Serpent's Storm (37 page)

“Seventy-three and twenty-one,” I shouted as my memory unexpectedly kicked in. I slid my finger along the panel, counting to seventy-three, then I depressed the button. Next, I drew my finger back down the panel and punched twenty-one.

“Please hold on to the handrail,”
an electronic voice chimed—but before I could comply with the request, the elevator began to plummet downward, my body slamming into the ceiling.

“’rap,”
I said, my face pressed against the ceiling’s smooth metal surface as the car dropped at G-force speeds.

Suddenly, the elevator came to an abrupt stop, chiming twice to announce our arrival, and my stomach shot up into my throat as the elevator/carnival ride of craziness dropped me back the way I’d come, my shoulder smashing into the floor. The elevator door folded open and I winced, the right side of my face aching from the ceiling hit I’d taken, but that pain was eclipsed by the agony I felt when I tried to stand up and found that my shoulder had separated in the fall.

I was still immortal. Which meant my cells should’ve started regenerating right there in the elevator, but the promethium was taking its toll on my body and all my energy was being funneled into just keeping me alive. So no matter how hard I willed it to move, my left arm remained immobile, hanging uselessly at my side. Part of me wanted to stay in the elevator and wait for the inevitable, but I fought against it, forcing myself to crawl out into the cramped antechamber marking the threshold of the Hall of Death. I vaguely remembered the space being painted a sickly mint green, but the lights had been dimmed, making it impossible to ferret out any real detail.

Banging my shin once on an overturned chair, I made it across the room without further incident, but when I tried to push my way through into the Hall of Death itself, I found only a blank wall where the entrance should’ve been. I knew there was a door somewhere—I’d seen it the last time I was there—but then I remembered how it had appeared invisible to Jarvis and me until our guide had led us through it. Pressing my good shoulder against the blank wall, I ran my hand over every inch of the smooth surface until my fingers found a thin crack, which I exploited by hooking my fingers inside it. Using my own body weight, I yanked backward on the opening with enough force to widen the gap just enough to allow me to slip inside.

Immediately, I stumbled over a fresh corpse on the other side of the door. In the darkness, I could see it was smaller than an average person’s body, with thin limbs, longish hair . . . and a shirtwaist dress. I didn’t stop to look at its face. Not because I meant the body any disrespect, but because I already intuitively knew it belonged to Suri, the Day Manager of the Hall of Death. I said a quick prayer for the dead girl in the doorway, who’d died defending this place from its enemies, but I didn’t stop to wonder how long it would be before I joined her. Instead, I forged steadily onward.

The first time I’d been in the Hall of Death, I’d marveled at the beauty of the place: the humongous skeletal steel structure, the floors made from large cut limestone blocks, the oriental carpets bearing strange symbols I’d never seen before, and the walls hung with surreal and bloody medieval tapestries. All the disjointed architectural styles gave the space the austerity of a monastery coupled with the modernity of a skyscraper.

Now the lights were low, hiding the carnage that had been wrought on the place. I found the floors slick with blood; the bodies of Bugbears, humans, and other creatures lay inter-meshed with the desecrated armor of the Hall’s knightly guards. I’d had a run-in with the knights the last time I’d been here, but we’d been able to resolve the situation without bloodshed. My sister and the Devil hadn’t been so lucky. Their people had been decimated here.

I heard raised voices down at the end of the long hall and immediately tried to fade into the darkness, hiding myself in the arched doorway of one of the myriad reading rooms that intersected the throughway of the Hall. I stood there a few moments without drawing a breath, using the wall as a support, but when I realized the voices were staying put, I relaxed. Whoever the voices belonged to, they had no clue about my presence. Emboldened, I stepped out of my hiding space and silently continued my journey down the hallway. I was careful not to make any noise that would give away my position, treading as lightly as my wounded body allowed. When I reached the end of the hallway, I slid into another archway and listened:

“I want all of them!” a woman screamed.

I peeked around the edge of the stone archway to see my sister Thalia pacing in front of the Hall of Death’s scarred cherrywood Main Information Desk, her firm body encased in a pair of snug hot pink Juicy Couture sweats. With her hair pulled back into a slick ponytail and her feet encased in a pair of those stupid round-soled Shape-Up shoes that were supposed to tighten your ass while you walked, it appeared she’d dressed down for the occasion.

She stopped pacing and walked over to the desk, slamming her fists into its scarred top, making the giant sumo wrestler of a man sitting behind it quiver. I’d met the man, Tanuki, the last time I’d been to the Hall of Death, looking for a friend’s Death Record. Back then he’d been a bubbling bowl of Jell-O, with an easy demeanor that could be either catty or playful, depending on his mood. Now, with his eyes red and puffy from crying, he looked beaten.

“The Hall of Death is an entity unto itself,” Tanuki cried. “It decides who receives the Death Records . . .
and who does not
.”

Having worked up his courage, he spoke the last few words with a poisonous disdain.

My sister was livid, her eyes wild as she pushed herself away from the desktop, walking around to the other side of the desk where Tanuki, nervous as a cat, sat in an oversized rolling chair. I thought she was going to strike the giant man, but to my surprise she walked past him, her eyes drawn instead by the allure of the humongous apothecary cabinet that towered over him, its face crowded with tiny wooden drawers. My sister stopped when she stood in front of its massive bulk, her hands running over the battered wood. Then, one by one, she began to yank the drawers out onto the ground like a whirling dervish, digging her hands into the empty cubbies, searching for something.

“Please, I beg of you,” Tanuki wailed, but my sister, in her frenzy, ignored his pleas. Instead, she became even more aggressive, throwing the drawers—once she’d confirmed their emptiness—as far down the Hall as she could manage. Distraught, Tanuki put his head down on the desk and began to cry, while behind him, my sister systematically destroyed everything in her path.

As I watched Thalia dismantle the cabinet, I began to wonder why she was down here without any kind of guard. If the Devil had really fallen for our plan and gone off to Hell to deal with the uprising we’d started, he would’ve at least left my sister with
some
protection, right? It just didn’t make any sense.

And then I had the epiphany.

The Devil
had
left her with protection. She’d just chosen to use her guard in a creative way. She’d sent them on a suicide mission to take the Hall of Death.

The Devil was pretty smart. He knew that the Hall was the most heavily fortified place in all of Purgatory, and he’d chosen to starve Suri and her guard out rather than attempt to force his way in. He probably thought they’d surrender peaceably once he’d installed his puppet (Daniel) as the President of Death, Inc., and assumed full control of both Purgatory and Hell.

But while the Devil had gone to take care of things down in Hell, Thalia had done as she liked, using her guard to descend on the Hall and take it—with maximum bloodshed. Of course, she’d greatly underestimated Suri and her knights, losing her whole guard in the takedown.

“Nice job, Thalia,” I said, clapping, as I stepped out of the shadows and into the light. “You destroyed the Hall of Death and lost all your guards in the process. What’s the next thing on your agenda? Killing your mother and sisters?”

At the sound of my voice, Thalia whirled around, her eyes scanning the darkened Hall. When she sighted me, an odd smile played at the corner of her lips and she shook her head sadly.

“I was really hoping someone else would’ve killed you by now,” she said, leaving the confines of Tanuki’s apothecary cabinet and crossing back around to the front of the desk, where she was closer to me.

“What happened to your buddy, the Devil?” I said, keeping my voice friendly. “He have a little accident down in Hell and had to leave his best girl here in Purgatory to hold down the fort?”

Thalia’s eyes shone with menace.

“You bitch! You’re responsible for what happened in Hell, aren’t you—”

“I am most definitely the cause of and answer to all your problems, big sis,” I shot back at her before she could get herself too worked up. “So, does the Devil know you’ve raided the Hall of Death in his absence?”

My well-chosen barb struck a nerve—Thalia’s face turned white and her mouth dropped open in surprise. In my peripheral vision, I saw Tanuki slowly rolling his chair away from the desk. I wished him all the luck in the world—I wouldn’t want to be caught between two very pissed-off immortal sisters dealing with some seriously screwed-up family issues.

“I was just doing him a favor,” she said suddenly, backtracking. “He thought the Hall would be impenetrable, but look, it only took two hundred Bugbear guards and here we are.”

“Here we are,” I echoed.

She narrowed her eyes at me, irises glinting black in the overhead light.

I spat my next words at her: “Why’d you kill Dad, Thalia?”

My sister leaned against Tanuki’s desk and laughed, but it was the sound of bitterness, not mirth.

“Calliope, you know why I had to do it,” she said, the odd smile still playing across her lips. “He left me no choice. He took away my future and then he had me locked away. When the Devil came and offered me his help through Evangeline, what else could I say, but yes?”

There was no point in talking to Thalia, I realized. Nothing she said, no bizarre ramblings she indulged in, would ever give me the closure I wanted—because no matter which way you sliced it, ambition and insanity were not good reasons for murdering your family.

“It’s over, Thalia.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Why?”

“Because I said so. You’ve done enough damage already, and now it’s time to stop,” I said, anger and nausea driving my words. “The Devil’s not coming back. It was a trap. And without him, you’re nothing.”

She pursed her lips, her hand instinctively stroking her ponytail.

“You’re lying. No one stops the Devil—”

“We did,” I said, lying through my teeth. I had no idea if Jarvis and the others had secured Hell yet, but Thalia didn’t need to know that.

Something behind me caught my sister’s attention and she turned her head to get a better look. Her face went slack with recognition and she lifted her hand aggressively.

“What’re you doing down here?” she said, uncertainty blooming in her eyes.

I turned around, too, wondering who’d decided to join the party now. To my shock, I saw my dad’s attorney, Father McGee, standing in the middle of the hallway, looking about half as old and decrepit as he usually did. Beside him stood my old buddy, Frank, who shot me a knowing grin. I guess he’d figured out who had tied him up with the light cords.

“I’m afraid I’m here to put an end to your fun, Thalia,” Father McGee said, taking something from his jacket pocket and holding it up to the light.

I had expected to see a gun or, at the very least, a Taser, but what I saw, instead . . .
was a package of airplane peanuts.

“Stay away from me!” Thalia screamed, bumping up against the edge of the desk as she tried to back away from the silvery-blue package in Father McGee’s hand. I would’ve laughed at the absurdity of the scenario: my megalomaniac sister being terrorized by a bag of airplane peanuts—
except now I had an inkling what my sister’s immortal weakness was.

As a child, I’d known that Thalia was allergic to peanuts. We’d never had them in the house, and Clio and I were forbidden from buying peanut butter cookies and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or ordering peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when we went out to eat—but I’d just never put it all together before.

Thalia had been born with the most common immortal weakness of all: peanuts.

And then, with a leaden certainty, I knew who had sold out my family.

It hadn’t taken me long to realize that someone had been feeding Sumi the particulars of my family’s immortal weaknesses—I just couldn’t figure out who the culprit was.

I knew that the person, whoever they were, was close to my dad—that they knew every aspect of his life intimately, both personally and professionally, and that they were in a position of utter confidence within the Death, Inc., hierarchy. Since I could cross Jarvis off the list—my Dad’s Executive Assistant had done nothing but suffer for my family—the only other person with the kind of access necessary to crush the Reaper-Jones clan was the man standing in front of me, shaking a bag of peanuts in my sister’s face: Father McGee, my dad’s lawyer and personal confidante.

“You bastard,”
I said under my breath. “You as good as killed my father—”

“No,” Father McGee said, interrupting me. “I didn’t kill your father. The Ender of Death has always known
his
weakness. I simply provided the necessary information about you, your mother, your sister, and Jarvis.”

Father McGee’s face glowed with power—yet upon closer inspection, I saw that it wasn’t just power that was making him appear so sprightly. His skin was appreciably firmer, the lines around his mouth and eyes less pronounced. Even his hair was shinier, the color having molted from snow white to a more distinguished salt and pepper. It was almost as if he’d won a year’s worth of Botox in the church raffle and had used the whole supply in one sitting. Gone, too, were the clerical trappings I’d always known, replaced now by a well-tailored black Armani suit and sockless white calfskin penny loafers that made him look like Bob Hope on a USO Tour to Hell.