Die and Stay Dead (45 page)

“Unless,” said another Guardian.

“Unless,” added another.

“Unless you die.”

“Die a true death.”

“I don’t believe in prophecies,” I told them.

“Belief has nothing to do with it. Not believing in snow will not stop a blizzard,” the Guardian of Time said. “Find a way to die, Immortal Storm. Before the prophecy comes true.”

Thirty-Four

Isaac drove us back to Citadel. The rain had finally stopped. The wet blacktop glistened under the Escalade’s wheels.

“I can’t believe the Guardians gave you the information,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “How did you convince them to help?”

“Must be my natural charm,” I said.

I was still trying to process what the Guardians had told me.
The Immortal Storm is the force that will destroy us all.
It hit a nerve, reminding me too much of what the oracles had said. For a while, I’d thought I was free of the curse of the Immortal Storm when I was Lucas West. But that had been a lie. I wasn’t free at all. I was starting to think I never would be.

“Charm? After the way you spoke to them, you’re lucky the Guardians didn’t turn you into a frog,” Isaac said.

“Can they do that?”

“I think they can do pretty much anything,” he said. “That’s why it stings so much when they refuse to get involved.”

But they’d gotten involved this time. Why? They refused to say, other than that everything was playing out the way it was supposed to, whatever that meant. I unrolled the scroll again, looking over the strange, blocky letters. At first I’d thought they’d been written in ink. Now I saw they’d been expertly burned into the parchment, without burning
through
it. It was amazing workmanship. Impossible workmanship.

“You’re sure you can translate this?” I said.

“I think so,” he said. “If I’m right, it’s a very old language, one that hasn’t been seen in a long time. But there are texts I can consult. I just need time.”

“What language is it?” I asked.

“I think it’s Elvish,” he said.

“I thought there weren’t any elves left. Didn’t they all take off for greener pastures after World War Two?”

“They did,” he said. “But look at the scroll again. It doesn’t look particularly new to me. It could have been written centuries ago.”

“Why would elves write a scroll centuries ago with the information we need now, in 2013?” I asked.

Isaac shrugged. “Where the Guardians are concerned, I’ve found it’s best not to ask too many questions.”

*   *   *

When we reached Citadel, Gabrielle met us at the door. I grilled her for an update on Bethany.

“She’s resting comfortably,” Gabrielle said. “I put her in your room. I hope that’s okay. I didn’t know where else to put her.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“I’ve been treating her burns with Sanare moss,” Gabrielle continued. “She’s stable now. She’ll pull through, but she’ll almost certainly have a scar.”

I sighed with relief. Bethany was going to be okay. The three of us climbed the stairs to the second floor. Isaac took the scroll with him to his study. He paused at the door.

“I’m not to be interrupted,” he said. “Not for any reason. I need to concentrate if I’m going to translate this.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Gabrielle asked.

He shook his head. “I just need time.” He shut himself in his study.

I looked down the hall at the door to my room. “Can I see her?”

Gabrielle nodded. “She asked me to send you in when you got back. Just be sure to let her rest, okay? She’s going to need another treatment soon. Come get me when you’re ready and I’ll take care of it.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

Gabrielle went back downstairs. I started at the door to my room for a moment. The last time I’d been here with Bethany, we’d gotten into an argument about Jordana. I felt like a fool for not listening to her. I knocked softly, opened the door, and went in. The room was dark. The shades had been drawn over the window. After I gently shut the door behind me, the only light was the dim gray of the approaching dawn seeping in around the shades. Bethany was sleeping on the bed, facing away from me. Kali was curled up on the covers by Bethany’s legs, purring and dozing. It was obvious the cat liked Bethany more than she liked me. She’d made the right choice.

I sat down in the chair across the room and put my head in my hands. This was my fault. I was the reason Bethany was hurt. Gabrielle said she’d be all right, but what if the wound had been worse? What if the Thracian Gauntlet’s blast had hit her full on? I’d almost gotten Bethany killed. My blindness—my stubbornness—had almost killed my closest friend.

In the darkness of the room, I heard Bethany speak. “You asked me once if I remembered my family. I don’t.”

“I didn’t realize you were awake,” I said, sitting up.

“My parents gave me up when I was very young, too young to remember them,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about them. I do, all the time.”

She turned to face me. She grimaced a little as she did, as though it hurt to move. More guilt surged within me. Upset at having lost her dozing spot, Kali jumped off the bed and scurried into the darkness beneath it.

“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone,” Bethany said. “When I was young, I would think about my parents for hours on end, but I didn’t know how to picture them. When I thought of my mother, I imagined the illustration of a queen I saw in a storybook once. She didn’t look anything like me. She was tall and blond. But she was also beautiful and strong, just the way I hoped my mother was. When I thought of my father, I pictured … God, I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Go on.”

She sighed. “The man I pictured was Patrick Stewart. I watched a lot of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
in the foster homes back then. I guess I wished my father was Captain Picard. Or someone like him, anyway. Decent. Honorable. A man who lived a life of dignity, a life in control. The opposite of the life I had. I made up this whole story about how my parents never wanted to give me up, but were forced to for some epic, tragic reason. It was childish. I know that now.”

“It wasn’t childish,” I said. “You invented a story you could live with. I did the same thing. I invented a lot of stories trying to come up with a past for myself.”

“I’m sure none of them involved Captain Picard,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Captain Sisko was more my style. He was a badass. He didn’t take shit from anyone.”

She laughed. It was remarkable how much I’d missed that sound.

“Remind me again how an amnesiac knows so much pop culture?” she asked.

“A television in the fallout shelter and a lot of sleepless nights.”

She sat up in bed. She switched on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in a warm, golden light. She had changed out of her street clothes and into a loose-fitting nightgown that presumably wouldn’t irritate her wounds. Her face scrunched in pain and she let out a small groan.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“The burn on my back is flaring up again,” she said. “I need more Sanare moss. Could you get Gabrielle? I’d apply it myself, but there are spots on my back I can’t reach.”

“How about I do it for you?”

She looked at me, surprised. “Are you sure?”

I stood up. “I haven’t exactly been a good friend to you lately. I’m sorry for that. I want to make it up to you, but I don’t know how. Taking care of you seems like a start.”

She regarded me for a moment, looking deep into me with those bright blue eyes. Then she nodded and pointed at a clay bowl on a table at the foot of the bed.

I picked up the bowl. Inside it was a lumpy green goo. I’d seen Sanare moss in action before. It sped up the healing process at an astronomical rate. I hoped it would do the same for Bethany’s burns.

Bethany turned her back to me and lifted her nightgown off over her head. Most of her back was covered with the tattoo of a fiery phoenix, a sigil that prevented magic from getting inside her and infecting her. But strong as it was, it couldn’t protect her from physical harm. A long band of red, burned skin stretched diagonally from her left shoulder blade to the small of her back, just above the waistband of her panties. But it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The previous Sanare moss treatments were already helping. Bethany held her crumpled nightgown to her chest, covering herself as she sat cross-legged on the bed. With one hand, she gathered her dark hair together and draped it forward over one shoulder so it would be out of the way.

I sat down behind her, unsure what to do. I thought for sure if I touched her, it would hurt her. She’d already been hurt once today because of me. I couldn’t stand the idea of hurting her again.

She sensed my hesitation and looked over her shoulder at me. “It’s okay, just be gentle.”

I could do a lot of things. I could fight creatures twice my size. I could die and come back. I could pluck the threads of the world and make it shudder. But gentle was something I didn’t know if I could do. Gentle was something I’d never been.

I dipped my fingers into the Sanare moss. It felt cool and gelatinous, tingling against my fingertips. I scooped out a dollop and began to spread it on Bethany’s back. The moss appeared green and lumpy in the bowl, but it went on clear and slick like an ointment. She shivered as I applied it.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “It feels good.”

I spread the Sanare moss across her shoulders first, then worked my way down her back. In the few places where her skin wasn’t burned or colored by the tattoo, it looked as pale as china compared to mine. The burnt skin felt rough to the touch at first, but the moss turned it smooth almost immediately. The tattoo had essentially been cut in two by the long stripe of the burn, but it began to knit itself back together under the moss, tendrils of color joining together and becoming whole again. Clearly, the shaman who’d tattooed her had not used regular ink.

Bethany was warm under my hands. Her body temperature had always been higher than normal, but now, touching her bare skin, she felt almost hot. It was like warming my hands before a fire.

“It’s funny, usually
you’re
the one fixing
me
up,” I said, because suddenly I needed to say something. I needed to be doing something other than just touching her. The sensation was confusing me, making me feel things I thought I didn’t feel anymore.

“It must really be the end of the world,” Bethany joked.

“If it is, the Guardians don’t seem all that worked up about it,” I said. While I applied the moss, I told her about our visit with the Guardians and the scroll they’d given us. “It’s supposed to tell us the location where Arkwright is going to open a doorway between dimensions, but it’s in another language. I couldn’t read it. Isaac is trying to translate it now. He thinks it’s written in Elvish.”

She looked at me over her shoulder again. “Elvish?”

I shrugged.

“Why would Arkwright need to open the doorway?” she asked. “Nahash-Dred is already here.”

“I asked the Guardians the same question. They didn’t elaborate.”

“It figures,” she said. “So you actually saw the Guardians? I never have.”

I thought that was a good thing, considering the price of admission.

“What did they look like?” she asked.

“A bunch of old geezers with a serious ego problem,” I said. “They made a big stink about staying neutral and not getting involved, but in the end they helped. Sort of. If the scroll can be translated, they helped. If it can’t be, then they’re just assholes.”

“It’s probably a little from column A, a little from column B,” Bethany said. She glanced at me again. “I’ve been thinking about why you asked me that question before. About whether I remember my family.”

“It was on my mind, that’s all,” I said.

“Because of Jordana. Trent, I’m so sorry. For all of it. I wanted to be wrong about her. I wanted you to be happy and know who you are.”

“I’m the one who should be apologizing,” I said. “If I’d listened to you, none of this would have happened. I was too blind to see I was being played, but you saw it. You had suspicions about Jordana from the start. I suppose you’re dying to say ‘I told you so.’”

“Not particularly,” she said. “In a way, Jordana was a victim in this, too.”

That was true enough. The anger flared inside me again, hot and ferocious. “Arkwright knew exactly what he was doing when he infected her. He knew it would affect her mind. It would silence any doubts she might have about killing to protect him and his secret. He turned her into a murderer. He used her to get me to lower my guard and deliver the Codex right into his hands.”

“Whoever Jordana was before Arkwright infected her, this wasn’t her,” Bethany said. “Not the
real
her.”

I spread another handful of Sanare moss on Bethany’s skin, down near the phoenix’s tail feathers at the small of her back. “I guess I’ve always had bad timing with women, huh?”

She looked back at me, arching an eyebrow. “There’s bad timing, and then there’s bad timing.”

I chuckled, but it was short-lived. There was just too much weighing me down. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words stuck in my throat. They seemed so tiny compared to everything I felt.

“I’m never going to know who I am, am I?” I said when I found my voice again. “Every time I think I’m getting close, it falls apart. Every time someone says they know, they’re lying. The kicker is, out of everyone, the only one who seems to know the truth is Reve Azrael, and I don’t even know if she’s dead or alive.”

“I wouldn’t trust the answer from her, either,” Bethany said. “I guess at the end of the day you have to ask yourself if you’re okay with not knowing. If you can live without the answer.”

Could I? I didn’t know. Every time I thought I was close, the answer was pulled away from me. The frustration and disappointment were chipping away at me piece by piece. How much more could I take? How much more until there was nothing left of me to chip away?

“What about you?” I asked. “Can you live with not knowing why your parents gave you up?”