Die Once More (3 page)

“Gold made sure those of us he recovered were certified dead and taken off the search lists. Those who had families or communities who might recognize them were moved farther away. Ryan, Tirado, Oreo, and me . . . we all decided to stay. My parents are dead, but I have a little sister I like to keep an eye on. I visit her when I'm volant.” He's quiet, studying the ground in front of
his feet.

It's got to be hard for him. He still has surviving family members he can't show himself to. Everyone I knew before I animated has been dead for generations.

As if reading my mind, Faust glances up at me. “At least I get to do what I love: save lives. Never thought I'd be signing up for an eternal contract when I became a firefighter . . .”

Called it!
I think. A century of watching people has paid off once again.

“. . . but I can't think of a better reason to exist.”

Frosty slows, puts an arm around Faust's shoulders, and gives him a sideways hug. “One of New York's finest,” she says, and astounds me once again by giving him a peck on the cheek. He gives her a sad smile and then abruptly looks up, listening.

“Tirado's got something over on Bushwick and Devoe. Three of our evil twins . . . on their way to stir up trouble, no doubt.”

“At this time in the morning?” I ask, as the three of us jog in the direction he had pointed.

“New York: the city that never sleeps,” quotes Faust.

Frosty fills me in as she runs. “We wondered if news of your battle in Paris had reached our city's numa, and if so, if they would react. If it would make any difference to them. Their activity's been growing steadily over the last decade, but recently something . . . different . . . seems to have been brewing,” she says, confirming what Faust said.

She throws a glance at me, a flicker of worry flashing across her blank-screen face, and says cryptically, “The dark prophecy
that gave you your Champion doesn't only refer to France. It's the Third Age here too, you know.”

WE ARRIVE AT A FOUR-STORY BOX-SHAPED BUILDING
that looks like it's been sided with roof tiles. Green. Ugly. I shouldn't care, but used to the beauty of Paris, I can't help but cringe. It looks like an architect threw up on a blueprint and decided it looked good that way.

I'm back, Frenchie. Miss me?
Ryan says in my head. I see Faust and Frosty talking to the air and know the volant spirits have congregated. “What do you see?” I ask him.

Top-floor apartment,
he responds.
Three numa versus four trust-fund-looking twentysomethings
. His voice disappears for a moment, and then he's back.
The kids are selling drugs for the zombies and didn't turn over all the money. Typical TV-cop-series scenario. Could have written a better script myself. Oh great . . . here come the numa volants
.

Frosty talks to her spirit for another moment and then announces, “Okay, we're on our own. The numa brought a volant
each, and they're blocking ours. I've sent Oreo back to the Warehouse for reinforcements. Ryan and Tirado, do what you can to stay with us.”

She turns from where she's staring into space and focuses on Faust and me. “What'd you get from your volants?”

“Three numa, four twentysomething kids shifting drugs for them, deal gone bad,” Faust summarizes, fingering his weapons and looking up at the building.

“Same for me,” I say, “and Ryan specified top floor.”

“Oreo got more,” she says. “A numa forced one of the kids to overdose. Got the opioid injection?” she asks Faust. He nods. “We have two entries: one through the front door and the other at the back through a fire escape. Faust, go up that way and block the exit.” Faust takes off around the side of the building. “Wait for my signal, and then enter if you can without breaking the window,” Frosty calls after him. He waves to show he heard her.

She marches up the front steps, her long quilted coat flying open on either side as she unbuttons it, fishes around in the pockets, and pulls out a large set of keys. Leaning over to inspect the lock on the front door, she murmurs, “Schlage single cylinder,” and rifles through the key collection. Sticking one in the lock, she turns it and opens the door. I follow her into a small front-hall area with another locked door in front of us. Boxes and letters are stacked haphazardly on a side table.

Without hesitating, Frosty picks up a large Amazon box, inspects it, rings a doorbell labeled
APT
1, and when a voice asks, “Yes?” she says, “FedEx.” The door buzzes open, she heaves the
box toward a door marked 1, and we're off, running noiselessly up the stairs.

From behind us I hear a door open, the shuffle of someone dragging the box into their apartment, and then the door closing.
Good trick,
I think with awe, understanding now why New York bardia insist on training out-of-towners in their ways before letting them loose. The simple technique of getting into a locked building without drawing unwanted attention would never have occurred to me. I can get into any building in Paris but would be totally lost here.

We get to the top floor, and Frosty pauses by the door, pressing her ear carefully to it, before slowly turning the door handle, testing. It's unlocked.

I follow her lead as she draws only her gun, leaving her sword hidden beneath her coat. The Glock feels bulky in my hand, its screwed-on silencer weighing down the already heavy weapon. I haven't held one of these since Ambrose, Vincent, and I posed as undercover security forces for a Paris embassy during the Gulf War.

“Take whoever's near the door,” she whispers to me, and then, putting her fingers between her lips, lets out an ear-piercing whistle and shoves the door open, landing a forceful blow to whoever was behind it.

We're in a short hallway. The open door blocks the access to the rear of the apartment, leaving whoever's behind it for Faust to handle. We turn left and find ourselves in a chaotic living room, broken furniture tossed around, and drawn curtains blocking the
morning light. Two young men and a woman huddle, crying, on a couch while two imposing numa, outlined in bloodred auras, loom over them, one pointing a gun at their captives. Another man is slumped over on the floor at their feet, eyes open, but obviously unconscious . . . if not already dead.

I take all this in at a glance, while from behind the door I hear the thick thud of a silenced gunshot, and Faust calls, “One down.”

Before his words are out, Frosty has put a bullet in the numa holding the gun, and he collapses. Rushing past her, I press my gun to the remaining numa's temple as he reaches for his weapon. He drops his pistol and holds his hands up.

“Quickly,” Frosty says to the kids on the couch. “Take cover in the bathroom, and lock the door behind you.”

She doesn't need to say it twice. In a second, they're up and scrambling for a door across the room. They disappear behind it, I hear a lock turn from the inside, and then dead silence.

“What are you doing here?” Frosty steps over the numa she downed and strolls over to us.

My numa tenses, and I press the barrel tighter to his head.

“What's it look like? Business,” he mutters.

“Whose business? Janus's?” she asks.

He narrows his eyes at her and nods.

“So he dares to send his muscle a mere ten blocks away from our headquarters, just to put some scare into a bunch of stupid kids? Business must be booming.”

The guy just glares at her.

“You're in our neighborhood, eight in the morning, full
daylight. Know what that tells me about you and your friends?” she asks.

The man looks like he's thinking it over, but before he can come to a conclusion, she points her own gun right between his eyes. “It tells me you're expendable,” she says, and pulls the trigger.

As the man crumples, behind me I hear a clink of metal against wood. I turn to see the numa Frosty shot first flex his fingers, as the bullet that has worked its way out of his flesh rolls around on the floor inches from his forehead. He begins pushing himself up from where he lies in a small pool of blood.

“Blades,” Frosty says, and the three of us draw our swords, Faust and his fallen numa just visible in the hallway behind the open doorway. There is a second of silence as we hold them high, then, together, bring them down.

“Deliver us from evil,” Faust murmurs, crossing himself, as he nudges the numa head away with his foot and closes the door behind him. As the surge of dark energy hits us, I see Faust clench his fists and take it like a shot of adrenaline. Frosty closes her eyes and breathes in deeply, storing hers up. I shudder as mine floods me. The big reward for killing numa: We get their energy when they die. And we also gift the world with one less bad guy. It's a win-win situation.

“Treat the overdose,” Frosty calls to Faust, and he moves quickly to care for the unconscious boy. She turns to me. “Go downstairs and let our backups in,” she orders.

As I leave, I see her go over to the bathroom door and knock.
“Is everyone okay in there?” she asks. Muffled affirmations come from behind the door. “Just stay where you are for the moment. Sit tight. You're all going to be okay.”

Her voice is firm and reassuring, but as she turns away and my eye catches hers, I know she is telling a half-truth. These kids got out of this scene alive, but they're already chin-deep in numa business. It's going to take a lot of intervention on our part, if they'll even accept our help, for them to truly be okay.

Frosty knows how things work here. She's been around for a while, but not too long. I can tell from her aura . . . from her eyes . . . that she's a much younger revenant than I. But the power I see in her leaves no question of her nature in my mind. She is trying to appear normal, chummy with her kindred, on equal terms with the others. But I'm from a place where hierarchy has reigned for centuries . . . millennia even. True leaders have come and gone: I've read about them in Gaspard's records, and met a few at convocations. And I know without a doubt that this woman was born to be among them. Born to be a queen. Forget Ice Queen, Frost Queen. I'm in the presence of a girl who has the potential to be the Queen . . . of New York.

TWO MONTHS CREEP BY, AND THINGS DO NOT GET
better. Every day is like its own separate death, bullet-riddled with memories and gutted by the twisting knife of loss. Entwined with the memories of Kate, and the longing for a love that will never be, is the loss of my best friend. My mood swings wildly between missing the camaraderie of a brother I had for over seventy years, and resenting him for being the recipient of Kate's love.

And then there's Jean-Baptiste. Although I was never as close to him as Vincent was, I loved and respected the man. I should be there to help support Gaspard in his grief. So there's that guilt to deal with, along with all the rest.

Losing Vincent is like losing my right arm. And since Kate has my heart, and I feel spineless for abandoning Gaspard, you could say I'm presently suffering a major lack of body parts.

The only way I survive is to never stop moving. I make sure I'm always surrounded by others, so I won't have time to think and
end up imploding like a dying star.

I walk incessantly. I know the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan, my two chosen boroughs, well enough by now to have an accurate street map in my head. I sign up for three four-hour shifts per day. Although that first day was an exception, and New York's numa are staying suspiciously out of sight, there are enough cases of suffering street people, suicide attempts, domestic violence, and near-fatal accidents to keep me on a continual high from the life force I absorb from these saves.

“Dude, this isn't a contest,” Faust says as I trim my hair in my studio mirror. “You don't get bonus points if you save more humans than anyone else.”

He has been an impeccable welcome rep. He got me moved into my room at the Warehouse and had it furnished with what I asked for. (I didn't really care, but he pushed me for details until it ended up looking pretty much exactly like my room in Paris . . . besides the floor-to-ceiling windows with an enviable view of the East River.) He got me weather-appropriate clothes, made sure the armory had what I needed (sending off for some antique swords so I would “feel at home”), and introduced me to our kindred artists—of whom there are many. Seems like every revenant artist in America wants to be here.

Faust even gamely accompanied me to my first Midnight Drawing Group meeting at the Warehouse. But after Gina, one of our bardia sisters recruited to pose when our human model didn't show up, perched atop the stool and dropped her robe, Faust's jaw dropped too. Her response was, “Draw or scram,
Faust.” He hasn't been back since. His third-generation Italian-American upbringing and his stint in the tough-guy New York fire department never prepared him for people like the artists I hang out with.

It was Gina, drawing next to me one night, who first pointed out that the girl I was sketching looked nothing like the model posing for us on the stool. I didn't respond—what could I say? Since then no one else has mentioned the fact that every woman I draw is the same. The position matches that of our model, the shadows and light are exactly what they are in our studio, but it is always Kate's face, always her body. My pencil has its own will, and my fingers are its slaves.

Late one evening, Gold drops by with a message from Paris. He takes one look at the girl on my drawing pad, and I see things click in his mind. Tearing his eyes from the page, he says, “I have something for you.” He waves a creamy white envelope like a flag.

As I reach for it, he slips it back into his pocket and says, “I'd actually been hoping to catch up with you.” He glances around at the twenty-odd people concentrating on their drawings. “Without disrupting everyone, of course. Do you have time for a break?”