Dying Is My Business (6 page)

I stared at her, wondering if I ought to leave her behind after all. She was clearly out of her mind. Or maybe the whole damn world had gone mad. After all, I’d died nine times already but was still here, alive and kicking. In what kind of sane world did
that
happen?

She saw the confusion in my face and said, “That’s what the amulet’s called, the Breath of Itzamna. It was given to me by a nine-hundred-year-old Mayan shaman in a tattoo parlor in Los Angeles. Let’s hope it works as well as he said it would.”

Ridiculously, I felt a pang of disappointment that someone so beautiful and brave could also be batshit crazy.

Against my better judgment, I asked, “Do you really expect me to believe there are nine-hundred-year-old Mayan shamans living in L.A.?”

“Just one,” she corrected me. “The others are in San Diego these days, mostly. They share an apartment complex near the zoo.”

Of course. I should have guessed as much. “That’s insane,” I told her.

“Not really,” she said. “It’s nice there and the rents are cheap.” She turned to me, her brow knitting with sudden confusion, as if it had only just occurred to her that I was a complete stranger. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Trent.”

“Trent.” She shook my hand. Hers was so small it practically disappeared in my grip. “I’m Bethany. Thank you, Trent. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I don’t know what would have happened. I guess I owe you my life. I don’t think I could have held off six gargoyles on my own, even with the Anubis Hand.”

I raised my eyebrows. “The what now?”

Bethany nodded at the staff on the floor with the mummified human fist. “Only two things in the world can hurt a gargoyle. Sunlight—or any bright light, really—and the Anubis Hand.” She looked at the pile of ashes by the wall that had once been Harelip. “But maybe you can help me out, Trent, because the thing is, I’ve never seen the Anubis Hand do that before. It can hurt gargoyles, it can knock them unconscious, but it’s never burned them to cinders before.”

I shrugged. “Maybe
you
can only knock them out, but I’m, what, three times your body mass? No disrespect, but I gave that gargoyle a pretty good smack.”

She looked at me skeptically. “Well, whatever you did, it saved my life. Probably yours, too.”

Not likely, I thought. I turned away from her, and Bethany gasped in alarm. “Trent, you’re injured!”

The adrenaline from the fight had numbed the pain so much that I’d forgotten about the wounds on my back. So much for getting through the night without ruining another shirt. “I’ll be okay,” I told her. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“It’s not every day someone walks away from a gargoyle attack,” she said. “You should count yourself lucky.”

“I guess so.” I still didn’t fully understand what had happened. Gargoyles, a staff called the Anubis Hand, an amulet named the Breath of Itzamna, a man who just a few minutes before had been a wolf … If the door had opened just then and a magical, telepathic Q’horse had trotted in, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Come on, Thornton,” Bethany whispered.

“What exactly are you expecting to happen here?” I pressed.

She ignored me and continued talking to the dead body. “We need you. You’re the only one who knows where it is now.”

“Where what is?”

Finally, she acknowledged my presence again. She shook her head and said, “A box. It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

Oh God. In all the chaos, I’d forgotten about the box. My stomach dropped. Bethany was one of the squatters Underwood had mentioned. I’d made a serious mistake. I saw that now. I’d gotten carried away in the moment and let my guard down. I never should have told her my name, or found out hers. That was only going to make it harder to do my job.

“Tell me about the box,” I said. She didn’t answer. She kept her eyes on Thornton.

I’d saved her life, only to have to kill her myself. Because she didn’t just know my name, she’d seen my face. She could identify me, trace me right back to Underwood, which was exactly what he didn’t want. I reached behind my back for the gun in my waistband. My mouth went as dry as sand. My heart lurched into my throat. My fingers grazed the gun’s handle. This was important, I told myself. There was too much riding on this.

When the box is in my hands, and the ones you’ve taken it from are dead, then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.

I wrapped my fingers around the grip of the gun. My index finger touched the trigger guard.

“Bethany, where is the box?”

I started to pull the gun free.

Between us, Thornton sat up suddenly, gasping air into his lungs.

Seven

There was no doubt in my mind that Thornton had been dead. Well and truly dead. I’d seen the body with my own eyes, clear as day, and they didn’t come any deader. And yet, one minute he was lying motionless on the floor with his guts practically falling out of his stomach, and the next he was sitting up and hyperventilating like he’d just surfaced from a deep-sea dive.

Startled, I let go of my gun, leaving it tucked in the back of my pants. Adrenaline surged through me, my muscles coiling, ready to spring away if he made any sudden moves. In the back of my mind, I wondered if this was how Bennett had felt when he saw me coming for him after I died.

The thought blossomed into another, more earth-shaking one. Was it possible Thornton was like me?

“Thornton?” Bethany said.

He stared at her, gasping and choking, still trying to catch his breath. “Bethany? What happened to me? I—I can’t breathe.”

“Take it slow,” she said. “Don’t force it. Just stop trying to breathe and you’ll be okay.” She turned to me. “Help me get him up.”

I closed my mouth, suddenly aware that it had been hanging open this whole time. Bethany took one of Thornton’s arms. I reached for the other, then paused. I didn’t want to touch him. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. I had the sudden and inexplicable urge to beat him with a shovel until he stayed down for good.

“Please, I can’t do this alone,” she said.

We didn’t have a lot of time before the gargoyles came back, so I reluctantly took Thornton’s other arm. His skin felt cool and clammy, like a slab of raw meat. I didn’t like it, it didn’t feel right, but I helped him get to his feet. He was heavy, cumbersome, awkward. In that moment, I finally understood the term dead weight.

Thornton wobbled unsteadily on his feet. He tried to walk, but his knees buckled under him and he stumbled. Bethany and I kept him upright. “I can’t feel my legs,” he said.

“Just take it slow,” Bethany repeated.

I glanced at the hole in the warehouse ceiling and wondered just how slow we could really take it. Bethany had said the gargoyles would be back soon, and with help. Where did they fit into all this? Was their attack on Bethany purely random? Somehow I doubted it. It wasn’t like the
New York Post
was running articles on random gargoyle violence in the daily police blotter. So what had they been doing here?

“Something’s wrong, I—I can’t feel
anything
.” Thornton looked down at himself and noticed, for the first time, the amulet at his chest. The small red gems at its center pulsed with a subtle, rhythmic glow, almost like a heartbeat. “Is this…?”

“The Breath of Itzamna,” she said.

“Why am I wearing it?” He paused, then looked up at Bethany. “Oh, no. I’m dead? I’m fucking
dead
?”

“Try to stay calm, Thornton,” she said. “The Breath of Itzamna worked. It brought you back.”

“No, I—I don’t feel right,” he said. “I’m cold. Numb. I can’t even feel my heartbeat. The only time I’m breathing is when I talk.”

“That’s because technically you’re not alive,” she explained. “Just … back.”

I bit back a swell of disappointment. Thornton wasn’t like me any more than Bennett’s fellow soldier Sully was. He was only up and moving because of the amulet. Somehow it had the power to bring him back. An amulet that could reanimate the dead. My brain tried to wrap itself around that but only wound up hurting.

“Christ, I’m a fucking zombie,” Thornton groaned.

“We have to keep moving,” Bethany told him. “Can you walk?”

He took a wobbly step forward. A rope of something thick and gray almost fell out of an open gash in his stomach before he pushed it back in with his hands. “Oh my God, I’m disgusting!”

We helped Thornton toward the door, his feet sliding stiffly along the warehouse floor. “Help me get to my clothes. They’re right outside.” He glanced at Bethany sheepishly. “Sorry about all the man flesh on display. It’s hard to make the change while I’m wearing clothes.”

She grinned at him. “Please, like I’ve never seen you change before? I’m used to you letting it all hang out.”

Thornton groaned. “That’s not a nice thing to say to someone who’s been disemboweled.”

Bethany stopped to pick up the Anubis Hand from the floor. I took the opportunity for one last glance around the room. She’d said Thornton was the only one who knew where the box was, which meant it wasn’t in the warehouse anymore. A moment ago I’d been ready to use my gun to get her talking, but now a new strategy occurred to me. If I stuck with these two, they would lead me to the box. I was sure of it.

We carried Thornton through the door. Outside, the familiar sights and sounds of the West Side Highway had a surprisingly calming effect on me. Maybe the entire world hadn’t been turned on its head after all.

A pile of discarded clothing sat under the broken warehouse window: jeans, boxer shorts, black sneakers, socks, a dark blue button-up shirt, and a long coat. Bethany handed me the staff and helped Thornton get dressed. Once he had his shirt buttoned up and felt more confident that his insides wouldn’t fall out again, he insisted on finishing the job himself.

He put on the rest of his clothes with the speed of someone who was used to constantly shedding his garments and then donning them again. Of course, he had a good reason for it.
Change,
they’d called it. Such a simple word, as if turning into a wolf was an everyday thing. When he was finished, he gingerly adjusted his shirtsleeve to accommodate the leather bracelet around his wrist, and said, “Much better. I almost feel like my old self again.” A dark stain spread across the shirt where his stomach had been torn open. “Well, I did say almost.” He drew his long coat closed around him.

A familiar shriek sounded from somewhere in the dark night sky. I couldn’t see anything up there, but it was close enough to draw a chill on the back of my neck. “They’re coming. We have to go now.”

“There’s no way we can outrun them,” Bethany said, her eyes frantically searching the sky. “They’re faster than we are. We need to take cover.”

“The subway,” Thornton said.

“It’s too far,” I said. “But I’ve got a car parked across the street.”

Thornton nodded. Bethany said, “Lead the way.”

There was no time to wait for a break in the traffic, so we hurried across the West Side Highway like suicidal fools. Bethany and I supported Thornton between us as cars screeched to a halt and honked angrily. A cabbie yelled, “Get out of the fucking road, ya morons!” I smiled to myself. The world almost felt normal again, predictable, a place where everything made sense and angry cab drivers yelled obscenities at pedestrians.

When we reached the other side of the highway, I brought them to where I’d parked the Explorer and opened the back door. Bethany got in first, then helped me load Thornton in beside her. I gave them the Anubis Hand to lay across their laps, and slammed the door closed. I quickly checked the sky for gargoyles, then got in the driver’s seat and started the car.

“Where to?” I asked.

“Just drive,” Bethany insisted, so I did.

Forty-Ninth Street, like so many of the streets in New York City, only went one way. It took us back to the West Side Highway. I made a quick right onto the highway, then another onto Fiftieth Street, speeding east across town to put as much of the city between us and the warehouse as I could. I worked the gas pedal, maneuvering the car through the narrow passage between the double-parked U-Haul and Con Edison trucks that lined the street. I hated driving in this part of town, especially when I was in a hurry. I expected gargoyles to fly out from the shadows at any moment. I glanced nervously at everything we passed—empty shuttered storefronts, a rental-car lot, a twenty-four-hour parking sign, the small, leafless, sickly trees that lined the sidewalks—but the coast was clear. So far, anyway. When I reached the corner of Eleventh Avenue, the traffic light turned red and I braked to a stop, trying to calm down. I looked in the rearview mirror. In the backseat, Thornton was clutching his stomach and gritting his teeth.

“I feel like I swallowed a block of ice,” he groaned.

“Your body is adjusting,” Bethany told him. “Your muscles are trying to go into rigor mortis, but the amulet won’t let them.”

“Wonderful,” he muttered.

The light turned green, and I hit the gas. The next block was lined with three- and four-story tenement buildings. A dark shape stood on a street-side fire escape. I stared at it as we passed, expecting it to spread its wings and leap down at us, but up close I saw it was just a man out for a smoke.

Thornton said, “By the way, I didn’t catch your name, friend.”

“Trent,” I answered, trying not to think about the fact that there was a talking corpse in the backseat of my car.

“Trent, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Thornton said. He chuckled.

“That’s not funny,” Bethany said.

Thornton ignored her. “You have a last name?”

“Just Trent,” I said. Underwood hadn’t seen fit to give me a last name along with the first. Honestly, I didn’t want one, not yet. A last name implied family, history, whole generations of people I belonged with. The only last name I wanted was my real one, when I found it.

“Okay, that’s cool,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Trent. I’m Thornton Redler. I take it you’ve already met the always-charming Bethany Savory. And yes, that is her real name. Thanks for your help back there. So where’d you come from? I haven’t seen you before. Did Isaac send you?”