I want, mage.”

“I’m not surprised,” Isaac said. “Why don’t you start doing your own legwork for a change?”

“Why, when you can always be counted on to do it for me?” She pulled his duster open, reached inside, and pulled out the Codex fragment.

Isaac glared at her. “You wearing Thornton’s face like that is an abomination.”

She laughed. “I rather like it. His corpse is still strong from the spell his woman employed when she tried to save his life. It is a nice change from the host bodies that are usually available to me.” As if to illustrate the point, the other revenants pressed closer, the stench of their rot overpowering.

“And you, little fly,” Reve Azrael said, coming over to me. “You have something I want, too.”

I looked hard into those glowing red eyes. “I’m flattered, but I’ve got a girlfriend now.”

“I am here to offer you another chance,” she said. “Join me in what is to come.”

“What makes you think I’ll say yes this time?”

“I can be very persuasive,” she said.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Give it your best shot.”

She stepped aside. The crowd of revenants parted. I’d miscounted again. One revenant had been hiding behind the others, waiting to be brought forward. An eleventh.

He looked just as I remembered him. The same clothes, the same bullish stance, the same dark sunglasses. But his skin was mottled and discolored now, decaying in patches. The ocean of cologne he used to wear to mask his rot was gone. He smelled sickly sweet and foul.

“Good dog,” Underwood said.

Twenty-Three

The revenant I had once known as Underwood shuffled toward me with stiff, jerking movements. “Good dog,” he said.

It all came crashing back then. The loneliness of the fallout shelter where I’d been kept like a pet. The torture room behind the black door. The threats, the violence and death he’d manipulated me into. All the damn lies about helping me while only stringing me along. Promises made to keep me under his thumb.

“Good dog,” Underwood rasped again. Part of his cheek had turned green with rot. One spot had worn through, leaving a hole in which I caught a glimpse of his teeth. He limped closer.

The horror-movie zombie act was just that, I knew—an act. Reve Azrael was making Underwood behave this way to play with my head. It was working. I couldn’t think straight.

“Stop it,” I told her.

“Does it bring back fond memories, little fly?” she asked.

Underwood stopped in front of me and slapped my cheek lightly. His hand was cold and clammy like uncooked meat. “You’re my go-to guy.”

“Call it off!” I shouted, struggling against Smiley’s iron grip on my arms.

Now, at last, I understood why Calliope had drawn Underwood’s face in her sketch. It was more than a message. It was a warning. The spirits had known what would be waiting for me when I came here.

“You’re not real,” I told Underwood. “You never were. You’re a trick, a lie, just like before.”

“Careful,” Reve Azrael said. “You’re hurting his feelings.”

Underwood straightened, the horror-movie charade over. He wrapped one cold, waxy hand around my neck and squeezed, choking me as his grip tightened.

“Let him go!” Bethany yelled.

Reve Azrael ignored her. She walked over to me. “You still have something I want, little fly.”

Underwood squeezed harder, strangling me. I couldn’t get any air. A dark gray haze began to crowd the edges of my vision. I didn’t have much time before I passed out.

“You can join me,” Reve Azrael said, “or I can take it from you.”

“You won’t get it by squeezing it out of him!” Isaac yelled.

“I gave him the chance to come with me willingly, and he threw it back in my face,” Reve Azrael said. “Clearly, he needs convincing.”

I gasped, trying to breathe, but it was no good. Underwood was crushing my windpipe. I struggled against Smiley behind me, but the revenant was too strong and I was growing weaker. I tried to kick Underwood away, but there was no strength left in my legs. He continued to throttle the life out of me.

“Tell me, little fly, after he kills you, whose life force will you steal to cheat death this time?” Reve Azrael asked. “There are only two living beings close enough to choose from. Will it be the mage? That would leave your little team of misfits weak and vulnerable, without a leader. Or will it be the small, annoying woman? Oh, how that would destroy you. Perhaps it is a good thing, then, that you do not get to choose. The luck of the draw, isn’t that what they call it? Perhaps after you come back from death and see which card has been dealt you will reconsider your refusal.”

I would have spat in her face, but my mouth was too dry and my tongue too swollen.

The gray haze started to turn black. I only had seconds left. I panicked. I would rather die and stay dead this time than let Isaac or Bethany take my place. I couldn’t let them die like this. Not because of me.

“Let him go!” someone called out. Whoever it was, they sounded a thousand miles away.

A sudden shock wave knocked me back, knocked all of us off our feet. It was like a bomb had gone off right in the middle of us, but there was no explosion, no fire or smoke. And yet, something forceful had sent us reeling. I landed in a heap on top of Smiley. Freed from Underwood’s choking grasp, I breathed in huge mouthfuls of air, my lungs aching and burning. My neck felt sore and bruised.